Summer Showers (and Salads)

I'm snug in my apartment listening to the first real thunderstorm of the season. The neighbor's daughter must be having a sleepover because every time the thunder booms, I hear a chorus of screaming followed by giggling and loud protestations of having been the scaredy-cat who initiate the screaming.

The hours at the noodle factory have been long lately this being our annual Busy Bee Season, leaving me too drained and uninspired when I get home to do much more than heat up a twice-baked potato (made en masse a few weekends ago and frozen in anticipation of my post-work zombie state). But the weather has been struggling to be summer lately and I've been craving pasta salad. So today, I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to have my salad tonight. Darnit.

The irony is that it seems pretty hellish and high-watery outside right now (queue girly screaming). But I've got my pasta salad!

Summer-at-Last Pasta Salad

1 bag tortellini--any type, cooked, drained and cooled.
1 yellow onion--coarsely chopped and sauteed (Feel free to leave raw--I just don't like raw onion very much and the slightly caramelized sauteed onion here makes a nice compliment to the flavors)
3-5 cloves garlic--coarsely chopped and sauteed with the onion
1 red pepper--chopped
a few stalks of celery--chopped
a handful of fresh basil--coarsely chopped
half a tube of goat cheese (any kind)--crumbled
3 tablespoons dressing
2 teaspoons sea salt

Combine in bowl. Serve over greens (hopefully yours haven't been sitting in your fridge for two weeks waiting patiently for me to cook this meal and are a little less grumpy than mine). Consume with gusto. Nice. And. Simple.

For the tortellini, I used Trader Joe's artichoke tortellini, and for the goat cheese, I used the recently-discovered Trader Joe's low-fat goat cheese. It's really quite edible! It's distinctly goat cheese and best when used in combination with other things--like this salad or pizza. I don't know that it would stand on its own, unless you mixed in some herbs. Mmm...that's an idea. Oh, P.S. in retrospect, a stronger cheese would do better in this salad--a blue cheese or Roquefort or other stinky cheese.

And for the dressing, I used Maple Grove Farm's Lime-Basil Vinaigrette--my mom hooked me on this line of dressing. Most of the flavors are fat-free and really quite good. I tend to not like the oily, greasy dressings in typical offering, and the Maple Grove dressings are somehow both light tasting while still coating all the little bits and pieces in your salad. Score!

This Stella Italia Pinot Grigio is destined to become my Summer 2007 Refreshment of Choice. It's light and floral with a very distinct flavor of honey. But not a cloying honey, just...like the whiff of honey you get while spooning it over your strawberries. The finish is apple-crisp and altogether satisfying. It goes well with any course--salad (obviously), fish, a light dessert. And if that weren't enough, it's $6.99 at Trader Joe's. I'm sold.

Thunder moving off. Salad finished. Sleepover moved on to a movie (hopefully not a scary one). Time for little Emma to think about another helping of salad.

Wine: 2003 Mountain River Pinotage/Shiraz

2003 Mountain River Pinotage/Shiraz from South Africa ($7.99 at Trader Joe's)

I first had this wine back at our Cross-Atlantic Holiday Festivus and liked it so much that I wanted to try it again when I had a chance to really pay attention to what I was drinking. At the time of the party, the wine steward at Trader Joe's had recommended it because he felt it would pair well with the highly-spiced Portuguese and Brazilian dishes we were serving. In my vague recollections of the evening, I remember being surprised at the strength of the wine--it wasn't a bad pairing with my food, just unexpected. This time around, I'm trying the wine by itself, unpaired with any food.

In the glass: Dark and completely opaque. Ruby-lit highlights when you hold the glass up to the light

Scent: This wine smells strongly of fermentation and slightly musty--like walking through forest with a thick ground covering right before it rains. There is a definite perfume of dark berries (blackberry, cherry, and maybe currant?). The scent is powerful and forceful--even with my glass sitting next to my computer about a foot away from my nose, I can still catch a whiff of berry and pleasant mold.

Taste: Heavy and rich, almost "thick" tasting. More of that mustiness in the taste as well--I think immediately of rich cheeses like blue cheese, gorgonzola, and roquefort. It's not an unpleasant taste, but not always one I'd want in a sipping wine. The individual berry flavors aren't as prevalent in the taste as in the smell, but the effect is still fruity. Very smooth, not a lot of tannins (that puckery flavor present in a lot of younger wines). The overall taste is quite bold. It really coats the entire tongue uniformally. There's no spiciness--it really "sits" on the tongue and lingers a long time after you swallow a mouthful.

Pairings and Culinary Uses: This would likely be a great wine to use in cooking--a nice tomato sauce, beef stew, glazes for steak and lamb. Might also be pleasant as mulled wine or sangria. I've also been reading a lot lately about making your own red wine vinegar, and it would be interesting to see this wine become vinegar and then to use it in a dressing for a salad with gorgonzola and walnuts.

I don't think I would often drink this on its own--it seems like a wine that's meant to be paired with food. However, it might be too heavy to go with the main course itself and would tend overshadow a meat-centered dish (like steak) rather than enhance it. If you want to pair it with dinner, go for highly spiced foods like Mexican or even Indian. I think this wine would be best drunk as an after-dinner wine. It would be fantastic with a cheese course or a dairy-based dessert like cheesecake, creme brulee, or custard where the flavors between the food and the wine would have a chance to play off each other and mingle.

Overall, I really like this wine. It's bold flavor is unexpected and incredibly balanced for an under-$10 bottle of wine! Because its flavor pairings aren't as versatile, it really inspires me to think of dishes it really would pair well with. It also makes me crave cheese, and cheese is always a good thing in my book.

Food: Holiday Festivus with Emma and the Engineer

On Christmas Eve at the abode of Emma n' the Engineer and with many friends in attendance, a festivus was had and, yay verily yay, it was good. This was the first Big Production meal I have ever prepared, and I was a bit nervous. We're talking appetizers, side dishes, main dishes, vegetarian dishes, drinks, and (of course) dessert. With the day itself looming on the horizon, I suddenly realized that pulling this whole thing off was going to require some Planning and Preparation. My list-making, organization-obsessed, multi-tasking little heart was filled with glee. Keep in mind that this is the same little heart that spent whole afternoons as a child organizing and then reorganizing the desk in her room, and who looked forward to buying school supplies every Fall nearly as much as she looked forward to Christmas.

My good friend R. and I had a grand time coming up with the menu. After much trolling of the Internet and a smattering of ideas thrown back and forth, we decided on a Cross-Atlantic Portuguese-Brazilian Dinner. Here was our final menu (click on the name of the dish to link to the recipe):

DRINKS:

• Caipirinha
• Quentao
• A Portuguese or Brazilian Wine
  

STARTER/SIDES:

• Green Beans with Coriander and Garlic
• Empanadas-- vegetarian (with hearts of palm)--I came up with my own recipe for this, loosely based on THIS recipe and also THIS one, and THIS dough recipe. I'll do a separate post about the empanadas cuz they were quite an...adventure to make, shall we say.
  
• Broa (Portuguese Cornmeal Farm Bread)

MAIN:

• Portuguese Potato Dumpling Soup (with Kale)-- vegetarian
• Portuguese Style Poached Chicken (with Lime, Chili, and other South o' the Border Seasonings)--loosely based on THIS recipe.
  

DESSERTS:

• Custard Cups

Like a dufus, I had a few too many caipirinha's and "forgot" to take picture of a lot of the dishes, but here's the run down of how the food part of the night went down and a few pictures of the pictures I remembered to take.

Drinks: The caipirinhas were FIERCE. Wowzas, did they knock your socks off. It wasn't until R. was actually preparing them that we fully realized that the drink is essentially all cachaca, a Brazilian brandy made from sugar cane, with a little sugar and lime thrown in there to take the edge off. Barely. We ended up adding a good dose of Fresca (classy!) to the drinks to make them a bit more drinkable. Even so, we all agreed that caipirinhas brought back ever-so-fond memories of Spring Break beach parties.

We had the quentaos after dinner as we reclined around the living room in various states of comatose. This is a drink that I would definitely have again--the spices are very similar to mulled wine (red wine is actually an ingredient in some variations) with some of that lovely cachaca. Also like mulled wine, it's served warm and would be quite nice for a cozy winter afternoon on the couch. I imagine a mug of this would also be an excellent antidote to insomnia, or at the very least you wouldn't mind being awake at 2:00 in the morning as much after you've had a few healthy gulps.

Ironically, we ended up drinking a South African wine with dinner--Mountain River 2003 Pinotage/Shiraz, a whooping $7.99 at Trader Joe's. While I was looking for Portuguese wines, I overheard another customer asking the wine steward for recommendations for a dinner of enchiladas and other South American dishes. The wine steward recommended this wine with such a glowing review that I had to try it. The wine was a deep red and very full-bodied. It had a deep, mellow flavor with just a touch of spice that really did pair well with all the flavors in the meal, but also didn't overshadow the food. I did find one bottle of a Portuguese wine, but we didn't end up opening it at the party--did I mention that the capirinhas were FIERCE?

Starters/Sides: The green beans were nothing super special. Blanched green beans drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with garlic and coriander. The recipe says to serve these cold or room temperature after having marinated for a day, but I didn't get my act together in time and also for some reason the idea of cold green beans with this particular meal didn't feel right to me, so I served them warm. (By the way, coriander was the surprise spice of the meal for me. I've never really cooked with coriander, but really liked it in the empanadas and the soup.)

The empanadas were a big hit. I'll do a separate post on them in another day or so and describe the whole preparation process. They're essentially little pasties or turnovers--a savory filling in a pie crust. I made them the week before the party, froze them, and then baked them right before dinner. The picture here is of an empanada right before I baked them. I really wish I'd remembered to take a picture after they came out of the oven--they were all crisp and golden, the kind of food that makes your mouth water just looking at them. The crust turned out well--nice and flaky, buttery and crisp. For the filling, I used onion, plum tomatoes, hearts of palm, corn, tomato paste, and spices (cayenne, chili powder, cumin, coriander, salt). The prep work is a lot of trouble, but it was really worth it. I think my guests and I would have been happy with just a plateful of these little empanadas!

The broa was kind of a disappointment for me, I have to admit. It's a cornmeal bread, so I knew it would be pretty dense and probably wouldn't rise like a regular wheat loaf, but I imagined the bread to be moist, crumbly, and springy like southern-style cornbread. Instead the loaf was more like a hockey puck--dry and dense. Sliced thin and spread with butter, the bread was decent, but I was still let down. I'm not sure if I didn't something wrong or if this is just the way the bread was supposed to be. I did a lot of searching on the Internet and found lots of recipes but few descriptions of how the final loaf was supposed to look, feel, and taste. From the pictures I found, I think the loaf is supposed to be rather flat (like mine turned out) but not quite as dense. More like a country hearth loaf than corn bread. I could probably figure out a better loaf if I had the urge, but I'm not a huge fan of cornmeal, so this will probably remain an unsolved baking mystery. By the way, I have an entire loaf and a half frozen in my freezer, so if you're still curious to try this bread despite my description, let me know and the loafs are yours!

Main: Poaching chicken is my new favorite thing. I do it in my slow cooker and it comes out perfect every time. (OK, it's come out perfectly all two times that I've done it.) The meat is moist, flavored throughout, and literally falls off the bone. For this chicken, I prepared a marinade using THIS recipe from the Boston restaurant Chez Henri, only substituting 1 tablespoon of chili powder, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of garam masala, and 1/4 tsp of cayenne in place of the achiote powder. (Achiote powder is a kind of sweet South American spice similar to chili powder--I couldn't find it in bulk at our co-op and didn't want to cough up the dough to buy a whole jar at the grocery store.) Instead of roasting the chicken as in the recipe, I poached it in the slow cooker with about a half cup of chicken broth, a few shots of soy sauce, lime juice, several whole quarters of limes, and a head of garlic with the cloves separated. Mmm, mmm, good. (P.S. I'm also planning another post on poaching whole chickens, but let me know if you want more detailed instructions before then.)

The only error in my otherwise well-timed meal prep was the time I allotted for preparing the potato dumplings for the potato dumpling soup. I plum forgot how gosh-darn long it takes for large potatoes to cook through when you're boiling them. (The thirty minutes suggested in the recipe was NOT enough for my potatoes, by the by. I probably would have been better boiling them for 45 minutes or so.) By this point in the evening, our friends were starting to arrive and I was feeling a bit frazzled. I thought I could make do with slightly undercooked potatoes, but it turns out that undercooked potatoes don't mash very well or even take very kindly to being mashed at all. Ah, well. So we ended up having Portuguese Half-Pureed, Half-Chunky Potato Soup instead. And it was delicious. The broth was light, pleasantly starchy, and well-flavored with garlic, salt, and coriander. I'm used to loading my soups up with all the veggies in my fridge, so I had to really exercise restraint on this one. I stuck with my recipe and only used onions, green onions, and kale...oh, and the potatoes, of course. I've never cooked with kale before and was at first a bit intimidated by the mounds of leafy greenness taking up half my counter space. Like spinach, I stripped the leaves from the woody stalks, rolled them lengthwise a handful at a time into a long cigar-shape, and cut cross sections about an inch thick. This gives you ribbons of kale about the length of your hand and as wide as a finger. It looks like a LOT of leafy greenness, but once you submerge it in the broth, the greens wilt down into a more reasonably-sized state. I thought the kale was a bit rubbery, like seaweed, but this was not unpleasant. It was actually very satisfying to have something with a bit of chew in every bite. The bitterness of the kale also balanced well with the relative sweetness of the broth and the onions, and the whole soup was warm and filling. (In retrospect, I think I would have cut the kale into smaller, postage-stamp-sized pieces instead of the ribbons. Pieces this size would be less cumbersome when spooning the soup into your mouth.)

Dessert: And last but not least, the custard cups. These were so good that a lot of us burned our mouths rather than wait for them to cool completely. The puff pastry made a crisp and buttery cup for the custard. (FYI, I decided to leave-off making my own puff pastry for another dining adventure, so I got a little help from my friends at Pepperidge Farm for this one.) The custard was smooth and creamy, flavored with vanilla and a hint of lemon. This was my first time making custard, and I definitely recommend THIS recipe for anyone else out there looking for something new to serve. You can also caramelize the tops under the broiler or with a brulee torch for an added bit of elegance.

Since the Engineer and I were leaving for holidays in Minnesota the day after our party, our lovely friends reaped the reward of what leftovers there were. To everyone that came to the party, we were so happy to see you and spend time with you during the holidays. And to everyone else near and far, if you ever find yourself in Boston on Christmas Eve, feel free to stop by--we'll be here cooking up something fabulous!

Cooking: Extending Your Wine Knowledge

-->If you're curious about all the different kinds of wine, how wines are made, what goes into a 'vintage' and all that general wine-knowledge, check out this article on Epicurious:

http://www.epicurious.com/drinking/wine/ewg/step3

The article gives a good overview to the whole wine scene and a good jumping off point for learning more.

-->And here is a fun photo-essay of wine-making from crush to barrel at Chow.com:

http://www.chow.com/stories/10183#

This photo essay is light on the actual facts, but it's fun to put a visual image with all the vocab words like "lees" and "steel fermenters"!

Cooking: Plonk Wines

I just discovered that the Boston Globe has a column devoted to the best plonk of the month. The explanation of the column from their website:

"This is a monthly column on $10-and-under wines we call "plonk," which began as British slang for the cheapest drink served, and is now widely used to mean simple, inexpensive bottles. "Plonk of the month" appears on the last Wednesday of the month and is posted on Boston.com.

Wines are selected to go with the season, so winter's heartier fare might lean more toward reds, but whites appear more often as the weather warms. We list several shops where you can buy these bottles, but check with your local merchant."

Here's the link to this month's column: http://www.boston.com/ae/food/gallery/plonk_september/, as well as a backlisting of their columns for the last few months. The Globe has also recently published an article entitled "Plonkapalooza" wherein they tasted 50 wines sold for around $10 or less per bottle and chose their favorite top 10: http://www.boston.com/ae/food/articles/2006/10/25/plonkapalooza/. Three cheers for good wine on the cheap!

Cooking: Red Truck Wine

I don't think anyone would ever confuse me for a 'picky' wine drinker. Only once can I remember loathing a bottle so much that I actually poured it down the drain: a particularly atrocious and vinegary red that I couldn't even bear to use in tomato sauce. Occasionally I find myself present at a dinner where a sample of some $50+ bottle of wine finds its way into my glass. (Yay verily, it is good to know folks with expense accounts. Yay.) But really, I'm quite happy sticking to the top half (ok, top quarter) of the wine list, and I find myself pretty happy with everything in that range. For reds, I like syrahs, Chiantis, and Merlot. For whites, I go for pinot grigio and pinot gris. My standby red is Yellow Tale Shiraz (retails at about $7), and my go-to white is Grigio Luna (retails at about $5.50). In my opinion, these are good, solid, dependable wines that are always good in a pinch.

But then a few weeks ago, something happened that caused my hand pause, hovering uncertainly, on its familiar course toward the Yellow Tail and my eye wander nervously toward the rows of neighboring wines. I had come across a blog called "The Cellar Rat" by Alan Baker: a blog discussing all things wine-related wherein he finds nothing shameful in picking from the top of the wine list and enjoying a bottle for $10. He says as long as you enjoy it, drink it. On his blog and in his podcasts*, he documents his exploration of the wine-making industry from the vine to the bottle. Baker worked in broadcasting in Minnesota for years, and then about two years ago, decided he was in need of a life change and moved to California wine country to explore the wild and gnarly world of wine making. He worked at a vineyard for a season and is currently experimenting with bottling his own "Rat Cellar" wine. His blog and podcasts include everything from explanations of the wine making process and wine vocab for the layman, coverage of local wine-tasting events, interviews with wine-makers, and of course his own opinions on various wines. Baker's blog (with links to his podcasts) is http://www.cellarrat.org (or click HERE). Since I started listening to his podcasts, I feel like I've been given permission to go forth and sample, dismissing that which is gross, and happily collecting that which I like.

On a recent trek to Trader Joe's, I picked up a bottle of Red Truck 2004 California Red Wine for $7.99. I'd heard this wine recommended a few times over on Chowhound.com, but hadn't tried it because I'd previously assumed that blended-grape wines were "uncool." I have no idea where I got that impression, but with my new found, Cellar Rat-inspired confidence, I didn't even hesitate before putting a bottle in my cart. Now, I'll tell ya, rarely do I open a bottle of wine, take a sip, and actually stop to say, "Wow." This stuff was good! It's a blended Syrah, Petite Syrah, Cabernet Franc, and Mourvedre. It's dark and berried, but with none of the bite or acidity that I tend to associate with many dark red wines. This is a wine meant to be drunk from a tea cup and is perfect for an evening wrapped in a blanket with a good book. It would likely pair well with red meat, spicy foods, and a chocolate dessert, though I unabashedly admit that I've been drinking it by itself all evening!

I like this new freedom of wine choice. I'm hooked now, I'm afraid. What to do but sample more wine?

*If you're asking yourself, "Podcasts? What the heck are podcasts?" you're not alone. Apparently these things have been around for the past several years, but who knew? I've only discovered them recently myself and am still trying to master all the Cool Kid Slang so that I don't sound like a big McDork when I talk to all the Cool Kids. Essentially (and as far as I can tell), podcasts are radio shows that you can download to your computer or mp3 player and listen to whenever you feel like it. They're generally free and, much like websites and blogs, anyone and your mother can produce one and make it available for downloading with some basic electronic equipment. Check out the National Public Radio website (click HERE) and the New York Times website (click HERE) for some nationally syndicated ones.