dsm Dish - February 28, 2025

On Oscar night, drink in the drama at the Varsity

By Hailey Evans

Every year during the Academy Awards ceremony, all the movie stars, producers and other Hollywood bigwigs gather in the City of Angels to celebrate their talents, while the rest of us watch from home and post our thoughtful reactions and well-informed critiques on social media.

Thankfully, the Varsity Cinema’s annual watch party promises something a bit more exciting. Starting at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, the ceremony will be broadcast in both theaters with hosted commentary, interactive games during commercial breaks, and a voting for the best-dressed guests. Dough Co. Pizza will provide pizza, naturally, and a few other curated bites.

But the real stars of the show might be the themed cocktails, handcrafted by house manager Miranda Tanner. This year, her drink menu includes three drinks based on Best Picture nominees.

Water of Life: gin, creme de violette, lemon juice, simple syrup and Blue Curacao, garnished with dried pineapple. Inspired by “Dune: Part Two,” Tanner mixed a gin cocktail with a Blue Curacao float that gives the drink a slight gradient, like the way water looks in a pool. The dried pineapple slices look a little like sandworms coming up from your glass.

The Activator: Midori, lemon juice and triple sec. This drink riffs on a classic cocktail called “the Japanese Slipper,” which makes use of Midori, the bright green melon liqueur. Tanner’s inspiration was the mysterious green drug Demi Moore uses in “The Substance” to make herself look younger.

Negative Space: reposado tequila, Averna, lemon juice and ginger simple syrup, garnished with candied ginger. Averna is Tanner’s favorite amaro, so she paired its rich orange and licorice notes with a ginger simple syrup. She used blocks of candied ginger to replicate architecture in “The Brutalist.”

Tanner has been ramping up the Varsity’s regular cocktail menu for nearly a year to offer patrons a little something extra. “I’ve been doing a lot of research and reading books on cocktails because I want to make drinks that taste good but are also layered and complex,” she said. “They’re a fun accent to the movies.”

She said it’s a challenge to concoct new cocktails for unreleased movies, when she sees only the trailers. She gathers whatever clues she can find in advance, so the new drinks are ready to be poured on opening night. “It can be hard with movies with really vague promo,” she said, “but it’s really fun.”
Tickets are still available for Sunday’s watch party at varsitydesmoines.com.

Quick Bites

Lesley Rish, the woman behind the mega-stuffed Oh High Cookies, recently announced she’s converted her garage into a commercial kitchen space, where she plans to continue to bake her sweet treats for wholesale and catering, and host events and collaborations with other businesses. To inaugurate the new kitchen, she will host a pop-up homage to her former East Village restaurant, Dumpling Darling, on March 8.

Hotori Market, a new boutique concept from Nam Ho of Horizon Line and Torri Myers, will open in March next door to the Walnut Street coffee shop to sell a variety of kitchen and hosting items.

dsm Dish contributor Wini Moranville recently posted a tantalizing post on her independent Substack, “Dining Well in DSM.” She rounded up five dishes in Des Moines she “can’t stop thinking about,” including the city’s best under-$25 steak and most opulent seafood dish. Now we can’t stop thinking about them, either.

The Iowa Beef Council has opened voting for its annual “Best Burger” award. Cast a vote (and get ideas) on this list.

Lachele’s Fine Foods opened Thursday in Highland Park. Check out more recent and upcoming openings on our handy Restaurant Radar.

The Des Moines Register's latest list of 10 “hottest new restaurants in the Des Moines metro” includes quite a mix, from Arcadia in Polk City to What Dak Korean Fried Chicken in West Des Moines.

Events

March 7: The Wine, Food & Beer Showcase offers samples from more than 30 area restaurants, caterers, wineries, breweries and distilleries at the downtown Marriott. All proceeds from the event, which started in 1985, support the Des Moines Metro Opera’s statewide education and community engagement programs.

March 14: Pie Day is inspired by math (pi equals 3.14) and the best kind of circles. Celebrate by baking your own or grabbing a slice from one of the talented bakers around the metro, including Deb Cazavilan (Wooden Spoon Homemade Pies), Rachelle Long (Chellie’s Sugar Shack) and Lana Shope (Pies and Pastries by Lana).

March 20: Savor Moxie, the monthly five-course dinner event at Moxie Kitchen + Events, takes place on the third Thursday of every month. Beware: This month’s theme is “Ides of March.”

March 28: A Southern-style Seafood Boil will wash up on the Rollins Mansion terrace, complete with shrimp, andouille sausage, crawfish and even corn on the cob, plus music from The Other Brothers.

April 11: A Surf & Turf Dinner at the Rollins Mansion offers four courses of delicacies from the Artisanal Food Co., paired with wine, in the historic home’s ballroom.

April 26: Winefest’s Vino in the Village takes over the East Village for an afternoon of samples, scavenger-hunt style. Pick up a glass and a map at check-in and stroll through participating stores to taste wines from around the world.

Mardi Gras and the magic of fats

By Mary Jane Miller

As you may know, Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” in French. For Catholics and others who observe the Christian calendar, it’s traditionally the last chance to enjoy fatty foods and red meat before the 40 days of Lent that lead to Easter.

Since this year’s Mardi Gras arrives next week, on March 4, let’s take a closer look at the holiday’s key ingredient.

In any dish, fats carry the flavors of other ingredients. When the flavors of garlic, onions and spices are suspended in fat, they hang out on your tongue in a splendid, unctuous sort of way. But the fats themselves have a wonderful, subtle flavor of their own — and each kind is different.

Cultured butter, for example, is flavorful, expensive and hard to find. Making my own had never occurred to me until my brother once brought me seven quarts of soon-to-expire heavy cream he’d purchased for 99 cents each. Here’s how you do it: Add two tablespoons of cultured buttermilk to the quart right in the carton, give it a shake and leave it at room temperature for at least 24 hours and up to a week. (The longer you leave it, the tangier it gets.) Pour the cream into a food processor or a stand mixer and whip it until grainy bits start swirling around in buttermilk. Then dump the whole thing into a strainer and catch the buttermilk in a bowl. It’s great for cooking. Rinse the butter with cold water, knead it to push out any remaining milk, and when the water runs clear, you’re done. You can knead a quarter-teaspoon of salt into it, if you like. I shape mine into quarter-pound balls and wrap them in plastic. Butter keeps about two months in the refrigerator or a year in the freezer.

Schmaltz comes from chicken and duck fats. They’re both luscious. I keep a Ziploc bag in the freezer to collect the fatty gobs and unneeded skin I pull off when I’m preparing chicken. (My husband calls this “the bag of carnage.”) A pound of fat and skin will make about one and a half cups of schmaltz. To render the fat, place the trimmings in a saucepan and barely cover it with cold water. Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the fat is clear and the skins are golden brown. The water evaporates. This can take about an hour, so I finish it in a 400-degree oven. The crispy bits, called “gribenes,” are a tasty snack when salted and good on salads. Strain the fat into jars and keep it up to six months in the fridge or a year in the freezer. Duck fat can be made the same way, but duck is a rare treat at my house, so I usually just save the rendered fat from the pan of a roast duck.

Tallow is beef fat, and lard is pork fat. We often buy pork and beef from local farmers and say “yes” to the fat. I also buy raw fats from the meat locker in Milo. Many people have good luck rendering the trimmed fat from briskets, too, and both are rendered the same way. Cube or grind the cold raw fat. Spread it in a roasting pan and roast it, uncovered, for about 2 hours at 325 degrees. You want the fat to fully render but not brown. Browning gives the fat a savory toasted flavor. It’s not bad, but it’s less desirable for baked goods. You can make cracklings by returning the strained bits to the oven to bake until they’re brown and crispy. Strain the lard or tallow into jars and refrigerate it for up to six months or freeze it for up to a year. Technically, rendered fats are shelf stable, but they stay in better condition at cooler temperatures.

So now what? All of these fats make stellar fried potatoes. McDonald’s fried its french fries in tallow until 1990; now the company uses 19 ingredients to replicate that flavor. I like to use half lard and half butter in my pie crust and biscuits. Schmaltz is wonderful for roasting vegetables. Using hot schmaltz to make mayonnaise in place of oil cooks the eggs a bit, making the emulsification last longer and taste better. Also, you can fry a slice of bread in chicken fat for the best ever toast under a fried egg.

Of course, if this is all too much, you can always just buy it. Skip the shelf-stable hydrogenated lard; it’s just not the same. Gateway Market has nice jars of duck fat and tallow. And you can buy lard from the meat counter at most Mexican grocery stores; ask for “mateca de cerdo.”