By the way, kudos to City Pages’ Rachel Hutton who’s really turned the dining section around. Much less pretentious and much less time spent deifying chefs who cannot even run a professional kitchen.

Last week’s issue had a fascinating article on Long Cheng, St. Paul’s custom butchery. Basically, you go there, choose your animal (or bring in your own animal) and get it butchered.

Meat sold commercially in supermarkets or restaurants must be inspected by either federal or state Department of Agriculture employees who act as representatives for the consumer. But if an individual buys a live animal at a custom slaughterhouse (or brings his own animal) and pays someone to slaughter it (or slaughters it himself), the individual can take responsibility for the butchering process. While commercial slaughterhouses are subject to continuous inspection, their custom brethren are checked periodically to ensure they’re following Humane Slaughter Act guidelines and proper sanitation procedures. As the owner of a live animal, the individual is categorized similar to a farmer, who has the right to kill and eat his livestock without government intervention.

Fred Petters / City Pages

The New York Times circled up some good ideas:

While mimosas, bellinis and other champagne cocktails are always an option on New Year’s Day, a more-healthful choice may be to use the uncorked bubbly in creative home cooking. Champagne is an excellent accompaniment to seafood and salads, and several Web sites offer recipes for starting the new year in a healthy way.

MyRecipe.com offers seven things to do with leftover champagne, including a 10-minute dish, Scallops in Champagne Sauce.

Chef Bryan Voltaggio from Volt in Frederick, Md., suggests putting leftover champagne in an ice-cream maker. The resulting sorbet will have a bubbly effect and can be served atop raw oysters for brunch. He offers several more ambitious ideas as well at FrederickNewsPost.com.

The Galveston County Daily News offers recipes for a tantalizing dish of Gulf shrimp, curry powder, cilantro and champagne as well as champagne truffles and a champagne vinaigrette.

Planet Green suggests using leftovers to make champagne vinegar.

And Epicurious.com suggests using leftover champagne or any leftover white wine to cook mussels.

Gain Newman / Greenpeace

Andrew Revkin has an excellent post on the declining ocean stocks of the Northern Bluefin Tuna, mainly due to the depletion caused by overfishing.

I think, sadly, environmentalists are really late to the game in this regard. Many species of ocean are well on their way to extinction if we do not do something about it. The reality is, we could all continue to enjoy eating it as high-grade sushi if we all make an effort to curtail our consumpition in order to let stocks recover. But that unfortunately makes too much sense… people would rather consume it now and not worry about the future. They will pay the price by never having it again due to extinction.

Revkin also goes on to talk about what a joke the current quote system for fishing this species is:

The fact is that for years the quota in the West has also been much too high, due to commercial and recreational fishing industry lobbying. And we continue fishing in the spawning area. (Earlier this month I lost a long-running lawsuit against N.O.A.A. to close the Gulf to gear capable of catching bluefins during the spawning season.) It’s all subject to limits but the limits are too high. If they weren’t too high, we would not have the problems. So we have a collapsed western stock and a rapidly declining eastern stock because of greed all around.

U.S. boats have been catching a small fraction of their quota (about 10 to 15 percent of what they’re allowed) in recent years. That percent of the quota will increase as the quota comes down, making things look better. But the quota remains higher than the catch, so the quota is not a limit. It’s like limiting your pasta intake by reducing your limit from 10 pounds of spaghetti per meal to five pounds per meal. Nobody is eating five pounds, so it’s not a limit.

Allen Brisson-Smith / New York Times

Minnesota has three main items in their “contribution” world cuisine:

• SPAM
• Tater Tot Hot Dish
• The “Jucy Lucy”

I have to say that the New York Times has been on quite a roll lately.., and not just with their recent coverage of the financial meltdown.

NYT’s Andrew Martin talks about the current economic times being a potential boon for such retail items like SPAM from Austin, Minnesota.

Invented during the Great Depression by Jay Hormel, the son of the company’s founder, Spam is a combination of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a “hint” of sodium nitrite “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color,” according to Hormel’s Web site for the product.

Because it is vacuum-sealed in a can and does not require refrigeration, Spam can last for years. Hormel says “it’s like meat with a pause button.”

During World War II, Spam became a staple for Allied troops overseas. They introduced it to local residents, and it remains popular in many parts of the world where the troops were stationed.

FULL ARTICLE HERE.

I think it is an idea whose time has come. For years, we have played along with the idea of wineries being quaint country-side weekend getaways. And while it is fun to visit them, the reality is that most wineries truck in a lot of the grapes they use from other farmers.

Kristina Shevory of the New York Times has an excellent piece on the rising group of urban wineries. They let go of the pretense, acquire the grapes they desire, and make wine to their own standards. I think this is a good thing. America has gone through quite a renaissance with craft beer brewing and it would be a welcome sight if we could do the same for wine and whiskey.

Stratospheric land prices keep many vintners city-bound. Without deep pockets, winemakers can’t afford to buy vineyard land, which can cost as much as $100,000 an acre in well-known areas like Napa, or to build a fancy chateau for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Buying land, planting vines and building a winery is then largely left to those who have made their fortunes in other professions.

“My wife and I are academics; we didn’t come from software or Wall Street. This is what we could afford,” said Tim Sorenson, the winemaker and co-owner, with his wife, Nancy Rivenburgh, at Fall Line Winery in Seattle and an economics professor. “It’s not romantic, but it works.”

FULL ARTICLE HERE.

As I lover of real beer, I am ashamed to admit that I am very inexperienced in the world of Italian beers. I once drank a bottle of the disappointingly mediocre Peroni beer, but that’s about it. The New York Times Evan Rail writes about the explosion of the craft brewing scene in wine-loving Italy:

“Around Italy, a craft beer scene has sprung up, bringing well-made specialty brews into haute cuisine dining rooms and elevating the fare served in brew pubs, creating an attractive destination for beer lovers who also love great food. “Italian brewers have done a wonderful job of making it clear that they are the same sort of artisans as chefs and others involved in food,” said Stan Hieronymus, the author of “Brew Like a Monk”.”

FULL ARTICLE HERE.

The Potato Eaters - Vincent Van Gogh

The Sunday New York Times has an interesting article on the humble potato taking on new focus as a potential way to impact the fight against world hunger. Nutritionists, scientists, and aid specialists believe that localized potato farming can help take some of the pressure off of grains which have been prone to recent swings in commodity prices.

“Potatoes are a good source of protein, starch, vitamins and nutrients like zinc and iron. As a crop, they require less energy and water to grow than wheat, taking just three months from planting to harvest. Since they are heavy and do not transport well, they are not generally traded on world financial markets, making their price less vulnerable to speculation. They are not generally used to produce biofuels, a new use for food crops that has helped drive up grain prices. When grain prices skyrocketed, potato prices remained stable.

Beyond that, potato yields can be easily increased in most of the world, where they are grown inefficiently and in small numbers.

Thanks to the “green revolution” of the 1970s, yields of wheat, rice and corn jumped by more than 50 percent in a decade as fertilizers and new planting techniques were used. Potatoes never got that kind of attention.

In poor countries, potato yields are still relatively low, at just one to five tons of potatoes per hectare (about 2 1/2 acres), less than 15 percent the yield in the developed world.”

FULL ARTICLE HERE.

As mentioned during my brief post on the Autumn Beer Review, I picked up my first ever 4-pack of SurlyFest. This beer is Surly Brewing Company’s “interpretation” of an Oktoberfest-style brew. And I must say, I appreciate their ambition to create something fresh rather than a B or C-grade version of the real thing. Most macro and micro American breweries put out an overly sweet product with a lazy autumn-themed or burnt orange label and call it “Oktoberfest”. Color me unimpressed.

However, SurlyFest has a crispness that matches our climate here. There is definitely a hop presence that is more noticeable than in other Oktoberfest beers. The maltiness is there, but is kept in check to balance with the hops. When you pour it out of the can, you can truly appreciate the copper tone of its body.

I brought my SurlyFest home on a cool Autumn night and enjoyed it with some salami that I purchased from Russ Kendall’s Smoke House. Along with a beautifully ripened tomato from a friend’s garden that I lightly salted, the three items created a satisfying meal that did not even need cooking. I would also like to note that despite this beer being a tip o’ the hat to our German friends, I really recommend SurlyFest with spicy Asian food.

Cheers.

Bill Ward wrote a nice article in the Star Tribune about St. Croix Vineyards of Stillwater and grape picking time. Now, to be honest with you, I have yet to taste a truly great wine made in MinneSnowta (in fact, many have been abysmal). This, of course, has to do with our gawd-awful-builds-character winters that we have annually and is more conducive to beer-vodka-whiskey making.

However, the good scientists at the University of Minnesota keep developing new strains of grape vines that I hope one day will truly elevate the level of local wine here. In the meantime, it is still fun to visit a vineyard and drink their bounty. After all, these days, most of us do not have the money to fly to Argentina or California for that matter.

FULL ARTICLE HERE. Photo: Steve Rice/Star Tribune

Chris Riemenschneider has a short article about the 2008 Autumn Brew Review in this weeks Star Tribune. I had not heard of the Lift Bridge Brewery (from Stillwater, MN) up until now, but I am curious to get a hold of some their beers to try.

It didn’t surprise me that the Surly booth was very popular, I’ve simply never had a bad beer made by them. Speaking of which, I just picked up a 4-pack of Surlyfest, their interpretation of Oktoberfest style beer and will post a review in a few days.

I am a huge fan of the British version of the “Kitchen Nightmares” TV show (the American version on FOX hypes the drama beyond the ridiculous point). Anyway, if you’ve seen Mr. Ramsay in action, you’ll love this spoof with “Little Gordon Ramsay”. – RJay

Haven’t gone out for Oktoberfest here in the Twin Cities yet??   Well, you should.

Tom Horgen of the Strib has the round-up for you and your beer-lovin’ friends.

ARTICLE HERE.

image: Oliver Lang, Getty/afp – Afp/getty Images