Snacking State-by-State: Massachusetts II - It's not just for St. Patrick's Day anymore

Apart from WASPs and Germans, Irish comprise the largest ethnicity in the United States.  And thanks to what seems like every other boxing or bank-robbing movie to come out of Hollywood over the past five years, Massachusetts - specifically Boston - is very Irish.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State Nicknames: The Bay State
Admission to the US: February 6, 1788 (#6)
Capital: Boston (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Worcester (2nd largest); Springfield (3rd largest); Cambridge (5th largest)
Region: New England, Northeast; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Clambake; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Vermont, New Hampshire (north); New York (west); Connecticut, Rhode Island (south); Atlantic Ocean (south and east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: cranberry juice (beverage); cod (fish); wild turkey (game bird); baked navy bean (bean); cranberry (berry); Boston cream pie (dessert); chocolate chip cookie (cookie); Boston cream donut (donut)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: New England foods, in particular Boston-specific foods such as: Boston cream pie, Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread; "New England" clam chowder; Irish, Italian and Portuguese ethnic dishes; codfish cakes, lobster rolls and other New England seafood dishes; cranberries and blueberries

Boston, like other parts of Massachusetts, is home not just to a very large Irish-American population but also many Italian- and Portuguese-Americans.  But I often think of the Irish - my people, my people! - when I think of Beantown.  Of course, Boston baked beans are not typical Irish food.  Boiled meats are, and one of the most significant Irish contributions to American cuisine is corned beef and cabbage - or as it is known in New England, the boiled dinner.

Mind you, corned beef and cabbage isn't exactly "Irish food" - it's "Irish-American".  The boiled meats in Ireland, often boiled with cabbage and other vegetables, may be beef, or they may be ham.  The Irish Culture and Customs website busts this well-heeled American myth about Irish culture.  For one thing, the Irish only started eating a lot of beef in the past century, since most Irish were too poor to use cows for anything other than their milk.  Their meat of choice was more often pork - a much more accessible meat.  So why did diaspora Irish eat so much beef?  The website gives an answer:

...It was in the late 19th century that it began to take root. When the Irish emigrated to America and Canada, where both salt and meat were cheaper, they treated beef the same way they would have treated a "bacon joint" at home in Ireland: they soaked it to draw off the excess salt, then braised or boiled it with cabbage, and served it in its own juices with only minimal spicing - may be a bay leaf or so, and some pepper.


This dish, which still turns up on some Irish tables at Easter, has become familiar to people of Irish descent as the traditional favorite to serve on Saint Patrick’s Day. Certainly, there will be many restaurants in Ireland that will be serving Corned Beef and Cabbage on March 17th , but most of them will be doing so just to please the tourists.  [Haggerty 2011]

I have made many a corned beef and cabbage in my life, but I have almost never boiled it.  I'm much more used to roasting or slow cooking it.  So this boiled dinner is a pretty new concept for me - an entire dinner, boiled.  This is also true for my very not-New-England family.  My Italian-American grandmother's recipe for corned beef and cabbage (certainly made for my Irish-American grandfather) was covered in wonderful brown sugar and mustard, and baked in the oven.  You can't boil it while covered in brown sugar and mustard.

I'm not really one for boiling things. Maybe it's a Baltimore thing, I dunno.

The Recipe: New England Boiled Dinner / Corned Beef and Cabbage

There are many recipes for corned beef and cabbage, boiled dinner-style.  The one I ended up using comes from Marcia Passos Duffy on "The Heart of New England" website.  True, the site focuses on Upper New England and not Massachusetts, but this one was one of the simpler recipes that had many of the ingredients I had on hand.  I could have gone the next step and actually corned the beef myself, but I didn't feel like putting out the extra effort.  That and I would have needed an entire week to corn the beef on my own.  Maybe some other time.  If you are interested in trying, check out Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage from the March 2010 edition of Yankee Magazine.  Passos Duffy, on the other hand, uses pre-corned beef like the rest of us.

Passos Duffy's corned beef and cabbage recipe calls for a 4 to 5 pound brisket.  I scaled it down for the 3 pounder I found at Harris Teeter.

* corned beef brisket (You know those St. Patrick's Day sales in the supermarket where you can find corned beef brisket for 99¢ per lb?  Well it's not St. Patrick's Day for another six months.  I found it "cheap" at Harris Teeter for $4 per lb - a 2 1/2 lb brisket for around $11)
* cabbage (this will usually run you a buck a pound at least outside of March.  Fortunately, there was just enough cabbage in my garden untouched by those damned Harlequin bugs to use for this project.  It was all itty bitty cabbage, but it was still cabbage)
* carrots (I got these from my garden plot, too.  They got big)
* potatoes and onions (bought both for between $1 and $1.50 per lb)
* dried thyme, dried basil leaves, and bay leaf (had them all)
* mustard seeds and coriander seeds (these are not in the recipe, but I wanted to add them myself, especially since mustard seeds often show up in those little throwaway herb and spice packages that come with most corned beef briskets)
* water, for boiling
 

Before all else, soak the corned beef brisket in water for at least 30 minutes to leach out the extra salt.

When ready, cover the brisket in water in a large pot or Dutch oven, and add the herbs and spices.

Passos Duffy quotes a cookbook from 1845, Esther Allen Howard's The New England Economic Housekeeper, in which Howard makes sure you remember to skim the scum as it boils to the top.  Do this occasionally for the next three hours, which is how long you need to boil the meat.  Do this until "fork tender".

Next, add all of the vegetables except for the cabbage, and boil for 30 minutes.

Halfway through the boiling of the other vegetables, add the cabbage.  Continue to boil for another 15 minutes

Scoop out the vegetables and take out the brisket.  Slice and serve.

As I said before, I usually never boil meat.  I found this version surprisingly tasty.  I had figured that the flavor would be leeched out by the boiling process, but not at all.  I quickly finished this up, and I must say it lasted a while.  I made these Massachusetts recipes just before Hurricane Irene struck a few weeks ago, and when my power went out for almost two days, this was one of the things that hadn't spoiled by the time the lights went back on (by the way, heating it for 250°F for 40 minutes works just fine in a power outage - ah, but microwaves have made us forget how to heat things up in the oven).  Far from having the flavors of the meat and vegetables washed out, this dish ended up being juicier and more flavorful overall.  Additionally, it's difficult to dry this out when it's completely submerged in water. I often have that drying out problem when I roast it.

Sources:

Dojny, Brooke.  The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home.  Also available in part on Google Books.  Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999.

Gand, Gale.  "Boston Cream Pie".   Featured on the episode "Desserts from the Yankee Kitchen" of the show Sweet Dreams (Gale Gand, host).  Food Network, 2011.

Haggerty, Bridget. "Corned Beef & Cabbage - The Feeding of A Myth".  From the Irish Culture and Customs website, copyright 2001-2011.  All rights reserved.



Passos Duffy, Marcia.  "New England Boiled Dinner (Corned Beef & Cabbage)"  From The Heart of New England website, copyright 2004-2011.  All rights reserved.


Shields, John. Coastal Cooking with John Shields (the Companion Cookbook to the Public Television Series).  Broadway Books: Portland, Oregon, 2004. 

Yankee Magazine. "Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage". From "Meat Recipes", March 2010. Copyright 2011 Yankee Magazine.

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

Snacking State-by-State: Massachusetts I - ANUTHAH Chowdah!

By the time you read this post, written a few weeks ago (ah, the magic of pre-scheduled auto-publishing), I will in fact be in the state you are now reading about, in Provincetown for the wedding of my friends Eric and Alan (shout out, guys - I know you are reading this).  This wasn't timed this way; it was mere coincidence.  So in a way, these posts have been a culinary primer for my first actual, on-purpose trip to New England (not counting that eight hour layover a few years ago on a flight from Baltimore through Boston and Reykjavik to Amsterdam).  As for the Provincetown excursion: you'll read about that wicked trip sometime in the next few weeks.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State Nicknames: The Bay State
Admission to the US: February 6, 1788 (#6)
Capital: Boston (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Worcester (2nd largest); Springfield (3rd largest); Cambridge (5th largest)
Region: New England, Northeast; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Clambake; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Vermont, New Hampshire (north); New York (west); Connecticut, Rhode Island (south); Atlantic Ocean (south and east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: cranberry juice (beverage); cod (fish); wild turkey (game bird); baked navy bean (bean); cranberry (berry); Boston cream pie (dessert); chocolate chip cookie (cookie); Boston cream donut (donut)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: New England foods, in particular Boston-specific foods such as: Boston cream pie, Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread; "New England" clam chowder; Irish, Italian and Portuguese ethnic dishes; codfish cakes, lobster rolls and other New England seafood dishes; cranberries and blueberries

Every time I come back to New England cuisine, I am reminded of something that famous TV chef Paula Deen (not a New Englander) said about Southern food: to paraphrase, she had never heard of anyone saying anything about Northern cookin', so she wasn't sure it was any good, unlike Southern cookin'.  I'm sure she meant no offense.  Still, after getting through half of the New England states, I can guess that Miss Paula is probably quite wrong about Northern cookin', because those New Englanders are very much in love with their cuisine.  Once again, I come back to Brooke Dojny, former Nutmeg Stater-turned-Mainer who seems to be the authority on Yankee cuisine.  From her book The New England Cookbook (also mostly available on Google Books), Dojny describes the historical importance of New England food, perhaps the oldest US regional cuisine (in place by the mid-1600's):

By the dawn of the eighteenth century, a new and distinct regional cuisine had taken root, with dishes that we continue to cook today.,  Chowders, fish cakes, baked beans, succotash, cornbread, boiled dinner, roast turkey and cranberry sauce, pumpkin and berry pies - these traditional dishes form the central core of New England home cooking, linking past with present in an unbroken chain. [Dojny 1999: xiv]

Among the New England states, Massachusetts is the largest in terms of population and influence, not to mention the first settled.  And while the Bay State may not be the be all and end all of New England food, it certainly has given those of us in the other 44 states plus the District the quintessential portrait of what we think of as "New England food": Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread, Boston cream pie (notice a trend here?). And it's not just Boston.  Take, again, Provincetown, at the tip of the tip of Cape Cod.  You can find all of New England's iconic foods here (albeit at much higher prices than most of New England): lobster, clams, oysters, cod, even crabs.  And do not forget that Provincetown, Boston, and all of Massachusetts has gained much from its immigrant communities, especially the Portuguese, Irish and Italians.

Even that most classic of New England clam chowders, in a region of many varied clam chowders, actually is from, again, Boston: the creamy, white and very opaque (sorry, Connecticut and Rhode Island) clam chowder full of clams and potatoes, but not too buttery or creamy (you too, Maine) and definitely not clear and tomato-ey (excuse you, New York - you people aren't even New Englanders anyway.  Then again, neither am I).  Even the famous New England boiled dinner - what I grew up calling "corned beef and cabbage" - was made popular by Irish-Americans in and around Boston.  Let's face it, Massachusetts has been the nation's conduit for proudly Yankee cuisine.

Maryland native John Shields used to live in Massachusetts before returning home.  Here I interpret his simplified recipe for "Back Bay Clam Chowder" - as he puts it "the real thing - pure, unadulterated, classic New England chowder, rich with clams, lightly enhanced with cream, and fragrant with briny broth" (Shields 2004: 18).  You can find the recipe for his Back Bay Clam Chowder on the same page of his cookbook Coastal Cooking with John Shields (2004).


The Recipe: Back Bay (New England) Clam Chowder

I say "simplified" because Shields takes the traditional recipe - hand-shucked clams in a broth thickened by crushed oyster crackers and water - and simplifies it with pre-shucked clams packaged in their juices, and a roux of flour and salt pork grease.  I further simplified it by using bacon grease instead.  Yes, I should have used salt pork, but I had the bacon on hand, saving me the extra expense.

You will need:

* clams, with juice (about $6 for a container of chopped clams in juice right from Cape Cod, at Whole Foods)
* bacon (instead of salt pork - again, remember the authentic ones usually use salt pork, though I did see recipes that use bacon)
* flour (to make that roux with the bacon grease - again, real Englanders crush oyster crackers to thicken the soup)
* potatoes and an onion (here, a leftover Vidalia - again, not a New England onion)
* milk (had it)

* salt and pepper
* fresh parsley (from my garden)
* Though Shields' recipe does not mention it, I added a few tablespoons of butter

A lot of these procedures were the same as that Southern Connecticut clam chowder, with the addition of much milk.

Render the bacon fat until the bacon is crispy, and discard the bacon (or in my case, eat it with a nice omelette while you're making New England clam chowder).

Fry up the chopped onion in the bacon grease until soft...

...and then add the flour.  Okay, so not exactly a roux.

You will then add the skinned and cubed potatoes with your clam broth, plus enough water to cover the potatoes.  Boil the potatoes until tender.

Next cook the milk in a separate saucepan and simmer until small bubbles form around the sides.

Add the milk and clams, and cook for about 15 minutes.

Stir occasionally.  I also added butter at this point.  Garnish individual servings with parsley

I was mostly satisfied with this clam chowder.  My one issue was that it was much thinner than I had expected.  Maybe I did not let the onions soften enough, or maybe I needed more flour.  Despite this, it was a hearty soup.  Mind you, it was very different than most New England clam chowders I have eaten - thinner than the Chunky Soups and Progressives, and not a can of salty milk jelly with mini bits of clam like Campbell's standard soup.  In general, I am amazed at how easy it is to make a clam chowder - that is, if you don't bother to shuck your own clams.  Maybe another time.

Sources:

Dojny, Brooke.  The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home.  Also available in part on Google Books.  Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999.

Gand, Gale.  "Boston Cream Pie".   Featured on the episode "Desserts from the Yankee Kitchen" of the show Sweet Dreams (Gale Gand, host).  Food Network, 2011.

Haggerty, Bridget. "Corned Beef & Cabbage - The Feeding of A Myth".  From the Irish Culture and Customs website, copyright 2001-2011.  All rights reserved.

Passos Duffy, Marcia.  "New England Boiled Dinner (Corned Beef & Cabbage)"  From The Heart of New England website, copyright 2004-2011.  All rights reserved.

Shields, John. Coastal Cooking with John Shields (the Companion Cookbook to the Public Television Series).  Broadway Books: Portland, Oregon, 2004. 

Yankee Magazine. "Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage". From "Meat Recipes", March 2010. Copyright 2011 Yankee Magazine.


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

Snacking State-by-State: Maryland IV - Once on Smith Island

Like any other state, Maryland has its own sub-regional specialties, things you will most likely find in one part of the state instead of another.  In Southern Maryland, this is stuffed ham.  In Baltimore, it's the snowball.  And on the smallish Smith Island, the only inhabited island in the Maryland half of the Chesapeake Bay, it is the cake that bears the island's name.

Official Name: State of Maryland
State Nicknames: The Free State; The Old Line State; America in Miniature
Admission to the US: April 28, 1788 (#7)
Capital: Annapolis (24th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Baltimore (largest); Columbia (2nd largest); Germantown (3rd largest); Frederick (8th largest)
Region: Mid-Atlantic, South, Northeast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Crabcake; Clambake; Chestnut; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: The Mason-Dixon Line (north and east); Pennsylvania (north); Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean (east), Virginia and the Potomac River (south and southwest); District of Columbia (southwest); West Virginia (west and southwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: blue crab (crustacean); rockfish, aka striped bass (fish); Diamondback terrapin (reptile); Smith Island cake (dessert); milk (drink)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Chesapeake Bay foods, especially based on blue crab, oyster, clam, shrimp & fish; historically, foods of the Upper South (especially fried chicken, stuffed ham, beaten biscuits & Brunswick stew); cuisines that reflect a broad multicultural landscape closer to Baltimore (Italian, Polish, Ukranian, German, etc) and Washington (Latin American, West African, Southeast Asian, Korean, etc)

This is not my first attempt at a Smith Island cake, the official state dessert of Maryland.  I tried it a few years ago, but quickly gave up after destroying the second and third thin layers just by trying to remove them from the cake pans.  For anyone who has never tried to make one, it is a challenge.  In her book Dishing Up Maryland, Lucie Snodgrass discusses the Smith Island cake in a vignette with innkeeper Susan Evans, a thirteenth-generation Smith Islander who has been making Smith Island cakes like women in her family have for perhaps hundreds of years.

Lore has it that the original families baked [the first Smith Island cake], although it only had four layers at the time.  Over the years the height of the cake grew as the women competed against each other to see who could make the most layers.  Today, Smith Island Cakes most commonly vary from eight to eleven layers,, depending on who's making it...  Assembling and icing the cake can be tricky and takes years of practice, Evans says.  She learned to make the cake from her mother, who learned form her mother mother, and so on.  "It's an island thing," Evans says, shrugging.  "They've always been made, and every woman knows how to make one." [Snodgrass 2010: 273]

Instead of using Susan Evans' recipe, I found a very popular printed version of the recipe on the Visit Somerset County website, attributed to Smith Islander Frances Kitching.  This is the version I used.

Recipe: Smith Island Cake

For the Smith Island cake, you will need the following ingredients, plus a lot of patience.

* flour (of course)
* evaporated milk, not the regular kind (don't have enough? just reduce regular milk over a simmer - just below a low boil - stirring constantly, until reduced by about a third)
* baking powder (not pictured - I knew I forgot to include something)
* several eggs
* vanilla
* granulated sugar
* several sticks of butter
* salt
* unsweetened cocoa (squares or powdered)
* water (this is an ingredient in the cake batter, and again i forgot to include it)

You will also need several cake pans.  Don't have ten of them just sitting around?  You will need to reuse the same three or four over and over.  Also, Mrs. Kitching's recipe calls for 9-inch cake pans.  All I had were 8-inch ones, which suited me fine.

First, cream the sugar and butter together.

And add one egg at a time to the mixture.

Sift the other dry ingredients together and add them about a cup at a time to the batter.

Still adding...

Your evaporated milk goes in next.

And then the vanilla and water until you just form a loose batter.

As shown here.

 Now comes the next of several tedious steps: the baking.  Grease the bottoms of as many same-sized cake pans as possible, and fill with a heaping serving spoon of batter.  I'm not sure what Mrs. Kitching meant by that measure, but I took a wild guess and grabbed a large spoon to fill each cake pan.

Plop the batter in the middle of the cake pan...

...and smooth it around the bottom with the spoon.  It is supposed to be this thin.

 

 Bake at 350°F for 8 minutes, and let cool a bit.  I found that trying to remove it once completely cooled actually made it tear more easily, so I tried to get it out of the pan while it was still warm.  You will need a towel for this, of course.  And these things tear easily, so you must be slow and deliberative.  What I did was take my knife and move it around the edges of the layer (yes, it already has pulled away from the side, but this helps), and slowly and carefully start to work it under the layer.  If well greased enough, the layer should eventually, and slowly, fall out.  Keep your hand over it at all times to prevent breakage or folding over, and either pile each layer by itself or (if you lack the room to do so) separate them with parchment or wax paper.  Please do not stack the steaming layers one on top of each other with nothing in between.  You will end up with one big layer of cake.

While baking your many layers of cake, prepare the frosting - a simple, cooked sugar frosting.  Start with more evaporated milk and sugar, stirring and warming them together.

Next add your unsweetened chocolate: either squares or the equivalent amount of cocoa powder and oil/shortening.
 

Add to that one stick of butter, and melt it all together, stirring.

When it coats the back of a spoon (okay, this is the front of the spoon.  Use a little imagination here.), set it aside for 30 minutes.  Impatient that I am, I stuck mine in the fridge to cool down a little faster.

Finally, you have your layers ready to assemble.  I found that I had enough batter for twelve layers - ten plus a few extra in case I messed some of them up.

For example...

To assemble the Smith Island Cake, place a layer on your serving plate, and spread some icing on top of it.  I used a spatula at first but eventually I found that a spoon was easier to use.

News flash: some of your layers will break and tear.  One tore into a few little pieces.  Mrs. Kitching tells us in her recipe not to worry about it - when the cake is assembled, no one will notice.  I did, however, try to sandwich the broken layers in between the ones that didn't manage to come apart.

Worry about icing the layers first.  Don't worry about the sides until everything else is stacked and iced together.  I found that I had just enough icing to cover this cake, so if I undertake this again I will make a little extra.

This new attempt at tackling the legendary Smith Island cake worked for me this time.  Though it wasn't as pretty as I had hoped it would be, the spongy layers sandwiched between ganache and all compacted one on top of the other make for a deceptively filling - and I mean "filling" - cake.  I am not sure how I will be able to finish all this, even with sharing it with others.  But at least now I can finally say I have tangoed with the Smith Island cake and survived.  Even if this Western Shore man can't say he's an expert like generations of Smith Island women, at least I came up with a lovely, sweet and dense cake that actually turned out.

- - - - -

And so my culinary tour of my home state is done, and I am more familiar than ever before with some classic Maryland recipes as well as a few that have been added to the state's increasingly varied multicultural landscape.  Now I head up north, back across the Mason-Dixon and up to New England again, for an exploration of that other bay state, Massachusetts.

Sources:

"Crab Cakes".  Recipe from the author's family.

Fowora, Simbo.  "Jollof Rice".  Featured on the episode "Nigerian Dinner" of the show Sara's Secrets (Sara Moulton, host).  Food Network, 2006.

Gibbon, Ed.  The Congo Cookbook.  1999-2009.  Available as a downloadable book from lulu.com and reprinted on the website http://www.congocookbook.com.

Hafner, Dorinda.  A Taste of Africa.  Ten Speed Press: Berkeley, CA, 1993.

Kitching, Frances.  "Smith Island Ten-Layer Cake-Mrs. Kitching's Original Recipe". Reprinted on the "Fun Stuff" page at the website VisitSomerset.com (website for Somerset County, Maryland).  2007-2010 Somerset County Tourism.

Shields, John. Chesapeake Bay Cooking. Broadway Books: New York, NY, 1998

Shields, John. "Foreward".  In Dishing Up Maryland by Lucie Snodgrass.  Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2010.

Snodgrass, Lucie.  Dishing Up Maryland.  Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2010.

Walter, Eugene.  American Cooking: Southern Style.  From the series Foods of the World.  Time-Life Publications: New York, NY, 1971

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

Snacking State-by-State: Maryland III - Jollof Rice, How Nice (or Suya wanna cook some rockfish?)

As noted before, Maryland has characteristics that make it both a Southern and a Northern state.  One thing that Maryland has more in common with its neighbors to the North is its patterns of immigration: especially German (where else will you find sauerkraut at the Thanksgiving table?), Irish, Southern and Eastern European in the last century, plus many African American immigrants who both left Maryland for the North and came to Maryland from the South during the Great Migration.  As Maryland and Northern Virginia are also tied inextricably to the DC area, over the last few decades these areas have been quite fortunate to see immigration from all over the world - Latin America, South, East and Southeast Asia, and all over Africa.

Official Name: State of Maryland
State Nicknames: The Free State; The Old Line State; America in Miniature
Admission to the US: April 28, 1788 (#7)
Capital: Annapolis (24th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Baltimore (largest); Columbia (2nd largest); Germantown (3rd largest); Frederick (8th largest)
Region: Mid-Atlantic, South, Northeast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Crabcake; Clambake; Chestnut; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: The Mason-Dixon Line (north and east); Pennsylvania (north); Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean (east), Virginia and the Potomac River (south and southwest); District of Columbia (southwest); West Virginia (west and southwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: blue crab (crustacean); rockfish, aka striped bass (fish); Diamondback terrapin (reptile); Smith Island cake (dessert); milk (drink)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Chesapeake Bay foods, especially based on blue crab, oyster, clam, shrimp & fish; historically, foods of the Upper South (especially fried chicken, stuffed ham, beaten biscuits & Brunswick stew); cuisines that reflect a broad multicultural landscape closer to Baltimore (Italian, Polish, Ukranian, German, etc) and Washington (Latin American, West African, Southeast Asian, Korean, etc)

Take Nigeria for example: Maryland has the largest Nigerian-American immigrant population of any state in the country, not to mention recent immigrants from all over West Africa, bringing their varied culinary traditions to the American landscape.  Sadly, few West African immigrants have opened up restaurants in the area, though a few do exist - mostly in Prince George's and Montgomery Counties with a small handful in the Baltimore area.  Immigrants from Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Liberia and (again) Nigeria are integrating their dishes into the American landscape, but again the lack of restaurants means that if you aren't lucky enough to know someone from Nigeria, you may have to make your own.

One of the most common pan-West African dishes is jollof rice, a dish that, like the crab cake and fried chicken, has many local variants.  According to Ghanaian-born Dorinda Hafner, author of A Taste of Africa, jollof rice likely originated in Mali.  Or Ghana.  Or Nigeria.  Well, okay, it hasn't quite been settled, and probably never will. 

Jollof Rice is among the best known of West African dishes not only because it is delicious and easy to prepare, but because the ingredients are readily available in Western countries! Its origin, however, remains a bone of contention between several West African nations.  There are many regional cooking variations... [Hafner 1993: 43]

Regardless of where it originated, most people who eat jollof rice are probably in Nigeria, the largest country in West Africa.  Another Nigerian dish that goes well with it is a simple take on the shish kebab, known as suya.  This is meat or fish coated in spicy ground peanuts, skewered and broiled or grilled until done.  I had this a few years ago at the FestAfrica in Patterson Park, made out of chicken.  But I thought a more Chesapeake-flavored version of suya would fit this post better: rockfish.

The recipes: Jollof Rice with Rockfish Suya

You could make the suya while the rice is cooking, if you really like multitasking.

The recipe: Jollof Rice

I could have used chicken, beef or fish - Hafner's version is good, as is this one from the Congo Cookbook.  But I wanted something simple and vegetarian, and I settled on a recipe submitted to Sara Moulton's show Sara's Secrets by Simbo Fowora.  No, Fowora is not a trained Food Network personality, or a trained chef like Sara Moulton, but the recipe was featured on the show, and I trust Moulton's judgment.

For this vegetarian jollof rice you will need the following, all of which are simple to track down. 

* white rice (not difficult to track down)
* tomato paste (I also added cherry tomatoes from the garden - I picked them that same day)
* chili peppers (one from the garden, one from Wegman's)
* bell pepper (Fowora's recipe says to use a red bell pepper - I used a green one)
* a few cloves of garlic
* onions (again, mine from the garden - mine were red, which is not typical of jollof rice)
* thyme and white pepper
* olive oil

First, throw all ingredients except the oil (and the rice, of course) into a blender
.

After blending, add the olive oil, and blend a little bit more.

As you do this, boil a few cups of water on the stove.  When boiling, add both your rice and your tomato mixture to the pot.

Cook for about 45 minutes, stirring every fifteen minutes.  I actually found the rice to be undercooked, so I added a cup or two more and let it steam with the heat off for another 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Garnish with parsley or cilantro if you have it available.  I ate mine with the suya.

The recipe: Rockfish Suya

The recipe I used comes from the Congo Cookbook, which you can find online.  Of course, it does not specify rockfish, but it was an easy substitution.

This recipe is also pretty simple:

* rockfish, or whatever fish or meat you prefer (A note on rockfish, aka striped bass: this is the state fish, so it holds a special place in Maryland's seafood pantheon.  I remember when I was much younger and the ban on fishing for rockfish had been lifted, since they were no longer endangered.  Dad and Mom went out and bought one and we had rockfish that night.  Very nice.  Rockfish is pricey - $20 per pound at Wegman's - so I bought a mere quarter pound, just enough to make one serving for dinner)
* roasted/salted peanuts (you will grind these up but don't make peanut butter with them)
* cayenne pepper, paprika (in this case I used smoked paprika) and salt
* garlic powder, onion powder and ginger powder (since I only had chopped dried onion, I threw that into the spice grinder)
* onion and tomatoes (optional, if you want to skewer them)
* skewers (you really do need these)

Take your peanuts and grind them into a powder.  Again, make sure you don't make peanut butter with them.  Mix with the dry spices in a bowl, separate into two portions (one for coating and one for dipping later) and set aside. 

After cutting your rockfish into pieces, coat them in the peanut mixture. Let them sit for half an hour - enough time to soak the skewers and preheat the broiler.

When ready, stick the rockfish onto the skewers, alternating if you want with onion and/or tomato.

Place the skewers in a dish and put them under your broiler, about 3 to 4 inches below the fire, for 4 to 8 minutes.  Other meats or fishes may take longer or shorter to broil.  Or you can just grill them.

And there you have your suya! Serve with any extra peanut mixture that did not come into contact with raw meat or fish.

Jollof rice is similar to jambalaya in that it cooks in a variety of spices (and sometimes meats) on the stove for a while, and is a meal unto itself.  The similarities end there, because this spicy, tomato-y rice dish is tangy more than anything else.  Again, it is very simple to prepare, and I may need to make this again.  It is a very nice accompaniment to the suya, whose peanut mixture would make an excellent coating for any broiled or grilled meat or fish.  Also, the ease of preparation makes this a recipe to come back to.

 Sources:

"Crab Cakes".  Recipe from the author's family.

Fowora, Simbo.  "Jollof Rice".  Featured on the episode "Nigerian Dinner" of the show Sara's Secrets (Sara Moulton, host).  Food Network, 2006.

Gibbon, Ed.  The Congo Cookbook.  1999-2009.  Available as a downloadable book from lulu.com and reprinted on the website http://www.congocookbook.com.

Hafner, Dorinda.  A Taste of Africa.  Ten Speed Press: Berkeley, CA, 1993.

Kitching, Frances.  "Smith Island Ten-Layer Cake-Mrs. Kitching's Original Recipe". Reprinted on the "Fun Stuff" page at the website VisitSomerset.com (website for Somerset County, Maryland).  2007-2010 Somerset County Tourism.

Shields, John. Chesapeake Bay Cooking. Broadway Books: New York, NY, 1998

Shields, John. "Foreward".  In Dishing Up Maryland by Lucie Snodgrass.  Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2010.

Snodgrass, Lucie.  Dishing Up Maryland.  Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2010.

Walter, Eugene.  American Cooking: Southern Style.  From the series Foods of the World.  Time-Life Publications: New York, NY, 1971

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

Fresh Air with Julia Child

Heads' up: NPR's Fresh Air is more interesting than usual this week, as it continues its food-related installments with a special Thursday rebroadcast of an interview Terri Gross did with the late, great Julia Child.  It's today, people - on WYPR and WAMU it's 3:00 - 4:00.  Or if you miss it, you can always listen to it whenever you feel like it at the Fresh Air website (audio available around 5:00PM on Thursday, September 1).