s/o: incorrect food

[bugabean]

I definitely prefer American faux-sagna to the bechamel stuff. Blech!

I was introduced to sushi in Minnesota and everyone mixed wasabi in the soy sauce. I think most Americans I've met do that, not just Californians.

[anna7602]

I went to the farmer's market today and gathered all the ingredients for an authentic Mediterranean-style lasagne, bechamel sauce and all. I couldn't stop thinking about it after reading this post!

[aMrsin09]

I'll have to second the faux-sagna over the bechamel sauce. I had never had it that way until I moved to Australia. Where they also put carrots in it. And the sauce pools on your plate. blergh.

[potatopie]

oh Jewels, I have had to learn soooooo many things about Italian food. It's a simple cuisine, but my goodness, you guys have hard rules as to what goes with what and how it's cooked.

And god forbid I ever dare to put CHICKEN on the pasta. NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[allibally]

Jun 5, 2012 0:28:17 GMT -5 tktravels said:

Jun 4, 2012 23:29:34 GMT -5 allibally said:

We just don't go out much so I don't know if we will ever get to it. But I did find the restaurant online and the menu.

chicago.menupages.com/restaurants/lake-langano/menu
www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2012/04/02/one-bite-false-banana-bread-at-an-ethio-chinese-joint

Let us know how it is if you end up going! This is my old stomping grounds!

I will definitely make a post about it if I ever go.

You lived in Uptown or just North Side Chicago in General. We are more west towards the end of the brown line.

[ktkl09]

Jun 5, 2012 4:18:21 GMT -5 potatopie said:

oh Jewels, I have had to learn soooooo many things about Italian food. It's a simple cuisine, but my goodness, you guys have hard rules as to what goes with what and how it's cooked.

And god forbid I ever dare to put CHICKEN on the pasta. NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

No chicken on the pasta?

And bechamel makes me gag.

[Cheesecake]

Humpf, I can't believe you guys are all being so nasty about bechamel! I am offended on bechamel's behalf!!!

Bechamel is sooooo good, provided you made it right. As in, absolutely no bechamel from a jar or box or pouch. It's so easy to make. Also, enough salt, cooking the butter/flour mixture long enough and nutmeg make ALL the difference.

One of my favorite dishes is a casserole with chicken and fennel on the bottom and bechamel over it, in the oven until the chicken is cooked. SO friggin good!

Also, any good cheese sauce, the base is bechamel. Basically any good creamy sauce has a bechamel sauce base. Do you not eat mac an cheese? ^o) If you make that from scratch instead of from the nasty blue box, that's a bechamel base!

You all need to apologize to wonderful tasty bechamel, for reals!!!

[aMrsin09]

Oh I do like Bechamel, I use it to make Pastitsio, just not in lasagna mixed with sauce ... and definitely NOT with carrots.

[dorothyinAus]

I agree. I really like a bechamel sauce. Just not in lasagne. But then I don't like ricotta, so I make my lasagne/manicotti/stuffed shells with cottage cheese, so my lasagne is hardly "authentic" to any regional variant recipe.

[ktkl09]

Any sort of white or cream sauce makes me gag and mayo.

Fettucini Alfredo is probably the most disgusting meal ever, is it even real in Italy (I'm looking at you Jewels)??

[bugabean]

My problem is not with bechamel, but with lasagna using bechamel. I do make mac n cheese from scratch without bechamel, btw, but I love sausage gravy biscuits too much to rag on bechamel. It just doesn't float my boat in lasagna at all.

[Deleted]

Jun 5, 2012 7:33:45 GMT -5 @ktkl09 said:

Any sort of white or cream sauce makes me gag and mayo.

Fettucini Alfredo is probably the most disgusting meal ever, is it even real in Italy (I'm looking at you Jewels)??

oooohmygod no they don't exist - this Alfredo sauce doesn't exist!
Every person I say it to looks at me as if I have two heads...
I'm seriously LOL over this post.
Please everyone carry on with your recipes and variations, all this torturous drama only happens in the heads of the italians It's one of a million curses that come with the peninsula.

[Deleted]

Jun 4, 2012 11:14:35 GMT -5 Cheesecake said:

Jun 4, 2012 7:49:56 GMT -5 @jewels6711 said:

LOL oh it totally would!
The menus are seriously off limits for me! I read mozzarella di bufalo and inside I'm screaming BUFALAAAAAA
It's crazy I know, please don't hate me
A million times I've told my local Whole Foods how to spell prosciutto San Daniele. And there they are still spelling it San DANIELLE .... @z&$/6/):?.&!?$/!!!!!
The poor saint's name was Daniel, dammit!
Ok now I need a drink.

Hehe, how ofteb since you've lived in the US have you corrected saying eXpresso?? That always makes me want to pull my hair out.

I have fat fingers, please excuse typos!

That must be what's making my hair fall out!

[clogged]

I love and support bechamel. In lasgana too. But I say eXPresso. *insert evil laugh here*

[bugabean]

Jun 5, 2012 8:23:10 GMT -5 @jewels6711 said:

oooohmygod no they don't exist - this Alfredo sauce doesn't exist!
Every person I say it to looks at me as if I have two heads...

In that post, it looks like you do ;D

I may love my faux-sagna and fettucini alfredo, but even I knew something had gone horribly wrong with I went to an "Italian" place here in Denmark that had spaghetti, tortellini, and spiral pasta all mixed together on one plate. I don't even have to ask you if that's authentic Italian!

[Deleted]

Jun 5, 2012 13:21:24 GMT -5 bugabean said:

Jun 5, 2012 8:23:10 GMT -5 @jewels6711 said:

oooohmygod no they don't exist - this Alfredo sauce doesn't exist!
Every person I say it to looks at me as if I have two heads...

In that post, it looks like you do ;D

LLLLLLOL!

[elenetxu]

Jun 5, 2012 6:42:40 GMT -5 Cheesecake said:

Humpf, I can't believe you guys are all being so nasty about bechamel! I am offended on bechamel's behalf!!!

Bechamel is sooooo good, provided you made it right. As in, absolutely no bechamel from a jar or box or pouch. It's so easy to make. Also, enough salt, cooking the butter/flour mixture long enough and nutmeg make ALL the difference.

One of my favorite dishes is a casserole with chicken and fennel on the bottom and bechamel over it, in the oven until the chicken is cooked. SO friggin good!

Also, any good cheese sauce, the base is bechamel. Basically any good creamy sauce has a bechamel sauce base. Do you not eat mac an cheese? If you make that from scratch instead of from the nasty blue box, that's a bechamel base!

You all need to apologize to wonderful tasty bechamel, for reals!!!

Regarding faux-agna and real lasagna, this is why I love this board. All along I thought my MIL was just making it wrong since we're in Spain!

I love lasagna with bechamel. And I agree - even for this non-foodie, it's not hard at all to make and a whole heckuva lot better when you make it yourself.

[potatopie]

Jun 5, 2012 13:15:43 GMT -5 clogged said:

I love and support bechamel. In lasgana too. But I say eXPresso. *insert evil laugh here*

hahahaha!

[Cheesecake]

Jun 5, 2012 13:15:43 GMT -5 clogged said:

I love and support bechamel. In lasgana too. But I say eXPresso. *insert evil laugh here*

noooooooo

Do you also say eXpecially and eXetera? (If the answer is yes, please don't tell me, I like having hair !!!!)

[jigginjessica]

Jun 4, 2012 6:18:33 GMT -5 ninjatofu said:

Apparently only the mentally deficient put soy sauce on rice in China.

Also, I once drank a cup of gravy there, thinking it was some sort of gross tea.

We also got crazy looks if we ate pizza with our hands.

This KILLS me! Rice with soy sauce and wasabi is one of the most glorious tastes in the world. DH and I just had a discussion about this last week (as I poured my soy sauce and wasabi all over my rice).

I have actually been pretty surprised by the whole rice concept in China. Not what I was expecting.

To this day one of our friends still laughs at me and makes fun of me for making a sort of "burrito/taco" out of my Peking duck, including rice.

[jigginjessica]

Jun 4, 2012 16:04:53 GMT -5 Wanderista said:

I also eat sushi with some faux pas a lot of the time. I will sometimes eat the sushi by swallowing it whole in one bite. (That does sound a bit rude, hehe). But yeah, sometimes I just want to savor it by eating it in bites. Also, I definitely dunk the nigiri in the wrong way. I use way more soy sauce than I'm supposed to and I love adding wasabi to the soy sauce rather than putting it straight on the piece. Supposedly that's the Californian way to eat it (wasabi in the soy sauce). I just like it better.

That's interesting. This is entirely anecdotal, but we sat next to a Japanese family at a sushi restaurant (or so says the Chinese girl we were with, "Definitely Japanese") and they all put their wasabi in the soy sauce bowl then poured the soy sauce around it (just a little bit though). They didn't exactly mix it in, but it was in the same bowl.

[fernane]

I didn't eat passion fruit the right way..my students brought me some and I thought you just opened it and slurped out the inside, so I did to show them I appreciated it. They started laughing and told me I was supposed to take it home and mix it with sugar and milk..now I usually mix it with plain yogurt.

[fernane]

Jun 4, 2012 5:30:56 GMT -5 dorothyinAus said:

I know I do not eat sushi "correctly."

I also cut my long pasta, rather than twirling around a fork. My Italian FIL's family gave me a few strange looks, but said nothing.

I do this too..I have yet to master the skill of pasta twirling without getting sauce everywhere.

[popcorn]

Yeah, I thought the bechamel in lasagna was a Spain weird thing. I much prefer ricotta, but that's probably it's what I know.

The bechamel gets all over the place and is trickier to eat. Boo.

My favorite thing I tried when I actually went to Italy was Arrabiata sauce which I didn't even know existed before going there.

[clogged]

Jun 5, 2012 15:44:06 GMT -5 Cheesecake said:

Jun 5, 2012 13:15:43 GMT -5 clogged said:

I love and support bechamel. In lasgana too. But I say eXPresso. *insert evil laugh here*

noooooooo

Do you also say eXpecially and eXetera? (If the answer is yes, please don't tell me, I like having hair !!!!)

I say especially normally, but I do say eXcetera. And boLth. and acrossT. My husband cringes and his eyes roll back in his head in agony.

[anna7602]

Jun 6, 2012 0:36:28 GMT -5 fernane said:

I didn't eat passion fruit the right way..my students brought me some and I thought you just opened it and slurped out the inside, so I did to show them I appreciated it. They started laughing and told me I was supposed to take it home and mix it with sugar and milk..now I usually mix it with plain yogurt.

Passion fruit is exactly what my story was about (that I referenced above)!

[ktkl09]

Jun 6, 2012 1:48:11 GMT -5 popcorn said:

Yeah, I thought the bechamel in lasagna was a Spain weird thing. I much prefer ricotta, but that's probably it's what I know.

The bechamel gets all over the place and is trickier to eat. Boo.

My favorite thing I tried when I actually went to Italy was Arrabiata sauce which I didn't even know existed before going there.

Really? I thought Arrabiata was pretty well known throughout. It's on all the Italian menus in Switz and I've seen it in the US.

[bugabean]

I've never heard of it.

[Shreddingbetty]

When I came to the US when I was 14( for a summer exchange) we went for ice-cream. I ordered 3 scoops not realizing that they were humongous scoops! I am sure my host family must have thought I was a pig. I was used to the tiny little scoops of gelato we get in NL (which would be the equivalent of 1 US scoop). I can't remember if I ate it all. Chances are I did....

[Cheesecake]

Jun 6, 2012 8:20:32 GMT -5 Shreddingbetty said:

When I came to the US when I was 14( for a summer exchange) we went for ice-cream. I ordered 3 scoops not realizing that they were humongous scoops! I am sure my host family must have thought I was a pig. I was used to the tiny little scoops of gelato we get in NL (which would be the equivalent of 1 US scoop). I can't remember if I ate it all. Chances are I did....

Tee-hee. That happens to all Dutchies. Really.

I remember ordering a sandwich in the US for the first time, in a deli, at the counter. I saw the guy slicing meat and actually called out to him "I think you heard me wrong, I only want one sandwich."