Fish Pie

INGREDIENTS:

We cheated. We used a recipe, almost exactly. I am in love with Jamie Oliver's notions of cooking. This is not original, though we made alterations.

But god, look at it.

Jamie's glorious fish pie recipe is here.

We made a few changes, of course.

1) Add leeks with the onion and carrot. Please add leeks. A big one, or two little ones. They're fan-bloody-tastic.
2) You don't really need that much heavy cream. By all means, use it if you like. But you can also sub milk (I think all we had was milk), or just reduce the amount. Trust me, with the cheddar, it's already very rich and creamy.
3) We de-glazed the onion and carrot saute with 1/2 cup of white wine. It was DELICIOUS.
4) We threw in raw shrimp, cleaned, tails off, halved lengthwise, with the raw fish.
5) The eggs are probably stellar, but we skipped them.
6) Open a bottle of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale.
7) Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

Classic British brews are endlessly satisfying. They're balanced with the benefit of hundreds of years of expertise, and--while you can probably drink any beer with a fish pie--this one is a particularly nice choice. According to my eminently reliable sources (the generous strangers who have nothing better to do than to improve Wikipedia):

"The Old Brewery at Tadcaster was founded in 1758 and bears the name of famous local brewer Samuel Smith. It is both the oldest brewery in Yorkshire and the only surviving independent brewery in Tadcaster."

Try to think of a cooler name than Tadcaster. You'll find you can't.

Now, go get knocked up and name your infant child Tadcaster. Girl or boy, it won't matter. In either case, he or she will be welcomed as a liberator if not hailed as a god.

This beer tastes like drinking a pecan pie, in a good way. In a BEER way. It's so rich, so toasty, so malty, so balanced, so butterscotch and milk chocolate and almonds and dark fruit and warm earth, without ever being literally sweet, you want another one right away. Along with another scoop of fish pie.

THE SONG:

Gabe and I both remember snatches of this song from our childhood. I went ahead and looked it up for this post, and was shocked to discover that it was actually released the year I was born (1980, kiddos). I admit freely, very little time passed as we assembled this recipe when we were NOT singing this song by Barnes and Barnes (you'll notice that the chorus is repeated frequently--because we couldn't recall the real words, that's pretty much all we sang):

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

In the morning, laughing happy fish heads
In the evening, floating in the soup

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Ask a fish head anything you want to
They won't answer, they cant talk

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

I took a fish head out to see a movie,
Didn't have to pay to get it in

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

They can't play baseball, they don't wear sweaters
They're not good dancers, they don't play drums

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up
Yumm!

Eat your fish pie. The end.

White Chicken Chili

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 pound dry white cannellini or Great Northern beans, soaked 4-6 hours in unsalted water until plump
1 andouille sausage link, casing removed
2 chicken breasts
1 large white onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, minced
8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 jalepenos, minced
3 celery stalks, chopped
1 tbsp. chili powder
1 tbsp. cumin
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. dried oregano
dash of cayenne (optional)
1 4-oz can roasted Hatch chilis (mild or fiery)
1 7-oz. can salsa verde (we use Herdez)
3 pints chicken stock
1 small container plain yogurt
plenty of queso fresco, fresh chives, and chopped cilantro, to serve
1 bottle of Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock (to drink!)

1) In a big heavy-bottomed pot, cook the andouille sausage until it releases its fat and browns, about 5 minutes over medium-high heat. If there doesn't seem to be enough fat in the pan to saute the veg, add a little olive oil.
2) Add onion, bell pepper, garlic, jalapeno, and celery. Sweat for 5 minutes.
3) Add dry spices and dry herbs. Toast for 2 minutes.
4) Stir in Hatch chilis, salsa verde, chicken stock, and white beans. Cover and reduce to a simmer. Cook about 40 minutes, until beans begin to soften.
5) Place chicken breast in pot, submerged in broth. Cook through, about 20 minutes.
6) Remove chicken breasts from liquid with tongs and shred with a fork. Return meat to the pot. Test the beans; if still firm, cook a bit longer.
7) When beans are finished, stir in plain yogurt and season to taste. Garnish with chives, cilantro, and fresh white Mexican cheese.
8) Open Paulaner Salvator. Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

Let's chat about Germans for a second. Germans are awesome in several ways. First--and this is truly important to me--they are completely, utterly unafraid of moustaches. More on moustaches later. Believe me, we are going to cover the topic of moustaches. But the second thing Fritz and Hans are entirely unafraid of is beer, and drinking it out of glassware with the liquid scope of a horse trough.

The doppelbock style was invented by monks. That's because, back when water was filthy, the Church decided that the best way of purifying it was to make a kajillion different varieties of beer, thus proving that sometimes even something as questionable as all-powerful Catholicism can produce good in the world. Most doppelbocks are dark and fairly rich, with a nice creamy head to them. They are not hop-forward, in fact are often quite mild and sweet, preferring to explore varieties of toasted malt complexity.

Paulaner is a monk founded brewery itself, and has been actively brewing for the monks' consumption (and other lucky people's, of course) since 1634. It could be argued that they know what they're doing by now. Paulaner currently makes fifteen classic varieties of German beer (they also make a non-alcoholic bottle, but I refuse to label that as typically German in any way, shape, or form). Their doppelbock is beautifully dark and caramelized, with tons of toasted sugars and a lingering aftertaste of spicy prunes. Delicious, and great for rounding out a nice bowl of chili.

THE MOUSTACHE:

Gabe has a moustache.

(No. I'm not going to spell it the other way. Don't ask me to spell it like that. People in Williamsburg with pointy elf shoes and Louis Vuitton trucker hats have mustaches. Real men have moustaches.)

I'm emotionally attached to the moustache. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's an awesome moustache, and I really like awesome things better than I like lameass things. Or maybe it has something to do with Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone being awesome, or Dr. John H. Watson, M.D. being awesome. I have no idea, but moustaches rule.

People in the United States are rightfully wary of the Moustachioed Man. He has a certain panache in the literal "face" of adversity that other men find enviable and women (the women without moustaches, and even some of the women with moustaches) find epic. The thing is, the moustache can easily go too far, or not far enough, and a powerful moustache is all about balance. You don't want to end up doing what Michael Phelps has recently been accused of.

There are certain moustaches, you see, in the United States in particular, which convey the inevitable impression that you work in the pornography field. Now, this plays on the archetypal paradigm of the Mighty Moustache, no question, but do you really want schoolchildren to see evidence of your involvement in the sex industry on your face?

No.

And that is what Michael Phelps has done here. Granted, he is an Olympic Gold Medal-winning professional athlete. And not the sort who goes to cheap suburban hotels in LA with film crews to take off his trousers and lay pipe like a contractor. Or not from what I've read about him, at any rate. It's nowhere in his Wikipedia bio.

The problem is, you would never know it from this moustache. He's famous, so his profession is going to be clearer to everyone than the average Joe's. But moustaches speak, and Michael Phelps's moustache is saying, "I'm here to fix your cable. Can I take my shirt off?" Yes, Michael Phelps, you can take your shirt off, because your torso looks like the Google Earth terrain map of the Appalachian Trail. But expect bright lights and girls named Taffy to want to get involved.

The Germans, on the other hand, have taken moustachular expressionism to new heights.

Here we have an example of another way that a moustache can get out of balance. A moustache, I believe, is exactly like a man's car: if you see a man, and he's car-less--you know, walks, bikes, takes the subway--you're not ever going to judge his manliness on the basis of his vehicle, obviously. But if a man has a Fiat with the paint peeling off and a CARTER/MONDALE 1976 sticker on the back, you might form some thoughts. If, conversely, you see a guy driving a red 2010 Corvette with a bumpersticker that says MY OTHER CAR IS A JET on it, that guy is going to be conveying a different impression entirely. What I'm saying is, neither of these looks is going to get you laid by any of my friends. If faced with the choice, they'd take the guy with the Fiat in a heartbeat, of course, because that guy is compensating for nothing whatsoever, but it's not ideal.

So then there's this moustache.

It's technically, from what I know of moustache types, the Wingspan Facespanner. Is it awesome? Yes? Is it beautiful? Yes. But so are Corvettes, sort of.

Meanwhile, don't even try to tell me this guy isn't German. This guy MUST be German. There's just no other explanation for his total moustache abandon here. It's a bravery that borders on recklessness. Only the Germans can treat moustaches with such wanton inhibition. This guy's name is Wilhelm Sigisfried Poppycock Krapp VonSchittekatter.

Finally, we have an example of the sort of moustache you want from a fellow. (A fellow who, I must add, just bought a straight razor, and things called boar's bristles and hones and strops and I don't even know what.) This man will rub the hide of a boar over his face and then shave it with a deadly weapon from the 19th century. This moustache commands respect.

Baked Eggs in a Leek Nest with Sourdough

INGREDIENTS:
(Note: obviously, this recipe is open to endless variation. You could make the base of this dish out of hash browns instead of leeks, maybe baked tomatoes, why not shittakes?, throw some Parmesan or feta on top, whatever you like. Go crazy. Then bake the eggs 8-10 minutes in a 390 degree oven and serve with warm, fresh bread.)

1 massive or two smaller leeks, cleaned thoroughly, halved and then sliced thin (about 5 cups)
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
4 eggs
a big handful of fresh parsley and chives, chopped
2 oz. hard Italian-style dried sausage or salami (we used finocchio), minced fine
2 tbsp butter
salt and fresh black pepper
and to serve, sliced fresh sourdough (recipe link and tale follows)

1) Preheat your oven to 390 degrees.
2) Heat the butter in a cast-iron skillet until foamed subsides; brown it if you like. Mmm.
3) Add leeks. Season with salt and pepper and saute about 3 minutes.
4) When leeks have begun to soften, add minced or pressed garlic. Continue to saute, about 3 more minutes, until garlic is toasted and leeks are starting to brown and melt a bit further. Taste to adjust seasoning.
5) With a wooden spoon, make 4 little nests in your leeks. They should *not* expose the cast-iron pan beneath.
6) Add the eggs to your nests, like so. Crack sea salt and pepper over eggs. Add minced hard salami, sprinkling over pan.
7) Bake 8-10 minutes (10 for cooked very nearly through).
8) Dish up the eggs in the nests. Garnish with herbs. Best breakfast ever. Voila.
9) Get yourself a growler of Sixpoint Double Sweet Action from Whole Foods.
10) Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

Oh my lord.

So I joined Twitter about...oh, maybe six months back...because after all it's a free marketing tool and (more convincingly) my friend Leslie Klinger of Annotated Sherlock Holmes fame told me I was ridiculous not to be on a free social media site everyone follows and I should get with the program. (He is right in this evaluation, as he is right to laugh when I put ice in my Maker's.) I joined, and let me tell you, it is a challenge for me to come up with posts that DON'T have to do with food. (My handle is lyndsayfaye, if anyone cares.) My friend Melinda told me that she can't check my Twitter feed without getting hungry. I have reached, meanwhile, some stirring low points in 140-character statements of self. Examples:

...is going to cozy up for some niece and nephew time. I hope there are ninja turtles involved, of the teenage mutant variety.

...is uncannily skilled at forgetting to water Christmas trees. In my living room, in plain view. Thereby killing them.

...has decided that duck ragu=delicious thing to have in fridge. Can you put it in pasta? Check. Risotto? Check. Hash? Check. Soup? Check.

I'm really none too good at it. And I refuse to say things like "...is sitting on the couch watching The L-Word. Shane is hot." What was this section about? Beer, you say? Ah, yes. What does Twitter have to do with beer? Well, kids, I soon discovered after joining Twitter that apart from following interesting people, I can also follow WHOLE FOODS. This was a seminal moment. Because a few days ago, the lads from Sixpoint (best Brooklyn brewery ever) finished a concoction they're calling Double Sweet Action for their fifth anniversary. And with admirable haste, they dispatched it and themselves to the Bowery Whole Foods Beer Room and started passing it around. For free. Free Sixpoint Double Sweet Action. Where did I find this out?

Twitter. That's what a full circle looks like, ladies and gents. We grabbed our coats and flew down to Whole Foods with the swiftness of fleet pumas.

The regular Sixpoint Sweet Action is a supremely highly rated American Blonde Ale. We love it. And so when we asked the brewers what they'd done to make the Double Sweet Action and their answer was "Doubled the malts and doubled the hops," we were very pleased. It tastes more like an IPA than does the original, of course, but the honeyed overtones and the lush tangerine really even out the bitterness. Which makes it a perfect...brunch beer! And it's nine and a half percent alcohol! You'll be out of commission by two in the afternoon. You're welcome. Go get a growler.

THE BREAD:

Gabe made a sourdough starter. Actually, there are two of them, living in the fridge like brothers. I have named them Terwilliger and Newt. One is a wheat starter and the other is a white-flour starter. Now, I don't understand the first thing about baking (you follow rules??), but here's a good discussion of starters and sourdough recipes with pretty pretty pictures of sourdough toast. Gabe followed America's Test Kitchen's recipe here, but unfortunately you need a subscription to access it. The Test Kitchen is rock solid when it comes to baking things, however, and a subscription to their website is hugely worthwhile.

Like I said, I can't bake. Meanwhile, I got to eat it. It was soooo tasty. We had it with white bean chili, and with smoked mackerel, and with jam, and with butter and cracked sea salt, and with olive oil and balsamic. And we weren't sorry.

THE NEWS:

I have a short story in friends Jon Lellenberg's and Dan Stashower's Sherlock Holmes in America anthology called "The Case of Colonel Warburton's Madness." It was a hat trick to write it, because it's an "armchair" mystery: Holmes solves a case presented to him by Watson without ever so much as leaving his chair except to pour a couple glasses of wine for himself and the Doc (hey, it's me writing Holmes here, after all).

Well, the story was just selected for the Best American Mystery Stories 2010 anthology! Huzzah! I am so chuffed over that I can't tolerate myself. Thanks very much to Otto Penzler and Lee Child for picking it. I'm thrilled. And I will probably never manage to pull off writing an "armchair" mystery of any sort ever again.

New Year's Thai Crab Fried Rice

INGREDIENTS:

1 tbsp. water or fish stock
2 tsp. Thai red curry paste
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. fish sauce
1 tsp. honey or agave
about 2 cups cooked (1 cup uncooked, following package directions) of day-old brown rice
2 shallots, minced
6 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
1 inch of ginger, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots, minced fine
6 oz. green beans, chopped
8 oz. lump snow crab meat
2 eggs, seasoned and beaten
approx. 4 tbsp. oil (one with a high smoke point), divided
3 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

1 bottle Laurelwood Public House & Brewery's Free Range Red

(Note: if you have a wok, follow the traditional method. We don't, and our cast iron doesn't get hot enough, so we do this in batches instead, so as to get a better texture.)

1) Stir the first five ingredients into a smooth paste. Set aside.
2) In a heavy-bottomed cast iron skillet or equivalent, heat 1 tbsp oil until smoking. Add 1/2 the carrots, onion, and green beans and cook until blistered, about 2-3 minutes. Scrape into bowl.
2) Heat another tbsp. oil and fry the remaining carrot, onion, and green beans. Scrape into same bowl.
3) Add next tbsp of oil. Stir-fry the minced garlic, shallot, and ginger until fragrant and toasted, 1 minute. Add the red curry paste and liquid mixture and toast for 30 seconds.
4) Add rice. Incorporate into sauce (it should have dried up very quickly) and fry, about 3 minutes, with more oil if necessary.
5) Stir vegetables back in with rice, adding the lump crab meat. Move to one side of cast iron and add last tbsp. oil to empty side. Fry the beaten eggs. When cooked, mix all together.
6) Mix in fresh herbs. Season to taste with salt and black or white pepper.
7) Open bottle of Laurelwood's organic Free Range Red Ale.
8) Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

Have we talked about Laurelwood before? I have no idea. Anyway, Laurelwood is three brewpubs, a pizza pub, and an airport bar. Just our size of company. And style too--it's based out of Battle Ground, Washington, and their beers go down real, real easy. It's an open question whether we'd know as much about their beers if the aforementioned airport bar wasn't in the PDX terminal JetBlue usually flies into, which we see at least twice a year, but I'd like to think we still would have found them. And as it is, the meeting was rather magically predestined.

Free Range Red is an organic ale, and Laurelwood owner Mike DeKalb claims that they were the first brewery in Oregon to "brew beers that met the rigorous certified organic standards of Oregon Tilth." Well, I'm not going to lie and say I fact-checked this. What I did do was visit Wikipedia to find out what the hell Oregon Tilth is. Wikipedia claims that Oregon Tilth is a nonprofit membership organization that educates gardeners, farmers, legislators, and the public on how to make better sustainable growing choices and conserve natural resources. But I didn't fact-check the Wikipedia entry either. For all I know, Mike DeKalb is a handgun magnate with a dirty-coal plant he rigged out of harvested elephant ivory to power his breweries. I'm just saying. Not that he is. And for all I know, Oregon Tilth is a grunge rock band who want their name to evoke a combination of filth and the more generalized enigma of the capital letter "T." I mean, maybe the Wikipedia entry is right. But I didn't...never mind.

What I DO know is that the beer is delicious. The Free Range Red is one of their year-round offerings, and it's sort of cheap to pair it with this dish, because you could drink Free Range Red with anything. Any sort of flavorful comfort food would go well with this brew. It's a pretty coral-copper-beige pour with pinker tones in good lights, with a nice smooth head. The toffeeish malts you get in the background are offset and nicely complimented by grapefruit rind and a good, clean acidity. Hops are more prominent than they would be if brewed in any other state, and that's 100% fine by us. All around, a very drinkable beer that also has the advantage of being rigorously organic (unless it's actually produced using babies on treadmills--I didn't fact check, so who can say?).

THE END OF THE DECADE:

I kick myself that I haven't updated this blog for so long, but the end of this year came at me like a lead freight train. First, there was Christmas. Yes, Christmas is all rock and roll and the cappuccino's foam and the best of times, but it also meant rather extensive cooking. We changed our routine this year and lived to regret it--three ducks instead of one fat goose, and our cooking method was trusted (Cook's Illustrated) but sadly imperfect. Well, imperfect unless you enjoy duck jerky. And you know, some people do. But we made duck gravy and the sides were delicious and all was well. The salad was the winner of Christmas Night. I'll throw in this recipe as a bonus, even without a picture, because it was inspired.

a whole big bunch of wild arugula
plenty of chopped roasted chestnuts
a good amount of slivered fennel
minced fennel fronds
lots of broken-up frico wafers (frico is a melted Parmesan or Asiago crisp: recipe here)
more-or-less-Jamie-Oliver's "Mind-Blowing Sauce"

Sauce a la Jamie more-or-less: take six peeled cloves of garlic and 10 anchovy fillets and gently simmer in a pot with 2/3 cup of milk for ten minutes, until garlic is cooked. In a blender, mix these ingredients with about 1/2 cup good extra virgin olive oil (more for creamier dressing) and 2 or 3 tbsp. good white wine vinegar. Season/sweeten to taste and dress salad. Voila! Best. Salad. Ever.

And then Gabe turned 30. Oh, lordy. I wanted to outdo myself for that one, so my friend Heather and I hosted a shindig at a very cute downtown Italian wine bar the day before his birthday. That was epic--and then, then, we went to Babbo.

This is what Mario Batali calls "Guancia Ripiena" with Eggplant Caponata and Broccoli Rabe Pesto. It's basically house-made sausage wrapped in pork fat and roasted, then grilled. The food there was so good it hurts. When you take ravioli and stuff it with goose liver pate, and then dress it with balsamic and brown butter sauce, you have made a friend of Lyndsay Faye and company. Gabe had a great time too. But I still scored bites of everything. In the end we were taken out by Luis and Allison, and we're still on about how nice that was of them and how Mario Batali is a food rock god and how we love our friends.

Then there was New Year's Eve. I was not prepared. Then there was the trip to Washington. Also not ready. But then I got back and it was...

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES/BSI BIRTHDAY WEEKEND.

This is like my crack cocaine.

I ran around to nine (is it nine? I think it was nine...) separate Sherlockian events over the course of five days. The daring folk at the Baker Street Journal trusted me to report on the events, which was absurdly charitable, and so I'm in the midst of writing up a report now. But god damn, it was fun. There were all sorts of people there I never get to see and love chatting with, and we gadded about and toasted everything in sight and talked scholarly papers and ate the best crab cakes of all time (the Coffee House Club's) and I think I might finally be sober now, two days later.

I hosted two of the events, which was also a blast. In retrospect, they ought not to have come right after each other. But truly, it was far more hitchless than I had any right to expect.

This is a picture from the BSI Dinner itself, with Mr. Peter Blau. It would be tough to find a better human being outside of Doylean literature. Mike Whelan held the dinner at the Yale Club this year, and I think it was a great move from the Union League Club. Food was great, the event itself wonderful, and the waitstaff had as poor an opinion of an empty wine glass as anyone I've ever seen.

Anyway, I am back to work and keeping up with this blog and determined not to let my focus slip. But this was, just like last time, one of the major highlights of my year. And it ended with Robert Downey Jr. winning the Golden Globe. How bloody cool are we Sherlockians?

Ginger Pear Cranberry Sauce with Port

INGREDIENTS (creatively based on another recipe from Cooks Illustrated, November 1999):

3/4 cup water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. table salt
1 generous inch of grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp. orange zest
1 12 oz. bag of fresh cranberries, picked through
2 medium firm, ripe pears, peeled and then diced into 1/2 inch chunks
2 tbsp. good quality ruby port

1) Bring the first 6 ingredients to a boil over high heat in a nonreactive sauce pan, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
2) Combine cranberries and pears and return to boil.
3) Reduce heat to medium and simmer until it reaches the sauce consistency of your choosing (it will thicken more after it cools)--at minimum after about 2/3 of the berries have popped open, five minutes or longer.
4) Add port and cool at room temperature and serve, or stow it in the fridge for up to 7 days.

THE BEER:

We aren't drinking beer at the moment. Before you grow sad on our behalf, because you're doubtless a sympathetic soul, we ARE drinking a cocktail Gabe just made up out of the blue (recipe following). But we had beer earlier, at Amsterdam Ale House (where else?), and it was delicious. A Southern Tier Unearthly Imperial India Pale Ale. Let's talk more about that beer later, because I have no intention whatsoever of pairing it with cranberry sauce. We at Beer Meets Food just wanted to wish you a merry Thanksgiving.

THE COCKTAIL:

1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. pomegranate juice
2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. simple syrup
2 dashes orange bitters

1) Combine, with ice. If you don't like sweet cocktails, don't add quite as much simple syrup.
2) Mix. Shake.
3) Pour into cocktail glass.
4) Drink.
5) Start thinking about what you'll drink next.

THE MERRINESS:

Be merry! Be bright! We are thankful for a number of things, and I'll do a short list here:

1) We are thankful we can cook, so people actually come all the way to our house and merrify our Thanksgiving.
2) We are thankful for the means to cook it in the first place.
3) We are thankful that raw sewage is not at this very moment seeping through the ceiling of our bathroom. Long story. (As it was last Thanksgiving. Long story. Not a short story. But as the Beatles said, It's Getting Better All the Time.)

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Roasted Tomato Shrimp Sauce

INGREDIENTS:

(for the beer)

1 12 oz. bottle (or more!) Dogfish Head Punkin' Ale

(for the gnocchi: will make about 6 servings)

3 medium sweet potatoes, roasted (you can microwave them or boil them if you really prefer, but we found the dry cooking method made for less moisture to deal with--and you can be roasting the sauce elements at the same time)
1 1/2 cups white flour (approx.)
1 fresh egg
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

1) Peel your sweet potatoes and either shave them into a fine pulp with a knife or send them through a potato ricer. Don't overwork.
2) Pile the flesh in the middle of a big well-floured cutting board with the beaten egg, maple, and all dry spices in the center.
3) Sprinkle the pulp with flour, slowly incorporating the dry ingredients into the wet ones with a fork. Add only as much flour as needed--the dough should be sticky, nearly too sticky to handle although still workable.
4) Divide your dough into 4 ropes on a dry, well-floured surface, each about 1/2 inch thick. Cut the ropes into 1-inch segments with a floured knife.
5) Leave as much gnocchi as you want to cook immediately on your work surface. Transfer the rest to a nonstick baking sheet and place in the freezer (you'll have lots). When the individual dumplings are frozen enough not to be sticky, you can put them in a freezer bag and have gnocchi for later.
6) Boil a large pot of salted water while you make the sauce. Drop all the reserved gnocchi into the water when it reaches a rolling boil, and watch it carefully. When all of it floats, it's finished. Transfer with a slotted spoon directly into the sauce.

(for the sauce: serves 2)

(just oil the to-be-roasted ingredients lightly and cook them in the oven on a tin-foiled baking sheet for about 50 minutes at 400 degrees along with your sweet potatoes)
2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 roasted onion, chopped
2 cloves roasted garlic, minced
2 roasted tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp. tomato paste
1 or 2 scotch bonnet peppers, minced (go easy, these are very hot)
1/2 pound of shrimp, peeled, de-veined, tails removed
1 cup shrimp or fish or vegetable stock
1 tbsp. agave or sugar
salt and fresh pepper to taste
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley

1) Heat the oil in a large skillet. When shimmering, add minced scotch bonnet. Saute 1 minute.
2) Add the roasted onion, roasted garlic, tomato paste, sugar, and roasted tomatoes along with the stock. (I always have shrimp stock on hand with shrimp dishes because I make it by boiling the shrimp tails and legs with a little bay leaf and black peppercorn and clove.) Allow to simmer until the tomato has melted into the oil and stock and the sauce has thickened, about 8 minutes.
3) Stir in the raw shrimp. Saute in the sauce until just pink and cooked through.
4) Add parsley. Drain the gnocchi and add directly to the sauce.
5) Sip Punkin' Ale. Enjoy together.

THE BEER:

Dogfish Head folks are crazy in a really good way. They are so passionate about brewing that they are very comfortable going to extremes and pushing boundaries, but we thought their classic pumpkin seasonal ale would be a great pairing with sweet potato gnocchi in an extra-spicy sauce.

This is a brown ale style brewed with pumpkin meat, brown sugar, and pumpkin pie spices. Although a very fun seasonal autumn brew, pumpkin beers often meet with one of two problems: either they don't taste much like pumpkin, or they taste shriekingly of pumpkin. Neither is delicious, although I'd prefer the latter over the former just to say I tasted the pumpkin at all. The nicest thing about Dogfish Head Punkin' Ale is that it both tastes of actual pumpkin and is also quite balanced. The cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and malty pie-crusty flavors all blend together delightfully, but you don't feel as if you're drinking carbonated pumpkin pie in any way. This is still beer, baby.

THE AILMENT:

A word of caution when dealing with scotch bonnets. You know scotch bonnet peppers, yes? The ones pictured up top with Gabe holding them? Well, that's the color and the sole quantity in which my downstairs C-Town grocery store sells them. This is because, as I have deduced by now, my C-Town is making attempts on my life.

You can't buy one scotch bonnet, you see. Or even several. You have to buy oodles. And then there they are, all multicolored and beautiful and smelling of sweet grass when sweet grass tastes a bit like lava, and my natural reaction to their loveliness is to cook them. So about two years ago, when I was determined to eat Thai-style ground pork with green beans, I minced four of them up and dropped them into shimmering oil.

Here's where I slipped up.

I had my face over the pot.

Now, I know that life is a fragile and tangential continuum, multifaceted and painted in as many opinions and beliefs as there are shades of grey, but nevertheless breathing the air above newly simmering scotch bonnets is NEVER A GOOD IDEA.

Why, you might ask? I have a two-word answer to that question:

CHILI LUNG.

How does one cure Chili Lung, the reader desires to know? How do I know if I have Chili Lung? Is it hilarious? The answer to the third question: no. Well, a little. I'm going to answer the second question next: you know you have Chili Lung when you sound as if you have walking pneumonia for literally a THREE MONTH PERIOD OF TIME. Another good sign is when your cat (pictured, a very reasonable and non-reactionary feline) screams like the vacuum cleaner just came to life and flees the kitchen in a blur of panicked mammal the instant the peppers hit the pot. See, it turns out by pure linguistic coincidence that the active ingredient in pepper spray is...well, you're an intelligent reader, so I leave you to determine whether or not you have Chili Lung.

As to the first question, what should you do about it once you have given yourself (or, if we're blaming the nefarious source, C-Town has given you) Chili Lung? I have, by rigorous process of elimination, cataloged several remedies that do not work in the smallest degree:

1) Taking steam baths. Nope. Weak.
2) Covering your head with a towel and inhaling a steamed pot of eucalyptus. No. Sets you coughing again.
3) Sucking cough lozenges. Negligible effect.
4) Standing outside C-Town swearing like a theatre techie. This feels excellent, but the symptoms inevitably return. A temporary cure, though a pleasure.
5) Stealing your Dad's asthma inhaler. Promising, but you don't have asthma--so it just gives you a really weird, distant high before you start coughing again.

Solution: outfox C-Town. Do not get Chili Lung in the first place.

Which leads me to ask: who in their right mind buys this quantity of scotch bonnets at a go? And don't say "Dominicans," because I thought of that already, but my neighbors are bon vivants, not suicidal lunatics. I am left with my original conclusion. C-Town has designs on my life.

Garlic Scape Pizza

INGREDIENTS:

(for the dough; adapted from recipe first printed in Bon Appetit, August 1998)

3/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon honey
1 envelope dry yeast
2 cups wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt

1) Place 3/4 cup warm water and honey in processor. Sprinkle yeast over; let stand until mixture is foamy, about 5 minutes.
2) Add flour, oil and salt. Process until dough forms.
3) Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth, about 5 minutes.
4) Transfer dough to large oiled bowl; turn to coat. Cover with plastic wrap, then kitchen towel. Let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 1 1/2 hours.
5) Punch down dough. Divide into 2 equal balls.

WARNING: VERY FREE-FORM INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW (APOLOGIES)

Now it gets creative.

Obviously this is garlic scape pizza, so here's what we did with the scapes themselves: chop scapes on the bias into 2-inch lengths. Heat olive oil in a wide skillet until shimmering. Add scapes, with salt and pepper to taste, and saute over med-high heat until the skins are slightly browned and the scapes are cooked through. (When they're done, they are going to resemble the consistency of sauteed green beans or asparagus--5-7 minutes should be enough, depending on thickness.)

What do they taste like? When they're raw, they taste like garlic. When cooked, they're very sweet, like a caramelized sweet shallot.

Delicious. They taste delicious.

When you're ready to roll out your pizza dough, you're going to want to put a pizza stone in the oven (very important--maybe if you didn't have one, you could stick a gigantic cast iron skillet or some really heavy quarry tiles in there?) and preheat it to 500 degrees (if 550 is your highest setting, go for broke). Rolling out the dough is good fun, and you're going to want to do it on a breadboard scattered with a good amount of semolina flour or cornmeal.

It's all about the toppings with pizza, obviously. The first dough ball we used got covered with:

drizzled extra virgin olive oil
1 cup grated manchego
6 thinly sliced garden baby Roma tomatoes
sprinkled parmesan
sauteed scapes
salt and pepper
(finished with chiffonade of fresh basil)

Second dough ball:

drizzled extra virgin olive oil
big dollops of Boursin garlic and herb cheese
sauteed scapes
dried thyme
red pepper flake
sprinkled parmesan
(finished with chiffonade of fresh basil)

Further instructions (throughout the course of these steps, you should be drinking beer):

1) When the first pizza is dressed, carefully scoot the dough onto a semolina-lined rimless nonstick cookie sheet or pizza peel (if you have one).
2) Line up the far edge of your peel or baking sheet with the far edge of your stone or tiles or maybe a huge cast iron pan if you're very adventurous, and tilt peel or baking sheet, jerking it gently to start pizza moving. Once edge of pizza touches stone or tiles, carefully pull back peel or baking sheet, completely transferring pizza to stone or tiles or your crazy-big cast iron (do not move pizza).
3) Bake pizza 6 to 7 minutes, or until dough is crisp and browned, and transfer with a metal spatula to a cutting board.
4) Immediately move your second pizza onto your semolina-sprinkled "device," slide it into the oven onto your other "contraption," and close oven door.
5) Turn around.
6) You should find your first pizza in front of you, sitting on a cutting board near your beer. Sprinkle with fresh basil. During the next 6 to 7 minutes, eat it up.
7) Get your second pizza out of the oven and place onto the now-cleared cutting board.
8) Find your beer. Turn off the oven (it's very hot). Sprinkle fresh basil over your second pizza. Eat it up.

THE BEER:

Let's talk about Sixpoint Craft Ales for a second. Why? Because they're awesome. And local. (For us.)

When Gabe and I first moved to NYC, we were already rabidly slavering beer nerdlings who had tried so many obscure brews that we were ecstatic to sample local East Coast fare. Unfortunately, some of it tasted less like microbrew and more like malts filtered through a fermented fireman's sock with hops maybe waved around in the air nearby it as it conditioned (you know who you are). Then we started chatting it up with other lunatic beer dorks, as beer dorks are wont to do, and discovered that apart from the nationally known Brooklyn Brewing Company, there was another "Brooklyn" brewing company: Sixpoint Craft Ales.

Already, we liked the name more. Excellent. Off to a good start.

But it only gets better. Sixpoint refers to its Brooklynite craftsmen in its website as a part of a larger "community of artists" unable to "resist the magnetic pull of [Brooklyn's] natural and urban beauty" who "take what we know, what we like, and what we aspire to be, and create our own style."

EPIC.

You are unlikely to be sipping a Sixpoint just now, unless you are the sort of person who possesses an NYC MTA card instead of a car. They don't distribute in bottles, and they don't send their drafts far afield. But hereabouts we can get growlers of the stuff at Whole Foods, which is a lovely ornament to life, liberty, and the pursuit of quality brew.

Specifically, drink the Brownstone with a slice of pizza in your hand when you get a chance. Make a point of doing so. Sixpoint Brownstone is an American Brown Ale style, 5.7 ABV, with a sweet, rich, cocoa-caramel nose and a brilliant dark mahogany color. The ample piney hops are so perfectly integrated with the roasted-pecan tones and the faintly molasses-tinged malt sweetness that you will do a merry beer jig and demand another glass. Great carbonation for a brown, too, and it tastes so much like home-baked bread that you really don't NEED the slice of pizza in your other hand...but have it anyway. Live large.

THE SCAPES:

I recently learned off the Google on the interweb that scapes and roses are friends. Isn't that odd? Apparently they're "companion" plants, which means they grow better when planted in close proximity and are allowed to hold hands and have tea parties and watch the Colin Firth miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice with martinis at their...elbows. Anyway, I'm going to pretend that this post is remotely seasonal by saying that if you want to grow garlic scapes in your garden...THE TIME IS NOW! Hooray for autumn, and the ideal time to plant your wee little garlic bulbs.

Here's how to do it, in a nice, detailed report from Boundary Garlic Farm.

Reasons to plant your own garlic:

1) You get to eat garlic scapes, the tender fronds of the garlic plant. This is reason enough. Stop reading and go plant garlic.
2) Most of the garlic eaten in the Unites States comes from China. That's ridiculous. Seriously, how much fossil fuel is that using? Foolish. Grow your own.
3) The plant looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. People will talk about it--and you, by proxy, as an intriguing and dangerous individual.
4) The garlic scape will give your roses backrubs and talk about their sex lives over macchiatos and invite them over for holidays.
5) I'm doing it! I'm doing it! Peer pressure! I might even buy them roses.
6) It's very difficult, in some parts of the country, to find garlic scapes at the grocery store. PROBLEM SOLVED.