People who have come to single malt whisky more recently probably get impatient when people like me talk about how different things were 10-15 years ago in terms of selection and price. But what you don’t understand is the hardships we also went through then. For example, when Kilkerran started releasing their Work in Progress series annually in 2009 they didn’t put the years or any other identifying marks on the labels. The only way to know which was which was by the colour of the label. And as in that period you didn’t need to rush out within hours of release to be sure of getting a bottle of even limited releases—and could indeed wait a year or three before buying anything—you would often find yourself in a shop looking at a bottle of Kilkerran Work in Progress, trying to work out what colour the label was and whether it was one you already owned. This was, I tell you, a terrible, terrible hardship. No matter whatever else may have happened in the whisky world since, I think we can all be glad that nightmare is over. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2022
Garden Grove Korean x 2: Jong Ro + GamjaTang House (Los Angeles, Dec 2021)
This is an account of our last restaurant meal in Los Angeles in December but it’s not my last meal report from the trip. That will come next weekend—a write-up of dinner at Sushi Takeda. This meal comprised Korean food picked up from two different restaurants in the Korean enclave of Garden Grove (where we went earlier for an excellent dinner at Mo Ran Gak). There were a number of things we wanted to eat: sullungtang (beef bone soup_, soondae (blood sausage), gamjatang (potato and pork neck stew) and also yeomsotang (black goat stew). Specialization being all, we decided to get the first two from Jong Ro and the latter two from GamjaTang House—both located on/off Garden Grove Boulevard. A short drive back to Seal Beach and we ate it all on my mother-in-law’s patio in the midst of late-December Southern California rain. 10/10, would do it again. Herewith, the details. Continue reading
Balblair 26, 1990 (Cadenhead)
I started this week of reviews of whiskies from distilleries in the northern highlands up in Wick at Pulteney. On Wednesday I went south, so to speak, to Glen Ord, a little northwest of Inverness. To close the week I go just a little further north again, to Balblair on the outskirts of Tain.
We visited the distillery briefly in 2018 and I still regret not having had time for a proper tour (as I enjoyed a couple of days later at Pulteney). That visit was just a couple of years after this 26 yo was bottled. [“That’s a forced transition!”, Ed.]. I purchased it at auction in the UK in 2017 for what seemed like a good price for a whisky of its age. The fact that it was bottled by Cadenhead from a single bourbon barrel seemed like further endorsements. Cadenhead have a good track record and bourbon cask Balblair is always a good bet. And then I forgot about the bottle on my shelves…I’m looking forward to finally getting into it. I quite liked the last Balblair I had of this age—the second official release of the Balblair 1990—though that was a mix of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry whereas this is from a single bourbon barrel—one that dropped a fair bit of abv as it aged. Continue reading
Khatta Alu
Tok is Bengali for sour and also the name of a broad genre of dishes that feature sourness, often imparted via the use of tamarind. Alur tok, or “sour potatoes”, is one such dish in the genre. I am, however, calling this dish khatta alu, which is Hindi for “sour potatoes” because the ingredients owe more to the North Indian spice box—broadly speaking—than the Bengali one. There’s no panch phoron here, for example, only zeera or cumin seeds, and the other major spice is coriander seed. There is, however, a Bengali touch at the end: the sprinkling of bhaja moshla over the finished dish. Bhaja moshla is the name of a family of masalas made by dry roasting and then powdering a mix of spices (the word “bhaja” means fried but no oil is used in the roasting). There’s a fair bit of variation in the recipe from home to home but they all provide a burst of flavour to whatever dish they’re sprinkled over. I use my mother’s recipe but as it is proprietary I am not going to share it with you—some secrets even idiot food bloggers must keep. You can google recipes for yourself or you can just use whatever garam masala you have at hand. Continue reading
Glen Ord 11, 2006 (Cadenhead’s)
Northern highlands week began with a 15 yo Old Pulteney. We move 100 miles or so south now to Glen Ord. This is an 11 yo from a bourbon hogshead that my source says may have been a private cask split with Binny’s in Chicago. As it happens, there’s also a Glen Ord 11, 2006 with the same abv bottled by Cadenhead that is still available at some Total Wine outlets (though none in Minnesota). So maybe it was split between Binny’s and Total Wine? Or maybe the abv is just a coincidence: the Total Wine listing is not for a single cask by a small batch release. If you can solve this uninteresting mystery please write in below. Confusion about the source of this bottle aside, I am always happy to review a Glen Ord—which is something I don’t get to do very often. Bourbon cask Glen Ord, in particular, can be very good indeed (see, for example, the last indie cask I reviewed); and it’s rarely the case that it’s not at least solid, highly drinkable malt whisky—that’s true even of the official 12 yo Singleton of Glen Ord. Let’s see where this one falls. Continue reading
Coming Soon…
The look ahead to February blah blah blah.
The poll to select recipes for the month ahead already closed yesterday—check the top four vote getters on that poll to see which this month’s recipes will be. On the restaurant front, I’ll be finishing up my Los Angeles meal reports over the next two weekends. We may also return to in-person dining in Minnesota this month. We have reservations at Owamni in Minneapolis at the end of the month. But with omicron apparently having peaked in Minnesota and with proof of vaccination now required to dine indoors in both Minneapolis and St. Paul we might venture indoors even before then. Let’s see how it goes. Oh yes, I also hope to finally post the latest entry in my universally beloved “Covering the Coverage of Indian Food” series. I pretty much know what I want to spotlight—it’s just a matter of finding time to sit down to write it (and my midterm break is on the horizon). Continue reading