Jambalaya meanwhile has shrimp in it (omitted in my version tonight), which is plucked free out of the bayou down where the stuff originated. Shrimp is a lot pricier in the mountains, and of dodgy quality if it isn't frozen.
Lots of famous foods are like this. You can't even make Scottish haggis in America unless you buy and butcher a sheep. Otherwise it's just not legal to sell you the heart, stomach, and lungs for food consumption. American haggis is mostly made with beef liver instead. You can't get the real thing at any price, but it too was meant to be a cheap food for the locals where it originated.
The jambalaya I made was all dry or frozen ingredients piled into a pressure cooker, except for the liquid chicken stock and some cayenne. It came out pretty great, and preserved the quality of being cheap that was the actual point of the original dish. Recommended.
Some of our favorite cheap delicacies are stews made with pork butt (a/k/a shoulder). You can't get it for a dollar a pound any more, but it's still one of the cheapest meats. We put it in chow mein, Vindaloo, pork with Thai basil, pozole, pork with green chile stew, pork stew with pineapple and plantains, you name it. These are all quick dishes. A whole pork butt can also be cooked low and slow and served up as steaks or on Cuban sandwiches. Sliced raw from the shoulder, it makes a terrific substitute for a pork chop, better, I think, even cooked quickly like a chop. It's not dry and uninteresting like a more expensive pork loin.
ReplyDeleteWe're fond of chicken quarters, too--thighs and drumsticks. We buy them in big 10-lb. bags, often around 40 cents a lb.
When I was in England and Scotland this past summer I had Shepherd's pie several times. Filling it most certainly was, no matter the topping and filling. Very good it also was. (But then I like haggis, so YMMV.)
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1