Never been to the States but I'm intrigued to know exactly where true American cuisine stands..being the cook of the house.

The only American high falluting chef I ever heard of was Robert Carriere, but don't know much about his cuisine.

Of course..America started fast food..fantastic. I love burgers, MacDonalds, Wimpeys, because they're quick and tasty.

My wife, when we're in town invariably want to go to Marks and Spencer where you can sample British food at its worst. Big fat lumps of dry bread with a thin slither of ham or cheese in the middle. Cheddar. My mum used to call it 'soapy cheese.'

Yes, British food has the reputation of being awful and often is..our own fast food..fish and chips can be abominable, fat laden and full of bits and horrible bits. Yuk!

But it's not totally well deserved. the French call us 'Les Ros Beef' because we eat roast beef, pork, lamb etc, all very simple, but with good ingredients very nice.

The reason is that animal husbandry has always been good in Britain (Except for the CJD scare!) whereas it hasn't in France, so they had to invent a good cuisine to cover up the taste of their awful meat.

So wot u got in the States then?

Yes, we know you'll get a pig's helping if you order a meal in a restaurant which is why so many Americans are FFFAAATTT!!!

I heard somewhere that in New York if you go to a sandwich bar you get all kinds of fantastic sandwich fillings whereas we just get ham and cheese and not much more..what sort of fillings??

I know the prawn cocktail is an American dish. What else is? I've heard about deep South cuisine..I've had some Cajun food, blackened fish and jambalaya, but the film 'Southern Comfort put me off a bit.

Also peach ice cream, raspberry pie (DON'T say apple pie..that was British before you were even thought of)

Of course barbecues are good, my brother has a friend in the States who barbecues his food every night, even when its snowing!

There's hot stones cooking too isn't there though we don't have that in the UK. Wasn't it an old Native American idea..didn't they used to cook up stews by throwing hot stones into the pot..though I know the modern method is to put your food right onto the stones.

I'm from Chelmsford in England, of course, home of eccentric old (now deceased) food expert Fanny Craddock, though I was born in Liverpool, home of the Beatles.

The local dish there is lobscouse. 'Scouse' as it is called, along with everything else Liverpudlian.

If anyone wants a recipe let me know.

Fanny Craddock..my sister went to one of her demonstrations in the North of England back in the Sixties, in a town where they speak with the very old North of England dialect..like British soap Coronation Street if you've ever seen it.

There were two old ladies sitting at the front, one of whom was nearly deaf, so the other one had to tell her what was happening, so the whole episode was filled with such loud comments as

"SHE'S MAEKIN' ASPIC JELLIED DOOK" (duck)

I bought some jerky in our supermarket recently then all the women I work with went into hysterics after I'd eaten it because they said it was dog food.

Now, American people on this site..TELL ME..I haven't just eaten dog food have I?

Love curry too but it heats your bottom.

__________________
You cannot create a truth by believing in a falsehood.

Couldn't tell you about the dog foot bit. Sorry. A couple of questions I can answer. For the sandwich thing, just take a look at Subway, a popular food chain. I guess you could call it fast food, though it's a deli style sandwich shop. http://www.subway.com/applications/menu/index.aspx
They've got probably several hundred of them over in the UK.

To me, "American" cuisine tends to be things like a meat and two or meat and three. Basically a main course that contains meat of some kind (beef, chicken, fish, whatever) and two or three sides (potatos, corn, other veggies).

One chain of restaruants that might have a good indication might be Cracker Barrel. They have a sort of "general store" in each restaruant and serves "old fashioned" type food. Here's a link to their menu page:
http://www.crackerbarrel.com/menu.cfm?doc_id=170
This place is a definite Yum.

Jerky is much too good to give to the dog. It's simply dried beef, usually flavored or marinated beforehand. I sometimes make my own and the better the quality of the beef, the better the quality of the jerky. I believe its origins are as a Native American trail food although I'd bet that it has been "discovered"independently all over the world.
I was at my son's wedding in Birmingham , England, 2 years ago and we were introduced to the "Balti" which is extremely popular there.

You can find tons of cook books written by Americans, all kinds of different types. Many are excellent, some are not... Likewise, cable and satellite TV networks have lots of cooking shows, some are excellent, most are not.

The really great US restaraunts are local places, regional in cuisine, usually with only one to a few locations in a single city.

Most of the chains, with hundreds of locations, are cookie cutter boring (e.g., TGIF = Bennigans = Ruby Tuesdays = whatever). There are a few exceptions, chain restaurants actually worth crossing the street for ... someone mentioned Cracker Barrell, I'd suggest Macaroni Grill. But in general, when traveling in the US, eat local whenever possible.

I really like Macaroni Grill; I'd say it's much better than Olive Garden. I guess it would qualify as Americanized Italian food.

One (I think) unique American dessert is strawberry rhubarb pie. It is very good, but I've found that it's more of a Midwestern thing.

__________________
Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

Actually, we don't have prawn cocktail, it's just shrimp cocktail and very popular. I had prawns in Italy and they are very different.

Southern food (and Cajun) is uniquely American as well as Tex Mex, which is nothing like native Mexican food, and in Mexico they don't serve chips and salsa with every meal. I would say Tex Mex is very popular in the US. Lots of cheese and ranchero sauce, which is probably why Houston got "Fat City" a year ago. Fattening things like Frito Pie too, which is chili, cheese and Frito Corn Chips.

Typical Southern food is chicken fried steak with gravy (made with cheap meat that's pounded thin and deep fried and smother with white gravy), cornbread, okra, grits and such--what people say is "good comfort food." I never ate this stuff until I came to Texas. Great thing about Houston is that there are tons of cheap restaurants, so just about every cuisine is available.

I've been to a New York deli. I ordered a ham sandwich. What I got what more than 10cm thick!

Americans do gorgeous fillet steaks. They succumb to the knife like butter. They are the most excellent meat I've ever sampled and not especially fattening despite stereotypes. Texas is the best place to go for that.

Of course, New England sea food is second to none. My dad always enjoys a good lobster there. I always love the shrimp. Mind you, Tescos sell an okay prawn as well.

Subway is pretty cool. They do nice sandwiches with a bit of meat, cheese and salad as you please. Nothing like the New York deli in Times Square, but a good snack for the road. There are a couple in Watford town centre and Birmingham City Centre are probably crawling with them.

I think the British public can be real hypocrits sometimes. American style food is highly eaten. American programmes are highly watched. American music is always doing well. And then they go on about how much they don't like them. It's just an ego trip really. They think they're making themselves look superior.

__________________
Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

I'm sitting here with my dinner, so let me tell you what I ate. In olive oil I put an organic onion & a clove of elephant garlic. then I added mushrooms and brown rice. It was delish. And soy sauce.

One of the nice things about living in the U.S. is that you have easy access to almost any kind of food you could ask for. I live in suburban Northern New Jersey, and within 20 minutes of here I could get any of the following (in some cases several examples of each):

Chinese (Or what we here in the U.S. call Chinese food, anyway)
Japanese (Either sushi or hibachi)
Indian (A bit more authentic than the Chinese)
Thai (Mmmm, coconut curry and satay)
Mexican and/or Tex Mex (Mostly Tex Mex. It's hard to find real Mexican around here)
Italian (Very Americanized, mostly based on Southern Italian cooking with emphasis on pizza. I wish more places offered more Northern Italian dishes)
French (Somewhat authentic)
Morrocan (Complete with belly dancing on the weekends)
Spanish (Somewhat authentic)

There's more, but you get the idea.

It helps that New York and New Jersey are major gateways into the U.S., so we have an incredibly ethnically diverse population, which makes going out to eat a lot of fun.

Here's some examples of American food that I love, but I can't get near here:

Seafood chowder (For the good stuff, you have to go to Northern New England)
Real southern fried chicken and hush puppies (Have to head south for that)

Name a food, any food, and it can be found on a sandwich in New York City. (Examples: cole slaw, french fries, bacon, the list goes on forever)

I know several families like that. Oh, and don't confuse barbequed food (that is, grilled) with Barbeque (or BBQ) from the Southeast, which is completely different. BBQ is pork or chicken that is cooked slowly until it is falling off the bone, and is then shredded and mixed with barbeque sauce. Add some cornbread on the side, and a glass of sweet tea, and now you're talking some good eats.

Good jerky couldn't be considered dog food, but the stuff in a supermarket... Let's just say the jury is still out on that one.

The US has lots of regional cooking styles, as others have pointed out. There's a long, long way from Tex-Mex to San Francisco Chinese-American to a Kansas City steakhouse to a New England Boiled Dinner or clambake.

There's one cooking show that comes close to embodying the "standard American" sytle of food, which I'd describe as more or less Midwestern but with lots of influences stolen shamelessly from all over the world. It's America's Test Kitchen, associated with Cook's Illustrated magazine. You can get the flavor (pun intended) here:

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/

By the way, the only type of American meal I know of that involves hot rocks is the aforementioned clambake. Hmm, maybe a Hawaiian luau, too.

Southern cooking.

In my town we have a restaurant called the Rountable, which, cleverly enough, has several 16 seat round tables with a lazy susan in the center. For a fixed price, go in, sit down, and have all you want (well, all you can eat. I've never had all I want!)

Fried chicken that melts in your mouth (not at all greasy), ham, fish, roast beef, pork chops, butterbeans, greens (collards, mustards or turnip depending on the day), green beans, corn done three ways, salads of all types, cornbread or yeast rolls, pies, and the absolute ne plus ultra -- banana pudding!

I don't eat there much -- I can't afford new clothes.

__________________
I am a doctor, but I don't play one on TV.

I'm down here in Texas, possibly the home of one of the only truly American foods- Tex-Mex. It's made up of about four traditions, and local ingredients which you don't have to go half a world away to get. But then, barbecuing and smoking are popular here as well.

Used to be the most American (as in US American) cuisine you could get was at Hungry Farmer here in Universal City around San Antonio. Why? Unlike every other steak place in the city, including Ruth's Chris: the hundred dollar plate place, they had a butcher on staff and the meat was fresh cut steak. It was the tenderest, most flavorful filet mignon I've ever had- and the New York Strip was excellent as well.

But then the "new" owner was a cheapskate and fired the butcher. Now it's the same frozen crap you get anywhere in the USA, including the other restaurants mentioned in the above posts.

If you really want "American" cuisine, ask a longtime native local to where you go. They'll know where the good restaurants are. Often they look like hole-in-the-wall places like Hungry Farmer, or like the now-defunct "Little Hipp's" that used to serve a minimum 2/3 lb (350g?) burger, and went as large as 1 1/3 lbs (700g) burgers. The "Large" order of tater-tots was a basket that weighed about two pounds (1 Kilo).

I'll just stop my drooling for a few seconds to ask a couple of questions...

"Chicken fried steak" has been mentioned. Where does the chicken come into it? Does it mean the the steak is cooked in chicken fat?

Grits. What the heck are they?? Hash browns? (That's what I'm imagining at the moment!)

Now, back to the land of food.... oggggghhhhllllll

__________________
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Chicken fried steak means steak cooked in the style of fried chicken--that is, tenderized by pounding, coated with seasoned flour and then fried. Hash browns are simply shredded potatoes that are pressed into a patty, usually without additional ingredients and then lightly fried, ideally without too much oil or butter. Grits are a pasta-like dish, made of corn. Or maybe they should be described as potato-like.

No, they're more similar to farina or cream of wheat. Except not so fluid and grittier (sorry didn't know how better to put it).

__________________
Free speech is no problem
It's listening that costs

Well, this is a real gourmet's paradise.

Someone said he made his own jerky? How??

I've been thinking of making my own smoked food..salmon, beef, duck and so on.

Yes, hominy grits, I've often wondered about them since my dad got then in his American supplies in WW2.

And hush puppies.

Corn seems to be in most of these things..is that maize..sweetcorn as we call it over here..like yellow peas?

Also succotash. We've all heard the phrase "Sufferin' succotash!" uttered by a cartoon cat. What is succotash?

And the American habit of putting syrup on your food. Yuk!!

Somebody said the Brits could be snobby about burgers and so on..well, a bit I suppose, particularly when they find burger wrappers flapping iun the wind and littering the street. We do have some slobs around here but not so many in Chelmsford.

But one thing we do have here guaranteed to bring up your breakfast.. at some fish and chip shops where everything is deep fried, you can get deep fried Mars bar or Snickers bar (a Mars bar is like a snickers bar without the nuts.) The bar is dipped in batter then deep fried. YUK!!

Hash browns? great with bacon and eggs and Worcester sauce, which is a kind of thin brown sauce.

Haven't seen any Subway bars.

And yes, we get a mix of food restaurants, but lots of Brits abroad all look out for British style restaurants dishing up meat and two veg.

One simple but very tasty sandwich filling..try it today.

Call it the Marconi..(he lived in Chelmsford.)

Marconi.

Two slices of bread spread with butter or low fat spread.

Fill with chicken meat.

Add chopped spring onions in good measure. (Scallions)

No seasoning.

Try it! :P

__________________
You cannot create a truth by believing in a falsehood.

Here is the menu from one of my favourite restaurants in Washington, which serves "Low-Country" American cuisine. I love the food there.

I've been thinking of making my own smoked food..salmon, beef, duck and so on.

As gritmonger said, smoking is real popular in the Southwest. Lots of people have smokers since barbecue is smoked meat here--everything is mesquite grilled or mesquite smoked. Don't care for it myself--I just like grilled anything. Smoking takes a lot of time.

Yes, hominy grits, I've often wondered about them since my dad got then in his American supplies in WW2.

Yes, the same thing--roughly ground corn with the hulls soaked off. We call it roughage here and without smothering grits with butter, maple syrup or honey, I think they're bland.

And hush puppies.

Well, we love our corn and fried foods. Corn is definitely an American (North, South and Central) food and frying things made a lot of foods taste better. Seems like everything is fried to death. There's some debate about the origin of "hush puppies," but one of the most accepted myths is that they fried the cornmeal dough and threw them to the dogs while sitting around a fire to shut up their barking. Corn fritters are good too.

Corn seems to be in most of these things..is that maize..sweetcorn as we call it over here..like yellow peas?

We don't refer to corn as maize-the Mexicans did. European settlers started calling it Indian corn. There are many hybrids, but I read there are three primary corn hybrids grown in the US--feed corn for livestock, sweet corn and popcorn. I had thought popcorn was just ordinary kernels, but they specifically use a breed of corn just for that. There's so much to do with corn--corn tortillas have more flavor than flour tortillas, corn chips, corn chowder, etc.

Yellow peas are peas--like black-eyed peas, which are big here, they're yellow instead of the common green pea. I've never eaten yellow peas.

Also succotash. We've all heard the phrase "Sufferin' succotash!" uttered by a cartoon cat. What is succotash?

Succotash is lima beans and corn mixed together. Succotash is an Indian word for food mixed together, I believe. It's sold in cans along with the other canned food.

And the American habit of putting syrup on your food. Yuk!!

Hey, syrup is good! Do you mean maple syrup? Hmm, over pancakes, waffles, ice cream...it's a good way to sweeten anything. I thought our biggest fault was smother everything in ketchup.

But one thing we do have here guaranteed to bring up your breakfast.. at some fish and chip shops where everything is deep fried, you can get deep fried Mars bar or Snickers bar (a Mars bar is like a snickers bar without the nuts.) The bar is dipped in batter then deep fried. YUK!!

Now that sounds interesting--fried Snickers bar. A lot of restaurants are using Snickers bars in desserts that are soooo good, but I've never had one deep-fried. Now, I'm curious. Mexican restaurants are into frying ice-cream, chocolate and ice-cream filled empanadas and such. I think that would be good because the inside would be all melted chocolate and caramel and that's essentially what these desserts are.

Hash browns? great with bacon and eggs and Worcester sauce, which is a kind of thin brown sauce.

No ketchup? I put ketchup on my scrambled eggs and hash browns.

And yes, we get a mix of food restaurants, but lots of Brits abroad all look out for British style restaurants dishing up meat and two veg.

We have a British style restaurant here called "The Black Labrador." It functions mainly as a pub, but claims authentic British-style food. They do have an excellent Shepherd's Pie, which to me is like an overgrown pot pie. I can't say I care for most of the food though, I find it all a bit bland, but that could be because I grew up with Greek food and a lot of Mediterranean cooking.

When a friend from Germany was here, we went to a German restaurant (figured he could tell me what was authentic) and I tried a sampler plate and can't say I enjoy most German food either, except for the potato pancakes (sauerbraten didn't do it for me). But they also had great blintzes on the menu, though I read those are Hungarian in origin.

Have you tried the deep-fried cream eggs yet?
yum!

__________________
http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats...630/prj:6/.png