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.

Leftovers and Tasmanians

Last night we returned to our mission to empty the freezer. This mission had been going so well, as it often does, until I foolishly bought and prepared an immense amount of food to add back to our limited freezer space. My goal for this week is to work once again at emptying our freezer so I can once again fill it with food we do not need.

It's the American way.



But first I started out with this Pleasant Ridge Reserve Uplands Cheese. It's made with raw, grass fed cow's milk and it was pretty tasty, though a tad expensive. And, get this: it's made in Wisconsin of all places! Who knew they made cheese in an obscure state such as Wisconsin? I mean, it didn't even achieve statehood until 1985!



To start off I made a salad with heirloom lettuce, grape tomatoes, feta cheese, blanched almonds, avocado, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I was wondering when I'd get a chance to use up that lettuce that was handed down to me from my great great grandmother.



I was able to clean out the freezer nicely with this pasta dish. I boiled two lobster tails, then removed them from the water and cooked some leftover dried linguine in the same water. This actually imparted a very nice lobster flavor to the dish, even better than I'd expected. In a pan I cooked some crushed garlic and shallot in butter and olive oil. To that I added some of the chopped up leftover pink peppercorn crusted pork tenderloin. Then I added some frozen peas and the chopped lobster tail before adding the cooked linguine along with some of the pasta water and salt.

Before serving I tossed in some chopped parsley and green onion.



To accompany this seafood dish I had this Tasman Red Red IPA from Samuel Adams. I'd received a recommendation on it and picked it up a while ago. At $4.99 it was an amazing deal and a very nicely made beer. I'm not a huge Sam Adams fan but this beer was a real winner. It had a nice molasses maltiness in conjunction with the hoppy character you'd expect from an IPA.

Plus it had an insane looking (presumably Tasmanian) man on the label, perhaps to honor the Tasmanian hops used in its brewing.

This beer is the first in Samuel Adams's "Small Batch Series" and if it's any indication of what direction they are headed with this series then I look forward to picking up some more from this line.

At $4.99 a bottle it seems like I can't afford not to try more of this series. However, what is the cost of Jen's anger when my beer collection continues to swell? My guess is: high.

Swizz Beanz

As our mild winter draws to a close we need to make the most out of the slightly cool days that remain. With temperatures dipping into the twenties this evening I felt this may be one of our last shots at making another winter type stew.



We have long had these great beans that we picked up at the Lucerne Market in Switzerland last summer. While not standard I thought I would use them in a cassoulet.



Knowing basically no German I couldn't really make out much on the package other than the "best by" date which was February 20, 2012, surprisingly not written out in the European dating convention.

Here's what it said on the label:

Steirische Käferbohnen, Bio
Herkunft: Österreich, Bio
Übernacht einweichen, 2-3 Std. kochen, erst zum Schluss salzen
Dunkel aufbewahren Mindesthaltbar bis 02/20/12
L&W Brauchart-Moos, Biohof Widacher, 6102 Malters
Zertifizierung: SCESp 086

And thanks to Google's translate feature:

Styrian Bean Beetle, Organic
Origin: Austria, Organic
Over night soak, 2-3 hours to cook with salt, until the end
Keep in the dark until best before 02/20/12
L & W Brauchart moss, organic farm Widacher, 6102 Malters
Certification: SCESp 086

I didn't actually translate this until after the beans had been cooking for a while but luckily my bean intuition didn't lead me astray. I'm just hoping that there was something amiss in the translation and that these are actually Beetle Beans, not Bean Beetles. While we may watch a lot of No Reservations I don't think either of us has a strong desire to eat bugs.



Any cookbook will tell you that cassoulet it is a dish that can be cooked in no less than three days and needs to dirty every single pot, pan, and utensil that you own. If you actually know anything about cooking you can read through these recipes and eliminate a lot of unnecessary steps. They usually go something like this:

1. Render some bacon in a pan.
   
2. Remove bacon from pan and set aside.
   
3. Add onions and garlic to pan and cook for seven minutes.
   
4. Remove onions and garlic from pan and set aside.
   
5. Brown some sausages in a pan.
   
6. Remove sausages and set aside.
   
7. Brown some pork shoulder in a pan for five minutes.
   
8. Remove pork shoulder and set aside.
   
9. Add everything back into pan.
   
10. Add chicken stock, wine, and tomato to pan.
    
11. Cook on low heat for six days.
    

Here is my modified method of preparation:

1. Render some bacon in a pan.
   
2. Remove bacon from pan and set aside.
   
3. Add onions and garlic to pan and cook for seven minutes.
   
4. Remove onions and garlic from pan and set aside.
   
5. Brown some sausages in a pan.
   
6. Remove sausages and set aside.
   
7. Brown some pork shoulder in a pan for five minutes.
   
8. Remove pork shoulder and set aside.
   
9. Add everything back into pan.
   
10. Add chicken stock, wine, and tomato to pan.
    
11. Cook on low heat for six days an hour or two, or as long as you'd like.
    

After soaking the beans overnight on Friday, and having Jen cook them last night, we were ready to proceed. So I guess this recipe did take three days to make. Sort of.

In my neverending effort to only use one pan to make dinner I rendered some bacon then tossed in some garlic cloves and chopped onion to cook down with just a little olive oil. After a few minutes I added some chopped tomato then some leftover ham steak from the freezer, some garlic herb sausages, and a confit duck leg. I then covered them with some chicken stock from the freezer and added a dark strong ale (in lieu of the recommended white wine) and cooked it in a pot on low heat for about six or seven hours.



The resulting dish, served with chopped parsley and baguette, was pretty good. Maybe it's not as good as your average gourmand who takes three days to make their, however mine was ready for dinner tonight and was a far cry better than having nothing for dinner tonight then having a cassoulet that is ten percent better on Tuesday.



To pair with this winter stew I poured this Trader Joe's 2011 Vintage Ale which Jen's father got me for Christmas. According to Beeradvocate this is brewed by "Trader Joe's Brewing Company." However, just looking at the silver writing on the brown bottle makes it quite obvious it was brewed by Unibroue, one of my favorite breweries.

This is not the most overly complex Belgian style strong dark ale I've ever had but at $4.99 a bottle I can't think of a better beer for the price. It is inconceivable to me that a beer this nice could be priced that low. Comparable beers in 750ml bottles rarely are priced lower than $9.99, even when they're not all that good.



It was a little difficult to do but I even shared a little with the cassoulet.

After dinner, which was pretty filling, we were left with the culinary question: what does one have for dessert after this classic French dish?



Ben & Jerry's Boston Cream Pie ice cream, that's what! Holy hell, this is a good idea. Boston Cream Pie is one of my favorite desserts of all time so when I spotted this ice cream at the grocery store I stopped dead in my tracks and snatched it out of the freezer case. I was so excited that I almost forgot to open the glass and nearly put my hand through the glass.

It's basically a custard flavored ice cream with bits of chocolate and yellow cake in it. It's pretty much the best thing that has happened to me so far this decade.

It's going to be tough to beat.

Sing a Song of Fried Avocado Tacos

When I was in Texas this week I had some delicious tacos from Torchy's Tacos. They were fried avocado tacos. I couldn't resist them because they featured avocado and they were only three dollars. Three dollars! They say everything is bigger in Texas but apparently this does not extend to the cost of lunch.

Since they were so delicious I decided I would like to try to recreate these when I got home.



I started off by making a mustard beer batter with flour, corn meal, mustard, and a bottle of IPA.



After dipping the segmented avocado wedges in the batter I deep fried them and let them rest on some paper towels.



Before doing this I made some corn tortillas with a little masa harina and water. I'd never done this before (as shown in the picture above) and we don't own a tortilla press (also as shown in the picture above). While not as expertly crafted as the ones I had at the taco truck they were pretty tasty, and far superior to the crumbly, disgusting corn tortillas that are available at the supermarket.



The final tacos were served up with a cabbage slaw I made with cabbage, salt, smoked paprika, hot sauce, lime juice, and sour cream. Also Jen chopped up some green onion, cilantro, tomato, and shredded cheddar cheese.



To match the IPA used in the beer batter I cracked open this Union Jack IPA from Firestone Walker Brewing Company in Paso Robles, California. While Mexican style lager seemed like a more appropriate drink the IPA was a much more interesting choice of beverage.

To keep it authentic we watched the U.S./Mexico Border episode of No Reservations top watch elderly Mexican women make perfectly round tortillas to make my deformed monstrosities that much more embarrassing. This also allowed Jen to develop delicate theories about how all Texans speak with the same sing-song cadence regardless of what they are saying.

Her grasp of Texan dialect and my grasp of tortilla making are still in their infant stages.

Sweet Potato Chowder and World War, Too!

After flying back from a work trip to Austin I was ready to get a-cookin'! I had left a whole fridge full of groceries and I wasn't about to let any of it go to waste.



I started by making this sweet potato and kale chowder. I rendered a couple of strips of bacon, added some crushed garlic, chopped leftover onion, red pepper, torn kale leaves, some turkey stock from the freezer, salt, pepper, milk, a little half-and-half, and thickened it with a little roux.



To accompany the soup I served this nice pumpernickel rye with butter. I mostly did this because we had it but it ended up accompanying the soup beautifully.



I purchased this beer because it was World War II themed. If there is one thing I like it's beer. If there are two things I like it's beer and World War II. (Just for the record, if there's three things I like it's beer, World War II, and anything having to do with space and galaxies).

After picking it up I learned that it was voted one of the top beers of 2011 so it turns out that it wasn't all just the gimmicky packaging of this fine-looking box. However, I wouldn't really have cared if it tasted like Coors Light after seeing this amazing packaging.



While brewed under the 21st Amendment Brewery name, this is actually a collaboration between 21st Amendment in California and Ninkasi Brewing Company in Oregon.

It's pretty great that they did this collaboration with another brewery but I think they really missed a golden opportunity to collaborate with an English and Russian brewery which would have also tied in nicely with the Photoshop job on the can and on the case the beer came in.

Even though they missed this obvious Grand Alliance theme the beer itself was extremely good.

Perhaps when my home brewing really takes off I'll hook up with an English and Russian brewer and do my own World War II themed beer playing off this concept.

And it will taste much, much worse.