Pumpkin Soup/Columbus Day

So the Stout turned up at 1.063.....that's about 16 Plato for you geeks out there. Nice indeed.

Today is the quintessentially perfect fall day, made all the more so by the fact that my hands are now stained "Oompa-Loompa Orange" and reek of pumpkin. I plan to use up some of the hundred or so gallons of chicken stock I have laying around as a result of last weeks' Chicken Carcasses: The Stockening, in which I went nuts and simmered up all the random carcasses & bones which had been piling up in my freezer. Seriously, what the shit am I going to do with all this stock?

Anyway, the pumpkin soup should be good...imagine a nice, creamy, savory soup with a touch of nutmeg hidden away...and then imagine yourself sprinkling some crispy bacon on top of it. Yea, that's how we do Columbus day at 46 Tremont.

-Wrence

Grilled Pizza 2: Electric Boogaloo

Made pies again last night. Lessons were learned from the last time and things went smoother indeed. We ratcheted things up a notch on the awesome-o-meter by making fresh mozzarella a few days before hand. This was the second time I've done the cheese thing, and that whole process certainly is not getting any easier for me. What a junk show! I probably would have given up actually, at one point, were it not for Vanessa's staunch optimism in the face of dripping milk curds everywhere (insert your own dirty joke here)


Anyway, the mozz went well on the pizzas. The special of the night was a peach & prosciutto combo that I had been dreaming about all week, and man was it good.

We (at least, I) ended up getting really hammered too by the end of it. Things actually got kind of blurry towards the end of the night. The last thing I remember is Vanessa standing on the hood of her car, jumping towards me so I could catch her and hold her up over my head a-la Patrick Swayze & What's-her-face at the end of Dirty Dancing. Needless to say, we were not able to accomplish this gymnastic feat. The next thing I was aware of was laying in my bed this morning, wearing two pairs of boxer shorts, for some reason. My only guess is that in my drunken/half-asleep stupor, I was anticipating some sort of radical new fashion trend. Keep your eyes open for that; and remember you heard it here first.

-Wrence

Grilled Pizza

The pizzas worked...sort of

The dough was my standard pizza crust, although somehow it came out probably better than I've ever made it before. The secret, my friends, is a long cold proofing in the fridge. Preferably 2 or 3 days. Then on the night of the pizza cookage, you simply pull it out, allow it to warm a bit, shape the dough balls, and allow a second proofing at room temp.

The ONE mistake I made was stretching the dough balls all at once, and then piling them up on floured parchment paper, instead of stretching them one at a time like I would normally do. The reason I did this is because I wanted the entire operation to be done outside by the grille, and I didn't want to be running up and down the stairs for every damn pie I made. This presented problems later on though, as they all sort of stuck to the parchment paper and separating them out was a pain; and most got sort of mangled by the time they ended up on the grille. But my diners were a forgiving bunch, and no one really cared seeing as how they still tasted good.

So: Tips for gilling pizza, learned the hard way (aka: the 'Wrence Standard Way)

1) Make sure grille is not too hot so as to avoid scorchizing the crust
2) Don't stack all the stretched raw crusts into a moron pile like I did
c) Get off my back about that big burn spot in the middle of the first pie, I mean the last one was freaking perfect already.


_____________

My brother, the oft-mentioned-on-this-blog KevBones, is turning 30 in a few days. Today/tonight they are having a party at his new place in Brookline. In fact he is picking me up in about 20 minutes and we are going to Redbones to pick up the food. The Bones also has his homebrews on tap now, including a 6 day-old hefeweizen that was desperately brewed to be ready for this very moment. Add to that some ribs, brisket, and slaw from one of my favorite BBQ places, and you have yourself a party. It's going to be kind of a chill, family flavored affair. There will be The Bones and his girlfriend, obviously; our step-brother and his wife; our Mom and her boyfriend; Our Dad and Step-mother; and me. Notice a pattern there? Maybe I'll bring along an inflatable love doll, so as not to stand out too badly.

Also, in honor of the occasion I just trimmed my beard and gave myself a ripping mustache! And I wonder why I am single...

-'Wrence

...and then I created FOOD

From what was once nothing but dirt, water, and Carbon Dioxide, I have created salad.

BEHOLD, the Vegetablening:

This was a shot of the garden, featuring the "arugula box," about 2 weeks ago. Today, I harvested my first batch of leaves (leaving the plants themselves intact, so I can harvest again in a few more weeks). Ah, the glory of photosynthesis!

BEHOLD, Salad!

In order to get the full terroir from my arugula, I kept it moron-proof simple: just dressed the leaves with lemon, olive oil, and some shaved parm. I can't even put into words the inappropriately immense amount of satisfaction I had eating this. I MADE FOOD. I mean, I've made bread, beer, and even cheese, but THIS shit I coaxed right out of the AIR (basically.)

Just go ahead and TRY to enjoy the rest of your night, I dare you.

-'God

It used to be about the guano...

So, as 'wrence mentioned in his post below, we had ourselves some good old-fashioned driveway beerhavery and cookitude on Friday night. Beers were had, texts were sent, and much roasted pig flesh was consumed. Let's begin...

I arrived to discover Man Saun and 'wrence crushing beers in the kitchen. After some consultation and mini-cornbread muffin type thingees, the decision was made to move the party to the driveway. For those who would find such a notion disconcerting, I assure you...the driveway was much more than that on this day.

Natural hardwood charcoal was added to the chimney thing and fire applied. In no time flat we had Smokey Joe looking quite ready to grill indeed. Bockwurst and smoked Kielbasa were thrown onto the grill and in no time flat we were chowing down. We had a few different beers to choose from some (but not all) include:

• 'Wrence's honey wine...delicious and super drinkable for something with such a high bbv
• 'Wrence's cardamom-spiced jaggery concoction (i can't remember if this was a wheat beer or not, i think it was)
• 'Wrence's amber
• 'Wrence's saison (prob about a year old and finally carbonated)
• RyToy's Pale Ale
• Man Saun's orange peel and coriander witbier
• Man Saun's lemon zest and grains of paradise witbier

Both of Man Saun's offerings were delicious, but the lemon wit was so far beyond delectable the girls drinking it actually had to be forcibly unstuck from their chairs...yeah, that good.

I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the ribs, which were unreal. Falling off the fucking bone, great sweet/savory balance, nicely finished on the now-cooling Smokey Joe. They were quite the treat and those in attendance ate as much as possible without bursting. Despite our best efforts there were ribs who remained on a plate in the middle of the driveway for the remainder of the night.

With the visiting Inga in attendance as well as the resident Greeks (Gena, Vanessa, and Nancy[sp]) and the neighboring Lori, the party took a turn for the awesome when I saw to it that Sparks was made available to all who would so desire. For those of you not fortunate enough to know, Sparks is a malt beverage containing caffeine, taurine, guarine, and ginseng, is 7% alcohol, tastes like orange soda and turns you into a miniature version of Robert Downey Jr. I had about 2.5 too many with outstanding consequences.

The highlight of the night (for some) would have to be the incredibly lopsided text message showdown between Vanessa and myself. Despite using the unorthodox "alpha" method to Ry's T9 style, Vanessa managed to defeat me soundly at every turn. The sample texts in question varied from those dealing with tazo tea to something about Biloxi. No matter....revenge will be mine in time.

Later the guitar was fetched and songs were sung. On the soundtrack were some songs from The Band (It Makes No Difference, The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down) and Radiohead (Street Spirit, The Bends, Fake Plastic Trees). RyToy laid down the entirely substandard vocals while 'wrence axed his way to a couple of bloody fingers.

Events get blurry post sing-a-long, although I do know that the party moved upstairs as the night went on. Individual comings and goings are vague at best, but I do know this...I had a kick ass fucking time at DrivewayFest '08.

&Ry

How to be Awesome: a diagram

I'll spare you the details of yet another grill session posting, but I will add this shot of my ribs just after applying a rub (the rub is 8 parts dark muscovado sugar, 3 parts sea salt, 1 part chili powder; and then some black pepper, red chili flakes and fresh thyme for good measure). The photo shows a half-rack of baby backs. Note the 3 others behind it all ready to party.


'Wrence

Grille Time/Bottling night

Tonight, despite the rain, I grilled. It was well deserved, I think.

I stopped at Savenor's on the way home, the idea being to splurge on some red meat. A beautiful rib eye steak was spotted, scoped out, and greedily purchased. The girl painting the chalkboard sign out front was beautiful. It was sunny. I happily skipped home. I had just time to change my clothes, start the coals in the chimney, and open a brew-ha when it started to rain on me in my driveway. Then, it started to rain harder. I shook my fist to the heavens, and let loose a torrent of chopped vegetables, bathed in a fresh thyme vinaigrette, skewered mercilessly upon bamboo stilettos of death. The steak simply had a suggestion of salt & pepper, and was cooked to medium rare. All was well.

After a brief digestion break, catching up on the replay of the Champions League final in Moscow earlier today (Man-U won in PKs), I began phase two of operation: awesome; bottling my latest beer, a substantially large IPA, which was modeled after one I had made back in December. The newest could easily be said to be a solid improvement over what was already one of my favorite homebrews. This one clocks in close to 8% booze by volume, according to amateurmash, and is expectedly nice and malty. A sweet alcohol presence is also there, and welcomed (by my mouth). The hopping is right smack in the middle of balance-land; accompanied by generous aromatics from the late kettle additions and the dry-hopping. God I love drinking flat IPA right out of the carboy.

Also, I racked the mead that I....umm...meaded last week. The recipe is impossibly complicated, but click this link for a list of ingredients, if you dare.

And last-ish, I would like to mention that, while perusing this neat-o blog tracker thingy that RyToy installed, I noticed that in addition to the numerous cities represented across North America, we recently had a visitor from Bombay India here at Bros11. So I say, WELCOME! I hope you've enjoyed reading our little crap-cake of a website, and please do come back!

Bonsoir, mes amis

'Wrence

Mom's Day meal = Incendiary

So, for Mother's day, the 'Bones and I ventured out to the country to spend some time with the woman who was nice enough to create and subsequently raise us: Mom.

The idea was to do your basic mind-blowing 3 course dinner on saturday night, and then just relax on Sunday with an easy breakfast and a nice little hike somewhere. Last week, 'Bones and I were watching an episode of Bourdain's show on travel channnel in which he was visiting and cooking in northern Italy; we were inspired to proceed along such an avenue ourselves.

We decided to start with a basic antipasti course, followed by a pasta course, and then a meat course. Bones would handle #2 (as is his wont- ZING!) and I #3.

To rachet things up a notch, I decided on diving into some ARTICHOKES; Bones & I operated, removed the hearts, and marinated them in lemon juice and some water. They were later quartered, slathered in olive oil, salt, and herbs; and then grilled up nicely. These were served, dressed in aged balsamic, with a nice salami and some asiago cheese for the first course.

Bones worked up his normal magic with the home made pasta, including a sauce with cream, cheese, and some of the braising liquid from my dish. Oh, he also melted some fresh ricotta on top to make it sexy (see photo at the top).

The third course was a braciole, which I'd never done before. I guess, traditionally this is served as a middle course, but fuck that, this isn't Italy, it's goddamn Massachusetts. I wanted this to be the main attraction. Started with skirt steak, pounded the uncle-tripping bejesus out of them until they were about a quarter-inch thick. Then they were stuffed with a mixture of grated pecorino, farm eggs (which made the stuffing a brilliant yellow!) and some bread crumbs. The little meat burritos were then rolled & tied with butcher's twine. Brown in a pan, remove, sautee your aromatics, de-glaze with a bottle of red wine. Then in goes about a dozen fresh tomatoes that I had grilled earlier (I don't think I'll ever go back to canned tomatoes after doing it this way) and then the meat goes back in. I think I threw some pitted black olives in as well. Once it's simmering, into the oven for an hour-plus (at least) braise.

Shit came out so good we forgot to take pictures. Well, we did take pics, but my Mom inadvertantly deleted them all. So I leave you with some shots of a fire we started out in the back yard.

'Wrence

Summer Weather

Hey kids, 'Wrence here;

Not much of any terrible importance going on; except, that is, the gradual and inevitable increase in the kick-assitude of the weather here in Boston. It seems like summer has suddenly sprung right from the bowels of crap-laden mud & street garbage itself. Why, just last week was I treated to the miraculous sight, as RyToy & I waited for a bus at Harvard Square, of an adult HAWK, screeching down from the heavens, TALONS OUTSTRETCHED, who dove into a nearby bush and then came back up with a fucking RAT in its carnivorous clutches!! Yea, it was probably the most badass thing I've ever seen in the city. Period. Exclamation point.

So anyway, when the 2nd consecutive day of sunshine, 60 degree temps, and a smooth summer breeze (makes me feel niiiiiice) hit me, I decided that it was time for me to take out my trusted and true little charcoal grille. The wimpy, pathetic, 14-inch diameter job that anywhere outside of the city would probably result in me being laughed off of something in an humiliating fashion, is PERFECT for my 7 x 30 foot driveway.

On the menu was a nice fillet of steelhead trout, dressed with olive oil, lemon juice & some herbs. Also a melange of grilled vegetables was produced (and thoroughly enjoyed), along with some goat cheese crostini. All this was cooked and consumed pretty much completely in the driveway, making cleanup not really even necessary. Score. Add a bottle of really good, decently priced California Cab. Score again.

Also, I felt so good I planted some marigolds in this big planter on my sidewalk. Over the last 3 years I have found that people throw less garbage in it if there are flowers there. Here is what it looks like:


I am proud.

Don't forget to call your mother on Sunday.

'Wrence

Artichoke Anxiety

So it's spring now and I know artichokes are in season; I find my face almost constantly having them shoved in front of......at least, I keep seeing the nice displays of them at Whole Foods, and they do look nice.

While I love a good marinated artichoke or a cheesy dip, I have not much experience with them in the kitchen. I think, maybe once, I dissected a few, pulled out their still-beating hearts, and blanched the crap out of them before pureeing & making some sort of spread from them (I can't quite remember what the hell I was making, but I remember all those hearts sitting in a bowl of cold water & lemons).

But I keep hearing about how good those LEAVES are. "Man, you got to steam them, and then strip the flesh off of them with your teeth." -for some reason I find that terrifying. Maybe it's a tooth sensitivity thing, I don't know. It just doesn't sound like it feels/tastes too good. But I'm sure I'm wrong here.

The thing is, I'll probably never know, unless I get someone over to my house to show me the ways of the choke. I need an artichoke Yoda to guide me through this difficult endeavour! I need the spirit of Alec Guinnes to appear to me and tell me on what swampy planet I may find this mythical little guy!

Anyway - it took me like 10 minutes to paint that artichoke. Which is 10 minutes of my life that I will never have back....

In other news: I'm hitting the brewstore tonight to pick up grain for my next batch. I haven't brewed since March so I am getting back on the horse with an IPA - more or less based on the same grist as my previous effort back in November (which came out super smoothalicious). This one will feature nearly 6 ounces of Summit flowers which have been sitting, vacuum-sealed, in my feezer since Harvest, patiently await their date with Mr boiling wort. I'll let you know how it goes.

-'Wrence