I tried a new-to-me dish a little while ago, Chicken Country Captain, that was surprisingly good. Supposedly it's a classic of Southern cuisine (chicken parts simmered in a sauce of tomatoes, onions, garlic, curry powder, and raisins) but there's something so unmistakably Indian about its taste that I had to do some investigating....
I did a little digging, and it turns out it's believed to have been brought to the South by an English sea captain who had previously been living in India. Hence the cross-pollination.
But it reminded me of other things I've heard about. The typical Mexican tamale is a popular soul food dish in the rural Mississippi delta, and usually eaten with saltines. In Wisconsin, there's "Chicken Booyah," which is stirred up by the descendants of Belgian immigrants. A British-style pasty (pronounced "pass-tee") can be found in Michigan. And a popular snack item in the West Virginia mountains (and sometimes in far western Maryland) is the pepperoni roll, a bread roll stuffed with sliced pepperoni and cheese, a culinary hand-me-down from Italian immigrants who came to work the mines.
Of course, the opposite can be true. General Tso's Chicken, a popular item on Chinese restaurant menus, is the invention of Taiwanese immigrants to America. And Chicken Divan, thought to be French, was the creation of an American French restaurant, New York's long-gone Divan Parisien.
Have you ever thought to wonder about the ethnic origins, and wanderings, of the food you eat? Ever been surprised by something's origin?
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