3 Cheeseketeers IV: Round Sampling

A short film documenting the drama.

The Mikkeller was a present (and the best).

3Cheese Stated Purpose:
To taste different beers and cheese. Specifically tonight, to taste groupings of similar beers (i.e. 3 hoppy reds in a row), with cheeses that go well with the general category. This was accomplished by buying singles out of 6 packs, which runs contrary to our typical approach of buying a few expensive big bottles.

The plan sketched out on an envelope.

Highlights/Recommendations:
Cabot Cloth-bound Cheddar with Lagunitas Lil' Sumpin' Ale
Port Salut with Mikkeller Not Your Average Wit
Comparing different IPAs, also comparing different stouts.

All of the beers.

Mistakes/Cautions:
Mikkeller's I Beat youU - not well balanced enough to temper the powerful hoppy alcoholic bite, the first fail from these guys.
Too many beers! We came to a consensus that doing three rounds of tasting is probably ideal. Our taste buds were basically fried by the time we hit the hoppy reds and the stouts. It may be no coincidence that our two favorites came from the first three beers we tried.

Snacks: sweet potato fries with Blueberry Birdseye Chutney

Notes:
Lil Sumpin won a deserved Good Food Award a couple months ago, which encouraged me to take another shot at it (paid off!). Coincidentally, the Grand Teton American Pale Ale that we drink it with did not stand a chance, though it also won a Good Food Award the year before.

Recipe: Blueberry Birdseye Chutney

Heat in a sauce pan:
1 cup vinegar (apple or white)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water

When boiling add:
pint of blueberries
3 meyer lemons seeded and sliced
3-8 birdseye chilis (or any chili) - how hot do you want it?

And:
half inch of ginger finely sliced
tablespoon curry powder
black pepper
salt to taste

Reduce to simmer and allow to thicken and reduce for 1.5-2 hours

Can or put in the fridge in a jar. Or eat hot!

Rapper's De-lite

Bon Rappetite - an Atlanta restaurant.

Serving among other things a dish named Pone Thugs n' Hominy.
Also noteworthy:
Lil Kimchi
Roastface Killah
Creme Puff Daddies

Mark your calendars for Hot Tub Night on Feb 20th - seating available at 6 or 8 person hot tub tables.

Unless it doesn't exist.

Foodie Killed the Radio Star?

Is food the new music?

The energy devoted to food and music is shifting. Music can be got free, freeing up disposable income to be spent on food. But wait, they are two very unique passions, and it is not enough to shovel out the records and carry in the crates of thinly sliced charcuterie and cheese. Or is it?

Over the last couple of years I attempted to fuse the two (food & music) in a blogging project called Some Quality. A primary motivation was my belief that both food and music writing is fairly tedious stylistically. The point is almost always to simply communicate information, and the average reader is reading for facts, not for quality. Reading a review of a great song or meal pushes the reader to go out and experience it. Unfortunately, this means that the information could be conveyed just as well via a tweet or a list with nothing but the name, source, location etc.

Some Quality was a fairly obscure project, and lo and behold, I have moved on to a foodcentric blog. The goal of the Food Drama is not to convince you, dear reader, of my personal opinions, but instead to make suggestions about things you can do.

If food is the new music, then we all have recently become laptop DJs. Our dancehall is the kitchen and our songs the ingredients. Sometimes it is fun to dance to seamless transitions or create mash ups. Sometimes it is fun to sample something you just heard for the first time. I am writing here to offer ideas on how to increase the Food Drama in your life.

Brewpub Mission!

Stoked to go check out the new brewpub in the Mission: Southern Pacific Brewing!

Less stoked that Speakeasy is doing their beer, which is sort of a shame. $3 pale ale pints ain't bad though.

Beer Bars in the Bay

Nice photo slideshow and descriptions.

Kentucky Fried Waffle Tacos: Birthday Party!

Clark and Mose helped fry by standing around and got first dibs

Andy's annual insane food birthday party took place on MLK weekend. Thank you Dr. King for everything you did, and now for one more thing: nothing like a brunch on a Sunday where you don't have to go work on the Monday. And thank you to Andy's sister Laura for the HQ photos. And, Happy Birthday Andy.

Captain Fryer

Ian was in charge of the chicken frying, which took place outside of the house. No one was burned, and no structure fires ignited. Clark brought the waffle maker. Once everything was underway I combined these two often paired foods into the following:

The Waffle Taco

The waffle taco involves half of a waffle folded around a deepfried drumstick, topped with fruit, jam, maple syrup, and caramel. Yes you have to eat around the bone - just like when you eat fried chicken on the bone. And yes, I have trademarked Waffle Taco (C) and purchased waffletacofoodtruck.com. See you on the mean streets of Uptown and Old Oakland.

Jono and the Waffle Taco with an (in)side of pie

After consuming three waffle tacos I was caught unawares and one upped by Jono with his apple pie-in-a-waffle taco. Rather than hang my head in shame I threw a piece of fried chicken on top of his taco and we called it a collaboration.

Necessary ingredients:
Waffle maker
Deep frier/big pot with removable frying insert/deep pot and a slotted spoon
Fire extinguisher (if frying indoors)
Traditional waffle toppings

Chez Danforth: Wine and Cheese and Cheese

Clockwise from 12: parm, young blue, ?, humboldt fog/olives. double creme brie, TJs cotswold double glo

 Mark hosted a wine and cheese tasting on Friday. He obtained four botellas de vino and five cheeses. I brought over two more cheeses and some cervezas. Despite the conversation that we had earlier in the week Mark chose not to follow the advice of Drink This author Dara Grumdahl and obtained four different kinds of wine, from BevMo, all under $10.

According to the first chapter of the book (which is all I've read) Grumdahl says the proper way to go about tasting and learning wine is to follow a specific plan, which primarily involves drinking multiple versions of the same grape (ie Zinfandel). Makes sense because as far as my limited knowledge goes, a Pinot Noir and a Merlot could be either very similar or very different, and your conclusions would be stunted because you are comparing apples and oranges (both sweet? one is acidic?). On the other hand if you drink the same type of grape from different vintages, vineyards, etc. you can look for similarities.

Dog tasting?

Grumdahl says to go out and buy 4 Zinfandels, one cheaper, one around $15 from the same vineyard as the cheaper one, another $15 bottle and then a $25 bottle (about $65 total). She also recommends placing scent clues in wine glasses, so that at your tasting table you have dirt, gunpowder, crushed rasberries, wet rocks, and so forth in wine glasses. I like that part.

Wine over beer?

In terms of wine and cheese, I have heard it said, admittedly by beer enthusiasts, that wine has such a complex taste that pairing it with a random cheese will mostly likely not result in a Level 2 taste experience (which is the highest that scale goes). It seems like just pursuing wine alone might be more profitable. In my experience this is true, which is why I stick to beer, as seen in the photo.

Many thousands of props to Mark for buying doubles of cheeses so that when we ran out, he just opened the fridge and pulled out another brick of Humboldt Fog. Cheese and bread makes for a seductive dinner, but next time we agreed we should eat first in order to quell the cheese lust that overwhelmed us for a few couple minutes.

Onion Dipping

Finally, I have to say that the Trader Joe's  Cotswold Double Gloucester with Onions tastes exactly like onion dip. I gave it to a couple of my students, and they willingly tasted and then agreed with the observation. Maybe TJs is riding the wave of the destruction of the low food-high food dichotomy. Soon we'll find it on restaurant menus in the Mission, sold for a premium thanks to its new name: Onion Dip Cheddar.

Restaurant Week in Oakland

Oakland before the lake was redone, as it now looks to the rest of the world, according to the NYTimes.

It is restaurant week in Oakland next week causing me to get anxious about the idea of eating in multiple restaurants at the same time. Impossible I know, though Nate was awe-inspiring last month when he attended two dinners in a row at Mission Chinese and purportedly ate the entire menu.

Personally I am going to hit up Chop Bar, as they are offering a bottomless glass of wine. They are the best cheap-and-cheerful Food Wave restaurant in the city. Go with a group of 6 and you qualify for a reservation.

An appropriate way for the city to ride the #5 wave!