Author: Nick Bergus

Three things for better grilling

You seriously suck at grilling. Let me help right your wrongs. It takes three free-or-cheap things. It’s easy.

A charcoal grill
I know you just spent $1,000 on your shiny propane grill with fold out range and adjustable racks. But that was really your dumb fault. I use a rusty Weber hand-me-down whose legs fall off every time I move it. Mine is better than yours.

Hardwood charcoal
The reason you bought that propane grill was because you hated the stench of Kingsford smoke every time the wind changed direction. Real wood smoke actually smells good. And that’s before you add maple wood chips.

An old aluminum can
OK, you also need lighter fluid, matches and some newspaper (a disappearing commodity), and starting a charcoal fire isn’t as easy as the click-click-click electric starter on your propane grill. But it is this easy:

  1. Get a commercial-size can. Every restaurant has tons of these from tomatoes, olives or whatever. Take the ends off the can. Now you have a chimney. Set it in the bottom of your grill.
  2. Instead of spraying lighter fluid all over the charcoal (which, unsurprisingly, makes whatever it’s used to cook taste EXACTLY LIKE LIGHTER FLUID), squirt lighter fluid all over an unfolded sheet of newspaper. Crumple it up and put it inside your can-chimney.
  3. Loosely pile the hardwood charcoal on top of the newspaper. Light a match and set the newspaper on fire from the bottom.
  4. When the flames are shooting out the top and there’s a whitish ash covering most of the charcoal, pull the chimney off the top, releasing the charcoal. Redistribute the charcoal, put the grate on top and wait 15 minutes or so before grilling.

See? Easy. Happy Memorial Day.

The problem with, and the pleasure of, farmers’ markets

The worst part of farmers’ markets, or at least Iowa City’s farmers’ market, is this: the market is just predictable enough so you start depending on certain people selling certain products.

That works until, one day, it doesn’t.

Today, for example, I stopped by to see Eric, the plants-and-chicken guy, because I wanted a frozen chicken. He had, he said, been cleaned out by the Motley Cow Café. And we needed honey, but the good honey guy — with honeys from different flowers (can you call those varietals?) — was nowhere to be found.

But that same unpredictability is what makes the market so great, so serendipitous. In weeks past, I had somehow missed the stall for La Renya, Iowa City’s excellent Mexican market and taco stand. Or, though it seems unlikely, perhaps it hadn’t been there before.

Whether new or overlooked, La Reyna was now selling frozen tamales, available in vegetarian, chicken or pork. Relatively reasonable, too, at $5 for four. Paired with salsa, the tamales — well-cooked pork, solid corn flavors and slightly fatty — were a fantastic lunch.

I should have bought more, because they might not be available next week.

Anticipating Chef’s Table restaurant in Iowa City

I was hoping for lunch at The Chef’s Table, a place that has been open just a week and a half now, but it’s only serving dinner.

The dining room is gorgeous and very French Laundry. At least as French Laundry as it gets in downtown Iowa City.

Barr has posted some pictures of the construction on the restaurant’s blog, but there seems to be a dearth of information otherwise.

Because it’s buried on its own website, the restaurant’s vitals:

Open Monday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Closed Sunday
Phone (319) 337-0490
Address 223 E. Washington St., Iowa City

Templeton Rye bottling

Sam and I have been debating industrial food processing and how much companies have a responsibility for transparency over on his blog lately. Here’s a nice video from Iowa’s own Templeton Rye (one of my new favorite things, by the way) showing their bottling process. And there are many more videos documenting the process of making the whiskey.

I’m surprised by how much handling by real actual people each bottle gets.

Danny Wilcox Frazier’s “Driftless: Stories from Iowa”

I haven’t had a chance to watch the entire half-hour of Iowa-native Danny Wilcox Frazier’s Driftless: Stories from Iowa from MediaStorm yet.

But I’ve watched the fifth segment, “Country Butcher,” and I know that I will finish the rest of it. It’s a moving story.

I spoke with Joe Kuba, the butcher in that segment, a couple years ago as part of my reporting on “A Pig in Three Parts.” I couldn’t get him into the final piece (though that’s his bloody floor grate in the background). He did appear on this blog, albeit without a name.

Frazier elicited some moving stories from Kuba, stories that I wasn’t able to. That always stings a little. Nicely done, Mr. Frazier.

Black-tuffle cheeses

I’m usually one for intensely flavored cheese — strong blues, sharp aged cheddars. But lately I’ve fallen for two really nice, subtle cheeses. Both are truffled and in the $25 per pound neighborhood.

Above is Cypress Grove Chevre‘s Truffle Tremor (it’s akin to the company’s delicious Humbolt Fog, only with black truffles). The other is sottocenere, a firm yet wonderfully creamy cheese flecked with black truffles.

The trick is figuring out how to serve them, since both are easily overpowered. I solve this by ignoring my dinner and eating them on their own.

New Pioneer’s Original Zin private-lable wine

I’m not a picky wine drinker. I shop the bottom shelf for $7.99 bottles. I usually choose bottles based on the label. I like a good bargain.

New Pioneer‘s private-label wines have been good values in the past. So when my mother (whom, I should note in the interest of full disclosure, works for the co-op) told me the store had gotten its act together and put out another one, I had to pick some up. It didn’t hurt that she suggested quantities were somewhat limited. (It’s the former record-collecting nerd manifesting itself.)

The official description:

All blueberry, spice, and chocolate. Heady, full and rich in the mouth with just the right amount of oak to work as a framing device for the lush fruit — not to overwhelm. Dry Creek is synonymous with Zinfandel in California and one sip of this elixir will tell you why.

That’s a lot to live up to. And, at $17.99 a bottle, it’s double my usual ceiling.

It’s not that I expect an AMAZING bottle of wine (or, in the vernacular of a certain New Pi wine buyer, one that “makes your balls sweat”) for less than 20 bucks, but I was, um, disappointed. Certainly drinkable, but I might suggest it was a little thin.

I have another bottle, but I’m not going to rush out to grab a case. But what do I know? I’m no snooty wine person.

What are we teaching our kids about food?


Johnson County Ag Fest is the sort of event held, on various scales, hundreds of times each year here in flyover country. Animals to pet. Banks giving away prizes. The county’s meat producers offering stickers. Kids running around with balloon hats or painted faces, or ice cream. Or all three.

The main thrust of this event and similar ones is a place to wear the kids out on Saturday morning; at least that’s why we go. But what’s the take-home message from these things?

  • Pygmy goats and alpacas have soft fur
  • Ducklings, chicks and baby turkeys are cute
  • There is an inextricable link between farming and banks
  • We produce a lot of corn (or pork, or whatever)

All of these are, of course, true. But we’re missing a big opportunity here to teach kids about where their food comes from. (I’m not just relying on agriculture celebrations to teach my kid about food.)

I’m not suggesting that we have live slaughtering demonstrations. But at today’s event, for example, there weren’t even the tools to talk about this with kids. There wasn’t a living version and an edible version of anything. No corn plants to pair with the feed corn. Or pigs to pair with the bratwurst.

Showing off pygmy goats and alpacas doesn’t make that connection or even give parents the chance to really talk about it. Instead we’re left with beef recipes for kids and coloring pages about the millions of tons of corn that is grown in Iowa every year.

We get a triumph-of-agribusiness message that reinforces the all-too-prevalent notion in this state that quantity of product is more important than the quality of it. If we as a state decided to, we could produce some of the greatest food in the world. Instead we produce a huge amount of the world’s cheap calories. Or at least a huge amount of our food’s cheap calories (most of our grain is livestock feed). But the producers still want us to believe it’s about quality. How else can you explain the “pure pork pleasure” sticker the Johnson County Pork Producers gave my daughter? (But that’s a debate for another day.)

We have made a choice to be ignorant, so I suppose we’ll suffer the consequences. Whatever those might be.

Quicky review: breakfast at Bluebird Diner in Iowa City


Simple breakfasts of eggs and bacon, pancakes and sausage, eggs benedict and hash browns at the Bluebird Diner. The restaurant is in what used to be a paint store.

The place has a very hipster feel, but most eating spots towards the north of downtown do. The coffee, the true test of any breakfast spot, was acceptable. (Give me greasy-spoon food, but don’t give me bad coffee is my rule.)

Bluebird has reasonable prices (we spent $25 before tax and tip) and the kid loved it.