SOS

SOS

In Screen Saver I mention that on a fuel stop at Clark Air Force Base in Manila on the trip to Vietnam I went into a cafeteria type of place where there were vast steam tables with a lumpy, viscous substance that was apparently being offered to the troops as food. I subsequently – after some time in Saigon – learned that the substance, which was also on offer in the Officers' Clubs where I ate most of my meals, was called SOS. I guess that stood for shit on a shingle. Even later in my tour, one of my fellow officers started waxing poetic one day about how good the stuff was. He waxed so poetic that I had to try it, no matter how awful it looked. I soon found myself also waxing poetic about it. It was really good. I have never seen a recipe for it, but I have been able to duplicate it with a fair degree of accuracy.

Ingredients

8 ounces of ground beef

2 or 3 garlic cloves

Olive oil (just a little)

1/8^th cup of flour

Whipping cream

Lea and Perrins

English muffin

Cooking

Use a garlic press to get some garlic in a cast iron fry pan. Put in a little olive oil. Put in the ground beef and blend the oil and the beef and the garlic into a kind of uniform paste. Turn the gas up to high (if you are cooking electric, let the element get red before you put the pan on it). Cover and let cook for a few minutes – 3 to 5 minutes. Remove the lid and there should be a mass of beef and garlic that is partially cooked and is kind of like a beef patty with garlic laced into it. Break it up some, but leave it in lots of chunks. Don't break it down to the size of the grind of the beef. SOS is supposed to be lumpy. Turn the heat down to medium. Turn the chunks a few times until they are done and put the flour in and mix it up with the meat with a wooden spoon. That should yield a bunch of beef and garlic chunks coated with flour. Brown those a bit. Then add some whipping cream. At this point you are turning the mix into a sort of country cream gravy. It will thicken and need some water to thin it down a bit. When it looks like sausage gravy put the mix on your previously toasted English muffin halves and eat.