Wisconsin Foodie

– Luke Zahm: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: - Jackie Gennett: Bushel & Peck's is a retail store with a caf and a food processing facility, located in downtown Beloit, Wisconsin.

- Hey, Jackie, how's it going?

- Hey, how you doing?

Good.

– Luke: This place is beautiful.

– Jackie: Thank you, thank you.

– Luke: Are you making anything fun today?

– Jackie: Yeah, we're making hot sauce today.

– Luke: Can we go see it?

– Jackie: Sure.

Its name says it all, it's hot.

– Luke: Okay.

- This one is made out of the ghost pepper and nothing else.

And it's meant to be very hot, so this is gonna hurt.

Ready?

- Holy Ghost.

- It's hot.

Did you eat all of that?

- Yeah.

- Ugh.

- Ooh.

[sniffs] Oh, my God.

[both laughing] I am alive!

[gentle music] - Joan Neeno: Well, Lark is a small plate, craft cocktail-focused restaurant, and we really try to have international food and all kinds of different things.

We try to source as locally as we possibly can and be as seasonal as we possibly can, as well.

- Is the hot chicken really where it's at?

Because it looked like, when you see a cornbread puree, braised greens, pickles, honey, and chicken, like, that's my jam.

That's incredibly rich and satisfying.

Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

- The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie, and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering] Just look for our badge.

It's on everything we make.

- I'm going out to pasture with the cows this morning.

– Announcer: At Organic Valley, we're on a mission to save small family farms.

– Farmer: Tasting pretty good?

– Announcer: And you can join us.

– Farmer: [laughing] Girlfriend's on a mission.

- Organic Valley.

- Twenty-minute commutes.

Weekends on the lake.

Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.

Not to mention all the great food.

There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.

Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit "Swiss"consin and see where your beer's made.

- Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone.

Come for the adventure, stay for the memories.

Go wild in Wisconsin.

To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

– Luke: Additional support from the following underwriters.

[relaxing music] Also with the support of Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[upbeat music] We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.

We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

[sizzling] We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[glasses clinking] We are storytellers.

We are Wisconsin Foodie.

[slow jazz music] - I'm Jackie Gennett, and we are at the farm of Bushel & Peck's.

Bushel & Peck's is a retail store with a caf and a food processing facility located in downtown Beloit, Wisconsin.

But we're here in Monroe, Wisconsin right now.

So the farm is technically about 140 acres, and we farm on a little plot of five acres here, where we grow vegetables, primarily for use in our production kitchen.

Most of what we grow for production is hot peppers.

This is the cherry bomb pepper.

It makes great hot sauce.

It's our best hot sauce.

It's sweet and hot, so sweet and hot pepper and just a really different flavor than most, sort of bitter peppers.

It's got no bitterness to it.

I like to make hot sauces blended with different things.

Most like, commercial hot sauces are made exclusively out of hot peppers, but I find that you get a lot more flavor if you add something in, like a red bell pepper and a Fresno together makes a great sauce or habanero and carrot makes a great sauce.

So you're not just burning your tongue; you're actually eating something that's really delicious, in addition to being spicy.

Well, we're out here picking some peppers.

I'm kinda looking over the last of them to make sure we got all the ripe peppers, and then we are headed off to Beloit.

We're gonna make some hot sauce, we're gonna make some pepper mash, and we're gonna process a bunch of bell peppers.

Both Rich and I worked in various aspects of technology.

I worked in software development.

Rich worked in sort of the database, data analytics software side of things.

And not really exciting.

Very intellectual, but not fulfilling from a personal standpoint.

We decided that we wanted to have a farm and eventually leave the city, and just do something completely different.

We took a ride one day and drove through Green County and stumbled upon this farm.

– Rich Horbaczewski: I feel great every morning.

Every morning that I'm not getting in a car and driving to work is a wonderful morning.

My commute is walking from my house to the shed, get in my tractor, get it started, and doing chores.

And it's the beauty of it.

– Jackie: Our farm started sort of in the idyllic sense of, "Let's grow some vegetables and raise some chickens."

And what we found is that we literally couldn't sustain ourselves just by being farmers.

There was, for us, there was no way to do that.

And so expanding into retail and into, you know, bringing in other producers' goods seemed like a really good idea, and it was.

We sort of almost accidentally took that step into food processing.

And once we took that, we knew that that was where we were going to earn a living, through local foods and value-adding local foods.

So that was our future.

That was 12 years ago, and we haven't stopped since then.

We have about 80 different products now and we also work with a lot of other farms to make products for them as well.

We had been making things like jam and pickles and really pickling everything.

And I said, "Why not hot sauce?

Why are we not making hot sauce?"

It really wasn't a thing for me to make, but I had discovered different types of recipes when I'd visited CentralAmerica, in particular Belize.

We started by making a Belizean-influenced habanero hot sauce.

Sold that at a couple of farmers' markets, and again, just completely sold out of all of it.

And then thought, "Well, let's keep going.

Let's make another one, let's make another one."

Then we started looking at different peppers, and farmers started bringing us different peppers.

Our most popular sauce is Cherry Bomb hot sauce.

And that was created and influenced by the fact that someone had grown 3,000 pounds of peppers that they didn't need.

So, and at that time, we had a surplus of garlic, so we brought those two together and eventually ended up with our most popular hot sauce.

Now we make about, I wanna say it's 16 different types of hot sauce, and many different types of peppers are used in those.

Okay, let's start getting everything ready to get loaded.

Yeah, so we wanna make sure that the garlic gets in the truck and gets to the store today, along with the cherry bombs that are over there being picked right now.

'Cause we're making hot sauce and pickling the cherry bombs today, so.

[gentle acoustic guitar music] - Hey, Jackie, how's it going?

- Hey, how you doing?

Good.

- This place is beautiful.

– Jackie: Thank you, thank you.

– Luke: Are you making anything fun today?

– Jackie: Yeah, we're making hot sauce today.

– Luke: Can we go see it?

– Jackie: Sure.

– Luke: Man.

– Jackie: Making some hot sauce in there.

– Luke: Look at that.

– Jackie: That's the Cherry Bomb hot sauce.

– Luke: It smells delicious.

It smells sweet, but it smells really, really rich and luxurious.

So then, when it gets done here, I see the pitcher there.

- Yep.

- What, we just basically pour from one to the other?

– Jackie: It's real high-tech here.

We pour the pitcher into a gallon bottle, and the gallon bottle has a nozzle on it.

We invert the bottle and fill the containers.

– Luke: Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

- All right, so in these, we have fermentation going on.

– Luke: Love this, whoa.

– Jackie: In there, we've got those guys waiting.

- The bags of water on top is a super clever... - So the bag of water is actually a bag of brine.

- Oh, nice.

- So that if the bag of water breaks, it doesn't ruin your whole batch.

- Awesome.

- The bag of water is great, though.

- Yeah.

- And I do that even at home with a Mason jar.

If I'm making something at home, I'll put a little baggie of water in there 'cause it's easy to get.

– Luke: Why do you find it important to ferment the chilies when you're making a hot sauce?

– Jackie: Well, when you ferment, it makes it more acidic, right?

If you're fermenting something, then you're reducing the pH, making it more acidic, so you get some flavor from that.

And fermenting a pepper gives it a certain flavor that you can't just get from cooking it, right?

So you're really creating layers of flavor in a hot sauce.

- So you're adding complexity.

- Yes, for sure.

- Which is awesome.

And I can say that even the smell of this is very tantalizing.

- Yeah.

- I mean, it could just be, like, all the aromas around me, but I specifically-- - No, that barrel smells great.

You open it, it smells, you can't quite describe it, right?

- Yeah - Yeah.

- Yeah, exactly, no, it's delicious.

I can't wait to taste some of these.

Do you have some hot sauces we can try?

– Jackie: Yeah, we sure do.

– Luke: Cool.

All right, so where do we start this bad boy?

– Jackie: Cherry Bomb, the little darling of Bushel & Peck's.

That's the hot sauce everyone wants and puts on everything.

So, you ready?

– Luke: Yeah, I think so.

– Jackie: This one, I eat like soup.

– Luke: You eat this like soup?

– Jackie: Yeah; you're gonna love this one.

– Luke: I am gonna love this one.

– Jackie: All right.

- Cherry Bomb, ready?

- Yep, go.

- Here we go, sister.

Mm, I like that.

You get some smokiness there, like the chipotle and adobo.

– Jackie: Uh-huh.

– Luke: You get a little bit of that garlic, that smoke; I love the consistency.

Like, it's got its own zhizh, it's got body.

- Yep.

And I think that that eats really nicely.

I'd love to make like a mayo or even a Hollandaise.

Whip that in.

- It's good on pizza, too.

- Is it really?

- Really good on pizza.

- Awesome.

Okay, next up.

- All right, we're going on.

– Luke: Belizean.

– Jackie: Belizean Habanero.

– Luke: Have you been to Belize?

- I have been to Belize and I've enjoyed the food there.

One thing that they're really known for is using carrots in hot sauce, using a lot of lime, and habanero is definitely the pepper of Belize.

So I kind of worked with some friends there and tried their recipes, tried my recipe, and ultimately came up with one that we really liked, and was our first hot sauce that we ever created.

[electronic music] - That's lovely.

- Very different.

- Very high acidity content, right?

- Lots of lime.

- Yep, so acid forward; it's actually... And it gives the impression of being cooling first.

- Mm-hmm, and it's not.

- Yeah, on the back end, now as I'm speaking, and pushing it around my mouth, that heat gradually rises, but it's sneaky.

The thing I love about habaneros is when they finish, they finish clean, so you get that really intense blast of heat, but then it kind of dissipates on your palate, which leaves you wanting more.

- Yep.

- Cool.

- Okay, are you ready to keep going?

- Yeah!

- Let's try the Rocket Hot Sauce.

So this is made from a pepper called Amazing, which is grown, we grow it on our farm.

And we smoke it and then turn it into the hot sauce in this cute little bottle.

- That's adorable.

- And this one I like a lot because it's a smoke, like, I really love the smoked pepper in it.

– Luke: Mm-hmm, ready?

– Jackie: Ready.

– Luke: Here we go, cheers.

– Jackie: Smoking.

- Mm, it's delicious.

- Thanks.

I mean, it's sweet, you get a little bit of sweetness.

Obviously, it has that consistency piece there, but that smokiness and that sweetness really marry well together.

A little bit of acidity.

- There's no sugar whatsoever in that, so-- - That's wild.

- That sweetness always comes from the pepper.

- Cool; you guys are masterful at this.

– Jackie: Let's see, Holy Ghost.

– Luke: Holy Ghost.

- Its name says it all; it's hot.

- Okay.

- This one is made out of the ghost pepper and nothing else.

And it's meant to be very hot, so, this is gonna hurt.

Ready?

Oh, that's a lot.

– Luke: Let's see.

– Jackie: Okay, here we go.

- Here we go.

- All right.

- One, two, three, Holy Ghost.

- It's hot.

You ate all of that?

- Yeah.

- Ugh.

- Whoo!

[sniffs] So I'm trying to articulate my way through this one.

The beginning parts, you get a little bit of that acidity, you get that rich, kind of delicious brightness with the pepper, but as this thing goes, it's still creeping up there.

It's still going.

It's like, in the back of my throat and now it's kind of pervading all the way through my palate.

- Is it up your nose?

- [sniffs] Little bit.

- Yeah.

- Little bit; what else is in the Holy Ghost?

- Just ghost peppers.

[laughing] - I like it.

- And vinegar, we put vinegar in there, too, and salt.

- That's super delicious.

- Ooh, hot.

- Yeah, it kind of keeps going; it's still going.

- Woo!

- You all right?

You gonna make it, sister?

- They're laughing at us back there.

[Luke laughing] - Yeah, this stuff is good; I like that.

I can feel my gums pulsing.

- Use that as an ingredient.

- Use it as an ingredient in what?

[both laughing] Making Satan blush, that's what it is.

[Jackie laughing] Oh, my God.

[both laughing] I am alive, right here, downtown Beloit!

I like hot sauce that accentuates the food around it.

I can say honestly that the Holy Ghost would be great in a mayo-based sauce.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Served over there.

[both laughing] - It's an ingredient.

- It is an ingredient, yeah, it's delicious.

Put on, like, some tacos, that'd be great, really legit.

- We don't expect that people will eat it off of a spoon.

- So Jackie, thank you so much for your time, walking us through your operation.

I gotta say that I'm really excited to see these in a retail situation.

I've heard that there's a place close to here... - Jackie: Yep, if you go up to Janesville and head downtown, you can go to Lark.

They have a market and the restaurant and the sandwich shop.

It's worth visiting all of them.

– Luke: Awesome; I've heard a lot about Lark and the Sandwich Bar and the market as well.

So I can't wait to check out downtown J-Town.

It's been a hot minute since I've been downtown Janesville, and I gotta say, I am pleasantly surprised.

There's been a lot of revitalization here in this community, and today, we're on our way to meet Joan and Richard Neeno, owners of Lark Market and the Sandwich Bar, to learn about how they're revitalizing downtown J-Town, one plate at a time.

– Joan Neeno: Well, Lark is a small plate, craft cocktail-focused restaurant, and we really try to have international food and all kinds of different things.

We try to source as locally as we possibly can and be as seasonal as we possibly can, as well.

The name Lark, well, obviously there's a bird, but Lark is also something that means to have a fun adventure.

And it's something that Richard and I kind of feel strongly about.

We've traveled a lot and had a lot of food adventures.

It's fun, right?

I mean, when you have that first taste of something and it blows your mind, that's an amazing experience, and that's something we wanted to share.

And that's kind of the concept, really, the base concept of this restaurant, is getting people to try new things, to kind of expand their palate.

- We were told that the kind of restaurant we wanted to open would never work in Janesville.

In fact, people embraced our menu and the differences from what they could find anywhere else.

We've always prided ourselves on superior service and great food.

– Joan: And cocktails.

– Richard: And great cocktails, correct.

– Joan: Lark Market sprung up during the middle of the pandemic.

It was kind of a necessity in some ways.

So the market was our way of getting our culinary staff back in business.

They cooked a lot of heat and eats and dips and things like that that we could sell at the market.

And people felt more comfortable coming in and taking things home at that point.

It was June of 2020.

And then, we basically started filling it with all the things that we love from around the area that no one in Janesville was selling.

– Richard: It's all about trying to provide people with the best from nearby that they may not be aware of.

– Joan: And that's why we got involved, also, with Bushel & Peck's out of Beloit.

Jackie and her crew there are amazing.

That's all organic and it's all locally grown just to the south of us.

And so, at the market, we carry a lot of her products.

- So Janesville, I always had this impression that Janesville was kind of a blue-collar type of city.

How big of a city is Janesville?

- 65,000 people.

- Give me a little bit of the perspective.

You've seen it change so much.

- Mm-hmm, yeah, the downtown hollowed out in the late '70s as everything moved out towards the interstate, and it didn't start regrowing until not much before we opened.

There were a couple things that came in shortly before we, four years ago, and it's only in the last five years, I'd say, that downtown has really become revitalized.

And right now, there's great enthusiasm and momentum for the development of downtown.

- I can see why, when you've got stuff like kimchi mac, or my favorite, the hot chicken.

– Richard: Mm-hmm.

– Luke: Is the hot chicken really where it's at?

Because it looked like, when you see a cornbread puree, braised greens, pickles, honey, and chicken, like, that's my jam.

– Richard: It's a half chicken, spatchcocked, and I dare you to eat it all; it's really good.

– Luke: Challenge accepted.

– Richard: Bravo.

– Luke: Is that cool?

– Richard: We can bring it on.

– Luke: All right, sounds great.

Hey, nice to meet you, brother.

[gentle music] Oh, man.

Oh, wow, look at this.

– Richard: Half a spatchcocked fried chicken, hot chicken, and our blue cheese-stuffed olives.

– Luke: Thank you so much.

– Richard: You're most welcome, I hope you enjoy.

– Luke: Hot chicken, who doesn't love that?

Mmm.

Cornbread puree, here we go.

That's incredibly rich and satisfying.

On the backside, I get a little bit of heat off of this.

So I get a little bit of crunch off that chicken skin, which is exactly where you want it to be.

With a spatchcocked bird, that means that they take all the bones out and you basically press it flat.

I've never actually had a cornbread puree before.

You get some of the essence of the corn, some of the earthiness, a little bit of that sweetness, but it pairs so nicely with the honey.

It's a natural match.

- How you doing there, Luke?

- I'm great; this is delicious, thank you, man.

- Good, good; you still got a ways to go, buddy.

- Yeah, I know, I wanna make sure that I save room.

I wanna check out the sandwich shop as well.

– Richard: Ah, well, that's a worthy reason.

[Luke laughing] - But I can tell you with honesty, that if I didn't have that on my docket for the day, this would be gone.

- Well, I'm glad; that means you liked it.

– Luke: Thank you so much.

– Richard: Pleasure, thank you.

– Luke: This is a delight.

– Richard: Wonderful.

– Luke: Thanks.

– Joan: Sandwich Bar was something we've been talking about since '19, when we bought that building.

And we were kind of inspired by a restaurant called Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans, which is known for its really wildly creative sandwiches and kind of their... attitude.

[laughs] And so it's been in the works for a couple years.

- So this is actually only a couple doors down from Lark.

What is this place in contrast to Lark?

- Well, Lark is finer dining.

It's where you go for a date night.

This is where you go for a sandwich at lunch or dinner.

It's very casual.

We really try to think of sandwiches from a chef perspective.

– Luke: Sure.

– Joan: So fresh ingredients, everything is house-made, and just creative, the flavors are creative.

You're not gonna find a plain ham and cheese here, which disappoints some of our customers.

– Luke: Sure.

– Joan: But, yeah, we're trying to do stuff that really has a chef's perspective.

– Luke: I was kind of taken by the idea of the Jolene.

– Joan: Yeah.

– Luke: The country fried chicken, pimento cheese, Alabama white sauce, and lettuce.

Is that a good sambo too?

- Well, yeah, the Jolene is truly a vixen of a sandwich.

– Luke: Aw, that sounds delicious.

I've never met a Jolene that I didn't like.

So I might put my order in for that.

Is that okay?

– Joan: Okay, that's totally fine.

Let me go back to the kitchen and we'll get you one started.

– Luke: Thanks a lot, Joan.

– Joan: You're welcome.

– Luke: That is a serious sandwich.

I am a little intimidated.

So this is country fried chicken, pounded chicken, lightly fried, looks like it's got a little crispy flour coating on the outside.

Pimento cheese, this is a staple in the South.

The crunchy lettuce on top.

This thing also has one more layer of Alabama white sauce.

Oh, my gosh, that eats like straight hedonism.

So in this sandwich, you get a really nice, like, fluffy potato bun.

The crunch of the chicken, the saltiness of the chicken.

Then you get that rich, rich element of pimento cheese, and the Alabama white sauce on top of the lettuce really adds a nice, acidic spike.

So all that richness feels really, really balanced on your palate.

So having two chicken entres in one block is really a fantastic showcase of the diversity of chicken.

As a chef, I say that chicken is kind of like the blank canvas.

It can take just about any flavor profile you throw at it.

Across the street at Lark, you feel all that richness in the cornbread puree, the richness of the greens, the lovely gentle breading on that chicken, really kind of takes it to this fine dining element.

But this, this has all those pieces of like, soul-hugging, fortifying.

I can take on a summer day or I can take on the depths of winter with a few bites of this.

Janesville is rebuilding itself through its artistic identity, and that makes us more resilient as we move into the future.

It's an emerging food hub.

I know for myself, those are exactly the type of destinations I want to pursue when I'm looking for a place to eat somewhere in Wisconsin.

[groovy jazz music] - Arthur: That's great.

Aw, perfect timing.

- I love hot sauce that mesh, meshes.

I love hot sauce that... [babbles] [laughing] I love hot sauce that lets me not feel my lips.

So when I'm trying to do a line, I can't feel it.

Do you know the difference between jam and jelly?

- Yes, jam is made with fruit.

- Okay.

- And jelly is made with juice.

- You know, that's a commonly accepted idea, but the real difference is, is you can't pump up the jelly.

Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

- The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie, and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering] Just look for our badge.

It's on everything we make.

- I'm going out to pasture with the cows this morning.

– Announcer: At Organic Valley, we're on a mission to save small family farms.

– Farmer: Tasting pretty good?

– Announcer: And you can join us.

– Farmer: [laughing] Girlfriend's on a mission.

– Announcer: Organic Valley.

- Twenty-minute commutes.

Weekends on the lake.

Warm welcomes and exciting career opportunities.

Not to mention all the great food.

There's a lot to look forward to in Wisconsin.

Learn more at InWisconsin.com.

- Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit "Swiss"consin and see where your beer's made.

- Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone.

Come for the adventure, stay for the memories.

Go wild in Wisconsin.

To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site, high-quality butchering and packaging, The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore: Know your farmer, love your butcher.

– Luke: Additional support from the following underwriters.

[relaxing music] Also with the support of Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, where you'll find past episodes and special segments just for you.

[whimsical music]