American Cheese
Posted on July 13, 2007
Maybe it reveals me as the pious food snob that I am, but today, in a Continental jet wafting over Winnemucca I stare at a sealed, steamed-up baggie labeled “Pierre Creations: Charbroiled Beef With American Cheese” wondering just what it would taste like. First, I was stunned to get a meal on a plane, the first one on a domestic flight in more than a year. Then, my only choice was a cheeseburger. Glad I am not a vegan or a Hindu or a cardio case. What surprised me is that everyone around me gleefully accepted this artery-buster. But, why not? It is small (everything in moderation is my mantra), nobody’s watching, nobody will tattle.
American Cheese: I can’t remember when I last sunk my jowls into a hot glob of American Cheese (I don’t eat Nachos). When I was a kid I had a choice of American or Swiss. One was orangish, the other was more whitish and had holes. I grew up In the Midwestern US, an American/Swiss, Chop Suey/Chow Mien sort of place. Pizza was exotic: Eye-talian. American Cheese, in one form, still comes in true American-style “don’t mess with me” individually wrapped slices. Not wrapped, actually, but a mixture of substances (51% real cheese by law) poured onto each plastic wrapper and chemically induced to emulsify and congeal.
So, struggling with the plastic, I unwrap this “handmade” delicacy, which looks something like a prop from CSI. I take a bite: not a savoring, slow, tooth-sinker as when I first sampled Kobe beef, but a more businesslike, matter-of-fact chomp. It is…edible, a blunt cheddar that neither amuses or offends. Scientist say smells can provoke powerful memories, and this flashes me back to the White Castles (aka gut bombs or sliders) I snarfed by the half dozen while cramming for college exams, memories of slob roommates and barely making the rent. It certainly does not have the pure, lovingly assembled by mom ‘n’ pop elan of an In-And-Out Burger (but then I have never ordered one with cheese).
But, who am I to criticize? I, who am corrupted by rock star chefs who swing their cleavers as cheekily as Eric Clapton swings his axe, by a misapprehension that radicchio is superior to iceberg lettuce, that slabs of cold, fat tuna served with horseradish rate higher than tunafish with Mac ‘n’ Cheese.
I have forgotten what Kobe beef tastes like and I will forget this one too but, that aside, I am curious as to whether American Cheese may have lost respect in the rest of the world. And I do wonder what it would taste like on French Fries.
» Filed Under Airlines, Culture, Food & Wine, Misc.
