Why Wasn’t I Invited?

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I saw this and I was really pissed that I had not heard about it. Joe Beef (the #1 restaurant I want to go to on the planet) teaming up with L’Abattoir (My pick for the #1 restaurant in Vancouver) for a 12 course, $145 dinner in Vancouver. I would have booked my hotel the day it was announced and driven up to Vancouver for it. Heck, I did once drive up to Vancouver for a cooking demonstration.

I then found out the event was only open to holder of the Visa Infinity card, which seems to only be available in Canada and to Canadians. They have a dining series like this and I did actually see if I could get on the invite list, but alas, you have to have the card and you need to have an address in Canada to get one.

The meal looks amazing and I would have killed someone to be part of it. I think it was a bargain at $145 for 12 courses, with wine, gratuity and a copy of the Joe Beef cookbook included. Based on the account it was an overindulgent, rich meal, which is exactly what I would have expected from those 2 restaurants. I guess that I will just have to settle for drooling over my computer screen and going back up to L’Abattoir next time we are up in Vancouver (you should really go if you have not been) and trying to go to Joe Beef the next time I am in Montreal, whenever that might be.

Check out the pictures of this meal and tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to be part of it.

El Camion in Ballard

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I have never been shy about my love for the local taco truck, El Camion, which has locations in Ballard, SoDo and North Seattle. I do go there frequently and I do tend to order the non-gringo items on the menu (tripas, cabeza, lengua and chorizo) and I love them. Actually, I am not sure I could tell you what their other stuff actually tastes like, but I am sure it is good. When you go to the truck and there is a Mexican in line ahead of you, I can almost guarantee that they will order one of the four above meats. Heck, I have had Mexicans in line behind me ask if I knew what I was ordering because they are surprised that a white guy would actually order them. But I digress.

Mrs. Iron Chef has been reluctant to go to El Camion because she has a thing against eating food from a truck. Well, she has that excuse no longer – El Camion is opening a non-mobile location in Ballard (in the space formerly occupied by Zesto’s and Ro-Ro BBQ) AND they are keeping their truck in Ballard! Hopefully they will find success there and have a few more items on their menu beyond what you can get on the truck. Let’s celebrate – dos tacos tripas for everyone!

Six Minute Pizza

by A.J. Coltrane

Historically I’ve baked pizza for sixteen minutes at 500F. The process would be to bake the dough and toppings except cheese for ten minutes, then add the cheese and bake for another six. For years I had an ancient oven to work with that only went to 500F. These days all the cool kids are using short baking times, so…

This is the first attempt at a six minute pizza. That’s total cooking time. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s different from what I’ve been doing, so it may rate a few posts as I figure out what I think I’m doing.

This pizza uses my “normal” (Smitten Kitchen) recipe. After kneading the dough spent two hours on the counter, then overnight in the refrigerator, then two more hours on the counter to come up to room temperature. The toppings are simply red sauce, low-moisture mozzarella, and sauteed red onion.

I preheated the oven to 550F. While the oven was preheating I stretched out the dough by hand, placed it on a perforated pizza pan, then topped it.

Basil was added after it came out of the oven.

Overall the color was ok, the bottom turned fairly brown.

Things to try going forward will include using a pizza stone, with or without the pan. The broiler may factor into things as well.

Bonus cat pic:

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Brews Imperial Rye IPA

By Blaidd Drwg

A while back, I wrote a post on food memories. Smells and tastes can invoke a powerful emotion and sometimes they can come from an unexpected place. A recent trip to visit my friends at Reuben’s Brews was such an experience. With their extensive and ever changing tap list and usually stellar beers, I am always torn between trying their new stuff and old favorites. A recent trip to the brewery saw the Imperial Rye IPA on their board; a rye based imperial IPA clocking in at 8.4% alcohol and 90+ IBU. This beer is not really for the faint of heart – it is a big, bold hop monster.

The beer pours amber, almost rosy in color. There is lots of citrus on the nose (predominately grapefruit) and rye – you take one whiff of this beer and you have no doubt that this is going to be a big IPA. The beer has a smooth, almost creamy feel on the palate with a slightly sweet hit giving way to a light bitterness with tons of grapefruit. For a beer with that high an IBU, the hops bitterness is incredibly well balanced with the rest of the beer. The Imperial Rye then gets really interesting – the grapefruit gives way to a dramatic rye finish with such a rye hit that it brought back memories of my grandmother making me fresh rye toast from the Jewish bakery in my home town. My only complaint, and this is because of the memories this beer invokes, is that the beer goes from sweet to bitter to citrus to rye too quickly – I really want that rye to linger on the palate for a long time. The reality is that this beer does have a fairly long finish and it is very pleasant and not overpowered with the high alcohol content it possesses. The bitterness does become more pronounced as it warms and I think this beer would be a good candidate for a cask treatment (Note to Adam: Big Hint!)

I did try this beer a second time without my notes from the first tasting handy and compared the two – they were both virtually identical with what I initially wrote. I loved this beer. As Rye IPA’s go, I probably rank this one as my 3rd favorite behind Anacortes and Laughing Dog, but this one has the childhood memory associated with it, so it really does make ranking it a lot harder.

I would have given this beer an easy 4 out of 5 if it weren’t for the memories, but since I do consider emotion as well as price when I come up with my ratings, Reuben’s Imperial Rye IPA invokes a perfect 5 Judicke’s Bakeries (that is where my grandmother usually got the rye bread from – it is still there and has been in operation since 1924) out of 5. Thanks for the trip down memory lane as well as the fantastic beer!

The Rock, Milk and Super Bowl Ads

By Blaidd Drwg

I really stopped caring about the commercials in the Super Bowl years ago when most of them just generally started to suck. Companies then got smart and started releasing their Super Bowl ads before the game on the web to generate buzz by putting them online. Last year, it was the Darth Vader Volkswagen commercial that drew the most attention. I watched it and thought it was one of the greatest commercials ever. I then saw it when it aired and I was confused – it really wasn’t as good as I remembered it being. I decided to do a bit of research and found that the version posted online was over a minute long and it got edited down to fit in a 30 second spot. It may not seem like a big deal, but could you imagine trying to watch a 2 hour version of any of the Lord of the Rings movies if they had to cut out half of the film.

Flash forward to this year. I thought that the milk commercial starring The Rock was brilliant and I essentially laughed out loud most of the time. It got very little reaction from the crowd watching it, and once again, I knew why – the online version was 1 minute long, but they edited it down to a 30 second spot. What was lost was the long shots of The Rock stopping at each disaster and deciding he didn’t have time to deal with it. Here is the version of the ad that aired during the game:

Here is the full version of the ad:

I will leave it up to you to decide, but I really think this is on par with the VW Vader Commercial.

Smuggling Tasty Contraband into the US

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Europe is very well known for its tasty, salted pig parts – ham, sausages, cured meats, pates , the list goes on. Thanks to the wisdom of the USDA, most of those delicious items are not available in the US, and those that are need to be processed in USDA regulated facilities in Europe, which sometimes means that what you get in the US is not nearly as good as what you have in Europe. Why this is the case is a tirade for another time.

Needless to say, this has led to a smuggling ring run by your everyday citizens travelling to and from Europe. I know people who have smuggled in ham, salami, cheese (in a diaper bag, which was odd since they didn’t have any kids) and all manner of seeds and mushrooms (Iron Chef Leftovers may or may not have been guilty of doing one or more of these things in the past). Saveur.com recently posted an article about this practice. While there is always the risk of getting caught and having your contraband confiscated (and possibly a fine levied), I personally think it is worth the risk for any cured meat product or cheese. Fruits, veggies, seeds and raw meats, well, those actually do pose a risk to be imported into the country illegally, so I do have some issues with those.

Not that I am encouraging this practice, but if you find yourself in Vancouver, B.C. stop by Oyama Sausage Company in the Granville Island Market and you may change your mind about breaking the law. If you do happen to go, please pick me up some of their phenomenal dried Spanish chorizo. It is far and away the best I have had in North America.

Beer of the Week: Deschutes Brewing Chasin’ Freshies

By Iron Chef Leftovers

If there is one thing that you can count on from Deschutes Brewing out of Bend, Oregon is consistency; there beers are easily a great “fall back” if you’re looking to have a couple and don’t want to break the bank doing it. You can never go wrong cracking open a Black Butte, Mirror Pond, Inversion or Red Chair. They also produce a special series of beers; usually hop monsters, in their limited Bond Street series, which usually border on spectacular. This year, they produced a fresh hop beer, Chasin’ Freshies as part of the series. The beer was available in 22 oz. bottles and ran about $6 at your local bottle shop.

From their website:

Alc. 7.4% | IBUs 60
22 oz serving

Like fresh powder, it’s a seize-the-moment thing. At harvest, we rush Goschie Farms’ Cascade hops fresh from vine to kettle. Not any Cascades, mind you, but an heirloom strain, from a single field, restored from the original rhizome. Hope you’re as hopped up as we are.

Malt: Pilsner Malt, Flaked Oats
Hops: Bravo, Fresh Heirloom Cascades

The beer pours a very pale yellow in color, almost surprisingly so – I looks like it could pass itself off as a saison. Any confusion over what you are drinking is eliminated when you smell the beer – the nose is dominated by floral and grassy hops and something that I couldn’t quite idenitfy, which might have been the oats included in the brew process. The initial taste is more malt forward than I was expecting, but it is a brief hit of malt and is followed by a huge punch of citrus with hints of resin and grass in a long and pleasant finish. The beer is not overly bitter and the hops are the star of the show, but still show great balance between the malt, bitterness, alcohol and citrus. Despite its light color, the beer drinks like a much bigger beer and does a fantastic job of displaying exactly what I want in a fresh hop beer and showcasing its pedigree.
This is definitely not a beer that you would want to drink if you did not like hops, but if you do, you should be chasing this one down during its limited run next winter.

Chasin’ Freshies gets run down with a high-speed 5 Smokey and the Bandits out of 5.

Wheat, Addiction and Stephen Colbert

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I really do prefer Jon Stewart, but I do find Colbert funny. He recently did a segment on his show comparing wheat to addictive drugs. If he is right, does this mean that Coltrane is a drug dealer? Possibly, you shoud see the way people jones for his bread.

The segment gets stranger with the introduction of McGnaw the Gluten Free Beaver.

For your enjoyment:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Stupid Sexy Flanders

By Iron Chef Leftovers

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.

The full list of beers is here.

Where it comes from:

Beer of the Week: Boulevard Brewing Chocolate Ale (Batch #8)

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Boulevard Brewing out of Kansas City makes some of the more interesting beers out there in their Smokestack Series of beers, especially if you are talking about anything Belgian Style. Their spring seasonal beer in that series is a Chocolate Ale. Being a fan of chocolate beers, I had to give that one a shot. I originally was lucky enough to head into Chuck’s Hop Shop when they had it on tap and liked it so much that I purchased a bottle that day to bring home. The review is for the bottle, a 750 ml one, that cost about $10, and is batch #8 of the Chocolate Ale.

From the Boulevard website:

In developing this beer, Elbow and Boulevard brewmaster Steven Pauwels sought to harmonize the interplay of chocolate and malt, with each supporting and enhancing, but not overwhelming, the other. Just the right chocolate was essential. Elbow recommended a rare variety from the Dominican Republic, prized for its robust flavor and aroma, and a personal favorite. More than a mere flavoring, the chocolate — in the form of nibs, or crushed, roasted beans – was incorporated into the brewing process itself.
Color (EBC) 41
Bitterness (IBUs) 24
Original Gravity (Plato) 20
Terminal Gravity (Plato) 4
Alcohol (ABV) 9.1%
CO2 – Bottles
CO2 – Kegs

The beer pours hazy orange with a cream white head. Slight hints of hops and malt are hidden behind roasted chocolate and cocoa on the nose. Taking the first sip of this beer is like biting into a good dark chocolate bar. There are notes of roast on the front followed by a slightly fruity background and finishing with intense chocolate fades slowly and pleasantly into the night. The beer has a crispness to it and there are slight notes of sugar and malt, but the chocolate is really the star. Unlike most chocolate beers, which are more like drinking a chocolate drink (hot cocoa for example), this beer retains a great deal of the fruity characteristics of the chocolate itself and is more like a liquid chocolate bar. It is well balanced and definitely something that you should try if you are looking for something that has more complexity than just chocolate flavoring in it.

Boulevard produced an outstanding beer here and it will be interesting to see if the next go around keeps with the same recipe or they try something different.

Boulevard Chocolate Ale (batch #8) cruises in with a sweet 4 cacao pods out of 5.