Anything as momentous as a World Series title for the Cubs deserves both alcohol honors and a properly codified and complex rule system regarding those tipples. I submit the Play-Off Beer Laws:
0) There are 11 victories needed to clinch the Fall Classic.
1) At the conclusion of the regular season, two six packs of beer will be purchased. These six packs are to be designated the Play-Off Beers. These play-off beers are preferably locally produced in or near the city of the competing team (which should and always will be Chicago), but must necessarily be of the highest quality. The two six packs can be of the same type or different, but they must be bottles, as only bottles have the necessary level of quality necessary to propel a stinking team of farm league rejects through 11 victories against clearly superior pitching and fielding talent.
2) On game days, one bottle of play-off beer is to placed in the refrigerator for the possibility of consumption following the game. The bottle may only be consumed in the event of a victory by the team for which the play-off beer was purchased. Only the one bottle is to be consumed. One bottle of play-off beer is to be consumed the night of each victory during celebrations. Consumption of alcohol on game days is not exclusive of other beverages, but the consumption of a play-off beer is compulsory in the event of a victory.
3) As there are eleven victories required to win the NLDS, NLCS, and the World Series, and there are twelve bottles of play-off beer, the twelfth bottle must be poured onto the ground following the eleventh victory. This is yet another of the many superstitions required to propel a team of incompetent hacks through a field of much better teams to claim a trophy they have no business winning. Do not disrespect the twelfth bottle by consuming it. Much like talking about a perfect game during said game, drinking of the twelfth bottle at any point in the future will cause the team to lose all remaining games in the present. [Accidental consumption of the twelfth bottle by a third party while said bottle is being poured onto the ground is not to be considered infringement of the third law.]
4) In the unlikely event of early elimination (i.e. loss of any of the three postseason series), all remaining play-off beers--not including the twelfth bottle--are to be consumed by the owner of the play-off beer in a timely manner. The twelfth bottle must be poured onto the ground in any event.
5) Play-off beer must be consumed exclusively by one person, although the consumer need not be the purchaser. As always, drink responsibly and stay off the roads.
Note: Budweiser, Miller, nor any affiliated brewery may not be chosen as the play-off beer for any Cubs postseason appearance. Also, please note, as Inbev is now the owner of the Budweiser name, all Inbev-owned breweries are to be considered off limits for play-off beer.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Back at School, No Friends
My life right now is pretty dominated by the fact that 1) I have returned to Gustavus for what is apparently my last semester and 2) everyone I know in more than passing has either graduated or gone on sabbatical. Which means that I am 1) very alone on the Hill and 2) looking forward very much to my breaks.
This isolation, at least in this first week, has also helped me focus on myself in a way I've not been able to do for quite a while. In many ways, it's like my first semester in England, except I've so far been spared the intense depression and homesickness of that fall. I've found that I'm concentrating more on my school work, that I am eating healthier than usual, and that I am drawn more into my philosophical musings which have gone unheeded since the spring of 2007.
To that end, I've started thinking about nonviolence and pacifism again. Namely, I'm starting to wonder how I am exemplifying the pacifist beliefs which I so strongly hold. The truth is, I really don't know if I am. Obviously, I'm not going around and picking fights, but pacifism goes beyond that sort of tension-releasing violence. Pacifism, as I once described it, is constant action in order to prevent the occurrence of violence. Am I doing this at all?
I'm also not cooking right now, but the last few mornings, I have awoken to the most treasured thing man has ever given another man: domesticated coffee beans. Now, I've had coffee before, but it's been months since I drank it on a cool morning, in my preferred manner of Turkish grind and boiling water. Those months nearly made me forget just how wonderful a pleasure warm, nutty, rich coffee is, about an hour after waking, about an hour before the day's activities start. I think it's entirely possible that, given a stack of books, a larder of beans and rice, and a lot of green coffee beans, I could spend a year almost anywhere completely alone.
But why would I want to?
This isolation, at least in this first week, has also helped me focus on myself in a way I've not been able to do for quite a while. In many ways, it's like my first semester in England, except I've so far been spared the intense depression and homesickness of that fall. I've found that I'm concentrating more on my school work, that I am eating healthier than usual, and that I am drawn more into my philosophical musings which have gone unheeded since the spring of 2007.
To that end, I've started thinking about nonviolence and pacifism again. Namely, I'm starting to wonder how I am exemplifying the pacifist beliefs which I so strongly hold. The truth is, I really don't know if I am. Obviously, I'm not going around and picking fights, but pacifism goes beyond that sort of tension-releasing violence. Pacifism, as I once described it, is constant action in order to prevent the occurrence of violence. Am I doing this at all?
I'm also not cooking right now, but the last few mornings, I have awoken to the most treasured thing man has ever given another man: domesticated coffee beans. Now, I've had coffee before, but it's been months since I drank it on a cool morning, in my preferred manner of Turkish grind and boiling water. Those months nearly made me forget just how wonderful a pleasure warm, nutty, rich coffee is, about an hour after waking, about an hour before the day's activities start. I think it's entirely possible that, given a stack of books, a larder of beans and rice, and a lot of green coffee beans, I could spend a year almost anywhere completely alone.
But why would I want to?
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Friday, October 26, 2007
Jim McCurry
My mother-dear was out of town last weekend, so I decided to use the oppotunity to experiment with garlic. That's right, I made the famous salsa chimichurri of the Gauchos.
A bit of background: Argentina is famous for its beef and the cowboys are called gauchos. They eat their steak with a steak sauce made from, in its most basic form, garlic, parsley, and olive oil. Supposedly, it gets its name from the first person to serve it, an Irish chuckwagon cook named Jim McCurry, which became chimichurri in Spanish.
So, how did I make it?
A small bunch of Italian parsley, which I chopped whole (I chopped the stems finely and the leaves coarsely), to which I added one small tomato diced, two cloves garlic smashed into a puree, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, enough olive oil to bring it together into a sauce-like consistency, and quite a bit of salt (it's a sauce, right?).
I put it, covered, in the frigo overnight and then cooked my steaks. With a bit of this on top, they were like biting into the most delicious garlic-salad-covered pieces of undercooked meat I've ever had. I should work on my cooking times for steaks.
By the way, the way I cooked the steaks seemed to work really well. It produced an excellent char and, if I'd cooked them long enough, they'd have been done perfectly. Here's how I did it.
I put a cast iron skillet in the oven and then set it to 500 degrees (that's F). I waited until everything was good and hot, and then I put the skillet on a burner turned to high. While that was heating up some more, I covered the steaks with oil and then salted them (again, quite heavily). I then put a tablespoon or so of oil in the skillet, waited the half-second for it to heat up, and then laid the steaks in. I left them for maybe a minute and a half untouched, then I turned them over, left them for another ninety seconds, and then put the whole thing into the oven. Once there, I waited until they were cooked to medium-rare (except I didn't actually do that and so my second, thicker steak, was about a rare as a steak can be).
Perfect steaks with an amazing char, just like being in a steak house, only much more expensive (I bought some really good steak at a high-end grocery store without looking at the price first).
One note of importance: The cooking method for the steaks produces a TON of smoke. It was fairly billowing out of the oven vent. Make sure you have a well-ventilated kitchen with a fan on high.
I also found some Argentine-style chorizos, which are like a bratwurst flavored with garlic. I made choripánes, an Argentine sandwich consisting of split French bread with a sausage cut lengthwise in the middle and topped with chimichurri. That was a garlic-fest if I've ever had one. After eating it, I told Timth that I was seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing garlic and only garlic. Then I went to see Joanna Townsend. Boy, was that a weird day!
Muhalo.
A bit of background: Argentina is famous for its beef and the cowboys are called gauchos. They eat their steak with a steak sauce made from, in its most basic form, garlic, parsley, and olive oil. Supposedly, it gets its name from the first person to serve it, an Irish chuckwagon cook named Jim McCurry, which became chimichurri in Spanish.
So, how did I make it?
A small bunch of Italian parsley, which I chopped whole (I chopped the stems finely and the leaves coarsely), to which I added one small tomato diced, two cloves garlic smashed into a puree, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, enough olive oil to bring it together into a sauce-like consistency, and quite a bit of salt (it's a sauce, right?).
I put it, covered, in the frigo overnight and then cooked my steaks. With a bit of this on top, they were like biting into the most delicious garlic-salad-covered pieces of undercooked meat I've ever had. I should work on my cooking times for steaks.
By the way, the way I cooked the steaks seemed to work really well. It produced an excellent char and, if I'd cooked them long enough, they'd have been done perfectly. Here's how I did it.
I put a cast iron skillet in the oven and then set it to 500 degrees (that's F). I waited until everything was good and hot, and then I put the skillet on a burner turned to high. While that was heating up some more, I covered the steaks with oil and then salted them (again, quite heavily). I then put a tablespoon or so of oil in the skillet, waited the half-second for it to heat up, and then laid the steaks in. I left them for maybe a minute and a half untouched, then I turned them over, left them for another ninety seconds, and then put the whole thing into the oven. Once there, I waited until they were cooked to medium-rare (except I didn't actually do that and so my second, thicker steak, was about a rare as a steak can be).
Perfect steaks with an amazing char, just like being in a steak house, only much more expensive (I bought some really good steak at a high-end grocery store without looking at the price first).
One note of importance: The cooking method for the steaks produces a TON of smoke. It was fairly billowing out of the oven vent. Make sure you have a well-ventilated kitchen with a fan on high.
I also found some Argentine-style chorizos, which are like a bratwurst flavored with garlic. I made choripánes, an Argentine sandwich consisting of split French bread with a sausage cut lengthwise in the middle and topped with chimichurri. That was a garlic-fest if I've ever had one. After eating it, I told Timth that I was seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing garlic and only garlic. Then I went to see Joanna Townsend. Boy, was that a weird day!
Muhalo.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Siwichi Revisited
I decided to try again, using what I had learned from my first try. This time, I bought the much cheaper tilapia (and it seemed quite fresh). I cut it large, but I used an equal mixture of lemon and lime juices. The bitterness was gone. I also salted it much more. Half an onion and the other half of the jalapeño, though this time I didn't completely de-seed it.
Also, I didn't have any cilantro as what was left over smelled, strangely enough, fishy. I threw it out.
I mixed it up and let it sit for only about twenty minutes this time before starting to eat. I ate it while I drank an all right Czech beer and watched a Fire game. Here's what I noticed:
The fish started out stringy, but after it had been sitting in the acid for the better part of a half, it was perfectly tender. Definitely, letting the fish steep for maybe an hour would make the ceviche just about perfect (as would letting it sit overnight).
It's very rich. I ate nearly a pound of ceviche and felt rather ill afterwards. I'm sure it was the large amount of acid I consumed (that's citrate, not LSD). It really does need to be drained.
It needed chips or tortillas or tostadas or something.
Cilantro, though a very nice flavor, is not necessary and, at $0.99 a bunch, maybe a luxury I can't afford right now (of course, I paid something like $5.50 for the fish).
The Fire are good, but not great, and they seem to lake the cut-throat mentality of the perennial powers of Houston and DC.
Czech lager is still not as good as English ale, but it does go better with ceviche than the former.
Muhalo.
Also, I didn't have any cilantro as what was left over smelled, strangely enough, fishy. I threw it out.
I mixed it up and let it sit for only about twenty minutes this time before starting to eat. I ate it while I drank an all right Czech beer and watched a Fire game. Here's what I noticed:
The fish started out stringy, but after it had been sitting in the acid for the better part of a half, it was perfectly tender. Definitely, letting the fish steep for maybe an hour would make the ceviche just about perfect (as would letting it sit overnight).
It's very rich. I ate nearly a pound of ceviche and felt rather ill afterwards. I'm sure it was the large amount of acid I consumed (that's citrate, not LSD). It really does need to be drained.
It needed chips or tortillas or tostadas or something.
Cilantro, though a very nice flavor, is not necessary and, at $0.99 a bunch, maybe a luxury I can't afford right now (of course, I paid something like $5.50 for the fish).
The Fire are good, but not great, and they seem to lake the cut-throat mentality of the perennial powers of Houston and DC.
Czech lager is still not as good as English ale, but it does go better with ceviche than the former.
Muhalo.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Siwichi
Supposedly, the Quechua word for that wonderful dish of citrus juice and raw fish is siwichi, and that became ceviche in Spanish. Others suggest that it comes from the word escabeche. Either way, this South American dish is one of my favorite things in this world, as is anything that involves seafood, especially when it does not involve the application heat (uh, oyster and wine, hello?).
So, I decided to make some this past week. It's a simple preparation. I bought a half pound of halibut, which was actually the most expensive fish I could buy. I really should have gone with the tilapia, which was half the price, but I didn't see it until the fishmonger was already cutting off my piece.
I diced the fish in fairly large pieces, then I juiced two limes and a lemon and poured the juice over the fish. I also finely diced half an onion and half a jalapeño (minus the seeds). I put those in with the fish, along with a fair amount of salt, and put the whole thing in the frigo overnight.
The next day, for lunch, I heated up some tortillas, chopped a large amount of cilantro (probably three tablespoons), poured off the juice into another container, and served up some ceviche tacos.
Criticisms:
I think I used to much lime juice, because it was very bitter. Salting more helped. Maybe ceviche has to be a salty dish, or maybe it needs lemon. I would also like to try out sour oranges.
The fish flavor was also lost in the midst of all the other ingredients. I think, if I make it again, I'll either use a stronger-flavored fish or else cut the pieces to be larger (closer to the size of a gumball).
The tortillas got water-logged almost instantly, and a water-logged tortilla resembles masa more than a tortilla. Also, they cooled off almost instantly, which was kind of disappointing. I think tostadas or just in a bowl are the ways forward from here.
There was no spice from the chiles. I'm not sure if the dish is supposed to be about the flavor of the chiles, rather than their spice, or if I made it wrong, but I definitely got no capsaicin whatsoever. Maybe I should crush some seeds next time (but just a few, I don't want it to be overwhelmingly spicy).
Mahalo.
So, I decided to make some this past week. It's a simple preparation. I bought a half pound of halibut, which was actually the most expensive fish I could buy. I really should have gone with the tilapia, which was half the price, but I didn't see it until the fishmonger was already cutting off my piece.
I diced the fish in fairly large pieces, then I juiced two limes and a lemon and poured the juice over the fish. I also finely diced half an onion and half a jalapeño (minus the seeds). I put those in with the fish, along with a fair amount of salt, and put the whole thing in the frigo overnight.
The next day, for lunch, I heated up some tortillas, chopped a large amount of cilantro (probably three tablespoons), poured off the juice into another container, and served up some ceviche tacos.
Criticisms:
I think I used to much lime juice, because it was very bitter. Salting more helped. Maybe ceviche has to be a salty dish, or maybe it needs lemon. I would also like to try out sour oranges.
The fish flavor was also lost in the midst of all the other ingredients. I think, if I make it again, I'll either use a stronger-flavored fish or else cut the pieces to be larger (closer to the size of a gumball).
The tortillas got water-logged almost instantly, and a water-logged tortilla resembles masa more than a tortilla. Also, they cooled off almost instantly, which was kind of disappointing. I think tostadas or just in a bowl are the ways forward from here.
There was no spice from the chiles. I'm not sure if the dish is supposed to be about the flavor of the chiles, rather than their spice, or if I made it wrong, but I definitely got no capsaicin whatsoever. Maybe I should crush some seeds next time (but just a few, I don't want it to be overwhelmingly spicy).
Mahalo.
Monday, September 24, 2007
That Other Old Familiar
I finally found time to write a new post, but only because I have fallen ill. It's a shame, because I was so healthy up until I got sick, and now this sets me back to square one. I had actually hoped to avoid getting this bug which seems to be going around, but my luck evidently is focused on other things.
Unfortunately, making good food is not one of those things. I made a pot of beans last week. It's a simple recipe and one which I love to make: one pound of pinto beans (soaked overnight), add to that one sweated onion, a few rashers of browned bacon, cumin and chili powder to taste (and salt). The final addition, which I don't always add, is a browned chicken cut into pieces. It makes the final product more of a stew, rather than just a pot of beans.
It's been a while since I cooked, so that probably explains why I left the skin on the chicken. Here's a tip: if you're going to stew a chicken, don't leave the skin on. It was a little disgusting to have chicken covered in gummy skin.
Other than that, the dish was great.
I like to serve it with an equal portion of brown rice and freshly made tortillas, while sitting on the veranda, watching the hacienda workers harvest the yucca.
Unfortunately, making good food is not one of those things. I made a pot of beans last week. It's a simple recipe and one which I love to make: one pound of pinto beans (soaked overnight), add to that one sweated onion, a few rashers of browned bacon, cumin and chili powder to taste (and salt). The final addition, which I don't always add, is a browned chicken cut into pieces. It makes the final product more of a stew, rather than just a pot of beans.
It's been a while since I cooked, so that probably explains why I left the skin on the chicken. Here's a tip: if you're going to stew a chicken, don't leave the skin on. It was a little disgusting to have chicken covered in gummy skin.
Other than that, the dish was great.
I like to serve it with an equal portion of brown rice and freshly made tortillas, while sitting on the veranda, watching the hacienda workers harvest the yucca.
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