Monthly Archives: September 2010

There is a general belief that human civilization developed with the control of fire. Fire protected early hominids from predators, allowing them to sleep on the ground instead of trees, and possibly caused the lengthening of legs and flattening of feet, thus allowing upright walking. The fire was also a gathering place, where cooperation and tolerance might have been learned and language evolved, all of these important to the creation of society. Perhaps most significantly, fire allowed food to be cooked.

Though you might not suspect it based on reality television programming, humans have enormous brains. With respect to calories, these organs are costly to maintain. Food cooked over a fire is easier to chew and digest. With fire, the energy value of food is much greater, allowing the early hominids that hung out by a campfire the luxury of big brain growth.

So it was with this reverence for our ancestors and fire that a small collection of folks from Gourmet Underground braved the elements for a weekend of campfire cooking in the north woods of Michigan at Rifle River Recreation Area.

Our earliest relatives would have merely thrown hunks of raw meat into the fire but we modern humans use what tools that we can either fabricate onsite or order online with free shipping. Because the heat of a campfire is a bit difficult to control, thick cast iron cookware is a good medium. Once our tents were pitched and camp organized, we cracked a few more beers and whipped up some toasted cheeseburger appetizers in the hobo pie maker and a full-size batch of chili.

Based on the Lodge recipe for camp chili, the key components here were a pound of bacon and the comfortable heat of fire-roasted Poblano peppers. The chili was hearty and delicious, with a hint of smoke from the campfire.

A refreshingly tart berry flavored bottle of Chateau d’Oupia Les Hérétiques Mediterranean French red wine was uncorked for a nightcap. Then we fell to sleep among the wail of coyotes and the spectral vocalizations of a nearby barred owl.

Early autumn in northern Michigan can only be described as exquisite. Leaves are just beginning to turn and the cool, damp woods are aromatic with decay. Saturday morning we hiked a few hours with guns. Bracken, curled and brown fell crisp across our shins. We flushed a covey of ruffed grouse and then returned to camp for gut-warming leftover chili and to begin the night’s meal.

Number 13, a suckling pig from local J & M Farm and purchased at Detroit’s historic Eastern Market, was stuffed with apples and onions and placed on the rotisserie. With frequent applications of apple cider, it turned over hardwood coals as the sun set pink over Rifle River.

Only in recent human history have so many of us lost track of where our food comes from. Not only was it common to look the animal you were preparing to eat in the face, it was necessity. There were few wasted calories in the days when head cheese and blood sausage were familiar fare.

And so it was with Number 13. Fueled by hunger after a day in the woods, many cups of beer and perhaps a snort of whiskey or two, we pulled her off the fire and squatted around the cooking grate. We drew her succulent flesh off the bone with our fingers and ate, all of us, communal, a portrait of the very soul of humanity.

With most of the meat consumed we leaned over the raging fire and tossed what was left of Number 13 into the flames. The vision of animal bones glowing red in the heat echoed our own transience and afforded us all a rare contemplative moment of our extraordinary origins in the din of an express new world. This was real campfire cooking.

The massive, 4-pound severed beef tongue lay on the kitchen counter in all its gruesome glory. It was once attached to the head of a beef cow, organically fed and pasture-raised by Elmer Slabaugh on his Brown City Amish farm. Elmer sells his cattle in sections. The “home of Yale Bologna,” C Roy Inc., processes and freezes it. If you purchase a quarter you’ll end up with a couple boxes full of ground beef, steaks, roasts and whatever else might have been attached to your section. Ours came with a tongue.

What the hell do you do with a tongue the size of a small cat? I mean, besides freak out the gentler members of your family by threatening to lick them? We consulted our vintage copy of Joy of Cooking for help. No problem. Boil 50 minutes per pound with carrots, onions, celery, peppercorns and bay leaves. Peel off the thick layer of taste buds. Slice it up fancy and serve with a mustard sauce.

If you’re looking for something hipper than mustard sauce, try warming a few corn tortillas, load them with hot cubes of tongue, and then top it all with a mixture of diced onion and cilantro and a lime squeeze. Each bite of tender tongue will burst with beef flavor. Your friends might eat a bunch even after you show them a photo of the post-boil rigor. You’ll at least have fun trading tongue-taco double entendres.

Handling that fat tongue gave us such a rush we went searching for even more exotic foods. And among the best places to find them is Kim Nhung Superfood — where the fish heads sell out faster than the bodies. This small grocery on the corner of Dequindre and 13 Mile roads is impressive for its stock of Asian staples, including rice noodles and various sauces and pastes. On weekends, you’re likely to find foam coolers stocked with live snails twisting in snotty hermaphroditic sex and green frogs that seem to know their fate.

The owner’s son, young Terry Nguyen, pointed out cans of fly larvae and grasshoppers in brine. We asked how to prepare them. He shrugged. The snails get boiled with lemon grass and dipped in fish sauce. The green frogs are stir fried. On Fridays, they get a shipment of balut. Balut is a duck egg with a nearly developed embryo inside. It is eaten with a pinch of salt. It is widely considered, of course, to be an aphrodisiac.

We have already resigned ourselves to the fact we will never be eating a duck embryo or bungee-jumping into a narrow gorge when we can feel the rush of real danger on our daily I-75 commute. We did muster the courage to try a century egg preserved in tea, lime and wood ash. The dark green yolk has similar flavor to an aged, washed-rind cheese. The white becomes cola colored and still doesn’t taste like much. To eat it, you you must fight that part of your brain that determines what’s edible, because it’ll be screaming: “No. No. NO. NO!” Closing your eyes might help.

For variation, century eggs can be wrapped in pickled ginger root or mixed into an omelet for a dish called old-and-fresh eggs. Neither of these methods will make them any less green.

Kim Nhung also has a remarkable meat counter. It is filled with inexpensive duck legs, whole chickens, tongues and a variety of other animal parts not readily identifiable to the Western eye. It was a bag of chicken’s feet we were after here, for “phoenix talons,” a dim sum dish.

After cleaning and trimming the toenails, the feet are usually fried first to puff the skin. Then we boiled and marinated them in a black bean sauce. We found pleasure in bringing them to parties and watching folks trying to nibble off a scrap of meat. Not an easy task. Fans of chicken skin might find sustenance in a dozen. We managed to get a couple quarts of quality soup stock out of the deal anyway.

Speaking of soup, we have always heard that the hearty Mexican soup menudo is a miracle hangover cure and took the making of one as an opportunity to get very drunk. Mexicantown’s Honeybee La Colmena has everything you need to construct this classic campesino meal. Start with a couple pounds of cow stomach. (Call it honeycomb tripe if that makes you feel better.) Clean it three to four times and cut it into bite-sized cubes. Throw the stomach, a beef knuckle or two, a couple chopped onions, a dozen minced garlic cloves and a healthy dose of cumin into a pot of water. Set a fire beneath it and let it simmer for about four hours, periodically skimming the surface of scum.

While you’re patiently waiting to be restored, soak about eight stemmed and seeded dried New Mexico chiles in warm water. After half an hour, puree and strain the chiles. When the tripe is tender, toss the chile puree and a large can of hominy into the pot, salt to taste and let simmer for another half hour.

What every recipe for menudo fails to mention is the scent that radiates from the simmering pot. If you’re already a bit queasy from getting hammered the night before, a house thick with the not-so-subtle aroma of stewing offal might have you running to your nearest coney island for hangover relief.

No doubt an acquired taste, the finished menudo is edible enough. Though spooning stomach into your mouth might have you longing for some good, old tongue.

First published in Metro Times