Monday, December 08, 2008

From the fringe of the bell curve

Maddy asks:
"Consider sharing a recipe that your family, a family member or you, enjoy that doesn’t seem to be appreciated by many other bodies on the planet."
I'm not sure that this really counts as a recipe, but something my mum served when we were growing up and I loved, was grated cheese and ketchup sandwiches. I remember her serving them at a birthday party of mine and some of my friends thought they were weird. I seem to remember most people eating them though. Well, some people anyway ... though, come to think of it, maybe that was me and my sister! I tried feeding them to my own kids last weekend as we had somehow ended up with a lot of cheese in the house. (We rarely buy it as too many of us in this household have high cholesterol.) I was very disappointed to find that when offered this rare treat, the children decided they hated it. I thought that as Americans they would eat anything that was accompanied by ketchup.

There's no recipe - just grate as much cheese as you need and then add ketchup until the cheese sticks together in one big glob. A shortcut would be to simply cut slices of cheese (REAL cheese with a nice sharp flavour - none of those horrid plastic squares that masquerade as cheese!) and put them in between two slices of bread and add ketchup. The gloppiness of the grated cheese with ketchup is definitely preferable as far as I'm concerned though - it's a texture thing! Another variation - using HP Sauce (steak sauce) instead of ketchup - was always reserved for grownups as my mother thought we'd find the HP Sauce too spicy.

6 comments:

Maddy said...

Yeah for you! Strangely, that's one of my husband's favourites too. Out here we use Sharp Tillamook. We also fed it two our own children within the last two weeks [memory fizzled] and they all ate it, which was especially rewarding as my youngest has never eaten cheese or toast or tomatoe sauce before.
Cheers

Expat mum said...

Brussels sprouts. They are a bit of a joke here aren't they, but if you marinate them in thyme and mustard then steam them they are delicious. I can't even get my family members to try them.

Almost American said...

Maddy - your son ate a cheese & ketchup sandwich? Excellent! Tillamook? Will have to look for that.

Expat mum - do you make the little X in the bottom of the sprouts or not? Apparently Gordon Ramsay says not to! A friend of mine has a good recipe for them with crumbled bacon and walnuts.

Anonymous said...

I never ate cheese and ketchup sandwiches growing up, but I do always cut the x in the bottom of brussel sprouts. The only reason that I do is because my nan said you have to. Why does Ramsay say not to?
Could you post the bacon and walnut recipe? It sounds great!
KP

Almost American said...

KP - I don't have the recipe I mentioned, but I could ask my friend if she still has it.

OTOH, Google +"brussels sprouts" +walnuts +bacon and you'll find lots of recipes. This one for example, or this one. This one with no walnuts sounded good too, though DH said he'd do it without the pecorino.

Gordon Ramsay thinks making the X in the sprouts is simply unnecessary.

Anonymous said...

Ummm, not sure I'll try that, but I bet my husband would love it ;-)

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