Category: Food and Drink

In a good year, the wild rice grows thick on the lakes and rivers in northern Minnesota toward the end of August. The rice stalks multiply into such dense thickets that the waters become nearly impassable—to everything but the sleek canoes that glide through for harvesting. This job takes two people: one to knock rice into the canoe, and the other to propel the canoe through the water. Last year, I took the canoe’s middle seat, and my ricing partner stood tall in the back, pushing at the bottom of the creek bed with a twelve-foot pole, hand over hand, maintaining a gentle pace. With a stick like a fat pool cue in each hand, I poked one end behind a hank of rice stalks, bent it over the canoe, and used the other to softly strike the bursting seed heads: A shower of rice rained into the canoe. All the while, rice spiders, tiny and albino-white, skittered down my arms. Between swatting at them and keeping up with the canoe’s steady pace, it made for arduous work in the heavy, late-summer heat. But on and on it went, until the canoe became heavy with a belly full of rice and we slowly weaved our way to shore.

Hand-harvesters like us generally yield small batches. In our case, we brought in around two hundred pounds of raw, or green, rice. Compared to the professional harvesters, or even the ambitious amateurs, it’s considered peanuts, and hardly enough to process. All rice must be cooked, or as they say, parched, in order to solidify the milky, soft kernel inside its sheath. Everyone we talked to pointed us to Lewie DeWandeler and Donnie Vizenor, friends and business partners who have been parching wild rice at Lewie’s farm for more than twenty-five years. Just like Donnie’s father and his father before that, they use a steel barrel that rotates over a blazing wood fire. Standing by, their eyes, ears and sense of smell are expertly attuned to the rice. “Some people use propane for parching, but you can taste the difference,” says Donnie. “We like to use wood, so that there’s a certain amount of smoke in the rice.” The heat dries out the soft kernel, but it’s the smoke that lends the wild rice its flavor.

There’s also history to consider. Then and now, the many hours spent hand-harvesting rice provokes a desire to finish it in the right way. People from this area of the state have always parched their rice over wood fires because it’s the best, most precise treatment for a precious grain. Wood-fire parching also requires a great deal of intuition. Knowing when to raise the temperature and when to slow the barrel’s rotation are skills maintained through generations only by the act of doing. In this age of mass production of wild rice and other grains, those few who have kept the craft of wood-parching alive seem to sense that they are the last inheritors of a great tradition.

Lewie DeWandeler and his wife Betty live on the Ponsford Prairie within the White Earth Indian Reservation, where fields of bright green hay give way to lush clumps of beans in rows. Abandoned farmhouses and the occasional one-room school sit squat in the middle of fields, shedding their whitewash.

My partner and I had been told to show up at Lewie’s at the crack of dawn, no later, but when we get there Lewie leans out the kitchen door and says, “Come in. I have to eat my breakfast yet.” We stomp the mud off our boots as we climb the rough steps to the kitchen. It’s been drizzling for hours, and looks to be a day of pure gray sky and soaking wetness. The three dogs standing at well-spaced intervals across the long driveway glare at us, standing proud in their heavy wet coats. One, to be polite, gives a slow wag.

Inside, Lewie is whipping eggs into flour to make pancake batter. His eyes have the glint of a true Midwestern prankster—someone who works hard but can make light of it. He makes a triple stack of pancakes and fried eggs, one on top of the other, and pours dark Minnesota maple syrup, thick as caramel, over all of it. We watch Lewie eat, we drink coffee, shoot the bull, and wait. Donnie Vizenor shows up, cheerful for the early hour, wearing bright blue workmen’s overalls.

By 7:45 we are all well-fed and, holding our coffee cups, heading out to the parching shed. A wind-worn but stubborn structure, it’s open on two sides, and a lush green mess of baby oaks and bindweed comes in through one of them. The other side, next to the fire, is open to the grand sweep of the Ponsford Prairie. Like many people who live on the prairie, Lewie DeWandeler has learned to diversify: he logs and traps in the woods in the winter, farms hay and pinto beans in the summer, parches rice in the fall, sugars maples for syrup in the spring, and in this way generally survives the extremes of Minnesota weather.

Over the years Donnie and Lewie have filled the shed with equipment for processing wild rice, an operation that begins and ends on the behemoth 1912 scale given to them by Donnie’s father. With its smooth white enameled shoulders, it stands as tall as a man and weighs in up to thirty-four thousand pounds of green rice each year. Donnie’s father, who grew up on the White Earth Reservation, updated the original parching method with a gas-powered motor: His first barrel parcher used a Ford Model A engine. As he scaled back on parching, Lewie and Donnie took on more of the job, eventually trading in the Model A engine for an electric motor to turn the barrel. They also invested in a thresher (often pronounced “thrasher”), which looks something like a washing machine and sports rubber rudders that gently beat the chaff loose from the parched rice. A large screen-lined grain separator shakes the whole kernels of rice down into a bucket, leaving a cloud of rice dust and chaff to blow out the side of the shed.

While the rice is in the barrel, it is tempting to lean in close, to get the full force of the steamy smell of grain toasting—but the fire beneath is intensely hot. Lewie and Donnie keep a large but well-controlled blaze going from logs of white pine and oak, whose smoke perfumes the rice. Lewie stands next to the fire, leaning on a tall, blackened stick, which he uses every few minutes to adjust the logs and maintain the temperature. Parching rice demands full attention, but also allows those involved plenty of time for leaning on sticks and reminiscing. “Back when everyone brought in local rice, we used to be able to tell what lake the rice came off of,” says Lewie. “Some is almost yellow, some brown, some almost white. Rice from Mitchell Dam is short, fat, like coffee beans. And then there’s that lake just north of Highway 200—the rice from there is blond, almost transparent, once it’s parched.”

Just like a cook, he’s keeping half a mind on the rice as we talk. He stops mid-sentence, turns a switch to speed the barrel. Opening the shed’s wide door to cool the place off a bit, he says, “Smell that? It’s going a little too fast.” When I ask how he can tell when it’s done, he gives my simplistic question a poker-faced, smartass response: “Standing here for twenty years looking at it has something to do with it.”

Then he responds seriously, for Lewie is serious about this: “When the rice is just right it rattles against the barrel and sounds heavy.” He could parch it just enough to make it edible, but he works toward something a little better than that. Crafting a superior product with great flavor takes someone who again and again chooses to bring each batch precisely to the point of perfect doneness. “I toast the rice almost until it burns,” he says, winking, “but just almost. That gives it a nice smoky flavor.” And it does. Steaming a mere cup of rice that Lewie and Donnie have parched will fill an entire house with its earthy fragrance, as if you can smell at the same time both the fire it was parched in and the water it was raised in. Each taupe-colored kernel cooks up separate, tender and gently bent, barely splitting.

Lewie’s and Donnie’s parching method closely resembles the Native American method practiced around the turn of the century. At that time, the rice spent a day or two drying in the sun before it was toasted in a large cast-iron kettle over a wood fire. After parching, it was then stamped upon with soft, moccasined feet to loosen the chaff. Once cool, it got poured it into shallow grass baskets and flung expertly into the air. The breeze carried the chaff away, and the rice fell back into the basket.

Ricing on lakes within a reservation is limited to enrolled tribe members, but lakes on public and private land outside of the reservation are open to anyone. The best ricing lakes on reservation land (such as the aptly named Big Rice Lake near Mahnomen, Minnesota) throw annual lotteries: Names of tribal members go into a bucket, and only a lucky handful win the right to go ricing.

Today the portrait of a small-time harvester is an interesting amalgam of Native American and European settler, with some of the ricing and processing being done by Native Americans on reservation soil, some on private land, and some by mixed teams on reservation lakes and on public lakes. The fact is, wild rice is a northern Minnesota foodstuff and its gathering is intertwined with the history of the northern territory. Settlers learned to rice from the Indians who lived here, in this place where rice grew wild on most every lake and in nearly every stream. When the Depression hit, all kinds of people took to harvesting and selling rice on a larger scale than ever before. At that time, the extra money and source of food nicely supplemented what could be, for both the settlers and the native people, a lean life on the northern prairie.

Since then, people devised ways to produce wild rice on large scale, and today, most commercial producers have eliminated the fussy steps: They flood a field to grow rice, drain it to harvest, dry the grain until it’s completely black, and then parch it with steam until it’s solid. There’s not a lot of aroma surrounding this kind of operation, and zero romance. And having eaten plenty of this solid black commercial rice, I have to say that there’s not too much flavor in it, either.

Cream of wild rice soup, a staple at diners in every small town across Minnesota, should be made with the old-fashioned, wood-parched rice. The steam-parched kind doesn’t cook evenly, so you end up with a few fully exploded kernels swimming among a lot of chewy, half-cooked rice. Wood-parched rice cooks more gently and evenly, and seems to thicken the creamy broth with its smoky, tender kernels.

I like wild rice best when it’s prepared most simply: steamed with a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, and a few cloves of garlic for perfume, with a thick pat of butter melting on top. (Contrary to popular myth, wild rice doesn’t take an hour to cook. Rinse it and cover it with enough water so that the tip of your finger touches the rice and the water reaches your first knuckle. Then bring it to a simmer, cover it, and steam for half an hour.) But this grain is also amazingly addictive when popped, salted, and buttered like popcorn. The kernels swell and explode when poured into a pan of hot oil; smaller than popcorn, the little puffed grains retain all the smoky flavor from the parching, and it’s a challenge to get the little bits in your mouth in enough quantity to satisfy.

This year, Lewie’s son is parching some of the rice. As my grandma would say, it’s nice to see young folk take an interest. Because while small processors like Lewie and Donnie parch rice year after year, they’re not exactly besieged by apprentices. And like any artisanal process, rice parching must be taught, not described.

Back in the day, families would bring their raw products to someone who would finish the processing. The cream went to the town creamery for butter and cheese; the wool was taken to someone who would spin it; the wheat was brought to the mill for flour. In this way, producers developed finely tuned skills for processing or finishing different products. With these kinds of cooking and processing, intuition is usually more precise than science.

In northern Minnesota, many people enjoy getting out onto the lakes, gathering the rice, getting it parched, and taking that simple pleasure in eating all winter what they reaped in the fall. “People like to come to us because they get their own rice back,” says Lewie. “We could parch two small batches from two different people together, but you don’t know what that guy did with his rice before it got here.” Though I hadn’t thought about it before, I too was thankful that we got back the very rice we brought in. When Lewie said “the taste comes from right here,” he may have been pointing to his barrel parcher, but he was also talking about this northern place, those logs on the fire, this creek bed, and the one down the way.

In a floating restaurant, with buoys hanging from the ceiling and the full complement of other nautical trappings, I ordered my first lobster. I was eight. Not a big seafood fan, I hemmed and hawed over the menu, which was crammed with clip-art renderings of comical sea creatures, until my Uncle John leaned over and said, “Go ahead and order a lobster, we’re celebrating!” Well, if we were celebrating, lobster must be like having cake for dinner, I thought. Sign me up! When the ridiculous red monsters were brought to the table, I watched as everyone dove in, cracking claws with gusto, melted butter dripping everywhere. All I could do was look at the giant bug on my plate. Someone eventually helped me crack it open and pull out some meat. As I sat chewing my little lump, my family looked to me expectantly, eyebrows raised, waiting for my precocious verdict. I said it was delicious. I lied.

Suffering my way through most of it, I learned a fine lesson in peer pressure. Lobster is a delicacy! Lobster makes everyone happy! C’mon, everyone’s eating it! I thought lobster was rubbery, smelly, and had no flavor other than that of algae and butter. But clearly there was something wrong with me, because the mere mention of lobster caused adults to loll their heads and go “mmmmm,” evidently recalling cherished moments with their little red friends.

The crustacean that has transported you is most likely Homarus americanus. Although this species is found anywhere from the Canadian Maritimes down through the Carolinas, it is widely known as Maine lobster, due in no small part to Maine publicists. European lobsters, Homarus gammarus, are basically the same as the American, just smaller.

The American love affair with the lobster actually had a late start. Early settlers thought them too ugly to eat, and witnessed the Native Americans using them for field fertilizer and fish bait. The creatures were so plentiful that they could be plucked effortlessly from tide pools. They were considered “poverty food” and served to prisoners and indentured servants. In Massachusetts, servants were outraged and lobbied for a law that would limit their lobster meals to no more than three per week.

Some stories credit John D. Rockefeller for the change in lobster’s social status. Legend tells of a wayward pot of lobster stew that was destined for the servant’s table and somehow made it to the master’s tray. He fell in love, and the dish became part of his regular menu. And what’s good for John D. is good for everybody! In truth, it was the canning industry in the late 1800s that popularized lobster, bringing packed tins of meat to all corners of the globe. World War II gave another boost to the industry as lobster answered the increasing demand for protein-rich foods. In the later boom years, per-capita consumption increased and lobstermen saw increasing profits, along with mounting competition. The lobster industry was one of the first to recognize the need for protective guidelines and limitations on fishing practices.

Today, lobstering is a grueling, labor-intensive, and closely guarded profession. “Lobster gangs” along the East Coast, comprised of fishermen with particular skills or family ties, don’t necessarily maraud through the waters, but they do defend their territories. This not only ensures their communities’ livelihood, but helps prevent over-fishing of limited resources.

While some have dubbed lobster the “cockroach of the sea” for its indiscriminate scavenging, lobstermen simply call their catch “bugs,” which is no coincidence, as a lobster’s nervous system is most like that of a grasshopper (lobsters and insects both hail from the arthropod phylum). This means that they don’t feel pain in the way that humans do, which is good because boiling them alive is simply the best way to cook them. As for the supposed “scream” emitted when they are plunged in boiling water—that’s the air escaping from their shells, which can produce a high-pitched whistle. You are not sadistic, you are just hungry. Once plopped in the pot, all lobsters turn red, no matter their original color, which is most often a mottled dark blue shade, but can be yellow, orange, purple, or even half-and-half.

Once you buy a lobster, you can actually keep it around for a few days, provided it spends them in a cool moist environment. But do not put them in your bathtub thinking you are being nice—freshwater to a saltwater creature is like diesel in an unleaded car. And by all means, keep the rubber bands on the claws, not only for your own safety, but for the bug’s: Lobsters are quite territorial and can go cannibalistic in close quarters.

The real question is: To bib or not to bib? When it comes to savoring lobster, it’s easy to find restaurants serving up sparkly, funky, elaborate dishes—but I’d strongly recommend sticking with the preparation that best highlights the essence of lobster. In other words, go for the bug-on-a-plate. However, you can leave the bib off, as shelling needn’t be a massacre. Simply twist off the claws and use a cracker to expose the meat. Next, separate the tail from the body and remove the tail flippers (don’t forget the meat there.) Use a fork to push the tail meat out in one piece. Discard the sick black veiny thing running down the middle. Separate the top body shell from the underside by pulling them apart. You’ll notice a green substance called tomalley. Some people think it’s a lord-lovin’ delicacy and spread it on toast. I think it’s water-toxins processed through a prehistoric liver, but you be the judge. Finally, crack the underside down the middle and gnaw on the legs. To do all this in public, pick a reputable fish-house like McCormick & Schmick’s or the Oceanaire Seafood Room—or a stellar steakhouse such as Manny’s—where you’ll be among kindred spirits.

In my case, it took a simple New England-style clambake in college to bring me around. Amid the clams, the corn cobs, and the chowder, I snatched a morsel of white flesh that verily melted in my mouth. I couldn’t believe this was the same crusty animal that I had been shunning my whole life. While the mention of lobster still won’t put me into an ethereal trance, I do hold that first awakening bite close in memory. Since August is the perfect time for indulging summer food memories, place a lobster order with Coastal Seafoods, gather your friends, pop some beers, and toast one lovely bug.

In the heady days of summer, it is particularly easy to gaze out the office window and dream the Raspberry Dream. In the Raspberry Dream, you walk to your raspberry patch in the warm morning sunshine. The dewy grass brushes your lightly tanned skin as thrushes and cedar waxwings herald your arrival. The encumbered bushes verily toss their berries into your vintage, flea-market-find basket. As you make your way home, you begin to imagine all the jams and vinaigrettes that you will produce, eventually forming your own private label that will grow into a conglomerate that would make Martha envious.

Call it the American Dream, call it the Raspberry Dream, call it what you will—being your own boss means never having to be stuck in a cubicle on a blissfully warm afternoon. Of course, Raspberry Reality has to take into account pestilence, drought, anti-redberry diet fads, and hours upon hours of sweaty work during the hottest months. But somewhere between the dreamy berry patch where critters break into song, and the massive fields worked by migrant laborers for Driscoll’s in California or Mexico, the berry of inspiration waits for you. In this month, when sultry summer days make us all want to quit our jobs, why not turn to the raspberry patch for a little bit of guidance?

Raspberries have been prized for ages. Rubus idaeus is thought to have been named as such by the ancient Romans because it grew thickly on the slopes of Mount Ida in Crete (which is overrun with wild raspberries even today). As for their ruby nature, the Greeks believed that a mountain nymph, whilst picking raspberries to appease the gods, scratched her breast on the thorny bush and marked the berries for eternity. The “rasp” comes from the obsolete English word raspis and is thought to be a reference to the slightly hairy surface of the berry. Raspberries have also been known as hindberries because of their favor with deer, and caneberries, referring to the plant’s arching stem when it’s laden with fruit.

Supplementing the common red raspberry are white, yellow, purple, and black varieties—but a black raspberry is not the same as a blackberry, though they are from the same botanical family. Both fruits are composed of drupelets around a core; however, when picked, the raspberry leaves its core on the plant while the blackberry takes its along. The difference lies in the resulting softness and delicacy of the raspberry, whose fragile structure lends to it a juiciness the blackberry can only dream of. Some say that the berries love to be harvested, as the bush may yield bigger and plumper berries the more they are gathered through the season.

Raspberry plants are known as brambles (thanks to their membership in the rose family), and they have the thorns to prove it. Red raspberries tend to be hearty and aggressive, spreading easily and returning year after year with abundant crops. This characteristic makes them perfect for the Minnesota climate, where early and more fragile berries succumb to bad weather.

In fact, the area known as West Minneapolis back in the 1890s was known for its dairy farms, lake cabins, and rolling hills thriving with raspberry brambles. Berry farming became so important to the area that it inspired spin-off businesses like the Hopkins Fruit Package Company, which made the little berry boxes that cradled the fruit on its journey eastward. It also helped build the towns that make up the western metro area. For more than fifty years, berry farms created jobs for young people, often providing them housing as they relocated from far-off towns. These people stayed on after the growing season, started families, and set their roots in what became the thriving western suburbs of today.

During the Great Depression, the city of Hopkins threw a “Raspberry Day” picnic to help bolster community spirit. Everyone who came to the town center got a free bowl of raspberries. It was hoped that they would also share the warmth of a summer day, enjoy each other’s company—and spend a little hard-earned money with the vendors lining the streets. Do you feel the Raspberry Dream working? The erstwhile community picnic is now the Hopkins Raspberry Festival, replete with Raspberry Queens, pie-eating contests, the five-mile Raceberry Jam, a pig roast and more—ten full days’ worth of trimmings that give the raspberry its due and help us savor the great American summer.

After basking in the warmth of this festival, celebrating its seventieth year this month, your next stop should be a U-Pick. Also known as a PYO (Pick Your Own), the U-Pick offers a dose of reality with your Raspberry Dream. The Brambleberry Farm in Pequot Lakes is a tremendous place to roll up your sleeves and act like a farmer for a day (or maybe just an hour or two). Put in some work under the hot sun, and meditate on what it means that something so rewarding has to come with thorns. Before departing with the delicious fruits of your labor, check out what the Brambleberry gang has done with their dream—don’t leave without their award-winning jams, fresh herbs, or local honey. Closer to the Cities, the Afton Raspberry Company provides a Picker’s Patio where you can enjoy lunch after a morning of toil in the thicket.

If, by then, you’ve realized that dreaming the dream and working the dream are two different things, you might want to pop over to your local Linder’s outpost for a single raspberry plant that you can nurture and grow. For some people, dreaming the dream—just enjoying the possibilities of life—is enough.

Raspberry Cheers
Hopkins Raspberry Festival
July 8-18
(952) 931-0878
www.hopkinsraspberryfestival.com
Brambleberry Farm
4002 Davis St., Pequot Lakes, Minn.
(218) 568-8483
Mid-July through September; call ahead
Afton Raspberry Company
1421 Neal Ave. S., Afton, Minn.
(651) 436-7631
End of August through early October
Linder’s Garden Center
270 W. Larpenteur Ave., St. Paul
(651) 488-1927
www.linders.com
Café Latte (Raspberry Cream Torte pictured)
850 Grand Ave., St Paul
(651) 224-5687
www.cafelatte.com

What is it about cows and cowboys that make us wax rhapsodic? It seems they beget legend and lore, or at least they did in the days when the sight of a herd breaking over a hill, with unshaven, grizzly men on horseback driving them in, could bring a tear to any Pappy’s eye. Maybe because the plains are being eaten up by thousand-acre CEO retreats, or maybe because people think of salad dressing when they hear the word “ranch,” or maybe because of the proliferation of places like Steak ’n Shake—whatever the reason, the romance and appreciation that attend tucking into a beautiful steak have almost disappeared. One may wonder if, in this age of information and globalization, there is any room left for myths and mystery. Enter the Japanese.

In the mid-nineties, rumors and mutterings about a superior breed of beef cattle from the Far East began surfacing in the food world. Soon enough, Kobe beef started popping up on influential menus at astronomical prices, upwards of two hundred dollars per pound. It was said to have a mind-boggling texture and flavor, unrivaled by any steak one could sink one’s teeth into in the U.S. Along with the beef came the stories: tales of secret Japanese traditions, including cows fed with beer, massaged with sake, and soothed with classical music. It seemed fantastic, and not at all cowboy-ish. The New Age myths began to take hold. Could a soused cow be the secret to heavenly steak? A sake massage might do many of us well and turn around our disposition, but can it make us tastier? Is it possible that the beef’s divinity comes from inebriated bovine divas sloshing in Sapporo? Or is it simply a matter of genetics?

Japanese history tells of cattle imported in the second century as labor animals to aid in rice cultivation. Because of the mountainous terrain, their passage was slow, leading to small, pocketed herds among isolated villages. Cross-breeding was common until the early 1600s, when the Shogun officially closed the national herd due to unwanted foreign influences. It has remained closed to this day, except for a brief period of importation during the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s.

These mysterious cattle, known as Wagyu (“wa” meaning Japanese and “gyu” meaning cow), are the breed that provides the famed Kobe beef. As with Champagne and Parmigiano Reggiano, however, the criteria for true Kobe beef is partly geographic. The Wagyu must come from the Hyogo Prefecture, whose capital city is Kobe, and also conform to traditions and strict standards of the Prefecture Council.

Isolated herdsmen of each region within Hyogo tended to develop distinctive breeding and feeding traditions, which they are still hard-pressed to reveal. Some have hinted that feeding the cattle beer stimulates their appetites during the warm months. Others claim that sake simply makes the hide attractively shiny, thereby fetching a higher price for the beast. Whatever they may be, the enchanted techniques of the Kobe herdsmen deliver not only on flavor, but also on softness. More than merely tender, Kobe beef is supremely velvety; it has been and still is the standard bearer for highest quality in the world.

When you first look at a cut of Kobe beef, your extra-lean training from the supermarket may give you pause. The meat is richly streaked with white fat (the good, unsaturated kind, for those still cautious about the “F” word), which means that it is luxuriously and audaciously jammed with flavor. Kobe beef is unlike any other steak, and to cook it as such would ruin it. To keep all of its precious fat and flavor from seeping out, the beef is best prepared by simply searing, as you might a steak of ahi tuna. So if you’re the type who orders a filet mignon well done with a side of ketchup, save your money for therapy.

One way the Japanese enjoy Kobe is in the traditional teppanyaki style, by searing on a steel hot plate, or teppan. Two restaurants in the Uptown area, Tonic and Chino Latino, will let you try this on your own, providing sashimi-style slices of Kobe and a hot stone on which to cook it. That said, heed my warning: sear quickly and eat. As for the increasingly popular Kobe burgers, I have yet to find a local version that even comes close to the perfection of one that I ate in Indianapolis (of all places) last year. (If you’re going to serve the King of Burgers, make sure it’s not overcooked, and appears with the right kind of company—no cheap lettuce or flimsy tomatoes as garnish.) The newly opened Mission in the IDS Center, however, is turning out a pastrami made with Kobe beef, and it is all that you hope it to be.

It is largely believed that the genetic predisposition of the Wagyu breed—not just the Kobe strain—produces a higher percentage of unsaturated fats than any other breed, leading to the white, streaky marbling that packs each bite with flavor. Americans are counting on this important fact, because unless you are physically in Japan, the “Kobe” beef you are eating probably came from Wagyu cows in Oregon. Does that mean the geisha girls giving sake hoof massages wear fleece and drink double espressos? Most likely, since there has been a ban on Japanese beef imports since 2001.

However, American Wagyu producers have been working for more than twenty years to perfect Japanese traditions in creating their Kobe(-style) beef. Eventually, it will be known by its correct name—Wagyu—but in its infancy with the American palate, “Kobe” has become the word that most people understand. Comparisons of the American version with true Japanese Kobe have generated much discussion and many opinions, all of which have been duly inflamed by national pride and a two-way beef trade embargo. I say we duke it out cowboy style, over bourbon and karaoke.

Don’t let the imposters win. You are encouraging their success when you order a rum and Coke and settle for Shasta. When you allow people to offer a cup of java, then serve up Folgers crystals. The worst offense is to say “pass the Parmesan” as you’re looking at a rotund shaker of a fluffy white substance like artificial snow. These substances are not so much fake as they are shadows of a truer form. The cheese in that shaker at the pizza joint or in the green cylinder jar at the supermarket has almost nothing to do with the cheese it purports to be. Unfortunately, the phony version has more fame, not unlike a certain leggy, blonde Law & Order actress with the same name as a certain short, sassy, rakish food writer. But if the masses knew the flavorful and amazing truth about the original, they’d shun the green jar and grab their graters.

“Parmesan” has unfortunately become a general term for Italian-style grated cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano is the true name for the cheese you think you shake so well. Like Champagne or Bourbon, Parmigiano-Reggiano is named for the area in which it is produced, in the River Po River valley in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna province. The same cheese produced outside this region is called Grana Padano. The art of the cheesemaker has remained the same for more than eight hundred years, and it all began in a place called Parma.

A story from Boccaccio’s Decameron, written around 1350, tells of a city by a mountain made of cheese. The good people of the mountain did nothing but make macaroni and ravioli, rolling the gifts down the peak to the hungry below. Ah, Parma. History is littered with instances of the appreciation of Parmigiano, in Italy and abroad. Taillevent, one of the first French cookbook authors, uses the cheese abundantly. Some accounts of Molière’s death witness him asking for a slice of the heavenly cheese on his deathbed.

In 1400, the humanist Platina observed that Italy’s most renowned cheese, Parmigiano, was also called maggengo because it was produced in the month of May. By his time, the process had already been perfected for some two hundred years, and it is the identical process that is used today.

Today’s artisans could be tempted by mechanization, but most still use milk, heat, and tradition to turn a good cheese.
High-quality milk is one of the secrets to parm. The cows eat well, munching young grasses, herbs, and flowers in the spring and robust grasses and straw come autumn. Cheeses produced with spring milk have a lower butterfat content and may be drier and lighter than winter’s, but will also have a more delicate flavor. Milk’s butterfat is highest in the fall, lending the cheeses of October and November a deeper color and more intense flavor.

The weather in Emilia-Romagna is another deciding factor. The humidity and variations of temperature help activate enzymes in the cheese that are responsible for creating its unique characteristics of flavor, color, aroma, and granular texture. Patience is another virtue of true Parmigiano, which takes from twelve to thirty-six months to mature. The standard chunk you buy will likely have basted in Italian breezes for eighteen to twenty-four months. Kraft proudly ages the stuff in its green jars for six months.

The final factor is love. It’s the love of a process that requires myriad subtle and delicate operations in which a tiny variance could affect quality and value. Rigorous testing by the Consorzio del Parmigiano-Reggiano, a group that’s quite serious about cheese, decides whether the labor of love is a worthy one. If a one-year sampling of cheese fails the standard testing, it is stripped of its rind and not allowed export.

Parmagiano-Reggiano is born as a seventy- to eighty-pound wheel whose rind is iron-branded with the Consorzio-approved stamp, the farm code and the date of production. By law, every piece cut from the wheel should have some marking on it (make sure you can see the rind on any piece you buy, or see the wheel from which it was cut). Then the cheese will fall into one of three categories. “Prima Stagionatura” identifies a cheese with a minor defect, but one still good enough for market; its rind is marked with parallel lines. “Extra” gets an oval stamp certifying at least eighteen months of ageing. “Export” is stamped as such and signifies first-grade quality after eighteen months.

While most think of Parmigiano in its grated form, let’s please think outside the shaker. This cheese is wonderful shaved into thin slices and eaten with fresh fruit—pears and Granny Smith apples are ideal. There is nothing better than a beef carpaccio with capers and thin, blond shavings of Parm, which, at Arezzo Ristorante, is something they do fairly well. I recently watched (and later dreamt of) my chef-husband tossing warm fettuccini in the belly of a carved-out wheel of Parmigiano, the cheese melting slightly and coating the pasta.
Want your own wheel? It can cost $800 to $1,200, without shipping. Scott Pikovsky of Great Ciao imports all sorts of crazy goodness from the Mediterranean area. Otherwise, for a slice here and there try some of the local Italian shops like Delmonico’s or Buon Giorno Italia. Even Lunds and Byerly’s have stepped up with good cheese. If you think grating your own is a bother, and you’re tempted to grab the “domestic Parmesan,” you may want to recall a colorful proverb from your childhood: Mr. Yuk is mean, Mr. Yuk is green.

During a lecture to a Harvard class, philosopher George Santayana happened to glance out the window and spot a burgeoning forsythia in a patch of snow. Heading to the door, he declared, “I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.” She’s a sassy month, this April—and also sacred to the goddess Venus. Her name is derived from the Latin word aperire, “to open.” The so-called cruelest month is full of hope (brightly shining sun and baseball’s season opener), albeit appropriately tempered with a bit of dread (the occasional three-inch snowfall and the culmination of tax season). But those of us cloistered for the past five months cling to the openness and hope as we Rollerblade in shorts when it hits fifty degrees and call for patio reservations while snow is still on the ground. We turn our faces to the sun, reaching outward and upward in a burst of revival and celebration. We are the asparagus of life.

For the gardener, there is no better harbinger of spring than asparagus. While the rest of the garden remains frustratingly unproductive, asparagus tips poke up through the dirt for a friendly hello. Under the right conditions, the spears can grow up to ten inches in a single day, sparking excitement and the planning of menus. Indeed, to feast in spring without asparagus would be merely to vivre without the joie.

A member of the lily family, asparagus officinalis grows wild throughout Europe and Asia, a fact that makes it hard to pinpoint its origin. However, asparagus’ proliferation along the banks of rivers and near salt marshes make the Mediterranean region a good bet. Actually, the cultivation process that is used today is based on the practices of early Greeks and Romans, who sought the spears for culinary and medicinal purposes. Believed to cure toothaches, heart disease, and dropsy, asparagus became important enough for the Romans to designate a special fleet to carry the spears to far-off troops. And millennia before Clarence Birdseye, they found a way to freeze the vegetable, by running loaded chariots from the Tiber River valley to the snowline of the Alps. A huge fan of both asparagus and haste, the emperor Augustus had a habit of ordering executions to be carried out “quicker than you can cook asparagus.”

France’s Louis XIV was also mad for the plant. He ordered his gardeners to grow it in hothouses at Versailles so that he could eat it year-round. Asparagus became all the rage in France, and even today there are festivals and celebrations dedicated to the tender stalks throughout Europe. German restaurants are known to add a special asparagus menu, or Spargelkarte, during the spring harvest months.

“Sparrow grass” distinctly lacking in green has long been popular in Europe, and is gaining presence on our shores. You might have seen them around, these white asparagus, and wondered what went wrong. And why are these albino mutants so expensive? Sometime in the 1600s, the French started cultivating asparagus, basically, in the dark. They mounded earth around the spears as they pushed forth to keep them sheltered from the sun. Without sun, the plant’s chlorophyll doesn’t react to turn the shoot green (while the labor-intensive process does justify the higher price). The result, a pale ivory spear that may be tinged with yellow or purple at the tip, remains the choice of most connoisseurs, as its flavor tends to be a bit nuttier and earthier than its colorful counterpart.

Whether white or green, the key to good Spargel is cooking time. The most common preparation is a quick boil, three to five minutes depending on thickness. Spears should be a lovely bright green with a measure of crispness left in the bite. Dullish, army-green spears of a flaccid nature must be banished. But to really bring out asparagus’ charming and vivid flavors, roll the trimmed spears in some olive oil, place in a pan and roast in a ferociously hot oven (450 degrees) until they are a bit wilted and turning sweet and brown at the tips (fifteen to twenty minutes). Sprinkle the spears with sea salt and wrap them in Spanish Jamon ham, like you know you want to.

As for that most unpleasant side effect of asparagus, the Traite des Alimens, published in 1702, proclaimed “Sparagrass eaten to Excess sharpen the Humours and heat a little … They cause a filthy and disagreeable Smell in the Urine, as every Body knows.” In other words, it is believed that the methanethiol molecules in asparagus cause the distinctive stinky urine in the eater. But apparently not every Body does know: While nearly all asparagus eaters are affected, not all are able to detect the odor.

Surely the best way to commemorate the vivacity of April is to mark it with the reawakening of the farmers’ markets. This year the St. Paul Farmers’ Market celebrates its 150th anniversary. Get down to Lowertown and buy some asparagus from the folks at Costa Farms, a third-generation producer in the Stillwater area that has been a regular at the market since 1917. If you can’t find white spears there, head to a Kowalski’s Market. They buy from local producers and promise to have the palest of the pale. If nothing else, even for one day, poke your head out, face toward the sun, and dream of asparagus.