Carignano

Ken wrote on Sun, 8 Jan 2006 10:42:59 -0700:

??>> Salut/Hi Ken Blake, ??>>

??>> le/on Sat, 7 Jan 2006 13:26:37 -0700, tu disais/you said:- ??>>

??>>> Ian Hoare wrote: ??>>>

??>>>> Spaghetti with pasta's perfectly good, but it's no more ??>>>> typically italian than a Pizza. ??>>>

??>>> True. In fact spaghetti with pasta is even rarer than ??>>> spaghetti with meatballs. ??>>

??>> Oh booger......;-))) ??>>

??>> I would like to pretend that was deliberate.

KB> LOL! *I* am the king of typo makers, and I don't want you KB> trying to steal my crown. ;-)

??>> How about spaghetti and ??>> chips? That's a truly British perversion.

KB> I can't tell if you're making this up as a joke, or it KB> really exists. Tell me it isn't so!

Sorry, it really does exist tho' I fortunately have avoided it for many years. There's another one: spaghetti on toast and a New Zealander friend took a long time to live down the spaghetti sandwich he brought in for lunch! The British penchant for synthetic custard on desserts is another shocker but I did come across Apfel Strudel with "English Sauce" in Hamburg!

James Silverton. Potomac, Maryland

I was afraid someone was going to say that. ;-)

I'll pass, thank you very much. ;-)

By way of an explanation, until the late 60's. the only "spaghetti" one could find in NZ was in cans - just like cans of *baked beans* - i.e. the precooked and rather soggy pasta was canned in a tomato sauce.

The can was opened, the contents heated for a few minutes in a saucepan and served, without any form of adulteration - yes, often on toast, usually for breakfast (like the beans).

I was staggered when, in 1967, having moved to Australia (where the influence of Italian immigrants was a revelation to this country boy!) to find that spaghetti in fact, did not come in cans, and that there were dozens of different pastas and hundreds of ways to prepare and serve.

Both "Spaghetti" and "Baked Beans" is still available today in supermarkets.

Very occasionally we may have the beans as an easy to prepare light meal, but I have never eaten the canned spaghetti in the 40 years since I discovered the *real* stuff.

Ian Hoare wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

What I would like to know: red sauce (catsup) or white (mayonnaise)? ;) And what wine to serve?? d ;)

graham wrote on Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:32:54 GMT:

g> "James Silverton" wrote g> ??>> another shocker but I did come across Apfel Strudel with ??>> "English Sauce" in Hamburg! ??>>

G>Presumably, that would have been "Crhme Anglaise" i.e., real English G>custard, made with eggs and cream.

Having suffered thro' many years of it, being brought up in Britain, I must say the sauce on the strudel looked awfully like Bird's Custard! I don't like it myself but my kids did when their Scots grandmother served it on apple pie.

Talking about food in Hamburg, what wine would you recommend for Labskaus? (That's another thing that Hamburg shares with Britain; it's pretty much the same as Liverpool Scouse, tho' I don't think they serve it with a pickled herring on top in Liverpool.)

James Silverton.

Don't they call it "Lobscouse" in the 'pool? It sounds repulsive enough that "Cold Duck" or "Lonesome Charlie" would compliment it:-) Did anything good ever come out of Liverpool?-) Graham (ex-East Anglian)

Hey, I _like_ malt vinegar on my chips! :) Red sauce or brown, sir? ...

] > naturally avert my eyes from the embarrassing spectacle, I have no idea ] > what ] > the poor benighted creature eating this tour de force of bad taste would ] > douse it with. However, I can confidently claim that it would be ] > accompanied ] > by several slices of thick cut "areated" bread slathered with the cheapest ] > possible marge, and accompanied by a cup of Tea, made with milk and ] > sweetened with between 10 and 20 spoonsfil of sugar. The liquid needed to ] > be ] > sweetened in this way, as it was usually so strong that ordinary spoons ] > would dissolve instantly. ] >

Truly Walfordian. Shudder. And yet there is something comforting about a nice sausage, egg and chips with a stroppy cuppa...

[] ] BTW, now that you mention Heinz, why is the ketchup (or catsup if you ] prefer) so awful in Europe? And why can't you get good barbecue sauce ] there? ]

Well, Heinz is available in every supermarket here, but I think it's a bit more expensive. In France sales actually went up (truly) during the last US presidential campaign: people thought it an easy way to contribute to Kerry, perhaps. Heinz here is manufactured in the Netherlands but using the same recipe as far as I can tell. The other brand one sees often is Amora, which is too heavily dosed with Worcester Sauce for my kid's taste.

-E

Tom wrote on Mon, 09 Jan 2006 05:07:47 GMT:

I tend to agree, as in the modified subject heading, that this thread is getting pretty OT and hardly fitting the name of this group; fascinating and horrifying tho' it is! I think I will restrain myself from further comment here tho' rec.travel.europe might be appropriate.

James Silverton. Potomac, Maryland

You're both partly right, here: Mike is right when he states that this dish is not known in most of Italy. But you're right, too, when you say that immigrants brougth that dish along with them from Italy.

That dish exists, and as you say it is found in the south of Italy, some say it's easyer to find in Puglia or Abruzzo than Calabria, but for the rest of Italy that dish doesn't exist, period. The diffusion of "meatballs spaghetti" in italy is ridiculously low, while they are much more common in the USA. Try to find "meatballs spaghetti" on the Menu of a restaurant in any of the remaining 17 egions of Italy: no chance. Similar to the case of "fettuccine alfredo", well known in the USA but almost unknown in Italy. I fear many "italian dishes" there in the USA are not so much italian, just as many dishes we find in chinese restaurants aren't chinese dishes or have been heavily refurbished, thus varying a lot from the chinese original.