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 :-).