September 2006 Archives

Berry patch booze, sour grain punch, dank bud hay fever like a disturbingly good cat piss kool-aid. Strawberry fields forever.

"Garlicky" just may be the most overused word in the food writer's lexicon. Why? Because there are few dishes that shouldn't come with a little garlic in 'em. It's like saying something tastes "good." The beer equivalent is "hoppy." Show us a brew that doesn't have some level of hoppiness to it, and we'll tell you to dump it out. So, saying something's hoppy is about as much description as burping. C'mon hopheads, we need to develop a language that surpasses grunts and clicks!

What better beer to start with, we thought, than Stone's 10-year anniversary IPA.

The pour of this beer is lying to you: An ordinary amber shine hides an insanely different IPA taste. The nose is literally spiked fruit punch--strongly fruity, almost overpoweringly sweet on first sip. But after you chill with it, this beer brings you over to its side. The depth of this kind of hoppiness makes us wish all those oxygen bars that were big a couple years ago could be converted into IPA huffing bars. Impeccable.

And since Stone's staple IPA, Ruination, began as a limited edition or specialty brew, we have faith that we may see this hard-ass beer again someday.

Dairy Pairy: Midnight Moon, goat's milk gouda
Soundtrack: the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour

Both vegetarians and carnivores have beef with fake meats. Veggies argue the strangeness of eating a reconstituted version of the exact type of food they are trying so desperately to avoid. Meaties go one step further and ask why we would even bother eating fake meat? If you like the taste of fake meat, why not just go for the real thing? Both sides are missing the proverbial boat: Fake meat doesn't taste like real meat, doesn't behave like real meat when cooked and most importantly doesn't have to be harvested by an exploited living being.

Put this stuffed roulade plate in front of both sides of the battle field, and both will murmur: "Woah dude...this is vegan?!"

The Stuffing:
4 shallots, peeled and sliced
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
1 cup button mushrooms, chopped
1 cup oyster mushrooms, chopped
4 Tbs. cabernet sauvignon
6 stoned wheat crackers
1⁄4 cup basil, minced
1⁄4 cup gold raisins
2 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs. maple syrup
2 Tbs. Dijon mustard

1. Heat a sauté pan on medium and add half the garlic and shallots to toast for 5 minutes. Once they begin to brown, crank the flame to high, add all your mushrooms and the remaining garlic and shallots.
2. After about 3 minutes add the wine 1 Tbs. at a time, letting it evaporate completely. When you've used all 4 Tbs. of wine, remove from heat.
3. In a food processor or blender, grind the crackers to dust. Add cracker crumbs and the rest of the ingredients to the mushroom mixture.

The Roulade:
12" of wax paper
1 package of Gimmie Lean (fake sausage)
4 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbs. paprika
2 Tbs. salt
2 Tbs. pepper
2 Tbs. ground cumin
1 small potato, sliced thin
1 cup Cabernet Sauvignon

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Cover your cutting board or counter top with the wax paper, and spread 1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil. Place your fake sausage in the center. Now, take a rolling pin and lube it liberally with more olive oil.
3. Gently roll out the sausage until it is a 1/4" thick rectangle. Pack stuffing 1" inward from the side closest to you in a 2" high wall--make sure the outermost sides of the roll are just as high as the center. Roll like a giant joint making sure that the sweet weeds inside are tightly compacted while being mindful of the delicacy of your fake meat. Once rolled, combine all spices together and sprinkle over every inch of turgid goodness.
4. In a sauté pan, heat 1 Tbs. of olive oil on high heat. Sear each side of the roulade, then lay in a greased baking pan to cook. (This will hurt your fingers, but builds character.) Then pour just enough wine to cover the bottom of the pan. Bake uncovered for 15 minutes, flip and cook for another 15.

"Blood" Sauce
1 red bell pepper
1 red jalapeno pepper
1 ripe roma tomato
3 Tbs. paprika
2 Tbs. salt

1. Place the bell pepper over a medium flame, turning every so often to blacken evenly. Place burnt pepper in a bowl and cover for five minutes. Skin the pepper, and remove its stem and seeds. Add all ingredients together in a food processor or blender and pulse until smooth.
2. Serve roulade with a splatter of blood sauce and black mission figs.

Soundtrack: Minor Threat's I'm Seein' Red!
Beverage: Stone's 10th Anniversary I.P.A.

Sheepy ale. Pastoral cream. Sugar foam with barley bubbles.

The first (and still most popular) ale from Alesmith Brewing Company in San Diego; this Extra Special Bitter lives up to its name. The malt in this beer is sweet and toasty, but also has a sour kick. Vinegary almost, the bitterness makes this beer far easier to drink than the nuttier ESBs of the mother country. That, and it's less snobby. An American ESB with manners. Good day.

Dairy Pairy: Cotswold double glouster
Soundtrack: Lola vs. the Powerman & the merry-go-round Part One

A Strange and Terrible Journey to the Heart of the Angeleno Liver.

"The shallow life!" barked the man next to us in the stall of a Downtown Los Angeles Marriott men's room. He spilled out of the can chuckling like a beast and scrubbing his crotch, where a stain the shape of Napa Valley was oozing.

"Here's to the shallow life," he said while rearranging a stray hair from his nearly vacant scalp, before pushing through the double doors and back out to the feeding frenzy of the Los Angeles Wine and Food Festival's opening night. The wine tasting had attracted a bizarre crowd: the ubiquitous weekend getaway lovers, thirsty to swill and swoon, locked in endless purple-tongued embrace; whole families from god-knows-where, teetering toward dessert trays like they'd never seen carrot cake before; and of course the winery reps, in full force, out to flaunt their varietals, taste the competition's pinot, or if nothing else, sleep with it.

Now, Hot Knives are professionals, and we were prepared for wine country--we'd come hopped-up on strong weed, with all manner of business cards, recording devices and reporters' notebooks to note the nuance of every vintage--but this was a different class of tasting we were clearly unprepared for: that of "convention booty."

Hours before on that Friday afternoon, we'd been trying madly to flee the office, and free ourselves from the juicy-suit snares of our attorney, [redacted].

"Is that a joint? Are you going to smoke that?" she asked as we checked and re-checked our equipment. It was, and we were.

She pulled a lighter from her briefcase and sparked the mean-smelling herb, sitting down in a swivel chair to fuss with her blog and talk about wanting a burrito. We puffed and ran, forgetting most of our supplies.

What had we done? This was no time for amateur slip-ups we lectured ourselves in the car; we were about to come eye-to-eye with the cream of the crop in the food blogging circuit. This was to be a true indictment of L.A. wine culture, in all its snobbery, and who better to send than a couple asshole beer bloggers.

After checking in for our press badges, we blended into the crowd and slipped into the ballroom, which was dotted with table after table of wineries from as near as Santa Barbara, as far as Italy. Some had sent their hungry sales rep lackeys, while a few had merely paid Hollywood eye candy to pour and flirt, in the hopes of luring as many winos to their booth as possible. Smart move, it turned out.

"Is this the right floor," one of us asked a pair of fake tits as they danced by.

In short time, we found ourselves shouting things like, "Coffee notes!" and "Peach nose with oak and butter finish."

We guzzled the stuff quickly at first, feeling it in the knees, giggling like hyenas on nitrous oxide, sure that we'd be caught any minute by a thick-skinned security guard detail, who'd take us in back and take turns bludgeoning us with corkscrews for trying to blend in with the paying customers of pedigree taste buds. But it never came.

We hit the cheese table, literally. And after an uncouth display of grabbing for blue cheese-chevre out of turn, it got ugly--one of us was convinced that the fromage girl was lying to him. The French cheese she'd said held real black truffles, had merely extract and things were starting to turn sinister.

At the other end of the hall, what looked like prize-winning porkers in chef's coats were ladling out some sort of watery-soup to people. They were the "executive chefs" of El Pollo Loco. We shied away, not trusting their weird crew cuts, but heard one wine purveyor say, "It's great to see who's behind the menu, real and in-person."

Jesus fuck. This was more serious than we thought, someone let these horny fucks in and now they were drinking everything in sight in between gulps of chicken and tortilla soup. Where, we wondered, were the real wine freaks? These people seemed like they'd been bussed in from some god-awful, suburban food court. Was there no one there with a refined palate for us to slam?

When we walked by a booth for "chai liquor" we started to lose it.

Next door we pointed to a small perfume-sized bottle with an old cork and asked for a nip from the table's middle-aged server.

"Oh, this isn't for tasting. It was a gift from the couple down there," she said pointing to an old couple at a booth. "It's a secret reserve port they bottle for friends."

When we got on our knees, she turned red and started pouring. The dark purple-black elixir smelled of gnarly vines, imported from the old world, processed cobwebs-and-all. This was the ticket, this is what we came for. This was fucking wine.

"Where can we buy more," we demanded from the grandparents who were grabbing for their bottles as they saw us approaching wild-eyed. It wasn't for sale, they tried to explain to us. "But we'll have a bottle of another port tomorrow at the convention," they said. "Look for us."

The couple scurried off and other tables slowly followed, until only a few stalwarts were left emptying their own bottles themselves. The bald man we'd seen in the bathroom earlier--"Shallow Life" we'd taken to calling him--was packing up with his young assistant, a brunette in a mini-skirt when we approached for our last taste of the night, some kind of white wine we hadn't run across.

Did we know what kind of grapes these were he asked? We didn't. Did we know anything about wine at all? We blushed and sipped uncomfortably, "Shallow Life" had found us out. As we finished the glass, we said we'd see him tomorrow at the conference. "No you won't," he said. His assistant was pouring for him.

"I'm going to mow the lawn, spray for crab grass, smoke a joint and drink a half a bottle of tequila. I'd say that's a day-off."

The last time I was inside a fancy hotel on the Sunset Strip was the birthday celebration of a wealthy, hedonistic Dallasite. We chugged PBR, snorted cocaine off a toilet seat with the stars of Jackass, and tried to communicate to the glass box girl in the lobby using Morse code.

Tonight, my lady and I were on the list for a different kind of keg party. Ascending to the top of the Mondrian Hotel in a wood paneled elevator, we giggled in wonder while staring at a video loop of tropical fronds swaying in the wind. Tonight we had a date with A.B. (not the prison gang, but Anheuser Busch) and their new line of specialty brews.

We were received with tall glasses of Hefeweizen and encouraged to mingle.

I had been eying the row of five bottles set at each place, and thankfully noted different kinds of glassware for each brew. We slugged down the Hefe and seated ourselves at the lavishly decorated table as we were introduced to our tour guides for the evening: George Reisch, a fifth generation brewer, and Jacques Haeringer, an Alsatian-American chef from the East Coast.

I was shocked when I was served Michelob Light out of a champagne flute.

Jacques, who started calling himself Jack after the whole freedom fries thing (and not for the right reasons), had paired Micky-Lite with a triple cream style cheese made in Mendocino county. Triple creams are sinfully supple. They should be oozing from their delicate rinds of white bloomy mould, which taste blissfully like mushrooms, nether-regions and butter. But the cheese from Cowgirl Creamery was sadly weak in the flavor zone and way too firm. And despite the various stages of swishing and twirling that George, the brew master, demonstrated to fully enjoy his product, the citrus notes that were supposed to play in my mouth were missing. If you closed your eyes it tasted just like a Velveeta quesadilla after a beer bong.

Our next beer was from a Chinese brewery owned by Busch called Harbin. It came in a green bottle, wrapped with a decorative, see-through, rice-paper bag, and was served in a small tumbler. Our beer guide explained that the large bottle and small glass implied a sort of family-style boozing. All I could think was how much it reminded me of another beer that came in a green bottle whose name starts with an 'H.' It was paired with a mixed milk (sheep and cow's) Camembert from New York. Most Camembert is made exclusively with cow's milk and is accompanied by a bit more flavor than your typical soft ripened cheese. This was a good match of curd and brew. The light hops met the texture of the cheese nicely. The rapid and vigorous bubbles scrubbed the salty lactose ooze off of my tongue, sending a harmonious river of flavor magma down my gullet.

It's important to note that I don't like lagers--I find them bland. I'm a strict convert to the American craft beer: very alcoholic, very hoppy, and made in much smaller batches than anything that Anheuser Bush (or its subsidiaries) brews. The reality of the situation at hand was I was chipperly slamming A.B.'s China Heini and loving it. Weird.

Then came Stone Mill Pale Ale, a beer that roused the cockles of my heart. There was a nice hop aroma and flavor, and a deft malitiness. This was the first beer in the lineup that seemed to follow the insinuations of the A.B. 'specialty series.' It tasted similar to many American craft brews and would be a welcome addition to any convenience store's refrigerated section. Matched with a sharp, raw milk cheddar from Vella Creamery, Stone Mill was by far the pick of the litter. It was also organic, a concept that has been thoroughly under-applied to the micro and macro brew scenes.

Number four in our flight of five was a flavored beer designed for the holidays. Jack's Pumpkin Spice ale forced me to return to 1999 when my weekends were spent convincing waiters at my favorite diner to buy me booze across the street. I would always have a wad of cash and a list, which consisted of "hard" lemonades and weird fruity beers for my underage female colleagues. My hookup would meet me in the dingy parking lot of a liquor store and complain that I always forced him to buy the nanciest stuff in the store. We were both embarrassed.

Jack's dairy companion, an English Wensleydale chock full of cranberries, was equally kitschy. The pair made sense in a cute turkey context, but they did nothing but saturate each other with sweetness. While a sugary beer is not my cup of tea, a stronger cheese would have brought out more of the darkness hiding under all that Thanksgiving fluff.

We finished the night with Michelob Porter in a highball glass. Classy. The heaviness of the chocolate and coffee malts and the Smokey clean finish made me say "wow" out loud. As porter tends to be a dessert beer, it goes fantastically well with bleu cheeses. Jack picked an awesome creamery--Rogue in Oregon--but the lesser of their two blues called Oregonzola, which was now in my mouth. It's a fine cheese but its name is misleading. Real Gorgonzola is very creamy and spicy, a perfect match for a dessert (or breakfast) beer like Porter. Rogue's is quite firm and rubbery: a mouthful with no mouth feel. The Smokey Bleu would have been insanely perfect for this beer: Smokey, sweet, and gooey. Jack's mistake.

My night with Anheuser Bush did not change my mind about mass produced beers. The winners in A.B.'s specialty line certainly pass muster, but I'll always reach for a smaller company's product when thirsty. While George Reisch's gift of gab made for an astounding sales pitch, I couldn't help but call a Lite™, a light.

- AB (Alex)

To serious vegetarians and vegans, fish is verboten. And that's just too bad, especially considering most veggie rolls are pathetic (tomato and cucumber is a waste of rice). Here we've used miso shitakes to mimic the rubbery protein of raw fish. The crisp compliment of cucumber is awesome, as long as it isn't the main dish, and of course buttery avocado. Instead of sticky sushi rice, we used forbidden rice. The purple-black color is a nice change--much more wholesome than the bleached shit.

Vegan Sushi Rolls
1 cup forbidden rice (purple grain)
2 cups water
1 Tbs. seasoned rice wine vinegar
2 shallots, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup water
1 Tbs. miso paste
6-8 shitake mushrooms, sliced in long strips
1 cucumber, peeled and refrigerated
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and halved
4 sheets of Grade A toasted nori seaweed

1. Bring a small saucepan of rice and water to boil. Cook until rice is fully cooked and slightly goopy (about 20 minutes). Strain any excess water. Cover a metal cooking sheet with wax paper and place rice on sheet. Spread rice evenly to cool and place sheet in the freezer for 20-30 minutes, or until fully cool to the touch.

2. Place a sauté pan on high heat and toast the shallots for about 5 minutes. Then add the water and miso paste, stirring to dissolve. Place on medium heat and add sliced mushrooms. Let the broth bubble for 5 minutes, or until mushrooms are cooked but not significantly smaller in size. Remove shrooms and set aside, but let broth continue to cook down.

3. Take your peeled cucumber, cut it in half and then slice lengthwise so you have four wide slices. With a spoon, gently remove seeds. Slice cucumber into noodle thin slices. Slice your avocado into thin slices and set aside.

4. Place your dry nori seawood on a wooden sushi roller (can be found in some Asian markets). Distribute 4 or 5 Tbs. of forbidden rice on to nori, making sure there is room at the top of seaweed to wet the seawood for rolling. Top the rice with other fillings, in a straight line that sits closer to the bottom of seaweed than to the top (as shown above). Then gingerly place shitake strips, cucumber and avocado in a tight line with a width of no more than an inch.

5. Grabbing the bottom of the nori, the edge closest to you, began flipping over into a tight roll, using the wooden roller to provide support. Pretend your rolling a sushi joint. Roll just short of the end, leaving a 1-inch space at the top to wet the seaweed, then roll fully and apply tight pressure. (It may take a few attempts to master this motion, keep trying!).

6. Hold the finished roll tightly and carefully cut into 5 or 6 1-inch pieces.

7. Remove miso broth from heat and mix with soy sauce for a savory dippin' sauce. Serve pieces with wasabi and miso soy sauce.

Soundtrack: the Black Angels' Passover
Beverage: King Cobra 40-ouncer

They say, "In wine, is truth." Or Plato did anyway, and we all know how he felt about wine. Well, when Hot Knives attended the Los Angeles Wine and Food Festival last weekend, we found the exact opposite to be true. After the umpteenth glass of Vignonier, we started recycling adjectives--buttery, oak finish, summer peaches--and many of the wine reps filling our glasses would nod their drunken heads in agreement (except the lady that insisted that we did not taste apricots in her wine).

How do you translate "In wine, is bullshitting" into Latin?

Then again, we expected the two-day red carpet wine orgy--which took place in the belly of the L.A. Convention Center--to validate our asshole beer dude 'tudes. Instead, something odd happened: We found ourselves excited, giddy even, for the occasional wine that floored us, like finding a diamond in the rough. If two-thirds of the wines we tasted were unimpressive, the rest of them were awe-inspiring. The event also taught our purple-stained tongues a thing or two about distinguishing between an estate-grown, small-run artisan nectar and high-priced, corporate grape juice.

We began our wine adventure at a reserve tasting the night before the expo. Fueled by strong weed and a bad case of the wine-imposter jitters, we checked in for our press credentials and grabbed some tasting glasses. About half the participating wineries attended, bringing their select bottles--the showy shit they were most proud of--and poured until all of them were empty. The Cabs showed up, as did the Zins, the Merlots, some Barberas and more than enough Chardonnays, but once in a while we came across amazing wines, shit we'd never heard of, and wine people who weren't just adjective robots. All in all, the night was a blur, a cherry-popping introduction that quickly turned sinister when we realized most of the weirdo wine reps were there hunting for "convention booty," so we guzzled fast and high-tailed it out of there. We learned two things the first night: be wary of the sales lackies who have nothing to do with the actual winemaking (hired sluts, as those in the business call them) and always, always use the spittoon.

We learned that lesson when we woke up.

As for the wineries that blew our minds, and blew ass, here's a short list.

Niner Wine Estates
Why they're dudes: The president of the company, Brian Storrs, was doing the pouring, and when he decided all the serious wine people were gone he packed up and drove to the beach to drink.
What's their deal: A two-vineyard winery in Paso Robles with excellent fucking taste. Welcome to Wine Country, biatch!
Flagship wine: For opening night, Storrs opened a reserve wine not yet released called Old Fog Catcher that was some sort of mean concoction of Cabernet Sauvignon and was mighty tasty. Their 2003 Sangiovese, however, was a party of earth, nut and berry--one of the finest dry reds we tasted all weekend.

Saint Helena Road Vineyards
Why they're dudes: Patty and Richard Maier, the owners, poured us glass after glass without a hint of annoyance or pretension.
What's their deal: The couple runs a pricey vineyard bed and breakfast in Sonoma County, and only recently decided to bottle their own wine in tribute to Grandfather Maier. Good choice.
Flagship wine: Roy J. Mair Cabernet Sauvignon is what you might call a mutt: it's 80 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 10 percent Merlot, 5 percent Malbec, 4 percent Cabernet Franc and 1 percent Petit Verdot. It's also 100 percent the best in show.

Trewa
Why they're dudes: As we learned the second day, this winery is owned by the same company that produces Monkey Puzzle wine, which immediately hurt their dudeness level; however, they gracefully dealt with us screaming "coffee notes!"
What's their Deal: A Chilean winery with mostly mediocre varietals and bad packaging.
Flagship wine: The 2003 Carmenere is the only thing that stood out about this winery, but it's good enough to make up for everything else. We hear it's being sold for next to nothing by accident.

St. Barthelemy Cellars
Why they're dudes: They are extremely old and only make ports.
What's their deal: They're basically wine merchants who have taken to using others' grapes and finished wines and aging them. Then they fortify the wine with double-aged brandy.
Flagship wine: Their 2003 Pinot Noir Port didn't sound like something we'd like, but we agreed to try all seven of their super ports and found this one especially strong. It had a pinot taste plus a hazy, strawberry-spice finish, but kicked our ass like a liquor.

Medeci Ermete
Why they're dudes: The sales rep who poured our glass wasn't actually part of the winery, but judging from his three-piece "Fuck America" tailored suit, he sold us.
What's their deal: An Italian winery that for 20 years has grown their own grapes for a series of Lambruschi, or naturally fermentation-carbonated wines, both white and red.
Flagship wine: 2005 Lambrusco Concerto is a slightly fizzy red wine, which is an anomaly among American attempts at carbonated reds: Its bubbles are not upfront and neither is it's sweetness. Instead it's a dry, almost bitter, red wine that tastes like spicy cherries. This Lambrusco would be a good, meaty replacement for brunch champagne.

Harvest Moon
Why they're dudes: The owners of this Russian River winery set out to make 200-case runs only, which is stout as shit.
What's their deal: A good example of "estate wine," which began as simply a vineyard, but in 2001 they decided to keep the fruit and bottle their own wine. We call it old vines.
Flagship wine: Pitts Home Ranch Zinfandel, a special reserve Zin, made one of us shout "blue cheese!" to the mild displeasure of its pourers. Apparently, it's not a description they'd heard before, but this classy wine had such an amazing Roquefort aftertaste that we begged to take one of their bottles home. Liquid cheese. The fact that they complied proved their radness.

Earthquake
Why they blow: All of their wines have specialty joke names that sound more like action movies than wines.
Worst wine: The Seven Deadly Zins.

Opolo
Why they blow: The rep was a douche bag who kept recruiting cute girls to feed him cheese and loved describing wines with the word "nut."
Worst wine: Cabernet Sauvignon; it tasted like everyone else's.

J. Jacaman Winery
Why they blow: This winery epitomizes the sleek wine aesthetics rich bachelors think is sexy, which makes us want to chug IPAs and forget about grapes altogether.
Worst wine: J. Jacaman Fall Reserve. LAA