Each City's Signature Dish

[ludja]

Tampico - Carne a la Tampiqueña (grilled with beans and rice and guac)

Oxaca - Queso Oaxaca (stringy cheese)

Oaxaca - Mole Negro Oaxaqueño

Cajeta de Celaya - (goat milk sweet)

Acapulco - Ceviche Acapulco (marinated fish & shrimp with tomato sauce)

Patzcuaro - Pescado Blanco de Patzcuaro - (fried fish from Patzcuaro Lake)

Guadalajara - Pozole Estilo Jalisco

Thanks for the nice post tryska; I was waiting for some mexican city specialties to surface and knew that the knowlege was out there.

I've recently become a fan of posole; have had it in New Mexico and have tried a recipe at home (pork and green chile). Do you know how the Pozole Estilo Jalisco from Guadalajara is made?

thanks!

[tryska]

you're welcome Ludja - but Sandra posted it - not me. :D

[sandra]

Tampico - Carne a la Tampiqueña (grilled with beans and rice and guac)

Oxaca - Queso Oaxaca (stringy cheese)

Oaxaca - Mole Negro Oaxaqueño

Cajeta de Celaya - (goat milk sweet)

Acapulco - Ceviche Acapulco (marinated fish & shrimp with tomato sauce)

Patzcuaro - Pescado Blanco de Patzcuaro - (fried fish from Patzcuaro Lake)

Guadalajara - Pozole Estilo Jalisco

Thanks for the nice post tryska; I was waiting for some mexican city specialties to surface and knew that the knowlege was out there.

I've recently become a fan of posole; have had it in New Mexico and have tried a recipe at home (pork and green chile). Do you know how the Pozole Estilo Jalisco from Guadalajara is made?

thanks!

Pozole estilo Jalisco has hominy, pork head, pork loin, pig feet, chicken, and garnishes - basically you cook all the meats together and then serve a bowl of the broth with meat pieces, hominy, and garnished with shredded lettuce, chopped onion, lime, radishes and hot sauce.

[ludja]

thanks sandra and tryska!

[Pan]

Carlovski, what's lobscouse?

It's basically a simple meat stew, food for the poor. See here.

lobscouse

Looks good!

Are Oxo cubes a type of bouillon?

[Eric_Malson]

Carlovski, what's lobscouse?

It's basically a simple meat stew, food for the poor. See here.

lobscouse

Looks good!

Are Oxo cubes a type of bouillon?

Yes, that's exactly what they are.

[ghostrider]

Zurich - Züri Gschnetzlets (diced veal in a cream sauce with sliced mushrooms)  served with Rösti (grated potato formed into a large patty and fried golden-brown on both sides).

A week's worth of calories crammed into one meal.  And so worth it!

Oh yes!! Just had this in Engelberg, 1.5 hours outside of Zurich - amazing dish, so simple, but so perfect... and after skiing, who cares about the calories, right?

I'm a hiker not a skier, but it's the same principle - a day of exercise in the mountain air & yep, forget about the calories!

[balmagowry]

Carlovski, what's lobscouse?

It's basically a simple meat stew, food for the poor. See here.

lobscouse

Also made at sea, with ship's biscuit instead of potatoes. (At least it was in the C19th.)

Lobscouse and Spotted Dog

Thanks for the plug! But actually (as in Lobscouse & Spotted Dog), at sea it was made with ship's biscuit and potatoes - assuming the latter were available, that is. In fact, one of the figurative meanings of lobscouse is hodgepodge, miscellany - basically it's a mess of whatever you have on hand. Which after a few months at sea can be pretty damn aleatory....

Edited February 21, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[Suzanne F]

Rome:

Pasta Carbonara,

Fettucini all'Alfredo,

Artichokes, Roman-Style (steamed, and stuffed w/garlic, lemon, parsely, mint)

Otherwise called Carciofi alla Giudia (Jewish-style artichoke), a product of Rome's ancient Jewish community.

No, no, no! Carciofi alla Romana are as described. Carciofi alla Giudia are fried whole (usually baby) artichokes. Trim them, flatten them, then fry twice rather like french fries (except pan- not deep-fry). Also a Roman specialty, but not at all the same as Carciofi alla Romana.

[Pan]

Yeah, you're right, Suzanne. Carciofi alla Giudia aren't stuffed.

[balmagowry]

Caracassone, Castelnaudry and Toulouse all get credit for association with cassoulet.

Yeah, but Carcassonne and Castelnaudary come by it honestly, whereas Toulouse is just a hanger-on on that list, a johnny-come-lately, a wannabe. Cassoulet came about as a triumph of alliteration during the early 16th century, when Catherine de' Medici arrived in France with haricot beans in her saddle-bags. The two towns in question were part of her marriage settlement, and they apparently got first crack at dem beans dem beans; inevitably then it was the combination of Catherine, Carcassonne, and Castelnaudary that ultimately produced Cassoulet.

[Stigand]

Lobscouse and Spotted Dog

Thanks for the plug! But actually (as in Lobscouse & Spotted Dog), at sea it was made with ship's biscuit and potatoes - assuming the latter were available, that is. In fact, one of the figurative meanings of lobscouse is hodgepodge, miscellany - basically it's a mess of whatever you have on hand. Which after a few months at sea can be pretty damn aleatory....

[balmagowry]

Lobscouse and Spotted Dog

I love this book - thank you for writing it! Patrick O'Brian did seem to have a keen understanding of the way English people of the C18th/eC19th thought about food.

Thank you. If anyone enjoys reading/using it anywhere near as much as we did writing it, it's the best kind of success we could have hoped for.

Yes, PO'B was that way not only about food but about most things. I don't suppose he was literally transplanted forward from that era, though that's a theory I love to posit with tongue only partly in cheek; but at some level he was far more a creature of his chosen period than of that in which he lived. He was so steeped in its literature and mores that they constituted his natural environment. He certainly didn't belong in the 20th century, let alone the 21st. One of the great pleasures for us was fleshing out recipes for the dishes which he had obviously invented, like Mrs. Pullings's pie. Partly because it was just such fun as an intellectual and culinary exercise, but also because it revealed the depth of his understanding of, and comfort with, the culinary language of the time. Funny, because he was certainly no cook himself, nor had he read much on the subject in particular. But he had very clearly caught the drift of how a natural cook might express herself - both through language and through food - and might use the kind of ingredients which were handy and which came naturally to her. He had a marvelous ear for that sort of thing, and very very rarely put a foot wrong. Which isn't to say that Homer didn't nod on occasion! We caught a small handful of minor but glaring errors... and quietly looked the other way. (This, for instance, is why the book makes no mention of Orangeado.) We also caught him in the occasional deliberate fabrication (as borne out by a sort of mischievous twinkle in his letters to us - in regard among other things to the apocryphal foodstuff from which I take my eGullet name...), and did our best to emulate his brazenness.

Sorry, this is getting kind of OT; by way of justification, though, it's worth considering the proposition that the above-mentioned pie is in its way a good informal example of a local signature dish. Not the famous kind identified with a major city, obviously, but definitely a representation of food as regional culture, and of how a characteristic cuisine bourgeoise might naturally evolve around the best of indigenous produce and provender.

Edited March 1, 2004 by balmagowry (log)