Recipes that aren't quite what they should be

Cafe Society
1

So, I made Spanish rice last night for dinner. Nope, not what you’re thinking. Spanish rice – in my house – is the stuffing that normally goes in green peppers, but since my husband doesn’t like peppers, we skip them and just have the stuffing. Oh, wait, but it’s probably not the stuffing you have had in peppers. Yeh. That’s what I’m on about – what dishes in your house have a common name but are nothing like what they are in the real world? For me, there are 3 that stand out in my mind:

Stuffed peppers/Spanish rice – it’s brown rice, mixed with diced tomatoes, ground beef (or turkey or pork or chicken, whatever’s cheapest this week), an egg, salt, pepper and covered in cheddar cheese, baked until the cheese is a lovely golden-brown. Stuffed into peppers or not, the stuff is delicious and cheap. And easy.

Corned beef & cabbage – in our house, it’s a stew, not a plated meal. It’s potatoes, carrots, corn, corned beef, salt, pepper, onions, and cabbage stew. The stew cooks until the potatoes are all but mush, then the cabbage is tossed on top to steam in the last 5 - 10 minutes so it is still nice and crispy. The first time we went to a pub where they served actual corned beef and cabbage my kids were shocked – “mom? Their corned beef and cabbage is wrong!”

Goulash – macaroni and cheese with diced tomatoes and ground meat mixed in it. It’s the original Hamburger Helper! Haha – can you tell I grew up pretty poor? Heck, in our house, Spam was an expensive Sunday treat, we normally had Treat. Yup, Treat – aka generic Spam. Think about that. Wait, I got off-topic, sorry.

So, who else has a “signature” dish that is not what it is for the rest of the world?

2

My version of Cabbage Balls is a family favorite and it’s not much like other people’s expectation of Cabbage Balls. Mine is a deconstructed version, the hamburger meat is seasoned and cooked in large meatballs with dry onion soup mix and chunks of cabbage and potatoes on top in a large pot. That’s it, no rice in the meat, no frou-frou wrapping up the meatballs in cabbage leaves, no tomato sauce. It comes out sort of like a stew, it looks like heck, and my kids love it. I even taught my daughter-in-law how to make it!

3

Cassoulet: I make it with hot Italian sausage, white beans, tomatoes, garlic, rosemary and chicken, in a skillet. It’s fookin’ fabulous, but isn’t at all like the French version.

4

I got nothin’. I’m just shocked that your kids would order corned beef and cabbage in a pub. What, were they out of chicken fingers, French fries, grilled cheese, and hamburgers simultaneously? :wink:

5

I just thought of another one that I never really make, but my dad always loved. At least once a week, my dad made “Chow Mein.” It was basically hamburger stew with oriental vegetables. Browned hamburger, water, bean sprouts, water chestnuts, baby corn, and soy sauce. Of course, it was garnished with those crunchy chow mein noodles – so that’s how you knew it was authentic Asian cuisine!

6

Sorry for the double post, but – my kids generally don’t eat that kind of crap. Sure, occasionally, they will order french fries or chicken fingers but only because it is so rare that we have that kind of food. My kids are somewhat food snobs. Just to paint a picture for you – when we went grocery shopping yesterday, my 8 year old son said “Look, mom, they have the cave-aged Gruyere, can we please?”

That’s not to say that we dine on caviar and pate…we don’t (ICK!) but that my kids have been brought up to appreciate real food. I cook dinner 6 nights out of 7. Tonight, at my son’s request, we’re having 4-cheese ravioli in pesto sauce with garlic bread and steamed veggies. I know, I know, my kids are odd.

7

Last night we had an old standard that is referred to, for lack of a better term, as “chili”:

Ground turkey, sauteed zucchini, beans and spaghetti sauce. I will usually sneak in a few drops of Rooster sauce, but I have to be careful even doing that.

It still goes well with cornbread, though, and it could hardly be easier.

8

New Englanders make something called “Italian Chop Suey”: macaroni, ground beef and tomato sauce. It’s not Chinese or really Italian.

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I grew up in New England and my mom made that all the time! Except she called it “American Chop Suey.” I didn’t know it was a regional thing.

10

My Grandma and Grandpa passed it on and we make it as well, but here in this particular part of the midwest and within our family it is called “goulash”.

There is also another variation of the same thing characterized by long noodles like spaghetti or egg noodles instead of macoroni, usually with copious amounts of cheese- It is called Johnny Marzetti. It was one of my favorites in the school cafeteria as a teenager, Rectangle Pizza and Johnny Marzetti days were probably the most popular days to buy a cafeteria lunch at school.

11

We did that, too. Called it Goulash, too. Funky. Thought that was a Newfoundland thing.

For me, ‘macaroni and cheese’ defaults to a mac n’ cheese casserole. Macaroni in cheese sauce is…well, it’s Kraft Dinner. It’s never made from scratch, and even the generics are KD.

12

I was reminded by the low end food thread – “salisbury steak” in my house is cheap hamburger, mixed with chopped onions, formed into a patty, fried, and drowned in Campbells Golden Mushroom soup with a dash of Lee & Perrins.

The whole fam-damily loves the slop, but it is* so* not real salisbury steak.

13

Wow. I thought the “goulash” thing was just my something my husband’s mom came up with! It’s a easy meal when I need something fast. I usually sneak in whole-wheat penne, but Mr. Legend never wants anything but the original, boring, ground-beef-tomatoes-powdered-spices-noodles mixture. Since I don’t eat meat, I make a parallel version without the beef and with some green veggies tossed in.

I make “enchiladas” that are really just a layered casserole with corn tortillas, cheese, and spinach. It’s essentially the same dish as my “lasagna”, which has noodles, ricotta cheese, spinach, and tomato sauce instead of the green chile sauce.

14

Goulash, again - One package cooked elbow macaroni; one pound browned ground cow. Cooked in the electric skillet with nothing more than salt, pepper, yellow mustard, and Heinz ketchup. What’s that? Oh, right. Paprika was reserved for decoration on the top of…

Deviled eggs. Hard boiled eggs, cut in half, yolks mashed with a mixture of nothing more than Miracle Whip and raw milk.

Also, something tells me that Swiss cheese doesn’t belong in lasagna, but that’s only because at some point in time the Alps cut off the advance of some Roman brigade.

15

Hunh. Upon preview, I’m starting to wonder if the reason that my mother made the best goulash around is simply because she added mustard to the ketchup.

16

One of the reasons that Johnny Marzetti day was so popular in the lunchroom is because they put out great gobulous bowls of grated Government Cheese to add to your Johnny. I don’t think it was the typical American cheese from the salt caves, but instead a white mild mozz type cheese. Soo…Gooey!

17

The goulash was passed down from my mother – she was born in Idaho & grew up in Michigan, so who knows? I find it funny that so many others have essentially the same recipe – I wonder if it was in an old Betty Crocker Does Ethnic cookbook or something?

chique – deviled eggs, even by the recipe aren’t much more than you described – just hard-boiled eggs cut in half, the yolks mashed with vingear, mayo, and mustard and topped with either cayenne or paprika.

As for regionalisms – living in the South, I know a grand total of 1 person (outside of my immediate family) that put ketchup on their mac-n-cheese. It always freaks people out, but it tastes soooooo good. Oh, and yeh, macaroni and cheese casserole grosses me out, it’s gotta be from a box or nothing.

18

Just curious, was that Frasier or Niles?

19

I’m always a bit fascinated by what is called “goulash” across the US. From my experience, it seems to be a catch-all term for any sort of stew or even casserole that doesn’t have a better name. “Goulash” has got to be one of the culinary terms that has come most far afield from its origins. Not a single recipe in this thread for goulash has anything in common with what is goulash in Central Europe (a soup or stew made of cubed beef/veal/pork, onions, and paprika. Here’s my recipe from another board.) It’s interesting.

20

Hahaha! He’s really not that bad with all foods, but the kid is a cheese-a-holic, like his mom. We had a chance to sample this particular brand of cheese once and one of the big points on the packaging was that it is “Cave-Aged!” – and he loved it. It’s rather pricey (roughly $14/lb) so we don’t get it often, go figure.

pulykamell – I often joke that “goulash,” “hot and sour soup,” and “gumbo” are all just words that mean “we scraped up all the leftover stuff we had laying around and boiled it in a pot, here have some!”