On a recent trip to Target’s Atlantic Center location, I wandered into the dollar deals section, the best place to find such delicacies as slightly battered Charleston Chews and Whales crackers, a snack that far outshines its more-famous Goldfish competitors. On this occasion another option presented itself, with the unexpected appearance of this imported Israeli snack, in a bag illustrated with two vaguely sinister, presumably pizza loving youths. Despite the label, these Bissli bites have no real hint of pizza flavor - closer to a thin, wheaty crouton with a vegetal aftertaste - likely owing to the classic cheapo ingredient trinity of corn starch, MSG and dehydrated onion and garlic, various configurations of which assure that nothing ‘Pizza-Flavored’ ever tastes anything like pizza. Of course Bissli isn’t just in the pizza business, they also deal in taco, falafel, ‘grill’ and other varieties, which pleasantly enough all come in different shapes, a choice which at least conceivably suggests that each configuration was chosen to perfectly match its corresponding flavor profile. The vague taste of these gently palatable, grid-shaped wheat snacks also brought me to another, bigger question. What is the inspiration here? To wit, what is pizza like in Israel?
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Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice takes place during a period of great, decidedly un-groovy change, set in a sun-dappled 1970 in which the dreamy hippie lifestyle is gradually being consumed by, and absorbed into, the formerly square mainstream, pulled by undercurrents of corporate greed and communal adaptation. It’s a process that’s neatly summed up by the toxic relationship of barefoot PI protagonist Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) and his authoritarian tormentor/establishment foil Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). Here, in a fitting moment for a character defined by several instances of massive consumption, the flat-topped detective wolfs down two helpings of American pancakes prepared in Japanese eatery. “They're not as good as my mother's” Bigfoot notes, “but what I really go for here is the respect.” From a tinny radio in the background comes another signifier of this process, by which American culture absorbs foreign items, then pressures or transforms them to conform to its own narrow sense of the exotic: Kyu Sakamoto’s 1961 hit Sukiyaki, which underwent a similar progression in its American renaming. As reflected by its Japanese title (“I Look Up As I Walk”), it’s an aching song about lost love / the failures of the anti-US protest movement, and has nothing to do with the traditional hot pot dish; the title is merely a slapped-on word that sounded catchy and Japanese. Look down as you scroll for a weird promotional video for this otherwise fantastic song:
Closing out a trio of posts dedicated to Bob Brown’s Complete Book of Cheese, here’s one last foray into the wide world of ‘50s-era preserved dairy products. As mentioned previously, the combination of Brown’s raconteur tone, the hazy mists of time, and the fact that not all information is available online and/or in English, leads to a bit of confusion about what is real and what Brown has simply invented. That matters less in this last post, which focuses entirely on recipes, all capable of producing very real, very rich delicacies, fabricated or not. This first dish purports to be a traditional favorite of the Engadine, a lush, Sound of Music-style valley in the Swiss Alps; Googling reveals nothing, although I did find a bit of fantastic web animation on the website of this unrelated London restaurant, named after the valley's famous resort town. The second is an explosion of opulence featuring the King of Cheeses, pushed even further into regal richness with champagne and butter. The third is a little less decadent, perfect for dieters who also want to sample one of the book’s 60 recipes for rarebit, or at least get a glimpse of mid-century dieting fashions.
For many Americans, weaned on the mild black variety, sliced into rounds or served floating in slightly salty, ferrous-sulfate tinged liquid, the astringent taste of genuine olives is one of those things you grow into, as the palate matures and heaping bowls of Waffle Crisp fall by the wayside. The next stage of tastebud evolution, for those who’ve grown acclimated to Kalamatas, Cerignolas and Niçoise, would appear to be the Chinese olive, which seems to resemble a tiny, mutated egg more than anything else. Sourced from an entirely different branch of botany (the Canarium genus of the Burseraceae family, as opposed to Olea Oleaceae), subject to an entirely different prep process (candied, rather than cured), they’re a definite shock to the Western palate, with mottled, reptilian skin and a salty licorice taste redolent of those shocking Finnish candies. I of course can’t even begin to detail the variety of culinary applications possessed by these things (more here), but in terms of the snacking variety, I was quickly overwhelmed by the variety sourced from Fei Long supermarket in Dyker Heights, where they’re sold by the pound amid a healthy assortment of dried fruits and nuts. Candied lemon slices seemed mild by comparison. Hawaiians, on the other hand, have developed a serious taste for these things, which are classed in the expansive crackseed family of snacks. They’re known there as footballs, a name which originates not from the fact that these olives resemble sporting goods, but vice versa; the Mandarin word for the American football comes from the pigskin’s close resemblance to the olive.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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