Sour coon pfeffer (racoon pickled in onions and sour wine)

I ask you.


(Photo from wikipedia.)

I have become passionately devoted, if I wasn't already, to library cast off book sales, and especially to rummaging about on shelves and in boxes thereat, hunting for old obscure cooking pamphlets. There's no end to the gems, from no end of sources -- very often from foodstuffs manufacturers or kitchen appliance manufacturers (whose recipes can be quite good), or from women's civic groups or church groups. A recent favorite is Right eating ... keeps you swinging' published by the Carnation canned milk company in 1964, and intended for an audience of older teens and young adults about ready to go out on their own for the first time. ("Why be healthy? Because it's so much more fun than being unhealthy." Very true.)

Now I happen to have been just thumbing through Favorite Recipes from New Glarus, Wisconsin, published by the New Glarus Tourism Association sometime before September 3, 1977, which is the date inscribed inside the cover by a previous owner of the pamphlet. It looks very clean and unused, by the way. Many of the recipes in this one are followed by an explanatory little sentence, as "a family favorite," "an Amish favorite," "we have prepared this for Christmas in our home for 55 years." I'm sure the ladies were all encouraged to tell a little something about their treasures, when they sent them in to be considered for inclusion in the pamphlet. And every single recipe is followed by the name and address of the proud donor. On every page the pale brown typescript opens up vistas of generations gone by, and of a thousand private lives on a thousand shady American streets. Is the Kundert family of New Glarus still making Zueri Bieter every Thanksgiving? And is Mrs. Purdue of Canyon Road East in Puyallup, Washington, still known -- or perhaps her daughter or granddaughter is -- for Apples Wilhelm Tell? (She very properly credits Marcel Forster of Marcel's Pastry Shop in Seattle with the apple concoction. "I have changed it somewhat.") I'm indebted to a Mrs. Snyder of Mullens, West Virginia, for a recipe for Mock Oysters which is, incredibly, nothing but elderberry blossoms fried in butter.

But nothing is more incredible than this, which I give in full, not forgetting the unorthodox spelling of raccoon. It's on page 33, and comes from the New Glarus fire department, which seems perfectly right. Only strong men could cope with it.

Sour Coon Pfeffer

8 to 9 racoons
salt and pepper
onions
pickling spices
sour wine

Clean all fat from racoons and cut up. Soak one day in strong salt water. Then drain and rinse. Place in stone crock, a layer of meat at a time, salt and pepper each layer and add a few slices of onion to each layer. Put pickling spices in tea balls or sack (1 pak to 4 racoons). Cover with sour wine; let stand 3 days in refrigerator. Using the wine it was soaked in, cook in a roaster at 350 F for 2 and 1/2 hours.

Serves 40.

I'll bet it does. And I'm puzzled by the idea of having access to a whole lot of sour wine. What kind of wine, originally? Did the firemen buy it up cheap and let it sit around for a year or two? But then, procuring enough of that ingredient would in a way seem to be the least of the cook's problems here.

Because, really. I ask you.



I think we had better stick with this.

Fenn Valley, from the Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival

What I particularly looked forward to trying at the Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival was Fenn Valley's red blend, Capriccio, which I had tasted at a friend's house within the last year. Amid the hubbub of that big-tent, county fair style Fest, I peered about like a tourist anxious to see the right things, and luckily there it was: Fenn Valley's table, ice buckets, wines, signage, and staff. I handed over a ticket and got my one ounce pour. I sipped, nodded sagely, and was satisfied. Just as good as I remembered.


Capriccio is a very friendly, fruity red blend made up of about 70 percent chambourcin and the remainder Meritage, that is, the remainder the Bordeaux blend of cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, and merlot which American wine makers may legally call "Meritage" if they wish. One pronounces Meritage to rhyme with heritage, although many people say mehr-ih-TAJH because the spelling of this invented word looks so French. My hastily scribbled notes say helpfully, "fruity, medium body -- !!" One hundred point scales are quite beyond me as yet, although at least I've given up explanatory smiley faces.

Chambourcin is a hybrid grape introduced, according to The New Wine Lover's Companion, in France's Loire Valley by Joannes Seyve in 1963. Further information from Appellation America -- which is now a subscription-only website, by the way, although its cached pages are still available gratis -- tells us that despite these details, chambourcin's origins remain mysterious. M. Seyve "based [the Chambourcin] on a number of undetermined Native American species and Seibel hybrids," and it seems in turn there are a large number of these, developed by French hybridist Albert Seibel (1844-1936). The New Companion credits Seibel with ten in just one short paragraph.

The point of hybridizing grape varieties, of course, is to get two parent plants of different species to pass the best of their characteristics to a new variety. Mixing the gene pools of Europe's vitis vinifera and North America's vitis labrusca has long been a tempting challenge: growers want, say, a pinot noir's fine elegant flavor with a Concord's hardiness and abundant production (not that that particular marriage has ever been attempted to my knowledge, but gracious mightn't it be interesting?).

All this makes the chambourcin a 47-year-old hybrid of hybrids of hybrids. And it seems M. Seyve hit something of a jackpot with this one. Appellation America calls the plant "high yielding, cold resistant, disease resistant, and extremely vigorous," its grapes thick skinned and high in tannins and acidity. That's the recipe for a wine of good structure -- in other words, a wine which gives you something to chew on besides sweetness or jamminess or an alcohol kick. It is widely planted in its hybrid home, the Loire, as well as in the northeastern and midwestern United States, in Canada, and in "the humid conditions of" Australia's Hunter Valley.

All that remains to be found out is the reason for chambourcin's name. My French dictionary tells me, on the page where that name should be, chambrer means to keep something under lock and key, or to keep (wine) at room temperature. Good to remember, next time I have access to some nice Capriccio.

Suburban duck breasts

To invent dinner when you have no recipe; and to pretend that nice, dark meat chicken thighs are duck breasts when you have no duck breasts:

... and you've tried finding them. The supermarkets don't carry them. The local little specialty meat market doesn't carry them. (You've asked.) All those in-the-know urban, professional people who live around the corner from bustling quaint gourmet shops and write excellent recipes for magazines and books don't quite realize. But, since a certain cut of beef was once sold as "City chicken" in the days when chicken was more expensive than beef, shall I now christen chicken thighs as "Suburban duck breasts"? Why not? If it will bring me eternal fame I might consider it.

But really.

... saute chopped onions and celery in olive oil or butter or a combination. Add sliced mushrooms and sliced fresh garlic.



Remove the vegetables from the pan, and then briefly brown four or five boneless, skinless chicken thighs. The thighs are sold nicely rolled up in the shrink wrapped tray. Open the meat out and flatten it to be sure that it starts to cook and continues to cook thoroughly.



When the thighs are lightly seared, return the vegetables to pan, add a quarter cup or so of wine, and simmer gently for about half an hour. Any herbs like thyme or tarragon would also be a good addition now.

Thicken the gravy and serve with mashed potatoes or brown rice.



Just about any wine would go well with this, I think. A rich malbec, a Rioja if you are in the mood for a red, or a riesling or perhaps one of those flavorful but strangely woody pinot grigios -- the millenium has arrived again, I finally tasted a Santa Margherita -- if you are in the mood for a white.

How rose wines are like colored moccasins

Years ago, my high school French teacher would once in while give us a treat, and allow us to relax from studying grammar and vocabulary long enough to discuss French culture in English. Among other updates and commentaries, she said to us once that it takes about two years or so for French fashions to reach the midwest, but that they inevitably do. They travel first to the east coast, then they jump to California, and then they filter back to us here in our sunny plains and humid forests. (Astonishingly cool plains and forests, as it happens, at least here in my little ecosystem. For the first time ever, I have had to shut windows at night, to keep out the July chill.)

One day, circa 1979, Madame warned us that in a short time, we would all be wearing brightly colored moccasins. She had just visited Paris, and that was what the young women, BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) were wearing on the street.

We all gasped in revulsion. Surely not. Moccasins are brown, why -- they are made of leather, the Indians wore them, they are dignified and natural, they muffled the brave Sioux's footfall as he paced the thick woods silently hunting deer and things. Who would be caught dead wearing such an absurd cultural thievery as colored moccasins? Madame just smiled knowingly.

Needless to say, within a few years, there they were in the stores and on girls' feet. Abruptly, yellow and blue and pink moccasins looked "cute." What happened to change our minds? Nothing, it seems, except that it became clear by some sort of planetary osmosis that of course colored moccasins are French. Q.E.F. (quod erat faciendum, "which was to be done").

These memories have returned because last night, at a Wine 101 presentation, a young woman asked me a question I couldn't quite answer except by saying "it may just be the fashion." It was an answer that explained nothing -- but possibly everything. This young woman had been to Paris two years ago, and had been surprised there to notice the constant serving and drinking of rose wines in the cafes. Why roses? She expected Parisians to be drinking, well, something else. Stronger stuff, perhaps.

My humdrum little answer, sometimes it's just a matter of fashion, makes sense to me because dry rose wines are popular in this country, too. Right on schedule. Professionals first noticed that sales were trending up about two years ago; today the trend continues and this spring, French producers worried about a potential change in European law which could permit roses to be made in a sort of quick 'n' easy way, no doubt to take advantage of that thirsty market. (The proposed law change was scrapped after protests about dilution of quality.)

Why roses, why now? A dry rose is delightful and refreshing, but objectively no more so than a chilled white or even a mix of Beaujolais and water, a blend that Beaujolais producer Didier Mommessin touts as "the most refreshing drink in the world" (quoted in Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, p. 93). I suspect any gaps in that "why now?" logic can often best be filled in, whether we are talking about wine or shoes or lots of other cultural products, with reference to that simple Q.E.F. The French are doing it.

Ready to dip your un-moccasined toe into the sea of dry rose wines? Here are three to start with, all ranging in price from $5 to $15:

• Frontera Rose, Concha y Toro, Chile
• Santa Digna Cabernet Sauvignon Rose, Miguel Torres, Chile
• Bonterra Rose, Bonterra Vineyards, Mendocino, California -- blended from sangiovese, zinfandel, and grenache grapes, all organically grown. This one is available only at Whole Foods.

This is a map of Burgundy

Really. Of course you must ignore the wooden porch steps, and in your imagination transport the six stones inside the borders of France. Place them in order in a small region in the east central part of the country, just down and to the right of Paris. Then you may proceed.

At the top left, the white stone represents Chablis, home to fine crisp chardonnays, held in stainless steel and not oak. The red and green stones down and to the right represent, together, the Cote d'Or, comprised of the Cote de Nuits (red) and the Cote de Beaune (green). The little white rock next in line is the Cote Chalonnaise, which is quite small on real maps. Next, the larger white stone is the Maconnais, producer of everyday good chardonnays -- famed Pouilly Fuisse comes from here. And last, the red stone somewhat in shadow stands for Beaujolais. This is the area that makes easy quaffing gamays -- appropriate that it should be in shadow, in fact, since its wines are so different from Burgundy's fine pinot noirs and since Beaujolais often is not thought of -- or discussed in wine books in the same chapter as -- Bourgogne.

When forming a mental picture of Burgundy, do put this in the forefront of your thoughts:



for the heart of Burgundy is the Cote d'Or. The name is either a contraction of Cote d'Orient ("east slope"), because all the vines face east to catch the sun, or it means "golden slope" because the vines' foliage turns golden in the fall. Wine writers don't agree. Regardless, these two sections, the Cote de Nuits, producing almost entirely red wine, and the Cote de Beaune, producing about 70 percent reds and 30 percent whites, are the source of the sublime things that conoisseurs collect, and that movie oenophiles from Claude Rains to Paul Giamatti rave about happily. Grace Kelly, too. Montrachet (chardonnay) comes from the Cote de Beaune, Romanee Conti (pinot noir) from the Cote de Nuits.

If you like history and especially like reading about medieval dukes and queens on long summer days -- so much easier to imagine jousts and pilgrimages and fluttering pennons now, than when the cold wind is howling and the snowplows thundering down dark winter streets -- you might know other mental pictures of Burgundy. Something like ...




...they are not necessarily all Burgundians, but they lived and posed when the dukes and other grand folk in Burgundy were served by artists whom Renaissance Italy could well envy. (All the images come from Olga's Gallery.) And note the background: do we see grapevines? Perhaps not, but it is summer.

Gruner Veltliner, Grants Pass, Oregon, and me

Gruner veltliner is a white grape that is Austria's pride, and that is, for casual wine drinkers, perhaps the most unusual new variety to come along in the last five years or so. It's a sort of "oh,-yes-I've-heard-of-that-lately" wine, just as there are "oh,-yes" books, news events, film documentaries, and for that matter, people.

This is not to say that the grape is a new variety in the universe. Frank Schoonmaker calls it "Veltliner" in his 1960s era Encyclopedia of Wine, and notes that it is a quality product of Austrian vineyards. (He advises it will remind you of a "Traminer," without traminer's very pungent floral aromas and tastes. By traminer he means gewurztraminer. Why the dropped prefixes in 1960s wine writing? Conversely, why the added prefixes in modern wine writing?) Oz Clarke in Grapes and Wines (2007) says that no less than a third of Austria's vineyard land is devoted to it. At high yields the grape, pronounced GROO-ner VELT-lih-ner, makes simple jug wines. At lower yields in the best growing regions -- Niederosterreich, in the northeastern part of the country -- it makes finer, more elegant light wines of distinct grassy, "celery," and black pepper flavors. These can even age a year or two in the bottle, and so take on what Clarke calls a "honeyed" character without losing its pepperiness. A light, fresh, but age-worthy summer white is unusual.

Also unusual, for me, is to come across a wine-related reference to Grants Pass, Oregon. "What a small world this is," as the Mad Hatter lisps, wide-eyed, in the old Alice in Wonderland movie. Biokult's gruner veltliner, produced by the Michlits family in Austria's Niederosterreich region, was introduced to the United States this month by Natural Merchants LLC, headquartered (partly) in Grants Pass. This allows me to lisp, wide eyed -- why, I've been there. The name sends me back to a family vacation a good long time ago, and memories of the Rogue River, of huge pine forests looming over two-lane roads, of feeding chipmunks right outside a hotel balcony, and of Oregon nights so primevally black that, even standing on that hotel balcony, you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. To this day I think I saw a bear in the woods, but it was probably my imagination. Incidentally, the other part of Natural Merchants is based in Cartagena, Spain. I'm sorry to say I've not been there, although I have a niece traveling in Spain at the moment. Would the Mad Hatter blink at that, and stutter, "Now, now -- don't get excited"?

Biokult's gruner veltliner is organically made (and beautifully packaged, by the way). The Michlits family runs a farm, not just a vineyard; beneficial insect populations are encouraged, an Angus cattle herd three hundred strong provides the manure for fertilizing soil, and "an infusion of horsetail" is laid down on the vineyard in the fall to fight dangerous fungus. The family have also begun experimenting with concrete "eggs," tall enough for a man to stand up in, in which to vinify wine. Twelve months' exposure to the oxygen levels that will seep in very gradually through the porous concrete will, the winemakers hope, create wines of completely fresh and "unadulterated" character. The gruner veltliner, however, has itself been vinified more traditionally in stainless steel.

The tongue running trippingly over this new name, not to mention over the wine, makes me wonder and speculate on what might be a comparable up-and-coming, yes-I've-heard-of-that red wine. Perhaps zweigelt? It's an Austrian red variety, a crossing of two other grapes, St. Laurent and blaufrankisch. "Low yields can produce stunning results" (Oz Clarke, Grapes and Wines). And beautiful packaging, too.

Biokult's gruner veltliner is available at Whole Foods ($11.99).

A cherry zinfandel barbecue

Just in time for your Fourth of July barbecues, here is a sauce recipe, from MyRecipes.com, that includes two all-American things: cherries and zinfandel wine (the full red version, not the "white").



The ingredients list is mesmerizingly long but intriguing nonetheless, and once you saute a bit of onion and garlic until they soften, everything else just gets thrown right in. Thusly:

Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a saucepan. Add and saute 1 medium onion, chopped, and 2 Tbsp. diced garlic. When the vegetables are soft -- remember not to burn the garlic, which is always a bad thing -- knock yourself out adding:

1 and 1/2 cups dry red zinfandel, 1 cup ketchup, 2/3 cup dried tart cherries, 3 Tbsp. cider vinegar, 3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, 3 Tbsp. lightly packed light brown sugar, 2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard, 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh ginger, 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, 1 tsp. anise seeds, 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

Bring the sauce to a boil, and then lower the heat and simmer until it thickens slightly, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the sauce cool slightly before pouring it into a blender. Add 2 Tbsp. lemon juice, and whirl in the blender until everything is smooth. Taste and add up to 1 more Tbsp. lemon juice if needed. Use warm or at room temperature for grilling pork ribs, or perhaps dark meat chicken or even venison?

The ketchup and light brown sugar will make this sauce quite sweet, so don't forget the lemon juice at the end. Its use here exemplifies Mrs. Humphrey's advice that lemon is one of the two or three great and underappreciated kitchen necessities, along with other things we don't often think about, like vanilla and ginger -- which is also here in this sauce.

And I do believe, if I were adventurous, I might try substituting fresh cherries for the dried tart ones. Maybe then I could experiment with adding two of the cherry's good friends, nutmeg and allspice, to the sauce, and then wouldn't it be delectable on grilled duck? It's all in the spirit of independence.

My Recipes.com

Wine from the Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival

Free Run Cellars' pinot meunier rose: a pale, rich rose color, very light and dry, with a steely taste that grew more intriguing with each sip. $12.99.

Pinot meunier, a relative of pinot noir, is one of the grapes of Champagne -- the others being chardonnay and pinot noir. According to the Herbsts of The New Wine Lover's Companion, its fruitness, high acidity, and high yield make it valuable enough to be the most widely planted grape in the Champagne region. It does well in very cool climates, which explains its presence in snowy Michigan. Meunier's unusual name comes from the French word for "miller," and refers to the underside of the vine's leaves looking as though they are covered in flour.

The fascinating steel-and-fruit taste of Free Run's example seemed to just ask for a pairing with something lusciously fatty -- deep fried county fair food, perhaps? -- and indeed the winery website suggests shellfish or cream based sauces to go with.

More good news: yes, Free Run Cellars can ship to Illinois.