Oh right, like your kitchen never looks like a crime scene?

There is probably some reference that I could make to C.S.I. here, but unfortunately I don't watch it, so you'll have to make up your own inside joke. Let me just assure you that after the steady influx of beets from my friend Robert's farm lately, many, MANY batches of borscht have been made and shared with friends around town in recent weeks. Frankly I'm surprised this was the only casualty. (Those beet stains are serious. I think my kitchen sponge will be permanently easter egg colored.)

Since things have slowed down a bit teaching and lesson-planning-wise during these out-of-school summer months, there has been a lot more work with gardens and farmers markets, and thus a noticeable uptick in the sheer volume of produce finding its way into my kitchen. Hiding indoors during the most intense hours of midday heat, I've found myself doing a fair bit of culinary experimentation, including my first foray into making shrubs (the drinks, not the plants), but I'll get to writing about that after the fermented fruit concoctions have bubbled a few more days and I can get a second opinion on whether they are, in fact, drinkable. (Not bad so far. Certainly nothing a little champagne couldn't fix if things get a little... iffy.)

Some fermentation experiments have gone better than others. For instance, the kombucha: not my finest work. In fact, I think I had to make myself a cocktail afterwards to get rid of that taste. But I'm up for trying again if someone out there can offer advice on how to have it not taste like a scotch drinker sucked on a piece of charcoal and then burped in my mouth....

Sorry, was that too graphic?

Speaking of (hopefully less ill-fated) fermentation, the homebrewing supplies I ordered should be showing up any day now! (Dad, aren't you glad you stored those 5-gallon glass carboys under the porch for me for all those years?) I'm ready to make some roasted pumpkin ale for real:

A pumpkin summer ale? Is that even legal? "But it was August, Your Honor. How could I possibly have committed cucurbicide to make that? Everyone knows pumpkins aren't ready for harvest til autumn!" (I'd better make sure the DCPD doesn't follow my blog....)

Spent

I have a new favorite ingredient: spent grain.

You know, the stuff left over after making beer? Yep, that's the stuff.

I'd first heard of using spent grain for cooking about 3 weeks ago when I was helping my buddy Bobby start a 5-gallon batch of whiskey porter at his apartment. While the wort simmered, we did a little looking around online and I discovered my new favorite webpage: The Mash: Spent Grain Recipes from the Brooklyn Brew Shop. We made some pseudo granola (a dense, energy-laden snack that I enjoyed but would not feed to others), a stack of veggie burgers (which I only tried a bite of as I was on my way to dinner), and dough for 2 loaves of bread (the loaf I baked the next morning was delicious, kind of like a dense, almost earthy pumpernickel). Recycling brewing grains into tasty and unusual dishes? I'm so there.

This past Saturday night, Ryan and I made our way up to Silver Spring to help my pal Joey make a little beer. I'd never made a 1-gallon batch before, and to be honest I wasn't all that involved in the brewing process this time around -- I will admit that I spent most of the time sipping wine and nibbling on appetizers and chatting with Joey's wife Katie while the menfolk sterilized equipment and set timers and took temperatures -- but I was right there waiting when the spent grains had cooled enough to be tossed into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and then into my purse. Katie also handed me the beer-simmered pecans we'd used for our gallon of pecan nut brown ale. "Oh, goody," I cackled to myself as Joey gave us a ride home, "A whole big bag of goodies to continue experimenting with...."

Sure enough, date night rolled around last night and since I was in charge of dinner I started pulling together ingredients for spent grain veggie burgers, version 2. Only I realized that I didn't have all of the ingredients for the burgers. I was not about to tramp back out into the pouring rain to go to the store to buy barbecue sauce, which appeared to be the only missing ingredient. So I made my own (and, objectively speaking, it's damn good). Well, so now I had all of the required ingredients to start making burgers. Then I started thinking that the burgers needed a little more protein. So I cooked up some french lentils to mix in. And I had some flax seed in the fridge that I thought might add some vitamins, so I pulsed up a couple of spoonfuls in my coffee grinder. A couple of pastured eggs, some panko breadcrumbs.... Ryan showed up just in time to form the mix into little mini patties, so as he took over burger patrol I checked on the sweet potato fries and whipped up a few dipping sauces. (After my first trip to the stellar Good Stuff Eatery downtown a couple of weeks ago, I've decided that fries need at least 3 dipping sauces for any meal: in this case barbecue sauce, a creamy lemon and edamame concoction, and a greek yoghurt and habanero sauce. Don't give me that look. I didn't have any mayonnaise around, either, but I wasn't about to make a batch of that, too. Besides, by this point I'd gotten distracted making oatmeal cookie batter using some applesauce and coconut flakes and some of the beer-infused pecans....)

As we devoured our mini grain burgers on little slabs of sourdough I'd made a few days earlier and sipped on our beers, I couldn't help but smile. Wooh, what a night of cooking (and eating)! I think that I, like my grains, am spent. Time to catch up on a little more sleep tonight.

Fermentation without Representation

Something about Thanksgiving always makes me think of good beer. Most likely it's the memory of the roasted pumpkin ale that Nick and I made at my cousin Caroline's place in the Poconos back in 2003, and which we drank like water it was so smooth, sharing it with our collective families during that Thanksgiving dinner. (Well, really it was Nick's masterful brewing, but I like to think I played a decent Igor role in the affair. "Bring me the hops!" "Yesss, massster....") Dad and I still reminisce about that pumpkin ale every now and then, usually around this time of year.

I may not make beer myself (yet), but I know a thing or two about it. I believe my appreciation of beer began a few years after my AmeriCorps days of drinking $2 pints of Bud Light, when I was living and teaching in Brooklyn and dating the aforementioned wonderful young gentleman who had gotten his hands on his first used homebrew kit. Those were good nights and weekends of us concocting blackberry wheat ales and caramel fig porters and scottish red ales. Mmmm. I've been angling for exceptional beer (and an exceptional partner) ever since. And, oh, that pumpkin ale. With a few empty carboys lazing around under the back deck behind my apartment and a Rogue Nation homebrewer's card in my wallet, I'm thinking it's high time I got cracking on recreating that delicious brew. But first: research.

Small-scale craft beer brewing has really taken off recently in these United States. While there's quite a tradition of homebrewing and microbrewpubs in parts of the Pacific Northwest especially, it's only more recently that folks around DC have had access to anything approaching "local" beer. (My backup since college has been Pottsville, PA's own Yuengling lager, though Flying Dog and a few Baltimore-based breweries have sprung up over the past handful of years.) Ah, but earlier today I joined my newlywed friends Meredyth and Greg for a tour of DC Brau -- the answer to the thirst for what D.C. has not had in over 60 years: a brewery whose product is available in local stores and on tap outside of its site of production. Here's a snapshot of Mere and Greg at the end of our tour -- don't they look happy to have a local source for good beer?



The tour itself was pretty interesting once we got past the rather nondescript, giant metal tanks and into the area with cask-aging ales and the secluded sour beer fermentation room (where rare, wild yeasted brews do their thing for a couple of years before being imbibed). The canning machinery was also pretty fun to learn about, though it wasn't running when we walked past while sipping on samples from the 4 varieties on tap and admiring the cool sculptures and murals scattered about the space. I especially liked the Belgian-style Citizen tripel and the (also Belgian-style) Penn Quarter porter. Looks like I'll have to make my way over to Meridian Pint for a taste of the Fermentation Without Representation, DC Brau's seasonal pumpkin porter, as there was none to be found on site at the brewery for us to fill up Greg's growlers.... Maybe I can pick up some free empty 750ml bottles while I'm there, instead of drinking endless 4-packs of Grolsch like Nick and I used to do to build up our supply of resealable bottles. I do love all things pumpkin, after all (and have a hard time looking at a bottle of Grolsch after that first summer of being a homebrewer's assistant.)

Speaking of local breweries springing up, I also just a couple of weeks ago tried out a few of the inaugural offerings of Cerveza Nacional and Cornerstone Copper Ale from Chocolate City Beer. It was part of the background research I was doing on local entrepreneurs for the next issue of Bittersweet Zine. No, really. I haven't yet toured their brew space, nor that of the soon-to-open Three Stars Brewing Company, but I aim to get myself to both in coming months. So much beer to try, so little time. Oh, wait, no, that's not quite right. I am a food educator, after all, and high-quality, locally-made beer must somehow fall under my purview. It's for the good of the food community, I assure you, as few things complement a good, locally-sourced meal like a good, locally-sourced drink.