I’ve posted before of how I’m tired of ‘gourmet’ burgers, and how I prefer thin, well-done patties that are crispy around the edges, and with traditional toppings, to the bloated concoctions with aioli, artisan cheese, bacon jam, etc[sup]†[/sup]. Anyway… Today I was thinking it was time I attempted to make fried green tomatoes. I’ve never actually eaten them, so I asked The Wife if you’re supposed to put anything on them. (She said no, unless you want to.) Blahblahblahblahblah… I thought, Ha! I should open a restaurant that serves ‘gourmet’ fried green tomatoes. With aioli and truffles. Have one slice on a 12-inch plate with just a streak of aioli and a tiny, hand-mounlded mound of truffles. And charge ten bucks for it.
So here’s the idea: Take a simple food and tart it up so egregiously that the only person who could enjoy it is the sucker with the money to pay for it. Like fried green tomatoes with aioli and truffles on a big plate, or a bologna sandwich with farm-made Gruyere, stone-ground mustard, Spring greens, and house-made mayonnaise on artisan multi-grain bread.
Go.
[sup]†[/sup] I should point out that I have eaten tarted-up burgers, and I’ll eat them again. I’m not saying they’re bad. But I really do prefer the classic model.
Shit, I live in NYC. We got every variety of those places, mostly in Greenwich Village. Artisanal mac n’ cheese? Artisanal Spam? Artinsinal corned beef hash? Artisanal fried baloney? Come on down!
I used to make an ultimate grilled cheese sandwich that went like this:
Two slices brioche
Three slices rendered pepperoni*
Two slices Muenster cheese
drizzle of fine balsamic
Paint each side of the bread with herbed mayonnaise (rubbed sage or rosemary) and fry gently until a deep golden brown. Serve with fresh cold celery sticks.
*Bake it in the oven at about 250F until all the fat melts out and you are left with a thin, crispy, lacy supernova of pepperoni flavor.
Oh,and the OP reminded me of this amazing appetizer I once had at Ozzie’s in Fairfax, VA. It was a Fried Green Tomato Napoleon. Beautifully fried green tomatoes with an excellent crabcake and pickled mango chutney. It was just incredible and so of course they’ve stopped making them so I can never have one again.
I do not want to eat caviar with black truffle brie, or langoustine with civet coffee, or gold flakes in a corn tortilla. This is the “if one fancy ingredient is good then more must be better” rule carried to absurd extremes.
I go to NYC 3-4 times a year and this is what I hate about eating in NYC. They always have to put some weird shit on everything. Like the candy store with the s’mores type things but with green tea ganache. I just roll my eyes and eat at diners and the like.
I once made some basic white bread in a bread machine, cut a slice to toast, accidentally burnt it, put butter and homemade strawberry jam on it and tore it in half. I bet I could have sold two slices in NYC for $18.
This is one where fact is stranger than fiction. I think you’re going to find it hard to beat the absurd “tarted” up dishes that are actually being sold by and to real people. I mean, regular coffee costs pennies and tastes delicious, but people gladly pay hundreds of dollars for coffee that was picked out of cat shit.
And not only that, but you can add gold leaf, truffles and caviar to literally anything. There’s an absolutely disgusting-looking pizza I’ve seen on multiple documentaries that costs thousands of dollars per slice. It’s got truffles, gold leaf and caviar, among other not-very-appetizing pizza toppings.
And so much of it was originally poor people food, too. Rich folks love slumming it up, with modifications, of course. Like, cockroach of the sea, AKA lobster, was once the cause of a prison riot, because prisoners were sick of eating it. But now you cook it alive and soak it in butter and it’s $50 a pound at fancy restaurants.
So taking all that into account, I’m going to guess the next poor people’s grub tarted into absurdity will be gilded shoe leather rubbed with a finely aged skunk excretion and boiled in artisan bilge water. Accompanied by 100 year old hominy grits cooked in rodent urine, sprinkled with maggot cheese and grated fermented fish anus. Of course it will be served on a solid platinum plate with a colloidal silver dipping sauce squirted all over it, Jackson Pollack style. Only $1 million dollars, but it’s served in the basement of a Seattle chum warehouse only Bill Gates knows the address to. I call the dish “The Aristocrat”. Reservations for December 2019 are currently being taken.
I just got a grilled cheese from a food truck, which featured bread from a local bakery, locally-sourced ham and farmhouse cheddar with a sprinkling of rosemary. It was good, but not better than your basic homemade grilled cheese.
If I’m feeling fancy, though, I will tart up a grilled cheese using locally-made bread (I do insist on white bread, though - I don’t think a grilled cheese is right without it), real English farmhouse cheddar, locally-made butter and very thin slices of crispy apple. This is probably my favorite grilled cheese when I feel like going to the effort to make it.
Others have spoken of NYC. Some bodega-type places there make a dish called the chopped cheese sandwich, consisting of ground beef, some slices of cheesefood, like Velveeta, and put on a bun with the kind of extras like one might find on your basic burger - onions, lettuce, etc. I didn’t know this thing even had a name until I read an article about it a year or two ago. Back in my college and early working days it was just a simple fast sandwich you could make cheap at home. It appears there was a backlash in New York when this sandwich was tarted up and sold for big bux in the fancier restaurants there.
I’m thinking making a fancy version at home wouldn’t be hard if you really wanted to do it and didn’t mind spending the extra cash - maybe some grassfed beef or bison for the ground meat, fancy cheese (any type that would melt well and ‘chop’ into the meat), add some cracked pepper, throw in some herbs - maybe some basil or oregano - heirloom tomatoes, spinach, caramelized onions and a nice crusty roll for serving. Ciabatta might work well.
I still make this sandwich at home, but the only changes I’ve made over the years is lower-fat beef and lower-sodium cheese - because I can afford it and it’s better for our health.
Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but I once saw a crazy recipe in the NYT for chocolate chip cookies. It started by having you weigh out half pastry flour and half bread flour. It ended with you cooking the carefully hand-crafted cookies, made of dough which had been rested over night on the fridge.
That is, they took an easy, quick, reliable, delicious recipe, and made it all over night pita extravaganza.
I’m willing to believe the final result might have been marginally better than tollhouse cookies. If you prefer a chewy cookie with large chocolate chunks to a crisp cookie with regular chips. (I don’t.) But even so, I can’t believe it was worth the additional time and effort.
