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.

Trip To New York #2: Fantastic Food

We were able to keep our heads long enough to grab some photos of our meals, but most were so delicious that they were demolished before the camera came out.

A fantastic breakfast at Bread Alone in Rhinebeck, NY. From their menu: "Country Scramble Three eggs scrambled with baked ham, Old Chatham camembert, scallions, grilled tomatoes and organic French Sourdough toast."
and
"Huevos Benedicto: two poached eggs with saffron hollandaise and merguez sausage on a corn muffin, with plantain mash."
It's hard to overstate the deliciousness of the sweet corn muffin with the spicy merguez.

Massive chicken wings with blue cheese dressing, pulled pork, and a half-rack of ribs, all cooked to perfection and drenched in barbecue sauce at Max's Memphis BBQ just north of Rhinebeck, NY.

A New York Strip steak (but in New York they just call them Strips) grilled rare with sautéed spinach, and a plate of fresh gnocchi under arugula at the beautiful Park restaurant in New York City.

These meals were shared with family from far and wide, but the warmth of the company and the wonderful conversation is best left un-blogged, we think.

Dig-Dig #11: Oregon Camping

A fruitless search for hot springs around Union was frustrating, but Catherine Creek State Park had a cold river for a refreshing wash.

View Dig! Dig! August 2010 in a larger map


The town of Union has a singular collection of beautiful houses, and the Union Hotel looks like it would be worth a return visit.

Dinner was an excellent pile of large, soft steaks and a thick, spicy "DeerSlayer" Syrah from Idaho's Snake River Valley.

Thirty Days: Done!

Another Thirty Days Project, our sixth, ended on June 30th. To celebrate, Aya prepared a fantastic steak dinner for the co-founders of Thirty Days Project (us and Tim Gerwing). You can see the global collection of everyone's work at thirtydaysproject.com

Aya started us off with salmon cakes with a mustard, dill and lemon mayonnaise. We opened Tim's bottle of BC's See Ya Later Brut, which proved to be charmingly lemony and bright, if a bit rustic in texture. Quite refreshing and a perfect pairing for the salmon cakes.

Aya also made "shrimp toasts", which turned out to be chopped shrimp in an egg-white batter on thin slices of bread. These were then gently sunk, like the Titanic, into a deep pot of hot oil. The main difference between the shrimp toasts and the Titanic soon became evident as the toasts emerged sizzling from the oil, crispy and delicious, while the Titanic remained on the ocean floor, untasted, as it has for decades.

The fact that there are no photos of the shrimp toasts is a testament to how they were simultaneously all-consuming and all consumed.

Aya served whole-wheat spaghetti, with its wonderfully nutty flavour, as the first course. The cream sauce was loaded with blue cheese and walnuts. At this point we started on a bottle of Sandhill Small Lots Syrah (2003). Sandhill was Canadian Wine Awards' "Winery Of The Year" for 2009, and this 7 year-old Syrah from the Phantom Creek vineyard was a perfect example of why they deserve that award. All dark fruit, spice and smoke, the wine was deep, rich and an excellent match for the creamy, nutty blue cheese sauce.

Then it was steak time: soft, flavourful strip loins, seared with crispy stripes and red inside. Aya made a mushroom cream sauce and sautéed some vegetables. The wine opened up to deep, complex spiced-plum flavours and ended up with an almost cola-like finish. Just spectacular.

Dessert was a spiced angel-food cake with a hot toffee sauce, light and heavy together, each needing the other and both pairing beautifully with the Knob Creek bourbon we gently sipped.