Betty Groff's family has had a lot of practice making good food. Ten generations ago, her ancestors settled in Lancaster County, Pa., which they thought was the next-best thing to heaven. They farmed the land and created an abundance of produce and good recipes that have been handed down through the years and have become one of this country's great troves of regional cuisine: Pennsylvania Dutch cookery.
Of the many restaurants that specialize in Lancaster County's let-out-your-belt-a-notch style of eating, one of our favorites has always been Groff's Farm Restaurant in Mount Joy. The dish that has made Betty Groff famous is a buttery fricassee named chicken Stoltzfus (after her friends Elam and Hannah Stoltzfus), served atop a plate of pastry squares. She is also known for her extra-creamy rice pudding and made-from-scratch caramel pudding, and a most unusual appetizer: cracker pudding served alongside small pieces of caramel-frosted buttermilk chocolate cake! She says she offers these little sweets before dinner just so customers leave room for big portions of dessert after they've mopped their plates of chicken Stoltzfus or schnitz und knepp (smoked ham and apples).Earlier this year Groff came out with a splendid cookbook called "Betty Groff's Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook," published by Macmillan. It includes recipes for many of the dishes that have made her restaurant famous as well as for typical regional home-cooked foods such as dandelion wine, authentic chow chow ("the fun in making this relish is to see how many kinds of vegetables you can get in a jar"), chicken-corn soup and scrapple (topped with apple butter or molasses).
Every meal at Groff's restaurant includes a gorgeous array of relishes, green salads and pickled vegetables.
One of the most interesting modern salad variations, served throughout the Midwest, is made with Pennsylvania's favorite snack food, pretzels. Betty Groff doesn't give a recipe for it in her book, but here is our version of the strange-but-true (and quite delicious) dish known as molded pretzel salad. It is creamy, sweet and festive; serve it for dessert, or alongside ham or pork chops, or as part of a Lancaster County-style salad bar bounty.