Badly-made food you love

[Basilgirl]

That burned cheese from pizza is not awful food! That's a delicacy!

I was at the truly weird International Foods Warehouse in Lodi NJ a coule years ago and one of their vendors was handing out free cheese samples. One of them is a sort of spongy cheese with fine holes in it that comes from Cyprus. They were cuttign slices, throwing them onto a non-stick griddle and then serving when it was totally browned and almost crunchy on both sides (almost like a slice of burnt crusty pizza cheese that's still soft in the middle. I loved it. They claimed that it's a popular breakfast food in Cyprus but I have yet to ever find that cheese again.

Halloumi? Did it kind of squeak when you bit into it, and was really salty? That is some good stuff. I get it at Whole Foods for a lot of $$ and at Shopper's Food Warehouse for very little $$. I like to fry it up and drizzle it with olive oil, capers & lemon juice. Yum.

[mrbigjas]

That burned cheese from pizza is not awful food! That's a delicacy!

I was at the truly weird International Foods Warehouse in Lodi NJ a coule years ago and one of their vendors was handing out free cheese samples. One of them is a sort of spongy cheese with fine holes in it that comes from Cyprus. They were cuttign slices, throwing them onto a non-stick griddle and then serving when it was totally browned and almost crunchy on both sides (almost like a slice of burnt crusty pizza cheese that's still soft in the middle. I loved it. They claimed that it's a popular breakfast food in Cyprus but I have yet to ever find that cheese again.

I have a friend from Cyprus, and might be able to help you out with a name for that cheese when he gets back.

Re: the original topic. I'm from Philadelphia, so I know from cheesesteaks. But when we were kids and were hanging out at my grandparents in upstate PA, we'd make sandwiches with steak-umms, which we'd microwave for a minute or so, and then take them off the grease-sodden paper plates we'd cooked them on and unwrap a piece of orange american cheese, and put that all into a non-crusty "steak roll" and microwave for another thirty seconds or so to get everything melted.

Man that's nasty. Wish I had one RIGHT NOW.

[FL Heat]

One of them is a sort of spongy cheese with fine holes in it that comes from Cyprus. They were cuttign slices, throwing them onto a non-stick griddle and then serving when it was totally browned and almost crunchy on both sides (almost like a slice of burnt crusty pizza cheese that's still soft in the middle. I loved it. They claimed that it's a popular breakfast food in Cyprus but I have yet to ever find that cheese again.

Seriously? Yummmmm. I'd eat that for breakfast. And second breakfast.

My school district's chicken fried steak was something I adored. It wasn't that good, but the crust was always crunchy, the gravy was always poured on super thick, it was a little too salty. . .I'm sure it was mass-produced beef patties, already breaded, but something about them just makes my mouth water, even years later. I always bought lunch on CFS days, in junior high & high school.

Diana

[TheFoodTutor]

"Hungarian Goulash" - the variety I'm thnking of is neither Hungarian nor is it a true gulasz.  This is the elbow macaroni with sweetened red sauce and browned hamburger variety. I just love the stuff even when it's poorly prepared. Don't get me started on Sloppy Joes. 

In our family it was called "American Chop Suey" and made with Campbell's tomato soup.

Didn't we talk about a lot of this on the thread about stuff we like that most people think sucks?

My mom made a simple version of this dish, too, with just canned, whole tomatoes that she mushed with her fingers, macaroni and ground beef. Only she called it "Macaroni Creole."

She also mixed leftover corn with mashed potatoes and fried little potato pancakes out of them. Yum. And there was "Beef Stroganoff" which was really just a type of Shepherd's Pie with ground beef, cream of mushroom soup and a topping of leftover mashed potatoes and flour, turned crusty in the oven. I liked it, but picked the mushrooms out. I still won't eat canned mushrooms.

Here's a very guilty one, and I'm wondering if anyone ever had a mother as wonderful as mine, to make oatmeal in this way. She made the oatmeal nice and thick, then spread it in a 1-inch layer over a plate. Then, she poured melted butter over the top, and topped that with cinnamon sugar, so that each bite was sweet and salty with butter dripping all over it. I honestly didn't know that I really didn't like oatmeal until I tried it at someone else's house, and they just gave me plain old crappy oatmeal and a spoon. I thought everyone had been eating it that way.

I also like:

Scrambled egg sandwiches with mayonnaise.

Ramen noodles toasted in an oiled frying pan, crumbled for a salad topping.

Burnt cheese, or really just any cheese, and lots of it.

Ranch dressing with guacamole mixed in it as a dip.

And oh, this last one is pretty low class: I like hors d'oeuvres made by stuffing any old thing into canned crescent roll dough, then folding it so you look like you made your own pastry. Trashy, but if you have good friends, they'll not only pretend not to notice your secret (ignoring the Pillsbury wrappers on the counter), but they'll also admit they're pretty tasty.

[agbaber]

I absolutely LOVE, and I do mean LOVE, my grandmothers old casserole. It's basically ground meat, macaroni noodles, tomato soup, and onions in a casserole under a half inch thick layer of velveeta cheese. Gotta cook the macaroni till it's real mushy though.

Throw it, steaming hot, right out of the oven onto a plate with LOTS of fresh cracked (not ground) pepper all over, and devour. I can literally eat 2 pounds of it easily.

[patti]

From Mabelline:

How about when you fry eggs in bacon grease, and spoon some on the eggs? The top is full of the crunchy transparent bubbles...look out!

And from marlena spieler

Oh God, Mabelline! the edges get crisp and browned, and you gotta keep the yolks soft and liquidy, so that when you cut in you get that combination of soft white, crisp white and almost saucelike yolk.

Spooning the bacon grease over is the best! Even if I'm hard frying the eggs for a sandwich, I spoon it over both before and after I break the yolk. I think I'm getting an envie right now.

[phaelon56]

Halloumi? Did it kind of squeak when you bit into it, and was really salty? That is some good stuff.

That sounds like it but I don't recall the squeak. Then again... the International Foods Warehouse offers such sensory overload to begin with that I may just not have noticed the sound.

[Bicycle Lee]

i haven't looked in prolly 10 years, but Bicycle Lee says they do.

They do make those ones still...as well as the polish sausage ones that are labeled Flavor Explosion (they're not kidding, watch out when biting into a hot one)

But the Frankenstuff ones with the chili in the middle are no longer on the market...sad....I remember them being a trashy delicacy, but that was over a decade ago.

[tejon]

Limp french fries - the ones that end up extra greasy and ready to fold into a waiting mouth. I pick these out and eat them first

[Maison Rustique]

My great-grandmother could never make green beans without burning them. My sister and I always like them burned now. I've actually taken to frying them in bacon grease until they are dark brown. I've even converted my DH!

[CopperTop]

This is one that is now being clamored for by a 3rd generation. My grandmother used to combine blanched elbow macaroni, Campbell's cheddar cheese soup, drained stewed tomatoes, evaporated milk and cooked ground beef, then top with french fried onions and bake. When I started making this for my kids, I changed the stewed tomatoes for Ro-Tel tomatoes with chiles and instead of just french fried onions, I used a combination of crushed tortilla chips, french fried onions and shredded cheese. My oldest now makes this for her children and they adore it, although she uses the nacho flavored cheese soup and the mild Ro-Tel product, though they liked Nana Marie's version, too.

[RSincere]

Mashed potatoes made from the flakes. It's what I grew up on . When my mom would make them from scratch on special occasions, they'd turn out gluey and lumpy and none of us would eat it. Including my dad, who to this day won't eat any other bread but the Bread of Wonder. So my mom grumblingly started providing the potato-flake mashed potatoes on all holidays as well. Even now that her "kids" range in age from 21 to 37.

We grew up in Minnesota, lived on a Lutheran college campus (Dad was a prof) and lived a very Garrison Keillor existence, complete with hot dishes and funeral casserole. I hated a lot of it but definitely developed a taste for things such as tater tot hot dish...and Frankwiches! From a 1970s Better Homes and Gardens Meat Stretcher cookbook, which I still have--you slice up a package of hot dogs, mix it in a big bowl with a can of Campbell's tomato soup, throw in some pickle relish, minced onion, mustard, and American cheese or Velveeta, mix it all up, put about 1/3 cup on each toasted hamburger bun, wrap in foil, and bake 20 minutes. Nasty, but the ultimate in comfort food for me. And it really stretches a pack of hot dogs.

[Mulcahy]

Old El Paso Tacos. You know, the ones where you brown gorund beef, mix in seasoning, and voila! I grew up with these, and even now my husband and I have taco night every once and a while (like last night). The only change has been that I now buy better salsa (Dessert Pepper) and chop up avocado (would never have happened in my house growing up). Mmmmmm.

[RSincere]

Oh, yeah, taco night! Big deal in my house growing up. I do believe I have a taco kit somewhere in my pantry.

This is so silly. Right now, I'm baking a simple 8x8 vanilla cake that I made from scratch, half a pound of butter and all. My son asked me to frost it. I have some canned frosting in my pantry because I had a bunch of coupons for it quite a while ago and I bought it in case I'd need it. I used to love the stuff as a kid! My mom would frost the cake or cookies, and we'd frost graham crackers with the leftovers.

But I opened the can, and smelled that chocolate chemical smell, and I can't do it. I just CAN'T put that stuff on my cake. The unopened cans I'm donating to a food shelter along with some of the other things I purged out of my pantry--Stove Top, etc.

But I can't put that crap on my beautiful cake!

[fifi]

My great-grandmother could never make green beans without burning them. My sister and I always like them burned now. I've actually taken to frying them in bacon grease until they are dark brown. I've even converted my DH!

Funny you should bring that up but we have a family dish called "scorched squash" that is the result of a mistake initially. You saute some onion in quite a lot of butter, dried onion flakes are really best, until browned. Then you put in the yellow squash slices and you let the water cook off and the squash kind of brown (scorch). Delicious.

[Ling]

My grandma used to cook these terribly oily, overcooked green beans for me that were absolutely delicious. She cooked them in a mixture of oil, soy sauce, sugar (quite a bit!) and topped the dish with sesame oil. The green beans get all wrinkly and mushy from the flavored oil/sauce (which, btw, was heavenly over steamed rice!)

I also love picking the burnt, crispy and oily bits of noodles from the bottom of the pan. Yumm....

[Maison Rustique]

The really funny thing is with Granny's burned green beans..

Before the Depression, Granny owned a restaurant. (When everything went beserck, she walked out of the place and never went back.) I just asked Mom recently if she burned them when she had the restaurant. Mom said she didn't know as she wasn't yet born. So then i asked if she burned them when she was growing up in Granny's house and she said she can't remember! How the heck can you not remember something as tasty as burned green beans!!!!

[Daddy-A]

My mom once tried her hand at baking rye bread. I say tried because the dough didn't rise or something, and the centre of the loaf was raw and doughy. I came home from school one day afterwards and made myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich using this doughy bread. Well ..... since the banana was kinda doughy itself, and the peanut butter was gooey, the sandwhich tasted like some kind of yummy bread pudding. My brother and I devoured 4 loaves of the "ruined" bread in 3 days.

Mom learned how to make rye bread perfectly her second try, much to my dismay.

DA

[ghostrider]

Burnt popcorn.

It's the reason I can't abide movie theatre popcorn & view microwave popcorn with sheer horror. That stuff just ain't right.

I've had the same dedicated popping pan for over 30 years now. It's got a remarkable patina of brown fading to black on the inside. I gave up trying to scour it clean after the first 2 years or so & simply bought a new pan for all other cooking uses.

[slyaspie]

Halloumi? Did it kind of squeak when you bit into it, and was really salty? That is some good stuff.

That sounds like it but I don't recall the squeak. Then again... the International Foods Warehouse offers such sensory overload to begin with that I may just not have noticed the sound.

What you had was definitely halloumi. And the thing is you can get halloumi a couple of different ways. The one you had sounds like it was probably the hard, really salty one, which is the one usually given to people in restaurants, and yes they usually fry it. The hard halloumi is basically aged halloumi that is put into huge containers of its own juice and is given more salt so that it hardens over time.

I haven't seen it in the states, but the softer fresh halloumi that is sealed in plastic and kept in the fridge or the freezer if you have a lot of them is actually the better of the two. You can tear a slice up into strips really easily and put it on your bread, and the way it is made, they fold it over so there's one big crease going down the whole length of the halloumi and in this crease they stuff it with a bunch of chopped up mint so that it ends up perfuming the whole loaf. I bring many kilos of it back from cyprus when i can, and it is this fresher, softer, less salty halloumi that is used in everyday cypriot eating; from frying it up in the morning or for lunch (it gets a little mushy, but like the hard one doesn't really melt). When fried for breakfast it is usually accompanied by a couple of sunny side up eggs and a cypriot sausage made of roughly chopped up pork, spices i don't know how to say in english and red wine, called loukaniko, or a couple of pieces of pork that has been soaked in red wine and then smoked/cured and then preserved in a jar of lard. Both kinds of halloumi are amazing thrown on the grill, whoever has some, grill it, put on a squeeze of lemon, put it on top of a nicely charred pita and top it with tomato, some olive oil and cilantro and you'll just die.

Halloumi is pretty much the main cheese the cypriots eat and you can usually find it at the table for every meal. A typical light meal in the summer is a plate of sliced halloumi, a dish of olives, a loaf of bread and a plate of lengthwise sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, lightly salted. And watermelon. You just sit with your family at the table and pick. There's usually another cheese at the table along with the halloumi called anari and that is made from the leftovers of the halloumi milk. It's really light and creamy and salty. This is good in a hot pressed sandwich with fresh cucumber and tomato, maybe some ham.

If anyone has any questions about halloumi I can answer them for you. Oh and when you buy it, make sure you get the goat milk one, not the sheep cuz it's not as good.

As for things I love that are made badly, I'll have to give a mention to this baked macaroni and cheese that my mother and aunts found one day in the newspaper thirty years ago after they came to this country. It's made with velveeta, cream of mushroom soup, sauteed, diced onions, bellpepper and ham, and a touch of curry powder. They inexplicably attatched themselves to this recipe and you can find it at most family gatherings on the buffet table surrounded by all the greek dishes. But you know, I just love it, although I don't think i'm ever going to make it myself.

I also really love tater tots that have been left in the over for extra time so they get extra crispy.

Edited July 16, 2004 by slyaspie (log)

[Mooshmouse]

Two of mom's bad-cooking idiosyncracies have become my faves:

(1) Pork chops coated in flour and baked a long time, to rigor mortis.

(2) Eggs over easy, with the yolk broken. It started out as an accident, but she started intentionally breaking the yolk for me since I loved it so much.

You must be channelling me...

One thing about old-school Filipino Moms is that they don't consider meat cooked until it resembles a charcoal briquette. None of this pink-in-the-middle crap for them... that'll make you die of some fatal disease or something along those lines.

Two of my absolute faves hit squarely on the head. Pork chops done in Shake And Bake and then popped in the oven until nearly every last vestige of moisture has been cooked out of them. And eggs "over hard", yolks broken and fried until they resemble a rubbery fake-egg puck that you might buy at a joke store. Don't get me wrong, I love me my "properly cooked" eggs now... poached, over easy, sunny-side up, you name it... but nothing says nostalgia like fried egg pucks.

[Mabelline]

Aw, jeez, after reading slyaspie's descriptions of Cypriot cooking, I think I will seek out somebody in Cyprus to adopt me! That sounds toooo Gooood!

[picaman]

Burned toast.

My mom would tell anyone at the table who didn't like their toast burned to go to the sink and "scrape it to your desired degree of doneness."

Jamie

[NulloModo]

You know, those scraped toast ashes have a very distinctive taste/texture/aroma. I wonder if once collected they could have any culinary use...

[browniebaker]

Two of mom's bad-cooking idiosyncracies have become my faves:

(1) Pork chops coated in flour and baked a long time, to rigor mortis.

(2) Eggs over easy, with the yolk broken. It started out as an accident, but she started intentionally breaking the yolk for me since I loved it so much.

You must be channelling me...

One thing about old-school Filipino Moms is that they don't consider meat cooked until it resembles a charcoal briquette.

Wow, this must be an Asian thing, then. My Chinese mom and dad always insisted that meat be really, truly dead -- not a trace of blood! -- before brought to table.