A Curryious Discovery

Some facts to know before reading further:

1. I have only had Indian food twice before.  The first time I tried it was at a fundraiser for my high school band.  It was hosted by our drummer’s parents who I believe were from India in the high school cafeteria.  I remember thinking the rice was very yellow for rice, but enjoyed the different flavor from the Rice a Roni that my family usually ate.   The second time I tried it was at a dinner for a foreign exchange student from India who was staying with my supervisor over the summer.  We went to a restaurant that he chose and I can’t remember what I ordered.  I do remember that it was in a cream sauce that I couldn’t eat because I was allergic to milk.
2. I’m from New Mexico and “spicy” does not mean the same thing to me as it does to people not from New Mexico.
3. That being said, I think Curry is a county and not anything having to do with food

Now that you know the facts about my experience with Indian food and my experience with spicy food, maybe you will understand why I didn’t think twice about dumping all of the curry spice from our latest Blue Apron recipe into the skillet.  I did ask the husband what he thought and he looked at me like I was crazy for asking, so I shrugged and dumped the spice packet in.   Oops.

The husband and I sat down to eat and admired our work and even managed to take a picture before diving in.  I took one little taste of the rice and sauce and knew that we were in trouble.  The husband started mixing the sauce and vegetables into the rice in his bowl and I tried not to shout “Noooooooo!!!!” Instead, I managed to suggest that he taste it before mixing it up.  I was hoping that the rice could balance the spice if not mixed together.  But I think I was too late in offering the suggestion and the damage had been done.

Thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary, I now know that curry is “a preparation of meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served with rice. Hence, a curry = a dish or stew (of rice, meat, etc.) flavoured with this preparation (or with curry-powder).”  I actually already knew about the turmeric, what I didn’t know was that “bruised spices” could also include “fresh or dried hot chillies.” This information comes from Wikipedia and as you can see “chillies” is not spelled correctly (at least it isn’t spelled correctly in New Mexico,) so keep that in mind when judging the accuracy of the statement.

The first use of the word curry or carriil was in 1598 by W. Phillip J.H. Linshoten in Disc. Voy, E. & W. Indies, “Most of their fish is eaten with rice, which they seeth in broth which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat sowre..but it tasteth well, and is called Carriil.” This implies that the dish was sour and not spicy.  Was chile added to cover up the sour taste? 

Lizzie Collingham states in her book Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors that spices were not added to dishes to hide the rancid (what I was calling sour) flavor of meat, but rather to enhance the flavor of the dish.  Before 1500 India relied on pepper to spice their food.  In the later 1400’s, the price of pepper went up and in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue not to discover a new land, but to find an inexpensive route around China to India to purchase spices for Spain. As we all know, he did not reach India, but instead reached the Bahamas, Cuba, and later South America.  He also found the Native American’s “aji” or chile which he mistook for India’s pepper.  He took this pepper plant back to Spain and it somehow came into the hands of the Portuguese who eventually did sail to India and sold the spice to the people of India.   Contrary to popular belief this chili pepper is not native to India; however, it quickly became a staple in Indian cooking.

The chile that came from the Aztecs in Mexico that made its way into New Mexican cuisine is the same chili pepper that made its way into Indian cuisine.  While the green chile and the red chile are staples in New Mexico and are roasted and made into sauces for dishes like enchiladas, the chili peppers are dried and crushed into a powder and added to curry dishes.  New Mexico has a slogan of “Red or green?” to question a person’s chile preference.  Is there such a thing in India to refer to how one prefers curry? Wet or dry?  In a sauce or more like a rub?

The Blue Apron curry powder that we tried must have had dried red chile in it because  it

was deep rich color and it was so spicy that it tasted bitter and even burned my throat as it made its way to my stomach.  It was so spicy that I spent the meal picking out the eggplant and leeks from the sauce and uselessly blowing on them as if that would somehow balance out the spiciness.  Unfortunately, blowing on food only helps lower the temperature not the spiciness.  Neither the husband nor I could finish our curry dish.  Instead, we grabbed some cold pita bread out of the refrigerator and ate it to restore our taste buds back to normal.  The pita bread was our saving grace.  I hate to throw away food, but this dish could not be saved any further.

And the moral of the story is…..?  Sometimes facts aren’t really facts at all; they are opinions or maybe experiences that have developed our opinions that we take as facts.  They cloud our judgement so that we can’t see what is in front of us – like the directions on a recipe card that explicitly say to add as much spice as you like – a clear warning that this could be spicy. 

Some new facts to know:

1. Food cannot be judged by only two mere experiences
2.  “Spicy” just might mean the same thing to me as a New Mexican as it does to people not from New Mexico
3. Curry is still a county in New Mexico, but it is also an intricate, complex sauce that originated in India that became spicier with other influences.

I would like to test curry again in a controlled environment where I only add a little bit of curry powder to the sauce and where I have ready access to a glass of milk and lots and lots of pita bread.

References

Collingham, Lizzie (2006). Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 

"curry, n.2." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2016. Web. 11 September 2016.

Wikipedia contributors. "Curry." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Sep. 2016. Web. 11 Sep. 2016.

My First Grilled Cheese Sandwich was made of Goat Cheese

Tonight was a night of firsts.  I’d like to say something more dramatic, something like tonight was the night that changed everything, tonight was the night it all began, but I really don’t have anything more than tonight was a night of firsts.

First, I had my very first grilled cheese sandwich.  Of course, I couldn’t have a normal grilled cheese sandwich made out of American cheese and white Wonder bread.  Oh no, I couldn’t be that normal – that would be boring.  Instead, my very first grilled cheese sandwich was a Grilled Goat Cheese and Plum Jam Sandwich with a side of Endive and Marinated Cucumber Salad courtesy of Blue Apron.

The second first of the night – we lost the shallot!  We had pulled all of the ingredients out of the refrigerator and placed them on the counter before we started cooking.  We looked and looked for the shallot.  I was looking for an onion looking kind of thing, but I had it in my head that a shallot looked more like green onions – probably because I never actually have a real shallot and instead substitute green onions in any recipe that calls for it.  So, naturally, I overlooked the small onion like bulb that sat on the cutting board.  The husband forgot that a shallot was an onion, so I’m not sure what he was looking for.    I even pulled out some green onions to use instead.  This is not the first time that I have felt dumb, but it was the first time that I so completely overlooked something that was literally right in front of me.  Anyway, the shallot was discovered, chopped, and used in the jam and in the salad.

This leads me to my third first of the night - and brace yourself for this – the husband made jam!  Not only did he make jam, but he seemed to enjoy making the jam.  He pitted a plum and then “roughly” (as was stated in the recipe’s instructions) chopped it into pieces.  I dumped all the ingredients into a sauce pan and he patiently watched it boil and then rigorously stirred it until it turned thick.  Then he prepared the sandwiches by spreading goat cheese on both sides of sourdough bread, spreading the jam on top of the cheese, and then placing the sandwiches in hot melted butter.  I must say that the smell of the bread toasting in the butter was absolutely amazing!

Also amazing?  The taste of that very toasted bread and its creamy contents! I was afraid that the goat cheese would have a bitter aftertaste, but the jam nicely balanced the bitter with a subtle sweetness and the crispy buttered bread finished it off with a slightly salty flavor.  

While we may not have had a dramatic evening and tonight was really not the night that changed everything, perhaps tonight was the night that something new began.  The husband and I are cooking meals together and I am hoping the husband enjoyed making jam enough to recreate this recipe in the future.  I’m glad that my very first grilled cheese sandwich wasn’t “normal,” but I think I would still like to try a “normal” grilled cheese sandwich – whatever “normal” means!

Destin-ed for Delicious

The husband and I took a week-long vacation to Destin, FL.  We arrived late on Saturday night and as we drove from Panama City into Destin we had great fun marketing our own vacation with zingers like “we have almost arrived to our Destin-ation” and “we were Destin-ed to vacation here” and as we rounded the corner to the condo we were rented, it became obvious that we weren’t the only ones playing with the name as there were subdivisions named “Destiny at the Sea” and “Destiny East”. 

As a polite reader you might wonder what we did on our vacation and you might be either disappointed or perhaps envious at the truth.  We woke up every morning and decided whether we would go to the beach or the pool, then we would go to the beach, while at the beach watching the waves crash against the shore, we would discuss where and what we wanted to eat for dinner.  We did this for 6 wonderful days! 

Because we did so much eating on this vacation, I thought I would share some of our favorite dishes from Destin, where the flavors of the South meet the Sea.

Seafood for Breakfast

After a long Saturday of traveling, we were starving on Sunday morning.  We decided to try Another Broken Egg even though there was a bit of a wait.  Their unique menu was definitely worth it though. Although we were both tempted to order our usual breakfast choices of eggs, green chile, and sausage, the husband and I forced ourselves to try something new and different, something that we couldn’t get in the desert of New Mexico.  I chose an omelet called Stan’s Mardi Gras which consisted of crawfish, shrimp, Andouille sausage, and red peppers and was topped with green onions, tomatoes, and Hollandaise sauce.  The husband ordered the Smoked Salmon Benny which consisted of whipped cream cheese, smoked salmon, and two poached eggs stacked on a toasted bagel and garnished with diced red onions, capers and green onions.

While neither dishes were completely new to us, they might as well have been.  I have had omelets before.  I have even had an omelet with crab meat in it before.  However, my crab meat omelet from New Mexico was most definitely made of imitation crab that left my mouth feeling dry and my mind wondering why anyone would ever combine eggs and seafood.  So for me it was a brave decision to try this and I’m so glad that I did. The eggs were perfectly cooked into a protective covering for the FRESH shrimp and FRESH crawfish.  While the sausage was a bit chunky and almost a strange texture to the smooth seafood; it added just enough Cajun spice to keep the flavor interesting.  The Hollandaise sauce somehow cooled down the spice just enough so that my mouth wasn’t burning with regret.  The Husband tasted it and said, “Wow, I should have ordered that!”

Maybe, but the benny that he ordered was good too.   He let me have a tiny taste and with great care made sure that I could taste all of the flavors.  The bagel served as a sturdy foundation for the savory salmon, the fluffy cloud-like eggs, and the sweet cream cheese.  I’ve never ordered my own eggs benedict before, but will have to do so in the future.  There is something mysterious about poached eggs, something unnatural about how fluffy and smooth they are, something I would definitely like to try again.

Hushpuppies

First, I must admit that I love hushpuppies.  Someone once asked me what a hushpuppy was and I was taken aback.  How could they not know what a hushpuppy was?  Unfortunately, my response was, “You know, those fried balls of cornmeal that you get at Long John Silver’s.”  And even more unfortunately, the response was “Oh yeah.  I like those.”

Luckily, there are better hushpuppies out there than the fast food version from Long John Silver’s.  We had the privilege of having them twice on the trip.  At Captain Dave's, the hushpuppies were the best part of my grilled shrimp and fried okra dinner and perhaps the best part of the husband's blackened tuna and fried okra dinner.  

We also ordered them as an appetizer along with fried calamari at Kenny D's.  Both recipes were very similar, crispy golden brown on the outside and mushy soft on the inside with a savory cornmeal garlicky taste.  

Because I’ve always been curious about where and how the term “hushpuppy” came into existence, I did some research and found that there are a number of different stories about this very thing.  The history of huspuppies is outlined on the Serious Eats Blog.  My favorite is that “puppy” is a euphemism for our stomachs and that the fried little morsels of delicious cornbread “hushed” the “puppy” from growling and cured the hunger in the tummy.   I can speak from experience from a really hard day of sitting at the beach and pondering what I would eat later, the hushpuppies were exactly what we need to hush our puppies.

Pineapple Cole Slaw

The husband hates coleslaw.  It’s as simple as that.  He hates it.  He even hates cabbage.  He won’t eat

it.  Maybe there was something in the salty Destin sea air or maybe there is something about eating dinner in front of the ocean that changes what one normally hates into something at least tolerable. The husband willingly ate coleslaw!

Of course, this coleslaw was not your typical mayonnaise drenched cabbage.  Oh no, not in Destin, not at Pompano Joe’s.  This coleslaw had pineapple in it!  While there wasn’t a lot of pineapple, when you got a huge chunk mixed in with the cabbage, it was like a surprise party that you didn’t know you wanted until you opened the door and saw all of your friends, a surprise, but a welcome and somehow comforting surprise. That’s exactly what the pineapple was hidden among the green and purple cabbage, a sweet contrast to the strong onion slivers.  It created a pause in flavors, a pause for the mind to catch up to the taste buds, a pause in conversation for our speech to catch up to our minds, and a momentary pause for the hatred of coleslaw.

Irish

For someone who hates cabbage so much, it’s hard to believe that the husband actually has Irish blood.  It also may be hard to believe that our favorite restaurant in the seaside town of Destin was not a seafood restaurant, but an Irish pub. Walking out of the bright sunlight into the dark, dusky McGuire’s Irish Pub, we first noticed that the ceilings and walls were covered with dollar bills.  The

second thing we noticed was the huge moose head that hung on the wall opposite our table.  I’ve never been to Ireland, but I felt transported from Destin to what my imagination tells me is a real Irish pub.  And so we took a vacation within our vacation, a pause from the Emerald Coast to the Emerald Isle.

And that was before we even saw the menu.  The menu consisted of traditional Irish fare as well as traditional pub fare. While we were pondering our choices, the waitress brought us the most delicious bread that I have ever tasted.  The menu called it Irish Honey Black Bread and Plenty of Pure Butter.  The bread was so soft and so sweet that it really didn’t need any butter, but just as the menu description claimed; it had plenty of butter - melted over the top of it like frosting on a cake.  Tasting this delicious combination of bread and butter – the essentials needed for a good meal - was the moment between taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out, the moment when you hold the air in your lungs, anticipating something good.

I too have some Irish blood and decided I would find something good in the Fish and Chips.  The description boasted “Free Range Fresh Fish caught daily in the Irish Sea by
McGuire’s Cousin Nathan and battered in McGuire’s Red Ale . Served with Homemade Coleslaw.”  I don’t know what kind of fish this was and I definitely can’t confirm where it was caught, but it was the biggest piece of fish I have ever ordered.  It was so big that it didn’t even fit on the plate!  It was lightly coated and fried.  Despite its size, there was lightness about it in both flavor and texture compared to the heavy wedges of fried potatoes hidden under the fish fillet.  With a little (ok, a lot) of ketchup, it was absolutely delicious!  And, yes, I ate every bit of it!

The husband ordered the Brewer’s Sausage Plate which was described as “Our Brewer's Choice of Sausages from Around the World, with German Sauerkraut, Potato Salad, and a Free McGuire's Craft Brewed Old Fashioned Ale”.  There were four different sausages that ranged from sweet to savory.  We joked that we needed a map so that we could know what each sausage was and where it came from, so that the flavors could be properly attributed.  Without the map, it’s difficult to describe them.   For the second time on this trip, the husband willingly ate cabbage.  While he didn’t eat all of the sauerkraut, he did try it and ate more than I thought he would.  Interestingly, a beer was part of this menu item, so the husband ordered a stout and all the goodness that had been anticipated with the bread became a reality.

Donuts

I think that every couple has a thing, you know that special thing that they do together – some couples like to go wine tasting, or brew their own beer, other couples go dancing, while others take up hiking.  The husband and I have a thing too: we love donuts!  And so you can imagine that when we heard about a place called the Donut Hole, we were ecstatic. 

The entire town of Destin must be ecstatic about this place too because it was ridiculously busy. The line to get a table was out the door and wound its way into the parking lot.  The first day we attempted to go there, we were too intimidated to stand in line.  The second time we stuck it out and were disappointed with our normal orders of eggs, hash browns, and bacon.  We were expecting something special, but this was just typical greasy spoon food.

We didn’t give up though.  We each ordered a donut to go: I had blueberry and the husband had red velvet.  They were both delicious – a sweet pause in the chaos of life.  The blueberry donut had a sweet crunchy glaze on the outside and gave way to an extremely moist purple filled inside, purple because there were so many blueberries in it.  The red velvet was by far the favorite because it was so unique – frosted with a deliciously sweet and slightly vanilla infused cream cheese frosting that gave way to a moist very light chocolate flavor.  This donut was so delicious, that I think it might be dangerous.

The donuts were so good that we went back a few more times during the trip to keep the donuts for breakfast the next day.  I tried coconut and maple frosted and the husband tried a peanut butter oreo donut. We also gave the menu another chance and were pleasantly surprised that the pancakes and the breakfast sandwich were exactly those special items we had initially expected.

Destin-ed for Delicious

Overall, our vacation to Destin was a delicious experience.  The above mentioned places and foods were just the highlights.  We went to a number of other places and I think we both agree that we were Destin-ed for Delicious.

Irish Nachos and Arizona Dreaming

Traditional Nachos

The husband makes the most amazing nachos.  I’m surprised that I haven’t blogged about them before.  I usually make taco meat using ground beef or ground turkey with lots of spices, mainly chili powder.  The husband puts Santitos corn chips in a casserole dish. (Santitos are the best because a whole bag only costs $2!)  Then I sprinkle the meat on the top and he dumps cheese on top of it and repeat.  He is in charge of the cheese because I never seem to put enough.  My version is usually super crunchy and seems to cool off way too quickly whereas his version is super gooey and steamy hot delicious.

But now I too can make super gooey and steamy hot delicious nachos!  I found a recipe on Pinterest called “Irish Nachos” and the name was so intriguing that I had to take a look.  The pictures were even more intriguing than the name  - generous dollops of guacamole were definitely enough to make me save the recipe to one of my many boards for later cooking.  Unfortunately, I’ve only admired the pictures until now.  Something possessed the husband and me to buy a big bag of avocados at Costco and they were ripening faster than we could eat them.  Enter the perfect opportunity to make these so called Irish Nachos.

Now what makes them Irish?  Irish and Nachos are not two words that I would normally pair together.   The difference between Irish and regular nachos should actually be pretty obvious.  Instead of corn chips, the recipe calls for potatoes!  (I’m sure that this recipe didn’t actually originate in Ireland, but it is a cute play on the concept of nachos.)  I must say that this slight starch exchange makes a huge difference.  There was no chance of too crispy nachos with this one. 

First, the potatoes are roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with spices.  I took a slight detour from the spices that the recipe called for.  Instead of simply using paprika, I used Penzey’s Arizona Dreaming.   I don’t normally use ready-made spice mixes because I think it is more cost effective and even more creative to make my own.  However, I made an exception for Arizona Dreaming because my mom gave it to me.  How could I say no to my mom?  And more importantly, how could I say no to free?!  The label said the mix contained,“ancho chili pepper, black pepper, onion, garlic, paprika, spices, cumin, citric acid, Mexican oregano, cilantro, lemon peel, chipotle pepper, red pepper, jalapeño, cocoa and natural smoke flavoring” – just the kick that I thought Irish Nachos would need. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the Irish are known for creating especially spicy foods and Nachos are a dish that I believe should have some spice to them.  So, I followed the recipe and added the garlic even though the mix may have had a bit in it.

Irish Nachos 

After the potatoes had roasted, I added the bell pepper and onion that had been sauted and then dumped cheese on the top of the entire mixture and put it all back in the oven for the cheese to melt.  When I could see more gooey cheese than potato, I took them out of the oven.  I then crumbled turkey bacon over the top of the steamy hot concoction and then made guacamole out the avocados that had initially inspired me to make this dish.  I didn’t use the recipe for the “mashed avocado” listed on the recipe’s directions though.  Instead, I used a family recipe, one that has been around forever - at least one whole generation - a recipe that is so simple that I won’t bore you with the ingredients.  But now that you know it is a secret, I bet you want to know what it is!  My lips are sealed!

Because I used Arizona Dreaming, I had high expectations for the flavor of these nachos.  I expected it to taste like a sunset.  I’m not sure what a sunset would taste like, but my imagination tells me it would have warm, rich flavors – mixing the deep reds of chili powder and paprika with the lighter oranges and yellows of garlic and onion and just a tinge of blue-green; the blue-green that makes you question what blue-green really looks like, let alone tastes like, the question that keeps you questioning, and keeps you wondering, keeps you eating and tasting, and keeps you living.  OK, so maybe my expectations were too high.  Maybe I should have added a little more Arizona Dreaming to the Irish Nachos.  After all, Arizona is 4,843 miles from Ireland and while the flavors weren’t that far away from each other, they could have been better.

New Mexico Sunrise

The potatoes don’t have as much salt as the corn chips and it didn’t help the taste that I forgot to sprinkle salt and pepper on the potatoes before roasting them.  The Irish Nachos fell a bit short of the husband’s delicious traditional nachos, our very own New Mexico Dreaming sunrise. (Who needs to taste a sunset when we could taste a sunrise?)  New Mexico is a few hundred miles closer to Ireland than Arizona and I believe the blue-greens in the sunsets are brighter, more robust.  Perhaps it is the green chile?

The husband said it best, “I think we could play with this recipe.”  I think he is right.  I am looking forward to trying it with some green chile or maybe using a green chile infused oil instead of olive oil for roasting the potatoes in addition to the Arizona Dreaming.  Maybe Nachos will be a culinary experiment, our very own trendy fusion of foods: Ireland meets the Southwest.

The Uncrowned Royal Burger

I had my cholesterol tested for the very first time.  I got up super early to be at the lab when it opened, so that there wouldn’t be a line but more importantly so that I wouldn’t have to extend my 10 hour fast to the time while I was actually awake.  The doctor recommended that I have it tested not because she thought that there was a problem, just because it was time to have it tested.  Seems to be a trend, I guess.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with precaution and why not be precautionary when the test is so simple: fast for 10 hours, have a bit of blood drawn, and be on your way.  Now I wait for the results.

While waiting, I decided to try something new, something so completely high in cholesterol that my doctor’s eyes would probably pop out of her head if she knew about it.  I ordered the Royal Red Robin Burger at where else but…… Red Robin.  Upon ordering, the waiter said “Mmmmm…the Royal” as if he were really speaking about royalty.  Was this burger going to be served with a crown of jewels on the top of it?  And should I only speak in hushed tones when gazing upon it?

Unlike me, the husband is trying to make healthy choices and ordered a chicken sandwich – not just any chicken sandwich; it was drenched in barbeque sauce and covered in fried onions, so I’m not sure how we’re measuring healthy choices these days.  Instead of the waiter that took our order, the manager brought our food to us.    He asked, “Who has the Royal?” as he tried to set it in front of my husband.  When I said that it was mine, he looked taken aback.  Who knew someone could look taken aback over a hamburger!?  But then it is the royalty of hamburgers, so maybe I should be so surprised at this reaction. “Oh!  Usually it is the opposite,” he paused and looked at me, “Usually the…” he looked at me again “orders the chicken,” awkward pause, “Good for you!” he smiled jovially and walked away.  I immediately said to the husband, “It looks like I’m the pig in this relationship!” and then we dug in happy to be eating and happy to not really think about cholesterol or healthy choices, just good tasting food.

The Royal Burger is like having breakfast on a hamburger.  It consists of a hamburger patty, American cheese, and is topped off with bacon and an egg.  I normally like food completely cooked, so I ordered the burger with “no pink” and requested that the egg be cooked over easy rather than sunny side up.

The taste of the burger was definitely not worth hushed tones and certainly didn’t make me want to bow down to it.  It was just a burger with an egg on it, a breakfast hamburger.  I’m glad that I ordered the egg over easy because it was still runny and a bit messy.  I must admit that I tend to turn into Sally from the movie “When Harry met Sally” in restaurants.  I don’t actually order everything on the side, but I tend to disassemble my food when it arrives so that everything is eventually on the side.  This way I can reassemble however I want. 

Upon delivery, I immediately removed the bun, so that probably contributed to the mess the egg made.  Once the yolk was consumed (most of it had stuck to the bread) I was left with the egg white, which tasted fine maybe a bit bland except for the added salt and pepper. It added a strange, rubbery texture to the familiar hamburger patty though.  I added lettuce and tomato and the juiciness of the tomato helped meld the flavors.  However, it was the cheese that surprisingly stood out in this burger.  I normally don’t care for cheese that much, but this was delicious.  Maybe I am a fan of the cheese burger after all!

While I wouldn't crown this burger or award it any titles of royalty, it was definitely worth trying before I know whether or not I should be eating hamburgers at all.  In the future, if hamburgers are indeed in my future, I will stick with the guacamole bacon burger instead.  We will not even consider a future without bacon.

Health(ier) Bangers and Mash

What did we do to channel our Irish roots for St. Patrick’s Day?  We had Italian food, of course.  Our nieces’ cheer team was having a fundraiser at a local Italian restaurant and so we decided to support them as well as our continuous craving for pizza and calzones.  Bangers and Mash was put on hold until the following day, but still tasted just as good as if it were the holiday.

Last year I said that I would try the same recipe with English sausage.  Well, I didn’t put a lot of effort into finding them and so I didn’t find any!  Instead, the husband and I decided to try a healthy version of Bangers and Mash.  I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too – HOW?!!!!!  All of that fat in the sausage, all of that butter and cream in the potatoes, and what to do about the gravy?

Not to panic, someone much more creative than me came up with a healthier (I won’t say healthy, but healthier) take on the traditional dish.  In a blog called “Don’t Change Much,” the entire recipe for HealthyBangers and Mash is outlined.  And I honestly didn’t change much this time because the changes to make this recipe healthier were already made for me:

• Turkey sausage (I used Sweet Italian) instead of English sausage
• Yogurt instead of butter and cream in the potatoes (I also used chicken broth to make the creamy mash more flavorful)
• Onions sauteed in leftover grease from the turkey sausage in place of a brown gravy (there wasn’t a lot of grease because this was turkey, so I added just a bit of olive oil)
• Peas and carrots were served on the side, so less potatoes were needed (less carbs too!)

The husband helped prepare everything, so we had a lot of fun chopping, stirring, and cooking together.  I think we both worried that the fat reduction would equal a taste reduction, so when we finally sat down to eat and the husband took a big bite of mashed potatoes, I was surprised at his unwavering response of “I like it.”  I think he may have been surprised that he liked it so much too.

But then I took a bite of the potatoes and completely understood.  They were creamy!  I don’t think I’ve ever had mashed pototoes that were that creamy!  Honestly, I don’t have much to compare it to though and I still consider myself a potato  novice.  While I’ve been tasked with seasoning the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving since I was a teenager, I don’t  usually taste them and if I do it is just a quick dab of the finger in the pot to see if needs more salt.  My Pie Goddess Sister usually tells me to add more pepper.  Even though there wasn’t much yogurt mixed into the pot, it really changed the texture of the potatoes and the chicken broth really changed the flavor but not so much that you would think “Oh yeah, there is chicken broth in there.” 

I already have some ideas on how to spruce this up away from the bangers part of the dish.  First, I want to make it dairy free, so I’m going to have to look for yogurt substitutes.  Then I want to try adding scallions and maybe even roasted garlic.

Sorry!  Shiny objects and and yummy food are terrible distractions for me – back to the Healthy Bangers and Mash!  The rest of the dish was delicious – the Italian Turkey Sausage was not overpoweringly spicy and the crispy onions complemented them nicely.  The onions came out a bit crispy; I may have over cooked them, but I actually like them almost burnt.  I think that this adds a natural salt to them, but that is just my preference.

My only regret is that I didn’t get to experience the “bang” in Bangers and Mash.  The sausages were originally called this because they would make a loud “pop” or “bang” in the skillet when cooking.  Because meat was rationed during in and around World War I and even World War II, the sausages were made with water.  If the sausages were overcooked, they literally popped with a “bang”.  Modern sausages don’t do this.  So I guess we don’t really have Bangers and Mash at all, rather we simply have Sausage and Mash.  And while this doesn’t sound all that festive, I guess it shouldn’t take anything away from our St. Patrick’s Day celebration.   Bangers and Mash is  actually an English dish and not Irish dish anyway, so maybe celebrating with Italian food wasn’t that far of a stretch after all.

Finding the Real Butterbeer

For those of you who have read Harry Potter, you know that there are not many more things more delicious or comforting than a cup of Butterbeer in the magical world.  So what is really in this fictional drink?  I realize this is an oxymoron, but it seems worth considering.  My imagination tells me that it is like drinking a warm liquidized version of butterscotch pudding topped with vanilla whipped cream.  It must have some kind of frothy topping. Mmmmm…just the thought makes me sigh with contentment.

But, let’s get back to the “real” part of my oxymoronic question.  After finishing the Harry Potter series, the husband and I set forth on a quest of our own: find a reality of Butterbeer that meets our imagination.

1. Harry Potter’s Hot & Cold Butterbeer

 

Who knew that there is an entire website called 

The Disney Diner?  Except for Disney, of course.  It

is dedicated to creating a reality out of imaginary recipes (not necessarily from Disney) just like Butterbeer!  The husband and I were extremely excited because the ingredients matched my above description – whipped cream and butterscotch!  While the ingredients alone are delicious, the combination made a rather thick and way too sweet drink.  It didn’t brink the mmmm….contentment feeling I had hoped that butterbeer would create.  Instead, it left me smacking my lips together from the overly sweet chalkiness and wondering if I would regret drinking it.  Perhaps drinking it cold and thinning it with another liquid would have made it better, but we didn’t try this. 

The weird starchy mess that it left behind in the pot curbed my desire to find a recipe.  So, we thought – “What would Hermione do, if she were here?”  She would go to the library and look for a book on potions (a/k/a cookbooks).  Because we weren’t looking for recipes at this point, but were instead shopping for the lovely beverage.  We decided to Google “Butterbeer” and were delighted when we found “Reed’s Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer”.  And so a secondary quest began for finding this brand.

We searched the city high and low – Total Wine and More, John Brooks, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, Sprouts, Smith’s, and more.  While these stores had other Reed’s products, they didn’t have the Butterscotch flavor that our taste buds required.  The more we searched and the less we found, I decided that this would be the perfect gift for the husband sometime in the future and made a mental note to keep searching.  I returned online to look into having the drinks shipped to us, but I refused to pay $16 for a 6 pack, plus shipping on top of that.  Because of that price tag, the search was halted for over a year.

2.  Dang! That’s Good Rootbeer – Butterscotch Flavored

For  Christmas 2015, I decided to buy the husband a lunchbox.  What better to go with that lunchbox

than Butterbeer?!  And the search resumed as quickly as it had ended.  I also realized that it wasn’t necessary to find the Reed’s brand and perhaps something else would work.  I walked into World Market with a heart full of hope and wandered around until the orange/brown label of Dang! That’s Good Rootbeer caught my eye.  (OK, you caught me.  I’m a researcher at heart and it really encompasses my entire being, so I looked it up online first.  I knew what I was looking for, but the label still caught my eye.  Probably because I was looking for it.)  At any rate, I immediately grabbed two of the butterflavored rootbeer bottles and headed to the register where the cashier greeted me happily and nearly jumped up and down as she saw my find.  She said that this was her favorite drink and if I liked butterscotch, I would love this.  She then proceeded to describe the flavor. “It’s a rootbeer, but it has a butterscotch after taste that isn’t too overpowering, so you can tell it’s still rootbeer, but butterscotch takes care of the bite in the rootbeer.”   She wrapped them up and voila, a gift for the husband.

The husband and I drank these on New Year’s Eve. As you can probably tell by our drink selection, New Year’s Eve isn’t really our thing.  But the soda just might be.  As if this was a fancy wine, we did a proper test by smelling the bottle before tasting it.  It smelled good, sweet, yummy and it tasted exactly as the cashier had said.  The husband’s response?  “This might be my new favorite drink.”  Then he smiled sheepishly “A new guilty pleasure…”

I guess I should mention at this point that we stopped drinking cokes over a year ago.  So not only was this a treat for finding a butterbeer like concoction, but it was the gift of sugar.  And at 31 grams per serving, it definitely had a lot of sugar in it!  While the husband was happy, I’m not sure if this met my butterbeer expectations; it did meet my butterscotch rootbeer expectations though.  So, if you like rootbeer and that strange syrupy yet somehow enticing burning that the taste leaves behind, this is worth trying.

3. Reed’s Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer

After I purchased the rootbeer and had hidden it properly in my closet, the husband and I went to the Cracker Barrel for breakfast and some last minute gift buying before Christmas.  I was looking for this apple crisp gift set that included fried apples and the crisp mixture.  Two shelves down from the baking display, was the soda display.  As I walked past it, I saw “Flying Cauldron” in purple lettering on a black cardboard holder.  It couldn’t be it, could it?  After all this searching and then finally giving up for something else, had I found it?  The husband walked past it 3 times and never even noticed it.  Each time I held my breath that and prayed that he wouldn’t see it. After purchasing the apple crisp packages, he took them to the car and I made a beeline for the soda shelves.  Low and behold! (I was in the Cracker Barrel Country Store, so I felt I should use exclamations like this!) The Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer was found!!  I contemplated buying it immediately, but knew the husband would see it.  It would be better to wait, to surprise him.  And so I stopped by after work one day, bought the deliciously decorated bottles, and then hid the bottles in the closet with the others.  (Not what you would expect from a phrase like “hid the bottles,” right?)

When the husband opened his lunchbox on Christmas Eve, he was in disbelief.  “Where did you find these?” he asked, excitedly.  I smiled and said “Cracker Barrel.  You walked by them 3 times and thankfully didn’t see them!” More smiling.  We had to restrain from drinking it right then and there because of Christmas parties to attend.  The bottles tempted us for a week and then we finally tried them, saving what we hoped to be the best for last,

The Flying Cauldron recipe is a cream soda base as opposed to the previously mentioned pudding and rootbeer bases.  It smelled sweet – a combination of vanilla and brown sugar.  It smelled good, sweet, yummy and it tasted exactly as the cashier had said.  The husband’s response?  “This might be my new favorite drink.”  Then he smiled sheepishly “A new guilty pleasure…”  When I reminded him that was the exact same he said about the rootbeer, he responded in one breath with “Butthisoneisbetter! Don’tbemadifIcomehomewitha6packone day.” He took a breath and then asked, “Dotheycomeina6pack?” I had to laugh at what we were talking about, but said, “If it’s a 6 pack of cream soda, I can’t complain.  You can buy them in a pack, but they are priced individually.”  I was so excited about finding these, that I forgot to remove the price tags.  I cringed when the husband said “Whoa! These cost $2 each?”  Indeed, they do, but that mmmmm…contentment feeling is definitely worth it.

It tasted just like an old fashioned cream soda with a deeper butterscotch flavor that danced along with the carbonation on the tongue.  30 grams of sugar?  Who cares! This might be the closest flavor humanly, realistically possible to the imaginary cup of contentment called Butterbeer created for the Harry Potter series.  The only thing that might make it better is ice cream!  Who could argue with a Butterbeer Float?

Quest Complete

For now, the quest is complete, but who knows I may return to creating my own recipe one of these days!  The idea of something warm is still tempting.