Micro Regional Specialties

[Mr King]

Where I am from for almost a 100 years now we have had a dish called the "Horseshoe". The dish breaks down like this, two pieces of Texas toast on a plate next to each other, a hamburger patty on each piece of toast, next a layer of crinkle cut french fries, then smothered in a English rarebit style cheese sauce. Now there are quite a few variations from the standard hamburger patty. You can get pork tenderloin, ham, walleye, chili burger, chili dog, corned beef, pastrami, bacon, roast beef, Italian sausage, and a very popular one is buffalo chicken breast. Some places will also offer a special horseshoe of the week. For example I had one that incorporated blue cheese into the sauce. More recent is the breakfast shoe. This consists of two pieces of toast or biscuit, sausage, bacon, or ham, eggs cooked to order, American fries or hash browns, and sausage gravy or cheese sauce or both. The smaller version of both is known as the "Ponyshoe". The local fish wrap did a article on them a while back and if I remember correctly they came in around a few thousand calories or so. The key ingredient is the cheese sauce. The crappy places use cheese out of a can or velveta based recipes that suck. The best is made with a good cheddar.

 

Horseshoe

 

Breakfastshoe

[Leo Niehorster]

Oh my arteries. That looks absolutely delicious.

Please, if it's not an imposition or indiscretion, where are you from in the US?

[Mr King]

Sure, Springfield Illinois

[Simon Tan]

It's passive resistance, trying to kill off all the politicos!

[Typhoid Maxx]

What are those, 6000 calories, mostly complex carbs, monounsaturated fats, sugar, salt & sodium out the window, nutritional value: minus 15 minutes minimum of your life..

 

Mother Night, is it some strange ploy to eliminate the aging baby boomer burden demographic from pension funding?

 

Do you people live to an old, old, old age there...like 36?

[Mr King]

What are those, 6000 calories, mostly complex carbs, monounsaturated fats, sugar, salt & sodium out the window, nutritional value: minus 15 minutes minimum of your life..

 

Mother Night, is it some strange ploy to eliminate the aging baby boomer burden demographic from pension funding?

 

Do you people live to an old, old, old age there...like 36?

 

Max don't hate just because you moved to the land of bland, boring, and British Which is ironic me saying that since the horseshoe wouldn't exist if it wasn't for a English cheese sauce.

 

I can't find the older article from the local paper that stated the calorie and fat count but it was between 1,000 and 2,000. The article the Wall Street Journal did on a deep fried version of the horseshoe a restaurant here came up with listed it at 2,700 calories.

 

http://online.wsj.co...tions_lifestyle

[Mr King]

A bit a show on the Food Network did on a diner near me that features horseshoe sandwiches. Charley Parkers is pretty good place to eat. I also found out recently that there is a pub in town that does a horseshoe pizza. I can only imagine the calorie count on that.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHDtQCKfDnw

[Mr King]

Charley Parkers also serves a mean omelet. Their corned beef hash omelet is particularly good. They make home made corn beef hash, stuff the omelet with it, melt Swiss cheese on top, then smother it with sausage gravy.

[Rocky Davis]

Where I am from for almost a 100 years now we have had a dish called the "Horseshoe". The dish breaks down like this, two pieces of Texas toast on a plate next to each other, a hamburger patty on each piece of toast, next a layer of crinkle cut french fries, then smothered in a English rarebit style cheese sauce. Now there are quite a few variations from the standard hamburger patty. You can get pork tenderloin, ham, walleye, chili burger, chili dog, corned beef, pastrami, bacon, roast beef, Italian sausage, and a very popular one is buffalo chicken breast. Some places will also offer a special horseshoe of the week. For example I had one that incorporated blue cheese into the sauce. More recent is the breakfast shoe. This consists of two pieces of toast or biscuit, sausage, bacon, or ham, eggs cooked to order, American fries or hash browns, and sausage gravy or cheese sauce or both. The smaller version of both is known as the "Ponyshoe". The local fish wrap did a article on them a while back and if I remember correctly they came in around a few thousand calories or so. The key ingredient is the cheese sauce. The crappy places use cheese out of a can or velveta based recipes that suck. The best is made with a good cheddar.

 

Horseshoe

 

Breakfastshoe

 

To me, simpler is better.

 

A pizza with one or two toppings is enjoyable and I can taste the toppings with each bite. A pizza topped with "the Works" has so much crap on top that you can't taste any one ingredient.

 

Likewise, I enjoy a good meal with all ingredients served on a plate, but are separated from each other, but I do not enjoy eating a bunch of food piled up on top of itself covered by sauces, gravies etc.

 

When I served and we used mess kits for our Class A hot field rations (breakfast and dinner). Those things (US Army-issue mess kits) were so small that hot gravy from your meat or potatoes would cover your (supposedly cold) salad etc. and your cold salad dessing would drip over into your (supposedly hot) meat, potatoes and vegetable (corn, or whatever). And your cold, white slices of bread were placed on top of everything (both hot and cold, wet or dry) because there was no other place to put it as you left the line with full mess kit in one hand and canteen cup of drink in the other to search out a place to eat. By the time you found a place to eat, all of your different foods were mixed in with each other and part of your bread was wet from hot gravy (no problem with that, usually) and the other part of it was wet from cold salad dressing. But, you ate it all anyway because you needed the nutrition for such a physically demanding job.

 

Having everything piled on top of itself was no choice then. I'm certainly not going to purposefully cook or order out a big pile of food by choice.

 

Just my opinion . . .

Edited June 24, 2012 by Rocky Davis

[Max H]

Here's one from the land of "bland & boring"

Dorset apple cake. Is cake with apples.

AFAIK it's not so much of a "dorset" speciality, more of a west country thing, but every county pretends it has the best. There's a catering van that parks on hardys monument that serves some great cake - might make some of my own soon.

[Mr King]

That looks delicious Max. I hope you know I was being facetious when I was poking fun at British food.

[Max H]

Of course, hence the smiley

[John Dudek]

Oh my arteries. That looks absolutely delicious.

 

No worries! Just throw back a couple litres of good, red wine and flush out your arteries of all that extra fat. The French seem to do that on a daily basis and they've got great coronary heart health. Of course, by midlife, their livers have the denseness of a common street sewer lid, but you can't have everything, can you?.