Quarantine Dinner #25: Corned Beef Hash

Life On A Plate

Growing up in Chinatown, NYC, in the early 70s, I remember a lot of things I never thought about till now.

Like never having an AC, only a window fan. Going out and playing in the streets or park without supervision, or having a real curfew.

I also thought about the fun things that kids now will never see again. Stoop ball. A metal bar jungle gym. Or a heavy wooden NYC park high seesaw.

If you grew up in NYC and played on a seesaw with your friends, you know. You would try things like getting off fast while your friend was up in the air, or trying to knock the guy on the other side off, or going really fast by jumping up and down and hanging on for dear life, or trying to catapult someone or something.

Another thing we did was getting the fat kid on one side and two kids on the other. Yes, I said fat kid. Back in those days it was normal to say things like that. Henry was our friend. We called him Fat Henry because there were two Henrys.

We never discriminated against him and always rooted for him. In fact, we loved Henry, especially playing Johnny on the Pony!

Johnny On The Pony

Johnny on the Pony was one of our favorite games to play, but if you played it now it would create lawsuits and mothers would scream!

You had two teams. The anchor would bend over and hug a pole, the next guy would bend over and hug the anchor guy, until you had this chain of 8 kids or so looking like a caterpillar.

Now the object of the game was to collapse the team by running and landing on the back of the pony/caterpillar kids. So you would run with a flying leap and land as hard as you could to knock them down!

When you had 8 kids or more on your backs, then Henry would come charging in.

Game over!

The Food Part

Another thing I never noticed was food. I ate whatever was on the table. Sometimes it was very simple food.

I never noticed my parents trying to stretch a buck to save money, so we ate a lot of rice and boxed pasta dishes.

There was this dish made from corned beef in a can that I used to love and still do!

Yes, I can make proper corned beef hash, but this was something from my childhood. One can can feed a family, depending on how many potatoes you put in it.

The meat by itself is a bit briny, but adding potatoes cuts that saltiness. Onion, peppers, tomato sauce, some olives, and serving it over rice.

This is not a high-end dish, but it is special to me.

It reminds me of coming home from the park and having a plate of canned corned beef hash over rice, then watching Get Smart.