Category: Food

Brewers’ Plate 2012 And My Happy Schooling

What a pleasant Wednesday. I ate. I sipped. I asked myself a lot about how people in downtown Toronto spend their Wednesday evenings. I did not think I got swept away in pairing mania but, and it is a subtle but so bear with me, there were many wonderful combinations to be found.

For example, Beau’s Mates with Dates and the cheese made from water buffalo milk from Montefort Dairy was a really interesting side by side but it was not one of the proposed pairings on offer. Similarly, a deftly tucked away bottle of Ten Bitter Years from Black Oak went very well with the dessert crepe being given away in a booth but that was not the beer on offer because the crepe had Ontario black walnuts. The chef and I talked about the weirdness of the texture of the crepe and nuts with a very bombish IPA. But we agreed that there was a twigginess in the hops of the beer that worked with the walnuts which tasted like you face would after an hour of chainsawing hardwood.

So did I pair? Probably. Was the event a good one. It really was. I am going to just post this now but add some more thoughts as my day’s class on contract drafting proceeds. Unless it is riveting. Which it could be. You never know.

Garden 2012: Today I Did Dig And Split The Rhubarb

Rhubarb is one of my favorite things. Spring food. Sour and astringent. It makes the years since childhood contract. A cup of white sugar into which a raw stem was rammed, the stalk chewed as if on a dare. Stewed rhubarb leading to the earliest bowel related humour at our table, pretend mad dashes for the washroom mid-dessert. Pies. Lard rich crust glazed with a crackle of rhubarb filling. Later, as a young married couple, we made weak rhubarb juice on a slow simmer that was cooled then mixed with cheap Ontario white wine as a particularly fine weekend drink. Today, I dug up and separated the rhizomes, halfway between thick carrots and thick sweet potatoes. I separated them in the patch where the compost bin used to sit and gave them a long soak of water from the hose. What was one plant should now be six. If I had a farm, I would have a rhubarb house. I understand the best in England are built over coal mines with only the light of one candle to ensure the stems are as pale as possible.

No yard should be without rhubarb.

Garden 2012: Peas Are In The Ground… Repeat… Peas Are…

Easter long weekend saw an assault on nature or at least that sort of nature that exists in a mid-60s subdivision. We have great plans to eat where we did mow so the following tasks were undertaken:

♦ ugly basketball hoop with sun-rotted plastic base disassembled;
♦ awkward juniper chopped down and ax play appreciated;
♦ willow and pear trees extending into neighbours’ space pruned with saw;
♦ 10 x 10 feet of front lawn removed, sheep poo inserted;
♦ 21 feet or so of sugar snap peas planted; and
♦ compost bin in-grown with tree roots attacked, defeated and moved.

Children now old enough to be useful if paid. Chives survived the winter. Cabernet Franc grape vines ordered. Cardoon and leek seeds in the house.

Saturday Afternoon Beer As I Smoked Meat By The Shed

After two weeks off that saw a lot of road, it was good to have a Saturday to commune with 5 pounds of pork and 5 hours next to the Weber set up as a smoker. As perfect a summer day as ever there was, the fire sparked quickly given the subtle breeze. I dry rubbed the joint for only an hour or so and then settled in for a long afternoon’s watch.

 

 

 

 

Despite the moment, I took a few scribbled notes:

⇒ Mill Street Organic Lager is a beer that had been mainly offered in an irritating 10 ounce bottles but is now available in 500 ml cans. It has a nice body for a 4.2% beer – some pale malt roundness framed by slightly astringent hopping leafing to an autumn apple finish. one of the few Canadian better sort of sessionable beers. Good beer at a good price that lets you have a few.

⇒ I should be grateful to have a Rickard’s Blonde in the fridge – because I happily downed the first two samples sent and then had to go back and ask for more. It’s a slightly sweeter lager than the Mill Street, a bit darker with a slightly peachy tone supported by heavy carbonation. Its light astringency is present from first sip onwards leading to a bit of a rougher hop finish. Its sameness from the sip to swallow got me thinking but it is quite worth buying for what it claims to be.

⇒ Hop Devil is an old pal that served as a change of pace mid-smoke. It pounds that crystal malt that some English beer commentators now suggest is overkill. The hops have black pepper and pine tree with maybe a bit of menthol. A beer I would happily have on hand anytime.

⇒ The Samson came my way care of a pal who was traveling through Quebec and found this at the Government SAQ store up in Gaspé on the Atlantic coast. Apple butter with molasses notes open up into black cherry. Bready and bready crusty make me think of the drink that Dr. Pepper wishes it was allowed to be. No need of this to be held out for the few and the easterly. Nothing Earth shattering but more evidence that Canada needs better beer distribution.

Shed. Beer. Shed beer. They held me in good stead as the afternoon wore on. Slow smoked the pork and slow passed the hours as I day dreamed about the human condition as well as the drawing to the end of holidays.

It’s Beer And Sausage Week At Finland’s Cottages

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I can’t tell you my Finnish joke because I told you in 2008. It was in a post entitled “Tonight Is The Night To Drink Like A Finn!” but I now understand that this week is the week to drink – and eat – like a Finn:

The amount of sausage Finns consume during the Midsummer week is approximately three times as large as normal. For example the Midsummer sales of the food producer HK’s grill sausages amount to almost a million kilogrammes, reports Antti Paavilainen, Senior VP of sales at HK. And with their sausages Finns want to drink beer. Lots of it. Around 4.5 million litres of beer are sold around Midsummer – about 50 per cent more than during normal weeks.

Apparently, it all happens at the back country cottage, especially in the sauna: “…traditional saunas right down to the wood fire that’s best lashed with beer to give the steam the yeasty flavour of a bakery.” So, you drink beer in a sauna that reeks of beer and, no doubt, soon come to be soaked in beery sweat, too. That does not sound too bad. And that’s not fiery enough, you are supposed to trot off to the bonfire to top off the day before another round of beer and sausage.

This cartoon from a guy called Seppo seems to sum it up.

Do Olde Geuze And Oysters Go Together?

oysgeu1-1I was out hunting for some Caribbean stout to go with the PEI oysters I picked up at the incredibly jambi Mike Mundell’s shop this afternoon. Without success. What to do?

I love oysters. I used to live in view of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on PEI’s north shore and heading over to Carr’s at Stanley Bridge for a half dozen Malpeques to suck back with my home brew. Despite the trade’s odd view of what makes for a benefit, the oysters know not what is done in their name. Quietly in their rocky shells they ignore such things, preferring to be pretty damn tasty and – at a buck and change – a great value.

So, instead of a strong sweet stout, I thought I would try them with a geuze, in the case a half bottle of Drie Fontienen’s Oude Geuze, the beer I had last New Year’s Eve. This one was bottled back on Friday, February 1, 2008 when I was having an Old Guardian for the twelfth edition of The Session. Let’s see what happens in mid-summer two and a half years later..

Wow. That is quite a combination. The barnyard funk of the geuze hits the oyster’s wharfy skank head on in your mouth. One of my more intense taste experiences when I think of it – which is all I can do given it is happening in my mouth right now. All that is missing is an overly aged chunk of blue cheese to make this as overwhelming an experience as it could be. But the aftertaste is creamy, like two waves counteracting each other leading to calm. The oyster brings out the apple notes and places the acidity in context. I am happily reaching for the next meaty oyster.

Success. Each assisted through the difficulties the other can pose. A vital combination.

Friday Bullets For A Week Off In July

It’s been a weird week off. Chopped up. I even had to go to work but that was my fault. Didn’t check the schedule. Picked the wrong week. Assumed. But we carried on. A cold moved through but we carried on. Started in fine style at the Dinosaur BBQ, too. Vintage base ball coming up on Sunday. Spent the week being scared to hell by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Still ate bacon and green onion cream cheese on bagels from Ithaca Bakery. But I knew it was wrong. And exactly how wrong: real wrong.

  • Construction paper 1930s Soviet arctic exploration art. Neato.
  • I don’t write that much about my town. I don’t write much about much come to think of it. But look at the video of Elton John at the rink. Where do rock bands play in towns without hockey teams?
  • Sox are 4-6 in July. Not pleased. Bought the lad Sox socks at Cooperstown and they play like this???
  • Still don’t know what to make of Obama. The Gulf oil crisis is his first crisis begun under his watch. If the oil has now actually been capped after 86 days, getting a 20 billion dollar fund mid-crisis is a pretty smooth move. No one is really talking about health care socialism anymore, either. He may pan out OK.

Gotta go get the car in for a tune up. That outta spice things up.

Teach Your Children Well – BBQ Version

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Every holiday should include a lunch at Syracuse’s Dinosaur BBQ. I had a Tres Hombre but as I I left meat (I’m embarrassed even thinking of it) I was not as hombre as I might have been. The beer is an Ape Hanger Ale that’s made, I am pretty sure, by Middle Ages as a special house brew. It followed a Syracuse Pale ale that I had standing out in the street waiting for a table. You go to hell and/or prison in Canada for standing in the street having a beer waiting for your table. That was the best Mac and Cheese I ever had, by the way. The lad knew enough to not leave any.

Why Does That Word “Pairing” Make My Temples Ache?

monkey4This has bugged me for a while. And that it bugs me bugs others, too. Here is what I know. Someone somewhere in the last few years decided we needed to “pair” beer with food. Prior to that, people just drank beer with their food and were generally happy with the many ways that great beer goes with good food. But one of the greatest turns of a consultants’ art is taking the obvious and often done, repackaging it and selling it back to you. That is what I suspect is going on with this “pairing” idea. Not that I have any issue with people being sold what they already own. It’s just not something I like to have done to myself. So, I worried when I read the very worthwhile Mark Dredge at the very interesting Pencil and Spoonwrite this over the weekend:

Today’s post is about pairing beer and food and is a simple overview of the tricks which beer can play that makes it a great companion to your lunch.

To which I asked “as opposed to the centuries of simply eating and drinking that have happily served mankind?” and to which Mark responded “Yes. Exactly opposed to that.” I have no idea what that means. What is the opposite of eating good food with good beer that still includes eating good food with good beer? When hasn’t beer been “a great companion to your lunch”?

Me, I’ve been happily eating food for almost my whole life. You should see my baby pictures. And since I was in the later end of high school, I have been drinking beer and pretty much as early as I could get away with it, I have been enjoying the consumption of good food with well made beer. I was lucky growing up in a seafood producing area of Atlantic Canada as my 1980s college days, among other things, were filled with regional beers with mussels in taverns as well as lobsters boils and early efforts craft beer. On UK trips and into the 90s, I liked plowman’s lunches with English style pale ales of brewers I could find to like those at Kingston Brew Pub or The Granite Brewery or Rogues Roost. As I moved on, moved out and got mortgaged, I baked breads with beer in it as well as New England baked beans and Texas chili. As access to good beer increased along with my interest in beer, I was quite happy to pull out old cheddars, blue cheese and even things that came out of a goat and try them with any number of brews. They all went pretty well… as did most roasts, most seafoody things and a lot of other things. In fact, I have now established that gueuze goes with everything and if it doesn’t, well, that thing is out of my life as long as the gueuze is in view. Get me in a room with a bunch of pals, a bunch of great beers and a pot luck of any types of food and I am happy to explore.

But I would never, you know, pair. I’d never get into that monogamous mindset where “this matches that” because we all should be aware that “these really go with those” and, if we are honest “all this pretty much is great with all that.” Did anyone really not know this? I have had the occasion to point out to food professionals that real hefeweizen goes really well with eggs and bacon and that flavours stouts created, among other things, to go with chocolate do actually go with chocolate – but it’s hardly the deepest thing I’ve picked up about beer. So, if it is not difficult information and it is something I’ve known for yoinks and most I know who like good beer have known for yoinks – what is all the interest in “pairing” based on?

Indiana: River to BBQ to Notre Dame to Silver Hawks

Such utter tourist we were yesterday. From walking by the river killing time before a hall of fame opened, to sucking back fantastic BBQ (the barnyard special at the Double T), to wandering around Notre Dame, to hitting the ugly hotel swimming pool with the eastern European 1973 paint scheme, to taking in another ballgame. All good. The equinox of the trip is upon us and we slowly turn back east north east.