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WINTER WARMERS

Published by Josh on February 10, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Is it just me, or does Winter really suck the big one? I hate being cold. I hate being deprived of my precious daylight. I hate jackets. Dead leaves? Yeah, real uplifting. I’ve found that there are only a couple of lines of defense from the Winter Blues. Booze and heavy food. With that I bring you, barley wine and chili.

I have to say, I’ve sampled considerably more barley wines this year than in previous years, and I’m warming up to them. Not that I wasn’t a fan before, but I think that I’ve tried some of the better ones this year and feel that I’ve learned a lot about this odd breed of beer. I would put this one from Real Ale right up there with the best of ‘em. Weighing in at 11% ABV, this is just what I needed to fight off a frigid Texas chill. It could save your life, seriously.

Going in the glass, this stuff is the color of fallen leaves. It looks complex, or is that just the wine glass? The pour is very viscous. It’s like syrup, and doesn’t make a splash as it quickly fills the glass. There’s a bit of a creamy white head that takes a couple of seconds to work it’s way through the thickness. Looks very inviting next to a bowl of flesh-free chili and burning embers. Not to mention the fire in the fireplace.

Raisins, dates and black cherries appear in the nose, alongside bread and booze. Is someone baking a fruitcake? I think I’m getting a buzz, just from the smell. Better drink up.

It feels like I’m pouring wet cement in my mouth. This must be the heaviest liquid known to man. If the thought of pouring uncured concrete down your gullet isn’t appealing, you better shake that shit off because this is very comforting. It’s not unlike taking a dose of Nyquil. Thick, oily warmth covers my mouth.

Right off the bat, I taste toffee, brown sugar and those dried fruits I picked up in the smell. Caramelized malts balanced with a fairly subtle hop profile. They’re mostly of the “piney” variety, with a little bit of the floral kind on the finish. It’s very sweet, but with a touch of hops and a blast of alcohol, I find myself going back for more. The warmth of the alcohol seems to bring out more of the sweetness. This is a sipper for sure.

Turns out the chili was the perfect meal to enjoy with this brew. The heat of the peppers cleaned the sticky sweetness right off of my palate. The density of the beans and potatoes gave something for the alcohol to latch on to. The earthiness of the spices jived perfectly with the evergreen profile of the hops. A match made in heaven.

The potatoes that I mentioned were the only real departure from the norm as far as my chili goes. It’s never exactly the same, but I pretty much start with the same base every time and go from there. For example, there’s always beer in it, but never the same kind. This time around, a cup of my coffee porter that I made a few months ago. As far as the base goes, it looks a little something like this:

  • 1 lb black beans
  • 1 lb red kidney beans
  • 1 lb of fake ground beef (I use Morningstar Farms)
  • two medium yellow onions
  • 1 green, 1 red bell pepper
  • 2 diced jalapenos
  • 3 large diced tomatoes
  • 1 can diced, roasted green chiles (or the real thing if I’ve visited New Mexico recently)
  • 1 can of corn
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 1 cup of good beer (if you wouldn’t drink it, why would you want to eat it?)
  • 3 cups of vegetable stock
  • chili powder, cumin, black and white pepper, coriander seed and cayenne pepper to taste
  • just a little bit of something sweet (anything from Dr Pepper to chocolate chips)

The beauty of chili is that it’s fairly forgiving. You can experiment quite a bit, which I do every time. What fun is following directions and making the same dish every… single… time? I say go crazy. If you start with a good base, you can afford to branch out a little and see what a little bit of this or that does to it. But most of all, make sure that you’ve got a tasty beverage to wash that hotness down with. Sisyphus from Real Ale will do the trick.

Now, bring on Spring. Cheers!

SWEET POTATO GNOCCHI WITH FETA CREAM SAUCE

Published by Josh on January 14, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Armed with a bunch of sweet potatoes from the Johnson’s Backyard Garden, a new Kitchenaid mixer and an undying desire to make gnocchi for the first time, I set out this weekend to make that dream a reality. Lydia would be so proud. She makes it look so easy! What’s so hard about potatoes, flour and eggs right? Right.

First, there’s no way to write an exact recipe for gnocchi as there are too many variables. Moisture content, altitude, size of your eggs and probably several more that I’m not even aware of yet. If you’ve made dough before, you get the idea. This is no different.

To start, you want to bake your taters rather than boiling so that you don’t introduce any more moisture that will have to be sucked up with more flour. Speaking of flour, start with less than you think you’ll need. Too much, and you’ve got dry, tough pasta. Too little, and it’s going to be a slimy mess. This is an art folks, not an exact science. It’s so worth it though. What you’re going for is pasta dough that sticks to itself more than to your floured hands. Once your dough is ready, form it into long rolls about an inch in diameter and cut into once inch pieces. Put a little flour on the back of a fork and roll your pasta pieces with your thumb and forefinger along the tines of the fork to create the ridges that will later grab your sauce that you top the pasta with. Simple right?

Gnocchi, like any pasta, will take whatever kind of sauce you like. I went with a cream sauce which I thought would get along well with the sweet potato. To make it a bit more interesting, I made it a feta/parm cheese sauce. Heavy cream, goat’s milk feta, parmigiano reggiano (say it out loud like Lydia does, it’s fun!), basil, garlic, oregano, salt & pepper reduced via a slow simmer. Delizioso!

ALL GEEKED OUT

Published by Josh on January 10, 2008 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

I’ve been under an all-out attack from some of the worst allergies of all time. Fuck you cedar trees! I wish you’d all just die already! Hmm, I think I actually feel a little better now. Given that my sense of taste and smell is completely shot at the moment, and that all that I really want to do is sleep, I haven’t been up to any cooking or drinking fancy beers. So, I thought I’d report on one of my other favorite things, technology. I had to keep it food/beer related, so these are a few items of interest I’ve come across lately in the world of cooking and brewing on the internets.

First, I started searching early last year for a piece of software that would help me to take the leap into all-grain brewing. At the time, I was limited to apps that would run on Windows or Linux. Well, since then I bought a Macbook and decided to alter my search. There are several versions for the Mac, but the most established one seems to be Beer Alchemy. So far, it seems like it’ll do everything that I want it to. It will help me to create and tweak my recipes and keep track of the results. It will calculate how much grain I will need to reach a specified original gravity, or how many hops to reach a certain IBU. It will keep track of my ingredient inventory as well as suggesting recipes based on what grains I have on hand. If I decide to brew something that I don’t have ingredients for, it will build a shopping list for me. All of this for a measley $20?

Along the same lines, I was also looking for a recipe program that would allow me to save my own recipes in the kitchen, so that I could duplicate them in the future. I’m not one to follow someone else’s recipe, and I’m even worse at keeping track of my own. I just get so caught up in the creation of it, I don’t really pay attention to how much of this or that I’m putting in. I know this isn’t good, so I wanted something easy to keep track of it all. Enter Connoisseur, also for the Mac. This little gem looks like it will be exactly what I need. It allows me to easily enter my ingredient list and cooking instructions. Once my recipe is built, I can ask the program to scale it for me. So, if I’ve made something for just the two of us and decide it would be good to serve at a dinner party, I just scale it up. Another cool feature is the ability to export a shopping list to my iPod, based on the recipes I’ve selected. I haven’t tried it with my iPhone yet, but I suspect that will work. Also nifty is the feature that makes it possible to follow along with the recipe without having my precious laptop right in the middle of the kitchen chaos. With the touch of a button, the program will format the ingredient list and instructions in large type and will even read them to me! There’s also a feature that allows me to easily import recipes from websites that I find online by just selecting all of the text on the page, and it formats and stores it for me. Again, all of this for a paltry $20.

The last bit of nerd news is that my lovely wife gave me a shiny new video camera for Christmas. I’m sure she was wondering why I wanted it in the first place, but she didn’t ask any questions. I’ve been wanting to incorporate other types of media on this here blog, and now I’m one step closer. I’ve come across lots of DIY cooking videos on the web and felt inspired to give it a try myself. Most of them are a little dry though, so I plan to go a slightly different direction with mine. Stay tuned for Kegs and Kitchen video insanity! In the meantime, check out some of the others ones that are out there at www.imcooked.com, www.foodtube.net and http://www.ifood.tv. Plans are also in the works for an extensive video library of “how to brew” information.

And now, back to sneezing. Sorry for the lack of posts and this half-assed attempt. I’ll be back in full force soon!

WHO IS JOHN, AND WHY IS HE HOPPING?

Published by Josh on January 1, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again. Time to make those lists of resolutions, clean house and get ready for what will hopefully be a great new year. For me, this time of year also means that it’s time to make a big pot of black eyed peas to eat for my first meal of the new year. My family has done this for as long as I can remember. It’s supposed to bring you good luck, and I think it’s a great dish, so I still do it.I thought that instead of doing the “end of the year” list that most of the blogs are doing these days, I’d share my version of this dish and take a look at it’s history. One specific piece of it’s history is very interesting, which is a name that I was unaware of until a few years ago. It seems that many people in the south, where this tradition started, refer to this dish as Hoppin’ John. Nobody seems to be exactly sure why though.

One explanation could be that there was once a rich Georgia landowner who had a slave to serve his meals, that only had one leg. He made this dish, and the landowner and his guests liked it so much that they named the dish after him. Cute.

Another explanation could be that it’s simply a bastardization of the French pronunciation of their term for black eyed peas which is “pois pigeons” (say it like you’re French, and it makes sense). It could have been that there simply was a man named John who came “a hoppin” when his wife made it. There is a phrase in South Carolina, where this dish reportedly has it’s roots, that when you invite someone in to eat you say “Hop in, John.” There’s even a story of a crippled man in Charleston that served the dish, and I’ll let you guess what his name was.

There are also many variations on how this dish is prepared and served. For some, it’s simply black eyed peas simmered in a tomato based broth along with fatty cuts of pork. Others jazz it up a bit with peppers and onions. Some would say that the peas are only half of the meal, the other half being some type of greens served with it to symbolize folded money which they hope will come to them in the new year. There’s even a Cuban version called Hoppin’ Juan, which substitutes black beans.

Regardless of which story you choose to believe , this is a great dish with lots of history. If it really brings good luck is anyone’s guess, I like to believe it does. I also like the fact that it’s one of those meals that you assemble with love, allow it to simmer for hours and then share it with everyone around you. It’s not fancy, it won’t win any cooking contests and you won’t find it on the menu of your favorite snotty restaurant. It is however incredibly satisfying and comforting. Not to mention healthy. That’s a good way to start the new year in my book.

My version of Hoppin’ John:

  • 1 lb of black eyed peas, soaked overnight.
  • 1 medium yellow onion
  • 2 10 oz cans of Rotel
  • 1 1/2 quarts of vegetable stock
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon cumin, chili powder, celery seed and thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 1 bay leaf
  • fresh cracked black pepper to taste
  • diced avocado and pico de gallo to garnish

Happy New Year!

WEEKEND REPORT

Published by Josh on December 15, 2007 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

There’s been a flurry of activity at Kegs and Kitchen headquarters. Instead of a bunch of small posts, I thought I’d combine some.

First, Friday night, Lefty and I staged “The Battle of the Belgians” at his house. It was a steel cage fight to the death that left only the Rare Vos from Ommegang standing.

It was a painful, bloody match for all involved. Chairs were thrown. There were several cheap shots square in the nuts, and at least one man left on a stretcher. But it was both an educational and exciting match to witness. Those Belgians are fucking crazy.

Saturday brought much time in the kitchen. First up was crab cakes for the lady. They were super easy, and she seemed to enjoy them quite a bit. Crab meat, diced shallots, roasted red pepper, bread crumbs, fresh thyme, a tablespoon of mustard, splash of white wine and an egg. Booyah.

I followed the cakes up with a first time ever dish. I had to put my recent bounty from The Johnson’s Backyard Garden to use. I had some eggplant and thought of either baba ganoush or eggplant parm. I wish I’d gone with the ganoush. I hadn’t had eggplant parmesan since I was very young when I decided that I really didn’t care for it. Turns out it’s still far from my favorite dish. I just cut the eggplant into 1/4 inch slices, breaded and pan fried them and then layered them with a basic marinara sauce, parmigiano-reggiano and mozzarella in two layers.

Then I baked it covered with foil for 30 minutes, and without for another 15 at 350 degrees. We had it with a glass of Clayhouse Adobe Red, which was quite good. The eggplant dish wasn’t bad either, I think it really just isn’t my thing.

And the top story of the report this weekend, Kegs and Kitchen was linked to for that Broccoli Cheddah Soup post a couple of weeks ago. It seems Eli in Indiana paired my soup with venison backstrap. Most interestingly, he used his own homebrewed steam beer in the soup. High five Eli!