Sunday, November 29, 2009
What is American Food?
When you live somewhere else, not only do you learn about that culture, but also you learn about your own. I realized for some time now that I have a hard time identifying food that is uniquely American. So I'm asking my friends, or anyone else reading, to comment. It is interesting that it has taken people from other countries to point out to me what they think is an American dish that is quite different from theirs. So Anni from Finland thinks that our pies - cherry, apple - are a uniquely American dessert. I thought maybe french fries, but she says they are from Belgium. Well what do you expect? I think pizza is probably one of the most commonly eaten foods in the states, but that certainly isn't American. What is? Hamburgers and hot dogs come to mind - are they American? How about fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy? Another student pointed out that our pancakes are unique. So does anyone know if that is an American invention What Hungarians call pancakes, we call crepes - a thin batter with a filling - and often a dessert. It's nothing like our pancakes. I wonder if jello is an American invention? So let me know what is your idea of American food.
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What about fried foods, Americans take frying to a whole new level. In the south, they fry everything including candy bars. I like fried green tomatoes and fried okra.
ReplyDeleteDidn't somebody in Texas or someplace like that deep fry a Twinkie? And of course there's deep fried turkey. I think maybe hamburgers could be considered American. But hot dogs are really sausages, so they're probably German. Is a hamburger named after Hamburg? Is it German?
ReplyDeleteI think BBQ is American, although they put meat on a stick and grill it in Viet Nam, in Arab countries, etc. But what we think of as BBQ--smoked ribs with tangy sauce--may be considered American. Damn, I want to go to Bryant's!
Fried chicken and all that stuff probably is too. How about crab cakes? I think (but not 100% sure) the Chesapeake Bay Indians made crab cakes with crab meat and corn meal back in pre-Colonial times. And corn...that's North American but probably not just U.S. American.
One thing that's always distressed me about our culture is that, except for corn bread (that's American, I think the Indians may have done that too), we don't really have any unique American bread. There's Indian fry bread, but that came about on the reservations and has never spread much beyond American Indian culture. Good stuff, though. Every other country I've been in--except Canada, England and Scotland--all have unique breads. Hmm...maybe it's an Anglo Saxon heritage thing to not have good bread, you think?
I guess if I had to tell a foreign visitor what I think American food is, I'd probably go with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn bread, and BBQ. Because we're a nation of immigrants (contrary to what the right wingers mistakenly believe), so much of our food has come from someplace else (but why not the bread?). So I wonder if fried chicken, which we consider southern, really came from Africa. Probably not. Nobody fries things as much as southerners. Well, maybe Chinese. Which brings up another point: is the Chinese stir fried food we eat here like real Chinese food in China? I know what we consider Mexican food around here is really Tex-Mex, and that's more of a peasant food, or fast food, sort of like gyros in Greece. Remember La Medeterraine when it was in the Plaza? Back in the '70s it was one of the most expensive places in KC and people thought they were really doing the haute cuisine thing when they went there. I liked it, as long as somebody else was buying, but when I spend 3 weeks in France in the '80s, I discovered that what Kansas Citians considered high class French food was really French peasant food served in the small town mom and pop cafes.
Interesting thing to think about. Some hard core foodie will probably jump all over us and prove that duck sauteed in white wine made from grapes grown in Pennsylvania is the only true American food.
On my trip to Atlanta recently I had the heart attack breakfast one morning--salty country cured ham, grits, greasy gravy and biscuits. You have to do that once to prove you were in the South. Grits--surely they don't eat that stuff anywhere else in the world. I think it's illegal to sell grits move than 50 miles north of the Tennessee border, as it should be.
I think that because we are a land of immigrants we have adopted and adapted everything. All of the things mentioned above, yes, I was thinking corn too, but I think the fact that there is no real stamped “American” food is a unique thing. It is like our national profile. Anybody ‘looks’ American if you really think about it (including Native Americans) because we are a country that is like a stew. Think about all the different types of faces on the American team in the Olympics.
ReplyDeleteYes, there’s Yankee Pot Roast and Boston Baked beans and sourdough bread, but I think adapting others’ foods and making them our own is what we do. Tacos, pizza, even what we do with spaghetti come to mind. I don’t think we have to apologize for our Tex-Mex not being “authentic” enough. We have just Americanized it! That is what we do. We are omnivorous!
Georgia