Blogger book Alert

A book I just finished is much more interesting than our last few dinners....so if you have a chance...Julia Childs: My Life in France by Julia Childs and Paul Prudhomme. It is very intersting on a few levels. Basically ,she tells how she got started cooking, and then talks about their ( Julia and her husband,Paul) years in France and what they ate and drank. They had some fabulous wines! I think you , all, will enjoy it!

Yum! Yuck! Gross! Yum!

First of all, we had a wonderful dinner with Thad and Lynn: a rice pilaf they call Jambalaya made with peppers and Andouille sausage but no shellfish, and let me tell you it was totally satisfying, and especially good today for lunch. Especially with the Nicolas Feuillete aperatif. Accompanied by a delicious green salad and Thad's excellent chocolate chip cookies ever so slightly warmed in the microwave. I thought the stack of cookies on the plate was way too many, but no! Home to bed through the 0F temperature and slept well.

Meanwhile.....
It turns out that our friend who shall go nameless came in SECOND in the Robbie Burns Haggis eating contest eating by eating 40 portions. The winner ate 51....

And another good friend tells us she is expecting a house guest for the weekend who is on a vegan purging diet. I don't EVEN want to know the details of this.

And John just made the best breaded cod for dinner, with fresh steamed carrots and bok choy, oven roasted potatoes, gorgonzola dressed green salad, kiwi and Cripps apples. A little Veramonte, but not too much, have to meet the airplane with the Moscow Circus on it tonight! There is nothing better than fresh fish.

Sorry about the font size

Sorry about the Font size on the Glassware thing. It was cut and pasted from another computer. If you want me to e-mail it to you directly just let me know. Sorry.

JD

Glassware

Since Alec asked about glassware I thought I would let him know what I found
out in Anchorage this week since our company is now the distributor for
Riedel glassware to restaurants in Alaska.

I have to admit that I was a bit of a skeptic coming into this. Now I might
not be a true believer but I have to say that I am convinced that different
shapes of glassware definitely can enhance the flavor of certain wines.

The first misconception that was cleared up for me was the pronunciation.
It is "REE-dull" as in "needle" and that is exactly what they told us at the
presentation. The Riedel family is Austrian and they have been in the glass
business for over 250 years although they did not start making wine glasses
until 1957. They do bring that Teutonic attention to detail to the
business.

Here is how the demonstration that they did for us worked:

We sat down with four different styles of glassware. There was a
Chardonnay/Meursault glass with Trefethen Chardonnay, a Riesling/Sauvignon
Blanc glass with Dog Point Sauvignon Blanc (and boy is that wine tasty), a
Burgundy glass with Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir and a Cabernet/Merlot glass
with Larkmead Cabernet Sauvignon. There was also an average "restaurant"
wine glass in front of us.

We then proceeded to taste the wines in the Riedel glass first and then in
the "joker" glass and the difference is fairly dramatic. The shape of the
glass concentrates the more pleasing and most "varietal" aromas and flavors
to your nose and palate.

The next step was to pour the wines from their "correct" glasses into one of
the other shapes (i.e. put the Chardonnay in the Riesling glass) and taste
the difference.

The glasses are also designed so that the lip of the glass is very thin and
does not have any sort of roll on the lip that might prevent the wine from
going directly into your mouth. This may sound a little strange but if you
run your fingers over your average restaurant wine glass there will be just
the slightest bulge right at the rim and the Riedel folks trim every single
one of their glasses with a laser to eliminate that bulge.

The power of suggestion is pretty strong but I sat through this twice; once
with our staff and once with a group of customers and I believe that there
is something to the shape of the glass making the wine taste better.

A couple of other points...

The Reidel folks specifically state that their glassware will not make poor
wine taste better. What they say is that it will make good wine taste
better. It's a bit of a fine distinction but what they said is that if you
put crappy wine in one of their glasses not only will it not taste better
but it is more likely to bring out the flaws and it might even make it taste
worse.

Even if you think that all of this is smoke and mirrors you have to give the
family credit for being incredibly good at marketing. I doubt if anyone
reading this had to Google Riedel to see what I was talking about. They
have built a reputation as the premiere producer of wine glasses in the
world and they can back that reputation up. If you go into a restaurant and
find that they are taking the time (the glasses should be hand polished
before every use) and expense of using Riedel it does make a statement that
the restaurant is taking wine seriously.

And if you still can't taste the difference between wine out of a Reidel
glass and a Libby glass you have to admit that the Reidel glassware is
exceedingly well made and beautiful to look at.

They also produce a tumbler wine glass without a stem. Some see this an
anathema but guess what? It is now their second best selling product. I
would be more than happy to drink my wine in a glass without a stem if I
could stick it in the dishwasher later and be confident that I would break
less over the course of a couple of years.

Hopefully this answers the questions and if not put it on the blog.

Prime Rib

We were invited to celebrate three birthdays all at once at our good friends Tony & Lori (of the Yorba Wine discussion). they slaved over hot stoves all day to prepare a wonderful prime rib, using the slow cooking method, I think you sear it on the outside and then set it at 200 and let it cook slowly. It was moist and delicious. They also made a mushroom sauce with portabellos and others, garlic and smoked Gouda mashed potatoes, there was a real Caesar Salad which one of the other birthday girls made, and we finished with a delicious chocolate nut tortes that the OTHER birthday girl made. And all we had to do was bring wine. There was quite a spectrum of them, and I can't remember them all.....Such a good evening....

A Rainy Night in LALA

I guess I'm a full-fledged "LALA-in "... I'm determined not to go out in the rain unless it is a true emergency, so dinner had to be made from something in the house. In the morning, I anticipated the day's weather so I defrosted 2 cute little Cornish game Hens. When it was time to cook them, I basted them with melted butter and raspberry jam ( after the white pepper,etc). I usually use a dark cherry juice to baste and make a sauce with the dark cherries but I didn't have them in the house....HELLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOO, it's raining, so I made do with the jam and they were very tasty. Parmesan couscous and white asparagus completed the plate. I opened what I thought would be a good wine for this dish...a Woodbridge Zin,but this bottle was over the hill.
For dessert, we had some delicious pears that someone sent us...we thought of J & N who seem to eat a lot of fruit for dessert...and wondered why!

Just me and the dog and a flank steak

John made a flank steak the night before last, quite delicious of course, and we didn't eat it all up. He flew to Anchorage yesterday to learn about Reidel crystal (!) leaving two bottles of wine, the dog, and the left over flank steak. I can work with this.
Flank steak: Put it in the mushroom/parsley/garlic/breadcrumbs/wine tian thing. Hmmm, sunchokes....scrub them, slice them up, toss with oil, salt & pepper, and rosemary, and bake both dishes at 375 for 30 minutes. Make a tossed salad and slice up a Cripps apple. Eat entire apple immediately, it is so good. Glass of Palazzo della Torre Allegrini. Leave the dishes in the sink!
hoo ha.

Meat-y Week-end

We had a pretty boring ...BUT HEALTHY"...cooking few days last week so I didn't want bore anyone, but I decided to kick it into gear over the week-end.

Friday was french(ed) racks of lamb with a honey mustard glaze and soy-sauce baked asparagus. We drank a 1975 St. Emilion.....yummy. I had first opened a 1991 Pinot that we believe, after our first sip, should have been consumed a few years ago. We had unexpected company and a lovely evening.

Saturday was a veal roast with figs from a recipe I found on epicurious.com. The recipe called for fresh figs which I could not find, so I used dried ones. It was very good, but I think fresh figs would have made it very very good. We were planning on drinking a red with it,but as I got into the recipe, I realized I needed a small amout of white wine. I opened a 2004 Fess Parker Chardonnay ( which I had in the fridge*), tasted it,decided it was quite good,put it in the roast, and then we finished the bottle with dinner. We had parmesan couscous with it. I couldn't decide on a vegetable taste to go with figs.

Sunday ,we met some friends for brunch who had a layover at LAX on their to way to New Zealand and Austrailia. They, all , had Eggs Benedict, but I had blueberry cream cheese stuffed french toast. Dinner had to be light so I picked up tuna sashimi at Bristol Farms and made a small salad and the rest of the couscous.

It's back to boring for a few days...
* I am definitely going to start writing the names of the people who give us wine on the bottle label.

Alaskan seafood

We were invited to eat dinner with our friends with the home in Tenakee, always a treat. Fresh prawns. Incredible. Grilled sockeye. Perfectly moist and delicious. Steamed green beans with toasted almonds and mushrooms. Baked yellow squash. Coconut and cranberry bars. Veramonte SB and Oyster Bay SB. Spoils you for the rest of your life for seafood from anywhere else.

We finished with a game:
two teams.
each person thinks up 7 names of well-known people/characters and writes them on little slips of paper and puts them in a hat.
Then the teams take turns having one member of the team pull slips out of the hat and as fast as possible gives hints so that their teammates guess as many of the names as possible in one minute.
After all the names in the hat have been guessed, all the names go back in the hat and the teams take turns doing the same thing, but can only use two words to give the hint.
After all the names have been guessed using two words, names go back in the hat and teams take turns giving one word hints and getting as many as possible in one minute.
The team who has guessed the most names at the end wins.

I think we've all been friends for too long: Marilyn Monroe, Betty Crocker, Hillary Clinton all in the hat multiple times.

Italian Gorgonzola Cheesecake

Last night Juneau Arts & Humanities had a little reception just for the immediate neighbors, to let them see the renovations in the works.

I made an appetizer that my friend Susan made once for us, and folks requested the recipe, so here you go:

Italian Gorgonzola Cheesecake,
from Rhonda Carano, co-owner Farrari-Carano Vineyards and Winery.
2 ounces Italian Gorgonzola
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
2 1/2 tablespoons sour cream
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh basil (I didn't have that, used about 1 teaspoon dried)
1/8 teaspoon salt (why not use salted butter and skip the salt?)
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Heat the oven to 350F and butter an 8-inch pie pan. Have another larger pan that the 8-inch will fit into ready.

In a food processor (although I think a mixer would be fine) cream the Gorgonzola with the butter until very smooth.

Add the cream cheese, and blend.

Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides, blending until smooth.

Add the sour cream, basil, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

Pour into the prepared 8-inch pan, and set the pan into the larger pan, into which put a small amount of hot water, just enough to come up 1/2 the side of the 8 inch pan, and set them in the oven carefully.

Bake 15-20 minutes, until the center begins to puff.
Then sprinkle the chopped walnuts over the top and bake another 5 minutes, until golden and puffy.

Remove from the oven to cool. The pie will collapse. Serve warm with sliced French bread, or may be refrigerated overnight and served the next day.

The recipe suggests topping with carmelized red onions on top, and serving with Ferrari-Corano Alexander Valley Cabernet. We had Veramonte SB, a Cypress Cab and Los Cardos Malbec. nummers.

Is Angel Hair chick pasta?

Last night, sort of last minute, we invited regulars to the real and virtual tables, Dick and Candy, over for supper following a little reception we had at the Arts & Culture Center. John pulled some prawns from the freezer and whipped up a pasta, peas, and shrimp dish over angel hair pasta, with the usual green salad and fresh fruit.

As he brought the dish to the table, he apologized for the angel hair, said it was the only pasta we had enough of in the house. Candy and I were delighted. We like angel hair pasta. In fact it might be my favorite. But we never have it, because the boys prefer things like big penne and rigatoni, big manly pasta shapes like that.

(Which brings up a memory of a birthday dinner at our house when the children were small, with our friend Jonathan, normally a pretty liberal thinker, who got all prudish when the kids stuck their fingers into the rigatoni and sort of waved them around. He had to stop eating.)

This prompted a brief discussion: Is angel hair "chick pasta" (and what would be wrong with that I ask?)? The discussion was short-lived however, because everyone got busy eating the stuff. You know how it gets quiet when the food is good.

Kari's Bananas to Die For recipe

Here as promised is the recipe.
It is fast, totally yummy, and sure to be nutritious with all those bananas and dairy products.

Kari’s Bananas in Liquor & Caramel
4 portions

175 g brown sugar ( a little over ¾ cup)
2 dl heavy cream (3/4 cup + 2 teaspoons: Kari says she uses a shy cup)
100 grams unsalted butter (3 ½ ounces)
2 ss Cointreau (2 tablespoons)
4 bananas, sliced
50 grams pecans or walnuts, chopped (2 ounces or so)
plain yogurt to garnish.

In a sauce pot over medium heat, cook the brown sugar, cream, and butter, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Cook 3 minutes, remove from the heat and allow to cool briefly. Stir in the Cointreau.

Add the bananas, and combine gently with the sauce.

Spoon into serving bowls, garnish with a dollop of yogurt and a sprinkle of chopperd nuts.

At the wrong meeting

I sure attended the wrong meeting last night...not only didn't we have that yummy-sounding banana dish ( which could easily become Chuck's favorite Birthday dessert, or at least rank up at the very top with creme brulee), I was reduced to eating peanuts,carob-coated raisins and onion dip on toasts. ...all the while discussing painting the building or replacing all the wood trim with stucco...Oh well,at least I was listening to a great audio book during my drive..."Dead Heat" by Dick Francis. Not only is it a great mystery,but Dick Francis was one of my Dad's(alev shalom) favorite authors since he always connects his stories to some aspect of horse racing. It made me smile to think "Bill" was listening with me!

Chuck ,on the other hand, went out for dinner with some clients to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant and loved it. These are becoming quite the rage in the lower 48. Just keep in mind you have to be a meat lover if you go. The waitstaff keeps coming to the table with "slabs" of meat( various cuts of beef,lamb,pork, and chicken)and slices whatever you want and puts it on your plate.You can eat as much or as little as you want. There is an accompaniment bar with salads,pasta,shrimp,etc.
I forgot to ask him about the wine ,but I would bet he ordered an Argentinian bottle of"red"...

Is there room for me on your Board?

Bananas

John is a wonderful cook, luckily so or my family would have starved this month so far, and he's whipped up some very tasty spaghetti (I think his secret ingredient is carrot juice) and last night some ratatouille with oven-fried chicken and pasta and some incredible pears accompanied by Genesis cabernet sauvignon.

However.

Last night at the Juneau Arts & Humanities board meeting of all places, we had such a treat!

It was my admin assistant's birthday, and mid-way through, she sidled up and asked to be excused for a minute, she had planned a "yummy dessert for the board". An understatement! We were treated to fresh bananas in a creamy caramel and Cointreau sauce, with yogurt and walnuts on top and it was to die for. She said it was a tradition on birthdays in her family (she is from Norway) My mission for today is to get the recipe and post if for you. The cookbook was there, and several of us thought to copy the recipe last night, but our Norwegian was rusty, so stay tuned.

Week-end update

Friday seemed like a good time to roast a chicken so I did. I suppose the only thing interesting about my roast chicken is that I use a nice amount of paprika along with pepper and a tidge of garlic. I once made that "40 garlic chicken"...once being the operative word. I wanted to make oatmeal stuffing but the old DIET sign flashed, so we had broccoli sprinkled with Parmesan and a salad with red wine vinaigrette. We drank a merlot and I must have had too much because I can't remember which one, but it was good.

Saturday we had turkey burgers smothered in mushrooms and onions and a Cesar salad.

Sunday was going to be a flank steak but then an ad came on TV for Popeyes, so I turned off the DIET sign( I should have turned off the TV) and brought home a bucket with a side of cole slaw.

Stay tuned for flank steak...

Black Beans and ricely yours

to paraphrase Louis Armstrong.
One of the staff favorites a lifetime ago at the late Fiddlehead Restaurant was Black Beans and Rice. There is just something nourishing, refreshing, and wonderful about the combination of black beans simmered with green peppers and onions, some herbs and chilis, flavored with miso, fresh cilantro, sherry and lime juice, and served over brown rice with squeeze of lime, a big dollop of sour cream and guacamole, tomatoes that gives you, to steal another famous saying, the courage to get up and do what needs to be done. Side of lemon dressed green salad, some kiwis, and John was drinking pink wine and I had Shiraz Viognier. Feeling much better, thank you.

Cookies...Again

Chuck was working late last night, so he was going to grab something and eat at his desk. I couldn't decide what I wanted and am not good at planning ahead when it's just me...then the doorbell rang about 4pm and it was the UPS man. He handed me a package from Mazziotas Bakery in CT. It was a late Christmas present from friends in Hartford. They send the cookies, actually Italian macaroons, every year and they are delicious and quite filling. So I figured, if I just ate my dinner calorie allotment in macaroons...no harm ,no foul!

I'm off to the gym...

Casseroles

One of John's favorite things is to "take contents of frig, add noodles and cheese". Last night he took the left over chicken and added what he thought was a lot of cream and some shell pasta and mushrooms. Shooting for Chicken Noodle Casserole. It was tasty indeed, if a little on the dry side. I see from the bowl by the sink that Henry must have finished it off during the night. All good.
Veramonte SB and a pleasantly smug conversation about "good eggs" and "pains in the ass". Your names were in the first category for sure.

Go Bucks!

Game night at the Beckers didn't quite go as planned....the ground turkey Nachos with homemade salsa and guacomole were quite tasty, but not tasty enough to take the Bucks to victory. Thank goodness I found chocolate hidden away to soothe us.
There's always next year...

Sunday Soup

Planning ahead, John asked me on Saturday if I would make bread for dinner on Sunday and he would make clam chowder. So I put the no-knead bread together that night. Sunday, John was humming along in the kitchen to the KRNN Broadway program (Amal and the Night Visitors, seasonally enough, and one of his faves) slicing and dicing making salad out of red and white cabbage and the celeriac in the frig. Some friends called to see if we'd like to go to the Island Pub for pizza for dinner. Normally, yes, but you see we have this bread and salad and soup all cooked and so why not come over for dinner?
So we had a lovely Sunday supper of halibut and clam chowder (the creamy kind, does anyone eat Manhatten clam chowder?) the slaw, a big tossed salad, fresh warm bread and butter, scrumptious pears, apples, oranges, and finished it with hazelnut and pistachio gelato that our friends brought. San Pellagrino, Dry Creek Fume. Conversation that ranged from how college is and how dreadful the USF food is, to the Iowa primary to many other things, a wonderful evening, and don't ever feel bad about just calling up and if we tell you to come on over, it is just fine. We love it.

Week-end eats

Saturday evening we went to visit some friends and Joy decided to make dinner at home...her favorite dish to cook and Chuck's to eat....Steak and Kidney pie. Joy is British and her husband, Dick, is Scottish. Her pie is pretty darn good and I'm not a big fan of the kidneys...in pie. We brought a 1978 Ch. Figeac to "wash it down". Dessert was a proper and "bloody good" English Trifle.

Tonight is very damp and yucky by southern CA standards so I made mushroom barley soup which warmed the "cockles of our hear"( I most likely wouldn't be a big fan of those in pie either), and an interesting chicken concoction. I beat eggs with pepper and mustard and coated the chicken then dipped it in a mixture of breadcrumbs and shredded parmesan and baked it in a 375 oven....somewhat similar to the John-Nancy chicken previously discussed but with the addition of a tasty hearty mustard. Quite kgood and the chicken stayed juicy. Diet ginger ale and soy sauce roasted asparagus and we're good to go!
Happy week everyone...

Late night food

2008 has started off at a dead run for this household! There's been some spaghetti, some eggplant parmesan (officially, the mozzarella cheese from Costco is the WORST. It stays in little shreds instead of becoming luxuriously ooey gooey) and then last night I think the boys had steak. I got home about 10:30 pm after a long day at the arts center: Drank the leftover champagne while making capellini with mushrooms, green onions, green beans with a wine and chevre sauce. Also there was our current house favorite, Veramonte SB.

Are we in an alternate universe?...

Something, very odd, must be going on if Cuzzin "M" is the only one posting...

At any rate, mushroom encrusted Chilean Sea Bass, truffled mash potatoes, and asparagus accompanied by a glass of Silver Oak chardonnay( from the coolest looking wine refrig/cellar I have ever seen). If anyone wants any of the recipes, I'll be happy to ask the chef...at the BAYSIDE Restaurant....business dinner to which I was invited.
I must go back sometime when I'm not playing the role of "corporate image" and take a picture of this round glass and stainless wine cooler. It was more fascinating than the wine list.

Hmmm, nobody talking out there reminds me of a joke about Snow White and the 7 dwarfs. I'll have to decide if this "blog crowd" is the appropriate group for this LOL...
I'll keep you posted!

Starting the New Year on the right "fork"

Happy New year to all! I'm sorry to have been an absent Blogger for the last few weeks, but I have made my #1 New Year's resolution to be much better at posting...and we all know how successful I am with my annual diet resolution !!
New Year's Eve was spent with dear friends, a standing rib roast, roast rice,baby peas and the most divine chocolate gelato ("JFB") ever tasted(agreed by the 4 of us) served in almond tuille cookie cups which was a twice recurring theme this Holiday season. We started with a triple creme brie, saga blue, and a fois grois pate`. Appetizers were accompanied by a fabulous Tattingers and dinner with a '81 Paulliac. It was a divine evening. The West Coast is a great place for "aldecockers( Yiddush for ChuckBecker) especially on New Years eve....you tape the ball dropping at Times Square at 9pm PST and you get to make midnight whenever you get sleepy...
Roast Rice is a recipe of my mom's(alev shalom) and I don't remember if she made it up or got it from a friend, but the last step gives the rice a crunchy yummy texture.Interesting factoid,however, is they trim the meat so closely these days and who knows what they feed these cows, I'm finding it difficult to get enough fat and jus to make this dish. I'm happy to send the recipe if anyone is interested.
New Years Day is always one my favorite days of the year...I spend it clearing the house of all sugar and calorie laden treats that have been bestowed upon us during the season. I do this by layering them onto my hips where they have lived for years( yes, despite my repeated resolutions). What a tasty day!
We still have some roast beef , so I suspect I will make roast beef hash (Thanks, Hunter) for dinner tonight. Hash is one of Chuck's favorite dishes.

Christmas Day/dinner we spent with friends in Redondo. Brian made an incredible Osso Buco, and I mention it because I was thinking about Aunt Grace(alev shalom) because if I remember correctly that was one of her "favs"...I toasted her anyway even if I don't remember correctly.
And, you know I don't remember what wine we drank...such a shonda on John and Nancy's Blog...We have spent the last 8 or 9 Christmas dinners with these friends and the drill is Brian cooks dinner, we bring the wine and dessert. This year I made the aforementioned cookie cups
and filled them with the most unbelievable Caramel gelato...again agreed by all.

The time in between was filled with the most delicious Strawberry gelato , Pistachio gelato and Black Rasberry sorbetto...you would not believe the intensity of flavor this dessert possessed.
I think I cooked some food to go with it but it hardly seems important.

Happy New Year!

Our plan was to spend the evening with old friends we seldom see, to make a Gorgonzola Cheesecake appetizer and bring a nice bottle of bubbly.

Instead (calling to decline at the last minute), I went to the store and bought NY steaks, mushrooms, fabulous green beans (there was spargle there in the bin next to the beans and I was sorely tempted) and some lettuce & a nice tomato.

Working backward, made a nice bleu cheese salad dressing (recipe from the Deborah Madison Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, a swell book), a tossed green salad of romaine and tomatoes. Popped oven fries ala Nicole (from another truly swell, and if you don't have this order it now cookbook Joie de Vivre: Simple French Style for Everyday Living) into the oven, cleaned the green beans, and in a nod to the festive nature of the day, actually tournéed two of the mushrooms. Slice the rest up and sauteed them with garlic and green onions.

Begin sautéeing the steaks by heating the pan up pretty well, and then fry the fat sides first to get a little of the beef fat in the pan. Then add some butter, salt and pepper the steaks and fry gently for about 10 minutes on a side. Add more butter. Put the two tourneed mushrooms in the pan face down to get pretty. Remove the steaks (and the mushrooms) and let them rest while adding some of the excellent red wine and a splash of brandy to deglaze the pan and make a nice sauce. Nap the steaks with the sauce and garnish with the carved mushrooms, put the sliced mushrooms and the green beans together, pull the oven fries out, toss the salad with the dressing, include a sweet and perfect Bosc pear, light the candles. Served with Allegrini Palazzo della Torre. Reflections on staying home for the evening, the past year, and how it seems as though we entertained more than in the past. Could lack of children have anything to do with that?

A nice glass of Nicholas Feuillatte to toast the New Year in Deleware and in bed, sound asleep by 8:30.

Up at 8:30 this morning preparing Hoppin' John for good luck for 2008.

Our best wishes to all of you, and if you are in the neighborhood today, drop in.