Midwesterners' Guide -- Indigenous Foods and Local Color

Indigenous Foods and Local Color

New Jersey is called the Garden State with good reason -- it supplies something like 150 different comestibles to people on the Eastern Seaboard. Jersey's most celebrated produce includes tomatoes, sweet corn, strawberries, blueberries, cranberries and peaches. Peaches! Before I moved here, I certainly never thought, "Oh, New Jersey -- home of sweet, juicy, world-famous peaches." In fact, though, peaches are one of New Jersey's most important crops, and we rank fourth nationally in peach production, according to the Star-Ledger.

With all those fresh foods, roadside stands and farmers' markets are popular. I go to the farmers' market that's held in Morristown on Sundays, and I find all sorts of great stuff there. This morning I had a peach from the market for breakfast, tonight I made nectarine ice cream with fruit from the market, and my late-night snack was a tomato ... from the market. I think the goods are fairly priced and generally of great quality. I also like the social aspect of these markets; you won't find people more relaxed and friendly anywhere in North Jersey than at a farmers' market.

Some people like to go right to the orchards and berry patches and pick their own fruit. I ran across this website that lists pick-your-own sites in New Jersey. It claims to list places only in Central and South Jersey, but it includes several North Jersey farms, as well. (Look for the 201 area code in the phone number.)
Of course, there's always the supermarket, when local produce is out of season. Among the markets I go to, King's and ShopRite generally have the best-quality produce. King's is good for gourmet exotica; ShopRite gets extra points for carry lots of foods used in Latin American and Caribbean cooking; it also has a decent selection of organic fruits and vegetables. (The selection varies dramatically from one store to the next, reflecting the ethnic groups that live nearby.)

Local color

Back in Fargo, the local colors, god bless 'em, were beige and off-white. Lefse, julekage, lutefisk, rommegrot ... all beige. In North Jersey, the local color is, well ... not so beige. Local supermarkets here (the better ones) carry plenty of Latin American, Italian, Portuguese and Jewish foods, and probably others. Each store seems to cater to a slightly different group of people. I don't have a clue about a lot of these foods -- is there a right way to cook pigeon peas? -- but my food vocabulary has changed considerably.

Taralles are among the foods I eat now -- they are, approximately, Italian pretzels, small fennel-flavored cracker rings. (If you find someone in Fargo who knows about taralles, ask if they know me. I've sent lots of them to my friends there.) And there are bolos levedos -- Portuguese raisin muffins. And plantanos, which are available in Fargo, though not so compelling there. Plantanos are a sort of starchy banana that are great fried. And gauva paste, which is a bit too sweet for my taste unless it's wrapped in a piece of muenster cheese. Then it's a real treat.

In general, I buy a lot of canned goods in the Latin American section of the supermarket. There's a popular local brand, Goya (the company is located in Secaucus), that I like. Goya offers good average-quality goods that are priced considerably lower than the same goods would be in another part of the market. The tradeoff is that some of the beans may be broken, or a few garbanzos may have escaped their skins. Unless I'm having the head chef of Lutèce over for dinner, though, those aesthetic issues aren't important to me. Taste is, and Goya's fine.

I also like to go to an Asian market, Maxim's, on Route 46 West in Parsippany, two towns over from where I live. Fresh produce is much cheaper there than at the supermarkets, and you'll find a great variety of East Asian foodstuffs. Bergen County also is known for its high-quality East Asian markets (there's a large and popular shopping complex in Edgewater, I'm told), and my friend Sunita says that there's a commercial area on Oak Tree Road in Edison that's very much like being in India.

A Special Word About Italian Dishes

North Jersey is home to many, many Italian-Americans whose families came from southern Italy and Sicily, and the landscape is lousy with Italian eateries. Southern Italian pronunciations are different from what is taught at universities and what Jessye Norman is likely to sing at the Met. Here are a couple of observations that may help you to sound more like a local, or at least to understand your server more clearly: Final syllables often are dropped, and the letter C often sounds like a hard G. Ricotta, which I've always pronounced rih-COT-tuh, is pronounced rih-GUTT. Cavatelli, which I'd have pronounced cav-uh-TELL-ee, is pronounced gav-uh-DEEL. Manicotti isn't man-uh-COT-ee; it's man-uh-GOTT. Calzones aren't cal-ZOH-nees; they're cal-ZOANS. You get the picture.

One of the truly indigenous foods of New Jersey is the Newark-style or Italian-style hot dog. It's a hot dog or Italian sausage on a roll of sorts with fried onions, red and green bell peppers and potatoes. They may have mustard and catsup, or a red marinara-style sauce, too, and they're huge, and pretty wonderful if you can overlook their health implications. These sandwiches are sometimes called "belly burners," which should give you some idea of how they stack up to the traditional Midwestern Oscar Meyer-on-Wonderbread.

Midwestern Foods I Miss

Well, I do miss all that beige food. I've been known to smuggle unseemly amounts of lefse back from Mother Dakota. I've brought back rosettes and sandbakkles, carefully packed and lovingly toted to ensure their survival. I miss real wild rice -- the stuff that's a dusty green and has been hand-harvested by Ojibwe people in canoes. (I especially miss it when I see what the paddy-grown rice goes for here.) For a long time I missed the mozzarella and cottage cheese. The mozzarella here is undoubtedly more authentic, but it wasn't to my taste. I miss lovely, cheap Jennie-O turkey franks. And I miss good cilantro and industrial-sized bottles of salsa. (There are relatively few Mexican-Americans here, and not so many Tex-Mex restaurants as you'd expect, so these foods, which seem like staples to me, aren't plentiful. The cilantro generally looks like it was smuggled in by burro from someplace six days away.) On the whole, though, I've done just fine with the foods that are available in Jersey. I'm certainly not quibbling with all the terrific choices we do have here!

back to Eating and Drinking in Jersey

Oh, I suppose this material is ©1997, 1998 Shewi.
Most recently updated: 12 August 1998.

	Indigenous Foods and Local Color
	New Jersey is called the Garden State with good reason -- it supplies something like 150 different comestibles to people on the Eastern Seaboard. Jersey's most celebrated produce includes tomatoes, sweet corn, strawberries, blueberries, cranberries and peaches. Peaches! Before I moved here, I certainly never thought, "Oh, New Jersey -- home of sweet, juicy, world-famous peaches." In fact, though, peaches are one of New Jersey's most important crops, and we rank fourth nationally in peach production, according to the Star-Ledger. With all those fresh foods, roadside stands and farmers' markets are popular. I go to the farmers' market that's held in Morristown on Sundays, and I find all sorts of great stuff there. This morning I had a peach from the market for breakfast, tonight I made nectarine ice cream with fruit from the market, and my late-night snack was a tomato ... from the market. I think the goods are fairly priced and generally of great quality. I also like the social aspect of these markets; you won't find people more relaxed and friendly anywhere in North Jersey than at a farmers' market. Some people like to go right to the orchards and berry patches and pick their own fruit. I ran across this website that lists pick-your-own sites in New Jersey. It claims to list places only in Central and South Jersey, but it includes several North Jersey farms, as well. (Look for the 201 area code in the phone number.) Of course, there's always the supermarket, when local produce is out of season. Among the markets I go to, King's and ShopRite generally have the best-quality produce. King's is good for gourmet exotica; ShopRite gets extra points for carry lots of foods used in Latin American and Caribbean cooking; it also has a decent selection of organic fruits and vegetables. (The selection varies dramatically from one store to the next, reflecting the ethnic groups that live nearby.) Local color Back in Fargo, the local colors, god bless 'em, were beige and off-white. Lefse, julekage, lutefisk, rommegrot ... all beige. In North Jersey, the local color is, well ... not so beige. Local supermarkets here (the better ones) carry plenty of Latin American, Italian, Portuguese and Jewish foods, and probably others. Each store seems to cater to a slightly different group of people. I don't have a clue about a lot of these foods -- is there a right way to cook pigeon peas? -- but my food vocabulary has changed considerably. Taralles are among the foods I eat now -- they are, approximately, Italian pretzels, small fennel-flavored cracker rings. (If you find someone in Fargo who knows about taralles, ask if they know me. I've sent lots of them to my friends there.) And there are bolos levedos -- Portuguese raisin muffins. And plantanos, which are available in Fargo, though not so compelling there. Plantanos are a sort of starchy banana that are great fried. And gauva paste, which is a bit too sweet for my taste unless it's wrapped in a piece of muenster cheese. Then it's a real treat. In general, I buy a lot of canned goods in the Latin American section of the supermarket. There's a popular local brand, Goya (the company is located in Secaucus), that I like. Goya offers good average-quality goods that are priced considerably lower than the same goods would be in another part of the market. The tradeoff is that some of the beans may be broken, or a few garbanzos may have escaped their skins. Unless I'm having the head chef of Lutèce over for dinner, though, those aesthetic issues aren't important to me. Taste is, and Goya's fine. I also like to go to an Asian market, Maxim's, on Route 46 West in Parsippany, two towns over from where I live. Fresh produce is much cheaper there than at the supermarkets, and you'll find a great variety of East Asian foodstuffs. Bergen County also is known for its high-quality East Asian markets (there's a large and popular shopping complex in Edgewater, I'm told), and my friend Sunita says that there's a commercial area on Oak Tree Road in Edison that's very much like being in India. A Special Word About Italian Dishes North Jersey is home to many, many Italian-Americans whose families came from southern Italy and Sicily, and the landscape is lousy with Italian eateries. Southern Italian pronunciations are different from what is taught at universities and what Jessye Norman is likely to sing at the Met. Here are a couple of observations that may help you to sound more like a local, or at least to understand your server more clearly: Final syllables often are dropped, and the letter C often sounds like a hard G. Ricotta, which I've always pronounced rih-COT-tuh, is pronounced rih-GUTT. Cavatelli, which I'd have pronounced cav-uh-TELL-ee, is pronounced gav-uh-DEEL. Manicotti isn't man-uh-COT-ee; it's man-uh-GOTT. Calzones aren't cal-ZOH-nees; they're cal-ZOANS. You get the picture. One of the truly indigenous foods of New Jersey is the Newark-style or Italian-style hot dog. It's a hot dog or Italian sausage on a roll of sorts with fried onions, red and green bell peppers and potatoes. They may have mustard and catsup, or a red marinara-style sauce, too, and they're huge, and pretty wonderful if you can overlook their health implications. These sandwiches are sometimes called "belly burners," which should give you some idea of how they stack up to the traditional Midwestern Oscar Meyer-on-Wonderbread. Midwestern Foods I Miss Well, I do miss all that beige food. I've been known to smuggle unseemly amounts of lefse back from Mother Dakota. I've brought back rosettes and sandbakkles, carefully packed and lovingly toted to ensure their survival. I miss real wild rice -- the stuff that's a dusty green and has been hand-harvested by Ojibwe people in canoes. (I especially miss it when I see what the paddy-grown rice goes for here.) For a long time I missed the mozzarella and cottage cheese. The mozzarella here is undoubtedly more authentic, but it wasn't to my taste. I miss lovely, cheap Jennie-O turkey franks. And I miss good cilantro and industrial-sized bottles of salsa. (There are relatively few Mexican-Americans here, and not so many Tex-Mex restaurants as you'd expect, so these foods, which seem like staples to me, aren't plentiful. The cilantro generally looks like it was smuggled in by burro from someplace six days away.) On the whole, though, I've done just fine with the foods that are available in Jersey. I'm certainly not quibbling with all the terrific choices we do have here!
	back to Eating and Drinking in Jersey
	Oh, I suppose this material is ©1997, 1998 Shewi. Most recently updated: 12 August 1998.