FEED THE RESISTANCE: MARDI GRAS 2024!
Feed The Resistance: Mardi Gras 2024!
Mardi Gras is coming up on Tuesday, so in honor of that, I had to do a little Cajun cooking! The jambalaya recipe that I make most often is a very simple, one-pot meal that comes from Chef John Besh of New Orleans. The recipe was included in a cookbook from Food & Wine magazine, called "Chef's Easy Weeknight Dinners" - and it is. Easy, that is. Normally, I would expect to spend an entire afternoon putting together a jambalaya, but this one comes together in about 30-45 minutes! It's got the spice of andouille sausage, which is tempered a bit by a little breakfast sausage that's also used in the recipe. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the recipe online, so I can't share it here - but if you ever come upon the book "Chef's Easy Weeknight Dinners" - this recipe alone is worth the price of admission!
To pair with the jambalaya, Dee served up our current "Tap That" beer of the week - "Lakeside Cherry" from Leinenkugel's, which worked perfectly - in particular, the spiciness of the andouille sausage really worked well with the cherry in the beer!
FEED THE RESISTANCE: GROUND PORK...FOR GROUNDHOG DAY!
Feed The Resistance: Ground Pork...for Groundhog Day!
Today is Groundhog Day, so in honor of that, I thought I'd cook up some Ground Hog (pork). One of my favorite pork recipes is for Pork Larb Lettuce Wraps. It's basically ground pork, cooked up with a few spices and served wrapped in lettuce leaves. It can be a bit messy...but it's worth it! DELICIOUS!
To pair with the wraps, Dee grabbed a Raspberry Tart beer from New Glarus Brewing - and it worked perfectly, with the fruitiness of the beer complimenting the spiciness of the pork really well!
FEED THE RESISTANCE: DRY JANUARY, WEEK 4 - HOP WATER-BRINED CHICKEN!
Feed The Resistance: Dry January, Week 4 - Hop Water-Brined Chicken!
Dry January rolls on! Once again this week, we're not just drinking non-alcoholic, but also cooking with it. About a year ago, we were introduced to a Hard Kombucha, which I turned into a great brine for chicken. For this dish, I used the same basic idea, but instead of the Hard Kombucha, I brined the chicken in a mixture of Hop Water, Brown Sugar, Salt and Lemon Juice. When I brined the chicken in Kombucha, the skin turned out nice and crispy, and the meat was really good & juicy! This worked exactly the same way! Since the first time that I made the kombucha-brined chicken, I have made that same dish several other times, but using different flavors of kombucha - each adding a really unique flavor to the meat. For the hop water-brined chicken, I used an unflavored hop water - but in the future, I want to try some of the flavored hop waters, and hop teas, to see if I get a similar result.
Obviously, to pair with the Hop Water-Brined Chicken, we drank straight up Lagunitas Hop Water.
FEED THE RESISTANCE: DRY JANUARY - JACKFRUIT CARNITAS TACOS!
Feed The Resistance: Dry January - Jackfruit Carnitas Tacos!
Still going strong with Dry January! Since I've been exploring so many different NA beers, I wanted to try cooking with one of them. I found a recipe for Jackfruit Carnitas Tacos on the Athletic Brewing website, and gave that a try. It's a vegetarian taco, with jackfruit as the main filling - but after tasting it, I think this would also work great with chicken!
In addition to the jackfruit, there's chipotle in adobo sauce, brown sugar, garlic, cumin, salt & pepper, onions, pineapple juice, orange juice, lime juice and Cerveza Atletica Mexican Lager, which all cooks down into a really nice sauce for the jackfruit. The tacos are topped with a pineapple salsa with pineapple, red onion, jalapeno pepper, lime juice, cilantro, honey, and salt & pepper.
The pairing for this one was pretty obvious - since we're using the Cerveza Atletica beer in the dish, that's what we paired it with - and it worked perfectly with both the sweetness of the pineapple, and the spiciness of the jalepeno.
FEED THE RESISTANCE: COMFORT FOOD...VEGGIE LASAGNA!
Feed The Resistance: Comfort Food...Veggie Lasagna!
With all the snow we've been getting this week and the COLD that will follow this weekend, I thought this would be a good time to cook up a little comfort food! When I think comfort food, I think Lasagna! This particular lasagna recipe goes back to my vegetarian days - it comes from a cookbook called "Sunset Vegetarian Cooking" and it honestly has a taste that's pretty close to a meat lasagna. The filling is made up of onions, garlic, diced eggplant and mushrooms, along with the usual tomato sauce, ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. I used to replace the ricotta with "Dry Curd" cottage cheese - but I can't find that anymore, so it's ricotta or regular cottage cheese these days. The sauce that I put on top also comes from a really old recipe that I found in the newspaper many years ago - it's a pretty basic sauce with onion, garlic, tomato sauce, tomato puree, tomato paste, plus a touch of sugar, salt, basil and just a pinch of baking soda (to cut acidity of the tomatoes).
To go with our lasagna, Dee brought in one of my favorite N.A. beers (it's "Dry January") - Lakefront Brewery's "Eastside Dark," which worked perfectly with the creaminess of the cottage cheese in the lasagna!
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FEED THE RESISTANCE: DRY JANUARY/VEGGIE TACOS!
Feed The Resistance: Dry January/Veggie Tacos!
Both Dee and I are taking on the "Dry January" challenge - so we're carrying that over into our usual Friday morning food and beer pairing...and pairing a non-alcoholic brew with the food each week throughout the month of January. For this first week, I brought out one of my favorite vegetarian tacos - the Honey Lime Sweet Potato and Black Bean Taco! The tacos come together pretty easily - it's pretty much exactly as it sounds...chop up your sweet potatoes, cook them in the oven, and then mix them in with the black beans, some corn, onion and a few spices. There you go! Done!!
To pair with the tacos, Dee chose "Natural Bridges" Kolsch-style N.A. beer from Surreal Brewing Company, a company the brews exclusively non-alcoholic beers...and has won many awards for those beers!
FEED THE RESISTANCE: HOPPIN' JOHN FOR THE NEW YEAR!
Feed The Resistance: Hoppin' John For The New Year!
As we head into the New Year, I had to dig out my recipe for an old southern dish that is traditionally served to bring good luck in the new year...it's Hoppin' John! I say "my recipe" - because it's my take on a recipe that I originally found in "Sundays At Moosewood Restaurant" cookbook, one of the greatest vegetarian cookbooks ever published. Hoppin' John is a Black-Eyed Peas dish, and the Moosewood cookbook did a really nice vegetarian version of the dish that me and my wife made every year for New Year's, back when we were vegetarians. We still eat a fair amount of vegetarian meals, but we are not strictly vegetarian these days. When we fell of the wagon several years back, I made some adjustments to the Moosewood recipe, and added a couple of Ham-Hocks and some Andouille Sausage, and served it alongside Collard Greens recipe that I found in Marcus Samuelsson's "Marcus Off Duty" book. The collard green recipe is actually a part of a recipe for "Mac & Cheese & Greens" - but for this purpose, I use only the Greens part of the recipe.
To pair with this dish, Miranda wanted something "Celebratory" - so she went with Potosi's "Wisconsin Holiday" beer...and it worked perfectly! Happy New Year!
FEED THE RESISTANCE: HAPPY FESTIVUS!
Feed The Resistance: Happy Festivus!
Another big holiday weekend is upon us! I'm talking, of course, about FESTIVUS! The traditional Festivus meal dates back to a Seinfeld episode from December of 1997, where George and his family celebrate the alternative to Christmas...Festivus. The meal served for the Festivus celebration was meatloaf. Since the late 90s, interest in Festivus has grown, with several websites popping up offering more ways to celebrate the holiday. It was on one of those sites that I found the recipe for "Kramer Style Mulligatawny." When Dee and I were talking about the stew this morning, I forgot to mention the last instruction in the recipe... "Serve. Watch the knees buckle."
To go with the "knee-buckling" stew, Dee played a little game of "Close my eyes and point my finger in the beer fridge" - and what she pointed at was a Heineken. And in the tradition of "It's beer and food, how can it be wrong?" - the Heineken worked great with the Mulligatawny!
FEED THE RESISTANCE: SAVORY CHOCOLATE BBQ CHICKEN!
Feed The Resistance: Savory Chocolate BBQ Chicken!
Tomorrow is National "Chocolate-Covered ANYTHING" Day! So, with that in mind...Chocolate-covered CHICKEN!
Well, there's chocolate in the BBQ Sauce, so it's at least close to "Chocolate-covered Chicken."
Dee paired Terrapin's "Hopsecutioner" IPA with this dish, as we've discussed in the past, IPA seems to always work with chocolate, and I pointed out that it also works well with the spiciness of the BBQ sauce.
FEED THE RESISTANCE: CAJUN CALDO VERDE!
Feed The Resistance: Cajun Caldo Verde!
We found out over the weekend that the Badgers will be taking on Louisiana State University on New Year's Day in the ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa. So - I thought it would be fun to do a little Cajun cooking, as we get ready for the Badgers to feast on LSU. What I made today is a take on a Portuguese dish called Caldo Verde - it's a soup with potatoes, greens and sausage. In this version the greens are Collard Greens, and the sausage is Andouille.
