In article , Christophe
Bachmann wrote:

French cuisine ain't no rubbish, but it ain't cheap either. Here in
France we can find Subway, McDonalds, and a lot of kebab, but for fine
fresh local products you got to pay 15-20 $ at least (15% compulsory
service charge included)


Okay Christophe, are you going to say that if you were about to be
stuck for a couple of days in the middle of Nevada, or in, say, the
massif centrale, that you believe that, stuck in a small hotel meant
for commercial travellers, you'd eat better in the midwest of the usa
than in france?

Lazarus

ps are you biased? Are you a wee bitty american?
I am.
L

On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 11:32:10 -0500, "TMOliver"
wrote:

I am comfortable admitting to eating better in France and Belgium than in
most of the US, especially when it comes to French and Belgian food. The
same is true in Italy, where I've been a frequent visitor since 1962. But
on every visit to Europe it seems harder to find the same "good" cafes of
yesteryear, replaced to often by the fast food morass. Obviously, I am far
more likely to find good European food in any one of the US's larger cities
than I might encounter "traditional US cooking" in Europe. As for Asian
food in Europe, except in Paris, it's almost laughable compared to that
available in Houston, SoCal, San Francisco or the Seattle/Vancouver area.

Another exception is Indonesian (or Indo-Chinese fuson) in the Netherlands.
And we have excellent Asian and middle-eastern food in the DC area as well.

Nowhere in Europe is a traveler likely to stumble upon the sort of pleasant
surprises found across the US in untoward locations, the little Basque
places around the corner in some near deserted Nevada junction, or the
upstairs Vietnamese seafood hangout in Kemah where the shrimp, squid and
tiny octopi are sautéed on a harrow disc. No French village has anything to
match the Napa with that old second rate winery with the grand deli, fine
selections of area cheeses and cured meats (and a rack of baguettes) and
plenty of shady tables outside to sit and enjoy them with the fruit we road
food travel fans have learned to always carry along.

We've found lots of similar surprises in small French towns, such as Carnac and
Cahors.

Fortunately, I am grandly happy with good Italian and French food,
especially the "plain vanilla small town/family/cafe" sort, available with
plenty of local and regional variety. But then I need to be, because in
much of France and Italy, the alternatives to that cooking are unacceptable,
either sad imitations of "foreign" recipes or a choice of grotesquely
over-priced restaurants caught up in fleeting media frenzy. Just as I am
pleased to add a name to my old directory of "Decent Italian Dining Rooms"
circulated among my friends who travel there, I'm always sad to remove one
of the great finds of yesteryear now departed (or worse ruined by trying to
be fancy and popular). What we do not have in the US are many small hotels
with good dining rooms, a tradition in much of Europe. Most hotel food in
the US falls into the late-term abortion category, deserving of prevention
on moral grounds alone. As for the UK, I'm never sure, but do note that
every "improvement" in English food seems accompanied by a collateral
increase in the number and spread of plastic ranks of fast food and what we
used to call "Greasy Spoons", institutions that the British seem willing to
not only tolerate but frequent

Nicely put, overall.

-- Larry

Lazarus Cooke a écrit :
In article , Christophe
Bachmann wrote:

French cuisine ain't no rubbish, but it ain't cheap either. Here in
France we can find Subway, McDonalds, and a lot of kebab, but for fine
fresh local products you got to pay 15-20 $ at least (15% compulsory
service charge included)


Okay Christophe, are you going to say that if you were about to be
stuck for a couple of days in the middle of Nevada, or in, say, the
massif central, that you believe that, stuck in a small hotel meant
for commercial travellers, you'd eat better in the midwest of the usa
than in france?

Nope, I'm not saying that either, because I've never been in the
mid-west and so cannot compare, and I never meant to say it, but what I
want to say most emphatically is that even in France if you want to eat
cheap you will most often have to resort to some form of fast food,
there are still quite a lot of good little restaurants, (and often in
small hotels too) but they are increasingly rare and increasingly
pricey. The little worker's restaurants are dying out, even in Europe.

Lazarus

ps are you biased? Are you a wee bitty american?
I am.
L

--
Greetings, Salutations,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald,
Chris CII, Rennes, France

I'm not biased at all because I've not set foot in the US for thirty years.

"TMOliver" writes:

Laughably, one example of the dearth of edibles cited was College Station,

Now, Tom, I didn't "cite" that, I stated that my guess had been that
College Station was unlikely to be particularly good--and that guess
was an extrapolation from my (not hitherto expressed, here, lately
at least) opinion that, contrary to Cape Cod Bob's opinion, "college
towns" are likely to have good restaurants. That's never been my
experience (not counting large conurbations like NYC or Boston/Cambridge
which have colleges in them but aren't in any sense "college towns").
Bob, if you're there, do you maintain that the environs of Cape Cod
Community College have particularly good food (better than what you
might find elsewhere on the Cape)? Certainly my neighboring college,
UMass-Dartmouth (formerly Southeastern Massachusetts University, and
before that the New Bedford Textile Institute) hasn't contributed a
damned thing to local cuisine (which has fine exemplars). And in
Worcester, MA, though there happen to be a decent Ecuadorian restaurant
and a quite good Vietnamese restaurant within a few blocks of Clark
University, both are too far outside the pusillanimous students' comfort
zone to have any significant number of Clarkies eating in them. Etc.,
etc.

I'm glad to hear that I *could* have had good eats in College Station
(if I hadn't had a riproaring cold that made the prospect of getting to
the Austin airport more important than almost any other goal at that
moment).

But I swear that on the direct route fron Huntsville to Austin,
there didn't appear to be a damned thing.

As for Asian
food in Europe, except in Paris, it's almost laughable compared to that
available in Houston, SoCal, San Francisco or the Seattle/Vancouver area.

What always astounds me is that I can't find decent Asian food in Geneva.

Let's face it folks....Those of you for whom the Cafe Texan is any more than
a routine stop for "Southern Road Food", who have not eaten sliced brisket
off butcher paper at the market in Lockhart, and don't understand that there
are two mutually incompatible regional versions, "East Texas Dipped and Deep
Fried" and "West Texas Pounded and Pan Fried", of Chicken Fried Steak (the
West Texas version authentically descended from Central European cooks who
have pounded cutlets for centuries and still do and a cousin to all those
"Milanesas" on menus from Buenos Aires to Monterey), are as terminally
unaware as are the silly Americans who claim to be unable to find good eats
in Paris.

So I assume both my (probably) Amarillo CFS and my Huntsville CFS were
East Texan? What's its roots, then?

I wasn't (as long as I'm being defensive) holding the Cafe Texan up as
an examplar of other than "Southern Road Food"--I did eat better in both
Austin and Houston, but don't remember the names of the places my hosts
there took me on that trip. Still, the well-buttered beans were memorable.

Lee Rudolph

Lazarus Cooke a écrit :
In article , Christophe
Bachmann wrote:


French cuisine ain't no rubbish, but it ain't cheap either. Here in
France we can find Subway, McDonalds, and a lot of kebab, but for fine
fresh local products you got to pay 15-20 $ at least (15% compulsory
service charge included)

salut Lee Rudolph.

(No the writer was Christophe Bachmann quoting Lee Rudolph)

I can't help feeling that you're nervously guarding your options (what
i believe, what I can say in public)

Tu (forgive me, but it's the internet) penses qu'on fait de la meilleure
cuisine aux Etats-Unis qu'en France?

Et que vraiment quand tu arrives dans un petit village dans les
montagnes, que tu vas manger mieux dans ce village aux Etats-Unis
que dans un village francais?

Non, mais en France tu ne trouveras plus de restaurants dans les
villages, et de moins en moins dans les petites villes, la tradition
gastronomique se meurt lentement, malheureusement. Je ne sais pas où la
situation en est aux USA.

Probably filled with mistakes
but at least I tried.

I took liberty to correct the french silently, by the way village is
masculine where ville is feminine but that apart it is quite good.

Lazarus
--
Greetings, Salutations,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald,
Chris CII, Rennes, France

Cookie Cutter writes:

TMOliver wrote:
Czech-American cooking is easy to find...

Where?

West of Houston (for one example that I'm sure of;
certainly there must be others). Just start driving...

Lee Rudolph

"Lee Rudolph" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
Cookie Cutter writes:

TMOliver wrote:
Czech-American cooking is easy to find...

Where?

West of Houston (for one example that I'm sure of;
certainly there must be others). Just start driving...

Yabbut, what's "Czech - American" cooking supposed to be ?
What are some typical dishes ?

Cheers,

Michael "just czeching" Kuettner

"Michael Kuettner" wrote

Yabbut, what's "Czech - American" cooking supposed to be ?
What are some typical dishes ?

http://www.csafraternallife.org/jour...c=February.pdf

--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com

Opinicus a écrit :
"Michael Kuettner" wrote

Yabbut, what's "Czech - American" cooking supposed to be ?
What are some typical dishes ?

http://www.csafraternallife.org/jour...c=February.pdf

Yeouch ! 8.1 MB, please everybody post a warning when you link to such
big files !

And there's exactly one recipe, for jidaski, a type of cookie on one
quarter of page 12 out of 36.

--
Greetings, Salutations,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald,
Chris CII, Rennes, France

"TMOliver" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

"Michael Kuettner" wrote in message
...

"Lee Rudolph" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
Cookie Cutter writes:

TMOliver wrote:
Czech-American cooking is easy to find...

Where?

West of Houston (for one example that I'm sure of;
certainly there must be others). Just start driving...

Yabbut, what's "Czech - American" cooking supposed to be ?
What are some typical dishes ?

Cheers,

Michael "just czeching" Kuettner


Kolace, Kolaches.....

Ah, Golatschen.
Bohemian "Mehlspeisen". Stolen by us wily Australians, refined and passed
back to the benighted Masareks & Beneses.
So I guess that the so-called "Czech-American" really is "K.u.k. - American" ?

In West (Station), Texas near Waco (along with a dozen Czech American
whatevers) are the "CzechStop" convenience store and bakery, plus the local
motel, the Czech Inn.
Thank you,

Cheers,

Michael "your czech is in the post" Kuettner

"Christophe Bachmann" wrote

http://www.csafraternallife.org/jour...c=February.pdf
Yeouch ! 8.1 MB, please everybody post a warning when you link to such big
files !
And there's exactly one recipe, for jidaski, a type of cookie on one
quarter of page 12 out of 36.

Sorry 'bout that. I was misled. The file was not what it was purported to
be.

--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com

"TMOliver" schrieb
"Michael Kuettner" wrote

snip
Michael "your czech is in the post" Kuettner

No, no, Michael, that's the Sodomite who claimed that the Czech was in the
male.....

I've just czeched my malebox. Nothing in it.


A century plus of Southwestern farm life has heavily altered what seems to
have been (at least among those who came here) a fairly standard Central
European rural diet.

Over here similar changes, though maybe because of different reasons.
Old recipes (like Gulasch or Sauerbraten) were invented to use fatty meat.
Nowadays, fatty meat ends in cat and dog food; and lean meat in Gulasch
just tastes ahem ...

Baked goods survive somewhat altered, but I fear that your "Golatschen" would
be hard to recognize....Today, the bakery varieties are...cherry, apricot,
pineapple, apple, prune, and rarely any more a sweet poppy seed filling sure
to make one fail a test for opiates.

Well, Golatschen are of the quadratic persuasion over here.
Take puff-paste, cut it into quadrats, spread a little molten butter over them,
add filling. Now fold the edge points towards the middle. Spread egg-yolk
over the dough and put it into the oven. Voila, Golatschen.

Apart from pineapple all those variants have been known for a long time.
The sweet poppy seed Golatschen has survived as well.
Plus the original one with curds and raisins (Topfengolatsche).

Hmm, I'll have to try a mix of pineapple and curds, I guess.

There are both "cottage cheese" and "cream cheese" filled, neither I suspect
"original", and now popular, using the sweet risen pastry, smoked sausage,
sausage and kraut, sausage and cheese, none of which are open topped, but with
the filling rolled/encased in the pastry.

Ah, here we enter the realm of Krautgolatschen; the other side of the coin.
As "Strudel", Golatschen are either made as a pastry or a pie.
Like meat-pie and apple-pie.
Although, contrary to youse Merkins, we don't sweeten the dough when we
plan to pack sausage in it.

The Texas "Czech Belt" extends from Ennis, South of Dallas, down through the
Brazos and Middle Colorado Valleys almost to the coast, with a number of small
towns and farm areas in which much of the population have Czech roots, mixed
with similar communities of strong German roots, often with towns only a few
miles apart, separated farther by the region of Central Europe from which the
founders had arrived.

My wife is part "Hrabal" and by some quirk I served a term as President of the
family reunion group, members all over the US, but gathering each year at the
SPJST Lodge in tiny Cottonwood, a few miles from West. I suspect that the
Hrabals may have been ethnic Germans of the Sudeten/Bohemian sort.

Well, ethnic Australians until Fritz decided to wage war against Maria Theresia
....
Speaking of Hrabals, defenestration is well and alive in Prague.
http://www.servus.at/hillinger/1997/...ben/leben.html
Although Bohumil Hrabal defenestrated himself ...

Even in Waco, our phone book is cluttered with all sorts of Czech family
names. Towns like West were large enough to house both the RCatholic majority
but Protestant minorities large enough to have their own church. Compared to
other immigrant groups, the Czechs tended to build their churches in town,
while among some of the Germans, the churches would rise on convenient bits of
high ground unsuitable for farming.

Well, a look into the phone-book of Vienna (Australia) would show you Mareks,
Posbischils, etc. And Czernys, Molotovs and whatever else was once part
of the empire.
While Australia isn't as big as Merka, we are more thoroughly *******ized;
we've been at it for more than a thousand years ...

In my youth, the generic "Bohemian" was used to describe a variety of the
cultures, but the use has declined.

I know the term and the meaning in English; after WWI it would have been
politically incorrect to use "kuk" or even "Austrian" culture; Wilson's "Vae
Victis" - treaty ...

snip
Thank you for the picture of the part of the world where you're living, Tom.
It's always a pleasure to read your posts (be it here or elsewhere).

In my case, I can still go to dinner at my wife's cousins, the Alfons Soukups,
and face a dinner little changed from that served on feast days by Georgie
Soukup's great grandmother, the first Mrs. Hrabal here (except I suspect we
have a lot more meat today), and on the way home stop by Nemecek the Butchers
for a limited variety of cured meats of Central European heritage.

Ah, "Speck" ?
Smoked, cured, etc.

The accents alone on the streets of West are enough to make one question where
in the world one is, and if listening closely, Czech expressions still dress
up conversations between older residents. Beer is still "Pivo" at Pareya's
Domino Hall.

Ah - Kruglje Pivo (half a liter beer).

snip
Again, thanks for a glimpse into Texas.

The local "German" restaurant food is in some cases pretty good, but owes more
to modern German cookbooks and restaurant kitchens than to the

Could you name some dishes typically served there ?
Thanks.

traditions of those first settlers who arrived lured by greedy con-men in at
least one case masquerading as a "German Nobleman", no more noble than was
that former drill sergeant, "Baron von Steuben" who contributed as much to the
US Revolutionary Army as any except George W.

He wasn't the only con-man. There were several other "companies" who
promised a new life in America. The people shipped there ended up like
nowadays Chinese slaves ...

Coming back from visiting with clients in Bastrop and Elgin yesterday, I
stopped into one of Elgin's to sausage factories, Meyer's and Southside, for
some "dry-cure", pure and simple "Jaegerwurst", likely pretty familiar to Mr.
Kuettner, to

Depends. "Jaegerwurst" was originally made from deer. Nowadays it's a variant
of Salami.

carry home and a couple of "German Americanisms", "sandwiches" of hot
"Southern" biscuits encasing a segment of Meyer's "smoked sausage" rings.

That's a Merkanism, right.

The biscuits might be strange, Mike, but the sausage would likely look and
taste familiar.
Well, since we have a metric buttload of various sausages over here, I guess
it would.

Had I stayed for lunch, with sausage, barbecue brisket or smoked porkchops for
entrees, the side dishes were a quaint blend of cultures...boiled potatoes
with bacon dressing (obviously "German Potato Salad" in the big city),
Hmm, potato salad.
Boil potatoes. Peel them, cut into slices.
Put them into a bowl and pour hot beef-soup mixed with vinegar over the slices.
Chop onions finely. Add and mix.
Let mix rest for 20 minutes.
Cut fatty bacon into little cubes and fry until crunchy.
Pour over salad and mix well.
Sprinkle finely chopped chive on top and serve.
Was that the one ?

Collard Greens (Southern), Kraut w/caraway seeds

Kraut is always made with caraway/cumin seeds.

(Central Europe), Pinto Beans (Mexican), "Dumplings" (which are a sort of
chicken and dumplings without the chicken, only the stock for flavor, an
adaptation of a European tradition).

Well, "dumplings" are supposed to mean "Knoedeln", which is wrong.
The most apt translation would be the Northern-German "Kloesse".
"Knoedel" in the Southern German area can be anything from pastry
(Marillenknoedel),
inlets for soups (Leberknoedel), side-dishes (Semmelknoedel or Kartoffelknoedel)
up to meals in their own right (Selchknoedel).
TW(OK)IAVBP ;-)


That's about as multi-cultural as life gets. There were cornbread and
biscuits, and for dessert the venue was purely American, a choice of pecan pie
or banana pudding. Had I spent a cold morning in pasture hunting deer or
walking behind a bird dog in crop stubble, I could have dealt with the
calories implicit in the menu, but with it close to 90F and early September,
the prospects were less than healthful.

That I can believe easily.

From a food history standpoint, the classic West Texas version of "Chicken
Fried Steak" (in my view the original) is a thin cut of beef, seasoned with
salt and pepper, into which flour is "pounded" with the edge of a plate or
other object used to break down the fibers

Yep. We have a special hammer (Fleischklopfer) for that purpose over here.
It looks like that, although mine has a wooden handle :
http://www.intergastro.de/artikelnummer/178324/pgruppe/2271/rp/-1

of what was originally "range beef", tough and stringy by today's standards,
then "pan fried" in a modest amount of grease, not deep fried as in East Texas
and much of the South (where the meat after tenderizing is dipped in a heavy
batter). "Chicken Fried Steak" as I grew up with it is clearly a dish of
Central European origin, a Schnitzel in anybody's cookbook.

Yep. Good meat became Wiener Schnitzel or Kotellette, tough meat would be
fried and served with sauces, or be made into Gulasch.
One of my favourite dishes, Sauerbraten mit Kartoffelknoedeln, was invented
to use tough meat.

Our regional tendency to use "Brisket" as a popular cut of beef seems equally
borrowed from Central European kitchens. "Barbecue" for us is certainly no
more than adapting a cut once oven-cooked to use, untrimmed and fatty, to be
very slowly smoked, and one still encounters altered versions of "boiled beef"
from the same cut in family homes and the occasional restaurant (although the
traditional sauce/gravy I recall from childhood, diced celery and carrots
which had been cooked with the meat, a white roux, the pan juices plus stock
as needed, and fresh horseradish, has been lost in time).

Ah, "boiled beef" covers a great variety of dishes here.
From the famous "Tafelspitz" down to "Siedfleisch" (the meat which is used to
make
beef-soup).
The diced celery and carrots hint to Tafelspitz - where you simmer prime beef in
bouillon
for a short time; serve with cooked and pan-roasted potatoes, cream-spinach &
cie.

Thanks for a most informative post; I hope I mentioned something which makes up
for the time you invested to show me some aspects of Texas.

Cheers,

Michael Kuettner

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 01:45:16 +0200, "Michael Kuettner"
wrote:

snip great discussion of delicious sounding food

Well, ethnic Australians until Fritz decided to wage war against Maria Theresia
...
more snippage

Well, a look into the phone-book of Vienna (Australia) would show you Mareks,
Posbischils, etc. And Czernys, Molotovs and whatever else was once part
of the empire.
While Australia isn't as big as Merka, we are more thoroughly *******ized;
we've been at it for more than a thousand years ...


Michael Kuettner

I'm confused, Michael. In this and a previous post in this thread you
refer to "Australians" (people from Ausralia). It seems to me you
might mean "Austrians" (people from Austria, in Europe). Which is it?
Has your spellchecker gone nuts? 'Cause it doesn't sound like the
Australia in which I live :-)
CJ

wrote

I'm confused, Michael. In this and a previous post in this thread you
refer to "Australians" (people from Ausralia). It seems to me you
might mean "Austrians" (people from Austria, in Europe). Which is it?
Has your spellchecker gone nuts? 'Cause it doesn't sound like the
Australia in which I live :-)

I count 18 Viennas in the US and one in Canada. Oddly there's not even one
in Australia, which is a shame. Someone missed a potentially good joke.

If I were an Aussie I'd found town called "Vienna" just for the hell of it.

--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com

schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 01:45:16 +0200, "Michael Kuettner"
wrote:

snip great discussion of delicious sounding food

Well, ethnic Australians until Fritz decided to wage war against Maria
Theresia
...
more snippage

Well, a look into the phone-book of Vienna (Australia) would show you Mareks,
Posbischils, etc. And Czernys, Molotovs and whatever else was once part
of the empire.
While Australia isn't as big as Merka, we are more thoroughly *******ized;
we've been at it for more than a thousand years ...


Michael Kuettner

I'm confused, Michael. In this and a previous post in this thread you
refer to "Australians" (people from Ausralia). It seems to me you
might mean "Austrians" (people from Austria, in Europe). Which is it?
Has your spellchecker gone nuts? 'Cause it doesn't sound like the
Australia in which I live :-)

Since George Bush stated that the Austrian army is in Afghanistan, I
feel a craving for roo-steak a la Vienna and am constantly checking
in which direction the toilet drains ...;-)

The Austria-Australia confusion is one of the oldest Usenet-jokes.
Esp. Merkins seem unable to keep the two apart, as demonstrated by
Bush recently.

G'day matey,

Michael "Bruce" Kuettner