Pork Kebabs and Fennel Orange Salad

Pork Kebabs and Fennel Orange Salad
April 27th

Although I cook all kinds of things, my cooking is still most heavily influenced by Mediterranean food (particularly Spain, southern France, and Italy). It’s something that I’ve strayed away from more in the last couple of years, but it still is a huge influence and draw for me. The current issue of Saveur magazine has a great article on the cooking of Cyprus, which includes a great pork kebab recipe. Kebabs are found throughout the Mediterranean, but you don’t see them made from pork as often as from other meat, like lamb. But many countries, like Spain and Cyprus, that were under Ottoman or Muslim rule (where pork isn’t eaten), do have recipes for pork kebabs were the marinade shows Ottoman and Muslim influences. The Saveur recipe uses herbs like oregano and thyme, but also uses sweeter spices like cinnamon and cumin. Like most recipes I look at, I didn’t exactly follow it and did make a few modifications.

Many kebabs call for leaner cuts of meat, but there’s a lot to be said for fattier, tougher cuts like shoulder, provided you marinate them long enough and then cook them long enough and over low enough heat. Leaner cuts can get overcooked and dry out pretty easily, even if they’re marinated (how many dry kebabs have you had in your time?). I used pork shoulder for mine and then grilled them outside over moderate heat. I kept them pretty far from the heat after an initial sear and let them cook for a total of about 45 minutes or so. The meat was still juicy and wasn’t tough.

On the side I made a salad of shaved fennel, oranges, black olives, lemon juice and olive oil and some roasted some potatoes with lemon zest, oregano and olive oil. (Oranges and black olives are amongst my favorite flavor combinations. The sweetness and slight acidity of the oranges marries perfectly with the salty, brininess of the olives). I served yogurt on the side for the meat (and the potatoes too actually). I had picked up a Butte Creek Organic IPA and had that as well. I’ve liked all of the beers I’ve had from Butte Creek, particularly their pilsner (at last year’s Oregon Brewer’s Festival) and their porter. The IPA is good but has a pretty distinctive Victory malt note to it that I’m not that fond. (A lot of people clearly are if sales of New Belgium’s Fat Tire are any indication.) Despite the slightly heavy handed Victory malt note, it’s still a nice beer. It’s got good hop bitterness and flavor but isn’t over the top. It leans a little more to malt than many IPA’s do (not a bad thing in my opinion). The beer was great with the food, but frankly, the kebabs were so amazing that most any beer would have been seemed great with it.

Homebrew Update

Homebrew Update
April 26


I had a bad cold several weeks ago and missed an opportunity to brew as well as the Portland Cheers for Belgian Beers festival that I had been looking forward to. But there’s still beer at home and some things have gotten brewed.

The Brown Ale is still kicking around, and with its malty intensity, it’s still my favorite current homebrew for spicy food. I am afraid it’s going to run out fairly soon however, but it’s holding well, particularly for a lower alcohol, low hopped beer.

The Biere de Garde/Biere de Noel (call it what you want) has really come into its own. It’s dried out as it’s lagered and is now crystal clear, but still pours with a rich, long lasting head. It’s still sweeter than a regular Biere de Garde should be, but it’s incredibly flavorful with great malt and light esters in the nose. It’s still something I’m considering entering into the Collaborator contest, but I have a few others I’m debating as well. It’s a little high in alcohol for a lot of hotter foods (the chile heat brings out the alcohol), but it’s fantastic with roasts. I made a pan roasted pork tenderloin with a cherry sauce (dried cherries, shallots, white wine and stock) that I served over mashed potatoes with glazed carrots last weekend and it was phenomenal with that. I’ve been tapping it so often, I’m worried there’s not a lot left, but I can always make it again).

Our updated Steam beer is still around, but I also wonder for how long based upon how good and drinkable it is now. It’s also the only hoppy beer I have at the moment, so it gets tapped pretty regularly. It’s got an intense citrus/orange hop nose from all of the Simcoe and Summit hops. It’s another one I’m considering for Collaborator, but I don’t know how it would stand up amongst all of the other hoppy styles that I expect will be in there. If nothing else, I’m enjoying it on my own.

The Belgian Golden from about a month ago is drinking well, but still needs to come together completely. We used two yeast strains in it (the Duvel strain and the La Choufe strain) and the Duvel strain takes a long time to clear. Clarity and appearance are only 3 points out of 50 on a BJCP score sheet, but it’s incredible how much clarity really does affect perception of a beer. I’m hoping it will clear soon, but it’s been kegged and chilled for the last two weeks and really hasn’t improved much yet. The nose has developed nicely and has a spicy, orange note to it. Belgian Goldens are amongst my favorite beers and I normally have one on hand because they’re food friendly, but it will be nice when this one finally clears up. I have several bottles, and strangely the bottles have cleared at room temperature, but the keg is still cloudy. We’ll see on this one.

The last beer we brewed was a Saison. The grain bill is the same as our Saison that won Collaborator, but the yeast is the same mixed strain we used of the golden ale (as a way of saving money and re-using yeast). We realized that we hadn’t made this recipe in about 2 years although it’s a favorite of both of ours. It’s still in secondary, but it could be kegged at any point and I may try to get to it soon just to have a little more variety.

Black Olive and Orange Sausages

Black Olive and Orange Sausages
April 26, 2007


I haven’t made sausages in a few months (although I had made some bacon and pancetta) and wanted to get another batch done. Although I love most sausages, I try to make varieties that lend themselves to being used in different dishes as opposed to varieties like brats, where all I want to do with them is grill them and throw them on a bun. Some of the varieties that are easy to work into other dishes are Italian sweets, Spanish Chorizo, Cajun Andouille, and Portuguese Chourico. All of them work well with beans, pastas, soups, etc. I had been thinking about something with Mediterranean flavors and decided to make some pork sausage flavored with black olives, oranges, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, marjoram and oregano.

The basic recipe was:

4 lbs Boneless pork shoulder, ground
4 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp dried Greek oregano
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground black pepper
Zest from 2 oranges, finely chopped
Juice from one orange
10 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 cup of pureed black olives


Mix the all the ingredients except for the ground pork in a bowl and mix them together. Then combine this mixture with the pork. Let it sit in the fridge for several hours (or overnight).

It’s a sausage that works well in bulk or in links. (I put most of mine into 32-35mm hog casing, but left some in bulk). You could also use lamb, beef, or even chicken instead or pork, but I’m fond of pork sausage and use it about 95% of the time I make sausage. I took some of the bulk mixture and made a stew of with onions, tomatoes, chick peas, and the sausage and then served it over rice. You could also grill it and then slice it and use it as a tapa or meze.

I did have a Sierra Nevada Summerfest while I was making the chickpeas and sausage stew. Summerfest is a pilsner-style lager which is incredibly refreshing and has a faint, but noticeable hop bite in the finish. It’s a terrific seasonal beer that I look forward to every year. With dinner, I had a Lagunitas Maximus IPA. I like most of Lagunitas’s beers very much (I must confess that I’m not a big fan of the Brown Shugga, but love the Imperial Red, IPA and Pils). The Maximus is a big beer at 7.5% alcohol and about 70 IBU’s. It’s a great beer, but it was a little big for the food. I probably would have done better to have the Maximus while I was cooking and the Summerfest with the food. There’s always next time.

March 28th - Hopworks Urban Brewery

March 28 – Hopworks Urban Brewery

Hopworks opened last Tuesday and apparently was mobbed on the first day. Since they had our El Diablo on, we wanted to get over and taste it. We had planned on getting there at about 5:00pm and were hoping to beat the rush, but I got delayed at work and didn’t get there until about 5:30pm. My brewing partner was already there at the bar when my wife and I got there.

They’re serving the El Diablo in goblets, which is good since it clocks in around 8.5% alcohol. The nose is spicy with good candy and honey notes. Although it tastes fairly full on the palate, assistant brewer Ben Love, let us know that it had a terminal gravity of 1.3 plato (about 1.0005) which makes it drier than most pale ales. It’s one of the best domestically produced Belgian Golden’s I’ve had. Yes, I’m biased, but I was really surprised at how authentic it tasted. It’s considerably drier than most of domestic Belgian style ales. I was also delighted to get a couple of bottle to bring home.

In addition to the El Diablo, I tasted through a fair amount of the other beers. The HUB lager is still one of my favorites. I’m very fond of the pilsner at Max’s Fanno Creek, but the HUB lager is no slouch. It’s a little lighter in body than Max’s, but is very clean with a great hop bite and is full of Saaz flavor and aroma. After the El Diablo, it may be my favorite of Hopwork’s beers. The Crosstown Pale is a hoppy but incredibly drinkable pale. It’s got an assertive hop character but doesn’t spill over into IPA territory. It’s a terrific food beer, because it has a lot of character but isn’t big and overwhelming. The Velvet ESB is more English style with a great malt character and a more subdued hop character. The Survival Stout, with its grain bill of barley, wheat, Oats, Amaranth, Quinoa, Spelt, and Kamut, is a great beer as well. It has an intense coffee and roast/black malt nose, but has a smooth, rich, round character to it. IPA is still a hallmark NW style and Hopworks is a great example of the style. It’s got a great malt backbone to stand up to the hops, but the emphasis is still hops. I had tried the beer previously at last year’s Oregon Brewer’s Festival, when the beer was being brewed at Golden Valley in McMinnville. The current version brewed on-site at Hopworks seems more balanced and more intense though.

When we had brewed with them, the test pizzas that their chef was working on had been impressive and the large pepperoni we ordered was actually very good. I’m form NY originally and in NY we’re pizza snobs. Luckily their chef learned to make pizza on the East coast and the pizza is really good. I ended up eating entirely too much, which was probably OK since I ended drinking too much as well (my wife wasn’t drinking and she as driving). I’m looking forward to going back, but am going to wait at least a few weeks until the crowds die down a little. If you haven’t been, you should. It’s well worth it.