woodcock: the other red meat.

Minnesota is a blessed place for a number of reasons, including an abundance of native wildfowl. Most people have heard of ruffed grouse, but what about Scolopax Minor, the noble woodcock? I recently heard a wonderful NPR interview with Clotilde Dusoulier, a young Parisian food blogger who translated Je Sais Cuisiner, an epic French cookbook, into English. I don't yet have this book but it has since risen to the top of my personal Christmas gift list. During the interview Clotilde describes how the book was intended to help a new bride cook simple, traditional French food for her new family. Among other interesting bits, she mentions that the author included recipes for some obscure dishes, some of which include wild game, because the polite cook must know what to do with a delicious wild boar or woodcock if an uncle happens to leave one at the house. You should be so lucky.

Woodcock is perhaps the most fleeting of Midwestern delicacies. Each fall, the mysterious upland birds migrate from the Northern US (mainly the Upper Midwest and New England) and Canada to the Southern states for the winter. Native Minnesota birds can be found throughout October, but large concentrations of migratory birds are only in the state for 2-3 weeks, depending on the weather, which adds to their allure as game. Their bodies are about the same size as a quail but they have a long neck, large black eyes, and a long pointed beak designed to dig in the soil for earthworms. With a taste that loosely resembles wild duck, Woodcock are truly glorious if roasted simply in a hot oven. To fully appreciate the mystique and obsession surrounding la bécasse, particularly in Europe, I recommend reading this web page. Not surprisingly, the French are the most rabid fan club, but Woodcock also are held in high esteem in the UK.

There are a few classic preparations for woodcock, most of which are mentioned in the Larousse Gastronomique. This is a variation on one of the most typical techniques.

Ingredients

• 1 whole woodcock, plucked
• 4 tablespoons of delicious butter, softened
  
• coarse sea salt (French grey is very good for this)
• coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup of equally scarce red wine
  
• 6-8 baguette slices

Technique

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Smear the inside and outside of the bird with 2 tablespoons of the butter, making sure the breasts are well coated. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper, again, inside and out.
   
2. Heat the oil in a small heavy-bottomed sauce pot over medium heat. When it begins to smoke, add the bird and brown on all sides (about 5 minutes total).
   
3. Transfer the pot to the oven and roast 10-15 minutes, or until the bird is golden brown, and the inside is hot to the touch. Important: Like duck, woodcock must be served rare or medium rare to retain its wonderful texture and flavor. The breast should be blood red when you slice it, but not cold (it's not sashimi).
   
4. Put the bird on a cutting board to rest. Pour out all but one tablespoon of the fat in the pot and heat the pot over medium flame. Deglaze the pot with the wine, making sure to scrape everything tasty off the bottom. Let the wine reduce to a light, syrupy sauce. Then remove from heat, whisk in the butter, and check the seasoning.
5. Pull the legs off of the bird and eat them while you finish the dish (with a fat glass of wine).
6. Remove the breasts from the carcass and slice them thinly. Top the baguette slices with the sliced meat, drizzle with sauce, and sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt.
   

*This makes 6-8 canapés to share, or a small meal for one.

A dish this special deserves an equally special wine. The French recommend a big, bold, dry red wine. I don't argue with them. There is even a French vineyard, Domaine de la Mordorée (Chateauneuf-du-Pape), that celebrates the elusive woodcock on its bottle labels. I drank this with a woodcock I ate last year and I won't ever be the same.

grocery wars

I'd prefer to write about this epic struggle, but one can only dwell in fantasy for so long. The top business story in Sunday's St. Paul Pioneer Press, "Food Fight," details the present landscape of mainstream grocery stores in our oft named battleground state. Well written and detailed, the piece describes how grocery market share in MN has changed over the past few years, particularly in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.

The overarching trend discussed in the article is clear: huge, extreme discount stores - mainly Walmart and Target - are attracting more and more shoppers away from Minnesota-based or regional chain stores, such as Kowalski's, Cub Foods, and Rainbow Foods. Many key issues are addressed, including unionization, loss-leaders, and extreme discounting (Walmart vs. Cub). Aside from the fact that co-ops and co-op-like stores aren't mentioned in the article, the most interesting part (for me) is the perspective offered by and about smaller grocery retailers, such as Kowalski's. Here's an excerpt:

The nine-store Kowalski's strategy is to hunker down, focus on quality and see when the economy improves, said Jim Kowalski. "We're not doing any growth right now," he said. "We don't pretend to compete in the price wars that seem to be going on."

Let's face it. There are at least as many types of grocery shoppers as there are brands of frozen pizza at Cub Foods (which was 27 last time I checked). Some people are loyal to one store, at which they buy everything. Others play hopscotch with several retailers, buying different items across multiple stores. Still others are perhaps a bit more schizophrenic, shopping at a different store depending on immediate geographic location (work, school, neighborhood) or emotional state (indulgent, frugal, or green). Such is the state of our food culture.

I am not a grocery store business expert or analyst, but I do buy a lot of food and attempt to follow these trends closely. To date, I have spent money at nearly every grocery retailer mentioned in the article, the exceptions being Aldi's/Trader Joe's and Walmart/Sam's Club. However, for the past 5 years or so, I've chosen to abandon corporate grocery stores in favor of co-ops, of which there aren't nearly enough. That's a different blog post altogether.

What if the challenge Kowalski's faces is an opportunity? A crowded market is dangerous for business as usual, so perhaps the time is right for some lasting innovation among smaller grocers. Jim Kowalski's quote acknowledges that his stores, despite their focus on "quality" (whatever that means), cedes a defeatist outlook by using expressions like "hunker down" and a lack of "growth." He claims to not "pretend to compete in the price wars," but his market share has decreased as a result of shoppers migrating to newer, bigger stores. He doesn't compete because he can't, at least not solely on the price of Brazilian orange juice concentrate, yet he would like to open additional stores.

Fundamentalist discount shoppers seek the lowest prices on food products, without much (or any) regard for the costs associated with producing, distributing, or selling those products, such as the energy (e.g. gasoline), environment (e.g. chemical pesticides), and community (e.g. wages). Smaller grocers should forget about these people. They live on a different planet or will have to soon.

Rather than use the same vocabulary and approach to growth (i.e. increasing profits, number of stores, and market share), smaller grocers should be and celebrate what the super stores are not: progressive, community-building organizations that sell healthy, fairly priced products (a lot of which are local) and create sustainable, livable jobs. If the tremendous growth of farmers' markets is any indication, there is an increasingly vocal segment of the grocery-buying public that seeks a different choice. Find them and sell them what they want. Co-ops have figured this out, so why can't the local supermarket? Such an outlook may squash a regional executive's dream of creating the next national chain store, but within a different framework, that executive no longer will be needed, and neither will the additional 5 stores he or she hoped to open. A small, efficient neighborhood store can hold a reasonable monopoly. Why must we always need more?

Here's an idea. Maybe the Kowalski's in Stillwater could sell meat, dairy, and produce from the St. Croix river valley, and the Grand Avenue store could sell products from Gardens of Eagan. Add a kick-ass bulk section and show people how to use it. If you can't compete on the price of Tyson chicken fries, then sell real chickens from Callister Farm. Think differently. Yes, these products cost more, but an educated customer understands and appreciates the quality of such products. If I want to find the lowest price on crap I will travel to the cheapest crap heap, of which there are many.

Perhaps a plant analogy is appropriate: grow and manicure a small but healthy bonsai that lives for 200 years, rather than 10,000 acres of wood-pulp aspens to be harvested en masse, or consumed by fire, in a few short decades.

reicpe: french tomato salad

During the juicy splendor of late summer/early fall, insalata caprese is often the default mode of consumption for fresh slicing tomatoes. It is a truly wonderful salad. However, to add some variety to your repertoire, culturally and technique-wise, try this minimalist French version, which is more or less the same recipe that appears in Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook.

recipe: french tomato salad (salade des tomates)
*Serves 4 as a first course salad, or 6 as a side.

ingredients:

• 2 lbs perfectly ripened heirloom tomatoes (don't mess around)
• 2 shallots or one very small onion, sliced paper-thin
• handful of basil or parsley leaves, cut into chiffonade
• 1 garlic clove, slightly smashed
  
• very coarse sea salt (fleur de sel would shine here)
• coarsely ground black pepper
• strong tasting olive oil (my new favorite is Napa Valley Naturals)
  

technique:

1. Using a very sharp chef's or tomato knife (I'm not a fan of specialty knives, but this is a useful one), cut the tomatoes in half, remove the cores, and slice the halves into wedges.
2. Place tomatoes in a large colander (positioned over a bowl or the sink) and sprinkle with a good amount of salt (a word of caution: salt preferences vary, and you will brush some of it off later, but don't go overboard the first time you make it. You can always add more salt before serving). Let them sit at room temperature for 10-20 minutes. Water and seeds will begin to drain through the colander.
3. Put the sliced shallots or onions in a small bowl and sprinkle with salt. Let them sit with the tomatoes.
   
4. Remove tomato wedges from the colander, scraping any loose seeds out with your fingers, and put them in a wide, shallow serving bowl or dish. You also can brush off any large granules of salt.
   
5. Add sliced onion/shallot to the bowl, brushing off any excess salt.
6. Add the basil and drizzle everything with a generous amount of olive oil. Then drizzle with a smaller amount of vinegar. The key here is to minimize the amount of liquid in the salad, as you want the flavors to be intense. The tomatoes should absorb most of the oil and vinegar, and release a minimal amount of juice into the bowl.
7. Toss lightly with a spoon, top with black pepper, check seasonings, and serve.

reinvent your appetite: the relative value of local food

Last week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune contained a short article about the cost of eating as a locavore - "Making the local food movement accessible." Written by Hayley Tsukayama, a grad student, the piece describes how the author seeks to eat more local foods but also maintain a trim grocery budget. Here's an excerpt:

"I was so excited that I forgot a key fact: I'm a single, omnivorous graduate student who normally buys groceries at Wal-Mart. And while the local produce at most farmers' markets is the same price or cheaper than at supermarkets, the meat is far more expensive. I believe that good food is worth the higher prices, but after rent and student loans it's hard to finance a foodie habit."

I'll start by saying that I'm not a big fan of the word "foodie." In a creepy way, it reminds me of the Crucible-era word "goody." Besides, it's too cute, and helps stoke the fire that enjoying high quality food is somehow elitist. By our pitiful standards of nutrition, anyone living in rural France or Italy would be a foodie - "those people make their own pesto!" As an unhealthy society, we should shun these words in favor of "healthy," "high quality," or "whole" foods, prepared from scratch (either at home or at a restaurant). Perhaps the verb "to cook" could see a renaissance.

Enough semantics. What I find interesting about this article is the frequent supposition that "going local" is simply a matter of plugging local products into the American discount "menu" and Walmart "more for less" value equation. Quite literally, we're looking at apples and oranges; or rather, locally-grown Minnesota apples (eaten in season) and dry, industrial orange-like organisms.

Eating healthy, delicious, simple food is possible at any budget. Rural, agrarian communities around the globe have demonstrated this for hundreds of years. In my opinion, one of the biggest issues is that many Americans are reluctant to adopt a healthier, more sustainable diet because it requires eating different foods and much less of certain things, such as meat.

For example, Americans eat a lot of bacon and pork chops. When you make the decision to eat local, pasture-raised pigs that are humanely treated and minimally processed (with care), it will cost more than buying a frozen mass of industrial chops from a huge company. Get over it. What this means is that you may only be able to eat pork chops once a month rather than every Wednesday. The same is true for bacon. At $1.99/pound for industrial bacon, the average person could eat bacon every morning and not go broke. Spend more on some high quality bacon and eat just a few slices on the weekend with pancakes or dice and toss it with pasta. It is time for Americans to revere high quality meat as a precious, scarce delicacy.

The same is true for other parts of the American meal. Bulk, organic oatmeal is very affordable. So is polenta. Dried pasta and rice have kept people satisfied and proud of their food culture for centuries. Remember your grandma's beef stew recipe or your aunt's green curry recipe? Perhaps it is time to rediscover these simple foods as the basics, and combine them with small amounts of more costly ingredients, such as meat, cheese, butter, milk, and olive oil. Throw some seasonal vegetables in a salad or on the side and you will enjoy a trim grocery budget, better tasting meals, and a higher quality of life. I promise.

In the author's defense, the people she interviewed suggested some novel, paradigm-shifting habits, such as eating less meat, so the article does offer some thoughtful perspective from different people who do know something about this. It also generated a number of comments - take a look.

anti-recipe: f'in simple avocado hors d'oeuvre

Rule #1: Don't freak out about hosting friends or family for dinner. Your boss, priest, or Secretary of Defense? Sure. Your best friends? Non.

Rule #2: Cooking and eating are fun, so enjoy the process as well as the results.

Rule #3: Make something that is easy. This will give you more time to clean your bathroom and have an apéritif prior to your guests' arrival. Both of those things are important. This avocado dish is good practice.

I first tasted this exquisitely simple creation as a student in southern France. I know, it sounds pretentious, but as a French major it was necessary to learn grammar in person and increase my vocabulary of regional foods and drink. This included, among other adventures, spending a couple weekends at a French friend's parents' home in Landes. Seeing that I am quite a large individual, my friend's mother immediately implied that the size of my appetite must surely equal or exceed that of my physical stature. She was not mistaken.

As part of a massive late summer meal, she served avocados, sliced lengthwise on small plates. She put a small amount of hot Dijon mustard in the center of each, then drizzled some balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and sprinkled some coarse sea salt and black pepper. Just looking at these made me excited. As a Minnesotan, I was not accustomed to eating many avocados, and surely not as an elegant hors d'oeuvre. Eat them with a small spoon and watch your guests drool.

What is this preparation called, you might ask? I do not know. She may have referred to them as "avocats" (avocados), because French people eat stuff like this every day. Let's give it a sophisticated name, to score you points. How about "avocados balsamiques?"

recipe: rustic tomato sauce and sausages

Walking through the White Bear Avenue farmer's market last Wednesday, we found a pile of roma tomatoes for just a few dollars. The heirloom slicing tomatoes in our garden are finally starting to ripen, so it seemed appropriate to use the romas for something cooked. We don't plan meals for the week as well as we should, but in the summer it's usually easy to slap something together with whatever we buy at the market. The following day I remembered reading an easy tomato sauce recipe in Mario Batali's Molto Italiano cookbook (a favorite). This, served with some wild rice pork sausages from Pastures a Plenty and a baguette, turned out to be a great weeknight dinner that also tasted great the following day.

Mario's original sauce recipe is intended for more traditional pasta applications, and calls for canned or skinned/seeded tomatoes, so I cut a few corners to make a more rustic version with chopped whole tomatoes. It's perfect for weeknights or lazy weekends.

rustic tomato sauce and sausages
*serves 4 as a main course or 6-8 as antipasto

ingredients

• about 2 pounds fresh, locally grown (important!) tomatoes, roughly chopped - if good tomatoes are not available, a high quality canned variety will work
  
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 cup diced carrots (1-2 large, or 4-6 small carrots)
  
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups fresh basil leaves, chopped fine
  
• 2-4 tablespoons of other fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary, oregano, parsley, etc.)
• olive oil
• hot red pepper flakes (optional)
• 4 large uncooked pork sausages, dried with a towel, then dredged in flour
  

technique

1. over high flame, heat about 1/4 cup of olive oil in a wide skillet until just smoking
2. sauté onions, garlic, and carrots until soft and translucent (8-10 minutes)
3. while vegetables are cooking, heat another skillet over high heat with 1 tbsp of olive oil and sear sausages on all sides until deep golden brown (8-10 minutes)
   
4. lower heat to medium, add tomatoes and cook until tomatoes are very soft and everything resembles a very chunky sauce (probably 10-20 minutes)
5. gently lay sausages in the sauce and simmer over low heat for another 10 minutes, until sausages are cooked
6. after removing sausages from skillet, stir the herbs into sauce (off heat)
7. plate the sausages, pour some sauce on the side, and drizzle with some oil
   
8. serve with bread and a spicy dry red wine

the organic salon: a review (and $20 coupon giveaway!)

I'll begin by confiding that I'm a Horst Rechelbacher admirer. As a Minnesotan, I derive a great sense of pride from knowing how fortunate we are to have such a visionary in our midst (technically, Horst lives across the St. Croix river, in Osceola, WI, but his businesses are located in MN). Furthermore, Aveda Corporate headquarters is located in Circle Pines, the suburb of my youth. If you're not too familiar with Horst or his endeavors, I recommend reading his Wikipedia entry. After selling Aveda to Estee Lauder in 1997 for an estimated $300 million, Horst focused more intensely on the fledgling Intelligent Nutrients (IN) brand, through which Horst has developed a complete line of organic health and beauty products, and more recently, a full service salon run out of the IN flagship store on Hennepin Avenue in NE Minneapolis.

Intelligent Nutrients products are truly awesome. If you like the Aveda line, but are seeking products that contain only natural plant/mineral ingredients (akin to Dr. Haushka), you will love IN (Aveda products do contain a number of harmful compounds, despite the earthy ethos of the their brand). But enough about the products, as this post is dedicated to the new salon, dubbed Intelligent Hair and Skin, which Horst claims is "the first ever USDA certified organic salon."

At this point you might ask: "So why should I care about an organic salon? I'm not going to eat the pomade." It is precisely that attitude which Horst hopes to transform. His new mantra: “What we put on our bodies should be as safe and nutritious as what goes into our bodies,” is not necessarily a new concept, but in true form, he is pushing it further into the mainstream.

If you signed up for IN email promotions earlier this year, you would have received a coupon for 30% off all of services (color, highlights, hair treatments and facial waxing) and a 20% discount on all salon products. A men's haircut starts at about $35, which is only a five dollars more than I currently pay, so this discount was clearly a deal for me.

Overall, the experience was great, easily worth more than the $35 sticker price. Upon being greeted at the door, I was offered a small glass of orange juice mixed with IN's Intellimune Oil - quite refreshing and exotic. My stylist, Catherine, appeared soon thereafter, and she led me into the small salon space, which is in the same room as the store. I'll admit, I've never had a facial treatment before (nor have I sought one), but a "mini" facial/massage is included with a haircut. Over the course of at least 15 minutes, the stylist massaged my head, and used several aromatic products to endow my mug with a "soft glow." Never again will I poke fun at such activities.

The massage/facial really was enjoyable, and left me feeling slightly euphoric upon sitting down for the haircut portion of the experience. Catherine proved adept at cutting hair quickly and stylishly. I didn't schedule the appointment with the intention of adopting a radically new style, the visit was more of a trim, but it was a great cut nonetheless. No gimmicks or overly earnest suggestions, just a quiet, relaxing haircut.

In writing this, I'm not trying to tell you that IN is the only place to get a great haircut - there are quite a few places where one can do that - rather, it is an experience that recognizes the many facets of wellness and well-being, such as the products with which one chooses to slather their hair or skin. These things do matter, and IN is a wonderful, locally-grown place to learn more about them.

And the giveaway? If you get a haircut at the salon, they'll give you several $20-off coupons to pass along to people you know. I have three of them left, which I'll mail to the first three readers who write a thoughtful comment below. The only requirement is that you live in MN/WI, or plan to visit Minneapolis sometime soon.