North American Regional Cuisine - Mid-Atlantic States

Introduction

This week our focus was on the cuisine of the Mid-Atlantic states. We cooked two menus of food, which were comprised of the following:

Menu 1

• Beets, Belgian Endive and Feta Salad
• Scallops, Mushrooms and Asperagus
• Shaker style turkey cutlet
• Croquette Potatoes
• Potatoes Parmentier
• Green Beans
• Spaghetti Squash
• Ginger pound cake with warm cranberries

Menu 2

• Navy Bean Soup
• Waldorf Salad
• Sauteed Soft Shell Crabs on Fennel Salad
• Braised Short Ribs
• Buttered Homemade Noodles
• Red Swiss Chard and Spinach Sauté

Observations

For our first menu, due to lucky market conditions we used white asperagus for the scallop and mushroom dish. This added an extra visual flare to the dish although the flavour was the same as green asperagus. The Belgian endive salad was flavourful and quite a refreshing dish. Overall Chef commented that our presentation and taste was good, although we overcooked the pound cake on the first try and had to make it again, resulting in late service.

When discussing the second menu, Chef made the point that while the menu included soft shelled crab, it was not an ingredient that would be locally available and thus likely never served in our area. As a comparison, we made the dish with frozen soft shelled crab, and then prepared some fresh live dungeoness crab as well. The texture and flavour of the fresh crab was obviously quite superior and there was very little comparison to be made between the two. For our homemade noodles we used whole wheat flour instead of white flour for a twist, and while the noodles turned out well, they were slightly chewy. This could be a result of over mixing, or simply a difference caused by the whole wheat flour. Again, our presentation and flavours were good for the second menu.