July 2008 Archives

The production of Lambic style beers is both a wonder of science and a labor of love. Once relegated to farmhouse production amongst southern Belgium's paupers, the practice basically involves brewing beer and letting it grow mold. Unlike the pious Monks' practices which involved painstakingly crafted house strains of yeast, old school Pajottenlanders would leave their cooling brews out in the fields to await inoculation from wild yeast strains. Occasionally fruit would fall in. The fruit would ferment in the young beer and aid in the transition from wheat juice to proper sauce.

Cheap production of different styles of Lambics gave way to a style of beer on the distant and opposing horizon from our beloved stouts and I.P.A.'s; Geuze. Typically Geuze is a blend of a young and an old Lambic that ferments finally in a bottle. When referring to lambics as young, don't think born on dating; usually the babies in this equation are about a year old, and the seniors are up to five. Both beers have been aged in oak casks that start to literally foam at the mouth when fermentation occurs. When the geezer and the whippersnapper unite in a champagne bottle, the beer ferments a second time due to the not-fully-formed-fermentation of the younger ale.

The result is nothing les than spectacular, and Geuze Fond Tradition made by St. Louis brewery is a golden example. Upon the first taste, one can't help but remember the eternal (and some say fabled) exclamation of the Benedictine Monk Dom Perignon upon his first taste of Champagne: "My Brothers! I'm tasting the Stars!" The bubbles produced by the age imbued second fermentation are explosive but soft compared to their vinous cousins. Unlike French bubbly, the complexity of flavor in Fond T. is unplumbable on the first gulp. Dry crisp apples lead into the sour pucker that barrel aged ales have made famous. The slight tinge of aged hops is almost invisible to the thousands of taste buds struggling to deal with the near shock of so strange a flavor. Eventually the sourness gives way to a savory, wheaty, mouthful: crackers and cheese, old wood, lemon oil, maybe a little cat piss. Nothing else can taste like so much, so lightly, with so little alcohol...

This beer screams summer like you used to scream for Kool-Aid and over-chlorinated water. It might take a few bottles for you to agree with us--Geuze and their ilk are not beers for the faint of heart. It's an acquired taste, certainly. But its perfect on these hot days when all there is to eat is salad, and all there is to think about is how wonderful things happen with time. And bacteria.

Dairy Pairy: Petit Mothais
Soundtrack: Jonathan Richmond's "Parties in the USA"

Amidst the telling signs of economic collapse, the craft beer world has been suffering similar ravages. Aside from the "F" word, those that head the frontlines of the small batch brewery face the rising costs of the few elements of their mana: grain and hops. For the macro world, meaning the producers that barely put any of these holy leaves and seeds in their bottles, these costs are just as astronomical, prompting more advertising and gimmicks for the mildest of beers. For the breweries we like, the strain shows itself on the bottle price; these are companies that can't absorb cost like McDonalds where (bafflingly enough) a Big Mac still costs less than three dollars.

Of course, we're happy to spend the extra dollar on a bottle we like from a brewery we love. Allagash Brewing Co., from the other Portland, has aptly named the recent edition of their buck per bottle campaign after an old time Rogue who's response to today's economic crisis would have either been a persistent and clandestine beer black market, or conversely, the violent overthrow of the government by persistent and clandestine beer fiends.

No Shit: Hugh Malone was an Irish hops farmer who basically pioneered the American style of over hopping ales back in the early twenties. Brewers and their minions used to refer to hops as "Hugh Malone's" because his name was stamped on the fragrant gunnysacks of smelly heaven they dumped into vats. Hops was so ingrained into the old Man's persona that mythic rumors surfaced, claiming "all those hops" were making Malone more bitter by the pint.

When prohibition hit Malone penned a book titled: "This Would Never Happen In Ireland."

The ale graced by the old brute is a similarly no-nonsense concept. The on-the-darker-side-of-amber ale, is hopped at almost every stage of the brewing process, which makes for an evolution of tart flavors that runs the gamut of the American bitterness palette. A sturdy soapy head maintains itself to the last drop, slowly succumbing to the bottom of your glass. A quick and painlessly sweet mouthful gives way to long lines of medicinal sour, wrinkles on a timeline of the face of a long dead hard-ass.

Squinting in the sun, silently contemplating our own IBUs, we realized the importance of heavy handedness during questionable times...Even though this beer would never have happed in Ireland.

Dairy Pairy: Stinking Bishop: a runny, stinky masterpiece
Soundtrack: The Clash, "Police On My Back"

The Spencer-Wing wedding... Dang. We can't exactly remember how our involvement came about, whether we were asked or we volunteered our services (come to think of it, hopefully we didn't drunkenly interject ourselves into their happy day). But catering these dudes' May wedding was a brilliant idea. And some of the best cooking we've done this year.

To be clear, Hot Knives is not really a catering company. Or even 'dudes who cater.' But we do live to feed people and flaunt our ideas on food, so on those few occasions where we cook "live" we get supremely siked. In this case it seemed only fitting: We first met Matt and Laura online. We met face-to-face at a summer barbecue party we grilled for last summer, where we realized that they eat and slurp with the same reckless abandon we do! So we were utterly honored to help them party down with a vegan wedding feast of the kind of food they like, believe in, and could feel good about forcing their family friends to eat.

But the operation got off to a bit of a jolt. When their wedding planner asked about our "catering insurance," the closest we could come up with was a sheepish pledge not to poison any old people with bad tofu. (We don't, of course, have any insurance). When the issue got cleared up, we got to work on the menu. Off the bat, we knew we wanted a canape-heavy affair, stuff to eat with one hand (so everyone could slug cocktails, cry, dance, whatever, and still be able to stuff their faces), but also because it allows a playful touch. We quickly settled on a combination of time-tested appetizers and new small-plate thingies we'd been endeavoring to try. Entrees proved a little tougher. Grilled seitan quickly got nixed (10 double boilers for baking, not fun to think about). And salads won out by far. Dishes we'd never attempted got at least one trial run in April. The vegan cupcakes we seized on as a cutie alternative to wedding cake took a handful of run-throughs. Finally, two weeks before the shindig, we summoned the lovebirds for a balls-out tasting.

The results? Each of the 14 courses went off without a hitch one after the next. Fortunately, they liked everything. Unfortunately, well, they liked everything. That's because the desired task of whittling down the menu didn't happen as planned, which would have been helpful to make our shopping list less unwieldy. It didn't matter. We had a menu...

Now, math dunces like us live and die by excel spreadsheets. So, our first step was penning bare-boned recipes in small amounts and multiplying eeeeeeverything. The pinnacle of exactitude. Then we made spread sheets of each dish and master lists for shopping trips divided by store: Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Food 4 Less, farmers markets, a wholesale produce company, and the gourmet import shop Alex works for. All of this was safely two-dimensional... Until Friday morning before the wedding rolled around.

That's when we woke at the ass of dawn to do inventory on our kitchen weaponry: knives, check; mixers, check; pastry bags, check; baking sheets, check. The oven? Got it. On top of that were the boxes, bags and bottles of food stuffs we were lugging down to San Diego. There was a case of red bell peppers, a 10-pound sack of sugar, 3 jars of veganaise that needed to be kept cold, 4 watermelons, 8 pounds of jicama, and a small forest of mushrooms, the list went on. When we stacked the produce in the front yard, most of the lawn was covered in cardboard. That's when at least one of us had a minor panic attack. With no room for a spare tire, we wedged the doors shut and hit the I-5 South to San Diego.

Ten Things We Learned!

1. 10-pound bags of sugar fit perfectly where your spare tire should go.
2. Caterers charge per person for good reason.
3. Caterers rip people off enormously.
4. One refrigerator is never enough.
5. Tangerine oil is amazing.
6. Bar-Tech rules.
7. Fresh fruit appetizers and 90-degree weather do not mix.
8. Wedding planners are intense.
9. Hip-hop is inevitable.
10. Some old people come to weddings just for the cake.

We were going down a day early to turn our boxes of produce into an orgiastic feast by taking over the groom's parents' kitchen. Once inside their home sweet home, we took up two fridges and most of the garage with our produce. On one table was our kitchen weaponry, on another our pantry goods. The first task our brains and hands could seize on was blending the gazpacho, which needed to sit in its own salmon-colored juices anyway. Bell peppers got beheaded, the first of a case of purple onions lost their skin, and the better part of an industrial tin of olive oil vanished into our new best friend, Bar Tech, the blender. Easy. Next came the rudimentary sauces -- lemongrass-infused soy dressing, roasted mushroom vinegrette, anything that could sit in the cramped fridge. Just before sunset, we poured a beer and took a swim in their pool, which the kitchen window faced, feeling like kings. We slacked and got veggie burritos at a shack next to a supermarket where we saw big crates of seedless watermelon selling for way cheaper than we'd paid for the ones crammed into our laps on the ride down. Bummer.

Back at the cutting board, shit got serious fast. The sun set and the clock started ticking faster. It is bizarre how the breezy easiness of cooking in daylight was quickly replaced by the dark shadows of an unfamiliar kitchen stacked with now menacing boxes of uncooked food. We put pot after pot on the stove to boil, first for 200 "baked potato" cups we carved out of baby tri-colored taters, followed by five pounds of Israeli couscous. And we started moving slower.

The darkest hour came when Alex realized how long peeling 10 pounds of carrots one by one into ribbons would take, and Evan started mandolin-shaving the first of 80 radishes by hand. Each handful of raw cut veggies was made all the more painful because they took up a pitiful 1/50 of the two empty metal pans we had to fill before we could move on. The whole thing took close to an hour. Next up was the real mind fuck: filling 400 dates. Now, this three-step recipe had been easily shrugged-off as the easiest of our prep worries. Grate cheese, open curry paste, fill the dates and set aside for baking later, what could be easier right? Well, when you decide to buy the dates one size smaller than mid-sized Medjools, these fuckers are tiny! And when you fill 400 of the things, it gets old quick. Standing face to face at the kitchen island, we turned into cranky zombies. Cutting open the tiny, gooey morsels, grating Gouda and stuffing hot, sticky curry paste into them, we lost our minds a little bit. Backs withering toward the floor, eyes shutting involuntarily, we gave up halfway through and slunk to our beds upstairs, the groom's childhood bedroom to sleep off the weirdness and try and prepare for a full day of cooking.

We were both up at the crack of dawn, in better moods and ready to pound away at the two-thirds of the tasks we still had left before heading to the gallery where the reception was scheduled for 6 pm, thirty minutes after the couple said some vows and released doves into the Downtown San Diego skyline (yup, doves, dang).

That morning, the To-do list looked something like this: toast crostinis, mix lavendar lemonade, puree hearts of palm, boil soba noodles, cut Persian cucumbers, stamp out fruit shapes, marinate and grill all the entrée veggies, roast seaweed and on and on. We immediately called our friends who were on the way down to attend the wedding and pleaded that they come early to help. Luckily, Lake and Meagan and Aubrey and Molly showed up hours later and dove right in helping us finish everything by 3 pm with just enough time to load all of the half-cooked food into Evan's car and make our way to the reception space to set up. (After having to come back to the house for 3 different items we'd left, we finally made it onto the freeway and to the gallery.)

Our kitchen was a back room wood shop for the art gallery with no air conditioning. We set the room up like a prep kitchen, with our cutting boards and sauces on ice (it melted quick) and the convection oven with a hot plate pan station and plating area. By the time the doves flew the coop and the guests started arriving we were furiously toothpicking the dangerously soft watermelon and pineapple. Fruit stand bites went out. The potatoes got baked into puffy little cups, piped with veganaise cream and toppings. The crostinis went out with their puree, tomato confit and drizzle of balsamic. Empty plates started coming back within minutes of the girls walking out to the dining room. There was a minor melt down over who was bartending and all 7 gallons of our lavendar lemonade was slugged within 30 minutes. By this point our chef's coats -- perfectly pressed whites -- were drenched in sweat but the food was going out and going down perfectly.

Then the well-meaning, but overly pissy wedding planner, dropped a bomb on us. Could we hurry up and serve the dinner entrée in 20 minutes so the couple could have their first dance? How do you say no when the first dance is riding on you, right? Hand-held mixers went blazing, knives akimbo, cupcake frosting all over the place. We held our tongues and busted ass and sent everything out. If anything should drive home the point consider this: we never cook without chronicling it with a camera and yet, none of our own footage of the wedding job exists. We had no time, not even for blogging's sake! Chalk it up to when food bloggers have to put their money where their mouths are. So Awesome. We look forward to our next job... in 2009!

1. Growlers from Stone Brewing.
2. Finding a parking space directly outside the reception at 5:59 when the meters expire at 6.
3. Having the bride's parents demand we make the rounds to greet guests and accept compliments.
4. Traditions like fixing a to-go platter for the bride and groom to eat in their honeymoon suite!
5. Forgetting to eat, but shoving stale crostinis with Pabst in a hotel room afterward.

After laboriously harvesting well over an ounce of fennel pollen we focused on a dish that would highlight the flavor of the famed pixie dust without overpowering its delicate vibe. Fortuitously enough, tomato season really starts to hit at the same time the forests of wild fennel bear their yellow fruit. By using every edible part of the fennel plant (bulb, stem, leaves, seeds, and pollen) and a gloriously ripe Japanese tomato, this dish covers every inch of one of our favorite veggies.

Serves two.

2 Fennel bulbs
1/4 cup Jasmine rice
1/2 cup water

1. Trim the stems off of a Florence (non-wild) fennel bulb, reserving the leaves (the part that looks like dill) for later. Slice them thinly into rounds.

2. Combine the rice, water and sliced fennel stems and bring to a boil. Reduce to medium heat and cook until the rice has absorbed the water, approximately 30 minutes.

2 Fennel bulbs (above)
1 Ripe tomato
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, minced
1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. Fennel seeds
3/4 cup rosé, or white zinfandel
2 tsp. sea salt

3. Scrub the fennel bulbs with cold water, then slice off the very bottom of the bulb. Quarter the bulbs standing them upright.

4. In a medium sized pan, sauté the garlic and shallots in olive oil for three minutes. Add the fennel, sliced face downwards, and the fennel seeds. Cover the pan for about three minutes so it regains its heat.

5. Cut your tomato in half. Slice both halves, cut side down, thinly. Reserve one sliced half for plating.

6. Add half of the sliced tomato to the pan and dump in the rosé and the salt. Cover the pan immediately and let cook for fifteen minutes.

4 Tbs. of a flavorful Olive oil
2 tsp. Fennel pollen
2 tsp. fennel leaves, minced

7. Toss the rice with the olive oil, and place two small mounds on each plate. Place one roasted bulb of Fennel on each mound of rice, and then gently top with the reserved slices of fresh tomato. Spoon the reduced wine sludge on each plate, and then liberally dust the tomatoes with fennel pollen, and the minced leaves.

Beverage: St. Feuillian Brune
Soundtrack: Scratch Perry's "White Belly Rat"

Until last week, wild fennel was a great frustration to us. In the early summer months the stuff sprouts all around us; glorious fragrant fennel, but with no bulb worth braising. After much discussion and consternation we realized the answer to our woe was staring us in the nose: Fennel Pollen.

In Tuscan cuisine the pollen of Fennel flowers is referred to as "fairy dust," or "the spice of angels." It imparts a fragrant and flavorful vibe to anything on which you choose to sprinkle. Dose you're evening tea, rub the pollen on greased vegetables before grilling, or if you're really feeling randy: finish your roasted (non-wild) fennel bulbs with a spoonful of their own seed...sick.

1. Find some wild fennel.

2. Check out the flowers. If they're nice and yellow as above, then they're ripe for plunder. Snip a large stalk as far from the flower as you can--the more stem the better, and return home to string em up.

3. After snipping the individual stalks make a little bouquet, tie the stems together at the bottom with twine or string, leaving enough rope to hang em.

4. Hang your bundle of joy inside a paper bag, in a cool dark place. Once a day, shake the bouquet against the bag to encourage the pollen out of the flowers. After about a week you should have shaken out all the pollen you'll get. Carefully dump the contents of the bag onto a sheet of wax paper, collect and store the pollen in a little glass jar.

The Summer of the Can continues. You remember that metal vessel that for most kids' high school years was the definitive method of putting beer in one's body? Whether "shotgunning" in someone's backyard using a car key to punch an air hole to chug in seconds, or lined up in a magnificent row in a party fridge, the can always seemed more palatable to us as young drinkers. The bottle on the other hand somehow seemed too luxurious, adult, and even snobby with its green tinted curves. Well, thanks to Oskar Blues, the Colorado-based brewery we recently praised for canning their brews, we're reverting!

Luckily, the Lyons facility also pipes its Gordon Double India Pale Ale into metal canisters (along with their Chubb's Scotch Ale and Dale's Pale Ale). Now, finding a pale ale in can form is one thing -- but a strong and piney IPA is something different entirely. And don't judge a can by it's cover: At first glance Gordon's looks more like a fancy ginger ale or a sparkling New York seltzer than a legit beer. But we welcome that. It makes for supremely easy outdoor summer boozing, even if you're at a public swimming pool or state beach. We suspect it could be the most appropriate camping beer in America. Three weekends in a row we've touted this brew to pool parties to can-smashing success.

Once popped, the fizzy but headless liquid trapped inside will dribble into the can top where you can detect a rich, red-gold velvet soda. The can says "Big. Red. Sticky." And that's fair. Sniff the top and you get whiffs of pine needles, even Pine-Sol -- clean, bright and slightly metallic. The maple-brown sugar, and to a slighter degree toasted malt sweetness, hints are higher in this IPA than most, nearly cloyingly sweet, which makes for a noticeably less gulpy beer. Eminently sluggable, but not quite chuggable. Drink hard enough and there are tastes of grass and grains. A lotta spritzy bubbles make it a little less food friendly, we recommend it with sunshine and an empty stomach. Gordon's stands among some of the better Double IPAs, though we'd prefer a more complexly hopped concoction given the choice. It's the can that gives it an edge. As some have noted, the aluminum shield keeps this kinda beer from skunking. And makes it easier to stay cool in the sun. And feels icy in your palm. Unlike our friend Dave's more proper advice, however, we can't bring ourselves to pour this stuff into glassware, or drink it on tap. Then it's just any other sticky icky red-ale IPA. In its metal, it shines.

Dairy Pairy: Red Windsor port and brandy English Cheddar
Soundtrack: Animal Collective's Sung Tongs

If you couldn't tell by now we're a little into cutlery. And although we share steel like some people swap spit, we definitely have different preferences in the Cut Department. Here's a rundown of the three most used blades in Alex's kitchen...

Being a huge subscriber to Yuself Islam's previous incarnation, this knife is the first and fondest in my little collection. A 10" Messermister Park Plaza that had survived almost six years of use, this knife was given to me by my sweetheart as a first-serious-birthday present. This knife is a no frills workhorse: it holds an egde and has a thin but super durable blade thats gone through countless celeriac.

The trend of using Japanese style knifes is pretty goddamn valid. And while this Santoku style blade is made by a one of the least hghly regarded blade crafters of Germany, Henckels, it has stood the test of time. The blade itself is hollow, and those little grooves are like speed holes that kick whatever your slicing away from the blade. Excellent for all purpose dicing, trimming melons, and detail work that you dont use a pairing knife for, this Target buy was a no brianer at $30.00 in 2004, and it still is.

A recent lust for breadbaking prompted me finally buckling and getting a serated blade. Just like the garlic press, lots of cooks have some strange chip on their shoulder about serrated knives. But like the nonsensical garlic press denial, the end fo the serrated doldrums is a happy thing. This one is part of the Wustof Cordon Bleu series: knives crafted form a single piece of steel. The recessed blade mades cutting board knuckle blisters a thing of the past and lets you cut bread like you wanna.