Michael Crane’s quest for a perfect pastrami on rye started six months ago after he ordered the standard Jewish deli classic while enjoying lunch with his wife.
Eager to relish a sandwich of mouthwatering, smoked, cured, and spiced brisket piled high on slices of sturdy, slightly earthy rye bread, Crane was disappointed when served a pale imitation.
“I essentially got lunch meat on Wonder Bread,” he said. “It was terrible.”
After watching YouTube videos and tinkering with recipes, the founder of Crane Brewing found himself on an unexpected culinary journey he dubbed Yiddish Yummies. A series of cooking classes and sold-out pop-ups have been providing an outlet to perfect recipes for such iconic comfort foods as pastrami, bagels, bialy, blintzes, kugel, mandelbread and tzimmes.
On a recent afternoon, Crane sliced 150 pounds of richly marbled pastrami and packaged 40 fragrant loaves of rye bread made with organic flour grown in Kansas and milled at Marion Milling in the West Bottoms.
“There’s not a really good place in KC to get Jewish food,” said Mindy Riley, who is Jewish and the owner of Olive Tree, an Overland Park gourmet store that is providing encouragement and a platform for pickups.
Crane’s classes include detailed recipe booklets with step-by-step photos for class attendees to repeat the pastrami process at home. Of course, not everyone has the time to commit to making their own pastrami.
“You really can’t show how to make it in a class, because it is a very involved process that takes days and days,” Riley said. “Almost as soon as we put (the class) out there, it sold out. I think he’s really onto something.”
When Crane announced a pop-up featuring blintzes using his grandmother Ethel Stein Gold’s recipe with proceeds to benefit Congregation Beth Torah, he notched another sellout. Michael initially committed to 10 dozen blintzes, but wound up selling out with each 10 dozen increment he added, finally landing at a grand total of 56 dozen blintzes!
“I don’t claim to be an expert on any of this, but the one thing I do claim is to be an expert on my grandmother’s cheese blintzes,” said Crane, who is a member of the Overland Park synagogue and known within both the food and faith communities for both his curiosity and generosity.
Brewing Savant
Crane is best known for his meteoric rise as an award-winning homebrewer. He stumbled into brewing in 2009, after his wife spotted a Mr. Beer Kit on the sale rack at Target. The plan was to brew beer with his two sons for fun.
A year later, he was brewing 20 gallons of beer every weekend. Crane, who doesn’t drink alcohol, shared the beer with friends. They encouraged him to enter his first home-brewing contest.
“I won, and people clapped, and I got an award, and I thought, ‘Well this is cool! This was fun!’” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to make more beer, and I’m going to make it better.’”
Crane spent nearly a decade on the road promoting award-winning beers for the Raytown brewery that still bears his name. Stan Hieronymus, author of the home brewers’ “Beer Bible,” once described Crane as “a brewing savant.” Stan has four books, all considered “brewing bibles” by homebrewers, according to Michael. But the book of that name, which pops up on Google under a search, is not his. Stan’s book titles include: Brew Like A Monk, Brewing Local, Brewing with Wheat, For the Love of Hops. Michael is featured in Brewing Local.
The now-retired 68-year-old Leawood resident grew up in Tennessee and struggled in school. Quiet, creative, and painfully shy, he was unable to focus on his schoolwork but had no trouble diving down the proverbial rabbit hole when a subject sparked his interest. It didn’t help that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder had not yet become a diagnosis.
Crane’s first love was clay and he enrolled as a ceramics major at Kansas City Art Institute. While taking a required photography class, he became interested in creating images with a pinhole camera. He started his career as a professional photographer, but a talent for woodworking led him to a stint as a children’s furniture maker instead.
“I like to call his ADHD passion,” said Karen Adler, a local cookbook author and seasoned cooking class instructor. Adler met Crane on the board of Slow Food Kansas City, an organization that promotes local food and traditional cooking.
Meanwhile, while one counter is reserved for a commercial slicer, a portion of his kitchen counter real estate is currently devoted to eight different coffee machines and gadgets, including and AeroPress, French press, a pour over coffeemaker, a Keurig machine, an espresso machine, assorted grinders, and a carbon dioxide tank is for the Soda Stream.
“I have so much respect for what he does,” said Jasper Mirabile, chef and restauranteur of Jasper’s Restaurant. “He picks one item and just researches it for weeks. He studies, experiments, and perfects it.”
It’s a recipe for retirement Mirabile hopes to emulate someday. Until then, he’s been a willing taste tester.
“Before he releases (an item) to the public, he always wants me to try them,” said Mirabile, who once made a cannoli-flavored beer for charity with Crane, who requested 12 dozen shells for the mash. “He is self-taught, everything is crafted with his heart. His kindness and generosity are almost overwhelming. Everything he does, he does not only with love and care, but he’s so sincere and humble about it.”
A Mensch
Once a month, Marcia Rittmaster and Crane bake together along with other volunteers for oneg shabbat, an informal gathering featuring hospitality and treats after synagogue.
“He’s one of my favorite people in the whole world,” Rittmaster said. “You ask him for something, he gets back to you immediately. He’s enthusiastic about everything, He makes it feel like you’re doing a favor for him.”
When the synagogue needed a new refrigerator, Crane volunteered to host a pop-up to raise money for a replacement. He donates the proceeds from his pop-ups and classes to his synagogue and Jewish charities, but it’s a practice that started at the brewery.
“We couldn’t write a check, but we could use our label and our brewery to get the word out,” said Crane’s former brewery partner, Chris Meyers.
Meyers estimates they worked with at least 100 charities, and one of Meyers’ favorite beers, one they named Ethel, came to represent Crane’s spirit of giving.
“I think the attitude that we need to embrace is that of Michael,” Meyers wrote for the label that appears on the large format 750-ml bottle as they transitioned from single-serve cans. “No, he isn’t the typical brewer in that he brews because he is excited to drink every batch. He started brewing more because he got excited when others drank it and enjoyed themselves. He is that grandma that spends hours cooking a huge meal for family, only to sit down and eat a small portion, but is satisfied because everyone is together and enjoying themselves.”
Like the best Jewish grandmas, Crane is called to preserve his family recipes and provide a taste memory for customers who don’t have access to their own grandma or a Jewish deli. If he can raise a little money for causes along the way, that’s a delicious bonus.
“I think if I put my mind to it to bake some rye bread I could,” said Adler, the cooking teacher, “but do I want to take the time? Probably not, with the caliber of bread he is making.”
For her customers, gourmet store owner Riley knows time is as precious as tradition, which is why she suggested teaming up to offer a blintz souffle kit and a variety of traditional foods for the upcoming Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
“He is a true mensch, that’s the best way to describe him,” said Riley, using the Yiddish word for ‘a good person.’ “I don’t believe there are coincidences in life. There is a reason he was put on my path.”
Jill Wendholt Silva is Kansas City’s James Beard award-winning food editor and writer.
A Few of Crane’s Jewish Foods
- Bagels: Michael Crane, who calls himself a bagel snob, developed a three-day process to emulate the New York bagel of his dreams. Cooking teacher Karen Adler calls Crane’s bagels “middle of the road” in terms of chewiness.
- Blintzes: A crepe filled with sweet creamy cheese pan-fried and topped with berry sauce, Crane makes his own dry cottage cheese (like ricotta, Italian chef Jasper Mirabile notes) but the cheese is hard to find these days. Ethel used a heavy cast-iron pan she banged on a cutting board; Crane prefers to use two lightweight, nonstick crepe pans. Vacuum-packaged, blintz-lovers only need to pan-fry until speckled golden brown. “There is nothing better than the aroma of slowly frying these blintzes in a generous portion of butter,” Crane writes in his blintz booklet.
- Kugel: A noodle casserole that can be savory or sweet, Crane’s version contains sweet raisins.
- Mandelbread: Mandelbread translates to almond bread, which is basically Jewish biscotti. “I did some research, and there are records of Jews in Italy, so biscotti did come first,” Crane said. His grandmother’s recipe uses pecans instead of almonds, mostly likely because she grew up in Mississippi, where pecans are common. “It’s crunchy, and light and loaded with carbohydrates.” He finds vacuum sealing the treats helps him to avoid bingeing on the sweets.
- Pastrami: Crane’s recipe and technique for this deli delicacy takes 11 days to cure and his yield is only 32% of the original weight, “but the taste makes it worthwhile,” Crane writes in notes he shared with customers at pickup. “It’s delicious,” said customer Marcia Rittmaster. “The pastrami has to have some fat on it or it’s dry.”
- Rugelach: “My grandmother never made it,” Crane said, but when he was doing foods for his son’s musical festival “Schmear,” he discovered the crescent shape worked best and offers a distinctive shape when served alongside strudel. The difference between the two pastries: strudel contains oil, eggs and flour and is rolled and stretched thin; rugelach is more like a pie pastry with sour cream, cream cheese, and butter for a “real fat, rich dough.”
- Tzimmes: Pronounced tsi-mez, Crane’s version of this sweet and savory dish includes sweet potatoes, carrots, prunes, and chunks of tender chuck roast. Crane’s secret ingredient: matzo balls. This family recipe was never written down, “but what I remember from many years ago was my mother saying, ‘Add more sugar, and taste it, then add more sugar and taste it.’”
Next up:
Olive Tree is taking orders for blintz souffle kits, and a variety of Jewish foods made by Michael Crane for the Jewish high holidays Rosh Hashanah (Oct. 2-4) and Yom Kippur (Oct. 11-12). Customers can purchase Michael Crane’s tzimmes, matzo ball soup, chopped chicken liver (think patê), sweet raisin noodle kugel, mandelbread and strudel.
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