Lasagna soup anyone? American recipes that just never sound quite right...

[MaryIsA]

www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/lasagna-soup-2268968

Partly its all the low sodium chicken broth, half and half, sticks of butter - but very often its the actual recipes. Just a bit off?

(I can't see Math's one properly - it only shows half the page for me)

The beauty of a bigger pan with a smaller meatloaf is that the juices have somewhere to go as the loaf cooks. I use breadcrumbs.

Bore is there a 'click to see full recipe' button?

I make a long loaf-shaped meatloaf and slice it like a sliced pan.

I’d forgotten my mums flan, tinned fruit, whipped cream from a can and bought spongy cake case.

What is a hush puppy. They look a bit like doughnuts or churros.

I can’t quite get round the idea of cooking peaches, they are so expensive where I live.

I think it’s a Mexican thing to add a chilli and salt mix on to a fruit salad (with cucumber) it’s sold in parks in LA it’s really nice (I’m not a lover of melon but this adds a lovely flavour). I’ve tried it at home but wasn’t the same

Talking of American Italian food reminds me of The Sopranos episode where they go to Italy and some do not like the food it’s not what they consider Italian food 😆

I’ve never had meatloaf though spent a lot of time in the states. I do like biscuits with gravy

What is a hush puppy. They look a bit like doughnuts or churros.*

No, they're savoury. They're made with cornmeal, which creates a slight sweetness, but it's offset by a bit of spice and onion. Personally I find them really sickly because I don't like cornmeal, but they are much loved.

Watermelon and feta is a lovely combination that same salty fruity combo.

I bloody love meatloaf.

I’ve never had roast chicken, meatloaf, or mashed potatoes like I had in New York.

And I’ve never had bacon or pancakes like I had in Florida.

I still dream about them.

I was on a long internal flight from the eastern US to the west coast. Lunch was being served and I saw travellers being given a rather nice chicken roll with some salad bits. I'm coeliac and was looking forward to something that looked equally as nice. I was given... a pot of apple sauce. Not impressed.

@TheVanguardSix

Why. This spoon meat is delicious. But tell me. What is this carbonated dipping jam ...... Cold land gets quoted ALOT between me and DH. Along with the BnQ add skit. This is the best time of year to buy a bucket. Anyway. Back to the actual topic of the thread ........

Nigella has a good meatloaf recipe. It’s very simple, the most important thing is to give yourself twice as long as you expect to caramelise the onions, the longer you spend on that the nicer the end result. I’m sure plenty of people (my MIL) have fried the onions for two minutes then complained that the meatloaf has lumps of onion in it. Meatloaf in US diners is always nice.
My Sicilian colleagues tell me that the North End of Boston seems like home, the food and the Summer festivals.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Betty MacDonald, US author, wrote this in her 1955 book Onions in the Stew:

I looked and looked at my salad trying to guess what it was. When it could not be avoided any longer I took a bite and it was tuna fish and marshmallows and walnuts and pimento (just for the pretty color, our hostess explained later when she was giving us the recipe) and chunks of pure white lettuce and boiled dressing. I almost gagged ...

Lots more in the same vein. She was clearly not a fan of sweet elements in salad!

She was very scathing about some US home cooks. another one of her quotes is “why do bad cooks have their houses so hot and serve their coffee so cold” food features quite a lot in her books, I think she must have been a very good cook herself.

(So pleased to see another Macdonald fan. When I win the lottery I am going to go to Vashon Island and stay in her old house which is now a B and B!)

@chemenger Thanks for that tip. I always hated my meatloaf because I hated the raw onion bits. Duh

Stillfunny aim for 40 minutes, low heat, stirring now and then. You need to make sure it doesn’t burn at all. It should reduce in volume a lot, be very soft, and a lovely dark golden brown. The pieces of onion in the cooked loaf are pretty much undetectable.

I have all the books, @viques! I'd love to go to Seattle and visit the island. Yes, I think she was probably a terrific cook. In that passage we've both been looking at she says her mother, sister and daughters are all excellent cooks and then modestly 'I am sometimes a very good cook'. In The Egg and I, where she's writing about her first marriage to a chicken farmer, she describes the fruit and vegetables they grew there in mouthwatering detail (albeit on the way to explaining how awful it all tasted after home canning and bottling).

@giantwaterbottle I nearly puked when she ate that 'salad'. Honestly one of the most revolting things I’ve seen.

Bore is there a 'click to see full recipe' button?

So there is!

@itssquidstella it's insane isn't it!!! Condensed milk 😱😱😱

I nearly puked when she ate that 'salad'. Honestly one of the most revolting things I’ve seen

I can’t have been the only one thinking if that’s her idea of “salad” it would explain her weight issue..

When I moved to the UK I absolutely fell in love with the bread, it was so good! Took me a minute to work out it was because there was no sugar in it.

Went back home and thought, 'right, I'm going to have me some of that UK bread', so I bought a bread maker and found every single recipe in the book that came with it had sugar. Some had a LOT of sugar.

I asked around baking friends and every one of them told me that the yeast wouldn't activate without sugar. I don't know if it's just a really well-accepted urban myth or if US yeast used to be a different or more tricky variety, but I tried it and it's not true. Yeast over here does just as well without sugar as with it, and the bread tastes so much better.

@occa

When I moved to the UK I absolutely fell in love with the bread, it was so good! Took me a minute to work out it was because there was no sugar in it.

Went back home and thought, 'right, I'm going to have me some of that UK bread', so I bought a bread maker and found every single recipe in the book that came with it had sugar. Some had a LOT of sugar.

I asked around baking friends and every one of them told me that the yeast wouldn't activate without sugar. I don't know if it's just a really well-accepted urban myth or if US yeast used to be a different or more tricky variety, but I tried it and it's not true. Yeast over here does just as well without sugar as with it, and the bread tastes so much better.

I make bread from my old recipe books. They say that with fresh yeast you don’t need sugar but with dried yeast you do. I always use fresh yeast (top tip, you can freeze it and use it from frozen) and never add sugar.

@BoreOfWhabylon I see you have math’s now. Mine is very similar. The main difference is there is no egg in mine.

1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup white sugar
1 cup milk (use full fat for best result)
½ cup butter (in US that’s one stick)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 29 oz. can of sliced peaches drained or 4 cups of fresh peaches sliced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C). Melt butter and pour into 9x13 in. baking pan. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, sugar, milk, and spices until well-combined and pour over butter in the pan. Spread peaches over batter; do not stir. Bake 40-45 minutes until crust is golden brown. Let cool about 10 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

A variation: replace some of the milk with juice or syrup the peaches are canned in, but not more than ¼ cup. Also if using fresh peaches, I use ¼ cup of the sugar to mix with them and let them sit for a few minutes, and then use the remaining ¾ cup of sugar in the batter.

I saw an American recipe the other night which called for a giant cheesy bag of Cheetos and a giant bag of flaming hot Cheetos, mixed into boiling water.

That then serves as 'sauce' for pasta.

Adding to the posts above about hush puppies. They are traditionally served with seafood. And they are fried. They have a lighter texture if some flour is used in the mix along with the cornmeal. I love hush puppies.

@SenecaFallsRedux Thank you!