The Heavy Table has a great post today which combines all of the secrets from yesterday’s live tweets (follow @heavytable to keep in the loop) with photos to help your imagination along. For those of you who can’t make it, this post will give you a picture of the best-of eats on day one of the fair. If you’re like us, and you’ve LIVED IN MINNEAPOLIS FOR A YEAR AND A HALF WITHOUT GOING TO THE MN STATE FAIR, this post will convince you that you are CRAZY and that you should GO TODAY. Incidentally, we’ll be heading to St. Paul this evening, tomorrow evening, or both, and we’ll definitely keep this list of suggestions in mind (along with the google map, thanks guys!).
From what our friends at The Heavy Table shared, it’s the beverages I’m most excited about. I’m currently craving the $1 Cider Freeze, the trio of Summit beers on a stick ($7.50), and Stanly’s Sugarbush Maple soda ($4). The last of these looks to be the most promising. As The Heavy Table puts it, Stanly’s is
A local alternative to soda… not just “as good as a Coke” good, but “far, far better than a Coke” good. It’s got an almost creamy flavor, a maple kick, and a refreshing hit of carbonation.
Based on the prices shared here, it looks like we’ll need to carry plenty of $5s and $1s with us in preparation for this 4,000+ calorie snack-feast.
When Surly Hell was released last week, I prepared myself for what would be my one opportunity to try it (it sold out very quickly) by reading up on the style. ‘Hell’ is German for ‘light’ or ‘pale’, and according to my sage for all things beer, Garrett Oliver, the Helles style was developed as the Bavarian answer to the popularity of Bohemian pilsner. Traditional Bavarian lager was dark and with deeper flavor, Hellesbier was pale, golden and crisp. I found Surly Hell to fit the bill for this style exactly. While it was not a particularly unique beer, it was an excellent one – refreshing and actually quite fun to drink. It’s a shame the production was so limited.
But even if I’ll never get to drink it again, Surly Hell got me interested in Helles beers. On my most recent trip to the Four Firkins, the Helles Schlenkerla Lagerbier caught my eye. When I mentioned to the clerk that I was interested in this beer after trying Hell, he told me that this would be totally different. As it turns out, the Schlenkerla Brewery in Bamberg, the brewer of the Helles in question, is famous for a different beer: smokebeer. Smokebeer is made by smoking the barley malt before brewing. While the Helles I was in the process of buying is not smoked, it’s made with the same equipment as smokebeer, so it has a lot of residual smokiness. I’m not one to be dissuaded at the cash register: smoky Helles it was.
Trying the beer, I can’t say I agree with the clerk about it being totally different from Hell. The underlying beer was quite similar: crisp and sprightly, light-bodied and refreshing. But then there was the smoke. Even though the beer was not smoked, the smoke flavor was fairly strong; a bit like the flavor you got from smelling burning alder or cedar as you smoke a trout (for example). The flavor was not so strong as to drown out everything else that was going on with the beer, but the flavor of smoke was unmistakably there.
What to eat with this golden smoky beer? Barbecue, obviously. But what if you don’t have a grill? Well, then you need to get creative. I was looking for something that would match the smoke in the beer, but, lacking the capacity to actually make smoke, I thought a deep roasting might do the trick. I cut summer squash, zucchini and eggplant from the farmers’ market into large chunks, salted them and let them sit in the colander for an hour to exude some water. I then added a coarsely chopped onion and tossed everything in oil, salt and pepper. I placed everything on a half-sheet pan in the oven for about a half an hour until the vegetables were deeply browned and starting to burn. B
Once the roasted vegetables had cooled slightly, I tossed them with cooked quinoa, big chunks of heirloom tomatoes (these tomatoes were so good off the vine that it seemed a shame to roast them; that would be a good option for improving inferior tomatoes), minced parsley and a lemon vinaigrette (lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper). I thought the zippiness of the beer would be complimented by a lemony salad. And since Helles is so light and refreshing, I had some leeway to make the salad richer, which I accomplished with 4 oz of crumbled goat cheese that immediately became melted goat cheese.
For all the thought that went into constructing the salad around the beer, this pairing was a dud. I thought the Helles aspects of the beer worked well with the pockets of fresh tomato in the salad, the acid of the lemon juice, and as relief from the rich goat cheese. But there was nothing in the salad that could do anything with the beer’s smoke. Roasted vegetables, as much as I might want them to, do not taste smoky – they taste sweet. Perhaps grilling the vegetables over charcoal would fix this problem, but for me that is not an option. After trying the beer, the choice of barbecue seemed so obvious: drinking this beer would be like adding liquid smoke to the barbecue sauce; there would be total continuity between the food and the beer. In fact it’s hard to imagine a more perfect pairing.
As for the salad, I don’t think the idea of pairing with a traditional Helles is a bad one; it was the smoke that was so off-putting. Perhaps if they make another batch of Surly Hell I’ll make this salad again to celebrate.
This was a good beer and a good salad, they just weren’t very good together. Such is the magic of pairings.
I hate to toot my own horn, but I did an awesome job going through all my produce from the farmers’ market last week. Between pickling, trying new recipes, and actually eating all our leftovers, by the end of the week our fridge, even our vegetable drawer, was looking empty. We even had to go to the grocery store for dinner Friday night since there was nothing left to eat in the house.
With this blank canvas to fill, I think I might have overdone it this morning. It didn’t help that this week instead of my usual school-size backpack I wore my Duluth Pack – something about that giant backpack makes you want to fill it. And with the variety and quality of produce available this time of year, it’s pretty hard to resist. Especially when $3 trays are 2 for $5. But what am I going to do with all this?
The haul for this week was: 3 onions, 8# generic tomatoes, basil, cantaloupe, fennel, garlic, potatoes, salad turnips, poblanos, honey gold tomatoes, variety heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and summer squash and radishes. The cantaloupes are new for me this week but Brett and Mary of Real Bread recommended them strongly.
I made sure to return to the Honey Creek Farm stand where last week we bought edamame and sun gold and heirloom tomatoes that made some of the best caprese and Greek salads of all time. More tomatoes, for eating raw, were a must and although there were no edamame this week, there was another interesting vegetable: salad turnips. Apparently these Japanese vegetables taste like a mild radish. Although I like my radishes sharp and spicy, I couldn’t turn down a new vegetable to try.
As for those eight pounds of tomatoes, I bought those with the idea that it is time for me to finally start putting up tomato sauce for the winter. I kick myself every year for failing to do so, so this is the year. I am planning on following Hank Shaw’s instructions for making and bottling the stuff. I figure 8# should give me 3 quart sized jars, a good start.
As for the rest, well, I have no idea. But hopefully I’ll come up with something before next Saturday when it’s time to load up again.
I am ready to eat Colombian food again. That was not the case when Martha and I got back from Colombia in mid July. On the flight home, somewhere over the Caribbean, I became violently ill and Martha was in the same state by the evening. Although our flu lasted less than 24 hours, eating anything made me nauseous for about a week, and thanks to the magic of taste aversions even the thought of an arepa made my stomach churn. But by last Friday I was over that and ready to reexperience Colombia through food. Where better to start than chicharrón?
If your mouth isn’t watering already, perhaps a quick translation is in order: deep-fried pork belly. That is the very fattiest part of the pig cooked in even more fat until crispy. In terms of eating pig, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Making chicharrón requires pork belly, which is not easy to find. To make things more difficult, chicharrón is made with bone-in pork belly. That is the belly with part of the ribs still attached (for a quick visual aide, run your fingers down your sides – mmm, delicious). Martha’s Aunt Stella, my mentor in all things Colombian, mentioned that they have never found this cut available in the US.
Obviously, they never went to Clancey’s. It required a special order and a wait of a couple of weeks, but last Thursday Kristin Tombers of Clancey’s was on the phone saying the pork belly was in.
Given all the fun I have breaking down chickens, I was looking forward to throwing this substantial hunk of pig on my counter and hacking away. Luckily, Kristin of Clancey’s is wiser than I and advised against taking the pork belly home in one piece. She didn’t think I was going to get very far without a cleaver and a bone-saw, but was kind enough to fire up her electric saw and cut the belly into more manageable pieces: 1″ wide by about 4″ long, and 2″ deep (that last measurement depends entirely on our friend the pig).
When Martha got home from Clancey’s with this big, white paper wrapped package it was better than Christmas and my Birthday combined; I could not wait to open it up.
The mound of white pork fat and pink pork flesh did not disappoint.
As excited as I was I had to exercise a little self-control: 8 pounds of pork belly was a good thing, but probably too much of a good thing. I kept four pounds in the fridge and split the other four pounds into three portions for freezing, frozen treats for another day.
Four pounds of pork belly is still a lot to deal with, but chicharrón requires very little prep. It was already sawed up for me by the butcher; I just added bone-deep cuts at 1″ intervals through the belly meat on every piece that still had a bone attached (some pieces had become boneless from the cutting process). I learned to do this in Colombia: the justification had something to do with – I think – preventing the meat from buckling or bending. I don’t really understand why that would matter, but cutting the pork in this way does create a number of extra edges – edges that will become crispy when deep-fried. Other than that no additional prep is needed; the meat will get salted after it leaves the oil.
Speaking of the oil, I poured an inch of vegetable oil into a couple of cold pots (if you had a really big pot, or not very much pork belly, you could do it in one). Before turning on the heat, I added the pieces of pork with bones bone-side down. The bone-in pieces have to cook the longest since bones don’t conduct heat as efficiently as flesh. After adding in the pork belly the skillet was pretty packed and my inch of oil was mostly covering the pork. I turned the heat on high and let the oil come to temperature.
Within a few minutes, a mouth-watering crackling sound was issuing from the stove and the apartment was filled with the warm smells of gently cooking pork fat. I added the boneless pieces around the time that I heard the first crackles. Someone with a powerful stove might need to reduce the heat at some point to avoid an oil fire, but since my stove is weak and pathetic I left it on high the whole time. It took 20 minutes for the pork to be crispy dark brown, and some pieces were done before others – just remove them as they look ready to a paper-towel lined tray and hit them with a shower of salt. And resist the temptation to eat the whole pile without advising your guests that dinner is ready (I couldn’t resist a few samples; had to make sure it was good!)
What can you possibly serve with chicharrón that won’t seem inadequate next to this pile of fried glory? That’s a tough question to answer, but here are the typical Colombian sides that I made:
Tostones/Tostadas/Tacadas/Fried Plantains. These deserve a post of their own: peeled green plantains (ours were actually a little too ripe – the skin was starting to yellow) are cut horizontally into 1 inch pieces. Fry these pieces in hot oil until they start to brown in spots – if you have a pot of pork-fat infused oil from frying chicharrón to use for frying, all the better. Drain the fried plantain chunks on paper towels. Then, take each chunk and place it on a cutting board. Using another cutting board or, even better, a culinary rock, smash the fried plantain piece until reasonably flat and circular – about ½” thick. With plantain pieces flattened, add them back to the oil and fry till golden. Drain and salt and serve immediately.
AjÃ. No tostón would be complete without some ajà to put on top. Ajà is actually just the word in Colombia for hot peppers (chiles) but it also refers to a whole range of sauces that are used on everything from meats to arepas to empanadas to, well, tostones. I made Stella’s version: I took half of a white onion and roughly chopped it,and then put it in a bowl with about a quarter cup of white vinegar. Apparently, the vinegar takes some of the bite out of the onion. To this mix, I added two expertly selected (by Martha) Haas avocados (in Colombia we always used much larger, green-skinned avocados) also roughly chopped, a half cup of chopped cilantro, a few dashes of Tabasco (it’s not ajà without something spicy) and enough salt to be able to taste everything. The vinegar in the ajà is vital in this meal for cutting through the fat that coats your mouth from the chicharrón. Beer is also very helpful in this regard. Two beers more so.
Frisoles/Frijoles/Beans. The national bean of Colombia is the cargamanto, a large red bean with white flecks; maybe the same as cranberry beans. Since I don’t have a convenient source for either kind of beans, I used red kidney beans. At least the color would be right! For the beans I followed my usual procedure: I soaked a pound of beans overnight (yeah, yeah, you don’t have to soak beans; I still think soaking reduces cooking time and on a 90 degree day any minute without the stove on is golden), then boiled them for two hours with a ham hock and an onion, split in half. To finish the beans, I cooked three minced cloves of garlic in oil until fragrant then added the cooked beans, their liquid, and the shredded ham from the hock and let them cook until they were nice and thick.
Rice. Nothing special here, just regular white rice. It seems like we ate white rice with every large meal in Colombia – it just wasn’t a complete meal without a bowl of rice on the table.
Avocados. A couple more avocados cut into slices are a great garnish for the beans.
And so it was that after a month of food aversion I dove back into the cuisine of Colombia. If you are trying to remember the merits of Colombian food, you could hardly find a better place to start than crispy, fatty chicharrón. It’s like pork candy! This opens up new possibilities to me; there are a lot of Colombian dishes I want to try to replicate, some of them not involving deep fried pork fat. But, then again, three packages of pork belly sitting in my freezer say I’m making chicharrón again.
