Thursday, March 29, 2018
Jameson’s New Bitters Taste Like Seaweed
Here’s a cocktail flavor you probably never considered drinking: ocean! But with their latest foray in the bitters market, Jameson is hoping you’re up for a swim, because they’ve just announced the launch of wild seaweed bitters. At the very least, we’re betting this unusual ingredient is mermaid-approved!
According to the drink maker, the bitters contain “a highly concentrated infusion of Jameson Irish whiskey, a variety of herbs—including cinchona, wormwood, ginseng and gentian—and wild dillisk seaweed.” It supposedly tastes as aromatic and bitter as it sounds. You can sure bet that this is not something you’d find in your granddad’s Old Fashioned!
As for the seaweed itself, it’s actually harvested by hand in Long Rock, County Sligo, Ireland, courtesy of second generation seaweed farmers. It’s then sun-dried on the shore. In other words, if you ever wanted to literally drink the Irish coast, now’s your chance!
These bitters are currently only available at Jameson’s Dublin and Midleton distilleries, as well as online, and retail for about $25. It might sound pricey, but it’s still cheaper than a trip to Ireland! Plus, you can impress your friends at your next cocktail party by having the most diverse flavor offerings around. Even if they aren’t fans of the taste, they’ll at least be amused by its novelty value, right?
This is Jameson’s second bitters product on the market. They previously launched the more conventional tasting Wild Sloe Berry Bitters three years ago.
Brendan Buckley, Irish Distillers’ innovation director had this to say about the new product, “Since launching our Jameson Bitters project back in 2015, the feedback from the global on-trade has been fantastic, so we cannot wait to see how bartenders around the world interpret the flavour of the Irish coastline in their creations using Jameson Wild Seaweed Bitters, the first seaweed bitters in the market.” Here’s hoping it goes swimmingly!
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A Look at 150 Years of San Francisco’s Evolving Dim Sum Scene
The first time I had dim sum in San Francisco, it was both Beer Week and Chinese New Year, an auspicious combination that led Fort Point Brewing Company to team up with the venerable Hong Kong Lounge II for a beer tasting and dim sum banquet. Plate after plate of food came steaming out of the kitchen and landed on the lazy susans already fully loaded with char siu bao and har gow and big heaps of garlicky greens. The joint was packed with curious San Franciscans, clearly more familiar with the city’s craft beer scene than its Chinese food, taking pulls off cans of kolsch and puzzling over how (and whether) to eat the whole chicken feet topped with black bean sauce.
I had made my reservation with great enthusiasm, eager to dive back into the deep and varied world of dim sum for the first time since I summered in Hong Kong in 2014. I grew up in a small Southern town that doesn’t even have decent versions of Americanized Chinese favorites like Hunan beef, much less takes on Cantonese fish balls and Shanghai’s famous xiao ling bao. It was good to be back in a city with a bustling Chinatown, even if San Francisco’s best dim sum parlors (and the Chinese community who give them life) have largely spilled out of the neighborhood into Richmond, Sunset, and Oakland.
That shift occurred after the 1989 earthquake, explains long-time San Francisco resident Steve Louie. He and his wife insist they aren’t foodies or experts, but they’ve also eaten a lot of dim sum over the past several decades, and watched San Francisco’s Chinese food scene evolve. It wasn’t the first time an earthquake made a big impact on the city’s dim sum scene. The Great Earthquake in 1906 leveled Chinatown and its restaurants, all of which later had to be rebuilt. There they stayed for the next 83 years until, as Louie put it, it became too inconvenient to get into the old neighborhood and new “centers of gravity” emerged.
Dim sum spread across the city, but the lines out the door were still mostly Chinese. To hear Louie’s recollections about how some of the great old restaurants on Geary Boulevard opened is to delve into the kind of gossip that crops up in close-knit communities and between families. What really set those grand dames apart, though, wasn’t the tea being spilled but the new food combinations imported from Hong Kong. One of the most popular and pioneering dim sum parlors was Ton Kiang, which is still open to this day.
“That has always been one of the most important influences on dim sum in San Francisco,” Louie said of Ton Kiang’s Hong Kong connections. Restaurants will “either bring the chef over or they’ll bring back ideas and start making them here.” That led to major advancements in the quality of San Francisco’s dim sum—a shift that, as you’ll see, reveals just how detail-oriented this style of cooking can be.
Delve Deeper
“What set Ton Kiang apart from more old-school dim sum was the skins were thinner, more translucent, and tastier,” Louie explained of the restaurant’s take on classic Shanghai soup dumplings. They became so popular in the Chinese community that word started to spread. “Their popularity took off and it started crossing over to the Caucasian community.”
Don’t think that the expanded popularity of dim sum, though, means you’re about to see enchilada bao or guien feng topped with Nashville hot chicken. Dim sum remains largely traditional in its ingredients, while the new school pushes the envelope by finding new techniques and combinations of old favorites. Take the idea to turn traditional Chinese pork barbecue, known as char siu, turned into dumplings that are then deep-fried. Or consider Dragon Beaux’s famous rainbow of soup dumplings, their skins dyed with squid ink, spinach, and beets.
Another variation especially associated with Dragon Beaux is fanciful names for traditional dishes. A trend of whimsical menu stylings have sometimes left long-time dim sum fans scratching their heads. Sometimes, Louie notes, it’s hard to puzzle out not just how one parlor’s take on a classic like siu mai differs from another, but what the same general dish is called on different menus. For newcomers to dim sum, however, it’s all part of the dizzying spell of the steaming bamboo baskets, whizzing metal carts, and the huge palate of flavors.
The other direction in which San Francisco’s dim sum scene has expanded its horizons is in price point and fanciness. There will always be hole-in-the-wall dumpling joints and noodle shops, but the earthquake of ‘89 wasn’t the only thing to shake up San Francisco. The city’s infamous tech boom and shift in business culture means there’s money to burn on elevated dim sum that leaves behind the Formica countertops of the ‘70s and ‘80s in favor of white tablecloths and flowers on the tables. No restaurant is more emblematic of that fine-dining approach than the one that paved the way—Yank Sing, the Michelin-starred SOMA flagship of San Franciscan Chinese food.
“Suddenly it wasn’t ‘oh we’re slumming and getting some really great food,’ it was ‘oh you can dress to go there and it’s fancy and it’s really good food,’” explained Louie. No longer was dim sum just novelty weeknight food or a comforting family brunch—now it was something you could take your business partner to. It wasn’t just diners taking note, either. As Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski of State Bird Provisions note, looking at the way dim sum parlors utilize ingredients, present food, and even arrange their dining rooms has inspired chefs and restaurateurs in all culinary niches.
That’s also inspired San Francisco’s Chinese chefs to get even bigger and splashier, going for the kind of grandeur you usually only see in Hong Kong or major Chinese cities. There’s a new generation of exciting new dim sum concepts including China Live, the new Ghirardelli Square project by the team behind Koi Palace and Dragon Beaux, Mr. Jiu’s, and even Yank Sing’s second location.
This is one of San Francisco’s many fascinating contradictions: that a city so deeply associated with transforming the way America eats and kick starting the slow food movement has run parallel to and is now influenced by a fast-paced style of super-traditional dining that crossed the Pacific in the Gold Rush days. Since then, this cuisine has thrived not by blending in or branching out, but by continuing to remix and reimagine itself. It only took 150 years for the city’s dim sum to step into the spotlight.
More to See in San Francisco
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Savory Dutch Baby Pancake with Salmon and Fried Egg
My first food memory is of sitting on a kitchen countertop watching Anna, the young German woman who came to our house to help with cleaning and tidying, pull a puffy pancake out of the oven.
It was the biggest pancake I had ever seen. She slathered it with butter, sprinkled it with lemon, and doused it with a snowy shower of powdered sugar. I was fascinated.
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The Best Sweet Potato Biscuits
7 Devilishly Spicy Deviled Eggs
I hate to be one of those annoying mad literalists, but doesn’t it seem like the classic deviled egg—delicious and perfect though it may—is a bit lacking in the set-your-mouth-on-fire quality its name implies?
Of course, when the concept of “deviling” a dish with the addition of mustard and/or pepper was first introduced in an 18th century cookbook, life simply didn’t have that much variety in the way of spice. Thankfully that’s no longer the case, and as these recipes prove, there are myriad ways to make your deviled eggs taste a tad a more devilish. From hot sauce to spicy condiments and peppers, here are seven favorite recipes for deviled eggs that deliver the heat.
In today’s “further proof that Sriracha makes everything taste better” news, we present these firey Asian-inspired deviled eggs. Here, the lip-tingling cult-favorite hot sauce stars in a filling mix spiked with mayo, spicy Dijon mustard, lime juice, and cilantro. Get our Sriracha Deviled Eggs recipe.
Wasabi Deviled Eggs with Roe and Crispy Nori
Sushi’s traditional partner, wasabi, adds its special brand of clear-your-sinuses punchy piquant to this deviled egg mix. Crispy seaweed strips add a welcome bite of texture and and the roe brings a pop of refreshing brine. Get our Wasabi Deviled Eggs recipe.
This Southwestern spin on the deviled egg relies on minced Hatch green chile to spice up the classic creamy egg yolk mixture. These make a good option for those just looking to dip their toes into the spicy waters as the pepper packs a milder heat and its flavor is balanced out by the addition of lime juice and aromatic cumin powder. Get the recipe.
Popular pub snack meets retro finger food in this clever mash-up featuring a boldly spiced blend of fresh jalapeño, tangy Dijon mustard, and cayenne pepper. Good thing it’s garnished with crispy, fatty crumbled bacon to help quell the heat. Get the recipe.
For the uninitiated, gochujang is the Korean fermented red chili paste responsible for adding a pop of sweet-spicy flavor to stews, soups, and traditional dishes like bibimbap and tteokbokki. But every once in a while, it’s nice to break with tradition, right? In this recipe, the intensely flavored condiment teams up with mustard, mayo, green olive brine, and chile powder for a wonderfully tasty heat-wielding take on deviled eggs. Get the recipe.
These poppable party apps channel the fiery, in-your-face flavors of Cajun cuisine thanks to the generous dose of spicy Cajun mustard, hot sauce, and paprika featured in the mix. Get the recipe.
Spicy Deviled Eggs with Prosciutto Crisps
Unexpected partners, paprika and pickled jalapeño juice, team up to create the warming, tangy-spicy heat that makes these easy deviled eggs so completely craveable. (Also, crispy prosciutto garnish. Enough said.) Get the recipe.
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