Ganglians!

Let's hear it for local boys The Ganglians! They are getting a lot of attention all over, including a really good review on Pitchfork that must be selling a ton of albums for them. They're playing a benefit for themselves tonight at Luigi's, and Zach Hill jumped on it recently. They're going on an East Coast tour soon and they need money to get there.

salsa

Last month's Gourmet had a salsa recipe that got me inspired to start learning more about cooking Mexican food, and I also went to the library and checked out a Dianna Kennedy book. One thing I learned is that the translation of "frijoles refritos" is closer to "well-fried beans" than "refried beans". They are only fried once, but the "re" on the fritos is for emphasis. The Diana Kennedy recipe is the bomb. This is the only time I've ever cooked with epazote, and I can't believe how good it is in beans! The recipes I've read all emphasize that epazote goes better with black beans, so I'll try it that way, but it was dynamite with pintos, too. I didn't get a picture of the mashed and fried beans, but the whole ones were also good.

It was really fun going to La Superior and picking out fresh and dried chilies that I had never cooked with before. The prices at La Superior make me trip out on the fact that people think Safeway is cheap. Everything is like half as much!

The salsa recipe is not linked online, but I think I can sum it up. Count out about 40 dried chilies de arbol and de-stem them. Peel a clove of garlic. Roast the chilies and the garlic close in a medium-hot cast iron skillet for about 2 minutes-until they start to get black spots. Take those out and put them in a blender and throw about a pound of tomatillos in the iron skillet.

Keep turning the tomatillos with tongs until they soften and get charred in spots. Take out the small ones as they get soft. The big ones can be in there as long as 20 minutes.
Blend it up and...
Delicious and pretty orange salsa.
Over the weekend, I also created this kitten out of angel tears and fluffy clouds.

Goodbye to Mrs. Lee

The most important item on the agenda is to let everyone know that the Lees have sold Lee's hardware at S and 10th and their last day there is on June 30th. Anyone who has lived on the Southside should go by and say goodbye to Mrs. Lee, I think she would really appreciate it. A "what's up" to Mr. Lee will probably go unnoticed. I interviewed her yesterday, and hope it will go in the SNR, but if not I'll post it here.

I interviewed Mr. Maalouf and I like the way it came out. Love the picture.

The Mayyors absolutely killed it last night. I was in the room with them when they started and it was ear-bleedingly loud and people started to pour beer on each other and crowd surf, so I fled into the kitchen. I was set to cut out early and started to make my way through the living room when I realized that they sounded fucking great. Really ominous and heavy. The Pizzas were really good and funny, too. I liked when Charles sardonically dedicated the song "Too Popular" t0 the Mayyors.

Brew Awareness?

Tonight is the Show That Cannot Be Named, otherwise know as: If This Show Does Not Get Shut Down By Cops Then Funcastle Will Live Forever.

I'm gonna post from the heart, guys. I can see that it rubs people the wrong way when I make stabs at non craft brew in the interest of amusing myself or trying to make you laugh. If you know me, you know that you have seen me drink countless bladderloads of non-craft beer. I love Sacramento Treats, I love ice cold Tecate and High Life. I drink mass-produced beer like Alaskan Pale Ale and Anchor Steam, and it can be delicious. I am trying to share my love of beer with you, and I am really getting a lot of flack. I see you don't like my attitude about it, but I think it really is similar to DB making fun of crap like Medea's In Jail or whatever. Does anyone accuse him of being a snob for that?

I know you're kind of joking, but it's just not the kind of comments I get if I post about wine or food or movies or bands or lots of other topics. I think it's cool for anyone to get into anything and have some standards about it whether it's records or wine or collecting 1860s silverware. Right? So are you going to keep busting my chops?

Brew Awareness

Did you know that the Original Pete's chain, which has only 8 locations total (this surprised me), has changed the name of two of its locations (midtown and El Dorado Hills) to "Pete's Restaurant and Brewhouse" because they have entered into a partnership with the well-respected Firestone Walker brewery to serve four proprietary beers? Every Monday these four beers are $2 a pint. They also serve the Firestone Pale Ale and the Double Barrel Ale, but those are not included in the discount. Here's what smiller had to say. He did not know I would be posting this. Surprise!:

All their “Pete’s” beers are $2 a pint. The Firestone taps don’t have the discount. I haven’t been in a while but their rotating seasonal tap (the one that had the awesome Velvet Merkin last winter) a month or so ago was their hefeweizen which I thought was pretty great for the style. Hefeweizens don’t exactly thrill me but when one is balanced instead of overly spiced like a lot of US hefeweizens, it’s a pleasant surprise. The other beers are OK but nothing quite as good as the proper Firestone beers. They have a pale, an IPA, an amber and a red. They’re all well made without being anything too fancy. I’d definitely stick to the Firestone beers on any other day besides Monday. I think they have the Firestone porter right now which is awesome. My biggest problem with Pete’s is that they serve their brews ice cold in super chilled glasses.

weekend sweets

Happy Summer!

I made clafouti from a Garrett McCord recipe this weekend. It's the perfect time because the cherries are still really good right now. It was tasty, although mine does not look lovely like his pictures. I didn't have the size baking dish he specified, so I used a skillet. This dish is very eggy and I would like to make it another time for breakfast. My only quibble is that I felt the almond extract taste was too strong. Two teaspoons is a lot of extract.

Then I made strawberry balsamic jam from a recipe from this book. I have a crush on the author, Eugenia Bone because she is pretty and does stuff like can her own tuna. However, this is the first time I've used the cookbook and it had mixed results. The balsamic flavor is not very pronounced and the jam is super sweet. She does not use pectin in her recipes, and the jam is very runny. I think it would make great pancake syrup. I had it in yogurt this morning. What I love about the book is that it is geared towards small batch canning. You can make jam after work, no big deal. I bought a six dollar flat of strawberries from the yolo fruit stand.
then I boiled the jars. Heating up the water is the most time-consuming part.
cook down the strawberries
add a crapload of sugar, and then the balsamic vinegar is stirred in at the end
Voila!

French Film Festival

I forgot until just now that the French Film Festival has been moved to the next two weekends so I can finally attend a movie or two. Well, I don't think that's why she moved it, but that's the result. Here's the schedule. Can any movie-nerd types who have looked into tell me what the hot tickets are?

Kitten!

I was told to take this picture because it symbolized the Dayrage, so here it is. I joined the 'rage at the Pine Cove, and it was in full effect.

We spotted JerPer running by. We tried to knock on the windows and get him to join the 'rage, but he was on his phone. I've seen him running at the park before and he seems to always be on his phone. The 'rage adjourned to the river (Sutter's Landing) around 6 pm. We got in the water for a bit and then I had to go. The core three raged on and I'm really not sure what happened at the end. I'm curious. Some stuff is happening to Sutter's Landing. There's a dog park there now. And I can report that the water is already pretty warm and slow. Swimming time! We need to get some watercraft and chill there all the time.

In other big news, here's my kitten after her bath.

Oh yeah, and for you record and cassette collectors out there, the KDVS record swap is at Luigis on Saturday. Smiller is going to be selling a gang of records in hopes of financing his next vacation. I will be selling some crap, too. Starts at 9am on Saturdya.

The Bruery

This is a kibbee sandwich from Maaloufs.  I interviewed Abdul Maalouf for SNR, so watch for that upcoming.  He is the best!  A fun interview, and I ate at Maalouf's three times in the course of trying to get the interview.  

This is a Hitachino Nest beer that Burgers and Brew in Sac is serving.  It is aged in sake casks. It's 8.0% alcohol.  The Kiuchi Brewery website says it's available only in Japan.  Obviously not up to date.
Now that I'm an expert in photoshop, I lightened up this dusk-time picture of Dreamdate playing acoustic in a Davis backyard.
The Bruery event at Sac Brewing was fun, and they still have Bruery beer left, as well as Chouffe beer from their Chouffe tasting last week.  The two Bruery beers I tried were the Berliner Weisse and the White Zin.  Here's their description of the Berliner:

Hottenroth Berliner Weisse
Brewed in memory of my Grandparents (Fred and Sarah Hottenroth), this tart German-style Berliner Weisse is as authentic as it gets. We used lactobacillus and a hint of brettanomyces to sour this very unusual, low gravity wheat beer. To cut the tartness for those with sweeter tastes, raspberry or woodruff syrup is a traditional way to sweeten the beer. Almost an extinct style, we hope to help revive the Berliner Weisse in memory of two great people.

ABV: 3.1%, IBU: 2, SRM: 2

Accolades:
Los Angeles International Beer Competition 2008, Gold, American-Style or German-Style Sour Ales

What an interesting brew!  So low alcohol, and the lactobacillus caused a different type of sourness than Brett.  It had almost no body, and little carbonation.  

The White Zin is not on their website, but here's the description from the handout they had at the tasting:

American wild ale with fruit.  No, not the wine!  Rather, this beer is a blend of Cuvee Juene with our Zinbier, a Belgian blonde fermented with almost 1000 pounds of zinfandel grapes.  Ripe fruit flavors meld with the biscuity malt to create a unique flavor profile, accentuated by a refreshing acidity.  The perfect cheese beer?  Perhaps.  (ABV approx. 7.5%)

This was a tasty brew.  Some in our group felt it was equal to a Russian River sour, but I thought it did not appoach that level of magical deliciousness.  Speaking of Russian River, Sac Brewing has bottles of Consecration for sale for 30 or 40?  I can't remember, I know that's a big difference.

Anyway, head out there for the beers on draft.  They range from $4.75 to 6.00 bucks a glass, and you can taste them all for 15.

Dayrage 2: The Revenge of Dayrage is going on today.  Maybe I will get text updates.

The Bruery

This video combines two great things: Nardwuar and The Vivian Girls.  Stay tuned until the end to hear them talk about a third great thing: The Bananas!

Also, an extensive article with a bunch of pictures on Matt K is in the Bee today!

Also also, Bruery tonight at Sac Brewing!  This is major.  Come out to support this so we can bring more stuff like this to our area.  These brews are delicious.  Here's the info from the website:

We will start pouring tasting flights and glasses at 4:00 and Patrick Rue will join us at 6:00 to meet and greet our local homebrewers and beer aficianados.

We will be pouring:
Orchard White
White Zin
Virgin Papier
Batch No. 1 - Levud's
Black Orchard
Hottenroth Berliner Weisse

Bottles of Saison Rue, Saison de Lente and White Orchard will be available for purchase as well.

The first 30 sample flights that are ordered will come with a beautiful Rastal crystal tulip glass with The Bruery logo etched on the front. You do not want to miss these!

Vanoni in Estonia!

One hour traffic jam on the way to work!  So many things to post!

Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang, authors of Cooking from the Heart are on Insight with Jeffrey Callison in a few minutes!!

Show tonight at West Capitol Bowl that you already know about which for real is a cassingle release party for the English Singles Cassingle.

Say what?  The Bruery is pouring beers at Sac Brewing Co. on Monday?!? You don't want to miss that.  How does Couchdive know?  It's not even on the website.

Oh yeah, Alkali Flats last show on Saturday as well.

AND...the cookbook ladies will be at Avid Reader at 4 pm on Sunday.  Go get a book!  The recipes are good.

raising BA

This is going to be the start of an occasional feature here on Heckasac.  There's an important cause that's near and dear to my heart-Brew Awareness.  I'm working through the Heckasac foundation to raise BA in our immediate area.  Just 50 cents a day pledged to Heckasac's Brew Awareness campaign can buy at least two, top-quality 750 ml bottles of brew for some Sacramentan in need of a serious brew education.  Here's the sample of just one of the countless letters we have received here at BA headquarters:

Dear Heckasac-

Before you offered me enrollment in your generous program I was in a sorry state.  I thought I loved brew.  I thought I knew brew.  I always drank Blue Moon-you know with the orange in it (I shudder to think of it now), and on special occasions I would head over to the Rubicon and order a Monkey Knife Fight.  Through the actions of your foundation, and your gift of two delicious craft brews a month, I have come to see the error of my ways.  You have saved my palate, and my life.

Thank You

OK, OK.  I kid.  And I will not claim to be an expert in brew, and whatever brew you like be proud of it.  Unless it's Monkey Knife Fight.  Me and smiller just thought this would be fun.  So after that backtracking, here goes:

Saison Rue-The Bruery (pictured above)

purchased at Healthy Spirits in San Francisco (currently not available in Sac area)

$12.99?

8.5% ABV

The Bruery is an interesting new craft beer maker that has been around less than two years, yet they already have a wide array of Belgium-influenced releases.  They are located in Placencia, in Orange County.  Last night we tasted their Saison Rue.  Here's how they describe it:

"Saison Rue is an unfiltered, bottle conditioned, Belgian/French-style farmhouse ale. This is a beer of subtlety and complexity, with malted rye, spicy, fruity yeast notes, biscuit-like malt backbone, and a slight citrus hop character. With age, this beer will dry out and will become more complex with rustic notes of leather and earth from the contribution of a wild yeast strain. Being a Saison, Saison Rue is ambiguous unto itself as it is a different beer when fresh and when aged. We hope you enjoy it in all of its incarnations."

So this is a beer that contains the wild yeast Brettanomyces.  It is unfiltered, so it has a kind of cloudy, apple cider appearance, and there's a yeast shot at the bottom.  Smiller's guess was that they take a cue from Orval, and pitch the Brett in at bottling.  It definitely had a taste of rye, and just a hint of the sourness that Brett imbues, but if you were to age this bottle for six months it would probably have quite a different character.  The rye would go down and the sourness would go up.  

At 8.5% it's on the strong side for a saison, which is kind of typical of the emerging "American saison" style, where we always have to go and break all the rules.  USA! USA!  I personally prefer their Saison De Lente, which is their Spring saison.  It also has Brett, and is lower in alcohol.

Blue Ribbon Contender

Prompted by reading the new blog I have linked at right (well, new to me), The Undercover Caterer, I just entered my Meyer Lemon Marmalade in the state fair!  If I have time to make basil strawbery jelly I might enter that, too.  The entry deadline is the end of June.  Just another reason to love the fair.

Only Wednesday? Drats.  There's a big show at West Capitol Bowl on Friday.  Knock Knock and English Singles.

dreamdate!

So that Rob and Arnie and Dawn show on thursday is going to have transgender activists on it. It's going to be funny to hear those dudes squirm.

Speaking of radio, the authors of Cooking From The Heart are going to be on Insight on friday.

Dudes, Dreamdate is one of my new faves!  They had a great show at Luigis the other day, and then an acoustic show in Davis.  Their new album is really good.  You can get it at chocolatecoveredrecords.com, also home of the Rantouls!  What a powerhouse label.  I hope they play in Sac again this Summer.

interesting...

Hmm...something quite interesting just happened in the tiny Sacramento food critic world.  Greg Lucas at the SNR and Blair Robertson at the Sacbee just reviewed the new incarnation of Plan B within a few days of each other.  One review (Lucas') is glowing, the other is a thorough trashing.  One or two of you may remember that I reviewed Plan B for Midmo a year or so ago and was pretty lukewarm.  One particular line I liked compared my duck confit to gnawing on a mummy's leg.  That particular entree was over 20 bucks, and was served quite carelessly.  Also, although Plan B specializes in mussels, the mussels at the restaurant, Ravenous, that is currently in the old Plan B location put Plan B's to shame.  And, the people I dined with all of these times, who live in the Pocket, stopped frequenting Plan B before it moved because of the attitude of the owner that Roberston mentioned, which is indiscreet to say the least.

God knows I've burned too many bridges here on Heckasac before I caught wise to the fact that almost everyone I write about seems to come around to reading it eventually, so I won't say much more, but I don't think I'm alone in saying that Lucas' review leaves a pretty strong impression that the owner knew who he and his friends were (one of his the dudes in his party was David Berkeley), and probably knew he was being reviewed.  That undermines his credibility in commenting on the service and presentation.  Again, this may not be so, but the implication is there.  Also, bringing wine along for a review is pretty useless for the purposes of the review.  He mentions a Saintsbury Pinot Noir, but it's unclear if he ordered that or if David Berkeley brought it.  I sympathize with having trouble writing about a wine list, since I am hardly ever excited about most Sacramento wine lists, so I often just don't mention them.  I won't quibble with the star rating, because I think star ratings are reductive and useless.

statement

The Rob Arnie and Dawn show posted a pretty impressive statement yesterda.  Here it is:

UPDATED JUNE 7TH, 2009, 11:50AM

TO OUR LOYAL ROB, ARNIE AND DAWN FOLLOWERS,

WE HAVE FAILED YOU. AS A SHOW, AS PEOPLE, AS BROADCASTERS, WE HAVE SIMPLY FAILED ON ALMOST EVERY LEVEL.

WE PRESENTED OUR OPINIONS ON A VERY SENSITIVE SUBJECT IN A HATEFUL, CHILDISH AND CRUDE FASHION; AND THEN, GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO RETRACT THOSE REMARKS, WE DEFENDED THEM.

SINCE THEN, YOU, OUR LOYAL LISTENERS, HAVE MADE IT CLEAR TO US THAT WE WENT TOO FAR. THE RESPONSE HAS BEEN OVERWHELMING. NONE OF YOU SAID THAT WE COULDN’T HAVE OPINIONS, YET SO MANY OF YOU SAID THAT THE WAY WE GAVE THEM CROSSED THE LINE. FURTHER, YOU SAID THAT OUR ATTEMPT TO MASK OUR COMMENTS AS “JOKES THAT WOULD BE UNDERSTOOD BY OUR AUDIENCE,” WAS UNACCEPTABLE. I WOULD SAY NOW THAT IT WAS WORSE THAN THAT, IT WAS COWARDLY. YOU HAVE MADE THAT CLEAR.

WE HAVE REACHED OUT TO VARIOUS GROUPS AND ASKED FOR A CHANCE TO MAKE THIS RIGHT; TO RESPOND, WITH THEIR PARTICIPATION, TO THE EDUCATION THAT OUR AUDIENCE HAS PROVIDED US. THAT OPPORTUNITY HAS BEEN GRACIOUSLY GRANTED THIS THURSDAY MORNING, JUNE 11TH. AT 7:30 A.M.

THE WORD APOLOGY APPEARS NO WHERE IN THIS LETTER FOR A REASON. WE ALREADY HID FROM DOING THE RIGHT THING ONCE AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE THAT MISTAKE AGAIN. APOLOGIZING IN A WRITTEN, POSTED STATEMENT IS A FORM OF COWARDICE. WE WILL SAY WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID THIS THURSDAY.

ON A FINAL, PERSONAL NOTE, AS THE LEADER AND OWNER OF THE SHOW, I HAVE MADE THE DECISION THAT WE NEED TO REFRAIN FROM BROADCASTING NEW EPISODES UNTIL WE CAN ADDRESS THIS ON THURSDAY .  WE WILL RETURN TO THE AIR AT 7:30 A.M. JUNE 11TH.

ROB WILLIAMS
ROB, ARNIE AND DAWN

some fun now

For something fun (besides the video below), look no further (farther?):

1) Drag Me To Hell! Ten thumbs up! A couple of times Raimi is too Raimi but if you like Raimi there really isn't any such thing as too much Raimi (except that one movie with Sharon Stone when he first went mainstream, anyone remember that?). Plus the psychic guy is a total fox, but Justin Long is a complete anti-fox.

2)The Alice Neel doc that's available on Netflix is also very good, although it does not contain any talking goats. I want to go to Richard Press books and search for one of her books, cuz they mostly out of print.

3)Show tomorrow at Luigis! Dreamdate (super good 90s style girl pop), English Singles, So Cow from Ireland.

In the not fun category, I got an email from JC with a link to this. Long story short, local shock jocks made some hateful and violent remarks about transgender children. Let's do our little part to get these idiots fired. Here's the contact page. Better yet, if you can listen to it for a couple of minutes, wait for a commercial and jot down a couple of advertisers, especially ones you think might be sympathetic to your concerns, and contact them. I can't do that today, but if anyone has time to do so, you could post some of the advertisers in the comments.

Bancho!

I won't be at work the next couple of days cuz I'll be taking a photoshop class (yay staff development!), so to tide you over I'll post this video.  The Bananas made this for a friend in Japan who is getting married.  His name is Bancho.

Take a look at the link

Hey, Liv asked me to link to this, so take a look.  She could be heading for Sac, and she's pretty distinctive looking.

With Glasses!

Ancient Sons killed it in Cesar Chavez Park.  There was a disappointing lack of swirly dancing in front of the stage, but there were a couple of truly terrifying tweakers.

Later, I went to a Funcastle show that had an excellent hippy band that burned sage, clanked swords as percussion and featured the improv saxophone jam of a red-haired hippy witch wearing a hat made out of hair.  A hat made out of hair!  Think about that one man, it's deep.

Saturday was Woodpussy, Four Pussy, and Banana Pussy and it was a fun show.  We forced Four Pussy to play "Judy In Disguise".  And there were such classic MikeRMike lines as:  You might wanna keep your cameras handy cuz I might throw up.  What's up with the Javalounge?  I heard it was closing but then I heard not really.

Uh, WTF?  I was just looking for a picture of Personal and the Pizzas to put on this post and the one above is from the Rolling Stone website.  As you can see, Dillon is now an integral part of this well-oiled fun rock maching (ha! I wrote funk rock accidentally).  They are playing at Luigis tomorrow!  Do. Not. Miss.

The new Sactown has an interview with porn star/assless tights wearer Sasha Grey, and they talk to her about being from Sac.  She says that she likes Tower Theater and had a friend who worked there?!?!!>? Does anyone know who this is?  I think she's only like 20 years old so it would have had to be recent.  After my time, anyways.