Gates of the Mountains

Local Sausage: Beer Baron

As the summer grilling season approaches, the New York Times recently surveyed the best hot dogs in New York.  The surprising secret of hot dogs in Gotham is that all the classic franks, from the grills of Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side all the way up to Papaya King on the Upper East Side, and every food cart pot of "dirty water dogs" in between, is that they all come from the same place: Sabrett's of New Jersey.  Even better you can order them shipped five pounds at a time--a critical service when your pregnant wife's most discernable craving is macaroni & cheese with hot dogs.  (Once, when I asked her if I should make three hot dogs for dinner, she asked, "three each?")

Montana's counterpart to the svelte Sabrett Frank is the fat and smoky Beer Baron, made in Oregon for the Bielen family of Great Falls.  Where the New York sausage is thin, salty, beefy, and snaps back when you bite it, Montana's monster sausage is an inch-thick, coarse ground, smoked, and squirting with savory juices.  Each link weighs in at one-third pound and, thanks to unabashed mention of beef hearts as the fourth ingredient on the label, carries a 30g dose of saturated fat that should meet your weekend quota.  Last time I checked, you could find Beer Barons at a White Sox game and some supermarkets, though the purest way to enjoy this monster sausage is at the humble Beer Baron Market at 2nd and 2nd north of downtown Great Falls, where you can sit at an outside table next door and wash it down with a 32-ounce pop.

Beer Baron
203 2nd Ave N
Great Falls, MT  59401
(406) 453-7123

StrawHouse Market

Helenans are celebrating the opening of their second health foods market, the StrawHouse Market.  Its building is both a technological marvel and a work of art.  We first noticed it going up last year, when stacks of Gallatin Valley straw started to form walls in a field among new housing developments off of North Montana.  In its finished state, solar panels and less conspicuous efficiency features complement its colorful adobe/prairie-style exterior.  Here's how its website, which contains an impressive collection of architectural and engineering detail, puts it:

The synergistic integration of interdependent energy saving systems incorporated as well, set the building apart from the norm.

1.  Passive solar gain through fenestration at the south elevation to admit and retain solar heat to the interior.
2.  Grid-tied photovoltaic power generation to offset utility supplied electricity and help to manage peak electrical load requirements and used as shading for the passive solar fenestrations during the summer months.
3.  Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) technology for heating, cooling, and ergonomics.
4.  On site rain/snow capture, harvest and storage for landscape irrigation requirements.
5.  Permeable customer parking area in place of paving and Ashlar (recycled) concrete paving substituted for monolithic concrete patio areas allowing vegetation growth significantly reducing the Heat Island affect on site and at building perimeter resulting in increased comfort and decreased energy requirements for cooling during summer months.

You can tell that its proprietor, Dirk Ellis, has a background in mechanical engineering.  Oh, and that last "permeable customer parking area" item means that you park your car on a grass boulevard that drains into a recycled water irrigation system.  (I can't help but wonder how that will fare in the next spring storm, or under the snowplow next winter.)

Inside, the StrawHouse is much smaller that it appears (blame it on the bale-thick walls), and features less than half the selection of its uptown competitor the Real Food Store.  And while customers might not miss Real Food's score of bulk granola varieties, other omissions such as tiny sprouts, chile pepper, and cheese assortments put the StrawHouse somewhere between an elegant organic convenience store and a full-fledged health food supermarket.  Valley residents would find that even the inorganic gas station Bob's Valley Market, down Montana on Lincoln Rd., boasts more shelf space (no solar panels, but great hams).

The smaller selection still has potential.  While I have not yet tested their butcher, the StrawHouse expands our local selection of grass-fed Montana beef by offering cuts from Beaverhead Meats in Dillon, adding to Real Food's McAlpine Ranch meats from Valier.  And many Real Food fans frustrated by its teetotaling management hope that Ellis will seriously consider selling Montana and organic beer and wine.

The StrawHouse shines in pure design and comfort.  Its welcoming two-story cafe, with deep-hued walls and warm wood flooring, is the kind of place you could spend a morning with the paper or meet for lunch, and a major improvement on Real Food's utilitarian food court.  And its deli wrap menu, ranging from portabello to roast pork, is more inspired than its rival's wheat-bread and luncheon meat sandwiches.

My only serious complaint about the StrawHouse is its location amid the sprawling cul-de-sacs of North Montana Avenue.  I have no problem with that in itself--suburbanites deserve natural foods too--but the big box store neighborhood is incongruous with all of its other conservation efforts.  Real Foods is a little less central in its current location, but still walkable; the StrawHouse is within walking distance of the aforementioned cul-de-sacs, Shopko, and little else.  Your average in-town Helenan will burn an extra pint of gas to drive past Real Foods (Van's, Safeway, and County Market too) to get to the StrawHouse's environmentally correct grass parking spaces and back; I'm no engineer, but my back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that it would take only a dozen-or-so customers driving those extra few miles to burn the same amount of energy all those photo-voltaic cells generate in a day (53 kWh, 180,000 BTUs, or 1.5 gallons of gas).

Given Ellis's attention to detail, I suspect he considered the importance of location, and land costs and zoning restrictions drove him to North Montana.  (Maybe the next new grocer will be more geographically efficient.)  That aside, Ellis deserves credit for building Helena's most architecturally and technologically intriguing new business.

StrawHouse Market
1050 Road Runner St
Helena, MT 59601
(406) 457-1050

Meal: The Jersey Lilly (Ingomar, MT)

Ingomar was the biggest town on the Milwaukee Road between Roundup and Forsyth, with a population exceeding three hundred in the 1930s and the self proclaimed title of "sheep shearing capital of North America" according to Don Spritzer's Roadside History of Montana.

Nowadays its claim to fame is the most famous bar in Montana most people have never visited, the Jersey Lilly, established in the former home of the failed First National Bank of Ingomar in 1933.  Doug Ardary's canonical (and apparently out of print) reference work, The Pub Crawler's Guide to Montana's Small Town Taverns calls the Jersey Lilly "one of Montana's most famous and most loved taverns . . . worth going 100 miles out of your way to spend some time there."  For those of us taking U.S. 12 due East from Helena to Miles City, however, the Ingomar turnoff came up just in time for dinner.

We arrived at dusk during a break in a daylong rain storm, and as we pulled up we feared the darkened bar had already closed.  But as our headlights shot past the hitching posts and over the boardwalk into the dining room, we spotted a dozen faces seated around several tables.  So we walked in and heard from the hostess that the storm knocked out the power, but if we didn't mind eating in the dark she would be happy to serve us dinner.  (It turned out the faces belonged to some local ranchers who were on their way to ride in the Bucking Horse Sale parade.)

This would be an especially rustic Jersey Lilly experience, with an absence of electricity supplementing the usual shortage of indoor plumbing (outhouses stood off the boardwalk around the corner).  The emergency exit floodlights shone on a table in the corner, so we pulled up some chairs and used the light to read the menus.  One item we could order without a menu:  Bill Seward's renowned beans.  An order of those and chicken fried steak would make the meal for most of us.

Our server brought out a knit potholder with our silverware and bowls, then set down a well-worn saucepan filled with a deep brown bean stew.  After a day of roadtrip jerky and trail mix, we greedily ladled the stew into our bowls and supped.  These were pot beans, a staple of chuckwagon cooking, in their own thick gravy flavored with chunks of smoky ham, a little salt, and a balance of secret spices for body.  It was as simple and perfectly satisfying a dish as exists in high plains cooking, and for that reason a rare find in fancier kitchens.

Just as I was finishing my first bowl of beans and reaching for seconds, the chicken fried steak arrived.  I didn't bring a ruler to the table, but I'd guess the flour-and-pepper dredged chopped steak measured almost half a square foot.  Four inches in, just as I was starting to fill up, I discovered the bean gravy made a good steak sauce.  One bowl later I had cleaned my plate.

As we were paying up, the lights came on and we could see the beautiful and enormous back bar.  We also got a closer look at the mounted moose head on the opposite wall--at first we thought it was just the bad lighting, but it actually had a cigarette in its mouth.  It was time to hit the road before we could ask about the smoking moose, but we'll be back to the Jersey Lilly.  Even if it takes us 100 miles out of our way.

Jersey Lilly Saloon & Eatery
NW Corner of 1st Ave & Main St
Ingomar, MT
(406) 358-2278

Reluctant Gourmet

We try to steer clear of Wal-Mart for shopping we could otherwise do at local grocery, but sometimes a long-anticipated roadtrip demands a store for both extra truck cupholders and industrial quantities of snackfoods.  As we walked down skylit grocery aisles wide enough to drive through, we discovered that Wal-Mart not only had pretzel kegs and every variety of Easy Cheese, but also had localized its inventory to a surprising extent.

First we found Tim's Cascade potato chips, acclaimed as the finest chip in the land, including a limited edition wasabi flavor.  As it turns out, Tim's is now owned by Birdseye, so maybe this wasn't a surprise.  Just across the aisle there stood two self-serve flour mills filled with Wheat Montana grain, something I noted last year but had not yet seen.  They even sold flats of Montana's Treasure bottled water, tucked away between Dasani and Arrowhead.  But all of these things are available elsewhere--you could find them at most gas stations without a long walk from the parking lot.

The real value of Wal-Mart's food store was finding foods you just can't get anywhere else in Helena, unfortunately.  They had the sweet-garlic Vietnamese hot sauce Sriracha, for example, something we usually had to get at an Asian seafood market in Bozeman.  And tucked near a 35-cent avocado display were industrial-sized bags of ancho chiles, dried yet still supple, a key ingredient for mole that I previously could get only by mail order.

Helena's due for another local grocery, and I'll keep my fingers crossed that they'll have the hot stuff I need.  But until then, I reluctantly must admit that the best specialty food store in town is the Wal-Mart.

Belmont Gardens

In the 1970s, at the intersection of State Highway 85 and Interstate 90 in Belgrade, there stood the light towers and grandstand of the original Gallatin Speedway, the tall dark pyramid of a sawmill smokestack, and the two long plastic quonset greenhouses of my grandparents' tomato farm.  The screaming stockcar races and the soot-belching pyramid disappeared from the intersection years ago, but those greenhouses remained.  Until sometime last month, apparently.

My grandparents built Belmont Gardens from scratch in the late 1960s as a semi-retirement project after decades of dipping candies and jerking sodas at their fountain on Main Street in Bozeman.  It was a state-of-the-art climate-controlled hydroponic operation at the time, densely packed rows of tomato vines pollenated by some sort of walking reverse-vacuum my grandfather referred to as "bee machine".  Inside the greenhouses was hot, moist, and almost pungent with the fragrance of tomato plants.  Outside in the shop the perfectly red and sweet tomatoes lined the shelves in row after row of flat boxes, 24 or so per box, prices indicated in my legally-blind grandfather's large felt-tip script.  There would always be a few spare fruits on the table by the cash register for my brother and me, and a rusty salt shaker filled with sugar (not salt) to season them.  It must have been the sugar that got me started on a lifetime tomato habit.

I would join my grandmother for deliveries in her station wagon, with her little dog, a bag of stale Cheetos, and an oldies station punched in on the a.m. radio.  We drove a circuit that started at Lee & Dad's in Belgrade, then head to Bozeman for stops at Van's on North 7th, Heeb's on East Main, and Thriftway in Livingston.  (Amazingly, all of these family supermarkets are still in business, though it's a little harder to get local produce at them.)  Along the way, she recited with me the names of the mountain ranges as they appeared over the dashboard:  Tubacaruts, Bridgers, Spanish Peaks, Hi-lights, Ubsorkees.  I didn't learn the spelling at the time, and that helped me with the pronunciation.

Almost twenty years ago, my grandparents sold the tomato farm and moved to a new development on what was then the outskirts of Bozeman, in a modest rambler that at the time had a clear view of most of those ranges I learned about.  As the years passed, my grandfather died, newer and bigger houses sprung up between the rambler and the ranges, and my grandmother eventually moved back to her childhood home of Livingston and into a rest home.  But every time I drove I-90 through Belgrade on my way to see her, those greenhouses stood sentry over our memories of the place, surrounded first by a farm implement dealer, then a used car lot, then a housebuilder's model homes.

This past Mother's Day weekend I found the greenhouses torn down.  It was the model homes that eventually conquered those greenhouses, of course.  Belgrade is Montana's fastest growing city, adding more than 20% to its population in the last few years as variations on those model homes begin to fill in the I-90 corridor to Bozeman.  Demand for housing is so high that my grandparents' house and shop stood braced on trailers, ready to be dropped into some new cul-de-sac.  Maybe if someone could have moved into those two long plastic quonset greenhouses, they would still be standing at the intersection of State Highway 85 and Interstate 90 in Belgrade.

Recipe: Mole Poblano

The avocado industry tells us that Cinco de Mayo is a time for guacamole--nearly 40 million pounds of it.  We love guacamole (best with just avocado, onion, serrano/jalepeno peppers, cilantro, and salt to taste), but figured Mole Poblano is a more fitting choice for Cinco de Mayo.  The holiday celebrates the unlikely victory of Mexican troops over the invading French army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, though the French went on to bring in reinforcements, win Mexico City, and rule until 1867.

Traditional mole as we know it (mole is simply an indigenous word for sauce) was born in the convents of Puebla long before the battle.  According to Diana Kennedy, the Julia Child of Mexican cuisine, nuns created mole for visiting church dignitaries, and either wanted to blend a sauce from Old and New World ingredients, or spilled their spice rack into a pot of turkey.  Both turkey and chocolate come pre-Columbian Mexico.

Mole is a sauce greater than the sum of its parts--Kennedy's recipe has more than 20 ingredients--and chocolate actually plays a relatively small role.  The fruity, roasted notes and silky body come from toasted chiles and nuts.  Every recipe, even every batch, will vary, but here's an easy way to start:

1.  Toast in a cast iron pan or toaster oven until fragrant and soft, being careful not to scorch:  Approximately 10 mulato chiles, 5 ancho chiles, and 5 pasilla chiles (all dried--you can substitute more readily available New Mexico or California chiles if necessary, but most of the chiles should be either mulato or ancho; you can find all of them at Gourmetsleuth.com).  Put the chiles in a bowl of warm water to soak during the next steps, then drain, stem, and seed before blending.

2.  Toast until fragrant:  1 tsp. coriander, 1 tsp. / stick cinnamon, 1 tsp. anise, 1/2 tsp. / 4 cloves.

3.  Toast until fragrant but not browned:  1 cup almonds / sesame seeds / pumpkin seeds / mix, and two cloves garlic.

4.  Blend until smooth all ingredients, plus:  1 chopped white onion, 1 chopped tortilla, 8 oz. tomatoes or tomatillos, and 1/3 cup raisins, 1 14.5 oz. can chicken broth (or more if necessary to release blender blades).

5.  Fry blended mixture in 2 tbsp. vegetable oil over medium-high heat for a minute or two, stirring constantly.

6.  Reduce heat to low, mix in and melt 2 ozs. unsweetened chocolate, and simmer for at least 30 mins.  Gradually add more chicken broth as necessary keep sauce from burning.

7.  Add 2-3 lbs. browned chicken during the simmering process to cook, or serve over roast chicken or (more authentically) turkey.  Serves 6-8, and can be frozen and later reheated with additional chicken broth.

Recipe: Brisket a la Deadwood

We couldn't join our families for the traditional Passover feast this year, but I knew we would manage once I found a 6 lb.  McAlpine Ranch grass-fed Montana-raised organic beef brisket among the select few beef cuts available at the Real Food Store last week.  This would be the barbecue my new $99 grill (souped up with my installation of a thermometer and an extra level on the coal rack) had waited for:  mesquite-smoked brisket a la Deadwood for a special Passover edition of our weekly dinner party in front of the television.

The recipe began yesterday, when I rinsed and dried the brisket and applied a dry rub of salt, cumin, chili powder, garlic, and a dash of dried chipotle chile.  Then I realized that the beautiful Montana brisket I bought had been fully trimmed, and without any rendered fat to moisten the meat it would end up with all the tenderness of horse hide.  Bacon, the usual fat source for tenderizing, was out of the question.  Luckily, the butcher at the Real Food Store was happy to sell me McAlpine Ranch grass-fed Montana-raised organic beef fat.

Replacement fat secured, I lit the mesquite charcoal this morning at 8:00 a.m., threw some mesquite chunks on the coals, and the brisket was smoking in a shallow pan by 8:30.  (Last week I had promised slow-smoked barbecue chicken for dinner, but by the time it was finished we were finishing dessert;  with the brisket projected to cook 8-10 hours, I was not going to make the mistake of getting a late start again.)  In between yard work--filling in holes Lena dug--I stoked the coals and added fuel and mesquite chunks to keep the grill smoking between 250-300 F.  By lunch the brisket registered 190 F, comfortably within range of the 210 F target (that's when the gristle completely melts back into meat and it becomes perfectly tender).

When our guests arrived, the brisket came off the grill after ten hours with a dark caramelized crust.  The thin end of the cut had cooked all the way through to a jerky-like texture, but under the knife the thicker portions fell off in tender dry shreds.  Smoke had penetrated the entire brisket, and each bite was spicy with mesquite--maybe even a little too spicy, but well complemented by a homemade tomato-vinegar barbecue sauce.  Still, I probably could have gotten away with just eight hours of cooking--next time I'll sleep in.

Street Food: Good Dog

A couple of months ago, while pulling together some garden paraphernalia at our local hardware megastore Power Townsend, I happened upon a curious little snackbar just inside the door by the grills, mowers, and patio furniture. It was called "Big Dog Chili Dog," and its young proprietor served monstrous yet succulent polish sausages and garlicky beef franks, accompanied by no fewer than five different hot mustards. It was just the meaty meal a guy needed before embarking on a hardware safari, but sadly the snackbar did not survive the summer.

So I'm not taking any chances with waiting to report my recent discovery of Good Dog, an honest-to-goodness hot dog cart camped on the northeast corner of the Capitol lawn. You won't find it there every day, but if you do, cancel any other lunch plans you may have and enjoy a locally made sausage from the Real Food Store served on a locally grown-and-baked bun from Wheat Montana. (Real Food doesn't make frankfurters--yet--so Good Dog gets those from a ranch in North Dakota.)

This is the kind of food cart I would run if I could get out of the office enough. Real Food makes the best sausage around, and with a few return visits you can taste all of them at Good Dog: bratwurst (solid and subtly seasoned), andouille (mace and allspice notes punctuating a hot cayenne baseline), italian sausage (zesty fennel and red pepper), chorizo (deep red chili seasoning with garlic and oregano), and chicken apple sausage (slightly sweet with sage).

Good Dog offers three sausages a day, including the basic frankfurter and one each of hot and mild sausages, grilled to order over a gas-powered hibachi mounted to the side of the cart. There's organic lemonade and root beer to drink, and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. My walk home to let Lena out brings me past Good Dog's location, and I haven't yet been able to turn it down when the cart is set up. (Here's to hoping it stays open into the cooler months, or at least reopens for the Legislature.)

Food carts, like roadside stands and the odd hardware store snackbar, deserve our attention because they provide a cheap way for people to offer diverse foods (don't take my word for it--listen to an economist). For my money, Montana's most distinctive, most "local" food comes from such unorthodox outlets like Good Dog. So attention Helenans and visitors to the Capitol: Go there now. (And let me know about any of your favorite Montana street food.)

Good Dog
Southwest Corner of Sixth Avenue & Roberts Street
(across from the Montana Historical Society)
Open for lunch, closed occasionally.

Hamburger Paternity: Louis' Lunch

Speaking of 'burgers', Stacy Haslem and Patti Denton report in the Great Falls Tribune that the hamburger is 100 years old:

Most historical accounts date the national debut of the sandwich to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, when Fletcher Davis sold his creation at "Old Dave's Hamburger Stand."

According to Texas historian and author Frank Tolbert, "Old Dave" had been serving an unnamed sandwich, a beef patty between two slices of freshly baked bread spread with mustard-flavored mayo and topped with onions and cucumber pickles, since the late 1880s at his Athens, Texas, lunch counter.

(The article mentions a couple of Great Falls burger joints, including Ford's Drive-In and Burger Master, a member of the odd species of apparently one-off fast food locations that thrive on 10th Avenue South. I last visited Burger Master two decades ago and don't remember it well, but Ford's looks to be worth a visit.)

The origins of the hamburger are of course controversial, with at least four contenders for paternity. To my mind the real hamburger centennial was back in 1995, the hundredth anniversary of Louis' Lunch in New Haven. And unlike Old Dave's and the others, the hamburger still lives at Louis', thanks to Louis Lassen's grandson Ken and great grandson Jeff, and to the hundreds of supporters who saved Louis' from demolition by relocating and rebuilding it with bricks sent in from around the world. After the bars closed, many of my college nights ended at Louis' with a slab of ground beef grilled vertically between old cast iron gas burners, then slipped between whitebread toast slathered with cheese, tomatoes, and onions (and maybe salt and pepper but never ketchup). The vertical burners give the Louis' hamburger a meaty, lightly musky, even clean taste unadulterated by grill residues. Born of fresh and fragrant red meat ground and pounded before your eyes, innocent of sauces and condiments, it is the ur-burger.

So say what you will about who invented the original hamburger--there's only one place in the world where you can still taste it the way it was. Just head to the little old brick shack on Crown Street and ask Ken or Jeff for a "Cheese Works." (And if you still have room for dessert after two or three of those, get a slice of one of the homemade pies advertised on the blackboard over the counter; just don't correct their spelling!)

Louis' Lunch
261-263 Crown Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Phone: (203) 562-5507

The Penultimate "Meat Hog" Sandwich: Staggering Ox

John Harrington of the IR reports:

The 2.5 million red-blooded American men aged 18 to 34 who buy Maxim magazine each month will likely drool even more than usual at the September issue. In addition to the magazine's standard fare of scantily clad models, "actresses" and NFL cheerleaders, there's a feature on "America's Top 10 Meat Hogs" - artery-clogging sandwiches piled high that only a carnivore could love. And checking in at No. 2 on the list: The Nuke, a longtime staple at Helena's own Staggering Ox.

(For some reason the article doesn't appear on the IR's website, and the Gazette's headline refers to a "Helena burger," which would come as a surprise to the folks at the R&B, Rialto, and Stinkyburger.)

The Staggering Ox, a ferny deli with other branches in Missoula and Spokane, is gradually taking over a local strip mall with its sprawling two-story dining hall cum art gallery--a big improvement over empty retail space. (They once advertised wi-fi, but I don't whether they still have it.) The Ox calls its sandwiches "Clubfoots," and they come in hefty cylinders of white bread baked in coffee cans. The winning Nuke (Ham, Turkey, Roast Beef, Swiss, Provolone, Sharp Cheddar, Lettuce & Sauce) actually is on the tamer end of the Ox's topically-named (and apparently trademarked, but I haven't figured out the html for the tiny "tm" symbol) Clubfoot sandwiches, which range from the "Yo Momma Osama" (Gyro Meat, Bacon, Black Beans, Gorgonzola, Pepper Jack, Onions, Salsa and your chioce of sauce) to the "Mount St. Helens" (Ham, Turkey, Roast Beef, Pepperoni, Turkey Pastrami, Swiss, Provolone, Sharp Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Mozzarella, Onions, Green Peppers, Mushrooms, Black Olives, Sunflower Seeds, Lettuce & Sauce).

The Clubfoot bread doesn't add much to the sandwiches other than extra dough, but it's worth tearing out some of the relatively bland bread to get to the Ox's daunting selection of ingredients (often from Montana, including roast bison at times) and tangy homemade sauces. You might say that the fresh deli-style Clubfoots don't belong with true "Meat Hogs" like first place winner the Fat Darrell at R.U. Grill & Pizza in New Brunswick, N.J., which Harrington describes as "a gut bomb featuring chicken fingers, fried cheese sticks and french fries stuffed into a hoagie roll." Maxim's Meat Hog article isn't yet online--and I personally don't subscribe (honest!)--though I'd be interested in what else made it on this list.

The Staggering Ox
400 Euclid in the Lundy Center
(406) 443-1729