Bringing home the Gold!
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 | Trip Reports
Chuck wins 1st Place in Cooking Contest
Tuesday morning and early afternoon was spent in our “cabin” in nearby Hocking Hills area. I use the term cabin loosely because we stayed at Ravenwood Castle and Medieval Village, which is described as a re-creation of a 12th century, Norman style English castle and village. We stayed in a two-story cottage with the beautiful wooded setting, There was plenty to see and explore around our cottage. It was an excellent way for my family to enjoy the surrounding beauty and scenery of Hocking Hills while attending Brew Week festivities.
I also spent part of the morning finishing up my creation and entry for the Ohio Brew Week Cooking Competition. Looking through the rules, the competition was sub-divided into several categories including professional, amateur, semi-professional and professional and prizes awarded for Best Appetizer, Best Entree, Best Dessert, etc. The premise of the competition was that all entries had to incorporate an Ohio microbrew as one of the ingredients. I had kicked around the idea of different possibilities but finally decided on adapting my vegetarian Red Beans and Dirty Rice recipe for the competition. I had prepared and chopped many of the ingredients in advance, lugging them with us in a large cooler. I knew I wouldn’t have much cooking space available in our cabin, so I counted on cooking the entire dish in a crock pot where I could easily just plug in and let it cook overnight. To qualify for the Ohio microbrew rule, I would cook the rice and beans with Great Lakes Holy Moses White Ale. I counted on the coriander and spices in the Holy Moses adding that special zing I needed to make my entry unique. And despite never cooking this dish quite this way before, I was quite happy with the result and was somewhat nervously anxious to have my creation judged by food critics.
My family and I dropped off the dish at Toscano’s Restaurant, and I added some home grown chopped parsley and cilantro along with some sweet peppadew peppers to give my dish some added color and presentation. Kim, one of the Ohio Brew Week staff, complimented me on the overall aroma of the dish and my confidence was boosted a bit. I was told the judging would take place between 4:30 and 5:30 and winners would be announced later that night. Although I was welcome to stay for the competition and dinner, I wasn’t sure that there would be anything on the menu that would satisfy my children’s simple palate (i.e., macaroni and cheese). And besides, there were other beer tasting events taking place that I didn’t want to miss.
The first event of the night was another formal tasting at The Oak Room — where we had tasted Barley’s Brewery the night before. Tonight, I was very pleasantly surprised to find beertasting friends, Rick and Missy, who also traveled from Dayton for this event. They would be in town for two days, and I very much look forward to sharing some tasting experiences with them. The format at The Oak Room tasting was the same as the night before, but this time the beers featured where from Maumee Bay Brewing Company and one from Elevator Brewery and Draught Haus. Also, this time the bar seemed to be short staffed and it seemed like our host Kevin was busy attending the main bar during most of the tasting.
I should describe here the entire approach of the Brew Week. There were about 25-30 different local bars and restaurants participating in Brew Week — most of them within easy walking distance of each other. There were also approximately 25 or so different Ohio Breweries (plus Sam Adams) that participated. Each bar or restaurant featured beers from one or two specific breweries. In addition, all draft beer was available in specially priced tasting glasses, normally $1 for a generous 3-4 oz tasting. This gave everyone an incredible opportunity to sample many different beers while visiting a variety of different local establishments. The beers featured for each bar were clearly labeled in the excellent program guide that was passed out, so that if I wanted to try beers from Thirsty Dog, for example, I know I can find those beers at Skippers Bar & Grille, while the Red Brick Sports Club just across the street featured beers from Great Lakes. Everyone I talked to thought this was a novel way to run a beer festival as well as promote responsible drinking — the same beers and tastings would be available all week long so there was no rush to move from bar to bar. The formal tastings, it seemed to me, were to add some additional value in addition to tasting the beer, therefore charging a premium price for tickets to these scheduled events. And this is where the tastings at The Oak Room fell a bit short — I could have just as easily tasted the same 5 beers for $5 at the bar and felt the $13 for the formal tastings here were a bit overpriced. There was a cheese and cracker tray that was passed around, but it just seemed like something was missing from these first two tasting events I attended.
Having said that, I enjoyed the beers I tasted at Maumee Bay (from Toledo). The “Pils” was a German style pilsner that was quite crisp and refreshing. We also tasted an Oatmeal Stout and and IPA that got high marks in my book. But I really enjoyed the Naked Saison — it was a smooth with a mild wheat flavor and aroma and slight hoppy finish — something I thought would make a great session beer. The Raspberry Wheat from Elevator was much more drinkable than the Raspberry Barleywine I had the night before.
After the tasting event, I check back into the cooking competition and they are glad to see me. Apparently, the judges wanted to talk to me in person, and I can only imagine that they want to know what kind of legal representation I have to represent me in the lawsuit that undoubtedly will arise for ruining their palates indefinitely. Actually, since I didn’t officially enter the contest in time, I didn’t fill out an official entry form with my recipe, and they wanted to know what exactly was in my rice and beans. I had spent much of the last three days shopping for the freshest vegetables, finely chopping ingredients, deliberating over just the right mix of spices. I then stand before several food critics, including one who has written several books on food & beer along with the food editor of a major newspaper, and like a deer staring into headlights of an oncoming car, I draw a complete blank. I stand there and stutter and stammer my way through 3 of the 7 grains that make my 7 grain dirty rice “dirty”. At least I was able to remember the name of the beer I used and I walked away thinking they surely exposed me for having no idea of what I was doing.
We decided to have dinner at the Casa Nueva, which would turn out to be one of the most pleasant finds in our entire trip. They had a wonderful selection of spicy Mexican type foods that appealed to everyone, including a variety of vegetarian burritos and entrees. But to go along with the excellent food, they had wonderful beer selections, including “The Paw Paw Wheat” from Marietta Brewing Company — a wonderful wheat beer with a complimenting, but not overwhelming, tropical fruit taste not unlike a papaya or mango. I have no idea what a Paw Paw is, but as luck would have it, the next tasting scheduled is with Marietta Brewing, and unlike the earlier tasting, it’s lead by the master brewer at Marietta, Kelly Sauber.
But first, I go back to the Cooking Competition to see what is going on. They tell me that all the judging has been completed and that I should stick around and watch the awards ceremony. There appear to be at least 25-30 entries lined up buffet style on two long tables (tickets to the event to the general public was $30 for a sampling of all the foods), and prizes are given out for Best Presentation (which was King Crab Legs), etc. All the awards given out are to professional chefs representing various restaurants. Finally, they announce “Best Amateur Entry” and I am somewhat stunned when I hear my name announced! Not only do I win, but I am presented with a very fancy knife set for my efforts (seen above). Now to be fair, it’s not exactly clear to me exactly how much competition I had in the amateur category — it’s quite possible that I had the worst amateur entry as well, but nevertheless they took my name and address down for a forthcoming press release announcing all the winners. Perhaps even more exciting than winning the event was seeing that my rice and beans was nearly all gone. So the general public paying $30/ticket (which was mainly the professional chefs and families who entered the event, thought enough about my dish to at least try it. I’m already looking forward to defending my title next year — perhaps I can even beat out some of the professional chefs to win Best Side Dish or even Best Vegetarian Entree?
After the cooking contest, my wife dropped me off at the Hampton Inn for another formal tasting featuring Marietta Brewing Company. Unlike the tastings at The Oak Room, this featured guest speakers, including the master brewer from MBC, Kelly Sauber. There were plenty of beers to be sampled and a large selection of appetizers and food (although I’m sure they didn’t read the press release yet that they were serving an Award Winning Amateur Chef :-)). Author Ray Daniels. “Designing Great Beers”, was also on hand and this formal tasting was much more like what I expected and well worth the admission price. Of the beers we tasted from Marietta - Raspberry Wheat, MBC Pale Ale, McLaren’s Scotch, and MBC Porter - I enjoyed the Porter the best.
But during the Q & A period, I got a chance to ask him about the Paw Paw beer I just tasted at dinner. He explained that he was commissioned by the nearby Paw Paw Festival to brew a beer for this annual event, and this beer he came up with became so popular he now brews it all year around. If I understood him correctly, the paw paw is the only fruit that is indigenous to Ohio. Although the tropical flavor of the fruit is delicious, the paw paw is somewhat difficult to cultivate as it bruises very easily and does not store or ship well. When noted beer expert Ray Daniels spoke about “Beers Around the World”, he also praised Kelly for making such a unique and interesting beer.
Ray makes an interesting analogy comparing styles of beers with breeds of dogs that I find helpful to think about when I see scores and medal ranking for various beers in beer competitions. Dogs with similar characteristics are grouped together and the breed of dog is defined by a standard list of those characteristics. When a dog is judged in a dog show, the dog is being judged on how closely it matches those standard characteristics for its breed. Likewise, when several beers, usually from a similar geographic region, share similar characteristics, a beer style is defined listing those characteristics. Beer competitions and medals are usually awarded on how closely a beer matches those standard characteristics for its style. Beers with unique characteristics may not necessarily match any standards for a specific style, but that doesn’t make the beer less worthy just as a family dog would not be less desirable just because it doesn’t match standard characteristics for a specific breed.
After the tasting, we went back to the Ravenwood, and I was glad my wife was the designated driver for the evening. It was a long day, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn earlier in the day that this remote English style castle where we stayed had an impressive variety of English and Scottish Ales. Safely back in my cabin, I finished the night off with an Orkney Brewer’s SkullSplitter to honor my visit to this quaint little village. We would check out of the Castle in the morning and head for Athens to be closer to more of the Brew Week Festivities.