FROM INDIANA Shrimp cocktail

Food writer Lindsey Nair

• lindsey.nair@roanoke.com | (540) 981-3343

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Throughout the NFL playoffs, I rooted for the New Orleans Saints to be in the Super Bowl, not because I'm a Saints fan or because they have never played in the championship game.

No, my motives were more selfish. And of course, they were food-related.

For the past couple of years, I have wanted to dig up recipes that highlight the cuisines of the Super Bowl teams' hometowns. That's easy to do when one team is from the Creole and Cajun capital of the United States; not so easy when the other team is from... well, no offense to my Indiana friends, but Indianapolis isn't well known for any particular style of food.

Of course, they do have corn! But very little sweet corn is grown in Indiana in proportion to the corn grown for feeding livestock.

Moving on to Plan B, I consulted my co-worker and friend Nona Nelson, who hails from Indianapolis (along with her husband, Phil Nelson).

Nona told me about a special restaurant in her home city, as well as a popular Indiana sandwich recipe.

Read on to learn about these specialties of Indiana and Louisiana, and then fix them up for your Super Bowl party for a true taste of team spirit.

In this end zone: Indianapolis

St. Elmo Steak House opened in downtown Indianapolis in 1902 and has since earned a reputation as one of the finest restaurants in the Midwestern city.

According to the St. Elmo Web site, it is "a place where salesmen and tycoons came to seal the deal, where attorneys and politicians strategized and plotted, where coaches and players celebrated wins and lamented losses, where celebrities came to unwind from a show."

If Peyton Manning went to St. Elmo's to celebrate a win, there's a good chance he would order their world-famous shrimp cocktail, which is advertised with a blazing neon sign in the restaurant's front window.

I found a recipe online that is alleged to be the St. Elmo shrimp cocktail recipe, but a spokesperson for the restaurant assured me it could not possibly be theirs, which is a closely guarded secret.

Well, OK, but the faux St. Elmo recipe, with its freshly grated horseradish marinated overnight in cider vinegar, still looks so delicious and powerfully sinus-clearing that I decided to share it anyway.

Elsewhere in Indianapolis, mouths water for the tenderloin sandwich. But this one isn't made with beef tenderloin; it's made with pork tenderloin.

A cousin to German Wienerschnitzel, the pork tenderloin is pounded very thin, breaded and deep-fried until crispy. It is served on a bun, but it has to be hanging off the bun on all sides to be a true Indiana tenderloin sandwich.

We've tailored the original recipe to the needs of a Super Bowl crowd, creating instructions for miniature tenderloin sandwiches.

And in this end zone: New Orleans

If "popular New Orleans dishes" was a category on Family Feud, gumbo and jambalaya would surely be the top two answers. Other Cajun and Creole dishes would probably fill in the rest of the blanks.

While these are very similar cooking styles, they should not be considered the same.

According to "Food Lover's Companion" by Sharon Tyler Herbst, Cajuns (descended from French Acadians) use a lot of dark roux, animal fat and spices whereas Creole cuisine (rooted in Spanish culture) is better known for its use of butter, cream and tomatoes.

Gumbo, which is Creole, would be a nice stand-in for chili at this year's Super Bowl parties. But some gumbo recipes can be too time-consuming and complicated for game day.

Roanoke Times online editor Meg Martin came to the rescue with her tested-and-tried slow cooker gumbo recipe, which will allow cooks to have free time later in the day. Meg originally found this recipe on Epicurious.com.

Another New Orleans specialty is red beans and rice, but that didn't seem like much of a party food to me until I found a Zatarain's recipe for red beans and rice dip.

It looks tasty and incredibly easy, which ought to be a plus if you are making all of these other dishes, as well.

I hope these recipes will add a little regional flair to your game-day foods. May the best dish win!