Meat And Alcohol: Pairings

Kirin Beer Company has a restaurant in Namba (in the south part of Osaka) and that is where you have to go if you want to try some of their specialty beers, served by specially-trained bartenders.

I mean, look at that foam.
Just look at it.

A plate full of spicy, garlicky sausages are the perfect match for our bitter, hoppy beers. We were hungry and dug in before remembering to take a photo.

The foam was much more bitter than the beer itself. The bartender told us that the trapped air increases the bitter qualities of the hops (I'm guessing through oxidation). The first sip of the liquid under the foam was sweet by comparison.

La Rosa (1997) is a classic Barolo with rose petal, tea and tar aromas. The tannins mellow deliciously with a mouthful of grilled, rare steak.

Chateau Margaux's Pavillion Rouge (2006) could rest in the bottle for another few years, but it opened up beautifully with a little time in the decanter. Grilled steak is the perfect match.

Tune in next week when we eat a vegetable.

To Waffle An Egg

A breakfast graced by the airy, crunchy, pockety, leger-de-pain of a cloud of waffles is bound to be a happy one (provided the coffee is fresh).

And there is no dark, dungeon cell as forgotten as the kitchen cabinet or hall closet that keeps a waffle iron for the other 364 days of the year.

We wanted to get more use out of our waffle iron than just an occasional freezer full of clouds and a forearm full of contact burns. Hence, this: the Cheese Omelette Waffle (or "Chomffle", which is hard to say).

A very hot iron keeps the egg from escaping over the sides.

The cheese awaits the closing of the lid, so as to crispify.

The first photo is a damned dirty liar.

Better than expected! The cheese (barely visible) was crisp and the wafflated tesseracts increased the golden surface area well into the range of "Very Good - Delicious".

We also had spinach (not shown) and the coffee was fresh.

Origami Coffee: Mon Café Blue Mountain Blend

We posted about Japanese disposable one-cup coffee filters last year.

Since then, we have gathered some different designs, each with its own  solutions to the same basic engineering issues.

This one is a blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and Brazilian coffees by Mon Café.

 Mon Café has chosen a unique elongated design.

The filter is gently sealed to keep the coffee from spilling out, and can be easily pried open. Then you bend down the two ends. The curve adds a lot of spring tension which gives the filter its structure.

The coffee smelled fresh and vibrant.

Large tabs break out of the ornate design and go inside the mug lip, holding the device securely in place.

The filter bag is larger than on other designs, stretching the length of the structure. When in place, its extra material trapped the coffee in little folds and pockets. While these turned out fine, the trapped coffee is likely to end up either under- or over-extracted as the water swirls around the folds.

The simple structure was perhaps not quite as fun to assemble as the UCC Gold Premium, but the coffee tasted very good.

Audi Systems

When in Japan, we use the subways and trains and sometimes bikes to get around on almost all our outings. Aya's family very generously offered use of a car.

This car:

We had no need for it, and were frankly a bit terrified of something going wrong on the very narrow residential streets, and so never used it.

However, the generous offers soon became increasingly insistent, to the point where we found the key at our table setting and, finally, on our bedside table. Part of having good manners is knowing when to accept something gracefully, so we took it out for a spin.

Jeebus.

It is loaded with stuff, of course. One of the coolest things was the back-up camera system. The yellow lines show where the car will go with the wheels at the current angle and the blue rectangle is straight back.

Putting complete faith in the camera system was more than a little off-putting, and when the proximity alerts started beeping there was a noticeable increase in heart-rate. It is amazingly intuitive, though, and worked perfectly.

It also has both a built-in and an after-market radar-detection system (circled in green in the dashboard pic, above). You might think that we wouldn't hear much from them unless a police officer pointed a speed gun at us, but that is not the case.

The Osaka Kanjo-sen highway is awash in speed radar, cameras, and all manner of radio frequencies, and these detecting systems will alert you to each with different beeps, jingles and announcements.

They will  also notify you of directions, toll booths, interchanges, off-ramps, on-ramps, merging areas, high-accident zones, changing speed limits, road conditions, traffic updates and about a million other things.

Having two competing systems in the car produced the most unreal cacophony of alerts, announcements and advisories, all playing over the enka  (sentimental ballads) on the stereo:

So where did we go in this over-powered, insanely noisy, fantastic car?

To the Leach Bar in the Rihga Royal Hotel, where they make the most amazing G&T, served in brass mugs.

Moss

We rescued some dried-up hemispheres of moss from a sidewalk recently. They were scattered around the base of a building, apparently after being scraped off the roof by someone whose job was scraping roofs, not sweeping sidewalks.

We had low expectations for their survival, but a little water and southern exposure has been good for them

Almost too good, perhaps, since they are merging together and now appear to be threatening to break out of their dish.

Our first attempt at moss growing was less successful. We brought a moss-covered rock home from a camping trip and tried to re-create its moist, north-facing mountain climate on our moist, north-facing balcony.

The rock seems pretty happy, at least.

Spot Prawn Season

We look forward to this time of the year the way kids look forward to Christmas, counting down the days on the calendar.

BC is very fortunate to have a strong, sustainable spot prawn fishing industry.
With the fishing area just a couple of hours north of Vancouver, we have access to these delicious sea-bugs for 4-6 weeks, beginning in mid-May.

Three pounds, bought from the boat and taken straight home.

Usually we sautée them with a little white wine and garlic, but this year we thought we'd start off by grilling a few, with a little salt, as an appetizer.

Japanese mayonnaise has a little more vinegary zip, according to Aya.

One of us was raised in North America, and grew up eating only the fat, white tails of shrimp and prawns. The other has enjoyed the amazing, acquired taste of the tomalley all her life. She somewhat regrets sharing her enthusiasm for this delicacy, since it is now eagerly devoured by all members of our household.

The grilling was such a success that we never got around to sautéeing any of them. We just stood there in the kitchen, reveling in the soft flesh and blackened leg tips. Absolutely, outstandingly spectacular.

Except for this bit. Don't ever bite into it. Srsly. Bleh.

We usually turn to a very reliable Sauvignon Blanc to go with our prawns, but our good friends at Liberty Wines on Granville Island recommended this tiny Languedoc appellation, Picpoul De Pinet (#7 on this map), and it did not disappoint. Bright, acidic and with a little more mineral than Sauvignon Blanc, it was an excellent match for the prawns. A steal at $18.

Interestingly (for one of our regular readers, at least) Picpoul De Pinet is also the principal grape in the famous vermouth Noilly Prat.

*A reminder to anyone digging into spot prawns or other shellfish: keep the shells in your freezer for making bisque! Aya's recipe will appear in an upcoming post.

JAL, Personal Ad, Eclipse Follow-Up Video

Japan Airlines (JAL) is really cool, and not just their new tail logo design.

The arm-rest on our Narita-Kansai flight had a somewhat old-school channel/volume controller.

But it got interesting.

Those four coloured buttons mean the same thing in any language.

Your bumpy flight is going to pass much quicker.
There were about 15 different games, in glorious 8-bit colour.

This little package had nothing to do with JAL, but we fell in love with its triple-entendre. Is it a snack? Or the best personal ad we have ever read?

Here is a follow-up on our last post: some video of the pin-hole cameras in the courtyard, waving their images of the eclipse in the morning breeze.

Osaka Eclipse

By pure luck and no planning on our part, we managed to be almost directly under the shadow of the moon during the eclipse on May 21. This was the first time for any of us in the house to be so close to the path of total occlusion, and a bit of mania overtook us as the moment of totality approached.


Using my father's recipe, we set up a pin-hole mirror to project the image onto a darkened wall.
A mirror is covered with paper in which a single hole (the aperture) has been punched. The reflection is aimed at a wall/screen in a dark corner of the same room.


The size of the hole dictates the focus of the image. Here, the lower image is the one coming from our one-hole-punch "pin-hole". It is out of focus and over-exposed because the hole is too large and too close to the wall/screen. The upper image is coming from a tiny crack between the covering paper and the edge of the mirror frame. The focus is much better, but the room is too bright to see it very well.

With more time to plan this, we could have set up multiple mirrors to direct the image to a much darker room. The word for "room" in Italian is, of course, "camera".


Outside in the garden, the camphor tree was doing a better job, making pin-holes with the gaps between its leaves.

We took quick glimpses of the full corona through a darkened piece of x-ray film, in direct contradiction of the warnings being broadcast on NHK at that very moment. Luckily, we had a doctor with us, although he was just as excited as we were.

Vermont Things To Do, Things To Drink

Driving from Montréal to Stowe, Vermont, we took a scenic route down a chain of islands in Lake Champlain.


Aya had never seen ice fishers before, and had certainly never seen cars and trucks parked out on a frozen lake.

View Larger Map

We stopped here for a couple of photos. And then, to our surprise, we did this:

The Vermont woods still had very nice snow, especially in the first few days. This is from when it was wetter, but still wonderful.

This calf seemed warm with its long hair.

Its mother hovered close by with her long horns.

The hot tub was a real treat. When we got too hot we rolled in the snow to cool down, then jumped back in.

Aya and Dad teamed up in the kitchen and produced a rich, dark beef stew and some amazing cheese soufflés to replenish our strength.


Thirsts were met by Vermont's excellent selection of local beers. Here, in no particular order, are some that we remembered to take photos of.

Howl black lager by Magic Hat

Circus Boy wheat beer by Magic Hat

Raison d'Être Belgian brown ale by Dogfish Head was particularly good

Demo dark IPA from Magic Hat

Otter Creek's black IPA was a real hit

A straightforward, flavourful ale by Long Trail

As tasty as their beers were, you may notice that we did not provide links to Magic Hat's website. Designed by and for people who attend way too many outdoor concerts, we wouldn't feed its navigation system to our worst dog.

Suffice to say that the menu is a doodle-pad of incomprehensibility that refers to their beers as "Elixirs".

Never mind. The beer is really quite delicious.

Did we miss any Vermont brewing gems? What should we look for next time?

What Does Modern Wine Taste Like? Descriptor Statistics

We have mentioned British Columbia's governmental branch of liquor distribution before. One of their excellent products is their quarterly Taste magazine. Loaded with articles, reviews, recipes and information, it is a very well designed magazine that covers a lot of ground in 160-odd pages. And it is free.

They include a huge amount of product reviews in every issue, most of them squeezed into 1/12th of a page and reined in at a succinct 40-50 words. In the Spring 2012 issue, we counted 137 separate wine reviews (red, white, rose, sparkling, and sweet), not including beer and spirits.

Why did we count them? Because we read them all, and the concentrated blast of adjectives describing taste and aroma sometimes makes our heads swim. After a few pages, our minds swirl with images of black cherries, herbs, chocolate, mineral, honeysuckle and spices (Christmas, baking and Asian) and it can be a bit overwhelming.

We realized that knowing the frequency of the descriptors packed into each issue of Taste would give us an indication as to what wine styles dominate the market. So we counted every adjective in the latest issue to find out what BC is currently drinking.

We started with the aroma descriptors for red wines (click to enlarge):

Vanilla comes from oak exposure, so its strong showing is no surprise in the red section. Spice looks like the front runner, but notice how some entries were broken up, like cherry and cherry (black). They combine for a total of 19 mentions. Fruit (dried), fruit (black) and fruit (red) combine for 16.

Let's take a look at the descriptors used for red wine flavours:

Fruit flavours have a very strong showing. When combined, they outrank even oak and spice.

White aromas show a similar breakdown: vanilla, toast, oak, caramel and browned butter could all indicate barrel influence, but the fruit descriptors dominate.

White wine flavours also show fruit of all kinds leading the descriptor list.


So what does this tell us? Mostly it confirms what should be obvious: most wines on the market these days are made in a modern, fruit-forward style, often with some oak influence, and are intended to be consumed within a year or two of release.

And why not? Fruit-forward wines are generally inexpensive, popular and are easy to drink on their own or paired with simple meals.

These numbers could also suggest that some winemakers are following specific trends, creating products that meet existing expectations rather than reflecting regional or varietal flavour profiles.

These statistics certainly reveal the bell in the curve: red wines overwhelmingly taste like cherry, plum and spice, whites like apple, citrus and mineral.

Knowing this, we can start to hunt around the edges of the data for wines whose flavour profile is out of the ordinary, maybe even surprising, rather than aiming for familiar territory.