Smuttynose started brewing in Portsmouth in 1994, releasing their pale ale and brown ale that year. Robust Porter came along in 2001. The brewery is linked to the Portsmouth Brewery in town, and I’ve found quite a few of their beers on tap alongside that brewpub’s beers when I’ve been there. I’ve heard tell their biggest market in New York City, even larger than New Hampshire, which tells you a bit about how well-received its beers have been here.

Robust Porter, as a style, is expected to be dominated by the roasty, even a little burnt flavors from the roasted malt in the grain bill, but never harsh. Obviously it’ll be brown or dark brown as a rule, and unlike its cousin the brown porter, which is more English in style, some hop bitterness should stand out in the body. It’s typically a rich, full beer, even if not very high in alcohol.

Smuttynose Robust Porter pours a very, very dark brown, opaque, with some ruby highlights if you hold it up to the light. I poured it to kick up the lovely pictured head, a huge, dense, big-bubbled brown head, though that quickly settles to a thin layer that never quite disappears. True to its style, the nose is filled with roasted barley and bitter chocolate. There’s a slight red-wineyness to the aroma as well, and that typically shows up as a marker of oxidation.

Aside: Oxygen will react with the building blocks of the beer to create new flavor compounds over time, many of which are unpleasant. This oxidation, though not what the brewer intended for the beer, can be pleasant enough — for example, wine or sherry aromas and flavors work pretty well most of the time in beers that use a lot of darker, roastier malts. But then, oxidation can show up as papery, like wet cardboard. Not exactly palatable.

Unsurprisingly, the flavor is dominated by bitter chocolate and the roasted barley as well, though there is a bit of hop bitterness present, as a “fuzzier” roughness on the palate than the roasted flavors. No hint of the alcohol — it’s a mere 5.7% — shows up to add heat to the mix. Instead, the beer feels fairly full in the mouth, and the carbonation isn’t so excessive that it distracts. There’s a little sawdusty dryness (another oxidative effect) in the back, too, which carries into the finish and mutes the roastiness in the aftertaste somewhat.

I picked this beer up at Sam the Beer Man in Binghamton, with a best by date of April 2010. So it was probably bottled in October, which means it was maybe getting a little long in the tooth. I’ve seen six-packs for sale for around $9 around the city (and it’s occasionally on tap), so it’s on the inexpensive side, actually. Just check the dates! All in all, the Robust Porter is a worthy, sessionable beer. Give the folks from New Hampshire a little love.

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Post tags: beer, porter, Smuttynose

I mentioned a special project I’ve been working on, well, here it is: SUPER SUNDAY SUPPERS!!!  (Credit: TC for coming up with the name unwittingly)  Cook a huge blowout meal on Sunday, then eat the leftovers the rest of the week as I can.  I’ve been planning menus like crazy, trying to make them the perfect combination, and so far… so good. 

First up: pulled pork, cole slaw, salad to be healthy, dinner rolls, and roasted brussels sprouts with bacon.  Nommm?

Nommm.  Better shot for the brussels sprouts glory – because they were glorious. 

Complete with dessert!  I’ve made this for the blog before – strawberry love cake – but had to fix a few problems from last time (YEARS ago). 

Nommms! 

And of course, I re-badged the leftovers after I got tired of eating it the way it was. 

Pulled pork
Cole slaw
Roasted Brussels sprouts
Strawberry love cake
Pulled pork “green chile” stew

Pulled pork: I used a random crockpot recipe to make pulled pork the normal way, vinegary deliciousness.
Cole slaw: shredded cabbage; thinly sliced red onion; white vinegar; celery salt; fresh black pepper; lemon juice.  Toss and let sit in fridge till you’re ready to eat it (it wilts a little bit).
Roasted brussels sprouts: chopped in half (cuz I had big ones, but if you have small ones, by all means leave them whole); lardons of bacon; drizzled with olive oil, tossed, then roasted on a baking sheet for about 20 minutes.  So good and sweet.  LOVE!
Strawberry love cake: recipe as shown, but I chopped the strawberries up and incorporated them into the whipped cream instead of layering them separately.  Pretty damn awesome, if you ask me, and less messy, no squishing out of berries! 
Pulled pork ‘green chile’ stew:  I put green chile in quotes because I didn’t actually use green chiles.  I bought them, then just didn’t add them, because it was awesome enough as is. 

Sautee minced garlic, onions and carrots in the bottom of a pot. 
Add diced tomatoes, with juice, to ‘deglaze’. 
Add black beans. 
Add frozen veggies of your own choosing.
Add shredded cabbage (I had some on hand I wanted to use, but you can feel free to omit that ingredient). 
Add pulled pork and stir to incorporate. 

You can add some heat by adding crushed red pepper flakes, or hot sauce… I wound up eating huge bowlfuls of this, sometimes with sour cream dolloped on top as well.  It was so good… the delicious pork permeating through the broth, and just… amazing! 

Hope you enjoyed following along for Super Supper Sunday #1!!!

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cake, pulled pork, soup/stew

Post-Midtown Lunch February HH, I needed some real food to eat before I passed out drunk on the sidewalk.  (Okay, I wasn’t that blitzed, but still.)  We headed over to nearby Menchanko-tei for some ramen yums!  I also opted to add on two rice balls or onigiri for $3.50, which is a meh price (I usually get them for about $1.50 each, but not freshly made that minute ones).  I got sake (salmon) and mentaiko (spicy cod roe), which were both underfilled and kind of eh for me.  My dining companions – my three bodyguards, hah – tried some and found them alright, but I’m picky about these probably because I’m picky in general, and because I make my own at home. 

TT ordered the menchanko (I think) – I’m sure he liked it or else I’d have heard complaining

TC ordered the Hakata ramen, which I know he’s had before and liked it. 

Personally, I opted for the Hakata ramen special, which boasted extra fatty pork, plus half a boiled egg.  I was very pleased with my bowl of ramen - it was just starting to rain outside – and it definitely hit the spot, warming me to my bones.  WIN. 

The Beer Boor ordered cha su negi miso nose, roast pork grilled with spicy miso and scallion.  Pleasantly spicy but not overwhelmingly so (his words, not mine), he would definitely order this again.  Yum. 

Despite being pretty full, when I saw ‘annin tofu’ on the menu, I thought it was ‘dofuhwa’ a Chinese dessert.  It was not.  It was okay but again, I let my buddies finish it off because I just couldn’t bring myself to be all that interested in it. 

Yvo says: Menchanko-tei continues to be a great place to stop by for some ramen or Japanese goodies.  Not expensive (nor cheap), well suited to those of us who just want a quick fix of noodles-in-soup sometimes… I like it quite a bit.
recommended

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Post tags: onigiri, Ramen

Today’s lunch: pulled pork, mac&cheese, and roasted broccoli.  Soon to be posted about a BBQ place in Queens   Giant mound of broccoli to make up for all the ‘bad’ food I’m eating…  

It was absolutely gorgeous outside today.  I was very happy with the weather… wandering around the rolling hills of my school campus, sitting on a bench, just enjoying what promises to be a gorgeous spring.  Class was kind of crappy, and the night didn’t get better when I got to my car and found a f*cking ticket on my windshield.  I should have been parked in the school lot, but I parked a few blocks away in a residential area instead.  Still!  A $65 ticket that I can’t afford for something that wasn’t my fault (but it isn’t the city’s fault either). 

My night didn’t really get better, to be honest, and I wish I could say I was happy right now, but I can’t.  Despite the plate of joy above, and the fact that I introduced a friend to ‘heaven in [her] mouth’ (hi E-dee-licious!), and just… everything is working hard to make me unhappy right now, and I’m giving into it.  I just am. 

Oh, right, St. Patrick’s Day.  That doesn’t really mean anything to me…

sigh

What is Project 365?

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Post tags: 365

You’ve all heard of my fried pickle quest – I do so love fried pickles, you know – but did you know how much I love Justin Timberlake?  YouTube “Plasticville” or his “immigrant” SNL skit.. or any of his Digital Shorts like “Dick in a Box” – well look, I love JT.  Now that the hype has died down from his restaurant opening eons ago, I swung by to check out the place and see if the BBQ was well, any good.  Y’know.  Cuz I’m such an expert on good BBQ, being a NYer and all, y’know. 

As soon as I saw this item on the menu, I knew we had to get it.  Come on: BBQ glazed thick-cut fresh bacon, would you pass that up?  Even if you had about 15 more lbs of food coming per person alone?  Sweet, succulent, though it wasn’t quite what bacon is, in my vernacular – crispy, thin, crackly, – it was still damn delicious.  No knife required – my fork sliced easily through the tender meat.  Oh so good.  Oh sooo good. 

My dining companion chose to also order “jalapeno bottle caps” – deep fried sliced jalapeno peppers with ranch sauce.  I mistakenly assumed they’d be filled with cheese, like most deep fried jalapenos that I’ve experienced, but as these were not, I could eat only a few before succumbing to the heat.  Whoops.  My dining companion inhaled all of them so I would imagine they were good.

DEEP FRIED PICKLES!!!  I was super excited to see these and even more excited by how crispy they looked.  And they were super crispy!  And better dipped in the ranch that came with the jalapenos than in the sauce that came with the pickles… BUT.  Someone super-dried these pickles pre-deep-frying (safety concerns, perhaps? – to prevent spatter?) so the pickles were super crunchy, but no burst of briney goodness issued forth in each bite and therefore… no pickle taste.  Who wants fried pickles that taste just like fried anything?  You want the pickle taste!  You want the briney goodness!  So while these were tasty as potato chips, they were not fried pickle delicious.  Sadface FAIL.  (That isn’t to say I wouldn’t eat them again, but it is to say these are by far not the best fried pickles I’ve had.)

What is that saying?  Your eyes are bigger than your stomach?  I do have pretty big eyes… and this case proved no exception.  I will maintain, however, that 1- I intended to have leftovers, ANYWAY and 2- it was the fried foods in the beginning that helped me hit the wall.  I mean, really, my stomach turns when I eat too much grease or oil, so I have to ease back… really!  I ordered the King’s Combo, which included Memphis-style dry rubbed spare ribs, sliced brisket, fried chicken, two sides and a biscuit.  I chose tater tots (cuz who can resist tots? REALLY!) and creamed spinach as my sides. 

A brief moment to say that I basically ate a small piece of brisket, one rib, looked at the fried chicken, and then a couple of tater tots… but had to stop myself from eating all of the creamed spinach.  I mean MY GOODNESS that was GOOD creamed spinach.  Buttery, garlicky, creamy… I could bathe in this stuff and die happily in a big vat of it.  WHOA. 

I actually wound up taking pretty much everything home… but the waitress forgot or just straight up didn’t bother packing my creamed spinach.  I was REALLY sad about that; this seriously was the best creamed spinach I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot, seriously).  Mmm.  Everything held up nicely to reheating (gently), and I liked everything from my platter a good deal, though I prefer saucier BBQ – which may be blasphemy to some of you, but it is what it is, I like what I like.  So, yummy.  And definitely on the creamed spinach. 

An order of mac & cheese goodness.  I didn’t find this terribly interesting actually – alright, it sufficed – but my dining companion really liked it and basically inhaled it.  Wow. 

Corn bread with honey butter.  I was in love with the honey butter.  The corn bread, not so much, but I don’t usually find myself dying for corn bread anyways. 

Last but not least, my pig of a dining companion ordered the fried chicken & waffles.  Not really many places on the UES that will have this, so it was total WIN – and look at that giant bowl of syrup accompanying!  Ridiculous!  But somewhat awesome.  I know these were good cuz I tried some of the waffle – crisp, slightly sweet, tender insides.  And the fried chicken was legit.  Pig destroyed the platter and then some.  Nom.

Yvo says: While I can’t comfortably say this is a must visit for any BBQ connoisseur (return trips needed!), I did enjoy my food and would definitely go back to try more stuff.  The place is comfortably casual, with lots of wood paneling, imitating what this city girl thinks feels like a ranch dining or a roadside stop… the service was super friendly, and if you read their Twitter, you can get discounts using a secret password, which I’m totally down with.  The place was pretty empty on a Monday night, which I prefer… and they have bottled root beer (I believe it was Abita), which is always a win (non-Pepsi/Coke root beer is usually a good thing, in my book, even growing up loving Barq’s as I did – before Coke bought them).  I definitely enjoyed myself.
recommended, though no need to go out of your way to try it

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BBQ, fried pickles