Rhode Island 100 mile

Last night, Chris and Grace came down to RI for our second stab at a beer and food pairing dinner. We did one last Fall where I gave Chris the menu and he paired each of the menu items with two beers. This time around, he bridged some menu items with the same beer and he also brought some of the beer he made himself…here’s what we ended up with:

“Beer Quiz”: Chris has recently taken his Beer Judge Certification Exam (and passed!)…and I’ve been studying up on the styles as well. Ingrid thought it would be fun to administer a quiz on Belgian Strong Ales before we began the dinner. There are 5 styles of Belgian Strong Ales, so I bought one of each style and two of one style- six beers in all for the five categories. Ingrid served them to us in a blind tasting and it was up to us to figure out which beer goes with the appropriate style. This was a pretty tough category- Chris got the most correct- and we were all tricked at least once!

So…after the quiz, we moved onto dinner…the first two courses were condensed into one…we had cheese filled crackers and parmesean crisps with goat cheese mousse. Chris paired this with a Saison- I had brought one back from Italy, so we ended up having Dau Saison from Troll Brewery.

Course 2: this was a surprise course that I decided to do…we did the Oyster, Ginger and Ale Foam again (see previous post)…this time I used Anchor Steam’s Liberty Ale.

Course 3: Mozzarella ravioli with assorted salts served with Chris’s Dortmund Export.

Course 4: Potato Blini with Eggplant Caviar and Roasted Red Pepper…served with the Dortmund.

Course 5: Chris made a spicy lentil salad served cold paired with Rock Art Brewery’s Hell’s Bock.

Course 6: Onion Tart with Wild Boar Bacon served with the Bock.

Course 7: Citrus Braised Endive with Seared Scallop paired with a Spring Ale (Kolsch) from Otter Creek Brewing.

Course 8: “Clam Chowder”- deconstructed clam chowder with seared cod and cod cake paired with the Otter Creek.

Course 9: Braised short ribs with polenta- Chris served this with his own Beglian Dubbel- the ribs were also braised with the beer as well.

Course 10: We don’t have a picture of this, but we ended the meal with a carrot cake washed with Dogfish Head’s Rasion d’etre…

You can read Chris’s pairing notes here.

-Josh

So we have started thinking about this year’s garden (this is Ingrid writing). Since we want to do 100% 100 mile diet for three months – August, September and 1 in the winter – we want to make sure that we plan well in advance. We cleaned out and added compost to 3 areas so far. One area will be for tomato, eggplant, and pepper plants. One will be for herbs and red onions. The third will be for hops – yes, hops. Josh ordered Willamette and Cascade hops from Basement Brew-Haus – a local home brew supply store in Providence. Since Josh has started brewing beer in addition to the cider, we’re going to try hops – we don’t have enough land for the barley or wheat! It’ll be interesting to see how the hops grow.

Back to the gardens. We still need to put together a lettuce, spinach, kale bed. Last year we made a fair amount of salads from our own lettuce. During the 100 mile diet, we use the lettuce like bread – it reminds me of a dish my friend Kristi used to love from PF Chang’s.

We’ll get most of our plants from the Goddard State Park farmers market and The Good Earth. We had good luck with the plants from both places last year. The only plants that didn’t do well last year were the ones I tried to grow from seeds – that’s how we ended up with leeks the size of pencils!

We’ll keep everyone updated on the garden and what we really end up planting.

Josh and I (this is Ingrid) were recently up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and we got to visit a lot of our old haunts and a new one. The Portsmouth Farmers Market was the first market we went to on a weekly basis and became more aware of the benefits of buying local. One of our favorite vendors was Kate from Willow Pond Community Farm.

When we first arrived in Portsmouth, we walked over to see Win at South Street & Vine. Win caught us up on what’s been going on in Portsmouth – lots of changes but really everything has stayed the same for the most part – including house prices! Josh and I wanted to try a new wine and Win recommended some Spanish wines – we have since tried two and we really like them. We’ll have to get our fill before the 100% 100 mile diet starts this summer!

Win also told us about a new restaurant, Cava. It’s a tapas and wine bar which is beautiful inside. And the food was just as good – the shrimp, cheese, chick pea fries, wine – it was all fabulous! After Cava, we visited with lots of friends at Portsmouth Brewery and the Black Trumpet Bistro. The Black Trumpet sources a lot of their ingredients from local sources. Evan, the chef and owner, has amazing recipes and ideas. He also has a blog in which he discusses his local producers – very informative if you are in the Portsmouth area. The only disappointment was that The Friendly Toast was closed for the weekend. Instead we went to Ceres Street Bakery for one breakfast and The Blue Mermaid for brunch the other day.

Wow – we really ate our way through Portsmouth – but it all tasted so good. We can’t wait to go back!

Been a while. Sorry about that. We’re in transition time here at ri100mi.com. Even though it’s Spring by the calendar, we still have a while to go in regards to getting ready for our next 100 mile foray. This year, we’re thinking of doing August and September as our 100 mile only months…and we’re possibly thinking of stockpiling this summer to do a winter month in 2010…we’ll see how it goes.

…anyways, I received a new cookbook a couple of weeks back. I ordered the Alinea cookbook- it took a long time to get here, but was definitely worth the wait. Alinea is a very exciting restaurant in Chicago run by chef Grant Achatz…although he does not use ingredients that are exclusively local to his restaurant, he does cook with the seasons in a way that no one else does. A lot of his recipes are steeped in the molecular gastronomy vein with ingredients that most people don’t use too frequently which is OK- my job is to take the recipes in this book and try to make them as local as possible- hence the oysters used for Oyster, Ginger and Beer Froth. We used some Matunuk Oysters for this one, farmed right here in Rhode Island. A ginger gelee was diced and placed at the bottom of the glass- next, an oyster and it’s liquid was placed on top of that and finally a beer froth was spooned on top. The mixture of ginger, salty oyster and sweet beer froth made for a great flavor profile, and the texture of the gelee and oyster was rather surprising…but pleasant. I could probably have six or seven of these!

-Josh

Every now and then, mostly on Sundays, Ingrid and I do what we call popcorn dinner…or if the Patriots are on early, popcorn lunch. We make a big pot of popcorn cooked the old-fashioned way on the stovetop in one of our biggest pots. Although none of the ingredients are local, we do get our popcorn in bulk at the Alternative Food Co-Op in Wakefield, RI. I take 1 cup of popcorn and heat it on medium heat with enough sunflower oil to cover the bottom of the pan. I shake violently and then let the popcorn do its thing. Once popping, I shake it side to side every once in a while to keep it from burning and to shake the unpopped kernels to the bottom of the pan…drizzle with butter and salt and there you have it!

-Josh