The Big E 2014 - The Maine Building

I'm spending some quality time at the Eastern States Exposition over the next couple of weeks, so prepare for a bunch of "state fair" types of posts. Everybody writes about the bizarre deep-fried junk food at state fairs (even me) so I'm taking a different tack this time around and telling you about other cool stuff there is to do and eat at the E. This series starts off at the Maine Building.

Let's start off with one of the most bad-ass food trucks I've ever seen.  It's parked behind the Maine building and it's owned and operated by Pizza Pie On The Fly from Portland. It is a genuine Italian-made wood-fired pizza oven on the back of restored 1949 International KB-6. I dearly love both wood-fired ovens and old trucks, so eating pizza and chatting with the crew before the lunch crowd rush was the highlight of my morning.

Pizza margherita: cheese, fresh sliced tomatoes, fresh basil.

But I know you're more interested in the pizza than you are in the truck. Over the course of a couple of days, I tried a slice each of plain cheese, pepperoni, and margherita.

Once upon a time, I used to say that it was impossible to find a decent pizza in Maine. But if Ryan Carey's Pizza Pie On The Fly represents pizza in southern Maine, I might have to take that back.

All of the pizzas are decent, thin-crust New York-style pies - that is to say, they have a thin and tender but chewy inner crust and should be folded as you take your first bites. The portions are generous: about a quarter of a 16-inch pie. The cheese and pepperoni pies were very good and typical of their kind, but the margherita was really great. Since excellent field-grown tomatoes are still in season right now, I would have been disappointed if the tomatoes were lousy, but they weren't. They were fresh and plump and tasted like they had been picked that morning. Combined with the delicious fresh basil and gently melted cheese, it made for a great breakfast.

Pro tip if you try them out: Go at a busier time when the pizzas are really cranking out of the blazing-hot oven. Air temps at the fair have only been in the low 70s, and pizza cools quickly under an awning. If it's not busy, though, you might ask the guys to slide your slice back into the oven for a minute or two to warm up, and then you'll have a chance to talk to them about their own love of pizzas and old trucks.

And if you're at the Maine building and you don't want to stand in a half-hour line for a baked potato, you can stop at Sebastian's Smoke House for a piece of delicious smoked salmon (it's almost as good as my own homemade.) Sebastian's also sells Cap'n Eli's Blueberry Pop, which tastes like real blueberries, not like that artificial (but still delicious) Blue Berry flavor.

They've got Cap'n Eli's Root Beer there, too, and can make you a genuine root beer float if you've a hankering for one.

Other features of the Maine building include fresh wild blueberry pie, maple syrup and candy, lobster rolls (a great deal at $10.00) and a barbecue out back - across the patio from the pizza truck - serving wicked good pulled pork. And of course, there's that baked potato, which is pretty famous and will necessitate a wait in line.

State Fair Food at the Big E: Big E Cream Puffs

Sixth in a series about State Fair Food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

For many people who attend the Big E, the signature food of the fair is not a donut-padded bacon cheeseburger or a batter-dipped deep fried monstrosity. It's a cream puff.

First introduced at the fair in 2002, the Big E Cream Puff was intended to be the "signature dessert" of the 17-day event, and it achieved that goal almost immediately - they were a huge hit that first year and have remained enormously popular ever since (the bakery sells more than 60,000 thousand of them during the run of the fair.) And it's easy to see why - the pastry is melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the cream filling isn't some cheap-ass lard-and-sugar bastardization, it's real 42% butterfat cream, sweetened and whipped to within a few minutes of turning into butter. It's decadent and gorgeous and velvety smooth, and I buy one a year, which my wife Maryanne and I share.

I think that the quality of the ingredients is only one of the factors involved in the cream puffs' popularity. The Big built a state-of-the-art bakery into the west side of The New England Center building where the cream puffs and their companion pastries, The Big Eclair, are made from scratch. That bakery is fronted on three sides by big glass windows that allow patrons of the fair to watch the pastries being made from beginning to end. It attracts quite a crowd, of both onlookers and buyers.

And it doesn't seem to matter what time of day you get there to buy your cream puff fix - there seems always to be a line (although, to be fair, the folks behind the counter at the bakery are friendly and efficient and the line moves fairly quickly.)

Cream puffs are $3.75 each and are available individually to eat right there at one of the surrounding picnic tables and benches, or you can get a bunch of them boxed to take home.

State Fair Food at the Big E: Fried Cheese Curds

Fifth in a series about State Fair food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

If you live in New England or the Midwest US you probably know what cheese curds are and you've probably eaten them a time or two. For the rest of you, I'm faced with the task of trying to describe them. I guess the best way is to just call them "immature cheese." Cheese curds are the solid bits of curdling milk which, when processed and pressed together and aged, eventually become the sliced cheese you're more familiar with.

Really fresh cheese curds are kind of weird to eat. They're mild and milky-tasting, and very soft. They squeak against your teeth when you chew them - it's kind of cool, and also kind of creepy. But that squeak is also the key to knowing how fresh the curds are - as they age, the squeakiness fades and finally vanishes (and that can happen in as little as a day!) That's why when you buy cheese curds in a sealed plastic bag from the supermarket they're usually not really soft or squeaky.

Anyway, this whole lesson in the freshness of cheese curds is solely so you have a frame of reference for the fried cheese curds sold by The Big Cheese at the Big E. As we were strolling along the concession-laden boulevard between the Better Living Center and the Avenue of the States,The Big Cheese caught Lynnafred's eye because cheese curds are one of her favorite snacks. We've had fried cheese curds at KFC before and they were okay but never awesome, because at KFC the curds are soft and mild but never fresh enough to squeak.

Ah, but not the fried curds from The Big Cheese. They're lightly coated in batter and quickly fried until they're soft and warm inside but crispy and golden outside. And they squeak! Awesome!

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State Fair Food at the Big E: Fried Lasagna

First in a series about State Fair Food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

It seems that every year, one particular food item at local state fairs catches a special buzz and becomes a highly-anticipated and sought-after treat. In years past, this has happened to deep-fried cookies and burgers served on glazed-donut buns. This year, the food which everyone is looking for at The Big E is the deep-fried lasagna.

A serving of fried lasagna consists of two "packets," each a little less than four inches or so square and about 1½ inches thick. The packets are made of long lasagna noodles, folded in thirds around a filling of seasoned ricotta cheese, then breaded and deep-fried to golden brown and served with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese and a small tub of marinara sauce.

The outside coating is crispy while the lasagna noodles retain just the right amount yielding softness. Meanwhile, the ricotta filling is smooth and creamy (very creamy, actually, almost - but not quite - to the point of being wet.) There's no mozzarella cheese involved at all, and a minimal amount of seasoning in the ricotta; while the lasagna is tasty, this makes it almost bland.

And that is where the marinara dipping sauce comes in, and that stuff is so good, you could almost consider it a "secret ingredient." Not only is it a perfect accompaniment for the lasagna, but it was almost good enough to eat with a spoon. Look, I know those guys probably ladle that sauce out of a can or something, but I'm telling you I would love to know what company is filling the cans. That marinara tasted so tangy and so fresh that it was almost as though this fast-food joint was taking the time to cook down freshly-picked vine-ripened tomatoes.

Another great thing about the taste: There was no oil flavor whatsoever. With properly-prepared fried food, you'll taste the food and not the oil. But let's be completely frank about your typical deep-fried-junk-food palace, especially at a place where they're cooking as fast as they can all day to meet a huge demand: sometimes the oil doesn't get changed enough. And when you're cooking something with as subtle a flavor as fried pasta, any off-taste in the oil will come through strongly in the food. So a huge thumbs-up to Chicken Express (the sole Big E purveyor of fried lasagna) for not only keeping their oil fresh, but also for keeping their fryolators good and hot, ensuring that the outside crisps up rapidly and prevents the food from absorbing excess oil.

I think it's safe to say that I would totally recommend fried lasagna to anyone at the Big E.

Find deep-fried lasagna at Chicken Express in the Food Court.  One serving, as shown in the photo above, is $7.00. Maryanne and I found that one serving was enough for us to share, and the friendly, hardworking Chicken Express staff are perfectly happy to give you an extra fork if you ask nicely.