Eternal beef

The South Africans have done for dried meat what the French have done for cheese. I scoffed when I read that biltong goes well with wine, but that's just how good it is. In some cases, it even improves the wine. This makes sense when you consider that dried meat was integral to the nation's history, at least for Europeans. South Africa is often described as the most beautiful landscape on the planet, in large part because of its stark contrasts. The Dutch emigres had to cross hundreds of miles of barren scrub to reach the fertile vineyards and lush beaches of today. Wild animals abounded, but vegetation was scarce. Killing big game like an eland was a blessing and curse in the days before refrigeration. But the ferocious sun could be turned to advantage in curing meat. With a little salt, spice, and care, the resulting cuts could be even more delectable than the fresh carcass--much as ham can be tastier than pork.

South Africans bristle at any comparison between biltong and beef jerky, yet the distinction can be pretty fuzzy. Here's what I can glean:

1. biltong is always cut with the grain; jerky is usually cut against the grain
2. biltong is usually cured in big pieces, even a whole cut (rump steak, e.g.) at once; jerky is usually cured in thin slices
3. biltong is cured slowly, at only a little more than room temperature; jerky can be cured at much higher temps.
4. biltong is dried in the open air; jerky may be smoked
   
5. biltong is always marinated, typically with cider vinegar; jerky may or may not be marinated
   
6. biltong may be spiced with almost anything so long as coriander seed is involved; jerky rarely if ever includes coriander seed
7. biltong must be cured raw; jerky may be pre-cooked (to kill germs)

Every spring I go on a camping trip during which students bemoan the dearth of sweets and other "civilized" food even as they consume more sugar--M&Ms, flavored oatmeal, Jolly Ranchers, Tang, hot cocoa--than I do at home. Other leaders bring vast stores of power bars. None of these snacks ever satisfied me. Beef jerky, even in its commercial, chemical-laced form, was a revelation: here at last was something to nibble on that gave me sustained energy and replenished the salt I was sweating off. When someone gave me a taste of homemade jerky a couple years later, I vowed to make my own for the next trip. It wasn't just satisfying, it was delicious.

My jerky has evolved considerably since that first attempt. Every year it gets a little better, even if I still haven't matched the chili sticks of a particular butchery in a dusty little town in Namibia. Good homemade jerky, biltong, whatever you call it, is more than tasty enough to make a good snack for home, even if you never go camping. And as with canning, and fermenting, drying food is a very special process whereby the end result is almost unrecognizable next to the source material. In a world in which so many things seem spontaneously generated in cans and boxes and bags, it's very satisfying to have something edible on hand which causes people to exclaim, "You made that?!"







In the pictures above you see (left to right, top to bottom) a round steak cut into inch-thick strips for drying; somewhat thinner strips of flank steak after being marinated, ready for hanging; about two pounds of sliced, marinated flank steak hanging on an unfolded coat hanger from the laundry line above my dryer; and the finished flank steak, almost black and brittle. My basement runs from 88 to 96 degrees in winter, which inspired me to quit fighting the oven, which insists on getting up to 140 or more--cooking the meat before it can dry properly--and let the meat dry out in the open. Even my basement is a little too hot; traditional biltong is slowly cured in the open air with a natural breeze or fan and little or no artificial heat, a process that could take several days for even relatively small bits of meat. Mine was done in less than 24 hours. (In the oven, thinner slices had taken less than 8 hours.) Lower temperatures allow bigger pieces of meat to dry evenly--and produce a more tender, flavorful result. Below 80 or so, mold and putrefaction become potential problems. I used to pre-cook the meat in the marinade to destroy E-coli and such, but this was messy, tedious, and flavor-robbing. Now I get my meat from the farmers' market: grass-fed, free-range, and butchered in small slaughterhouses, it's cleaner than a lot of vegetables.


Even grass-fed beef has some fat on it, which has to be trimmed away before drying, lest it go rancid. If you take this, and the scraps of meat, and chop it all up (with a very sharp knife and a lot of "wrist-grease"), you'll get the most tender, delicious hamburgers ever. You'll also understand why meat grinders were invented.

Adventures in Fermentation I

Winter's almost over, and most people still haven't made their own sauerkraut. What a pity. Sauerkraut is one of the simplest and most delicious things you can make at home. It requires only two ingredients, a few minutes of work, and a few days of waiting to provide the basis for any number of healthy, delicious meals. It's also an excellent first foray into the wild world of fermented foods. Fermentation is a lost art of food preservation--and, it increasingly seems, compounding health benefits. From yogurt to beer to kimchi to ketchup, much of the food our ancestors consumed was alive. You can continue eating pasteurized this and flash-frozen that, or you can reestablish the alliance with good germs that kept prior generations all but immune to colds, fatigue, and indigestion. Few things you can do in the home kitchen are as magical as fermenting cabbage, a process whereby a tough, sweet, dry, voluminous vegetable transforms into something tender, sour, juicy, and dense.

Though I do sport considerable German heritage, I never thought much of sauerkraut, because I'd only ever had it out of a can. It was just something to cover a hot dog with. As I developed a taste for beer, and increasingly unusual pork products, I became reasonably fond of commercial kraut, even though it sometimes gave me pretty bad indigestion. This probably resulted from the vinegar used in most commercial varieties, or the excess of pork fat often used to cook it.

Homemade sauerkraut tastes very different from the canned stuff--depending on how long you let it ferment, it can be plenty sharp, but more like horseradish than vinegar. At its best it has a depth and complexity of flavor I can only describe as "creamy." Yet maybe even more notable is the texture: while the commercial stuff tends to be very limp and a little slimy, homemade kraut is delightfully crunchy.


So how do you make it?

1. Slice half a cabbage as thin as you can with a good sharp chef's knife.
2. In a large bowl, toss the cabbage with several teaspoons of (Kosher) salt. To facilitate blending, layer cabbage, salt, cabbage, salt into the bowl. After you've filled the bowl, stir it all together thoroughly.
3. Cover and let stand overnight. Cabbage should "bleed" several tablespoons of juice.
4. Stir and mash the mixture with a wooden spoon. Let stand a few hours. Repeat. When the cabbage has been reduced to about half its original volume, you're ready to bottle it.
5. Pack the cabbage very tightly into a wide-mouth one-quart glass jar. You should be able to compress it to about half the space it took up in the bowl (or less).
6. Pack the cabbage all the way up to the brim of the jar, just beyond where it seems to fit, turning and mashing with a wooden spoon, so that the juice rises and covers the cabbage, all the way to the lip of the jar.
7. Loosely screw on the lid and wipe up overflow as necessary.
8. Cover with a towel and let stand in a cool, dark, draft-free place for about a week. Above 70, the cabbage will rot; below 60, it won't ferment. I've found a temperature of about 65 and a "rest" of 5-7 days to produce optimal sauerkraut. Less time, lower temperatures, and more salt all inhibit fermentation, producing a less sour product.

The picture shows red cabbage--half a big head of it, which seemed like way more than I could possibly fit in the jar. But the tighter you pack it, the less chance there is of mold. I've also tried white cabbage, and, best of all, half red and half white. Such a blend makes a beautiful swirl of green and purple when you start, but by the time it's done fermenting, it's solid fuchsia.

Serve with pork chops, sausage, ham, spaetzle, potatoes, any of the usual German suspects. Or substitute it for lettuce and make a beautiful winter salad. I get my cabbage at the farmers' market, so it's got a lot more vitamins, and fewer chemicals, than supermarket lettuce and other veggies. You can go on eating summer-style salads all winter and ignore the fact that the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., are flown in from Mexico or Chile, grown in E-coli-infested soil, woody with fertilizer, transported by planes gobbling up precious oil. Or you can embrace winter and enjoy some fermented cabbage. Since I'm not a football fan, Superbowl Sunday has become a celebration of guacamole; I "intercept" the avocados on fire sale for the weekend. Here red sauerkraut does a glamorous understudy for lettuce; with two colors of tortilla chips, the little plate could fetch a pretty price in one of those places where "vertical presentation" is a big deal. What a long way we've come from a can-opener and a frozen hot dog!

Foodie Central

I'd been to Zingerman's once before: I remembered coffee in pint glasses and a sense of stress. Nothing has changed. Entering the deli, an unprepossessing brick building that opens like some wild pop-up book into a tiny space jammed floor to ceiling with bread, cheese, cured meats, prepared salads, olive oils, coffees, and other specialty items, you suddenly understand what Imelda Marcos must have felt like on entering a shoe store. Interest in food quickly goes from acute to terminal here. Negotiating the sandwich menu alone could take half an hour, if you actually took the time to read all the ingredients meticulously listed for every sandwich. No noun will do without an adjective, it seems, and no story may be left untold. The kitsch faux hand lettering doesn't make things any easier. None of the three dozen or more sandwiches listed seemed to include serano ham, several of which were hanging from the ceiling nearby. I would have done almost anything for a couple slices of it, in any form, but I was afraid to ask, lest I get drawn into a protracted discussion of the various grades and sources and cuts, abrading my memory of how casually the stuff is treated in Spain, the barman in the little place I frequented dabbing the butt-end of each dangling ham with a heel of bread as they sweated into the night. So much of the magic of food for me is bound up in its original context, where it is treated as impossibly common. A decade later I remember the cafe con leche at an unremarkable little bar in Granada not only because it was one of the best cups of coffee I've ever had, but because the barman was so utterly nonchalant in making it, as if coffee like this could be had anywhere.

There's no question they do a lot of things extremely well here: apricot rugelach was second only to my mother's, and a round French pastry I'd never heard of was so exquisitely constructed that its near-absence of flavor and moisture somehow became a virtue. The coffee, a "single-origin" variety, made me wonder why lattes were invented. (And they offered to rinse my travel mug with hot water and give me a 10% discount for bringing it.) The prices would be outrageous except that everything really is made with great care and top-notch ingredients. A loaf of rye bread I'd purchased on my previous visit, some seven years ago, still haunts me.

Yet there's a lot of things to hate about the place, like their "guide to good eating," which comes in both book form for purchase and little placards all over the store for free, as in "seven keys to a good olive oil..." Call me old-fashioned, but I've never considered taste something to be taught. There used to be a joke about the price of a Rolls-Royce: "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." If you need someone to tell you what's worth eating, why are you eating it? My sandwich included more packaging than a meal at McDonald's; I'll be using the napkins alone for weeks. The menu bears little if any relation to the seasons: for all the grandstanding about milk produced at different times of year yielding different cheeses, my sandwich featured a hank of romaine lettuce, about as far from Michigan in February as one can get. Next door at the farmer's market, the "Brinery" offered red and white sauerkraut, pickles, and other fermented treats, while inside Zingerman's, sandwich after sandwich was adorned with the same old lettuce and tomatoes that hadn't been available locally for almost six months. If the point is to re-create standard sandwiches in higher-quality form, they've certainly succeeded, but if the goal is to create some set of new, ingredients-first delicacies, imagination is lacking.

I was in a pickle, both literally and figuratively: I was offered a choice, with my sandwich, of a garlic-brined sour pickle or an unseasoned new pickle. I chose the new, which was excellent, but I don't want to have to choose. There's a line beyond which gourmet sensibilities crumble into neuroses, and Zingerman's seems to nudge, if not hurtle, people straight over it. Everything is extraordinarily good, and extraordinarily complicated. Talking about food becomes more important than eating it. I spent ten minutes with a bubbly young cheesemonger comparing goat cheeses, trying to strike a balance between "gooey," "aged," "chalky," and "goaty," only to end up with something less satisfying than what I've found at Whole Foods. She was knowledgeable enough, but the process became more a war of vocabularies and predilections--her book-sanctioned terminology vs. my casual one, her inculcation into farm philosophies vs. my recollections of French markets--than a tasting.

Yet in a sense Zingerman's must not be judged for itself, but for how far askance it dares to look at the mainstream American food world. Ten minutes away is Potbelly Sandwich Works, a "gourmet" fast food chain which produces pitiful shadows of what used to be served at any decent deli. It's a marvel that two such ostensibly similar, yet essentially different, places can coexist within less than a mile. Potbelly is cheaper than Zingerman's, but not by much. And there's plenty of fuss on offer at Potbelly too, yet it leads only to mediocrity and monotony. So as much as I chafe under the weight of overwritten captions and gratuitous options at Zingerman's, I can only cheer the extent to which they've raised awareness of the subtleties that make food more than filler for shrinkwrap and styrofoam: "raw milk," "acorn-fed ham," "wild yeast," and so on. Somewhere behind all the jargon are many wonderful meals the rest of the country has forgotten. Yes, right here in Michigan, we have a thing or two to teach New York and San Francisco about eating. Ann Arbor is carrying the epicurean fire back, however pretentiously, to the gastronomic capitals.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled bowlers...

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk in the woods. Well, first I went for a drive to get to some semblance of woods--such is the price of suburbia, with all its convenience and cleanliness. There's a rails-to-trails project a couple miles from my house: in one direction it's well-maintained, almost sterile, but in the other direction it's rougher, and, after skirting the backsides of various industrial buildings for maybe half a mile, it edges away from a pretty dramatic ravine. Several much more primitive trails run down into these lowlands, following the power lines at first. "Wow! Are those crickets?" I wondered alloud. No, just the buzzing high-tension wires. Again, the strange hidden costs of suburbia.

One of these trails quickly disappears into fairly thick, relatively untrammeled woods. I followed it for maybe a mile as it meandered around deadfall, through half-dry creeks, and among stands of birches straight out of Ansel Adams. The whole time I walked I kept hearing what sounded like a softball game up the hill to the northwest. I'd discovered on a previous exploration that one branch of the trail led to the bottom of a vast mown hill leading up to a playground, so I wasn't too surprised by the cries.

When I took one of the trails up the hill (across the boggy bottom from the mown one), it led me out of the woods and abruptly into a softball field. But rather than a bunch of middle-aged white guys slugging it out, I saw two dozen Indian men playing a heated game of cricket--complete with regimental stripe sweaters, matching trousers, and, on a couple players, wide-brimmed hats or turbans!


To me, this was magic. I don't have a clue about cricket, but it's thrilling to see the game invented by our former masters being played by their former servants in a place with no direct connection to either. Given the recent boiling over of the immigration debate, I'm sure some would find such a scene unsettling. I can only suggest to them that it's precisely such incongruities that make this country great. I've been all over the world, and I've never seen anything anywhere else that even comes close to this degree of cultural "swirling." You'll see Chinese restaurants all over the place, and French cultural centers in those countries they once colonized, and little pockets of immigrants in major cities worldwide. But the "wrong" people playing the "wrong" game in the heartland of the "wrong" country? Only here.

Dark-skinned men with foreign accents boisterously playing an unfamiliar sport look a little strange in the quiet 21st century suburbs. But this is probably how my own ancestors looked 100 years ago, drinking their foul-smelling "barley-water," eating sausages made from god-knows-what, and dancing to their odd 3/4 time music. I can only hope that a century from now the Indians will be as well-integrated as the Germans are today, and they will get to look on in puzzlement at some other group of fresh-faced foreigners bringing some other new custom to the great American table heavy-laden with its ever-replenishing buffet of traditions.

First impressions of the homeland

NB: This post makes obvious the fact that I'm now back "home" in the USA. One of the best parts of travelling is those first few hours or days after returning, when you can see the place you call "home" with new eyes. So here's some of what my new eyes saw. I intend to continue adding some "leftovers" from West Africa, however, so please check back.

Almost everyone seems to be in a terrible hurry, both in cars and on foot.

Anger and impatience everywhere, partly mine—I expect everything to work perfectly, and it doesn’t. Some things are actually more complicated. Two of four automatic faucets at PA Welcome Center, for example, won’t turn on. I thought maybe it was just me, but the next guy got tricked too—it starts seeming like a Candid Camera routine. At a gas station later, the automatic soap won’t turn off. Newark Airport had already reminded me that American bathrooms are not always as clean or pleasant as I expect.

Enormous RV at Flying J Travel Plaza towing enclosed trailer.

Car running, no one inside, parked in handicapped spot at OH Turnpike rest area.

Guy sitting in passenger seat of car, engine and A/C running, while wife goes inside to buy drinks or pee, presumably. He was there the whole time I stretched, checked tire pressure, sipped my Coke, procrastinated.

I was relishing the weather, which was so much cooler than West Africa—hardly even used the A/C, which I always do on the highway—and the smell of new-mown grass everywhere. Most people seemed to feel oppressed by the “heat,” yet their “solutions” were even more oppressive. In an OH rest area, the A/C was cranked so high I was nearly shivering, yet the temperature outside was perfect. A lot of people fought for the closest parking space, and then waited in the car while one family member went into the store. How do we reach the point that paralysis inside a car is more interesting than walking around outside, or in a building?

Even in central PA, ethnic diversity far outdistances what you’d find almost anywhere else in the world. My favorite gas station in Jersey Shore, PA, normally manned by various members of an Indian family, was today staffed by a young Korean(?) guy.

Late 19th- and early 20th-century houses built right up to the main road in rural PA. Still makes sense when Amish buggies pass by, but seems crazy for cars—in the old days, presumably, traffic was so slow and infrequent there was no reason not to sit on a porch right in its lap.

Passed an Amish buggy, lady with bonnet lounging in passenger seat. Can’t remember if this means married or single. She looked strong and pale, as they always do, but remarkably relaxed. Husband’s responsibility to drive the horse, of course, so this might be her most carefree moment. Very appealing order and simplicity to this lifestyle—but then there’s all that work! Passed another Amish lady, on foot, in violet blouse, in the midst of some sort of yard work. I think she waved to me, though that seems out of character. This was near Loganton, about 120 miles west of NJ, near dead-center of the state, so it’s possible so little traffic comes through that they treat cars as curiosities rather than nuisances.

So much packaging! I prob. consumed more plastic bottles and bags in one day of driving than in six weeks of travelling. Then there’s all the receipts!

The range and volume of merchandise for sale at a Flying J, or other large gas station, is greater than at the biggest supermarket in The Gambia.

Despite all the ice, Coke in the US tastes like crap after the “real thing” with sugar and a proper bottle in the rest of the world. I’m supposed to feel lucky, I guess, for getting a nickel or dime discount for bringing my own cup. No recycling bins at any gas station, so I have to carry all bottles home with me to MI, or consign them to the landfill. At Plum Market, where “going green” is a major talking point, it’s as crowded as I’ve ever seen it, but I’m the only one with my own bag. A lady in front of me with a huge order stands there and stares into space while the checker bags all her stuff, forcing me to wait even longer.

Bumper sticker on new-ish Chevy Malibu driven by fat middle-aged lady: “My life is based on a true story.”

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (book review)

I remember now why I don’t read mysteries. It’s like eating dessert without a meal, or ice-skating instead of walking—enjoyable, but it all goes by so fast, and you can’t help but race toward the end, at which point you feel almost cheated, realizing that you know little about the characters and care less—except insofar as they fulfill their roles as puzzle-pieces. That, and the fact that I have no mind for clues—though in this case, at least, I more or less guessed correctly who the murderer was, but my head continues to spin trying to follow Poirot’s elaborate reconstruction of events and motives.

On the other hand, I see now why Christie was so successful—she has a real genius for being at once so spare in detail and prose that even a slow reader finds himself turning pages with abandon while at the same time packing in an astonishing array of fine and subtle details, interesting both in building realism and, of course, in setting up the workings of the mystery.

I picked up Death on the Nile because The Lonely Planet describes the Bou El Mogdad as “like something out of Agatha Christie,” and that title, set on a boat in a different part of Africa, is as close as she came to my own trip down the Senegal River. My boat and hers may be similar, but customs sure have changed. Even the Americans, maids, and other less formal characters seem almost laughably stiff compared to my fellow passengers. My boat has no smoking room, or stewards ready to guard the dining room, or a doctor, colonel, heiress, or nobility. And Poirot himself is unimaginably fussy by today’s standards—but I’ve always taken him to be something of a self-caricature even in his own day.

This brings me to my big question. I’d read a few Christie novels before, and seen some dramatized on PBS as a boy. It never occurred to me then to question Poirot—that was just how storybook detectives were, I assumed. But now I wonder: where did Christie come up with this guy? Did she feel she had to have a male hero, because a woman would be too endangered, or perceived as insufficiently clever or bold? Why would an Englishwoman make a Frenchman the epitome of intelligence and good manners? Did she have to “earn” the right to create Miss Marple? Did she ever like her as well? Did anyone? I can’t remember reading any of the Miss Marple mysteries, though I’m sure I saw at least one on TV. Perhaps a female detective was revolutionary at the time, in which case I congratulate Christie for creating her. But it strikes me that without Poirot, there wouldn’t be much of a show. And this is what’s so vexing: he’s so stereotyped as to be laughable, yet just as irresistible for it. “C’mon, Poirot, do something ridiculously French again!” I kept thinking to myself as I read. “Be impossibly clever! Have superhuman hearing! Be everywhere at once!”

Floatin' down the river

Loyal readers may be wondering what's become of me for the last week-plus. Well, my placement in Gambia ended, I crossed back overland to Dakar (see previous post, "Overland from Dakar to Banjul" and turn it upside-down), and on to St. Louis, where I joined Le Bou El Mogdad, a vintage cruise ship that plies the Senegal River. It's a more luxurious excursion than I tend to go for, but it was described by the Lonely Planet as "like something out of an Agatha Christie novel," which was nearly all the hook I needed. A couple times before I'd made major plans based on a colorful sentence or two in the LP, and I'd never been disappointed. My luck held this time. There's a lot to say about a week-long cruise, but I'll start with some highlights:

Children—and adults—wave to us with great excitement from the shore. They do rhythmic clapping and chants, and chase after the boat along the shore. Not clear if they know the schedule (biweekly) or hear it coming, but they’re always there waiting for us, brimming with excitement. They seem not to mind, in some cases even to crave, being photographed. Once so far there were women wading topless in the river, seemingly apathetic to being stared at or photographed. It’s common for women to go bra-less, and rare but not unheard-of topless, but both are quite practical given how much time they spend nursing or washing or gathering water. Taking people pictures from the boat reminds me a bit uncomfortably of snapping animal shots on safari—this is the first time on this trip, and one of the only other times at all, that I’ve used the long lens. I try to wave, and await a reply, before raising the camera, in hopes this signifies approval, and makes them feel less like zoo creatures. A very small thing, but I think that most of these people are so isolated, and their lives so simple, that the passing of the boat, and waving and the pointing of cameras, is one of the most exciting things liable to happen.

By my standards, the boat is certainly luxurious. But the real luxuries are hidden. For starters, the food is French—those who've been to France will understand the significance of this, but in brief, it means strong coffee for breakfast, three perfectly balanced courses for lunch and dinner, scrupulously serving ladies first,... and, to add a Senegalese touch, they roasted a whole lamb on the back of the boat! The motion of the boat creates a breeze which goes a long way toward mitigating the horrific heat. This and/or being in the middle of the river means there are no mosquitoes—so I can actually gad about in shorts and sandals at night, and not slather my arms in DEET. We always drop anchor at night, though, so the lack of breeze just about balances out the cooler temps. As on the shore, it’s far cooler outside (in the shade, with the possibility of a breeze) than inside. Locals hardly ever go inside except to sleep—which is why traditional buildings are windowless, or nearly so.

People wash everything in the river, starting with themselves. Women seem to bathe together, roughly if not strictly separated from the men, who are more likely to bathe alone. They sit on a rock, or a 5-gallon oil jug, stripped to the waist, and lather up. Only babies and toddlers get to go in the river naked. A couple times now we’ve seen a man bathing his horse, up to the withers in the river. Just now a boy stood on its bare back and waved as the boat passed. Reed mats, rugs, clothes, pots, everything short of houses gets dunked in the river, lathered up, and scrubbed down.

Since this is the low season, the boat is well under half-capacity. (The cruise director says they won't even run it at this time next year.) There’s one black family (mom from St. Louis, dad from Mauritania, pre-pubescent daughter), and one Swedish/Senegalese guy attached to a French lady. Everyone else is French, Swiss, or Belgian—or me. Apart from one French(?) cruise director, the crew is entirely black—including one older guy, the excursion director, who seems to speak practically every language on earth (Wolof, French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, and more). This is pretty much how it always goes—whites vacation while blacks work. I wonder if there’s anywhere in the world you can go where the whites serve the blacks. For me the issue has been less race than language: I'm the only one on board who isn't a fluent French speaker. The others keep asking if this doesn't bother me, but I don't know how to explain that I've spent so much time in places where I don't speak the language that it hardly seems strange anymore. Meals are a bit awkward, as I get lost in a sea of strange accents and verbiage, but at other times I'm happy for some alone time to read and journal--and watch the river go by, a surprisingly engrossing activity.

(Yes, Virginia, that's a swimming pool on the boat, which more than made up for in coolness what it lacked in size!)