So I’ve been a bit absent from blogging this summer with traveling, working, etc. Is it time for back-to-school resolutions yet?

But hey, I learned How To Grill Bananas! Try this at your next cookout to impress your friends with your wizardry.

• Keep bananas in their shells entirely. Grill until the skins are thoroughly blackened and the insides are just getting squishy. A simple poke will help you judge this.
• Remove, peel open and let cool for a few minutes.
• Eat straight from the peel.

Warning: the particularly rowdy tend to turn these babies into frisbees. But it’s okay, banana washes out much easier than red wine.

Originally featured on Serious Eats: Staff Picks.

Here’s the latest in our At Home With video series, starring Nick Anderer of Maialino and his lovable dogs, Revis and Kai.

Turns out kimchi fried rice is a great way to jazz up your clean-out-the-fridge repertoire.

Spoiler alert: cute dogs eating pork belly! Ah, the ways we get our kids to smile for the camera…

Original post on Serious Eats here.

Last weekend, Tara and I jammed it up at the 2012 Newport Folk Festival. In between the Alabama Shakes, Blind Pilot, and a terrible rainstorm, we explored the festival’s food offerings to share with the interwebs via my post on Serious Eats. While NFF was no Smorgasburg, we did our best! Highlights included Tallulah’s tacos, a cone of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream above, and glazed nuts.

Original post here on Serious Eats.

Blueberry beer from Newport Storm

Mediterranean platter from Timi’s Greek Food

Salmon slider from Little Billy’s Gourmet Food Truck

Glazed nuts from The Nutty Bavarian

Beef and chicken tacos from Tallulah on Thames

Yaki soba chicken from Naked Fish Sushi

There’s a new yogurt bar in town.

And it’s not frozen – it’s Chobani Greek yogurt, with a plethora of mix-ins.

The glass pots are made to order, with such combinations as dark chocolate, pistachio, mint leaves and orange wedges.

I learned a savory lesson from this shoot: plain Chobani, olive oil and pepper.

Original post on Serious Eats: New York.

Have you ever tried a Dinkie? These round puppies remind me of the Corn Baller ™.

From their website:

Dinkie (ding-kee) noun 1. A fun homemade treat, a hybrid between a pancake and a cake, it’s shaped like a sphere and can be filled with anything from peanut butter & jelly to ham & cheese. It fits right into the palm of your hands. It is served with endless sauces and toppings.

Original post here on Serious Eats: New York.

I wanted to share some shots from last week’s dinner at former Catholic school-turned-culinary salon City Grit. The dinner was hosted by John Currence of Mississippi’s City Grocery, who was very productive during his time in town for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party.

The menu was exploding with seafood and fresh vegetables. Our favorite of the evening was the Lady Cream Pea / Popcorn Rice Hoppin’ John ‘Risotto’ with pickled serranos, crawfish tails, tomato jam, and ham powder. Other highlights include a succotash salad with crisped-up butterbeans, roasted corn, heirloom tomatoes, roasted fingerling sweet potatoes, and greens. Oh, and the okra and corn fritters pictured on top, with roasted tomato, a cucumber / onion relish, and a sweet corn vinaigrette.

Gotta love that Southern hospitality.

Original post on Serious Eats: New York.

Dale Talde, former Top Cheffer and current restauranteur superstar, is a cool dude – and a serious chef. But when he gets home from a long night of service, plus or minus five or six Jamesons, it’s unlikely he’s elbows-deep making his famous Korean fried chicken. So what does he make?

“The key to cooking at the home, for me is not to make anything too involved,” Dale told us during our shoot at his downtown Brooklyn apartment. Check out the video below to see Dale and Carey make his top pick: Cacio e Pepe, or what he lovingly calls “Italian macaroni and cheese.”

While it’s undeniably good food, Dale “lazies up” the process so it’s simple enough to cook no matter how tipsy or tired he may be. Think such classic bachelor moves as using a fork to stir, not waiting for the water to boil, a heavy-handed application of cheese, and eating straight from the pan, on a paper towel, while watching SportsCenter.

Original post on Serious Eats.

The inaugural video in a new Serious Eats: Drinks series, starring Michael Neff of Ward III and The Rum House.

Dark ‘N’ Stormy, you’re up first.

Original post here on Serious Eats: Drinks.

As part of the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival, we trekked 11 km (nearly 7 miles) through rugged bogs and marshes galore in honor of the whisky smugglers of yesteryear. Smugglers such as Robbie MacPherson (our trail’s namesake) used to distill illicit whisky out of sight of excisemen, in mini stills like the Sma’ Still, as shown in my distillery tour. A dram of whisky never tasted so good as it did atop a 570 meter (1870 feet) summit. Check out some of the breathtaking scenery in the 45 second video above.

Special thanks to Andrea for lending me her hiking shoes.

Welcome to Speyside, a beautiful region of Scottish countryside surrounding the River Spey, where the sheep and the shortbread outnumber the people. Beside those notable draws, what really attracts visitors is the high concentration of single malt whisky distilleries, such as The Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, The Macallan, and Balvenie. It’s a good place for Scotch lovers. During the recent Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival, I had the chance to see a few different distilleries in action. First up for whisky cross-examination: The Glenlivet.

The stone pillar in the first photoset marks the site of The Glenlivet’s original distillery, circa 1824; it was nestled lower in the valley to more easily obtain hard well water. Now, thanks to modern day technology’s aid in procuring water, the distillery has relocated and looks down on the rolling slopes as seen above. P.S.: Those tiny white specks are sheep!

The Grains

On with the show then, shall we? We begin with an examination of the grains. The Glenlivet, like most distilleries in the area, purchases locally-sourced barley that’s already malted. We popped a few grains of malted barley, and fast became addicted to its satisfyingly crunchy, slightly sweet taste.

Milling

The barley goes through a malt mill identical to this one, and turns into coarse grist.

The Mash Tun

Hot spring water gets added to the grist to in four batches to coax the sugars out. The first two batches of water move along to fermentation, and the last two are reused in a nice distillery version of the circle of life.

Tumbler rakes stir the mash around frequently. The Glenlivet produces a clear wort, which results in a cleaner, fruitier spirit. A cloudier wort would yield nuttier flavor.

Modern Day Renovations

The Glenlivet’s new distillery was opened in 2010, and increased the distilling capacity by 75%. Here, we see the floor of the still room en route to spic and span.

Another modern-day convenience: Computers, overlooking the stills, help the distillery workers monitor the process. The result: a more consistent spirit.

Fermentation in the Washbacks

Once the wort is cooled enough that it won’t kill the yeast (around 16-19 degrees Celsius), it’s time to add the yeast and begin the fermentation process, which takes about 48 hours. This room’s filled with 16 washbacks, each working on fermentation batches staggered three hours apart. The Glenlivet uses wooden washbacks for fermentation. While they’re much harder to scrub clean than modern stainless steel washbacks with bells and whistles like fans and vents, one of the reasons the wooden ones are preferred is because the lactic acid builds up and adds character to the final product.

Distillation

We’re getting so close, we can nearly smell it. After fermentation, the spirit’s basically a frothy beer, so it’s up to the distillation phase to seriously kick it up. The two steps of distillation take place in the copper pot stills, as required by law for single malt. There are seven pairs of stills in the new distillery. The wavy-shaped pot stills and their increased surface area means more liquid to copper contact, both impacting the overall flavor and also reducing the sour sulfur content.

Wash Stills, Spirit Stills, and the Spirit Safe

After the spirit goes through the wash still, it’s still got a pretty low alcohol content, hence the name of the favorable product: low wines. The low wines then distill a second time in the spirit still, and with the help of the spirit safe, divide into strains. The strongest bit, which comes off first, is called the heads or the foreshots. The heart comes next, and is what makes our final malt whisky. Finally, at the end come the tails.

The spirit safe locks are left over from the strict lockdown policies all whisky distilleries had back in the day, when it was required by law for a government official to strictly monitor the process. The locks still remain, ensuring everything’s accounted for and everyone’s water bottles are only filled with water.

The Sma’ Still

This little guy mimics how the smugglers used to make whisky. It’s the 15th and final pot still licensed by The Glenlivet. As far as spike goes, this stuff is pretty potent. (Spike is the nickname for the unaged, straight-from-still spirit.)

From Cask To Bottle: Post-distillation, the 70% ABV spike piles into tankers and travels on a short journey offsite to Keith, where it’s then filled into casks after being reduced to 63.5% alcohol. The oak casks come in three different types: sherry butts (500 liters), oak hogsheads (250 liters) and bourbon barrels (190 liters).

Then, the casks come back to the warehouses to mature as all good single malts are apt to do. Most distilleries operate under the “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket” method—meaning, it’s better to distribute the casks among several different warehouses in case of a fire, natural disaster, etc.

The casks used to be repainted a different color and labeled with the name of the distillery, but nowadays they’re just labeled with barcodes. The blue casks mean the distillery is under the Chivas Brothers umbrella.

The bottling for all Scotch whisky takes place in the south of Scotland, in the industrial central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Maturation: The spirit must age for at least three years to be considered Scotch. The youngest whisky at The Glenlivet is the 12 year old, which is aged at least 12 years.

We tried a dram straight from a 1979 cask—the good stuff, yessiree.

Check out the process behind this intensely rich and juicy 40oz ribeye for two, via Chef Franklin Becker at Abe & Arthur’s in NYC.

The ribeye’s aged for 28 days and is sourced from Creekstone Farms via Pat LaFrieda. It’s cooked in four stages: in an infrared 1,700 °F salamander, a regular oven, a clarified butter bath—and a quick return to the salamander to finish. If only my uncle could serve cote de boeuf at his annual MDW ‘cue…

Original post here on Serious Eats: NY.

Apparently tatties, slang for baked potatoes, are huge in Scotland. The awning at The Baked Potato Shop in Edinburgh reads, “Hottest Tattie in Town.”

Now that’s a slogan that really caught my attention.

While there just wasn’t time to investigate in Edinburgh, a few days later we lunched on baked tatties in Speyside. Perfectly warm and satisfying after an 11km hike.

Toppings range from English baked beans, cheese and bacon, to a simple swab of butter.

What’s in your lunch sack today?