Cultural food anomolies

I have been catching up on my internet reading today, including reading comments on other people's blogs. Sometimes the comments are even more thought provoking than the original post.

What does this have to do with food? Well, as Eddie Willers often does, a post of his started my brain whirring. Then the comments sent it off into outerspace!

I like ethnic foods, I love pozole, tinga poblana, falafels, samosas, springrolls, gnochhi, all sorts of interesting foods. But some things weird me out, and the hot dog comment made me think of some of the foods here that I don't understand nor like very much.

What is with sandwichon? For my 50th birthday, (long ago kiddies, almost in the last century), Husband threw a surprise party. Actually,he gave money to Son and Son and the neighbor girls put it together. One of the delicacies was a sandwichon. I don't blame Son, he probably thought it was a giant submarine sandwich from Subway, instead it was a loaf of white bread sliced horizonally and filled with ummm, various, ummm, let's call them..... pates! and frosted with miracle whip or some equally vile substance. It was garnished with pimento and peas and looked delicious, infact it looked like a cake.

Sadly,Memories of a Cuban Kitchen, also includes a recipe for Cake de Bocadito or ribbon sandwich loaf, but at least it's frosted with cream cheese and mayonaise. I cannot be responsible for inflicting this attrocity upon ciberspace, so if you want the recipe, you'll have to buy the book, or at least check it out of your local library. The only defense I can offer is that Cuban cooking seems to be frozen in pre-Castro time, a ribbon sandwich cake would have been so modern and fashionable in the 1950s and 60s! What is Mexico's excuse?

And then there is the hot dog. I pretty much like hot dogs, in a bun with ketchup and onions. Inspite of having been a carhop at A&W and having survived many a twentyfive cent coney dog Tuesday, I still like chilli dogs. I even have a fondness for corn dogs, but deep fried hot dog flowers are not a treat for me and I will eat just about anything if you deep fry it. Speaking of treats,when we was in Panamà, we went to a bakery, in the section with the empanadas, choripàn! It didn´t look a choripàn, which is a sandwich made from (Spanish) chorizo and a small baguette but more like a bagel dog, that should have tipped me off. Imagine my surprise when I bit into it and it was contribed from half a hot dog and a very heavy bread dough. I ate it anyway, and felt like I had eaten a stone. sadly, all the emapandas had the same dough, more like a bread dough that had never risen than a pastry dough. Maybe choripàn is Panamanian for bagel dog? naw, bagel does taste better.