Bringing Bamberg to My Dining Room

A few years ago The Dulcinea and I were watching some travel show where the host went to Bamberg, Germany and toured the Schlenkerla brewery. This immediately made us thirst for some rauchbier. Then this person stopped in at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant and had a Bamberg Onion. This had two results: 1) I vowed to go to Bamberg someday and 2) we got really hungry and probably ordered a pizza. Since I can't go to Bamberg, I decided to bring a little of it to my home and made the titular onions.

The first thing you do is peel some onions and then scoop out their guts. I cried and cried doing this. Next time I hope to have a nice serrated melon baller with a comfy ergonomic grip to speed things up and make it easier on my finger. I took the onion guts and pureed them I did the same with a smoked pork chop. Then I mixed it all with some ground pork, eggs, bread crumbs, and seasoning. Aside from salt and pepper, I added mace and marjoram. What you're doing is essentially putting a smoked brat in an onion.

I went to the Jenifer Street Market to get my meat for this venture and was disappointed to find that, not only did they not have any of Nueske's smoked chops but that they were also out of ground pork. So I went to Jim's. I got some smoked chops and they ground the pork for me on the spot. It was so nice to be able to go to a butcher shop on a weekend when there was actually a butcher around instead of simply someone who can weigh and wrap meat. I suspect that there are no real butchers at the big grocery stores these days and perhaps a slight chance of the Jenifer Street Market employing one. Unfortunately Jim's has succumbed to the brat craze. By this I mean having only a smattering of cuts of meat and instead filling the display case with funkily-flavored sausages. If I hear one more word about how "sophisticated" Madison is in a culinary way, I am going to vomit. There are shopping days when I have a problem finding a simple cut of meat like a rump or chuck roast because meat departments and butchers are spending all their time combining ground pork with bulk powdered seasoning mixes from Sysco so all the sophistos can have their gyros, chipotle & sun dried tomato, and mac & cheddar brats. Meat counters across the land are inundated with these sausages as well as pre-stuffed this and marinated that. So I call bullshit on any notion that Madisonians are any more culinarily sophisticated than folks in Richland Center. With the filling done, you stuff those bad boys.

After about 45 minutes in the oven, you apply bacon and pop the root end of the onion that was hacked off earlier on top and return to the heat to finish.

 

I fucked this meal up twice. Firstly, I added too much mace to the meat. It wasn't inedible by any means but very strong. My second cock up came in the choice of beer for use in the gravy. One is supposed to use Schlenkerla's Märzen or one of their other common rauchbiers but I used the Oak Smoke which is much too hoppy for gravy. To add to my gustatory crime, I will also say that the pork was too fucking lean. No fat = crappy pan drippings. Due to circumstances, I ended up with ground pork from Woodman's instead of using the stuff from Jim's. Next time I need to have Jim's grind the stuff and make sure they add plenty of fat. And so I had to improvise and ended up making gravy that was passable. I can imagine what it must taste like when prepared correctly - smoked pork, bacon, rauchbier gravy - a cornucopia of smoky goodness. On the plus side, two 12-year old boys, whom I didn't think would be too thrilled about Bamberg Onions, enjoyed the dinner. Live and learn.