The Rake Magazine

Category: Food and Drink

  • Wine, wine, wine! Bottles, Not Boxes

    “Courage, friends,” said George Bernard Shaw. “We all hate Christmas.” These days there is a good deal more to hate about the festive season than there was in Edwardian England, particularly the annual crash-course in consumerism given to all our children by the manufacturers of worthless plastic gewgaws. No doubt the hairy Hibernian sophisticate disdained competitive consumption. But I fear the things he probably hated most about Christmas were precisely those which decent people most treasure, what John Betjeman, the elegist of the everyday, called “the sweet and silly Christmas things.” In the Twin Cities, the sweetest, silliest Christmas thing is the seasonal willingness of comparative strangers to invite each other into their homes. Newcomers here, even those like me who are accustomed to British levels of reserve, find formidable the willingness, during the rest of the year, Minnesotans exercise to respect one another’s privacy. This is the state whose largest university has for several years been without a faculty club, and no one has even noticed. But across the cities, Christmas seems to free up the flow of the soul, rather like Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week.

    Of course, the midwinter social thaw does not occur on the scale it did in the Roman Empire. In the ancient world, the Saturnalia—the festival of Saturn, coldest, oldest, and most coagulative of the Gods—filled the last days of December with a free-and-easy spirit. (There is, incidentally, no need to believe in any continuity between Saturnalia and Christmas. The first mention of the Nativity of Christ on the 8th day before the Kalends of January comes as late the year 354. The Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, was more important to early Christians, and neither was half as important as Easter. Besides, the Early Church was keener on conversion than continuity.) The Saturnalia was quite a party. It was meant to recall the long-past Golden Age of prosperity and peace when Saturn himself ruled on Earth.

    Festivities in both ancient Rome and modern Minnesota have in common a need for wine. Bernard Shaw didn’t of course. He was a teetotaler as well as a Noelophobe, so the whole of this column would have passed him by. But the rest of us like to be well lubricated (though not, of course, our designated drivers), and large parties require good bulk wine.

    There are few things nastier than the carpet cleaner some people serve their guests—and it is the impurities, they say, which produce the hangover. So let me recommend some decent big bottles: a brand of wine called Vendange, made in the central valley of California, but with a rather French character to it (the name is French for “grape harvest”). At less than $8 locally for a double bottle (1.5 litres), it is certainly affordable and the reds have the added merit of making hearty mulled wine. Vendange wines can be provided in quantity when that’s what’s needed. They also have quality. (Loyal readers of this column may recall my contention that, when it comes to wine, excess is the enemy of appreciation. Let the boozers chunder on the wall-to-wall, or “talk on the big white telephone.”)

    Vendange produces wine from a wide range of grape varieties. A host who selects several contrasting bottles can find amusement educating himself about the tastes of different types of grape, knowledge which is basic to intelligent imbibing. The Cabernet, it must be admitted, reminds me why the French mix this variety with the milder-tasting Merlot when they make Claret. But the Pinot Noir slips down pleasantly. My particular favorite, the Malbec, is a dark red wine with a distinctive, refreshing character. There is a good range of whites as well, Chardonnay, Semillon, and so on.

    These are wines which will please at parties. Or they can be sipped, while you perform your own sweet and silly seasonal rite. Mine is to read with the children a short story of Alphonse Daudet set one Christmas Eve in 17th century Provence. Whatever yours may be, I wish you every joy at the dark time of the year. Shaw was a bore.

  • The Mystery of Marzipan

    As a blond, long-braided German girl, my mother was in charge of going to the bakery for the family. During Christmas, the most magical time, some German traditions hold that the world itself is transformed, that angels dance all around, and heavenly music accompanies the softly falling snow. Yet only the true of heart witness these miracles. My mother made her way through the Christmas markets from the bakery, her task of bargaining for a log of marzipan complete. Did she witness any of the wonders around her? Or did she sneak a small sample of her parcel? Knowing her slightly wicked ways, it is safe to assume the soft, rich feel of the marzipan in her mouth was all the glory she cared about.

    Simply made from almonds, sugar, and maybe an egg white here or there, marzipan is as central to the holiday tradition as the Tannenbaum. If you grew up in a German family, your holidays probably consist of real candles on the tree, presents on Christmas Eve (not Christmas morning), odd little meat-pocket pies known by different names like “pierogi” and “kraut mitschle.” (I love those things!) And then there are the small, delicate sweets that have the shape and color of dazzling sugared fruits. But when you bite into them, they have the distinct flavor of almonds. Marzipan has been a treat for hundreds of years, eaten in bar form, dipped in chocolate, draped over cakes and cookies, or shaped into strange and wonderful figurines, from fruit to skyscrapers to heads of industry. But even though the Germans claim to create the best marzipan in the world today, it is undoubtedly a borrowed art, with many curious stories of origination.
    To begin with, almond trees are not indigenous to Germany. The people who keep track of such things believe the almond tree originated in the warm climes of southwest Asia, and spread into Greece and Italy, where it was cultivated from at least 200 B.C. When early trade routes developed, the almond spread throughout northern Africa, to Spain, France, and eventually England and Scandinavia.

    The source of the magical marzipan mixture—and it really has to be exactly right, or you have an unappetizing sugar-almond glob—is a bit harder to pin down. One story says the sultan of a Far Eastern province faced a famine in which only the almond trees survived. In order to keep his people in high spirits, and to keep their minds off their empty stomachs, he added rosewater to the crushed almonds and shaped them into whimsical creatures. The name “marzipan” might have been derived from Marci Panis, that is, St. Mark’s Bread, supposedly produced by way of a miracle during a medieval famine. Or it might have come from the “mazaban,” a slim wooden box in which sweets were presented throughout Venice in the 13th century. Over time, the contents of the box also came to be known as mazaban. As these boxed sweets left for other ports, they may very well have become marzipan in Germany, marchepane in England, marzapane in Italy, and massepain in France.

    The tradition of making this gentle paste can be traced through the Moors, to the Spanish town of Toledo. At various times sacked and occupied by Moors, Christians, and Jews, this little steep-hilled town is known for creating incredibly rich marzipan, as it has for hundreds of years. Toledo was the Moorish capital in the sixth century, and was considered a most multicultural city indeed. The rest of Spain couldn’t care less about marzipan, but it is in the very fabric of Toledo’s history.

    Marzipan traveled north and found a happy home in Lübeck, Germany. The old treasury accounts of this little burg show the importation of almonds from the 16th century onward. Throughout Europe, marzipan was believed to be a “curative,” with the power to cure such maladies as hopelessness and drunkenness. This gave apothecaries the exclusive right to produce it. Retailers were originally allowed only to trade in the raw ingredients, not the actual paste. Even under this medicinal guise, the rich know a delicacy when they taste it, whether it cures you or not. The aristocracy incorporated marzipan confections into their feasts, but the masses were left to beg for prescriptions. When more people got ready access to sugar, and supply was introduced to demand, the confectioners took over production, and artistic shapes and beautiful moldings became synonymous with the name. Toward the middle of the 19th century, production was industrialized and the agreeable result was a delicacy that was affordable to everyone.

    While in some places industrialization can mean a loss in quality, Lübeckers believe in the pre-eminence of their recipes, and have earned the reputation as the standard-bearers of marzipan today. German law allows products to be named “marzipan” with a blended ratio of no less than 50 percent raw almond paste and 50 percent sugar. Lübecker marzipan holds itself to its own standard: 70 percent raw almond paste to 30 percent sugar. They even produce a premium marzipan known as “Edelmarzipan” which is 90 percent raw paste and 10 percent sugar! The higher the almond content, the richer and denser the product.

    Because it was originally an extravagance saved for special occasions, it would be brought out only on religious feast days. Over the years, it developed into a holiday tradition that carried on even through the lean years. My mother tells me that, during the war, she and her sisters would devour the beloved treats even though they were diluted with ground peach pits. Mom says maybe the hardest year was when they had “ersatz marzipan,” made with mashed potatoes and almond essence. Each year, my mother and I get over to the Deutsches Haus in St. Paul (off 94 in the Sun Ray Center) before Christmas to load up on Mozart Kugeln—chocolate-dipped balls of marzipan with Wolfie’s head embossed on them—and Lübecker marzipan. And in homage to her braided days, I’m certain, Mom makes sure only about half of our take makes it home.

  • Deer Wine

    A few weeks ago, central London saw the largest demonstration it has ever witnessed. A good-humored crowd of 407,791 people marched through the streets. These were not folk normally given to protest. For the most part, they were quiet country people, though to be sure they enjoyed their day out in the capital, cheering, singing, and blowing hunting horns.

    They had come to remind Her Majesty’s Government of a few home truths, in particular that one cannot pay too much for food, that it is rude to criticize a farmer with your mouth full, and that agricultural subsidies are not handouts for farmers but a way of ensuring a supply of cheap bread (circuses come separately) for the urban masses. But at the heart of their protest was not the plight of farmers so much as anguish at the government’s interference with certain immemorial pleasures of the rustics.

    The oldest of these pursuits is the hunting (with hounds, not guns) of the wild red deer, once the sport of kings, but now carried out only on one remote moor in the southwest of England. Deer run faster and straighter than foxes. Following stag-hounds across the springy heather under an open Exmoor sky must be one of the most exhilarating pleasures a human being can have. Hunting deer involves knowing about their natural history. The locals seem to know the deer individually—“the big stag with the crooked antler as lives above Badgworthy”; “the pale-colored hind you see at the bottom end of Horner Wood.” They can tell from their footprints (“slots”) the age, size, sex, and condition of the deer who made them. It is probably true that despite the damage they do, the wild red deer are tolerated by the Exmoor farming community principally because of their complex relationship as hunter and hunted. If and when the hounds do bring their beast to bay, it is dispatched from close range by the huntsman; the hounds get the paunch, the followers divide up the venison, and the heart goes to the farmer on whose land the deer was killed.

    This sport involves a good deal more exercise than the shooting of white-tailed deer, a popular sport in Minnesota in the autumn. But both present one common problem: How do you cook wild meat of indeterminate age which is going to need to be hung quite some time before you can be sure it is at all tender? The sensible solution is, of course, to eat farmed venison, a delicious meat, always reliably tender and amazingly low in cholesterol-inducing fat. It may be the lean meat of the future, but that’s another story.

    I cannot help the hunter much with recipes. For these you must look to the wonderful cookbooks of Nichola Fletcher, Game for All and Monarch of the Table (I specially like her “Venison in Chocolate Sauce”). But I can recommend a wine which I think will stand up to the strongest of “gamey” tastes. It is the 2000 Napa Valley Zinfandel from Beaulieu Vineyards, a winery with more than 100 years of continuous history behind it (they made altar wine during Prohibition).

    This Zinfandel is a fine red color, like a pan of berry juice ready for making bramble jelly. (Deer like berries. You should see what a stag can do to a blackcurrant bush. So there is some justice in the world!) The soft tannin at the center of the taste will stand up well to the meat, the smell of fresh oil which comes from the wine being matured in oak barrels is appetizing, and the pleasant fruity sensation as you swallow, which is reminiscent of a fresh Granny Smith apple, gives the palate wings. Less mist, more mellow fruitfulness.

    This is a wine with a good heart— and at less than $20, a decent price. It should go nicely with whatever Florian Krebsbach and Clarence Bunsen may shoot (or run over) in the woods near Lake Wobegon this autumn. For me, it brings to mind the Scotch poet who wrote, “My heart is on Exmoor / My heart is not here. My heart is on Exmoor / A-chasing the deer.”

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

  • Get Squashed!

    Is there such thing as “harvest time” anymore? You can buy apples in June, tomatoes in January, and there are bananas year-round at our local Farmer’s Markets. Nature’s bounty is but an email away to Simon Delivers. The harvest used to be a glorious time of celebration after the hard work of bringing in the stores for a long winter ahead. True, it has been a long time since many of us actually toiled in the earth for our munchies, but harvest time still means something.

    The harvest is really the beginning of the Eating Season. Is it by chance that this season coincides with Fat People Weather? Being a devoted eater, I know that if I lived in Seattle, with fabulous Fat People Weather year-round, I would weigh 742 lbs. All spring and summer we run about with our bared skin, eating fruits and keeping fit. Come fall, the air cools, the colors pop, and we pull on our bulky sweaters and allow ourselves to indulge in caramel apples, fresh pie, stuffed turkey. For the few, football season means a solid running game, but for the many it means roasting a pig, and drinking a few hearty, malted beverages. Throw open the windows and break out the stew pots, it’s brisk enough to bake again.

    And so we indulge, maybe not fully aware that some deeply buried genetic code is telling us it’s necessary to pad our bodies for the survival through the winter months. When that first snappy cold morning arrives, although we may now reach for the polar fleece, it still compels us to reach for the bite-sized Snickers bar in the first fill of the Halloween bowl. That’s when you know it’s begun, the Eating Season. And there is no other food that can herald the beginning of the season better than the squash, sitting there orange and grinning, as you furtively stuff wrappers in your pockets.

    Squash really is the poster food of harvest time. There could be a fall festival squash pageant and all the contestants would be different in their quirky splendor. It kicks off with the iconic pumpkins of Halloween, followed by the decorous gourds and dense pies of Thanksgiving. Squash easily rolls into the many holidays of December in the form of acorn and butternut-squash side dishes and casseroles on the pot-luck buffet tables of yore. What better fruit—and it is a fruit—than one that was not only present, but became a symbol of the first official celebration of food in this country, the original Thanksgiving?

    Native to Central America and Mexico, seeds from related plants have been found dating back more than 7,000 years, to around 5500 BC. Squash was being cultivated in North America by the time the Pilgrims landed, and had become a great staple of the Native American diet. Pumpkins were sliced into long strips, then either roasted over open fires or dried and woven into mats. We don’t know exactly which squash was brought to the first Thanksgiving, but we do know the colonists were smitten. They shortened the name from the Algonquin askootasquash, which means “eaten raw,” and directly began boiling, steaming, and baking it. According to tradition, the original pumpkin pie came about when the colonists sliced the top off a pumpkin, removed the seeds, and filled the belly with milk, honey, and spices, then buried it in hot ashes to bake. Of course, as this New World fruit gained popularity, its seeds were brought back to the Old World, and soon squash was snaking its way into the culinary traditions of the Spanish, French, and Italians. The Brits oddly like to refer to squash as “vegetable marrow” (and refer to that ball-and-paddle game as “squash”).

    You may be surprised to learn that there are two categories of squash. Summer squash is characterized by the delicate-skinned gems that are best eaten straight from the vine. Their many shapes and colors can cheer up your garden and include yellow squash, zucchini, crookneck, and pattypan. Their skins and seeds are edible, and their flesh has a high water content making them easy to eat without a lot of cooking. Winter squash, on the other hand, should be eaten when they are good and ready, after they have basted in the seasons, and felt the first touch of winter air. They are characterized by their tough skin and seeds. The deep yellow and orange flesh of the winter squash is firmer and requires more cooking.

    The winter bunch arrive in all shapes and sizes, their colors rivaling the fiery trees overhead. The hourglass-shaped butternut, with its fine-grained flesh, has a soft but tremendous flavor when roasted. Dark green with orange markings, the acorn squash is one of the most popular. The spaghetti squash, sometimes referred to as the “golden football,” never ceases to amaze as you scrape out the long yellow strands from the solid flesh. And of course, the pumpkin, which has become the grinning cheerleader for the squash family and an international icon for the first holiday in Eating Season.

    Kicking off the season with a good batch of toasted pumpkin seeds or a deftly turned loaf of pumpkin bread may jump those eating instincts into overdrive. So much so that you can’t seem to wait until the third Thursday in November for more. If you feel so inclined to explore the flesh of the squash harvest yourself, you’ll find the book Zucchini, Pumpkins, and Squash by Kathleen Desmond Stang to be a fitting guide. There are great recipes and tips about how to become a squash guru.

    If you’d rather celebrate the season at the table of others, make your way to the restaurant Auriga in Minneapolis. Chefs Van Eeckhout and Goodwin have long known the secrets of harvest food—they’ll seduce you with root vegetables and vine fruit and reinvent your idea of gorging during Eating Season. They have a pumpkin ravioli with duck confit, arugula, and a brown-butter sauce that will satisfy your seasonal cravings, and quite possibly root you there for the next three months.

  • Kippers Go Down Under

    My grandfather’s grandfather invented kippers. The family tradition is that if he had not sold the patent for his method of making smoked herrings to Woodgers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northeastern England for 200 pounds, we might all have been rich beyond the dreams of creosote. Imagine a penny-a-fish royalty on every kipper consumed on the Flying Scotsman by an Agatha Christie hero fleeing northwards, and the ching soon starts to add up.

    Great-great grandfather cut a swathe through the 19th century. There is a daguereotype photo showing him with full set of Victorian whiskers and a long-stemmed “churchwarden” clay pipe. He served on the ship on which Napoleon was carried off to his final exile on the island of Saint Helena, he had a son called Elijah, and his wife is said to have been the first person ever to own a steam trawler.

    All of which probably explains my lifelong predilection for smoked fish. Proper kippers are not easy to get in the Twin Cities, but it is a truth which deserves a wider currency that a certain well-known chain of bagel shops will sell you a side or packet of pretty good smoked salmon for a pretty good price, and they sometimes have specials around Christmas.

    A lifelong taste for smoked fish naturally precipitates a lifelong search for good wine to go with it. The wine must, of course, be white, light enough to allow the taste of the fish to come through, strong enough in the nose to blend with the smoke, and sufficiently acid to cut into the oils which are meant to be so good for you and some say were the secret of the braininess of Jeeves, the perfect gentleman’s personal gentleman.

    Much of the pleasure of such a search comes from trying. When you set out for Ithaca, pray that the way be long, as the Greek poet puts it. But there is one spot on this quest, inexpensive and consistently pleasing, to which I find myself returning regularly. It is Rosemount Chardonnay, all the way from Australia, a fine masculine wine with a powerful flavor, consistent enough to suggest to one lady drinker the persistent charm of honeysuckle. Certainly it has nose enough for the smoky taste of kippers, and strong road-holding qualities on the palate. It is generally available for less than $10 a bottle, and there is not a headache in a hogshead of it.

    Australian wine has come a long way in the last generation. The crimes formerly committed under the label “Australian Burgundy”—once satirized as Chateau Downunder—are a thing of the distant past. Wines like Rosemount Chardonnay taste good. They have to; it is a fact that Australians drink twice as much wine per head as inhabitants of the United States. They also sell well; Rosemount is the largest selling brand of white wine in Australia.

    In England, where it has been popular for nearly 20 years, “strine wine” has a reputation for reliability. California wine-makers penetrated the British market a few years earlier than the Australians, but got off to a poor start by selling there the lesser products of that great state, notable mostly for their fancy carafes and strong aroma of burnt matches. The Aussies must have guessed they would lose money underestimating the taste of the Great British Public; theirs is wine which no one could dislike. I will back Rosemount Chardonnay against kippers and smoked salmon any time. Only those who spend Christmas Eve at Ingebretsen’s on Lake Street will be able to say if it can stand up to lutefisk.

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

  • The Fruit of Knowledge

    Forget baseball, it’s just a bunch of millionaires running around in a circle. Hot dogs are full of toxic elements. And the bald eagle, while a majestic site indeed, is actually a bit of a scavenger and bully. There is one symbol that all Americans can embrace, one icon that is known and loved by millions. It is that most democratic of fruit: I give you the apple.

    Think about it. Unlike the flag, no one is campaigning to pass legislation on whether you can burn an apple or not. In fact, setting the apple to flame may be one of the highest compliments you can pay to the luscious fruit, bringing out the sugars which meld beautifully with cinnamon. The apple is as diverse as the country itself. At last count, there were more than 7,500 varieties, and new varieties are being cross-pollinated every year. Many of us learned our first lessons in capitalism as we tried, usually in vain, to swap the apples in our lunches for something better down the table. And maybe we learned a little bit about politics, too, as we shined them and gingerly set them on the teacher’s desk.

    Where would our country be without the Big Apple? One theory is that the nickname was coined by jazz greats like Charlie Parker because Manhattan was known for having “lots of apples on the tree,” that is, lots of jumping jazz joints. Our affection for apple pie is legendary and timeless, but during the Depression, to save money and stretch ingredients, hard-pressed Americans would make it with just a bottom crust. Only more affluent families could afford apple pies with an “upper crust.” And does anybody not know how to “keep the doctor away”? The apple’s lofty place in our culture is well preserved in the language, too—from “the apple of your eye” to a certain personal computer with a cultish and loyal following.

    In a pie, sauce, or fritter, peeled or unpeeled, smothered with caramel or left fresh, crisp and clean, we all have our apple preferences. In fact, last year the average American consumed 16 pounds of fresh apples and 29 pounds of processed apples (juices, ciders, apple products, and so on). Grown in every state in the continental United States, most apple orchards are in Washington, New York, and Michigan. We rank second only to China among the top apple-producing countries of the world. Last year, our total apple production was about 230 million cartons, valued at around $1.5 billion. Of that crop, 25 percent of the total fresh-market crop was exported to countries like Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, and Indonesia.

    Like most things American, the roots of the original apple tree lie elsewhere. Some believe the apple is as old as temptation itself, owing to the story of the Garden of Eden. Most agree that the apple originated somewhere in the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian seas, today known as Kazakhstan, where 300-year-old, 50-foot trees still bloom. This area was a well known stop on the silk trade route, and it’s likely that travelers filched wild apples and traded the seeds. Eventually, the domesticated apple evolved, and was subsequently spread through the world by the Romans. A few varieties and practices were lost with the fall of the Romans, but many more were saved, thanks to the orcharding customs of Christian monks. Further east, Muslims, too, preserved the traditions of cultivation through the tenets of Islam, which explicitly encourage botany.

    As the apple came to the New World with the settlers, new legends and traditions sprang up. The simple and good-hearted apple farmer John Chapman of Leominster, Massachusetts became famous in the 1800s for distributing apple seeds and trees to settlers in budding frontier territories like Ohio, Indiana, and beyond. The myth—and the Disney portrayal—has Johnny Appleseed roaming the sunny countryside wearing ragged clothes and, oddly, a tin pot as a hat. A true American hero.

    Whatever region you travel to in this country, you’re sure to find different varieties you’ve never seen before. The Ginger Gold, currently cultivated in Virginia, owes its existence to hurricane Camille, the 1969 storm that destroyed much of the orchard of Clyde and Ginger Harvey. Many years later, they discovered a tree grown from a seed that had been blown into the orchard from somewhere else, a tree unlike they had seen before. By the early 80s the tree had born fruit, and they realized they had a unique and delicious new variety on their hands. They promptly named it after the lady of the house.

    Ginger Gold is known as an up-and-comer, as is the locally created Honeycrisp. Minnesota orchards are known for a distinctive assortment of apples that are rare or absent from the rest of the country, apples like the Fireside, Wealthy, Prairie Spy, Haralson, Red Baron, and Honeygold to name a few. Haralson, with its crisp tartness, is probably our most popular, but Honeycrisp is creating a buzz both locally and internationally. In fact, it’s probably the most talked about variety in the country at the moment. Introduced in 1991 by a University of Minnesota research team, it’s a cross of Macoun and Honeygold varieties. Crisp and very flavorful, Honeycrisps usually ripen around the end of September or the beginning of October.

    The other thing Minnesota orchards are known for is good old Midwestern fun. The absolute best way to spend a bright fall day is to haul the family out to one of the locally owned orchards. It’s almost impossible to find one that doesn’t have hayrides, ciderfests, jumping goats, pick-your-own, and—of course—a corn maze. (If you can get to Aamodt’s, in particular, they have a killer ciderbrat with an onion/apple relish that is sweet and tart—an inimitable autumn treat.) It’s good to sit under the autumn sky, cider in one hand, an apple-brat in the other, supporting your local farmers and being a red-blooded American.

    Local Orchards near
    the metro area
    North: Pine tree Apple Orchard
    White Bear Lake
    (651) 429-7202

    South: Appleside Orchard
    Highway 3
    Farmington
    (651) 463-2505

    East: Aamodt’s Apple Farm
    Hwy 36 & Manning Ave (Cty 15)
    Stillwater
    (651) 439-3127

    West: Apple Jack Orchards, Inc.
    4875 37th St SE
    Delano
    (612) 972-6673

    Stephanie March is a regular contributor to The Rake.

  • Ex Oriente Lux

    Some countries come up so often in the news that you feel you ought to know more about them. There is a painless way to achieve this. Read travel literature. An intelligent travel book provides more enlightenment than any number of newspaper accounts of the latest atrocities, as well as placing in a longer historical perspective lands which (as was once said of Ireland) produce more history than can be consumed locally.

    Imagine, then, the pleasure of finding a book about the Near East that is both easy to read and fresh in its perspective. It is William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain. The author had the fine idea of travelling clockwise around the Eastern Mediterranean (what we used to call the Levant), starting from the monastic community at Mount Athos in northern Greece and ending among the Copts of Egypt, chronicling the scattered remnants of the Christian commonwealth which once covered the whole Mediterranean world in the three centuries leading up to the rise of Islam in the mid-seventh century.

    Dalrymple’s visit to a Christian abbey in northern Mesopotamia is particularly poignant. He describes one of the surviving monks, a man whose native tongue is Syriac, a variant of the Aramaic language Jesus spoke, looking out over the monastery’s parched and deserted vineyards. The escarpment of Tur ’Abdin was an area whose wine was well known in Biblical times. Not anymore.

    In the Muslim Near East, Christians have traditionally been associated with winemaking. Of course, despite the Koranic prohibitions, they had no monopoly on its consumption. One thinks of the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Sot, and of the poet Omar Khayyam with his book of verses underneath the bough, his loaf of bread and jug of wine, and Thou—even though scholars tell me that the lines would be more accurately translated as a cask of wine, and half a sheep, and Thou. But in common belief, Christianity and wine went together; the Armenian Christians of Ispahan in Persia made rugs with irregularities in the pattern which the dealers called “tipsy carpets.”

    Many modern Near Eastern states produce fine wines. The Vieux Thibar of Tunisia is powerful stuff and the multifarious wines of Turkey are a pleasure to the traveller. (My favorite is called Villa Doluca—pronounced do-lud-jah) but they are not frequently found round here. The best known Levantine wine is called Chateau Musar, made for more than 70 years now by a Maronite Christian family in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. The vines grow on gravel and limestone 3,000 feet above sea level, and they are guaranteed a mild climate by protective mountains on either side. This valley is otherwise famous for the ancient temples at Ba’albek, the largest in the Roman world and known in pre-Christian times for its ritual prostitutes (and known today for its warlords).

    There is nothing quite like Chateau Musar. It comes in a claret bottle (with shoulders), its maker studied at the University of Bourdeaux (France was the dominant western power here from the mid-19th century onwards), and the grapes are mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, the variety which gives flavor to most Bourdeaux. Yet the taste and character is more like a Rhone—more sunshine, more alcohol. I recently considered a bottle of the 1996 vintage. It was strong yet subtle.

    Chateau Musar takes a long time to make. The different varieties of grape (Cabernet, Cinsault, and various others) are fermented separately for two years before they are blended and then left to age for several more years. It also varies in price; I have seen it on the Internet for less than $12 and for more than $20. This is a wine well worth bringing home in your luggage if you take a trip this fall, to lands where it is more readily available—the Levant, Europe, or England. Whether you think it was Noah who invented wine or Dionysius, Chateau Musar will show you how the ancient art of winemaking can be refined to a high elegance.

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

  • The Chef’s Secret Weapon

    Consider the radish. A noble vegetable to say the least, the radish is easily recognized by most people. While it may not be universally loved or fawned over on chic menus around town, the radish has a fame that allows it to be readily picked out of a veggie bin. Unfortunately familiarity, or lack thereof, may cause us to pass over a more deserving vegetable, one that has been known and loved through antiquity, but doesn’t own a spot on the grocery list of today’s shoppers. What’s worse, this mystery plant is one of a cook’s best weapons, edible and versatile from stem to stern. Fennel is the underdog of the kitchen.

    There are quite a few factors which contribute to the mystery surrounding fennel. Is it an herb? Is it a vegetable? Is it a seed? Yes. Isn’t fennel the same thing as anise? No. While it may share a touch of the licorice flavor of anise, it is a completely different plant. In fact it’s two plants. Florence fennel, foeniculum vulgare dulce, or finocchio as the Italians know it, is cultivated primarily for its wide bulb, which is eaten like a vegetable. Common fennel, foeniculum vulgare, is known to grow wild and has no bulb. It shares the same sturdy stem and frothy leaves as finocchio, but is mostly harvested for its seeds. So: The word “fennel” applies to all the parts of two separate plants—the greens, the stalks, the bulbs, and the seeds. As you might expect, the full range of what this plant can do in the kitchen is staggering.

    Native to the Mediterranean, fennel is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. The Greeks believed that Prometheus hid the fire he stole from the sun in a fennel stalk as he brought the gift to humankind. Greek athletes ate fennel seeds before their Olympic competitions, ensuring enlivenment and strength. The Romans found their own uses, including no less than 22 different medicinal applications for the plant, as outlined by Pliny. Women counted on its use as a diuretic and learned that a tea of fennel leaves, passed through mother’s milk, could cure a colicky baby. For as long as writers have been writing, there have been words glorifying fennel and its virtues—a cure-all for such maladies including headaches, toothaches, coughs, asthma, and arthritis—and even suggesting that its use could cause substantial weight loss. Among fennel’s many fans you can count Milton, Shakespeare, Dumas, and Jefferson. Isn’t that enough to get it on your weekly list?

    I hear your concerns: What does it taste like? What the hell do I do with it? Enter the fear of black jellybeans. On a recent trip to Lunds, I noticed that the fennel bulbs were labeled as “anise or fennel.” It may be a way for people to understand a bit better what the flavor nuances of fennel are, but it mostly makes people turn and say ick! Not to knock anise but, among other things, it is used to flavor such liqueurs as Ouzo and Pernod and has a strong sweet liquorice flavor. While fennel does impart a nuance of that flavor, it suffers a grievous slander with the association. The key to the real flavor of fennel lies with its preparation.

    So how should you prepare it? Surprisingly enough, the answer is, “Any damn way you please.” Fennel is versatile and flexible, and it will forgive a multitude of culinary mistakes. However you prepare it, the subtleties and intensities will come out in different ways. Shaved or chopped raw fennel in a salad will yield a fresh clean taste. (In Italy it is often eaten raw at the end of the meal to cleanse the palate.) When heated in a variety of ways such as braising or sautéing, fennel is transformed into a new food. The crispiness turns to tenderness and the flavor becomes more understated and mellow. Fennel lives well wherever you put it, chopped into soups and stews, battered and fried as finger food, baked into bread as the Romans did so long ago. The seeds alone have countless uses, from sausage seasoning to Chinese five-spice. Honestly, fennel is the secret weapon of chefs, and I mean to spread the word.

    If you are still afraid to go the course alone, your best bet is to sample the wares of others. The ever-remarkable work of Chef Alexander Roberts at Restaurant Alma is a great place to start. He has been serving fennel in different forms on many a menu. The best example presently is his seared tuna and shaved fennel. Roberts loves fennel for its versatility and rare balance between vibrancy and delicacy. He suggests that another mouth-watering way to enjoy fennel through the fall is in a gratin with cream and herbs—especially as an accompaniment to meats.

    As you begin to understand and appreciate the complexities, you should head to Vincent for the full fennel experience. It is a culinary staple there and Sous Chef Don Saunders likes it because it often provides a natural sweetness, substituting nicely for more pedestrian sugars and sweeteners. Incidentally, he thinks tarragon is a great match for fennel. You can test this theory out with their salmon dish, which uses all the components from the ancient plant with a touch of tarragon. The salmon is coated in fennel seeds and seared, served with a risotto made with lobster stock and fresh shaved fennel, and the beautiful dish is garnished with the deep fried greens. If that doesn’t inspire you to look beyond the radish and the anise, you really need to get out more!

    Restaurant Alma
    528 University Ave., Mpls.
    (612) 379-4909
    Vincent
    1100 Nicollet Ave., Mpls.
    (612) 630-1189

    Stephanie March is a Minneapolis writer.

  • The Philosopher and the Wine List

    Bertrand Russell may have looked like God—piercing eyes, white hair, son of the Duke of Bedford, that sort of thing. But he was a philosopher not noted for an enthusiastic belief in the Divine. When asked what he would say when he got to Heaven, he replied in clipped tones, “‘God’, I will say, ‘you are a very mean fellow. You did not give us enough evidence to go on.’” Many restaurant wine lists seem to operate on the same divine principle. I know someone who was driven to ordering “vin rouge” from one particularly pretentious list—not red wine, you understand, but vin rouge.

    More often you look down the list under the appraising eye of someone who thinks you ought to be able to make wise decisions about wine (if about nothing else in life) and you see no more than the name of a grape variety, “Syrah,” and the maker’s name, “Joe.” You shut your eyes, hope for the best and state your choice, humming the while, “Che Syrah Syrah, whatever will be will be.” Which is of course not just the first line of a cheesy pop song. “Che Sara Sara” is the motto of the Duke of Bedford, which is why you see it all over the place in London—especially near the British Museum, long owned by the Duke of Bedford (Bertrand Russell, again).

    Sometimes you’re lucky. A pithy line on a wine list the other evening, “Pinot Noir, Kenwood” introduced a really pleasing bottle and prompted a spot of reflection. It would be a pity to have had the experience and missed the meaning. What was there to know about this wine? Let’s try induction.

    Kenwood is more likely to be named for a Californian town than the homonymous manufacturer of kitchen appliances or the upmarket mosquito breeding-ground of Minneapolis. Pinot Noir is the grape the French use to make the nectar known as Burgundy. (Did B. Russell feel that nectar was wasted on the Gods?) So this was going to be red and probably stronger, fruitier, and more voluptuous (I nearly said full-bodied, but you know what I mean) than many table wines. The bottle itself provided more information. It announced its year (2000) and the area it came from—the Russian River Valley, a misty wooded cleft in the California coast first settled by Russian fur-trappers in the early 19th century, as they spread south from Alaska (at that time Russian territory). It said that it contained 13.8 percent alcohol by volume, which was cheering but not of course the most important point. And on the back it said it had been aged in French oak barrels for a year (oak imparts its own taste), had a smooth finish, and should not be drunk when I was pregnant (pretty safe there; B. Russell too) or about to drive. Helpful, all of that, but only pointers to the empirical pleasure of pouring a glass and examining it with as many senses as are decent and legal. The eye saw a good deep red, the nose detected the sort of smell you might get if you cross-pollinated a garden rose with a bottle of brandy, the good round taste suggested that after the first glass a second might be an enormously good idea. It was the mind, though, which suggested that this was a drink less analogous to Burgundy than to Port, an Old World wine with few Californian equivalents (though there is an intriguing wine wittily named Starboard).

    Only experience will enable you to verify my observations. I thought this a wine delightful in itself, a Ding an Sich. At significantly more than $15 a bottle, this is a bit more expensive than most of the wines which make their way into this column, but I certainly thought it was worth it. Would Bertrand Russell? Can we know what is in Other Minds? It is easier to sample the evidence and make up our own.

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

  • The Love Apple

    We are a deserving people. We bear down under the barrage of cold and wetness for some eight months, to emerge into the light for the remaining four. We understand our lot in life, we choose it. We have stronger character for the winters we suffer, and we have a deeper love and appreciation for the summers that thaw us. Looking forward to the gifts of the sun, we revel on our bike paths, enjoy our many outdoor dining options, and throw fests at every turn for every reason. If there is one icon to give form to our passions about summer, to illustrate the brief hedonistic streak in an otherwise puritan life, it is the food that is all about joy—the tomato.

    Round, red, and luscious, the tomato is the picture of pleasure. It has no rough outer shell to peel, no artichoke-like defenses. It is soft and fleshy to the touch. You need not worry about stems, cores, or nasty pits; the seeds simply slide down your chin with the first ravenous bite.

    Indigenous to Central and South America, the tomato was cultivated by the Incas and Aztecs as early as 700 C.E. The conquistadors took the Nahuatl name tamatl along with the fruit and introduced it to Europe in the 1500s. At first the tomato found its most loyal following among the hot-blooded Mediterranean countries of Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The Italians, so enamored of this succulent fruit dubbed it pomo d’oro or apple of gold. You have to wonder—Who were the Italians before the tomato?

    As the tomato moved north, its legend grew. The French renamed it pomo d’amore, or the love apple. The Germans called it the apple of paradise, believing it to be the actual “apple” offered to Adam by Eve. But many, like the British, shunned the red beauty as a poisonous berry. Perhaps because it’s in the nightshade family, they had a right to be nervous. In fact the foliage of a tomato plant is poisonous. During the 18th century the Linnaean name of the plant was coferred—Lycopersicon esculentum, but it was known as “wolf’s peach.”

    Unfortunately the fear of tomatoes traveled with the colonists as they set out for the New World. It wasn’t until the 1800s when the Creoles in New Orleans unleashed the tomato in this country with their fiery gumbos and jambalayas. By the 1850s the tomato was in produce carts and home gardens in every city in America. In fact some of the varieties begun in gardens at that time are considered priceless gems today.

    The “heirloom” tomato has been bandied about on chic menus for a few summers already. With names like Green Zebra, Blondkopfchen, Mr. Stripey, and Eva Purple Ball, these are definitely the showgirls of your vegetable garden. Some of these varieties have been around since the 200 years passing from family to family, and some have been created in the past decade through cross pollination. Regardless of their lineage, the heirloom market has boomed and thereby created more colorful, complex, tasty fruits.

    And yes, the tomato is a fruit. If you want to get into a heated, passionate discussion, gather a botanist and a chef to discuss the intractable fruit-or-vegetable controversy. The botanist will have logic and science on his side. He will point out that generally, a fruit is the edible part of the plant that contains the seeds, while a vegetable is the edible stems, leaves, and roots of the plant. Fruits are apples, oranges, papayas. Vegetables are cauliflower, carrots, and rhubarb. At this point the chef will throw down her tongs and scoff. Papayas and tomatoes in the same camp?! If not by science, then by common law, she will say, the tomato lives with vegetables, making a much more palatable existence among the garlic, onions, and savory foods of the world. Leave the syrupy sweet stuff to the trees. The tomato will dwell with the ground vegetables.

    It hardly matters, when you contemplate that first beautiful vine-ripened tomato from your garden. One that in the throes of spring planting was only a vision in your head as you patiently waited for the sun to work its mojo. The rubbery tomatoes in the grocery aisle that are hydroponically grown are meant to give you a December fix, to reawaken the frozen part of the tongue where summer lives; that’s all. Beware any restaurant that offers a tomato bruschetta or caprese in November or March. They should be held accountable for their light pink/whitish affront to the senses.

    The true and pure way to enjoy summer is to take pleasure in a tomato straight from the plant. Carry a small dish of kosher salt out to the garden, pluck and sprinkle. Stand there with the warm August sun beating on your neck, the juice running down your arm. Heady from the buzz of the garden around you, savor that moment—like only a sunburned Minnesotan can.

    The Second Best Way to Eat Your Garden Tomatoes

    A Mess of Caprese

    Traditional mozzarella caprese is usually sliced and laid out in layers. I think this way is more fun and gives a bigger bang in each mouthful.

    Coarsely chop three or four big fat tomatoes. Throw them in a big bowl. Tear a ball of fresh mozzarella into little chunks. Throw them in the bowl. Grab a handful of fresh basil, chop it how you like, throw it in the bowl. Roughly chop or mince three cloves of garlic, in it goes. Get some good extra virgin olive oil and douse the mess in the bowl. Don’t be afraid to jump in with your hands and toss it around a bit. Try not to make it too soupy.

    Cracked pepper and salt it to your liking. Maybe some red pepper flakes?

    All you need now is a big crusty loaf of bread as your fork. And a hammock.

    Stephanie March is a Minneapolis writer.