An Kentucky Bourbon Update from the Male Offspring

     Connor Sites-Bowen's newsletter covers a lot of ground. I'm excerpting his most recent to give you a taste of his writing.

    Last month he joined his sister and my spousal unit on a pilgrimage and a celebration. The spousal unit had just emailed the final proofs of his forthcoming book, Understanding Computer Dynamics. I figured he deserved a vacation, and a chance to hang out with his children, bourbon lovers all. As I'm not a fan of that spirit, I signed them up for Chef Ed Lee's Bourbon Extravaganza, and I hung back in California. 

    I'm a big fan of Chef Ed Lee. In my chronicles of the late, lamented Gourmet magazine, his work marks a major transition in food journalism in the early 2000s. Before Chef Lee, Francis Lam and David Chang brought their personal history and scholarly chops to the Gourmet, the magazine's coverage of Asian and Asian American food was mostly the work of British ex-spies and restaurant reviewers. 

    What I couldn't imagine then, was that Chef Lee would tackle so many of the human issues in the hospitality industry, not to mention the crisis of COVID. I'm so glad my family could reune in such company!

    

American Spirits 

by Connor Sites-Bowen (Excerpted with permission)

[One of dozens of rickhouses Buffalo Trace is building on the bluffs above their distillery. The final project cost is expected to be $1.1 billion.]

The trip came together around chef Edward Lee, a Brooklyn-born kid of Korean parentage, whose Louisville restaurant 610 Magnolia blends Korean and Southern cooking with great delight and genius. You've probably seen him on PBS's Mind of a Chef, or on Top Chef circa 2012. His cooking philosophy is expressed eloquently and marvelously in Buttermilk Graffitti, a collection of essays. Smoke and Pickles is his cookbook.

Of the book and the man, the late Anthony Bourdain said 

Edward Lee is one of America’s most important young chefs―and what he has to say with his delicious food and in the pages of [Smoke and Pickles] will help redefine American food as a whole. Better start reading and start cooking. The future is here.

Right now, Chef Lee's focus is on fermentation and distillation - spirits. Kentucky is the home of bourbon, America's spirit, and he's been watching from the restaurant side of the business as the bourbon industry has boomed in recent years. Old players are building out huge new construction. New distilleries established in the 2010s are producing mature, fine products, at premium prices.

[Sweet Mash fermentation at Peerless. A man of military training, owner/founder Corky Taylor opted for this start-fresh-daily process rather than jumpstart each batch with the leavings of the last one, the 'sour mash' process.]

Though it comes in glass bottles as a translucent liquid, bourbon (and all alcoholic spirits) are the compressed, calorie-rich results of incredible amounts of vegetable and fungal growth. The jewel-like quality of a good bourbon shelf traces its fine colors and rich scents to a compression of thousands of years of sunlight, rainfall, soil, and plant care. 

The mash bill (ratio list of ingredients) is agricultural grains - a majority of corn, rye, wheat, malted barley, or malted rye grain. The fermentation process is so amazingly productive that once it gets going most distilleries let it ferment in open stills. The corn beer is so rich with yeast at this stage that it self-heats and self-stirs, giving off huge plumes of carbon dioxide. You can dip your unclean hand into this corn brew and the microorganisms on it would not find purchase here - indeed, one 'trick' on many bourbon tours is letting people dip a pinky into the tank and taste the 20-proof partial product.

After fermentation and distillation, the alcohol is put into charred oak barrels, from which the spirit derives the majority of its scent and flavor, as well as the characteristic color spectrum - orange-yellow-brown. The oak is a managed natural product as well, sylviculture or forest management. Most bourbon barrel oak is quercus alba, the American White Oak, though a variety of Old World oaks (geographically from France) are also used. The barrels must be oak because oak tree cells have tyloses, special microscopic growths which under stress fall off and block the wood's internal channels, uniquely preventing leaks and most evaporation.

White Oaks can live for half a millenium, and many are harvested after they've passed their centennial year. With 45 staves to a barrel (Maker's Mark 46 refers to a mysterious extra stave for flavor), one bottle of bourbon from one barrel can represent 4500 years of oak lifetime, and the simultaneous springs and summers of thousands of grain stalks, biologically processed and then thermodynamically reduced down to a potent, intoxicating escence.

[Me, my sister Fiona, and my dad Richard, at Ouita Michel's Honeywood restaurant, in Lexington.]

Local bourbon is local food, and the distilleries we visited were accompanied by visits to some of Kentucky's best kitchens too. With Chef Lee as our ambassador, we sat down to close dinners with chefs, owners, bar managers, and other food system experts, trying flavors and ingredients tied to Kentucky's land, seasons, and ever-advancing culture.

It was wonderful to gather with family, and to gather over food - both things are even more precious in a COVID world. The rest of the group had brothers on a road trip, spouses on vacation, sisters fleeing the Texas summer for a long weekend, old friends out adventuring together - a surprisingly wholesome group of day-drinking bourbon tourers. The takeaway line from the trip was a comment made by co-guest Ian, who well into our first evening dinner and drinks, jokingly told my dad 'Hey man, control your kids.'

[The heritage rickhouses at Woodford Reserve. Note the micro-gauge rail, not for trains but for barrel transport from filling to storage.]

Bourbon has been and will be big business. It's not a fast-moving product like moonshine whiskey. The timetables involved, the storage and associated risk of capital compound to make bourbon a banker's business & a rich man's industry. Prohibition didn't shut down production completely, but did concentrate holdings down to just a few surviving firms, whose licences during prohibition did not allow them to produce whiskey, but did allow them to distribute it medicinally. These 7-10 firms cashed out the other ~ 200 distillers operating at the time, buying out their inventories, blending them, and selling it all along.

It was not until the end of the 20th century and the start of this one that bourbon became a desired, select spirit. Long campaigns for regional tourism have paid off. Single Barrel programs have proved enormously popular - bourbons are 'chaseable' the way Pokemon cards and Candy Crush trophies are. At this point, they're an American export - a luxury symbol worldwide. We were told at Buffalo Trace that a 1% rise in Chinese bourbon consumption would soak up the entire production day for the whole state.

Based on the projected demand, the industry is building big projects now, as fast as they can. At Buffalo Trace, the parent company (Sazerac) has sunk $1.1 billion into more than 20 new rickhouses (The technical term for the oak-racks-with-some-walls-thrown-on buildings bourbon barrels age in), to hold millions of gallons of aging product.

[Striking workers outside Heaven Hill Distillery, which wants to move them to a potential 24/7 production schedule, cut medical benefits, and limit overtime. ]

Heaven Hill Distillery, maker of Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, Old Fitzgerald, Two Fingers Tequila, Blackheart Rum, and more, makes around $500m per year in revenue. The bourbon industry at large has revenues around $4.3b per year. The company just spent $19m renovating the 'Bourbon Experience" tourist area of their production campus. And yet... They offered a contract with less money, health, or stability for their workers.

Hard pass - 420+ production workers are out of contract and on strike. Support Local 23D. Boycott Heaven Hill products, and let them know why. We did not stop there on our trip.

Foods of Comfort, Foods of Loss

Note: This is the first of a series of essays I'm writing about conversations with my 90 year old painting teacher, Calvin Douglass, member of the SPIRAL group of African-American artists. After a 50 year hiatus, we speak weekly. He's in a retirement home in Florida, I've been living in the Bay Area for half that time. He still has a lot to teach me, and we share a lot of memories of East Coast times, spent between Washington, DC, New York City and rural Maine. As Mr. Douglass shares 90 years of memoires, the culinary historian in me is reminded of what Splendid Table’s Francis Lam once observed: food can unite but can also cause shame and fear. To bridge the miles and years that separate me and Mr. Douglass from the our home places and favorite tastes, I'll share recipes for Fried Soft Shell Crab, East Coast Oyster Roast, Horn and Hardart's Baked Beans (for the Georgia boy) and their Baked Macaroni/Cheese and finish with New England Clambake.

     The cook at Mr. Douglass's  retirement home in Florida claims to be “just a Georgia boy.” He makes red beans from a can, ruins even meatloaf and knows nothing of meal planning according to the Farmer’s Almanac, the original seasonal cooking. Fortunately for Mr. Douglass, he has friends in town, retired from the Navy, who love sea food as much as he does. There’s no local fish market, but an Italian restaurant serves calamari, and the Chinese restaurant serves great steamed fish and shrimp.

Unfortunately, his beloved blue crabs are not to be found. When Mr. Douglass's mother, Mercedes, from the North Carolina piedmont, married Marylander Calvin Douglass Senior, they made their home with his parents. The image of her new daughter-in-law cleaning a bushel of blue crabs with a toothbrush shocked the elder Mrs. Florence Douglass. It became a family legend; almost a century later it raises a chuckle.

My painting teacher has another Baltimore crab story. As a teenager, Mr. Douglass worked as a busboy at the whites-only Merchants Club where he observed the preparation of its famous crab soup. First, a fire was lit under a huge pot. Handfuls of spice and a gallon of beer were followed by a bushel of Wye River crabs. The chef stirred the pot with an oar, and frequently spat tobacco juice into the mix. The patrons loved that soup and good “Old Joe.” If he called in sick, and Mrs. Munder herself had to make it, the patrons complained. 

    A fried soft-shelled crab sandwich remains Mr. Douglass's dream of the perfect bite.

Oysters were another matter. He’d heard about them from his father. Calvin Douglass Sr. was the second African American graduate of University of Maryland Law School, admitted after the Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP sued. At that time “Friday Night Lynchings” were publicized events on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Mr. Douglass's father and other lawyers took the ferry and were escorted by Maryland State Police as they tried to convict the lynchers of murder. For their efforts, the African American community fed and feted them with an oyster roast. 

After Frederick Douglass High School, at the suggestion of the chairman of the Art Department, Mr. Douglass went to study at the Museum of Art School in Philadelphia. He could no longer rely on his family’s home cooking. The School Administrators told him a cafeteria would be opening up in the basement. When he went to eat there, the white students refused him a seat. He had a chocolate bar in his pocket and went to sit on the steps of the Museum to eat it.

“They treat me the same way.” He looked up and saw another student speaking to him. “I’m Jewish.” That student and two others became Calvin Douglass’s foursome. They continued to be scorned by their white classmates, who spat on them from their automobile as the four waited to take the trolley on a drawing field trip to the Philadelphia Zoo. 

Fortunately, one of the nation’s first automats, Horn and Hardart, was located not far away on Chestnut Street. It was famous for macaroni and cheese, but Calvin Douglass preferred their creamed spinach. He took additional classes at the Fleisher Memorial on Catherine Street. Sometimes he’d go to Rittenhouse Square and draw portraits for sale. 

In 1952 Mr. Douglass enrolled at Howard University. Lois Maillou-Jones headed the Art Department. After he painted, at some risk to life and limb, giant angels adorning the Library Bell Tower for Christmas, she sent him to Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine for the summer. 

    Mr. Douglass arrived at Skowhegan in the rain,  after an overnight train ride from Washington, DC, and a shorter bus ride to the campus. An administrator welcomed him and handed him a mop. His was a work study scholarship. Mr. Douglass was assigned to a single room. He wondered about this, but it made him the envy of his fellow student, Robert Birmelin, and they became friends.

Skowhegan’s version of an Eastern Shore oyster roast was a Maine clambake, with lobsters, clams, corn and potatoes steamed between layers of seaweed. Skowhegan’s kitchen staff took charge of the regional education of their Southern visitor. They introduced him to roadhouses. They took him deep into the woods to community of Pinheads, likely a family of micro-cephalics, sometimes recruited to be presented in touring circuses.

At the end of the summer, Calvin Douglass did not return to Howard, but to classes at the Brooklyn Museum School. Skowhegan Faculty served there. Friends from Skowhegan, Robert Birmelin, Guy Tudor, Frank Yee and Calvin Douglass helped each other survive as aspiring artists. Guy Tudor’s brother hired Calvin to cook on weekends in his restaurant. For the first time, Calvin Douglass heard the phrase “my complements to the chef,” directed at him. Frank Yee’s father advised finding work in Chinatown’s restaurants, as you would be warm in the winter and fed. 

    Guy Tudor’s father was Charles Tudor, a legendary editor at Life Magazine. At a party for Xavier Gonzalez in the Tudor’s upper East side apartment,  Calvin was introduced to Augustus Peck, Director of the Brooklyn Museum School. He asked Calvin Douglass about his skills. Calvin replied that he could draw like Ingres.  Peck visited his cold water flat in the Village and saw that he could indeed draw like Ingres, and hired him on the spot. 

    At the Brooklyn Museum School Calvin met Richard Mayhew. When Richard Mayhew was awarded the John Hay Whitney prize to study in Italy, he was financially strapped. Calvin took him to dinner at a favorite Italian place, the Vesuvius in Greenwich Village, run by two Italian ladies with a wine server dressed in monk’s robes. 

    As the best drawing teacher at the Brooklyn Museum School, Mr. Douglass was recruited to teach painting at Vassar College. There he brought the Skowhegan spirit of hands-on work of making frames, stretching canvass and mixing pigments to the Studio Art program.

Fried Soft Shell Crabs - Allow 2 Crabs Per Person

Place live crabs face down on a board; slice across just back of the eyes. Lift apron at opposite end of crap, scrape off spongy portion beneath and cut off apron. Remove sand bag. Lift each point at the sides andd remove all the gills. Wash and dry.

To prepare for frying (1) Sprinkle with salt, pepper and lemon juice and dip in milk and then in flour. Fry in hot deep fat (370 F) until brown. Serve with Tartar Sauce.

 From The United States Regional Cookbook.

Cicero's Oyster Roast, from Bowen's Island, South Carolina

    Although I spent a few spring vacations catching crabs with bacon of the dock in front of my grandmother's home in St. Michael's Maryland, I was never treated to a Maryland Oyster Roast. So I've relied on Natalie Dupree's description of oysters roasted at Bowen's Island, South Carolina. (I wish I were related to those Bowens.) 

    Besides oysters, you will need a wood fire pit, very hot, and a sheet of heavy steel (3 x 4 feet, 1/8 inch thick) to cover it. Wash the oysters and place on steel. Place a burlap sack over them and spray with water. Steam until the oysters open just slightly. Shovel them onto a surface protected by layers of butcher paper with butter and saltines and oyster knived to finish opening. 

Horn and Hardart's Baked Beans --- for Four

    So simple, the Georgia boy just has to remember to start the night before...

    Soak 1/2 lb of pea beans overnight. Boil them for half an hour. Add 1/2 cup chopped onion, 2 strips raw bacon, diced, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1&1/2 tsp salt, 1&1/2 Tbsp dry mustard, 1/8 tsp red pepper, 1/3 cup molasses, 1 Tbsp cider vineger, 1/4 cup tomato juice, and 1 cup water. (Additional boiling water may be added to prevent drying during baking.) Bake in pot uncovered at 250 F for four hours.

 Horn and Hardart's Macaroni/Cheese --- for Four

    Cook 1/4 lb macaroni, and preheat oven to 400 F. Make a roux of 1&1/2 Tbsp butter melted and same amount flour, and dashes of salt and pepper blended until smooth. Add 1 3/4 cups Half and Half, stirring constantly until thick. Add 1 Cup of shredded Cheddar and stir until melted. Remove from heat and add cooked macaroni. Add 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to 1/2 Cup canned diced tomatos and stir in. Pour into a buttered baking dish and bake until browned on top.

New England Clambake --- for Twelve

    The culinary highlight of my summers spend in Northwest Connecticut was the Clambake held on the shores of Lake Mauweehoo. I'm not sure how the arrangements were made to bring the ingrediants inland, but the grown-ups did the cooking. Picnic tables were covered with those indestructable checked table cloths. Messy eaters could always go for a swim to clean up.

    Another treat of those years was visiting the Mystic Seaport Museum. In 1970, Lilian Langseth-Christensen, who lived near us in New Milford, gave the following instructions for a Clambake in her The Mystic Seaport Cookbook.

    Prepare 12 large cheesecloth bags. Put 1/2 quart steamer clams in each bag. Tie loosely. Place a metal garbage can over a hot fire, and cover the bottom with seaweed and a quart of salted water. In each sack place a lobster, 4 ears of corn, a baking potato, and half a quartered broiling chicken, all interspersed with corn husks. Place the sacks in the can. Cover and cook over roaring fire for 1 hour. Add a little more water if food smells scorched.

    Remove can from heat and dispense each person their share, each with a stick of butter , salt and pepper shakers, and possibly pickles.