Edible Grand Traverse Fall 2010 : Page 26
resources and cultural history. Native Americans boiled the briny flow of Onondaga Lake’s salt springs to yield crystalline sodium chloride for food storage and trade centuries before European colonists came on the scene.Within a generation of the RevolutionaryWar, industrialists had ratcheted up production, deploying teams of immigrant laborers tending vast iron kettles atop roaring fires to christen Syracuse the Salt City. The nascent trade hit its stride with the European blockades of theWar of 1812 and by 1825, the Erie Canal—“the ditch that salt built”— cut a swath through the city’s center, thanks to the self-serving efforts of local producer and politician James Geddes to ease transportation of the bulky commodity. For the Irish immigrants who spent their workday tending a cauldron of steaming brine, the quest for a hot meal yielded a boiled lunch: the salt potato. By the early 1880s, the brothers Keeffe had added the by-then-ubiquitous dish to the menu of their grocery-turned-barroom onWolf Street. “The saloon where they are served isn’tmuch in the way of a luxurious drinking place,” reported the Syracuse Herald in 1899. “A plain little bar takes up one side of the small room, whose sawdust floor leads through a door into a room beyond, where a table placed among the kegs and barrels of liquor makes up the furnishings of the Café Keeffe.” John Hinerwadel picked up where the Keeffes left off when he opened the eponymous 31-acre Hinerwadel’s Grove in 1914. Surrounded by North Syracuse farm country, the site was a short trolley ride from downtown and Hinerwadel marketed the accessible, park-like setting as a picnic destination where he hosted clambakes replete with chowder and salt potatoes grown by a neighbor. In the 1960s, Hinerwadel’s grandson began bagging and promoting the recipe’s raw ingredients through local groceries and farm stands. At the time, the super-small spuds were cheap, an undersized, largely ignored byproduct of the baking tubers commonly cultivated in the area. Today, says president Vicky Hinerwadel, the fourth-generation family company sells between 4 and 5 million pounds of B-size potatoes in their trademark-protected paper sacks. “When we’re entertaining, I just bring a bag of potatoes home,” says the executive, who credits expectant guests for their role in maintaining the family tradition. “What’s a summer barbecue without salt potatoes?” Thanks to the Internet, the simple fare has legs. TasteofCNY.com will ship a single sack of Hinerwadel’s, while the Syracuse Crate Company packs them with Hoffman Hot Dogs, Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans and a collection of Dinosaur Barbeque sauces. That’s good news for my now far-flung family. Mom and Dad retired to Tennessee and my sister settled in Atlanta, where 25 years later she still thinks of a steaming bowl of salt potatoes as a rich indulgence.With 300 row feet of heirloom fingerlings in the ground, I’m tempted to put a Technicolor twist on the dish: Purple salt potatoes, anyone? Ithaca-based freelance reporter and beginning farmer Sharon Tregaskis never lived far enough from home to realize that Central New York's culinary touchstones aren't universally appreciated delicacies. 28 Edible Grande Traverse / Fall 2010 www.ediblegrandetraverse.com Photos by Zoe Becker
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