"Tastes like...burning." - Ralph Wiggum

This weekend I went to a Balvenie scotch dinner at the Omni Parker House in Boston. I can't say that I'm much of a scotch drinker (having tasted my father's scotch and soda when I was a curious pre-teen and thinking I was drinking fire), but the dinner was billed as being less about tasting the scotch than about cooking with the scotch. So I was game. The dinner was very underwhelming. It included:


1) oysters on the half shell with a drizzle of the 12-year old Balvenie, which ended up tasting more like straight scotch with an oyster dunked in it (perhaps more of a scotch oyster shooter?);


2) sirloin with a 15-year Balvenie tarragon "glace", which was tasty, but the accompanying sauce, which did have a nice complexity that I've never been able to accomplish using wine to deglaze the pan, had these little whole green peppercorns that were so tiny they were hard to avoid, but packed such a pepper wallop that you had to pick them off your steak before taking a bite (and while we're at it, why do restaurants use perfectly good vegetables as merely window dressing--baby carrots and broccolini can be very tasty if they're sauteed, rather than par-boiled, and seasoned with at least some salt and pepper);


3) creme brulee (which honestly didn't show many signs of having been "bruleed") topped with Balvenie 17-year aged in Madeira barrels, which was nothing special except that, for me, it was the very first time I was tasting scotch and rather enjoying it (maybe I'd had too much wine?); and


4) a cheese tasting with Balvenie Vintage Cask 1978. I asked the Balvenie representative if I could try the Madeira barrel one instead, since I liked it so much on the creme brulee, and they actually brought out both for me to share with my dinner mates, which was a much-appreciated and memorable gesture.


I've never cooked with spirits, but after this dinner, here's what I might do next time (with blended, not single malt, whiskey):


Roast a chicken with aromatic spices like ginger and cinnamon, honey and lemon (Arabesque-style) and make a pan sauce from the drippings by deglazing the pan with whiskey; make glazed carrots with brown butter, whiskey and brown sugar (or, alternatively, whipped sweet potatoes with butter, whiskey and honey-roasted pecans), and have my husband make his fabulous bread pudding with whiskey-kissed pound-cake.


At the end of the night, I wasn't much more of a scotch-lover, but I am starting to think about cooking with spirits and even found the first scotch I didn't hate (my gateway scotch, if you will). I'm looking forward to buying a bottle for myself if I can find it in a store somewhere!