This was my reaction too. But apparently I don’t eat “Real” Pizza because I’d rather call up the Eagle Boys or summon the minions of Pizza The Hut for my “Shit, it’s two days before payday and I’ve only got $15 on me” dinner needs than go to somewhere that has mood lighting and a wine list.
Dipping Sauce for a Pizza? Madness, I say. Dipping Sauce is for Spring Rolls, Wontons, and Potato Wedges or Chunky Fries.
Moving onto burgers:
The true Hamburger should have:
*Meat patty (min. 1/4 lb)
*Cheese, melted over the patty
*Onion
*Lettuce
*Beetroot
*Bacon
*Egg
*Pineapple
*One or more of the following sauces: Tomato, Mustard, BBQ.
*A white bun. Not a Wholemeal bun, not a Sourdough bun. A White bun.
Any hamburger that doesn’t have Beetroot on it is a Poofter Hamburger, and anyone who doubts the righteousness of Pineapple on hamburgers is a Communist. And remember: If you don’t need both hands to hold it, it’s not a Real Hamburger either.
Apparently the Steak & Cheese Pie is also completely unknown in America, which is a shame. The only thing that even comes close to a Great Aussie Hamburger is a Great Aussie Pie, with Steak & Onion and Cheese in it, topped with Tomato Sauce or Gravy. You can eat them with one hand and drive at the same time, so you’d think the Yanks would be all over them, but apparently not.
I like Holland (except in the winter, when nobody likes Holland). But what they think is a hamburger is an affront to all that is holy.
A hamburger is meant to be made from beef. You would think they could work this out, what with all the cows wandering about. A Dutch guy’s very notion of Truth is bound up in a cow, witness the expression zo waar als een koe – “as true as a cow”.
But they make their burgers from half beef, half pork, bleah. Then they put some horrible kind of curry in them, fry them with vegetables of uncertain origin, slap them on the nastiest cotton like bread in the world (which also makes no sense as Dutch bread is on the whole very good) and cover them in assorted slimy goos. Like curry ketchup or peanut sauce. Top it all off with an egg and it’s disgusting. It’s enough to make you long for a Wendy’s franchise.
I do love a good steak & cheese pie, though I can never eat them without burning myself on molten cheese.
I couldn’t find any sort of meat pie anywhere when I was over there - how about you? It was kind of weird, walking into a bakery and seeing not a single pie, pasty or sausage roll…just rows upon rows of (admittedly, delicious!) sweet pastries and many variations on yeasty doughnuts.
One day I shall win the lottery, move to America*, open an Aussie-style bakery and … probably fail miserably. Though you never know; I might just be the one to introduce Cheesymite Scrolls to the US**…
You won’t find them in bakeries. What you want to look for – and it’s not too common – is someone selling Cornish pasties. When I was living in Carson City, right next to Virginia City and the Comstock Lode, two old guys there had a pasty shop. They had two varieties, chicken and beef, and both were delicious. Unfortunately they retired and no one picked up the place.
Then a couple years ago, not far from where I work, opened The Cornish Pasty Co. Run by an immigrant Cornishman, it has a wide variety but the traditional beef, potato, and rutabega is his best seller. He doesn’t have steak and cheese but rather, ‘meat and cheese’ – the meat being pork sausage.
But I’m a Brit and understand that “peanut butter and jelly” to you means “peanut butter and jam” to me. And it still sounds gross. As I’ve posted in other food threads, we Brits do not mix savoury and sweet like the Merkins do.
Getting back to the OP: iced tea. Full of the spirit of “when in Rome” after emigrating to the US, I tried it, and discovered that it tastes as disgusting as it sounds.
Having tried it, I agree that peanut butter and jam is as disgusting as you’d expect.
Peanut butter and sliced banana, on the other hand, is bloody good. I like it on rice cakes. Not sure about sandwiches, but it’s probably good that way.
That truly is the perfect burger. It’s called a “hamburger with the lot”, or a “hambrdalot” when you come out of the pub. The only thing I’d change is that I’d keep the lettuce - a burger with lettuce on it, and there’s yer healthy eatin’ for the week.
And nobody has mentioned the South Australian “pie floater”? Take one bowl of pea soup, and one meat pie. Drop the meat pie into the soup. Eat (somehow).
I’ve never considered peanut butter to be in the savory category. In my mind it’s eaten primarily in sandwiches either alone or with jam or honey. Otherwise it’s used to make sweets like peanut butter cookies or peanut butter cups.
Yeah, I’ve never quite understood the head scratching PB&J gets overseas. Fruits and nuts are a perfectly normal combination pretty much anywhere in the world. Why would turning both into a paste-like consistency and combining them be suddenly gross?
But I’ve also used peanut butter for savory applications like soup (there’s a great Szechuan-style carrot soup that uses peanut butter), stews, dipping sauces for meats–it’s mostly Asian and African stuff. Plus I enjoy peanut butter and hot pepper sandwiches.
I can say personally that it doesn’t. I have eaten both kosher and non-kosher meat. The kosher meat has had all the blood drained from it by a process of soaking and salting. After cooking, they’re quite similar in texture. (The salt gets washed off, so kosher meat isn’t saltier than non-kosher, either, just to head that myth off at the pass)
Americans generally do think of peanut butter in the “sweet” category- it’s usually used in cookies, sandwiches, or candy. Dishes that use it as a savory flavoring tend to be Asian or African, and relatively new to most of us in the last 20 years. Dave Barry made a joke once years ago about men’s cooking, talking about a husband who “had made 10 dinners over the last 20 years, 8 of which involved peanut butter”. Tom Lehrer also joked about “peanut butter stew”. It’s not funny if you know about things like satay or groundnut stew.
Maybe what we think of as peanut butter is slightly different from what you’d get if you asked for peanut butter in a British supermarket?
Anything and jello- gross, in the same way that “anything and a big steaming dog turd” would be gross.
Peanut butter here is used almost exclusively as a sandwich filling, and very rarely with anything else in the sandwich - just bread, butter or margarine, and peanut butter. British peanut butter does seem to be less creamy and slightly less sugary than American. The no. 1 brand by some distance is Sun-Pat, and the supermarket brands are suspiciously similar, like they’re made in the same factory. They do sell US brands like Skippy too.
FWIW, I’m a Brit that regularly has peanut butter and jam together, although I almost always have it on toast instead of in a sandwich.
It truly is a match made in Heaven. The saltiness of the peanut butter helps temper the sweetness of the jam. It’s a great snack for winter nights when you need the extra calories that buttered toast alone won’t provide.
Which one are you calling “savoury”? To me, they’re both sweet. And is peanut butter & chocolate (as in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) eaten over there?
The closest thing to a meat pie in the parts of America I’m familiar with is pot pie (e.g. chicken pot pie, which has chicken and vegetables in gravy baked in a pie crust), which is not uncommon in restaurants and readily available in the frozen food section of most grocery stores.
To me, peanut butter is savory. I’m American, but I don’t think of peanut butter as sweet–it’s salty and nutty. The commercial brands like Skippy and such have enough sweetness to keep the kids eating it, and the more “natural” blends have very little, if any, sugar at all.
