Green Room Drabble....

[concertigrossi]

Scene: The Green Room

 
          
               The Author arrived at the appointed hour to find her cast of Navy and EITC sailors already assembled, but looking aggrieved.  Is everything all right?

James spoke up.  “Good day to you, my lady.  Now, while we do appreciate the accommodations here, I’m afraid there’s been grumblings about the food.”

            What?  It’s sushi!  I ordered from the best place in town!

            “It’s bait!” shouted a voice from the back.

            James turned to shout at that anonymous voice.  “I SAID, I would HANDLE this.”  He turned back to the backside of the monitor glass.  “Madam, you have seen to our creature comforts excellently well, but we do feel that, in this particular case, there has been an oversight.  This fish is a bit undercooked.”

            It’s raw.  It’s sashimi.  It’s Japanese, and it’s supposed to be that way.

            There was a general outcry at this response.

            James tried to be conciliatory.  “Ah.  Now, I realize that, to you Americans, the rest of the world is, in fact, one multi-colored blur, but we are English, not Japanese.”

            There was a pause.  You’d prefer blood pudding, I suppose.

            James beamed, as if some accord had been reached.  “Yes, exactly.”

            Or haggis?

            “A bit Hibernian, but that would do nicely.”

            You know, I’ve never been really clear as to what goes into a Spotted Dick…

            James looked affronted.  “It’s a PUDDING, with CURRANTS.”

            “Now gentlemen…” sneered the voice of Cutler Beckett, as he entered the room with Caroline on his arm.  “We do not wish to seem provincial before the American…”

            “Really, you ought to try it.  It was quite good.”  Caroline tried to mend the breach.

            “You can’t possibly be serious…” started James.

AAAAAAAAAGH, cried The Author.  Fine.  Japanese is off the list.  I’ll get Indian, next time.  OK?   

            Caroline again tried to intervene.  “We really do appreciate the effort you’ve made…”

            PLACES, everyone, or so help me God this turns into a “Desperate Housewives” crossover fic.

            There was no more discussion.

Comments

[pink-siamese.livejournal.com]

"It's a pudding...with currants!" Teehee.

[soubie.livejournal.com]

You do know that it's called a BLACK pudding, don't you, not a 'blood pudding'? That nobody in Britain ever asked for a 'blood pudding'? And that it's not like a pudding full of blood, but a sort of sausage? (In fact I'm mostly a vegetarian now, but it still gets on my nerves)

[concertigrossi.livejournal.com]

Oh no! You're right, I did screw that up. I crossed black pudding with bludwurst... Sorry!

What gets on your nerves, black pudding or silly Americans who get it wrong? :)

And I have eaten it, in London, as it happens, and my husband even made it, once, but I have to say, it's not my favorite. Up there with sea urchin on my avoid list. :)

This bit came about because I had sushi for dinner that night, and I had a bit of a laugh thinking about what would happen if you tried to serve sashimi to any 18th century Westerner. "You want me to eat WHAT?"

We can snark about scrapple, if you want to hear about gross American foods... :)

[soubie.livejournal.com]

I don't know- some smoked fish comes essentially raw (and there would be quite a bit of smoked fish pre-refrigeration).

To be honest, I was never into black pudding either. It's just up there with the annoying stereotypes of silly voices, rotton teeth and 'kidney pies' (look, they're *steak* and kidney pies, see? And the kidneys are really just what the gravy is made of. And is that any more gross than any sort of sausage? I had a Muslim friend once who thought all Europeans (and European-decended cultures) were freaky with thier eating every last scrap of an animal.)

I've never heard of scrapple, though I'm always bemused by the idea that 'grits' could be an appealing name for a foodstuff. Apparantly it's very nice (sort of the result of a mating between oatmeal and polenta, yes?)

[concertigrossi.livejournal.com]

True; it's sort of like ceviche, but still, there's the implication that SOMETHING has been done to it. :)

I do apologize, though, I didn't mean to play to English stereotypes. Mostly, I was going for "Foreign food is gross and nasty, and nothing at all like the sheep's eyeballs/cow's brain/jellyfish salad that Mom used to make." Which is equal-opportunity, as stereotypes go, and one that Americans are known for. :) Seriously, my friend loves chitlins, but when we go out for Japanese, always gets teriyaki...

Scrapple. Yeah. Everything that's left over after butchering a pig or a cow, ground up into a greyish paste, and usually fried. :P Big in PA Dutch country, which is where I spent a good chunk of time, growing up.. and OMG, I though I'd blocked this out, but faschnats, which are REALLY GROSS doughnuts made on the Tuesday before Lent, fried in so much lard you can squeeze it out like a sponge...

And it's funny, I had to think for a minute before I could think of a gross American food that hasn't been ripped off wholesale from another culture. My first thought was menudo, but that's Spanish, and then there's lutefisk, but that's Scandinavian, poutine, but that's Canadian...

Actually, grits and polenta are pretty much the same thing. Vehicles for butter and syrup. :)

[soubie.livejournal.com]

It's okay, my fault for being tetchy.

You know, in truth most of my generation have got a lot like the same generation (or the one before) in the states have been- 'ew'ing at the idea of offal and the bluntly specific names of German 'wursts', but happy to have no idea of what bit of an animal they're eating if it's made into some cute shape and covered in breadcrumbs. There's actually been a reaction against this sort of thing recently- it started with TV chefs- most notably Jamie Oliver and his school dinners campaign- against junk food in general with junky meat products particularly singled out. So the middle classes got terribly anxious to know about what cut of meat they had and so on. And now that we're all supposed to be finding exciting new ways to spend less, there's a much-trumpetted fad on the way for 'nose-to-tail' eating, so we're all going to have to lay on bravado about finding exciting uses for spleen and things.

Actually, the blood-and-onion pudding was invented in ancient Greece, although I think they favoured the stomach for the stuffing, or just to eat it from a bowl. What really defeats me is the appeal of white pudding- an Irish sausage that just seems to consist of onions and pressed fat.

I dare say the squeemishness about offal in America, as in Britain, is only a few generations old (and I believe Jewish cooking still makes gleeful use of liver anyway). I presume my friend from Bangladesh wasn't familier with it just because in Bangladesh they only eat meat at all for special occasions (on which the animal is sacrificed in public, which even more put her off meat in general), and what they don't eat immeadiatly they throw away or feed to dogs or something.

I suppose, seeing as America as a whole drew together lots of older cultures to make an amalgamated new one, then the thousands and thousands of years of trial and error that lead to such oddities as sushi and brawn had already been done, either elsewhere or by the tribesmen, so proper 'Americans' didn't need to experiment in the same way, but rather to tweak the things they ate already.

Actually, when I saw grits I thought it looked like a hybrid of Pilgrim-era English food (if in doubt, cook it into a sludge and put something you know you like on top of it- rather like the flummery and pottage (a sort of porridge made with whole pulses) that they ate back home) with inigeonous food (corn, corn and more corn). I mean, I know there are a lot of Italian-decended people in the US, but where grits come from is not a very Italian area, is it?- and it's older than that anyway.

[concertigrossi.livejournal.com]

"It's okay, my fault for being tetchy."

No worries! :)

"There's actually been a reaction against this sort of thing recently- it started with TV chefs- most notably Jamie Oliver and his school dinners campaign- against junk food in general with junky meat products particularly singled out."

It's much the same here, especially with the locavore movement getting some traction. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it: you really can make something tasty out of just about anything, but some things take more work than others.

I suspect the whole eating offal thing hinges on being either 1) really recent arrivals, or 2) having become used to severe austerity.
The joke goes that, when presented with something that Grandma used to make, teens will whine about wanting American food like pizza or
tacos. :)

(And I have to cop to it: I'm a first-generation US citizen on my Dad's side, and used to gripe about eating the pickled herring in mustard-cream-beet sauce that was traditionally made by my Finnish grandmother at Christmastime. Mind you, I'd love to have some right now... taste buds do grow up, I guess...)

"I suppose, seeing as America as a whole drew together lots of older cultures to make an amalgamated new one, then the thousands and thousands of years of trial and error that lead to such oddities as sushi and brawn had already been done, either elsewhere or by the tribesmen, so proper 'Americans' didn't need to experiment in the same way, but rather to tweak the things they ate already."

I think that's part of it... but I think part of it also was the pressure on recent immigrants to assimilate. It's a lot less today than it was during the early 20th century - and that wasn't always outside pressure, either. I know of lots of people a generation or two older than me whose parents absolutely refused to teach them their native language, on the theory that they'd grow up as "Proper Americans." And the food would go with it..

But then there's always the search for novelty, so the more accessible foods got incorporated into the dominant culture. American-style Chinese food is now it's own sort of thing, for example...

I once read a fabulous quotation - it was actually about the English language, but it applies to American food as well:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
- James D. Nicoll

"I mean, I know there are a lot of Italian-decended people in the US, but where grits come from is not a very Italian area, is it?- and it's older than that anyway."

Grits and polenta really are just boiled cornmeal. The cooking style itself is pretty much one of those things that EVERYBODY did as just a good way to prep starch to eat. Grits were originally a Native American thing; Italians, like everybody in Europe, had grain-mush dishes, but didn't have cornmeal polenta until corn came over from the Americas. It's funny, I hang out with a Medieval reenacting society from time to time, and, at first, it's really hard to imagine Italian food without tomatoes. :)

I make polenta a lot... cornmeal is easy to keep in the pantry, and can be pretty versatile, depending on what you add to it.

Oh! And I did think of another truly American food atrocity: I think we were the ones to start putting pineapple on pizza. :P

Have you ever seen The Gallery of Regrettable Food? It's a pretty good skewering of mid-20th-century cuisine in the US. :)