A dinner to remember at Chez Winkelman
BRAINERD, Minn. - I have eaten in some of the finest restaurants in this country, as well as having to fight the flies off my food in quite a number of dumps located on the side roads of America. I once went on a five-state quest to find the best biscuits and gravy, only to discover this precursor to a heart attack was served on a platter in Mundelein. And that stuff was as good as anything served in Alabama.
And then there are the wild game dinners shared with friends who uncorked the wine, tossed the salad, and then spread the light, never-clogging artery dressing over north-country wild rice.
But this dinner was a tad different.
Kris Winkelman came into the relationship not knowing whether to sauté or filet. Because she was married to a guy who has become the most widely recognized outdoor television personality in the country, Babe Winkelman that is, it was only natural for her to establish her own slice of limelight.
Kris quickly became an expert in her own right when it came to being on camera while showing viewers her kitchen masterpieces. Every week she appears in "Kris' Kitchen" near the end of Babe's fishing and hunting shows.
Prior to my arrival here in Brainerd, Babe called me and suggested I bring my appetite along when I showed up at his front door recently.
"Kris is going to knock your socks off with a special dinner," he declared.
After I hung up the telephone, I allowed my mind to travel back to the late 1950s and the frequent visits to Chicago's Café Bohemia with my father. It was there I had my first taste of bear meat.
And so it began, the dinner up north that is, at Chez Winkelman. We first "decanted" a bottle of Green Acre Mike's homemade wine and then dove head-on in to the salad course. Roast potatoes found their way to the table, followed by the piece de résistance, marinated black-tail deer filets straight from the outdoor grill.
Over a more than four-decades-long stewardship in this outdoor business, I have supped on all sorts of God's creatures. I used to rank caribou and moose as my top favorites of the antlered variety until I sat down at the Winkelman family table.
I forgot how Kris prepared the meat, but I will declare the filets were better and more tender than some of the steaks I've consumed in many of the finer Chicago chop houses.
Babe and Kris market their own variety of premium seasonings; fish and game mixes; jerky seasonings, as well as marinades and dipping sauces.
The blacktail deer filets came home from an Alaskan hunt, and were carefully wrapped until ready for use.
When she does her segment on the shows, the taping crew shows up at the house and sets up right in the kitchen. As soon as she gets her cue she goes into her recipes and subsequently causes a Pavlov reflex of drooling to ripple around North America when the show hits the air.
As dinner progressed Babe was constantly watching me devour my filet so as to catch my reaction. His face telegraphed a whole bunch of pride when I told those gathered that this was one of, if not the best, wild game dinners I had ever encountered. Thanks goodness he picked up the check.