It's a Fluke

The other day I bought a giant bag of crimini mushrooms to go with the giant bag of green beans we'd purchased for an aborted Canadian Thanksgiving dish. Unfortunately the green beans didn't really survive so I was stuck with a tremendous amount of mushrooms and no green beans. What was I to do? Everyone knows there is no other food item that pairs with green beans other than mushrooms.

One thing was for sure, I was truly in a pickle!



I started off by making a salad with olive oil, feta cheese, and chickpeas which I roasted in the oven until crispy. I squeezed a little fresh lemon over the top.



For the main course I got this beautiful whole fluke this afternoon. I seared it in a pan with a little olive oil, salt, and Pepper. Before I did this I put together a risotto with garlic, onion, crimini mushroom, pumpkin, sherry, turkey stock, and butter. I put this on the base of the plate and served the fluke on top with some shrimp which I lightly cooked in butter.



The only problem was that I had so many mushrooms and so much pumpkin that if I'd turned it all into risotto we would be dealing with a Canadian Thanksgiving level amount of leftovers.

I decided to divide everything up before pressing on with the risotto which, truth be told, was still far too much risotto. However, it would be nice that we could both enjoy it for a few days as lunch before finally disposing of the excess when it inevitably spoils in our fridge.



After this seafood dinner I cracked open this Nostradamus from Brasserie Caracole. At the time of writing this their website is non-existant, which is fine. If it's going to take any time away from them making a beer this good their website can remain dormant for the rest of human history as far as I'm concerned.

The predominant taste of the beer was of molasses. I thought molasses to be an entirely American flavor and not something the Belgians were fond of as well. This beer is perfect for after dinner with a nice sweetness. If you are going to pair it with food I would recommend that you do not but you tend to do what you want to do.

You've always been headstrong that way.

Brew Day

Today was a day I've been waiting for for a long, long time: brew day. In my normal lazy manner of pursuing my goals I finally got around to beginning my own home brew beer. After well over a decade of wanting to do it, and two months after purchasing all of the gear, I finally started on my own batch of home brew.



The day started by unpacking, washing, and sanitizing all of the beer making equipment I'd purchased back in August. This proved to be extremely difficult. Trying to hold a giant, slippery, glass carboy on the edge of a sink while washing it with the extremely short hose sprayer was more difficult than I'd imagined. I took extra care to soak everything in a bleach solution as to hopefully avoid any bacterial infections. Unlike our home canning and jarring experiments I was less on edge knowing that the worst outcome of bad brewing would be a bad-tasting beer. That beats death by botulism any day.



After putting the 1.5 gallons of water into my largest stock pot it became quite obvious that there really wasn't going to be any chance I could fit anything else into the pot. I put everything on hold, ran out to the local beer shop, and picked up an incredibly poor quality pot that seemed to just one gauge thicker than standard kitchen aluminum foil.



It was, however, big enough for everything and fairly cheap. Soon the smell of breakfast porridge (or cream of wheat) filled the kitchen.



I watched the pot like a hawk, expecting it to foam up and boil over. This was about as bad as it got. Everything I read, everything I've seen, lead me to believe that this boil up would be the worst thing I'd ever encountered. It was nothing compared to scorching milk or making caramel sauce. I was disappointed. I feel like I was cheated out of an overflowing pot and smoke-filled kitchen as part of the brewing process. Either my culinary skills came in handy or I was doing something wrong. It's probably the latter.



After a lot more boiling, adding hops, boiling, adding sugar, funneling, adding cold water, chilling, adding yeast, waiting, mixing, waiting, and finally sealing the carboy up my brew day had come to a close. I had to chill it in front of a fan by the window for a while until it was at a low enough temperature to throw the yeast in.



I set the carboy full of wort into a dark closet where I would allow it to ferment for the next few days.

After doing all of this I have a new found appreciation for people who don't know how to cook. It must feel a lot like this. Having never done this before it was a scary and confusing process. I didn't understand some of the directions and wasn't sure if I was doing it properly. I was reading and re-reading steps in the instructions a half dozen times. There were times where I was just looking at all the ingredients and equipment unsure of where to start. I'm sure I took far too many precautions and I had to search message boards for really dumb questions I kept having. I look forward to a few batches from now where I'm just winging it like I do when I made dinner every night. That will be a glorious day.



After adding the yeast it was almost 7:00 PM so I had to put something together quickly for dinner. I cooked a little crushed garlic in olive oil with onion, red chilies (I was feeling brave), celery root, red potato, and pumpkin. I added salt, pepper, sage, thyme, and a ladle full of the turkey stock I'd made the other day. When that had cooked down I put in some ground lamb from Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, Maine.

I don't know why but this felt very Iron Chef inspired to me. It's probably because it was such a small amount of lamb that it felt very Chen Kenichi to use ground lamb as an ingredient in a pumpkin-centric dish rather than as the main ingredient.



After dinner, to celebrate my first brew day, I cracked open this bottle of Chateau Jihau from Dogfish Head. This beer is part of Dogfish Head's "Ancient Ales" series and is based on a recipe developed in conjunction with Molecular Archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern. The recipe was discovered by examining preserved pottery jars found in the Neolithic village of Jiahu. The recipe called or fermentation of rice along with honey and fruit.

I chose this beer for a few reasons. One: we'd been watching some episodes of Brew Masters (or as I like to call it, Bro Masters) over the last few nights. Two: this claims to be the oldest beer recipe in the world (over 9,000 years old) so I thought it fitting to drink Earth's first beer recipe with my first attempt at brewing. Hopefully mine is half as palatable.

To conclude the evening we enjoyed the Chateau Jiahu while watching the thematically appropriate Prohibition, a documentary by Ken Burns. There's nothing better than watching a documentary about one of our nation's most embarrassing episodes. This particular beer enhanced the embarrassment knowing that a Neolithic village in Northern China had more sense than the most advanced civilization in the world 9,000 years later.

Oh, America, do you ever stop coming up with really bad ideas?

Just Like Dad Used to Make

My dad would probably not mind if I brought up the fact that he doesn't really know how to cook. That being said there are a few items he knows how to make. He is quite adept at making grilled cheese sandwiches though I'm not sure he's made one in the past ten years. One culinary invention that my father did introduce me to was the proper way to eat canned sardines.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "There's a proper way to eat canned sardines?" No? You're not thinking that? Oh, you must be thinking, "Ew, canned sardines, gross!"

Well, to hell with you. I think they're delicious.



My father showed me that you spread a little butter on a saltine cracker, top it with a sardine, and put it away. It's quite delicious. I only made four of these because I wanted four and Jen wanted zero.



After the sardines I made some salads with baby greens, Marcona almonds, and this Bayley Hazen Blue cheese from Jasper Hill.



Jen cringed at the thought of turkey soup last night but I was ale to convince her that tonight was the night. I cooked down some garlic, onion, and celery root then I tossed in some of the roasted butternut squash, carrot, sweet potato, delicata squash, pumpkin, acorn squash, turnip, and rutabaga. I also threw in some of the green beans that we never ended up using for Canadian Thanksgiving, then threw in some chopped turkey and leftover pasta.



Since I generally am against the idea of having beer with soup I saved this Three Philosophers from Brewery Ommegang and enjoyed it as a dessert beverage. At 9.8% ABV one was enough. More than enough actually. It's that time of year where it's quite cold out but our building hasn't actually turned the heat on yet so a strong Belgian-style ale was just what I needed to stay warm.

All Jen needed was one sip and a little Northern Exposure. That episode where Walt thinks he saw a caribou really warms you up.

Heavy Spending and the Split Personality Beer Tasting

I spent a good deal of today making turkey stock with the leftover Canadian Thanksgiving turkey bones. It was a little too warm out to spend the day with the stove going full blast but making stock is one of my favorite things to do so I let it go. Besides I was feeling a little under the weather and after buying a new car, a new couch, and new kitchen shelves (yes, all in one day), it was therapeutic to smell the broth being made.



Repurposing food in a frugal and sensible way, almost balanced out the huge outlay of money.



If it wasn't for our completely senseless take out order! After getting home on a fairly miserable night it was decided that we'd order delivery. We were going to get take out but were shocked to discover that the restaurant by us now offered delivery as an option. What a novel idea! This doesn't generally happen in a city where everyone besides us can afford servants to go and get their take out for them. It must be the economy that made this option suddenly available. Pretty soon people around here will have to start selling their secondary beach houses!



The To go with this Four In Hand IPA from World Brews in Novato, CA. For $6.99 a six pack this was considerably better than I'd expected. As someone who is not crazy about IPA I was also very impressed. Both my IPA-hating personality and my spending-too-much-on-beer personality were surprised by this beer.

I guess today was full of surprises. Heavy spending and surprises.

Mama Mia! That's A-Canadian Risotto!

We only have about seventeen or eighteen pounds of leftover Canadian Thanksgiving food so we're really in the winding down phase of the holiday. Jen, who generally cannot stand repeat meals, has finally reached her limit for Thanksgiving leftovers.



I started off by rendering some bacon, thinking that would be a good start to warding off the Thanksgiving flavor. I tossed in some butter, a selection of the roasted root vegetables, some whiskey, chicken stock, salt, pepper, sage, and arborio rice. After the rice had fully cooked I added a pat of butter and served the risotto with a dollop of ricotta and some Parmigiano-Reggiano.



For beer I had a Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale form Sierra Nevada. I figured it was time for a little break from pumpkin ales. I'd had this beer on tap the other night and really liked it so I decided to break open the one in my beer cupboard cellar.

It was tasty but I enjoyed the one on tap a bit more. This was partially because they served it in a nonic glass and that's just cool. Some day I hope to be able to have a nonic glass of my own.



As a final course I scooped some vanilla ice cream and crumbled up some week-old whoopie pies on top with some melted chocolate to make these little sundaes.

It's going interesting seeing if I can continue to carry these leftovers through a full eight days. The real challenge will be in trying to remove enough of the Thanksgiving taste for it to be palatable.

Oh, the holidays!