What food find still haunts you - that you had once and haven't found since?
For me it would be Cuban toast at some little shop off Alligator Alley in South Florida... long Cuban bread, halved, doused in butter and put through the sandwich-shop moving broiler till toasty, but the owner said somehow mojo criollo was involved (!), and then topped with huge portions of guava jelly and with the halves smushed face-to-face inside a little baker's-paper wrapper.
By Cinnamon
on May 8, 2009 09:27 PM
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A white chocolate mousse drizzled with raspberry puree. I had it at a street festival in San Francisco. My friends and I bought one to share, and it was so exquisite we went back and bought one more for each of us. It has to be twenty years and I can still almost taste it...
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The moment I saw this topic I thought of this white chocolate cake, almost cheescake, in a raspberry puree that I got every time I went to a restaurant called Ichabod's on the Upper East Side of Manahattan. It was in the eighties and I was very young, but I still remember it. I thought it was so sophisticated and innnovative! Ha! Such a similar memory to yours.
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A absoutley INCREDILBLE white pizza I had once while catching a quick lunch on a school trip in colledge while we waited for the ferry to take us to our next stop. Don't remember exactly where but we we going to Long Island.
A great Cane vinegar from the Marquesas That I found in a now defunct gourmet store. Looked like a wine bottle and had a graphic of a bunch of sugarcane on the label. I use Steen's now but this one was better.
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When I was a kid, there was an ice-cream shop in Gulfport, MS name Stone's Ice Cream. Now this has been way-many years ago, but my taste bud memories will always remember their hot-fudge as being the most luxurious, rich, creamy, milk chocolate colored sauce that actually "draped" the ice-cream rather than running off into a puddle, leaving little veins of nasty dark syrup behind.
Like MsMaryMc, I can still almost taste it (and it's been more years than 20) and would pay large $$$ to know how it was made. Knowing now that coffee can be added to choco to deepen the flavor - well, I wonder if Mr and Mrs Stone figured this out way back when. But I'm still not sure how they managed to have the sauce seemingly "stick" to the ice-cream.
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Back in the mists of yesteryear, there was a place in Palo Alto - Edy's I think it was - that served a sundae which had a cold fudge-like sauce. This sauce was semi-solid and was scooped over the ice cream rather than poured. It was memorable.
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Sorry to interrupt. Recipes are off-topic for the General Topics board, so we've split off a gfr1111's reply to this message to our Home Cooking board. You'll find gfr1111's recipe here: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/621584 .
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must've been real fudge, no filler. like the joy of cooking fudge icing recipe, which is just fudges thinned out. you could thin it out a little more.
so, like, 2 0z. chopped bittersweet and maybe 2 c sugar, and say 1 1/2-2 c. milk, and let 'er boil 5 min til the soft-ball stage (set up some cold water and keep dropping some in til you can make a little soft ball with your fingers. at first it'll just dissolve)
take it out, through in 3 tbsp or so of butter, vanilla if you have it and stir like hell til it's smooth. and before it becomes too thick, pour it over the ice cream. if it thickens, as weird al says, re-heat it. and if that fudge syrup don't drape, it'll still taste good. i mean mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. or something.
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I was eleven, visiting my mothers home country (USA) for the first time - I was taken by an uncle to an ice-cream place and I ate a bowl of vanilla ice cream with blueberries and custard. It sounds so simple but I've never managed to reproduce the texture and taste of that perfect sundae.
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There was a place in Hollywood Florida called Gustos and they served the best honey cilantro chicken wings, I have tried many time to get it just right, but never as good as Gustos ( which is no longer open)
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Silly -- but I've yet to find a tomato that equals the almost melon-sized one I had bought at the market in Dubrovnik over 20 yrs. ago & devoured on the boat for lunch, didn't even need salt.
Ekmek kadaifi as eaten on Mykonos almost 20 years ago. Haven't had that particular version ever again. It was to die for.
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Not silly at all! My friend, prior to going back to work full-time, grew her own tomatoes. I was never a tomato lover until I had her home-growns. And let's just say she frequented our nearby animal farms for fertilizer and swore by that! Her cherry tomatoes were a burst of sunshine and sweetness on my tongue. No veggie stand tomato has come close and I beg her every year to plant again. I can dream...
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Tomatoes are another food that haunt me. You can not grow delicious tomatoes in Alaska like the amazing ones that I grew up eating in Wisconsin. Amazing! We would usually get about 30-60 new ones a day and we made the most delicious homemade marinara, and also ate them fresh. I have met alot of people here in AK that claim they hate tomatoes, and I am convinced that if they tried the tomatoes we grew in WI they would change their mind.
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A tomato-based item for me as well. My aunt had a farm in Richmond BC, mostly horses but with a sizeable veggy garden. We went over one day and she made us tomato sandwiches with fruit picked straight from the vine, still warm from the sun. Just toasted bread, tomatoes, a little mayo, a little lettuce, salt and pepper. I'm drooling now thinking about it.
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Ohh...yes...me too.
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>überdrool< how great would it be to find tomatoes like that again.....
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Go to New Jersey farm stands in July. Really! The Garden State.
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At least in Central Jersey (Monmouth) farm stands are few and far between these days.
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The year was 1988, The place - Mykonos ferry terminal. The food - bowl after bowl of Greek yogurt served with local honey. I'm now living in Greece but haven't had yogurt like that since, it was thick but light , like tangy whipped cream, Wonderful memory, (didn't really like Mykonos though!!)
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On the only trip I've ever made out of the country, in highschool, a group of students went on a tour of Europe. In Holland, we stayed at a little bed and breakfast, and one night I wasn't feeling terribly hungry, so I just had the tomato soup. Oh, the angels were dancing on my tongue! I had three bowls that night, knowing that I would probably never get to re-create this intense, fleeting love affair with tomato and cream, who did such naughty things to my taste buds that I shall never forget them.
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Oh, "The Meatloaf!" After my oldest was born, I was hungry enough to eat an econo-sized box of Pampers. The hospital tray offered...meatloaf. <sigh> Well, it was food.
But what meatloaf! Superior crust, but unbelievably juicy. The texture was spot on and the flavor was unlike any meatloaf I'd had before or have since. It also seemed to have an elusive "hamminess" to it. I have tried to recreate the flavor for 21 years, but never seem to come close. It was just so very delicious, and it wasn't just the hunger as seasoning.
I think I've got to take another stab at it now!
Cay
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:)
I had a similar hospital food experience once. After being unable to eat or drink for over 24 hours and feeling as though I were at the brink of utter starvation, the nurses brought me a bowl of ........ split pea soup. Now at that time, I was beyond finniky about food, but that soup was so wonderfully tasty, I ravished it with gusto - I had-to-have seconds!
But I'll let that remain my only memory of split-pea soup.
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Same experience, except that the nurse brought me clear broth. It was amazing !
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After knowing the experience of having babies, that sounds great!
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Yep, after I had my son and got into a room it was something like 2:30 am, and I hadn't eaten in well over 24 hours. I asked the nurse what there was to eat, and she said all the usual jello, etc, and then said she thought there may be a leftover taco salad, which suddenly sounded like the best thing on earth to me at the time! so I ordered it, wolfed it down like some sort of starveling, and threw it right back up. Guess my body was still in "let's get rid of stuff" mode.
It sure was good while I was eating it, though!
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I can relate. When I was 13 I got thrown off a horse and broke my hip. By the time they'd done all the diagnostic stuff and got me admitted it was after nine at night, and I hadn't eaten since lunch. My Mom was a regular volunteer in the hospital cafe and she got the security folks to open it up and brought me a tuna salad sandwich on toast and a three musketeers bar. Still the best meal I've ever had. <g>
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Hunger, not hospitals, make good kitchen in my opinion. Everything tastes better when you're starving.
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Yes, after I gave birth, the next morning (8 hours later) they brought biscuits and gravy for breakfast. It tasted delicious, and after 24 hours without food I am pretty sure I know why.
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I have a couple. One which has perplexed me to no end, because I feel like I should be able to find it on the internet, have been looking for years and have been unsuccessful. It was an aged white cheddar cheese that Gelson's Market in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles used to carry around the holidays when it was Mayfair, up to around 2003 or 2004. It was on the pricey side -- around $8 for 8 or so oz, and came encased in wax, shaped like fruit -- apples, pears. It was complex, nutty and rich (not some processed food product) -- probably the best cheddar I've ever tasted. I believe it was Canadian or from Vermont, although there's the possibility it was English. When the store switched over to Gelson's, they stopped carrying it. I tried asking the manager but they didn't know what I was talking about.
The others are foods eaten while travelling in Europe and elsewhere -- a gyro on the streets of Mykonos, after the clubs let out in the middle of the night, perfectly charred meat with tangy tzatziki on hot, puffy, pita heated up on the grill; a late-night chicken sandwhich in Paris -- which to this day was probably the best sandwhich I've ever had, anywhere -- with freshly roasted chicken shredded onto a crusty baguette with mayo, dijon and capers; roasted piquillo peppers in Ibiza at a seaside tapas place, with a glass of wine watching the sunset; a perfect lobster roll at a foodshack in Maine. I know some of these I could probably find the equivalent of again, if I ever get back to the places mentioned, but try as I might, I have been unable to recreate them at home, or find them where I'm currently living. The closest I ever found to the chicken sandwhich was at a place called Pamela's in NYC, where I was living in the early 1990s. It was a french sandwich shop on the south side of West 4th St just west of Broadway, and it's since long gone . . . I make the sandwhich myself at home sometimes, but it's only a shadow of the original, as I don't think I'll ever be able to replicate a french grown chicken, rotisserie roasted in that little shop which only featured chicken, or the bread. Ah, the memories!
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The fresh mint ice cream offered as an amuse bouche at the dearly departed 721 Pine restaurant here in Seattle. Haven't had as good since.
Mee pok. So far as I know, it's not available in this country. I barely remember what it is but used to love it for breakfast in Singapore.
Peter Cipra's roast duck with dumpling and sauerkraut. Best duck in the world. So crispy on the outside, so moist on the inside. Dumpling as light as air. Never knew sauerkraut could be sooooo good.
Cambodian noodle soup at a small Vietnamese restaurant. The lady who originally owned it remarried and moved to California. Have never had another Cambodian noodle soup like it.
Really good Hainanese chicken rice in the US. Have had great chicken rice in Singapore and Malaysia, but in this country, it never measures up. Ditto for SE Asian oyster omelets.
The badaam kheer I had once in Penang. The rice pudding Vij once served when he was still a hole-in-the wall restaurant in Vancouver. Recipe NOT in his cookbook, darn!
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Pao,
Ditto on the Hainanese chicken rice, which was wonderful, and available all over Singapore. I found one place in the United States while on vacation that matched it: I think it was called "Singapore Cafe" (or something similar) on Geary Street in San Francisco. Alas, it went out of business a few years back, although I have since learned that there are (or were) a few other locations in San Jose (and maybe Market Street in S.F?) and elsewhere. Unfortunately, that won't do me any good here on the west coast of Florida.
I must say, I don't understand why it is so good. The recipe seems simple enough, but I can't duplicate it here in the United States.
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721 Pine! I ate there once, and it was a wonderful experience! Thanks for reminding me.
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DanaB,
I believe I've seen the cheese you're describing at a specialty cheese store in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) called Paddy's. Ph: 780-413-0367. Might be worth a call to see if it is a cheddar, and if they'll ship to you!
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I was really hoping somebody would reply to this thread with a tip on what maker they thought the cheese might be from, or where I might actually be able to find it! Thanks, I will definitely look into it! :-)
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Inverloch Cheese company from Scotland. They make fruit-shaped cheeses and you can find them on their website and a few stores around the holidays. They call them Gigha Fruit.
I know this post is 8 months old but just in case you're still looking...
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It's worth a try but what you describe sounds like Brand name " Kerrygold Irish Dubliner Cheese " I 've found it hear in Houston.You can google it and read all about it. Mine was not shaped like fruit but everything else you said. Great cheese even if it isn't yours try it.
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that kerrygold dubliner cheese is delicious. great for snacks with wine.
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http://www.inverlochcheese.com/gighaf... Has to be this cheese, right?
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Cajun Upside Down Pickles. - The labels were upside down, so the jar was put on the shelf upside down. They were from NOLA area, but all the googling in the world does not find them in business anymore.
I at least found a few recipes for them. I will have to play around.
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This was what I was after....I think its a good start but I am gonna play around with it.
http://sassysdewdropinn.yuku.com/topi...
1 jar (46 ounces) dill pickles, drained
2 1/2 cups sugar
6 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seeds
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1 small onion, chopped
Directions
Slice pickles. Put them back in jar and set aside. Combine sugar, vinegar, celery seeds, horseradish, and onion. Pour mixture over pickles. Turn jar upside down and refrigerate 24 hours. Serve chilled.
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Either the naan fresh out of the tandoor in a real poor-folks' hole in the wall in Cuttack, India (have had lots of naan since, but never quite as good) or the brown trout my cousins caught and cooked on green sticks over a tiny fire way up in the Sierras when we were still in high school.
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Good one, with the trout! My son was about fourteen and he and I went to my GF's cabin in Cuesta, NM and caught cutthroats at will from a creek thirty feet from the rustic, no-frills shack. We ate the trout like corn on the cob, with eggs, for breakfast!
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Yup good un. Cut throat w/ scrambled eggs for breakfast back packing in the Rockies in the 70's ! Will never ever be the same!
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I also remember fresh-caught trout in this topic: my father and I were near Yellowstone and he cooked it Boy-Scout style at our campsite. Never had better fish in my 40 years since then.
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Live dungeness crab in Tofino, a crabbing town on Vancouver Island. It was a cozy little restaurant, I sat in the loft watching them prepare the crabs by bashing them in half--still alive, I think--on the center divider of the sink, then cleaning and cooking the halves. I've had a lot of crab, but nothing has ever come close to this. The crab shack was no longer there the next time I visited Tofino.
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this must've been the late 60's. i was eating falafels in brooklyn, and there was some red pickled item on the side. i do not know to this day if it was pickled watermelon, or pickled cactus fruit - but i've never found it again, and it has haunted me for 40 years
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The red pickled items were probably picked turnips. If you google pickled turnips, you will find recipes and pictures, so you can see if that it what you remember.
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no, it wasn't a turnip or a radish. i've had both those many times since.
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It wasn't beets, was it?
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I would guess pickled baby eggplants? I've had them at a lot of falafel places.
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as i said - i believe it was either watermelon or sabra (cactus fruit)
but i was very young and i wouldn't swear to anything. beets seem too firm and not juicy enough, eggplants seem too soft.
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It was Sweet pickled watermelon rind, my grandmother knew a great restaurant called the Dessert INN in Ohio and the always served that as a side. The red color comes from the rind just below the pink in the melon ... closest thing to it would be Pickled Watermelon Rind by Old South Foods, you can find them online, but it is chunky and you would need to slice thin.
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I once had an Apple Cinnamon filled doughnut from Tim Horton's at Eaton Centre and thought it was delicious (for Timmy's). I went back the next day and the next and the day after that and never saw it again. To this day I make a point to stop at Tim Horton's that I never been to before hoping they have it... they never do :(
WON
http://whatsonmyplate.wordpress.com
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In 1957, I was flying from Manchester, England, to Istanbul, Turkey, with a stop in Amsterdam, on KLM. At Schiphol Airport, it was determined an engine had to be changed out on the aircraft and KLM issued everyone on board vouchers for the main dining room; anything we wanted! I wasn't that hungry, but decided to try some Dutch hot chocolate. Oh my god.... First off, it was served in a lovely white porcelain chocolate pot with matching cup and saucer, accompanied by a side of sweetened double cream. The "hot chocolate" was basically cream with chocolate melted into it and sweetened. It remains the most wonderful, incredibly delicious chocolate drink I have ever had in my life! And I have never missed an opportunity to tell people about it!
Which brings me to an amusing follow up. Many years later, my second husband and I found ourselves on a one night layover in Zurich, Switzerland. When we got to our hotel, the choices in the main dining room were for liver brochets or liver dumplings. I wasn't in the mood. To make things worse, Swiss Air had sent our luggage on to New York (we were heading for Boston), so we only had our travel clothes, not exactly appropriate for the white linen table cloth dining experience we had in mind. So we found ourselves in a Movenpik restaurant (think "Denny's" of Europe). When the waitress came to take our orders, my husband asked, "Do you have really good hot chocolate?" The waitress smiled and proudly announced, "We have the very best hot chocolate in all of Switzerland." I don't remember what he ordered for dinner, but as the waitress walked away, he gloated, "Well, Miss Smarty Pants. I guess this will put an end to all of your bragging about your Dutch hot chocolate. Swiss chocolate has a reputation to match Holland any day of the week." I had ordered some sort of liqueured cappuccino. When the waitress brought our drinks, my coffee was gorgeous! Tall footed mug, whipped cream on top. And then she set a steaming mug of hot water and an envelope of Swiss Miss Instant Hot Chocolate in front of my husband. '-)
Dutch hot chocolate rules!
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I like this! (and am drooling about this hot chocolate!)
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In general, KLM has shockingly good food.
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Growing up, summer vacations were trips home to the Midwest to visit Grandma and Grandpa on both sides of the family, and so I had never been on a plane in between my infancy (when I flew for free on my mom's lap) and my first trip to Europe when I was 18. So the first time I flew and was able to remember it, it was a transatlantic flight on KLM. I had always heard these horror stories and standup routines about "airplane food," but just didn't see what was so horrifying about it. I chalked it up to, "I'm 18 - what the hell do I know?" My grandmother commented that the food was really good on our flights, but I never thought her cooking was much to write home about, so that didn't impress me one way or the other either. Now, with a bit more experience, and having done more snack-hoarding than I would like to admit on JetBlue and Porter, I know better - my first flight spoiled me for airline food.
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Except for military flights, KLM was my first flight as well, in the late 60's. Then I transferred to Aeroflot in Schipol. The lunch on board was cold cuts, cheese and black bread. What I'll never forget though was the full water glass was pure vodka! Na zdrovya!
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I wish we had had vodka on our Aeroflot flight! Maybe it would have taken our minds off the fact that the seat belts weren't working and the sounds from the cockpit were not those one would normally expect! We could see the stewardess's legs, and then we could not. I was on Aeroflot in Russia in the 70's. We didn't get vodka, or anything else. We were lucky we made it through the flight. I was a high school student on a class trip and kissed the ground when I returned to the good ole U.S of A!!! With all that goes on in this country today, I continue to appreciate it more due to spending just ten days in Russia when I was in high school!
Food-wise, I must admit, even though I was expecting breakfast, and got a bit faint when a hot, steaming bowl of meat borscht was put in front of me as my first meal in Russia, it remains to this day, the best borscht I have ever had.
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On domestic flights it was ladies w/ caged chickens standing in the aisle and bring your own vodka.
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Now that's panache.
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Now yer urban mything it, keg.
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Nup, I seen it. Turbo prop, so loud you couldn't talk w/out shouting. Big bag of produce too. Plane didn't depart until fully loaded. Waited 6 hrs; everybody drunk.
Aaahhhh, back in the USSR.
Sam, ever fly the Bolivian military transports as a passsanger? Santa Cruz to Riberalta in a DC-3 older than I for $17. Few instruments, flying through mountain valleys; now thems wuz pilots. All the burned out 50's era American passanger liners lying burned out at the end of runways?
No food though, only prayers. Did I really take my little boys on these planes?
Happy Memorial Day; kiss a vet.
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Have flown in the various countries' Transportes Aereo Militar all over the Amazon in a wide variety of planes. Pre-GPS navigation using VORs and all instrument flying. There are no visual cues over the Amazon.
The Illushyns and Tupolovs for Hang Kong Vietnam always had cabin crew women wearing the ugliest ao dai - turquoise light blue and white polyester - bad "food" and no vodka.
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I'd take the gooney bird. *With* the Vodka.
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Sam, it's obvious that you are flying the wrong airlines. Maybe you need to transfer your miles to Aero-Grey Goose.
Hunt
PS, I've never flown with good vodka either and good wine is almost as rare, even in FC.
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I once took a Wine Appreciation class when I was in grad school - we had a one-man Enology department, and he was also the wine consultant for American Airlines. The airline donated all of the bottles for our tastings, and we got some seriously good stuff on occasion - he was a man of good taste. I always wondered if that translated at all to what was actually offered on the planes.
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I've flown several airlines, and the wine offerings were on the low side. Not that many years ago, UAL made a big step up. They hired a master sommelier (name escapes me right now) and the offerings took a major jump up. This was so for several years. Great offerings (for an airline) and good diversity. Some lesser-known varietals, and small producers with very good wines. Unfortunately, first the airlines, in general, took a tumble, and then the general economy. Those days are gone - for a while.
I've never lived in an area, where AA was a big player. While I am one of their frequent fliers, I have to admit to little contact, or knowlege of their wine programs. Based solely on what that one consultant did for UAL, I am certain that your professor also did wonders for AA - I just did not discover it personally. It only takes a knowledge, a commitment and a bit of a budget. Then, it's up to the fliers to explore and enjoy.
I do a survey after each flight. The wine selections are always a part of my responses, plus those of my wife. If the airlines do not know, they cannot possibly justify any expense.
Now, I have to say that UAL has paired with Chef Charlie Trotter as a consultant, and the food has taken a nose dive in my opinion. Still, I have no idea of what budget Chef Trotter may have been working with.
Thanks for sharing. Wish I had flown AA, when that professor was the consultant. Sounds like they knew and loved what they taught.
Hunt
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The first time I went to Europe I flew alone on Alitalia and had a delicious airplane meal. Some kind of veggies and pasta with sauce and a half bottle of very decent red wine. Wait, no, I think I tried to order vegetarian, out of suspiciousness of airline food, but they'd run out and gave me a chicken dish instead. I couldn't believe how good it was, and looking back, I wonder if it was that good, or if it was just so much better than I expected, or what?
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ah, such fond memories.... I love how KLM is really quite happy to knock you out on a succession of wines and cocktails and hearty meals for the duration of the flight. i also flew it for the first time as a teenager. they won a loyal customer in me, early! i always make it a point to fly them to india, if i have time for a layover in schiphol.
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Mashed avocados mixed with condensed milk and frozen in ice cube trays - I used to have it all the time, growing up in the Philippines. Hot pan de sal with condensed milk. Also, hot pan de sal with spicy sardines - all foods I used to eat when I was growing up. I haven't found a place in the SF Bay area that sells good hot pan de sal.
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Oh my! I will have to try that avocado and condensed milk concoction once I pick up some ripe avocadoes!
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This was on my mind too...
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Well I went in a slightly different direction.
3 Avacado's
Juice of 1 Lemon
1 Stick of Cream Cheese
The can of Condensed Milk
I know have a cheese cake filling. May add a egg yolk or two next time.
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Oh, yes! I also remember siopao (for the non-Pinoys, a Filipino dim sum), filled with some kind of meat and a VERY tasty sauce, and the Filipino chorizo, more sweet-sour/barbecue/garlic than the Mexican or Spanish versions. Luckily, the avocado-condensed milk can be easily concocted.
Will contact the relatives in SF to see if they can recommend any sources for pan de sal.
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Kahit pagkain inchik ang siapao (although siopao is Filipino Chinese).
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Hey, still masmassarap!
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Splendido, Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, '80's: Entree of chicken on a round noodle cake plus other layers of goodies. Absolutely delicious. Asked for recipe and got a 4-page read-out in the mail. So labor intensive, never tried...alas.... still think of it every now and then. Weird, huh?
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In the Northwest, there is a chain of admirable drive-ins called "Burgerville". Back in 1966 I would sometimes hop in the car and go there on my lunch break just to get their marvelous shrimp burger. The patty had coarsely-chopped shrimp meat with some kind of binder (shrimp paste?) and must have been deep fried as it had a crunchy crustiness. Boy was that good! Worth the driving and parking hassle.
I moved to San Francisco, and in my absence Burgerville stopped making the shrimp burger. I have never seen anything comparable. Not in the frozen food seafood section. Not in any restaurant. Not even in any cookbook.
http://burgerville.com/our-food/menu-...
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If you ever make it to Mott, ND....you can still get the shrimp burger at the local drive-in restaurant! I grew up there, and go home to see my family every year...and the shrimp burger is a must-have.
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Oh my god that sounds delicious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you want to try making these at home, it sounds a lot like what Chinese stuff bell peppers/capsicum and eggplant/aubergines with. We do this at home and fry them and serve in black bean or oyster sauce. It is often served at yum cha too.
You can buy fish paste at Asian grocery stores in the chiller or freezer section. Thaw if frozen and mix in roughly chopped prawns/shrimp, and season. The prawns will be (the chinese word for it is) "song", kinda like al dente, if you salt then rinse them in water a couple of times first. They sort of pop in your mouth. Some restaurants I think must whip their fish paste or something, so it almost mousse like with chunks of prawns in it, so good. they use that for filling prawns toasts.
hb
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I can't tell you what the secret is to the "whipped" fish paste texture/taste thing going on in the stuffed peppers/eggplant at the dim sum restaurant ('yum cha'). I suspect, however, that it might be as simple as stale white bread added to the stuffing... Just a thought. I love these items, too.
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OK, I'll add one more experience... I don't know how this happened, but one evening at the Hard Rock Cafe near the marina in San Francisco, in the mid-1980s, I ordered shark fin soup and guacamole. The best shark fin soup and guacamole I have ever had. Perfect avocados, perfectly chunked, perfect lime/salt, just the right amount of tomato pieces added (regardless of your view on what belongs in guacamole, this was fantastic). I don't make a habit of frequenting Hard Rock Cafes, but there was something magic going on in the kitchen at that one, at that time.
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For me it was vanilla gelato in Tuscany. It was the perfect balance of creamy vanilla flavour and wasn't too sweet. I've tried every type of vanilla gelato I've seen since and the closest I found was in Spain last year. I'm going to attempt to make it this summer but it's probably going to take some experimenting to get it right!
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Ginger Altoids. I really like them and have never found them anywhere but the once.
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They sell Ginger Altoids at Trader Joe's. Or, you can buy them online: http://www.altoids.com/shop.do
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My sister and I are still haunted by the melon gelato we had in Rome about 20 years ago...so good we went about 2 blocks and turned around and went back for a second serving.
She was recently in Rome but unable to duplicate the experience.
In Lima (Peru) I luckily tried the tamarindo gelato at cafe 4D at the airport... A new twist on an old flavor memory .."tamarind balls" we ate when children.
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major league girIs' baseball, I almost never drink soft drinks. An exception is when I go to get a haircut after a session at the gym. One time Rueben gave me a tamarindo soda (made by Postobon). Maybe the best soda I've ever had and not found or had since.
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That reminds me, there is a Peruvian restaurant in NY called Limas and they served the best sangria, ceviche and cows heart! That was a great afternoon!
Last time we were in NY we couldn't find it again.
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How different was the tamarindo soda compared to Jarritos?
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Haven't had Jarritos. What is it?
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will answer for TampaA. Jarritos is a brand of Mexican soda. I think it is good, but not dream about it good. Can't compare to Postobon since haven't had the latter..
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Sorry for the delay. Jarritos is the only brand of Mexican soda that I can find readily in Tampa Bay. I'm slightly addicted to their tamarindo. If its in the house, it doesn't stay for very long. I'm really just addicted to tamarind anything but don't have enough recipes built up to find it worthwhile to source out some tamarind paste to make myself a tamarindo agua fresca.
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I found ginger altoids in trader Joes
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a hot dog. from nash's roadside stand in oakland, new jersey. it was deep fried, topped with chili and onions. i ate more than one, more than once.
good stuff.
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The first thing that popped to mind, oddly enough, was a sandwich I had at a food court in a Fairfax County, Virginia mall about fifteen years ago. It was right around the time that pita bread was just becoming widespread, and this one place (don't remember if it was Middle Eastern or just 'healthy eating' themed or what), had pita sandwiches with very lightly cooked vegetables and some kind of creamy sauce that bound it all together.
Try as I might to combine lightly cooked vegetables, creamy sauce and pitas in myriad combinations since, I just have not been able to.
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You'll probably never see this reply but Olallieberry, I worked at a place called Everything Yogurt in high school in the early 1980's and they used to have the stores in quite a few malls in the east. We made a pita bread sandwich with chopped vegetables and melted muenster cheese over it. That place had surprisingly good food. We used to make a pasta salad (corkscrew noodles and various vegetables including green beans that we had to snap ourselves and blanch - my 1st experience with fresh beans) using something called Paris dressing that I could never find elsewhere and it was soooooo good. Slightly sweet but also creamy. And the tuna pasta salad also great...
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The home-churned vanilla icecream we had at a family reunion when I was about 12. It was the best icecream I have ever had.
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OH BOY, does this topic strike home for me!!! I have exactly two. Both of mine are from when I used to live on the east side of Michigan (grew up over there, been on the west coast 15 yrs.). When I was about 18 and worked a stint with my Dad at his workplace in Auburn Hills, not far from the Silverdome, we got lunch frequently at a little deli/convienience store just down the street.
They had a hot ham and cheese sandwich that was for me roll-your-eyes-back-in-your-head delicious! It was shaved ham with (I think) American cheese on an onion Kaiser roll. I ordered it with extra raw onions, mustard and mayo. I'm pretty sure they nuked it. Seems like the most basic of ingredients but I have never come close with homemade to how delicious that sandwich was. Of course, I didn't fully appreciate it when it was available to me, but I still drool at the thought! Give me a bit of slack, I was a baby Hound back then!
My second was when I lived in Plymouth and worked at "The Crier" newspaper from mid-93 to mid-94. We were on Penniman St. and the "Penniman Deli" was directly across the (one-way, therefore not very wide) street. Every morning I would walk over there and buy one of their "cheese" bagels with lite cream cheese.
These bagels were not what I see in a grocery or at Panera, with shredded pieces of cheese baked on-top. They were just shy of bright orange, with the cheese throughout every morsel, chewy, and dense, even when toasted. Scrumptious sharp cheddar (my guess). I didn't know how good I had it, I mourn that I will never have that great of a bagel regularly again. It was what I envision when I read others writing about New York bagels. Sadly, I have tried all the groceries in our area, Panera and the sole "Brooklyn Bagels", and there's not even a "good" bagel among them :(
At least I can still rely on Lender's for a freezer bagel. Oh wait, I can't, they don't make my beloved "garlic" any longer....WHY???!!!!!! I grew up with them and I can't fathom why, when garlic has been all the rage for a good decade+, they decided to disconntinue that flavor. I wrote them a couple of years ago and they had no answer beyond "Sorry, we don't make 'em anymore".
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I used to be a kitchen manager at the Box Bar (long ago) and never got to try the Penniman bagels! I don't live that far....maybe tomorrow I can slide out to see the state of the place.
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Well, it's been 15 yrs. since I lived in Plymouth, I don't even know if Penniman Deli still exists! They always did brisk business so I'd be surprised if they aren't still there. Do report back if you get to try them!
The deli is (was) not all that big, I never asked but suspected that the bagels may have been delivered to them before opening from some other business. Maybe from somewhere like Northville or Livonia, I can't recall any really good bakeries back then in the Ply/Canton area.
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Like many of these responses, my haunts tend to deal with travel experiences.
Being a 15 year old kid, my dad brought me to a place in Miami for conch chowder. Each table had a bottle of sherry as a condiment. Don't know if I was more in love with the chowder or the sherry...
Shrimp lightly steamed with Old Bay on the boardwalk in Daytona Beach Fl. Again, as a kid, I've been back to this area as an adult time and again, searching for it, but always coming up short.
Stopped in an asian fast food joint in Sydney at about 10:00am. They were barely opened but begrudgingly cooked me a whole fish. Kinda like a sole, wok sauteed with chile, it remains a benchmark.
Deep fried pork belly in the market of Merida, Mexico. Mayans call it Kastacan, and it is.... what can I say? Delicious? Succulent? Words fail to describe...
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A bit left field, I got into very strong left politics at university and went vegetarian for three weeks. One night at dinner with my mother and her friend I finally cracked and ate a pork wonton, more accurately I cracked and ate a whole plate of wontons and about another half a pig and two ducks. Nothing particularly amazing about it, but I can still taste that wonton. My god but it was good! Nothing against vegetarianism, I actually quite admire it, but it is not for this Queensland butcher's grandson.
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Reply to Samuelinthekitchen May 11
I LOVE your style...half a pig and two ducks. My two favorite foods but have to add fish.
This is similar to how I feel after visiting my vegetarian daughter's home.
And I'm not even a butcher's daughter.
We live and learn.
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My first and 1 of only two tastings of chilled targole...fruit of palm trees. Its not quite a coconut, but has a thick pulpy flesh that encases about a teaspoon of the sweetest coconut water ever. To eat it you peel back a 2mm thick opaque skin to get to the flesh inside. Texture and taste combined, plus the cooling relief after a day of walking the streets of Mumbai, made this an unforgettable experience. and to date I have never eaten Targole with quite the same taste and flavour
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The Caldo Tlalpeño at Hotel El Mesón del Marqués in Valladolid, Mexico. Complex rice-based (not garbanzo bean) chicken soup with whole pieces of chicken, avocado, and a whole chipotle that bursts into the broth. I've had many other versions and have tried to re-create it from numerous recipes, but nothing has come close.
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I still think about the Sopa de Lima I had there......so simple, but so delicious.
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Fresh squeezed blood orange juice in Athens. I was 14 and had never heard of blood oranges. It was perfect: tangy without being over the top sour. I still have weaknesses for blood oranges, but they never measure up in taste. I wonder if I'm buying them too far away from where they grew.
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Ah, Blood Oranges. When I lived a year in Israel, I used to regularly trek to the Sook, the old city in Jerusalem & get the freshly squeezed Blood Orange Juice. Now I haven't equalled the experience completely, but I bought a good Oxo Press, & every Summer I freshly squeeze a combo. of Tangerines & Blood Oranges....Delicious!! --JET
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Hungarian blintzes, at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Dizengoff in Tel-Aviv. Run, as I recall, by a Thai couple. I've eaten in the Jewish restaurant sections of New York and Toronto and neverfound anything like them.
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E, as the descendent of professional Hungarian cooks, I would be glad to share our recipe for blintzes (palaczinkas) with either cheese or fruit. What was it that made your blintzes so special? My great-aunt used to live just off the Dizengoff, near Rehov Sirkin. Wouldn't it be funny if she was the cook?
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I'd actually love to know your recipe for cheese blintzes. My mom and grandmother make them (we're Polish). I don't have the recipe, but recall that it uses dry curd cottage cheese, which I CANNOT find outside of the Midwest. Sigh.
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Farmers cheese!
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When I was a kid, I went to boarding school in Bryn Mawr, PA. On the weekends, some of us used to walk across the train tracks to visit the shops on The Pike and stop for an afternoon snack. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the luncheonette we frequented near the train station, but will never forget the taste of the sticky buns. They were about 5 inches in diameter, with no pecans. They'd split the buns crosswise, butter the cut sides and put them down on the griddle for a minute or two. 50 years later, my mouth waters, just thinking about them - so sweet and salty (from the butter - sometimes I'd get extra, on the side), with the soft, melted cinnamon/brown sugar sticking to my braces.
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I was born in Bryn Mawr, small world! When I was six we moved from PA and my mom has never been able to find sticky buns since! She has tried to make them herself and been to bakeries in all the other states we lived with no luck!
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my boyfriend is about to move to Bryn Mawr - do you know if they are still available?
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oh, those PA Dutch sticky buns! can't beat the ones from Plain & Fancy in Schuylkill Haven. i haven't had one since i was about 11 years old, and i can *still* remember the taste and texture. nothing quite like it.
same goes for chocolate-covered pretzels from Mootz in Pottsville, though they're not the same as they were when i was a child.
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Oh!
GHG you just remeinded me of soft pretzels dipped in hot fudge - I only ever saw them at Six Flaggs Great Adventure in NJ - but they dissappeared never to be seen again. *sigh*
the were THE BEST thing EVER in the world!
I suppose i could try it at home using frozen soft pretzels.... but I'm sure they'd never be as good....
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well then, i think you'll just have to bake your own! ;)
http://www.chow.com/recipes/28382-sof...
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on the ocean city nj boardwalk, there is a place next to the water park called philly twist (where i worked for a few summers) and they also do the "fresh" chocolate covered pretzel"...and they are amazing! made in small batches throughout the day, every day.
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Was it the College Inn?
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I still mourn for Laudenslager's on rt 309, just north of Allentown.
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Old El Paso Mild enchilada sauce comes to mind. One can of it and one of beef broth (or stock), saute some onion, maybe garlic, a very little chili powder and a good amount of cumin in oil (or lard), make a roux with 2 T. flour and add the rest. Play around until you get the combo of flavors you want. That's how they did it in Galveston, TX, when I lived there.
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When I was living in Mason City, IA during the late 1970s early 1980s there was a Mexican place. It was owned by a Mexican family (and no, it's not Pastime Garden) and the food was wonderful. I can't remember what the place was called any more, and a google search didn't turn it up.
I've had the food more than once, but never since leaving Mason City for good in 1987. On their enchiladas they used a brown sauce that was beefy/gravy-like rather than red sauce/chile-like. I've never, ever been able to find a recipe for this sauce (despite trying all sorts of recommended recipes , and even calling them years ago, they refused to give the recipe), I've never found any other Mexican restaurants that use this sort of sauce on the enchiladas, and my mouth still waters to think of its rich, beefy flavour complimenting the wonderful beef or cheese enchiladas they served. *wistful sigh*
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Hot and Sour Beef Salad at the Thai Hut in Wheaton Md from the early 80's, it gone of course but I have my memories. Or about the Hot Steamed spicy blue crabs from Popes Creek Md....You know the way they used to taste!
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Might this be it? It is credited to Emeril Lagasse. It appeared on chowhound but I don't have the CH source for it.
Enchilada Sauce
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon flour
1/4 cup New Mexico chili powder
16 ounces chicken stock (you can use a good quality canned broth if necessary)
10 ounces tomato puree
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
In a saucepan, heat the oil. Add flour and cook, whisking for 1 minute. Add the chili powder and cook 30 seconds. Stir in stock, tomato puree, oregano and cumin and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes, lid partially off, until flavors are well-blended, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt.
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Tex-Mex Mexican gravy was discussed here
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/536947
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Thing is, I am not convinced it was Tex-Mex. It's been a long time, but I'm starting to think that this was strictly something that this family developed themselves, maybe it would appear in the "only in your family" thread if they were on CH. ;D I've eaten in so many places, and tried so many recipes, both "authentic" Mexican and Tex-Mex and nothing has come very close to what I used to get there, that I even wonder if I was simply insane and imagined it all. :)
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Nope. :) It was definitely beef, not chicken, for one thing. The other thing is, over the years I've tried dozens of variations on the theme above, and none of them tastes quite right. :) Thanks though. :D
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Morganna, sorry I missed this earlier. It sounds to me, based on the color of the sauce, that it was mole that you enjoyed so much. There are probably as many recipes for salsa mole as there are cooks, but for starters may I recommend Dona Maria mole sauce?. I've never seen a Mexican market that doesn't sell it, and many non-specialized supermarkets carry it too. It runs around four or five bucks a small jar, then you dilute it with two or three parts broth (or water). Who knows? It could be Dona Maria the restaurant used. But if it's not exactly what you remember, but close, then you'll know you're on the right track.
There are dozens of mole recipes on the web, and not to mention every Mexican cookbook seems to have at least three mole recipes. I have only made mole from scratch once in my life. It was one of the more "challenging" mole recipes. A week and a half to gather all of the ingredients and tons of work and time to make it. it was absolutely fantastic!!! Have I made it again? No, but I do offer the recipe to all the best cooks I know with the condition that they invite me to dinner when they make it. But there are easier recipes I could try. I'm just afraid they wouldn't taste that good, so I'm content with Dona Maria.
.
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It wasn't mole. It was most assuredly a beef-based gravy. I've had moles in a variety of forms, that was totally not it. :)
But thanks for the thought. :)
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Is there anyone you still know who lives there now that you used to eat with at the restaurant? Maybe they remember the name so you could just call them up and ask.
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*grin* Everyone's trying to hard to be helpful. I have called them and asked, three times, over the last 20 years. Lately my memory isn't what it used to be, so I can't remember what they're called now, but ... LA HACIENDA!! That was it. :) Anyway, I have tried and they refuse to part with the recipe. :D
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The use of a colorado gravy on enchiladas is quite common with Tex-Mex cuisine. It is usually beef-based, and has ground chilis. This would akin to some moles, but no chocolate (that I ever found), no peanutbutter (that I ever found) and then a heavy base of rich beef gravy. Some do have tomatoes, but their contribution is basically some acid and maybe a tiny hint of red in the otherwise brown sauce. I've encountered this (and love it) in Texas, parts of Louisiana and even New Mexico. The closest that we have been able to come in our kitchen is to take a more traditional tomato-based enchilada sauce and blending in a good rich beef gravy. OK, but we're not there yet.
Since living in Colorado (the state, not the dark brown, brick color) and Arizona, I have not seen this used. However, the Mexican-influenced cuisine is more Sonornan and Bajan, with elements of Sinoloa thrown in.
I would *guess* that the chef in IA was possibly from Chiuahua, Coathuila, Nuevo León, or Tamaulipas. I've also encountered this through Zacatecas, down to Jalisco. Still, it's more common along the Texas/Mexico border.
Good luck in your search - though I did not encounter this sauce in IA, I do seek it out, as well.
Hunt
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I'll check into Colorado gravy and see if that's closer for recipes :) Thanks!
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Good luck. If you can find a chef, who did some time near the US-Mexico border to the East, you should get similar to what you describe.
Yes, I miss that too! Out this way, everything is very light with larger chunks for tomatoes, etc. It's probably better for me, health-wise, but that rich dark brown (with a reddish tint) gravy is fabulous. Heck, we even have Mexican-inspired health food - no lard, no meat, no taste. Tofu burro anyone?
Hunt
Hunt
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Is the restaurant still there? I live in the Twin Cities but I'm thinking of making a road trip on your behalf. (maybe I can taste it and taste some vital ingredient).
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I believe it still is. I would LOVE it if someone would go and check it out! I posted on the Midwest board asking for help, but it would appear no one from Mason City posts there. :)
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Try Navarrete's restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa. They do that "gravy thang" there. Maybe they'll give you a recipe.
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We were driving back from Wisconsin up near the top of the state along I-94. We stopped in this home-cooking diner hole in the wall and had the most incredible breakfast I have ever had. The absolute highlight was these coffee/Kahula muffins that tasted of chocolate, coffee and cream cheese. I would KILL for the recipe. Can't remember the name of the town or the cafe. This was in 1999.
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Many, many years ago, when I was a little girl in Vietnam, I had banh mi with these lovely, pale, somewhat crumbly but rich meatballs at a sidewalk stand. I don't remember what was so good about them, but the taste remains in my memory. I even have the recipe from that stand (owned by a family friend) and my mother has made a million variations thereof for me when I was younger, but I cannot find the taste from my memory.
A few years after that, in a very upscale Mongolian BBQ type place in one of the suburbs of DC or WV (I don't remember), I encountered the bread basket of my dreams. I remember nothing about the food (it was good enough to remember that much but not memorable) but the bread ... oh that bread. It was flat and warm and delicious, with just enough spicing to make it exciting but not enough to obscure the fact that the bread itself was the glory of flatbreads everywhere. I've heard [sad] tales that said restaurant is now closed, but really, no one remembers the name anyways, so I hope this restaurant is still operating somewhere ... 15+ years later ...
As an adult, I haven't found any foods that really haunt me - okay, I really, really love David Change's pork buns but it's not like I can't find them again or haven't already had more than once. I'm still searching for the perfect [Vietnamese influenced] steamed bun, but that's just because I have the terrible taste to live some place without a very large Vietnamese population.
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Thank you for this great post!
My memory of the zuppa di clams with spaghetti from the little Italian restaurant on 15th St in Coney Island...and the baked clams, too. The rumor was that he bought his wife in Italy and brought her over to cook . Everything was delicious. He cooked in the oven and made the baked clams, she made everything else. I remember you could hear them fighting in the kitchen, but you didn't care 'cause the food was so good.
A few years ago my partner was in CI hospital, and one of the ladies there lived on that block all her life, and we reminisced about that place...I think maybe it was called Stella's...and the bread from the Italian bakery down the block. I have had good Italian since, but not as good.
...the camembert baguette sandwich from the bakery next to our hotel in Paris. My partner got one bite.
...also my aunt's blintzes..hungarian style, and watching her make them...flipping the crepes by hand. I have loved watching people cook ever since.
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I have 2. One is from when I was a little girl living in Indiana. I think it was in Huntingburg. My parent ran a bowling alley that had a diner attached. Some of the people had gone mushroom hunting and brought back the mushrooms and our cook fried them up. They were so good, and I don't like mushrooms! I didn't even know what kind they were until I asked on here and someone told me they were Morels! I can still taste them.
The other is a potato salad that my cajun neighbor made for me more than once when we moved to Texas in 1970. I have posted about it before. I have tried to duplicate it many time and never succeeded. It was served warm, consistency of sort of chunky mashed potatoes, a yellow tinge, but not mustard and lots of black pepper. The best stuff ever! Think I gained 10 pounds eating that stuff, and she just kept feeding it to me! Loved that woman!
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the bagel refereces reminded me of another one.
During my time at Cornell (about ten years ago now), I (like a lot of the other students) made regular visits to Collegtown Bagels whenever I needed to be out for breakfast and couln't make it to any of the dining halls. Standard breakfast for me was a lage Iced Chai and one or two pastries. Beyond the bagel most of of the pastries consisted of sweet scones (whic were not attractive to me, since I unlike the majority of people do not generally like a sweet breakfast (don't comment on the Chai, please) however there was a savory scone (though for some odd reason the savory ones were referred to as buscuits) a cheddar chive, which was all right and which may explain why in future years I have tried and been disspointed by so many cheddar chive scones (usally becuse someone put the cheddar and chives into to the stadard (i.e. sugared) batter). However the very first year I was there, there was another savory flavor, an Herb Buiscuit which was absoultey trancendent. I took a year off after that first one, and when I came back the herb had been removed from the menu. Still they were incredible and probably rank among my top five college food discoveries (the other four being Wegmans, My first salt baked squid (Captial Corners), the Oasis Natural food store (where I found out just how many flavors of soda Journey's actually made, since they had ALL of them), and the Green Star co-op (where I first bumped into Sidehill Acres Folie Folieberge (One of the best hard sheep cheeses I have ever tasted) and Lively Run Cayuga Blue (THE best raw goat milk blue cheese, in my opinion)
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The yellow tinge sounds like the veggie/chicken broth used in German potato salad recipes. Have you tried those? http://culinspiration.wordpress.com/2...
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christina, the recipe you link using chicken broth is not traditional. traditional uses bacon bacon bacon! yeah! ;-). http://www.kitchenproject.com/german/recipes/GermanPotatoSalad/index.htm
the salad danhole recalls was not likely german in origin, as it was a cajun chef. i'll bet that the yellow tinge was simply from the eggs. http://www.lpb.org/programs/tasteofla...
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Or Speck Speck Speck, a bit smokier than most bacon. I love Greman potato salad, my favorite one.
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the yellow tinge could be tumeric.
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Wheat flavoured ice cream (also malt flavoured) at the Coppelia ice cream place in Havana.
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1. Small coconut filled pastries in a small bakery in Havana, Cuba. Puffy, crispy pastry, rich coconut filling, not too sweet, just pure coconut goodness. And I don't even like coconut that much! These were heaven. I may never get them again.
2. Perfectly ripe Chinese gooseberry, picked that morning from a mountainside in Korea, sold in front of one of the temples by some street hawkers. Sweet and tart at the same time, incredibly refreshing, so much better than the half-ripe kiwis we get in North America. A revelation.
3. Tiramisu gelato in Palo Alto. I have no idea where this place is, I was taken there by locals. Creamy, rich, with chunks of ladyfingers plump with espresso, it was the perfect gelato. Every tiramisu gelato I've had since falls oh so short.
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OK, apart from the rather pedestrian tomato and the ekmek -- I once had the most unctuous broth on Ko Phi Phi in 98 (gua tiew sp.?), with wonderful noodles, fish balls, and fresh herbs. I have yet to experience that flavor again.
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About 10:00 PM on a weeknight in May, 2005. I was on vacation in Manhattan with a friend, we'd been walking around all day and were stopping for dinner on our way back to the apartment we were renting in the Lower East Side when we stopped for a quick bite. There was this Italian restaurant at about Seventh and Avenue B (8th & C?) with huge open windows; creamy, slightly golden colored linens that gave the whole place a warm glow; and no line. We figured we'd stop in for a quick bite. The spaghetti carbonara was on special. I'd never had it before, so I asked what it was. The waiter, whose family owned the restaurant, explained in an oddly sexy, very heavily accented voice that it was "spaghetti, tossed with pancetta and eggs and tons of parmesan cheese. It is so creamy and with so much fresh black pepper you want to die." I ordered it. He came by a few minutes later, "Is that the best pasta you've ever eaten?" I said that it was, and he said, "Yes. It is."
I have never had such good pasta.
Ever.
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Oh, oh, this is an easy one! Back when I was young, before most of your parents were even born, in the tiny town of Biloxi, MS, there was a fried chicken restaurant. It only had a half-dozen tables, and I can barely recall anyone ever sitting at those. It was the "take-out," that drew us from up the Coast. The chicken was unbelievably great. They probably had sides, like cole slaw and maybe French fried potatoes, but I do not remember any of those. Could have been others, that I cannot imagine now - hushpuppies?
This was the ultimate fried chicken. On the CH Homecooking board, some suggest that it might have been broasted, and not really fried. Cannot comment on that. The name was Alamo FRIED Chicken, but who knows?
I've been working with my wife (who never tasted this chicken) for almost 40 years, trying to reconstruct it. The original owners sold it, but did not sell the recipe. In short order, it closed, never to be seen again. It was totally to die for.
Then, there was Magnusen's House of Seafood. This was truly a tiny shack, in every sense. However, the fried shrimp were the best ever. Regardless of the venue, it was expensive by the standards of the day. A "shrimp plate," with just fries, cole slaw and some toast points to absorb the oils, was about $8.00. This was at a time that one could have ordered a "shrimp plate," with more, at a white-tablecloth spot on the ocean, for $6.00 and gotten more shrimp. Yeah, more of their shrimp - not Magnusen's shrimp. Each of those was such a wonderful experience, that I'd save up my allowance and buy two plates (two full weeks of my allowance) and then bring them home to savor.
OK, enough going down memory lane. What's YOUR food haunt?
Hunt
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This makes me think of the opposite of this thread - what am I haunted with for NOT eating when I had the chance - if I had only known. Thinking about being stationed at Keesler for about 8 months (in 1972-3) for training, and getting off base to eat what? Burger King, Waffle House (at 2 am) - yes I did eat some great catfish in Ocean Springs. But now you're telling me that I missed out on the world's best fried chicken... now I'm seriously haunted.
The things I didn't miss (but have since):
Ekmet - Turkish sourdough bread in Diyarbakir, straight out of the brick oven - for 1 TL (in 1973). Although I had it more than once during the year I was stationed there - never since.
Schmalzbrot and Goulaschsuppe at Dszo's Kukushuhr at Obereichenbach - also had a few more times than once - why I didn't get the recipes from him I'll never know.
Smoked cold fiorellen (trout) on a brochen - Weinachtsmarkt in Koln.
An incredible Muller-Thurgau grape TBA (TrockenBerenAuslese) from the Badener region, I bought a split case of and drank up while living there. I think it was a 1970 (year of the century). I've never seen anything close to this combination (region, varietal, TBA, great year) in the US.
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Maybe this will help you sleep better. I think that they were gone by about 1963.
However, these might cause sleep deprivation - they do for me, and I had 'em.
The fried shrimp, by which I will always judge that dish were available only at Magnusen's House of Seafood on the Pass Rd. in Gulfport. Curt Magnusen's uncle was open from about 1962 through about 1967. One had to know about it, as they'd likely never stop, even if you drove from central Gulfport to Biloxi, via the Pass Rd. every workday.
Glad that you had memorable catfish in Ocean Springs. At one time, there was a great seafood restaurant, just over the US 90 bridge, called Allman's. In my youth, this was nearly as big a treat, as going to Antoine's, or Galatorie's in New Orleans.
Because I am evil, I;ll throw out one more, and I think that if you'd had it, you would have mentioned it. Again, on the Pass Rd., in what was then named Handsboro (long since incorporated into Gulfport) was a little family-owned seafood restaurant, Benny's. His fried flounder was the thing that dreams are made of. I've had many, all over the Deep South, but his was the lasting paradigm.
At least you had four good ones for the thread, including the M-T TBA (most often associated with the Riesling grape, but M-T is more heavily planted in GR, than even the lovely Riesling). Were you at Ramstein, by any chance. I'll trade you half of my Magnusen's fried shrimp, for a taste of the Schmalzbrot!
Hunt
PS glad that someone else appreciates a really good TBA.
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Re: "...when I was young, before most of your parents were even born ..." makes you about 110 years old. I guess you missed the thread on chowhounds' ages.
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it's not the age, it's the mileage. hunt has some seriously good miles under his keel.
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Unfortunately, I think that there might have been more seriously BAD miles. Still, at 115 (see Sam's reply above), I still have some of my memory, and threads like this do allow me to reach back a bit.
Hunt
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hunt,
sam and i are buds. we appreciate an unrepentant rake.
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Oh, so I was "tag-teamed" then?
Yes, just a "rake n' ramblin' boy... "
Hunt
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Yes, indeed, but at 118, we can do whatever.
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heh, heh.
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Bill, I don't recall any chicken restaurants when I lived in Biloxi (late '56 to early '57), but at the west end of town there was an "Italian" restaurant-- red checkered tablecloths with chianti fiasco bottles buried under layers of colored candle drippings as a centerpiece -- that also offered soft shelled crab plates of little Italian influence. Fantastic! And even poor Air Force students could afford them. I don't recall ever seeing anyone eating their Italian dishes, the crab was that good. But that was probably before you could say "Biloxi!" Good memories.
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The description sounds a lot like Hugo's (apparently the home of French salad dressing on pizza - though I seem to have missed that). It was at the corner of Howard & Division St (IIRC), on the SE corner. I do not recall ever having soft-shelled crab, and that was favorite of my mother's. Still, maybe we dined there, when "soft-shells" were not in season.
Alamo Fried Chicken was about a block to the East, and on the same side of the street.
Your time-frame would have been about right. I'd say that I first encountered it about '53, and probably ate their chicken until the very early '60s. Somewhere about that time, the place and name were sold. As the story went, the recipe was not part of that deal - unfortunately.
Heck, when you were there, I could even SPELL Biloxi ! [Grin]
Thanks for the comment - sadly, I, and my family, must have missed Hugo's crabs.
Hunt
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In LA in l969 a friend took me to lunch. It was at a place called "Adriatic" near LaBrea. I ordered something consisting of small pieces of lamb meat in spinach which had been cooked so long it had turned into a sort of thick green gravy. It was wonderful accompanied by a crusty bread for slurping. I do not remember the name, and have not seen anything like it since.
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Shrimp Puffs, at the Chinese restuarant (Fung Lee??) at the International Food Court in the San Francisco Airport. When I passed thru the AP on the way home, I breached airport security by going back to the food court I bought 2 dozen and carried them home on the plane. I had to be issued a new boarding pass, Geez, the TSA has no sense of humor sometime! But the Shrimp Puffs were wonderful! I have never found anything like them since, Alas, I guess I have to go back to SF Airport!
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Leur's hot dogs! Thin, natural casing Kosher hot dogs that were like no other hot dog I've had. We used to buy them all the time growing up in Los Angeles, but even at the time I believe that they were a bit difficult to find.
Now fast-forward a few decades later to the Internet age and I cannot even come up with a search result on Leur's hot dogs - as if it never even existed! *sniff! sob! sniff!* (I even tried variations of spelling...)
So CH'ers, especially those who grew up in the L.A. area in the 70's, any good intel on these amazing dogs?
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A chicken club sandwich brought to me by room service at Stocks Hotel in Hertfordshire, England, at the end of a long day of meetings several years ago. Everything about it was perfection - the lightly toasted house-baked bread, the fresh-roasted, moist and tender chicken, the thick slices of pungently-flavored back bacon, even the perfectly crisp lettuce that probably came from a local garden. We're talking about the Platonic ideal of club sandwiches. I've never been able to forget it - or to replicate it.
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I was in Portugal back in September and had a creamy sheep's milk cheese known as Serra de Estrela. It is shaped like brie, round w/ a rind, and they traditionally cut a hole in the top and then you scoop the cheese out and spread it on crusty bread. It's sooooo delicious. I have yet to find it in the U.S. yet, but I've only looked around my hometown. Dean & DeLuca used to carry it and said they could order it but they've yet to return my calls.
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I've not had the pleasure of having the Serra de Estrela, but I shall definitely look for it! We have a lot of Portuguese cheeses in Montreal, so i might have a chance to find it.
But this reminds me of another great experience in Portugal. We have a very good friend whose parents moved back to Portugal and live on a small hobby farm. We were fortunate enough to stay with them in the fall. Her mother would milk the goats and make fresh goat's cheese every morning. She'd let them sit for a day, then serve them for breakfast with some crusty bread. You would spread it on the bread, then drizzle it with honey. It was absolutely divine. A few times, I would also top the whole thing with a fresh fig from their tree. I have never had anything quite like this since. They have since sold the goats, as they are a lot of work. But this cheese! I can still taste the slightly salty, creamy cheese and the contrast with the warm sweet honey. Truly haunting.
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Yes, look for this cheese and buy it if you find it - it's heavenly. Speaking of, fresh goat cheese on bread w/ honey - I am doing this this weekend! Yum. We have a woman here who raisese goats and makes fresh goat cheese and then sells it at the farmers market. It's wonderful stuff and I swear I could eat 5 oz of it w/ a spoon and nothing else. She also makes the most divine goat cheese chocolate truffles topped w/ fleur de sel and crushed hazelnuts. Wowza!
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Those truffles sound amazing! Fresh goat's cheese is such a luxury...
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Amen! It's like ice cream - only better. :)
Interestingly, I had another fresh local goat cheese recently. This one was flavored with fresh lavender and, oddly enough, bee pollen. I bought it to stuff peppadew peppers. The lavender was a bit much, but the bee pollen was intereresting. I think I'm a purist when it comes to fresh goat cheese - I prefer it straight up.
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Yes! I've had that several times in Portugal and have not been able to find it in the US. Wonderful stuff.
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Oh, just thought of another one. This was an “intermezzo” at an event at a Hyatt in Seattle. The rest of the meal was really good, especially for one of these events. After the fish course was cleared, a martini glass in a truncated globe appeared. You’ve seen these, right? It’s a little “fish bowl,” that is usually filled with crushed ice, and the “glass” is a clear cone, that fits into the opening. Inside the glass was the most wonderful spruce sorbet, that I have ever tasted. Nestled in the globe was a tiny spruce branch with a few minuscule cones. The sorbet would have been great, had it been served in a Dixie-cup, but with this presentation, it was spectacular. I’ve been to heavily starred restaurants, that did not take a presentation to this height. Just spectacular, in all respects.
Hunt
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Sounds delicious. I've had caviar served in what sounds like an identical two piece ice filled container, but never sorbet. Hey, on a retirement income I can still afford sorbet, but no chance of beluga! Wait. There's always the lottery. '-)
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Yes, you got the idea completely. In most of the caviar servers of this style, that I have seen, the only difference has been the size of the set.
Ah yes, the lottery. Not THAT long ago, we did several caviar dishes to do a Champagne tasting. Unfortunately, too many did not like caviar, and even some did not like Champage. Why did the come? I think I'm still paying notes on that grocery bill, but hope to have it paid off by '10, if not sooner. Let's just say that wife and I brought all of the leftovers home from that party, and did use the remainders for other dishes - egg omeletes with caviar... tuna-salad sandwiches with caviar... you get the idea.
Hunt
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New Year's Eve some time in the 90s at Blue Angel in Philly. I friend who worked in their kitchen made a truffle sauce made from whole white truffles and truffle juice for our table. I poured it on everything that night it was so good (steak frites, scallops, steak tartare . . .) One of the most incredible things that I've ever eaten. I've had many entrees that included truffles, but I've never had anything so ridiculously pungent of them since. A dream.
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Steak soup. Seriously. On my first trip to San Francisco in 1977, I had lunch at a place (the name of which I cannot of course recall) that served some sort of a cream soup with steak in it. Never had it before then, nor since. Every once in a while I remember it...well enough to be haunted by it...but just not well enough to ever recreate it.
Second item: Garlic Shrimp Pizza from Sammy's Woodfired Pizza in San Diego, 1999. Sauteéd mushrooms, bell peppers, red onion and roast garlic sauce, Shrimp of course; OMG a garlic-lover's delight! That one I remember distinctly and have (sort of) recreated here in NJ.
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Steak soup in SF in 1977....my.guess would be the long-gone PamPam's on Geary at Mason (just west of Union Square). I _think_ they were still there in '77. A favorite locals place, being open 24 hrs -- rare in those days. The food was in general unexceptional, but that steak soup was pretty good.
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That's GOT to be the place! When I made my trip in '77, I stayed at the Bellevue Hotel (probably also gone, renamed or gone corporate) not far from Union Square.
I knew I hadn't dreamed it; I don't suppose you recall what was in it?
PS: Absolutely it was PamPam's
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/10/BAMQUVNQB.DTL
How many soups (or any foods) get mentioned in an obit?
PPS: May have found a recipe; perhaps not "The" recipe, but it's a start.
http://homepage.mac.com/awilltx/MyRec...
You Are The Best! I love this place!
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That recipe looks pretty close, except I don't remember any tomato in it. I started to read the recipe to my wife; I didn't get past the half-pound of butter before she said I could stop right there. :o)
Glad to be of help.
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Jump to the end and tell her it makes a Gallon of Soup. 8 oz of butter isn't much spread over a gallon. :)
The good news for me is you can freeze it before you add the dairy. No way can can I deal with a gallon of soup alone without freezing a great deal of it.
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Wow, I had completely forgotten about PamPam's. We ate there a lot when I was a kid, after shopping in the square, and yes, I remember the steak soup!
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Fava bean puree. Santorini, Greece. My honeymoon, August 2002. It was served as an appetizer in so many restaurants...the one that stands out in my mind is the Oia Cafe.
I swear I have searched high and low in so many Greek places since then and I have never found it again. I'm sure I could make it, and I have searched for the right recipe, but the problem is that I don't know what made it so good. The scenery was pretty good too...
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I forgot about the fava bean puree when I was in Greece (I was in Santorini, too)! I think I might have a remedy for you. When I was there in 1998, I fell in love with the "fava" and bought a cookbook in Athens on my way home, which turned out to be a very good cookbook. The book is Rosemary Barron's Flavors of Greece, and she has recipes for "fava bean salata" made with both fresh and dried beans. I've posted it on this site before. Here's one of the recipes, adapted for canned beans, but you can make it with fresh or dried as well:
Fava Bean Salata:
2 Cans Butter Beans (14 oz cans) (reserve juice from can) [Note, you can do this with dried butter/fava beans, or, even better, fresh fava beans, as well, but it is excellent with the canned beans].
3 oz. extra virgin olive oil
1 med. onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 med. carrot, finely diced
1/2 celery stalk, finely diced
1 bay leaf, crumbled
2-1/2 T. finely chopped parsely
Salt and freshly fround black pepper to taste
1 thick slice coarse-grain white bread, crust removed, soaked for 5 mins in 1-3 T. extra virgin olive oil (to taste)
Juice of 1 small lemon
Paprika for serving
Heat half the olive oil in a large frying pan. Saute the onions, carrot, garlic, celery and bay leaf over med.-low heat for 15-20 mins, or until dark golden brown, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Stir in 2 T. of the parsley, the salt, pepper, beans (and their liquid) and about 2-3 T water. Cook for a few minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated.
Transfer to a food processor and add soaked bread. Puree, and with the machine running, add most of the remaining olive oil and about 2/3rds of the lemon juice and process until thick and smooth. Add a few T of water if the puree is too thick, and add salt, pepper, and additional olive oil or lemon juice to taste.
Serve sprinkled with remaining parsley and olive oil and the paprika. Great with toasted pita or french bread.
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Thanks...I will try it!
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Grady and Meryl Nash's Hickory Pit bbq sauce. Gone but not forgotten.
Bob
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Time I weighed in. Gone (either the establish or my physical presence):
My grandmother's kolbassi & pork ribs baked in kapusta, blini, and vereschaka before lent.
Hazelton, Pa, Pitz, a special of bread-like pizza eaten cold
Spezzi's Pizza, Sayreville, NJ, just can't find as good.
Yacco's Hot Dogs, Allentown, Pa., helped me last through end of semester exams.
Jaramillo's Mexicatessen, Grants, New Mexico, the red chile enchiladas w/ a fried egg.
Fried cod tongues and cheeks, whale steaks,so many types of herring, and hot dogs (polser) w/ shrimp salad on them in Stavanger, Norway.
Muisstaleipa (black bread), Rappu fest (cray fish), reindeer chops, Helsinki, Finland.
A good charassco w/ roasted udder, BBQ's chicken hearts, roasted iguana, and majadito in Santa Cruiz, Bolivia.
And the "coop dee grass" , hot pho at a surprised and rapidly evacuated VC camp in Nam. Got busted in rank for disobeying an order not to eat it, but after days, weeks, months of c-rats., it was worth it.
Carpe Chow Comrades in Food!
Dumkeg
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"Got busted in rank for disobeying an order not to eat it, but after days, weeks, months of c-rats., it was worth it." Passadumkeg
THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a Chow Hound! Give up a pay grade for a bowl of pho and not regret it. Incredible. '-)
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Gone (for me) but not forgotten - not just once and then haunted
Aunty Kiyo's ume boshi
Tarijeno saltenas
Mochi sata shoyu
Karki's momos
Pucallpa mahas at the "Inter"
First great Cajamarca cuy
Bierocks in elementary school
First wife's enchiladas
First bulalo Batangas
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Sam, how the Hell did for get saltenas, the real Bolivian drug, from El Horno in Santa Cruz!
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Keg, it was you and your post that made me think of saltenas.
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Canupes, sweet cheese tamale, too
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One year ago today. Gone but not forgotten - not just once and then haunted.
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A specific type of pomelo in Israel, pink and giant with huge cells that peeled off instead of eating it in sections . . ..
Chocho y tostado in Ecuador - DELICIOUS, not to mention the fact that a bag from a street stall or market cost 5 cents . . ..
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Oh, those pomelos! And the onion rolls on El Al. And the falafel near the Cardo in Jerusalem. And the best damn produce I've ever had. No wonder everyone eats salad for breakfast! I eat salad for breakfast too when I can get produce that tastes that good.
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Pomegranates from the trees, avocados like cream. Don't forget the shawarma on Ben Yehuda Street (unless you're a vegetarian). The place on the left that has no seats, though you can sit under the umbrellas in the middle if you can find a spot. My son will only eat vegetables in Israel! Can't get him to eat more than broccoli at home. Produce is incredible there. There is a hotel in Eilat called Agamim. Never mind that the sliding glass door opens into a delicious pool. Not a lot of Americans there. The salads are the joy of the day. The hot food is good, but those salads are a memory! I can't wait for August to visit again!
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Ok, now you are just bragging.
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I grew up in Salem, NH where there was this little hole in the wall store called Gourmet Take-Away. It was owned by a Lebonese family and they made the best food. The ultimate was the hummus with homemade Syrian bread. You would get a big tub of hummus with oil and paprika on top, a bag of freshly made Syrian bread, and a red onion. I have made dozens of hummus recipes, but none compare.
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Well, I had it more than once...but it still haunts me. When I was a teenager living in Mexico City, we joined a "Deportivo" (sports club...). We would often go there after school to swim or work out...and of course a snack was usually in order. The restaurant was fairly typical of such places...except for the molletes. I'm not sure if it was just that they had the perfect bolillo, or the perfect beans, or salsa, or what...(A mollete is a fresh-sliced bolillo - roll - topped with refried beans and queso and run under the broiler and served with fresh salsa cruda...). I just know that I still dream of those molletes (some people spell it mojetes).....
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umm....they were good, but not as good as the squash blossom quesadillas from La Senora de las quesadillas (who set up a tiny griddle on the street corner near our house on weekend nights...)
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True...but for some reason the molletes haunt me more....maybe because I feel there is no chance of matching the quesadillas...but the molletes seem like they should be attainable! Does that make any sense??
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Broadalbin, NY, 1950's. Homemade ice cream shop. Scoop of lemon and scoop of chocolate. I dream about it sometimes. Haven't had lemon ice cream since. Also, the ham salad sandwich at the lunch counter at G.FOX Co. in Hartford, Ct. in the 60's.
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Moundsville, West Virginia ~~ in the 1960's at a family reunion. "Cherries in the Snow" someone made for the pot luck. No cake cubes, graham crackers IIRC (I was a little kid). I asked what it was, it was so good, and that is why I remember the name.
San Luis Obispo, CA ~~ early 70's. Benjamin Franklin Electric Company. Yogurt Shakes so good, worth driving from Los Angeles.
In another lifetime in the 80's went with another DH and while BFEC was still there, the yogurt shakes were a thing of the past. (((sob)))
Los Angeles, CA ~~ Canape Robaire at now defunct Robaire's Restaurant on La Brea.
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OMG! How could I forget - Uglesich's soft-shell crab po-boy - I weep thinking about it. SO perfect. So well-fried, so delicious. I've never had crab that fresh-tasting. Uglesich's is closed now. I will never have that fabulous sandwich again...
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A soft shell crab sandwich at Jensen's Market on corn rye. The seoul ( a honest error) food of my youth.
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mmm. i just remembered an oregon blackberry ice cream they used to sell at stewarts, in woodstock, when i was a kid. never had a fruit ice cream as good.....
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Oh, man! Stewart's coffee got me through grad school at SUNYA. Even better, I grew up in Schenectady on Stewart's Make Your Own Sundaes. That was when they had REAL hot fudge in the urn that you could pump yourself. It was the best hot fudge! The icecream was great, but it was a vehicle for the fudge. The condiments were all out for us to take as much as we wanted, and going back for seconds was soooo allowed. Wow! Thanks so much for an incredible memory! My mom still takes my kids to Stewart's. The "hot fudge" is behind the counter (as are the other condiments) and is more like chocolate sauce, though the ice cream is still good. The kids love going there with Grandma and Grandpa, and that's all that matters! (I had relatives in Kingston and Newburgh - I had a favorite pair of pants that I bought when my grandmother took me to Woodstock for a day!)
It's so much fun replying to an "up-stater"!
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*drool* Yum* I remember two foods in particular, one was the most incredible 'French-Dip beef sandwich, it was on a 1 1/2 inch wide crispy-chewy baton like roll, with shaved beef and a cole slaw that was shaved, not sliced from cabbage, carrot, onion, with a mayonaise that Johnny's used to make on-site. When you dunked the end of that sanwich into the Au Jus gravy and bit into that sandwich, the crusty bread just broke and the hot beefy juices and cole slaw just simply had a "Mardi Gras" parade all the way down the Red Lane!!! That was the most fabulous sandwich I have ever had! I must have eaten 100's of them while in college! Alas, Johnny's is gone now, along with the French Dip Sandwich that was sold for a buck fifty!
Second most memorable....... My Aunt Margie's Huckleberry pie! She had a dark brown crust, made with brown sugar, that just flaked and flaked and flaked! The huckleberries were sweetened with honey. The combination of her flaky brown crust and the honeyed huckleberries were richer than Baklava!
Oh yeah! those two items still stand out even after 40 years!
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That roll sounds like a french ficelle. Our local European-style bakery sells them but I've never thought of using them for sandwiches, I usually cut them into thin rounds for canapes. I'll have to try that.
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#1 When I was in elementary school in a town in Iowa, all the butchers and bakers were Czechs. Whenever we got a nickle, which was very seldom in those days, others would buy candy or ice cream. I always got a thick slab of sausage and nibbled it all the way home. Been looking for this bologna ever since..not to be found.
#2 My parents lived on the coast in Mexico for years after I was grown. My children and I would visit often. I'd always take my dad a box of cigars and in return he always had ready for me a 5lb bag of sea bass that he had caught, meticulously boned and smoked.
Sea Bass is gone, so is Dad.
#3 Mulberries from the tree in my front yard in Los Angeles. Kids weren't allowed to eat them without taking off their shirts. I have difficulty finding fresh mulberries these days.
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not a food, but a chef.
there used to be a japanese place on the UES of manhattan called sesumi. the owner/sushi chef was a master - he used to serve a lobster tail sashimi that had the front half of the lobster still alive while you ate it. mmmmmmmmmm
if ANYONE knows what happened to him - i NEED to know
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Acorn jelly in a tiny restaurant (run out of someone's house) in a remote mountainous part of Korea - somewhere south of Seoul is all I remember. We were on a family trip and I must have been 7 or 8. It had amazingly deep acorn flavor and the sauce was incredible. It was the middle of summer and it was so refreshing and delicious. I think of that experience every time I have acorn jelly but none have been even close to being that good. Here's a pic of what I'm talking about.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
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Way back when, I guess it must have been the late 70's and my first trip to France. We had dinner on the first night of our vacation in a teeny little restaurant in Autun. I ordered the mussels with Aioli. I had never tasted either. It was Love at first taste for both items and I have never been able to reconstruct that meal, try as I might.
Having mussels this evening,in a saffron cream, which is why I think the original dish came to mind.
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In 2003 I was working in the cafeteria at John Abbott College during the summer, they rented out the dining hall and catered. One time there was this big gathering with people from all over the world, and they had brought in food from 2 different restaurants here in Montreal to cater to them. One was Dad's Bagels with indian food, and another one was an African place, don't remember the name, although I suspect it might be the place near Dad's Bagels on Sherbrooke. But WOW did they ever have the most amaaaazing grilled Tilapia!! We weren't allowed to have any of the food until after everything was done, and sadly (but unsurprisingly) there was no tilapia left except for half a portion I found leftover on a plate I cleared later in the evening, which, I'll admit, I ate lol. But it was soooo worth it, it was amazing! I really have to go to that African place on Sherbrooke West to find out if they have it... Loll me and the 2 other guys in the dish room were having a ball draining all the half-full wine glasses that were coming through after they cleared the dining hall, good times! Lolll, if my boss noticed (which I can't imagine he couldn't have lol) he didn't say anything, he even gave us the leftover couple of bottles in the case at the end of the evening :D
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The three-euro Moscato d'Asti that all the Di per Di's in my Torinese neighbourhood carried. No fifty-euro Moscato compares. I used to drink a bottle almost every evening.
Also, Tim Horton's "Beverly Hills" doughnuts.
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World street food. A riisi piraka w/ 2 nakki (a meat pastry w/ 2 hot dogs stuffed in.) in Helsinki, a polser (hot dog) w/ shrimp salad topping in Norway, grilled chicken hearts, pork sandwiches, or spicy panchito hot dogs in Santa Cruz Bolivia, roasted grubs in the market in Seoul.
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"roasted grubs in the market in Seoul."
Oh Passa! Please don't tell me you aren't talking about bundaegi, the silk worm larvae dish... I can eat almost anything, but I will never eat one of these things again! Crunchy and gritty, with an odd odour and a soft yet gritty interior, a smoky metallic taste, a bitter afteredge. Texture, taste, odor, all terrible. I will agree the food is haunting, but in a Poltergeist way. If I never find them again, I will be just fine thank you....
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Gee, have you been talking to my wife? One month from today we're in Seoul and I get to hold my beautiful brillant looking grandson, Taebaek.
Pork back bone soup, had it once as a hangover soup and love it>
Bulgogi too, just ain't the same in the states.
Thank god for So Ju, cause I just can't get used to the very weak and watery Korean beers.
Love the live octopus too.
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I'm sure you'll have a great trip! Such a great reason to visit too. You can never start too soon in the indoctrination of Chowhound pup... Slurp back a bowl of the pork neck bone soup for me, I lived on that stuff when we were in Seoul. And enjoy the kimchi!
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Betty Crocker Noodles Romanoff.
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Eaten during the huge blackout of the Northeast way back. It was one of my favorite childhood dishes! I can still taste those creamy noodles wrapping around my tongue. How could something so good have come from a box?
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I loved the Noodles Romanoff!! I totaly agree!!
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I found this recipe on the Betty Crocker Forum, commenters seem to think it tastes like the original:
Noodles Romanoff that tastes like the old Betty Crocker® two-step preparation Noodles Romanoff in the box
1 pot of boiling, salted water
6 ounces (170 grams) of dry uncooked egg noodles. It's best if you use medium egg noodles (. what Golden Grain calls "fettucine"), not wide or extra-wide, because these best approximate the size and thinness of the noodles Betty Crocker used to use. 6 ounces of these kinds of noodles works out to about 3 cups if you go by volume
1/2 cup (120 ml) of sour cream (I use lowfat or fat-free sour cream so that I don't go over the . . of fat in one meal, but a purist has informed me that anything but the regular old high-fat variety of sour cream has a strange aftertaste). If 1/2 cup is too sour-creamy for you, reduce the amount of sour cream to 1/3 cup and make up for it by adding 1/6 cup of milk
1/4 cup (60 ml) Kraft® day-glow-orange Macaroni & Cheese cheese powder (you can buy it in tubes that look like those green tubes of Kraft® grated parmesan cheese except they're blue; I see them on the shelves at Safeway, but that might just be a northern California thing. 60 ml works out to a little over 1/3 of an 85-gram tube full). If you can't find this stuff anywhere, use one full packet of the cheese powder from a box of Kraft® Macaroni & Cheese Dinner
1 clove of garlic (maybe less), or 1/8 teaspoon (½ ml) garlic powder
1/8-1/4 teaspoon (1 ml) of onion powder —OR— 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of freshly-chopped chives —OR— 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of those freeze-dried chives you can get in the spice aisle
2 tablespoons (30 ml) of butter or margarine (you can reduce it to 1 tablespoon if you're worried about your saturated/trans fat intake, but don't omit it entirely)
Boil the noodles in the boiling, salted water until they're the same consistency you used to like when making Noodles Romanoff in a box. Drain the noodles, keeping them in the same pot you cooked them in (that way you'll only have to wash one pot when you're done). While the noodles are still hot, rub the butter or margarine around on them until all (or most) of it melts, then stir in the Kraft® day-glow-orange cheese powder, then dump all the other ingredients into the pot with the noodles and stir until the mixture is homogeneous. (Except the chives won't be homogeneous, of course, because they don't dissolve.)
Add ground black pepper to taste. I recommend super-finely-ground black pepper, not those coarse crunchy pepper chunks that seem to be so trendy nowadays. If there's any left over when you're done eating, put the pot in the 'fridge; when you re-heat it later, add a dash of milk and put the pot on the stove over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.
http://www.bettycrocker.com/community...
:)
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CM: Wow - I have not had Noodles Romanoff in many, many years - and I always loved that stuff! Now that makes me want to run out and get the stuff to make it! Thank you for that recipe!!!!
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As a child of about eight, my mom would pack up the five children and go to the farm, east of Austin. On the way (from Dallas), we invariably stopped in Waco, near what was one of Texas' few roundabouts, or "circles", as we called them, or stopped in Temple, and bought tamales from the street vendors. We'd find a park or some place nearby to eat them. Wonder why I like Mexican food so much?
Really hard to find those fresh "fingerling" tamales anymore.
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Cheddar cheese vegetable soup from an italian restaurant in Richmond, VA. Whenever I see something similiar on the menu, I have to order it, but it's just not the same.
Cheese toast from an office park deli (flat pita, brushed with flavored oil, topped with sharp cheddar and hot banana peppers) - I've tried to recreate it at home, but whatever was in that oil made it special.
Scarp's chicken wings in South Buffalo. These weren't the regular Buffalo chicken wings. They were lightly breaded and slightly sweet. I haven't had one in 22 years, but I can still taste them.
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The old original Capital Grill on 6th St. in Austin, long gone, actually grilled over real mesquite wood. I had a baby coho salmon cooked over mesquite 23 years ago, that was the best fish I have ever eaten.
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Burbot caviar on buckwheat blini w/ sour cream and diced onion. Hard to believe I used to split a 5 gal. bucket of burbot caviar w/ a Finnish buddy.
A Rapu fest. Easting crayfish in Finland outside by the midnight sun w/ chasers of iced
Finlandia vodka.
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Nothing, nothing, nothing in the world like dill-y crayfish and rye bread after sauna at Midsummer, eikö niin? That's livin".
Cay
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Hyvaa, hyvaa!
Grilli makara and beer after a wicked hot sauna ain't too shabby either. Don'ytforget the viita!
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Heh! Whoever said the Finns were *reserved* has never experienced these sauna/feast evenings! :-) Another perfect dish for it: the mäti roe. <rrrr> Cay
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Your post reminded me of a decadence the likes of which I know I will never experience again in my lifetime. In March of 1992, when I was 24, my grandmother, who was a regular cruiser, took me on a four week cruise through the Panama Canal on the Royal Viking Line. My mother had passed away earlier in the year, shortly after I had quit my job in NYC to move home to be with her, and the trip was sort of a healing period for both of us before I went away to law school that fall. The Royal Viking Line in the 1980s and early 90s was Scandanavian-run, and was the best cruise ship fleet out there. The trip we were on was the maiden voyage of the Royal Viking Queen, a smaller ship which only had suites for staterooms and accomodated around 200 passengers. I was the youngest passenger on the ship by far (the next youngest was the second wife of a retired gentleman, and she was 45, we soon became fast friends :-), and at dinner, there was the option to order caviar as an appetizer. It was beluga, and while it was not on the menu, it was available every night, and NOT at an extra charge. I ordered it every night, along with one of my grandmother's friends who was seated at our table. In private, my grandmother would chide me for being extravagant and gluttonous, and with the reasoning of an immature 20-something, I was like, "we aren't paying extra for it, and your friend does it, so why shouldn't I?" And so I ordered it, every night we were not in port for dinner, which was most of the trip. It was the most delicious thing, salty, tangy, complex, nutty, and perfectly served, chilled in a silver serving vessal with a horn cavair spoon, buckwheat blinis, and chopped egg and onion on the side. At the time, I had NO IDEA how lucky I was, and in the years since, have never eaten caviar of that quality and in general, have eaten very little decent caviar at all, due to both the exhorbitant prices and the precipitous decline of the Caspian sturgeons since that time.
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Beautiful!
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Thanks, Dana. My beluga days were in commie Russia in '69-'70; so young and naive (and drunk). Haven't had it since.
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Amaretto ice cream / gelato. I've actually been able to find it again, but not in a very convenient place. The first time was in 2000 at Tepoznieves, an ice cream store from Tepoztlán, Mexico, near Cuernavaca. This place had some funky flavors, including lettuce or carrot.
In 2006, during my honeymoon, I found some amaretto gelato in Paris -- not made simply with amaretti cookies, but real amaretto flavor. To this day, I think of amaretto as such as underappreciated flavor. So memorable that I just eyeballed it on a map: http://www.amorino.fr/ near Jardin du Luxembourg.
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I grew up in San Jose, CA..there was a shopping center at the corner of Williams and Winchester blvd. I think there was a Mayfair Market and El Torrito in the center. There was also this very small ice cream by the dry cleaner and dounut shop. They made the VERY BEST toasted almond ice cream. That darn ice cream started me on a Toasted Almond Ice Cream search...hard to find..now evern harder since Dryer's discontinued their flavor. I'm bummed....who make Toasted Almond Ice Cream now????????
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Fenton's in Oakland still has Toasted Almond ice cream. IMHO it's better than Dreyer's.
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Oh my! I still remember getting hot fudge sundaes with toasted almond ice cream from Fenton's 20 years ago. TO DIE FOR!
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An old post but have to agree....loved the Fenton's toasted almond hot fudge sundae!
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The bread at Bella Donna in NYC...tiny BYO pasta place on the UES. Best bread EVER! Anyone else rememeber it?
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For me it was something called Hot Patty in the Bahamas. We had it years ago while waiting for a connecting flight in the Nassau airport. It’s just some sort of soupy ground meat, possibly with a little melted cheese, encased in a non-flaky pastry disk, but it was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever had (and no I wasn’t ravenously hungry or deranged with jetlag). I spent the whole vacation talking about getting another Hot Patty on the way home. My husband, who was not under the same spell, was patient. At the end of the week I pretty much burst out of the plane in Nassau, only to see the Hot Patty stand on the wrong side of a glass security divider.
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A crispy beef empanada at a little cafe at El Mitad del Mundo outside of Quito, Ecuador.
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Having lived in S. Fla. most of my life I often ate what was called Jamacia pattys. Crispy round crust , soupy well seasoned groung meat. Yup thats them Havent had on in abot 10 years but the cajuns make a meat pie thats pretty close.
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south florida as in southeast florida around miami? i'm from s.w. florida, and am not familiar with those. you have jamaicans there, whereas on the gulf coast, not so much at all.
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I spent the first part of my childhood in Hong Kong (this was during the early 80s). There used to be a couple of street vendors in these little wheeled carts that made these crepe-like snacks. They were fresh crepes with a little bit of shaved coconut and some kind of sugar inside. I can still remember my relatives taking me out at night, where I'd see the little lit cart by the roadside, the smell of the hot pan and coconut in the air, the wrinkly old man handing me a fresh one with his grubby hands. Heaven.
Years later, they city banned street food and moved all food vendors indoors, mostly inside public markets. But I never found those crepes again, after many visits back. I also never found out the proper name for those crepes. Every now and then, when I pass by a Filipino bakery in the city, I catch a whiff of something in the air that reminds me of those crepes and it always makes me stop and do a double-take.
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Filipino bakery in Vancouver or in Hong Kong?
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There's a Filipino bakery in Vancouver called Goldilocks on Broadway and Fir. Great sweets!
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I have two food experiences that i still think about:
the first comes form my mother who is a fantastic cook. i was at sleep away camp and when my parents came to visit she brought me a slice of a white chocolate cheesecake she had made the night before. it was topped with an incredibly raspberry sauce. maybe it was the prolonged exposure to camp food, but it was divine. something about the subtle white chocolate with the vibrant raspberry...just wonderful!
my second "haunting" food experience came when we traveled to southern Germany. in a tiny little converted house we stopped for dinner and along with my main course came a heaping helping of buttery, warm spaetzle with little flecks of parsley. they were the epitome of comfort food.
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My family and I drove around Mexico in our car in 1967. I ordered chicken chalupas with a green sauce at Sanborn's "House of Tile" in Mexico City. I have had chalupas since, trying to duplicate the experience, but they were nothing like what I had there: shredded moist chicken on a corn tortilla with the edges rather cripsy, due to being run under a broiler, a garlicky and spicy green sauce underneath, some sort of white Mexican cheese on top (goat cheese?) covering cilantro and maybe chopped onion, with a large puddle of liquid Mexican cream (?) on top, which melded with the cheese.
Maybe they are still serving it at Sanborn's to this day, but I have found nothing like it in the United States and I haven't been back to Mexico since 1972.
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You are better than I. We drove down the west coast of Mexico and back up the east. I remember a lot of delicious shrimp dishes and moles, bur maybe too much mezcal and pulque and fogged (a euphanism for dead brain cells) my memory. The trip did, however, change for ever my attitude about and desire for Mexican food forever.
Mole, mole, I want mole!
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gfr1111, Sanborn's is my only vote on the "What foreign chains would you like to see in the US".They are still just as good, and their bakery and desserts are even better now! They are clustered around Mexico City and are the place of choice for "power breakfasts". But they would be an instant hit in any American city.
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the enchiladas suizas at Sanborn's were also justifiably famous, back in the late sixties, early seventies...haven't eaten there in about 15 or 20 years myself, so can't vouch for them currently, but I'd definitely go back to try them.
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About 15 years ago I stumbled upon an incredible vegetarian wrap simply called "cheddar curry" sold at a music festival by a local purveyor in Guelph, Ontario. It was (to my fading recollection) a chickpea based filling with a mildly spicy, creamy cheddary-curry sauce unlike anything I've ever tasted . I typically abhor wraps, yet this was divine (if such a word can even be used to describe something otherwise so pedestrian). Googling has yielded no leads on this mysterious food. Alas, I have come to accept that it was a once in a lifetime experience.
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In the 70's, for my last 2 years at UConn I lived in a small dorm where the chef thought our eating should be as much as part of our education as our classes. We had wonderful meals and got introduced to many different types of food. He was also very frugal and turned leftovers into delicious soups for lunch the next day. To this day I miss his Chicken a la Reina, sort of a creamy chicken soup with rice.
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Nothing fancy for me. Just a couple of experiences that have never been reproduced in Toronto. Toby's Good Eats burgers (any of them, but the Courage was my fave) with cheesy, chunky fries and thick Hagen Daaz milkshakes. The potato-flour-crust pizzas made at a little hole in the wall at the corner of Midland and Eglinton called Cavoto's back in the 70's. Never had a pizza that good before or since in my city.
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I loved Toby's fries with that cheese sauce!!!!
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That cheese sauce was laced with crack. I'm sure of it. ;-) I didn't even like the wedge fries that much, but I'd have dipped wood chips in that sauce. The fries were just the vehicle for the sauce.
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Just remembered another one: grapefruit & apples. This was a dish available off of the massively-loaded breakfast 'cart' at the very posh Newton Hotel in Nairn, Scotland.
My dad, my sister and I spent two weeks there in the early 80s, arriving hopelessly underdressed (the cost of the vacation should've been a dead give-away to my dad, but...)
Every morning, there were several breakfast carts with all kinds of nice stuff to choose from, a 3-5 course lunch, tea time, a 5-course dinner, and after-dinner coffee service with petit-fours, etc. Unfortunately, at that point my chow-nicity hadn't quite developed yet, so I was overwhelmed by most of it. Sigh.
But the grapefruit & apples dish, similar to a compote, was so fab I had it every morning... is it a British / Scottish thing?
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What a great thread!
About 25 years ago, at the Flamingo in Vegas, in the main restaurant the soup of the day was a creamy chicken and avocado. Rich, savoury, mellow and complex, and absolutely
the best soup I've ever had. I've spent many a chicken carcass trying to replicate it.
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lol....I just thought of one. In the spring of 1972 I was living in the Co-op Dorm in UC Davis...we shared meals and chores...and bought our own food...and since there were only about 70 people living there the food was much better than standard dorm stuff....
We also ran a little late-night cafe in the dorm kitchen, and would make snacks and stuff for folks living in the "big dorms" who were craving real food. Our specialty was a sandwich: basically a grilled cheese on wheat..but the cheese was good cheddar, and sliced tomatoes and grilled mushrooms went into the mix as well. They were always so good....Maybe someone who lived in Unit III in Davis in the early 70s can remember what they were called..My memory is that someone's name was attached to it.
Funny, it should be a simple treat to reproduce, but it isn't the same. Maybe you need a night of studying followed by a good case of the munchies to appreciate it....
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Three, all from my honeymoon:
Fresh sardines, grilled quayside in Portimao, Portugal. Served with a simple green salad, boiled potatoes, and a glass of vinho verde. Anyone who doesn't like fish should try these - or maybe not, it might spoil you on other fish forever!
Souffle potatoes at the eponymous restaurant in Madrid - little pillows of joy! Potatoes deep fried once, left to cool slightly, and then plunged into hotter oil, which makes them puff up into the perfect cross of french fry and potato chip. Tried to make them at home a few times, always failed.
On the train from Paris to Lisbon - In Paris, we picked up some local pate, ham, cheese, and two ficelle. On the train, we had an impromptu picnic in our compartment. The texture of the ficelle was the outstanding part - crispy enough that there was some bite, but with a soft yielding crumb. The funny part was we shared our compartment with a French gentleman. As we were rolling through the vineyards of Bordeaux, I opened a bottle of wine that our stewardess on our Toronto-Paris flight had given us to celebrate our honeymoon. It was a California cab. I distinctly remember the gentleman lowering his copy of Le Monde for a moment. After he saw what I was doing, his eyes met mine for a millisecond with just the faint glimmering of contempt. He re-raised his paper, and later left without ever speaking to us.
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There was a place on Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica CAlifornia called "Pickle Bills" that was sold in the early 70's and became a McDonalds. They were around since WW2 and lots of Dogulas aircraft employees ate there, the best hot roast beef sandwiches anywhere, especially the gravy, I cannot duplicate it.
Also at University High School in West Los Angeles was the Sloppy Joes, hamburger base with a tomato based sauce served on a hamburger bun, kind of tangy with a tiny bit of sweetness, cant duplicat it either.
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When I was an adolescent, I had the chance to spend two years in Paris. As an impoverished student, I often ate at cheap student restaurants near the University.
One night I was eating at one with a Parisian friend. I was remarking on the prevalence of horsemeat butchers in Patris, adding that I could never bring myself to eat horsemeat, all the while eating what seemed like a very tender, juicy steak. My friend said nothing, but just pointed at my steak, and smiled.
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How many times I would have wished at the window that my 5 bucks would have bought a nice, lean sandwich rather than a ticket on a pony that was so slow they had to pay the jockey overtime.
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I am not fond of most citrus fruits, however, I did a presentation for career day at a school where my older sister taught and in the same class, a woman from UC Riverside was also doing a presentation. She brought in a 'new' fruit, called, I believe, an orangelo. I can't remember what they had crossed to make it, only that it looked like a pommelo, but tasted very sweet. I look in produce sections all the time, but I have never ever seen one.
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Whilst backpacking around the US for 3 months 4 summers ago my friend and I stumbled upon a cafe near our hostel in Charleston, South Carolina. We ordered lunch (half a sandwich and salad - so cheap compared to what we had been spending in other cities as we travelled down from NYC). It was a marinated chicken salad sandwich with tomato and it was the best sandwich I have ever tasted. I will never forget the taste of that tomato - it was like I had never tasted tomato before and that was what it was meant to be like! Without speaking I offered my friend a bite and our eyes met in total understanding and agreement. We still talk about that sandwich to this day, back in London.
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Yes, THAT is what a tomato is SUPPOSED to taste like!
Those kind of experiences make me marvel that the world still eats, say, tomatoes in their less brilliant representation. They can go on for years with bad, under-ripened, anemic tomatoes because of some distant memory or vague notion that it's a tasty food, when it's not at all ... unless it is the kind of tomato of which you speak.
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many foods have similar issues, constantly being eaten and assumed to taste like their out-of-season, shipped-from-miles-away, picked-unripe specimens - strawberries come to mind . . . but I think tomatoes are the worst offender in this class. It's at the point where I really won't eat tomatoes out of season (I'm in California, so I can afford to be snobby like that).
Growing up in CT, my mom would always whine about the tomatoes and I didn't get what the big deal was - to me they were just a gross vegetable. It wasn't until I had tasted some homegrowns in CT, and of course now in CA, that I learned to appreciate the raw tomato.
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Being so tired of tasteless tomatoes, I'm in the process of growing several different varieties from seed (NOT Big Boy, Beefsteak, or Celebrity). The seedlings are due for transplanting into the ground, so stay tuned for further details.
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Oh. At a tiny place on a back street in Lisbon several years ago - I don't know if it even had a name. Nor a menu; the specialty was a rice dish with seafood - rice, clams, shrimp, squid, chunks of fish, all superlatively fresh and baked together in an absolutely delicious conglomeration. Not like paella, it was in a deep bowl, and no saffron; not sure what the spices were, if any. Just tasted of the sea. I went back again a couple of times while I was there, but have never found anything since that was quite as good.
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A hamburger I had on my honeymoon at Sam Lords Castle in Barbados 27 yrs ago. It was to die for.
A simple dish of home made pasta, garlic, oil and LOTS of truffles in a casual restaurant in Pienza, Italy.
The veal parm. we had at this 1 neighborhood italian restaurant in Queens, that has been gone for many, many years.
Gelato we had in a tiny place in Rome, on a side street by the Spanish Steps. God I love gelato.
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Reminds me of the "Grand Marnier Mousse" served at Josef's in Barbados that we would savor. In order to assure yourself of a taste...you had to reserve 2 as soon as you were seated. The restaurant is still there...but sadly I don't believe it is on the menu.I have tried to duplicate this dish at home as an elegant dinner dessert...the results have been fairly close but perhaps to have it served on the Glorious shores of Barbados is key.
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Having anything served to you on the shores of Barbados always improves the flavor in my book :-)
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Found at a "Mediterranean" deli in Colorado Springs, CO:
It was more than Mediterranean food. There were also some groceries from all over the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia. We bought a jar of pickled mango (yes I know Indian). Maybe because it was my first taste of it but it was exquisite. I used it in marinades, as a condiment and in side dishes.
I've found other pickled mangoes since then but nothing quite like those.
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Milk ice cream. I spent most of a summer in Japan during high school, and had plenty ice cream flavors (green tea, red bean, ginger) that are very easy to find on this side of the world. The closest I've found to the milk flavor is sweet cream, and it is nothing like the pure taste I'm looking for.
The melon shaved ice was really good, too. We had a little tube of condensed milk to top the pile of ice with. Mmm. They did summer right over there.
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HOW DID I FORGET?
Almond-flavoured rice milk from Italian health food stores. I can get rice milk and almond milk here, but not almond-flavoured rice milk.
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Try a freezer ice cream maker, cheaper too.
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Or almond extract or oil in rice milk?
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Seafood pizza on the island of Moorea in the pacific. Local guide took us there by boat but then we had to walk about 1/4 mile thru shallow water to the beach, all the while paying attention not to step on a stone fish (painful not deadly). The pizza place was little more than a trailer in a tropical grove with a big fired pizza oven. The owner/cook was maybe italian or french. The pizza was just amazing, tons of unknown and known seafood, very little cheese and a great crispy crust. Never saw or heard of pizza like it!!!!
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Burnt Caramel gelato in Italy. I haven ever gotten over it, and I am not an ice cream lover.
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Kings Barbeque in Eustis, Florida. Up in colored town, Opened on Saturday nights at 11pm. til whenever.
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The most heartbreaking things I used to eat as a kid that are no longer sold are the french onion dip we used to get that is no longer sold here, the hamburgers with cole slaw from a little stand near my hometown that was torn down when they widened the road, and the butterscotch marble ice cream from the ice cream parlor that was in the mall in my hometown that closed down when I was a preteen.
ALL of my favorite restaurants from my childhood are now closed. :(
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What a wonderful thread..
Paris 2000 Gare de l'Est train station. After a fiery argument in more than adequate French with the bathroom attendant who was not willing to take my 5 francs to use the facilities, I came upon a sandwich stand. I was going to be arriving in Luxembourg at an off meal time and knew I would need something to hold me over until dinner.
My train was leaving in 5 minutes so I grabbed a tuna sandwich on a baguette and a can of Kronenbourg 1664. That tuna sandwich still haunts me to this very day as one of the best I have ever had. I can't re-create it, it was plain, the baguette was crisp on the outside and doughy on the inside and washing it down with a cold beer on a fast moving train was purely celestial
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leanne....this same exact senario happened to me in '84....god, i was homesick! But the sandwiches, the sandwiches!
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Paris, 1990, Gare de L'est: must have encountered the same attendant as Leanne did, on many trips for showers there, who kept trying to force my travelling companion and me into the same stall--and we most definitely did not want to shower a' deux! But I digress . . . I ate many sandwiches there, including tuna, and, yes, they haunt me still. And I live in a city full of great sandwiches.
But the most ordinary ingredients on the most delicious bread, in the dinginess of a train station, in Paris = Magic.
And then there are the tremazzini in Venice. There is a place right near the Accademia, with an amazing selection. Yet, each time I've contemplated trying to replicate them at home, I think--egg salad? tiny shrimp in mayo? white bread?--how can this be the stuff of dreams?
But the all-time haunter, that most elusive of culinary ghosts, was a piece of white pizza in Rome--porcini pizza, to be exact. My husband and I were wandering about, sight-seeing, after a substantial Italian lunch. It was hot, and we found ourselves at the Trevi Fountain, amongst throngs of other tourists, when I got a whiff of something I could not resist, my siren call for sure, and I followed my nose to a little stand (?), a window in an ancient building (?), something on wheels (?), somewhere nearby, and I saw people being handed good-sized squares of pizza. I told DH that I must have some, eliciting a question about my sanity, as well as a reminder that we'd just eaten--amply--and that we had a dinner reservation to work up to. I bought a piece and bit into what I can only describe as the most blissful, transporting combination of earth and cheese. (I did not know then that I was eating porcinis, and much as I love them, they have never tasted so good.) I offered DH a bite; seeing my ecstasy, he bit. Which turned into an excuse to get a second piece. I do not remember anything else we ate in Rome. I will never forget that piece of pizza.
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I started reading your post with a dumb blank look on my face that was gradually but then fully transformed into that of a totally grinning idiot by the Trevi.
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A dish of paper-thin slices of breast of chicken and the same of fresh bamboo shoots in an intensely chickeny broth and chicken fat sauce, served in a shallow frosted glass platter, lookiing cool and refreshing, served to us at the Zhi Yuan aka Tizzy Sichuan restaurant on Zhonghan Bei Lu in Taipei in the height of hottest summer, by our usual very charming waitress who insisted we needed something cooling to counteract the allergic reaction I had from a surfeit of mangoes. Never seen again, either in the flesh or in recipe form, or known by any of the other Sichuan restaurants I've ever visited. There was a faint whiff of almond about it from the bamboo shoots. Magic.
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Wow Buttertart! Such an evocative post, you really captured a magical moment for all of us to share. That dish sounds marvelous.
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Thanks. It was. The food in that restaurant was wonderful.
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Pizza in Lugano Switzerland, my aunt's honey fried chicken and, sadly, a Gino Giant.
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My most memorable pizza was also consumed in Switzerland, Zurich, to be exact, but it was not the pizza itself (seafood variety, so strange it seemed to me at the time to be eating a pie with whole shellfish, shrimp with heads, and squid, no cheese) that made the meal memorable.
What has stayed with me was the ease with which I managed to instigate an argument with my then girlfriend of many years, that meal being our first together after a six-month separation, and the fact that we managed to stay together for several years after that. I still wonder what that fight was about.
I left food uneaten that I would not have had the circumstances been different. There was public crying, after all..
Many of our dearest memories are our best meals, but all of our best meals are dear memories.
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In the early 80's in a restaurant in Montreal (Le Fadeau), a chicken breast flattened, stuffed with chicken mousse, then rolled and cooked to perfection. Sliced and served with a wondrous sauce. It just melted in the mouth. I have never forgotten the taste, and have failed to replicate it. The chef died many years later. The replacement restaurant, though highly-rated, did nothing for me on my one visit there.
One New Year's Eve, a dinner guest brought along a bottle of 30-year old Port (Barros 1963), It was heaven. A subsequent visit to a wine shop in Montreal turned up another '63, for $600 +. My dinner guest, when told the price, said no regrets, she was with people who appreciated it. Funny, though, after dinner at her place a few months later, with a whole bunch of people, she called me into the kitchen and sneaked me a glass of the same stuff; said she was not sharing with anyone else! Then, years later, a waiter in Boston gave me the same stuff to buy my silence - to not say anything to the chef if he came around to ask how I liked his pride and joy dish, which I told the waiter was horrible.
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For me it was a soup I had when I was 22. After 12 hours of traveling from 3 airports with little rest and less decent food we landed on a drizzly cold night in Cancun. Even if everything was in English and the people were intensely nice the food was the standard continental fare sterilized for tourists. We opted out and took a cab ride to a restaurant overlooking the water and had what they called "Vueve la Vida" essentially a seafood soup that was the living essence of the briny sweet sea. Perfectly cooked shellfish and a good beer. I've gone over all the Bayless books and tried their versions of Sopa de Mariscos but the satisfaction of a hot comforting soup greeting you in a foreign land you're still adjusting to just can't be replicated.
Perhaps good borscht in the middle of the Russian Tundra would be next.
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Appropriately named, "return to life" soup.
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And so named because its a famous hangover cure....:-) My husbands all-time favorite soup, btw, and not because of its curative properties :-)
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My favorite and never found again was a "Orange Soup" from Moscovitch? and Moscovitch?" in Winnipeg Canada, (it was 20 yrs. I might be a bit off on the name.) Anyway , it sounded interesting so I tried it and it was so wonderful. It was a Borscht with mandrine oranges in it. Tried to make it (and I make good borscht) but failed. If anyone has a recipe let me know.
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Something called Louisiana Butter Cake at Gary Danko in San Francisco. Made out of leftover croissants, it was crunchy on the outside and soft and dense on the inside. I've searched for a recipe, but it looks like it's something that was made up at the restaurant.
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Warm cherry tomatoes, straight off the vine, sitting in the garden in my grandmother's back yard. Must have been around 1976. Wow, I ate them until I was sick. Best tomatoes of my life.
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I have a grape tomato plant that I've saved seeds from for about ten years. The tomatoes it produces are the perfect size to pick from the plant and eat. The plant itself that the seeds produce is fantastic in its own right, as it usually lives two years in Los Angeles (essentially overwintering), and thus I have ripe tomatoes as early as April sometimes, but definitely by May. I had friends visiting from the east coast one Memorial Day weekend a few years back, and their three year old, once he tried one tomato from the vine, sat there and ate every single one that was red. If anyone else on the planet had shown up and eaten all my ripe tomatoes in one fell swoop, I would've been angry, but the kid was just so amazed at how good they were right from the vine that it made it all okay ;-)
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Oh can I pretty please have some seeds?
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A bowl of pork soup with noodles at a street stall in Georgetown, Penang. The soup was rich and thick with tender pork slices, bean sprouts, green onions and chewy, yellow noodles. With a bit of chili pepper sprinkled on top, it was a magnificent lunch that I still remember after 30 years. I recall sitting down next to the hawker stall, slurping my food in the summer heat with sweat running down my face, and saying delicious, delicious!
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I like this thread!! There are so many things I could say, but the taste I remember and miss the most is a cheese naan (naan avec fromage) from an Indian place in Montmarte I ate at a decade ago. It stayed gooey and drippy and buttery half an hour afer we ordered it. There is a chance it's still there, I just haven't been :(
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There was a takeout Italian restaurant where I grew up called Cirolli's and they had a great "baked lasagna" where they would put the pasta on edge around the container, They also made a great veal parm sandwich. By the way, this is going back 40 years.
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On a recent trip to Italy, visiting my Italian cousins, I ate peacock (pavone) at their friends house in Treviso. Treviso, a city of canals, is near Venice and Venetian opulence seems to have made it's presence known at that meal. The eating of various birds in Italy is not so unusual. Italian's frequently cook all types of poultry; chicken (pollo), guinea fowl which they call faraona, duck (anatra), spit roasted pigeons (piccioni allo spiedo), goose (oca) and pheasant (fagiano) but I had never eaten peacock. Our meal began with a broth (brodo) made of peacock with nidi d'amore (love nests), a type of pasta filled with ground veal. The pavone (peacock) meat was jointed, braised and served on the bone presented on a giant platter. The peacock legs were carved because they were quite large; much larger than a turkey. The meat was dark but very flavorful and didn't taste gamey at all. We were also served a goose prepared in a similar manner and an Italian meatloaf. When we drove up to the farm (fattoria) there were peacocks roaming the grounds. Little did I know they would be part of the afternoon meal.
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Sounds interesting. I would love to try it someday!
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Here in southern callifornia back in about 1960 you used to be able to get Real Churrned Buttermilk, hasn't been here for years, I understand they only have it back east and down south, they also have fat free buttermilk, but not here.
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Kate's of Maine just introduced it to their line, can you get her products where you are? They're sold at Whole Foods, among others.
http://www.kateshomemadebutter.com/Ka...
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Thanks Bob but I just checked and they dont have any of Kate;s products at the two Whole Foods I was at.
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They do here in MA - probably only the East Coast outlets carry it. But maybe yours could special order it for you?
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Shaw's Grocery stores carries Kates too and it is cheaper that the ersatz stuff.
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If you happen to be in the S.F. Bay Area, trek to the Rouge et Noir Cheese Factory in an area in Marin County known as Nicassio. There they give tours, samples, & they have just the delicious Buttermilk you have described! -JET
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Cruze Dairy Farm in Knoxville, TN is the only producer of churned buttermilk I've come across, and I did a tour in America's dairyland (Wisconsin and Minnesota, where it's true, by the way, that each state's motto better describes the other; WI has more lakes than MN, and MN produces more dairy).
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Miami Beach, 79th Street. It's probably the home of a huge hotel/condo complex now but in 1965, there was an outdoor jukebox and concrete pad for dancing or whatever and next door was a place that made the best hoagies -- maybe Philly cheesesteaks but what did I know in those days? They were delicious and I was hungry.
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An awesome sweet and sour sauce, orange in color as opposed to the red stuff. China town, L.A. circa, 1972
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My Great-Grandmother's chocolate chip cookies.
They weren't the sort on the back of the Toll House bag, I have tried to figure out what she did to no avail. When my oldest sons were in Pre-school, after a school play, there were refreshments baked by the parents... someone there had cookies like those.
I burst into tears.
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Iced peppered strawberry soup at a hotel in the Lakes District of England over 10 years ago. Perfect consistency, and the concept of sweet and spicy was a revelation to me-- I must have been 11 or 12 at the time and I think that was the moment that transformed me from a passive eater to a foodie. I dream of that soup--the sweet tart strawberry puree with the bite of cracked pepper.....
I also remember a frozen lemon mousse at a museum cafe in Washington, DC. Just the perfect texture....delightful.
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Oh, golly! You reminded me: a proper English cream tea, with the scones still piping hot, the clotted cream piled in a bowl, and the strawberry jam tasting of sunshine, in an properly ancient Tea Shop in Devon. The building was built entirely of grey stones, on a winding little street , the curtains were lace and the hostess was jolly. It was a perfect part of a perfect college field trip. We also went to Stonehenge near sunset (and in those days you could wander amongst the pillars), we peeked into the tomb of the D'Urbervilles, and we ended up on "Wessex" Moor as the bonfires for Guy Fawke's Eve sprang to life all over the darkened plains stretching before us....
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When I was about 12 years old, our family went to Germany. My dad is a Lutheran pastor, and was asked to do a wedding there, and used the opportunity to bring the rest of the family. Because of jet lag, and being busy in general, we rarely ate supper before about 10 at night, so we usually resorted to a place across the street from our apartment. It was an "Imbus" place which sold a variety of things, but what I remember most was a thing called a Donar. It wasn't anything like the "donairs" that you can get in North America. It was turkish, and closest to what you might get at a Shwarma restaurant here, but it still wasn't the same. It was a meat of some kind (i'm about 80% sure it was chicken) with lettuce, tomato and cucumber, wrapped up in the most heavenly bread I've ever had. It was like a pita, except thick, and with a crisp, wavy brown crust on the outside. And it was all doused in tzatziki sauce. They were available everywhere in Berlin, but I haven't been able to find anything like it in North america. It was then when I was also introduced to the sheer bliss of french fries and mayonaise....
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That's a doner kebab - very common wherever Turks are found. Can be made with any of several meats, typically lamb or chicken. Very similar to Greek gyros.
And where you ate it was an Imbiss (or Imbiß), a classic German fast food emporium. My favorite Imbiss item when I lived there was currywurst.
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Real shashlii, like in the Cacausus or in Russia.
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OH yes! The currywurst was also incredible! My dad had made if for years at home and I wasn't a huge fan of it, because he made it more like a real curry, with canned tomatoes and stuff, but when I had it in Germany it was so different, and so much better!
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It was nearly 30 years ago. We stopped for the market day in a very tiny village somewhere in Oxaca state...I can't even remember the name of the town so we never can return. Mexican markets almost always are wonderful, and at this one, it seemed every person on the mountain had turned out: the streets were lined with vendors selling baskets and parrots and pottery and jewelery and shawls, beautiful embroidery and food, food food: everywhere you looked there were piles of gorgeous peppers, fruits, grains.
We were wandering--a bit stunned (the night before had been hairy, lost on twisty mountain roads in the fog, playing "Dual" with giant diesal trucks with no headlights)--through the masses when a beautiful, smiling woman walked up to us, uncovered a tin bucket she'd protected with a napkin, and inquired "tamale?"
My husband nodded and held up just two fingers, so she quickly handed us two, banana-leaf wrapped bundles, we handed her the few pesos they cost, and she melted right back into the crowd. THEN we unwrapped and took bits of the SINGLE MOST DELICIOUS mole tamales on the face of the earth!
My husband, in particular, was overwhelmed. He dove into the crowds and tried for at least half an hour to find her, but she had vanished like the fog...Maybe we imagined her? ;-)
He still sighs and shakes his head, regretfully, when remembering the tamales that got away....
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The best wantan mee ever, in Singapore.
Years ago, I was in Singapore with my mom and we had to go to the Visa Office to extend our visas (have family there so we'd go for 2-3 months at a time). The office had a small cafeteria on the first floor, so we decided to grab something to eat before we headed out to go shopping. You would think a government office's cafeteria would have mediocre food, but this was delicious -- lots of char siu, wantans, spicy chillis, and perfectly cooked noodles. This was my first introduction to wantan mee, and it's the standard I hold all wantan mee to. I've tried many different ones from many different restaurants and stalls in Singapore, but none match up to that one from the visa office!
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cafe provence, brandon vt, about eight years ago. it was an appetizer: extremely good ratatouille, topped with sweet, mouth watering carmelized onion, and then drizzled copiously in an incredible butter sauce. i shall never forget it :(
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Before leaving Japan to go back to the US in my early teeens, we had purchased certain foods we knew we would not easily find in the States. One of those items that I remember distinctly was Shiroi Koibito (white chocolate sandwiched between thin buttery cookies). We are now well past our teens, but my brother and I still remember the taste of that cookie.
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Peach Pandowdy!!! That was in 1961 and I still remember it as though it were yesterday. My mother-in-law offered to make me a pie of my choice and that was it. But she's gone now and I never got the recipe. Bummer.
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My mom made apple pan dowdy. I'll poke around her recipe books and see if I can find her delightful version for you. I remember peeling the apples off the top so I could eat those first. In the meantime,
http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/a...
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My mom was given "Washington Dip" as a gift when we were younger. Neither of us has been able to find it since. I think it was a dip mix that came in a red envelope. Any ideas on where to get it now?
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Macy's Cellar in San Francisco had a nice deli about 20 years ago. In their cold case they offered something called Stephano's Supremo (or something similar).It was loaf shaped with a filling of layers of cheeses, salami and red peppers and wrapped in a thin flaky crust. I would usually order several slices but finish it off on the way home and wish I had ordered more!! It was probably mass produced in a factory somewhere but I can still remember exactly what it tasted like and it was wonderful. Macy 's closed their deli some years ago but I'm hoping someone will know what I'm talking about and can tell me where I can find it again.
Another memory: Back in the eighties, there was a mediocre neighborhood bakery not far from where we lived here in Modesto. But they served something called "gypsy sticks". They were long and looked like a baguette sprinkled with poppy seeds and the filling was a seasoned very finely ground beef mixture. I loved them and ordered them a lot but the bakery has since closed and when I mention them to other people they look at me like I'm crazy. Has anyone ever heard of gypsy sticks besides me?
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The Macy's thing sounds a bit like the cold cut pies that my married to an Italian Polish friend used to make for her husband at Easter (and that are available in Italian bakeries sometimes, have also seen recipes for them in Nick Malgieri and Carol Field's books on Italian baking. Might be worth being on the lookout for. The other sounds great as well, perhaps a Bosnian or other bakery specializing in that kind of thing would have something similar? Have not seen a recipe for just such a thing, but the bierocks discussed on Home Cooking sound somewhat similar.
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i just remembered there used to be a place in chinatown, on doyers street called BoBo that had the best sesame noodles, but the dish that haunts me was their duck. somehow it was infused this deep, yet not overpowering, garlic flavor that i have never found anywhere else. it was SO good. they closed at least 20 years ago :(
they also had an item on the menu called "hot intestines and things" - i always wondered what the things could possibly be, that the hot intestines were the least nasty one that they could name.....
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Was it spicy? There's a Sichuan dish 腸 王 (Mandarin in Pinyin: chang wang) that is intestines and solidified duck or chicken blood in a hot and spicy sauce, served over a heat source. Quite tasty considering you are literally eating blood and guts!
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while around quite chowish 20 years ago i wasn;t yet quite adventurous enough to try it, as i would be today. so i have no real details of the dish at all, only my lasting amusement at the name.
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I wouldn't have tried it on my own tick either, but it was a favorite dish of two cousins I taught English to in Taipei and they ordered it up for our farewell banquet. Couldn't say no. Love the dish name too.
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At a Flatiron area (NY) restaurant, whose name I can't recall -
strawberry consomme w/ ginger & mascarpone
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There's this mashed potatoes when I was in HK, and it sounds so absurd to remember something like mashed potatoes when it was just a side to some lamb dish but those potatoes were my first mouth orgasm I ever had! Like my eyes rolled back and I almost moaned (I had SOME etiquette left).
Unfortunately next time I went back the place closed and in place was another restaurant that was kinda identical BUT NO MASHED POTATOES!!!!!
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Olive Garden's Creme Brulee...loved it and it's no more.
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Aww, man, I grew up in Southern California, and remember that the little liquor stores used to sell these Lucas lime and salt bottles - the one with a purple duck in front of it. Friends and I would just sprinkle these on our palms, during recess and eat it.
I am not sure it it was meant to be eaten as such, but it was good.
Same idea - the other thing is a candy that was on a stick, and flat, sprinkled with this salt. I loved that, too.
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i've had some of these more than once, but it was once upon a time...
fried calamari from a now-defunct Italian restaurant in the Virginia Highlands neighborhood of Atlanta. the name of the place escapes me now, but it was a combination of their delicious marinara sauce and perfectly breaded & fried calamari that made it the BEST i've ever had.
and speaking of fried food...fried conch at some random, out-of-the-way fish shack in Key West about 15 years ago. oh. my. god.
coal-fired brick-oven pizza margherita from a little shack on the beach in Cancun, Mexico of all places! perfectly charred, blistered, almost cracker-thin crust with just the right amount of cheese and fresh tomato sauce. it was heavenly.
the other item that haunts me is the ice cream cone i used to order at our local DQ when i was a child - a sugar cone with chocolate soft serve and butterscotch shell topping.
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Were they conch fritters? Could the place have been called something like The Half Shell? A shack in the middle of the a large shell parking lot? We were in KW three times in the period of 15-20 years ago and ate conch fritters at such a place. Good memories.
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ok, i'm just seeing this now! and yes, i meant fritters, i don't know why i didn't just say that :) it wasn't The Half Shell, i did some Googling and figured out that it was B.O.'s Fish Wagon. the place was/is seriously a SHACK...but the fritters were incredible. i seem to recall a pretty fantastic grilled grouper sandwich there too...
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Rochester NY, 1943, Genesee Street near Arnett Blvd, a store that sold "frosted malted". This was like soft-serve that was a half-frozen creamy chocolate malted milk served in a cone---it came out of a machine. I don't know whether it was a regional specialty or what but I have been looking for it (unsuccessfully) ever since.
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just thought of one more - a dessert at George's at the Cove in La Jolla, CA (before it became George's California Modern). a deconstructed napoleon of rich peanut butter semifreddo, fantastically airy peanut wafers, and a decadent chocolate sauce.
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Their was a restaurant in Santa Monica, CA on pico blvd called Pickle Bills that closed down in the early 70's that served hot roast beef sandwiches, brisket between 2 pieces of bread with mashed potatoes and lots of gravy, the gravy was to die for and we used to buy it by the quart, I have never found any that good and can't duplicate it.
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I have 2: When I was a little girl living in Oakland, CA, my mother and I would shop for goodies at Emil's Delicatessen - an old Italian deli with barrels of salted codfish, whole cheeses, etc., drool, drool, and we would eventually end up at Swan's Market for a celery phosphate. The celery phosphate was a drink the color of Coke, not fizzy, but really, really yummy. The stand (within Swan's) also sold Orange Julius, but I always wanted the celery phosphate. I noticed they had bottles of CP on the shelf for sale (mix with water) but my mom never bought it. Now that I'm in my mid-60s, I still remember the taste. I've tried Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda, and if you try real hard, you can almost taste the phosphate, but not really. I've tried net research but can't find anyplace to buy it. They're probably out of business.
The other haunt is a mexican restaurant in Benicia, CA. I think it was called Santa Fe. It was in an old brewery and they made everything from scratch. Nothing frozen or nuked. It was fabulous. I live in Iowa now, south of Dubuque and along the MS River, but I miss like hell the farmers markets where everything was super fresh and abundant, that Mexican restaurant in Benicia and celery phosphate. Trust me - it doesn't pay to get old and move away from what you love. Oh, hell, I'm not THAT old and, when I'm home (I'm a trucker), I love nothing more than chasing my husband out of the kitchen and cooking until I fall down. Iowa DOES have great pork!
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And muskmelon, tomatoes, and corn in season. Also lots of good cooks in Iowa! (My husband is from Clinton County, south of you.)
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Pine Bros Cough Drops!
I used to get them all the time when I was young- they were so chewy (maybe used gum arabic or something similar). TOO BAD they were discontinued!!!!
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I remember those! They had less flavor than the hard-candyish Smith Brothers, but a nice jujube-like texture. I must have spent half my candy money on cough drops as a kid.
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haha, me too!
what ever happened to the old jujubes anyway? WAS it the gum arabic in them that gave them the texture? is there anything around now like that?
i know grether's pastilles are somewhat similar, but a little difficult to find....
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Moussaka at Mr. Souvlaki's in Brooklyn Heights. The bechemel was 2 inches thick. The spices were subtle and perfect.
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I liked that restaurant very much too. They also made a delicious briami (veg stew with tomatoes and okra). Nice folks there as well.
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I did a focus group on tomatoes one time, and there was one tomato that was so amazing. I have never tasted one with such a perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. it was juicy, but firm with no mealiness AT ALL. It was so awesome. They wouldn't tell me anything about it though.
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A sandwich shop in downtown San Jose CA. Blimpies (not the chain), now out of business. They had these Italian subs with this wonderful hard crust (thick, brown, and crunchy) sourdough bread with a meaty and robust interior. Since they closed shop without notice, I never got to ask where they bought it from, and I've never seen its like since.
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This isn't as sexy as some of the posts, but I haven't been able to find jarred hot cherry peppers in San Diego. I found them once a few years ago but not since. Every store has sweet ones but not hot. Woe betide my homemade cheesesteaks!
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have you tried Cardiff Seaside Market or Bristol Farms in UTC? also check the olive bar at Whole Foods.
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Pastene brand!
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A creamy fish chowder I had at a restaurant in Cobh, ireland, overlooking the bay. I know it had mussels in it but I was young and it didn't occur to me to ask what else was in that. Also, the French onion soup at L'Auberge Gourmande (sp?) on St. Maarten.
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A cheesecake with cinnamon in the cake and dutch apple topping with whipped cream from a italian restaurant and sub sandwhiches in New Hampshire that had a topping that was called "salad" - I think it was marinated chopped pickles, olives, peppers, onions and tomatoes.
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Banana Bread at the square where everyone joins to watch Sunset in Key West. (Mallory?) The guy says, "Banana Bread, banana bread". It is dense warm and aromatic. Is he still there?
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Jerk Chicken I had in Negril in 2007. Never had anything that came close to it.
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a fluffy white masa tamale with pineapple center in Oaxaca
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I fondly remember something called "citrus brittle" at the local grove stores in Florida. My memories are 40+ years old, but I can still taste the wonderful bright melt-a-way flavor of these delectable goodies. The base candy wasn't truly a "brittle", it was more like the melt-a-way mints you get now, but not so cloyingly sweet - and there were little strips and bits of candied citrus strewn through them. They came in all sorts of citrus flavors and beautiful pastel colors to match the flavor. I've searched all over and can't find anything even vaguely resembling them. I have no idea how to go about making my own, alas.
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It's remarkable you should mention these, I remember them from our trips down to the Keys from Canada when I was a tiny tot (my mother loved them). Haven't thought of them in absolute ages, they were divine. Also remember how amazing the oranges and kumquats tasted - so flavorful in comparison to the stuff shipped into Canada) and the incredible smell of the Donald Duck orange juice factory my dad took us on the tour of. Thanks for the memories!
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Yes, I was amazed on a trip to Clearwater Beach how tasty the strawberries were, even though they were large. The large stuff we get here is bland.
I also had some amazing orange jellies there. Looking forward to returning there sometime just for the jellies.
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But when you get local strawberries in Ontario (and I imagine in Quebec, was never there in the season) they are to die for. Have had Greenmarket ones from many vendors here and nothing compares. Also peaches are a lot more iffy in NY. And tomatoes even in good years.
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True, local strawberries are amazing, and you can now even get them till October. The large, bland, ones we get are from California.
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The other thing I remember from my childhood (I left Canada when I was 19 and newly married) is a Lobo apple - ripe around Labor Day, biggish, flattened in shape, red/yellow striped, crisp but somewhat loose texture, bright flavor. Do you know it? A wonderful apple - have asked for it at the Greenmarket and vendors have said they know of it but don't grow it.
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I do know that Lobos are available here, but I have not had one. I have a brother-in-law who owns an orchard, and I think he grows them. I'll ask him when I see him on Saturday. BTW his wife keeps me supplied with apple jelly.
My favourite apple has to be the Honey Crisp.
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I'm a Braeburn girl in absence of a better offer.
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You're right: our Florida strawberries are really HUGE. Too huge, IMO. The ones I love (and you can't get in stores) are the tiny little alpine strawberries I remember growing wild on roadsides up in the North Carolina mountains. They're like jewels of pure sugar - and so intensely "strawberry"! mmmm The Florida berries are okay, but they have a slightly more pithy texture that isn't all that appealing to me.
The orange blossom honey you get in grove stores is delish, too. I'm not sure if I like the flavor or the aroma ... one whiff reminds me of the days when we still had miles of groves (before the big freeze decimated everything) and you could get a "citrus buzz" just driving through them! lol
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Nothing but nothing beats wild strawberries, they are utterly heavenly. (Haven't had orange blossom honey in ages, remember it used to come in nice spherical jars with gold foil labels.)
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I remember those! Hadn't thoughtof them in years. so good. Also from groves stores was tropical conserve in those little round jars. loved it.
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Orange semolina cake from a restaurant called Cul de Sac in Rome, where I lived in the mid-eighties. Very moist, drenched with a profound orange flavor, a shock to the taste buds. I have never forgotten it.
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If you do any baking I suggest that you try making the Golden Grand Marnier Cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Cake Bible", but leave out the chocolate. You may find that you come close to your Roman cake if you adjust the soaking syrup. I last made it a week or so ago and ate a piece about 15 minutes after it came out of the oven. It was sublime.
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AWESOME post!
I have a few.
There was (is?) a great restaurant somewhere along Malibu Beach - it was pretty much right on the beach, with huge windows to see outside. I think it had 'Lion' in the title, but I'm not sure. I had my first ever seafood omelette there, and it was *amazing.* I was 12, and thought I'd never tasted anything so grand!
The most haunting for me, though, is a little restaurant somewhere near Tupelo, MS that was called Country Squire Jr. We'd go once a week in the early '80's, and get their all you could eat fried catfish. I've never had catfish like this since - it was the whole fish, fried, but before they fried it they cut and sectioned it in such a way that you just took your fork and lifted off piece by piece of succulent, perfectly corn meal-fried fish. You cleaned one side of it, then flipped it over and did the same. I kid you not - when you were done with it, it looked like the fish skeleton in a cartoon that the cat pulls out of his mouth! lol And if that's not good enough, it came with a bowl of lemon pieces, and a plate of raw onions. O.M.G. Just thinking about it brings tears of joy! :)
Another great food item - we used to regularly go to a Bird Sanctuary somewhere in CA - it was owned by Anheuser Busch because you could tour the factory, right next to the bird sanctuary. Anyway, they had vendor carts throughout that sold the most amazing churros ever - they were long, skinny, and cane-shaped. To die for.
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<<a Bird Sanctuary somewhere in CA>>
That was Busch Gardens in Van Nuys, CA its not there anymore of course but those perfect churros along with the flamingos will live in my mind forever. Thanks for the memory.
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That's it! I found that it closed in 1979. More info here: http://laist.com/2009/07/18/laistory_...
What I wouldn't give for one of those churros now! :)
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The one in Malibu was called the Sea Lion and the fellow that owned it lived to the right of it. Very good omlets and a bottle of wine there cost little more than buying it from a market, back in the 50's they had a tank outside with sea lions in it. It is now called Dukes.
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Thanks SO much for that info! :) I loved that place! I'll have to look up Dukes - thanks again!
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Chicken Tesh at Josephina's in LoDo. Are they still there? I haven't been back to Colorado in years, but that was amazing!
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Ten years ago, we were in Hawaii, and my then boyfriend ordered a Crab-Stuffed Opah at the Mauna Kea... it was incredible. I wouldn't even know how to go about replicating it, as I didn't pay enough attention while eating to discern the various components. I just remember it was delectable.
A few years ago, I had seared scallops over toasted beluga lentils with an orange reduction (usually don't like orange-anything) and parsley oil. I've recreated something *similar* at home, but never quite as good.
My mom's wedding cake from her second husband... I *think* it was made by the Four Seasons... it was a white chocolate cake with a raspberry and buttercream filling with a white chocolate fondant... OMG... still... yum...
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That is remarkable, a wedding cake being a standout food memory. I have no fond memories of anyone's except my own (I'm Canadian so it was made of my mother's fruitcake professionally decorated).
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"My mom's wedding cake from her second husband... I *think* it was made by the Four Seasons... it was a white chocolate cake with a raspberry and buttercream filling with a white chocolate fondant... OMG... still... yum..."
I have an issue of Chocolatier that has a similar cake, I think.
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i'd LOVE to see it, if you feel like and have time to post!
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I guess my memory is failing me. It is actually two different cakes I am thinking about. I made both; succeeded with the first and failed with the second.
The first cake had white chocolate in the batter, was filled with raspberry buttercream, and was covered with white fondant, not white chocolate fondant. See the picture.
The second consisted of pound cake that was filled with cherry preserves, covered with buttercream, then covered with marzipan and then white chocolate plastic (I don't know what is in white chocolate fondant). I got as far as the marzipan, then crashed and burned with the white chocolate plastic. You are supposed to mix white chocolate and corn syrup, and I think it is supposed to have the texture of fondant as you are supposed to roll it and cover the cake. What I had instead was a sticky mess. I consulted a baker here and he told me that you have to knead it till you get all of the cocoa butter out. I tried that out, but it did not work. I ended up throwing out the mess. The cake covered with marzipan was delicious, though.
I can post the recipes, but be warned, it is a lot of work. Let me know.
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honeyed banana at this chinese restaurant we went to when i was a kid. had it more than once. they would bring out a bowl of ice water. then bananas coated in hot honey and a few sesame seeds i believe. they would dump them in the ice water, and when it worked there would be a loud cracking sound, and the bananas would be hot inside and sheathed in a crunchy crystal honey shell. sometimes it didnt work, and the honey was just gooey on the outside of the banana. still yummy, but not nearly as much so.
that was an early indicator to em that food could be something special and magic
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Chocolate walnut caramel torte w/unsweetened whipped cream.
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I remember the honey banana!!
As soon as you mentioned the bowl of ice water - the memory came flooding back!
We used to get that at Mandarin Inn in Chinatown (I think!)
I can now remember it so clearly...the silver bowl...the crunchy sweet slightly greasy
The Mandarin Inn is gone now - But surley we could still find this dessert somewhere in Chinatown (?!)
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1. A smoked Stilton from the cheese counter of a little food shop in Grassmere, England. I have tried and tried to find something like it in the US, but to no avail. I keep thinking that one of these days I will try smoking a Stilton myself, but I have no idea what that will produce.
2. Pasta with squash blossoms at a restaurant outside Florence. This is the best pasta I ever ate. They did give me the recipe, but I haven't been able to make it taste as good as it did in Italy.
3. My great-grandmother's bread. I've got the recipe for that, too, but mine just doesn't taste like hers.
4. Roasted sea bass at a restaurant in Venice. We started out sitting outside by the canal, but it started raining and they brought us inside. There were only six or eight tables in the restaurant. We sat by the window, watching the rain and this beautiful fish was presented to us. Then they went off and cooked it with tomatoes, olives and I'm not sure what else. Brought back to the table and presented whole. Then the owner served us individual portions. The flavour was sublime.
5. Fresh caught salmon, grilled over alderwood in Alaska.
6. Oysters on the half shell from Uncle Earl's in Baton Rouge back in the 70s. During happy hour oysters were a nickle apiece. A pitcher of beer was $2.00. I was a poor graduate student and those oysters, along with saltines and cocktail sauce were often supper for my best friend and me. Maybe it was the times, but the taste of those oysters just hasn't been replicated.
7. Creole cheese - it came in a tub. Kind of like cream cheese with a layer of thick cream on top. I've never seen it outside of Louisiana and I don't think any of the dairies there make it anymore.
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chocolate cream of wheat.
:( I'll never recover from this being pulled from the shelves when I was a child. I've emailed the company... no intentions of bringing it back.
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well, i *was* going to suggest just doctoring up the regular stuff with cocoa powder & sweetener. but if you don't mind that your breakfast comes from a box with pictures of Spongebob on the front, you're in luck!
http://www.startsampling.com/sm/101055/?lp=sp&source=CoWHomeSBParents
http://www.buythecase.net/product/271...
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Thank you! I will definitely try this version! A few years ago they came out with a special Polar Express, Hot Cocoa edition of the cereal and it wasn't quite the same, but it did provide a bit of comfort. I may be ordering a case and sharing it with my siblings... it's my turn... it was my sister that bought a case of the Polar Express edition, ha! :)
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i hope it turns out to be a good substitute for the one you miss!
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Gee GHG - you really push that cocoa don't you!
;)
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Just wanted you to know I am from LA and you can definitely still get Creole Cream Cheese.
http://www.jfolse.com/bittersweet_dai...
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Or you can make it yourself http://www.nolacuisine.com/2005/07/29...
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Thanks! I don't live in Louisiana anymore, so will try making it myself.
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Poppyseed roll made by my grandmother and aunt. Cold birch-beer, and fried cheese on a stick with mustard at the Geauga County Fair. Shaken lemonade. Cabernet snow-cones. Chocolate zuchini bread. Fire-roasted corn-on-the-cob and potatoes at Yankee Peddler. Funnel cakes. Malted milk powder on vanilla ice cream. Lamb patties with A-1 sauce, au gratin potatoes, peas. Cinnamon saltwater taffy. Sponge candy. Anise biscotti.
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Lobster, sweetbreads and mushrooms in a brandy cream sauce. The restaurant has been closed for decades, but it was always my birthday dinner!
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Regal Crown Sour Cherry candies...Individually wrapped and packed like LifeSavers!
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Hot dogs from a Greek place in New Haven back in the 50's called Coney Island Hot Dogs. I don't even know what neighborhood it was in. They had this amamzing sauce on them -- I recall it was brown, greasy and had onions. I remember eating more than two (I was a very small kid) before my father cut me off. Whenever I try to google recipes for coneys all I find are chili recipes and I really don't think that's what it was.
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Back in the early 90's there was a hot dog cart outside where I worked in Chatsworth, CA. The guy had an onion sauce like this. It was so good I would polish off one of those huge kosher dogs and I am a light eater, but the sauce is too good.
Maybe try this http://www.recipezaar.com/New-York-Ho... If you could brown the tomato sauce or sub browned tomato paste.
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Thanks M. I'm definitely going to try it.
H
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Rhode Island still has Coney's! Old School Coney's!
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Trader Joe's had Ginger Jo-Jo cookies a couple of years ago. Haven't seen them since. They were fantastic!
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i've seen other suggestions here on CH to try Newman's Own Ginger O's or Carr's Ginger Creams as a replacement. might be worth a shot...
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There's a cute cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts called LA Burdick which makes the best hot chocolate I've ever had, by far, along with beautiful little pastries.
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Ah, BURDICK'S! I used to live near the "mothership" in (of all places) Walpole, NH. LOVE the place! They moved from their original location to a new, much bigger place across the street a few years back where they started doing a full-service restaurant (which I loved BTW), but before they moved, they were in this weird, funky little space with pillows and tablecloths -- with wonderful chocolates (love their chocolate mice!) and THAT HOT CHOCOLATE! It's divine. I was delighted to see that they were doing well enough to open a branch in Cambridge.
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The location in Harvard Square was SO TINY. Even though it was crazy popular. Honestly, it was impossible to get a table there sometimes...there was always a line to the door. The only reason the line didn't go *OUT* the door is because it's always ***SO COLD*** outside!! And also people knew it would be crazy hard to get a table so they didn't wait in line. I used to go on dates there. I wish I could have a demitasse of hot chocolate and a linzer torte. U R so right about their adorable little chocolate mice too :).
P.S. I used to live in Woodley Park. Small world!! We used to get pizza by the slice from Vace and walk through the zoo and eat it.
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Hey sillygoosedown! Small world indeed! I am a huge fan of Vace pizza -- just had a slice this weekend as a matter of fact...
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Years ago (1970’s - 80’s), in Los Angeles, there used to be a breakfast joint called Ray’s Redwood Kitchen on 39th & Western Ave. that served up the most amazingly delicious Calf’s Brains & Eggs Omelet you can imagine. Worthy of a last meal. Heretofore, utterly irreplaceable. Alas, gone forever.
… Haunting pangs …
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1965. South of France. A simple omelette with truffles followed by a green salad. Exploding with flavors, yet simple, fresh and delicious.
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Wow - I have so many haunting food memories....
A home-made chocolate ice cream that we used to make - it had such a distinct flavor and texture....I could never replicate it...
Libby's Fruit Float......probably it was disgusting - (Fruit flavored....pudding type dessert - in a can) but as a kid - I Loved it and would love to have it one more time...
A ice pop from a Mexican grocery store in Brooklyn - it was a horrible brown/green shade - and not very nice looking at all - but it was cucumber chille - and it was AMAZING
it was hot and yet refreshing at the same time...I ate them for a summer - nearly every day and then boom the shop closed and they wre gone forever...(I still seek them out but I believe these were home-made)
Home made cheddar cheese pretzels my 8th grade class made together .(I've made these but they never taste as good as those did)
Any beer that I have has in Belgium
Any chocolate that I had in Brugge
A pecan pastry that I had in Amsterdams train station.
Baked Feta cheese in Kos
Any meal I had in Bodrum....
Well sorry - I could go on and on......Lots of travel related memories which never will be duplicated.....but hopefully there will be more to come!~
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You reminded me. Leonidas ("only" Leonidas...) in Bruges: a seasonal special: dark chocolate canteloupe cream. Unbelievable.
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Sounds wonderful...
The name sounds so familiar but not the description...
I think Belgium is one of my all time fav food places... most of the food I ate there - was simply divine.....
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It is wonderful, you're right (but top of my all-time list is Taiwan rather than Belgium). The Leonidas chocs you can get here in the States are not nearly as good. And they are so cheap, relatively speaking, in Belgium! (Most of my unforgettable food memories are also tied up with travel.)
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Speaking of chocs, I once bought a couple of Laderach raspberry truffles from Dean and DeLuca in Georgetown, and they were out of this world. They were reddish on the OUTSIDE, and when you put them into your mouth you tasted raspberry immediately. On biting them you then got an explosion of raspberry and chocolate. On return visits to the store and to the branch in Napa I did not have any luck locating more. I will be returning to the Napa store in a week, so hopefully then....
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There's a restaurant chain in Tucson called Eegees, and they specialize in a frozen fruit drink, also called an eegee, that's similar to italian ice. Every month they have a different "flavor of the month", and once they had black raspberry. It had big, fat chunks of fruit in it, and the perfect balance of sweet and tart. I'm told they repeat the flavor occasionally, but I'm never in Tucson to see it.
Another one, on my first trip to San Francisco when I was a kid, we were just walking around Fisherman's Wharf, looking for lunch and stopped in a non-descript restaurant. I ordered crab legs and they brought out this massive pile of the freshest, sweetest crab I've ever tasted. Could never find that place again.
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If I had to name one thing that I've had once and never again, it would have to be the fries from a beachside stand at Scheveniengen in The Hague, Netherlands. I was there once in 1993 with my Dutch grandparents who grew up in The Hague, and those fries were by far the best ones I've ever had.
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Smoked eel and new herring at Scheveniengen!
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I grew up in East Africa, and cassava was a staple there (we called it "mogo" in Swahili). On the way home from shool we used to stop at a little restaurant that served fried mogo with a yellow sauce that looked very unappealing. The first time I saw the sauce I refused to eat it, saying that it looked like upchuck, but a friend of mine urged me to try it. WIth much trepidation I did, and found it delicious.
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There used to be a butter that you could buy in Australia when I was a kid - it had a duck on the top of the container - I remember it being so good that I was eating it non stop on everything. Then, for some reason, it dissapeared from the supermarkets. I hunted and hunted - I still keep an eye out now, life has never been the same.
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The Princess Cake from the Co-op supermarket in Berkeley, CA. It was covered in a light buttercream, with white chocolate flakes and pink flakes. It also had ballerina candle holders on it. It was a yellow cake with a heavenly filling. Very light and not too sweet. I think they were made by a Bakery on Solano Ave.
The colors appealed to me as a little girl, but the taste appealed to my parents, so much so that it was my Dad's favorite cake for his birthday.
This was before the gourmet revolution of that area; Co-op was across the street from where Chez Panisse is. But it was a truly delectable cake.
That and Blum's lemon goddess pie on Union Square.
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That was my supermarket when we lived in Berkeley. I loved it and can still go through it in my mind's eye! The gourmet revolution was just getting going at that time, a great time to have been there.
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Me, another Bay Area Exile who always longs for her TRUE home1: The Berkeley Cheese Board had an AMAZING warm cheddar/jalapeno bread that was to die for..All of Alice Medrich's treats from Cocolat, the short-lived , but amazing, gelato place at Walnut Square,Lunch at Chez Panisse, where we have to try/share a bit of alll of the appetizers & desserts, Warszawa Restaurant (now defunct) that had the most amazing Borscht, and so much more. I always miss the City & Bezerkly!! Oh, I forgot going to G.B. Rattos in East Oakland, & plunking down with a fresh sourdough roll with a strong imported cheese & Italian Salumi..................................................... -JET
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Wow! I got chills of recognition reading your post. We must have been there at exactly the same time. Loved ALL those places. Warzawa had that chlodnik - pink borscht with sour cream and baby shrimp...Vivoli's gelato was terrific - we had a darling cat who was mad for their canteloupe gelato. We used to go to Ratto's on Saturdays and load up on stuff. Those...were..the...days....
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And before Warzawa, it was Il Pavone, a very very good Italian restaurant run by some Cornell restaurant school grads. Great Italian wines. All of this (except Ratto's) within walking distance of our Berkeley Way apt...
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My Italian Mother-In-Law used to make a dish we called "scallion pie". She has been gone for many years now,and we have all tried to duplicate it but no one ever wrote down the recipe. We haven't been able to recreate it. It did not have a crust. We know she used scallions(just the white tips). They were not browned. There appeared to be egg in it,but probably not alot because the "pie" was not yellow in color. I know she blended whatever it was and then put it in a deep wok pan with olive oil. The last part was the trickiest because she would put a plate under it and then flip it over. We sliced big wedges and put tons of salt on it. She also made a zucchini version. It was quite thick,maybe 3 -4" tall,and was not browned. Anyone have any idea what this was. Our younger family members have never been able to enjoy it. Would LOVE it if someone had suggestions to what this was. I think I remember grated parm being in it.it was very light in texture.
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Sounds a lot like the Fritatta my grandmother used to make. She came from Italy as a bride and never did speak much English but, boy, could she cook. She always made this with Zucchini and Onions and lots of eggs. (I know, you said you thought it didn't have much egg in it but it still sounds like a Fritatta). Grandma's was made in an iron skillet where she saute'd the veggies in olive oil (zucchini, onion and sometimes green or sweet red peppers - whatever was on hand) then she scrambled the appropriate number of eggs - depending on the size of your skillet - added milk and scrambled again and poured this over the veggies. Cook till set then invert the pan onto a plate, slide the whole thing back into the pan so the top can cook and add som grated pecorino romano and serve in pie shaped slices along with a crisp green salad. Heaven!
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Sounds like an onion/ricotta pie to me. But there're so many variations... sadly for you, my recipes involve browning, not the saute technique you describe.
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In the mid-60's, the Baskin Robbins 31 flavors in Southern California would feature Licorice ice cream as the flavor of the month during October. It was "black", hence a Halloween connection. Actually it was kind of charcoal grey And I am not a particular fan of BR ice cream, then or now. But the Licorice flavor was from heaven. I lived for the stuff, mourned the trailing off of availability as November deepened. I don't know when they discontinued it. I would love to find out any info that would allow me to replicate -- recipes, sources, alternatives. It was unforgettable.
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My Baskin Robbins addiction was the Mandarin Chocolate Sherbet. That was so gooood! I can't imagine why they discontinued it.
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Lime Daiquiri sherbet from Baskin-Robbins. In the '70s it actually had bits of lime zest in it, and I think a little rum, too!
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oh yeah, lime daquiri sherbet -- count me in!
and make me a shake with coconut milk.
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And just One more (not bad for a lifetime of eating), please: Four years ago my husband and I took the "trip of a lifetime" on a chartered yacht to Greece and Turkey. One day we were in port at a medium-sized Turkish port city and the crew bought groceries and served us a buffet lunch on board. It was all gorgeous and splendid and delicious, of course. But the baked potato....... will you believe me if i tell you that this baked potato was from the gods? It looked exactly like the baked potato you would get anywhere, here in the States. It was medium-sized, looked like a Russet. Just baked in oven -- no seasonings. I spent days grilling the multi-international crew about the potato. Everyone had the same story -- it was just a local potato, baked and served. When I can afford it, I will go back to Turkey (wonderfully fascinating country and people) and find that variety of potato. I will become an exporter, or a grower, or whatever it takes. I will live on the Turkish potato, baked.
My husband agrees it was an incomparable potato, but after 4 years has begged me not to talk about it anymore...
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I, too, think about one baked potato I ate about 10 years ago.
It was at some mall eating area in Edinborough, Scotland. The skin had the right crunch, the potato had the most potato-ey flavor I ever tasted, the butter was fresh, and the cheddar cheese was just a wonderful cheddar.
When I talk about this wonderful potato that I had 10 years ago, people's eyes glaze over. It's so nice to feel understood here on Chowhound.com
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I mentioned a cherished potato incident (best boiled potato ever) I shared with my mother when I spoke at her funeral and was shunned by some of her friends who apparently didn't find it serious or dignified enough for the occasion. It most certainly was, if you knew my mother. The immediate family loved it.
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As if it was about her 'friends', and not your memories of her. I am sure your mom would've loved the story.
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My sister-in-law said I captured her to a "T". That was nice. The "friends" were horrible anyway.
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Upon reflection, I must add a dish that I had many times, but have not had since.
In Gulfport, MS, there was a tiny restaurant on Pass Road, not too far from Hewes Ave., named Magnusen's House of Seafood. It was tiny and had a hole in the roof. Their fried shrimp are the paradigm, by which all fried shrimp shall ever be judged. For a shanty, and it was such, the food was not inexpensive. The "shrimp plate" with fries and some toast points was about $8.00, and this was in the '60s. Still, those shrimp were the absolute best, with none others really coming close.
I graduated from high school with the cook/owner's nephew, and at a reunion begged him for his uncle's recipe. He did his best, but even my chef-wife could not recreate the magic, though she came close. Even the top chefs in the Deep South have yet to get close.
Two other dishes, though the same, but different, were the pancakes on the L&N RR, back in the '50s. We did a long rail journey, and had the pancakes in the dining car. Wonderful, just wonderful. Many years later, in the early '60s, we stopped at a tiny breakfast restaurant/beach shack in Port St. Joe, FL. Their pancakes still haunt me, like those on the L&N.
Cannot recall what I chose 399 posts back, but will check. Hope that these are not repeats of then.
Hunt
[Edit] OK, looked back up-thread and Magnusen's was mentioned. Sorry to beat a dead horse.
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Guess I'm a late comer but I can think of a few things -
1) when I was a child my aunt would make a cake for every birthday and holiday - it was always the same cake, a Daffodil Cake - tall, light sponge cake dusted with powdered sugar - sometimes made in a 13x9 type pan, split horizontally and filled with homemade lemon filling. I always wished for a store bought cake (often as kids we don't appreciate good things -what I wouldn't give to have her walk through a door today with one of those cakes - I can still taste it.
2) Hot Dogs from Coney Island in New Castle, PA - I get 2 "with everything" and fries with everything every time I go back home. The restaurant is still in business - I remember going there as a child with my mother - that's at least 55 years ago. What makes it is the chili sauce which isn't typical chili. I think it's ground meat, chili powder, paprika and something to add body and I swear (don't laugh) it's coffee grounds. I've tried to reproduce it and I can get close - but no cigar! I love those dogs!
3) Again, a childhood memory. My mom used to take me to town shopping for back to school cloths and Christmas shopping (twice a year trip to shop). On those special occasions we'd go to The Italian Spaghetti House on Washington Street in New Castle. We never ate spaghetti (we were Italian) but we had the best hot roast beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy I have ever eaten. I've never had one as good as they were and I have fond memories of them to this day. The place closed years and years ago but the memory lingers!
There are other things but these are from my childhood and my hometown and so they are special.
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a buttermilk pie made in someone's home but served in a little small town restaurant- It was not flat like most recipes, but had quite a few egg whites and was high. It did have sort of a more solid bottom layer, but it was still all one and not defined in two layers. It was so good.
also my grandmother made olive oil pickles-starting with big dill pickles and slicing them. It had whole allspice in it.
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I spent a summer living in Hong Kong in 1992 --in Shen Zhen in the New Territories and every night I would walk out to the local food stalls on the street and get this crepe thing. I have no idea what the name was in Chinese, but it was essentially a thicker spongy/moist crepe and wen it was hot they would smear it with salty butter, then filled it with coarse sugar, sweetened condensed milk and peanut butter and rolled it up. It was INSANE and I could not get enough of these things. I tried to make it at home, but I could never get the crepes right (either too pancakey or too thin and crispy). The crepes were so moist and had an almost mochi-like sponginess. Sigh.
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Maybe they were made with rice flour? Have you tried that? They sound wonderful.
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Although I have had many fantastic and memorable meals in my life, there are two childhood memories that I think about every time I see this post.
The first is Kaiser rolls. When I was a child growing up in East New York Brooklyn in the 1950s, my father would take my sister and me to the Jewish bakery on Sunday mornings after church. We would go inside to where the ovens were and we would get a large brown grocery bag filled with piping hot Kaiser rolls, which had just come out of the oven and were handled gingerly by the baker as he put them in the bag. This was in the winter, and the car was freezing cold, and I would get to hug the bag of hot rolls all the way home, smelling their yeasty, just-baked aroma. And they were delicious, split and buttered with crackling crust and billowy interior. I now bake my own Kaiser rolls since anything you can buy is a pale imitation with a flaccid crust and gummy interior. Though the rolls I make are delicious, they just can't compare with the ones I remember.
The other taste memory I have is barley sugar lollipops. Although I have seen them around from time to time, they are all flavored. The barley pops I remember had a very simple, pure taste, which I assume was just the taste of the caramelized barley sugar. I don't know much about candy-making, so I am not sure if, in fact, that is how you would make a barley sugar lollipop, but I would know the taste if I ever had it again!
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That brings back memories - my father would also take me to the local Jewish bakery (Green & Freedman's) on weekends here in Boston to get fresh rye bread and bulkie rolls. I can still remember the heavenly, yeasty smell of the place...
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My first thought for this thread is halvah, a nut-butter based confection that I had a few times as a young child in Ankara, Turkey (my USA family was there due to my father's Air Force career). My parents didn't get us this. Instead, my little sister and I (each pre-schoolers) were given some by a generous Turkish construction guy who gave us his halvah from his lunch. If you've had it, you know that the texture is very distinctive, moist but crumbly at the same time, and very sweet.
So for decades after that occasion, I had no idea what that stuff was. I didn't know how to name it, could barely find words to describe it, no one could figure out what I was describing when it would come up every so often. And then, after 25 years, I was at a New Year's party during my study abroad year in Germany, and it was like a revelation to find this stuff there. I had almost persuaded myself that I was misremembering something.
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You brought back great memories with your post on halva. I was born in East Africa and it was a great treat to get halva, which was made on the Kenya coast by Arabs. It was studded with almonds and was really yummy. I have only had pale imitations here in Canada.
Also on the Kenya coast - tender coconuts. The street vendor would knock off the top with a machete and you would drink the juice, then eat the flesh with a spoon that he fashioned out of the top that he had knocked off.
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Thanks for your great stories in return. I left Turkey when I was about 5 or 6 years old, so the memories retain a kind of magical and very intense quality. I can hardly imagine what Kenya must be to you.
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I actually lived in Uganda. Another supposed halva story: family friends in Uganda owned an Indian restaurant, and they used to make a sweetmeat that was a thin white disk that was really delicious. Another Indian friend tells me that it was a type of halva, though I tend to doubt it as the texture was totally different from the halva I was used to. I have never been able to find it again. I asked a few Indian restaurants, but they did not have a clue about it.
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Sundesh maybe? A Bengali halva-ish milk sweet?
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Dunno, but thanks for the suggested name. I should look for it when next I am in Toronto (large Indian community there); will be there at the end of June.
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No Indian sweetshops in the Capital of our great land, the true north strong and free?
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There are quite a few, but I have not been able to find the stuff. I actually gave up some years ago. This thread resuscitated the memory and the desire to tittilate my tastebuds once again.
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Our sis-in-law is from Kolkata, I'll ask her for a recipe. It takes a half gallon of milk as I recall. The best sesame halva I've had recently was imported from Turkey - they also have something called pismaniye, which is like sesame candy floss in little chunks, pulls apart into sheets, sort of like eating sesame fibreglass insulation - a strange and wonderful eating sensation.
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I wonder if it isn't semolina halvah (irmik helvasi), from your description of it being crumbly and moist. The problem may be that everyone makes their irmik helvasi a little different so it may be hard to recreate. Here's a recipe though:
http://www.giverecipe.com/semolina-ha...
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Another faint possibility, given this happened in Africa (and regrettably, one that diminishes the chances of finding the sweet outside of the area); I undersand that there is a havlah like confection common in parts of africa that is made from the seeds the watermelon and similar plants (the same sort of seeds used to make egusi (melon seed) soup) Maybe it was that.
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an (hopefully) amusing anecdote:
was with 2 buddies (one a NYer the other Israeli)in Fez, Morocco. We decided we wanted a sweet something after dinner, it was our 1st few days of a month in morocco, so we thought halwah would be a perfect choice. We rounded up the 2 boys who decided they were going got be our runners, and told them we wanted halwah. off the ran, beckoning us to follow. We get to a bakery. there are cakes and cookies but not what we are looking for. We tell them "no- we want halwah, halwah" they shrug and run to anotehr shop with confections and cakes. "NO - HALWAH, we want HALWAH" we say. another shop, same story, they getting more confused and us more frustrated.
what did i learn that day? - Halwah is the arabic word for "sweet" (and they don't have the sesame dessert in morocco)
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Along the same lines, if, while I was living in East Africa (and spoke Swahili) you asked me for "chai tea", I would have given you plain tea. "Chai" is Swahili for tea.
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chai is hindi for tea - and probably was sanskrit too.
"tea" comes from the chinese word - also exported around the world w/ the producy.
i assume, but have not researched, that tea and chai share the same root word, and there was a simple linguistic shift from the one to the other
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Chai is turkish for tea as well. I ordered a chai here and got this milky spicy stuff and wondered why I didn't get tea.
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I love this thread so much. I have cried I am so happy at some of your loving memories!
here are mine:
1. Fethiye, Turkey, 2000. There was pide shop called Pizza 54 or 57 or something, some number. They had a vegetable salad that was something bright red and finely chopped. I have no idea what it was!!! It was too firm to be tomatoes and not crunchy like capsicum or chillies, there was onion and it was dressed in oil and there was some chilli but the main ingredient is a mystery. We called it The Red Stuff. It was bright red, it was intense and spicy and sweet and just delicious. It was so good, we had it every day we were there. On our last day we bought a plastic container and asked them to fill it. We ate some on the beach at Oludinez and ate the rest with beautiful fresh bread on route to our next stop. After we came home, we lived in the Turkish part of Sydney for years but never saw anything like it again. The shop was very popular with travelers so if you were there and have any ideas, please let me know.
2. Somewhere near The Pantheon in Roma is a little restaurant with a crappy wooden veranda out the front. Inside it is much fancier and I had the most amazing spaghetti marinara, as in seafood. Razor clams, little fat mussels, beautiful fish and prawns in a sauce like no other. Italians do have the best food in the whole universe don;t they? Well, I think so (until I get to France, Hong Kong, Britain - joking!) If you think you know this restaurant too, let me know. I think maybe they specialised in seafood because we had swordfish carpaccio, my husband had a seafood lasagne and I had my extraordinary marinara. I have to add that I order spaghetti or fettucine marinara almost every time I eat Italian. And definitely when I go somewhere new, it's how I measure them, so i have eaten a lot of them. I also grew up in Sydney's little Italy and nothing has ever come close. It really does haunt me.
hb
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Gee, only what? Five or six weeks late with an answer? I suspect the salad you had in Turkey (#1 memory) is for a traditional Turkish red onion salad. Here's a pretty good recipe at this website:
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Turkish-Onion-Salad-241940
If you want it to come closest to what you had in Turkey, be sure to use sumac and not lemon juice. I get mine from World Spice (worldpsice.com)
http://www.worldspice.com/spices/0171...
Lemon juice sort of approximates sumac, but no cigar in my book. Plus, the sumac will intensify the color of the red onions. Be very careful what kind of knife you slice the onions with. Do NOT use a carbon steel blade (stainless or ceramic are best), and for the most uniform results use a mandoline if you have one. You want the onions sliced really thin. Fresh new red onions that haven't been on the shelf for a long time will deliver the best flavor. Aging the salad for a while before serving is critical. My chef-housekeeper (when I lived in Turkey) used to "sweat" the onions in a lot of salt to draw off any bitterness and to soften them, then rinse them and proceed pretty much as the recipe directs. And occasionally she would serve it with a "collar" of orange supremes.
I hope this is what you remember. Sure sounds like it to me. If it is, enjoy!
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It might also be "ezme" which is a common meze in Turkish restaurants. It's raw and involves tomatoes, and is usually bright red and really spicy. Have a look:
http://www.turkishcookbook.com/2006/0...
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I thought about that but dismissed it because the OP says the dish did not taste like it had any tomatoes in it and that it was too firm to be tomatoes and not crunchy enough to be red bell peppers or chiles. Since the onions in this dish lose most of their crunch from being marinated in salt, I figured this would probably be the thing, though normally the onions are not minced fine. But it's not impossible. Who knows? '-).
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Deep fried chunks of sturgeon w/ icy shots of vodka; back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR!
A rapu fest (crawfish party), by the midnight sun, w/ icy Korskinkorva vodka, back in Helsinki.
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I see a theme developing here...
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A Bolivian churasco w/ pisco sours. I miss going into a Bolivian supermarket, drinking a cold beer while I shop and coming out w/ a six pack of .5 l. bottles of rum. I miss taking my own bowl and utensils to the open air market and eating fish stew for breakfast at 6 am to beat the heat of the day.
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Damn bob, now you got me thinking. I really miss the open air markets. The fresh North Atlantic shrimp (just like Maine shrimp), monk fish, cod , crabs, herring and whale meat at the open air market in Stavanger, Norway. The market in down town Helsinki, where one could buy false morels (poisonous, if not boiled or dried), chanterelles, crayfish and pirraka.
Especially the huge open air markets in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The strong smell of the meat market where we'd buy huge, whole, beef tenderloins for 5 bucks, chickens that tasted like chicken (with the feet still attached), myriads of kinds of potatoes, tropical fruits and fish from the Amazon. Damn I can't wait for II Little Keg to get a job in South America, so I can retire down there.
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Simple as it gets - I had an ear of corn at a country fair in Canada many years ago which on reflection was perhaps the best thing I have ever tasted. The variables are so few - corn, boiling water, salt, butter, a sunny day - and yet I've never experienced it in quite the same way again.
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They put sugar in the water in Iowa---supposed to keep the sugar in the corn IN the kernels.
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I always add sugar for my corn. Just a touch and it makes all the difference in the world. Just delicious sweet corn.
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We eat that corn every August at our cottage, 6 hours northeast of my home. The rest of the year, I live in the southernmost part of Ontario, which is also known for sweet peaches and cream corn. My mother always put a splash of milk, a dash of salt and a dash of sugar in the pot with the water and corn, brought it all to a boil from cold, then turned off the water and let the corn sit until we were ready for it. Most people slather it with butter and salt, but I find it tastes so good that a little salt is more than enough. If the corn isn't very tasty, some lime juice and some chaat masala really kicks it up, Indian style. When perfectly in season, just picked and still warm from the sun, there's nothing like that corn. It's a mix of vegetable, starch and candy. Mmmm.
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We had a cottage in Quebec. When Dad and I would go out to buy the corn, Mom would put the water on. We'd have a table spread with newspaper waiting. We'd get the corn fresh picked (as in, the kid selling it would run into the field, and come back with 13 ears), Dad would hightail it back to the cottage, and we'd all shuck it like crazy. Then into the pot - with just a splash of milk - and serve with just a bit of salted butter. Crazy good!
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the milk thing we did too.
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Us three. Or a bit of sugar. Alka dear, remember when corn was cornier and less sweet? Wish someone would grow an older varietal (real butter and sugar, maybe).
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I have read elsewhere that corn is now being bred more and more for sweetness (at first I thought it was my tastebuds failing). I really miss the "old" corn taste too, so I guess that qualifies as a food that haunts me. I keep trying to find varieties that still have that something something, but we have such a limited selection available in Vancouver proper...
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It would be nice, wouldn't it? By the way I remember having some fantastic raspberries in a motel just outside of Victoria when I was a kid - the place came with a kitchen and my dad and mom cooked dinner for the first time in a couple of weeks (we had driven from London to LA and then up the coast, went back by way of the Rockies and as far as Saskatoon, then through the northern US). Steak, bread, and berries never tasted better.
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You've just reminded me that I had another "haunt" last night -- raspberries the SO brought back from him mum's garden on Vancouver Island that hadn't been washed or refrigerated. Reminded me so much of going next door to the neighbour's when I was a kid and eating raspberries right off the cane. Darn near as good...
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I remember these as being big and dark dark red. Most of my good memories have food in there somewhere! (It was also wonderful to be in the coolness and back in our home and native land after being through the desert and up from LA - in July - in an unconditioned car!)
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There used to be a pizza truck at MIT in Cambridge in the 80's near building 10. they had the best pizza. The cheese was tangy and the crust chewy. It was amazing! I can almost still taste it.
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walking around South Beach in Miami, probably a couple of blocks off the beach, hungry wandered into a "bodega", small convenience store with prepared foods and a makeshift lunch counter, and i ordered the Sopa de Jaiba / Crab Soup. I think it was pumpkin and crab, but what I know for sure is it was bright orange and kind of creamy (but not from cream?) and was full of clumps of shell on crab legs, it was amazing and I went back a couple times before i left but I guess it was a daily special....It was truly one of the most delicious things I ever tasted.
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It was possibly orange and creamy from the crab fat from the main shell. Has a a slightly pumpkiny taste.
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When I was in Japan, my friends used to take me to an Okinawan-themed bar. Every time, we ordered umi budo, which translates to sea grapes. I have never been able to find them anywhere else. In fact, they were hard to find in Tokyo! Anyway, umi budo is maybe a type of sea weed and it has these little bubble type things at the end (the grapes) that kind of burst in your mouth. It was kind of like a seaweed tobikko or something. I live in Hawaii now and told my Japanese friends about them (they hadn't heard of them either) but they tried to pick some seaweed that they thought was what I had meant. WAY OFF. I miss it!
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like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oval_sea_grapes,_Caulerpa_racemosa_var_clavifera,_at_5_meters_depth.jpg
http://www.alibaba.com/product/ph1014...
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Two ends of the spectrum to add my $0.02 to this fabulous post...
Flushing, New York, 1967: On Union Street there was a Daitch Shopwell supermarket. Next door was a little Chinese take-out joint. They put good hot-dogs inside of egg rolls, and served them with the nice, hot mustard. As a ten year old child, I was thrilled by the combination of my then-two-favorite-foods; egg rolls and hot dogs! (Little did I know that now, for the past 18 years, I've *owned* Chinese restaurants, have tried to re-create that experience, and haven't been able to do it...) (P.S., that being said, for kattyeyes and JungMann, it's going to be a little while before I develop the "Reuben-Filled Egg Rolls" we've been talking about.)
On the other side (the de-luxe side) of the spectrum, the Confit de Canard at the long-gone Le Coq Hardi restaurant in Ridgefield Connecticut was one of the most complex flavors I'd ever tasted. I've tried to contact the chef years later but to no avail -- and he was a young man at that time. Perhaps another 'hound knows where Carl Wright went?
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Do you mean Union Turnpike?
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Lobster with brussel sprouts at Mesa Grill. The sprouts were INFUSED with lobster flavor in a way I have never tasted them infused with anything. And they were perfectly crunchy. I"m still baffled at how perfectly they pulled off the infusion. If I could cook brussel sprouts this good, I'd cook them everyday.
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Many, many years ago I had sturgeon for the first (and only) time in Khazikstan. LOVED it. Alas I live in the desert and any fresh fish can be a challenge to find much less sturgeon.
The sturgeon was grilled on veggie leaves, it was during the summer and I remember glancing fondly at the leftovers until someone at the dinner party took pity on me and passed the plate. They have it regularly over there so I was told.
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Look above; I miss the sturgeon too. The shashliki as well.
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ok - one more (I just started reading this thread). In my home town was a drive up burger joint called Frosty's. It was only open in the summer (this is in Northern Montana) and had the absolutely best burgers, crinkle cut fires (maybe they fried them w/ bacon?) and shakes. I rarely get home anymore, but the last time I was there the place was still open and the the food was still as excellent. I only go home in the summer as the winter is just too brutal.
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My father went to his grave still attempting, never succeeding, to make a coconut cream pie with a crispy, not soft meringue top that we experienced once in a little Texas cafe in the middle of no where. I think I have the secret (bake it separately), but it isn't nearly as good as that perfect pie was.
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I have two things. The first is a bruschetta I had at - of all places - Pizza Hut in Kifissia, Greece. It was warm with I believe olive tampanade, creamy fetta and garlic. I've tried to replicate it but have not been able to do it. We used to go there after work and have these with some good beer! If anyone has the recipe, please feel free to forward. ;-)
The second is a type of mushroom fettuccine from a little side cafe near the Le Meridian Etoile Hotel in Paris. It got to where they didn't even need to ask what I wanted for dinner. I searched on Google Earth and it may of been at the Le Ballon des Ternes, but I would sure like to have the recipe!!
Yeah, I know I had each of these more than once, but since I have never been back to Greece or France, those 2 items still haunt me.
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boyzoma, the french place is so pretty! http://www.bestrestaurantsparis.com/r...
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Bruges Belgium, age 18, first night on first trip to Europe. Late dinner. Oversized antique silverware. The first course was a bouchee aux champignons (aka vol-au-vent). The best thing I had ever tasted. Flaky puff pastry standing tall with a hole down the middle, overflowing with a creamy white wine mushroom sauce. I will never forget weilding the heavy silver knife and fork to cut this delicacy. Delicious!
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I think I had that dish in Saint Pierre et Miquelon a French island off Newfoundland back in 1985. I was on a trip with my parents, after the bouchee we had steak au poivre, asparagus with hollandaise. For dessert there was a peach covered with sugar but when you picked it up it was a CAKE Donut with a square void inside filled with peach flavoured cream! That peach cake thing has stuck in my mind for decades everything we ate back in Newfoundland tasted awful after that meal in St Pierre. When I die I'm asking for that peach thing from the nearest angel.
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Durian cendol at a particular place in Singapore. You can buy cendol at a few places in the US, and you can probably buy durian cendol, but the place I'm thinking about was my favorite in Singapore and it's never going to be duplicated here.
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Kyivsky torte. It is made only in Kyiv, Ukraine. I first had it in the 1980's. It is a layered cake, with rich buttercream, hazelnuts, and meringue layers. Its texture is what makes it so unique.
Apparently, the recipe was "discovered" at a cake factory when one of the workers made a mistake in the ingredient mix. Other cities have tried to duplicate the recipe, which is "top secret", but the original is still the best.
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Cinnamon: been there, done that and you are so right. It's YUMMY! tThe mojo sauce is brushed on lightly after the butter and before the Guava jelly. We used to stop there often after fishing the Glades. Was always what I got with cuban cafe con leche.
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Got several though this whole thread is making my mout water.
1. Wolfies resturant in Ft. Lauderdale FL back in the mid 60s made a great cake called Victory Cake. was 4 thin layers of dark chocolate cake that wasn't devilsfood but wasn't very sweet but in between and on top was vanilla frosting that was sweet but not sugary. Never before or since haveI had a cake like that. wen't there as often as I could to eat more. Moved to Oregon for 4 years and when I got home Wolfies was no more. I still dream about that cake.
2. Psole cooked in an Iron pot over an open fire at a solstice party in the sangre de cristo mts in New Mexico. I can make good psole but this was just wow. Hominy, jalepenos(just enough for a zing not hot),fresh killed kid goat, garlic,cumin and who knows what else. I ate so much I had to nap and missed a lot of a great party. (The tequila I drank with lunch might have had to do with the nap too:)
3. Rose D"Urso's pasta. growing up across the stree from an old country Italian was great. Even tho she taught me to make tomato "gravy" mine just isn't the same.
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Someone just gave me what I think is a sweet pickled red cherry pepper that she got in the deli section at Jewel. It was delicious. I went to Jewel to get some yesterday and my Jewel doesn't carry them. I am off on a search to find them. There was something that I bought off the shelf that sort of looked the same but did not taste the same at all. It started out sweet when you chewed then gave off some heat at the end. Yummy!
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I have very fond memories of the Wolfie's (actually was below Ft. Lauderdale, at (I think, 173rd St. in Golden Beach) and also the one on 21st st. in Miami Beach. What those restaurants had that I have never had at any other restaurant was a breakfast more delicious than I can express...endless baskets of fresh baked (still warm) rolls and danish pastries. Yum! We used to get them with an order of lox and cream cheese...YUM!
We also got very delicious kaiser rolls, just baked in a Jewish bakery in Bradley Beach, which was a big summer town for people from North Jersey and Brooklyn! No more!
Lastly, I wish I could get iced cream made like what was made by a small chain on the Jersey shore, called Kohrs. They were in Asbury Park, and I think Seaside Heights. Kohrs still exists, but they sold to someone else who changed the formula. It was light as a feather...whipped, I guess, and they had flavors like vanilla/blueberry with tons of real blueberries swirling around. Makes me sad that nobody makes this stuff anymore.
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actually, just remembered that the restaurant on 173rd st. was called Rascal House, not Wolfie's. Wolfie's was the correct name for the one on 21st St. and Collins Ave.
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My mind immediately goes back to three meals I had as a child travelling with my family in our native Turkey:
1) Caught-on-the-spot freshwater trout in a butter sauce. That was it. It melted away in my mouth. My sister and I ate it at this small outdoor restaurant I couldn't relocate if I tried..We looked at each other in disbelief about how heavenly good it was as the adults chatted away.
2) The Alinazik kebab we had in Gazientip while travelling in the north of Turkey. We asked the locals to point us to the best restaurant in town and they did not let us down. It was succulent pieces of minced lamb kebabs that broke apart gently in your mouth served over this cloud of sweet eggplant puree , all topped with melted butter and paprika. We thought we had died and went to heaven. I have had this kebap outside of Gazientip but never the way it tasted in that tiny restarant.
3) Stuffed eggplant (dolma) that I had a distant relative's little house in the mountains . We were visiting and she insisted on feeding us. I have dolma all the time but have never had it like that again. It was cooked by a woman who had never left her village and she had been cooking it for so long it had just achieved absolute perfection! That, and she was the butcher's wife so she had first pick of all the fattiest tastiest cuts of meat. The dolma was made from delicate eggplants, tomato, rice, parsley and coarsely hand-minced lamb. The flavour was amazing! I couldn't really tell you what made it so perfect... something about the ratios, the fresh ingredients, her experience, but I still drool just thinking about it...
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You're really making me drool! I've had similar experiences when visiting Turkey. I've found that Turkish food here doesn't compare to what I get in Turkey. Something about the produce here makes it a bit "off"; the produce just tastes different. Eating is one of my top things to do when visiting family in Turkey, and the Halas (aunts) oblige!
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I was only in Turkey once, and my most indelible taste memory from that trip is of marinated anchovies. That's one of my absolute favorite foods, and those were among the best I've ever had anywhere, right up there with the ones in Sicily.
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I've never had marinated anchovies in Turkey before.. it sounds delicious. Were you in the Black Sea region? Their love for anchovies is a bit of an ongoing national joke.
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Istanbul.
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Yes it's true. It just tastes different in Turkey. Even without cooking, the fruits and vegetables always taste amazing to me... I'm flying out in a week's time and CANNOT WAIT (to eat heh). I just talked about the restaurants and distant relatives because those are the ones that :"haunt" me, but my immediate family, mostly the teyzes in my family, feed me extremely well while I'm there too.
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When I was a little girl, my parents were traveling through Italy, and we stayed in Rome. We ordered a cheap meal from a street cafe on the way back from Vatican City, and I remember my Mom ordered a pasta dish with a putanesca sauce that I have yet to replicate. I've tried many recipes for putanesca, but nothing tastes quite like the memory of this one.
Another is street food in the Philippines. I'm really picky about the food I eat, and I won't eat any offal or oddities like balut, but there was a street cart vendor who would travel around with his wok, and park at a corner and fire it up. In the hot oil, he'd fry up fish balls. We paid 10 centavos per fish ball, and he'd skewer them and dip them in a sauce of your choice. My preferred sauce was always the sweet and spicy chili sauce, and to this day I crave those things. I haven't had them since I visited Manila, and I wish I knew what they were called so I could search for them at the local Asian stores here.
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Spanish mojama. Impossible to find outside of Spain. Also Valencian fideua, another longshot outside of Spain.
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A sandwich I had in Italy: Two slices of buttered crust-less thin bread (almost like Arnold bread), sauteed mushrooms, thinly sliced hard-boiled egg and farm-fresh ham. Heaven. HEAVEN.
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In the mid-sixties, there was a patisserie directly across from the entrance to a building where I had a morning class at the Université de Grenoble. When I came out of class at about 11, the baker was just taking his wondrous apple-filled pastries out of the oven. There were a couple of tables out front where we could sip at a Pschitt Limon until the pastry had cooled enough to eat. There are any number of people I would kill for another taste of that pastry.
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I used to work in a hospital in the late 70's, and every Friday morning the cafeteria used to bake Chelsea buns. They were wonderful straight out of the oven.
Yes, I know, this was hospital food, but it was great....and I was young !
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Can you imagine a hospital baking ANYTHING these days? Doubt it, Ralph. Haven't had a Chelsea bun in a month of Sundays - there was a little bakery in Thedford, ON we used to get them from on our way to the cottage. Miss that.
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actually, buttertart, when my mom was in hospital in fort myers, florida, i became well-acquainted with the hospital's cafeteria. the food was good and they actually DID bake things -- pies, cakes, cookies, pastries (and they were good, too).
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That's nice - my thankfully so far limited exposure to hospitals up north doesn't include house-baked goods. They would be a small, good thing under the circumstances.
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comfort anywhere it might be found -- even in a slice of blackberry pie.
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Yes indeed.
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Two things...
1. Amazing bread I ate on a brief stop in the Azores when I was about 20.
2. The sweetest, juiciest orange I ever tasted when we finally made it to California during a wild and wooly road trip.
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A Bloody Mary in the Santa Cruz, Bolivia airport made w/ fresh tomatoes.
Oh......that reminds me, the time I was detained in Bolivian customs when I returned to claim our baggage that missed the flight from Miami. Our kid's stuffed animals & toys were in Army surplus duffle bags. Fidel Castro was about to give a speech and they wouldn't let me out. I slipped the guard a $20 bill, asked him to get me 2 .75 liter bottles of Ducal beer and keep the change. I pulled up a table and chair and listened to Fidel harangue for over 2 hours as I sat there 40 feet away watching him through a plate glass window. I was smiling like a Cheshire cat, sipping my ill gotten brews. Beer has never tasted so good. god a few saltenas on the side too. Nice guard.
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This will probably sound exceedingly strange, but there are only two things that I still think about all these years later.
One was a pizza my family had in Michigan when we were on vacation to Mackinak Island. We stayed on the mainland where it was cheaper and took the ferry over to the island each day. In the evenings, we'd be back on the mainland and go into town for dinner. One night we stopped and had pizza at this tiny little place - it was thin crust - and truly the best pizza I've ever had. Then we bought fudge. :D
The second one is (and please don't laugh at me) is from a little bait shack on the lake by the beach where the boat rentals are at Buckhorn Lake State Park (the lodge) in Kentucky. My brother and I were playing by the lake, and got tired and hungry, so my dad took us over by the boat house and we got sodas and a grilled cheese sandwich. I have never frorgotten that sandwich. Odd how a grilled cheese sandwich can be memorable - but I've never been able to make one like it.
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Once in the early 70s when I was in Paris for a week I was served a pizza I can still remember vividly-
it was a deep-dish ("knife and fork") pizza with artichoke hearts, Gruyere and a creamy white wine sauce.
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A magic evening at Tagide, in Lisbon: the restaurant overlooks the Tagus River - we asked for a window table to enjoy the view, but the headwaiter said oh but you should sit away from the window to truly enjoy the view - he was right, we could see river, sunset, and Lisbon on two sides. A beautiful meal topped off by perfect cherries served in a bowl of ice and water - barely chilled - the best cherries of my lifetime.
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I had zuchinni stuffed with ground lamb and tomato sauce in a restaurant called Jacqueline's in Washington D.C.. It was so wonderful, that I asked to meet the chef. That was more than thirty years ago, and the memory of that dish still haunts me. I could probably make a valiant attempt to recreate it from memory, but I would never get it right.
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About 35 years ago, when I was server in a steakhouse in Laramie, Wyo, a customer gave me a coffee can filled with "top cream". I have never seem this kind of cream before and I thought it was curdled, but he assured me it was very "fresh" cream. Not knowing what to do with so much cream, I took it with me to my mother-in-law house where there was a family gathering. She took the cream and made the best darn vanilla ice cream i have ever tasted along with the recently picked wild blueberries. It was so rich and decadent and the taste of the fresh cream is something I have never tasted to this day.
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Deep fried "Mountain Oysters" at an Italian restaurant in El Centro, CA
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Rocky Mountain Oysters that I cut from the scrotum of the of the poor little calf; floured and fried in bacon grease on the ranch, in'75, 15 mi. from where I'm sitting now. Watermelon for dessert
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Smoked salmon belly sushi at Hama-Ko, SF.
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Two kinds of coconut spreads that I had as a kid; they were gifts to the family, but I can't recall from where or whom. The first was just dark, possibly toasted, coconut, made into a thick spread, and the second was like an orange-coconut marmalade.
A vanilla-flavored Italian ice, in a little paper cup, that had a darker, outrageously-delicious cinnamon-infused base. Purchased and devoured at Nellie Bly in Coney Island.
Amazing orange ice cream -- not orange-pineapple, just aromatic, creamy, delicious orange -- in Montreal.
The best raspberry pie ever, at a farmhouse restaurant in rural Quebec.
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More coming to mind...
A mild but incredibly savory cheese-based souffle over a langoustine/tomato sauce, made by a friend's mother while visiting them in France.
Also in France, a scoop of Roquefort gelato paired with a scoop of intense mixed-berry sorbet. Heavenly.
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This brought back a nice memory of the lemon ice we had growing up in the 50's. It was a brick building on the main road from Schenectady to Albany. So smooth, lemony and creamy.
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Where in Montreal was the orange ice cream? Havre aux Glaces ?
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Sitting on the stern of a 42' scallop dragger, back in Maine, and shucking and popping in my mouth the freshest possible raw scallops.
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Josta
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what is Josta?
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A fairly short-lived guarana soda made by (I think) Coke. Stuff got me through a lot of late nights in college before it disappeared. :)
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caffeine city I bet interesting
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It was a mellow but long-lived caffeine high compared to any other soda, and pretty tasty to boot. Kind of wish it were still around, so I could find out if it still tastes good to a palate with an extra decade or so of maturity. :)
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I have had a lobster and crab bisque that I have tried to replicate at home with little success. The crab bisque was at a local Italian restaurant and the lobster was at CraftSteak in Vegas. Really. really good. These are not cheap ingredients and it takes a fair amount of prep time so I haven't tried but a handful of times. Each time it was off in some way. Too thick and not enough flavor, good flavor but thin and the crab or lobster was chewy (over cooked). I will keep trying, but for now it eludes me.
jb
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What do you use to thicken the lobster bisque ?
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High Brow: Kobe beef at a teppanyaki restaurant in the Hotel Ana, Tokyo. The beef was beyond anything I've ever had and was actually surpassed by the appetizer, which was one huge shrimp per person, alive and jumping when it hit the grill. After finishing the body of the shrimp you were served the fried shrimp head, which was much better than I would have expected. An absolutely perfect meal.
Low Brow: Greek hamburgers from the Academy Grill (long gone) in Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania. Basically a hamburger patty, browned and then stewed with tomato sauce and onions, served on a roll with a shot of Greek chili (a bit like Cincinnati style) on top with cheap yellow mustard. For some reason it was best with chocolate milk.
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Mine was this magical thing I had once in Singapore about 12 years ago - based on internet research I think it's called a Golden Pillow (although I didn't know that name at the time) - a loaf of bread filled with curry chicken. You would rip off pieces of the bread and use it to scoop up the curry. SO GOOD. My LA Hounds do not know of anywhere here that this can be found. =(
http://www.goldenpillow933.com.sg/
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Real honest -to-goodness hand tossed caesar salad at a little Italian place in the village (NYC) that has since closed. My whole family still talks about that salad...
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Well, I've read this thread and I have to add mine...... I've travelled and eaten all over the world and there are three foods that absolutely haunt me.......
Jeager Schnitzel with cheese served at a small gasthaus called Mom's in Spangdahlem Germany. This is without a doubt the best meal I've ever eaten and I've had it a hundred times. It's not just the schnitzel, which is thick, and succulent, and OMG good with an incredible gravy and cheese, but the salad, the fries, the bread. It's the most amazing meal I've ever had.
Second would be the chicken kebab served at the Red Onion in Incirlik, Turkey. I've tried to reproduce this many times and just can't get it right. The bread, the veg, the chicken....all put together make a perfect storm of flavor and texture.
Third....I was in Washington D.C. on business and was staying at the Marriott Suites in Herdon, very close to Dulles. Connected to the hotel was the India Supper Club. I'm a sucker for minced lamb and the only item on their menu that had it was Badshahi Kofta Kurry. This was, hands down, the best curry lamb I've ever had. If I ever have to go back to D.C, I will get that every night. It was as good, if not better, than anything I've ever got anywhere else.
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I had a yogurt in Santa Cruz, can't remember the brand but it said Russian Yogurt ( but I think made locally). It was 12 years ago and I still miss it, despite having several very good local brands here in MA and making my own.
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One time and one time only a very good restaurant in our town had a Julia Child's night. It was around the time that the movie "Julia" came out. All the food was prepared from Julia Child's recipes. One of the dishes on the menu was Julia's Beef Bourguignon . There was obviously a lot of car taken when this dish was made. It was the most delectable dish that I ever had.
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Pear ice cream! I had it in Sweden when I used to live there and have never seen it since - I still long for it!
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When I was a kid growing up in Taiwan there was a bakery across the street that served these little ham cucumber and yellow cheese sandwiches. It was on white bread and they cut off the brown edges so it's just all white bread. That yellow cheese is to die for. I don't think it was made from pasteurized milk, I think it was from raw milk in those days. It was really soft and the flavors jumps out at you. now I go back to TPE and you know what, I look for that same sandwich and yes, they have it, but the yellow cheese is just dead and so lacking in flavor. I never found that yellow cheese ever again.
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I guess the first thing that comes to mind is a dish I had at The Presidents (now defunct) restaurant in Chicago probably a good 30 years ago. They made a superb dish called Prawns stuffed with mustard fruit, I assume split prawns with the mustard fruit stuffed inside, and then reclosed and then breaded (or battered -- can't remember) and fried. Served with a kind of mustardy sweet and sour sauce. It was succulent and flavorful. My old BF at the time, who was quite a cook, often tried to copy the dish with fairly good success, but it was never duplicated. And now they're gone. Pre-internet days, guys. :(
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Mehlka in a Tunisian hole in the wall in Cambridge, MA. Had it for dinner on a trip a couple years ago, have not seen it on menus elsewhere and can't find any recipes. It had eggplant, feta, all the classic ingredients in just the right combination.
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In the mid 70's I would travel to Portland Oregon and stay at an old central city hotel. It still had an elevator operator and big brass doors. For dinner, I always has thinly pounded abalone steaks wrapped around an Alaskan crab leg smothered with an orange cream sauce.
Before that, while in high school in western PA I worked at a local drug store. After work, I'd go to the local 'beer garden' and have a Italian hot susage on a hogie roll or on Fridays, a breaded & fried fish sandwich.
Menories..............!
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The Hickory Pit, a bbq place in Gravois Mills, MO back in the 50's and 60's had the most incredible sauce you could ever imagine. A secret Grady family recipe, it disappeared when the the place closed. Rumor has it Heinz bought it it with the agreement that it would never be marketed. I would kill to have a bottle again.
Bob
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The one food I really miss is a "Meatball on End" from Tony's Italian Restaurant in Middletown, N.Y. I've had it many more times than once, but now that I'm down South, there's nothing quite like it. It was really GREAT!
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Bacon and horseradish dip that I think Kraft made back in the '60's. It was sold in the refrigerated dairy section and came in a shallow metal container with a pull off top. (I had to be verrrry careful fingering out the last delicious bit, all around the bottom of the can.)
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I wonder if this is similar? http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/b...
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Have enjoyed falling into all your memories more than I can say. A few that came to mind for me were a dessert Gewurtztraminer somewhere in the Hunter Valley on a winery tour, a smooth coconut candy in Puerto Rico that crumbled just right in my teeth, shattering into soft particles, and a fresh baked cheese roll from the grocery store (they were never that good again). The cheese formed these gooey hollow places and the dough was light and soft.
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There was a restaurant in Tampa in the early 1970's whose specialty was what looked like a turkey leg. In reality it was three or four very large shrimp, tail on, packed around a crab meat stuffing, dipped in a light batter and quick-fried. You paired it with a Caesar salad made at your table and a pitcher of sangria. Except that I'm a klutz at frying, I'd try it myself. It's probably better just to savor the memory.
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When I was a kid, I'd sometimes go to our family business on a Saturday to "work". I was paid 1 cent for each bow that I made for holiday gift wrapping. My father would always take me out to lunch to the local diner. I remember walking hand in hand with him and being so happy. I always ordered the same thing: a hot dog, which was split down the middle and grilled and the homemade potato salad. The potato salad was freshly made everyday and served on iceberg lettuce. I can remember my father watching me devour a huge plate and say, "How is it that every time I bring you to work I actually loose money?" Happy memories of a great father.
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Red Mirinda - I had it in Thailand when I visited about four years ago (it was pretty much all I drank, hahaha!) and I have been searching for it ever since to no avail. I don't think it's stocked or imported into Australia :(
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I remember Mirinda from when I lived in Uganda (left 40 years ago), but I think the one I had was orange.
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Boxty at Bricin in Killarney, Ireland! It was so delicious, so perfect...We tried to find something close in many of the "Irish" restaurants in the " Irish" neighborhoods here in the lower NY area, but nothing. Nothing will ever be that perfect boxty from Bricin!!
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in the cruise port of mykonos they let you off in a downtown toursity area with lots of outdoor restaurants and shops - i would know the place if i saw it but can't remember the name.
my dad ordered this vegetable risotto that is the best thing i have ever tasted in my life - we all agreed on it's amazingness. cheesy, well-cooked, flavorful perfection!
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A little japanese candy that I had a couple of times as a kid...It was square and kind of had the texture of a loukoum, I don't remember the taste clearly so it would be hard to describe...But I do remember each was wrapped in clear and very thin rice paper wrapper that you could eat. They really looked like they were wrapped in plastic but the "plastic" melted in your mouth. They came in a small box about the size of a thick box of smarties. I have searched and searched, but since I don't even know the name and barely remember the look of the box, I'm afraid I will never get to eat them again. Still haunts me though...I really wish I could find them.
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Botan Rice Paper Candy is still available in some imported foods stores.
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thank you so much! Typing that name I've found I can order it!
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I think that's it, too. I had the same memory from a strange restaurant I went to once during a blizzard, and was pleased to find it again as an adult.
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I tried Cinnacredible Meijer cinnamon buns.. because I love cinnamon buns, but they were ABSOLUTELY horrible. Never again--obviously still cinnamon buns, but never CinnaCredible.. not so (in)credible.
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A breakfast burrito stuffed to the brim with amazing eggy, meaty, spicy Mexican goodness in Phoenix at some hole in the wall that I could never, ever find again. It's been about 7 years and I still think of that damn burrito.
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Memories (possibly faulty) of Les Foods Perdu.........
The World's Best Bacon (and sausage) made by a small, long-closed (by about 1986?) butcher shop/smoke house in Manchester, NH. Perfect balance among salt/sweet, cob smoke and "chew."
js
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Every year my girlfriend would make me a hazelnut tort for my birthday. Made from ground hazelnuts and covered in rich chocolate icing---- those cakes were intoxicating.
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Chocolate-covered cranberry clusters. The cranberries were not fresh, nor were they dried. They were some kind of processed, like a cordial, but less overly-sweet/syrupy and more gelatinous. They tasted like what little bites of dark-chocolate-covered cranberry sauce would taste like. Sooooo good.
The best (worst?) part of this? My mother had been at Target, a few days after Christmas, looking to score some discounted holiday decor, and saw a ton of these generic dark-green boxes on the shelf where all the overstocked/cheapo Christmas candy goes to die (and where 75% off Lindors occasionally lurk). So she bought a box, on a whim.
I've been stalking the shelves of Target every December for the last three years and I have not found anything like it. Any ideas on what it was? or know of any chocolatiers who make something similar?
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Slow braised whole hind legs of caribou in 45 gallon barrels. Twelve hours VERY slow cooking then add all the other vegs. for two hours. Sitting with a few dozen friends near Hudson Hope. Dancing singing story telling. BTW no herbs/spices/strange things in bottles. Just caribou and root vegs.
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Guerrilla Cookies! They were made in Madison, Wi back in the 70's. The baker that made them is taking the recipe to the grave with him. Iin a generous mood, I would call him eccentric. In a less generous mood, miserly and a nut job. He has his own bizarre reasons not to share. But there are people trying hard to recreate them without much luck. There is a website dedicated to recreating the cookie. http://guerrillacooking.blogspot.com/...
Honestly, it was incredible. Oatmeal-ish but so much more.
The fresh orange juice in Mexico. NOTHING like the blah stuff I drink here in WI. Frozen concentrate. Even fresh squeezed isn't close to the flavor of the oranges they used in Mexico. Even fresh Florida oranges don't come close.
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Chronollogically:
In the 60s, when I was still in high school, most days I ate delicious fish and chips for at Love's Lunch in Penticton, BC, Canada. Must have gained ten pounds that year and have never had 'em so good, anywhere since.
In 1975, I ordered red snapper Veracruz style (in Veracruz), in l976, and was just beginning to enjoy the most delicious fish I've ever eaten when the cook ran out yelling "Cruda! Cruda" and, after a struggle, got my plate away from me and rushed it back into the kitchen. She was returned it a few minutes later but NO WAY was that snapper as delicious once it had been thoroughly cooked! That was before sushi was widely popular and though I love the stuff it has never been as good as that raw fish in Veracruz.
In the 80's, I loved the zucchini sticks and dip at a fast food place in the food court at Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna, BC. Then, one day, they were gone!! No other zucchini stick has ever matched them and the few that came close didn't have that delicious dip.
In 1991, my husband bought a 200 gram can of Russian Caspian Sea beluga caviar, in Russia and brought it home to me. It cost him US $10, at the time. A few months later, on our 25th wedding anniversary, we sat at a picnic table in a park just north of Prince George, BC, surrounded by brilliant fall colors, and ate the whole can with a few water crackers and squeezes of fresh lemon. Unbelievably delicious.
In 2011, just a couple of months ago, I had a delicious pollo con mole in the Mayan town of Chamula (near San Cristóbal de las Casas, in Chiapas, Mexico). We had just visited the weird and wonderful pagan/Catholic church and our friend recommended the blue 'economica' cafe across the way. Never has mole come near the taste of this mole. I suppose I might duplicate the chicken with a good organic bird but that mole sauce already haunts me. There was no obvious taste of chocolate in it, for one thing, but it was absolutely delicious
It's interesting that I've traveled many places, including several times to China (and loved the food) but don't recall any other culinary experiences that fit this thread.
Oh, one more. The very first Cadbury Wunderbar I ever tasted, on a bus to Bella Coola, maybe 40 years ago. I've eaten quite a few since and they're still good but not one was as delicious as that first one.
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I love cooking gourmet food, but my list of bygone and haunting foods is entirely low-rent, various mementos of my 70s/80s processed-food childhood.
1. Coke and Pepsi with real sugar in glass bottles. i firmly believe that both factors are important. Luckily, Mexican Coke fills this void today.
2. Le Menu frozen dinners in the '80s. I have vague memories of wild rice pilafs, chicken in a cream gravy, etc...and you could keep the plates to re-use.
3. Banquet TV dinners twice the size of the tiny things sold today, and in tinfoil trays covered in foil. Much stronger, better and more food.
3-a. Banquet Polynesian Dinner (sweet-and-sour pineapple chicken), Western Dinner (beans 'n' franks 'n' yummy cornbread) and as I recall, Indonesian Dinner.
4. Orbit Soda with the little blobs of coloured gelatin floating in it.
5. Campbell's Frozen Soup and Sandwich. This was an item which was briefly rolled out, then quickly extinguished as sales were dismal. I loved them, darn it! There were combos like grilled cheese with tomato (natch), hot dog with vegetable soup and ham and cheese with I forget. They were so good, and they just vanished. Not that I can't make a soup and sandwich easily enough and a lot better quality, but in terms of flavors that stay with you, this really did.
I don't really want to sit around shoveling this stuff down day after day, but it sure would be nice to taste it again.
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I remember french fries that came in a sort of frozen sheet that you plopped into the toaster and then broke apart the individual fries. I loved those things but they weren't around for long. Early 1980's I'm thinking...
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The chewy icecream in Turkey. Strange, but fantastic!
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Coca-Cola 'on tap,' as best as I can figure. Had it in the Berlin train station and of course, haven't been back to Berlin. But holy moly, that was the absolute best Coke I've ever had . . . in fact I'd say the best soda I've had ever. I freaked out, got my husband, he freaked out, we went and found our friends, and made them come back and try it.
Man, I would do bad things for that Coke . . . . .
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Lovin' this thread....here are a few of my missing Canadian (Greater Vancouver) things....
Campbell's Chunky Cream of Mushroom Soup, seemed to have a sophisticated flavor.
Rainbow Ice Cream available at the Ice Cream Counter at Woolco (Burnaby, CA) in the 70's, other rare tastings at ice cream vendors around Vancouver and once located a 4 gallon tub at IGA in Langley, BC....
Catelli long macaroni
Purdy's Raisin Clusters
Jello puddin' pops with spokes person Bill Cosby
Loved the frozen yogurt pops too with the layer of chocolate? on the outside, they were kinda tart if I recall...
I'm afraid that the Pearson's Salted Nut Roll may disappear in California if we don't all jump onboard and start buying it when we can... :) thanks!
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.....totally got sidetracked with all the other things that I was missing to mention the one HUGE thing I'm missing in California.....what is the deal with not being able to find frozen (mini/bite sized) tart shells? They were a staple for me in Vancouver, Canada for making bite sized quiche and buttertarts, but I can't find them at all down here...
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I did grad school in south Florida. There were these shacks along the Tamiami Trail/Alligator Alley that sold smoked fish. Shrimp. swordfish, marlin, anything, really, and all wonderful.
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Strubbs brand brine pickled green roma tomatos. Soooooooo tasty!!! A farmers market near where I live used to sell it and then Whole Foods bought them out and this delicacy disappeared from their shelves. I truly miss it.
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The clam chowder at Georgie's Restaurant on the Oregon Coast. I think you can get it shipped but they can't include the ocean view.
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