North Branford Potato & Corn Festival

North Branford is a tiny little town just in from the shoreline of Connecticut. It is mostly farmland with two main crops; potatoes and corn. Hence the Potato & Corn Festival. This is a small little festival with a few midway games, a couple of shaky carnival rides, and a handful of local arts, craft and food vendors. We arrived late on a Friday afternoon, walked around a bit, listened to a friends band play on the main stage, then headed straight for the food tent. First up was my wife’s favorite, fried dough.

It has recently been brought to my attention that elsewhere in the country people may not eat fried dough the same way we do. Powdered sugar and cinnamon seem to be the toppings of choice. But for us here in New England, sauce and cheese rule. A good grated parmesan cheese adds nicely to this dish, but good…no GREAT sauce is a must. If your sauce is more like hot ketchup then I’m not interested.

This is how fried dough should be. A little bit of a crisp on the outside and fluffy and doughy on the inside. These were the perfect size fitting nicely on a paper plate with an oasis of sauce floating in the middle. The proper way to eat New England style fried dough is as follows. You start from the outer edges tearing off a piece, dip it in the sauce in the middle, pop into mouth and do your best to avoid dripping sauce on your shirt. Once the outside is gone it’s a free for all. I like to fold mine up and try to eat it like pizza. It is inevitable that sauce will drip out. Where it lands in anyone’s guess.

Being a potato and corn festival, we next hit up the potato vendor. We had to wait since they were out of both corn and potatoes. We skipped the corn (I know…) but we both got potatoes with the works. Bacon, broccoli, cheese, sour cream, and butter. They were fresh out of the cooker so we had to let them cool for a minute. Once they were cool enough to eat, we dug in.

If you’ve never had a loaded potato like this it is an experience to be had. The fresh steamed vegetables mixing with the liquid cheese, coolness of the sour cream, and moist starchiness of the potato is a medley of flavor not to be missed. As I write this I think of the potatoes from the Eastern States Expo. The North Branford potatoes could hold their own against the Maine potatoes in my opinion.

Just after we finished eating the power in the food tent went out. We had more things we wanted to try. Maybe next year.