Inside My Mid-life Crisis

We have 2 from our affordable purveyor Trader Joe's...

Our first wine this week is our Sicilian friend Nero D'Avola. We tasted the Epicuro Vendemmia 2009 Nero D'Avola. This is a delightful pizza wine with a clear cherry color, a pleasantly sweet nose with a lightly tannic and soft berry-cherry taste. Vendemmia is the Italian term for the fall harvest time. Sorry the photo is a little dark...

Our second wine is labeled as Trader Joe's Reserve but it comes from Castoro Cellars in CA. This is the 2010 Carignane Paso Robles. Color is clear and dark purple, the aroma is peppery and the taste lead with the same peppery note in this tanninc, full bodied and long finishing red. I went right out and bought another bottle of this one. The Carignan grape seems to be one of the "red-headed step children". (pronounced "Karen-Yawn") I understand it to be a widely planted, high yield grape  but treated more as a workhorse blender. I liked this one really well and for $10 bucks I think it is a really nice big wine. Castoro had a 2008 on their website for $18 which might be interesting to taste side by side...

In yet another exploration into foodie creativity I decided to make jam. And might as well make some butter while we are at it!

This was actually pretty easy. The hardest part is getting all the equipment together. I happened to have my mom's canning jars and canning pot "in storage" so I had pretty much everything. The other important item is a non-reactive pan--I used my big stainless steel All-Clad.

When we were visting the Finger Lakes NY wine country a few years ago, we were served a couple jams based with wine at the B&B we stayed at..I choose a Rhubarb-Chardonnay jam recipe to try from the Ball (jar) website:
4 C sugar
5 T Ball Real Fruit Instant Pectin
4 C chopped fresh rhubarb
1 750ml bottle of chardonnay
5 Plastic Freezer jars
**NOTE--when instructed to follow directions EXACTLY when canning; uh you better do that as you will see later!
I follow the directions and prep the sugar, pectin, chop the rhubarb and get to cooking it. My jars are heating up in the canner and I decide that I want my jam shelf stable and plan to hot water process after filling the jars. Now jars are hot, lids and rings are heated...time to blend up the fruit a bit more so out comes my boat-motor mixer to finish this task handily...
I cook a bit more until the desired consistency is achieved based on the spoon test--jam coats the back of a spoon. I take my jars out of the water and begin to fill them, wipe the rims and place the seals on the jars, add the rings finger tight and place back in the water bath. Jar one, jar two, jar 3 CRACK.
So maybe we will go ahead and stick to freezer jam. Having already lost an entire jar (a big one of course) I pull them all out of the water and finish filling. I wound up with 2 large and 2 small jars. I allow them to cool on the towel overnight and refrigerate one and freeze the others.
This is AWESOME jam, its still a little tart (even with all that sugar!!) and you can taste just a hint of the chardonnay. LOVE IT!
I plan to make another batch but I will follow the instructions EXACTLY next time :)

Now, what good is home-made jam without home-made butter? I grabbed a pint of heavy cream and a fresh baguette and away we go! The cream is from a dairy in Mt. Vernon, they don't "highly" pasteurize their milk so it actually tastes like something (even the skim tastes better, this is also the dairy I use when I made cheese but we will do that again another day).

Put the cream in your mixer. A stand mixer is better as it does take 15 or so minutes to whip completely then you don't have to babysit it.

After a few minutes on speed 7 it looks like whipped cream (duh) but then the solids begin to separate from the liquid. It gets grainy and there is liquid in the bottom of the bowl...
Once it was all separated I removed the solid butter  from the buttermilk straining through a bit of cheesecloth and then squeezed my butter into a ball.
One pint of cream made a one cup ball of butter and one cup of fresh buttermilk--incidentally, naturally low fat as you have separated all the butter fat OUT to create your butter ball.
The butter is creamy and smooth and tasty..I choose not to salt mine but you certainly can salt to taste during the last minute or 2 of whipping. Worth the effort for the wonderful taste and freshness and you know exactly what went into it.

Our first wine from this weekend is a bold Italian red. Masi Campofiorin 2008 IGT Rosso Del Veronese
This deep ruby red colored wine with a ripe cherry and sweet spicy nose gave way to an even bigger cherry-berry softly tannic beauty. According to the label this wine is from the Verona area and made using the Appassimento method of partially drying the grapes on bamboo racks then double fermenting with fresh grapes--who knew? We really enjoyed it and in true Italian style served with cheese tortellini in white sauce to accompany our home-made grilled Italian sausage.

The next one is a blend from Aviator 2009 Yakima Valley AVA. We picked this one up at the St. Martins Wine tasting event a couple months ago. This blend is Cabernet Sauvignon 50%, Merlot 25%, Petit Verdot 10%, Cabernet Franc 10% and Malbec 5%. The blend reminds me of some of the "Old World" reds we sampled in our class and the use of Petit Verdot as a blender is the real common denominator. The Winemaker notes really say it all; complex, rich dark cherry, spice and vanilla--the spice was my first impression for sure. This one paired beautifully with grilled rib steak served Oscar style with petite lobster tail.

If you are not familiar with Oscar style--you are in for a treat. Rib Steak topped with al dente cooked asparagus spears, an oz or 4 of your desired seafood then drizzled with sauce Bearnaise.

Cut the tough ends off your asparagus spears and place in a shallow skillet just covered with water. Add a pinch of salt to the water. Cook to al dente while the grill-master attends to the meat.

I was lazy yesterday and used a packet of Bearnaise sauce with skim milk and butter and prepared according to directions while the asparagus cooked. Easy and "almost" as good as homemade...

Season your steak and using large kitchen shears cut down the center of the top of the lobster tails shell stopping when you hit the tail. Grill the tails in the shell along with your steak. These were the small tails you see advertised regularly for around $6 each and they finished in the same time that thick medium rare steak came off the grill. Pull the shells apart (they are hot; grasp each side and pull open to free the meat from the shell) pop the tail meat out, cut into bite size pieces.

Arrange a few asparagus spears on each portion of steak (we share a steak) then top with lobster and drizzle with 2 T of Bearnaise sauce.

Most of the time the seafood used is crab but shrimp and lobster are equally great. . Accompany with a fine  glass of wine and you need nothing more.

2 T minced onion (or scallions or shallots)
1 T dill relish (not the kind with mustard)
1 t lemon juice (juice of half a fresh lemon is actually better)
Dash Worcestershire
Dash hot sauce (Franks or Tabasco etc)
½ t Parisian seasoning (Penzy.com it’s the best!)
½ t garlic salt
Pinch black pepper
Mix it all together and that is all there is to it.
Now--REVISIONS!
You can change up the flavor by adding any or all of the following!
Horseradish (some like it hot!)
mustard--yellow; stone ground,Dijon--all impart different flavors
1/2 t dill weed (I like mine this way)

Smoked Salmon spread:
Trade the mayo for a packet of cream cheese, 1/2 t dill weed and add 1/2 C flaked smoked salmon

Louie Dressing:
Add 1 or 2 T catchup and a minced hard cooked egg and you have a "thousand island-y" Louie salad dressing

We spent the weekend at our place on the canal and our friends Craig & Jodi were nice enough to invite us to join them on their (and our) first excursion for the elusive Hood Canal Spot Prawn.

The shrimp run up and down in a row like ants on the bottom and are deeper then crabs at 200+ feet depth. Craig- you are a smart man to have invested in the pot puller- 400 feet is a lot of rope to pull by hand!

Welcome to the first of what will likely be many wine postings. I am seriously pursuing a new career in the wine & spirits industry. So what better way to develop my "wine chops" then to share experiences with you! I would love it if any of you tried the wines I post and would welcome and encourage your feedback and opinion on the wines to help me learn.

Our first wine is a Tempranillo. This is a grape principally grown and best known from Spain (Ribera Del Duero and Rioja regions primarily). But also being successfully grown in our very own Washington wine regions. I have learned that "on the palate" tastes can vary widely with this grape!

A 2010 Tempranillo from the Tapena winery called "Vino De La Tierra De Castilla" in Spain came across as a light ruby colored wine with a faint aroma and a fruity/strawberry taste.
This one was purchased at Fred's on sale for $9.95 (now I know why)

A real "light weight" in my opinion.

A 2008 Tempranillo from Teft Cellars in the Yakima Valley AVA of Washington was considerably more to my liking. This nice big wine came across with a clear medium-dark red with a pleasant black cherry aroma and a peppery medium dry taste with a full bodied rich and tannic finish. I bought this one last fall on our Yakima wine tour and it was priced at $28.

A delight! I served this with my aforementioned duck with huckleberry demi-glace and it stood up to that rich dish like a champion.

I took a stab at a classic French dish last week; Duck Confit. If you are a fan of any Food Network competition shows you hear references to the use and delightful benefits of duck confit and duck fat regularly. I wanted to see first hand what all the fuss was about. I searched the Internet to choose a recipe and settled on a "Simply Recipes" Easy Duck Confit.

Easy NOT. Standard preparation takes several days even this one would have taken a day or 2 and I was just not that patient.

The premise of duck confit is to take the leg and thigh sections of the duck, marinate for a day or 2 then slow roast in its own delicious fatty drippings creating succulent, rich, decadent duck morsels and precious duck fat. (You should now be either queasy or salivating).
I prepped my duck sections with garlic, fresh thyme, salt, pepper and a bay leaf and let it marinate for about 4 hours. I then slow roasted with the remaining duck sections in another roaster.
So even tho I gave up on the actual correct methods for confit, I still wound up with a rich and tasty roasted duck and about a half cup of precious duck fat (strained) to be reserved for use sparingly in sauted veggies or the like.

Suffice it to say I surely would have been kicked off "Chopped" for the hatchet job I did butchering my duck.