Perfect pairing: Mole + imperial stout

Pairing food and wine has become quite popular over the past few decades. A truly fantastic pairing brings out distinct flavors and notes of the wine and the dish it is paired with.

More recently, pairing food with a complementary beer has started to emerge. This can perhaps be most often observed at microbreweries that also run their own restaurants. If you haven't tried beer outside of those mass produced at large commercial breweries, then this may not make much sense to you. In your mind, perhaps, beer is beer, stout is Guinness... The truth is a vast, wonderfully complex spectrum of flavors, rivaling that of your wine list, can be found with beer. And just as pairing food and wine brings out unexpected notes in both, so does pairing food and beer.

OK. Now that I have extolled the virtue of pairing beer with food, let me share the one I discovered last night at a local pub/restaurant. I decided to try their pork mole. If you're not familiar with it as it is found in the US, mole is a sauce made with dried chiles, nuts/seeds (ground), and chocolate. In the Americanized version, bittersweet chocolate is often used, but traditionally 'Mexican chocolate' goes into the dish. (Mexican chocolate is essentially ground cacao beans mixed with spices and a bit of sugar. It has a distinct texture and flavor when compared to European chocolate and seems to be the 'new' thing in specialty chocolates.) The ingredients in mole give it a rich, strong, spicy flavor. The restaurant I was at uses chipotle (a smoked, dried jalapeno) in its mole, which adds a nice smokey flavor. The beans served with the mole had that smokey, chipotle flavor, as well.

I paired the mole with Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout. This is classified as a Russian Imperial Stout, so it has little carbonation and a big flavor. The Brooklyn Chocolate Stout has a subtle chocolate flavor. I will confess that I'm not great at defining how 'hoppy' a beer is. Several reviews refer to the 'hoppy bitterness' in this beer, but it's a completely different flavor than hoppy bitterness in an ale. Pairing this rich, powerful beer with the rich mole actually created a nice balance that kept either from being overwhelming. Funny how that works...

* I couldn't resist putting up a picture of a mole chemist, especially with it being so close to Mole Day, because I am that much of a geek.

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Cajun-cut ribeye

I'm back. Finally. Suffice it to say, life has been pretty crazy. Then again I'm not sure that it's ever not.

Part of the craziness involved being deprived of good food for nearly a week. Over the weekend I was away at a department retreat in the middle of nowhere. Although the buffet food wasn't terrible, it was typical of a hotel buffet: everything overcooked, meat smothered in sauce, vegetables underseasoned. This was followed by a restricted diet, under which I was essentially left with white bread, tender meats, cheese, and a very small subset of cooked vegetables. Then a day of broth, juice, and jello. Blah. And no coffee. That's just cruel. But I am now back on the coffee and whatever I want to eat. It's the small things in life, you know.

Speaking of small things, one that Paramed and I indulge in periodically is a good steak. Sometimes it's tough to find a good steak that you can have more than once a year on a medic and postdoc's salary. Fortunately some years ago, I had a couple of meals at Foster's Market while on a grad school visit in Durham, NC (as an aside, I highly recommend the restaurant, especially as I was vegetarian at the time and loved it). I picked up The Foster's Market Cookbook before I left, and in the years since, one recipe (with some adaptations) has become our standby for steak night (yes, I gave up the vegetarianism along the way).

Reagents

• 1 to 1.5 lb rib eye steak - We have tried other cuts, but they just don't turn out the same. Also the original recipe calls for a single big-ass steak, but we usually end up with two smaller ones.
• 1/2 cup port or dry red wine - Haven't tried port in the recipe. Beer works, but a nice bold red (I prefer a Shiraz or Cabernet mix) is better.
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
  
• 2 teaspoons fresh cracked black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary - I personally think fresh is better
• 1 roasted red bell pepper, diced - You can use store bought or roast your own.
• Optional: 1 roasted jalapeno pepper, peeled, seeded and diced - This is in the original recipe but makes it a bit too spicy to truly enjoy the steak flavor. If you decide to use it, toss it in at the same time as the red pepper.

Special equipment

• A large cast iron or other oven safe skillet
  

Protocol

• Whisk together wine, mustard, Worcestershire, and soy sauce in a small bowl.
• In another small bowl, combine black pepper, cayenne, and rosemary.
• Place the steak(s) in a deep glass or stoneware dish. Pour the wine mixture over the steaks. Then press half of the pepper/rosemary mixture into each side of the steak. Marinate at cool room temperature for up to 2 hrs. (I wouldn't go much less than an hour).
• Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
• The next part will smoke up your kitchen, so crank up the exhaust fan, open a window, whatever you need to do. Heat a large, cast iron skillet over medium high-heat to the smoking point, about 10 minutes. I've also used a stainless steel pan here. The key is to have a large (12-in or more), heavy duty skillet that transfers heat well and is oven safte.
• Place the steak in the hot skillet and cook on each side for 3 min. (This creates a really nice sear on the steak. Also you can throw in some sliced sweet onions, if you like). Cut the heat and immediately pour remaining marinade on top of the steak. Toss roasted pepper in the skillet and transfer to preheated oven.
• Cook to an internal temp of 150 to 120 F for rare, 125 to 130 F for medium-rare steak. The original recipe, which uses a single 1.5 lb steak, recommends ~15 min for rare and ~20 for medium-rare. My experience using two steaks totaling 1 to 1.5 lb is that ~10 min is sufficient for rare.
• Transfer the steak to plate/carving board and allow it to rest for five minute before serving and slicing. Top with peppers, pan juices, and onions, if using.

Serve it up with a nice baked (sweet) potato and a glass of that wine, and you're in the steakhouse business :)

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Intro

Many scientists I know--the ones that I've interacted with in person and the ones I've met in the bloggosphere--are also proud foodies. I count myself among that group. I am from the South, after all, so how could I not love food?

One of the problems I've encountered in my endeavor to find fabulous food and awesome (on so many levels) alcohol is that lack of storage space in my brain. There have been several times when Paramed (my spouse) and I have spent a long time trying to remember the name of a wine or cheese or where we found some recipe. Thus I have decided to create a repository here on the interwebz, a chronicle of the things in the food world I've tried.

Of course, I am a scientist through and through, so you may occasionally see some article that integrates these favorite topics.

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