Are there really people this stupid?

[rbowman]

That's no lie. Montana dining has become a little more eclectic but it's still mostly people trying their best to cook ethnic foods from a recipe.

The one I find most amusing is an extended Hmong family that has various food enterprises. They ran a Thai restaurant for a while and then started a mobile operation for fairs, concerts, and so forth. Teriyaki got added to the Thai selections but when they started with the Dutch Funnel Cakes I thought it was getting out of hand.

Nothing new there. I like Greek cuisine but when I lived in NH most of the Greeks were doing Italian. It's what sold.

[rbowman]

We had the French church too. I'm drawing a blank but there was a day around Easter when all the churches decorated. We'd visit around to see who had the best flowers. I think it was some sort of city ordnance that there couldn't be a church and a barroom in the same block, so they alternated. The bars were the same as the churches. Unless you were looking for a fight it never came to that but if you walked into the wrong ethnic crowd there wasn't any red carpet rolled out.

[Don Y]

Yup. I used to bring things like fresh kielbasa back from Chicago; a particular type of Italian grated cheese from CT (I've not found it sold anywhere else -- demand?) along with MacCoun apples (and Capital Lunch hot dogs!) One of my favorite meals is "Baked Stuffed Shrimp (stuffed with crab meat)" -- which I've rarely seen on any restaurant menu (let alone expecting them to use Super Colossal shrimp to prepare them!)

Bakeries are the toughest to compensate -- along with certain ingredients.

Fisichelli's (Lawrence, MA) makes a delightful type of biscotti that I've only found in one other place (interestingly, *here*!). Way too expensive to have shipped cross country in the quantities that I'd want (tens of pounds). The "local source" makes them "wrong" -- wrong size *and* wrong flavor. This winter I will set out to "deduce" an appropriate recipe to make them the way *I* like (cuz the local ma & pa bakery that makes them wrong won't share their Rx as a basis for me to *fix* -- and, don't like my "suggestions" for what they are doing "wrong")

I also have to reconstruct another cookie recipe from "taste memory" (a delicate cookie made *from* finely ground almonds). It would be nice to be able to go buy some of each of these things to have a "reference" on hand when I make these attempts!

[Don Y]

There's a difference when you "cook for yourself" vs. trying to "cook for someone else". For yourself, you cook what you know and have eaten over the years. My "spaghetti sauce" surprises people -- who are used to store-bought (crap!). Yet, there's nothing particularly "interesting" that goes in the pot! I bake biscotti every 2-3 weeks -- usually to replenish SWMBO's "supply" for morning coffee but, also, for friends and neighbors: "Wow! These are the *best* biscotti I've ever had" (sure, all you've ever had was store-bought designed to last on a shelf for 30 days or more!) Yet, the Rx is incredibly trivial; just a fair bit of time and elbow grease...

Ha!

And there's the rub! If you don't have a large XXX community to frequent your XXX restaurant/bakery, then you won't *have* an XXX restaurant/bakery! You *need* the communities to create the markets into which those can exist.

[Vic Smith]

When I grew up in Chicago there were plenty of "true" ethnic neighborhoods. Italian, German, Polish, Irish, you name it. There's still vestiges of the old neighborhoods.

[rbowman]

Amaretti?

[Don Y]

I *think* they're amaretti. But, I will have to make a batch to see if the taste agrees with the "taste memory".

We had lots of cookies and other baked goods that were well known in our communities but never encountered in cookbooks, etc. So, I am not sure how much of it may have been "family recipes" or things brought over from The Olde Country (grandparents were immigrants).

E.g., I can recall looking for caciocavallo (cheese) and getting crazy looks (from *italians* in the North End, no less!) like I was talking nonsense. Or, being redirected to Provolone, instead (close, but no cigar).

There are two types of cookies that I make (in big quantities) over the holidays that are invariably met with something approaching

*disgust*, when first encountered. But, within minutes, the disgust is replaced with ADDICTION. One would assume that if folks had encountered them previously, they would remember (the disgust *or* the addiction!)