My Favorites

Last night we had dinner at Revolution, a fairly new restaurant here in Durham, NC. It’s been fun to watch the restaurant scene expand here over the last few years, and this place is one that people have been eagerly anticipating the opening of for quite some time. Usually, I like to focus my food and wine pairing posts on meals that I have at home, as I think what you eat and drink every day is what should get the most attention. However, that being said, every once in a while I have a restaurant experience that I think is worth blogging about, and last night was one of those times.
I’ll start with the food. The menu was very interesting, with lots of dishes composed of unusual and creative combinations. As there were four of us having dinner, the meals that were ordered were fairly diverse, although two of us did opt for the same entrée. Bill and I decided to share an appetizer of thinly shaved parma ham served with a side salad of arugula, parmesan cheese, almonds and hints of orange. For our main courses, Bill’s Dad, Tony, ordered the salmon which was grilled and served over a bed of lentils. Bill chose the scallops which were served with a side of goat cheese and diced potatoes, which as I type this sounds sort of strange, but was actually really delicious. Bill’s Aunt Barbara and I both opted for the pork chop served atop a bed of tomatoes, onions and sweet potatoes. Again, the combination of the sweet potatoes and the tomatoes sounds a bit odd, but it was extremely tasty, with the acidity of the tomatoes cutting through some of the sweetness of the sweet potatoes.
Now I will say that the entrees we ordered were not the most challenging food and wine pairings I’ve ever had to deal with, but they certainly were a bit tricky. You’ve got pork, seafood and shellfish, not to mention the strong flavors of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and goat cheese to balance.
So what did I do? Well, the wine list presented a bit of a challenge. It was a bit on the short side, but there were some very interesting wines. However, given our mix of meals, there were really only 3 or 4 that fit the bill. Add to that that there was a request for the wine to be white, and my options went to 2, although in hindsight, after tasting all of the dishes, I do think that a white was the way to go – the tomatoes/sweet potato combo would have been an issue for the Pinot Noir I was thinking about as a red option. After a few minutes of deliberation, I selected a 2007 Albert Mann Pinot Blanc from Alsace.

The wine was delicious, and exceptionally versatile. I’ve often found that Pinot Blanc is a wonderful wine for restaurant meals. It is capable of going with such a wide range of foods and spices and can be perfect for any number of different cuisines. Pinot Blanc has a touch of floral character, notes of melons and pears and can sometimes show a slight hint of nuttiness. It is more often than not well balanced in terms of alcohol and acidity and is a great wine to pair with any number of different seafood dishes.
The Albert Mann Pinot Blanc was very well balanced with notes of honeysuckle, pear, melon and a trace of nuttiness. It went with all of the different entrees on the table, including the appetizer. It is closed with a screw cap, which I find tends to be a plus for many white wines, although I do think that more wine servers need to be taught the easy way to open bottles with screw caps – too many of them struggle a bit because they hold the bottle and the very top instead of firmly grasping the neck and the cap and twisting in opposite directions – but that’s another blog entry altogether!
So if you happen to be in Durham anytime, I recommend checking out Revolution, and whether it is at that restaurant, or any other – when you find yourself in a tricky pairing situation, check to see if there are any Pinot Blancs from Alsace on the menu. This is one heck of a versatile grape that, more often than not, will prove to be a winning choice for pairing with a variety of foods.

Welcome to 2009!

Sorry for the delay in getting some new posts up, we have had a server move and so things are just getting back to normal here. I hope that everyone had a great holiday and that your year has started off well.
But before we talk about the future, I thought I would send you back into the past. A few months ago I recorded a segment with a dear friend of mine, Philipe Newlin, for Devour.tv. We did a fun food and wine pairing with the chef from Brasserie, a wonderful restaurant in New York. Chef Luc Dimnet made a great venison stew (if I could make venison taste like his stew, I’d consider making it) and I got to choose the wines. The video is up on Devour and I thought you all might get a kick out of it.

I hope you enjoy the episode and let me know what you think!

Even though we didn’t host Thanksgiving, I went ahead last week and cooked a giant turkey just so I could have the leftovers. I love to make my own stock and I figured that a big turkey could provide us with a number of different meals. One of our favorite leftover turkey dishes is turkey tetrazzini.

Although it sounds like it might be an Italian dish, the theory is actually that the recipe for turkey tetrazzini originated in San Francisco. Supposedly, it was named to honor an opera singer named Luisa Tetrazzini (1875-1940), who lived there.

Regardless of where it comes from, it is a popular dish in our house, and with so much left-over turkey, it was a perfect choice for dinner the other night. I use the Cooks Illustrated version, but you can find a lot of variations on the web if you are interested in finding a recipe for yourself. Essentially it is turkey, noodles, mushrooms, onions and peas baked in a cream sauce – sounds good, right? My version calls for a lot of parmesan cheese and a toasted breadcrumb topping that I find keeps the dish from getting bland and mushy.

As I made the turkey tetrazzini (Peter really enjoyed saying this out loud, by the way), my thoughts naturally turned to wine and I did a mental run-down of what I have in the cellar at the moment. I decided that I was in the mood for a white wine. We had paired the turkey with a red wine a few days before and while it was delicious, I felt like trying something completely different. So I selected a bottled of the Jean-François Mérieau, Sauvignon de Touraine, “l’Arpent des Vaudons” to serve with the turkey tetrazzini.

While I was a bit apprehensive that the Sauvignon Blanc might be too aggressive for the cream sauce, the combination was actually quite good. The earthy flavors from the mushrooms and the turkey balanced the fruitiness of the wine and the nice acidity on the Sauvignon Blanc was a good counterpart to the cream sauce. The wine seemed to brighten up the dish a bit and it made for a very refreshing match. I think I could have also paired this with a Pinot Blanc, a Chardonnay or even a Pinot Noir with great success, as this is a pretty wine-friendly meal. But there is something so lively and fresh about Sauvignon Blanc that it always makes a meal fun. And given this particular dish, it somehow seemed an apropos choice.

I had a bit of a hectic but fun week last week with wine events in both New York (blustery and 45 degrees) and Los Angeles (sunny and 78 degrees). The events were luncheons for folks in the wine trade (press, restaurants, retailers, distributors, etc) and offered a unique opportunity for me to see how two very different chefs paired wines selected from my list of top picks with some of their favorite dishes. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the pairing highlights with you.

The lunch in New York was at Bar Q, a fantastic place in the West Village that features Asian-style barbecue with a little bit of a French twist. The chef, Anita Lo, is exceptionally talented and innovative and it was both tasty and fun to see what she created. Each course was delicious, but there were two that really stood out. The first was a Spit Roasted Berkshire Pork Belly with Kimchee, Takuan and Steamed Buns. The pork was paired with the Le Loup Blanc La Mère Grand 2004 from the Minervois and also with the Château de La Chaize 2006 from Brouilly (one of the crus in Beaujolais). The combination of sweet and spicy flavors was really interesting with the two wines. The La Mère Grand was a bit fruitier than the earthy Château de La Chaize, but both wines worked with the course and balanced the exotic flavors of the pork beautifully.

My other favorite course (besides dessert, naturally) was a delicious Grilled Shortrib with Korean Flavors that was paired with the Marc Kreydenweiss Perrières 2005 from Costières de Nîmes and with the Christian Moueix 2005 Saint-Émilion. Again, both wines showed nicely with the dish, although I, personally, thought that the pepper and spice from the Kreydenweiss made for a slightly better pairing with the shortrib. But when I asked for a show of hands as to who preferred which wine with the shortrib, the room was pretty evenly divided.

Two days after the New York lunch, it was on to LA where the luncheon was held at a very cool place called Palate Food + Wine .
Palate is not only a restaurant – it is also a wine merchant (I ended up buying a bunch of wine before I left), a cheese cellar, a tasting bar and a lounge. Chef Octavio Becerra prepared a wonderful meal for us that featured lots of fresh, local ingredients. My favorite course was a Pork Tenderloin with grits & apple compote that was paired with 2 wines: the 2006 Domaine Le Peu de La Moriette Vouvray and the Lucien Albrecht, Crémant d’Alsace, Brut Rosé. The dish was superb – I loved the combination of flavors and textures and the apples were cooked perfectly. Both wines were sensational and I loved how the pairing worked both with an off-dry Chenin Blanc and a dry sparkling rosé.

Dessert was also terrific with a Valrhona spiced pumpkin tart paired with the Moët & Chandon White Star Champagne and the 2003 Castelnau de Suduiraut Sauternes. The combination of the pumpkin tart and the Sauternes was sooooooo good – I made a mental note to make sure that I serve the Castelnau de Suduiraut with my pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

 All in all, a busy (but delicious) week. Of course this week is all about payback – lots of laundry, catching up on email and of course, trying to get in a few workouts to make up for all of the great food and wine of last week. But it was definitely worth it!

The other day I had the pleasure of lunching with Ray Isle, who is the Deputy Wine Editor at Food & Wine magazine. I’m a fan of Ray’s work and his musings on his Food & Wine Magazine Blog, so it was a lot of fun to have a chance to sit and chat.

We had lunch at a great new restaurant in NY called Allegretti. The food was delicious and the staff exceedingly friendly. Ray and I both had the Autumn Salad with assorted greens, anjou pear, gamonedo cheese, candied walnuts and a white balsamic walnut vinaigrette and for a main course, I choose a roasted chicken while Ray went with the lamb shank. I had brought along a few wines from my list for us to taste with lunch and we also decided we would select one wine from the restaurant’s list. The list has a great selection of French wines and they range from the very affordable to the super-duper-supreme-special occasion wine.

Given our mix of lamb and chicken, we settled on the 2004 Domaine Gauby “Vieilles Vignes” Cotes de Roussillon Villages. Domaine Gauby is a biodynamic producer and I had recently read some very interesting things about them in Monty Waldin’s outstanding book, Biodynamic Wines. The wine was, in a word, delicious. A blend of Grenache, Carignan, Mourvèdre and Syrah, it showed notes of violets, black fruits and minerals. The wine was elegant and balanced with juicy acidity and it went beautifully with both my chicken dish as well as the cheeses we sampled for “dessert.” I was so impressed it was all I could do not to take the rest of the bottle home with me…

But the biggest thing that stood out about the Domaine Gauby was that it was served at the right temperature. I’ve talked a lot about this on the blog before – about how we tend to drink our whites too cold and our reds too warm. This red, which was probably served at somewhere around 60 degrees, was perfect. The coolness enhanced the minerality and the acidity of the wine and made it seem more refreshing than any of the other wines we had on the table. Two of the wines I had brought along were some of my favorites on the list, but when served next to the Gauby, they seemed a bit too hot and dull.

My hat is off to Allegretti not only for a lovely lunch, but also for serving its red wines at the right temperature. This was a very good reminder to me of just how important serving temperature really truly is. If you have a chance, at your next get-together, I encourage you to try sampling the same red wine served at two different temperatures. Try opening one bottle that has been out on your kitchen counter all day long and the other that you have chilled in the fridge for 20 – 25 minutes prior to opening. See if you taste a difference between the two wines and be sure and let me know which wine tastes better to you. I’ll be waiting to hear from you!

Rushing through the grocery store yesterday, I happened to spy a bottle of the 2007 Louis Jadot Mâcon-Villages on the shelf. I’ve always enjoyed the Jadot wines and find them to be a pretty good value, so I was very interested to taste the new vintage of the Macon-Villages.

I am finally just about all set up in the new kitchen, so I will admit I did entertain a few brief fantasies about cooking some sort of elaborate meal to pair with the wine. However, one thing after another seemed to crop up last night and suddenly it was after 8 and dinner was not even close to being ready.

So, we decided to simplify the menu and grill some chicken breasts seasoned with salt, pepper, mustard, white wine vinegar and olive oil. I made a small salad of mixed greens, cucumbers and toasted pecans and threw together a simple vinaigrette. In the mood for something else, I used the leftover canned diced tomatoes and mozzarella that I had used when making Peter’s dinner and added them to some orzo (chosen because it takes only about 10 minutes to make). I worried slightly that the tomatoes might not pair so well with the Chardonnay, but I figured it might be worth a shot.

Haphazardly planned as it was, our “quick to the table” dinner was actually very tasty. I had added some walnut oil to the salad dressing and the nuttiness was delicious with the chicken. The wine had a bright citrus and green apple note to it that balanced the oil and enhanced the flavor of the chicken. The orzo, while very tasty, was an ok pairing with the wine. I would have probably been better off if I had added in some different seasonings, but all in all, the wine did stand up to the tomatoes better than I thought it would. The bright acidity of the wine and the tangy nature of the tomatoes when combined with the chicken and the salad made for a very pleasurable mix of flavors.

So keep an eye out for the Jadot Mâcon-Villages 2007 – it is a very food friendly and enjoyable wine and, as evidenced by my meal, a wine that can pair well with almost anything you can throw together in the kitchen!

Well, here it is. The last weekend of summer. I almost can’t believe it. In some ways, I am sad to see summer end – since I was a kid I have loved the opportunities of the warmer months: swimming, growing a garden, wandering through the farmers’ markets or enjoying a baseball game. At the same time, I’ve always found the fall exciting. The nip in the air, the excitement of football, Halloween and yes, even the start of the new school year. But before we head into September, I thought it would be fitting to end with a fun-filled cookout, complete with hot dogs, hamburgers and sausages and of course, potato salad, baked beans and a blueberry pie. So we invited a few people over for a Saturday night summertime grilling party.

And to serve alongside all of these different grilled meats? Well, since this is my goodbye to summer party, I felt that it was fitting to choose the two rosés that are featured this week as the Wines of the Week. I always love to surprise my guests with rosé wines. I’ve found time and time again that when you serve pink wines, people automatically expect the wines to be sweet. There is always a look of surprise when they realize that French rosés are almost always dry. It was also interesting to present my guests with the opportunity to taste two different rosé wines. This way, they had an opportunity to compare and contrast these wines. Interestingly enough, by the end of the night, our guests were divided almost equally as to which of the two rosés (the L’Estandon and the Commanderie de Peyrassol) was the preferred wine. But what they all agreed on was how delicious and refreshing dry rosé wines can be.

As I am a fan of both wines, my choice of rosé for the evening had to do with what I decided to eat. There was a large selection to choose from. One of our guests brought some sausages he had purchased at the farmers’ market and we supplied the hot dogs and hamburgers. I’ve always joked that one of the reasons I married my husband was because he makes such great hamburgers. In fact, we even refer to hamburgers as Billburgers in our house. He adds several different spices, some garlic, a splash of soy sauce and a little bit of Worcestershire sauce and then shapes each patty in an elaborate ritual that our son likes to imitate.

With its slight touch of tannins, I found that the Commanderie de Peyrassol paired very nicely with my hamburger. However, my husband, who loves sausages, felt that the L’Estandon was a better match with his dinner. Either way, there were definitely no losers – both wines showed well and we all enjoyed what will most likely be one of our last big summer cookouts. But with football season starting and holiday celebrations just around the corner, there are so many reasons for hosting get-togethers that I don’t think there will be enough time to miss summer too much!

Ps – I’d love to know if you have any special Fall celebrations you’d like to share. Drop me a line and fill me in!

Usually, the My Favorites section gives me a chance to discuss some of the food and wine pairings that we have at home (most of the time with food that I prepare). This week, I thought it might be fun to change things up a little bit. On Saturday night, Bill and I went out to dinner with several very close friends to a local Durham restaurant called Four Square.

Four Square is one of my favorite restaurants here in the Triangle – not just for the food, but for the ambiance as well. It is located in a beautiful old house that was built in 1908 and the owners have been able to retain many of the original architectural details. The food is always seasonally appropriate, creative and interesting and I love that the chef, Shane Ingram, makes an effort to use locally grown and raised ingredients.

As tomatoes are very much in season, most of us chose a first course that reflected that. Mine was an Heirloom Tomatoes & Burrata Cheese “salad” with field peas, balsamic-brown butter vinaigrette and grilled ciabbata bread. Other dishes our table ordered included a Local Romaine & Fig Salad with pole beans, garlic croutons and a green peppercorn-lemon dressing and a Sweet Corn & Green Zebra Tomato Chowder that contained beef sausage & cornbread “slider” and cayenne-green tomato chow chow.

To pair with all of these interesting ingredients, I chose the Henri Bourgeois La Chapelle des Augustins Sancerre 2005. Sauvignon Blanc, the white grape of Sancerre, is usually a great (and affordable) choice for a first course that contains a lot of diverse and bright flavors. The wine had distinctive notes of lemons, grass and flint to it, as well as a hint of the classic “cat’s pee on a gooseberry bush.” It was pretty balanced on the palate and almost seemed a slight bit short on acidity. However, once we paired the wine with our meal, the wine seemed to brighten up and it complimented my tomatoes beautifully.

For our main course, I selected a Lemon Brined Organic Chicken Breast with goat cheese spaetzle, chicken sausage, chanterelle mushrooms and cherry mostarda. Bill had the special, an eggplant lasagna dish that was unusual and tasty, while others at our table chose the Spicy Chiogga Beet & Red Kuri Squash Spring Roll with white asparagus, morel mushroom & buckwheat noodle salad and coconut-lemongrass broth. While a few opted to stay with the Sauvignon Blanc, some of us wanted to see how a red wine would go with our dishes. This choice proved a bit more difficult. I didn’t want a red that would overpower our meal, and I wanted to stay at an affordable price point. My goal was to choose a wine around the $50 mark. The Sancerre was $55, so I opted to go with a $45 Bourgogne Rouge. The Catherine and Claude Maréchal 2006 AC Bourgogne Rouge Cuvée Gravel was, for my palate, an outstanding buy. A touch earthy, with bright raspberry and cherry fruit, the wine was well-balanced and delicate with a fresh finish. It was terrific with my chicken – the lemony note of the chicken was balanced by the acidity of the wine and the mushrooms and sausage were enhanced by the wine’s slight hint of earth and spice.

As you could probably tell from the list of complex ingredients and unusual combinations, most of these dishes are not ones that I will be trying at home any time soon! However, I will certainly be on the lookout for the Maréchal Bourgogne and the Henri Bourgeois Sancerre. Given what I know about how well these wines do with some of my favorite restaurant foods, I will have to see what I can come up with in my own kitchen. And be sure to drop me a line and let me know if you have had a great (or even not-so-great) restaurant food and wine experience. I’d love to hear about it! Cheers!

All the talk about Beaujolais and the Gamay grape on the blog recently got me to thinking about a fun food pairing to try. Every once and a while, it starts to feel like we eat nothing but chicken, so at the grocery store the other day I spotted a pork tenderloin with a raspberry-chipotle marinade. Immediately it occurred to me that this would not only be a good change of pace for dinner, but it would be a great dish to try out with the Louis Jadot 2007 Beaujolais-Villages!

For the rest of the menu I decided to go with a mixture of flavors (both sweet and savory). For the sweeter side, I tossed some sweet potatoes with a mixture of olive oil, walnut oil, salt & pepper and a few spoonfuls of brown sugar. Our weekly visit to the farmer’s market had yielded a large number of tomatoes and cucumbers, so I made a tangy balsamic vinaigrette for a big salad and then added some mozzarella cheese for good measure.

It was a fantastic match. The wine was very grapey and full of strawberry fruit. But it also had notes of cinnamon and other spices and it worked beautifully with the fruity flavors of the pork. The soft tannins of the Beaujolais didn’t overpower the meat and the combination of the two was both flavorful and enjoyable. The addition of the sweet potatoes worked well both flavor- and texture- wise. With its fresh acidity, the wine seemed to “lighten” the pork and the sweet potatoes and it worked as a most enjoyable palate cleanser for the meal. It even went well with the salad!

For dessert I had made a blueberry and cherry cobbler and what was left in our glasses worked well with that, too. The range of flavors in the meal, as well as the combination of the savory and the sweet components, all married well with the wine. It demonstrated perfectly the wonderful versatility of, and pleasure to be had from, Beaujolais.

But I didn’t stop there. A bumper crop of basil, combined with an abundance of basil that was in our CSA box this week, convinced me that it was the right time for making pesto. So a few nights ago, with the help (sort of) of my 2 and a half year old, I made a batch of basil pesto. We had also received a bunch of different veggies in our CSA box, so it seemed like a good idea to sauté the veggies, make some pasta, toss it all together and serve up a pesto primavera for dinner. As we were setting the table I ran through my different wine options and I decided it would be fun to see how Gamay did with a pasta dish. For this meal I choose to open the Chateau de La Chaize, a Beaujolais from the Brouilly cru.

I was really pleased. The wine was a terrific match with the veggies and with the pesto. We had chilled the wine slightly, so the meal felt light and refreshing. The slight earthiness of the wine was balanced with the mixture of vegetables that we used for dinner. The Chateau de La Chaize is not as fruit-forward as the Jadot and instead it has a lot of earthy, cherry and spicy notes to it – a great compliment to the pesto and the veggies.

All in all, I was pretty impressed with the versatility of Beaujolais. The fruitier example was a great match with the pork and the earthier version was a hit with my homemade pesto. So next time you are looking for a different wine to try with your dinner, I definitely recommend picking up a bottle of wine from the Beaujolais region. I think you will find it to be not only a charming wine, but also a great match with a wide variety of foods.

Cheers!

Bastille Day is just around the corner and this year, I have decided to mark the occasion with a small dinner party. I’ve invited a few of our good friends (one of whom is a definite Francophile) and their children to help us celebrate. Making the decision to have the party was, of course, the easy part – now I am trying to settle on the menu.

So far, here’s what I know for sure I will be serving: a baguette and a selection of French cheeses. After that, I’m at a total loss! I have several options for my salad course. I could do an herb salad with a French vinaigrette or I could go with a spinach salad with mushrooms topped with a warmed lemon vinaigrette. Both would be delicious and fairly easy, so I’m a bit torn.

And then we get to the main course – and here too, I am at a bit of a loss. I think it is partly because there are so many different options and also partly because two of my guests are vegetarians, so I need to make sure the menu works for them. Right now, I am debating between making a vegetable tart, a cheese and broccoli quiche, a cheese soufflé, or ratatouille. I think I am leaning towards the quiche or the vegetable tart as those seem a bit more kid-friendly. Despite the Disney associations, I am not sure how excited my two year old is going to be with the ratatouille.

Dessert is also proving to be a bit challenging. I am debating between crepes (I think the kids would have fun with those) and one of my all-time favorites, a cherry clafouti. There is also the option of making chocolate mousse or a fruit tart or even a fruit soufflé (I have a great banana soufflé recipe), but I think right now my vote goes to making the crepes and serving several different filings – sort of like a make your own sundae bar.

At least I think I have a good idea of what wines I am going to serve for dinner. Salad dressings can be a bit challenging for wine pairings, but I think that if I make the spinach salad and the veggie tart, I will open Olivier Leflaive’s Les Setilles White Burgundy. An all-around and versatile wine, I think it will pair nicely with all of the different vegetables and the mushrooms. The mushroom/spinach salad and vegetable tart combination would also work well with a Pinot Noir and so I could also serve the Joseph Faiveley Bourgogne Rouge and then give my guests the option of choosing to have either white or red wine. For dessert, I’ve already settled on the Moet White Star, an off-dry bubbly that will be a festive end to the evening and will pair nicely with either the cherry clafouti or the crepes (and at this point, I’m thinking I’ll go with the crepes).

I still have a few days left to fine-tune my menu though, so if you have any suggestions, please drop me a line and let me know what you would serve for your own Bastille Day celebration. Santé!