Brown on the Air: Mom's Cooking

My weekly commentary for Saturday's "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE is entitled "High Heat" and talks about a couple kitchen stories and life lessons in honor of my grandma on this upcoming Mother's Day. The call-in show will discuss the nostalgic topic of "Mom's Cooking" while sharing great music and probably a recipe or two. It sounds like John Bauer will be filling in as host this week. Tune in between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday, May 10. It should be fun. You can pick up KAXE on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or stream it online at www.kaxe.org.

Taking requests: Bob Dylan Fudge Bars

Over the next few days I'll be responding to questions or requests that I've been getting via e-mail. The next few days will include idle speculation on local retail developments and the Minnesota Steel project.

Today I'll clear out an old request, the posting of the recipe for the Bob Dylan Fudge Bars that I baked on "WDSE Cooks" several weeks ago. This recipe was billed as "Bob Dylan Fudge Bars" even though the more accurate name is for Dylan's mother "Beatty Zimmerman." She had contributed the recipe to an old community cookbook where the folks at Dylan Days found it. As I said on the show, these are the bars that we presume a young Bobby Zimmerman would have enjoyed while growing up in Hibbing. I'd describe them as denser than cake but more like cake than fudge. Is that confusing enough for you? I may have baked these as a promotional ploy for Dylan Days, but they're good, too. Enjoy!

Beatty Zimmerman's Fudge Bars

INGREDIENTS:
1/3 c. butter
1c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 t.
vanilla
1/4 t. salt
6T. cocoa or 2 pkgs. cocoa bake
1 c. cake flour
1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 c. milk
1/4 c. chopped nuts, optional
Chocolate frosting

DIRECTIONS
Cream butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt until fluffy. Add chocolate to well-creamed mixture. Hand mix the flour, baking powder and milk to cream mixture. Pour mixture in a greased and floured 9" by 9" or 8' by 10" pan. Place in 350 degree pre-heated oven. When shrunk from sides of pan remove from oven. When cool, frost with your favorite chocolate frosting. SERVES 20

I am a cooking fraud (the column)

This is my weekly column for Sunday, March 16, 2008 published in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. I archive my columns at my writing page.

I am a cooking fraud (and almost got away with it)
By Aaron J. Brown

If you missed it, I recently appeared on “WDSE Cooks” on Channel 8, northern Minnesota’s public television station. For a lot of people, the image of me in an apron on the TV came as a shock. An encore of the show, titled “C is for Comfort Food” will run again today. I baked fudge bars. More specifically I baked Beatty Zimmerman’s fudge bars, which were dubbed “Bob Dylan fudge bars” on the show in honor of the late Hibbing woman’s famous son.

It was a strange, winding road that brought me to the world of televised cooking. See, I’m involved with Dylan Days in Hibbing, an annual event celebrating Dylan and the arts community of northern Minnesota. (Disclosure: Dylan Days will be held May 22-25, with more information available at www.dylandays.com.) (Disclosure Disclosure: That last disclosure was an inappropriate excuse to plug Dylan Days … May 22-25 … d’oh!).

So when I was e-mailing a producer at Channel 8, “The Ocho” as the kids call it, I told her that the Dylan Days group had some of Bob Dylan’s mom’s old recipes. Maybe the cooking show would want them? (Har-har-har, small talk, is what I was thinking). Well, not only did she want Beatty’s fudge bar recipe, she wanted me to bake it … on TV. Apparently, they wanted to fight two widely held stereotypes: 1) that only women can cook well and, 2) that you have to know something about cooking to appear on a television program devoted to cooking.

Since the marketing department of Dylan Days can’t afford to buy a used Kia, much less air time in Duluth, I figured I’d do the show to mention the event. (Oh, is that too honest? Does that break the PR code of silence? OK, then I did it because I love to try new things).

The show went well, and my thanks and kudos go out to host Juli Kellner, all the good people at Channel 8, and the many skilled “real” cooks who shared their recipes. In the week that followed the original airing of the show dozens of folks told me they saw the show and even tried making the bars themselves. Hey, the bars were pretty good.

If the crushing fame of appearing on a local TV cooking show wasn’t enough, I also ended up in the “Taste” section of the Duluth News-Tribune. (Disclosure: The Duluth News-Tribune is a competitor of this newspaper and thus, you should never ever read it. Not even as a joke. Not even if an old copy gets stuck to your leg on a windy day and the front page story is about your long lost father. Not even then). The story featured several of the cooks who appeared on the program talking about their comfort foods. Now, remember, I was there to bake something that we presumed to be Bob Dylan’s comfort food. I had only learned the recipe a few weeks before the show. So when I was asked about MY comfort food, here is what was quoted in the Duluth story by Candace Renalls:

“For Aaron Brown of Bovey, comfort food is Kraft macaroni and cheese, just like he had with hot dogs as a boy. ‘Not the good homemade stuff,’ he said of his preferred macaroni and cheese, ‘but the cheap stuff from the store.’”

I have to imagine that real cooks and bakers – and I know there are thousands of you reading this right now – see a quote like that and shudder. Hibbing Daily Tribune publisher Wanda Moeller shook her head when I stopped by the office afterward. She said something, too. I don’t remember the words she used. I think “travesty” was one. “Assault on justice” may have in there, too.

Anyway, I’ve fessed up now. I am a cooking fraud. I do enjoy fudge bars though, and it feels good to bring more of them into the world.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Brown on the Air: Souvenirs and 'C is for Comfort Food'

I am a triple media threat this weekend. Jump back!

Old Media (TV): I will be baking fudge bars using a recipe from Bob Dylan's mom's personal file on "C is for Comfort Food" on WDSE Channel 8 in Northern Minnesota from 1-4:30 p.m. this Saturday, March 1. I promise to tell you the story of how that happened next week.

Older Media (Radio): As usual, an essay of mine will be featured on Saturday's "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE, streaming online at http://www.kaxe.org/. The topic for the call-in/music show this week is "Souvenirs: Things that remind us of trips and special times as we battle cabin fever." The show airs from 10 a.m. to noon on KAXE.

Oldest Media (newspaper): My column runs as usual in the Hibbing Daily Tribune this Sunday. I'll post it here over the weekend. It's about the "Tobacco Monologues" we have seen cropping up around Minnesota bars, hastily produced "plays" that are used to defy the new state smoking ban by exploiting a loophole for theatrical productions that use cigarettes.

New Media? This is it. It's happening RIGHT NOW. Convergence, baby. I'm still broke, but damn if I'm not converged.

I am a cooking fraud, but no one is calling me on it ... yet

Sometimes in life, strange opportunities will come your way. My philosophy is to always embrace them, no matter how bizarre. This strategy is the only possible explanation for why I will appear on a cooking show this weekend and was featured in the "Taste" section of the March 27 Duluth News-Tribune.

A couple weeks ago I recorded a segment where I share the late Beatty Zimmerman's fudge bar recipe with the viewing audience of the WDSE "Cooks" program (PBS, Channel 8 in northern Minnesota). The segment is entitled "C is for Comfort Food." Who is Beatty Zimmerman? None other than the mother of one Robert Zimmerman, known to the world as Bob Dylan.

I'll share more about this experience in a future post, but read today's article by Candace Renalls for a "taste" of why I was there.

Check out this quote, where I show how out of touch with cooking I am:

For Aaron Brown of Bovey, comfort food is Kraft macaroni and cheese, just like he had with hot dogs as a boy. “Not the good homemade stuff,” he said of his preferred macaroni and cheese, “but the cheap stuff from the store.”

I talked to a real cook today, someone who tries hard to achieve glory in the kitchen, and she practically wept that I was profiled in "Taste."

Ha! I'm a fraud and I'm getting away with it!

PS: I've already gotten one comment on this blog from someone who said they liked the "Bob Dylan fudge bars." Let me know if anyone else tried it. As inept as I am in the kitchen, these bars are pretty simple and good.