Iced Coffee and the Dilution Solution

mmmmm, iced coffee...

Seems that most people make iced coffee by, well, brewing a pot of coffee and pouring it over ice in a glass. But this dilutes the brew and does nothing to give you a really good, smooth coffee experience.

I prefer the way it's done in New Orleans (thanks, Chuck!), where they know a thing or two about beating the heat.

Take a jug of cool water, 5 cups is good, and pour in a half pound of ground coffee (of course, they use chickory in New Orleans, but I find this method works well with most any coffee). After 12 hours, strain out the grounds (a regular old strainer works just fine). What remains is about a quart of lovely coffee extract. It's strong--you only need a bit--but it has none of the bitterness you get with a heat brew. Pour in a smidge of vanilla extract if you like--the real stuff, please!--to balance out the flavor. Then do with it what you will. It's good in a tall glass of ice, about one part coffee to three parts milk (depending on your personal taste). Or get really decadent and use creme (or even Baileys). Sweeten to your liking.

Lest you think you have to sit around staring at it for 12 hours while it works its magic, the coffee extract keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge (if it lasts that long), so it's ready when you need it.

As when you make sun tea--which involves putting a jug of water with a handful of teabags in it (or lots of loose tea) out on the patio for the day--you let time, rather than heat, do all the work. The result is a nice, smooth cuppa. Or glassa.

My coffeemaker, espresso maker and French press may sue me for neglect
this summer. I don't care. Cool is cool!
(Check out the chick magnet on the fridge, nyuk nyuk!)

Kol-ahh!

Kola Tonic, which I see in the fine print on the label is produced in Salt River, South Africa. So much for reducing the carbon footprint. Doesn't anybody make this stuff around here?

I experienced an ah-hah! moment recently, while telling our cocktail-loving friend, Wes, about picking up a bottle of kola tonic in an Indian market. Andy and I had been on the lookout for it to make the Filmographer cocktail. Wes said yeah, you can get it at the drug store in tiny bottles (this one is much larger) and told us that when he was a young sprout his mum doled it out as a remedy for tummy troubles, poured over ice chips.

When I was a kid, carbonated drinks were not allowed in the house except when someone was sick, and then Coca-Cola was brought in for its tummy-easing, restorative powers. I loved the taste of it dearly, so much that it was worth being sick just to get to drink Coke.

While I don't drink it often now, I still crave the taste of this beverage in particular, for its aggressive, attitudinous flavor (to me its rival, which begins with P, tastes like another p-word!). At one point I was so passionate about its flavor that I kept one ice tray dedicated to cubes of frozen Coke. That way, when I poured myself a glass, I could use those instead of ice, so as not to dilute its flavor and potency.

That's a bit much, and I don't do it anymore. But there are times when it makes verrry good sense to me...

Bacon-Laced Booze Bliss

Ever since my pal, Chuck (he's about to officially acquire the hyphenated name Chuck-of-Gumbo-Pages-Fame) introduced me to bacon-infused bourbon, I've been itching to give it a try. I'm not much of a bourbon drinker, but he recently made me an Old-Fashioned with his bacony bourbon, and I didn't execute the taste-and-give-it-away maneuver I typically do with drinks made of amber spirits. Its porky aura beguiled and seduced me and held my interest through to the bottom of the glass.

So of course I had to make my own. Being a true Southerner, I keep a coffee can of bacon drippings at the ready for frying and flavoring and for just this kind of adventure. Incidentally, these drippings come from the really good smoked bacon I spirit away from Tennessee in my luggage when I return from home. None of that dreary, mass-produced bacon for me or my coffee can!)

Mmmmmm, pure bacon drippings.
I wonder if you could read the porky dreck in bacon drippings
the way a fortune teller reads tea leaves? Sorry, I digress...

So last night I followed Chuck's advice and put about a tablespoon of bacon drippings (okay, okay, I used more) into a large jar with 750 ml. of Buffalo Trace, which he suggested as a great bourbon to pork up. Every hour for the next few hours I gave it a vigorous shake (I have a great action shot of Andy doing this, but he forbade me to include it... grrr...).

The bacon drippings work their magic. Just a few more hours to go...

Then I stashed the mixture in the fridge overnight so that the fat would harden for easy separation. At least the waiting isn't too long with this concoction, like it is when you're making most other infusions. Still, when it comes to smoky pork, any wait is a long one.

Chilling the combo allowed the bacon drippings to solidify, so I could easily
filter them out through a sieve lined with a couple of layers of cheesecloth.

This morning I strained the bourbon back into its original bottle and plastered onto said bottle a bacon strip bandaid (courtesy of Archie McPhee) to denote which has the essence de bacon.

Ta-dah! Bacon-infused bourbon.

Now the fun begins as Andy and I hit the lab, a.k.a. the kitchen, to see what sorts of cocktails we can dream up using our lovely new porky friend. First is the Old Fashioned. This should go great with my bacon walnut fudge.

Bacon-infused bourbon. It's not just for breakfast anymore!

Sinning With Your Clothes On

Andy and I went double dating recently with a pair of our favorite foodists (I hate the word "foodie"), Wes and Chuck of Gumbo Pages fame.

Wes & Chuck are the best ever to go trawling with for good food & drink.

We hit Animal, a happenin', fairly new meat-loving establishment in Hollywood. Among us we ordered and shared six starters, four entrees, three desserts and two bottles of wine (and a partridge in a pear tree...). It's a great way to sample a range flavors. We each got about two bites of every starter, so we were satisfied with our sampling and had a great meal without feeling too stuffed.

As the name of the restaurant suggests, this is NO place for vegetarians.

My favorite dish was the pork belly with kimchi. It's such a logical choice, pairing the tartness of the kimchi with the full-on richness of the pork belly, that I wonder why we haven't been eating it that way all along, that is, when you can actually find pork belly. After all, this IS image-conscious L.A. (Unfortunately, there's no photo of the pork belly. We tried to shoot as much as possible with existing light--and iPod-generated light--and those pix just didn't turn out!)

Animal certainly doesn't shy away from those dishes you seldom find on American tables:

Andy's entree: Foie gras, fried quail egg and spam (!) on a bed of gold rice--how's THIS for running the gamut in one dish, from low-rent to the la-di-da?! It was a surprisingly appealing combination.

My entree: Whole branzino, fennel, olives, tomato and ceci beans with green garlic. Whole fish! Dinner with eyes! C'mon, who doesn't want to have their dinner looking at them while they eat it? This meal comes with a convenient comb--you just have to eat your way to it. Okay, so I'm being a smart ass--the fish was lovely, as were its accompaniments. I especially appreciate the addition of fennel to the plate--I don't see it nearly often enough, unless I'm using it at home.

For dessert: a trio of Joe's doughnuts with caramel: These offered a great combo of soft and crunchy. Really good stuff, but I craved a glass of milk to go with.

Also for dessert: Bacon Chocolate Crunch Bar. While it was good, frankly, I prefer my own bacon walnut fudge. Perhaps it's all a matter of using the best, smokiest bacon you can find. Also, with something this rich, you don't want a serving this large. A bite every so often is much more manageable--a serving this large at the end of a rich meal is not. Still, I wouldn't turn it down...

By the time you go to Animal, chances are none of these items will be on the menu, for they specialize in not specializing (except for the animal part). The menu changes weekly, with a few holdovers. Regardless of what's on the menu, whatever you have will be good.

This isn't stuff you'd eat every day, as my pal Lisa reminds me. It's pretty decadent stuff. But for an occasional fun time when you want to do some sinning with your clothes on, this is a great way to do it.

Life Lessons in the Kitchen

Last night we had friends over to redeem their wedding gift certificate: a his-n-hers cooking lesson. They're two of the busiest people I know, so I wanted to teach them how to make dishes that are simpler than they seem and that they'd want to make again. Italian's always a winner, so that was our cuisine.

I feel like I learned more than I taught.

I learned that it's okay to strip down the agenda. Casey and Missi were just returning from four days of camping, so they were tired when they got here, and it was a little late when we started. Instead of teaching them to do everything on the menu, I went beyond prepping and made some of the simpler things myself in advance. I selected two items to focus on teaching them: pasta and tiramisu.

A pasta machine can be an intimidating contraption, but once you give it a go, you realize it's not so difficult. And once you've had fresh, homemade pasta, you never want the dried-stuff-in-a-box again. So I talked them through making and rolling dough, cutting fettuccine and assembling ravioli.

Ravioli: Hide the yummy filling between a couple of pieces of dough and glue 'em together with a painting of egg.

 
Fresh fettuccine: Putting those Play-Doh skills to practical use. This is waaaay more fun--and tastier, too! They were impressed with the pasta maker and pleased to know that it doesn't cost a gazillion dollars. I see more fresh pasta in their future.

I learned that in this setting, you don't have to sweat too much technique. After all, this isn't for a grade. The tiramisu wasn't quite as voluminous as it could have been, but I figured it was more important to demystify the dish than to get into the minutiae of folding the yolk mixture with the whipped egg whites just-so for maximum volume. The results tasted great.

Divide and conquer: Missi combined the yolks and sugar,
while Casey focused on frothing up the egg whites.

And I learned that it's okay to set something on fire--within reason. And that you don't have to panic if it happens. While I was busy explaining how to broil the bruschetta without setting it on fire, IT CAUGHT FIRE! (There's a humility lesson in there, too.) But a quick dousing in the sink took care of that, and, after laughing our butts off and taking pictures with the cremated bread, we moved on to make the pasta while Andy produced some relatively carbon-free bruschetta. The bruschetta was supposed to be a starter, but we had it later with the pasta and enjoyed the tomato-bread salad as a starter. No problem!

Which wine pairs best with charcoal?

Essentially, it's all about having a good time, so if everything isn't explained to the n'th degree, that's okay. We had fun and enjoyed each other's company, and the food wasn't half bad either.

Most importantly, we made memories. That's a gift we all received, one that doesn't need exchanging, can't break and won't gather dust.

Beans: Getting Reacquainted With an Old Friend

Beans seem to be everywhere nowadays, quite fashionable in these times of fiscal restraint. I've never been a fan of dried beans, probably because the ones I have always tried to cook were simply too old. But I finally came to understand: Just because you buy a bag of dried beans, that doesn't mean you can save them for nuclear winter. But how do you know which bag of hard-as-rocks pellets on the shelf will cook up into something desirable?

Enter Steve Sando and Rancho Gordo. I first met Steve and enjoyed his remarks at a blogging workshop during the International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference a couple of years ago (in fact, it was Steve and Pim of Chez Pim who helped me conquer my reservations--or cancel my reservations?--and get a food blog going. Thanks, you two!). In addition to the entrée on blogging, I learned about Steve's lovely heirloom beans and decided I really should give dried beans a second chance (what's all this about "give peas a chance" anyway?)

I mulled over which ones to fix first (I got crazy and bought three bags at Cube in L.A. last week). Borlotti? ooh, love that sexy Italian name. Yellow Indian Woman? They look good, but the name suggests confused and perhaps politically incorrect associations. Yellow Eye? Well, that's a symptom of jaundice, but, what the hey? I think the Yellow Eyes could use a little love today.

Into the cast iron pot went the Yellow Eyes, along with onion, carrot, celery, chicken stock, a few herbs from the garden and a fresh bay leaf from my new bay laurel tree (woo-hoo!). I included some chopped leek, since it makes everything it goes into velvety and lush, and I figured leeks certainly couldn't diminish a pot of beans. And I tossed in a hunk of hog jowl I'd stuffed into my suitcase when I returned from Memphis after Christmas.

Because they were not bagged in the Eisenhower era, Steve's beans cooked up beautifully, without having to be soaked. (That has always been one of my problems with dried beans--you had to have the forethought to put them in to soak the night before you wanted to eat them; then you had to be able to put together a future-dinner early the next day, so it could cook while you were at work. Dried beans were never a food I could enjoy on a whim.). The Yellow Eyes came out tender, with none of the mealiness that characterizes my usual best efforts at cooking any dried legume. And they were flavorful, thanks to both the freshness of the beans (I think dried beans that are past their prime get a little stingy with their flavor) and the addition of smoky pork product, which makes everything better.

I guess the lesson then is "Know your bean." Knowing the source of the beans certainly helped.

Speaking of beans, congrats to Ken Albala for snagging yet another award, this one the Cordon d'Or in Food Literature/History, for his book, Beans: A History, which remains partially read on my bed stand (there's quite a stack there--I read a few pages of each every night, so it takes me forever to finish a book). Reading Beans is almost as much fun as listening to Ken wax poetic and geeky over a beer about a subject he knows well and is clearly passionate about. Who knew beans could be such a fascinating topic? or that they could be tied so tightly to both the life and the death of Pythagoras? Before the word "vegetarian" came into use, non-meat eaters were called Pythagoreans. Fancy that...

I'd have to say I don't really know beans about beans, but with the help of Steve and Ken, I'm learning. Thanks, guys!

Sometimes It's Best Not To Ask Why

I have no idea why I did this, why I created it, why I took a picture of it
or why I decided to put it on my blog.