Food Lab: Dumplings

Lordy, y'all, we did a Food Lab this past weekend (more on that later), and it alerted me to the fact that we did a Food Lab back in March that I never documented.

Oops.

It's been a busy spring.

Anywho, for my birthday back in March, we did Food Lab: Dumplings (gyoza style only - no shumai). 

This has been on Chef Spouse's wishlist for a while. One, he loves dumplings. Two, it can be good garde manger, since fillings can really be whatever your lil ole heart desires. Three, they seem like a good option for parties. Four, you can make them in batches, freeze them, and then have them ready to serve in minutes because they can go straight from the freezer to the pot. 

So, dumplings.

It's now been several months, so do I remember most of what we learned? 

Nope.

Here's what I do remember:

Most filling recipes call for cabbage. You may be thinking: "What is cabbage actually bringing to the party? It's not terribly flavorful on its own. Hell, I don't even like cabbage. I'll skip it." Do not skip it. The cabbage acts as your binder for all the other ingredients, like breadcrumbs in a crab cake (or meatballs).

Yep, we used all that cabbage

You need way less filling than you think, both in your individual dumplings and overall. We overdid, as usual, with four separate full batches of filling (pork, shrimp, veg, and pork+shrimp). This resulted in a grim assembly line of "Good God, how much more filling is there?" and cramped fingers. Make less. No, less than that. No, still less.

Use wonton wrappers, preferably the circular ones. Many websites will tell you you can use square wrappers, too. They are lying. Square wrappers are BS. So is making your own. Chef Spouse has subsequently tried making the dough from scratch, and he's an ace dough maker (makes fresh pasta of all types all the time), and he can confirm: just buy the wonton wrappers. Less fuss and better results.

2 packets = good

2 packets = straight-up evil

See those janky dumplings on the left?

Square wrappers

Just say no

I could not master the cute little ruffled folds, even with eleventy-billion dumplings to practice on. Chef Spouse and The Executive Committee did great, though. So I stuck to plain half rounds, which are not as pretty but taste the same. 

See my boring half-round dumplings v

the cute ruffled dumplings

(But they were all tasty)

Since then, we've all had bags of individually frozen dumplings residing in the freezer (and you do have to be careful to fully freeze them individually or you end up with a Giant Squished-Together Multi-Dumpling Blob and then no one is happy), which have been excellent for a quick snack or first course.

Yummy dumplings, fresh from the freezer, 

ready in minutes

And yes, you could just buy bags of frozen dumplings from your favorite grocer, but that would be un-Food-Lab-ish of you, now, wouldn't it?

Food Lab: Ceviche

Long-time readers may recall that this marks the SECOND appearance of ceviche in Food Lab. They may ALSO recall that last time, we went a little nuts on raw proteins and ended up mostly focused on beef, venison, and tuna tartare, with the ceviche preparations getting short shrift.

So this time, we decided to make them the star of the show.

Chef Spouse and I stopped by District Fishwife to procure sushi-grade sable, sea bass, and kanpachi (aka amberjack). 

Meanwhile, the Executive Committee researched various preparations, and landed on three options:

Traditional (lime, red onion, cilantro)

"Don" ceviche (leche de tigre, red onion, cilantro, sweet potato)

Ota Ikha (Tongan - lime, cucumber, tomato, scallions, bell pepper, chiles, cilantro, coconut milk)

Mad Kitchen Scientist had also salted some salmon overnight for lomi salmon, a Hawaiian preparation that uses tomatoes, sweet or Vidalia onion, and lime. 

There are several variables here: type of fish, type of preparation, and length of curing / cooking. We managed to lab the first two, but did not really lab the third (although, to be honest, Kenji had pretty much already done the heavy lifting there - tl;dr? 5-30 minutes, with 15 being his sweet spot). 

On the type of fish front, the clear winner was the kanpachi, followed by the sea bass, with the sable a distant third.

On the preparation front?

Leche de tigre, no contest. Even our super-tasters preferred this somewhat spicy version to the other two (and yes, you really do need to get amarillo chile paste to make it work - there is no acceptable substitute; fortunately, it's fairly easy to find online or at a well-stocked Asian or Latino market). 

The thing that struck me the most about the other preparations was that they seemed one-dimensional. And looking back to our previous Lab, I think I know why. One, we added a lot more "stuff" for flavoring: jalapeños, garlic, avocado, olive oil. Two, we used more than one type of curing liquid: grapefruit, orange, lemon, and pineapple all played a role. We were going with a very purist approach in this attempt, so it's understandable. But I think the next time we make this, we'll throw in more extras and taste the curing liquid for balance before our fish goes for its brief swim. 

To drink?

Pisco sours, followed by mezcal margaritas.

So what happened with the lomi salmon? 

It accompanied us and a pitcher of REAL hurricanes (no alcoholic red Kool-Aid here, only Goslings Black Seal rum, 100% passionfruit puree, lemon, and demerara syrup) to Wolf Trap that evening, along with Mad Kitchen Scientist's delicious coconut cream sticky rice for dessert. Why that? Because we showed up with a pile of ripe champagne mangoes, and MKS has a well-stocked pantry ;)

Quoting Mad Kitchen Scientist:

The coconut cream sticky rice follows “Thai Food” cookbook by David Thompson. Cooking sticky rice in the InstaPot follows Amy & Jacky (pressurecookrecipes.com).

364 g sticky rice
1 1/4 c water
1 400ml can of coconut cream
400ml table sugar

(optional) 2 egg yolks (because they were generated in the course of making pisco sours)

Soak rice 45 min in warm water

Meanwhile, heat the coconut cream, table sugar, and egg yolks until yolks are cooked through to create a runny custard.

Then steam the rice in the “pot in a pot” style: water directly in the InstaPot, with a rack in the bottom, then the rice in a bowl set on the rack inside the InstaPot.

Cook at high pressure for 12 min, then let pressure release naturally.

Combine hot rice with custard and eat pretty much at any temperature. It has tasted good at each tasting, with the texture trending toward thick congee.

One more key note: MKS's niece, who lost her job in the recent DOGEing of all our useful and good federal government functions and is moving to Boston as a result, was able to join us for one last FL before she departs, so we realized we needed to name her before she goes. So aloha to the Health & Savory Inspector. 

Food Lab: Throwback

Or, as Mad Kitchen Scientist termed it: Food Lab - Squashgiving! 

"Why 'throwback'?" you might ask. 

"Wasn't your very first lab about eggs?" 

(yes) 

"What does that have to do with squash?"

Not a damn thing. 

BUT! 

The *idea* for Food Lab came to Chef Spouse while he was working on cream of tomato soup.

Inspired by the season, we decided to take on winter squash soup, in part because all of us have found ourselves defaulting to curry spicing, which, while delicious, is also limited.

So Chef Spouse cleaned our favorite purveyor at the farmers' market out of butternut (most flesh bang for your squash buck) and we were off! 

We started with the same base for all:

Mirepoix (2 parts onion, 1 part celery, 1 part carrots, garlic)

2 parts Chef Spouse's homemade chicken stock

1 part peeled, cubed, and roasted butternut squash 

Salt & pepper 

Once done simmering, all were pressed through a chinois before moving to the all-important seasoning step, giving us four soup bases of just over one quart each.

Option 1: Spicy

2 Tbsp arborio rice
1 tsp harissa (plus more to garnish for those who wish)

Option 2: US Southwest 

Poblano (roasted) 4-5 little ones
1/2 tsp chipotle powder
1 tsp cumin
Sour cream & pepitas to garnish

Option 3: East Asian

1/2 c coconut milk
Ginger coins
4 kaffir lime leaves
1/2 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp red miso

Option 4: Pumpkin spice

1/2 c heavy cream
1 clove
1 star anise
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Juice of 1 orange
Diced apple to garnish

They came out thusly

clockwise from top

East Asian - Spicy - US SW - Pumpkin spice

Now, I have never been a fan of sweet takes on squash soup, nor am I a PSL fan, so I was shocked to discover that my favorite take on the soups was in fact pumpkin (really, baking) spice, particularly with the addition of the crisp diced apple. It was delicious.

The US Southwest was my second favorite, and the thing that most surprised us all there was that the roasted poblanos REALLY thickened it up - you may not be able to tell from the photos, but it was the thickest soup, even without any type of cream added. 

The East Asian was lovely, but needed more umami and/or acid. I still have my leftover portion, and I plan to add fish sauce when I reheat it for lunch this weekend.

The spicy harrisa was a bit of a fail. We had the idea of adding the rice for body, but the problem was we didn't pre-cook it in any way, leaving the grains a little too al dente. In retrospect, we should've toasted then ground the rice, then added it to the soup base. 

For dessert? The Executive Committee had recently picked up New Native American Cuisine: Five-Star Recipes From The Chefs Of Arizona's Kai Restaurant, which included a recipe for butternut squash creme brûlée, which seemed like the obvious choice.

Mad Kitchen Scientist decided to gild the lily, 

so to speak, 

by torching some maple sugar on top

Now, we are talking an "n" of 1 here, but this is not a cookbook for inexperienced cooks, as the recipe instructions were lacking. In short, if you don't already know the technique to make creme brûlée, you will not be able to figure it out from these instructions. The flavors were excellent, but the squash base probably would've benefited from being passed through a chinois or tamis - it was a little grainy. 

Chef Spouse also proposed trying techniques to roast winter squash to the point of crispness rather than softness. We all thought that would be a fail, seeing as squash contains so much water, and we were right (honestly not sure what he was thinking there). And we experimented with trying to make spaghetti squash palatable, and, sadly, confirming all my previous experience with spaghetti squash, that was also a fail. It's just so freakin' bland. Spaghetti squash? Just say "nah," no matter how much pesto and parm you have on hand.

Food Lab: Chocolate Redux

Precisely two years ago, your intrepid Food Labbers bit off more than we could chew and attempted to make chocolate from beans at the same time as testing the differences between Dutch process and natural cocoa powder, methods of melting chocolate, tempering chocolate, and fixing seized chocolate.

We did not get to all of that.

But we all still had raw and roasted cacao beans, so we decided to make another run at bean to bar, still inspired by what Chef Spouse and I had seen in Cozumel in the winter of 2022.

In theory, the process is simple:

Roast beans

Hull beans

Grind beans

Combine with sugar (and, potentially, some combination of honey, vanilla, allspice, cinnamon, and/or achiote) 

Sounds easy, right?

Challenge one, which we'd discovered two years ago: hulling the beans takes some serious time.

No problem! Chef Spouse roasted and hulled in advance!

Challenge two: grinding the beans finely enough to be palatable.

When we watched the demo in Cozumel, the guy making the chocolate used a large rectangular molcajete, with a grinder that was more rolling pin than pestle, and it came out great.

We have a mortar and pestle style molcajete, plus a blender, a food processor, and an electric coffee grinder that's reserved for spices. So grinding the beans should be no problem, right?

Wrong.

The taste? Well, it was great - we were adding all those optional flavors to taste, so: YUM. But no matter what we tried - and the electric coffee grinder can easily take coffee beans to an espresso grind - we could not get the grind fine enough for the finished product to be anything other than unpleasantly grainy. 

We even tried heating some of the ground beans with a little cream - on the left up there - and all that happened was the fat separated.

BOO!

Turns out, if you REALLY want to make bean to bar chocolate, you need a melanger, a device that's designed to run for 24-48 hours STRAIGHT without burning out the motor, to get the grind fine enough.

Well, damn.

What to do with all those roasted and ground cacao beans? 

Chef Spouse observed: They look kinda like coffee. What if we treated them as such?

All by themselves, the brew is too thin. But, as we've discovered in the mornings since, adding 1-2 TBSP to your usual coffee beans makes for a DELICIOUS morning cuppa.

Fortunately, we'd planned a meal of tacos al pastor, frijoles negros, and corn and black bean salad in advance, because the bean to bar experiment was a FIAL.

Mad Kitchen Scientist also brought the ingredients to make homemade Irish cream, and here's where we landed there:

1 tsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp espresso powder

1/2 c heavy cream 

14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 c Irish whiskey (he chose Jameson)

Blend all & refrigerate 

For dessert? Chocolate flan, natch.

Food Lab: Velouté

We're back!

Your intrepid Food Labbers have still been cooking, of course, both together and individually - gotta eat! - we just haven't been doing much labbing lately.

We have, however, been planning our three-years-delayed (Thanks a lot, coronavirus!) Ten (now 13) Years of Food Lab trip to....France! No, we're not there yet, but we're headed there this fall. It will be a third return for Chef Spouse and me, but Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee have never been, so we're looking forward to sharing some of our favorite sights in Paris with them and then heading to a lovely villa in Provence for a week of farmers markets, bakeries, vineyards, cooking, eating, and drinking together with some additional friends. 

Our pending trip to France and Chef Spouse's shiny new account with ProFish (acquired in support of the Summer of Poke, which is a story for another time) did inspire our most recent Lab though: velouté.

Velouté, for those who don't know, is one of Escoffier's "mother" sauces and is a simple combination of a blond roux and a light stock, generally chicken or fish, that is then served over poached chicken or fish (or as a base for a sauce for veg or pasta).

The ratio we were using was 1 Tbsp each flour and butter to 1 cup of stock, finish with salt and WHITE pepper to taste (no black pepper spots in your pristine velouté, s'il vous plaît!)

We set our plan over oysters and bubbly: 

Test one would be: Should you start with fish stock or with water, wine and aromatics?

Test two would be: If you wish to enhance your velouté, should you use cream or an egg yolk?

Chef Spouse had procured snapper for the poaching that would give us the stock in the first place and branzino filets for the actual poached fish over which to serve the finished sauce. We also had some adorable little cabbages from our CSA that we poached and then seared on the Green Egg (which was at the ready because Mad Kitchen Scientist was also smoking some salmon, aka "Bacon of the Sea") because we figured, correctly, that we were going to have more velouté as a result of our tests than needed to sauce branzino filets for four. (That Bacon of the Sea got turned into snackies for hungry cooks spread on individual endive leaves with cream cheese enhanced with The Executive Committee's fresh-snipped chives.)

That is some good-looking fish.

Seriously, that is some GOOD-LOOKING fish.

Fortunately, Mad Kitchen Scientist had fish stock already waiting, so we pulled together a pot with water, white wine, fennel, carrot, celery, green onion, and thyme, cut the snapper in two, and poached.

The water/wine/aromatics combo was the CLEAR winner, both as a base for the sauce and as a cooking liquid for the snapper. Starting with a fish stock and then adding MORE fish, even as mild a fish as snapper, was...too fishy. (Although we did eat ALL the snapper regardless.) 

So that was easy, and we had our sauce for our poached branzino at the ready.

But what about an enhancement? To cut to the chase: Save the cream for something else, use an egg yolk, and, per Food Lab tradition, make cocktails (or something else) with the white. Even after reducing the sauce, the cream still left it thin and didn't add much by way of richness or mouthfeel. The egg yolk, on the other hand, turned what is a mildly flavored sauce into something with the richness to stand up to our wee cabbages. 

Did you notice I said "cocktails or something else" with the egg white? Turns out, The Executive Committee had gotten a soufflé mould for her birthday that had, as yet, not been christened. She decided she would very much like a late birthday / early July 4th soufflé for dessert, so while the boys were playing with the fish, I followed Julia's recipe for orange soufflé from Mastering. 

A few notes:

• Definitely bother with the "rub two sugar cubes over the surface of the orange before zesting" thing - it sounds silly, but it adds depth.
• If you don't have Grand Marnier handy, Cointreau makes a perfectly acceptable substitute (I wouldn't do a regular triple sec though - I suspect the sugar content is too low).
• You can prep the entire thing up to the point of whipping the egg whites and incorporating them! This is clearly how restaurants manage soufflé for service with only a LITTLE extra time required to prepare it, rather than diners having to sit there for an extra hour to wait for their dessert.
• It's better to slightly *under* do the folding in of the whipped whites than to overdo.

How did it turn out?

Also, the kitchen smelled DIVINE, and I can report that there was not a CRUMB left over.

Yes, I *will* be making more of these when we're in France this fall. Although since we'll be eight, I will probably need to make TWO at a time. 

Food Lab: Chocolate

Seeing as our last Food Lab was last summer, have your intrepid Food Labbers been subsisting on nothing but carry out and boxed mac & cheese since then?

Fear not! 

We've been cooking and eating together QUITE well and QUITE frequently, just not Labbing much, partially because we've all been suffering from a bit of topic-block. Given everything we've taken on since we first launched this crazy project in 2010, what remains?

I'll tell you what remains: CHOCOLATE

Mad Kitchen Scientist was the one who started the whole thing off, observing that "chocolate is something that WE do not know, and knowing about tempering and all such things is becoming something fashionable among foodies." 

How did it take us more than ten years to take on chocolate? How did we not notice we hadn't taken on chocolate? That I do not know, and yet, here we are.

Will it surprise you to learn that our initial plan turned out to be a bit ambitious?

We did manage to head one excess off at the pass: we decided NOT to revisit mole lab in making dinner. Chef Spouse gently observed that that might be a bridge too far for a Sunday afternoon. 

Our initial list included:

• Taste test various % cacao 
• Make chocolate from cacao beans 
• Differences between Dutch process & natural process cocoa powder
• Different methods of melting chocolate
• Fixing seized chocolate
• Tempering chocolate

Chef Spouse regularly makes me homemade truffles, and we were currently out, so we had our base already chosen for the tempered chocolate (my other idea was coconut and/or peanut butter Easter eggs, but I was overruled). Because the ganache base needs time to cool before it can be formed into truffles and dipped, Chef Spouse prepared it before everyone arrived. He favors alcohol as a flavoring agent, so we went with my two favorites: absinthe and añjeo tequila. (He used to use sweet liqueurs like Amaretto and Chambord, but we both realized they tend to be cloying.) 

We had seen chocolate made by hand from cacao beans on a recent trip to Mexico, so Chef Spouse was eager to give it a shot and ordered 1 kg of organic cacao beans. They arrived fermented - the first processing step - but not roasted, so after tasting the pre-roasted beans (pleasantly fruity and bitter), we went on to roast about 10 oz. immediately following the simple 5 minutes at 400 - 5 minutes at 350 - 5 minutes at 325 - then 300 until done (~10 minutes) recommended pattern. 

(I should point out that eating the fermented but not roasted beans can be a little dangerous - similar to eating raw eggs or meat, both of which you already know we do - so roasting not only allows you to remove the beans' husks, it also kills any pathogens on the beans. Anyway, we each tried a bean, we didn't chow down on handfuls. But do so at your own risk.)

Sooooo....getting the inner beans out of the husks turned out to be a bit of a production and put the whammy on most of the rest of our plans, including the plans to turn those beans into chocolate. We now each have a container of nibs waiting to be chocolatized in the hopefully near future. Fortunately, if you store them carefully, they have a pretty substantial shelf-life of up to two years. 

However, while everyone else was fooling around with the hot beans, I decided to get onto the cocoa powder tests. I had done a bit of advance research at Serious Eats and Sally's Baking Addiction, where I learned that in addition to slight taste differences (Dutch process, to my taste buds, is more chocolatey, while natural is "brighter"), it comes down to acidity. Dutch process produces a neutral pH of 7, while natural process is more acidic, coming in at a pH of 6 or even 5. 

Why does that matter?

Well, what are you making? If it's a baked good that depends on baking soda for its leavening, it may matter quite a bit, as alkaline baking soda requires an acid environment to be activated. 

So I pulled out my mom's simple chocolate eggless cake recipe, which I remembered relying on baking soda, and got to work. I measured out all the dry ingredients into two bowls, one with natural and one with Dutch process cocoa powder.

Then I turned to the wet ingredients: canola oil, water, vanilla....damn it. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the recipe also includes a small amount of vinegar. FOR ACIDITY. 

So much for that test. Both layers rose just fine. 

So I said screw it, made some cherry icing, and turned them into a cake. 

Meanwhile, the hullers were still at work.

Eventually, they finished and were able to return to the ganache and form the truffle centers.

At this point we broke for dinner: cacao-crusted hangar steaks and roasted cauliflower and steamed green beans with Mad Kitchen Scientist's take on a Cacao Picada Sauce

----------

Cacao Picada Sauce (loosely adapted from Saveur)

3/4 c olive oil
8 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1/2 c almonds
1 c fresh parsley
~3 T of dark chocolate (baking chocolate at least 60% cacao)
~2 T sherry
salt, freshly ground white & black pepper

Toast almonds. Simmer garlic in olive oil until just getting some golden color.

Put almonds, chocolate, parsley in food processor or blender. Process in chunky salsa. Add sherry and garlic & oil. Blend to desired consistency. Season with salt & peppers and adjust other flavors as desired.

After eating, it was on to the idea that started this whole thing: tempering chocolate and, more specifically, covering the truffles in the tempered chocolate.

----------

After diner, it was back to the truffles. 

(Due to a promise to an old friend, I am forbidden from taking part in the making of truffles, so I was merely an observer at this point.) 

So I asked Chef Spouse what he learned about working with tempered chocolate, and he replied that it gets hotter than you think it will faster than you think it will, it keeps rising in temperature longer than you think it will, it's harder to get it to working temperature than you would think it would be, it's harder to hold it at optimum working temperature that you would think it would be....and having three pairs of hands to dip the truffles was a MAJOR improvement over his usual solo process.

I'm sure that's all true, but the finished product is so delicious, who cares about your troubles, Chef Spouse? ;) 

Drinks to accompany? A take on a Oaxacan old fashioned (reposado tequila, mezcal, agave nectar) that we tested with both mole and chocolate bitters, universally agreeing that the chocolate bitters win. (I think we should rename it a Mayan old fashioned.) 

We never got to playing around with seized chocolate or the chocolate tasting or, of course, making chocolate by hand. As I said, overly ambitious. 

Food Lab: Brewing

Confession time: this wasn't really a Food Lab. Mad Kitchen Scientist has been home brewing for more than 30 years and is, truly, expert at it. But I've never brewed beer, and wanted to at least learn what the process is, so this was more like a tutorial or demonstration than an actual lab.

Beer-brewing is conceptually simple:

• Crack the grain 
• Combine with warm water to form the "mash" 
• Cook the mash at a low temperature
• Strain the grain out of the mash water
• Add the "sparge" water to form the "wort"
• Add your other flavoring ingredients (hops, malt)
• Boil the wort
• Chill the wort QUICKLY 
• Strain the wort into your VERY VERY CLEAN fermentation container
• Add the yeast and a little more clean, cool water 
• Let the yeast do its job (aka ferment the beer)
• Bottle the beer

As Mad Kitchen Scientist is fond of reminding us, no known human pathogens can survive the brewing process (as long as you're careful not to introduce them in the fermentation and bottling), so beer is not only, per Ben Franklin, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, it's also proof that She doesn't want us to die from drinking bad water, a major concern throughout much of human history. 

In fact, historically, beer tended to feature at every meal, even for children, due to the aforementioned water quality problem. Of course, those beers were not juiced to the high alcohol levels of today's imperial stouts (the beer we brewed this weekend), Belgian IPAs, and Scotch ales (or the even higher levels of speciality beers than can start to approach the proof of distilled spirits). Still, our forefathers - and foremothers - were likely rarely sober as judges. Of course, while alcohol abuse is very serious, it turns out the communities of tipsy apes do better than the communities of sober apes, and beer can be an excellent way to induce that cooperation and sense of bonding. So on to the brewing! For the good of our community of tool-using apes! 

If brewing is conceptually so simple, what's the deal with good versus bad homebrew, and the dizzying variety of beer options available? 

Recipes (and temperature control). And Mad Kitchen Scientist has been refining his for decades. 

The grain is primarily barley, but there are all different types of barleys for brewing at all different levels of roast.

Mad Kitchen Scientist's super-secret

Imperial Stout blend

Cracking the grain is cracking the grain - and it's a delightfully analog process.

The next stage at which the brewer really influences the product is in what you choose to add to the wort by way of hops (type, quantity) and malt or other sugars (same). This is also when you can get into experimenting with things like fruit beers or other flavors. 

Look at those pretty hops!

Once the wort is ready for fermentation, two things are VERY important:

• You need to chill your wort FAST
• Your carboy needs to be CLEAN (so does your filter and your airlock)

Mad Kitchen Scientist created a clever gizmo from copper tubing to cool the wort by plunging the coil of copper tubing into the wort, attaching one end to tubing that runs from the cold water tap and letting the water run out the other end back into the sink.

Clean carboy? Bleach solution, scrub scrub, rinse rinse rinse.

Then you filter the wort into the carboy, add the yeast and cool, clean water to fill, insert the airlock, and let those little guys get to work eating, digesting, and, per Alton Brown, farting, which is what creates the fermentation and, ultimately, the fizz.

Saturday was glorious, so we also smoked (and ate) a brisket and played with the dog. To drink? Homebrew that was already aged and ready to go, duh. 

Get to work, Yeast! 

How did Mad Kitchen Scientist's brewing expertise come to be? Well, it turns out, a little more than 30 years ago, he was housemates with his "Brew Daddy." Both of them were also competitive Ultimate Frisbee players, and their house was definitely the hip hangout for that crowd. Brew Daddy was already an accomplished brewer, he showed Mad Kitchen Scientist how to brew, and then it became a situation of iron sharpening iron as they inspired each other to up their game. It's been many years since they shared a living space, but, unsurprisingly, Mad Kitchen Scientist has continued down the path set all those years ago.

I will likely not start down that path - Chef Spouse doesn't drink beer, so I'd just be brewing for myself, and I already have a good source of homebrew at the ready - but I am glad to understand, conceptually, how to do it.

I'm also looking forward to cracking one of these babies at Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee's resumed New Year's Eve house party later this year....