Lake Superior's milder cousin

The view of Lake Michigan out the motel window was just dandy, as was falling asleep listening to the waves.

We just got back from what turned out to be more or less an extended beer run to Wisconsin. We had time for a mini vacation, and opted for Door County, where we'd never been.

We default to Superior's North Shore, for good reason. It's much closer to us, has much more dramatic, spectacular scenery and is a tad cooler and (slightly) fewer bugs. That said, I can see the appeal of Door County if you live closer and Lake Michigan's West Shore is your lake break option. Very different character, though, with more golf courses/wineries/shopping and far fewer aging hippies or adventure-minded hipsters. Dave described it as the Okoboji area writ large. I'm glad we went during the shoulder season gap between the hordes of summer visitors and throngs of fall color season tourists.

We chose our destination and motel at the last minute, an arbitrary decision based on which town seemed to have the brewing company with the most promising beer list and then googling motel and "lake view" in that town. That landed us on the island's quiet side at the Beachfront Inn in Bailey's Harbor, which is like the Shoreline of Door County, so it suited us just fine. Great view, minimal but comfortable accommodations, a nice fire lit every night on the beach where guests make mildly awkward but pleasant conversation and get a fantastic view of the night sky. (Oh, and it's dog friendly, so be prepared to be sniffed and have petting opportunities.)

It was an easy stroll to Door County Brewing, where we happily hung out and added more brewvenirs to the cooler. We bopped over to the other side of the island for lunch (Shipwrecked Brewing) and supper (Wild Tomato's wood-fired pizza, try the Paisano), interspersed by attempts to hike it off.

We came home with a full cooler, with a stop at Red Eye Brewing Co. in Wausau. It's a three-hour drive from the Cities, which makes a good breaking spot on the long trip, and they make quite nice beer and food. With the right road burner, I could see buzzing over for lunch, providing we can get a smallish cooler in the saddlebags for more brewvenirs.

And now reality awaits and I'm just trying not to spend time googling how to retire early. (Short answer: Spend less, save more. It's about as likely to happen as eat less, exercise more. Both are good advice, but no fun.)

And this is the view of the sunrise shot through the window because I didn't wake up quite early enough to run outside.

Roasted garlic beer cheese dip

 

One of the main football-watching food groups seems to be something questionable involving molten cheese and another is beer, so naturally you combine them if possible.

I was looking for a slightly better version of a beer cheese dip, and ran across this one on the Beeroness site, an online repository devoted to the intersection of food and craft beer. I filed it away under recipes to possibly try for a game day, noting that I had most of the ingredients on hand already, which isn't surprising since it involves many of my usual suspects. 

Oddly, the one thing we didn't have was a Saison or an IPA, the odds of which seem slim in our house, but Dude: inventory control. We were at South Lyndale remedying that shortcoming and other deficiencies when I happened to notice the very beer (Saison du BUFF) she was raving about having used in the dip. 

Sign taken.

Roasted garlic and Parmesan beer cheese dip

From thebeeroness.com

Ingredients

2 heads of garlic, roasted and peeled

12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

1¾ cups grated Parmesan cheese, divided

6 ounces grated smoked Gouda

1 cup beer (she calls for a Saison or IPA)

1 teaspoon Sriracha

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

1 tablespoon cornstarch

¼ chopped green onions

Method

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix cream cheese and roasted garlic in a food processor. Add 1½ cups grated Parmesan cheese, Gouda, beer, Sriracha, salt, pepper and cornstarch. Blend well.

Pour into a medium baking dish. Top with remaining ¼ cup grated Parmesan. Bake for 35 minutes or so until golden and puffy. Top with green onions and serve warm.

Note: To roast garlic, score the top tip of the head all the way around the outside, not cutting through. Place each head on a square of tin foil. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Wrap up in foil and bake for 30 minutes at 425. When cool enough to handle, squeeze out pulp and discard skins.

Rating: It's tasty melted cheese. I felt like it wants just a bit more garlic? But no one will complain if you serve this because it's not polite to snark about food with your mouth full of hot tasty cheese.

Now about that beer: I thought the description had been a tad glowing, as craft beer sites are wont to be. It often seems as if they've run out of adjectives and only hyperbole remains. But. She was not wrong. This is a really, really, really nice beer that I wouldn't tell you about but I'm pretty sure no one is really reading this anyway so the secret is safe. It's a combined release in stages from three breweries; the current one is from Dogfish Head. It's brewed with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. No, it does not taste like stuffing, but you could drink it with that. Or with pretty much anything, because it's food friendly. Wonder if the house brewmaster would care to experiment with our own herbs next year?

Tomato beer puttanesca sauce

Pasta with tomato-beer puttanesca sauce

Adapted from Saveur’s “The New Classics Cookbook”

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil

¼ cup capers

8 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, chopped

8 cloves garlic, smashed

6 oil-packed anchovy fillets, chopped

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (the original called for 4 Fresno chiles, but this was literally all I had in the house)

8 gherkins, chopped

2 red onions, chopped

1 28-ounce can tomatoes in juice

1 bottle dark malty beer

¾ cup chopped Kalamata olives

1 pound dried pasta, cooked to al dente

8 caper berries for garnish

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Method

Heat oil in four-quarter saucepan. Add capers, garlic, anchovies, red pepper flakes, gherkins and red onions. Cook over medium heat until onions are softened. Add tomatoes, breaking up pieces, and beer. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1½ hours over medium-low heat, or until sauce is thickened.

Remove from heat. Puree sauce in a blender or food processor. Return to pan, add kalamatas and keep warm while you cook pasta.

Add drained cooked pasta to pot. Add some of pasta cooking liquid as needed to make desired sauce consistency. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve topped with caper berries and parsley.

Rating: Fine. A duskier, deeper and less brash flavor than your standard puttanesca sauce. It's the non fast-food version of the usual quick fix designed for, um,post-night shift. It was fine enough, but not sure it really brought enough to the party to justify the extra time. But the Warsteiner Dunkel we bought to use in this was tasty.

Beer-brined rosemary chicken and root vegetable mash with beer butter

One of the hazards/opportunities of living with a home brewer is that every once in a while a bottle fails to carbonate. At that point, it gets labeled as a cooking beer and goes into a carbonnade or gets used to stew chicken breasts in an herbal broth.

Luckily, there are other cooks who specialize in the cooking with beer category. Here are a few new recipes I've tried lately. Prosit.

Beer-brined roasted rosemary chicken

Adapted from thebeeroness.com. Note that this recipe requires starting hours ahead.

Ingredients

2 pounds chicken thighs (I used dark meat)

kosher salt

1 bottle of beer

¼ cup olive oil

3 garlic cloves, pressed

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

½ teaspoon pepper

Method

Sprinkle chicken with salt on all sides. Place in a large bowl. Pour beer over the top. Cover and marinate for 1 to 6 hours. Remove chicken from beer; pat dry.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place chicken on a rimmed baking sheet. Stir together olive oil, garlic, rosemary and pepper. Rub mixture over chicken. Roast for 30 minutes or until well browned and cooked through.

Rating: Very repeatable, basic food. Would pair well with the following:

 

Slow cooker whipped root vegetable mash with herb beer butter

Adapted from cookingandbeer.com. Again, you'll want to start this earlier in the day. Don't let the potentially sharp turnips put you off of this one; they get tempered nicely by the sweeter parsnips and fresh-tasting celery root. Yes, I know celery root looks like a Maurice Sendak creature, but just cut off the dirty, gnarly bits and you'll be rewarded.

Ingredients

1 pound turnips, peeled and chopped

4 parsnips, peeled and chopped

1 celery root, ugly bits lopped off and the rest chopped

2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 head of garlic, cloves peeled

1 cup water

½ cup sour cream

3 tablespoons of milk

1 cup butter

½ cup beer (we used some of Dave's basil-weizen in keeping with the herbal theme)

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon fresh oregano and/or marjoram

½ teaspoon coarse salt, plus more to taste

Method

Put turnips, parsnips, celery root, potatoes and garlic in a large slow cooker. Add 1 cup water. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover and cook for 6 to 8 hours on low (or 3 to 4 on high) until vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a small saucepan. Add beer, fresh herbs and ½ teaspoon salt. Let cook for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Transfer vegetables from crockpot to a serving/mixing bowl. Add the sour cream and milk, beating in with a handheld electric mixer until smooth. Add enough beer butter to reach desired consistency. You can use the rest to drizzle on top or for another use. Surely you can think of ways to use a substance that combines beer and butter?

Rating: Quite nice, repeatable home comfort food.

Grilled cheese panini and chili

Cooking can get you what you need in life. That’s more or less the underlying message of a couple of cookbooks I’ve been reading lately, starting with Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year.” Unlike most cookbooks where you skip the forward and skim through the recipes, this is a book you read, almost as much as it is a cookbook. It follows the longtime Gourmet magazine editor’s journey of recovery in the kitchen after Condé Nast abruptly pulled the plug on that bastion of all things food-related.

It’s one of those books that make me pause frequently while reading because it resonates perhaps a bit too much. Any journalist who has been herded en masse into a cold dark conference room to hear the latest grim news that presages mass job losses can relate. But it’s also a very hopeful book, with the power of cooking pulling her out of the darkest hours. She’s saved by the rhythmic comfort of cooking, the rituals of gathering the best of the season and translating it into simply good food. It makes me want to play hooky and go on a shopping tour of all the food purveyors of the city.

Reichl’s cookbook is filled with lush photography of the country and food. My only nit: the gimmick of tweets quoted at the beginning of each entry gets old about half way through her “year,” but it’s a small gripe about an otherwise great book. If you try this cookbook and want to learn more about how Reichl turned into the kind of cook she is, her memoir “Tender at the Bone” is an entertaining read as well. 

Reichl’s approach to cooking doesn’t begrudge effort, but it isn’t exacting about detail or ingredients. The recipes enable flexibility to cook with what’s at hand to achieve the food you want to eat. That’s appropriate for these two recipes I tried first, chosen because I had the ingredients more or less on hand on one of those no-way-in-hell-am-I-going-outside recent weekends.

The diva of grilled cheese

Adapted from Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year”

Ingredients

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 garlic cloves, minced

4 green onions chopped fine, or the white parts of a small leek

2 large shallots, chopped fine

1½ cups grated cheddar, divided (use the tastiest you can find)

4 slices sourdough bread

Butter and mayonnaise

Method

Mix together the chopped onion, shallots and garlic. (Basically she suggests chopping up whatever oniony items you’ve got handy.) Add all but 2 tablespoons of the cheese and toss mixture together.

Spread one side of each piece of bread with butter. (OK, so there was no softened butter in my stone-cold house, so I used aioli. I know how to cheat.) Spread mayonnaise thinly on the outside of the bread to help keep it from sticking to the grill. Divide the cheese mixture in half and put on two slices of bread. Top with remaining bread slices. Press a tablespoon of grated cheese firmly onto the tops of the sandwiches. Place on heated griddle (or in a panini press, as I did) and grill about four minutes a side until the cheese is “softly melted,” as she so wonderfully puts it.

Rating: Makes two ooey-gooey cheese sandwiches. Much as I loved the combination of Campbell’s tomato soup and Velveeta grilled cheese sammies as a child, this is a version worth growing up for. The best touch is what happens to that layer of cheese on the outside, which turns into a golden brown layer that's become part of the bread. Dave’s take: “I guess unemployment is good for something.” 

 

Basic chili

Adapted from “My Kitchen Year,” by Ruth Reichl. She includes a recipe for making your own chili powder, but I didn’t have those ingredients on hand so I can’t vouch for the element she feels is key. I was just congratulating myself on having fresh oregano growing in the basement and some of the summer’s tomatoes in the freezer since I was out of canned.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 medium onions, diced

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves, chopped if they’re large

1 tablespoon chili powder, divided

1 teaspoon cumin

1 pound ground beef (she used bison; I used some nice lean meat from Hilltop)

3 chipotle chiles in adobe sauce

28 ounces of canned tomatoes

1 12-ounce bottle of dark beer

1 cup chicken stock

1½ cup cooked black beans

2 ounces dark chocolate, optional

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, optional

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until tender. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add oregano, 2 teaspoons chili powder, cumin and salt and pepper. Add ground beef and cook until no longer pink, stirring to break up the chunks. Puree the chipotle chiles. Add to pot along with tomatoes and remaining chili powder. Add beer and broth. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add beans, and chocolate and balsamic vinegar, if using, and simmer for another 10 minutes to let flavors meld.

Rating: It’s a decent chili, which I’d say serves about 6. Perhaps not the best I’ve ever made, but it was reasonably tasty. The original recipe calls for even more chipotles, but that was all I had in the house, and I think any more adobe would have overwhelmed the flavor. If I try it again, I think I’d opt for more chili powder and slightly less chipotle.

If you want to see her chili powder recipe, click here.