Fifty-Nifty-United-States

Did everyone have to sing that song at some point in elementary school? It's how I remember the 50 states to this day—all I have to do is start singing "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas..." and soon enough I'll hit the elusive state that's momentarily slipping my mind. In my current class, American Regional Cuisine, we're cooking our way through every state (I sang the song in my head while reading over the syllabus to make sure we weren't missing any).

Obviously, some states are far more exciting than others, and the curriculum is laid out appropriately—for example, Louisiana gets its own day, while the "Central Plains" day represents a whole bunch of culinarily-challenged states. On Mid-Atlantic day last week, my home state of Maryland (and its Chesapeake neighbors) probably got most attention because we bring crab cakes and softshells to the table.

Each day over the next three weeks, we'll talk about a different region and make several recipes from that part of the country. Chef P. has a great system going—our groups rotate tables every day, and table 1 always makes soup and appetizers, table 2 salads, table 3 entrees, table 4 starch and veg, and table 5 bread and dessert.

We were at the sides table for New England day and made this delicious "New England stuffed eggplant"—still not exactly sure how this recipe is indigenous to New England, though. We also roasted some expertly-cut root vegetables (below) and baked a green-bean casserole with fried onions (made from scratch, NOT from a can!) which we plated beautifully with the entree group's broiled bluefish (top photo). Next week I'll take more pictures—I wish I had one of their other entree, lobster-and-cod cakes.


I was disappointed that we ended up at the dessert table for Mid-Atlantic day—I'm already way out of baking mode. We were stuck with applesauce cake (a super-moist and delicious Pennsylvania Dutch recipe) and shoofly pie (kind of like pecan pie minus the pecans, made with molasses—not a huge fan). The tables around us got to tackle softshell crabs, Maryland crab cakes, crab puffs, potato latkes (representing New York's kosher delis), and chicken-and-dumplings (we learned that this dish is actually not indigenous to the South, but to those Pennsylvania Dutch again).

We only have an hour and a half for production in this class, and the time constraint is most difficult for the dessert table. Making a cake and baking it in this amount of time is tough (in fact, for the applesauce cake, almost impossible—it needs an hour and 15 minutes in the oven). That's why there are no pictures of our desserts...in our rush to get them out of the oven and plated for presentation time, I completely forgot to take some. Oh well—at least Chef P. had good things to say in her critique. Looking forward to hitting the entree table tomorrow!