Beer garden food: Pickle dip and horseradish deviled eggs

Last year I ran across a book about German beer gardens, which sounded like a truly wonderful institution to me: You get to bring your own picnic and then you buy the local beer to go with it. Perfect for someone like me.


I thought, if only we could have those here. And then I realized, we actually sort of do. Those super small taproom operations that don't offer food but let you bring your own are really the same concept. Which is funny, because when I first encountered taprooms without food I was somehow not in favor, not realizing the possibilities, and also not knowing if people actually really did bring their own food or just go to the food truck du jour.   

Then we realized that we could actually walk to Venn Brewing. It's a bit of a trek, but then you can just walk it off on the way home. And yes, people did indeed bring their food and there were picnic tables. Eureka: a beer garden.

That discovery had me scouting out recipes that would make good beer garden fodder, and these two made the cut. Sadly, now Venn is closed at the moment, but someday we can hope all our beer brewing establishments can safely reopen.

In the meantime, many local breweries are delivering or offering curbside pickup. You can find a list here. Prost.


Janet’s Mom’s Dill Pickle Dip

From "Season: A Year of Wine CountryFood" by Justin Wangler. You might expect something fancier-pants from a cookbook about wine country, but this plays well in beer land, too.

Ingredients

1½ cups firmly packed, finely grated and well-drained dill pickles

1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

¾ cup mayonnaise

½ cup sour cream

2 teaspoons powdered ranch seasoning mix

Potato chips for dipping

Method

Use a box grater to grate pickles. Drain on paper towels.

Mix all ingredients (except chips). Chill. Tastes best if made a day ahead, and it keeps well.

Rating: Like most non-high-brow bar food, really, really tasty and fairly addictive. We used a really tasty pickle from Hazelwood Creek via the Midtown Farmers Market, and I suspect the quality of the pickle really makes a difference here.  Good with chips, but also made a killer bread spread for BLT sandwiches. Definitely a recipe to pull out for those of us who might over-supply ourselves with refrigerator pickles in the summer and need to use them up before putting up the next year's crop.




This next recipe started life as deconstructed deviled eggs, or “undeviled.” The horseradish mixture just got drizzled over the top as a dressing and then the whole mess was anointed with herbs. It was fine, and certainly less fussy then actually mixing the yoke with the dressing. But I found myself thinking that it would actually be much tastier with the dressing incorporated with the cooked yokes. So I tried it again, deviling the eggs

 Undeviled eggs with herbs and horseradish

Adapted from "Season: A Year of Wine CountryFood" by Justin Wangler

Ingredients
8 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and sliced in half

¼ cup neutral flavored oil

1 tablespoon prepared horseradish

1 ½ tablespoons Champagne vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Zest of 1 lemon

3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

2 green onions, thinly sliced

½ cup assorted herb leaves

Method 1
Mix oil, horseradish, vinegar and mustard together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Drizzle over eggs. Sprinkle with lemon zest and fresh herbs.

Method 2
Mix  oil, horseradish, vinegar, mustard and lemon zest together. Season with salt and pepper. Remove egg yokes from eggs and place in a bowl. Mix in dressing until you achieve desired consistency (I ended up with a bit leftover). Fill egg whites with egg yolk mixture. Garnish with chives (I skipped the abundance of herbs).

Rating: Fine enough undeviled, but it's not particularly looky. Inhalable as filled deviled eggs.