Health food

For a person who makes their own yogurt and grows their own sprouts, I have a terrible attitude about "health food".

Of course I also make Aioli and Holandaise from scratch.....

Beer Celebration

To celebrate the kegging of my Treewhale Irish Red ale, I made Mac& Cheese.

I seethed some vidalia onions in butter, then made a roux and added a mixture of half red ale and half half-and-half. From there, I added a cup of lite cream cheese, a cup of applewood smoked cheddar and a cup of mozzarella. I blended in the macaroni and diced smoked ham, topped it with crumbs and baked it for a half hour.

That's what I'm talking about, baby... Yeah.

Owen didn't win something

Came in 5th in Canadian Brewer of the year http://www.canadianbreweroftheyear.com/winners.htm without really brewing that much this year. Big plans for summer, though. The Aurora Brewing Challenge wrap up was a fun time after several evenings of judging beers. We killed a noble pig and ate a great deal of home-made sauerkraut. It was lovely.

I know, I know, two beer posts in 3 days. Get over it.

So I won the 2010 Vanbrewers beer competition on the weekend. Best of Show. The grand prize? Yaletown Brewing makes a batch of your beer and sells it to customers. Woo hoo.

Black Irish Red

Today, over came Nick the Mighty Brewer, and we proceeded to make ourselves a batch of Irish Red Ale, which turned out a bit more Brown than we expected. It sure smelled good, though, and we are looking forward to trying it out in a few weeks. Also in the beer news this week, Last Sunday was Big Brew at Alley Kat Brewery, where I walked away with a couple of carboys of a pleasing American pale ale, one of which I will be dry-hopping, and the other will be, I dunno, infused with raspberry essence. Yes, that would be nice.

Edmonton International Beer Festival Sucked

I think the title to this post says it all, but just to give some detail, you can learn more about it at www.onbeer.org, where my good friedn Jason Foster keeps us all up-to-date about beer happenings in Western Canada.

Another recipe request

This time from Vanessa, for sticky rice in lotus leaves.

1. Steam a steamer of glutinous rice. Don't think you can use regular rice and it will turn out. It won't. I have tried to do this in a bamboo steamer according to directions with the recipe, but it turns out way better if you just put it in a rice cooker. It is easier too.

2. Soak 4 large lotus leaves in hot water for an hour or so. This takes some doing because they are so big. Cut them in half when they are ready. T&T doesn't carry these, so you will have to hit Lucky 97 in Edmonton, or another indie specialty grocer in the place where you are. They keep forever and they are dirt cheap,l so if you find them, get a couple packages if you really like these things. (One package will make a couple of double batches.

3. Soak 4 dried Chinese mushrooms and a couple of tablespoons of dried shrimp in boiling water for an hour or so. Chop them all up together.

4. Heat a wok. Ass oil, stir-fry 12 oz cubed chicken or ground pork until browned. Ass the shrimp and mushrooms, a clove of chopped garlic, 2 thinly sliced Chinese sausages, and 2 sliced green onions. Stir fry another 2 minutes. Add 1 TB oyster sauce, 1Tb light soy sauce, 1 Tb sugar and 1 tsp sesame oil. Mix well. Add 1 TB cornstarch dissolved in 3/4 cup water. simmer until thickened.

5. lay out a half a lotus leaf. put a generous handful of rice on the leaf and flatten it a bit. spoon a portion of the cooked mixture over the rice, and add another generous handful of rice on top. wrap up and lay aside. Repeat until you are out of something. If you are careful, you should run out of everything at once.

6. At this point, you can wrap and freeze, or you can steam them for 30 minutes. If steaming from frozen, steam longer.

7. You can double this recipe easily. I recommend it because doing it for a regular sized batch is a lot of work and soaking stuff, and doing it for a double batch is not that much harder. They freeze well, and they are super handy for an easy supper with some stir-fried veg or as part of a leisurely at-home dim-sum breakfast if you have some other dumplings in the freezer.

Calgary Style Ginger Beef recipe circa 1996

Ginger beef is not Chinese food. It is as Canadian as it gets. It was purportedly invented at the Silver Inn in Calgary sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, depending on who you ask. It quickly spread throughout Calgary, and now Canada (a Friend told me of a restaurant in Toronto advertising "Calgary Style Ginger Beef"). Edmonton's version is not the same, being sweeter, more of a sweet&sour beef with ginger, and lacking the darker flavours of the original.

In the early days of my use of the World Wide Web, I searched for Ginger beef recipes using the then state-of-the-art Alta Vista, and what should come up but the Ginger Beef Peking House in Brentwood, who had, inexplicably, posted their recipe on line for all to steal.

It works.

Several of you have asked for it over the years, I have always said I would get around to it. Here it is, Owen's (stolen) recipe for Calgary Style Ginger Beef:

1/2 pound flank steak, sliced thinly against the grain

Batter:

1/2 egg
8 TB water
10 TB corn starch
1.5 TB flour
2 TB oil
1/4 TB white pepper

(combine batter, mix the beef up with the batter and deep-fry the strips of beef until crispy)

Sauce:
2 TB light soy sauce
1TB white vinegar
1.5 TB Mushroom soy sauce (dark soy sauce is an acceptable substitute)
0.5 TB Chinese cooking wine (or dry sherry)
1/4 cup water
8 TB sugar
1/4 TB or more crushed chilies

(mix together and put to one side before you start to assemble the final dish)

Slice 1 red and 1 green pepper (you can substitute celery, julienned carrots, baby leeks, whatever), chop 3 garlic cloves finely and julienne a hefty chunk of ginger, depending on taste. (At least the size of your thumb.)

Stir fry the vegetables you have chosen with the garlic and ginger until crispy. Ass the sauce mixture and bring to the boil. Add the beef strips and stir to coat with the sauce.

For authenticity stop here and serve. If you want a thicker sauce, you can add a little cornstarch and water and bring back to the boil.

There you have it. It is about as simple as it gets. Enjoy. I know you will try it, Kelly and Lesa.

24 Down

24 down, having brewed Dunkleweizen yesterday. Next up, Kolsch and California Common Beer, and then who knows?

My mistake

It isn't 16 down, I went back throught the blog and counted up, and it is 23 down, 57 to go after 30 months. Time to get brewing.

Brewing Doubles and Feeling.... Uh... Married.

Today, with a visit from Nick the Mighty Brewer, we brewed up two styles of India Pale Ale, English and American, both of which are going to be great. I expect to keg both within 10 days or so, though we will see. I want to have them both ready to head to the Cowtown Yeast Wranglers competition in February, which means they need to be bottled/kegged within about 2 weeks.

This means that we are 16 down and 64 to go, with a forecast of 2-3 more beers this month if the weather holds.

The world is my freezer.

Literally. The world is my freezer. I just made a big pot of soup and the portioned tubs of it are sitting on my deck because they it is colder out there than in my freezer, and also a lot more spacious.

For Christmas, I received a ton of great presents, one of which was Jim Murray's 2009 Whisky Bible, a document which purports to rate every known whisky. Scotch, Irish, English, Bourbon, Japanese, Nepalese, Norwegian, Spanish, Australian, and not the least of them is Canadian, or what we in Canada would call "Rye". Although a disproportionate amount of the text is devoted to Scottish Malt whiskeys, he repeatedly observes in his introductions to other sections that blended whiskeys are currently overlooked by whiskey drinkers around the world.

Being a patriot, and long having been an advocate of the principle that it is better to drink good rye than cheap Scotch, I turned my attention immediately to the Canadian section, where I found an interesting statement - that the 4 highest rated Canadian whiskeys in his book would give the four best whiskeys from any country a run for their money - presumably including Scotland. The second through fourth were rather obscure premium bottlings. The number 1 whiskey in Canada, described as a "National Treasure"? Bottom shelf booze. Literally. In my hometown, the top brand is a discount brand relegated to the bottom shelf, leaving room for more lofty drinks like Crown Royal.

Best Whiskey in Canada? Alberta Premium. So the man says. Who am I to argue?

A dedicated booze enthusiast, that's who. I went to the store.

This is a big whiskey. The Lagavulin of Canada. It grabs hold and shakes. Big body, big flavour, big aroma, big rye taste. Go get some if you are a rye drinker. It is worth the shame of being seen buying discount booze. This is a whiskey to run with the best premium spirits in the world.

Last night was an odd one.

Jenn found out that the admin of her program had changed her schedule for next semester so that she needs to be in class on Monday until 6:30, go to a hospital yet to be determined, copy down information, leave there about 7:30, go home on her 45 minute to an hour commute, do a 2 hour research project, commute another hour into town and start her practicum shift at 7:00 AM. We figure about 5 hours of sleep on those nights. Needless to say she was livid.

Not allowing this misfortune or our generalized semi-sick state to inhibit our Friday night, we went shopping. Grocery shopping. Lucky 97 in Chinatown, which has a different, even more ethnic feel than T&T, and carries some even more obscure things. Some of my victories from last night? Real Pixian chili-bean paste, and it smells incredible... dried lotus leaves, they had lots, now I know where to find it... Hinianese Chicken Rice paste, tasty. Fresh water chestnuts, various kinds of Japanese snacks, and a few other odds and sods. I would have bought their excellent bitter Mellon if I thought anyone but me would eat it. Now all I need is some eggplant and my supper plans will come together nicely. I should have gotten some last night but I wasn't thinking.

Treewhale Brown

Today was Treewhale Southern English Brown Ale Attempt# 2 - which should be improved by the addition of a decent recipe and a thermometer that works. Also, it was the fastest single batch I think I have ever done, three and a half hours from start to cleanup being finished. It smells lovely. It should be ready to drink by the December EHG meeting.

XXX

You may have seen Andy Capp drinking bottles of stout with XXX on the front. Today I brewed my own - Treewhale Snowflake XXX Milk Stout. First brew-up in months, and well deserved. It should be very very tasty. It will be on draft very soon folks, call it Halloween.

Earth, Wind and Flyer

Saturday night, driving home from Mill Woods on the Whitemud freeway... Tumbleweeds. Genuine, high plains drifter tumbleweeds. I hit one with my car. Bad noise, but no damage. Lots of swerving. Got to the edge of town and it was biblical. The fields are all torn up from harvest and there hasn't been rain for who knows how long, add a 70 Mile an hour wind, and you have a dust storm you can hardly see through.

Sunday, ordained by our lord God as a day of rest, was spent painting and putting in baseboards. Then I made pork stuffed peppers with black bean garlic sauce and did three loads of laundry.

Today, Monday, was garbage day. When we got home, our garbage can had quite obviously become airborne at some time during the day, as it was rapidly headed for the coast. Had it not hit a neighbor's car, it would certainly have made it at least as far as the crescent across the main drag from us.

Tuesday, incidentally, is a day ordained by our lord God as a day of meeting with beer nerds, and that is what I intend to do tomorrow.

Lost and found

If you want to find your wife's missing keys (and they were lost for a month), you ought not to ask the question, "Where would my wife lose her keys?" This question will lead you to the places where she might put her keys, and obviously she has already looked there, and to her pockets which, being much smarter than you - and more attached to her keys, she has already gone through.

The question you ought to ask is, "If I was looking for _MY_ lost keys, where would I look?" The answer to that question (under the cushions of the living room chairs) will provide the answer to your quest in the form of car keys within seconds.

Reno progress report and Nursing

Jenn is now dome her first two weeks of the Nursing After Degree program. Two weeks down, 21.5 months to go.

In other news, the grout is sealed, the downstairs baseboards are all in and looking fabulous. Half done or so upstairs. Some touch up on the paint yet, and then clean everything up and organize the basement.

Bwah. This has been a long 3 months.

One more thing off the list

Just finished tiling the upstairs bathroom. Now just need to re-install the toilet, finish the baseboards, and clean up a bit, seal the grout downstairs and up, and I think we are done. Call it, two weeks of cursing and mitering, with just a bit of brad nailing to make it more fun.

Done soon

We finished the grout tonight, tomorrow we do some baseboards and move some furniture, and we are going to start living in a more normal home again. The upstairs bathroom tile never got done, but that will be a weekend project for me in the fall. It should be easy now that I have half an idea what I am doing.

And the place looks fabulous.