Here is the first of two Benrinnes reviews this week. This one was bottled by the famous French store, La Maison Du Whisky in their Artist series. The label lists the vintage as 1995 but the age is given as “Over 20 Years”. Which is true as it was bottled in 2018. This is the first instance I can remember of a bottler choosing not to go with a higher number on a label—was/is this par for the course for the Artist series? This means that this is probably the same age as my next Benrinnes, which is also from 1995 and is marked as a 22 yo by bottler Signatory. Indeed, I remember reading at some point that Signatory is probably the source of La Maison Du Whisky’s casks and so this may well be from the same parcel. I haven’t yet looked up the particulars of that cask and to do so would require me to get up and walk across the room so you’ll have to wait a couple of days or hope I remembered to do so before finalizing this review. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2021
Covering the Coverage of South Asian Food: Winter 2020/2021 Edition, Pt. 1
It’s been a while since my last round-up of notable writing on South Asian food. I’d actually been planning to post the next iteration in December but as I kept procrastinating the list of pieces I wanted to include kept growing and growing and the task began to seem more daunting and more like work. And so now it’s the end of the first week of February and I have a VERY long list of pieces I want to draw your attention to. To make sure I finally do it I’m going to break this into two parts. The first part today will cover a big chunk of the list and then next Sunday I’ll post my thoughts on a few more, in particular on one recent piece that got a lot of love on social media but which I found rather problematic. Which one was it? You’ll have to wait till next Sunday to find out. Today I have nothing but positivity. Perhaps this is because I’ve stopped paying close attention to what’s published in legacy media but 2020 seems to have seen a major uptick in the quality of writing on South Asian food in American outlets. And, oh yes, as I said in my year-end post, going forward this series will not be focused centrally on writing in Western media; I’ll be including pieces published in South Asian outlets as well (I’ve done this occasionally before too but it will be standard procedure now). Continue reading
What Should My Next Recipe Post Be?
I’ve been doing Twitter polls for the last couple of months to decide the order of my recipe posts. All four recipes eventually get posted; the poll only helps me decide the order. If you’d like to vote, please click on this link; pictures of all four candidates are in the next tweet in the thread. I’m only going to go by the results of the Twitter poll because it’s easier to keep track of that way, but you can ask for more information on the dishes here. However, the poll will close at 10.15 am CST tomorrow so you’ll need to respond relatively quickly.
Bunnahabhain 12, 2007 (Old Particular for K&L)
As I noted on Monday, I went in once again at the end of last year on bottle splits of a large number of K&L’s exclusives (maybe even all of them? I’m not sure). There’s a rather large number of them, most, if not all, from the various Laing outfits. There were a large number of teaspooned malts in the set but also some that dare to openly wear their distillery’s name on their labels. This Bunnahabhain is one of the latter. It’s also one of the younger malts in the set. We’ll start with it anyway.
I’m also rolling out a new feature for this round of K&L reviews. As longtime readers know, K&L staff and I have not always been in perfect alignment on our ratings of their releases, either in terms of scores or values. They’ve always expressed themselves with kind restraint but I’ve been able to sense their disapproval. It hurts me to hurt anyone’s feelings and so these reviews will be accompanied by two sets of scores. One for the rest of us and also the EW! or Everybody Wins! rating (patent pending) which those who think my scores are too low can focus on and be happy about. Continue reading
Salmon, Two Ways
I have for you two recipes for salmon or rather two recipes in one. The second is the first plus one ingredient and a couple of very minor time adjustments. Both are centered on flavours from southwestern coastal Indian fish preparations, sometimes involving rawas or Indian salmon. These kinds of preps are pretty much the only Indian fish dishes in which I think American salmon works very well—but that may just be me.
This is not, however, a traditional preparation. It does not follow any particular regional recipe but instead seeks to approximate vague taste memories of dishes eaten in friends’ homes and in restaurants. There are two ingredients that are certainly not traditionally Indian in any way: balsamic vinegar and Sichuan peppercorn. But both work well here, the balsamic playing a role similar to tamarind and the Sichuan peppercorn doing the work that its South Indian relative tirphal might otherwise do. Despite the ersatz nature of these recipes and two unorthodox ingredients the results are excellent and I recommend both dishes to you highly. Continue reading
Lagavulin 10
I was not aware until a few minutes before I purchased this bottle from a store in the EU that Lagavulin is now putting out a 10 yo whisky. It was apparently first released in 2019 and is a travel retail exclusive. Which does not explain how I purchased it from a regular store but doubtless there’s an explanation: it does seem to be available at a number of stores in the EU. The more surprising thing is that I did not notice it in duty free shops on the way to or back from India in early 2020 but the explanation for that may well be that I did not really look closely, having long before given up on the possibility of finding good value for anything in a duty free shop. If I missed this a year ago then shame on me. Especially since it’s priced quite reasonably for an age-stated whisky from a name distillery. I’m not sure what relationship it bears to the other whiskies in Lagavulin’s core range, especially the only slightly younger 8 yo (which I was not as enamoured of as some). It is made from spirit matured in “rejuvenated and ex-bourbon casks”. Theoretically that should put it closer to the all ex-bourbon limited edition 12 CS as the 16 yo has some sherry cask involvement. But the proof is in the glass. Let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 43: Pho Everest (Lakeville, MN)
We’ve been trying very hard through the pandemic, even in the winter, to get in a long family walk every weekend before picking up takeout. We’ve managed it most weeks, though sometimes a bit farcically. Two weeks ago, for example, we arrived at a park in Richfield to find the walking trails entirely covered in sheet ice—we ended up walking a couple of miles on very unattractive sidewalk through the adjoining neighbouhood instead. Some weekends, however, we succumb to laziness. And so even though this past weekend was warm by January in Minnesota standards the family ended up vegging indoors while I drove a scant 20 minutes to Lakeville to pick up Vietnamese food from Pho Everest in the Crossroads strip mall at the corner of Dodd and Cedar Avenue. Continue reading
Coming Soon…
Even though I tell myself every year that I won’t do it, I invariably find myself going in on bottle splits of K&L’s annual year-end parcel of single malt exclusives. My shares of their 2020 exclusives—many of them casks of teaspooned malts—got to me in mid-January and I expect I will review them all over the next month or two or three. Half of them are in the list of potential reviews for this month and the rest will show up next month, whether I get to all of these this month or no. I’ll also be rolling out a very special review feature for those K&L casks—but more on that later this week. On the food front I think I’m going to take a break from the biweekly Indian restaurant review for a few weeks. This month will probably see more Southeast Asian food and a return to St. Paul for Ethiopian and/or barbecue. Oh, and I think I’ll finally put up the next installment of my wrap-up of writing on Indian food. As for cooking, if you’re on Twitter you may want to look out for my next poll later this week to determine the order of the next four recipes. Continue reading