October is the fourth-annual Dining Month on OnMilwaukee.com. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, delicious features, chef profiles, unique articles on everything food, as well as the winners of our "Best of Dining 2010."
A gorgeous new cook book, "Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers," make the trek to Milwaukee so that Bolzano Meats and its owner Scott Buer could be featured.
Published in an elaborate hardcover edition by Welcome Books, "Prime Cuts" was written by Marissa Guggiana, president of Sonoma Direct, a sustainable meats business, and founder of the Secret Eating Society.
Guggiana is also extremely active in the American Slow Food movement.
The book -- with an introduction by James Beard Award-winning television personality / chef Andrew Zimmern -- hits shops on Oct. 12.
Among the 50 profiles of American butchers is one focusing on Buer, who runs the small -- but growing and ever-more buzz-worthy -- Bolzano Meats in a space on Holton Street, near Capitol, that was also the original home of Guy Rehorst's Great Lakes Distillery.
I met and wrote about Buer last year.
"The author contacted me via the local Slow Food group," recalls Buer. "She came up here, took photos and spent most of a hog-butchering day with me."
In addition to a great photo of Buer, Guggiana calls the personable charcuterie connoisseur "mustachioed and fastidiously sincere" and notes that "he is both of Milwaukee and apart from it, like a man just emerged from a glacier."
On the following pages are recipes for red-cooked pork hocks and pork kidney and liver pie (aka pate brisee).
"The recipes are mine," says Buer, who is quick to give props to another chef for part of one of the recipes. "The recipe for the leaf lard crust (in the pate brisee) I use is right from Jennifer McLagan's 'Fat: A misunderstood ingredient'."
The book retails for $37.50, but for home cooks who love cooking with ingredients purchased from the ever-rarer butcher shop, it's worth every cent. And if you can't check it out at a local bookshop for a look, Buer can help with that and with a little discount, too.
"I have a preview copy to look over at our farmers market booth," says Buer. "Folks can even save a little with pre-ordering with us right at our booth."
A book tour will bring Guggiana to Milwaukee for a Nov. 3 event at Boswell Book Co. on Downer Avenue. Buer will be at the 7 p.m. talk selling his products (Slow Food gets 20 percent of sales) and Buer says the farmer from whom he buys his hogs will also be there.
In the meantime, Buer says "Primal Cuts" is already paying dividends for Bolzano.
"The book is getting us some much-appreciated publicity, more awareness of the odd and slow process we use, and why it's a cool thing to do to local food," he says.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
