W4: "American Food"

Here's your task for this week's post: You get to design the menu for a new "quintessential American restaurant" in, let's say, Russia. What foods best represent "America" and why? At a minimum, your post should list the menu items and the rationale. But no burgers, fries, or pizza. Those are a given--let's dig deeper. (And I think we can all agree to leave SPAM off our lists as well.

A Predictable Adventure

My kitchen reeks of fried SPAM. Yes, I said SPAM. I’d found a clever article on the reappearance of SPAM here in our recessioned American lives—she claimed it wasn’t so bad, really.

She lied.



I assigned the article to my class as we were discussing “American foods” (I feel sorry that we Americans are forced to claim SPAM, but some truths cannot be fudged, unfortunately). As I was preparing for class I thought, “If we’re going to read about it, we really ought to do a taste test. How bad can it be? Perhaps I am misremembering its cloying, gelatinous texture and overpowering, processed taste.” And so I found myself standing over the stove, browning a can of diced SPAM at 9:00 last night.

***

I’d searched the SPAM website for recipes and clicked on “Blue Ribbon State Fair” recipes. I figure at least one person has decided these recipes are good, thus giving me better odds than simply searching the ‘net at large. I check out an instructional video on making “SPAMaroni and Cheese Swaddlers” with a Toddlers and Tiaras-esque headshot of, I presume, the pre-teen creator of “Swaddlers”. Given my present repulsive associations with the term “swaddlers” (i.e. eating my newborn son and/or his diapers of the same name), I decide to pass on this recipe and move on to “SPAMkins Breakfast Muffins.” The SPAMkins’ chief virtues are that I already have the ingredients, the SPAM will actually be cooked, and the SPAMkins seem more likely to be palatable at room temperature than some of the other options.

Perhaps they were more palatable, but that is more a statement about the palatability of SPAM-based foods at large than about these particular muffins.

The SPAMkins were conceptually something of a McGriddle, but in muffin form. The recipe called for making a strange, yeasty batter for the bottom and then layering cinnamon-sugar, a spoon full of browned SPAM, a glob of beaten egg, and a drizzle of maple syrup. Yes, I said “a drizzle of maple syrup.” On top of beaten eggs. As I assembled the SPAMkins my husband kept telling me not to sweat it—that nothing I did was really going to make these things taste worse.

I popped them in the oven (a cold oven, mind you, per the recipe’s instructions), set the timer, and hoped for the best. I then dumped the remaining fried SPAM in the trash can and gave thanks that tomorrow was garbage day. And then I turned on all of the fans in the house in a vain attempt to suck out the stench of browned SPAM. Vain, vain, vain.

The SPAMkins emerged glistening from the oven, the task of tasting saved until the next morning’s class.

***

There were looks of horror when I announced that I’d brought SPAM to class. One of the looks was mine. I popped open the lid of the Tupperware, slid out a SPAMkin, and passed them around. I unenthusiastically began peeling the cupcake liner from the SPAMkin. Except that the liner was stuck to the SPAMkin as though concrete had been a key ingredient of the recipe. It took several minutes to peel off enough paper for a bite-able portion of SPAMkin to emerge. I stared, summoning my courage, stifling my gorge. Closing my eyes, I took a small bite.

The assault came in waves. First, the cinnamon-sugar and cold lump-ness of the muffin batter. “It’s not so bad it’s not so bad it’s not so bad” I chanted to myself. Next, the salty-smoke explosions across my mouth as my incisors met with chunks of SPAM. “Yuck. YUUUUCK. But I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.” Then, just as the taste settled into unpleasant but bearable: the slime—the everlasting slime of cold eggs and maple syrup. “Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. EW!!!.” I can still feel that cold, stickiness coating my mouth, my whole body, my very soul. Can I ever be made clean again?

***

The aforementioned SPAMaroni Swaddlers video concludes with a challenge to “break the monotony!” by cooking with SPAM. The website features poor, sad looking eggs that are transformed into smiling, happy eggs once one hovers the mouse (a can of SPAM) over the eggs. “Break what monotony?” I ask myself. “The monotony of eating actual food??”

[image credit: spam.com]

W3: Teachers

As we're transitioning into the next section of the class, we'll be talking about cookbook authors, bloggers, and television hosts--people who, in part--are trying to teach us about food and cooking. Who have been the "teachers" in your life? Who has taught you about cooking and food (and what did they teach you)?

If you don't like or know how to cook, feel free to get creative with this prompt. What do you know (even if you don't feel like it's a lot)? For example, I'm remembering the friend who taught me to make grilled cheese without the stove, enabling a new after-school snack. She would put the bread in the toaster and then butter it, add the cheese, and microwave it to make the cheese melt. My best friend Jenifer taught me that peanut butter and jelly was even better if you grilled it (butter = better). She would make her sandwich, butter it, and then grill it just like grilled cheese. And now that I think about it, on that same visit she introduced me to the fried hot dog--a hot dog pan fried in butter with a little worcestershire.

Now none of these is haute cuisine. None is going to win a prize. But both of these people did teach me something about food. So if you need to expand your definition of "teach" for this post, then have at it.

And in honor of one of America's best known food teachers, I give you: The Chicken Sisters!

W2: The Enigmatic Pawpaw

Your assignment for this week:  What does the pawpaw taste like?  Write whatever you'd like about the Ohio Pawpaw Festival, but make sure to include your best description of the flavor of pawpaw.


If you aren't attending the Pawpaw Festival then you can choose your own topic for this week.





I spent my Saturday morning in search of the elusive, enigmatic pawpaw fruit.  My first recollection of the pawpaw is a song sung in kindergarten: “pickin’ up pawpaws, puttin’ ‘em in the basket”.  Repeat three times, followed by some final line that I’ve never been able to remember.  Even then,  I don’t think I knew what a pawpaw was. It was just a catchy s
ong. And I don’t believe I ever thought of a pawpaw in the subsequent 20ish years.

But the pawpaw resurfaced when I moved to Athens, Ohio and began seeing bumper stickers around town:  “I’m pro pawpaw and I vote.”  Oh, really?  I had arrived in the midst of a campaign to dethrone the apple as Ohio’s State Fruit and replace it with the pawpaw.  The pro-pawpaw lobby argued that the pawpaw was native to Ohio, unlike the apple.  The power of the apple proved too great though, and the pawpaw was named Ohio’s Native Fruit instead. Somehow, I feel this must be par for the pawpaw’s course.  It can’t quite catch a break.

Living in locavore-obsessed Athens, the pawpaw and I just kept bumping into each other—in locally made jams, paired with other foods on restaurant menus, and most especially in Zoe’s pawpaw creme brulee. Yet the more I tasted the pawpaw, the less I knew just what I was tasting.  What does a pawpaw taste like? It is often described as tasting like banana or kiwi, but these are utterly different flavors in my humble opinion. I decided that this year, I would head over to the Ohio Pawpaw Festival at nearby Lake Snowden in the hopes of solving the mystery.

I set out to sample the varied pawpaw culinary offerings.  My husband and I tasted widely (one of the great benefits of marriage being that you can taste twice as many things because, as we say in our family, “Married people have to share”).  We started off by sharing some pawpaw puffs (fried funnel cake dough) with pawpaw cream cheese frosting. We moved on to the pawpaw and peanut chicken satays, then to the guacamole pawpaw burrito, followed by fried cheese curds with pawpaw pepper butter and then washed it all down with a pawpaw smoothie.  Before we left we also sampled the pawzels (pawpaw pretzels), a pawpaw cheesecake brownie, and a strawberry-pawpaw popsicle.

Having tasted so many twists on the pawpaw, you would think that we would be able to clearly identify the thing itself, right?  With my stomach full, I was no more able to answer the question “What does a pawpaw taste like” than I had been before. Before sampling the pawpaws I listened to a lecture titled “Pawpaw 101”.  I learned that the pawpaw is native to many parts of eastern North America, that it can be somewhat difficult to grow, AND that the fruit’s taste can vary widely from tree to tree. Aha!

In the puffs and pawpaw frosting, the pawpaw added just a hint of a dark, fruity note.  The pawpaw toned the cream cheese and sugar down a bit and made it more interesting. In the Burrito Buggy’s guacamole pawpaw burrito, it added a fruity tang to the guacamole, perhaps being used in place of the usual citrus.  The pawzel had a perfectly sweet cinnamoniness to complement the dense, soft, chewy pretzel. (And, if I overheard correctly, the anti-oxidant-laden pawpaw had been used to cut the amount of fat without cutting moisture, much as applesauce sometimes does.) The smoothie tasted of fruity vanilla; the brownie had dark, fruity undertones.

The real standouts, though, were the pawpaw pepper butter and the pawpaw-peanut satays.  The satays were made by the Indonesian Student Association and lest you scoff, their satays are the stuff of legend.  Their booth has the longest line each year at the International Street Fair because the delicious scent of grilling satay wafts all up and down the street. Unlike all of the other pawpaw foods on offer, I knew what the “regular” satays tasted like.  As I picked up the skewer to take a bite, I thought the sauce looked darker than usual.  As soon as the sauce hit my tongue my eyes opened wide. They had somehow managed to make the satays even better. Under all the other layers of flavor was a darkly sweet, smoky hint of fruit.

The pawpaw pepper butter was a sauce accompanying Laurel Valley Creamery’s fried cheese curds.  The curds themselves were the stuff of a cheese-lover’s dreams—soft, gooey, oozing pillows of cheesiness—none of that waxy rubberiness sometimes characteristic of cheese curds.  The light batter they’d been fried in could not contain them and they had oozed together into delicious pale-golden globs on my waxed-paper-lined tray.  The butter was a vibrant yellow and tasted like banana peppers with some added heat and a bright, fruity tang.  The vinegary, almost mustardy heat cut through the luscious curds perfectly, leaving your tongue ready to get maximum enjoyment from the next bite.

Ultimately, I decided that it doesn’t matter what a pawpaw tastes like. The pawpaw is the chameleon, the tofu, the secret agent man of fruits.  It’ll blend in to just about anything and add a little note of complexity.  It can be light or dark, sweet or savory—it’s oh-so-accomodating. I now suspect you’d never eat something and say, “Hey, there’s some pawpaw in this sauce and it’s delicious!” but you might very well say, “This sauce is delicious and I have no idea why. I must have your secret ingredient!”

In sum, the pawpaw plays well with others. Much like the Ohioans for whom it is the native fruit. The pawpaw is quiet, unassuming.  It won’t shout to get your attention. It won’t, like Texas, brag about how big and bold it is, or like New York, dazzle you with bright lights and loud noises. The pawpaw will just sit there quietly and politely on your palate like a good Midwesterner as it makes everything you taste a little more interesting.




image credit: ars-grin.gov

W1: Remembering Home

What foods remind you of home?  Are those foods sources of pride, or like Janzen, do you have some shame-based foods hiding in your closet?

Post a response to your personal blog by Tuesday, 9/13.

Your Food Cultures

"Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are."
 ~Brillat-Savarin

What food cultures do you belong to? Most of you are part of the student food culture (pizza, burgers, burritos and beer) and you no doubt belong to some kind of regional food culture as well (e.g. midwestern meat & potatoes).  Does your ethnic or religious identity connect you to particular foods or food rituals?  Are you a foodie?  A vegan?  Post your response (at least 300 words) here. And feel free to otherwise introduce yourself to the rest of the class while you're at it.

due 9/8/11