Some people who have been invited to my home for dinner are often intimidated by me, whizzing about the kitchen at a frantic pace preparing nineteen different things at once. Everyone always asks me the obligatory, “if you need any help, let me know.” To which I always dishonestly reply with, “I sure will!” but I never do. No one works in my kitchen with me, but me. Sometimes Adrian is allowed, but really, I like to go it solo in there. I have a system of ins and outs, pass throughs, go arounds. I know where everything is and should go when I’m done. I can find anything in a third of a second and it only slows me down to have to explain, in minute detail, where to find something or how to chop something. If you don’t know what a Microplane or a Mandoline is or you can’t figure out how to chop the cilantro for salsa, then please….just pour yourself a glass of wine and put your feet up. I could really use the space.
Then I got to invite a real chef into my home. An honest to goodness, works every day in the hot hell of a small commercial kitchen chef. Our awesome friend, John Brooks (chef of Smoken Bones Cookshack which I wrote about for Guilty Kitchen), colloquially known as Chef Thunda to his friends had a great idea to do a beer and food pairing in our home. “Let’s cook with beer!” I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do on a Sunday night. So it was set. We kind of half heartedly figured out which beer we were to use (Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout) and then see sawed for a week or so on what we were actually going to do with it.
Probably the quickest thing to come to mind was dessert, of course, but John wanted something much more creative. We talked about doing lamb shanks for a while, which had me drooling…but then that idea got tanked after John arrived at our house. Pulling random items of food out of a backpack, we were greeted by an assortment of delicacies. Dark chocolate, annato seeds, goat Brie, red onion, jicama, masa flour, chorizo…I was in heaven.
After discussing a few things, John laid it out. Mexican food! Chocolate stout = Mole! Of course, it’s brilliant. What goes better with chocolate than spice and lush rich sauce? My only foray into chocolate with spices were my double chocolate chili brownie cookies. But this sounded even better. I pulled a chicken from the freezer (the remnants of our summer flock) and began defrosting. What else could I add? Cilantro, yucca root, spices, achiote paste, mole spices, goose fat for cooking the tostadas, and cous cous for an extra starch.
John started whipping up a yucca and jicama slaw while I made appetizers with the goat Brie, some other soft cheese we had, some Stilton and a loaf of fresh sourdough I had baked for the occasion. Then I sat back, filled up my glass with beer and let John do his magic. It was glorious, and possibly only the second time in my life I have ever let anyone take over my kitchen completely. I helped when I was needed, breaking down the chicken and fetching implements, but John did the rest and fixed us up a grand meal.
The mole was rich and had a note of bitterness to it that I loved. There wasn’t too much spice and the beer gave it a complexity that I’ve never had before. The tostadas cooked in goose fat were tasty, crispy and golden in colour and I will make them again. I should have paid more attention to the ingredients going into all the dishes cast across the counters, but I was too busy enjoying myself. It was like being at a restaurant in my own house.
Lucky for me, we also had our professional dishwasher on hand to clean up a true chef’s mess. Working from the top of your head can be distracting and doing dishes as you go is simply not an option when you have your hands in three different pots, a pan, two bowls and a rolling pin.
I’d love to tell you that I meticulously wrote down every ingredient he stirred into that rich mole, or into the jicama pickles, or the yucca and jicama slaw, or the rich and crispy tostadas but I was just too busy laughing, relaxing, drinking and having a night off.
Maybe next time I plan a little bit better and actually write something down. But for now, enjoy our night in photos and words and look forward to the next installment, of which I hope there are many!
On another note, I wanted to say thank you to all that voted for me in the EAT Magazine exceptional Eats Awards. I received second place in the rather wordy category of: “I Eat, Therefore I Tweet”. So thank you all!