Suburban Tasteland

A Sophisticated Palate

Several years ago, I lived on the sixth floor of a walk-up in Manhattan’s East Village. I shared our cramped three bedroom apartment with at least two other people at any one time, and occasionally their assorted hangers-on, as well. At nine feet by seven feet, my bedroom was only slightly larger than your average office cubicle, and my roommates’ bedrooms were only slightly larger. As you can probably imagine it’s difficult for human beings to cohabit peaceably under such dehumanizing conditions. And there was certainly no shortage of drama.

One of my best friends, who occupied one of the other bedrooms for about three years, was a source of regular irritation due to his habit of waking up at three in the morning all parched and proceeding to slake his thirst with whatever items were in our refrigerator, regardless of their owner. And invariably, those items tended to be mine.

I’ll never forget the time that I came home from work to face a sheepish apology from my roommate for having eaten the rest of my jar of Raspberry Polaner All-Fruit:

“Dude, I’m so sorry, but I ate the rest of your jelly last night.”

“What do you mean you ate the rest of my jelly? There’s no bread in this apartment.”

“I know, I know. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was so thirsty that I drank your jelly straight out of the jar.”

“Wait a minute- I’m just not understanding. How can you possibly satisfy thirst with jelly?”

“Dude!” he exclaimed as he collected his thoughts. Then more quietly, “Dude, there was no water in the Brita, and I didn’t have any Gatorade left. I really needed something sweet and liquid, and your jelly was the closest thing to that in our fridge.”

“You are an insane person.”

A few weeks later, I brought home a bottle of Guyanese banana soda that a co-worker was kind enough to specially schlep in from her Guyanese enclave way out in Queens. I was saving it for the weekend, so it languished in our fridge for a couple of days. But then, one day after work, I noticed it’s level had dropped about an inch. Of course, my roommate was the culprit. But this time, I was actually upset, as this soda was not something that I could just score down the street, and I certainly was not keen on drinking a banana soda that had traces of my roommate’s backwash.

A couple of months later, however, I enjoyed sweet, though unintentional, revenge. I used to occasionally get take-out from the Mee Noodle Shop on First Ave., a noodle joint that was purportedly a favorite of Allen Ginsberg’s and is now sadly closed. I would always get a noodle soup with steamed vegetables, and would typically eat all the noodles and most of the vegetables, but then still have a ton of leftover broth. For some reason, I would stow this broth in our fridge, rather than disposing of it, as if I would ever have any reason to consume the rest of it. And more often than not, it would remain in our fridge for weeks on end until someone had the fortitude to bust it open, and pour its putrifying contents down the drain.

So one day, I came home from work and decided that it was time to clean out our fridge. The first thing I noticed was that the formerly full container of broth, which had easily been in our fridge for the past six weeks, had been nearly drained. Just a few stray bits of noodle and a mushroom cap, the dregs of a dinner from weeks past, were lurking in a pool of broth at the bottom of the container. Perplexed, I called my roommate into the kitchen.

As he walked in, I held up the nearly empty container of broth with a quizzical expression.

“Dude, I’m so sorry,” he said with a look of shame. “I woke up in the middle of the night again, and I was so thirsty. That broth saved me.”

“Are you kidding me?! You drank the broth?”

“Please, I’m sorry.”

Then I started laughing. “Do you realize you drank broth that’s at least six weeks old?”

His expression turned from shame to horror. “Oh God, no!” he cried with a pained expression. “No, no, no!” he whimpered.

When he finally regained his composure, I inquired, “Just explain to me how you could drink a half liter of broth and not realize that it had gone bad. I really want to know.”

“Well, I did think that it tasted sort of funny,” he explained.  “But then, you’re always being adventurous and trying new things all the time. I guess I just assumed that this was something that my palate was simply not sophisticated enough to appreciate.”

—AC

Go Take Mofongo for a Walk

I wrote the following account of my experience with mofongo several years ago when I was still living in New York. The greasy spoon described below was called Spanish American Food, and has since closed. One warning- try not to read this while eating lunch, as some of the descriptions are especially foul:

The naked lightbulbs ringing the window of my neighborhood cuchifrito beckoned me to the porcine viscera displayed in its window. The lightbulbs highlighted every stringy tendon and shiny bulge of cartilage. The pig parts festered in yellow pools of oil and animal run-off in steaming hot plates. The interior of the window had a patina of grease and insect debris that formed a smeary halo over the vats.

I grabbed a take-out menu and scanned it hoping for some exotic item to savor. I was baffled by “old hen soup,” avocado milk shakes, octopus salad, and the endless list of fried organ meats. But my eyes were drawn again and again to the word mofongo with the inviting phrase "Try it!" listed beside it in parentheses. It sat all by itself on the menu, with no modifiers and no explanation as to its constituent parts- just that simple exhortation.

I sheepishly ordered a fried plaintain and slinked away ashamed that I lacked the courage to order something less appetizing. As I peeled away the foil around the plaintain, my mind kept fixating on mofongo. I said it aloud to myself. It was a fun word to speak- an almost nonsensical word that I would surely have delighted at as a child. But it did not seem to promise a dish that was the least bit savory.

I thought about mofongo over the next few months. I looked up mofongo recipes on the internet and found that most called for green, unripened plaintains and pork cracklin', or chicharron in a garlic sauce. I imagined this as the sort of peasant food that would fortify the body through an afternoon of sweating through a guayabera, while hacking away at stalks of sugar cane.

As I walked home from work one day, I was finally seized with the desire to have mofongo for dinner. I marched purposefully up the avenue towards the cuchifrito, ignored the window caked with fly wings and antennae and queued up for my order. Most of the customers seemed to be ordering cuban sandwiches and tripe mondongo soup. The sandwich press was constantly becoming more crowded and oily as the swiss cheese melted and rivulets of oil streamed down the sides of each hero roll.

Then it was my turn. "Mofongo, please." The counter man blinked in disbelief. He recovered and then told me that it would take about ten minutes to prepare. He then dispatched one of the countermen into the back to begin the preparation. Another customer, an aged man with gray stubble and leathery skin, sighed through his gums and what remained of his teeth "Aiii, mofongo! You'll sleep for days after eating that!" I laughed quietly and felt my cheeks flush.

During the next five to seven minutes the cuchifrito was filled with the din of pounding. It sounded like metal striking a wooden cutting board repeatedly. I was horrified as I imagined pig snout, pig tails, and pig hooves being manhandled into bacon bits for my mofongo. Later I realized that this was simply the sounds of the green plaintains being rendered into a mash.

Even at this late juncture, I was still grappling with the idea that chicharron, or pork cracklings, were to be a featured part of this dish. I figured that when worked into the plaintain mash, the most disgusting properties of the chicharron would be mellowed.

But then the counterman emerged from the back of the kitchen, sweaty and flushed from his labor, he reached over for one of the vats that contained what I had considered to be the most unholy and mysterious of all the animal parts. The vat was stacked to overflowing with dark brown, almost blackened, bark-like husks of pigskin, that concealed an inch thick layer of what appeared to be bubbly compartments of fat.

Then sounds of hacking followed by intensified pounding echoed throughout the establishment. The two other men behind the counter continued assisting new customers, pressing cuban sandwiches, and blending exotic batidos amidst the clamor. Finally after fifteen minutes a take home container was produced on the counter. Then one of those "we are happy to serve you" Grecian urn coffee cups was filled with a ladle full of a red soupy sauce dotted with slicks of yellow oil. I paid my $3.00 and scurried home anxious to try mofongo before I lost my nerve.

As soon as I got home, I went straight to the kitchen and got a spoon. I cautiously peeled back the light cardboard lid covering the foil container- the odor wafted up and quickly expanded to fill the entire apartment. I gagged slightly and opened the kitchen window to help clear the air. I peered into the container and saw that the mofongo had been shaped into a mini bundt cake mass. I took the cup of oily, garlicky tomato ooze and poured it over the mash. I dipped the very tip of the spoon into the fetid pile for a cautious bite. The plaintains were bland and starchy with no hint of the sweetness that I love in ripe plaintains. The pork crackling was not crunchy at all, but rubbery and unyielding. I had hoped the taste would be a cousin of bacon, but instead it tasted of salt and decay. The garlic sauce provided the strongest flavor, but it was a brutish garlic sauce that tasted of old oil- like oil that had been drained from previous meat-stacked hot plates to be given a second or even third life in soups and sauces.

The smell must have penetrated into the deeper interiors of my apartment. My roommate came bounding down the corridor.

"Dude!” he bellowed, “What is that awful smell?"

"That . . . is the stink of mofongo," I proclaimed, feigning an amused and cavalier attitude. "It's green plaintains with pork cracklings and garlic
sauce. I think it's  either Dominican or Puerto Rican."

"Well, that sounds utterly rank,” he declared. “Is it any good though?"

"No, it's awful- the smell reminds me of Dahmer's apartment."

"That's great, dude. But if it's so awful, then why are you still eating it?"

"I have to have a few more bites before it's condemned."

"Oh, so you think that by the third or fourth bite you might understand why the Dominicans like it?"

"That’s my hope,” I replied as I sighed wearily.

I dug in for three more bites recoiling with each dreaded spoonful. My roommate just laughed at me and walked away. Finally, I closed up the takeout container and triple bagged it. I tipped back some mouthwash and scraped at my tongue with my toothbrush. Then I headed out to the city trashcan on the corner of our block.

I had to take mofongo out for a walk.

Our apartment aired out about forty minutes later.

-AC

Extremism in the Pursuit of Trashiness is No Vice

Some folks might be insulted if one of their friends gave them a copy of “White Trash Cooking” for their birthday. But that gift, which was presented to me upon my 23rd birthday, ranks among the most thoughtful birthday gifts that I’ve ever received. For some reason, I felt compelled to bring “White Trash Cooking” into my former workplace in New York, and conduct a cubicle to cubicle version of the old classroom show ‘n’ tell. Among the oddities that I chose to highlight in my presentation to  each of my co-workers was a beverage recipe with the straightforward title “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up” and the following instructions and anecdote:

Pour a small bag of Tom’s peanuts into a cold Pepsi. Turn it up and eat and drink at the same time.

Raenelle told me that this was one of Betty Sue’s concoctions. She said: “But it’s so trashy she won’t own up to it!”

One of the reasons I focused upon this recipe is that as appalling as it is, I was nevertheless intrigued by it. As I’ve written previously, some of my favorite food and beveraging experiences are offbeat combinations of sweet and savory. And it was the one recipe in the entire cookbook where the originator actually felt enough shame about its trashiness that she tried to deny its ownership. Similar to Raymond and Connie Marble’s quest for the title “Filthiest People Alive” in John Waters’ movie Pink Flamingos, I wanted to assume the mantle of extreme trashiness and its concomitant shame if only for the brief span of time that it takes to down a Pepsi mixed with salted peanuts.

So I was surprised when my manager, who was a fairly colorful personality in an otherwise staid corporate accounting department, stated matter of factly that she had frequently enjoyed a slight variation of the “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up” during her childhood in Oklahoma. Her version involved a Dr. Pepper instead of a Pepsi, which sounded even trashier.

Although I was slightly disappointed that my manager had usurped any pretense that I had to extreme trashiness, I resolved to try her Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts variation.

So on one otherwise unremarkable Friday night, I decided to stir things up. I set off to the corner bodega and scored a can of Dr. Pepper and a small bag of Planter’s salted peanuts. I then emptied the contents of each into a pint glass and drank it down greedily. The cherry and prune notes of the Dr. Pepper blended surprisingly well with the salt and roasted peanut flavor, although I’m still not sure what to make of the unusual textural competition between the fizz of the carbonation and the crunch of the peanuts.

Recently, I discovered that far from being some sort of marginal white trash concoction, the “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up” actually enjoys a broad southern constituency as is evidenced by this hilariously disputatious thread on eGullet. And even stranger still, a not entirely dissimilar drink is enjoyed in some parts of the Middle East. The Lebanese enjoy a drink called jallab, which is a mixture of date syrup, rosewater, and pignoli nuts. In fact, the Lebanese Taverna serves the finest rendition of this that I’ve had. One wonders if one of the impassioned posters on the eGullet thread would recognize the kinship between these two beverages. Um, perhaps not. -AC

The Sweet and Savory Sublime

When I was a little boy, my parents would occasionally bring me along to their office building after school so that they could continue being insane workaholics- and so that I could ostensibly toil away on my homework unfettered by such distractions as Sega’s Alex Kidd in Miracle World or Randee of the Redwoods' latest bid for the Presidency.

But since my father is a doctor, and doctors tend to have waiting rooms piled high with People magazines, I actually spent most of my time flipping through “Star Tracks” and reading celebrity interviews. At that time, Luther Vandross had recently lost a ton of weight, so People ran an interview with him to inspire others to follow suit. Instead of finding inspiration in his successful weight loss program, however, I was awed by the so-called “Luther Burger,” a proprietary sandwich whose legend has apparently spread widely enough that it even merits an entry on the indispensable Snopes.com.

The “Luther Burger” is every fat little boy’s (and I most certainly wore Husky pants) concept of what the freedom that comes with adulthood must entail. That is, the freedom to dispense with a boring old hamburger bun, and instead enjoy your bacon cheeseburger as Yahweh surely intended . . . between two Krispy Kreme glazed donuts. There it is, the most sublime combination of sweet and savory since the Monte Cristo, or the Elvis with bacon for that matter (the latter of which, AK and I actually shared one time at Peanut Butter & Co. in New York).

Flash forward to a couple of years ago, when I found myself musing on the “Luther Burger” and wondering if I might conjure up my own sweet and savory food atrocity to bestow upon the world.

And then it hit me: French. Toast. Steak!

There, I said it.

What could be better than bathing a steak in a traditional french toast batter consisting of a couple of eggs, some whole milk, a little nutmeg, and a tablespoon or two of honey, then cooking it up with some butter in the frying pan, and finishing it off with some powdered sugar? Would the batter adhere to the steak anywhere near as well as it does to bread?

Well, I resolved that some day I would test this theory out in the real world, but here we are nearly three years later and the French Toast Steak is still but a dream. I simply don’t have the arterial fortitude to see this vision through. So I freely offer it to the world where some enterprising huckster, perhaps even the corporate test kitchen at IHOP (yes, the same sick minds that produced the french toasted cinnamon bun), can turn my dream into a mass market reality- or, at the very least, some post-collegiate loser can turn it into a late night drunken debacle. -AC

White Trash Shepherd's Pie

I love the Discovery Health channel. I can learn all about Siamese twins and people born with two sets of DNA all in the space of a Saturday afternoon.

Today, it was all about the Duggars, a religious family of 16 (now 18) in Arkansas. It was both fantastic and also totally infuriating. These kids are seemingly perfect: They dress alike, obediently do their chores, and are home schooled. Even the oldest says of dating, "i want to find someone who will love and care for me, not just get carried away with their emotions (read: just wants me for a hook-up)." The freak-show aspect of the documentary included showing the family driving around town in a small tour bus, attending a convention for religious homeschoolers, conducting church services in their home with another family of 10, taking turns to use the house's two bathrooms, and—the best—shopping for groceries.

The eight oldest children and parents (mom's pregnant with No. 15 in this taping) remove two bench seats from the minivan to accommodate the groceries and then pile in and head to Sam's. Five or six shopping carts  ("We're going to need a flat of peas, too.") and $800 later, the Duggars head back home to stock the pantry. Ah, the pantry. If their "pantry" was in my house, I might call it an "enormous walk-in closet" or a "spare bedroom." This thing was insane. It was stocked immaculately with flat after flat of canned goods and hundreds of other packaged goods, probably full of trans fats and preservatives. Though I got a glimpse into their culinary lifestyle, I still wasn't sure what kind of things they ate on a regular basis. Certainly, a family that huge had to have a few mainstays that Momma serves up when there's a time crunch.

And then I learned all about "One of Daddy's Favorites!": tater tot casserole (or TTC).

Now, I'm the last person to dis the frozen treats—mini pizza bagels, hot pockets—they all have their place. But for cryin' out loud, God did not invent tots for the purpose of a casserole. But I soldiered on through the rest of the show, as the narrator promised to share the recipe. Here goes (keep in mind this is for a family of 16): three 2lb bags of tots, two pounds ground turkey (?), two cans cream of mushroom, two cans cream of chicken, and two cans evaporated milk. Layer meat at the bottom of the pan, mix the soup and milk together, pour the soup and milk mixture on top of the meat, and bake for an hour at 350. Easy. (Oh, and really disgusting and terribly unhealthy for an army of growing children.)

Still curious about this atrocity of a casserole, I Googled it, and found that this is not just a Duggar anomaly; it's celebrated on numerous recipe sites, many with varying ingredients. Some include sour cream. Some throw in Worcestershire sauce. Others like corn flakes (!). I've enjoyed trashy casserole after trashy casserole and loved 'em, but TTC takes the idea of a quick dinner to a very dangerous place. —AK

Separate Lives

Note from the editors: Every so often, this web site will feature things that we find so appalling that we must smite them with our ire.

The first of these random rants tackles an ad from Philadelphia Cream Cheese. I'll start off by saying that I love both chili and cream cheese. And I'm not opposed to having dairy in my chili, e.g. sour cream or cheddar cheese. But what Philadelphia Cream Cheese has suggested this holiday season is a culinary abomination of mammoth proportions: a block of cream cheese smothered in chili (no specific kind, and really, does it matter?) and cheese.

I can just picture the Director of Food Innovations and the Marketing Manager getting together to come up with something new and delicious for the holiday season, you know, something that a busy family can just whip up for an appetizer while the ham is cooking.

Eureka! Chili-smothered cream cheese! Idea green-lighted. Production company called. Hand-model booked. Jingle-writers contracted. Done.

Speaking as a person who loves to combine food that shouldn't go together (mashed potatoes and corn, for example. Sue me, it's good), I firmly believe that cream cheese should be used in dessert and bread items, and chili should continue being liberally served over noodles, Fritos, and cornbread. But never the twain shall meet. -AK