FAT Bites – Vegan Scrapple Fiasco and Mint Mojito Magic

>> Chris Lindstrom: And we are back. This is a food about town Bites episode, and we're gonna talk about a few of my travels recently and a little bit of cooking experiments. So, one, thanks for joining for this episode of food about town bites. And let's just start off with some of the recent cooking experiences I've had. So I tend to get into ruts when it comes to cooking at home. I tend to cook large amounts of one dish at a time. I think my friend Brian always called it, a utilitarian slop food, which, I mean, it's not 100% incorrect. usually I'll cook somewhere between, three and four weeks of one dish for lunches that I'll cook. but for whatever reason, something popped in my head recently that I really wanted to try. which I tried making vegan scrapple and failed, but also succeeded at the same time. So, for those that don't know, scrapple is kind of a Pennsylvania Dutch food that has, offal in it, liver, other, you know, assorted animal parts, bound together with cornmeal and other seasonings, usually like sage and things like that. then it's basically put into a loaf, baked and turned into this, loaf that you can sear off and use on, using lots of different ways. So I tried doing that with vegan ingredients. I tried doing that with impossible sausage, using tofu, using, Yeah, I just used anything else I had around. I had some dried mushrooms. I bought some dandelion greens, at the new market that that's happening, down at parcel five. That is, coordinated by the commissary. So, got some stuff there and tried to put it all together, added, some oats to try to build a little bit of different nutrition, add some more fiber to it. and I got to say, overall, tastes delicious. did it turn out to be scrapple? Absolutely not. So, the texture ended up just being polenta, which nothing wrong with that, polenta, obviously just being a corn meal seasoned with lots of different things. So just ended up being a really savory, delicious polenta that I've now been eating for the last week or so for dinner and for some lunches. turned out real good. I guess it's just kind of an example of when you try to make something and just focus on the flavors being good. If it doesn't quite turn out exactly the way you were hoping, doesn't mean it's going to be a bad experiment. It's still very successful experiment, just not exactly what I was trying to make. Which, you know what, I'm pretty okay with that. I don't cook that many dishes. I usually just cook flavors. so this was, you know, a bit of a. Outside of what I've been usually doing and kind of enjoyed the process.

I've been working on some cocktail ingredients recently. My mind will get locked in on different cocktail ingredients

speaking of process, also been working on some cocktail ingredients recently. every so often, I'll just grab. My mind will get locked in on trying to make different cocktail ingredients. sometimes for a specific cocktail, sometimes just because I've got some extra, extra, ah, fruit around or have a flavor I want to go after. in this case, I end up making a couple different syrups that I've ended up using a few times since. kind of utility syrups, too. But let's dive into the process. So, first off, I made a mint syrup. my friend Chris Carlson from, spiritsreview.com has, mint plants all over his backyard. So of course, that means he has way more mint than he could possibly use. so I ended up, grabbing a few plants of mint and tore them up, cooked them into a syrup, and then, strained it out. And I ended up dying it because it ended up being very lightly colored. If, you're extracting mint into a syrup without doing anything else, actually turns out very lightly gold, isn't, you know, sometimes you want that green color. in this case, we had some, you know, high density food dyes at home. Added a little bit of blue, a little bit of yellow. turn it a vibrant, bordering on offensive green color. I'd say it was ectocooleresque, if you will. tasted more like mint than ectocooler, though. Flavor, wise. Pretty, happy with it. pretty minty. I'd say this is. It was a little more than one to one syrup. and in all my syrups, I tend to add, a little bit of neutral spirit, a, little vodka in there to prevent it from molding. which has been very successful. I've had some syrups around for a long time that still are good. so made a bunch of that. Next time around, though, I'm going to try something different. I did some reading after. And one of the ways that you can get that green color from vegetables when you puree it is actually by blanching the, blanching, the herbs or the vegetables ahead of time. So, obviously, you know, dumping that into a little, into boiling water very quickly to get that bright green color. Then you shock it in a, ice water bath. And then you can essentially make your syrup, blend the mint in, in a blender and then strain it through like a coffee filter or something else like that. So you get that real green from the plant vibrancy. I think I'll probably have to have like double the amount of mint in it, which, I mean, no big deal. I got access to lots of mint. but then you get a more, more dense mint flavor as well. So I'm really looking forward to trying that after I burn through this. what I've been using that for is for, mojitos. Instead of using fresh mint, I have a syrup pre made. So one, it's a, it's a little faster process. You just use the ratios of syrups and kind of just whip it up real quick. what I've been using for that is also super juice. So this is a process that I had seen on some cocktail channels. I believe the producer I saw it on first was educated barfly. which, ah, great channel if you're not familiar with it. But if you watch any quality cocktail content, from educated butterfly, how to drink, with Greg over there, an amazing show. or the person who I saw it on as well was Kevin Coase. I forget what country he's from. He's from, Europe. but essentially, there's a lot of different ways of looking at it. But what you're doing is taking a citrus and extending it, into a larger volume. So what you do is you take the citrus peels off. in this case, I was using limes. So you take the citrus peels off and you cover, them in a, certain ratio of acids. So since I'm using lime, it's, there's a ratio of how much you have to add. you can look it up, a super juice recipe. But basically it's a ratio with two, three citric acid, one three malic acid, which kind of mimics what lime juice is. citric acid is what you think of as kind of lemon flavor. Malic acid is a little tart, more tart in a way that's like a crunchy tart, like a granny Smith apple. so the combination of those in a 2313 is basically lime juice acidity or lime acid. So you make this, you soak the skins of the citrus, in this case limes, in that acid solution, and it pulls the oils out. So you're getting those lime oils as well, which are very intensely flavored. you add a volume of water after, and then you squeeze the citrus in there as well. You blend it up and strain it. And then you have made, what is referred to as lime super juice. So it is roughly the same acidity as a lime. it is very tart. It's robustly limey. So I've been using, that and the mint syrup with, with a rum. Usually you want something, at least for me, I want something that's aromatic. I don't want a neutral rum. A lot of people end up using, neutral rums for mojitos and things like that. I want something with a little bit of character. So for this, some of my go to's are, probitas, which is, ah, very affordable. I believe that's, jamaican in origin. Not 100% on that, but, very, very, affordable. maybe lightly aged. sugarcane. I think it's sugarcane. In any case, it's a very enjoyable character. Full rum, but it's not wildly complicated. so a great thing for this and the one I end up buying when I was on my trip to the Adirondacks, Washington, ten to one unaged, which is a very good, value buy for a high quality rum that you can actually feel good about. it's a black owned brand, so, one that's great to have stocked at home for cocktails, a great default. So highly recommend that, also end up making a blueberry hibiscus syrup. So I was at the Rochester public market and a, vendor was offloading, bulk produce at the end of the day. Speaking of which, if you ever need really cheap produce, if you're trying to save money, trying to do some canning, trying to do something like that, go at the end of the day at the public market or whatever market that's around you and see if anybody is offloading stuff at the end of the day, I end up buying a case of these are just commercial blueberries. If I'm eating blueberries straight, I really want local blueberries. And preferably I'd want local blueberries for what I just did. But the price was hard to turn down, twelve like regular plastic clamshells of blueberries, for $2.

So uh, for that price, it was hard to turn down. Uh, I had to throw away about half of them

So for that price, it was hard to turn down. I had to throw away about half of them due to, you know, there's a reason they were cheap. So a little bit of manual effort, clean them all up, cooked it into a syrup with some hibiscus to bring some brightness and some darker color. And also cooked it into syrup, blended that and strained it out and again ended up with a really delicious ah, syrup that's ah, really fruity, has a bit of acid to it. and it's been really tasty in coffee done, that a few times. Very enjoyable. And also works really well in a rum cocktail, or a whiskey cocktail. Be great with great with rye too.

Jay: American malt whiskey is a wildly fast growing category

and as we're going into the travel section of this food about town bite, I wanted to talk about my trip to the Adirondacks, and Vermont. And while we're doing that, I'm gonna sip on some delicious whiskey. And I want to talk about that for a second because this is one of the more unique spirits, I've tasted and bought in a while. So I'm gonna take a sip and we're gonna talk about it for a second before we go into the rest of the travels. That's fascinating. So for those on video this time, speaking of Jay, if you're listening on the podcast, we've hooked up video in the food about town studio and mostly episodes for food about town food about town bites and mostly episodes in the studio from now on will have video. So we're gonna start putting those up online, hopefully on the foodabout town, YouTube channel and probably lunchadors as well. So we'll see where all this goes. But there will be video clips from this, so pay attention. this is from appalachian gap distilling, distillery in Vermont. And a beautiful bottle, by the way. Great color. So this is a malt whiskey. American malt whiskey is a wildly fast growing category. Tons of great producers doing that. Texas is really starting to specialize american malt whiskey. but this is from middlebury, Vermont and the base of this spirit. This is a fascinating story. It's worth looking into and reading. About more. But this is actually in conjunction with switchback brewing, because this malt whiskey is distilled switchback ale. So one of the more well known, and early, like, craft products from Vermont craft beers from Vermont Switchback. And what they, what they did was, I think, was during the pandemic in 2020, that excess switchback beer, that wasn't gonna sell in kegs, and they ended up distilling a whole bunch of it and putting in barrels. So I think this is a three plus year old, at least three years in new american oak barrels. So this is a truly fascinating product. And when we're talking about beer, obviously, that is, you know, usually barley, a malted barley. and in this case, there's hops in it as well. So it's already been turned into beer. So it has all that character from the hops. And wildly enough, the hops really come through here. There's this dense floral. You get that. You get a little bit of that high note, some of that citrus from the hops. But what really carries through is actually some of the bitterness from the hops, which makes this one of the truly most fascinating whiskeys I've ever had. It's distinctly hoppy in a way, where every sip you getting this little lingering bitterness on the back, almost like a, like a west Coast IPA. And. But it's in a whiskey form, so it's got this beautiful, floral, complicated flavor. And then this bitterness comes in at the end of, If anybody's a real whiskey person wants to try it, like, send me a message, let me know. swing over, have a taste. It's really delicious stuff. Oh, man, great way to finish the day, too.

Power was out around a whole bunch of the Adirondacks after tornadoes

so let's finish off with a little adirondacks and, Vermont talk. So, went up a few weeks ago to the Adirondacks. Just a long weekend. Stayed in airbnb on a dirt road. So, tornadoes had just gone through the area, so power was out around a whole bunch of the Adirondacks, in the area where we were, which is around Lake George, north of there. So this is, near screen lake. So basically a 40 miles range, ah, vertically on the north way, was basically out of power. And when we got up there, where my sister was saying the powers out, the other place, the, place we were staying, was fully solar powered. So we climb up into the, you know, like, apartment style thing above the garage. And the air conditioner was on, the satellite tv, was on satellite, Internet was on, which is awesome. So great place. I really enjoyed staying there, but, I know this area so well, but it's changing so fast. So, in that same area in north Hudson, there's frontier town, which is a. When I was a kid, was kind of like an old west. Not amusement park, but like, you know, like an old west village with all that kind of stuff. And now there's a campground, but there's also a little food, court in there that has pizza, ah, and burgers and also pakistani food. So, end up going there with my parents and eating. Eating outside one of those days. And that was awesome to get to have that in a small town in, you know, in the Adirondacks area, which was. It's great to see that, you know, see those kind of places starting to flourish and see how popular it was and how many people were there eating. It was, really gratifying to see because I love that kind of food. And it was really nice to be able to, you know, grab some, you know, grab some chickpeas and, grab some samosas and sit and enjoy that on a beautiful day. we also ended up, the first day while power was out. we went up to Lake placid because that's where we could find some power, outside of our area. Lake, placid is always a bit challenging for me. I, really don't like being in the super touristy areas. I don't mind being around people. But in a lot of the tourist areas, there's a lack of depth, there's a lack of soul, lack, of intentionality. It's a lot of. A lot of fluff and a lot of things that don't really, don't really ring true to me. So a lot of gift shops that don't really provide anything of interest. a lot of low quality shops that just survive because they're the only game in town. Ah, we went into a coffee shop that was also part of a bakery, and it was one of the truly worst coffee experiences I've had in years. like, I know my coffee taste isn't everybody's coffee taste, but this was exceptional. This was exceptionally bad. It was so bitter and, like, poorly. I really, truly disliked it. in a way that almost put me in a bad mood. Like, I really want everything I taste to be so good. I don't. I don't want things to be bad. I don't want to celebrate the bad. I want to celebrate great. It's so much more fun and enjoyable to talk about what's great and get excited about things. And this was the complete opposite of that. so from there, we ended up actually going to, buy some stuff at a store, which weirdly enough, the person, who was working there had actually retired and left Rochester. And lives now in that area. And when I mentioned what I do is like, oh, yeah, I've heard you on connections before. I knew I recognized your voice somewhere. It's, you know, it's a, it's a small world sometimes when you're out doing things and talk about what you're doing sometimes. it was, it was a fun little coincidence there.

I went to what I think is one of the best coffee shops in Burlington

and also ended up at, prison city, brewing. they have an outpost in lake placid now. So they're in, Auburn, New York, which I'm going to be visiting more recent, in the near future story for another time. But they have a they have a satellite outpost now in lake Placid. So they have some roots there. And now you can go into lake placid and go to their to their little satellite pub, right in the heart of the village. So you can get some really tremendous beer. And you know what? That really helped turn my day around. And it wasn't the beer, you know, because the beer is excellent, but it was like, ah, this is a place that's actually good, that cares about what they're doing. it was a nice experience. I got to talk to somebody sitting next to me, and that was so much more enjoyable. we also got a chance to do, some mini golf up there at a really cool spot. Enjoyed that. Had a lunch at the, good bite kitchen, which was kind of like a meal prep place, but they also had some noodles and things like that. Very, very enjoyable. and then, one of the days when we went up to Vermont, where I grabbed, this delightful beverage, we have kind of a routine when we drive up from that area to Vermont. You're crossing over the bridge near, crown Point. We'll go up to Vergennes, to Vergennes laundry, which is bakery. It's got it's got some really interesting, you know, dry goods. So I bought this, fancy french mustard, which I really enjoying. it's like in a clay pot. Like it's, it's way over the top, but it is also truly delicious and so simple. Like, this isn't like a mustard with tons of additives. This is like mustard, water, vinegar, salt, that's it. But it's done in such a classic way that it's complex and really deep and very enjoyable. but what we ended up doing is, you know, grabbed some breakfast there, drove up to. Towards Burlington, ran into the farmers market where, we bought some other stuff, bought this, you know, tried a few samples. There's something about just stopping into a random farmers market and figuring out what's going on in that area right now, which obviously very enjoyable for me. And, I'm driving up into Burlington, you know, grabbed a couple other things. Ended up having a picnic in the park for lunch, which was fantastic. Like, it was really enjoyable. Well, we grabbed some blueberries on the way up from a blueberry farm. you know, grabbed some other, you know, got some goat cheese for Carrie, got, some other stuff. And, you know, ended up sitting in a park looking over Lake Champlain, right in Burlington, which was, which was great. It was really relaxing. Got a chance to really just sit and enjoy that for a little bit. Went, to what is, I, think truly one of the best coffee shops I have ever been to, in Burlington. I'm, going to look it up while we're talking right now. But it's kind of a multi roaster. so this is a what I call a very high end multi roaster. So they're bringing in very well curated beans, for, all the Rochester people. it's kind of like ugly duck. It's a tighter. And I'd say the coffees are pushing the boundaries. It's a little higher end. not in a bad way. Like, again, I love what ugly duck does. It's my regular, coffee shop. But basically every time they have, you could have, like, three, four different things on espresso. everything's available for, you know, you could do pour overs of many different things. a lot of the stuff's very highly, you know, the more modern process, the super modern processes a, ah, lot of anaerobic stuff. A lot of, stuff like that. So really enjoyable. It's onyx tonics. So it's o n y x tonics, specialty coffee. every time we go to Burlington, this is a must go for us. Had, some fascinating coffees there. Really enjoyed it. and then kind of, you know, charged up the car and zipped back. Zip, back there. So it's always great to get these little side trips, into different areas. and I definitely. I think what I want to leave you with is if you're traveling somewhere, don't just get locked into being exactly where you are. Do the little side trip. Go to, you know, drive outside of town, go to the botanical garden, go to find a mini golf. Find something that gets you outside of your day to day comfort zone while you're traveling, you end up finding something, you won't expect.

so I think that's where we're going to leave. This episode of Foodabouttown Bites come up on like 25 minutes, which good enough for now. So, what I will ask everybody is if you are interested in being a guest on food about town or one of the other shows on the lunch at or podcast network, you can reach out to me, stromymail.com or, lunch at our podcastmail.com. we're also looking for, so we're looking for guests for food about town. We're looking for live recording opportunities out in public. So if you know somebody who'd be a great guest on food about town, reach out to me, tag them on, tag them on a comment, let them know to come, on the show. And, I guess that's going to wrap it up. I got to get to sleep. Driving to Philadelphia tomorrow. Maybe I'll have a little bit of update for everybody on that after, but hope everybody enjoys the last of summer coming up. We're going to have more food about town bites coming up. I'm trying to really do a little bit more of this. I know I've said that before, but really trying to ramp up the content for this. We have some crossover episodes that are going to be reposting. First episode of just can't knots coming out. So that's going to come out on the food about town feed as well. So thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time with more food about town. Enjoy the summer and be good to yourself. Be good to others. See you later.