ok, so you've read my mumblings on the world cup and its attendant fever below. (if you haven't, go ahead, it's a little further down, i'll wait. done? yet? ok, let's resume.) in order to make this quadrennial event a little more interesting for me, i need to link it to something that excites me. i've chosen food.
i'm someone who loves to cook, but lately i've been lacking inspiration. so for the next several weeks, i'm going to base the meals that i cook for myself on that day's world cup results. now, i'm only one person, so i really only have to cook something up for myself every couple of days, but on those days, it's going to be world cup winner related.
to start off, i have let myself do something completely, pathetically easy. cacciatore (italy 2, ghana 0). i'm really cheating on this one, because, not only is italian cuisine the easiest of today's winning cuisine (my other choices would have been czech and australian), but cacciatore isn't even a 100% proper italian dish. it was popularised by italians who emigrated to america.
but here's my excuse (aside from the fact that it makes great comfort food and can be prepared with relatively few ingredients): while the dish may reflect a winning team, it also references another team who played today: the americans.
let's face it, it's really difficult to cheer for the americans in any sporting event. they outspend everyone and therefore outperform. they aren't terribly gracious about winning and, worst of all, they aren't interested in participating if they can't win. most of the time.
international soccer is about the only sport that they just haven't been able to master. part of it is that they just don't have the lion's share of the money (since they can't deliver much of an audience domestically, which is because they don't win, which is... you see where i'm going with this). so, in a truly weird twist of fate, the americans really came into this tournament with something to prove. and what happened? they got their asses handed to them by the czechs (cze 3, usa 0). so for once, they get to be the team who put in a valiant effort and came up short.
it's sort of like the american melting pot idea. they can try to assimilate people (as they did the italians), but they just come up short. what's the result? there's a lot of the old country seeping into the new.
delicious, i'd say.