Category: Food

Iron Chef America – Margin of Victory

by A.J. Coltrane

Looking at the wikipedia page for Iron Chef America results — it seems like there have been a lot more blowouts the last few years. Here is the Victory Margin, as a 7 episode rolling average:

 

Looks like a trend to me.

 

I removed all of the team competitions and all episodes that used four judges. The chart goes through the end of Season 9.

Ignore the spike right at the start — Morimoto defeated Roberto Donna 50-33. Donna only completed two of the five dishes. It always kind of bugs me when I’m reminded that they gave Donna another chance; a second chance doesn’t feel very “Iron Chef” to me.

The other big spike is during Season 8. I wonder if the level of competition changed, or the judges really changed, or the new Iron Chefs have a much different talent level, or… what else?

The average margin of victory has gone from about 4 to about 6, I’d have to think that’s at least partly on the judges.

Sucks! Holiday Ale from Lagunitas

By Blaidd Drwg

I was recently at Chuck’s Beer Store on 85th in Seattle (a fine place for local beers and a great tap list – go if you haven’t been) and was talking to Chuck about a variety of beers, specifically IPA’s. Chuck was telling me about the Lagunitas “Christmas” Beer this year. It appears that something bad happened to their annual “Brown Suga’” beer and, as a result, they produced what is being called “Sucks! Holiday Ale”.

Buy this beer and your holidays might suck a little less.

I am generally not a huge fan of Lagunitas beers. They are ok, but I don’t go out of my way to buy them since with just about every style they make, there are several beers that I like better.

Skeptical about Chuck’s praise for this beer, I sampled it. This beer is an IPA, an unusual beer release for a winter beer. There is a strong citrus nose initially, giving way to a pleasant hop aroma and slight bitterness finished off with a clean crisp palate with a little lingering citrus. This beer tastes like a fresh hop (although it isn’t listed as one) and comes in at only 63 IBU, so it won’t kill your palate. This is a beer that you could easily put back several in one sitting, but it might hurt – Sucks! Holiday comes in at 7.6%. I walked out of Chuck’s with a growler and gave serious consideration to finishing it myself that night.

This beer is at the end of its release cycle – Chuck’s only had it on tap and is expecting one more keg, so get it while you can. The beer was bottled, so other area bottle shops may have one or two still floating around. Definitely worth tasting if you can.

Rating: 4 Christmas cookies out of 5.

The New Toy

by A.J. Coltrane

A little birdie told me this camera has a better macro. The birdie was right.

The new (to me) Canon SX230HS. The photo is using only natural light on a dreary and rainy Seattle day. Mints in a 2-1/2″ diameter ramekin:

Thank you birdie!

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!

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!!

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?

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

Alton Brown’s Frittata, Sorta

by A.J. Coltrane

Saturday morning frittata very loosely based on Alton Brown’s recipe.

4 eggs

1 red pepper, diced

1/4 lb breakfast sausage, broken up

About 1/4 cup each grated cheddar and parmesan.

—-

Cover and heat sausage & red pepper over medium-low heat until cooked. Beat eggs with cheese, salt & black pepper. (It won’t take much salt, both the parmesan and sausage are salty.) Add the egg mixture to the sausage/red pepper and cook covered until the top is almost set, then broil until the top browns a little. (To broil, I slid the frittata out of the non-stick skillet and onto a baking sheet.)

Jamie Oliver’s English Onion Soup

by A.J. Coltrane

Jamie Oliver’s English Onion Soup, mostly. Using chicken stock and the bread from the “7 Hour Rustic Bread” post to finish. The bread went under the broiler, which seemed to work well enough:

I didn’t really follow his recipe though:  1/2 red onion, thinly sliced. 1/2 large leek, thinly sliced, salt, pepper, and 6 mashed garlic cloves (remove garlic cloves at the end of the “saute”). Cook partially covered over low heat with 2 TBP extra virgin olive oil and 1 TBP butter for about 30 minutes. Remove lid and cook another 20 minutes until everything is brown. Add a 14.5 oz can of chicken stock. Heat through and add 2 TBP of butter to finish. Check for seasoning and fix if needed. Serves 2.