Hungry Like The Duck

Mead Pt. 1

2011-06-06T21:06:00.005-05:00

Yes, Mead!

First, a little history. Beer is generally considered to be the oldest fermented beverage - the accidental product of stored grains that got rained on. Mead is slightly younger, but still decidedly ancient. To be reductionist, mead is simply fermented honey, however there is more to it than that. Most old world cultures have some form of mead product that can be made with or without flavorings such as herbs, spices, fruit, grains, or hops, dependent upon what was fashionable and available in the area.

Mead is made essentially of fermented, watered down honey. The honey must be watered down because it is far too heavy and sugary for the yeast to take hold. The alcohol content usually ranges from strong beer to fortified wine (high single digits to high teens), depending on the initial sugar content and type of yeast used. Beer yeasts tend to die off at around 10% ABV while wine yeasts last up to 15% ABV or higher. The combination of initial sugar content and yeast strain used will also determine how sweet the final beverage is.

The first time that I tried mead was in college. My roommate's brother was a (very) amateur brewer. He cooked up a batch of mead and left it sitting somewhere dark for a while. My roommate decided to crack open the bottle one evening and it was magnificent! By aging for a year and a half in the bottle, the mead had clarified and accidentally carbonated. It was truly like a honey-based Champagne. This is what I desire.

There's one trick to mead. It takes time. A whole lot of precious time. Meaders advise storing finished mead for at least SIX MONTHS before consumption, though a year is considered necessary for it to properly mature. This is considerably longer than the month needed to make a batch of drinkable beer. Thus, this project not only fosters patience but will also serve as a spectacular reward for completing what many consider to be the hardest single year of schooling that people can experience. On to it!

I recently made a driving trip to Asheville, NC. That little mountain town was selected as Beer City, USA for three years in a row due to their thriving microbrewery culture. So, it's a bit ironic that Asheville was the source of my honey - my one fermentational departure from grain-based drinks. Who knew that local farmer'd honey in Asheville would be so reasonably priced? It cost about 1/3 less than bulk honey in my urban paradise, and probably about 40% the cost of honey bears. As you can see, this is made from mountain wildflowers, which I hope will lend some depth to the flavor of the finished product. I also detest clover honey.

Calculation time!
Using my beverage calculator, I determined that, in order to reach my target 13% ABV (standard for Champagne) I would need to thin out 5 pounds of honey into two gallons of fermentable liquid.

The first step of meadery is actually a pretty quick process. When making beer, you need to mash the grain for about two hours, then strain, then boil for an hour, then chill. Honey just needs to be heated enough to incorporate it into the water, then chilled to about 70 degrees. It spent about a week and a half in the standard plastic keg fermenter before being transferred to the vessels pictured below. I was able to take a good whiff of the mead at this point. It smells like medicine. I hope that improves over time. It better!

These glass jugs are called carboys. They range in size from a gallon to about seven gallons for amateur usage. They are capped off by an airlock as seen below.

The airlock is a snakey tube of plastic that allows air to escape while preventing anything from entering the fermenter. It uses water and gravity. Simple yet cool. Fermenting beverages cannot carbonate more than a tiny tiny bit because the Carbon Dioxide is allowed to escape through the airlock. Pressure will be necessary to carbonate it very soon.

The mead will sit in here for another couple weeks until I feel compelled to bottle it. In this time it will continue to ferment, albeit very slowly. More on that coming soon...

Making Sausage - It's Much Prettier Than How Laws Are Made

2011-05-31T20:00:00.007-05:00

Living well on a college budget: Sausage

Is there anybody in the world who doesn't like some form of sausage? The delightful combination of ground meat and spices can be found in all of the world's great (and lesser) cuisines. Traditionally, the purpose of making sausage was to take junky parts of the animal or meat that has been sitting around a wee bit too long and make a food that is palatable and satisfying. Over time sausages have become haute cuisine - a true expression of a chef's skill and taste. Think Italian dry salami, Spanish Chorizo, French Boudin, and scores of other delicacies.

The sausage medium is, like a plain white canvas, receptive of the creativity of its user. Virtually anything that can be made can be made into a sausage.

Below, I will show you the moderately easy way to make sausage at home. There's an even easier way which I'll discuss later. In this example, I am making a Sweet Italian Sausage. I wish I could give exact amounts for this recipe, but I wasn't taking notes. Any reputable recipe will do, though.

You'll need:

Ground Meat
Salt
Black Pepper
Crushed Fennel Seeds
Sweet Paprika
Granulated Garlic & Onion
Dried or fresh herbs (Italian Seasoning if you're extra lazy)
(For spicy, add red pepper flakes or some other spicy spice)

Begin by mixing together all of the ingredients in a dishwasher-able bowl. You can move onto the next step immediately if you're in a time crunch, but if you give it time, it will pay off. The salt changes the texture of the meat by, among other things, drawing water-soluble proteins out of the muscle tissue. This liquid meat extract forms a glue that binds the sausage together, leaving you with something that feels like a sausage rather than something that feels like a hamburger. If you mix this up in the morning before class and stick it in the fridge, it will be just right when you get home for the evening.

The fairly-easy method involves a fair amount of plastic wrap. Make sure that it is the heat-safe kind. Lay out a length of plastic wrap on a clean counter. Wet your hands a bit and sprinkle the water on the plastic for lubrication. Wet your hands again and grab a hunk of meat. With practice, you will be able to easily gauge the amount of meat to grab. Lay the meat at the near edge of the plastic and form it into a cylinder of even width.

Now roll up the meat log as tightly as possible, making sure to ease out any air bubbles. You can roll it thicker or thinner depending on how you like your sausages (or as style dictates). Using food-safe kitchen twine, tie off the ends of the meat tube. If you're not going to further segment the sausage, make it very tight by pushing the knots towards the center. If you are making the tube into smaller sausages, leave some slack in the plastic as seen below.

If segmenting the sausage, tie it up with twine into the desired sizes and shapes. (Note: This method is often used in the production of fresh mozzarella for making small lobes of cheese)

Here you see what two pounds of sausage looks like in a pile.

Bring a large pot of water to 170-180 Fahrenheit. This is just below a simmer. Bubbles are not a desired. Place the wrapped sausages into the pot and simmer until cooked through - around 15 minutes depending on the size of the sausages. Remove and drain the sausages and allow to cool as much as you care to. You can eat them as is (sans plastic, of course) but it's better to let them set for a while.

If desired, you can do fun stuff with your sausage now. You can grill them, add them to sauces, put them on a pizza or, as I like to, cook them in a cast iron skillet. Bring the pan to medium-high heat and brown sausages on all sides, with or without the aid of a miniscule amount of oil.

And now the even easier way:

Once you've rested your bulk sausage meat, load it into a zip-top freezer storage bag. Quart bags work for small batches. Seal the bag, pushing as much air out of the top as you can manage. Now cut off one of the bottom corners of the bag. Obviously, the higher up you go, the larger the sausages will be. Heat up the cast iron (or other heavy-duty) pan over medium heat with a tiny bit of oil. If you've ever used a pastry bag, I don't need to tell you what to do now. If you haven't, look it up. Squeeze lengths of sausage into the hot pan. To separate them from the bag, use a metal knife or other utensil or, as I did, pinch it with your fingers. Turn the sides once they're golden brown (they will also freely release from the pain at this point). Once all sides are browned, the sausages are ready to serve. Just make sure that they're cooked through.

It's fun to play with sausages because you can experiment with dozens or even hundreds of different recipes.

Enjoy!

Pilsner Revisited

2011-05-10T21:28:00.003-05:00

My last "Pilsner" (an ale made in the style of a Pilsner) was not as successful as I would have liked. Due to my inexperience (and still rudimentary beer recipe calculator.xls) I produced a beer that was too strong, too dark, and also had some off flavors.

Take two.

I'll spare the details of the Pilsner style other than this one tidbit: The tour guide at Highland Brewery in Asheville, NC said that the mineral profile of Asheville's water is virtually identical to that in Pilsen, Czech Republic. Sorta interesting, other than that there wasn't a lot of local lager to be had. Though, I recall that what lager we imbibed was quite good.

I'll start with the differences between the last batch and this batch.
Old Grain Bill:

1.62 lb American 2 row pale malt
2 lbs German Pilsner malt
1/2 lb CaraVienne
1/4 lb American 6 row pale malt

New Grain Bill:

2.5 lb German Vienna Malt
1 oz Belgian Victory Malt

Note, first, the difference in mass. The old recipe used 4.37 lbs of grain and the new recipe uses 2.56 lbs. The primary goal of this was to make a lighter beer. One problem with the first batch was that it was just too strong. A 7.5+% ABV beer, whether ale or lager, is simply not refreshing the way a Pilsner should be. Second, note the simpler grain bill. A light, refreshing beer should not be overly complex, lest the drinker get confused. The CaraVienne also adds too much color, shifting the hue from golden to amber. Not so desired. Here, then, is a big bowl of Vienna malt with a small sprinkling of Biscuit malt.

The next difference is in the hops. Old recipe used 1 oz of Saaz hops, boiled in even 1/3s for 60, 30, and 5 minutes. For this recipe, I upped the ante, using:

1/2 oz Sterling (the beer store-recommended substitute for the out-of-stock Saaz) hops as a First Wort Hop
1/4 oz Hallertau (another noble German variety) for 30 minutes
1/4 oz Hallertau for 10 minutes
1/2 oz Sterling, cold hopped for three days

This rounded out the hop profile, though in the final product, it proved to be no substitute for good ol' Saaz hops.

There was one other difference. For the past several batches, I've been adding Irish Moss to the boil to help clarify the beer. This time I added 1/2 of a Whirlfloc tablet, a more refined clarifying agent.

OG - 1.044

FG - 1.009

ABV - 4.7%

IBU - 37

Appearance: Golden with a hint of orange. Almost perfectly clear. Fine bubbles and a thin head that both dissipate rapidly. Not at all clinging to the glass when swirled or sipped.

Aroma: Faint aroma of piney hops. Pretty austere, actually.

Flavor: This beer rocks it on flavor. I dare say that it tastes like a decent Czech Pilsner (there's a few out there if you look hard enough). I may be crazy, but I think that I can detect the unique toasty flavor from the biscuit malt. Subtlety is a rare find in my beers. Some spicy hop flavors are around. It's not like it would be with Saaz hops, I think, but the beer clearly uses noble continental European-style hops. There's a hint of orange juice on the finish. I'd imagine that's moreso a function of the yeast than the grain.

Mouthfeel: This is incredibly rich feeling for a 4.7% abv beer. Not to say that it's like a DIPA or breakfast stout, but still...

Drinkability: Despite the rich mouthfeel, the light flavor and booze content of this beer make it quite drinkable and approachable. I challenge any beer expert or novice to dislike this.

Sorry for the boring post. There's an exciting one coming soon. I promise!

Prost!

Join the Dark Side

2011-04-13T21:58:00.001-05:00

Not all dark beers are created equal. My first dark beer was a Porter that, due to my own novice, was wholly subpar. My second (not counting the cupric IPA) was a Nut Brown Ale - surely on the lighter end of the dark side. Now is the time to dive into a style that is perhaps the best known dark style in the world. Guinness is a Dry Stout (aka Irish Stout) - dry, in this case, meaning a beverage that has minimal residual sugar. Sweet Stouts, Oatmeal Stouts, and other styles have more residual sugar and therefore are heartier drinks. Dry stouts run about as light as any real beer gets. 12 oz of Guinness, for example, will only set you back 120 calories while a pale ale can run up to twice as caloric.

Stouts developed in the 18th century but soon after fell out of favour as Pale Ales took hold in England and elsewhere. "Stout" originally referred to a stronger drink and, though many varieties of stout are among the strongest in the world, dry stouts also have a strong hold in the commercial beer market. There are numerous explanations of the difference between a stout and a porter but currently, the distinction has become a matter of preference rather than style.

One oft overlooked component of beer is water. Not all water is created equal. Famous beering regions have distinctive mineral attributes in their water that contribute to the specific style of their beer. Dublin water is famously rich in bicarbonate which balances the acidity in heavily roasted malts (more on that later). Thus, Dublin makes some killer dark beers.

My Dry Stout begins with a fairly light-colored mix of grains:

German Vienna Malt - 2.5 lbs
American 2-row Pale Malt - 0.25 lb
American 6-row Pale Malt - 0.5 lb
Flaked Barley - 0.25 lb

The Vienna Malt is slightly darker and richer (though by no means dark) than normal pale malt. The Flaked Barley contributes no sugar, but increases head retention and adds a bit of depth to the flavor. These grains are mashed normally. Most recipes for dry stout involve the addition of gypsum or other minerals to make the water more like that in Dublin. I opted against because I'm not ready to play with water minerals yet. Soon, though.

The final grain added is Roasted Barley. Roasted barley is not malted like other brewing grains. It contributes no sugar and provides only black color and roasty toasty flavor. If added directly to the mash, it could cause severe problems in the lautering & sparging process (remember, that's extracting the liquid grain-sugar-juice from the mashed grain gruel). Thus, a different method is commonly used to generate the roasted barley's contribution to the beer. We make barley coffee. To begin, add hot water to the roasted barley (I used 5/8 lb grain with 3/4 qt water) in a cooking vessel. Let it sit for a while. Pour the liquid over a coffee filter to remove all particulate. You now have the black, bitter, undrinkable liquid seen below.

Once you have collected your wort, add the roasted barley extract and begin the boil. I used one ounce of German Hallertau hops, divided equally between 60 and 20 minutes of boil. Why you ask? I didn't want the fruity flavors that you get from American hops, but I hoped for a spicier finish than I would get from English hops. Thus born is the German-English Dry Stout.

Here's the beer after primary fermentation:

One thing that distinguishes Irish stouts from other beers is their creamy mousselike head. This is because they are usually poured from a nitro-tap. Because Nitrogen is stored at a higher pressure than Carbon Dioxide (the standard carbonation in beer), it forces finer bubbles, resulting in not only the classic head, but also a smoother mouthfeel and that distinct cascade effect during pouring and settling. Guinness recently began adding Nitrogen-containing widgets to their cans and bottles which release their nitrogen upon opening the package, duplicating the nitro-tap effect.

OG - 1.052

FG - 1.014

ABV - 5.1%

IBU - 33

Appearance: Pitch black and nearly opaque with an inch of semi-fine tan head. Forms a modest lacing along the glass. Bubbles are delicate.

Aroma: The roasted aroma dominates while hints of sweet butterscotch float in the background

Flavor: Naturally, the flavor is predominantly roasted, however this tastes like dry stout with some basic English ale mixed in. It's not quite as dry as I'd like. There's also a touch of mouthwatering acidity, due to my unwillingness to follow a good recipe and add minerals as required. Hmm... a bit jammy on the finish. Interesting. I like it.

Mouthfeel: Lacking the nitro tap, it's not as smooth as it could be, but it is still pretty darn smooth.

Drinkability: Not quite as drinkable as Guinness, but I could easily take a couple of these. It's spring right now; I'd surely prefer this beer while sitting outside in mid-late Autumn. In the still night, you need no jacket. Only your stout and a buddy (perhaps a stout buddy).

Prost!

Belgian Style Rye Ale - A Delicious Misnomer

2011-03-19T18:53:00.009-05:00

Diligent readers will recall my series on Rye IPA Better Red Than Dead and RyePA Digested. In them, I detailed my quest to create a rye beer that has the characteristics of an American IPA, specifically, Founders Red's Rye pale ale. Red's Rye is pretty bold with its 6.6% ABV and a bit of residual sugar - a deep richness comes from four varieties of Belgian caramel malts. The dry hopping of American Amarillo is quite aggressive. My version, though not a photocopy of Founders' beer, was bone dry with bright hop aromas and hints of caramel. With the success of that beer (definitely above average for me) and my love of beers, I wanted to try to make a different version.

Somewhere in my brain was the desire to create a more Belgian-style rye beer, using Belgian malts and a softer hop character. I bought Belgian base malt, but then like an idiot picked up American caramel malt (60 L). I also had purchased some hyper-American hops (Cascade, Chinook, and Centennial). Basically, the Belgian train ran off the tracks as it was leaving the station. Not that that stopped me from calling it a Belgian-style rye beer.

Left to Right:

1 lb Rye Malt
2.5 lb Belgian Pale Malt
.75 lb American Caramel Malt (60 L)

My mash accidentally got a bit warm (I got distracted at a critical moment) so there is definitely a potential for the ABV to be low and the residual sugar to be high.

One problem with rye malt is that it makes a mash really really sticky. It takes a long time and great pain to properly separate the spent grain from the wort. Maybe I should use the proper 10ish percent rye instead of the generous 25% to make it easier.

Hops:

1/3 oz Chinook for First-Wort Hopping
1/3 oz Centennial for 30 minutes
1/2 oz Cascades for 10 minutes
1/2 oz Cascades dry-hopped.

This time, I decided to dry-hop within the fermenter (as is traditional) using a plastic mesh bag.

OG - 1.060

FG - 1.024

ABV - 5.0%

IBU - 55

Appearance: A bit cloudy with slowly rising bubbles. The head pours slightly tan. The color is on the red side of amber with the slightest hint of brown.

Aroma: Fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh hops and all that comes with it - citrus, pine, and spice. Also a slight hint of caramel.

Flavor: Starts with the rye spice, then moves on to a medium-sweet malty flavor. Finishes with the tasty hops. It's not as complex as I'd like, but fits the genre of rye beer pretty nicely.

Mouthfeel: It's gotten thinner as it's been in the bottle from the sugar-to-alcohol conversion. It doesn't feel as satisfying in the mouth as some other beers I've made, but it's okay to have things on the lighter side from time to time. It lingers a bit sticky, but not in a bad way.

Drinkability: Keg please. Need I say more?

Oh my do I love rye.

Prost!

Jai Guru Deva Yum

2011-03-12T21:49:00.002-06:00

Coming from my successful spice-infused Winter Ale, I wanted to continue playing with non-beer flavors in beer. With its grassy, fruity, and floral flavors, east-Asian Jasmine Green Tea seemed the natural choice.

Jasmine Green Tea is made by mixing normal green tea leaves with the dried flowers of the jasmine plant.

Grain ingredients:

Belgian pale malt

I guess a picture of that is not necessary.

Oops! I forgot to stock proper grains. I guess I'll make my own. I started with three pounds of said Belgian pale malt. I began mashing 2.5 lbs of it normally. The other half pound I placed in a medium pot with enough water to saturate the grains. I cooked this on medium heat in order to caramelize the grains. As the water dried up, I waited until it began to smell toasty, then added more water and stirred it up. The goal is to darken the grains and create the complex flavors that you find in caramel malts. Once it was caramelized to my (amateur) liking I added more water, scraped the bottom of the pot, and added the grain and liquid to the main mash. To be safe, I also caramelized 1/2 cup of sugar and added that to the mash.

Yadda yadda yadda.

First-Wort-Hop with 1/5 oz of Cascade hops. Boil 1/10 oz of some very potent Chinook hops for 60 minutes. Boil 1/2 oz Cascade for 10 minutes. Cold hop another 1/2 oz Cascade.

Now brew some jasmine tea. I brewed about 3 oz loose tea in 1 quart of water, steeped for three minutes, strained, and cooled the tea. I figured it would be best not to boil the leaves so I added the tea to the cooled and strained wort once it was ready for fermentation. I also over-brewed the first batch of tea. It was extremely bitter and wholly unsuitable for beer. The second batch was fine. Here's what it looks like before fermentation:

And now after primary and secondary fermentation, as well as a good rest in my "Beer cellar"...

Appearance: On the amber side of golden. Crystal clear. Vigorous fine bubbles. Pours a thin, white head.

Aroma: Smells like cheap beer with hints of honey and flowers.

Flavor: It initially tastes like a basic pale ale that has been minimally hopped. The flavor almost immediately transitions to the piney and lemon zest characteristics from the hops. That quickly clears up to reveal a hint of both green tea and jasmine. If you didn't know that the beer was infused with jasmine green tea, you would probably have trouble deciphering these flavors. The tea flavors linger longer than the first two phases as the beer eases into a honey and melon finish.

Mouthfeel: Clean and light like a fine session ale.

Drinkability: It has a slight hint of that flavor that made the Gumballhead-type-beer undrinkable and the first Pilsner-style a bit off. If not for that, this would be ultimately drinkable - light and refreshing enough for summer but rich and flavorful enough for winter.

Prost!

If Buffalo Have Wings, Why Can't They Fly?

2011-02-05T21:32:00.001-06:00

If you don't know the story of Buffalo wings, blah blah blah, fried and dipped in hot sauce blah blah.

Traditional Buffalo wings are deep fried until cripsy without the aid of flour, breading, or batter. The naked, golden brown, crispy wings are then dipped in hot sauce enriched with butter. The butter emulifies into the hot sauce, thickening it and adding much richness and mmm. These wings are served with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing to cool you off.

Most wings you find, whether or not they bear the "Buffalo" moniker, do not fit this template. Ranch dressing, which is cheaper and more available than blue cheese (and less scary to people who scare easily), has become the norm. So has breading. Most bars and restaurants get their wings breaded, par-fried, and frozen from a food supplier. Why? It's cheap and easy (much like the patrons of such unscrupulous bars). The thick coating of breading provides a satisfying crunch while filling up diners with less meat. This has become increasingly important as the chicken market has skewed towards wings.

The Chicken Market: Like any other product that is sold in an open market, chicken is subject to the whims of supply and demand. Sometimes, the greater population prefers once portion over another. For many many years, chicken wings were considered a throw-away cut and sold at a discount to the price of whole chicken while legs cost about as much as whole chicken (by weight) and breast, especially "boneless, skinless", brought a significant premium. The cheapness of wings has increased the popularity of wings which, in turn, increased the price of wings so that they now sell at a premium to whole chickens. As wings got more expensive, cost-conscious eateries found a way to give you less chicken and more breading on your plate.

Even worse, some enterprising restaurateurs have decided that anything fried and sauced can be called a "wing". "Boneless wings" are not wings but dried out chunks of chicken breast liberally coated in breading, making them even cheaper than proper wings. When servers ask me if I want my wings "traditional or boneless", I have trouble not saying "I'll have the ones that are wings".

Now that I've ranted about other people's wings, it's time to talk about my wings.

The culinary school that I attended hosts an annual wing cook-off (in addition to several other cook-offs) in one of its dorms. Small teams were given the challenge of making the best wings for a group of VERY discriminating tasters. My friends Torin and Colton entered the contest and sought to create a new recipe. I helped a little.

They did apply a light flouring to the wings, however they did not use wheat flour but a blend of rice and tapioca flours. This provides a pleasant crisp to the wings without weighing them down. It also helps absorb more sauce. The wings were then deep-fried until golden-brown and tender. Apply a little salt to the drained wings. Then toss in the sauce.

What sauce? My friends created a sauce combining sambal (a spicy, coarse chili garlic sauce), tamarind concentrate, honey, and a bit of water to thin it out. The wings were delicious but lacked sufficient depth of flavor. I added some smoked Spanish paprika, also known as pimenton, to the mix, rounding out the deliciousness of the wings. In traditional South-Eastern Asian cuisine, most dishes combine the five tastes of sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and Umami (savory, aka deliciousness). The honey provides sweet, the tamarind provides sour, the salt provides salt (shockingly), the sambal provides spicy, and the smoke flavor in the pimenton provides Umami. Thus, all things are in balance.

Namaste.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

2011-01-28T19:19:00.004-06:00

During Summer, we generally prefer foods that are light and refreshing - ones that won't weigh us down in the heat. Come winter, we opt for heavier meals that will keep us satisfied and warm us up from the inside. The same is the case for beer. Summer is the time for lighter brews like most lagers, wheat beers, saisons, and pale ales. Winter means doubles, triples, rich porters, and barleywines. Barrel-aged beers are extra-cool, but I'll leave those to the pros. One shining example of a cold weather beer is the spiced Winter Warmer. This is a more modern format - a hybrid of heavy English ales and Wassail (a festive punch of ale fortified with spirits and spices). These beers tend to be dark and malty, with a restrained hop character and smoooooth finish.

For my beer, I wanted something that felt like a dark, spiced American-style IPA. Here's how I did it:

1.75 lbs American two-row pale malt
1.00 lb British two-row pale malt
.25 lbs American Caramel Malt (40 L)
.25 lbs American Caramel Malt (60 L)
.1 lbs Chocolate Malt
1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

That number next to the caramel malt refers to the Lovibond scale, a linear measure of color. There are many different scales, but this is the one commonly used in grain descriptions. The higher the number, the darker the color. Higher numbers also indicate flavors ranging from grainy to biscuity to caramely to roasty. It is also used in measuring the final beer color. I tried to use a fancy mathy thing to show how I convert the numbers into colors, but the Blogspot HTML genie got confused by "less than" symbols. If you're that interested, you can look it up.

I used my usual process to make the beer.

BUT

During the boil, I added a mesh bag containg 2 sticks proper cinnamon, 1 dry old vanilla bean, about 1/2 dozen allspice berries, and a teaspoon of coriander seeds. After about 25 minutes, I removed it. My goal was to add hints of spice, not to punch you in the mouth with spices (as haphazardly spiced beers tend to). And here's my hopping schedule:

1/2 oz Chinook pellets as a First Wort Hop
1/3 oz Centennial leaf for 60 minutes
1/3 oz Centennial for 20 minutes
1/3 oz Centennial for 5 minutes
1/2 oz Centennial - cold hopped

According to my calculations:
IBU: 100+
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.5%

Appearance: The picture doesn't do this beer justice, because it is a nearly transparent brick red color with nearly two inches of tan foam. It clings to the glass like a much heavier beer.

Smell: I will be honest here - the smell is not terribly appealing to me. The coriander aroma comes through above the other spices, but is still dominated by a sweet smell.

Taste: Don't be fooled by the smell, the residual sugar is low enough that the sweetness of this beer is not the dominant feature. The spice character is just right, with the cinnamon being most prominent. The vanilla isn't quite as strong as I'd like, but I'll tolerate. There's just enough caramel flavor to remind me that I'm drinking something meant to stick to my ribs. There are slight hints of nuttiness and chocolate from the malts and dried fruits from the yeast. I absolutely love how well the hops, sweetness, and spices balance.

Mouthfeel: It is, like many other beers I've described, silky smooth. The bubbles are exceptionally fine, moreso than average, and the beer expands to fill and coat your mouth while drinking.

Drinkability: There is no doubt that this is a winter beer. More than two would be a bit of a challenge. It seems to expand in the stomach and, along with the spicy flavors, provide a savory sense of satiety. It's a good thing that I'm drinking these at a relatively brisk pace; they should be long gone by the time spring shows his shining face. Unfortunately, this seems like a beer that would benefit from many months (or more) of aging. Maybe I'll make something age-friendly in the future.

Next: Belgian-style Rye Ale

Prost!

The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire

2010-10-01T22:06:00.004-05:00

Before I get deep into this post, I must say that this beer is surely the best tasting beer I've made to date.

The Brits are a beer drinking people; that much is certain. Traditional Limey beers (unlike, say, Belgian beers) are not particularly heavy. They tend to use very simple malts and hops to create beers that are clean and drinkable, but often a bit bland. And then they set sail. British sailors (both military and merchant) took to the seas to claim ownership of inhabited territories by planting a flag.

We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and Stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag …? "What? We don't need a flag, this is our home, you bastards" "No flag, No Country, You can't have one! Those are the rules... that I just made up!...and I'm backing it up with this gun, that was lent to me from the National Rifle Association." - Eddie Izard

So as the Empire expanded farther and farther from Mother England, men of the sea encountered a new problem. By the time they arrived at their distant destination, after a long and dangerous journey, their beer was spoiled. The sailors wrote home and demanded that brewers make a beer that would withstand a long journey. The answer: make it bigger and badder. Three things help preserve a beer. Sugar (counterintuitively) helps stave off nasty infections, so not all of the sugar in the wort is allowed to ferment into alcohol. However, more alcohol also helps prevent beer taint, so extra malt is added to boost the final ABV. Finally, hops contain various chemicals that preserve and protect the constitution of the beer. With this stronger, more longevitous brew (and the hearty dose of B vitamins it packed), the Brits were able to secure global maritime dominance for centuries.

On to the beer!

The IPA has taken new form as the g0-to American craft beer. I'm pretty sure that there are more IPAs made in the US than there are breweries - Beer Advocate currently lists 1879 of them, plus hundreds more in related styles. From the Wiki, "The Association of Brewers reports that of July 31, 2009 there were a total 1482 craft breweries (962 Brewpubs)(456 Microbreweries)(64 Regional Craft Breweries) in the United States". American IPAs have a tendency to be even bolder, boozier, and hoppier than their English cousins. You can expect them to run 5.5-7.5% alcohol. Please do not chug these as it is a waste of good beer and will leave you feeling quite uncomfortable in several ways. True to the American spirit of oneupsmanship, Imperial (or Double) IPAs have developed as a way for brewers to show how rad they are. Add more malt and more hops to get something that most people find undrinkable and beer snobs will pay handsomely for. These brews start at around 7% alcohol but climb all the way up to 14%! Anything higher would be a barleywine, and would require some very special yeast. As an aside, the Imperial moniker was developed for the very very strong Russian Imperial Stouts crafted in England for the Russian Monarchy. It now is used to refer to any very strong beer.

I wanted my IPA to have a good punch and lots of hops, but be smooth and largely inoffensive.

2.5 lbs American Two-Row
1 lb TF&S Crystal
.75 lb American Caramel
.25 lb American Six-Row
A sprinkling of Chocolate Malt

This Crystal Malt, an English variety, is used to provide a slight sweetness, rich body, stable head, and reddish color to beer. The Caramel has a similar effect, though the particular shade and flavor profile can vary. I threw in some six-row to make sure that the mash maximized starch conversion, to maximize final alcohol content. I also cheated and added a bit of sugar to boost the final alcohol content.

For the hopping, I began by adding 1/2 oz of Cascade hops as a First-Wort-Hopping. In this process, the hops are placed in the vessel under the draining grains. The warm wort drips onto the hops, purportedly stabilizing the aromatic molecules during the boil. I'm not entirely convinced, though.

Sixty total minutes of boiling. A leftover 1/2 oz of Fuggles at 60 minutes, 1/2 oz Cascade at 30 minutes, 1/2 oz Cascade at 5 minutes. The final 1/2 oz of Cascade was used for cold-hopping. It sat in the fridge for seven days.

Flash forward through 14 days of primary fermentation and 10 days of secondary fermentation.

OG - 1.066
FG - 1.020 (not as low as I'd like, but the residual sugar helps balance the hops)
ABV - 6.4%
IBU - 73

Appearance: Darker than an average IPA - it looks more like a weak nut brown ale, however when held against a light source in a smaller glass, it has a deep red color. The head is thick and has a slight caramel color. The bubbles are medium-sized, and form at an average pace.

Smell: Some pine and citrus zest from the hops. Dirty dark fruits - like caramelized canned peaches and bananas, if you can picture that. Slight toast. Slight caramel. This beer is hoppy enough for the hop addict, but not so hoppy as to scare malt chasers away.

Taste: The sweetness is actually restrained due to the decent amount of hops. It definitely tastes like an IPA. It's not as fruity as many are. It's even somewhat earthy. Caramel flavors come through without being noticeably sweet. The chocolate malt lends a slight nutty flavor that really takes this beer to a level that I'm not used to from my own creations. The hops are present on the sides of my tongue, while the fruit and sweetness are present at the front and the chocolate is at the back.

Mouthfeel: Surprisingly light, given how much residual sugar is in it. Not American Light Lager light, but still fairly light. It's incredibly smooth and slightly creamy. The bubbles are just plentiful enough to make their presence known without gassing out your mouth.

Drinkability: Danger!

*sigh* I guess it's not really an "Imperial" IPA (though it would have been if it had fermented fully). But it's pretty dang tasty.

Prost!

The Official Beer of Squirrels

2010-09-02T12:49:00.003-05:00

The hardest part of of the brewer's craft is designing a flavor profile that can't be truly tested until it's finished. When you're cooking food, you can season as you go along. Salt, acid, and other seasonings can be added or muted to best suit your desired final product. Once you have it flavored properly, you can eat it. With beer, you must make your best guess 10-20 days before you'll be able to see how the beer actually tastes. Only with practice, experimentation, and a good feel for ingredients can a brewer transform grains, hops, and yeast into the the beer of his dreams.

So I want to make a nut brown. A nut brown is the beefed up descendant of English brown ales like Newcastle. There really isn't going on in those old-style beers. Essentially, they are made of pale malt with a speck of dark caramel-y malt for color and sweetness. Now add some more complexly flavored malts and you have yourself a nut brown.

For my beer, I'd like, if possible, to have flavors of almonds and hazelnuts. It isn't easy to get that nutty flavor into a beer, though. You certainly can't use actual nuts.

But I want to put real nuts in my beer!

No. Nuts contain a pretty good amount of fat. Fat is the enemy of beer. Fat becomes rancid quite easily, resulting in a beer that tastes like dirt, funk, or garbage. Sugar, alcohol, and certain chemicals present in hops can help stave off rancidity, however the risks involved actually adding fatty ingredients to beer are too severe for most brewers. Instead, one must use specialty grains to create the flavor characteristics desired in a nut brown or any other beer. For the inexperienced such as myself, a malt guide can be quite helpful. This one is nice. It indicates in very simple terms what flavors different types of malts can be expected to lend to a beer. It also has useful information about the fermentable starch content and expected color of different grains. The main determinants of the finished qualities of a particular malt are the ways that the grains are grown, germinated, and kilned (emphasis on the kilning process - time, temp, and moisture produce drastically different final products). Here's what I used:

1.5 lbs American Two-Row Pale Malt
3/4 lb. Belgian Biscuit Malt
3/4 lb. Belgian Victory Malt
1/3 lb. American Six-Row Pale Malt
1/4 lb. American Chocolate Malt

The pale malts are the standard base malts. The six-row was used to boost starch conversion (and clear out some surplus from past batches). The Biscuit Malt provides a little bit of color and, yes, a biscuity flavor. It's not quite nutty, but it does give some of those toasty notes that you'd expect in a nutty beer. The Victory Malt was to provide the bulk of the nutty flavor. The Chocolate Malt is also a bit nutty (though its flavor is predominantly eponymous), but its primary purpose is for color. It wouldn't be much of a brown ale if it wasn't brown, eh?

Standard Brewing Process.

For the hops, I wanted to use traditional English hops, which hopefully would provide a mellower flavor than, say, super-citrusy American hops or the mega-spice of Saaz hops. I added 1 ounce of UK Kent Goldings hops at, 1/4 oz at a time, for 60, 30, and 10 minutes of boil and the remaining 1/4 for cold hopping. I also added 1/2 ounce of Fuggles, half at ten minutes of boil remaining and half for cold hopping. The beer cold hopped in my fridge for three days before the usual fermentation.

OG - 1.054
FG - 1.012
ABV - 5.6% (at time of measurement. I suspect it has since strengthened)
IBU - 23

Appearance: It looks exaclty like a good iced coffee - viscous and inky. The pictured glass is flat because it has been sitting in the fridge for too long. The other bottles have all poured a thick, tan head, with small bubbles.

Smell: It smells quite a bit like roasting coffee. It smells exactly how you'd expect a nice stout to smell.

Taste: The nutty flavors are not as pronounced as I'd like. There are definitely almonds and a hint of hazelnut. The coffee flavor from the chocolate malt is quite present, as is the biscuity flavor from the biscuit malt (seriously, it's like licking a biscuit). The flavor is balanced, coating the entire palate and going down smoothly.

Mouthfeel: It started off pretty viscous, but has gotten lighter with age, as the residual sugars have fermented into alcohol. The bubbles feel pretty nice. It was a bit too thick at first, but it's just right these days.

Drinkability: I'm the kind of person who cares to drink a significant amount of dark, heavy beer (which doesn't mean that I don't from time to time). It's kind of like with wine, where you can drink endless tart whites (such as Sauvignon Blanc, for the standard American drinker, but especially the Spanish treats like Albarino), but you wouldn't really want to drink endless, heavy, oaky reds (though, again, fun and pleasant on rare occasions). That said, I'd drink two of these, but probably not three.

Since creating this beer, I've read that roasted (unmalted) barley is great for adding not just a roasty flavor but a nutty flavor to a beer. Next time, I'd probably use some of that and less biscuit malt.

Prost!

Für maximale Köstlichkeit, müssen Sie krausen die Pilsner.

2010-08-19T13:18:00.009-05:00

For maximum deliciousness, you must krausen the Pilsner.

Please forgive the significant delay in updating. I temporarily donated my life to a two-month employment situation.

One of the best known archetypal styles of beer is the Pilsner. A Pilsner is a type of pale lager named after and originating from the town of Pilsen (Plzeň) in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. In this area, beers were traditionally dark and cloudy, produced with the top-fermenting ale method. With the importation in the 19th century of German lagering techniques, it was now possible to make a clearer beer in Bohemia. This, combined with generous use of the local hop variety now called Saaz, resulted in the genesis of the Pilsner. Saaz hops are not terribly useful for bittering, but provide a distinct spicy, earthy aroma and flavor. Unfortunately, certain American macro-breweries have co-opted the term "Pilsner" to refer to any clear, pale beer, whether or not that beer has the flavor or aromatic qualities of a genuine Pilsner.

I used an unusually large grain load for this batch, especially considering that Pilsners are generally a lighter style of beer.

1.6 lb American Two-Row Pale Malt
2 lb German Pilsner Malt
.5 lb CaraVienne Malt
.25 lb American Six-Row Pale Malt

Except for the Pilsner malt, all of these have been discussed previously. Pilsner malt is light in color and flavor. It also might lack ample enzymes, thus the six-row. The CaraVienne adds a little richness to the beer.

The Saaz hops I used were the higher-acid (bitterness) American variety, so I didn't need a separate bittering hop. I used one ounce, added 1/3 at a time for 60, 30, and 5 minutes of boiling.

This is what the beer looked like after secondary fermentation. It was flat. Boooooo. This is probably because I procrastinated on bottling the beer due to a lack of bottles. Thus, I had no option but to Krausen. I'm sure you've heard that Old Style is "Fully Krausened", but you probably had no idea what this means. To Krausen (sounds like poison) is to take a beer that has finished fermenting and carbonate it by adding fresh, actively fermenting beer. I used a starter culture for a later batch and put a few drops in each bottle, then resealed them. I probably should have used more culture liquid in each bottle, but it definitely made a difference.

I should also add that this isn't really a Pilsner at all. It's too heavy, yeasty, and boozy.

OG - 1.065
FG - 1.012
ABV - 7.2%
216 calories per 12 fluid ounces
28 IBU

Appearance: On the golden side of pale straw. Slightly cloudy. A bit effervescent, though not fully carbonated.

Smell: A hint of yeastiness, dominated by the peppery, spicy aromas that make Saaz hops distinct.

Taste: It's a bit lacking, for sure, but it's not horrible. Definitely better than the average macrobrew. The combination of the yeastiness, herbal/spicy hop flavors, and high-abv punch makes this a pretty intense drink. Despite the amazing flavor derived from the Saaz hops, the flavors from the malt and yeast are subpar.

Mouthfeel: Fairly rich but not creamy or prohibitively heavy. Bubbles gently on the tongue.

Drinkability: I'd rate this as moderately drinkable. It doesn't go down as easily as the ESB or Red Rye IPA, but it isn't as harsh as the Gumby or as dense as the Porter. It'll definitely knock you back, though, so watch out.

Prost!

A Wheat Oops

2010-08-14T16:23:00.007-05:00

One of my favorite beers in the world is Three Floyds Gumballhead. Now, beers from the guys at 3F are not cheap, but they're guaranteed to be top notch and a fine expression of the given style. I surely don't have the hubris to assume that I'm able recreate such a fine brew, but I wanted to give it my best shot. As described by the Three Floyds Website:

An American Wheat Ale, Gumballhead is named in honor of the underground comic book cat created by Rob Syers. Initially a seasonal summer beer, now brewed year round due to demand. This beer helped redefine American Wheat Beers. Brewed with Amarillo Hops and a generous portion of American red wheat, Gumballhead has a complex hop aroma with notes of grapefruit, lemon zest, marmalade and peach. These flavors combined with low bitterness make Gumballhead a refreshing American Wheat Beer that doesn’t suck.

Gumballhead is a very problematic beer. First and foremost, it's quite addictive. It's definitely full flavored for a wheat beer, has a very palatable body and crisp taste. Because this beer is so awesome, it has broad appeal. Thus, 3F has some trouble keeping up with demand. It's a shame to see the empty Gumballhead shelf in local purveyors of fine beverages. The only sure thing is to go to the brewpub in Munster, IN, a short 40-minute drive from Downtown Chicago.

Since I'm not a brewery, I'm limited by whatever ingredients are available at the store at the time of purchase, and freshness of grains and hops is certainly not guaranteed (though I'm in no way blaming the beer supply store for my failure).

Grain bill:

1.5# American Six-Row Pale Malt
1# German Wheat
1# Canadian White Wheat
0.5# CaraVienne

Naturally, wheat is a major component of the beer, account for half of the total grist. It was probably a bad idea to use that much six-row malt. Six-row, like two-row, is a base malt used to provide the bulk of the fermentable sugar in the beer. Six-row malt, however, contains a greater amount of enzymes, important for use with other grains that have weak enzymatic powers (especially highly toasted/roasted grains and non-barley grains). I'm sure I could have gotten away with, say one pound of two-row and half a pound of six-row. I'm not sure if this actually affected the flavor. The CaraVienne provides a bit of extra color and body to the beer.

I used my standard process to brew the beer, so I won't comment on that (as usual). For hopping, I used two ounces total, one each of Amarillo and Cascade. I put in each 1/3 of the Amarillo pellets for 60, 30, and 5 minutes of the boil. The Cascade plugs went in for 1 minute of boil and the for three days of cold hopping. (Note, cold hopping is typically done during primary fermentation, however given my equipment, I simply steep it, refrigerated, and strain it out prior to fermentation.) The bitterness is about 35-40 IBU.

So far so good. The wort is somewhat hazy, as is to be expected from a wheat beer. Gumballhead is clear but I'm not as sophisticated a brewer as the guys at 3F. The OG of the wort was 1.049, a predicted final ABV of 5.2%. Perfect for a summer ale. After two weeks of primary fermentation, I bottled the beer. The final gravity was 1.015, meaning the alcohol topped out at 4.6%. Not awful, not great. It increases slightly over the course of secondary fermentation, so let's call it 5%. At the time of bottling, it smelled EXACTLY like Gumballhead. I didn't taste it. The majority of the aroma comes from the hops, not the malt.

Two weeks later, I opened the first bottle of "Gumby". It smelled decent, though not as good as before. There was a decidedly funky aftertaste that marred the overall enjoyment of the beer. It is a citrusy/chemical flavor that surely doesn't belong in beer. I tried from this bottle every few days, then from another bottle every few days with similar results. I FINALLY opened a bottle in which the off flavor didn't dominate the beer experience. There's obviously something wrong with this beer.

Appearance: Pours a very creamy white foam, leaves a delicate lace around the edge of the glass. Color is Golden/Amber with a slight brown tinge. This is also the cloudiest of the beers I've made.

Smell: The citrus/floral aroma of the hops is dominant but it also has an old beer smell, like when somebody leaves a cup of Bud out overnight.

Taste: As I stated earlier, this beer has a particular off flavor. The front-palate is totally flat. The mid-palate is almost exclusively this bad taste. The back-palate actually tastes like Gumballhead. There's a good beer in here somewhere. I really do want to enjoy it. The hop bitterness is actually pretty pleasant.

Mouthfeel: This beer feels a bit lighter than past batches. It's hard to think much about the texture of the beer when the flavor is so off. I really can't think about anything else. It doesn't seem as bubbly as other beers either.

Drinkability: Low marks for the off flavor, otherwise, this would be a winner.

What I'd do differently:
Use two-row pale malt and subtract some of the six-row.
Add a light colored caramel malt to round out the flavor a bit.
Hop for a bit longer.
Hope for a better result.

So I didn't exactly succeed at replicating Gumballhead. Oh well. This is batch number six and the first five turned out well (and I think that the next three that are coming up will be successful as well).

Prost?

Carpaccio - A Real Food Post

2010-08-09T22:25:00.008-05:00

Dinner for one doesn't have to be sad. Though you may be tempted to dip into the fast food, frozen burrito, or nuclear noodles, there are plenty of quick and easy options. On a whim, I decided to make beef carpaccio. Why? Why not? It's decidedly quick and easy, versatile, and beyond delicious. According to The New Food Lover's Companion,

carpaccio [kahr-PAH-chee-oh] Italian in origin, carpaccio consists of thin shavings of raw beef FILLET, which may be drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice or served with a mayonnaise or mustard sauce. The dish is often topped with capers and sometimes onions. It's generally served as an appetizer.

As a side note, "fillet" should not be confused with "filet". A fillet is any boneless piece of meat or fish. A Filet (Mignon) is a steak cut from the skinny end of a beef tenderloin (the other end being the chateaubriand), and it is one of the most tender pieces of the cow

Back to the carpaccio. The dish was purportedly created in Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy, a popular American ex-pat hangout, by proprietor Giuseppe Cipriani, but raw meat preparations have been around for a while. It was named after artist Vittore Carpaccio. With moderate portions and fresh vegetables, it can be really nutritious too! There's a similar dish made in Tuscany that consists of marinated pork and shaved artichokes (when in season).

Rule number one of carpaccio is that tenderer is betterer. That said, I wouldn't use veal because it isn't all that flavorful. Nor would it be as attractive on the plate. The most tender cuts of beef are the tenderloin and the strip loin. Most of the ribeye is sufficiently tender, as are parts of the sirloin. I used the sirloin tip. The store happened to have a perfectly sized and shaped piece for my purposes. This piece is about 12 ounces and has a triangular prism shape. My carpaccio did not meet the traditional guidelines but these days you can slap any name on anything and people will eat it up. Foolish sheep. I suppose it's less cumbersome a name than actually describing all of the components of the dish. This is the spiced-and-seared variant. I made a spice rub consisting of ground mustard, fennel seeds, coriander, green peppercorns, and salt. I like to grind my own spices in a coffee grinder (different from the one that you use for coffee), but you can probably find everything pre-ground. Coat the meat in the spice mix and allow it to sit for a few minutes.

Why sear? A few reasons: First and foremost is safety. Even if you get your meat from a reputable source (I get mine from Whole Foods), there's always the risk of stray pathogens. These tend to be only on the surface, especially on very solid cuts of meat (as compared with skirt steaks which have lots of spaces and surface area). A quick, hot sear in a pan, grill, or broiler is all you need to reasonably ensure your safety. Of course, no amount of cooking will eliminate the junk that's in your meat if it comes from the average factory farm or bulk processor. The next reasons to sear the meat are texture and flavor. If your pan is sufficiently hot, you can get a good crust on the outside of the meat. Finally, with a good sear, the sliced meat will have a really pretty appearance, with a frame of cooked around the brightly colored raw center. Aesthetics count too.

A cast iron pan is best for searing because it is, due to its thickness, black color, surface texture, and metal composition, a spectacular conductor of heat. The pan should be very hot and no oil is necessary. You don't want the meat to linger in the pan too long or else the middle of the meat will cook. You only want a millimeter-thick (or so) layer of cooked meat around the raw center. Cook the meat on all sides. It shouldn't take a full minute on each side to cook the meat. It's also probably better to lean towards under-cooking, rather than over-cooking, while you get the hang of the timing.

Resting the meat is crucial. If you slice it as soon as you pull it out of the pan, it'll "bleed" all over the place. Note that this isn't actually blood but loose muscle proteins and other compounds suspended in water. As the meat rests, the muscle re-absorbs the liquid and holds onto it for good. Your patience will be rewarded. (Also, this is a cold dish. It helps to have meat that isn't hot.)

Once the meat is cooled to room temperature, thinly slice it with your sharpest non-serrated knife. A longer knife is better because you'll be able to slice more evenly with long strokes, avoiding the stair-step appearance of shoddily sliced meat. The meat mallet will also smooth out some imperfections. Pound the meat as thinly as possible. I can't really explain how to pound the meat properly; you'll have to get a feel for what muscle movements work best for you, your meat, and your mallet. It's okay if you screw a few up. Just eat the bad ones before they make it to the plate. Arrange the meat as desired around the plate. Notice that the entire surface of the place that isn't covered with meat is perfectly clean. This results from careful plating and, more importantly, allowing the meat to rest sufficiently before slicing (lest it leak liquid all over the place).

It helps to have some extra color contrast on the plate. And vegetables. I'd planned on doing shaved asparagus but my corner produce market didn't have any! Instead I used fennel (shaved with a vegetable peeler), watercress, and arugula. Any salad greens and tender vegetables work very well. Also, the red, white, and green Italian flag theme works nicely. Gently toss the veggies in a light, simple dressing. I just used balsamic vinegar, oil, and salt.

To finish off the dish, I whipped up a quick mustard sauce. Let's call it lazy aioli. Combine equal parts mayonnaise (I used the commercial olive oil stuff that has a bit less fat in it) and dijon mustard. Flavor with roasted or granulated garlic and thin out with a little bit of water and/or white wine vinegar. If you're making this dish for lots of people, you can put it in a squeeze bottle to garnish more attractively but if you're cooking for one like I am, you can use a zip-top bag as a piping bag by cutting off a tiny bit of the corner. Please forgive the uneven lines resulting from this MacGyver'd process.

Tada! It was quite delicious. There's about 7 ounces of meat on this plate - a decent portion for a shared appetizer or solo entree. The nice thing about carpaccio is that you really can bend it to fit your tastes. The following picture is a rather hearty appetizer from a lovely little restaurant in Girona, Spain, where I had one of the greatest meals of my life. The meat is tissue paper thin, a definite plus. It's liberally garnished with pine nuts and a heavy drizzle of syrupy balsamic vinegar, crisped onion shavings, and chopped herbs. I'd actually prefer a bit less garnish to let the flavor of the meat shine through. Oh well. Enjoy.

RyePA Digested

2010-07-27T17:22:00.004-05:00

Two weeks later, the RyePA is ready to drink. I like it. A lot. I wish I had a keg of this handy at all times. That would be delightful. I'll probably make this again, tweaking the recipe to include some interesting caramel type malts.

Appearance: Depending on the bottle and agitation, this can be a cloudy beer. The color might be described as "Brick Red", though I'm not a paint chip analyst. It pours a fine, creamy head, almost as if poured from a nitro tap/Guinness can (though this may be because I dropped the bottle on the ground before opening).

Smell: The aroma of the hops dominates. It's citrusy, especially orange zest, and a bit floral like Jasmine. I can't get much more out of it because I'm so bloody congested.

Taste: "mmmmm" seems to be a common descriptor in this section. The Rye gives this beer nice spicy flavors while the hops imparts a slightly tangy flavor. The chocolate malt, even though I only used an ounce, gives a really nice toasty feeling in the back of the tongue. There's also a slight carameliness to it.

Mouthfeel: Without a doubt, this is the baby bear beer. Not too heavy, not too light. Just right. I won't comment further on carbonation, unless future batches deviate from the norm, because they basically all have the fine champagney bubbles.

Drinkability: With a fairly average 5.2% alcohol level this won't put you out of commission, but, given time, it will catch up to you. Like most creations, this is slightly sweeter than I'd like, but I'll deal with it because it is quite delicious. Of the beers I've made, this is in the mid-range for drinkability. The flavor makes it go down smooth, but the sweetness would hold me back from drinking several bottles.

Prost!

Coming soon: Beer that didn't turn out so well

It's Alive! (with video)

2010-07-15T16:24:00.005-05:00

Here's a video (with as high quality and focus as I could manage with my inferior technology) of the beer fermenting vessel. You can see that there's a whole bunch of stuff floating around. That stuff swirling about is a bunch of protein, starch, and yeast. The continuous motion is due to convection from low-density alcohol being produced beneath high-density sugar-water (wort) and because of the Carbon Dioxide bubbles that form during fermentation and must rise to the top. More on what's specifically is in the keg later. Sorry there's no audio. I probably should have thrown in the Benny Hill theme or something but I wanted to avoid copyright issues.

Prost!

Not really though. Don't drink that.

Beer Recap

2010-07-10T23:51:00.007-05:00

I've been really bad about keeping up with this. Actually, I've been really bad about taking pictures of the beer.

Porter:

Appearance: Opaque, inky, black beer. Pours like highly carbonated motor oil, only darker. Due to overcarbonation, it pours quite the head, as seen in picture one. Picture two shows what a proper pour looks like. In subsequent batches, I used less priming sugar (used to generate carbonation) to prevent this hyper-head from forming.

Smell: The aroma is very rich with nutty, toasty, and... dark notes.

Taste: The first time I tried this beer, I really didn't like it. It was too sweet and had a difficult-to-describe unpleasant flavor to it. My friend Chip agrees. Over the course of several days and weeks, the flavor greatly improved. At first it tasted too molassesey too, but that declined over time. The flavor mirrors the aroma. Anyone who's had Arcadia London Porter would understand the general style of this beer, though theirs is much cleaner and more refined. My dad says it's probably the best Porter he's ever had, but I don't think he's an unbiased taster. I feel like this beer would make a great Vanilla Porter. Maybe one day this winter...

Mouthfeel: It's definitely thick. Like the other beers, the champagney bubbles are most pleasant.

Drinkability: This is not the smoothest beer, but it's definitely good to drink. I wouldn't drink more than a 12 oz bottle of it. At over 6% alcohol, I think I'll pace myself.

ESB:

Appearance: Amber with a slight reddish tinge. First pour has about six inches of head. After the pressure reduces and the beer calms down, the head gets more manageable. Notice the extreme amount of sediment in this bottle. I'm trying to get better about reducing the amount of junk that gets into the bottles. The other bottles in this batch were much clearer.

Smell: The beer really isn't all that aromatic. It has a slight toffee and grainy smell

Taste: It's been interesting watching this beer's flavor develop over time. The first bottle seemed a bit sweet. It was quite delicious, but didn't have the drinkability I like. The next bottle, several days later, had too strong an alcohol taste. Since then, it's been wonderfully balanced. There's definitely a good caramel flavor from the caramel and chocolate malts. The hop bitterness is subtle. I was hoping for a bit more going on there. Oh well.

Mouthfeel: There's something creamy about this beer. I swear I didn't add any lactose. The fine champagne-like bubbles remind me of a nice cask ale.

Drinkability: This beer could be dangerous if I didn't have self-control. If there was a keg of this at a party, though, I would definitely be in trouble. It goes down so smoothly now that I can't taste high 6.7% alcohol content.

This post deserves a grand Prost!

A Strawberry by Any Other Name

2010-07-07T11:58:00.005-05:00

Growing an edible garden is, as I've already discussed, a wonderful way to have a cheap, steady supply of fresh amazing produce. Strawberries are among the easiest to grow because they're low maintenance, perennial, and self-propagating. A small berry patch can turn into a large berry patch in only a few growing seasons. I'm on my third season of strawberry growing and wanted to spice things up a bit. At produce markets in Europe, and some farmer's markets in the U.S., you can find a breed of strawberry different from what we're accustomed to here. These tiny strawberries, known scientifically as fragaria vesca, and commonly as woodland, European, or alpine strawberries, are delicate and delightful. I ordered some seeds online for a few different breeds of the woodland strawberry last year and planted them inside, but they took a really long time to develop into viable plants. This spring, I put the pot outside and the plants took off. They're finally fruiting. I've picked nearly a dozen by now and the plant shows no signs of stopping.

Shown below are three common types of strawberries. Left to right are Driscoll's organic, standard homegrown, and woodland homegrown. You can see that the Driscoll's is considerably larger than the two homegrown varieties. You can also see that they're approximately the same color. Also, note the stem and leaves. The woodland strawberries are ripe when they pop right off the stem. Furthermore, the seeds of the woodland strawberries sit on the surface of the berry while the seeds on the other types are recessed.

To enhance comparisons, I have bisected the three strawberries. First, appearance. Note that the Driscoll's goes from barely pink on the outer ring to pure white. It also has some air space and a fibrous, flavorless core. Wasted space and false advertising. The standard homegrown is deep red throughout with the exception of the ring of white. The woodland are off-white. Next, texture. Driscoll's are crunchy. The standard homegrown is quite tender. Woodland berries have a creamy texture. Most important is flavor. Driscoll's lack it. Standard home grown are bursting with rich strawberry flavor. Woodland are a bit tart with a more floral taste and aroma.

The Italians make a lovely tart out of the woodland strawberries, known there as fragolini di bosco (little forest strawberries). This is a mediocre example from a pastry shop on Capri. They have much prettier ones in Naples and Sorrento, but I missed my golden opportunity because I was supposed to save room for pizza.

Yum.

Better Red Than Dead

2010-06-16T17:00:00.006-05:00

It seems as if two weeks have passed and it is therefore time for a new batch of beer. My system works approximately as follows: Brew a batch of beer. Allow to ferment in the Mr. Beer fermenting plasticask for 10 - 14 days. Bottle with priming sugar to promote secondary fermentation and carbonation. (A day or two later, brew a new batch of beer and place that one on this cycle.) After 10-14 more days, pop the bottled beer in the fridge. After a day or two, begin to enjoy. What this means is every two weeks I have a batch of beer ready to drink and every two weeks I make a new batch. Because I always have a new beer style becoming ready to drink, this keeps things interesting while adding spice to my non-existent schedule.

To refresh the reader's memory, my first two batches (made from malt extract) were Golden Lager and Blonde Ale. Batch three, which just became drinkable, was the Porter. Batch four, ready to be consumed in less than two weeks, was the ESB. In this fortnight, I wanted to try to replicate one of my favorite beers, Founder's Red's Rye PA. Sorta. According to Beer Advocate, the Red's Rye is made with four varieties of Belgian caramel malts and 100% Amarillo hops. I deviated somewhat from this, due to availability of ingredients and stuff I already bought. I don't want to accumulate 28 different kinds of malted barley in my already cramped kitchen. Here's the grain composition of my beer:

Bottom to top:

2 lb 2-row pale malt
1 lb rye malt
10 oz Belgian CaraMunich
2 oz flaked barley
1 oz chocolate malt (not pictured)

To avoid repetitititivenes, I'll spare the details of the brewing process. Mash-in at 130 F. Protein rest for 25 minutes at 125 F. Saccharify at 155 F for 90 minutes. Lauter and Sparge to extract wort. Boil wort with hops. One little twist was that, according to this beer color calculator, my beer wasn't going to have the desired rich, red color with the ingredients I'd originally intended to use. I thought I had more of the CaraMunich than I actually did, so I needed to compensate with the addition of 1 oz chocolate malt (thus why it isn't pictured). It will also provide some complexity to the final product. Here's what the wort looks like:

One of my goals with this beer, in contrast with the Porter, was to end up with a really hoppy beer. I used two full ounces of hops for my two gallon batch. I had one ounce of Amarillo hops pellets and one ounce of Cascades hops plugs. The plugs have a much fresher flavor and contribute more oomph to the beer than pellets tend to. The wort boil lasted about one hour. At the beginning of the hour, I added 1/3 of Amarillo hops. I did so again after 30 minutes and after 55. After the full hour, I added one of the 1/2 oz Cascades hops plugs. Then I removed the wort from the stove and added bags of ice to rapidly chill. Once at room temperature, I added the final Cascades plug. This process is called cold/dry hopping. Typically this is done in the fermenting vessel, but I didn't want to clog up the works in my dainty little fermenter. I left the hops to flavor for two full days in the refrigerator. Hops contain Alpha Acids which promote bittering and preservation but also many delicate aromatic compounds which are destroyed in heat. The cold hopping is to preserve these compounds. As a side note, I have a plastic mesh bag, like a giant tea infuser, that can hold the hops during the boil. It makes straining out the hops later very easy, as I can just wring out the bag. Here's the hops after being wrung out and dumped on a plate. You can see some whole hop cones, loose leaves, and clumps of muck. The clumps of muck are the ground pellets after soaking up the wort. They look like moss. They all smell wonderful, though.

This beer doesn't look all that different from my ESB, though it has a slightly lower gravity and therefore the potential alcohol content is lower. Original gravity is 1.054 so the alcohol could reasonably reach about 6%.

Then there's the matter of the yeast. The day before I planned to make beer, I made a yeast starter using one of my cultures, dehydrated malt extract, and water. After a few hours, I gave it some white sugar after which it became quite active. It was midway through the process that I decided to cold hop (and delay fermenting by 48 hours), so I stashed the starter in the fridge. As you can see, after three days, the yeast (sludge at the bottom) have multiplied considerably. This should make for a wonderful brew.

Prost!

The Bitter End

2010-05-29T15:41:00.005-05:00

All-grain homebrew round II: Extra Special (or Strong) Bitter.

To the extent that England is known for producing really awful warm uric lagers, they are also known for producing a delightful assortment of ales, especially bitters and porters. Two weeks ago, I brewed up a batch of Porter which, right now, is looking like it's going to turn out delightful. It is currently undergoing secondary fermentation and bottle conditioning, that is, it was bottled with a bit of sugar to carbonate the beer while the flavor continues to develop and mature. Now that I have liberated my fermenter, it's time to brew something else. In England, the term "bitter", as a classification of beer and not a flavor characteristic, refers to a pale ale. Bitters are further classified by their strength, ranging from session/ordinary to best/regular to premium/strong. The ESB, by and large an American appellation, is the latter category. Bitters are typically very balanced, with moderate hop and malt qualities. They should be easy to drink, though richer and darker as they get stronger.

The first step to beer making, after acquiring ingredients, is preparing the yeast culture. At least, it should be. I was foolish and began the grain mash before dealing with the yeast. As you all will recall, I cultured yeast to ensure a limitless supply at low input cost. Begin by making a starter wort, as described before. Allow the wort to cool and allow the refrigerated yeast culture to come to room temperature. Note, the starter shown below is not bubbly from yeast action but from being hot and agitated.

Fill the test tube containing the yeast with some of the room-temp starter. You'll need some form of long, skinny tool to extract the yeast. I used the back end of a mini-whisk. Scrape the yeast off the gelatin, then pour into the starter wort. A couple tries may be necessary to extract all the yeast.

After a few hours, I was worried that the culture didn't work. The starter was quite still and dead looking. To get things going, I took a bottle of highly active homebrew porter from the counter, agitated it to distribute the solids, popped it open, and poured about a teaspoon of it into the starter. Yes, I cheated. I can't know for certain whether the porter yeast or the test-tube yeast (although, admittedly, they're the same yeast) is responsible for the ensuing fermentation. To jump to the end of the story, I was really happy this morning when I woke up and saw 1/2 inch of foam atop the wort in the fermenter, a sure sign of vigorous fermentation. Next time, I'll make the yeast starter a day in advance to ensure that it's actually working right. But back to the beer.

The ingredients for the beer are as follows:

The large bowl at the bottom contains 2.5 lbs of 2-row pale malt. The smaller bowl, right to left, contains 5 oz Belgian CaraMunich malt, 3 oz flaked wheat, and 1 oz chocolate malt. The CaraMunich provides a caramely flavor and brownish-reddish color. The flaked wheat (had I not been following a recipe, I probably should have used flaked barley) adds a bit of grainy flavor, creamy texture, and head retention. The chocolate malt adds a darkness to the color and a toasty coffee/chocolate flavor. The bag at the left is US Goldings hops; I also used Fuggles, more on that later. The vial to the right, obviously, contains the yeast starter.

As usual, begin by adding 130ish F water to the grains in a big pot to get things going. Allow to protein rest for about 20-30 minutes at 125F. Slowly raise the temp to 150ish F for starch-to-sugar conversion, aka saccharification. Let it sit here for about 90 minutes to ensure full conversion. There's a starch-conversion test that involves iodine, but that just seems excessive for me right now. Maybe some day. Raise to about 175F for about five minutes, then lauter/sparge/etc. to extract the wort from the grain. Place the wort back on the heat.

Here's a nondescript picture of the mash because why not?

Once the clear wort is placed back on the heat, add the first round of hops. First, I added 1 loose cup of light brown sugar to add a bit more texture and punch to the beer. I mixed the 1 oz Goldings and 1/2 oz Fuggles in a bowl and added in 1/4 increments. I'm in no way a hopologist, but I wanted a balanced profile, so this seemed the way to go. Both Goldings and Fuggles are traditional aroma hops in English ale brewing. The total boil time was to be 60 minutes. Add 1/4 of the hops at the beginning, 1/4 after 30 minutes, and 1/4 after another 30 minutes. Then chill to room temp. I added the remaining 1/4 of the hops to the room temperature wort. The last of the hops spent about 3 hours in the wort before being filtered out. Cold hopping gives the freshest hop aroma to beer while hot hopping provides mainly bitterness.

Here's the wort just before being added to the fermenter:

Original gravity is 1.06, so I expect the alcohol by volume to be in the 5.5-6.5% range after the 10-14 day primary fermentation period.

As I said before, the beer is bubbling and therefore fermenting quite powerfully. This is just about the best picture I could get. It's at least 1/2 inch of foam. This is after about 12 hours of fermentation, 18 hours after making the starter wort. I'll definitely have to make the starter a day early just to make sure that it's working well. But just look at that foam. Glorious. I was delighted, practically giddy, when I saw it this morning.

Prost!

How To Create A Yeast Infection

2010-05-18T21:13:00.006-05:00

Brewing your own beer, as I'm beginning to discover, can be fun and rewarding. It can also be expensive. The grains to make a two gallon batch, as I do, can cost around ten bucks, but the yeast, which is most often packaged for larger batches, gets expensive. The dry yeasts are only about $1.50, but the liquid packs made by Wyeast, available in numerous varieties, cost around $6.50. To save some money and have some fun, I wanted to culture the yeast for future use. Benefits of yeast culturing include reduced costs, fun, and a steady supply of long-lasting yeast for your beer brewing whims. Downsides include extra work (if you can call it that) and reduced strain diversity. With culturing, unless you have a huge operation, you're basically stuck with the same strain. According to Wyeast and the homebrewing literature, the different strains of yeast can produce vastly different beer styles. I don't know nearly enough about either the biochemistry or mythology of yeast to get into this in any detail.

If there's anything living yeast (and most other life-forms) love, it's reproducing. Culturing yeast is essentially the process of promoting long, slow reproduction. Then, once you're ready to make beer, the yeast will be ready to reproduce rapidly.

Begin by collecting lab equipment. Lab glass and rubber can be subjected to high heat which is essential to the process. I use American Science and Surplus for my lab needs. I got an Erlenmeyer flask for mixing and 10 test tubes with rubber caps. Here's the process I used to make the gelatin cultures. Sterilize them by steaming for about 15 minutes. Okay, this doesn't sterilize it, but I don't feel like using a pressure cooker or autoclave. It should be sufficiently germ-free for safe culturing. If it's not, it'll be obvious. My steamer setup is a shallow pot with a steamer basket and a lid. Very basic.

Make a starter wort with water and about 10% dehydrated malt extract. Bring it up to a boil, add gelatin, and whisk to combine. This is the growing medium and will provide a growth surface for the yeast and enough food to nourish the yeast for a long time.

When the test tubes are cool enough to handle and the gelatinized wort has cooled a bit but not yet set, fill the tubes with the wort 1/3 - 1/2 full, reserving one empty tube. Lay them down at a narrow angle so that the gelatin sets slanted.

For this process to work properly, it helps to brew a batch of beer today or tomorrow. This works best with liquid yeast like the Wyeast varieties. Activate the yeast by slapping the pouch. It doesn't seem that weird if you've seen the pouches. If you have the wort ready for a batch of beer today, you can add the yeast to it when the cultures are all done. If not, make a starter wort of about 300ml water and 1.5 oz malt extract powder. Pour some of the activated liquid yeast into the empty test tube and the rest into the starter wort. Cover the starter wort with foil (or a proper stopper with an airlock) and add it to the beer as directed in the Porter post. Here's the starter that I used in said Porter:

Unless you have a proper inoculating loop, you have to MacGyver one. I used a straight pin stuck through a drinking straw. Sanitize the straw and pin with rubbing alcohol or whatever you have handy. Dip the pin into the yeast in the separate test tube. The tip of the straw should collect a little bit of yeast, which will help the culture develop quickly and effectively. Deposit the yeast on the gelatin and gently pierce the gelatin with the pin. This will allow the yeast to take a good hold and access the food contained within the gelatin. Cap the test tubes and set aside.

Good yeast will begin reproducing and spreading right away. A white film on the surface is a good sign. Anything colorful or fuzzy is a bad sign. Once the film is pretty solid, put the yeast tubes into the fridge where they, I'm told, will last 3-6 months. Hopefully in two-ish weeks I'll be able to put the yeast cultures to the test with my next batch of beer, an ESB. Here's the yeast after one week. Notice the white film and lack of fuzz. The instructions say to use electrician's tape to seal up the tops so I did (after taking this picture).

Prost!

Let There Be Porter!

2010-05-17T19:22:00.007-05:00

Loyal reader(s) will remember that I went through the basic process of making extract beers. The extract is essentially wort - the liquid used to make beer - with all the water reduced out, leaving only fermentable sugars. It's a good low-effort way for beginners to make homebrew, but it's not the full process. Today, I make all-grain beer from scratch. Sorry to those using Internet Explorer, this is a picture heavy post.

When preparing to make an all-grain beer, I toured a number of homebrew informational websites and online beer supply stores. I didn't want to make anything too fancy or complicated for my first all grain batches so decided to go for an ESB and a Porter. I placed an order for bottles and ingredients from an online store but they had some issues so I had to buy from a local store - Brew & Grow on Kedzie. I'd recommend it.

Below is an image of the ingredients used to to make a batch of Porter slightly larger than two gallons.

Left to right. The scale is important for accurate weighing. The Erlenmeyer flask contains the yeast starter. There's a fun story about the yeast, but you'll have to wait a few days for that. The tiny shiny bags contain pellets of hops. It looks like hamster food but smells like a Dutch lounge. The varieties I used are Cascade and Fuggles. A big pot is necessary for cooking the malt and extracting the wort. The black pouch in front is Black Patent Malt, a heavily roasted barley malt used in porters and stouts to add dark color and very toasted flavors. Behind it is flaked barley, an unmalted, pressed grain used to add nuttiness, texture, and head retention. the gigantic bag holds 2-row pale malt which is used as the base grain in most beers, providing most of the sugars for alcoholic fermentation and other flavor, color, and texture compounds. Here's the ingredient list for an 8.5 quart batch of porter:

3.5 lb 2-row pale malt
5 oz black patent malt
3 oz flaked barley
1 oz cascades hops
1/2 oz fuggles hops
Wyeast labs #1098 British Ale yeast

I'll go through my process for making the beer. This is by no means the officially sanctioned homebrew process, but it's what I did. Begin by combining the grains in a large pot. Add two gallons of hot water to the grain at about 130 F. Turn on the heat and allow to sit at about 125 F for 25 minutes. This stage is the protein rest in which starches start breaking down and are liberated as enzymes and loose amino acids, among other compounds. Below is the mash during protein rest. It already has a nice creamy head.

Following protein rest, turn the temperature up to about 150 F for starch conversion. At this stage, the enzymes released during protein rest convert the starches into fermentable sugars. After 30 minutes, add the Cascades hops. Hops added early in the boiling will provide bitterness and preservation but very little flavor. Below are the pellet hops. They are ground and pressed for easy storage and use.

The Fuggles hops were added with five minutes remaining in the boil. These will provide more flavor and aroma. After adding the Fuggles (great word, eh?), crank up the heat to 170 F for the mashout. This stage stops enzymatic processes and loosens up the liquid for easy extraction. It looks pretty cool right now.

After five minutes at an almost boil, prepare for lautering and sparging. My supplies aren't ideal but they work well enough. The pasta pot I used for brewing came with a steamer basket. I gently loaded it with the grain to create a mash bed which will filter proteins out of the wort. Here's what it looks like straining and filtering the wort.

After the wort is separated, pour boiling hot water over the grains to extract the remaining sugar and other compounds. I used about two quarts. Combine this liquid with the rest of the wort and allow to cool to room temperature. I added about 2/3 cup (maybe less) of molasses for a bit of extra character and alcohol. After cooled, apply a hydrometer to determine the density of the wort. This will help with calculating alcohol content later on.

Isn't that pretty? The original gravity when all was said and done, was 1.075. If all of the sugar ferments, the beer would be 10% ABV. Carefully pour the wort into the fermentation vessel. Add the yeast starter (remember, more on that later), stir up vigorously, and close up the fermenter. I needed to add 1.5 quarts of water to bring it up to the desired 8.5 quarts. The dilution brought the OG down to 1.062, meaning the maximum potential final alcohol content will be 8.3%. But it's more likely it'll end up at about 7%. Not too shabby. This will ferment for about two weeks, then undergo secondary fermentation in the bottles for about two more weeks.

Prost!

*Update* 5/27/10
The blonde ale came out pretty well. It's a bit richer and fruitier than the golden lager, though mostly similar. It's also not quite as effervescent.

Today, after 10 days of primary fermentation, I bottled the Porter. The density measured at 1.016 which translates to a 6.1% ABV. It'll probably be a little sweeter than I'd like but that's alright. I'll give it 10 days to two weeks for secondary fermentation before consuming. A 12 oz portion will contain 200 calories. Go easy.

Tomorrow I'll make an ESB. The following batch will (hopefully) be a red rye IPA.

Finally A Post That's More About Drinking Than Brewing

2010-05-09T17:19:00.005-05:00

After two weeks of primary fermentation and two weeks of secondary fermentation (the last few days of which were in the fridge), the Brasserie Josh (name is a work in progress) Golden Lager should be ready to drink. Before consumption, several things are worth noting. The bottles used for this are soft plastic, so you can give them a squeeze and see how carbonated the beer is. A firm bottle, like an unopened bottle of pop, indicates sufficient fermentation and carbonation. If it's still soft after a while, the yeast is either slow or dead, or you forgot to add the sugar for secondary fermentation. This is bottle-conditioned beer which means it is 1) alive and therefore 2) changing in character throughout the process. The way it tastes and feels today will not necessarily be how it tastes and feels in two weeks (on the off chance that it lasts that long). Here's a reminder picture of what the beer looked like prior to secondary fermentation:

Notice the pale straw color. It's almost creamy looking. There's also no carbonation in there. I must say, it looks fairly unappetizing. The finished beer is much more clear in the bottle. All the gunk that made the beer cloudy has apparently settled in the bottom in a yeasty pool of sludge. Inverting the bottle cloudies the beer, but it settles fairly quickly. It's important to pour out the beer carefully to avoid getting the brew too cloudy. The loosest sediment won't mar the flavor of the beer, but the sludge at the bottom will. Here's the final product:

Notice how much darker the color got. Also the nice little bubbles. I will now review my beer using the Beer Advocate standard reviewing system (qualitatively only).

Appearance: Rich golden color. Tiny bubbles like a Champagne. Effervescent, though producing only slight head. The beer is crystal clear and very alive.

Smell: It doesn't have too strong an aroma. There's a slightly noticeable hop character and some grainy smells. Nothing particularly exciting.

Taste: It tastes like a basic lager. There's no getting around that. It has a typical lagery flavor at the beginning, some herbal and honey notes in the middle, and, interestingly enough, has a sake finish. I'm pretty surprised with how good this beer is compared with, say, MGD. I'd even comfortably put it next to some mid-range commercial golden lagers.

Mouthfeel: The mouthfeel is actually this beer's strongest category. It is surprisingly thick and rich feeling for a beer as weak as this one.

Drinkability: Tastes great. Less filling. Kidding. Although not really. It goes down pretty smoothly. At an ABV (alcohol by volume) of about 4%, it is weak compared to most micro-brews. It's slightly stronger than most light beers, and also a whole lot more flavorful.

Prost!

How a Beer Becomes a Law

2010-04-24T20:11:00.007-05:00

"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver." - Jack Handey

We all take for granted the delightful intoxicant that majestically pours from skinny amber bottles on a warm Saturday night. Or cool Tuesday afternoon. Either way. It has to get there somehow. In my previous post, I briefly explained the process for making the basic Mr. Beer Homebrew beer. Today I'll go into a bit more detail about what beer is and how it is made.

Beer is an alcoholic beverage.

The primary ingredient in beer is water. Water is very important. But I'm no hydrologist.

The ingredient responsible for the majority of beer's characteristics is grain. Beer is necessarily made from grain. If the bulk of the alcohol comes from fruit, you have wine. If it comes from agave, you have pulque. If it comes from honey, you have mead. If it comes from wood, you have a problem. Grains are basically dense packages of starch and nutrients. Barley is the most common grain used in Western beers, however there are many beers in the world made with corn, wheat, rice, millet, sorghum, and other grains. In order for there to be fermentable sugars in the grain, it must be "malted". Malting is a process of germinating the grain so that it begins to sprout. Enzymatic activity gives you the stuff that makes beer beer. The sprouts are removed and the grain is roasted to stop the activity. The extent to which it is roasted determines much of the beer's color, texture, and flavor. Dark malt = dark beer.

One of the distinguishing ingredients of beer is the charming cousin of cannabis, hops. There are countless varieties of hops, each of which provides a distinct aromatic characteristic to the beer. The bitterness of a beer and its floral/fruity hoppy characteristics depend upon when in the brewing process hops are added and how much are used. Big brewers use just a sprinkling of hops while many American microbrews like to saturate the beverage with hoppy goodness. In addition to providing a great deal of flavor, some compounds found in hops help preserve the beer. This was especially helpful for long boat journeys. (Think about Imperial India Pale Ales. They're very hoppy and strong giving them a long shelf life. Great for bringing His or Her Majesty's glory to the farthest reaches of the orient and new world.)

The final component of beer is yeast. The yeast is responsible for converting the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide (bubbles). Different types ferment at different temperatures and produce different characteristics in beer. Lager yeast ferments at a cooler temperature, and at the bottom of the vessel while ale yeast ferments at about room temperature and floats atop the liquid. Lagers tend to have simple flavors while ales are usually more complex. I'll leave the explanation to scientists. But here's what sugar to alcohol fermentation looks like.
C₆H₁₂O₆ → 2C₂H₅OH + 2CO₂

One particularly happy form of beer is the cask ale - a naturally carbonated, unpasteurized, hand-extracted brew. Cask ale provides a special beer drinking experience. Because secondary fermentation takes place in the vessel from which the beer is served, either a firkin (small keg) or a cork-topped bottle, they have a very pure beer flavor and quite pleasant bubbles. Operating a firkin is a labor of love. In other words, it's a pain, but well worth the effort.

Steps to make beer:

Malting - germination of grain to produce enzymes and sugar
Milling - many brewers mill the roasted malt to increase surface area
Mashing - soaking the grain in warm water to extract the sugar
Lautering - heating the mash to end the enzymatic process and make the grain and sugary liquid (now called a wort) more easily separated; then removing the wort
Brewing -reboiling the wort to ensure flavor and biological purity
Fermentation - adding yeast to make the stuff that gets you sauced
Conditioning - aging the beer to smooth out the flavor
Filtering - to remove the yeast and other sediments
Packaging - putting the beer in the vessel in which it will be sold/drunk

There are several different ways to go here. Many beers are unfiltered. This can give them a cloudy appearance but more complex flavors. Beers can be carbonated naturally or artificially. Artificial carbonation (think Coors) has the same character as pop. Natural can be more Champagney. Secondary fermentation is the process for naturally fermenting beer. It occurs in bottle-conditioned and cask ales. A small amount of sugar is added to the nearly finished beer and then it is sealed. The live yeast in the beer continue producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Since the vessel is sealed, the carbon dioxide cannot escape and instead gets dissolved in the liquid to be released once ready to be consumed.

So that's where we are now with my beer. It spent two weeks in the primary fermenting/conditioning phase. It was vigorously bubbling for 2-3 days and lightly bubbling for another 1-2. After that it stayed flat.

As you can see below, the beer has a straw-yellow color and is very cloudy. The cloudiness is live yeast, protein, and other stuff. Golden lager indeed.

Next comes bottling. The shape of the keg essentially allows for the sediment to stay out of the bottles. A little bit of priming sugar is added to the bottles to promote secondary fermentation and carbonation.

The brown bottles are soft plastic that came with the kit. The nice thing about them is that you can squeeze them throughout the secondary fermentation to see how it's coming along. The firmer they are, the more carbonated the beer is. The Rogue flip-top ceramic bottles are super convenient because they can be used repeatedly. The beer will have to rest at room temperature for 1-2 weeks and then in the fridge for a bit before it's ready for consumption.

Prost!

*Update* I started the second batch of beer. It's a blonde ale. I cut back on the water a bit to make it stronger and boozier. I also ordered supplies for making two batches of all grain beer. I'll be making an English Bitter and an American Porter.

Beer pt. I

2010-04-10T19:53:00.009-05:00

Several of my friends got together and bought me a Mr. Beer homebrew kit for my birthday. Today I begun the process of brewing the first batch. Here's what went into it:

1 can Golden Lager hopped malt extract
1 packet "booster" (guh, corn syrup solids)
1 cup light brown sugar
1 packet brewer's yeast
8 quarts water

The malt extract is barley, malted to convert the starch to sugar, roasted to stop malting, boiled to extract sugar from grain, and reduced to remove water from sugar. Tiny flecks of hops are then added to the malt extract. It comes in a can. This provides all of the flavor and 2/3 of the alcohol for the beer. The "booster" provides the rest of the alcohol and supposedly contributes to the body and texture of the beer. By that I mean it's cheap filler (see also: Budweiser et. al.). The brown sugar is not in the basic recipe, but provides a bit of extra alcohol, color, and character. The yeast does the important job of turning the sugar into alcohol. The water is there to make sure the beer isn't too strong, lest we get ourselves drunk. Also to make sure that the final product doesn't taste like bitter syrup. I'll talk more in detail about the process when it gets closer to completion. In 1-2 weeks I'll decant the beer from the 3 gallon plastic keg into the bottles. You'll get a post then. In 1-2 more weeks the beer will be ready to drink. You'll get another post then. I may also make a new batch once the first batch is bottled. Stay tuned, kids.

Additionally, I can see that there are already bubbles forming within the fermenting tank. These bubbles will not be in the final beer. They are the carbon dioxide that is formed when sugar is converted into alcohol. More nerdery to follow.

It smells like beer! There's a slight layer of foam at the top with a few big bubbles and some tiny bubbles in it.

Enhancing Your Cocktailery

2009-12-24T18:01:00.007-06:00

There's nothing quite like a well made cocktail. Connoisseurs and posers alike relish the myriad delightful combinations of spirits and flavorings. You can tell a lot about a bar by what ingredients they put into their drinks. If you order a Manhattan, does the whiskey come in a plastic 1.75 L jug? Is it something craft-distilled just miles away? No matter the quality of bar, bartender, or spirit, one aspect of your drink is nearly universal. We have all come to accept the post-industrial "Maraschino" cherry as an unavoidable garnish not only in cocktails but on ice cream or that bowl of whipped cream that Outback gives you on your birthday. Treated with some rather unpleasant chemicals, that piece of candy looks like a piece of fruit, but may as well be a radioactive hunk of plastic. So why, even in many high-end bars, is this plutonium cherry so ubiquitous? It's cheap. Dirt cheap. And easy. All you have to do is call your helpful neighborhood industrial food purveyor and a gallon jar of these tasty niblets appears to cast its eerie glow upon your bartop. Surely, there must be a better way.

First, a bit of history. The forefather of the cocktail cherry we know today was made from the Marasca cherry, a variant of the sour Morello cherry. That special breed of cherry is most common around the Adriatic Sea, in Croatia, Bosnia, and Northeastern Italy. A similar fruit, the Amarena cherry, is most common in Central-Eastern Italy. The traditional production methods involve curing these sour cherries, often whole with pits and stems, in a sugar syrup. The result is a richly flavored, essentially candied cherry, thick with a firm bite, in a dark heavy syrup. These cherries are incredibly flavorful and make for delicious cocktails. Unfortunately, they're also very expensive and hard to come by (unless you're a fancy bar, restaurant, or patisserie). The two most common brands available in the US are Fabbri (for amarena) and Luxardo (for marasca). Luxardo is also the most prominent producer of maraschino liqueur.

For you and I, home users with too much time on our hands, homemade cocktail cherries are a feasible alternative to those "maraschino" cherries sure to survive the zombie apocalypse. There are numerous methods that we can use to produce lovely cherries, depending on our preference and patience. This is my third batch of cocktail cherries and my third method for making them.

Perhaps the simplest method is the brandied cherry. A whole cherry would be quite unpleasant for the Old Fashioned tippler on his third or fourth drink. To spare yourself and your guests the expense and unpleasantness of an unnecessary trip to the dentist, please pit your cherries. A device such as this is cheap, easy, and durable. Its design, compared with many other styles, helps reduce hand fatigue. There are also more expensive automatic pitters, worth the investment if you're working with volume.

For the brandied cherry, toss pitted cherries with plain white sugar. Pour into a clean mason jar or other non-reactive vessel. Let sit, refrigerated, for several days until sugar begins to dissolve. Fill with brandy (or bourbon for a Southern twang) and let sit for several more days, until sugar has fully dissolved (gently agitating if necessary). Beware of store-bought brandied cherries, as they tend to be mushy and either chemical-rich or somewhat sketchy.

A fancier method involves Maraschino liqueur, a spirit flavored with marasca cherries. As an aside, the distinct bitter flavor found in this liqueur comes from a form of cyanide. Yum. Fill a clean jar with cherries and top off with Maraschino liqueur. After a few days, you'll have preserved cherries. This method is expensive and the texture of the cherries is not too bad, softer than the heavily sugared cherries and plutonium cherries, firmer than cooked and brandied cherries.

For a cherry more closely resembling the fancy Italian varieties, I gently cook the cherries in heavy syrup. I like using amarena or marasca cherry juice, which can be found in most European-leaning ethnic grocery stores, but any 100% pure sour cherry juice will do.

Bring to a simmer in a pot with sugar. I used about 1.5 cups for this quart of juice, however tweaking is often necessary. Reduce the liquid until it thickens significantly, making sure that the sugar doesn't caramelize. Next, turn the stove temperature as low as it will go and add pitted cherries. For a more authentic flavor, you can also add a splash of Maraschino liqueur or Amaretto. If your tastes and uses don't mind, you can also flavor with vanilla, cinnamon, or other delicious things. Depending on the temperature, it may take quite a while for the cherries to process themselves properly. Based upon your tastes, you are trying to replace some or most of the water in the cherries' cells with sugar, but without making cherry compote.

Be careful, as the syrup will thicken significantly when the cherries cool off. If it's too thick, the cherries become hard to manage. Kept refrigerated, you should be able to hold on to your cherries for a few months. If you get sick, though, that's your own business.

Once cooled, you hopefully have a delicious cherry with the skin and structure intact, a medium bite, and a pourable syrup. This syrup can also be used in place of grenadine in cocktails, if it's watered down to a reasonable viscosity. Grenadine, like Maraschino cherries, have taken on an absurd post-industrial zombie form. Originally a pomegranate-based syrup, most grenadine now contains little more than high fructose corn syrup and red dye.

The Old Fashioned is one of my favorite cocktails, especially during these lovely Chicago winters. In the bottom of a sturdy "Old Fashioned" glass (yes, this drink goes in a glass bearing its name), muddle one of our cherries, a small wedge of orange, a few dashes of Angostura or other aromatic bitters, and a teaspoon of fine sugar. Add 2 oz bourbon or rye whiskey and stir to ensure that the sugar is dissolved. Fill the glass with cracked ice and stir again. If you're into garnishes, and I am not, you can spear an orange slice around a cherry or something silly like that.

Other delicious cocktails involving cherries include the Manhattan, Tequila Sunrise, and Whiskey Sour.

Prost!

Whiskey Revisited

2009-12-23T11:22:00.006-06:00

As you'll recall from my uncreatively titled September post Whiskey River, I added 1500 ml of high proof clear barley whiskey to an oak cask and let it sit. Three months later, it was time to decant. The alcohol acts as a solvent, liberating colorful and delicious caramelized sugars and exotic chemicals from the wood.

The alcohol level of the cask-strength spirit is unpleasantly high. With the help of some simple math, I diluted the spirit to have one bottle standard 80 proof (40% alcohol) and one bottle 100 proof (50%). Despite adding about 300 ml of water, I only ended up with two full bottles of spirit, suggesting substantial evaporation. I read up on this to find out whether my drink got weaker or stronger and the answer is neither. Though alcohol has a lower vapor point than water, the temperature and relative humidity impact what evaporates out of the liquid. If it s warm and/or very humid, very little water will evaporate and the only loss will be alcohol (very bad!). If it is cooler and/or drier, water will evaporate in a greater proportion. Though my basement is fairly cool and dry, I can't speak to the exact proportions of liquid loss. Thus, the ABV figures are rough estimates.

The more diluted spirit is obviously a bit lighter and more drinkable while the less dilute is stronger and a bit rougher. The spirit is much smoother after aging. As you can see, it has a very pleasant medium amber color. The taste is slightly sweet, with flavors of honey and spices, among other delicious things. Though I'm sure that either bottle would make glorious Manhattans and Old Fashioneds, due to the cost, time and limitedness of the spirit, I'll stick with straight up in a snifter or with one or two ice cubes in a heavy bottomed rocks glass.

Prost!

P.S. See you in three months when the next mystery spirit is de-casked. I'll give you a hint. It's delicious.

Leftoversgiving

2009-12-10T21:41:00.005-06:00

With so bloody much food left over from Thanksgiving, there is no doubt that you and your cohabitants will quickly get sick of it. Turn that boring dinner into something fun and new. Here's two old standards that make great use of leftovers. Leftovers are super casual so who really cares about grammar and syntax?

Turkey Chili

mince onion, garlic, and jalapeno and sweat* in a big heavy soup pot
add typical chili seasonings including cumin, oregano, and assorted ground peppers**
cook the spices until they're nicely fragrant
add crushed tomatoes and/or diced tomatoes; canned works just fine
add liquid such as stock, wine, or beer; especially beer; simmer
add canned beans of your choosing (because why cook from dry for leftovers)
add chopped turkey leftovers
season to taste with salt and hot sauce (if desired)
serve with typical fixins

Vegetable Soup

sweat chopped onions, shallots, or leeks in olive oil
add diced fennel and continue to sweat
add leftover roasted root vegetables
add turkey stock made from the leftover turkey carcass or some other stock or broth (or water)
simmer for a few minutes
puree in a blender until very smooth; strain if desired
season with salt to taste and serve (can also be flavored with typical indian yellow curry powder for enhanced deliciousness)
very nice when accented with chives and yogurt/sour cream

* to "sweat" is to gently cook in a pan on the stove on medium heat making the vegetable translucent but not allowing it to brown
** I like an assortment of pepper types; a variety of paprikas, hot and sweet, smoked or not, is very nice; pulverized anchos, pasillas, chipotles, arboles, or other peppers are great and more = better; if pulverizing fails, take the whole dried peppers, steep in hot water, and blend into a paste

Anatomy of a Feast

2009-11-27T13:56:00.009-06:00

Friends, the end of November is upon us. As the month comes to an end, people across this great nation of ours come together to give thanks for doorbuster deals and liberal credit. Before we all have the annual pleasure of deepening our personal debt for stuff we don't need, there's that family obligation called "Thanksgiving". Everybody has their own traditions, from oyster stuffing to feats of strength. Some pretentious snots do thier best to replicate the original thanksgiving, or spend $300 on a heritage turkey. (That said, heritage turkeys are better tasting and generally better for the environment than Butterball. I'll give you like 60 bucks for one.) I try not to be held down by traditions, but I still make roughly the same stuff every year. For the purposes of deconstructing this meal, I'll order the items by their grandiosity or wow-factor.

Least wowful is the roasted root vegetable. I know mashed potatoes is a staple for this type of feast, but I am unwilling to make them in this setting. There is no way to make mashed potatoes that is both healthful and delicious. Cream and/or butter make it delicious. Removing those ingredients, replacing them with Good Morning American healthy alternatives such as chicken broth or applesauce makes them watery and icky. Pass. Instead, I take a colorful and nutritious array of vegetables and roast them simply. This year I used celery root, boniato (white yam), standard yam, and butternut squash. The assortment is based largely upon my whim, though I try to go for diversity of colors and flavors. Peel and large dice the vegetables. With the boniato, be careful; it is rich in polyphenol oxidase and thus turns brown very very quickly. It's usually pretty helpful to roast the vegetables separately as cooking times often vary. Or, if you're really wily, you can cut the slow-cooking veggies into smaller pieces than the quick-cookers. Toss lightly in olive oil and a little salt. Additional flavorings are usually superfluous. I like to throw in some thyme or shallot/leek. Please don't add black pepper. Roast on a sheet pan in a 350-ish oven until the veggies are soft and delicious.

You have to serve the cranberry sauce (not pictured) so that it still has the ridges from the can. Not. If you want something that tastes good, make it yourself. It couldn't be easier. Fill a saucepan with an appropriate amount of washed fresh cranberries. Add orange zest, raisins, orange supremes (skinless segments), orange juice, apple cider, honey, and brown sugar. I don't measure. Cranberries are super tart, so add enough sugar to balance that out. Though I'd like to also add ground cinnamon and fresh ginger, familial obligations prohibit it. Simmer gently
until the cranberries soften and some begin to pop. The acid from the OJ will activate the pectin causing the sauce to gel nicely (though not can-style). Allow to cool to room temperature and enjoy.

If you want a dissertation on stuffing a turkey, watch the West Wing episode, "Indians in the Lobby". I don't stuff for many reasons, thus my bread-based side-dish is called dressing. I'm not formally in charge of this dish but I do contribute to it. For the bread, any crusty french loaf or sourdough will do quite nicely. Just don't use that artifically-softened store-brand stuff. Or Wonder. Ick. Tear apart the bread into a big bowl. Soften with chicken stock. Add cornbread and mix up. Though we historically added brown rice, I prefer fun grains. This year I used a hard red wheat, red rice, and millet. Steam the grains a day in advance so they're not too hot to handle. Sauteed mixed vegetables like onion, celery, and mushrooms are added, as are corn flakes. Season with celery salt, cumin, and really any herbs and spices of your liking. Pour into a baking dish and bake until the outside is crisp and yummy.

An appetizer is helpful to mollify the anxious crowd before you're ready to serve turkey. A simple yet impressive spinach strudel does the trick. Saute frozen chopped spinach to remove moisture. Season to your liking; any number of styles works. I went for simple ricotta, egg, salt, and raisin. One could also do a middle eastern seasoning blend or something else that is delicous. Chill the mixture. Thaw store-bought puff pastry until soft enough to work with. Spread the middle half of the puff pastry with the filling. Fold the sides over the filling and try to seal gently. Now carefully flip the strudel so the seam side is down. With a knife or carving fork, poke holes in the top to allow steam to escape. Brush with egg wash. Bake on a pan lined with parchment paper at around 425 until the puff pastry crust is fully crisp. Allow to cool to room temperature before slicing and serving.

Nobody likes brussels sprouts blah blah blah. It's just cabbage, people. C'mon! Trim the sprouts to remove loose leaves and brown spots. Carve an X into the base to allow the inside to cook more quickly. In rapidly boiling, salted water, cook the sprouts until bright green and mostly softened. Dice lamb bacon (or any other bacon of your choosing) and brown in a large saute pan. If there is not enough rendered fat, you can add butter or olive oil. Place the well drained sprouts in the pan and cook until lightly browned and/or caramelized on the outside. Yum.

One cabbage just isn't enough. I like a nice Germanic braised red cabbage to make sure there's extra vegetable matter on the table. Thinly slice or shave red cabbage and red onion. Saute the red onion in a large pot until caramelized, then add the cabbage. Add red wine vinegar, salt, and red currant jelly/jam/preserves to the pot. Simmer slowly for several hours until the color is uniform and the cabbage is very tender. If you have cheesecloth, make a sachet with appropriate spices such as mustard seed, juniper berries, and caraway. I simmer the spices in vinegar and water, and add the strained liquid to the pot. You can also cook this with lamb bacon or a ham hock to add smokiness.

Every good feast needs some sort of bread. I've recently taken to making pretzels from scratch. Pretzel dough is essentially the same as any other dough. A dough lightly enriched with butter makes especially nice pretzels. Pretzels are typically boiled in lye solution prior to baking, giving the pretzel its distinct crust character. Lye can be dangerous and hard to find. Baking soda makes a decent alternative. Add baking soda to boiling water before adding the pretzel dough balls. Make them small as they expand quite a bit. They should boil for about a minute before being removed, drained carefully, and placed on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush with egg wash, sprinkle with coarse salt, and bake in a 400 oven until crisp, brown, and baked through. Enjoy.

And now, the main event. I don't feel bound by tradition to make turkey, but I think it's a good practical option for having a lot of people at a special event. For a dissertation on brining your turkey, watch the West Wing episode, "Indians in the Lobby". I brine because it helps retain moisture during cooking and flavor the turkey meat (not just the skin). The brine should include salt and sugar, but the spices are at your discretion. Mine included fennel seed, coriander, mustard, fenugreek, and black pepper, among other things. For a big turkey, brine for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator prior to cooking. Also, make sure to remove and reserve the neck and innards. Dry off the turkey and place in a roasting pan. I like to bend the wings back so they're under the back. This helps lift the turkey above the pan when the roasting rack is too small for the bird. A mixture of aromatics should be added to the pan including, but not limited to, carrot, celery, onion, fennel bulb, apple, thyme, and sage. Place the neck, gizzard, and heart of the bird in the pan. I also seasoned the skin with finely ground fennel and coriander seeds. Some apple cider in the bottom of the makes for a moist, flavorful bird and a rich gravy.

My bird was 23 pounds, 4 ounces, so it needed about five hours to cook. My preferred temperature is the slow-and-steady 325 degrees Fahrenheit. As you can see below, even a low temperature, given enough time, will effect a dark, crisp skin. A little butter (possibly herbed) under the skin can help flavor the breast meat if you're into that sort of thing. After about an hour of cooking, place a foil shield atop the breast so it cooks a little more slowly than the thighs. The legs need to reach about 180 to be nice and tender while 160 is sufficient for the breast. Baste the turkey occasionally, but basting is decidedly overrated. With about an hour of cooking remaining, remove the roasted neck and innards to a saucepot, adding much of the liquid from the bottom of the roasting pan. If there isn't enough liquid, you can supplement with home made or boxed stock or broth in both the pot and the roasting pan. Simmer the neck+ in the drippings for about an hour, skimming any scum from the top. Strain and bring back to a simmer. Thicken with corn starch slurry to your desired thickness. The surest way to tell turkey doneness is to wiggle the leg. A very wiggly leg indicates that the connective tissue has largely broken down and thus it is not only fully cooked but also moist and tender. Present the bird before carving. I like to remove the breast whole and then slice on a cutting board. Save the two-boned wing section and the leg for yourself; they are are by far the best parts. Also the bottom of the thigh which just spent five hours simmering in rich broth. Now that's a feast.

Happy Thanksgiving.
Prost.

This is NOT an Appletini (Dedicated to the University of Minnesota)

2009-10-15T20:52:00.010-05:00

Cocktails that are shaken or stirred and then strained are served in a cocktail glass. A Martini is an example of this. Blah blah blah.

There is a class of mixed drinks referred to collectively as "Flips". Apparently, its 15th century origins involved beer, rum and sugar heated with a red-hot poker. The heat from the poker not only warmed the drink but caused the Carbon Dioxide in the beer to release all at once, stabilizing into a foam with the sugar. The addition of egg white and the removal of beer and poker created what we now know as the Flip (so named for flipping the drink back and forth between tin mugs to foam up the egg white). Some form of spice (nutmeg or cinnamon) is typically added as well. This is, of course, not to be confused with Egg Nog which contains cream and has a different method of production. The typical formula for a flip is as follows:

2 oz spirit
the white of 1 egg
1 tsp. superfine sugar
pinch grated nutmeg

This will indeed make a delightful (albeit small) cocktail to be enjoyed by many who don't convince themselves the egg is evil.* The flip has come back into fashion among mixologists and last fall I thought I'd give it my own spin. Like most good things, this one just came to me in a flash. Thus, I give you the Harvest Flip.

Begin by dicing apples - I prefer Honeycrisp (developed by U. Minn.) for their rich, complex, tart flavor. Blend or puree the apple to maximize juice extraction, then strain out the juice. Please please please resist the temptation to just drink the juice.** Crack one egg, separating the white, doing with the yolk as you please. Make certain there is no shell in the white, nor blood or yolk. Combine in a cocktail shaker the following:

1.5 fl oz Bourbon
1.5 fl oz aforementioned apple liquid
1/2 fl oz orange liqueur (Cointreau and triple sec work fine but I prefer to make my own) - fills in for the sugar
egg white (use less than a whole one to minimize smell or a whole one for maximum froth)
dash sage bitters*** - fills in for the spice

(The Bulleit Bourbon contains the orange liqueur)

The next step is called the "dry shake". In this case, 'dry' refers to the absence of neither water nor alcohol, but ice. Detach the spring from your Hawthorn Strainer (most just slide off) and add it to the shaker. Shake vigorously for a solid minute (or less if you feel so inclined). Remove the spring and add ice.

Shake vigorously some more, until the shaker becomes unpleasantly cold. Strain the drink into a chilled cocktail or sour glass. Take a small washed sage leaf, place it in the palm of your weak hand, and slap it with your dominant hand. This flattens it for good presentation but more importantly releases the aromas. Gently place the sage leaf atop the foam in the center of the glass and serve. The aromas from the sage leaf warmly greet the imbiber, also serving to mask any offputting aromas potentially present in the egg white.

Prost!

*Food warning: It is not advised for infants, pregnant women, the elderly, or those who are otherwise immunocompromised to consume raw eggs or other animal products. That said, if your eggs are very fresh, are from a reputable farm (ie not store brand), and have been properly handled, the risk of illness is incredibly slim. Especially when they take a bath in bourbon before consumption. mmm bourbon bath

**I put this at the bottom to discourage it. If you don't want to puree and strain fresh apples, it's okay if you buy apple cider. Only fresh, quality apple cider will do. Apple juice, anything from concentrate, anything clear and yella, and anything shelf stable will greatly compromise the quality of your drink. And what of the solids left over? First, you have instant raw applesauce, rich in fiber and vitamins. Cook it down a bit and add sugar to make apple butter. Just eat it with a spoon.

***Wait, you mean I never did the blog post on herbal bitters? Here's the Reader's Digest (would that be "tweet" in 21st century parlance?) version: In a mason jar or other nonreactive vessel, add fresh chopped sage (or any herb of your choice) to overproof clear spirits. I use Wray and Nephew brand 126 proof rum. Allow the mixture to sit for several days until the liquid has a full color, but ideally before the herb oxidizes and turns brown (which will happen over time regardless but will have a negligible impact on the flavor). Strain out the herb, add a small amount of heavily caramelized sugar (to the point that it begins to smoke just slightly), and bottle. I use cute barbershop bottles from American Science and Surplus. Because bitters are very concentrated and need but a small dose to transform a beverage, a proper shaker top will be needed. A tight fitting laboratory rubber stopper with the tip of a cheap disposable plastic pipette sticking through the hole will do nicely. Perfectly, in fact. Sweet.

Whiskey River

2009-09-12T20:54:00.002-05:00

There is a distillery in Sperryville, Virginia called The Copper Fox Distillery (their bottled product goes under the name "Wasmund's"). They are some clever, clever folks. Economic times are tough, and they need some cash flow! How to make more money more faster? Stick a bottle under the spigot of a pot still and sell it, unaged, with a barrel. This is awesome in several ways. First and foremost, it allows them to keep a low inventory. Second, it allows them to have fewer steps in their production process. These elements together make for a high sales/rent ratio. For those pondering investing in a company, this is a very good thing.

This reminds me somewhat of the business model of the Tuthilltown Distillery in the Mid-Hudson Valley, New York area. As a young distillery, they wanted to produce high quality spirits using local ingredients. However, as a businsess, they needed positive cash flow in order to survive. Aged (brown) spirits are typically the most desirable to connoisseurs (think Scotch, Bourbon, etc.), but require lengthy ageing in wood casks in order to mature, mellow, color and aromatize. This does not make for a successful business. Tuthilltown instead took two steps towards cash flow. First, they sold apple- and grain-based clear (unaged) spirits which require but a few days of fermentation and processing to get onto the shelf. Second, they used very very small barrels to age their spirits. These casks usually hold about 53 gallons of liquid. Using such casks, you have a very low surface area to volume ratio which translates to very slow maturation (through osmosis and other processes). Tuthilltown downsized the casks to 3-5 gallons so that the products could be ready for sale in months, not years. Thus, business is booming and they will NEVER be able to produce enough spirits to meet market demands (at $40/375ml bottle, the spirits don't last long on shelves).

The good people at Copper Fox have taken this to the next level. Instead of ageing the spirits themselves (rather, in addition to), they sell boxed sets including a teeny tiny two liter cask and two 750-ml bottles of clear, pot-strength (around 125 proof) single malt barley whiskey. You fill the cask yourself (once cleaning it, of course) and age it to your taste and pleasure. I will post with updates as the months go by.

A note on copper pot stills:
There are essentially two main kinds of commercial stills, the copper pot still and the column still. The column still is generally used to produce neutral spirits. It requires less energy and man-power, and can distill a greater volume for higher "purity". Purity is the stuff that makes vodka flavorless. A pot still is labor-inensive, messy, and rather inefficient. Use of a pot still necessarily makes something more expensive than a column-distilled product. It also tastes a whole lot better. At a strength of around 62% ABV, it is much weaker than column distilled booze which comes out at up to 95% ABV. The water and gentler processing, however, allow a greater diversity of flavor compounds to come through. You can taste the difference between, say, apples and grains. Or Barley and Rye. Or Islay malt and Highlands malt. It's delicious. Come over now, and every three months from now, and I'll give you a taste so you can see.

Strawberry Fields Forever (an inevitability)

2009-06-16T15:20:00.015-05:00

Spring is here. Normally, for me, it would be planting season. However so much of what I planted last year has returned, better than ever. My perennials - raspberries, strawberries, chives, oregano, mint, and sage - are all bigger and more delicious than last year. Some of the annuals, such as the tomatoes, have even propagated themselves by way of squirrel poop. For the strawberries, it is as if the plants know when June 1st is, regardless of weather conditions, and they begin growing, spreading, and fruiting anew. I think I've already harvested more strawberries this season than in all of last season. Surely, the best is yet to come. Naturally, when confronted with lush, perfect produce, I transform it into cocktails.

To preface this cocktail, a bit about them. I am a fan of Martinis. A Martini is a specific cocktail made using gin and vermouth. There is some wiggle room regarding ingredient choice but there is a point at which the "Martini" appellation no longer applies. Vodka and apple pucker is not a martini of any sort. That the "-tini" suffix is so frequently attached to any drink served "up" in a cocktail glass is a source of great frustration. Typically, drinks served up, that is, shaken or stirred with ice and strained into a glass, are presented in a cocktail glass - a stemmed vessel with an obtuse conical bowl. That said, with a sense of tradition, one can adapt classic cocktails to include quality ingredients and end up with a fine beverage. Here, then, is the Strawberry Mango Gimlet. (as always, I will accept naming ideas.)

A Gimlet is a derivative drink of the Martini where the vermouth is replaced with fresh lime juice. Simple syrup is usually added to balance the lime, and an orange liqueur like Cointreau is often included for depth. Included in this variant is North Shore Distillery's Alphonso Mango gin. North Shore Distillery, located in Lake Bluff, IL is one of the top small-batch distilleries in the country, with the top rated gin in the United States. Every year, they concoct a specialty spirit using rare ingredients (Israeli dates, Indian mangoes, etc.). Of the mango gin, there were only about two dozen cases produced; bottles are hand numbered out of 256.

Above is the setup and a close-up of the gin bottle. You can see that the strawberries are tiny but very red. They are quite full of flavor unlike their store-brand counterparts. The equipment needed is a cobbler (or Boston) shaker, a citrus juicer, a muddler (not pictured) and a cocktail glass, iced to protect the drink's chill.

Strawberry Mango Gimlet

1-3 small strawberries
Juice of 1/2 small lime, about 3/4 fl oz
1 3/4 oz North Shore Mango Gin
Dash simple syrup

Muddle the strawberries in the bottom of the shaker with the lime juice and simple syrup until well mashed.

Add gin and shake gently to combine. Strain into cocktail glass.

The drink also makes a fine Fizz or Collins when poured over ice into a highball glass and topped with soda water.

Prost.

Lamb Bacon II: Reloaded

2009-03-04T14:02:00.005-06:00

Today I return to where I started. Lamb Bacon. It makes chilis, stuffings, stews, braised collard greens, hashes, and, and, and, and, and... really delicious. I swear to you, with lamb bacon in your arsenal, you will have no need for pork bacon in your cooking. Keep it around for your lumberjack breakfasts, though, if you're into that sort of thing. Lamb bacon is not seen to frequently for several reasons, practical and economic. It certainly isn't traded on commodities exchanges. Nor is it particularly easy to produce. Except that it is. If you're Wylie Dufresne, and need perfectly consistent slices of lamb bacon, it's certainly a challenge, but for the home user, it's quite simple.

I was pleased with my first attempt at lamb bacon, but it was nothing compared to the second batch. Here's how I improved it:

I made a stronger cure using more spices, toasting them for added deliciousness

Mustard, black pepper, fennel, coriander, cumin, dried herbs, garlic and onion powders, salt and sugar make up the cure.

Curing the lamb bellies in a dish, stacked together.

I used Activa TransGlutaminase GS, following the company instructions and making sure to glove up, to seal the meat. TG essentially acts as a meat glue, binding the muscle fibers to each other. This is important because, when removing the bones from the lamb breast, it gets all flappy. TG seals the flaps, making a much more contiguous product.

The meat glue package. Note all the warnings.

The meat glue powder activated with water.

Brushing the meat glue onto the flappy lamb breast to create a cohesive bacon mass.

I slow smoked the cured lamb breasts over hickory wood. Apple is better, but you take what you can get.

The final product is much more baconey than the previous batch. I think you should try making some lamb bacon and let me know how it came out/how you improved my recipe and method/what you used it for.

In the Garden of Eatin', Honey

2008-10-05T13:18:00.002-05:00

Though the herbs were the longest lasting and most practical selections in the garden, there were quite a few other treats.

Tomatoes:
When you buy tomatoes at the grocery store, they are usually either pink and hard, or mealy and nasty. In either case, they typically lack much in the way of flavor. I'm certain that I've mentioned before the reasons for this, involving highways, cheap fuel, and hyper-growth varieties. Heirloom tomatoes are essentially the exact opposite of these grocery store ones. There are countless varieties that come in every color of the rainbow (except blue; there is no blue food), with many different flavor profiles. Additionally, different varieties produce fruit at different times of the year, so using several varieties will allow you to have a constant supply. For my garden, I purchased four varieties of tomato saplings from the local farmer's market.

The Orange Blossom variety produced earliest in the season. Its fruit was also the sweetest of the bunch. Slightly smaller than racquetballs, they were perfect for making salsa. As you know, I'm not that crazy about recipes, as each person has their own tastes. Salsa is a perfect medium for expressing your culinary ideas while still maintaining the flavors of the produce. I finely diced the tomatoes and combined with mixed shallots, chopped cilantro, a hint of garlic, and salt. That's all it needs to be the best dip your tortilla chips could dream of. Make sure you have enough, though; it goes fast. Regrettably, I had but one orange blossom plant.

In terms of numbers, the Green Zebra tomatoes were the most prolific, producing dozens of fruits on each of two plants. Their flavor is lighter and more citrusy than other varieties. They're great on salads, especially as the centerpiece of an Insalata Caprese. Even better is to use them to make Gazpacho Verde. Tasty. Here are the tomatoes, unripe and attached to the vine on the left. To the right, the yellowing of the stripes indicates ripeness.

The other two varieties were Purple Cherokee and Brandywine. The PCs are similar in flavor to standard tomatoes, albeit much fuller and fruitier. They're great in sandwiches, add nicely to salads, and provide a great visual and textural counterpart in ceviches. Brandywine tomatoes are redder than anything you've ever seen, incredibly richly flavored, and aromatic like flowers. A couple of them grew to about the size of a softball for added visual effect. Few varieties of tomato existing outside the backyards of Southern Italy are better for making sauces or for canning than these. The internal structure is also a tighter, more complex lattice meaning more meat, less juice, and a striking presentation.

The problem with berries is that there are never enough. I would gladly sit down and eat a pint of blueberries for lunch every day. Blueberry plants are more of an investment than others. You buy some scrawny, bare twigs and, given a few years, it turns into a fifteen foot bush producing enough fruit for you and your neighbors. The raspberries and blackberries are similar, though not expanding as much with age. They all taste as good as anything you'd find in a farmer's market and require very little maintenance.

Strawberries are fantastic. There really isn't much to say about them. The plants are perennial and spread like crazy. They also stay low to the ground so they can be mixed in with other, taller plants like basil (together in ice cream = perfection), tomatoes, and berry bushes. Harvesting them can be a bit like Where's Waldo. And beware of ants. Some types of strawberries produce only during a certain time of year, and are classified as such, such as "Junebearing". These typically have better tasting fruit, a tradeoff for the brief growing season. Others will produce as long as the temperature is warm enough and are referred to as "everbearing". Using a planter, you can even grow them inside during the winter. Delicious local strawberries in Chicago in winter? Yes we can.

In the Garden of Eatin', Baby (Apologies for the trite pun)

2008-10-04T11:40:00.006-05:00

Anybody who says that local, organic, or sustainable produce is too expensive needs to be smacked. Okay, I don't typically condone violence of this sort, so maybe they just need to do be learned about the truths. For the low price of a few seeds or saplings, you can grow your own foodstuffs with minimal effort. In early spring 2008, I started clearing out patches of the back yard of weeds, vines, roots, and other purposeless florae. With several patches cleared, I needed to decide what to plant.

This is an important decision to make. Many gardening books suggest certain lettuces or summer squashes because they are easy to grow, but surely the most important guidance, regardless of difficulty, has to be to plant what you love. One of the greatest pains of grocery store shopping is the purchase of herbs. Why must I buy a bushel of parsley if I only need a sprinkle? Worse yet, why when buying other herbs is the cost so exorbitant for such a small quantity? I am a well-known Mojito fiend. I can't get enough of them. Of course, the distinctive flavoring of that delightful Cuban cocktail is mint. Funny, though, how you usually can't really taste the mint in a Julep or Mojito. Why is this? When most restaurants and grocery stores buy mint, it comes from gigantic farms whose sole purpose is to produce vast QUANTITIES of a product as quickly as possible. Agribusinesses use selective breeding and genetic manipulation to achieve these ends, usually at the expense of flavor and aroma. Note, this is the same reason that a rose today indeed does not smell as sweet. So with dilute or flavorless mint, one cannot make a fine beverage (or jerked chicken). The best way to guarantee good flavor, short of complicated soil testing, analysis, and rebalancing, is to start with good genes. Internet stores provide heirloom (unadulterated) seeds and local garden shops typically carry specialty varieties. Additionally, many farmer's market vendors will sell their surplus plants to the public. I planted several types of mint from several sources and it sure did grow like a weed. Plus, when it flowers, it produces beautiful conical shoots. Having a constant and huge supply of herbs makes spur-of-the-moment cooking and cocktailing a pleasure. All together, I grew marjoram, oregano, sorrel, chives, sage, basil, and seven varieties of mint. Despite my poor soil, they grew well, producing interesting and delightful flavors. Enjoy some photos.

Common Mint

Lemon Thyme (perfect for chicken, sauces, and cocktails)

Top Left: Greek Oregano, a peppery treat
Center: Marjoram, unique, fruity, citrusy, and... herbal

Sorrel, a sour lettuce-like leaf

Basil. A must for anything pretending to be Italiano

Oh Right, Garlic Scapes...

2008-08-11T22:35:00.005-05:00

I previously promised an entry on garlic scapes, but have not yet gotten around to producing anything particularly photogenic at home with them. So here's a text-only account of the scape.

Available only for a few weeks during late spring and early summer, garlic scapes are part of the stem portion of the garlic plant. There are two parts to the scape, the stem and the blossom. The stem is green and crunchy, almost like a green bean, but very smooth and cylindrical. They can be a couple inches to a couple feet long, but are usually trimmed down to several inches when sold. (Sometimes the entire garlic plant is sold whole, from bulb to leaves to stem to blossom. Very cool but usually not the best value) As the season progresses, the blossom grows from a small nub to a golf ball sized cluster of hominy-esque garlic kernels. When peeled of its outer skin, it is a fairly attractive flower, as long as you don't mind the Dracula busting aroma.

The stem section has a very strong bite raw or cooked and makes a fine addition to risottos and vegetable sautes, but by far my favorite application is tempura fried. I made it a few times with varying success, and I don't recall the key to success, but I do know that very hot oil is crucial. The blossom is slightly subtler in flavor and kick, with a creamy texture when cooked. Tonight, I used them in lentil soup, sweating them with the aromatics (and lamb bacon v2.0...). It was a nice textural contrast. My favorite preparation would have to be caramelization, though. In a small amount of oil over low heat, cook the separated blossoms until they are very soft and uniformly dark golden brown. Most recently, I used this application at work, in the one-week absence of my chef, on the special I ran.

Tuna Watermelon Salad

Prepare garlic blossom kernels as directed above
Remove the rind from a whole watermelon and carve so that cross-sections are uniform circles
Thinly slice the watermelon into friendly, manageable circles. (Don't forget to collect the juices to add to sparkling water, pop, or prosecco)
Rub down a small (4 oz) tuna steak with salt and ground coriander (or seasonings of your choice)
Sear on both sides in a screaming hot (cast iron, ideally) pan, making sure not to overcook the fish. (Center should be 1/2-2/3 rare/raw)
While tuna is resting, compose the salad, beginning with the watermelon on the plate.
Toss a handful of arugula with the mild flavored vinaigrette of your choice and mound with maximum elevation atop the watermelon.
Thinly and uniformly slice the tuna, then arrange around the base of the watermelon and salad, forming a single ring, discarding (read: consuming) the ends.
Garnish with garlic kernels atop the salad and herb oil and watermelon granita on the side of the plate.
Sell like crazy because it rocks!

Purple Haze

2008-07-31T20:18:00.010-05:00

This is a cocktail entry. There is already a cocktail named "Purple Haze", and every other conceivable title using the world "purple" but they all involve blue curacao (aka HFCS [high fructose corn syrup] and blue dye) and either grenadine (aka HFCS and red dye) or cranberry juice. Alternate naming suggestions will be accepted though.

Therefore, for the sake of natural, quality drink making, the type that would be found in a respectable bar, I am hijacking the name and using it for my own. Why the need for purple? Seeing a big bin of cactus pears (also known as prickly pears, being the fruit of any cactus of the genus Opuntia) at H-Mart, I instantly thought of using them in a cocktail. They are bad for eating straight because they have large, hard seeds within which can either be swallowed whole or spit out. They also have a very thick skin. Here they are whole.

To prepare them, slice off both ends, just under 1/4 inch from the edge.
Make a shallow slit down the longitude of the fruit.

Peel away the skin to reveal the fruit within.

Dice and puree the fruit, then strain out the seeds and fibers. The resulting puree is thick, full flavored, and richly colored.

So here it is, the Purple Haze

1/2 oz sake or soju (I actually used sake and my galangal infused soju)
3/4 oz cactus pear puree
1 oz clear rum (as you'll recall, cruzan is my choice of the mainstream brands

Combine ingredients in a shaker full of (cubed, not disk) ice and shake vigorously until you can barely handle the cold
Pour into a rocks glass of fresh ice or a chilled cocktail (read: martini for the less-informed) glass

If you felt inclined, and lack any knowledge of mixology, you could call it a -tini, Opuntini, perhaps. But that wouldn't sell well. And it's not a martini, despite its pretty color...

The flavor was quite interesting. Reminiscent of a warmer-climate, chardonnay. It had the tropical fruit flavors such as banana and pineapple from the cactus pear and the butteriness from the sake, aside from other characteristics which are too many to detail. This was paired with the sushi appetizer I made tonight. Prost (or should I say Kampai?)

Popcorn Ice Cream

2008-07-21T11:39:00.004-05:00

Having a gigantic sack of popcorn and not a lot on my prep list, I made some popcorn ice cream at work.

You'll need:

2 large eggs
3/4 C sugar
2 c heavy cream
2 c milk
2 quarts of prepared buttered popcorn
(Normally, I add salt to every ice cream recipe to enhance the sweetness and flavors, but the popcorn ought to take care of it)

Method:

Combine eggs and 1/2 sugar in a large bowl and whisk to Ribbon Stage
Combine cream, milk, popcorn, and remaining sugar in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil, then remove from heat (take care not to boil over)
Let it sit for about 20 minutes, until the popcorn has thoroughly infused its flavor into the cream. (Using a heavy pan will maintain enough heat so that the eggs are properly cooked by tempering)
Strain through cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer (see: Appendix D)
Whisk a very small amount of the cream mixture into the eggs, continue whisking and adding cream in larger increments until you have a smooth ice cream base.

--This process is called "Tempering". It is done in order to prevent the eggs from curdling. If the eggs do curdle, you could try just straining the mix.
--If you heat this mix on a double boiler until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon (nappe), you have "Creme Anglaise", aka pastry cream (though that also involves the addition of vanilla).

You can use an ice cream machine to produce the final product, or just put it in your freezer (once cooled to 40F) and stir about every half hour to incorporate air and ensure even freezing

(Recipe adapted from Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book)

Appendix D
The "D" stands for "Delicious"

The strained out popcorn is delicious and creamy, but not quite suitable for snacking and desserting. I'd recommend making a bread pudding out of it. Combine an egg, a splash of milk, a dash of vanilla, and a half pony of bourbon and whisk. Add the reserved popcorn (which hopefully has dried out a bit since being removed from the ice cream base), and more fresh popcorn if needed. Pour into an appropriately sized, greased baking dish and bake at 350F until set and a bit brown and crisp. Now play around with the recipe until you make something even cooler.

Potato Caviar

2008-07-14T20:09:00.004-05:00

Disclaimer: This is in no way related to fish eggs or the solidified juices made popular by Ferran Adria.

I could go on an on about the farmer's market. The benefits to health, society, and the environment, are virtually immeasurable. But that's not what this is about. Okay, I can't resist, here's a few.

The food comes from people, not companies
There is no middleman unnecessarily stealing money from you
You get the best, peak seasonal produce improving flavor, freshness, and healthfulness
The environment is protected from unnecessary travel times transporting grapes from Chile to Vermont (google it, that's pretty far)
The environment is protected from the very destructive practices of factory farms, be they chemical, physical, or social

Again, I could go on, but here's the reason that is important to this post: you can get stuff that you won't find anywhere else. Let's start with the why. National grocery store chains such as the Jewel, Dominick's, Wal-Mart, Price Chopper, and Stop & Shop require the same products in all of their stores. This is because of perceived demand. What's all this then? It's not simply that apples must be available at every store, year round, but that red delicious apples must be available at every store, year round. Red delicous apples are cheap and easy to grow, and have a long shelf life, but they lack the flavor and nutrients of, say, Honeycrisp apples, available only in certain areas at certain times of the year. The corporate growth strategy of most large corporations such as these is to provide an absolutely consistent product year-round, with the same selection available nationwide. This is a strategy based upon the premise of an infinite supply of cheap fossil fuels (think gasoline). Though we are currently in the midst of a major paradigm shift, these stores are resistant to embrace local varieties, seasonal produce, and quality ingredients.

So when you shop for potatoes at a grocery store, you have few options. Red and white (tiny), yellow (medium) and russet (large), are pretty much all you're limited to. But around this time, in the farmer's market, a single farmer can have as many as 20 varieties of potato, with a broad range of shapes, sizes, colors, textures, and flavors. Furthermore, among each variety, many size options are possible. Seeing these potatoes, I was instantly drawn to what most people would usually reject, the teeny tiny potatoes. These guys were all narrower than the width of a dime (though some were oblong), and I spent close to ten minutes picking out a pound and a half of them from among the baskets of potatoes. There were four varieties, two purple, one pink, and one yellow. Together, they looked almost like an assortment of olives, though the purple ones resembled blueberries when set alone.

Though there would surely be many cool and fun options for these potatoes, I went with a simple potato salad. The standard first step (after a thorough washing) is to boil and cool the potatoes. Start them in cold, salted water, and then heat until soft and tender, but not so much so that the skins split. I don't like the heaviness of mayo, so I use Greek yogurt as a base, with an equal amount of dijon mustard. A bit of lemon juice adds kick. Some chives and lemon thyme (picked in my garden) add nice flavor depth. A bit of grated garlic will give you a bit of a punch in the face, in the good way. And salt. Always salt. Here it is. Just so you understand the tininess of the potatoes, those green rings are thinly sliced chives, not scallions, as would be proportionate with regular potatoes.

What I'd do differently:

Use an emulsified-vinaigrette-based dressing, rather than yogurt-based, so that it's translucent and the color of the potatoes shines through better
I guess that's it right now. Have a nice day.

Coming soon: garlic scapes/blossoms

On Kitchens and HR; On Food, Philosophy and Passion

2008-07-07T01:42:00.007-05:00

I haven't worked in a kitchen for a while now. I had that one job for a month, but that hardly counts as a kitchen, more a factory. Sure, there was Advanced Cooking, but the last time I genuinely produced (quality) food for paying guests was in the Escoffier Restaurant... two years ago. That is not to say I haven't been cooking. Even at culinary school, I often cooked my own food in the dorm rather than be subjected to the passionless schlock often served out of the production kitchens. Since commencement, I've seldom gone two days without cooking dinner. My first meal post-graduation? It was a joint effort between two fellow graduates and myself. Venison guinness stew with curried barley pilaf. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Other than that I'm deeply passionate about food and cooking, whether completely immersed in it, recently escaped from it, or just kinda doing it.

Unfortunately, a series of experiences in professional kitchens, ranging from mildly unpleasant to absolutely miserable, have forced me to shy away from professional kitchens. I applied for many many jobs in the past four months, ranging from wine retail to FOH management to bartending to serving to CoffeeBucks. We appear to be in the midst of an HR crisis in this nation. I don't know why employers no longer have the consideration to call potential employees following an interview, once they've made their decision. I've been forced to call and call and e-mail and e-mail and occasionally even stop in and stalk them in order to get a straight answer.

CoffeeBucks was surely the most egregious. I went in to an open job fair and interviewed for almost an hour. It seemed to go well. I'd hear back within a week. I was pleased to hear back after four days, but displeased to hear that i'd be considered for a barista position rather than shift supervisor, certainly reasonable given my education, training, and experience. What really ground my gears, however, was that I'd have to wait THREE WEEKS to even have my second interview! Three weeks passed and I interviewed with two different managers. It definitely went well. We had good chemistry and it seemed I'd be offered the position. Boy was I excited when, after the interview, I was offered the supervisory position! Before agreeing, I wanted to go in, meet the manager of that store, and chat briefly; after doing so, I gladly accepted the position. I'd hear back from her within forty eight hours when I'd begin my training. There was evening and there was morning. There was evening and there was morning. There was no call. Giving them some wiggle room, I held off calling them for another two days. Once I did call, I was informed that they decided to "go in a different direction with [my] application". I understand CoffeeBucks just announced the closing of 600 stores, but they knew that would happen before offering me a position. Oh well, I guess. But find yourself a good coffee shop that roasts their own beans and is very happy. CoffeeBucks doesn't cut it. Intelligentsia doesn't cut it. If you're around New Paltz, New York, go to Mudd Puddle. It's by far the best coffee shop I've ever been to this side of the Greenwich Meridian. I miss it.

The point of all this ranting atopical to the theme of the blog? I'm once again almost in a restaurant kitchen. Technically, a wine bar. But why? Why, given my past experiences would I put myself back into that situation? I truly dig this place. They believe in what I believe in. Their plan is to implement a constantly changing, seasonally inspired, locally sourced menu. It's exactly what Carlo Petrini describes as Good, Clean, and Fair (read Slow Food Nation or the Slow Food Manifesto for more details). I didn't get the job; I was surely beaten out by a more qualified and more experienced chef.

Edit: Got the job, been working for two months and a week now as of September 20th.

But this is, after all, a food blog. So here's the menu that I wrote as part of the interview process. Note, no specific season was intended, just a broad overview of my style. Also included are some beverage pairings, some specific, some general.

Green Zebra Tomato Gazpacho
With Basil Oil and Roasted Garlic Blossom

Gruet Blanc de Noirs
Warm Fresh Mozzarella
Filled With Tomato Pesto

Balsamic, Crostini, Pink Sea Salt

Burgundian or rich Italian White

Trio of Autumn Squash

Buttercup Latke

Red Kuri Puree

Caramelized Butternut

Maple Cream and Hazelnut

Nut Brown Ale or Wheat Beer

Salmon & Beets

Golden Beets wrapped around pieces of salmon, stuffed with braised beet greens

Pinot Noir Reduction

Arugula Salad

Sancerre Rouge or Cote de Beaune Villages

Braised Shortrib Ravioli in Spinach Pasta

Mustard Greens

Nebbiolo sauce

Nebbiolo, Barolo, or Barbaresco

Cassoulet

Flageolet beans, Lamb Bacon, Venison Sausage, Duck Confit

Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA or Claret

MoShiso Granita

Sake, Fresh Lime Juice, Muddled Shiso Leaves

Warm Chocolate Brownie

Raspberry Zinfandel Coulis, Mascarpone Zinfandel Cream
Late Harvest Zinfandel

I tested two of the recipes. Here's the granita:

4 parts (by volume) dry Sake
3 parts lime juice
2 parts water
1/2 part sugar
several shiso leaves, very finely minced

Combine the ingredients thoroughly and place in the freezer. Mix with a fork occasionally. Ice crystal size is inversely proportional to frequency of stirring. Act accordingly. It can range from snow cone to slushee, depending on treatment. It was quite delicious, if i do say so myself. Here's what it looked like. Garnish with Black Sesame Glass for added fun.

I also made the brownie dish. The brownies came out so-so, but that's easily remedied. Take a bottle of inexpensive (not cheap, learn the difference) Zinfandel, put it in a saute pan on low heat and reduce until slightly syrupy. Zinfandel, especially good ones, presents strong chocolate and berry flavors, an ideal pairing for chocolate desserts. For the sauce, just puree and strain raspberries (frozen please, fresh fruit in season shouldn't be tampered with like that), and mix with a bisl of the Zin syrup. There's your sauce. It should taste like fruity chocolate sauce with a smooth mouthfeel and bright acidity. For the cream, I tried whipped cream, zin, sugar, and mascarpone, but it resembled sour criscocream more than anything else. An appropriate substitute would be the type of sabayon cream used in making tiramisu, substituting the zin syrup for marsala wine.

Smoke in the Backyard, Fire in the Sky

2008-06-20T01:08:00.004-05:00

There are things in cooking which are quantifiable and things which are qualifiable. Example: 3 large chicken eggs is the perfect number to make a french omelet. It gives it the perfect thickeness and cooking time. Creamy curds, smooth as a baby's bottom. Example: pimenton gives richness and depth to stews such as chili. There is, however a third factor that can not be explained logically, rationally, scientifically, or in any way that would be accepted by the average Wal-Mart McDonald's American. Food made with love tastes better. I challenge you to find a single chef, foodie, or mother who would dare suggest otherwise. There are many ways to add love to food, whether using home grown ingredients, taking extra steps to please the end consumers, the list goes on. One of my favorite ways is a little thing called "low and slow".

I'll spare the scientific details (read On Food and Cooking or watch Good Eats for those), but certain cuts of meat, specifically, the more active muscles on an animal, contain connective tissue that, if cooked quickly, mimics the texture of a worn out bike tire. These cuts contain far more flavor than the ever-popular tenderloin (think filet mignon), but require more care, more finesse, more... love to create silky, rich, voluptous dishes. Such is the shortrib. English style shortribs, those cut between the bones for single, five inch bones loaded with meat, are full of fat and connective tissue, and can not under any circumstances be cooked quickly. There are many ways to cook low and slow, including braising, slow roasting, and smoking.

I recently acquired a new electric smoker and had to try it out. Let's take a few steps back. It's not a new smoker, but it was unused. It was sitting in my grandma's basement for several years. Previously, it was at my Aunt's house. She liberated it from someone's basura. Prior to that, it surely went unused in someone else's basement for many years. The company producing the product, the United States Stove Company, sold the line of smokers many years ago to Brinkmann, who currently produces similar, yet more modern, models. Therefore, this is an old smoker. Lacking instructions or all of the necessary parts, I went into "wing it" mode. Acquire hardwood (hickory) chunks, check. Lava rocks, check. Safety equipment... meh.

Step one when smoking is to brine. At its basest, a brine is salt and sugar dissolved in a large amount of water. The addition of herbs and spices can flavor the meat from within, a far more harmonious marriage of olfactory sensations than saucing after cooking. Always remember, sauce is a myth. Dry rub is crucial. Dry rub preferences vary drastically from person to person. I like to use a paprika base, lots of dried herbs (heavy on ground thyme), with cumin, anise, coriander, mustard, and other spices, and just a smidgen of brown sugar for adhesion and crunch. I like to omit salt, applying directly to the meat. It's a lot easier to control that way. After brine and dry rub, there are no necessary flavor additions. Leave the bbq sauce, mustard, A-1, and (shudder) ketchup at the Arby's where they're needed.

Oops... There is one more crucial flavor to be added when smoking. Smoke. Many people use chips, and that's great when you want to throw them on the grill for a bit of added flavor, but they are insufficient for slow smoking. Large chunks, at least two inches long in at least two dimensions are best. They produce more smoke over a longer period of time and require less handling and futzing. A good long soak in water prior to smoking will prolong the effect of the chunks. Highly aromatic woods such as hickory and mesquite are traditional for giving a strong smoke flavor to the food. I prefer fruit woods such as apple or peach to give a more refined character to the dish, especially if it is more delicate like salmon. These ribs got hickory, though. Aside from that, follow the directions for the smoker and cook on.

About four hours of smoking is required to fully break down the collagen holding the meat together into gelatin, its constituent molecule. What is left is a richly flavored meat, concentrated in umami from smoke penetration and moisture reduction. The meat shouldn't be dry as long dry cooking might suggest; fat and gelatin should coat the fibers giving it that distinctively sensuous mouthfeel. Nobody would miss pork when eating these ribs. Please please please. You're using cheap meat. Garbage cuts. Splurge on a nice bottle of red wine, rich in noble tannins, like an aged Bordeaux, Napa Cabernet, or Barolo. It'll be well worth the extra expense. Beer works too, but try to expand your horizons and live outside of your box. Try something new. Most of all, never forget to put a little love in your food.

Dobos Torte and a Rant on Textbooks

2008-05-22T12:32:00.007-05:00

Dobos Torte

A Dobos (pronounced dough-bush) Torte is a traditional Hungarian dessert. Traditionally it is made with layers of vanilla or lemon sponge cake, layered with chocolate buttercream, topped with soft caramel, and coated in chopped nuts. Cake is a funny thing. The difference between good cake and bad is often a matter of a few grams or degrees or microns. For one, the cake must be moist, but not so moist that it lacks structure. Buttercream should be smooth and creamy but not greasy. Layers must be straight and even, and frosting must be made level. Sweetness is key, in all parts. There must be a balance to ensure that one is neither attacked with sugar nor punished with an unsatisfying dessert. For the sake of ease of portioning (I want a thin slice, I want a big slice, give me half of that, blah blah blah), I opted against using caramel as a topping, instead using some chocolate shavings for texture and visual contrast.

My first attempt since school at making a cake such as this one, I was very pleased with how well it came out (though future attempts, I will seek a higher level of quality). It was delicious, balanced, and, also, awesome. As far as flavorings go, the sponge itself was heavily scented with vanilla extract. I contemplated using some form of spirit or liqueur to drizzle over the cake both for moisture and flavor, but I deemed it unnecessary due to the moistness of the cake already and the tastes of the consumer (In this case, my family). For the buttercream, rather than the traditional chocolate, I added espresso crystals (a great ingredient, but not for drinking) to make "mocha buttercream". Enjoy.

On Buttercream, On Textbooks:

Buttercream, defined in its broadest terms, is an icing or frosting made from sweetened, aerated, solid fat. The simplest style, American Buttercream, is merely soft butter and powdered sugar creamed together. (A bastardization of this is made using shortening or margarine, and is commonly referred to as Criscocream. This is used most prominently in supermarket cakes because of its simple creation, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness. Avoid Criscocream. It will kill you.) More complex forms incorporate eggs in the form of a sabayon (in the case of French BC) or a meringue (in the case of Swiss or Italian BC). The different styles have different physical and olfactory properties and deciding which to use is based upon its intended purpose.

When I was much younger, I had a bit of a sweet tooth. I was a candy fiend. Loved the stuff. And white/milk chocolate rocked my world. Around puberty time, my sweet tooth waned and a preference for rich, savory, and bitter foods prevailed. So for nearly a decade now, I've had a mild aversion to foods which are too sweet. This all changed sometime towards the end of my senior year at CIA. All of a sudden, the sweet tooth returned, and with a vengeance. About two months ago, I was a bit obsessed with cake. Rather than buy cake or order it in a restaurant, I decided to make a batch of cupcakes. Realizing I'd run out of cupcake liners, I opted to pull out some cake pans and make a layer cake. My experience with doing such had been limited to the very controlled cake baking environment in the CIA's Baking for Culinary class. So when I tried to make buttercream frosting at home, according to the recipe in the CIA's Baking and Pastry Arts textbook, I failed miserably. The bloody thing curdled! So I was left there with a pile of meringue and butter reminiscent of a mushed flan. Rather than add insult to injury by throwing more butter into the mess, I started over. This time with a different recipe, also from the CIA pastry text. Seeing the same results unfolding (denaturing?) I added gelatin to stabilize and emulsify the frosting. It was delicious, but had a very icky texture. The cake, though unattractive, served its purpose, satisfying my cake craving.

What I learned: don't make buttercream at home.

Now, I would think that a recipe that spans five sections of a textbook (assembled dessert, cake, frosting, caramel, syrup), in a book designed to TEACH PEOPLE, would have sufficient information on how to make and assess the product (Thankfully, the culinary version does have assessment criteria). Determined to produce a dobos torte for Mother's Day, I looked for other recipes. They were all basically the same, except for one difference. "The Best Recipe" told me that the buttercream would likely curdle about half way through the butter adding process, but would restabilize by the time all the butter was added. I later found out that even Wikipedia could have alerted me to this handy piece of information. Why, I ask, WHY does the EDUCATIONAL TEXTBOOK not tell me in detail about the process of making the product? This CIA text misses the mark entirely as a teach tool, but rather serves as a Triple-Thick™ cookbook. You disappoint me, book.

Cocktail as yet unnamed.

2008-05-02T21:59:00.004-05:00

My grandmother came back from California with dates. Lots of them. A box for everyone. No way am I going to eat a three pound box of dates. I like them, but not that much. So I chopped up a bunch and infused them in vodka according to the aforementioned procedure. They must have been infusing for about three weeks. After a good straining, the sauce was good to go. While preparing dinner tonight I though that a good drink would be in order, and I wanted to use the date liqueur. I'll spare the details of the crafting process. Here's what it entailed:

A bit less than a shot of Meyer's Dark rum
Half a shot of the date liqueur
A dash of Drambuie.
Mix vigorously, serve on ice, and top off with a bit of tonic

The drink was good. Very good. But definitely not ideal. Change one, I think a woodier rum such as a Bacardi 8 or Cruzan 8 would pair better with the date. Change two, a different herbal liqueur would be needed. I'm thinking absinthe because of its complexity and highly herbal quality, but I'm open to other options. Change three, a different mixer would be good. I'd say just skip the mixer, but the three ingredients in the cocktail are just a bit too potent. I think an adult pop would work well. You know the ones that have less sugar than regular pop and more mature flavors like tangerine, pink grapefruit, mint, herbs, or ginger? Something along those lines would likely work well.

I'm here to share my ideas, but if you make money off of them, I expect to see royalties.

That is all.

Holy Crèp!

2008-04-29T21:42:00.011-05:00

The store from which I purchase the vast majority of my produce and meat is very Greek, both in ownership and clientèle. Greek Easter was this past Sunday and tradition dictates the consumption of lamb in large amounts. The butchers went through an incredible amount of lamb, selling sides, whole lamb, whole legs, and assorted parts. The other "parts", at least, those which can be sold, found their way onto the shelf. Such parts included RMOs, tongue, head, sweetbreads (the tasty but quite unhealthy thymus gland), and the caul fat. I've used pork caul fat before, but for reasons previously mentioned (I think), it would not be appropriate for usage in my household. For those not in the know, caul fat is the webbing of fat surrounding the animal's internal organs. It is very flavorful and gelatinous, traditionally used to wrap sausage patties for cooking. Such a patty is called a Crèpinette. Seeing the lamb caul fat in the store, I knew that I had to purchase it and make Crèpinettes. Another nice thing about this store is that they will actually help you and get things for you that aren't on the shelf. For example, I required ground lamb for the Crèpinette but, not yet having acquired my own meat grinder, the meat guy eagerly ground up a package of lamb for me, and more for the shelf. With the ingredients for dinner, I went home to prepare.

Typically, when I make sausage, I just go with the flow. Thus, I grabbed some ingredients and threw them into the ground lamb. Sausage seasonings today included home grown sage and oregano, dried thyme and basil, paprika, and other stuff. And salt. Always salt. The lamb caul fat differs from pork in that the pork is soft, silky with narrow strands of fat forming the web, while the lamb is a firmer, larger veined fat. This makes it more difficult to work with, but still quite good.

When making sausages, they can be prepared using artificial casings, or no casings at all, but the difference is striking. Natural casings provide flavor, structure, and texture and let me tell you, tonight's Crèpinettes were rather delicious. I cooked them low and slow in a heavy bottomed pan. Well covered. They splatter a lot. Here's what they look like cooked.

On a separate note, I made quinoa to accompany dinner. It's an heirloom variety of red quinoa with a nice nutty flavor. Quinoa, when cooked, has a little tail/sprout that pops up and takes on the color of the liquid in which the grain is cooked. I used turmeric and saffron making a beautiful contrast of brick red and straw gold.

Sinojito (sign-oh-he-toe)

2008-04-24T00:09:00.004-05:00

I discovered Taiwanese Basil (that's not what it's really called. I have no idea what it's really called.) at H-Mart today. It makes a mean Mojito.

Straightforward mojito recipe:

Muddle several (like 10) mint/basil/useyourimagination leaves with coarse sugar in the bottom of a rocks glass. (that's one where it's short, cylindrical, about as wide as it is high, and has a sturdy enough construction to support muddling)
Add juice of about half a lime. If using whole limes, drop the spent lime shells into the glass and muddle more.
Add a shot of clear rum and stir. I like Cruzan 2 - barrel aged for two years so it's still clear and mild, but has more character than the typical Bacardi Silver
Fill the glass with ice.
Top with seltzer water.
Stir.
Enjoy.

I Suppose This Would Be Considered Northern Italian/Jewish Fusion

2008-04-22T23:38:00.005-05:00

It's still Passover. I had some leftover ground bison meat, but no idea what to do with it. At first plan was to just make ragu and serve it over Passover (potato starch-based) pasta. Remembering past passover pasta experiences - the gumminess, the lack of flavor, the lack of texture - I decided to find something better. Lo and behold, it came to me. Spatzle. But how? you ask. Matzah balls, I say. I followed the recipe on the box of matzo meal for making said balls, with the addition of chopped fresh sage and thyme. Not having a proper spatzleizer, or the close substitute, a professional kitchen's perforated hotel pan, I used a broiler pan with holes in it, held atop a pot of simmering water. It worked pretty well at making tubewormesque matzo balls. As I am typing this, it's occurring to me that a pizza pan would have worked even better. That's the point of experimenting, though; you figure out what works and what doesn't though the process of doing and, more importantly, the process of thinking. The ragu was pretty straightforward. I simply browned minced carrot, celery, and onion (heavy on onion, light on the other) in a bit of oil, pushed it aside and browned the ground bison. Deglaze (that is, put in a flavorful liquid to get the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan, forming the base for the sauce) with a bunch of red wine, add some tomato puree/sauce/diced/crushed and simmer for a while. I also added a bit of chicken broth to rehydrate through cooking. Because bison is so tender, it needs not the long cooking of ground beef to make a silkily delicious ragu. Serve sauce atop "spatzle" for a Passover feast that one, is not from a box, and two, doesn't taste like Passover food.

A Brief Update on Chicken, Pesach Style.

2008-04-21T20:21:00.003-05:00

It is currently Passover, a Jewish holiday which comes with virtually innumerable food rules. Aside from the more popularly known rules prohibiting leavened bread, leavening in general, and any consumption of (most) grains, there is a whole separate class of "can't eat" things called Kitnios. Included in this rather broad category are legumes such as corn (and corn derivatives, which live in just about every processed food we eat) and soy (and soy derivatives which live in just about every processed food we eat). Additionally, many seeds are included, including some tasty spices. Now I had intended on basically repeating the previous broiled butterflied chicken dish, except on the grill. I also have some tasty fennel spice that I wanted to use on the chicken, but because it is kitnios, I was unable. As a solution to the problem, I used licorice tea, which is basically just ground, dehydrated licorice root. After a good stay on the grill (if it's not charcoal, it's not a grill), the licorice gave the chicken delightful flavors, reminding me of a complex red wine. Aside from the licorice flavors, there were lots of fruity, earthy notes too. It was awesome, I say.

No Bones About It (pardon the regrettable, yet inevitable, pun)

2008-03-13T19:47:00.005-05:00

I'd like to preface this post regarding tonight's dinner by saying that it doesn't cost much more to buy a natural Whole Foods chicken than it does to buy a commodity chicken. I spent $10 on a 4.5# natural roaster, compared with the same cost for a conventional six-pounder at a local grocery store. It's majorly better for all parties involved (except agribusiness) for you to buy the natural Whole Foods chicken. Please do.

Now what did I do with this chicken? I boned it. The first step is to remove the backbone. Using a sturdy pair of kitchen shears or a heavy knife, cut along both sides of the backbone to separate it from the rest of the carcass. I can't explain to you without pictures how to remove the bones, other than using one word: carefully. Use a sharp, rigid, relatively short knife to cut along the bones of the carcass, preserving the integrity of the skin and flesh as best as possible. At the end, there will be a boneless, butterflied chicken. I left the bones in the drumstick and wings.

For base flavoring, I marinated in blood orange, lime, garlic, rosemary, and olive oil for about five hours. To supplement, I made a puree of turkey bacon, onion, garlic, oil, and rosemary to stuff under the skin. This served two main purposes. First was to add flavor. Second was to slow the cooking of the breast. It worked quite well on both counts, as the breast and thigh were finished cooking simultaneously. I also sprinkled the top with some spice mix just for a bit of added kick. It's a pretty straightforward dish and turned out quite tasty.

Salmon, Beets (and finally a non-post-dated post)

2008-03-11T20:34:00.006-05:00

An anecdote.

I began cooking when I was very young. It all started (I'm told) at the age of about three or four, baking chocolate chip cookies with my grandmother. With the acquisition of Cooking Wizardry for Kids, a cookbook filled with kid friendly recipes, I began to expand my repertoire of dishes. The big one for me was a simple asiany stir-fry of chicken and vegetables. Once I outgrew the book, salmon became my new medium. Though my recipe began with a simple Chinese(ish) marinade, I tweaked it with different sugars, citruses, herbs, spices, and all sorts of other things until I deemed it perfect. So perfect, in fact, that I entered it into the 2004 Johnson & Wales National High School Recipe Contest, and was selected (among 9 others) as a finalist (out of several hundred) to fly to their campus in Denver, CO and compete. I didn't win, nor do I still have the official recipe, but here's an approximation:

Make a marinade containing rice wine, soy sauce, freshly squeezed orange juice, brown sugar, minced garlic, grated ginger, and sriracha sauce. Marinate boneless, skinless salmon fillet portions in the aforementioned marinade for 45 minutes to an hour, at room temperature, rotating often to ensure even flavor absorption. Remove the fish from the marinade and dry off. Thin honey with a small amount of the marinade to make it easy to spread, but not so runny that it doesn't stick. Brush on the top surface of the salmon (which is, of course, arranged on a broiling pan) with the honey. Then, sprinkle it liberally with white and black sesame seeds. Place under a broiler with sufficient distance that the salmon will cook and not just blacken. The honey will caramelize and crystallize, the sesame seeds will toast, and you'll end up with a delightful contrast and combination of flavors and textures.

Why did I tell that story? Every time my parents go to Costco, they buy a huge hunk of salmon and, while I do enjoy making that recipe, it gets rather trite to prepare and consume. Therefore, I set out each time to create a new or different (or new to me) dish to utilize this salmon. Today's salmon seemed rather noteworthy, though. If this isn't unique, please point me in the direction of whoever created it and where it currently resides. If it is unique, don't use the recipe professionally without paying a tribute. If I find out it was stolen from me, there will be shankings. But I digress. I ventured to Whole Foods, not with tonight's dinner in mind, but with the intentions of purchasing a roaster chicken to butterfly, bone, and broil on Thursday. While there, I saw some particularly appealing golden beets and decided to make the purchase. The initial idea was to simply roast, season, and serve alongside the salmon, but plans quickly changed. While driving home, the dish came to me, appearing in fully finished form. I could taste it.

So to start, I took the tops of the beets, chopped them up into about 1cm pieces, and washed them. Some chopped onions sweated in oil until the warshed beet greens were added. The moisture cooked out, the greens softened, the moisture evaporated. Then I replaced the moisture with some unsweetened soy milk (because that's what we got) and reduced it until the moisture was, once again, nonexistant. This time, the fat in the Silk concentrated as if cream were added to the greens instead. Minor seasoning followed. Finally, a significant amount of mustard (including the home brand - more info to follow eventually) was added to give it some punch.

Next step, the beet roots. Wash, trim, wrap in foil with salt and olive oil. Roast until par-cooked. Then, chill! Once they're cool enough to comfortably handle, peel them with fingers or a spoon. But don't let your vegetable peeler get too far away. Calmly, carefully, use the peeler to make strips out of the beets as long, thick, and wide as possible given the equipment. Ideally, 1beet=1strip. Of course, it'll break. Don't worry.

To prepare the salmon, take the portions and coat the top with the beet tops. All the ingredients should be at room temperature (but, of course, beware of time-temperature violations with the salmon). Next, wrap the salmon, carefully, with the strip of beet. Rub down with a bit of oil, and salt slightly. Roast until salmon is as cooked as you like it. Finally, finish with some coarse salt of your choosing. Other options for stuffing are endless, but sauteed shiitake mushroom slices or truffle shavings seem especially appropriate. Here's what it looks like!

Booze Time

2008-02-12T19:39:00.003-06:00

In celebration of my second (of three) paychecks from my former place of employment, I went out and bought myself a bunch of Mason jars and decided to do some food modification. Step one was pickles. Nothing too fancy, so I won't go into detail. But I made garlicky, dilly pickle spears, garlicky persian pickles (smaller variety of cucumber, left whole), cauliflower, asparagus, red bell peppers, beets, and finally ginger. Blah blah blah, vinegar, water, sugar, salt, spices...

That's not why we're here today. In addition to the pickles, I bought a rather sizable bottle of sub-par vodka (why was I too cheap for the Svedka?) and some fruit, with the intentions of mellowing, flavoring, and enhancing the spirit. I'll start with the easiest one - blood oranges. You can't mix juice with vodka and just let it sit. Sorry. So the zest must be removed (with care to include none of the pith). Using a vegetable peeler, I zested about four washed blood oranges and placed them in a Mason jar with around 600 or so ml of vodka. The flavor progressed from nothing and burny to bitter, to burny, to smooth, fruity, and fresh. Once it reaches smooth, fruity, and fresh, it's time to strain, fine, and bottle. Reusable cork topped bottles tend to work the best for storage.

Next, kumquats. For those of you who don't know what a kumquat is, it's a small citrus fruit with a rather unique sour-orangesque flavor, and edible skin. I sliced them thinly and removed the seeds before candying them in simple syrup. This minimized the tartness of the flesh and bitterness of the pith. It also extracted pectin which gives the final spirit more body. That having been said, the kumquats and vodka were combined in a Mason jar and left to sit. For this, the flavor went from burny to sour, to bitter, to sweet and balanced. Again, straining and fining is key to ensuring a clear product, free of particulate.

Finally, I decided to do rambutan. Rambutan is a very tropical tasting fruit from South-East Asia. It's somewhat like a lychee, but with long, red velcro hooks covering the surface. I opted to maintain the shape of the peeled fruit, rather than cut them up. I'm not entirely sure this was a good idea. The flavor of the final spirit ended up not quite as fresh, strong, or fruity as I had intended. All told, however, It was a lot of fun and the spirits turned out pretty pleasant. They're not good straight up, they're okay on the rocks, but where they really shine is in cocktails (think blood orange spiked margarita or rambutan saketini).
Here are the three jars, with rambutan in the front, blood orange back left, and kumquat back right. I hope you can get some sense of the color and body. I'm thinking you can't.

Marshmallow Explosion!

2008-01-07T20:23:00.006-06:00

New Years day festivities always merit something new, different, or strange. Continuing with the theme of marshmallows, I decided to make them a focus of the dessert course. To do this, I made a mallow centerpiece. For the bases, I halved cantaloupes and coated the outside in mallow. The mallow was prepared as normal, but underwhipped as to make it flow smoothly. While it was still soft, I decorated it with festive patriotic sprinkles and colored sugar.

Tangerine: Tangerine juice and zest were added to the sugar when boiling and strained out before being added to the gelatin.

Coffee: Espresso crystals (not intended for consumption as a beverage) were added to the sugar when boiling. A thick splash of Kahlua added at the same time as the vanilla rounds out the flavor nicely.

Anise: Be careful, or you'll end up using too much like I did. Anise extract is added with the vanilla. Perhaps an anise liqueur would do better to have a multi-dimensional, smooth flavor.

S'mores: Yes, S'mores. I added cocoa powder to the mallow, then piped it out into rows and rolled them in powdered graham crackers. The rows were about an inch wide and length simply depends on space available. It helps to wait a bit after you fill your piping bag (or gallon sized zip-top bag, for AB fans who don't like unitaskers). Don't wait so long that it sets up, just long enough so that the ropes of mallow can support their own weight. After cutting into rounds, the other two sides were also coated in graham powder. Though I didn't, for an added bit of wonderful, they can be dipped (ideally on one side only) in the chocolate of your choice. Safe, clean, neat, indoor, S'mores.

Additionally, using biscuit cutters, I cut a large circle of one of the flavors of mallow and, using smaller cutters, fashioned 08 into it. Then I torched it. Why? Because I can. I used sandwich cutters (the flower and star look remarkably similar) to cut shapes out of the rest of the mallow. Here's the display.

Duck Prosciutto (Take 1)

2008-01-06T23:28:00.002-06:00

Ok, my duck prosciutto experiment didn't work out entirely as I'd planned. I bought a duck and separated the legs and used them for a separate dish. Then, I took the breasts and started off by brining them in a mixture of water, red wine, salt, and sugar (ratio uncertain). After about a day and a half, I took them out of the brine and then rubbed them down with a dry cure of salt, sugar, and assorted dried herbs and spices. After flipping and rubbing down repeatedly over about two days, the dry cure was, for the most part, wiped off. Then, I tied the two breasts as if they were a roast, using butcher's twine.
The final step was to let them hang in the refrigerator for about ten days, to dry and mature. This is an important step for flavor and texture development, as well as preservation. I won't get into the sciencey details, so you'll just have to trust me (or seek other sources). So after hanging, I sliced, as thinly as possible, some pieces off of the breast. I was rather confused. The texture was pretty nice, but the flavor was lacking the character that one would expect from a cured and dried piece of meat. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. So for service, I started with some 4 inch corn tortillas and toasted them up a bit under the broiler, though not enough for them to crisp, just to release the moisture and soften them. Then I threw in some peanut slaw - cabbage, carrot, and peanut vinaigrette - followed by thin slices of duck (fat trimmed), and finally some red onion chutney with currants. Topped of with cilantro, it made for a very popular New Years Day hors d'oeuvre.

Next time, I'm just going to brine and smoke the duck breast.

Dom Perignon

2007-12-29T22:30:00.001-06:00

I'm hosting a New Year's Day party and I wanted to do something fun, new, and different. Aside from the standards (chili, wings, little hot dogs and more to follow...) I decided that it would be fun to try and make festive icebox cookies from scratch. You know those tubes they sell at the grocery store where you slice up the raw cookie dough and there are colored santas or snowmen or christmas trees in the cookies? That's what I wanted to do. After pondering chili pepper, green olive (with pimento), martini glass, and bunch-o-grapes, I settled on the bottle-o-Dom-Perignon shape. Why Dom? Not because it's the best or the priciest or the fanciest, but because it has the most unique bottle with the gold shield label.

This was my first time preparing such a cookie, so the whole process was pretty new to me. Well, not the whole process. Step one is to make a nice big batch of rolled butter cookie dough. This is the same dough you use to do your holiday cut-out cookies. This dough is used because it is very flavorful, but has the structure to hold up to physical manipulation in the form of rolling, molding, and freezing. Why freezing? The butter in the dough makes it soften rapidly when handled, so, in order to maintain the shape of the cookie while molding, it must be chilled periodically. After making the dough, the constituent parts must be colored. I used food coloring, a few drops of green and one of red for the bottle and a few yellow and one red for the label. I divided the initial dough with about equal amounts of white and green, and a bit less of the yellow. It was all very experimental, so I wasn't that precise with the ratio. One tip though, make sure you have more dough than you think you need. Worst case scenario, you bake it as is and eat it while no one's looking.

[I'm about to talk about shapes. When I talk about shapes, I am speaking two dimensionally. They are actually strips of that shape a little over a foot long]
To Begin, I molded a triangular shape out of the yellow for the bottom half of the label. I then surrounded it with green for the bottom section of the bottle. Next, I made another yellow triangle, but sliced along both sides of the edge, spread them apart, and filled in with green, in order to make the top of the label.

Next, the two pieces were fused together through the magic of thaw-and-refreeze. After that, It was time to wrap in green to finish the bottom of the bottle. The neck was made with one strip of green flanked by two strips of white, with a tiny bit of green sticking out for the bulbous part of the cork. Further wrapping in white, with some minor shaping to form something that looks vaguely like a rectangle. I coated the outside with black decorating sugar, but in retrospect, more dough, colored and flavored with cocoa powder, rolled into a sheet, and wrapped around the rectangle would have been neater, tastier, and more attractive. After another round of freezing, they were ready to slice and bake. Though the recipe said 375, about 300F was good to make sure the cookies baked through without browning at all. Browning, you see, defeats the point of coloring dough entirely. I'm pleased with the results, considering it was my first time doing anything like this, and I'm not a baker.

Tangerine Trout and marshmallow update

2007-12-23T23:12:00.001-06:00

Tangerine juice and zest mixed with honey makes a fine glaze for broiled rainbow trout.

Raspberry jam works nicely to color and flavor marshmallows, but the seeds can get in the way.
Anise extract, when abused, makes for a rather pungent marshmallow.

Chocolate Marshmallows

2007-12-21T15:46:00.001-06:00

After watching the Good Eats episode "Puff the Magic Mallow", and seeing how easy it is to make marshmallows at home, I decided to adapt his recipe to make chocolate marshmallows. the cost to make these is about the same as a bag of store-bought marshmallows, but these have a lot more flavor, a much nicer texture, and you can do whatever the hell you want with them.

Bloom two packets of gelatin in 1/3 C cold water.
Combine 1 C sugar, 2/3 C light corn syrup, a pinch of salt, and 1/3 C water in a pot and cook to 240F.
Using a stand mixer with a whip attachment, drizzle the sugar into the gelatin, whip on low to mix, then crank it up to high.
Whip for about ten minutes, then add what I'd guess to be about 2T cocoa powder.
Whip for another two minutes, then add about 2t (real - don't waste your time on artificial) vanilla extract.
After another minute, turn off.
While whipping, combine equal parts corn starch and powdered sugar, you'll need about 1/2 C total.
Using a brush or paper towel, wipe a 9x13 or slightly smaller, flat bottomed glass baking dish with vegetable oil. [any pan will work, as will molds - you can also pipe shapes using a large zip lock bag with a corner cut out if you don't have a pastry bag]
Sift starch/sugar mixture liberally onto the dish, cover with foil, and shake to ensure even coating.
Once the sugar is fully whipped, work quickly to spread an even layer into the baking dish, using as few motions as possible. It will begin to set almost immediately.
Sift more sugar/starch onto the top of the marshmallow. Allow to set for about four hours (or longer).
Turn out marshmallow onto a flat, open surface and cut into desired shapes using a pizza cutter, or really any king of cutter you like. Make sure all sides are well coated with sugar/starch mixture before storing in large zip lock bag or other container. They'll stay good for a couple weeks, but if you're anything like me, long-term storage won't be an issue.

Goat Ragu

2007-12-20T19:21:00.002-06:00

I saw some goat at the store the other day, and since they usually don't have it, I bought some for dinner tonight.

Grind meat in food processor.
Sweat minced carrot, onion, celery.
Brown meat in same pan.
Deglaze with red wine.
Enhance with tomato paste/sauce and some form of stock
Cook on super-low until meat is completely tender, about six hours.
Serve over pasta (preferably fresh tagliatelle)

Lamb Bacon

2007-12-11T13:32:00.003-06:00

So I decided to make lamb bacon. Here's how I did it.

Purchase lamb breast aka lamb belly. The breast has layers of fat and meat just like pork belly.
Remove the thin tough outer membrane; this is inedible, even if cured and smoked
There are also some small, thin rib bones that need to be removed. They are connected by a strip of cartilage which must also be removed. It's also important to try to damage the meat as little as possible when removing the bones.
Create a dry cure consisting of two parts salt to one part sugar (I used brown for no particular reason). In addition, the cure can contain whatever spices and herbs you want. I used crushed coriander, fennel, and cumin seeds, black pepper, and dry Italian herb mix, as well as some paprika and red pepper flakes.
Coat the bottom of an appropriately sized cookie sheet/sheet pan/any non-reactive tray/dish with the dry cure and pack the breasts on top of it. Then, rub down the tops and sides of the breasts with the cure.
Since lamb breasts are very thin, they will not need to cure very long. Two days should be sufficient. The meat and fat will be noticeably different; the meat will be firm and the fat will seem somewhat creamier (for lack of a better word)
If desired, hot smoke the bacon until it reaches an internal temperature of 140F.
Refrigerate the meat.
Once chilled, meat can be sliced into strips, or prepared any other way, as you would with pig bacon.