Best Food Writing 2017

by Holly Hughes

  Some in the group are a bit shaken, and that’s okay with Rodriguez. The reverence he demands from boucherie attendees during the harvest—be on time, be quiet—makes it clear he’d be offended by anyone who took it lightly.

  Cajun Crusader

  Rodriguez has done boucheries in his hometown of Grand Coteau, Louisiana, for the last several years. He decided to take the show on the road and give folks far from Cajun country the opportunity to experience one. The two-year nationwide tour kicked off at Wedge Oak in May. Other stops have included St. Louis, Boulder, Santa Cruz, Seattle, and more with Atlanta and Birmingham still ahead and even Cuba on the calendar for 2017.

  At each stop, local chefs and others in the food industry sign up to help butcher and cook the hog. The public is invited to buy tickets and attend as spectators and diners (although Rodriguez will put anybody who wants to help to work).

  The two-day event starts solemnly with the harvest of the hog and ends with a festive, pork-centric feast paired with wines and other libations. In between, the hog is butchered and broken down, and 90 percent of the animal ends up on the multi-course menu guests enjoy at dinner the second night.

  The mission behind these gatherings, fueled by bourbon, boudin, and beer, goes beyond good food and fellowship; it’s Rodriguez’ goal that folks leave with a greater respect for the farmers who raise what we eat, and the humble animals who are what we eat, as well as the knowledge that we can take control of our food systems. “Our species does not have to depend on industry to feed itself,” Rodriguez says, his words quick, his accent, a mash-up of Cajun and Southern drawl, rounding his vowels and softening consonants. He spreads his arms wide. “This does not belong in a plant. We’ve lost our emotional connection to our food—that’s why we’re so wasteful. We need to get it back.”

  Like a Cajun crusader, he’s committed to showing people how and why a return to roots is crucial, and he knows chefs can be influential ambassadors. “As the leaders in culinary communities, if they reconnect with food sources, then they’ll spread the message farther,” he says. He’s passionate, but not preachy. Quick with a joke (often a dirty one), he puts people at ease with humor and talks common sense.

  His idea that we should care about where our food comes from is not new. But getting close to your food when it has a heartbeat can be unsettling. Despite growing up on a farm where he saw and participated in boucheries routinely starting at age 10, Rodriguez still gets anxious. “I’m killing another creature; it’s intense. It’s not anything that I enjoy,” he says. He’s made a ritual of checking and cleaning his knives in the minutes before the harvest. “I put a lot of attention into getting my tools ready; it gets me out of my head a bit.”

  But he’s never as tense as he was seven years ago, when someone asked him to do a boucherie after being away from the tradition for a time. After studying art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a stint in the Army, he worked as a contractor, specializing in home renovations and carpentry. “I hadn’t done one in years, and I was nervous,” he says. “But as soon as the pig was on the table, it felt natural. I felt removed from everything around me. It’s the same feeling I get when drawing or sculpting.”

  Beyond Boudin

  The slaughter evokes powerful emotions that put a sharp point on Rodriguez’ message, but the butchering provides a practical education that lures chefs eager to learn new skills. “Proper butchering is such an integral thing for a chef,” says Jacob Wittenberg, a cook at Butcher & Bee in Nashville. “Plus, I think if you eat meat, you should be willing to see the death. It gives you increased appreciation for your food.”

  As the group at Wedge Oak gathers around the hog for the first step, hair removal, the mood moves from somber to celebratory. “Pass this around—and remember, the best way to keep any hog hair from getting in is to keep a pair of lips around it,” Rodriguez says as he takes a swig from a bottle of whiskey and hands it off. Some use dull-edged metal rings to scrape off the coarse hairs already loosened by a spray of scalding water. Braver souls gingerly wield knives. “Don’t cut the skin!” Rodriguez says, while expertly using a straight razor.

  Once the hog is smooth, Rodriguez turns teacher, flipping the hog on its back and splitting it open with one long slit. He works with surgical precision and explains every slice. He instructs others where to cut, how, and why. He holds up a hunk off the backbone. “Look how pretty that is! Brought to you by Karen and God,” he says. The meat, along with most of the organs, goes into coolers marked with names of the dishes they’ll be used in.

  When the butchering is done, the local chefs head to assigned stations and get to work chopping mounds of garlic, onions, and peppers in a makeshift outdoor kitchen where they learn the art of Acadian cuisine—head cheese, fraisseurs, cracklins, ponce, backbone fricassee, boudin—from the Lâche Pas team; most of the recipes and techniques are from Rodriguez’ family. Lâche Pas chef Barrett Dupuis gets busy grinding shoulder and rib meat for boudin. Some of it is for boudin noir, a version of the staple sausage that owes its color and rich flavor to the addition of the blood that Gaude collected. “Boudin is definitely my favorite to make and to eat,” Dupuis says. “It’s such a major player in Cajun cuisine.”

  McIntyre gathers ropes of Dupuis’ boudin links and hangs them in Wolfgang von Sausage, the cold smoker designed and built by the Lâche Pas team. He continually feeds Wolfgang coals from Big Sexy, a Lâche Pas–designed furnace surrounded by a quivering wall of vicious heat that renders oak into ash-white embers in less than thirty minutes.

  Preserving Culture

  Sausage-making is only one of the crafts the team is keeping alive. Boucheries were originally a necessary form of meat preservation, but Lâche Pas boucheries are about preserving culture. “Boucheries have never really been documented,” Rodriguez says. “We’re chronicling these old techniques; it may be the first time some of them have been written down.”

  The culmination of the group’s labor, the “Lundi Soir” dinner the second night, imprints the flavors of Acadiana in the guests’ memories. White-clothed tables are lined up in the field a few yards from the kitchen, under stars and strings of glowing bare bulbs. Rodriguez welcomes diners who are already digging into the first course—boudin boulette, an orb of boudin and rice stuffed with creamy, salty camembert, crusted in cornmeal and fried, then glazed with cayenne-laced honey. “Thanks for being here, y’all. We’re here to show you why the origins of what you eat matter and to share our story,” he says. “Lâche Pas means ‘don’t give up—never’ and that relates to Acadian culture, the way it has held on and thrived all these years.” Five more courses follow, including a sweet and savory dessert incorporating cracklins and figs steeped in cane vinegar.

  Rodriguez’ favorite marked the middle of the meal. “I love the fraisseurs, also called butcher’s stew,” he says. The thick brown medley of various parts—heart, tongue, kidney, and tenderloin—slow simmered to melt the ingredients together, yet let them retain a hint of their distinction, is a fitting metaphor for a boucherie: It’s a history lesson, it’s a cooking class, it’s art, it’s a party, all imbued with a higher purpose. It’s just as applicable to Lâche Pas’ goals and methods—to revive tradition, celebrate life by honoring death, and use the community and camaraderie that surrounds food to create something meaningful.

  Who Really Invented the Reuben?

  BY ELIZABETH WEIL

  From Saveur

  Based in Berkeley, California, journalist Elizabeth Weil grew up with a family claim to fame—her Nebraska grandfather’s claim to have invented the Reuben sandwich. But once she made that claim in print, the food historians swooped in—and the battle was on.

  We all need stories in order to live. A cliché, yes, but true for writers, and a few years ago I decided to tell my family’s best one: My grandfather invented the Reuben sandwich.

  To be honest, I’d been avoiding the inevitable throughout my young adult life, more focused on defining my future t
han examining my past. Plus, I had sauerkraut issues, having grown up in suburban New England in the 1970s, pre-fermentation boom. But just 500 words, not a big deal, no definitive claim. On the back page of the New York Times Magazine, I laid out the basics: My great-grandfather started a chain of hotels along the railroad southwest from Chicago. He trained each of his four sons in a hospitality skill, sending my grandfather to École Hôtelière in Lausanne, Switzerland where he learned to cook. In the 1920s, my great-grandfather’s friends in Omaha, Nebraska, began gathering to play poker at the Blackstone Hotel. Inevitably the men grew hungry and called down to my grandfather, who oversaw the hotel’s kitchen, for snacks. For Reuben Kulakofsky, one of the players, my grandfather created a sandwich: corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing, pressed hot on rye bread. Reuben loved it! Everyone loved it! The sandwich went on all the hotel menus. In 1956, a waitress entered the Reuben in the National Restaurant Association’s National Sandwich Idea Contest. It won! Now you can buy Reuben-flavored potato chips. God bless America!

  As expected, upon publication, I did receive a few e-mails from the Kulakofsky clan, laying out their family’s claim. The Kulakofskys have long contended that my grandfather, whose name was Bernard Schimmel, just delivered a deli platter to the poker players and that Reuben made his sandwich himself. The movie Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford, did include the question “Who invented the Reuben sandwich?” and the answer: “Reuben Kay.” (I know.) But this is a well-established controversy and basically an in-house fight. What’s more, the Reuben is pressed. Did the poker room include a panini maker? Make of that what you will.

  Then Andrew Smith, a food historian and the author of 24 books—including Pure Ketchup: A History of America’s National Condiment and what at the time was the forthcoming New York City: A Food Biography—sent a grenade of a letter to the New York Times that my editors were kind enough to share with me:

  “Elizabeth Weil’s ‘My Grandfather Invented the Reuben Sandwich. Right?’ tells a nice story about her grandfather inventing the Reuben sandwich in Omaha, Nebraska. It is a nice story, but the correct answer to the question is, ‘Wrong.’”

  He forwarded the theory that the sandwich was not invented at my family’s hotel in Omaha but instead by Arnold Reuben at his eponymous sandwich shop on East 58th Street, in New York City. In the early 20th century, celebrities often ate at Reuben’s deli after the theater. “Around 1914,” Smith wrote, Arnold Reuben “came up with the ‘Annette Seelos Special’ for one of Charlie Chaplin’s leading ladies. It consisted of ‘ham, cheese, turkey, coleslaw, and dressing.’” Smith also cited a 1941 cookbook, Menu Making for Professionals in Quantity Cookery, which included a Reuben made of “Rye Bread, Switzerland Cheese, Sliced Corn Beef, Sauerkraut, Dressing.” The author of that cookbook lived in New York. Ergo, Smith reasoned (if you can call it that), “The Reuben sandwich is a New York invention; it’s time to put the Nebraska origin myth to bed.”

  What? Is ham, cheese, turkey, coleslaw, and dressing a Reuben? I don’t think so. Was coq au vin invented in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Julia Child lived when she wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking? It was not. Still, I’m conflict-avoidant, so I wrote Smith back, soft-pedaling, “Thanks for your note.…”

  But he did not let it go. Within hours, Smith escalated, explaining (though he didn’t need to) that he was “a pedantic culinary historian” who put his trust in primary sources, and if I had “primary sources, such as any menu with ‘Reuben sandwich’ that lists the ingredients before 1941,” he’d love to see them and retract his letter. Without such documentation, he was calling it for New York.

  I forwarded all this along to my husband, Dan. He’s not from a food family. He’s from an Irish storyteller family, but long ago my parents ordered him a foie gras torchon at Gary Danko, in San Francisco, and inducted him into the world of food. He now possesses the mania of the converted. Dan butchers whole lambs at home on our kitchen island. He makes his own veal demi-glace. Our kitchen table is our friends’ favorite restaurant. He is so much more devoted to cooking than any of my cousins that my mother and her sisters decided that Dan, a goy-in-law, should inherit Grandfather’s knife roll. It also bears mentioning that Dan has an unused Ph.D., and thus is happy to research arcana. He’s also been known to enjoy a fight from time to time. He recognized Smith’s type immediately—too wound up for his own good, the kind Dan delighted in tormenting when, say, such a man zoomed up and started tailgating his truck. His preferred method of combat, however, was not to drag race. It was to turn on his blinker—flicka flicka flicka—and linger in the lane, tapping the brakes.

  Online, Dan found a reference to a 1937 Reuben and set about locating the menu.

  Smith, meanwhile, wrote back to say he’d done some more research and while he did concede that the Annette Seelos Special was not a Reuben sandwich per se, Reuben’s restaurant did use all the Reuben components (rye bread, Swiss cheese, corned beef, and sauerkraut) in its sandwich offerings. Thus Reuben’s invented the Reuben.

  Smith signed off that e-mail: “Sorry.”

  We had a stalemate for a few days. Or really, I should say, I tried to forget about Smith and what my neighbor began calling his Reubensanity, while Dan dug in. Dan called my aunt, who lived in Omaha, and impressed upon her how imperative it was that she dig through every box in her basement to find a pre-1941 menu. (She did not find one.) Then he called the Radisson in Lincoln, Nebraska. In the 1960s my family sold the hotels. Three out of four of the brothers’ places were now shuttered. The Lincoln Radisson was the sole holdout. Sadly, there were no boxes of memorabilia in its basement. But a janitor did mention that a nice lady in town collected historical artifacts. Dan tracked her down and explained the cruel and heinous crime Smith was attempting to perpetrate on one of Nebraska’s claims to fame. She scurried down to her basement and searched her boxes. She did not find a pre-1941 menu, also.

  Life in my e-mail inbox became more pleasurable, at least for a time. Tom Brokaw wrote to say that his wife used to teach at an Omaha high school with Warren Buffett’s wife, and while in Nebraska they considered dining on Reubens at the Blackstone Hotel, the height of haute cuisine. He even offered to ask Robert Redford, who according to Brokaw, had consumed a fair number of Reubens at Blackstone, where he got the Quiz Show “fact” that Reuben Kay invented the sandwich. What I mean to say is that beautifully, strangely, the Reuben turned into the Forrest Gump of sandwiches, a lunch-size window into American life. I learned that Michael Pollan married a Kulakofsky. A reader referred to my grandfather as “the original Oracle of Omaha.” Another wrote to the New York Times that the last name of the poker player in question was spelled “Kulakofsky, not Kulakowsky.” The New York Times ran a correction. Then yet another reader wrote the editor to say that the correction was wrong—“Kulakofsky” and “Kulakowsky” are both transliterations from either Polish or Russian, thus equally valid spellings. But by that point even the New York Times, which once corrected the names of My Little Pony characters, apologizing for confusing “Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual” with “Fluttershy, the kind animal lover,” gave up. They let incorrect correction stand.

  But Smith did not quit. After three days of silence, he wrote again:

  “Most humble apologies—but I do have some late breaking info.” He’d discovered that Arnold Reuben’s restaurant included on its menu a sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, mustard, and coleslaw on toasted rye. With great chutzpah, he wrote, “It was called the ‘Col. Jay Flippen’ sandwich.”

  The Col. Jay Flippen! With coleslaw and mustard! Are you kidding me? (N.B.: Col. Jay Flippen was an actor whose first film, of his vaudeville act, was called The Ham What Am.) In what sense was this a Reuben? And how do you prove the intellectual property of a sandwich, anyway? Or any food? Among my grandfather’s other creations were butter brickle ice cream and a concoction he called Schimmel Seasoning. Schimmel Seasoning is kosher salt, black pepper, and MSG. My mother s
till makes it, minus the MSG. She keeps it in a shaker and calls it Schimmel Seasoning. Did anybody invent that?

  Origin stories may always require some emotional generosity. Did ice-cream shop owner E. R. Hazard invent the banana split in Wilmington, Ohio? Or was it David Strickler, a 23-year-old pharmacist in Latrobe, Pennsylvania? “We think the controversy is fun”—that’s the wise, official position of the sweetshop owner in Wilmington. But Smith showed no such magnanimity. As he awaited primary documentation, he informed the New York Times that they were fools to publish my mendacious writing. “Where’s the evidence? If there is no evidence, it is time to put this nice myth to bed.”

  But you’ve got to root for Omaha on this one, right? New York delis have adopted the Reuben because culturally the sandwich seems as if it should be theirs—it has a huge personality, it’s loud, it man-spreads. But the Reuben is a deeply early-20th-century American Midwestern creation, a Jewish sandwich that isn’t kosher, made by an assimilated Eastern European whose family left Russia, Poland, and Germany several generations before World War II. The Midwest was in its heyday then. The railroad was grand. So were my family’s hotels. They had fancy dining rooms with white-gloved waiters rolling silver carts for haute French table service. The Blackstone’s Cottonwood Dining Room featured a real cottonwood tree. The poker players, with a wink, called themselves the Committee. They were proud, prominent, going places—or some of them were. In the early 1950s, Reuben Kulakofsky moved to Los Angeles. My grandfather stayed in Omaha. The railroad magic faded. Nobody believes that anything inspired comes from Nebraska anymore.