Cultural Appropriation and Pepperoni Rolls

For a non-conformist, I really enjoy being told what to do. A full-time freelancer spends a lot of energy creating order from chaos and rustling up work from thin air, so when I get an assignment from a client to develop a specific recipe, I'm happy to take it.

One of my clients, a large retail corporation, often gives me assignments to develop recipes for a mainstream American audience. I love working with the company, but I sometimes feel conflicted about developing recipes for an "Asian steak bowl" or a "Mexican rice skillet." The steak bowl is Asian because it features rice and some kind of soy marinade on the meat. The rice skillet is Mexican because it has corn, cumin, and chili powder. 

As a Caucasian mutt, I don't have a specific cuisine tied into my identity and family tradition, and so I never felt the sting of an outsider swooping down and flower-picking various ingredients and techniques for the sake of novelty...until a few weeks ago.

I grew up in Southeast Ohio, across the river from West Virginia. Four years ago, I moved back. It's more Appalachian than Midwestern, though in many ways it's simultaneously both things and neither of them. I call it the Appalachian Interzone. My parents, both native Ohioans, moved here 37 years ago, and people here in town still consider them outsiders. "Bir?" they'll say when I answer their inquiries about my last name ("Who are your parents?" is not a big-city question, but a small-town one). "Hmm, I don't know any Birs." While I find this scrutiny amusing, I see its usefulness; it's a simple attempt to tease out connections, create a community context. 

So I, too, am now an insider-outsider. Certain aspects I thought were universal during my youth I now see as highly regional, and one of those things is the pepperoni roll. 

There is nothing not to love about pepperoni rolls, unless you are an avid fan of nutrition, because there is nothing beneficial about them in that aspect. They are wads of cottony white bread stuffed with greasy, salty cured meat. A tiny bakery here in town made them; their version featured two pencil-thin sticks of pepperoni encased in the fluffy roll. One made an ideal snack; two, a satisfying lunch.

Pepperoni rolls hail from West Virginia. The lore says an Italian-American baker in Fairmont created them so coal miners could have a filling and portable lunch down in the mines. These days, you are more likely to find pepperoni rolls at a gas station or grocery store, but small-town bakeries still make them, too. Sometimes there is cheese in or on the roll. Sometimes pizza sauce is served on the side, or--gasp!--in the roll itself. I am a purist, and I like the rolls buttery and soft, with only pepperoni inside. 

There's also a sticks vs. slices debate. Though I once preferred the pepperoni sticks (the lunchmeat version of a chocolate baton in a pain au chocolat), I am now a convert to the slices, because they are better distributed in the roll and thereby leech more of the flavorful, bright orange grease into the bready interior. It's a déclassé version of brioche, almost. I love brioche. 

Currently I am working on a cookbook called Tasting Ohio: Favorite Recipes from the Buckeye State. The book collects recipes from chefs and food producers all over Ohio; it's meant to be a survey of Ohio's abundance and diversity, not a definitive encyclopedic tome on Ohio's regional foods. Pepperoni rolls initially didn't seem to be a good fit for the book, because they are the official state food of West Virginia (I say this literally, not figuratively--the WV state legislature passed the resolution marking it such in 2013), and Tasting Ohio is an Ohio cookbook. But I grew up in Ohio, eating pepperoni rolls. Ohioans up and down the Ohio River Valley did, too. Who am I to deny the Appalachian Interzone a voice in Tasting Ohio? It exists! I exist in the Appalachian Interzone at this moment!

I gave in to my misgivings. The rolls are going in the book. The classic homemade pepperoni roll recipe is insanely simple.

1. Buy Rhodes frozen dinner roll dough.

2. Thaw it.

3. Shape it into rolls with either slices or sticks (and perhaps, god forbid, cheese).

4. Bake. Cool somewhat. Eat.

I wanted to start with homemade roll dough, so I sniffed around for source recipes to compare, and in my research I came across a pepperoni roll recipe in Cook's Country. Cook's Country is the less austere sister publication of Cook's Illustrated. Both magazines take extreme pains to build fail-safe recipes that deliver what, in their eyes, are the best results possible. The Cook's Country pepperoni rolls had sesame seeds on top, which instantly tipped me off. They could not be the real deal! Never, ever have I seen pepperoni rolls with sesame seeds on top. Who did those Massholes think they were, plucking one of West Virginia's fine traditions and mucking it up to suit their elitist tastes?

It was my turn to be on the receiving end of Asian Steak Bowl fury. It riled me up enough that I didn't read the Cook's Country recipe, or the accompanying short article setting it up, so I can't go point my finger at them and cry "Columbusing!" That, by the way, is a newish term for appropriating an aspect of one culture and acting as if you discovered it. West Virginia, and Appalachia in general, is tragically misunderstood by most people in our nation. It's thought of as white trash, politically backwards, culturally bereft, and appallingly unsophisticated. Some of those assumptions are founded in reality, but West Virginia is also rich with folklore, extremely fertile in all aspects of the arts, and home to its own legitimate foodways. I know many smart, proud, and delightful West Virginians. Every time something good about West Virginia sneaks into the national consciousness, I want to give the state a fist-bump. But, just as the natural splendor of the state has been mined by greedy outside interests for its fossil fuels, so to have its food traditions been mined by superficial foodies who, say, want the cachet of ramps without understanding anything about the cultural meaning the plant has to rural mountain folk. I want pepperoni-loving people everywhere to be embrace pepperoni rolls, but I also want them to understand that they are a salt-of-the-earth delicacy, the street food of the coal mines. To render them foufy with sesame seeds is missing the point.

In my pepperoni rolls for Tasting Ohio, I use the fancy deli pepperoni slices, not the so-so Hormel stuff. I add honey and full-fat buttermilk to my dough, and brush the proofing rolls with melted butter. None of those things are standard issue in a typical pepperoni roll, but I feel I can get away with it, because I'm from here. Does it all come down to feelings and birthrights?

I attended a great panel discussion at this year's IACP conference called "Is What's Mine Yours? How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation in Your Writing." One of the speakers (I think it was Andrea Nguyen, an expert on Vietnamese cooking and never one to shy away from critical thinking) pointed out that appropriation is taking, while collaboration is giving. Giving credit, giving context, giving goodwill. Being mindful that a recipe is never just a recipe, and a seemingly innocuous white bread roll stuffed with pizza toppings is never just a roll. Is it okay to fling sesame seeds over them if you don't have roots in the Mountain State? Is it okay to include them in Tasting Ohio when you're a fringe element in the Appalachian Interzone? Is it justifiable to look Cook's Country in the eye and ask, "Who are your parents?" Good intentions go a long way, but good research goes further. What I can pull off in the privacy of my own home can't always be explained away in the few short sentences of a recipe headnote. Someone could write an entire book on pepperoni rolls. Someone should.

Maybe it shouldn't be me.  

Ramps and Reverse Foraging

My recent Serious Eats feature (which yay, I’m so excited about) is an inside look at ramp dinners, but my initial interest in ramps came about from the attraction of finding and getting them. Looking for ramps in the woods in the spring is a bit of a treasure hunt in nature. A person heading out foraging and coming back empty-handed at least got outside for a while and saw many non-ramp examples of wildlife, and that was pleasing to me.

I think that’s part of why ramps have become so trendy the past decade; even if you don’t get the full-on foraging experience from buying them at a fancy farmers’ market, just having them on your plate connects you to the larger romance of their story.

But this year I learned more about how our love for ramps is harming them. Nature can’t keep up with the demand, and ramps—while hearty—are very slow to grow.

Ramps were my introduction to foraging, but I like to get out and scrabble around for all kinds of greens, fruits, forest herbs, and mushrooms. Oftentimes I am not very successful, but the success is ultimately about reconnecting with my role in the immediate ecosystem where I happen to be at the time. Still, the lure of going into the woods is not nearly as potent without the potential reward of encountering something delicious to eat.

So I decided to be a little bit more proactive in making sure my actions help preserve the forest habitat I love so much—without it, there is no foraging. I think of it as reverse foraging. It may be just a drop in the bucket in the face of everything our modern lives do to alter the landscape we live on, but I think intentions go a long way for one’s spiritual well-being.

• Planting ramp bulbs in areas in decimated ramp patches, or, better yet, collecting ramp seeds in the early fall and planting them in the woods (which is actually very easy).

• Pulling up invasive garlic mustard and properly disposing of it so it does not spread. This one in particular is like beating back waves, because garlic mustard is very tenacious. But I saw some growing in my favorite ramp patch, and I was like, “that’s it, man! This is WAR!” Also, pulling up garlic mustard can be cathartic if you are in a foul mood.

• Following the basic principles of courtesy by not foraging for more than the land can easily recover from.

• Getting friends excited about the wonders of what grows right where you live. Even if someone is not going to go out and collect shagbark hickory nuts, just knowing they exist increases the value humans place on those trees, and, by extension, the biodiversity of their surroundings.

There’s a school of thought that the changes humans make to our natural systems is, in its own way, natural (e.g. invasive species accidentally coming over to new landmasses on ships, or people intentionally introducing new species). I get this—there were no apples in North America prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and goddamn do I love apples—but I think it’s fine to make judgments on a case-by-case basis, rather than cop out and say “fuck it, we’re screwed, but I’ll be dead by the time it matters.” Just today I was thinking there could be a year when I have grandkids and I’d tell them, “I remember when there were bats in North America,” or “There used to be these wild onions in the woods called ramps, and I liked to dig them up and cook them.” What a dreary future to have in store. I don’t want us to get there without a fight.

This Crappy Kitchen: Kelly in Elkins, WV

Crappy kitchens. We've all had them (and if you haven't, sweetheart, then props to you). Nearly every lifestyle magazine or website glorifies the concept of a fully-loaded deluxe kitchen; we see profiles of famous chefs or writers or designers and their glorious, airy kitchens with top-end appliances and cookbooks arranged just so. Inevitably, these chefs and writers and designers have more resources to pull from in creating their dream kitchens than we mere humans. 

The argument is that glossy magazine spreads appeal to our own dreams--if we can't enjoy a clean, spacious kitchen of our own, at least we can do it vicariously--but I don't buy it. I want tips on living with the kitchen I have now, not ideas on how to set up the kitchen I'll never get. 

Earlier this week, food writer Debbie Koenig came clean in a blog post that went a little viral. In it, she points out that food writers, by projecting a buffed-and-polished version of their lives, let readers down by delivering something unreasonable and unattainable. "I don’t think we’re ashamed of these parts of our lives, necessarily, just that in order to capture attention, we chase a notion of unrealistic beauty," she writes. "That leads to cookbooks and food blogs as staged and Photoshopped as the models in Vogue."

I'm sick of Vogue model kitchens. So, with that in mind, I invite us--you!--to share your crappy kitchens with others who likewise cope with crappy kitchens. I hope this occasional series of short videos will inspire you to embrace what is real, and vent about what is crappy. First up: my lifelong friend Kelly. Back in February, I stayed at her rental house in Elkins, WV. Kelly is usually a very expressive, energetic person, and that she's somewhat subdued here is quite telling. She hated that kitchen. The video quality here is not great, perhaps in keeping with the theme, but you'll get the idea.

Kelly shares her crappy rental house kitchen.

Happy ending: Kelly married her boyfriend, and they now live in a house way out in the woods. Their kitchen is still not ideal, but it's warm and welcoming, and its few cabinets are easily accessible. My heart goes out to the occupants of Kelly's old place, which is a cute little house, if you eat exclusively instant ramen and instant oatmeal.

Please share your crappy kitchen woes below. And maybe we'll feature your kitchen next on This Crappy Kitchen! 

Curried Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Soup

Right now we’re at the peak of summer, but I first encountered this rib-sticking soup in the chill of last November. It’s an all-season soup; I can’t stop craving the stuff, with its exotic aroma and bright flavors.  

I can thank the TipTop Café of Thomas, West Virginia for introducing me to this hearty manna. After a long day of teaching a charcuterie class in the adorably historic village of Thomas, I was beat. We’d driven up the mountain with a car full of kitchen equipment and specialty cuts of dead animals. We all had a blast, but anyone who’s cleaned up after a day of sausage-making knows what a task it is. After we’d dried the last sheet pan and swept the floor a final time, we walked a few blocks to the TipTop, a darling little coffee shop/bar/restaurant in a well-preserved former mining town (population 600-something). Passing through its door was like entering a portal to Brooklyn or Portland: the tidy row of specialty chocolate bars, the gleaming shelf of infused liquors, the kid’s area with an IKEA play kitchen. I was famished—when I teach classes, I get hyper-focused and can’t really eat anything of substance—and a steamy bowl of vegan soup topped off a day of pâté-making like nothing else could.

Thomas is hours away, and I’m saving future TipTop visits for fancy chocolate bars and cocktails made with nibby bourbon. I can’t get those here, but I was able to replicate the soup in my own kitchen. Slightly sweet with a gingery bite, it’s easy to throw together (and, if you own a pressure cooker, will be ready to eat in all of 10 minutes). Even my four-year-old daughter consented to eat spoonfuls at the dinner table, a rarity for any food that’s not a cheese sandwich.

We returned from on a two-week trip recently. I peeked in our root cellar (actually just a basement-corner “IN” basket salvaged from a former library job) and saw tendrils sprouting from the giant sweet potato I’d intended for soup. After lopping off the rooty top, I plopped it in a dish of water, and lo! It grew. My hope is to pot the thing in a hanging basket, once the roots really get going. Sweet potatoes make cute houseplants, but they make better soup.

Curried Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup

Serves 4-6  

Do not even consider using a can of lite coconut milk. Fatty coconut milk is what makes this soup so rich and fragrant.

• 1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 4 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 2 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 pound 5 ounces), peeled and cut into 4-inch chunks
• 1 cup dried red lentils
• 3 cups water
• 2-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
• 1 lime
• Chopped cilantro, for serving

Open the can of coconut milk and spoon a few tablespoons of the fat at the top of the can into the bottom of a pressure cooker at least a 4-quart capacity. (You may use a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed stockpot). Turn the heat to medium-high. Once the coconut fat sputters, add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, 3-5 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic and cook another minute. Add the curry powder and stir until combined. Dump in the sweet potatoes, lentils, remaining coconut milk, water, and salt.

If using the pressure cooker, lock the lid in place, bring to the highest pressure, and cook for 7 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally. (If you’re not using a pressure cooker, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Cook maybe about 30 minutes, stirring often. You’ll probably need to add at least another cup of water, bit by bit).

Unlock the lid of the pressure cooker and either mash the soup with a potato masher or stir it vigorously with a big wooden spoon—the sweet potatoes should be cooked enough to easily fall apart. Stir in the sriracha sauce and squirt in the juice of half the lime. Taste and adjust the seasonings with more salt or a few squirts of sriracha. This soup thickens quite a bit as it cools, so you may need to add more water to make it more like soup and less like porridge.

Serve topped with cilantro, if you like, and more freshly squeezed lime juice. Once cooled, the soup will keep, tightly covered in the refrigerator, for 5 days.   

Indian-Style Green Beans and Potatoes

For years I've been all geared up about pressure cooking, so when I finally got to teach a Modern Pressure Cooking Workshop this past weekend, I was over the moon. Pressure cooking is a hard sell for places that host classes. It's just not sexy. Pressure cookers strike home cooks as risky and prone to explosions. But pressure cooking is IS sexy, and it's also very safe, and that we had a sold-out group this past Sunday only proves how groovy the folks are up in the Randolph/Tucker county area of West Virginia. It's about 3,000 feet up there, to be exact, so we needed a few extra moments of cooking time for a number of the dishes. (Note to chef-educators: when something does not turn out exactly as planned, blame the altitude!)

Here's one thing we made in the class, a summer staples I cook again and again: green beans and potatoes. Pull out your pressure cookers and snap to it.

Indian-Style Green Beans and Potatoes

Serves 6-8 as a side dish

Is there any other veggie pairing as homey and adaptable as green beans and potatoes? Here, we’re adding turmeric and a few spices with ginger and garlic for an Indian feel, a riff on a recipe created by my friend Sara Alway in her adorable little book on companion planting, Soil Mates. But you could tinker with the aromatics and seasonings and take it in dozens of different flavor directions.

The doneness is the trick here. Some green beans are old and tough; some are young and tender. Some potatoes cook up in 4 minutes; others take longer. Also, I love it when my green beans get on the mushy side and the potatoes begin to fall apart. I’m guessing you don’t (if you do, awesome!) Use these cooking times as a guideline, checking after 4 minutes and cooking longer as needed.

• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 2 teaspoons whole black mustard seed, optional
• 1 onion, diced or sliced
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¾ cup vegetable stock, water, or whey
• 2 pounds small redskin potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1-2 pounds green beans, snapped
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, optional
• Freshly squeezed lemon juice for serving

1. Heat the cooker over medium-high heat. Add the oil. When it shimmers, add the mustard seed and cook until the seeds pop.
2. Immediately add the diced onion and cook until the onions begin to brown, about 5-10 minutes. You may need to lower the heat to keep the onion from burning. Add the ginger, garlic, turmeric, and coriander and cook for an additional minute.
3. Stir in the water, stock, or whey, then add the potatoes and green beans. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the works. Lock on the lid, bring the cooker to pressure, and cook on the highest setting for 4 minutes (really I always need to go longer, more like 8 minutes, but start with 4). Release the pressure and take a peek in the cooker, poking a potato and green bean. If they are not yet tender, continue to cook in increments of 2-4 minutes.
4. When the vegetables are cooked to your desired doneness, stir in the butter, if using. Taste for seasoning and add more salt. Unless you used whey, which is already tart, squeeze as much lemon juice over the vegetables as you like and serve.

Rosemary and Garlic Variation: Substitute olive oil for the canola oil, and omit the spices and ginger. Add a dried bay leaf and a sprig of fresh rosemary when you add the liquid and the vegetables.

Basil and Tomato Variation: Substitute olive oil for the canola oil, and omit the spices and ginger. Decrease the cooking liquid to ½ cup and add a few chopped fresh tomatoes instead. After it’s all cooked, throw in a nice handful of chopped fresh basil and maybe a little fresh oregano.

Down Home Version: Omit the canola oil, spices, and ginger. Render a few slices of bacon and cook the onion in that. Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar over the cooked vegetables before serving. I especially like this preparation when the veggies are a little more cooked and the beans are army green.

*Sara also shared her own pressure cooker, a funky but not scary Hawkins, with me; it's what you see in the photo. Hawkins is a big brand in India, I guess, because the pamphlet that came with the cooker has a bunch of neato regional Indian recipes. Sara, if you want your cooker back, let me know! It's not hard to use at all. Perhaps it's time for me to host a an underground Modern Pressure Cooking Workshop in my own kitchen!  

Gather Ye Ramps While Ye May

Like nearly all highly coveted foods, ramps have a crevice of calendar days when they appear in titillating abundance. Their delicate green fronds rise from the leafy detritus of primeval forest floors, signaling spring. And thus the mania begins. Every year, those wise in the ways of ramps take to the woods, seeking their precious, restorative quarry.

A ramp is as slender as the most refined pinkie. It shyly pokes its head from the ground from late March to April. They grow in fertile, shady woodlands all over the eastern United States and southeast Canada, though I think of them as particularly Appalachian. It’s possible to cultivate ramps, but they are finicky. The majority of the ramps harvested every year are foraged. These alluring wild mountain leeks have grown for centuries, so if you are rolling your eyes and thinking how very 2011 it is to extol the many culinary and spiritual virtues of ramps, you may be dismissed. Only those pure in heart can enter the magical portal to this pungent Brigadoon. It’s been a hell of a winter. Go gather ye ramps while ye may.

That the heartbeats of an entire group of humans—young and old, hillbilly and hipster—can quicken so at the mention of an untamed vegetable that shares a prosaic name with a simple machine perplexes many. My husband, for one. He does not object to ramps; in fact, he will gladly eat them. What he does not get is the mighty ruckus people like me raise over a feral edible plant. The concept of combing the hillsides in search of elusive alliums and then investing dirty hours on hands and knees extricating their slender roots from the chilled spring soil holds little appeal to him. And since the treasure hunt is half of the point, he’s only experiencing a shadow of the ramp when he ingests it.

Appalachians pride themselves on their self-reliance. To glorify the ramp is exquisitely Appalachian. To glorify the ramp is to recognize the generally unnoticed wonder that quietly rises up from deep, dark, ancient hollers where living mindlessly is not advisable.

So ramps are not just a food or a fever of spring. They are an emblem and a practice and an edible manifestation of a tribe. You don’t need to live in a shack in the woods to belong to that tribe. All you have to do is get why there’s a tribe in the first place.

And yet the flavor of a ramp offers enough stinky-breath allure to pay off the emotional hype surrounding it. Ramps are scallion-esque, but not oniony. Their emerald fronds are herbal, but not chive-y. There’s some garlicky assertiveness in the white root, but it’s not as sharp. That’s what’s foxy to a chef about a ramp. It’s an aromatic and a cooking green all in one, familiar in concept but and exotic in spirit.

The Appalachian tradition hinges upon having access to heaps and heaps of ramps. Heaps, literally. This amount is known colloquially as “a big mess of ramps,” or even more colloquially as “a messaramps”. A messaramps shrinks dramatically when exposed to heat, and the result is somewhat like very pungent cooked spinach: green, but zingy with that good stink.

These cooked ramps are often served alongside cornbread and beans at church fundraising ramp dinners, where many hands make faster work of the digging, sorting, cleaning, and cooking. A common way to prepare the ramps is to first blanch them; it’s fast, and it’s said to tame these little buggers. I prefer to chop the white root ends into segments about a centimeter long and saute these gently in a big skillet filmed with olive oil. After a few minutes of this, when the roots are good and aromatic (they won’t become translucent as chopped, cooked onions do), roughly chop the greens and throw them in. They will wilt yieldingly. Season this with salt and a few light grinds of pepper; now you can enliven a frittata, risotto, pizza, sandwich, omelet, quiche, home fries, et cetera.

A raw ramp is an entirely different beast from its mellower cooked sibling. Raw ramps emit vapors that intoxicate some and polarize all. If you have only a dozen or so precious ramps to in your hot little hands, I recommend using them as crazy-intense herbs. Make ramp aöli, or mince them and gently knead them into a hamburger patty with a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce (and then serve it with ramp aöli). Or chop up your scant little bundle of ramps, flash it in a little olive oil, and cook eggs sunny-side-up right on the rampy nest.

The only way to go wrong with ramps is to disrespect them. When you find a patch in the woods, don’t go decimating the whole thing like a heathen. Dig up a few ramps here and a few ramps there, allowing the patch to maintain its numbers from season to season. And it’s best to leave some of the root end in the ground, if possible, to facilitate next year’s growth. I sense that the trendiness of ramps in urban markets peaked last year, but there’s still a need to preserve, not deplete, the wild rampshed.

Should you not be privy to the secreted lands where ramps thrive, take heart. Certainly there’s something else equivalent in your life. If not in flavor, in essence. Ramps present themselves to those who choose to be aware of what surrounds them. You can’t enter Brigadoon by looking for it directly, but you can’t enter it without wandering, either.

Mash up a big, rich pot of potato-ey ramp champ to enjoy some rib-sticking spring fodder. 

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I am a contributor.