Expect to see pork on holiday tables this season because it is affordable and, depending on the cut, healthful.
And with the popularity of locally grown food — including meat — cooks have more choices in both cuts and specific breeds of pigs.
Earlier this year, Aqua Grille executive chef Gert Rausch and sous chef Jacob Guajardo purchased a whole Berkshire black pig, making more than a half-dozen dishes including unusual cuts such as tongue, kidneys and pork belly.
"I think the pork belly was my favorite," says Guajardo, who learned to prepare a snout-to-tail tasting menu while studying in Germany with Rausch's mentor, Henry
Rausch says he bought a Berkshire hog from his Boston meat purveyor because it has a similar taste to the pork he grew up eating in his native Germany.
"Basically, it's twice as expensive as regular (pen-raised) pork," Rausch says, "but I like the marbling of it; not too much fat but enough fat in
there. And they are raised so they can run around, have their freedom, which makes any meat so much better because all the muscles are being worked."
The oldest known breed of pig, Berkshire has an illustrious history. Cromwell's soldiers discovered black pigs with white spots on their legs, ears and snouts in the 1640s in the shire of Berk. Word of the juicy, tender meat spread with Cromwell's returning troops and, for years after, England's royal family kept a large herd and dined on Berkshire pork. A royal gift to Japan introduced the pigs there, where they were known as Kurobata. The American Berkshire Association, established in 1875, ensures hogs raised here are purebred.
While you won't find it in the average grocery store, Berkshire pork is being raised at small farms on the Cape and Islands, including Miss Scarlett's Blue Ribbon Farm in Yarmouthport. In October, chef Matt Jennings joined American Seasons chef-owner Michael LaScola on Nantucket for a Hogtoberfest weekend of cooking an entire Berkshire pig. Jennings is a two-time winner at Cochon 555, a competition that champions family farms raising heritage breed pigs for chefs.
As for buying the whole pig, Rausch said that too was a throwback to his younger days when all the animals served at Koch's restaurant came in whole. Preparing a tasting menu from all parts of the pig gave Guajardo a chance to show off skills he acquired in Germany.
The dishes produced included Pork Empanadas, Sweet-and-Sour Kidneys (a little chewy, but delicious), a crisply fried square of belly fat, and a tender marinated tongue.
Rausch cautioned that the biggest problems with pork are that people remove too much of the fat and overcook the meat — both of which dry out the pork. It's done, he says, when the fat — punctured by a needle or very sharp knife — produces a clear fluid. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, below the 180 prescribed years ago when there was more opportunity for growth of dangerous bacteria.
Breeding has reduced the fat in pork since the 1970s, when people began to worry about the nutritional value of what was then the nation's most popular meat, according to the USDA. If you don't get meat from an heirloom breed, Rausch recommends asking the butcher or the grocery store's meat department employees to cut you a roast with the fat cap left on — or chops with a strip of fat — to bring out the full flavor of your holiday pork.
Second year in a row!
Winner of both the Popular Vote and Judges' Favorite
at Sandwichfest's "Best Sandwich in Sandwich" competition
Gert does it again this year with his Hot and Crunchy Lobster Sliders (crispy lobster fritters topped with avocado mayonnaise, Chinese coleslaw and ancho chile on a brioche slider)
This winning sandwich is available at the Aqua Grille on the specials menu.
Cape welcomes fall with feasting at fests
Cape Cod Times - By Gwenn Friss - gfriss@capecodonline.com
With chef Gert Rausch cooking, the Aqua Grille has featured an Oktoberfest menu at this time each year and donated part of the proceeds to charity. That's happening again this year but, for the first time, the Sandwich restaurant is pitching a 60-foot tent on its lawn, hiring a German band to play such traditional dances as the schunkel, performed with linked arms, and hosting a full-scale celebration Oct. 11.
"They're hoping to get 800 to 1,000 people," says Sarah Bassett, spokesperson for the eatery.
The first Oktoberfest was celebrated Oct. 12, 1810, when Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, married Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. According to the Web site www.history.com, the Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. The decision to repeat the festivities and the horse races the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the annual Oktoberfest.
The Cape event, alongside the Cape Cod Canal, runs from 1 to 5 p.m. Tickets are $14 and include both admission and seven food and beverage tickets. For those 12 and younger, admission is $8 and includes four food and beverage tickets. Additional tickets may be purchased for $2 each.
Proceeds go to the Sandwich Emergency Heating Assistance Fund, created by Friends of the Sandwich Council on Aging and the Aqua Grille to help needy residents of all ages to heat their homes this winter.
During last year's fundraising, Rausch says, the two most popular German specialties were, by far, the wiener schnitzel with potato salad (three tickets) and potato pancakes or Kartoffelpuffer at one ticket each.
Also on the menu are grilled bratwurst and champagne sauerkraut (two tickets), bouletten or charbroiled Berlin burgers (two tickets); salzstangen or a German pretzel (one ticket), imported beer and wine (two tickets) and Cape Cod Beer (two tickets). Cape Cod Beer owners Todd and Beth Marcus are donating 16 half-barrels of beer.
Oktoberfest 2007
Cape Cod Times - By STAFF WRITER
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Tips for cooking German dishes
The tradition also has hopped the pond, and is still going strong in the United States today — 197 years later.
The German-American Club of Cape Cod held its annual Oktoberfest last Saturday at the Masonic Lodge in Centerville with a traditional meal of bratwurst, along with dancing and entertainment provided by the Cape Cod Bavarian Band.
"We have 80 members and we're the only German club on the Cape," says president Charles Firnhaber.
Whether it was planned or not, the original wedding festival occurred when the spring's stockpiled beers had to be depleted to make room for the fall's production.
From its festive origins, Oktoberfest in Munich has evolved into the largest beer festival in the world: a commercial bash of brewery tents, food vendors, brass bands, costumes and carnival rides that draws millions of visitors from all over the world. It's estimated that 7 million liters of beer are downed during the three-week period.
It's a big beer-drinking party, says Rausch, who grew up in a small town near the city of Stuttgart.
This is the seventh season the German-born chef has been bringing a taste of the festival to the Cape by hosting Oktoberfest at the Aqua Grille in Sandwich.
Typically, October is a slow month in the restaurant business. Rausch and co-owner John Zartarian thought they could boost traffic by offering something different, and it worked.
"People come from all over," says Zartarian. "Many of our clientele are older and enjoyed German food when they served in the military in Germany or on their travels to Europe."
During the fall fest, which runs from Columbus Day to Oct. 28, the regular menu is curtailed and Rausch cooks traditional German dishes. An extensive German menu is offered at dinner nightly and select German items are served at lunch. The chef is assisted in the kitchen by young German people he hires through friends in his homeland. To set the mood, the waterfront restaurant which offers views of the Cape Cod Canal, is decorated festively and German music plays in the background.
Rausch uses recipes he learned when he was young, some handed down in his family.
The hearty German fare is hardly low-calorie. Instead, traditional German food is considered very heavy, Rausch says. But his attitude is that everything in moderation is the spice of life.
German food is popular in pockets of the United States, Rausch says, where there are large populations of people of German descent — such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Pennsylvania and Texas. It has enjoyed a good reception on the Cape.
The first year Rausch wasn't sure rabbit would go over. He was surprised he went through seven cases.
Yet some German dishes don't appeal to Americans, Rausch says, such as eel. Nor do Americans like the German way of cooking fish with the head on.
Rausch primarily uses wine rather than beer in his cooking, which includes white wine with rabbit and German burgundy in fish dishes. But he also does an onion-beer sauce with a breaded pork cutlet and apple mashed potatoes.
Rausch has no problem finding the ingredients he needs to make authentic-tasting German food.
"There are good sausage houses that produce almost every German sausage," he says.
Rausch chose familiar items for the Oktoberfest menu, including Rheinischer sauerbrauten (beef marinated in red wine and vinegar) served with red cabbage and serviettenknödel (German bread dumplings) topped with a sweet and sour sauce; schweinesteak (breaded pork cutlet) with sauerkraut, apple mashed potatoes and Bavarian onion-beer sauce; and jägerschnitzel (breaded veal) in a creamy mushroom sauce. It also features Venison Schnitzel Baden Baden topped with game sauce.
Game dishes, such as venison, are very popular in Germany especially during hunting season, Rausch says.
The menu also features two fish dishes: lachs helgoland (poached salmon) in a red wine and shallot glace) and kabeljau in kartoffel kruste, native cod in a potato herb crust similar to a potato pancake.
Appetizers (vorspeisen) include wurstsalat with German sausage, cheese, pickles and onions; hamburger herring salat with pickles, apples and sour cream sauce; and schwärzwalder pate with Waldorf and cucumber salads.
Rausch caps the entrees with what he calls "very standard" German desserts, including black forest cake and apple strudel.
German beers and Reislings are also added to the menu.
This year the restaurant will offer entertainment featuring Rudy Schwarzer and his three-piece Cape Cod Bavarian Band from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Rausch worked in restaurants in Munich, Paris, Switzerland and Italy. He came to the United States on a whim in 1971 and worked for a season at the Paddock Restaurant in Hyannis, which is owned by John and Maxine Zartarian. After working in different parts of the country and running his own restaurants, he returned to the Cape when the Zartarian family invited him to help run the Aqua Grille.
Cape Cod Times Review
Colorful decor with canal views at Aqua Grille
Compared with, say, the awe-inspiring ocean vistas of Chatham or Provincetown, the town of Sandwich may seem, to some, a bit lacking in the Cape’s characteristic seaside charms.
“There’s no water in Sandwich,” as an acquaintance once put it to me, but I live in Sandwich, and I would beg to differ.
Boat traffic on Cape Cod Canal can be fun to watch and, if you’re really lucky, a gleaming cruise ship might pass by. It happened to me one foggy night. The ship looked like a five-story building gliding through the mist.
Without a doubt, the best perch for canal gazing in Sandwich is Aqua Grille. From the outside, it looks like an upscale clam shack, but inside the décor is an interesting mix of nautical kitsch and bright, contemporary furnishings and fixtures.
You enter through the very aqua cocktail lounge, where there are many aqua booths, as well as a curvy cocktail bar. You can dine in the bar area, if you like its hip, modern vibe. There is also the main dining room, which feels a little more formal. It has a stylish fireplace, which to me, seems to have a cool, retro 1950s look. Many more tables are offered on the fully enclosed porch, which has the best canal views. Diners often come here to watch the sun set over the Sagamore Bridge and the restaurant’s vigilant staff is always quick to lower the awnings if the light gets too intense. In my many trips to Aqua Grille, the service has always been pleasantly genial and well-timed.
Aqua Grille and The Paddock in Hyannis are owned by the same investors, but their respective chefs and menus are completely different. Aqua Grille’s menu is long and eclectic, with dishes that borrow flavors from Asian, Mediterranean, Italian, Mexican and even German cooking traditions. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
For appetizers, the house-made gravlax ($7.95), fried calamari ($8.50), ultra-fresh shrimp cocktail ($1.95 each) and smoked chicken and goat cheese quesadilla ($8.95) were all very good. In fact, Aqua Grille is a great place to graze on some of the Cape’s best “bar” food. The cocktails are nicely turned out, too, and the excellent wine list offers prices that are surprisingly low by Cape Cod standards.
Aqua Grille’s forte is surely its seafood preparations. Baked, nut-crusted halibut in orange beurre blanc sauce ($22.95) is a house specialty. The nut crust is crisp and delicate, and the sauce has bright, citrusy flavor. The fish is accompanied by creamy scratch-made whipped potatoes and buttery, crisp-tender green beans. Even humble baked cod with bread crumbs ($18.95) is done very nicely here, with thick, juicy cod filets. The lobster salad ($20.95) is served with a plate of chilled greens, blanched haricots verts, and generous chunks of avocado and tomatoes. It’s competitive with any lobster salad served on the Cape. The hefty plate of fried fish tacos is good, too, served with key lime aioli and a black bean salad ($14.95).
I’ve sampled a wide variety of the dishes served at Aqua Grille and I’ve often been surprised at how successfully the kitchen turns out such an ambitious array of entrees. A few flawed recipes aside, Aqua Grille is an entertaining spot in a unique setting, especially on a busy summer night, with food that is, quite often, exceptional.
Terry Ward Libby is a freelance writer, cookbook author and former off-Cape restaurant industry professional. She has written about American regional and international cuisine.
