By now, most of those effected by the Blizzard of ‘09 should have found a way to dig themselves out from under the crushing weight of snow they woke to find yesterday. I know that here in Virginia, the use of the word crippled  is not to strong to describe the state of the area. Of course, the Commonwealth of Virginia is simply not prepared, nor should they necessarily be, for a storm that dumps a blanket of two feet of snow across the entire state. In addition to the woes of the snow removal crews, there is the fact that people down here can’t drive worth a damn to begin with, adding snow to the mix is a sure fire recipe for disaster.

Traffic problems aside, the Blizzard of ‘09 did give me an opportunity to do something I was hoping that I would get a chance to do but wasn’t certain that I would have the time. That is to make Christmas cookies. Ms Cocktail’s mom takes this to the extreme, sometimes making as many as twenty varieties for the Christmas season. I have much more modest goals; just getting one variety made is a serious accomplishment. So when we heard that a big storm was coming, Ms Cocktail and I headed to the store to pick up the necessary ingredients for the cookies and of course, the requisite eggnog for the chefs.

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Today it is cold, well, cold for Virginia at least. We have a rather large (again, by Virginia standards) winter storm bearing down on us so that means stocking up on items designed to help me through the cold winter snow. I’ve got extra bottles of cognac, brandy and bourbon laid up and my wine rack is full. The only thing left to do is to load the beer fridge with…well…beer.

With that thought in mind, I’ve once again been sampling beers that I think would tend towards a more winterish theme. By that, I mean heavier beers with higher alcohol content. Also while I really like American IPAs, even the imperials and doubles, I find that those that come across very hoppy with what I like to call a “green” flavor, (piney or citrusy, not young) do not help me warm up that much during the cold weather. I like things darker and thicker during this time of the year. This includes the Belgian style ales.

With that thought in mind, I collected a dubbel and a tripel from Westmalle brewery in Belgium. These are traditional ales brewed by the monks of the Trappist Monastery of Westmalle. They are unfiltered ale and so have a layer of yeast at the bottom of the bottle. Now, let’s look a bit more closely at the dubbel.

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Florentine in the name of a dish implies that it is served in the style of Florence which for our purposes means the city in the Tuscany region of Italy by that name. In the simplest terms, this means a dish served with spinach and a cream sauce. However, the dish I am speaking about today is not Italian, but French in nature. To kind of tie French cuisine and the Italian city of Florence together, there is an unauthenticated story concerning the Italian wife of France’s King Henry II, Catherine de Medici. She is credited with introducing a number of Italian foods to France including Italian ices and sherbet. She is also credited with introducing spinach to France somewhere around the year 1550. The story goes that in order to honor her Italian heritage, she decided to call any dish including spinach “Florentine”.

OK, now that we have that out of the way, we can get on to my story. Ms Cocktail and I both hail from Connecticut. Me from the interior recesses and Ms Cocktail from the coast. Both of us have seafood as part of our culinary tradition but her connection to it is much stronger. You see, her uncle was a commercial fisherman and in turn his son, Ms Cocktail’s cousin Mike, also took up that career. Since Mike lives near Ms Cocktail’s mom and the family is pretty close, he often stops by and gives her some fish. This fish sometimes makes its way into our hands as well.

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Today’s post, will be the second piece of the puzzle towards the dish I made on Tuesday. Béchamel isn’t necessarily a dish unto itself, you’d never serve a steaming bowl of hot béchamel unless you are functionally degraded. However, it is a wonderful sauce for several dishes such as lasagna or as a base component for things such as cheese sauces. In fact, my macaroni and cheese dish uses béchamel as the base for the cheese sauce and it is out of this world. The mac and cheese is a story for another day though.

By all accounts, béchamel is very easy to make. At it’s core, it is a butter and flour roux to which scalding milk is whisked into. The thickness of the sauce is governed by the proportions of milk and flour. A very traditional rendering of béchamel would use 2 Tbs butter, 2 Tbs flour and 1 cup of milk. For my recipe, I wanted it a bit thicker so I increased the butter and flour to 3 Tbs each. I’ll give the classic recipe here and you can experiment with the proportions for whichever dish you decide to make. I also made one other change, that was instead of using an onion studded with clove I used chopped onion and loose clove then strained. I use a small sauce pan to make this and I find this technique easier to work with.

Béchamel Sauce

2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 small onion
3 whole cloves

Peel the onion and stick the cloves into it, set aside. In a small sauce pan, melt the bitter over medium heat and then slowly add the flour. Cook for about three minutes stirring constantly. Slowly add the milk and whisk until fully blended. (Author’s note: You do not want this to clump. When I say to slowly add the milk, that means about 1 Tbs at a time and whisk thoroughly until the roux reaches a liquid like quality. Repeat adding a little more milk each time until all the milk is added.) Once the milk and roux are combined, add the salt and the onion and cook over medium low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do not boil the mixture and do not let it burn or stick to the bottom of the pan.

I know, it doesn’t sound like much, does it? Let me guess, it’s got spinach and cream in it right? Do I win a prize? Well, there’s a method to my madness. Tuesday was a day filled with surprises for me so I took an opportunity to make a special dish. This dish is essentially a combination of three separate things: a vegetable dish, a sauce and a prepared protein. So rather than make a huge post that will have you bored senseless, I’ll break it up into separate posts for each component. It’s possible that I’ll be able to reuse these at a later date as well.

The first thing I’d like to say is that spinach is a wonderfully versatile vegetable. Aside from being eaten straight up, it can be gussied up in many ways, from serving it up as a salad to making a mush like I’m about to do here. Like all vegetables, the most important aspect of preparing spinach is to not overcook it. That removes some essential vitamins and minerals and most of the flavor. Oh and contrary to popular belief, the human digestive system is not very adept at extracting or using the iron available in spinach. It is however, rich in beta-carotene and lutein, two cancer fighting anti-oxidants.

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Sometimes what at first blush seems like a great idea, doesn’t turn out so well in the end. Trust me, I ought to know, I’ve had a ton of them. Being a guy, these ideas usually involve a 6 pack and a power tool. Thankfully, I still have all my important pieces still attached in the appropriate places. So in addition to being a schemer, I can also identify these types of ideas when I see one.

Take an offering from the Mikkeller brewery for instance. Now, Mikkeller is a small brewery only recently opened (2006) in Denmark. It was started by two home brewers that quickly scaled up to national and then international scope. Their “mission statement” or at least what I can discern as one, comes from their web page and states:

“The brewery want to challenge the Danes’ taste buds with intense taste adventures, and some of the inspiration is found on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean where the American breweries aren’t afraid to play and break all the rules.”

And in three short years they have compiled quite a list of brews that they make, including seasonal Christmas brews. However, today, we are going to talk about one specific brew they make, the Stateside IPA.

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I’ve mentioned before that my culinary heritage is that of New England. The regional cuisine is based largely upon seafood and local vegetables. While somewhat experimental with the spicing, it’s not like other regions where hot, spicy flavors dominate the cooking. My mom was a very typical cook with New England sensibilities. Every once in a while she would break out a new recipe, but the old standards were always there. Meatloaf, home made spaghetti sauce, fresh pan seared trout (my dad and I used to do a lot of fishing when I was younger), and of course, the clam cakes and chowder (it’s spelled chowder but it is pronounced chowdah. No kidding.) that made up part of our Fourth of July celebrations.

Somewhere along the line and I’m not really sure where, I developed a penchant for spicy. I mean hurt you, melt your tongue with chemical burns, spicy. I’ve since taken a step back from that precipice, but I still like a bit of kick to my food. That desire has led me to explore the culinary traditions of the American Southwest and Cajun cultures, both of which are noted for their use of hot peppers and spice.

At this point, you must be asking yourself exactly what does one have to do with another? Well, I’ll get there, just be patient a little while longer.

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