The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Zoom In: Usry Alleyne

    As we talk in his loft above the Midtown Global Exchange in South Minneapolis, Usry Alleyne mentions that he was caught a bit off-guard by mnartists.org’s request for an interview. That’s likely because he is better known as a teacher or a photographer of arts events than as an artist. “Most of the time, I document other people’s work—tons of dance and theater performances around town, little documentaries for theaters and all kinds of things,” he says. “Sometimes people are surprised when you say you do your own stuff, too.” His work spans a variety of media—video art, sound art, photography—and it is unconcerned with the audience. “As an artist, I work for myself. Left alone, I go around observing, creating, reflecting, making, and [doing] very little talking.”

    A short survey of Alleyne’s work makes his preference for graphic simplicity clear. Not Signs of Culture, a series exploring death, consists of lovely, vibrant photos of the disgusting. Some subjects are more readily identifiable than others, but none is an abstraction. A dead rat. Maybe some kind of food. Maybe a wound. Regarding pain and ugliness, he says, “We try to ignore it, to put it aside and pursue our lives. But I can’t. There’s a need to acknowledge that it happens.” If he could, Alleyne would “give the audience the experience of the process, along with the work that they see. When I’m painting, making video, listening to sound—there’s this process that happens that’s extremely wonderful, even if it’s looking at something disgusting.”

     

     

    Originally published in issue 22.1 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

  • Theater in Motion

    In accordance with standards for staging cosmic spectacles, (however low-budget), the cast of A Gift for Planet BX63 (above photo) appeared in glittering, metallic costume. But Off-Leash Area, an inventive, burgeoning troupe based in Minneapolis, had injected its intergalactic show—think The Little Prince—with another, rather unexpected feature: zero gravity. Rendered as a six-foot cube, simply constructed from plywood, mirrors, and Plexiglas, this tiny onstage world was a place in which the performer, Jennifer Ilse, could wall-dance. By balancing on her hands and kicking off the cube’s various surfaces—even its ceiling—Ilse created the illusion of floating in space.

    Her performance mixed dance, mime, and traditional text-based theater, not to mention gymnastics and contortionism. In all, it was an extraordinary demonstration of “movement theater,” a performance genre increasingly popular in the Twin Cities. It is, in essence, an approach that requires a heightened use of gesture and body language, as well as an awareness of the spatial relationships among the actors, the audience, and the performance space. In simple terms, it’s theater that has been choreographed. And as a matter of fact, there’s a permeable boundary between “movement theater” (or “physical theater,” as it’s often called) and “dance theater.” Both communicate with motion more than words. The difference between them lies in the varying measure of each ingredient.

    When it comes to distinguishing theater from other entertainments, especially film, immediacy and common experience are, perhaps, its supreme virtues. Theater is unique in the way it unfolds in real time at a common point shared between artists and audience, thus imbuing the live performances with a sense of connectedness that film and literature simply cannot possess. But there’s another distinction less often discussed: A theater audience observes the action through a window more sweeping and panoramic in scope than that offered by film.

    Exposure to cinema has caused many theatergoers, including this one, to tire of dialogue-heavy theatrical realism. Filmmakers have the luxury of using close-up shots when they wish to emulate the intimacy of real life, person-to-person conversation. In a playhouse (or for that matter, an ancient amphitheater) it’s difficult for the audience to see the teardrop streaking an actor’s cheek—that tear is simply too remote. Theater must provide something altogether different. Since the scale is so much larger, a performer’s broad, gestural movements will register far better than, say, the nuance of his facial expressions, especially in larger venues. The performer better communicates with thrashes and wails—and, come to think of it, the Greek chorus often functioned in this style, too.

    Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s Tartuffe

     

    In short, with movement theater, character is rendered physically, not emotionally. Locally, well-known examples include Steven Epp’s portrayal of Tartuffe in Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s now-classic production of Molière’s play: Epp crouched in the shadows as would a predator, before leaping forth to center stage. He didn’t walk so much as slither. On the other hand, in Or The White Whale, last spring’s adaptation of Moby Dick, director Jon Ferguson called for a lack of movement—stillness in an otherwise kinetic universe—to illustrate the alienation of Ishmael. In both instances, actors and directors worked to distill from complex characters their most basic, core elements. But, in translating those elements into evocative physical presences onstage, they offered more powerful understandings of these characters.

    What’s more, movement theater tends not to be burdened by the formalities some folks perceive in much of the performing arts. Chalk it up to the pervasive influence of clowning and circus arts, but movement theater practitioners, to their credit, do not shy away from silliness, even if their subject matter is solemn, be it war (Please Don’t Blow Up Mr. Boban, Live Action Set, 2005), the great American novel (Or The White Whale), or feigned piety (Tartuffe). That may be, in part, because the practice of such intense, often athletic physicality requires of the actors a certain youthful vigor. The resulting aesthetic is light and playful; it has a hand-made quality; it’s full of action, and a pleasure to behold.

    Live Action Set’s Please Don’t Blow Up Mr. Boban

    Many of the Twin Cities’ current crop of movement theater practitioners are linked, in some way, to Theatre de la Jeune Lune. It was this company that, in 1979, imported a European style of theatrical clowning to our city. These were the very methods that the founding artistic directors—Barbra Berlovitz, Vincent Gracieux, Robert Rosen, and Dominique Serrand—learned from their Parisian teacher, the legendary Jacques Lecoq. (The most famous graduates of the École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq are the founders of the enormously popular Cirque du Soleil.) The curriculum includes work in miming, masks, improvisation, studying the dynamics between performer and stage, and something called “finding your inner clown.”

    Lecoq’s teaching also emphasized a collaborative approach to creating new theatrical works, a tradition still deeply rooted in the movement theater community. This is, perhaps, the most important factor in the recent explosion of the form. From the very start, a student or apprentice of movement theater functions as an integral part of his or her ensemble. At the time of graduation, the student has already helped write, choreograph, and perform several original works. In other words, this newly minted performer is no stranger to the entire artistic process, and is therefore better prepared to strike out on his own, and, along the way, to pass these traditions along to other collaborators.

    In 1985, Theatre de la Jeune Lune settled permanently in Minneapolis. As the company grew, so, too, did an inner circle of artists who studied and subscribed to this form of theater. Local clown Luverne Seifert was a company member between 1994 and ’99. (These days, Seifert regularly appears with Ten Thousand Things and Frank Theaters.) Joel Sass, the Jungle Theater’s associate artistic director, was a Jeune Lune company member during the early ’90s. Puppeteer Michael Sommers (who founded Open Eye Figure Theatre in 2000) has been a frequent collaborator. Emerging performers like
    Lisa Rafaela Clair (who studied clowning with the esteemed Pierre Byland at the Burlesk Center in Switzerland) and Katie Kauffman (a graduate of the California-based Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre) came to Minneapolis to study and intern with Jeune Lune. Capping off this by no means exhaustive list is freelance director Jon Ferguson—in my opinion, the most exciting movement theater artist in town. And he has said he was drawn to Minneapolis, at least in part, because of the mood set by Jeune Lune. (Full disclosure: I worked for several years at Jeune Lune in an administrative capacity.)

    Over the years, other movement theater companies have sprung up. Outstanding midsized companies like Ten Thousand Things and Frank Theaters frequently incorporate movement theater. Bedlam Theatre, founded in 1993, practices its own homegrown approach to creating playful, collaboratively created spectacles, relying heavily on the tenets of movement theater. Paul Herwig, who is the co-artistic director of the nine-year-old Off-Leash Area, is also a graduate of Lecoq’s school; his wife and co-director, the aforementioned Jennifer Ilse, is a veteran of ballet and contemporary dance. Like Off-Leash, the delightful Live Action Set, founded in 2003, is peopled by both dancers and movement theater artists. And with any luck, a tiny troupe called 3 Sticks will soon rise to prominence as well. Founded in 2005 by students from the London International School of Performing Arts (a two-year program based on the teachings of Lecoq), 3 Sticks already has two outstanding Minnesota Fringe shows to its credit (2005’s Mythed and 2006’s Borderlines). Artistic director Jason Bohon recently announced a slate of upcoming shows; look for their take on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds later this year. And, of course, as these artists continue to practice their craft, thereby hooking a new generation of performers, the list of must-see movement theater will continue to grow.

  • Christian Johnson’s Playlist

    On a dreary winter morning, while dining on scrambled eggs at The Bad Waitress, we noticed something about this South Minneapolis eatery: It has one of the best jukeboxes in town. Miles Davis, PJ Harvey, and early REM, to name but a few, were the perfect accompaniment to a slow-starting Sunday. So impressed were we by the eclectic mix, in fact, that we asked the man behind the jukebox, Christian Johnson, who also happens to be the owner of The Bad Waitress (and the Spyhouse Coffee Shop up the street) to share his personal playlist. Dubbing his mix “Seven Days in the Desert, Ten Albums Shotgun,” Johnson explains that these albums will provide the soundtrack to an upcoming road trip: “Every year I travel to the desert to get away, driving along deserted county roads and visiting small-town weirdness in the American Southwest. These albums inspire, and typify, the mystery surrounding those desert communities and their hauntingly beautiful landscapes.”

    10. Depeche Mode, Violator (1990)
    “Personal Jesus,” “Enjoy the Silence,” “Policy of Truth.” To me, it was their first heavy album with a lot less electronica, dance-type stuff.

    9. The Cramps, Bad Music for Bad People (1984)
    The track “TV Set,” produced by Alex Chilton, begins with cannibalistic drums and rants of debauchery; on “Garbageman,” engines thunder into a gothic rockabilly riff.

    8. Bowery Electric, Lushlife (2000)
    Formed in New York in the ’90s, this duo’s last album proved to be a cinematic soundtrack to a post-modern world; it’s filled with rich tones and futuristic qualities similar to Portishead and Massive Attack.

    7. 120 Days, 120 Days (2006)
    Hailing from Norway, this band produces a relentless and pulsating rhythm indicative of The Cure in the early ’80s, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine. Their ambient drone, rolling drums, and subtle, soaring vocals complement the synths and guitars on tracks such as “Lazy Eyes” and “Sleepwalking.”

    6. Judas Priest, Point of Entry (1981)
    I must confess, there is a metal band I still listen to. This underrated record was released between two monster-selling albums: British Steel and Screaming for Vengeance. With tracks such as the appropriately titled “Heading Out to the Highway” and “Desert Plains,” this album is perfect when departing the motel parking lot and hitting the road for another day of scorching heat and highway haunts.

    5. The Clash, Combat Rock (1982)
    It’s The Clash. Come on!

    4. Gram Rabbit, Music to Start a Cult To (2004)
    Former Minneapolis darling Jessica Von Rabbit fronts this dangerously disturbing pop assault of renegades now residing in Joshua Tree, California. Their first full-length album engages the listener from the murderous West with a soundtrack of brilliantly written pop anthems. Jessica’s voice floats above melodic rhythms of guitars, pianos, and synths, with a backbeat of go-go inspired tastes. My favorite tracks are their massive hit “Cowboy-Up,” “Land of Jail,” and “Cowboys & Aliens.” Imagine Madonna, Johnny Cash, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and The Jesus and Mary Chain all in the same Chevy Nova going 120 miles an hour and crashing into a van filled with bunnies.

    3. X, Under the Big Black Sun (1982)
    A classic album whether on the road or sitting in church. John Doe and Exene Cervenka deliver modest attitude and an electrified sound with great talent as songwriters and vocalists. John Doe’s solo albums are also a must for any trip.

    2. The Cult, Pure Cult: The Best of the Cult
    Just a great collection of American commercial rock songs from English blood.

    1. Mark Lanegan, Bubblegum (2004)
    The darkest and most urban album to date from Seattle’s Screaming Trees frontman. The tracks “Head” and “Hit the City,” with PJ Harvey, are explosive. “Driving Death Valley Blues” speaks of addiction with reference to the road. This bluesy album is full of depth, soul, and loss.

  • Dress Up to Get Down

    The directive was simple: Pick an outfit for your sweetheart to wear to a hypothetical romantic dinner-on Valentine’s Day, or any other occasion, for that matter. We proposed this to three reasonably fashionable folks, all with different ideas about what flatters the female form. Our guys-an intrepid television reporter and the owner of a women’s boutique in Minneapolis’s Wedge neighborhood-ventured to shops new to them, whereas our lady, a noted restaurateur, had her own suggestion (naturally): Could she visit a socially responsible eco-retailer? No problem! Their picks, not surprisingly, were wildly divergent. The assembled outfits range from tailored-yet-skimpy to a modest bomber-meets-Flashdance look to, finally, a vintage ensemble brilliantly characterized as "Golden Girls fabulous."

    Kim Bartmann

    Restaurateur, Bryant-Lake Bowl, Café Barbette, and the new
    Red Stag Supper Club

    Shopping at:
    Key North    , a Northeast eco-boutique; 515 First Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-455-6666.
    Melrose Antiques, vintage décor, fashion, and accessories; 13 Fifth St.
    N.E., Minneapolis; 612-362-8480.
    Surdyk’s Liquor & Cheese Shop; 303 Hennepin Ave. E., Minneapolis;
    612-379-3232.

    Shopping for: Her girlfriend of seven years, a modern dancer.

    Why Key North? "I believe people should spend money in accordance with their values."

    Disposition:     Flummoxed. Standing at the center of the jam-packed store, Bartmann darted her eyes about helplessly. "I never do this sort of thing. I mean, who shops for other people?"

    What she’s after: "Hip-casual! She would totally wear jeans to La Belle Vie, but with something nice on top."

    Settled on:
    Velour slacks by Pure Color Jeans ($182), mostly because of the
    sexy cut of the back pockets; and by Bernadette Conte, a teal nylon jacket ($337) and shimmering, translucent pink shirt with a draw-string collar ($203.70, on clearance). All at Key North. Accessories: a matching Murano glass necklace and bracelet ($85, including earrings) from Melrose Antiques.

  • I, Too, Have a Bone to Pick with Andrew Zimmern

    At any rate, what’s my big problem with Zimmern? Where to begin, where to begin? First, I should admit that I really don’t know who this Zimmern fellow is. I mean, I really don’t know who the hell he is, just as, I’m sure, he doesn’t know who the hell I am. I got wind of a recent dust-up in the blogosphere, however, and felt curious enough to search Google for images of the man. I start there whenever possible, because I have no problem at all judging a book by its cover, being a firm believer in that old business about a picture being worth a thousand words.

    At any rate, I spent some time looking at photographs of a man alleged to be Zimmern and quickly concluded that a thousand words were something like 975 words too many; a couple dozen, I should think, would suffice.

    I can definitely tell you that I don’t like the cut of Zimmern’s jib. I think he eats too much, and given that he apparently spends so much time eating, I also think it’s fair to presume that he eats bugs … no, wait—he does, it seems, eat bugs, but what I meant to say was that it’s fair to presume that he talks with his mouth full. I don’t care for that.

    I dug a little deeper to find out more about this Zimmern character, and discovered not only that—as I suspected—he eats too much, but he also eats almost entirely at places I’ve never heard of. I’m not a big fan of people who make a habit of eating at places I’ve never heard of, then proceed to go on and on about how great those places are.

    I’m guessing that Zimmern has never spent a morning hanging drywall and then, with dust all over his hands (and under his fingernails), eaten the hell out of a Manwich and a can of Pringles. I’m also guessing that he’s never spent a cold afternoon in the garage skinning muskrats then driven his truck to the Arby’s drive-thru and polished off the 5-for-$5.99 roast beef special all by his lonesome.

    Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe Zimmern has, in fact, laid drywall and eaten the hell out of a Manwich and a can of Pringles. Maybe he has skinned muskrats and gone to Arby’s to gorge solo. But I’ll say this: if I’m correct in my suppositions—and I feel confident that I am—then I’m also correct in saying that this is a man who doesn’t know a diddly-damn thing about truly great food and the supreme pleasures and surprises of eating when you’re flat-out hungry as shit.

    Answer me these questions, Zimmern, you hot shot:
    • Have you ever eaten a pie from Beek’s, King of Pizza?
    • Under the right circumstances (very, very hungry; very, very stoned and/or drunk; etc.) could you rave for hours about the wings at Shorty and Wag’s?
    • Can you name, with appropriate enthusiasm, a favorite brand of canned chili?
    • Could you, do you honestly think, tackle the Tremendous Twelve at Perkins?
    • Have you ever been so fucking hungry that you’ve eaten a microwave hamburger from SuperAmerica and felt like you’d died and gone to heaven?
    •Might you, as I did this very evening, mix together cans of Progresso vegetable beef and beef barley soup and eat the whole damn pot while seated on the kitchen floor?
    • Have you ever spent hours driving along a freeway praying for the appearance of a Taco John’s?
    • Do you agree that Tootsie Rolls and pretzels are often as not a perfectly suitable lunch?

    If you answered no to even half of these questions, Zimmern, you’re not only a piss-poor food critic, but you’re also a pussy.

  • Scratch That One Off

    I love a to-do list. In fact, I am such a master at list-making I can make lists of my lists. I can subdivide errands, chores, and activities ad infinitum. Sometimes I go numerically, by order of importance to my day. For example:

    1. Work out
    2. Breakfast
    3. Phone calls

    Other times, I mix it up to build in fun when I anticipate that drudgery and boredom will be looming:

    1. Return emails
    2. Make appointments
    3. Make a prank phone call to someone you know from sixth grade
    4. Laundry

    During periods of depression, my lists have taken on a rather frightening level of detail:

    1. Get up
    2. Shower
    3. Brush teeth
    4. Get dressed
    5. Go to work
    6. Come home from work
    7. Stay out of bed until it is dark outside

    I don’t imagine that I would have forgotten that those things needed to be done, but at those times in my life I needed to be able to cross them off one by one. A scarily basic daily to-do list was one of my only tenuous links to normality.

    I have had four vacations in my adult life. I am so connected to my lists that even on vacation I make a list of must-do fun things, or must-see interesting things. Here are three items cherry-picked from a list made during a trip to New York City:

    4. Go to a bar and don’t talk to anyone you know
    5. Talk to at least six people
    6. Do not touch anyone

    That kind of list has a “double dog dare” effect, catapulting me into social situations that would never have occurred otherwise.

    When I do stand-up I make a set list and carry it with me, even if I don’t look at it or reference it directly. These lists have a terrific surreal quality. If I am ever in some kind of accident, the paramedics will strip away my clothes to find that I am wearing dirty, sweat-stained, unmatched underwear with holes in them. They will pump my stomach and find a semi-digested handful of Sour Patch Kids, four rum-and-Cokes, and an entire rotisserie chicken. And instead of proper I.D., I will have a list in my pocket that says:

    1. Clorox Gel boobs
    2. Big Lots’ three-legged-pet store
    3. Margery Johnson’s Keebler elf pie

    The list, of course, will be given to my children, who will understand immediately.

    I like to cross things off lists, but I enjoy making them just as much. It gives me a false sense of security, like everything is under control. The greater me realizes this is folly, yet also indulges my compulsion to write down what I hope will, and should, happen next.

    By the time you see this article, I should be about one month into the Big Kahuna of lists, my New Year’s resolutions. I make them annually (duh), with widely varying results. There are efficiency experts who tell you not to make big promises to yourself or you’ll just get discouraged. I’ve made yearly lists of very specific things to do, with very excruciatingly detailed steps. I’ve also gone the route of putting only three things on my yearly list so I won’t be overwhelmed.

    Who knows if any of this year’s planning will pan out? Maybe yes, maybe no, and I’m OK with that. Two years ago, because of a New Year’s resolution to learn an instrument, I took four guitar lessons. Now I know how to play Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” which would have solidified my status as a hot chick to teenage boys in 1972, but in 2008 makes me feel a little embarrassed when I play it at parties. It’s like I’m Grandma come to call, kicking it old school and playing “Surrey with a Fringe on Top.” But I do it anyway. Because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be following the resolution that makes it to the top of my list every year:

    1. Bring all of you, everywhere

  • White Wine for Men

    It is a pity there’s no reason to believe King Arthur actually existed. True, there was a sixth-century monk called Gildas The Wise who penned a wordy jeremiad that mentions a battle at a place called Mount Badon where the Celtic remnant of Roman Britain stemmed the tsunami of Anglo-Saxon invasion. It is also true that, long afterwards, Welsh monks with well-developed imaginations placed at Mount Badon one of the twelve victories they ascribed to Arthur. If you think that adds up to evidence for a historical Arthur, you probably also think that Saddam Hussein supported Al Qaeda.

    Of course, not necessarily existing is no barrier to being influential, as critics of the Ontological Argument sometimes discover. Imaginative folk of every era since Late Antiquity have peered back into the Age of Arthur and summoned the mythical monarch from the fifth-century mists, calling into the old world to redress the balance of the new. The monks of medieval Glastonbury felt they had solid evidence that Arthur would one day return and put old England to rights when, in 1184, they discovered a lead coffin allegedly containing the king’s bones. It was inscribed with his name and the motto “rex quondam rexque futurus.” Some 300 years later a Warwickshire country gentleman called Malory, in jail awaiting trial on a long list of charges including affray, deer-stealing, and carrying off a neighbor’s wife, wrote a long and eloquent account of King Arthur and the Round Table, lamenting in marginal notes to his manuscript that the age of chivalry was dead and that knights no longer had the noble souls they had of old.

    Later poets, too, have found ideals to feed their fancies at the court of the once and future king. The opera of Purcell and Dryden, King Arthur: The British Worthy, is as insubstantial as spun sugar, but no less pleasingly sweet. Alfred Lord Tennyson, gentleman-poet, sought high moral rectitude at the Round Table and found it in Sir Galahad, whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. (Did anyone less pure-hearted, one wonders, try to warn the old boy about his earlier line, “‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried the Lady of Shalott”?) In living memory, Charles Williams found in the Arthur stories a mystical means to understanding the coinherence of human and divine life.

    And then there is Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I loathe this book. Instead of parting the curtains of time to catch sight of Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye, Mr. Twain sends there a cocksure moron of his own era, a nineteenth-century firearms manufacturer yclept Hank Morgan, who turns the armored knights into sandwich-board men advertising soap and, as a final gesture, mows down rank on rank of mounted men-at-arms using an electric fence and a nest of machine guns. The message is: Whatever happens, we have got the Gatling gun and they have not. Mr. Twain (yes, I know it is a nom de plume) is no more imaginative in this book than the creators of the Flintstones, who assimilated even the Neolithic to the contemporary suburb, a habitat as specialized in its own way as that of any dinosaur, and therefore ultimately just as fragile.

    What is more, Hank Morgan’s is the sort of mechanical machismo which gives masculinity a bad name. Until his time, men in love with speed needed to develop “good hands” and a lasting relationship with a horse, an animal with more mind of its own than a supermarket trolley, willing when treated well but tricky if bullied. They could not simply pull a metal throttle and blast off into the sunset. Chivalry, as the etymology of the word suggests, involves not only strength but also the gentleness necessary for equestrian manipulation. For Arthur and his knights, manliness was more than force.

    Which is why, when I describe the 2007 Sauvignon Blanc from Mount Riley in New Zealand as a masculine wine, I do not mean merely that it knocks your socks off. It is a constant surprise that New Zealanders can make from this variety of grape, so evanescent when the French turn it into Pouilly-Fumé, a wine so muscular in character. The Mount Riley Sauvignon Blanc is bright and clear, the color of pale straw. It is strong and fresh; it is not sweet, but it is not unsubtle. It made me think of the taste of peaches with the sugars taken out. I detected also hints of pepper, such as you sometimes encounter in kiwifruit. A glass or two with a hot fish stew could help redress the balance of your world.

  • The Sweetest Simmer

    Now we’re fully settled into the bland, grayest days of winter—a time when I seek to imbue my life with more flavor. After all, woolen sweaters and bestsellers can only go so far in fighting the battle of the blahs. If I’m to be trapped indoors, then the kitchen had better be sending forth seductive smells of warm, satisfying dishes that make me happy to be holed up at home. That’s usually why, particularly at this time of year, the Sunday meal becomes a big braising event.

    Braising is one of those cooking terms that sounds technically daunting to the uninitiated: Do I need a special pan? Will it require kitchen string or a unique thermometer, neither of which I have on hand? But in truth, braising is so easy that, once you’ve mastered it, it starts to feel like cheating. Better yet, braising consistently produces soulful, and even good-looking, Sunday meals—meals that come for far less money and with a lot less mess than your typical fried, roasted, or sautéed productions.

    The basic technique requires slowly cooking a cut of protein while it is semi-immersed in liquid in a covered pot. But don’t confuse braising with stewing; braising relies more on the combination of liquid and steam to bring out the best flavors.

    Typically, braising is done with tougher, lesser-quality cuts of meat. In fact, braised classics like osso buco and coq au vin were invented for the very purpose of enhancing the flavors of such meats. The moist heat of braising breaks down the connective tissues in tougher cuts, melting the collagen and contracting the fibers. Those tissues then absorb some of the liquid along with the melted fats and flavors, giving the meat the tender, fall-apart quality that is the hallmark of a braised dish.

    Preparing the week’s capstone meal in a single vessel cuts down on clutter—and saves time. In the same pot, you can quickly sear the meat (giving it a nicely caramelized crust), add the liquid, and toss in some vegetables. Cover the whole thing and put it in the oven on low temperature. For the next few hours, while your meal develops many layers of flavor and your kitchen fills with warm and comforting aromas, you’re free to read a book, do your taxes, or just get on with your life.

    Cuts of meat that braise well include lamb and veal shank, poultry legs and thighs (think chicken cacciatore), country-style pork ribs and beef cuts including chuck pot roast, short ribs, flank steak, and eye or top round roast. That’s not to say you must have meat; sturdier vegetables like cauliflower, endive, leeks, and rutabaga braise quite well, as a matter of fact. The liquid component can also be varied. While most recipes call for a base of stock, the addition of wine, port, and beer is also common. During the coldest months, I like to braise pot roast with rosemary and Guinness. But the moment I sense the light of spring, I switch to braising chicken with citrus, white wine, and stock.

    In the meantime, as cold days continue to keep the family cooped up together all weekend long, there is likely to be a bit of sniping. But by braising a huge pot of short ribs, the cook can gently infuse the domestic surroundings with the smell of subtle spices, working a little homespun magic against the winter blues.


    Spiced Braised Short Ribs

    1 cup all-purpose flour
    2 tsp. salt
    1/2 tsp. pepper
    1/2 tsp. cinnamon
    1/2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa
    6 pounds bone-in beef short ribs,
    cut into 3-inch sections
    1/4 cup butter
    1 large onion, chopped
    1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
    4 cloves garlic, minced
    1 3/4 cups beef stock
    3/4 cup red wine vinegar
    1/4 cup packed brown sugar
    1/2 cup Sriracha (or chili sauce)
    1/3 cup tomato paste
    1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce

    Combine flour, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and cocoa in a large zip-lock bag. Add ribs in batches and shake to coat. Melt butter in a large pan and brown ribs on all sides. Remove ribs to a larger baking dish.

    In the same pan, over medium heat, sauté onion with ginger until translucent and soft; add garlic, stirring until fragrant. Add stock and vinegar and bring to a low boil. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Add remaining ingredients and bring back to a low boil. Remove from heat and pour over ribs. Cover dish with foil. Cook in a 300-degree oven for four to five hours, or until the meat is easily pulled from the bone.

  • Swallowing

    It is an established fact that we human beings want what we cannot have. When exorbitantly priced iPhones hit the market—already in limited supply—people line up at 2 a.m. And by telling a couple they are not allowed to have sex for a week, therapists say they can cause even the most uninterested spouse to churn with desire.

    So it is with absinthe, the drink preferred by Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which supposedly drove each of them crazy and was outlawed in the United States in 1912.

    It is supposedly the wormwood in absinthe that makes it so deliciously dangerous. An herb that’s poisonous in even moderate amounts, pure wormwood contains thujone, a ketone with hallucinogenic properties. It’s possible, I suppose, that absinthe provokes delusions in very rare cases—though the same can be said of sugar, sleep deprivation, over-the-counter cold medicines, and lust.

    Laws restricting the sale of absinthe have been loosening for years. In 1972, the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act lifted the ban on the liquor itself and focused instead on concentrated thujone (which also occurs naturally in sage, thyme, and rosemary). Then American distillers realized that the absinthe they’d been drinking in Spain and Portugal—and believing had mystical properties—actually contained such a negligible amount of the hallucinogen that it qualified for sale in the U.S. They were faced with a conundrum: The very argument they could use for making the case that absinthe should be legal might also lessen its appeal.

    In other words, without the naughty element, what is left of absinthe but a foul-tasting green syrup with a nearly lethal level of alcohol?

    I am both a confirmed wine drinker and someone who does not care for the taste of anise. Keep these two facts in mind. But my experience tasting absinthe for the first time left me truly puzzled as to what all the fuss is about.

    It smells herbal with a touch of sweetness, like a bakery in the middle of a stand of fir trees; this I truly enjoyed. But the first sip was like dragon effluvium: livid, scorching, and green. It burns for a long time (a looonnnggg time): on the tongue, in the throat, and later in the gut. The predominant taste is licorice and leaf and something vaguely scotch-like—if your scotch had been subject to a nuclear flash.

    Most disturbing, absinthe’s flavor lingers for hours. Neither breath mints nor vigorous tooth (and tongue) brushing can expunge it. With an alcohol content of sixty-two percent—that’s 124 proof—it’s as if the imprint is soldered onto the inside of your mouth.

    I tried drinking it straight and as an absinthe drip, a process that reminded me of every heroin-cooking scene I’ve ever seen on TV. There is dramatic ceremony to this drink—no doubt one of the things that has made it popular among writers, artists, and actors. Traditional preparation requires a sugar cube placed on a slotted spoon that is set over a glass of absinthe. You trickle ice water directly over the sugar, allowing it to melt into the liquor through the spoon’s vents. This creates a “louche,” or pale white cloud, in the drink, topped with a ring of iridescent chartreuse.

    It’s pretty. But I actually liked the absinthe even less this way, preferring the pain and boldness of a flavor I found confounding to a watered-down, sugary slurry edged in green. The only way I could imagine liking this liquor, frankly, is in coffee with a heavy dollop of whipped cream—a variation on Irish coffee that would not only soften the flavor but might thankfully burn off some of the alcohol as well.

    On December 27, Surdyk’s opened early and began selling Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, one of only two varieties currently available in the United States, for $75 a bottle. And when Jim Surdyk, who had a five-day exclusive on the introduction, opened his door at 8 a.m., twenty-five people were already lined up to buy. (The day after New Year’s, Haskell’s began selling Lucid for $69.99.)

    “It’s just interesting to people, the whole mystique of it,” Surdyk says. I agree. I also think absinthe is a perilous drink, not only for the pocketbook but for public health: a century-withheld novelty that will make you very, very, very drunk very, very, very fast.

    This—in addition to depression, schizophrenia, and syphilis (respectively)—is likely what really caused the madness of Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

  • Beyond the Obvious

    Some guys—and gals—get all the ink. If you are a devoted Twin Cities foodie, you know all about Tim (and Josh), Vincent, Alex, Stewart and Heidi, Lucia, Doug, J.P., Lenny, and Brenda—and you can pair them with their restaurants. Odds are pretty good that you have also heard of Tanya Siebenaler, Don Saunders, Scott Pampuch, Mike Phillips, and J.D. Fratzke.*

    Google any of these names and you’ll get hundreds of hits. And by the time this issue is on the streets, your chances of getting a Valentine’s Day reservation at any of their establishments are slim or none.

    But plenty of other very fine restaurants don’t generate the same buzz and don’t make it into the Zagat Guide. Some of them are too new, others too old, some are a bit off the beaten path, and some are just a notch less ambitious than the places everyone’s talking about. Following are a few of these under-the-radar places that seem especially appropriate for Valentine’s Day, or any romantic occasion.


    At First Course: A chicken roulade with gorgonzola risotto, with a tres leches cake for dessert.

    Unless you happen to be his mother or one of his loyal customers, odds are pretty good that you have never heard of Travis Metzger, chef-owner of First Course. The décor at this little neighborhood bistro might be rather minimal for some tastes (varnished plywood takes the place of teak and mahogany veneers), but I find the place quite charming, fake fireplace and all.

    The first time we visited, Metzger was doubling as waiter, and listening to him describe the nightly specials made it clear that this is a guy who really knows and cares a lot about food. We started with a couple of his nightly specials: field greens and roasted beets with chopped walnuts, dressed in walnut oil with a pumpkin-infused goat cheese, and a tapas plate of polenta topped with a savory duck confit.

    I was a little skeptical about ordering the seafood stew in lobster broth, fearing a commercial soup base loaded with salt and MSG (there are no other lobster dishes on the menu); this version, however, was delicious: shrimp, mussels, clams, and calamari in a light but intensely flavorful broth, spiked with just enough chipotle pepper to command your attention. Other best bets from subsequent visits include the pappardelle with lamb ragu; braised leg of lamb with rosemary, white wine, and tomato; butternut squash ravioli with a brandy-Gorgonzola cream sauce; and the chicken roulade filled with prosciutto, spinach, and provolone, served over a Gorgonzola risotto.