Category: Food

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Gingersnap Amber

By Iron Chef Leftovers

imagesCAAR87MMI know I have said this before, but I don’t really like ginger in my beer. Don’t get me wrong, I love ginger, I use it frequently in my cooking, but I feel like it tends to overpower the subtle flavors of beer to the point where it is all you end up tasting. Populuxe put on tap their Gingersnap Amber recently, and I decided that I needed to try it with some reluctance. The beer clocks in at just 5.5% ABV.

The beer pours amber in color with notes of toffee, malt and gingerbread on the nose. Gingersnap drinks heavier than it smells, starting off with a mild yeastiness before moving into light toffee and caramel notes which pleasantly linger for a long time before moving into a delicious cookie like flavor with hints of sugar and very light ginger coupled with light molasses and toffee. The finish is extremely long and pleasant, reminding me of a really nice gingerbread cookie without the crumbs. Well balanced and easy drinking, this beer manages to draw some big flavors into the picture without having to empty the spice rack or overpowering the palate.

Populuxe Gingersnap Amber preps for the holidays with 4 warm cookies out of 5.

An Inexpensive EarthBox Hoop House

by A.J. Coltrane

SeattleAuthor brought over Mâche seeds the other day, so it seemed like a good time to make a hoop house to keep the rain off of the seedlings. The hoop house was intended for the front yard, so it had to look decent. I was also targeting the minimum cost that would still allow for a “sound” end result. The finished cost was about $4.

140714 hoop house

Bill of Materials

~8 feet of 1/2″ pvc (black, flexible). Cut into two 4′ pieces. (Of a 100′ roll @ $16. An 8′ length should be comparable in price.)

5′ x 5′  of 4 mil clear plastic sheeting (Of a larger roll. It won’t last forever anyway.)

4 pvc clamps (sold as a bag of 5 for ~$1.60, similar to these)

7/16″ dowel x 4′, cut into 2 @ 10″ and 2 @ 14″. (The EarthBox is shallower on the watering tube side.)

2 clothespins

Assembly

1.  Cut the dowel into four pieces. Cut two ~4′ sections of pvc pipe.

2.  Insert the dowels into each corner of the EarthBox. Slide the pvc lengths over the dowels.

3.  Cover with the plastic sheet and clamp. Pin the extra plastic on the ends with a clothespin. The clothespins can also be used to hold the plastic doors on the ends open.

Done!

—–

The postmortem and assorted thoughts:

I think that there must be a better answer for the clamps, though I didn’t want to spend ~$1 each for good spring clamps. I want something that can easily be moved around, so something like spring clamps would be desirable. Still working on the right answer.

The cost could have been lower — My first thought was to build a wooden frame and attach the pvc to it using clamps. That’s the “normal” way to do it. But then I thought, hey, I can just push the pvc into the soil in each corner of the EarthBox. *Then* I did some looking around online — it appears that toxins from the pvc could potentially (likely?) release into the soil. How to deal with that?

I chose to do something similar to the buried rebar — I purchased some 3/8″ dowels, cut them to 1′ length, and buried the dowels in the corners of the box. I then slid the pvc over the dowels, leaving the pvc above the soil. In retrospect that was a no-brainer, but I was so fixated on the wooden frame/external support idea that it never occurred to me use the area within the EarthBox to anchor the pvc tubing.

I think it’s interesting that if you were to stick wagon wheels on the sides of the hoop house would look a lot like a covered wagon.

covered wagon

That may mean that it was the right way to do it — form follows function, and both the EarthBox and covered wagon have a similar functions.

Or it’s just a coincidence.

———–

I learned something new. The french “a” thingy is alt and numpad 0226.

Mark Your Calendars, Hop Heads of Seattle

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Twelve Breweries, all doing triple IPA’s, all being served at once.

The breweries:

The venues:

I will most likely make at least one of them, you know, just because I don’t do enough to support my local breweries.

More info here.

Beer of the Week: Unita Sea Legs Baltic Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

ssdsadweI am always surprised that breweries coming out of Utah are able to make anything resembling good beer, considering the draconian laws they have around alcohol in that state. Breweries like Unita and Epic have really shown that a brewery can both survive and thrive in that environment. Unita does distribute to Seattle and has some pretty good beers, so a trip to Chuck’s where there was one on tap that I had never seen before – Sea Legs Baltic Porter, was a nice surprise.

From the Unita website:

December 18, 2012 SALT LAKE CITY– Uinta Brewing Company introduces the newest addition to their Crooked Line of beers, Sea Legs Baltic Porter. Sea Legs is a limited release, only 1,500 cases were produced.

Complex and drinkable, Sea Legs delivers flavors of roasted malt and chocolate. Sea Legs was aged in Bourbon Barrels for nearly 12 months adding toasted vanilla and bourbon notes to the flavor profile. This Medium-bodied Baltic Porter has a complex malt profile and mild hop bitterness. With a hidden ABV of 8%, Sea Legs is a siren of a beer.

The beer pours jet black with lots of chocolate, licorice and vanilla dominating the nose with roasted barley hiding in the background. The initial sip yields notes of vanilla with hints of roast before moving into a slightly woody/licorice middle and finally finishing with a long chocolate finish with strong notes of licorice. The wood is somewhat unexpected (and wood I mean like pine rather than oak barrel, which is odd since it is aged in bourbon barrels) and the licorice seems slightly out of balance with the other flavors in terms of dominating them, making this somewhat off-putting. It is an interesting beer and might give it another shot, but it definitely wasn’t one that I would run out to try again.

Unita’s Sea Legs Baltic Porter stumbles into port with 2 broken rudders out of 5.

 

A Quick And Simple Cracker Recipe

by A.J. Coltrane

For future reference and before the notes evaporate — the cracker recipe for Iron Chef Leftovers’ big dinner party.

These crackers were served with three cheeses and three chocolates selected by ICL. I wanted to go for a cracker that would have good initial crispness but would have a small amount of chewiness as well. They also needed to taste good on their own but not compete with the cheese and chocolate. I think that overall the crackers fulfilled those goals.

This particular recipe is an amalgam of a bunch of different recipes that I looked through online. I ended up choosing this Alton Brown recipe as a loose template, though they’re still very different:

Ingredient This Recipe Alton Brown
AP Flour 8 oz 4-3/4 oz
Wheat Flour 1-1/2 oz 5 oz
Semolina Flour ½ oz
Table Salt 1-1/2 tsp
Kosher Salt 1-1/2 tsp
Aluminum Free Baking Powder 1-1/2 tsp 1-1/2 tsp
Olive Oil 3 TBP 3 TBP
Water 6 oz 6-1/2 oz
Poppy Seeds 1/3 cup
Sesame Seeds 1/3 cup

Instructions –

1. Knead until the dough *just* comes together and the flour is incorporated. (AB calls for kneading “4-5 times”.) Do NOT knead any further — the goal is develop as little gluten as possible. (More gluten = a chewy cracker, and not in a good way.)

2.  Rest 15 minutes. (So that the flour has a chance to hydrate.) Preheat oven to 450 F.

3.  Cut off 1/8 of the dough. Lightly dust the back of a sheet tray with semolina flour. Roll out the dough as thin as you can. Poke the dough all over with a fork. (So that it doesn’t puff up very much when baked.) Using a pizza wheel, cut the dough into cracker-sized pieces.

4.  Bake for 6 minutes on the first side. Rotate the pan and flip the crackers over. (Work quickly.) Bake 4-6 minutes on the 2nd side. Spread the crackers on a cooling rack to cool. Note that they’ll get crispier as they cool.

—

When we did these we used three sheet trays — one would be baking on the first side, one would be baking on the 2nd side, and one we’d vigorously wave around to cool it off, then prep the next dough to go into the oven.

Tips:

Don’t overwork the dough.

Roll it out super duper thin.

Keep practicing. The recipe makes many batches. By the time you’re on the 5th batch some things will start making more sense and you’ll likely have an “aha!” moment. And then you’ll be done.

Even the less than ideal ones will still taste good.

Feel free to add sesame seeds or poppy seeds or cheese or coarse salt or spices or whatever to make them more interesting. Lightly sprinkle the “topping” over the dough when it’s rolled out and pat it in a little bit. Again, these crackers were intended to be complimentary and not try to hog attention from ICL’s dinner, they’d be somewhat “plain” as-is if eaten solo.

Have fun!

Even More Over the Top Mac and Cheese

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Well, time to revisit the recipe since a number of people asked for it at a New Year’s Eve party we attended at Domanico Cellars. The original recipe is here, but this is the one I specifically made on NYE

The Software

1/2 lb of elbow macaroni

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 lb. good quality bacon, preferably thick cut

1 1/2 tablespoon powdered mustard

3 cups whole milk

1/2 cup onion, minced (about 3/4 of a medium onion)

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 large egg (lightly beaten)

12 oz Sharp Cheddar  shredded

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Black pepper to taste

The Recipe

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Shred the cheese and separate into 2 parts, one containing 1/4 of the cheese and 1 containing 3/4 of the cheese.
  • Cook the bacon, reserving the fat. Mince into 1/4 inch pieces when cooled.
  • Mince the onion. Add to the pan that you cooked the bacon in with 1 tsp of bacon fat and cook over medium heat until browned and slightly softened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
  • Bring 2 quarts of salted water to a boil in a 4 qt pan.
  • Add pasta and cook for about 5 minutes to al dente and drain.
  • While the water is coming to a boil, melt the butter in a 3 qt pan over medium heat.
  • Whisk in the flour and cook until pale blond (about 3 minutes) stirring about every minute.
  • Whisk in onion, paprika and mustard until combined (about 1 minute)
  • Slowly add the milk and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly until slightly thickened, about 7 minutes. Remove from heat.
  • Slowly add 2 ladles full of the milk mixture to the egg, whisking as you add it. This will temper the egg to keep it from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs. I usually do this in a measuring cup. If there are any lumps (i.e. cooked egg), start over with another egg.
  • Add the egg mixture into the pot and stir a couple of times to combine.
  • Add 3/4 of the cheese to the sauce and stir until the cheese is melted, 1-2 minutes.
  • Add the pasta to the sauce and add salt and pepper to taste.
  • Add the bacon to the pasta and combine.
  • In the pan that you cooked the onions, add one tablespoon of bacon fat over medium high heat. Add the breadcrumbs and toss. Cook until they become golden brown, about 4-5 minutes, stirring constantly.
  • Put pasta and sauce in a 4 qt casserole dish, cover with the remaining cheese and breadcrumbs and bake in the over for 20 minutes.
  • Let stand for 5 minutes and serve with your favorite hot sauce (or not)

IMPORTANT – don’t fully cook the pasta – it will finish cooking in the oven and it will be completely mushy if you cook it fully on the stove. Also, don’t rinse the pasta after you drain it.

Notes Timing is important on this recipe, so I highly suggest preparing all of your ingredients before you start cooking – it really makes the job much easier when you are not trying to measure something while watching something else. I also highly recommend freezing the cheese for about 10 minutes prior to shredding – it makes it much easier. The shredding can be done in a food processor or using a box grater. Don’t buy the pre-shredded cheese, it really doesn’t taste the same and shredding yourself will take you 2 or 3 minutes extra and it will be worth it. I really like Beecher’s Flagship Cheese in this recipe, but if you aren’t local to Seattle, you probably won’t be able to find it, so just use your favorite cheddar.  I really like Skagit River Ranch’s bacon for this recipe, but any good quality bacon will work. The pasta and sauce can be made in advance and then put in the oven later – just put it in the casserole dish, covered in the fridge and when you are ready to cook it, remove it from the fridge, uncover and let it sit at room temp for 15 minutes while you warm the oven. The leftovers also make really good fried mac and cheese the next day, that is, if there is any left.

 

Lemongrass Doesn’t Work Well In An EarthBox

A.J. Coltrane

Yesterday was “Ready The EarthBoxes For Planting Day”. The EarthBox holding the lemongrass needed to be dumped upside down into a wheelbarrow because the roots had grown down through the base aeration screen and into the reservoir. The plant had to be cut off of the screen to get it out of the box:

Upside down in the wheelbarrow.
Upside down in the wheelbarrow.

If you look closely, the roots have perfectly formed to the molded shapes on the bottom of the container. The circle (bottom right) is the fill tube, which was almost completely blocked. That explains why it *seemed* to be blocked in late summer:

140104 lemongrass closeup

Lemongrass isn’t supposed to winter over, but I think that it might have lived, at least so far. It’s been transplanted into a planter box along the back fence.

The lesson:  Super invasive root systems won’t work well in the EarthBox, or more accurately —  the lemongrass went gangbusters, but the box isn’t designed for *that*.

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Pumpkin Saison

By Iron Chef Leftovers

untitled2Reuben’s held out on me this year – they made a second pumpkin beer beyond their flagship pumpkin beer that they did not release until November. This beer was based on a saison, definitely a beer that you don’t see used very often in the pumpkin beer world. They had a very limited quantity of the Pumpkin Saison and it didn’t make it past the weekend that it went on tap, but you know that Iron Chef was there to try it and let you know what you missed.

The beer pours very dark reddish brown in color with notes of roasted pumpkin, pumpkin spice and saison funk on the nose. The beer starts out small with subtle grain notes and a distinctive saison background, then moving into a distinct pumpkin realm with light notes of roast and pumpkin seeds before hitting you with a burst of pumpkin pie spices – cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves are distinctly present. The beer finishes long with strong pumpkin pie character a pleasant dryness and just a hint of cinnamon heat. The pumpkin saison manages to bring more to spices to the party than the Pfeiffer’s Pumpkin Rye that Reuben’s also brews, giving a nice counterpunch to that beer. They also took great care in preserving the grassy notes of the saison and not completely overwhelming them with the spices, creating an interesting and balanced beer. I still would rather have the Pfeiffer’s Pumpkin, but this would be a welcome change of pace next pumpkin beer season.

Reuben’s Pumpkin Saison carves out a niche with a spooky 4 jack o’lanterns out of 5.

Beer of the Year: Cheapseateats.com’s Best of 2013

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I really intended to post this on December 31st, but I forgot to switch the date on the post, so it is a couple of days late.

Overall 2013 was a banner year for beer in Seattle, particularly Ballard with a significant number of new breweries opening and the existing breweries kicking it up a notch with the quality of their beers. It was a particularly banner year for beer reviews on this site also, with me posting just north of 100 beer reviews on the site (that is a ton of beer and that doesn’t even take into account the beer notes I have but have not posted yet). This has made determining my best beer of 2013 much more difficult than last year. Here are the rules for determining the winner:

  • The beer had to score 5 out of 5 on the Iron Chef Scale
  • I had to post a review of the beer sometime in 2013
  • Vintage beers are not eligible to win
  • If I named the beer, it wasn’t eligible to win (so, no, my beloved Ate2Four Porter is not the beer of the year)
  • Previous winners are not eligible win again, no matter how delicious they are (It means Reuben’s Pfeffer’s Pumpkin can’t win again)
  • The winner is picked by an esteemed panel of me, myself and I

This really was a challenge – I had about 15 beers that I scored 5 points so I took down my list from there to 4 contenders for the best. It was actually going to be 5, then I realized that the one that would have been in the 5th spot has not yet had a review posted, so, it is an early contender for 2014 (and no, I won’t tell you what it is). The final 4 came down to hoppy vs. roasted, so let me show you how this played out:

Matchup 1: Battle Hops

Our contenders are Reuben’s Imperial Rye IPA and Populuxe Full Spectrum (previously Founders) Imperial IPA.

A good old Ballard brewery smack down and a competition between 2 breweries I love and what I think are the 2 best beers these breweries make. This was a hard choice. Full Spectrum is one of the best Imperials out on the market and I think it holds its own against beers like Pliny (yes, it is that good). The problem is, I think this about the Imperial Rye IPA (the cask version particularly):

I tasted this side by side with the regular version of the Imperial Rye, a beer I dearly love, and honestly, the cask version blew the doors off the regular version. After tasting the cask version, the regular, a fantastic beer in its own right, didn’t have the same level of intensity as its sibling. I am going to go on the record here as saying the cask version of the Imperial Rye IPA is one of the 10 best beers I have ever had and quite possibly in the top 5. Yes, it was that good. Next time it makes an appearance, you should be waiting in line for this beer when it gets tapped.

As good as Full Spectrum was, the Imperial Rye edges it out just slightly and moves onto the finals in a close match between 2 heavyweights.

Matchup 2: Battle Roast

Our contenders are Reuben’s Bourbon Imperial Russian Stout and Midnight Sun Moscow Russian Imperial Stout.

This could also have been called battle barrel as both beers spent some time in oak.

Again, a tough choice. Both were massive beers and both were spectacular. Both of these beers had tremendous balance and flavor, and it really came down to a number of small differences. I can sum it up about the winner in a post I made about the beer in its initial review:

If you like Russian Imperial Stouts, you need to try this beer. Really, it is that good, and possibly the best I have ever had.

That beer was the Midnight Sun Moscow, edging Reuben’s (and preventing an all-Reuben’s Final) by the tip of a Cossak’s bayonet.

That sets up the final between Anchorage and Seattle, with 2 heavy hitter ready to slug it out in the ring. They went 15 rounds, toe to toe, bringing us in with a split decision. I will turn it over to our ring announcer for the results:

The winner, by split decision, and 2013 Cheapseateats.com Beer of the Year…Reuben’s Imperial Rye IPA!

A Reuben’s beer takes the title for the second straight year! Another well earned (and hard fought) victory for Reuben’s and congratulations to Adam and Mike for making such fantastic beer. Can Reuben’s do it again in 2014? Only time will tell. I can say that they have some pretty stiff competition to go up against if they want to 3-peat.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Kaleetan-weizzen

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I tend to stay away from the lighter beers, just because they usually lack the depth of flavors that I am looking for when drinking a beer. There are some breweries that I would still try their lighter beers, just because of their track record with making beers that I enjoy. NW Peaks is one of them. So when they released Kaleetan as part of the August Mountainbeers lineup, I was actually looking forward to drinking it.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Kaleetan is a peak close to Snoqualmie pass. It is one of the more impressive peaks in the area and its name means arrow, while others have described it as “matterhorn” (both aptly describing it). It’s a great day climb and/or ski depending on the time of year and conditions. In the summer trails go from Denny Creek to Melakwa lake. Heading up to the summit gully and easy class 3 scrambling can take you to the exposed summit. In winter, source lake is the preferred starting point.

The beer. Kaleetan is an “American Wheat Beer.” It has a wheat base and we used hops that have lemon qualities for the flavor and aroma. We finished off the beer with some lemon zest, enhancing the lemon properties. The result was a light beer with a light/delicate lemon aroma. The aroma is followed by a bready flavor with light herbal notes (a secondary characteristic from the sorachi ace hops). Overall, Kaleetan is an easy drinking wheat ale with light lemon and herbal notes.

untitle8dThe beer pours pale yellow in color with a fizzy white head. The nose is dominated by strong notes of yeast and wheat with touches of lemon interspersed. On the first sip, light notes of grain appear on the front of the beer with a very mild hint of yeast, before moving into slightly dry/tart lemon notes, before finishing with a hint of refreshing bitterness and touches of lemon peel. The beer is light and refreshing but surprisingly complex and it vaguely reminded me of a pilsner and would be perfect on a hot day. I think the beer is complex enough to keep an advanced beer drinker happy and subtle enough to have mass appeal.

NW Peaks Kaleetan-weizzen climbs to the top and announces its presence with a strong 4 yodels out of 5.