At the Calcasieu-Cameron Fair in Sulphur, Louisiana, they eat catfish courtbouillon. Barbecued chicken is a favorite dish at the Rockingham County Fair in Harrisonburg, Virginia. At the Twin Falls County Fair in southern Idaho mouths water in anticipation for Tater Pigs.
"Each county fair is unique, a community celebration with its own distinct local essence," write authors Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy, Jr., in the introduction to "The County Fair Cookbook".
While the fast food restaurant menus and Interstate highways may look the same across the country, the food items found in the most popular county fair food booths are refreshingly indigenous. There's Yankee Johnnycake at the Plymouth State Fair in New Hampshire, for instance, and Ruritan Chicken at the Canfield Fair in Ohio. At the Kent County Fair in Maryland they sell crab cakes and at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, Washington, the Snoqualmie Tribe's smoke-barbecued salmon is served in a cedar longhouse.
Stallworth and Kennedy collected more than 200 "down-home" recipes from food booths, exhibit barns and blue ribbon prize-winners across the country and compiled them in their cookbook along with descriptions of nearly 100 county fairs.
The Twin Falls County Fair began as a harvest festival in 1916 and has evolved into a six-day event with three days of rodeo. Tater Pigs were introduced in 1975 by the Twin Falls Magichords, a barbershop quartet singing group. The recipe goes as follows:
Tater Pigs
4 Idaho russet potatoes, 1/2 lb. each
4 frozen pork link sausages
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Scrub the potatoes well. Make a hole through each one just large enough to hold a sausage. Insert a frozen sausage in each. Bake for 1 hour or until the potatoes and sausages are cooked through. Serves four.
Baking the potatoes with the sausages inside flavors the spuds and makes them especially appetizing, according to Blaine Williams, president of the Magichords group. Serving Tater Pigs with liberal amounts of butter, sour scream, hot cheese, salt and pepper makes them even better.
Proceeds from the Tater Pigs booth help finance the Magichords' expenses and are contributed to the group's major benevolent program, the national Institute of Logopedics in Wichita, Kan., which helps people with severe speech handicaps.
Pigs are also popular at the Tillamook County Fair in Oregon, which hosts the world's only Pig-N-Ford races. The racers, many of them young Tillamook County dairymen, pull squealing and squirming 40-pound pigs out of a pen, tuck them under one arm, crank up their Model-T Fords, and drive around a half-mile track. Then they change pigs and do the same thing two more times. Inspired by some loose pigs on the Old Miami River Road in 1925, the Pig-N-Ford races are now a three-day attraction at the fair, culminating in a World Championship.
Mildred Davy, who has been broadcasting her "Woman's World" program on KTIL radio since 1963, contributed the following Tillamook cheese recipe to "The County Fair Cookbook":
Cheddar Cheese Puffs With A Surprise
2 cups grated sharp Tillamook cheese, or other cheddar
8 T (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 cup sifted flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t paprika
48 small green stuffed olives, well drained
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Blend the grated cheese and butter. Stir in the flour, salt and paprika. (This can all be done with a food processor with the metal blade.) Mold one teaspoon of the mixture around each olive. Chill the puffs until firm, about 30 minutes. Arrange the puffs on ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes or until browned. Makes 48 puffs.
Pigs are also a source of entertainment at the Tulelake-Butte Valley Fair in Tulelake, Calif. For the annual Greased Pig Contest the spectators form a human wall around the playing field.
"The kids are divided into weight groups, the pigs are greased with lard, and as pigs and kids dart around the field, it's up to the 'wall' to keep the pigs from escaping," according to Stallworth and Kennedy.
Mary Victorine is descendant of one of the 60 Czech families that colonized the town of Malin on the shores of Tule Lake in 1909. The town of Malin in Czechosolvakia was said to grow the best horseradish in Europe and the colonists brought the rootstock of those plants with them when they immigrated.
"Today we raise about one-quarter of all the horseradish in the country right here," Victorine told the cookbook authors. She offered the following roast pork recipe as one "almost-entirely-homegrown" in Malin.
"We like it with a side dish of sauerkraut, browned in the roasting pan after the fat is removed," she said. "To spice it up, serve it with a mixture of three-quarters mustard, one-quarter horseradish."
Roast Pork with Caraway Seeds
1 clove garlic
1 4-lb. pork loin or shoulder roast
Salt to taste
1 T caraway seeds
1/2 cup water
1 medium onion, cut into quarters
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut thin slices of garlic and insert them into little cuts in the meat. Salt it lightly, press on the caraway seeds and place the roast, fat side up, in a roasting pan with the water and onion. Roast for 1 3/4 to 2 hours, or until the meat reaches 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Let rests 15-20 minutes for easy carving. Serves 4 to 6.
In Grandview, Wash., the Yakima Valley Junior Fair is held for four days in mid-August and is run by 4-H and FFA members. Located in "The Fruit Bowl of the Nation" and surrounded by orchards, the fair naturally features many apple-based cooking contests. Denise Dykstra, a 4-H member, won a blue ribbon for the following dessert at the Junior Fair in a competition sponsored by the Washington Apple Commission.
Grandma Dykstra’s Apple Cake
2 eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 t vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2 cups peeled, sliced Washington apples
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs. Add the sugar, oil and vanilla. Mix well. Add 1 cup of the flour, the baking soda and salt and beat for 1 minute. Beat in the remaining flour, then fold in the apples and walnuts. Spread the batter in a greased 9x11x2-inch baking pan. Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a rack. Makes 1 cake.
As much a collection of American culture as cuisine, "The County Fair Cookbook" includes photos and information on local traditions, events and folklore.