30/30 - #26 Trophy Brewing & Pizza Co.

Today, my favorite is a place, not a recipe. But this place has several of my favorite things all in one spot! Quite ironic that one of my favorite places is a brewery, especially since I don't really drink beer anymore, but the food is what stole my heart, and the beer is what stole my Hubby's. Where is this magical place you ask, Trophy Brewing & Pizza Co. in Raleigh.

Trophy popped up recently on a little side street in Raleigh, serving up some of the best craft brews and amazing pizzas with local fresh ingredients. The first aspect of this place that hooked me was the chalk board menus....which means they constantly change. Trophy sources locally when they can and add a little of their own beer into the pizza dough.

It is a "hole in the wall" kind of place, but a very popular one. Trophy fills up pretty fast on the weekends and keeps a steady clientele during the week. It is VERY popular for happy hours! The staff is always friendly and happy to chat with customers, which is just one of the many reasons that we will keep going back.

For my readers that live in the Raleigh area, it is definitely worth checking out Trophy Brewing & Pizza Co. any time of day.


Hint for tomorrow: It can be dipped, spread or melted.

Kettler Travel Journal - San Francisco Part 1

We were in San Francisco last week - land of wine, startups, hipsters and amazing beer! Ryan was like a kid in a candy store on the way up to Petaluma and Santa Rosa to visit Lagunitas Brewery and Russian River Brewery. Our gracious hosts for the trip, Jessica and Corey (who are newly engaged) showed us around. Between the four of us, we tasted more than 25 beers! 

Russian River Brewing Co. - sampler of all beers on tap!

More to come on our trip, but had to share these pics!!

Lagunitas Brewing Co. - custom taster!

Happy Travels!!

My happy husband :)

Celebrating Anniversaries

It just so happens that today, I am celebrating two different anniversaries! First and foremost, my husband and I have been married for 1 year today! It is so hard to believe that it has been a year since we walked down the "aisle" in the mountains and committed ourselves to each other for the rest of our lives. I wouldn't change ANYTHING about this first year.

Ryan is possibly the most supportive husband a woman could have. He has supported me through it all...full time job, marathon training, house work and my favorite new hobby, KettlerCuisine! He was the one that encouraged me to start the blog on that fateful Spring day.

Speaking of a "fateful Spring day," it has been 6 months today since I officially launched this blog. I know it seems silly to launch a blog on April 1...think about it, April Fool's! However, it has been a lot of fun to keep alive. Friends and family are always asking me about how the blog is going and what they should expect for the future. Well, I can't give all of my secrets away!

Since Ryan is the center of my life and my second love is cooking, it seemed only natural to come up with an over-the-top Anniversary meal that we could plan and cook together. We decided on extending the celebration a day early so we could enjoy more time together.

Lobster!! That was the star of the show last night. We wanted to think of something easy enough that we didn't have to stress over, but delicious enough that would be memorable. 

Desert was taken care of, we had the top layer of our wedding cake that has lived in our freezer since last October 1. My father contributed a nice aged bottle of Tawny Port, and we completed the meal with two sides, one of which is from the blog - Caramelized Pancetta and Fennel Salad.

Lobster Tails

No recipe today, but instead, some tips about our first experience handling and cooking lobster. We tried to find live lobsters, but decided against this once we knew we would have to face the inevitable killing! We settled (which I say lightly because they were amazing) for lobster tails from Whole Foods. I was intimidated!! I had never cooked lobster and it is quite pricey...so there was a lot of pressure to not screw up.

Ryan did his usual Google search for tips on cooking lobster and found some other cooking blogs online. The best bet was to broil them with melted butter on the side. This just further claims my theory of "seafood is best with nothing on it!" These tails were great - no fishy smell at all.

I only made one cut down the center of the tail, but I would suggest making two cuts (discarding the cut shell pieces). Then use your finger, being careful not to cut yourself on the shell, to separate the "meat" from the shell on both sides. The meat should then easily pull away and rest on top of the shell.

Most recipes call to brush the lobster meat with melted butter before cooking, but I did not do this. I simply placed the tails on a foil-lined baking sheet and broiled on high for 5 minutes. That's it!! Our tails were between 4-6 ounces each. If you get smaller ones, reduce the cooking time and visa versa.

Overall, it was a great anniversary. We started the day with a trip to Whole Foods (for our dinner ingredients) and favorite beer store, Bottle Revolution. We had to find some good beer to put in our cute new coozies from Cass and Mike!

We then sat and watched the amazing video that my cousins made from our wedding and the recording of our ceremony (while I sobbed). And finally, we turned on some beach music, (my personal fav - only Southerner's can understand this one) and re-lived our first dance, which started with a choreographed shag (again, only Southerner's can understand this)!!

We ended the night with our amazing meal:

• Lobster tails with melted butter
• Blanched asparagus, oscar style
• Cheddar and jalapeno stone grits
• Caramelized pancetta and fennel salad
• Wedding cake and aged Port

Happy Anniversary to the Kettlers and to Kettler Cuisine!

Wing (End)Zone

This is our precious goddaughter, Avery. And she is ready for some football! Much like many of our other friends that came over the other weekend for opening football weekend!! Ryan and I figured we would go all out and make wings. We decided on three different kinds and put out the usual carrot and celery with ranch dip. All of our guests contributed to the food supply as well.

Normally I don't recommend trying a new recipe for a party, but wings sounded so delicious and with Ryan's grilling skills, I knew we would pull through! We not only tried a new recipe for our shin-dig, we tried grilling wings for the first time. Let's just say, touchdown!!

Wings are one of those dishes that we previously would have only ordered in a restaurant because they are more hassle than delicious. I am not a frequent wing-eater either, mostly because they are deep fried and don't agree with my stomach. However, my husband LOVES wings, possibly one of his favorite foods (along with Ranch dressing and Bojangles). He always seems to find an excuse to go out for Wing Night with the boys. 

He prefers the buffalo sauce, which is my least favorite! Here we are again folks, at the culinary crossroads to find something we agree on...not only on the "sauce," but the method of cooking. 

Frying was definitely not going to happen. From the day we said "I Do," it was clear that nothing would be fried in my kitchen! So I gave him the buffalo sauce in exchange for not frying. We then agreed on two other flavors - Sweet and Spicy and Stout Jerk. We looked for recipes that called for grilled wings, which was hard to find! Most recipes call for baking or frying the wings.

We followed the Sweet and Spicy recipe from Serious Eats exactly but altered the Stout Jerk one from The Beeroness slightly. And, just for my beloved, we grilled plain wings to cover in buffalo sauce :)

For the Sweet and Spicy wings, hop over to Serious Eats and try out this recipe (my personal fav of the day). 

For the Buffalo wings, we simply marinaded chicken wings (and drumsticks) in pepper, salt and olive oil for a few hours, grilled them and then poured our favorite wing sauce on top.

And finally, the Stout Jerk Chicken wings recipe which we got from The Beeroness. We decided to grill them instead of baking and they turned out fantastic! Side note about The Beeroness blog, it is awesome! She uses craft beers in all of her recipes. The girl really knows how to cook! I will definitely share more of her recipes in the future since my husband keeps begging me to make them. You might recall his love of craft beers from this post.

Stout Jerk Chicken Wings

Adapted from The Beeroness, Inspired from Blood, Bones & Butter
Yields: 6-8 servings (appetizer portion)
Prep Time: 2-24 hours (depending on marinade time)
Cook Time: 15-25 minutes

1/2 cup stout beer (we used Stone Imperial Stout)

4 small Habanero peppers, seeded and roughly chopped

6 cloves of garlic, peeled

3 tablespoons ponzu sauce (Asian citrus sauce)

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon dry mustard powder

2 teaspoons Chinese 5 spice powder

1 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons shallots, finely chopped

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon sea salt

3 pounds chicken wings and thighs

Add all of the ingredients except the chicken into a food processor and mix until smooth.

Rinse the chicken in water and pat dry. Place into a large heavy duty Ziploc bag. Pour the marinade over the chicken and seal the bag tightly. Gently move the chicken around in the marinade to evenly distribute. Place the bag into a large baking dish and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or overnight. Move the marinade around and flip the chicken every 2 or 3 hours to redistribute the sauce.

Once ready to cook, remove the bag from the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to grilling. Heat a charcoal grill to medium-high heat, creating a direct heat side and an indirect heat side (by placing coals on one side of the grill).  Grease the grill grates (can use the half onion dipped in olive oil method that Ryan uses).

Place the chicken wings and thighs on the indirect side, cover and cook until the skin starts to brown, anywhere between 7-15 minutes (depending on the size of the wings). Move the wings to the direct heat side of the grill and continue to cook until the skins have crisped, another 2-3 minutes. Depending on the size of the wings, you might want to remove one wing and test to make sure the chicken is cooked through before removing all. Once the chicken is cooked through, remove the wings from the grill and place on a large serving dish with plenty of wet naps on the side! Delicious!

*Tip from the Grill Master

After reading this post, I received a lovely email from our close friends, the London's. You might remember them from this post. Anyways, Hal is by far one of the best Griller's I know of and he adds a few steps when grilling chicken wings:

When you remove the wings from the grill, toss them in a large mixing bowl with your favorite BBQ or wing sauce and then put them back on the grill to "set" the sauce. This creates a few crispies on the skin according to Hal. Another plus, is it helps keep the wings a little less messy. 

We are certainly going to try this next time we grill wings Hal and Sandy. Thanks for the feedback and for following the blog :)

Grill, Meat, Football

I got home Thursday night to a happy husband....a VERY happy husband. He had the coals on the grill heating up, our Meat House steak tips and veggies laid out and counting down the minutes until NFL preseason started! 

It certainly was a nice treat to have him prep and cook dinner, all I had to do was steam broccoli and slice a tomato. He stepped outside with a huge grin on his face to start grilling (oh, the relationship between a man and his grill is almost as enigmatic as the one with football). I offered to get him a drink and he giddily asked for the new Stout that was chilling in the fridge. I opened and poured some for the both of us. 

We opened a bottle of one of our good wines (from a wedding gift case we got from a family friend) and enjoyed the hell out of that steak! It is amazing that among our chaotic lives, we still find simple pleasures in food and drink (and football). We watched our beloved NC State Alum, Philip Rivers take on the Packers, and enjoyed the beginning of football season. (Why the network wasn't playing Peyton's debut, I shall never know!!)

So, in the spirit of my blog, I have to include a little something about our meal. When Ryan grills, he takes half a red onion and greases the grill with olive oil. This adds extra flavor and prevents the use of an aerosol cooking spray. I took the other half of the onion, sliced it and sauteed it in some of the delicious Stout beer that we were drinking that night. The beer gave the onions a yummy caramel coating, which paired well with fresh tomato slices and basil from our garden.

The onions caramelize in about ten minutes - a flavorful and easy addition to any cookout or dinner salad!

Beer Can Chicken

Imagine my excitement when Ryan asked if he could write a guest post on the blog for my birthday! How could a girl say no to that! He had already drafted the post and done all of the research on his topic, which of course is beer! If you know Ryan, you know that he loves good microbrews! He would definitely fall into the category of "beer-snob" :)

Over the weekend, we made a beer-can chicken, which I thought would go perfectly with his post. This was one of the first recipes Ryan and I made when we first moved in together. We figured it was about time to bust it out of the recipe book and make some updates, such as using my chili rub and a Belgian-Style Golden Ale from Triangle Brewing Company. I have included the recipe below. Enjoy the post!

Hubby Guest Post: North Carolina Breweries

Hey there!  Ryan Kettler here, aka “the husband” or “Hubby”.  You may have heard a thing or two about me on this blog and let me preface this article by saying, they’re all true. I love my wife very much. There are a lot of things I love about her, but right at the top of that list is the amazing food she cooks for me on a daily basis. I know you’ve read about some of these superb dishes on this very blog! I could not have chosen a better person to spend the rest of my life with!

One of my passions in life is great beer.  I’m not talking about any of the “Big 3” of Budweiser, Coors, or Miller.  Those beers are acceptable for 3 reasons; quantity, cost, and hot days. The beers I’ve grown to love are brewed in small, craft batches by microbreweries across the United States. These beers should be enjoyed in their own specific glass and should be sipped, not chugged, glugged, or bong’d. There’s a good reason behind this advice, most craft beers have an alcohol content of 6-13%, compared to the 3-4% range of the big 3. Don’t fall for the gimmicks of the big 3; wide-mouths, vortex necks, air holes, color-changing cans, etc.  If you haven’t noticed, most, if not all of these gimmicks have the same end-result in mind. DRINK MORE OF OUR CRAPPY BEER AT A QUICKER PACE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO TASTE IT AND HAVE TO BUY MORE SOONER.

The “microbrewery revolution”, as I call it, is quickly sweeping over the nation. We’re very lucky to live in the Raleigh-Durham area as we’re spoiled with some awesome home-grown breweries such as Big Boss, Lonerider, Roth Brewing Company, Triangle Brewing Company, Carolina Brewing Company, and Aviator Brewing Company among others. North Carolina as a state is leading the "revolution" with new breweries opening all the time.  Here’s a map of all the breweries in North Carolina.

We’ve also been blessed to have some top-notch establishments open up in the area such as Bottle Revolution and Tasty Beverage Company in Raleigh and Sam’s Quik Shop in Durham. At these places, you we can purchase beers that you can’t normally find in the supermarkets at modest prices, much to the chagrin of my wife. :)

People in our wonderful state love good beer. They also love amazing food. The realization that beer is deliciously complex in flavor has been the impetus for many fine-dining establishments to start offering a beer list that’s often comparable, if not more impressive, than the wine list!

There’s a good reason for this.  The flavors found in craft beers run the gamut; from citrus, floral, smoke, chocolate, vanilla, coffee, oak, bourbon, chili, coconut and many more.  There has been much debate over what pairs better with food, beer or wine. It’s the battle of the beer-snobs vs. the wine-snobs. I, of course, am biased. I love beer with food. Not only because of the flavor, but also the price! You’ll typically save at least $3-4 by ordering a beer with dinner instead of a glass of wine.  Plus, you want to support your local economy, so don’t buy an overpriced California wine when you could buy a spectacular craft beer brewed right in your backyard!

So you want to try some beer with your food, but you don’t know where to start. I found this helpful chart that you should check out.

My personal favorite style of beer is the India Pale Ale or IPA for short. This style of beer was first brewed in England back in the mid 1800s with high amounts of hops, which are a natural preservative.  Since the beer could stay fresh longer after bottled, it could last the long journey to India, which at the time was a British colony. The hoppy/bitter flavor of an IPA is often times too intense for novice beer drinkers.  If this is the case for you, maybe you start with an amber ale, brown ale, or a kolsch.  All of these beers are much easier on the palette. 

I encourage you to be adventurous.  Try new beer, and try it often.  There are no 2 craft beers that taste the same, so you’re bound to find something you enjoy eventually. Cheers!

Beer Can Chicken

Yields: 4-6 servings

Prep Time: 10 minutes 
Cook Time: 70-75 minutes

1 4-5lb whole organic chicken

3 T of my chili rub (could also use Old Bay)
2 tsp olive oil (or butter)
salt and pepper
1 can of favorite beer (used Golden Ale)

Pull the chicken and can of beer out of the refrigerator about 30 minutes prior to roasting. Open the beer and pour out half into a glass. Preheat the oven to 350F and pull out a large baking dish.

To prep the chicken, first remove the giblets and and neck from the cavity (if came with the chicken). Rinse the chicken under water and pat dry. Rub the chicken all over with the olive oil (or butter) and then sprinkle the rub or spice of choice all over the outside of the bird. Be sure to get around the legs, wings and inside the cavity.
 

Lower the chicken onto the beer can, so that the can is inside the cavity and the chicken is standing upright (legs down). If the wings are not up against the chicken, cut a slit in the breast and stick them in there for more even cooking. Place the chicken and beer in a large baking dish and place in the center of the oven. Roast the chicken at 350F for 45 minutes.

Turn the pan around and cook for another 20-25 minutes until a themometer in the thickest part of the thigh reads 160F. When the chicken is finished, pull out of the oven and let rest on the counter for 10-15 minutes. Carefully remove the can from the chicken and discard. Slice the chicken and serve!

We made a quick mushroom-beer sauce to go with our chicken. Saute shallots in butter and add mushrooms. Saute these until the mushrooms cook down and release water. Add in beer, salt and pepper and reduce down. Yummy!