Super Bowl Weekend
February 1st, 2008
Hey, you over there, put down the Lays and jar of onion dip. Yeah you. I know it’s Super Bowl weekend, and the football fan in me knows that such an event allows, nay demands, a certain type of food. We call it Football Food. But you can make your own. And it will be better — much better — and more bacony.
Simply Recipes has an authoritative round-up on Super Bowl recipes featuring everything from classics (potato skins, hot wings, various and sundry dips) to the truly frightening. Okay, so I was honestly curious about the Beer Cheese Cupcakes with Bacon Cheddar Frosting — if that’s not a manly dessert, what is? — but then I saw the “beer” in question: Budweiser Select. What’s a sell-respecting beer drinking to do? Guiness cupcakes, of course.
Book: Cooking with Booze
December 20th, 2007
Ah, a book after my own heart: Cooking with Booze. We all know how to cook with wine by now, and thankfully Cooking with Booze focuses more energy on spirits, beer, and hard cider. Even better, whiskey gets the biggest section of all.
The recipes in Cooking with Booze lean towards traditional English fare, with a few adventurous side trips abroad. Some recipes that piqued my interest were Potato Salad with Beer Dressing, Whisky Pancakes, Brandy-baked Brie, and Roast Pork with Apple Stuffing and Cider Sauce.
You can buy the book (obligatory Amazon.com link), or you can view it in it’s entirety online, with the occasional video.
No Knead Bread, Revisited
December 6th, 2007
As one of the billions of people now enjoying New York Times’ (in)famous No Knead Bread on a semi-regular basis, Cook’s Illustrated’s recent revisions piqued my interest. If you don’t have a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, you can get a rundown of the changes here.
No Knead Bread, photo licensed under CC courtesy of Taryn Domingos.
Essentially, Cook’s Illustrated addresses the major issues people were having — namely, the dough falling during transfer to the pan, and lack of flavor. Additional salt seems to help address the latter, but the article suggests substituting small amounts of vinegar and beer into your liquid to give the bread some additional complexity.
They also suggest several small procedural changes, including 15 seconds of kneading. Heresy, I know.
Michelada
November 22nd, 2007
Michelada
Michelada
- Juice from half a lime
- Coarse salt
- A dash Tabasco
- A dash Worcestershire Sauce
- Ice
- Negro Modelo
Rim a highball glass or tumbler with lime and salt. Squeeze lime into the bottom of the glass, then add Tabasco and Worcestershire; mix. Fill glass with ice. Carefully pour in beer — it’ll want to foam over. Enjoy, topping off the beer as necessary.
Chocolate delicious accident from beer byproduct
November 12th, 2007
National Geographic News has summarized new research on the emergence of chocolate from beer-making — placing the use of chocolate 500 years earlier than previously thought.
The researchers seem to think that people saw these useless, discarded cacao seeds, roasted them and then made a horrible bitter drink that then took off and has become the fantabulous variety of chocolates we have today—which seems reasonable enough. The end of the article is a little bizarre with a random chef discussing how this research could:
… fuel creativity and spark the imagination of chocolatiers and chefs. … As a result, we get new ideas about using chocolate in savory as well as sweet dishes and about pairing the flavors of chocolate with other flavors, too.
I really don’t see how the discovery that chocolate was found earlier than previously thought will change the way we experiment with chocolate. I suppose it would be interesting to see someone do something like oh, say, a savory sauce made with chocolate and peppers. What I want to know is what this fermented cacao fruit drink tastes like.
Cork’d for beer? Not quite.
November 9th, 2007
Having been a huge fan of wine mega-site Cork’d for some time, I’ve always hoped and prayed for — and on several occasions considered making — an equivalent service for the beer lovers among us.
So imagine my excitement when Dan Cederholm, one of the original creators of Cork’d and web designer supreme, announced his new beer-themed service today: Foamee.
And imagine my disappointment when the service turns out to be not equivalent to Cork’d on any front, but just a Twitter log of who owes who a beer on the Internet. I got out of bed for this?