Think you know me?

This is a photo I posted on Facebook yesterday:

Frank's Red Hot Sauce - my favorite!

It got some interesting comments, offers, and even recipes; all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.  One of the points I was trying to make, other than my love for hot sauce, is there are something you just can’t get in France.  I’m okay with that; I can take the trade-off and bring back a bottle of hot sauce every year.  This doesn’t bother me.

France is the height of gastronomy; one cannot talk about France without talking about its food and one can rarely talk about food without mentioning something French.  I am one to defend the rich French culinary traditions, but with the highs come the lows, and sometimes those valleys can be pretty deep.  The discussion developed from my hot sauce photo turned to barbeque sauce and quickly went downhill from there because there is no real barbeque sauce is France.  Alright, perhaps not truly the pits of the valley and something that one can do without, but what the market has created in its place is as just about as low as you can go: spicy ketchup.  It’s not just that I’ve seen people use ketchup over pasta, or that the very mildly spicy version is “just too spicy” for many tame French palettes, but it’s what it represents: this is what they think American food is about.  It’s not. 

The facsimiles of “American food” are shocking and somewhat telling of how we Americans are looked at from afar.  Anything “American Size” is huge; sandwiches à l’Amércaine are topped with fries; and American sauce is some pink concoction I’ve never seen before.  I’d love to know where this is coming from because while barbeque is tomato based, I’ve never seem one confused for the other – and this is coming from a Midwesterner; a region generally considered novice when it comes to spices and all that cooking over fire thing Texas has going for it.  The sad news is, France has hooked into what is bad about the American cuisine.  I like American cooking, heck, I’m a big fan of ham and cream cheese roll ups and I know they’re not considered high class, but what represents us food-wise elsewhere is not doing any favors to our reputation.

So now, when I tell people from the United States, and in particularly Chicago, I can now add ketchup to the list of things people think they know about me: Coca-Cola, Al Capone, and (thankfully) Michael Jordan.

Pickles!

I just discovered something magical: I can make homemade pickles.  This might not seem like something noteworthy given the vast selection in any US supermarket, but it is a huge revelation for us because we cannot find pickles in France, and I love them.  Yes, yes, there are pickle counterparts, like the cornichons, but they aren’t the same.  They’re sweet and lack the garlicy crunch that makes a burger perfect.  I like cornichons, but I’m disappointed every time I want a real kosher dill; they just doesn’t stack up.  We’ve been bringing pickles back with us from the United States, and with a 23 pound baggage weight limit, we’ve had to make to some difficult decisions about what goes in the suitcase.  Each year, we ration our pickle consumption so they’ll last until our next trip stateside.  It’s not easy and some polite fighting has occurred over the last, remaining pickle.  So, when I stumbled across a recipe for “ice box pickles” I was curious, and happily discovered that I have most of the ingredients right in the garden.  Everything goes right in the jar, the jar goes in the fridge, and one week later, voila!  The pickles are ready.  And, HOLY COW, they’re great!  Not just “great” as in “they’ll do”, but great as in better than the last store bought jar we tasted them against.  They’re AWESOME!  Still very crunchy, the pickles had all the garlicy goodness I was craving and a bite from the cayenne pepper put them over the top.  I ate three right away.  No more hoarding, no more rationing, I can have all the pickles I want, whenever I want.  I even dreamt about them last night. The cherry on the cake to this is now we have more room in our suitcases for Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, which not so strangely enough, goes great with our homemade pickles.

Here’s the recipe if you’re interested.  I discovered it thanks to fellow blogger The Magic Apron.

Dill Refrigerator Pickles

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lbs Kirby cucumbers (sometimes labeled pickling cukes), cut in half lengthwise.  (I don’t know what type of cucumbers we have in the garden, but I’m guessing most anything would work.)
• 2 cups white distilled vinegar
• 2 cups cold water
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 3 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 good handful of fresh dill seed
• 1 tsp mustard seeds  (I searched all around for this, but couldn’t find it.  Strange for a country that loves its mustard so.)
• 1/2 tsp chili flakes or a dried red hot pepper (optional)
• 1 tsp black peppercorns

Directions:

1. Place all the seasonings in the bottom of a 2 or 3 quart jar. Add the cucumber halves, stacking them so they don’t float around too much.
2. Measure out the vinegar, water and salt in a separate container and stir until the salt dissolves.
3. Pour the liquid into the jar containing the cucumbers. Make sure the liquid covers all of the cucumbers.
4. Seal the lid tightly and shake for about a minute. Put in the fridge and wait… patiently.
5. Wait for 6 or 7 days, giving the jar a good shake each day.