Romancing the Rutabaga

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smashed rutabagasI read somewhere that while Americans call everyone’s favorite big turnipy-looking root vegetables “rutabagas,” pretty much everyone else in the world calls them “Swedes.” But I also read that the word rutabaga is derived from a Swedish word, so presumably the Swedes don’t call them Swedes, either. I feel like we’ve got sort of a linguistic home field advantage here, guys.

And if etymology is not enough to tempt you into cooking up some rutabagas, then you should know that they are also rich in vitamin C and zinc. So while your co-workers are nursing their dreary colds, you can munch on your rutabaga leftovers, feeling pleasantly superior.

not a good ideaThe question, as always, is how to cook them. You can, of course, cut them up and roast them with some herbs, the tried and true method for root vegetables of all kinds. But because they taste a little like cabbage and because sour cream just seems like the sort of food any respectable Swede would like, I decided to go a different route, which I’ve outlined below. At the very least, I figured it might top Jason’s culinary experiment of the week, which involved post-Halloween candy corn and breakfast cereal. I’ll leave you to be the judge.

Smashed Sour Cream and Onion Rutabagas Continue reading →

How to Run a Successful Beer Tasting: Step 1) Invite Poets

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The Royalty

The Royalty / Fallen Soldiers

According to the experts, when you run a beer tasting you should always begin with the lightest beer with the lowest abv; however, when you’re tasting only imperial IPAs, this might mean you start at 8%. My friends Kate and Orie came over to help Ben and I taste a mixed sixer of double IPAs so I wouldn’t end up with an article on alcohol poisoning instead.

We had some pizza while we did our stretches and a few warm-up sips of a Brooklyn East IPA — overall a very responsible preamble. We also did a little research, by which I mean we talked at our phones and accepted Wiki definitions as good enough. Turns out Imperial just refers to any beer that has extra bunches of hops or malt, resulting in extra bunches of alcohol. It originated when the British had to brew their stout extra forte to make the journey to the royal Russian court. Basically, big and bold beers, regardless of style.

We start out with Hopmouth, a double IPA from Arcadia Brewing in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At 8%, Hopmouth was dangerously smooth — sessionable, even. Overall it was good, quite drinkable, but not our favorite.

Brooklyn Brewing’s Brooklyn Blast, at 8.4%, is up next. (Side note: this name is embarrassingly hard for me to say even without alcohol, transposing my Ls and Rs like I was Long Duck Dong in the spectacularly un-PC Sixteen Candles.) Kate takes a sip and trills, “it’s the tips of the hairs on the back of a bee! A ferocious honeysuckle meringue!” (Side note 2: I should also mention that Kate and Orie are musicians, poets, artists, beautiful people with shiny, twisty minds.) Continue reading →

Lesser-Known Gourds: A Puzzle

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gourdgator

Now this is man who understands gourds.

In our household, we have an inside joke that goes, “Pumpkin! (Groan!) The most common kind of gourd!” I guess you kind of had to be there.

‘Tis the season for jack-o-lanterns, but leave those groan-worthy pumpkins behind, because this is our ode to less common gourds. Can you name each member of the Cucurbitaceae family described below? These aren’t easy, but pay attention to the contextual clues and use your…well, you know, and you’ll do just fine.

  1. You might not think it while you’re using it to scrub off your dead skin, but this spongy vegetable is actually a gourd.
  2. You can eat the seeds of this gourd, and even use them to make a Mexican sweet similar to peanut brittle, but Adam didn’t use it as impromptu clothing as the name might lead you to believe.
  3. These squashes look a little like flying saucers, but they’re named for the kind of vessel in which you might bake a small cake.
  4. A lumpy green gourd native to Mesoamerica, it’s also called a mirliton when it pops up in Cajun cuisine.
  5. These gourds are often dried to make utensils, leading to the nickname “the bottle gourd.” The name also sounds similar to a character from The Tempest.
  6. This type of melon is good to eat, and though it can be harvested all summer long, it gets its name from its ability to be stored a long time, maybe even until Christmas.
  7. This squash is very popular in Japan, and its nutty flesh can be eaten many different ways, but it sounds more like a popular Thai dish.
  8. That commercial pumpkin pie mix you buy probably contains not pumpkin but rather this relative, named for its curved slender top portion.

Don’t click continue or scroll down until you’re ready for the answers! Continue reading →

Boston Beers: Home Away from Home

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Step 4

Step 4

Before I left for my trip to Boston last week, I put some serious time and energy into developing a
To Do List:
1) Hang with old friends
2) Drink good beer
3) Combine steps 1 and 2
4) Repeat steps 1-3
I don’t suppose I need to brag about how successful I was accomplishing this.

I had five days and about four times as many places I wanted to see (trans: beers I wanted to drink). Say what you will about Boston, but they do their beer up damn fine. What’s most impressive is the diversity of brews made there.

That little barley grain is just the cutest

That little barley grain is just the cutest

We started off the trip with a visit to Redbones, which is a rib place for most people, but a beer bar for me. (Also, hush puppies that’ll give you a glimpse of the deep fryer that is heaven.) My first pick had to be a Jack D’Or from Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. Pretty Things isn’t your typical brewery, in that they don’t have a brewery. They’re gypsies. They get up at 3am and brew in other brewers’ breweries before the generous owners need to open up and use their own equipment.

More importantly, they make beers no one else is brewing. Jack D’Or, their flagship beer, is what they call a Saison Americain…which is not really a thing, but it is now. Pretty Things abhors “styles” the way cats abhor vacuums. They like to let the beer speak for itself, and Jack D’Or says, “Mais oui! Je suis delicieuse!” So, what is it then? I’d say a sort of hoppy saison with spicy notes and a bitter backbone coated in gold. Continue reading →

Thinking Outside the Stalk: Salt and Vinegar Broccoli

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broccoli sandwichMost people, when faced with a head of broccoli, will hack it up and throw it in a pan, sautéing it or steaming it and doing very little else to it. Nothing wrong with that; I have eaten broccoli in exactly this manner hundreds, maybe thousands of times and been perfectly happy. But there’s also nothing wrong with giving your broccoli the royal treatment every once in a while.

I find it hard to think of anything more royal than a good salt and vinegar potato chip. What’s more, dear reader, is that potato is not the only vegetable to take kindly to these flavors. Broccoli, with its cabbage-y overtones, is an ideal candidate. I actually first learned this at No. 7 in Brooklyn, when I tried their trademark double-decker broccoli tacos. They take a hard taco shell and a soft one, paste them together with black bean hummus, fill them with finely chopped broccoli treated with shallot vinegar and top the whole thing with feta cheese. Holy-brocc-oly! It was better than a salt and vinegar potato chip, and that, I recognize, is a bold statement.

You can certainly try to replicate those tacos, but once you have a mess of salt and vinegar broccoli, why stop there? Use it on a sandwich with ricotta cheese and fresh tomatoes. Scoop it on top of a baked potato with some cheddar cheese. Mix it with some hot sauce and use it as a garnish for a quesadilla or burrito. I did all of these things with great results, but I surely did not exhaust all of the possibilities. Seize the broccoli, seize the day and come up with your uses.

Salt and Vinegar Broccoli Continue reading →

What to Drink If You’re a Knight in Shining Armor

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knight

A fist pump for mead!

You can only watch so many rounds of the Armed Combat League Championships before you start thirsting for a flagon of mead. At least, that was my experience at my first (yes, first!) medieval festival last weekend. This was a totally free one (yes, free!) staged annually at Fort Tryon Park surrounding the reconstructed-monastery-turned-museum, the Cloisters. I cannot express how awesome it is that the city parks department actually goes to great lengths to put on a massive celebration for teenaged enthusiasts of swordplay, accomplished players of the lute and harp, and people who enjoy dressing their dogs up as princesses.

mead lineI did, however, think that the location in a public park would put a definite damper on my mead game. So imagine my surprise, when, after wending my way past armored contenders whacking each other with blunted axes, some slightly long-in-the-tooth Celtic dancers and a juggling performance by Joey the Jester, I came upon a special cordoned-off drinking area, where you could buy a ten-dollar beer or a glass of mead for eight. I think you already know, dear reader, which booth had the longer line.

If you’re a stickler for historical accuracy, this might well have been your favorite part of the festival. Continue reading →

Beer Mythrepresented: Turn Down the Frosty Glass

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My teeth hurt just looking at this.

My teeth hurt just looking at this.

As a Beer Snob, I am contractually obligated to violently dispel any myths about beer that I hear or see being propagated by the ignorant. (They’ll take away my BS membership card if I don’t.) This is why I am the one in your party of bar-goers who loudly asks the bartender for a pint glass that isn’t frosted, thank you, I like to be able to taste my beer. [Pushes up glasses.] I don’t know why that always makes you blush.

Beyond the idea that beer must be ice cold, there are an astonishing number of misconceptions about my favorite beverage in regards to taste. The belief that a beer’s color directly relates to its taste is a big one. First of all, lagers are not all light-colored, and ales are not all dark. Then there’s the feeling that very dark beers are thick, strong, and heavy. I still am unclear as to what “heavy” means in this context. I’ve asked before, only to be met with unhelpful glares. Dark beers are so often light or sweet that I hate for them to get a bad rap. They are typically very serious and insightful beers, though, so perhaps that’s where the rumor started. Continue reading →

Shannon and Jason Own the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Chili Pepper Festival

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IMG_0922The advertising promised “5 Blazing Bands, 7 Hours of Chocolate Debauchery, 23 Years of Spicy Culture, 2 Legendary Fire Breathers, 52 Fiery Food Artisans, 52 Acres of Glorious Gardens.”

Fire breathers and free spicy food?  We’re there!

We visited every stall.  Every. Stall.  And here are our picks:

Shannon’s Pepper Picks:

Brooklyn Delhi: I cringe at paying $8 for a jar of salsa, no matter how good it is, because I could (and might very possibly) eat the whole thing in a single sitting with a spoon. But with achaar, Indian pickle, a little dab’ll do ya, and with innovative combinations like rhubarb ginger on offer at the Brooklyn Delhi booth, the price suddenly seemed entirely reasonable and left me wishing I’d packed some naan in my purse.

IMG_0925Queen Majesty: Do you know that the easiest way to catch fruit flies is with vinegar? That whole thing about catching more with honey is such a lie! Anyway, I love vinegar in many forms, and even though sweet-hot sauces seem to be all the rage these days, Queen Majesty makes beautiful vinegar-based ones that still have plenty of complexity. Try the jalapeno, tequila and lime flavor for a delicious tangy kick. Continue reading →

Hello, Hunger, My Old Friend

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The Void

It is not easy to find a visual representation of a lack of something. That is why Sartre book covers are so boring.

I have always been, as they say, a good eater, but I never thought that it was at the core of my being. Now I’m not so sure.

Certainly I have had the flu many times before, and while it’s always awful, I’m usually so nauseous that I don’t have the time to pause and reflect upon my lack of appetite. What happened on Sunday and Monday was different. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach (though that came later—a virus, maybe, or a latent Mexican souvenir), but I simply wasn’t hungry. It was startling. I’m almost always hungry. In the abstract, that doesn’t sound so bad (it sounds more like an ideal diet), but I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was completely unsettled by it. I wandered around aimlessly on my lunch break, confused by this sudden non-wanting. It was as though a thrumming engine that is always purring inside of me had dropped away. It was almost a relief when I started feeling ill; a presence rather than an absence.

Perhaps you find it silly or frivolous that I am equating a greedy desire for food with a cherished personality trait. But aren’t we all, to some extent, defined by our wants? They’re the heartbeats beneath our most vital decisions: this person or that person, Cleveland Indians or Cincinnati Reds, drama club or football team, crunchy or creamy. Continue reading →

Why I Won’t Drink AB InBev or SABMiller “Craft” Beer

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WSJambevsabmillerchart

The Wall Street Journal, staying relevant with snazzy infographics!

I read in the news this morning that Anheuser-Busch InBev is making moves to buy SABMiller. I don’t know much about mergers or acquisitions or really anything relating to money, but I do remember something in Coach Kaple’s 11th grade economics class about monopolies and trusts and how they’re bad. I also recognize that the joining of these two enormous beer-making entities does not technically form either of these, but it does severely limit the diversity of the field. If I understand it right, that diversity is kind of what makes capitalism capitalism. That said, here are the reasons I personally will not drink an AB InBev or SABMiller beer.

Big Beer and craft beer have drastically different motivations behind brewing. AB InBev, like any business whose profit last year broke 11 billion, is motivated by one thing: greed. I read as much of a Bloomberg Business News article on the possible acquisition as I could without spitting my beer on the screen and drop-kicking my laptop. The article also notes that the dudes in charge of the money handling for Big Beer claim that by purchasing up smaller craft breweries, they are able to get craft beer out to more people. Oh now I see, it’s really a charitable thing. And probably tax deductible.

Craft beer brewers, on the other hand, are in it for, well — craft. This word implies care, quality, and men with long beards and tall boots. It also implies innovation, experimentation, and a passion for the art. The men and women of craft beer are not in it for the money. It’s the art at the heart of it all. The essence of Dogfish Head could never survive if purchased by any of the big guys. Can you imagine any brewery associated with Miller concocting a brew that involved the brewers’ own saliva? No, no they would not, though I’d love to see the board meeting in which this idea is introduced. The spirit is what makes it craft — and is why craft beer drinkers stay with the small breweries. Continue reading →