FLDG Challenge: Prepare a dish from the year you were born

Anyway, Salisbury Steak is merely referenced in a passing comment so there goes my hope of finding what might be considered the or a 'definitive' version.

It's also on p.486 in the long intro block to hamburger meat. But, still, no recipe.

[Jenise]

Yes, that's the passing comment I was referring to.

So I planned Swiss Steak tonight for dinner and invited my brother to join us for that memory lane kind of moment. He called to say yes but then informed me that as of yesterday his allergist is taking him off all acid-containing food for a month. Chris has a lot of lung and stomach issues, and lately has become suspicious that they're connected--that his breathing problems could be part of or at least exacerbated by a food allergy. Like me, he eats tomatoes almost daily so they're the first thing to go (or maybe second, white wine being first). So there goes my Swiss Steak plan!

Jenise, you are right, and I am very surprised. Salisbury steak, in my recollection, is ground, not chopped, and clearly has onion and other flavorings in it, in addition to clear brown gravy. The whole point of Joy of Cooking is that it has recipes for everything, for those of us who didn't learn how to cook in childhood. Because there is a swiss steak recipe. We have an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, maybe it's in there.

Today I tracked down another oddity from my childhood. My mother made something she called subgum. I completely forgot about it and couldn't have told you what was in it until reading a recipe in Bob's grandmother's book--in fact, I presumed my mother made up the name. It's essentially a chow mein, and the first known use of the word can be tracked to 1902 where "subgum chow mein" was on a list of Chinese dishes in a Chicago Tribune article. Webster's defines it as a meat and vegetable stir fry but most sources indicate that bean sprouts is a must ingredient and typically onions and celery are there too. Way back when, though, canned bean sprouts and recipes called for them without hesitation as fresh would have been very limited and very regional. In the BH&G book, it's described as a recipe for leftover roast pork. My own mother might have used leftover roast-something in hers and probably did--but since I detested recooked roasted meats I would have avoided it.

Subgum? That is odd. Nothing is too unlikely given the origin of chop suey, but I really wonder what the ultimate source of that dish is.

I remember subgum chow mein and chop suey being a menu staple at Chinese/Polynesian restaurants in the 60s and 70s. The distinguishing feature of subgum is that it has more vegetables than conventional chow mein/chop suey. There is also Chicago-style, which has a brown sauce. Authentic Cantonese chow mein is made by boiling the noodles until nearly cooked, stir-frying the meat and vegetables, then adding the noodles and stir-frying until the noodles are fully cooked. Chinese/Polynesian American-style chow mein uses deep-fried noodles topped with the stir-fried meat and vegetables.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, I'm guessing there's an east vs. west coast thing here. You and I are about the same age and I am certain it wasn't in common use in west coast Chinese restaurants. I'd have seen it, I'm that annoying child who read every menu in every restaurant we went to from the day I learned to read. And Chinese was my favorite. It was just, to us, something vaguely Chinese-ish that Mom made.

Another strangely named dish she made often was Slumgullion, aka Beefaroni to some. Again, we kids thought she made up the name.

Another strangely named dish she made often was Slumgullion, aka Beefaroni to some. Again, we kids thought she made up the name.

Now you're clearly just pulling my leg.

[Jenise]

What? You didn't grow up on Slumgullion? You deprived child, you.

FWIW, it's even in the Oxford Dictionary. Probably came from Britain, it's an old word for stew or melange of things, though in America it's decidedly ground beef+pasta+onions+tomato sauce and various seasonings.

Paul, I'm guessing there's an east vs. west coast thing here.

I'm sure you're right. Another example of that sort of thing is pot stickers (literal translation of the Chinese kuotie), the Chinese jiaozi dumplings browned on the bottom. In the Boston area (at least as far west as Worcester MA and as far north as southern New Hampshire) these are called Peking ravioli. That's Joyce Chen's doing. She introduced them to New England at her Cambridge MA restaurant under that name.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Peking ravioli???? Oh man, I came across that in recent weeks but can't recall where. I kind of presumed what they would be but didn't realize it was a commonly used term.

Never heard of Peking ravioli and, growing up in the 1960s, there were no dumplings on offer at Chinese restaurants near us. We would order wonton soup, a few roast things (pork, spareribs), and the chow mein was clearly the subgum type but was never indicated as such.

Never saw any dumplings in Chinese restaurants when I was growing up in Connecticut in the 1960s, either. There was wonton soup and fried wontons as an appetizer, but that's it. Pot stickers and steamed jiaozi were part of the Mandarin Chinese Restaurant movement of the 1970s, along with moo shu pork. In New England Joyce Chen's restaurant was at the vanguard of this movement. Most of the Tiki-style dishes from the Cantonese-Polynesian era of the 1950s/60s seem to be gone now.

Egg drop soup used to be a staple on Chinese restaurant menus but I haven't see it in years. Ditto for lobster Cantonese style.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

We talked about this at dinner last night, and my BIL, who grew up in coastal Georgia, recalls Chinese restaurants being called Polynesian. Wasn't the case in So Cal, but come to think of it, my grandmother's favorite Chinese restuarant near her home in Bell Gardens was called The Tiki Room.

Chinese-Polynesian restaurants were part of the whole post-WW II Tiki fad, which was started as a nostalgia movement of sorts by GIs returning from the South Pacific theater. A lot of Chinese restaurants decided to catch the wave and rechristened themselves as Chinese-Polynesian. The Polynesian bit mainly meant dishes featuring pineapple. There was also an array of pseudo-Polynesian cocktails such as the mai tai and zombie. On the East Coast there was a Chinese-Polynesian franchise where restaurants could buy Tiki-type supplies such as coconuts, zombie cups, and paper placemats printed with the array of Tiki cocktails. It was all very similar from one restaurant to the next. Very much like the Greek pizzaria cookie-cutter restaurant package popular in New England.

Nashua NH used to have three Chinese-Polynesian restaurants: the Singapore, Haluwa, and Khalua. Only Haluwa is still there. I only ever went there once, in the 1980s. The pu-pu platter I ordered was stone cold and I never returned.

Most Chinese-Polynesian restaurants around here have dropped the Polynesian bits from their menus in favor of Mandarin and Sichuan dishes. I've noticed over the past decade or two a trend towards Chinese-Japanese menus (Mandarin/Sichuan Chinese plus some sushi and whatnot).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

So Swiss Steak finally happened last night! Simplicity at its best: thick slices of sirloin tip, pounded with flour, salt and pepper, pan seared then covered with a half/half mixture of water and good tomato sauce (Mutti brand, the best) and half a large onion, slivered. Put the lid on and simmered for almost two hours, then served them on grits. Absolutely delicious and I who repeat rarely can imagine doing this again and again. Tomato+onion+beef = heaven.

Bears no resemblance to my mother's, btw, which was all gravy, no tomato whatsoever and which was one of three or four things that as a child I'd eat with a fork in one hand and a glass of water in the other, I hated it so much.

Chinese meat wool is also called rou sung or yuk sung. There is a dish called yuk sung that is minced meat (usually pork) stir-fried with vegetables in small dice and served in a lettuce leaf. 'Rou' means 'meat' in Chinese, and by itself rou means specifically pork. Other meats always explicitly name the animal, for example, niu rou (beef) and yang rou (lamb/mutton). 'Yuk' or 'yoke' also means 'meat', but I think it might be Cantonese dialect.

Yuk sung brought to mind a menu category seen on Chinese restaurant menus in my youth: chow yoke. This was one of the categories of main courses, such as Chow Mein and Chop Suey, where you could select the meat/seafood/vegetarian option of your choice. Chow Yoke was stir-fried vegetables with the meat of your choice. Chinese-Polynesian restaurants also had a Polynesian section to the menu. I think Chow Yoke predates the 1950s Tiki craze. The one remaining Chinese-Polynesian place left in Nashua, NH still has a Chow Yoke section on their menu. They also list egg drop soup and lobster Cantonese style--items absent on most of this area's Chinese restaurants these days.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

My absolute favorite stir fry as a child was called Green Pea (or Snow Pea) Chow Yuk and available at numerous restaurants in the L.A. area. And it was just pea pods, water chestnuts and slices of Chinese BBQ pork in a pale sauce. Variations weren't offered, ever, but I get it that it's popular these days because so many won't/don't eat one or the other for various reasons. My brother won't eat pork but eats everything else, another friend doesn't eat chicken but eats everything else, other friends only eat chicken but no red meat...so hard to be a purist.

So Swiss Steak finally happened last night! Simplicity at its best: thick slices of sirloin tip, pounded with flour, salt and pepper, pan seared then covered with a half/half mixture of water and good tomato sauce (Mutti brand, the best) and half a large onion, slivered. Put the lid on and simmered for almost two hours, then served them on grits. Absolutely delicious and I who repeat rarely can imagine doing this again and again. Tomato+onion+beef = heaven.

You are making this sound very appealing! I'm going to have to schedule it up.

Bears no resemblance to my mother's, btw, which was all gravy, no tomato whatsoever and which was one of three or four things that as a child I'd eat with a fork in one hand and a glass of water in the other, I hated it so much.

Goodness, you have a lot of early food traumas! Can't you just repress it like the rest of us?

[Jenise]

Heck no! I remember everything.

My absolute favorite stir fry as a child was called Green Pea (or Snow Pea) Chow Yuk and available at numerous restaurants in the L.A. area. And it was just pea pods, water chestnuts and slices of Chinese BBQ pork in a pale sauce. Variations weren't offered, ever, but I get it that it's popular these days because so many won't/don't eat one or the other for various reasons. My brother won't eat pork but eats everything else, another friend doesn't eat chicken but eats everything else, other friends only eat chicken but no red meat...so hard to be a purist.

You'll have to construct a Venn diagram.

My mum’s recipe collection was interesting but not very helpful as most of it either predates or postdates my birth.
I did discover (don’t ask) that tater tot’s were invented the year I was born!

[Jenise]

I couldn't zero in on something invented in my birth year: already on the planet at the time, that would do.

FWIW, the tomato variety, Sioux, was released by Univ. of Nebraska in 1944 (my birth year).

Here are two sites with some names and dates:
https://www.foodreference.com/html/html ... -1956.html
https://www.lovefood.com/gallerylist/64 ... in-the-60s

If you are talking about North American cook books, I can't play - I binned all the ones from the previous two generations of my family as I had already assessed them as (with a very few notable exceptions) not worth keeping.

If I can jump forward a very few years though, I'd offer up a whole lot of recipes from Julia - including boeuf Bourguignon.