In 1880, an English immigrant to the U.S., Samuel Bath Thomas, opened a bakery in New York City, where he invented a variation he called "toaster crumpets." Unlike their predecessors, which were eaten whole, these were cut into two halves so they could be toasted in a toaster or under a broiler. The crumpet, a leavened griddle cake with a spongy texture and a porous top, has been popular in the U.K. In Tampa, where a large part of the population is of Italian origin, salami is typically added to what has officially been dubbed "the signature sandwich of the city." English muffin The recipe traditionally includes roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese and pickles on mustard-slathered lengths of Cuban bread - a baguette-like loaf with a thin, crisp crust. The modern-day Cuban sandwich, though, was first formulated by immigrant cigar makers in Key West, Florida, in the late 19th century and later refined in Tampa. Mixed meat sandwiches, or mixtos, were common workers' fare in 19th- and early 20th-century Cuba. The version known in America, however - a stir-fried hash of meat or chicken with bean sprouts, celery and other vegetables - was probably created as a cheap way of feeding miners or railroad workers by 19th-century Chinese-American cooks, possibly in San Francisco. This expatriate Chinese restaurant staple is related to a regional Cantonese dish called tsap seui, or shap suì ("miscellaneous pieces" or "mixed bits"), which was usually made with minced organ meats. Credit is usually given to Sylvia Cheng Wu, who served the salad at her popular Madame Wu restaurant in Santa Monica. But the Chinese chicken salad as we know it - chicken tossed with shredded cabbage or lettuce, fried wonton strips or rice vermicelli, and other ingredients, usually in a sesame or peanut dressing - first appeared in California in the 1960s. There are dishes made with shredded cold chicken in traditional Chinese cuisine. Another Arizona restaurateur, Woody Johnson, claims that he invented the chimichanga in Phoenix, but not till 1946. The owners of El Charro Café, the city's oldest Mexican restaurant, claim it was invented there in 1922, when founder Monica Flin accidentally dropped a burrito into a vat of bubbling fat. This deep-fried burrito, particularly popular in the Southwest - and with the Marvel Comics character Deadpool - was most likely first made in Tucson, Arizona. Chili came to national attention in 1893, when Texas set up a San Antonio Chili Stand at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago that year - and the rest is spicy history. San Antonio became known as the chili capital thanks to the so-called "Chili Queens," Mexican women who sold it and other dishes in the city's plazas. Another theory is that it was devised in the state's prison kitchens as a cheap, filling way to feed prisoners. It may have been concocted first by trail cooks on cattle drives. Chili as we know it, though, comes from our side of the border, in southern Texas. Many Mexican dishes combine chiles with meat, which is literally what "chili con carne" means. That doesn't make the dishes they apply to any less delicious. Other times, though, their names - even the geographical ones - aren't what they seem at all. Perhaps they are indeed just regionalized variations on authentic originals. Over the years, in this country, we've come to identify some of our favorite foods as Mexican or Chinese - or Cuban or German or Swiss - though they might be nothing of the kind. Ours is a cuisine of adaptation, open to the world. Mexican specialties took on a new identity when they got to Texas Chinese-American chefs in the 19th-century took inspiration from their homeland to fashion dishes appropriate to their new home. In America, the great melting pot, our cooking pots are full of borrowings. The rich French stew called ragout was transformed in the Italian kitchen into a more finely textured pasta sauce, ragù. "Tempura" derives either from tempero, Portuguese for “seasoning,” or from Quatuor Tempora, the Latin name for Ember days, on which Christians are supposed to eat fish and vegetables instead of meat. But the Japanese learned how to deep-fry foods in batter from Portuguese merchants and missionaries who came to Nagasaki in the 16th century. One of the most typical dishes of Japanese cooking, for instance, is tempura. Cuisines all over the world adapt foods and techniques from other cultures.
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