Category: Cucina

One thing I forgot to highlight in my discussion of our visit to the Erdinger brewery was their product line, which is a lot more diverse than I had previously realized. In addition to the fact that they are currently the leading producer of wheat beer in the world, they also have a number of other products, including a slightly lower alcohol, low-CO2 version of their wheat beer designed for consumption in nightclubs, and an alkoholfrei version (see picture to right).

When I was a snotnosed punk, new to good beer and full of sneers for all things bad beer, I didn’t understand the point of alcohol-free beer. Why not just drink a Coke? I thought. Now I think I get it better, thanks to the experiences of some friends and family members who can no longer drink the full-alcohol variety. If one of the big points of beer is the taste, why should NA beer drinkers be limited to just a few different flavors? In fact it seems that a number of German breweries produce at least one NA flavor, including Erdinger, Paulaner, Clausthaler, and others. I didn’t get a chance to taste Paulaner’s version so no detailed tasting notes this time. But the picture is fun at least.

It’s good to see BeerAdvocate, the site that has consistently had the best and broadest selection of beer reviews and information about pubs, getting some recognition. On the heels of last week’s Top 100 Beers, this week they’re getting linkage from CNET for their list of the Top 50 Places to Have a Beer In America. (Sounds like a candidate for Lists of Bests, doesn’t it?)

The funny part is I’ve visited two of the places in the Top Five: Toronado in San Francisco (though my last visit was over a year ago) and our own Publick House. I was interested to see the large number of places in Massachusetts I haven’t visited, and astonished to see that there were so many in Virginia. Esta, you’ll have to check out the Capital Ale House and let us know how it is. But but but… no places in Seattle? I would have thought the Hilltop Ale House would rate at least a mention, but it doesn’t look like it’s even been reviewed.

NYT: The Oyster Is His World. What is it about oysters that inspire great food writing? The article about tireless oyster promoter Jon Rowley (who happens to be the same guy who first shipped Copper River king salmon fresh rather than canned or frozen, so pay attention) is a great read.

Particularly interesting from my historical perspective: the description of Totten Inlet Virginicas, oysters native to the Chesapeake Bay where I grew up and which are now farmed in a bay off Puget Sound, as “the best oyster on the planet… uncommonly plump and sweet, with a memorably pronounced mineral finish.” Interestingly, Rowley credits micro-algæ for much of the character and flavor of the oysters, meaning that they might not taste so sublime coming from the Chesapeake. Still, I don’t know: oyster shells are the preferred paving material for driveways in the part of the world I grew up in, primarily because people insatiably ate so many of the things (at least prior to the James River kepone pollution problems and the Dermo and MSX epidemics) that they were about the cheapest building material around.

NY Times: Much Ado About Mutton, but Not in These Parts – New York Times. It’s rare that I read about a meat that I’ve never either cooked or eaten, but this article on mutton in the Times made me want to go rent a cooler to hang some mutton in for a few weeks.

Especially love the quotation from that modest monarch Louis XVIII, who wrote, “Sacrifice, if you please, three mutton cutlets for every one required. Tie them together, with the choicest and tenderest one in the middle. Grill them, turning them over often so that the juice of the two outer cutlets pervades the one between. When the outer ones are more than cooked, take all three off the fire with infinite precaution and serve only the middle one.” Now that’s something you’ll never see on the Food Network.

NYT: Decanting Robert Parker. The premise of the article is that Robert Parker, whose 100 point wine rating system and apparent love of big wines has revolutionized the industry, feels that he’s being made a scapegoat for everything that is wrong with the wine industry today.

Oh well. The price of fame.

Still, among the self pity, there are some interesting notes: that it would be a full time job for one wine reviewer to cover the wines of Italy (I think it would require at least two FTEs myself); that the variety available in the wine market today is greater than it has ever been in modern memory, and “we see evidence in southern Italy with the reclamation and resurrection of all these indigenous varietals that had long been sold off to co-ops”; that the apparent sameness of taste that many critics argue is a negative result of Parker’s influence is because “most wines are being tasted when they are too young”; that he wants to do a book on value wines, “Just a little pocket book. I think it would establish the fact that I’m not just a guy who is used by speculators to drive up prices.”

Sounds good. Let’s see it. I for one would welcome the reversal of one modern wine trend: that value wines nearly double in price within three years of their discovery (see southern Italy, Spain, and Chile for three recent examples).

It’s been a nice long holiday so far. We saw Lisa’s parents off this morning, mine came yesterday. We took Esta skiing and have generally been having a good time. It’s been nice getting away from everything, including the blog, for a while, just to think and be with family. I highly recommend it.

Oh, the title? Just a quick note: if you want to cook a duck with good flavor and a crispy skin without drowning in fat, pack your hairdryer and your Marcella Hazan. I wish I had thought to get pictures of my wife and my mother-in-law bending over our two ducks for Christmas dinner, fresh out of their boil in the pot, waving a hairdryer over them with intense concentration. It was worthwhile. The skin was thin and crispy, the meat flavorful without being greasy.

On this Thanksgiving day, a year after my last epic cooking adventures, things are oddly quiet here. We’re much better prepared than I was last year; we’ll be eating an hour later but just about everything is done or pre-cooked so I’m able to relax and write this blog post.

For the record, our menu this year:

• Roasted brined turkey a la Alton
• Cider sage gravy
• Mashed potatoes with fried sage leaves
• Sausage and apple dressing
• Roasted harvest root vegetables
• Swiss chard with garlic and anchovies a la Two Fat Ladies
• Homemade cranberry sauce
• Pumpkin gelato
• Apple pie

(You may detect a few repeats from last year. I must confess: my spirit, and my crowded calendar, quailed a bit at the thought of doing another menu entirely from scratch this year.)

Lastly, my thanks for the past year and a great job, two great choral groups, a wonderful wife, two working showers and air conditioning (and no oil heat or radiators) in our house, our supportive families, and the most ridiculously cute Bichons ever.

The New York Times has an unusual food article today—unusual for the run-up to Thanksgiving, anyway: The Pilgrims Didn’t Brine, in which their writer canvasses a number of chefs to find the simplest possible turkey preparation that still turns out well.

Given my adventures last year, their findings—start with a fresh, locally raised turkey; roast at 425, and tent the breast with foil to keep it from cooking too fast; then let rest for a half hour—sound pretty good. I’m still probably going to brine, though this year I think I’ll make the brine on Tuesday so it will have enough time to cool.

I had an unspeakably foul beverage this morning at Starbucks that made me think, hard, about food, about what we choose to eat and drink and what it says about us. And it called to mind some uncomfortable thoughts that have been rattling around in my mind since reading the excerpts from Cory Doctorow’s latest novel on Salon.

I have long maintained that Starbucks is fundamentally a milk company rather than a coffee company. It was around the time that coffee took one of its periodic jumps in price that Starbucks introduced Frappuchinos, after all. Even at the time it struck me as a canny way to react to a coffee supply disruption: create demand for a product that is mostly not coffee. By volume, certainly, Starbucks sells far more milk than coffee.

None of this has ever bothered me, primarily because I stick to drip coffee, Americanos, and “poisonously strong” double espressos. But this week I got a mailer from Starbucks informing me that they had loaded my card with an extra $5, and, since the weather is getting colder, would I like to try a Pumpkin Spice Latte? This morning it was colder—44 degrees when I walked the dogs—so I thought, why not.

Why not is that Pumpkin Spice Latte tastes like ass. Worse, it tastes like sweet ass, and not in a good way. As Cory Doctorow wrote in the second installment of Themepunks about another ubiquitous American institution, IHOP:

Caramel pancakes with whipped cream, maple syrup and canned strawberries. When I was a kid, we called that candy. These people will sell you an eight dollar, 18-ounce plate of candy …

Or a $4, 16 ounce cup of it.

Despite my need for coffee, I tossed the latte after a few sips. It was vile and I’m back to espressos.

But it made me think: what is it that makes us crave this stuff? People, to all appearances, eat lots of candy. (You can certainly tell if you fly with Americans, particularly in the Midwest, particularly when you’re in a middle seat and a couple of 350 pound guys are on either side of you.) Is it that we never grew up? Were we denied candy as kids? Or did we never find out that there was something better?

I regret making a crack about Bavarian food last night without putting it in context. One of the most spectacular things about Oktoberfest was the smell of the food—primarily the spit-roasted chickens for sheer olfactory pleasure, but with contributions from sausages, potatoes and other delights. In fact, I ate well all week.

Too well. I gained five pounds in the seven days I spent on the ground, and would have kept going had it not been for a mounting sense of bloat. Which is only natural, really. I don’t think that even the locals eat Bavarian cuisine all the time. It’s not possible. To see what I mean, here’s a rundown of some of the meals I had:

• Schweinshaxe (crackled pig’s leg): The first joint of a pig’s leg, grilled until the skin crackles; served with kraut and potatoes. The meat was exquisitely flavorful and unbelievably greasy.
• A dish of rahmschwammerl (meatballs) and button mushrooms with spätzle. The meatballs were airy but huge, and the sauce on the spätzle was deceptively deadly. I couldn’t finish the plate.
• Chunks of deer meat in a brown sauce with potatoes and a salad. This was one of the lighter meals.
• On Saturday the four of us went to the Nuernberger Bratwurst Gloeckl am Dom (an Augustiner restaurant, naturally) and ate a platter of 25 grilled bratwursts (which mercifully are small, about the size of a breakfast link), along with a few Münchner Stadwürste, on a bed of sauerkraut with horseradish and the most sublime warm potato salad I’ve ever eaten.

Add to that a beer or two—generally hefeweizen, dunkel, or the Oktoberfest wies’n beer—and the effect is total gastric paralysis. Not to be too graphic here, but when I got home it took a week of intensive fiber before I felt even close to normal.

But God, it was worth it. Oh those bratwurst! Oh that beer!

Bonus links: Beyond brez’n and bratwurst; Oktoberfest at Epicurious; and threads about relocating to Munich, eating in the city, and general tips for Bavarian food from eGullet.

After months of cajoling, I finally convinced Lisa to try the Publick House, which I got excited about a year ago after reading the recommendation in the Globe. The reality: the beer is every bit as good as they say; the food is good, but not quite up to my elevated expectations; and the crowd is much much younger than I would have guessed.

Lisa and I arrived on Sunday night and hit the first hard reality: the place was packed and there was no host to give us an idea about wait times. Fortunately as I hovered I spotted a couple leaving the back room and we pounced on the table. Beers, in the meantime, were quite good: we started with an Ommegang Hennepin and a Whale’s Tail Pale Ale, both on draft, both excellent.

Perhaps it was just a “back to class” night, but we were just about the oldest people in the room, which isn’t a normal experience for me at beer-related venues. We shrugged and ordered, sticking on the “pub grub” side of things. Lisa’s andouille sandwich was excellent as were the fries; my upscale mac and cheese, topped with some undistinguished sausage or other, was good but not the “great 8” wonder that I was expecting from the menu. I wonder what the food experience would have been if we had tried some of the other menu items — sadly, the mussels promise in the Boston.com article were not on the menu.

Good fun. I think I’ll have to find someone else to go back with me next time, though. Niall, you interested?

NY Times: In Virginia Beach, Restaurants Where the Food Moves Sideways. Probably the first time that a New York Times reviewer has darkened the door of a Chick’s Oyster Bar. Props to Mimi Sheraton (is that a real name??) for finding the restaurants in the list, referencing Beautiful Swimmers, and calling out Hatteras clam chowder, on which I was raised. Boos for missing the Duck-In, which has a lousy buffet but the finest bucket of boiled shrimp, and one of the finest views, money can buy.

Lisa and I were lucky enough to get an old friend, Daria, to join us for dinner last night. I knew Daria from my undergrad years at UVA, where she was the roommate of Caroline, a good friend in the physics program. Then I bumped into her at Sloan. In about three weeks we’ll lose Daria to the vast midwest, where she’ll be relocating to join her fianc&eacute. So we were thrilled that we finally got her to join us for dinner, and we pulled out all the stops with three experimental dishes.

Lisa made a version of a broth-based minestrone with cabbage, zucchini, carrots, onions, garlic, celery, tomato, white beans, and herbs. We jointly produced a pollo diavolo — a broiling chicken flattened, covered with crushed black peppercorns and a little salt, marinated with olive oil and lemon juice, and grilled. And the meal ended with a black cherry granita: tasty but not quite right (perhaps a little too sweet—we’ll definitely make it again and play with the proportions).

Now that Lisa is regularly traveling for business, it was nice to have the chance to collaborate in the kitchen with her on a weeknight. My only regret is there wasn’t much chicken left over. Maybe next time I’ll make two.