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Beer Scribes in the Kitchen for Thanksgiving

Posted November 23, 2010 by Julie Johnson 0 Comments | Post a Comment

Brewing is a notoriously male world. But some of the best writing on beer is not in GQ or Esquire, but at BellaOnline: The Voice of Women, where Carolyn Smagalski, a.k.a. the Beer Fox conveys the complexity of beer in clear and entertaining prose.

By paying attention to women in the beer world and to beer and food among other topics, Carolyn has opened the door to beer culture for countless women. But male beer enthusiasts are missing out if they don’t put beer.bellaonline.com on their list of regular sites to visit.

Here’s the Beer Fox’s conclusion to a festive meal, a decadent dessert that incorporates “lovely, lusty beer,” as she puts it. —JJ

New Orleans Pecan Pie

Carolyn Smagalski

With huge, full-flavored pecans, a grande finale sweeps the charts with just a touch of manic sweetness.

Ingredients:

• 10-inch unbaked pie shell
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 4 ounces Dogfish Head Immort Ale
• ½ cup light corn syrup
• ¼ cup wildflower honey
• 1 teaspoon Madagascar vanilla
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• ¾ cup pecan halves

1. Preheat oven to 325 °F.

2. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs.  Add sugar and flour. Beat until fluffy.  Add beer, corn syrup, wildflower honey, vanilla, butter, and chopped pecans.  Mix thoroughly to distribute ingredients evenly.

3. Transfer into unbaked pie shell.  Garnish top with pecan halves.

4. Bake for 70 minutes, or until center is set and crust is lightly browned.  Serve while slightly warm.  Garnish with a dopple of whipped cream.

Health benefit:  Rich in 19 vitamins and minerals, including vitamin A, vitamin B-complex vitamins, vitamin E, folic acid, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, antioxidant properties.

Beer Scribes in the Kitchen for Thanksgiving

Posted November 22, 2010 by Julie Johnson 0 Comments | Post a Comment

On my bookshelf is a swingtop bottle of beer from the Faust Brewery in Miltenberg, Bavaria, labeled with a photograph of a dozen beer writers —a surprise gesture from the brewery to commemorate our visit in 2007.

Standing to my right in the picture is a beaming Lisa Morrison, a woman whose sunny nature must brighten the sometimes drizzly city of Portland where she lives. Beer writing used to be her off-hours occupation while she kept her day job in journalism, breaking some important stories in the early hours. But, with a Beer Writer of the Year award and a guidebook to the breweries of Oregon to her credit, she’s claimed the handle Beer Goddess and moved to the brew side full time.

Still in the broadcasting world, she is the producer and host of “Beer O’Clock!—The Show for People who Love Great Beer.” It’s live each weekend in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest through the Radio Northwest Network and can also be heard on Saturdays at 3 p.m. PT on kxl.com. You can get the podcast on iTunes, kxl.com and beergoddess.com.

Here’s what the Beer Goddess creates in the kitchen. —JJ

Lisa Morrison’s Cranbeer-y Relish

Published in The Christmas Table: Recipes and Crafts to Create Your Own Holiday Tradition by Diane Morgan

Makes 2 1/4 cups

Ingredients:

• 1 12 ounce bottle Lindemans’s Framboise Lambic beer
• 1 12 ounce package fresh or frozen cranberries
• 1/4 cup finely diced crystallized ginger (see Cook’s Note)
• 1/4 cup sugar (or more or less to taste)

1. In a deep four-quart saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the beer to a boil. Add the cranberries, ginger, and sugar.

2. Adjust the heat so the mixture simmers and stir to dissolve the sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the cranberries have popped open, about 10-15 minutes. You can assist the cranberries by pushing against them and the side of the saucepan with a spoon. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.

3. Refrigerate in a covered jar or container until ready to serve. The relish can be made up to 10 days in advance.

Tomorrow: An over-the-top pecan pie brings Thanksgiving dinner to a stupendous close.

Beer Scribes in the Kitchen for Thanksgiving

Posted November 21, 2010 by Julie Johnson 0 Comments | Post a Comment

The man with the bow tie who is cracking dreadful puns in three languages is Horst Dornbusch. Raised in Northern Germany, educated at Reed College in Oregon, Horst has straddled at least two cultures ever since, interpreting German brewing to Americans and American brewing to Germans.

On a trip through Bavaria a few years ago, he shepherded a group of American beer writers who, to Horst’s evident relief, always managed to stay just on the right side of behaving badly. Beer in food was not much in evidence, but beer with food was at every stop: baked stuffed onion with Schlenkerla smoke beer; roast pork with malty, dark beers.

At our final stop of the trip, the Zötler Brewery in the mountainous Allgäu region, I tasted goose for the first time, rich and delicious on a cold night that threatened snow, and washed down with more terrific beer. I knew from a newspaper article I once saw that Horst sometimes presides over beer-based roast goose in his own kitchen, and here he shares it with us. —JJ

Beer Bird in the Oven

Horst Dornbusch

This recipe is particularly good with goose, although it can be made with any fowl, including chicken and turkey. The recipe below is for a bird of 12 to 16 pounds. Reduce or increase the quantities, if your bird is bigger or smaller. Baking time is about 25 minutes per pound at 400 °F. Serve with boiled chestnuts, red cabbage and egg noodles.

Ingredients:

• 1 12 to 16 pound goose (or chicken or turkey)
• Salt/black pepper
• ½ cup dried herbs (mugwort is best, but hard to find; marjoram and/or sage are suitable substitutes)
• 1 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 sweet apple, diced (Delicious or Macintosh, for instance)
• 1 sour apple, diced (Granny Smith, for instance)
• 1 medium white onion, diced
• 5 cups (40 fl. ounces; almost 4 bottles) dark ale (Most porters are suitable, but avoid chocolate- or coffee-flavored stouts and porters!)

1. Preheat oven to at 400 °F.

2. Rub the bird and out with pepper and salt. Rub the bird cavity with dried herbs.

3. Dice the apples and the onion. Chop the parsley. Stuff goose with mixture of apples, onion, and parley. Pour 1 cup dark ale into the bird cavity for additional moisture. Close cavity openings with skewers to hold stuffing in.

3. Place bird breast down on rack with dripping pan and bake for one-third of the total time. (Weigh stuffed bird if necessary; plan on a baking time of approximately 25 minutes per pound.)

4. Remove bird from oven briefly. Prick skin with skewer or fork to render fat. If bird is very fatty, empty drippings into a grease separator cup and set aside. Turn bird on one side, douse with about 1 cup of dark ale, and return to oven.

5. Bake for one-sixth of the total time. Remove bird from oven a second time. Prick skin with a skewer or fork again to render more fat and set aside the drippings. Turn bird on the other side, douse again with about 1 cup of dark ale, and return to oven.

6. Bake for another one-sixth of the total time. Remove bird from oven a third time, prick skin and empty additional drippings. Turn the bird on its back, douse again with about 1 cup of dark ale, and return to oven for the final third of the total baking time.

7. For the gravy, separate grease from drippings. Pour the de-greased drippings into saucepan, add 1 cup dark ale, thicken with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and cook until of gravy consistency.

8. Remove bird from oven, cover loosely with foil and let rest for at least 25 minutes before carving.

Tomorrow: A beautifully roasted bird needs a sweet-tart relish for contrast. Add a dash of Belgian lambic for emphasis.

Beer Scribes in the Kitchen for Thanksgiving

Posted November 20, 2010 by Julie Johnson 0 Comments | Post a Comment

Beer writers rarely wear tuxedos; it’s not their natural garb. But in my photo collection is a picture of Matt Stinchfield, puckish behind square-rimmed glasses, seemingly comfortable in a penguin suit at a reception for Prince Luitpold, the brewer prince of Bavaria.

At other times, Matt has been found among the other beer judges at the GABF, or consulting breweries about safety. But in the world of beer and food, Matt is also known as The Palate Jack: “writer, brewer, beer judge, gourmand and sympathetic traveler.” His current projects include a series of cookbooks on beer-friendly food, and he drops recipes and philosophy at palatejack.wordpress.com.

Intrigued, I googled “palate jack” and found instead “pallet jack”—a lift for moving pallets. So I wrote Matt with a guess: had he, as a safety consultant citing a brewery for unsecured heavy machinery, suddenly been struck by how clever the term could be if spelt differently?

Matt answered: “You surmised that Palate Jack comes from Pallet Jack, in terms of elevating or lifting something, in this case your palate! But “jack” is also a clever term, as in “jack of all trades” or a knave. A Québécoise friend told me that in her patois, “un bon jack” means a good guy. So, on a lot of levels I’m, shall we say, ‘the good jack of all trades that elevates the taste experience for your palate.’ Longwinded, but there it is.”

And very rich, but here it is: a velvety beer-tinged cream soup. —JJ

Potato Leek Soup

From The Palate Jack

Ingredients:

• 4 medium to large leeks
• 2 pounds russet potatoes
• 1/4 cup lardons, lean salt pork, ham, salt-cured, not smoked
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, divided
• 1 1/2 cups gueze (un-fruited vintage lambic blend, one 325-355 ml bottle)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 sprig thyme
• 1 teaspoon fresh chives

1. Prepare the leeks by trimming and discarding the roots and most of the green tops, rinsing to remove all grit, and chopping finely into 1/4” pieces. Divide leeks evenly, reserving one half.

2. Peel potatoes and dice into 1/2” cubes; reserve under water in a large bowl to avoid browning.

3. In a 4-quart saucepan, heat 3 quarts water to boiling. In a separate large soup pot of at least 6 quarts capacity, melt 1/4 cup of butter and slowly heat the lardons to render their fat. Avoid overly darkening the lardons. Remove the lardons with a slotted spoon, drain on paper towels, and reserve. Add half of the chopped leeks to the butter and cook on medium heat until soft, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid browning. Deglaze with the bottle of gueuze. Drain the peeled potatoes and add to the pot. Add the boiling water, bay leaf, salt and white pepper. Simmer for at least 30 minutes, until the potatoes are falling apart and the leeks are very tender.

4. While the soup is cooking, sauté the reserved leeks in the remaining butter until soft, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

5. Back to the soup, remove and discard the bay leaves, then carefully purée the hot soup in a blender in batches until smooth. You may have to jockey pots to accomplish this, but you should end up with the puréed soup and the sautéed leeks in the same pot. Taste for seasoning and correct salt and pepper if needed. If the soup is too thin, reduce with constant stirring until consistency is that of a thick sauce.

6. Stir in the cooked lardons, cream, and thyme. Heat soup through and serve immediately with chopped chives as a garnish.

Tomorrow: Move over, turkey, and make way for the Thanksgiving goose, speaking German and basted with beer.