It’s that time of year again, when the crisp fall temperatures stir the hearts of Wisconsin’s Norwegian brethren. The aroma of rotting fish and rutabagas is in the air. At Lutheran churches and Son’s of Norway lodges all over southern Wisconsin the annual ritual of the lutefisk supper is upon us.

For as long as I can remember our family has been eating lutefisk and lefse around the holiday season. When I was young it was always at Grandma’s house, where she had spent days making lefse and soaking the lutefisk before the big dinner. Now that my Grandmother has passed away, my family still enjoys this ritual at one (or more if I am lucky) of the local churches around the area. The lutefisk dinner is a major fundraiser for those organizations that put it on. People come from all around for this once a year event. You purchase your tickets and then wait in the pews till your number is called. Seating is usually family style and you quickly make friends as your passing the pitchers of melted butter around the table. Members of the congregation are working hard preparing and serving the meal. For those who have yet to acquire a taste for lutefisk (or fish jello as my son likes to call it), there is usually ham or meatballs to satisfy. When you throw in the mash potatoes, Cole slaw and cranberries you have the makings of great meal. To top things off, there is always a slice of pie.

If you have never tried a lutefisk dinner, I encourage you to do so this season. Below is a list of the various dates and locations of lutefisk dinners in southern Wisconsin. I am not sure I have all of them listed so if you know of additions to this list, please be sure to comment below.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to pass the butter.

October 24, 2009

• Son’s of Norway Idun Lodge
  2262 Winnebago Street in Madison, WI
  (608) 837-8335
  11:00am – 6:00pm
  Meatballs (for the faint of heart) potatoes, rutabagas, lefse, sweet soup, and more. Adult (13 & up) $16, Youth (5 – 12) $7

November 6, 2009

• Lakeside Lutheren Church
  located at the corner of Mandrake Road and Northport Drive (WI Highway 113)
  (608)-244-6181
  serving the public from 11:00 am until 8:00 pm

November 7, 2009

• Bonnet Prairie Lutheran Church
  two miles south of Rio, N3694 Old F Road
  (920) 992-3200
• Western Koshkonong Lutheran Church
  2633 Church St, Cottage Grove, WI 53527-8616
  (608) 873-6744 or (608) 873-7148
  Serving Times 11:30AM 12:45PM 4:00PM 5:15PM & 6:30PM, Tickets $14.00 in advance and $15.00 for walk ups.
• Barneveld Lutheran Church
  505 Swiss Lane Barneveld 53537
  (608) 924-8621
  Serving: 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM. Adults: $ 15.00 Children 12 & under: $ 7.00

November 14, 2009

• Son’s of Norway Nordland Lodge
  418 W. Milwaukee St., Janesville, WI 53511
  (608) 365-1369
  11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
• Christ Lutheran Church
  220 S. Main St., DeForest
  (608) 846-4719
  11 a.m. to 7 p.m., adults $15, $7 for children 6 to 12, under 6 free (2008 prices)

December 5, 2009

• St. Olaf Lutheran Church
  W653 Roosevelt Road, Rubicon, WI 53078
  (920) 474-7042
  Serving 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Today officially kicks of Thanksgiving Prep 2008.  I have all the shopping done (except the fresh turkey that I need to pick up tomorrow).

So, what’s on tap for today?

- Stuffing prep,  including sauteeing the italian sausage and cooking the wild rice.  I’ll assemble it all into a mass of bread cubed goo on Thursday before it goes into the bird.  Yes, I am one of the daredevils that actually puts my stuffing into the turkey to bake it.  I haven’t killed anyone… yet.  Maybe this year!

- Cheese Sauce:  I have been looking forward to making this cheese sauce for weeks.  You see, we belong to an amazing CSA.  This year they offered a cheese share, which we signed up for without even blinking.  Well, we are blinking now!  We love it, don’t get me wrong.  The cheese is some of the best organic, artisan cheese you can find on the planet.  But the reality is that two people can not keep up with the cheese deliveries. 

Not even the staving Shiba Inus have been able to keep up.  So my refrigerator is overflowing with cheese, and the sooner I use it, the sooner I can start using my refrigerator for non-cheese storage. 

- Pumpkin Pies:  I roasted the butternut squashes (also from my CSA) over the weekend, now it is time to assemble them into pies.  I’m making the traditional pumpkin cheesecake pie, of course.

More later – wish me luck!

When it comes to holidays, nothing surpasses Thanksgiving for tradition and for hours of time spent in the kitchen cooking.

And this year will be no different than other years we’ve spent celebrating the holiday.  Twenty-some people will descend on the house like ravenous vultures, eating everything in site.

Ok, that might be somewhat a bit of hyperbole, but it sure doesn’t seem like it when the turkey comes out of the oven and the hordes descend.

I know that the commercials, and cards, and traditional programs around Thanksgiving depict the elder male of the family standing at the head of the table, masterfully carving a beautifully dressed and arranged bird.  His impeccable family sits at the formally set table, dressed in their best finery, with looks of awe and adoration on their faces. Why look! A quick Google image searched showed me exactly that:

Who ARE these people, and what planet do they live on??

This is what it looks like at our house.  The turkey gets pulled out of the oven and the vultures immediately descend.  People start vying for the tail, the skin, and any hunk of meat they can get their hands on before the carving even starts.  Typically, the only way to ward the vultures off is with several serious waves of the carving knife.  And that seldom works.

THAT is our family tradition.  Try to finish off the turkey before it even makes it to the table!  Then fill your plate with everything else, and drowned it all in cheese sauce.

I don’t expect that this is going to change too much.  It pretty much puts an end to any fantasies of an elegantly prepared dinner with candlelight and soothing music playing in the background.  But there is much screaming, yelling and wrestling that takes place, that makes up for the lack of background music, right?

At any rate, here’s the menu, so far:

Appetizers:  Cheese, sausage, crackers, olives, carrots, deviled eggs
Cole Slaw
26 Pound Turkey
Italian Sausage and Wild Rice Stuffing
20 Pounds Mashed Potatoes with herbs and cream cheese
Gravy
Cheese Sauce
Peas and Pancetta with pearl onions
Cauliflower 
Broccoli
Black-Eyed Peas
Cornmeal Fried Okra
Green Bean Crap*
Bread
Pies:  Pumpkin Cheesecake, Apple, Pecan, Chocolate Pecan, Blueberry, Double Chocolate Fudge 

*Yet another family tradition, you can read about it here.  You may note that we had basically the same menu last year.  See, we ARE a traditional family.

Each year I swear I’m going to blog along with all the prep.  I live up to that vow up until Thanksgiving morning.  It’s all over after that.

The pumpkin pies are done!  But, to quibble, I feel the need to point out that they are not pumpkin pies.  They are butternut squash pies.

Thanks to my involvement in a terrific CSA, I learned years ago that good pumpkin pies… aren’t.  In fact, often the canned pumpkin that one buys in the store is not pumpkin either.  There are a lot of advantages to making pies with butternut squash rather than pumpkin.  First, it just tastes better.  Also, it has a much better texture – no stringy stuff! I don’t even process or mash the squash.  It is the perfect texture for pies simply by roasting the squash for an hour and scooping out the innards.

And here the pies are, below.  Those of you with eagle-eyes will note that the crusts are not homemade.  I admit it, while I simply can not bring myself to make a pumpkin pie with canned pumpkin, by the same token I simply can’t see making a pie crust from scratch.  First, I don’t like to do it, and second, I don’t see a difference in taste, mainly because I suck at making it.  (Bad Foodie!).

I make up for it by adding cream cheese to the pie, making a really nice cross between a pumpkin pie and a cheesecake.

Recipe (makes 2 pies):

• 20 ounces cream cheese
• 28 ounces sweetened condensed milk
• 2 packed cups roasted butternut squash
• 5 eggs
• A pinch of salt, and cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger to taste (I say to taste because I really load it up on the cinnamon, and most people would not use as much as I do).

Bring all ingredients up to room temperature, making sure that the cream cheese is very soft.  Blend cream cheese until smooth.  Slowly add 14 ounces of milk, blending to ensure smoothness.  Add the rest of the milk.  Add squash, then eggs.  Spice to taste.

Pour into prepared pie shells.  I used one regular pie crust, and one graham cracker pie crust.  Be warned, you very well may have extra mix left over.  I throw the leftover in ramkins or a small baking dish and bake it up for a crustless pumpkin pie-like snack.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 40 minutes.

One of the side dishes that disappears fast at our Thanksgiving table is the Cheese Sauce.  In many ways, it is really a side of a side dish, served up alongside the broccoli and cauliflower, though I will note that in reality it gets poured over almost everything on the plates, very much like a gravy.  I make a lot of cheese sauce for Thanksgiving, using 1 cup of butter, 6 cups of milk, and over 13 cups of cheese.

I can already here the cries of “Holy Heart Attack, Batman, that’s a lot of dairy!”.  But I’ll point out the following:

1. There will be around 25 people for dinner.
2. We are from Wisconsin, after all.
3. I use chicken stock in addition to milk in a relatively futile effort to lighten the sauce up a bit.
4. There is usually some left over, which people fight over even more than the leftover turkey.
5. It is Thanksgiving… get over it.

Here’s the evidence:

Cheese sauce is a great dish to make in advance, which I did, stored in a crock pot, and put in the refrigerator.  On Thanksgiving it will be brought out and warmed in the same crockpot, which makes it an effortless and mindless thing to deal with in the uproar.

Recipe:

• 2 sticks butter (1 cup)
• 2 cups flour
• 6 cups milk
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 8 cups cheddar cheese
• 4 cups sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 cup parmesan cheese
• powdered garlic, onion, mustard to taste
• salt, white pepper, paprika to taste

In a very large stockpot, melt the butter over low heat.  Add flour, a little at a time, whisking to avoid lumps.  Once well mixed, cook over low heat for several minutes to cook out the flour taste.

Slowly pour 2 cups milk into flour mixture, whisking constantly to ensure smoothness.  Once smooth, add the rest of the milk more rapidly, still whisking.  Add the cream cheese and allow to melt.  Continue to add the rest of the cheese, whisking as you add so that it melts consistently.  Once all the cheese is added and melted, use the chicken stock as needed to thin to the right thickness. 

Taste the sauce before adding salt, as the cheese can be salty.  Add all spices, to taste. 

I’ll start with a quick look behind the scenes.  You see this picture?  Yes, the picture on the left.  The Thanksgiving-oriented picture.  Yes, that one.

 This blog gets literally hundreds of hits a day around this time of year from people who are searching for this picture. Oh, they don’t know that this is exactly the picture that they want – at least, not until they see it.  But once they see it, they come here to grab it.  By the hundreds.

But that is beside the point of this post.  It’s that time of year again – Thanksgiving.  Some people have a nice, quiet dinner at home.  Some people go to their eccentric great-aunt’s house.  Others gather at the parents house.  And still others go and have a respectable, civilized dinner out.

But not here at Cuisine Capers.  Instead, we are descended upon by around 25 very hungry people (give or take one or two, depending on how things work out).  And, I’ll point out, they are very hungry people who can eat a lot of food.

So, here’s the menu:

• 28 pound fresh turkey
• 15 – 20 lbs of mashed potatoes
• Gravy
• Wild rice and Italian Sausage stuffing
• 7 Layer salad
• Peas with pancetta and pearl onions
• Cauliflower and broccoli mixture
• Cheese Sauce
• Black-eyed Peas*
• Okra*
• Southern Cornbread*
• Green Bean Crap**
• Multitudes of dinner rolls
• Pies, pies and more pies

I’ll be chronicling the prep along the way, if all works out.

Notes:
* Black-eyed peas, okra and cornbread are all a nod to the southern roots, courtesy of my father who is from Hot Springs, Arkansas.  No one but my father will eat the okra (pronounced O-KREE in my family), but most of us will eat the cornbread and the black-eyed peas.

** Green Bean Crap is typically called Green Bean Casserole in most families.  In my family, we’ve changed the name in honor of my sister-in-law Laurie, who, after being assigned this dish to bring a couple of years in a row cried in horror, “No, not that grean bean crap!” after being assigned it yet again.  Needless to say, she will be bringing the green bean crap for the rest of her natural life to every family gathering we have.

The First BLT of the Season

Served with a bottle of wine and a bit of jazz while sitting on the back deck and enjoying the summer, it is something that we look forward to all year long.

A quick perusal of my blog stats tell me that many of you are hitting this blog right about now searching for tickets to the Great Taste of the Midwest.

Pardon me for a moment while I rant.

I will never again purchase tickets to another Great Taste of the Midwest. I won’t even use tickets if they were given to me for free. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to go to the Great Taste of the Midwest, even if you paid me.

Whew. I have that out of my system now. Perhaps I can address this issue in a purely intellectual sort of way.

The Great Taste of the Midwest used to be like Christmas to us. The first one that we attended (I believe it may have been the second one ever) was held in the Capital Brewery warehouse, with maybe 400 people and not so many breweries represented.

We stuck with this event for many years through thick and thin, laughing as tickets became harder and harder to come by, and saluting the Madison Home Brewer’s Guild on their success. We followed the event from venue to venue. We were intriqued when it settled in Olin Park. Of course, that’s when it started to go to pieces, the victim of its own success and its own arrogance.

And arrogant it did indeed become.

Last year, the ticket policy became ludicrous. In order to get tickets, you basically had to skip work, stand in line, get a “right to purchase tickets” ticket, then go back later in the day (again missing work) as the tickets went on sale.

The amazing development last year was that many of the venues trusted to sell the tickets to the public released the “right to purchase tickets” ticket to their regulars, long before these pre-ticket tickets were available to the public.

So, let’s say you were a die-hard, and you decided you were going to wait in line early, get your pre-ticket ticket, and then come back and purchase your ticket. Well, SURPRISE! Guess what! The pre-ticket tickets were gone before they were supposed to be available.

Does this sound like sour grapes? Let me hasten to assure you that this is far from the case. I had many a person approach me to see if I wanted tickets. But by that time, I had such a bad taste in my mouth over the arrogance, the abuse, and the ridiculousness over the ticket policy that I vowed that I wouldn’t set foot inside these beer tents again.

So, I urge you all to join me in this boycott. Get together with your friends and plan your own event. You can all bring your favorite unique six packs to try. Hold your own private Great Taste Festival in August, and then attend the Quivey’s Grove Beer Fest in the fall, when the temperatures are cooler and the attitudes are more palatable.

I would say that I would hope that the organizers of The Great Taste will once again get in touch with the philosophies that once went into making this the premier beer tasting in the Unites States.

But, frankly my dears, I no longer give a damn.

The Traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage… (sort of…)

There is a big difference between Irish American St. Patrick’s Day and Irish St. Patrick’s Day. Take that traditional corned beef, for example. The Irish don’t celebrate with corned beef. In Ireland eating cabbage is certainly common place, but it is served with Irish bacon, not corned beef. Corned beef became a tradition in the US when immigrants could not afford to buy the traditional Irish bacon, and they substituted Jewish corned beef instead.

And you know that long standing US tradition of overindulging in really bad green beer? First, until the 1970′s, Irish pubs were required to close on Saint Patrick’s Day. Second, the Irish have much better taste in beer… (Miller Lite? Bah!).

We dranks Smithwick’s this year. We were introduced to Smithwick’s the first time that we went to Ireland, years ago. Smithwick’s is an Irish Ale that came to be somewhere in the 1700′s. Located in Kilkenny, it was built next to an abbey. Eventually, it expanded and took over the abbey and the grounds surrounding the abbey. There’s probably a fun philisophical point there, but I’ll save that for another day. Smithwick’s has since been purchased by Guinness.

The first thing to know about Smithwick’s is that it is NOT pronounced Smith Wicks’s. In fact, the pronunciation changes the further west you go in Ireland, and, of course, the more Smithwick’s you drink. Starting in the east, you’re fine if you walk up to a bar in a pub and order a Smiddicks. However, by the time you get to the Ring of Kerry, be prepared to stumble up to the bar and demand a smks. That’s right… no vowels needed. Just slur it fast… smks… and you’ll be fine.

It took a long time to get Smithwicks here in the US. I found it in Canada years before it finally made it’s way to the states. But now it is indeed here and can be found in some liquor stores and your better bars and taverns. US bartenders look at us in confusion when we order Smiddicks, but we just can’t ask for a Smithwicks. We do stop ourselves from ordering a Smks though (unless we’ve had too many of them…).

Every year we do make our corned beef and cabbage. This year I found a very nice cut of brisket. I don’t boil my corned beef. I prefer to braise/roast the meat instead. I believe the texture is better, and meat has a deeper flavor. I put a rack on the bottom of a roasting dish, add some water to the bottom of the dish, put the corned beef on the rack, cover it up and roast at 350. I take the lid off for the last 30 minutes or so to let it “dry up” a bit.

And that boiled cabbage? I have just one word for that – “DON’T”! Why take a perfectly good cabbage and boil the snot out of it? There is no redeeming value behind mushy cabbage.

We saute the cabbage until just slightly wilted, but still very crisp. Add sliced onions, garlic, some red pepper flakes, and a splash or two or red wine vinegar and you’ve got a flavorful dish that does not have the texture of slime.

Now I think I’ll go have another Smks.

Greg remembered to turn the oven on at noon, and I came home to a house that smelled like corned beef. He had strict instructions – take the corned beef out of the refrigerator upon arrival at the house. Preheat the oven to 500. Walk the puppy. Put the corned beef in the oven and drop the temperature to 225. This worked out very well.

While we had cabbage with the corned beef, it wasn’t your traditional cabbage. I do not like soggy, slimy boiled cabbage. Instead, we buy Cole Slaw mix and sautee it til slightly crisp, with onion and garlic added. Much better than limp cabbage boiled to death.

Of course boiled potatoes were a part of the meal. These were flavored with dill and garlic.

And the meal was rounded off with a loaf of rich, dense rye bread from Clasen’s European Bakery in Middleton. While Irish Soda bread may be the more traditional answer, nothing beats Clausen’s rye bread, and besides, one needs to keep in mind the leftover corned beef on rye possibilities.

We discussed the idea of a glass or two of Guinness, but nothing ever came of it. I think we are getting old.