How To Drink
This week may turn out to be all about drinking. December isn’t the worst time of year to dedicate a week to the subject. I mean, there are all of those holiday parties and family gatherings. And up in Albany it’s getting dark before 5 p.m. So if you are one of those people who wait until the sun goes down before you indulge in a tipple, December brings added joy.
“But wait,” you say. “I already know how to drink.”
Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t.
It never even occurred to me that people might need guidance on this subject until I bought a loved one a lovely bottle of Bonny Doon Framboise – a luscious raspberry dessert wine that pairs amazingly with chocolate. And when I asked her how she liked the wine, she hedged.
“It was a little bit sharp.”
Sharp?!?
After some further investigation it turned out the problem wasn’t the wine, it was her.
She was drinking it wrong.
Bringing Home Cornelius
Last week, I wrote about my excitement for the impending release of Harvest Spirits’ first batch of applejack. Yesterday was the first day their Cornelius Applejack was available for sale, and I was among the first to buy a bottle of the stuff.
If you live in or around Albany, you have no excuse not to visit the distillery. The fact that this traditional but long-abandoned use for apples is being resurrected in our backyard is very special.
Part of me feared that people would be lining up early to get their hands on one of the few hundred bottles from the first batch. But in reality, people don’t buy booze on a snowy Tuesday before noon. So I had the place mostly to myself, and got to talk for a while with Derek and Collin about their work and their plans for the future.
But first let me tell you a little about the booze.
Ask The Profussor – Where Did November Go?
Seriously, the last time I did this was October 21st. That means I completely missed this feature in the month of November. How could that have possibly happened? Well, it was a big month.
November included the biggest week the FLB has seen since its launch seven months ago (thanks to All Over Albany and the Times Union) and drove the site to its biggest monthly volume to date. We are getting more and more subscribers to RSS feeds, fans on Facebook, followers on Twitter, and most importantly commenters.
I have been trying to be better about answering questions and responding to comments as they are posted. But these semi-regular columns allow me to catch up on things that somehow fell through the cracks. Now onto the questions.
Good Things With Bad Raps
Building off of yesterday’s post about Beaujolais Nouveau, I figured I would continue the theme of good things that get a bad rap.
There are plenty of them. And I could probably pack a month’s worth of posts under that theme. But there is a tool in my kitchen that falls under this category that I have been meaning to write about for some time. The problem is, it seems rather unlikely that someone as fussy as me would own this device, much less use it frequently.
I’ll come right out and say it. I love my slow cooker.
Some Good News
I feel compelled to write this down in some central location where I can refer to it again and again. Because people keep asking, “Why does everyone hate Beaujolais Nouveau?”
And I have my answer. But eventually one gets tired of writing the same diatribe over and over again. So in the future, when somebody asks the question—and it may not happen again until around this time next year—I’ll just be able to point them to this post.
I’m going to lay it down right here, right now.
How Do You Like Them Apples?
Every now and again I have a food-related pipe dream.
The first one was a desire to raise sheep in Pennsylvania.
Then I wanted to be a cheesemaker in California.
More recently I wanted to recreate the great American spirit.
You may ask yourself, “What is the great American spirit?”
You may say to yourself, “Where did that spirit go to?”
Well, the great American spirit was applejack.
It was the most popular tipple in the country a long long time ago, and for a pretty good reason. This was apple country. Transporting a cart full of apples isn’t easy, and it’s not nearly as lucrative as transporting a cart full of distilled apple cider. So wherever you found apples, you would certainly find applejack.
But today it’s mostly gone. There is one major producer in New Jersey, Laird’s. And while it is widely distributed, it’s not terribly special. Which is why I was so excited to get an email from the distiller at the nearby Harvest Spirits.
It Wouldn’t Be Thanksgiving
Did I ever tell you I’m my mother’s hippy lovechild? Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. My mother was a hippy and my father played folk songs on the guitar. But they were married.
As much as I am no hippy, I still have a bit of a soft spot for the movement. And today, I play folk songs on my father’s old guitar.
Thanksgiving is the perfect time for this song. And every year at this time it is played on the radio, but there may be some of you out there who have never heard it. Or people who may have heard a little bit of it, but never really listened to the whole song.
Plus I have no idea what station might play it in Albany, if it is even played at all.
So here I will start a little FLB holiday tradition of our own. It’s a long song. A long long song. That has now been sung for an even longer time. So maybe sit down and take a break with the video, if you have an 18 minute window in your cooking schedule. Or maybe after your meal, when you are feeling sluggish and don’t want to talk with your family, excuse yourself and watch these eighteen minutes and thirty six seconds.
Because it is a fun song. It is a classic song. But it is also an important song. It all starts on Thanksgiving, and I like to listen to it every year.
Hope you enjoy the song and have a wonderful holiday.
Hunting and Gathering
It’s time to batten down the hatches. People get crazy in the days before and after Thanksgiving. My plan is to stay in the house for the next few days and emerge on Saturday to a world that has gotten the first panicked frenzy of holiday shopping out of its system.
If you are going out grocery shopping today or tomorrow, God help you.
Hopefully after the past two days of food and beverage shopping my larder is all stocked up for the holiday meal and any potential contingencies. Because there is little I hate more than crowds.
There were a few things I learned while out shopping that I wanted to share.
The Centerpiece of Thanksgiving
Yesterday I mentioned that the traditional roast turkey was merely the canvas for the Thanksgiving meal, and that today I would reveal my thoughts on the true culinary centerpiece of the event.
Otis wisely reminded me that not all turkeys are created equal. And again, he is correct. When I talk turkey, I am talking about the broad-breasted white that represents something like 99% of turkeys consumed in the world.
However, there is still an argument to be made that even if you have a tastier roast bird on the table, the centerpiece of the meal is the stuffing. After all, the stuffing goes inside the bird. That is, if you like to live dangerously. And it gets imbued with all the tasty drippings of the turkey. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.
A few of you may be shaking your heads in disbelief. Which says to me that you have never had good stuffing.
Bird Eating
Sure it’s turkey season. Everyone is gearing up towards Thursday. They are picking up their pre-ordered fresh birds, defrosting frozen ones, getting a brine bath ready, or attempting a dry-brine possibly for the first time.
I prefer to be a guest and bring wine for the holiday. But this year because of family illness I may be sitting this one out.
So I am contemplating what to make for a small informal thanksgiving at home. And really the answer could not be clearer to me. Roast chicken. Chicken, especially a smaller 3-3 ½ pound chicken, is really the perfect balance between meat and skin. You might be able to make a case for slightly smaller game birds, but it would be difficult.
Turkeys clearly don’t have enough skin. It’s just a sad and regrettable fact. Even a smaller turkey will yield piles of meat, but only a few precious strips of crisp delicious skin. I’m no slave to convention. Besides, anyone who tells you that Thanksgiving is all about the turkey is full of poppycock. The turkey is beautiful eye candy. It is a great symbol of abundance, and at one point was a strong contender for our national bird.
But turkey itself is merely the canvas for the rest of the meal: the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the gravy, the potatoes, etcetera. Tomorrow I will tell you what single item I believe to be the centerpiece of the meal.
For now I would rather focus on my chicken.
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