What has happened in DmentiA since last I rambled on at random?

Christmas came and went, and left many wonderful things in its wake… including (but not limited to) a new art print for the wall, books, and seed money to procure the bulk of my start-up gear to begin home brewing beer.  *squee* Much intense and focused research was done and equipment was bought.

We made many delicious things as Christmas gifts this year, and Sweets has a great write-up about it all HERE.

Austin saw much rain, and very cold temperatures.  Much of the garden did the usual die-off/leaf drop gig, and the yard started looking bleak.  A few plants were protectable, and even fewer actually prospered form the cold (our garlic, to be specific).  Leaves dropped from trees and littered the yard.

The new year came and went, and left me with a kidney stone as a parting gift.  Thanks… it’s what I’ve always wanted.

Sweets’ family came to the States, and after a week in Disneyworld, they trekked into NOLA where we met them and stayed a few days, then made our collective way to Austin.  They stayed for a week — it was a lovely week at that — and I think I managed to keep from frightening them sufficiently with my crass American ways… I was on my best behavior, and didn’t disgrace my family.  Suckers!  Fooled you all.

They specifically came in to attend Sweets’ graduation from Culinary School, join us in a bleated (very belated!) wedding party, and basically make sure I wasn’t keeping Sweets in squalor (I kid!  I kid!).  The graduation was very nice, and I can’t adequately express how fiercely proud I am of her.

Sweets has written up the visit, complete with pictures, HERE.  She’s done such an elegant job of it, that I won’t shame myself by endeavoring to do it again. (see paragraph 1, i.e. “being lazy”).

And, most recently, Sweets and I finally brewed our first batch of beer.  It’s a lovely Belgian Golden Ale, similar to Duvel, and it was a blast to make.  I spent the preceding ten days doing massive research into the brewing process, basically discarding the generic process that comes along with the recipe kit.  I learned a tremendous amount about the overall process, what shortcuts can be taken, the very specific stages of mashing grains and making a wort, the hows and whys of the specific gravities of the liquid at every stage, and so much more.  I also learned that for all the minutiae that can and should be paid attention to, that you can just chill and not worry about it.  There is a popular phrase I’ve read a lot while doing my homework: “RDWHAHB - Relax, Don’t Worry, Have A Homebrew.”

The hooch is in the primary fermenter where it will live until the yeasties have done most of their work converting the sugars into alcohol (about a week), then it gets moved into a secondary fermenter where it basically clarifies for two weeks, then into bottles for conditioning and natural carbonating for 3-4 weeks.  Yup, it’s a lot of time to wait, and that’s why most home brewers have multiple batches going at once.  Time, equipment, and experience will eventually allow us to do that to.  Eventually.

For now, I’m enjoying the sheer adventure and creativity of the process, and I’m learning a hell of a lot of new things as well.  When you stop learning, you may as well lie down and die.

That’s it for now, kiddies.  Expect to hear a lot more about homebrew from me.

For the time being, as a way of priming the pump again, here’s a nice little bit of fiction I just stumbled across.  It’s a story told from the Thing’s point of view from John Carpenter’s Sci-Fi/Horror flick, The Thing.  Surprisingly well thought out and written.

After having used 30 or so while cooking, we were left with about 135 peppers to do something with before they went off.  I have a dehydrator, and that is the best choice for preserving the peppers long term… you can store them in an airtight container almost indefinitely, they can be re-hydrated for use in recipes, or ground up and sprinkled on like salt.  But what about making chipotles?

I used this as an opportunity to experiment with a little project I’ve wanted to work on for a little bit.  I have a gas grill with lots of acreage, and it’s everything I need for most of my outdoor cooking needs.  I’ve never desired a full-blown smoker as I don’t feel I’d get as much use out of it as I’d spend on it, and storing it is another consideration.  What I wanted was something that was cheap, I could store in a small space, and could easily pull out on the few times I wanted to smoke something.

Enter the “ghetto smoker”.  It’s a concept I first discovered while watching Good Eats, and I’ve seen a lot of different adaptations around the web as well.  Basically you take a hot plate and a cast-iron skillet and put it in a “something” (garbage can, large box, a large terracotta pot with another pot inverted over it, etc), and add wood chunks/chips/sawdust to it and turn it on, then place a rack over it and close the whole thing up and go, occasionally adding more wood to it as it runs out.  That’s the gist.

I wanted to spend as little as possible on the whole shebang, otherwise it wasn’t worth my time or money.  I have a large grill, so there is my smoking chamber already accounted for, and it’s now a multitasker.  I picked up a cheap-ass hot plate at the grocery store for $7, and an 8″ cast-iron skillet at Goodwill for $4.  Done and done.  Wood for smoking can be had at Home Depot year round.

A few notes on making and using a ghetto smoker:

• Whatever you’re smoking must be at an elevation above the smoke/heat source or you’ll get no love.  This elevation cannot be too close to the heat/smoke source or you’ll cook too quickly.
• Wood chips soaked in water for 30 minutes or so will start smoking quickly, generate more heat, but will be exhausted in less than an hour… wood chunks however will last considerably longer — soaked will last up to 3 hours but are slower to catch and start smoking, dry will catch and smoke right away, but only last about 60 – 90 minutes.  The trick is to refuel with soaked wood before the old wood is completely used up.
• Eliminate as many air-drafts as you can to keep heat and smoke in, but make sure there are some small holes to let some smoke out.
• Keep a probe thermometer near whatever you’re smoking to monitor the ambient temperature.  You want this to be between 170 and 200 degrees (depending on what you’re smoking).  Adjust the wood, or the location of the smoked goods to change this.
• If you’re smoking meat, put a second probe thermometer into the meat to monitor the internal temperature.  There are no set times to follow, temperature is the only way to get it right.
• Anything that is in the smoke will get smoked.  Thermometers, grills, etc will get covered and stained by a layer of smoke.

So, armed with all this I smoked about a third of my red, ripe jalapeños.  It took about 8 hours, and lots of fiddling to figure things out, but it worked, and worked well.  I pronounce the grill as a ghetto smoker a success… with the caveats being that I cannot get the smoked material directly over the smoke as it’s too close, but to one side and just above, and I now have a very old towel that is dedicated to the task of draping over the back of my grill to close off the gaps that are there by design to let smoke out.

I’ll continue to use this as I see fit to try out some other smoker projects, and if I find myself enjoying it more and more, I’ll make the minimal investment in a $40 smoker from Home Depot.  Now that I have muddled through discovering the basics of what is involved in the process, I have found that I don’t need anything elaborate or huge, just something that satisfies the needs.

Even so, it’s been a fun and cheap project.

I finally got one.

A coworker friend of mine had been boasting about his chili, and how his wife had this dynamite chili sauce that was made from scratch, and well, that sounded about right to me.  The problem was that they hadn’t written anything down, they just made it “by feel”.  When I asked for the recipe, he used it as a good excuse to make a batch of chili and take down notes.  Those notes ended up in my inbox on Saturday.  I cobbled together a more formal recipe from what he sent and promptly went shopping.

Armed with this recipe I set to putting it all together, starting with the chili sauce.  The sauce is simple, and flavorful, consisting of sauteed onions, dried peppers and broth simmered for the better part of an hour, then blended to within an inch of its life then strained.  It’s thick, dark and powerful stuff… precisely as it should be.  This is the key to a good chili — this is the make or break part.

The second part, the actual chili, is straightforward as well.  Cubed stew meat, after being browned off, is combined with sauteed onions and garlic, seasonings and some water or broth, then allowed to simmer until tender.  The rest of the ingredients are added, as is the chili sauce.  Adjust the seasonings and heat to suit your tastes, then cut the heat to low and abandon all hopes of eating it for at least 5 or 6 hours.  Allow the whole melange to simmer slowly and thicken up, further tenderizing the meat and letting all those flavors co-mingle and mature.

Your patience will be rewarded.

Eleven people demolished 6½ quarts of chili, 2 loaves of fresh bread, and a pot of rice in record time.  It was worth every minute of bloating that came afterward.

The recipe can be found HERE.

I know there are some heat-hounds reading this, and I tell you now that this is a “½ alarm” chili that is suited for the widest range of pepper tolerances, so you’ll want to spice it up to suit your own tastes.  I strongly suggest doing it during the chili sauce phase.  You can either leave all the pepper seeds in to boost it a bit, or substitute hotter chilies in the “Optional Additional Peppers” section (habaneros or scotch bonnets perhaps?).  I used fresh jalapeños, half of them with the seeds intact to get the mild heat I like.  The ancho and cascabel chilies are necessary to get the right basic flavor and texture, so leave those be.  Finding the right balance of other peppers is your problem, not mine.

Optional Additional Peppers (choose one):
4 dried japones chili peppers (seeded & rinsed – save the seeds) – commonly used in Chinese dishes
4 jalapeño chili peppers – fresh or dried (whole, seeds and all)

Chili:
1 TBS oil
1 onion (chopped)
8-10 cloves garlic (minced)
2 LB cubed stew meat
¼ TSP ground cumin
16 OZ diced tomatoes (if using canned, get the “no sodium added” variety)
32 OZ cooked kidney/pinto/whatever beans (optional)
Water
Salt & pepper (to taste)

Good chili is a slow process — don’t rush it, the ingredients will build upon each other.  Let it simmer low and slow all day, and you’ll be glad you did.

Beans are optional, if not using beans you’ll use more water or broth, and you’ll want to substitute more meat in place of the beans.  Pre-cook pinto or kidney beans (or used canned) and go sparingly on the salt and other seasonings — less is more in this case, usually salt, pepper and onions.  Cook till tender.  Drain freshly cooked beans and save the water, this will be used later. If using canned beans, drain and discard the water.

Sauté the onions for the Chili Sauce, then combine the remaining Chili Sauce and Optional Additional Pepper ingredients and bring to a boil, then reduce to medium heat and simmer until the chilies become tender (approximately 30 to 45 minutes).  Transfer to a blender or Cuisinart and puree until smooth and saucy.  Strain to get the pepper skin pieces out.  Set aside.

Sauté the onion and garlic in the oil until clear.  Add the meat and brown, adding a pinch of salt and pepper during cooking. Add water, enough to just cover the meat.  Add the cumin.  Cook until the meat is tender,  maintaining the water level to just above — approximately 1 to 1½ hours depending on the cut of meat you use.

Once the meat is tender add the Chili Sauce, drained beans (if using), and diced tomatoes.  Add juice from beans to desired consistency, substituting chicken or beef broth if the beans are omitted (approximately 1½ C).  Bring to a boil then reduce the heat to medium and simmer.  Taste, and adjust salt and pepper as desired (approximately ½ TSP of each).  If you want to add more pepper spice, add the saved seeds to taste.  These will add heat quickly, so add a little at a time, boil for 10 minutes and taste again, repeating as necessary (start with 3 big pinches of seeds).  Check the consistency of the chili, it should be slightly thinner than what you are aiming for, add broth as necessary.

Reduce the heat to very low and simmer for 30 minutes.  The chili will be ready to serve at this point, however the longer and slower you cook it, the better it will become. Reduce heat to very low and cook this for several hours, stirring frequently.  6 hours of slow cooking makes a thick, hearty, flavorful chili.

Makes between 3 and 3½ quarts.

NOTES:
If  you know approximately how hot you want the chili to be, you can add the appropriate amount of chili seeds into the Chili Sauce at the start of cooking so they can be blended and strained later to eliminate whole seeds from the final chili mix.

When the chili sauce it done simmering, before you strain it you can remove as many of the cascabel chilies as you can and scrape the pepper meat from the skins and return the meat to the pot.  The skins don’t break down at all during cooking, and resemble thin plastic sheeting.  They’re easy to pick out as they float and are bright red.

The amount of bean juice/water added to the chili will depend greatly on how long you intend to simmer it.  The volume above (1½ C) is based on a 5 – 6 hour simmer.

I came to enjoy coffee late in life, very specifically because I was born in a town that luxuriates in combining perfectly good coffee with funk-ass chicory — a throwback first to it’s French heritage, and secondly to World War II when coffee was scarce and chicory was used to bulk it out or replace it altogether.  Chicory lends a bitter, eye-squinting taste to coffee, masking or completely obliterating many of the essential and desirable flavors standard coffee offers.  As such, coffee and I never saw eye to eye.

The most popular and well known variety of coffee and chicory in NOLA is CDM, aka Café du Monde, and comes in an iconic golden yellow can that can be found in every grocery store in the South, not to mention in NOLA itself.  It’s the blend of coffee and chicory made famous by Café du Monde’s café au lait that is served alongside yummy orders of powder sugar heaped beignets.

Once I grew to appreciate actual coffee — not the bastard hybrid that almost ruined me for life — I also discovered that I couldn’t abide cold coffee, and more specifically iced coffee.  There was something about how the flavor changed, and the way your taste buds were dulled by the cold that made the taste unpalatable to me… for lack of a better explanation, it “cheapens” the flavor.

After moving to Austin, GonzO — my coffee mentor — decided to blow my mind again by introducing me to my own personal contradiction addiction.

Cà phê sữa đá (aka, Café su da).

It’s a Vietnamese style coffee that is brewed using CDM (specifically in the South due to its availability and similarity to the coffee used in Vietnam) in a specially designed metal drip coffee filter (cà phê phin) that drips into a glass containing sweetened condensed milk, stirred then served over ice.

Iced.  CDM.

I know! Dude… I know, I know, I know.  I have a hard time explaining it other than to say that the sweetness of the condensed milk and the bitterness of the coffee work some kind of voodoo when combined with each other over ice to make a blissful little bit of heaven in a glass.  It’s a bold flavored cup of coffee that will make our eyes pop open with an audible snap and keep you moving for hours.  Combine a glass of that with a huge bowl of phở (a Vietnamese beef and noodle soup), and you have the perfect start to a late, lazy weekend day, or the perfect cure for a hangover (whichever it happens to be, and that’s not to say they are mutually exclusive).

No respectable Vietnamese restaurant would exclude cà phê sữa đá from their menu, and it has become one of the core criteria we use to judge a restaurant by here.  Vietnamese has become one of my staple nationalities when dining out — the restaurants are plentiful, inexpensive, and filling without being horrible for you.  The food is fresh and simple, and let’s face it, they have the miracle coffee.

One of the gifts from Sweets’ for my birthday was a pair of cà phê phin filters so I could make cà phê sữa đá at home.  I promptly went out an bought a can each of CDM and sweetened condensed milk.  The process goes like this:

Pour 3 TBS (50 GR) of sweetened condensed milk into a shallow tumbler.

Unscrew the screen from the inside of the filter, add 2 TBS of CDM coffee, and screw the filter back down, tightening moderately.  Place the filter on top of the tumbler.

Fill the filter ¼ full of boiling water and wait 20-30 seconds.  Unscrew the filter screen at least 2 full turns then fill it the rest of the way with the boiled water.  It should take approximately 5 minutes for the water to drip completely through the filter.

Thoroughly stir the coffee into the condensed milk while it is hot, taking care to scrape the sides and bottom of the tumbler clean.

Allow the coffee to enjoy one last moment of life as a hot drink as it contemplates the glass of ice next to it.

Pour the coffee over the ice, mix, and enjoy.  If this is a new drink to you, you may want to be sitting comfortably, keeping clear of anything that could be kicked when you take your first sip, or knocked over when you stand suddenly, shouting “my god, I can see tomorrow!”

And I can rationalize enjoying this under the umbrella of coffee snobbery as there is special equipment involved, and a whole little ritual to be adhered to.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

My 40th birthday has come and gone, and the inevitable question was asked numerous times: “So, how does it feel to be 40?” About the same as it did when I woke up yesterday when I was still 39 — I could use more sleep, less work, a strong cup of coffee, and a couple of undisturbed hours in a hammock or a comfortable chair reading without distraction… but then again, I’ve felt that way most of my life anyway, so this is nothing new.

At any rate, to me birthdays are birthdays, just another day with a bit of personal significance but no need for anyone to make a fuss over.  I don’t demand a big party, lots of gifts or overt amounts of attention… which does not mean I won’t happily — gleefully even — accept any of that, hell, who doesn’t like gifts and a fun party?  The most I would ever ask for myself is a decent meal and the company of good friends in a low-key, comfortable environment, which is pretty much the same thing I’d ask of any given weekend anyway.

We went to Peony, a nice Asian restaurant that serves Japanese and Chinese cuisines, and I loaded up on sushi.  I hadn’t had sushi in a long while, and had been in the mood for it for quite some time.  T’was yummy, and priced well too.  Apparently some of the selections from the Chinese menu were tasty as well.

Afterward we went back to Sweets and my place to light the fire-pit, have some drinks and enjoy a cigar.  I finally opened the bottle of Scotch I was gifted for the housewarming over a year ago, and it was definitely worth the wait.

All told, it was precisely the evening I had hoped for.

The most notable contrast between Hunter writing in the voice of “Raoul Duke” — a caricature of himself distilled to the very core of bad craziness — and in his own voice comes at the end of the book, specifically the “jacket copy” he wrote for Fear and Loathing.  In a brief few pages, H.S.T. soberly, and with a sudden clarity that takes such an immediate u-turn from the insanity of the book that gives you whiplash, explains that Fear and Loathing was a failed experiment in Gonzo Journalism… a phrase he coined at the time to describe what he envisioned to be a free-form method of writing — to buy a notebook and write down everything as it happened and publish it with no editing whatsoever.

What he ended up with was a mix of fact and fiction, with no discernible lines to tell one from the other.  It is a failure in that he never accomplished his original vision, but instead ended up writing something altogether different and ground-shaking. He accidentally invented a new genre of writing, one that continues to inspire writers to this very day.  His success was that he wrote something that not only entertained readers, but gave him immense joy and gratification to write.  He would take a break from banging out whatever assignment he was on to write F&L.  It was a vacation for him.

I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling.

I’ve found myself, again, very attracted to the way an author’s mind works.  While I do not agree with every gilded word that falls from him his mouth, I find Hunter — like Vonnegut — a very intriguing personality.  A number of the things he’s said strikes certain chords within me.  I stumbled across a number of quotes while searching out the one above, that just resonate happily through my head.  I’ll leave you with these.

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.

We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.

Good people drink good beer.

…and he would probably not agree with my conviction that a sense of humor is the main measure of sanity. But who can say for sure? Humor is a very private thing.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

And, on the impending arrival of my 40th birthday…

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.