Besides having your mind broadened, one of the great joys of traveling is tasting a region's cuisine. (Concomitant to this is chatting with locals to inveigle them into fisticuffs with one another over who has the best
version of a particular dish.) With this in mind, I would argue that there is a mental or associational aspect to
eating that doesn't seem to be remarked upon much: I think it's entirely
possible to eat a regional specialty in its hometown that is
"objectively" not the best or even mediocre yet feel that it is a feast fit for kings because
you're away from home having a good time with good company in an attractive
setting.
I don’t
doubt that one reason why I think that it reached the pinnacle of po' boy
goodness was that the shrimp was much fresher than I generally find in Madison. But it was
also that I was on vacation with one of my best friends. I was coming off of a
bad relationship and our trip had an element of putting that part of my life
behind me to it. Plus, I was down on the bayou surrounded by people who spoke
in a funny accent. The time and place made an experience out of eating that po'
boy.
I will also
note that the po' boy was the first thing I ate at the festival and that a rather large volume of hot
sauce (I had applied it generously.) dripped from it onto my white shirt so I spent the rest of that day
wandering around with a big red stain on my front where it was visible to all.
A friend of
ours, Joe, is from the Detroit area and he sometimes laments his inability to get
some of the foods from his hometown here in Madison. I never knew there was
such a thing as Detroit-style pizza until he told me of its existence.
Rectangular, thick crust, and lots of brick cheese. The cheese must go to the
edge of the pan so that it undergoes Maillard reaction and browns to a perfect
crisp.
While he has
made his own Detroit-style pizza, the formula for Coney sauce eludes him. He
loves Detroit-style Coney dogs. During this past summer the butcher near our house, Meat People, had Coney sauce on offer. The Frau bought some and I told Joe about it which prompted him to immediately make a trek across town to get some of his own. While it was the best Coney
sauce he'd found yet in Madison, he thought it was about 50% of the way along to being the real deal. It
tasted too much like chili – Hormel chili, to be exact.
Shortly after this, he returned to Michigan to visit family and his stepfather blessed with him with dogs and Coney sauce from National Coney Island which makes the ingredients he swears are the most traditional and most tasty. He returned to Madison with a cooler full and pawned some off on us so we were able to enjoy an authentic Coney dog.
I didn't
have any yellow mustard so I used Polish brown.
********
Among the
many things that were canceled last year was the annual convention of the
Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors held annually in April. I have been a judge for the convention's product show on and off for a while now. The 2021 version was moved to
August and went on despite the Delta variant's spread.
We judges aren't told what categories we'll be judging until we get there but, while driving over to the
Marriott on the west side, I found myself hoping not to get whole muscle jerky again. It's not that I don't like
jerky but sampling a few dozen strips of dried meat really takes a toll on
my jaws.
I met up
with my friend Ed who got me into this whole judging thing in the first place
back in 2005 or so when we were co-workers. He had a career in the meat processing industry before becoming a
health inspector and even had the honor of then governor Tommy Thompson admonishing him
in a stern voice over a conference phone, "Thou shalt not hinder commerce
in my state!"
Our category
assignments were announced and, much to my chagrin, I was assigned whole muscle jerky duty. D'oh! That and
specialty smoked/cured bratwurst. I hoped that there weren't too many oddball
flavors of sausage. Cheese or cheese & jalapeno I could handle. But I've
heard tell of a butcher who puts Gummy Bears into their sausage while
another who adds Kool Aid to theirs. I am not sure I could be an impartial judge of such befoulment of all that is good and holy in the culinary world.
We donned
our white lab coats and hairnets and headed inside the judging room which the
hotel keeps as cool as it can. This was especially nice since it was a very hot
and muggy August day outside.
So how do
you judge a sausage? To begin, you examine the exterior. How is the color? Are
the links of uniform size and shape? Does the casing have wrinkles? Any air
pockets? Once we were done perusing the outside, we cut one open to examine the
inside. Again, we looked at color, to start. We kept our eyes peeled for air pockets,
fat pockets, and connective tissue. If there were non-meat bits, such as pieces of cheese, were they
evenly dispersed throughout?
Lastly, we
sliced some sausage and heated the pieces in a microwave for tasting. What was
the texture like? Were there off flavors? I judged smoked poultry one year and there
were quite a few samples that were oxidized and I just cannot stand oxidized
chicken now.
There weren't many goofy sausage flavors to be had, thankfully. As expected, we sampled many cheese-laced brats in addition to a couple Philly cheesesteak sausages and ones made with beer. The oddest entrant was an unholy abomination unto charcuterie: a mac & cheese brat.
At one point in our judging, I turned around to see that behind us was the large diameter luncheon meat table. To my horror, a log of mac & cheese bologna was staring back at me.
Meanwhile, my pal Ed was judging flavored bacon. Bacon is near and dear to my stomach but, alas and alack, I have never had the pleasure of judging either bacon category. The first category is standard unflavored cured bacon while the second is flavored. I am not really sure how people flavor bacon beyond encrusting the slabs in black pepper or injecting maple flavoring. Sitting next to a few slabs of peppered bacon were a couple that appeared to have had barbeque dry rub on them while others had had completely unfamiliar seasonings applied to them.
Here's the Braunschweiger section:
Although you
generally don't swallow the product you're judging and instead spit it out into a cup, you are still
chewing on sample after sample of processed meat which means you consume a lot of salt. I drank a lot
of water and went to the bathroom several times over the course of the 4 or so
hours we spent judging.
It is also
worth noting that the leftover product is all donated to local food pantries.
A look at life at the semi-boneless ham table. Note the large hacksaw.
********
Bonus photo time. In keeping with the culinary theme, here's Grabby staring covetously at a spoon of hot pepper peanut butter ice cream from Calliope.
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