Earlier this week I made chicken and dumplings. Afterward, didn't care much for the dumplings so discarded them, then augmented the remaining chicken and gravy with potatoes, carrots and peas to make a stew. Today the final serving of that stew was Bob's lunch, draped over a toasted and trimmed slice of sourdough bread which I called, in the French tradition, a 'crouton'.
Bob was amused by the word 'crouton'. Yes yes, I commented, most Americans think those are only for salad. To which Bob added, "and you buy them in a box at the market".
He's so right and it got me started on the whole idea of bread as a platform for saucey meats. I first encountered it when I was a kid lunching with a friend in a local department store's cafe. It was thin slices of well done roast beef in a gravy that came, no doubt, from a powdered mix, over plain white sandwich bread. Very midwestern and three things I didn't like at all (at home I eschewed all gravy and well done beef) yet I liked this concoction very much, industrial though it was.
A decade or two would pass before dining at a so-called French restaurant in Southern Californai with my father who insisted we both have the "Open-faced Steak Sandwich", a grilled strip steak on a thick slice of garlic toast. Of course the French would call that a crouton but Americans in the 'burbs don't understand bread with meat without the word 'sandwich', so there it was, even if you couldn't pick it up and eat it with your hands.
It's a shame, I said, that Americans don't consider bread a fourth starch, other than as a mop, when considering rice, potatoes and noodles for that line of duty.
And then not two hours later, here I am reading a recipe for a garlic/beef/cream pan saute, to which the author, one Jessica Formicola whoever she is, adds: "Tender top sirloin and fresh herbs work beautifully with the garlic, which is gently stir-fried to enhance the flavor without being overpowering. The traditional accompaniment is mashed potatoes, but pasta or rice are also excellent choices, as is a slice of crusty bread to sop up every bit of the sauce."
PROVES MY POINT. Bread on the side in addition to, but not bread instead.
Am I the only one here who uses bread as the platform in a main dish?
