Snacking State-by-State: Pennsylvania III - Apple Pan Dowdy!? We don't need no stinkin' Apple Pan Dowdy! (or "Amish Pie-radise")

Indiana has the country's most Amish county, and per capita there are (apparently) more Amish in Ohio than in any other state.  But the Amish are forever tied to Pennsylvania, where they first set foot the United States.  Many an "English" tourist has flocked to Lancaster County to get some exposure to Amish lifeways and culture, only to bitch and moan when they get stuck behind a horse and buggy.  There is something to be said about we tourists actually trying to, you know, respect Amish lifeways - especially when that involves getting stuck behind a horse and buggy.  But I digress.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
State Nicknames: The Keystone State, The Quaker State
Admission to the US: December 12, 1787 (#2 - Delaware beat 'em to the punch)
Capital: Harrisburg (9th largest)
Other Important Cities: Philadelphia (largest), Pittsburgh (2nd largest), Allentown (3rd largest), Erie (4th largest)
Region: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest; Middle Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Maple Syrup; Clambake; Crabcake; Chestnut; Wild Rice
Bordered by: Maryland & the Mason-Dixon Line (south), West Virginia (southwest), Ohio (west), Lake Erie (northwest), New York (north & northeast), New Jersey & the Delaware River (east), Delaware (southeast)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: white-tailed deer (animal), milk (beverage), ruffed grouse (bird), chocolate chip cookie (cookie), brook trout (fish)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: German & Amish foods; Polish & Eastern European foods; pretzels, water ice, hoagies & Philly cheese steaks (particular to Philadelphia); city chicken, halupki & halušky, chipped ham, kielbasa (particular to Pittsburgh); scrapple; Hershey's chocolates; birch beer; Herr's Potato Chips, Hanover Pretzels & (yes) Utz Potato Chips; people (if you're an extra in a George Romero movie, that is - the big ones were all filmed near Pittsburgh)


The Amish first arrived in Pennsylvania in the 18th century, after fleeing Europe for their Anabaptist beliefs, specifically that only adults may be baptized.  According to Wikipedia and Lancaster County website [Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau 2012], they first settled in Berks County, with many eventually settling in nearby Lancaster County.  Today there are over 50,000 Amish in Pennsylvania, many centered around Lancaster County, along with their less religiously conservative but similarly "plain" religious brethren, the Mennonites and the Brethren (both of whom do use electricity but typically dress the same).

Many Marylanders have had exposure to the Amish - not necessarily to individual Amish, per se, but to Amish country.  This includes the massive Amish buffets in Lancaster and Strasburg, which don't seem to fit the Amish spirit - "Amish" and "excess" aren't really two words that go together.  But as the Amish America website points out, the Amish are known for good food.  Good, filling, and not exactly slimming food.  While the Amish pretty much grow (and sell) their own farm foods - vegetables, eggs, milk, meat - depending on what the specific community allows, some Amish may buy food at the grocery store or even make their own wine (many communities are dry apart from weddings and semi-annual communion services).  And even the Amish are eating out more than they used to, bringing more processed foods into their diets.  But overall, most of their diet is of the low-processed variety [Amish America, 2010].

A few dishes are particularly famous for being Amish dishes.  Some, like scrapple, have crossed over into our "English" world.  Many people in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic love scrapple, that mixture of pig parts and cornmeal that you slice up and fry.


I. HATE. SCRAPPLE.

I could never understand what my mother saw in it back when she had a block of Rapa Scrapple sitting in the fridge ready to slice and fry up.  The Amish are also famous for their pies - apple butter pies, sugar cream pies, whoopie pies (yes, they make those just like New Englanders do), and the pie that I most readily identify as Amish: the shoo fly pie.

Just as New Englanders share whoopie pies with the Amish, so Southerners share shoo fly pies with them as well.  Hardly an Amish restaurant or buffet in Lancaster County is missing this gooey concoction of molasses and brown sugar baked in a pie shell.  One doesn't need to connect too many dots to figure out where it got its name: all the molasses attracted flies, hence the need to shoo them away.  While it is also known below the Mason-Dixon Line, as Montgomery pie (with lemon added), I have always thought of this as an Amish thing.  And few if any of the Amish cookbooks you buy in Amish Country are missing a recipe for the famous and easy pie.  I got this recipe from one of those cookbooks, The Amish Homestead Cookbook [date unknown], printed (apparently) for the Amish Homestead on Lincoln Highway East in Lancaster - long since replaced (apparently) by a Wal-Mart.

The Recipe: Shoo Fly Pie

This shoo fly pie recipe is on page 28 of The Amish Homestead Cookbook (in the "Fastnacht Day" section).  Since I don't think this is a copyrighted book - there isn't even a publication date - and not a terribly easy book to find, I will provide a photo of the recipe for exact measurements:

So as you see, you will need:

* pie crusts (yes I cheated - again, Trader Joe's is a good pre-made pie crust with as little junk as you will find in a pre-made pie crust.  Extra plus: I had this in the freezer and didn't even know it!  Note: though the Amish do occasionally shop in grocery stores, they probably would make their own)

From here there are two components to this recipe, the crumb part and the liquid part.  For the former, assemble:
* brown sugar (had it)
* flour (same)
* shortening (some recipes call for lard and/or butter, as Alton Brown's version on his molasses episode of Good Eats uses)

For the latter you will need:
* molasses (had a bottle of backstrap molasses in the pantry)
* salt (no, I didn't have this lying around.  That was snark.)
* cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger (I had most in ground form - had to grind the cloves myself)
* baking soda (had it too)
* hot water (not difficult to find)

Mix the brown sugar, flour and shortening together until well blended.

Like so.

Next, grind your spices if they need grinding.

Add the spices, salt and baking soda to your bowl.

Dump in your molasses.

And add hot water.

Mix the whole mess together.

Now for the pie crusts.  You only need one, to fit a 9 inch pie plate.  If you thaw it correctly, you won't need to roll it out.  I forgot this step, and so tried to cheat by blow drying it, on high.  [Yes, don't laugh.]  Needless to say, it didn't work, but with enough stopped and started blow drying it did soften the pie crust enough that I could roll out the various pieces that broke off as I tried to unroll it, and re-roll it out into a normal pie crust shape.  I could even make up for the few pieces I lost to the floor.

Looks good as new.  This is a little tedious, but the blow dryer and re-roll method is a viable shortcut if you forgot to thaw your pie crust.  Also I must point out that I got this method for rolling out pie dough between two pieces of plastic, wax paper or parchment paper from Adam Roberts, who suggested this on his Amateur Gourmet website.  I could not tell you when he posted this.  All I know is I got this from him.  So cred where cred is due.

Put the pie crust in the pie plate.

Crimp the edges and make it look all purty-like.

Now you're ready to assemble the pie.  Alternate crumb and liquid, making sure you both start and end with a crumb layer.

The easiest way for me to do it was crumb-liquid-crumb-liquid-crumb.

I went to the trouble of spreading out the crumbs all over the top.

You will bake this in two steps.  Start with a 450°F oven and bake for 15 minutes, then decrease the temperature to 350°F (I got there fast by both lowering the temperature and leaving the oven door open until it got there) for 20 minutes more.

Let it cool down, or just eat it piping hot.  Mmmm.  Burns from piping hot molasses.

This shoo fly pie is pretty much part and parcel what I would have expected from a shoo fly pie.  It tastes about the same, and feels that way too: gooey, ridiculously sweet and slightly salty, with a wonderfully flaky pie crust and a desperate need for some ice cream.  Again, the Amish are not eating health food.  Remember that, people.


Sources:

Amish America.  "What do Amish eat?"  Copyright 2010 Amish America, All rights reserved.

Amish Homestead Cookbook.  Tourist cookbook, date of publication unknown.

AmericanCivilWar.com.  "American Civil War Recipes: Union Hardtack and Confederate Johnnie Cakes".  Date unknown.  Copyright 1997-2012 AmericanCivilWar.com, maintained by Central Design Lab. All articles are public domain and clearly credit and link to the author when possible.

Batz, Bob, Jr. "Pittsburgh sticks with loving 'City Chicken'".  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, published March 30, 2012.  Copyright ©1997-2012 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.

Brieda, Luboš.  "Potato Dumplings (Halušky)".  Slovak Cooking, posted November 3, 2009.  Updated March 24, 2010.  Copyright 2009-2011 Slovak Cooking.

Chowhound.com.  "Slicing Ribeye roast for philly cheese steak".  Discussion on "Home Cooking" board, Chowhound.com. Thread started September 6, 2008.

Pat's King of Steaks. "Pat's King of Steaks Philadelphia Cheese Steak".  Featured on the episode "Best Sandwiches" of the show The Best Of.  Food Network, 1999.

Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau.  "Pennsylvania Amish history & beliefs".  Copyright 2012 Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau, site maintained by Cimbrian.

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.  Pennsylvania Cookbook Trail of History.  From the Editors of Stackpole Books and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, foreword by William Woys Weaver.  Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, PA, 2004.

Pittsburgh.About.com (About.com). "How to Make Haluski (Cabbage and Noodles)"  Date unknown.  Copyright 2012 About.com.  All rights reserved.

Robinson, Douglas.  "City Chicken".  Recipe in I Grew Up in Southwestern Pennsylvania: A Nostalgic Look at Growing Up in the Pittsburgh Region.  Recipe featured in the article "Pittsburgh sticks with loving 'City Chicken'" by Bob Batz, Jr. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, published March 30, 2012)

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Pennsylvania" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Pennsylvania".

Snacking State-by-State: Maine III - That's what you get folks for makin' whoopie

The last stop on my tour of the Down East takes me back to a topic I have visited once or twice over the last few years: the whoopie pie. Now found in various forms throughout the country, from the Mid-Atlantic to the West Coast to even the South (so long as you have a Starbucks nearby selling adorable little mini-whoopie pies for $1.50 a pop), it is still classic Yankee food.

Official Name: State of Maine
State Nicknames: The Pine Tree State
Admission to the US: March 15, 1820 (#23)
Capital: Augusta (9th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Portland (largest); Lewiston (2nd largest); Bangor (3rd largest)
Region: Northeast, New England; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Maple Syrup; Clambake
Bordered by: New Hampshire (west); Québec (Canada) (northwest); New Brunswick (Canada) (north, northeast), Bay of Fundy (due east), Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine (southeast)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: wild blueberry (fruit); Maine wild blueberry pie (dessert); whoopie pie (treat); Moxie (soft drink); landlocked salmon (fish); moose (animal)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: New England foods; seafood, especially lobster, haddock, swordfish, salmon, clams; blueberries and apples; fiddle head ferns; whoopie pies; foods in common with southeastern Canada, including poutine

As I wrote a few years ago, the whoopie pie is relatively new to this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Up until 2009, I thought it was just some type of Moon Pie, which it's not. It has its origins, it seems, in two cultures: upper New England (read: Maine) and the Amish. Legend has it that whenever New England children knew what their mothers had just made for them - or when an Amish farmer opened his lunch pail to see what his wife had put into it - a cry of "Whoopie!" would ring out, hence the name. I can't determine where it came from first, but Mainers love it so much that they made it their official state "treat" (since wild blueberry pie is already the official state dessert).

There are many variations on the whoopie pie, but most of them are still found in the Northeast: maple, vanilla, red velvet, peanut butter, and so on. Here in the Mid-Atlantic it's mostly just the traditional whoopie pie that you can find, and it's still not that common here (yet). I decided to do the standard whoopie pie and see how that turned out. For this, I went back to Brooke Dojny, who gives a seemingly pretty standard recipe in her cookbook The New England Clam Shack Cookbook, which I also used for my first New England recipe for this series, the semi-clear, very un-creamy clam chowder that you find along the coast of Connecticut.

Dojny gets this whoopie pie recipe, on pages 218-219 of her cookbook, from the Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster Company in South Freeport, Maine.

Recipe: Whoopie Pie

Whereas the previous recipe for fiddle head ferns was very simple, this is very not - there are a lot of steps, so block out a few hours in your schedule to make these things.


The ingredients and procedures are listed in two separate sections - first the cakes, then the filling. However, several of these ingredients overlap, so note that when you are shopping or searching for them.

For the cakes you will need the following (I ended up having most of this on hand):

* granulated sugar (mostly have it, and picked up a little extra just to be on the safe side)
* unsweetened cocoa powder
* eggs
* vanilla and salt
* vegetable shortening (just enough in the pantry - I ended up using Crisco)
* white vinegar
* whole milk
* baking soda

In addition, you should have at least one cookie sheet and parchment paper, and at least one wire cookie rack.

For the filling you will need:

* confectioners sugar (picked up an extra one pound box - you will use the whole box)
* vanilla
* butter (one stick will do)
* vegetable shortening (again, Crisco)
* marshmallow creme (by most accounts, New Englanders use Marshmallow Fluff from Lynn, Massachusetts, which has several recipes for whoopie pies on its website)


Before all else, you will need to cover the cookie sheet or sheets with parchment paper.

First, the procedure for the cakes:


The first thing you need to do is combine whole milk and white vinegar.


After about 10 minutes, the milk-vinegar mixture should become slightly thickened and foamy (mine did not). You will then add baking soda to this mixture.

Meanwhile, cream together the sugar, cocoa and shortening.

Now creamed

Add eggs and beat until smooth.

Beaten!

Next, sift the flour and salt together, and add it alternately with the milk-vinegar mixture.

What I did was to add the dry, then the wet, then dry, wet and dry.

Blend vanilla into the batter.

When you spoon the batter onto your baking sheet, Dojny recommends using a 2 ounce ice cream scoop or a 1/4 cup measure, and keep the blobs of batter two inches apart from each other. I found the ice cream scoop to work better, as it yielded a smaller whoopie cake. (Did I just type that?)

Uhhhh....

Bake in a 350°F oven for 12 to 15 minutes, and transfer to wire cooling racks. Because my milk-vinegar mixture never foamed up, my whoopie cakes wound up being, well, flatter than I had expected. They still worked out fine, but they didn't get the visual puff-up that I was anticipating.

The filling was frighteningly sweet and fatty, and I could taste this even while I was mixing the ingredients.

First, mix together the softened butter and the Crisco.


You will next add the marshmallow creme. An easy way to measure this out, as Dojny notes, is to grease the inside of the measuring cup (the residual Crisco in the cup is really all you need). You will add this, along with the powdered sugar and vanilla.

This is not health food.

Now you are ready to assemble the whoopie pies.


Take a spatula and spread a more or less generous amount, to your liking.

When I got to my final whoopie pie, I decided to test out a different flavor, and added just enough maple syrup to get a maple flavor (to New Englandize the recipe even more).


What to say about this incredibly sweet dessert? When I made my first one, I ate it immediately. I gotta tell you: it made my teeth hurt. This is sugary and sweet, and tasty and delicious and evil all at once. This is a dessert that I have to eat in pieces - I have not been able to eat any of these whoopie pies whole, instead needing to eat a half a pie here, a bite there. But even as flat as mine turned out to be, these were still worth the effort. Will I do this again? Well, it IS a lot of work, and whoopie pies are becoming more common down here. Perhaps again, later on down the road. The end result is very tasty.

We have gotten to the point on this state-by-state journey where I am ready to explore the state whose food is by far the most familiar to me, not to mention many of my readers. In crossing back below the Mason-Dixon Line, how do I address the unique cuisine of my own home state? This is the issue I will tackle over the next few weeks, as I head back home, to the Chesapeake - to Maryland, hon.

Sources:

Dojny, Brooke. Dishing Up Maine: 165 Recipes That Capture Authentic Down East Flavors. Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2008.

Dojny, Brooke. The New England Clam Shack Cookbook. 2nd edition. Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2008. Portions also available on Google Books.

El-Begearmi, Mahmoud. Facts on Fiddleheads (Bulletin #4198, Facts on Fiddleheads). Updated by Alfred Bushway, Beth Calder and David Fuller. Cooperative Extension Publications (University of Maine): Orona, ME, 1995 & 2010.

Greenlaw, Linda, and Martha Greenlaw. Recipes From a Very Small Island. Hyperion: New York, NY, 2005.

Yankee Magazine. "Dijon Fiddleheads". From "Weekly Wisdom", May 2002. Copyright 2011 Yankee Magazine.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Maine" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Maine".

Snacking State-by-State: Indiana II - Sugar cream pie, honey bun...

The Midwest has significant Amish and Quaker populations - especially Indiana, whose LaGrange County boasts the second largest Amish population in the country. While our own nearby Pennsylvania Dutch neighbors have brought on the shoofly pie, in Indiana their most well known pie-based contribution to the local fare seems to be the sugar cream pie.

Official Name: State of Indiana
State Nicknames: The Hoosier State
Admission to the US: December 11, 1816 (#19)
Capital: -Indianapolis (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Fort Wayne (2nd largest); Evansville (3rd largest); South Bend (4th largest); Gary (5th largest - let me thththay it onththth agaaaaaiinnn)
Region: Midwest, Great Lakes; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Wild Rice, Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Lake Michigan (northwest); Michigan (north); Ohio (east); Indiana (east); Kentucky (south); Illinois (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: water (beverage - no, seriously, I am not making this up); sugar / "Hoosier" cream pie (pie)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: American Indian (especially Shawnee) foods like buffalo, deer, turkey, corn, maple syrup and wild rice); again, Hoosier cream pie, breaded pork tenderloin sandwich; Wonder Bread; popcorn

This sugar cream pie sounds as sweet as it is, and is much easier to make. In part, it is so simple because of the spartan spate of ingredients that go into the pie, often prepped right in the shell. Marcia Adams, whose Heartland cookbook I have visited several times since I started investigating the Midwest and its foods, points out that this pie - also called a poor man's pie or a milk pie - is a simple pie often made from leftover pie dough scraps, milk, cream and sugar. This very popular Hoosier pie is even the official state pie - a much more interesting official food than the state beverage, which is water.

That's right: water.

After using Adams as a reference since I started looking at Illinois, I knew it was time to use one of her recipes. This pie comes from the same recipe featured in her Heartland cookbook, provided to her by Charlanne Dixon, Floridian but originally from Southern Indiana. This replicates the same pie from her youth.

The recipe: Sugar Cream Pie

For this recipe, you can make any old pie crust, but I decided to use Adams' recommended "Never Fail Pie Crust" which includes hardened vegetable shortening, flour, ice water, cider vinegar and eggs among other things (but no butter). It is indeed a deliciously flaky pie crust.


Apart from that pie crust, you will need:

* sugar (um, duh)
* milk and heavy whipping cream (had to buy the cream, about $2.50 for a cup - a half-pint - size carton)
* flour to thicken, and salt (had 'em)
* butter (had it)
* vanilla and nutmeg (had these on hand as well)

Once you have the pie crust made (or bought, or whatever), you will assemble the pie the following way:


First, mix the sugar, butter (still hard), salt and flour in a food processor until smooth (the closest to "smooth" I got was "soft and crumbly" but it still worked).


Dump the mixture into your pie shell and spread it out.


Next, pour the cream over the sugar mixture.


Here's where it gets different - take your fingers and gently mix it together. Make sure you do not break or tear the bottom of the pastry while doing this!


As for the vanilla and milk: combine the two together...


...and pour into the pie shell. Sprinkle nutmeg on top. Then bake it in a preheated 300°F oven for all of 90 minutes. Adams notes that it is a slow baking pie, and must be baked for this long.


When it's done, it will still bubble and wiggle. That's normal. But let it cool completely before cutting.

In terms of appearance, this pie reminded me a little bit of buttermilk pie, which of course does not cook nearly as long. The taste is different from any pie I have experienced. Of course it is sweet and creamy. What I did not expect was its very slight saltiness, a nice addition to this very sweet pie. You don't add a whole lot of salt to this dish, but it is there. Perhaps this comes from Adams' pie crust? Again, it's not unwelcome, but it adds an interesting flavor to this pie. It is so damn easy to make, this Midwestern pie might pop up alongside that breaded tenderloin sandwich in my very Mid-Atlantic kitchen again.


Next on my culinary tour of the Midwest, I cross back over Illinois to the state of early caucuses and Music Men. What does Iowa have to offer someone who isn't running for his or her party's nomination? I am not sure at this point. So I really ought to give Iowa a try.

Sources:

Adams, Marcia. Heartland: The Best of the Old and the New from Midwest Kitchens. Clarkson Potter: New York, 1991.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Indiana" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Indiana".