Kitchen Klatter and Raw Meat

 

No, that is not a can of cat food artfully presented with a hint of lemon.  It is, rather, in the words of Wikipedia: 

Steak tartare is a meat dish made from raw groundmeat (beef or horsemeat). It is usually served with onions, capers, pepper and Worcestershire sauce, and other seasonings, often presented to the diner separately, to be added to taste. It is often served with a raw egg yolk, and often on rye bread.

Clearly, this dish is not in the mainline for meat eaters, those of us who choose between a burger and a filet depending upon the dollar signs on the menu.  But other foodies extol the virtues of this purest of purists' meat choices.

You're Wrong About Steak Tartare

Why do I even risk ruining someone's supper or, worse yet, turning them against beef altogether as a barbaric choice made by folks with ultra long incisors?  

Because once upon a time, on a whim and a dare,  I ordered steak tartare...at a German restaurant in Washington, D.C.  Even given fair warning, the appearance of the dish, bringing to mind nothing so much as a uncooked cube steak, was enough to give me pause.  The articles tell us that raw meat is supremely tasty...and I'll admit that a fine rare or medium rare steak certainly has more flavor than the sliced beef 'n gravy on the average buffet.  But even decades later...for that's how long it has been...the overwhelming 'remembrance of things past' is not the beef, but the capers, onions, and other strong herbs I suspect were used to cover up the taste of the meat in times past....not enhance it.

Because it was lunch, and out of pride and bravado, I did eat some of my steak tartare.  The German beer was much more palatable....

Since then, we've enjoyed other adventurous food outings: main dishes with the eyes intact...and other artistic but unarguably raw concoctions.  Blake has always loved oysters and for many years, I eschewed the slippery gray things.  But I do love the places where oysters are on the menu: the East Coast, West Coast, Gulf Coast, and over time, I've weakened and now eat my share, dabbing horseradish and dipping malt vinegar to....what?....accentuate?....eliminate?....the underlying mossy essence of the shellfish. 

Gabe....

not a big fan of oysters....

Thinking about these 'delicacies' gives me pause as I contemplate some of my culinary accomplishments when we were first married.  Clearly the guy that has survived oysters for more than forty years earned that cast iron digestive tract.

I remember cooking pork blade steaks several times a week while we lived in Columbia: they retailed for $1.29 a pound, never mind that a person burned more calories than he consumed trying to separate the meat from the bone.  Another favorite dish involved cooking hamburger, then mixing in a can of tomato soup and a can of cream of mushroom soup, and pouring the whole mess over spaghetti.  I am sure I can blame that one on Campbell's soup, but, it was mighty cheap and fed us several times.  I used my harvest gold electric skillet a lot!....

It's so convenient anymore to look up a recipe using whatever combination of ingredients you desire.  For lunch today, I had bought some asparagus, having a vague notion that I'd seen an interesting pasta recipe using both shrimp and asparagus.  Very springy, right?  All you need to have on hand.... besides the shrimp and asparagus and pasta........ are such staples as mushrooms, fresh oregano, fresh parsley, and fresh thyme!  Pardon me if all my spices come in those convenient little round orange containers that say "Tones"....

The cookbooks in my pantry reflect the way people used to cook at home...and the kinds of meals kids ate in the school cafeteria.  One of my most careworn cookbooks is one I received as a wedding shower gift.  Even though the blue cover is long gone, I know Grandma Hurst's friend, Mabel Pursell, gave me the big thick Kitchen Klatter cookbook.  I still use it: particularly for frostings and muffins.  A windshield survey of the contents is sufficient to recognize how much times have changed in the kitchen: 

Exhibit A:   Mustard Ring (Extra special!) 

Ingredients: eggs, sugar, unflavored gelatin, dry mustard, turmeric, salt, water, cider vinegar and whipping cream.  Follow the instructions and turn into a quart and a half ring mold. When firm, turn onto salad greens.

When was the last time you saw a mustard ring?  

Exhibit B: Just-Before-Payday Casserole

Ingredients: margarine, flour, pepper, onion, milk, potatoes, can luncheon meat, grated cheese. Make a white sauce, add potatoes, and bake with lunch meat.  Top with a little cheese.

Or...

Exhibit C: Wiener Dinner

Ingredients: Minute Rice, frozen green beans, 10 hot dogs, margarine, onion, mushroom pieces, pepper, flour, chicken broth.  

Cook rice and beans according to packages.  Cut hot dogs into chunks and saute in margarine.  Saute mushrooms, onion, and pepper.  Stir in chicken broth and flour.  In a large bowl, put the rice on one side, the beans on the other, and pour the wiener mixture over all.

Hmm.. Makes me want to pack a lunch....but all the ingredients are in your pantry!

Don't misunderstand: I mean no disrespect. The women of Kitchen Klatter  were women like my grandmother, the cooks who sent in both family favorites and aspirational recipes like Mary Beth's Quiche Lorraine  (Pronounced Keesh Lorraine) and President Eisenhower's Old-Fashioned Beef Stew.  They were Presbyterian women with honorifics: Mrs.Wm. R. Tweedie or Mrs. C.A.Bottermuller and they were careful to thank the Presbyterian business and professional men who sponsored the cookbook. 

Food fetishes come and food fads go.  What would our fore-mothers make of the current popularity of sushi, sashimi, ceviche...

or for that matter, steak tartare??

Comfort Food

Last week at this time I was seated in Amen Street in Charleston sharing a platter of Chincoteague oysters with my dearly beloved under an oyster shell chandelier, surrounded by parti-colored brick and watercolors of jazz musicians.  Our waiter recommended a William Hill chardonnay, but I should have followed my instincts and chosen the Chenin Blanc; nonetheless, if the  wine was pedestrian, it was the only part of the evening that was.

Chunky crabcakes and fried chicken sandwiches; hogfish with pureed cauliflower and omelets with grits; just baked cinnamon rolls dripping with buttery icing and glazed ‘dossants’, a square cross between a croissant and a doughnut with all the glaze and flakiness...and yes, fat of both its parents: this is just a sampling of the overeating we enjoyed during a few days in the Low Country.  Eating Southern seemed only polite after visiting the splendid exhibit “Feast Your Eyes” at the Myrtle Beach Art Museum.  Beginning with porcelain oysters, knives and chandelier, and progressing through the food groups: yams, beans, bacon, BBQ, berries, chicken, Crisco, and finally peach and pecan pie, each artwork is accompanied by a literary reference, so beautifully written, they made my mouth water.

And that brings me around the long way to food and our family.  Long before anyone other than the Sunday paper food editor featured gorgeous spreads of juicy vittles created from exotic ingredients, the eaters in our family memorialized the cooks in writing, for better…..or for worse...but mostly in high praise and appreciation.

My mother and my grandmothers were the cooks I first remember.  Granny knew how to fill a table: meat, potatoes, vegetables, fruit, bread and dessert...much of it home raised from my grandpa’s garden and canned or frozen in the steamy brick oven that was their galley kitchen.  This was workaday food, big pots full to feed a big table...or two.  I know her kids had favorite dishes, but the family cookbook is full of recipes that note, “Mom always made (name the food) and this recipe is almost like it”, so my guess is that Granny cooked by the seat of her pants from the foods in her cellar and freezer and everyone always ate it.

The dishes I remember my Grandma Froerer cooking are fried chicken and mashed potatoes...with gravy for the potatoes, though I was too young and ignorant to appreciate it.  I made a major production out of making the lake for the big hunk of butter to melt in.  Yum!  She also made veal birds, also fried, but I didn’t like those as well as her chicken.  She made yellow cake from scratch and chunky lumps of oatmeal cookies. Both of these she bathed in hand beaten caramel frosting...the nectar of the gods.  As she got older, she always baked pineapple upside down cake, a dish I haven’t had for thirty five years, I’ll bet, ( though Millie used to bake them a long time ago).  The upside down cake was good too-- she had a generous measure with brown sugar--but it couldn’t quite match up to the frosting.

My mom was a marvelous baker and I can attribute my love for coffeecakes and breads to her.  

It’s a pretty good legacy!  Quick breads from apples and cherries and bananas and pumpkin….gooey rolls studded with plump raisins, dripping brown sugar and cinnamon and caramelized sugar as they were tipped carefully from the pan.  That same recipe, titled simply ‘Ma’s Coffeecake’ could be raised in two 9” pans, sprinkled with streusel and topped with pie cherries, apples or peaches. When the kids were young, a visit to Redbarn almost always meant coffeecake for breakfast.

And Grandma Millie is no slouch at baking either, though you’d never know it by talking to her!  The cake is always fallen...or the rolls are burnt...or bubble didn’t turn out right so she had to a) make another bubble...or b) make an entirely new German chocolate cake….or c) start all over again on a hand-beaten-from-scratch angelfood cake!  Despite her protestations, the dinner rolls, the bubbles, and the angelfood cakes are fit for royalty, gifts from hands and heart and no one else can touch them...even though she has generously tutored the next two generations of cooks.

The men may be  the most creative and most particular cooks of the family.  Freed from the challenge of getting something/anything on the table, Mark, Ryan, and Matt do what some of us women never seem to master: plan ahead...even though Matt will resort to chicken patties in the oven every so often as a summer lunch for the Schlueter kids.  Meats in all their aromatic smoked glory are something to anticipate when Matt, Ryan and even Ben take over the menu. In particular, I admire the careful use of herbs, a far cry from my dash of this, some more of that, and liberal dollop of Tabasco when the results aren’t lively enough…..

One of my fondest food memories will be the good-natured ribbing every Thanksgiving between my aunts about baked beans.  Someone would be deputized to bring beans with the caveat that Liz would absolutely bring HER beans because THEY were the best baked beans.  I cannot tell you whether Aunt Anne’s beans or Aunt Liz’s beans were the best, for the simple fact that I wouldn’t waste a square inch on my Thanksgiving plate for baked beans when there was so many other seasonal treats covering every square inch of serving area.  Baked beans?  Heck, we ate those at least nine months out of the year!  But the gentle jesting happened every year and was part of the togetherness and tradition that is the reason we all cook. It’s why Lee makes all the pies, why I overdo it on Ann’s cucumber dip in the summertime and why Millie complains...every Christmas...that the gravy didn’t thicken…....

Over the River and Through the Woods...

...........may be the beginning of the iconic Thanksgiving song, but when I was growing up, we got up even before all the moms and grandmas putting the turkeys in the oven and drove south through the Illinois prairie in darkness so far from morning that we could not even see the silhouettes of barns and silos. Gradually, as we got south of Kankakee, the lights of the farm houses would glow dimly across the bare ground and I would picture the cooks in their robes and slippers warming ovens and wrestling the birds from the refrigerator, then heading back for a quick nap before rolling out dough for rolls and pies after breakfast. There were no fast food restaurants or quick trips or other convenience stores back then so we looked out the windows and listened to our stomachs growl, making do with whatever my mother had packed. The fields were empty of grain and quite often cleanly plowed and put to bed for the winter, but I wasn't a farmer then and could be mistaken.

Our destination was usually Hannibal where my aunt and uncle and cousins would host Thanksgiving dinner, weather permitting. But I also remember eating with my cousins on Granny's back porch, with steam condensing on the louvered windows and the little succulents lining the sills in glazed pots of various shapes.  Grandpa would say grace and we'd load our plates with canned beans and frozen corn and pies from fruit of Grandpa's orchard; sweet potatoes and red skinned potatoes from his garden; not just traditional meats, but maybe some squirrel or rabbit pieces unrecognizable in its gravy brought to mind the platters and pots of the Pilgrims' feast...as did the risk of finding some buckshot with your teeth....We ate off real plates: play, whether active football or armchair football, had to wait until all the dishes were done. By hand. Washing was my dad's job; he didn't trust anyone else to clean sufficiently, but all of us ladies would dry. It was certainly more fun to do dishes with the chatter of the Renken women than with just my sister at home! Granny and Grandpa's house was a drafty thing ,but the kitchen was a mere alley and all the humidity from the ovens, the dishes, the pots on the stove and the quantities of chatter made getting out of doors a refreshing relief. Later, while some of the menfolk watched football, we'd play 'Hearts' or 'Spades' and have to suck it up when we were firmly trounced by any of the adults. We learned at a young age that if one was going to play with the grownups, one had to pay the price. No quarter!!

My father would bring his clarinet and uncle Terry, the music director at Hannibal, would bring out a stack of music for them to try out.  After a while, I was recruited to make a woodwind trio.  It was terrifying for the first year or so as I struggled to keep my place and not embarrass my father by getting lost.  Uncle Terry was always kind, but then I'm sure he was used to it!  

Usually we went out to get our Christmas tree over Thanksgiving as well.  The pastures of central Missouri were fertile fields as far as cedar trees were concerned.  If the weather had been just right, the needles would still be green and not the reddish brown hue the cedars would wear through the winter.  Our old cars had commodious trunks, so the luggage would ride in the back seat with Laura and me while the freshly cut cedar was bent and fitted carefully into the trunk. We might not have been comfortable, but we enjoyed the fragrance all the way back to Illinois with the additional anticipation of putting up the tree in a week or so after it soaked up water and unfolded in the garage.

By the time I was in college, the Renken family Thanksgiving had settled comfortably at Aunt Anne's and Uncle Tony's gracious home in Columbia.  Each family brought its special dish, eagerly anticipated from the previous Thanksgiving, up to and including the baked beans which provoked a friendly rivalry about whose beans were the best beans.  I would never take sides or pretend to judge...Who eats baked beans on Thanksgiving?  I knew I liked my mother's the best!  Rather, fill up on stuffing and rolls and cranberries and broccoli salad and try to carve out a bit of room for pie.   The tables were always set with creative place cards and the weather always seemed to be just right for a leafy afternoon stroll those years. 

When our kids were little, we reprised the pitch black early morning drives south, packing something to drink and a few donuts from home.  Lee, Ann, and then Ben were the only grandkids/great grand kids in the family then and were spoiled commensurately with new books or toys and full and complete access to the pinball machine downstairs and the hot tub on the back patio.  My younger cousins played football and shot baskets with them.  They played cards with their Granny, just like Laura and I had done a generation before.  I can assure you, she was much less cutthroat than some of the other family members!

We are a big family now with bits and pieces of family connections near and far.  In years past, turkey was followed close by with farming as we strove to bring in the last wet corn or the last frosty beans or to finish up running anhydrous on a particular field before rain, or snow, or freeze shut down field work. We have offered Thanksgiving on still chill days after covering a greenhouse in ideal conditions and celebrating our grand good fortune with a big beef steak.  When we partake of this particular type of Thanksgiving meal, we echo our forebears in a small way, praising God for every measure heaped atop survival, for allowing us to approach the long winter season without fear and with a great hope and anticipation.  We count our blessings in so many ways on Thanksgiving Day: by the weight of the turkey in the oven, by the number of plates on the tables, cars in the driveway, pies on the counter, frequent flyer miles....but none so sublime, so intangible, so righteous, as the gift of giving thanks itself before, during and after the day itself has past.  

This year it is our turn to hit the road, to cross the brown prairies bare of crops, to join the other travelers following their own personal GPS like homing pigeons of the past.  Traveling east this year to cook, to hug, to celebrate, to count our blessings.

Thanksgiving has always been our movable feast

 

Don't Pick on Me, Chipotle

“Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of s*** every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell..."
Mario Puzo The Godfather

That's my reaction to the new Chipotle cartoon/video game.  Not subtle, but then, there is nothing subtle about the advertisement either.  Winsome but troubled knight with a peg nose and straw hat rebels against the 'Man'...or the 'Birds'(Hitchcock anyone?) and forges his own way, finding true happiness and the moral high ground simultaneously.  This general theme is no more original to advertising than it is to literature.  It finds its way into commercials quite often;  the latest incarnation being the Infiniti 'Factory of Life' assembly line. These appeals to our independence and individuality enlist us to be 'we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.'; which of us sees himself as just another guy waiting in line for his 100 percent beef-ish?  Whose life long dream is to belong to the Machine?

Well, trust me when I tell you that my friends, Romans, countrymen out here in outer rural Missouri see themselves as the rugged hard working independent minded stewards of God's green earth and practitioners of sustainable husbandry for the plants and animals under their care.  When they see the label 'BIG FOOD' and the derisive and ironic billboard proclaiming

Crow Foods Feeding the World

they will be dismayed, offended, and wonder why a BIG FOOD company like Chipotle is picking on them.  We can't all be local providers as Chipotle would desire. And we don't have to squeeze into the narrow  but deliberately nebulous definition of an acceptable type of agricultural operation to be real farmers and ranchers contributing not just food and fiber to our society, but stability, tradition, and yes, initiative and  even entrepreneurship. Some of us are indeed bigger than others, but even farms with sales similar to the average Chipotle restaurant.(1.8 million dollars) are operated overwhelmingly by family farmers, not whatever shadowy boogieman BIG FOOD is supposed to be.

Don't get me wrong: Chipotle has attracted gobs of attention from all sorts of media outlets.  The site garnered 450,000 views in its first day.  And that's big business in anyone's book.  Goodness knows this little screed won't measure a blip on the Scarecrow's radar.  Nonetheless, I would like to rebut the idea that we are faceless nameless Crow-bots out here.  I don't have a production company but I do have a camera.  So here you go:  

PeeWee showmen at the county fair

Keeping the greenhouse safe

Helping Grandma seed

New piggies arrive

Production manager and smiley face

View west, summer sunset

Family farm circa 1980

Where mud is a toy I

Hand labor

A boy and his wheels

Short crop 2013

Suppertime harvest style

Typical bean sunset

Heading to the garden

Quality family time

Where water is a toy

Winter maintenance above ground

Flower child

View west winter wind

Where mud is a toy II

April showers

Downtime

Birthday party in the field, October

Whistle while you work

A teaching moment

West view with cornflowers 

Sure, I know its nothing personal.  Its just business. Still....

Don't pick on me, Chipotle