January 12th

January 12th
We went to a friend’s house for dinner and one of the things that struck me as odd was being home on a weekend evening and not cooking. I normally try to save my more labor intensive cooking for weekends so I’m normally cooking by mid afternoon and it just felt strange to not be cooking. It also made me realize how infrequently I eat out or at someone else’s place.
We were invited over by friends and when we asked if we could bring anything they said beer, which is actually pretty easy but puzzled me because I thought that they were both wine drinkers and not really beer drinkers. We brought over a growler of dry stout and one of Belgian golden ale.
Dinner was really good. First was a salad of greens, raisins, cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette (at least I think so). The main course was a stew of buffalo meat and carrots. The stew was fairly spicy and I thought I picked up coriander and allspice, but embarrassingly, was wrong. It had tarragon, thyme, cloves and black pepper. They had added a fair amount of black pepper which gave it a good bite, and I think that and the cloves where what threw me off. In any event, it reminds me why I hate blind tastings, whether it’s food, beer or wine. It’s so easy to get thrown off. (As I always say in my BJCP prep classes, blind tasting are only fun if you’re the one who’s running it.) Next were whipped potatoes and Brussels sprouts cooked with awesome bacon from a place called Otto’s in SE Portland. I had never heard of Otto’s but it’s on my list of places to checkout. It was a delicious meal, and as much as I like cooking, it was nice to have someone else doing the cooking this time.
Both of our friends were beer drinkers which I didn’t remember. I thought they were both wine people, but I was happy to find out that drank beer as well. One of them likes big stouts, so the dry stout was a little light for him. He told me he was a fan of Stone Russian Imperial Stout, so I also recommended Victory Storm King and Widmer KGB to him, but in retrospect, I realized I should have mentioned Hair of the Dog Adam. It’s not stout, but he said he likes big heavy dark beers and Adam is about as good as you get in that vein. Perhaps I’ll get a few bottles of it the next time we have them over. It’s a perfect match with hot spicy food.