Last week, someone pushed a button that accidentally deleted my entire web site, including all my blog posts (it wasn’t me, honest!). I’ve since rebuilt the site, but in reinstalling the blog, I unintentionally sent its default first post, titled “Hello world,” to my handful of subscribers. I apologize for any confusion it caused!
Luckily I have all my previous blog posts in Word documents, so I can reload them. (There’s an advantage to being a not-too-prolific blogger – not much to reload!) I think I’ve deactivated syndication and so you shouldn’t re-receive those fifteen or so posts – emphasis on the word think. If I’m incorrect about that, I apologize in advance for the soon-to-be-flooding of your inbox. (What’s the emoticon for an embarassed grimace?) I’m relatively sure it’ll be a one-time thing, emphasis on relatively.
Hoping it’ll soften any blow a bit, know that after all this rebuilding, I’ve got a post about my recent week at Rancho La Puerta, an incredible spa/resort in Tecate, Mexico, where I had the amazing fortune to be the visiting culinary instructor a couple of weeks ago.
So stay tuned, keep your fingers crossed for me, and again, I’m so sorry for the bother!
I thought it might be interesting to talk about a recipe that I cut from my book, “100 Perfect Pairings: Entrees to Enjoy with Wines You Love,” because I couldn’t make it, well, a perfect pairing!
When you write a cookbook, you start out with a publisher-approved list of recipes, but everyone knows that some might change or possibly be eliminated altogether. That’s just the nature of taking something from concept to reality.
But with this book, I knew that the possibility of elimination was greater than usual, simply because not only do the recipes have to taste great, they have to work with wine. And although you can pretty much always get a food and wine pairing to work pretty well, you can’t always make it perfect. Or better said, my experience is that sometimes, in making the pairing perfect, you so have to so compromise the food that it’s no longer great-tasting. So the recipe ends up on the cutting room floor (the cutting board floor?).
Long story short, Lamb Chops with Fig and Orange Tapenade (pictured above, recipe below) is one of those that didn’t work. I made it four times – and I have to tell you, each version was really, really delicious dish, with a super-simple tapenade, one that you can make in 5 minutes, as a bed for pan-seared lamb chops. But not delicious with Merlot, the wine I was imagining for it.
So what went wrong?
It had elements that I know work with Merlot – meaty/fatty lamb, salty olives, and a slight fruitiness to complement the fruitiness in the wine. But I also knew it was risky – because fruit adds sweetness to food, and sweetness in food can make the wine that you enjoy with it taste less sweet, and sometimes even downright sour. Even a dry wine, like Merlot, with no noticeable sweetness, can get robbed of its fruit flavors, leaving the wine tasting too acidic.
So I proceeded with caution, first making just the tapenade and trying it with the wine. Knowing that dried fruit tends to have less sweetness than its fresh counterpart, I used dried figs. Knowing that there’s plenty of bitterness in citrus peel, which would balance some of the sweetness, I used peel-and-all orange pieces. I also used plenty of olives (salty), capers (salty and vinegary, or acidic), and balsamic vinegar (also acidic) – to further ensure balancing the sweetness of the figs and oranges.
But the tapenade didn’t work with the wine. It was too sweet, making the wine taste sour.
So for attempt number two, I increased the olives and vinegar in the tapenade, and decreased the figs. I also added more acidity, in the form of lemon juice. This time I tried the tapenade with the seared lamb chops. Delicious. But still too sweet for the wine.
For my third attempt, I eliminated one of the sweet elements, the orange, and used lemon instead, again peel and all. I again increased the proportion of olives, adding green, martini olives along with the black kalamatas, and decreased the figs. I also eliminated the capers. Still a fantastic, easy-to-make dish – but now so lemony-bright that it didn’t work with the darker flavors of Merlot. And besides, the fig taste was lacking – the recipe no longer delivered on its name, and didn’t want to take “fig” out of the name because I felt that was one of the things that made the dish attractive.
So it was back to the kitchen again, going back to all Kalamata olives and an orange, playing with the proportions one last time. Again, delish. Again, not with Merlot.
Every time the food was too sweet and was making the wine taste sour, I had three options for the recipe – increase a) the acidity, b) the saltiness, or c) both, any of which would help keep the wine from tasting sour. But when I used enough acid, in my third attempt, all the attractive figginess disappeared. In my fourth attempt, I added more salt at the table, which did help with the food-and-wine combination, but made the food on its own too salty.
So, although I really enjoyed the dish, I cut it from the book. When and if I have time to play some more, I might try the recipe with other wines, maybe something with a little sweetness in it to stand up to the sweetness in the food (Rosé?), maybe even a white wine like Gewürztraminer.
Meanwhile, here’s the recipe. Enjoy it. And let me know if you come up with a perfect pairing!
Lamb Chops with Fig and Orange Tapenade
As I mentioned in the above post, this really is a super simple recipe to make. Just put the tapenade ingredients into the food processor and – buzz, buzz, buzz – that’s done. Then season and pan-sear the lamb. Then plate and garnish. Voila!
Serves 4
10 dried mission figs
1 small navel orange
1 cup drained pitted brine-cured nicoise or kalamata olives
1 tablespoon red wine or balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 3/4 teaspoons freshly ground pepper, divided, or more to taste
8 lamb rib chops, about 3/4-inch thick, or 8 lamb loin chops, about 1 1/4 inches thick
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
Stem and quarter the figs. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the figs and 1 cup water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook until the figs are softened, about 15 minutes. Drain, reserving 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid.
While the figs are cooking, cut 1/4 of the orange into 2 or 3 chunks (including the peel). Use a vegetable peeler to cut 4 thick pieces of the colored part of the peel from the remaining orange (save the remaining fruit for another use). Cut the peel crosswise into thin slices and set aside.
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the figs, reserved cooking liquid, orange chunks, olives, vinegar, 1/3 cup of the olive oil, and 1 teaspoon of the pepper and pulse to make a coarse puree, scraping down the bowl as necessary. (You can prepare the tapenade and orange peel slices up to 2 days in advance, storing them covered in the refrigerator. Return them to room temperature before serving.)
Sprinkle both sides of the lamb with the salt and remaining 3/4 teaspoon of pepper.
In a very large skillet over medium-high heat, warm the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. (If you don’t have a skillet large enough to hold the lamb without crowding, use 1 large and 1 small or 2 medium skillets, dividing the olive oil between them.) Add the lamb and cook to desired doneness, about 2 1/2 minutes per side for rib chops and 3 1/2 minutes per side for loin chops for medium rare. Transfer to a platter or plates and let rest, loosely covered with foil, for 5 minutes.
Arrange a puddle of tapenade on serving plates, dividing it evenly. Top with the chops, garnish with the orange peel slices, and serve hot.
In honor of Valentine’s Day and all things chocolate, I’m posting an article I wrote in February ’07 for my ANG Newspapers “Quick Cuisine” column. After the piece ran, I got an email from Guittard complimenting me on my accuracy describing the chocolate-making process. Apparently, it’s rare for someone who’s not a choclatier to get the details so right!
Chocolate is an amazing thing.
I always knew this culinarily because there’s nothing that elicits oohs and aahs like serving an incredible chocolate dessert.
And I always knew it emotionally because there’s nothing that makes me feel indulged, treated, and happy like eating chocolate.
I even knew it intellectually. Because I know what it takes for chocolate to go from bean to bar.
But it wasn’t until I had the delicious fortune to visit the Guittard Chocolate Company factory in Burlingame, where I saw the journey with my own eyes, that I really got it in my gut: chocolate is an amazing, miraculous thing.
(Guittard isn’t open to the public, but about this time last year, a few Copia co-workers and I got a private tour from Gary Guittard himself, whose great-grandfather opened Guittard Chocolate in San Francisco in 1868.)
Guittard explained how chocolate starts out in the form of a cacao tree, growing twenty degrees either side of the equator, usually on a small family farm. After harvest, the seeds and pulp of the football-shaped fruit are fermented for a few days to develop the flavor. The seeds, or beans, are then dried, packed into burlap bags, and shipped off to a chocolate factory.
Our tour started in the farthest corner of the building, where a worker with a hook knife slit those recently-arrived bags open and emptied them into a grate in the floor. The air was warm and, as you might imagine, dripping with the scent of chocolate. Those same cocoa beans would come out the other end—seemingly miles of chugging, grunting machines, hoses, and conveyer belts later—in the miraculous form of chocolate bars.
From the grate in the floor, the beans got sucked into one of several roasters, including one that was used at Guittard’s original Sansome Street factory.
Next, the beans went to the winnower, separating the outer papery hulls from the nutmeat, if you will, inside. (The hulls used to be merely a byproduct, but now they’re a product in themselves, cocoa mulch, available at most every nursery. I recommend it for the simple reason that it’ll make your garden smell like chocolate!)
We moved on to watch a series of machines grind, grind, and grind the cocoa nibs, as the hull-less beans are called—and which are also a finished product nowadays at some chocolate companies—into an increasingly smooth, peanut buttery paste called cocoa liquor.
The cocoa liquor—almost equal parts cocoa butter and cocoa solids—continued to scurry its way along all manner of chutes and ladders. (At one point we had to beware of an occasional plop! of chocolate from above. Imagine chocolate falling from the sky!) Along the way, it was blended with more cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, milk, and/or other ingredients, depending on the type of chocolate being made that day.
Eventually, we climbed a set of steep steps to look down into perhaps the most mysterious machine of all: the concher. Outfitted with a barrage of stirring mechanisms and baffles, the concher is a sort of mixer that, depending on time, temperature, and air, helps enhance the inherent qualities of the chocolate. Some of Guittard’s conching formulas have been handed down over four generations.
Finally, we watched as the chocolate was tempered, a process of heating, cooling, then slightly heating again that makes the chocolate solidify with a beautiful shiny surface and helps prevent bloom, the powdery look that you’ll sometimes see on older chocolate. Then the chocolate was poured into molds and cooled.
On the day of my visit, huge ten-pound bars were rolling off the end of the line. After all that, I definitely had a ten-pound chocolate craving. But hoping to be invited back again, I settled for a tasting from Guittard’s artisan line, E. Guittard. Which was a very fine treat indeed.
And so, to review: chocolate is harvested, fermented, dried, packed, shipped, unpacked, roasted, ground, ground, ground, blended, conched, tempered, molded, cooled, unmolded, packaged, and shipped. It is truly a miracle of invention and innovation—and quite ridiculous, if you think about it.
I left Guittard in a chocolate-induced sensory overload, feeling more awed by the stuff than ever. I also left confirmed in my belief that while there’s no such thing as bad chocolate, good chocolate is ten thousand times better.
And so, this Valentine’s Day, as you enjoy treats housed in heart-shaped boxes, take a moment to appreciate all that goes into making them. From subtropical forest to your local candy counter, chocolate makes an incredible journey, one that includes countless growers, manufacturers, inventors, experimenters, artisans, and machinery. It’s a wonder anybody ever figured it out.
And thank God, or whoever, they did.
Bittersweet Chocolate Bark with Candied Ginger and Mixed Nuts
This isn’t the recipe that originally ran with the above story, but it’s one of my favorite, easy-to-make chocolate treats, perfect for Valentine’s Day gift-giving.
Makes about 1 1/4 pounds
2/3 cup (about 3 1/2 ounces) coarsely chopped candied, sugared, or crystallized ginger (see below)
2/3 cup (about 3 ounces) roasted, salted mixed nuts
12 ounces good-quality bittersweet (55 to 70% cacao) chocolate, chopped
Line a large rimmed baking sheet with a silicone mat or a 9- by 13-inch baking pan with foil. In a medium bowl, combine the ginger and nuts. Set aside.
In a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water, melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally, until smooth. Stir in half of the ginger-and-nut mixture, then spread the entire chocolate mixture onto the baking sheet, spreading it into a roughly 9- by 13-inch rectangle, or in to the baking pan. Sprinkle the remaining ginger-and-nut mixture on top and chill until firm, about 30 minutes.
Cut or break the bark into pieces. Store covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
Note: Candied ginger can be found in the spice section of most major supermarkets, but it’s much less expensive if you find it in the Asian or ethnic section or with the bulk foods.
A month ago today, I hit “send” on the manuscript for my second “100 Perfect Pairings” cookbook. It took me a week or so to recover, then another couple of weeks to catch up with all I’d been putting off, and then, well, another week of procrastinating blogging and – here we are!
(To the right is a photo of the final recipe, Good Old-Fashioned Pot Roast. I’m not sorry to say I had to make it several times, because that meant I got to stash lots of leftovers in the freezer. I sent some to my Dad as a belated Hanukkah gift, which he loved. I shared some with my Mom and my in-laws. And I’m now down to one last serving, which I’m hoarding. It’s that good.)
Now that the second book is off my desk – the work is not complete, mind you, there’ll still be plenty to do between now and this time next year, what with editing, photography, design, etc, but the work is complete for now – I’m starting to turn to the release of the first one, “100 Perfect Pairings: Small Plates to Enjoy with Wines You Love,” which will be out in April (here it is on Amazon.com, available for preorder at a hefty discount).
When I turned in that manuscript in January ’09, April ’10 seemed like a million years away, but now it feels right around the corner. I’m already scheduled to do a food and wine pairing class at Ramekins on April 16 to coincide with the release, and am looking forward to (hopefully) signing books at the International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference. Just yesterday I learned that Napa Sonoma magazine, who I write for semi-regularly, is going to include a piece about the book in their spring/summer issue. All very, very cool.
Between now and then, it seems like there’s a lot to do, not the least of which is revamping my web site (to be more consumer-friendly), drumming up some (paying) work, and writing a proposal for whatever the next cookbook will hopefully be!
But before I move on to all that, no completion celebration would be, well, complete without a final, rousing round of applause for my recipe testers – Andrea, Becky, Deirdre, Jan, Janie, John, Kate, Kay, Keven, Lanniece, Lori, Melissa, Pam, Rachel, Rhodora, Susan, Susan, and Suzanne. For more about what I mean by recipe testers, read this post. Suffice to say that these are people – 18 people! – who help me with my job simply out of the goodness of their hearts, who cook, taste, and evaluate my recipes just for the fun of it, and who, in doing so, contribute to me more than I can sufficiently say. They make all my recipes and books better, and besides that, it just makes a difference knowing that those 18 people are on my team, cheering me on. I can’t thank them enough for their partnership and participation.
Please join me in taking a moment to send a little love to the people who contribute so much to us even though they don’t have to.
I have spent the last couple of weeks cooking up a storm for the Cabernet Sauvignon chapter of my second “100 Perfect Pairings” book. On the docket last week: Peppered Prim Rib Roast with Crème Fraîche Horseradish Sauce, Lemon- and Olive-Stuffed Leg of Lamb, New York Steaks with Espresso Pan Sauce, Steak and Radicchio Caesar Salad, and Good Old-Fashioned Pot Roast! I couldn’t have done it all without my trusty kitchen assistant Judy. My freezer is stuffed with carnivoric leftovers and, even then, a LOT of goodies got dropped off at the local soup kitchen. Sometimes I wonder what it ends up as – do the homeless of Napa enjoy prime rib in their beef stew?
Here’s what I have to share about pairing with Cabernet Sauvignon: It’s not easy. By that I don’t mean that it’s not doable, only that the list of foods that pair with Cab isn’t long. It’s kind of funny, actually – people tend to think that the most elegant/impressive/fancy wine they can plop on the table for a meal is a Cab, but the reality is that it’s only rarely the best wine for the food. So say I, at least.
Cabernet tends to be quite austere – meaning that it’s kind of sharp and severe and intense – and so you have to account for that austerity in the foods you pair with it. For example, I’ve found that, with almost any recipe, adding Dijon mustard helps. Many food and wine pairings are helped by some form of acid, of which mustard is one, but sometimes a particular acid seems to work well with a particular wine, and Dijon and Cab are one such acid/wine combination, the sharp severity of the mustard marrying well with similar qualities in the wine. (Merlot and balsamic vinegar is another – almost every food that you pair with Merlot will pair better with a little balsamic.)
Bitter ingredients can also help Cabernet pairings, simply because Cab tends to be pretty high in bitter tannins – those compounds that give you the dry-mouth sensation you sometimes get from a red wine – and so adding bitterness to food helps to match up to those tannins. (I fully admit that it’s totally contrary to logic that adding MORE of something to a pairing will DECREASE your overall experience of it, but that’s what happens in food and wine pairing – more acid in the food will decrease your experience of acid in the wine, more sweetness in the food will decrease your experience of sweetness in the wine, etc.) Bitter ingredients that I like with Cabernet include coffee (hence the New York Steaks with Espresso Pan Sauce, pictured, which are pretty killer, if I do say so myself), bitter greens like endive and radicchio, and even nuts like walnuts and pecans – the papery “skin” that nuts have in their cracks and crevices is high in tannins, just like wine can be.
Try this experiment. Next time you’re enjoying Cabernet with your meal, try sprinkling some crushed roasted coffee beans or chopped walnuts onto the food, and see if it doesn’t improve the pairing. It might result in a kooky dish, but I promise you, it’ll go better with the wine.
A final element that always seems to help a Cabernet Sauvignon pairing is fatty meat. That’s not to say that you can’t pair vegetarian and non-red meat dishes with Cab – it’s just to say that adding a fatty meat to the equation is an easy/obvious way to go. So, generally speaking, chicken is better than fish, beef is better than chicken, and a marbled New York steak is better than a lean filet mignon. (Anyone else getting hungry all of a sudden?)
The very, very last recipe I have to finish is the Good Old-Fashioned Pot Roast. Pot roast is plenty rich, which is why it’s a good candidate for Cabernet Sauvignon, but much of that richness is in the form of collagen in the meat, which is why it’s NOT a good candidate for the grill. Quick cooking an inexpensive cut like pot roast will result in tough meat. Slow, moist cooking, though, melts the collagen, meriting fork-tender, falling-apart meat that’s still rich and juicy.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but – 99 down, 1 to go!
Thanksgiving is here again, and my mind wanders to some of the culinary delights I’m most thankful for.
I am thankful for pork tenderloin. Quickly and easily it cooks up juicy and tender, and it satisfies my carnivorous cravings without the heavy feeling that sometimes comes with a steak. A pork tenderloin is the perfect roast for a two-person household. Sometimes I marinate it in wine and rosemary, sometimes with olive oil, cumin, and paprika. Sometimes I slather it with hoisin sauce, barbecue sauce, or even mustard straight out of a bottle. (Pictured, Honey-Mustard Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Carrots and Parsnips, with Pinot Grigio, from my second “100 Perfect Pairings” cookbook, which will be released in spring of 2011.) Always, I enjoy it.
I’m thankful for salmon, and that there’s a guilt-free, sustainable salmon option (wild from Alaska). I’m thankful for salmon’s deep, sweet flavor and the way the meat is so rich that it sticks to my back molars as I chew it. I love its bright coral-pink color, and how that always dresses up my plate. And I love salmon’s versatility – that it can be casually broiled or delicately poached in wine, that it goes equally well with chunky salsa and smooth hollandaise sauce. Cured, it’s my favorite part of Sunday morning brunch at Dad’s.
I’m thankful for sushi. Sushi is the only food that I’m always hungry for that’s not fattening or bad for me – and I’m very thankful that there’s at least one food for which that’s so.
I’m thankful for wild mushrooms, and heirloom tomatoes, and fennel-y Italian sausage.
I’m thankful for arugula. Noting its tender, nutty taste dotted around a mesclun mix is always a happy surprise. But I’m also thankful for arugula on its own, as a green salad, as a bed under a chicken breast or sautéed scallops, or as a pizza topping. I’m thankful I can grow it so easily in my garden.
I’m thankful for chocolate – and that there’s a food that so universally makes people moan.
I’m thankful for ice cream. I love how a simple scoop of vanilla is the perfect accompaniment to almost any dessert, providing smooth, sweet, cold, creamy contrast to whatever lies under or next to it. I love how a bowl of ice cream is the ideal antidote to whatever ails me – be it a sore throat or a broken heart. Ice cream is reassuring, healing, hedonistic, and intensely delicious, in almost any variety. All of which I am very thankful for.
I’m thankful for cheese, especially small, triple cream Brie, pretty artisan goat cheeses, and Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk, any and all of which I love to serve at cocktail parties and bring on wine country picnics.
When my husband and I were first dating, he used triple cream Brie to turn me into a football fan. Because watching football with him wasn’t a beer and chips sort of occasion, it was a Brie and chardonnay kind of time. A comfy sofa, a gorgeous man sharing something he’s passionate about, a glass of wine, and buttery-soft cheese slathered on crusty baguettes – who could blame me for succumbing to all four? And I’m thankful that I did.
I’m thankful for my mother’s pot roast, my grandmother’s chopped liver, and New York’s cheesecake. I’m thankful for nectarines and peaches. I’m thankful for rosemary and basil and homemade pizza. And I’m thankful for carnitas, my favorite dish at any good Mexican restaurant.
And while most times of year it goes without saying, above all, I’m thankful there are people I love to indulge by cooking them all the foods I’m so thankful for.
As Bonné points out, the Thanksgiving meal is fraught with contradictory and competing flavors. Mild turkey with meaty gravy. Sweet sweet potatoes. Tart cranberry sauce. Vernal green beans. It’s a total mish-mosh. (Who invented this ridiculous meal, anyway?) Find a wine that’s supposedly perfect with one dish and it’ll probably wreak havoc on another.
So why worry about it? As Bonné points out, “No one’s going to put you in wine jail.” (In my food and wine pairing cookbook, “100 Perfect Pairings,” coming out in April, I mirror the sentiment, saying “there are no food and wine pairing police.”)
Bonné goes on to make a grab-bag of Thanksgiving wine suggestions, slightly hedging away from his original, drink-what-you-like premise.
But he redeems himself by proposing that we put our wine neuroses in a box – not just for Thanksgiving, but for the remainder of 2009.
I say, let’s put it in a box, pack it up, and ship it off to Antarctica, forgetting that neuroses for good.
I mean, food and wine pairing shouldn’t be some ideal that makes us crazy, that if we work and strive toward hard enough, we’ll finally achieve. If anything, food and wine pairing should be an arena to play in. Not a burden, but something to explore and enjoy.
So this holiday – and always – be thankful for whatever’s in your glass and, for turkey’s sake, don’t stress about it.
Cheers to you, Jon, and a happy Thanksgiving to all!
(Pictured, Roast Turkey with Pan Gravy and Spiced Sausage Dressing, from my second “100 Perfect Pairings” cookbook, which I’m working on now and which will be released in spring of 2011. I recommend it with Gewürztraminer.)
I’ve had an article from the San Francisco Chronicle Food & Wine section on my desk for about six weeks now, thinking it fodder for a blog post, but then being kind of reticent about it. But, well, I’m tired of seeing it there, mocking me, calling me a chicken, and so here goes.
The article is called Dips and Sips, and it pairs simple appetizer/dip recipes with wines. The thing is, many of the suggested wines are ones that most people have never heard of. Which drives me absolutely crazy.
For their Sloppy Joe Dip, for example, they suggest Grenache, Barbara, red Rhone blends, and some Zinfandels. For Radish Dip, they suggest Vinho Verde, Quincy, and lighter rosé. Now, with the exception of Zinfandel and possibly, possibly lighter rosé, does the average wine drinker know what the heck the Chronicle is talking about? Could you go into the liquor department of your local supermarket and find a Grenache, Barbara, red Rhone blend, Vinho Verde, or Quincy? I think not.
I’m writing a second book on the subject – food and wine pairing – and even I don’t know what Quincy is. (I do, however, know enough to have the right reference materials on hand for when I’m stumped – the fabulous Wine Lover’s Companion reveals that Quincy is a tiny [their word] appellation in France’s Loire Valley. Aha.)
All in all, articles like this, more than anything, serve to keep wine mysterious, frustrating, elusive, and therefore, at arms length for most people. Why does the wine industry keep doing that? Doesn’t it know it’s cutting off its nose despite its face???
My calm, logical husband points out that perhaps the only paper that can get away with recommending such little-known or understood wines is the San Francisco Chronicle, what with the proximity to several of the world’s premier wine regions and all, and perhaps the New York Times, what with the paper’s huge circulation and East Coasters proximity to European wines. (Comic genius that he is, he also suggests the Bordeaux Picayune.) And okay, while we’re being generous I should point out that the Chronicle’s article included nine recipes and while one or two others provided an equally esoteric group of wine suggestions, pretty much every recipe included at least one more familiar wine among the bunch. So I guess you could argue that they did their best to cover the breadth of readers’ wine knowledge.
You could also argue that it’s one of the inherent dichotomies of the wine world – that it’s both alluring and daunting, intriguing and off-putting. To a certain degree, it’s that allure that makes wine attractive. Perhaps if you take away all the allure, made it totally accessible, understandable, welcoming, and inclusive, you’d make it totally uninteresting and boring.
It’s been a quick month since my last post. Since then, I’ve finished the recipes for the Gewürztraminer chapter of my cookbook “100 Perfect Pairings: Entrees to Enjoy with Wines You Love.” I’ve also finished the Rosé and Pinot Noir chapters, and am now about halfway through Merlot. All in all, about one third of the book is complete and I’m on track to deliver it to Wiley, my publisher, as agreed on January 4. (Who signs a contract to deliver a book on the first Monday in January? Live and learn.)
It seems appropriate to be moving on to the red wine chapters just as the weather is turning cooler here in Napa. Even though I adore Rosé – it’s definitely my desert island wine – I haven’t been unhappy to sip Merlot these past few nights.
You might be rolling your eyes at the thought of Merlot – I blame the movie “Sideways,” even though it’s one of my favorites. In it, Merlot drinkers were scorned, like Chardonnay drinkers can be, simply because they drink what’s popular.
But you know what? Merlot is popular for good reason. Like Chardonnay, it can be big and rich, but also fruity and soft, without being overly high in acids or tannins – which makes Merlot easy to drink, but also easy to pair with food.
For Merlot, think rich foods, and meaty foods, but also somewhat softly flavored foods, foods that aren’t too assertive or biting. Pan-seared filet mignon versus char-grilled New York steak. Braised dishes and stews. Casseroles, but also a good old-fashioned hamburger, especially if you add blue cheese, which I love with Merlot.
One of my favorite tools for helping a Merlot pairing? Balsamic vinegar. A little bit adds just a little acidity – and although Merlot isn’t high in acid, there’s still enough that some acidity in the food helps. Plus the vinegar mimics the typical dark berry flavors in the wine. Yum.
The recipes I’ve been working on for Merlot include Eggplant Moussaka, Mixed Mushroom Pappardelle, Skillet-Roasted Chicken Breasts with Lavender Red Wine Butter Sauce, Merlot-Braised Lamb Shanks with Gorgonzola Polenta, and Baby Beef Wellingtons. Today my husband and I tasted Bacon and Blue Cheese Burgers (pictured above) with three different Merlots.
(After seeing “Julia & Julia” and realizing that Julie Powell included a count down on her blog as she cooked her way through Julia’s book, I had second thoughts about including the count down in my blog posts. I don’t want to be a copy cat! But since I started it already, unknowingly, I figure I might as well proceed. Worked out for Julie, right?)
I’m narrowing in on finishing the first half of the book – working on the last white wine chapter, Gewürztraminer (gah-VERTZ-trah-mee-ner), this week and next. After only one day in the kitchen, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it’s going really well. The recipes in this chapter include Onion and Apple Tart (pictured here), Curried Pumpkin and Potato Stew, Cashew Chicken Stir-Fry, and Monster Turkey Meunster Melts with Cranberry Horseradish Relish – all dishes that are relatively rich, to go with the relatively full-bodied wine, and that sometimes have a little spice and/or a little sweetness, to go with the wine’s typically spicy qualities (gewürz is German for “spice”) and/or its often off-dry (or very slightly sweet) nature. I cooked and tasted three dishes today and, with a little adjusting, they’re slam dunks.
Gewürztraminer is definitely an under-appreciated wine in the U.S. My supermarket only had four different kinds of it! And that’s a shame – because Gewürz is a great food wine. Besides the full body and slight spice (not heat spice, but baking spices like cinnamon and nutmeg), Gewürztraminer is typically bright, fragrant, often floral, and to me, always drinkable.
Recipes for this chapter also include Roast Turkey with Pan Gravy and Spiced Sausage Dressing, Duck a L’Abricot, Asian Barbecued Spareribs, and Honey-Orange Lamb Chops – but I’m putting them off until next week, hoping that by then the heat wave will have worn off. (It was supposed to hit 89 today in Napa!)
Meanwhile, testing results, and accompanying photos, continue to come in from my recipe testers. I can’t thank them all enough for helping, and for having such a good time doing it!
Chock full of food and wine pairing recipes for everyday wine drinkers, "100 Perfect Pairings: Small Plates to Enjoy with Wines You Love" is perhaps the first-ever food and wine pairing book decidedly not written for food and wine pairing geeks. Click here to order it on Amazon.com.
And look for 100 Perfect Pairings: Entrees to Enjoy with Wines You Love, in early 2011.
