Cheap Eats evolves to Haute Cuisine

Cuisines evolve. What might start as an accident or "make do" winds up on every menu in town (Cesar salad). What starts as a way of surviving on very little becomes all the rage at trendy restaurants (Poke weed, tripe, carp).

What recipes do you cook that started this way but have not yet been "celebrated"? For me, there are many recipes that my Italian immigrant grandparents made for one of two reasons - they wanted what they made in the old country but had to improvise the ingredients, or they made a hearty meal out of very cheap ingredients as a way to feed their large families.

I am sure many of us have these wonderful but "unsung" recipes either buried in the family archives or, even better, still in use and still enjoyed.

Share them here and hum a little of Elvis' "Poke Salad Annie"

(By the way, somepeople have **no** sense of humor!: http://www.aces.edu/dept/extcomm/newspaper/june21b02.html )

The ultimate use-up dish.

An Italian dish I love that might qualify is bread salad. Is that in your repertoire?

to use up all the uneaten heels of bread from the last 2-3 weeks. , Milk, egg, sugar, raisins or chopped dried apricots or other exotic dried fruit, cinnamon, and a 350 degree oven.... mmmm.

is a Romanian ciorba (sour soup/stew). My grandmother made it with cabbage, pork spareribs, tomato sauce, garlic and herbs.

It hasn't become restaurant faire but if I ever open my restaurant, it'll be on the menu as the chef's specialty. My restaurant would be called Marmara and would feature the foods found around the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (here, hold the pork, substitute lamb, but hey the customers would be paying, right? hahaha).

Over the years, mine as evolved into using a pork butt. Lots more meat and spareribs are not the throw-a-way meat it was back then.
I cut much of the fat off, put the pork in a crockpot overnight and the next day, put the meat, bone and skimmed broth in a pot and get cooking.

When you get the cabbage for 10 cents a pound, pork for under a dollar a pound, tomatoes in an institution size can, you can feed an army, the best damn meal ever.

BTW, all my grandparents were immigrants. One Romanian, one Greek and two Italians. You wanna talk eating til you bust? LOL

Mary

"BTW, all my grandparents were immigrants. One Romanian, one Greek and two Italians. You wanna talk eating til you bust? LOL"

Mary, have you ever seen a movie (from the 70's, maybe?) called "Fatso"? It starred Dom DeLuise and Ann Bancroft. It was about an Italian man (Dom) who was overweight. Bancroft plays his sister. It is all about eating like Italians eat (abondonza!). Very NY/inside humor and very, very laugh-out-loud funny. Anyway, that movie sums it up. I know **exactly** what you mean about eating till you bust.

"Better to pay the grocer than the doctor."

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding"...."What?!?!? You don't eat no meat??" and the room falls into a moment of rarefied silence. LOL

Plus the all time keeper of the gigantic pots was the Romanian, who told us if we didn't eat everything in front of us, the gypsies with the pushcarts were gonna come and take us away. "Oh little girl, come see what we have under this tarp." Woosh!! But we should thank Mother Mary that the gypsies got to us before Dracula got there. HAHAHA

God, I miss those wonderful grandparents and feel sad for the "Americanas" *psfftt-psfft* who weren't lucky enough to grow up knowing that world.

Mary

You can wrap anything up in a crepe, improvise a little sauce and yesterday's garbage becomes today's "chef's special".

Mary

Now made with fried or stale corn tortillas, I've read in Mexico they'd leave yesterday's tortillas to dry in the sun til crisp and then cover them in a rojo or tomatilla salsa, chicken and cheese or whatever last night's leftovers were. It originated as a breakfast dish and I like them with eggs.

I've seen a hundred variations in restaurants but the original was just a way to use up the leftovers.