After last week’s recipe for a stew of white beans with lamb, here is another lamb recipe to close the month in cooking on the blog. Unlike last week’s recipe—which involved lamb neck—this involves lamb shanks. We get our lamb shanks from the same source as our lamb neck: Goette Farms in southern Minnesota. As with most of my cooking, this recipe was improvised, which is not to say it is wholly original: it draws on taste and texture memories of Indian and non-Indian braises and stews and may possibly evoke for you one that you are familiar with. If so, please write in below. The main ingredient here that rarely goes into my meat curries is ground peanuts—an ingredient with which you have to take some care (see below). I made this for the first time for Easter lunch this year and a couple more times since. Continue reading
Glen Elgin 10, 2007 (SMWS 85.49)
On Monday I had a review of a Braes of Glenlivet/Braeval. Speyside week continues now with another relatively obscure distillery: Glen Elgin. This is only my third review of a Glen Elgin, which may be reliable indicator of how little Glen Elgin is generally available in the American market. It was bottled by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society at the tender age of 10 from a first-fill bourbon barrel. That combination of age and cask type sets off some warning bells but hopefully the whisky will rise above. The venerable society named this one “Aloha!”. I’m not sure what the reason for that is but at least it fits with my ongoing food reports from Hawaii, Okay, let’s get to it.
[Actually, before I get to it, I should note that this Speyside week might well grind to a halt with this Glen Elgin. This because I had not—as I thought I had—taken notes on the third whisky of the set before leaving for Ireland, where I’ve been for a week now on work. I get back home tonight but jet lag may keep me from having the wherewithal to review anything till the end of the week. Let’s see how it goes.] Continue reading
Khâluna, Again (Minneapolis)
I first ate at Khâluna in early April. That meal was eaten with some colleagues and I liked it so much (see my review here) that I was resolved to eat there again soon with the missus. That happened only three weeks later but it has taken me almost three months since to write the second dinner up. This is not because I was less enthusiastic about this meal—it was also very good. It’s just that I had a big backlog of restaurant write-ups to get to and didn’t want to run a write-up of a repeat visit so soon after the first. The good news is that since Khâluna’s menu does not turn over much, if at all, this write-up is still relevant: everything we ate at this dinner is still on their menu. Having now eaten most of that menu, I would recommend most of it if you have a reservation. Continue reading
Braes of Glenlivet 16, 1997 (Cadenhead)
So far this month my whisky review themes have been the following: Craigellachie (here, here and here); sherry casks bottled by Old Particular for K&L (here, here and here); and heavily peated Islay whiskies (here, here and here). Let’s now end the month with reviews of some more delicate Speysiders. First up is a 16 yo Braes of Glenlivet (the throwback name for Braeval) bottled by Cadenhead in 2013. It was released in their “Small Batch” series. But as the outturn was 270 bottles and the cask type is specified as bourbon hogshead, it seems safe to assume this was a single cask release. I bought this at the same time as I did this Dufftown 26 (also from Cadenhead) and this Unnamed Orkney 14 (bottled by Signatory) and also a G&M Caol Ila trio I have not yet reviewed. All were purchased with a consortium of friends. I kept half of each botle and they split the rest. I’ve been drinking and enjoying this for the last two months and here finally are my tasting notes. Continue reading
Randy’s Huli Chicken (Big Island, Summer 2022)
My meal reports from the Big Island, where we spent a week towards the end of June, have so far covered both a formal restaurant (Volcano House at Volcanoes National Park) and a more informal affair at Kona Grill House, where a formal kitchen prepares food to be eaten casually at outdoor tables. Today I have a review for you of a more informal setup yet, one that’s not very unusual on the Big Island and probably elsewhere in Hawaii as well. Randy’s Huli Chicken sets up their grilling apparatus by the side of the Mamaloa highway, a little south of Kona, and they grill their namesake chicken—and other things besides—till they run out. Your best bet if you don’t want to be disappointed is to go early. We’d passed them the day before we stopped while on the way to a beach further away and had made a mental note to pick up food for dinner in the evening. By the time we got back there—long before sunset— however, they were long gone. We made no such error the next day, stopping in for an early lunch after a visit to a coffee farm in the vicinity. I am happy to tell you that the food is very good. Continue reading
Kanpachi (Los Angeles, June 2022)
My meal reports from our trip to Los Angeles in June began with the first of two dim sum meals. Here now is my second report, on the first of two sushi meals. In my write-up of our dinner at Sushi Takeda in the winter I’d noted that on our next trip we were unlikely to go out to another expensive sushi dinner, given the escalating prices of omakases at the high end. And we stuck to that sort of resolution on this trip. For one thing, we only went out to sushi lunches, not dinners, and for another, we only ate the set lunch omakase specials at the places we went to. The first of these places is an unheralded restaurant in Gardena, the kind that does not show up on lists of the best sushi bars in Los Angeles: Kanpachi. It was a satisfying lunch anyway. Continue reading
Port Charlotte 16, 2001 (Archives)
Monday’s Laphroaig 10 CS, Batch 013 was fine but nothing more. Wednesday’s Caol Ila 8, 2013 was a lot better. Islay peat week now concludes with the oldest whisky of the trio: a 16 yo Port Charlotte or peated Bruichladdich. Will this keep the positive trajectory going? I hope so even though I am not a fan of that buytryic sour milk/parmesan rind note I get off almost everything from Bruichladdich. Like the Laphroaig and the Caol Ila this is bourbon cask matured; from a single bourbon barrel, in fact. It was bottled a few years ago by the Whiskybase lads for their Archives label. Once upon a time I used to buy those Archives releases on the regular. Alas, in recent years it’s become very difficult to purchase whisky from abroad in the US. And even though some Archives releases have come to the US, intra-state shipping here has also become all but impossible—and I don’t think any of their releases have come to Minnesota. And so I am compltely out of touch with what they’ve been up to in recent years. Anyway my sample of this one comes to me from the redoubtable Michael Kravitz of Diving for Pearls. His review of the same whisky—which I have not read yet—can be found here. Continue reading
Lamb and Bean Stew
Here is a recipe for a delicious stew of lamb and beans that I have made variations on a few times this year. It ends up a sort of hybrid between Indian preparations of dried beans and southern European stews/braises. As always, I use Rancho Gordo beans. My preference is to use large white beans (I’ve made it with Ayocote Blanco and Large White Lima) but smaller beans like their Flageolet or Alubia Blanca will work just as well. For the lamb I like to use lamb neck. We get our lamb neck (and other cuts of lamb) from the excellent Goette Farms in southern Minnesota. I realize lamb neck may not be easily available everywhere. I like it because the neck bones make for excellent flavour in the stew as the meat slowly becomes tender. If you don’t have lamb neck available use whatever bone-heavy cut of lamb you can. Continue reading
Caol Ila 8, 2013 (Thompson Bros. for K&L)
Peated Islay week started with Batch 013 of the Laphroaig 10 CS. It turned out to be my least favourite of the batches so far—though by no means a bad whisky. Today I have a review of a slightly younger Islay whisky. Speaking of which, ignore what it says on the sample bottle label in the picture alongside: that second line listing age and abv was swapped accidentally with that of a Thompson Bros. Teaninich. This is a Caol Ila 8, distilled in 2013 and bottled at 57% abv. Caol Ila is almost always good for the kind of nuance missing in that Laphroaig 10 CS, especially when matured in bourbon casks; and this one was matured in a refill hogshead. The bottlers are Simon and Phil Thompson of the Dornoch Distillery and hotel (see my brief account of a visit there in 2018). They are well-known figures in the single malt whisky world and are working as small-scale independent bottlers as their own spirit waits to come online. This is one of a few casks they’ve bottled recently for K&L in California. Let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading
Kalsada (Saint Paul, MN)
Filipino food has not by and large been very visible in the Twin Cities metro until recently. This is not a surprise when you consider that as per a January 2016 report from the Minnesota State Demographic Center, the numbers of Filipinos in Minnesota—whether foreign-born or not—is relatively low: 14,100 people at the time the report was published. Compare to 184,100 for Mexican, 66,800 for Hmong, 46,300 for Somali, 44,800 for Indian (from India), 29,800 for Vietnamese and 29,400 for Chinese. Of course, population numbers alone don’t account for this lack of visibility. The number of Ethiopians is only a few thousand higher than the number of Filipinos and there are lots and lots of Ethiopian restaurants in the Twin Cities, many of them popular with more than just an in-group clientele. The secondary issue here is probably that Filipino food does not have a very high profile in the US more broadly and so there has perhaps not been that “call” for it from out-culture groups. That is, so far. Continue reading
Laphroaig 10 CS, Batch 013
Last week’s series of reviews of recent Old Particular/K&l releases ended with a Ledaig 15 that I quite liked. Let’s keep that peat blast going this week with three reviews of smoky whiskies from Islay. First up is a Laphroaig, the Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength, to be exact.
I try to stay as current on the Laphroaig 10 CS as I can. I’ve reviewed every batch release from 001 to 012 and very rarely has it disappointed me. I’ve been waiting for Batch 013 to hit Minnesota for a while now. It was released in 2021 but I only saw it on local shelves a month or two ago. Meanwhile, Batch 014 and Batch 015 are both out as well, and as per Whiskybase were both also released in 2021. Indeed, Batch 014 seems to have been released in the US too—there’s a 750 ml bottle listed on Whiskybase. I’ve no idea when that will come to Minnesota but am happy nonetheless to be able to review Batch 013. Let’s get to it. Continue reading
Volcano House (Big Island, Summer 2022)
Our first afternoon and evening on the Big Island saw us eat lunch at Kona Grill House, do some grocery shopping and settle into our rental. The next morning we woke up bright and early (being on Los Angeles time) and headed out to Volcanoes National Park. It was about an hour and a half drive and we arrived shortly after the park opened. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but the park is utterly amazing. We spent the morning and afternoon walking along several trails and in between we got lunch at the Volcano House. The Volcano House is a historic hotel situated not too far from the Kilauea crater—the crater rim trail passes the restaurant in the rear—and has a restaurant that is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner (closing in between—check hours before going). It’s located very close to the Visitor Center. Reservations are required for dinner but lunch—at least going by our experience—is far less busy. The view can’t be beat and the food is quite creditable too. Continue reading
Dim Sum 101 (Los Angeles, June 2022)
Alright, let’s get started on the meal reports from our 9 days in Los Angeles before we headed off to Hawaii. Unlike our two weeks in Hawaii, our time in Los Angeles was very food-focused—as it always is. We are not tourists in Los Angeles: all we do is hang out with family and friends, hang out at the beach and go out to eat. And one of the three categories of food we look forward to eating the most when in Southern California is dim sum (sushi and Korean are the two others). Usually, we head to one of our favourite places in the San Gabriel Valley for dim sum but on this trip we decided to stick closer to home, which is now in Seal Beach (which is not only not Los Angeles, it is not even in LA County). We ate dim sum twice on this trip—coincidentally for both our first and last meal out—and at two different ends of the spectrum. First up, a quick meal at Dim Sum 101 in Lomita, a relatively new operation. Continue reading
Ledaig 15, 2006 (Old Particular for K&L)
This week of sherry casks from distilleries from different whisky producing regions of Scotland bottled by Old Particular for K&L got off to a good start on Monday with a 16 yo Glenrothes. It then hit a bit of a pothole in the road with a 17 yo Glenturret. Let’s see if the youngest of the trio can take us to a strong finish. This is a 15 yo Ledaig, or peated Tobermory from the Isle of Mull. There has been a lot of Ledaig available from independent bottlers in the last decade and a fair bit of it from sherry casks. Ledaig’s flavour of peat tends towards the farmy and organic. It can be funky but it also takes sherry very well. At least that has been my experience. Let’s see if that is borne out here.
Ledaig 15, 2006 (51.8%; Old Particular for K&L; refill butt DL 14901; from a bottle split)
Nose: Big farmy peat mixed in with rich sherry (orange peel, raisins, fruitcake). Saltier with each sniff. With more time and air it softens, with some toffee and milky cocoa and a touch of vanilla. Some rotting leaves mixed in there too now in the farmy peat complex. A squirt of water pulls out a lot of lime and mixes it nicely with the salt; ashier here too now. With a bit more time the lime moves towards preserved lemon. Continue reading
Baingan Masala
Eggplant season has begun to get underway here in Minnesota—I just harvested my first eggplant today, a small Pot Black. If all goes well, we will have plenty of eggplant in August. And as I am growing three different long varieties (Ping Tung, Nagasaki and Chinese String), I am constantly on the lookout for recipes where these will particularly shine. I am happy to say that this recipe—which I improvised at the end of May—is one of them. The secret weapon here is a commercial masala mix. As I may have mentioned before, one of the things I am exploring more this year is the use of commercial regional spice mixes. There are so many of these available now at my local Indian stores and it’s a world I need to spend more time in. One of the mixes I bought back in May was Bedekar’s Malvani Masala. If you can’t find it near you, you can probably find it online. Malvani cuisine is one of the cuisines of southwestern India, the flavours of which I just love. I used this Malvani masala in a beef curry when I first got it and while that came out quite well it is in this dish that I like it even more. I add it at the point at which I would normally add whatever spice mix I would have ground myself. Coconut milk adds some richness and the final result is a dish with a sticky texture and robust flavour. Give it a go. Continue reading
Glenturret 17, 2004 (Old Particular for K&L)
As I noted on Monday, this is a week of several overlapping themes: whiskies from distilleries from different regions of Scotland; sherry cask whiskies; whiskies bottled by Old Particular; whiskies bottled for K&L in California. And for at least the first two you could add, whiskies from Glen- distilleries. The week began with a 16 yo Glenrothes from the Speyside; we’ll now continue with a 17 yo Glenturret from the highlands. I will repeat what I have said in my introduction to every Glenturret I’ve reviewed—all two of them: I have very little experience of Glenturret. Of the two I have reviewed I really liked a 33 yo distilled in 1980, and really did not like a 6 yo distilled in 2013. This one doesn’t fall in the exact middle of those two age-wise but at 17 years of age it’s got some respectable age on it. And unlike that 6 yo, it’s not at a stupidly high abv. All of that is good. It is, of course, no guarantee that all of this means it is a good whisky or, at least, a whisky to my taste, Only one way to find out for sure. Continue reading
Myriel (St. Paul, MN)
Myriel opened just about a year ago in St. Paul and has quickly garnered a strong reputation. The chef-owner is Karyn Tomlinson who was previously the head chef at Corner Table in Minneapolis. I have to admit we were not hugely impressed by our one dinner at Corner Table (which closed before the pandemic) but given the acclaim for Myriel we were looking forward to eventually eating there. We were first set to do so in May but those plans were scuppered by a late-breaking positive test among the staff (we ended up at Saint Genevieve that evening where we had a very nice dinner). We got rescheduled to early-mid June and when our friends couldn’t make it on that date we decided to take our boys along for another fine dining outing (which is a development they are hugely enjoying). Here is how it went. Continue reading