Wine Wednesdays

We talk alot about using wine to make an evening special. But on a Wednesday night, with half a week of work remaining, we might turn to a good glass of wine to simply make the evening bearable.

Usually, we consider our wine and food pairing and try to plan an interesting meal for an interesting bottle of wine. But by mid-week, that can be hard to do. It is useful to have a few more flexible bottles lying around that will go with whatever you throw together for dinner. Blended wines offer you a comparatively neutral palate, with a mix of the flavors from multiple grapes. This is something easy to mix and match with a range of meals.

Cooking a real dinner mid-week can be overwhelming, so having a few simple recipes in your back pocket will help. Sometimes, a good crock pot stew can be lifesaver. You develop some deep flavors, and are still ready to eat as soon as you get home from work. Some beef, rice, tomatoes and some broccoli to round it out made for an loose take on Cuban Mofongo.

We picked a bottle of blended wine from Chile. A mix of Carignan, Grenache, and Mouverdre, we had no idea what to expect. But the complex mix of flavors from the mofongo--earthy, acidic, fatty, and a bit of green vegetable--meant we needed some complicated flavors from our wine. This blend of grapes gave us flavors of blackberries, with hints of graphite and cinnamon. The spice of the wine matched the hot pepper spice of the mofongo, while the flavors from the sweet and acidic tomato brought the sweet fruit of the wine to the forefront.

Blended wines are often mistaken for "table wines" (unless, of course, a Bordeaux). It is good to remember that winemakers might attempt to create a versatile blend of flavors that lend themselves to easier pairings... especially on those Wednesday nights where you just don't want to think too hard about it.

Last of the Winter Reds

Winter is finally behind us. It's time to clear some of those big red wines from the rack, before the weather gets too warm to enjoy them.

 Normally, you might pair a red wine with a meat-heavy dish. But we like to mix it up every once in a while, and try red wine with a vegetarian meal, which would traditionally be matched with white wine. With the right preparation, those delicate vegetarian flavors can be coaxed into something deeper that can stand up to a red wine.

Carrots roasted with the spice Garam Masal and a bit of nutmeg, and then pureed with jalapeno peppers. The sweet and earthy carrots pick up a smoky flavor from being roasted with the Garam Masal. The jalapeno adds green vegetable flavors, and of course some heat. Complemented with some drop biscuits stuffed with shredded radish, kohlrabi and lettuce, you are looking at a very green meal, but stuffed full of spicy and earthy flavors. Perfect for a cool spring night to ward off the last winter chill. And perfect for a big spicy red like Syrah.

Pair like with like. That's a useful rule of thumb for pairing wine with food. In this case, the spicy flavors need something to either match them, to make them really pop on the palate, or something sweet and unctuous to help soothe your mouth between bites. The earthy, smokey flavors can easily overpower most wines, so you need a real full-bodied wine to match. Malbec or an Old Vine Zinfandel might have worked, but we went with Syrah. In this case, it might have been a bit too much spice, as both the food and the wine were a mouthful on their own, and created fireworks of blossoming heat when combined. But like a plate of spicy chicken wings, sometimes that's just what you crave to help remind you that the warmth is just around the corner. 

White Wine in WInter

Winter time can really limit your wine options. The cold weather encourages us to make hearty, warming dishes, and we look for wines to handle those big flavors. Fresh vegetables are long forgotten, and we hope our stockpile of root vegetables--augmented with the occasional imported tidbit from the grocery store--helps us make it through the dark months. Focusing on the handful of ingredients that last well through the winter allows us to find a recipe that helps us break from the red wine rut.

Broccoli is one of the few vegetables worth picking up from the grocery during winter. It's versatile and can serve as a base to a wide range of meals. You'll always taste the vegetable, but you can do a lot with seasoning and protein to add to the flavor. Fish and broccoli in a nice stew can make a great warming meal, yet avoid the gut-busting heaviness found in most other stews.

For a lighter meal like that, look for a wine that has a hint of crispness to complement the fattiness of the fish, with a vegetable note to match the broccoli. Sauvignon Blanc fits the bill in this case: crisp, herbal, grassy. These are flavors that can brighten up a cold day.

Exploring Wine in Pennsylvania

We enjoying discovering new wine regions together. Wine is made in every state in the US now, and it's fun to try it all when we travel. Wandering through the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, we came upon a shop for Blue Mountain Vineyards. While we didn't have a chance to visit the vineyard, we could at least bring back a bottle to celebrate our visit to the state.

Picking up a bottle of their Cabernet Franc, we made the assumption that it would have a flavor profile similar to other cool climate regions we are more familiar with. Expecting a smooth wine, with strong fruit and a hint of spice, we took a bottle home and decided on a hearty, meaty meal utilizing some great fresh summer tomatoes--Ropa Vieja. A beef dish, slow cooked in a spicy tomato sauce, we thought that the wine might match that spice, and add a layer of sweeter fruit to the sweet acidity of the tomato sauce.

The plan paid off. The wine hit all the right notes with the food, even if it was a bit light for the big flavors of the meal. (Cabernet Franc is often light compared to traditional reds like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot). It may be quite some time before we have a chance to try wine from Pennsylvania again, so we are glad it ended on such a good note.

A Quick Pairing: Wine and Fried Chicken

These days, we have a little less time to spend in the kitchen. It's useful to remember that we don't need to over-think our wine and food pairing choices: a few carefully selected ingredients can define a meal, and flexible wines give you a lot of latitude.

With the release of the 2012 vintage of Finger Lakes Rieslings, we had a few bottles of wine and we basically knew what to expect out of them. Sweet peaches, minerality, apple... these are flavors we know. So for a quick mid-week dinner, it was simply a matter of finding the meal to go with those flavors. I quickly sautéed some fresh fall bok choy with onion and jalapeno, to combine sweetness and heat, then added rice for a base and fresh chopped arugula for texture. The fried chicken was there for the minerality. Although there was a bit of prep time in the chopping and breading, and rice takes as long as rice takes, this was a quick and easy dish, all told.

Paired with the new 2012 Dry Riesling for Knapp Vineyards, we ended up with a great meal. The wine was sweeter and fruitier than we expected from a dry Riesling, but not overpoweringly so. The sweet flavors worked well with the spice of the jalapeno, and the flavors were bright and crisp against the fried chicken. With life as complicated as it is, it's useful to have a repetoire of quick recipes and and a library of wines you are confident in to make even a quick dinner after a long day an enjoyable experience.

A Hard Pairing: Beets and Wine

It's harvest time again. The fall brings the last of the great produce for the year. We love restaurants that focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients, but we also love to cook those same ingredients at home. If you are looking to use up a lot of fresh vegetables, you have to be creative in your recipes, and even more creative with you wine pairings.

Of all the difficult ingredients, there may not be many more complicated than beets. Earthy, almost dirt flavored, but with a strong sweetness as well, there aren't many flavors like it. Shredded and mixed with a few other ingredients, like radishes, carrots and basil, beets can be used as a substitute for ground beef in things like meatballs. Served up with some beans and lettuce in a tortilla, and you have a hearty vegetarian burrito.

In this case, we really only had one option to drink with dinner. Searching for something "like for like" (the recommended way to pair wine with food), we needed something earthy, with a hint of fruitiness. So we went with a cold climate Pinot Noir that had a balance of ripe cherries and deep stone and earth flavors, with enough body to match the big flavors of the fresh vegetables. A perfect time for one of our favorites from the Finger Lakes. And it just emphasizes how you can create perfect pairings to match fresh, local produce with local wine.

Curried Potatoes with Cabernet Franc

With all of our stories, it seems like we go out to eat often. But really, most nights we eat at home. And since having a bottle of wine at home with dinner is a less expensive endeavor, we are often willing to experiment a little more, both in the recipes with choose, and the wines we pair with them.

Of course, sometimes the recipes get a little complicated. Looking for a hearty meal one night, the ingredients started piling up. Potatoes as the base, but that seemed a bit too bland, so added some curry spices to liven up the sauce. Mushrooms, to give the meal a bit more body. And the sauce seemed a bit thin, so some Roquefort cheese to give it a bit of richness. That was an odd combination of flavor, with lots of earthy flavors, so we looked for a red wine to match. A bottle of Cabernet Franc seemed like a good idea; some earthiness to complement the mushrooms, some fruitiness to bring out the sweetness of the Roquefort, and maybe that hint of green vegetable to play with the curry.

Surprisingly, the dish ended up light in flavor. Maybe it needed a bit more time to stew, to allow the potatoes a chance to really absorb the flavors, but improvised recipes are always a learning experience. The flavors worked, but it turned out that the wine was a bit too powerful, and kind of overwhelmed the food. It seems like that can be a problem with Cabernet Franc. Very dependent on the vintage, it can be a light bodied wine with some delicate flavors, or a deep, powerful wine. It pays to know the details of the bottle you plan to open. Or you can just sit back and enjoy it, no matter what the outcome.

Knowing Your Pinot

One of the benefits of knowing details about a wine is that it makes it so much easier to figure out the perfect meal to pair it with. Pinot Noir comes in a wide range of styles, so knowing a bit about it beforehand can let you craft a dinner to really showcase the flavors in the bottle. The wines of Burgundy tend to be both rich in ripe fruit and earthy flavors, while the Pinot Noirs of California tend toward bright, red fruit, while the ones coming out of Oregon tend toward more subdued berries.

Knowing we had a bottle of Heron Hill Pinot Noir from the Finger Lakes, I had a good idea of what to look forward to. While we haven't had the chance to try the newest vintage, we enjoyed the release last year, so I had agood idea that we would find a heart, earthy wine, with hints of tart fruit. With this in mind, I headed to the local farmers market to buy the ingredients for a simple, tasty Saturday dinner.

Its still early for some of the best produce, but knowing the market helps. Some greens, just coming into season for some freshness with just a hint of bitterness to match the stone flavors. Sometomatoes from the first harvest fromthe hothouses of New Jersey, sweet and firm, almost like the fruit flavors of the wine. To serve as the base of the meal, some mushrooms to match the earthiness so typical of the best new New York Pinots. With the addition of some black beans cooked in honey and molasses and the aid of some time in the backyard with my grill, some sweet and smokey notes were added to an easy dinner of veggie burritos, and we had an excellent complement to our excellent wine. I only wish I had a second bottle, that I could have enjoyed by itself as I sat in the summer sun preparing dinner.

Pairing Wine with Brussel Sprout Curry

Pairing wine with food is mostly about history. Finding a wine to pair with a meat or fish is fairly easy, with the long traditions of wine and food in France and Italy. With other dishes, it can be a bit harder.

With a tofu dish, especially one with a curry sauce, there isn't the same depth of history to draw from, so you have to be a little more creative in your wine pairing. Tofu has little flavor of its own, while curry is a strong flavor tough to match with wine. In deciding to pair a tofu and vegetable curry, we looked to the most powerful flavor among the vegetables to find our match for the wine: brussel sprouts seemed the biggest flavor in the dish, providing earth, green vegetable, and a bit of funk.

Still not an easy match, but our thought was to search for a white wine. We decided to look for something with a bit of crispness to it to counter the richness of the tofu and curry. The earth and funk can be emphasized by a bit of minerality. With that in mind, we picked a Chenin Blanc. The younger versions from the Loire Valley can be bright, with a sharp, almost metallic edge. The pairing was pretty decent.

Pot Roast Dinner

It's the holiday season again. Time for those homey, comforting dishes best shared with a large group of friends and family. I love cooking a complicated dish, but sometimes it's best to just prepare something simple and put it in the oven, to give yourself less time in the kitchen and more time with those you love.

Hence, I love pot roasts. A great way to cook a nice chunk of meat for a group, and an easy way to include some good veggies in the dish. Add some simple spices, and just let it sit in the oven for a few hours, and you have a wonderful blend of flavors. As winter sets in, it's a good way to cook up some root vegetables, and other hardy green stuff, like radish, carrots, and even some brussel sprouts (if you add them late in the process--avoid cooking them to long). 

All told, this is an easy dish to find a good wine pairing for. Something hearty and red, with earthiness to match the vegetables and some spice to complement the meat. Nothing too fruity and sweet, but just a hint of berries can add another layer of complexity to the meal, and help us remember that summer will come again. This time around, we selected a Finger Lakes Cabernet Franc from Ravines Wine Cellars. It was the perfect selection for what we were looking for, as it matched the flavor profile of the dish. It's good to know just enough about the wine styles of a specific varietal and/or region so that you have a good idea what to expect when you want an easy, delicious meal.

Homemade Mac & Cheese

With the cold weather settling in, it's time to make hearty, warming dinners, and of course to find great wines to pair with these heavier meals. It should come as no surprise that when we want something warm and gooey, we make a big dish of Mac & Cheese.

Mac& Cheese is great, because it's easy to make at home, and, if you put a little bit of effort into selecting the cheese, you can end up something very special. We find some great cheeses at our local farmer's market. This time around, we selected an aged cheddar for the main cheese, and a blue cheese for added flavor and richness. Then the trick was to find some wine to go along with it.

Both cheeses had strong flavors: sweet, salt, and a bit of funk from the blue cheese, and more sweet from the cheddar, with some nuttiness. To this end, we decided to look for a strong red wine, with some fruit notes to match the sweet cheese. Walking the aisles of our local wine shop, we spotted something interesting; a 2003 Zinfandel, and decided to give it a try. While the wine wasn't as fruity as we expected, we still made a good selection: the wine was old and rich, with deep earthy notes that held up to the rich cheese, and balanced with the sweetness of the dinner.

It's simple pairings like this that can bring us great joys. We like to experiment with trying new wines, and finding the best dish to match, but its good to know we can make simple selections, and that they will result in a perfectly wonderful dinner.

Mac & Cheese:
1 box Elbow Macaroni
4 tbsp Butter
4 tbsp Flour
2 Cups Milk
4 oz shredded Hard Cheese (Cheddar, Swiss, etc)
4 oz Soft Cheese (Blue, Goat, etc)
1 Cup Breadcrumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the macaroni and cook until al dente, approximetly 8 to 10 minutes, then drain.
3. In a medium sauce pan, melt the butter, then add the flour and stir until smooth. Add the milk and stir until the mixture thickens. Add the cheese and stir until melted.
4. Pour the macaroni into a greased 9x13 pan, then pour the cheese over the macaroni and stir in. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs evenly over the top of the mixture, then bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown.

 Enjoy!

Wine and Baked Brie

We have heard time and again that wine pairs well with food from the
same region. To test this, Tina decided to make baked brie to pair with a bottle of French wine. The recipe is extremely simple but extraordinarily delicious.

How-To: Pair Wine with Pulled Pork

We do not often go into a meal with a clear idea of what the wine is going to taste like, and then select the dinner menu accordingly. But not long after we tried Heart & Hands Pinot Noir at Brooklyn Winery, we received a bottle of their Barrel Reserve Pinot Noir in the mail. Having thoroughly enjoyed their "normal" Pinot Noir, we felt compelled to do something special with the Reserve version. Expecting even stronger earth notes, we decided to try a heartier dish: Pulled Pork with a Blue Cheese Mushroom Sauce.

Wine and Not-Hassenpfeffer

There a are a lot of recipes out there that call for wine to enrich the dish. The first one we ever tried was before we even started exploring the world of wine together, and a dish where the use of wine was unexpected: Hassenpfeffer. A strange dish; a rich, slow cooked, spicy stew made with rabbit, its a special treat that I make myself every year for my birthday. Out of deference to that fact that Tina is reluctant to eat rabbit, I make it with chicken, but the real star of the dish is the thick gravy, flavored with bacon, pepper, and red wine. In the past, I have made it with cooking wine from the grocery store, but now that I know a bit more about wine, I was able to buy a bottle of wine for both a cup to add to the dish and for a glass for us to enjoy with the finished meal. Since the main flavor of the meal is the 'pfeffer', or crushed black peppercorns, I selected a spicy red wine, a Lamoreaux Landing Cabernet Franc. While I hate to use a good wine in cooking, because a cup in the recipe is a glass that could be drunk, this worked out well. The wine was the perfect addition to the recipe; peppery, smokey, with a hint of fruit highlighting the best flavors in the dish. And in a glass with the dinner, it was the perfect "like with like."

While I love to go out for special meals, this was a perfect treat. Cooking a great meal with my own hands always makes for a wonderful day. And finding a perfect wine to pair with my perfect meal was an added treat, reminding me that all this "hard work" is paying off, and we are really learning how to understand wine and food.

Elk stew & Barrister red

Holidays brought us some wonderful gifts from family. We try not to collect too many “things”, instead we love it when our family gives us “experiences”, and they managed to deliver a great one this year. A bottle of wine from Washington State, a package of frozen elk meat, and we were set for a wonderful evening at home. Elk may not be something normally associated with wine, since its hard to come by, but we have been experimenting with different pairings, and this presented us with another interesting challenge.

Best of 2011... Wine and Buffalo Wings

This week, we are recapping some of our favorite things from the year...

My personal favorite experiment for the year was trying wine with homemade chicken wings.
While it’s not a normal wine pairing, it was fun to try something different.

How-To: Use Bad Wine, Cooking with Wine

Over the summer, we bought a few bottles of wine on discount. We opened the first bottle, and decided we didn’t like it, and the remainder have sat in our wine rack since. They weren’t horrible, or corked, but with all of the good wines out there, we couldn’t be bothered to finish them off. But we couldn’t just throw them away. So they have sat there, gathering dust, waiting on a time where they might come in handy. And with the holidays, they we finally came up with a use: cooking wine.

They say you shouldn’t cook with any wine you wouldn’t drink. That means that if you can skip using Cooking Wine from the grocery store, you probably should. But who wants to waste a good bottle of wine in cooking? The Riesling we had on hand was drinkable, but was always at the bottom of the list, so it made sense to use it for some holiday cooking, for dishes that needed a bit of added liquid and that could stand a bit of acidity. I did a bit of research, and came up with a couple of recipes: Chicken and Mushrooms in White Wine Sauce, and for Thanksgiving, I made Wine Butt Turkey.

Wine Pairing... Tocai Fruliano and Chicken Pot Pie

We are working our way through the recipe book, testing out wine knowledge with meals that would not normally pair with wine. This week, we went with Chicken Pot Pie; a dish rich in flavors.

Did you know? . . . Herb Infused Wine

Adding wine to your favorite recipes is pretty common, as is mixing spices, juice, and other mixers into wine to create fun cocktails and other infusions. But we were surprised to discover an herbal-flavored wine from Rebec Vineyards.  Called "Sweet Sofia," this wine is described by the winemaker as such:

An herbal-flavored wine. A Bulgarian recipe presented by Rebec Vineyards' winemaker, Svetlozar Kanev. It is just right for sipping, or as an after-dinner treat. A 'niche' wine for special occasions, it also goes well with Cajun, Mexican, Oriental, and Indian cuisine.

Upon first smell, you get hints of the italian herbs. And it's very apparent in the taste as well. This unique wine went very well with our homemade lasagna (matching the herbs in the lasagna with those in the wine), but was not as good as a standalone sipper (in our humble opinions). And, with dessert, the wine was much too herb-y. But a fun idea and love the idea of using an old-time recipe to create a new type of wine.

Photo couresy of http://www.rebecwinery.com/

Wine Pairing...Sauvignion Blanc and Pulled Pork with Beet Salad

We’ve started to experiment with trying wine with food that you might not normally pair with wine. Recently, I tried wine with Buffalo Wings to great success. This week, I decided to make some pulled pork, and we made a quick run to the wine store to see what might work with it.

Asian Pulled Pork Recipe: 
1 tbsp Cardamom pods
1 tsp Paprika
2 tbsp dried Star Anise
1 tsp Chili Pepper
1 lb Pork Shoulder
2 Fresh Jalepeno peppers, chopped
Salt & Pepper to taste

In a spice grinder, mix and grind the spices thoroughly. Coat both sides of the pork shoulder with the spice mixture, then cook in a crock pot on low heat until tender, 4-6 hours. Serve on thick sliced bread. Serve with a warm beet salad.

Warm Beet Salad: 
4 small Beets, sliced thin
1 tbsp Scallions, sliced
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
1 tbsp Butter
Lettuce
8 oz Goat Cheese

In a sauté pan, melt the butter, then add the beets, scallions, and lemon juice, and sauté until tender. Drain, then add the beets to a bed of lettuce and top with goat cheese.

We paired this with a Sancerre from France, a crisp white with hints of flowers, minerality, and spices. The minerality of the wine went well with the natural earthy flavors of the beets. According to Tina, with the pork, the wine “makes the spice go ‘bang’”. The floral notes popped against the smell of the seasonings, especially the anise. The flavors of the wine were strong enough to make a good pairing with the dinner, which was a fun discovery, considering that pulled pork is not usually paired with this sort of French wine.