And speaking of good stuff, Effen makes a Cucumber Flavored Vodka which is dangerously good.  I didn’t think I’d like it but I DO as they say at a wedding.  It was truly love at first sip.  Effen Cucumber and our Bloody Mary recipe.   PA-CHOW!  outstanding!   Plus it’s fun to say….I’d like some of that Effen Vodka!   You may need to say it out loud to get the full effect….

 Now, the New York Deli Style Corned Beef Sandwich ain’t too bad, either!

Only about ½ a pound of corned beef on this one so it’s not like you see in a real New York Deli piled mile high.  I mean, we can do that for you if you want but we’re not charging $25.00 either!  $10.95 is pretty reasonable for a half pound sandwich! 

And, you can’t leave out my Southern roots!  A sweet, tangy Cole Slaw is piled onto sliced Corned Beef on toasted Rye Bread.  Nuf said! The Dill Seed in the Cole Slaw adds the tang and the mayonnaise adds the sweetness.  I didn’t know you could have corned beef any other way till I was 18! 

Of course, we’ve got the Corned Beef Plate with boiled Cabbage, Potatoes and Carrots!  Get a side of mustard or, my preference, creamy horseradish sauce! 

So, what the heck IS Corned Beef, anyway?  Well, it is beef preserved or ‘cured’ by salt.  These days, usually, a brisket or a round is used.  The little cans of Corned Beef from Argentina you see is really Bully Beef – chopped corned beef pieces packed with a little gelatin to hold everything together.

Served hot or cold, the flavor is wonderful.  And, hey, if you smoke Corned Beef with a few other spices, you get Pastrami!

So, in true Irish spirit, we’ve put together a fun beer tasting event on Saturday, March 17, 2012 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM in the Double Eagle’s Isabela Room.  For a $20.00 admission fee, you can taste over 10 beers from Murphy’s Irish Stout to Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye Ale.  Plus a Snacking Table will be available with Irish Sliders, Beef & Tater Empanadas and more.  Should be a fun, sociable way to commemorate the day everyone becomes Irish.

 First a primer on whiskey:  whiskey is a distilled spirit made from grains.  Bourbon is a whiskey made from, at least, 51% corn.  Straight whiskey is made from, at least, 51% of the named grain.  So, Rye Straight Whiskey is made with, at least, 51% rye grain.  Something labeled Rye Whiskey could have as little as 20% rye grain in the mash.

 Changing tastes toward clear spirits starting in the 90’s and continuing into the 21^st century, put the brand out of business.  But, as the century moves into its teens, brown liquor is back and booming big time.  So, the good folks at Buffalo Trace resurrected the recipe and name producing a real winner.

 Sazerac Rye has a nose of vanilla, cloves, anise, pepper.  The taste is candied spice and even has citrus notes.  The tasting notes claim that if the finish was any crisper it would shatter glass!  That’s pretty darn crisp and they are not exaggerating.   Any whiskey drink would work with the Sazerac Rye but the Sazerac Cocktail is what made this brand famous so here’s the recipe:

 Take on old fashioned glass, splash with absenith (ouzo, sambuco, anisette if you don’t have a bottle of absenith laying around…) swirl to coat the inside of the glass and discard the excess.

 In a shaker, add a shot of Sazerac Rye, a teaspoon of sugar (superfine if you have it) and about 3 drops of bitters (Peychaud if possible to be historically accurate) add ice and shake vigourously.  Strain into the prepared glass and rim with a lemon twist.  Twist the lemon over the liquid and drop into the drink.  Enjoy.

 An excellent snack with this drink would be the Crispity Calamari with the Sriracha dipping sauce, a spicy Japanese chile sauce.

Now, you know we didn’t just put a hamburger steak on the offerings.  We did a Hamburger Steak Mesilla!  A bed of sautéed onions, a half pound patty of seasoned grilled ground beef, a whole roasted green chile and hid it all under a pile of shredded Monterey jack cheese which we then melt luxuriously over everything.  Then you have your choice of sides: black beans, refried beans or Spanish rice.  (Of course, you can sub in any of the other sides we offer for a small upcharge.)  We add a dollop of guacamole and a flour tortilla to complete the picture.  And, yes, TO GO boxes are available for the leftovers. 

Patterned on the famous – and best-selling – Chicken Mesilla dish, the Hamburger Steak Mesilla has steadily grown in popularity and is breaking into the top 10 sellers for Peppers Café, both Lunch and Dinner!  Step aside, Vegans.  Move over, Vegetarians.  Big Boy Beef is back in town! 

The Double Eagle has not suffered any type of boycott or seen any type of negative reactions to the restaurant’s stand.
Harrell thinks that, while many nudists have clothed friends, those friends really don’t have a problem with not being
able to dine with the nudists.   “It’s like the smoking thing.  Sure, you have friends that are smokers but you are not
willing to give up your three cheese and green chile stuffed crispity wontons and pineapple-jalapeno salsa to go
stand outside with them, are you?” noted Harrell.  Apparently, the public agrees since customer counts have been
well over last year.   Perhaps there is even a bigger market for non-nudist dining.  

Other restaurateurs in the area refused to comment for this blog.  Off the record, however, almost all supported
Harrell’s stand.  One restaurateur did note that naked people’s money was just a green as clothed people’s money
and as long as the nudists didn’t get rowdy after a few margaritas, he had no problem serving them. 

I resisted adding Sliders to the menu.  My thinking was that we have several unusually tasty Bar Snacks
and we should concentrate on selling them rather than imitate others.  But, hey, in the restaurant business,
we don’t call it stealing..we call it coincidence!  And there is a very high number of such coincidences.

So, I finally found a tasty yeasty roll I thought would work well.  Yes, I was resistant but I did keep my
eyes, ears and mouth open to suggestions.  When this soft bun like roll appeared, I marked it and kept
it in my “Some day” file.  And as the new year rolled in, so, too, did my quarterly review of menus – and,
we have a lot of them.  You’d think we’d be able to get by with a Double Eagle Menu and a Peppers Cafe Menu,
but NOOOO!  Peppers Lunch, Peppers Dinner, Banquet Event Lunch, Banquet Event Dinner,  Banquet Event Breaks,
Dessert Menu, Beer and Wine by the Glass Menu, Martini Menu, Margarita Menu, Cocktail Menu, Wine List,
After Dinner Drink Menu, Bar Food Menu, Bar Snack Menu and on and on and, yes, on. 

It finally felt like the right time for sliders to slide home, baby.  Simple, basic, nothing too fancy – learned my lesson
with the smoked trout sandwich – I was the only one to like it.  Had to keep it on the Peppers menu till I ate the whole case
of smoked trout….damn it, that was a great sandwich – anyway, I started with the obvious:  Green Chile and Cheese.  The cooks
are used to me wandering in and asking them to cook different stuff, different ways, make weird sauces, use different
ingredients so when I showed up with yeast rolls and my weight scale they didn’t blink an eye.

I asked for several yeasty rolls to be split and we brushed the cut sides of rolls, one each with butter, olive oil, mayonnase, bacon drippings and
one plain and put them on the grill.  Then we made burger patties of various weights and shapes ranging from almost round to thin, thin and flat.
Those went on the grill, too.  We then experimenting matching grilled buns with patties till we all agreed on the basic slider formula.  Then we
used that basic format adding the chile and cheese till we all agreed we had a winner.

We then experimented with various fillings to add to the basic slider.  We ended up with:  Green Chile and Cheddar Cheese, a Western Slider with
Chef’s tangy sweet BBQ sauce and a crispy onion ring, Bacon and Blue Cheese, Sauteed Sweet Onions, a version of the World’s Largest Green
Chile Cheeseburger with Chile, Pico De Gallo and crumbly creamy Queso Fresco.  We even came up with a Salmon Croquette patty with a
wonderful dill mayonnaise.  Tasty!

So, do drop in for the slider assortment.  You get three for 9.95 and can add more at 3.95 each.  Available only at the Bar and in the
Lounge area for now!   See you soon!

There will be a $20.00 fee and reservations are encouraged for planning purposes.  “We’d hate to run out of beer on this of all days!” said Beverage Manager Win Ritter. 

The beers offered for tasting range from XS Imperial Stouts to a summery Wheat beer made with Blueberries!  The choices were made after extensive research and tasting. “Yes, it’s a tough job but we knew it had to be done.  So, we jumped right in!” said Ritter.   

Reservations can be made by calling the Double Eagle at 575-523-6700

Always on the lookout for excellent steaks, we taste tested many styles and cuts.  And, we found a winner!  It’s cut from the center of the top sirloin and has a rounded shape, looking like a filet cut of the tenderloin.  That rounded shaped and size gives it the name Baseball.   

Top sirloin is the flap left of the primal loin after the tenderloin and bottom round are cut away.  Draw a circle in the center of that flap and voila – a center cut “baseball” top sirloin.

Center cut and then hand trimmed, this ends up being one of the leanest cuts of beef you can enjoy.  So, you’ve got the full flavor of the sirloin with the lean quality of a filet.  And, priced quite a bit less!

Now, sirloin is a working muscle so more time in the Ageing Room is required to produce the quality product we demand.  Up to 60 days spent in the dark at 35 degrees will work the magic we seek.  And taste testing shows the magic did indeed occur.   True, it’s not a filet mignon but still wonderfully tender and tasty.  I like it paired with green chile and bacon – we call that Cowboy style at the Double Eagle.  Your server will know that phrase and be able to order it for you.

Another idea is Pittsburgh Style – charred on the outside and rare on the inside.  Supposedly, the workers in the Pittsburgh steel plants threw steaks on the steel just emerging from the blast furnace.  More likely, the story about the line cook in a prominent Pittsburgh hotel who put a steak on the hottest part of the grill by mistake and then explained that, well, of course, he meant to do that…is true.  And, he wanted to charge extra for doing it that way…  Oh, those cooks!

If you like a good sirloin steak, then drop by and try out the Baseball!  Now, it’s a thick cut of steak so if you like it medium well to well, ask them to butterfly the steak or you will wait quite a while for the steak to cook all the way through.  Butterflying means we split the steak in half and spread the meat like the wings of a butterfly.  This allows the meat to cook quicker.  Now, you rare steak lovers don’t hate on the well doners.  Each to his or her own, right?

Coffee comes from a bean grown on a bush, almost always in a mountainous geographic region.  There are two major types of coffee beans: Robusta and Arabica. 

Robusta beans are grown at lower elevations, flatter terrain, making them easier to pick.  They often have twice as much caffeine.  Robusta tends to be the chosen bean for commercial coffee uses, including the food service industry.  Arabica beans are grown at higher elevations, have a smoother, richer flavor and usually cost more.

Roasting the beans is a major factor in the resulting taste.   Light roasts such as New England yield a mild flavor.  Medium roasts, like Viennese, produce a richer flavor.  Dark Roasts, such as French, can be quite robust.

Most specialty coffee is Arabica and is categorized three ways: by country of origin – Guatemala, Costa Rica; by blend – Mocha Java; by roast type – French Roast.

These days there are eco-symbols to look for as well.  Fair Trade means the beans were purchases directly from farms and that fair prices were paid for the beans.  Organic means that, at least, 95% of the beans must have been grown without using synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers.  Rainforest Alliance refers to a group of growers following strict standards for soil, water and fair labor practices.

Coffee, like wine, has different sensory components to evaluate:  acidity, aroma, body.  Acidity refers to the feeling of dryness at the back and around the edge of the tongue.  It’s a pleasantly bitter sensation.  This is not sourness.  Aroma is the smell and like wine there are common descriptors: nutty, fruity, earthy, caramel, buttery.  Body relates to how ‘heavy’ the brew feels in your mouth.  Think of a cabernet sauvignon wine vs a pinot noir.  Think of whole milk vs water.

Brewing method also affects coffee.  The usual method of making coffee in a restaurant is the automatic drip.  This method is used for making a whole pot.  The taste often deteriorated over time as the pot sat on the warmer to keep it hot.  The Double Eagle uses thermos pots hold hold coffee, sealing the coffee in, keeping it hot and preventing evaporation which would concentrate the bitter aspect into an unpleasant flavor.

Cones are used to make one or two cups of coffee at one time and so are not favored in restaurants.  A plastic or metal mesh cone shape is place over a mug or pitcher, a paper filter is added, then the ground beans, then hot water is poured over the grounds.  The method is used for immediate consumption.

The French Press is popular for home brewing and has made it’s way into some high end restaurants and coffee houses.  A tall glass coffee pot with a plunger/filter apparatus attached to a lid is used.  Coffee grounds are added to the pot, hot water poured over the grounds, swirling the grounds throughout the liquid allowing the coffee flavor to infuse into the hot water.  When ready, the plunger/filter is pressed through the liquid, straining out the grounds, pushing the grounds to the bottom of the pot, leaving the coffee above the compressed grounds.  This method is considered elegant and upscale.

Double Eagle/Peppers Café serves Seattle’s Best Coffee, a whole owned subsidiary of Starbucks.  Jerry chose Level Three Decaf.   Medium acidity, crisp with hints of nutty-ness, clean finish.  Best with butter-rich, higher fat foods.  Perfect with desserts.  Excellent for an afternoon coffee break.   Blends well with liqueurs.  This Decaf is processed using sparkling water instead of chemicals to remove the caffeine.

Jerry chose Level Four for regular coffee drinkers.  Darker, richer, elegant, even complex flavor profile. Nuttier, fuller bodied than the Decaf.  Definite after taste.  Lingers on the tongue cleansing the palate of other flavors, elbowing them aside to be King of the hill.  Almost like chocolate lingers and slowly dissipates, so too does this blend.