'Tis the Season of Ozmozome Worship
Gas and electricity have killed the magic of fire, the kindling of live flame from inert wood. Simone de Beauvoir
For most of man’s time on earth, nature delivered feast or famine in seasonal cycles. Survival depended on storing calories in the fat times to get through the lean. Even late in the 20th century, body weight dramatically varied from season to season in temperate zones, more because of genetic memory than necessity. A Playboy photographer in the 1980’s told Iowa reporters that he should never have scheduled a trip to Ames when subjects were fattened for winter.
What does still vary with the seasons is our method of cooking. In summer, we still move the fire outdoors, as our ancestors did. For this reason, half of the hot dogs and hamburgers consumed in Mid America, are eaten in the hot season. Over three fourths of the charcoal is burned then.
Michael Symons’ “The History of Cooks and Cooking” tells a four thousand year tale of a disrespected magical art. Cooks have intermingled the destinies of humans with the plants and animals they eat, and the fuels they burn. In one interesting take on pre Enlightenment history, Symons believes that cooks practiced the true, feminine science of healing -- trial and error -- while masculine physicians practiced unscientific dogma. For this, cooks were marginalized as insignificant and condemned as witches.
Non-sustainable agriculture is nothing new. Man has always pushed the limits of his environment and then adapted to depleted resources. During the Trojan War, Homer’s heroes consumed an ox, over an open fire every 300 verses and disdained fish as a food of destitution. However, by the Golden Age of Classical Athens, fish was a luxury, meat was almost unheard of, and wood had become so scarce that braziers were invented and charcoal had become a major industry.
Most of the great inventions in cooking compensated for exhausted supplies of wood.Cauldrons, fireplaces, braziers, ovens, ranges, clay pots, woks and kitchen cutlery were invented to cook more food with less fuel. French and English cooking developed according to different resources. Until the end of the 17th century, wealth at the table was synonymous roasts, which consumed precious fire wood. Rich in forest and pasture, England’s gourmet class was content to throw a dead animal over a fire and rip apart the results. In France, only the south coast produced olive oil and only the north coast supported dairy farms, so cooks put more fat in the diet by extracting stock from bones and turning it into sauce. Ragout, stew, soup and braised dishes then invaded England, which by the 18th century was feeling quite inferior.
James Boswell defined man as the cooking animal. “Beasts have memory, judgment and the faculties and passions of the mind, but no beast is a cook.” In an era when most cooking is out of sight, what possesses this animal to spend billions on outdoor grills that he only uses three months a year?
Probably we cook with fire, outdoors, for the aromas. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a word for the smell of beef searing on a fire - “ozmazome.” Chemists today deduce over 600 flavor compounds in roasted beef, but most backyard chefs relate better to the mysterious “ozmazome.”
Browning by fire changes food chemistry dramatically. The high temperatures that cause browning are not possible in boiling, steaming or micro waving. Infra-red radiation from charcoal sears meat at 2000 degrees F, from open flames at 3000 degrees F. Ovens and pans can’t get nearly hot enough to produce the delicate flavors that real roasting achieves.
There are more romantic explanations for our attraction to cooking outdoors. Fire is elemental and contrary, the burn of Hell and the light of Paradise. The ancient Egyptians believed that it was a living creature who devoured whatever it feeds on, and died when it was full. Philosopher Gaston Bachelard called it a terrible, contradictory divinity.
That explains both the lack of trust and the awe of other thinkers before a fire. Heraclitus believed it the source of the entire world. Empedocles altered this view of the elements, to include water, air and earth, and his opinion held for 2000 years. The 20th century replaced it with the Periodic Table -- “Ozmazome” taken to a laboratory and deconstructed.
Some scientists prefer the mystery. Harold McGee put it this way:
“In the sip of roast coffee, or the taste of crackling, there are echos of flowers and leaves fruit and earth, recapitulation of moments from the long dialogue between animals and plants.”
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Berea: Cradle of Hope, Greasy Beans & Garlic
"God has made of one blood all peoples of the Earth." Berea College motto
It was founded in 1855 as America’s first inter racial and co-educational college. After blind prejudice outlawed interracial education during the first half of the 20th century, the mission expanded. Berea College charges no tuition and admits only academically promising students who have limited economic resources. All students work at least 10 hours per week in campus and service jobs while studying toward bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degrees.
The college is particularly renowned in two areas that appeal to us - sustainable agriculture and traditional American arts & music. Music and the arts are so ingrained here that for many years a feed and supply store in Berea (population in 2000 census was 9851) sold more Gibson guitars than any other outlet in the USA. I also suspect that Bereans eat more varieties of heirloom fruits and vegetables than people in any other town of comparable size.
I wouldn’t think of going to Berea without first booking a room at the recently remodled Boone Tavern. The college owns that century old hotel and uses it as a de facto hospitality and culinary school. An hour’s drive from Lexington’s airport, Boone Tavern has 58 guest rooms furnished with reproduction Early American furniture made by Berea College’s woodcraft school. After checking in and strolling around the campus and adjacent downtown, we headed out to meet a man who is reviving the “greasy bean” from near extinction.
Bill and the Bean Stock
Settlers in Appalachia brought their own bean stocks with them. Nearly every town and holler in eastern Kentucky and western Carolina had a bean with a different name and characteristics from those in the next town or holler. Mutated strains of these beans were passed on from generation to generation. Beans also migrated when daughters married sons from other hollers, where they cross married and became new beans.
After World War II, people in Appalachia began buying more commercial beans and growing fewer of these heirlooms. Berea College professor Bill Best realized a magnificent diversity was being lost in the rush to homogenous hybrid strains that were bred for shelf life and sisease resistance rather than for taste or character. He began collecting and preserving the traditional bean stock of the mountains and propagating their seeds through his Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center.
Bill Best also began collecting stories that went with the beans. He’s been saving them both for decades now, planting small crops to build up specific seed stock, which he sells on his web site. Wro and I found him walking his tomato fields in overalls, doing pretty much the same thing he’s been doing with his famous beans. Spring of 2007 was brutal for beans in the field, so Bill had more time for tomatoes, which are a money maker that helps subsidize his passion of saving beans. He walked us through wondrous variety including a tomato called Vinson Watts after a Kentucky grower who has been developing this tomato for 52 years. Bill thinks this pink tomato is the best tasting ever. I think he might be right.
“Atlanta restaurants offered to pay $6 a pound for my best heirloom tomatoes. That’s quite a bit more than I can get around here and it just might be worth the drive,” he confided.
What’s a Greasy Bean?
As we walked through tomato fields, Best mentioned that he spends three hours every night just answering e-mail from people desperate to find a particular greasy bean seed. Many of these people are transplanted Appalachians hoping to recall a taste of their childhoods. But an equal number are bean stock neophytes.
“Once people eat them, it seems that nothing else quite satisfies,” Bill said.
He pleases a lot of people because he has more than 200 Appalachian beans in a collection which grows every day. Wro asked Bill how greasy beans got their name.
“Greasy bean pods lack the fine hairs of other beans and so they appear greasy,“ he explained.
Best believes that greasy beans originated with the Cherokee and reached their zenith in western North Carolina and eastern Kentucky. His theory is contentious. Academics have weighed in on this subject from multiple disciplines. A little internet research turned up greasy bean origin theories based on ethno-botany, anthropology, archeology, population dynamics, migration patterns, horticultural fashion and pre-Columbian trade routes.
Bill told us that his opinion about Cherokee origins stems from the geographical location of the primary stocks in Carolina and Kentucky.
“The Cherokee influence on gardening in Western North Carolina is well known. Less well known is the fact that many people living in Southeastern Kentucky have a lot of Cherokee blood. I know I could be wrong about the Cherokee origin but most of my greasy beans come from Madison, Buncombe, and Haywood counties in North Carolina and Jackson and Owsley counties in Eastern Kentucky. I have a few from other Kentucky and North Carolina counties and one from Northern Georgia. It is astounding to me how many varieties of greasy beans are from Madison County, North Carolina alone. I'm from Haywood County and I have three very different greasy beans which are from within a few miles of each other,” he said.
Bill’s project is multi-generational. His grandson was working with him when we visited and Bill seemed pleased when we told him that he spoke of the work with great enthusiasm.
“Really, he said that? I try to not put any pressure on him at all,“ he said, smiling. Bill added that his project is a verification of his mother’s intuition.
“Mother was far ahead of her time. She felt intuitively that the new beans being released by the experiment stations and seed companies, the beans which had been "improved" by breeders, were bland and tough and flavorless compared to the beans which had been passed down in the mountains for generations,” he explained.
All Bill’s beans are picked when the pods are full with immature beans, before fiber sets in. He compared stringing beans to meditation:
“Start at the tail end of the bean, snap off the end and then pull the string along the inner curve of the bean. Then snap the stem end and pull the string from the outer edge. Pull off any left over bits of string as you snap the beans (into one inch pieces) about so,” he demonstrated.
He explained that “greasies” can be cooked whole like other green beans, harvested as “shellies” (nearly mature beans with prominent green seeds) or allowed to mature into dry beans that are removed from their pods before cooking.
“Where I grew up, we dried whole green beans into ‘leather britches.’ Then we could enjoy them throughout the winter. People used to string up green beans to dry using a needle and heavy thread,” Best said, adding he now prefers drying beans on a screen for several days. Once the beans are dry as leather, he stores them in the freezer.
Before we left, he drew a wider analogy about the new interest in heirloom foods.
“I think heirloom values in general are making a comeback for similar reasons. Mainstream values, those brought into the mountains by northeastern industrialists and missionaries, have turned out to be bland and tough, but leave much to be desired on a human level. Our old traditional values - like honesty, trust and neighborly compassion - might be good antidotes for cynical, impersonal times,” he said, professorily.
In a normal year, Bill Best sells greasy beans at farmers’ markets in Lexington and Berea. But last year’s weather reduced him to preserving seed stock. So Wro and I left full of greasy bean knowledge but with tummies empty of greasy beans. We hoped to find some before our weekend was over and decided to begin our quest with dinner at Kentucky’s most historic traditional restaurant.
“When Jean joined me here in 1982, we had a camper by the river. It didn’t take her long to realize that I would never leave home if I couldn’t take food with me, because it had become so hard to find good food. Being unable to find good garlic is what drove us to this.” Leo explained, while braiding garlic for the Lexington Farmers Market.
“After DNA tests and whatever, the USDA is convinced that there are only ten kinds of garlic, with some subtle geographic variations. I don’t want to argue with genetic science but I grow two totally different tasting varieties that they insist are the same thing - German White and Music.
Recipes
Bill on Beans:
Bill Best advises soaking dried beans overnight, followed by two more fresh-water soaks in the morning.
“After that soaking, the beans are ready to be cooked as if they were fresh beans.”
Blue Moon Farm’s Green Garlic Soup
3 cups chicken stock
6-8 stalks green garlic
2 tbsp butter
3 small white potatoes
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
Take 2 green garlic and cut the shoots into thin rounds. Saute the green garlic rounds in 2 butter for about 10 minutes over a low flame. Wash 3 small white potatoes and cut them into pieces (do not peel). Place the potatoes and sauteed green garlic in a sauce pan and add 3 cups of chicken broth.
Cook covered for about 30 minutes.
In small batches in your blender, puree the soup until it is smooth like velvet.
Return to the saucepan and add more broth if it is too thick. Add salt and pepper to taste and reheat.
When hot, add vinegar and serve.
Cyd Mull's Tempura Beans with Horseradish Sauce
1 pound washed cleaned Green Beans
2 cups of All Purpose Flour
1 cup of Corn Starch
5 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Table spoon Curry Powder
2 11.15 fluid ounces Perrier Mineral Water
1 teaspoon Celtic Sea Salt
Fresh Cracked Pepper
½ cup Grated Pecorino Romano Cheese
2-3 liters of peanut oil
Tempura batter- mix together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and curry powder in a bowl. Dredge the beans in this dry mix, shaking any excess back into the bowl, and add the mineral water while whisking constantly to make it into batter.
Season the batter with Celtic sea salt and cracked pepper.
Heat peanut oil to 375 degrees F in a deep-fryer, or according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Dip the dusted green bean into the tempura batter. Gently drop the green beans into the hot peanut oil. With long tongs roll green beans over until the batter is a golden color. Remove from hot oil and place on a paper towel. While tempura green beans are warm dust with grated Pecorino Romano cheese.
Serve with Horseradish Sauce on the side.
Horseradish Sauce
1 cup Mayo
1 cup Sour Cream
3 Tablespoons Horseradish Grated
Sea Salt
Mix together ingredients
Recipe by from Cyd’s Catering L.L.C.
http://www.cateringbycyd.com/
Berea, Kentucky represents the very best of the American dream - a reason to believe that your children will have more opportunities in life. It’s a college town like no other because Berea College has a mission like no other school.
It was founded in 1855 as America’s first inter racial and co-educational college. After blind prejudice outlawed interracial education during the first half of the 20th century, the mission expanded. Berea College charges no tuition and admits only academically promising students who have limited economic resources. All students work at least 10 hours per week in campus and service jobs while studying toward bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degrees.
The college is particularly renowned in two areas that appeal to us - sustainable agriculture and traditional American arts & music. Music and the arts are so ingrained here that for many years a feed and supply store in Berea (population in 2000 census was 9851) sold more Gibson guitars than any other outlet in the USA. I also suspect that Bereans eat more varieties of heirloom fruits and vegetables than people in any other town of comparable size.
I wouldn’t think of going to Berea without first booking a room at the recently remodled Boone Tavern. The college owns that century old hotel and uses it as a de facto hospitality and culinary school. An hour’s drive from Lexington’s airport, Boone Tavern has 58 guest rooms furnished with reproduction Early American furniture made by Berea College’s woodcraft school. After checking in and strolling around the campus and adjacent downtown, we headed out to meet a man who is reviving the “greasy bean” from near extinction.
Bill and the Bean StockSettlers in Appalachia brought their own bean stocks with them. Nearly every town and holler in eastern Kentucky and western Carolina had a bean with a different name and characteristics from those in the next town or holler. Mutated strains of these beans were passed on from generation to generation. Beans also migrated when daughters married sons from other hollers, where they cross married and became new beans.
After World War II, people in Appalachia began buying more commercial beans and growing fewer of these heirlooms. Berea College professor Bill Best realized a magnificent diversity was being lost in the rush to homogenous hybrid strains that were bred for shelf life and sisease resistance rather than for taste or character. He began collecting and preserving the traditional bean stock of the mountains and propagating their seeds through his Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center.
Bill Best also began collecting stories that went with the beans. He’s been saving them both for decades now, planting small crops to build up specific seed stock, which he sells on his web site. Wro and I found him walking his tomato fields in overalls, doing pretty much the same thing he’s been doing with his famous beans. Spring of 2007 was brutal for beans in the field, so Bill had more time for tomatoes, which are a money maker that helps subsidize his passion of saving beans. He walked us through wondrous variety including a tomato called Vinson Watts after a Kentucky grower who has been developing this tomato for 52 years. Bill thinks this pink tomato is the best tasting ever. I think he might be right.
“Atlanta restaurants offered to pay $6 a pound for my best heirloom tomatoes. That’s quite a bit more than I can get around here and it just might be worth the drive,” he confided.
What’s a Greasy Bean?
As we walked through tomato fields, Best mentioned that he spends three hours every night just answering e-mail from people desperate to find a particular greasy bean seed. Many of these people are transplanted Appalachians hoping to recall a taste of their childhoods. But an equal number are bean stock neophytes.
“Once people eat them, it seems that nothing else quite satisfies,” Bill said.
He pleases a lot of people because he has more than 200 Appalachian beans in a collection which grows every day. Wro asked Bill how greasy beans got their name.
“Greasy bean pods lack the fine hairs of other beans and so they appear greasy,“ he explained.
Best believes that greasy beans originated with the Cherokee and reached their zenith in western North Carolina and eastern Kentucky. His theory is contentious. Academics have weighed in on this subject from multiple disciplines. A little internet research turned up greasy bean origin theories based on ethno-botany, anthropology, archeology, population dynamics, migration patterns, horticultural fashion and pre-Columbian trade routes.
Bill told us that his opinion about Cherokee origins stems from the geographical location of the primary stocks in Carolina and Kentucky.
“The Cherokee influence on gardening in Western North Carolina is well known. Less well known is the fact that many people living in Southeastern Kentucky have a lot of Cherokee blood. I know I could be wrong about the Cherokee origin but most of my greasy beans come from Madison, Buncombe, and Haywood counties in North Carolina and Jackson and Owsley counties in Eastern Kentucky. I have a few from other Kentucky and North Carolina counties and one from Northern Georgia. It is astounding to me how many varieties of greasy beans are from Madison County, North Carolina alone. I'm from Haywood County and I have three very different greasy beans which are from within a few miles of each other,” he said.
Bill’s project is multi-generational. His grandson was working with him when we visited and Bill seemed pleased when we told him that he spoke of the work with great enthusiasm.
“Really, he said that? I try to not put any pressure on him at all,“ he said, smiling. Bill added that his project is a verification of his mother’s intuition.
“Mother was far ahead of her time. She felt intuitively that the new beans being released by the experiment stations and seed companies, the beans which had been "improved" by breeders, were bland and tough and flavorless compared to the beans which had been passed down in the mountains for generations,” he explained.
All Bill’s beans are picked when the pods are full with immature beans, before fiber sets in. He compared stringing beans to meditation:
“Start at the tail end of the bean, snap off the end and then pull the string along the inner curve of the bean. Then snap the stem end and pull the string from the outer edge. Pull off any left over bits of string as you snap the beans (into one inch pieces) about so,” he demonstrated.
He explained that “greasies” can be cooked whole like other green beans, harvested as “shellies” (nearly mature beans with prominent green seeds) or allowed to mature into dry beans that are removed from their pods before cooking.“Where I grew up, we dried whole green beans into ‘leather britches.’ Then we could enjoy them throughout the winter. People used to string up green beans to dry using a needle and heavy thread,” Best said, adding he now prefers drying beans on a screen for several days. Once the beans are dry as leather, he stores them in the freezer.
Before we left, he drew a wider analogy about the new interest in heirloom foods.
“I think heirloom values in general are making a comeback for similar reasons. Mainstream values, those brought into the mountains by northeastern industrialists and missionaries, have turned out to be bland and tough, but leave much to be desired on a human level. Our old traditional values - like honesty, trust and neighborly compassion - might be good antidotes for cynical, impersonal times,” he said, professorily.In a normal year, Bill Best sells greasy beans at farmers’ markets in Lexington and Berea. But last year’s weather reduced him to preserving seed stock. So Wro and I left full of greasy bean knowledge but with tummies empty of greasy beans. We hoped to find some before our weekend was over and decided to begin our quest with dinner at Kentucky’s most historic traditional restaurant.
Blue Moon Farm
We drove into the hills outside Berea to visit a couple who believe in garlic the way Bill Best believes in beans. Leo Keene and Jean Pitches Keene grow some of the best heirloom garlic in America - their client list includes some famous chefs. We had been told that their Blue Moon Farm was “rather remote,” but after getting lost three or four times and passing some steep hillside goat pastures, we decided that description needed an upgrade. Fortunately for garlic shoppers, Blue Moon Farm also has a website.
Leo and Jean built this farm because they were picky eaters. Well, Leo was.
Leo and Jean built this farm because they were picky eaters. Well, Leo was. “When Jean joined me here in 1982, we had a camper by the river. It didn’t take her long to realize that I would never leave home if I couldn’t take food with me, because it had become so hard to find good food. Being unable to find good garlic is what drove us to this.” Leo explained, while braiding garlic for the Lexington Farmers Market.
We tasted three kinds of garlic with distinctly different textures, colors and flavors. Then Leo informed us that according to Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) genetic scientists, all three were all the exact same garlic.
“After DNA tests and whatever, the USDA is convinced that there are only ten kinds of garlic, with some subtle geographic variations. I don’t want to argue with genetic science but I grow two totally different tasting varieties that they insist are the same thing - German White and Music.
The first caramelizes much faster too. So it has to have more sugar. The German White doesn’t grow nearly as well in this climate either,” he explained with a wry smile.
Of the nearly twenty varieties that Blue Moon sells, Music garlic (named after Canadian garlic pioneer Al Music) is their best seller because it has huge cloves which make life easier on chefs. Their Lorz Italian is the most lovely, an “artichoke type” garlic that is layered on the inside, yet has few interior cloves.
We learned some important garlic trivia: that a hickory smoker is marvelous for drying garlic; that all garlic’s bad attributes stem from having set too long in storage; and that garlic cloves make a marvelous substitute for olives in a martini.
Recipes
Bill on Beans:
Bill Best advises soaking dried beans overnight, followed by two more fresh-water soaks in the morning.
“After that soaking, the beans are ready to be cooked as if they were fresh beans.”
Blue Moon Farm’s Green Garlic Soup
Serves 2
3 cups chicken stock
6-8 stalks green garlic
2 tbsp butter
3 small white potatoes
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
Take 2 green garlic and cut the shoots into thin rounds. Saute the green garlic rounds in 2 butter for about 10 minutes over a low flame. Wash 3 small white potatoes and cut them into pieces (do not peel). Place the potatoes and sauteed green garlic in a sauce pan and add 3 cups of chicken broth.
Cook covered for about 30 minutes.
In small batches in your blender, puree the soup until it is smooth like velvet.
Return to the saucepan and add more broth if it is too thick. Add salt and pepper to taste and reheat.
When hot, add vinegar and serve.
Cyd Mull's Tempura Beans with Horseradish Sauce
1 pound washed cleaned Green Beans
2 cups of All Purpose Flour
1 cup of Corn Starch
5 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Table spoon Curry Powder
2 11.15 fluid ounces Perrier Mineral Water
1 teaspoon Celtic Sea Salt
Fresh Cracked Pepper
½ cup Grated Pecorino Romano Cheese
2-3 liters of peanut oil
Tempura batter- mix together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and curry powder in a bowl. Dredge the beans in this dry mix, shaking any excess back into the bowl, and add the mineral water while whisking constantly to make it into batter.
Season the batter with Celtic sea salt and cracked pepper.
Heat peanut oil to 375 degrees F in a deep-fryer, or according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Dip the dusted green bean into the tempura batter. Gently drop the green beans into the hot peanut oil. With long tongs roll green beans over until the batter is a golden color. Remove from hot oil and place on a paper towel. While tempura green beans are warm dust with grated Pecorino Romano cheese.
Serve with Horseradish Sauce on the side.
Horseradish Sauce
1 cup Mayo
1 cup Sour Cream
3 Tablespoons Horseradish Grated
Sea Salt
Mix together ingredients
Recipe by from Cyd’s Catering L.L.C.
http://www.cateringbycyd.com/
If You Go…
Southern & Eastern Kentucky Tourism Development Association
Center for Rural Development
2292 South Highway 27
Somerset, KY 42501
877-TOURSEKY
Center for Rural Development
2292 South Highway 27
Somerset, KY 42501
877-TOURSEKY
Berea Tourist and Convention Commission
3 Artist Circle
Berea, KY 40403
800-598-5263
http://www.berea.com/
3 Artist Circle
Berea, KY 40403
800-598-5263
http://www.berea.com/
Boone Tavern Hotel and Restaurant
Berea, KY 40404, 800-366-9358
Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center1033 Pilot Knob Cemetery RoadBerea, KY 40403859- 986-3204
http://www.heirlooms.org/
http://www.heirlooms.org/
Blue Moon Farm 3584 Poosey Ridge Road Richmond, KY 40475
http://www.bluemoongarlic.com/
http://www.bluemoongarlic.com/
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thresher Spirits
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?
Christina Rossetti
One hundred years ago, at the threshold of the 20th century, a pair of Henrys made decisions that would redefined Iowa. Henry Wallace chose to enroll at Iowa State College and study agriculture while Henry Ford hired a design team to build gas engine tractors. Not so coincidentally, half of Iowa’s counties peaked in population at that same time.
Hybrid seeds and industrialized farming would have come even if Wallace had gone to Harvard to study archeology and even if Ford had diversified into aircraft instead of farm machinery. Still, Wallace and Ford’s decisions hastened the depopulation of rural Iowa and the rise of Des Moines as much as than anything else these last 100 years. When technology and politics turned agriculture into an industrial enterprise, economics drove farmers to cities.
Iowa is irreversibly no longer a farm state. Most of us live in suburbs and cities and most farmers are now over 55, with only 8% under 35. The average farmer now makes barely $10,000 a year from the sale of crops and is dependent upon political incentives.
Des Moines is a city of people who average two and a half generations of separation from a family farm - so our blood still carries the DNA of farmers. That is particularly obvious in the Fall, when ancient harvesting instincts resurface. Each September, the Old Threshers’ Reunion draws huge crowds of nostalgia seekers to Mount Pleasant. Those who remember their family’s farm are ironically moved by antique machines that uprooted so many lives. Nonagenarian Verle Reynolds of Chariton comes every year and camps for the entire five days with her daughter and grand daughter. She spoke elegantly of her love for old technologies.
“Our first water pump was a miracle. The first washing machine meant all we had to do to wash clothes was crank a fly wheel. The worst job I remember on the farm growing up was hand stripping the sorghum, then a machine did it. When we got our first tractor, we didn’t have to ride ponies to school,” she recalled.
“To most people these machines are old curiosities, to me they are old friends. I lived through the Depression and two World Wars, I like to come here and see that these old friends are still working. I can’t believe I have lived to see these miraculous machines come and go. Rendering lard, butchering, caning, now that was hard work. Kids today are so cozy they think these are old machines. I remember them as miraculous gifts,” she told us.
When Iowa was a farm state, people connected to each other by necessity. Machines and people alike moved from farm to farm for harvest each others crops. Reynolds recalled 18 hour days as a child, preparing meals for some 20 extra people at harvest time. Today, the thresher spirit lives in the parking lots of football stadiums, where people share the bounty of harvest with neighbors who help with the work. Though the tailgate party is vaguely related to the thresher dinner, it is no coincidence they share a common season. As Easter became Lupercalia, new spirits absorb the old. At the threshold of the 21st century now, it's time to take stock of how two gargantuan projects are doing at their expressed intentions of redefining Iowa again. Though Jordan Creek Town Center is private and the Iowa Events Center is public, both were built on daring assumptions about the new Iowans who must support their heavily leveraged constructions. The shopping mall and entertainment complex are laden with trappings of status and luxury that used to make Iowans uncomfortable - valet parking, private suites, club levels, imported marble and stained glass. Both are more Las Vegas than traditional Iowa.
At the mall’s opening, we asked developer John Bucksbaum which tenants brought the most cachet to his place. He dropped three names, two of which were hot shot Wall Street restaurant chains. P.F. Chang’s and The Cheesecake Factory both look like Vegas: dazzling in ersatz gimmicks; notable for quantity not quality; and as inauthentic as a theme hotel.
Long lines, reminiscent of Vegas buffets, suggested that Bucksbaum knows his marks, that the great grandchildren of Verle Reynold’s generation are cozily enough removed from a real harvest to have forgotten the taste of fresh food. If that is right, no one will mind sitting in nose bleed seats at the new Events Center, while others pay dearly to be catered in luxury. And factory food, designed solely for corporate profits, will chase independence and creativity from our restaurants, just like corporate farming vanquished diversity from the food chain, and family farms from our landscape.
But the Iowa that Verle Reynolds loved, the state of interdependence and sharing, the Iowa that abhorred the putting on of airs, will be gone with the thresher wind.
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?
Christina Rossetti
One hundred years ago, at the threshold of the 20th century, a pair of Henrys made decisions that would redefined Iowa. Henry Wallace chose to enroll at Iowa State College and study agriculture while Henry Ford hired a design team to build gas engine tractors. Not so coincidentally, half of Iowa’s counties peaked in population at that same time.
Hybrid seeds and industrialized farming would have come even if Wallace had gone to Harvard to study archeology and even if Ford had diversified into aircraft instead of farm machinery. Still, Wallace and Ford’s decisions hastened the depopulation of rural Iowa and the rise of Des Moines as much as than anything else these last 100 years. When technology and politics turned agriculture into an industrial enterprise, economics drove farmers to cities.
Iowa is irreversibly no longer a farm state. Most of us live in suburbs and cities and most farmers are now over 55, with only 8% under 35. The average farmer now makes barely $10,000 a year from the sale of crops and is dependent upon political incentives.
Des Moines is a city of people who average two and a half generations of separation from a family farm - so our blood still carries the DNA of farmers. That is particularly obvious in the Fall, when ancient harvesting instincts resurface. Each September, the Old Threshers’ Reunion draws huge crowds of nostalgia seekers to Mount Pleasant. Those who remember their family’s farm are ironically moved by antique machines that uprooted so many lives. Nonagenarian Verle Reynolds of Chariton comes every year and camps for the entire five days with her daughter and grand daughter. She spoke elegantly of her love for old technologies.
“Our first water pump was a miracle. The first washing machine meant all we had to do to wash clothes was crank a fly wheel. The worst job I remember on the farm growing up was hand stripping the sorghum, then a machine did it. When we got our first tractor, we didn’t have to ride ponies to school,” she recalled.
“To most people these machines are old curiosities, to me they are old friends. I lived through the Depression and two World Wars, I like to come here and see that these old friends are still working. I can’t believe I have lived to see these miraculous machines come and go. Rendering lard, butchering, caning, now that was hard work. Kids today are so cozy they think these are old machines. I remember them as miraculous gifts,” she told us.
When Iowa was a farm state, people connected to each other by necessity. Machines and people alike moved from farm to farm for harvest each others crops. Reynolds recalled 18 hour days as a child, preparing meals for some 20 extra people at harvest time. Today, the thresher spirit lives in the parking lots of football stadiums, where people share the bounty of harvest with neighbors who help with the work. Though the tailgate party is vaguely related to the thresher dinner, it is no coincidence they share a common season. As Easter became Lupercalia, new spirits absorb the old. At the threshold of the 21st century now, it's time to take stock of how two gargantuan projects are doing at their expressed intentions of redefining Iowa again. Though Jordan Creek Town Center is private and the Iowa Events Center is public, both were built on daring assumptions about the new Iowans who must support their heavily leveraged constructions. The shopping mall and entertainment complex are laden with trappings of status and luxury that used to make Iowans uncomfortable - valet parking, private suites, club levels, imported marble and stained glass. Both are more Las Vegas than traditional Iowa.
At the mall’s opening, we asked developer John Bucksbaum which tenants brought the most cachet to his place. He dropped three names, two of which were hot shot Wall Street restaurant chains. P.F. Chang’s and The Cheesecake Factory both look like Vegas: dazzling in ersatz gimmicks; notable for quantity not quality; and as inauthentic as a theme hotel.
Long lines, reminiscent of Vegas buffets, suggested that Bucksbaum knows his marks, that the great grandchildren of Verle Reynold’s generation are cozily enough removed from a real harvest to have forgotten the taste of fresh food. If that is right, no one will mind sitting in nose bleed seats at the new Events Center, while others pay dearly to be catered in luxury. And factory food, designed solely for corporate profits, will chase independence and creativity from our restaurants, just like corporate farming vanquished diversity from the food chain, and family farms from our landscape.
But the Iowa that Verle Reynolds loved, the state of interdependence and sharing, the Iowa that abhorred the putting on of airs, will be gone with the thresher wind.
Friday, June 26, 2009
An Immigration of Flavors
Iowa's Melting Pot Stirs its Spoon
The history, even the prehistory, of Iowa recounts a series of immigrations. Glaciers descended and dumped the world’s richest silt on a tongue-shaped midsection of the land. Then grazing animals migrated to eat the bountiful tall grasses and hunters tracked that prey here. When planters came, first slowly in wagons, then rapidly on railroads, they cleared the grasses and the forests to grow corn, the king of crops. In the 19th century, western and northern Europeans came to reap the greatest harvests in the world.
In the 20th century, Italians, Greeks and Irish followed, then Mexicans, African-Americans from the American south, southeast Asians, Africans, east Europeans and Central Americans. Most came for the land, and for the jobs that the land produced, first in Iowa’s coal mines and on the railroads, later in the farm machinery factories and then in meat packing houses, in pig confinements, on chicken ranches and in our universities. Each immigrant wave came to work jobs that second and third generations of previous immigrant groups did not want.
Every new group of Iowans brought their taste for distinctive foods with them. Immigrant groceries and restaurants sprouted to feed a longing for the flavors of their homeland. Originally, these stores and cafes were in ethnic neighborhoods and catered to immigrants. After curious diners from outside the immigrant group visited, new markets were born. More importantly, the first footsteps of assimilation had been taken. When a person breaks bread with a stranger, tolerance is digested.
Just as Italian food was once strange to German Iowans, Italian-Iowans found Vietnamese food strange, and Vietnamese-Iowans found Sudanese fare weird. Honduran food is strange to the Sudanese, and Bosnian food to the Hondurans. Those who adventure into new culinary lands discover something more valuable than flavors. Ethnic restaurants are instruments of acceptance and understanding. What doesn’t kill you, makes you more open minded.
If that’s too touchy-feely for your taste, then consider another reason to support ethnic foods in Iowa. They add choices in a time when food choices are being reduced by economic conglomerations that don‘t much value diversity. Despite all the aisles and all the different brands on your supermarket shelves, its harder to find a variety of pure foods than it was 30 years ago. The last quarter of the 20th century was the Dark Age for Iowa’s greatest natural resource -- its farmland and the independent lives it begat. The family farm disappeared as a cultural entity, sold off in most cases to an industrial-agricultural complex that exploited the land, the animals that live on it and the air above it. All in a rush to produce food faster and cheaper -who cares what it tastes like?
Most of our supermarkets and franchise restaurants do not prioritize food quality. As long as customers don’t get sick and sue, they will emphasize consistency over freshness, long shelf-life over purity and price over flavor. The agro-industrial complex became so efficient that they produced more food than Americans needed. To expand their markets they had to convince customers to increase personal consumption. Crap was super sized. Now no obese child in America ever needs to go to bed without a belly full of empty calories.
Our mainstream grocers and restaurants specialize in long distance, highly processed foods that have nothing to do with the great natural resources of Iowa. Consumers must search the marginal niches for alternatives to “enhanced pork” and “vine-ripened” produce that was actually picked weeks ago and later shot full of gas to “auto stimulate” ripening. Most Iowa grocers are not interested in locally grown foods because the supply is too inconsistent.
Immigrant niches, from farmers’ markets to ethnic grocers and restaurants, present alternatives to the status quo. The elongated Chinese eggplant you find in Iowa is more apt to be grown in Iowa than the familiar purple egg-shaped version. The Thai basil you get at farmers’ market is probably fresher than the European basil you find at the supermarket, if you find any there. In one great irony, most all “fresh” garlic in American supermarkets is harvested in Asia, but most all garlic that Asian-Iowans sell at farmers’ markets is grown in their backyards.
Ethnic groceries, like small town lockers, do most of their own butchering, so they aren’t as apt to be selling “fresh” pork that is shot full of chemicals, so it won’t change color when it is shipped pre-cut and prepackaged.
They also stock cuts of meat that you won’t find in our supermarkets, cuts that our ethnic forefathers would never think of wasting and that their American grandchildren have never tasted.
The history, even the prehistory, of Iowa recounts a series of immigrations. Glaciers descended and dumped the world’s richest silt on a tongue-shaped midsection of the land. Then grazing animals migrated to eat the bountiful tall grasses and hunters tracked that prey here. When planters came, first slowly in wagons, then rapidly on railroads, they cleared the grasses and the forests to grow corn, the king of crops. In the 19th century, western and northern Europeans came to reap the greatest harvests in the world.
In the 20th century, Italians, Greeks and Irish followed, then Mexicans, African-Americans from the American south, southeast Asians, Africans, east Europeans and Central Americans. Most came for the land, and for the jobs that the land produced, first in Iowa’s coal mines and on the railroads, later in the farm machinery factories and then in meat packing houses, in pig confinements, on chicken ranches and in our universities. Each immigrant wave came to work jobs that second and third generations of previous immigrant groups did not want.
Every new group of Iowans brought their taste for distinctive foods with them. Immigrant groceries and restaurants sprouted to feed a longing for the flavors of their homeland. Originally, these stores and cafes were in ethnic neighborhoods and catered to immigrants. After curious diners from outside the immigrant group visited, new markets were born. More importantly, the first footsteps of assimilation had been taken. When a person breaks bread with a stranger, tolerance is digested.
Just as Italian food was once strange to German Iowans, Italian-Iowans found Vietnamese food strange, and Vietnamese-Iowans found Sudanese fare weird. Honduran food is strange to the Sudanese, and Bosnian food to the Hondurans. Those who adventure into new culinary lands discover something more valuable than flavors. Ethnic restaurants are instruments of acceptance and understanding. What doesn’t kill you, makes you more open minded.
If that’s too touchy-feely for your taste, then consider another reason to support ethnic foods in Iowa. They add choices in a time when food choices are being reduced by economic conglomerations that don‘t much value diversity. Despite all the aisles and all the different brands on your supermarket shelves, its harder to find a variety of pure foods than it was 30 years ago. The last quarter of the 20th century was the Dark Age for Iowa’s greatest natural resource -- its farmland and the independent lives it begat. The family farm disappeared as a cultural entity, sold off in most cases to an industrial-agricultural complex that exploited the land, the animals that live on it and the air above it. All in a rush to produce food faster and cheaper -who cares what it tastes like?
Most of our supermarkets and franchise restaurants do not prioritize food quality. As long as customers don’t get sick and sue, they will emphasize consistency over freshness, long shelf-life over purity and price over flavor. The agro-industrial complex became so efficient that they produced more food than Americans needed. To expand their markets they had to convince customers to increase personal consumption. Crap was super sized. Now no obese child in America ever needs to go to bed without a belly full of empty calories.
Our mainstream grocers and restaurants specialize in long distance, highly processed foods that have nothing to do with the great natural resources of Iowa. Consumers must search the marginal niches for alternatives to “enhanced pork” and “vine-ripened” produce that was actually picked weeks ago and later shot full of gas to “auto stimulate” ripening. Most Iowa grocers are not interested in locally grown foods because the supply is too inconsistent.
Immigrant niches, from farmers’ markets to ethnic grocers and restaurants, present alternatives to the status quo. The elongated Chinese eggplant you find in Iowa is more apt to be grown in Iowa than the familiar purple egg-shaped version. The Thai basil you get at farmers’ market is probably fresher than the European basil you find at the supermarket, if you find any there. In one great irony, most all “fresh” garlic in American supermarkets is harvested in Asia, but most all garlic that Asian-Iowans sell at farmers’ markets is grown in their backyards.
Ethnic groceries, like small town lockers, do most of their own butchering, so they aren’t as apt to be selling “fresh” pork that is shot full of chemicals, so it won’t change color when it is shipped pre-cut and prepackaged.
They also stock cuts of meat that you won’t find in our supermarkets, cuts that our ethnic forefathers would never think of wasting and that their American grandchildren have never tasted.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Stalking Burgoo to its Natural Habitat
The Wrigley Field of Horse Racing
Because my gay bipolar bear is an obsessive fashion maven, Wro gets giddy about ladies’ hats, dudes’ sport coats, jockeys’ silks and, of course, dudes and jockeys themselves. For outdoor fashion, Lexington’s Keeneland Park is Paris, New York and Milan all stitched together -- the ultimate runway for scouts of summer’s most dapper styles. I came along to Kentucky to stalk the great American stew burgoo to its natural habitat. Burgoo is to racing in Kentucky what hot dogs are to baseball and beer is to the Daytona 500 - something so intrinsically part of the experience that it’s impossible to imagine without it. For historical appetizers, we visited some only-in-Lexington attractions beginning with Kentucky Horse Park.
These 1,200 acre grounds, surrounded by 30 miles of white plank fencing, is dedicated to mankind’s relationship with horses. Two museums, twin theaters and regular competitions highlight the attractions. But the cool thing for Wro was how easy it was to get up close and personal with 50 different horse breeds that live here. There’s so much for horse-loving kids to learn, and adore. Our highlights were anecdotal:
~At the Man of War Memorial, Wro read an explanation, by Joe Palmer, of why people consider him the greatest race horse in American history.
“Man of War, loose in his paddock at Fairway, dug in as if the Prince of All the Fallen Angels were at his throat latch and pieces of sod threw up behind the lash of his power. Watching you felt that there had never been, nor could there ever be again a horse like this.”
All other modern race tracks have been hard hit by the metastasizing spread of faster, more addictive forms of gambling. Some tracks persuaded legislators to allow slot machines to subsidize horse racing. With or without slots, these tracks degenerated because of lost, or less savory, sources of income.
“I served Her Majesty a gin and tonic. I think she had a filet too, but I remember the gin and tonic she ordered. Frank Atkins was the oldest employee here before he died and he was in charge of ushers. Frank would arrange people for photos of trophy presentations and he had a habit of grabbing people and moving them around. Sure enough, he did that to the Queen. Everyone gasped when he did that, but fortunately, it was no problem. So, ever since then, we have always said that other than Prince Philip, Frank was the only guy who knew if the Queen wore a long line bra or not.”
Because my gay bipolar bear is an obsessive fashion maven, Wro gets giddy about ladies’ hats, dudes’ sport coats, jockeys’ silks and, of course, dudes and jockeys themselves. For outdoor fashion, Lexington’s Keeneland Park is Paris, New York and Milan all stitched together -- the ultimate runway for scouts of summer’s most dapper styles. I came along to Kentucky to stalk the great American stew burgoo to its natural habitat. Burgoo is to racing in Kentucky what hot dogs are to baseball and beer is to the Daytona 500 - something so intrinsically part of the experience that it’s impossible to imagine without it. For historical appetizers, we visited some only-in-Lexington attractions beginning with Kentucky Horse Park.Kentucky Horse Park
These 1,200 acre grounds, surrounded by 30 miles of white plank fencing, is dedicated to mankind’s relationship with horses. Two museums, twin theaters and regular competitions highlight the attractions. But the cool thing for Wro was how easy it was to get up close and personal with 50 different horse breeds that live here. There’s so much for horse-loving kids to learn, and adore. Our highlights were anecdotal:~We learned that Isaac Burns Murphy, a black jockey (1815-1896) rode 628 winners, an amazing 44 % of his mounts, including three Kentucky Derbys;
~At the Man of War Memorial, Wro read an explanation, by Joe Palmer, of why people consider him the greatest race horse in American history.
“Man of War, loose in his paddock at Fairway, dug in as if the Prince of All the Fallen Angels were at his throat latch and pieces of sod threw up behind the lash of his power. Watching you felt that there had never been, nor could there ever be again a horse like this.”
Even the jockey of Upset, the winner of the only race Man of War ever lost, said he was sometimes sorry he didn’t move over and let him by. Wro measured Man of War’s stride, 28 feet, four more than Secretariat’s, 2 more than John Henry’s and 27 more than Wro’s;
~Wro got really excited to learn that the public is invited to watch the creation of the Kentucky Derby rose garland - 550 classic roses, one to the bush are hand sewn to the green satin fabric;
~At the American Saddlebred Museum, we learned that Supreme Sultan was the Man of War of his breed. Saddlebreds are a Kentucky original, the ultimate horse for shows, dressage and jumping.
Racing's Holy Ground
In 1790 Lexington outlawed horse racing on downtown streets and the social center of the city moved to the race track. Some 140 years later, Keeneland was founded. It has been refined and expanded ever since, but it remains the ideal home of the sport of kings, a time traveler’s dream. Behind its ivy-covered walls, women still powder their noses after lunch, dress codes are strictly enforced and white parasols are handed out, lest the afternoon sun darken the complexions of fair ladies.
All other modern race tracks have been hard hit by the metastasizing spread of faster, more addictive forms of gambling. Some tracks persuaded legislators to allow slot machines to subsidize horse racing. With or without slots, these tracks degenerated because of lost, or less savory, sources of income.Keeneland is uniquely blessed. Its horse auctions inject genteel money into the track operations, allowing it to become a living history museum of all that is honorable, noble, and even royal, about horse racing. This is the only track in America where the Queen of England races horses. We began our day there though in less sophisticated trappings.
The kitchen serves breakfast to the public. During the racing season, the most illustrious jockeys, trainers and owners can be found having a pre, or post-workout breakfast in the humble cafeteria. I could have slept later, but Wro, dressed in silk himself, insisted we go “look for hottie jockeys.” And I have found that long days become even longer if I deny his first impulses of the morning. It’s not mentioned in the manual of mothering skills, but it works for us.
Things didn’t go all that well. The jockeys having breakfast were wearing workout clothes, not their finest silks. They were also engaged in tactical sessions with trainers and owners, and didn’t have time to hear Wro tell wild stories about racing horses in Mongolia. I made certain he swallowed his meds as we left for the Thoroughbred Center.
Superior Muck
Superior Muck
Owned by Keeneland, the center is dedicated to the racing side of the horse business. Only active race horses are stabled here. Since Kentucky has racing 52 weeks a year, it’s convenient for trainers, so 300 horse barns house some 1100 horses. The Center doesn’t mention this, but my Chinese fetish for numbers led me to conclude that, with the average price of a race horse sold at Keeneland auctions topping $70,000, there is probably $80 million of horse flesh here.
Math geeks might also like to know: Stalls rent for $5.50 to $7 a day; Total costs to owners are about $25 - $35 grand a year, per horse; Horses train about 10 minutes day, or five times as long as they race; It takes a horse three strides to reach full speed.
The center includes two race tracks and a famous sales pavilion. Wro noticed that many riders had Irish accents. (We were told there are so many Irish in town they have their own pub.) They wore Kevlar vests, like homicide cops. Wro was love struck.
I spotted a curious sign: “Attention Keep Muck Clean: No Trash, String, or Sawdust.” It turns out that all recycled muck is sold to Campbell’s soup, to fertilize their mushroom fields.
In Barn 28 we met Mike Cameron, an ESPN analyst and trainer. We noticed him because he keeps a resident goat there. He was a walking advertisement for the track.
“Keeneland is the finest track in the world, the only American track the Queen of England races her horses at. They hand out white parasols to women and they even expect trainers like me to wear a coat and tie, just to saddle a horse. The climate is eternal Spring and Fall. It’s 15 degrees warmer in winter than Cincinnati and gets only a quarter as much snow. It’s cooler in summer too.”
“Keeneland is the finest track in the world, the only American track the Queen of England races her horses at. They hand out white parasols to women and they even expect trainers like me to wear a coat and tie, just to saddle a horse. The climate is eternal Spring and Fall. It’s 15 degrees warmer in winter than Cincinnati and gets only a quarter as much snow. It’s cooler in summer too.”Post Time
We didn’t check Mike’s numbers. It was time to get back to the track. Don’t misunderstand my point about Keeneland being trapped in time. It is, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of step with contemporary America. On the day of our visit, Keeneland’s attendance exceeded that of Aquaduct (New York City), Santa Anita (Los Angeles) and Gulf Stream (South Florida) combined! It is the Wrigley Field, or Carnegie Hall, of horse racing, venerable and beloved like no other venue of its genre.
Back to business -- My plan was to stalk burgoo in its natural habitat. This is a legendary Kentucky dish, an 18th century porridge made with squirrels, hens, cows, pigs and sheep. I found an old recipes that began with “800 pounds of cow flesh.” I determined to try this dish in its natural habitat, which I supposed was a track kitchen serving 20,000 to 30,000 people.
Track chef Ed Boutilier admitted that health and safety codes prevented him from following the old recipes. He also said something about proprietary information. So, Wro and I went over his head. Ed’s boss is Larry Wolken, President of Turf Catering and “the second longest employee here, after the bugler. My father came from Chicago, to run the concession stands the day the track first opened.”
Each racing day, Turf Catering serves sit down dinners for 3500 while their concessions serve an additional 10,000 to 30,000. They have 50 full time employees to feed the year-round simulcast crowd. They add 700 additional employees for racing seasons, and that’s just for food. Over 65 % of them return each year, so it’s a good part time job. As Larry showed us around, we’d stop at concession stands to check on the hot dogs.
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“Dad always said, ‘You’re only as good as your last sandwich.’”
“Dad always said, ‘You’re only as good as your last sandwich.’”Down at the serious end of the kitchen, we sensed we were getting closer to pay dirt.
“I stole the bread pudding recipe from Paul Prudhomme,” Larry confided.
Then we passed a station where five 80 gallon copper kettles simmered the stew of Kentucky racing lore. 
Larry acknowledged that the track’s famous burgoo begins with 150 pounds of chuck stew meat, 25 pounds each onions and celery, three #10 cans each of tomatoes and mixed vegetables, 20 pounds of okra, a #10 can of tomato puree, 2 pounds each of onion base and beef base, 3 pounds of chicken base, a quart of lemon juice, a half gallon of Worcestershire, a half gallon of red wine, a bottle of white wine, a cup of Tabasco, water “as needed (not too much),” 30 pounds of diced potatoes, and corn starch to thicken. That will yield 65 gallons. I can’t wait to try that at home, but only when I can add fresh whole squirrels, rabbits and sheep.
Larry acknowledged that the track’s famous burgoo begins with 150 pounds of chuck stew meat, 25 pounds each onions and celery, three #10 cans each of tomatoes and mixed vegetables, 20 pounds of okra, a #10 can of tomato puree, 2 pounds each of onion base and beef base, 3 pounds of chicken base, a quart of lemon juice, a half gallon of Worcestershire, a half gallon of red wine, a bottle of white wine, a cup of Tabasco, water “as needed (not too much),” 30 pounds of diced potatoes, and corn starch to thicken. That will yield 65 gallons. I can’t wait to try that at home, but only when I can add fresh whole squirrels, rabbits and sheep.Corned beef briskets, another track specialty, were also being simmered in 80 gallon tubs as Larry recalled his role in Keeneland’s most famous day of racing.
On Her Majesty’s Cocktail
“I served Her Majesty a gin and tonic. I think she had a filet too, but I remember the gin and tonic she ordered. Frank Atkins was the oldest employee here before he died and he was in charge of ushers. Frank would arrange people for photos of trophy presentations and he had a habit of grabbing people and moving them around. Sure enough, he did that to the Queen. Everyone gasped when he did that, but fortunately, it was no problem. So, ever since then, we have always said that other than Prince Philip, Frank was the only guy who knew if the Queen wore a long line bra or not.”
Historic (Literally) Recipes
Mint Juleps
“The mounds of ice and the bowls of mint julep and sherry cobbler that they make in these latitudes are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds.” Charles Dickens
“The mounds of ice and the bowls of mint julep and sherry cobbler that they make in these latitudes are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds.” Charles Dickens1 serving
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
12 sprigs of mint
3 ounces bourbon
1 sprig of mint
1 cup water
12 sprigs of mint
3 ounces bourbon
1 sprig of mint
Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a saucepan and simmer 5 minutes, without stirring. Pour over the sprigs of mint in a heatproof bowl, crushing the mint with the back of a spoon. Chill, covered, for 8 to 10 hours. Strain, discarding the mint. You may store the syrup in the refrigerator for several weeks, preparing individual juleps as desired.
For each serving, fill a julep cup with broken or crushed ice. Add 2 tablespoons of the mint syrup and the bourbon and stir until the cup is frosted. Garnish with 1 sprig of mint.
For each serving, fill a julep cup with broken or crushed ice. Add 2 tablespoons of the mint syrup and the bourbon and stir until the cup is frosted. Garnish with 1 sprig of mint.
If you go, we recommend
Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau
301 East Vine
Lexington, KY 40507
859-233-1221
http://www.visitlex.com/
301 East Vine
Lexington, KY 40507
859-233-1221
http://www.visitlex.com/
Keeneland
POB 1690, Lexington, KY 40588, 859-254-3412
http://www.keeneland.com/
Fran Taylor Ex Dir
Kentucky Horse Park
International Museum of the Horse
4089 Iron Works Parkway
Lexington, KY 40511, 859-233-4303
http://www.kyhorsepark.com/
POB 1690, Lexington, KY 40588, 859-254-3412
http://www.keeneland.com/
Fran Taylor Ex Dir
Kentucky Horse Park
International Museum of the Horse
4089 Iron Works Parkway
Lexington, KY 40511, 859-233-4303
http://www.kyhorsepark.com/
Whiskey Trails Part II: Distill My Heart
Pairing Woodward Reserve & Holly Hill InnIn the middle of the horse country near Versailles, Woodford Reserve spreads out like a centerfold for Southern Culture. The buildings, built by Irish and Scottish stonemasons, rise from a creek hewn valley while a thoroughbred-in-residence gallops the hills. His name tops anything else that could be written about the place -- Distill My Heart.
This is the only distillery in America that still uses the three copper pot method, with sweet Kentucky (limestone filtered) water from deep wells. Copper stills are the best conductors of heat and are also malleable enough for gooseneck tops, which helps in distillation, and for purification. Copper is slow though, so only a small distiller can use it. Woodford Reserve is the slowest, oldest and smallest in USA. At peak times, it produces 105 barrels of whiskey a week. By contrast, Jack Daniels produces 2100 barrel a day.
“They joke that they spill more whiskey than we make,” says David Scheurich, plant manager. David told Wro that the best of each batch of whiskey is called “honey pot” and that Woodford Reserve uses cypress plank in their vats, not stainless steel like most of the industry. A little history -- Kentucky was a border state in corn as well as slavery. Boone County White was the secret to old fashioned southern cornbread. It reigned from Tennessee south. Hardier Flint was ubiquitous north of the Ohio River. In rebel fashion, bourbon corn was different. The modern corn that most resembles the original Kentucky bourbon corn is #1 Yellow. David said that’s the only corn used in Woodford Reserve. It’s grown on contract by a single farmer who lives a few miles away. No other corn grown in the area, so nothing can cross pollinate the GMO-free crop. Three tanks graduate the alcohol content from beer to wine to whiskey levels (15% to 22% to 80 % alcohol respectively). Wro was told that Ronald Reagan is still a hero here -- for getting rid of the cumbersome tax process, still symbolized by now-decorative double padlocks.
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“I delivered two box lunches and never left. I was dragged kicking and screaming into cooking with bourbon. But people now treat super premium like they do fine wine, and I have to believe that Woodford Reserve is the best of the batch. I taste tobacco and leather in it,” he said.
As he prepped his way through a delightful, whiskey flavored lunch, Larson dispatched tips and insights. Here are three shots worth:
“Christopher’s pastry cook skills came in handy redoing the walls,” she joked. “As a B&B it had a good following, so we wanted to keep the name, but it was getting real rough around the edges. I knew, with the (small) size of the kitchen, I had an excuse for the fixed price menu. I just don’t like plated first courses. From a chef’s point of view, that is a horrible trend. I just wasn’t going to do that.
Woodford Reserve also has their own cooperage and is thus the only whiskey maker that chars the heads of their barrels, where 30 % of the surface lays. Their stone aging warehouse is also unique. But, the real distinction of Woodford Reserve, at least from a foodie’s perspective, is the magical way they use whiskey in their kitchen. Terrace brunches here, during warm weather months, feature the work of chef-in-residence David Larson, mentor to the fresh and local food movement that has elevated Lexington cuisine. (For those of you playing the Two Degress from Ouita game, Ouita once worked for John Foster, who succeeded Larson at Harvest.) They often incorporate their bourbon in recipes. His cooking classes go even further.
Like other bluegrass chefs from the fresh & local school of thought, Larson features much more local product than whiskey -- Blue Moon garlic, John Medley’s free range pork, Judy Schad’s goat milk cheese and Bill Best’s heirloom produce on the day of our visit. Larson laughed about how he came to be resident chef to the distillery.
“I delivered two box lunches and never left. I was dragged kicking and screaming into cooking with bourbon. But people now treat super premium like they do fine wine, and I have to believe that Woodford Reserve is the best of the batch. I taste tobacco and leather in it,” he said.As he prepped his way through a delightful, whiskey flavored lunch, Larson dispatched tips and insights. Here are three shots worth:
~ I used to think it was only good in sweet applications, but I learned that it’s a catalyst to flavor. I think this whiskey is similar to cinnamon in that it takes flavors literally all over your tongue;
~ Grilling chicken over whiskey barrels is similar to aging whiskey. You are caramelizing sugars;
~ I always add Woodford Reserve to Béchamel (white sauce). I think it brings out umami (Japanese word for the fifth savory taste), the flavor of glutamates.
Ouita Michel
Ouita Michel
After Whiskey 101 with David Larson, we were ready for an evening at Holly Hill Inn, one of the great country inns of America. After days of measuring food treasures by degrees of separation from Ouita Michel, Wro finally met the original. Ouita is chef, husband Chris is sommelier and the couple met at the CIA, where she graduated as valedictorian. Before sitting down for cocktails, Ouita showed us around the 1845 building and her eccentric art collection. Some ratehr intimidating rabbit art made Wro fractious, until Chris served him a virgin julep.
Ouita told us that after falling quickly in love, she and Chris decided to marry and she came home to plan the wedding. She had no intention of staying in Lexington, but her home town had other plans. After Chris saw the bluegrass, they never left. They looked at 20 properties before deciding on this former Bed and Breakfast, which had hosted Quita’s bridal shower. It needed lots of renovation.
“Christopher’s pastry cook skills came in handy redoing the walls,” she joked. “As a B&B it had a good following, so we wanted to keep the name, but it was getting real rough around the edges. I knew, with the (small) size of the kitchen, I had an excuse for the fixed price menu. I just don’t like plated first courses. From a chef’s point of view, that is a horrible trend. I just wasn’t going to do that. “We felt that by having a place in the country, people would get the idea that this wasn’t a place to go for tapas before a movie. That if they were going to make the drive out into the country, they were committed to staying here for the entire evening. That was our idea from the beginning,” Ouita said.
“For four years we lived upstairs. That was an extremely romantic and misguided notion,” she laughed. They immediately began developing the infrastructure to support her fresh & local regional cuisine, by cultivating relationships with local farmers, artisans and producers. It took some creativity.
No one does scallops with more original style than this. Wro went more traditional, with Kentucky squab two ways:a whole roasted breast; plus a confit of the leg and thigh, with flageolets and baby organic greens. For the sake of research, we also tried a bacon wrapped saddle of Kentucky rabbit, with green and white asparagus in brown butter and a buckwheat rabbit crepe. Sigh. Oh, and lamb three ways: roast rack; barbecued leg, and a confit of tongue, with baby carrots, tiny turnips and fresh favas. (I should add that Holly Hill accommodates tasters like us by splitting multiple half orders. It wasn’t quite as self indulgent as it sounds.)
Holly Hill’s famous “coconut snowball” which was a coconut cake with a citrus curd, coconut frost and fresh strawberries that were red all the way to their core.
“For four years we lived upstairs. That was an extremely romantic and misguided notion,” she laughed. They immediately began developing the infrastructure to support her fresh & local regional cuisine, by cultivating relationships with local farmers, artisans and producers. It took some creativity.
“We laugh about this now, because we have become big enough it isn’t the problem it was then. But at first we were buying the best cuts of beef from this rancher and then he was left with the hard to sell parts of the cow. That wasn’t working out so well for the farmer, so we decided to have a Hamburger Hootenanny, in partnership with the local NPR station. Every Memorial Day we would buy most of the beef that we had left the farmer with and we’d have a bluegrass band on our front porch,” she recalled.
For the most part, Quita still buys from the farmers she met while working in her first job “at Dudley’s, for $7 an hour.”
“Ann and Mac Stone, Scott County farmers have taken a tobacco farm into certified organic, which requires long time fallow. They do organic cattle, free range chickens, huge heirloom tomato business and almost any kind of vegetable, eight kinds of eggplant. Another smaller farmer grows all my salsify, Belgian endive, Jerusalem artichokes and English nettles. Campbell Gratty is a cattle farmer with a killer asparagus patch. On our menu, Dutch and Linda Hatcher raised the bluegrass squab. They also do pheasant. One woman just does rabbit. We love Kentucky bison. Pork comes for John Medley’s Kentucky Heritage Meats,” she said.
Then she spoke about another romantic but misguided notion. “We will never plant or grow tomatoes again. We carefully chose all these varieties so we would be harvesting different types at different times. And then, they all came at once,” she laughed.
Ouita thinks about where she wants to fit within southern culinary tradition. “I like grand mere dishes like coq au vin and braises. There will always be braises on the menu. I like dishes that come from the past. I have a very historic perspective. I love dishes that march across geographic, ethnic and cultural borders. For instance, boned pork butts made into a roulade and then slow braised in milk - that’s a dish from Italy, from France and from the Old South. I love that!
“One woman who has worked with me since before Holly Hill is Lisa Laugher. Her mother was an influential Louisville chef, personal chef to the President of the University of Louisville. She helped many young chefs get their start. She is die-hard traditionalist. You are eating her cheese waferettes now. She will fight you to the death about what should be on a Hot Brown - no tomato and no ham.
“I know more what I don’t like than what I do. I hate contrived food,” she explained, before excusing herself to return to the kitchen while Wro and I adjourned to the dining room. Our dinner explained why so many other chefs defer to Ouita when talking about Kentucky cuisine. It was superb at any price, and at $35 (3 courses) to $45 (five courses), it was an epiphany in fine dining.
I began with a mille feuille of herbed fromage blanc mousse, made with pistachios, marinated baby beets and beet syrup. Wro had pan seared foie gras with an oatmeal, spiced pecan and apricot glaze.
He moved on to poached halibut en vinaigrette with a baby artichoke barigoule, haricots verts and black cerignola olives and a salad of Woodford County greenswith Serrano ham, Valdeon blue cheese, Arbequina olives and banyuls. I tried a black barley soup with choux farci. After all, barley research is compulsive to whiskey trail studies.
Our next courses brought seared sea scallops with black trumpet mushrooms, salsify puree and a cornbread foie gras dressing that kicked French butt all over Kentucky.
No one does scallops with more original style than this. Wro went more traditional, with Kentucky squab two ways:a whole roasted breast; plus a confit of the leg and thigh, with flageolets and baby organic greens. For the sake of research, we also tried a bacon wrapped saddle of Kentucky rabbit, with green and white asparagus in brown butter and a buckwheat rabbit crepe. Sigh. Oh, and lamb three ways: roast rack; barbecued leg, and a confit of tongue, with baby carrots, tiny turnips and fresh favas. (I should add that Holly Hill accommodates tasters like us by splitting multiple half orders. It wasn’t quite as self indulgent as it sounds.)We shared three desserts: a chocolate chestnut creme caramel with kumquat sauce and cornmeal shortbread; a caramel walnut tart with bourbon reduced raisin ice cream; and
Holly Hill’s famous “coconut snowball” which was a coconut cake with a citrus curd, coconut frost and fresh strawberries that were red all the way to their core.Bluegrass Summer Recipes
The following recipes of David Larson and Ouita Michel are courtesy of the Woodford Reserve Culinary Cocktail Tour, an eye opening book for southern food lovers. These are not simple recipes, but as Wro says, they are SO worth the effort.
Ouita Michel’s New Fangled Tomato Dumplings
4 servings as a first course or light entrée
2 large or 4 small tomatoes
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
4 ounces goat cheese, feta cheese or ricotta cheese, softened
2 tablespoons freshly minced dill weed, basil or parsley
2 green onions, minced
2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 egg
2 tablespoons water
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut around the stem of each tomato and remove. Cut a small “x” in the opposite end of each tomato. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and fill a bowl with ice water. Plunge the tomatoes into the boiling water and let stand for 10 seconds or until their skins loosen. Immediately remove from the boiling water and plunge into the ice water. Drain and peel the tomatoes. If working with large tomatoes, cut into halves, remove the seeds and core gently without leaving too big of a hole. If using smaller tomatoes, cut off the top fourth of the tomato and gently spoon out the seeds. Pat the tomatoes dry with paper towels and sprinkle the inside of the tomatoes with salt and pepper. Invert onto paper towels and drain for 30 minutes.
Combine the goat cheese, dill weed and green onions in a bowl and mix well. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon 2 to 3 tablespoons of the cheese mixture into each tomato. Cut the pastry sheets into 4 squares large enough to enclose the tomatoes, allowing 2 inches on each side. Place 1 tomato half or tomato in the center of each pastry square and cut slits in the pastry from each corner towards the center. Whisk the egg and water in a bowl until blended and brush the pastry with the egg wash. Bring the triangles up around the tomatoes, pressing them together at the top and using scraps of pastry to cover all the edges. It is acceptable to allow a small portion of the tomato to peek through. Brush the outside of the dumplings with the remaining egg wash. Arrange the dumplings on a baking sheet. Mix the vinegar and brown sugar in a small saucepan. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat. Bake the dumplings for 15 minutes or until golden brown and crispy, basting with the vinegar syrup occasionally, or drizzle the warm vinegar syrup over the dumplings after baking. You may substitute cherry tomatoes for the larger tomatoes for a great party appetizer.
David Larson’s Woodford Wilt
4 servings
1 cup fresh corn kernels (about 2 ears) or frozen white Shoe Peg corn kernels
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup drained hominy
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 slices bacon
1 tablespoon chopped shallots
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon Woodford Reserve bourbon
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
6 cups mixed seasonal salad greens, such as watercress, escarole, arugula
2 tablespoons chopped red bell pepper
2 tablespoons sliced kalamata olives (optional)
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Blanch the corn in boiling water in a saucepan for 1 minute; drain. Mix the cornstarch and flour in a bowl and stir in the hominy. Place the hominy mixture in a sieve and shake to remove the excess flour mixture. Sauté the hominy in 2 tablespoons oil in a medium sauté pan over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes or until a crust forms; do not want a mushy consistency. Fry the bacon in a skillet until brown and crisp. Remove the bacon to a bowl and coarsely crumble, reserving the bacon drippings. Cool the drippings for several minutes and stir in the shallots and 1 teaspoon sugar. Cook over low heat until caramelized, stirring frequently. Increase the heat to high and stir in the bourbon. Cook for 30 seconds. Reduce the heat and stir in 1 tablespoon oil, the vinegar and
2 teaspoons sugar. Cook until heated through, stirring occasionally.
Toss the corn, hominy, bacon, salad greens, bell pepper and olives in a bowl and drizzle with the warm dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately. Add chopped grilled chicken for a nice entrée salad.
Ouita Michel’s Tian of Summer Vegetables
4 to 6 servings
2 baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
3 large tomatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
1 large eggplant, peeled and thinly sliced
2 zucchini, thinly sliced
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, cubed
1 cup (4 ounces) grated Parmesan cheese or asiago cheese
1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth
1/2 cup panko or other bread crumbs
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9¥13-inch baking dish with butter or oil or spray with nonstick cooking spray. Layer the potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini in the order listed in the prepared dish, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper, dotting with 1 tablespoon of the butter and sprinkling with 1/4 cup of the cheese. Pour the wine down 1 side of the baking dish.
Toss the bread crumbs with the olive oil, garlic, parsley and thyme in a bowl and sprinkle the bread crumb mixture over the prepared layers. Bake for 1 hour or until the vegetables are tender and the bread crumb topping is golden brown. Let rest for 15 minutes before slicing, or let stand for 1 hour and serve. You may substitute extra-virgin olive oil for the butter. Bake in a round ceramic baker or quiche pan if desired, but the baking time must be adjusted to the size of the dish and thickness of the vegetables.
David Larson’s Fried Green Tomatoes with Tomato Relish
4 servings
Tomato Relish
2 cups coarsely chopped seeded mixed red or heirloom tomatoes
2 tablespoons chopped scallions
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 small jalapeño chile, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon sugar, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper to taste
Fried Green Tomatoes
1 cup flour
11/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 green tomatoes, cut into 1/2-inch slices
2 eggs, beaten
peanut oil for frying
For the relish, toss the tomatoes, scallions, cilantro and jalapeño chile in a bowl. Add the olive oil, lime juice, garlic, sugar, cumin, salt and pepper and mix until coated. Store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 1 day. Substitute grape tomatoes in the off-season.
For the green tomatoes, mix the flour, 1 teaspoon of the salt and 1/4 teaspoon of the white pepper in a shallow dish. Mix the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, remaining 1/2 teaspoon pepper, cornmeal and paprika in a shallow dish. Coat the tomatoes with the flour mixture, dip in the eggs and coat with the cornmeal mixture.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Heat enough peanut oil in a sauté pan to measure 1 inch. Fry the tomatoes in the hot oil until crisp and golden brown and drain on a rack. You may prepare to this point and store, covered, in the refrigerator until just before serving.
Arrange the tomato slices in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until heated through. The tomatoes should be tender but not mushy. Remove the tomatoes to a serving platter and top with the relish. Serve immediately.
David Larson’s Corn Pudding Versailles
8 to 10 servings
4 cups fresh white corn kernels (about 8 ears)
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
6 eggs, beaten
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup half-and-half
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Process 1 cup of the corn in a food processor until ground. Combine the ground corn, remaining 3 cups corn kernels, sugar, flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl and mix well. Whisk the eggs, heavy cream and half-and-half in a bowl until blended and stir into the corn mixture. Add the butter and mix well.
Pour the corn mixture into a greased 9x13-inch baking pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a sharp knife inserted in the center comes out clean. You may substitute frozen Shoe Peg corn for the fresh corn kernels.
Wro’s Recommendations
Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau
301 East Vine
Lexington, KY 40507
859-233-1221
http://www.visitlex.com/
Woodford Reserve
7855 McCracken Pike
Versailles, KY 40383, 859-879-1952
http://www.woodfordreserve.com/
The Springs Inn
2020 Henderson Rd.
Lexington, 40530, 859-277-5751
http://www.springsinn.com/
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Contradictions in a Bun
Burger IowaThey are contradictions in a bun, simultaneously the scourge of nutritionists and the piece de resistance for low carbohydrate dieters - hold the bun, please. Although they have been around for at least 800 years, they recently celebrated their 100th birthday. Despite being the most popular meal of the masses, they fulfill any gourmet criteria.
Hamburgers have it all: hot (meat) and cold (lettuce); sweet (ketchup) and sour (pickle); acidulous (onion) and alkaline (bun). Textures range from charred to soggy and every color of the rainbow is stacked between their buns, even Maytag blue. They account for four out of every ten sandwiches served in restaurants and almost half of all burgers are consumed during the summer.
In America they are a guilty pleasure for which no one apologizes. After a New York City restaurant gained notoriety by claiming the most expensive burger in America, a $41, a war of decadence broke out, with prices reaching $100. Now hundred dollar burgers are the greatest contradiction of all, for the simple sandwich is the long time poster child for affordable food in America. In the last 50 years, fast food systems made it possible to raise a baby calf from 80 to 1200 pounds in fifteen months, rather than the five years it took a century ago. Iowa was ground zero for that revolution, first with king corn changing the feeding habits of cows, and then with the innovation of modern meat processing, which began with IBP in Denison.
Hamburger is Iowa’s birthright, the cheapest protein in the history of the world. But modern food systems have a downside. Unheard of before the 1980s, E coli bacteria now lives happily in the intestines of most U.S. feedlot cattle, comfy in the acidic rumens that corn diets. Mad cow scares have people tracing carcasses to their origins, since parts of scores of different cattle can wind up in a batch of burger that comes from the modern processors. The fatter, tastier flesh of corn fed, feed lot cattle also raises red flags at cardiologists.
Today Iowa is a trove for healthier burger choices. Dennie Heuton’s Mr. D’s Cattle Company raises the same wagyu bulls from which Kobe beef is cut, crossing them with Angus cows. His Iowa ranches produce cattle that have more good cholesterol and less bad. Brent and Joni Christensen, who raise free range cattle in Corning, Iowa, can trace their burger to a particular cow. They never use growth hormones nor antibiotics.
Frank Reitsma of Deo Gloria Elk in New Sharon has found a local market for his antibiotic and hormone-free herds, whose “diet is 99 % pasture.”
Other farmers’ burgers are also capable of showing consumers a better way to eat. Not only do free ranged cattle have richer taste than most commercial burger, they are also free of hormones produced by fear and loathing, common to animals abused in typical livestock confinements. Hunters know that animals who are wounded, but not killed instantly produce bad meat, because of the chemical changes wrought by the suffering. Confinement cattle’s whole lives are wrought with suffering.
Nick Wallace of Wallace Farms and Irene McCoy’s organic Grasstravaganza burgers are also filled with good fatty acids and cholesterols that grain fed beef lacks.
All kinds of formerly “exotic“ meats are now popping up in Iowa health food stores and restaurants. Ostrich thrive in Central Iowa for the same reasons. Elk are raised for meat in several parts of the state and sold at farmers markets All these wild meats have fewer fats and calories and more good cholesterol, omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin E than factory beef.
Gourmet Burgers at Home
We gathered a six-pack of burger wisdom compiling this story.
1.) Because of their fats, typical feed lot, supermarket burger cooks slower than exotics and grass fed burgers do. They also shrink more. So adjust your temperature and cooking time down when using non-traditional kinds of burger.
2.) Flavor, not to mention aroma, comes from searing burger without burning it. This is called the Maillard factor and it works best on traditional corn fed beef, because this happens when fats bond with proteins at high heat. That’s why expensive, lean burger has the complexion of soot. Most of the best chefs prefer a burger mix that is only 75 - 85 % lean. Moisture retards the Maillard factor, so some chefs pat their burger patties dry with paper towels before grilling. Burger meat needs to be fatty, and this is not all bad. Burger cholesterol carries satiety messages to the brain. That is why the Atkins Diet works.
3.) Searing can be done on a flat top grill, over an open flame or burning coals, but electric stoves don’t get hot enough. Pans don’t work because collected fats exceed their smoke point and burn the meat.
4.) Fresh beef performs better than previously frozen patties.
5.) Patties should be loosely hand-packed, as tightly compressed patties can not aerate, and lose moisture.
6.) Burgers to some are just delivery systems for buns, lettuce, tomatoe, pickles and condiments, so use the freshest garden foods and the best condiments.
Iowa’s Celebrity Burgers
Siouxland diners queued up for “taverns,” or “Charlie Boys,” since Prohibition days. These loose meat sandwiches are a tradition in Sioux City bars to this day. After being rejected for a McDonald’s franchise, Vincent Calligan built his own fast food store, the Tastee Inn & Out, which looks pretty much like it did when he opened it half a century ago. The restaurant sold “tastees,” a variation on the “taverns.” Like the “Charlie Boys,” named for the son of founder John Miles) still served at the Miles Inn (2622 Leech, 712-276-9825), “tastees” are specially sauced ground beef sandwiches which require too much labor to appeal to the fast food giants.
Tastee Inn & Out is now run by Vince’s daughter Jean Calligan and Jean’s daughter wrote an off-Broadway play about growing up in the restaurant. Calligan’s neon sign at 2610 Gordon is original and the café is still strictly a drive-through. The biggest change in half a century was redesigning the driveway, for driver’s side pick-ups, something that wasn’t necessary back when no one ever drove alone.
Up the road in Lemars, Bob’s Drive Inn (Highway 75, 712-546-5445) has been serving taverns, in their signature spices, since 1949.
At Ross’ 24 Hour Family Restaurant, under the freeway by-pass in Bettendorf (430 14th Street. 319-355-7573), fresh ground beef and freshly baked buns have been keeping burger lovers happy for more than 60 years. Cynthia and Ron Freidhof‘s “Ross burger“ is a loose meat special on the lines of Sioux City‘s taverns.
At Mason City’s Pro’s Sandwich Shop (625 S. Federal, 641-424-2662) the Beef Delights come in green and white checked wrappers, but are just a local variation on the same loose meat theme.
In Des Moines, where Ted’s Coney Island (3020 Ingersoll, ) and George the Chili King (5722 Hickman, 515-277-9433 ) have been making the same loose meat burgers for over half a century, they are simply called beef burgers. Though there is nothing simple about them. Ted’s grinds their own meat, from inside rounds, and cook it heavily peppered, with allspice and other secret spices, on the stovetop, 90 pounds at time, for three hours, with constant stirring. George’s method is similar, but more secretive.
In Ottumwa, loose meat sandwiches are called “canteens,” after the ones sold at Canteen in the Alley (112 E. 2nd Street, 641-, 682-5320), a little 1927 diner that has a parking ramp built over and around it.
In Marshalltown, Taylor’s Maid Rite (106 S. 3rd 641-753-9684) has been serving their loose meat burgers for over 70 years, but that is nothing compared to Stone’s, still referred to as “that place under the viaduct, down by the vinegar works” though the vinegar works are gone with the wind. Stones (507 S. Third Ave., 641-753-3626).Probably Davenport’s most famous burger comes with some 19th century history too. Boozie’s Bar and Grill (114 ½ W. 3rd, 563-328-2929) is in an old downtown building and is named for a cat reputed to be the original owner. The Boozie Burger includes three cheeses and bacon and Boozie’s original hot sauce.
In Waterloo, Steamboat Gardens (1740 Falls Avenue, (319) 232-0344)
packs them in for $.49 beef burgers on Saturday afternoons, and $.99 Steamboat Burgers on Mondays. Here, “a haystack” means a burger with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese.
That would be a Reuben burger at Iowa City’s Hamburg Inn #2 (numbers 1 and 3 are no more). HI#2 (214 N. Linn, 319-337-5512) has probably sold burgers to more people than any other independent restaurant in the state. Joe Panther opened the place during the Great Depression and sold burgers for a nickel. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton stopped by, as do most politicians during the Iowa Caucuses. Today, the motto is "Comfort Food In a Fifties Time Capsule," the burger is still fresh ground daily and the place was featured in the Washington Post’s “Great American Hamburger Debate.”
In Johnston’s Greenbriar (5810 Merle Hay Rd. 515-253-0124) chef Troy Trostel will serve his lightly packed, flame broiled burgers with any sauce in his vast European repertoireFor over 40 years at Christopher’s in Des Moines (2816 Beaver, 274-3694), the Guidecessi family grind their burgers from the trim of prime rib, filets and other middle meat, season it with shallots, garlic and salt, and grill half pound, hand packed burgers on a flat top.
At Maxie’s in West Des Moines (1311 Grand, 223-1463) the half pound Maxieburgers have been made the same way for 65 years - hand packed and char seared. They were dubbed “Happy Max” in Jeff Hagen’s book “Searching for the Holy Grill.”Along the Mississippi River, Iowans also seem to like maximum burgers. At Café Mississippi in Guttenburg (431 S River Park Drive, 563-252-4405) the half pound burgers are smothered with caramelized onions and served on rye bread.
The Irish Shanty's giant Gunderburger keeps Gunder on the map, even after it lost its post office and incorporation. At the venerable The Cellar in Keokuk (29 South Second, 319/524-4040), the fresh ground burgers are half pounders, which makes then small up the road in Fort Madison. There the burger buzz is called the “Wally” and it’s a full pound of fresh chuck, with four slices of cheese, sautéed mushrooms and onions, sold at Walt and Jake’s Fort Diner (8th Street and Avenue H, 319-372-1949).Elsewhere, burgers are distinguished by their cooking method. Smokin' Jakes (117 Broadway, Arnolds Park, 712-332-5152) grills their Smokin’ Burgers over hickory. So does Hickory Park (1404 Duff, 515-232-8940) in Ames, with their “Hickorys.” At Archie’s Waeside in Lemars (224 4th Ave NE, 712-546-7011), they are slowed cooked at low temperatures. At Winston’s (601 Locust St. 515-245-5454 ), owner chef Steve Little reconstructed his grill hardware to get a bigger flame for searing his burgers.
Then there are the exotic burgers. Raccoon Bend Golf Club in Jefferson serves 7 ounce wagyu burgers for $6.50 and 14 ounces for $7.25! Dorothy Stitt’s Olde Broom Factory in Cedar Falls (125 West First Street, 319-268-0877) makes an emu burgers. The Iowa Buffalo Company in Mediapolis (213 Wapello St S, 319 -394-9790) reported double sales, and changed their name, after they began making burgers out of bison. Buffalo burgers can also be found at: Circle C in Lamotte (806 Pleasant St., 563-773-2352) ; Skyline Inn and in Kalmes Restaurant in St. Donatus (Highway 52 South, 563- 773-2480); Point Restaurant in Dubuque (2370 Rhomberg Ave., 563-582-2418) and Thunder Bay Grille in Davenport (655 N Brady, 563-386-2722).
Grasstravaganza
641-449-3254, grassfedmeat@yahoo.com.
Klinge Farms
563-783-2456
Thankful Harvest
712-365-4433, mailto:tagerman@netlic.net
Wallace Farms
630-466-8723
info@wallacebeef.com
Heartland Elk
2200 Woodland
heartlandelk@hotmail.com
Iowa Buffalo Co.
213 Wapello St S, Mediapolis, IA 52637 319) 394-9790
Whiskey Trails Part I: Buffalo Trace
The Blue Grass Diet:It’s Not Just for Horses Anymore
Graham Waller's Hot BrownWroburlto and I always begin a day in Lexington at Winchell’s for a state of the art southern breakfast. Winchell's was the first American sports bar I ever found that upgraded the culinary aspects of its genre to Japanese and Argentinian levels. Owner-chef Graham Waller is as forthcoming with candor as he is with Kentucky country ham, grits, eggs and a special blue & white pancake concoction that celebrates the University of Kentucky colors.
“I was a bad boy coming out of high school. At one point, I was basically given a choice of going to jail, going to reform school or going to work for Quita. I chose her restaurant and she worked my butt off. But she encouraged me to the point that I found myself going to the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). She‘s influenced a lot of what‘s going on here,” he confessed. 
He was referring to chef Quita Michel, one of the great Southern chefs in America. Ouita and her husband Chris, own Holly Hill Inn in Midway. That restaurant’s reputation influenced our decision to visit the Bluegrass Country, so I was excited to hear her praises sung. (We'll meet Quita in Whiskey Trails Part II.) Wro was more excited about Graham’s bad boy image, reminding me that rebels have often influenced the great flavors of Kentucky.Geology & Whiskey
After the 1792 Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, many Irish and Scottish settlers came looking for respite from federal tax collectors. Those rebels had a tradition of distilling rye whiskey, but the Kentucky climate was too hot and humid for that grain. In the bluegrass area, they discovered a divine coincidence of geology and weather - perfect for making whiskey. The limestone soil was ideal for growing corn, a rebel grain at a time when wheat was the grain of sophisticates and international trade, and when rye was the poor man’s wheat. Plus the limestone-enriched water was superior for distilling spirits.
Note: whiskey is spelled with an “e” in Ireland, but without an “e” in the United Kingdom and Canada. Probably because sons of Eire predominated in Kentucky, bourbons use the Irish spelling. Wro sometimes thinks he’s an Irish bard, so I use that spelling in lieu of increased doses of lithium.
Today’s Bourbon Trail extends 80 miles southeast of Lexington and is home to 17 distilleries. The name predates statehood; several present counties of Kentucky were in Bourbon County, Virginia. Most bourbon is made with 70 % corn, though only 51 % is required. Bourbon also must be aged in charred oak barrels for at least two years. We decided to visit two distillers who make super premium products.
We drove to Frankfort where the Buffalo Trace distillery hugs the banks of the Kentucky River. Originally named Old Fired Copper, they have been making bourbon continuality since 1787. (During Prohibition, they wrangled a special permit to make whiskey “for medicinal purposes.”) The grounds encompass 119 acres and 114 buildings dating to 1881. They offer tours six days a week, year round. Among their distinctions, they were the first distiller to ship whiskey down the Mississippi River, to use steam power for distilling and to heat warehouses. They are currently the only distiller: to use five whiskey recipes; to create vodka from organic corn; and to have a computer-free still house.
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After repeal of Prohibition, Albert Blanton began producing single-barrel bourbon for himself and his friends. In 1984 the distillery became the first to commercially market a single-barrel bourbons. They changed their name in 1999 - because the site was once a major crossing for migrating buffalo, which, as Wro points out, look really hot on a label. When renamed, they introduced their super premium Buffalo Trace Kentucky straight bourbon. Approximately 30-35 barrels of aged whiskey are selected from the middle floors of three warehouses. If anyone on their tasting panel rejects a sample, the barrel is voted off the island. Only 25 to 30 barrels are chosen. The others become Blanton's, W. L. Weller, Old Charter and Eagle Rare. 
When we visited, a tornado had taken the roof and wall off the warehouse, but not a single drop was spilled from the massive wooden beam old-aging home. Our tour guide told us that the grain leftover from the whiskey making process is so valued by cattlemen that it sells for more than the original cost of the grain!“That works out great for everyone but the pigs. We used to just give it away to them."
Wallace Station: Historically correct chicken
Half way between Frankfort and Lexington is Midway - a pun intended by the railroad that founded the historic town. Well into its second century of gentrification, Midway has overcome some dubious history to become the heart of horse country and bluegrass tourism: Jesse James’ mother was born and raised in a tavern here and another old tavern claims to have invented the porterhouse steak; To prevent a recurrence of such things, hard liquor is forbidden in the town’s cafés today.
We visited the former train stop called Wallace Station, now known for the faithful recreation of old fashioned fried chicken, right down to historically correct cast iron skillets. Our server dropped a familiar name on us: The owners of this bakery-country store-deli and chicken shack are Ouita Michel’s sister Paige, and her husband Jared Richardson. Jared’s fried chicken was the first reason I had passed up Winchell’s two nights earlier. He cooked it in deep pans, filled half way with vegetable oil, not lard. His collard greens with homemade habanero vinegar were superb. Cheese grits were smooth. Black eyed peas and some fabulous lard-fried corn bread rounded out the meal.
The Milk of Great Compromise
Back in Lexington, we visited Ashland, home of the “Great Compromiser” Henry Clay, the captain of the United States legislator’s all time, all star team. Since the city maintains 17 acres of Clay’s original farm as city park, it draws history buffs, architects and nostalgia lovers. We visited because Clay had been a progressive foodie.
We saw how pipes from two silo-style ice hoses cooled the milk in his dairy, which his wife Lucretia sold downtown. We heard how the six-time Speaker of the House brought several new breeds of livestock and the first gingko tree to Kentucky. And that he planted hemp for medicinal purposes only, oh wait, no it was actually as cash crop. In a related vein, or not, Clay kept what docents called “a pleasure yard,” next to his house. They said that meant it was livestock-free. Today dogs are allowed as well as bi-polar honeybears - as long as they are on leashes and medications respectively.
Another Ex-Bad Boy
Nineteenth century history makes me hungry. So we headed to the historic downtown district where the elegant Jonathan’s at Gratz Park serves regional cuisine with flair. Owner-chef Jonathan Lundy comes from Midway horse country and is a self-confessed “spoiled rich kid.” He says he wasn’t exactly born loving food.
“My mother didn’t do much cooking, so I grew up cooking ‘Chicken and Stars’ and ‘Chef Boyardee’ in the microwave. I remember once when my father was enjoying olives and insisted that I eat an olive. He made me put one in my mouth and I sat there with it for an hour until he finally gave up. But because of that I don’t ever push anything on anyone,” he explained, adding that he still can’t enjoy olives.
Jonathan told us he never had a job until his father tired of his wildness and arranged a restaurant apprenticeship when he was 20 - with Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans. “This was during the first year of Emeril’s first restaurant, when he was there all the time. I spent about six months there and didn’t get paid, but had a good time when I wasn’t working. He arranged for me to go to Johnson and Wales (the Harvard of culinary colleges). I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t even fill out paper work, nothing. I just showed up. I did my two years at Johnson and Wales and came back here and got a job,” he explained.
Jonathan worked at Nadine’s and Rossi’s, two of Lexington’s better restaurants. Jonathan and his wife then persuaded the Gratz Park Hotel to let them move in and offer regional cuisine. That meant things like burgoo topped with white cheddar grits, “hot brown” scallops served with country ham and smoked bacon, Kentucky trout pate with cucumber rolls and horseradish cream, and, this being Lexington, fried banana peppers with green tomato relish.
“I knew that was what I wanted, there was nothing like it at the time,” he recalled.
“We try to do as much as we can with local farmers and ranchers. Kentucky Bison Company in Goshen has a good product. The country ham I like the best is Colonel Newsome’s in Princeton (KY). We use Weisenberger Mill for hominy and wheat products, they’re in Midway, and Sheltowee Farms for mushrooms,” he credited his local providers.
The elegant historic dining room pleased Wro, who had dressed up for the occasion. We began dinner with a carpaccio of Kentucky bison, served with whole roasted cloves of garlic, fresh arugula and toast points. It was softer and more flavorful than any beef carpaccio I have tasted. Because we visited during racing season, a deviled egg trio included offerings with country ham, smoked salmon and Benedictine. We were told that deviled eggs go with horse racing like hot dogs go with baseball. I never had a Benedictine wiener though.
Jonathan’s is known for grilled Caesar salad. Romaine leaves were dredged in dressing and grilled “just enough to bring out some flavor without losing crispness,” then served it with crispy black eyed peas. We applauded those peas, so they came back for an encore - coating Kentucky trout and served with bibb lettuce wilted in brown butter, and caramelized onions. We applauded that course even louder, but the peas were done for the evening. We weren’t though. 
Jonathan is also famous for his rock salt chicken, so much so that it was the second reason I passed up chicken at Winchell‘s. Jonathan’s deserves its reputation, and that comes from a Chinese chef who experiences more rock salt chicken in a typical month than most people do in a lifetime.
We tried scallops served with a corn cake, wilted arugula and sweet pepper relish. 
We also indulged in a bacon-wrapped beef filet, though Jonathan described it as a “rookie dish.” That was hardly accurate because Maker’s Mark (bourbon) gives Jonathan their old walnut barrel plugs and he uses those to smoke the bacon. Jonathan redefines regional cooking with such signature touches. Similarly his crème brulee was seasoned with butterscotch liqueur and was burned down at the table with rare 150 proof bourbon.
“We believe you need a substantial crust. We serve it flaming and I hope the server tells you to let it burn completely out. Otherwise it will taste of bourbon and that will ruin it,” he explained. Wro is not known for his patience, but he heeded this warning.
Jonathan confided that he is spending much of his time on his home made ice creams. “I entertain hope that they are a ticket out of the restaurant business.”
We tried a trio, but his reputable chocolate bourbon brownie flavor was sold out. Wro was so upset about that I had to take him to Harvest for another dessert. Their chef then was John Foster (now at Metropol) whose frozen gelato was legendary amongst honeybears. He made honey lavender gelato with lavender grown on the restaurant patio. I know multiple desserts aren't part of the good parenting handbook but we both slept that night.
Wro’s Recommendations
301 East Vine
Lexington, KY 40507
859-233-1221
http://www.visitlex.com/
Wallace Station
3854 Old Frankfort Pike
Versailles, KY 40383
859-8465161
Jonathan at Gratz Park
120 W 2nd St.
Lexington, KY 40508
859-252-4949
http://www.jagp.com/
Winchell’s
348 Southland Dr.
Lexington, KY 40503
859-278-9424
Note: It wasn’t on our agenda, but it should be noted that Lexington is home to so many Japanese businesses that there is also a first rate sushi scene here. I have that on the authority of every chef we met.
Buffalo Trace
1001 Wilkinson Blvd., 40601,
Frankfort, KY, 502-223-7641,
http://www.buffalotrace.com/
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