Granny’s strawberry shortcake.

Duck breast, orange zest, thyme, bay leaves salt, cracked black pepper.

Brother, here is one of the finest dinners around.  Grilled skirt steak (just salted and peppered, no marinade), grilled leeks, and a cocktail made with a staggering variety of bitters.

Brother, this is one of my favorite fall dishes.  It’s quite simple to make, tastes delicious, and has nice fall flavors. 

The basic premise is a simple risotto, with the addition of green apples and hot italian sausage, finished with apple cider.  The apple cider finish really adds the love that you need. It gives the dish a nice, robust fall-y flavor.  I like hot italian sausage for a bit of spice and granny smith apples for tartness.

To make it, just add some butter, onions and peeled apples to a pan.  Saute for a few minutes.  Add the ground sausage and cook it until it’s pretty much cooked through.  Add the risotto, saute for a minute.  Then start adding stock.  When you have a few minutes left on the risotto, add the apple cider in 1/2 cup increments.  Usually 1 cup of cider does the trick. When it’s ready to eat, I usually shave a little parmesan on the top.

And for your next vegetarian Bed-Stuy party you could probably cut the sausage and just add some spiciness via crushed red pepper or chiles.

Tonight in the Hamptons, Fadi, Conroy & I cooked not one, but two - two! - seven pound legs of lamb, sweet potato discs, and salad w/ arugula, squash, pine nuts & goat cheese.

[Note: I still have not figured out how to configure this blog properly!]

Just my luck, brother.

I invite three Bed Stuy friends to dinner, and they’re all vegetarians.  (One, in fact, claims, “I’ve lately been trying out this high-protein-low-gluten-macrobiotic-raw-foods diet and, if it’s not too much trouble, would also prefer that all ingredients be harvested within a ten block radius, begin with vowels and, for the most part, comprise only the colors red and orange.”  However, I believe that means he’s vegetarian. Ish.)

So, deterred I am not.  I plan a meatless menu.

Part 1: Roasted Brussel Sprouts & Pecans tossed with Endive and Frisee and topped with a homemade vinaigrette.

Part 2: Cauliflower with date, pine nuts & butter. 

Part 3: Fettucini with Mushroom Ragu

Part 4: Homemade Apple Pie

And, brother, I must say: I’m a pretty damn good vegetarian chef.

I took more pictures, but somehow in the darkness, drunkness and depth of the night, they turned out blurry.  iPhone’s an idiot.  Still, another delicious meal in Chez Bed Stuy (and cauliflower + dates + pine nuts = surprising delicious.  Roasted brussel sprouts & mushroom ragu we already knew were tasty, but cauliflower & dates we did not!)

Brother, you need to find these beers and drink them.  Stillwater Ales.  Belgian style beers brewed in Baltimore, MD.  The Stateside Saison is the finest beer I’ve had in a long time.  And the Cellar Door is no slouch, either.

Ok, brother, so I’ve brewed two batches of beer using the extract method.  That’s fine and all, a reasonable expectation for a beginner. But I’m ready to move on.  But to move on I need to start “mashing” my own grains.  And to “mash” my own grains I need something to mash in. 

So I decided to build something to mash in.  A mash tun at my local homebrew shop is upwards of $400. The homemade version was $60 and only because I bought one thing twice. So more appropriately, probably $50. Here is what I bought:

10 Gallon Cooler

18” of braided stainless steel piping

10’ of 3/4” plastic piping (I only needed about 3 feet, but I could only get it in 10’ increments)

Four 3/4” stainless steel clamps

1 spigot, made out of plastic

So, let’s get started. Here is the 10 gallon cooler that we’re using.

The plastic tubing and the clamps.

And a piece of braided stainless steel tube.  For the braided stainless tube, I needed only the outside braid, not the inside plastic tubing. Separating the two was the most difficult part of the entire process. It angered me a lot. Nevertheless, I took the hacksaw (pictured below) and cut the ends off of the stainless steel braid. I then struggled mightily but managed to remove the inside tube. I took the cut stainless braid and put it over the plastic tubing I had bought and secured it with a clamp.

After I had secured the stainless braid to the tubing, I slid the tubing through the hole in the cooler, as so.

The stainless braid is on the inside. The logic here is that when you fill the cooler with grains and water, you can drain the liquid out through the stainless braid without sucking out the grains.  That’s why the braid works so well. Check out the inside of the cooler below. 

The last step, aside from making delicious freaking beer, is to add a valve to the tubing.  That helps make it easier to drain your liquid is released from the cooler.  That will be done tomorrow, but for now, enjoy the mash tun creation!

I didn’t have a CSA share this summer, brother, but thankfully friends with CSA shares are plentiful in Brooklyn.  And look at this late-summer loot!  Makes me wonder how I lived without one … (although last time I had one, I simply ran out of creative kale-themed dishes midway through June.)

We selected some delicious heirloom tomatoes to begin our end-of-summer dinner spectacular.  In the back of the picture above, there’s some celery - I don’t think I’ve ever had celery this fresh.  So fragrant.  It’s one of those vegis that makes you wonder if it’s even related to the stuff you buy in the store.  Anyway, we used the celery leaves atop our tomato/mozzarella because we didn’t have any basil … A decent substitute, but nothing compared to fresh basil!

For dinner, squash + sweet potato purred by Amy.

Pork loin which I rubbed in a homemade garlic-oregano-salt-cumin(!) rub.  We roasted it with celery, apples, pears and some balsamic.  Look!  It’s in the oven!

And dinner is served!  Yumski!