Cincinnati Weekend (Part One)

Ah, Cincinnati. Glorious were the days of my youth mucking about downtown, getting up to no good with the rap scallions down on Court Street, giving a piece of gingham to Emmy Lou, late nights at the cranberry bog.

Okay, so I've never actually been to Cincinnati. However, I did see an episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bourdain went there so I'm pretty much an expert. When I heard a friend was going to visit family there recently I asked him about Cincinnati chili and, much to my delight, he returned with a gift!



Cincinnati chili! Two cans from the top two rival Cincinnati chili makers: Skyline Chili and Gold Star Chili!



The Skyline Chili can had a recipe on the back of the can. And any recipe that begins with the words 'Place a cooked hot dog in a bun' has just got to end with happiness.



I added some mustard (though I had trouble splashing it), some of the chili, and shredded some cheddar cheese for the top. I feel like I lose points by using an organic hot dog bun and an organic beef hot dog. Also I probably lose a lot of points for using a cheddar cheese that was not from Skyline and even more points by shredding it myself.

I have to say that it was pretty tasty. The chili itself was a little sweet from the spices used. It reminded me a little bit of a New York System wiener which, curiously, isn't actually available in New York but is very popular in northern Rhode Island. Remove the cheese and take out the spices from the meat sauce and the two 'recipes' are nearly identical.



It is really hard to find beer from Ohio in New York. I looked and looked and the best I could find was this Little Kings Original Cream Ale from Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'd imagine that a few of these beers have been consumed with many a cheese coney in the past. Cheese coney is, by the way, what they inexplicably call these hot dogs in Cincinnati.

I was expecting this beer to be terrible but I was actually very surprised by it. It had a very soft and sweet taste to it with a strong flavor and scent of apple juice, something I've never really picked up in a beer before.

This was, indeed, the perfect accompaniment to the cheese coney.

Drinking this beer has renewed my faith in the entire class of beer known as cream ale. I'm actually eager to try a few more. This could be the beginning of something beautiful!

Or, I could be disappointed to find out that the rest of cream ales are foul, flavorless, abominations.

Ah, Cincinnati. I feel like I've experienced a sterilized version of your majesty this evening.

Now . . . what would Cincinnati be like if I were in charge? I guess you'll have to tune in tomorrow night to find out!

Going Bananas!

It is fortuitous that Jen happened to take this trip in the 21st week of her pregnancy. According to the Baby Size Chart, our two babies are now the size of bananas!

Jen hates bananas so it worked out rather well that she was not around to have to endure this week's themed meal.



It seemed a little strange that they are the size of bananas this week. Last week they were the size of cantaloupes. I have always considered the average cantaloupe to be larger than your garden variety banana, however, the Baby Size Chart is not to be questioned.

Do not question to the chart!



I started off by making this salad with baby spinach, banana, red onion, lemon zest, roasted almonds, and a dressing made of yogurt, buttermilk, salt, pepper, lemon, and honey. This was surprisingly tasty. My worries of going banana crazy tonight cooled a bit at the taste of this, though I'm sure the phrase "banana salad" is still not going to achieve the status of "goat cheese and cranberry" any time soon.



For an entree I seared a pork chop and finished it in the oven. I cooked down some kale and red onion in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, then made a sauce of orange juice, brown sugar, and banana to put over the top. This was also shockingly tasty. As a big fan of well-cooked pork chops (and by that I mean cooked perfectly, not overcooked) this was a pretty easy win for me.



For the first time in weeks I've found an appropriately produce-themed beer to accompany my baby theme meal! The beer was this Banana Bread Bear from Wells and Young's Brewing Company in the UK. This is the first beer I've had that looks designed to revolt both Jen and my father-in-law.

While interestingly unsweet in the first few sips, by the end I found it to be a little tiresome. It had a distinct-but-subtle fresh banana flavor but by the end of the beer I felt as though I had just eaten some banana-flavored Now & Laters.



It seemed a bit odd to have dessert after such a beer but if I made a salad, entree, and beverage that were all banana-themed then it seemed like I would have been letting a golden opportunity slip away by not having dessert.

I don't think I've ever actually had a banana split before in my life. At least I don't recall ever having one, despite frequent trips to the ice cream parlor every summer of my youth with my father.

While I was tempted to jazz this up in some unusual way I figured my first taste of this treat should be the classic. I just used vanilla ice cream, made some chocolate sauce, whipped up some fresh cream, and topped it with a cherry. After the first bit I could see why this dessert became popular. It was delicious!

I guess it's not surprising that adding a banana to an ice cream sundae would be delicious. Unfortunately I come to some things later in life.

Next thing to cross off my Embarrassingly Admissions of Gen-X Undoneness: watch The Goonies.

I know, I know. Save your emails. I am ashamed.

Brewing and Babies (But Not Brewing Babies)

It's probably about time that we let you all know something: Jen is pregnant. That's right. However, since we always make more than we need we've decided to have twins. Yes, we decided to do it that way. It was in no way a surprise to us at all.

However, since no one is interested in reading a blog about babies or parenthood (you can find virtually none on the entire internet) I had to be creative about how I could related this development to food. This was easy given that there are about four hundred web pages devoted to comparing the development of your unborn baby to produce.



While Jen uses a different chart I am fond of the Baby Size Fhart from TheBump.com. According to this chart Jen, at eighteen weeks, is currently the proud carrier of two sweet potatoes.



Naturally it seemed like a good idea to make a themed meal around our announcement of this occasion. Sweet potatoes didn't seem particularly seasonal given that the weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 70's today. However, since it was only 41 degrees this afternoon I found it would be a safe day to have some sweet potatoes and run the oven.



I took advantage of the entirely seasonal cold snap to also brew two recipes from the Brooklyn Brew Shop recipe book Jen got me for Christmas. I brewed the Tea & Toast and the Chocolate Maple Porter. I'm tired of all these large scale breweries I've been enjoying beers from. They're so commercial. These recipes will both yield between nine and twelve bottles each. Any batch of beer that produces more bottles than that is just out for profit. My first batch of beer made 55 bottles! Back then I was only in it for the money.



For tonight's main course I made this sweet potato gnocchi which I boiled and simply tossed with olive oil, butter, salt, and pepper.

To make the gnocchi I started off by baking the two sweet potatoes in the oven along with one Russet potato. When I removed them I felt an incredible sadness when I remembered that they were supposed to be symbolic of my unborn children. "What have I done?" I cried. "My beautiful boys!"

After taking a few minutes to remind myself that these were merely tubers I got to work in peeling them and passing them through a food mill.



I topped the gnocchi off with this Bella Lodi which is kind of like Parmiggiano-Reggiano except it has a black rind and is slightly cheaper. That's $1.00 a pound less that's going straight into the college fund. That's $1.00 per pound per baby!



It was a sad day, however, in that our trusty salt mill (given to us by Jen's Mom) was broken. Actually it broke about a week ago.



I ordered a replacement in and was excited to finally get back to grinding until I realized something depressing.



The one I ordered was intended to run on batteries. Yes, that's right. Batteries!



While pondering why anyone would want such a device I was further enraged by the fact that it took six -- six! -- AA batteries to operate this salt grinder. I'm going through enough batteries in my battery-operated forks in knives. I don't need to add to that expense for a salt grinder.

Now if they came up with a battery operated pillow then that would make sense. I'd definitely pay money for that.



I figured, to keep with the baby theme for tonight's dinner, I'd go with a milk stout. I couldn't decide between these two milk-themed beers so I figured I'd just have both!



The first was the Milk Stout from Left Hand Brewing Co. in Longmont, Colorado. I was very happy with this stout. It was rich and creamy with a very faint liquorice flavor and a quality that I like to call "imaginary chewiness" which is one of my favorite characteristics in a beer.



The second beer was this Mother's Milk, a slightly more local stout from Keegan Ales in Kingston, New York. I had this beer once before, on tap, on my birthday last year. This was extra fitting considering how my birthday just happened to fall on International Stout Day.

This beer scored extra points for having the word "mother" in the name of the beer.



After brewing beer with all grains you have a tremendous amount of spent grains at the end. Even with these small one gallon batches I had all this grain. Luckily there were some really nice recipes on the Brooklyn Brew Shop website.



After stumbling across a recipe for Barley & Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars it became clear that this was definitely what I was making.

I made a crust out of the spent grains, some pretzels, a little granola, some brown sugar, and butter. After it was done I topped it with a mixture of peanut butter, powdered sugar, melted butter, and chocolate chips then topped it with melted chocolate and milk.

This recipe is actually remarkably similar to my peanut butter chocolate bars, the first recipe I ever wrote down from my Aunt Vivian as a teenager.

The bars were predictably delicious. After drying out half the grains in the oven all night I put the second half in before bed in hopes that we would awake in the morning with all of the grains completely dried and ready to use for more recipes. My only hope was that we would not burn the building down in doing this. If we could overcome this fear all would be well.



Now we only have to get over the fear that one day Oprah will eat our babies.

Fancy Pants Beans on Toast

I've long held an ambivalence toward beans. They're something I know I should like and I should eat more often but I can never get excited about it. That being said I have been looking forward to making some homemade baked beans for a long time now and tonight was just the night to make that happen.

I had some beans leftover from August and I knew I had to use them soon before they gave up the bean ghost.



To start I soaked them overnight, then I cooked them this morning, and after an exciting trip to a New Jersey Ikea, I threw them in the oven. I added a little water, ketchup, mustard powder, salt, pepper, molasses, Worchestershire sauce, and brown sugar. I also chopped up some of the skin side of the leftover ham stead from the other night and added the skin, fat, and leg bone before throwing them in the oven for three or four hours.



When they were done I served them on a slice of toasted cornbread. Since I'd started out with these precious little heirloom beans I had the idea to turn them into beans on toast. However, since they were fancy pants beans I could not simply use a slice of white bread. No, this called for something decidedly more fancy pants, thus the cornbread.



To accompany the baked beans I roasted a chicken and served it with some steamed broccoli and a salad. That's right, the chicken was an accompaniment to the beans! That's just how fancy pants they were!



For beer I enjoyed this Diesel from Sixpoint Craft Ales. I've been eyeballing this one for a long time and I finally got around to cracking one open. This is a truly unique beer, kind of a cross between a porter and a stout with delicious notes of bitter chocolate and coffee. Normally I'm not a huge porter or stout guy but this beer certainly hit the spot.



In fact it was so good that I also added about a third of the can to the beans before cooking them.



For dessert I served up this Sumo mandarin. These mandarins have been all the talk lately. At least they've been all the talk in circles where people stand around talking about citrus. These are the kinds of circles I generally travel in. You may think that sounds exceedingly lame but I assure you I'm a terrifically wild and exciting guy.

I'm great at dinner parties. I drop all kinds of produce knowledge all over the place. For example: did you know that Sumo mandarins are from Japan and are extremely silly looking?

I bet you didn't. In my circles we'd refer to you as a classic Fruit Fool.

Good night, folks.

Pink Peppercorny

On another rainy, not-quite-winter, night I decided that the fridge needed a little emptying. As we won't be dining at home tomorrow night I wanted to eliminate as much of the remaining leftovers that I could, even after yesterday's assault on all that was both left and over.



To start off I put out this Montenebro goat cheese from Spain. This cheese is sort of like if they made a giant fist out of cheese then punched you in the face with it then sprayed cracked black pepper into your eyes.

I'm not sure from that description if it's clear that I loved this cheese. While that may not sound great to everyone I can assure you that this cheese was incredible. It had a slight grassy taste too. I'm not sure if that's violent enough though. Okay, so after you get pepper sprayed in your eyes it's like someone rubs grass into your brand new white jeans until they stain.

This cheese is that good!



For salad I put together this little number with arugula, feta, kalamata olive, and some grilled artichokes I'd given to Jen for Christmas. I topped it all with a little arugula. I didn't realize until writing this that I didn't put any salt or pepper on this salad. With everything going on it really didn't need any.



For the main course I crushed up some pink peppercorns with my mortar and pestle. I trimmed and lightly salted a nice pork tenderloin and then applied the lightly crushed peppercorns like a crust before searing it and throwing it into the oven for about ten minutes.



I also baked a sweet potato in the oven and roasted some halved Brussels sprouts to serve along with the pork tenderloin. Pork tenderloin is one of my all time favorite cuts of meat and this preparation was a new favorite. I've never crusted pork with pink peppercorns before but tonight I thought it would be fitting and I was right. The inspiration, I admit, came to me from the beverage I chose to serve.



I cracked open this Pink IPA from Birra Almond '22. I'd been looking forward to having this for a while. The Pink IPA is an Italian beer which comes in a beautiful bottle and with a fairly large price tag. It's also an odd volume at 37.5 centiliters (12.7 ounces).

I didn't get too much pink peppercorn from this beer. Sadly, to me, it tasted like an average IPA. After eyeballing this one for the past five or six months, observing the packaging, and paying ten dollars for a little more than twelve ounces I was expecting more.

Admittedly this was not the freshest bottle on the planet. I would like to give it another try if I could find it fresher. Of course with no dating on the bottle I don't know how I'd really know.

So, if you are looking to try a nice single bottle of IPA I'd recommend going with the Rayon Vert last night over this one. It's an astonishingly good beer and it probably costs about a quarter of what this does.

Hey, it may not have been the best beer ever but at least the trains ran on time!

A Man, A Plan, A Trout

I had absolutely no idea what I should make for dinner tonight. I was moments away from declaring it a buttered noodles night when I spied this beautiful trout from Panama at my local purveyor of fine fish. I had also recently seen the Panama episode of No Reservations so I fancied myself something of an expert on this country that I've never visited.



I pan roasted the trout to get the skin nice and crispy and served it over a bed of coconut rice with cilantro. I also sauteed up some spinach and made a simple pineapple salsa with pineapple, roasted red pepper, red onion, cilantro, cayenne, rice vinegar, and salt. I have no idea if this is the sort of thing that they'd do in Panama but it seemed entirely possible. I'm pretty sure Anthony Bourdain mentioned something about coconut rice in that episode so as far as I am concerned this is a 100% truly authentic Panamanian dish that would have been served to Noriega's dinner guests as they listened to him tell them about how much he hated the music of Bruce Springsteen.



Long before I started making this quick dinner I cracked open this Hefeweizen from Uinta Brewing which I've been mistakenly calling Unita for the past month or so. I recently had their pale ale which was one of the best beers I've ever had. The hefeweizen was not quite at that level but it was decent. It was bottled a little less than three months ago so I probably could have had it a little fresher. I'm just not sure February is the right month for hefeweizen. However, it did snow today and we got an accumulation of a little shy of two millimeters before melting twenty minutes later.



I got these New York State Cortland, Jonagold, and Crispin apples so I figured I'd make a giant pot of applesauce since it's one of Jen's favorite things in the world to eat.



I used equal parts of each apple, peeled and chopped them, and cooked them down with just a little water. Jen and I have completely different tastes in apples. The Jonagold was my favorite of the three while the Cortland was her favorite. Our only common ground was in ranking the Crispin as two out of three.

Want to know the secret to a long marriage, folks? I'll tell you. It's all about finding your apple common ground.

And never go to bed angry.

Lentil Lundi

Whilst grocery shopping on Saturday morning Jen proclaimed, "We should eat more lentils." This sounded like a good idea to me, however, I stated that there'd have to be some theme to this. So I proposed that tonight, on Monday, we would start the very first in a series called Lentil Lundi!

Okay, let's be honest, this will probably be a series of approximately one (1) blog entry. But still, the idea was enticing enough.



Since I wasn't working today I cooked up a big pot of lentils and just let them sit on the stove for a while.



While they sat I cooked up some onion, chili pepper, and tomato in a little butter with some cumin seeds. I guess technically I could have used ghee but I just didn't want to. There are certain ingredients in cooking that I just don't like to recognize as legitimate and ghee is one of them. I understand the point of ghee, I just don't like the idea of getting it when I can just use some oil or butter in place of it.

I like running a lean pantry. Lean with the exception of the seventy-five odd jams, jellies, tapenades, and mustards I accumulate in an average year.

I added a little chili powder and fresh tomato to the cooked vegetables before adding in the cooked red lentils.



I served up a salad of the leftover roasted celeriac and beet with a squeeze of lime, olive oil, salt, and pepper mixed with fresh cilantro leaves. I was content to leave it at that but Jen suggested rather forcefully that I add in some sliced avocado. It didn't really go with the salad but, hey, I'm not one to turn down avocado in any situation.



To accompany this makeshift dal I decided to make some naan. I would have loved to have planned this better and just bought some naan but not having that foresight I was forced to make some from scratch.

Along with ghee another thing I don't like doing is measuring things so I just put in an amount of flour, water, yogurt, yeast, salt, and oil into a bowl, mixed it up, let it sit for a bit then scooped it in portions onto the pizza stone fresh out of a 500 degree oven.



They puffed up a little too much when I put them on the stone to bake. Next time I think I might make the batter a little more wet and spread it thinner on the stone. That's a simple fix, I'll just increase the liquid content in the recipe!

Oh yeah. No recipe. Maybe there is something to this whole recipe thing after all.

Sockeye It To Me

Normally we continue our holiday excess from Thanksgiving straight through until our multi-part tri-state Christmas festivities die down sometime in mid January. This year we've implemented a one week cool off between Christmas and New Year's so we can try to gain some small shred of health back before loading back up on fatty meats and baked goods.



When we hit a rare mustard shortfall last month I picked this mustard up because it contains two of my favorite things: mustard and beer! I brushed a nice piece of Sockeye salmon with the mustard with a little salt and pepper to let it sit for a few moments while I prepared the rest of the dinner.



I tried to fill us up on salad by making this little number with mixed baby greens, toasted pistachios, blueberries, satsuma segments, red onion, and goat cheese. I tossed it with my old standby fig dressing of fig preserves, tahini, and balsamic vinegar.



I got a pan red hot, coated it lightly with olive oil, through the salmon in skin down, then tossed it into a 425 degree oven for ten minutes. I probably could have gone with eight minutes but the result was a nicely flavored roast salmon with crispy skin. Stout isn't the first beer I'd pair with salmon but the mustard worked brilliantly.



As I like to do I wilted a pound of spinach with a splash of olive oil and a few cloves of crushed garlic. As I also like to do I piled it high on a plate tor effect. When doing this it gives me a sense of smug satisfaction and achieving height (or as my chefs in culinary school used to inexplicably pronounce it: HITE-TH).



For dessert I broke with my vaguely healthy theme by serving up this butter tart Jen had made. This is a newcomer to the holiday dessert rotation. It's oddly named in that butter is a very minor ingredient. There are many other ingredients that it could better be named after -- raisin tart, sugar tart, coconut tart, walnut tart, just to name a few. Once again there is no beer to report on tonight, merely a mustard made with beer. Soon I hope to return to my normal beer-tasting form.

That way I can review all these Christmas beers in January and look like a total jackass.

Post-Apocalyptic Dinner Menu

After yesterday's bonanza of cooking and pickling the kitchen was left in a state that most closely resembles the lair of one of those mad scientist guys in a post-apocalyptic movie. The only thing missing is a guy with a dirty trench coat on and goggles made out of copper.

Oh, and a flying machine that, after the protagonist boards with him, he reveals has never actually tested before just as they roll off the edge of a dusty plateau.

Hollywood producers: call me if you want to take a look at my script.



I was going to make a great big kale salad to get started, however, when I looked in the salad spinner I saw that we only had enough kale to make what a mouse would consider a great big kale salad. A mouse who had snacked before diner. And had had gastric bypass surgery.

Instead I decided to cube up some bread and toss it with the kale. I added a squeeze of lemon, feta, chopped basil, Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt, and pepper. As a super special twist I also drizzled a little honey onto the salad.



Tonight, based on all the ingredients this week, I decided to make pasta that had a caponata-style sauce. I browned some garlic, tossed in some Wala Wala onion, the farm eggplant, and some of the tomatoes. After stewing for a while I threw in some of the basil leaves and a splash of balsamic.

There are a great deal of things I could have added to this sauce to make it like a caponata. One thing I would have added is pine nuts, however, I have decided that I am now boycotting pine nuts.

I really like pine nuts but they have reached an absurd price. With cashews being such a cheap (and, frankly, just as delicious) alternative I don't think I can justify their use in cooking anymore. So it is that I bid adieu to pine nuts. It's been nice knowing you but until you get down off of your expensively priced horse I'm going to have to go with your tastier and more affordable cousins.

Also, in the post-apocalyptic future, pine nuts are more precious than gold.



When researching what would go well with eggplant or pasta I discovered that there is next to zero information on the internet about this subject. Therefore I decided that tonight I would pair dinner with this hefeweizen from Hofbräu. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually go with

For dessert I recreated a snack that Jen has been making for the past few days. The snack she invented was putting some Speculoos spread on a graham cracker then topping it with fresh peach slices.



Speculoos spread is a spread made out of ground up Speculoos cookies. I liked the cookies so much on our trip to Europe that Jen brought the spread for me. You know a spread made out of cookies goes great on? More cookies. True story.



I mixed together some Speculoos spread with a little melted butter and crushed up graham crackers to use as a crust in a small casserole dish. I topped the mixture with peaches and blueberries and chilled it until it was cool enough to slice and serve in little squares. It is convenient that Jen's fantastic idea comes at this time seeing how we have a bunch of expired graham crackers in the cupboard that need to be used up toute suite.

I cut out a square of the dessert, which ended turning into a pile, and topped it with whipped cream. I've been steadily cutting back on the sugar I add to my whipped cream and now I've reached a point where there is no sugar and only vanilla. The dessert was plenty sweet enough without the additional sugar.

Expect a large number of bakeless graham cracker crusted desserts to follow. It's going to be like recipes on the back of a graham cracker box in the 1980's.

In this post-apocalyptic wasteland we're lucky when we can get any kind of crackers, stale or otherwise.