white beans

I look back at all those regular beans that I've eaten and silently ask the cooks collectively, "What were you thinking?" 

I sense they were all not thinking. Or they were thinking what's the least they can do with that #10 can of beans. I doubt they ever even looked for beans in a cookbook or else they'd know what's going on. You can make them taste like anything. You can include the regular enhancements. Tins of beans usually come with one sorry little piece of floppy bacon, you can pump up the jam by using a lot of fantastic and carefully prepared bacon. You can fry the bacon first in the same pot to render its fat throughout. You can add alcohol for its flavor, beer wine, anything, I used sake. But most importantly you can add something sour like vinegar and something sweet like honey. A recipe for Boston baked beans gives the idea and you can extrapolate from that how to poke out the profile. 

Hold off on tomatoes and brown sugar until the end if you use them. Also vinegar. Anything acid will change the pH and toughen the skins so they never turn soft without overnight baking, as Boston beans are. A recipe will call for molasses or brown sugar, salt pork, vinegar and tomato, and each of those elements can be improved greatly and treated more wisely than baking overnight. People think that it's salt that toughens up beans. No, it is acid. So don't put those elements in until the beans are already softened. 

Baked beans are a favorite side at Buckhorn Exchange. They've been asked so often for the recipe they went ahead and just published it on their lunch menu available online.

Here is the Buckhorn Exchange recipe for bean soup. 

1 LB Great Northern beans

1/2 cup diced onion

3 oz diced ham

1 oz chicken base

1/2 tsp seasoned salt

1 tsp Liquid Smoke

1 tsp granulated garlic

1 tsp white pepper

1/2 gallon water

1 oz cornstarch

1/2 cup water

Bake slowly at low 200℉ (that's not boiling temperature, not even in Denver) for 8 hours. When beans are tender remove from oven to stovetop and bring to a boil, mix cornstarch and 1/2 cup water to thicken. Let simmer 15 minutes.

That's just crazy. Who's got that kind of time. You can do this whole thing from hard dried beans in 20 minutes by pressure cooker. They didn't say anything about soaking the beans. I suppose that's part of the 8 hours low heat baking. 

They thicken with cornstarch instead of smashing a few beans to do the same thing. While soup doesn't have to be thick. 

And this is the part that just kills me. Buckhorn Exchange is all about various somewhat bizarre meats. They cook pheasant every night. Duck too. If Buckhorn Exchange doesn't have bones for broth then nobody does. And they use a commercial ersatz liquid smoke when smoke is literally pouring out of their building every night filling the entire neighborhood with the smell of roasting meat. 

Come on!

See, their beans really are utterly delicious. And yet, they can be even better.

They use dehydrated garlic that restaurants rely on instead of fresh garlic. There is no acid component, no tomato, and there is nothing sweet, no molasses, no brown sugar, no honey. 

I wish I had made crackers. I'm showing an egg but I also added tomatoes. I still have some beans left and I'll add cheese to that. 

Buckhorn Exchange, Denver light rail

I did not make this. 

This is probably the most prosaic meal possible to order from the Buckhorn Exchange, the oldest restaurant in Denver Colorado. FACT! The restaurant is in a very rough looking building with a faded mural outside that cannot be painted over because it is just so doggone historic. All sorts of famous cowboy types visited the restaurant in the early years and throughout to the present. The history covers every inch of the interior walls. And it is not the usual kitsch that is purchased wholesale to fill out a theme restaurant, no siree, it is the real deal, real artifacts, photographs of real historic figures that hung out at the restaurant, Buffalo Bill Cody, indian chiefs, railroad builders, gamblers, presidents, Hollywood types, famous local and national people, you name it. But we try not to hold any of that against the place.  

A light rail substation is located directly across the street, a natural decision because that was the spot of an original Rio Grand Railroad station and the Buckhorn Lodge that housed railroaders for the night. Each week the railroad men would cross the street to cash their paychecks whereupon they were given a token for lunch and a beer, the loss leader I suppose to a whole weekend of eating and drinking, so the place was as much a bank as a restaurant, thus the name Buckhorn Exchange. 

It's a mile from my home, basically a straight shot from Broadway down through the gentrified golden triangle, past the projects, to the ganglia of railroad tracks at the unsightly edge of town. On the walk down people were everywhere. Near the end, close by the rougher parts, people were actually yelling at me from their car, "Ew now lookie day -- white boy got a bubble butt!" And I'm all, "Don't even start with me. (But thanks for noticing)." 

I imagined the exercise would sweat the sick out of me. I don't know if it worked or not. I'm too tired to tell. I walked down to the train station, something of a mild adventure because my camera could attract unwanted attention, or so I imagined. Worn out from walking, I rode the train to the terminus then back to the Buckhorn. I thought that  would rejuvenate my energy but it didn't. My legs protested every step. I went into the Buckhorn and ordered the most ridiculously unimaginative lunch. The people there were so nice to me. They were closed for the period between lunch and dinner but the woman saw that I was out of sorts and instead of directing me up two flights to a bar with its own menu, she took pity and seated me in one of  the first floor dining rooms. The staff was busy with between shift tasks, but were nonetheless most generous even though I was wreaking havoc with their usual schedule. 

The Buckhorn specializes in weird meat. It is the place known for bison, ostrich, alligator, snake, all kinds of strange things. To order a turkey sandwich runs counter to the whole raison d'être of the place. The staff understands they will get the occasional fuddy-duddy who will not play the reindeer games, or eat one. Honestly, I couldn't handle much of anything even slightly challenging. All the taxidermy was already putting me off and  I'd rather not eat anything at all. I was only doing it because I knew I must. I'd have preferred a bland chicken pot pie.

That does it. Tomorrow I'm going out and score a chicken pot pie.  

Here's the Buckhorn's usual dinner menu. When you get there for dinner, they'll  have something usually for a special not seen on gentler menus. It looks like this online published menu is designed not to frighten people off. 

This is where I walked this morning that began this episode. I started out half a block from the Denver Art Museum, Hamilton building, oddly titled MAD Greens on the map. Mostly paved, there is little that is green about it. Between this big metal cow, and this clump of art center buildings. 

You can see all the tracks for the ordinary rail and the light rail at the far left on this map. I took the light rail with the farthest terminus then rode the train back just for fun and to see if my legs would stop aching. 

The following set of 120 photographs are gathered in 8 groups of 15 each. This is what I saw from my seat on the train and then from my seat in the restaurant. 

I did not take any pictures on the walk down to the station, although the walk is lovely. The thing is, the camera is strapped around my neck and under an arm like a backpack and it's a bit of a drag to stop walking and set up a shot. I was focused on my destination and I did not care to stop walking. 

On the light rail, again, there was nobody to check my ticket, and that makes me wonder why we even bother to buy them, unless they kick our ass if they do a random check and we don't have one, or something.

At the restaurant, I was the only person in the dining room.  

The diagonal streaks that you notice are reflections of interior train car lights. All these shots have an intervening window. 

This is 5-Points. When Denver was more segregated than it is now, this area was nearly 100% black. It is still mostly minorities but I like coming here and exploring. I imagine I look completely out of place, but I don't care. Deal with it. Below is the Denver Motor Vehicle ➘ where I just recently came by choice to renew my plates. It was crowded as hell and I could have done my business by mail, but I wanted to come here and insert myself. Everybody around me was complaining and unhappy, but I was having a great time. Maybe that's where a germ hopped on me. 

It is very dark inside the restaurant. I cranked up the ISO to maximum and carried on without a flash or any supplemental light. 

The last photo is from a bench next to the front door of the Buckhorn Exchange. I took a cab home because my legs wouldn't go anymore. 

Bean soup

The Buckhorn Exchange offers what they're calling their famous bean soup, apparently it's a favorite. Last week I had it twice. Both times I thought to myself I could do as well without much effort. 

Usually, I could probably safely say always, some kind of ham is involved with beans. Ham bone, spiral ham but not picnic ham (too salty), salt pork, bacon, smoked ham joint, whatever. I scrounged around for something ham, and I do have thick slab bacon but I didn't want to use it. Instead I substituted a single lamb hamburger that was prepared earlier and frozen, which has a few slices of bacon ground into it. I also included a single breakfast sausage patty that was sold with blueberries included. 

The beans are dry cannellini beans that were scooped out of the bulk bins at Whole Foods. They were not soaked overnight. 

Lamb patty, onion, garlic and spices were heated in a heavy-bottom pressure pot. Water was added to fill half way. All the dry cannellini beans I had on hand were dumped into the pot along with a few handfuls of rice. I could have included potato instead of rice, carrots, celery, but I didn't feel like it. The lamb patty caused fond to form on the bottom of the pot which was lifted up by the water and turned the whole mixture darker than the bean soup at Buckhorn Exchange.

* 1 lamb hamburger patty that includes bacon. 

* 1 breakfast sausage patty 

* 1 whole onion diced

* 2 large garlic cloves, smashed and diced
* 3 small bay leaves 

* 15 peppercorns

* 1 teaspoon coriander seeds

* 1 teaspoon cumin seeds

* 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

* 1 teaspoon mixed pepper flakes

* 1 teaspoon kosher salt

* 2 teaspoons baking soda. 

The baking soda is included to vitiate the unfortunate side effect of the difficulty of digesting the oligosaccharide in beans. It was added last. When the baking soda was dumped into the hot liquid, the entire pot foamed up violently and risked overflowing the pot. This made me think it was reacting to some unknown acid which I was careful not to include with the beans. A problem developed in that the foaming would not stop. It interfered with putting the lid on the pressure cooker because the foam could block the safety valve. I kept removing the foam and it kept right on forming. Finally I put the lid on the pot and cooked the beans for one hour on low pressure. When done, a small portion of beans was removed and smashed then returned as thickener. 

Contrary to popular belief, salt does not interfere with beans cooking, LIES !!!!, but acid does. Salt actually helps beans, acid hurts them. Acid causes the beans to form a tough exterior that can be used to the clever cooks advantage if the beans are intended to sit on the stove on low for a long time. The toughness that acid develops can help long-cooking beans from turning to mush. The acid would come from tomatoes, and from molasses if those are used. In that case, hold off on whatever acidic element you intend to include until the end or until the beans have already softened.  

Conclusion: This bean soup is delicious. Spicier than than Buckhorn Exchange's bean soup. Frankly, this is better.  

Buckhorn Exchange, steaks

All photos from one spot while seated.

We're taken to an enclave in the back where I've not been before. If it were a house the space would be a bedroom. I took the seat with the short view. This is what I saw when seated. 

Up.

Behind

So I told Joe I'm temporarily poor due to emergencies and such and that's a bit ridiculous but he can still be counted on for jumping right in with, "That's okay, on me!" 

So I said, "I ordered the most expensive thing possible and still manage so that this is all worth it for you." And he cracked up because that is kind of logical.  

Through our enclave's doorway. This is the hallway of linking segments that forms the lower portion of the restaurant and leads to our side enclave at the back, not the side enclave in the middle. Its theme seems to be Bill Cody.

And dead animals.

So that's lamb, buffalo, and elk. The lamb chop is thick. The waitress came back and told me to eat this bit. The tenderloin bit. The best part. Dear thing, she worried herself I would miss it. 

My favorite part is the gastrique that comes with one of these things. I think they call it blueberry sauce. 

Buckhorn Exchange Bean Soup

I LB Great Northern beans

1/2 cup diced onions

3 oz. diced ham

1 oz. chicken base

1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt

1 teaspoon Liquid Smoke

1 teaspoon granulated garlic

1/2 gallon water

Put in pot. Oven. 200℉ for 8 hours.

Bring to stove top. Add slurry, boil to thicken.

1 oz. cornstarch

1/2 cup water

These beans are very good. Very satisfying indeed. They hit the spot every time. 

Mine are better.

Use site search up there, or tags down there to see and compare, if you like. 

Off the top of my head, I would add chile flakes, or some form of chile, it just screams for it. There is no bay in this recipe. I would use more herbs, more cilantro, or mint, if I had it, something to spruce it up rosemary would work so would thyme. Why powdered garlic and not real garlic since the onions are being chopped anyway or conversely why not dehydrated onion since they're taking that shortcut? This recipe has no acid at all, they do not specify diced tomato, nor molasses, no brown sugar. I would thicken with smashed beans and leave out the deadening cornstarch. I'd leave out Liquid Smoke simply because I do not understand that ingredient, the Buckhorn Exchange is an exceedingly smoky place already, it smokes up the whole neighborhood. Introducing the ingredient Liquid Smoke does not make sense unless they're making it themselves. Instead I'd include fond that was stuck on from singed protein and lifted off with wine, most likely, but they do not bother with this basic cheffery technique. I'd consider salt pork for additional flavor, and then remove it. And I'd use beef stock instead of chicken stock. I would consider half a teaspoon of fish sauce or even a touch of anchovy, for boost, not for fish flavor. 

This is the sort of place men go in packs. Seated behind me was such a table of big fat men, and, man, do they put it away and have themselves a fine robust time. I'm imagining each one of them chomping down on a 16 oz buffalo steak with all the trimmings. I did my best to to be a pig but I don't hold a candle to the guys who hang out at this place. They like big caveman steaks. 

Denver omelet

Sort of.

I know, I know, a Denver omelet uses a green bell pepper not a California pepper and it's folded in half not in thirds.

I wonder why Colorado doesn't have its own state pepper. 

Let's check. [colorado, state pepper].

Aji Colorado. I bet you 1 million dollars it's red.

Let's check. [aji colorado]. It's named after the color, not my state. But I'll take it.

Here's the thing: Colorado means red. So does rojo/a. So does rosa. So does tinto.

"Colorado" is perfect past tense for "to color."

Colorado motto is "colorful Colorado" not "Red."

There is a lot of red, but it really is colorful.

One time I drove the whole state. A friend insisted on this. My vacation, boom, road trip. I did not realize how trippingly colorful the state is and then I did realize  I can drive the same thing the next day and I'll get an entirely different set of pictures. If you were an artist then you'd need a very broad palette. As we drove along around a hill a pattern displays of ground and plants and weather, snow. The ground is red rich in iron. The plants are sparse so the ground shows between them, the monoculture shrub dominates the scene with rough dots. Iron deficient. There is something incomplete about the whole scene. Why can't the plants get the iron? Their shadows are another separate pattern. The sky another scape.

Then round the hill and another hill shows on the opposite side, all half pine trees and half snow.

Then around that hill and another hill shows on the opposite side, all Aspen without leaves and dusted with snow punctuated with full dark green fir trees partially covered with snow.

Then around that hill and other hill shows, fully in the sun, there is no trace of snow.

And so on, hill after hill after hill after hill. And I'm sitting there driving and thinking, "Holy shit! This place is a painters dream."

History:

The origin of this story is shaky, a couple stand out. They're plausible but none of them explain green bell pepper that didn't exist in Denver back then. One site insists on green bell pepper for its bitterness to contrast the sweetness of ham and cooked onion. Imagine it, all those peppers growing all over the place and cooks pick the stupidest one, the one with zero Scoville units.  Ham, cheese, pepper, onion. How basic can you get?

Then the egg is treated as a tortilla. There is no shaking of the pan or dragging cooked curd to the center to build up layers of lightly cooked egg, no, this is beaten egg treated as paper. It's poured into the pan, with or without filling, and allowed to set. As a tortilla.

A flat stupid disc of egg with plain flat stupid ingredients that everyone always has. It would be harder to come up with an omelet dumber than this. Prepared ineptly as possible with eggs overcooked X5.

Since the history is murky I'll make up my own. My version is good as any. It all went down like this:

Phil Grassley, the cook at Buckhorn Exchange was the only man in Denver who could make an omelet. He was the only person who knew what the word meant. But he worked in a cow town. One associated with mining. The ingredients he had available were crudely basic.

One day Phil got sick.

The owner asked the busboy, "Do you know how to cook?"

The busboy said, "No."

The owner asked the busboy, "Do you learn quickly?"

Sensing an opportunity the busboy said, "Yes."

But that was a lie. This is the busboy at his best when put on the spot as the newest cook in Denver. The busboy winged it and since Denver population didn't know the difference between egg that is way overcooked and with plain Jane ingredients, and with nothing to compare and contrast, the omelet was never corrected. We always had this Boy Scout camp out hack version of an omelet.

The busboy's name was Ricardo Montaldo Estevez Consuelo but everyone called him Ricky.

"So, Ricky, how do you make an omelet?"

     "You get all the stuff and you chop it all up then you put it in a pan and turn on the stove then you break open eggs and scramble them all up then pour them in the pan then fold it in half then flip it on a plate."

Did I mention that Ricky is mentally handicapped?

He is a very enthusiastic worker.

Once he gets this cook thing nailed it could suit him the rest of his life.

Ricky did exactly as he said. Phil Grassley died of Sino Moon Moth infection and the knowledge of proper omelets at Buckhorn Exchange died with him. Ricky took his place. Ricky continued producing his unschooled version and people continued to love it.

When you make one of these Denver omelets you automatically think of a million ways to improve it;  a sauce, for example, tarragon or any other herb, any other cheese, recombination of vegetables, anything other than ham, say, shrimp, bacon or even hamburger. You think of improving technique. But Ricky did not. He stuck with what he knew. There he was at the Buckhorn Exchange in its beginning in the presence of outrageous wild protein and what does he pick? Ham. When he picks his pepper, what does he pick? Green bell pepper, the stupidest pepper of all.

Oh, I'm so used to eating elk and deer and yak and buffalo with pheasant and grouse and goose and puffins, with ostrich and iguana and boa constrictor and alligator and kangaroo that when I have the taste of boiled ham I just swoon.

It's exotic.

No. Ricky was retarded and this is the best he could do and it worked. Residents liked Ricky and encouraged him. Mine workers made sandwiches out of his omelets and took them into the mines for lunch. The Chinese railroad workers made them into egg foo young. Sheepherders made their own version with lamb, cattle ranchers made their own version with beef. Herpetologists made their own version with lizards. Cowboys wrapped their Denver omelets in a tortilla and ate them as they rode with extras in their saddlebags. The omelets are soft enough to be used as edible pillows to comfort disquieted children and yet abrasive enough to scrub the pots that cooked the beans.

Denver omelet is just one of those things that happened by way of absence of everything needed to do something properly. It was similar to living in Alaska today. Yes there is abundance all around but you have to go out there into it and create a civilization. The elements of Denver omelet exist on a plate by themselves just fine, but to chop them all up and enrobe them in egg is ... fancy. When there is nothing else like brie or lox or tarragon or gyros, bacon or jalapeño, when there are no other choices than onion and green bell pepper, cooked ham and cheese, and when you have no idea how to cook eggs, then a Denver omelet will do.

Denver omelet is among the rude things that people claim a place of origin. They're everywhere. Just this week I read about Detroit pizza. Every region has some weird food-peculiarity; Loco Moco, Hot Brown, chitlins, Hawaiian Haystack (Utah) and so on for endless examples.

This is the first omelet that I made. Back then at age eighteen I thought, "Gee, this is brilliant. The things people think of."

This is the last omelet that I made. The whole time I was thinking, "Man, this is dumb." 

buffalo prime rib, Buckhorn Exchange

This cost a million dollars. 

Possibly $43.00. I don't know. I didn't pay for it. My brother did. It was worth a million dollars to me so that's what I said.

This is what I saw from where I sat at Buckhorn Exchange, Denver.

Golden eagle. 

Looks like a crow from underneath, hanging like that from the ceiling.

I have to admit it's macabre. This is the stuff that nightmares are made. And so close to Halloween. Honestly, sitting there eating a steak from one of these animals is enough to turn one vegetarian. I can see how that happens.

It was Alona's desire to come here again. I think part of that might have been to show her two boys. We spent a long weekend together spanning Thursday to Monday and we ate at a lot of places and this one was best.

And we knew the whole thing came to a beautiful and peaceful soft landing, a very long car trip back and forth through Nebraska, and several tiring activities, including a wedding, when to the left of me in the restaurant booth and to the right of me, my dinner buddies, two little boys stretched out their bodies and slept.

Domo restaurant, Denver, Colorado

Bean and chard soup

Bean soup with Swiss chard. 

I realized my last batch like this with bacon turned out a lot better by the addition of scant sugar. It changed everything. Sugar changed the beans and chard from dull to bright, from plain thud and serious to child-like precocious. A small amount makes a big difference.

Buckhorn Exchange, Denver's oldest restaurant, has the best bean soup I've ever tasted. It's worth going just for that but it's not all you'll want once you get there. So well liked that the owner graciously and generously offer their recipe so you can make it at home.

When you go there, you must order this if only for a taste.

Oh goodness. I just realized they cook everything for eight hours. 

No to that.

It's very simple. The only flavoring is, 

* ham

* chicken broth

* onion

* liquid smoke

* salt/pepper, duh, there's always that.

So, a very simple recipe and that is why it is so satisfying. There are no carrots in there trying to add color or sneaking in vegetables, or perhaps sweetness, no celery that would complete a mirepoix,  no corn, no chiles, no tomato, no garlic, no bay, no coriander, no cilantro, no oregano, no turmeric, nothing exotic, nothing unusual, none of the customary suspects. 

Why do they use ham and chicken broth? For substance. For a base. They didn't have a ham bone for every batch of bean soup like we do. If they had more ham then they'd use it, but they don't so they use the next best thing, a substitute, something blank that will contribute substance but won't interfere with intrusive flavor. 

But we have a very good ham bone. A couple in fact. A ham joint. We have something they don't. Good as their bean soup is, and it is very good, ours will be better because ours will be loaded with substance, all that marrow, all that aspic, far more than their chicken broth can provide. Plus we'll have even more ham besides. And with chicken broth there is a broad range with their substance. The best most substantial I can have is my own chicken broth, the best I can buy is frozen, and nearby but that is not available to everyone. The next best is in cartons and the worst is in tins, and the worst of the worst in cubes, but this recipe does not specify what type of chicken broth to add other than 1 oz suggesting a chicken broth paste as chefs sometimes use. 

Why cook beans for eight hours? They're dry and they take long to soak. They will absorb the flavors in the liquid as they swell and cook.

We soak and swell our beans before starting. Soaking beans is the pre-start. They're soaked overnight in water and triple their bulk.

Our ham bone is pressure cooked on high to force out the marrow into the water. This is done within half an hour.

Our soaked beans cook with everything except chard under low pressure. The bones cook again with the beans so all the flavors get shoved into each other, by pressure the flavors exchange. This time low pressure.

The pressure pot opened again and the Swiss chard added to the pot. Heated a third time to lowest of pressures then turned off. This pressure pot uses much less electricity altogether, and heck of a lot less when compared with eight hours of bean cooking. The chard hardly cooks at all, but it does cook under brief pressure. Now it is done, completed and commingled within an hour and as if it had cooked a third of a day. 

*1/2 bag white beans (this bone could have flavored enough for 5 LBS or more beans)

* large onion diced

* 2 smashed garlic cloves, diced

* bay leaves

* 1 teaspoon sugar

* 1/3 teaspoon chile flakes

* 1/2 teaspoon cumin

This version is not a particularly beany soup. Here, beans share the glory with Swiss chard and especially with the honey baked ham. This soup is trifecta of soaring glory testament to bean cooperation, of bean-chard-ham symtriosis, and not one-dimensional homey bean goodness.