First Taste: Capital Vintage Ale

The Capital Brewery (Middleton, WI) made some waves this year by releasing a beer that's just begging to be aged. As an experiment, I want to drink my "Capital Square" four-pack over the next year and trace its development. To achieve a baseline, however, I needed to open one now. Tentatively, I'm going to label the remainder of my bottles as follows:
Bottle 2: open first day of spring 2007
Bottle 3: open first day of autumn 2007
Bottle 4: open January 1, 2008

It's true that most beers do not develop with age beyond a certain point, but then again most wines don't either. What makes strong ales so well suited to aging is their above-average alcohol content and aggressive hopping. Weighing in at 8.5% alcohol, this beer is definitely within style norms for this high gravity ale.




The twist-off bottle opened with a hiss bursting with Kent goldings and cascade hop aroma, nuanced by some yeasty and mineral notes. When poured vigorously into a glass, the nose demonstrated extreme restraint. Only a decided yeast and faint hop aroma was detectable.

The ale had a rich, warm copper color that was perfectly clear. Many small bubbles rose to the surface, but the carbonation was understated as is appropriate for the style. This lead to a small head of about 2 mm that disappeared almost instantly. The color was unexpectedly light, given the style, but this fact made the beer more surprising and interesting given the stiff hopping and malty backbone.

The flavors are dominated by a progression of complex malt flavors that progress across the mouth like a parade. The first taste is bready like childhood memories of grandma's house. This flavor morphs into a more biscuity maltiness before fading into a warm, generic malt flavor. The hopping is up-front, but not dominating, resulting in a beer that is quite bitter with little hop flavor or aroma. There are hints of vanilla, orange juice, and the tart quality of grapefruit as the beer warmed in the glass. The flavor experience is intense as the beer is slightly viscous and the flavor seems to concentrate on the back of the tongue and on the roof of the mouth, possessing a tannic quality I would normally associate with a red wine. There is also a fair amount of residual sugar in the flavor that gives me high hopes for the continued development of this ale. The beer is almost immediately warming, and is strong enough to demand sipping. This more rewarding than it sounds, however, as the taste persists in the mouth for several minutes.

I don't want to make this beer sound like a brute that would knife you in a dark alley or steal your wallet. It's not that. The flavor demonstrates an admirable level of restraint, which makes the flavor experience very precise and controlled despite the strength. The beer has a great ale-ish character, a certain wildness to the flavor that isn't too clean, that wasn't reined in by the brewer to make it more polite and docile. Even the carbonation attested to that, as more carbonation would certainly have made it overly bitter and astringent on the palate. It would have been easy to push this beer too far and wind up with a barley wine. The very fact that the Capital Brewery instead got Vintage Ale is a remarkable feat of craftsmanship.

With any luck, this craftsmanship with shine for some time to come.

Spoiled

People have asked me why I haven't supported groups like the Organic Consumers' Association or the Family Farm Defenders. These groups have admirable goals but their voice is deleteriously affected by "off topic" opinions.

Before I dish, let me say that I have the greatest respect for these groups when they are "on topic." I owe a debt of gratitude to the Organic Consumers' Association for bringing to my attention a study by the Cornucopia Institute which names brands of milk are labeling their milk "USDA Organic" despite being from industrial farms (i.e. a violation of 205.239.1-2 of the National Organic Program regulation). I respect the Family Farm Defenders for their opposition to industrial scale farms, rBGH, genetic modification of food products, and the conditions which favor BSE.

The mission statement of these groups is as follows

Organic Consumers' Association: The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability. The OCA deals with crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability and other key topics.

Family Farm Defenders: Our mission is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice. FFD has worked to create opportunities for farmers to join together in new cooperative endeavors, form a mutual marketing agency, and forge alliances with consumers through providing high quality food products while returning a fair price to farmers.

It would seem odd, then, that these groups would go out on a limb to do things that are politically controversial, completely unrelated to their mission statements, and divisive.

Example one. The Organic Consumers' Association links to an article written by Heather Wokusch for the progressive opinion website Common Dreams in which she intones -- completely without evidence -- that Karl Rove was personally responsible for the anthrax attacks following the September 11 attacks as well as the nerve agent scare on Capitol Hill earlier this year. She goes on to suggest that the Karl Rove might use "some form of bioweapons attack," invade Iran, or capture bin Laden in October to rally the conservative vote for the November mid-term elections.

Example two. The Organic Consumers' Association links to an article written by Allan Uthman for the leftist website AlterNet whose mission involves opposition to the "right wing media machine" and building a "progressive echo chamber" that argues that that the US is becoming a police state based upon ten current events. He argues that the confluence of everything from "touchscreen voting machines" to "signing statements" (i.e. executive orders) to the prosecution of "high-ranking whistleblowers" (i.e. the polite term for someone who leaks information that you find useful or with whom you agree) is "becoming a police state."

Example three. Alongside books with clearly applicable titles like "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter" and "Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Lawn into a Garden" there are titles with no applicability like "The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq" (the cover of which sports a comic image of "King George") and "Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-up of 9/11" (which argues that Bush was personally responsible for the 9/11 attacks). These are books with extraordinarily controversial content that doesn't apply to the OCA's mission, yet the OCA endorses them anyway.

Example four. Family Farm Defenders has endorsed the pacifist organization Farms Not Arms. This organization believes that resources spent toward martial causes is "misappropriated" and "wasted" because it could be used for ending "poverty, injustice, and religious intolerance." Interestingly, this group is officially endorsed by George Naylor, the president of the Organic Consumers' Association. I consider pacifism a radical political idea, and one that is extraordinarily divisive.

Example five. When Anna Lappé spoke at the Food for Thought Festival in Madison a few weeks ago, she shared a story in which she verbally sucker punched food scientists and made numerous attacks against "white men". (In the interests of transparency, please note that I'm a professional chemist working in industry. My opinion on this matter is thus biased. I'm also male and am as proud of it as any feminist is of being female.) She relates a story in which she obtained a press pass to visit a scientific conference on industrially processed foods. Being someone interested in real food, she was disturbed that each attendee praised industrial foods to a panel of like-minded scientists. So disturbed, in fact, that she asked the panel of food scientists why, if their products were so safe, a major company that wasn't in attendance at the conference paid a south-east asian country several million dollars to by-pass requisite food safety testing before their product could be imported. When the panel didn't have a coherent response and she was evicted from the conference, Lappé felt vindicated in her view of industrial food being unsafe and unwilling to have a dialog with the public. To great laughs, Lappé told the Food for Thought audience that she was told that her question was "off topic." If her anecdote demonstrates anything, it's that she's too eager to draw negative conclusions of entities that are the "bad guys" according to her weltanschauung. If an antievolution activist (presumably a "white male" from Kansas) asked a pointed question that favored creationism at a conference of evolutionary scientists, Lappé would probably applaud conference staff for evicting the member for being "off topic" and confrontational. When she does the exact same thing, however, she paints herself as a victim and a heroic crusader standing up against the Man. I don't think she fully understands that food companies are businesses. She wants to "have a dialog" with these companies, but she doesn't seem to realize that these companies would have to pay someone to have a dialog back to her. I'm not sure she'd appreciate it if Monsanto would call her up where she works and ask what temperature her thermostat is set to, or how may gallons of gas she's used to promote her books, or what the environmental consequences of manufacturing the ink for her book might be.

Please understand that I'm not a policy strategist. But I would think that if I were going to promote a cause, I'd want to get as many people on my side as possible. I'd put my argument forward in its most pointed, most basic state. That is, I'd do what Habitat for Humanity does. Habitat founder Millard Fuller believes in what he calls the "Theology of the Hammer." That is, whatever religious, political, or personal beliefs you have, everyone can agree that no one should be forced to be homeless. Everyone can find common ground by taking up a hammer for a common cause to confront a common problem. It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist. It doesn't matter if you voted for George Bush or John Kerry or Ralph Nader. Everyone agrees that it's a bad thing that some people are forcibly homeless.

I shouldn't have to sign on to nutcase conspiracy theories, pacifism, political pessimism, or be ashamed of being a "white male" scientist to join others in expressing my support of real food.

Similarly, I would think that everyone can agree that food should be nutritious, plentiful, delicious, healthy, and ethical. The Organic Consumers' Association and the Family Farm Defenders agree, too. But I'm withholding my support until they dedicate themselves solely to the promotion and defense of real food -- and stop clowning around.

Tasting Notes: Fraoch Heather Ale

In honor of my friend Heather's twenty-first birthday, I sipped at one of the world's oldest and rarest beers. Before Humulus lupulus became the bittering ingredient de rigueur of beer, people were making beer with what ingredients that they could find on hand. And in Scotland, where hops can't grow well anyway, this meant using the flowers of the abundant heather plant.

This beer style was nearly forgotten until homebrew shop owner Bruce Williams took a gamble with a family recipe for "leann fraoich" (heather ale in the gaelic language) and began brewing in Argyll. Before long, he expanded his operation by contractin with the family-owned Maclay Brewery in Alloa. Williams opened a quaint new brew house in Strathaven in 1997, but he still brews some of his beer under contract with Maclay's.

Only a handful of brewers have taken up the challenge of brewing a beer with heather, instead of hops. This is, no doubt, a challenge because the heather can be added as bittering hops (during the boil) and finishing hops (at the end of the boil and sparging). It's easy to imagine that the methods of brewing with hops are well known, and that any brewer who forgoes them for heather is placed on a fairly unforgiving learning curve with few peers to help.

Fraoch Heather Ale, being the standard bearer of a re-emerging beer style, promised to be a good introduction to the Scottish tradition of ancient herbed ales.

The bottle bursts open with a gentle breeze of floral aromas. Upon further inspection, the smell is extremely reminscent of walking into a greenhouse filled with flowers. A number of very well-defined flower aromas grace the nose. Underneath the obvious, however, there's a layer of pleasant grassy, earthy, and hay-like aromas. Strangely, the beer has a sweet smell to it that made me worry that the ale would be cloying and undrinkable to my pallate. Once I put my nose into the glass, I resolved the sweetness as a fruity plum aroma.

The beer itself is a brilliant orange-gold color when held up to lamp light. The turbidity of the ale is a striking feature, helping to accentuate the color and making it seem slightly darker than it actually is. Fraoch is only lightly carbonated, and thus doesn't raise much of a head. I think this is appropriate for the style.

The beer opens with a surprisingly sweet sensation in the front of the mouth. This rapidly gives way to an ephemeral taste of bitterness all along the tongue. The nature of the bitterness is threw me a bit off guard, as it wasn't a hop-like bitterness. Rather, it was an extremely dense floral bitterness that couldn't be more potent if you chewed on flowers. After the bitterness begins to recede, a slightly dry sensation is left in the back of the mouth. This effect of flavors rippling across the pallate, teasing it every step along the way, makes it a very drinkable beverage. But because of the bitterness, it certainly is not sessionable. Despite a lack of carbonation, the beer fizzes on the tongue slightly which leaves the pallate refreshed after each sip.

The bitterness was held in place by a robust Scottish malt flavor that is by itself slightly reminiscent of much heavier Scotch ales. The maltiness dominated the floral aroma when the beer was chilled out of my refrigerator. As it warmed up slightly in the glass, the floral aromas really opened up and outweighed the malt flavors. This flavor transition was interesting, of course, but I felt that the beer somehow lacked balance as a result.

There's a slight minerality to the flavor, which helps bring out the other flavors in the ale. At 5% abv, I was happy that I didn't taste or feel any ethanol.

Despite not being a "real ale" (i.e. one that is cask-conditioned), it was an interesting and delightful beer on which to reflect on the origins of brewing. And the unique combination of floral aromas and biting bitterness makes this beer as unique as it is enchanting.

Nina Planck Recap and Response

For those of you who missed it, author Nina Planck spoke about her new book Real Food yesterday at Cafe Soleil. Planck grew up on an ecologically minded vegetable farm eating what she now calls real food: the traditional all-American diet. No, not that one, the other all-American diet of meat, whole milk, pies made with lard, and vegetables aplenty. She rose to some prominence in founding and operating fifteen farmers' markets in London with her company London Farmers' Markets. She was also the director of New York's famous Greenmarket.

From her teenage years to her writing of The Farmers' Market Cookbook, Planck practiced strict veganism on the basis that it was the healthiest diet. At the same time, she put on twenty five pounds (despite running six miles a day, six days a week), came down with colds and the flu, felt moody and irritable, had dry skin, and bad fingernails. As she gradually added eggs, butter, meat, and fish back into her diet, these symptoms quickly went away. She lost "at least" twenty five pounds and generally felt healthier. Surprised by these results, Planck was inspired to do her own research into the healthiness of traditional diets.

And we all know that traditional foods are much maligned by nutrition professionals. Margarine is recommended over butter, vegetable oil is recommended period. Eggs yolks and organ meats are to be avoided at all costs. Processed milk is recommended over farm fresh milk.

Planck's book demarcates an alternative perspective on nutrition, apart from that of the traditional professionals. Her aim, then, seems bold and subversive, but Planck intimates that the government's dietetic standards are always out-of-date and are possibly "bought off" by the food industry anyway. Her talk focused on referencing historical data that would indicate that when a community's consumption of "real food" declines in favor of "industrial food," three diseases of civilization (obesity, diabetes, and heart disease) always increase. She also makes an attempt to rationalize these trends by referencing voices from outside of the science nutrition mainstream. In particular, Planck blames so-called diseases of civilization on the increased consumption of trans fat, corn oil, and sugar.

At the present, no health-oriented organization has supported Planck's heretical views.

Before I respond to Planck's ideas, please understand that I haven't read her book and that my views are purely that of an analytical chemist listening to an author's talk. I am not a nutritional expert, so it is not my place to support or refute her thesis that real food is good for you while industrial food is bad for you.

On the whole, Planck presented an interesting and bold case for real food. However, I found Planck to have made some points that have only the most tenuous of support, and some other points that seemed downright disingenuous. Allow me to explain:

1. Correlation does not necessitate causation. Much of Planck's argument has us believe that heart disease, obesity, and diabetes have increased because of the rise in "industrial foods." She makes this claim by showing how in our grandparents' generation, people supposedly ate a greater percentage of real food and that diseases of civilization afflicted a lesser percentage of the population. If we accept, for the moment, that "real food" really has declined to the degree that Planck believes, she does nothing to logically connect the decline of "real food" to the increase in diseases in civilization. There are a myriad of other factors that could be causes, co-causes, or generally play a facilitative role, such as less exercise (as fewer Americans perform physical labor, either at work or for recreation), environmental factors, the volume of food consumed, or specific chemical properties of the foods that we eat – to name but a few.

And speaking of which, it's difficult to believe that the house is burning when you don't smell smoke or see fire. Perhaps Planck provides this information in her book, but she did nothing to demonstrate that "real food" has been eclipsed by "industrial food" to the degree that she claims.

2. Hasty generalization. Listening to Planck, one would think that she would still consider McDonald's guilty of dietetic sin if they served organic, grass-fed, free range, cruelty free beef, served with freshly baked whole wheat buns, organic tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and ketchup -- with a side of organic fries cooked in beef tallow.

Her tagline is "real food is good for you, industrial food isn't." It catches your attention, yes, but upon further inspection you see that she has no basis for bringing down all industrial food. Just those that contain trans fat, corn oil, and sugar.

If industrial scale producers of food were able to eliminate trans fat, cut back on sugar, and use different oils, Planck would have no further argument against "industrial food" except that it's not as socially conscious or energy efficient as buying food that was locally grown and raised. Planck presents her argument as a purely dietary one, but one readily understands that her argument isn't based so simply. If she doesn't like industrial food companies in part or whole because they spite local and ecologically-minded farmers with bland substitutes and try to subvert legislation designed to protected these very people and their high-minded principles to the detriment on the consumer, that's fine. But her lack of transparency on the matter is suspect.

3. Appeal to authority. Planck is constantly dismissive of the dietary mainstream and the corpus of scientific work that I imagine went into crafting current dietary guidelines. At the same time, she seems to place complete trust in "new research" whose conclusions differ from the traditional authorities in the field.

4. Ignoring root causes. Planck comes out heavily against the pasteurization of milk. In general, milk is pasteurized because the udder is so close to the anus, making sanitation both extremely important and extremely difficult. As a result of modern mega-scale milk processing facilities, the improper sanitation of one udder could result in thousands (or tens of thousands) of gallons milk becoming contaminated. Without pasteurization, this milk would be passed directly to the consumer. Pasteurization thus allows the milk industry to certify that their product in safe to consume. Milk is also pasteurized to give it a much longer shelf life, which consumers both expect and appreciate.

Now, pasteurization of milk results in a myriad of chemical changes. Maillard reactions take place, which give pasteurized milk a subtle cooked flavor. Gases are allowed to escape (which happens when you heat any liquid) which improves shelf life. Lactose is partially degraded into lactulose and organic acids. The concentration of colloidal calcium decreases. And the concentration of vitamins, including vitamin C, decreases significantly.

So, while Planck is correct in arguing that we wouldn't "have to" transport oranges across the country if milk wasn't pasteurized, her argument is disingenuous. We'd still have to transport oranges because people in Wisconsin like eating oranges and we can't grow them here. There would also be the constant threat of sickness from consuming contaminated milk, which would drive consumption way, way down.

Planck takes aim at pasteurization of milk when she should be critical of the mega-scale processing and distribution of milk.

Moreover, the nutrient content of most foods is diminished by cooking. So if you're planning on cooking those green beans, or stirring that milk into anything hot from a béchamel to a cup of hot coffee, you're destroying most of the vitamins and anti-oxidants present. Her failure to note this fact when she is critical of pasteurization was most disingenuous.


Planck's lecture was interesting, insightful, and fun. She does good work in promoting local foods, but for the moment I'll have to remain skeptical of her conclusions.

Sopa de Huitlacoche

Last year, I had the good fortune to attend a cooking class at the French Culinary Institute by none other than Aarón Sanchez (Paladar, Mixx). It was one of those transcendent culinary experiences where I pushed my boundaries of what's "good to eat" way back. Chef Sanchez served up two things that I otherwise might be afraid to try: corn smut and worms. True, he did give everyone a shot of artisanal mescal, but I was awestruck by the dishes he made. They were a combination of French technique, Mexican flair, and truly fantastic flavor combinations. After a year and a half, the thing I remember most vividly about that class -- besides being outrageously thirsty by the end of the four and a half hour demonstration -- was his huitlacoche soup.

Huitlacoche is rendered into english rather ingloriously as corn smut. It's the result of Ustilago maydis, which is present wherever corn is grown. The end result, the part that cooks are interested in, is greatly enlarged kernels. The taste is an amalgamation of mushroom and corn.

Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, it's safe to eat. The Aztecs ate it, and Mexicans have been eating it continuously ever since. Huitlacoche has always been sold at a higher price than sweet corn, being considered a delicacy. Nowadays, many growers infect maize intentionally which has helped to keep the price under control as demand has steadily increased in the United States. Which is an interesting turn of events in itself, since the USDA has spent considerable time and money trying to eradicate corn smut. With the attention of Gourmet magazine, the Slow Food movement, and the James Beard Society, huitlacoche has made some cursory inroads over the last twenty years.

Speaking of the James Beard Society, you might also have heard the term "Mexican truffle" used to denote huitlacoche. This term was coined by the Beard Society in 1989 when they hosted a high profile huitlacoche dinner. The use of this phrase should be avoided, in my opinion since huitlacoche is completely different than a truffle. Truffles are foraged; huitlacoche has been grown since ancient times. Truffles are tubers; huitlacoche grows above ground. A single truffle in a room and can fill it with a pleasant scent; huitlacoche has no scent at all (this is how you can tell if it is huitlacoche and not something that might be poisonous). Truffles grow in the wild; huitlacoche grows among a staple crop (maize is the new world equivalent of wheat in the old world). Truffles are said to invoke passion; huitlacoche doesn't. Because of the almost comical lack of similarities between the two foods, it makes little sense to confuse things by associating one with the other.

Back to my story. I had been so eager to make chef Sanchez's soup that I was prepared to use canned huitlacoche until I read that Rick Bayless compares them to canned asparagus. As luck would have it, the Troy Community Garden in Madison had a farm festival last weekend. The highlight of the festival was, for me, the huitlacoche cooking demonstrations and the sale of fresh huitlacoche for the bargain price of $2 per ear. The huitlacoche was harvested earlier than would have been ideal, but I wasn't about to complain.



That night, I made a batch of sopa de huitlacoche, which is one of the simplest soups to make.

Simply heat some vegetable oil (or home-rendered lard, if you want to be authentic) in a skillet until very hot. Sauté one onion cut into half moons and two cloves of minced garlic until the onion is translucent. Add two roasted Anaheim chiles and one roasted poblano chile, all of which have been peeled and seeded. Cook for three minutes while stirring. Then add the huitlacoche of at least three ears of corn along with fresh epazote or cilantro. Reduce heat to medium and allow to simmer for five minutes.

Blend with a little chicken stock (about three cups) to create a smooth puree that has a thin consistency. Stir in half a cup of heavy cream, and bring to a boil. Simmer for five minutes before serving hot.

What stuck chef Sanchez's huitlacoche soup in my mind was the unique flavor experience of it all. Initially, you tasted an earthy-mushroom-corn flavor from the huitlacoche before being hit with a gentle dose of heat. I've never had a soup that had multiple ingredients mixed together that you still experience distinctly. If that's what I was trying to accomplish, I unfortunately fell short.

My version, while good as its own product, didn't have the interesting parade of flavors that I experienced last year in New York. The result was that of a simple corn-mushroom soup, which was still tasty. The huitlacoche was immature, and I used cilantro instead of epazote (the fresh epazote at the store didn't look terribly fresh).

In the end, I think this exact situation is what makes cooking so interesting. An expert can write down exact step-by-step instructions on how to make a dish, but an amateur can still only approximate the results of the expert. It makes every dinner a discovery.

Fortunately, this one turned out to be delicious.

The onion I used was from Tipi Produce (Evansville, WI) and the heavy cream was from the Blue Marble Family Farm (Barneveld, WI).

On the trail of Saveur

We who cook often find ourselves trapped in our kitchens, nose to the cutting board. We eschew travel, loath to squander the opportunity to reprovision our pantries with the fresh bounty that we dream of as Yeats dreamed. Loath to miss the fleeting smells of cherry tomatoes wafting from a farmer's stand, the grittiness of loamy soil on our fingers having run them over a pile of carrots each beautiful in their uniqueness, and the quiet reverence of our fellow parishioners as our feet carry us to a place where we get a brief burst of reality as we shuck an ear of corn, undressing it to the shoulders to admire its pulchritude for a moment, knowing that there is no ear like this one that's so close, so vulnerable, so fleeting, and so dear. It is the ear that we have lusted over when we wanted to stay home from work as a refuge from a deluge of snow, when we were having an affair with ramps while flirting with asparagus, and we will dream of it again as we bootycall a pumpkin to rekindle that old flame potage de potiron. But now is the time when we revel in corn, longing to expose it completely and enjoy every last kernal before it leaves us with fond memories of companionship and resentment that it couldn't stay, like the zucchini, driving us to ever higher plateaux of ecstasy as we try dish after dish of it. But in the end, you realize that it was just another tease like everything else that you can touch but not grasp, a longing without consummation.

We have our escapes. We read about food and about its Götterdämmerung and apotheosis in becoming cuisine. We subscribe to food magazines and eagerly await their arrival the way a lesser man anticipates the coming issue of Maxim. But every once in a while, these magazines don't whisk us away on a culinary exploration of field hands' dinners in Bordeaux or fold us into the midst of street markets in Melaka, but pipes us back home into liaison with our lives as cooks and as eaters.

That was the case when I opened up the September 2006 edition of Saveur to find the Milwaukee Friday night fish fry as the cover story. It highlights the midwestern tradition as faithfully as one could expect of the writer, Milwaukee native but expatriated Daphne Beal. I would have liked a bit more mise en scene to set the tradition against the backdrop of a city with a rich but troubled history, trying to find its identity without the glory of the now defunct Blatz, Pabst, or Schlitz breweries that still stand as drab monuments to an antiquated belle epoque in the city's history. It is a city recovering from a real lack of joie de vivre that so characterizes other Wisconsin cities. I can forgive the lack of historical depth as the length of copy was surely limited, and it might have been viewed as "off topic" by the more mainstream editors. I am also grateful that Beal managed to tell the story without the usual "quaint" or "provincial" descriptions.

To me, though, the real test of the article was to visit one of the restaurants it featured. Because of its prominent downtown locale, I went to the Historic Turner Restaurant for Friday night fish fry. A striking 1883 building greets the hungry diner as he opens the door to enter into a wide hall. After ascending a few stairs, the guest is immediately greeted by the pleasant smell of food and the decorous clatter of dining. Elegant wooden walls extend to a ceiling so high that you could hardly imagine any modern building being made that way. Historic photographs garnish the walls, adding character. Unfortunately, the restaurant has gone the "sports bar" route and has deleteriously affected its historical charm by hanging large televisions all over the restaurant. Although I tried to appreciate watching the Brewers play as a cultural element essential and perhaps inseperable from the experience itself, I found it distracting.



The menu features pretty much what you'd expect: a partnership of stripped-down cornerstones of many cuisines, mostly American and German. The prices are very reasonable, given the quality of the food. But I didn't really need the menu since I was there for the fish and the potato pancakes. The beer menu was sadly uninspiring for Milwaukee. It lacked many of the staple beers that one could expect: Riverwest Stein Beer, Sprecher Black Bavarian, New Glarus Spotted Cow, or Capital Special Pilsener. It did have some beers from the Water Street Brewery Bavarian Weiss. I was also disappointed in the service as the waitron only understood the "weiss" pronunciation instead of the more beer savvy and accurate "veiss." Never having sampled the Water Street Brewery's offerings, I was pleasantly surprised with the beer. It matched the style, possessed some complexity while avoiding the cloying flavors of other "wheat" beers. They served it in the correct kind of glass, which was also a nice touch.



The cod was tasty to be sure, having been well browned on all sides. It had the pleasing flaky-tender quality of a well-cooked fish. But the potato pancakes are what really stole the show. The pancakes were made by finely grating the potatoes, which gave them a nice smooth mouthfeel as opposed to the somewhat hashbrownie mouthfeel that potato pancakes sometimes possess. They were also cooked much more evenly than we've been able to achieve in my home kitchen, which was impressive even though I know the "secret" here is just using more butter.

My only complaints about the food are the quantity and the bread. They provide much more than one person could possibly eat, which demonstrates poor portion control. Second, the rye bread was extremely uninspiring. It didn't have the deep rye flavor or the heft that bread should possess. In the restaurant's credit, the butter was served warmed instead of refrigerator cold, which demonstrated an appropriate level of attention to detail on their part.

In all, the meal was excellent. I strongly recommend getting a table at the Historic Turner Restaurant. Going there might not have been the introduction to Irish folk cooking that I've come to expect from the editors of Saveur, but it did provide introspection into my own food culture.

That and the company of good friends gathered for a great meal.

SHF 21: The Root Beer Float

For this month's edition of Sugar High Friday, Sarah of The Delicious Life wants ices. Since she seemed particularly obsessed with Vanilla Ice, who will always be more "go ninja" than "ice, ice baby" to me, and since this blog is into beer, what better way to express this theme than with a humble root beer float? Like Boulud making a hamburger, I hope that I can show you that this dessert can be more than be more than the all-too-common bad marriage of bad root beer and bland ice cream.

To play matchmaker, I needed to make the most delicious vanilla ice cream and find the best root beer. The root beer part was easy. Nevertheless, it gave me a good excuse to taste two of my favorite brands together: Point and Sprecher. Since the experience was more hedonistic than I'd probably like to admit, I'll announce that I found Sprecher's root beer to be richer and more complex than Point's cleaner and more straight-forward flavor.

The ice cream offered a unique challenge in that I wanted to make the richest, most delicious vanilla ice cream I've ever had. I found three different recipes and compared their ratios of sugar and eggs side-by-side. I then decided to make my ice cream with the one with the most eggs yolks (ten) and the least amount of sugar (one cup) per quart of dairy. To be honest, I basically made Glace-Créme á la Vanille Escoffier with a few noted deviations.

To get my dairy products, I visited the new Westside Community Farmers' Market where I bought a quart of whole milk and a pint of cream from Nick Kirch of Blue Marble Family Farm. They purvey what might very well be the highest quality milk anywhere. Although I might question their claim that homogenized milk is bad for you and their use of clear glass bottles (the fat in milk is highly sensitive to photooxidation), their unhomogenized milk has a flavor that I had never before experienced.

I combined two cups of whole milk with two cups of cream in a heavy sauce pan. Then I added two Madagascar vanilla beans (from Penzey's Spices), even though Escoffier only calls for one. In this case, Madagascar vanilla beans seemed like a better bet because of their clean vanilla flavor. I let this mixture simmer for twenty minutes over a medium-low flame.

Meanwhile, I whisked one cup of sugar and a dash of salt into ten egg yolks until the mixture became pale yellow. When my dairy was properly scalded and infused, I added the strained dairy mixture into the eggs yolks via tempering. Once combined, I strained the mixture and put it back on the stove and stirred it continuously until it became slightly more viscous. Once done, I strained the mixture again and put it in the refrigerator until it reached the ambient temperature of my fridge (39° F). You want to freeze the ice cream at the lowest possible temperature above freezing to avoid ending up with a grainy ice cream.

At this point and in defiance of Escoffier, I added several spoons of my cranberry honey and a tablespoon of Mexican vanilla extract. Why? I was hoping to convoke the honey flavors of the ice cream and root beer. I also added the vanilla extract to give the ice cream an extra dash of vanilla flavor. If I were just making vanilla ice cream for eating vanilla ice cream, I would recommend against this step. However, in this case, I wanted to make sure that the ice cream could stand up to a full-flavored root beer. That's also why I chose Mexican vanilla extract (again, from Penzey's) for its rich, complex vanilla flavor.

Once my cream was at a cold enough temperature, I froze it in my ice cream maker for thirty minutes and left it in the freezer for about a day to firm up.

The resulting vanilla custard is probably the best vanilla ice cream that I've ever had. It's rich, and extremely flavorful. It combines a pleasant dairy flavor with a solid dose of vanilla. Plus, I love the light brown color and the vanilla speckles.

To make my root beer float, I spooned three scoops of my custard into a small glass and filled to volume with root beer. It was a revelatory experience to me, in that never I had a root beer float like this before. That and I always thought the problem with a root beer float was also a mechanical one. The ice cream would float on top of the root beer, making it almost impossible to combine the flavors. With a larger amount of ice cream, this problem was obviated.

In fairness, however, I think the ice cream was too good. And by that I mean that it might have been too rich and eggy for a root beer float. Next time, I will make it with a smaller number of egg yolks or simply skip the eggs in favor of Philadelphia-style ice cream. The addition of egg yolks has the advantage of making the ice cream melt more slowly, which is good unless you're looking for a fancy cream soda.

Sipping at an ice-cold root beer and savoring the creamy custard melt in my mouth was enough to make me forget the nearly 100° F weather today, one spoonful at a time.

Tagged with: SHF21 + Sugar High Friday

Beating the heat with a Radler

The Radler. A mixture of lemonade and lager. With temperatures hitting 95° F today, I couldn't resist the appeal of this misunderstood and much maligned beverage. That, and I also can't resist the urge to foil Eric Asimov who recently argued against lemon and beer combinations.

Many beer aficionados disparge any combination of lemon and beer on the grounds that it de-elevates the beer into the realm of swill. I believe my father responded to the idea of a Radler by saying, "There's nothing I'd rather less do with a good beer." After all, serving beer with a lemon or a lime is strictly for Coronas and similar beers in the US. I used to agree with this opinion until I was eating out one night and the bartender stuck a lime in my Spotted Cow. Now I like Spotted Cow; it's a good, solid beer. Nevertheless, I squeezed the juice into my beer. The result was a revelation to me. It didn't ruin the beer, it just took it to a different culinary destination. It added some bright citrus taste and seemed to bring out the hop flavor a bit.

While it would be relatively easy to dismiss by opinion as heresy or an appeal to beer anarchy, I believe I can claim the support of two unimpeachable sources. First, Garrett Oliver notes that lemon can be a welcome partner to a witbeer. And second, no less of an authority than the Belgians and Germans are practically mixmasters. Even at traditional Belgian cafes serving lambic brews, small dishes of sugar sit out so that diners can sweeten their framboise. And back in olden times when beer quality wasn't as high or as dependable as it is today, Germans traditionally mixed fruit syrups into their weizens to make them more palatable. Heck, even the British have their shandies and their black and tans.

Interesting, there are some histories of the Radler circulating around on the internet. The most common is that it was invented in 1922 by Franz Xaver Kugler, the owner of a Bavarian Gasthaus (an inn with a restaurant), who mixed lemon-lime soda with beer in order to accomodate the number of cyclists staying at his establishment. And indeed, the word "Radler" does mean cyclist in German. I have no idea of whether this story is true or not, but I'll just say that I'm generally highly skeptical of creation myths. The beverage is also known as an Altsterwasser in northern Germany, leading to curious double sided cans that identify the contents for both regions. The Radler is, to the best of my knowledge, the only exception to the German Reinheitsgebot. That is, all German made beers come from only malt/wheat, hops, water, and yeast. Except for the Radler, which is permitted to be sold as a finished product despite the addition of lemonade. Perhaps because many Americans would reject a Radler as somehow unmanly or a perversion of taste, the Radler isn't imported into the United States.

To make a good Radler, I figured that I needed to start with good lemonade. Originally, I planned on using Escoffier's very own citronade recipe but I was stumped by what unit of volume a "syphon" is (such as "add one syphon of sparkling water"). After having done some research online, I decided upon the juice of six lemons, 1/2 cup fined sugar, and four cups of sparkling water. To maximize carbonation, I recommend juicing the lemons and dissolving the sugar in the lemon juice. Then add the sparkling water (I used San Pallegrino), and whisk gently to mix. This lemonade is somewhat stronger and more sour than what you're probably accustomed to from the supermarket, but I swear this lemonade is darn close to perfect. The spritzy carbonation adds a nice touch to the still lemonades that are common in this country.

Having made my lemonade, I picked up my local helles variety from the Capital Brewery (Middleton, WI). It's called Bavarian Lager and is, I think, a good expression of the style. I plan to review it in the future.

Traditional Radlers are 50-50 mixtures of lemonade and beer. So I measured out a cup of helles and poured it into my pint glass and topped it off with a cup of lemonade. If you mix it the other way, you'll get less foaming.

The resulting beverage was extraordinary.

The aroma was alive with bright citrus notes accented by two kinds of sourness, one from the lemons and the other from the beer. The beverage appeared bright gold in the glass and was graced by spritzy carbonation. But the flavor is where the mixture really took off. The flavor is very interesting, and unlike anything I had ever tried before. It's basically a sweet-and-sour experience where you taste an initial burst of sweetness and malt flavors. After a brief moment, the flavor shifts to lemonade and hops. I was surprised to detect hopping in the Radler, because I couldn't taste any in the beer by itself.

But best of all, the Radler was very easy to drink and extremely satisfying. It lacks any ethanol flavor or the warming effects associated with drinking.

Next time it's hot out and you're tempted to mix up a margarita, have a Radler instead. You won't be disappointed.

Television commentary: Feasting on Asphalt

As somone who got turned onto cooking by Alton Brown's scientifically minded and entertaining show Good Eats, I'm excited that he's hosting a new television program.

It's called Feasting on Asphalt, and it will feature Alton Brown traveling around on his motorcycle and eating road food. Sounds like a good deal for Alton, not only because he loves motorcycles, but also because it gives him a chance to do more than his geeky Good Eats gig. Which after so many seasons has got to be good for his career. If he continues doing Good Eats, I hope that the quality remains at the level that it has been.

Alton Brown already got in a vehicular accident and broke his clavicle. He'll be ok, and seems to be in good spirits about it.

Before I give you the link (which in classic Food Network online fashion is totally useless anyway), I want to warn you that few things in life suck more than the Food Network's webpage. It's slow, full of ads and unnecessary java, and it crashes Firefox from time to time. Which as anyone who uses the latest version of Firefox on Mac OS 10.4 can tell you takes some doing. That said, here it is. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Edit: You may be more interested in reading about the new show on Alton's own website.

It's interesting that Alton Brown's webpage was redesigned for the debut of his new show. His old webpage, still viewable using the Internet Archive, prominently featured Alton in a long black coat considering an onion while holding a Kershaw knife behind his back. The layout seemed consistent with his Good Eats persona: whimsical, amusing, and useful. It is the first major overhaul of the website since 2001. The new layout seems to share these same qualities, but showcases his new travel show with the diner "EAT" sign on the mainpage and the "OPEN 24 HOURS" and "Guest Check" images on his store's page. Could this be hinting at a change in programming? Only time will tell.

If Alton Brown is seeking to have a travel show on the Food Network long term, I am have worries about how that would integrate into the network's regular programming. The Food Network has gone completely nuts for travel and eating out shows, eschewing shows that actually involve cooking. With Rachael Ray's transformation from the master of quickies -- er, Thirty Minute Meals -- to $40 a day, to her celebrity gossip flop Inside Dish, and her latest Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels, the network seems to have gone too far in one direction. (Note: As much as I like to make fun of Rachael Ray, I agree with much of what Jill Hunter Pellettieri says about her in Slate.) I would hope that Feasting on Asphalt, if any good, will replace existing travel programming instead of merely tack another travel show onto the regular schedule. I'm worried about the broader implications of cutting a cooking show from the primetime line-up and perhaps replacing it with another travel show. As Sara Dickerman of Slate pointed out, the network has cast its culinary talent into television exile. Jacques Torres, Wolfgang Puck, and Sara Moulton all have been virtually eliminated from the network. Even Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour doesn't make it on television much any more. Now, I can understand why: culinary talent is not the same thing as television talent. Jacques Pepin is an amazing chef. But his program on PBS are not particularly entertaining. I'm told that Emeril and Mario Batali are both excellent and accomplished chefs (their restaurants are too far away to visit at this point in my life), but it's obvious that they were not made for television.

That brings up a larger issue of how we approach our time and our food. We want everything to be easy and fun. Cooking isn't just the flash of an expertly executed flambé, it's also the monotony of peeling carrots and shocking asparagus and cleaning pans. Cooking is about transforming earth's bounty into cuisine... or at least food. Which can be fun, yes. I like cooking myself. But its primary role is not to entertain us or amuse us so much as feed us. To be good at anything in life, including cooking, you have to put some elbow grease into it. You have to want it and work for it. If you have fun along the way, so much the better.

The problem is that many programs on the Food Network don't teach you the first thing about cooking. As far as I'm concerned, Good Eats is the lone survivor of the the network's obsession with hausfrau programming.

Beer and ... Eric Asimov?

If you haven't noticed yet, the New York Times' very own Eric Asimov had some very brief but positive words about summer beer.

Here's the link.

This isn't as surprising as you might have expected. Although Eric Asimov seems to have a bias toward European beer over craft American brews, he's a fan of Garrett Oliver and has used his unassailable authority in the world of wine to good use in favor of great beer.

My only complaint is that he says that hefeweizen has a strange taste. It's not that strange even in the world of lagers. Sure it can taste of "cloves, smoke, bananas and bubblegum" but what makes that so strange. Belgian beers, especially dubbels and tripels, are even more clove-ey, banana-ey. amd bubblegum-ey. Witbeers have even more pronounced spice flavors.

And besides, what makes cloves and banana so strange? To me, it doesn't seem any more unusual than someone talking about cherry, chocolate, or coffee stouts. Or noting the creative use of corn adjuncts in New Glarus' Spotted Cow, for instance.