After seeing our daughter settled in to camp in Dent (a/k/a “middle-of-nowhere, Minn.”), we drove about an hour to the fine city of Fargo, North Dakota.  Before we went, we told people we were going there and they were all extremely skeptical that we’d find anything worthwhile to occupy ourselves for the week we were there.  It’s not a big city, that’s for sure, but like our little gem in central Illinois, it has a lot to offer if you look a little closer.

The first night there, we checked into our hotel, unpacked a bit and headed to downtown Fargo.  We walked around a while to see what was there and unwind from already being in the car for many hours that day.  We settled in to the HoDo Lounge, located in the historic Hotel Donaldson.  I had read about this place while planning some of our meals and looked forward to what they had to offer.

Opening the menu, we were greeted by a long list of local producers that they use.  Nearly every aspect of their menu was represented, flour, lamb, cheeses, and produce.  We ended up sharing a couple salads and small plates to get a good sampling of their offerings.

We ordered two salads, the first being a pretty standard salad made with organic greens.  We followed the recommendation of our server and chose the dressing made with a Minnesota blue cheese.  The dressing was balanced, not too creamy, not too much funk from the blue, and just enough to dress the salad.

The next salad seemed so odd that we had to try it.  Watermelon cubes meet shaved fennel, feta, and kalamata olives, dressed with a sambuca citron vinaigrette.  I wasn’t expecting to really like this, but it was a knockout!  The sweet watermelon and fennel really worked well together.  The feta and olives added some saltiness that somehow brought out more of the richer watermelon flavor.

Oh yeah, drinks!  We were in a lounge after all.  Megan had the cat’s meow, made with a local rhubarb vodka (more on that to come), ginger syrup, and orange juice.

I went with a classic gin martini, garnished with blue cheese stuffed olives.  It could have stood a little more vermouth, but I really enjoyed trying a new (to me) gin, Hendrick’s.

The walleye cake was our introduction to the understanding that this fish is everywhere in the area.  This cake was the best fish cake I’ve ever had, bursting with flavor and really featuring the main ingredient, walleye.  The slaw was light and crunchy, and the lemon caper emulsion should be bottled and shipped across the nation to replace any imitation tartar sauce we’re suffering with now.

Then we have meat, a house-made boudin blanc, made with pork and rabbit.  It’s been browned and served over a warm apple-studded choucroute and drizzled with a thick apple gastrique.  The sausage itself was so well-seasoned and moist, and the texture was spot-on.  I’m not a fan of sauerkraut, but this choucroute preparation was delicate and complex, not just in-your-face stinky cabbage (apologies to the kraut lovers out there).

We were still a bit hungry, so we chose a lemon tartlet for dessert.  The crumbly tartlets were filled with a delightfully tart lemon custard, topped with fresh berries.  The strawberry/kiwi jelly “cone” was a fun and tasty garnish.

All in all, it was a great meal and a fabulous way to start our vacation.  We had drinks here a few more times over the course of our trip, but we had to try some of the other restaurants in town.  I’ll be posting about more of our adventure over the next week(s).

Have you been to Fargo or anywhere around there?  Leave a comment and share where you ate and what you thought of the area.

Offal, if you’ve never had it, refers to the magical “fifth quarter” of the animal, the stuff that falls off (get it, off-fall?) when you cut it open.  This also includes the extremities, like feet and ears.  Today we’re going to look at some organs and a tissue.  For you vegetarians and squeamish people (and because I don’t have any), I’ll spare you the before pictures.

The most common offal available is liver.  It’s available in many forms, from the grandiose foie gras to buck-a-pound pre-packaged chicken livers.  You may have had pâté, which usually includes the liver of some animal.  My friend, Laurence, makes a mean pork liver pâté studded with tongue.  The flavor and texture is one I find so enjoyable.  Some people, however, turn their noses at it because “it looks like cat food.”  Good… more for us.  Beef liver is available, and is commonly served overcooked and doused with onions to try to cover up the fact that it’s overcooked liver.

You can sometimes find tongue, usually beef tongue, especially if you have ethnic markets available to you.  Americans have tended toward the less-worked, less-flavorful, more expensive parts of the animal, but many in the world have held on to traditional cuts.  I’ve had beef tongue a few times, and none of them were spectacular.  It was beefy, but not terribly flavorful.  It needs to be cooked a long time to make it tender, but in the process it seemed to have lost much of its character.  I recommend you try it… find a good taquería and order one.  If you don’t like it, close your eyes, dump some salsa on it, and pretend it’s actually tenderloin.

Now for the serious stuff, the kind of thing you can’t find at a typical grocery store.  The first is a specialty sausage made with a mix of delicious piggy parts, some spices, some fruit, and blood.  The traditional blood sausage, or boudin noir, is made with caramelized apples and cognac (or calvados), but the Caribbean-inspired riff that I tried (courtesy of Larbo’s skilled manipulation) had raisins soaked in rum.

Since I forgot that it had raisins instead of apples, I stayed true to traditional accompaniments and made simple baked (in butter) apples and crisp-fried (in schmaltz) potatoes, as inspired by the mentions on this page about boudin noir.  As recommended by Larbo, I sizzled the sausages in a skillet until heated through and served them sliced open.  The sausage mixture inside was almost creamy, with a slight metallic hint (blood does have a good amount of iron) in the aftertaste.  The allspice came through as a pleasant warm spice accompaniment to the sausage, and despite the raisin/apple difference, it went very well with the baked apples.

If you learn how to cook potatoes one way, learn how to cook sliced potatoes in a flavorful fat (like lard, goose, or chicken fat) until they are nicely browned all over and crunchy.  I added some lightly sautéed onion and garlic and finished with a sprinkle of parsley.  I could have eaten a bowl of those potatoes.

The other offal experience I recently had was with pork kidney.  I’ve seen them at the University meat salesroom a few times, and was always curious what they’d be like.  Last Friday, when my wife was returning from a business trip, I decided to prepare them as a side dish.  As a filtering organ, I knew there would be a much stronger flavor than, say, tripe or tongue, but there was little advice to be found on the web on how to “purge” them of their offensiveness.  I trimmed the meaty outer portions away from the inner glandular portions and gave them a quick rinse with water.

I did read that overcooking was strictly verboten, as they would quickly become disgusting.  I opted to saute them in a bit of butter, then finish with what I gathered is a traditional mustard sauce.  It was simply a bit of whole grain mustard and heavy cream stirred in at the end.  The mustard and cream worked together with the, ahem, unique flavor of the kidneys to make something that really tasted good.  Our 7-year-old tried them first (without knowing what they were) and said the kidney was “really good.”  To her credit, after we told her what it was, she kept on eating it.  I love that girl!

Edited to add (due to a question via Google Buzz): A friend who reads the blog asked me to be a little more descriptive about the flavor of the kidneys.  Here’s what I said: “I’ll be honest… it had a little bit of acidic twang, but the underlying flavor was deeply meaty. The texture was firm but pretty tender. To put it bluntly, kidneys filter pee and you could taste it juuust a little, but it worked well with the acid and fat of the mustard cream sauce.”

Since my wife loves steak, and I’d heard steak and kidney pie has been a hit in the UK for generations, I made a pan-seared steak, some cannellini beans mashed with truffled goat cheese, some kale for greenery, and a parsnip-potato pancake (improvised from a Union Square Cafe cookbook) for crunch.  As a home-coming meal, it was teetering on the edge between extravagant and overwhelming, but we all managed to enjoy it.  I’ll definitely try to learn more about kidneys and prepare them again.  If you can find them, give it a shot.  As a less-desirable organ meat, they are super-cheap and pack a lot of flavor.

If you want to learn more about offal, there are many great resources.  The local meat master, Larbo, of This Little Piggy, has explored everything but the oink.  Famous chefs are becoming more open about offal, as it becomes more available and trendy in times of economic hardship.  One notable chef is Chris Cosentino, who is known for his offal cooking skills.

Weisswurst, blaukraut, and potatoes… oh my!

Or you could go to the next page.

We frequently drive up route 47 to visit family in the Chicago suburbs and pass through a little town called Gibson City about 45 minutes away from C-U.  My wife loves German food, especially sauerkraut and sausages.  After hearing reviews, seeing pictures, and looking at their menu online, we finally stopped in to Bayern Stube.  If you’ve never been there, you’re missing out.  The experience of the restaurant, with the waitresses dressed in Bavarian outfits, taxidermy-covered walls, and good German beer served in large one-liter mugs, should not be missed.  The food is very good, and portions are large, but you don’t have to take my word for it.

If you’re not up for the drive or the prices, I haven’t found any good options in town to get good wurst.  Your best bet is to make it yourself.  The hardest part about recreating a meal like this is getting the right sausage.  You can really use just about any sausage you like, as long as it’s not too spicy.  I really like going to the UI Meat Salesroom.  In addition to pork, lamb, and beef cuts, they make a wide range of sausages from the pigs they raise.  Their bacon is also very good.  They sometimes make varieties of sausage that you won’t find anywhere else in the area, like weisswurst or mushroom & swiss brats.

One of my favorite parts of the meal at Bayern Stube was the braised red cabbage or blaukraut in German.  The sausages can’t help but be delicious, the starch could be any manner of things, but the cabbage is vital to the meal.  Not only does it the only really colorful element, but the sweetness of the cabbage and acid note of the vinegar bring the plate together.

You’ll want to decide on your starch beforehand, I went with potatoes that I boiled until done, then crisped them in a pan with a little bit of Triple S Farm lard I found at Common Ground.  Other good options would be spaetzle, potato pancakes, or simple mashed potatoes.  The weisswurst is a juicy but lean sausage, so you can afford to use a little extra butter (or lard, or your fat of choice) in this part of the meal.

The weisswurst that the UI Meat Salesroom makes is pre-cooked, so all you need to do is gently heat them in water.  Because of its delicate flavor, this is not a great grilling sausage.  Simply cover them with water and heat until the water is barely simmering.  Hold that temperature for about 5 minutes to heat them thoroughly, then kill the heat and leave them in the water to stay warm.  You should do this while the cabbage is cooking.  You could serve a couple of these links to each diner, but I’d recommend serving a couple different types of sausage.  Perhaps offer a contrast to the weisswurst with some of the smoked bratwurst.

Braised Red Cabbage

• 3T oil, lard, or bacon drippings
• 1 onion, chopped (red would be nice)
• 2 cloves
• pinch of caraway seed (optional)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 head red cabbage, quartered, cored, and shredded
• 1 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 c water
• 2T red wine vinegar

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.
2. When hot, add the onion and cook, stirring, until it becomes translucent.
3. Add the cloves, bay leaves, and caraway (if using), stir for 30 seconds until they release their fragrance.
4. Add the shredded cabbage, the salt, and the water.
5. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook slowly, stirring, as the cabbage wilts, about 10-15 minutes.
6. Eventually the cabbage will all be uniformly wilted.  Add the vinegar, and continue cooking for another 15-25 minutes or until you reach the desired tenderness.
7. Once the cabbage is as soft as you’d like, taste and season with salt, black pepper, and more vinegar, to taste.