|
August 1993: The Widow maker
Throughout most of my life in Japan, my experience of food can be roughly divided into three different categories. 1) Food cooked for me by a very traditional grandmother 2) Food cooked for me by the moderately traditional mothers of my school friends 3) Train station Bentous (Japanese lunch boxes) All of which were quite healthy, quite colorful, and quite different from what I would find upon my arrival in the Midwest. Eat Like An American While I knew about American fast food, like Pizza and hamburgers, and I knew about the limited number of dishes that were considered American enough to be permitted in the compound on special occasions (mostly variations on pot roast), the fact that I had spent 5 days a week living with my grandparents while I (nominally) lived on the base, and that I usually ate outside of the compound in Kyoto, meant that I arrived in American with very little knowledge of what an “average American meal” was like beyond the fact that it was usually accompanied by mashed potato. This made my first few months in the US a real education in American eating. Local Specialty With all of the learning that I did about what was considered to be a normal meal in America, there also came a good does of education about local specialties, including the local specialty of my new town; A dish best described as being a “chicken-fried re-fried cheese steak sandwich” Loosely put, a “chicken-fried re-fried cheese steak sandwich” is a heart attack in a bun. Simply looking at it could give you a coronary. Step 1: Lightly pan fry two thin cuts of fatty beef steak in a generous helping of lard. Step 2: Place a generous helping of sliced of Monterey Jack cheese between the two cuts and press them firmly together to make a sandwich. Step : Coast the sandwich in beaten egg yolk Step 4: Douse liberally with chicken batter mix Step 5 Deep fat fry. Unsurprisingly, the local name for this concoction was “The Widow Maker”. |
||
|