So, why write a whole book about dumplings?

My first book, “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen“, was the book that I wanted to write since I was a kid — it was my fantasy compendium on Vietnamese food and cooking. And I’m not a quick and easy or super healthy kind of cook, so that sort of thing didn’t make sense for me to do next. Instead, I thought about what else I really loved to cook, and eat, and write about. I decided to be more focused, and I thought hell, why not use dumplings — which are one of my favorite foods to cook and eat — as a way to help teach people to cook and to trace all sorts of cultural linkages? It made sense for me professionally but also it allowed me to put my focus on another subject that I was passionate about and fit into my larger goal of demystifying Asian food.

What do you think is it about dumplings that gets people so excited?

I think dumplings are just really homey and that despite all that low carb diet nonsense, people really want to eat carbs. Plus, they’re are cute and small, so you can try a lot of different kinds, and there are so many different ways you can eat them, they don’t just limit themselves to one cooking preparation or filling. Dumplings are very, very flexible. I feel like there must be a dumpling for everyone.

Also, many of us have very specific food memories that we attach to them — whether were waiting to get into a dim sum house, or making them at home with friends and family – they’re usually bound up in really pleasant memories.

It seems like dumplings can be so many different things; how did you come up with your definition for the book?

It’s weird because with dumplings, you can either go on and on and on — or you can stick to the very simple idea that a dumpling is something wrapped in skin. When I was starting, I took a look at Western definitions of dumplings and then I realized there wasn’t really a definitive concept. Then, I looked at Eastern definitions and they were really non-existent. So, I realized that the idea of an Asian dumpling is actually a Western construct imposed on Eastern food. I speak and read Vietnamese and my understanding of Mandarin is pretty good — so I started looking in dictionaries, but couldn’t find one that really had a definition of dumpling. Then there was the question of India. The Indians developed their notion of dumplings according to what the British brought over: they have all kinds of drop dumplings from dough dropped into fat. It gets complicated, and at some point, you just have to decide for yourself.

For my purposes, I took a look at what people would identify as a dumpling and decided that above all there had to be some kind of starch featured and that they should be small, almost bite size. They might be wrapped in dough or leaves — like a tamale — or banana leaves or lotus leaves. Or they might be dough “dumplings” in the European sense, such as leftover bread dough that is poached in a stew or dropped in a soup, like chicken and biscuits. Most of all, I wanted to make it accessible to people — because the thing about dumplings is that you really can make them with what you have in front of you. That’s why the first part of the book features wheat flour — because that is something almost everyone keeps on hand. I wanted readers to open their pantries and think, “Oh, I can make a really great Chinese pot sticker.” That’s just cool.

I think your attempt to chip away at that sense of exoticism is really important — speaking as someone who makes pierogies every Christmas with her mother, but is still embarrassingly intimidated by Chinese dumplings.

Totally! But, if you’ve made pierogies, it’s the same thing. And in reality, in Asia, if you go to an actual dumpling shop and you look around, you see that the ones they make are kind of rustic, chunky, ugly things. But, they’re all good, and they look like mortals made them. There doesn’t have to be this notion of them being part of some kind of “ancient Chinese secret.” [Laughs] It’s my job, I think, to get people beyond that idea.

But, honestly, even a lot of Asians feel that way. I was doing a book talk a few weeks ago and afterwards this Cantonese woman in her 80s came up to talk to me. In my presentation, I had mentioned using a tortilla press to make skins, and this woman came over to me and touched the press and said, “I use this.” I asked her how long she had been using it. Turns out she had been using it for 30 years to make hundreds of hundreds of ha gao. She said: “So easy, so fast!” But then she asked me how I rolled out dumpling skins with my little rolling pin, so I showed her. And I thought it was so interesting because the truth is, a lot of it is a mystery to Asians as well. There’s this notion that dumplings are some specialized exotic art, when really everyone has to practice them a little.

Now that the book is finally out, are you sick of dumplings?

You know, I do still want to eat them, but I don’t like power eating them as much as I did while I was working on it!

What are some recipes that you know you’ll return to?

I love the poached dumplings tumbled in chile oil, and the taro puffs are just fabulous and so are the samosas. Really, the dough for the samosas is so amazing and so easy to make, that once you have it you start realizing that almost all the samosas you encounter are made improperly. It really pays off to make them at home.

Or maybe, if you are lucky enough to live in Oregon, you already do.

That’s right, in addition to the world’s best used bookstore, livable cities, a sophisticated restaurant scene, pristine wildlife, innovative winemakers, a creative beer culture, a small army of artisan distilleries, and mountains and shores and valleys fairly dripping with wild berries, fruit orchards, and fish, Oregon also lays claim to a terrific local breakfast franchise called…drumroll please…Pig-N-Pancake.

First off, let’s get this out of the way: Pig-N-Pancake is not IHOP! It is nothing like IHOP! (Well, ok, maybe it’s a teeeeeeensy bit like it.) I love a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity as much as the next hangover sufferer, but that is because I am a cheap date and sucker for blue-roofed chalets and grew up in the Northeast where the fast food breakfast market was pretty much a one-horse racket.

It was a trip out west last spring that converted me. On assignment, I spent a week in Portland and the Willamette valley, toiling away tasting pinots and homemade pates, exploring organic vineyards and buzzy new supper clubs. As you can imagine, after that, I needed some R&R. So, with just a 48 hours to go before flying back to New York, I motored out to the Oregon coast — more specifically, to Astoria. Situated dramatically at the mouth of the Columbia river, Astoria has a long, fascinating maritime history and was once one of the country’s busiest cannery towns. I learned that when I got there. I figured all I need to know beforehand was that The Goonies was set there. My hotel room had a deck overlooking the water. Wait…..what’s that through the fog….is it…a pirate ship?!?

Once the Goonies sights were out of the way, though, I had to admit that Astoria in March was a pretty sleepy town. Gorgeous yes, but in a seedy, soiled-flannel sorta way. Across the street from the new Columbia River Maritime Museum was a little night spot called Club Desdemona. Black plastic garbage bags were taped over the windows. The peeling, whitewashed walls swayed like a sailor coming off three months at sea. My boyfriend summed it up thusly: “That’s the kind of strip club where the dancers are all related to the customers. And they’re pregnant.” Thankfully, just when we needed to scrub that image off our eyeballs, there it was, a few blocks away: Pig-N-Pancake, glowing gloriously pink and cheerful and promising a wholesome, syrup-sweetened respite from the post-industrial ennui.

At the time, I was really just after some good old-fashioned comfort food. But when I sat down to study the menus, I was happy to learn that Pig-N-Pancake was a beloved, regional chain — with 5 locations in the shore towns of the central and northern Oregon coast and one outpost in Portland. (The original restaurant, which seated 35 and served only breakfast and lunch, was founded in Seaside in 1961 by Bob and Marianne Poole — pictured, right – with just $200 in cash.)

The menu varies slightly from town to town, but at its core, Pig-N-Pancake is a straightforward slice of short-order heaven, offering everything from patty melts and chicken fried steak and kielbasa, to made-from scratch hits like corn cakes, buckwheat pancakes, apple pancakes, potato pancakes, and of course, pigs in blankets. But it was a simple, spare dish — a delicate, berry drizzled and sugar dusted plate of pannkakor, or Swedish pancakes — that really won me over, and which I still crave weekly from 2000 miles away.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in its maritime heyday, Astoria was home to an abundance of Scandinavian immigrants who arrived in search of work in a field that was familiar: salmon fishing. According to the Oregon History Project, by 1920, Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians accounted for more than 45% of the town’s population.

Evidence of that heritage is still all over Astoria, from Suomi (Finnish) Hall to the community sauna, but I was more than happy to take my history lesson in edible form. For the uninitiated, Swedish pancakes are thinner and more delicately crepe-like than their American counterparts, thanks to a recipe which leans in proportion towards butter and eggs and sugar (mmmmmmmm…) and away from flour. And speaking as someone who finds even a short stack a little heavier than I can manage most mornings, they offer an ideal way to get my ‘cake fix without having to don elastic-waist pants. Substitute a little whole wheat flour for all-purpose and the pancakes take on an ever-so-slightly nutty note that is the perfect compliment to the traditional topping of tart lingonberry preserves.

I haven’t been able to scheme a way to get back to Oregon in the past year — so these days, if I need a little taste of Pig-N-Pancake, I have to turn to my own griddle for inspiration. Luckily, the internet is full of guidance, from Mark Bittman’s New York Times recipe to this personal one, which comes from Seattle blogger Sarah @ Coffee Beans & Curry Leaves. My table may not feature a view of the Columbia River or Club Desdemona (thank god) — but it does at least sport the right mug.

Still, joking aside, doubters shouldn’t knock the glory of Grape-Nuts pudding until they’ve tried it — and if you’re going to lose your Grape-Nuts virginity somewhere, it may as well be at Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro, Maine. I dropped in for supper at Moody’s last week, after a mind-bendingly slow drive through weekend traffic in New Hampshire, and though the fried haddock and fresh baked biscuit I had for dinner was a slice of home-cooked heaven, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that it was all really just an excuse to order dessert.

Moody’s takes Grape-Nuts pudding seriously, featuring the dish as a daily special twice a week and preparing it in two different styles: one more custard and one more mousse. In the custard version, which is the more traditional of the two, a thick, sweetened layer of softened Grape-Nuts sink to the bottom of a pan of eggy, vanilla-sodden custard to form a thick, nubbly, nutty, cinnamon-flecked crust.  In what I’ve dubbed the mousse version (though, Lord — in a million years, no one at good old Moody’s would ever call it that), softened Grape-Nuts are gently folded into an airy pudding that’s remiscent of a rustic rice pudding and manages to be spicy and rich while at the same time almost weightless on the tongue. Take your pick. But either way, spooned out by the ice cream-scoopful while still warm and crowned with a cumulonimbus of just-whipped cream,  it’s a subtle, grown-up tasting dessert in the disguise of a nursery treat.

Yankee’s Grape-Nuts Pudding
(adapted from Yankee Magazine)

1 cup Grape-Nuts
1/2- 3/4 cup sugar, depending on desired sweetness
4 eggs
1 quart milk, scalded
1 tablespoon vanilla
Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, pour scalded milk over Grape-Nuts; allow to sit for 5 minutes.

3. Beat eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla in another medium bowl, then add to the milk and grapenuts. Pour the mixture into a greased 2-quart casserole dish. Sprinkle very generously with nutmeg and cinnamon.

4. Set casserole dish in a pan of hot water and bake for 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. (NOTE: If you prefer a Grape-Nut pudding with the Grape-Nuts evenly distributed throughout the pudding, rather than as a layer at the bottom, give the mixture two thorough stirs within the first 20 minutes of baking.)

Before you start scratching your head — no, this grub is not growing on my street in Brooklyn. (Though wannabe urban foragers, take note — you actually can find plenty of vittles inside NYC’s parks and alleys.) I’m lucky enough to be camped out for the last few weeks of summer in my home away from home, Wellfleet, Massachusetts — a little white clapboard and clam shell harbor town way out towards the tip of Cape Cod.

Wellfleet is best known for its eponymous oysters, but for those who are willing to do a little digging around (really), its shores and sandy dunes can yield dozens of other delicious surprises. I always gorge myself on steamers (which definitely taste better after you’ve shoveled them yourself from a foot of low-tide muck) and bluefish (especially in August and September, the height of the feisty fish’s season). This year, though, maybe as a side-effect of the canning and infusing and preserving fever that seems to have befallen me, my hungry wanderings have been focused more on the delights of the land than the sea.

And so it is that with Peterson’s Guide to Edible Plants under my arm, a sheaf of brown paper shopping bags, kitchen shears, and a summer camp’s worth of Deep Woods Off, I’ve spent the last few days scrambling up and down shore roads and dune paths, all in pursuit of a trinity of native late-summer fruit: the elderberry, the rose hip, and — perhaps the most adored and elusive of all the shoreline treats — the beach plum.

It all began last week; I was certain I passed a copse of elderberry shrubs while taking a run — and though the berries went by in a blur, my suspicions were confirmed when I returned later to find a car pulled off onto the sandy shoulder and a small family deep in picking. Still, the plants were generous, and I managed to snag a dozen nodding fronds, drooping with tiny black fruit that were no bigger than peppercorns. I spent the next morning, bleary-eyed over my coffee, tenderly separating the berries from their stems. (This is important work because the stems and roots of eldersberries contain cyanide, aka POISON). In the end, I was left with a robust cup — not enough for a cobbler, but perfect for a batch of scones, or a quart of homemade elderberry cordial. Can you guess which one I chose?

My next hunt was a simple one:  Rosa rugosa, or wrinkled roses — which bear cherry-sized seed  pods known as rose hips in the late summer and  fall — practically carpet the dunes and shore lanes of Cape Cod (plus the Great Lakes region and much of the Northeastern seaboard for that matter). When August rolls around it’s impossible to stroll the sidewalks of Wellfleet without seeing them dangling from the thorny green hedges, as scarlet and round and gleaming as a thousand Christmas balls.

Rose hips may surprise you: with a taste that’s sweet/tart, rather than floral, they don’t evoke roses, really, as much as they do jamaica (hibiscus). Some rules of thumb for picking: look for pods that are firm, bright, and blemish free. (Some sources suggest waiting until after the first frost to harvest them, as the cold concentrates their sweetness — but I’ve never tried it.) And — of course — be sure that you’re culling from pesticide-free bushes. Eaten raw, the hips are hard and sour, thin skinned, and cluttered with itchy, hairy triangular seeds. This is not snack food.

But trimmed, scooped of those pesky seeds, and simmered until soft, they transform into a beguiling base for jams, jellies, and syrups (and a healthy one, at that: rose hips are higher in vitamin C than any citrus fruit). Clean and dry them, and you’ve got an extremely sippable tea. Given the bumper crop outside my door, I’ll be trying all of them this year.

Unfortunately, Operation Beach Plum has proven more challenging. These petite fruits (the red and orange cherry-shaped specimen towards the bottom of the photo at top) are sometimes conflated with rose hips by the uninitiated — but for those who know and love them, there is no mistaking a beach plum for anything else. In Euell Gibbon’s Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop, he explains that the beach plum is a shrubby descendant of native domestic plums and cherries which prefers a habitat of semi-sterile dune sand. (He also includes recipes for a “tart, meaty” beach plum jam, a clear jelly, a lattice beach plum pie, and a fluffy beach plum pulp that he uses to make a pie he calls one of the “best ever concocted.” Move over pumpkin pie — I think the Thanksgiving table is getting a new addition.) Hardy and quirky, the beach plum thrives on harsh conditions and may grow anywhere from two to ten feet high. As its name suggests, it is primarily a seaside plant, but if the setting is right, it can survive inland as well — as it does in the New Jersey pine barrens and the dunes of Lake Michigan.

There is no such thing as a standard beach plum: many are dark purple with a dusty bloom, some are crimson, some are fiery orange or blushing melon. Indeed, their variability is part of their mystique — and perhaps their allure. The yield from a given beach plum shrub can vary wildly from year to year, making it nearly impossible to count on a commercial harvest. (A lesson learned by Ocean Spray in the 1930s, when the company sold beach plum jelly along with its lineup of cranberry goods.) So, despite the fact that people have been eating beach plums in North America since before the arrival of the pilgrims, for the most part, they remain a resolutely personal pleasure, harvested by hand by home cooks and local, small-batch purveyors.

I’ve been gobbling sweet beach plum jelly from Wellfleet legend Marjory Sayre, who runs the Briar Lane jelly shed off Route 6, since I was a girl in pigtails. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to make  it myself. But last year a post about picking beach plums by Elspeth Pierson, the Wellfleet blogger behind the delightful site Diary of a Locavore, got me all fired up to start my own foraging mission. Folks around here guard the location of their favorite beach plum-picking grounds like they are CIA spooks protecting a state secret, so I knew I’d have to depend on my instincts and more than a little luck to lead me. Apparently 2007 was a banner year for beach plums — but last year’s yield was less impressive, and this past weekend I had a worrisome conversation with a local shopkeeper who confided that although she picks plums every year on Labor Day, she’d recently strolled by her preferred patch only to find the shrubs bare. So far, in a few days of increasingly focused investigation, I’ve managed to scrape together no more than 2 dozen — and those I found only because I happened to be crouched on the asphalt fringe of the road, cursing my bike for refusing to change gears while climbing a hill. I considered the few straggly plums the universe’s attempt at karmic relief.

Luckily, there are still a few weeks left in my seaside sojurn and the small success I’ve had foraging has only whetted my appetite for more. I’m staying hopeful, and stocking up on bug spray. And with any luck, this December we’ll be sipping Beach Plum brandy while hanging our stockings.

Looking back on the summer, I realize I’ve already devoted an unequal percentage of this real estate to the subject of hot dogs. And here I go again! Whats behind my obsession? Maybe I still have the tastes of a 10 year old. Maybe — as the Godfather of roadfood, Michael Stern, expressed so succinctly in a recent conversation — it’s that hot dogs can be such a cheap, tasty, and appealing blank slate for showcasing regional flavors. Or maybe its just in the water; one thing’s for sure: New England — the part of the country in which I was born, raised, and still spend a lot of my time — is certifiably weiner-mad.

In fact, I’d like to make a case to the tourist boards of the Northeast: as Kentucky has its bourbon Trail and Northern California its wine trail — why not put together an official New England Hot Dog Trail? Proudly plaster it on billboards, and talk it up over the airways. Call it good, clean, belly-fulfilling fun for the whole family.

Actually if you spend some time online, you’ll find a few enterprising eaters have already gotten a head start on the project (really: this amazing Google map could occupy an entire season’s worth of meals). But you could just as easily focus your tour to a single state — like Connecticut (my home state, which happens to boast a particularly robust assortment) or a roadway (like Route 1, a great old blue highway, that runs along the entire coastline). To get you started, here are two picks from just those two places:

Frankies
700 Watertown Avenue
Waterbury, CT
203-753-2426

Frankies is an institution in Waterbury, a slightly down at the heels — but to my eye, shabbily beautiful — old manufacturing city in the heart of the Naugatuck valley. The stand is perpetually busy, but lunchtime is when things really heat up — and when you approach the order window here, you’re as likely to be standing next to your your garbage man as you are your governor. Frankie’s was started in 1933 by brothers Frank and Paul Caiazzo and quickly gained a cult following for their signature “super” extra-long weenies. Still family owned, they now have more than five locations across CT. Each dog measures 12 full inches, and is carefully grilled to order so that the charred casing gives a slight crunch with every juicy bite, and is nestled in a custom sized, buttery, toasted split-top bun. To dress things up, you can take your pick from a smorgasbord of toppings (chili, onions, mushrooms, cheese, bacon) — but regulars always reach for for Frankie’s homemade spicy relish: a slippery, sweet and hot pepper spread that’s perfect swirled with a snake of mustard and packs a sneaky bite.

Flo’s
1359 Route 1
Cape Neddick ME

I pulled up to Flo’s at 1:30 yesterday to find a line stretching out of the screen door, past the picnic tables, and around the front of the lowslung red “shack” that sits just steps off Route 1. Flo’s does only dogs does them only one way: steamed. But they are done oh so very well: each stubby, slim, natural casing frank is freshly prepared to order (know what you want when you get there, and be prepared to wait!) and packed in its perfect companion — a steamed bun, so soft and yielding it forms a pillowy cocoon around the dog that reminds me of what might happen if a slice of Wonder-bread mated with a corndog. Flo’s has been beloved in these parts since Florence Stacy herself started the business in 1959. Now the operations at the stand are headed up by her feisty, but friendly daughter-in-law, Gail. Tradition dies hard here. There is no ketchup in sight. Indeed, the signature Flo’s dog is a true original: a weenie dressed with a dollop of Flo’s secret hot sauce (a sweet/spicy meatless chili that has hints of onion, hot pepper, brown sugar, and maybe even a bit of tamarind) and a ribbon of cool mayonnaise. Oh. My. God. Trust me, it’s so much better than it sounds.

I’ve been on the road a lot this summer, up early,  coffee in hand, crisscrossing the interstates and shore roads of the Northeast. I’ve been consuming a lot of gas — and a lot of doughnuts.

Doughnuts may be the perfect roadfood: sweet, indulgent, versatile, and — with a shape like an edible handle — practically engineered to be gripped while still holding a steering wheel. Not to mention, they’re simply fantastic looking. (Want to fall down a flickr rabbit hole? Search donut.)

Highlights of this past week included a gargantuan, crispy, sugar-encrusted apple fritter from Fleming’s Donut Shack in Eastham, Massachusetts (which, I think, tastes even better when taken with a little sand from Newcomb Hollow beach stuck to your glaze-slick fingers) and two petite, perfectly shaped, classic cake doughnuts — chocolate glazed and cinnamon — from my hometown favorite, Dottie’s Diner (formerly Phillips Diner) in Woodbury, Connecticut. Two weeks ago, I attended a rehearsal dinner where a mountain of crullers and boston cremes and powdered sugar specimens rounded out the dessert buffet. But, though the party was in Los Angeles (arguably the doughnut mecca of the world), these doughnuts had been flown in fresh from St. Louis, the groom’s city — thus proving that everyone’s favorite doughnut is the one they grew up with.

Last year, myself and a few other editors at Saveur magazine chomped down hundreds of doughnuts from around the country while compiling a list of great independent shops. Any one is worth a stop. But you tell me: are you a Tim Horton fanatic? A Voodoo devotee? What’s your favorite doughnut detour?

(photos — top row, left to right: this one is bob; Sarah Karnasiewicz; House of Sims’; middle row, left to right: mockturtle; Larry Page; myrone; bottom row, left to right: Sarah Karnasiewicz, Mark Wallace)

No, not that boardwalk. To get to La Canasta you’ve got to keep cruising, past the Wonder Wheel and the weenies of Coney Island and over the Verazzano bridge to South Beach, on the city’s southernmost borough: Staten Island. It’s worth the trek. Despite Staten Island’s Goodfellas reputation, the borough has grown steadily more international in the past two decades and now hosts thriving South Asian and Central and South American enclaves. More than 11,000 Mexicans live on the island, with the largest concentration in the north, making that shore the city’s third largest Mexican neighborhood after Washington Heights and Sunset Park. That also makes it, of course, one of the city’s best destinations for simple, authentic Mexican food.

Set on Sand Lane a few blocks from the water’s edge, at the corner of a strip of stucco storefronts next to an overgrown lot and a shuttered arcade called Beachland Amusements, La Canasta does brisk business from 6am to 11pm every day as a bakery, grocery, and cafe serving a motley assortment of families, students, and day laborers. Handwritten signs taped in the front window tout daily specials — a different hearty guisada del dia (stew) five days a week, plus homemade tamales and carnitas on los fines de semana. (The first time I visited was a Sunday morning, when the place was filled with families and every one of their plates was littered with masa crumbs and corn husks.) Inside, card tables with folding chairs clutter the room, flanked by walls of sundries like La Morena chipotles and kaleidoscopic refrigerator cases glowing with soda cans emblazoned with onapometic names like Thirstee and Boing. The sounds of clanking pots and a griddle getting scraped down drifts from the kitchen. Diners nibble on sunflower seeds from a miniature mojajetes at each table and hoot agreeably with telenovelas that blare from a wall-mounted television near the register.

The options for breakfast, lunch, or dinner are predictable but uniformly appealing, like pepper and tomato flecked huevos a la Mexicana or con chorizo; an assortment of tortas stuffed with everything from pollo (chicken) and al pastor (marinated pork) to longaniza (spicy sausage); an array of fresh soft corn tortilla tacos whose toppings include standbys like bistek and carnitas (fried pork) to lengua (tongue) and suadero; hot, earthy sopes, or masa pancakes, served thinner than customary and straight from the griddle, sprinkled with smoky chicken or chunks of chile-marinated steak, shreds of lettuce and cotija cheese; chilaquiles, and sincronizadas — pressed sandwiches of flour tortilla and cheese that most American would call quesadillas.

At La Canasta, however, quesadillas are another matter entirely. There is something to love in everything I’ve eaten there, but it is two quesadilla specials that really make me swoon, and which have plagued my cravings ever since. Part of their beauty owes to their elemental form — just a single tortilla, heated on the grill till it crisp and ever-so-slightly puffy, then half-lined with a filling of your choice, folded into a neat half moon, scattered with lettuce and a few crumbs of fresh white cheese, and placed back on the heat for a moment more to melt and crisp. On each occasion that I’ve visited, the special fillings have included flor de calabaza (squash blossom) and chicharron prensado (a slice of pressed, fried, pork skins) — and eaten side by side the two make a perfectly balanced study in contrasts, one bright and succulent and sweetly vegetal and the other, quite simply, a Frankenstein’s monster of fat and salt and voluptuous porcine deliciousness.

Before coming to La Canasta, I’d never had chicharron prensado, in fact, I’d never even heard of it — but like Eve with her apple, everything is different now. A few google searches, a little flickr browsing, and a few clumsy spanish translations later, I’ve started to get a sense of just what I’ve been missing. (Still, further — ahem — first hand research is needed. Stay tuned to this space for continued coverage of chicharron prensado and its international cousins.) But meantime, get over the bridge and try it for yourself. With the first bite the tortilla will crunch and shreds of salty pork and spicy chile grease will pool with the cool, creamy cheese; with the last bite, you’ll look down to see your plate covered with shimmering orange droplets of grease, your lap filled with wadded napkins, and your fingers slick. Your soul will be satisfied. You’ll be ready to hop a flight if that’s what it would take for another fix. But thank god, and Staten Island, and La Canasta — you won’t have to.

La Canasta Bakery Grocery Inc
272 Sand Lane, Staten Island, NY
(718) 442-1633

I’d been planning to hop a train at 7 am the next morning and spend the day cycling around the Alsace. But needless to say, when I woke, my vice-like headache and slack-limbed body indicated that was not to be. Instead, I dozed till noon and then spent all the energy I could muster dragging my bleary self out into the streets of the Marais. Only then (thank god) did I find it – a thoroughly American cure for my thoroughly American hangover, right there in Paris: a real, honest to goodness, dirty water dog.

Maybe there are some people on whom tube steaks don’t act as a curative. I leave them to their green tea and lettuce wraps. Not me. To my mind, there are few moods that a hot dog can’t improve, few aches it can’t soothe. I’m not picky. I’ll take ‘em grilled, fried, boiled, or baked; topped with sauerkraut and yellow mustard, lined with ketchup, smeared with relish, strewn with onions, peppered with pickles, or smothered in chili; morning, noon, or night. (In fact, Frankies, one of my favorite frankfurter purveyors in Connecticut, serves a killer breakfast dog. Trendmakers, take note: the bacon, egg, and cheese has competition.)

So, it was like a beneficent mirage, that Pat’s Hot Dog — a (literal) hole in the wall along the Rue de Roi de Sicile — appeared in front of me. It’s a simple place, one that does one thing and does it well. (Ok, it does two things: Pat’s also serves spaghetti. But for God’s sake, get the hot dog!) For 2.50 Euro, I was handed a six-inch frank, pulled from a kettle of warm water, and nestled in a soft white American-style bun. You won’t be building a Chicago-style dog here; the toppings offered are sparse, though top notch. Just a squeeze bottle of ketchup, dijon mustard, sliced pickles, and the pièce de résistance: a confit d’ oignon. Spread in a thin layer under the warm sausage, the melting, sweet and savory spread is the little French twist that elevates this typical ballpark frank into something ever so slightly more worldly. It was so good, I’m making it at home now. (Isn’t that the best kind of souvenir?)

It only required one hot dog that day to set me back on course — but my serendipitous stumble on Pat’s made me curious about the world of Parisian hot dogs. Were they simply for (home)sick tourists like me? Or had  they joined the ranks of the French’s other beloved saucisse?

Meg, from Too Many Chefs, writes here about her love affair with Le Super Hot Dog, a Franco-adaptation of the American hot dog that can be found in cheap cafes serving students and workers. But these are not your typical cart dogs. As  usual, the French have taken an American classic only to inspire their own. Meg’s favorite dog came “encased in a crisp baguette, slathered with mustard so hot it made your eyes water, topped with grated gruyère cheese and placed beneath a grill until the cheese was melted and crispy.”  Yowsa. I thank  her for including a recipe. If I drink too much Cahors tonight, I know what I’ll be eating in the morning.

In the hope that I might actually see the sun for 48 hours during the month of June, a few weeks ago I left New York and jetted down to southwestern Virginia — Lexington, to be specific — a petite, perfectly bucolic town nestled in the verdant hills of the Shenandoah Valley. I lived in Lexington during my first year out of college, in 1999. It was a lovely, if lonely, year — and it left a lasting imprint that keeps me finding reasons to return, even a decade later.

For all its many charms, however, Lexington is not much of a culinary destination. Evidence: while living there, I developed an addiction to KFC coleslaw spooned on top of Ryvita crackers. That was lunch. For a big dinner, maybe I’d meet friends at the long wooden bar of the local, and linger over pints of lager and plates of meatloaf and brown gravy –  the perfect  nursery food for grown ups.  Mostly, though, I ate at home, and I ate simply, with whatever I could whip up on my 2 burner stove. In the years since I decamped, a few enterprising chefs have set up shop nearby and are taking advantage of the bounty of local farms to turn out top-notch, sophisticated, restaurant food. But still, this corner of Virginia — like many parts of this country, I’d be willing to venture — remains at heart, a home-cooking sort of place, where the best meals are made by unabashed amateurs: mothers and uncles and sisters working over cast iron skillets or charcoal barbecues.

That, of course, means that the best way to be assured of eating well is to get yourself invited to dinner. But that’s a tall order  for someone who’s new to to town, let alone just traveling through. That’s why I devised Plan B: Find A “Supper.” No matter where you live, chances are you’ve driven by the signs — outside a church, a firehouse, or an Elks lodge; promising all-you-can-eat spaghetti and meatballs or sausages and beans. For years and years, community groups have been setting out suppers as social fundraisers, and for years and years, their hungry neighbors have been happily accepting the invitation. Indeed, the power of the amateur American cook should never be underestimated; as a letter writer from North Adams, Massachusets once opined to the New York Times, “It is foolishness to talk of the decline in churchgoing and the tendency to agnosticism, etc, when such a never-failing panacea is available for all these ills. To arouse the average American to action…nothing is needed but to place before him the attractions of a church supper, whether it is turkey at 50 cents a head or corned-beef hash and beans at 10 cents, and ice cream ten cents extra.” The year was 1901 — but not much has changed.

In fact, that sense of continuity (and the idea that as natural outgrowths of their communities, such meals often do reflect real regional tastes) is just one aspect that make suppers great on-the-road eating. But in the end, the food speaks for itself. You could cut a delicious swath across North America wandering from seal flipper suppers in Newfoundland to all-you-can eat pancake breakfasts in Maine, down into wild game dinners in Vermont and ham and bean bakes in New Hampshire, southward towards Pennsylvania’s Russian fairs, packed with stuffed cabbages and blini, onto Baltimore’s sour beef and dumplings and into Carolina’s beloved barbecue country, and still only be at the start. Good food, kind company, and a glimpse of the people and the place they are in at their most genuine, welcoming, and unguarded: really, what more could a hungry traveler want?

That weekend in Lexington, just a few miles west of town, in the riverside hamlet of Rockbridge Baths, it was a fundraiser at volunteer firehouse, not a church, that seduced me. The roadside sign promised a supper of chicken and pork bbq and live music, but when I arrived, towards the end of the evening, the band was closing up and the pork was sold out. Still, my hosts couldn’t have been more hospitable. I handed over a wrinkled five and two singles and watched as my styrofoam platter was piled high with baked beans swimming in a sweet, velvety tomato soup, tender mountains of  potato salad flecked with fresh chives, and a chicken breast and wings, their skin perfumed with pepper and just a whisper of stinging vinegar — juicy, yet artfully charred till they took on crunchy, carbon-black pocks.  I found a picnic table outside and while I ate, watched the sun slip down behind the trees in a blur of pink. After such sweetness, who needs dessert? But, yes: I ate the red velvet cake anyway.

Vinegar-spiked Barbecued Chicken, Rockbridge Baths-style

(adapted from “Bon Appetit, Y’all” by Virginia Willis)

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup vinegar, preferably cider or wine
1/4 cup peanut oil
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce
1 large chicken, cut into pieces or 2 breasts, 2 wings, and 2 thighs
Salt and pepper

1. If you are using a charcoal grill, prepare your briquettes and allow them to heat until medium-hot. If using a gas grill, turn the burners to high setting, close lid, and heat for approx. 10 minutes.

2. In a medium bowl, mix water, vinegar, oil, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and a pinch of salt; reserve for later.

3. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper, then place pieces on the grill. Cook the thighs and drumsticks for approximately 2 minutes  per side and breasts for 3 minutes; then baste pieces with the vinegar sauce and reduce heat. Grill for 15-20 minutes more (or until the juices run clear), basting with the vinegar sauce every few minutes.

We’re coming up on July 4th. If you could pick one place in the country to celebrate the holiday, and one thing to have on your plate, what would it be?

I would go whole hog and attend a weekend pig-pickin’ in North Carolina. The whole process of cooking the pig is actually older than Independence Day, and it’s just the sort of community ritual that reminds you how much food defines a person’s sense of place and belonging. Also, the simple duet of whole-hog pork and smoke, abetted only minimally by seasonings (sauce optional) is delicious, especially when accompanied by good corn bread and slaw.

After 30+ years of exploring America’s native foods, it’s a given you and Jane both love good grub, but it’s also clear from how you talk (and write) about what you do that what you really treasure is good food eaten in its “natural setting.” How much does place effect a meal for you?

Well, as I was just saying about the pig-pickin’, food in a vacumn, no matter how delicious, isn’t all that interesting to Jane and me. Food eaten alongside those who grow it, prepare it, and enjoy it everyday is sustaining for soul as well as body. That is why we’re not all that interested in a cajun restaurant in Chicago or Texas barbeque in New York. Tasty as they might be (though usually they are not), the experience of the food is all wrong: wrong setting, wrong dining companions, wrong accents on the staff and — in the case of rural foods served in the city — prices that are incongruous.

You’ve divided your new book into regions, each one packed with information and temptations. If you had to pick a favorite dish from each one (New England, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, and West) what would they be?

Ok, here goes:

NORTHEAST: Pancakes and maple syrup at Polly’s Pancake Parlor (672 Route 117, Sugar Hill, NH)

MID-ATLANTIC: Pastrami Sandwich at Harold’s New York Deli (3050 Woodbridge Ave., Edison, NJ)

SOUTH: Hot Chicken at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack (123 Ewing Dr, Nashville, TN)

MIDWEST: Cherry pie at the Cherry Hut (211 N. Michigan Ave., Beulah, MI)

SOUTHWEST: Pico de gallo at Pico de Gallo (2618 S. 6th Ave., South Tuscon, AZ)

WEST: Fish taco from The Cottage (7702 Fay Ave., LaJolla, CA)

It’s summer, the season for backyard bbqs — so I’m going to ask you to pick sides: hot dogs or hamburgers? Why? And where do you go to you find your favorite of each?

I relish a great hamburger, but hot dogs are my passion. Not only because I like the way they taste, but because they are a food that has defied national homogenization. Consider: you can get the same hamburger coast to coast, but a Chicago-style hot dog is completely unlike a West Virginia slaw dog, which bears no resemblance to a Sonoran dog, nor to a New Jersey ripper nor a Rhode Island hot weenie, nor to a Cincinnati Coney Island. Everybody is loyal to the hot dog with which they grew up, and although my truest devotion is to a Chicago-style dog, at this exact moment in time, I am yearning for a charcoal-cooked footlong from Ted’s of Towanda, New York — topped with mustard, onions, a pickle wedge, and Ted’s sensational hot sauce. My favorite hamburger is at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach, California. It’s a gorgeous patty loaded into a bun with a virtual salad of condiments and served with excellent milkshakes.

Much of what of include in the book is no-holds-barred, old-fashioned “American” food — apple pies, clam chowder, lobster rolls, biscuits, bbq, and the like. But you also include a couple of picks that reflect a more recent immigrant influence, like the Chilean grilled meat sandwich called a Chacarero, in Boston, and the taco trucks of Oakland, California. Are there any other “new” American regional foods or trends you’re excited about that didnt make it into the book?

We missed the boat by not including the Korean tacos of Los Angeles — they are getting a lot of press now and are a wonderful example of how American cuisine is all about hyphenation with others from around the world. Also, we need to further explore Hmong food, mostly in Minneapolis, to see if and how it has blended with local ingredients and food customs.

“500 Things” is meant to be a guide, of course — but you also encourage your readers to get out on the road and do their own wandering, to find their own “must-eats.” Can you offer any rules of thumb or advice to novice food explorers?

When in doubt, just remember these hints:

1. Get off the main road and travel through small towns as much as possible.

2. In a strange restaurant, look at the food on other people’s plates. The locals probably know what’s good.

3. Bone up in advance. Know what the regional specialties are, so you don’t completely miss them on a menu. For example, “hot beef” seems so innocuous, but in the northern Midwest, it’s a specialty not to be missed. Also, in Plattsburg, New York, if you see “Michigan” on a menu, you need to know that a michigan is that city’s unique take on the chili dog — and a great dining experience.

4. Don’t only eat in restaurants: look for small groceries that sell ready to eat food (like the boudin of southern Louisiana), food trucks, farmers markets, gas stations, produce stands — because it in those types of places that you can get a real taste of where you are.

Finally, one question about the book’s title: Does the demise implied in “Before It’s Too Late” belong to a) the reader or b) the food? And if it’s the latter, how concerned are you that the sorts of regional delights that you and Jane chronicle are becoming endangered in America?

To some degree, corporate homogenation does threaten local specialties, but that effect is counterbalanced by Americans’ ever increasing awareness and appreciation of regional specialties. The title of the book has both meanings — but mainly, “too late” refers to our fear that the food police and nutrition nannies will try to eliminate many of these beloved foods or tax them out of existence or brainwash people into thinking they are evil.