Click here to claim your blog on Blogged.com

Iowa Souper Bowls

I live for good soup, not fine words. Moliere

Years after buying her first refrigerator, my grandmother still kept her leftovers in a soup pot simmering around the clock. Raised in Ireland and Iowa 100 years ago, when food was never wasted, she couldn’t break that old frugal habit. Grandma didn’t live to own a garbage disposal, and I doubt she could have ever lived long enough for that.

Iowa has a long soup tradition. Most of the foods that helped our ancestors survive long winters ended up in a soup pot where bones gave up their last measure of nutritional value. Potatoes, carrots, onions and especially squash figured in early Iowa cookbooks. So did things that could easily be dried and dehydrated - mushrooms, fruits, meat and fish. Most 19^th and 20^th century Iowa soup recipes came from the Old World. Czechs and Slovaks brought mushroom soup to Cedar Rapids long before Campbell’s put it in a can. German and Irish immigrants favored soups of dairy decadence, with sweet butters and creams complimenting cabbage and potatoes’ blandness.

Others soups were more esoteric. In Winneshiek County, the Norwegian-American population brought sotsuppe, a fruit soup that is traditionally eaten as a winter treat, particularly on the holidays. There are scores of variations, but it’s usually made with a grape juice base, plus dried fruits like raisins, currants, apricots, prunes and cherries, before being sweetened with sugar, given an acidity boost with lemon juice, spiced with cinnamon and thickened with tapioca.

All these European immigrant groups discovered squash in Iowa, along with its native American siblings corn and beans. European Iowans never really had the patience to make soup out of mature corn, and even most 21^st century Mexican-American chefs in Iowa take the short cut of using canned hominy to prepare posole. Sweet corn soups, legendary in the first half of the last century, were a casualty of hybrid seeds. Today’s sweet corn varieties don’t yield the same magical sweetness to a soup pot.

In the 1950’s President Eisenhower took Soviet Premier Khrushchev to dinner at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. They began with an Iowa split pea soup. Lisa LaValle at the Des Moines Art Center Café makes a marvelous “green lentil ginger” version of that now, but most Iowa bean and lentil soup recipes have been imported from other states.

Of the basic native American foods, squash figures most distinctively in the state’s soup traditions. Two of squash’s most illustrious varieties -- the acorn and the Sibley -- have deep Iowa roots. Iowa soup makers have long been divided over whether squash should first be cooked, or be added raw to the soup stock. At Fairfield’s Revelations Book Store & Café, an “ova, lacto, vegan-friendly, organic restaurant,” chef Maki Bishop makes a rather famous “butternut squash curry soup with red lentils and ginger.” She believes in simmering raw, cubed squash in her vegetable stock. State Fair champion soup maker Lynn Jeffers prefers roasting her squash first in olive oil, with apples, carrots, shallots and tomatoes, before adding it to her chicken stock. Martha Wolf at Burlington and Fort Madison’s Ivy Bake Shoppe and Café makes it similarly, but with leeks instead of shallots and tomatoes. Rob Beasley at Johnston’s Mojo’s on 86^th likes to extract every nuance of squash into his soup. He makes a "squash stock" with various root vegetables and then adds roasted, sauteed, caramelized and raw squashes for myriad textures and flavors.

In the last half of the 20^th century, convenient short cuts, like bouillon and base mix, threatened to wipe out the tradition of boiling bones and vegetables to make stock. Lately there’s been a revival of the old, slow methods, on many levels. Thanks to Community College culinary schools, Iowa is now blessed with a large number of academy-trained chefs who wouldn’t think of making soup with anything less than pure bone stock. So, “liquid bones” are returning to the fine dining scene. At the same time, Southeast Asian immigrants have imported a traditional cuisine that is based around a 12 hour bone stock soups. At Café Shi in Ames, or a dozen places in Des Moines, a bowl of pho delivers a balanced meal in the finest of stocks, for less than most chain restaurants charge for reheated canned soup. From Mexican tortilla soups to Japanese miso, from Thai tom yum gai to West African peanut soups, the world is now Iowa’s oyster stew.

Some Iowa soups have faithful customers willing to drive long distances. Just off the square in Shenandoah, The Sanctuary draws people for their fresh home made soups year around, but especially when asparagus is in season. Southside Des Moines neighborhood café Baratta’s pepper cheese soup is the most famous cheese soup in a town that adores that dish. Smokey Row Coffee House in Knoxville and Pella has been known long for their cheeseburger chowder in a bread bowl.

George the Chili King in Des Moines, plus Milwaukee Weiner House and Coney Island in Sioux City have all been serving a Greek-American take on chili, in which herbs and meat trump tomato and beans, for half a century or more. All their recipes are remarkably similar, but different enough to be closely guarded family secrets.

Since this is the corn state, the last word in soup belongs to the Red Avocado. That extraordinary Iowa City café, which buys more fresh and local produce than any other place in the state, has a signature soup that compensates for modern hybrid corn with culinary ingenuity. It mixes sweet corn with coconut, salts it with tamari and accents it with freshly made chili paste, creating a vegan and organic version so popular the recipe is proprietary information. Partner-chef David Burt says more than one customer has described it as “an orgasm in a bowl.”

Three Iowa Classics

Last Chance

At Alpha‘s on the Riverfront in Fort Madison, owner-chef Kumar Wickramasingha had almost given up trying to introduce his native Sri Lankan cuisine to customers. Then for a Christmas banquet, he made this soup and called it simply "curry vegetable soup.”

“They loved it and kept telling me put it on the menu. So I decided to market it, I put a little page in the middle of the menu, telling people how I was giving it one last chance, I wrote ’I swear I’ll take this off the menu if you don’t try it.’

“It was so popular I had to make 6 gallons a day.”

Kumar Wickramasingha’s Curry Vegetable Soup

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup chopped carrots

1 cup chopped mushrooms

1 cup chopped onions

6 cups chicken broth

1 tsp. chopped garlic

Half cup chopped cilantro

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

4 teaspoon curry powder

3 Tablespoons flour

One fourth a cup heavy cream

Put all the celery, carrots, mushrooms, garlic & half a cup of onions with chicken broth and bring to a boil, simmer until vegetables are soft. When the vegetables in the broth are slightly cool, puree the soup. Once it turns into a velvety texture, return the soup to the pan and bring it to a gentle simmer.

In a skillet, heat the oil and fry the rest of the onions until they turn caramel brown. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Add curry powder and flour to oil and onion while stirring rapidly. Add this mixture to simmering soup while stirring constantly to prevent lumping.

Simmer until the soup is thickened. Add cilantro. Just before serving, add a dash of heavy cream to each bowl.

Cool Pepper Sprout

At Pepper Sprout in old downtown Dubuque, area growers bring their fresh garden harvest to Kim Wolff’s kitchen door. The owner-chef’s scratch soups have quite a reputation. Many are personal family heirlooms, with relatives even growing the ingredients. Kim wastes nothing.

“We utilize the whole food, the trimmings from the peeled vegetables tonight go into the stock tomorrow morning.”

She rotates several cold soups on her Spring and Summer menu, but her personal favorite is this champagne and cantaloupe soup with fresh spearmint. It’s so cool, she even makes martinis from its base.

Kim Wolff’s Champagne Melon Soup

serves 8-12

3 fresh melons

1 shallot, or green onion

2 bottles Asti Spumante

half cup chopped spearmint, plus as many sprigs as servings

One fourth pint fresh blueberries

Salt and pepper to taste

Sugar or honey are optional

Cut the melon from the rind and puree, in a blender of food processor. Chop the shallots or green onions and add to the puree. Pour the champagne over the puree and let settle about two hours. Add spearmint and blueberries.

Serve in martini glasses with fresh sprigs of spearmint.

Holy Mushroom

Many Slavic groups, particularly the Slovaks, have kept the same traditions as their ancestors who lived in the Tatrý Mountains of Eastern Europe. Even with the variance of certain traditions Slavs in Iowa gather as a family and share the Christmas Eve meal, complete with its religious significance. The meal consists of 12 dishes served in honor of the 12 Apostles. One dish includes machanka, a thick mushroom soup, prepared with Zapraška base. Zapraška is a thick brown sauce used in preparation of various soups and gravies.

Slovak Machanka

Courtesy of “Czech & Slovak Heritage: Families, Stories, Traditions, Recipes” by The Museum Guild of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

For Zapraška

4 tablespoon salad oil

4 Tablespoon flour

For Machanka

Zapraska, from above recipe

Mushrooms (canned, fresh, or dry)*

salt and pepper to taste

1 16 ounce can tomatoes, mashed, undrained

In large skillet, make Zapraska by heating oil and add flour gradually stirring constantly until browned.

Add mashed tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste. Then add mushrooms with liquid. Mix well and cook for a few minutes on low heat.

For thinner machanka, add more liquid from mushrooms; For thicker machanka, drain some of the liquid and add enough to your desired thickness.

* Canned Mushrooms: Put mushrooms and juice into saucepan; heat. Then proceed as directed above. The amount of mushrooms depends on your preference.

Fresh Mushrooms: Put cut up mushrooms in a saucepan; add water to cover; cook. Use the amount you prefer.

Dried Mushrooms: Wash and soak overnight. Cook next day in lightly salted water, slowly, 2 hours or more.

Where Barns Cross Oceans & Fish Come Down from the Hill Top

If geology was grand opera, standing ovations would interrupt the arias on Iowa Highway 141. The state’s familiar flat terrain ends abruptly near Coon Rapids. West of there, the headwaters of the once awesome Nishnabotna rivers have carved a show stopping consecution of hills and dales. In the southwest corner of Carroll County, the landscape is further dramatized by the creative genius of farmers who terrace their crops around the hills in contoured strips. In this idyllic part of the state, Manning’s voice rises above the chorus like a Wagnerian tenor‘s.

Founded by Schleswig-Holstein immigrants in 1881, the town is a brick-paved charmer, confidently adapting to modern times with Teutonic ingenuity. The regional health care center includes a hospital, clinic, nursing home and substance abuse facility. It shares downtown with tourist-catching German architecture. Manning’s entire school district is housed in one new building. A liquor store is also a tanning parlor and video shop.

Clearly, Manning flourishes in contrast to many Iowa towns with populations under 1500. The newly renovated downtown includes three local banks and retail sales grew by five times the state average last year. There’s a home here for troubled teens, a recreation center, a technical support call center, an indoor-outdoor pool and a fur shop. City owned utilities include a phone company with high speed internet, cable, plus gas and electric service, providing 50 jobs that didn‘t exist before it was formed in the late 1990‘s.

Manning has a long history of foresight. When just a student at Iowa State, Henry Brunnier designed the town’s then unique stand-pipe water tower. He went on to develop earthquake tolerant architecture, including the Oakland Bay Bridge. Today’s residents include Dr. Rexanne Struve, a world leader in swine genetics, vaccine testing and transplant research; Ben Puck, who invented a state of the art hog confinement filtration unit; and the Kusel company, which innovated riparian buffer strip designs that support no till and pesticide free farming.

So, after you get to know Manning, the sight of a 17^th century, reed roof bauernhaus southeast of town no longer makes you blink. Originally constructed in 1660 in Offenseth, Germany, the huge building was given to the town in 1991. It was then diagrammed, dismantled and reassembled in Manning, with master carpenters from Germany leading local volunteers.

“This was a community project. Our centennial in 1981 generated some good vibrations and, wanting to keep that civic esteem alive, people talked about creating a tourist project on the lines of Elk Horn and Kimballton’s Danish villages. Luckily, they discovered a German landlord, of an old bauernhaus, who was tired of his tenants’ demands,” explained Joelle Puck, a volunteer docent.

The fifteen year project cost $500,000, a small fraction of what it would require in a less volunteer-oriented, or less ingenious town. The bricks in the building’s floor, for instance, were recycled from Manning’s downtown, when those streets were repaved.

Renamed the Hausbarn, an Americanized word, it was rebuilt adjacent to the American Bungalow homestead of the Leet/Hassler Farms. An early 20^th century playboy, William Leet blew his family fortune before selling his property to Frederick Hassler, who had worked in Leet’s carriage house and saved his money wisely. Hassler then developed famous Poland-China hogs, including a national grand champion that sold for $20,000 in 1920. Each year on the first weekend of October, Heritage Park, which includes the Hausbarn and Leet/Hassler Farms, hosts an intimate Octoberfest, among a series of events that show off Manning’s Germanic spirit.

Having enticed Chef Dan Grove away from his legendary Skean Block restaurant in Albia, the Hausbarn Restaurant and Conference Center lures foodies to town regularly. Grove recreates northern German favorites while also catering to less adventurous tastes of conventioneers and tourists. Among his specialties, beer battered lobster with wood-smoked angus prime rib sells out on weekends.

It shares a menu with rouladen, weiner schnitzel, pfeffer steak and sauerbraten. Kale and dumplings are as popular here as potatoes. All sausages are hand made and include northern German pinkelwurst. Grove braises pork shanks and serves tenderloins in both German (Marsala cream sauce) and American styles (dusted in red pepper and sautéed). Chef Dan bakes wondrous rye breads and supplies his kitchen from its own herb garden and from the local vegetable gardens of Mary Saylor. Desserts include Black Forest tortes, apple almond strudel and burnt custards.

However, what truly sets the Hausbarn apart is its fish, which are locally raised in the “nation’s best tasting drinking water.” That too is a story of ingenuity. In 1998, Manning entered their municipal tap water in the Great American Water Taste Test and won, first the state championship, and then the national title. Iowa fish lack market-appeal because concentrated livestock facilities have polluted the state’s rivers, so much that the Des Moines Water Works needs the world’s largest nitrate filtering system to cope. Manning farmer Chuck Ehlers reasoned that if people avoid fish that come out of bad water, the converse must also be true -- they would love fish that come out of good water.

Southwest of town, Ehlers lives on a century farm that swims over two gorgeous hills, planted equally with beans and corn. The day we visited, he was raising 5100 head of hogs, from feeder to finish, on one hill top, and 24,700 fish on the other.

“I started looking into fish in 1996 as an alternative to crop and hog farming. I realized that I had three daughters, I was getting older and my wife was tired of riding hogs. No one in the family was going to take over the farm, so I needed to find something different, or get divorced,” he laughed.

No longer wanting to raise pigs from birth, Ehlers sold his sows and began looking for an alternative use for his farrowing shed. Fish farming had an environmentally friendly appeal, but Iowa pride also influenced his decision.

“Aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of agriculture and Iowa isn’t even on the map. Yet, we have people here who know how to raise livestock. So why should we depend on newcomer farmers from the two coasts to build this industry?”

Ehlers wanted an environmentally friendly system.

“What we do here involves recycling ninety-seven percent of the water and replacing just three percent each day. The recycled water is filtered and cleaned. Solids settle in the tank and get pumped out, then they are air dried into fertilizer. I sell all mine to a guy who uses it on his orchid farm in Arkansas. He loves the stuff,” Ehlers told us.

One of the by-products of fish farming involves the least desirable parts of the fish, at least to American tastes. The offal and the heads have produced highly successful test results as anerobic digesters in sewage treatment. An Iowa State University study believes they could replace expensive chemicals in that industry.

Ehlers began his fish farm with yellow perch which fetch $12 pound, but only in a small area around Duluth. Walleye’s market is much broader, so he quickly switched.

“Then I sold all my walleye to one buyer and I had to move immediately because the tanks can’t live if they are empty. Trout were available , so I got into trout. I started striped bass later,” he explained.

There have been lessons to learn. Large mouth bass have a great market and grow fast, but they didn’t take to intensive culture. The walleye eat fish meal, the bass are vegetarians.

“I put some of the predators on a vegetarian diet and they are growing, but not nearly as fast. So, we’ll see what happens. I think they develop a cleaner flavor on veggie diets, and there is less chance of contamination, so it might be worthwhile,” he said.

Ten thousand gallon water tanks are small enough that fish develop girth. At feeding time, smooth water turned frothy with turbulence. Striped bass particularly were energetic about eating.

Aquaculture constantly challenges one’s ingenuity. At first, Ehlers netted fish, but small stripers were killed by the spines of larger fish. So he invented a fish pump and filter system that reduced his death rate dramatically. When the price of liquid oxygen rose from $200 to $800 a tank, he installed an oxygen generating system. Steve Sommerfelt designed Chuck’s three stage, sloped filtration system that requires pumping only once, the rest is done by gravity.

Heartland Fish is a six member co-operative. Besides Ehlers, Jim Ferneding of Templeton is already in production. Their business plan calls for ten more producers in three years. Their best customer is Joe Tess Place, an Omaha restaurant that specializes in fresh Midwest fish. Ehlers also sells his fish at One Stop Meat shops in Sioux City and Des Moines, to Simone’s Plain and Simple in Cedar Rapids, and to Dale’s Evergreen, which stocks them in a hunting preserve for ice fishing in eastern Iowa.

There’s no better place to eat them though than at the Hausbarn, as Dan Grove explains.

“We are so lucky to have this fish right here. Other purveyors have a totally liberal idea of what fresh fish means. To them five days out of the water is ‘fresh.’ With Heartland, we get a firmer texture and the flavor is so fresh and pure that I don’t like to mess much with that, just pan sautee it with a traditional meuniere, ” he said.

“It’s just too good to cover up the taste.”

Dan Grove’s Trout Meuniere

4 trout, in filets

Half cup water

2 eggs
one third cup flour
salt and pepper
half stick butter
juice of half a lemon
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
lemon twists to garnish

Soak the trout filets in egg wash of eggs beaten into water. Spread the flour in a shallow bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Add the fish and coat well on all sides.
Melt the butter in a large frying pan. When it foams, add the trout. Fry gently for about 4 minutes on each side, until the skin is golden and crisp.
Transfer the fish to a warm serving dish with a slotted spoon. Season the butter remaining in the pan with salt and pepper and heat until it is nut-brown. Add the lemon juice and chopped parsley and pour this over the trout. Garnish with lemon twists and serve immediately.

Manning’s Heritage Events

Kinderfest each Fathers’ Day weekend, is a 120 year old tradition of games, rides, fireworks and other children’s activities.

German Heritage Day is in July.

Harmony in the Field, in August is music festival with jazz, bluegrass, country and folk artists from across Iowa. Camping encouraged.

Octoberfest, October 1 this year includes crafts, demonstrations, polka bands, pumpkin picking and decorating, horseback rides, dancing, singers and food.

Weihnachtsfest, November 25 - December 11 includes fireworks on opening night, the mass lighting of Main Street, a parade, music and ceremony. Ends with a Christmas cantata at Zion Lutheran Church.

Information: 800-292-0252, www.manningia.com, heritage@pioneer.net

100 Years of Soy Repute:

A Century of Asian Cafés in Iowa

Asian restaurants have been nourishing Iowans for over 100 years now. Their early days were colorful to say the least in both Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. Des Moines’ first Chinese café opened in 1903 and several others quickly followed. Those owned by George Wee were frequently raided by police as scantily clad women scurried out windows. Wee would usually be arrested along with those the Des Moines Register & Leader termed “alleged actresses” and “patrons from fine families on self-described slumming adventures.” Crowds reportedly cheered the lawbreakers as they were ushered into paddy wagons.

Wee outlasted three Des Moines police chiefs before a city attorney convinced him to move his businesses to Chicago. The Register & Leader also wrote that the mysterious “heathen” white shoots served in “chop suey joints” were actually “a form of celery.” A century of soy beans later, Iowans now know them as bean sprouts.

In downtown Cedar Rapids, where Prohibition began in 1915, Chinese restaurants were often veritable speakeasies. One Chinese café adjoined a wide elaborate alley that was accessible only through a secret trap door in its floor. On the same block, the Mandarin Inn used its upstairs venue and a convenient elevator shaft to evade getting caught with illegal goods. Historian Mark Stoffer Hunter explained:

“I talked to the lady whose family operated the Standard Glass & Paint store beneath the Mandarin Inn and she said that they always knew if there had been a police raid because the elevator shaft would be littered with liquor bottles the next morning. That Mandarin kept a sign in its window that read ’The Mandarin Inn, where the lantern glows.’ Old timers here tell me that it was common knowledge that the rest of their slogan was ‘and the liquor flows.’” Stoffer Hunter said.

After Prohibition was repealed in 1932, Asian restaurants in Iowa operated without much controversy. In the same neighborhood as The Mandarin, The Dragon would become a family favorite in Cedar Rapids between 1948 till 2005. Then it morphed into the Dragon Nightclub, the city’s first drag bar. Now all that remains of either business is an original neon sign and elaborate dragon head décor over the door.

Chinese-American writer Shirley Fong-Torres says it’s unfair to characterize the early days of Asian restaurants without considering an unfortunate context.

“The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 severely restricted Chinese immigration to America and the rights of Chinese-descended immigrants. In 1924, (American Federation of Labor founder) Samuel Gompers persuaded Congress to extend that “undesirable” status and its restrictions to people from Japan, the Philippines, Laos, Siam (Thailand), Cambodia, Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and Malaysia as well. No Asians living in the USA, even those born here, were allowed to become citizens, to own property outside of Chinatowns, to bring their wives or children to America, or to even return to America after visiting their families in Asia. When assimilation isn’t possible, people have no incentive to play by rules that are rigged against them,” she said.

The Chinese Exclusions Act was repealed in 1943 and the Immigration Act of 1965 allowed Asians into America without specific racial restrictions. Then in 1975 Iowa Governor Robert Ray led a massive re-settlement effort for Asians who had been displaced after the end of the Vietnam War. It would have wonderful consequences.

“We did it for the humanitarian need, to save human lives. We had no idea what rich rewards we would receive - the remarkable diversity they would bring to Iowa,” Ray mused.

The first of those rewards was coincidental, unless you believe in karma. That same year Maharishi University of Management (MUM) moved from Santa Barbara, California to Fairfield. Those two 1975 events would change the composite Iowan’s diet while treating the most recent third of the state’s Asian century to a remarkable diversity.

Today, almost all Iowans live within a short drive of an Asian restaurant. The majority of buffets in contemporary Iowa are now Asian, appropriate perhaps since America’s first buffet was Chinese too. While large towns have many of these, they can also be found in smaller towns like LeMars, Hiawatha, Red Oak, Iowa Falls and Webster City too.

There were no Thai restaurants in the state until 1979 when Benichang Luangaram and Prasong “Pak” Nurack began serving Thai food at Little Joe’s diner in Des Moines. Now Thai restaurants cover the state with cafés in Panora, Grinnell and Pella as well as in every large city.

Vietnamese-Laotian cafés introduced Iowans to pho, the traditional beef broth and noodle breakfast of Southeast Asia. By doing so, they also introduced a new generation of Iowans to an old standard of scratch cooking. While almost every Vietnamese café in the state makes their stock from bones, only the high end bistros and a few traditional kitchens still do so elsewhere.

Indian restaurants, and even an Afghan café in Des Moines, have become popular particularly with vegetarians. Sushi can be found now from Sioux City to Burlington and from Dubuque to Council Bluffs. Korean restaurants have extended Iowan’s interest in pickling.

Asian chefs are some of the best and best known in Iowa: Miyabi Yamamoto (Miyabi9 in Des Moines), Hong Willer (Café Shi in Ames), Kumar Wickramasingha ( Alpha‘s on the Riverfront in Fort Madison), Cy Gushier (Ohana in West Des Moines), Liam Anivat (Cool Basil in Clive) and Mao Heinemann (King & I in West Des Moines) to name a few. For all this remarkable diversity though, nothing in Iowa compares with Fairfield.

Fairfield

Entering from the west, one’s first impression of the Jefferson County seat is similar to most mid-sized towns in Iowa. One passes Taco John’s, Hy-Vee, Subway, Dairy Queen, Fairfield Diner, Burger King, KFC, Jefferson County Farigrounds, a livestock and land dealer. Then there’s a building shared by a sports bar and the Istanbul Grill. The latter is a three-meals-a-day café that serves American favorites alongside a Turkish menu of flame grilled chicken and lamb kebabs, gyros, falafel (fried mashed favas and garbanzos), hummus (a dip of mashed garbanzos, sesame seeds, lemon juice and fresh garlic), baba ganoush (roasted eggplant mashed and seasoned) and kisir (fresh salad featuring cracked bulgur wheat, olive oil and fresh lemon juice). Just as Istanbul is Europe’s introduction to Asia, Istanbul Grill preps visitors for the culinary mainland of Asian Iowa.

Even a window shopper on Fairfield’s square can see the place is flavored differently. Signs direct people to stops on the monthly Arts Walk, an unusual happening for a town of less than 10,000. Radio Shack’s window displays statues of Venus de Milo and paintings of Shiva and Krishna. A music store had as many tablas as guitars in its window. Multiple acupuncturists and massage parlors dot the square. Thai Vegetarian Deli includes the Fairfield Museum of Renewable Energy. Asian Deli provides a dog and cat adoption service. Gupta Vegetarian Cuisine displays saris and mandalas for sale. One sign in their window explained “We do all kinds of bead stringing and wire linking.”

Holly Moore, Fairfiled’s Art Walk Director, put the scene in remarkable context.

“Fairfield has more restaurants per capita than San Francisco. We did the research and the math on that. What’s more, they are so accessible and so affordable that we don’t cook much at home. We eat dinner at Asian restaurants here at least three times every week,” she explained before pointing out the consumer of a legendary Fairfield meal.

“That’s ‘The Dog Who Ate World Peace.’ World Peace was the name of a sculpture made out of gingerbread. It was featured in the window of an art gallery and that dog was walked by it daily until he saw his chance and he took it. He was off his leash, the gallery door was open, he was dog. So he ate World Peace,” Moore related.

At least a dozen Asian restaurants serve less consequential meals in Fairfield, most of them within a block of the square. Some are organic and/or natural. Some are 100% Fresh & Local, meaning that everything served is raised locally and never frozen, processed or recycled as leftovers. Some are Ayurvedic, meaning they adhere to strict prescriptions of an ancient philosophy-based life science. All use local organic dairy products from Francis Thicke’s Radiance Dairy. Most use organic vegetables raised at two local greenhouses: Maharishi Vedic Organic Greenhouses and the Maharishi University of Management Organic Farm.

ArtLife Society founder Stacey Hurlin sees the restaurants as key to the town‘s image.

“Asian restaurants are one of the elements that make this town because as much as anything else they draw attention to the amazing diversity of this place,” she explained.

Fairfield probably has the most cosmopolitan per capita population in Iowa. Hurlin, who moved here from Laguna Beach, California, said that MUM attracts students each year from at least 50 different foreign countries.

“It’s hard to find a Fairfield native who is over the age of 20,” said Moore, who moved here from southwestern Pennsylvania. Restaurant owners here come from at least six different countries.

Will Merydith, who moved from Seattle, brought the kind of economic development of which Iowa towns dream. He directs a new Development Center for California-based ScribeStorm, Inc.. They create interactive media asset management products in Fairfield for companies such as ESPN. Merydith explained how Fairfield’s restaurants contributed to the high tech company’s expansion here.

“When I came out last year to do some ‘recon’ on Fairfield to see if we could move here, the first thing I noticed was the number of Asian restaurants. To me this said, this is not your ordinary rural/small town in the Midwest. After visiting several of these restaurants, and seeing how crowded they could be, I concluded that Fairfield had a sizable population of people that were not afraid to try new things and in fact demanded them. Access to decent food was my single biggest requirement before moving and Fairfield fulfilled that,” Merydith observed.

Fairfield’s Asian Restaurants

Ching Dow

117 East Burlington Avenue, 641- 469-5858

Chinese-American favorite is Fairfield’s oldest Asian restaurant.

First Thai Taste

50 South 2nd Street, Fairfield, 469-3050

Thai restaurant draws customers from long range.

India Café

50 West Burlington Avenue, 472-1792

Paramjeet Singh’s café serves South Asian cuisine, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. His lunch time buffet features fresh dosas (lentil flour crepes).

Gupta Vegetarian Restaurant

51 South Court Street, 472-0548

Indian vegetarian meals feature fresh, home made organic paneers (cheese).

Mohan Delights

101 West Broadway Avenue, 469-6900

“Whenever I come home from traveling the first place we go is to Mohan Delights and it always brings tears to my eyes, because it is so comforting, so pure a form of nourishment,” Holly Moore testified to the delights of this Ayurvedic Indian café.

Thai Noodle House

59 North Court Street, 472-0222

One of the most popular places in town, Noodle House serves slow food fast.

Thai Organic Deli

120 W. Broadway, 472-3902, www.thaideli.net
Sitti Charoenkul’s vegetarian and non-vegetarian cafeteria has been rated the best bargain in Eastern Iowa. Their home made pies sell out daily.

The Raj

1734 Jasmine Avenue

Maharishi Vedic City, 800-248-9050 www.theraj.com

This spa and resort has been praised in magazines as diverse as Healing Lifestyles, Town & Country, Spafinder, Elle, Spa, Healthy Living, Vogue, Fitness, Yoga Journal, Natural Living and Heathy Planet, among many others. Its mid day Ayurvedic buffet is open to the public.

Asian Deli

117 E. Broadway, 472-2649

The original Thai Deli owners moved two blocks down Broadway and opened a new place with similar fare, including pies to die for.

500 West Burlington Ave., 209-1458

Turkish native David Foraker moved here in 2000 from the culinary citadel of Napa, California, where he owned American Canyon Pizzeria.

The Iowa of popular lore is gone with the 20th century wind. Today, a person can drive the entire width of the state without laying eyes on a single cow or pig. Hip-hop is more popular than square dancing. And the only Iowans who need to stick their fingers in their ears before answering questions are quarantined in Bill Bryson books. Yet old stereotypes cling to our identity with the tenacity of cancer cells, particularly when it comes to dining. Iowans know it’s easier now to find a Laotian, Salvadoran and Bosnian restaurant than a single scratch cooking Mom & Pop café, but try telling that to out of town visitors. My e-mail address was recently listed as a restaurant information source for John Wayne Centennial pilgrims. Mostly they asked wistful things like “What are the top five places for pan-fried chicken?” If only.

A couple months ago, I wrote about the Suburban Restaurant, a true to the bone (stock) café and a charter member of my Iowa Food Hall of Fame, along with Polenha’s Market, the Oneonta Co-Op and Jerry Talerico‘s recipe for steak de burgo. The response to that column set a Food Dude record for replies — not counting hate mail. Several different writers reminded me that another Central Iowa home-cookin’ café has been around even longer than the Suburban. In fact, Crouse Café is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. And, in a daring defiance of tradition, they banned smoking for the first time.

Crouse began in 1946 in Lenox, Knoxville and Indianola and moved to its present location, just off the square in Indianola, in 1963. The third and fourth generation of the founding family are running things now — John and Rhonda, plus five children. Both John and Rhonda cook, too, in this hands-on operation. Like all small town home cooking cafés of lore, Crouse is open for three meals a day. Breakfast is community time, with retirees hanging around and businessmen hustling through generous portions of French toast and hashed browns with eggs and sausage.

Crouse is not as pure scratch as Suburban, but hardly any place in America is. The Indianola café combines an admirable amount of scratch recipes with some modern short cuts. Among the pure treasures we tried, pan fried chicken stood out. It was lightly floured, without corn meal, and slow-cooked in cast iron skillets. Home made, pan dripping chicken gravy accompanied mashed potatoes. No one has ever invented a better method of frying chicken. Note that it’s only served after 5 p.m. and worth the wait. I met a couple who said they wait all year for Crouse’s fried chicken before Des Moines Metro Opera productions.

Fried chicken isn’t Crouse’s most famous dish though. That would be their iconic onion rings, also hand floured and served in three sizes: quarter ($3.59), half ($4.59) and whole ($4.99) orders. Hand breaded pork tenderloins and chicken fried steaks would complete a holy quadrant of Indianola fried foods.

Crouse’s hot beef sandwich is also among the best around, obviously cut from homemade roast beef, not the deplorable pre-cooked rounds that pass for roast beef in most places. Gravy was true, too.

Rhonda’s flaky crust pies are a prerequisite to a complete meal. You have to ask about fresh made ingredients, as several compromise with canned fillings. The apple pie I had did not. Hand dipped malted milks are another old-fashioned way to go on dessert here.

Iowa is never so lovely as in October, when locals drive hundreds of miles just to dine at a table with a spectacular view. One can do quite well without leaving town, too. Some of the nicest places to eat in Des Moines are restaurants operating in the margins of another mission. The Des Moines Art Center, Living History Farms, Prairie Meadows, Des Moines Botanical Center, the Cub Club and the Iowa State Historical Building all offer surprisingly good food along with one-of-a-kind ambiance. Yet, none of those places have the town’s best view of autumn.

That distinction goes to Providence Café, which opened late last spring in the White House, the venerable community center of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in Iowa. The White House has tried food service before but never as professionally as now and not at all since 2003. Ron Wheeler and Mike Scopa are serving breakfast, lunch and dinner in a remodeled café that features an old-fashioned lunch counter with stools, plus tables, chairs and a picture window with a view from the Des Moines River bluffs. Picnic tables sit directly above the river, too, for outdoor dining in nice weather.

Providence Café is the kind of place one expects to find in the gritty fiction of writers like Nelson Algren and Raymond Chandler. Algren declared three basic rules to a good life: “Never sit down at a card game where the dealer is named Doc; never eat at a place named Mom’s; and never sleep with anyone who has bigger problems than you do.” Providence Café refutes that last rule emphatically.

It’s been joked that AA works by getting people addicted to good stories. As in the meeting hall next door, Providence Café offers the real possibility that the guy sitting next to you has problems that put yours in perspective. That can be as comforting as chicken soup. One guy told me that he was glad to be here because his alternative was to be following his “slut wife” to his brother’s house and committing a double murder that he “might later regret.” That kind of story does more for hashed browns and eggs than Tabasco.

Not that the short order work needs any help. It’s first rate. Hash browns and eggs are reliably delivered with bacon, sausage or steaks. A steak and eggs special I ordered last week brought a thick sirloin, perfectly cooked, with hashed browns, buttered toast and jam for $6. Prices like that seem to come out of a Chandler novel, too. The menu is simple and short, as good short order grills should be, yet breakfast choices ranged in complexity from biscuits and gravy, to a lavish French toast foster, which included bananas and ice cream.

Top local products like Graziano sausage are used here. In fact, a Graziano hoagie at $6 is the most expensive item on the menu. Burgers, salad and home made soups filled out the lunch fare. Burgers came with a choice of fries, onion rings, potato salad or home made pineapple coleslaw. Spaghetti with good meatballs or sausage, and penne with Cajun cream sauce, sausage, sun dried tomatoes and fresh basil, completed the entrée menu.

This café is open to everyone. AA is a fellowship of men and women who share their problems and experiences in hopes of solving common problems. The only requirement is to come with a sincere desire to not drink alcohol.

 Opening to the biggest buzz in many years, Dos Rios hopes to change the way locals think about Mexican food. The new restaurant asks some hard questions: Will Des Moines buy Mexican entrees that cross the $20, even $30 threshold? Will customers accept that tequila can be as sophisticated as Scotch or wine? Can ethnic street food sneak past the white linen profiler? Answers will determine whether this place becomes a landmark or a badly timed venture like Cabo San Lucas and La Fonda, previous efforts to take Mexican cuisine upscale here.

Two precedents suggest Dos Rios will succeed: Managing Partner Karl Alterman and Executive Chef Rich Garcia have a similar restaurant doing extremely well in Boca Raton, Fla.; Mark Miller and Rick Bayless became food world superstars with similar concepts in Santa Fe and Chicago. Their culinary idea was to apply the best fresh and local ingredients to meticulously researched regional recipes. Alterman is a humble disciple.

“Don’t even mention me in the same sentence with them. Rick Bayless is one of the legendary chefs and restaurateurs in the world; I’m just hoping to run a good restaurant,” he said.

Still, comparisons will be made because there’s nothing like this place between here and Chicago, and because this restaurant resembles Bayless’ place more than it does other Mexican cafes in Iowa — particularly price-wise. In an instance in which Dos Rios crossed the $30 line, Bayless’ top restaurant (which won this year’s James Beard Award as the nation’s best) sells the same ribeye steak, from the same meat purveyor, for $3 less than Dos Rios. Dos Rios doesn’t have the same commitment to sustainable seafood either.

It stacks up quite well though in its support of the best local farmers. Dos Rios’ chickens all come from Sheeder Farms in Guthrie Center, where they are naturally raised outdoors. Their pork all comes from Niman, a mostly Iowa conglomerate of pig farmers dedicated to the highest standards of husbandry. I have seen Alterman, Garcia and Chef de Cuisine Hal Jasa shopping farmers markets for seasonal foods that found their way to their menu — Swiss chard, squash, lettuces and tomatoes.

Their dedication to traditional recipes is obvious: in the spices on the complimentary pumpkin seeds; in the different masas used for hand made tortillas, empanadas, tamales and enchiladas; in the spit roasted meats; the chile glazes; the many fresh made salsas and different moles. Dos Rios uses molcajetes and not just as décor. Those lava stone mortars are employed to grind and to serve foods — a touch of style. Tableside guacamole preparation used roasted poblanos, fresh limes and tomatoes, but their fresh flavors were compromised by heavily spiced tortilla chips. Sometimes less is more.

Lunch featured a two-taco special complemented perfectly with a sweet citrus vinaigrette salad and soup for $10. This is an inexpensive way to try five spit-roasted meats, mahi-mahi or the shrimp. The best dinner dishes I tried were duck sausage tacos; a cactus-chile glazed pork chop in red mole; a Oaxacan beef rib that was braised in avocado leaves. Jasa says he’s proudest of the cactus-glazed corvina. Other foodies gushed over drunken calamari, roast chicken, seasonal side dishes and desserts like tres leches (sponge cakes) and three flans.

Service improved progressively over four visits, even acoustical problems were addressed. Little mistakes, like skirt steak being sliced the wrong direction, were corrected. The bar featured more than 200 tequilas, including rare legends at up to $46 a shot. Cocktails were made with fresh fruit juices and pure concentrates, never mixes. The margarita salt even came from top of the line Salt Trader.

Bottom line: Dos Rios is on track for becoming one of Iowa’s very best restaurants.

Update - In November, Scott Stroud served his last menu at Dos Rios to launch that restaurant’s tequila dinner series. The gifted 23-year-old chef then moved to South Florida to open a French restaurant. He said he’ll return to Dos Rios in March, but South Florida is one of the nation’s top launching pads for culinary stars. For his last supper here, Stroud used tequila in eight different preparations. The best was an oyster on the half shell with salmon (smoked in tequila-soaked wood) and cilantro cream. His main entrée paired smoked spare ribs and sweet potato slaw with pulled pork shoulder and chile slaw. For his final dessert, Stroud made his “first ever” angel food cake, with tequila. No one in Des Moines this year was more creative with new foods, nor more loyal to local farmers, than Stroud. He introduced much of Central Iowa to goat and heritage poultry. His tequila dinner, which will be repeated monthly this winter, was a bargain. The bar bill alone (seven upscale tequila drinks) could likely have exceeded the $60 tab.

During the 14 years of these reviews, this category presented some tough choices. Sage, Bistro Montage, 43, Mezzodi’s, Danielle and Yamananem’s all opened in 2001. Four years later Dish, Café di Scala, Star Bar and Chef’s Kitchen all debuted. This year tops them all though with Absolute Flavors & Smokey D’s, AJ’s, Azalea, El Corita, Gateway Market Café, Grand Piano Bistro, Lemongrass, Miyabi 9, Splash Raw Bar, DuBay’s and Zen Sushi & Noodle. A handful of those places are good enough to win this distinction some years. Azalea, Gateway and Miyabi 9 all could have won most years. But...

Best New Restaurant - Dos Rios

Dos Rios flooded the competition this year. Karl Alterman’s Court Avenue restaurant combines commitment to sustainable and local foods with devotion to the traditions of Jalisco. Some foods (huitlacoche) had never been served before in Iowa restaurants. Some tequilas had never been sold before in the U.S. The restaurant opened in October while its building was still under construction. Remarkable improvements have been made since in acoustics, commitment to sustainability, in tweaking recipes, and in creating new specials.

Chef of the Year — George Formaro

Formaro kept Centro among the top local restaurants and South Union at the top of deli choices while also opening Gateway Market Café — serving the city’s best-ever, and most eclectic, comfort food. In his spare time he created a menu for the late-winter opening of a new French restaurant.

Rising Star — Scott Stroud, Dos Rios

This 22-year-old brings Bouchon experience to Dos Rios specials, which can out-rock the live music.

Top Chain Restaurant — Fleming’s

In greater Des Moines, Fleming’s has become the Warren Buffet of corporate restaurants — a big powerful player who behaves like an ordinary good neighbor.

Top New Fast Food Joint — Sushi Box

Reasonable sushi for the bargain prices in Kaleidoscope Food Court.

Service Trend of the Year — shorter hours

After years of expanded service, many places reduced hours in 2007, mostly after the new minimum wage law.

Business Trend of 2007 — independence

The ratio of new independent restaurants to corporate chain restaurants increased dramatically in the metro.

Local Kitchen Trend of 2007 — charcuterie

Norwalk’s La Quercia introduced several new products to America. Brasserie announced that charcuterie would be a focus of its new kitchen. Bistro Montage, Gateway Market Café, Dos Rios, Sage, Mojo’s and several ethnic cafés all delved deeper into the old art.

Fast Food Trend of the Year — diversified menus

What’s good for McDonald’s is good for the industry. That means espresso with fried chicken, salads at burger joints, burritos and ice cream for breakfast, etc.

Top Food Stories

Specialty markets come and go. Four specialty grocery markets opened in the metro this year but two closed before cold weather.

Farm Bill turns Democrats into Republicans and vice versa. The Democrat-controlled House and Senate approved Farm Bill legislation that a Republican president from Texas kept threatening to veto because of lavish breaks for the rich.

3. Big Ethanol demonizes Holocaust hero. Swiss statesman Jean Ziegler became a Nobel Prize candidate for retrieving stolen assets for Holocaust victims. When he questioned the morality of ethanol subsidies in rich nations, which drive up food prices in poor nations, Big Ag and their flunkies in the Iowa press attacked, and smeared, the messenger.

Conspiracy Theory of the Year — Swift raids

A year after the federal government raided ConAgra’s Swift plants (and only Swift plants) across America, suspicion grew that Tyson and Cargill had been rewarded for their superior acumen at insider-politics.

Quote & Book of the Year

“Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you.” Danny Meyer, “Setting the Table.”

Thanks for the Memories

Rick Murillo, Garcia’s, 25th Street Café, Beggar’s Banquet, Pat’s Corner Café, Cookery, Off the Hook, Stella’s Blue Sky Diner, 43, Dolce Vita, several library coffeehouses.

Tea & mystery at Living History Farms

Living History Farms (LHF) covers 300 years of Iowa commerce: an Ioway Indian farm; an oxen-powered 1850 farmstead; a horse-powered 1900 farm; and an 1875 Iowa town. Until recently, farming was all about growing good things to eat, so some LHF lessons are hand-to-mouth exercises. At a Victorian tea in Flynn House, I discovered one must earn his food in the historically correct manner, even though today’s visitors are allowed to cut some corners. My reservation was made a week in advance. (In the last quarter of the 19th century, tea invitations would have been sent at least six months ahead and RSVPs were returned within 10 days.) Nor was I required to coordinate my outfit with the definitive Victorian hair color guidebook. That authority dictated that only blondes could wear pastels.

Assuming that clueless visitors would forget to bring fans to a November tea, LHF hostesses provided those compulsory accessories — complimentary wooden fans, marinated in the scent of aging spinsters from the era before deodorant was invented. Because today’s tea guests are also ignorant about “the language of fan, handkerchief and glove gestures,” we were escorted to the parlor for lessons in “suggestive flirtation” that were as earnest as the longing in the hearts of Jane Austin’s heroines. I learned, for instance, that if a lady draws her hanky across her lips while looking at you, she wants you, but if she nibbles on the tips of her gloves, she wants you to take a hike. If a girl pairs white gardenias with red roses in her “tussy mussy” (hand-held bouquet), she’s hot to trot, but one holding a single yellow carnation has learned that her man is a lying, cheating rake. Hostesses also instructed us on petticoat and corset history. (LHF docents actually participated in Mayo Clinic research on the delicate relationship between corsets and breath.) I was also taught how to use a kerosene lamp as a curling iron and that George Washington used the same Aqua de Florida cologne that LHF provides for gentleman callers today.

Eventually, afternoon tea was served in the dining room. (I noted that morning tea would have been served in the parlor, extending the parlor games.) A first course included finger sandwiches of sliced apples with turkey, chicken salad and dill with cucumbers. A second course included a buttery scone with cranberry and citrus flavors, plus a fresh lemon curd. A third course, made from recipes in an 1874 cookbook, included lemon petit fours, a pecan tart, pumpkin cakes, sugar cookies and a “coconut caramel,” which would more accurately be called a “chocolate coconut truffle” today. Darjeeling tea, nuts and bonbons were also served. If your appetite is unhindered by the wearing of a corset, you will probably still be waiting for more food.

No one ever leaves one of LHF’s historic dinners hungry. Those begin with horse-drawn hayrides to lantern-lit historic farmhouses. Menus (chosen by the first party to make a reservation) for either an 1875 or 1900 style dinner are completely prepared in historic manner, meaning on a wood burning stoves, over an open fire. At a recent 1900 style dinner, spiced baked beef, fabulous scalloped tomatoes (with a crumb topping of onions, cheese, garlic and bread), green beans, caramelized carrots and chocolate cake were served with two other items that taught the most valuable history lesson of all — to respect the wisdom of our ancestors. LHF’s yeast rolls are simple, food epiphanies, especially with freshly churned better and home made preserves. LHF’s lard crust, pear pie has deservingly become a word-of-mouth Iowa food legend. Pie this good probably explains why Victorian men endured all the parlor games that Victorian women made them play.

Proof finds its Place

This year’s impressive lineup of new restaurants already includes Alba, Zuzap, Le Jardin, Maverick, Sbrocco, Django, Torocco, Gateway West, Jethro’s and Graze. That competition makes it tough for a new place to find a niche, yet Proof distinguishes itself from the pack in more ways than one. First, Carly Groben’s corner café on Gateway Park completes an all female free enterprise zone — in the Arlington Building, next to the Ritual Café. Secondly, the cafe defies a shibboleth that fine dining can only make it in Des Moines by focusing on dinner. Proof is open for lunch-only, except on Friday nights when it defies another common belief that diners need a multitude of options. Proof offers only one dinner choice — whether to order the four-course prix-fixed menu, or to select fewer than four courses.

This café borrows style and ambiance from two of consultant Steve Logsdon’s restaurants in which Groben previously worked. The same unusual hours of service gave Basil Prosperi a near cult following earlier this decade. Proof’s minimalist restoration harkens the design mantra of Lucca and its architect Kirk Blunck — “Do a lot of work to make it look like nothing much was done.” Other elements of décor remind diners to leave all assumptions at the door. This is a bastion of nonconformity where fresh cut flowers have not yet bloomed, nor even produced scents, where a female-owned restaurant looks utterly masculine with heavily waxed, hardwood floors, a black and white color scheme and exposed ceilings on which even the electrical wiring has been blasted with gunmetal gray spray paint.

So, it’s not totally surprising that Proof’s breads have not been proofed (leavened). In fact, on my four visits, I never encountered single proofed bread — just good flatbreads. Obviously, this kitchen is also nonconformist. Though partitioned off, it’s one of the most “open kitchens” in town — as at Radish, guests are welcome to walk through on their way to the dining room. Fabulous salads are made without using any lettuces at all. A “seafood tagine” was prepared without a tagine (conical clay pot that lends its name to the dish). Instead, it was cooked and served under a cone-shaped lid improvised from parchment paper.

Groben recruited top talent — Chris Place was Django’s original head chef and Tony Pill was a line chef at Sage. Proof’s small dining room, short hours and shorter menu pretty much ensure that the talent will prepare your meal. That’s a rare luxury as fine dining trends toward bigger things. Everything I tasted was exciting and flawless. Homemade merguez (lamb sausage) even excited some picky North African foodies, though I’ll order it without the distracting marinara next time. Fantastic seasonal soups were made from bone stock — green pork chile, roasted pumpkin and coconut beef stood out. All sauces were out of the Escoffier playbook (bone stock reductions), one made a nice filet of beef, with a wild rice pancake, even grander. Salmon was served perfectly rare, as ordered, and was creatively plated, hanging over a globe of risotto like a crescent moon. Chicken with couscous was tender and juicy. Tabbouleh defied tradition by including quinoa along with fresh mint and raisins. Those were all lunches, none of which exceeded $10.

Dinners were more creative. Salads included a grapefruit with fennel and another that layered fennel hearts, Feta and sweet potato wrapped in fresh basil leaves. Place served a pair of fried oysters, on home made scones, with Feta, carrot relish, harissa (chile) oil, remoulade, aioli, baby tomatoes and fresh spinach. His lamb moussaka was made with braised whole legs plus eggplant. Lamb roulade was paired with cous cous. Desserts were served in duos: chocolate and harissa with bread pudding one week; a fabulous sticky yogurt cake with homemade espresso ice cream another.