I have benefitted greatly from the home brew/craft brew movement.  Over the last 30 years, I have enjoyed many a tasty beverage.  It could be argued that America has the best beer on the planet.  And we have Jimmy Carter to thank for that.  Thank you, Jimmy Carter.

But it never occurred to me wonder why the rules aren’t the same for liquor.  It came as a mild surprise to me learn that the revenuers are still raiding moonshiners, and breaking up their stills.  Yet, they are.  It is a felony in this country to distill even a drop.

Back twenty years ago, I was climbing in WV, and at the camp that night the populations of out-of-state rock climbers mingled with the locals.  The locals had ‘shine in mason jars.  And that was some of the best whiskey I’ve ever tasted.  It was like drinking an alcoholic hot pepper, and it was like smoking a cuban cigar, and it was like breathing in the air on a cold Fall day.  Nothing I ever paid for in a liquor store ever matched it.

This video from Reason explains a bit of why almost no one ever gets to experience that.

Chew on this, y’all. Tonight’s menu:

Ham steak with pear, ginger and maple glaze
Potatoes Anna
Maple-whipped winter squash
Pois au Provence (a pea and herb concoction of my own devise with lavender, fennel, thyme and sea salt)
American-style pasta salad with the mayo and boiled eggs

Ham steak with pear, ginger and maple glaze (serves 2-4)
1 1-pound cured ham steak. A good one. Niman Ranch at the very minimum. None of that generic water-filled crap.
1 very hot skillet
1 tablespoon oil
1/4 cup pear and ginger marmelade
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons maple liqueur

But wait, John. Not everyone has pear and ginger marmelade and weird Canadian hooch lying about…. Not to worry! Lacking the marmelade and liqueur, substitute:
1 smallish pear, peeled, cored and finely diced
1/4 tsp grated fresh ginger or 1/4 tsp dried ginger
a trace each nutmeg, allspice, clove
1 tablespoon American whiskey (Bourbon or Tennessee)
1 tablespoon got-damned real maple syrup, grade B or A ONLY.

Film the very hot skillet with the oil. Place steak therein. Let get very brown and crusty in spots on both sides over medium to medium-high heat, about 7 minutes per side.

Remove steak from pan and set aside to cool. Add butter and once melted add either the marmelade and liqueur or the subsitutes. Scrape browned bits off bottom of pan as you go. If using the substitues, add a splash of water and let the pear cook for a few minutes until quite soft. If using the real deal, just heat through and pour over your steak. Serve and swoon.

Maple-whipped winter squash

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and diced into 1-inch dice
2 tablespoons butter
salt
pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon
a few gratings (or 1 dash) nutmeg
2 tablespoons maple syrup, grade B or A

Steam the squash until tender. Mash and force through a food mill or fine-meshed strainer.
Stir in other ingredients, and charge $10 for a number 8 ice cream scoopful of the stuff. Seriously, this will knock the pants right off you.

Let’s just pretend it hasn’t been a year since I last posted.

So anyway, I’ve gone buck-nutty this summer making up salads, some of which are even delicious. Here are two.

Carrot and red cabbage slaw with toasted fennel

1 small head red cabbage, cut into eights and finely shredded
4-5 medium carrots, grated
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup white balsamic or white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1 tablespoon honey
salt
black pepper

Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Place the fennel seeds in the skillet and toss over low heat until they darken slightly and you can smell them.

Remove immediately to a spice grinder and pulverize.

In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, oil, fennel, ginger, honey, salt and pepper. Whisk vigorously to combine and let stand for 10-15 minutes.

In a large bowl, pour the dressing over the carrots and cabbage and toss well. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. This salad is DOPE, yo, and excellent with pork or steaky-type fish.

Variation 1 – carrot and fennel slaw with orange dressing

Grated carrots
Finely shaved fennel bulb
Dry-toasted fennel seeds
Orange juice
Vegetable oil
White balsamic vinegar or white wine vinegar
Golden raisins
salt
and maybe a splash of Grand Mariner or Cointreau

Two weeks to the traditional tapping of the keg and the start of the 175th Oktoberfest.

That’s THE Oktoberfest, not your local beer festival that lamely goes by the same name and serves swilly beer for a couple hours in the park while a band plays Kenny Loggins covers and most of the people around look like they’d rather be someplace else.

Bavaria, friends. Munich. Dirndls and lederhosen. Oktober-fucking-fest.

If you care to see how the world’s greatest party is shaping up, look here.

If you care to cry yourself to sleep tonight certain that you will never have that much fun, just remember to cut lengthwise down the vein, not perpendicular.

[Wik] Or, you can thank Jebus that the game Herzerljagd, advertised at the above link and which asks, “Can you see those sweet girls on your screen? Maybe you can win their hearts, but at first you have to shoot them”, doesn’t load right and is unplayable in IE.

From the BBC, this story:

Restaurant sorry over F word bill

A restaurant owner has apologised after diners had their very own F word experience – without Gordon Ramsay.

Ten friends found the abusive and sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci’s Italian restaurant in Bird Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Diner Clare Watkin said she thought it was written after they complained about poor service.
…

If it weren’t for the fact that I seldom eat in either Great Britain or Manhattan, and in any event, am always unfailingly polite to anyone in a position to spit in my dinner, I’d have to start paying more attention to my bill.

I have broken my embarrassing six-month bloggy hiatus (self-imposed due to infant, my job, and my other job, plus the realization that nobody in the world gives a rats’ red ass about my “learned” opinions on world affairs) to tell y’all this: I’m famous!

Or at least notable.

Ahhhh, hell with it. This week’s edition of the Basic Brewing Radio podcast features a 40-minute interview with yours truly, expanding ya’ll’s consciousnesses on the topic of capturing, keeping, and working with wild yeast and wild yeast sourdough bread. The brewing connection to baking being, obviously, ancient and fundamental. And delicious.

I might be a fraud, but I’m a very convincing fraud. Download, listen, and learn.

With cognac and spices, of course.

Brew #18 – Beamish Genuine Dry Stout clone
(from a recipe in “Beer Captured” by Szamatulski and Szamatulski)

The wife requested a nice dry Irish stout in the mold of Guinness and Murphy’s, so it is my duty to oblige.

13.5 oz roasted unmalted barley
6 oz black patent malt
8 oz flaked unmalted wheat
5 lbs light dry malt extract, 2 lbs Breiss, 3 lbs Muntons
1 oz Challenger hop pellets, 7.5% AAU, bittering
.4 oz Fuggles hop pellets, 3.8% AAU, bittering
.25 oz Fuggles hop pellets, flavor
1 Whirlfloc (Irish moss) tablet
White Labs WLP 0004, Irish Ale Yeast
1 Tablespoon 88% lactic acid, added at kegging.

The place I’m getting my grain from now doesn’t grind to order (jerks!) so I crushed the grains using a cast iron pan and a sheet pan – which produced lots of dust which had to be filtered from the steeping water it was added to the kettle. Will this cause tannins to come through in the final beer? Sure hope not!

Steeped grains in 1 gal Market Basket spring water at 160 degrees. Sparged grain sack in kettle water at 180 degrees-ish.
Brought 2.5 gal approx Market Basket spring water to boil, added steeping water

Added malt extract and bittering hops at boil

Added whirlfloc and flavor hops at 0:45

Cooled pot in ice bath, combined with 2.3 gals (approx) chilled Poland Spring water. Pitched yeast at 74 degrees. Total volume about 5 1/4 gallons.

OG: 1.044, which means I got amazing efficiency out of my steeping grains. Huh.
Target FG: 1.009-1.010
Actual FG: 1.013, which is high. Maybe I just need to learn to read my hydrometer better, as the target OG was 1.041. Knock three points off each reading and I’m in the zone.

Fermentation proceeded at about 68-70 degrees, a little high for the yeast but I don’t really have a choice. Racked to secondary after 8 days and held at 66-68 degrees.

Kegged after 1 month in secondary. Siponing went irritatingly, and I had to leave a good quart of beer in the bottom of the carboy. Final yield, about 4.75 gals.

Added 1 tablespoon of 88% food-grade lactic acid to keg. Force carbonated at 35 PSI.

Delicious stout. Lots of body, and though not milkshake-smooth it is well integrated. Aroma is of roasted barley (natch) and a whiff of malt. Flavor balances a drying roasted note with a malt backbone and just a touch of yeast character – some neutral esters and a touch of diacetyl (which is appropriate to the style). Bitterness is present but not too assertive, and the hop flavor is present but just sort of behind the scenes. The lactic acid added that Guinness tang and really brought everything together. Aftertaste is of roasted barley giving way to sweet malt and Fuggles hops, and a lingering bitterness. I could probably have stood to undershoot the bittering, but that’s niggling on what has turned out to be a really good beer.

Anyone else know that song?

I digress…

Last week the wife and I were out in the woods north of here, just south of the border with Cow Hampshire, hunkered down in a blind in the foggy morning dew. And just as the sun peeped up over the horizon, there he was! A magnificent specimen, just sauntering through the meadow before us without a care in the world, making for the Lego cache we’d placed.

Long story short, first day of the season and we bagged us a heckuva prize. Look at this pelt! Gorgeous! And the meat… I did a thigh roast with roasted pears, rosemary and a few juniper berries, and it was spectacular. I’m salting down the rest for winter tomorrow.

Just look at that pelt!!!

The Carnival of the Recipes, cocktail party edition, is now up!

I wish I’d’a remembered to submit something. I have some good cocktail recipes.