It's too darn hot...

I will be cooking today. I know, I am crazy. However, I do have some cold stuff to pair it off with as well: gazpacho in the freezer and salad in the fridge. Let's hope those go well with those exotic New England fiddleheads I yanked out of the freezer and will be stir frying up today (read about it in a few weeks when I try to interpret the foods of Maine).

In the meantime, deal with the heat in these ways:

* Please stay well-hydrated today, stay indoors in the A/C or at least a fan, as much as humanly possible - , for example, a mall, library, museum, hospital (if you have someone to visit - try not to go there as a patient, please), or house of worship (pray for cool weather - do it).

* If you do visit an air-conditioned pub, make sure you offset any alcohol you drink with water or juice or something along those lines. And don't just rely on soda, coffee or tea today either: the caffeine can be bad in this heat. Again, offset them with water, juices or anything that provides electrolytes.

* If you are doing activities outside (like the footie I was playing yesterday evening in much cooler 90° temperatures), stay hydrated and take frequent breaks.

* It's probably a fool's errand to look for the food trucks out today: the Gypsy Queen Café Truck (Twitter: @thegypsytruck) has already said they are staying home today due to the heat. Not to discourage people from visiting the food trucks, but who knows which ones will be out today? (UPDATE: At least one will be out today; the Kooper's Chowhound - Twitter: @BRGRwagon - is in Mount Vernon until 1:30. And the Haute Dog Carte - Twitter: @hautedogcarte - as always, is selling its delicious dogs).

* Did I mention that you need to stay hydrated today?

* Check in on your sick and elderly, and if you see any animals locked in cars... well I don't even want to think about that!

Snacking State-by-State: Kentucky I - That Derby Day Classic

Done (for now) with the Midwest, I head to the Upper South as I explore some of the most famous edible exports that the Bluegrass State has to offer the rest of America.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Kentucky
State Nickname: The Bluegrass State
Admission to the US: June 1, 1792 (#15)
Capital: Frankfort (14th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Louisville (largest); Lexington (2nd); Bowling Green (3rd); Owensboro (4th)
Region: Appalachia, South, Upper South; East South Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ; Chestnut
Bordered by: Illinois, Indiana & Ohio (north); West Virginia (northeast); Virginia (east); Tennessee (south); Missouri & the Mississippi River (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: blackberry (fruit); gray squirrel (wild animal game species); Kentucky spotted bass (fish); milk (drink)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: common Southern foods; Kentucky-specific foods such as burgoo & Derby pie; fried chicken (though not "Kentucky Fried Chicken"); mint julep & Kentucky bourbon

For the most part, the foods of Kentucky are those of the South: catfish, hush puppies, cornbread and (well duh) fried chicken abound. This also includes the foods of Appalachia, which trundles through a massive part of the Bluegrass State (look at Margarita's Appalachian Menu for a bibliography of Appalachian cookbooks, which I will find useful at some point during this State-by-State series). And true, fried chicken is important in Kentucky (even if what the entire world thinks of as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" or, at least in Egypt, as just plain "Kentucky", has a bit more in the way of hydrogenated oils and high fructose syrups). Corbin, Kentucky's most famous son, Col. Harland Sanders, opened his first business in a gas station in 1930. As Jean Anderson points out in her book A Love Affair with Southern Cooking, it wasn't all just fried chicken at first. It was only after the government ran an interstate right through his business that the gears were set in motion for KFC to hit the big time

Still believing in his fried chicken with its secret seasoning blend of eleven herbs and spices, Sanders took to the road in 1952. Crisscrossing the country, he called on restaurant owners and fried batches of chicken... Dozens were impressed enough to cut a deal: Sanders would share his secret recipe and frying technique if they'd pay him a nickel for every order sold. [Anderson 2007: 114]

Finally, a test case for that famous saying, "If I had a nickel for every time..."

Another famous Kentucky classic is pretty tough to find at KFC (unless Pepsi is starting to make them en masse). The mint julep is, by all accounts, a Kentucky Derby classic. Yes, various Southern states lay their own claims to their own juleps, but Kentucky's is the one that everyone keeps going back to. There is a variety of recipes even for Kentucky's take on the mint julep, but it more or less comes back to the same simple formula: Kentucky bourbon, simple syrup and mint. Since I am not well-versed in the art of the cocktail or other liquored drinks, I needed some visual aids. I found one at the website for the Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg, made by Dixon Dedman, which you all can follow below:

I more or less followed Dedman's procedure, since he is showing how to make just one and since it looks so easy when he does it! But I did take a hint from the recipe posted by the Beaumont Inn underneath the video, which shows how to make enough mint juleps for 30 people! I am not drinking that much liquor, but I took a cue from Maker's Mark for how to infuse their bourbon with mint leaves.

The recipe: Mint Julep (Kentucky-Style)

To make a mint julep, you will need the following:


* Kentucky bourbon - yes, it has to be Kentucky bourbon - not rum, brandy or whiskey as they use elsewhere in the South, otherwise it's not the kind you will find at the Kentucky Derby. When I sought out a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, the nice folks at the Wine Source in Hampden gave me some recommendations. The woman I talked to said that she prefers Knob Creek Kentucky Bourbon because of its flavor. However, she pointed out that people with a sweet tooth may prefer the slightly sweeter Maker's Mark, and that is why I went with that brand. Just don't use something cheap. You are making this for the flavor, not for the buzz.
* fresh sprigs of mint - lots of it if you are making a lot of mint juleps. Since the one tiny mint plant I planted in my raised bed at Clifton Park last year has literally taken over the whole damn bed, I am not lacking in fresh mint.
* equal parts water and sugar, which you will use to make a simple syrup. Don't just mix the two in the glass like some sloppy bartenders - make the simple syrup, for corn's sake. It's not as hard as it looks. Note: some folks infuse mint leaves into the simple syrup while cooking it. The Maker's Mark recipe did not suggest that, probably because you will infuse the bourbon itself with your mint.
* crushed ice - okay, it doesn't have to be crushed, but this is preferable.

In addition, make sure you also have a straw to slightly bruise the mint as you push it down into the glass, kitchen shears to cut the straw, and a jigger with which to measure the bourbon and simple syrup.

If you don't have crushed ice on hand, go ahead and crush it. I found that neither my blender nor my food processor was very useful for crushing ice - I got a snowball-like consistency at the bottom of the blender and many slightly bruised ice cubes on top in the blender, but that was still better than the food processor which didn't do much more than slightly crack the ice. I finally had to put the ice in a ziploc bag and take a hammer to it on the front porch.

Sometimes the bluntest instrument is the best

To make the simple syrup, take a cup of water and bring it to a boil, and then put in an equal portion of sugar, constantly stirring it over low heat.


It is done when the sugar is completely dissolved the simple syrup is ready. You can tell this by taking a metal spoon and pouring the syrup back into the bowl, looking for crystals. No crystals = simple syrup (there are many places online to find these instructions). During the simmering process you may want to put some mint leaves into the mixture, which you will fish out later. Either way, let the syrup come to room temperature and refrigerate.

If you don't use minty simple syrup, follow Maker's Mark's suggestion (again, on the Beaumont Inn website's mint julep page): take about 40 smallish fresh mint leaves and cover them with Kentucky bourbon.
Let them sit for 15 minutes, then take a cotton cloth (I used a fine cheese cloth)


and put the mint leaves into it and squeeze the life out of those leaves. Dip the sachet into the bourbon a few more times, each time wringing as hard as you can.

Okay, YOU try taking a photo while wringing out a cheese cloth filled with bourbon-soaked mint leaves!

Throw the leaves out and set the minty bourbon aside until ready to use.

To assemble the mint julep, start with a glass. Preferably, you will use a silver mint julep cup, but those can get pricey and I am on a budget.

This assembly is per Maker's Mark:


Fill your glass part way with crushed ice.


Next put in a sprig or two of mint.

Then put more crushed ice in the cup.

The rest comes from the Beaumont Inn video: as Dedman suggests, you can play around with the amounts: use two parts bourbon to one part simple syrup for a stronger mint julep, equal parts of each for a sweeter one.

Again I went sweet (and because I didn't want to get too buzzed here), and used my 1 3/4 oz to 3/4 oz jigger to measure out about 1 3/4 oz each Kentucky bourbon and simple syrup into my glass.

Of course, do not forget to put some of the mint-infused bourbon into the glass - a few spoonfuls should do you.

Take your straw and muddle the mint down towards the bottom of the glass. Put another sprig of mint in for decoration, and powdered sugar if you like. Some recipes suggest that you snip the straw so that it is the same height as the mint sprig.


I have not had a mint julep before. I did have a black-eyed susan once, on Preakness Day, though I was not terribly satisfied with the version I had (note: the black-eyed susan also uses Kentucky bourbon). The mint julep I made was pleasantly sweet and minty, and very cold and refreshing for the hot day on which I made it. Because mine was not as strong, it didn't get me terribly buzzed. I wasn't going for "terribly buzzed" anyway, so I was not disappointed. Again, if you want yours stronger, fill your jigger accordingly. This is a very nice drink and I now finally know how to make it. That and the simple syrup will come in quite handy for other uses (I have some iced tea to make, for example...)

Sources:

Anderson, Jean. A Love Affair with Southern Cooking: Recipes and Recollections. William Morrow: New York, 2007.

Beaumont Inn. "Recipe: How to Make the Perfect Mint Julep". Video "How to Make a Mint Julep" by Beaumont Inn, featuring Dixon Dedman. Video posted on YouTube by Beaumont Inn (user BeaumontInn) on May 24, 2010.

Hellmann's. "Owensboro Kentucky: Burgoo". From the In Search of Real Food YouTube Series with Dave Lieberman. Posted August 6, 2007.

National Public Radio. "Moonlite Burgoo and Mutton Dip". From the "Hidden Kitchens" Series. Originally published November 5, 2004.

Lacabe, Marga. "Margarita's Appalachian Menu". Date unknown.

Maker's Mark. "Mint Julep Recipe". Reprinted on the Beaumont Inn website. Date unknown.

Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn. "The Burgoo Soup Story / The Burgoo Recipe". Copyright 1996-2005 The Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn, Inc.

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

Parce que c'est la Fête Nationale (de la France)

Today is Bastille Day, and hopefully we are having a better one than the French Women's World Cup team (congrats to our own Women's World Cup team, who play Japan in the final round on Sunday).

Back to Bastille Day: find some good French eatin' around town this weekend - anything from crepes to escargot (Urbanspoon has the lowdown on all the French food around Baltimore). Or you could just pack up a Chinese food container with profiteroles lovingly made in your kitchen in the Hamptons, like Ina does. Because nothing screams "Overthrow the monarchy!" like the Hamptons.

Snacking State-by-State: Kansas II - Hello, Pickle!

Bread and pickles don't really go together in my mind, unless there's a sandwich going on somewhere. In fact, pickles don't really strike me as "Midwestern food". Or are they?


Official Name: State of Kansas
State Nicknames: The Sunflower State; The Wheat State; The Breadbasket of the World
Admission to the US: January 29, 1861 (#34)
Capital: Topeka (4th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Wichita (largest city); Overland Park (2nd); Kansas City (no, the one in Kansas: 3rd largest)
Region: Midwest, Great Plains; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Cornbread & BBQ, Bison
Bordered by: Nebraska (north); Missouri (east); Oklahoma (south); Colorado (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: buffalo (animal); wild native sunflower (flower & flower emblem); honeybee (insect - its honey is what is edible)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: prairie foods, including Native American and pioneer foods; wheat, wheat and more wheat; sunflowers; honey; did I mention wheat?

Judith Fertig, in her Prairie Home Cooking, mentions that prairie housewives regularly put out relish trays and, during the hot summers, had ice cold pickles ready in the refrigerator (or perhaps the icebox). The following recipe comes directly from Fertig's cookbook. This isn't her recipe per se - she tells us where she got it:

I first tasted these pickles in Ernestine Van Duvall's kitchen in Nicodemus, Kansas, when the temperature outside was 106 degrees in the shade. She had made them to accompany a barbecued rib dinner for Emancipation Days [celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation], held in late July. Cold, crisp, crunchy, and slightly sweet, they were just what my parched tastebuds wanted. Good home cooks all over the Heartland keep a tub of pickles like these in the regrigerator for days when temperatures soar and appetites flag. If you are a novice pickler, these quick pickles are a simple place to start. [Fertig 1999: 50]

Again, there isn't anything specifically Kansan about these pickles, but this seems like a good thing to have on hand during the hot summer months that are about to hit here - not to mention the hot spring we've had lately.

The recipe: Icicle Pickles

As Fertig suggests, this is an easy pickle for pickling noobs like me. I have hardly ever pickled anything. I did make a very fast Cambodian-style pickle a while back, but that's a different type of pickle altogether.


* cucumbers (about one pickling cuke yields a cup of cucumber slices, and you will be slicing them thinly)
* yellow onions (again thinly sliced and chopped)
* pickling salt (a large box is not too expensive; you can also use kosher salt, but you will need to adjust the amount: What's Cooking America talks more about this)
* distilled vinegar (got it, but bought a much bigger bottle since I needed a lot)
* sugar (same, but I had more than enough)
* celery seeds and mustard seeds (I needed to buy both. These can be pricey, but there is no shame in buying the budget herbs and spices)


First, slice the cucumbers thinly. The best way to do this is with a mandoline slicer with a safety. You don't want nice little slices of you, do you? This is why these mandolines freak the hell out of me.


Gently mix the cucumber slices and the onion slices together and set aside while you prepare the brine.


I had no idea just how easy brining pickles for the fridge could be. All I had to do for this recipe was mix an equal amount of vinegar and sugar together, and boil them with pickling salt, celery seeds and mustard seeds.
Boil them until the sugar dissolves, and pour the liquid over the cukes and onions.


They aren't done yet, of course. Set them in the fridge to pickle for at least 24 hours. Fertig notes that they will keep in the refrigerator indefinitely.

These were simple and nicely sweet and tart pickles. It was not quite a pickle I was used to eating - a little sweeter than the more savory and tangy pickles I prefer. I would like to play with some variations: dill, more sour pickles, perhaps an Indian pickle version, or even one with actual pickling spices. But even though I cut the recipe in half, I am unlikely to finish these pickles anytime soon. I guess that's what a hot summer is for.


My first foray into the Midwest is done. Next I head not too far away fro the Midwest, to Appalachia and bluegrass, bourbon and burgoo: Kentucky is coming up very soon.

Sources:

Fertig, Judith M. Prairie Home Cooking: 400 Recipes That Celebrate the Bountiful Harvests, Creative Cooks, and Comforting Foods of the American Heartland. The Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999. Also partly available on Google Books.

Hester, Bree (BakedBree). "Honey Wheat Sunflower Bread Recipe". Published August 24, 2010.

Kansas Wheat Commission. Facts About Kansas Wheat. Kansas Wheat, copyright 2009.

Kansas Wheat Commission. "Sunflower Wheat Bread". Kansas Wheat, copyright 2011.

King Arthur Flour. "Kansas Sunflower Bread". King Arthur Flour, copyright 2011.

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

Food Truck Gathering (and why I wound up eating at Max's Empanadas instead)

Last night's food truck rally was, by most accounts, a big success - especially if you were one of the many food trucks that showed up to non-stop patrons drooling over burritos (Curbside Café - Twitter: @Curbside_Cafe), cupcakes (my favorite: Iced Gems Baking - Twitter: @icedgemsbaking), crepes (Creperie Breizh - Twitter: @creperiebreizh), lobster rolls and pulled pork (Silver Platter), haute Southern (Miss Shirley's - Twitter: @missshirleys) and so much more. If you were a food truck operator, you got a LOT of revenue and publicity last night.

You also probably got a lot of people early on that you had to send away because you ran out of food. This was the one failing of the Food Truck Gathering, and it was a big one. The event was supposed to last from 5 to 10pm, so understandably many people - myself included - came at a more leisurely pace, say 7ish, when we found this:


As popular as food trucks are, I have to say the sheer volume of patrons did, in fact, surprise me. What did not go through my head at the time I snapped that photo was, "Gee, I hope they don't run out before I can get something to eat!" But as I stood in the line for Creperie Breizh, exactly that happened: in line for 45 minutes, the woman in the window let the group of women right in front of me know that they had just run out of batter for their crepes. This was about 8:30.

So near, and yet soooooooo far...

Needless to say, I was frustrated. But I knew there was no reason to take this out on them or on anyone, for that matter. It wasn't the food trucks' fault, nor the patrons, nor even the organizers: nobody could have foreseen just how big this was going to be. And please note that Creperie Breizh was one of the later food trucks to run out of food - a few had run out by 7, only two hours into the event! Plus, the few remaining lines of still-functioning trucks, such as the Gypsy Queen Café (Twitter: @thegypsytruck) and Dangerously Delicious Pies trucks, had experienced a massive growth in their lines just as I found out that I had waited in line for nothing.

So instead, I cut my losses and tapped the massive array of restaurants awaiting me in Little Italy. Thanks to my new Android phone, which now has this Urbanspoon app, I was able to price some restaurants and just how well liked they were if I wasn't familiar. I walked right into the priciest part of Little Italy - Sabatino's and Aldo's? Love them but cannot afford them right now. But then I saw Max's Empanadas, an Argentinian restaurant, grocery and wine store in the heart of the neighborhood (Argentina has a sizable Italian population anyway, so in a way Max's is, technically, sort of Italian). So I figured I would think outside the box and head in there instead.

Not a food truck.

Max's is small and brightly lit, but with warm earthy colors in its dining area. Its big thing is empanadas, and they have a wide variety, from chicken to beef to ham & cheese, from chorizo to the delicious sweet beef empanada that I eventually bought as part of a $10 combo with a second chorizo empanada (your choice of empanadas, though a few special ones cost 40 cents extra) and Argentinian potato salad, with parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. If you get a chance, please stop in Max's and get some empanadas. You can buy them individually, take them with you, eat in their dining area - and mine came out fast, before I even sat down. With the thirst-quenching Quilmes cerveza (about $4 or $5), it was a filling meal. And I was so appreciative of the fact that I actually got to eat last night, too!


As an addendum to the Food Truck Gathering: they have to do this differently next time. Though I was fortunate in that the experience forced me to find a new place to eat in Little Italy, it shouldn't have come to that. And again, nobody could have foreseen the sheer volume of patrons, lest most of the food trucks wouldn't have run out of food by 8:30 (or well before in some cases). So some thoughts to make sure that most if not all of the food truck aficionados get to eat next time (both from me and from other things I have read on Twitter):

1. For the organizers: Put it in a larger place if you can, to alleviate the ridiculously large and often confusing lines (this was some advice a Twitter user wrote to Richard Gorelick at the Sun). Some cities - Los Angeles, Washington - often experience a lunch rush where literally a dozen food trucks will be lined up over a long stretch. Portland, Oregon, has a dedicated space just for food trucks! As for Baltimore: I am not quite sure where this could happen. Perhaps the Inner Harbor? Under the Jones Falls? It should be somewhere downtown or near there, so as many people can access this as possible.

2. Also for the organizers: Shorten the time, so that latecomers who show up three hours before the event is supposed to end (or only two hours after it started) will actually be able to find food. Waiting for almost an hour to leave empty handed is not fun.

3. For the patrons: Come early if you are eating, and expect lines.

4. For the food trucks: This may be easier said than done, since I have never run a food truck, but bring more than you expect to sell! Again, most of the food trucks had completely run out of food well before the event ended, which led to some very apologetic vendors. Now that we all know just how big the next one is going to be, you know how much to bring now!

Here is hoping that I get something to eat next time this happens!

Tidbits: Early July Edition

A few things I've been eating lately:

* I have been playing a lot of soccer lately - both pickup and league, and my shins hurt like hell (note to self: find something to make these shinguards more, er, comfortable to wear while running around for one or two hours). Last night after one such pickup game down in DC (where I did pretty well, considering my lack of experience), I headed to Adams Morgan for a quick beer and bite before making the long slog home. I ended up at the cozy L'Enfant Cafe & Bar where I ordered a delicious savory crepe of salmon & boursin cheese ($13). It was a bargain, though the refreshing cherry beer I ordered, normally served with ice, clocked in at $10! That kind of took me by surprise (note to self: ask how much the damn beer costs).

* Whenever I eat Indian, I often gravitate to one or two recipes that are tried and true favorites: chicken tikka masala, saag gosht (lamb with spinach), murgh makhani (butter chicken), etc. At Mughal Garden the other night I settled on something somewhat different: their lamb methi ($14), which is lamb in a fenugreek sauce (hence the methi, which is fenugreek). It's not a taste I can easily describe, because I don't have a reference point. It's a very mellow dish, a lovely one with a lot of sauce you can soak up with much of your garlic naan. I recommend it.

* I haven't been to Rocket 2 Venus lately. I did go last week, and could not get over how quickly I was seated... and how my waiter just completely forgot about me (very irritated about that). Fortunately after about ten minutes of tapping my fingers and checking my email, a waiter did come by to find out if I was being helped (nope), and my service was quite fast after that. R2V is a place with such an eclectic menu that you can spend a good long while trying to figure out what to order - maybe that was a plus for waiting while people seated after me ended up ordering first. After all the classic American, Southern, Western, Chesapeake, Cajun and Korean offerings, I ordered the bulgogi plate with fried rice ball, mashed potatoes & kimchi ($13). It was a very satisfying experience, with the soft bulgogi, kimchi and potatoes providing a flavorful contrast against each other. Plus, my food came out much faster than I had anticipated.

* Alas, all the area Super Fresh stores are now history, excepting for the one downtown on N. Charles Street. Some of them are already slated to become something else (like the one in Hampden, for example). The rest are just sitting around, twiddling their thumbs. I hope a Harris Teeter or something moves into the one on Putty Hill.

* I realized the other day: sometimes you want a nice, hearty breakfast of pancakes, sausage, bacon, etc., just like Mom used to make. And other times, all you want is a bowl of kimchi flavored noodles (second kimchi reference in this post, by the way).

* Find out in a few weeks what happened to this little guy that I got at the Maine Avenue Fish Market in Washington, DC, for all of $7 a pound:


* Soda update: I have been sticking to about 2 cans a day. With Dad in the hospital and the occasional late long drive back from DC I have allowed myself a little more of the stuff. But on the contrary, I have also found myself just normally drinking less. It's been a long time since I have ordered it in the restaurant, preferring beer, tea or water (I did order a soda at Lou's City Bar after a game the other day, to give me a shot of caffeine - which worked). But overall I have been going through a good bit less of it lately.

* And finally: I know he is moving out soon (er, being forced out by our landlord), but could my idiot neighbor please stop putting all his crap out by the side of the road for the trash and recycling people to just leave there!?!? It's bad enough he used to go through my recycling bin for cans, and the only reason he doesn't seem to do this anymore is because I have started putting it in a place where he is too lazy to look.

Ouch, did I just let all that pour out? Maybe I should smack him with one of my shinguards?

Because it's the Fourth of July

Er, well this is definitely a different take on our national birthday! Courtesy of RuPaul's Drag Race and one of our favorite drag queens, Manila Luzon.

Tags: Gay Video & Lesbian Movies, Logo: Fierce TV

Food Truck Rally in Baltimore!

Get ready to rrrrrrrrrrresauraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant!

(Okay that was stupid. Anywho...)

Charm City is finally hitting the foodie big leagues, as several of her food trucks are clamoring together in Harbor East on Friday, July 8 (that's this Friday, y'all) for a Food Truck Rally. It will be at the more-than-occasional venue of the Silver Platter truck (421 Central Avenue). Attendees so far, according to the above-linked page at the Baltimore Sun website, should include:

* GrrChe (Twitter: @grrche - gourmet grilled cheeses)
* Gypsy Queen (Twitter: @thegypsytruck - As their website says, they join "inventive cuisine with cheeky-smart ass street food". Smart ass food sounds enticing to me.)
* Iced Gems (Twitter: @icedgemsbaking - The gourmet cupcake truck and bakery that I have oft raved about here and on Twitter)
* Miss Shirley's (Twitter: @missshirleys - I didn't realize one of the city's favorite brunch locales now comes to you!)
* Souper Freak (Twitter: @souperfreaky - delicious soups and sandwiches. Oh sweet Jesus, I caught myself almost saying "sammies")

I assume the Silver Platter truck, with its blue crab tostadas, buttermilk calamari and New England lobster rolls, will be there too, but I saw no word in the Sun. One can hope. I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet.

Snacking State-by-State: Kansas I - BREAD!!!

I am soon leaving the Midwest, but first taking a detour, finally, into the Great Plains, land of amber waves of grain, sunflowers, corn and so on. Before anything else, however, I have to figure out just what constitutes the cuisine of the "Great Plains" in the first place.

Official Name: State of Kansas
State Nicknames: The Sunflower State; The Wheat State; The Breadbasket of the World
Admission to the US: January 29, 1861 (#34)
Capital: Topeka (4th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Wichita (largest city); Overland Park (2nd largest); Kansas City (no, the one in Kansas: 3rd largest)
Region: Midwest, Great Plains; East North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Bison
Bordered by: Nebraska (north); Missouri (east); Oklahoma (south); Colorado (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: buffalo (animal); wild native sunflower (flower & flower emblem); honeybee (insect - its honey is what is edible)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: prairie foods, including Native American and pioneer foods; wheat, wheat and more wheat; sunflowers; honey; did I mention wheat?

In her cookbook Prairie Home Cooking, Judith M. Fertig discusses her reaction as a girl to moving to Kansas in the 1980's - an exciting expanse of prairie, as European immigrants discovered a century beforehand. Today, the prairies are a mixture of culinary traditions from Europe and Native North America, as seen in their festivals, which "[celebrate] cultures as diverse as Czech, Norse, Russian Mennonite, and Sioux" (Fertig 1999: xi). The foods of the prairies are part and parcel the foods of the Midwest, and Fertig describes them as a culinary oral history of sorts, connecting the past to the haute present:

Although Sunday dinner at grandma's is but a memory for many far-flung families, foods that say "comfort," "family," and "farm" are returning to favor. They get a lot of play in food magazines and they are being reinterpreted by well-known chefs in major cities [Fertig 1999: xii]

She mentions noodles and dumplings, relish trays and homemade pickles, bread - homemade - and beef, potatoes and wheat beers as major parts of prairie life. I hear her on the beer.

Kansas, specifically, is a major exporter of wheat, as the Kansas Wheat Commission points out: Kansas is "on average" the country's leading producer and storer of wheat, producing about 20% of the nation's wheat (Kansas Wheat Commission, 2011). I can't even begin to grasp the different varieties of wheat they grow there.

Since wheat is so important to the "Breadbasket of the World", a loaf of bread made sense for my first recipe. But in the spirit of Kansas, I sought out a recipe that also included some of the other very important ingredients from the state: sunflowers (the state flower) - harvested by native peoples for many generations before Kansas even existed, and honey - produced by the state insect, the honeybee. I was surprised at the sheer number of recipes for "Honey Sunflower Bread". King Arthur Flour has an excellent recipe that they even call "Kansas Sunflower Bread" featuring both hand-kneaded and bread maker versions. Plus the Baked Bree blog has a lovely honey wheat sunflower bread recipe where the author, Bree Hester, kneads it in the bread maker and then bakes it in the oven. But in the end, I went with the one straight off the Kansas Wheat Commission's website.

The recipe: (Honey) Sunflower Wheat Bread

To make this thoroughly Kansan bread you will need the following (measurements can be found in the Kansas Wheat Commission's recipe):


* whole wheat flour and bread flour (I had just enough leftover bread flour that I didn't need the extra $3.50 bag I bought just in case; I had plenty of whole wheat flour)
* milk (skim but all I had was whole)
* honey
* cracked wheat (I have no experience with this stuff and have never used it before. I bought bulgur wheat in bulk)
* sunflower seeds (salted, though I ended up getting unsalted, also in bulk)
* butter, salt, turmeric (had them all)
* orange juice and orange rind (I forgot to add this last part after accidentally adding a little extra dash of orange juice)
* active dry yeast (one packet - this I ran out of)


Unlike most bread recipes I have followed, this one featured a simple first step: cook the bulgur wheat in just enough water until it boils out, about five minutes or so but watch it so it doesn't burn.


Next add the ingredients in the order you normally would for your bread maker. Since I had a newly-purchased second hand bread maker - the Zojirushi BBCC Q10 at the Goodwill for all of $8 - I had to figure out just what order I needed to add the ingredients. I ended up adding the liquids first, then the flours and solids, and then finally the yeast.

Usually one puts it in the middle of the pile of ingredients.

Now for the really hard part: set your bread maker for the "whole grain" setting. On my new bread maker, that's about 4 hours.

Here it is at the onset - 4 hours and 10 minutes to be exact.

At the 3:45 mark

And after all the kneading you get here, ready to bake, around 54 minutes left

Four hours later you get this:


The one thing I found disappointing was the fact that the flavor was not very honey-like. I couldn't taste it at all, really. It's still a nice, light bread, with nice specks of bulgur and sunflower poking out from all over. And it is an easy bread, even with the cracked wheat (which, again, I have little experience using). All in all, a good use of Kansas' best ingredients. Again, however, I would have to add a tablespoon more of honey. hopefully for a more honeyed taste.


It slices nicely too.

Sources:

Fertig, Judith M. Prairie Home Cooking: 400 Recipes That Celebrate the Bountiful Harvests, Creative Cooks, and Comforting Foods of the American Heartland. The Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999. Also partly available on Google Books.

Hester, Bree (BakedBree). "Honey Wheat Sunflower Bread Recipe". Published August 24, 2010.

Kansas Wheat Commission. Facts About Kansas Wheat. Kansas Wheat, copyright 2009.

Kansas Wheat Commission. "Sunflower Wheat Bread". Kansas Wheat, copyright 2011.

King Arthur Flour. "Kansas Sunflower Bread". King Arthur Flour, copyright 2011.

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

I'm gonna rock yer body til Canada Day

I'll stick with Orange Julius because poutine is in very short supply down here.



Happy Canada Day, eh!