Snacking State-by-State: Nevada II - Basque in the glow of oven fried potatoes

In the 19th century, Nevada saw pioneers searching for gold and silver.  Settlers came not just from all over the East, South and Midwest but from other countries.  Among those settlers were the US's first documented Basque settlers, coming to work in the mines and bringing with them their own food traditions from Basque Country.

Official Name: State of Nevada
State Nicknames: The Silver State; The Sagebrush State
Admission to the US:  October 31, 1864 (#36)
Capital: Carson City (2nd largest)
Other Important Cities: Las Vegas (largest), Henderson (2nd largest), Reno (4th largst), Sparks (5th lagest)
Region: West, Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, Southwest; Mountain (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Pinyon Nut; Chile Pepper
Bordered by: Oregon & Idaho (north), Utah (east), Arizona (southeast), California (south and west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: desert bighorn sheep (mammal - though generally not hunted); single-leaf pinyon (tree - for the pine nuts); Lahontan cutthroat trout (fish - whose low numbers are currently being replenished)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Native American and frontier foods, specificalyl Native foods typical of Great Basin peoples (including pine nuts); Basque cuisine; buffets and Vegas-style excess (in Las Vegas)

One of the earliest Basque settlements in the United States was the town of Winnemucca, in the northern part of the state.  Accorcding to A travel guide to Basque America by Nancy Zubiri, Basque settled all around southeastern Oregon and northern Nevada.  Few of those communities went on to flourish; Winnemucca was an exception.

Many of the newcomers were transplants from the smaller towns.  Located on the banks of the Humboldt River, Winnemucca was supported primarily by farming and ranching.  Several mines of gold, silver, copper, and tungsten brought many immigrants to the region.  But in surrounding Humboldt Colunty towns the mostly wide-open ranges with adequate greenery were an attractive starting point for Basques hoping to establish their own sheep band. [Zubiri 2006:292]

Today, Zubiri notes, Winnemucca and nearby Elko mostly thrive on tourist dollars.  Even with Interstate 80 funneling most traffic between San Francisco and Salt Lake City, people still stop in the cities - especially in the summer, when business for the Basque restaurants spikes, and when the Basque Festivals take place [Zubiri 2006:292-293].

I am familiar with several world cuisines, either in passing or through a more thorough investigation.  I must confess that Basque is not among them.  Among the sheepherder's breads - a mammoth loaf of bread cooked in a Dutch oven - and lamb stews (see this link from NPR for these recipes), I also found links to garlic soups and Basque potatoes.  There are various versions of both the soup and the potato (try Buber's Basque Recipe Page for more).  The recipe I went with is on the Daily Dish website, a blog of low sodium and salt-free recipes.  The author, Christy Ellingsworth, did what I am about to do: take photos of the cooking process (hers are prettier than mine).  I did add a little sprinkle of salt (hers is intentionally salt-free).

The Recipe: Basque Potatoes

For Ellingsworth's version of Basque potoatoes you will need:

* potatoes (for a potato dish?  Seriously, I got about a pound of reds.  This one calls for Russets though I've seen others that call for red or Yukon gold.  The red ones worked well, and are cheap)
* garlic (had it)
* dried parsley, rosemary and thyme (have them, though I need to replenish the thyme)
* paprika, cayenne pepper and freshly ground black pepper (yup, have those too)
* olive oil (same)

Peel and cut up your potatoes.  I did mine in large chunks, as per the recipe.  However, you could just cube them as well.  Adjust the cooking times accordingly.

Ellingsworth says to bust out that mortar and pestle and get to grinding up your garlic.  Oh, if I had a mano and metate, I'd grind garlic in the morn...

Throw the garlic and herbs and spices into an oven-proof pan (when in doubt, stick with cast-iron) filled with olive oil, and heat for a few seconds.

Quickly add the taters and coat.

Adjust the cayenne to taste.

Next, cover the pan with aluminum foil, and place in a preheated 375°F oven for about 15 minutes.

Uncover, stir, and put in for another half hour or so.

The garlic wound up being hard and very browned, but you won't be eating it in this case.  The potatoes are the star here, in this simple, spicy potato dish.  The garlic and rosemary left a pretty subtle flavor, I think - surprising to me, since these are not things that usually impart a mild anything.  This is a good, quick introduction to Basque cuisine (says the guy who knows next to nothing about Basque cuisine).  Perhaps I should tackle that garlic soup?


Sources:


Detterick-Piñeda, Cynthia.  "Piñon Cakes - Pine Nut Cakes How To Make Pine Nut Cakes".  WhatsCookingAmerica.Net, date unknown.  Copyright WhatsCookingAmerica.Net 2011.


Elllingsworth, Christy.  "Basque potatoes".  The Daily Dish, posted January 4, 2011.


I4Vegas.Com.  "Popular Las Vegas Drinks". Date unknown.  Copyright I4Vegas.Com 1999-2011. 


The Modern Mixologist (TheModernMixologist.com).  "Cable Car: Tony's Signature Cocktail".  Date unknown.  Copyright The Modern Mixologist, 2007.


PineNut.Com.  "History of Pine Nuts & The People of the Great Basin". PineNut.Com, date unknown. Copyright PineNut.Com 1998-2011.

Schneider, Deborah.  "Mexican Mojito".  Leite's Culinaria (LeitesCulinaria.Com), posted May 5, 2010. 

Zubir, Nancy.  A travel guide to Basque America: families, feasts, and festivals.  University of Nevada Press: Reno, NV, 2006.  Also partially available on Google Books.

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

Snacking State-by-State: Nevada I - Viva Los Piñones

When Americans think of Nevada... well first we usually think "ne-vah-duh", like the "o" in cot (or like the Spanish word nevada, meaning "snowy").  Nevadans will correct you by saying "It's 'ne-vă-duh'" (IPA - /æ/ ), like the "a" in cat. The state's travel website even says this (though note: even though the state is  "ne-vă-duh" the Sierra Nevada mountain range is "ne-vah-duh".  Nevada, Nevada, potato, potato... ah, hell).  Anyway, it's next on my food tour.  And my first attempted recipe comes is yet another variation on frybread using, of all things, the incredible, edible pine nut.

Official Name: State of Nevada
State Nicknames: The Silver State; The Sagebrush State
Admission to the US:  October 31, 1864 (#36)
Capital: Carson City (2nd largest)
Other Important Cities: Las Vegas (largest), Henderson (2nd largest), Reno (4th largst), Sparks (5th lagest)
Region: West, Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, Southwest; Mountain (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Pinyon Nut; Chile Pepper
Bordered by: Oregon & Idaho (north), Utah (east), Arizona (southeast), California (south and west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: desert bighorn sheep (mammal - though generally not hunted); single-leaf pinyon (tree - for the pine nuts); Lahontan cutthroat trout (fish - whose low numbers are currently being replenished)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Native American and frontier foods, specificalyl Native foods typical of Great Basin peoples (including pine nuts); Basque cuisine; buffets and Vegas-style excess (in Las Vegas)


Historically, Nevada's food is a reflection of its Native American and frontier immigrant cultures.  The Native peoples of of Nevada are in the Great Basin (which extends into much of Utah, and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, California and Oregon).  The Great Basin peoples were by and large hunter gatherers.  Just as buffalo was the key thing for the Plains peoples and acorns were for many of the California Indians, so pine nuts were the staple food for Native peoples in the Great Basin.  And this was far from an easy nut to crack (pardon the pun).  The processing of pine nuts - or pinyon nuts, pignolias, piñones, etc - was largely a communal effort, extending from summer into fall.  And the first falling of pine cones was considered a sacred time for many Great Basin peoples. Then the processing began - as PineNut.com notes, this was the hard part.

This began by roasting the pine cones around hot coals, turning them often, to cause them to open up. Then, the cones could be beaten lightly to cause the nuts to fall out. When a supply of nuts was available, these required further processing since the nuts were covered by a soft brown shell. Cracking this shell would be difficult and would injure the fruit inside. The nuts were processed by placing them on a basketry tray with hot coals from the fire. Once introduced together, the whole mass was kept in constant motion, throwing them up and swirling the tray, until the shells were roasted to a hard, crisp dark brown. The coals were removed at this point and the nuts were poured onto a grinding stone where they were lightly pounded with a mano until all of the shells had cracked and falled free of the inner fruit. [PineNut.com, date unknown]

The pine nuts would then be dried for future use, often being ground into a flour, not unlike the California Indians did with acorns (which had their own special processing needs).

The Great Basin peoples adapted their dishes with the influx of whites to their area.  During the Long Walk (the relocation of Native Americans in the West to reservations), many recipes were adapted to the new staples brought in from the whites.  One old recipe incorporates flour and powdered milk; perhaps an ancient version may have included pine nut flour.  This pine nut cake, a modern cousin to the many varieties of frybread, is often eaten today while stories of the relocation are told [Detterick-Piñeda, date unknown].

The following recipe comes from Cynthia Detterick-Piñeda of Andrews, Texas, and reposted on the WhatsCookingAmerica.net website.  Check here for a list of Detterick-Piñeda's (and others'?) Southwestern recipes.

The Recipe: Pine Nut Cakes

For pine nut cakes, you will need the following:

* pine nuts (seriously, you need these.  As we now know, these things aren't easy to process, and that's why they're so pricey.  I found that I didn't need a whole lot of them, maybe 1/2 cup at most.  This will make half of the above recipe.  I bought extra but found I didn't need to.  Great - more pine nuts to use all around!).
* powdered milk (had it)
* whole wheat flour (had it too)
* oil (for frying - had it)
* salt and water (well, yeah, I have those too)

First, throw the pine nuts into a food processor with all the remaining ingredients, except of course for the oil.

Pulse at a high speed until you get something mealy...

...eventually adding water little by little until you get a nice ball of pine nut dough.  I had to add just a little bit more water than the recipe called for.  The dough ball pretty much just formed all of a sudden.

Break off pieces of the dough.

Form each piece into a ball, about the size of a walnut.

Or a Brussels sprout.

And flatten that ball.

Fry in hot oil for a few minutes on a side until golden brown.  The author recommends cutting the first one open to make sure it is not doughy in the center.  Mine weren't.

Drain and serve hot.

 

With whatever condiments you so choose.  I have Icelandic butter and some of that Great Plains wojapi on top of mine.

Again, this is a smaller cousin to frybread.  I find that these pine nut cakes are best fresh out of the fat.  I had some day old pine nut cakes, cold.  They should at least be rewarmed, maybe even refried for a minute in the pan.  It is definitely a different way to eat pine nuts than I am used to.  I ate mine with butter but you could use honey, jelly (or wojapi).

Sources:


Detterick-Piñeda, Cynthia.  "Piñon Cakes - Pine Nut Cakes How To Make Pine Nut Cakes".  WhatsCookingAmerica.Net, date unknown.  Copyright WhatsCookingAmerica.Net 2011.


Elllingsworth, Christy.  "Basque potatoes".  The Daily Dish, posted January 4, 2011.


I4Vegas.Com.  "Popular Las Vegas Drinks". Date unknown.  Copyright I4Vegas.Com 1999-2011. 


The Modern Mixologist (TheModernMixologist.com).  "Cable Car: Tony's Signature Cocktail".  Date unknown.  Copyright The Modern Mixologist, 2007.


PineNut.Com.  "History of Pine Nuts & The People of the Great Basin". PineNut.Com, date unknown. Copyright PineNut.Com 1998-2011.

Schneider, Deborah.  "Mexican Mojito".  Leite's Culinaria (LeitesCulinaria.Com), posted May 5, 2010. 

Zubir, Nancy.  A travel guide to Basque America: families, feasts, and festivals.  University of Nevada Press: Reno, NV, 2006.  Also partially available on Google Books.

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

Dougherty's Pub

Last night I wanted a hamburger or a Reuben after happy hour, and I was in Mount Vernon.  I considered my usual choices for such sandwiches: City Cafe, Marie Louise, Stable. But a friend texted me another option: Dougherty's Pub, next to the Triple L Bar.  I've passed by this little pub many times but never thought twice about it.  I am glad I did.  Pretty sparsely populated on a Wednesday night, and homey.  They have a standard pub fare menu - pretty much American fare, nothing really Irish if that's what you're seeking - including a list of burgers to go with that beer.  I went with the Blue Cheese burger ($7.50), topped with the standard onions, lettuce, tomato (they will hold those if you don't want them), along with bacon and Bleu cheese dressing.  Not your average warmed over, dried-up burger.  This one was a little soppy on the bottom, but still a good, juicy one.  And a good way to absorb the Fat Tire or two you had at the Central during happy hour.

Snacking State-by-State Mashup 7: Paneer Potatoes with Bacon and Corned Beef

For my next mashup, I took a cue from the Idaho potato recipe I tackled midway through last year.  The allure of various loose ingredients in my pantry, fridge and freezer was just too tempting not to throw together.  Potatoes. Bacon. Sweet dried cranberries. Bacon. Corned beef. BBQ sauce. Bacon.

Ahem, did I mention bacon?

The mashup recipe: Paneer Potatoes with Bacon and Corned Beef

Makes 3 to 4 servings

Ingredients (state flag indicates State-by-State post where ingredient was featured. Ingredients with no flag were not specifically used for any one post.)

3 large or 6 small potatoes

1 to 2 T BBQ sauce

4 slices raw bacon, chopped

3 slices corned beef, chopped

1/4 cup milk or cream

1/4 c dried berries such as raisins, craisins (pictured), dried blueberries or huckleberries

about 1 fist-sized hunk stale or toasted vanocka Christmas bread

1 T beef tallow (not pictured)

few pats (or about 2 - 3 T) butter

1/4 to 1/2 c paneer or cottage cheese

Start a pot to boilin', and boil your potatoes for about 20 minutes, (until they are mashing consistency).  Feel free to salt it but I didn't bother.

Melt some bacon grease, oil, butter or - in this case - beef tallow into a skillet.

Fry the bacon and corned beef in the beef tallow.  My God, bacon, corned beef AND beef tallow from suet?  Honestly, I don't eat like this all the time!

But maybe I should...

Break up the vanocka or another dried fruit-filled bread (or any old bread), and throw it in the food processor.

Keep at it until you have crumbs.  Use about 1/4 cup if you just have store-bought ones.

Drain and mash the potatoes.

Next, mash some more with the milk and cheese.  It will be a little on the firm side (add a little more milk if you want.  Go on, see if I care.)

Next add the meat and berries - it's like pemmican potatoes!

Finally, add a dash or two of BBQ sauce, to taste.  Or leave it out.  Your choice.

Press it into a Corningware dish, and top with the bread crumbs.  I ended up scooping it out and putting it in a shallower dish.  Top with the butter and broil it for four minutes.

Er, three and a half minutes.  Actually, it looks worse than it was.  Only two or three berries on top were singed in the broiler.  I just plucked them off and all was good.  So four minutes will work.

If you've been following these mashups, you will note that I've had mixed results with these things.  This was probably my most successful one: the buttery crunchy bread crumbs on top of moist (YES I SAID IT - MOIST!) potatoes and the sweet craisins and bacon.  So far this is the mashup recipe I would most likely do again, proving that you gotta try pretty damn hard to mess up with a combo like potatoes, bacon, berries and butter.  And folks, I just didn't feel like putting in that sort of effort.

Snacking State-by-State: Nebraska III - Mutual of Omaha's Wild Reuben (or "A post that New Yorkers may not like very much")

What better way to start off the New Year than with that hearty, All-American sandwich, the Reuben?  (Actually, if you're hungover it might not be the most ideal way to start off the New Year, but anyway...).  And it certainly is All-American: no less than two US cities in two different regions of the country claim it as their own.

Official Name: State of Nebraska

State Nicknames: The Cornhusker State
Admission to the US:  March 1, 1867 (#37)
Capital: Lincoln (2nd largest)
Other Important Cities: Omaha (largest), Bellevue (3rd largest), Grand Island (4th largest)
Region: Midwest, Great Plains; West North Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Bison; Pinyon Nut
Bordered by: South Dakota (north), Iowa, Missouri (east), the Missouri River (northeast and east), Oklahoma (south), Colorado (southwest), Wyoming (northwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: channel catfish (fish), honeybee (insect - of course, the honey is what people eat, not the bee), white-tailed deer (mammal)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: corn, wheat and honey; foods of the Great Plains, including Native American foods (pemmican, wojapi, etc); foods from German, Czech and Russian immigrants, and foods from Midwestern and Southern settlers; the Reuben and runza sandwiches; beef (Omaha steaks)


Omaha has a bone to pick with New York City, and it goes the other way, I might add.  You see, each city claims to be the birthplace of the Reuben sandwich - that wondrous concoction of corned beef, Swiss, sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing between two buttered slices of rye bread, and all fried together.  Later on in this series I will be exploring New York State and all of its wonders for a few weeks (from the comfort of my own kitchen, that is).  Whether or not that is the reason for this post is beside the point: though I don't mean to get in between these debates usually, just the existence of this post shows which city I am siding with in this debate.

There are two origin myths for the mighty Reuben sandwich, and to be honest I'm not sure which is the more correct.  Perhaps they both hold some merit.  Jim Rader of Mirriam-Webster [date unknown] and Linda Stradley of What'sCookingAmerica.net [2004] compiles the two origin myths.

Certainly the older version comes from New York City.  Rewind back to 1914, when German-American  restaurateur Arnold Reuben, Jr. apparently made a sandwich for a tired actress late one night which he called "the Reuben's Special".  Based on various accounts from Mr. Reuben and his daughter, the restaurant began making it around 1927 or 1928.  As Reuben's daughter Patricia Taylor told the New York Times' Craig Claiborne,

...He took a loaf of rye bread, cut two slices on the bias and stacked one piece with sliced Virginia ham, roast turkey, and imported Swiss cheese, topped off with coleslaw and lots of Reuben's special Russian dressing and the second slice of bread. [Claiborne 1976, in Stradley 2004]

This is clearly the oldest recipe, but there's one thing wrong: it's not a Reuben, or at least what Americans think of as a Reuben.  That clearly lies with Lithuanian-born Reuben Kulakofsky, as Jim Raber writes:

According to Omaha lore, the combination of rye bread, corned beef, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut had been dreamed up in 1925 to feed participants in a late-night poker game at the Blackstone Hotel in downtown Omaha by a local grocer, Reuben Kulakofsky. Charles Schimmel, the hotel's owner, was so taken with the sandwich that he put it on the hotel restaurant menu, designated by its inventor's name. Fern Snider, a one-time waitress at the Blackstone, entered the Reuben in a national sandwich competetion in 1956; her entry won--hence one of the earliest pieces of documentation for the name of the sandwich, an OED cite from 1956 from the food services journal "Institutions".  [Raber, date unknown]

Raber, who has a thorough discussion of the contentious origin myths surrounding the Reuben sandwich, seems to suggest that it is Lincoln, Nebraska's Cornhusker Hotel, and neither Omaha nor New York City, that is the very first documentation of a sandwich called a Reuben that is, in fact, made of corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut "on Russian rye bread".  This confirmation didn't come until 1956.

Claiborne, at least, seems to slant towards the Nebraskans.  And until I find out otherwise, so will I.  New York has so much else going for it anyway, why not let Omaha have the Reuben?  Or maybe Lincoln?

The Recipe: The Reuben Sandwich

The classic Reuben sandwich, whose recipe I more or less followed from the various descriptions of it online (plus my own memory of the many Reubens I have eaten) incorporates the following ingredients:

* corned beef (about $8 per lb at Wegman's, I bought half a pound and used most of that on this sandwich.  It still wasn't enough but I didn't complain).
* Swiss cheese (much cheaper at about $4 per lb.  Again, half a pound.  I used a few slices)
* sauerkraut (had a can in the pantry)
* Thousand Island dressing (geez, at $3.50 a bottle of Thousand Island dressing is pricey these days)
* rye bread (a good loaf will be about $3.50 to $4, more if you go to an actual delicatessen)
* butter (had it, though I wish I had used some of that fancier European butter from Ireland or Iceland - the kind that's meant to actually taste good - instead of the generic Giant brand)

Start with the corned beef, which you will place on one slice of the rye bread.

Top the meat with some of the sauerkraut.

And then top that with the Swiss cheese.

Put a healthy dollop of Thousand Island dressing on both sides.

It is probably better to soften the butter and spread it on before you assemble your sandwich.  Note to self: next time, soften the butter and spread it on before you assemble your sandwich.

Place the assembled sandwich in a heated pan (I like my grooved cast iron griddle), and fry on each side for a few minutes.  I kept turning it about every minute, until the cheese melted).

Cheese is melted!

Although my Reuben wasn't stacked nearly as much as your typical diner Reuben, the same burst of juicy goodness from the meat, the sauerkraut and the buttery bread all made this a sandwich I have made again since I first made this sandwich.  Not much more to say: this is perfection, whoever the hell made the first one.  Now don't you want one, too?

- - - - -

We are on our way past the Continental Divide now, heading from the Great Plains to the Great Basin.  It's the land of pine cones, mega-casinos with mega-buffets, wedding chapels, lounge acts, and fictitious zany cops who don't know what the hell they're doing.  It's Nevada time!

Sources:

Abourezk, Kevin.  "Ponca Tribe to honor Milford for historical gesture".  Lincoln Journal Star.  Posted May 29, 2011.

American Indian Health and Diet Project.  "Traditional Indigenous Recipes: Wojapi".  American Indian Health and Diet Project, date unknown.  Copyright 2011, American Indian Health and Diet Project

Carson, Dale. New Native American Cooking.  Random House: New York, 1996.

CzechMate Diary (Tanja, blogger).  "Czech christmas magic: Vanocka / Kouzlo Vanoc: Vanocka".  CzechMate Diary.  Posted December 11, 2008.

Hill, Cheryl Joy.  "Blueberry Wojapi".  NativeTech.org: Indigenous Food and Traditional Recipes.  Date posted unknown.  Copyright 2011 NativeTech.

Nebraska Folklife Network.  "Recipes: Traditional Foods of Nebraska Ethnic Groups".  Date unknown.  Copyright 2011, Nebraska Folklife Network

Nebraska Guide (Nebraska-Guide.Info).  "As American as Apple Pie".  Date unknown.  Copyright 2004-2011, Interatctive Internet Websites, Inc.

NebraskaStudies.Org.  "The Immigrant Experience: The Czechs Move to Nebraska".  The Homestead Act: Who Were The Settlers? From Nebraska Studies.Org, date unknown.

Rader, Jim.  "Brief History of the Reuben Sandwich". The Reuben Realm, date unknown.

Red Star Yeast.  "Vanocka".  Red Star Yeast, date unknown.  Copyright 2011, Red Star Yeast.

Stern, Jane & Michael (Roadfood.com).  "Runza".  Roadfood.com, date unknown.  Copyright 2011, Roadfood.com.

Stradley, Linda.  "Reuben Sandwich - History of Reuben Sandwich".  What's Cooking America (WhatsCookingAmerica.net), 2004.

Weisman, Karen.  "Baking a Four-Strand Challah Bread Loaf".  eHow.com, date unknown.  Copyright 2011, eHow.com.

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