I think I can speak for everyone when I say French fries are probably Americans' favorite guilty pleasure. So much so that Americans dared to rename them Freedom fries when France objected to the war.
Interestingly there is nothing French about them. As history goes,
potatoes were first brought to Spain via the New World expeditions.
Fried potatoes became popular during the 17th century in the Spanish
Netherlands, present day Belgium.
When there were no fish to fry, the
poorer citizens fried potatoes. Sometime during World War I, an
American or British soldier eating fried potatoes erroneously named
them French fries since French was the official language of Belgium.
Another theory suggests that the culinary term for slicing into thin
strips, "to French," was applied to fried potatoes and thus the name.
However
the story goes, fried potatoes or pommes frites have achieved worldwide
acclaim. American fast food chains accepted them as their own and their
popularity soared. Once you bite into a golden crisp fry with a pure
white fluffy interior, you just can't stop at one.
I found the secret to the crispiest, most delicious home fries.
A good steak never needs something extra to make it stand out. However, sometimes I do have a craving for an extra twang to go with my meat.
“…definitely the tuna tartare, and the hazelnut crusted chicken, and… then a nice, big crudite platter…”
For some reason, I recently had a hankering for Chocolate Mayonnaise cake, a staple in our house when I was growing up. If you're not familiar with it, it's a wonderfully moist chocolate cake that was created, according to food legend, by the wife of a Hellman's mayonnaise salesman to help increase his sales. Although it may seem like an odd ingredient, the mayonnaise is used in place of eggs and oil, making it handy to throw together with just a few pantry ingredients.