There's a beer for that!

I got these at work. Had to try them. Damn good cookies! Awesome chunky deep chocolate flavor enhanced by the sea salt that somehow worked with the rustic texture, with a bit of coconut-iness and something about it that gave me the impression that there's peanut butter in it but there isn't. Would the coconut do that? Maybe it's just because I've been feeding the dog so much peanut butter that I can't get it off my mind.

Immediately after the first bite I thought, I have to find a beer to go with this. It struck me that a Porter would work -- I went through a phase of Porter-chocolate pairings starting with the Lake Champlain 5-Star peanut bar and the gosh-I-can't-remember-what-it-was Porter (I'll have to look for it on Twitpic) -- but of course I had to ask the beer guy at Marty's. The first thing he asked me was if I wanted to go with a complementing or contrasting pairing.

I love the beer guy at Marty's.

I went with contrasting. He recommended that I try the Oud Beersel Framboise Belgian lambic. At $10 it was pricier than I wanted for 12.7 ounces 5% ABV (I think I'm starting to value my beers at dollars-per-unit-alcohol) and I didn't love it enough to buy it again but I'd sure drink it again if offered. Sour is the one flavor in beer that I'm not so sure about. I've never been head-over for a sour. In this one the raspberry had more a sour cherry note to it, which I liked a lot, and the texture wasn't too thin and I liked the carbonation level.

As a pairing for the cookie, though, it was a total fail. The disconnect was the texture -- The oats were far too rustic for the lambic, which would have gone brilliantly with a flight of chocolates or cheeses and probably would have made me think much more highly of the beer. I picked up a Three Philosophers (Brewery Ommegang) at Trader Joe's that I want to give a try as a pairing for the Salty Oats but the 9.8% ABV bomber was far too much inebriation for one evening and I'm working a stretch of 4 nights in a row which is too long to cork & keep in the fridge. I'll get to it eventually. If that pairing doesn't work I'll go with my Porter instinct.

Once again, I have to take a moment to thank the genetic line that enables me to eat and drink constantly and still maintain an impressive BMI. And let's not forget the dog that walks me three hours a day (got an extra hour in this morning when she took off chasing coyotes).

Cheers!

30 Minute Meals

30 minutes isn't long enough to eat a meal. That's the time we get on break, to punch in & out, take a pit stop, maybe say hi to the nice peeps in floral, grab some tea...

And eat. Thich Nhat Hahn says to chew each mouthful 50 times to be mindful and to prepare it for its journey through the digestive system. It's a beautiful thing, if you can do it. I can only make it to 30 at best. Even that is a really, really, really long time. And what is there to do then but take it in? Fully.

We seem to either think too much about our food -- calories, fat, carbs, whatever -- or we think nothing of it, shoveling it in while we drive, watch TV, text... or blog.

My call to action is to have us BE with our food, thoughtfully -- not as an object to be obsessed over or overlooked but as part of us. Because it is. It is the stuff we are made of.

If we love our food, we love ourselves. I believe this.

Mobile Me

So psyched! Just installed the Blogger app on my Droid so I can post on a whim, limited only by the speed (or not) of my thumbs on the touchscreen keyboard. I won't be writing any novels this way but that's probably a good thing.

I'm also committing to be more extemporaneous in that I'm going to NOT put edit/refinement energy here & I'll let the mood of the moment flow as it will, spelling, grammar & coherence be damned! (Hah, that's funny, the Droid tries to change "damned" to "darned" & it's not too keen on saving the correct spelling. Pffft!)

Well that's it for my 30 minute break on this shift. I'm learning to eat fast. Maybe my thumbs can learn to type fast, too. But for now, that's all folks.

Work in progress

One week, two weeks... Time just slips past.

So I'm trying to tease out this "Surreal Food" concept. It's a work in progress. The mission/manifesto is coming together but it's not cohesive or even very coherent yet. You can see it come together over time at http://surrealmeal.com/mission-statement.html.

The bottom line is, I've been noticing that something's missing in our food. It seems to me that we're removing ourselves further and further away from what we eat, like it's some remote object out there instead of something integral to our very being. I want to reverse that trend. I want to bring the joy back into it. Not just the pleasure, but the joy. Food is nothing less than a celebration of life in all its messy glory.

So am I maybe making just a little too much of all this? I don't think so. Here in America we're becoming the unhealthiest people on the planet and it's in no small part due to the fact that a lot of our food is hardly recognizable as food. The food we derive from animals is from animals that are hardly recognizable as animals. The plants we eat are coming from ground that's being forced to do one thing, the same thing, over and over again without replenishing. It's as if our food is enslaved.

How can we live on that?

I'll stop my diatribe for the moment. I'm trying to pull together a thesis to explain the pathology in all of this so we can restore sanity and life to our cupboards and plates. A few years ago I started studying Integral Theory and the application of it. A few months ago I started looking for Integral Theory as it applies to food and -- I found nothing. Sure, there's a lot along those lines about the impact of diet on our bodies and the impact of factory farming and agribusiness on our environment and social structures but there's nothing -- nothing -- about our relationship with food. It's all right-quadrant It/Its, devoid of left-quadrant I/We. (See Wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AQAL and scroll down to the "Quadrants" section.) Left quadrant is about relating, whether it's our internal subjective experience of "me-ness" or our cultural expression of "us-ness", it has to do with the Whole and our place within it. Sure, there's an awakening of sorts along these lines, such as a call to reconnect with family over the dinner table. What I'm not seeing or hearing or finding is anything that's crying out how imperative it is that we relate to our food. This started to occur to me a while back when I watched a bit of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. (Disclaimer: I think I watched parts of only two episodes. I might not know what I'm talking about here.) Something bothered me about what he was doing. It wasn't the obvious criticism of his arrogance, thinking he was some white knight in shining armor coming to save the poor peasants from themselves. Actually, I don't think he's arrogant at all. My impression is that he's genuinely, deeply concerned for the people who are eating themselves to death. But that's just it: I found it to be a complete turnoff that he was focusing so desperately on death. Mothers, how can you feed your children this way when you know that it's bringing them decades prematurely to diabetes, heart disease and god-knows-what-else that will kill them. Can't you see that you must stop this madness??? I don't disagree with anything in this. I don't disagree with the power of his call to action, his earnest desire to exponentially raise the quality of life through healthful eating habits. But I think he's fundamentally doomed to failure. You can't teach people to love good food and embrace health by fearing death. People will love food -- truly, madly, deeply love food -- when they learn to love life.

As I wrote in the last post, something had gone missing from my experience of food and I realized it was me. It think this is true overall: What's missing in our food is us. What's missing is the desire to be with our food -- to be a part of it and one with it and all that New-Agey sounding stuff that I said I wouldn't get into. But there it is.

We are what we eat.

***

Enough of that. Let me get into something of the joy I'm talking about by mentioning my recent forays into beer. Actually what I'm doing right now is a repeat. I'm revisiting porters. I went through a the-bitterer-the-better mega-hops phase then was wooed over to sweeter fare. I'm not sure how it started but I think I asked someone at Whole Foods River Street to recommend a beer to pair with the Lake Champlain Five Star Peanut chocolate bar I'd just bought. To be honest, I can't remember what it was that he pointed me to but it was a porter and it was a fabulous pairing. (Three cheers for all those beer-foodies out there! You rock!) I'm not sure why I've gotten back into it but I started dabbling in the bitters again and now I'm back to the porters. Tonight I finished off part 2 of a bomber of Stone's Smoked Porter, yum! I love that beer. The beer guy at Whole Foods Legacy Place (I get 20% off at WFM -- damn straight I'm picking up my beer there!) recommended that I try the Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter. Damn cheap and a damn good beer, I'd say! It surprised me in that it wasn't at all sweet and was, in fact, a bit astringent and bitter but it was awesome. That was two nights ago and maybe it was just the mood I was in but I found it to be a tasty, tasty beverage. Maybe it's in part because I'm done for a while with the off-the-charts aged ABVs and I'm getting back to the basics. Maybe it's the anti-spring we're experiencing here in New England and I just want something not-quite-so-thick. Who knows. But I recommend it highly:

Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter. Cheers!

And on that note, Good Night.

Rebranding

It's been over a year since I've blogged here. I can't even begin to say where I've been and what I've been doing during that time. I can say that my thoughts turned inward and my writing attention turned toward journaling. It's been a deeply spiritual journey. I promise I'm not going to get all mystical or New Age-y about this. I'm far too earth-bound for that.

So what's food got to do with this?

There hasn't been much time or money to indulge in my food passions over the past year. And even more than that, food just stopped tasting as good for a while. Everything fell flat. Something was missing. I started devouring books to learn more about myself, about my dog, and about this spectacular world around us. My reading list ran the gamut from Temple Grandin to Thich Nhat Hanh to A.A. Milne, all of those serving to cleanse my palate in between bouts of heady reading on Integral Theory and on the neuro-physiological intersection of our brains and our souls. I didn't take the time to even browse through a single issue of Saveur. I'm three or four or five seasons behind on Top Chef, I don't even know. I'd occasionally pour myself a delightfully complex microbrew as I experimented with a few new flavors to meld with the fond in the pan after searing one sort of protein or another -- one time sending a three-foot wall of flame screaming up to the ceiling. Nice.

What was missing was... me. My heart just wasn't in it. The kids were mostly not around for dinner now that they're busy with high school and I lost my social connections in the divorce and it was just me and the dog and I discovered that food means nothing when it's not shared. There's nowhere for all that love to go. I realized that I kept the dining room covered in a mass of paperwork and storage boxes so I wouldn't have to be reminded that there's no one sitting at the table. I'm not saying any of this to elicit sympathy. Life is there and it's up to me to live it. We all have our barriers to fulfillment and mine are fairly steep; they're also about 40 years out of date. Time to get on with it, Jane.

With this passion for life reignited, I was inspired to rebrand myself. I'm diving into this "Surreal Food" concept. I'm throwing myself back into the world full of confidence and doubt. In the coming weeks I'll flesh this all out a bit, lay out my manifesto, expound on my inspirations, get all philosophical and get back into sharing food -- eating and drinking it, writing about it, clearing off that poor dining table and inviting new friends to it.

Come, eat and enjoy. Every moment we have here on earth is too precious to waste on bad food.

It's Not A Reuben

I had dinner at American Craft tonight. I promise this isn't a restaurant review but it's going to sound an awful lot like a restaurant review.

I've been waiting for this place to open. Found out about it in a Beer Advocate link on Twitter, with the restaurant-to-be billing itself as "a full service restaurant and bar celebrating the best of artisanal American cuisine" helmed by a chef who has "a strong commitment and dedication to local products and ingredients and will source as many items as he can items being sourced from local Massachusetts farms". Cool! Sign me up!

I was pleased to see on the menu that they have two of my three litmus tests for are-you-a-good-chef: Burgers, and Roast Chicken. (Missing: Fried egg.) If a chef can take something so mind-numbingly basic as a hamburger or roasted whole chicken or a fried egg, and can nail the preparation so spot-on that the simple becomes sublime -- well, then that there is a good chef.

If it's on the menu then I add a fourth challenge: The Reuben. The reuben is a sandwich that's so taken for granted it's almost impossible to find a good one. I think people have forgotten why a reuben exists. It's a house of cards ready to fall apart but it doesn't. It's about precarious balance. It's about taking a lean meat -- corned beef -- and adding more fat -- dressing, cheese -- then cutting through the fat with a tangy bite -- sauerkraut, rye. The textures should be a meld of crunchy-chewy-creamy. The sandwich should not ever under any circumstances leave you anything less than full-up to the brim. It's a hefty meal.

I was excited to see a reuben on the American Craft menu. But wait... huh? They spelled it "Rueben". That can't be right... (googled it)... nope, it's not right. Reuben. R-E-U-B-E-N. Reuben! Unfortunately this starts me off on the wrong foot. It shouldn't matter -- and I'm not quite sure why it matters SO much to me -- but it does. If you're going to call your take on it "Classic", well gosh darn it the least you can do is to spell it right!

Enough already, let's eat. So I get to American Craft on opening night. Tonight. I like the space. It's laid out well, the chi flows. Two bars. I plopped myself down at the one with the long line of taps & the beer menu chalkboard rising high above. Yes, please! I knew I was going to try the reuben so I ordered a beer I thought would complement the meal. Pretty Things! A local brew I've followed on Twitter but I hadn't ever tried yet. Let's have a pint of the St. Botolph's Town rustic brown ale. I really don't know the style but I'm taking an educated guess that it'll cut through the richest parts of the reuben to bring out more of the tang. I think I was right b/c the St. Botolph's has this interesting hop bitter that's... mellow? Like something that you think will be sharp then it rounds out smoothly at the end.

I'll never know if St. Botolph's pairs well with a reuben because the American Craft "Rueben" ain't no reuben. It's a good sandwich, sure. And hefty, absolutely! Basically it's a mound of corned beef on rye with some melted swiss. The Russian dressing & sauerkraut are nearly imperceptible. The bread is a light rye, not the signature pumpernickel, and it begs to be grilled rather than toasted. All the components are there but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

For the record, the fries are awesome. French fries need to get on my litmus test list because it's hard to find awesome fries. They nailed these spot-on. Crisp on the out, tender on the in, flavorful all around with a just-right sprinkle of salt. I would have loved a side of mayo for dipping (that's just me) but the ketchup was really good. I don't know if it's house-made. Typically I find that mass-market ketchup is much too salty, house-made is too tomato-y, so I never bother. This one was just right and I plowed through it.

Back to the reuben.

Let's take some contrasting cases-in-point from a couple of my favorite Toronto restaurants.

Beer Bistro: Duck Confit Reuben. That's right, you heard me. Duck Confit Reuben. This is from the folks who bring us the fabulous this-shouldn't-work-but-it-does Duck Confit Corn Dogs. That's another story. In spite of the everything-wrong-about-it sound of it, I would absolutely call this a reuben. The duck confit acts as cured meat and rich dressing all rolled into one. Brilliant! Unfortunately the whole was also less than the sum of the parts -- literally. The presentation was utterly confusing and I had NO IDEA how to eat it. The duck confit and cheese were sandwiched together by thin pumpernickel toasts nested on top of braised tart red cabbage. Do I pick it up? If so, where does the cabbage go, and HOW? Nope that doesn't work. Do I eat it with fork and knife? The bread is too crisp and collapses in a crumbled mess. Nope! That doesn't work, either. I'm telling you, it was maddening. The flavors and textures were all PERFECT and I couldn't get it all in one bite. The composition was (for me) a failure.

Hoof Cafe: Schnitzel. This is something that's not billed as a reuben but I'd absolutely call it a reuben. The components are all there and meld together perfectly. The fried tongue acts both as cured meat and a substitute for the crunch of toasted bread. It's dressed with a whole-mustard creme fraiche that acts as cheese, dressing and sauerkraut all rolled into one. The only questionable aspect here is the bread which is a complete fail as a sandwich bread and a total win in the flavor/texture department. It's a house-made no-knead bread that disintegrates two bites in but remains an integral component with its chewy texture and slightly sour-yeasty taste. OK, I'm biased toward the Hoof Cafe. Trust me on this, though, the schnitzel is really a reuben.

But really. What's the best truly classic reuben? Let me start hitting up the many Jewish delis here in the Boston area and I'll find out. Or maybe I'll go to NYC on this quest. Stay tuned.

Back to American Craft.

I suspect that American Craft is one of those that's a great brew pub with good (not great) food. I'll give it another shot and take my son there for a dueling-burgers night. If they do a good burger I'll call it a righteous eatery. Jury's still out on that. It's definitely a fabulous bar and I hope it lives long and prospers.

Post script: Pretty Things beer! Omigosh! SO GOOD! In addition to the St. Botolph's, I had the Baby Tree (belgian quad -- no idea what this is) which was like a sour-cherry cordial with a bit of fizz and I know this sounds awful but it's GOOD! Very unique. I feel like it would go awesome with food but I couldn't quite figure out what would be best. Maybe a piquant aged sheeps-milk cheese? Try some and let me know.

"Oh my god that's good beer!"

Yesterday was the Super Bowl. Congratulations, Saints!!! I'm not much for football but it looks like it was a good game. I wasn't riveted to the T.V. but was fortunate enough to catch the two most memorable moments: the onside kick & The Interception. Maybe there was more than one interception in the game; if you saw it, you know which one I'm talking about. It was cool. I can only imagine what it feels like to a professional sports player to have a moment like that. I imagine it's the best feeling ever.

I like the Super Bowl because I can make food, lots of food, for no real reason whatsoever other than: that's what people do on this day. I like having an excuse to cook a mountain of food. When my kids had their Bar & Bat Mitzvah, I made dinner the night before for an intimate family gathering... of 30 people. It was a real highlight for me. OK, the REAL highlight was seeing each of my kids on the bima the next day, each of them shining in the spotlight in their moment, each of them excelling in their unique talents in front of the congregation with me beaming the whole time. I love my kids. The point I'm trying to make now is that I love to cook for a crowd.

For Super Bowl Sunday, I wasn't cooking for a crowd. I was cooking for myself, another adult (my ex-wife #2) and one teenager (my son). I didn't let that stop me from making a mountain of food. My intention was to make short ribs, pork ribs, jerk wings, guacamole, key lime pie & lemon meringue pie. I can't say it's the most cohesive menu but all of this was stuff that I wanted to make. I didn't end up making the wings or key lime pie and another teenager (my daughter) joined us. It was still a lot of food.

I also had gotten lots of beer. Lots. Toronto has several really good beer bars and over the months of travel I'd taken the opportunity to sample all sorts of brews from all over, preferably local/Canadian, within wide range of alcohol percentage. I was particularly enamored of the aged barley wines from the cellar list at the Beer Bistro on King at Yonge, such as Rogue's Old Crustacean which has a depth and richness of dried fruit with a strong kick of alcohol cutting through it. I didn't have anything quite so indulgent yesterday but I made sure there was a wide variety to choose from, the equivalent of about 16 pints.

For myself and one other adult. I have quantity issues.

I busied myself with making the food, going at it all with an uncharacteristic laissez-faire. The good thing about not having very many people to feed is that the pressure is off; I don't have to hit every note spot on. Some part of the meal can fail -- deeply, miserably fail -- and it doesn't really matter. There's something else to eat. So I'm going at it with the cooking, working on multiple components for multiple dishes depending on my mood in the moment and my best guesstimate about the timing required to bring it all together at least by halftime, with guacamole and a fine cheese plate to tide things over. Like I said, it wasn't a very cohesive menu.

The game starts and it's time for a beer. I asked X2 to pick out a beer for herself and one for me and I really didn't have a preference for opening round, surprise me. I had gotten an assortment of Great Divides and she poured me a Hibernation Ale into a pint glass from my collection of pint glasses. (I collect pint glasses and coffee mugs; I have nowhere to put a new acquisition for either collection but that won't stop me.) The beer had this beautiful deepest-deep amber color, very pleasing to the eye. I took a moment to take that in and Cheers! took a sip. Oh my GOD that's a good beer! Every so often I get a taste of something that's so unbelievably good it feels important and it's not quite that time stands still but in a way it's kind of like that. I know what you're thinking. It's a beer, get over it. But truly folks, this might be the best beer I've ever had. At the very least it's the most enjoyably drinkable. What hits me first is the rich caramely sweetness that's somehow not too sweet, followed by some longer, smooth notes of a winter spice mix, ending with a hoppy bitter finish. Damn! I like that beer. I still had to keep on cooking a bit so I don't know this for sure but my instinct is that this beer goes great with food, food of the dark meat, rich sauces, potent cheese and chocolate variety, foods that I love. Stay tuned and I'll let you know. I plan on getting a few bottles to have around for those times at home when I can really indulge in the flavors of what I'm eating.

For the record, the stout-marinated short ribs and smokehouse-spice-rubbed pork ribs were pretty darn good, too. The glass of Hibernation Ale was empty by the time they were ready. So sad! The lemon meringue pie was not very good. This was attempt #2 at lemon meringue pie and after I finally nail it I'll write about it. However, there are some foods that elude me and lemon meringue pie might be one of them. Time will tell.