Chicken Tetrazzini is a fraud!

[72doug2,2S]

Italian? No lo so? Niente!

Chicken, seafood, turkey or whatever. If anyone tells you this is an Italian dish, please set them straight. Tetrazzini is a San Francisco treat, much like Rice-a-Roni. Although the name is definitely Italian, the dish is pure Americana.

... been in SF History mode today, so I can't resist giving a little history on Turkey Tetrazzini, if anyone cares. (And why would you, really? )
There is a monument on Market Street (a major thoroughfare) called Lotta's Fountain - a gift to the city from singer/entertainer Lotta Crabtree in 1875. In 1906, with virtually every water main in town broken, Lotta's fountain pulled through with enough water to save the extraordinary Palace Hotel, a gem of the city. Ever since then, every April 18, survivors have gathered at the fountain at 5:AM, in remembrance of the catastrophe. But in 1910 a special Christmas Eve concert was held at the fountain to reward locals for their efforts in rebuilding the city, and Italian soprano Luisa Tetrazzini - who'd captured the city's heart some years before - gave a free performance. 250,000 people showed up for it. Legend has it that this dish was created by a local restaurateur in her honor.

[masraum]

Funny, when I was in college on the "meal plan", they had "tuna noodle casserole", "chicken and noodles" and "turkey tetrazzini". I think they were all exactly the same dish with the same ingredients, just at different ages. My theory was that when they first made it they would call it "Chicken and Noodles". As it aged a bit, the meat would darken and they'd change the name to "turkey Tetrazzini". When it got really old they'd call it "tuna noodle casserole". Visually, gustatorily and olfactorily they were all virtually identical.

[Gogar]

I thought you meant this

[legion]

The cake is a lie, too.

[red-beard]

Chop-Suey was created in San Francisco too

[Normy]

50% of what is sold in your local Taco Bell doesn't actually exist in Mexico-

N

[Hawktel]

Legion +1 internets.

Normy.. Not only is it not from Mexico, its not even 50% beef...

Taco Bell Meat: Chain Sued Over 35% Beef Content In 'Taco Meat Filling' [Updated]

[RWebb]

SFO is also implicated in fake Chinese Fortune Cookies

- that makes THREE for Paris by the Bay

[ckissick]

Rice-a-Roni is an Armenian dish. It's simply rice pilaf. While living in San Francisco with the Italian "inventors" of Rice-a-Roni, a Mrs. Captanian taught the Italian brothers her pilaf recipe.

Crab cioppino was also invented in SF, by Portugese and Italian fishermen.

[72doug2,2S]

Invented in America must mean Americana regardless of the ethnicity doing the creation. Just like the American Chinese food that you can't find in China or the bland Mexican food dumbed down for the American palate.

These are unique to the USA. I'm not up on the Rice-a-Roni history, but if these dishes do not exist in the native countries where they are supposedly attributed to, then I'm saying let's call it Americana or fraud.

[72doug2,2S]

Originally Posted by Gogar

I thought you meant this

<

Gogar, Coffee through the nose! HEHEHE

[Scuba Steve]

Originally Posted by Gogar

I thought you meant this

Beat me to it

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by RWebb

SFO is also implicated in fake Chinese Fortune Cookies

- that makes THREE for Paris by the Bay

And egg foo young.

Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Japanese food has all been bast$erdized by Americans.

But we kicked a$$ by inventing deep dish pizza!

And BBQ... is BBQ American?

[AirKuhl]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

And BBQ... is BBQ American?

Neanderthal

[vash]

i think BBQ is spanish. barbacoa? right?

eggrolls..whatever. american. and NOBODY should eat "chop suey". wtf? like chinese hash. gross.

i personally love the bastardization of food. love it. except alfredo sauce..wow. butter, cheese. i had a discussion with an italian guy in italy about alfredo sauce. i told him to visit me and we could go to OLIVE GARDEN. together.

[VINMAN]

General Tso's Chicken originated in NYC in the 70's

I heard the guy didnt even like chicken....

[72doug2,2S]

Originally Posted by VINMAN

General Tso's Chicken originated in NYC in the 70's

I heard the guy didnt even like chicken....

Interesting

Outside North America, one notable establishment that serves General Tso's chicken is the Taiwanese restaurant Peng Chang-kuei, which is credited by some sources as the inventor of the dish.[6] Differences between this "original" dish and that commonly encountered in North America are that it is not sweet and sour in flavor, the chicken is cooked with its skin, and soy sauce plays a much more prominent role.[4]

[VINMAN]

Name and originsThe dish has been associated with the name of Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠, 1812–1885), a Qing Dynasty general from Hunan. Zuo himself could not have eaten the dish as it is today, [2] and the dish is neither found in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, nor in Xiangyin, the home of General Tso. Moreover, descendants of General Tso still living in Xiangyin, when interviewed, say that they have never heard of such a dish.[4]

There are several stories concerning the origin of the dish. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo states in her book The Chinese Kitchen that the dish originates from a simple Hunan chicken dish, and that the reference to "Zongtang" was not a reference to Zuo Zongtang's given name, but rather a reference to the homonym "zongtang", meaning "ancestral meeting hall" (Chinese: 宗堂; pinyin: zōngtáng).[5] Consistent with this interpretation, the dish name is sometimes (but considerably less commonly) found in Chinese as "Zuo ancestral hall chicken" (simplified Chinese: 左宗堂鸡; traditional Chinese: 左宗堂雞; pinyin: Zuǒ Zōngtáng jī). (Chung tong gai is a transliteration of “ancestral meeting hall chicken” from Cantonese; Zuǒ Zōngtáng jī is the standard name of General Tso's chicken as transliterated from Mandarin.)

[edit] Taiwan claimAs documented by Fuchsia Dunlop in the New York Times,[1] one claim is that the recipe was invented by Taiwan-based Hunan cuisine chef Peng Chang-kuei[6] (a.k.a. Peng Jia) (Chinese: 彭長貴; pinyin: Péng Chánggùi), who had been an apprentice of Cao Jingchen's, a famous early 20th century Chinese chef. Peng was the Nationalist government banquets' chef and fled with Chiang Kai-shek's forces to Taiwan during the Chinese civil war.[6] There, he continued his career as official chef until 1973, when he moved to New York to open a restaurant. That was where Peng Jia started inventing new dishes and modifying traditional ones; one new dish, General Tso's chicken, was originally prepared without sugar, and subsequently altered to suit the tastes of "non-Hunanese people." The popularity of the dish has now led to it being "adopted" by local Hunanese chefs and food writers, perhaps as an acknowledgment of the dish's unique status, upon which the international reputation of Hunanese cuisine was largely based.[1][4] Ironically, when Peng Jia opened a restaurant in Hunan in the 1990s introducing General Tso's chicken, the restaurant closed without success because the locals found the dish too sweet.[4]

[edit] New York claimPeng's Restaurant on East 44th Street in New York City claims that it was the first restaurant in the city to serve General Tso's chicken. Since the dish (and cuisine) was new, Chef Peng Jia made it the house specialty in spite of the dish's commonplace ingredients.[1] A review of Peng’s in 1977 mentions that their “General Tso's chicken was a stir-fried masterpiece, sizzling hot both in flavor and temperature”.[7]

New York's Shun Lee Palaces, East (155 E. 55th St.) and West (43 W. 65th St.) also says that it was the first restaurant to serve General Tso's chicken and that it was invented by a Chinese immigrant chef named T. T. Wang in 1972. Michael Tong, owner of New York's Shun Lee Palaces, says, "We opened the first Hunanese restaurant in the whole country, and the four dishes we offered you will see on the menu of practically every Hunanese restaurant in America today. They all copied from us."[2]

The two stories can be somewhat reconciled in that the current General Tso's chicken recipe—where the meat is crispy fried—was introduced by Chef Wang, but as "General Ching's chicken," a name which still has trace appearances on menus on the Internet. However, the name "General Tso's chicken" traces to Chef Peng, who cooked it in a different way.[


Who ya gonna believe??

[RWebb]

one story on fake Chinese Fortune Cookies is that they were invented by a Japanese guy who served them in his Japanese Tea House (out near Mt. Sutro?? or somewhere)

so...

would they be Americana? or Japanese-American-Chinese?

Chinese-Japanese-American


and let's not even start with the inauthentic use of tomato sauce in Italian cooking

and the many other New World plants that wound up in Asian cooking...