Beer Week is *hiccup* here!

Hello beer lovers, beer drinkers, and beer stinkers,

Some local Californian brews I drank *for testing purposes only*

I’m here to tell you that Beer Week is in full swing on the internet!  My bloggy friends have teamed up for another week full of delicious beer-filled recipes and brewery tour guides.  From maple ale ice cream to Oktoberfest shenanigans to pumpkin beer bread, this week of beer truly has it all.

I decided to try another home deep-frying adventure because everything tastes better deep-fried.  Let’s be honest.  So I made Beer Battered Shrimp Tacos with a roasted poblano slaw.

Roasted Poblano Slaw Buddies

I grabbed what was on hand to make a sauce for the slaw.  I had no idea how it would taste, but the end result was a creamy slaw with a bite of garlic and hints of the savory roasted pepper.  YUM!

Creamy poblano sauce

Slaw:

1 cup plain Greek yogurt

2-3 Tbsp. lime juice (throw some zest in if you’re feeling frisky)

1 small clove garlic

5 Tbsp. cilantro

1 roasted poblano pepper–skinned and seeded

Combine in food processor until creamy.  Add to cabbage until desired consistency.  I kept mine on the creamy side to pair it with the crunch of the shrimp.

After you grill/roast the poblano, simply tent the pepper in foil for about 5 minutes until the skin has steamed. Then it is much easier to scrape off the skin with a knife.

Next up were the shrimpies!  Make sure your shrimp are peeled and deveined.  Sometimes the butcher will do this for you, but it doesn’t take too much skill to do it at home.

Pat those shrimpies dry with a paper towel before you start this shenanigans.  I almost added a picture of this step, but I discovered that pictures of raw shrimp are really unappetizing.  I’ll spare you the gory details.

Beer Battered Shrimp:

1 cup Flour

1/4 cup Cornstarch

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Cayenne

1 tsp Season-All Season Salt

1 tsp Pepper

1 cup Panko (I also added 1/2 cup Wheat Germ for extra crunch)–set aside for dunking later

Mix ingredients through pepper together in one medium bowl.  Set aside.

Mix panko and wheat germ (optional) in another bowl.  Set aside.

Dunking bowls

Dunk each shrimp in the flour bowl only and shake off excess flour.  Set the shrimpies aside.

Then choose the beer of the day.  I went with a light wheaty beer because I really don’t like hops.  Who’s with me?  I also thought it was cute that the bottle had a shark on it…I wanted to stick with a nautical theme. 🙂

Great White Beer from Lost Coast Brewery

Add about 1/2 a bottle of beer to the flour mixture.  Add a little at a time.  You want the batter to resemble a thick pancake batter.

Drink the other half.  This step is important!

Then set up an assembly line.  Dunk the shrimp into the beer batter.  Shake off the excess.  Then roll the shrimp around in the panko.  Shake off the excess.

Dip it, dunk it, drop it, rock it, roll it, grab it.

Once your oil reaches at least 375 degrees, add about 6 shrimp to the pan at a time.  Cook for 3 minutes or until golden brown, flipping partway through.

Such an exciting moment to capture on film!

Place cooked shrimp on a paper towel-lined plate to remove extra oil.

Assemble the tacos!!!!

Slaw + shrimp + salsa = Pure unadulterated heaven

This dinner was rated an 11/10 from the whole family.  I get that the whole family is only myself and Jonathan, but we said we would make this again in a heartbeat.  There were no leftovers.  I about passed out in the first bite.  Make these.

What’s your favorite thing to make/eat with beer?

-Mads

Check out the other fabulous Beer Week posts here:

Inside NanaBread’s Head–Dark Chocolate Espresso Stout Cake

Comfortably Domestic–Brewer Biography and Black & Tan Brownies

Tenaciously Yours–Oktoberfest Prost!

Munching in the Mitten–Pumpkin Beer Bread

From My Sweet Heart–Beer Pretzel Caramels & Beer Orange Caramel Sauce

Climbing Grier Mountain–Pale Ale Shrimp Po’ Boy

Country Cleaver–Schnitzel and Dumplings

Decadent Phillistines Save the World–Spicy German Mustard, Ale-Soaked Sweet Potato Oven Fries, Maple-Ale Ice Cream

Life Changer

I will post more about wedding stuff soon, blah blah blah.

BUT my life was drastically changed tonight when I discovered something magical on the internet.

MAGICAL.

This blog boasted the best umami flavor in a grilled hamburger ever.  Umami is that crazy smack of flavor that wakes up your taste buds and has you saying, “What was that?” (more about umami here).

The White on Rice Couple said their secret to the best umami burgers ever was fish sauce.  That’s right, the Vietnamese sauce that seems to go well with all Vietnamese dishes…but in an American burger.  As soon as I read that, I smacked my forehead.  Of course you should put fish sauce in a burger.  D’oh!

Three Crabs is the brand we use. (Click on image to be redirected to photo source)

Fish sauce is filled with glutamates, which are those nummy little amino acids that give umami flavor to soy sauce, worcestershire, meats, and anything delicious.

I followed their recipe to a T, and I can honestly say it was the best burger of my life.  I’ve never been able to grill anything remotely close to that awesome flavor.

Ignore my freckled skin and peach fuzzed arms.

I topped my burger with feta cheese, caramelized onions, basil, and Trader Joe’s Red Pepper Sauce.

p.s. This is awesome…as if you ever doubted the awesome power of a Trader Joe’s sauce.

I was literally hooting and hollering on my patio.

Life=changed forever.

Please try this.  Even if you have to buy a jar of fish sauce, you can always use the rest of the bottle for stir fries (frys?), fried rice, AND ALL THE BURGERS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Thank you for your time,

Mads

Apeman found in cave!

Me: Has there ever been an attempt to make a human monkey baby?

Jonathan: Like Planet of the Apes?

Me: No, I mean a legitimate attempt to breed a human monkey baby.  They can make ligers, why not a human monkey baby?

Jonathan:  Think about what you are asking me.

Me:  I mean, I get that it’s not PC in this day and age, but they did all sorts of crazy experiments in the 50s.  Surely I’m not the only one who has thought of this.

Jonathan:  I’m done talking about this.

Me:  Will you please just look it up on your iPhone?

Jonathan: *sigh* Ok, I found something on Yahoo Answers.  Do you want to trust this?

Me: Absolutely.

“We are more closely related to chimps and bonobos than horses and donkeys are to each other, and it’s well-known that they can interbreed. There is a rumour that a certain scientist once impregnated a chimp using his own sperm, but got cold feet before the offspring was born and destroyed the animal. A human-ape hybrid is never likely to happen for moral and ethical reasons, supposing it’s possible at all, and a good thing too – imagine an animal with the strength and aggression of a chimp and the intelligence and capacity for evil of a human. It’d be lethal.”

-Source   

Me: I KNEW IT!  Wait, could you please repeat the last line?

Jonathan: “…imagine an animal with the strength and aggression of a chimp and the intelligence and capacity for evil of a human. It’d be lethal.”

Me: hahahaha OMG I WANT THIS HUMAN MONKEY BABY TO BE BORN!

Jonathan: You might not want to post that on your blog.  It seems highly unethical.

Me:  They’ll understand.

-Mads

Semi-homemade cooking gone to sh!t

The Food Network is mostly about entertainment and not so much about “food”.

How do I know this?

Exhibit A:

Paula Dean’s English Pea recipe (thanks to Mama Pea for the link)

Paula’s general recipe format:

Take any object (doesn’t have to necessarily be food)

Add butter

Once you think you have added enough butter, double it

Serve with salt

Exhibit B:

I’m not even sure where to begin with this video.

Other cake-topping options when you are in a pinch:

-Kleenex oragamied into roses add a “je ne sais quoi” to an otherwise boring store-bought cake.

-The center of a bundt cake can be filled with a bottle of $2 Chuck (remember that the glass part of the bottle is not edible, so remove before eating).  Pour the wine directly into the “cakehole” for a modern take on the traditional rum cake.

-Easter cakes really sparkle when adorned with rabbit’s feet.  You can pick these up at your local craft store or you can slaughter 4-5 rabbits (depending on the size of the cake).

-Savory and sweet is such a wonderful pair, why not punch it up by adding some pepperonis in the shape of a smiley face?  Your kids will be sure to love!

I can only assume Miss Lee was doing her own version of “My Drunk Kitchen”:

Visit Kat’s site for more on this topic.  She tackles some really tough issues like how to prepare for Kwanzaa.

-Mads

Chocolate is my girlfriend

If music is my boyfriend, then chocolate is fo sho my girlfriend.

Any other CSS fans out there??

No?  Ok, moving on…

Chocolate.

She is my girlfriend.

Not just any ole chocolate…Lindt “A Touch of Sea Salt” dark chocolate.

I want to melt it down and swim through it’s chocolatey salty goodness.  I want to eat a s’more with this chocolate, but without the graham and the mallow.  I want to liquify this puppy and drink it out of a fancy teacup.  I want to eat this every day for the rest of my life.

Is that too much to ask?

What’s your favorite form of chocolate?  If you don’t “like” chocolate, you better hope you have a winning personality because otherwise our friendship ends here.

-Mads

P.S. The winner of the Zappos giveaway is Kathryn!!  Congratulations!  Hope you find some shoes you fall in love with.