Early morning stream-of-consciousness thing going on here, so I’ll explain… In the '80s I worked with a young (then – she was older than I was) transplant from Iowa who didn’t quite have pronunciations down. She said since moving to California, she discovered she liked ‘tor-tilly-ahs’. So I’m out on the deck, looking at my basil plants. My thoughts turned to the mozzarella cheese (in brine) I have in the fridge, and thence to Caprese salads, which I’ll probably make tomorrow. I wondered how someone from a certain demographic who had never had Caprese salad would try to make one. (As I type this, I recall someone posting that his/her grandmother put American cheese on delivery pizza, wondering what the poster was excited about. ‘They charge extra for cheese, and this is cheaper!’) To here’s the game:
Come up with the most egregious ‘misinterpretation’ of a recipe you can. My SOC thought was…
KAY-prees Salad
Slice up a beefsteak tomato and put the slices on a plate. Put a square of ‘pasteurised process cheese food’ (Kraft Singles) on each tomato slice. Sprinkle dried basil, table salt, and black pepper over everything, and then drizzle vegetable oil on top.
I’m not going to make one up, since there are so many real-life examples to choose from, but I’ll nominate any of a million different “hamburger” recipes that involve putting shit in the burger and kneading it all to hell so it’s more meatloaf than hamburger.
I’m a little too picky about the proper way to make foods to help much here. I’m quite offended by someone who puts condiment sauces (ketchup, mustard, etc.) on the top of a sandwich instead of on the bottom as God Almighty intended, not to mention putting mayonnaise on any sandwiches besides BLTs and sliced poultry. That said, it is the horrifying concoctions that people call pizza that truly offend me, even more than ruining chili by putting beans it. This goes all the way back to the 6th grade when I was served pizza for lunch that consisted of half a hamburger roll with a slice of American cheese on it topped with ketchup. There are all sorts of adaptations of pizza that are not quite what I consider a pizza to actually be, but there has to be at least one ingredient of what I consider an actual pizza in the dish.
I’m not sure if this is what you’reasking for, but I remember a coworker at a previous job who brought in some homemade banana bread. It was her first attempt at banana bread, IIRC. It was kind of chunky - she had used just-ripe bananas (possibly even still a little on the green side) rather than waiting for them to get brown and mushy.
I’d be fine with squid. I can’t even find anchovies on the list at a lot of places. But pineapple on pizza should be subject to an even worse punishment than eating it.
I’ve learned to be more tolerant of such things after living in CA for so many years. Now all I have to do is get over the idea of putting “green things” in clam chowder. That one I’m still working on.
There was this place in Iraq when I was there called Fil’z. Like Phil’s, but spelled F-I-L-Z.
Anyway, they had great shawarma sandwiches, but one day I went and found out they had started offering pizza. I was curious what their idea of pizza was, so I ordered one.
It was a pita bread topped with ketchup, processed cheese and sliced hot dogs. :eek: I took one bite and threw it away. To this day it was the worst pizza I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t even call it pizza, really.
(It’s unlikely that most people have access to koalas or cocaine/coca leaves. 
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