Cazbar and Sparkling Wine!

On Thursday I had the very good luck to go to Cazbar, a delightful Afghani place in Baltimore that I have no idea how to get back to because DesignBroad took Rt. 40 into the city and I never go that way. I'm going to have to figure it out at some point though, because holy crap, what great food. I got these little tender dumplings, covered in yogurt and some kind of spicy sauce and some wicked tasty cigar pastries. Oh god, so delicious. Go there like right now if you live anywhere near Baltimore.

I also got a glass of Peared Champagne, one of Cazbar's signature cocktails. It was recommended to me by the waiter, and was, at 10 dollars, the most expensive drink on that menu. It was a mixture of Champagne and Grey Goose pear vodka, and I think a drop of pear liqueur. Luckily for me, I am pretty sure I can recreate it using delightfully cheap materials!

Last nights dinner was something less epic. Take out Chinese food paired with Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut sparkling wine. That's actually a pretty great pairing, the MSG and hot pepper laden General Tso's chicken brings out the tartness of the wine in a way you wouldn't expect, and the happy fizzy bubbles remove some of that sickly sweet aftertaste you get from cheap Chinese.

Also it's just a really nice bottle of wine. Sparkling anything on a Friday night is just delightful, whether it's at a bar or in your own home.

This weekend is a weekend of No Plans, which could be nice or could make me go completely mad. We'll find out which later!

9001 Times Better Than Farmville

It's getting on summertime, and that means Mojitos. But mint is so freaking expensive... how can I enjoy my delightfully refreshing Rum Drinks without breaking the bank on herbs?

PLANT A GARDEN!

But Stark, you may whine. I do not live in a nice area for gardens/I don't want to wreck my lawn with a tiller/I'm about to move out of my house and don't want to leave all my plants behind with my parents! I cannot have a garden for fabulous fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables!

START A CONTAINER GARDEN AND QUIT BITCHING ABOUT IT!

Of course, if you're like me and broke most of the time, it's good to start small. I was lucky in that we owned all of those pots beforehand, and so didn't break the bank on containment devices. The only container I bought was the horse trough up there that the herbs are in, and that was about 25 bucks from Home Depot. The Garden Center is a dangerous place for me to be, because I LOVE plants even though I know jack about them. The Boyfriend (who helped with the garden and even bought me that lovely basil plant) had to talk me away from acquiring a dwarf peach tree.

But seriously, how awesome would it be to have peaches in an apartment?! SO AWESOME.

Anyway, no fruit trees. Here's what I've got:

 MINT! For mojitos, iced tea, schnapps, deserts, and just chewing on while mowing the lawn!

ROSEMARY! For all of the things one needs rosemary for! Rosemary has this tendency to get HUGE, and will inevitably need to be moved out of the horse trough planter and into its own pot. However, while it is small and happily in sunlight, I'm going to keep it where it is.

CHIVES! Which make a great garnish as well as being a fine ingredient.

BASIL! For PESTO. As well as more PESTO and some extra PESTO and did I mention PESTO?

I guess you could put it in tomato sauce too.

This plant looked kind of sad right after we put it in a pot, but after a brief rain shower this morning he perked up nicely. Probably just some transplanting unhappiness.

TOMATO! Specifically Red Beefsteak Heirloom tomato. I bought it mostly for Mom, and selected this specific variety because "beefsteak" made me giggle. I am kind of a tool. This guy got some recycled potting soil, so we'll see how well he does. It looked like fine, dense soil still, unlike the dusty stuff we found in one of the bags, so I figured he should be okay with it.

Oh yeah. You know what that's about. STRAWBERRIES. Who doesn't love strawberries? Nobody, that's who. I've got two of these babies in pots that are probably a leeetle small for them, but they'll do until I can afford another one of those long horse planters. When they start fruiting I'm going to cover them in bird mesh to avoid avian attacks. Freakin' birds.

And finally: LETTUCE!

LETTUCE!

MOAR LETTUCE!

Good lord that's a lot of lettuce. Romaine is a great salad veg, and it tastes awesome all the time. I don't expect much from the Four-In-A-Pot plants, due to overcrowding and the sub-par potting soil we had to use (ran out of the good stuff). The two in their own pots have already gained half again their original size! What awesome plants!




Now, we'll see whether or not these things survive longer than about a month, which is my standard "oops, forgot to water them!" time frame. Hopefully they will thrive and provide me with delicious fruit, leaves, and herbs for the rest of the summer until I move out!

The Lord is Risen! Now Let's Drink! Hallelujah!

Easter was... epic this year. Truly epic. It was a feast of gigantic proportions, and I am larger for it. Our menu was as follows:

Chili sambal shrimp, made by The Boyfriend
Jalepeno Popper Dip, made by The Smalls
Raw Oysters, served by Dad, The Boyfriend, and Mr. Small
Grilled Foie Gras, made by Dad and Mr. B
Antipasta Salad, made by The Smalls
Grilled/Smoked lamb, Small Potatoes, and Asparagus with Hollandaise, made by Dad
Cheeses selected by Me
Irish Cake Bombs, made by Me.

Oh god. So much food. The Boyfriend is a mighty fine cook, which is part of why I like him so much. Unfortunately, he also has the tendency to say things like "Hey, you know what would taste great with this? CAIPIRINHAS."

A capirinha is a wonderfully refreshing drink made with cachacas, a sort of un-clarified sugarcane rum from Brazil. The recipe on the back of the bottle calls for using raw sugar, but we substituted simple syrup, because we didn't want to spill a crapton of sugar all over the floor. Our recipe was as follows

3-4 pieces of lime
1 measure cachaca
simple syrup
lime wedge garnish
sugarcane juice (optional)

Muddle the lime in a lowball glass. Fill with ice. Add cachaca and syrup. If using it, splash a bit of sugarcane juice in. Stir. Taste. Decide it's too strong and squeeze your garnish into it. Realize that you can no longer taste the alcohol. Drink three. Make a bad decision.

You don't *need* the sugarcane juice, which really just tastes like sweetened hearts of palm, but it adds a really nice green aroma to the drink that makes it especially nice on a hot day. I'd caution against using more than a splash, though, as you want the cachaca flavor to come through too.

After a caipirinha, I had a glass of sparkling Merlot. You heard me right. The Pugliese Vinyards 2003 Sparkling Merlot, hailing from the North Fork of Long Island. It is a deep purple-red sparkling wine, that fizzed up in a way that reminded me of that scene in Fantasia where Bacchus visits the centaurs and gets everyone drunk and wine gets sloshed about pinkly. It was actually pretty good, very different. Sparkling wine is such a pleasure, and when you get something that weird that tastes that good, you've just got to go for it. I recommend it highly.

There were other wines, but I found that after a few handfulls of shrimp, a dozen oysters, a caipirinha and a few flutes of sparkling wine that I could not recall much about any of them. In all honesty though, the rum drinks and sparkling Merlot were the highlights of the alcoholic reverie. I cannot recommend these enough. Seriously, go out and get yourself some cachaca and some limes and make yourself one of these, because it's The Best.

A More Different Rose

Sometimes I drink rose wines that are NOT Marques de Caceres! I know, crazy, right?

To begin with, today is the perfect pink wine day. It's sunny, warm, light breeze... and it's been a miserable ass winter. A month ago our lawn was butt deep in snow. Right now our tulip tree is in bloom and the grass is getting taller than I think I can really conscience, despite my totally reasonable hatred of mowing the lawn.

Work was delightful, just enough tables to make money and keep busy, and all of them disappeared exactly at 2:00. So much win. While resetting the dining room, one of the managers asked me if I wanted to try some tongue.

Now, my first thought was "why Jessica, are you coming on to me?" but I don't say things like that at work, because I'm kind of a goodie-two-shoes when I'm not swearing my head off. I had never eaten beef tongue before, offal just rarely shows up on my table. My other coworkers had refused to eat it, and the fact that I agreed to try it made Chef laugh. "Stark will eat ANYTHING!" It's true. I'll pretty much eat anything he puts in front of me. Except tomatoes. I freaking hate tomatoes.

This was nothing like tomatoes, however. It was sliced very thin and served with a really great gravy and little pickles. The texture is kind of weird, it being a totally different type of muscle than regular type beef. It's grainy and... stretchy. But it tastes like good lunchmeat, and with the tart little pickles it was awesome. I'm down with tongue.

Speaking of offal... I also had the opportunity to taste Chef's faux fois gras. He handed me this bread with stuff on it and said "TRY EET." I really didn't know what else to do. It had the silky texture of foie gras, but there was something... off. It didn't taste livery. It didn't taste like meat. It was also very pale. After I finished he told me that it was Monkfish liver.  Huh. How about that? I really didn't even ever think of Monkfish as having livers, but I guess they'd have to have them. Learn something new every day.

Moving on. After work today I bought a bottle of Mouton Cadet rose. Mouton Cadet is the "affordable" wing of Baron de Rothschild wineries, the oldest brand name in wine. I really love Bordeauxs, apparently. Red, white, or pink, they're all delicious. Normally these bottles retail for somewhere between 13 and 15 bucks, which make them a great wine for the broke-ass wine drinker. The rose has a really lovely sweet raspberry nose, and when it hits the tongue it's like a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. It mellows into a light, early summer fresh berry taste that makes it a perfect wine to sip on a warm day. It is quite dry, and not heavily tannic, and is a great idea next time you're at the liquor store.

My boys in the Outback!

No, no I really got nothing to say today, except that you REALLY should check out ANDREW AND WILLIE'S VAN-TASTIC ADVENTURE.

Click HERE and watch Andrew and Willie set off on their excursion from Adelaide to Darwin, all videotaped for  your viewing pleasure.

What? A Job?

I got one of those! Woo! Starting on the 12th of April! WIN!

This makes me especially happy because it lets me have Easter Monday off, so I'll actually be able to hang out with The Boyfriend, who will be coming down for the ANIMAL CRUELTY CELEBRATION.

Why do I call it that? Mostly because we'll be eating foie gras and raw oysters. Personally, I don't think oysters count as animals, but bajillions of taxonomists and biologists disagree with me. Still, what oysters really are, are delicious.

Does that comma look right to you? Grammatically it's correct... but it never looks right to me. Grammatically speaking that ellipsis I just used is also crap, but then again I never claimed to be an English Major.

...wait.

ANYway. Additional Good News is that I saw my cousin's production of RENT down in Charlottesville, VA the other day. Great cast, great voices for everyone. Frankly I have no idea when my cousin developed a singing voice. Apparently he's been doing stuff like this for a long time and I'm just a really terrible family member for not noticing. That's probably accurate.

None of this has anything to do with wine or other bits of alcoholism. That's because I drank so unwisely that I do not properly remember anything I drank over that weekend. I am a moron. Still, I was introduced to a lovely wine bar called Siips (oh yeah, two "i's" is how you know it's good) in the pedestrian zone of C-ville where I had a really great glass of... something. It was French and expensive and tasted like smoke and seaweed. Heavenly. Too bad I don't remember a dang thing about the name, thus making this wine journal thing pretty useless.

St. Patrick's Day, Recipes, Pictures, and an Experience with Fermentation

WOOO ST. PATRICKS DAY KISS ME IM IRISH WOO SHOTS

No, not really. Don't kiss me, I'll hurt you. Also you're not Irish unless it says so on your passport, you nasty drunkard.

I began the day with Bulmer's, because it's delicious. Don't mind the fact that I have no chin, I donated it to help the sober kids in India. The drinking was necessary because I was engaged in making something suspiciously delicious: Irish Cake Bombs.

 Irish Cake Bombs are Guinness cupcakes filled with Jameson ganache and topped with Bailey's frosting. They are also King of Delicious, partially because they are alcoholic, but mostly because it involves nearly an entire pound of butter. Eat your heart out, Paula Deen, but first put a little butter on it. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to hide this behind some sort of cut tag, so just scroll through if you're not interested. Here's the recipe:
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For the Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes
1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

Ganache Filling (Updated to double it, based on many commenters suggestions — thanks!)
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 to 2 teaspoons Irish whiskey (optional)

Baileys Frosting (see Recipe Notes)
3 to 4 cups confections sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperatue
3 to 4 tablespoons Baileys (or milk, or heavy cream, or a combination thereof)

Special equipment: 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer and a piping bag (though a plastic bag with the corner snipped off will also work)

Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes. Cool cupcakes on a rack completely.

Make the filling: Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter and whiskey (if you’re using it) and stir until combined.

Fill the cupcakes: Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped (the fridge will speed this along but you must stir it every 10 minutes). Meanwhile, using your 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. You want to go most of the way down the cupcake but not cut through the bottom — aim for 2/3 of the way. A slim spoon or grapefruit knife will help you get the center out. Those are your “tasters”. Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.

Make the frosting: Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.
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Now, I did a silly thing and thought "hurr bittersweet chocolate they don't have that here unsweetened is like the same thing rite hurr." It is not the same thing and I shame the baking gods. There was improvisation and a lot of powdered sugar, but in the end I made an awesome, slightly-too-thick filling. I should have saved some of it to make truffles with, as it probably had enough sugar and chocolate in it to keep from melting... oh well.

Oh yeah baby. That is cupcake porn. Seriously you guys, you have to make these. Don't get scared by the word "ganache," it's just about the easiest damn thing in the world to make (heat milk, pour on chocolate, stir).

I brought these fine offerings to the bar, where they were appreciated by many. It is time for more Embarrassing Pictures of People I Love.

 

There were also plenty of Suspicious Drinks. Such as the standard Green Beer:

And the ever-present Irish Car Bomb. AngryGinger was not pleased with the development of Irish Car Bombs.

PictureTaker McDrunksalot on the other hand was thrilled:

I hate Irish Car Bombs. Can't chug fast enough. Blurgh.

Moving away from the St. Patrick's Day festivities (including the wicked awesome party in Middle Basement), today I had an Experience with Fermentation. You see, At Birthday Ball we filled up a resealable container with orange juice for mixers. We then never used it and I left the box in Captain Class's dorm room. That was a month ago. This morning I opened it in order to wash it out, so that I could put something else delicious in it.

I do  not think I have experienced that level of energy in a fruity beverage before. It exploded like a poorly maneuvered bottle of champagne. If I had not had the sense to point it away from me, I'd be drenched in fizzy orange bits. Holy science, that was unpleasant. At least it doesn't smell like rotting oranges... probably because botulism is odorless... My god.

Woo! Pictures!

I found my camera cable! It was, as Mauve Shirt suggested, in her room. How the hell it got there, I don't know, because I'm pretty sure it's not compatible with her camera. Whatevs.

Anyway, pretty pretty pictures!

Look at them strawberries. Look at 'em. Ain't they gorgeous? They were tasty too. MOST of the two pounds of strawberries ended up in the jar. The rest ended up in me. Of course, my favorite strawberries are the mutant ones. You know, the ones trying to grow an extra head or something. Like this one.

IT IS ALIIIIIVE. Or not.

I also did a mango infusion this afternoon. What I know about mangoes can be counted on the fingers of one elbow, so these were selected and broken down pretty inexpertly. There were gonna be three of 'em, but...

I sort of assumed that that's not a good way for mangoes to look. QuasomodoMango was not used in the making of this infusion, though I did involve him in making a mess of the kitchen. GOD mangoes smell like flowery ass. I'm not entirely certain about the quality of this infusion, so I didn't make all that much of it.

Finished products!

Oh yeah, check out that bidniss. When I went downstairs to put the mango infusion away with the others, I made sure to give them all a good shake. The coffee was already turning a delightful color, as seen below.

That is going to be delicious. CRAZY delicious.

Of course, I've got about a quarter liter of vodka left, and I'm wondering what I should do with it. Any recommendations?

I keep misplacing my camera cable...

Which means I don't have any good pictures of the infusions I made. LAME. It's a damn shame too, 'cause these ones look particularly delicious. First is a strawberry infusion, made with two pounds of strawberries and enough vodka to fill the jar. Mr. B gave me two old whisky bottles, nice glass ones with a cork. One of them is now full of vanilla bean infusion, and the other with coffee bean. My vanilla-coffee infusion was so successful that I really wanted to make more, and I figure that these two can be combined in all sorts of delicious ways, or taken alone.

Now, these particular infusions have a purpose: they are bribes. Before I move out, I will decant and sweeten them (except the vanilla, it keeps its bean in and takes no sugar). They will be served as bribes to those who help me move in, likely along with cupcakes.

I know beer and pizza is the traditional bribe, but I figure this is more my style.

In wine news, I had a delightful Malbec with the Boyfriend. Naturally I can't remember the name. Luckily, when I got home, I found a bottle of Chateau du Cleray Muscadet Sevre et Maine. I don't... I don't know what those words mean. It's French and I'm not very good at this. The grape is Melon de Bourgogne, which is typically used in Muscadet, which I thought was its own grape. Learn something new every day.

It is a very dry, minerally white, which surprised me, since I see "Muscadet" and think "honey sweet." This is really good, and I'd love to have it with oysters. I'll be getting the chance for tasty, tasty slug rocks soon, since for Easter this year we are having a Foie Gras and Oyster Dinner. Oh yeah. It doesn't get much better than that.

...I'm also just happy because I have flowers. I got a shamrock plant named Padraig. Also the Boyfriend got me some yellow roses and they are beautiful.

Nerd Weekend!

Hooray for nerd weekend!

Last night I met up with BeerSnob, Kaiser TNT and MetalChef to run a tabletop roleplaying game. It was based on the Fate system, which is really great for pick-up games, one-shots, and intense roleplaying. It is super flexible, and because a large portion of character creation is based around putting together shared backstories, it makes jumping into the game really easy. It's wonderful.

My homebrew setting (featuring the Matu'Ashak) was complemented by a tray of brownies and a bottle of Westport River Chardonnay that MetalChef gave me for my birthday/christmas/thing. It was an estate grown wine from Southeastern New England, and it was really, REALLY tasty. Very balanced acids and sugars, citrusy without tasting like juice. It was easy to drink and highly enjoyable, even out of Red Cups while pretending to be monsters. I highly recommend this wine if you get the chance to try it, it's the style of white wine that got me interested in whites in the first place.