Author: AJ

The Grill That Saved Christmas

by A.J. Coltrane

A lot of homes in the Greater Seattle area lost power on Christmas Day, starting at about 11 am, right in the middle of prime turkey-cooking-time. I’m going to bet that there were some people really freaking out.

Fortunately, we had steaks as a backup. We had also arranged for a supermarket to make the side dishes. I had figured that way I could focus on a few other appetisers.

The idea of making appetisers was lost with the power.

64 ounces of semi-frozen turkey gravy went into a 10″ cast-iron skillet with a lid. The cast iron was scavenged from the camping equipment.

The (also semi-frozen) scalloped potatoes, stuffing, and mashed potatoes all went shoulder to shoulder to shoulder into a shallow roasting pan. The roasting pan got wrapped tightly in aluminum foil.

Everything went onto the grill. I babysat for 40 minutes, maintaining the temperature at 350F.

When the sides were lava hot I pulled them from the grill, turned turned the grill up high, and put the steaks on.

Lunch/dinner was served! Thank You Weber Grill!

Football this Holiday Season

By Blaidd Drwg

I have already expressed my righteous indignation over the entire BCS system here, and I read something recently in the Seattle Weekly about the entire bowl system that leads me to believe that it makes money for the people running the bowl and screws the schools over.

To make matters worse, this season, the #7 team in the country, Boise State, didn’t get to go to a BCS bowl because they are not in an AQ conference and did not win their conference title. Fine, except that #13 Michigan, a school with 2 losses (more than Boise), who didn’t win their conference, didn’t play in their conference championship game and didn’t even win their division within their conference, gets to go to a BCS bowl. On what planet does that make sense?

Boise State’s consolation prize, a 6-6 Arizona State team in the Las Vegas Bowl. I watched about 2 minutes of the game and it was obvious that Boise was making a statement that they were unhappy about their bowl placement – they essentially ran the Sun Devils out of the building. It would have been much uglier for Arizona St. if it weren’t for the Boise turnovers that did what the Sun Devil defense couldn’t – keep the Broncos offense out of the end zone.

Normally I love watching college football and the bowl games at the end of the season. Based on the stupidity of the system, I think I am going to pass this year. Luckily, thanks to the way the calendar falls, we have NFL games on Christmas and New Year’s weekends this year. I would much rather watch the riveting Colts-Jags game on New Year’s Day than any of the bowl games that are being played.

Grissini In A Blender!!

by A.J. Coltrane

This Grissini recipe uses two formulas from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice — Pate Fermentee and French Bread. Really, it’s the same recipe twice. The Pate Fermentee is made 24 hours in advance then refrigerated. The exact same ingredients are used again and combined with the (warmed) refrigerated dough to make French Bread. Reinhart suggests a number of different potential bases for Grissini, I used the French Bread version because it’s only flour, water, salt, and yeast — all stuff I had on hand.

Grissini ready for the oven. They're about 1/2" wide

This is the first time I’ve done a recipe using weights instead of volumes. I did this for three reasons:

1.  The Reinhart formulas inevitably call for volumes that are too much for one loaf. The French Bread winds up using 4-1/2 cups of flour, intended to make three baguettes. For reference, I use 1-1/2 cups for a large pizza. I definitely didn’t want to make three large pizzas worth of Grissini.

2.  Scaling the recipes down tends to make lots of weird measurements and oddball math. Halving the following formula below would mean halving 1-1/8 cups of each flour, which comes to 1/2 cup + 1 TBP. Halving the salt would be 3/8 teaspoon. That’s all assuming the scaling isn’t 1/6 of a recipe or something. “Makes 6 baguettes, 6 to 8 pizzas, or one 17 by 12-inch focaccia”.

3.  Baker’s Percentages allow working in grams, and the metric system is waaayyy easier to scale than messing around with cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons.

The nice thing about Baker’s Percentages is that everything is weighed relative to the total weight of the flour. The “65” in the water column means that for every 100 grams of flour the formula uses 65 grams of water. It couldn’t be simpler. Especially with a calculator.

The table:

  Reinhart (vol) Reinhart (weight) Reinhart (grams) This One Baker’s Percentage
AP Flour 1-1/8 cup 5 oz 140 g 75 g 50
Bread Flour 1-1/8 cup 5 oz 140 g 75 g 50
Water 3/4 cup 6-7 oz (6.5 oz) 182 g 98 g 65
Yeast 1/2 tsp .055 oz 1.5 g 1 g (0.67%) 0.55
Salt 3/4 tsp .19 oz 5.5 g 3 g (2%) 1.9

The 75 grams of each flour was pretty arbitrary — it was loosely half a recipe. Had I realized how close it was to a half recipe I might have gone with exactly half a recipe, though at the time I was more interested in the nice, round 150 grams of flour to use as a base for the rest of the math.

The recipe in short form:

1.  Knead all of the ingredients, place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.

2.  Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it warm up for an hour. Cut the dough into about 10 pieces and mix together with the “new” ingredients. Knead and let rise about 2 hours.

3.  Roll out the dough and divide into strips. Let the strips rise, covered, on parchment lined baking sheets, about 60-90 minutes. (I used a pizza cutter to make the strips.)

[One difference between what Reinhart calls for and what I actually did:  I rolled the dough out on semolina flour. I wanted some crunch on the outside of the breadstick.]

4.  Reinhart simply says “To drive off the moisture for crisp breadsticks, bake them for a long time at low temperatures, 325F to 350F, until dry and crisp. For soft breadsticks, bake hotter, at 400F to 450F, until the sticks turn golden brown.”

I wanted not-super skinny grissini with a little bite and soft insides. Looking around the internet, I settled for 400F for 20 minutes. At the 20 minute mark there was no browning, so I gave them another 5 minutes, then gave up on brown.

Way hotter than they look.

In retrospect, a small amount of fat on the outside of the sticks, or a higher temperature, might have made for an appearance closer to what I’d visualized as a target.

Of course, I don’t own anything to use to serve or display the breadsticks, therefore it’s

GRISSINI IN A BLENDER!!

Recommended Game: Forbidden Island

by A.J. Coltrane

Title:  Forbidden Island

Game Type:  Cooperative “set collection” game.

Number of Players:  2-4

Complexity of Rules:  Low/ Low-Medium

Time to Play:  30 minutes

The Concept:  The Island Is Sinking! The players must work cooperatively to gather four treasures and escape the island before it completely sinks into the abyss! The island is composed of 24 tiles; as the game starts the tiles slowly begin to sink into the ocean. As the game progresses the tiles sink faster and faster. Each turn a player has the opportunity to move around the island, shore up sinking island tiles, and/or transfer a treasure card to other players. Treasures can be claimed when a player has four of the same treasure card and is standing on a tile that is named for that treasure. And each turn, the island sinks a little more…

The gray-blue tiles are "submerged". The missing tiles have sunk!

Why I Like It:  It’s cooperative, which is a nice change of pace. It’s fairly easy to teach and learn. The game is well executed and features a very visceral concept. Each player has a unique ability, and each game the abilities are randomly assigned, so every game is different. Everyone needs to play with a good sense of urgency to avoid going down with the island. Players actually cheer when they win — Forbidden Island seems to make people more “excited” than about any other game we play, from the beginning all the way through to the end.

Boardgamegeek page here. As always, support your local gameshop.

When to use the term “Hall of Famer”

By Blaidd Drwg

I see a headline on ESPN.com today that says “Hall of Famer Conlin accused of molestation”. It was a sad story about famed Philadelphia sports writer Bill Conlin being accused of molesting a couple of kids in the 1970’s. My problem is with the headline – winning the Spink Award or the Frick Award or the Buck O’Neil Award (o.k. maybe the O’Neil winners should be called Hall of Famers as the award has had 2 winners, one of which is they guy who the award is named after and SHOULD be in the real hall) does not make you a Hall of Famer. Yes, they get to make a pretty speech during the induction ceremony, but they aren’t being inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Baseball Hall of Fame website does not list winners of these awards in its Hall Of Famers section and they don’t have plaques in the Hall of Fame. Contrary to popular belief, there is no “Broadcasters Wing” of the Hall of Fame. The award winners for the Frick and Spink awards have a display in the section of the museum devoted to baseball in the media in a gallery called “Scribes and Mikemen.”

To the media – PLEASE STOP CALLING WINNERS OF THE FRICK AND SPINK AWARD WINNERS HALL OF FAMERS! When you wrongfully call someone as perverted as Conlin a Hall of Famer, you are doing a disservice to the memory of all of the cheats, liars, racists, drug addicts, alcoholics and all-around assholes that are currently inducted into the actual Hall of Fame (not to mention the large number of guys who were inducted that were actually nice guys).

Post Script – After writing this and before posting it, ESPN changed the title to “Veteran writer…” from “Hall of Famer…” What do you want to bet ESPN got a nastygram from the Baseball Hall of Fame about the misuse of the term Hall of Famer.

Tony Wroten

by A.J. Coltrane

“Tony Wroten” refers to Husky freshman guard Tony Wroten. He was a highly rated recruit, and some people are very high on him so far [ESPN Insider Link]:

A number of NBA scouts and GMs now feel like Washington’s Tony Wroten(Rank: 19) might be the best NBA point guard prospect in college basketball…

and

..But Wroten is the real deal. He’s tall, has eyes in the back of his head, can get to the basket at will and, when he’s focused, he can take over a game. His second-half performance against Duke on Saturday was, at times, special. He’s still wild and tries to do too much, but it’s rare to find a player with his size doing the things he does. Said one top NBA scout, “He’s the second coming of Gary Payton.”

Emphasis mine.

The last sentence is what really got my attention.. I watched the Duke and Missouri games, and I know Wroten came in highly regarded, but still, my eyes weren’t telling me THAT. He seems like a nice young guard who’s still figuring it out. I haven’t seen “future Hall of Famer”.

Think about what Payton was — a great defensive player with good size and court vision. He was also a marginal shooter coming out of college and his shot never really developed much beyond “solid”.

The Gary Payton comment prompted me to look around a little further, and here’s a second opinion by David Thorpe (also Insider), following the Missouri/UW game:

Wroten looked for the spectacular play almost every possession rather than the easy one…

He has a terrific feel for slithering to the rim for buckets. Wroten has no idea how to play basketball, but has a great idea how to score and see the floor. Once he learns to read and think the game, his talent can grow to enormous heights…

He was not inclined to do much on defense in this game and missed some opportunities to get back on defense. I would have liked to see him handle that better…

However, he is a poor free throw shooter thanks to rushing his way through the shot as if a defender is about to come guard him.

Does that sound like Gary Payton? I’d point the phrases “no idea how to play basketball” and “not inclined to do much on defense”… One thing about Gary is that he worked hard, all the time, especially on defense… He was also really savvy and had a high basketball IQ.

Here’s the ESPN draft report card:

Projection Late First Round Pick
Positives
  • Powerful combo guard
  • Excellent court vision
  • Can be a spectacular passer
  • Powerful finisher at the basket
Negatives
  • Needs to improve his jump shot
  • Can be reckless at times
  • Questionable shot selection
  • Lacks elite athleticism or explosiveness

Wroten is even bigger than Payton was — Wroten is listed at 6’5″, 205 lbs. If he can get rid of the “reckless” then maybe he’s a point guard at the NBA level, otherwise he’ll be a tweener combo guard.

Which is useful, but it’s not Gary Payton.

At the college level though.. he could be *very* effective.

The Great Philly Cheese Steak Debate

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I went to North Sound Brewery in Mount Vernon yesterday to pick up  beer and I ended up chatting with the bartender, Rachel there about cheese steaks. Rachel went to school in Philadelphia and despite never having been to Pat’s or Gino’s (the tragedy in that), understands the cheese steak dilemma here in the northwest.

What is the dilemma you might ask? You can’t get a great cheese steak outside of Philly. I have never figured out why – there are whopping 3 ingredients in a plain steak – bread, grilled meat and cheese. You can ask 100 people what the best steak is and get 100 different answers on places and toppings, but for me, the true indication of a great steak is the base model (bread, steak and cheese wiz – it has to be wiz on the steak), similar to the way that the best way to judge how good a pizza is would be to order one that is just dough, cheese and sauce. For some reason, once you get outside of Philly, people can’t seem to make them anywhere close to the same level as the ones you get in Philly.

In Seattle, there are really 5 contenders for the “best” cheese steak. I haven’t been to all of them, but my goal is to get to them and see if any can compare to the ones you get in Philly.

The contenders are:

Calozzi’s on Occidental in Pioneer Square – haven’t been but I know a couple people who swear by their steaks.

Tat’s Deli on Yestler in Pioneer Square – see my post on places that I want to eat at. Tat’s is generally considered to be the best steak in Seattle.

The Original Philly’s on MLK – I don’t know a ton about this place except it has been around forever.

Philly Boys on 4th in Sodo – They are newcomers to the scene and the owners are from Philly. The streaks are decent by pricey and the place is difficult to find as it is tucked away in a gas station parking lot. They have the best steak I have eaten in Seattle, but I wouldn’t call it great.

Philly Ferve on 23rd in Madison Park – it has been years since I have been here, but I was told they had “authentic” steaks. They were terrible and based on the reviews; I don’t think it has gotten any better.

Before I start going to these places and reviewing them, anyone have any other suggestions for adding to the list?

Assorted Sports Thoughts

by A.J. Coltrane

Mike Leach to the Cougars: 

To quote Leach – “You can win here and win big, I believe.”

Washington State football just got a lot more entertaining — I may actually make a point to watch a game or two next year. WSU will throw the ball all over the place, and historically that’s what they’ve done when they’ve been good. At the very least they’ll be fun to watch.

The Sounders get a new keeper:

The Sounders signed 6’5″ Austrian keeper Michael Gspurning. From the Seattle Times: “Gspurning’s size lends to a more aggressive approach in coming out to defend crosses, and he is also more comfortable having balls played back to him and using his feet”

The News Tribune has more information about Gspurning, including this YouTube clip of five of his saves:

I’m predisposed to like tall keepers — Kasey Keller would have had a hard time getting to Save #3 on the video, though Keller likely would have been playing another step or two to his left to cover that angle and would have stopped it anyway.

Gspuring is a 30 year-old veteran keeper. I have high hopes the Sounders won’t miss a beat.

Finally, the NBA is dead to me, but:

The Miami Heat signed Shane Battier. I think this is about as important as any signing in the league this year — Battier is absolutely the perfect fit to go with Wade and Lebron. Battier doesn’t need the ball in his hands to be productive, he’s a very good perimeter defender, he’s a good rebounder, a good passer, and he’s a good 3-point shooter. He may wind up being more valuable to the Heat than Chris Bosh. Really, the Heat are the “Big 2 +1” anyway, not a “Big 3”. As Battier approaches the late phase of his career he could basically be Robert Horry all over again. Mike Bibby just signed somewhere else, and if the Heat can get anything besides a corpse to play the point then they have to be heavy favorites to win it all this year. They don’t even need a traditional point guard, it could be a Steve Kerr equivalent and they’d be fine. (Any of the triangle offense non-traditional point guards would work — Kerr, Paxson, Harper, or Fisher. They just need long-range shooting and (ideally) someone to get in the way of quick little guards.)

Bleh.

Beer Event Rosemary Flatbread

by A.J. Coltrane

I thought it might be fun and good eating to bring rosemary flatbread to the last beer event we attended. It’s basically the Smitten Kitchen pizza recipe, with modifications:

 

  Smitten Pizza Recipe This One
Flour 3 cup 3 cup
Water 1 cup 1 cup
Yeast 1.5 tsp 1 tsp
Salt 2 tsp 3 tsp
Olive Oil 2 TBP 2 TBP
Rosemary none 2 TBP

I increased the salt, figuring we’d eat it with pretzels and use it to cut the beer. As it turned out there were a lot of stouts at the beer event, so the strong salt/rosemary combo worked out pretty well.

The dough was mixed, then got a four hour rise. At the end of four hours the dough was cut into six pieces.

The dough was then shaped into balls and allowed to rest for another hour. At this point the dough was very “pillowy”.

The dough was then rolled out, brushed liberally on both sides with extra virgin olive oil, and grilled. Olive oil was lightly applied after I took it off of the grill. Then it got a little sea salt.

Overall I think it came out pretty well — one thing I learned is that in the middle of winter, when the grill is cranky and damp, is that the grill needs to preheat for a while to heat up and to burn off whatever moisture is kicking around in there. I didn’t do that, and the bottoms came out with poor grill marks and darker than I would have liked. The light application of olive oil at the end is probably what salvaged it.

In any case, it didn’t last long around our table of seven people at the event — everyone was tearing off hunks of bread — it was a massacre!

Road Trip Review – Beers You Can’t Get in Seattle

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I have been lucky to taste a number of beers lately that are not at all available in Seattle and I figure that I would write about them in case you are able to come across any of them in your travels. I have rated them on a 5 point system:

5 out of 5 – Do whatever you have to in order to get this beer, even if it means breaking laws, selling your soul to the devil, or flying 3000 miles to drink one.

4 out of 5 – A fantastic beer. Actively seek this one out if you can or find a friend who can ship it to you.

3 out of 5 – Perfectly drinkable, but unremarkable. If someone handed you one, you wouldn’t shy away from it, but I wouldn’t spend time or money trying to get hold of it.

2 out of 5 – Drinkable, but not that enjoyable. Might try it again to give it another shot, but then again, probably not.

1 out of 5 – Don’t bother with it. There are beers better out there.

A good number of these beers are winter beers and are available now.

Thirsty Dog 12 Dogs of Christmas (Akron, OH) – malty nose and initial palate, hints of cloves and cinnamon on the finish. A nice beer for a cold day or a holiday celebration with the smell of pine in the air.

4 out of 5 sled dogs

Great Lakes Brewing Christmas Ale (Cleveland, OH) – slightly malty with subtle spice on the nose. Flat on the palate, with hints of malt and allspice on the back end.

3 out of 5 tannenbaums

Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale (Cleveland, OH) – Pumpkin Pie spice with faint hint of pumpkin on the nose. Spice notes disappear quickly and nearly no pumpkin on the palate. Really flat and disappointing.

1 out of 5 sad jack o’lanterns

Southern Tier 2xIPA (Lakewood, NY) – Lemon and citrus notes. Moderate bitterness with a citrus (not grapefruit) finish. Not quite a West Coast IPA but definitely more hopped than a BIPA. A good beer to introduce someone to the DIPA style.

3 out of 5 chautauquans

Harpoon Winter Warmer (Boston, MA) – Cinnamon and malt on the front of the palate, nutmeg on the back, but not an overwhelming spice that lingers pleasantly on the tongue. A fine beer on a cold, blustery day by a warm fire.

4 out of 5 chestnuts roasting on the open fire

Buckeye Brewing AltBier (Lakewood, OH) – slightly malty and hints of yeast, dry crisp finish and an amber color. Better with food, but not an all-around unpleasant experience.

3 out of 5 old beers

Brooklyn Brewing No2 (Brooklyn, NY) – Belgian yeast and citrus peel on the nose, nicely yeasty and malty on the front of the palate, giving way to a citrus and spice followed by smoky brown sugar and molasses with increasing sweetness from the hint of honey on the back of the palate. The honey is more prevalent as the beer warms.

5 out of 5 bridges

Brooklyn Winter (Brooklyn, NY) – Malty notes, more of a Scotch Ale (and not a good one at that) than a Winter, syrup notes, no balance. Really disappointing considering how good No2 was.

1 out of 5 bums hanging out under the bridge

Granville Island Maple Cream Ale (Vancouver, BC) – more ruby than yellow thanks to the inclusion of maple syrup. Maple notes barely noticeable on the nose and plate giving way to a smooth, crisp finish on the beer. Very nicely balanced and not overwhelming with maple.

4 out of 5 Oh Canada’s

Granville Island Lions Winter Ale (Vancouver, BC) – Vanilla notes give way to superb malitness. The use of vanilla is well restrained – it takes a couple of sips to figure out what you are tasting and the booziness does not linger. A good beer to crack open by a roaring fire, and probably my new favorite winter beer; reminds me of a good cream soda. I would drive to Vancouver just to get more of this beer.

5 out of 5 roars

Steamworks Brewing Great Pumpkin Ale (Vancouver, BC) – Liquid pumpkin pie – roasted pumpkin, allspice, cloves and cinnamon balanced nicely in this beer. You almost want to drink it as part of an ice cream float. For the second straight year, I got the last pint at the brewery.

4 out of 5 spice racks