Bourbon Butter

There is nothing better than really good cornbread, and I would venture to say that most southerners make it out of a box! The horror! Just kidding, but really most of us do make it out of a box, it is just easier.  One way to ensure your cornbread isn’t hard as a rock, is to add cream of corn instead of milk or buttermilk.  Try it, you will not be disappointed.

Now, if you want to kick up your cornbread another notch, you can make bourbon butter.

Take 1 stick of sweet cream butter, 1 tbs. honey and a bit of bourbon (probably 2 tsp), beat with a fork until it emulsifies.  You do not want to see any honey, or bourbon. It should all be mixed in the butter. 

Goodness gracious this is a delicious treat for you, your guests and your cornbread.

BBQ Bourbon Ribs

In continuation of our bourbon celebration and National Bourbon month, we wanted to share the recipe for Barbeque Bourbon Ribs and Sauce.  After the bourbon tasting, we dined on these ribs!

We like our ribs a little fatty for the extra flavor, as a result, we selected pork spare ribs for our meal. Feel free to make your own selection. 

Rib Marinade Ingredients:

2 Large pork spare ribs

1 Cup bourbon

2 ½ cups chicken stock

½ cup pickling spices (in a cheese cloth)

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 head of garlic, cut in half long ways as to see segments

½ white onion, small chop

½ purple onion, small chop

2 tbs. salt

1 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

Sauce Ingredients:

Rib Marinade

1 cup ketchup

½ cup yellow mustard

3 cups cider vinegar

½ can tomato paste

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup honey

2 tbs. corn starch

Directions:

If you have the time, you can marinate your ribs overnight, and cook them the following day. Make sure they are refrigerated overnight.  If cannot marinate them overnight, do not worry, they will be just as delicious if made a few hours prior to eating.

In a large roasting pan (large enough to fit ribs), combine all ingredients above, wet liquids first.  Dunk your ribs on each side and place in the liquid (more than likely they will not be covered by the mixture.) Cover the pan with foil, and place on your stove top between two burners or one large burner. 

Bring the liquid to a boil, and then simmer on medium-high heat for 45 minutes to an hour and half. This time range is very wide depending upon your stove top and how much meat you are cooking.  The steam will cause the foil to raise and potentially drip water on your stove top.  To avoid this and ensure all liquid goes back into making delicious ribs, you will want to weigh down the foil.  We used two pairs of tongs for weight.  You will know when the ribs are done when you can pull the meat away from the bone. 

Sauce Directions:

Do not pour out your liquid! We are using it for sauce.  Strain the garlic, onions and pickling spices from the liquid. Return to stove in a smaller pot.  As it is still warm, skim off any excess fat.  On a high heat reduce the mixture by half. 

Next, add your ketchup, mustard, tomato paste, brown sugar, and honey.  Lastly, add your corn starch, vinegar and salt and pepper.

Now, taste and see what you think of your sauce. If you care for things to be sweeter, add more honey. If you prefer hot sauces, add a hot sauce. 

When ready, fire up your grill.  Sear each side of the ribs. Next, remove from direct heat (place on side of grill and baste the ribs with your sauce).  As the ribs are pretty much cooked, they only need to be on the grill for a total of twenty minutes.  After removing them from the grill, baste with more sauce, and serve! 

Remember, once you make a recipe it is yours!!!

Pairing Food with Bourbon

The caramel, vanilla, and oak flavors that often embody bourbon pair well with many foods. 

After a little internet research, and a selection of my favorite options, we paired the bourbon with dark chocolate, fresh South Carolina peaches, wheat toast points, smoked gouda cheese, Bartlett pears, and a thick cut of bacon.  Amazingly, each selection brought out a different and somewhat exciting pairing with the bourbon.  The bacon, gouda and peaches and pears were the hands down favorites, but I must say spending time with the people you love by engaging in an activity that is new and exciting is so worth the experience. 

Some other foods that you might consider when serving bourbon are any salty hams, such as a country ham, or prosciutto, cornbread, sugar coated pecans, apple pie, and smoked shellfish (maybe even wrapped in bacon). 

I hope this will encourage you to host your own bourbon tasting. 

Bourbon recipes coming this week!

A Bourbon Tasting

Bourbon.  An American spirit with lots of southern tradition and production involved.  The limestone spring water of Kentucky is known to contribute much to the flavor and purity of this drink, as does the aging, bottling, temperature and storage. 

To me, bourbon denotes mint juleps and southern men in seersucker, however, I truly have never thought to actually sit down and compare the products.  I realize the absurdity considering this is a southern blog, but ideas don’t come all at once!  Sunday evening we hosted a little bourbon tasting and sampled three Kentucky bourbons, Maker’s Mark, Buffalo Trace, and Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey. 

[sidenote: Tastes are subjective. Understanding this, you might not agree with some of our opinions and if you do, please be encouraged to host your own tasting. I know the parties involved will not mind!]

Selection : Maker’s Mark, 750ML, $23.99

Reason:  Maker’s Mark was selected as it is one of the more visible bourbons on the market.  It is most often in bars, and restaurants as the bourbon of choice. As a result, I selected it as our standard from which the other two would be compared. 

Production: Maker’s Mark is a small batch barrel bourbon (see An Introduction to Bourbon), made from Kentucky limestone spring water, local corn, grains contributing to the whiskey are baked and slow cooked,  the sour mash method  (see An Introduction to Bourbon), fermented in cypress tanks, distills the whiskey in copper, and rotated during the aging process. 

Taste Notes:  

Low ball glass, 2 ice cubes, 1 shot of bourbon. 

The nose on Maker’s Mark is warm even to the smell. You can pick up on the sweetness and masculinity of this drink.  To taste, you could feel the warmth, and notice the tastes of Christmas, allspice, and butterscotch, backed by the force of the alcohol content.  (Make sure you have something in your stomach before you start this journey). The taste does not linger, so you take another sip, and another until you are ready for a new glass. 

Selection: Buffalo Trace, 750 ML, $25.99

Reason: The reviews of Buffalo Trace are all good, and as it won the Malt Advocate Distillery award for Distillery of the Year in 2000, 2005 and 2006, as well as, named Distiller of the Year in 2005 and 2007. Lastly, Buffalo Trace won the Wine Enthusiast Magazine award for Distiller of the Year in 2006. All these awards are quite convincing. 

Production: Buffalo Trace begins with corn, rye and barley milled by a hammer, and then pressure cooked.  The sour mash ferments anywhere from three to five days and afterwards is distilled and stored in barrels at 125 proof.  Additional steam is pumped into the warehouse during the aging process, and barrels are selected from the middle of the warehouse for small batch barrel bourbon.  Finally the bourbon undergoes a chilling process to ensure the color and flavor maintain, and then is reduce to 90 proof by using water that is reserve osmosis filtered.

Taste Notes:

Low ball glass, 2 ice cubes, 1 shot of bourbon

The nose on Buffalo Trace is much stronger than that of Maker’s Mark, and instantly you smell the alcohol followed by the flavor.  This is much the same when tasting. You are initially shocked by the taste of alcohol and then move forward to taste the caramel, vanilla and brown sugar.  It feels heavier on the tongue and more one dimensional compared to that of Maker’s Mark.

Selection: Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey, 750ML, $27.99

Reason: Truthfully, I was originally drawn to the Bulleit packaging and then began to read a bit more about the product. Known for the high amount of rye, more so than others, lack of phenol alcohol and over six years of aging sold me. 

Production: Produced in small batches and stored in a single story warehouse as to reduce inconsistencies provided by temperature.  Aged six years and the barrels are mingled, not blended unlike some other bourbon. 

Taste Notes:

Low ball glass, 2 ice cubes, 1 shot of bourbon

This bourbon has a smooth smell, soothing almost.  Full bodied and includes notes of vanilla, and caramel.  The difference between this bourbon and the others is the complete lace of harsh taste and lends itself to drinking straight or mixing. 

Overall, I preferred the Bulleit to the others, due to the smoothness, and flavors.  It was a rare treat! We welcome your opinions and hope to hear about your favorite bourbons.  We are open to new things!

Tuesday Tip: Cooking

Southerners are Food Lovers. So when you’re cooking, here are a few things to make your life a little easier.

• Cook once; eat twice. Grill extra meat, fish, or vegetables when you’re making one meal. Toss it in the fridge and you’ve got half the battle one the next day. Just disguise it in another way, and voila… now you’ve got sandwiches, pasta, stir fry, salads, whatever your imagination can think of!
• To keep those pots from boiling over the side, place a toothpick between the pot and the cover. This give a tiny outlet that also works great for casserole dishes in the oven.
• Rub oil around the inside of the top of the pot when you’re boiling for custards, milk, pasta, and such to prevent boilovers.
• Place three marbles in the bottom of the pan when you’re using a double boiler. These will alert you by rattling when the water gets too low, and save your pan from scorching.
• When cooking those tell-tale odorous dishes such as broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts, toss a few thick chunks of bread into the water. The heartier the bread (think ryes and the like), the less likely it is to dissolve on you, making it harder to remove, but any style bread will work. Who knows why this works, but it does? (Sharon Herbst claims it’s because of the sweetness of the breads. She also claims a couple of slices red bell pepper does the same.) Just don’t forget to remove your bread or pepper before serving.
• Drape a cloth dampened with half water, half vinegar over the cooking pot (make sure those edges are well away from your heat!) to keep odors down as well.
• Reheat frozen foods over low heat, adding just enough water to your soup, sauce, stews to cover the bottom of your pan, then cover and cook. Stir and break up the food as it defrosts often. Once unfrozen, turn that heat up to medium and heat through.
• Turn off your burner before even removing a pan from the stove. This will make sure you never accidentally leave a burner on.
• Make sure your oven mitts are dry before handling your hot dishes. Wet material lets heat through and could burn you!

Now, I’m hungry. How about you? Let’s get to it, and go make something delicious!

Austin City Limits, Season 36

As the longest running music series show, Austin City Limits begins their thirty-sixth season this year.  If thirty-six years was not enough to celebrate, it is an end of an era as they embark to a new sound stage early in 2011.  To commemorate the move, Austin City Limits welcomes back some of their favorite performers, and also new friends this season.  The season premiere is Saturday, October 2, 2010. 

Willie Nelson was the first Austin City Limits performer thirty-six years ago.  Since that epic first performance, Austin City Limits has been an advocate for the unknowns, underdogs and generally misplaced artists.  While some might consider it an island of misfit toys of sorts, we can all be thankful for their continued support of music genres that were rarely popular until exposed to a larger audience.  For example, country music was a constant feature in the 1980’s although it was not so popular across the nation.  The world music genre is another example of their continued support of finding artists beyond the top 40 list of local radio stations.    

Riding the musician’s cargo elevator up to the third floor 6A studio was a treat while visiting Austin last summer.   I asked a ridiculous number of questions of the guide who was subjected to my every thought and truly I could have sat in that room until the next band showed up for a sound check. 

Some of the facts I found interesting about the show, Austin City Limits, is that they receive little funding from the Public Broadcasting Company (PBS) who airs the show, but it also affords the show’s directors and producers complete artistic freedom.  Unlike many television show performances where payment is high, artists are paid wages in accordance with the American Federation of Musicians.  While the studio might not be all that glamorous it made me think of that band you fell in love with at the local venue that is small, intimate and requires the artists to be more engaged with the audience.   

And if you asked the staff of Austin City Limits about their favorite act, musician, band, they would hem and haw around the issue. This is not because they are trying to make everyone happy, but rather that there are so many standout performances, it would be too difficult to list them all. 

p.s. – Band of Horses and The National will appear on the show this season as well. Woohoo!

Bourbon on the Menu

Here is a little preview of what is coming up this week.

An Introduction to Bourbon

 

During this last week of September (which is also National Bourbon month) we will approach the history and components of bourbon, explore a few recipes and enjoy a tasting. 

This is an introductory piece for the newcomers to the world of bourbon. If you happen to be a bourbon aficionado all the information shared will be familiar territory. As this is my first experience dabbling with bourbon, tasting, pairing and dining with the spirit, it has proved to be a joyous learning experience.

Who knows, perhaps you will learn something? I know I did.  Cheers to you!

Bourbon.  Around the world it is a distilled spirit that evokes only thoughts of the American south.  Birthed from Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, when Irish-Scottish Settlers refused to pay a whiskey tax.  Causing problems, Washington provided incentives for settlers who would move out of the area to Kentucky (at that time parts of what is now Kentucky were part of Virginia).  Thomas Jefferson, governor of Virginia, offered the settlers sixty acres of land if they built a permanent structure and raised corn.  Sixty acres of corn proved too much for one family, but a welcomed solution to all of the corn was making whiskey with the leftovers. 

We are still talking about bourbon, don’t worry.  Here is where the jargon can be confusing, but I will try to explain.  All bourbons are whiskey, but not all whiskeys are bourbon.  That is a mouthful, I know.  Legend says that whiskey was stored in charred oak barrels for long trips. The outcome included a caramel color and flavors different from that of the original whiskey.  Named for the county of its origin in Kentucky, bourbon was born (Old Rip Van Winkle, History of Bourbon.)

Legally, bourbon must be straight whiskey made in the United States (anywhere, not just Kentucky) with at least fifty-one percent corn (although most distillers use more), aged two years or more in new charred oak barrels (most is four years or older), distilled at 160 proof or lower, and no coloring or flavoring can be added.  Just as a point of interest all straight bourbons in the United States are made of sour mash.  Sour mash uses drained liquid from mash (fermented and cooked grains) leftover from the primary distillation and adds it to the next batch of mash, thus bringing forward the character of each old batch and balancing the acidity. 

If no coloring or flavor can be added how is the beautiful caramel color and taste derived?  Prior to storing the whiskey, new barrels are assembled and heated to extract natural sugar and tannins from the wood. After formation, the interior of the barrels are charred over an open flame to produce a layer of charcoal (Regan, G. Regan, M.H. The Baffling World of Bourbon.)

With what we know about straight whiskey from above, the variety of bourbons on the market are based upon elements of production, storing, aging, and bottling.  This in itself is another essay for another day down the road, but I cannot go without mentioning a few differences. 

• One of the unique qualities of this American spirit is the use of limestone spring water found in Kentucky and considered to greatly contribute to the flavor (Old Rip Van Winkle, History of Bourbon.)
• Most bourbons are filtered with active charcoal both after aging and before bottling.
• Small batch bourbon does not lend itself to the quantity of the spirit, but rather as whiskeys mature at different rates due to location, and temperature in a warehouse, batches are mixed together to develop consistency. 
• Single barrel bourbon may differ from barrel to barrel and is not mixed as with small batch bourbon (noted above). The distiller makes selections that have matured and meet the standards of flavor to develop consistency.

We look forward to sharing with you our bourbon tasting and some of bourbon recipes this week.  It should be a good week.

(picture from mentalfloss.com)

Finian’s Rainbow

 

I’m gonna let y’all in on a little secret that I’m not sure I’ve shared here before. I love Broadway. It’s not very Southernly of me, I know, but I do. Musicals especially. I’ve got more showtunes albums than I know what to do with (much to husband’s chagrin on roadtrips), and if I had to live anywhere else besides the South, it’d probably be right there in New York City, just for this very reason.

That being said, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to a great Broadway classic, Finian’s Rainbow, and only just recently realized just how Southern it is. The whole plot centers around Finian, who moves to the fictional Missitucky (a combo of Mississippi and Kentucky) from Ireland. The marriage of Irish music with bluegrass, gospel, rhythm & blues is fantastic.

It’s filled with humor, romance, satire. The bad guys get their due, and all ends happily. It’s my kind of play. While it’s had many Broadway revivals since 1947 (it’s most recent closing just in January of this year), if you’ve never had the privilege to see this show, Francis Ford Coppola made a film adaptation in the 1960’s staring Fred Astaire.

Entertainment. Culture. Southern. How much better can you get?

Rocking Chairs for All Seasons

 Inspired by all of this talk of fall and sittin’ on the front porch, I found myself searching for rocking chairs online and wanted to share with you! Which is your favorite? Can you guess which is the most expensive?

Variations of the Rocking Chair

High Back Rocking Chairs

Medium High Backs

Mesquite Rockers

Classic and Colonial Rockers

My personal favorite is the High Back Plantation Rocker.  The most expensive is the Mesquite Rocker from Gary Weeks.  This particular rocker is a one of a kind, with an asking price of $32,000!!