Global Cuisine
LUND--Bored with scanning negatives of sunny Central America on a snowy Swedish night I decided to engage in a spot of culinary self-entertainment. I walked down to the square though the slush and as usual the kebab stand was playing excellent music. I wandered through the aisles of the grocery store and bought some Spanish chorizo with which I was planning a spicy red lentil stew, some crusty bread and some eggs and cream with which to practice my creme brulé. I thought that if there was one great thing about globalization and the shrinking of the world and its borders it was the availability of exotic, multi-national ingredients. I remembered a story I had read about an American airman interned in neutral Sweden during the second world war when his plane couldn't make it back to Britain. He had said something to the order of, "I really liked the Swedish people and nothing bad happened to me while I was there, but I couldn't eat fish for about 15 years afterwards..."
So I counted my blessings of not being on an enforced diet of all the wonderful ways one can prepare herring. I was on my way back to the flat when I saw a new sign in the window of McDonald's. It advertised two burgers, the El Maco Grande and the El Nacho and read, "A Swedish tradition...from Mexico." Of course there are some things in life one cannot resist and I popped in and ordered an El Nacho which turned out to be a more or less regular cheeseburger topped with corn chips. At present I cannot yet report on the nature of the El Maco Grande. But I munched my crunchy traditional Swedish-Mexican McDonald's sandwich and thought that I should have ordered a pie. Sometimes they have cloudberry pies (a very Swedish berry along with the lingonberry) in deference to local tastes just as in Central America McDonald's often has pineapple pies. I was, for a moment, very proud to be an American until I remembered that only on foreign soil can one get the old-fashioned fried McDonald's pies. Apparently it is only Americans who have to eat the insipid baked pies, who cannot be trusted with the hot filling. Swedes seem to be able to handle it. Ditto for Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans. Maybe other countries are as inept as the US at the eating of fast-food pies. I vowed to investigate. And, in general, to eat more pie.
So I counted my blessings of not being on an enforced diet of all the wonderful ways one can prepare herring. I was on my way back to the flat when I saw a new sign in the window of McDonald's. It advertised two burgers, the El Maco Grande and the El Nacho and read, "A Swedish tradition...from Mexico." Of course there are some things in life one cannot resist and I popped in and ordered an El Nacho which turned out to be a more or less regular cheeseburger topped with corn chips. At present I cannot yet report on the nature of the El Maco Grande. But I munched my crunchy traditional Swedish-Mexican McDonald's sandwich and thought that I should have ordered a pie. Sometimes they have cloudberry pies (a very Swedish berry along with the lingonberry) in deference to local tastes just as in Central America McDonald's often has pineapple pies. I was, for a moment, very proud to be an American until I remembered that only on foreign soil can one get the old-fashioned fried McDonald's pies. Apparently it is only Americans who have to eat the insipid baked pies, who cannot be trusted with the hot filling. Swedes seem to be able to handle it. Ditto for Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans. Maybe other countries are as inept as the US at the eating of fast-food pies. I vowed to investigate. And, in general, to eat more pie.
posted by Andrew at 11:25 AM
2 Comments:
You cant have your pie and eat it too .
EOT
"Irrationally, perhaps, he thought of Eve introducing the consciousness-exspanding snake fruit to her partner in Eden. The sharing of certain kinds of knowledge is seldom without consequences."
T. Robbins from , Fierce Invalids
It appears as though the subtle connections between the Golden Arches is blurred between the coalescing of Mex and nordic climates. Sometimes pairing two seemingly unpairable shapes or flavors together does result in a culinary balance that only the palate can discerne.
Who was it that said " Talking about music is like dancing about architecture" ? I dont think it was Chrissie Hynde but I am certain she would understand. Sometimes talking about food can create a simaliar vocabulary stahl. This is not to suggest that we should dance about food, but perhaps we [could] dance about pie.
After all, the geometrical ramifications of the circle and the triangle do lend themselves to a multifaceted array of diffrent styles. Take for instance the polka. Invented by the Polish who clearly had a problem comprehending shape and sound.Or the [ square ] dance , here we clearly have a red neck inversion with a well stuctured twist . The real masters go almost completely unnoticed, these would be the break dancers and the spinning dervish. Here we have real angularity and mystical union bound up in the human brain pan.
And what about the Big PIE? The Euchrist sacrament. A circle split into 11 triangular pieces for holy consumption, by all but the one who would betray "with a kiss" .
Just remember, it is as deep as it is wide, and, if you cant eat your pie, you certainly can kiss it.
Best Regards,
Endo Ftime
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