The latest from Twitter: @Peace_Coffee plays cupid with “Caffeinate Your Cutie,” @triplerockmpls is serving @surlybrewing Mild at $3.50 a pint, @bittercube celebrates the long-anticipated opening of Eat Street Social, and @Masu_NE will feature a suggestive little Valentine’s Day roll through Tuesday.
by Judd Spicer on February 4, 2011
Minnesota Vikings’ defensive end Jared Allen ranks No. 7 among active NFL players with 83 career quarterback sacks and is 45th all-time (tied) since the statistical category was first officially charted in 1982.
Yet when he moves his game to the kitchen, the gregarious lineman isn’t defined by a sack lunch. Rather, the three-time All Pro and part-owner of two Arizona restaurants fancies himself a graduate of the faux “Culinary Academy,” presenting himself as much when introduced on nationally televised games. This past fall, Allen released The Quarterback Killer’s Cookbook ($18.18 via Allen’s site or for under $10 for Kindle through Amazon), a collection of recipes that complement his reputation as an avid outdoorsman.
But are the dishes up to snuff for a Super Bowl party?
“Absolutely,” Allen writes from Arizona via e-mail. “You would get a broad mixture of great-flavored meats.”
With platings as diverse as pheasant, ostrich, bear, wild boar, elk, venison, and, um, rattlesnake, Allen offers no shortage of attempting something unique for your Packers vs. Steelers gathering.
Accompanying ingredients for the recipes herein are huddled around cupboard standards, but tracking down the wild game signatures may initially appear something of an arduous task, lest you know an avid hunter. Not the case. Rather, all of these unique offerings can be found at Specialty Meats & Gourmet (a division of Venison America) in Hudson, WI.
The shop’s staff is extremely helpful in navigating the rarities featured in Allen’s book, and vice president Steve Loppnow (aka “The Meat Detective”) receives requests for meat as exotic as lion to stock in his freezer alongside the likes of oft-available alligator, crocodile, kangaroo, python, frog’s legs, and turtle.
To be sure, some of these exotics are costly. Want to tackle, say, Allen’s “Rattlesnake Croquettes”? That will snake through your wallet at the cost of about $32.00 / pound.
I tried two recipes that seemed a good match for a Super Bowl feast: “Jared’s Famous Pheasant Nuggets with Country Gravy” and “Wild Boar Ragu with Fettuccine.” Lacking a dehydrator, I had to unfortunately skip Allen’s recommendation of trying his “Elk Jerky,” of which he says: “Fill up a bowl of those in front of the television and watch them disappear.”
Explaining the origin of both the pheasant and boar dishes, Allen continues: “I was on a hog hunt in South Texas with only a knife; that was chaos. I won the battle that time but it could have gone the other way fast. I’ve always wanted to try different hunting styles: bow, spear, knife, etc. It really evens the playing field and makes the hunt more of a challenge. I wanted to try something different with the recipe as well. Our Chef at The Lodge in Scottsdale helped me fine-tune the Wild Boar Ragu recipe. It’s delicious.” Continue reading Super Bowl Prep: The Quarterback Killer’s Cookbook by Jared Allen »
On the cusp of 2011, the food world — or the world of people who care about food — is hands-on, up-close-and-personal, increasingly maker-y and curious and — let’s face it — a bit of a boy’s club.
And all of that goes double for butchers.
Butchers are hot right now. The twin arts of butchering and charcuterie are hot. There are big knives involved, and wild bacteria, and animal parts never seen in a SuperTarget. It’s like red meat (yeah, I meant that) for foodies who need a new challenge.
Capturing the big, bad world of butchery is no job for a slim, dainty paperback. Marissa Guggiana’s Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers (foreword by Dario Cecchini, introduction by Andrew Zimmern, $37.50, 288 pages, published by Welcome Books, 2010) is a big, meaty (I’ll stop now) book, printed on large-format, heavy paper, with a showy, die-cut cover over a glossy photo of marbled flesh. It’s really beautiful. And a good read, too.
Guggiana, who is the president of the butcher shop and wholesaler Sonoma Direct, interviewed 50 chefs around the country, including locals Scott Buer of Bolzano Artisan Meats in Madison, WI; Mike Lorentz of Lorentz Meats in Cannon Falls; Scott Pampuch of Corner Table; and Mike Phillips, formerly of The Craftsman, now cofounder of Green Ox. Local bizarre-eater Andrew Zimmern wrote the introduction and national stars Dan Barber and Joel Salatin make an appearance alongside the lesser names.
Each butcher gets about a page and a half of text, told in the first person and clearly condensed from interviews. So readers get a nice taste of the subject’s own personality, but almost no background, none of the ritualistic who-what-where-when-why-and-how, even from Guggiana’s own introductions. While that often leaves some unexplained details just hanging there in the text and unanswered questions, it works, because it’s easy enough to find answers online. What the Internet can’t give you is a snapshot of who these folks are, those in the present and future of the ancient and newly reborn art of butchery. Continue reading Primal Cuts by Marissa Guggiana »
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
With the best of intentions, I requested a review copy of One Big Table: 600 Recipes from the Nation’s Best Home Cooks, Farmers, Fisherman, Pit-Masters, and Chefs. The book, written by former New York Times food columnist Molly O’Neill, features recipes from all over the country (including Minnesota and Wisconsin).
Therefore: Recipe-testing a few local submissions while summing up the rest of the book sounded as though it would be a lot of fun.
But then the fun went bad.
Consider these historical dates:
In 1858, Wisconsin’s first cheese factory was established in Sheboygan Falls.
In 1873, Wisconsin was shipping cheese to eastern markets in refrigerated train cars.
In 1879, the predecessor to the Wisconsin (later National) Cheese Exchange was set up in Plymouth.
And by 1915, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin “had become the leading dairy state in the nation, producing more butter and cheese than any other state.” Late 19th Century innovations in dairy science and safety (pushed by pioneers such as William Hoard and Stephen Babcock) made it a cheese and dairy powerhouse.
Now consider this passage from One Big Table, which introduces a recipe featuring Wisconsin cheese. I’ve added italics to the words that are particularly categorical, definitive, and wrong.
“Florida is oranges. Texas is beef. Maine is lobster. And in the 1920s, some marketer decided that Wisconsin should be cheese. The state had no history of cheese making, and no more dairy cows than Vermont or New York. It did, however, have a surplus of milk.”
So. Let’s forget the copper cheese kettles of the Green County Swiss and let’s forget the establishment of the nation’s first dairy school at the University of Wisconsin in 1890, and let’s forget the previous 70 years of grassroots and then serious industrial cheesemaking — the origin of Wisconsin cheese is “some marketer” in the 1920s. Also worth noting: In 1922, there were 2,800 cheese factories in Wisconsin. From 0 to 2,800 in two short years — good Lord, what a terrific marketer this anonymous chap must have been!
Because before that, presumably, Wisconsin dairy farmers — many of whom emerged directly from great central European cheesemaking traditions — were just pouring their surplus milk out onto the street like slack-jawed idiots: “Duh, I wish there was something we could make with this stuff that would add value and extend its shelf life! Oh well!” [Empties pail of milk onto the carrot patch] Continue reading The One Big Blunder of ‘One Big Table’ »
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
I’m bushed. And my kitchen is a mess. This week, I’ve had all five burners and both ovens going at once and have used every single small appliance I own, with the exception of the waffle maker and the fondue pot. When I reached for the juicer, I heard my husband groan. When I started feeding cauliflower down the juicer tube, he just laughed.
For the past week I have been cooking like Shefzilla, the nom de plume of chef Stewart Woodman and the title of his new cookbook from Borealis Books. Subtitle: “Conquering Haute Cuisine at Home” (published October 15, 184 pages, $27.95). At the moment I feel more like the vanquished than the mighty conqueror, but I am full and happy.
Shefzilla the book includes well over 100 recipes (which Woodman compiled in a headspinning three months). I say “well over” because many of the recipes are, in fact, fully composed restaurant plates, including within themselves a protein, vegetable, starch, and sauce. Throughout the book, Woodman shares stories of coming up through the ranks in the restaurant world and how his cooking philosophy was born. Inspiring photos by Heavy Table’s own Kate N.G. Sommers make every dish look tasty and tantalizingly achievable.
My grocery list for the week recalled the war plan I draw up annually to produce a Passover seder for more than two dozen people. Except, instead of six dozen eggs and a shankbone, I needed everything from Chinese hot mustard and kimchi to grana padano. And my grocery bill was even larger. Make that grocery bills. I headed downmarket to Cub for peanut butter chips, way upmarket to France 44 for fleur de sel, as well as to the usual suspects at the farmers market and coop for good meat and veggies. I asked at every fancy deli counter in my neck of the woods for truffle paste (and finally gave up — next time, I’ll get it online) and begged butchers for beef neck bones. (One finally admitted that the reason he didn’t have any for me was that he liked to make his own stock out of them instead of the usual shankbones. He did pass along four pounds from the next week’s steer. Thanks, Clancey’s!)
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
And what a week of eating. We had poutine, beets in a silky soy sauce, a mysteriously smoky parsnip soup, vegetarian Bolognese with homemade pasta, and grilled zucchini pizza. We spooned thin cilantro “pesto” on chicken and nearly everything else. We had a lovely salad of baby arugula, roasted cauliflower, and moist, flavorful chicken patties, and then moved on to peanut butter brownies with peppercorn ice cream and pineapple sauce for dessert. On a strangely hot October evening, we drank watermelon-sake soup with guests who wondered out loud how it would taste as a sorbet. Continue reading Shefzilla: Conquering Haute Cuisine at Home »
by Susan Pagani on October 1, 2010
Susan Pagani / Heavy Table
I’ve just put five jars of canned applesauce on my pantry shelf. Five jars I canned, to my immense gratification, in my own kitchen.
My grandmother’s family weathered the depression, in large part, due to the fame of my great-great-grandmother’s canned pickles. With this esteemed heritage, you’d think I would have been canning all my life. Not so! I learned to can from the Joy of Cooking, which begins with “It is a thrill to possess shelves well stocked,” but quickly moves on to cautioning against everything that could go wrong, from spilling hot water to “… Clostridium Botulinum, a germ so deadly that ‘1oz. could theoretically kill 100 million people.’”
Susan Pagani / Heavy Table
It’s a fantastic resource and this is not the first time I’ve successfully canned. But, I must admit, my pickles have been relatively few and far between, due to the paranoia that attends each attempt. There is always that nagging fear that I’ll kill myself or someone I like (canning is a long process, so one doesn’t give homemade pickles to just anyone).
In contrast, Ana Micka’s newly published The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning and Preserving ($19.99, 128 pages and a DVD) sings a much friendlier tune. With clear instruction, a scientific approach to canning temperatures and methods, and a warm illustration style, it makes the process a whole lot less intimidating.
Why bother with canning? Micka, who hails from St. Louis Park, MN, makes it sound almost heroic. Canning is a great way to preserve in-season goodies from your CSA box, farmers market, or garden, thus ensuring that you have local fruit and veggies in the winter. Along the way, it helps reduce your carbon footprint and support the local economy. Plus, once you get rolling, putting up all that food saves money — and makes eating healthy, additive-free food as easy as opening a jar.
And yes, there is the thrill of a well-stocked pantry.
In the non-fiction book Harder than HardScrabble, Thad Sitton interviews a man who describes his depression-era childhood, explaining that his mother was forced by their circumstances to move from some Northern state to South Texas. She brought with her three Model-Ts filled with jars of canned produce — peaches, corn, and beans — essentially, a summer’s worth of dedicated gardening and her family’s food for the rest of the year. Continue reading The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning and Preserving by Ana Micka »
Brett Laidlaw
Foraging for wild foods is a hot topic among the food-obsessed these days, the natural progression, perhaps, in a line that runs from farmers markets to CSA shares to backyard gardening and urban chicken coops. For some people, the quest for an unmediated, authentic food experience won’t be complete until they walk into the forest empty-handed, and come out with dinner.
But heading out into the woods to forage for one’s supper can be a daunting prospect for the uninitiated. It helps to have a guide.
Short of having a personal foraging mentor, wild foods enthusiasts in the upper Midwest could hardly have a better guide than the work of Sam Thayer, author of The Forager’s Harvest (2006) and Nature’s Garden (published this past spring). Taken together, these books represent a remarkable and ongoing project of explicating, extolling, demystifying, and generally evangelizing on behalf of wild foods. According to a press release for Nature’s Garden, “The only way to save nature is to eat it.”
Thayer lives, writes, and forages in northwestern Wisconsin, and wild foods are a daily part of his diet. They’re a frequent component of mine, as well. I’ve been gathering wild foods for over 20 years, and I’ve written frequently about the topic in my blog, Trout Caviar. Reading Sam Thayer, though, I feel like a Cub Scout on his first camp-o-ree, agog and a bit at sea in a world I never knew was so big, or so varied.
Brett Laidlaw
Where a typical field guide imparts factual information and little else, Thayer’s books place wild foods in a much broader context. He is compulsive about getting it right, even critiquing in passing various other books on wild foods that don’t. He debunks a lot of wild foods bunkum, like the widely disseminated misinformation that milkweed is bitter. Considering whether the edible underground portion of the spring beauty is a tuber or a corm, he settles the question almost Solomonically, judging that it is neither: It is root.
Continue reading Nature’s Garden and The Forager’s Harvest »
Recent Comments