Food – Page 9 – A Good Beer Blog

Garden 2013: A Week Into July And Where Are We?

So, there are beans. A patch of soldier beans from Johnny’s seeds that should flower and pod, then fade and die before any are picked. Dried beans for winter to be slow baked with molasses and bacon. Bombastic bowel-tastic beans waiting for an evening with Hockey Night in Canada as a blizzard howls outside. The bok choi and mustards have flowered with the advent of heat. The lettuces are still coming on with new sowings. Grapes are looking very good as is the tower of potatoes. There are hundreds of sugar snap pea pods waiting to be picked now. The lad ate a raspberry from his own property today.

More seeds will be planted before work this week. Tender carrots for September and October need to get in the ground now. You mail order seeds in February to plan for spring. You sow seeds in July planning for autumn. It’s never about now.

Waking Up At The Wrong End Of Lake Ontario

Did I write wrong up there? I meant “western” or at least “other” I suppose. Having a house emptied by the call of a cottage as I stay home to work next week, I needed something to do. And I had a bit of business to take care of with Jordan. That thing I didn’t get into any details about a couple of weeks ago. Book deal. Or rather a “promise to write a book” deal. We had to sign some papers and what better way to celebrate than a short tour of some beer spots around his hometown.

Once I got to the hotel, I got directed out of the downtown that I am most familiar with to head out in a taxi, past the protesting Egyptians at the legislature, around the mass of celebration that was the PRIDE event and north to The Rebel House, a pub celebrating its 20th birthday this year. I found Jordan out back in the beer garden. Well, he called it a beer garden but I would have called it a back patio. Which was about the only point over the next six or seven hours that I did not raise with him. I deeply don’t care about the difference but wonder why I think things like that. I had tweeted as I drove west that I wanted a Left Field Eephus and the spot was picked well as it was in very good shape for a dappled table in a backyard on a perfect June afternoon. I am not used to Toronto being this pleasant. At this point of the afternoon I attributed it entirely to the gem of a drinking spot.

Finished up and then jumped into a taxi for another flying trip back south to the Queen and Beaver on Elm off Yonge for a few more pints and a bit to eat. I was there by myself back in late 2009. Supper ended up bring a variety of minor cuts of meat. Cured and dried lamb, ox cheek and deviled lamb kidney that Jordan reported gave him dreams of zombies. Note the action photo of beer nerds at a feeding to the upper right pausing not to pray but to take digital photos. I suspect the great moral order gave him nightmares for that alone. The best thing – or a best thing – was the dimpled mugs of County Durham ale, the quiet capable and utterly unmarketed brewer to the west of Toronto. Black tea hopping did a great job cutting the rich bits of mammal and the accompanying sauces. Quiet downstairs as the place was packed watching the fitba upstairs. First time I encountered one of these, too.

After dinner, we marched south down Yonge through the PRIDE celebrations during which I realized what was going on in my mind. Toronto did not smell Toronto-ish. With so much of the downtown shut to cars and with it being Sunday not to mention one free from the heavy heat the city gets in summer, well, all the towers were washed with cool sweet lake air. One last stop at beerbistro! where a third local Ontario ale was the focus, Peterborough’s Publican House Square Nail pale ale. We passed on the Baladin investment opportunity as I suspected the owners might have wished they had. Baltimore slapped the Yanks on the big screen behind the bar.

On the way home, I hit Churchkey 40 km north of the 401 picking up a White IPA and a few strong brown ales, then carried on to Sharbot Lake for a few packs of bacon and sausage at Seed to Sausage apparently in celebration of my ale and meat themed trip. Or thus themed life. Drank many ales, ate many meats. Call the headstone carver.

Garden 2013: Lots To Eat… Including By Rabbits

Rabbits. I have seen them around the raised beds out front in the mornings when I head to work. But I had no idea that it had come to this. Beet eating. Frigging cheater pants rabbits are eating my beets and swiss card even if they are leaving the mustard greens, spinach and basil. Thing is… I like beets. Which is, of course why I planted them in the first place. For my eating, not theirs.

Out back there are parsnips, carrots, bok choi, onions, leeks, grapes, radishes, lettuce, peas and the amazing tower of potatoes. A chipmunk is eating the sunflowers but I feel less offended by that. I don’t eat sunflowers or chipmunks. And I am not allowed to trap the rabbits to eat them. It is an unfair deal. The tower of spuds is the year’s biggest innovation. Multilayer rings of seed potatoes on the outside of the tower, compost rich soil in the core and layered between the rings. They grow out the top and through the sides of the mesh. We’ll see what happens.

Garden 2013: The Last Of The Parsnip Crop

One of my favorite things to do is to not do something. Last year, I planted parsnips, onions and carrots in the square of soil by the front door. The carrots got dug up in early October and the onions were lifted a month earlier. But five parsnips were left in the ground all winter. Where they apparently grew. I had to dig around each root down around a foot and pull on the damn things. I left at least a quarter inch width of each in the ground. They came out with a snap.

My Recollection Of Pizzaria Tomaso, 1984

So, this was dessert. We made a stack of pizzas tonight. This was the last one. I even have the blister on the back of my wrist where I brushed the hot oven wall to prove it. But apple pizza? Thirty years ago in the north end of Halifax, Nova Scotia there was Pizzeria Tomaso with Mr. Tomaso still holding sway before he sold the business to a local family who promised to keep up his standards, brought from Sicily. It was only open Thursdays and Fridays from 4 to 7 pm. He was about 80 and had 15 high school kids working behind him. I remember going in once and among the stacks and stacks of pizzas seeing, among those destined for law firms head offices and nearby neighbourhood families, boxes marked “the Cabinet” meaning the five or six extra larges were destined for the cabinet room of the government of the province. I remember asking for anchovies on my ‘za and he came past the clerk taking the order to slap my face saying “You want anchovies? You a good boy.” He used to cook pizzas 90% of the way and offer then tax free as “cook at home” pizzas because he was really mad that there was tax on pizzas. The CBC Halifax evening TV news was presented live from his pizzeria counter once a year when Frank Cameron and Doug Saunders hosted the show in the ’70s and early 80’s. He used to give away wine when you were waiting for your order because he was so mad that he was not allowed to sell it. And they still make an apple pizza.

Not Beer: Zero de Gris 2009, Huff Estates, PEC

I was going to post about tea. I have been drinking a lot of tea lately. Good tea. Good tea is one of the least expensive good things going. Even at $35, per portion so might be a sweet wine like this bottle I picked up last summer at the winery on one of our ice cream, beach and cheese curd jaunts into Prince Edward County. A half bottle like this can easily be shared at dessert or after with six or eight. And you might open one once every couple of months, right? So, OK, not quite great tea value but often a well placed addition to the end of a holiday meal like the one shared today.

Zero de Gris is made with all Frontenac Gris picked late but short of forming noble rot or freezing. As flavour packed as I would have hoped, there’s honey and apricots on the nose. You can smell it with the glass sitting there on the side table. There’s more in there as well. Fresh lemon, white grapefruit, honey and something thicker, earthy – maybe melon or beeswax? A small sip gives you tangerine, lemon juice, honey in a sharp acidity framing a sweet hefty mouth feel. The finish is light and grapefruit clean with a lasting nod to that beeswax note.

We had this with a lemon curd cream cake. It would likely go well with just spoonfuls of thick cream and a couple dozen butter cookies if that were your thing, too. Light at 9.5% and enough sugar that the bottle’s drip leaves the neck sticky. Probably infanticide at three and a half years old. An award winner for Canadian late harvest wines in 2011.

Garden 2013: It’s Still March But Planting’s Begun

It has begun. A sunny Saturday reaching up towards maybe 7F today. I took down the cold frame that sat out back all winter and found one lone red lettuce plant growing along with a fair number of carrots. Leeks survived, hilled, out back and out front. Parsnips are starting to poke up enough green to betray their hiding spots.

Soups of ginger and parsnip are a-comin’. Peas have already been planted twice and some of the onion seedlings in the basement might actually survive. Rhubarb is a red ball pushing up through the leaves. But, best of all, that is the plot of garlic planted last fall showing itself.

Not Beer: Pinot Noir 2009, Grange, Closson Road, PEC

I didn’t buy this when we visited The Grange of Prince Edward County last August but maybe I should have. Found a bottle on a low shelf at the local government store. I sorta realized I had not been paying attention to this grape. I’ve probably been in a Côtes du Rhône rut now that I think of it. You know what that’s like. So, I have been picking up bottles from a few regions where Pinot Noir is grown when I see a reasonable price. Like this one. The Grange appears to have six different vineyards totaling around 60 acres. Half the vineyards have Pinot Noir. The are located just south of the lake in the middle of Hillier township on this Victorian map, right by old Sam Trumpour’s place. Lord Goog has the location, too.

I made a white bean and sausage stew in the slow cooker to go a long with this wine for tonight’s family gathering. I threw in dried mushroom and celery root along with a good slug of a Niagara red blend. Earthy. Hopefully. Not sure if Pinot Noir earthy bears any relation to biere de garde earthy. Not sure I’ve thought about cross-referencing adjective from wine to beer at all, come to think of it. Whatever earthy means in relation to this bottle, it is defined by the Hillier Clay Loam that you can read all about at page 58 of this 1948 Government of Canada report on the soils of Prince Edward County. It’s all about the dirt.

I took this advice and opened the bottle this morning. In the glass, the wine glows dark cherry red and gives off aromas like barky spices, alcohol, earthy berry… maybe red current? I agree with the idea of tastes of cherry and cranberry from this review but might add a little wintergreen and maybe strawberry as well. Some astringency from black tea tannins in the middle open to woodsy berry fruit at the end. Not the big and slap on the back wine like a lot of the Cabs, Merlot or Shiraz. A quieter drink.

Did I like it? Well, on the way come from dropping off the guest scurrying to get home before Earth Hour, I bought another. Stick it away for a bit to see what becomes of it. And, as we are not drinkers from fishbowls, half of this bottle is still around for leftovers tomorrow. And at well under $20 a good introduction to Prince Edward County Pinot Noirs.

Book Review: The World Atlas Of Beer, Tim ‘n’ Steve

Not only do I like a good atlas, I believe deeply in the graphic presentation of data. Mapping, graphs, tables, photos and flow charts. These are the things that provide instruction, organize and contextualize. Text is so over valued, isn’t it? Anyway, suffice it to say that the WAo’B is lush, well organized and current as well as an excellent source of beer porn. The sort of book that proves its value. In fact, unlike all those other guys, I actually bought my copy at an extremely generous discount – one that does makes one wonder who in fact pays full retail any more – and I am very glad I did.

The book has received some pretty ripe cheese so far. ATJ needed a private moment. And, while it is virtually identical in page number and physical size to Jackson’s World Guide to Beer, the function of this book function is quite different. Don’t be fooled by the gullible. Thirty-five years ago the WG2B was a comprehensive gazetteer to the beers of the global beer scene. It dipped into beer culture on the one hand and, on the other, described and classified now uninteresting macro industrial lagers with impressive detail. Not only does it predate the idea of “craft” it does not concern itself particularly with “good” preferring instead to aim for “all” – which is fine… for its day. A whole page is devoted, for example, to an ad for Bud. Fabulous.

The WAo’2, by comparison, takes sides. Which is good. Better. Or at least better suited for today’s wealth of information. Sure, half a page of text is dedicated to what are called “convenience beers” but, really, they are popular beers that need acknowledgement but need not receive further comment. What we get instead is information about the best the world has to offer. And lots of information. After the obligatory introductory sections on the nature of beer that we seem to need in every beer book put out these days, we have 200 pages dedicated to regions and regions within regions of beer. Each gets its own map, summary of the current situation, topical photos as well as a selection of brief reviews of top brews one can find now.

Quibbles? I have heard there ought to be more text and that might be true. A book like this, however, could easily be expanded to twice or even ten times its size… if there were a market for that. But there isn’t because that is what the internet has provided for a couple of decades. The WAo’B, like other better beer books these days, are more about a comprehensive argument or an description of a method of approaching the subject. To date, anything more comprehensive has failed. For me, I would have been more adventurous with the mapping. A map showing the medieval spread of hops perhaps? Beery trade routes of the 1800s perhaps? You get a bit of this with, for example, the brewery density map of France on page 129 or, say, the map of Canada on page 207 that sets out, among many things, which areas have the strongest Belgian influence – though it is not clear to me why Vancouver is particularly weak in this respect. But that’s me, isn’t it. How many times I have gone on about the deficiency in pie charting in non-fiction these days?Buy this book. But just don’t pretend anyone is walking the steps of giants. And please don’t dwell on who is Monet and who is Reubens. Get out your coloured pencils and annotate the damn thing. Mark it up. Layer it with your own findings, prejudices and fantasies. It’s just a big book of maps, you know. Think of a text that a dream but imaginary compulsory grade 12 classes should be based upon. OK, maybe introductory undergrad. Or a field guide perhaps to the best beers of today. Sure. That’s it. So, get it and let it guide you out into those fields, wouldja?

Garden 2012: Root Vegetables For Thanksgiving Dinner

Three types of carrots. The smaller ones to be roasted with olive oil. The bigger ones will be shredded and mixed with parsley, garlic and rice wine vinegar in a salad. Add to that swiss chard with tarragon and orange zest as well as box choi with fish sauce and lime juice. Not to mention small onions roasting under the dripping beef. Lawn food is good.