German Bouillabaisse

For a while now there has been a trio of portobello mushrooms living their sunset years in our crisper. Last night, I'm excited to say, they got the call!



I roasted them in the oven with some olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh sage and thyme, and toasted pecans. I served them over a bed of kale as a salad. It was pretty tasty but probably would have been even tastier if I'd cooked them up a week (or even two weeks) ago.



The last leftover (for the time being) that needed to be tackled in the fridge was the leftovers from the beer and brats on Sunday night. So I crushed some garlic and toasted it with some olive oil and tossed in some chopped onion and carrot. When they cooked down a bit I also added a cubed russet potato. Then I simply added the remaining beer brats with their cabbage and bacon and cooked it down with some turkey stock from Canadian Thanksgiving.

The resulting stew was pretty tasty. I also made a mustard aioli with my favorite Sweet Smooth Hot mustard from SchoolHouse Kitchen. I put it on some baguette slices (would have been better on pretzel bread) as an accompaniment.

I call this dish German Bouillabaisse.



After dinner I settled down with another father-in-law cringe-inducing beer:
Alta Gracia Porter by Wolaver's (Otter Creek). I was right in saving it for after dinner in that the coffee taste was even stronger than I'd thought it would be. With every sip I visualized cracked coffee beans, like the chocolate covered espresso beans you can purchase as a snack. It was very good but probably not a beer I'd rush out to purchase in quantity for every day drinking.

I wonder if it has any caffeine in it. I wonder if it's like a legal version of Four Loko. Of course there has always been a legal version of Four Loco called an Irish Coffee. I guess because Irish Coffee doesn't come in a can with EXTREME fonts and fluorescent colors it doesn't pose the same risks.

Kids. They'd drink Drano if it came in a colorful can with a snazzy logo.