Cheese cake and stout

Cheese cake and stout night was the pairing. Cheese cake is not something I would normally make, as it is made from fake cheese, sugar, and cookies, thus clearly fails the "real food test" miserably. Also I dislike fancy cake type things in general, far too finicky for my tastes. But, a friend asked me nicely. Anyway, I got this pairing from The Brewmasters Table, and I am still not all that sure why it works so well, but it does.

The basics for the pairing are there. That is, the impact of the dish and the beer are generally of the same level. The smooth carbonation clears all the fat and sugar of the tongue, which is critical here. Also there is little hop aroma in the style, which would probably interfere with the flavors here. The chocolate sauce on top of the cake matched to toasted malts in the beer as well. But, it still seems like a weird pairing to me for some reason. Still glad the book provided me with yet another good pairing, and as my first serious pairing of desert and beer, I was quite happy with the result.

Beer steamed mussels

Last night was mussels steamed in beer sauce. I had been wanting to do this one for a while, but just now got around to it. The dish is quite easy to make, but tastes wonderful, and looks like it should be on the front of a cook book. For starters I made oven fries, and edamame as well. Tried a wide variety of beers actually. Most of them were from Minamishinshu. Not great but solid beers, I especially liked the hefeweizen, and the amber worked quite well as the base for the steaming. The shop is my favorite local beer shop Iseya.

Basic procedure

1. Take basic aromatic veggies , and spices and sweat them in a pan
2. Then  add the mussels and beer, keep on med-high heat, until they open up.
3. shut off the heat and add some garnish/flavor type spices.

Example Ingredients

1. Onions, Garlic, Tomatoes
2. Minamishinshu amber
3. Scallions, Red Pepper, Parsley

2 temaki and 3 beers

Last night I was feeling like some fish. I was expecting the pairing to be quite difficult, envisioning my dinning parter saying "やっぱりお寿司には日本酒だね”　or some thing to that effect. But in actually the paring was much easier for a couple of reasons. First temaki, unlike sushi is wrapped in seaweed, and I used brown rice, as opposed to the sickly looking white variety. Both of these factors added some robustness to the dish. For the fillings we had two kinds, one with Tuna and wasabi, and one with Katsuo, negi, and ginger. So in hind sight temaki was a great choice because it is more complex in flavor and because its less fussy, more fun than regular sushi,

The surprising winner pairing of the night was the Anchor Steam Beer. None of the pairings were bad but the Weihenstephan (A german weissbier) added some sweetness to the dish that seemed out of place, and the Yona Yona was delicious but to heavy for the dish. The steam beer was light enough to match the impact of the temaki, had some of the same nutty, earthy flavors present in the temakis rice and seaweed, and a low bitterness to cut through its slight fat and spiciness. All and all a thoroughly satisfying dinner. Next time Id like to try some different combinations of fish and topics paired with some of the good Japanese rice beers, such as Miyama blond.

________________________________________________

Temaki Sushi ( for 2)

1. Make rice ( 1 cup of brown rice with 2 cups of water worked for me)

2. Cut up fillings ( Look to classic sushi combinations for inspiration, or go with what looks freshest at the store)

3. Mix rice with vinegar mixture (Roughly 1 cup vinegar 1/4 cup sugar or honey or something sweet)

3. Spread rice on seaweed (best place to put it is in the section which will become the innermost section when rolled up, easier tried then explained)

4. Add other ingredients on top of rice

5. Wrap up into a cone and eat (mmmm)

_________________________________________________

Grilled salmon and Moinette

Last nights dinner with a friend near Ikebukuro, Grilled Salmon with a salad of assorted greens. Paired the dish with Moinette from Dupont. Got the idea from the inspiring and useful book The Brewmasters Table by Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery.


___________________________________

Salmon

1. Buy good looking salmon
2. Rub Salmon with salt and pepper
3. Grill lightly

Salad

1. Buy good looking green vegetables
2. Combine Olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar at roughly 3/1 ratio
3. Add dressing (2) to salad (1)

_________________________________________________

Of course, for the Salmon I would suggest rock salt, freshly ground pepper, and a wedge of lemon squeezed over before and after cooking. Maybe some paprika? For the salad I would add some spices such as salt, pepper, basil, oregano, paprika, perhaps some mustard and a dash of brown sugar.But feel free to ignore these directions is they detract from the simplicy of the dish for you. Or better yet play around with it and come up with your own additions. Thats what cooking is about.

My ranty suggestions. First, when buying ingredients trust your senses. Iceberg lettuce has virtually no smell and is vaguely greenish white ball. Thus its going to taste like that. Don't buy it. On the other hand that deep green spinach or those bizarre greens with crazy smells? Those are gonna taste interesting and make for a tasty meal. Second, whenever possible make stuff yourself. Making olive oil is out of the reach of most of us, but thats ok because it already has only a few ingredients. On the other hand, store bought marinades, salad dressings, are full of all sorts of scientific ingredients that are designed to keep "food" tasting exactly the same for ever, shallow and fake. So just make a quick dressing. It will taste better, save you money, and ultimately make you feel better.

Hello World

Hello world,

Thank you for taking the time to looks at my blog. This is the beginning of a journey for me, and if I succeed others as well. The purpose of this blog is to show, by example that life-changingly good culinary experiences and easy, exciting, healthy, reasonable, and thoroughly worth while. I believe that food, cooking, and brewing can, and should be taken to complex artisanal heights. I also believe that eating, drinking, and cooking are fundamental human activities that any one can do reasonably well, thought too much hassle and without worry. To put it another way, any one can have amazing culinary experiences, without being rich, or a trained chief. Furthermore I believe that by engaging in these activities cooking, eating, drinking, the world can, in a small way, become a much better place, and I intend to prove this.