Mar

Steam Whistle, Some Beer-y Good Food

Dan

If you have ever met me, followed me on twitter, or just plain ol’ stalked on the street (yes, I’m talking to you Annie), you would know that I love Steam Whistle Pilsner. So, you can imagine my excitement when the company came on board as a sponsor for Kick The KD.

Not only were they more than happy to take part and supply us with some ‘cooking’ beer (ok, we drank a couple…), but they also wanted to feature any of the participants’ original recipes on their website. How awesome is that? The basis of this program has always been to encourage and inspire, so, what better way to encourage a university student than with beer? I stand by this generalization.

I scoured their extensive beer-based recipe database for some Kick The KD appropriate dishes and decided on…Cran-beery Meatballs, Roundhouse Risotto, and Date and Nut Beer Cake.

First up: Cran-Beery Meatballs. I thought this would be an excellent choice because some solid meatball skills are transferable to other culinary fields such as hamburger construction or meatloaf-making. I think the highlight for myself, personally, was watching how squeamish some of the girls were having to mix the meatballs by hand (You can see Rand mixing away in the photo above). I kept reminding them: ‘Such is the life of a culinary-inclined socialite.’

The meatballs were fantastic. (note: we substituted 1 cup of chopped dried cranberries and extra liquid instead of a can of cranberry sauce. More real, more flavour!)

Next on our list: Roundhouse Risotto! Risotto is always on that high, intimidating horse called ‘Fancy’ so I thought knocking it down a few pegs by adding some beer would help make it more approachable for the Kick The Kd-ers. I was hoping it would help open up everyone’s eyes and show them that you don’t need a skillful hand for risotto, just patience…lots and lots of patience.

In lieu of patience, I found that a group of 15 participants taking ‘shifts’ to stir the risotto/add broth became instrumental to its success ( That’s Stacey and Kat keeping a watchful eye). Let’s face it, it’s pretty hard to not get distracted while stirring for half an hour…is that a butterfly? I’ll be right back…

The risotto turned out perfectly as well. Everyone had seconds (at least). So far, so good! One more recipe left…

Sadly, Date and Nut Beer Cake could not be with us today because it did not turn out as well as we had hoped. I think our main FAIL (as kids these days would say) was not using a bundt pan, which, I admit, was completely my fault, but, hey, everyone makes mistakes! The cake baked well over it’s allotted baking time and was still uncooked in the middle when we pulled it out of the oven. On the plus side, the cooked parts of it were absolutely delicious. Every last (cooked) bit of it was eaten up in no time.

So, a life lesson for Dan: Your spring form cake pan is not appropriate for all cake recipes. I stand corrected. Never again.

Last, but not least, we had a very special guest at our beer-based Kick The KD class this week. None other than Charcut’s beer sommelier, Kirk! This fine gentleman came down to chat with us about food and beer pairings. He shared his extensive knowledge of brews near and far with the class as we tasted different types of beer with each dish. It was definitely the cherry on top of our already awesome sunday. On his website, Kirk writes about all things beer.

You can follow him on twitter too. @beersnsuch

Check back here soon for some more Kick The KD updates! Only five classes left!