by Trish
Bill Sysak from Stone Brewing Co., a phenomenal brewery from California, explains how you can cellar certain beers for several years like you would wine.
Read the entire article at The Kitchn.
by Trish
What does mining and food have to do with each other? Well, not a heck of a lot. Unless you’re a well-renowned Canadian chef donating your time to raise money to stop a huge mining project. Which is exactly what Foodstock is.
It all started with a proposal for a mega-quarry near Orangeville, Ontario to mine limestone. The quarry would be a pit-mine covering over 3 miles and dug to a depth of 200 ft, occupying what is currently prime Ontario farmland. Environmentalists are incensed over the project, citing concerns over the water requirements of the operation (which would reportedly be 600,000,000 liters per day), increased truck traffic, and long term rehabilitation to the land after the mine is empty.
There have been a number of protests againt the quarry, but the tastiest protest will surely be this Sunday’s Foodstock. The website gives the following promo:
“Join Chef Michael Stadtlander and 100 of the best chefs from across Canada for an outdoor, pay-what-you can, public food event in support of the movement to Stop The Mega Quarry”
The event will be held from 11am-5pm this Sunday, October 16th in Honeywood, ON. More information and registration can be found on the NoMegaQuarry website.
via The Toronto Star
by Trish
It must be a big week for booze, because here’s my second alcohol-related post this week!
The Province of Quebec announced earlier this week that the drinking age will be lowered from age 18 to 14 for general consumption and 12 if you are at home with your parents. This move is the first change in the drinking age in Quebec since 1972 when the drinking age was lowered from 20 to 18.
Quebec is the first province to lower the drinking age, with most other Canadian provinces setting the drinking age at 19.
On a CBC Radio interview Alain Rousseau from the Societe des Alcools du Quebec called cited Quebec’s similarity to European culture among the reasons for adopting the policy.
Update: I got fooled by a fake news show! Apparently not all the links on the CBC radio page link to proper news, this particular article is from their phony news show and poor me was gullible. And I just thought the French were trying to stir the pot!
by Trish
Visiting my family over the holiday weekend, my sister and I wandered down to a local bar after dinner for a drink. It’s a small town, and while this particular place is one of the cleanlier establishments, it has a very casual vibe with TVs showing college football, a popcorn machine, and some comfy leather chairs. I ordered a pint of beer and my sister a glass of red. But when the drinks arrived, the bartender told my sister that they were out of the wine she had ordered and gave her a glass of some other red wine, on the house. While it was a really nice gesture of the bartender, the good intentions were diminished after she tried the wine.
“It tastes funny.”
Sure enough, I had a sip and it smelled and tasted like vinegar. Who knows how long that opened bottled had floated around behind the bar before finding its way to her glass. However long it was, it was clearly way too long.
It’s not terribly uncommon to get bad wine by the glass, and it’s why I generally don’t order it. When you open a bottle of wine, the wine comes in contact with the air, causing it to oxidize. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, older wines do well with a bit of oxidation which is why people decant wine bottles about a half hour before serving them. However, after a couple of days you’ll begin to pick up a distinct vinegar flavor to your wine, and this means your wine has been opened too long. When ordering wine by the glass, you really have no idea when the bottle was opened, and while busy establishments usually have enough turn over to maintain fresh bottles, it’s really luck of the draw. But this could all change.
Winemakers and restaurant owners have been tentatively introducing wine on tap, served alongside beer through the keg system. Because wine from a keg doesn’t come in contact with the air as it’s served, it remains fresh for months. It also saves producers in bottling and shipping costs, without sacrificing flavor. (In fact, some experts argue that the flavor from kegs is actually better since the wine doesn’t undergo “bottle shock”.) And rather than keeping the red wine floating around on top of the bar with the sambuca, the temperature of the keg could be controlled so it could be served at a slightly cooler, proper temperature.
So far there there are only a handful of establishments offering wine on tap, mostly in New York City, Los Angeles, and one in British Columbia, but hopefully the trend will continue. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ceremony and circumstance that calls for opening a bottle of wine. But for the evenings where a bottle is just too much commitment, it would be nice to know you could have a lovely, fresh glass, drawn to order.
Via the Globe and Mail and NYMag.
by Trish
I’ve had more than one misadventure with garlic. Once, when chopping lots of garlic for a recipe I took of the end of my thumbnail with my super-sharp chef’s knife. Squeamish as I was from my close-call (thankfully it was just the nail), I was thoroughly annoyed at having to throw out all my hard work as I had no clue where said thumbnail ended up. On another occasion, when making a pasta dinner for my boyfriend, I must have brushed my hair out of my face after chopping lots of garlic. After dinner when we were cuddled up on the couch he remarked, “Your hair smells really garlicky.” Great - just what every girl wants to hear.
This video from Saveur piqued my interest, then, as it shows you how to deal with garlic en masse quickly and without having to get your fingers all through it. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those “Martin Yan bones a chicken in 20 seconds” type videos. No, if you have two bowls and a bit of pent-up aggression, you too can peel a whole head of garlic in mere seconds.
I might just be inspired to make some Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic this weekend.
Via lifehacker.
