Article published November 17, 2009
Regional dishes reflect local foods, ethnic heritages
By KATHIE SMITH
BLADE FOOD EDITOR
Across America, home cooks are planning their Thanksgiving Day menus with their traditional dishes, many of which reflect each family's ethnic heritage as well as the region in America where they live.
Foods range from cranberries, oysters, and seafood to seasonal vegetables such as pumpkin and squash. Ingredients that are local in certain regions turn up in dishes, including chayote (a member of the squash family) in New Orleans and black walnuts used in pies in the Midwest and East.
I started thinking about Thanksgiving in October when I was in New Orleans for the Association of Food Journalists annual conference.
At the New Orleans Cooking Experience where Creole Cooking classes are given, we learned about southern Louisiana Thanksgiving foods. Chef Frank Brigtsen, chef/co-owner of Brigtsen's restaurant, demonstrated how to cook roast turkey and gravy. "My favorite sauce is gravy - natural pan gravy," he said. "Start with good turkey stock for depth of flavor."
"The key technique is how we treat celery, onion, and green pepper," he said, describing it as a layering of flavor. When sauteed with thyme, basil, and oregano, "it's my favorite smell in the world."
As he was making the stuffing for a casserole to accompany the turkey, he introduced us to the mirliton (pronounced "MILL-ee-tahn"), also known as chayote. You may have seen it in our Ohio stores, but in Louisiana it is a backyard vegetable. Chef Brigtsen said it is a traditional Thanksgiving dish.That day he poached the chayote for 30 to 45 minutes until it was fork-tender, then peeled it with a vegetable peeler. Inside is a seed that is almond-shaped; it is lifted out. He sliced the cooked vegetable lengthwise and then chopped it and added it to the sauteed vegetables and herbs. Then he added shrimp stock, unsalted butter, French bread crumbs, and parmesan cheese and spread the mixture into a sheet pan to bake for 30 to 40 minutes. "Browning gives another dimension of flavor," he said, explaining how he rubs a whole turkey with butter and salt and pepper and puts it on a V-shape rack in a baking pan in a preheated 500-degree oven. Then he immediately lowers the temperature to 325 and roasts the turkey.
Next I watched Poppy Tooker, founder of Slow Food New Orleans and a cooking teacher, demonstrate how to make a perfect brown roux for Seafood Gumbo. "It should be a milk chocolate brown color if you are making gumbo," she told us, noting that the onions then are added to get a bittersweet chocolate brown color. "Each stage has a different aroma and color and flavor."
She said that the most important ingredient was the roux and "the base of everything we cook." Four gumbo crabs (small crabs) and two pounds of shrimp were added to the gumbo.
And over in a third area was Chiqui Collier demonstrating how to make Pecan Pralines and oyster stuffing.
All are regional dishes Louisianans put on their Thanksgiving table.
Once home in Toledo, I tracked down chayote at Fresh Market (it's also sold at San Marcos on Broadway and other stores) and tried to duplicate a stuffing similar to Chef Brigsten's. I discovered that the chayote adds plenty of extra moisture, so the next time I made the stuffing I reduced my stock by half. The chayote squash has a mild flavor that I think gets sweeter the second day in the stuffing.
Knowing that chayote grows in Mexico, is popular in Miami, and elsewhere on Latin American tables, I checked with Lina Barrera, who with her sister-in-law Syndi Guerrero, are well known Toledo cooking instructors who specialize in Mexican foods. Chayote was not a vegetable they grew up with here in Toledo, but friends from Mexico where the vegetable grows introduced them to it and taught them how to use it. It can be used in soups, tacos, salads, and main dishes. It can even be used in empanadas, but it's not necessarily a Thanksgiving dish here.
"Turkey is a celebration dish in Mexico," said Mrs. Barrera. "They make their own mole for turkey." She said that her family has traditional American dishes for Thanksgiving such as Roasted Brussels Sprouts made with Mexican chorizo which is very delicious.
"There are Mexican influences such as rice and salsa. Our dressing or stuffing is influenced by the American Indian. My daughter has perfected the recipe with cornbread and fresh Mexican sausage."
She makes sweet potato casserole and green beans. For a succotash, she uses corn and squash together, often zucchini. But chayote could also be used with salt, pepper, onion, garlic and red bell pepper, said the cooking teacher at Kitchen Tools & Skills.
Another tradition is pumpkin seeds. "We roast and save these to make mole. That's what my grandma did with mole and turkey. She'd grind the seeds for mole," said Mrs. Barrera, noting that enchiladas made with pumpkin and turkey are "our leftovers dish."
On my family's Thanksgiving table, the turkey is surrounded by celery and onion stuffing and a second dish - oyster stuffing. There's the candied sweet potatoes recipe from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, the Brussels sprouts with cheese sauce, and the traditional pumpkin (or winter squash) pie, a recipe I developed from our years in Pennsylvania. The homemade cranberry orange relish from Michigan is a must.
While I make pumpkin, Ohio apple, and Texas pecan pies, I known that black walnut trees are grown in our area and that some folks like to make Black Walnut Pie.
In Cape Cod, you'll find Boston brown bread and maybe cranberry-minced pie. In Miami, it could be a black bean and rice stuffing or baked plantains, and key lime pie for dessert. In Minneapolis, look for wild rice stuffing and corn pudding. San Francisco's sour dough bread is used in stuffing and in Sante Fe, N.Mex. blue corn bread stuffing is not uncommon.
It's all a taste of America.
Kathie Smith is The Blade's food editor.
Contact her at:
food@theblade.com
or 419-724-6155.
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