Askov Fair and Rutabaga Festival

There are festivals galore dedicated to corn or apples, seafood or sausage, and we’re all for them, but c’mon, how often do you get to attend a festival that celebrates the lowly rutabaga?  That’s what the town of Askov, Minnesota does each year and this year’s festival is taking place this very weekend (8/27/10 – 8/29/10).

It’s too late for the parade but there’s still plenty of time to enjoy the exhibits and crafts, museums, dancing, contests, live bands, and tonight’s fireworks.  Best of all, in our book, is the food, led by the famous æbleskiver & rutabaga sausage stand.  Æbleskivers are little Danish baked pancakes, more spherical than flat, served with jam.  Rutabaga sausage is, well… your guess is as good as ours but we assume pork sausage that incorporates the root vegetable.  Both sound interesting and delicious.  There’ll also be fair food both common, like corn dogs, and more regional, such as cheese curds, brats, and pork chops.  And there will also be a beer garden.  The festival closes with tomorrow morning’s pancake and sausage breakfast, put on by the Lions.

For more info, see the Askov Fair and Rutabaga Festival website, where you’ll also see recipes for all sorts of rutabaga delicacies, such as Rutabaga Pudding and Ontario Rutabaga Spice Cake.

Potato Feast Days

The 51st annual Potato Feast Days (2010), held in Houlton, Maine, wraps up today.  The area around Houlton was once a major potato-growing region (and is less so today), and the Feast celebrates the local crop with potato sack races, a Mr. Potato Head decorating contest, a potato-peeling contest, games of hot potato, potato-picking contests, and a cooking contest to find the best potato salad.  There’s even something called a Potato Barrel Rolling contest; who knew there was such a thing as potato barrels?  There’s a road rally scheduled for today (Sunday).

The town of Houlton is far north of the popular Maine coast, at the border with New Brunswick, Canada.

The Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival

Nicknamed “Ohio’s Eatingest Festival,” the annual Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival began this morning, and will continue through Saturday.  The good stuff starts right away, with both the Bratwurst Eating Contest and the Ice Cream Eating Contest scheduled for this afternoon.  Tomorrow’s gluttony includes the Pizza Eating Contest and the Cream Puff Eating Contest.  There will be bands and parades, pageants and dancing, arts and crafts, rides and beer gardens, and even a stein auction.  And of course there will be plenty of brats in every form imaginable, and some forms you’ve probably never even considered, like brat pizzas, brat casseroles, and brat sundaes.  We trust grilled and bunned versions will also be plentiful for all you traditionalists.  Admission to the fest is free.  The town is Bucyrus, Ohio.  The dates: 8/19/10 through 8/21/10.

It’s Easy Being Green in New Mexico

Chile in New Mexico is unlike chili anywhere else in the country, and it goes beyond that trailing vowel.  Most of us think of chili as a spicy beef stew, sometimes containing beans, and seasoned with ground chilis and other things.  In New Mexico, chile, the dish, is a celebration of chile, the state vegetable.  At its most elemental it is little more than the pureed fresh pod, perhaps seasoned with some garlic and salt.  This is green chile, and it is used more as a sauce than a stew.  And that is the stuff that came out on top in the Roadfood.com poll which asked, What's Your New Mexico Chile Preference?

Cook the dried pods into a sauce and you have New Mexico red chile, a very different but no less delicious concoction than the more celebrated green chile.  You will often be asked in a New Mexico restaurant what kind of chile you want on the dish you ordered.  Some will answer “Christmas,” and that means you want both!

Those who responded that they haven’t yet tried chile and would like to find out for themselves which they prefer will have the opportunity to do so on September 17 and 18, by snagging one of the few remaining tickets to this year’s Roadfood Eating Tour of New Mexico.  A word of warning: New Mexico chile is like a drug.  Once tried, you’ll find yourself craving the substance for the rest of your life.

The State Fair of West Virginia

Fairlea is the site of this year’s (2010) 86th annual State Fair of West Virginia, which began a few days ago and will continue through this Saturday, the 21st.  Some of the highlights include the Rib Showdown, to be held Tuesday, August 17; Moo U, which is a 50-minute tour that gives participants an up-close look at production livestock; Heritage Village, with a blacksmith shop, grist mill, sawmill, and thrashing machines; and the Open Horse Show which begins each day at 5PM.  Unfortunately, Tuesday’s attempt to construct the world’s largest cup of lemonade had to be canceled due to a scheduling conflict with the Guinness people.  Lady Antebellum is sold out for Thursday night, but tickets are still available for Jason Aldean on Wednesday, Hinder Friday, and a bull riding show to close out the fair Saturday.

Fair food available in past years  included pepperoni rolls, apple dumplings, BBQ ribs, cinnamon rolls, country ham, pork steaks, pulled pork, catfish, roasted corn, fried green tomatoes, rib eye steak sandwiches, Paul Bunyan sandwiches (?), brown beans (pinto beans simmered with fatback) and cornbread, and chicken with baked potato, slaw, and calico beans.  A nice local spin.

Fair admission is $10/$5 for kids, with discounts for those entering after 5PM during the week, and unlimited carnival rides options starting at $20.

The Ploye Festival is Upon Us

The picture above is buckwheat in the fields outside of Fort Kent, Maine, a small town in the northernmost part of Aroostook County where U.S. Route 1 ends (or begins, depending on which sign you believe). Buckwheat is the main ingredient in the locally-loved crepe known as a ploye; and the reason I bring up this topic now is that Fort Kent’s annual Ploye Fest and Muskie Derby is next weekend, August 13-15. I was there last year and it was a heap of fun and good eating: not just ployes, but ployeboys, which supposedly were created by the American Legion when they ran out of makings for doughboys. Instead, they deep fried ployes and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar:

If you attend, you will have an opportunity to watch townsfolk cook the world largest ploye, then eat some of it:

And if you’re in the area, even at a time other than during the Ploye Festival, you will have a chance to eat magnificent ployes at the nearby Roadfood-recommended Long Lake Sporting Club as well as at nearly every good restaurant and diner in the area.

Delaware State Fair

The first state fair of summer has already started, and will continue through this Saturday, July 31st.  There’s still time to catch today’s Livestock Extravaganza, tomorrow’s Dairy Goat Milking Contest, harness racing on Thursday, or Saturday’s Bigger, Better Burger Contest.

The Delaware fair has some particularly good chicken, roasted or grilled by community groups and churches, served with local corn, and some fine scrapple can be enjoyed, too.  And don’t forget to take advantage of the many farm stands you’ll encounter on the return drive from the fair up the peninsula.  We always arrive home with a trunk filled with gorgeous, ripe fruits and vegetables.

Rodney Atkins is performing tonight, The Beach Boys play on Thursday (if you consider Mike Love The Beach Boys), and Jason Aldean closes out the fair Saturday.  And of course there’s a carnival to satisfy all of your motion sickness needs.  Fair admission is $6; concerts will run you $25-35 a ticket.  The fairgrounds are located in Harrington.  For more info, check out the Delaware State Fair website.

2010 New Orleans Roadfood Festival – Part 6

Chris and Amy did a masterful job with their descriptions of the Friday night Roadfood party, and our dinner at Galatoire’s afterwards.  We don’t have a lot to add.  Mostly photos.

Daylight was fading, and we have an oldish camera that takes poor low-light photos, so none of our shots of the presentation to the Uglesich’s are suitable for posting.  The Uglesich’s were very touched by the Blue Plate Award they received, and so richly deserve.  It was nice to see.  The party was mostly outdoors in the courtyard, and the weather was just right.  So was the food.  We had a chance to sample some Cincinnati chili, T-Boy’s cracklins, some crawfish boil, the bread pudding, the warm, freshly made pralines, and Bud Royer’s pies, but we missed most of the other good-looking food – a combination of being busy talking to folks, and our late lunch at Parkway Tavern.  But those cracklins!  They were amazing!  And we were very impressed with the seafood boil cake.  We heard it was actually cut up and eaten.  We wouldn’t have had the heart to do that.

As the party was winding down, Chris suggested we all head to dinner at Galatoire’s (Roadfood.com review).  Sue said she wouldn’t eat a thing but would join in.  It must have been the manic walk from the party, along Bourbon Street on a Friday night (is there a more incongruous pairing than Bourbon St. and Galatoire’s?), and the Sazeracs upstairs in the bar, or maybe the memory of our previous Galatoire’s meal was still vivid, because by the time we sat down for dinner, Sue’s appetite had returned.  Bruce and Tony Bad’s appetites needed no flogging.  The noise level in the downstairs dining room was just astounding.  Anyone who’s been to a 1970s Slade concert will have about the right idea.  There was much table-to-table visiting, and anyone with a well-defined sense of personal space might have found the situation difficult.  Tony, in particular, was a good sport, as he was seated back-to-back with one particularly popular diner.  That table was filled with very English professory looking English professors, in town for  the Tennessee Williams fest.  On the other side of us: Judy Rushmore and her daughter (and Stephen’s sister) Cindy, who had the same idea!

Our waiter didn’t ask us what we wanted.  He told us what he’d bring.  The crabmeat and shrimp were excellent, but the oysters en brochette, pictured above, was the star of the show (that meaty, not-oystery looking thing in the photo is bacon).  For our main courses our waiter laid out the fish, preparation, and garnish options, and brought some nice asparagus with hollandaise, and Brabant potatoes.

That’s Bruce’s drum with crabmeat pictured above.

Those crispy potato cubes are the Brabants.  Below, one bread pudding, five forks:

The food, the company, the energy of Galatoire’s, all made for a grand time.  As we walked back to our hotel we wondered: would our appetites return in time for Saturday’s festivities?  Nah, we didn’t really think about that at all… we knew we’d be in fighting form tomorrow.

New Orleans Roadfood Festival: The Arrival

Visiting New Orleans must always include a number of must-stops for us, and as soon as we got to the hotel, we made a beeline for Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. We ordered a half muffuletta, grabbed a bag of Zapp’s Voodoo potato chips, and strolled down to Jackson Square for an impromptu picnic. One of our Top 5 sandwiches of all time, their muffuletta always elicits the same discussion between us: “What makes this so good? The excellent bread? The imported meat and cheese? The incredible olive salad?” Every bite was a glorious experience, bolstered by the spicy crunch of the chips. And the people-watching was hysterical, since there always seems to be some crazies yelling at each other for no discernable reason: true local color.

We met Bruce & Sue to walk over to the Opening Party at the historic Boucvalt House, where we found Tony Bad already slurping down oysters on the half shell. Amid appetizers from Cinncinnati’s Camp Washington Chili, Mobile’s Brick Pit BBQ, and Louisiana’s T-Boy’s Slaughterhouse, we found said oysters, pecan pie, and amazing pralines made fresh in front of us. After a few words of thanks from Stephen Rushmore, Jr., Jane & Michael Stern awarded the inaugural Blue Plate Award to Anthony and Gail Uglesich, whose humble café has been a Roadfood landmark for decades. After the party dispersed, a small, intrepid group wined and dined in fabulous style at Galatoire’s, chronicled in this post. The high percentage of butter coursing through our veins made sleep arrive quickly, while we all surely dreamed of things yet to come on Saturday.

2010 New Orleans Roadfood Festival – Part 5

We rolled out of bed late Friday morning and walked the block to Majoria’s Commerce for breakfast.  It looked promising.  But it was too late for breakfast!  They were on to lunch.  I had a backup ready – Stanley.

If the keys to a successful business are location, location, location, then Stanley satisfies all three conditions: it’s situated in the French Quarter at a corner of Jackson Square.  It’s chef-chef Scott Boswell’s downscale (sorta) answer to his rarified and pricey Stella! (exclamation point his).  Thing is, serious chefs have a hard time truly doing downscale.  They take the food seriously.  It’s in their genes.  And lucky for us, because we think Stanley is one of the best spots for breakfast in the city!  What’s good?  How about…

…Breaux Bridge Benedict, which piles boudin, cheese, and poached eggs on toasted bread, and it’s all topped with Creole hollandaise laced with smoked ham.  Or…

… an Omelet Sandwich, which puts the eggs, along with smoked ham and bacon, cheese, grilled onions, and spicy mayonnaise, between two perfectly toasted slices of whole-grain bread.  They’re trying to come off as an upscalish diner, but the food is just too good for that.  The eggs are perfectly poached, the hollandaise is the real thing, made by folks who know what they’re doing, the smoked ham is full of flavor, the boudin is from Charlie T’s… even the breakfast potatoes are a dozen cuts above standard.  Prices might seem a tad high for this type of food, but not for this level of quality.

After breakfast, we headed up to the art museum to check out the sculpture garden next door.  On our last visit, we tried but found it closed for renovations.  When we got to town this time we read that it had just reopened days ago.  And it’s spectacular – highly recommended for a beautiful day.

Lunch – late today, just an hour or two before the start of the official Roadfood festivities – was at what is probably New Orleans favorite po-boy shop…

…Parkway Bakery & Tavern.  The shop is a non-stop po-boy party!  There’s a dark bar up front, and behind that, a helter-skelter collection of rooms that lead to choice outdoor dining and counters and tables, complete with hanging bags of liquid (water? We were told but we forget) with pennies in them – something about keeping bugs away.  Who knows.  The most important info is that the po-boys are superb.  We ordered a roast beef, and a fried shrimp po-boy:

Please believe us: the photos don’t do these po-boys justice.  We’d rate these sandwiches about a half a point behind the perfect specimens at Parasol’s, but these are truly world-class, nonetheless.  They’re certainly some of the most generously filled po-boys you are likely to see in this city of generously filled everything.  The beef is a sandwich in name only – you have to tear off pieces of bread and grab at beef and garnishes as if you are eating pita and hummus.  You could make a second po-boy with the shrimp that fall out of your shrimp po-boy, and these shrimp are huge, they taste like shrimp, and they are cooked not a second too long.

And there’s something about dining outside here, sloppy po-boys and ice-cold Barq’s in hand, that reminds us of our favorite shoreline dining spots.  Not sure quite why that is, but it does.  Much fun!

Take it, ayersian!