blood’s a rover

Last Saturday I attended the 2nd Annual “Portland’s Cheers To Belgian Beers” Festival, which was held at Roots Brewing.

Having been to Belgium (and going back in December), I am always forced to compare “Belgian-style” American beers with my vivid memories of the real thing. And it’s almost never a favorable comparison. For most American brewers, “Belgian-style” simply means using Brettanomyces as their fermenting yeast, which imbues the beers with a number of unique flavors, including bananna, bubble gum, and clove.

The problem is, most Belgian beer doesn’t taste like that.

Belgian beer is almost always much subtler in flavor, complex, and higher in alcohol than most “Belgian-style” beers I’ve encountered. The Portland “Cheers to Belgian Beers” had some standouts among the 15 beers being poured, but they really needed to be judged and enjoyed on their own merits, and not as attempts to reproduce something that, in my opinion, simply cannot be duplicated (or, for that matter, improved).

Results:

Most Favorite: Lucky Lab Malt Bomb
(mostly for being unique and delicious, it also ended up winning the judging this year)

Honorable Mentions:
Alameda Lucky Devil
Hopworks El Diablo
McMenamin’s Gulden Tijger (the only McMenamins beer that has ever impressed me)
Roots Farmhouse Brown (very respectable)

Meh:
All the rest.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Staged!PDX’s youth production of Les Misérables. While it did not have the spectacular stage production of the original, it was still well produced, and most of the kids did a fantastic job- some more than others.

The actor who played Jean Valjean, Morgan Mallory was a real standout, while the guy who played Javert was always just off enough on his timing, singing, and emoting to be distracting. The Master of the House and his wife mugged appropriately, and Eponine totally nailed “On My Own”.

Honestly, the fact that the entire production starred children and young adults was not nearly as strange as you might imagine- I mean, Broadway musicals are already so, so contrived and distant from reality that a young cast was barely noticable. Now what I’d really like to see is a production of Cats starring trained, costumed cats. I can imagine picking up a Playbill for cat’s Cats and finding a insert sheet that read:

“Tonight, the role of Grizabella will be played by Peaches.”

That would be great.

Lovely (Freshman) Ladies

That’s right kids, pro-JECT!

Marius is an idiot.

Vague Recipes is a series of posts where I tell you how to make something delicious in as simple a manner as possible. 

Buy:
Some avocados
Some shrimp
Some cilantro
Some green onions
Some limes
Some chili peppers
A mango

-Peel and slice everything up. Squeeze a bunch of lime juice into a bowl. Add some sugar and salt to the lime juice and stir.

-Cook the shrimp.

-Combine everything together, tossing to coat. Don’t overdo it or you will end up with Mango Shrimp Guacamole, although worse things could happen, I suppose.

EAT!

Youth Center, 4.6.08

Bonus PotW!

Hyperspace
(a pair of diffraction glasses + DJ Philip Sherburne mixing things up)

Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Is there anything better than pork? Probably not. And if this website is any indication, I’m not alone in that opinion. And it was definitely shared by Spain, where cured pig legs are as numerous as attractive brunettes. Known there as Jamón, it is sold in grocery stores (hoof still attached), added to dishes that were already delicious, and hung from the ceiling of delicatessens with paper cones hanging from them to catch the fat that would otherwise drip onto customers like a greasy rain.

I’m mentioning this because the undisputed pinnacle of pork products, Jamón Ibérico, has only recently been made available for import to the United States, and it remains a little bit difficult to find.

From Foodandwine.com: “Thanks to Taylor Griffin, 35, jamón ibérico, the long-banned ham from Spain’s centuries-old breed of ibérico hogs, will soon make its way stateside. Last year, Griffin, president of the Rogers Collection in Portland, Maine, received a call from famed Washington, DC-based Spanish chef José Andrés, telling him that Embutidos Fermín, the first USDA-approved ibérico producer, was ready to start exporting. Griffin got on a plane and days later signed an agreement to be its exclusive U.S. importer. He debuted the meaty ibérico chorizo and lomo, dry-cured pork loin, last summer at tienda.com and is preparing for the spring 2007 launch of jamón ibérico, the ultimate ibérico delicacy.”

Last week I discovered that Pastaworks, my favorite neighborhood high-end grocery, is stocking it. It costs $95 per pound. And when I jokingly asked Dave the butcher for a sample, he did something unexpected: he gave me one.

I had jamón ibérico while in Spain, but even then I don’t recall the quality being so good. Dave told me that he and the boss have been disagreeing about whether or not samples can be given- Dave, with the street honed wisdom of a crack dealer, argues that people won’t pay for something without trying it first. And you know what? Dave is right. Because before trying it, it was very difficult for me to justify paying that much for what, essentially, is a slice of ham.

But now I need more. Just a taste. Just enough to get me through the day.

(Because finding the pictures above required me to view images a lot of other great Spanish food, I couldn’t resist adding a few non-pork pics for good measure.)

(Photo of LAST Week, sorry for the delay)

Stained glass detail, First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Oregon

I’ve been developing quite a relationship with the ladies over at the Alaska Air Partner Desk these last couple of days.

First I was going to fly in and out of Moscow at the end of the year. Then I was going to fly into Moscow and out of Frankfurt. And now, just like Napoleon’s army in 1812, I’ve decided to flee the Russian winter altogether and head for Brussels instead.

Why? Because I was only planning to spend five or six days in Russia, and all the hoops you have to jump through (and their associated fees) to obtain tourist and transit visas are just too numerous to bother with for that short of a visit.

So now I’m looking at something like: Brussels-Dresden-Prague-Budapest-Vienna-Salzburg-Munich-Frankfurt, spending a couple days exploring each location.

If I can see all that, I’m alright with putting off St. Petersburg for another time. “I’m going to Russia in December” did have a certain ring to it, though.