Beating the cold with comfort food

We've actually been having a little thaw here lately. It was 53 degrees here on Tuesday. Unfortunately, there was also a strong wind blowing, with gusts up to 30mph. So, on the one hand, I got to go out and walk through Central Park on my lunch break. On the other hand, I spent most of that walk blinking dust out of my eyes that the wind was whipping up in great, gritty clouds. 

 

Today it was 56 degrees, with no wind, and I walked from 79th St. back to work at 65th st. with a huge smile on my face. It gave me just a taste of what's to come - warmth!! And lots of it. I'm sure you'll tire of hearing me whine about the heat and humidity in August, but right now I say "Bring on that 90 degree weather". I'm ready for it!! 

Unfortunately, I've lived in the Pacific Northwest long enough to know a false spring when I see one, and I'm not fooling myself that the cold weather is past us just yet. And last week I had found a dinner that is a perfect remedy for a cold night. Comfort food - eggs, biscuits, potatoes and mushrooms. I got a couple of portobello mushrooms in my food box last week and was a little perplexed as to what to do with them. I grew up in a household where mushrooms were not common and I've only recently begun to truly enjoy and appreciate mushrooms. And I've never handled a portobello before! So I did what any smart person would do, I went to bonappetit.com and typed in Portobello. And back came, "Broiled Portobello topped with Creamy Scrambled Eggs". I had some buttermilk in the fridge leftover from making butter, so biscuits seemed natural and there were potatoes in the box as well. What could be more comforting and warming than breakfast foods? The mushrooms are broiled with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and, my lord, they are delicious. The egg is almost omelette-like in texture and you just plunk it down on top of the mushroom and devour. It was the perfect dinner on a super-cold night. 

Broiled Portobello with Creamy Scrambled Eggs

• 6 4- to 5-inch-diameter portobello mushrooms
• Olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 12 large eggs
• 4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter

Preparation 

Preheat broiler. Line large baking sheet with foil. Remove and discard mushroom stems. Scoop out and discard tough inside centers where mushroom stems were attached. Brush both sides of mushrooms generously with olive oil. Place mushrooms, dark gill side up, on prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle mushrooms with minced garlic, then sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Broil mushrooms about 5 inches from heat source until beginning to soften, about 5 minutes. Turn mushrooms over; broil until tender when pierced with knife, about 7 minutes longer. DO AHEAD Can be made 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature. Before continuing, rewarm in 350°F oven until heated through, about 10 minutes.

Whisk eggs, 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, chopped rosemary, salt, and pepper in large bowl to blend. Melt 5 tablespoons butter in heavy large skillet over medium-low heat. Add eggs to skillet and stir gently in circular motion with wooden spoon or heat-resistant rubber spatula, releasing cooked eggs from bottom of skillet and allowing uncooked portion of eggs to flow underneath. Cook until eggs are set but still soft, about 4 minutes total. Dot with remaining 1 tablespoon butter. 

 

Arrange hot portobello mushrooms, gill side up, on plates. Top with eggs, dividing equally. Sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, dividing equally, and serve.

We get to taste our beer this weekend! I can't wait and I hope it's not skunky!!

I apologize

I just wanted to say I'm sorry for not writing more interesting things about living in New York City. The truth is that it is just so cold here, I spend probably 95% of my time either in the apartment or at work. This is just not the weather for long walks or neighborhood exploring. Usually I'm just trying to get from the subway to wherever I'm going in the shortest amount of time possible, not even pausing to look up or marvel that I live in this cool city. January was just frigid. We had snow at least twice a week for the whole month and I don't think it probably got above 35 more than a couple days. We still have snow on the ground from Christmas, although it's on it's last legs now - the 3 foot high piles have subsided to mere inches now and the dogs are having to go to the bathroom on the bare sidewalk for the first time in a month. February has been a bit warmer and it hasn't snowed yet. It was 40 yesterday for about 10 minutes, then a cold front came in while I was at work and by the time I left, it was 20. This morning it was 17 degrees when I left for work and with the wind chill, it was supposed to feel like 2 degrees. Trust me, it did.

So, really, we haven't been exploring much, we haven't been walking or touring or leaving the apartment for long stretches of time. Frankly, it's starting to drive me a little bit crazy and I'm feeling a little bit trapped. At least in Oregon, if it stops raining for a few hours, you can go outside.

We have, however, been going to the ballet a lot, which is a nice way to get out of the house. I think I mentioned this before, but the ballet is set up more like a symphony performance. The season includes about 30-40 dances, each probably 30-40 minutes long and every night they perform a difference combination of 3 or 4 of these dances. So if you go on a Tuesday night, you will most likely see 4 different dances than you would if you went on a Saturday. It's actually really cool and good for those of us with shorter attention spans. They usually do a very traditional ballet, and contemporary ballet and then kind of a broadway/more showy ballet. A little taste for everyone.

Having only ever seen the Nutcracker before, I wasn't sure if I would actually like ballet, but it turns out that I do! It's just amazing to watch these incredible athletes who are SO strong, yet so beautiful and graceful. They flit around the stage looking effortless and weightless, and then you focus on their arms and legs, and you see how hard they are working, how much strength it actually takes to make these things look effortless and weightless. It's pretty astounding, actually. Swan Lake is coming up and, having seen Black Swan recently, I'm really hoping that we will be able to get tickets to that. But, I'm sure it will be a very popular performance and there might not be any availability for us free-loaders.

Hope everyone else is staying warm!!

Bottling

The wait was finally over last Sunday, and we bottled the beer. It was a little nerve-racking to take the top off of the fermented and hope that there was beer inside, but there was indeed - delicious, aromatic, amber-colored beer.

The first step was to go back to the home brew shop and buy a bunch more equipment. Bottling bucket, bottles, bottle caps, siphon tubing, racking cane, bottling cane, bottle tree. I won't lie to you, the setup for this hasn't been cheap. Its put a deep, $200 dent in my pocketbook. But it was worth it the second I took my first deep whiff of the fruits of our labors. We took the lid of the fermenter and looked down into that gorgeous, delicious liquid and the two weeks of babysitting the swamp cooler, swapping out frozen water bottles twice a day, it all seemed very worth it.

We ended up getting 22oz. Bottles because that's all they had. At first I was bothered by this, but with home brew, there's always a little layer of yeast at the bottom of the bottle, and it's probably better to pour it out of the bottle to drink anyway, so I got over it.

We came home and washed and sanitized all the bottles and hung them on the nifty bottle tree until it was time to put the beer in them.




Then we had to move the beer from the fermenting bucket into the bottling bucket. The bottling bucket has a spigot on it which makes getting the beer out of the bucket much easier. So step one was to transfer the beer. Easy right? Just hoist that bucket up and pour it out? Nope, turns out that getting oxygen into your beer is, like, the worst thing you can possibly do to it. So, instead, you must use a siphon to gently, gently suck the beer out of one bucket and into the other. The last time I used a siphon, I was about twelve and cleaning out my fish tank. To get that siphon to work, I used to submerge the whole thing in the tank and then slowly work all the air bubbles out of it. Somehow I didn't think submerging a whole siphon plus my hands and arms into the fermented beer was going to work for this, so I had to YouTube "how to use a siphon". Looked pretty easy on the video, but try as I might, in our kitchen, I just couldn't get it flowing. Luckily, it turns out that Neil has been hiding his secret talent as a siphon-starter from me all these years. He's a pro! He just looked at the thing and it started flowing!

Inside the fermenting bucket, there is all sorts of crap stuck to the edge, where the yeast bubbled up during fermentation. And then at the bottom of the bucket is an inch thick layer of yeast and who knows what else. You don't want this in your beer, so you use a racking cane attached the siphon to get the beer out, and leave the yeast behind. The racking cane has a little cap on it that keeps the suction about an inch or so off the bottom of the bucket.









Once the beer was transferred from the fermented to the bottling bucket, we attached the bottling "Thingy" to the spigot on the bottling bucket. I'm sure there is a technical name for it, but I'm just too lazy to look it up right now. Basically it's got a spring in it that when you insert it into the bottle, and push down on the spring, it releases the beer into the bottle. When you let up on it, the flow of beer stops. It's actually super-awesome. We then proceeded to bottle. I filled up the bottles and Neil capped em.

















When we we finished, we had 24 22oz. bottles and three 12 oz. bottles. Now they sit on the shelf and condition for 3 weeks and then we drink!! it's really hard to wait and wonder what it is going to taste like, so...we didn't! We siphoned a little bit into a glass and tasted the fruits of our labor. Wit wasn't carbonated, because the carbonation happens in the bottles, so it tasted totally flat, but if you looked past that, it was really good! Good flavor, good body, I think it is going to be delicious. But, we still have to wait two more weeks to find out for sure.

Next up, we'll be brewing a clone of Obsidian Stout, which is one of my favorite stouts.





Look at that pretty!!