Bierocks, Beer Rocks, Berrocks

I made the mistake of posting a food photo on Facebook last month without explaining how to make the things. Yesterday several friends took notice and asked for the recipe. For those who cannot do without bierocks, here’s that recipe. Bie-what? Yeah, we had that conversation at home. Between a Midwesterner and a native Californian, it went something like this:

"What are they?"
"Bierocks."
"What?"
"Bierocks."
"They're what?"
"German bao."

"Oh!"

Coastal Californians, of course, have more intimate knowledge of dim sum dumplings such as xiaolongbao than they do of Midwestern comfort food, so appealing to a bao sensibility was simply a fast way to get at the heart of the meaning. I could have just as easily called them Kansas empanadas. Bierocks, brought to the American Midwest by 19th century Mennonite immigrants, are stuffed rolls that fit in the palm of your hand.

Norma Jost Voth writes in Mennonite Foods and Folkways from South Russia (volume 1):

Bierocks, among Molotschna Mennonites, were bread pockets amply filled with a mixture of ground beef and cabbage. A little like a hamburger sandwich, they made a hearty meal, were conveniently served hot or cold and made ideal traveling companions for trips or picnics...The word Bierock is related to the Turkish word berok or boerek. Today, in the Crimean city of Simferopol (where Russian Mennonites went to school or went shopping) they are called cherbureki and sold on the street.

Also spelled beer rocks or berrocks, the word is also a cognate of piroshki, pierogi, pirogi, and the dozens of other spellings for those thick, filled dumplings popular in Polish families, and are similar to Russian, Ukrainian, and other central and eastern European dumplings. These, however, are a bit bigger and baked rather than simmered and pan-fried. In the American Midwestern states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri, even larger versions are sometimes known as runzas (because, wags that we were in college, we figured a meal of the low-grade examples from our dorm’s cafeteria would deliver a nearly immediate, and perhaps fatal, case of the runs).

No worries. These shouldn’t cause such gastronomic distress — unless you gorge a dozen or so. Then you deserve it. In fact, I am under orders to make more “German bao.” The recipe below is one I adapted, slightly, from Bruce Aidells and Dennis Kelly’s good book, Real Beer and Good Eats. The filling is classic: cabbage, onions, and sausage. It is, however, a versatile recipe and practically begs to be tweaked. Some variants I like: (1) Make a pseudo-Reuben by swapping out 2 cups of rye flour for 2 of all purpose flour, add some caraway to the dough, and use sauerkraut, pastrami, and Swiss cheese (deli Swiss is fine or class it up with a nice Comte or cave-aged Emmenthal), (2) Use any or all of mushrooms, fried onions, spinach, or Swiss chard as fillings. (3) Try roast pork, garlic, broccoli raab, and sharp provolone. You get the idea. Keep the stuffing moist and fully enclosed when you make the buns and you should have no problems.

Bierocks

Filling
1½ pounds/680 g fresh sage or smoked sausage, removed from the casings
1 cup/300g onion, diced small
4 cups/300g shredded cabbage
1 Tbl fresh minced garlic (or 1 tsp powdered)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried onion powder
½ tsp pimento/smoked paprika

Dough
⅓ cup/75g sugar
½ tsp salt
1 package (1 ounce) active dry yeast
1½ cups/350ml warm cooking water (at about 100° F.) from the potatoes
⅔ cup/150g butter, softened
2 eggs
1 cup/265g warm mashed potatoes (at about 100° F.)
7—7½ cups/about 900g all-purpose flour

To make the filling: Fry the sausage over medium heat 3-5 minutes to render some of the fat. Pour off the fat, and add the onion, cabbage, salt, and spices. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, or until the cabbage has wilted. Set aside to cool while you prepare the dough.

To make the dough: Dissolve the sugar, salt, and yeast in the warm potato water. Proof in a warm spot (80-100°F/27-38°C.) until the mixture becomes bubbly, about 5-10 minutes. Pour into a large mixing bowl. Blend in the butter, eggs, mashed potatoes, and 7 cups of the flour.

Knead on a floured surface until the dough becomes elastic and easy to work, about 5-10 minutes. Add the remaining flour if needed. Place the dough in a large oiled bowl and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the dough doubles in size.

After it has risen, punch down the dough and form into 24 equal balls. Pat the balls into ½-inch-thick rounds, about 2 inches in diameter. Place about ¼ cup of the filling in the middle of each round. Form the dough around the filling to make round rolls. Pinch the seams together and place, seam-side down, on a baking sheet. Put in a warm spot and let the rolls rise for 20-40 minutes. It the surface of the dough has dried out, brush lightly with water.

Heat the oven to 375°F/175°C. Bake the rolls for 20-25 minutes or until the beer rocks have a nice golden color and a mouth-watering aroma. The rolls freeze well.

Makes 24 rolls, 3-4” diameter.

Adapted from Bruce Aidells and Dennis Kelly (1992) Real Beer and Good Eats: The Rebirth of America's Beer and Food Traditions.

Goes well with:

• Aidells and Kelly's book can be had for ridiculously little money on Amazon. 
• Speaking of homey Midwestern foods, it's still cold and wet in huge swaths of the US; try some German bacon dumplings or homemade egg noodles to take the chill off.  
• Norma Jost Voth's Mennonite Foods and Folkways from South Russia is not quite as cheap or common as Real Beer and Good Eats, but it should be easy enough to track down copies in the US and Canada. Volume one can be found here and volume two here.
• Finally, if you just can't bring yourself to make dough from scratch, you could — in extremis — pop open a tube of ready-to-bake biscuits, stuff them, and bake them off as above. It's ok: I've cooked drunk before, too. Tart them up at least a little, though; an egg glaze, maybe, sprinkled with flaky salt, caraway seeds, or a blend of cumin and smoked paprika. 

Bananas Foster French Toast. To Start.

"We have salmon, lettuce, simple syrup, beer, key lime cheesecake, a tri-tip, and...erm...butter." Pause. Blink. "Or would you rather go out?" After the usual uncertainty of what to eat on a weekend morning, we headed to Fig Tree Cafe, a local joint with a typical Southern California menu: omelettes, Benedict variations, hash, French toast, burritos and tacos, fresh fruit and salads, plus the sort of sugar-and-spice-lacquered bacon one finds on brunch menus these days. At Fig Tree, it's called Man Candy. Sure. Why not? Bring on the man candy — but that's not why I was there.

Appetizer (n): what you eat before you eat so you'll be more hungry

I was there for the French Toast: four thick slices of bread, batter-dipped, skillet-fried, and dolled up bananas Foster style with sautéed banana slices, brown sugar, and rum. When I asked our waiter to bring a plate of that, he nodded agreeably and asked "To start?"

Yes. To start.

After that, I'd like three pork chops, a pitcher of orange juice, a five-egg Denver omelette, a bowl of yogurt with honey and granola, a mango and arugula salad (check; make that two), two breakfast burritos, an English muffin with butter and marmalade, one of those crab cakes with avocado slices, some sausage, a chicken sandwich, six shrimp tacos, an order of breakfast sushi, and a slice of meatloaf. Oysters if they're good today. And biscuits. Do you have biscuits?

Oh, and don't forget the man candy. I'll take, like, a pound.

French toast to start. Pfft. Who am I, Diamond Jim Brady?

Grousing aside, breakfast was great.

Fig Tree Cafe
416 University Avenue
San Diego, California
(619) 298-2010
The menu

Goes well with:

• While we're on the topic of bacon, sugar, and spices, but certain to make a batch of homemade bacon jam with apple cider. At its most simple use, just spread it on toast. But once you start folding it into macaroni and cheese, potato gratins, waffles, bread dough, and the like...well, then you're onto something quite good indeed. I might just use some in the next batch of bacon dumplings. 
• Fig Tree isn't the only place I like to hit for breakfast in San Diego. The Tractor Room is always a solid choice. The full bar may have something to do with that. 
• Tri tip is a cut we see a lot in California, but less so in other parts of the country. If you get your hands on some, do as I do: grill it. 
• Diamond Jim Who? James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady was a Gilded Age railroad supply salesmen known for expensive swag and an expansive gut, a contemporary of Mark Twain. David Kamp looks into the truth of his supposed and infamous gluttony for the New York Times. 

Bacon Dumplings for a Wicked Hangover

Though I make Speckklöße only, at best, once a year, I lust after them each and every week. Speckwhat? Think of them as bacon dumplings. Think of them, also, as restorative after a night of debauchery and something you can make almost on autopilot. Hot, cheap, smoky, lightly greasy, carb-heavy with bacon’s ineffable umami loveliness, and better than aspirin when that bottle you hit last night smacks you right back. I could eat a dozen. Which is about how many this recipe makes.

Dumpling eaters. Don't make yours so big.

In Germany, Klöße and Knödl are names for poached dumplings made from potatoes, semolina, yesterday’s bread, flour, breadcrumbs, even crumbled dry pretzels. These dry ingredients are softened with stock, milk, or other liquids and are generally bound with eggs and flavored with fruits, nuts, or various proteins such as fish, cracklings, or — in this case — bacon.

Sidestepping the intricacies both of territorial nomenclature and of nearly infinite dumpling species, we’ll call these simply “Klöße.” That weird character, that ß, represents a sound we often make in English, but for which we don’t have a single character. It’s called an eszett and is pronounced like a double-s, so you’ll see these sometimes as Kloss (singular) or Klosse (plural). Speck is smoked bacon so Speck-Klöße are simply bacon dumplings.

Like all the German foods I ate growing up, I learned to make these in the American Midwest where German, Swiss, and Austrian bakeries, Konditoreien, sausage shops, and butchers were commonplace and the Germanic (or, as we called it, “Dutchy”) influence on home cooking was pervasive. The older I get, the less I eat the German foods of my youth. But as I work through our bacon inventory, I’ve been building a craving for a bowl of Speckklöße.

Today, I capitulated.

Speckklöße

The recipe calls for simmering the dumplings. Seriously: simmer. If you boil these, they are likely just to fall apart in the pot. Edible, but in the same way a fistful of dough is.

3” square of slab bacon, diced into tiny cubes (about 8 slices if using pre-sliced)
1 medium loaf of crusty bread
1 cup/250ml hot milk
2 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper
q.s. rich chicken stock

Cut the loaf into slices (crust or no crust: your call, but save the cumbs) and pour the hot milk over them in a large bowl. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel or a cutting board (careful that it doesn't tip the bowl) to keep in the heat and moisture. Fry the bacon pieces in a medium pan. When the bacon is browned, pour it, grease and all, over the soaking bread in the bowl. When the mixture cools, add the eggs, salt, and pepper. Mix gently but thoroughly.

Shape into small round dumplings about 1.5”/4cm in diameter. If they seem too wet, add some of the reserved breadcrumbs or even a small bit of flour. If they’re too dry, add a bit of stock. Then simmer the dumplings gently in rich chicken stock (I flavor my stock with roasted garlic and cumin) until they float and are cooked through (about 10-15 minutes).

Serve hot in shallow bowls with some of the stock.

Notes

About the bacon: Use the very best you can find. I like slab bacon, but pre-sliced is fine. Allan Benton’s stuff is amazing, but if you’ve got a local shop making or selling high-quality smoked pork belly, by all means shop there. And do check out Maynard Davies' Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer.

About the bread: It’s easier to get good cupcakes in San Diego than good bread. Fortunately, we have Bread & Cie, a bakery that consistently puts out the sorts of high-quality breads I knew in the Midwest, on the East coast, and in Europe. Go for something with some character, a tight crumb, and a crisp crust. By all means, use flavored breads if you want to experiment; just keep in mind the effect that things like olives, rosemary, or jalapenos may have on the final dish.

For that matter, you can play with the poaching liquid. I find the idea repugnant, but you could — if you possess the perversity to do such things — swap out the bacon with country ham and poach these in coffee as a red-eye dumpling concoction. But beef stock, fumé, and vegetable stocks are all fine. Water, too, in a pinch, if it’s salted. Deep-fried in fat takes it an entirely different, though no less delicious, direction. Want to sauté some onion and include it in the dumplings? In. Got cracklings from rendering your own goose fat? In. Knock yourself out.

The version above is the no-frills classic I prefer at home, but there’s no reason not to take the basic idea and run with it.

Lord knows the Germans have.

Rowley Down with Swine, Lard

Even to two Southern boys like us,
it was a shock.
Lard seems as outdated as
a wood-burning stove,
as risky as a quart of moonshine…
Today, most Americans would sooner
smoke unfiltered Camels
while riding a motorcycle without a helmet
than eat lard.

~ Matt and Ted Lee

Pigs are intelligent animals, prolific, curious, and, from a distance, adorable. But more than anything, from trotters to tail, pigs are delicious.

Though I refrain from contaminating my finest whiskeys with rendered bacon fat as some inexplicably do (see below), a bloody mary tarted up with a rim of Allan Benton’s cooked and pulverized bacon is a meal in itself.

In fact, I am so down with swine that I make my own lard in a big cast-iron Dutch oven. Turns out, the stuff is not nearly so deadly (except to pigs) as nutritionist thinking has led us to believe, so when James Temple’s article came out in this week’s San Francisco Chronicle praising that very essence of piggy deliciousness, I was happy to see what he had to say on the subject.

But my jaw dropped at the inexplicable waste included in a lard-rendering recipe from Staffan Terje, executive chef at Perbacco in San Francisco. Terje’s recipe as reported goes like this:

In a large pot, add about 2 quarts of water and the [five pounds of] ground-up fat. Bring to a simmer over low heat. Continue to simmer for about 6-8 hours over very low heat, about 170°. Add water when necessary so that there is 1-2 quarts of water in the pot at all times. This ensures that the fat does not burn.

So far, so good, though the water forebodes something sinister. He continues:

Strain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer or cheese cloth and into a large glass bowl or transparent plastic container. Discard solids.

Discard the solids? WTF? In rendering lard, discarding the “solids” is tantamount to wasting one of the best parts. The solids, also known as cracklin’s or grieben (if rendering duck, chicken, or goose fat), are crisped bits of skin and flesh that make delicious additions to salads, to sandwiches (John Thorne turned me on to duck skin po-boys), and to breads when folded into the dough.

Easiest thing? A chef’s treat that might, in fact, never make it out of the kitchen: strain the solids cracklin’s from the liquid fat, drain them on a paper towel, and toss them while still hot with salt. Get fancy and drizzle it with cane syrup if you like.

Alternately, toss them in the batter the next time you crank out a batch of cornbread. Don’t have a favorite recipe? You may notice the Southern pedigree in this one, given its lack of sugar and lardy deliciousness. I’ve adapted it slightly from Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock’s sour milk cornbread recipe in The Gift of Southern Cooking:

Cracklin’ Cornbread

1 ½ c finely-ground cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 ¾ c buttermilk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½-1 cup pork cracklin’s
2 Tbl homemade lard*

Preheat the oven at 450°F/230°C. When the oven comes to temperature, combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl large enough to allow some vigorous stirring. Add the buttermilk and eggs and stir to create a smooth batter, free of lumps. Fold in the cracklin’s.

Add the lard to an 8” cast-iron pan and place on the middle shelf of the heated oven. When then lard melts, take out the pan and swirl it gently (this is hot, hot, hot) to cover the bottom and sides of the pan, then pour the excess lard into the batter and listen to it sizzle. Give it a few stirs to fully incorporate the fat, then pop it back in the oven. Cook about 30 minutes (maybe a little more) until the top is golden and it pulls away from the sides.

Cut in to wedges and serve hot.

*Use butter if all you have is processed snow-white store-bought lard: I wouldn’t feed that stuff to a hog.


Goes well with:

• Matt and Ted Lee's Light, Fluffy: Believe It's Not Butter
• James Temple's Loving Lard
  
• Don Lee's bacon-infused bourbon from NYC's PDT.

Lastly, one of the most cherished provisions in my fridge is the occasional package of Allan Benton’s bacon or country ham

Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams
2603 Hwy. 411
E-Mail Info@bentonshams.com
Madisonville,TN 37354
Phone (423) 442-5003

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