April 16, 2024

Inspired by Missouri

THE MEAL

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Ever since my trip to St. Louis in June of 2023, I’ve been so excited to try making some of these foods for myself! And I was really happy to find out how easy they were and how delicious they turned out!

TOASTED RAVIOLI

There were so many things I could have chosen for the main Missouri-inspired dish, such as cashew chicken, burnt ends, or St. Louis-style pizza (honestly, with how many variations of pizza I’ve heard of, I could make pizza a challenge of its own in the future!), but ultimately I had to go with toasted ravioli.

Toasted ravioli, or “T-Ravs,” aren’t actually toasted but fried. They’re thought to have originated in “The Hill,” an Italian-American neighborhood in St. Louis, but there’s some evidence that it might have existed in Sicily before being brought to the States in the 1930s. In most stories, someone accidentally dropped ravioli into the deep fryer instead of boiling it, and the toasted ravioli was born. In any case, restaurants on The Hill have made the dish famous, and it’s one of the foods that St. Louis is best known for. They’re usually an appetizer (they were an hors d’oeuvres for the event I was at in St. Louis) but I figured that a plateful would make a great main meal, and I was right. 🙂

I wanted to try to make ravioli from scratch for this endeavor, but I ended up not having the time, and I worried that my first attempt at homemade pasta wouldn’t turn out well enough to use. Store-bought ravioli worked just fine, though, and these were a cinch to make. You just dip the ravioli in buttermilk, coat in Italian breadcrumbs, freeze for a little bit to firm, then fry until golden brown. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese, dip in marinara sauce, and enjoy!

They turned out so good! They have the delicious classic taste of ravioli, but the satisfying crunch of chicken parmesan. I enjoyed eating these much more than I generally enjoy a bowl of boiled ravioli. And I’ve gotta say, I’m getting way more confident about frying foods now that I’ve made so many for this challenge!

CHEESY CORN

As with Iowa, I had a hard time coming up with a definitive Missouri-specific side dish for this meal. I heard about Red Hot Riplets but couldn’t find any in my local supermarkets and didn’t trust myself to try making them from scratch. I considered Silver Dollar City Succotash, but since I’m not a fan of zucchini or okra, that probably would have gone to waste. And I learned that people in Missouri love funeral potatoes from my home state of Utah, but since I’ve already made those, and they’re definitely a Utah invention, I continued my search. What I decided on was a popular side dish at Jack Stack’s Barbecue—one of Kansas City’s favorite barbecue places. Since I didn’t make barbecue for this meal, I was happy to include something from Kansas City.

According to their website, Jack Stack Barbecue began in 1957 as a barbecue stand that then expanded into the largest wood-fired cookery in the United States. There are six restaurants in Kansas City, and they also ship their products nationwide. Their cheesy corn bake is a family recipe that they’ve been serving in their restaurant for years.

Cheesy corn is essentially the same recipe as homemade mac ‘n’ cheese, starting with a roux, melting in cheddar cheese and cream cheese, and instead of adding boiled elbow macaroni, you add corn and diced ham. It’s such a random combination, but it’s not bad. I expected the flavors of mac ‘n’ cheese to be incompatible with corn, but honestly, the cheese flavor wasn’t very strong. It mostly just tastes like creamy corn. It’s pretty good! Not sure that I would make it again, but I’d happily order it as a side dish if I ever get some barbecue at Jack Stack.

7 UP

My first choice for a Missouri-inspired beverage was a Peach Nehi Float, which are popular in Iconeum, Missouri, especially among Boy Scouts. I got my hopes up when I saw that my local supermarket had peach Nehi soda, but when I stopped in to grab some, the shelf was empty. 🙁 So I settled for 7 Up instead.

7 Up was created by Charles Leiper Grigg in 1929. His company was based in St. Louis, hence its inclusion in this meal.

Did you know that a lot of sodas started out as medicinal tonics? 7 Up is no different. Its original name was “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” and it contained a mood-stabilizing drug until the 1940s! That was probably why it was so popular during the Great Depression… No one is really clear about why it was renamed 7 Up. Some think it had to do with the bottles being 7 ounces instead of 6 like other contemporary soft drinks; others said it’s because lithium (the mood-stabilizing drug) has an atomic mass of 7. Who knows!

To me, 7 Up is more of a base I use for more interesting drinks like Shirley Temples or sherbet punch. It’s fine on its own, but I prefer Sprite or ginger ale. You can’t deny its versatility, though! Just look at their website, and you can find so many recipes with 7-Up as a key ingredient.

GOOEY BUTTER CAKE

Missouri’s state dessert is the ice cream cone, which made its debut at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. As amazing as ice cream cones are, there’s another dessert that’s undoubtedly one of Missouri’s favorites—gooey butter cake!

Nobody is really sure about how gooey butter cake was first made, but it seems to have appeared during the 1930s in St. Louis, with one theory being that a baker accidentally reversed the proportions of butter and flour. It’s now super popular in St. Louis and beyond. You can find it in bakeries and grocery stores, and when I visited a nice hotel in St. Louis, they left me a slice of gooey butter cake as part of the welcome!

It’s really easy to make, with a base layer using an eggy, buttery yellow cake mix, topped with a cream-cheese-powdered-sugar layer. After slightly underbaking, it turns out kind of like a blondie, but creamier. I LOVE the texture, and it’s plenty sweet on its own, though some people eat it as a breakfast pastry and top it with powdered sugar and berries.