Words are Weeds

I thought it was a little early to be talking about the State Fair. But at least the Week in Review article Deep Fry, and Don't Forget the Stick, rightly acknowledges Minnesota as "the epicenter of stick and hot-oil cuisine." I look forward to going to the State Fair every year, especially since we started going with our friends Jason and Amanda. Jason, who grew up here, long ago learned it won't do to just stumble onto the fairgrounds and wander aimlessly from booth to booth. Confronted with the sheer variety of foods, the vastness of the fairgrounds and the throngs of people, the smart thing to do is to go in with a carefully considered plan. His plan is the result of many years of going to the fair, finding out what's good, and fine-tuning strategies for getting the most out of it all. Having moved here just a few years ago I am grateful for the opportunity to reap the benefits of a strategy that really, you can't develop without a lifetime of experience.

It's not just about knowing what's good--plotting an itinerary is very important. The genius of Jason's itinerary is to make the first stop at the deep-fried candy bar stand. Eating a deep-fried candy bar while still hungry is very different than eating a deep-fried candy bar after you've already eaten cheese curds and some of those tiny doughnuts. (Note: there will be no Pronto Pups in this story as everyone in our little group is vegetarian.) The deep-fried candy bar kicks off a balanced eating experience, at least according to State Fair logic. Sweet alternates with salty, so a stop at the French Fry place could be next, or perhaps sweet and salty are judiciously combined, as some of us like to get a root beer to go with the french fries. The next-to-last stop is always at the place where they sell buckets of chocolate cookies, where we grab a bucket and go directly to the free milk stand. One year we were running late and with cookies in tow got to the milk stand to find it closed. You bet we didn't make that mistake the next year.

I'm already a little worried about this year's State Fair, as Jason and Amanda are moving to Madison in August. They better come back to Minnesota at the end of the month. I don't care if it's more convenient for them to go to the Wisconsin State Fair--it's just not the same. I've heard some serious debates about which State Fair is better, which is inevitable since people from each state move back and forth a lot. I can't really say. I grew up in Wisconsin and went to the Fair every year, of course, but it's been a while since I've been back. I like to think that each has its own charm.

Now, midway into writing this blog entry I discovered that in fact it's never too early to report on the latest in food-on-a-stick. As it turns out, about a week ago the Pioneer Press published a report on what new foods-on-a-stick we can expect this year. In fact, a closer reading of the New York Times piece suggests its reporter relied on the Pioneer Press article. (The New York Times article attributes the Pioneer Press but not the specific article in question.) The Pioneer Press article of course has much more depth. From the New York Times I learned that Minnesotans attending the fair this year can enjoy the latest innovation, sloppy-joes-on-a-stick. But the Pioneer Press informs us that we can also look forward to corned-beef-and-cabbage-on-a-stick and some other items that are not served on a stick but newsworthy nevertheless. For example we have the Uffda Brat, a Norwegian sausage wrapped in potato lefse. I also notice that the Pioneer Press reporter went to the trouble of interviewing people, while the New York Times reporter seems to have relied on reports from other papers. I suppose it's not surprising that the local reporter would take more care with a local story, but I am beginning to feel that all those people who have made the New York Times article the third most popular story in the Week in Review section are missing out on the better story. It's a shame, really.

The big news on advances in food-on-a-stick didn't come from Minnesota last year; it came from Texas, where Abel Gonzales, Jr. perfected deep-fried Coke. What sets deep-fried Coke apart from the rest is that Gonzales didn't just find something else he could dip in batter and fry up. Instead, he devised something he could call "deep-fried Coke," which turned out to be soda mixed with batter, fried, drizzled with fountain syrup and topped with cinnamon sugar, whipped cream and a cherry. Deep-fried Coke was an award-winnning snack that was two years in the making and involves a little bit of science and a little bit of food deconstruction.

Reading about deep-fried Coke reminded me of one of my current interests, la nueva cocina, which is typified by the restaurant El Bulli and the chef Ferran Adrià. He is probably best known for his culinary foams, which can have flavors of espresso or mushroom or beet. Adrià says the point isn't the scientific innovation, but to surprise and delight the diner with unexpected flavors, textures and contrasts. In other words, it's about the "deconstruction" of food, for example pa amb tomaquet "deconstruido," which transforms the traditional Catalan snack of rustic bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil into pastry balls that are injected with tomato water and olive oil through a syringe.

I'll probably never eat at El Bulli. The restaurant is a couple of hours north of Barcelona on the Costa Brava, and isn't easy to get into because it's shut half the year while the chefs experiment and devise new dishes. And trying much of la nueva cocina at home would be near impossible. For one thing, I can't imagine having the necessary equipment needed to cook with nitrogen and to make the foams and their essences. I also found that the cookbooks are prohibitively expensive at about $200 each.

I did spot a couple of nueva cocina recipes in a cookbook I bought recently, The New Spanish Table. I might try making the Chupa Chups Julio Verne, "lollipops" made from fruit covered in meringue, which are named after Jules Verne because they look kind of sci-fi. (These Chupa Chups might be considered very distant relatives of the deep-fried grapes, canteloupe and pineapple that will be served at the Fair this year.) Wouldn't it be great, though, if we could find more deconstructed food like deep-fried Coke at the State Fair? They may be on the right track with the deep-fried sloppy joes, and maybe with the deep-fried hot dish, which probably need some "molecular gastronomy" to make them happen and depending, could be considered "deconstructed." But how great would it be to plot out a fair itinerary where at every new stop we could eat food that isn't novel only in a technical sense, but was created to surprise and delight?