Today is a 2 for 1 beer post day! Aren’t you all excited.
Anyway, if you are going to Belgianfest (and if you are not, why are you not going to Belgianfest – there are tickets still available) at the Bell Harbor Center on February 2nd, you will get the experience of tasting a beer named for one of my all-time favorite Simpson’s lines and it is made by none other than the fine folks at American Brewing.
The description:
A Brown Ale fermented with our Sour Yeast on locally grown raspberries and aged to perfection in red wine barrels. 8% ABV
I am still surprised no one has used this name, considering Flanders is a style of beer as well as a mustachioed neighborino of Homer J. Simpson.
I have always like Andrew Zimmern, host of Travel Channel’s, “Bizarre Foods.” The man has no fear about eating things that most people would find strange, although I do question his ability to actually taste anything since he actually likes lutefisk (one of about 4 things I will never eat again).
Zimmern was in Portland this summer filming and he is really hitting some of the best spots in the city. From eater.com:
Thus far, Zimmern’s Portland itinerary has included stops to Olympic Provisions, Laurelhurst Market (where Zimmern touts a smoked balsamic-brined lamb as having “insane flavor”), Steven Smith Teamaker, and Beast (described as “just a jewel of an eatery”). As previously reported, he’s filming at Lincoln today (where he’s already Twatted a photo of tonight’s dinner), and it looks like a stop at Nicky USA is also on the calendar.
What other Portland stops should be considered sufficiently Bizarre? Holler in the comments.
UPDATE: Zimmern’s Tweeting major food porn — wild boar collar, fermented Thai sausage, Vietnamese wings — from Pok Pok.
Laurelhurst Market is a favorite of the Iron Chef Leftovers family and has been previously reviewed here. Hopefully he got the marrow bones, which were some of the best I have ever had. I went to Beast recently and it was outstanding. Olympic Provisions, also reviewed here, is home to an amazing eggs benedict, which Mrs. Iron Chef Leftovers calls one of the best things she has ever eaten. Pok Pok, Lincoln and Teamaker are all on my short list of Portland places I want to hit.
The one I am most jealous of – Nicky USA. If you are not familiar with them, they are the largest purveyor of game meat in the US, most of which is sourced locally in Oregon. I really can’t wait for the show to air just to see what sort of goodies he got to experience there.
Since popup restaurants are all the rage these days, I recently saw a post on eater.com about one being done by a “celebrity chef.”
Here is what you would get:
Mac and Cheese with Butter Sauce and Crispy Bacon
Hot Chicken Bite with Tomato and Cucumber Salad
Meat Loaf with Collard Greens, Mashed Potatoes and Creamed Corn
Banana Pudding, Pecan Short Bread and Bruleed Bananas
Each course comes with a paired cocktail, a gift bag containing cookies and a bottle of wine and a photo op with the chef.
The regular price for this privilege is $399 per person, tax and gratuity included, but if you act now, you can get this meal for $175 per person (although there is some confusion if gratuity is included).
The chef?
Thomas Keller? Nope
Hugh Atchinson? Nope
Ferran Adria? Not even close.
The resurrected corpse of Julia Child? Well, that is closer.
It is none other than former Top Chef contestant Carla Hall, most famous for not winning Top Chef and being on a talk show. The event is held in Bloomingdales in NYC and I can imagine that Hall probably won’t be doing the cooking. For $175 dollars, go somewhere else – it is NYC, you can find a better meal just about anywhere. Hell, for half that, I will make the same meal for you if you want, and I am slightly less annoying than Hall.
Well, the Mayans were wrong and what a better way to celebrate the fact than throwing a hedonistic feast in their honor. I will do this post in a couple of parts – this one with the menu, descriptions and any links to existing recipes that I used to make them (along with any tweaks) and a second set of posts with the remaining recipes (some of these are a pain to write out, so it will take a bit to get them out there). I really wanted to have fun with the meal, so I opted for simple preparations with fun plating and names. So, without further delay, I present to you “Meal of the Apocalypse”!
Cocktail: Heart of Darkness
I am pretty sure that I didn’t make this one up, but I have absolutely no idea where I would have come across it either. It is a champagne based cocktail, which are always delicious and refreshing and this takes about 1 minute to make.
The Heart of Darkness is looking a little lighter and more refreshing these days.
Here is what I wrote about the drink on my menu:
The story Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is the inspiration for one of my favorite movies, Apocalypse Now. It seemed appropriate to make a drink based on that, given the theme of the night.
Since I like you, I will give you the recipe here.
The drink is 1.5 oz. blood orange juice or soda, 4 oz. sparkling wine, 3 drops Scrappy’s Chocolate Bitters and a frozen strawberry, served in a wine glass.
I would recommend using a drier sparkling wine for this so that you don’t get overloaded with sweetness. I personally used Washington produced Treveri Pinot Gris sparkling wine in this version.
First Course: My Last Meal
Being Italian, it seemed logical to start off the meal with pasta. I did a meat ravioli with a taleggio, shallot and sous vide egg cream sauce and topped it with a sprinkle of guanciale, just because I could. It was decadent and over the top, but it pared nicely with the 2010 Wilridge Pinot Grigio, which has a bit of sharpness to it that cut the richness of the dish.
Since it seems I didn’t actually take a picture of the pasta, I give you one of the cats sunning himself on the couch. This was the general happy response to the pasta, so let’s just call this the after picture.
My notes on the dish:
One of the components of my last meal on earth, if I got to choose it, would be something that my dad made for me when I was growing up. This is my adult version of the meal that I enjoyed as a kid.
Second Course: The Mayan Slaughter
I wanted to make mole without making mole, so I basically took a bunch of the spices that are used in mole and made a spice rub for some pork tenderloins. Then to get the chocolate component of the dish, I made a chocolate gastrique as a side sauce that was meant to be eaten with the pork. I really felt like I nailed this one as the combination of the spices and the chocolate really reminded me of a mole, although a more complex one than you might expect since the fruit notes in the chocolate really came out. I served it with a toasted quinoa hash (quinoa, black beans, queso fresco) that I got the basic idea from Modernist Cuisine at Home. I pared this with a completely killer Argentinian Malbec from my cellar that a friend brought me back from Argentina – 2006 LaGarde Riserva Malbec.
Too bad the Mayans hadn’t actually invented this dish, they might be remembered for something other than they amazing grasp of astronomy and a faulty calendar.
There was one problem with calling this dish the Mayan Slaughter:
The Spanish brought pigs to the new world and they became a main protein of Mexican cooking well after the Mayans. A deconstructed mole sauce is a tribute to the Mayans, although the Mayans didn’t really invent it and quinoa is actually from South America. We will just ignore those little details.
Third Course: Side of the Road Salad
Just a simple salad of wild arugula, dandelion greens, truffle oil, 30 year old balsamic vinegar and alder smoked sea salt. I wanted to add some sun chokes to this, but my attempt at making a sun choke crouton didn’t work. I served this with a 2009 NHV Rose which wasn’t a fan favorite by itself, but worked well with the salad.
No picture of this since: A) salads are boring and B) I forgot to take a picture of it before I started eating.
My story about the salad:
You could, in theory, survive in Seattle eating nothing but foraged food (there are people who do this willingly), if you know where to look. This just proves that you can do it and still eat well.
Fourth Course: Raid the Emergency Supplies
This was one that I went really creative with the presentation. What better to celebrate the world not ending then with eating your stockpiles of emergency supplies? I made my Belgian Beef Carbonnade recipe, topped it with a potato slice and served it in a tin can. Of course, since I went with the really classy presentation in a can, I had to serve a great bottle of wine, in this case the 2001 Conti Sertoli Sforsato in a mason jar.
Here are my thoughts on this:
You should have a stockpile of emergency supplies including canned goods in the event of a natural disaster. If Dinty Moore beef stew tasted this good, I probably would be eating it every night. When serving stellar food in a can, it is only appropriate to serve a killer wine in a mason jar, just to keep it classy.
Dessert: Last in Line for the Human Sacrifice
I really needed to have a human sacrifice as part of this meal; it just seemed fitting and, after much debate, decided that it would be at the end of the meal. So how do you have a human sacrifice without killing an actual human? Well, you first take an altar made out of chocolate pudding. You then take a human made of a sugar cookie and place him on the altar. Then you take some raspberry blood and dot that on the plate. Then you take a spoon and kill your cookie man and enjoy. Just for the hell of it, you pair this with a Maison de Pagett Pillow Talk Vanilla Port. Human sacrifice has never been as fun or delicious as this one.
Our vicitm just before he meets his untimely end. In an interview just before the sacrifice, he was quoted as saying, “No thanks, I would rather be lost.”
The gory details:
A line from a George Carlin bit about being lost. No proper post-apocalyptic meal would be complete without a sacrifice at the end. There was also much debate among my friends about where in the meal the sacrifice belonged. We will try it here.
October and November are cruel months for the Seattle dining scene. By the end of November, we will have said goodbye to Iron Chef favorite emmer&rye (where I had possibly the best burger in Seattle one night), the venerable 35th Street Bistro and my favorite pizza place in Seattle – Crash Landing Pizza (whose pies were nearly as good as the ones I grew up eating in NJ – who says that Seattle has no good pizza). Those places will be missed as they were regular stops in the Iron Chef family dining excursions.
Do not shed too many tears though, as we also get to welcome the reopening of Revel Joule in Fremont, the much anticipated opening of The Whale Wins, right next to Joule and Eltana Bagels just a couple of blocks up from Joule. Eltana does a “Montreal” style bagel (if you have not had one, you should try it) and they are as good as the ones I have had in Montreal.
Holy hops, Batman! Ballard is really becoming a hotspot for beer. I saw this on myballard.com, yet another brewery opening soon. That means when Peddler Brewing opens, we will have the following breweries in a 1 mile radius:
Hale’s Ales
Maritime Pacific
NW Peaks
Hilliard’s
Reuben’s
Populuxe (if they ever get their act together and finally open)
Peddler
I am not surprised that a brewery moved into the old Maritime space. I think it is a good location for a small operation.
If beer is not your thing, there you can always visit my friend Jason at the fun tasting room of Domanico Winery. Now if we could just get a distillery….
Ok, so this post is not really about baseball; I tend to leave that to my friends AJ Coltrane and Blaidd Drwg.
It must be nice to be Harvard. The school has no culinary program, but it does sponsor a lecture series on Science and Cooking. For those of us not fortunate enough to be in Boston, we can still see these lectures streaming (and they eventually get posted to youtube and itunes). Since this series is really as much about science as it is about cooking, the lineup contains some of the heavy hitters in the molecular gastronomy world. Being a fan of the processes involved, I have a ton of interest in the series.
If you are interested, here is the batting order:
• Tuesday, September 4, 2012 — Dave Arnold (Food Arts), Harold McGee (New York Times)
• Monday, September 10, 2012 — Joan Roca and Jordi Roca (El Celler de Can Roca), Salvador Brugués (Sous-Vide Cuisine)
• Monday, September 17, 2012 — Bill Yosses (White House Pastry Chef)
• Monday, September 24, 2012 — Enric Rovira (Master Chocolatier)
• Monday, October 1, 2012 — Fina Puigdevall (Les Cols), Pere Planagumà (Les Cols), Paco Perez (Miramar)
• Monday, October 8, 2012 — Raül Balam Ruscalleda (Moments)
• Monday, October 15, 2012 — José Andrés (Think Food Group, minibar, Jaleo)
• Monday, October 22, 2012 — Wylie Dufresne (wd~50)
• Monday, October 29, 2012 — Dan Barber (Blue Hill Farm)
• Monday, November 5, 2012 — Joanne Chang (Flour Bakery)
• Monday, November 12, 2012 — Jack Bishop (Editorial Director at Cook’s Illustrated and an Editor on The Science of Good Cooking), Dan Souza (Associate Editor of Cook’s Illustrated)
• Monday, November 19, 2012 — Nathan Myhrvold (former Microsoft CTO; co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures; and author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking)
• Monday, November 26, 2012 — David Chang (momofuku), Carles Tejedor (Via Veneto)
• Monday, December 3, 2012 — Ferran Adrià (elBulli Foundation)
Not bad, not bad at all.
I leave you with the clip that the title of this article comes from.
Blog friend Annie S. asked me about fresh hop beer recently while we were knocking back a few malt beverages. I mentioned that they are generally only available in the spring and fall, right around harvest time for hops.
In case you are not familiar with fresh hop beers, they tend to have a very robust and green hop flavor and need to be consumed within about 6 weeks of production before the hop flavor starts to fade. Most beers use a dried form of hops and do not suffer from this issue.
I happened to be surfing the interweb recently and noticed that our friends at Seattle Met magazine had a story about fresh hop beers.
So for Annie and any other readers out there (all 5 of you) who care, here is some info on fresh hop beer s and where/when they will be available:
Once again, Two Beers is the first out of the gate on this; the brewery’s Fresh Hop 2012 started flowing in the SoDo taproom over the weekend, and is now surfacing outside the brewery. It’s the earliest release yet for its beer. Big Al Brewing also does a fresh hop brew each fall; the Santiam hops are being picked this very morning, and are destined for a batch of Big Al Brewing Harvest Ale, a malty amber, later this afternoon.
Fremont Brewing gets its hops from a one-acre plot in Yakima Valley’s Cowiche Canyon, half of which is dedicated to its Cowiche Canyon Fresh Hop ale. The brewery is hoping to release this year’s version the first week of October, but like a restaurant opening, such matters are moving targets. Schooner Exact, 7 Seas, Big Time, and Iron Horse have also done fresh hop brews in past years.
Not surprisingly, Oregon breweries like them some fresh hop, too. Geoff Kaiser of Seattle Beer News and the excellent Noble Fir bar in Ballard put on an annual Oregon vs. Washington fresh hop throwdown, where 15 versions battle for crowd supremacy. This year’s hop bonanza happens Saturday, September 29. Get there early, brace yourself for a line, and be assured that what awaits inside is completely worth the wait. Not surprisingly, Yakima is also home to a Fresh Hop Ale Festival happening October 6.
One that I would love to get my hands on – Laughing Dog Brewing’s Fresh Hop. They picked 150 lbs. of hops by hand this past week to go into the beer. Hopefully it shows up in Washington
FlatbreadGarden 