Avenues Proper: New SLC Brewpub

This is no longer the news it once was; Avenues Proper Restaurant and Publick House has been open for over two months now.  But we local beer nerds spent the prior year hotly anticipating this new brewpub opening.  Former Epic brewer Rio Conolly (namesake of Rio's Rompin' Rye) is one of the three owners, and is now brewing on premises.  I had the good fortune to meet Rio in the past year and learn of his plans for this new venture.  It became even more exciting when I found out it would be right in my neighbourhood, the Avenues--it's all of six blocks from our house.  Through the winter and spring, I took to walking the dog by the site to watch the construction progress.  And in late April, I managed to catch wind of their open house coming up on an early afternoon just prior to opening night and checked it out.

The space is gorgeous and impressive; it's much bigger than the shoebox I feared it would end up being.  Much of the furniture (including the bar) are locally made, a focus that also shows in the food.  The menu of bites, salads, and small and large plates feature a plethora of local and seasonal ingredients.  At the open house, they provided samples of the duck fat popcorn and pretzel sticks with stone ground mustard; excellent stuff.  The brewhouse is compact, but looks like a heck of a lot of fun.  No house beers were ready for prime time for the opening, but their bottle menu keeps up the local theme with a heavy focus on Utah breweries.  Also on hand for the opening were local coffee roasters Charming Beard, who specialize in sustainably grown single-origin coffees.  I had a couple cups of wonderfully fruity and aromatic coffee, and have since sought out their beans for home enjoyment.  The Proper staff were all very friendly and approachable; upon request, a couple friends and I even got a tour of the spacious and well-planned kitchen and prep area.  A great first impression overall.

Mrs. Absalom and I got out that night to try the full menu on their opening service.  The menu is admittedly higher end than we normally have when eating out, but the food was really excellent. We enjoyed the hell out of several small plates and bites; the marinated olives were particularly tasty.  Paired with fine libations (including gluten-free options for Mrs. Absalom) it was an excellent night out.  We've been back a couple more times and have been similarly impressed with the food, drinks, and atmosphere of the place; they've even managed to keep pretty busy in the middle of the week!  It very well may end up being the perfect neighbourhood hang for a few of our friends and us when we want a drink out.  All that's left is to try the beer; it can take some time to get a new system dialed in, but Rio should be just the man for the task.  I look forward to getting a taste when we get back to town.

- Br. Absalom

Knowing Goodness

“A taste for better stuff is cultivated only through experience.”

     -Barbara Kingsolver

“The baguettes don’t take long to bake in the hot stone oven. After about fifteen minutes we take them out and cut them open. The smell is enough to make you give up on cooking a gourmet meal and just eat bread instead.”

     -Camille Kingsolver

These two quotes are much more related than seems at first glance. Okay, maybe first glance is enough. It’s pretty obvious.

I’ve long been perplexed those willing to eat supermarket tomatoes in the winter. I suppose I’ve been one of those people myself at times, but that was less about ignorance and more about desperation, and a futile attempt in denial to have what I wanted when I wanted it. Perhaps it was also a sort of personal food Rumspringa. (I’ve mentioned my upbringing before, our kitchen at times more closely resembling that of an Amish household than its typical American counterpart.) I have a vivid memory of being in the Jewel-Osco (grocery chain in Chicago) on Ashland and Wellington in the winter of 2003-2004 with the ill-fated intention of buying tomatoes. (This probably happened more than once.) I wanted that magical July-August experience. A pesto pasta punctuated by bright, warm bursts of acidic-sweet cherry tomato sublimity. I knew in my heart of hearts that it was an empty pursuit, but like I said, I was in denial. I know I bought romas, brandywines, or whatever the hell variety supermarkets refer to as “vine-ripened tomatoes,” (as though there should be any other kind). “Insipid imports...anemic wedges that taste like slightly sour water with a mealy texture.” That’s actually a rather nice way of putting it. And if these insipid imports are all you know of as “tomatoes,” I can see why your feelings about tomatoes in general would be rather lukewarm at best, or even negative.

One of 2012's prized gems

But if you’ve ever had a fresh garden tomato, if you’ve walked up to a tall, gangly cherry tomato vine stretching its limbs like a yawning cat, unabashedly sunning itself in your backyard, and picked one of those warm, red jewels hanging from its crowned blossoms, popped it into your mouth, bit down with your front teeth, and received an explosion of flavor (and texture) that you forgot or never knew was possible, I don’t know how you would ever trust one of those insipid imports again.

I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life realizing just how bad a lot of the food we eat is, and wondering why so many people are okay with eating it. And I think it’s because they haven’t had enough experiences such as those described above. If a taste for better stuff is cultivated only through experience, does a good experience guarantee a taste for better stuff? I think we know that it doesn’t. The words “only” and “cultivated” in that statement are powerful words, accounting for the people who are mysteriously unaffected by such experiences, as well as for those who don’t have the experiences frequently enough, allowing appreciation and love for quality to grow. What’s the missing link? Surely there is some reason that someone experiences a truly superior tomato, India Pale Ale, or slice of artisanal cheese, but for whatever reason registers no more of a reaction than the “meh” that is normally elicited by the impostor immigrant counterparts.

Homegrown Yugoslavian heirloom variety - 2012

Was it a good enough experience? Walking into a good bakery and eating freshly baked bread is one thing, but when you were in the kitchen when it was in dough form, smelled it baking, cut into it and saw the steam rise from the crack like a volcanic fissure, and bit down on what was the freshest baked bread that any human has ever tasted, is that enough to make the difference? To never want to eat another slice of the double-wrapped, fisher-price resembling, aisle 3 stand-by again? I would think so, but then again, I know of people who have uttered a facial “meh” at such experiences, leaving me to wonder, how could you be so blinded to the truth that just jumped up and smacked you right in the face?

Admittedly, I don’t know many people who have denied such a tastebud affirming experience. Most of the dinner guests at my parent’s house in my youth frequently gasped at the sight of our vegetable garden, uttering laments of you’re so lucky and to eat like this every day...

I’ll just have to go on being like one of those charmingly obnoxious Pink Floyd fans, who upon discovering that you don’t really like Pink Floyd, confidently declare that you just haven’t heard the right album yet. It’s the only way I can reconcile the fact that for you and tomatoes, “‘kinda reddish’ is qualification enough.”

-Br. Thelonious

*Quotes taken from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Some of our 2012 deck garden's production

Un viaje a Chile

I haven't done a great deal of international travel, but I'm happy to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.  Just such a one came up this past October: I accompanied two of my music professors (of composition and trombone) to Santiago, Chile, to provide tech support for an electronic music concert and to give a few brass master classes.  It was an enjoyable week, getting to know just a little bit about Chile's history, culture, and people.  The roots of the indigenous people and the descendants of the Spanish

conquistadores are deep, but influxes of German and Middle Eastern immigrants last century have also made their marks on the country.

The "Chicago school" concepts introduced by economists trained at the University of Chicago and adopted as policy by the Pinochet regime raised the country's international economic standing considerably while simultaneously creating widespread unemployment and poverty.  The divide between rich and poor is still quite stark, and it seems that those of the middle class many times struggle to subsist.  In the last few years, Chile has experienced sustained student protests demanding deep reform of the public education system.  Despite the hardships, the students I met and worked with at the Universidad de Chile, all from middle class families, were very friendly, receptive to new musical concepts, and really quite fine players.  I gave two master classes to the tuba studio, the first a solo class and the other on chamber playing, and did a little coaching

of the trombone choir; it was very rewarding to hear the players make progress during our short time together.  I also greatly appreciated their patience with my terrible grasp of Spanish; the composition professor who was on the trip is Chilean and was on hand to translate for all the master classes, and often had to figure out how to re-translate what I had tried (and failed) to tell the students in their own language.

After all the teaching and accompanying translating that went on--the trombone teacher at the U. de Chile managed to wring a lot out of our trombone prof, having him give something like six or seven master classes and coachings during our stay--the concert almost came barreling up out of nowhere.  Our trombone professor performed a piece for bass trombone and live electronics by (of course) our composition professor as part of the Ai-Maako Chilean Electroacoustic Festival, which took place at several venues across Chile over the course of a couple weeks in mid-October.  Tired as we all were, the rehearsal and performance--which took place in Santiago--came off without a hitch and the piece was well received.

While we spent quite a bit of our time at the U. de Chile in downtown Santiago, it was great to get out into several other areas of the city as well.  The trombone professor and I stayed in a hostel in the Los Leones neighbourhood, which has apparently moved from being primarily residential to having more of a commercial vibe in the last couple decades.  The architecture in this area varies from a more Old World style of some of the remaining houses to the very modern high rises that are currently under construction.  Out exploring the neigbourhood one afternoon, I discovered a multistory building that exclusively housed

tattoo & piercing parlours, skate shops, anime boutiques, and small punk/hardcore music & clothing stores.  Within a block were several of the city's premier department stores.  A fascinating place.  Other interesting venues visited included the tenth-floor apartment of the composition professor's mother, where I experienced my first earthquake (it was just a little one, but exciting nonetheless); a quiet--and admittedly somewhat touristy--open-air market for handcrafted Chilean items; and a Communist-themed bar for a night of tango music.

Spring was just beginning when we visited, so we enjoyed a few lunches at outdoor cafés near the university or our hostel.  Much of the fare was very meat and bread-centric; fairly massive hot beef and cheese sandwiches with ají--a spicy red chili sauce--were regular staples.  Ordering coffee was an interesting experience; the normal cup of café was actually instant Nescafé, so if you wanted a regular cup of coffee you would order "café café."  The favourite of our trombone professor became a cortado ("cut" with milk).  We also had many wonderful meals at the homes of our Chilean professor's family.  One evening at a birthday

party we had an incredible wok-prepared shrimp curry; another night I was fed so many homemade dolmathes that it pained me to think of eating Greek food at all for several weeks afterward.  Accompanying a number of meals, of course, was alcohol.  Chilean wine was the common fermented beverage on the table, but the most renowned local drink is pisco, a grape brandy most often served with a sour mix.  Along with a few of these pisco sours, I also had a chance to try some top-shelf pisco over ice; I'm far from a connoisseur of liquor, but it was quite good.

As one should always assume with me, though, my eyes (and tongue) were peeled for local beer.  German immigrants several generations ago brought their lager brewing tradition, and lager was the drink of choice at the outdoor cafés.  Being a proud participant in the American craft beer revolution, I've long held a bias against lagers; sure they have a place, like at a cookout on a scorching summer day, but they don't normally end up in my fridge.  The (dare I say) authentic German lagers of Chile really made strides to change my mind, however.  In particular, I had an amber lager--whose name I can't recall, much to my regret--with lunch one day that was just perfectly malty, crisp, and balanced, without any of the unpleasant aftertaste I associate with lager beer.  My other experiences with Chilean lager, while not as revelatory, were far from displeasing; from a bottle of Austral at another café to a can of Baltica at a family dinner, I was happy to partake in this "dark side" of beer culture.

Of course, I didn't go all the way to the Southern Hemisphere without researching the local microbrew culture.  This article from Beer Magazine gave me a little primer for hunting down some cerveza artesanal in Santiago.  The grocery stores carried a wide selection of beer, both local and international (read: European).  From Kross Brewery I tried their ESB, Lupulus, and their fifth anniversary strong ale, Kross5.  The ESB was light and well balanced, the moderate hop bite and aroma very pleasantly contrasting the breadiness and faint yeast character; Kross5 was malty and warming, and went down well back home a few weeks later in the deepening autumn chill.

The "Bones of Oak" Stout from Cerveceria Rothhammer didn't make as good an impression when I cracked it open in SLC; despite the name, it came across as a fairly insipid stout without any noticeable wood character.  The "oak" may have just made for a good beer name in the brewery's eyes, but it set up certain expectations for this gringo, at least.  The most unfortunate Chilean craft beer experience I had, though, came at the aforementioned Communist-themed bar in the form of a bottle of stout from La Casa En El Aire.  I'm not sure if it was an off-flavour or if the brewery perhaps intentionally tried to add a touch of
"Guinness-ness" to their stout, but even very cold the beer had a pronounced tang that made it very difficult to return to the glass for another drink.  I'm not sure if I ended up with a bad bottle, but it's true that not every new, ambitious brewery--here in the US or anywhere else--puts out high quality product.

Fortunately, my overall impression of the cerveza artesanal Chileno scene is actually very positive.  Let me contrast my toughest experience in Santiago with my best: a visit to the Cervezeria Nacional brewpub.  I ended up making the trip on my own one evening to a neighbourhood that was probably not the safest for a fairly obvious tourist.  However, I arrived none the worse for wear, and eager to try some local beer.  The pub was small but had a great, warm atmosphere; I ended up sitting at the small bar, chatting with an off-duty waitress, exchanging my broken Spanish for her broken English.  My first pint, a

"blonde" that was really a red, redeems my later-diminished impression of Rothhammer; a little sweet, nicely malty, with a good balancing bitterness.  My second pint was the house IPA (which they pronounced "eepa"); while not a West Coast-style face melter, it was plenty hoppy, harmonizing with the malt base.  My take on the beer may have been coloured by the cozy environment, but I couldn't have asked for a more inviting setting to get a taste of the local brewing scene.  They even made sure I got out the door in time to make the last metro, saving me from trying to navigate the city by cab.  Definitely worth a repeat visit.

I don't know when I'll have a chance to return to Chile, but I look forward to some day revisiting the wonderful people, places, and flavours I discovered a few months ago, as well as exploring new ones.  I'm particularly keen to get up into the mountains, which loomed imposingly behind Santiago during our stay.  I always marvel at the places I've been fortunate enough to visit because of my vocation; here's to future adventures in music, travel, food, and beer.

- Br. Absalom

A Reluctant Goodbye to City Provisions

Cleetus Friedman's collaboration brew with New Holland

 Brewery - Marsha Mallow's Malted Milk Stout.

I’ve only written two blog posts so far on here, and as it happens, they’ve both been about places I like to patronize. One of those places just closed its doors for good. 

City Provisions was one of a kind. It began over four years ago as a catering company, and quickly expanded to comprise elements of a deli, coffee shop, cafe, restaurant, bar, and artisanal market. It was a local business in the truest sense. Cleetus Friedman, the chef/proprietor, had incredibly high standards for the sourcing of his ingredients and supplies. Much has been said about the food movement of the past several years, and the buzz words are used sincerely as often as they are in jest - sustainable, local, seasonal, ethically raised, environmentally friendly, organic - but all of those words could have been easily and honestly applied to City Provisions, and they were. What is often lost in the conversation about these concepts is that they are not for themselves, but are intrinsic to food that is, simply put, great. It’s obvious to anyone involved in the production of food that fresh tomatoes are only worth eating in July, August, and September, and any fresh tomato in February is invariably a spongy impostor. Cleetus embraced sustainability and all that it implies, but the reason sustainability is such a good idea when it comes to food is because it makes the best food. Chefs at fine dining restaurants already know this, and have known this for many years; seeking out the farmers themselves in many cases, buying directly from the guys growing the stuff, and only when it’s worth eating. Cleetus was doing it in a neighborhood cafe and deli. His place was excellent in the most ordinary way, which is exactly what made it extraordinary.

One of my all-time favorite City Provisions pictures. A 

delicious Americano on one of their beautifully imperfect

wooden tables.

Small businesses come and go. Restaurants come and go. Good places come and go. Places I like have come and gone, but this one was different. 

Almost two years ago, I experienced a paradigm shift in my philosophy about and daily approach to food. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma changed my life. I would imagine I’m only one of the many who have made such a statement. Grass-fed, pasture-raised, local, seasonal; for me these words became guiding principles in the grocery aisles, not simply disingenuous marketing terms.

A sinfully delicious cuban sandwich, Oct. 6, 2012

I grew up eating good food, and participating in lots of the types of activities that Barbara Kingsolver describes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Things like freezing, canning, and pickling. June activities like pulling the tops off of 25 pounds of strawberries that we picked ourselves for eating throughout the summer, and freezing for use until the following June. August activities like shucking 50 ears of sweet corn, boiling them all, and then cutting the cooked kernels off of the cob and stuffing them into ziploc bags to be stashed in the freezer, hopefully to last until the following August. Activities such as these marked the passage of time, the changing of the seasons, and held an important place in our lives. Food was important to us in a way that was, unbeknownst to me, unusual. Restaurants were something we did twice a year on I-94 in between Minneapolis and Milwaukee. At home my parents cooked every meal we ate. But not all of them were based on entirely sustainable, ethically produced, seasonal ingredients. Many were, but not all. We didn’t buy grass-fed beef or pastured poultry. The produce wasn’t organic necessarily. We sure as hell didn’t buy fresh berries in January (an oxymoron if there ever was one), but it wasn’t out of ecological or ethical principle, it was because fresh berries in January suck. My parents cared about the quality of good food, and made choices accordingly. It just so happened that good food often meant those other things as well. But after reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, the memory of my parent’s passion for all things food related made it easier to return to what I grew up eating, and even go beyond to what Pollan was advocating. In a sense it was easy, because I knew how important it was that I do it. 

Smoked pork heart/tongue tacos, Oct. 27, 2012

When it came to restaurants it was more difficult in some ways. I’ve always loved restaurants, everything about them: the various ways to create atmosphere, the lighting, the decor/furniture; the presentation of a menu be it elegantly showcased in a tri-fold leather portfolio with reinforced metal corners, a simple white piece of paper with a sans serif font, a giant chalkboard above a deli, or just the food itself sitting behind glass; the entirely unique aroma of a particular place created by both the building and the kitchen; the people of the staff and the relationships you can forge through something as common as needing to eat; and obviously, I loved the food. Now there were so many good restaurants at which, because of my new rules for myself, I could no longer eat. No more Al’s #1 Italian Beef. No more Philly’s Best. It wasn’t that I was so much depriving myself of things I loved, but rather that I knew I wouldn’t enjoy them anymore, knowing more about their food’s origins. When I found City Provisions about a year into my new food life, I almost couldn’t believe it. My brother (who visited it for the first time only a month ago) said “it’s perfect.”

Corned beef ruben, Oct. 30, 2012

I proudly brought my family there on visits from out of town. I brought friends there and bragged about how close it was to my apartment, “just a three minute walk!” I introduced them to Cleetus, the warm, incredibly hospitable, friendly proprietor extraordinaire. I became a regular along with my wife, and we got to know the rest of the wonderful staff as well. I spent hundreds there over the past 12 months without giving it a second thought, and would spend twice as much in the next 6 months given the chance. This place was special.

Who knows, six months from now I may not even be living here in Chicago anymore. But wherever I end up, I envisioned myself returning to Chicago frequently, going back to City Provisions again and again. It was the only place that I felt completely confident that I could buy anything on the menu without contributing to the industrial food economy in any way. It was the only place I felt that I could order any meat on the menu without worrying about where it might have come from. (And yet I usually asked anyhow because not only did they know, but they loved to tell you all about its provenance.) It was the only place I felt confident that everything I bought and ate or drank was produced, grown, cultivated, butchered, hand-processed, hand-crafted, cooked, pickled, smoked, brewed, grilled, braised, baked, pulled, assembled, and served with the utmost care and passion. It was the only place like it.

A City Provisions specialty: Sunday Brunch. Simply the best 
eggs benedict I've had anywhere. Ever.

Part of why this one bothers me so much is because it feels like a defeat. Defeat of the “food movement” (whatever that means) in some small way. Cleetus himself said, “I found that sustainability - an undying commitment to what that means - wasn't sustainable.” I’ve spent so much time talking to people about food, our food culture, our food industry, and everything that I think is wrong with it, and everything that I’d like it to be. Many of the arguments against such a dramatic change in the way we do things have been economically based, and I’ve tried to argue that they’re unfounded, that doing things differently is economically viable. What has happened here has raised the uncomfortable question, “well, are they?”

cp italian, with Carburetor Rye Bock.

Cleetus Heetus Aquavit Bloody Mary 
with charcuterie spear.

On Sunday afternoon, January 27, 2013, at about 2:30 p.m., I was headed back into the city from Glenview, hungry for a belated lunch. It occurred to me that they were open until 3 pm on Sundays, and a sandwich from City Provisions sounded perfect. I called in and talked to Eric, one of the guys who had been working there as long as I had been going there. I ordered a cp Italian: “assorted cured and smoked meats, parmesan, seasonal vegetable giardinera, oregano balsamic, baguette.” They had been out of the giardinera for a little while, which I knew, and as such they hadn’t been serving too many cp italians as of late. But I really wanted one anyhow and pressed on. Eric suggested getting it with some pickled red onions in lieu of the giardinera, and although the giardinera is an integral part of it, in my yearning for a cp italian I accepted his suggestion. I picked it up at about 2:58 pm, right before they closed. I briefly chatted with everyone as usual. Then I took it home, cut it in half, carefully plated it up like I always do with all take out - always - and enjoyed the hell out of it, sandwich, delicious homemade chips, wonderfully and curiously spiced pickle spear and all. Of course it was delicious. 

The last "cp italian," and the last

sandwich made by City Provisions.

I don’t know if I would have preferred to have known that it was the last sandwich that City Provisions would make. I probably would have been more sad while eating it, and thus unable to really enjoy it. I supposed I’m glad it happened the way it did, if it had to happen at all. I was the last customer at City Provisions, and as soon as Cleetus figures out what he’s doing next, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure I’m one of the first customers at his next stop.

Cheers to you, Cleetus. Thanks for an incredible place!

Fresher produce

Mrs. Absalom's done a fair bit of gardening over the last couple summers in the limited space we had in our former domicile in Chicago.  Every last tomato fell prey to the neighbourhood squirrels, but the basil fared much better, producing plenty of pesto, caprese salads, and pizza toppings.  This spring she embarked on an ambitious program of growing a wide variety of vegetables from seeds, starting them inside.  Unfortunately, they did none too well when they were moved outside; we were forced to scrap them all and regroup.  Our new plants - including basil, bell peppers, hot peppers, strawberries, and several varieties of tomatoes - are sprouting happily and showing prodigious progress every day.

In the meantime, our friends Craig and Caitlyn, who've done a lot of planting on their property last year and this spring (including a few fruit trees), gifted us an ample bag of mint leaves they harvested.  We love having great, fresh produce from our friends' garden, but we've really had to dig for ideas on how to use all of this mint.  We're not big mixed drink fans normally, so I don't foresee a lot of mint juleps or mojitos in our future.  After a bit of online research, Mrs. Absalom decided to candy a few of the leaves, then use them as a garnish on toasted graham crackers with quality chocolate and organic strawberries and blueberries.  To say this turned out well would be an understatement.

More ideas for getting the most out of the rest of this crop would be greatly welcomed.  If nothing else, I'll make a tincture with it to give brewing a mint stout another shot next winter.

This has brought me back to thinking on the issue of eating organic versus local foods.  Much as Brs. Abelard and Thelonious have mentioned here recently, we've really come to value knowing the origins and treatment of what we eat in the last few years.  Mrs. Absalom and I usually select as much certified organic food, especially produce, as possible; avoiding extra chemicals is certainly better for our personal health.  Ideally, we'd like to be able to buy organic and local - reducing the distance our food travels and supporting local businesses would definitely be our preference - but it seems like it's difficult to have it both ways at this point, especially in a climate that's less than ideal for farming of even moderate scale.

Fortunately, we're not without options altogether here, most notably Wyomatoes (their basil is also great) and Creminelli Meats; in addition, our local Whole Foods occasionally offers locally raised heritage meats.  The Order has discussed recently what it would take to find locally produced organic brewing ingredients; Dave Logsdon of Logsdon Farmhouse Ales (and founder of Wyeast) just spoke of his own work on this in a Q&A on sour beer blog Embrace the Funk.  And on the East Coast there's Valley Malt, whose Malt of the Month Club makes me wish I were back in New England.  At this point, it's tough to be a year-round organic locavore in many areas; for now, though, we'll keep growing in our small space and making the best-informed choices we can.


- Br. Absalom

Simply a lovely spring day

I'll admit it: I'm relieved to be done with doctoral study for the summer.  Having survived the hurdles of writing back-to-back double-digit-page papers two weeks ago and finals (with sometimes downright insane "drop the needle" listening portions) this past week, it's good to put it down for a while.  Not that there's nothing to do until September; there are a few more studio projects to wrap up in the next week, and DeAunn and I are getting to work to find ways to make a summer living as musicians, sussing out new students and cajoling libraries, nursing homes, and any other venue we can think of to pay us to perform.

Having started early and fought the good fight earlier today, I found myself on my own for the afternoon and evening; DeAunn played a recording session this afternoon, will play the opera downtown tonight, and taught a lesson out of town in between.  Stopping

at Whole Foods on the way back from logging some studio time, I found their salmon steaks on sale for nearly half off.  What was there to do but have one for late lunch/early supper, pour a beer, and sit out in the beautiful spring sunshine?

I don't have a lot of experience cooking fish--I've never eaten it regularly--so after some online perusing I seared it with a little olive oil and the inimitable Spice House's Lake Shore Drive Seasoning, then baked it for a few minutes to cook it through.  A few slices of raw tomato and a sauteed chopped green onion finished the plate; I laid on too much lemon juice, but it was still excellent.  Accompanying the salmon, the dog, and myself on the porch was a glass of my "new" old ale (formerly known as my IIPA).

It still gets chilly at night, but the days are getting increasingly warmer, a trend that's right in line with my own constitution.  I look forward to more glorious days like this, hopefully including a few back in the Midwest with my fellow brothers of the Order this summer.

-Br. Absalom

A Garden Meal

Okay, so it wasn't precisely a garden meal; after all, there was actually only one ingredient from the garden which actually was ready to be in the meal, but still, it was the first harvest from our garden, so I thought I'd write up a post about it...especially considering Br. Thelonious and I were recently lamenting about the lack of cooking/food posts on the site.

There was a time, in the not-so-distant past (6 years ago), in which I would not have batted an eye at eating a meal where all of the offerings had come already prepared from a box, tube, jar, or some other container. Add water, heat, and "enjoy". Fortunately I've traveled a long way since then, to the point where it's highly unlikely that anything in a meal has been pre-prepared, pre-made, etc. For the vast percentage of Americans, however, this is not their reality, and it hurts my soul to think about. Wendell Berry sums it up best when he writes:

"The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous, substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality."

Yes, it can take time to make a meal from scratch (though it doesn't always have to), but the reward of knowing every ingredient that is in the meal, and hopefully from where it came and how it was produced, far outweighs the reward of convenience.

This meal consisted of two offerings: a Spring garden salad with goat cheese, and oven-baked macaroni and cheese. For the salad, Katherine and I harvested radishes from our garden and to them added carrots which we had peeled into thin slices. "But where are the greens!?", I hear you asking frantically. Worry not: we simply cut off the tops of the radishes, chopped them up, and used those as the greens. To that we added goat cheese, then combined lemon juice, melted butter, salt, and pepper and tossed it all together. The result, of course, was delicious:

 

The macaroni and cheese was also fairly simple (Katherine suggested this), which required neither a bechamel sauce nor par-boiling the pasta: combine the liquid with the pasta and the cheese; bake it, and you're good to go. I ended up blending milk, yogurt, butter, spices (I used salt, pepper, nutmeg, and habanero powder), then mixing in the pasta with some smoked cheddar and provolone, and baking for an hour in the oven. Again, the result, paired with Sierra Nevada Torpedo (seen in background):

It was a fantastic meal, made even more so because it utilized our first garden harvest. I look forward to the day when we can harvest multiple things at once, and make an entire meal from them all. 

~Br. Abelard

Goodbye Winter, Hello...Summer?

Disclaimer: I wrote this exactly six weeks ago, on March 15, and forgot to click "Publish." D'oh!

Two weeks ago I was wearing double layers of external winter wear. And I was enjoying my seasonally appropriate stouts and porters, unable to whet my appetite for what has traditionally been my favorite style: the hoppy, pale variety. Today, and for the last two weeks or so, daytime temperatures have hovered in the 60s, 70s, and occasionally breaking 80.

Bacon, mushroom, and onion omelet, with a baby greens salad and
homemade balsamic vinaigrette. But that's not just any old bacon. That's
lamb bacon from Indianapolis' Smoking Goose, a "meatery" that specializes
in artisanal meat products that come from from heritage animals, properly
pasture-raised on local family farms.

A few days ago, intent on taking full advantage of our premature summer, I was enjoying a day off at home doing the usual "day off at home" things that I enjoy doing: cooking meals (like my omelets that, thanks to Jacques Pépin, are better than any I've ever had in a restaurant), drinking beer, listening to music, and doing chores with every door and window in the apartment wide open. The inherent warm-weather ability to do such things provides the possibility of chance encounters with neighbors - otherwise highly unlikely. (Two nights ago the smell of hotdogs and hamburgers sizzling over burning charcoal lured me out onto my deck to find my downstairs neighbor intent on taking full advantage of our impromptu June as well.) While cleaning dishes after cooking a delicious breakfast, I overheard voices outside spouting off names of very familiar-sounding beers. Turns out some upstairs neighbors of mine, while on their way out, spotted the ad-hoc collection of bottles that had accumulated on my back porch over the winter. Ommegang Adoration...My Antonia, that's Dogfish Head's Imperial Pilsener...hey these are some good beers! I quietly thought to myself, indeed they are. Hey wait a second...they - whoever they are - are looking at my beers! As I was poking my head out to see who these kindred spirits were, they were doing just the same; walking up to my back door to see just who, once upon a time, had enjoyed all these good beers. "Looks like you've had some good stuff here," they said. "Hey, if you're interested, City Provisions has a couple bottles of Founders KBS left. Are you familiar with that one?" "Yeah sure," I said, being unfamiliar with it. "Get over there soon if you want one. The owner is also pouring a collaboration brew he did with New Holland." "Oh you mean, Cleetus?," I replied. "Yeah! So you know..." Kindred spirits indeed.

Cleetus Friedman, a "politically-incorrect-white-jewish-ambisexual-hip-hop-artist"-comedian-chef-conceptual brewmaster, owns City Provisions, a deli-cafe-catering company that focuses on local, seasonal, sustainable, expertly prepared, awesome food. No surprise that Cleetus also has a thing for such beer. Each month, he collaborates with a different local brewery to produce a small batch of beer, often inspired by the season, something he's cooking, or his whim. By his own admission, he doesn't know much about brewing, but he knows the character he's going for, and what he wants his beers to taste like. He's recently worked with such breweries as Metropolitan, Finch's, Greenbush, Dark Horse, Two Brothers, and right now he's pouring a beer titled "Marsha Mallow's Malted Milk Stout" that he made with the powerhouse craft-brewery in Holland, Michigan: New Holland. Apparently - according to ZombiesAteMyDog, the lone reviewer of the beer on Beer Advocate - the beer was "Named after the infamous Marsha Mallow, of the NHB [New Holland Brewing] staff holiday party, 2012." I don't know if it's true or not, or whatever Ms. Mallow may have done to gain infamy, but who cares. Marshmallows, chocolate malts, milkshakes - this beer evokes them all.

But that wasn't even what I went over there for. I went for the Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout (which I had just figured out was what the "KBS" stood for). What my neighbors didn't tell me was the price of admission. About an hour after their admonition to make haste, I called up City Provisions to ask if they had any KBS left. "We do," the guy on the phone said, "but do you know the deal?" No, I did not know the deal. "The manager wants you to drop an old-school rap line in order to get one." Ok. No problem. I'm not a rap aficionado or anything, but I'm sure I can come up with a single line from a Dr. Dre, Snoop, Gangstarr, Ice Cube, someone's song. When I got there, I panicked. I asked "who I was supposed to tell that we've been spendin' all this time livin' in a gangster's paradise." Ugh. Coolio?! And it had to be the song in which he shamefully ripped off a great Stevie Wonder tune? Shame on me. I could see that Cleetus was not impressed either. He is a hip-hop artist himself, after all. But hell, it got me some KBS. And hey offered me a glass of the milk stout too. Not a taste, mind you, but a whole glass. For free. Of course I went back later that night with a friend to purchase two more, because that's what you do when you have a guy like Cleetus and a place like City Provisions in your neighborhood. You go there.

-Br. Thelonious

Beer Flight

It often pays to be a regular at a place. I'm almost tempted to qualify that by saying at some places, but I don't make a habit out of going to places at which it does not pay to be a regular.

I'm a regular at Urban Burger Bar, much to my wife's chagrin. Great food, great beer selection, great people serving both, nice atmosphere, and, well you could say proximity to my workplace, all come together nicely to make it a no-brainer.

I walked in the other day for lunch just as they were opening to find a completely empty place and two beer flights artfully on display at the end of the bar. "We're just taking some new press shots," says Emily, one of the regular bartenders. Before I could ask what "press" they were for, she slid one of the flights in front of me and smiled.

"Edmund, Sprecher, Rasputin, and Allagash White," she says. I checked out the aroma of the first one, and it smelled a lot bigger than Great Lakes' Edmund Fitzgerald. I tasted it, and it tasted a lot bigger than Great Lakes' Edmund Fitzgerald. "I don't remember Edmund being this powerful," I tell Emily. "It can stand up on its own," she says, "it's a good solid porter." Out of curiosity, I tried the third one, North Coast's Old Rasputin, and it smelled and tasted an awful lot like a nice mild, roasty, coffee-like porter...at least I proved to myself that I can tell the difference.

(Cask Conditioned Summit India Pale Ale)

I went back to the first one and enjoyed the rest of the big, powerful Russian Imperial Stout Old Rasputin, followed by the third one, the nice balanced, mild, roasty Edmund Fitzgerald porter. And finally I drank the second one, Sprecher's Abbey Tripel. I left the Allagash White alone for the most part, except for a little taste after the other three. Against the others, the Allagash is practically a palate cleanser, and not lacking at all for that, but perhaps a bit out of place on that flight. Although maybe that's exactly the point.

But what's my point? No point, really. Just that it's nice to be a regular at a place.