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Chile Paste

2010-03-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

Meet my latest obsession - chile paste.

I've been making this stuff for the past several months, and we've been using it in everything. Made simply from chile de arbol and water, it is perfect for adding a deep, intense and yet neutral heat to all sorts of food. The neutrality of it is great because it is not cuisine-specific - we've used in dishes ranging from Huevos Rancheros to Mapo Tofu.

It is also super easy to make and dirt cheap to boot. A big bag of chile de arbol costs about 75 cents (we get the chiles from Northgate Market, our local Mexican mega-grocery).

I destem the chiles and cut them in half to get out any seeds I easily can (no need to try to get every last seed). Then I toast them in a frying pan until they darken, but do not burn.

Here they are just out of the pan:

After toasting, I soak them for about half an hour in just enough hot water to cover them. I put a small plate on top to keep them submerged.

After soaking, they get blended with enough of the soaking water to make the blender "catch". I find that starting on low power and then increasing it makes it less likely to spew all over the inside of the blender. Also, be careful not to open the top of the blender until it has completely stopped. I learned that lesson the hard way - chile de arbol in your eyes is not a good thing...

Blend until the consistency is very smooth, and voila - you've got chile paste!

In addition to being a great ingredient on its own, it also provides a perfect base for making hot sauce. More on that in a future post...

Chile Paste

Makes about 1 cup.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 ounces chile de arbol
Water

Destem the chiles and cut them in half, removing any seeds that shake out easily.

In a frying pan over medium high heat, toast the chiles while constantly stirring them around until they darken but do not burn (about 5 minutes). If your stove has an exhaust fan, you may want to use it.

Place the toasted chiles in a large bowl, discarding any seeds that fell out during the cooking process. Add enough hot water to just cover the chiles, and put a small plate on top of them to keep them submerged. Soak them for about a half hour.

Remove the chiles from the soaking liquid, and place them in a blender with enough of the soaking liquid to allow blending (about 1/2 to 2/3 cup).

Blend first on low power, and then on high until you have a smooth paste.

Pizza Port in Ocean Beach

2010-02-16T10:21:00.001-08:00

Why am I posting a picture of a partially constructed building? Because Port Brewing, one of our favorite local brewers, is opening a location in Ocean Beach - just down the coast from us.

I first heard rumors about the new location (on Bacon Street - where an old Boll Weevil used to be) about a year ago. Construction was stalled for quite some time (issues with their liquor license, I think), but they now appear to be moving full speed ahead. We took a bike ride down to OB yesterday to have lunch at Newport Pizza, and snapped the above photo.

To say that we're looking forward to the opening would be an understatement.

La Playa Taco Shop - Mexican Breakfast in Pacific Beach

2010-01-29T12:05:00.000-08:00

We absolutely love a good Mexican breakfast. Where we live in San Diego, there are a plenty of taco shops where you can grab a bite to eat in the morning, but it generally means getting a breakfast burrito. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of a good breakfast burrito. But I also like a more traditional, sit-down plate of food, and that can be harder to find.

Fortunately, we have La Playa Taco Shop serving up great renditions of the standards. On real plates. With silverware. Pictured above is their Huevos Rancheros - always a good way to go. I'm more likely to order Huevos Divorciados, though:

Why have one sauce when you can have two? We really like both their red and green salsas. The green is the spicier of the two. Huevos Divorciados isn't on their menu, but they've been happy to oblige when I've asked for it.

Also not on the menu is Sherry's current favorite - a combo of a chile relleno and one egg ranchero style:

Chile rellenos are one of those food items that are great when done well, and terrible when done poorly. In my experience, they are much more often done poorly. La Playa, however, does them perfectly - an intensely flavorful poblano chile (lots of places use Anaheim chiles, which work nowhere near as well), a thin, nicely-seasoned batter, and a molten cheese center.

If scrambled eggs are more your thing, you can get Huevos al Albañil (brick-layer's eggs). Their version has bacon in it:

Or Huevos con Chorizo:

And, of course, they also do a breakfast burrito. With all of the other great options, however, we've yet to try it.

La Playa's non-breakfast offerings are very good as well. I'm particularly partial to their al pastor and carnitas tacos (check out this post on What We're Eating for pictures of the carnitas), but we've enjoyed everything we've tried.

La Playa Taco Shop
3973 Mission Blvd.
San Diego, CA
(858) 488-7405

Imperial Stout - A Partial Mash Recipe

2010-01-22T11:26:00.001-08:00

If you've followed our past beer posts, you might quite reasonably assume that all we ever drink are light-colored hop bombs and Belgians (and sometimes combinations of the two). And, for the most part, that is indeed what we like to drink. We do, however, also have a fondness for the opposite end of the beer color and body spectrum - the Imperial Stout.

Imperial (or "double") stouts are the big boys of the dark beer family. I like mine jet black, with a motor-oil-like viscosity and punch-you-in-the-face flavor. The rich toastiness and generous alcohol level make it a great winter beer style.

And the best part is that they are also comparatively easy to brew. We've spent years getting our IPAs where we want them, but Imperial Stout came out pretty much bang-on the first time we made it. All of the effort we go through with an IPA in order to keep the color light and the malt out of the way so the hops can shine through - no need to do that here. We want it dark and malty, and that's easy to achieve.

Below is the recipe we came up with. The dark color comes from the addition of Black Patent and Chocolate Malt. It surprised us how little you need to use to get the color jet-black - only around 10% of the total malt bill. Our target alcohol level was 9%, but we ended up closer to 8% (too cold a temperature during fermentation, I think). I would have been happier with the extra 1% abv, but a little bit of residual sugar works well with this style.

Imperial Stout

Total batch size = 5 gallons; Partial Mash in 3 gallon beverage cooler; ~3 gallon 60 minute stove-top boil; late malt extract addition; target abv of 9%
(target OG: 1.090; target FG: 1.021)

Ingredients:

2 3/4 lb Pale Malt (2 row)
1 lb Roasted Barley
3/4 lb Black (Patent) Malt
3/4 lb Chocolate Malt
3/4 lb Wheat Malt
6 1/4 lb Briess Golden Light Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 lb Briess Pilsen Dry Extract (DME)
1 1/2 oz Centennial (9.7% AA)
1 oz Simcoe (13.2% AA)
1 oz Amarillo Hops (7.5%)
1 tablet Whirlfloc
White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast
3 oz light or pilsen DME (optional - for starter culture)
4 oz corn sugar (optional - for bottle priming)

Hop Schedule:

1 oz Centennial - 60 minute boil
1/2 oz Simcoe - 25 minute boil
1 oz Amarillo Hops - 20 minute boil
1/2 oz Centennial - 2 minute boil
1/2 oz Simcoe - 2 minute boil
(whirlfloc - 10 minute boil)

[Optional: Prepare a starter culture the day before brewing. Heat 3 cups water then add 3 oz DME. Boil 10 minutes, then cool quickly to room temperature. Put into a sanitized 1 quart jar or bottle, add yeast, seal and shake gently for 30 seconds. Loosen the lid or use an air-lock to allow gases to escape and let sit until time to pitch the following day.]

Heat 8 quarts water to 166 degrees for a target mash temperature of 154 degrees. Place the 6 pounds of crushed grain (Pale, Barley, Black, Chocolate and Wheat) into a large mesh bag. Pour the hot water into the beverage cooler, then slowly lower the grain bag into the water, pushing and prodding with a large spoon to ensure all the grain is wet (this can take several minutes). Put the lid on the cooler and allow to rest 60 minutes. (If the room is cool, preheat the cooler with hot water before starting the mash.)

While the grains are mashing, heat another 4-5 quarts of water to 190-195 degrees for sparging (rinsing the grains). Near the end of the 60 minutes, heat 2 quarts of water to a boil in your brew pot.

After the first mash is complete, remove the cooler lid and open the spigot to draw off about 1 quart of wort into a large pitcher. The first draw will likely be cloudy with grain particles; pour it gently back into the cooler over the grain bag to help filter it. Slowly draw off the wort by the pitcher-full and carefully pour that wort into the boiling water in your brew pot. As you pull off the wort through the spigot, add the hot (190 degree) water to the top of the cooler, keeping the grains submerged at about 168 degrees. Once 4 quarts have been added to the top, cover the cooler and let it sit another 10 minutes. Use the spigot and a pitcher to draw off all of the second wort and add it to your brew pot. You should have about 3.25 gallons of wort.

Bring the wort to a boil. When ready, add hops according to the schedule. With about 30 minutes remaining in the boil, begin adding the DME one cup at a time, stirring to dissolve. With 10 minutes left, stir in 1 tablet Whirlfloc. At time zero, continue adding DME off the heat until all has been added (if needed, return to low heat for a few minutes to help dissolve the extract). Cover and let sit 10-15 minutes.

Move brew pot to an ice bath and cool quickly to less than 80 degrees. Transfer wort to a primary fermenter. Add water to reach the 5 gallon mark. Swirl vigorously 2 minutes then pitch the yeast.

Ferment in primary for 1 week, then transfer to secondary. Keg or bottle after fermentation is complete (2 to 3 weeks in secondary).

Feast of the Seven Fishes 2009

2009-12-30T09:52:00.000-08:00

This Christmas Eve, we continued our yearly tradition based loosely on the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. We don't worry about the exact number of fishes, and we don't limit ourselves to Italian dishes. We just use the holiday as an inspiration to create a multi-course meal centered around fish and shellfish.

We had no real unifying theme this year. Our initial thoughts revolved around a "Mediterranean (both sides)" idea, but we ended up throwing in a bit of the new world as well.

Here's how it played out:

Oysters with Chile de Arbol and Cilantro

Our Christmas Eve feasts have always started out with oysters, and we weren't about to change that this year. This guy is a local Olympia oyster, grown by Carlsbad Aqua Farm and purchased from Bay Park Fish Company. The sauce was made from chile de arbol - whole dried chiles, soaked and then blended with garlic, cilantro and a bit of red wine vinegar.

This is what the oysters looked like pre-shucking (the one pictured above is on the left below, sporting his big barnacle):

The flavor of the oyster was clean and briny, and went well with the hot punch from the chile de arbol. In addition to the Olympia oysters, we also had some Conway Cup and St. Simon oysters for good measure.

Niçoise Tuna Skewers

Kind of a play on a Niçoise Salad. The tuna (Ahi) was salted and then poached confit-style in olive oil that was flavored with garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns. We skewered it with potato and green bean, served it over a bed of lettuce and chopped egg and sauced everything with a vinaigrette. The tuna had fantastic flavor all by itself, and was made even better by the other ingredients.

As you can see, we had fun playing with various platings:

The vinaigrette consisted of oil, white wine vinegar, lemon, Dijon mustard, anchovy and minced shallot and garlic. We don't often make emulsified dressings, but we really enjoyed this one and found ourselves scraping every last morsel of salad from the plate.

Seared Scallops with Spicy Lentils

I was really pleased at how the half-moon presentation of the dish turned out. To be honest, though, I have to credit it more to affordance than inspiration. The simple fact was that the scallops we picked up (also from Bay Park Fish Company) were absolutely massive:

Cutting them up seemed the only sensible way to serve them (although we did sear them whole).

In addition, we did a sliced version that also worked really well. There was a great textural contrast between the harder-cooked and caramelized outer slices and the pristine inner slices:

The bright-yellow base underneath the scallop is a hugely aromatic and tasty mixture of red lentils and yellow split peas we often use with fish (you can find the recipe here). The flavoring is turmeric, cumin, ginger, lemon and cilantro.

Seafood Paella

This year's way of getting maximum fishes out of a reasonable number of dishes. The fish were shrimp, squid, asari clams, rock cod and lingcod. Some green beans and piquillo peppers rounded out the mix.

We initially under-measured the amount water in the rice which resulted in a longer than ideal cooking time for the seafood. Despite the mishap, it came out looking beautiful and tasting great. It was the first time we've made a seafood paella, but it certainly won't be the last.

So ends another fun, if a bit exhausting, "seven" fish feast. The final tally for this this year was 4 dishes and 8 fishes (10, if you count the varieties of oysters separately).

If you enjoyed reading this, you may want to check out the posts on our previous Feast of the Seven Fishes meals:

2008 Feast of the Seven Fishes - Oysters with Vietnamese Ginger-Chili Mignonette. Cured Salmon Four Ways. Thai Steamed Mussels. Vietnamese Salad with Smoked Trout and Bitter Greens. Ginger Fish. Squid in Caramel Sauce. Napa Cabbage Soup with Shrimp Dumplings.

2007 Feast of the Seven Fishes - Oysters with a Thai mignonette. Crispy Fish and Lentil Balls. Sardines on Toast. Yucatecan Squid Salad. Fish and Shellfish Stew.

The Sazerac Cocktail

2009-12-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

The Sazerac is my hands-down favorite winter cocktail. Created in New Orleans in the 1830's, it is a delightful concoction of rye whiskey spiked with the complex aromatic flavors of anise liqueur and Peychaud's bitters (named for apothecary Antoine Peychaud who came up with both the recipe for the bitters and the cocktail itself).

I first discovered the Sazerac while doing research for a visit to New Orleans. We planned to try the cocktail at Napoleon House, but it was closed for a private party and we didn't quite manage to try the drink in its city of origin. In the end, I finally had my first Sazerac later on the same trip at City House in Nashville. I was an instant fan.

Originally made with cognac, the Sazerac is now made with rye whiskey. I generally use the appropriately named Sazerac Rye which is produced by Buffalo Trace Distillery (whose parent conglomerate now also control the Herbsaint and Peychaud's brands). I quite like the stuff, and enjoy it on its own when I'm too lazy to make a cocktail.

My version of the Sazerac is a bit stripped down from the official recipe. I omit the sugar, and I do not like to use a chilled glass (I have the same preference when making a Manhattan).

First up is the Herbsaint, an anise-flavored liqueur. I add just enough so that I can roll it around to create a coating on the inside of a whiskey glass.

I love the smell of the Herbsaint, and coating the glass with it brings out the aroma and helps it persist after the whiskey is added.

Next, a few drops of Peychaud's bitters:

The ruby-red color of the bitters instantly turn the color of the glass from lime-green to a burnished orange.

Then it is time for the whiskey. I generally pour in around two fingers worth, but I'm not at all fussy about the exact measure. The more whiskey, the less dominant the flavors of the Herbsaint and Peychaud's will be - I use more or less depending on my mood.

Then, it's down the hatch - tongue-tingling and belly-warming.

Cheers, and Happy Holidays!

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

2009-12-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

Who says pot pies have to be made with chicken? We love to take all sorts of savory fillings and encase them in flaky pastry. Most commonly, the filling is leftovers from some sort of braised dish.

A few days ago, we had short ribs for dinner (using Daniel Boulud's recipe from the excellent Café Boulud Cookbook). After a fantastic meal, we still had some of the rich sauce and lovely meat left over. Time for pot pies!

They start with savory shortcrust pastry (we like a mixture of butter and lard for the fat). The bottom crust gets pricked with a fork and par-baked in a 450°F oven for about 10 minutes:

For the filling, we took the already super-flavorful sauce from our leftover short ribs and added in some finely-diced and sautéed onion, carrot, mushroom and celery (with the leaves - don't leave out the leaves). We separately cooked a potato until just tender, and cut it into chunky pieces about the same size as our leftover bits of rib meat.

Then it was on with the pastry top and back into the same 450°F oven for about 15 minutes - until the crust was a beautiful golden brown.

And finally time to dig in:

The contents are always way too hot eat at first, but fortunately you have the top layer of pastry already cooling nicely so that you can flake off bits and dip them in the gravy.

Perfect, decadent winter meal.

Thanksgiving Stuffing Croquettes with a Gravy Center

2009-12-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

While we often make a non-standard Thanksgiving meal, this year we did it pretty much straight-up traditional. The leftovers, on the other hand, we've been playing around with a bit.

Case in point, these stuffing croquettes. Think of them as Thanksgiving in a ball. A crispy, fried ball.

We took some leftover stuffing, mixed in some small bits of turkey and formed them into balls.

The gravy center was added to each ball by poking a hole, inserting a gravy "cube" (the gravy was set up well enough at fridge temperatures to be easy to work with) and then re-forming the ball.

They were then coated in panko:

And fried in oil at a temperature of about 350°F until they were golden brown.

We initially tried a higher temperature, but the outside cooked before the gravy in the middle had time to melt. Although it was difficult to restrain ourselves from eating them straight out of the fryer, we found that it helped to let them rest for a few minutes to let the heat penetrate through.

This is what they came out looking like:

After being cut in half, the gravy oozes out of the center - like a savory take on a molten chocolate cake...

I think we've definitely got a fun new addition to our Thanksgiving leftover repertoire.

Hopped Wine

2009-11-18T10:49:00.001-08:00

When Sherry was bottling her second batch of wine (a South-African Chenin Blanc), a crazy idea occurred to me - what if we added some hops? We had a plug of Centennial hops left over from our last batch of beer, so we put some in two of the bottles.

We had no idea what to expect, but it actually turned out pretty well. As is the case with dry-hopping beer, the hops added aroma and flavor, but no bitterness. The taste was intense enough, however, that it was hard to drink too much of it. Rather than drink it as a wine, it is probably better used as a aperitif.

Chori-Migas

2009-11-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

We first experienced migas when we road-tripped through Austin last summer. I'd never heard of migas before, but I was an instant convert. Migas are very much like, but intriguingly different from the chilaquiles we enjoy here in San Diego.

Migas, as American food at least, seem to be pretty Austin-specific. Historically, though, the dish is Spanish/Portuguese in origin. The key elements seem to be leftover stale bread and pork product of some kind.

In Austin, the bread is replaced with corn tortillas, the the pork product is likely to be chorizo, and eggs make it a breakfast dish (hence the likeness to chilaquiles). Regardless of the origin and the transformation, chori-migas are awesome!

Ingredients:

First, fry up your chorizo. We use our homemade Oaxacan-style chorizo bolitas:

Here, I just want to add a frustrated photographer mini-rant. I have found it to be *very* hard to get a good picture of chorizo cooking. The darkness of the chorizo against the black background of frying pan is very unforgiving. Add in that this is all happening on our stove, which is not the best lit environment, and you have a very non-photographer-friendly environment.

The plus side is that, while it might not be very photogenic, it does taste really, really good!

Once your chorizo has bust open and nicely cooked down, tear up some corn tortillas into small to mid-sized bits (we like a hodgepodge of mixed sizes) and toss them in. Once they have taken on the amazing rust-orange color of the chorizo, pour in your scrambled egg mixture:

From there, you are very much in your just-making-scrambled-eggs-comfort-zone. It can be done better or worse, but it is hard to truly mess up. If you must ask, however, I do like my scrambled eggs on the soft-set-up side.

Then it is to the plate. We garnish with sliced jalapeños and some shredded cheese. We keep the cheese simple - mild jack or cheddar - since the flavor complexity is coming from elsewhere. Plus, Austin might just be the epicenter of unapologetic use of yellow cheese, so don't you worry.

Chori-migas eaten straight-up are pretty damn good, but our favorite breakfast delivery vehicle is the chori-miga-taco. We like to use flour tortillas, since we already have corn tortillas in the filling.

Pop your migas in, add some salsa if you like (I like a bit of pico-de-gallo, not yet added in the picture above) and enjoy your breakfast!

Chori-Migas

Serves 2.

We start by cooking the chorizo whole and removing the casing once the sausage is cooked through. This results in decent sized chunks of meat in the end product. If you like, you can remove the sausage from its casing prior to cooking, however you will end up with smaller, finer pieces of cooked chorizo.

1 tablespoon canola oil
3 oz Mexican Chorizo, preferably Oaxacan
3 corn tortillas, torn into rough 1-2 inch pieces
1/2 onion, sliced or chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
4 eggs, lightly scrambled
Kosher salt
1 jalapeno or serano chile, thinly sliced
A bit of queso fresco or monterey jack cheese for garnish

Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan until medium hot. Add the chorizo and cook, turning frequently until the sausage is bursting from its casings. Use scissors or a small knife to slit the casings and tongs or a fork to remove them from the pan, leaving the meat and oil behind.

Add the tortillas and stir well to coat them in the flavored oil. Cook a minute or two, then add the onion and cook for another couple of minutes until some of the tortillas begin to crisp and the onion has softened. Sprinkle everything with salt, then stir in the garlic and cook another 30 seconds.

Pour the eggs over the chorizo-tortilla mixture, and use a rubber spatula to stir gently until the eggs are set, but still moist. Fold in some of the chile slices, then serve on warmed plates. Garnish with a little cheese, more chile slices and some finely chopped cilantro if desired.

Homemade Guanciale

2009-10-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

We've been remiss in following up on the Guanciale we made earlier this year. We just recently cooked the last few remaining bits of it, so I figure now is a good time to revisit it.

Guanciale is a cured meat that is much like Pancetta, except that it is made with jowl instead of belly. We cured ours with a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, cracked black peppercorns and fresh thyme. This is what it looked like after about a week:

Then it was hung in the meat fridge until it was quite firm, but not too dried out - a little over three weeks. When it was done, it came out looking like this:

We've used it in a number of dishes, but I want to highlight a couple. First, some Guanciale and Smoked Cheddar Sliders we made this summer:

And, of course, perhaps the most classic guanciale dish - Bucatini all'Amatriciana. We've been wanting to make this for a while, but we hadn't been able to find bucatini locally. We finally broke down and ordered some online.

The dish is extremely simple. We rendered down diced guanciale with some red onion and olive oil, added in some of Mario Batali's Basic Tomato Sauce, tossed it with cooked bucatini and served it with some grated Pecorino Romano:

Lovely, rich dish.

Cabeza

2009-10-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

Sherry did a run out to Northgate Market recently, and came back with a bounty of pork products, including half a head. We popped the head in a pot, and slowly simmered it along with some tongues and trotters. Part of the results went into tacos, which were rich, sticky and very satisfying.

The rest went into a small batch of Testa (head cheese):

We had warmed Testa on toast for breakfast this morning, and it really hit the spot.

You can find more details on making Testa, along with our recipe for it here: Coppa di Testa.

Homemade Chorizo - Oaxacan Style

2009-10-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

While we were in Oaxaca, we fell head-over-heels in love with the chorizo there. Here in San Diego, despite the wide availability of Mexcian food products in general, we've been unable to find a chorizo that tastes as good.

The chorizo we bought from our local carniceria in Oaxaca had a deeper color to it and a more complex and tangy flavor. Plus, we missed the pretty bolitas of chorizo we would see hanging amongst other lovely bits of meat:

Our solution to this problem (which will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog) was that we would have to try to make it ourselves.

After a bit of experimentation, our recipe is something of a combination of a version from The Food and Life of Oaxaca, by Zarela Martínez and one from Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexcian.

At its base, this chorizo starts like most pork sausages: a mixture of ground pork meat and fat (we use shoulder and belly). Where it differentiates itself is in the seasoning. The dark color comes from lots of chile - in both amount and variety. For this batch we used ancho, paprika, chipotle, guajillo and cayenne. Most of it is for depth of flavor, but it also adds a nice bit of heat.

The taste gets an acid kick from some cider vinegar and is rounded out with herbs (thyme and oregano) and spices (peppercorns, cinnamon, clove and nutmeg).

Into the sausage stuffer it goes:

And the "after" shot, with the lovely, fatty, burnished-orange afterglow from the chorizo meat.

We were very pleased at how the bolitas of chorizo turned out:

After stuffing it was into the magic fridge to hang for a couple of days (that's some saucisson sec hanging in the background).

After it has tightened up a bit it is ready to go. The uses are endless. Just grab a few bolitas, toss them in a frying pan and cook them until they burst and spill out.

Then add it to your dish of choice. We have a growing number (such as our recipe for Chori-Migas), but one of the simplest and most satisfying is to use it as a topping for some breakfast memelitas:

The day just starts off better when it starts off with some chorizo.

Oxacan-style Chorizo

You'll want about 2 1/2 oz of whole dried chiles (anchos, guajillo, chipotle or another mixure of fairly mild chiles). If using ground chile, substitute with about 1 1/2 oz. Keep the meat very cold at all times to improve the grinding and stuffing process.

6-7 ounces pork belly
9-10 ounces pork shoulder
2 or 3 medium ancho chiles, seeded and stemmed
1 guajillo chile, seeded and stemmed
1 to 2 dried chipotle chiles, seeded and stemmed
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 whole cloves
1/2 inch cinnamon stick (preferably canela)
3/4 teaspoon mexican oregano or marjoram
1/4 teaspoon thyme
generous pinch ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt (mortons)
1 garlic clove, whole
1 garlic clove, minced
1/3 cup cider vinegar
water for soaking chiles
Hog casings
Kitchen twine

Cut the pork belly and shoulder into finger shaped pieces 2 to 3 inches long (remove any tough or stringy gristle). Coarsely grind the meat with a meat grinder. Place into the refrigerator to chill while you prepare the seasonings.

Tear the chiles into large, flat pieces. In a hot, dry pan, quickly toast the chiles a few pieces at a time, just until they start to change color and/or blister. This will only take a few seconds - do not over cook or burn. Place the toasted chiles into a bowl, cover with hot water and soak until softened, about 20 minutes.

Place the peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, oregano and thyme into a spice grinder and grind finely. If you do not have a spice grinder, add these to the blender in the next step, but run it much longer.

Drain the chiles (reserving the liquid) and place into a blender along with the ground spice mixture, the nutmeg, paprika, cayenne, salt, and 1 garlic clove. Add the cider vinegar and 5 tablespoons of the reserved chile soaking liquid, then blend until smooth.

Using a large spoon, thoroughly mix the seasoning and minced garlic into the ground meats. It will be quite loose. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Prepare hog casings for stuffing by soaking in warm water at least 30 minutes. Change the soaking water and run fresh water through them to remove traces of salt. Stuff the meat into the casings, but leave each piece of casing unstuffed at least 6 inches at each end. Keep the long sausage link quite loose rather than densly packed (if too tight, the casing may burst while creating the small links). Starting in the center and working toward the ends, use kitchen twine to tie the sausage into short, tight rounds the size of a golf ball.

Hang the links in a cool airy place (50-60 degrees) for 36-48 hours or until they have firmed up and are dry to the touch. Be sure to put a baking tray lined with paper towels underneath the sausage to catch the drips. Cut the finished sausage into shorter sets of links, then wrap in plastic and refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.

Lamb Offal Treats

2009-10-01T20:51:00.001-07:00

We've had a package of assorted lamb offal tucked away in our freezer for a while now, and we finally got around to putting it to good use. Pictured above is Sautéed Lamb Kidneys with Onion, Garlic and White Wine, from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. This was the first time we've tried to cook kidneys, and the dish came out very well. Kidneys, like liver, have a very strong, intense flavor which I really enjoy, but can't eat too much of in one go. Perfect for an appetizer.

After that, we improvised a dish with lamb's heart - we sliced it, seared it quickly, and served it over a potato purée spiced with turmeric and cinnamon with some arugula mixed in.

I really love heart in general (beef, chicken, pork - you name it), and this proved no exception. Very good, and it went nicely with the potato - we'll definitely be making this again.

While cooking the previous two dishes, we had lamb tongue simmering in a pot on the back of the stove. The next day, we used it to make tacos:

Oh yeah!

Belgian Tripel IPA Partial Mash Recipe

2009-09-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

There is a long history of American brewers being influenced by their Belgian counterparts, but lately the flow of ideas has been going the other way as well. In 2005, Hildegard van Ostaden was inspired by American IPAs and decided to brew a Tripel with an American IPA hop profile. The result was Urthel Hop-It, and it was very good indeed.

Our first exposure to this style was a Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel at the Liars' Club, and we were instantly fans. Two of our favorite beer styles are the IPA and the Belgian Tripel, so it is no surprise that a combination of the two is right up our alley.

In the past few years, American brewers have begun to adopt the style as well. Here in San Diego, Green Flash's excellent Le Freak has been getting better with each year they brew it. We decided it was time to get in the game and try to brew one of our own, so we scoured the internet for information and cobbled together a recipe.

Tripels are generally higher octane than IPAs (and most double-IPAs). For our Tripel IPA we were shooting for an original gravity of about 1.082, which a lot of fermentable sugars. Going with the Tripel style, we used Pilsner malt supplemented with clear candi sugar to get the high gravity while keeping a light color and body.

Candi sugar has very large, nearly half-inch crystals. This is what it looks like:

Given the amount of fermentables, we decided to get things going with a two-cup yeast starter culture to give things a kick-start. And man did it ever kick-start. The next morning the wort was moving around like crazy and bubbling so hard it sounded like a motor running.

Fortunately, it didn't quite overflow the air-lock, so we didn't have a mess to clean up.

The resulting ale turned out very well - golden in color and full of flavor. The distinctive Belgian yeast character is balanced very nicely by the aroma and bitterness of the hops. Apparently our yeast was very happy since we achieved a higher level of conversion than expected - with an ABV of 9.2%, it packs quite a punch. Definitely not a session beer...

Belgian Tripel IPA

Total batch size = 5 gallons; Partial Mash in 3 gallon beverage cooler; ~3 gallon 60 minute stove-top boil; late malt extract addition; dry hopped for aroma; target abv of 8.5%

Ingredients:

5 1/2 lb Pilsner Malt (Belgian)
1/2 lb Wheat Malt
5 lb Briess Pilsen Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 1/2 lb Candi Sugar, Clear
2 oz Columbus Hops (12.3% AA)
1 1/2 oz Saaz Hops (4.0% AA)
1 oz Amarillo Hops (8.5%)
1 tablet Whirlfloc
White Labs WLP550 Belgian Ale Yeast
4 oz corn sugar (optional - for bottle priming)
2 1/2 oz light or pilsen DME, plus 1 T cane sugar (optional - for starter culture)

Hop Schedule:

1/2 oz Columbus - 60 minutes boil
1/4 oz Columbus - 45 minutes boil
1 1/2 oz Saaz - 15 minutes boil
1/4 oz Columbus - 10 minutes boil
1/2 oz Columbus - 0 minutes boil
1/2 oz Columbus - Dry Hop in Secondary Fermenter
1 oz Amarillo - Dry Hop in Secondary Fermenter

[Optional: Prepare a starter culture the day before brewing. Heat 2 cups water then add 2 1/2 oz DME and 1 tablespoon sugar. Boil 10 minutes, then cool quickly to room temperature. Put into a sanitized 1 quart jar or bottle, add yeast, seal and shake gently for 30 seconds. Loosen the lid or use an air-lock to allow gases to escape and let sit until time to pitch the following day.]

Heat 8.25 quarts water to 165 degrees for a target mash temperature of 150-153 degrees. Place the 6 pounds of crushed grain (Pilsner and Wheat) into a large mesh bag. Pour the hot water into the beverage cooler, then lower the grain bag into the water very slowly, pushing and prodding with a large spoon to ensure all the grain is wet (this can take several minutes). Put the lid on the cooler and allow to rest 60 minutes.

While the grains are mashing, heat another 4-5 quarts of water to 180-185 degrees for sparging (rinsing the grains). Near the end of the 60 minutes, heat 2 quarts of water to a boil in your brew pot.

After the first mash is complete, remove the cooler lid and open the spigot to draw off about 2 quarts of wort into a large pitcher. The first draw will likely be cloudy with grain particles; pour it gently back into the cooler over the grain bag to help filter it. Draw off the remaining wort by the pitcher-full and carefully pour that wort into the boiling water in your brew pot; continue until only a trickle of wort leaves the spigot.

Pour about 4 quarts of your hot sparge water over the grain bag in the cooler. Gently lift the bag up and down to thoroughly re-wet the grains (but don't slosh). Cover and let sit about 5 minutes. Use the spigot and a pitcher to draw off all of the second wort and add it to your brew pot. You should have about 3 gallons of wort.

Dissolve the candi sugar in the hot wort, being careful to keep the sugar from scorching. You can do this easily by suspending the crystals in a strainer or chinois as you bring the liquid to a boil. When ready, add hops according to the schedule. With about 15 minutes remaining in the boil, begin adding the DME one cup at a time, stirring to dissolve. At time zero, continue adding DME off the heat until all has been added (if needed, return to low heat for a few minutes to help dissolve the extract). Stir in 1 tablet Whirlfloc. Cover and let sit 10-15 minutes.

Move brew pot to an ice bath and cool quickly to less than 80 degrees. Transfer wort to a primary fermenter, straining most of the hops. Add water to reach the 5 gallon mark. Swirl vigorously then pitch the yeast.

Ferment in primary for 1 week, then transfer to secondary. After seven days, dry hop with 1/2 oz Columbus and 1 oz Amarillo. Keg or bottle after fermentation is complete (2 to 3 weeks in secondary).

Pulled Pork Sopes ("Masa Boats")

2009-09-17T09:51:00.001-07:00

We did a smoked pork butt a while back and were faced with the inevitable bounty of leftovers. Pulled pork tacos are our go-to dish for this circumstance, but we wanted to try something new. We decided to see how pulled pork would do as a filling for sopes. I'm glad we did, because it turns out that pulled pork sopes are really, really good.

Sopes are a delightful Mexican antojito made by forming little "boats" of masa and filling them with your ingredient of choice. We use a Rick Bayless recipe from Mexico One Plate at a Time. Given how easy sopes are to make, it is really more of a simple technique than a recipe.

You start by preparing masa just as you would for corn tortillas: add warm water to dry masa harina until it has the consistency of soft cookie dough, add a little salt (a scant teaspoon of kosher salt per two cups masa harina) and then let the dough rest at least 15 minutes to fully hydrate. Just before cooking, shape into balls about the size of a golf ball.

Once you have your masa balls ready, flatten them in a tortilla press to a thickness about twice what you would do for a tortilla and pop them into a dry frying pan over medium-high heat.

Once they have puffed up a bit but are not too browned on the bottom, you can take them out and crimp up the sides to mold them into the sope boat shape:

Then it is back into the frying pan - this time with some oil drizzled around. Add in your toppings and cook the masa the rest of the way through.

Sopes are best eaten when they are just out of the pan with the masa still hot and crispy. When we have sopes we generally make a few different kinds. We really like simple ones with just a bit of cheese topped with salsa (we like them with both red and green - you can find the the recipe we use for salsa verde here).

This time we had some leftover pipián, a pumpkin seed dip/salsa we learned to make in Oaxaca. It made for a very satisfying filling:

Sopes are a perfect blank canvas just waiting to take on the character of whatever ingredient you choose to fill them with. The next time you're thinking of having some tacos, try something different and make sopes instead.

Fallbrook Syrah Harvest

2009-09-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

We have some friends who are way more serious about making wine than we are. Recently, they have been starting with whole grapes rather than using juice concentrate from wine kits. This year, they purchased Syrah grapes from a small vineyard in Fallbrook.

Last weekend, the timing was right and we were ~~roped into providing free labor for~~ given the opportunity to experience the grape harvest. We hauled ourselves out of bed at 5:00 (!) and groggily made the drive up I-15 to Fallbrook. The early hour and a bit of cloud cover provided a reasonably cool temperature. Given that the respite from the heat was temporary, we wasted no time getting to the grapes.

We were given a quick lesson on evaluating grape clusters (discard them if they are predominantly dried up and elongated rather than round) and then it was time to grab our buckets and shears and get to it.

What our group of amateur harvesters lacked in talent, we made up for with numbers. A little over an hour after we began, there wasn't a grape to be seen on the vines.

The total came to around 250 pounds of grapes. That was less than had been anticipated (the same vineyard produced four times that amount last year), but the hope is that the juice will be of a higher quality.

With harvesting finished, it was time to de-stem. Fortunately, modern equipment makes this a pretty painless process.

The grapes go in the top:

The stems shoot out the side:

And the grapes themselves funnel nicely out the front.

At this point the grapes were broken up a bit, but not fully crushed. To keep them cool for the trip back to San Diego, they were packed in big plastic buckets with dry ice (further crushing and yeast addition would happen back home).

The freshly pressed grape juice had a very nice sweet, clean taste. We're looking forward to tasting the wine in a few years.

Hot Chicken

2009-09-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Fried chicken? Check.
Heat? Check.
Pickle slices? Check.
Sliced white bread? Check.

Hot Chicken is in the house!

A little over a year ago, on a sweltering July day in Nashville we made the pilgrimage to Prince's Hot Chicken. Having lunch in the heat of the day at a hole-in-the-wall joint with no AC, eating piping hot chicken straight out of the fryer, coated with burn-your-face-off fiery spices seems crazy. And it was crazy - crazy good!

Here in San Diego, our heat wave continues and the conditions seemed right for attempting Hot Chicken at home. But how to make it?

We decided that Justin Jones' contest-winning recipe from the 2008 Music City Hot Chicken Festival was a good place to start. His recipe is pretty simple - a paste predominantly of cayenne and lard that is applied to the chicken after frying. Adding the heat post-frying seems like the right thing to do logistically (keeping the spice out of the cooking oil and allowing different heat levels of paste to be used at the end to customize the hotness of the order on a piece-by-piece basis) and it rings true with anecdotes I've read about the method used at Prince's.

It all starts, however, with good fried chicken:

We do an overnight buttermilk soak, then dredge in seasoned flour and fry until crisp. Fried chicken was one of Sherry's favorites growing up. Her chicken-frying skills have atrophied over the years, but they are starting to get back in form.

The heat comes from the chile paste. This is what it looks like when you first mix it up:

After 10 seconds in the microwave on high, the lard loosens up nicely and it can be easily brushed onto the chicken.

How to serve it? That's pretty much established tradition - over a couple of slices of white bread, with several pickle slices skewered to the chicken with a toothpick. I will note, however, that these pickles were homemade - hence the lack of the characteristic fluorescent-green color. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying fluorescent-green is bad in a pickle, we just haven't been able to achieve it yet...

Once everything is properly assembled, it's time to chow down. Biting into the chicken, the crust crunches nicely, its temperature and spice level challenging with their aggressiveness. The meat inside is savory and juicy, just as fried chicken should be, and temporarily diminishes the burn. But only temporarily - the burn is not to be denied, and builds with each bite.

Until you're done, left only with bones and the remaining chile-stained bits of bread.

Now for the critique:

Was it good? Absolutely. Very good indeed. Some of the best fried chicken I've had.

How did it stand up to Prince's Hot Chicken? We've got a ways to go. First, the chicken we had there was extremely well cooked. Ours is good, and getting better, but not yet in the same league. That's on us, though, and not the recipe we used.

Ok, how about the Hot Chicken recipe? I think it works well, but I'm not sure that it is quite what Prince's actually does. First off, the color is too dark. Have a look at the "medium-spicy" leg quarter I had at Prince's:

This was very hot - certainly hotter than the chicken that we made - but isn't very dark-colored at all (aside from the top of the drumstick, which is dark from cooking and not chile). Similarly, the oil on the bread was much more light-orange rather than the deep red we got.

Another factor is the bitterness of the cayenne. I really like the complexity you get from powdered dried chile, but in large quantities on its own, you really taste and smell the bitterness.

In summary: We definitely think that application of the "hot" after frying is the way to go. Exact composition of the "hot" merits further experimentation. Stay tuned!

Watermelon

2009-08-27T20:08:00.001-07:00

As I write this at 8:00 in the evening, our thermostat is still reading 83°.

We do not have air conditioning since we don't normally need it - except for the few really hot days like today that we get each summer.

When it's hot, there's nothing quite like the cool, refreshing taste of watermelon. The one pictured above is probably the best we've ever had. It is from Maciel Family Farm - one of our favorite vendors at the Pacific Beach Farmers Market.

You can't see it in the picture above, but the skin color was rippled with a deep, rich green - not washed out like you tend to get with an average supermarket melon. Cutting it in half revealed a beautiful ruby red flesh that seemed the perfect embodiment of Summer. And the taste? Pure heaven. Intensely sweet - but a clean, pure kind of sweet.

It was really great in a fruit salad, but the best bit was definitely those first few scoops straight from melon to mouth.

Operation Cheap-Ass Summer White

2009-08-21T15:52:00.001-07:00

Sherry has been wanting to make wine for a while now, but I've been reluctant. I just wasn't convinced that we could make a wine that we would enjoy as much as wines we can buy at the same price point. To be honest, I wasn't convinced that we could make a wine that we would enjoy, period!

But Sherry was persistent that she wanted to give making wine a shot. Surrendering to the inevitable, I theorized that the best path to success would be to do a simple, inexpensive white wine. My reasoning was that a style that generally isn't messed with much would be harder to mess up, and that the inexpensive end of the spectrum was more likely to give us a better value than we can buy. Not to mention that if it ended up being a complete bust it would at least be an inexpensive complete bust.

Thus began what I've dubbed "Operation Cheap-Ass Summer White". Sherry bought an Italian Pinot Grigio kit online from Fine Vine Wines, snagged some wine making equipment that a friend wasn't using, and soon had 6 gallons of grape juice fermenting away.

It is now ready to drink, and I'm happy to report that it turned out pretty well. I'd say that it tastes on par with the less expensive whites we buy, which run about 6 or 7 dollars a bottle. And how much did it cost to make? Here's the breakdown:

Italian Pinot Grigio kit: $67
Corks: $6
Shrink wrap capsules (foils): $4
6% sale discount: -$4.60
Shipping: $9

Total: $81.40

We got 29 bottles out of the batch (it was supposed to yield 30, but we lost a bit while racking off sediment at bottling time). That puts the per-bottle cost right around $2.80. Cheap-ass indeed.

Spaghetti With Tomato Salsa Cruda

2009-08-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

So Sherry is out of town for a couple of days and I'm on my own.

It feels very strange pulling out just a single glass from the cupboard.

It feels even stranger being completely responsible for dinner!

In case you haven't guessed already by reading previous posts of ours, while I may be the source of much of the inspiration for what we do, Sherry is very much in charge when it comes to the execution.

Last night, being temporarily responsible for both the inspiration *and* the execution, it was all on me to figure out what to make for dinner. It needed to be heavy on the inspiration, while at the same time being easy on the execution. I went with a simple, summer-focused tomato pasta dish based on ideas I got from this thread on eGullet. It isn't so much a recipe as it is a simple process and a state of mind.

While making breakfast, I also chopped up a few cloves of garlic (four, I think). I put the garlic in a medium-sized bowl and generously covered it with extra virgin olive oil. Don't hold back on the olive oil, since that is the only fat in the dish and we want the richness that it provides.

If that looks like a lot of garlic to you, have no fear - it mellows nicely. If you aren't a big garlic fan, I guess you could use less. Or just make a different dish...

The olive-oil-covered garlic just sits at room temperature on the kitchen counter for the day - the flavor of the garlic slowly leaching out into the oil.

A few hours before I wanted to have dinner, I diced up a couple of good-sized tomatoes (around 10oz, total) and popped them into the garlic oil. I added a few generous pinches of kosher salt, gave it a quick stir, and then left it alone for a while longer.

After a few hours with the odd stir now and then (and admittedly stealing bits of tomato "to make sure it tastes right") the mixture was transformed. The tomatoes softened and gave up much of their juices to mix with the oil to become a rich, fragrant sauce.

At this point, I admit that I could happily spoon this stuff into my mouth now and call it a day. I smells amazing and tasted event better. But, we need to control ourselves and do a bit more to pull the dish together.

Heat some water, salt it generously, grab some spaghetti (we keep ours in an Oban canister, don't you?) and toss it in to cook. And yes, "grab some" is the measurement. I told you in advance this wasn't really a recipe!

When the spaghetti is ready, drain it and mix it in the pasta pot with the tomato sauce. Serve it in a bowl and top it with a chiffonade of basil. What? You don't have a chiffonade of basil? Neither did I, but I quickly rectified the situation. I told you in advance this was more a state of mind than a recipe...

The result was exactly what I was looking for. Richness from the olive oil, pungent depth from the garlic, and drawn together perfectly by the essence of the tomato.

All in all, I think I did pretty well.

I'm still very much looking to having Sherry back tomorrow, though.

Magic Fridge - Now With Beer!

2009-08-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

So, the already magic meat and cheese curing fridge got a bit more magical.

I see your meat and cheese. And I raise you beer!

The meat at the moment is a bit meager - just a few kielbasa hanging for a bit to tighten up, and the cheese is currently hidden away in side drawers. The beer, on the other hand, is going full steam.

We have two batches on tap in the magic fridge - a Belgian Tripel IPA (which I am sure will get its own post in future) and a kegged version of our Piggish IPA.

Freedom from bottling is a wonderful thing!

All hail the magic fridge!

Tuscan Salami and Our New Meat / Cheese Slicer

2009-07-28T09:58:00.001-07:00

Just because we haven't said anything for a while about our magic meat and cheese curing fridge, that doesn't mean there hasn't been anything going on. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Case in point: our latest foray into the world of dry-cured sausages - Tuscan Salami.

After having great success with Saucisson Sec, which is about the most basic cured sausage you can make, we decided to up the ante and do a fermented, cured sausage. Tuscan Salami seemed like a very good place to start. Like Saucisson Sec, it is made from simply seasoned pork - in this case with garlic, a touch of fennel and a bit of red wine (the recipe we used was from Charcuterie).

Tuscan Salami is a larger beast than we've made before, and thus called for a larger casing. We used narrow beef middles. This should give you a picture of the initial size:

As I mentioned earlier, this is a fermented sausage. Fermentation adds that characteristic twangy bite that is prototypical of what I, as an American, think of as a "salami".

The fermentation process starts by mixing sugars (dextrose and dry milk powder, which adds lactose) into the sausage meat base and then adding in a small amount of a beneficial live culture: Bactoferm F-RM-52. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the resulting raw, stuffed sausages then rest for 12 hours at about 85ºF while the culture (the good bugs) eat the sugars and produce lactic acid. If all goes well, the pH decreases enough to turn the raw meat mixture into a decidedly unattractive place for any bad bugs out there (and adds that nice, tangy flavor as well - a very pleasant side effect). Afterward, the freshly fermented sausage doesn't really look any different, but it has most definitely changed.

Next up is the drying time in the magic fridge. A mere four weeks later, it emerged looking like this:

Fermentation is not the only new trick in our cured meat arsenal, however. We decided that we needed a slicer to do justice to the gems that our magic fridge has been turning out. After scouring Amazon reviews it was pretty easy to decided on the Chef's Choice 610 Premium Electric Food Slicer from EdgeCraft. Unless you are willing to spending the $500-$1000 it takes to get a commercial quality slicer, at $100 the Chef's Choice 610 seemed like the clear best bet. As one reviewer put it, "this is not a commercial machine but it thinks it is".

So far, we've been extremely happy with it. It easily slices super-thin slices of salami (and cheese).

The result of our foray into the world of fermented, dry-cured sausages and the acquisition of new slicing apparatus have both paid off handsomely:

Definitely the nicest cured sausage we've made so far (which is good, since we made a lot of it!). The thin slices our new slicer provides taste noticeably better than hand-cut. The skinnier slices are all surface area and make for rich, meaty, aromatic morsels.

We've been eating a lot of the salami straight up with crackers and maybe a bit of cheese, but it has been fun to use in other contexts as well. We did a nice grilled pizza with it the other day and, given our current "have meat, must make banh mi" mindset, this was inevitable:

Rancho La Puerta and La Cocina Que Canta

2009-07-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of being invited down to Tecate to spend the day at fitness resort/spa Rancho La Puerta and their associated cooking school, La Cocina Que Canta. We met up with other local food bloggers and some folks from Slow Food Urban at the Old Town Trolley Station - the point of departure for their new one-day Saturday program.

On the way down, Marketing Director Peter Jensen gave us an overview of the rich history of the Ranch. In operation since 1940, Rancho La Puerta was founded by Edmond Szekely and his wife Deborah (pictured below). Szekely, who had been holding health camps all over the world, settled on Tecate as a permanent location.

The impression you get from hearing Peter talk about the Szekely's is that the division of responsibilities was pretty clear from the beginning - Edmond was the visionary and would lecture the guests in his philosophy of healthy living while Deborah managed everything else. Now in her late 80's, she seems to still be very much the driving force behind Rancho La Puerta.

Located on a sprawling 3000 acre property (most of it undeveloped), the Ranch is a very appealingly peaceful place. Following a tour of the facilities (which include swimming pools, gymnasiums, hiking trails and, of course, the spa) we had a light lunch. The food is health conscious and vegetable-focused, but was vibrant and flavorful. Most of the produce they use comes from their own garden.

Following lunch, with everyone else scattered to their various massages, pedicures and what have you, I happily relaxed with a book in a shady, outdoor seating area and passed a very pleasant couple of hours.

When we regrouped, we headed off for a short drive to the Ranch's cooking school. La Cocina Que Canta ("the kitchen that sings") has only been operating for a short while (about a year, if I recall correctly).

The space is beautiful and welcoming.

I was a bit taken aback as we entered the kitchen and were greeted by the chef who was... Belgian! Not exactly what I was expecting from a cooking class in Mexico, but it turns out that they often have guest chefs giving their classes. In this case, the chef was Michel Stroot, who had been the chef at The Golden Door (founded by, but no longer owned by the Szekely family).

After a brief introduction, we were whisked out into the garden to collect a few remaining ingredients for the meal. The 6-acre organic farm is managed by Deborah's daughter. There was a huge variety of produce and herbs, all at various stages of maturity. As we toured through the garden, we picked celery, parsley and chives.

Back in the kitchen, it was time to divide into groups, pick a recipe and start cooking. Sherry and I worked on the appetizer - Quinoa Papaya Mold with Crab Meat and Citrus Dressing. I don't tend to be a big quinoa fan, so I was surprised at how much I liked this dish. Ribbons of red pepper (painstakingly, and expertly julienned by Sherry) added visual appeal, bits of celery (painstakingly, if not expertly chopped by yours truly) added a nice texture, and the acid bite of the dressing brought everything together.

The soup - Chilled Cream of Corn Soup with Avocado, Lime and Red Pepper Coulis was also very good. The coulis, in addition to being quite pretty, added a nice flavor contrast to the sweet corn base. We liked it so much we've since made it at home, and it was great a second time as well.

The main dish was grilled tilapia with two sauces - a tomatillo salsa and a chipotle cream sauce, both of which had fantastic depth of flavor. Sides were green beans with toasted sesame seeds, fingerling potatoes with parsley, and very nicely handmade corn tortillas. Dessert was a Plum Apple Compote with Orange Meringue (garnished with edible flowers from the garden).

All in all, a lovely meal, a fantastic setting and good company. What more could you ask for?

Churros, of course!

Yep, there is always room left for churros. On the brief drive back to the border, we lobbied heavily to stop at a churro vendor whose praises Peter had convincingly sung earlier in the day.

Churros, when freshly and expertly made, are a perfect thing - hot, crispy morsels of finger food composed purely of delicious carbs and fat with nothing else in the way to detract from them.

These particular churros were absolutely fresh and expertly made, and provided the perfect ending to a very nice day.

Rye IPA - Partial Mash Recipe

2009-07-08T11:13:00.001-07:00

Ever since we first had a pint of Alpine Beer Company's Nelson Golden Rye IPA, we have been wanting to brew a "RyePA". Given that we didn't have any of the New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hops that Alpine's beer is named after, creating a Nelson clone was out of the question. Still, we figured we could take a shot at the "Golden Rye IPA" part.

The rye in our recipe is whole malted rye grain. Rye malt is not available in extract form, which was one of our motivations for moving to partial mash brewing.

This is what the rye looks like cracked:

Definitely darker in color than malted barley - below you can see them together for comparison:

Rye has twice the coloration potential as barley - about 3.7L vs 1.8L (the "L" stands for Lovibond, a unit of color measurement). Given this, we were a bit worried that we would not be able to achieve the bright, golden, "West Coast IPA" look that we wanted. Our standard IPA recipe uses a bit of crystal malt specialty grain, but to counter the increased color potential, we were careful to use a very light version (10L) - we even considered dropping it altogether.

Color wasn't a problem, though, as you can see here:

Exactly what we were going for. Pretty much the same color as our Blind Pig ("Piggish") clone. We used very similar recipes for both beers, with exception of substituting rye for about 12% of the grain in the mash and increasing the hops in secondary.

Below, you can see the two beers side-by-side (the rye is on the right):

Any perceived difference in color is mostly due to lighting - they looked virtually identical save for a difference in carbonation.

And the taste? Also similar, yet different. I would say that the rye added a more round and complex malt flavor. We've tasted them together a number of times now: sometimes I prefer one, sometimes the other. Depends on my mood. A little variety (even if subtle) is nice to have, though, and we'll definitely be making this beer again.

Piggish Rye IPA

Total batch size = 5 gallons; Partial Mash in 3 gallon beverage cooler; ~3 gallon 60 minute stove-top boil; very late malt extract addition; dry hopped for aroma; target abv of 6.5%.

3 3/4 lb 2-Row Pale Malt
3/4 lb Rye Malt
1/2 lb 10L Crystal Malt
1/2 lb Carapils/Dextrin Malt
1/2 lb Wheat Malt
4 1/4 lb Briess Golden Light Dry Malt Extract (DME)
2 oz Columbus Hops (12.3% AA)
2 oz Cascade Hops (6% AA)
1 1/2 oz Simcoe Hops (13.2% AA)
1 oz Centennial Hops (8% AA)
1 tablet Whirlfloc
White Labs WLP001 California Ale Yeast
4 oz corn sugar (for bottle priming)

Hop Schedule:

1 oz Columbus - 60 minutes boil
1/2 oz Cascade - 30 minutes boil
1 oz Cascade - 15 minutes boil
1/4 oz Columbus - 2 minutes boil
1/2 oz Simcoe - 2 minutes boil
1 oz Columbus - Dry Hop in Secondary Fermenter
1/2 oz Cascade - Dry Hop in Secondary Fermenter
1 oz Simcoe - Dry Hop in Secondary Fermenter
1 oz Centennial - Dry Hop in Secondary Fermenter

Heat 8.25 quarts water to 165 degrees for a target mash temperature of 150-153 degrees. Place the 6 pounds of crushed grain (2-Row Pale, Rye, 10L Crystal, Carapils and Wheat) into a large mesh bag. Pour the hot water into the beverage cooler, then lower the grain bag into the water very slowly, pushing and prodding with a large spoon to ensure all the grain is wet (this can take several minutes). Put the lid on the cooler and allow to rest 60 minutes.

While the grains are mashing, heat another 4-5 quarts of water to 180-185 degrees for sparging (rinsing the grains). Near the end of the 60 minutes, heat 2 quarts of water to a boil in your brew pot.

After the first mash is complete, remove the cooler lid and open the spigot to draw off about 2 quarts of wort into a large pitcher. The first few draws will likely be cloudy with grain particles; if so, pour it gently back into the cooler over the grain bag to help filter it. Draw off the remaining wort by the pitcher-full and carefully pour that wort into the boiling water in your brew pot; continue until only a trickle of wort leaves the spigot.

Pour about 4 quarts of your hot sparge water over the grain bag in the cooler. Gently lift the bag up and down to thoroughly re-wet the grains (but don't slosh). Cover and let sit about 5 minutes. Use the spigot and a pitcher to draw off all of the second wort and add it to your brew pot. You should have about 3 gallons of wort.

Bring the wort to a boil and add hops according to the schedule. At time zero, remove from heat and add the DME one pound at a time, stirring to dissolve (alternatively, with 15 minutes left, carefully begin adding DME by the cup-full, stirring well between each addition; at time zero, add the remaining DME off the heat). Stir in 1 tablet Whirlfloc. Cover and let sit 10-15 minutes.

Move brew pot to an ice bath and cool quickly to less than 80 degrees. Transfer wort to a primary fermenter, straining most of the hops. Add water to reach the 5 gallon mark. Swirl vigorously then pitch the yeast.

Ferment in primary for 1 week, then transfer to secondary and dry hop with 1 oz Columbus, 1/2 oz Cascade, 1 oz Simcoe and 1 oz Centennial. Bottle or keg after fermentation is complete (2 to 3 weeks in secondary).