State-by-State Redux: X of X - A Julia Child recipe that does not feature butter, and an Ina Garten recipe that makes up for it

Here it is, the last State-by-State post after more than two years of this project chugging along.  And for this final State-by-State post, I am visiting some American classics that I haven't done for this series, and surprisingly even much in the history of this blog, which you know by now is also ending soon.  I thought it was imperative to visit some of these classics by using recipes from the Queen herself, Julia Child.  Oh, and also Ina Garten.

Snacking State-by-State Redux X of X: The United States

Official Name: United States of America
Nickname: none
Founded: July 4, 1776
Capital: Washington, DC
Other Important Cities: There are a lot of 'em.  Can we just leave it at that? 
Region: North America
RAFT Nations: All of them, except Moose (upper Canada)
Bordered by: Canada (north), Arctic Ocean, Bering Strait & Russia (northwest), Pacific Ocean (west), Mexico (south), Gulf of Mexico & Caribbean Sea (southeast), Atlantic Ocean (east)
Official US Foods and Edible Things: none
Some Famous & Typical Foods: see the previous two years worth of posts for this.  Also: apple pie, barbecue, hot dogs, hamburgers, fast food, and so on

Of all the famous chefs in American history, it's pretty safe to say that none rivals the importance of Julia Child.  I mean, did the Smithsonian Institution put James A. Beard's kitchen on display in the American History Museum in Washington?  I've been a few times, and I just don't get tired of it.

Child was, among all chefs, a pathbreaker in that she introduced the American public to the pleasures of an intimidating cuisine (French, not American) in as accessible a way as possible.  From her Mastering the Art of French Cooking to her long-standing partnership with PBS, her many books and television shows, and her co-founding of the American Institute of Wine and Food, Child left an important and lasting impression on American food [Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Behring Center), no date]

For my final State-by-State post, I am showcasing one of Child's more American recipes: the ever-popular meatloaf.  Yes, she had a recipe for meatloaf, which she considered it a cousin to the French pâté: "Since they are so closely related, I consider the one a variation of the other" [Child 2000: 53].  I had never thought of meatloaf that way, but I guess it is.  But I also did change this one up, not so much fiddling with the master so much as using a version that was "pre-fiddled with".  You see, I realized when planning this final post that I had used so many different meats over the past two years for this series: beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, shellfish, even buffalo, but not the one all-American bird that deserves extra attention in such a series: the turkey.  I left out any turkey recipes!  Yes, that idiotic bird that Benjamin Franklin would have made into our national symbol had the bald eagle not swayed other people instead.

Fortunately, I found a recipe that swaps out the pork in Child's recipe for turkey plus precooked rice.  I'm not sure of the actual provenance of this recipe.  Various sources attribute a turkey meatloaf to Mark Ladner of Del Posto restaurant, though I don't think this is the version in question.  I did find Child's meatloaf with the turkey and rice swapped in for the pork on, of all places, the CD Kitchen website.  Poster "AmandasMom971" [2012] provides the measurements for what is, otherwise, Julia Child's recipe.  To her credit, she does call it "Julia Child's Meatloaf" and doesn't pass it off has her own.

To further complicate things, I swap out the beef in her meatloaf for that tried and true "meatloaf mix" of beef, pork and veal.  Mixing all of those together still gave me some quite pleasant results.

To go along with this turkified version of Child's meatloaf, I thought I would add two important sides: mashed potatoes - for what is meatloaf without mashed potatoes - also from Child's Julia's Kitchen Wisdon: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking [2000], and a recipe for one more recipe that I have never made for this series or this blog, but has become an important part of the American food landscape: macaroni and cheese.  This time, however, I go with Ina Garten and her "adult mac & cheese" featuring tomato slices, Gruyère and cheddar.  A hearty and wonderful macaroni and cheese on page 202 of Garten's Barefoot Contessa Family-Style cookbook [Garten 2002]

The Recipes: Julia Child's Meatloaf (with Turkey) and Mashed Potatoes, with Ina Garten's Grown-Up Macaroni and Cheese

First, Julia Child's meatloaf that you will certainly not hate.

The Recipe: Julia Child's Meatloaf (with Turkey)

Assemble the following:

* ground beef (or in this case, "meatloaf mix", about $7 per lb at Whole Foods.  Child calls for two pounds of beef, but I settled for 1 1/2, which worked for me)
* turkey (about a pound, about $5 at Whole Foods, mixed with...
* white rice (I just got this in the hot food bar at Whole Foods while I was shopping for the other things)
* toasted bread crumbs (nothing faincy here, just a few toasted slices of plain old white bread pulsed in the food processor)
* onions (three that I got the day before at Waverly - I got about six in all for $2
* beef broth (I swapped that out for chicken broth á la Better Than Bouillon.  Yet another animal added to the mix
* eggs (in case you decide not to swap beef for chicken broth, this will help add chicken to your meatloaf anyway)
* Cheddar cheese ($5 for a block of the XXX Sharp Cheddar from Yancey's Fancy.  I got this at Wegman's.  This surprised me, since I've never heard of cheese in a meatloaf.  But Julia Child put it in there and I'm sure she knew what she was doing.  Don't forget to grate it)
* garlic (had it - again, I used the garlic paste from Trader Joe's that I had in the fridge, but stuck the head of garlic in the photo)
* salt & pepper
* various spices: oregano, thyme, paprika, allspice and bay leaves (had them all)

You will also need oil to sauté the onions, and a tomato sauce to pour over the meatloaf.  Look for more on that below.

First chop the onions and sauté them in a skillet.

Mix your bread crumbs with the onions.

Add the meatloaf mix...

...the turkey and rice (yes, that is rice)...

...the grated Cheddar and the eggs...

...and your chicken broth, salt, pepper and herbs and spices, holding off on the bay leaves which go on top of the whole thing.

Child suggests cooking a little bit of it in the skillet and tasting it to make sure it's right.  It's stuff like this, folks, that explains why her kitchen is in the Smithsonian.

Push it into a meatloaf pan (I used one with holes in the bottom and another pan underneath to catch all the juices) - Child suggests greasing it with butter (natch), though I used baking spray instead - and top it with the bay leaves.  Bake in a pre-heated oven for 90 minutes (until the juices run clear) at 350°F.

While that is in the oven, make the tomato sauce for the meatloaf.  Child suggests the sauce on page 30 of her book, which uses fresh ones.  I used canned San Marzanos instead ($4 per 28 ounce can), with chopped onion and basil, and reduced until thick.

Ninety mintes later, the meatloaf should be springy...

...and the sauce should be reduced and very intense.

Child's mashed potatoes go wonderfully with this: just boil some potatoes, add cream and/or milk alternating with butter.  I just used a hand masher.

The Recipe: Ina Garten's Grown-Up Macaroni and Cheese

As for Garten's luxurious macaroni and cheese (which, unlike the meatloaf, I halved), you should gather the following ingredients:

* macaroni (I got the Barilla variety for about a buck and a half)
* Cheddar (here I thought I'd run out of Cheddar.  I still have a ridiculous amount left over)
* Gruyère (I got the cheaper, mild kind at Whole Foods, about half a pound for $7)
* milk (fresh from the South Mountain Creamery stall at the farmers' market at Waverly)
* flour (had it)
* tomatoes (a few Romas from the supermarket)
* butter (had it)
* nutmeg, salt and pepper (had them all)
* bread crumbs (more than enough left over from the meatloaf)

Start by grating your cheeses.

Boil your macaroni in a large pot.

Melt that butter!

Once melted, whisk in your flour (exact measurements in Garten's recipe on page 202 of the Family Style cookbook)

Add the milk and whisk some more, then remove from heat.

Next, whisk in your shredded cheeses...

...and your nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Drain your macaroni and add this to the mixture, coating thoroughly.

Pat it all down into an oven-safe dish.

Then mix the bread crumbs with a little more melted butter.

Slice the tomatoes and place on top of the macaroni and cheese.

And then spread the bread crumbs over everything.  Yes, all over everything.

Bake in a preheated 375°F oven for about 35 minutes.

Though the meats were not exactly the ones she recommended, Julia Child's meatloaf still turned out to be lovely.  It's done for me what homemade sauce did for me for spaghetti: it made it taste good again.  As for the mac & cheese: it was good, though distinctly second fiddle to the meatloaf.  But a hot bowl of the mac & cheese alone (and it must be hot - lukewarm really doesn't bring out the flavors all too well) is still a nice thing on a cold day.

- - - - -

And that's it!  Fifty states, one territory, one federal district, plus several regions and an all-encompassing "America" post, and my Snacking State-by-State series is now - pardon the wording - history.  I have enjoyed learning about all the different ways of eating all over this country over the past two years and a handful of months.

• I've either learned or re-learned how to pick apart a lobster (Maine), a crawfish (Louisiana), a King crab (Alaska) and a shrimp (Florida).   I sought out easier ways to shuck oysters (Delaware, Mississippi and Virginia) and clams (Rhode Island).  Mind you, I already knew how to pick blue crabs (Maryland), duh, and Dungeness (Washington) was something I remembered from back in California.  
• I learned that Youtube is a great repository for how-to videos, on everything from frying bison testicles (Wyoming) to making Mr. Beer home brew as interesting as possible (Wisconsin), to making sushi rice (California), to mixing up your own Korean potato salad (District of Columbia) and so on.
• As far as my own state's food goes, I've learned just how much more Southern we are in our culinary history (note: panfried chicken, Smith Island cake) than we are Northern, though we still have that.
• I was also reminded that Lady Baltimore cake (South Carolina) has nothing to do with Maryland, no matter how hard John Shields or myself want it to be.
• I've learned a few new-to-me culinary terms: 
• bizcochito (New Mexico)
• buckeyes (Ohio)
• chislic (South Dakota)
• curtido (District of Columbia)
• funeral potatoes (Utah)
• halušky (Pennsylvania)
• hot chicken (Tennessee)
• johnny cakes (Rhode Island)
• knoepfla (North Dakota)
• mofongo (Puerto Rico)
• musubi (Hawaii)
• pemmican (Montana)
• pork roll (New Jersey)
• purloo (South Carolina)
• sofrito (Puerto Rico)
• St. Paul sandwich (Missouri)
• tapioca maltodextrin (Illinois)
• tourtière (New Hampshire)
• wojapi (Nebraska - this one and pemmican are both Native American dishes)
• I now know how to smoke pork butt  (North Carolina) in the slow cooker, as well as beef brisket (Texas), and how to smoke pork ribs (Missouri & Tennessee) in the oven.
• I learned how expedient and how expensive mail-ordering foods can be when you just cannot buy them locally - ahem, huckleberries, anyone? (Idaho)
• I learned that Miss Paula may claim that gooey butter cake for Savannah, Georgia, but they were making it in Missouri long before she caught wind of the idea.
• I still never got to make steamed crabs from Maryland or Virginia, Jamaican jerk chicken from New York, or apple pie from all over the country, but I do think I covered most of the bases.

And that closes the textbook on this culinary exploration of America.  It has been enriching, exhausting, expensive and fattening all at the same time.  And with that, I can now go to the supermarket secure in the knowledge that I don't have to root out any specific ingredient for any blog-related reason, anymore.  And to quote the master herself one final time, Bon Appétit!

Sources:

"AmandasMom971" (poster).  "Julia Child's Meatloaf".  CD Kitchen, posted 2012.  Copyright CDKitchen 2005-2013, all rights reserved.

Child, Julia.  Julia's Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking.  David Nussbaum, collaborator.  Knopf: New York, 2000.  Reprinted 2009.

Garten, Ina.  Barefoot Contessa Family Style: Easy Ideas and Recipes That Make Everyone Feel Like Family.  Clarkson Potter: New York, 2002.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Behring Center).  Bon Appétit! Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian.  Rayna Green and Paula Johnson, content and curatorial for website, Nancy Growald Brooks, editor (full list of website and exhibition credits can be found here).  Copyright 2002 - present, Smithsonian Institution, all rights reserved.

Some information also obtained from the United States Wikipedia page and from the Food Timeline State Foods webpage.

Snacking State-by-State: South Dakota I - Chislic-in' Good!

Just as I saw with North Dakota a few months back, South Dakota is a state whose foods are based in Germany, Eastern Europe and the Sioux and other Upper Great Plains peoples.  The next few recipes will bear that out.  And in a nice contrast to South Carolina's very complex recipes for Lady Baltimore cake and shrimp and grits, one of the most popular state-specific foods of South Dakota is chunks of fried beef on toothpicks.

Wow, that's hard to make.

Official Name: State of South Dakota
State Nickname: The Mount Rushmore State
Admission to the US: November 2, 1889 (#40)
Capital: Pierre (8th largest)
Other Important Cities: Sioux Falls (largest), Rapid City (2nd largest), Aberdeen (3rd largest)
Region: Midwest, Great Plains; West North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Bison; Pinyon Nut
Bordered by: North Dakota (north), Minnesota (east), Nebraska (south), Wyoming & Montana (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: fry bread (bread), honey bee (insect, for the honey), kuchen (dessert), milk (drink), ring-necked pheasant (bird), walleye (fish), Western wheat grass (grass, though I imagine few people drink the wheat grass concoctions popular with health nuts elsewhere in the country),
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Native American foods, especially those of the Great Plains (wojapi, fry bread, Bannock bread, and so on, as well as traditional foods such as pemmican and wahuwapa wasna); German and Eastern European foods, including kuchen & chislic 

The cuisine of South Dakota - as opposed to its northern neighbor - is quite unknown to the rest of us.  It's even conspicuously absent from Roadfoodies Jane & Michael Stern's 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late, that otherwise comprehensive compendium of anything to eat in the lower 48.   Had they ventured anywhere in the state they might have found such delicacies as these (see South Dakota Magazine's blog post "What We Eat. How We Eat. Who We Are." for more):

* German, Danish and Eastern European foods, like Danish pancake balls known as æbleskiver (again: South Dakota Magazine has a feature on them - these intrigue me, but I would need to shell out the big euros for a special pan just to make them, so no æbleskiver).
* The most notable of the German dishes is the state dessert kuchen, that German cake recipe for which there are many variations: apple, peach, blackberry, cream cheese, custard and so forth.
* traditional and modern foods of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Sioux, and other Native American peoples of the state.  Note for example the delicious wojapi, that berry pudding that I tried to make back when I examined Nebraska, or bannock bread, basically an oven-baked (and therefore somewhat healthier) version of fry bread.
* walleye, the state fish
* milk - because South Dakota, like so many other states, wanted something exciting for its state beverage (to be fair, many states - including my own - don't even have a state beverage.  No, hons, it ain't Natty Boh.)
* steak, because South Dakota is a beef state.
* corn, because South Dakota is also a corn state
* chislic, because South Dakota is...er... Okay I'll bite, what the hell is that?

Simply put, chislic is cubed beef or mutton, sometimes breaded, sometimes seasoned, always fried and skishkebab'd or served on toothpicks.  It looks like a pretty simple dish to make.  According to Rich Preheim writing for - once more! - South Dakota Magazine, chislic was introduced by Russian immigrant John Hoellwarth.  A century later, it is an extremely popular and even important part of life in the southeastern corner of the state.

However it’s prepared, chislic sells. Papa’s Restaurant in Freeman serves up to 3,000 chislic sticks a week. Rachel Svartoein, whose grandfather sold chislic at a corner store south of Freeman for many years, provided 1,200 sticks for her high school graduation reception. At Marion’s 125th anniversary, the Jaycees sold 4,000 sticks on the first night. The chislic stand at the Turner County Fair in Parker sold 40,000 in 2004.

Chislic is simply an unquestioned thread in certain community fabrics; yet it remains a mystery meal, its origins unsure. Even theories and myths are difficult to find. “I know there are sheep in other places, so why chislic is popular here and not there, I don’t know,” said Papa’s co-owner Susan Letcher. [Preheim 2005]

That's right: chislic is almost as unheard of in the rest of South Dakota as it is in the rest of the country.  But it's a pretty simple dish to make, and shouldn't it be better known in the US?  I mean, what's more American than fried meat on a stick?

The Recipe: Chislic

Since it's such a simple dish to make, there is much room for variation.  Cheri McSpaden [2008] of the Holland Sentinel seeks out various chislic recipes that include anything from a garlic and soy sauce marinade to a Worcestershire sauce marinade, each of which sounds awesome.  But this even simpler recipe from Tasty Kitchen user "globetrotter" [2011] just fries up meat - "lamb, beef, venison, goose—any game meat, really" as he or she says - and sprinkles it with garlic salt or Lawry's seasoning.  I decided to mix and match these various ideas for the chislic recipe below.

* beef chunks (in this case, Angus top sirloin "fondue style" beef chunks, $8 per lb.  I got about 7/10 lb for around $5.60.  This is probably smaller than the meat chunks they would use for chislic in South Dakota, but hey it works for me)
* oil for frying (still getting lots of good use out of that big jug o' rice bran oil)
* garlic powder (since I have no garlic salt on hand; Lawry's is also used frequently)
* toothpicks (yes, my seemingly unending font of rainbow toothpicks that I stick into the little flags is coming in handy for actual eating - these will be your utensils).

I zhuzh'd it up, as I was inspired to do from the Holland Sentinel piece, with some soy and Worcestershire sauces for an impromptu marinade

If your beef is not already conveniently pre-chunked, go ahead and cut it into cubes now.  When ready, marinade it in the soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, if you're inspired to do so (or for what I gather is the "authentic" way to do this, skip this part entirely).  Let it marinade for half an hour.

Heat your oil to deep frying temperature, and get ready to drop the beef chunks in (some preparations call for dredging the beef in flour but I figured short and simple would be nice for a change).

Fry those beef chunks up.  Bigger chunks will take about three minutes; these smaller, fondue-sized ones only took about one and a half.

Drain on a paper towel.

Sprinkle with garlic powder, garlic salt or Lawry's seasoning.

Or hell, any old thing.  That shaker of adobo seasoning is just itchin' to get used.  Maybe I should have tried it with Old Bay for that matter, which is probably unheard of in chislic country.

This is perhaps one of the easiest things I have made for this State by State project, apart from that sweet tea from one of my Florida posts.  So I am surprised that this isn't more common, since when you think about it this is - again - about as American a snack food as I can think of: chunks of meat, fried.  That's it.  And it is an addictive little snack food.  Even when just opening the fridge looking for something else I might snag one or two of these little things to eat.  Quick, fattening burst of energy.  And with all the different seasonings out there, you really can experiment with different flavors.

Sources:

Globetrotter (TastyKitchen.com user).  "Chislic (South Dakota Treat)".  Posted January 21, 2011.  © Copyright 2006-2012, The Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond). All rights reserved.

Guthmiller, Trevor T. "Cookin’ Kuchen: Naming a German Pastry the State Dessert Adds Spice to Life in McPherson County".  South Dakota Magazine, February 2004, 58-61.  Posted on the "Germans from Russia Heritage Collection" website (North Dakota State University Library).

Johnson, Laura. "Viborg's Pancake Balls".  South Dakota Magazine.com.  Posted June 21, 2012.  Copyright 2012 South Dakota Magazine.  All rights reserved.

McSpaden, Cheri. "There’s not much to chislic".  The Holland (Michigan) Sentinel website (HollandSentinel.com). Posted December 1, 2008.  Copyright 2012 The Holland Sentinel.  All rights reserved.

Preheim, Rich.  "The Chislic Circle".  South Dakota Magazine.com.  Originally printed in the July/August 2005 issue of the print issue of the Magazine.  Copyright 2012 South Dakota Magazine.  All rights reserved.

South Dakota Magazine.  "What We Eat.  How We Eat.  Who We Are."  South Dakota Magazine.com (posted on the magazine's blog).  Posted August 26, 2010.  Copyright 2012 South Dakota Magazine.  All rights reserved.

State of South Dakota. "Chapter 1" of the 2007 South Dakota Legislative Manual.  Copyright 2007, State of South Dakota.

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

Snacking State-by-State: Ohio III - The Sausage of Champions

Wisconsinites will proudly tout the bratwurst as their own - the well-known Johnsonville brats hail from Sheboygan, a city which proclaims itself to be the "Bratwurst Capital of the World".  But don't tell that to the residents of Bucyrus, Ohio, which touts itself as the "Bratwurst Capital of America".  Every August their Bratwurst Festival celebrates the Midwest's favorite German sausage, with arts, crafts, parades and (presumably) more than a few different preparations of bratwurst.

Official Name: State of Ohio
State Nicknames: The Buckeye State, The Mother of Presidents
Admission to the US: March 1, 1803 (#17)
Capital: Columbus (largest)
Other Important Cities: Cleveland (2nd largest), Cincinnati (3rd largest), Toledo (4th largest), Akron (5th largest)
Region: Midwest, Great Lakes; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Maple Syrup, Wild Rice, Chestnut, Corn Bread & BBQ
Bordered by: Lake Erie (north); Michigan (northwest); Indiana (west); Ohio River (south); Kentucky (southwest); West Virginia (southeast); Pennsylvania (east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: white-tailed deer (mammal), tomato (fruit), pawpaw (native fruit), tomato juice (beverage)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: typical Midwestern foods; city chicken (no longer common); ethnic European foods, particularly German (bratwurst, German potato salad, sauerkraut) & Amish foods, Polish, Italian and Irish; buckeye candies; Shaker lemon pie; Cincinnati chili, sauerkraut balls and (again) bratwurst

I have not eaten many brats in my life.  I admit that.  And yes, Midwesterners will gasp - gasp, I tells ya (sorry, y'all)!  I think my first one was in California, of all places, when a fellow grad student invited a bunch of us over to her house.  She was from Columbus originally, and was grilling up some brats outside in the warm Inland Empire air.  It was good, but I still hadn't gotten around to eating many more after this.

Fast forward to today, and I still haven't eaten many of these things.  It's something I will need to do more of, as I hadn't realized what I was missing.  But I wasn't sure exactly how to make these.  Again I turned to Eric, my Columbus born-and-raised ethnographic source on all things Ohioan.  He told me in preparation for this post that if you're not grilling them outside - which is what one typically does - you might cook them in a pan on the stove, usually in beer or water.  Sounds simple enough.  And it was one of those few times where it actually was as simple as it sounded.

The Recipe: Bratwurst

To prepare brats on the stove in this fashion, you will need:

* bratwurst (I got Johnsonville's Beer 'n Bratwurst version for about $5 at Harris Teeter)

I decided to be lazy, and instead of opening a bottle of beer I cooked these in water.  Next time I'll use beer.  Okay, honestly it wasn't really all laziness. I had to leave in an hour or two and I knew I would drink a good bit of that beer if I opened it.  So in the interest of safe driving, I held off on the beer.

Place the uncooked brats in water in a pan on the stove.  Fill the pan with enough water - or beer - to just barely cover the brats.  As you can see, there are already bits of things in the pan.  I cooked these brats while in the middle of another recipe (coming up next).  I figured it wouldn't hurt.

Here is the easy part: simmer, don't boil the brats until the water reduces down.  Once it does, they should be cooked through.

I was not quite sure how to eat them or with what.  I didn't ask Eric this.  But apparently people in Wisconsin get extremely particular about how to prepare and serve their brats.  I'm not quite sure if the same can be said for Ohio.  When I explore Wisconsin food (sometime around the end of the year) I will come back to bratwurst and see just how they do it up in the Badger State.  Apparently, at the very least, you eat them on bratwurst rolls with a non-yellow mustard (and not with ketchup either).  I ate them nekkid (the bratwursts were nekkid, I mean).

There are so many ways to prepare bratwurst.  Even though I realized they could be an ingredient in many recipes, it didn't dawn on me just how versatile the bratwurst actually is.  I explore what else to do with this delicious sausage in my next post.

Sources:

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

Christina (blog author).  "Sauerkraut Balls".  Sweet Pea's Kitchen, posted February 5, 2012.  Copyright 2010-2012 Sweet Pea's Kitchen, all rights reserved.

Lowe, Cliff.  "The Life and Times of Chili Cincinnati Chili - Part Two" [sic].  In Mama's Kitchen, date unknown.  Copyright 2012 In Mama's Kitchen, all rights reserved.

"Ohio's Favorite: Buckeye Candy Recipe".  Recipe postcard, date unknown.

University of Akron Press.  "Akronisms: Sauerkraut Balls".  An Akronism, posted June 9, 2010.  Copyright 2012 University of Akron Press, all rights reserved.

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

Special thanks to Eric Randolph for making the buckeyes with me, for offering the use of his kitchen, and for giving me his advice in making buckeye candy and in preparing bratwurst.

Snacking State-by-State: Montana II - It's Pemmican-tagious!

If I am reading Big Sky Cooking author Meredith Brokaw correct, Montanans eat a lot of foods that grow, walk and swim right around them.  This is something they've been doing for millenia, and much of that includes food preservation techniques that also give one a lot of energy.  Take, for example, that Great Plains classic ball of fat, berries and dried meat known simply as pemmican.

Official Name: State of Montana

State Nicknames: Big Sky Country
Admission to the US: November 8, 1889 (#41)
Capital: Helena (5th largest)
Other Important Cities: Billings (largest), Missoula (2nd largest), Great Falls (3rd largest)
Region: West, Northwest; Mountain (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Bison; Pinyon Nut
Bordered by: North & South Dakota (east); Wyoming (south); Idaho (west & southwest); British Columbia, Alberta & Saskatchewan (Canada) (north)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: grizzly bear (animal - no longer eaten); blackspotted cutthroat trout (fish); Ponderosa pine (tree - the pine nuts, of course, not the trees)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: frontier foods and Native American foods; huckleberries, chokecherries; beef & bison; game (venison, moose, etc) & trout.

Pemmican, so notes Wikipedia, is a Cree word that shares the same etymology as the Cree word for "fat".  Although I'm showcasing it for Montana, it isn't specific to the state.  Pemmican has been eaten for thousands of years throughout the Great Plains and Canada's prairie provinces.  Once made, it lasts indefinitely in storage.  When European fur traders came to the area they adapted the food as their own.  Today you can find many recipes online for this high energy, high protein, low waste snack that just lasts seemingly forever.

Mark Sisson at the Mark's Daily Apple blog describes what early 20th century Icelandic-Canadian explorer Vihljamur Stefansson found out about pemmican when he first visited the Inuit:

Pemmican consists of lean, dried meat (usually beef nowadays, but bison, deer, and elk were common then) which is crushed to a powder and mixed with an equal amount of hot, rendered fat (usually beef tallow). Sometimes crushed, dried berries are added as well. A man could subsist entirely on pemmican, drawing on the fat for energy and the protein for strength (and glucose, when needed). The Inuit, [Vihljamur] Stefansson noted, spent weeks away from camp with nothing but pemmican to eat and snow to drink to no ill effect. [Sisson 2009]

The procedure sounds simple - just dried meat and melted fat, maybe mixed with some dried berries - but as I found out in my research, it is time consuming to make. Very time consuming.

Why the recent pemmican craze?  Apparently it goes back to the book NeanderThin, the book and now website that claims to tell you how to achieve a lean body by "eating like a caveman" (not that we actually know yet what exactly Neanderthals ate, but it probably wasn't just meat. Scratch that: it definitely wasn't just meat).  Since then several blog posts have been written about plebeian attempts to make pemmican.  I've looked at a few of them in preparing for this post.  The most straightforward of these I found on the NativeTech site, posted by R.L. Garritson, affiliated with the Les Roche Jaune Métis of Montana.  Perhaps the most entertaining was this one by Rix White - WildeRix - who like most would-be pemmicanistas attempts to make it from scratch.

As the Paleofood website [1998; 2011] points out, "The boiling of suet takes a long time. Many hours. It does not melt easily. I would start it early in the morning."  I don't have that kind of time, but fortunately I found a shortcut in WildeRix's pemmican post that turned ten hours of work into three!

The Recipe: Pemmican

In all truth, I used a few websites to make the pemmican you will see below, but I mostly went back to the aforementioned Mark's Daily Apple (who has helpful photos) and WildeRix (who has helpful humor) for guidance.  You will need the following to make your own quickie pemmican.  Yes, quickie pemmican.

* some sort of jerky - today beef is widely available, but I ended up with buffalo jerky from Trader Joe's ($5).  Yes, mine had lots of flavorings.  I didn't have the money, patience, time or equipment to buy a large beef or buffalo roast and thinly slice it, and I wasn't mass producing this stuff anyway.  One bag of jerky will work just fine for my purposes.
* suet, if you don't want to cut corners, or lard, if you do. Kim at The Nourishing Cook website suggested either suet or lard.  Though I ended up not using the lard, I got it out just in case I needed it.  You may need it too.  The truth of the matter is that it's not as easy to find suet - typically beef fat around the kidneys - as you might think.  If you don't ask the butcher you're pretty much up the creek.  I was about to give up when, imagine my surprise, I found frozen suet at Wegman's.  Seriously, these people seem to have just about everything.
* dried berries of some sort.  To stay in the Northwestern spirit, I used some dried blueberries (about $4), again from Trader Joe's, combined with some of those huckleberries I ordered through the mail a few months ago for that post about Idaho.  Since those were pricey, I have been saving them for the most special of occasions, such as this one.

The first thing I did was carve up some of that suet, which doesn't feel like wet and gooey fat that you typically are used to, but instead it feels like hard, waxy and crumbly fat.  I tried to dice it up but it ended up being easier to just kind of half-dice, half-chop it up with my knife.

Put your mincings into a baking dish of some sort.  Most people do what NeanderThin author Ray Audette advises, and simmer it barely covered with water on the stove top for about 10 hours until it reaches a temperature of about 260°F, at which time it'll start melting.  Neither I nor Rix White had the patience to do that.  Lucky me, White found out the hard way:

So I boiled my fat for about 3 hours, but it didn’t look like it was melting all the fat. When I thought about it, I realized that my fat wasn’t reaching the 250 degrees that Audette recommended. I don’t know if that was the problem or not, but I decided to abandon the boiling and put my fat in the oven. I picked out the stray meat (which hadn’t fallen down to settle in the water) and ate it–it wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t bad. Then I put the messy concoction in a casserole dish and baked it at 250 for a couple more hours. The oven method definitely seemed to work better. [White 2007]

After about three hours, I got just enough rendered fat to use for my pemmican.

You don't see it too well but there's pure liquid suet in there.

While the suet was rendering, I needed to dry out my jerky.  That sounds redundant, but jerky from the bag is actually too moist to just make right into pemmican.  You need to powder it, and so I had to dry it out somehow.  My solution: the microwave.

Yes, I am cheating here - native peoples, fur traders and Icelandic-Canadian Arctic explorers didn't have microwaves available to them but I do.  I ended up nuking a few pieces at a time in my 1100 Watt microwave at a very low setting: about 4 minutes (1 to 2 minutes at a time) at 30% power.  I tried 20% but it was just too low.  In the end I got jerky that looked slightly burnt but really wasn't, and was just about completely dessicated and hard.

Okay, the one thing which I made harder for myself was in the powdering of the meat.  Yes, to make pemmican you meed to grind the meat completely down into a powder.  Most websites recommend a spice or coffee grinder.  I just broke out my mortar and pestle.

After a few minutes the meat was mostly powdered.

Like so.

Funny that: I spent Friday night powdering buffalo meat.  I've had less interesting evenings.

See, how could anyone mistake the two? 

I also tried to more completely dry out my blueberries and huckleberries but the microwave actually seemed to get them less dry.  Eventually I would just throw in some of the dried berries as-is.

To assemble your pemmican, put the powdered meat into some sort of flat dish.

Next pour over top of it just enough of the melted suet (or tallow) to cover it, and mix it up.

Throw in some of those berries, and smooth it all out.

It will harden soon enough, but hell, why not just throw that bad boy in the fridge to speed up the process?

As I was first getting ready to eat the pemmican, my first thoughts were along the lines of "meat candy bar".  Ewww.  But it dawned on me that it tasted more like a roast with some sweet spots (the berries) in bar form. And this stuff will last a very long time, and not even in the refrigerator at that.  Granted, I am not going to be eating this on a regular basis, but it isn't meant to be eaten as a meal.  It gives energy when you most need it, and perhaps that is its best use.

- - - - -

Wait - I'm taking you all  back to the Midwest!?  Yep.  I head south from Big Sky Country to the heart of the Great Plains, the home of corn, wheat, steak and maybe, just maybe one of America's favorite sandwiches (Omaha, can you hear me?).  We're off to Nebraska!

Sources:

Brokaw, Meredith, and Ellen Wright.  Big Sky Cooking.  Artisan: New York, 2006.

Garritson, R.L. "Pemmican".  NativeTech.org: Indigenous Food and Traditional Recipes.  Date posted unknown.  Copyright 2011 NativeTech.

"Kim" (contributor), "How to Make Pemmican – Great Snack for Hiking!"  The Nourishing Cook.  Posted 2010. Copyright 2011 The Nourishing Cook.

Paleofood.com.  "Rendering Suet for Pemmican".  Paleofood.com.  Date posted unknown.  Copyright 1998-2011 Paleofood.com.

Sisson, Mark, "How to Make Pemmican". Mark's Daily Apple.  Posted May 22, 2009.  Copyright 2011 Mark's Daily Apple.

Visit Montana.  "Baked Trout".  Reprinted from Butte's Heritage Cookbook, Jean McGrath, author (Butte-Silver Bow Arts Foundation: Butte, MT,1980)

White, Rix ("WildeRix").  "The Pemmican Brief".  Posted February 28, 2007.  Copyright 2011 WildeRix.

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