Superabundant dispatch: a sweet way to recognize Oregon’s statehood

OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the tales behind the meals of the Pacific Northwest with movies, articles and this weekly e-newsletter. To maintain you sated between episodes, we’ve introduced on meals author Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian and ecologist, to spotlight completely different elements of the area’s meals ecosystem. This week she needs Oregon a cheerful birthday by wanting on the state’s centennial celebration.

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Valentine’s Day is upon us, and whereas Oregon is house to legions of excellent chocolatiers, right here at Superabundant we’re extra targeted on cake. Sure, Feb. 14 can be Oregon’s birthday, and whereas we couldn’t fairly match 164 candles on prime, we do have the recipe for the birthday cake that was served on the centennial celebration in 1959. Now that was a birthday cake. What number of servings did that colossal cake yield? Learn on to search out out.

Freshly picked morsels from the Pacific Northwest meals universe:

In a altering local weather, dry farming may very well be the way forward for Oregon agriculture.

Even in a state identified for its lengthy wet season, droughty summer season climate can impression what we are able to develop and when. As OPB’s Elizabeth Castillo experiences, that’s why farmers and plant science researchers are arduous at work exploring crops appropriate for dry farming, a method for rising meals with out irrigation. Oregon State College’s Dry Farming Collaborative seeks to prepared the ground in each figuring out productive Mediterranean varieties that may be grown with out irrigation and uncovering new functions for the dry farming.

February is Potato Lover’s Month.

Final week we celebrated Nationwide Tater Tot Day with a narrative on the historical past of Oregon’s prodigal spud, however in case you’re in search of different Oregon-centric potato dishes, then look no additional than the jojo. Jojos aren’t simply another potato wedge, defined Matthew Korfhage in a 2017 story for Willamette Week; they’re particularly breaded and pressure-fried (aka broasted) and, in keeping with lore, might have been invented right here within the Northwest by a Vancouver, Washington, Taste-Crisp model pressure-fryer salesman. Beloved Portland rooster and jojo hang-out Reel M’Inn purportedly nonetheless makes use of an outdated Taste-Crisp. Each make very sturdy instances for the potato’s proposed designation as Oregon’s official state vegetable, as reported by OPB’s Kristian Foden-Vencil.

The place’s the meat (from)?

All this fried potato information makes us crave a juicy burger. Consuming regionally is simple with greens just like the tater tot, however do you actually know the place your meat comes from? OPB’s Kristian Foden-Vencil reported not too long ago that it’s not as simple as selecting your favourite ranch or grass-fed burger. As soon as cattle enter a U.S. Division of Agriculture-inspected abattoir, they’re sorted with animals from who is aware of the place. This occurs once more at every step, from packing to delivery to the meat counter; the worth goes up at each a part of the method, however extra importantly, it might imply that the meat’s exact supply isn’t really easy to pinpoint. Wish to make sure you’re shopping for native? Skip the center steps and inventory your freezer with state-inspected meat purchased straight from the ranchers, just like the Regenified-certified Carman Ranch, whose meat is processed by state-inspected butcher Valley Meat Service in Wallowa.

A few of it’s possible you’ll be out having a romantic dinner on Valentine’s Day, however always remember that Feb. 14 can be Oregon’s birthday. Whereas there isn’t any single signature dish to characterize the state (alas, no Oregon analog to the Maryland crab cake, regardless of Dungeness crab being far superior to their blue cousins), Oregon does have substances that it does higher than others.

It begs the query, although: What does Oregon actually style like? Does it style just like the Pacific Ocean — the salt, seaweed and the merroir of oysters, whose taste relies upon completely on the place they reside?

Does it style like Douglas fir bushes? Like beer? Like pickled beaver tails?

When it was time for Oregon to be feted 64 years in the past, these weren’t the burning questions being contemplated. In reality, even Oregon’s birthday cake appears to have been an afterthought.

In 1959, to have a good time the state’s one hundredth birthday, Portland hosted the Oregon Centennial Exposition and Worldwide Commerce Honest. Although Oregon formally grew to become a state within the winter, occasion planners sensibly opted to carry the three-month bash in the summertime — and it was fairly the occasion.

Held at what’s right now the positioning of the Oregon Expo Heart in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood, the official centennial birthday celebration was a really massive deal. The expo web site, dubbed “Frontier of the Future,” was 65 acres. It was no 1905 Lewis and Clark Expo (sited on 400 acres of Guild’s Lake, that was the West Coast’s first world’s truthful and noticed 1,588,000 paying attendees), however it might do, and all in all of the Centennial Expo noticed practically the identical variety of guests because the Lewis and Clark Expo had.

Harry Belafonte, Lawrence Welk and Roy Rogers performed the occasion. Apart from being festooned within the predictable evergreen bushes, coated wagons and full-size duplicate of a generic Wild West city dubbed “Frontier Village,” the exhibition featured a Japanese tea home, a show from the Atomic Vitality Fee to advertise the advantages of nuclear energy and a pool for synchronized swimming performances by the Worldwide Water Follies. A 31-foot-tall statue of Paul Bunyan was devoted to the occasion — it nonetheless stands at N. Interstate and Denver (the statue is now listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations).

The Oregon Centennial cake obtained a good quantity of native press, largely as a result of it was a sensational 5-ton behemoth within the form of Mount Hood, festooned with candy-covered wagons and tiny sweet bushes, designed to feed 40,000 folks. The mastermind behind the cake was Mardi Jacob, a neighborhood cat fancier and gown designer who gave the impression to be concerned any time a mammoth cake was wanted. A frosting recipe was developed particularly for the centennial by White Satin Sugar (made out of native sugar beets), and was printed in The Oregonian as a part of the corporate’s promotion:

The cake was reduce by Assistant Secretary of State Francis Wilcox with assist from Mardi Jacob, who wore a superb chiffon frock of her personal making. However regardless of all of this consideration to throwing the most important bash the state had ever seen, nobody bothered to report on how the birthday cake tasted.

Thankfully, a minimum of one Oregon girl had the presence of thoughts to clip the cake recipe that appeared in her native newspaper in 1959 (and which was later included in her household’s on-line cookbook); the standard applesauce-raisin cake recipe is similar because the “Oregon Centennial Cake by Mrs. Nathan Lemert from Lane County” that seems in Fabula’s Well-known Recipes by Oregon’s Most interesting Cooks!, revealed in 1964 by the Oregon Farm Bureau Ladies (now referred to as OFB Ladies’s Advisory Council). Search for the recipe on the finish of this text.

Recipe: Oregon Centennial Birthday Cake

Applesauce, walnuts and raisins are all effectively and good, but when we’d been on the party-planning committee, we would’ve steered a luscious pear cake topped with hazelnut frangipane. These are Oregon’s official state fruit and nut, respectively. Or perhaps we’d have gone with a berry-forward semifreddo, or a creamy bitter cherry clafoutis. At any charge, that is the cake that was mentioned to have been served at Oregon’s one hundredth birthday celebration. We’ve made a number of alterations to yield a cake with balanced taste and a extra tender crumb. (With all due respect to Eleanor Lemert, this cake wants eggs and nobody needs to soften shortening into scorching applesauce anymore.) Whereas we’re at it, cream cheese is a extra appropriate frosting for this cake than the cloying marshmallow fluff steered by White Satin Sugar in 1959. Makes 1 two-layer cake.

Oregon Birthday Cake

½ cup impartial oil (like canola or vegetable)

2 giant eggs

2 cups unsweetened applesauce

½ cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking soda

1 ½ cup sugar

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp floor cloves

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp tremendous sea salt

1 cup raisins

1 cup chopped walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-oz brick cream cheese, at room temperature

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups confectioner’s (powdered) sugar

1 tbsp complete milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease two spherical 9″ cake pans and line the bottoms with a circle of parchment paper. Set the cake pans on a rimmed baking sheet.
2. In a big mixing bowl, mix the oil, eggs, applesauce, milk and vanilla.
3. Whisk collectively the remaining substances besides the raisins and walnuts, then add the flour combination to the applesauce combination. Stir till completely mixed, then fold within the raisins and walnuts.
4. Divide the batter evenly among the many ready cake pans and bake for 30-40 minutes or till a toothpick inserted within the center comes out clear. Flip the baked muffins onto a cooling rack and allow them to cool utterly earlier than you even take into consideration frosting them.
5. Whereas the muffins are cooling, put together the frosting by combining the substances with a hand mixer and beating till easy.
6. Place one cake spherical on a serving plate or cake stand, then unfold about ¼” of frosting on prime. Heart the second cake spherical on prime, then unfold the remaining frosting in a fair layer on the tops and sides of the cake.

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