wine

Kitchen Fun!

Nibbles

During a manicure at the Nail Bar (literally a nail place that does your manicure at a wood-and-tile bar while you sip wine or cocktails) I offered to let a friend come over one Saturday and we’d spend the day in the kitchen, preparing awesome food and then have a small dinner party with our significant others. And lots of wine.

After many reschedules, we finally had our kitchen day.

Dinner is Served

Dinner is Served!

The Menu

Bacon-Wrapped Artichoke Hearts

Individual Beef Wellingtons with Onion Marmalade and Goat Cheese
Garlic Green Beans
Oven-Roasted Red Potatoes

Crullers with Vanilla Ice Cream

Q arrived just after 2pm and we donned our matching aprons and got to work.

Desserts were first (as they should be) since they needed to be prepped, piped and chilled before being fried. And then they could sit.

This was one of the Q’s requests, as the light and airy cruller is her favorite and she really wanted to learn how to make them herself. It’s a testament to our friendship that I agreed as I really don’t like to fry things and these are basically fried cream puffs, unfilled but topped with a glaze. We used Gale Gand’s recipe (via Food Network Online) which says it yields 12 (but I think a single batch will give more than that, based on our own yield). Well, we figured since it was early and we’d want to snack test them for quality we’d increase it by half and make sure we still had plenty for after dinner.

Crullers, pre-frying

There's a definite learning-curve with piping the dough.

To pipe the crullers you need a pastry bag and a large star tip, which gives you the traditional “tractor tire” ridges. Trace a 3″ circle while keeping even pressure applied to the bag and the same distance from the parchment-lined sheet pan (about half a inch). When you get back to the beginning, stop the pressure but continue to follow the circle around so that the tail hides in the rest of the grooves.

While those chilled, we got started on the next long project: the onion marmalade. Usually a wellington is topped with either pâté or a duxelles (minced mushrooms, etc. cooked down to a pâté-like consistency). Since neither of our guys are big mushroom fans, I decided it would be fun to try something new. A quick search yielded a recipe that seemed promising. It was also time-consuming, taking up most of the afternoon waiting for the liquid to reduce. It did give us time to start frying the crullers, though, and glaze them (tip: for all that’s good and flavorful, add some good vanilla to the glaze.)

frying crullers

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!

I want to try the onion recipe again because it’s truly delicious but almost too sweet (yes, I know, I can hardly believe I typed those words, myself) and I want to make it slightly quicker. Not instant, just quicker.

Meanwhile, we pre-cooked the fillets for the wellingtons according to this recipe. In the past I’ve always baked it just the once and been a little apprehensive about getting the meat done enough while not overcooking the pastry. This method of baking the meat til rare, cooling, assembling and then baking just long enough to heat everything and brown the pastry worked so well I’ve adopted it as my new favorite method.

The side dishes are the epitome of simple: steamed green beans sauteed with garlic, olive oil and a last minute addition of the bacon leftover from the marmalade. The potatoes are steamed first, then tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, sage and rosemary with just a dash of chili powder before going into the oven to get nice and golden-brown.

The last thing to be started was the appetizer: bacon-wrapped artichokes are, truly, as simple as they sound. Wrap half an artichoke heart with half a slice of bacon, place on a foil-lined pan and broil until crispy.

Let's Eat

Let's Eat

Glaze Upon Pastry Perfection

Dinner was lovely. It took us about 4 hours to cook and the meal lasted close to 3. Q & I had finished off a bottle of Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot while we cooked, served a bottle of my favorite Pinot Evil during dinner and then had coffee and Blackberry Wine from Chautauqua Winery with the crullers and ice cream (did you know Breyers has a Lactose Free version? I’m officially in heaven!).

Eclairs and lamb have already been requested for the next Kitchen Day.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gale-gand/crullers-recipe/index.html

Pairings

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The Rule of Food & Wine Pairings used to be: Red with Beef, White with Chicken or Fish and White Zin with nothing at all (okay, that last part I made up, don’t hate me because I hate the cool-aid of wines and I won’t hate you for ordering Filet Mignon well done, though I will feel sorry for the cow). Some people still hold this to be gospel and it’s okay because, well, it make sense: colors match, it’s easy and, for the most part, the heavier the food the heavier the flavor of the wine.

Now, though, most people are fine to live and let dine with whatever your choice of wine. Like Merlot? Drink it! Prefer Chablis? Stock your shelf with a case and enjoy. But don’t be surprised if you fine yourself noticing what does and doesn’t enhance the flavor of your wine or your meal.

This is where pairings come in. It’s a true art form which requires an extensive knowledge of wine, the flavors that go into them, as well as a good knowledge of food. See why we ended up with the red with red guideline? Wineries are actually helping to demystify wine a bit as some will put on the label what foods their wine goes best with and there’s always the helpful Wine Guy at your local store–make friends with him (or her!)–who can steer you in the right direction. Paying attention to menus that suggest certain wines with certain dishes can also give you an idea of what goes with what.

Of course, nothing beats just experimenting at home. Try this: the next time you open a bottle of wine, plan to have a variety of basic foods around to try with it. A few basic proteins, some spreads and dips, anything with a definite flavor and try each with a little sip of wine. Better yet, make it a party: invite some friends, make up some score-sheets and maybe even cloak the bottles so that no one is prejudiced against a particular wine. You know, I’ve been meaning to have a wine party and this might be just the thing!

I’m really surprised to have four more wine-related offerings from Entrepreneur to share, but I guess some things if not recession-proof are at least recession resistant (i.e., drown your sorrows much?). Of course, these gorgeous places may not be the ideal spot to moan about money woes, better to let them envelop you and forget your troubles for a few hours.

I’d happily spend some time in any of these beautiful spots: Wine o’Clock from Brunnel Family Cellar, the Newsome-Harley Winery, Thunderbolt Winery or Tulip Hill Winery & Vineyard. Doesn’t someone want to send me to California, huh? No? Oh, well, I’ll just have to add it to my list!

Random Appetites: Go Cups

Nibbles

New Orleans and Las Vegas are the two cities I know of where it’s perfectly legal for you to walk down the street with your beer or cocktail in hand. Consequently, if you’re in a wandering mood, you can request your drink be put in a Go (or Geaux, in The Quarter) cup rather than the usual glass or whatnot and mosey on down the way. While many places use coated paper cups or Styrofoam, some have capitalized on this and have printed plastic cups for their to-go orders. These also make useful “throws” during Carnival season (beads are not the only thing thrown from parade floats, t-shirts, cups, footballs and other items are quite popular).

Of course my recent move was what had me thinking of to-go items and this post has been a result of such stream of consciousness thought. If you’d like something more potent with your Random Appetites, check out these three wine-related articles that came, of all places, from Entrepreneur.com while I get back to digging my way out of cardboard purgatory.

This Winery’s Vintages Speak for Themselves

Art is Science at Six Sigma Ranch

Experience the Luxury of Hall Wineries

And, finally, a quick reminder that next week’s Random Appetites will post on Monday under a new name! Even if you read this through RSS, please stop by the some time next week to see the new, fresh look of Random Acts Comics!

Random Appetites: Chautauqua Vineyards

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One of those places you find just off the highway, Chautauqua Vineyards is something you don’t expect to find along I-10 in the Florida Panhandle. I first noticed the sign several years ago on my way back home for a visit. The next trip I took was, unfortunately, for my grandfather’s funeral, but on the way back I wasn’t in a big hurry so turned off at Exit 85 purely out of curiosity.

The Winery is a medium-sized building on a hill that you get to by a service road–it’s not hard to find. They offer both “tours” and tastings as well as a full retail shop. The tour is actually a 3 minute video in their viewing room that overlooks the huge tanks, etc. that make up the main operations there at the winery. But don’t skip that room just because you don’t get to actually walk though the vines: it’s a good place to start your shopping. Lots of little wine knick-knacks interspersed between various sizes and shapes of wine racks, wine totes and picnic baskets. I was sorely tempted by one of the very cool baskets that featured real glass and stoneware (no plastic!), including 4 petite wine glasses.

Follow the hallway around and you will end up in the tasting room. On my first visit back in the early aughts they charged for tastings but now apparently it’s free to taste as many wines as you like. Most of their wines are made from local muscadine grapes which are incredibly sweet and many don’t like the taste of. Even if you fall into the anti-muscadine camp, give their fruit wines a try–the blueberry is very good but the blackberry is absolutely outstanding! Even people who don’t like wine actually like the blackberry. They also have some wines that are made from Concord grapes and their Sunset Red is quite palatable. On this last visit we tasted their Vanilla Sherry and, even though it was tasty, I already had a bottle of their Chocolate Port (yes, really) at home so we passed on picking up a bottle of the fortified this time around.

Next to the tasting room, which has it’s own trinkets to browse through, is the main retail room including the racks and racks of wine and a lot of glassware, wine accessories and other accoutrements of wine culture. Among the items I’ve picke up there are novelty pastas, cocktail napkins with a variety of pithy sayings, bottle decorations, mugs, a “Wine Diva” ball cap, wineglass coasters, etc etc etc. Hey, it’s an hour and a half away and our last trip out there was specifically to stock up, might as well make it worth the drive!

Basically, if you ever find yourself around Exit 85 on I-10 (DeFuniak Springs, FL) during business hours with a little time to kill, stop and in and see what you think.

Random Appetites: United Grapes of America

Nibbles

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1837245,00.html

Joel Stine of TIME Magazine decided to try (at least?) one wine from each of our 50 states and rate them. The article itself is a fun, quick read and if you follow the link at the bottom you’ll get to see how each state was represented and rated. Unfortunately Florida (as with the other Southeastern states in close proximity) did not fare well. On the one hand, I’m glad that it was a Gulf Coast winery that was tasted but I’ve had some much better wines from the Chautauqua Vineyards out of DeFuniak Springs. The blackberry wine is especially nice and they used to have a Carlos that was not overly sweet (they also used it in their bottled Mimosas that they no longer carry, mores the pity) but I tend to agree that muscadine wine can be a bit much even for those of us with a pronounced sweet tooth. Furthermore, the Port that the monks in St Augustine make is absolutely divine and definitely worth the drive to the other coast (which I still need to make one of these days!).

What’s your favorite regional wine (if you have one) and why? Had any of the ones on Mr Stein’s list?