Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972)
Foreign food as a nightmarish culinary imposition
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"Sergeant my wife is currently taking a course at the continental school of gourmet cooking. Apparently they’ve never heard of the principle that to eat well in this country, one has to have breakfast three times a day. And an English breakfast at that.”
Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972) Foreign food as a nightmarish culinary imposition
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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.
Everyone has a different definition of what constitutes ‘fancy,’ with especially broad variations occurring across national and economic lines, but in the realm of the sweet most would agree that the French have this elusive descriptor locked down. And while the global masters of pastry may not be solely responsible for the wonders of the meringue - the Swiss and Italians both also claim ownership and probably had something to do with the confection’s creation - the airy snack does fit squarely into the French dessert tradition, with its routine elevation of earthbound items to a divine plane via the wonders of furious frothing. This brings us to the Philippines, an island with more than its share of foreign influence, but which has never hosted any sustained French (or Swiss, or Italian) presence. How then do we end up with the Puto Seko, subtitled here as ‘fancy cookies,’ which taste like a dustier, denser cousin to the meringue?
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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