My Aching Head

In every town, there are drinking icons, places that everyone knows about, everyone has had their fair share of schooners at, and everyone will have great memories of in 35 years when they can’t drink anymore cause their kidneys give them grief. Of all the pubs in and around Brisbane the RE in Toowong may not be the swankiest, the coolest, or even the friendliest but it’s probably the best local. It’s one of those places that you could walk into blind folded and just the smell of it draws a picture. It just so happens in this case it’s the smell of spew, nonetheless it makes you feel like home, or you are at your local.

Let’s be fair about it, there is nothing that jumps out and takes you about this pub, the beer garden is big, complete with the requisite covers band 4 nights of the week playing more than it’s share of Jimmy Barnes, Powderfinger and Hunters & Collectors. The band has to stop playing at about 11 every night, cause the people that live nearby started complaining about the noise, even though there has been a band playing there since before they were born. Though, it’s not the band that the punters come to see, in fact they aren’t coming to see anything in particular except the beer. That’s the thing about uni students, all they need is a a few tables, a shitty band and cheap cold beer and they’ll sit and talk shit anywhere.

The public bar has about 42 flat screens within 4 metres of each other not to mention a couple of old blokes betting on the dogs that look like they’ve been there since it opened (1876), the dogs haven’t been there since then, the blokes have. The upstairs has a couple of pool tables and a bar, the bar is only open when they’ve got some reason which isn’t really that often. That being said, the upstairs has a nice little deck overlooking the stage.

As I’ve mentioned it’s not the coolest place, but it does have a webcam, so head on over to the website and check it out for yourself.

I’m a great believer in the benefits of roast dinner as a way to socialise and be merry. I have a pretty stiff opinion about most parts of the process of preparing the aforementioned roast dinner. Every part of the dinner is important - potatoes and pumpkin go together very nicely, onion adds a bit of as the french would say, “I don’t know what”, the meat is clearly the star attraction and the peas and broccoli add an important touch of colour to the plate. However I believe the final crowning achievement of any roaster is the gravy.

Now, before getting too crazy about this gravy business let me say this, it’s easy to screw up, and especially easy to screw up when you start adding your own stuff to it so let me step you through the basics and then we will work on spicing things up a little.

1. First thing’s first. Roast the shit out of your favourite meat.
2. Now when you are done and have carved it and it’s ready to serve get all that yummy meat juice from your cutting board and add it back into the roasty tray.
3. Stick your roasting tray on the stove on a low-medium heat and sprinkle a good dose of flour lightly across the entire roasting pan. You don’t want to dump it all in one big blob, you want it to be more like snow all over the pan juices. Add to this a healthy amount of salt and crack some pepper as well. The salt is the key ingredient so don’t be too shy, but for god’s sake don’t overdo it.
4. Grab a fork and using the back of it, stir all this flour into the juices. This should all turn pretty brown and very pasty.
5. Add to this paste some water. The amount depends on a variety of things - how much paste you’ve got, how thick you want the gravy and the alignment of the constellation of Aries in the southern sky. You actually want this water to be the water you have poured off the peas and broccoli if possible, otherwise normal water is fine.
6. Cook this concoction over a low heat while constantly stirring. This will end up as the gravy.
7. Undoubtedly there won’t be the right amount or it will be the wrong consistency so you need to add more water/more flour or more of both (to make more) If you are going to add more flour you should premix it with a little bit of water in a cup before you add it to the mix. This stops it from turning lumpy and ruining your masterpiece.

So that’s all pretty easy, and to be fair the gravy that you will end up with should be pretty amazing. Amazing is good, but it isn’t going to keep you happy on 7 meals a week so it’s time to spice things up a little bit. There is a variety of things you can do to add your own take and as long as you don’t go too mad adding pretty much anything is going to give you some unique flavours. A few things I like to do are,

1. Add a bit of chilli powder when you are first adding the flour and salt.
2. Stir in some tomato paste before you add the water, barbecue sauce goes alright as well.
3. I do this pretty much every time I make gravy - add a good splash of red wine with the water - you can probably add white wine as well but I’ve never tried.
4. Use beef stock instead of water - You could do this if you don’t have much (is any) pan juices.

As far as dinner goes, there isn’t a better drink to accompany it than a glass of red. That is of course if the source is tomato based or the meat is red, otherwise white wine is preferential. Now let me start by saying I’m definitely no expert on wine, but I know what I like and first of all I like cheap. When you talk about cheap wine there is 2 types of cheap, cheap and goon. This classification is pretty down the line, goon comes in a bag (sometimes disguised as a box) and cheap wine comes in a bottle. Until recently this differentiation was pretty clear cut with nothing in a bag being worth more than $3 a litre and bottles starting at about $10 a litre.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter, for about $20 you can pick up a box of Banrock Station red (or white). They come in a range of blends, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, merlot, and my personal favourite cabernet merlot. This isn’t any normal goon bag, I consider it to be in the class of “cheap wine,” or at least that’s what I tell myself. I suppose a sign that the box isn’t going to be horrible is the specification of the actual blend of grapes, rather than “dry red” or “crisp white,” another sign is that the grapes are all sourced from the same place, rather than from Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Chile.

The beauty of buying 2 litres of cheap wine to have over dinner is it’s flexibility you have enough for tonight and tomorrow night, can drop a splash of it in your cooking and you aren’t too worried if you leave a glass that needs to be thrown out at the end of the night. While you might not believe me, by forking out the extra $10 your head might not ache so much tomorrow morning.

The White Russian, or better (not commonly) known as the Caucasian is a simple drink. Coffee and Milk that get’s you pissed - what’s not to like. The name Caucasian stems from the movie The Big Lebowsky. I want to believe that The Dude has a White Russian in his hand in every scene of the movie, but that just isn’t true, though he has a fair crack mixing a few up when he clearly wasn’t welcome.  Anyhow, The Big Lebowsky - great film you should get it out or download it.

Before you get your hands dirty, you should know that the White Russian has a cousin/brother, the Black Russian. We won’t talk about that right now.

The White Russian is a great drink, strong and tasty. Take a short glass, (also know as a rock) fill it up with ice, add 1 nip of Kahlua, 1 nip of vodka and top it up with milk. Stir and serve with a straw. I want to talk a little bit about some other variations of this, some places will put this all into a shaker, shake and then strain it into a glass of new ice. I don’t have a particular abjection to this being shaken, but it should be shaken gently and definitely not strained. Shaking normally breaks the ice and adds some water to the drink, normally this doesn’t hurt a shaken drink but in this case milk and water definitely do not go together.

Another version of this replaces milk with cream, I actually have a suspicion this has happened because of a problem with translation between the US and the rest of the English speaking world. Americans often refer to full cream milk as cream, and if I for example didn’t know that I would read a drink recipe containing this so called “cream” add cream to my White Russian and not get it how it’s meant to be. Anyway, aside from that cream doesn’t go badly and it doesn’t go that well in a Caucasian. I don’t recommend it, but whatever floats your boat. Just remember, this drink is pretty good as it always has been.

It is a commonly held belief that greasy food is the be all and end all of hangover cures however I have don’t believe it is the grease in the food that is the cure. Now, don’t get me wrong a greasy bucket of KFC shared between hanging mates or a quick trip down to the local fish and chip store for a steak sammy certainly put the right (or correct) foot forward in getting back on the wagon but it is my belief that it is actually the nutrients and energy in what you are eating that is the solution to the night before’s problem.

All that being said, the Good, Old-Fashioned fry up is possibly the greates, possibly the 3rd greatest or perhaps just a good hangover cure. There are a couple of key factors to make it the success that it should be. First of all, there are a few ingredients that have to be there if you plan to cure even the slightest of hangover. This is by no means an upper limit, but at the very least: meat, bready stuff, and something else.

Let me explain, there is no substitute for meat. I don’t care if it’s pig, cow, sheep or sausage (I’ve not tried fish in a fry-up, but I’ll keep an open mind), but what ever it is it has to be there. I’m not saying this to rile up the vegetarians, (though I’ve been guilty of having a crack before) the high level of protein and iron these particular ingredients carry is imperative and whats more, tofu tastes like nothing and doesn’t compare to a steak no matter who you talk to. The bread, this doesn’t have to be bread, toast is fine, so is potato, pasta isn’t traditionally fried but would suffice and rice is a bit boring, but who am I to talk you can use your imagination - mashed potato from the night before also works (can anyone say bubble and squeak). The key part of this is the carbohydrates, slow burn energy is what you are going to need in 2 hours time so you don’t regress from feeling like having a shot at the title.

I just want to put this out there, I’m not a nutritionist so all of this jibber-jabber about nutrients isn’t worth a dime.

Finally, something else is important, ideally this isn’t just going to be 1 thing but a selection of goodies. My particular favourite is egg, scrambled or (preferably) fried, it doesn’t matter as long as it has a sprinkling of salt and some cracked pepper. There is a plethora of other options, mushrooms are great, tomatoes are tasty, not to mention onions and capsicum - fried together are amazing. What is important is that the extra flavours work with your 2 aforementioned staples. What’s more noone just wants a piece of bacon on toast, it has to have flavour.

Now what hasn’t been mentioned is preparation. If you can help it, you don’t want to be zipping down to the supermarket to grab supplies. Even if it is a 15 minute round trip, the chances are you are not going to be fit for public consumption let alone capable of making the important decisions. Ideally you have the ingredients in the fridge/freezer, it doesn’t matter if you can’t get 12 different ingredients on the plate the aforementioned guidelines need to be followed but if the choice is between frying 4 day old mushrooms and braving the supermarket take the option of the mushrooms.

Your head will appreciate it.

The other day, I saw a great roundup about tequila. Recently (over the last 6-12 months) I have been getting into a bit of better tequila. Mainly stuff from the Cuervo range, 1800 is particularly good for the price and the “Reserva De L’Familia” is expensive ($25 a hit in a bar) but very tasty.

My thinking about good tequila goes, that if you can shoot it without lemon and salt, it’s actually worth drinking.

Something that wasn’t mentioned in the article were tequila liqueurs “Patron” and “Agavero” are 2 that I have tried and really enjoyed. Patron is a coffee flavoured liqueur while Agavero is a tequila blend. Both are very nice chilled to sip.

While checking up about this info I found this great reference site on all things tequila, tequilas.info