Amsterdam's Canals: A Drunkard's Deathtrap

Understand that Amsterdam is one of my most favorite cities in the world. In fact, when I lived in Philadelphia, I kept a bag packed for those weekends when roundtrip airfare to Amsterdam dropped under $200. It didn't happen often, but when it did, I knew I'd soon be eating breakfast at Cafe Luxembourg overlooking Spui, the cobblestoned square at the heart of so many of my Amsterdam adventures.

A "private" model from whatsupwithamsterdam.com

Heavy drinking and concomitant public urination is so common in the city, however, that residents have a term for it: "wild pissing" (wild plassen in Dutch). Despite the presence of outdoor pissoirs throughout the city, such pubic conveniences aren't always used. Anything is fair game when a full bladder demands attention — trees and buildings, for instance. Even the city's famous canals are not exempt from a good hosing down.

Earlier this year, Radio Netherlands relates a story from De Telegraaf that 51 people have died in those canals over the last three years. One was the result of crime. The other 50?

De Telegraaf newspaper concludes that the other deaths were the fault of the victims themselves: they fell into the water and were unable to get out...Most of the canal casualties are apparently men who fall in while attempting to urinate into the water from the side.

How is it determined that men fell to their deaths while urinating? The article doesn't specify. Of course, witness statements might help establish that. But my guess is that their open flies were the common giveaway.

The article makes no mention, either, of the obvious: many of these drowned men with their supposedly open zippers had to have been drunk enough to lose their balance at the canals' edges and, hands occupied, tumble into the dark waters below: an ignominious end.

Please, dear readers, should you visit Amsterdam, have a few drinks too many, and find yourself outside, use the public toilets. That's why they are there. If the completely open four-man pissers make you a bit shy, keep an eye out for older, more private ones like the one above.

And before your flight back home, be sure to piss on a fly in Schiphol Airport.

Hands-on Whiskey Distilling Class in Colorado

For the past several years, the American Distilling Institute has offered small hands-on classes for aspiring distillers and those who want to know more about distilling. ADI president Bill Owens once (in)famously fermented and distilled doughnuts at one of these five-day workshops. Owens, it must be noted, has an impish side and likes tweaking peoples' notions of proper whiskey.

June 3-8, ADI is holding another class. I've got nothing to do with this; just passing on information. This class will be led by distiller Jordan Via. Via has led similar events at Sweetwater Distilling (in Petaluma, CA), but is now plying his trade at Breckenridge Distillery, site of next month's get-together. 

The class includes;

• Denver International Airport shuttle to and from Breckenridge 
• Sunday night welcome BBQ 
• Five nights lodging in Breckenridge
• Breakfasts and lunches    
• Hands-on instruction with Master Distiller Jordan Via (Monday through Thursday)  
• Demonstrations and presentations by industry professionals and suppliers 
• Optional morning walk with ADI President, Bill Owens 

Attendees will participate in the process from charging the still with distillers' beer to the final steps of wresting the usable alcohol from that beer. Since this is a slow process, there will be breaks during which speakers will talk about aging, blending, distribution, marketing, branding, sourcing materials and other topics about opening and running a distillery. Lots of smelling and tasting.

Distiller Jordan Via explaining how to run a still

The five-day class is $3,500. Owens tells me that, at that price, most of the attendees already have done their reading and are seriously considering either launching a distillery or — in the case of the occasional sommelier who signs up — are professionals in the beverage field who want to expand their knowledge of how spirits are made. For more details, head over to the American Distilling Institute's website.

For first-time drinkers in Colorado, Owens offers words of advice: "...[C]onsuming alcoholic beverages at high altitude can get you drunk fast, so limit your drinks to 1 per hour. Bottom's up!"

South Carolina Orange Cordial

200 Years of Charleston Cooking was first published in 1930. If you were to flip through the edition in my library, you will find a recipe for homemade orange cordial using not brandy as one might expect, but “good corn whiskey.” Should you have access to a gallon of corn whiskey and the patience to gather the pith-free peelings of fifty oranges, then you are in business.

The original headnote calls this recipe “doomed to go untried.” In 1930, you see, Prohibition was still the law of the land and beverage alcohol was illegal. In spite of this, I suspect the good people of Charlestown, South Carolina wouldn’t have had great difficulty, if they were so determined, getting their hands on even as much as a gallon of corn squeezin’s.

Orange Cordial 

Another recipe doomed to go untried reads: 

"Take the thinnest parings of fifty oranges to a gallon good corn whiskey. Leave two months, then pour off and add a thin syrup made of two and one-half pounds of first white sugar and one pint water boiled until it commences to thicken." 

 — Bluff Plantation, Cooper River

Getting a Grip on Smoke: an Idea from Chip Flanagan

Chip Flanagan is on my mind today. Flanagan is executive chef at Ralph's on the Park, a mid-city restaurant directly across the street from City Park in New Orleans. Catching a breeze on the upper story's wraparound porch after a meal is a thoroughly civilized — and mighty enjoyable — way to keep cool on sultry Summer evenings. Helps to have some whiskey in hand (which the bartenders downstairs will happily supply).

But it's the not drinks, the view, or the architecture that's got me thinking of Ralph's; it's what Flanagan has been doing with smoke that's got me mulling options for our new place in San Diego.

Smoked pork belly at Ralph's

Back in December, we bought a 1914 Craftsman house. The sellers had hidden the pad for the original garage out back under a layer of new mulch next to loquat and lilly pilly trees. It was well disguised and we took nearly a week to discover the deception.

The options, as I see them, are two; (1) keep it or (2) get rid of it. The area gets a lot of sun. If we rip it up, I can plant avocado or citrus trees in the 180 square feet. If we keep it...what to do?

And then I remembered Chip Flanagan: I could turn the pad into the foundation for an outdoor kitchen, starting with a smoker. From little more than an old proofing box and a couple of hot plates, the chef has rigged a respectable smoker that he showed me when I was visiting. At the time, a few pork bellies hung within, each slowly acquiring a mahogany mantel. Not long afterwards, I greedily tucked into some of that unctuous, soft, sticky swine.

A flare up in the smoker

Yeah. That's what I want.

Smoked meat is the birthright of every Kansas City native and ever since I was a kid growing up in that town, I've wanted a smoker of my own. When we lived in places a smoker was either impractical or illegal, visions of home-smoked hams, sausages, bacon, chickens, and more have kept me up at night — but the obsession over smoked meats didn't abate. Now that I own the ground under my feet, it's time to decide not whether to build one, but what kind to build. Flanagan's steel box is a compelling design — it's simply a bakery proofing cabinet with the electrics removed and it's on wheels already, so it's mobile(ish). Flanagan uses old skillets with wood chips heated on portable hot plates and for the smoke. The thing would have to have vents to control the flow of air. Add a few cross bars for hanging meats, maybe a wire shelf for smoking cheeses or salt, and we're on to something.

That's it.

With such a simple box, the chef makes great stuff for the restaurant. There's the smoked belly, of course, but also cauliflower, which he uses in soups, salads, and custards. Right now, he's got an oak-smoked pork chop on the menu and he also sometimes cold-smokes tuna with hickory.

Tonight, I'm picking up a little bullet-shaped smoker from a guy who's never used it. That will hold me until I figure out whether I take the Flanagan route or take the plunge and build something more substantial.

But mark this: come Monday, we'll have smoked chicken gumbo for the first time in many years.

Ralph's on the Park
900 City Park Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70119
(504) 488-1000
www.ralphsonthepark.com

Rip It. Dip It. Sip It.

When people ask me "Who do you write for?" my stock and somewhat glib answer is "Whomever pays me." The food and drink jobs undeniably are some of the most fun work, but I write and edit for physicians, politicians, film directors, governments, universities, museums, other authors...if there's a paycheck involved, we're halfway there.

Through it all, I drink tea. Hot tea, iced tea, Assam, Earl Grey. If it's Camellia sinensis, I'm in. Now, when I'm at the keyboard, I myself am never bothered by thoughts that drinking all this tea is somehow unmanly, some effete affectation. I do, however, understand that lesser men occasionally may be plagued by such doubts. For them, I offer a short video and words of inspiration: Empires will fall! The steam will rise!

Are you man enough to watch?


Goes well with:

• Professor Elemental knows a thing or two about tea. Here he is singing its praises. 
• My writing site is here: www.matthew-rowley.com

Tales of the Cocktail Update. I'm Out; Rupf and Heugel Are In

Missing a Tales of the Cocktail weekend is not something I do lightly. Yet for the first time in years, I'm out. Whether I'm at the podium or in the audience, the annual fête in New Orleans has been one of my must-do events for almost a decade. If you look at the schedule for this year's sessions, you will find me listed once again as a presenter, this time with Paul Clarke of Imbibe magazine and the Cocktail Chronicles.

Well, grab onto your seats, kids — the lineup just changed. The session on American non-grape brandies is still on, but if you've already bought a ticket with hopes of seeing me in New Orleans, you just got an upgrade; Paul will be joined by not one but two others on the mic.

Bobby Heugel of Anvil

First up is Houston bartender Bobby Heugel, co-owner of Anvil Bar & Refuge. Bobby will be on hand to offer the thirsty crowd brandy-based libations and a bar owner's perspective on using these American fruit spirits. We've mentioned him before for his rum, Averna, buttermilk (yeah, buttermilk), and Chartreuse cocktail, the Vanderbilt Fugitive.

Jorg Rupf and Lance Winters next to an Arnold Holstein

Paul and Bobby will be joined by pioneer California distiller Jorg Rupf. Rupf founded St. George Spirits in Emeryville, California in 1982, twenty-five years before most of today's distilleries even existed. His masterful eaux de vie are exemplars of the craft and have racked up award after award. Twenty years after the founding of the distillery, he and distiller Lance Winters blended American wheat and viognier grapes to create a new vodka they dubbed Hangar One.

You may have heard of it.

Rupf is now officially retired. But some people just can't leave work behind when they call it quits; we are pleased that he still has some skin in the game and will be sharing over three decades of distilling knowledge.

Regrettably, a conflict has arisen that precludes my joining this august triumvirate in New Orleans. A shame. It sounds fantastic.

Cinco de Derby

Pool season is creeping up on us. Party invitations are starting to trickle in. Haven't thought at all about what to wear, but I'm already planning out the drinks menus — and polishing my drinking silver. One of the first harbingers of San Diego's pool season is Cinco de Mayo. This year, it falls on Derby Day, a holiday lesser-observed in these coastal environs, but dear to my own heart. The confluence of the two form a sort of Cinco de Derby that only happens once every few years.

¡Viva la Revolución, y'all!

Now, Derby Day — for our friends beyond the shores of these United States — is the final day of the two-week Kentucky Derby Festival held in Louisville, Kentucky every year. It is the day on which the Kentucky Derby is held and when a great deal of money changes hands depending on whose pony is fastest. One is apt to see enormous hats on the women, much linen and seersucker on the men, and enormous quantities of bourbon consumed by each.

Cinco de Mayo, as it's observed in the US, is a sort of general celebration of Mexican heritage; it is not, as many would have you believe, the Mexican Independence Day. Rather, it's a commemoration of the French army's defeat at the hands of the Mexicans at Puebla in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

And this year, they each fall on Saturday, May 5th. At Derby Day parties throughout the country, a galling number of execrable mint juleps will be downed (and sometimes hauled back into the light of day) and inordinate amounts of tequila will be shot into (and out of) the drinking pubic. May 6th might as well be I'm Never Drinking Tequila Again Day.

Let' us leave behind the overdrinking occasioned by both and bind the holidays with a slightly more civilized glue: the tequila julep.

Tequila Julep

2 oz reposado or añejo tequila
1 Tbl agave nectar OR 1-2 tsp rich simple sugar (made with 2 parts demerara sugar to 1 of water)
10-12 spearmint leaves, stripped from their stems
Sprig of mint
Crushed ice

Muddle the mint gently with the syrup in the base of a julep cup or a short tumbler. Add the tequila and stir to combine. Top with crushed ice to fill the cup and form a short dome over the rim. Spank the mint against the palm or back of one hand (to help release its aroma), then insert the sprig through the ice into the drink. If using metal julep cups, allow the drink to rest undisturbed until its exterior is well frosted.

Serve either with short metal straws or plastic straws that have been trimmed to just an inch or so longer than the cup is tall — the idea is that drinkers will have to bury their noses in the fresh leaves while drinking and thus get a extra wallop of mint aroma.

You're on your own for anything after the first.

Goes well with:

• The Maine Julep, Irvin S. Cobb's derisive, Kentuckicentric tirade against what passes for a julep in points north, including a "crowning atrocity" of allspice.

When I Say Oo, You Say Long

I've slurped up a cuppa from an elephant's trunk 

With a couple of monks who utterly stunk 

I've had bourbons with sultans and creams with queens 

And I've bathed in Earl Grey — I'm really that keen.

And missionaries dismiss me for my single epiphany

The diff between him and me is a simple sip of British tea! 

So when times are hard and life is rough, 

You can stick the kettle on and find me a cup.

~ Professor Elemental

My idiocy reveals itself in stages. Casual acquaintances may, if my guard is down, catch a glimpse of this rare creature, but it's not generally on display. They do not know, for instance, that when my attention flags (or I'm under deadline), I take on the personalities of others. I'll sing the theme song for the 1980's television show The Facts of Life, for instance...in the style of Tom Waits. Or I'll pull a deadpan exsanguination of Jingle Bells, draining it of life and joy as only Jeremy Irons can do. Just this weekend, I could not shake the image of Joe Pesci recast in the role of the android Bishop in Aliens ("You ast me, them A2s always was a little twitchy.") nor of Don Rickles as Lt. Ellen Ripley ("Get away from her, you hockey puck!").

But that all pales to the vocal styling of Professor Elemental. Here, the pith-helmeted Professor gets a little steampunk and throws down Victorian rhymes in Cup of Brown Joy.


Goes well with:

• Professor Elemental's website. 
• At the end of the video, you'll note that the good Professor is off for a bit of Battenberg. Some what? Is it bitters akin like Underberg? No; it's cake, a very British checkerboard cake. Robert L. White explains.
• My own obsessions over the brown stuff (iced? hot? buttered? in punch?) are well established.
• Also noting his fondness for tea, and akin to Professor Elemental, check out Mr. B, The Gentleman Rhymer strumming his chap hop ukelele in a 2008 performance. Be warned, however, that the rivalry between the two is legendary.

Weekend Grillades and Grits

I dote on grillades. Whenever I'm in New Orleans, I try to squeeze in at least one meal of the long-simmered veal — or sometimes pork — slices served over grits. Even, as it occasionally happens, if they're dished out over plain buttered rice, they're a fantastic way to ease a languid morning into a lazy afternoon.

Elizabeth's in the Bywater neighborhood serves a respectable, chunky version (get a side order of praline bacon). Any number of places in the French Quarter serve them; Green Goddess, for instance, or Arnaud's. EAT New Orleans, just a block down from Good Friends (site of the notorious Chicken Drop from Chickenshit Afternoon), is another good one.

Perhaps the best, though, I ever had was when chef (and James Beard Award winner) Ann Cashion cooked a batch one morning when we were in town for Carnival. Cashion was visiting as well and she cooked up a stunner of a New Orleans breakfast for a group of mutual friends. A pot of stone-ground grits burbled and plopped quietly to one side of the stove while a huge old Magnalite oval roaster held  perhaps two gallons of long-simmered chunks of tender meat in a dark brown sauce.

Yeah, yeah. Yellow grits was all I had. Still good.

It is possible, though not likely, that Ann, too, will come to your house to cook grillades. In the event that she doesn't, I have a solution that's a very good second choice and that still puts smiles on my family's faces. In fact, they've been observed moaning barely articulate sacrilegious oaths while tucking into broad bowls of the grillades I make at home. 

When there's a crowd to feed for a weekend breakfast and I want to get a taste of New Orleans, I work up a big batch of grillades that's based on John Besh's door-stopper of a cookbook, My New Orleans. Besh calls for boneless veal shoulder, a traditional choice. Slightly adapted from his, here's how we're making grillades around the Whiskey Forge.

That is, at least until Cashion comes a'calling and takes over my stove while I mix drinks.

Slow-Cooked Grillades

4 pounds boneless pork [or veal] shoulder, sliced into thin cutlets
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons basic Creole spices
¼ cup rendered bacon fat
1 large onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups canned whole plum tomatoes, drained, seeded, and diced
2 cups basic chicken stock
leaves from one sprig fresh thyme
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon Worcestershire
Tabasco*
Two green onions, chopped
Prepared grits

Season the pork cutlets with salt and pepper. Whisk the flour together with the Creole spices in a medium bowl. Dredge the cutlets in the seasoned flour and shake off excess. Reserve a tablespoon of seasoned flour.

Melt the bacon fat in a large skillet over high heat. Fry the cutlets, several at a time, until golden brown on both sides. Take care not to overcrowd the skillet. Remove cutlets from skillet and continue to cook in batches until all the pork has been browned. Set the pork aside while you continue making the sauce.

Reduce the heat to medium-high, add onions to the same skillet, and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until they are a deep mahogany color, about 20 minutes. Add the celery, bell pepper, and garlic, reduced the heat to moderate, and continue cooking, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle the 1 tablespoon of reserved seasoned flour into the skillet and stir to mix it into the vegetables.

Increase heat to high, stir in the tomatoes and pork stock, and cook until it comes to a boil. Reduce the heat to moderate and stir the thyme, pepper flakes, bay leaf, and Worcestershire into the vegetables. Add the pork cutlets, cover, and simmer until the feel is fork tender, about 45 minutes.

Season with salt, pepper, Tabasco, then add the green onions. Serve over grits.

 *Besh serves this over cheese grits flecked with jalapenos and calls for Tabasco. We go for Cholula hot sauce and, like Cashion, omit the jalapenos. Normally, I use white grits, but today all we had were yellow. Still very good.

Goes well with:

• Long-simmered stone-ground grits are what you want here. Anson Mills will ship theirs right to your door. My advice? Save on shipping by ordering ten pounds and split the costs with a friend or two.
• Don Rockwell has an online AMA-type interview with Cashion here.
• John Besh's My New Orleans is not the last word on New Orleans cooking. But it's an excellent place to start. I drop a few plaudits on his book is here.
• Sara Roahen's Gumbo Tales is a must for understanding food and local mentality in post-Katrina New Orleans.

John Wright's Homebrew from the Hedgerow Series

My "May blossom rum" is simply hawthorn blossoms, 

covered with white rum and left in a jar for a week. 

The petals are removed and the result bottled. 

The flavour and bouquet is almost exactly that of 

May blossom itself with a surprising 

overtone of almonds.

~ John Wright

John Wright’s niche is foraged food and he has penned a number of handbooks for the British market on his expertise in the field, including The River Cottage Hedgerow Handbook, Edible Seashore, and Mushrooms. But last year, he launched a column for The Guardian that keeps me coming back again and again. In it, he covers country wines, local liqueurs, backyard apéritifs, and other hedgerow homebrews close to my heart.

Recently, he’s explored smoked vodka. Ok, maybe that’s not to everyone’s taste. But his DIY solution involving a can, some tubing, and sawdust is readily replicable and can be applied to a variety of spirits. His earlier piece on the sea buckthorn fizz made me remember that, while we don’t seem to have sea buckthorn around these parts, a store nearby carries liter cartons of the requisite juice which I nabbed within the hour.

Blackthorn leaves. Photograph: John Wright

Americans will quibble over — and flat-out disagree with — some of Wright’s pronouncements. When he writes, for instance, that white rum has “no real flavour of its own,” let’s cut the man some slack. He is a forager, after all, and not a bartender or boozer whose job it may be to identify any number of white rums in blind tastings. But his takes on orange beer, parsnip wine, rhubarb wine, chestnut liqueur, cider, blackberry whiskey, dandelion and burdock beer, and so much more have inspired me to pay closer attention to the seasons here in San Diego and what’s flowering and fruiting when in the parks nearby. Lemons, grapefruit, and rosemary are everywhere here; it's the keen eye that spots rose hips, lemonwood flowers, and feral nasturiums, just there for the taking.

From his most recent article, here’s Wright’s verbatim scaled-down version of épine, a French aperitif that’s a very close cousin to sloe gin since it uses the leaves of the blackthorn bush rather than the sloe fruits familiar to us. We are told that in France friends of his friend who supplied the recipe are ignorant of sloe gin and leave the fruits to rot on the shrubs. Sacré bleu!

Épine apéritif

2½ litres of red wine or homemade red fruit wine such as blackberry or elderberry
Half a bottle of brandy or eau-de-vie
500g sugar
About half a litre of blackthorn leaves (don't use more leaves than I recommend because blackthorn, like all the plum species, produce traces of cyanide as a byproduct of the almond flavour it imparts)

Put all the ingredients into a food quality plastic container, stir and fit the lid tightly. Leave for two weeks, stirring occasionally. Transfer to clean bottles using a funnel and some doubled-up muslin cloth to filter out the bits. As with nearly all drinks it improves with age. Santé!

Goes well with:

• The entirety of John Wright’s Homebrew from the Hedgerow series is here.
• Sloe what? Sloe gin? Yup. Check out what Irish poet Seamus Heaney says about it here. 
• The River Cottage Preserves Handbook is a great little tome. I write about it here and include a recipe for beech leaf noyau. 
• About those feral nasturiums. They'll be coming into seed soon enough. Here's a recipe for pickling the pods.