"What Do We Have in the Fridge?" Lamb Stew

INGREDIENTS (serves 6):

1 bottle He'brew Hop Manna Test Batch #4

1 1/2 lb lamb stew meat
1 large onion, halved and sliced
1 yellow pepper, cut into 2-inch strips
6 cloves garlic, sliced
1/8 tsp red pepper flake
dash mace
2 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp flour
1 bottle Sierra Nevada Bigfoot
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 cup water
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large turnip, peeled and chopped
3 tbsp sugar
salt and pepper to taste

2-3 large parsnips, peeled and chopped, hard core removed and added to stew with vegetables
3 tbsp butter
6 oz sour cream
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

LAMB STEW

1) Add a touch of oil in the bottom of a dutch oven; heat and add the lamb. Cook at medium high until browned on all sides.
2) Add garlic, half of the onion and a third of the yellow pepper. Sweat for 5 minutes.
3) Add tomato puree, spices, and flour. Cook 3 or 4 minutes until fragrant.
4) Pour in beer, crushed tomatoes, and water and bring to a boil; then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 2 hrs.
5) Stir in remaining onions and peppers, carrots, turnips and parsnip cores. Increase heat until it starts to boil, then reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 1 - 1.5 hrs more, until vegetables are tender.
6) Finish with the sugar, and salt and pepper to taste.

PARSNIP PUREE

1) Heat the butter in a skillet on medium high until it foams and starts to brown; add parsnips and a touch of salt.
2) Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for 20-30 minutes, or until parsnips are tender. Stir occasionally.
3) Blend parsnips and sour cream in a food processor until smooth.
4) Salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with fresh parsley.

Open He'brew Hop Manna. Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

He'brew Hop Manna Test Batch #4...tasty, tasty brew. It has a rich amber copper tone and good head (that's always fun to write, incidentally). On the nose, there is a lot more malt than you normally get from an American IPA. Has a little more of the bready fruitiness of a British IPA style. The taste follows from that exactly as expected--a medium carbonation, slightly sweet, with a late breaking grassy hop presence. They put 6 different hops in this beer, and to be honest, I'm not quite sure why. But overall a very pleasant beer, which went nicely with the richness and acidity of the lamb stew.

THE MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN:

Beer, meet Food.

Lyndsay, meet bright red Le Creuset dutch oven.

AW, YEAH.

During the cold, nipply months, one wants brazen casseroles and thick soups and hearty dishes with dripping meat chunks and cubes of roots tossed in with the tenderous fleshy sinews. (Yes, tenderous is a word. No, you can't tell me otherwise.) Never mind that NYC has been effing creepily warm this winter, I will not have my stew inclinations trod upon by temperate climes. So when Gabe scored me the incredibly natty crimson Le Crueset seen above on my stovetop, I did the Happy Happy Joy Joy dance and a couple of laps around the living room.

I wrote up a piece for Otto Penzler in his forthcoming IN PURSUIT OF SPENSER essay anthology (click here!) about Robert B. Parker's use of food and cooking in the series and mentioned my belief that there's something of a soul to certain kinds of cookware. Really old iron skillets, beautifully made knives, seasoned cutting boards...they matter when you're cooking. Making dishes with beautiful or historied tools means something, particularly when you're serving the concoction to loved ones.

So far, my Le Creuset is a baby. Only two months old, having gotten it for Christmas. But I want to make countless dishes in it, until the memory of many meals shared lives in its enamel. Thus far, it has performed admirably. There is something so bloody sexy about getting a brilliant brown sear on a chunk of meat, and for this reason I have been kissing my new dutch oven repeatedly and cuddling it in the wee hours. It needs to see decades of curries and chowders and tagines come and go.

Le Crueset dutch oven, we shall grow old together. While Gabe is gently caressing his Bob Kramer Henckel carbon steel chef's knife, I shall nuzzle your cool enamel surface, and be content.

Chicken Mulligatawny, Cauliflower with Fenugreek, and Scented Rice

All recipes in this posting are from the book Ajanta: Regional Feasts of India by Lachu Moorjani. His curries require an output for Indian spices to start with, but the dishes are authentic, amazing, and you will make a ton of them. We are even planning on dining at his restaurant when we visit the Bay Area.

The other picture is of our Nashville cousins. Aren't they genetically fortunate? Left to right, I present Shari, Bradley, Bailey and Madison. Shari was visiting us here in NYC for this Indian feast, so I thought it only right to introduce them formally.

INGREDIENTS:
Chicken Mulligatawney (slightly altered from book):
3 tbsp. oil
1 inch piece ginger, chopped
6 - 8 cloves garlic, chopped
3 dried red chili peppers, broken in pieces
3 onions, cut in quarters and thinly sliced
1 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
2 tsp. coriander powder
1 tsp. turmeric
2 tsp. poppy seeds
1 tsp. paprika
1/2 to 2 tsp. hot chili pepper powder
2 1/2 tsp. fennel powder
2 tsp. black peppercorns
1 1/2 tsp. cumin powder
1 1/2 tsp. salt
13.5 oz. can coconut milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup curry leaves
2 tbl. lime juice
1 tsp. Garam Masala

1) Heat the oil in a 6 to 8 quart saucepan. When hot, add ginger, garlic, and chili peppers. Fry for 10 to 15 seconds.
2) Add onions and saute over med-high heat, stirring every 2 to 3 minutes, until slightly brown, about 10 minutes.
3) Turn to high heat. When pan is hot, add chicken and stir until all the chicken pieces are nicely browned. Continue browning until most of the moisture has evaporated.
4) Add cubed potatoes and all the spices; cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Add coconut milk and water, bringing the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and add curry leaves, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the chicken is tender. Mix in lime juice and Garam Masala to finish.

Cauliflower with Fenugreek:
1/4 cup oil
6 to 8 cloves garlic, chopped
1 inch piece ginger, peeled and chopped
2 onions, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
2 tsp. cumin powder
2 tsp. hot chili pepper powder (substitute all or part w/ paprika to make the dish mild)
3 tsp. coriander powder
1 1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. dried fenugreek herb
2 potatoes, peeled and cubed into 1 inch pieces
1 1/2 lbs cauliflower, cut into florets
1 cup frozen peas
2 tbsp. lemon juice

1) Heat the oil in a 6 quart saucepan. When hot, add garlic and ginger. Fry for 10 to 15 seconds. Add onions and saute for 8 to 10 minutes over medium high heat, stirring occasionally.
2) Add chopped tomatoes. Stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add all the spices, salt and dried fenugreek. Stir and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
3) Add potatoes and cook partially covered for 7 to 8 minutes, stirring every 2 to 3 minutes. Add cauliflower and continue cooking, covered, over medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring every 3 to 4 minutes. If there is too much moisture, cook with lid removed. If there is too little moisture and the vegetables start to stick to the bottom of the pot, cover and reduce the heat. Continue to cook until the vegetables are tender, adding the peas for the last 4 minutes of cooking.
4) Add lemon juice.

Rice with cardamom and cinnamon:
1 cup basmati rice
1 1/2 cups water
1 tbsp. oil
1 tsp. cardamom seeds
1 stick of cinnamon

1) Heat oil in a pot until shimmering, then add cardamom seeds. Cook for 30 seconds. Add rice. Toast rice for 3 to 4 minutes, until aromatic and opaque.
2) Add cinnamon stick and water, bringing liquid to a boil.
3) Cover and reduce heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes covered, then fluff with a fork.
4) Open He'brew Lenny's RIPA.
5) Enjoy together.

THE BEER:
A spectacular rye-based double IPA, He'brew's Lenny's RIPA is brewed, to quote its makers, "with an obscene amount of malts and hops," and is "the straight dope for the growing minions of our nation's Radical Beer junkies." Sign us up! They're on to something. In addition to being brewed with Warrior, Cascade, Simcoe, Crystal, Chinook, Amarillo, and Centennial hops, it's later dry-hopped with Amarillo and Crystal. Thus you get great pine and citrus in the nose, followed by thick, malty sweetness for mouthfeel. This is beer that drinks like a meal--a rich, 10% alcohol treat with hints of pumpernickel, toffee, grapefruit and pepper. Indian food has big flavors, and this beer can go three rounds swinging.

THE ADVENTURE:
Shari-Lynn Sample and her fine upstanding young man Robb were visiting us the last time we made this dish! Just look at them. I stole their picture from Shari's myspace page. Aren't they cute? Isn't it kinda sick? Cousin Shari is one of our favorite houseguests, whenever she visits, because she's definitely pretty enough to take outside and show to your friends, and she can walk all day, and she's super fun and nice, and she's friends with Grendel Puss-Gato, and you never know when she'll fall asleep. It's like an endearing form of narcolepsy. Awesome. And this time she brought Robb, so that's a major bonus.

The Midnight Salad

INGREDIENTS:

1 large vine-ripe yellow tomato
6 fresh basil leaves
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. aged balsamic vinegar
cracked sea salt and pepper
-----------------------------------
22 oz. He'brew Jewbelation Eleven

1) Cut tomato into bite size pieces.
2) Chiffonade the basil.
3) Drizzle olive oil and Balsamic vinegar.
4) Add sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste.
5) Open He'brew Jewbelation Eleven.
6) Enjoy together.

THE BEER: First of all, it's from He'brew, which is made in Saratoga Springs, NY and is the ale/other category of the Shmaltz Brewing Company, whose lager beers fall under the Coney Island label. It's dark, velvet chocolate with a good dose of coffee, brown sugar, vaguely smoky, not too strong on the tobacco end, with hints of fruit (primarily prune) and just a tiny trace of tar. Very meaty, strong beer, which Gabe matched with an acidic, vinegar-lightened dish. Why? It tastes delicious. The darkness of the beer was offset by the strong light tones of the salad.

THE ADVENTURE: It can be a dicey proposition, one fraught with self-recrimination and heartache, to pick a tomato when There Be Bandits About. After all, they know you want the ripe tomato. The thieves long for the same heightened flavor. They will wait until the last moment possible, just before you pick it, and abscond with your tomato. They will not look back. Except to check for other near-ripe tomatoes. Oh, sure, you could pick an unripe tomato. You could also buy hydroponically-genetically-fundamentally-spiritually altered tomatoes from the great tomato beds of Mars, and eat them after they've gone through re-entry. But why do that? One's timing must be perfect to preempt these Lawless Community Gardeners.

THE RECIPE IS GOD-AWFUL SIMPLISTIC BUT DELICIOUS: Also, it was a literally post-midnight snack. One does what one can, after all. And the tomato was begging to be picked. If I'd been a Tomato Bandit, I'd have marked it days ago as "ripe" for the "plucking."

Our departed Belgian comrade in beer drinking (he didn't die--he has merely determined to live in Belgium) left us with some lovely Delirium Tremens glasses, from which the He'brew done got drunk from when it got drunk. Forgive us. We just watched Tropic Thunder.