November is the month Baltimoreans go to church to eat rather than to pray.
No wonder. My idea of answered prayers is a font of marinated beef, properly spiced and swimming in that heaven-sent sweet-sour gravy. Add to it the necessary dumplings and you are fortified for a fierce winter and a size-larger pair of pants.
The church sour beef dinner is a mainstay of the Formstone districts of old Baltimore. This dish, beloved by its converts and shunned by the rest, does not necessarily dominate the church supper menu. The church dinners featuring ham and fried oysters are more numerous.
There are those church supper specialists who will travel into Southern Maryland for an equally hearty meal of fried oysters and stuffed ham, the local dish that has the reputation of being so difficult to make that few chefs north of Upper Marlboro attempt it.
The fall sour beef season has its origin in Baltimore's German roots. It is one of the last culinary vestiges of that nationality here. Its cousin dish is the sauerkraut served at Thanksgiving.
You might read in an obituary that the deceased was an accomplished sour beef cook. This is high praise in Baltimore's Sauerbraten Belt, the invisible neighborhood that wraps around Rosedale on the east, works its way through Highlandtown and Canton, jumps the harbor into South Baltimore and spreads its aromatic way out Wilkens Avenue. It never reaches Howard County, heaven forbid Columbia.
The uninitiated think us sauerbraten gorgers are an unrepentant tribe of beef trusters. That's fine; let them savor their goat cheese with mixed greens.
Sour beef making is something you learn from your ancestors. And it's a lot of work -- three days' advance preparation to get the beef souring in a vinegar-based marinade. And, if it doesn't come off just right, people will openly blurt out, "Well, it's not as good as last year's," or, "Yours doesn't live up to my mother's." There is no shame here.
But judging from my recent informal beef tasting, the time-honored custom is prospering nicely. I made it to a pair of sour beef dinners this year, one in Canton (Southeast Baltimore), the other in Locust Point (South Baltimore).
In Locust Point, a few blocks from Fort McHenry, I feasted at Christ Evangelical and Reformed Church where a group of volunteers served up a deep bowl of beef and gravy, three dumplings, another large bowl of cole slaw and one more of green beans. I ate everything.
The Canton supper, presided over by the one and only Grace Fader at the United Evangelical Church, was nearly the same, except the cooks here possess a fabulous recipe for lima beans cooked in tomato sauce. It might not sound so good, but try having just one helping.
I asked to see Miss Grace's church kitchen and found it stuffed with red-cheeked volunteer workers. There was frenetic activity around the boiling caldrons as the ladies and men dropped the perfectly shaped dumpling spheres into the water.
Both churches also serve excellent homemade cole slaw with finely cut cabbage and more vinegar than most recipes use.
The workers cooked all day, then cleaned up. The energy level never ceased.
During the course of this meal, a woman came up and commented that she preferred her sour beef served as chunks of beef, similar to a pot roast. The church's custom was to slice the beef, more like a slice of roast beef. This comment immediately set off a sour beef discourse, the kind of talk that invariably accompanies this meal.
At the old German church in Locust point, the sour beef was served chunk style.
Every pot of beef, spices and vinegar bears the stamp of an individual cook. One of my grandmothers made hers with a thick gravy; the other made hers with thin. One made potato dumplings; another used more flour. One year my mother skipped the beef altogether and used venison. We called it sour deer. It wasn't bad.
On another occasion, my mother's pot of dumplings completely disintegrated in the hot water.
It looked like boiling white glue.
But she was unperturbed, salvaged the meltdown and the next day produced delicious vichyssoise.
In Munich one time, I decided to go for the ultimate sour beef experience -- or so I thought -- in one of the great old German beer halls.
It was terrible. I should have known to trust Canton and Locust Point to be the best.