Road Trip--Up North, Wisconsin

Due to spotty internet access, a few pics will have to serve as a sneak preview of the posts that will surely bubble up as a result of my recent trip to the North Woods.

Kids, Wisconsin, Summer, fishing, swimming, and eating. Lots of good stuff to write about. Over the next couple weeks I'll document my experience with an old fashioned shore dinner, the North Woods phenomenon known as the supper club, and some real-deal contender burger places.

For now, enjoy!

Very good (but not the world's best) burgers at Fred's in Burlington.

Enjoying the clean sands of Crystal Lake.

Shore dinner

Finchville Farms Bacon Shots + More Ham

I had so many pork porn shots from my Finchville visit that I'm doing a second post just to show them off.

Bellies

More bellies

Cured bellies

Ham slices ready for the store.

Hams in stockings.



I'm probably going to get more static from vegans for this. Oh well.

Road Trip--Buffalo Trace Distillery, Frankfort, KY

The final stop on my trip back from the Greenbrier, earlier this month, was a visit to what I now know to be the legendary Buffalo Trace distillery, where they create some of the finest Kentucky Bourbons on the market.

Buffalo Trace is a part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. It's being marketed to tourists and Bourbon lovers as a destination, and there are folks who even buy the "passport", make a trip of it and try to visit as many of the eight distilleries that ring the area around Frankfort as they can.

In keeping with this attempt to make this whole thing more marketable and accessible for tourists, I found the area to be well-marked, with street signs indicating where to turn once I got off the main highway, so finding the place was fairly easy. I pulled off into what appeared to be a large estate, and the drive wound around past some very well-kept gardens until I pulled into what was obviously the working distillery and tour zone.

As soon as I stepped out of my car, I was smacked in the face with the smell of bourbon. The distillery's parking lot sits right next to one of the large barrel aging warehouses, and the grainy, caramelly, woody smell seems to hang in the air around the compound of more than 100 buildings that make up the distillery. This smell, along with the fact that the 55 gallon barrels can yield as little as 5 gallons of finished product, have given rise to the term "angels' share" to refer to the huge quantity of the tasty brown liquor that evaporates into the Kentucky air as the environment and its temperature fluctuations work their magic and turn grain spirits into fine Kentucky bourbon.

I did what they refer to on their website as the "hard hat tour", which took me, according to their literature, "behind the scenes of the bourbon making process where the magic happens". As part of a small group of four guys, the tour guide walked us through the entire brewing/distilling/aging process from where the grain gets trucked in, right through to where the pure spirits go into the barrel to age.

The grains (corn, wheat, malted barley) are cooked in giant pressure cookers.

The mash is then cooled, yeast is added, and it's allowed to ferment in huge vats. The mash is constantly bubbling furiously and an oily, bubbly scum forms along the top. It smells like beer.

Buffalo Trace is really a pretty amazing place. The name refers to the fact that buffalo herds used to cross the Kentucky river at this particular spot, and is the owners' way of paying tribute to the "mighty herds that carved paths in the wilderness and a destiny for our ancestors."

The site was first settled in 1775 by brothers Hancock and Wills Lee, and was originally called Leestown. The story goes that the region's fine limestone-filtered water and burgeoning grain farmers made it an ideal place for a distillery, and, perhaps due to those circumstances, there has been a working distillery on the site since 1787.

It's gone through a lot, though. It was known as Blanton in the early 1800's, then was purchased by George T. Stagg in the 1870's and rechristened O.F.C. distillery. It eventually came to be known as the George T. Stagg distillery, which is what it's called on the National Registry of Historic Places.

During prohibition, George T. Stagg distillery was one of only four distilleries in the country to be granted a permit to continue producing alcohol for "medicinal purposes". People could get a prescription from their doctor to purchase whiskey, and some 5 million people got in on the act, purchasing the quart maximum that they were permitted every 10 days.

In 1992, it was sold to the New Orleans-based Sazerac company, which gave the distillery its current name and, in 1999, started marketing bourbon under the Buffalo Trace (which is a Kentucky Straight Bourbon) brand name.

Which brings us to some of the rules and nomenclature associated with bourbon. The label "bourbon" is a federally-protected descriptor. In 1964, the US Congress recognized Bourbon Whiskey as a "distinctive product of the United States." The Federal Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits (27 CFR 5) state that bourbon must meet these requirements:

• Bourbon must be made of a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn.
  
• Bourbon must be distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume).
• Bourbon must be aged in new, charred oak barrels
• Bourbon may not be introduced to the barrel at higher than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume).
• Bourbon which meets the above requirements and has been aged for a minimum of two years, may (but is not required to) be called Straight Bourbon.
• Bourbon aged for a period less than four years must be labeled with the duration of its aging.
• If an age is stated on the label, it must be the age of the youngest whiskey in the bottle.

The distinction, then, between bourbon and other various types of American whiskey, is an important one. Bourbon need not be made in Bourbon County (there are, in fact, no distilleries in Bourbon County, Kentucky), and it doesn't even need to have been made in Kentucky to be called bourbon. But it does need to adhere to the requirements above.

So, for example, Jack Daniels, is categorized as Tennessee whiskey, and cannot, by law, be called bourbon.

Now that the term "bourbon" has been fully explained, we can tackle the concept of "single barrel".

Basically, as bourbons go, the less expensive commercially-produced brands like Jim Beam or Maker's Mark, while they are legitimately called Kentucky Straight Bourbon, they are not "single barrel" bourbons. These brands consist of the contents of hundreds of barrels--some may be ten or twelve years old, others as young as two--which are then combined (don't say "blended"--I learned the hard way) so that a consistent color and flavor profile is achieved.

Which is fine. There's a certain consistency and appeal to these products, and the price is right. Buffalo Trace's eponymous brand falls into this category.

But the real draw here is the single barrel stuff. In 1984, the world’s first single barrel bourbon to be marketed commercially was released under the label, Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon, named after Colonel Albert B. Blanton, who dedicated his life to preserving the tradition of handcrafted small-batch produced bourbon amidst a quickly-modernizing industry.

Buffalo Trace makes and markets its own brand of single barrel, Eagle Rare, which is available as a 10 year-old single barrel at 90 proof and a 17 year-old "antique collection" offering.

But what I found really cool is the fact that Buffalo Trace produces and ages a number of other brands, each to the specifications of their master distiller, each with a different personality and flavor profile; Blanton's is a great brand with a number of different offerings, Elmer T. Lee is named after Buffalo Trace's distiller emeritus, and is bottled when he decides the time is right, and Rock Hill Farms is much prized, but difficult to find. There are others.

These distillers get first crack at the prime aging spots. Experts claim that specific floors within specific aging warehouses are superior; they offer the best temperature fluctuations between Kentucky's hot, humid summers, and cool, foggy winters, and that these severe temperature changes are what gives the contents of the barrel its distinctive mellowness and flavor notes. According to their website, "the fourth and fifth floors of Warehouse C and the fourth through sixth floors of Warehouses I and K produce our absolute best whiskey." Who knew?

Other products produced at Buffalo Trace include Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve, which is a wheated bourbon, has been rated the number one bourbon whiskey in the world and goes for around $250/bottle, and Sazerac Rye (rye whiskey is a smoother, yet spicier version of bourbon) are also made at the distillery. Rain vodka (the only vodka made exclusively from organically-grown American grain) is also produced at BT.

Bourbon is a distinctly American product which, despite achieving some degree of notoriety in recent years, hasn't even begun to approach the prestige level that Scotch whiskey has enjoyed forever. Until I went and immersed myself in the history of this fine amber sipping liquor, I was sorely ignorant of the amazing tradition, incredible standards, and great variety that Bourbon offers to those who are inclined to delve deeply into the genre and start learning and drinking. There's simply a ton to know, and there are lots of great resources out there.

And, amazingly, the center of the bourbon universe is a short 5-6 hour drive south of Chicago, tucked away in the country between Lexington and Frankfort, Kentucky, just waiting for city dwellers like me to discover, which, in my mind, is a pretty good excuse for a road trip.

Road Trip Photos--Hip Louisville

Ok, I will readily admit that I'm not as cool as I used to be. I'm forty. I have two young kids. Sorry. I try my best.

But as a once-hip indy-record-store-dwelling post-collegiate goof-off of some notoriety, I feel that even in my advanced middle-aged state, I can appreciate a good thing.

During my recent trip through the mid-South, I stopped in Louisville one evening for dinner and a stroll and happened up a great neighborhood along Bardstown Road that featured lots of urban hipster eye-candy in the form of cool bars, restaurants, and shops, live musicians playing outside a coffee shop in what I think is called Deer Park, and just a really nice neighborhood, with many friendly folks out and about.


Lots of cool signage in this area. I'm a sucker for creative and retro signage.







I had some food, which didn't actually impress much (maybe Louisville isn't a barbecue town, despite its proximity to Owensboro, which happens to be one of the great barbecue regions of the US), so I'm not really going to speak to the restaurants much with this post. But the neighborhood and the people really struck a nice tone for me on a warm late-Spring night.

I love record stores.

Walking a block or two off the main strip, I found a nice neighborhood with old trees and architecture very reminiscent of Chicago bungalows. Lots of brick, limestone, and squared-off corners which are everywhere in the Midwest and always give me a very comfortable and familiar feeling.

A little further off the main shopping drag, there are some amazing turn-of-the century mansions, too. You'll have to crane your neck out your car window to see them, since the most ornate and stoic examples sit perched way up on their own little hills, but park real quick and get out and look around at these beauties. They're amazing.


I was amazed at how, only five hours south of Chicago, Louisville felt so positively southern. Despite the quick drive, I was in The South; people had accents, every restaurant served cornbread and biscuits, and it was so much more warm and humid and green. This would be a nice place to live, I think.

The proof that I'm old, of course, is that I came back buzzing about Louisville and the impression it made on me, but instead of suggesting to my wife that we pick up and move there right now, as I might've done when I was in my 20's, my thought was that it would be a great place to retire to someday. Sad, this getting old thing. But also kind of cool.

My Post-Symposium Post

Sorry for the prolonged absence. I've been out of town the past week at the Symposium for Professional Food Writers at the Greenbrier in West Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

It was an incredible honor to be there. The whole thing was hugely inspirational and validating, both as a writer, but also just as someone who's as interested in food as I am. Spending a week with similar-minded people was great fun and really re-charged my batteries on both an intellectual and spiritual level.

Now, the challenge is to harness that energy. Many of the successful presenters at the Symposium shared their methods and models with the attendees, and I find myself going in twenty directions at once, trying to write for this or for that potential project, so I've taken a few days off from posting here, out of sheer inability to organize my thoughts and head in one specific direction.

I road-tripped it down there, so I took advantage by visiting a few food-related spots. I spent an evening in the hip Highlands area of Louisville, visited a farm where they make country ham the old fashioned way, ate lunch at a cool art deco diner in Charleston, West Virginia, and toured a bourbon distillery that's been in continuous operation since 1787. I'll be blogging about all that stuff under the new header "Road Trip" which will feature stuff that's outside the scope of Chicagoland.

I've also started a second blog, where I'll be documenting the process of opening and running my restaurant; it's going to be a good quality burger joint here in Chicago and I'll be blogging the story more or less in real time. As a business owner, I'll be hoping for things to run smoothly, but the writer part of me wants to see plenty of challenges and drama, which always make for better storytelling. As a restaurant industry vet, I know I can safely count on the latter.

The burger blog is in development now, but it'll be fully up and running soon.

Thanks for reading.

Istanbul Photos

Istanbul is a bustling city with street vendors everywhere,
people running by with giant loads on their backs,
and seemingly endless markets where you can get lost for days.
It's worth the trip just to visit the famous Spice Bazaar.
I feel lucky to have made it there in my life. Enjoy.

Fresh Chiles at the Spice Bazaar


This guy would scurry into a crowd, set up his stand and sell half his stack in about two minutes.



Persimmons



Haggling at the Spice Bazaar



Where the Spice Bazaar gets its name.



Doner vendor



Gotta love a market where you see offal just glistening in the sun!


In Italian, corn is referred to as Granturco, or "Turkish Grain", because it was first introduced to the Italians via Turkish trade routes. Istanbul was and still is a world crossroads, serving as a gateway between Asia and Europe.

Sicily Pictures

These were taken, for the most part, at Il Capo market in Palermo.

Enjoy. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year.


Making ricotta




Polleria



A cheese and salumi vendor



A friendly fruit-seller



Butchering a chicken



Chanterelles (not sure what they're called in Italian)


I swear, this was a real butcher stall in Palermo--it's not a scene from a Scorsese movie.


Old guy with crates

Photos--Boqueria Market, Barcelona

These are photos I took while visiting the Boqueria market in Barcelona. It is perhaps the best market in Europe. Just an amazing place to eat, buy, watch people, and be. I spent a LOT of time there when I lived in Barcelona in '97-'98, and learned a lot about the local ingredients and how to best prepare them. I only wish we had markets like this in Chicago.

Food can be so beautiful. Enjoy!

Embutidos

Fruit Vendor

Snap Peas

Tocineria

Mackerel

Drying sardines in a hoop basket