|
Post by mummifiedstalin on Jan 20, 2011 10:27:42 GMT -5
When I go back to Texas, my family always gets me wrapped up in their weird arguments about food. Some of the topics that came up last weekend:
1) Can chili use only chicken (no beef or pork) and still be chili? 2) Tex-Mex, "Southwestern," or "New Mexican" cooking should never be called Mexican food. 3) Margarine is only a replacement for oil, never for butter. 4) Are red bell peppers actually "hot"? (There's a scientific answer, actually: what makes peppers like jalapenos "hot" is capsaicin...and bell peppers don't have it. Nonetheless, my uncle insists that red peppers are just as spicy as some other peppers. He's a fool with malfunctioning taste buds.) 5) General arguments about the value of vegetarian cooking. (My wife is vegetarian, and my older son is, too, voluntarily. They both always take crap for it when we go home even though every vegetarian thing we've ever made for them, they love, ask for the recipe, and make many times.)
Personally, I don't care what people call stuff or how they categorize it, as long as the taste works out in the end. My family, however, can get pretty angsty about such stuff. The red bell pepper thing is the only one I really get freaky about because he complains about my "mild" salsa when I don't just use red peppers. Dumbass.
Anyway...just getting some stuff off of my chest.
|
|
|
Post by siamesesin on Jan 20, 2011 11:23:26 GMT -5
Ah, yes. Food fighting.
My mom cooks beef to the well done level and has all my life. I always drowned it in ketchup growing up. I did not know what steak really tasted like.
Then my uncle made steak on the grill with a bit of pink in it and I couldn't believe how good it was. The foodie would say something about the complexities of the flavors and all that crap. The honest response is that it likely triggered something deep in my ape brain-primal blood lust.
Now I go black and blue. If my mashed potatoes don't turn red, it's overdone. For a while it got ugly come mealtime. I can always cook hers longer, but once mine is ruined it's too late. Now I'm the one who makes dinner when we're having steak.
|
|
|
Post by Mod City on Jan 20, 2011 11:42:12 GMT -5
Now I'm hungry That's an interesting list of discussions, mummi. My thoughts: • I don't see why chicken-only chili couldn't be called chili, but it does seem odd to do so. I had a couple of friends get into a shouting match once over substituting all meat in chili with tofu. • I'll have to defer to the folks in the southwest on what constitutes Tex-Mex/Mexican, etc., although I'm guessing I could tell the difference. • Margarine should never be used. • I don't think red bell peppers are hot at all, but I'm kind of a chili head. • I'm not a vegetarian and I live in a part of the country where herds of steaks are literally wandering around in pastures. So yeah, vegetarians can have a rough go of it around here. • My taste for steak shifted to more rare as I got older. The taste is amazing. I find it hard to classify some food arguments as stupid, though. I guess it depends on how strongly you feel about particular foods. In my area, there is a very specific food known as chislic, which is chunks of lamb on a skewer deep fried and served with garlic salt and saltine crackers. It's a very specific thing that is done in a small belt of about four or five small towns. However, outside this belt in some larger communities, the word chislic has been bastardized to mean "sirloin tips on toothpicks served with a side of barbecue sauce." It's been the source of many arguments.
|
|
|
Post by siamesesin on Jan 20, 2011 12:01:03 GMT -5
Mod, you and I should go out for a bloody chop sometime.
|
|
|
Post by Mod City on Jan 20, 2011 12:58:54 GMT -5
Fantastic. I'll bring the chislic
|
|
|
Post by solgroupie on Jan 20, 2011 14:02:25 GMT -5
growing up in the south, i thought it was normal for food to have everything burned out of it before you ate it. not that my family ever ate that way, thank god. my mom was a great cook who liked to try new things. but i was often appalled if i ate over at a friends' house when i was growing up. all meats were beyond well done - the vegetables were cooked until they were a soggy, tasteless mess. even the bread seemed to get intentionally burned. vats of ketchup were available and used. and of course, everything is deep fried. every family is different, but i am just grateful i came from one that gave us the opportunity to actually taste what we were eating. i prefer my steak medium rare, but if you don't ask specifically for it around here, it will come to you burned and flavorless. unless you have ketchup. and you WILL.
|
|
|
Post by mummifiedstalin on Jan 20, 2011 14:45:38 GMT -5
I'm one of the weirdos because I actually like my steak all but burned. I know it kills some of the flavor, but I really like the flavor of char. As I said, I'm weird. When I'm cooking steak for myself, I'll usually make a really thick crushed black pepper rub and just smother the thing in it in order to intensify that flavor.
And my mom used to use bacon in every vegetable, which is another southern thing. I finally cured her of that and showed her what happens when you STEAM rather than FRY or BOIL vegetables. It's amazing that she now gets all excited when green beans or cabbage taste like, wonder of wonders, green beans or cabbage. But she was right that vegetables were tasteless when you cook them so long that you just kill their flavor. But that's how her mom did it, etc...
My son hates me, though, because I put chiles in everything. I've got a never-ending stock of dried chiles, some of which I'm not even sure are actually edible, that I keep acquiring, and I just throw those babies in every vegetable I can. He hates it. He prefers white/yellow food that has as little flavor as possible. He can't be my son.
|
|
|
Post by siamesesin on Jan 20, 2011 15:08:53 GMT -5
Maybe he hates the smells Daddy makes after the chilis. I have a predilection for cold/raw foods. I hate cooked veggies even if they're steamed. Except for corn, of course (I AM a Nebraskan). I like cold cuts and practically-raw meat. I will even fry up fish and then chuck it into the fridge to get cold before I eat it. I'd go for a sushi diet, but I don't like a lot of fish outside of coldwater white species (cod, haddock, etc). I HATE TUNA.
|
|
|
Post by mummifiedstalin on Jan 20, 2011 16:18:08 GMT -5
Maybe he hates the smells Daddy makes after the chilis. I have a predilection for cold/raw foods. I hate cooked veggies even if they're steamed. Except for corn, of course (I AM a Nebraskan). I like cold cuts and practically-raw meat. I will even fry up fish and then chuck it into the fridge to get cold before I eat it. I'd go for a sushi diet, but I don't like a lot of fish outside of coldwater white species (cod, haddock, etc). I HATE TUNA. I don't like hot pizza. When we order pizza, I always take mine and immediately throw it in the freezer to get it cold. Refrigerated morning-after pizza is the best stuff in the world, and I try to recreate it even with fresh stuff. I went through a period like you're describing with meat, too. One of my favorite things was to sear a flank steak and then soak it in cold Worcestershire sauce for an hour or so. And then cold fried chicken, of course, is a delicacy. And it depends on the vegetable. Raw: broccoli, spinach, carrots, absolutely. But ever tried raw brussel sprouts? Ugh. Bell peppers get kinda gross when they're cooked, I think, but are wonderful raw. Spicy peppers, though, HAVE to be roasted, imo, even jalapenos and serranos.
|
|
|
Post by solgroupie on Jan 20, 2011 16:35:00 GMT -5
i prefer raw veggies to cooked, but when i do cook them, i try to steam, using a little vinaigrette marinade instead of water to give it extra flavor. i will never try brussel sprouts either raw or cooked.
we were very fortunate in that an italian woman lived across the street from us when i was growing up. she showed my mom more about cooking than anyone else and we ate very well.
and sia, i adore sushi. i'd eat it every day if i could afford it. and i used to hate tuna too, but i have learned to like it over the years. i love a good tuna steak. i could live on steamed crabs, mussels, scallops, lobster, etc. all of it but oysters.
|
|
|
Post by Don Quixote on Jan 20, 2011 19:15:50 GMT -5
It's "Soda" not "Pop". Everyone else is wrong.
|
|
|
Post by Mod City on Jan 21, 2011 1:38:49 GMT -5
Everyone is wrong. It's all Coke. Taverns? Sloppy Joes? Loose meat sandwiches? Or are they all just delicious
|
|
|
Post by siamesesin on Jan 21, 2011 8:55:42 GMT -5
and sia, i adore sushi. i'd eat it every day if i could afford it. and i used to hate tuna too, but i have learned to like it over the years. i love a good tuna steak. i could live on steamed crabs, mussels, scallops, lobster, etc. all of it but oysters. Tuna's a lifelong obsessive loathing for me. I can't even stand the smell. Same with salmon. I just don't get the attraction. I'm weird. I think my biggest problem with a lot of seafood is that I live in the middle of the Midwest, and my access to fresh fish has been limited most of my life. Trust me, I was not shy trying new things when I was down in the islands and Mexico. There's a MASSIVE difference to a shrink-wrapped fishie and one that you watched some dude pull out of the water in front of you.
|
|
|
Post by solgroupie on Jan 21, 2011 11:14:38 GMT -5
i never considered that - how people in the midwest don't always get fresh seafood. that would suck! where i live most of it is fried to death, which sometimes is okay if you are in the mood for it. i used to live on the eastern snore shore, but really the only real fresh seafood we got where i lived were crabs. tourists assumed all the seafood was fresh, but most of it was delivered.
|
|
|
Post by FlickMontana on Feb 19, 2011 15:28:47 GMT -5
Here in the Midwest we have steak.
Yep. That's pretty much it.
|
|