When we think of Detroit food the Coney Dog comes to mind.   It has the same lineage as our Cincinnati Chili Cheese Coneys.   The chili is a bit different – thicker – but from the same Greek immigrant wave that brought us the Kiradjieffs and Empress Chili 100 years ago.   

But there’s another sandwich in Detroit that doesn’t get as much PR as the Detroit Coney, and it’s a remnant of the African-American Community northwest of downtown.

It’s called the Boogaloo sandwich, and has been described as an amped up Sloppy Joe, Manwich, or Loose meat sandwich.    It was created sometime in the late 1960s by Jean Johnson, who with her husband, Barney, owned Brothers Open Pit Bar-B-Que at two locations – Fullerton at Roselawn, and Curtis at Wyoming.   You could almost call it a food of the Civil Rights Movement.  Later, the Curtis location was moved to a larger restaurant around the corner.

The story is that an unnamed student of local Mumford High School said that the sandwich was so good it made you want to dance the Boogaloo.

Wyoming and Curtis had once been one of the main shopping and restaurant areas of Detroit’s Jewish community. It was just northwest of the Catholic Polish and Eastern European neighborhood of Hamtramck.   The Eastern Ashkenazi Jews who came in the same wave of immigration settled outside the Catholic neighborhood. When Brother’s first opened , there were still a few Jewish businesses on those blocks, and folks could still grab some tref-y ribs from the non-kosher Brothers BBQ to go with an armload of fresh rye bread, corned beef and kosher salami.

The Boogaloo sandwich was made with flattop grilled ground pork with Jean’s famous “sauce of the islands”, mustard, diced onions, green peppers, and melted American cheese served on a grilled French roll.     Jean’s is a tangy, herby, slightly sweet tomato-based sauce with a little kick and perhaps a Jamaican element.  The internet has offered several versions of the Sauce of the Islands, but no one knows the exact recipe.    The Johnsons had a son named Clifton, who also worked at the restaurant after school, and folks have tried to track him down to get insight into the secret Sauce of the Islands.

The sandwich, with its sauce, became such a neighborhood favorite that other local restaurants offered their own versions.    Akbar’s on Livernois used to serve a similar sandwich that was just as good many say.

There’s a first hand review in the New York Times of BBQ restaurants from Sunday, July 3, 1988 that mentions the Brothers Boogaloo sandwich:

Brothers Bar-B-Que, Detroit, Mich. 581 East Jefferson Avenue; 313-963-7298 COMMENTS AND HOURS: Just across the street from the gleaming Renaissance Center, Brothers has an atmosphere that is strictly Down Home. Pork ribs are the specialty, slathered in Jean Johnson’s sweet, spicy Sauce of the Islands. Another favorite is the Boogaloo sandwich – French bread filled with ground pork, cheese, onions, green peppers and sauce. Open 11:30 A.M. to 9:30 P.M. Monday to Thursday, 11:30 A.M. to 11 P.M. Friday and Saturday; closed Sunday. Second location [[not sampled): 18091 Wyoming Street.

When Brothers closed in the mid 1990s, the Boogaloo sandwich closed with it.    That was until 2007 Chef Greg Beard opened his restaurant Soul “N” the Wall in the former Brothers Bar-B-Que spot on Curtis and Wyoming.

Originally Chef Greg did not offer the sandwich, but was urged by former Brothers customers to bring it back to the neighborhood.   He researched the sandwich and the sauce and came up with an iteration that cult lovers of the original – now in their 60s – said was pretty darn close.   He won’t reveal the sauce recipe but he says molasses and garlic are key ingredients. 

Chef Greg’s Boogaloo is known as the Boogaloo Wonderland Sandwich.  Beard added the latter part as an homage to his good friend Allee Willis, who also went to Mumford High School in the neighborhood and co-wrote Earth, Wind, And Fire’s hit “Boogie Wonderland.” Perhaps Willis’ best known cut is the Friends theme song, “I’ll Be There For You.”

Greg’s version of this iconic sandwich is made with pork, like the Brother’s original, but he also makes it in steak, veggie, and chicken to accommodate different tastes.   He’s even willing to add habanero or jalapeno peppers to offer a spicier version.

As for the sauce Chef Greg sees it as a grocery shelf staple, used for dipping mozzarella sticks, as a pizza sauce, or even a base for chili.     He has brought back a significant regional food that holds the history of his Northwest Detroit neighborhood. 

I was just in Amsterdam for several days at the beginning of June.    It’s one of my favorite cities in Europe.   I actually call it my Paris – because it’s a beautiful romantic city with great art and architecture and has such a great street food scene.     Although I’m not a huge fan of the pickled herring you find almost everywhere on the street, there are many other delicacies that make up for that sort of Viking-esque barbaric street food.    I always get the post trip blues having experienced all this great food and then coming back home and not having access to it.    So, when I saw Poffertjes in the frozen section of my local Trader Joe’s I was blissful.

The history of the Poffertjes is supposed to come out of crappy tasting communion hosts used at the Catholic mass.   I mean communion wafers still do taste horrible, but they’re not meant to taste great.   In fact, there’s Canon (Church) Law that defines hosts to be made of just flour and water.   If we’re gonna go all cannibal and eat our Lord and Saviour, shouldn’t we imagine he/she would taste like the most decadent, heavenly, delicious pastry you’ve ever had (like a Sebastian’s Ube Croissant)?      Well, the Catholic Dutch did, specifically those of the highly Catholic provinces of Brabant and Limburg.   These are also the provinces where goetta’s cousin balkenbrij was born.    And, this is the area where Van Gogh painted what is considered his masterpiece – The Potato Eaters.    Dutch communion wafers tasted so bad, the lay parishioners experimented with pancake batter type recipes and eventually when they found something so tasty and delicious, it didn’t fall within the canon law parameters of communion hosts.   But these poffertjes found their way into the street food scene in the Netherlands, and even spread to neighboring Belgium to compete with their two types of Belgian waffles.

Poffertjes are easier to eat than Belgian waffles.   They are smaller, bite sized – no cutting knife required – and can be eaten with a toothpick.   Typically you get a plate of about 20 or so.   They can even take the same toppings as the Belgian waffles.    The simplest topping is powdered sugar, but like the American funnel cake, they can take a variety of sauces and fruit toppings.      Sour cherry sauce, strawberries, fresh berries and cream are common toppings, as are drizzles of caramel and chocolate sauce.     Some even top with maple syrup and then sprinkle with the other fun Dutch treat, sprinkles they call Hagelslag, that Dutch children put on top of buttered toast for breakfast.     There’s even a savory version of the poffertjes that includes a filling of Gouda cheese.

There’s a theatre involving the making of poffertjes that must be seen to get the whole experience and there are numerous YouTube videos to watch.    There are specialty griddles that have dimples the exact size to fill with the batter.    A vendor uses a funnel with a release button to fill each dimple individually onto a hot griddle.  By the time they’re done filling, its about time to flip each one over, which he does one by one with a small toothpick.    The speed with which they turn the little puffy pancakes over is astounding and fun to watch.    But even with the fastest, the ones flipped at the end of the griddle will be a bit browner than the first ones flipped.

There are several companies that make a poffertjes insert that sits in the standard sized cast iron pan so that they can be made at home.   This would be a fun treat to bring to Cincinnati for our various Oktoberfests and Germanic themed festivals.      Kids love watching their poffertjes being made in front of them.   And, not being deep fried like our standard American funnel cake, they’re a bit more heart conscious of a treat.      Look out Taste of Belgium!

My cousins are travelling across America in their camper this summer.    They have been posting some phenomenal pics of sunsets in national parks, at hot springs, on lakes and with beautiful mountain ranges behind them.   This week they were in Montana.    So I asked them if they had tried the huckleberry pie at the Park Café at  Glacier National Park.     I was too late for my food reco, and they had already moved on.

But it made me think – this is berry season – raspberries, blackberries, chokecherries and a host of other regional berries.    The Buck Moon of last week signified this to our Native Americans across the country. So, I thought, there must be other national Parks who feature regional berry pies at their cafes in or near the parks.     And I came up with the following list.

The Mile High Blackberry  Ice Cream Pie in Shenendoah National Park in Virginia is probably the most instagramed of all of the National Park Berry Pies.  It’s a cousin to our Mecklenburg Mocha Mile High Pie, only with berries.    The pie is a heaping pile of fresh blackberry ice cream on top of a graham cracker crust, with a meringue top and blackberry compote.   It’s been a tradition for a long time and is a homage to the thickets of wild blackberries that cover the mountains every June and July.  It’s served at two places inside the park – Skyland at mile 41 and at Big Meadows Lodge at mile 51.   It’s enough for a whole family, and if you don’t get there early during peak summer season, prepare to wait in line.

The there are two pies in Glacier National Park in Montana that I mentioned to my cousin.   The huckleberry is native to the Dakotas, so that pie is the feature.     The huckleberry itself is a state symbol.  You’ll find fruit stands and all sorts of products made with it in peak season.   It’s a taste described as having the tartness of a raspberry and the sweetness of a blueberry.   The best version of the pie is at the Park Café, right outside the entrance to Glacier National Park, on Blackfoot Native American land.   It’s different from other similar pies in the state because it does not mix the huckleberries with blueberries.   And there’s a challenge with making huckleberry pies, that the inventors, Kathryn Hiestand and her brother Rob Heistand know – the higher the elevation, the sweeter the complex sugars in the berry taste, so they don’t add too much sugar, and also add sea salt to the pie.    After its invention in 1981 Park Café’s huckleberry pie quickly developed a cult following, including First Lady Laura Bush.    The second berry pie they serve at the Park Café is loved by the park rangers and called the Grizz Bear-y Pie.   It’s a mix of huckleberries, marionberries, and blueberries.

North Dakota is famous in July for its chokecherry pie, which is the state fruit.   You can get it outside the Kellys Slough National Wildlife refuge in Grand Forks, at the Farmer’s Market, which makes delicious mini chokecherry pies.     It’s a tart, juicy red berry with a mildly sweet cherry taste.

Berry pies are a specialty at Bryce Canyon Pines Restaurants in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.     They’re famous for their blueberry or boysenberry pies, but the locals love the Sour Cream Raisin Pie, not officially a berry pie.   The boysenberry is described as a cross between a raspberry and a blueberry.

In Southwest Harbor in Mount Desert Island Maine, near Arcadia National Park, the famous pie is the Triple Berry Pie from Island Bound Treats.  It contains a delicious mix of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.

Near Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park is a restaurant chain called Shari’s in Medford, that features local Oregon marionberry pie.   You can also find it at Becky’s Restaurant in Union Creek Resort or at the Cannon Beach Farmer’s Market.   Marionberries look just like a blackberry, but are firmer and a mix of tartness and sweetness of a blackberry.

Although not a U.S. National Park pie, but a North American Park pie, the Saskatoon Berry Pie near Calgary.   The berry is native to Alaska, Western Canada, and Northwestern and North Central United States.   It’s a deep purple color with a mildly sweet flavor of blueberries and blackberries, fragrant, with a lingering flavor of almond.   The best place to get Saskatoon Berry Pie is at the Berry Barn overlooking the South Saskatchewon River

So what is Ohio’s best National Park Pie?   It’s at the Conservancy at Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s Dinner in the Valley.   Chef Larkin Rogers, who is the catering chef for the Conservancy, makes seasonal pies on shortcrust and sour cream crusts.   She makes blueberry, mincemeat, apple and pumpkin pies and does an annual pie crust demo at the Conservancy in November. 

West Side Brewing is one of the most prolific beer collaborators with local non-profits.   They’re a 15-barrel brew house with 15-20 beers on tap, and make about 60 different beers annually.    The brewhouse and tap room are in the burgeoning Westwood Business District, which also has a great foodie scene popping up around it.

Thankfully, in Cincinnati, it’s hard to say what brewery in our microbrew scene does the most non-profit collaborations per year.     Rhinegeist does Charitable Tuesdays where they donate a portion of sales to a charity who gets the floor to tell imbibers about their org.     West Side has for several years collaborated with one of my fave local Germanic organizations, the Krampuslauf, who appears at Bockfest and several Christmas events like Germania’s Christkindlmarkt.   Krampus Candy and Krampus Coal Baltic Porter were two of the beer collaborations West Side Brewing did, which donated a portion of sales to the Cincinnati Boys and Girls Club.   They’ve collaborated several years with Cincinnati Pride for a beer that donates sales to charity.

This month’s new collab is called West Side Braille Ale and is the second beer can in America that will have raised Braille on the outside.   This is the second year of the Braille Ale collab. The first year was a German style sour gose ale with flavors of coriander and raspberry, but the pandemic prevented a release party.      The salty tartness of a gose beer goes well with any type of grilled meat or veg.  It’s a special collaboration with the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (CABVI).   This year’s style is a Tangerine Juicy IPA and the release party is August 11 from 5-7 PM at West Side Brewing.

CABVI’s mission is to empower people who are blind and visually impaired to live independent lives.   They offer services like screen readers and magnifiers,  a Radio Reading Service, and employment opportunities in its “Industries Program.”    They are a private non-profit, so they get little government funding, aside from the occasional grant.   They do an annual Dining in the Dark fundraising evening, which is where West Side sales rep Ben Metz met the VP of Development at CABVI, Aaron Bley, starting this wonderful partnership.

The words in braille that were on the first can were “CABVI,” “West Side Brewing” and “Braille Ale Raspberry Gose.” This year the words “Braille Ale Juicy IPA” will replace last year’s style. West Side Brewing will donate $1 to CABVI for every six-pack sold.    My friend Sue G. has worked for the CABVI for over twenty five years and is their printed braille editor and reviewed the braille on the prototype can.    West Side Brewery could have just collaborated with the CABVI without adding braille, which was a challenge in itself, but they did a “yes, and” collab.     There are no commercial can printers in the U.S. who print braille on any beer or food and beverage cans for that matter. 

West Side Brewing had to work with a company in the Netherlands to print the braille on the  cans – which is both technically difficult and expensive.   West Side hopes to include braille on all their cans, and offer a full braille menu.    They also plan to work with other breweries to implement braille on their cans.    Ben Metz, West Side’s sales rep, says braille should be on Budweiser and Miller cans, and be an industry standard.    With more adopters of braille on cans, the cost of printing will go down, and it will be more accessible to smaller breweries.

This and last year’s cans will be collectible as the first American beer cans with braille.    This past weekend a Bruckmann Brewery cone top can sold for over $2100 at auction.    Maybe in 50 years West Side’s Braille Ale can will fund someone’s monthly grocery bill, which with current inflation may be $2100 by then.

If you’d like to donate directly to the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, please go to Donate to CABVI | Learn How to Support CABVI (cincyblind.org)

Last night we saw, with clear weather, the largest moon of 2022 – the Super Moon.   The July Moon is generally called the Buck Moon.   This year July’s moon is the closest the moon will be to Earth.  Local astrologist at the Observatory in Hyde Park, Dean Regas says, “Super-est Moon of the year tonight. Look for it rising in the southeast after sunset. Big on the horizon around 9pm (221,000 miles away), but closest to Earth around 1:30am (under 220,000 miles).”

The full moon was super important to the Native Americans.   Each month’s full moon had a name, a purpose or indicator- usually of what food was ripe for the eating – and in many cases even a ritualized dance to go with it.

July’s signals mid summer and hot weather months.    And in the Midwest, southwest and northwest it indicates several foods that are in season.    For us in the Midwest, plains and northeast it signifies the ripeness of berries – blackberries, raspberries, and chokecherries.     For those in more southern and warmer climates it indicates that the early corn is ripe and ready to be harvested – ours in the Midwest was only “knee-high by the Fourth of July,” so we’ve still got a way to go on our corn.  Finally, in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, Washington and Alaska it’s salmon season.

The Algonquins called their July moon ‘matterflawaw kesos’ and to them it signified that squash, one of the Native American ‘three sisters’, was ripe.     Our local Shawnee Indians called the July moon ‘miini klishthwa’ and to them is signified time to go out and forage the ripe blackberries of Ohio.     For the Chippewa and Ojibwe it signified ripening of raspberries.   The Cherokee of the Carolinas knew it meant corn was ripening. For the Araho and Lakota it meant the chokecherries were ripe.  For Pacific Northwest Indians, like the Haida of Alaska or the Tlingit, it signified salmon season and so it was time to get your fishing poles up to snuff and catch some fresh salmon. 

So if you were to make an entire meal inspired by Native American July moon indicators it might be salmon encroute (although I doubt the Indians had access to good layered puff pastry), with a cheesy squash casserole, ending with a beautiful red berry pie.    And make sure you also do a little dance around the campfire in moccasins and loincloth.

If you hurry down to Colonel D’s spice counter at Findlay Market you may get some of the last few ounces of a Georgian spice blend I ordered called Khumeli Suneli.    I picked mine up on Saturday when I was giving my brother, his wife and my nephew a food tour of Findlay.     I heard about this funny sounding spice blend from my college friend Mark who says it the secret to the best chicken soup you’ll  ever have.   

Even though Colonel D is my go to spice counter, they don’t always have everything on premise.  However, like in this case, they will order and make a blend if you ask them to.   That’s pretty spectacular in my opinion – I know of no other spice company that will do that.    That way, you don’t have to spend three times the amount on all the spices needed  to mix into the blend.

Although the rhyminess of it makes it sound like a newly created brand, Khumeli Suneli, translating into ‘dried spices’, is an ancient herby Georgian spice blend that’s been around for thousands of years.  And like the Baharat is the basis for dishes of Mediterranean origin, like moussaka and Cincinnati Chili, Khumeli Suneli is  the basis of nearly everything in Georgian cooking.

It’s a fragrant green herby blend that typically contains Georgian blue fenugreek, basil, parsley, dill, celery seed coriander seed, mint, bay leaves, summer savory, and marigold.      Summer savory is an ancient spice used in the West before black pepper from the East was discovered and widely traded.   It’s described as a cross between mint and thyme with a piney, mild peppery flavor.  I’ve never used flower petals in cooking before, so the marigold is an interesting new bitter flavor to experiment with. 

Flower petals were once used a lot in candy and gum flavor – particularly carnations – which probably made Delhi’s J.C.Witterstaeter, the US Carnation King very happy.

Since Georgian cuisine uses a lot of walnut, it’s supposed to be the best pairing with them as in a Georgian dish called badrjjani nigzvit (eggplants rolled with walnut paste), or another, pkhali, (spinach, walnut and pomegranate molasses puree).   Every Georgian family has its own ratio of spices and maybe adds another herb or spice or two to their mix.    It’s been called the Georgian garam masala or curry, or even the Georgian ras al hanut.  

Historically, Georgia was right in the center of the spice trading routes from China to the Mediterranean, so their cuisine is a fusion of East and West.    Today in Georgia, the blend is used in sauces , meat and even vegetarian dishes as an all purpose spice. 

It’s particularly good in soups and stews and fish, chicken or lamb, especially when made into a marinade with garlic, olive oil and pomegranate molasses.   My application was in chicken soup which bumped it up to a huge level.  To me the blend kind of has a similar flavor to what we in America call poultry spice, with a little bit of bitter and some other interesting flavor.    Poultry seasoning is typically high in herby thyme and sage, and small amounts of ginger, black pepper and nutmeg. 

The blend is  also recommended in deviled eggs and I think it would probably also be good in chicken salad, egg salad, or on roasted potatoes or any roasted root veggies for that matter.     It would also be good in my mom’s Thanksgiving giblet dressing, mushroom dishes, and with oysters Rockefeller.

Khumeli Suneli is my new summer experiment and I hope to integrate it into many dishes.

My Grandma always called the thin metal foil you put over leftovers tin foil.     And there were always leftovers from a meal with Grandma.   She cooked in an amount like she was feeding an army mess hall, which is funny because Grandpa was a cook in World War II.     But my geeky adolescent brain always corrected her, “But Grandma, it’s not tin foil – its ALUMINUM foil.”      She’d flash her loving Grandma eyes that also said, “It doesn’t matter it’s still tin foil to me !”

Aluminum foil came about because a Swiss industrialist named Robert Victor Neher wanted an alternative to tin foil.   Tin was rare and expensive, while aluminum was actually cheaper (it didn’t trade on the commodities stock market) and easier to source, and it didn’t impart that ‘tinny’ flavor to food it encased.     Aluminum had different properties than tin foil, so Neher had to send technicians to his foil customers to modify their tin foil packing machines so they could still use them for the new aluminum.  Neher patented the continuous aluminum rolling process in 1910 and opened a plant in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, on beautiful Lake Konstanz, about an hour directly east of where my Grandma’s Brosey family originated.      His customers used foil to pack Swiss chocolates, boxed cheeses, tobacco, and  for the Maggi company, which used the new foils to wrap their ready made soup stock cubes.

Well there’s good reason Grandma called it tin foil.   Up until 1947 in America, it WAS tin foil, just like the tin made for the cans that contained soups, tuna, and in Cincinnati, even goetta.   In 1919 Richard Samuel Reynolds formed the United States Foil Company, which focused on tin and lead foils.   They broke into the tin industry in 1926.   By World War II, they were the country’s largest producer of aluminum, supplying aluminum parts for the war effort.    After the war, when large quantities of aluminum were not needed, they Reynolds Corp saw an opportunity to pivot and started making aluminum foil in 1947.   They created Reynold’s Wrap, a household aluminum foil.   The lightweight inexpensive aluminum foil became an instant success and became a kitchen staple that has stood the test of time.   It also makes a great alien detector helmet, or a medieval knight’s helmet.

Remember when every bar was adding over the top skewers in their Bloodies?     And it was not just a celery stalk or cheese chunk, olive and mini pickle      My favorites were the skewered mini hamburger slider by Jerry’s Jug House, and the skewered Goetta Ball in the Bloody at Libby’s Southern Comfort.   

Well, this summer’s trend is a bit like the over the top skewered Bloody, but in the form of a milkshake- sundae hybrid called a Freakshake.   It’s iliterally a “My Milkshake is better (bigger) than yours” competition amongst ice cream parlors.      These toppings are more than sprinkles, chocolate sauce or nuts.    They’re ice cream sculptures or even works of art.    Some even rim the glass or cup.       Things like peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, or caramel are used as glue to keep things like cookies, brownies, cupcakes on top of the milkshake.    Other ingredients are speared like a Bloody into the drink to keep them stable.    Items like Marshmallow Peeps, Cotton Candy, gourmet popcorn, funnel cakes, donuts and literally anything else you can imagine are topped on to make a mound of delicious craziness. 

 There’s no such thing as too over the top in a Freakshake.  They harken back to the days of Ferrell’s Ice Cream Parlors clown sundaes, which were like a five person serving.

Terry’s Ice Cream Bar in Lynchburg, Ohio, was one of the first locally to offer these freakshakes a few summers ago.   They call them crazy shakes and have about twenty-three flavors including Unicorn, S’mores, Caramel Explosion, Cookie Monster and Over the Rainbow (which comes with an entire slice of rainbow cake).  The Carnival Shake is topped with cotton candy, popcorn, Twinkies and a lollipop.    The only thing missing is a fried Oreo.    Although the calories in one shake probably exceeds the recommended daily calories, you can also get pizza at Terry’s and any sundry groceries you need after you fast for the next two days.

Another one, KraZee Shakes in Milford, Ohio, just announced that they were closing for unforeseen circumstances after only being open for a year.    They have a smaller variety than Terry’s – about a half dozen – and most are the same flavors as Terry’s.   They have an interpretation of the Unicorn, the S’mores, Cookie Monster, along with a Peanut Butter, and Salted Caramel version.

If you’re looking for an adult experience, Nomad in Bellevue, Kentucky, has both virgin and alcoholic versions.  Lori’s American Grill in Goshen has Crazyshakes and Dreamy Café in Miamisburg, south of Dayton, Ohio, has them.    Even Blue Ash Chili has entered the game with a freakshake of the week, one of which was the PB&J for the month of May.   It had about a dozen nutter butter cookies on top with strawberry compote and whipped cream.    Cincy Chili and Freakshakes sound like a beautiful marriage to me.

So far neither Graeters, UDF nor Aglamesis have gotten into the Freakshakes phenom, but if they’re smart they will. I see a version of the Cincinnati Nectar soda freek-ized, maybe with a few Opera Creams on top.

They’re all pure theatre and super-fun for kids, but expect to pay above ten bucks for these ice cream performances. If I were to create a crazy shake – It would be called the Amsterdam – a speculas flavored shake topped with whipped cream, about a dozen pfeffernuse cookies, some ‘glued’ to the side with Belgian chocolate, a tompouse snack cake on top and sprinkled with rainbow Hagelslag sprinkles and a handful of salty, sour Dutch black licorice. You’re welcome Cincinnati dairy bars!

What most people don’t know is that the month of June in the Tristate is sauerkraut ball rolling month.    Mayor Pureval should officially designate it as such, given our area’s strong Germanic heritage.    These will be all the balls served at the local German fests and beer gardens leading up into the August start of the local Oktoberfest season.  I know, right? Oktoberfests starting in August?

Germania Society in Colerain Township spent last month hand rolling and then freezing sauerkraut balls for their end of August Oktoberfest.    They estimate that 30,000 kraut balls will be devoured by hungry Cincinnatians at this several day event.  

Volunteers have also been hand rolling “hundreds of dozens”  – that amounts to several thousand balls – for Oldenburg Indiana’s upcoming Freudenfest.     Oldenburg is a quaint town about an hour west of Cincinnati in Southeastern Indiana, that was populated by mostly Catholic immigrants from goetta country – that is northwestern Germany.  It’s known as the city of spires because of all the gothic churches in the small  farm community.   It’s also known as the mother house for the Franciscan sisters of Oldenburg.     These were the sisters who basically raised and taught me as a kid at Corpus Christi and St. Bart’s Consolidated Schools.  My favorite nun, sister Carlene is buried in the large nun’s section of the church cemetery behind the convent, as is Sr. Margaret, my sixth grade teacher, who ruled with an iron fist and a thick wooden ruler.

Freudenfest is your first opportunity to taste a locally hand-rolled sauerkraut ball in 2022.     The funny thing is that even though Oldenburg was populated by Goetta country Germanics, most people, like all our other “German” local festivals will wear the costumey lederhosen and dirndls of Bavaria, a region on the complete opposite end of Germany from the immigrants who founded Oldenburg.    That would like someone in New York wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots at an Italian fest like Giglio Fest in Brooklyn.    At Freudenfest, they dress Like a Southern Bavarian to celebrate a North German heritage.   Instead of lederhosen, men should be wearing black broad brimmed hats, vests, and the shin-length breeches of northwestern Germany.    And women should wear the Vegas-style hats women in the region wore, which would make for a super interesting festival.

For those of you who have never had a sauerkraut ball, its an American invention.   The closest thing you will find to the sauerkraut ball in Germanic Europe is the bitterballen in the Netherlands.  But that is just breaded and deep fried gravy – it has no sauerkraut, cheese, but does have some meat bits.

Here’s where the contention comes in.    Akron, Ohio, claims they invented the sauerkraut ball.   The first reference to theirs comes in the 1960s.   In Cincinnati, our restaurants like Mecklenburg Gardens and Lenhardt’s were already showing sauerkraut balls on their menus at least by the 1950s.      And the Cincinnati Kraut ball is different from the Northern Ohio kraut ball by one very distinct ingredient – the addition of a creamy cheese.   Interstate 275 is the demarcation line – sort of a Maginot Line – separating northern and southern Ohio sauerkraut balls.   Above it you will find no creamy cheese inside.

The Germanic deep fried ball has taken a few fusion U-turns from the standard sauerkraut ball.   Gliers and others serve up goetta balls.    And there are some even more innovative restauranteurs that make Hanky Panky balls – which are ground beef and cheddar filled balls.

A good kraut ball has a good seasoned kraut (better to be finely shredded than large chunks) with some small meat bits – ham or bacon, and then a good melty creamy cheese.   The breading should be not too thick, but dark brown and crunchy.    A good size is about golf ball size.   That makes it for a two bite affair if you’re dainty, and a decent one bite gobble if you’re not so dainty.    One friend – an Italian – makes her sauerkraut balls larger, about racquetball sized, and I hate to say it – are the best damn German sauerkraut balls I’ve ever had.   I guess their similarity to the Italian Arancini – the fried risotto ball – is similar so that the technique carries over into sauerkraut ball making.

And finally there’s the subject of what is an appropriate dippin’ sauce   I like a good spicy ground mustard as the dipping sauce, or a good homemade curry sauce  (not the gelatinous commercially made Currygewurz) like that made by Tuba Baking or the Lubecker.  

Summer brings to mind old time treats to enjoy while taking a summer break.    Some of the oldest American candies are hard candy flavored sticks and jelly filled hard candies.    The filled strawberry, the primrose red raspberry filled candy, and even others like filled root beer barrels are the most recognized of these American standard old time candies. The origin of these candies come from the flavored candy stick, which birthed the Christmas Candy cane.   And, oddly enough, their homeland is in northwest Switzerland at the Basel Fall Streetfairs.

The Herbstmesse, or Fall Street Fair, of Basel lasts for two weeks in late October into November.  This tradition has been going on since 1471 and is spread over seven of the city’s squares and a hall at the trade fair center.  Not only filled with rides, fun games, and entertainment, mysterious products, particularly food from foreign lands were and still are one of the big attractions.    

One candy product that became a staple for the fair is what Baselers call “Mässmogge”.  These colorful candies have a hard shell that hides a hazelnut paste filling consisting of roasted and ground hazelnuts, sugar, and some fat. The shells come in various flavors and colors, such as strawberry, chocolate, lemon, and many others.    These were the first filled hard candies and are grandfather to our old time treats like the filled strawberry candy.  Today, mässmogge make up for one-fifth of all the candy production in Switzerland. Other names and spellings for this candy include mässmögge, mässmocke, or messmocken.

According to consistent reports, two French sugar cookers from Lyon and Nancy offered their goods at the Basel Fair in the 1860s. Their elongated, thin stems made of boiled sugar porridge quickly became very popular. Because sugar was cheaper in France than in Switzerland at the time, the business paid off for the two sugar cookers. In addition to sugar, another ingredient played a central role in the success of the sugar stems of the time: the discovery of artificial food dyes in the second half of the 19th century. These colorful sugar sticks must have inspired the trade fair visitors at that time. The success of the sugar cookers naturally attracted imitators, so that from 1869 several French sugar cookers and confectioners offered sugar stems at the Basel fair. In order to be able to serve customers more quickly, resourceful confectioners came up with the idea of producing shorter and thicker stems. The stem became such a mogge and – as the legend goes – in 1879 a child ran home for the first time with the joyful cry: “Father, Muetter, lueget dä Mässmogge!”

At the turn of the century, the confectioner Leonz Goldinger, also from France, refined the glass moggs of the Basel Fall Fairs by pouring a hazelnut mass into the sugar stems. It was the birth of the stuffed mässmoggen.

It was these flavored, colored sugar sticks, glassmoggi, first shown at the Basel street fairs that would become the Christmas treat the candy cane.     In antebellum America, pharmacies and general stores sold these flavored, dyed candy sticks.   We added American flavors like horehound and root beer in addition to the popular peppermint flavor. 

Who bent the ends to make them ‘canes’ is highly debated.   One theory is that   in 1670, a Catholic choirmaster in Cologne gave out pure white sugar sticks to the children as a way to soothe them during the long nativity ceremony.   That choirmaster asked a local candy maker for each sugar stick to be turned into a hook to resemble the shape of a shepherd’s staff in the Christmas nativity story.

Another theory brings us to Wooster, Ohio. August Imgard was just 19 when he came to America in 1847 from Wetzlar, Hesse, Germany, about 30 miles north of Frankfurt. Living with an older brother named Frederick Imgard in Wooster, Ohio, August decorated a small blue spruce tree with white candy canes that he made from his mother’s recipe.     The National Confectioners’ Association today gives Imgard the credit for being the first to crook the canes to hang them on a Christmas tree.    We in America, later added the red stripe into the cane.    The number, pattern and size of the stripes were the signature of the skill of the specific confectioner.

Our own oldest confectionery company in Cincinnati, Doscher’s was founded in 1871 by German immigrant Claus Doscher.   He came from the town of Grossenheim, near Dresden, then in the Kingdom of Hanover.   One of their first candy products was the striped candy cane, which they still make today in their Newtown candy factory.  

Before hard candy was a treat, it was how pharmacists integrated less-than-tasty ingredients into medicine.  Even the most recognized throat lozenge, Ricola has roots directly south of Basel, in the town of Laufen.  In 1930 Emil Richterich founded his company of specialty candy, inspired by the massmoggi and other sugar confections seen at the Basel street fairs.  He experimented with the healing properties of herbs and came up with the 13 ingredient formula for Ricola, integrated into the signature square hard candy herb drop.   In 1948 there were two Richterich confectioners in Laufen and Emil took the first syllable of his name and created the name and brand Ricola.

Although the Germans seem to have brought the candy cane to America, we can thank the Swiss of Basel for bringing us the idea for fruit & flavored gel-filled candies that descend from the French made sugar sticks which became the candy cane.