1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (147 page)

Mail order:
Oregon Mushrooms, tel 800-682-0036,
oregonmushrooms.com
; Northwest Wild Foods, tel 866-945-3232,
nwwildfoods.com
; for huckleberry bushes,
hartmannsplantcompany.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The International Wild Huckleberry Association,
wildhuckleberry.com
(click Recipes, then Wild Huckleberry Cream Pie; Huckleberry Jam; Swedish Pancakes and Huckleberry Sauce);
saveur.com
(search huckleberry crisps);
epicurious.com
(search no-bake fresh fruit pie; huckleberry mostarda).
Tip:
Blueberries, especially if small, can be substituted in most recipes calling for huckleberries, but it will result in some loss of intensity.

A favorite among women that was hailed as an “American drink” in an 1891 issue of
Harper’s Weekly
, carbonated water (soda) was due for a new incarnation in the second half of the nineteenth century. It took a French émigré to think of adding syrup and, in 1874, an ingenious dessert maven of debatable identity to plop in a scoop of ice cream. To the genius who thought of adding creamy milk, the world remains thankful. Thus was the ice-cream soda born: a sparklingly refreshing, richly creamy drink with its frothy bubble head, its sweetly tingling liquid, and the final reward of lusciously softened ice cream to be spooned up between sips.

Once a ubiquitous treat dispensed at the soda fountains of local pharmacies, ice-cream sodas are now harder to find. But in the cafés, diners, and sweet shops where they are featured, a couple of time-honored favorites tend to persist: the “black and white,” made with vanilla ice cream in a chocolate soda, or the “white and black,” vanilla soda with chocolate ice cream. More sophisticated sippers opt for an all-coffee blend of ice cream and syrup, or for a pale blond, purely vanilla drink, or for a mochalike Broadway (chocolate ice cream with coffee syrup). In summer, flavored syrups may be replaced with fresh fruit—strawberry or peach ice-cream sodas are garnished with mashed strawberries or peaches.

At home, in the absence of an array of flavored syrups, the traditional ice-cream soda starts with flavored carbonated drinks: root beer, Coca-Cola, vanilla-scented cream soda, and ginger ale, with or without a trickle of milk, but always, of course, with a generous scoop of ice cream lowered in, and finished with a drizzle of soda. The classic root beer float, also known as a Black Cow, is best made with vanilla ice cream. Avoid the temptation to add a final flourish of whipped cream, which might weigh down the drink’s light bubbliness.

Authenticity demands that the soda overflow as it is poured over the ice cream. Drink first, clean up later.

Where:
In New York
, for floats, Serendipity, tel 212-838-3531,
serendipity3.com
;
in Forest Hills, NY
, Eddie’s Sweet Shop, tel 718-520-8514;
in St. Louis
, Fizzy’s Soda Fountain & Grill, tel 314-395-4550,
fizzyssodafountain.com
; Crown Candy Kitchen, tel 314-621-9650,
crowncandykitchen.net
;
in St. Paul, MN
, Lynden’s Soda Fountain, tel 651-330-7632,
lyndens.com
;
in South Pasadena, CA
, Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, tel 626-799-1414,
fairoakspharmacy.net
.
Further information and recipes:
Soda Fountain Classics
by Elsa Petersen-Schepelern (2001);
cookstr.com
(search root beer ice cream; orange ice cream soda);
food.com
(search fantastic ice cream soda);
foodnetwork.com
(search ice cream sodas garten).

One of the nation’s oldest Catholic churches, Mission San Xavier del Bac on the Tohono O’odham reservation near Tucson, Arizona, is worth a visit. The stark-white adobe building, erected in 1783, boasts renowned examples of Mission, Moorish, Byzantine,
and
Mexican Renaissance design and an impressive collection of murals and statues. And then there’s the matter of its Indian fry bread.

In a parking lot of the desert church, members of the tribe deep-fry irresistible slabs of the simple, knobby, thick bread as they have for hundreds of years. Drizzled with honey or filled with an array of toppings (it’s sometimes sold elsewhere as a Navajo or Indian taco), it is an achingly simple food with a homey, stick-to-your-ribs appeal. But as the bread’s few ingredients attest—water, flour, baking powder, and salt—fry bread isn’t an indigenous food to native communities. Rather, it came about in the nineteenth century, when tribes on the Great Plains were forced to resettle and given government rations, including wheat flour and lard.

The bread has long since taken on a life of its own as an iconic symbol of both repression and independence. Today, it is served at an array of pan-tribal ceremonies and is a great source of pride among groups that persevered through unjust events like the Long Walk. As Indian rock musician Keith Secola sings in his song “Frybread,” “But they couldn’t keep the people down because born to the people was a Frybread Messiah, who said ‘You can’t do much with sugar, flour, lard, and salt. But you can add one fundamental ingredient: love.’”

Where:
Near Tucson, AZ
, Mission San Xavier del Bac, Sunday mornings, tel 520-294-2624,
sanxaviermission.org
;
in Phoenix, AZ
, The Fry Bread House, tel 602-351-2345;
in Denver
, Tocabe, tel 720-524-8282,
tocabe.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Southwest Indian Cookbook
by Marcia Keegan (1987);
foodnetwork.com
(search indian fry bread).

The perfect dish for feeding a large and hungry crowd.

A savory plateful of history, jambalaya may well be one of the very first examples of American fusion cooking. A classic example of some of our very best regional cuisine—that of Creole-Cajun Louisiana—it is a soul-satisfying rice dish in the manner of pilaf, risotto, or paella. Based on short-grain rice, shrimp or crabmeat, spicy andouille sausage, and the even spicier smoked tasso ham, it is aromatic with diced green bell pepper, onion, celery, garlic, perhaps a touch of tomato, and always a heady boost of thyme and bay leaves. Chicken in some form may also be added, whether as meat or cut-up giblets. All simmer together in a flavorful chicken or seafood stock, exchanging juices and flavors for a heady, difficult-to-set-aside result.

Now considered a Cajun dish, jambalaya is credited to several origins. Some say it was derived from the paella of the region’s first Spanish colonists, who included their beloved
jamón
(ham) in what might be a linguistic derivation of jamón-paella. Another theory has the name coming from the Provençal word
jambalaia
, meaning a mishmash. The Cajuns wisely adopted the dish and made it their own, recognizing the appeal of this robust, throw-every-thing-in-the-pot, crowd-pleasing meal.

Whatever its beginnings, jambalaya is a favorite dish on oil rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico, where workers share a similar food culture—including a preference for the unusual addition of black-eyed peas, as in the following recipe.

Serves 10 to 12

1 tablespoon olive oil or unsalted butter

4 slices bacon, diced

3 medium-size onions, peeled and chopped

4 stalks of celery, coarsely diced

1 large green bell pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

½ cup chopped Italian parsley leaves

2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 large bay leaf, finely crumbled

2 teaspoons salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

1½ pounds cooked ham, cut into 1-inch cubes

1½ pounds smoked sausage, such as spicy andouille or mild beef knockwurst, peeled and cut into bite-size chunks

2 cups dried black-eyed peas

2 cups white rice

Dash of Tabasco or pinch of dried red pepper flakes

1.
Heat the olive oil or melt the butter in a large, heavy soup pot over moderate heat. Add the bacon and cook until the edges begin to turn brown, about 7 minutes.

2.
Stir in the onions, celery, bell pepper, garlic, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf and cook over low heat, stirring, until the vegetables wilt and soften but do not turn brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the salt and black pepper.

3.
Add the ham, sausage, black-eyed peas, rice, and Tabasco sauce or red pepper flakes. Then, add enough water to cover, about 6 cups.

4.
Cover the pot and cook the jambalaya over low heat until thickened and all ingredients are soft, 45 minutes to 1 hour, stirring often and adding more water, if necessary, to prevent scorching. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt, black pepper, and Tabasco or red pepper flakes as necessary. Serve the jambalaya very hot. If made in advance and refrigerated, you may need to add more water when reheating. It will keep in the refrigerator for about 5 days.

Where:
In Lafayette, LA
, Randol’s, tel 337-981-7080,
randols.com
; Prejean’s, tel 337-896-3247,
prejeans.com
;
in New Orleans
, K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, tel 504-596-2530,
chefpaul.com/kpaul
;
in New York
, Good Restaurant, tel 212-691-8080,
goodrestaurantnyc.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen
by Paul Prudhomme (1984);
Bill Neal’s Southern Cooking
by Bill Neal (1989);
cookstr.com
(search jambalaya; seafood jambalaya; creole-cajun jambalaya; chicken turkey kielbasa jambalaya).

New England’s oceanfront towns have a reputation for superb Atlantic seafood and iconic chowders, fries, lobster rolls, and clam bakes. But visitors to big-city Boston can find such fare without leaving town—thanks to Jasper White, whose Summer Shack restaurants bring Cape Cod to the home of the Cabots and the Lowells.

It’s not often that a chef trades in white tablecloths for brown butcher paper, or scales down from a high-end, intimate restaurant favored by critics, and even by Julia Child, to a three-hundred-seat glorified clam shack, but that’s exactly what Jasper White did in 2000. The New Jersey Shore native settled in Boston in 1979 and, with chef Lydia Shire, went on to run the dining rooms of the city’s top three historic hotels. White opened his own high-end restaurant, Jasper’s, on the Boston waterfront in 1983, and it quickly became a must-stop for local and visiting connoisseurs hoping to feast on caviar, oysters, and delicate lobster pan roasts. But when the infamous “Big Dig” construction project threatened White’s business, he abruptly shut his doors in 1995 and regrouped. The result was the Summer Shack, a bright, pastel-hued restaurant stuffed with giant lobster tanks and old-fashioned steam kettles, where White switched from caviar and oysters to corn dogs and (yes) oysters. A large, raucous, buzzing, and open-plan restaurant that evokes the outdoor clam joints lining New England’s shores, Summer Shack is a place where diners can almost smell the sea breeze as they enjoy New England seafood classics like chowders, steamers and broth, clam bakes, fish fries, lobsters (steamed and in rolls), baked beans, and all the standbys of such beloved low-tech, sandy-floored places. Joining the seafood is the always outstanding fried chicken—sparklingly crisp, moist within, and almost devoid of grease.

Where:
50 Dalton St., Boston, tel 617-867-9955; 149 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, MA, tel 617-520-9500; 850 Providence Highway, Dedham, MA, tel 781-407-9955; Mohegan Sun Resort & Casino, Uncasville, CT, tel 860-862-9500; for all,
summershackrestaurant.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Summer Shack Cookbook
by Jasper White (2011);
50 Chowders
by Jasper White (2000).