Pennsylvania and Delaware

The first two states to join the Union, and the last two states in our cooking project!   There are a number of foods associated with Pennsylvania, but my husband is from Philadelphia, and that means just one thing:  Philly Cheesesteak.   Always good if you get decent shaved beef.   A cheesesteak is shaved beef on a sub roll with melted provolone or American cheese on top.   We went for the provolone.   Onions and peppers are frequent additions, and we added both.

When we started the project, we started in backwards order because we had no idea what to make for Delaware.   Even queries of people who had lived in Delaware came up empty.  We got better at our research  though, because it turned out that Delaware was actually very easy!   To our surprise, we discovered that one of their state symbols is peach pie.  Yum!

So steak sandwiches and peach pie concluded our project.   We had a great time doing all of the research and cooking, discovered some interesting foods, and ate a lot of really good meals! 

Georgia and New Jersey

Ok, when you think of Georgia, can you think of anything else besides peaches?!   Luckily, it is the right time of year to get good peaches here in Massachussetts.   We made a peach torte for dessert using the basic fruit torte recipe from "Elegant But Easy."   This is a great recipe;however, you must use real butter, and have a heavy hand on the sugar and cinnamon for the topping.  

I lived in New Jersey for awhile, and I always think of good red sauce Italian food for that state.   But I couldn't come up with a specific red sauce dish that was really local to NJ.   Instead, I came across a number of discussions about Italian hot dogs, which are a favorite dish there.   Descriptions of the hot dogs said that they are served in a "pizza bread roll" with fried onions, peppers, and potatoes. 

The big question was, what is a pizza bread roll?   I couldn't find any recipes on the internet, but I did find various descriptions saying that they were "sort of a fat pita".  That description, plus the name, leads me to think that they are rolls made out of pizza dough.   So that's what we made - rolls from pizza dough, filled with a hot dog, onions, peppers, and potatoes.  We cheated an made oven fried potatoes instead of deep fried, but they worked well.  I thought it would be strange to have potatoes on a sandwich, but I really liked it!

Massachusetts and Connecticut

Massachusetts is easy, because that's where we live.   We made brown bread and baked beans for our meal.   The catch on making the brown bread is that it should be steamed, not baked.   This was traditionally done in a large tin can such as a coffee can.  But who has coffee can's these days?!   The coffee we buy comes in cardboard cans.


I almost gave up and decided to bake the bread, but then I noticed that it can be done in a slow cooker.  Voila!  We put the bread batter into a casserole dish, covered it with a lid, and put it in the slow cooker surrounded with water.   Worked like a charm.

We did cheat on the baked beans since we were pressed for time and don't have a pressure cooker.   Rather than starting from scratch, I used my mom's old recipe for doctoring canned baked beans.   First you drain the beans, then cook them with onion, green pepper, bacon, ketchup, mustard and brown sugar.

Connecticut was a fun find.   There is a cake called "Election Day cake" or "Hartford Election cake" that originated in Hartford back when women did not yet vote.   It is a yeast coffee cake, not too sweet, with fruit and nuts in it.  We used golden raisins because we had dark raisins in the brown bread.  The cake is usually made in a tube pan, but we made a half recipe in a loaf pan instead.

An amusing point to this meal is that our bread had leavening normally used for cake (baking soda) and our cake had leavening normally used for bread (yeast)!

South Carolina and Maryland

I'm from Maryland, so this was an easy decision.   Crab, crab, crab!   Definitely my strongest food association with that state.   We made Maryland crab cakes as an appetizer for our meal.

We didn't want to do any of the basic Southern cooking (much of which we've already done for other states) for South Carolina.   Fortunately, we were able to find something fairly unique to that state.  I say fairly unique because it's also done in Georgia, but that seems to be it.   We prepared a low country boil for dinner.   This is one of those dishes traditionally done outside in an enormous pot for a big crowd.   We were too busy to deal with a big crowd, but we did at least make ours outside on the camp stove :-).

A low country boil is traditionally shrimp (shell on), corn, new potatoes, kielbasa, and sometimes crab, boiled in a big pot with some Old Bay seasoning.   We skipped the crab since we were making crab cakes at the same time.  Also, regretfully, we couldn't find any real Old Bay seasoning and had to go with Penzey's Chesapeake Bay seasoning instead.  Being from Maryland, I didn't think it was a good substitute - it was too clove-y and not spicy enough.  If we ever make this again, I'll definitely try hard to find real Old Bay.   Anyway, the low country boild was easy to prepare, and kind of fun.   You're supposed to eat it by dumping it onto a table covered with newspaper and then just roll the paper up at the end.  We compromised and used plates for the corn, kielbasa & potatoes :-).

For dessert, we had a magnificent find!  A Huguenot torte is an interesting cross between a pecan pie with apples, and meringue.  The top comes out like a thin layer of meringue, and the inside is an apple-pecan pie like mixture.  It's a really interesting recipe, and I'm surprised that it isn't more popular.  It's easy to make and really good.   I definitely recommend giving it a try!  We used the recipe at http://dining.discoversouthcarolina.com/recipes/recipe-details.aspx?recipe=7

Virginia and New Hampshire

Virginia is known for good food, but much of it is generically Southern and not specific to Virginia.  We already made ham biscuits for Tennessee so a Virginia ham wasn't our first choice.   We ended up making Brunswick Stew, which Virginians claim was invented in Brunswick County, VA.   Georgians claim it comes from Brunswick, GA, but at least for our state cooking project, we're going with the VA story :-).

There are many, many variations of Brunswick Stew.   Traditionalists claim that it was originally made with squirrel meat.   We like our squirrels though (and would probably get in trouble for killing them), so we went with the modern day common approach for Virginia, which means we made it with chicken.  Other than meat, the stew generally has lima beans, corn, tomatoes, and frequently okra.   Our recipe also added ham.   We did leave out the okra since only one of us is a fan.   It's not really stew weather here in July, but we enjoyed it.  The youngest of us also liked it cold for lunch - kind of a vegetable chicken salad.

New Hampshire is just not known for its food.   I asked multiple people who live there for suggestions and they all came up empty.   Fortunately, New Hampshire has designated pumpkin as its state fruit.   That, plus the fact that it was a woman from New Hampshire that lobbied to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, led us to make pumpkin pie.   Also a bit odd for July, but really good served cold!

North Carolina and New York

This was a fun combination!  Both states have state fruits - blueberries and strawberries for North Carolina, and apples for New York.   Fruit salad from those three fruits is the perfect red, white and blue combination!  New York is bigger than Manhattan, believe it or not.   We found a sandwich particular to Binghamton, NY called a 'spiedie'.   It's basically a kebab served in a slice of Italian bread.   They were traditionally lamb, but are now made with most types of meat.   We made both lamb and chicken, and I thought that the lamb was particularly good.

To go with the spiedies, we made sweet potato oven fries for North Carolina, and (baked) potato chips for NY.  Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY and were originally named Saratoga Chips.  

For dessert we made black and whites, which are cookies created in NY.  One story says that they were invented by bakeries trying to use up their cake batter.  The cookies really are a cake batter baked as cookies.  For each cookie, half is frosted white, and the other half with chocolate.  Truth be told, most of the store bought ones are dreadful.  However, a batch freshly made at home can be really good.  We made a half recipe from here http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/09/black-and-white-cookies/

Vermont and Rhode Island

We did not actually do a full meal for these two, but parts of two meals.   We made pizza strips, a Rhode Island specialty, as an appetizer for dinner.  And we baked apple pie, the Vermont state pie, for dessert.   Pizza strips are pizza dough, with a spicy tomato sauce and no cheese.   They are served room temperature or cold.   The sauce isn't cooked - it is just crushed tomatoes with some seasoning.  We liked them a lot, and thought they were pretty easy to make since we bought pre-made dough.   I made a second batch by making dough in my bread machine and that was extremely easy too.  For the sauce, we used the first recipe in this blog http://cookingchaotic.blogspot.com/2011/04/recipe-2-ri-pizza-strips.html

The declaration of the apple pie being a state symbol for Vermont is hilarious.   It includes the wording "When serving apple pie in Vermont, a "good faith" effort shall be made to meet one or more of the following conditions: (a) with a glass of cold milk, (b) with a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of 1/2 ounce, (c) with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream."  We served ours with a choice of all three :-).

We felt the need to cook more for these states primarily because we hadn't used any maple syrup for Vermont!  Happily, johnnycakes are very common in Rhode Island.  They are basically fried cornmeal mush.  Kind of a cross between a pancake and polenta.   They were great served with maple syrup for breakfast.

Tennessee and Kentucky

Tennessee bourbon (Jack Daniels).   Kentucky bourbon (Makers Mark, Jim Beam, Four Roses).   What a pair of states!   We figured we'd better do something with bourbon.   Coincidentally, a friend gave me a bunch of mint from her garden during the week so we made a batch of mint juleps.  Fortunately, we had a ton of company for Memorial Day weekend to help drink them :-).

We also got lucky on this one because my sister lives in Tennessee.   She was able to ship us some country ham, which isn't normally available here.   That plus the Tennessee state fruit, which is the tomato, made for an excellent sandwich comprised of buttermilk biscuit with country ham and tomato jam.   The recipe is at http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/buttermilk-biscuit-ham-sandwiches-with-homemade-tomato-jam-recipe/index.html.  As we frequently do, we only made a half recipe and it was plenty.

We also made Derby pie for Kentucky .   It is basically pecan pie with chocolate chips and bourbon.   We used all of our bourbon in the mint juleps though, so I subbed Southern Comfort.   I figured that was reasonable since it was also made in Kentucky.  The pie is very rich and excellent.  We were happy to have lots of company to help eat it!

Louisiana and Ohio

Wow.  Louisiana is a serious challenge.   So many good things to choose from!   I wanted to make muffaleta, but was outvoted.  We ended up making shrimp and okra gumbo.  We made a quick version from Cooking Light (http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/shrimp-okra-gumbo-10000001973609/), but it still wasn't too quick.   It was great though.  Which is good, since the recipe made a lot.

We had the opposite problem with Ohio.  It's not a state known for it's food.  Cincinnati chili would be an option, but we've done enough chili, and we wanted a main dish from Louisiana.  Another food many people think of for Ohio is buckeyes.   They are a peanut butter candy dipped in chocolate.  My DH doesn't eat chocolate, however, so we didn't make them. 

In the end, we went with the fact that Ohio has the largest Amish population in the U.S.   Amish Friendship bread usually requires a starter that takes weeks, but I found a recipe for a version that simulates the starter with other ingredients http://www.food.com/recipe/quick-amish-friendship-bread-or-muffins-no-starter-required-109140.  Much easier than dealing with the starter, and the end result was excellent.  We did substitute applesauce for half of the oil, and added toasted pecans.   There's some question as to whether Amish Friendship bread is really Amish.  The sharing of bread starter certainly is, and the recipe is on lots of Amish recipe websites, so we decided to go with it.

Mississippi & Indiana

These two were a challenge because we have a rule against deep frying in our house.   I actually had a hard time finding anything specifically related to Mississippi - it's just generally Southern.   And the main food related to Indiana seems to be a fried pork cutlet sandwich.   They also make a particular pie called "sugar cream pie".   It's basically sugar and cream in a pie crust.  We passed on that too.



I was very happy when I finally came across the information that Indiana is the biggest producer of ducks in the U.S.!   That led us to making sauteed duck breasts with a blackberry-madeira sauce for Indiana.  Everyone was happy with the result :-).   For Mississippi we made "Mississippi Caviar".   There are many variations on this dish, but it is usually a black-eyed pea salad.   Ours had cider vinegar and jalapeno in it, among other things.

We also made baked "hushpuppies" for Mississippi.   For those not from the South, hushpuppies are basically deep fried cornbread balls.  They're really tasty, but with our no deep frying rule, we went for a baked version.   They look just like mini corn muffins, but there's grated onion in the batter and they do have a distinct taste.  Not as good as the deep fried hushpuppies of my youth, but still good.

Alabama & Illinois

Illinois immediately brings to mind Chicago-style pizza.   My officemate, whose family lives in Illinois, claims that Chicago isn't Illinois, but we went with the pizza anyway :-).   We followed the recipe from Cook's Illustrated http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=21349.   It takes a fair amount of time since the dough rises twice, and you have to simmer the sauce.   It was worth it though!  The pizza ties with the Texas style chili for my husband's favorite meal so far.

For Alabama we made the pecan pie at http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pecan-pie/Detail.aspx.  I used two cups of pecans though.   Much more expensive, but also a much better ratio of pecans to goo.   The filling was very buttery tasting and not too sweet - really excellent!.

Missouri and Maine

Two inventions from Missouri - toasted ravioli and ice cream cones!   The story about the latter is that an ice cream vendor at the St. Louis World's Fair ran out of bowls, and the waffle vendor next door rolled up a waffle to use for the ice cream instead.  For those that have never had them, toasted ravioli are basically breaded ravioli that are then deep fried.   We baked them in a hot oven instead.   I have to admit that I've never been a big fan of the ones that I've had in restaurants, but I actually liked the ones that we made at home.  Perhaps because we went lighter on the bread crumbs and didn't fry them.

I remembered part way through making the ice cream cones (without an actual waffle cone machine), that I've never had much luck trying to make cookies that are shaped after baking.   I'm afraid the cones didn't work too well either.   They tasted good, but it's really not worth trying at home without the right equipment.

Two foods strongly associated with Maine are lobster and wild blueberries.   Living in New England, I actually make lobster rolls now and then.   Unfortunately, lobsters are rather pricey right now, and frankly, I just didn't feel like dealing with them.   So we bought some freshly made lobster ravioli, which we did not toast, to enjoy with our toasted ravioli.   And we made yummy wild blueberry sorbet to go with our homemade ice cream cones.

Michigan and Arkansas

This counts as our junkiest (in a good way) meal yet.   Our main dish from Michigan was the Coney Dog, invented in Jackson, MI.   It's a hot dog, with a particular meat sauce, chopped onions, and yellow mustard.   We learned a new cooking technique making the sauce.   The ground beef gets sauteed with water, which results in a very fine texture for the ground beef.  You pour off the water and fat after it is cooked.  Good to know.  Here's the recipe we used for the Coney sauce http://reliableanswers.com/kitchen/coney_island_sauce.asp.

Arkansas is, apparently, all about cheese dip.  There's even a short documentary about it (which I haven't yet watched) called "In Queso Fever (A Movie About Cheese Dip)".    There are lots of recipes out there for cheese dip, but we went with the classic.   A pound of Velveeta microwaved with a 10oz can of Rotel tomatoes with green chiles.   What could be bad?!   I used the leftover dip the next night to make baked mac 'n cheese.

For dessert we made Rice Krispie treats.  Which actually worked for both states, since Arkansas is the biggest producer of rice in the U.S., and Kelloggs (producer of Rice Krispies) is in Michigan.

Texas and Florida

Yay!  These two states were the easiest to come up with a menu for so far.   Texas, of course, means Texas style chili.   It is their official state dish.   Texans believe that "chili con carne" should be what the name says - peppers with meat.   No beans, cubes of beef, and no tomatoes.   It is ok to eat it on rice.  

We made the recipe at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/True-Texas-Chili-355049 using guajillo peppers (Penzeys Spices has them).   It's a bit of work - you have to soak the dried peppers, seed them, and then make a paste in the blender with the other spices.   Not difficult, just time consuming.    We concluded that the result was worth it.

Texas also has an official state bread called Pan de Campo.   Which translates as "camp bread".   There are a ton of variations, but it is basically a baking powder bread traditionally cooked over a campfire.   Many times in a Dutch oven, but sometimes in a skillet with lard.    We made it in a Dutch oven in our indoor oven since we don't have an appropriate setup for making a campfire in our backyard.  It ends up being pretty much a giant biscuit, but that's a good thing :-).

For Florida we made key lime pie.   It's not an official state symbol, but it should be!   We served it with genuine Florida strawberries, which, happily, are in prime season right now.

Wisconsin and Iowa

Apparently people in Wisconsin really like beer.  The favorite dish seems to be bratwurst cooked in beer, and their favorite soup is beer-cheese soup.   We wanted to make pork for an entree for Iowa since it is the number one producer of pork in the U.S.   So we skipped the brats and made the beer-cheese soup.    I'm sorry to say that it was not a hit.  It wasn't terrible, but we didn't particularly like it either.   We did think that it was fun that it is eaten topped with popcorn.

Wisconsin is the number one producer of cranberries in the U.S., so we made a cranberry-apple chutney (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/cranberry-apple-and-ginger-chutney-recipe/index.html) to go with our pork tenderloin.  We liked the chutney :-).

To find out what to make for Iowa, I emailed a friend who's family is from there.   She sent me her grandmother's recipe for Norwegian Kringla.   I remember her grandmother fondly, so I am happy to have the recipe!   Kringla are a pretzel shaped biscuit/butter cookie.  My friend reports that they are so popular in Iowa that they are sold on the counters in gas stations.   We liked them too!  After the first batch was in the oven, my daughter decided they looked too plain and started putting colored sugar on them.  The recipe is below.

Grandma Hill's Kringla recipe

1/2 cup butter

1 C sugar

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

1 C buttermilk

3 C flour

 

Mix all together.  Refrigerate for awhile.  Roll out (teaspoonful at a time) to make a pencil-thick rope.  Dough is a bit sticky...use flour!  Roll into approx 8" lengths and shape into pretzel shapes.  Bake at 450 degrees until just a tiny bit light brown.  About 7 or 8 minutes.  They do rise a bit so they end up being sort of filled in...not the big holes like the mall pretzels have - and are great with a little butter...they also keep well.

Minnesota & California

Wild rice is the state grain of Minnesota, and I happened to have some from there, so that was a must on our menu.   We also wanted to tie in the large Norwegian influence in the state.  The two Norwegian dishes most mentioned for Minnesota are lutefisk and lefse.  Somehow we thought we'd prefer the lefse, a dessert flatbread made from mashed potatoes and served with butter and sugar, over the lutefisk made from dried fish.  Go figure.   We made the lefse recipe at http://visualrecipes.com/recipe-details/recipe_id/113/Lefse/.   Actually, we made a half recipe and totally regret it - we should have made more!

 California is known for produce and nuts.  Particularly artichokes, avocados, garlic, olives, grapes, raisins, pistachios, almonds and walnuts.   We couldn't use all of those, but we threw almonds and golden raisins into our wild rice pilaf, and made chicken stuffed with artichokes, olives, and Monterey Jack cheese for the entree.   Monterey Jack cheese is really from Monterey, CA.   We also bought a sourdough to represent San Francisco, but unfortunately forgot to serve it.  We did enjoy it for breakfast the next day at least. 

Kansas and Oregon

Ah, the wheat fields of Kansas, whose nickname is "the Sunflower State".  Our first cooking project was the Sunflower Wheat bread recipe from the Kansas Wheat Commission http://www.kswheat.com/recipes.php?id=66.   We made the dough in our bread machine as the recipe says, but we don't love the texture it produces, so we baked it in the oven instead.  The bread recipe called for cracked wheat (bulgur), and I had to buy a big bag of it, so we also made the bulgur recipe on the back of the bag as a side dish.

The other thing people think of for Kansas is Kansas City BBQ.  We made the KC sauce recipe at
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001634712.  It was fairly spicy with a tablespoon of black pepper in it!   Not too spicy though, and really good on chicken.



Newport, Oregon has declared itself "Dugeoness Crab Capitol of the World".   Quite a title.  Normally I would never thought of having dungeoness crab for our meal, but I happened to spot it at Costco last week.  It turns out it is high season for them, so we went for it.   I made a crab salad with lime dressing as an appetizer.  We also had blackberries, a major crop in Oregon, for dessert.

Nevada and West Virginia

At first glance, what stands out about Nevada are the amazing buffets in Las Vegas.  It would have been great fun to prepare a big buffet and invite lots of friends, but we just didn't have time.   On second glance, what appears is the influence of Basque Sheephearders in Northern Nevada.  Who knew?   Anyway, we decided to make Basque lamb stew for our main dish.

All of the recipes for Basque lamb stew boiled down to two basic variations.  One contained lamb, roasted red peppers, wine and paprika.  The other was more of a basic stew with lamb, some herbs and root vegetables.  I'm guessing the first is more authentic, but we went for the second since we wanted to include vegetables in the stew.

It turned out to be very easy to find a food particular to West Virginia.  Or least a food that we hadn't heard of before.   Pepperoni rolls (http://www.bobheffner.com/pepperoniroll/index.htm) are a popular snack in there.  There are a lot of variations, but the basic roll is white bread dough with pepperoni rolled up inside and baked.   What could be bad?!

The pepperoni rolls were embarrassingly easy to make.  We took a shortcut and used frozen bread dough.   After cutting it into 12 pieces, we flattened each piece and put 3-4 slices of pepperoni on it.   Roll up jellyroll style, pinch the ends shut and place on a lined or greased cookie sheet.   We then let them rise, and brushed them with a mixture of butter, egg and sugar before baking.  Definitely a hit!

Colorado & Nebraska

Kool-Aid was invented in Nebraska.  We didn't have any for our state dinner, but it's an interesting story: http://www.hastingsmuseum.org/koolaid/kahistory.htm
  
Nebraska and Colorado are both beef eating states (think Omaha Steaks).  Grilled steak was our choice for an entree.  The obvious accompaniment would be potatoes, but we've already done potatoes (for Idaho).   Plus, grilling steak isn't much of a family project - we needed a side dish that was a little more effort.  Nebraska's nickname is "The Cornhusker State", and green chiles are a popular theme for food in Colorado.    So we made green chile-cheddar polenta to go with our steak.

I'm not going to post a polenta recipe, but basically we made polenta and added grated cheddar, chopped green chiles, and some pepper.  We refrigerated it for a couple of hours (actually, we put it outside to chill since it was 26 degrees outside) and then cut it in squares and heated it in a cast iron skillet.

We also discovered that Nebraska is the biggest producer of popcorn.  That led to toffee-caramel popcorn for dessert.  The recipe made a lot, but the leftover popcorn didn't last long at our house :-).