Grape Salad? WTF? [View all]

[uppityperson]

Have anyone of you heard of this? Granted I grew up 20 ft from MN, but huh? Lefse, molded jello salad with grated carrots, wild rice salad or hot dish, but this?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/11/19/365194058/grape-salad-is-not-minnesotan-and-other-lessons-in-cultural-mapmaking?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social

I was not raised in Minnesota, but I earned my stripes there during 10 winters as a resident, scraping my windshield through a fog of existential despair. Not every portrayal of the Midwest is based in reality, but this still speaks to a profound piece of my soul. I have been this person. I have been Jerry Lundegaard before murder enters his life, but after it enters his heart, if by "murder" you mean "beating the bejeezus out of a car with a plastic scraper."

I have never in my life heard of a "grape salad." Not at Thanksgiving, not at Christmas, not during a Vikings game, not during the Winter Carnival, not during the State Fair, and not during the greatest state holiday: the annual hockey tournament of the Minnesota State High School League.

But today, when The New York Times decided to come up with Thanksgiving recipes that "evoke each of the 50 states," Minnesota got "Grape Salad."

(clip)
Look, I'm not saying nobody in the state has ever eaten a grape salad. It's heated up grapes and sour cream with sugar on it; somebody has eaten that in any state where there are families coming up with simple dishes — in fact, somebody has eaten that in any state where there are mostly empty refrigerators and college students. Somebody has also, at some point, dipped Doritos in peanut butter and washed them down with Yoo-Hoo, in spite of the fact that recreational marijuana use is still illegal by federal law. But that does not mean Dorito Peanut Butter Crunch is a dish, and it definitely does not mean it is a Thanksgiving classic.
...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/18/dining/thanksgiving-recipes-across-the-united-states.html

This grape salad, which falls into the same category of old-fashioned party dishes as molded Jell-O salad, comes from a Minnesota-born heiress, who tells me it was always part of the holiday buffet in her family. It couldn’t be simpler to prepare and has only three ingredients: grapes, sour cream and brown sugar.

Rather like a creamy fruit salad with a crisp sugar topping, it really is delicious, though the concept sounded strange to me before I first tasted it. Other versions, I hear, call for softened cream cheese and nondairy “whipped topping”; I can’t say I’ll be trying that. Some cooks caramelize the brown sugar under the broiler and some don’t, but I definitely recommend this step, which gives the dish a crème brûlée aura