Utter ignorance of gastronomy (Central American and from other cultures)

[GIGObuster]

Ok sorry for that title, but every time I saw the thread title on the Pit on “utter ignorance of astronomy” I always saw it as gastronomy, that great subject that according to Wikipedia is:

Gastronomy

Gastronomy is the study of relationship between culture and food. It is often thought erroneously that the term gastronomy refers exclusively to the art of cooking (see Culinary Arts), but this is only a small part of this discipline: it cannot always be said that a cook is also a gourmet. Gastronomy studies various cultural components with food as central axis. Thus it is related to the Fine Arts and Social Sciences, and even to the Natural Sciences in terms of the nutritional system of the human body.

So no, it is not just cooking, and the focus here is how culture can protect and promote traditional dishes in other countries. I can report that the Salvadorian culture in the USA avoided the fate of cuisines like the Chinese one in the USA, that besides appalling combinations never seen in China, ended with items like fortune cookies.

But it came close with the Salvadorian Pupusa: http://www.post-gazette.com/food/centamrecipeap9.asp

With curtido (the pickled cabbage salad).

I remember how even people from the original countries can make a mess of a traditional dish. I have to give thanks to communication technology and immigrants willing to demand better from preventing this fate.

Circa 1988: I remember seeing one of the first Salvadorian restaurants in the USA and for a while they tried to do this travesty: Sure it was made of corn, with pork meat and beans or cheese, but instead of adding the stuffing and then using hands to flatten it out, they used two corn tortillas with the contents sandwiched between the tortillas, and voilà!

An instant pupusa, but to me an many Salvadorans an abomination!

Sure, now I can see how and why many cuisines suffer that fate in the USA and other developed countries with a sizable immigrant population, it is an attempt to have something similar to the original dish, but to make it cheap and faster with the more abundant materials of the new country (Mexican corn tortillas) of course the target were American customers that did not know what the real thing was.

I said politely to the owner, that was a family friend, that they were doing it “wrong”. Did not make much of a difference. AFAIK that restaurant did make that “pupusa” work for several years, but then the competition appeared:

Other Salvadorian restaurants appeared in San Francisco and they had an element the other place missed: pupuseras (cooks that know how to do it properly) that had the experience and the real know-how came to the USA and the immigrants found a true taste from home, so me and many immigrants from el Salvador (and Americans with taste!) voted with their feet and avoided a disaster of Chinese proportions. (Orange with chicken?)

The owner of the Salvadoran restaurant with the americanized pupusa gave up and hired cooks with the experience.

And this leads me to ask all the dopers out there how faithful cuisine from the old country compares with the one in the new country or the abominations you see* and your tales of making things right or worse in the name of gastronomy.

Your attempts (both failures and successes) at trying to recreate traditional dishes with local ingredients are welcomed too.

*(Or good stuff, for I’m not an absolutist, I have found the ambrosia that is “Chinese” pineapple shrimp )

[Lucky_13]

At last, a fellow Salvadoran Doper! Yay!

I enjoyed your story, and the restaurateur’s resistance to have his ignorance fought… :smack: At least he fixed things in the end.

I grew up eating Salvadoran food, both homemade and from restaurants. You’re right, it does take a skilled cook to make a decent pupusa. I couldn’t make one to save my life. :o
As far as Salvadoran food in the LA area goes, disasters such as you experienced have been mostly averted, mostly because a lot of Salvadorans moved here in the early 80s, and quite a few opened restaurants, so that the authenticity of the food is not in question. The quality, on the other hand, tends to vary, in my experience. (the last smiley was added by my daughter, who is watching me post)

[GIGObuster]

@Lucky 13

At last, a fellow Salvadoran Doper! Yay!

I enjoyed your story, and the restaurateur’s resistance to have his ignorance fought… :smack: At least he fixed things in the end.

I grew up eating Salvadoran food, both homemade and from restaurants. You’re right, it does take a skilled cook to make a decent pupusa. I couldn’t make one to save my life. :o
As far as Salvadoran food in the LA area goes, disasters such as you experienced have been mostly averted, mostly because a lot of Salvadorans moved here in the early 80s, and quite a few opened restaurants, so that the authenticity of the food is not in question. The quality, on the other hand, tends to vary, in my experience. (the last smiley was added by my daughter, who is watching me post)

Say hi to her.

One thing I’m curious about is the expression “tirar pupusas” as making pupusas, “'tirar” means to throw, but a pupusa is not make by throwing around like a pizza, but by smacking it and pressing with the palms of your hands.

Speaking of pizza, that food item also was transformed and changed from the original Italian one.

However, some changes are for the better:

The History of Pizza

By the nineteenth century the pizzas in Naples were garnished with pork fat, oil lard cheese, tomatoes and tiny fish, surprisingly enough not the recipe for a winning pizza!

[devilsknew]

I can’t think of one foreign cuisine that I have not seen bastardized in some way by Americans. It’s a tricky thing, since we are a nation of immigrants and everybody is bringing their own foods and working it out with nationally or locally available ingredients.

It’s a peeve of mine. Sometimes restaurants are making do with available ingredients, but I hate it when a restaurant alters something integral to save a buck and it is nothing at all like the original, as is the case with your pupusa.

Although it might have had something to do with the availability and cost of mas harina outside of labor costs. I don’t know how old you are, but it wasn’t until the late eighties that some Mexican/Central American specialty food items became more readily available. The state and general quality of Mexican food has become better and more authentic as a greater variety of ingredients have become common and of course much cheaper in stores. Which I think had a lot to do with the singular efforts and influence of Rick Bayless, believe it or not.

I guess I got the biggest problem with the standardization and commercial processing of ‘foreign’ sausages by Americans. All of the commercial varieties in the store are crap, (Johnsonville brats pale in comparison to a true bratwurst), even your local Butcher that makes their own sausages doesn’t compare to an average European sausage. My theory is the giant commercial sausage makers and even the so called artisinal sausage makers in America rely on packaged, pre-ground, seasoning mixes or pre-ground spices instead of freshly ground, whole spices and they have too high of a fat to lean ratio, as well as substandard meat grades. I think there is also a lot lost to the fact that they make such large batches. And that’s not even to mention artificial casings.

[devilsknew]

The texture of American sausages is wrong, too. the sausage is always much too over processed, overworked, and smooth-pasty.