On the Sausage Trail in SW Michigan

My kids have been all over the world in search of summertime fun, but this year we found good times only an hour away in Southwest Michigan.

We found:



Beautiful Dog-friendly beaches



Lot's of U-pick



A winery trail




And a Sausage Trail.

Now gentle reader you may be saying to yourself "A Sausage Trail? How come I've never heard of that? I'm moving!"

Even though it's very plain to see now, it took me three years to connect the dots and I now only have a rough guide for you. We must undertake further investigation. For now I have mapped out four small shops where they make the sausage on the premises. Here's the 2010 SW Michigan Sausage Trail ver. 1.0 in Beta:


View SW Michigan Sausage Trail in a larger map


1st Stop: Drier's Meat Market, Three Oaks, MI,



When you think smoked meats in SW Michigan, you think Drier's. It's a beautiful shop with all kinds of smoked delicacies. I love their liverwurst, Bonne Femme loves the tub cheese.



If you are anywhere near Three Oaks, you should stop in. Three Oaks is nice place to walk around, other interesting things to see are:



A log smokehouse, on the second floor of the library,



Seifert's Farm Supply (but only if you are getting feed for your chickens or salt for your ice cream machine),



and Dewy's cannon, maybe not so interesting, but the kids liked climbing on it.

Drier's Meat Market
14 S. Elm ST.
Three Oaks, MI 49128
888-521-3999

Driers.com

2nd Stop: Sawyer Market, Sawyer, MI

I wandered into this place looking for beer. In the back is a very nice meat counter where I discovered freshly made sausages and other deli delights. I got some fresh bratwurst and they were very good.



The Sawyer Market also had a good price in beef tenderlion, it grilled up real nice.

Across the street from the market is the Sawyer Garden Center, lots of great produce there, but buy your meat (and PBR) at the Sawyer Market.

Sawyer Market
5864 Sawyer Road
Sawyer, MI 49125

269-426-4646

sawyermarket.com


3rd Stop Falatic's Meat Market, Sawyer, MI.

Warren Dunes State Park is one of my favorite spots to camp. To get there you have to drive by Falatic's. I stopped when I saw the sign advertising pickled herring. The place rates an eleven on the authentico meter, A small cold case, a huge grinder behind it, and the rest of the space is crammed with chest freezers and huge walk-in. The have a lot of sausages, some of it frozen, smoked beef sticks and of course, pickled herring. Definitely worth the stop.

Falatic's Meat Market
12236 Red Arrow Highway
Sawyer, MI 49125

269-426-3224

falatics.com



4th Stop: Bridgman Premier Meat Market, Bridgman, MI. (pictured earlier)

I stopped into this place on our last day, and I wish I had found it sooner. Great sausages for the grill and very nice guys behind the counter. They had a box of old butcher knives behind the register, not really good for buying, but fun to look at. Bridgman is on the way to the wineries we visited, Lemon Creek, Round Barn and Tabor Hill.

Bridgman Premier Meat Market
4352 Lake St
Bridgman, MI 49106

269-465-3533

bridgmanmeatmarket.com

So that's my sausage trail, I'll update it with more details and photos for ver 2.0. In the meantime enjoy the rest of your summer.



Cheers.

Ten Years in the Making

Photo collage by James Worrell.

Excuse me while I jump into the way back machine. Ten years ago this week I went to Europe for the first time. Eight of us stayed in a house in the middle of nowhere, southwest France.

Bonne Femme improvising to roll out a pâte brisée (that's a pie crust, yo)

MAC et asperge.

We took turns cooking every night.

Lucky (née Michel)

We ate Cassoulet in Carcassonne.

For ten years I've tried to re-create the magical moments we had that week. I ended up living ten years of magical moments in Greenpoint, Lincoln Square, Homewood and of course Clintonville.

Fix food for family and friends, smile.

What else do you need?

Cheers.

The Istanbul Report: Food in The Streets

Grilled mackerel on the Galata bridge

"You and Ledina can eat all that crap together in Turkey."
--Eric (Ledina's husband) on prospects of eating non-fleshy animal parts.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I decided to visit Istanbul. I was going to meet up with Ledina, a good friend of mine from the Addis Ababa salad days. Ledina is a most impressive gourmet adventurer and I knew that she was the perfect person to discover a new world of culinary delights: After all she was the first one who dug in to the raw goat chunks (Tere sega), when we were in Ethiopia. We were joining Ledina’s sister Bora her friend Michael. It was a small army of fearless eaters-- stuffing our faces as we worked our way forwards and backwards across Istanbul, stopping for the occasional draw on the nargile or water pipe. The four of us were primarily interested in street food, as it tends to be the best tasting, cheapest and lets say, experiential. This is the way to locals eat anyways, not in tricked out tourist traps of ‘we have terrace’ restaurants with menus in four languages. Sultan’s Revenge be damned-- I’d rather eat hunkered down on a street curb swatting off the battalions of stray cats (and there are A LOT of stray cats in Istanbul!) than in a restaurant.

I had purchased a Lonely Planet guide that included a run down on street vendors and things that we might come across such as mussels, fish sandwiches, cucumbers, raw meat balls, etc. It warned that sampling some of these dishes risked bouts of severe diarrhea. The stuffed mussels for example, were recommended only for those that wanted to live ‘very very dangerously’ and went on to add ‘if you try these, you must be mad’. I wanted to live dangerously. And yes, I might exhibit symptoms of madness; but having lived in sub-Saharan Africa in a mud hut drinking river water for two years, I figured I already played host to most of the possible range of microorganisms and furthermore believed that the Turkish varieties were probably pretty small time stuff compared to their African counterparts. I was not to be proven wrong.

I sampled all that I could off the streets. The stuffed mussels for those who live dangerously? they were OK, but tasted more like a ball of rice than of any shellfish. There was amazingly delicious rice pilaf, with such fierce turnover, it is highly unlikely that it sat anywhere long enough to be fertile ground for bacteria.

The grilled fish sandwiches were always good, made more fun by the novelty of ordering them off of tiny wooden fishing boats docked along the Golden Horn river. Unfortunately, I never did manage to get my hands on the raw meat balls. Given my love of kitfo, it looked like they would be right up my alley. We hit everything else on the lonely planet list though, and more. I loved the carts of raw cumbers, expertly peeled before your eyes and served with a shake of salt.


Thirsty? There were carts laden with fresh oranges and grapefruits, pushed by men who would slice open and juice up some refreshing citrus. I was most enamored with kokorec, which are sheep’s intestines.

I used to be a bit squeamish when it came to the interior meats, but now-a-days I have a true appreciation of their capabilities. Especially when prepared porchetta style, all tied up and seasoned with aromatic herbs and served in a hot roll. I am ready and waiting for Macmac to try his hand at some boudin or haggis.



It wasn't all fish sandwiches and barbecued sheep intestines for us though, the sweet stuff is just as good and just as plentiful. Pastry and candy shops selling lokum (gummy Turkish candy) and all manner of baklava dot the city like the syrupy sugary stars. We also became specialists in the wonderfully eclectic asure.

Asure is a mix of fruit, nuts, grains and beans in a sweet starchy medium perfumed with rose water and cinnamon. Asure has it all, texture, flavor, color and all around mind-belly satisfaction--it feels good to eat it. The rosewater aroma imparts asure with a very sexy, exotic attitude, emboldened by dried figs and pomegranate, but is grounded in homey familiarity with its broad white beans, chickpeas and barley. We tried one that even contained maize kernels! I will certainly begin trying my hand at recreating this in my mother’s kitchen in the coming weeks... Asure is also interesting to me in that it breaks many of the rules that have been laid out for desserts in the western context. It is not cakey, flaky, creamy or chocolately; it isn't even terribly gooey. Often times, we just ate asure for lunch rather than downing a greasy French-fry-lamb kebab. Of course, we also took a fish sandwich for dessert.


Thanks Jolie. I believe my sister is getting back to the US today. You'll need to book her quickly for your Turkish-Ethiopian party food, she doesn't stay still for long.

Check Jolie's Flickr Page for more photos.

Cheers.

Duck and Ham: The Final Chapter

Birthday Weekend in Wisconsin.

Le Diner

Magret Sec (duck prosciutto)
Bacon and Onion Tart
Trout a la Meuniere
Cassoulet
Sticky Date Pudding


Le Petit Déjeuner

Croissants avec:
Jambon et Comté
Pâte d'Amandes
Chocolat

It been a busy couple of weeks here at the hermitage, but we will always take time for food and friends. This past weekend we took the show on the road to celebrate birthdays and to execute the final chapters of Ham Serial and Duck Tale.

Magret Sec (duck prosciutto)

It embarrasses me to say duck prosciutto. I suppose it's a good name, it succintly describes the flavor and the process, and it certainly has a better ring than dried duck breast, but it's not ham. So I came up with a new name, Magret Sec. It's French for dry duck filet. Sliced thin, the magret does taste a lot like its former namesake, but instead of curing for a year or more, I got mine in about a week.


I dried them for about ten days achieving about a thirty percent reduction in weight. The temperature stayed in the fifties but my humidity dipped as low as forty percent. Well worth the effort. For anyone thinking about curing duck, go for it.

Bacon and Onion Tart.

Next on the appetizer parade is Bonne Femme, with her signature Bacon and Onion Tart. Her recipe is adapted from the cookbook, Cooking with Master Chefs.

The tart is wicked easy, especially when you have frozen puff pasty dough and a Cuisinart. The bacon was cured in the pot with the ham and cold smoked for six hours.

Trout a la Meuniere

People often ask me: Are you learning anything at culinary school? Oui. On the day we were pan frying fish, Chef talked about a hatchery in Wisconsin that was great place to get fresh trout. Turns out this place is about ten minutes from where we were staying.

Rushing Waters Fisheries was pretty cool and the fish doesn't get any fresher. Since I just wanted a quick and easy appetizer, I pan fried the filets in clarified butter, then finished with a whole butter and lemon sauce served on mixed greens. Stay tuned for an upcoming episode when I cure and cold smoke some filets I brought home.

Cassoulet

Oh boy I love this stuff. I wrote about cassoulet last year and I focused on the idea that this dish is a combination of items that come from your pantry and larder (pronounced beer fridge). This version raids the pantry again but I also made a quick trip to Walt's for some lamb.

I started with salt pork. This is cured pork belly trimmings that I did at the same as the bacon and the ham. Salt pork is bacon that has not been smoked. I chopped this stuff up and blanched it before throwing it in with the beans to cook.

While the beans are simmering I started the ragout with a couple of jars of tomato sauce (the pros call it tomato coulis), duck stock, a bouquet of rinds, and some cubed lamb shoulder.


For the sausage portion of the program, I made two kinds: A garlic recipe adapted from Ruhlman's book Charcuterie, and a Toulouse sausage.

Toulouse Sausage is required ingredient to that city's version of cassoulet (Toulouse is the Holy Ghost to Castelnaudary (the Father) and Carcassonne (the Son) in the Holy Trinity of Cassoulets) The sausage is supposed to be roughly chopped, I made mine with pork, some salt pork, salt and quatre épices.



Remember our crock of canard from two weeks ago? I had to warm the vessel in the oven so that I could wrestle the legs from their larded slumber. I browned them up in a pan along with the sausages and then assembled the whole lot (Beans and ragout too) into the biggest pan I could find.

Bubble in the oven for several hours, serve with love.

Here are the birthday girl(s) at about 23:30. JJ brought a cheese plate and Chrissy made the sticky plum pudding, shown here with candles and a caramel sauce. Zach discharged his duties expertly, sommeliering his way through the courses with some great wine choices, mostly Côtes du Rhônes, but also some domestic white and Austria red (who knew?) just to mix it up.

With dinner service concluded, time to hit the hay. The kids will be getting up in a few hours and they are going to want breakfast.

et le Jambon?

I am happy to report that the ten day long transformation from leg of pork to country style cured ham was successful. Most of it is still waiting to be made into sandwiches, the bones I saved for lentils, but some of the choicest slices went to Wisconsin last weekend to play the lead role in breakfast,

the ham and cheese croissant.

I made some chocolate ones and some almond ones too.

After breakfast we went outside.

Good food, good friends, great weekend. Anyone can do this anywhere.

Don't fuss, just cook.

Cheers.