Fertig - Heartland

Heartland text copyright 2011 Judith Fertig. Location photography copyright 2011 Jonathan Chester. Food photography copyright 2011 Ben Pieper. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

E-ISBN: 978-1-4494-0665-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929351

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

Location Photography: Jonathan Chester

Food Photography: Ben Pieper

Design: Julie Barnes and Holly Ogden

Food Stylist: Tina Stamos

Assistant Food Stylists: Richard Garcia and Daniel Trefz

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Front cover: Cross Plains, Wisconsin
Back cover: Midsummers Festival, Lindsborg, Kansas;
Root Beer Funnel Cakes; Green Dirt Farm, Weston, Missouri

For my family and friends, who put the heart in Heartland.

CHAPTER 1
PRAISE AND PLENTY: THE HEARTLAND PANTRY

CHAPTER 2
RISE AND SHINE: BREAKFAST AND BRUNCH

CHAPTER 3
THE HEARTLAND BREADBASKET: BREADS

CHAPTER 4
NIBBLE AND A SIP: APPETIZERS AND DRINKS

CHAPTER 5
GARDEN GATHERINGS: SALADS AND SOUPS

CHAPTER 6
BLUE PLATE SPECIALS: MAIN DISHES

CHAPTER 7
SWEET ENDINGS: DESSERTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSHeartland has been a labor of love right from the start.

Id like to thank everyone who made this project so deliciously fun, incredibly interesting, and amazingly heartfelt. First off, thank you to publisher Kirsty Melville, editor Jean Lucas, art director Julie Barnes, marketing and public relations guru Tammie Barker, and all the team at Andrews McMeel for such a wonderful hands-on opportunity, made possible by the best literary agent on the planet, Lisa Ekus. Then, thank you to photographer Jonathan Chester, who was as brilliant capturing Berkshire pigs in Iowa as he was penguins in Antarctica. Food photographer Ben Pieper and stylist Tina Stamos did a fabulous job, as well.

A big thank-you to Justin Rashid of American Spoon Foods in Michigan, Jonathan Justus of Justus Drugstore in Missouri, Tory Miller of LEtoile in Wisconsin, Kathy and Herb Eckhouse of La Quercia in Iowa, and Sarah Hoffman and John Spertus of Green Dirt Farm in Missouri for being generous with their time in helping me tell the stories behind the food and guiding Jonathan Chester to the photos that help illustrate them.

Thank you, also, to the foodies, farmers, restaurant owners, chefs, Slow Food members, and food artisans who helped point the way: Allen and Mary Schrag, Alvin Brensing, and Frank Reese in Kansas; Jude Becker, Seed Savers Exchange, and Joyce Lock in Iowa; Jenny Britton Bauer and Fred and Linda Griffith in Ohio; Jasper Mirabile, Jane Zieha, Ted Habiger, the Saint Louis Culinary Society, and the Kansas City Barbeque Society in Missouri; John and Dorothy Priske and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board in Wisconsin; Wes Jarrell and Lesley Cooperband, Sarah Stegner, Susan Goss, Andrew Zimmerman, Norm Dinkel Jr., and Weber in Illinois; and Nola Gentry, Larry Oates, and Ron Harris in Indiana.

There are still, thankfully, many Heartland writers who continue to put into words what we think and feel about where we live. My thanks for the quotes in this book go to Willa Cather, Paulette Jiles, Marilyn Kluger, Kit Kiefer, Garrison Keillor, Carrie Young, Elizabeth Landeweer, Ruth Suckow, W. P. Kinsella, Justin Isherwood, Nancy Horan, Carl Sandburg, Clementine Paddleford, Lauren Chapin, Conrad Richter, Louise Erdrich, Susan Power, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Adam Z. Horvath.

I greatly appreciate everyone who provided recipe inspiration or helped me develop and test the recipes in this book: Nick and Jessica Fertig, Sarah Fertig, Julie Fox, Karen Adler, Mary Ann Duckers, Dee Barwick, Frank Stitt, Peter Golaszewski, Harlan Pete Peterson, and Lindsay Laricks. Thank you to Jenny Britton Bauer, Christopher Elbow, Vicki Johnson, and Roxanne Wyss for generously allowing me to use their recipes.

And finally, thanks to all the Heartland folks who were so giving of their expertise as we all write the next culinary chapter in the place we call home.

INTRODUCTION The horizon was like a perfect circle, a great embrace, and within it lay the cornfields, still green, and the yellow wheat stubble, miles and miles of it, and the pasture lands where the white-faced cattle led lives of utter content, wrote Willa Cather in The Best Years.

Among those fortunate enough to have been born and raised in the Midwest, this is how we think of it. The Heartland holds us, comforts us, makes us stand up straight. Even if we leave, it still claims a place in our hearts.

The Heartland, or Midwest, is the center section of the United States, which also happens to be its agricultural core. According to geographer James Shortridge, The Midwest is Americas pastoral face, etched into our consciousness as a permanent physical location, despite the presence of industrial cities, which are accepted, nonetheless, as exceptions to the rule.

You hear the Heartland in the rustle of golden, ripening wheat in the Dakotas. You see it in the mysterious deep green gloom as you wander into an Indiana cornfield. You taste it in the sweet corn, slathered with butter. You smell it in hickory smoke.

The term Middle West first appeared in print in 1880 to describe the Kansas/Nebraska region. It was subsequently shortened to Midwest and the area enlarged to include all twelve of the current Midwestern statesOhio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraskaby 1910.

Today, the geography of the Midwest or Heartland consists of broad river valleys, marsh, rolling prairie, thick forest, great lakes, Flint Hills, Badlands, and savannahsall specific