Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Manang to Mustang
I've finally made enough sense of the thousands of photos from my last Nepal trek to make a coherent slideshow. I took the time to add captions to each image, but unfortunately those don't appear in the little thumbnail slideshow at right. To see the thing properly, click on the title of this post to link to the corresponding photo album, and set up a slideshow there. It's worth it! (As of today--September 15th, 2009--I've just finished uploading all the photos with captions.)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Brewer's itch
Here we are--the second beverage related post in one day. It never rains but it pours, I guess.
I’ve been concocting again. It happens periodically, which is funny, because it used be an incessant state. I spent the better part of my college years in the kitchen, bottling beer and tending bubbling crocks of kraut and kombucha. Fermentation itself became an obsession (perhaps at the point when the kombucha mother colonized my central nervous system), and my habit reigned unchecked until a roommate drew the line at the vat of fermenting dumpster-dived bagels mouldering in a corner. The intended delicacy was a variation on kvass, the sour Russian breadcrust-based beverage. (Didn’t make it onto anyone’s list of three, I notice...) Among my prouder creations were a strong, Belgian Abbey style ale made from scratch with a healthy dose of dark maple syrup, a peach-ginger mead that could have passed for champagne, and a dark, half-sour ale that fueled another roommate’s mania for a month straight.
Like most of my obsessions that one eventually simmered down, though a bubble of lingering enthusiasm will rise the surface periodically and inspire me to get out the big brew pot or the mammoth mortar and pestle. The latest resurgence was spurred by a reference I came across recently to a liqueur made by suspending an orange above spirits in a closed jar. I loved the image and the promise of such a subtle infusion, and before I knew it I had filled half a dozen jars with a variety of alcoholic extracts ranging from syrupy to medicinal. My favorite so far is inspired by an Italian drain-cleaner strength digestive liquore called Cent’erbe (‘one hundred herbs’) that my father brought back from Italy once upon a time (he also once notoriously made a batch of garlic vodka, so perhaps these tendencies are genetic). The stuff was bright green and, at 80% abv, tended to peel a layer off your eyeballs. In high school we’d sneak a few ounces of it from the liquor cabinet, and mixed with in a Ninja turtles water bottle with grapefruit juice was enough to lubricate an entire teenage night on the town. The current version, which features a little of every aromatic herb I could find within a two minute walk of my house, promises to live up to its grandaddy in all but proof--100 proof vodka was the strongest base I could find. (The lady at the Price Chopper liquor department was mighty emphatic, too, when she informed me that no, they did not carry pure grain alcohol.) That one is clearly on the medicinal end of the spectrum, but even further out there is a cordial featuring traditional digestive and heart-tonic herbs: hawthorn berry, cardamom, and saffron. It’s cognac-base, and it’s going to get some honey after the infusion is complete. Should digest anything within five miles, including your stomach lining if you’re not careful.
The beauty of liquors, cordials, etc. is how easy they are to make. You can go from concept to execution in about 5 minutes--if you discount the few days, weeks or months it takes for the flavors to infuse and mellow out. The idea is the same as making an herbal tincture, only here the concentrations are much less intense. Basically, you take whatever you’re doing the flavoring with, put it in a jar, and pour some vodka, brandy, rum, or whatever over it. Taste periodically, and strain when you deem it strong enough. Sweeten if you like with simple syrup or honey. You can even add cream; the alcohol should preserve it. Other liquers currently liqueuring on my shelf include blackberry, coffee, and a bitter orange digestive. I’d offer up samples from the website, but Mac hasn’t made that technology public yet.
On a soberer note, one reason I’m confident that I’ve found my niche with herbal medicine is that it manages to integrate so many of the obsessions or hobbies I’ve nurtured over the course of my life: everything from foraging to gardening to cooking and brewing to collecting hot sauces (that was sixth grade?) fits neatly into the fold of traditional medicine. Meanwhile, doing it all for the sake of health puts a more positive spin on inclinations that could easily be put to less than wise use. In some parallel universe, perhaps, I might be running a meth lab right now.
Cent’erbe
ingredients:
-modest sprigs of eight or more fresh aromatic herbs, such as peppermint, basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, mugwort, marjoram, bee balm, hyssop, and fennel
-high-proof neutral grain alcohol. vodka is fine, but at least 100-proof is preferable. If you have access to Everclear or other really strong stuff, dilute it down to 65-80%.
Pick the herbs and put them in a clean jar that has a tight-fitting lid, such as a mason jar. Pour the spirits over them, stir or shake to get them wet, cap, and put somewhere out of direct light. Shake it up each day and start smelling/tasting it every day after the second or third day. Adjust herb amounts if necessary by adding more of things--you don’t want any one flavor to predominate. It should smell good and pungent, almost like turpentine. Strain and bottle, diluting with more alcohol and/or water if necessary. Will probably improve with age.
Fuoco Dell' Etna
This is an approximation of a souvenir liquor I brought back from the slopes of the active volacni Mount Etna, in Sicily. In seven or eight years my family never managed to get through the tiny novelty-sized bottle, so I used it to tincture up some bloodroot, an herb with a similarly firey character.
ingredients:
vodka or high-proof alcohol
atomic fireballs or other red, cinnamon-flavored candy
Soak/dissolve fireballs in the booze. put on a high shelf and forget about it.
(apologies for the lack of photos here--I just don't have any good shots of people drinking awful firewater floating around. I'll make up for it soon, however. )
I’ve been concocting again. It happens periodically, which is funny, because it used be an incessant state. I spent the better part of my college years in the kitchen, bottling beer and tending bubbling crocks of kraut and kombucha. Fermentation itself became an obsession (perhaps at the point when the kombucha mother colonized my central nervous system), and my habit reigned unchecked until a roommate drew the line at the vat of fermenting dumpster-dived bagels mouldering in a corner. The intended delicacy was a variation on kvass, the sour Russian breadcrust-based beverage. (Didn’t make it onto anyone’s list of three, I notice...) Among my prouder creations were a strong, Belgian Abbey style ale made from scratch with a healthy dose of dark maple syrup, a peach-ginger mead that could have passed for champagne, and a dark, half-sour ale that fueled another roommate’s mania for a month straight.
Like most of my obsessions that one eventually simmered down, though a bubble of lingering enthusiasm will rise the surface periodically and inspire me to get out the big brew pot or the mammoth mortar and pestle. The latest resurgence was spurred by a reference I came across recently to a liqueur made by suspending an orange above spirits in a closed jar. I loved the image and the promise of such a subtle infusion, and before I knew it I had filled half a dozen jars with a variety of alcoholic extracts ranging from syrupy to medicinal. My favorite so far is inspired by an Italian drain-cleaner strength digestive liquore called Cent’erbe (‘one hundred herbs’) that my father brought back from Italy once upon a time (he also once notoriously made a batch of garlic vodka, so perhaps these tendencies are genetic). The stuff was bright green and, at 80% abv, tended to peel a layer off your eyeballs. In high school we’d sneak a few ounces of it from the liquor cabinet, and mixed with in a Ninja turtles water bottle with grapefruit juice was enough to lubricate an entire teenage night on the town. The current version, which features a little of every aromatic herb I could find within a two minute walk of my house, promises to live up to its grandaddy in all but proof--100 proof vodka was the strongest base I could find. (The lady at the Price Chopper liquor department was mighty emphatic, too, when she informed me that no, they did not carry pure grain alcohol.) That one is clearly on the medicinal end of the spectrum, but even further out there is a cordial featuring traditional digestive and heart-tonic herbs: hawthorn berry, cardamom, and saffron. It’s cognac-base, and it’s going to get some honey after the infusion is complete. Should digest anything within five miles, including your stomach lining if you’re not careful.
The beauty of liquors, cordials, etc. is how easy they are to make. You can go from concept to execution in about 5 minutes--if you discount the few days, weeks or months it takes for the flavors to infuse and mellow out. The idea is the same as making an herbal tincture, only here the concentrations are much less intense. Basically, you take whatever you’re doing the flavoring with, put it in a jar, and pour some vodka, brandy, rum, or whatever over it. Taste periodically, and strain when you deem it strong enough. Sweeten if you like with simple syrup or honey. You can even add cream; the alcohol should preserve it. Other liquers currently liqueuring on my shelf include blackberry, coffee, and a bitter orange digestive. I’d offer up samples from the website, but Mac hasn’t made that technology public yet.
On a soberer note, one reason I’m confident that I’ve found my niche with herbal medicine is that it manages to integrate so many of the obsessions or hobbies I’ve nurtured over the course of my life: everything from foraging to gardening to cooking and brewing to collecting hot sauces (that was sixth grade?) fits neatly into the fold of traditional medicine. Meanwhile, doing it all for the sake of health puts a more positive spin on inclinations that could easily be put to less than wise use. In some parallel universe, perhaps, I might be running a meth lab right now.
Cent’erbe
ingredients:
-modest sprigs of eight or more fresh aromatic herbs, such as peppermint, basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, mugwort, marjoram, bee balm, hyssop, and fennel
-high-proof neutral grain alcohol. vodka is fine, but at least 100-proof is preferable. If you have access to Everclear or other really strong stuff, dilute it down to 65-80%.
Pick the herbs and put them in a clean jar that has a tight-fitting lid, such as a mason jar. Pour the spirits over them, stir or shake to get them wet, cap, and put somewhere out of direct light. Shake it up each day and start smelling/tasting it every day after the second or third day. Adjust herb amounts if necessary by adding more of things--you don’t want any one flavor to predominate. It should smell good and pungent, almost like turpentine. Strain and bottle, diluting with more alcohol and/or water if necessary. Will probably improve with age.
Fuoco Dell' Etna
This is an approximation of a souvenir liquor I brought back from the slopes of the active volacni Mount Etna, in Sicily. In seven or eight years my family never managed to get through the tiny novelty-sized bottle, so I used it to tincture up some bloodroot, an herb with a similarly firey character.
ingredients:
vodka or high-proof alcohol
atomic fireballs or other red, cinnamon-flavored candy
Soak/dissolve fireballs in the booze. put on a high shelf and forget about it.
(apologies for the lack of photos here--I just don't have any good shots of people drinking awful firewater floating around. I'll make up for it soon, however. )
Nectars of the Gods
^What's he thirsty for?
I’ve been spreading the word about the cow with the soda-fountain udder, and everyone wants a piece of the action. I’ve managed to pop the question to a few dozen folks over the last few weeks, and preliminary results are interesting. But before examining the hottest trends, a little philosophizing is in order.
The quandary, as I see it, is this: one wants at the very least something caffeinated, something alcoholic, something refreshing, and something hot. It’s also nice to have something nourishing. I don’t meant to go any further than this with the psychologizing, but it probably says a lot about someone which of these they opt for, or which they try and combine. for example, I made my alcoholic drink and my refreshing drink one and the same: Chang is a milky rice beer that they make in Nepal. The Newari style, or my favorite example of it (which comes from a hole-in-the-wall in Naradevi) is slightly tart and slightly sweet with a bit of spritz to it. It’s great by itself as a snack or a refreshment and goes well with all sorts of food. As for my other choices, milk is nature’s perfect drink, and can be served up hot or cold. After much deliberation (and a recent bout of over-caffeination) I replaced green tea with tulsi, which is a kind of basil native to India. Really good tulsi tea is divine and could even be iced, if this temperature-fiddling isn’t against my own rules. Sure, there would be times when I craved an IPA, a glass of red wine, or some juice. But I could drink good chang almost anytime, and for fruit juice i’d just eat the fruit. The mouth: nature’s juicer.
My runners up: green tea, salty lassi, Samuel Smith’s oatmeal stout, a good dry red wine (like Salice Salentino). If we’re going to get outlandish, I mean more than we already have, I’d throw in a dessert wine like Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. But that was the point: you have to choose three. Never again shall I taste yr sweet nectar...
So much for my logic. The masses have spoken (yes, those screaming hordes at my doorstep), and the most popular responses are: coffee in various forms (15), beer (10), red wine (8), whiskey (5), grapefruit juice (3). Only one person for orange juice, but lots of people had some kind of juice (total 10). 14 out of 33, almost half, included milk or another dairy product, even if only in their coffee or tea. No one mentioned hot chocolate--but I didn’t conduct this survey in the winter. No one said breast milk, but I didn’t ask any infants.
One-time only answers include: chocolate soy milk, pepsi in a glass bottle, gin and tonic, gatorade, ginger ale, Nepali millet beer, rooibos tea, and mango lassi.
Interestingly, no one took the luxury approach and named, say, vintage champagne or really fancy wine. Goes to show good taste don’t have to be expensive. Neither does bad taste, weird taste, or complete lack of taste. (One respondent, Chris Edley III, did pick a single malt scotch, but later changed it to a cheap bourbon for reasons best known to himself.)
It was predictably common for someone to rattle off three of their favorite drinks after a moment’s consideration, only to realize with a start that they’d forgotten coffee.
Now for the awards:
Most Batshit Insane goes out to The Boat, who chose raw goat’s milk, kombucha and everclear. Boat also tried to name raw honey, until I told him he could have honey even without naming it as one of his three.
Most whiskey-loving goes to Ezra who picked bourbon and scotch for two out of his allotted three.
Most beer-loving goes to Ben M who named IPA and “a good stout” and was stumped to come up with a third.
Most weirdly counterbalanced to Toby Louis David, orator extraordinaire, who chose coconut water, yerba mate, and rye whiskey. Toby’s got his bases covered.
Most desert island-friendly goes to Angela, what with her pineapple juice, coconut milk, and lemonade. You can spot a californian a mile away.
Most eclectic goes to Orion, with Anchor porter, sugarcane juice, and Pu Erh tea.
Most concocted goes to Alden, who included “amla-rhododendron-lemon juice sweetened with agave nectar” as one of his selections, g_d love him.
Most sarcastic goes to J-will, who without missing a beat responded “any three -tinis.” My special contempt goes out to you, J-will, as you will have to suffer for the rest of your days as I make you every kind of -tini you never dreamed of: mochatini, smokatini, gropatini, blokatini... the list goes on.
Congratulations to the winners, especially since neither they nor I knew this was a contest. Any of them are hereby invited to buttonhole me for a free drink any time.
I would be interested to hear what people would choose if we put a localvore-type constraint on this, limiting the choices to beverages produced within one’s local area (bioregion, say, or 100-mile radius, whichever is smaller). Every single ingredient need not be local, but the production should be. If you’re mixing it up yourself, all of the ingredients should be readily available. Here in Northeastern Vermont, my candidates are apple cider, switchel (that’s “water seasoned to taste” with cider vinegar and maple syrup or honey), cow’s milk, and the Double Bag ale or a local IPA. There’s a vodka distillery nearby, but that’s the one kind of booze I never could abide. Go figger. Offbeat choices would include rhubarb wine, mead, pickle juice (Tev? anyone?), a pickletini, fresh maple sap or even straight maple syrup.
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