You're Fired!

I've fired my cats. It was harder on me than it was on them. They not only don't seem to mind, they seem to be totally oblivious to the fact.

Three cats; all useless. These cats owe me dammit! I saved their sorry furry butts from fates unknown! All three are rescues via my vet.

India and Jubilee are sisters, an American Longhair and an American Shorthair respectively. They were a few days old when their mother was run over. The vet's staff bottle fed them and I got them at age 6 weeks. India looked like Don King with hair going in all directions and always meowing about something. Jubilee was smaller and quieter and by all appearances butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Their lack of proper feline parenting was apparent from the beginning. No fear of dogs. In fact when other dogs come to visit they will often intimidate them by following them around the house and yard. Max, a co-worker's black lab got so frustrated he sat in a corner of the back yard and barked and howled until I rescued him from the annoying pests.


India fancies herself as the mightiest hunter of all time. Her prey consists of leaves and small sticks. Never the shy one, she announces each successful capture with much caterwauling and proudly brings each trophy into the kitchen for me to admire.

Jubilee is an avid snake hunter. In the summer she stakes out the various snake lairs in the yard and when she successfully captures one of the resident garter snakes she brings it into the house and releases it. Catch and release at it's finest.

Gigi or Ginger, she ignores either name, is a Tortoiseshell. She was brought to the vet as a kitten to be euthanized after her back was broken when she got slammed in a door. The vet managed to nurse her back to health and she shows no outward physical signs of the trauma. She is however totally skittish and paranoid and flies through the house at the slightest noise.

Ginger hunts monkeys or to be more specific "the monkey". The monkey is a small stuffed monkey that she adopted at the vets. Her daily task as she sees it, is to seek out the monkey and kick the monkey's butt (I'm pretty sure the monkey likes it). She hurls it around, pounces on it and finally grabs it in her front paws and kicks it ferociously with her rear paws. Mission Accomplished, she then settles in for a bath and a long nap.

I don't ask much from these cats for providing them with food, a clean litter box and the occassional ration of catnip. While hunting leaves, sticks, snakes and monkeys is all well and good and are even admirable talents when done well it's not enough. Really, would it be too much to expect for them to catch a damn mouse?

Friday evening while cooking dinner I saw a mouse skitter out from under some shelves across the floor and under the refrigerator. Smooth move and I thought it was pretty brave considering the fact he did it in front of two of the cats. They couldn't be bothered to respond though. Apparently a mouse is under their radar.

I turned off the stove and put things away for later. I headed up to the hardware store and grabbed a six pack of sticky traps for mice. I set three up in the kitchen and three in the basement. First thing Saturday morning I checked the traps and the one in the kitchen by the refrigerator had a mouse in it.

The cats were not impressed. They showed no remorse that I had to catch the mouse myself. I was angry and I told them so. Then I fired them. I told them each individually, explaining that they were not meeting my expectations and that I was going to have to let them go. Good thing I've had management training.

So far the their firing hasn't affected them much. I thought they might decide to seek a home where they would be appreciated for their meager skills, but for the time being they show no signs of going anywhere.

The aborted Friday night dinner was Braised Chicken Thighs with Lemon and Olives. I finally made the recipe on Saturday and it was just OK. It called for fresh lemons and I think it would have been better with preserved lemons. Since I'd bought an abundance of lemons I decided to preserve my own for the next try.

Housemade Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Scrub a half a dozen lemons - I used the common Eureka Lemon, but it's okay to use Meyer Lemons if you've got them.

Cut the tips off of either end

Slice the lemons from one end lengthwise almost to the other. Give it a quarter turn and repeat. You'll want about 3/4 of an inch at the bottom to hold the 4 quarters together.

Use a tablespoon of sea or kosher salt per lemon. Pour it over the open part of the lemon and then stick the lemon in a clean quart canning jar. Repeat, jamming the lemons in to the jar as tightly as you can.

Jam the lemons down everyday. They'll get softer. Rotate the jar and turn it over to keep the salt and juice distributed. At the end of a week cover the lemons with extra juice if needed.

Put them into the fridge for a month and then they'll be ready to use.

You can spice them up if you like. I've seen bay leaves, corriander seed, dried red peppers and cinnamon recommended. It might be fun to try a sprig of rosemary.

I used a bay leaf, a couple of pinches of red pepper flakes and a teaspoon of corriander seed in mine.

One Man's Trash

Clear Creek Distillery, one of the original of micro-distilleries in the United States, is located here in Portland Oregon. Steve McCarthy, the owner, is a genuinely nice guy and a man with vision. Of course it's taken 25 years for most of the world to appreciate his vision of eau de vie and other products made from locally grown fruit.

I first met Steve in about 1990 when I was making wine commercially in a rented garage in Newburg Oregon. Steve was making grappa from muscat and gewurtztraminer pomace left over from local wine production. Those of us that were willing to set aside the pomace from our production would receive a few rationed bottles of grappa from his minuscule annual production.

For those unfamiliar with the production of wine or it's terminology; pomace is what's left after you squeeze all of the juice out of the grapes. Having someone haul it away for me was a bonus. It meant I didn't have to hall it away and dispose of it or worse yet pay someone to haul it away. Getting some grappa or another one of Steve's brandies for my trash was a screaming deal in my book.

Over the years Steve added to his repertoire of eau de vies and brandies. While his pear brandy is a pure expression of the fruit from his family orchard and a wonderful product, it was never my favorite. I tended to like the aged apple brandy or the fragrant grappas made from muscat and gewurtzraminer. Occasionally when I'd stop by the distillery for a bottle I'd get to sample some of the other products he was working on like a peaty whiskey or a green hued eau de vie made from grape brandy and the tips of the new spring growth on Coastal Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii).

The first time I tried the evergreen scented brandy he pulled from a barrel, it was to say the least, off putting. It had an evergreen aroma, but it more closely resembled Pinesol than something I'd want sit and sip. A few years later after much experimentation he finally had a product that he was comfortable releasing for sale. The evergreen scented brandy he finally released had been tempered with a bit of pear brandy and the fruit complimented and rounded out the evergreen aromas. We sampled it and I found intriguing enough to get a bottle to take home.

Later, at home, I opened the bottle and found it to be a bit much by itself and set the bottle aside to contemplate later. Later didn't come for several years. I hadn't thought much about that bottle in a long time; it was out of sight and out of mind.

On Friday, Steve had his second Proof Blog entry published in the NY Times. One of the products he highlighted was the Douglas Fir infused spirit. I thought perhaps it was time to revisit that long forgotten bottle. I went looking for it and finally discovered it in the back of a file cabinet in my basement office.

I pulled the cork and took a sniff - it wasn't as powerful in the nose as I remembered. I don't know if it had mellowed as it sat in the file cabinet or if my tastes had changed. This stuff was really interesting. There were hints of the evergreen and pear and even more. It's herbal complexity reminded me a bit of Absinthe but with a bit of mint and citrus instead of anise.

I had one of those "Ahah" moments and decided to make a Sazerac with Douglas Fir spirit substituted for the Absinthe. The Douglas Fir isn't as potent as Absinthe and it takes a bit more of it to make the cocktail reflect the character of the spirit. Several years after the fact I was finally able to appreciate Steve's vision for this bottle.

Pseudotsugarac

2 oz Rye
2 barspoons of Douglas Fir Spirit
1/2 teaspoon agave syrup or 1 sugar cube
2 generous dashes of Peychaud Bitters.

Stir all of the ingredients together in a Boston Shaker without the ice. When the agave is dissolved in the rest of the ingredients add ice and stir until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass.

I didn't garnish this with the lemon twist called for in a traditional Sazerac. The Douglas Fir Spirit has a slight citrus quality. I suppose I should have gone out in the yard and picked a sprig off the fir tree for a garnish.

Life is just a Bowl of Cherries

In hindsight I probably should have called this Blog "House of Rye" or the "Manhattan Project" because I drink much more rye than bourbon these days and most of that rye is consumed in the form of Manhattans.

One of my earlier posts, Garnish with a Cherry, dealt with recipes for Manhattans. Since a Manhattan consists of only four ingredients, whiskey, vermouth, bitters and a cherry or two, it shouldn't be that hard to reach nirvana.

Whiskey in the form of Rye is my preferred poison in a Manhattan. Some folks use Bourbon in a Manhattan, but I find they make the cocktail too sweet. I most often choose Wild Turkey 101. It has a nice spicy rye bite and the high proof gives it some kick. It's a bargain to boot at $22 for a 750ml bottle. I usually have a few other bottles of Rye in the house as well. Currently I've got Jim Beam, Rittenhouse, Russell's Reserve and the ubiquitous WT 101 ryes on hand. There are other high end ryes out there that I cast a covetous eye on when I hit the local liquor shop, but basically I'm a cheap bastard and unwilling to pay price they command. With liquor as with many other things in life, a doubling of price doesn't extend in to a doubling of enjoyment or quality. That being said I'd gladly accept a gift or donation of a bottle of Black Maple Hill for the purposes of research.

Sweet Vermouth is the second component in a Manhattan. There are a couple of vermouths that are widely available in Oregon; Noily Prat and Martini & Rossi. Of the two I prefer Martini and Rossi. It's a bit fruitier and complex in my opinion and better compliments the rye. For folks with a fatter purse there are some additional choices to consider including Carpano Antica, Punt e Mas or the domestically produced Vya.

The third ingredient in a Manhattan is bitters. A couple of dashes of bitters changes the whole complexion of cocktail. For years the only bitter's choices available were Angostura and Peychaud. Angostura are the bitters of choice for an everyday Manhattan. Angostura now has an orange bitter available too and it make an interesting variation with it's strong orange aromas. Bitter's: both homemade and commercial are becoming much more widely available and are worth of posts of there own.

Last and certainly not least is the cherry. Many people are put off by dayglo maraschino cherries. One can hardly blame them. The maraschino on the grocery store shelf is a shadow of the original liquor soaked wild maraska cherries that were the original Maraschino Cherry. Maraschino. Luxardo, an Italian Liquor producer makes a high quality candied cherry that is pretty good, but it wasn't what I was looking for in the ultimate cherry for a Manhattan. While it's much better than the dayglo variety, it didn't quite cut it.

What's a guy to do? Life wasn't a bowl of cherries. I needed the perfect cherry to reach my Manhattan Nirvana.

Time to search the internet, because you can find anything on the internet can't you? Most of the recipes I found called for putting cherries in a jar, adding sugar and covering them with brandy. This produces brandied cherries; tasty, but not a Maraschino Cherry. After searching further and not finding anything that really looked like it would make me happy, I decided it was time to experiment.

Call it beginner's luck, karma, kismet or whatever, the first batch of cherries I made were spectacular. Now known by the few who have had the privilege of tasting them as "The Chcrries". The Cherries were everything I wanted. They are tasty, not too sweet, have complex flavors. They are the treat at the bottom of the glass. Indulge, use two! A half gallon of them, I'm rich! Those things will last me a year for sure. Share the wealth and give a few away, because there's a half gallon of them, I'll never run out.

Okay, I ran out. What's a guy to do? I thought why not try infusing some frozen or canned cherries. So I got a pound of frozen cherries at Trader Joe's and made the following recipe.

Housemade Maraschino Cherries - Using Frozen Cherries

The advantage of this recipe is that it can be made year round. The frozen cherries seem to absorb the alcohol and sugar much more quickly than the fresh cherries and the process only takes a week.

• 1lb of Frozen Sweet Cherries
• 2/3 C evaporated cane sugar
• 1/2 C Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
• 1/2 C Clear Creek Kirschwasser

1. Put the cherries in an empty one quart canning jar with all of the rest of the ingredients.
2. Give the jar an occasional gentle shake.
3. When the sugar is dissolved put the cherries in the refrigerator and let them age a week before using.

This makes just under a quart of damn good cherries, not "The Cherries", but damn good. These are not inexpensive to make, but they'll last a long time, not as long as you think, but a long time.

A special shout out to Cat for kicking me in the ass and getting me to write a post.

Thanks Cat!

Wasting Away in NE Portland

For the last year or two I've had a fascination with cocktails. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them before that, it's just that I never thought much about them. The place that raised my awareness was the now closed Taqueria Nueve and their assortment of margaritas. They had a half a dozen or so margarita choices and a couple of other house cocktails that were well worth trying (and I did).

With the internet it's pretty easy to find an overwhelming amount of information and opinion on whatever topic you happen to be interested in at the moment. A Google Search for "Margarita Recipe" returns 221,000 results in 0.18 seconds. This includes sites devoted to margaritas, recipes for margarita cheese cake, margaritas made with beer and of course Slurpees..er frozen margaritas.

Taqueria Neuve House Margarita Clone
2 oz Blanco Tequila
1/2 oz Triple Sec
1 oz lime juice
1/8 orange
1 sugar cube

Muddle orange and sugar together
add ice and the rest of the ingredients
Shake and strain into a highball glass, filled with ice and with a salted rim

My Dinner with Mr. Sulu

I was teaching a two day class in Everett Washington earlier this week. The first night we had a wonderful dinner at Ivar's Restaurant in Mulkiteo. A couple of bottles of Chateau St. Michelle Eroica Riesling on the 50% off All Washington wines on Monday Night Special to wash down an appetizer of red curry mussels and an entrée of Alaskan Razor Clams. Good food, new and old friends and conversation.

Tuesday night we went out to dinner at Bobby's Hawaiian Style Restaurant (It was featured on Diners, Drive-In's and Dives) . I was seated next to one of the guys in the class and I kept thinking this guy's voice sounds so familiar. Kevin is a Japanese American and he grew up in Hawaii. He was explaining all the dishes to us before we ordered. I've never been to Hawaii, but I've found some types of Hawaiian cooking to be appealing; who doesn't like pit cooked pig (kalua pork) or raw ahi tuna marinated in soy sauce and other flavorful things (poke)?

Anyway, it dawned on me....this guy sounds just like Mr. Sulu. Okay, so I didn't really have dinner with Mr. Sulu. I just had dinner with a guy that sounded just like Mr. Sulu. Still, it was fun eating a table full of food with narration by Mr. Sulu.

Most of the folks were ordering beer, but since the restaurant was full of faux palm trees and other Pacific Island type decor I thought it might be possible to get an authentic Tiki Drink. I wandered over to the bar and asked the woman tending bar if she made Mai Tai's from a mix or from scratch. She assured me that she made them from scratch and with a very authentic recipe. I ordered one. Alright, I should have asked what was in the "Authentic Recipe". The drink was most notable for it's plentiful rum, so it wasn't all bad. It also included passion fruit nectar and grenadine and while it wasn't a Mai Tai, it was drinkable and after all when you're eating dinner with Mr. Sulu, life is pretty good.

Here's a recipe for an "Authentic Mai Tai" and an appetizer to serve it with at your next Luau

Beach Bum Berry's $100 Mai Tai

1 oz of Saint James 15-year Hors D'Age Rum
1 oz of Appleton Estate Extra rum
1 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz of Curacao
1/4 oz orgeat
1/4 oz Rock Candy Syrup

To make one $100 Mai Tai, crush enough ice to fill a double old-fashioned glass, and put the crushed ice in your cocktail shaker. Next, pour in one ounce of Saint james, one ounce of Appleton, 1/2 ounce of Curacao, and one-fourth of an ounce each of orgeat and rock candy syrup. Then, pour in one ounce of fresh-squeezed lime juice. Shake it up an serve in a hollowed out pineapple, your favorite Tiki Mug or a highball glass.

Lomi Lomi Salmon

Recipe courtesy Bobby Nakihei at Bobby's Hawaiian Style Restaurant, Everett WA from Diners, Drive-In's and Dives on the Food Network

Prep Time: 15 min

Inactive Prep Time:12 hr 0 min

Cook Time:0 min

Level:Easy

Serves: 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 cup diced salted salmon
• 5 medium tomatoes, diced
• 1 medium round onion, diced
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
• Sea salt
• 1 cup crushed ice

Directions

In a large bowl, cover the salted salmon with water and soak overnight. Drain and rinse the salmon.

In a large bowl add the diced salmon, tomatoes, onion, and green onion, and mix well. Add sea salt, to taste. Chill and just before serving add the crushed ice.

Chef's Note: if unsalted salmon is used, rub the salmon with sea salt or rock salt and let stand overnight, then use in the recipe.

One is the Loneliest Number

Recently I've received some invitations to be a Facebook Friend. Frankly I was a bit uneasy about being asked. I'm not really sure why I was uneasy other than ignorance of what Facebook is or can be at its best. It seems like there are a lot of stupid people out there doing stupid things and in a final stupid act; posting narrations and pictures of the afore mentioned stupid acts on the Online Social Network of their choice - Not something that really made me want to run out and join, I mean I've done my share of stupid things...will I now feel compelled to post about them?

So today I received a third invitation to become a facebook friend. This time there was an explanation of the request that actually made sense and was even a bit intriguing. So I signed up and accepted the friend invitation. Checking back to my Facebook page I see that I now have "1 Friend". Fifty-Four years old and I have "1 Friend". This isn't making me feel all warm and fuzzy, but at least I still have my dogs and cats.

I've contacted the other two folks that asked me be friends and the wife of my first friend has befriended me so I don't feel quite so bad. Definitely not one of the popular kids on campus, but I never was and I can live with that.

Okay, so now I've got four friends and I realize that I don't qualify for the latest Burger King Promotion; Whopper Sacrifice. Defriend ten Facebook Friends and get a free Whopper. I don't think I'd qualify for a free Whopper by going into negative six friends territory and what am I supposed to say? "Hey Chumps" you just asked me to be your friend and I'm throwing you over for a crappy fast food burger" - I've just added you to the other 112,030 people scorned for a free burger coupon!

To add insult to injury, my first Facebook Friend is the person that introduced me to the pleasures of Happy Hour Hamburgers at Clyde Common! Sacrificing a friend like that.....well it just doesn't pencil out.

So thanks Rod for inviting me to be your friend and thanks too to Mike, Robert and Pam. I don't feel quite so lonely now.?

So, Hey Rod, just when are we going back to Clyde Common? I'm curious to see how well they make a Sazerac.

Sazerac for One - Inspired by Chuck Taggart

In your cocktail mixer:

• Mix 1 teaspoon of sugar with 1 teaspoon of water or use a teaspoon of simple syrup
• Add 4 dashes of Peychaud Bitter and 1 dash of Angostura Bitters
• Add a bunch of ice and two oz of Rye - Sazerac Rye if you've got it, but Wild Turkey works just fine
• Stir for thirty seconds

Rub the rim of a chilled cocktail glass with a strip of lemon peel
Add a 1/2 teaspoon of Absinthe into the glass and coat the inside of the glass with it
Strain the cocktail into the glass.
Heretic that I am, I throw the lemon peel into the glass because I really like the aroma

Absinthe is expensive but well worth the price in this cocktail. I bought a miniature for $7.00 and it's made a bunch of cocktails so far and will make many more.

Garnish With A Cherry

A few years ago I picked up a copy of "Villas at Table" at Multnomah County Library's used bookstore; Title Wave Used Bookstore. The book is a collection of Mr. Villas' essays on food and drink.

Most of the essays are entertaining and educational and frankly forgettable. They're articles about restaurants, visits to France, wines of some obscure region or a recipe for Glockenspiels with Horseradish Sauce. You know the type. The article that keeps you interested while you're waiting to be called at the doctor's office. The story you can put down 95% of the way through and not care if you finish it or not. I like books like this, they're kind of like Reader's Digest, good to have when you need a quick read at bedtime or while you're taking care of business.

This book would probably have been donated back to the library system for them to sell again if an unpublished essay called "A Few Choice Words About the Manhattan" hadn't grabbed my attention. The essay outlines Mr. Villas's introduction, at age twelve, to the Manhattan by his father. It continues on with his pursuit of Manhattans in Manhattan prior to the current cocktail renaissance (the book was published in 1988 and doesn't say when the essay was written). One of his biggest obstacles was that during the time period the essay was written many establishments had eschewed the glowing red maraschino cherry in favor of a lemon or orange twist. Mr. Villas took to carrying his own bottle of the bright red gems in order to satisfy his habit.

Villas the Elder's Manhattan
2.5 oz Blended American Whiskey (I'm guessing I used Elijah Craig 12 y.o. Bourbon)
1 oz of Martini & Rossi Sweet Vermouth
"less than a dash" Angostura Bitters
and a maraschino cherry
Served strained into a 4 oz stemmed cocktail glass

Inspired by fervor of Mr. Villas, I bought a bottle each of marachino cherries, Angostura Bitters and Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth. I don't know what bourbon was in the house when I made that first Manhattan, but I was hooked. Many bottles of bourbon, vermouth and cherries have passed through the doors of my house since I read this article.

James Villas's Perfect Bourbon Manhattan (In his words: "and by "Perfect" I'm by no means referring to the abomination by that name that includes a shot of dry vermouth")
2.5 oz Bonded Whiskey (Bottled in Bond Bourbon is 100 proof)
1.5 oz Cinzano Sweet Vermouth
"a quick dash" Angostura Bitters
A Big Fat maraschino cherry
Served strained into a chilled 6 oz stemmed cocktail glass

Something about the Big Fat Maraschino Cherry has never sat quite right with me. According to the article the Manhattan was invented around 1890 by Supreme Court Judge Charles Henry Truax when he was president of New York's Manhattan Club. The Maraschino as we know it today was invented by an Oregon State University professor named Ernest H. Wiegand. The original Maraschino cherries were made by soaking small sour wild black Maraska cherries, from what is now Croatia, in Maraschino Liqueur. These original cherries were a luxury item and getting one as a garnish was a real treat. I'll deal with my pursuit of the ideal cocktail cherry in a future installment.

Mr. Villas was kind enough to include Judge Truax's recipe for Manhattans in the book. It includes more sweet vermouth than what is common in most of today's recipes. A lot of the older cocktails include a higher proportion of sweet modifiers and I suppose that was a reflection of the tastes of the day.

Judge Truax's Original 1890 Manhattan Club Cocktail
2 oz Rye (or bourbon)
1 oz Sweet Italian Vermouth
A dash of Angostura Bitters
Garnish with a stemmed Maraschino Cherry

One of the really good things about the essay was the fact that there were multiple recipes, using different ratios of whiskey to vermouth, different whiskeys and vermouths. Obviously this is a cocktail that can be customized and tweaked to suit your preferences. This is the kind of research I can get behind.

After making my original Manhattans with a variety of bourbons I noticed that the original recipe called for rye. Hmmm....rye? I headed off to Rose City Liquor and was gratified to see that rye was readily affordable and came in a handy multiple choice selection. The rye I came home with that day, Wild Turkey Rye 101, has pretty much become my house pour for Manhattans ever since.

The Manhattan I'm Drinking Now
2.5 oz Wild Turkey Rye 101
1.0 oz Noilly Prat Sweet Vermouth
2 big dashes of Angostura Bitters
1 housemade cherry

For further reading on Manhattans see This Article by Gary Regan