Pizza Port in Ocean Beach

Update: Pizza Port Ocean Beach is now open!

Why am I posting a picture of a partially constructed building? Because Port Brewing, one of our favorite local brewers, is opening a location in Ocean Beach - just down the coast from us.

I first heard rumors about the new location (on Bacon Street - where an old Boll Weevil used to be) about a year ago. Construction was stalled for quite some time (issues with their liquor license, I think), but they now appear to be moving full speed ahead. We took a bike ride down to OB yesterday to have lunch at Newport Pizza, and snapped the above photo.

To say that we're looking forward to the opening would be an understatement.

Update (3/15/2010): We went by today and they are looking pretty much done with the exterior. More importantly, you can see that they've got their brewing equipment installed!

La Playa Taco Shop - Mexican Breakfast in Pacific Beach

We absolutely love a good Mexican breakfast. Where we live in San Diego, there are a plenty of taco shops where you can grab a bite to eat in the morning, but it generally means getting a breakfast burrito. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of a good breakfast burrito. But I also like a more traditional, sit-down plate of food, and that can be harder to find.

Fortunately, we have La Playa Taco Shop serving up great renditions of the standards. On real plates. With silverware. Pictured above is their Huevos Rancheros - always a good way to go. I'm more likely to order Huevos Divorciados, though:



Why have one sauce when you can have two? We really like both their red and green salsas. The green is the spicier of the two. Huevos Divorciados isn't on their menu, but they've been happy to oblige when I've asked for it.

Also not on the menu is Sherry's current favorite - a combo of a chile relleno and one egg ranchero style:



Chile rellenos are one of those food items that are great when done well, and terrible when done poorly. In my experience, they are much more often done poorly. La Playa, however, does them perfectly - an intensely flavorful poblano chile (lots of places use Anaheim chiles, which work nowhere near as well), a thin, nicely-seasoned batter, and a molten cheese center.



If scrambled eggs are more your thing, you can get Huevos al Albañil (brick-layer's eggs). Their version has bacon in it:



Or Huevos con Chorizo:



And, of course, they also do a breakfast burrito. With all of the other great options, however, we've yet to try it.

La Playa's non-breakfast offerings are very good as well. I'm particularly partial to their al pastor and carnitas tacos (check out this post on What We're Eating for pictures of the carnitas), but we've enjoyed everything we've tried.

La Playa Taco Shop
3973 Mission Blvd.
San Diego, CA
(858) 488-7405

Imperial Stout - A Partial Mash Recipe

If you've followed our past beer posts, you might quite reasonably assume that all we ever drink are light-colored hop bombs and Belgians (and sometimes combinations of the two). And, for the most part, that is indeed what we like to drink. We do, however, also have a fondness for the opposite end of the beer color and body spectrum - the Imperial Stout.

Imperial (or "double") stouts are the big boys of the dark beer family. I like mine jet black, with a motor-oil-like viscosity and punch-you-in-the-face flavor. The rich toastiness and generous alcohol level make it a great winter beer style.

And the best part is that they are also comparatively easy to brew. We've spent years getting our IPAs where we want them, but this Imperial Stout came out pretty much bang-on the first time we made it. All of the effort we go through with an IPA in order to keep the color light and the malt out of the way so the hops can shine through - no need to do that here. We want it dark and malty, and that's easy to achieve.

Below is the recipe we came up with. The dark color comes from the addition of Black Patent and Chocolate Malt. It surprised us how little you need to use to get the color jet-black - only around 10% of the total malt bill. Our target alcohol level was 9%, but we ended up closer to 8% (too cold a temperature during fermentation, I think). I would have been happier with the extra 1% abv, but a little bit of residual sugar works well with this style.

Imperial Stout

Total batch size = 5 gallons; Partial Mash in 3 gallon beverage cooler; ~3 gallon 60 minute stove-top boil; late malt extract addition; target abv of 9%
(target OG: 1.090; target FG: 1.021)

Ingredients:

2 3/4 lb Pale Malt (2 row)
1 lb Roasted Barley
3/4 lb Black (Patent) Malt
3/4 lb Chocolate Malt
3/4 lb Wheat Malt
6 1/4 lb Briess Golden Light Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 lb Briess Pilsen Dry Extract (DME)
1 1/2 oz Centennial (9.7% AA)
1 oz Simcoe (13.2% AA)
1 oz Amarillo Hops (7.5%)
1 tablet Whirlfloc
White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast
3 oz light or pilsen DME (optional - for starter culture)
4 oz corn sugar (optional - for bottle priming)

Hop Schedule:

1 oz Centennial - 60 minute boil
1/2 oz Simcoe - 25 minute boil
1 oz Amarillo Hops - 20 minute boil
1/2 oz Centennial - 2 minute boil
1/2 oz Simcoe - 2 minute boil
(whirlfloc - 10 minute boil)

[Optional: Prepare a starter culture the day before brewing. Heat 3 cups water then add 3 oz DME. Boil 10 minutes, then cool quickly to room temperature. Put into a sanitized 1 quart jar or bottle, add yeast, seal and shake gently for 30 seconds. Loosen the lid or use an air-lock to allow gases to escape and let sit until time to pitch the following day.]

Heat 8 quarts water to 166 degrees for a target mash temperature of 154 degrees. Place the 6 pounds of crushed grain (Pale, Barley, Black, Chocolate and Wheat) into a large mesh bag. Pour the hot water into the beverage cooler, then slowly lower the grain bag into the water, pushing and prodding with a large spoon to ensure all the grain is wet (this can take several minutes). Put the lid on the cooler and allow to rest 60 minutes. (If the room is cool, preheat the cooler with hot water before starting the mash.)

While the grains are mashing, heat another 4-5 quarts of water to 190-195 degrees for sparging (rinsing the grains). Near the end of the 60 minutes, heat 2 quarts of water to a boil in your brew pot.

After the first mash is complete, remove the cooler lid and open the spigot to draw off about 1 quart of wort into a large pitcher. The first draw will likely be cloudy with grain particles; pour it gently back into the cooler over the grain bag to help filter it. Slowly draw off the wort by the pitcher-full and carefully pour that wort into the boiling water in your brew pot. As you pull off the wort through the spigot, add the hot (190 degree) water to the top of the cooler, keeping the grains submerged at about 168 degrees. Once 4 quarts have been added to the top, cover the cooler and let it sit another 10 minutes. Use the spigot and a pitcher to draw off all of the second wort and add it to your brew pot. You should have about 3.25 gallons of wort.

Bring the wort to a boil. When ready, add hops according to the schedule. With about 30 minutes remaining in the boil, begin adding the DME one cup at a time, stirring to dissolve. With 10 minutes left, stir in 1 tablet Whirlfloc. At time zero, continue adding DME off the heat until all has been added (if needed, return to low heat for a few minutes to help dissolve the extract). Cover and let sit 10-15 minutes.

Move brew pot to an ice bath and cool quickly to less than 80 degrees. Transfer wort to a primary fermenter. Add water to reach the 5 gallon mark. Swirl vigorously 2 minutes then pitch the yeast.

Ferment in primary for 1 week, then transfer to secondary. Keg or bottle after fermentation is complete (2 to 3 weeks in secondary).

Feast of the Seven Fishes 2009

This Christmas Eve, we continued our yearly tradition based loosely on the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. We don't worry about the exact number of fishes, and we don't limit ourselves to Italian dishes. We just use the holiday as an inspiration to create a multi-course meal centered around fish and shellfish.

We had no real unifying theme this year. Our initial thoughts revolved around a "Mediterranean (both sides)" idea, but we ended up throwing in a bit of the new world as well.

Here's how it played out:

Oysters with Chile de Arbol and Cilantro


Our Christmas Eve feasts have always started out with oysters, and we weren't about to change that this year. This guy is a local Olympia oyster, grown by Carlsbad Aqua Farm and purchased from Bay Park Fish Company. The sauce was made from chile de arbol - whole dried chiles, soaked and then blended with garlic, cilantro and a bit of red wine vinegar.

This is what the oysters looked like pre-shucking (the one pictured above is on the left below, sporting his big barnacle):



The flavor of the oyster was clean and briny, and went well with the hot punch from the chile de arbol. In addition to the Olympia oysters, we also had some Conway Cup and St. Simon oysters for good measure.

Niçoise Tuna Skewers


Kind of a play on a Niçoise Salad. The tuna (Ahi) was salted and then poached confit-style in olive oil that was flavored with garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns. We skewered it with potato and green bean, served it over a bed of lettuce and chopped egg and sauced everything with a vinaigrette. The tuna had fantastic flavor all by itself, and was made even better by the other ingredients.

As you can see, we had fun playing with various platings:



The vinaigrette consisted of oil, white wine vinegar, lemon, Dijon mustard, anchovy and minced shallot and garlic. We don't often make emulsified dressings, but we really enjoyed this one and found ourselves scraping every last morsel of salad from the plate.

Seared Scallops with Spicy Lentils


I was really pleased at how the half-moon presentation of the dish turned out. To be honest, though, I have to credit it more to affordance than inspiration. The simple fact was that the scallops we picked up (also from Bay Park Fish Company) were absolutely massive:



Cutting them up seemed the only sensible way to serve them (although we did sear them whole).

In addition, we did a sliced version that also worked really well. There was a great textural contrast between the harder-cooked and caramelized outer slices and the pristine inner slices:



The bright-yellow base underneath the scallop is a hugely aromatic and tasty mixture of red lentils and yellow split peas we often use with fish (you can find the recipe here). The flavoring is turmeric, cumin, ginger, lemon and cilantro.

Seafood Paella


This year's way of getting maximum fishes out of a reasonable number of dishes. The fish were shrimp, squid, asari clams, rock cod and lingcod. Some green beans and piquillo peppers rounded out the mix.

We initially under-measured the amount water in the rice which resulted in a longer than ideal cooking time for the seafood. Despite the mishap, it came out looking beautiful and tasting great. It was the first time we've made a seafood paella, but it certainly won't be the last.



So ends another fun, if a bit exhausting, "seven" fish feast. The final tally for this this year was 4 dishes and 8 fishes (10, if you count the varieties of oysters separately).

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If you enjoyed reading this, you may want to check out the posts on our previous Feast of the Seven Fishes meals:

2008 Feast of the Seven Fishes - Oysters with Vietnamese Ginger-Chili Mignonette. Cured Salmon Four Ways. Thai Steamed Mussels. Vietnamese Salad with Smoked Trout and Bitter Greens. Ginger Fish. Squid in Caramel Sauce. Napa Cabbage Soup with Shrimp Dumplings.

2007 Feast of the Seven Fishes -  Oysters with a Thai mignonette. Crispy Fish and Lentil Balls. Sardines on Toast. Yucatecan Squid Salad. Fish and Shellfish Stew.

The Sazerac Cocktail

The Sazerac is my hands-down favorite winter cocktail. Created in New Orleans in the 1830's, it is a delightful concoction of rye whiskey spiked with the complex aromatic flavors of anise liqueur and Peychaud's bitters (named for apothecary Antoine Peychaud who came up with both the recipe for the bitters and the cocktail itself).

I first discovered the Sazerac while doing research for a visit to New Orleans. We planned to try the cocktail at Napoleon House, but it was closed for a private party and we didn't quite manage to try the drink in its city of origin. In the end, I finally had my first Sazerac later on the same trip at City House in Nashville. I was an instant fan.



Originally made with cognac, the Sazerac is now made with rye whiskey. I generally use the appropriately named Sazerac Rye which is produced by Buffalo Trace Distillery (whose parent conglomerate now also control the Herbsaint and Peychaud's brands). I quite like the stuff, and enjoy it on its own when I'm too lazy to make a cocktail.

My version of the Sazerac is a bit stripped down from the official recipe. I omit the sugar, and I do not like to use a chilled glass (I have the same preference when making a Manhattan).

First up is the Herbsaint, an anise-flavored liqueur. I add just enough so that I can roll it around to create a coating on the inside of a whiskey glass.



I love the smell of the Herbsaint, and coating the glass with it brings out the aroma and helps it persist after the whiskey is added.

Next, a few drops of Peychaud's bitters:



The ruby-red color of the bitters instantly turn the color of the glass from lime-green to a burnished orange.



Then it is time for the whiskey. I generally pour in around two fingers worth, but I'm not at all fussy about the exact measure. The more whiskey, the less dominant the flavors of the Herbsaint and Peychaud's will be - I use more or less depending on my mood.

Then, it's down the hatch - tongue-tingling and belly-warming.



Cheers, and Happy Holidays!

Beef Short Rib Pot Pie

Who says pot pies have to be made with chicken? We love to take all sorts of savory fillings and encase them in flaky pastry. Most commonly, the filling is leftovers from some sort of braised dish.

A few days ago, we had short ribs for dinner, using Daniel Boulud's recipe from the excellent Café Boulud Cookbook (we also love the version in The Balthazar Cookbook). After a fantastic meal, we still had some of the rich sauce and lovely meat left over. Time for pot pies!

They start with savory shortcrust pastry (we like a mixture of butter and lard for the fat). The bottom crust gets pricked with a fork and par-baked in a 450°F oven for about 10 minutes:



For the filling, we took the already super-flavorful sauce from our leftover short ribs and added in some finely-diced and sautéed onion, carrot, mushroom and celery (with the leaves - don't leave out the leaves). We separately cooked a potato until just tender, and cut it into chunky pieces about the same size as our leftover bits of rib meat.



Then it was on with the pastry top and back into the same 450°F oven for about 15 minutes - until the crust was a beautiful golden brown.



And finally time to dig in:



The contents are always way too hot eat at first, but fortunately you have the top layer of pastry already cooling nicely so that you can flake off bits and dip them in the gravy.

Perfect, decadent winter meal.

Thanksgiving Stuffing Croquettes with a Gravy Center

While we often make a non-standard Thanksgiving meal, this year we did it pretty much straight-up traditional. The leftovers, on the other hand, we've been playing around with a bit.

Case in point, these stuffing croquettes. Think of them as Thanksgiving in a ball. A crispy, fried ball.

We took some leftover stuffing, mixed in some small bits of turkey and formed them into balls.



The gravy center was added to each ball by poking a hole, inserting a gravy "cube" (the gravy was set up well enough at fridge temperatures to be easy to work with) and then re-forming the ball.

They were then  coated in panko:



And fried in oil at a temperature of about 350°F until they were golden brown.



We initially tried a higher temperature, but the outside cooked before the gravy in the middle had time to melt. Although it was difficult to restrain ourselves from eating them straight out of the fryer, we found that it helped to let them rest for a few minutes to let the heat penetrate through.

This is what they came out looking like:



After being cut in half, the gravy oozes out of the center - like a savory take on a molten chocolate cake...



I think we've definitely got a fun new addition to our Thanksgiving leftover repertoire.