Important Food Poll

[angus]

I'll go with burgers.  

I really like pizza and we probably eat pizza a couple of times per month.  I've tried to make them at home a few times over the years, but I can't seem to master the dough so we eat out or carry it home.  I like mushroom and italian sausage but my son likes buffalo chicken pizza, so we usually end up geting two and have the remainder for the next morning's meal.  Breakfast of champions!  

I really like tacos and eat those nearly once every week.  Among the foods listed it's the only one I make regularly at home.  Yesterday for lunch I had tuna and haddock tacos.  I sautéed onion, garlic, jalapeños, serranos, poblanos, and a little finely-diced chorizo in butter, then added a can of tuna and some leftover haddock from the night before and put that on soft corn tortillas with grated gouda cheese.  Usually I do pork or chicken tacos, and usually I use soft flour tortillas and have homemade pico de gallo, but I wanted to use the fish.  I just diced some fresh cilantro and threw in the pan during the last 60 seconds of cooking rather than making the pico.  Mostly because we're out of lime at the moment.  My son usually opts for the hard corn shell, so I put the stuff inside his shell and then top it with grated mozarella (he always wants mozarella), and put it in the toaster oven for a couple of minutes at about 350 to soften the cheese and harden the corn tortilla shell.  That can be a tricky business.  You only have a few seconds between just crispy enough and totally blackening the top edges.  He likes Old El Paso taco sauce.  I prefer Cholula or Melinda's.

That leaves fried chicken and burgers.  I don't eat either very often, but both can be delicious.  Fried chicken is best when smothered in sauce, and about the only time I eat it in the United States is when it's on a buffet and I can put a big breast on my plate and smother it with either marinara sauce or chipotle sauce, never both.  (Whereas I always use thighmeat for chicken tacos, I prefer breast and wingmeat for deep-fried chicken.)  When we're in China or Mexico I eat fried chicken more often.  They don't do marinara, but they have other really good sauces for smothering the chicken.  We usually spend about a month in China once every few years, and of course I eat more roasted duck there than fried chicken, but Chinese fried chicken is delicious.  And I always spend at least a couple of weeks in Mexico every year and I tend to eat fried chicken there as well.  When we were at a resort in Mexico this past summer, the buffet had a fried chicken on a bed of green chili and corn waffles and smothered with ancho bacon and salsas picantes, choice of roja or verde.  It really hit the spot.

Burgers are rare.  We never eat them at home and I rarely order one at a restaurant, but I actually had a burger fairly recently--about a week ago.  It was smothered in grilled mushroom, onion, and swiss cheese, served on a toasted kaiser roll with lettuce, tomato, and pickle, and washed down with a couple of pints of the house IPA.  Of course I ordered a tub of mayonnaise for my fries, but the waitress brought out four condiment packages.  I guess it was all they had.  The burger wasn't bad, but I probably won't have another one for a long time.

It should be noted that I only voted for Burger, not for fries.  While Burger is my least-frequently eaten entrée among the four listed, I do eat french-fried potatoes regularly.  My son likes malt vinegar (or barbeque sauce if the vinegar is unavailable) on his fries; I prefer copious amounts of mayonnaise with mine.  I can use hot sauce or vinegar in a pinch, but I prefer mayonnaise.  If they're really fresh and still finger-burning hot, I don't even need a liquid condiment.  Just lots of salt and black pepper.  (I just polled the boy and he agrees:  Among the four choices, burgers are his least favorite, but he agrees that fries and burgers are necessarily different and should not be listed as a single item.  He also eats fries regularly.)  

[angus]

Lunch for me was tacos arabes at the place around the corner that was written up this summer in Bon Appetit. Marinated pork, herbs, salsa, lime. Now we're talking real tacos.

looks tasty, but I'm having a little problem with the interpretation:  arabes = pork?!  I've been to egypt and I'm pretty good at learning languages quickly, and I swear I never learned how to asked for a pulled pork sandwich in arabic.  I've also been to at least 12 spanish-speaking countries, and I studied Spanish for four years in high school and several semesters in college, and I worked as a Spanish-English interpreter in an ESL program, and I'm quite sure I know what "arabes" means.  On top of all that, I'm a huge fan of tacos and have eaten all manner of them, including some made from rodents that gringos don't normally eat, and I have only one question:

Seriously, how does "arabes" come to mean pork, of all things? 

[angus]

Many dishes are named for a place or group of people. Spaghetti carbonara is spaghetti in the style of the charcoal makers, but you wouldn't have a clue that it is a bacon and egg topping from the name. Tacos arabes are tacos in the style of the Arabs. In some places that means they cook the meat on a spit like gyros. It can also be pork marinated with olive oil, parsley and other seasonings.

I'm totally clear on all that. 

I just can't figure out why pork, of all things, would be arabes.  It would be like having beef tacos called tacos a la india.  Or shellfish tacos called tacos judeos.  I guess it wouldn't have occurred to me to call them that anyway.

[angus]

Not at all.  At least not to me.  Going to an indian restaurant for beef vindaloo doesn't strike me as being even remotely similar to calling, say, a roast beef sandwich from Arby's the Arby's All New Himalaya Special.  Given the gazillion words in the various tongues of the world, and effective marketing strategies, I think I could probably come up with something better and--even though I, like The Donald, loathe political correctness--something at least slightly more sensitive.  

That said, I do like the mention of Giuseppe in Arby's commercial.