Posts Tagged ‘wine and food pairing’
Beaujolais Nouveau – Yep, It’s Baack in DC!
Image by jetalone via Flickr
TasteDC has organized many events in the past at the French Embassy‘s “Maison Francais” including the Annual Beaujolais Nouveau celebration which always takes place (by law) on the third Thursday of November..and how convenient, probably the most versatile and light red that easily shines with the complex variety of flavors of many foods, is exactly one week before the Thanksgiving turkey-down celebration! Back in 2005, we organized a TasteDC.com Beaujolais Nouveau event at the French Embassy, and hundreds of people flocked to taste these fun wines, great French fromages and some delicious French fare, see many Photos Here.
The key to understanding this wine is it is meant to be drunk young – utilizing a process known as “carbonic maceration” CO2 is used to quickly press and maximize the skin compounds from the red grapes to produce a generally lower alcohol wine with an intense floral nose. Beaujolais is also 100% Gamay which is considered an inferior red grape to the Pinot Noir of neighboring Burgundy, but frankly is priced so much less, that it gives amazing bang for the wine purchasing dollar!
The story goes that this wine became popular because of Georges DuBoeuf and other Negociants in the Beaujolais wine region (just south of Burgundy) who wanted to sell young wine to improve their cash flow – a very traditional method of financing better wines in France. Wikipedia does a nice job explaining the history and details.
Here’s a schedule of some of the events coming up this Thursday, November 17th, 2011 in the Washington, D.C. Region via NBC Washington. Yes, Beaujolais Nouveau is an excellent wine for Thanksgiving – it has the features I like in a Thanksgiving wine: red, inexpensive and because of relatively low tannin and alcohol, it goes with the unusual range of foods expected to be gobbled down on that day. Enjoy, and cheers!
Charlie “I Drink on the Job” Adler
Related articles
- Beaujolais Nouveau at the French Embassy (cellarblog.org)
Mama Mia – Pasta Making 101: Agnolotti Stuffing
Over at TasteDC we love to roll out pasta for Agnolotti (pretty much the same as Ravioli)..and knead it, mix it, stretch it, stuff it, cook it, and then eat it! The above video was from TasteDC’s Pasta Making 101 class on Sunday, February 13th, 2011 – the day before Valentine’s Day, so people were a bit more enthusiastic than usual, which made it quite a fun event!
Here’s the recipe:
Agnolotti alla Piemontese
Authentic Piedmont-Style Rich Beef filled Ravioli in a Savory Sauce
Ingredients Pasta:
1 lb Durum flour water as needed
4 lg eggs
1T olive oil
1 pinch salt
Ingredients Stuffing:
2 oz butter
3 T cooked rice
1/4 lb tinned peeled tomatoes
a small carrot
1/2 onion
1/2 stick of celery finely chopped together
a little parsley
1/2 lb lean raw beef, finely minced
1 glass white wine
4 cabbage leaves, boiled and chopped rather finely
salt
to taste
freshly ground black pepper
grated nutmeg
2 eggs
1 oz freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Directions Stuffing:
PUT a very small amount of butter in a small frying pan. When it is foaming add the cooked rice and fry, stirring, for 1 minute. Put on side.
TAKE the seeds and liquid out of the peeled tomatoes, and pass them through a vegetable mill.
PUT the rest of the butter in a frying pan together with the chopped vegetables and parsley. Cook gently until the onion becomes transparent. Add the minced beef. Cook gently, stirring all the time, until the meat is golden brown. Add the wine. Reduce completely, so that no smell of wine remains. Add the tomato pulp and the rice, the chopped cabbage leaves, salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg. Bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover the pan, and simmer gently for half an hour. By this time you should have a fairly thick mixture.
TRANSFER this to a mixing bowL. Let it cool. Add the eggs, beating them first, and the Parmesan. Mix well.
Directions Pasta Dough:
Combine all ingredients, except water into a kitchen aid mixer with a hook attachment. Mix ingredients until made into a dough, add water if needed. Wrap in Saran wrap and refrigerate for thirty minutes.
In another bowl beat an egg that will be used to seal the ravioli with a basting brush. Cut dough bundle in half and flatten out enough to pass through pasta machine, from thickest to thinnest. On a flat surface lay sheet of pasta and brush with egg wash half of the sheet. Fill pastry bag with meat filling and make 2 tsp size deposit onto the pasta sheet, at 1 ½ inch intervals from each other. Once the sheet is filled overlap the sheet and seal the edges using your fingers. Exclude any air bubbles which may have formed. Use ravioli cutter to cut sheet into separate ravioli. Sprinkle flour on a tray, lay ravioli on top and cover with a clean cloth. Refrigerate.
Boil pot of water and cook ravioli to your liking. In a sauce pan over medium heat, melt 1T butter add short rib sauce, bring mixture to simmer for a couple of minutes. Once ravioli are cooked, strain and toss ravioli in sauce pan. Sprinkle Parmigiana cheese and serve.
Butternut Squash and Peanut Butter..Who Would Have Thunk??
It’s now the time of the year for squash’s and Fall veggies. I recently found a recipe from Mango Tomato for Curry butternut squash soup with coconut milk and decided it was time for my first delicious Fall soup. I have one rule about cooking from a recipe: I never EVER do it exactly the same, even the first time, I always add at least one or two “personal” ingredients. What I mean by “personal” is either I made it myself from an older recipe or something I add for zing or flair – in other words, I always try to make the recipe my own. The “personal” ingredient was homemade vegetable broth, but the zing item was peanut butter – actually crunchy peanut butter from Mackey’s Ferry in North Carolina – I actually picked it up on a road trip when I saw a sign on the highway for “boiled peanuts” – another treat that you’ve gotta try, a very addictive food!
I’ll keep my conclusions short, but I wanted to thicken the original recipe a bit, and normally that would mean adding cream or half and half to the mixture – I didn’t have any. Once I began to smell the coconut milk, the curry (which I make myself “based” on a Mark Bittman recipe, but I spice it up with cayenne), the sugar (I store left over vanilla pods in a sugar container) and the squashes cooking, I kept thinking..hmm, peanut butter is so natural in Thai food, why wouldn’t it work here with all these Asian flavors? I only had chunky peanut butter – of course you could use smooth, but I’ll tell you what – the little pieces of chunky peanuts at the bottom of each bowl of soup I served to myself was decadently good! You could adjust this recipe in so many ways such as using brown sugar instead of vanilla sugar, or even skipping the sugar – there was no sugar in the original recipe. I think the secret to this recipe is to keep it simple and make it your own, but don’t forget to thicken it with something to create a little contrast to the squash – creme fraiche or cream would do the job nicely, but peanut butter was fantastic. Also, did you ever notice how once you open a container of peanut butter, it generally just sits around..I say make peanut butter the new secret ingredient, maybe it can even give bacon a run for the money?
And what would I drink with this? Well, I always drink wine with the meal, I immediately think of an off-dry riesling, but a rustic red like Sangiovese does just fine. You could also go with Scotch – but here’s an additional thought – if you want to make the dish “smokier”, you could add a smoked chipotle pepper and this would make the dish work better with Bourbon or other “smoky” spirits..
Another By the Way..don’t forget to roast the squash seeds with a little salt and spices – I through on some of the curry powder for a treat later..
This recipe is adjusted from Mango & Tomato –
Ingredients
1 butternut squash (small to medium)
1/2 an acorn squash
1/2 a large vidalia onion cut in 4 pieces
1 cup coconut milk
4 cups vegetable broth
salt & pepper to taste
1 1/2 Tablespoons curry powder
1/2 cup vanilla sugar
1/2 cup of chunky peanut butter
blue cheese for garnish
Directions
1. Scoop out the seeds from butternut squash and acorn squash and roast at 400 degrees for an hour.
2. Meanwhile, either together or separately (I have a smaller toaster oven as well) roast the onions with a little oil at around 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes until they start to caramelize.
3. Once the butternut squash and acorn squash are tender, scoop it out from the skin and drop it into a blender. Add the caramelized onion to the blender as well.
4. Pour all the ingredients from the blender into a pot and add coconut milk and vegetable broth and season with spices, salt & pepper. Heat at medium and when bubbles begin to form, swirl peanut butter into the soup.
5. Adjust the seasonings, and cook on medium-low for 15-20 minutes – it’s ready.
6. Either serve just like this or garnish each soup bowl with blue cheese.
Charlie “I Drink on the Job” Adler
A Lombardy Perspective on Wine
Yesterday, I stopped by the Wines of Lombardy Tasting in Washington, D.C. to taste a wine region I knew little about. I love Italian wines – especially because I love the way Italian’s see food and wine as part of their culture. Lombardy is considered one of the more industrious parts of Italy with Milan as its center, but it is still a part of Italy – the meal is still a central part of daily life, and yes, wine is consumed with daily meals!
My first video interview was with Gianpetro Poletti who is sort of Chamber of Commerce for the Lombardy region:
One point to note is that Gianpetro considers the Nebbiolo – the noble varietal used to make Barolo and Barbaresco in neighboring Piemonte – as native to the Lombardy region! I really enjoyed his Nebbiolos, particularly one that was made from dried grapes also known as the “appassimento” method. As the translator explained to me, wines produced using the appassimento process are known as passito wines. This is the same process that Amarone is made in neighboring Veneto, but with different grape varietals. The Sforzato di Valtellina DOCG Tinaia 2005 had 14.5% alcohol and the concentrated flavors of a rich wine, but was amazingly balanced by the acidity of Nebbiolo and the tannins as well. It wasn’t nearly as “beefy” as an Amarone, much more refreshing in comparison and I think therefore a year-round wine.
My next interview was Daniele Travi of Sorsasso, a wine maker and Agriturismo in the Lake Como region. His specialty is a wine made from a unique grape which he called “Verdesa”, but it is probably related in some way to the Spanish “Verdelho”, but it’s hard to say. He mentioned to me a dried fish unique to the region that I had never heard of before – Missoltini, a type of salted and dried shad, here’s a very hard to understand recipe for it: Missultitt Recipe. As they say, you should eat and drink the region, here what he has to say:
Ciao!
Ben Giliberti Post Chablis Tasting
I’ve always enjoyed talking with Ben Giliberti – even when he was the Washington Post wine critic (which lasted for 22 years, he followed the venerable Robert Parker!), he was always accessible in person and frankly, quite humorous! We were walking away from a Chablis tasting in Washington, D.C. and we were discussing his new role as Director of Wine Education at Calvert Woodley when I posed to him the question “how would he use Social Media and the internet to promote wine education?” We went back and forth for a few moments talking about how things had changed in wine over the last few years and then I pulled out the mini HD video camera and filmed him for about 3 minutes or so, see how he did:
Consider Yourself Paired – “Yinzer Torte”!
First of all, I want to mention that it’s really great that Daniel is using local resources as his ingredients. It’s really sad that people are so urbanized and removed from nature that they don’t even trust the fruit that grows on their local trees! Just like Daniel used the local quinces for this recipe, I have often thought about using the ginkgo “stinky” fruit that falls from the female trees that are common all over Washington, D.C. Stinky Gingko Fruit – unfortunately, it is SO stinky, that it will probably never happen!
The first point I want to make is that I am not a proponent of pairing dessert wines and dessert – the way I see it, there’s a missing synergy. In my book (sorry for the blatant promo!) I Drink on the Job – I have a complete chapter on pairing wine and food, and the principle that comes to mind is “1+1=1/2″. It seems weird, but when you put a sweet food in your mouth and then you drink a sweet beverage (it could be any beverage – fruit juice, cola, etc.), the sweetness is significantly reduced. The pairing rule I often learned was that the wine should be at least as sweet at the dessert, but I don’t see how it makes a difference – sweet and sweet mostly cancel each other out!
Another point is that the Yinzer torte is made with highly acidic quince fruit turned into a butter emulsion. So now you have acidity – and yes, you do want to match a dishes acidity with the wine, or the wine will taste really flat! You could easily pair this dish with a traditional dessert wine like a Sauternes or a Hungarian Tokaj, and that will do just fine. But let me throw a curve ball.
1) I prefer to have contrast to a sweet dessert dish – just like many people really enjoy coffee with sweets because the tannin in coffee contrasts the sweetness of dessert on your palate, I would rather pair this with a spirit – and my spirit of choice for this dish is either a Cognac or a Calvados. Cognac is distilled from grapes and has a nice fruit component. Calvados is distilled from apples and has that fruit component as well. You could have a whisky or a Scotch, but definitely avoid a really smoky/peaty version of the latter – there are no smoke components to this dessert (unless you’re puffing on a cigar at the time!),
2) Change the dish a bit to make it go better with wine – this is called a pairing “bridge”. For example, you could put some chopped walnuts on top and maybe serve with a slice of blue cheese and now Ruby Port goes perfectly! Crunchy nuts would also add texture which makes food more interesting on the palate. Add a caramel sauce, and now a Tawny port, which is port that has been pre-aged in barrel will work with those flavors. You could even bridge this dessert by making a dessert wine reduction, and that would bring the flavors together.
3) Add fresh whipped cream with a little liqueur in it like Cointreau. OK, it won’t match better with any wine, but certainly it will make the dish all the better, and isn’t pleasure what you’re really after?
Consider yourself paired!
Charlie Adler, Author, I Drink on the Job
If You Evaluate Wine, Then Why Not Food?
Contemplating Wine
This was a crazy week for me, so I’m just starting to wind down and think about it more. I was on the “Thunder Show” with Gary V on Monday (although it went up on Wednesday), traveled back to DC through the snow and began in earnest to market my book the rest of the week, with a small respite for a “Unique Spirits 101″ class that I organized with my full-time gig TasteDC. I always like to look back at my week and try to sift through what was important, what I learned and if I need to avoid any situations. I sort of live in a bubble – all I care about is promoting my message – wine and food were meant to be together – and that’s become my life goal, better not get in the way!
I love wine, and I love food, so I’m in a bit of a quandary (a common state for me!)..why is it in the wine world that we try to evaluate and break down wine, but in the food world, it only happens in rare occasions such as competitions..a little vague, but let me explain. Whenever I’m teaching a class on wine like my “Wine Basics 101″ class at TasteDC, attendees always ask me to “explain” what I’m tasting. People who are attending a wine class obviously want to learn more about wine, but I’m not sure why they want to know what I’m tasting – does it translate well to their taste buds? If I taste spearmint, blackberry and tobacco, and you taste peppermint, cranberry and honey, who’s right? By breaking down the components of the “taste” of wine, do I make it any easier for a beginner wine drinker to understand the wine? Will the attendee be empowered by the experience or intimidated, and ultimately, will it get the person to purchase more wine?
First of all, I don’t have the answer, that’s why I’m in a quandary – there is no answer, sometimes just looking at the question brings awareness to the situation (my Zen side!). So I posed an additional question to myself: if we break down wine into its individual parts, shouldn’t we do so for food as well? In my book “I Drink on the Job” I spend alot of time talking about the connection between food and wine. I have one quote – read it, consider it, make a picture of it in your mind:
Americans don’t seem to trust their sense of taste with wine. If you like steak, then you don’t need anyone to tell you if it’s good or not; you’ve enjoyed steak since you were young and you know what you like–medium or medium-rare, one-inch thick, two-inch, rib eye, filet or strip–even if someone else disagrees. We have no experience with wine as a culture, so we seek peer approval..
I Drink Launches on Wine Library TV with Gary V!
Charlie Adler with Gary Vaynerchuk on Official Launch of “I Drink on the Job” Book
OK, time for “I Drink on the Job”s 15 minutes of fame..it all started on a cold rainy day, windswept and forlorn..
Actually, I met Gary V on his “Crush It” book tour when he visited American University in Washington, D.C.
Crush It has had a huge influence on my book marketing via Social Media..
I give Gary V credit, he’s a very savvy guy, and being on the show is about the most exhilarating experience I’ve ever had,
I mean it’s like an emotional roller-coaster, it was scary and fun at the same time!
I’ll have more on this tomorrow – I’m watching I Drink Amazon.com Sales go through the roof!!
Chocolate and Wine: A Pairing for Sweeties!
I love chocolate..I love wine..but can the two come together to make a great match? This is the dilemma of writing a chocolate and wine pairing article – it is not a “traditional” pairing, meaning, it is neither a regional pairing (Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc and Chevre) nor a dish pairing such as steak and Cabernet Sauvignon. Chocolate and wine pairing was created primarily to satisfy the need for accentuating and justifying the obvious connection between being amorous and enjoying the sensual pleasures of chocolate and vino!
Actually, the pairing can work, so here’s my take on the combination. First, the assumption is you’ll be tasting dark chocolate, in other words, chocolate with say 60% or more Cacao percent. Dark chocolate or “bittersweet” chocolate has two components to think about: tannin (from the cacao bean) and sugar. The basics of food and wine pairing are either to pair similar or contrasting components. For example, since chocolate has tannin and red wine has tannin, you could pair those flavors. The effect of pairing similar tastes is actually to lessen each, also known as “1+1=1/2″. Take too similar “tastes” paired together and that component will be lessened. Tannin and tannin reduce the effects of each other. This same principle works with the sugar in chocolate and the sugar in a glass of wine, again the same thing, this will ultimately make both seem less sweet. This is a weird phenomenon, but try something basic like orange juice and a sweet morning muffin, and it becomes obvious.
If you contrast with your pairing, the most obvious is to pair a highly acidic wine with chocolate to counterbalance the tannin and/or sweetness. In my opinion, this won’t work very well because it would be an unnecessary overload of the senses. Plus, I’ve tried it, and it tastes pretty awful or neutral at best!
So you have a choice: you can either pair the sweetness with a dessert wine such as a French Sauternes or a German dessert Riesling or you can pair the tannin in chocolate with a red wine with tannin. For whatever reason, many Merlots and also fruity medium tannin wines work with chocolate. Merlot is generally medium tannin, but also has softer, lusher tannins that don’t seem to clash with chocolate.
So what’s my conclusion after evaluating the chocolate and wine pairing principles? Frankly, it’s better to just go with the romantic mood, forget the pairing and enjoy some delicious Champagne or sparkling wine with chocolate! My reasoning is the power of suggestion: sparkling wine suggests a special occasion, from the popping of the cork to the effervescence of the wine, and it promotes the romantic occasion.
You could play with the sparkling wine a bit by serving a Rosé which often is made from lightly pressed and fermented Pinot Noir. The best pairing might be Port which has both tannin from the red grapes as well as sweetness from sugar. My issue with Port is that from experience, many Americans aren’t fond of it, especially at tastings I’ve held, it is often over powering to an unaccustomed palate.
Conclusion: wine and food pairing shouldn’t get in the way of a romantic moment, they should accentuate it. Dessert wines work great with the sugar of chocolate, Port is even better, but medium tannin wines like Merlot also work well..still, Champagne or sparkling wine wines. Celebrate love and romance with a bottle of bubbly and share the moment!
"I Drink on the Job" – DONE! Off to the Printers..
Charlie Demonstrating Screwtop Sniffing Technique!
My book is done – off to the printers! I received the Author’s Proof copy in the mail yesterday of “I Drink on the Job: A Refreshing Perspective on Wine” and I went through it thoroughly – found a few typos, but I felt it was good to go – Onward!! So do I feel relieved? Well kinda, let me explain:
First of all, now that the book is done, now I have to sell it! Oh, you mean these things don’t just sell themselves, shouldn’t I just sit back and wait for the royalty checks? After talking with quite a few first time authors, this myth was quickly erased for me. Marketing, promoting and selling a book today is a jungle – you gotta go out there with your machete and cut through all the brush in order to get to your sales paradise. I’ve been talking up the book for about a year now (according to my estimate, the book was finished about 8 months ago!) and I even held a pre-launch through Adams Morgan Main Street, a non-profit that was interested in having me speak at their monthly wine tasting. My formal “Launch” is on Wine Library TV on Monday, February 15th in a few weeks, but I still have pretty wide open plans.
I’ve signed up to be one of the wine seminar speakers at various wine and food festivals in the DC area including Great Grapes, Virginia Wine Showcase, and many more in Virginia and Maryland. The DC Intl. Wine Festival no longer has wine seminars, but I will be attending (still waiting for my Trade/Press pass, what’s up with that DC Fest??). I’m talking with various local wine retailers (a few national chains too!) and wine bars for events as well. When I charged speaker’s fees for wine tastings before, I cut out so many charities who couldn’t afford my services, now all they have to do is purchase a minimum number of books and they have an event to go!
I REALLY strained my sciatic nerve really bad lifting weights this week, and I can barely walk without wincing in pain – ouch!! I think that injury is related to stress – I had too much on my mind when I hit the gym and I hit it a bit too hard. If someone says you can’t be “over” motivated, they’re flat out wrong – I’m capable of losing a limb without noticing when I’m pumped up..but I really need to take it easy at my age (40+ – that’s all you need to know!), I have to be the turtle, not the hare..
OK, back to watching the snow fall in DC and wondering how to market my first book – questions like “where should I do a book tour?”, “will wine bar events sell books?” and “did I price my book right?” are all floating happily in my brain – think I’ll relax in front of the fire tonight – Cheers!
Charlie “I Drink on the Job” Adler
