Coffee, caffeine…ahh. I had heard about Café du Monde and I couldn’t remember if I’d had the stuff or not so I had to swing by and try it. It’s from NOLA and made with endive. This was done to originally save money by making it less expensive to produce, based on the ingredients. Was worth trying. It has a unique taste. Not my personal favorite but absolutely worth it for the local experience.
A friend gave me this for my birthday…priceless.
Kitchen gadgets can be so much fun! I went to a business lunch and there were door prizes. I never win anything. Most of the giveaways were gift cards, anyway, and as nice as essential cash is (they were Visa cards), I knew I wouldn’t win. Well, suddenly I heard my name. But, I didn’t get a GC. The stars aligned and I won the kitchen gift bag. The rep giving this one away had been to Sur La Table and had a field day. WOW! I was in luck. So, I got all sorts of new toys that I would totally never go buy for myself but loved getting.
The one I’ve played with the most is the Berry Pincher (that’s the formal name I give it). The manufacturer, Chef’n, calls it the StemGem. You can remove the leaves from strawberries and clean all sort of other things.
You just plunge the sharp teeth of this thing right in the top of the berry.
You give it a little twist.
And yank it out. The motion makes the picture a bit fuzzy! Sorry. The website has better pics.
The other great toys I got in my bag were:
A Kuhn Rikon Pepper Mill with Ratchet Handle — so cool with the handle!
A Joseph Joseph Rocker Garlic Masher — SMASH! Great fun, you can also use it to get rid of the odor in your hands.
And the last toy, by the same producer as the strawberry toy, I got the Zipstrip Herb Stripper. I haven’t actually gotten around to using this yet. I needed it the other day and of course was cooking in somebody else’s kitchen when I was looking for it!!
So if you want so new additions to your kitchen, consider checking these out.
As I continue going through some Cooking Light recipes, the next one I tried was an awesome asparagus salad. The proper title — Shaved Asparagus Salad with Manchego and Almonds. What was unique about this is that the asparagus is raw. I can count on less than one hand the amount of times I’ve eaten un-cooked asparagus. Game on! When I made this, I did not add the egg because of everything else I was making for dinner, I didn’t need that extra bit of protein/food.
Ingredients
Directions
It was DELICIOUS! Crisp, fresh and some nice tang with all the flavors. Highly recommend it! I can’t decide if next time I’m going to try cutting the asparagus with a mandolin or V-slicer or cutting them in half and using the food processor with the proper blade. I just need to hope the hit the blade horizontally to slice properly. Though, I guess even if not, they’ll taste the same!
After the 2nd winery, we put the bikes away and took a long enough drive (as in too far to ride) to Solms Delta.
Here we started with their Vastrap, a white which is a blend of Chenin Blanc and Semillon. It was a dry white, nothing to write home about. R50.
Next we went to the Amalie, which is a blend of Viognier, Roussanne and Grenache. Smells like chard, has some oak flavors, but I would characterize it as a ‘light’ chard. R110.
Third one presented was the Lekkerwijn, which means ‘nice’ or ‘yummy’ wine. It’s a blend of Mourvedre, Grenache Noir and Viognier and is a Rose. It was sweet and not great. R55.
Reds, finally reds!!! Langarm, pronounced Long-arm, a blend of four varietals — Pinotage, Touriga Nacional, Shiraz and Mourvedre. The nose had tobacco and was sweet. The taste was light and peppery. R55.
Next red was one I look for a lot and can be hard to find — sparkling Shiraz. This one is their Cape Jazz Shiraz. Subtle, fruity, per them. Light, refreshing, 9.9% alcohol. Yes, oh yes. I left with a bottle. R580.
We then hit a fortified wine, the Gemoedsrus, made with a Shiraz grape. The style ‘An entirely new concept in port-style wine; Shiraz desiccated on the vine, then fortified with Shiraz grappa.’ 18.5% alcohol, NICE and SMOOTH. R150.
Finally we sampled an experimental wine, Perry, a lightly sparkling pear fermented beverage, 6% ABV. Crisp and refreshing. The problem here is that you could not taste any alcohol so you could easily just be sitting outside enjoying this on a beautiful summer day and that bottle would be gone quickly…and you would be too…without realizing it. R50.
Three down, and since we had such a small group, our guide made sure we hit one more winery before the day was done!
This year I am celebrating Christmas with my family in a new location and we did something new for Christmas Eve dinner. We went to their neighbor’s house for a laid-back, several-family gathering. The main dish was a seafood bisque and I offered to bring a non-dairy dish because of my lactose intolerance. I hadn’t had posole for awhile, it just sounded good, it’s quick and easy and with the wind howling around here in CO my mind was set.
I have relied on Cooking Light’s recipe for quite awhile and just had to quickly pull it up.
Ingredients:
1 pound tomatillos — I always just use a big jar of green salsa
6 cups chicken stock
2 cups chopped onion
3 pounds chicken breast halves, skinned
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and quartered (I’m a wimp for heat, use 1)
1 (30-ounce) can white hominy, drained
1 teaspoon salt
(These are toppings)
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream $
8 lime wedges
The hardest part of this at the start is chopping the onions (just makes me cry…).
After they’re chopped, you just throw them, the chicken stock, chicken breasts, garlic, jalapeno, hominy and salt into a pot and bring it to a boil then let it simmer for 30+ minutes until the chicken is cooked.
Then, you take the chicken out and shred it. And while you’re shredding it, you’ve added the tomatillos (or salsa) to the pot.
After the chicken is shredded, throw it back in there, heat everything through.
Then serve with cilantro, chips and sour cream, if you’d like. Great addition to dinner!! There was not much left at all.
Last night I got to enjoy a wonderful dinner of smoked salmon…done on the stove via stove-top smoker. It was amazing. All I had to do was provide wine. Easy!
For the main dish, you just need put some smoking chips in the bottom of the smoker then cover them with foil.
Season the fish with spices of choice (tarragon, S&P were used), then close the smoker.
You cook/smoke the salmon for about 25 minutes (this was 1/2lb+) — you start it at medium-high heat to get the chips smoking, leaving the back end of the smoker open, then keep it going at medium heat until cooked through.
Carefully remove the lid (hot pads!) and heaven has arrived!
We also prepared some pan-seared asparagus seasoned with rosemary and garlic salt.
The final product was the fish, asparagus, dolmas, olives, marinated mushrooms and wonderful Penner-Ash Pinot Noir. Not a bad dinner at all.
I was flipping through my recipe binders last night searching for something to make for a gathering this weekend and what do I come across? Notes from a wine class I took in 2004. Hmmm…I knew nothing about wine back then. I remember drinking that bright blue bottle of super sweet Riesling and other quality stuff. I never sank so low as White Zin, though, fear not. I loved reading over some of this info. Lots of good notes to keep in mind.
Basic Rules (per the instructor):
-Drink what the locals drink — ‘when in Rome, …’
-Drink what you want to drink, not what somebody else tell you is the ‘right wine’
-Beware that some pairings will clash (like spicy Shiraz with angelfood cake)
-Main ingredient is important but…
-Accents in the sauce and seasonings are the focus of the flavors
-Time of day is important:
-afternoons – maybe whites or roses work best
-evenings – fuller-bodied whites and reds are more satisfying
-Season:
-hot summer afternoons
-cool to cold winter evenings
-instructor deep thought — air conditioning was probably invented so that red wine would taste better in the summer. Nice!!
-Temperature:
-cold dishes need cold wines, usually lighter wines
-warm/hot dishes need bolder flavors and bigger wines
-Length of time cooking:
-short cooking (stir fries, seared, etc) suggests lighter wines
-longer cooking suggest heartier wines
-What else is on the plate?:
-one bottle for an entire meal presents problems
-some meals, think Thanksgiving, offer a wide range of flavors that are tough to match
-Pick wine that matches the weight and ‘size’ (bigness of flavor):
-simple, fragile wines with simple, fragile flavors
-robust wines with hearty dishes
-Texture:
-best example of texture in wine is sparkling wine (or beer) with spicy Asian food
-consider this range of texture: filet of flounder, lobster tail, steak
-Cooking with wine:
-easiest rule: serve the same wine
-therefore: never cook with cheap wine
-Sweet wines are tough to match with main dishes, but not impossible:
-Americans are used to drinking sweet drinks (soda, iced tea) — why not sweet wine?
-the secret is in balancing sweetness and acidity
Great wine (vs food) for thought when hitting the stores this weekend and deciding what to pick up.
I posted about my first couple wine classes and got lost in a shuffle and wasn’t able to share the next couple. I am indeed posting about #4 here (will backtrack to 3 eventually). In class 4, we learned about ‘other’ varietals, spending a lot of time in Italy. Some good, fun stuff to take home:
-DOC — great wine, DOCG — AWESOME wine, in layman’s terms
-Trebbiano is almost all bulk and per our instructor is boring2
-Barbera is just a fun wine
-Zinfandel producers are renagades
Our tastings for the night:
1) 2012 Alois Lageder Pinot Grigio, Dolomiti, Italy, about $20
2) 2008 Serra “Paitin” Barbaresco, Piemonte, Italy, about $40
3) 2010 Vietti Barbera D’Asti, Piemonto, Italy, about $22
4) 2008 Carpineto Chianti Classico Riserva, Tuscant, Italy, about $27
5) 2012 Verdicchio di Castelli di Jesi, Marches, Italy, about $13
6) 2010 Masciarelli Montepulciano D’Abruzzo, Abruzzo, Italy, about $14 (this was one of my favorites of the night)
7) 2010 Terredora Dipaolo Aglianico, Campania, Italy, about $18
8) 2005 Lan Rioja Gran Reserva, Rioja Spain, about $25
Note: This post has nothing to do with food. But, it’s fun to change gears sometimes. I have been living in the DC-area for over a decade and finally made it to the High Heel Race this year. It takes place the Tuesday before Halloween and is a huge tradition in the city. The weather was perfect, the costumes put most of us to shame by just going to the costume store and the entertainment was phenomenal!
Some local news (recap) links are at the bottom, too.
Lots of pictures (there was so much going on that the quality isn’t great on all of them because I was in constant motion)!
Mel's Mosaic 