Chef Lucy Saunders demonstrated a recipe from her cookbook -- The Best of American Beer and Food --live, this morning on WUSA TV9, the CBS affiliate in Washington D.C.
During the segment, host Mike Walter interviewed both Ms. Saunders and Clipper City's Hugh Sisson.
I was there ... on the other side of the camera.
Is "beer the new wine", Mike asked Hugh?
Hugh, not only owner of Clipper City Brewing, but a co-host of Cellar Notes, a Baltimore radio program on wine (!), answered, "Yes!" Beer has a food-worthiness, that is only now being formally recognized.
From her book, Lucy prepared Creamy Cavatappi with Mushrooms and Fennel.
She explained that the fennel, with its anise-like character, was a good match for some of the yeasty fermentation character of the Clipper City Pale Ale. Indeed, she said she finds fennel to be a good choice for many American Pale ales.
Mike Walter and co-host Andrea Roane agreed, as did most of the members of the news staff and crew. After the broadcast, they gathered around, to try more of the Cavatappi.
And this was at 10am!
Find the recipe on WUSA's website.
See more photos here.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Lucy Saunders cooks, live, on DC TV
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Mussels, just "that damn good"
In the video below—an audition for the Food Network—Chef Teddy Folkman of Washington DC's Granville Moore demonstrates how to make Moules á la bière. [UPDATE 2008.03.21: Moules aux moules-- Folkman vs. Flay]
He cooks them with a Belgian Trappist ale— Chimay White.
Many moons past, my chef at Sissons Brewpub in Baltimore would prepare Prince Edward Island (PEI) mussels with gueuze-lambic: Cuvée Renée to be exact.
The gueuze's acidity and fruity funkiness proved to be wonderful cooking and flavor foils for the bivalves. My staff took to automatically serving extra bread in anticipation of the invariable request for more with which to sop up the broth.
At one point in the video, Chef Folkman gets wistful, wishing that beer were food. But, of course, he need not, as beer is indeed just that—a foodstuff, best served fresh.
He wafts the aroma of the cooking mussels toward his face, reveling. The aroma of food is of course a component of its flavor.
Why then, at the conclusion of the video, would he drink his Chimay from a bottle? Where's the aroma in doing that?
Other than that, it looks wonderful.
I grabbed this over at Frozen Tropics, a blog about the comings and goings along and near the H Street corridor in NE Washington, DC.
P.S. Chef Folkman's audition was fruitful. The Food Network will be filming him, the restaurant, and his patrons on 17 March.
P.P.S Flay was flayed.
another listing of the best beer bars in the US
From Brookston Beer Bulletin came this notice of Forbes' list of the top ten beer bars in the US.
Blogger Jay questions the inclusion of The Brickstore Pub in Decatur Georgia and the exclusion of Monk's Cafe. But having been to both, I would acclaim The Brick Store as eminently worthy and Monk's exclusion as an erroneous lacuna.
Maybe the list needs several honorable mentions as well. Such as Max's TapHouse in Baltimore ... or [place your nominee here].
Here is the list, in no particular order of worthiness, except that I've imbibed at the first five.
- Brickskeller (Washington, DC)
- Brick Store Pub (Decatur, GA)
- Toronado (San Francisco, CA)
- Hopleaf Bar (Chicago, IL)
- Falling Rock Tap House (Denver, CO)
- Spuyten Duyvil (Brooklyn, NY)
- Blind Tiger Ale House (New York, NY)
- Publick House and Monk’s Cell (Brookline, near Boston, MA)
- Brouwer’s Cafe (Seattle, WA)
- Great Lost Bear (Portland, ME)
YFGF gets it wrong at the Brewers Ball
In an earlier post, I had lamented that we wouldn't be seeing Bob and Ellie Tupper at the Brewers Ball this year.
Three (!) readers of this blog were in attendance last evening, and stopped by the Clipper City table to chat.
And all three directed my attention to the upper mezzanine. Sitting there were Bob and Ellie, last-minute additions to the roster of breweries: a welcome sight indeed. As before, however, they had no definitive word yet on a new contract brewery for their Tuppers Hop Pocket beers.
Clipper City Brewing has participated four times at the Brewers Ball—to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation—since the gala's inception in 2005. This year's attendance was the largest yet.
I had no bad beers last night, but of the few I had time to sample, standouts were Jackass Rye from Sweetwater Tavern, an oak-aged Scotch Ale from Shenandoah Brewing, and Vintage 50's Auld Abominable —Bill Madden's old ale that has aged quite gracefully since I first tasted it at the Brickskeller in January. And, a DC-area go-to favorite of mine: the Märzen, from Gordon-Biersch.
I'm also very grateful to several friends-in-beer who stopped by my table before midnight to toast my father's birthday, with a Guinness. Note that we drank from a bottle of Extra Stout. Dean Lake of Sweetwater Brewing remarked: "I had forgotten how good this recipe for Guinness actually is!"
left to right: Chris Mallon of Clipper City Brewing; Dean Lake of Sweetwater Tavern, Merrifield; Tom Cizauskas; Bill Madden of Vintage 50.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Albert C. Cizauskas
Today, I celebrate the life of Albert C. Cizauskas.
Born this day in 1920, now deceased, he was a diplomat for the United States, a writer, and an international economist.
He is my father.
Tonight, I will toast his memory with a Guinness, the last food he enjoyed on this earth.
Ansveikatus, Dad!
- In the early 20th century, both my father's and my mother's families emigrated from Lithuania. But alone among his five siblings, he did not change his surname of Cizauskas. He proudly retained it, and I and my siblings are recipients of that name.
- Throughout his life, my father remained an appreciator of good books—the words in them and the binders that hold them. Today on his birthday, 1 March—or throughout the year—consider contributing to a library of your choice.
- At the end of his life, my father suffered from Parkinson's Disease.
- I've linked my home computer into a worldwide distributed computing effort—called Folding at Home—run by researchers at Stanford University to better understand protein folding errors, believed to be a cause of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and other neurodegenerative diseases. It's free to run. Please consider doing so on your computer.
- NARSAD is a private, not for profit public charity organized for the purpose of raising funds for scientific research into the causes, cures, treatments and preventions of disorders and disease of the brain—such as Autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, Schizophrenia, Depression, Bipolar Disorder—32 in total. Consider making a donation.
