Guess the 1980s Dish Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pasta Primavera

The name literally translates into "Springtime Pasta," because of its use of spring vegetables and refreshingly light flavors and bright colors. It was not invented in Italy, but rather New York City in the late 1970's. Sirio Maccioni, the Tuscan born owner of Le Cirque, devised the dish along with his chef Ed Giobbi, while looking for an authentic modern Italian dish similar to something made by Ed Giobbi's mother. Maccioni suggested using a variety of spring vegetables including asparagus, baby peas and small green beans to top a lightly dressed pasta. It was an instant hit, and before long savvy New Yorker relished ordering this beautiful, off the menu dish.

Pasta Primavera graced the magazine cover of 1978's premier edition of Food & Wine, launching the dish as a 1980's menu staple, with restaurants everywhere giving the dish their own unique ingredients.

Spaghetti Carbonara is cooked spaghetti tossed with bacon, beaten eggs and Parmesan cheese.
Pesto, also an 1980's favorite, is chopped basil, pinenuts, pepper, salt, olive oil and Parmesan cheese. It makes a wonderful dressing on any pasta.

Spaghetti Bolognese is a meat based tomato sauce on spaghetti.

Answer: Blackened Redfish

Paul Prudhomme, America's premiere Cajun chef, introduced Blackened Redfish to the world. He coated the fish with Cajun spices and cooked it fast in a searing hot cast-iron skillet. The seasonings sear into a delicious crust, keeping the fish inside succulent and juicy.

The technique of blackening took off during the 80's, and soon even the most run of the mill and broadly appealing restaurants were offering blackened chicken, prime rib or fish.

Gumbo Z'herbs is a gumbo cooked with a variety of greens, a roux, green peppers, onions and celery, and lots of spices. Seafood, sausage or ham can be added, too.

A Monte Cristo Sandwich is not Cajun at all, but is a fried turkey, ham and swiss cheese sandwich served with powdered sugar and grape jelly.

Crawfish Etouffee means "smothered crawfish" and is a popular Cajun dish made with a roux, green peppers, onions, and celery. Its cooked down with stock, added to the crawfish and served over rice.

Answer: Oat Bran Muffin

Oat bran muffins were a part of the oat bran craze of the 80's. A scientific study (funded by Quaker, incidentally) toted that oat bran had special cholesterol reducing abilities, and soon, books and newspapers all began decreeing the miraculous nature of oat bran.

Oat bran made its way into everything from snacks, beer, and even toothpaste. So into the muffin batter it went, and voila! A heavy, tasteless, highly caloric 1980's fad was born. This craze died out however, when studies done in the early 90's proved that oat bran's effects were much less positive than originally hoped.

Steak-umms have been around for over 40 years, but they are not necessarily the best option for someone watching their cholesterol.

Betty Crocker's Stir n' Frost was 1980's snacking at its best. Cake mix, frosting, with its own pan for baking. Instant cake!

Carnation Breakfast Bars were the 1980's precursor to today's cereal/nutrition bars. Sadly, they are now defunct.

Answer: Nouvelle Cuisine

Beginning in the 70's, and catching fire in the 80's, Nouvelle Cuisine's concept was simpler, ingredient centric food that was all about flavor and quality ingredients. Reduced meat and vegetable stocks replaced the heavy, flour thickened sauces of the 70's.

As the decade progressed, Francophile chefs made their creations more complicated, blending unlikely ingredients together for new flavor combinations. Plates got bigger and the artful looking servings shrank. Plating innovations such as stacking, dipping stations made up of dots and dashes were wildly popular. Your plate was a work of art, but you were likely to leave the table hungry.

Grande Cuisine is marked by elaborate presentations with complex service.

Cuisine Classique refers to food based on the works of famous French chef Auguste Escoffier. (It was heavier, sauce laden food that was popular in the 70's.)

Fusion Cuisine is food that is a result of fusing two cultures.

Answer: Pepperoni and sausage

Before the 80's, the idea of gourmet pizza would have been absurd! Pizza was tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and a few standard toppings. A couple of Californian celebrity chefs, however, changed all that.

Wolfgang Puck, revolutionized pizza into a fresh, individual gourmet dining concept. Inspired by fellow Californian chef Alice Waters who was baking her thin pizzas in a wood-fire oven, Puck abandoned the tomato sauce for olive oil, white sauce or pesto and then topped his pizzas with everything from seafood, greens, luscious California produce, or even Asian ingredients.

Eventually, the chain California Pizza Kitchen took the gourmet pizza torch and rolled out individual gourmet pizzas by the truckload, thus igniting America's love affair with barbecue chicken pizzas.

Answer: Because I just ordered a rolled up hot towel with Japanese horseradish.

It's no wonder that health conscious 80's saw Sushi Bars become wildly popular. A chic and slightly exotic Japanese treat that was also healthy and delicious! Totally awesome to the max!

The word "Sushi" does not mean raw fish (that is sashimi) but rather it refers to the vinegared rice that is often paired with raw fish.

Sushi originated as a 7th century Japanese technique of pickling or preserving fish. Fish was packed with rice, and as the fish fermented the rice produced a lactic acid which caused the fish to pickle.
After fermentation advances in the 15 and 16th centuries, in the 17th century rice vinegar was introduced to flavor the sushi rice.
In the 1820's Hanaya Yohei of Edo (Tokyo) envisioned sushi as a fast and healthy snack food. He also introduced Sashimi (fresh sliced raw fish) combined with the vinegared rice to the sushi repertoire.

If I wanted to eat "dancing" or live shrimp, I would ask for "Odori-ebi."
If I wanted salt water eel, I would say "Anago o kudasai". If I wanted to ask for the bill, I would ask the server for the "Okanjo."

Answer: Frozen Yogurt

Although frozen yogurt has been made since at least the 1970s, it popularity exploded in the 1980s as a low fat alternative to ice cream. It's made like ice cream, constantly churned at a very low temperature, and with the exception of the yogurt cultures, the ingredients are also similar.

Frozen yogurt chains, such as TCBY, popped up in the eighties, and added sugar to their yogurt, making a previously sour food much more marketable. TCBY offered a variety of yogurt flavors, plus a delightful array of delightful toppings, such as fruit and crushed up candy and cookies.

In 1984 David Mintz created Tofutti as a sweet treat that would be allowed under the laws of his strict Orthodox Jewish dietary practices. He created a natural, tasty, low-cal, no-cholesterol, nondairy frozen treat, a perfect addition to the 80's frozen yogurt trend. He began selling it from pushcarts and at specialty stores and soon it moved into supermarkets, where it can still be found today.

Interest in frozen yogurt died down in the 1990s, when low-fat ice creams hit the market. The Frozen yogurt market made a surprising rebound in the 2008 with the arrival of new chains like Pinkberry and Red Mango.

Answer: Pasta Salad

Pasta salad evolved from Macaroni salad which first appeared in the early 1900's. It was simply macaroni drizzled with oil, vinegar, mayonnaise or horseradish.

Chefs in the 1980's modernized their grandma's recipes used different colors and shapes of pastas, and added herbs, cheeses, vegetables, meats, seafood or poultry. Most were served cold.

Pasta Salads could contain anything, from leftovers to exotic international flavors, and allowed Yuppies to carbo-load and get a gourmet meal at the same time. And what a crowd pleaser to bring to that block party!

Answer: Garbage Pail Kids Cereal

In 1988, Ralston made Ghostbusters cereal, which was a crunchy sweetened corn cereal with marshmallow bits.

Post made Smurfberry Crunch cereal in 1983, discontinued it soon after but brought back Smurf Magic Berries in 1987.

In 1985, Ralston made Donkey Kong Jr. cereal, which was named after the popular Nintendo game and had fruit-flavored bananas and cherries mixed in with corn barrels.

Garbage Pail Kids Cereal never existed, thank goodness!

Answer: Tiramisu

Tiramisu, which means 'pick-me-up,' is layers of espresso-soaked spongecake or ladyfingers, sometimes with rum or brandy, and slathered with either sweetened custard or mascarpone cheese. The top is sprinkled with cocoa powder.
There is speculation that Tiramisu was invented in the late 1600's by a Sienese pastry chef to honor Grand Duke Cosimo III De'Medici. It was called Zuppa del Duca, or the Duke's Pudding.
It was rumored to be popular among courtesans, who enjoyed it before trysts.

In the 19th Century, zuppa del duca became popular among the English intellectuals and the name evolved into zuppa Inglese. However, Zuppa Inglese is a cousin of Tiramisu at best. While Zuppa Inglese is made of sponge cake, biscuits or ladyfingers, the cake is then dipped in Alchermes, an aromatic Florentine liqueur and then covered in Crema Pasticciera, which is a thick custard.

Tiramisu, on the other hand, is a modern dessert, invented in Treviso, Italy in the 1970's in a restaurant called Le Beccherie by pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto. Their original Tiramisu was round and served from a large bowl and made only of Savoiardi biscuits, eggs, sugar and cocoa. Because it was created with children and the elderly in mind, there was no liquor added.

From Treviso, the dessert gained poplularity throughout Italy, and made into America via San Francisco, where is popped up on Italian and Greek menus all over the city. Eventually it made its way across America and became a quintessential dessert of the Eighties!

An English Trifle is layers of liquor soaked cake, jam, custard, and fruit.

A Floating Island is dollops meringue (the islands) floating in Crème anglaise. It was popular in the 70's.