In addition to importing and trading the finest specialty foods from all over the world, cities like New York and Philadelphia have had the past influence of Dutch, [59] Italian, German, [60] Irish, [61] [62] British, [63] and Jewish cuisines, [64] and that continues to this day. Baltimore has become the crossroads between North and South, a distinction it has held since the end of the Civil War.
A global power city , [65] New York City is internationally known for its extremely diverse and cosmopolitan dining scene and possesses the entire world spectrum of dining options within its city limits.
Some of my Favorite German Cookbooks in English- Make German Food at Home!
Some of the most exclusive and prestigious restaurants and nightclubs in the world are headquartered in New York City [66] and compete fiercely for good reviews in the Food and Dining section of The New York Times , online guides, and Zagat's , the last of which is widely considered the premier American dining guide, published yearly and headquartered in New York City. Many of the more complicated dishes with rich ingredients like Lobster Newberg , waldorf salad , vichyssoise , eggs benedict , and the New York strip steak were born out of a need to entertain and impress the well to do in expensive bygone restaurants like Delmonico's and still standing establishments like the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel , and today that tradition remains alive as some of the most expensive and exclusive restaurants in the country are found in this region.
Since the first reference to an alcoholic mixed drink called a cocktail comes from New York State in , it is thus not a surprise that there have been many cocktails invented in New York and the surrounding environs. Even today New York City bars are noted for being highly influential in making national trends. Cosmopolitans , Long Island iced teas , Manhattans , Rob Roys , Tom Collins , Aviations , and Greyhounds were all invented in New York bars, and the gin martini was popularized in New York in speakeasies during the s, as evidenced by its appearance in the works of New Yorker and American writer F.
Like its neighbor Philadelphia , many rare and unusual liquors and liqueurs often find their way into a mixologist's cupboard or restaurant wine list. New York State is the third most productive area in the country for wine grapes, just behind the more famous California and Washington. It has AVA 's near the Finger Lakes, the Catskills, and Long Island, [68] and in the Hudson Valley has the second most productive area in the country for growing apples, making it a center for hard cider production, just like New England.
Since their formative years, New York City , Philadelphia , and Baltimore have welcomed immigrants of every kind to their shores, and all three have been an important gateway through which new citizens to the general United States arrive. Even in colonial days this region was a very diverse mosaic of peoples, as settlers from Switzerland, Wales, England, Ulster, Wallonia, Holland, Gelderland, the British Channel Islands, and Sweden sought their fortune in this region.
The original Dutch settlers of New York brought recipes they knew and understood from the Netherlands and their mark on local cuisine is still apparent today: Crab cakes were once a kind of English croquette, but over time as spices have been added they and the Maryland crab feast became two of Baltimore's signature dishes; fishing for the blue crab is a favorite summer pastime in the waters off Maryland , New Jersey , and Delaware where they may grace the table at summer picnics. Other mainstays of the region have been present since the early years of American history, like oysters from Cape May, the Chesapeake Bay, and Long Island, and lobster and tuna from the coastal waters found in New York and New Jersey, which are exported to the major cities as an expensive delicacy or a favorite locavore's quarry at the multitude of farmer's markets, very popular in this region.
In the winter, New York City pushcarts sell roasted chestnuts, a delicacy dating back to English Christmas traditions, [80] and it was in New York and Pennsylvania that the earliest Christmas cookies were introduced: Germans introduced crunchy molasses based gingerbread and sugar cookies in Pennsylvania, and the Dutch introduced cinnamon based cookies, all of which have become part of the traditional Christmas meal. After the s, new groups began to arrive and the character of the region began to change. There had been some Irish from Ulster prior to , however largely they had been Protestants with somewhat different culture and often a different language than the explosion of emigrants that came to Castle Garden and Locust Point in Baltimore in their masses starting in the s.
The Irish arrived in America in a rather woeful state, as Ireland at the time was often plagued by some of the worst poverty in Europe and often heavy disenfranchisement among the masses: In addition, they were the first to face challenges other groups did not have: They faced prejudice for their faith and the cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore were not always set up for their needs.
For example, Catholic bishops in the U. Unsurprisingly, many Irishmen also found their fortunes working as longshoremen, which would have given their families access to fish and shellfish whenever a fisherman made berth, which was frequent on the busy docks of Baltimore and New York. Though there had been some activity in Baltimore in founding a see earlier by the Carroltons, the Irish were the first major wave of Catholic worship in this region, and that meant bishops and cardinals sending away to Europe for wine.
Part of the Catholic mass includes every parishioner taking a sip of wine from the chalice as part of the Eucharist. Taverns had existed prior to their emigration to America in the region, though the Irish brought their particular brand of pub culture and founded some of the first saloons and bars that served stout and red ale ; they brought with them the knowledge of single malt style whiskey and sold it. The Irish were the first immigrant group to arrive in this region in massive millions, and these immigrants also founded some of the earliest saloons and bars in this region, of which McSorley's is an example.
It was also in this region that the Irish introduced something that today is a very important festival in American culture that involves a large amount of food, drink, and merry making: In England and Wales, where prior immigrants had come from, the feast of All Hallows Eve had died out in the Reformation , dismissed as superstition and excess having nothing to do with the Bible and often replaced with the festival of Guy Fawkes Night.
Other immigrant groups like the Germans preferred to celebrate October 31 as Reformation Day , and after the American Revolution all of the above were less and less eager to celebrate the legacy of an English festival when they had fought a very bloody war to leave the British Empire. The Catholicism of the Irish demanded attendance at church on November 1 and charity and deeds, not just faith, as a cornerstone of dogma, and many of their older traditions survived the Reformation and traveled with them.
Naturally, they went door-to-door to collect victuals for masked parties as well as gave them out, like nuts to roast on the fire, whiskey, beer, or cider, and barmbracks ; they also bobbed for apples and made dumb cakes. Later in the century they were joined by Scots going guising , children going door-to-door to ask for sweets and treats in costume. From the Mid Atlantic this trend spread to be nationwide and evolved into American children trick-or-treating on October 31 wearing costumes and their older counterparts having wild costume parties with lots of food and drink like caramel apples , candy apples , dirt cakes , punch , cocktails , cider both alcoholic and non , pumpkin pie , candy corn , chocolate turtles , peanut brittle , taffy , tipsy cake , and copious buckets full of candy; children carving jack-o-lanterns and eating squash derived foods derive from Halloween's heritage as a harvest festival and from Irish and Scottish traditions of carving turnips and eating root vegetables at this time of year.
Their bobbing for apples has survived to the present day as a Halloween party classic game, as has a variation on the parlor game of trying to grab an apple hanging from the ceiling blindfolded: Immigrants from Southern Europe, namely Sicily , Campania , Lazio , and Calabria , appeared between and in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Maryland hoping to escape the extreme poverty and corruption endemic to Italy; typically none of them spoke English, but rather dialects of Italian and had a culture that was more closely tied to the village they were born in than the high culture only accessible to those who could afford it at this time; many could not read or write in any language.
They were employed in manual labor or factory work but it is because of them that dishes like spaghetti with meatballs , New York—style pizza , calzones , and baked ziti exist, and Americans of today are very familiar with semolina based pasta noodles. Their native cuisine had less of an emphasis on meat, as evidenced by dishes they introduced like pasta e fagioli and minestrone , but the dishes they created in America often piled it on as a sign of wealth and newfound prosperity since for the first time even cheap cuts of it were affordable: New York—style hot dogs came about with German speaking emigrants from Austria and Germany, particularly with the frankfurter sausage and the smaller wiener sausage.
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Today, the New York—style hot dog with sauerkraut , mustard, and the optional cucumber pickle relish is such a part of the local fabric, that it is one of the favorite comestibles of New York City. Hot dogs are a typical street food sold year round in all by the most inclement weather from thousands of pushcarts. As with all other stadiums in Major League Baseball they are an essential for New York Yankees and the New York Mets games though it is the local style of preparation that predominates without exception. Hot dogs are also the focus of a televised eating contest on the Fourth of July in Coney Island, at Nathan's Famous , one of the earliest hot dog stands opened in the United States in A summertime treat, Italian ice , began its life as a lemon flavored penny lick brought to Philadelphia by Italians; its Hispanic counterpart, piragua , is a common and evolving shaved ice treat brought to New York City by Puerto Ricans in the s.
Unlike the original dish which included flavors like tamarind, mango, coconut, piragua is evolving to include flavors like grape, a fruit not grown in Puerto Rico. Taylor ham , a meat delicacy of New Jersey , first appeared around the time of the Civil War and today is often served for breakfast with eggs and cheese on a kaiser roll, the bread upon which this is served was brought to the area by Austrians in the second half of the nineteenth century and is a very common roll for sandwiches at lunchtime, usually tipped with poppyseeds.
This breakfast meat is generally known as pork roll in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, and Taylor ham in northern New Jersey. Other dishes came about during the early 20th century and have much to do with delicatessen fare, set up largely by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who came to America incredibly poor.
Most often they were completely unable to partake in the outdoor food markets that the general population utilized as most of the food for sale was not kosher. The influence of European Jewry before their destruction in the Holocaust on modern mid Atlantic cooking remains extremely strong and reinforced by their many descendants in the region. American-style pickles , now a common addition to hamburgers and sandwiches, were brought by Polish Jews, and Hungarian Jews brought a recipe for almond horns that now is a common regional cookie, diverting from the original recipe in dipping the ends in dark chocolate.
New York—style cheesecake has copious amounts of cream and eggs because animal rennet is not kosher and thus could not be sold to a large number of the deli's clientele. New York inherited its bagels and bialys from Jews, as well as Challah bread. Pastrami first entered the country via Romanian Jews, and is a feature of many sandwiches, often eaten on marble rye, a bread that was born in the mid-Atlantic. Whitefish salad , lox , and matzoh ball soup are now standard fare made to order at local diners and delicatessens, but started their life as foods that made up a strict dietary code.
Like other groups before them, many of their dishes passed into the mainstream enough so that they became part of diner fare by the end of the 20th century, a type of restaurant that is now more numerous in this region than any other and formerly the subject matter of artist Edward Hopper. In the past this sort of establishment was the haven of the short order cook grilling or frying simple foods for the working man.
Today typical service would include regional staples like beef on weck , Manhattan clam chowder , the club sandwich , Buffalo wings , Philadelphia cheesesteak , the black and white cookie , shoofly pie , snapper soup , Smith Island cake , grape pie , milkshakes , and the egg cream , a vanilla or chocolate fountain drink with a frothy top and fizzy taste. As in Hopper's painting from , many of these businesses are open 24 hours a day. Midwestern cuisine today covers everything from Kansas City-style barbecue to the Chicago-style hot dog , though many of its classics are very simple, hearty fare.
Mostly this region was completely untouched by European and American settlers until after the American Civil War , and excepting Missouri and the heavily forested states near the Great Lakes was mainly populated by nomadic tribes like the Sioux , Osage , Arapaho , and Cheyenne. As with most other American Indians tribes, these tribes consumed the Three Sisters of beans, maize, and squash, but also for thousands of years followed the herds of bison and hunted them first on foot and then, after the spread of mustangs from the Southwest due to the explorations of conquistadors, on horseback, typically using bow and arrow.
There are buffalo jumps dating back nearly ten thousand years and several photographs and written accounts of trappers and homesteaders attesting to their dependence on the buffalo and to a lesser degree elk. After nearly wiping out the elk and bison to nothingness, this region has taken to raising bison alongside cattle for their meat and at an enormous profit, making them into burgers and steaks.
This region today comprises the states near the Great Lakes and also the Great Plains; much of it is prairie with a very flat terrain where the blue sky meets a neverending horizon. Winters are bitterly cold, windy, and wet. Often that means very harsh blizzards especially near the Great Lakes where Arctic winds blow off of Canada and where the ice on rivers and lakes freezes reliably thick enough for ice hockey to be a favorite pastime in the region and for ice fishing for pike , walleye and panfish to be ubiquitous in Minnesota , Wisconsin , and Michigan , where they often there after become part of the local tradition of the fish fry.
Population density is extremely low away from the Great Lakes and very small towns dominated by enormous farms are the rule with larger cities being the exception. Detroit , Cleveland , St. Louis , Cincinnati , Indianapolis , Milwaukee , Minneapolis and her twin sister city across the river St. Paul dominate the landscape in wealth and size, owing to their ties with manufacturing, finance, transportation, and meatpacking. Smaller places like Omaha , Tulsa , and Kansas City make up local capitals, but the king of them all is Chicago , third largest city in the country.
Non-American Indian settlement began here earlier than anywhere else in the region, and thus the food available here ranges from the sublime to the bizarre. As with all of the Midwest, the primary meats here are beef and poultry, since the Midwest has been raising turkeys , chickens , and geese for over a hundred and fifty years; chickens have been so common for so long that the Midwest has several native breeds that are prized for both backyard farming and for farmer's markets, such as the Buckeye and Wyandotte ; one, Billina, appears as a character in the second book of the Oz series by L.
Favorite fruits of the region include a few native plants inherited from Native American tribes like the pawpaw and the American persimmons are also highly favored. As with the American South, pawpaws are the region's largest native fruit, about the size of a mango, and are often found growing wild in the region come September, whereafter they are made into preserves and cakes and command quite a price at farmer's markets in Chicago.
Other crops inherited from the Native Americans include wild rice , which grows on the banks of lakes and is a local favorite for fancy meals and today often used in stuffing for Thanksgiving. Typical fruits of the region are cold weather crops. Once it was believed that the region had winters that were far too harsh for apple growing, but then a breeder in Minnesota came forth with the Wealthy apple and thence came forth the third most productive region for apple growing in the land, with local varieties comprising Wolf River , Enterprise, Melrose , Paula Red , Rome Beauty , Honeycrisp , and the world-famous Red Delicious.
Cherries are important to Michigan and Wisconsin grows many cranberries , a legacy of earlyth-century emigration of New England farmers. Crabapple jelly is a favorite condiment of the region. The influence of German, Scandinavian, and Slavic peoples on the northern portion of the region is very strong; many of these emigrated to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois in the 19th century to take advantage of jobs in the meatpacking business as well as being homesteaders.
Bratwurst is a very common sausage eaten at tailgate parties for the Green Bay Packers , Chicago Bears , or Detroit Lions football teams and is often served boiled in lager beer with sauerkraut, different than many of the recipes currently found in Germany. Polish sausage, in particular a locally invented type of kielbasa , is an essential for sporting events in Chicago: Chicago today has approximately , speakers of Polish and has had a population of that description for over a hundred years.
Poles that left Poland after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the descendants of earlier immigrants still make all of the above and such comestibles are common in local diners and delis as result. In Cleveland, the same sausage is served in the form of the Polish boy: In Cincinnati, where the Cincinnati Reds play, the predilection for sausage has a competitor in Cincinnati chili , invented by Macedonian immigrants: In the Midwest and especially Minnesota, [91] the tradition of the church potluck has become a gathering in which local foods reign, and so it has been since the era of the frontier: Next to that is the booyah , a thick soup made of a number or combinations of meat, vegetables, and seasonings that is meant to simmer on the stove for up to two days.
Lefse , traditionally a Scandinavian flatbread, has been handed down to descendants for over a hundred years and is common on the table. Behind that is the venison, a popular meat around the Great Lakes and often eaten in steaks, sandwiches, and crown roasts for special events. Last on the table are the dessert bars and most especially the brownies: Further South, barbecue has its own style in places in Kansas and St.
Louis that are different to the South and the American West. Kansas City and St. Louis were and remain important hubs for the railroad that connected the plains with the Great Lakes and cities farther east, like Philadelphia. Louis area, Omaha, and Kansas City had huge stockyards, waystations for cattle and pigs on their way East to the cities of the coast and North to the Great Lakes.
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Louis-style barbecue favors a heavy emphasis on a sticky sweet barbecue sauce. Its standbys include the pork steak , a cut taken from the shoulder of the pig, grilled, and then slowly stewed in a pan over charcoal, crispy snoots, a cut from the cheek and nose of the pig that is fried up like cracklin and eaten dipped in sauce, pork spare ribs , and a mix of either beer boiled bratwurst or grilled Italian derived sausage, flavored with fennel.
Dessert is usually something like gooey butter cake , invented in the city in the s. Kansas City-style barbecue uses several different kinds of meat, more than most styles of American barbecue- turkey, mutton, pork, and beef just to name a few- but is distinct from St. Louis in that the barbecue sauce adds molasses in with the typical tomato based recipe and typically has a more tart taste. Traditionally, Kansas City uses a low-and-slow method of smoking the meat in addition to just stewing it in the sauce. It also favors using hickory would for smoking and continual watering or layering of the sauce while cooking to form a glaze; with burnt ends this step is necessary to create the "bark" or charred outer layer of the brisket.
When referring to the American South as a region, typically it should indicate Southern Maryland and the states that were once part of the Old Confederacy , with the dividing line between the East and West jackknifing about miles west of Dallas, Texas, and mostly south of the old Mason—Dixon line. These states are much more closely tied to each other and have been part of US territory for much longer than states much farther west than East Texas, and in the case of food, the influences and cooking styles are strictly separated as the terrain begins to change to prairie and desert from bayou and hardwood forest.
This section of the country has some of the oldest known foodways in the land, with some recipes almost years old. Native American influences are still quite visible in the use of cornmeal as an essential staple [] and found in the Southern predilection for hunting wild game, in particular wild turkey , deer , woodcock , and various kinds of waterfowl ; for example, coastal North Carolina is a place where hunters will seek tundra swan as a part of Christmas dinner; the original English and Scottish settlers would have rejoiced at this revelation owing to the fact that such was banned amongst the commoner class in what is now the United Kingdom, and naturally, their descendants have not forgotten.
Catfish are often caught with one's bare hands , gutted, breaded, and fried to make a Southern variation on English fish and chips and turtles are turned into stews and soups. European influence began soon after the settlement of Jamestown in and the earliest recipes emerged by the end of the 17th century. Specific influences from Europe were quite varied, and remain traditional and essential to the modern cookery overall.
German speakers often settled in the Piedmont on small farms from the coast, and invented an American delicacy that is now nationally beloved, apple butter , based on their recipe for apfelkraut, and later introduced red cabbage and rye. From the British Isles, an enormous amount of influence was bestowed upon the South, specifically foodways found in 17th- and 18th-century Ulster , the borderlands between England and Scotland, the Scottish Highlands , portions of Wales , the West Midlands and Black Country.
Often ships' manifests show their belongings nearly always included cookpots or bakestones and seed stock for plants like peaches , plums , and apples to grow orchards which they planted in their hundreds. Each group brought foods and ideas from their respective regions. In time they came up with a method for distilling a corn mash with added sugar and aging in charred barrels made of select hardwoods, which created a whiskey with a high proof. This gave birth to American whiskey and Kentucky bourbon , and its cousins moonshine and Everclear. Closer to the coast, 18th-century recipes for English trifle turned into tipsy cakes , replacing the sherry with whiskey and their recipe for pound cake , brought to the South around the same time, still works with American baking units: Pork is the popular choice for Southern style barbecue and features in other preparations like sausages and sandwiches.
For most Southerners in the antebellum period , corn and pork were staples of the diet. Country ham is often served for breakfast and cured with salt or sugar and hickory-smoked. Desserts in the South tend to be quite rich and very much a legacy of entertaining to impress guests, since a Southern housewife was and to a degree still is expected to show her hospitality by laying out as impressive a banquet as she is able to manage.
American style sponge cakes tend to be the rule rather than the exception as is American style buttercream, a place where Southern baking intersects with the rest of the United States. Nuts like pecan and hickory tend to be revered as garnishes for these desserts, and make their way into local bakeries as fillings for chocolates. In Louisiana, cooking methods have more in common with rustic French cuisines of the 17th and 18th century than anything ever found at the French court in Versailles or the bistros of 19th- and 20th-century Paris; this is especially true of Cajun cuisine.
Cajun French is more closely related to dialects spoken in Northern Maine , New Brunswick , and to a lesser degree Haiti than anything spoken in modern France, and likewise their terminology, methodology, and culture concerning food is much more closely related to the styles of these former French colonies even today.
Unlike other areas of the South, Cajuns were and still are largely Catholics and thus much of what they eat is seasonal; for example pork is an important component of the Cajun boucherie a large community event where the hog is butchered, prepared with a fiery spice mix, and eaten snout to tail but it is never consumed in the five weeks of Lent, when such would be forbidden.
Cajun cuisine tends to focus on what is locally available, historically because Cajuns were often poor, illiterate, independent farmers and not plantation owners but today it is because such is deeply imbedded in local culture. Boudin is a type of sausage found only in this area of the country, and it is often by far more spicy than anything found in France or Belgium. Chaudin is unique to the area, and the method of cooking is comparable to the Scottish dish haggis: Crayfish are a staple of the Cajun grandmother's cookpot, as they are abundant in the bayous of Southern Louisiana and a main source of livelihood, as are blue crabs , shrimp , corn on the cob, and red potatoes, since these are the basic ingredients of the Louisiana crawfish boil.
New Orleans has been the capital of Creole culture since before Louisiana was a state; this culture is that of the colonial French and Spanish that evolved in the city of New Orleans, which was and still is quite distinct from the rural culture of Cajuns and dovetails with what would have been eaten in antebellum Louisiana plantation culture long ago. Cooking to impress and show one's wealth was a staple of Creole culture, which often mixed French, Spanish, Italian, German, African, Caribbean and Native American cooking methods, producing rich dishes like oysters bienville , pompano en papillote , and even the muffaletta sandwich.
However, Louisiana Creole cuisine tends to diverge from the original ideas brought to the region in ingredients: Andouille is often used, but not the andouille currently known in France, since French andouille uses tripe whereas Louisiana andouille is made from a Boston butt , usually inflected with pepper flakes, and smoked for hours over pecan wood. Other ingredients that are native to Louisiana and not found in the cuisine of modern France would include rice, which has been a staple of both Creole and Cajun cooking for generations, and sugarcane, which has been grown in Louisiana since the early s.
Ground cayenne pepper is a key spice of the region, as is the meat of the American alligator , something settlers learned from the Choctaws and Houma. The maypop plant has been a favorite of Southerners for years; it gives its name to the Ocoee River in Tennessee, a legacy of the Cherokees, and in Southern Louisiana it is known as liane de grenade, indicating its consumption by Cajuns. It is a close relative of the commercial passionfruit , similar in size, and is a common plant growing in gardens all over the South as a source of fresh summertime fruit.
African influences came with slaves from Ghana , Benin , Mali , Congo , Angola , Sierra Leone , Nigeria , and other portions of West Africa, and the mark they and their descendants have made on Southern food is extremely strong today and an essential addition to the Southern table. Crops like okra , sorghum , sesame seeds , eggplant , chili peppers , and many different kinds of melons were brought with them from West Africa along with the incredibly important introduction of rice to the Carolinas and later to Texas and Louisiana , whence it became a staple grain of the region and still remains a staple today, found in dishes like Hoppin John , purloo, and Charleston red rice.
Other crops, like sugar cane , kidney beans , and certain spices would have been familiar to slaves through contact with British colonies in the Caribbean; Southern plantation owners could and did buy slaves from slave ports and seasoning camps in Havana , San Juan , Port au Prince , Kingston , Bridgetown and Willemstad.
African cooks, mostly the women, knew that braising ham hocks flavors collard greens , and this dish remains unchanged after almost years of cooking it and also is often accompanied by black eyed peas , an African crop they would have known before slavery. Other recipes certainly brought by Africans involve peanuts, as evidenced by the local nickname for the legume in Southern dialects of American English: Certain portions of the South often have their own distinct subtypes of cuisine owing to local history and landscape: The Spanish Crown had control of the state until the early 19th century and used the southern tip as an outpost to guard the Spanish Main beginning in the s, but Florida kept and still maintains ties with the Caribbean Sea , including the Bahamas Haiti , Cuba , Puerto Rico , the Dominican Republic , and Jamaica.
South of Tampa, there are and have been for a long time many speakers of Caribbean Spanish , Haitian French , Jamaican Patois , and Haitian Creole and each Caribbean culture has a strong hold on cooking methods and spices in Florida. In turn, each mixes and matches with the foodways of the Seminole tribe and Anglophone settlers. Thus, for almost years, Floridian cooking has had a more tropical flavor than any other Southern state. Allspice , a spice originally from Jamaica , is an ingredient found in spice mixes in summer barbecues along with ginger , garlic , scotch bonnet peppers , sea salt, and nutmeg; in Floridian cooking this is often a variant of Jamaican jerk spice.
Coconuts are grown in the areas surrounding Miami and are shipped in daily through its port for consumption of the milk, meat, and water of the coconut. Bananas are not just the yellow Cavendish variety found in supermarkets across America: The second has a red peel and an apple like after taste, and the third and fourth are used as a starch on nearly every Caribbean island as a side dish, baked or fried: Mangoes are grown as a backyard plant in Southern Florida and otherwise are a favorite treat coming in many different shapes in sizes from Nam Doc Mai , brought to Florida after the Vietnam War, to Madame Francis , a mango from Haiti.
Sweetsop and soursop are popular around Miami, but nearly unheard of in other areas of the South. Citrus is a major crop of Florida, and features at every breakfast table and every market with the height of the season near the first week of January. Hamlin oranges are the main cultivar planted, and from this crop the rest of the United States and to a lesser extent Europe gets orange juice. Other plantings would include grapefruits , tangerines , clementine oranges , limes , and even a few more rare ones, like cara cara navels , tangelos , and the Jamaican Ugli fruit. Tomatoes , bell peppers , habanero peppers , and figs, especially taken from the Florida strangler fig , complete the produce menu.
Blue crab , conch , Florida stone crab , red drum , dorado , and marlins tend to be local favorite ingredients. Dairy is available in this region, but it is less emphasized due to the year round warmth. Traditional key lime pie , a dessert from the islands off the coast of Miami, is made with condensed milk to form the custard with the eye wateringly tart limes native to the Florida Keys in part because milk would spoil in an age before refrigeration.
Pork in this region tends to be roasted in methods similar to those found in Puerto Rico and Cuba, owing to mass emigration from those countries in the 20th century, especially in the counties surrounding Miami. Ptarmigan , grouse , crow blackbirds, dove, ducks and other game fowl are consumed in the United States. In the American state of Arkansas , beaver tail stew is consumed in Cotton town.
Cooking in the American West gets its influence from Native American and Hispanophone cultures, as well as later settlers that came in the 19th century: Texas, for example, has some influence from Germany in its choice of barbecue by using sausages. Another instance can be found in the Northwestern region, which encompasses Oregon , Washington , and Northern California. All of the aforementioned rely on local seafood and a few classics of their own.
Here, the terrain is mostly temperate rainforest on the Coast mixed with pine forest as one approaches the Canada—US border inland. One of the core favorite foodstuffs is Pacific salmon , native to many of the larger rivers of the area and often smoked or grilled on cedar planks. In Alaska , wild game like ptarmigan and moose meat feature extensively since much of the state is wilderness.
Fresh fish like steelhead trout , Pacific cod , Pacific halibut , and pollock are fished for extensively and feature on the menu of many restaurants, as do a plethora of fresh berries and vegetables, like Cameo apples from Washington state, the headquarters of the U. Hazelnuts are grown extensively in this region and are a feature of baking, such as in chocolate hazelnut pie, an Oregon favorite, [] and Almond Roca is a local candy.
This region is also heavily dominated by some notable wineries producing a high quality product, with Sonoma found within this region as well as the newer vinicultural juggernauts of Washington State, like the Yakima Valley. The first plantings of vineyards in the United States began many miles to the South on the Pacific coast in what is now San Diego , because the Franciscan friars that settled Alta California required wines they could use for their table and for the Eucharist, and the variety they planted, the mission grape , is still available on a limited basis. Today, French, Spanish, and Italian varietals are sold by the hogshead , and much of the area directly north of San Francisco is under vine, in particular Pinot noir , Garnacha , and Ruffina and several Tuscan varietals.
Like its counterpart on the opposite coast to the East, there is a grand variety of shellfish in this region. Geoducks are a native species of giant clam that have incredibly long necks, and they are eaten by the bucket full as well as shipped to Asia for millions of dollars as they are believed to be an aphrodisiac. Gaper clams are a favorite food, often grilled or steamed in a sauce, as is the native California abalone , which although protected as a food source is a traditional foodway predating settlement by whites and today features heavily in the cooking of fine restaurants as well as in home cooking, in mirin-flavored soups the influence of Japanese cooking is strong in the region noodle dishes and on the barbecue.
Olympia oysters are served on the half shell as well as the Kumamoto oyster , introduced by Japanese immigrants and a staple at dinner as an appetizer. California mussels are a delicacy of the region, and have been a feature of the cooking for generations: Crabs are a delicacy, and included in this are Alaskan king crab , red crab , yellow crab , and the world-famous Dungeness crab.
Californian and Oregonian sportsmen pursue the last three extensively using hoop nets, and prepare them in a multitude of ways. Favorite grains are mainly wheat, and the region is famous for sourdough bread. Today it is home of a large population of Native Americans , Hispanos , descendants of the American frontier , Asian Americans , and immigrants from Mexico and Latin America ; California, New Mexico, and Texas continue to hold their unique identities which is reflected in their distinct regional cuisines, the multiple cuisines of California , New Mexican cuisine , Texan cuisine , and Tex-Mex.
Spanish is a commonly spoken secondary language here, the state of New Mexico has its own distinct dialect. With the exception of Southern California, the signature meat is beef , since this is one of the two regions in which cowboys lived and modern cattle ranchers still eke out their living today. These cuts of meat are different from the related Mexican cuisine over the border in that certain kind of offal, like lengua tongue cabeza head and tripas tripe are considered less desirable and are thus less emphasized.
Typical cuts would include the ribs, brisket, sirloin, flank steak, skirt steak, and t-bone. Historically, Spanish settlers that came to the region found it completely unsuitable to the mining operations that much older settlements in Mexico had to offer as the technology of the age was not yet advanced enough to get at the silver that would later be found in the region.
They had no knowledge of the gold to be discovered in California, something nobody would find until , and knew even less about the silver in Nevada, something nobody would find until after the Civil War. Likewise, settlers learned the cooking methods of those who came before and local tribes as well: In Utah, a state heavily populated by Mormons , alcohol is frowned upon by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints but still available in area bars in Salt Lake City, mainly consumed by the populations of Catholics and other Protestant denominations living there. Introduction of agriculture was limited prior to the 20th century and the development of better irrigation techniques, but included the addition of peaches , a crop still celebrated by Native American tribes like the Havasupai , [] and oranges; today in Arizona , Texas , and New Mexico the favored orange today is the Moro blood orange , which often finds its way into the local cuisine, like cakes and marmalade.
In California, Spanish missionaries brought with them the mission fig: Cuisine in this region tends to have certain key ingredients: Chili peppers play an important role in the cuisine, with a few native to the region such as the New Mexico chile pepper, knows as Hatch, New Mexico and Anaheim ; these still grown by Hispanos of New Mexico and Pueblo.
In New Mexico, chile is eaten on a variety of foods, such as the green chile cheeseburger, made popular by fast food chains such as Blake's Lotaburger. Indeed, even national fast food chains operating in the state, such as McDonald's , offer locally grown chile on many of their menu items. In the 20th century a few more recent additions have arrived like the poblano pepper , rocoto pepper , ghost pepper , thai chili pepper , and Korean pepper, the last three especially when discussing Southern California and its large population from East and South Asia.
Outdoor cooking is popular and still utilizes an old method settlers brought from the East with them, in which a cast iron dutch oven is covered with the coals of the fire and stacked or hung from a tripod: Tortillas are still made the traditional way in this area and form an important component of the spicy breakfast burrito , which contains ham, eggs, and salsa or pico de gallo. They also comprise the regular burrito , which contains any combination of marinated meats, vegetables, and piquant chilis; The smothered burrito, often both containing and topped with New Mexico chile sauces; the quesadilla , a much loved grilled dish where cheese and other ingredients are stuffed between two tortillas and served by the slice, and the steak fajita , where sliced skirt steak sizzles in a skillet with caramelized onions.
Unlike Mexico, tortillas of this region also may incorporate vegetable matter like spinach into the flatbread dough to make wraps , which were invented in Southern California. Food here tends to use pungent spices and condiments, typically chili verde sauce, various kinds of hot sauce , sriracha sauce , chili powder , cayenne pepper , white pepper , cumin , paprika , onion powder , thyme and black pepper. Nowhere is this fiery mix of spice more evident than in the dishes chili con carne , a meaty stew, and cowboy beans , both of which are a feature of regional cookoffs.
German Cooking | Saline Area Historical Society
Southern California has several additions like five spice powder , rosemary , curry powder , kimchi , and lemongrass , with many of these brought by recent immigration to the region and often a feature of Southern California's fusion cuisine, popular in fine dining. In Texas, the local barbecue is often entirely made up of beef brisket or large rib racks, where the meat is seasoned with a spice rub and cooked over coals of mesquite , and in other portions of the state they smoke their meat and peppery sausages over high heat using pecan , apple , and oak and served it with a side of pickled vegetables, a legacy of German and Czech settlers of the late s.
California is home to Santa Maria-style barbecue , where the spices involved generally are black pepper , paprika , and garlic salt , and grilled over the coals of coast live oak. Native American additions may include Navajo frybread and corn on the cob , often roasted on the grill in its husk. A typical accompaniment or appetizer of all these states is the tortilla chip, which sometimes includes cornmeal from cultivars of corn that are blue or red in addition to the standard yellow of sweetcorn, and is served with salsa of varying hotness.
Tortilla chips also are an ingredient in the Tex Mex dish nachos , where these chips are loaded with any combination of ground beef, melted Monterey Jack, cheddar, or Colby cheese, guacamole , sour cream , and salsa, and Texas usually prefers a version of potato salad as a side dish. For alcohol, a key ingredient is tequila: Southern California is located more towards the coast and has had more contact with immigration from the West Pacific and Baja California , in addition to having the international city of Los Angeles as its capital.
Here, the prime mode of transportation is by car. Drive through fast food was invented in this area, but so was the concept of the gourmet burger movement, giving birth to chains like In and Out Burger , with many variations of burgers including chili, multiple patties, avocado, special sauces, and angus or wagyu beef; common accompaniments include thick milkshakes in various flavors like mint, chocolate, peanut butter, vanilla, strawberry, and mango. Smoothies are a common breakfast item made with fresh fruit juice, yogurt, and crushed ice. Agua fresca, a drink originated by Mexican immigrants, is a common hot weather beverage sold in many supermarkets and at mom and pop stands, available in citrus, watermelon, and strawberry flavors; the California version usually served chilled without grain in it.
Soybeans , bok choy , Japanese persimmon , thai basil , Napa cabbage , nori , mandarin oranges , water chestnuts , and mung beans are other crops brought to the region from East Asia and are common additions to salads as the emphasis on fresh produce in both Southern and Northern California is strong. Other vegetables and herbs have a distinct Mediterranean flavor which would include oregano , basil , summer squash , eggplant , and broccoli , with all of the above extensively available at farmers' markets all around Southern California.
Naturally, salads native to Southern California tend to be hearty affairs, like Cobb salad and Chinese chicken salad , and dressings like green goddess and ranch are a staple. California-style pizza tends to have disparate ingredients with an emphasis on vegetables, with any combination of chili oil, prawns, eggs, chicken, shiitake mushrooms, olives, bell pepper, goat cheese, and feta cheese.
Peanut noodles tend to include a sweet dressing with lo mein noodles and chopped peanuts. Fresh fish and shellfish in Southern California tends to be expensive in restaurants, but by no means out of reach of the masses. Every year since the end of WWII, the Pismo clam festival has taken place where the local population takes a large species of clam and bakes, stuffs, and roasts it to their heart's content as it is a regional delicacy.
California sheephead are often grilled and are much sought after by spear fishermen and the immigrant Chinese population, in which case it is basket steamed. Hawaii is often considered to be one of the most culturally diverse U. As a result, Hawaiian cuisine borrows elements of a variety of cuisines, particularly those of Asian and Pacific-rim cultures, as well as traditional native Hawaiian and a few additions from the American mainland.
American influence of the last years has brought cattle, goats, and sheep to the islands, introducing cheese, butter, and yogurt products, as well as crops like red cabbage. From Japan, the concept of serving raw fish as a meal with rice was introduced, as was soft tofu, setting the stage for the popular dish called poke. From Korea, immigrants to Hawaii brought a love of spicy garlic marinades for meat and kimchi. From China, their version of char siu baau became modern manapua , a type of steamed pork bun with a spicy filling.
Each East Asian culture brought several different kinds of noodles, including udon , ramen , mei fun , and pho , and today these are common lunchtime meals. Traditionally, women and men ate separately under the Hawaiian kapu system, a system of religious beliefs that honored the Hawaiian gods similar to the Maori tapu system, though in this case had some specific prohibitions towards females eating things like coconut, pork, turtle meat, and bananas as these were considered parts of the male gods.
Punishment for violation could be severe, as a woman might endanger a man's mana, or soul, by eating with him or otherwise by eating the forbidden food because doing so dishonored all the male gods. As the system broke down after , introductions of foods from laborers on plantations began to be included at feasts and much cross pollination occurred, where Asian foodstuffs mixed with Polynesian foodstuffs like breadfruit , kukui nuts , and purple sweet potatoes.
Some notable Hawaiian fare includes seared ahi tuna, opakapaka snapper with passionfruit, Hawaiian island-raised lamb, beef and meat products, Hawaiian plate lunch , and Molokai shrimp. Tropical fruits equally play an important role in the cuisine as a flavoring in cocktails and in desserts, including local cultivars of bananas , sweetsop , mangoes , lychee , coconuts , papayas , and lilikoi passionfruit. Pineapples have been an island staple since the 19th century and figure into many marinades and drinks. Chicken, pork and corn cooking in a barbecue smoker.
New York—style pizza served at a pizzeria in New York City. Chicago-style deep-dish pizza from the original Giordano's location. The demand for ethnic foods in the United States reflects the nation's changing diversity as well as its development over time. According to the National Restaurant Association ,. Driven by consumer demand, the ethnic food market reached record sales in , and has emerged as the fastest growing category in the food and beverage product sector, according to USBX Advisory Services.
Minorities in the U. A movement began during the s among popular leading chefs to reclaim America's ethnic foods within its regional traditions, where these trends originated. One of the earliest was Paul Prudhomme , who in began the introduction of his influential cookbook, Paul Prodhomme's Louisiana Kitchen , by describing the over year history of Creole and Cajun cooking; he aims to "preserve and expand the Louisiana tradition. Norman Van Aken embraced a Floridian type cuisine fused with many ethnic and globalized elements in his Feast of Sunlight cookbook in The movement finally gained fame around the world when California became swept up in the movement, then seemingly started to lead the trend itself, in, for example, the popular restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
Examples of the Chez Panisse phenomenon, chefs who embraced a new globalized cuisine, were celebrity chefs like Jeremiah Tower and Wolfgang Puck , both former colleagues at the restaurant. Puck went on to describe his belief in contemporary, new style American cuisine in the introduction to The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook:. Another major breakthrough, whose originators were once thought to be crazy, is the mixing of ethnic cuisines.
It is not at all uncommon to find raw fish listed next to tortillas on the same menu. Ethnic crossovers also occur when distinct elements meet in a single recipe. This country is, after all, a huge melting pot. The men had been working outside since early morning and they were hungry! Mother prided herself on learning to cook American dishes, but we often had the old standbys: Cows could only be sacrificed for meat once they stopped producing milk.
Therefore, we seldom had beef on the table. Sometimes Mother stewed an old chicken that was no longer laying eggs. She used the broth to make delicious chicken noodle soup or chicken and dumplings. For religious reasons back in those days, we did not eat meat on Fridays, so vegetable soup and potato pancakes or applesauce over noodles topped with melted butter and dried toast cubes was the order of the day.
Fresh or cooked vegetables from our large garden were served plain, with salt and pepper and perhaps a bit of butter: Nothing but salt, pepper and a little butter was added to vegetables — no cream or cheese sauces of any kind. Occasionally, we had a salad. When dandelion greens or fresh lettuce and tomatoes were in the garden, Mother made a simple dressing of vinegar, oil and sugar or mayonnaise mixed with sugar. Aside from that, we helped ourselves to individual large pieces of fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, which we added to our dinner plate.
We always added a piece of lettuce to a sandwich, but salads were not common practice. Well into the s, my parents had many German friends to whose homes we were invited for Sunday dinner. I do not remember ever having a salad at anyone's home. Germans love smoked bacon and sausages of all kinds but are partial to salami, pork sausage, knackwurst, and hotdogs.
The adults relished pickled herring, sardines, limburger cheese with a slice of onion , and such. We children did everything we could to avoid having to eat such things. Each late fall, we butchered a hog which had been "stuck in the jugular vein" and quickly bled. The blood was captured in a large enamel dish pan, taken into the house while still warm, mixed with copious amounts of sage and other spices, salt, pepper and rice. Pork scraps were cooked and ground prior to adding them to the blood mixture.
This was put into casings, cooked in water, cooled and lightly smoked. It made the most wonderful sausage when fried and served with fried potatoes. I can still taste it. Mother was very particular about what went into blutwurst blood sausage. She would never buy any from a butcher shop; she said she wanted to know what went into it! We did buy head cheese from a family friend who was a butcher by trade. For this, the meat scraps were cured in salt brine, and then cooked in a little water.
After grinding or mincing, many spices were added with the natural gelatin and cooking stock. It was placed in a mold in ice water and then refrigerated. We children avoided eating this wiggly stuff that contained "floating things" actually, the dried spices , but adults loved it with buttered rye bread and coffee.
For a snack that could be carried in one's pocket out in the field, there was smoked and dried landj'ger literally, hunter's sausage. It was similar to, but much better than, toda's beef sticks. And, we always had desserts: A handful of walnuts and apfelschnitz dried apple slices was another treat. Mother's sister Rosa lived in a farming community in New York State.
As a 5-year old, I remember being at her house when she was making springerle. It's a 2-day job to prepare the dough, chill it, and roll out the cookies with a special rolling pin that has pictures carved into it. After that, the cookies had to rest overnight in a cool place. She placed them on cookie sheets stacked on a table, just inside the doorway that led to the upstairs bedrooms where we children slept.
It took a lot of will power to walk past the butter, egg, and anise aroma on the way to bed! We knew if we snitched one, we would be in trouble. Another task I recall her doing was slicing and slowly drying a few apples on a rack at the back of her woodstove. Day after day, she turned the slices and added a few more. Those that were sufficiently dried went into a clean white cotton flour bag.
She started in the early fall as soon as apples came in. We could depend on Aunt Rosa to send springerle and appleschnitz. Oh my, I could smell the treats through the wrappings! This was a BIG box of several dozen cookies and a large white cotton flour sack about half filled with the dried apples. We probably ate the springerle shortly after receiving them, but the bag of apples minus a few handfuls was taken up the long stairway and tied to the attic clothesline.
Periodically, Mother would bring a few apple slices downstairs for snacking. Technically, drying the apples was a way to preserve them for baking, though they had to be reconstituted before using them in a pie. However in our house, they never lasted long enough to go into a pie! At Saline's Rentschler Farm Museum where I am a volunteer, we interpret the farmhouse as a family might have had it during the Depression Era of the s. An important component of our historical society's mission is to show visitors how German-American farm families lived at that time.
Special Events at the museum call for cooking on the old gas stove, a s Hostess model made by the Detroit Stove Works. It is a thrill to cook on it. Our goal is to show how the farmwife could put a substantial meal on the table for her family, even though times were hard during the Depression. And we also show that delicious German-American desserts could satisfy family and friends when made from ingredients found on the farm. Our efforts exemplify that farm families were both self-sufficient and frugal.
Oftentimes, I make bean soup so the aroma permeates the house when visitors walk through the front door. The oven is unreliable but if watched carefully, we can turn out a beautifully roasted chicken, biscuits, or even a pie or two. Occasionally, one of our good museum friends demonstrates how pork sausage is made. Out comes the big cutting board, where his daughter cuts pork into chunks prior to grinding.
Then, he attaches the very large hand-cranked meat grinder to the table. Salt, pepper, sage and perhaps a little ginger and nutmeg are worked in. The sausage stuffer gently forces the ground meat into natural casings and like magic, we have pork sausage for breakfast!