Beer Brats, Bear Brats, and Bear Beer

Today was far too rainy to go to the farmer's market. This worked out well because we still had items in the fridge from last week's trip. I discovered this late in the game when opening the crisper revealed some produce that needed to be used without delay.



I made this salad by cutting beet greens into ribbons and topping with slices of warm, cooked beets, dill pickle, and radish. Then I drizzled sherry vinegar and olive oil over it with salt and pepper. This was unorthodox but quite tasty.



I thawed some bratwurst that we had in the freezer and cooked it with rendered bacon, crushed garlic, onion, and cabbage with a little olive oil and a pat of butter. After stewing this all down together I added a bottle of Weyerbacher Winter Ale and finished it off. This was probably far too good a beer to use in this recipe but it seemed seasonally appropriate.



I picked this beer very carefully. I love Long Trail and all that they produce but my main reason for picking this was because I haven't seen my father-in-law comment recently. Fruit-flavored beers really get his goat so I knew this would be sure to rile him up. One problem with this is that while he hates fruit-flavored beers he loves bears so I thought this may put him in a bit of a moral quandry and he will have to think very carefully about how he responds. I'm pretty sure that the fruit-flavored nature of this beer will not be made all right by the bear theme. However, it will be interesting to see how he handles this delicate situation.

The ball is in your court, Gary.



For dessert I sliced up some nice ripe persimmon. There is nothing better than a nice ripe persimmon. Except for a bunch of candy bars which we also had.

There is no culinary romance in having a bunch of Butterfingers though.

A Night of Four Porks (or Four Pork Night)

Tonight was a night to clean out the fridge and the freezer. It just so happens that most of the things in the fridge and freezer happen to be of a pork-related nature. Therefore it was much like an episode of Iron Chef in that I needed to prepare as many pork related items as possible for dinner. The only major difference was that I did not make a ham and shark fin soup which most certainly would have happened on Iron Chef.

In fact, ham was the only pork ingredient that made it through the evening untouched.



I started off by making a salad with the leftover butter lettuce and some shredded kale. I topped it with sliced beets and chopped pistachios. For dressing I made a dressing with some tahini, water, fig spread, ginger preserves, and balsamic vinegar.



For the main course I stuffed some beautiful center cut pork loin with a generous amount of leftover cornbread stuffing from Canadian Thanksgiving that I took out of the freezer.



I had a bag of Brussel sprouts dying a slow death in the crisper so I rendered some bacon, cooked down some garlic and red and yellow onions, and then tossed in the trimmed sprouts. The pan got a little dark so I deglazed it with some apple cider and sprinkled the crispy bacon on top when it was done.



Based on Mark Bittman's recipe I peeled and cut these sweet potatoes into wedges and par-boiled them. Then I topped them with sage leaves and alternately wrapped them with either prosciutto or bacon before roasting them in the oven. I only used the bacon because I didn't have very many prosciutto slices left but we both ended up liking the bacon version much better.

So we had bacon, pork loin, sausage (in the pork stuffing), and prosciutto around the sweet potatoes. I'm not sure if we lose points from our Hanukkah dinner last week. Perhaps it would have been better form to at least wait until Hanukkah was over before having this dinner.

Oh well. Leftovers don't wait.

Mazel tov!

Christmas Trees, Oxen, and Croque Monsieur a la It's Complicated

Apparently last year I didn't mention anything about our outing to cut down a Christmas tree. Normally I post such events on the blog as to use them for future reference. This year we got a recommendation for a good place to go cut down a Christmas tree. When we got there we discovered it was the exact same place we went to last year. This ended up being fine since it happened to be a great place.



The place was Maple Row Tree Farm in Easton, Connecticut. We managed to get a type of tree we'd never gotten before but I can't really remember the name of what type it is. The rustic outdoorsman at the entrance rattled off some of the types of trees they carry but he could have been making them all up as he went along: Douglas Pine, Colorado Blue, Norwegian White.

Come to think of it he may have been listing the names of Harry Potter dragons.



Just like last year they had Fred & Bill the oxen available for children to look at and torment. Jen decided to get in on the action and pose with Fred.



Fred didn't take kindly to this and made a loud noise which scared Jen in this moment which is the finest I've ever captured on film. Or SD Card.

Earlier this week I had concocted a plan. After my investigative report on the Maille mustard and It's Complicated movie tie in I had the idea to make Croque Monsieur and watch the movie It's Complicated. To assist us in this we invited our good friends Paul and Caolan over to share in the madness.

This is likely the stupidest idea I've ever had in my life.

The main problem with the idea is that none of us really wanted to watch It's Complicated. Particularly with the Christmas season upon us. However, I'm all about follow through. If you put a stupid plan into motion you have to see it through to the bitter end.



The first major flaw in the plan was that I wanted to follow the recipe from the Maille recipe booklet verbatim. The problem with that is that I think whoever wrote the recipe had never actually had a Croque Monsieur before. Instead what this recipe calls to make is more like a Croque Madame/Tomato Mozzarella hybrid. That being said, I was intent on following it to the letter.



The second major flaw was that we had some varied diets in the group. Jen has a strong dislike for eggs of most varieties, Caolan is a vegetarian, and Paul only likes complex carbohydrates. Therefore I would be the only one who was having the authentic It's Complicated version. It was indeed very complicated getting all these sandwiches made in their various permutations.



After getting them all made we sat down to watch the movie. After getting about halfway through all our sandwiches Caolan made the observation that it did not taste like there was mustard on her sandwich. This was true because in all of this fuss I had completely forgotten to put the essential ingredient on the sandwich. I blame Maille's marketing department for this one. So it was that we got out the Maille and applied it to the second half of all our sandwiches.

Much to our delight this is exactly what happened in the movie! Meryl Streep is bragging about how she learned how to make Croque Monsieur in Paris yet halfway through she goes and gets the Maille and puts it on the counter (with the label carefully facing the camera). Steve Martin actually takes out a knife and applies it to the top of his sandwich.

Her Croque Monsieurs looks much more true to tradition so apparently she was not following the strange egg-in-the-basket method.

I'm convinced that some greater power is up there watching over us and makes sure that all of our sandwiches turn out okay. Some sort of sandwich deity.



For beer I chose a nontraditional match to Croque Monsieur by having this Winter Ale from Weyerbacher. This is fine considering that this was a very nontraditional Croque Monsieur to begin with.

This beer was quite tasty. This brewery also made a great pumpkin ale in the fall that sold out immediately so I snatched this one up as quickly as I could. It was as dark as winter beers tend to be but not as overpoweringly bitter or spicy as I find most of them. It was great to have one that is not infused with all manner of nutmeg and allspice.



For dessert Jen made this apple pandowdy which was fantastic with a little vanilla ice cream on top.

To further cleanse our palates we watched Christmas in Connecticut. This is our second year in a row with this movie on our Christmas movie list and it's a great addition. Particularly since we live so close to Connecticut now that we can be considered honorary Connecticutians. Connecticutites?

Connecticutamians?

G. Love With No Special Sauce . . . and Special Sauce!

Last night I was planning on going home and making some Reubens. Instead I got a call from Jen that she'd been invited to a private G. Love concert and that he'd be performing songs from his new album, Fixin' To Die which is being released on February 22, 2011.

Being a huge fan of the man I jumped on the train and headed into the city.





The only other times I've seen him he has been performing with Special Sauce so this was rare for me. He even performed one of my favorite tune, Fresh Lila, which I was able to capture on video. However, after a while I started to feel bad that he was all by himself without Special Sauce.



However, tonight, I made up for that with my own special sauce (see what I did there?). I had brewed up this batch the other night when I made my turkey Reubens from our Thanksgiving leftovers. Tonight I used it again to make Reubens out of our Hanukkah leftover.

I guess I'm a bit of a one trick pony.



For dinner tonight I used a bunch of leftovers. I used the leftover brisket, Swiss cheese, special sauce, fresh seeded rye bread, and sauerkraut to make these Reubens. I also made sweet potato fries. Much to my surprise as soon as I peeled the sweet potatoes they were white! I've had white sweet potatoes before but they usually had a distinct pale skin whereas these had a dark reddish skin similar to normal sweet potatoes. While I didn't achieve the color I was looking for they still roasted up nicely and were delicious. I seasoned them with Old Bay, salt, and pepper.

Also I made this cabbage slaw with the leftover cranberry relish, mayonnaise, Maille mustard, dried cranberries, a little hot sauce, cider vinegar, salt, pepper, shredded carrot, and julliened red onion.

We also had some pickles we picked up last week at the farmer's market in town from Dr. Pickle who is apparently a pickle that got bitten by a radioactive MS Paint which gave him the super power to be poorly rendered on a web page. Good pickles though.

This was maybe not quite as good as the turkey Reubens had been but at least 95% as good.



For beer I had an Estrella Daura which is a Spanish gluten free beer. I mostly had it out of curiosity. It was a very tasty pilsner-style beer. And the best part is that if I've developed celiac disease overnight I am safe!

Except for the rye bread I suppose.

A Very Rhode Island Hanukkah

It struck me that we don't own a menorah. That is sad. Would it be too late if I bought one tomorrow and we started lighting it a day late? Well, it's probably not a big deal since I had no intention to be very traditional with tonight's meal there's no real reason to be traditional with the accessories either.



To be safe we lit our makeshift menorah. There's space for four total candles so the way I figure it is we have four more days to get a real menorah. That's proper protocol, right?



For a salad I got this nice Boston lettuce from Tiverton, Rhode Island which was as close to Boston as I could find this lettuce growing. I guess that makes this Boston lettuce almost as authentic as they come. Next I'd like to try some Boston butt from Fall River, Massachusetts.

On the lettuce I put sliced radishes, fennel, and fresh dill from Migliorelli Farms in the Hudson valley. The last ingredient there kinda killed my Rhode Island vibe I had going.

Then I topped it with a sweet lemon vinaigrette that I made with Maille mustard, lemon juice, Lyle's golden syrup, cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.



After salad it was time for latkes. To make them I shredded a russet potato and half a vidalia onion then chopped up some green onion and dill. I mixed that all with a couple of spoonfuls of Maille whole grain mustard, horseradish, an egg, and a generous amount of salt and pepper. I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours before adding some flour, squeezing out the excess moisture, and frying in a pan until golden brown.

I served with sour cream, fresh dill, and apple sauce.



To go with the latkes I felt beer was in order. What I grabbed was a beer from Innis & Gunn which I'd never had before. It tasted a little too sweet but once we started eating the latkes it wasn't as noticeable. It was a very tasty beer, very high in alcohol, but not at all what I expected. I had planned this meal to be less sweet than our traditional Jewish fare but it turned out my beer had been covertly sabotaged by my own inability to read the label.



For the main course I carmelized a ton of onions in a pan with butter, olive oil, and garlic. Then I seared a chunk of generously seasoned brisket, deglazed with some zinfandel, topped with the onions and some of the rich turkey stock I made from the Thanksgiving turkey, and braised in the oven.



In a separate pan I roasted some carrots, parsnips, and fennel with just olive oil, salt, and pepper. I guess traditionally I should have glazed them but my recent Jewish meals have been just too sweet for dinner so I tried to keep this one a little more savory.



Since I'd opened the zinfandel to cook the brisket I figured we might as well drink it as well. It was not a kosher wine but it was quite tasty. It was far better than the Great Manischewitz Debacle of Passover '09. I think I still have a lingering sugar headache from that one glass I had.



Jen's mom sends us a disposable advent calendar each year. This year she sent us a permanent advent calendar. It was perfect timing in that it arrived on December 1st. It was a little strange opening the first door on the first night of Hanukkah.



You can imagine my disappointment when instead of delicious chocolate we were greeted with, of all things, earrings for the first day! I told Jen that if we get chocolate tomorrow she has to give me all of her portion to make up for this.



For the final course I took two frozen confections, again from Rhode Island.

The first was orange sherbet (or what they call SherBetter) GaGa's in Warwick, Rhode Island. Rhode Island likes things with the word "better" clumsily crammed into the name. At one Rhode Island grocery store they top cakes with "Better Cream" which is basically a butter cream made with shortening so that it lasts forever and doesn't matter. Better than what I shudder to imagine. This "Better" on the other hand was quite good.

Along with the SherBetter I used vanilla gelato Cold Fusion Gelato in Newport, Rhode Island to keep my home state's theme going strong. A bunch of eggheads like
Brian Cox claim that we don't have the technology yet for cold fusion. Apparently he's never been to Newport, Rhode Island. See? This is why you can't trust science.

I topped both with chopped Medjool dates, and pistachios.

Since we don't really have any Hanukkah movie traditions (and I didn't feel like searching for a copy of 8 Crazy Nights) we opted to just listen to our awesome four-song Hanukkah playlist instead.

I did just learn that there is an Israeli version of Sesame Street called Shalom Sesame and there's a Hanukkah special featuring Jeremy Miller of Growing Pains fame!

Oh my. If I knew a few days ago what I know now that DVD would have been shipped to me two-day delivery from Amazon and we would have watched it this evening.

Well, at least we know what we're doing for Hanukkah 2011.