The Rake Magazine

Category: Food and Drink

  • Hope in a Bottle

    I have always warmed to authors who thank their spouses for preparing their index. Such marital harmony, such mutual society, help and comfort. You can imagine their kitchen: she sitting at the table rummaging through proofs and index cards, he standing at the stove turning Seville oranges into coarse-cut marmalade.

    It is surely gracious also for professors to thank their students, not (heaven forfend) because they have published their students’ research, nor from fake humility or a failure to put in the necessary hours in the library, but rather to acknowledge two important gifts. One is the sense that there are others who care about what one loves and wants to study—the pursuit of truth for its own sake can otherwise be a lonely business. The other is a sense of hope. A lifetime of teaching impresses on those who teach that the end is not yet, that people do become wiser, or at least more knowledgeable, given the opportunity. Some more generous professors, I am told, even take this view of telemarketers who call at dinnertime.

    I recently spoke to a friend at an English college where admission depends heavily on personal interviews conducted by the people who will actually teach candidates if they are admitted. Potential students in their very late teens, he said, were like young claret—the name given to the great wines of Bordeaux since the seventeenth century, when wines like Chateau Haut-Brion were already being enjoyed by the likes of Samuel Pepys, the diarist. Clarets do not leap into life fully armed, like Athena from the head of Zeus (or Dionysus from his thigh). Samples taken from the cask before the wine is ready to be sold taste largely of tannin. The initial impact on the tongue and palate and the taste left after swallowing (or spitting—in the cuspidor, that’s what it’s for, toreador) may suggest the pleasures of the finished article. But in between there is a hard, dry taste like leaf mold (no, I don’t, not often, anyhow) or dry tea leaves (politesse once obliged me to eat half a pound of dry tea leaves in a train on the Turkish-Syrian border, but that is another story).

    These tannins will be absorbed as the wine lies in its bottle, waiting to be drunk. Sometimes, as with a memorable bottle of 1975 Haut-Bages-Monpelou consumed in the late 1980s, they are never absorbed; this was a wine as inky in taste as it was in color. Sometimes one waits too long, the wine lies in the cellar howling “drink me now” through its cork, no one hears, and what is eventually poured is brown around the edges and acid. But more clarets die, I fear, of infanticide than of old age. What my English friend was trying to say was that his interview technique involved assessing the potential for mellowing exhibited by the tannins in his future pupils, while at the same time savoring their possible depth, complexity and fruit. He quoted Mark Twain at me: “When I was 18, I thought my father was an old fool. When I got to be 23, I was amazed how much he had picked up in five years.” Not a scientific method, I guess, but humane and effective.

    Not all the wines of Bordeaux are made for the long haul. Indeed, I recently enjoyed a bottle only three years old, which made up in pleasant warmth what it lacked in complexity. Like most red Bordeaux, the 2000 vintage of Chateau Saint Sulpice (Appellation Bordeaux Controlée) is a blend of Merlot (imparting mellowness) and Cabernet (imparting flavor)—in this case rather more Merlot than Cabernet. Upon opening there is little smell to it, but the first impact on the tongue releases a pleasantly “winey” aroma up inside the nose, followed by a light tanniny taste and a lingering flavor of grapes. Left to air for a little while, it mellows further. It would be good with cheese or pork; it made a homemade cauliflower cheese really quite palatable. This is not complicated wine, but it bears thinking about as it goes down. Moreover, at about $10 a bottle locally it does no excess damage to the budget—and that is surely a true foundation for domestic harmony.

  • Incredible—and Yes, Edible Too

    Sitting at the Ideal Diner in the spring can be anything but. In this Northeast Minneapolis joint there is the counter and there is the cooking line, and that’s it. Perched on a prize stool, you are simultaneously warmed by the remarkable heat emanating from the grill and chilled by the rush of cold air from the swinging door behind you. But it is there, trapped in the nexus of fire and frost, that you might meet a wizened sage, your oracle, also known as the short-order cook. You may enter as a skeptic, sizing up the grease-stained apron and witnessing the alarming use of lard in the hash browns while perusing the spotted menu. But all you need do is clear your mind, center yourself and order two poached eggs on toast. His reply, “Adam and Eve on a raft, coming up,” signals that you are in the presence of greatness.

    Who else but a philosopher, a truth-seeker, would have such insight into the symbolism of eggs? He could have called them “two googly eyes on a raft” or “double sun in the clouds.” But he didn’t, he gave them monikers synonymous with creation. As the moist spring air whips the door open one more time, you may wonder if he has the answer to the ultimate question, the question of life itself: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

    On the food timeline, eggs are as old as salt and water. Eggs, and the birds that laid them, were around before there were humans to write about them. The first domestication of fowl is believed to have taken place somewhere in India around 3200 BC. The Egyptians and Chinese both record egg production around 1400 BC.

    Although we agree when we speak of eggs we are speaking of chicken eggs, it is important to know that oology, the study of eggs, covers all kinds. So in the broadest oological sense, duck eggs are quite popular among enthusiastic egg-eaters, as are goose and quail eggs. Turkey eggs are rarely available to the consumer, as most are hatched, and ostrich eggs are sold primarily for use in very large novelty omelets. As for rattlesnake eggs, let’s just move on.

    It seems that as long as humans have been consuming eggs, they have been consumed by their spiritual nature, their symbolism and connection to the divine. The Phoenician creation myth tells of a very large egg splitting open, its two halves becoming heaven and earth. The idea of the egg as a self-renewing model of the cosmos is central to many ancient religions. Hindu writings tell of deities Brahma and Prajapati each forming an egg and then emerging from it. Egyptian hieroglyphics often depict the god Osiris being reborn from a broken eggshell. Probably the best-known legend is that of the Phoenix, which, in the tale from Greek historian Herodotus, died in a rage of flame and was reborn from an egg it had laid.

    Rebirth was a crucial belief among early civilizations, which celebrated it every year when the earth went through her own springtime regeneration. The sun’s return after a dark winter was a miracle, and the egg became emblematic proof of the renewal of life. Celtic tribes observed the vernal equinox with a feast including red-dyed eggs, whose shells were vigilantly crushed to ward off cold weather. With the spread of Christianity and the assimilation of local traditions, the egg came to symbolize Christ’s resurrection from the tomb, also celebrated in the spring. “Easter” is believed to originate from Oestar, an ancient goddess of spring and renewal.

    Eggs were among the first forbidden foods of Lent, making them a special treat at the subsequent Easter feast. In many Eastern European countries, people carried baskets of food, which usually included eggs, to church to be blessed before their preparation. It was considered a special gesture to give someone an egg, especially a decorated one. By the sixteenth century, the court of France was commissioning ornately decorated eggs from famed artists—an art form that reached its apex in the late nineteenth century, when the czar of Russia had his court jeweler, Carl Fabergé, create incomparable eggs encrusted with gold, crystals, and gems. As for the bunny? Blame those crazy pagans, who saw the rabbit as a symbol of fertility and new life, and kooky Germans, who believed that a magical rabbit would bring them a nest of eggs if they were good during Lent.

    Even without the symbolism, the egg is the perfect food. Nature designed it as a total life support system, so it contains nearly every nutrient thought to be vital to humans. The proteins in egg whites are of such high quality that they are held as a benchmark for all other food proteins. The yolk provides goodies like vitamins A, D, E, and B12, as well as folic acid, iron, and zinc. True, the yolk also contains fat and cholesterol, but as long as you don’t eat fifty eggs you should be fine. Nobody can eat fifty eggs.

    How your egg looks depends on who dropped it. Chickens with white feathers lay white eggs, naturally enough, while those from red-feathered breeds are brown. The yolk’s color may change with the diet of the hen—for instance, marigold petals are added to feed for a brighter yellow. Many of us have had the luck to crack a double-yolk egg, but few have cracked an egg with no yolk, which is rare but not impossible.

    Now that various diets are leading people away from carbohydrates and toward proteins, the egg is having a rebirth of its own. Some places, such as local favorite The Egg & I, will always bring you eggy delight. I say go soft-boiled and do some toast dipping. For a truly spiritual experience, try the soft scrambled eggs over cured salmon at Solera. How they get them so silky and delicate is a true mystery of life.

  • Wine, wine, wine! Wild Horses on Bended Knee

    The saints of February are a rum lot. The larger their reputation, the less can be said for certain about their lives and activities—and vice versa. The blameless virgin Saint Scholastica, twin sister of Saint Benedict, is relatively well documented—for someone who lived fifteen hundred years ago. But she is remembered only for the name of a distinguished college in Duluth, and for the fact that on her feast day (February 10) in 1355 no fewer than sixty-three Oxford scholars were killed in a riot, which began as a difference of opinion about the beer in the Swindlestock Tavern in the city center.

    By contrast, nothing is known for certain about the fourth century’s Saint Blasius (February 3), but in the Middle Ages he had a mighty reputation for curing sore throats and as the patron of workmen who combed raw wool—thanks to legend that the Roman authorities tortured him by scarifying his sides with metal combs. Similarly, Saint Agatha (February 5) is entirely legendary. But she was regularly invoked in medieval Sicily to prevent volcanic eruptions from Mount Etna, no doubt on account of the myth that her martyrdom involved double mastectomy.

    In such company it is scarcely surprising that there is not much that is true, or even likely, to tell about the best known of all the February saints, the patron of tacky Hallmark cards, unseasonable single red roses, and the midweek catering trade. We know for certain there was a shrine dedicated to a Saint Valentine just outside Rome as early as 352. The rest is legend—in fact, two legends: one revolving round Valentine of Rome, the other around Valentine of Terni, a hill-city many miles to the north. It was not until the time of Chaucer, a millennium after the construction of the Roman shrine, that we find people pairing off on February 14, and they seem to have been inspired not by the alleged deeds of either Valentine, but by noticing that this was the time when small birds found their mates. Fourteenth-century folk were as good at inventing traditions as the Victorians.

    In our gray world (and what is grayer than the slush churned by the buses in Uptown on a February evening?), it is a poor heart that never rejoices. There ought to be something that can warm and lubricate your Valentine’s Day (and, no doubt, your valentine). Everyone I ask about this suggests champagne. I disagree. For one thing, it’s cold, and what sensible person wants to add extra chill to a Minnesota winter? Second, even in small quantities it dries you out, causing particularly grim and enervating hangovers. But most important, the energy it imparts is evanescent; it lifts the spirits only to dump them good and hard afterward. Macbeth’s porter might well have been thinking of champagne when he said that much drink is an equivocator with lechery: “It provokes the desire, but it takes away from the performance.” Those who propose champagne are welcome to my share.

    I will choose something heart-warming, fruity, and red. Pinot noir is the grape from which the French make Burgundy. For a fraction of the cost of a bottle of good Burgundy (in fact, about twenty dollars—but your sweetheart’s worth it!), you can share Wild Horse pinot noir from the Central Coast of California, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The winery, founded little more than twenty years ago, gets its name from the local wild mustangs, descended from the horses brought by the Spaniards to the California missions. Wild Horse gathers grapes from vineyards spread widely across the region.

    Wild Horse pinot noir would be good on its own, with pâté or cheese, or with a wide variety of food. It is a wine that would look warm by firelight. I can imagine it well with roast wild duck, but you would need to cook a brace—they mate for life, not just for February. Good luck with your own valentine legend.

  • For the Love of Oysters

    Casanova was a scoundrel. He was a scalawag, banned from Venice and disqualified from a career with the Church. He scammed rich and poor alike at every turn. And he was a lawyer. Yet, if he were to make a few appearances between now and November, he might get elected president. For despite all his failings, or maybe because of them, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova knew how to make the ladies smile. By his own account in his famous History of My Life, he canoodled with 122 or so lovelies, from nuns to noblewomen. Though some think gossip fueled much of the reputation that made him such a titillating figure in Europe’s eighteenth-century society, many more pore over his multi-volume memoirs looking for the secret to his amorous success. These Casanovitiates try to emulate his behavior in hopes of getting similar results. Of course, to truly follow his lead, they’d have to squander fortunes, be imprisoned in numerous European cities, lie, cheat, steal, and eat at least fifty raw oysters a day. To some, it is the latter that is most reprehensible.

    Throwing back more than a dozen raw oysters before every meal was de rigueur for Casanova. Some of his most pleasurable memories have him eating them in the bathtub (not by himself, of course). Could this be the secret to his potency? Ever since Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, sprang forth from the sea foam on an oyster shell, giving us Eros, oysters have been known as an aphrodisiac. In this day and age, the era of Viagra and the Penis Enlargement Patch, it seems almost too easy to just suck down a few oysters and have a roll in the hay. But perhaps slippery things aren’t for beginners. Quite possibly, they’re advanced cuisine and meant only for those serious about the arts of eating and love.

    To quote Jonathan Swift, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” It seems astonishing that someone could find along the shore an object that looks like a rock, pry it open, and think the viscous contents fit to eat. The first connoisseurs had to be the Romans, who were so passionate for the bivalves that they sent scores of slaves to gather them from the English Channel and paid their weight in gold. Aristotle first tried to understand how they bred in 320 B.C., when he described their spontaneous generation. While oysters do have gender, they may change their sex a few times throughout their life. An oyster releases “spat,” which must attach itself to a fixed object like a rock, tree roots, or pilings in order to grow into another oyster.

    The old oyster code declared that one should never eat an oyster in a month without an r, namely May through August. Whether that was because of natural breeding schedules or poor refrigeration in hot months, it’s no concern now. Today’s farming techniques and health codes allow us to slurp oysters all year long.

    There are three general classifications of oysters: Atlantic, Pacific, and Olympia. Within each classification are hundreds of varieties named for the specific waters in which the members of the Ostreidae family grow. As oysters filter their surrounding waters, they take on properties of the area. An oyster grown in Chincoteague Bay will have different flavors from one grown near Pine Island.

    Atlantic oysters are also generally known as Blue Points. To many, they provide the quintessential oyster experience. The cold waters of the eastern seaboard lend a clean, salty taste and firmer flesh, best for eating raw. Good bets include Malpeque, with its bright flavor and crisp lettuce finish, and Belon, with a lemony flavor and zingy aftertaste. Also look for Tatamagouche, Glidden Point, Caraquet, and Wellfleet.

    Pacific oysters can grow to be twelve inches long and end up as quite a mouthful. But their meat is creamier and mellower than that of their Atlantic brethren and, in some varieties, quite delicate. Totten, Malaspina, and Little Skookum are all great. Plump, smoky, and a touch sweet, Hog’s Island is the most flavorful of the West Coast oysters. Kumamoto should be every oyster virgin’s first. Small and easy to handle, it’s buttery with a fruity finish.

    The Olympia is in a class of its own. Native to the Pacific Coast, it naturally grows in Puget Sound. Although small in stature, rarely exceeding two inches, the Olympia has a firm texture and salty, metallic taste. Now let’s face it, it’s the texture that’s scary. (But if you liken it to snot, you should be slapped. Grow up.) Yet there are other things you put in your mouth that, if you think about it, are far more disgusting. Some people are unsure about how to eat an oyster—tilt it back or use a fork, to sauce or not to sauce, and do you chew? Just remember, there is nothing sexier than confidence. Pick up the half shell. You may want to loosen the meat a bit with a fork, but don’t dump out the water. Do a nice, brief squeeze of lemon, bring the shell to your lips, and tip it in. Close your eyes. Think of the ocean and chew your oyster a few times before letting it slip down. Dare to taste the metallic tinge on your tongue and the cucumber in the finish. Do not “shoot” the oyster.

    Knowledge is the base of true confidence, and Kitchen Window in Uptown offers classes with Chef Rick Kimmes of Oceanaire, who is a true oyster addict. Now you are ready to get a table with your baby at the romantic and alluring Lurcat. Order a couple of trays, confidently choosing a selection of East and West Coast varieties, and know that not only is it a fun thing to do with your mouth, but oysters contain a lot of zinc, phosphorus, and iodine, which are conducive to stamina. Go, you scalawag!

  • Sweet and French

    Who now reads Charles Morgan? Some years ago there was a revival of his novel The Gunroom, which proved to anyone who was interested that the middle one of Churchill’s three Traditions of the Royal Navy (Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash) was a living reality for young officers of the Edwardian Era.

    Morgan’s masterpiece is The Fountain, a thoughtful love story set during the First World War. The unkind complain that the characters talk more about doing less than any others in literature (even those of E.M. Forster, his older contemporary), but what could be more absorbing than serious reflection on serious sentiment, especially if it is presented in dignified English prose rather than modish modern psychobabble?

    It was not only inner lives Charles Morgan could delineate; he was expert at placing people in a landscape. The Voyage begins in 1883 among the green chalk combes of western France, north of Bordeaux just inland from the Atlantic, the land bisected by the river Charente, the land where Cognac comes from. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the vineyards of Europe were being laid waste by a tiny insect from the East Coast of the United States called Phylloxera vastatrix; the name means literally Dryleaf the Devastator, which sounds like something out of Tolkien. In its own land it lives by sucking sap from the hard roots of the American vine Vitis labrusca so when it came to France and found the soft rootstock of Vitis vinifera the European grapevine, it behaved like a mouse munching through a wheel of Brie. It took years to perfect the science of grafting French vines onto hard American root stock; it was during this hiatus in brandy production that Scotch whiskey really established itself as a popular alternative in the smoking rooms of London clubs. In the meantime Charles Morgan’s hero Barbet was having anxious discussions with the parish priest about the spread into neighboring vales of the vine pest, “the accursed green fly.”

    This is a novel full of food and drink. In the first scene, Barbet, an amiable man as unworldly as he is wise, takes a big pot of homemade stew to the six prisoners in the local jail, which he runs in his old farm buildings. Charente is a part of the world where eating and drinking are taken seriously. Even today, in a France where young folk are supposed to be knee-deep in McDonald’s wrappers, one may read in a Jarnac school newsletter that the children are to benefit from a program of éveil sensoriel (sensual awakening—it sounds better in French) based on discovering the pleasures of eating local produce. Lucky old them, I say.

    No doubt as part of their awakening they will meet (in suitably moderate quantities) the sweet local wine Pineau des Charentes. This appealing pudding wine is made in both white and rosé, though the white is much more easily found than the pink. It is of varying ages, from twelve months to twelve years—the older the better. And it owes its sweetness not to the grape varieties from which it is made (claret grapes for the pink, a whole range of varieties for the white) but to the local brandy used to arrest its fermentation as soon as the grapes have been pressed. One part spirit to three parts grape juice prevents the grape sugars from turning into alcohol.

    Pineau des Charentes was allegedly discovered when someone in the 16th century poured brandy into a barrel of freshly pressed grape juice. The legend seems set a little early for the development of brandewijn by the Dutch in the seventeenth century—though this was indeed one of the areas where canny Dutch merchants of the Rembrandt era got their grapes. Whether or not either legend is true, white Pineau des Charentes goes well with creamy things, custard, or Brie. And the rosé is that rare thing, a wine that goes well with chocolate. Lightly chilled, this is one of life’s simple pleasures. As innocent and as amiable, perhaps, as Charles Morgan’s Barbet.

  • The Year of the Onion

    The Chinese calendar declares that 2004 is the year of the monkey. Anyone born this year will be intelligent, well-liked by everyone, and have success in any field they choose. Lucky monkeys. The loquacious and red-faced Democrats have claimed 2004 as the Year of Change. Athletes and festival purists may see 2004 as the year the Olympics return to Athens. In addition, most of us have our own personal brands for the year, as in 2004: The Year I Run Three Miles Every Damn Day, or 2004: The Year of the Sex Change. But those have more to do with resolutions than an actual annual manifesto. Thus far, nobody has seemed to get it right, so I’m calling it. This 2004 will be a year of complexity and strong reactions, many will peel away the layers of their lives to find their true essence, we’ll see widespread acceptance and global success, and there just might be some tears in the process. For all intents and purposes, this will be the Year of the Onion.

    Such a mundane veg for a potentially fantastic year, you say? Maybe you don’t know how emblematic the onion really is. Rotund and ready to roll, the onion has character, not giving in so easily under the knife. It bites back. Once tamed, though, the onion gladly softens, sweetens, and plays backup to other foods, rarely hogging the limelight in most dishes. Sautéed with a bit of garlic, you have the smell of home-cooked memories hanging about. Like any great work of art, onions have been both maligned and exalted by kings, and misunderstood and appreciated by the masses. And they have stood the test of time to land smack-dab on your hot dog in this great year of 2004.

    It is actually believed that we’re coming up on more than five thousand years of love for the onion. Most anthropologists agree that the onion probably grew in its wild form throughout the region from Israel to India, where primitive man presumably first pulled them from the earth. The earliest civilizations knew the value of the onion. Egyptians saw in its multilayered skins a symbol of the universe, peeling back the layers of eternity to find the two stems of life’s beginning. The onion appears in art among the feasts of the gods and was a true companion in the tombs of Pharaohs. In 1160 BC, King Ramses IV was mummified with onions in his eye sockets.

    Maybe with the return of the Olympics to Greece we’ll see a return to the old practice of competing athletes devouring pounds of onions, drinking onion juice, and rubbing onions all over their bodies in preparation for competition. Maybe not. High-society Romans were the first to brand the onion as peasant food, going as far as passing laws on certain times of day when it was okay to eat onions. Apicius, the first gourmand, does little for the onion, whereas the foot soldiers of the Roman Army wouldn’t go marauding without them.

    Easily cultivated in many climates and soil conditions, the onion spread throughout the world. The genus Allium is extensive and includes garlic, shallots, onions, leeks, chives, scallions, and lilies. Since cultivation began, there have been several different sizes and types bred, which has led to much confusion. If all green onions are also scallions, are all scallions green onions? Onions are best lumped into two categories: the round globe onions with single bulbs and the tubular cluster onions. The latter never form bulbs; instead they grow a cluster of stem bases with long green leaves and are referred to as spring onions, oriental onions, green onions and sometimes scallions. But the term “scallions” can also mean young leeks and sometimes the tops of young shallots. These onions are the oldest and most used ingredient in Chinese cooking and the only onion commonly used in Japanese cuisine.

    Papery, spherical, and robust, the globe onions are usually bought mature with the dry delicate skin hiding the pungent flesh. The fresher the onion, the milder the flavor, so an older onion with very dark papery skin will have more kick. The basic grocery store set includes Bermuda onions in white or yellow, the usually yellow Spanish onion, and the red Italian onion. And then there are the juicy, sweet debutantes of the onion world that show up every once in a while to steal the show, the Vidalia (which can, its Georgian creators claim, be eaten like an apple) and the wondrous Walla Walla from Washington. These are great starters for those afraid of the onion’s bite. And how does one tame an onion so that no cook shall be reduced to tears? Simply chill the onion for 20 minutes before cutting to slow down those sulphuric compounds, or if you don’t have the time, a welding mask also works.

    The very Zen onion often finds its way into sauces and dishes as merely a flavoring agent, propping up the other ingredients with no thought for self glory. But it is this quality that makes it indispensable. The chicken-fried rice at Kinhdo is the best in the free world, in part because of the healthy proliferation of onions. And then there are times when the onion can unexpectedly take center stage, like when you grab a Polish sausage at the Bulldog and heap it with sauerkraut and onions, just to be close to the gods. Then, of course, one of the best ways to enjoy the delightful nuances of the onion is to find a hearty bowl of French onion soup, slathered with melted cheese and crusty croutons. The Panera chain makes a good bowl, but I’d like to suggest a real special sleeper: Keegan’s Irish Pub in Nordeast serves an onion-rich broth topped with a half-inch of the finest Irish cheddar. Yum! My challenge to you this Year of the Onion is twofold, just like the twin hearts of a Texas Sweet 1015: Seek out the best French onion soup in the city and seek in your inner onion.

  • Gratification for the Patient

    I like starting novels in the middle. By skipping all those establishing shots, which exclude as much as they reveal, you’re able to catch the author and the characters off their guard. Also, once you have finished, you can start again at the beginning and have the paradoxical pleasure of reading the book for the first time twice.

    My father did the same. When I was about ten years old, he left on the chair next to the bath the ideal book for those who read like we do. It has color, and some of the most memorable comic characters in English fiction, but, as the author proudly proclaims, nothing much by way of a plot.

    Like many Victorian novels, Robert Smith Surtees’s Handley Cross was issued originally as a serial in separate monthly parts. The hero is a relatively rough diamond, a prosperous London grocer called John Jorrocks. Oddly for a Londoner, his principal passion is foxhunting, though he is not above mixing business with pleasure. He was known to have cantered after a fresh acquaintance in the hunting field, calling out, “Did you say two chests of black tea and one of green?” The man leapt a fence to get away from him.

    Second only to Jorrocks’s passion for foxhunting was his passion for port. Claret he despised—“I can make you some, if you like,” he told a guest, “with water, vinegar, a lemon and a little drop of port.” Brandy and water was less a pleasure than a form of central heating. But port “wot leaves a mark on the side of the glass” gave ample opportunity to mull over (and magnify) the triumphs of a day’s sport.

    By Jorrocks’s time, port had been the favorite wine of Englishmen for over a hundred years. Jorrocks’s racier contemporary Jack Mytton drank eight bottles a day, the first while he was shaving in the morning. He died young—of trying to cure his hiccups by setting fire to his nightshirt.

    Port is in fact a by-product of the wars fought by Britain all through the eighteenth century—wars that prevented the France of Louis XIV and Napo-leon from dominating Europe. Fighting France meant less claret coming across the English Channel from Bordeaux and led to closer links between England and Portugal.

    The alliance encouraged the wine trade. Soon after the Methuen Treaty of 1703, merchants discovered that vintages from Portugal crossed the stormy Bay of Biscay better if they had first been spiked with brandy. The same methods they developed are used to make the wine we enjoy today. Early during fermentation, the process by which natural sugars would normally become alcohol is arrested by the addition of brandy. The result is both sweet and intoxicating, ideal for drinking slowly after dinner with apples, nuts, Stilton cheese, or a biscuit.

    Port comes in various styles: Ruby port is drunk young, having spent most of its life in cask; tawny port is generally older and sometimes has a dryish tinge to the taste. The greatest of all, vintage port, is the wine of a season considered sufficiently remarkable by an individual maker for him to risk his reputation by declaring it a vintage year. In some years only a few houses will declare a vintage. Vintage port spends only a couple of years in cask, so it grows old in bottle. This can be a lengthy process—the wines of 1963 and 1977 still have time on their side, and 1997 won’t be at its best for years yet. And maturing in bottle means that crud accumulates; if vintage port isn’t stored carefully the wine becomes clouded with sediment.

    Vintage port is the enemy of instant gratification (which might be why California has so far failed to produce a convincing port, though there is a pleasing drink made there, wittily called Starboard). Long years in bottle must end with sensitive decanting. But it is absolutely worth the effort. There is nothing like the slow, deep sweetness of vintage port. This is a pleasure for people with patience.

  • I’m Crantastic! Thanks for Asking!

    Everyone has a Great Aunt Tootie they haul out for the holidays. She sits in the corner calling everyone by the wrong name and talking about the turkey she had back in ’29 that was really made out of dirt. Someone thought it was a great idea to bring her, but now nobody knows what to do with her. She sits at the holiday table and you wonder how she’s related to you, and why she only comes out every ten months or so. At odd intervals, she may laugh loudly or simply stare at the table, eyes glazing over. But she’s not crazy; she’s just communing with her kindred spirits—the cranberries.

    If you’re going to have your spotlight dance only twice a year, it may as well be during the two biggest feasts of Eating Season: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sad thing is, most people put cranberries on their holiday table only because they think they have to: It’s their duty, just like picking up Aunt Tootie at the home. True, there are fans of the cran, those who happily pass the bowl after taking a big spoonful of gelatinous crimson tartness. But the majority of people won’t be fighting for the cranberry leftovers or making a turkey and cranberry sandwich the next day. And it’s a shame, because two appearances a year are not enough for the wonderful cranberry. Its ability to help you stave off a nasty urinary tract infection alone makes it worthy of yearlong celebration!

    Wisconsin is known for cheese and beer. Most people miss the fact that Wisconsin produces more than half of the country’s cranberry crop. Last year’s harvest yielded more than three million barrels of fruit. To know the true greatness of the berry, you should start in a bog.

    Cranberries are native to North America. American Indians traditionally ate them fresh, mashed, and ground with cornmeal into breads. Cranberry poultices were used to draw poisons from arrow wounds, and juices were used to dye cloth a vibrant red. Different tribes had different names for the versatile berry, but it was the Pilgrims who first likened the blossom to a crane, referring to them as “crane berries.”

    Thanks to the glaciers of the Ice Age, the northern part of the U.S. is ideal for growing the cranberry. The cranberry is a wetland fruit, growing on trailing vines that thrive in the natural bogs that evolved from deposits left by glaciers. These wetlands are surrounded by dazzling support lands that, through a maze of ditches, dikes, dams, and reservoirs, ensure an adequate water supply and provide a natural refuge for wildlife such as bald eagles, sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans, ospreys, and wolves.

    The season begins in winter, when the farmers flood the bogs—which freeze and insulate the vines. The bogs drain with the spring thaw, the vines blossom, and by September the tiny green nodes have become robust red cranberries. This is when the magic happens. Two methods are used to gather the berries, depending on their destiny. Wet-harvested berries are usually processed, and dry-harvested berries are used as fresh fruit. Both methods are based on two of the coolest properties of cranberries: 1) they float, and 2) they bounce.

    The dry harvest involves mechanical pickers that comb through the vines. The harvested berries are then bagged from a conveyor belt and sent to receiving stations, where they’re screened and graded on color and bounce. (Soft berries don’t.) The method was derived from an old practice of rolling a load of berries down a flight of stairs. The ripe ones would bounce down; the duds would sit listless.

    The wet harvest is something to behold. The bogs are flooded and the berries loosened from the vines. As they float on the surface, they are gently corralled, almost herded toward the conveyor belt and into waiting trucks. On an early October afternoon, with a crisp, blue sky overhead, the pools look like a sea of floating fire.

    Where would your Cosmopolitan be without cranberry juice? Certainly not in the pink. The tart little berry contains antioxidants that are believed to combat heart disease, cancer, and certain bacterial infections. The berries can be frozen or dried, and they keep for up to a year. Try using them as “rocks” in your Stoli Cranberi. Other ways to celebrate cranberries throughout the year: Grab a tantalizing white chocolate and cranberry muffin at Taste of Scandinavia, or indulge in Regi’s Cranberry jams, which often incorporate interesting twists like jalapeños. Or why not just play around with them? Sautéed, glazed, candied, dried, tossed in cakes or muffins, added to ciders, stuffed in a chicken… Go crazy.

  • for the heart

    Of all the places I have ever lived, Minneapolis is the most confusing. One might have thought it would be otherwise. It was meant to be laid out, after all, on a Jeffersonian grid. Yet one cycles down the street, blithely confident that the 3800 block of Sheridan Avenue South will lead ineluctably into the 3700 block, only to find that an unkind providence has interposed a lake, a railroad, or a freeway. Reason, one feels, has been defeated by Nature, or at least by Life.
    Occasionally, it is true, Minneapolis gives inklings of the organic process of its growth to the hard-pressed cyclist trying to find the house where he has been invited to dinner. If he bumps and rattles his way over the monstrous potholes in the southeast quadrant of Lake Calhoun Parkway, he will come to Richfield Road, originally the wagon route from the infant Minneapolis to the neighboring township of Richfield (which originally included modern Edina). On a good day, the remains of the streetcar rails can be made out beneath the asphalt of broad old thoroughfares such as Portland Avenue. But in Edina the farms that defined the landscape in the late nineteenth century are gone. Only their names survive in Grimes and Browndale avenues.

    After trying to get the Minnesota landscape into larger perspective, I went to see the Jeffers Petroglyphs down beyond Mankato. These lively scribings are etched (by who knows what anonymous hand) onto rocks that slope and tilt like the bed of a prehistoric ocean. The wind passes through the prairie grass like cat’s-paws at sea. Here at last I found a sense of the size of the state.

    If these waves of prairie have the breadth of an ocean, Mont Ventoux in the South of France has the height of a tsunami. From its summit you can see for miles (all right, kilometers). The fourteenth-century poet Petrarch discovered this when he climbed it—possibly the earliest example of mountaineering, or at least hill walking, done for no other reason than the fun of it. Not that Petrarch was capable of anything so innocent as fun. He took with him a copy of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, which he duly opened on the summit (at random, he claims), and conveniently found a passage that assured him that landscape is less important than the soul: “Men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean, and the revolutions of the stars—and desert themselves.”
    The modern climber will descry on the southern slopes of Mont Ventoux gravel terraces planted with vineyards sheltered from northerly winds by the mountainous bulk behind them. One of the Côtes de Ventoux wineries that has had a remarkable run of good years recently is Château Pesquié. The red wine made here by the Chaudière family called Ch. Pesquié les Terrasses is a round fruity Rhône. It is composed of slightly less syrah, the grape variety most often associated with Rhône reds, and slightly more grenache, the variety familiar from the wines of Châteauneuf du Pape, about twenty miles to the west. One can confidently commend it for consumption with cheese and meat (including turkey).

    Claret, they say, is wine for the head; Burgundy and Rhône, wine for the heart. Even a poet as sententious and self-absorbed as Petrarch would, one feels, have been able to allow a wine as appealing as this one to penetrate the formidable defenses of his self-consciousness. Perhaps, too, it could have inspired him to appreciate the pleasures of landscape without his having to decide in advance what he was going to think about it.

  • It’s Liver, Lover!

    It’s a child’s privilege—and punishment—to help with the Thanksgiving turkey. The responsibility of assisting in the preparation of the main dish is heady, indeed. Turkey is pretty much the definition of Thanksgiving for many kids, and they may dream of the moment when that golden bird is brought out to the big table and all the hungry eyes turn away from the bird for a momentary glance of appreciation toward the tot who is beaming with pride. It may be this kind of dream that would fuel a blond child of seven to throw her hand up and volunteer for the job.

    But when she gets to the kitchen in the morning, forgoing the traditional hot chocolate and parade-watching done by the non-chefs of the house, she discovers a pinkish, pebbly-fleshed monster with a gaping hole. What’s worse, the poor girl learns that it is her job to remove, with her small hands, the creature’s internal organs (cutely nicknamed “giblets” to make her feel better). Her duty is great, and she suffers through, pulling out the neck and dealing with the gizzard, but the reddish, gooshy liver is too much to handle. So she runs screaming from the kitchen. And she is thankful in later years that no one told her then that it was those items that made the gravy taste so good. It would already be a long time until liver would come back into her life.

    Livers are appreciated in most cultures and cuisines throughout the world, but consumption is low in North America. Is that because in our quest for ultimate information we know that the liver is the clearinghouse for a body’s toxins? That it secretes bile? Maybe it was the preparation by a million moms who bought beef liver, fried it up with onions, and slapped its stinkiness on a plate in the McCarthy era. For some, liver might just be part of the food-oddities column—classified creepily as “organ meat,” or tucked between the cow tongue and headcheese. The tradeoff is that we are missing out on a global delicacy rich in iron, protein, and vitamin A.

    If you want to give liver a chance, get thee to a local butcher. If you haven’t found one in your neighborhood, you can use Clancy’s Meat & Fish (formerly Lippka’s Linden Hills Meat) in Minneapolis. It’s a great little shop. When we’re talking straight liver, the kind that can be successfully fried up with some mushrooms and onions, your best bet is calf’s liver. The younger liver will have a smoother texture and more delicate flavor. Calf’s liver is pinkish, compared to beef liver’s reddish-brown hue, and is much more tender than the elder. Besides beef and calf, the most popular livers are lamb, pork, chicken, and goose. But the true beauty of this organ is how it performs in the hands of an artisan.

    OK, maybe chopped liver isn’t necessarily artisanal, but it has been unfairly maligned. (“What am I, chopped livah?!”) Served on Jewish holiday tables for eons, the dish that may contain onions, hard-boiled eggs, and chicken livers is a cultural icon for the laborings and celebrations of life. Spread on a thick piece of rye bread, maybe with a little corned beef, the simple is transformed into the inspired.

    Chopping liver is only the beginning. The Germans not only make liverwurst sausage; they also indulge in leberknödel, or liver dumplings. Cod liver oil has been used since at least the eighteenth century as a cure for rheumatism and wasting diseases. It makes you wonder who was the brave soul who first squeezed a fish liver and drank it. Livers are prepared in terrines, pastes, mousse, stuffing, and, of course, pâtés. But of these remarkable preparations, the most delectable has to be that of foie gras.

    The original and classic foie gras (fwah grah) is made from goose liver with techniques that date back to the Egyptian dynasties. Now a specialty of the southwestern region of France, foie gras is the liver from a goose that has been force-fed, fattened on grains on an accelerated schedule for four or five months. This mimics their natural behavior and physiology before a long flight. These special geese gain an enlarged liver, which after harvesting is soaked overnight in milk, water, or port. The resulting flavor is extraordinary and the texture velvety smooth.

    The fact that this culinary luxury is the darling of many five-star chefs’ menus has put it in the spotlight. But with fame comes scandal. A San Francisco chef’s home was recently attacked by animal-rights extremists who spray-painted his house, wrecked his car, and threatened the lives of his wife and child—all because of his association with Sonoma Foie Gras. Never mind that Sonoma Foie Gras is not a factory farm, but a small, local producer that cares for their birds in accordance with the highest standards. Why let the truth get in the way of your headlines?

    To sample some of the local talent’s foie gras, the sophisticate heads to La Belle Vie in Stillwater. The ever-clever chefs have wrapped a diver scallop and French Rougie foie gras in serrano ham. With the accompanying Black Mission fig sauce, each bite has a mingling of nutty, salty, and sweet flavors. If that’s too fancy for your pants, Figlio has just debuted a killer burger with porcini mushrooms and caramelized onions, topped with foie gras. It’s a little bit of heaven in each mouthful.

    Still can’t get your brain around the internal organ thing? What are you, chopped liver? You should be so lucky.