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Curator Roland Kays serves up some vegetables. Image courtesy of Kays.

Tomorrow is the final day of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday month. Most people only get a daylong birthday celebration, but most people didn’t put forth a revolutionary theory that’s influential two centuries later, now, did they?

One of the more interesting food-related events commemorating the bicentennial was a series of cooking demonstrations at the New York State Museum, in Albany, called Cooking the Tree of Life. Each Wednesday in February, a local chef was paired with a biologist to present foods and facts relating to one of four branches of the tree of life: vertebrates, plants, invertebrates and fungi/yeast.

I would have liked to attend the events but, as I mentioned in my last post, I live in the boondocks and couldn’t justify a 5-hour round trip. Instead, I got the rundown from Roland Kays, the museum’s curator of mammals. I also found another, more conveniently located blogger who gave her own account.

“The overarching idea is that everything we eat is alive,” Kays told me. Hmm, even sugar-free Cool Whip? I didn’t think to ask.

The first demonstration featured vertebrates, and paired Kays with Chef Tony DeStratis of the Lake George Club, in Bolton Landing, New York. Among the dishes prepared were swamp gumbo, with frogs’ legs and alligator tail, two animals that have changed little since the Mesozoic Era more than 100 million years ago (perhaps the dish could have been named Primordial Soup?). The Evolution Omelet contained fish eggs, chicken eggs and milk, representing three advances in vertebrate reproduction: amniotic eggs, cleidoic eggs, and lactation. You can see a video from that demonstration, complete with techno music, here.

Plant Night had the most diverse offerings, Kays said, since so much of what we eat, from grains to vegetables, comes from the plant kingdom. Timothy Warnock, corporate chef for U.S. Foodservice, prepared 11 dishes, organized according to the evolution of humans’ use of edible plants. There was Hunter-Gatherer Salad, with greens, berries, flowers, nuts and amaranth. Then came Three Sisters Salad, using the common Native American trio of squash, corn and beans. The evening culminated with chocolate, which, as Amanda told us during Chocolate Week, has been used in Native American cultures for at least 1,000 years.

Dr. George Robinson, a professor at the University of Albany, explained some of the evolutionary features of the plant kingdom. For instance, the reason plants produce delicious fruit is so animals will eat it, go on their merry way and, ahem, deposit the seeds elsewhere.

Invertebrate night could have gotten ugly, but chef David Britton, of Springwater Bistro in Saratoga Springs, New York (you may have seen him as the sidekick on the Food Network program Dinner Impossible), intentionally kept to the more appetizing side of the category, like shrimp and lobster. In other words, no bugs. There were, however, escargots, or snails—a dish I’m happy to leave to the French.

The series ended with fungi and yeast, which, Kays told me, are more closely related to animals than plants. Chef Paul Parker from Chez Sophie, in Saratoga Springs, cooked up lots of mushrooms, of course, but also wine, bread and corn smut, a fungus that grows on corn and which sounds better in Mexico, where it’s called huitlacoche. The biologist of the night was Cornell University professor George Hulder, author of the book Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds, which Amazon called “a hugely entertaining introduction to spore lore.”

Kays said the presentations were so popular, drawing 150 to 200 people a night, that the museum would like to do something similar for Darwin’s 201st birthday.

In the meantime, if you want more on the interplay of evolution and food, check out this fascinating article from the Economist, which explains the role of cooking in the evolution of modern humans.

Samichlaus beer from Schloss Eggenberg

Okay, let’s recap. In part one, I told you about Delirium Tremens and four beers from a recent Smithsonian Resident Associates beer seminar, but there’s still seven to go! So read on, if it doesn’t drive you mad with thirsty envy….

Even though we were sipping only a few ounces of each beer, by the time we got to the Brooklyn Monster, the notes of the woman next to me had devolved from detailed descriptions to “Mm, pretty good,” and two old men were quarreling loudly over the cheese platter (they were promptly shushed, of course). It dawned at me that the event’s name wasn’t just an exercise in alliteration—these beers were all “behemoths” in terms of alcohol content!

They seemed to be getting stronger as the lineup progressed: The Brooklyn Monster has 10.8 percent. It’s a classic barleywine, strong and sugary. I found it a bit too sweet, but it was well-paired with a musty blue cheese called Persille du Beaujolais.

The next pour was truly unique: A single batch of barleywine made by the brewmaster at the District Chophouse, which was clearly such a labor of love that I feel like a jerk for disliking it. It was tank-conditioned for a full year, then aged for several years (I think he said five?) in a used bourbon barrel. I took a sip and scribbled down, “Weird, licoricey, don’t like,” a sentiment the woman next to me shared. (But to be fair, I think maybe I just don’t like barleywine.)

On the opposite end of the taste spectrum, the Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA was an extremely bitter beer, one of the weakest of the day in terms of alcohol content (7.2 percent) but surely the hoppiest. The aroma evokes pine trees and lemons, which would be nicer if it didn’t make me think of cleaning products, but I still found it surprisingly drinkable. The brewery announced earlier this year that Torpedo is now on their year-round roster, so you can try it for yourself sometime. We also tried the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, which I’d had before but never realized was a barleywine because it’s so hop-heavy. (And I liked it, so there goes my theory above…)

Among the biggest of the behemoths was Samichlaus, a 14-percenter which is brewed only on December 6 of each year at the Schloss Eggenberg brewery in Austria, then aged for 10 months before bottling. Samichlaus shares some of the sweet, syrupy, raisiny taste of barleywine, and it took me a few sips to make up my mind about it. I wouldn’t want a full glass—it seems more like a liqueur than a beer—but I liked it, especially with the cheese pairing (a semi-hard, raw cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland called Tete De Moine).

At the 10th-beer marker, just when my interest was starting to flag, I fell in love. The chestnut-colored brew that arrived in the next cup had the aroma and flavor of caramel…or was it coffee…no, chocolate…maybe vanilla? It was reminiscent of an expensive cognac and yet unpretentious. It tasted so smooth that I was startled to hear it had a whopping 12 percent alcohol, but I’m not surprised this delicious brew came from the folks at Dogfish Head in Delaware. I like everything I’ve ever tasted from them. This one was called Palo Santo Marron, named after the exotic wood it was aged in. All I can say is: Try it. Now.

The Sam Adams Imperial Stout is a brand-new offering from the Boston Beer Company, a robust black brew with hints of anise, chocolate and coffee. It’s fashioned after the English imperial stouts reportedly favored by 18th-century Russian empress Catherine the Great, which had to have a high alcohol content (9.2 percent in this one) and intense flavors to withstand the long journey. I’d say Catherine had very good taste!

I opted out of the brutally strong closer, Mikkeller Black from Danish craft brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergso, after just a sip. It’s an imperial stout packed with a ridiculous 17.5 percent alcohol. It reminded me of grappa mixed with blackstrap molasses (which is also what it looks like), and I thought Tupper’s description of it as a “heavy, pompous, violent” taste was apt. “It’s not for everybody,” he noted. No kidding.

Here’s the full list of beers we tasted, in order:

1) Huyghe Delirium Tremens 2) Gordon Biersch Urgestiner Dunkel 3) Vintage 50 Scotch Ale, 4) Chimay Grand Reserve, 5) Brooklyn Monster, 6) Chophouse barley wine, 7) Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA , 8 ) Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, 9) Samichlaus, 10) Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron, 11) Sam Adams Imperial Stout, 12) Mikkeller Black

If you’re interested in participating in future events like this in the DC area, keep your eye on the “culinary arts” program listings from the Resident Associates, as well as the Brickskeller’s events page.

A summer scene in the Adirondack Park, in upstate New York.

Through the magic of the Internet, I am blogging not from Smithsonian’s Washington, D.C. offices but from the Adirondack Park in upstate New York, a place with six million acres of unspoiled natural beauty but [sigh] not a single chocolate lounge.

The advantages of living in a state park significantly outweigh the disadvantages. For one thing, I love that my commute looks like this picture—especially after having spent much of my life in the Los Angeles area, where the population of some parking lots exceeds that of my entire village.

But this is a food blog, not a traffic blog, and herein lies my one complaint. As someone who grew accustomed to living in a place that had not just a Chinatown, but a Thai Town, a Little Saigon and a Little Ethiopia, I’ve suffered from a case of culinary culture shock since moving here a year ago. It’s not exactly homesickness, since that implies a longing for the familiar. What I long for is the unfamiliar, the unexpected, the unpronounceable.

So, I find myself wistfully reading articles like this one from the Los Angeles Times, about a Korean BBQ taco truck that tweets its location to fans. The point of the story was the innovative use of Twitter as a marketing tool. But all I could think was, Korean BBQ tacos? Brilliant! A thought which was quickly followed by the realization that I won’t be seeing Korean BBQ, much less Korean BBQ tacos, around here anytime soon.

Still, the culinary landscape is by no means as bleak as suggested by the name Adirondack, which is said to be based on the Mohawk word for “they eat bark.” I haven’t seen any locals gnawing on trees, though there is a certain back-to-the-land earthiness to North Country cooking that offers its own simple pleasures.

Some of my colleagues and neighbors tap their maple trees for syrup, forage wild leeks and chanterelles, and grow their own vegetable gardens. Wild blueberries are the go-to trail snack on hikes. I’ve recently become inspired to (finally) learn how to cook. In late summer, when the farmers’ markets are loaded with local tomatoes and corn, my cravings for exotic spices nearly disappear.

Last July, I made a strawberry pie with absurdly flavorful berries I had picked myself from a local farm, and served it by a bonfire beside a tranquil lake. It was the kind of food you could get homesick for.

Has anyone else out there suffered from culinary culture shock after moving somewhere new?

Ask most people where the cocktail was invented, and they’ll probably guess New Orleans, something the city itself wants you to believe. The story goes that a fellow named Antoine Peychaud opened an apothecary shop in New Orleans’ French quarter in the 1830s, and sold his own homemade bitters. Before long, he realized that these bitters tasted especially good mixed with cognac, sugar and water. He measured out this concoction with an egg cup (called a “coquetier” in French—some believe this is the basis for the term “cocktail”), and so the modern cocktail was born.

Well, that’s a nice story, and I believed it myself until I went to a recent Smithsonian Resident Associates program on the history of cocktails. The speakers were Phil Greene and Chris McMillian, spirits experts who helped found the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans in 2005. Greene is actually a descendant of Peychaud, so he was a bit rueful about playing the role of debunker, but he noted that the word “cocktail” appeared in an upstate New York newspaper as early as 1806, when Peychaud would have been just a baby.

Still, New Orleans can claim to have invented one particular type of cocktail, the Sazerac, which uses Peychaud’s bitters. It was the house specialty at a bar called the Sazerac Coffeehouse (later the Roosevelt Hotel, and then the Fairmont) which used only Sazerac-brand cognac. The original recipe, according to Greene and McMillian, is as follows:

Chill a small rocks glass filled with ice, then empty the ice into a second glass. In the first glass, add 1 cube of sugar, 1 teaspoon of water, and 2 dashes of Peychaud’s bitters.

Muddle together until sugar dissolves (alternatively, use simple syrup instead of a sugar cube and water). Add 3 ounces rye whiskey and stir. Pour mixture into the ice-filled glass. Pour a teaspoon of absinthe into the empty glass, and twirl it around well to coat the inside of the glass, then pour out any absinthe that remains in the bottom.

Strain the main mixture out of the ice-filled glass into the absinthe-coated glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon peel.

Watch Greene and McMillian in action in this video from Smithsonian Media. And have a happy Mardi Gras, or even better, FaT Tuesday!

A glass of Delirium Tremens beer; Courtesy of Flickr user

Remember when I mentioned in a previous post that I wished I could attend a certain beer tasting seminar organized by the Smithsonian Resident Associates? Well, my wish was granted! The “Beer Behemoths” seminar took place earlier this month at the Brickskeller, a DC restaurant that boasts a beer list of more than 1000 brews from around the world.

I guess I expected something a little more along the lines of the “What is American Food?” Resident Associates event I attended last fall, which was heavy on the tasting and light on the lecturing. But this was heavy on both—the speaker, local craft brewer Bob Tupper, was a born storyteller who barely even paused long enough to sip during the nearly four-hour-long event.

The place was packed when I arrived a few minutes into the talk; I squeezed myself into the only seat left at a long table. My fellow tasters’ attempts at introductions were loudly shushed by a professorial-looking gent a few seats away, who was concentrating so fiercely on Tupper’s photo slideshow of a brewery in action I thought there might be a final exam. (He erupted in several more fits of shushing as the beers loosened people’s tongues, and before long I was doing a very poor job of stifling giggles. Sorry, sir.)

The first beer we tried was one I already knew I liked: Delirium Tremens, a strong Belgian pale ale from Huyghe brewery. (It’s also the medical term for a brutal symptom induced by alcohol withdrawal). DT is a light, bubbly brew with hints of citrus and spice, and it tasted even better than I recalled, especially paired with a Blue Shropshire cheese (a sharp, creamy cousin of Stilton). Tupper says Belgian ales like this should be served in a large, wide-mouthed glass, stopping the pour a bit short to leave most of the yeast in the bottom of the bottle. (Or if you like a yeasty beer, swirl the bottle around a bit and dump it all in.)

Then we moved on to something special from the Gordon Biersch brewery and restaurant chain’s Virginia Beach location, which brewer Allen Young stepped up to tell us about. Apparently the “Urgestiner Dunkel” (aka Virginia Native Dark) is his limited-edition re-brew of a beer called Chesbay Dark Horse that was a big hit in this region in the late 1980s. Young calls it a “strangely balanced” beer, noting that it is heavy on both hops and malt (and on alcohol, at 7.2 percent). I’d call it simply “pleasant”—something I’d order again if I lived near the brewery, but wouldn’t go out of my way to find.

Next up was a “wee-heavy” Scotch ale from the Leesburg restaurant and brewery Vintage 50. It was brewed in 2002, using English malts (pale and crystal) and hops (First Gold) with a touch of flaked oats and roasted barley. The taste was complex and rich, reminding me of dark fruits like cherries, while the smell reminded me of a dairy barn (believe it or not, that’s a positive association). And with over 9 percent alcohol, it was more than a wee bit heavy, I’d say!

The Chimay Grand Reserve, a Belgian ale brewed by Trappist monks, was one of my favorites. It’s a bottle-conditioned beer, meaning that it wasn’t filtered after the final fermentation. The taste was malty and slightly sweet and spicy, reminding me a bit of a hermit cookie. Which, come to think of it, is quite fitting. Tupper said that although he doesn’t think this truly qualifies as a “craft beer” anymore because it’s produced on a fairly large scale, it certainly qualifies as a very good beer.

I can see this entry is getting long, and there are still 7 beers to go, so I’ll break here and give you Part Two another time!