A Winter's Tail (Oxtails Braised in White Wine)

 

Continuing on the theme of winter-worthy dishes, let us consider the oxtail.  I just saw a tweet from the National Weather Service to the effect that starting tonight (writing this Friday, January 15), temperatures are expected to remain below zero for at least the next 80 hours.  That’s three-plus days, folks, and that’s real Upper Midwest January weather.  Booya!  It could possibly be the coldest snap of what has otherwise been a fairly mild weather, and that makes it the perfect time to prepare the richest, most unctuous, rib-sticking, soul- and belly-warming dish that I know, and that is oxtail stew.

Actually, what I prefer to make is more of a braise than a stew, the difference being really not much more than how much liquid is used in the cooking and is left at the end: stew=lots of liquid; braise=not so much.  I think that in a stew the liquid is most often water, while a braise uses a more flavorful liquid like beer, wine, cider, but that’s not written in stone, or in Escoffier, that I know of, and opinions may vary.  What I’m looking for in the end result is oxtails cooked to absolute surrender, collapsing in a rich, savory, lip-smacking sauce, enough to bathe a mound of polenta or rice, or a tangle of noodles.

The term oxtail is an odd survivor from some earlier age when, presumably, people ate oxen.  What we’re really talking about is the tail of a cow, the same beast that gives us T-bone steaks, chuck roast, and hamburger.  Oxtails used to be pretty cheap, but in these days of nostalgic nose-to-tail cooking, they demand a premium, especially when you consider than most of what you pay for in a package of oxtails is inedible bone and cartilage.  The oxtails from grass-fed animals I picked up at Seward Co-op cost $6.99 a pound, over $15 for the two-pound or so package; that will feed the two of us generously for dinner, with perhaps a lunch for one or two leftover.  Eating low off the cow is not cheap these days. [We actually wound up getting two dinners for two out of these oxtails, plus a cup of soup each to round out another lunch.  First time through, we ate our fill of the recipe as presented here.  Second go, I removed all the meat from the leftover oxtails, added a little more broth and a splash of wine, some chopped cabbage, cooked chickpeas, simmered until the cabbage was tender-crisp.  Served with leftover polenta, it was a wonderful mid-week dinner.]

I said the cartilage in oxtails is not edible, but that’s not quite true.  There will be gelatinous or slightly crunchy bits of cartilage left even after long cooking, bits that will be our dogs’ delight.  But in that extended braise, the cartilage and bone will exude collagen into the braising liquid, and really, that’s the whole point of a dish like oxtails.  The meat is nice, for sure, but even more delicious is that unique, almost gluey, quality that imbues the sauce left at the end of cooking.  It’s a flavor sensation you don’t get any other way, and the rare case where the word “gluey” is likely to be attached to food in a positive sense.  Viscosity and specific gravity are other terms that come to mind, also rarities in the world of food writing.  As with the puree of cabbage and potatoes that I wrote about last time, oxtails are not the sort of thing you’re likely to crave in the midst of a July heat wave.  

No, this is apres-ski or post-wood-chopping food, to be washed down with a robust red wine (the Marietta Old Vine Red is one that pops immediately to mind, and is widely available; what we actually drank with the dish described below was an Italian barbera, cheap from Trader Joe’s, quite suitable).

When I’m making oxtails, I always think of my father, Albert William "Bill" Laidlaw, who died too young, at the age of 65, back in May of 1990.  During by childhood, in the 1960s and early ‘70s, the term foodie had not been invented (O, happy days!), and if it had existed, you would never have applied it to my dad.  But my father was, I think, a sort of secret gourmand, and as I think back on his brief catalog of favorite dishes, I realize that he specialized in what you might call difficult foods.  He would take charge of the broiler when he was home for dinner (a traveling salesman for much of my childhood, my father was absent a lot), cooking up sizzling rib steaks or pork chops.  Of course when we barbequed, he took the lead—his most important piece of equipment being a Bubble-Up bottle filled with water, with a sort of shower head stopper in the neck, essential for dousing the frequent flare-ups that threatened to incinerate the chicken. 

But on the more esoteric side, he absolutely loved marrow bones, and seemed to relish extracting each, last, savory morsel from the hollow bones.  For roast beef sandwiches he would mix up strong English mustard from the powder that came in those distinctive rectangular yellow metal containers, using a shot glass and a toothpick, stirring with the concentration of a medieval alchemist.  I remember taking a whiff of it, and thinking that my nose would never be right again.   

Perhaps the most exotic (and to me, at the time, oddly frightening) food he prepared was smoked Lake Winnipeg goldeye, a sort of whitefish.  My parents were from Winnipeg, and on our yearly trips to the homeland he would sometimes bring back a smoked goldeye or two.  The interesting thing about my father and the goldeye was this:  he would eat them all by himself, and outside of regular mealtimes.  He would heat them in foil in the oven, and the house would fill with that smell of warm smoked fish—a smell unlike anything else that ever issued from our kitchen on North Eden Drive in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie. 

Maybe my memory is selective, but I recall him then sitting alone at the kitchen table, with the foil packet of warm, fragrant fish open before him, and with an air of utter, blissful satisfaction, going at the flesh, revealed by pulling back the reddish-gold skin, with his fingers alone.  In this iconic memory the rest of the family stands at a respectful distance, beholding the ritual devouring of the goldeye with some mix of awe, delight, terror, and pride.  I think now that my mom simply couldn’t stand the stuff, and it was assumed that my brother and I would be equally unappreciative.  But there it is, the elemental power of food, that such memories (even if embroidered or dodgy) can survive decades, and help to define people, times, and relationships.

Oh, and my dad loved oxtails, so this recipe, though somewhat fancier in preparation than what we used to make, is one I’m sure he would have enjoyed, and so is dedicated to his memory.  There are lots of comfort food sorts of dishes—braises, stews, warming soups—that, when you take the first, long-anticipated bite, fill you with a sense of:  “You know, everything’s going to be okay…”.  Well prepared oxtails have that quality, and more.  The first unctuous, melting bite of really good oxtails brings a sense of:  “Everything’s going to be fabulous, and tomorrow’s going to be grand, and we shall live in joy from here ever after…”. 

You think I’m exaggerating?  Then go ahead, give it a try.  

I rendered some home-salted pork fat to use in browning the oxtails and vegetables, simply because I had it on hand.  The rendered pork fat has a high smoke point, little flavor of its own, and does a lovely job of browning things without burning.  But  you can certainly use vegetable oil in its place; if everything else is in place, don't let the lack of salt pork stop you from making this wonderful dish.

Also, re the garnish:  I browned up some small shallots and button mushrooms, which you'll recognize as the traditional garnish for coq au vin and boeuf bourguignon.  This is also strictly optional, though delightful.  You could also add fresh vegetables toward the end, to make it more of a stew--perhaps peas, blanched pieces of carrot, parsnip, rutabaga, or celery root, that sort of thing.  Put them in for the last 30 minutes of gentle cooking.

Oxtails Braised in White Wine

Serves two generously, with leftovers

2 pounds oxtails

2 ounces salt pork in ½-inch dice, divided, optional or

     3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil, divided

1 medium carrot, peeled and cut in 5 or 6 pieces

1 small leek, white and green, cleaned, cut in 2-inch pieces

1 medium or ½ a large onion, coarsely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 ounce dried tomatoes, chopped in small pieces

2 pinches dried thyme, or a couple sprigs fresh

12 black peppercorns

2 whole cloves

¼ teaspoon whole hua jiao (Sichuan peppercorns)

Salt

1 ½ cups dry white wine, such as sauvignon blanc

Water

¾ cup chicken or beef stock, optional

Optional garnish:

About 20 small button mushrooms, white or crimini

A dozen very small shallots, or pearl onions

Heat your oven to 325.

In an oven-proof dutch oven with a lid—enameled cast iron, like Le Creuset, is ideal—begin to render half the salt pork with a little bit of oil—the other half of the salt pork will be used the next day, so refrigerate it.  If not using salt pork, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the dutch oven.  Salt the oxtails, then brown them over medium-high heat in the oil or salt pork renderings.  Turn them often to brown all sides; take your time with this step, as the browning develops a lot of flavor.  It will probably take a good 15 minutes.  If the salt pork cubes start to burn, remove them from the pan and set aside.

When the oxtails are well browned, remove them from the pan and add the carrot, onion, leek, and garlic, along with a couple pinches of salt.  Cook the vegetables, stirring often, until they wilt and start to take on a bit of color.  Add the wine, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden scraper to dislodge any browned bits.  Then add 1 ½ cups water, the dried tomatoes, thyme, peppercorns, cloves, and hua jiao.

Return the oxtails and salt pork cubes to the pan, bring to a boil, then remove from the heat.  Cover, and bake for 3 to 4 hours at 325, turning the oxtails over every 30 minutes or so.  Add water as needed to keep the liquid about halfway up the oxtails.  You want the liquid to be bubbling gently, so adjust your oven temp accordingly (some ovens run hot, others cold, etc.; mine, of course, is perfect…for this recipe, anyway).

After the 3 to 4 hours of baking, test the oxtails to see if the meat will come easily away from the bones.  If they’re properly done you should see the meat starting to pull away from the bones.  You want the meat to be utterly yielding; chewy oxtails are a travesty, and such a sad waste of all the time you’ve spent on them.  Provided that you don’t cook them to hot—i.e., furiously boiling, or so that the liquid all evaporates, and they burn—it’s really not possible to cook them too long.

When you are satisfied that the oxtails are tender, remove the pot from the oven, allow it to cool, then refrigerate the whole thing until a couple of hours before you are ready to serve.  The dish can be made up to this point several days ahead.

A couple of hours before serving, remove the oxtails from the fridge.  You will find that a good amount of fat has solidified on the surface of the liquid—which will now actually be more like gelatin.  Remove as much of the fat as you care to.  Start to heat the oxtails on medium heat, and add more water and/or the optional stock to keep the liquid at half-oxtail level.  Taste for salt; it shouldn’t need much, if any, as so much flavor will have developed in the long cooking of the meat and vegetables; as you taste the liquid, close your eyes and smack your lips a little—there, now you know what umami means.

For the shallot and mushroom garnish:  start to render the remaining diced salt pork in a bit of oil, or just heat 1 tablespoon olive oil, then add the shallots.  Cook, stirring often, until they begin to brown a bit, then add the mushrooms and a good pinch of salt and a grind of pepper.  Toss these around in the fat, and cook gently until they are quite brown, soft, and fragrant, 10 to 12 minutes.  Add the mushrooms and shallots to the oxtails.

Now we’re just about ready to serve:  open a bottle of hearty red wine.  Warm some crusty bread, and put a dish of butter on the table—I would go for salted butter here.  I like to serve oxtails with polenta, which ups the warm and fuzzy comfort food quotient considerably.  We do polenta at a 4:1 water to coarse cornmeal ratio, cooking it gently for 25 to 30 minutes, adding a little additional water as needed to keep it creamy, stirring in a good knob of butter at the end, seasoning well with salt.

So:  spoon a mound of polenta onto each plate—a shallow bowl sort of plate works well here—making a shallow depression in the polenta to catch the sauce.  Nestle a couple sections of oxtail beside the polenta, and spoon sauce and vegetables generously over all.  Drink a toast to beauty of winter cooking, and then get in there and enjoy.

Back to the Stream 2015

I inaugurated the 2015 fishing season on Sunday with a trip to the Whitewater region of southeastern Minnesota.  It has become my tradition over the years to make a trip or three to Minnesota waters in the second half of April.  The regular (i.e., catch and kill, rather than catch and release) season in Minnesota opens a couple of weeks earlier than in Wisconsin, which opens for hook ‘em & cook ‘em the first Saturday of May, Kentucky Derby day.  Both states have lengthy catch and release seasons during the winter and early spring months, and some years ago I did fish Wisconsin streams in April.  You can have some impressive days of catching fish if you come upon an early mayfly, stonefly, or caddis fly emergence.  Also, it just seems that the fish are less wary at that time of year, maybe because there hasn’t been too much to eat over the winter.

But I have eschewed the early season fishing in recent years because I don’t agree with the catch and release “ethic.”  As much as I appreciate all the aesthetic aspects of flyfishing for trout, I’m a meat fisherman at heart, and I don’t like the “moral” distinctions that some catch and release advocates apply to the legitimate choices available to those who practice this pastime.  So I generally back up my position by not stringing up my rod unless there’s a legal opportunity to put a trout or two in my creel.  Which is not to say I won’t waver in my convictions on some bluebird day during the early season, maybe even next April; or indeed that I won’t find a principled justification for poaching the odd trout.  You just never know.  It pays to keep your options open.

I hadn’t been planning to round up the gear and head for the stream on Sunday, but when I looked at the week ahead it suddenly seemed like one of the few days I would be able to get away.  We have this new little creature in the house, a nine-week-old griffon puppy named Gracie, and she’s pretty high maintenance.  Actually she’s a sweetheart, and worth all the trouble (so far), but with Mary away at work part of the week, I knew I would have to be around the house, and then there were other obligations on other days…. It’s just really unconscionable that life often shows so little regard for fishing.

Sunday was actually looking like a prime day for fishing—overcast and spitting a bit, but not too cold or windy, and no downpours in the forecast.  My only reluctance arose from the fact that the Minnesota trout season had opened just the day before, and opening weekend can bring out crowds of fisherfolk who in those conditions do not always display the finest aspects of their nature.  Still I figured it would be worth a shot in the slightly rainy conditions; with some years of experience on southeastern Minnesota streams, and a little patience, I thought I’d be able to find some quiet water to fish.

There weren’t many vehicles parked along the branch of the Whitewater River, a nice surprise.  But when I reached the DNR lot in the wildlife management area through which the river flows, six vehicles had beaten me there—not much of a surprise there, since it was already late morning.  I hesitated only briefly.  There were miles of river upstream from here, with no easy public access.  It was also likely that some of the vehicles had arrived together for an opening weekend gathering, and so the fishermen would be clumped.  And then, if nothing else, it was a pleasant enough day for a walk in the woods.  I was pretty sure the ramps would be up, and so I would find something edible to take home.

I’ve been fly fishing for 25 years now, so recalling how to put a rod together and tie on a fly is not difficult, even if I haven’t done it in the last seven months.  I walked in waders, wading boots, vest, and a faded Badgers baseball hat down the rutted two-track with a steep wooded hill on my right and a stubble cornfield on my left.  Beyond the cornfield, across the river, limestone bluffs aspired, with birches, pine, and aspen on their flanks.  It’s a spectacular valley, and there are many good reasons to visit there, but it’s fishing that I know will always bring me back.

I had planned a good long hike to assure myself some undisturbed fishing, but as I came over a rise five minutes or less into my walk, I looked to the left and saw the river through the still leafless trees, and it looked like nice riffle water, and I saw no one fishing it.  My habit had always been to hike well upstream from here, but then aren’t habits made to be broken, I asked myself?  So I made the premature diversion thinking, well, if the hoards descend, I’ll revert to Plan A.  But it turned out to be a good call, with no need for second thoughts.  I fished happily for about three hours, and saw exactly three other people, at a distance.  No one walked into my water, and I did not round a bend to discover a party of raucous metal-chuckers.  It was an opening weekend miracle.

It wasn’t looking like a dry fly day: no rising fish, no apparent insect activity.  I tied on a girdle bug, a simple concoction of black chenille and white rubber legs; and then to a length of tippet tied to the bend in the girdle bug’s hook I knotted on a small hare’s ear nymph, which to the layman’s eye looks like a little brown fur wound around a hook, because that’s pretty much what it is.  Flies don’t necessarily have to be fancy to fool fish.

I waded into the stream in a shallow riffle with a rocky bottom, and as I sensed the water rushing over the top of my boots my blood rushed, too, with a sense of exhilaration.  Fishing writing can easily go over the top with evocations of mystical communion between the fisher and the natural world, but is indeed something of a sense of rebirth when you first step into a river after the long off-season.

Or as Nick Adams might have said: It was good.

Right away then, the fishing proved to be good, too.  Below the riffle where I entered the river the current divided into runs along either bank.  Casting first to the left I had a hit on my third cast, and failed to hook the fish, and then another hit a few casts later, and again my timing was off.  Nothing more on that side, but I was encouraged to know the fish were active, looking for food.  Casting then to the slightly deeper run on the right side, I lifted my arm after my third cast and saw the rod take on that splendid bend, and felt the line go taut, and there it was, fish on for the first time in 2015.

It was a lovely fish, too, a deep, chunky brown trout gold along its flanks, probably a little more than a foot long.  Meat fisherman though I am, I observe a small ritual of always releasing the first fish of the year, so once I had reeled the fish in close I ran my hand down the leader until I could grab the hare’s ear nymph stuck in the side of the trout’s lower jaw, gave it a quick twist and watched the fish turn and dive to safety on the bottom.  I never touched the fish or brought it out of the water.  

  

And from there the afternoon proceeded like…a really nice afternoon of fishing.  The only real negative was seeing several styrofoam worm containers discarded along the streambanks, which was irksome for two reasons--mainly because of the littering, also because this section of river is designated artificials only, no live bait allowed.  (The no worms rule was instituted to support a catch and release fishery, so I should probably feel a little more umbrage about it, if I were consistent.  When a fish goes for live bait it will often completely swallow the hook; this almost never happens with flies or other artificial lures.)

Probably the highlight—which was also, ironically, the biggest disappointment—was hooking a really good fish in a deep run not far downstream from where I started.  I cast across the run and let the flies sink and sweep through, and about in mid-stream my line took a jolt, my rod bent violently, and the reel whined as line peeled off.  I tussled with the fish for a bit, until it moved upstream, took the line down.  As the line went down I also had a sinking feeling.  One moment I was experiencing the thrill of playing a really nice fish; the next I was still standing there with the line taut, rod in that dynamic curve, yet everything was different.  The trout, which had taken the nymph, had found a log along the bottom of the stream and swum under it; the hook of the girdle bug had gotten stuck in the log, allowing the fish to break the tippet and swim away.  All I could do was roll up my sleeve, reach down the leader as far as I could without going snorkeling, give a tug and break the tippet.  I was lucky that the tippet broke right where it was tied to the hook, and I didn’t have to perform major leader repair.

I caught a few more fish, including one that was just barely under 12 inches, and that fish went in the creel.  Careful measurement is required on this stream to observe the regulations, for there is a no-kill slot of 12 to 16 inches, meaning all fish in that range must be released.  You are allowed to keep five fish under 12 inches, or four under 12 and one over 16.  I don’t think I’ve ever caught a 16-inch trout in that stream.

Although brook trout were native to this region, the introduced “German” brown trout now predominates.  I’ve never heard or seen them referred to as an invasive species, though.

The ramps were indeed in prime condition on this 18^th day of April, and I picked a nice sack full.  A spring trickles through the ramps patch, and this year it was wearing a lovely coat of green—nice, perky watercress.  I brought some of that home, too.  Also a few sprigs of mint growing along the streamside path, which I used to make a sort of julep with a bit of birch syrup and 2 Gingers whiskey.  I noticed other wild edibles:  garlic mustard (always referred to as an invasive species) and stinging nettles.  When I have ramps and cress I’m not that interested in garlic mustard, and I have nettles a’plenty all around the edges of my yard.

With the opening day’s bounty from stream and woods I made a simple, seasonal meal.  I fileted the trout, chopped the bones and put them in a saucepan with a chopped shallot, stuck that in a hot oven to brown up.  Then I added some white wine, chicken stock and water, and let it reduce and infuse, still in the oven.   

 

To anchor the plate I prepared a recipe I had never made before, “schupfnudeln” from David Bouley’s East of Paris.  It’s a sort of noodle-gnocci hybrid, a potato dough with egg and butter that you roll with your hands into short, thick noodles.  It was really easy to work with, and very tasty, and I’m thinking I may make a couple big batches to freeze, since I have a lot of potatoes in the basement that aren’t going to be good for much longer.

You boil the nudeln, then brown them in a fry pan.  For the fat I chopped a little of our home-smoked bacon.  As the noodles were starting to brown I tossed in a couple generous handfuls of chopped ramps, mainly the bottom white and red part.  I also chopped a good handful of the ramp greens and added these to some melted butter.  The butter I brushed on the skin side of the trout before sticking it in a hot convection oven, and cooked it until it just started to brown.

I added a little more wine and a little butter to the reduced stock/sauce at the end.  Laid down a bed of the lovely brown, fragrant, bacony noodles, some fresh cress on top of that, spooned the sauce over that, and crowned it with the trout.  

This, to me, is the sort of meal so emblematic of the way we live, of the way we have chosen to live and eat, that it’s beyond the realm of food criticism of any traditional sort.  But it was wonderful, and we cleaned our plates.

That’s my story of the first fishing outing, and first trout stream meal of 2015.  If you’ve made it this far, I thank and applaud you.  It’s a perennial story that I always feel is worth telling again.  I hope you enjoyed it.

A Midsummer Night's Smørrebrød

You don’t have to be Danish to appreciate smørrebrød, those open-face sandwiches—knife and fork sandwiches—composed upon dense, buttered rye bread, usually containing appropriately Nordic ingredients like pickled herring, beets, and pork paté. If you like bread, and noshy food in that tapas mode, you’ll like smørrebrød. As a summer evening meal it has the additional virtue that most of the toppings can be prepared ahead—or are themselves commercially prepared foods of the very best sort, like cheese, smoked fish, cured meats, etc. Finally, because finishing preparation is so simple, these mini-canvases beg to be decorated to the full extent of your garnishing imagination.

Bready. Noshy. Easy. Pretty. What, I ask, is not to like in that combination?

It’s usually this time of year, when we’ve just slipped past the solstice, and the gardens are really starting to produce, the market stalls are burgeoning as the plants make the most of that vital sunshine, that my appetite turns to smørrebrød. It’s an elegantly rustic (or is it rustically elegant?) kind of meal to enjoy in those long twilights as the strong sun softens on descent, spreading welcome shadows, and the heat of the day begins to mellow.

That pretty well describes the evening last weekend when we prepared a smørrebrød repast at the house and packed it in a cooler for a picnic on the hill. It was a bit warm and muggy in the valley, but we caught a nice breeze as we headed up the hill. I’d been cleaning up a little impromptu sort of dump at the edge of the woods this spring, hauling down old car batteries, car seats, beer cans and bottles, what have you. Then I ran the lawn tractor up there to mow a small picnic area. Among the detritus I’d found a piece of sheet metal and some cinder blocks, and these we turned to better purpose as a makeshift picnic table (pleasantly, though very rustically, reminiscent of a Parisian zinc bar). It was, I dare say, one of the best picnics ever.

We settled in very comfortably (so did the dogs, eventually) to enjoy the view of the green, green hills, mist-shrouded in the distance. The aspen leaves overhead kept up a  calming kerfuffle. There was even a floor show, of sorts, as the neighbor who rents our hayfield came to bale up the last few rows of the oats and grass they cut last week. Urban al fresco dining has its pleasures, but when was the last time you saw a John Deere tractor and baler on the Nicollet Mall?

As we ate our smørrebrød and sipped our pinot gris and watched the sun pass out of sight behind the western hills—though it would still be light for a couple of hours—I had a thought about terroir—you know, that idea that foods and wines can taste distinctly of the place they came from, express some quality of the soils in which they grow, the waters that sustain them, and the human cultures that have nurtured them through time. My idea had something to do with how a cuisine is shaped by the sense of the seasons experienced by the people who create it. And how, for us specifically and for northern peoples in general, our long annual journey from the abyss of winter’s frigid darkness to midsummer’s almost too abundant light and warmth, and back again, how this must have as great an impact on the savor of our food as the molds in the caves of Roquefort, or the chalky soils of Sancerre.

It profoundly affects what we eat, how we eat it, what we want to eat, and how we experience it in the context of the year. A midsummer picnic at 45 degrees north latitude must taste different from the same meal consumed in Florida or southern California; in those places, their own seasonal context would shape their experience of what they eat.  For me, high summer dining has meant that I’ve hardly wanted to look at a piece of red meat—give me vegetables, salads, simply prepared fish, cheese and bread. Oh, and maybe a glass of wine.

I made a small rye loaf that included a little birch syrup. You want a pretty dense bread, with a close crumb--not something like a baguette that's full of holes.  Then top to your heart's desire.  I don't let myself be constrained by any rules, but rather see the smørrebrød concept as the base for using the best of the local and seasonal.  One of my favorite, oft-repeated mantras--Ninety percent of good cooking is good shopping--is on full display here.  That is not to say, of course, that you should hie thee to a high-end supermarket, but rather that best ingredients make for best results.

The Superior shore was well represented in fresh herring from Cornucopia, smoked whitefish from Port Wing, cheese from Bayfield.  The Menomonie farmers market gave us snap peas, onions, beets, turnips, potatoes, and asparagus, and our garden contributed, too, with radishes, chives, and mustard greens.  There was a bit of home-smoked bacon in the potato and asparagus salad, and the yogurt cheese was home-cultured using wonderful fresh milk from just down the road.  Oh, and the mayo, also homemade, using eggs from our neighbor Tina's chickens, and Minnesota sunflower oil Smude.

On Wisconin! was surely the theme of this meal, especially as the sandwiches were literally presented on Wisconsin.  A more thorough description of the various toppin's below.

Smoked whitefish salad combined about four ounces of flaked smoked whitefish with roughly three tablespoons of peas—we shelled some sugar snaps—two ounces of Wisconsin hickory nuts, chopped and lightly toasted in a dry skillet. (The nuts were a generous gift from my buddy Lucas “The Beard” Madsen; hickory trees grow in his part of southeastern Wisconsin, though they’re scarce here. Other local, wild alternatives would be black walnuts or hazelnuts; a good storebought option would be pecans.) To the fish, peas, and nuts I added some sliced red onion and about three tablespoons of mayonnaise—homemade in this case, and for a dinner like this I think it’s really worth the effort. Garnish with a little more red onion and thin slices of sugar snaps.

I was inordinately pleased with my checkboard composition of roasted baby beets and turnips. The base was fresh yogurt cheese (with just a dollop of chevre added in for body, and flavor) mixed with chopped chives and lots of coarsely ground pepper. Lay down a good bed of the cheese mixture, and decorate to your heart’s content. You can leave the vegetables round and create a fish-scale effect. I really liked the geometrical drama of the squares—just cut straight down around the sides of each little beet or turnip, and then slicing across produces squares.

Asparagus and potato salad was originally going to be oyster mushroom and potato sauté, but the little critters had honeycombed my ‘shrooms, so it was Plan B, which was just delightful. The potatoes were preroasted (along with the beets and turnips). Wash and slice the asparagus bite-size.  Dice up some good bacon fairly coarse, begin to render, then add the asparagus. Then add a couple of generous pinches of caraway seeds, about half as much cumin seed, and…mustard seed! About a teaspoon. Add the cut-up potatoes to warm and brown just a bit, and absorb the other flavors. This I served atop a generous spread of that homemade mayo.

Brie and radishes. A study in simplicity and the wonder of felicitous combinations. This one was just delicious. The cheese was one you probably haven’t heard of, but of which I predict you’ll be hearing quite a bit in the near future. It was Happy Hollow Creamery's “Snowy Spring Brie,” which we picked up at Ehler’s store in Cornucopia on the shore recently. Happy Hollow lists a Bayfield, WI address. This cheese, beautifully ripened, was exquisitely flavorful. Not even terribly expensive. If you happen to come across it, just buy it. Their Lazy Daisy raw milk cheddar is also excellent. As I say, I predict you’ll be hearing more about these cheeses and this creamery. For the sandwich: butter, cheese, radish, pepper, boom.

Last but surely not least, grilled Superior herring atop mustardy mustard greens. I’ve said plenty about this superb fish, which never disappoints—we usually get it hours after it’s been caught, so that’s a good start. I’ll have more to say in a future post about the greens preparation, which combines oil, mustard or other strongly flavored greens, more mustard—a good, strong Dijon style—a bit of honey, some vinegar, salt and pepper. This is going to be a standard greens preparation at our house right through the summer and fall. Butter, mustardy mustard greens, a piece of grilled fish, and a radish flower—yep, radish flower, you knew? They’re a bit sweet and a bit peppery at the same time.

Partly what inspired us to climb the hill for supper was a story we heard on  WPR's new show 45 North .  Last week Anne Strainchamps interviewed the British adventurer and writer Alastair Humphreys , who has bicycled around the world, run a marathon in the Sahara, and rowed the Atlantic, and now (maybe because he's tired...) is promoting the idea of "micro-adventures," mini-excursions in one's own backyard.  He's encouraging people just to get outside, and outside one's usual comfort zone--just grab a sleeping bag, a sandwich, and a bottle of wine, and go sleep on a hill, look at the stars, watch the sun come up.  I think it's just a brilliant idea whose simplicity is at the heart of its brilliance, and while we retired down the hill with the last fading light to all the comforts of home, we did feel as if we'd been away for a while, even if our adventure was, literally, in our own back yard.

And the food, if I need to say it, was good to the last pea.

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Sapped Out

I'm doing the last boil of the sugaring season today, cooking about 10 gallons of birch sap down to what will probably be around a pint of syrup.  It has been a long, satisfying, at times grueling, few weeks--tapping the trees, awaiting the sap run, at first reluctant, then rising to a spate; checking the taps, hauling the sap, cutting firewood, and boiling, boiling, boiling.  All this in the midst of one of the most remarkable stretches of springtime weather...I was going to say "in memory," but I don't think anyone remembers such a season, as such a one has not occurred before, not in my time.

That's because water has been falling from the skies--mainly as snow--just as steadily as it has been pulsing up through the capillary systems of the maples and birches.  We thought that the April of storm after storm was remarkable, until we experienced a historic May weather event, a two day-plus storm that dropped around 16 inches at our house.  The Twin Cities record for a May snowfall was around three inches--and that record held, because the cities were on the rain side of the line.  Three inches is not a lot of snow, but then, May is supposed to be a spring month.  Well, so is April, for that matter. 

May 4, 2013, Ridgeland, Dunn County, Wisconsin

As the snow melts water flows down our hayfield hill, around the corner of the yard (and right across where I dug our garden last year, bad planning), and pools up in a low spot north of the garage.  From this holding area it then trickles out to form a perfect little brook past the lone pine tree behind the garage, and out into the pasture.  It's a good distance from there to the corner of our property at the crossroads of the county road and our town road, where tiny Hay Creek makes a hard southward turn, but some of those snowflakes from our hilltop surely make it to the creek, which meanders through some very pretty countryside about 15 miles, crow-wise, and who knows how many crooked stream miles, to the Red Cedar River.

The Red Cedar takes a more direct route south and empties into the Chippewa River south of Downsville (in summer we ride our bikes on the state trail that follows the Red Cedar down to this confluence).  The Chippewa in springtime is a mighty river, at some spots it can seem as broad as the Mississippi; until, of course, you see the Mississippi where the Chippewa enters, a shining, stirring inland sea--Lake Pepin--from which greening bluffs, grander than castles, rise on the western shore in Minnesota.

And the Mississippi, of course, it goes to the Gulf, where a warm wind picks up water molecules from the salty surface, and perhaps on some strange May day (or it could be March, December) a driven jolt of northbound air carries that laden breeze back up the course of the great river in an anomalous weather system that sets up a stationary line of torrential snow from Iowa into southeastern Minnesota, across west central Wisconsin, dropping nearly a foot-and-a-half of snow on a hilltop in northern Dunn County.  Did some of those snowflakes start here, years ago?  Seems crazy, but it's possible.  Clearly, I'd like to think that they did.

All this water coming down, water gushing down, the gathering of the streams, the boiling of the sap, it's had me thinking about accretion, and reduction.  All that water from the skies, gathering on our hilltops, in the woods, in our yards--in everybody's yards, forest, fields.  It comes down drop by drop, or flake by flake.  When you get down to where the Chippewa joins the Mississippi, you wouldn't have thought just a few snowflakes, a few raindrops, could amount to all that.  If all you see is the mighty flow, I think you're missing the bigger picture, which, oddly, only comes into focus when you start with a snowflake.

Accretion, it's kind of an odd word, but the one which, to me, sums it up (no pun intended).  Things gathering together, things piling up. "Any gradual increase in size, as through growth or external addition."  It's how every little bit helps, and every litter bit hurts, how the extra Christmas cookie, one more beer, or french fry, amounts in time to...self-loathing.  A garden is an accretion, created one seed at a time, then one leaf at a time until, there it is, a verdant expanse.  Since I've started cutting wood for next winter (and that wet, heavy snow has given me lots of broken limbs to cut up for the pile), I see the woodpile as an accretion, one split, one stick at a time until, by the time the frost returns (think not of that...), we'll have a winter's worth of heat, and cooking fuel, and dark nights' cheer stacked up to see us through.

A good novel is an accretion of detail and incident and image, all adding up to something marvelous, and all compiled one word at a time.  And running accretion backwards, in an abstract but very, very meaningful way, that's the phenomenon of moments slipping by, it seems to me, of time past and not to be regained--Proust can search all he wants.  More positively, what is life but an accretion of moments, experience, memory?  Whatever it is that's piling up, it's all happening in time, so a snowflake falling is a tick of the clock, and as the meltwater drips out of our ephemeral pond, it's a sort of liquid hourglass--though we won't be turning it over.

With the wet snow coming down, the saps coming up, we started to feel inundated from all sides.  When the snow stopped and the sun came out (it did, a couple of times in the last six weeks), things seemed better, but in another way it only sped the spate--the water flowed down the hill, the creek filled to the banks; the sap gushed from both maples and birches.  I couldn't keep up with it.  I dumped gallons and gallons of sap on the ground--I don't know why it felt wasteful, it was going to wind up there eventually, and the trees had all the sap they wanted.

Meantime, with all that accretion going on downstream, I was going against the tide, a few gallons at a time, engaged in the frantic race toward reduction--take 10 gallons of maple sap, 20 of birch, 80 or 160 pounds of liquid, turn it into something you can hold in your hand.  Pour on your pancakes, use to flavor a salad dressing.  Drop by drop, in wisps of steam, or through gentler evaporation in the final reduction on the woodstove overnight, as the fire gradually died down, I was sending all that water back into the air.  To harvest an essence, a distillation.  Some sweet stuff.  Here taking away everything extraneous, which is in fact all you could really see was there, the watery part, to leave something of which we only had the vaguest insinuation, that fleeting sweetness on the tongue.  An act of faith, in its modest way.

The pros at this business probably philosophize less and boil a lot more than I do, so in this bountiful year for sap I've seen syrup offered at $25 a half gallon, cheaper if you buy more and bring your own containers. 

________________________________

I recorded the first drops from our maple taps on March 25.  With the back-and-forth spring going mostly back, it was a couple of weeks before I had enough sap to boil.  Thanks to Twitter, I'm able to report with utter accuracy that our first boil was on April 5: "My half-assed homemade sap contraption did a fantastic job on its maiden boil."  Thus I tweeted.  It went pretty steadily from there, reaching full spate by mid-April, wearing out my willingness to spend the day bathed in wood smoke by about the third week of April.

At which time I drilled an inch into a big birch, and sap came pouring forth.  Here we go again.

It's pretty easy to see how people started making maple syrup.  Although maple sap is clear as water, still it tastes faintly sweet to the tongue.  To the squirrels the sap that dries on maple trees, naturally flowing out from cracks in the bark or broken branches, definitely has a sugary appeal, and perhaps that's how aboriginal people figured out that there was something good here, from observing how the squirrels lapped it up.  Then there were probably a few steps involved, and a lengthy evolution, before getting to maple syrup and maple sugar, but the end result was reliable and delicious.

It's much harder to understand how birch syrup came to be.  A birch tree in a good year can provide an astonishing amount of sap, but when you taste it, it doesn't seem sweet, containing only about half the sugar of maple sap.  Perhaps I should modify that:  It doesn't taste sweet to me.  It doesn't taste sweet to the contemporary American palate, bombarded with sweetness from every side, sugar hidden in just about every processed food from salad dressing to crackers.  But maybe to a purer palate, way back when, the sweetness of birch sap was detectable, and desirable.  It you had a lot of birch sap, and firewood, and time, it was probably worth it.

As my last batch of birch sap boils away, with a pint of finished syrup in the fridge, I'm asking myself if it was worth it, and mainly coming down on yes, now that it's nearly over.  It's a fascinating product, unlike anything I've tasted before.  It's dark, dark, dark--more like molasses or sorghum syrup than even grade B maple.  And I'm not sure what accounts for this, but it is quite acidic, too, with a spiciness dominated by a menthol or wintergreen note, and a smokiness that may literally be from wood smoke wafting across the surface of the pan as it cooks.  But also, perhaps because of that acidity, it has a fruitiness, almost a wininess, that maple syrup lacks.  At first taste, I must say, it's not immediately likeable--it takes you aback and sits you up straight.  But part of what I like about it is that sense of extremity--that it is difficult to make, not easy to like, and that it requires some thought to determine how best to use it.

Here's what I've done with it so far, and how these preparations turned out:

Birch-cured whitefish gravlax.  I followed the method I used for maple-cured lake trout gravlax (in the book), but:  then I forgot about it in the back of the fridge for over a week.  Oops.  I was afraid it would be spoiled; instead, it is just very, very salty.  But the flavor, other than the oversalting, is good, and the texture is excellent, which I attribute to the birch syrup.  So I'll use it as I would salt cod, probably make something like a brandade, the Provencal dish of salt cod pureed together with potatoes, lots of garlic, olive oil or butter.  Maybe I'll work in some other seasonal things like ramps and watercress.

Pork chops marinated in birch syrup, ramps, and Sichuan pepper.  A couple hours ahead of cooking I brushed the chops with a couple of tablespoons of birch syrup, added chopped ramps, salted and peppered liberally, also a good sprinkling of roasted, ground Sichuan pepper (hua jiao).  On the grill, medium coals, 10 to 12 minutes total--excellent, and the interesting thing was, the birch syrup didn't burn as another sweetener would.  I'll look into this phenomenon further.

As a salad dressing component, birch syrup (you don't know how many times I've typed bitch while writing this post, and had to correct...) is superb, especially with assertive greens like watercress.  Since it brings both sweetness and acidity, you don't need vinegar or lemon juice in the dressing.  I've simply been mixing the birch, some sunflower oil, a wee bit of mustard, salt and pepper--terrific.  Shown here as the base for pan-fried trout with sauteed ramps and lardons, duck fat potatoes.

You experience the land and the season in a different way when you take up sugaring, and I'm as glad to have done it as I am that it's over.  I probably won't make birch syrup every year, and with three gallons of maple syrup in the pantry, I likely won't have to do as much next year.

On the other hand, I recently saw a link on Twitter to an article about making syrup from black walnut sap.  Oh, why did I have to look...?

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Charge Ahead, Fall Down, Get Up, Repeat (New Year's Wishes, 2013)

From our bedroom window looking north.

2013 came at us from Day One with reminders of what winter used to be like, could still be like, north of 45 degrees latitude in the center of a continental land mass.  The thermometer registered 18-below on New Year’s morning at 7:30, then actually dropped a couple more notches, stopping at minus-20 as the sun crept over the southeast hill.  I looked at the dial with some disbelief, but when I stepped outside and heard the deck boards creak and groan with a frigid lament under my feet, I believed (I have not over-indulged this holiday season, so I’m certain excess weight wasn’t the cause of this phenomenon).  Also my nose hairs went instantly crispy, and my still sleepy eyes were like to be glued shut if I had stayed outside a minute longer.

Odd thing was, the needle stayed put at -20 as the sun grew stronger; Mary eventually went out and gave the dial a tap, and it jumped up suddenly to near zero.  Who knows where we actually bottomed out?  Cold enough.  But it warmed enough by mid-morning that we (Mary and I, guests Martha and Tom ) got into our skiing togs and hit the trails.  A glorious day for it—with bright sun and little wind the exertions quickly warmed us.  Lily charged ahead of us over the crest of the hill and her pounding paws kicked up a flurry of powdery snow while her breath billowed out in a steamy cumulus, caught in the sun’s sharp near-solstice angle on the line where snow meets sky.

 

We skied over the hayfield hill, swooping down the eastern slope to the boundary with LeRoy and Shelly’s land, traversed back up to the top and came down toward the house through the old pasture.  I took the hill first, on a slightly different line than I had taken before, and as I came around the curve and over the knob with speed, I saw that divot, and I thought Oh, crud….  I believe I was airborne for a moment; then I was anything but.  Wipe out. It must have been impressive, but I don’t know if anyone saw.  I got up and shook it off; I was a little embarrassed, but more exhilarated.

Top of the hayfield hill.

One thing I’ve been trying to do a lot while skiing this year is to fall down.  I know that might sound odd, and counter to the general aim of skiing, but I feel that one of the best things a 54-year-old can do is to fall down in the snow—provided that he is able to get up again, of course.  The key is to not be afraid of falling—charge ahead, fall down, get up, repeat.

That’s going to be the theme of 2013 for me.  I’m avoiding the resolutions game.  Except that I have already publicly resolved to eat more Wisconsin cheese.  And I want to learn to play Johnny B. Goode on the Ibanez Artcore electric guitar that Mary surprised me with on my birthday last October, best present ever.

Best present ever, the Ibanez "Blue Beauty"

But back to the ski trail—and just to digress here a bit: I have discovered this winter that one key to perfect bliss for me is to be able to step out my back door and ski in my very own woods; it’s a luxury, for sure, but one that I appreciate fully.

 

I took Martha and Tom through the woods to the northern tip of our land while Mary stayed out in the field (she’s particularly averse to trees on skis as she’s still just picking up the sport).  The woods trails could use some improvements, as there are a lot of downed trees and some brushy patches with no clear way through, but it is so quiet and beautiful there in the snow, skiing is really just a way to get there.  One charming thing I’ve noticed this winter is that there are often deer tracks running right down the ski trails—I don’t know if this is because the deer and I share an intuition about the best way through the woods, or if the deer are cleverly taking advantage of our efforts to lessen their energy output in the cold snowy weather.  Or perhaps they’re curious about these odd emanations in the snow, and follow them wondering what sort or creature they will lead to.  At any rate, it creates a pleasant feeling of simpatico with the animals, like, yeah, we all live here together.  We often see deer at a distance, in the woods at dusk, but I’ve noticed the hoofprints following the ski tracks nearly right up to our back door.

Après-ski, a warming lunch, and Mary and Martha sat on the couch knitting while Tom and I flipped through the Fäviken cookbook they brought us as a gift, wondered about just how tasty would be a tea brewed from forest leaves that have “almost turned into soil,” and vowed that we would mature our own cider vinegar in a charred, hollowed-out stump, so help us Odin.  (Fäviken is a Swedish restaurant on the cutting edge of atavistic Nordic cuisine, employing ultra-local ingredients like, yes, old leaves, moss, lots of other foraged stuff that is very far removed, indeed, from the typical European luxury ingredients like truffles and foie gras.  Some—well, a lot—of the recipes read like parodies of obsessive-compulsive chefdom in pursuit of the hottest trend, and yet I find the idea of digging down (literally and figuratively) into northern culinary roots really fascinating.  It’s the very idea I’m slowly developing for my next concerted project, as I look for emblematic foods, methods, and recipes that speak compellingly of our place.)

Tom and Martha took their leave mid-afternoon, to get back to town before full dark, and I took a nap.  I just zonked out, and woke feeling as if I were getting sick.  But I willed myself out of bed, put on my Swedish Army surplus wool knickers, whistled for Lily (Annabel, 14-and-a-half, pretty much just putters around the yard in the winter), pulled on the ski boots, clicked into the bindings, and headed back up the hill just as it was turning to dusk.  I followed the path along the edge of the field and then, near the top of the hayfield hill, turned left and worked a traversing course up to the highest point on our property, stopping along the way to remove a section of barbed wire.  I got to the top of the hill where a serious deer stand—ours, inherited—is slowly going back to nature, the plywood walls delaminating one by one.  Then I skied out to the tip of the promontory I romantically think of as “The Grande Esplanade”; from here there is a marvelous view of our house and outbuildings far below, and the valley and ridgelines running off to the south and west.

 

It was pretty much dark now.  I took in the view, and the silence, only enhanced by the bit of breeze that rattled some frigid branches.  A very light snow was falling, but I couldn’t really see it, only felt the flakes touch my face.  With my literary education and inclinations, I couldn’t help thinking of Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and that was okay.  Whose woods these were, I knew.  The woods were lovely, dark, and deep, but I did not have miles to go before I slept.

In our woods going up is often easier than going down—certainly less dangerous.  But coming back down last night I found the line I’d been looking for all winter:  a long traverse of the big swale, between the oaks and maples, avoiding deadfalls and stumps and hidden barbed wire, so that I made it from near the top to the edge of the woods in one exhilarating run, in control but with enough pace to make it interesting.  It felt like an accomplishment, as if I’d worked out a writing problem, and it made me feel like, yeah, I will learn how to play Johnny B. Goode, the coolest song ever.

Then I skied to the top of the hayfield hill and finished with a lovely downhill run with a decent telemark turn, and as I glided into the yard I thought for some reason of Hemingway, something reminded me of a story from In Our Time.  I can’t help it; I’m made that way.

For New Year’s dinner Mary and I raided the fridge for leftovers—a couple of shrimp fritters that were excellent reheated and dabbed with mayonnaise; home-smoked duck breast and its accompanying sauce, so luxurious served on toast with a carrot slaw, “leftovers” seems a wholly inappropriate term.  Then the last remnants of some excellent cheese, Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve, and aged Marieke gouda (off to a good start on one resolution…).  We were both weary, we didn’t talk about too much, but it was pleasant.  We sat in our usual living room chairs and noshed.  Mary went to bed around ten; I practiced Johnny B. Goode for a while.  I’ve got about two-thirds of the intro down pretty good.

From my office/spare bedroom window; note Tom (L) and Martha's (R) herringbone ski tracks up the hill, impressive.

Thinking about the events of last year makes my head spin—we bought a house, sold a house, left the city for the country, plunged into home renovations, learned to live in a whole new place, embraced it; my mother went into a nursing home, had to leave her old life behind for one with not promising prospects, but she’s doing okay, has such a positive attitude, she sustains us all; our old dog Annabel had a major health crisis last winter (because of various and numerous fabric items she consumed), and last summer, a seizure, so she’s now on a daily dose of doggy downers; Mary became a country-to-city commuter; book events crescendoed in the fall then completely tailed off (don’t forget, I’m available for birthday parties, bar/bat mitzvahs, bachelorettes, etc.!). 

I hardly fished, barely hunted.  I found morels in our yard, chanterelles where I expect to find them, and missed out on most of the other mushrooms.  Our garden produced a lot of squash, but our apple trees bore little fruit.  We ate exceedingly well, and I grew rather tired of taking pictures of food, or looking at them.  Cutting, hauling, and splitting oak logs to feed our wood furnace has become a consuming concern for me; we could turn on the LP furnace, but to me that feels like a moral failure.  I’m heading up the hill with the chain saw and the ice fishing sled this afternoon.

Not the easiest way to heat a  house, but among the more interesting.

What’s past is past (or not, ask Faulkner), and I’m taking a clean slate approach.  Charge ahead, fall down, get up, repeat.  Focus on the possibilities; it’s never too late.  Resolutely avoid resolutions (except as noted).  Let conclusions present themselves.  Some of this applies to the future of Trout Caviar, as its five-year anniversary nears.   It’s usual to say something like, “Five years ago I never would have believed I’d be writing this damn thing five years later…”, but since, when I started this journal I didn’t put a term limit on it, it sort of makes sense that I’m still doing it, especially in light of the book, and all.

Which is to say:  I’m not sure about the future of Trout Caviar.  I ended the year in a bit of a slump, with only a brief, herring-induced bounce-back; I wonder how long the topic can remain fresh, or why, ultimately, I would keep at it.  I know I am not alone in this, since if you click on many of the sites in my “We Read These” list, you’ll find that there’s not much new to read on a lot of them.  It is probably melodramatic to say that I have seen the best blogs of my generation destroyed by madness, or that the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a passionate intensity….  Well, melodramatic and derivative, and wrong.  If some of our comrades have fallen by the cyber-wayside, others have picked up the torch and race onward.

Nonetheless, what seems fairly clear to me is that the thrilling promise of a true “Internet community” is paling more than a little.  I’ll bet there are plenty of you reading this who have resolved to spend less time on-line, get off Facebook, give up Twitter.  Who doesn’t want to live her or his life more fully in the actual moment?  There’s good stuff to be gleaned from the Interwebs; it’s setting the limits that is tough.

I revile myself for caring about how many Twitter followers I have (300!), and I believe that the whole of social media creates a lot more heat than light, while at the same time, thanks to the “blogosphere” I’ve met lots of people who have enriched my life.  I’m not planning to crawl into a cave; or, if I do, I’ll be sure to bring my iPhone….

What I meant to say was:  Happy New Year.  The designation is arbitrary, sure, but nonetheless significant.  Marking passages is important, can lend clarity.  I hope your 2013 is filled with satisfaction and growth; that the people and things around you compel your interest, and that you spread it to others.  I wish you moments of calm reflection, bursts of inspiration.  Thanks for hanging around here.  It means a lot to me.

Cheers~ Brett