Dragon Seal Winery was formed in 1987 as a subsidiary of Beijing Winery. The goal behind Dragon Seal was to begin producing wine in the European style by importing French vines and utilizing advanced French wine making techniques. French viticulturists studied several vine-growing areas of China looking for the ideal place to plant grapes for the Dragon Seal label. They eventually settled on the area of Hualai in Hebei province, 75 miles northwest of Beijing. The tradition of making wine from grapes dates back thousands of years in this region. The climate in Hualai is very similar to that of France’s Burgundy and Bordeaux (in fact, it shares the same latitude with Bordeaux.) Dragon Seal launched its first bottle of wine in 1988, the year of the dragon according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

Dragon Seal wines are made from imported French vines: Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Riesling are all grown here. Notably, Dragon Seal was also is the first winery in China to make sparkling wine using Methode Champenoise, the technique used for making Champagne. In addition to using French grapes for their wines, Dragon Seal uses traditional French and American oak barrels for aging the wines.

For dinner, I made Grilled Mackerel with Warm Potato & Fennel Salad. Mackerel is one of my favorite types of fish, and it didn’t disappoint with this recipe. It was so decadently oily, and the bits where the fish touched the grill were nice and crisp. To make the salad for this recipe, you boil new potatoes and toss them, still warm, with thinly sliced fennel and red onion. A mustard and lemon vinaigrette brings the whole dish together. Instead of parsley, I seasoned the salad with lemon basil from this week’s CSA box. The lemony fennel was a great match for the oily fish. Next time, I would probably make the fennel and onions into a slaw for the fish and serve roasted potatoes separately on the side.

The wine was a decent, crisp, full-bodied white wine. It had a pretty strong citrus component which actually worked really well with the flavors in the potato and fennel salad. A good effort from a country relatively new to this style of wine. Who knows, maybe wine making will begin to take off in China. If so, France had better watch out! If there’s anything to be learned from the opening ceremony of this year’s Olympics, if China wants to do something bigger and better than everyone else, there seems to be no stopping them.

Pike Street Fish Fry is located right next door to Neumo’s in the space previously occupied by Frites, a popular, but ultimately doomed, Belgian frites shop. Everything I’ve read about Pike Street Fish Fry makes a point of describing how exceedingly tiny it is inside. Fully expecting to walk into a space the size of a small closet, I actually ended up finding it to be almost roomy. It is small, but not claustrophobically so (although, if you are very tall, you may feel a bit cramped; unlike at most of Capitol Hill’s new restaurants, all of which seem to be competing to see who can achieve the loftiest space, the ceiling at Pike Street Fish Fry is extremely low.) Pike Street Fish Fry’s small size doesn’t matter too much, though, because it isn’t really meant to be a sit-down restaurant. There is only one small table inside and a few others outside; otherwise, you eat standing up at one of the counters or you order your food to go. Cal Anderson Park is conveniently located two blocks away and is the perfect spot for a fish fry picnic.

The menu is divided up into several categories: Battered & Fried, Just Fried, Grilled and Sauces. The Battered & Fried section lists five or six choices of fish as well as one or more seasonal vegetable (asparagus in the spring, green beans in the summer, etc.) Fish is brought in daily from Mutual Fish, and there is a strong emphasis on sustainable seafood. The Just Fried section includes French fries and “Spanish fries” which are French fries served with a sweet chili sauce and sour cream. Grilled offerings include octopus, steak and fish of the day. Finally, there are the sauces: classics such as tartar sauce as well as more unusual options like smoked chili aioli, salsa verde and curry ketchup. Everything is ordered a la carte, and each individual item costs anywhere from $4 to $10. Anything on the menu can be turned into a sandwich with slaw for an extra $1.

I gluttonously ordered straight off the Battered & Fried menu: smelts, zucchini and lemons. Robert chose catfish and Spanish fries. Our order came up, and we immediately realized that we had ordered way too much. I’ve never had so much fried food in front of me before. It looked like we had joined some sort of battered and fried Olympics. How embarrassing. My smelts were pretty tasty, though. They were fried in a very light batter, similar to tempura. It was nice and crisp and actually stayed crispy the whole time! This was a real treat. I absolutely hate soggy fried fish, and it’s amazing how many places can’t seem to get it right. The smelts measured about 6 inches each, edging close to the size at which I would no longer consider eating them whole. But, I ate my smelts head to tail, taking a slightly sadistic pleasure out of dipping them head first into Pike Street Fish Fry’s delicious salsa verde.

The fish, fries and zucchini were all very good, but my favorite thing was the lemons! Battered and fried lemon slices come with each serving of fish at Pike Street Fish Fry. I had heard great things about these lemons so I ordered an extra helping. I’m glad I did because I only got two measly slices with my smelts. I wouldn’t have thought fried lemons to be very good, but these were tart, sweet, crispy and totally wonderful. I put forth a good effort, but I wasn’t quite able to finish my extra lemons. I ended up giving them away to the people sitting next to us (as fellow fried lemon aficionados, they were more than happy to take my leftovers.) Overall, everything that we ate at Pike Street Fish Fry was really good. The prices and location are pretty hard to beat, and I’m looking forward to working my way through the various types of fish on the menu (the fried fish balls and grilled octopus are next on my list.) I see many, many fish fry picnics in my near future!

Pike Street Fish Fry is located at 925 E. Pike St.

Last Saturday, Robert and I hiked through the fog and snow up to Silver Peak in the Snoqualmie Pass area. I brought along a pretty standard hiking lunch: bagel sandwiches. Because they are sturdy and densely packed with calories, bagels are great for hiking or backpacking. Other than that, though, I rarely eat them. I think I just wasn’t born with a bagel mindset or something. Whenever I buy bagels, I feel like some sort of bagel poser. There are bagel enthusiasts out there that have extremely strong opinions about their bagels, and I’m sure I have probably made the mistake more than once of buying bagels that they would deem totally worthless. In fact, aren’t any bagels outside of New York City supposed to be worthless? Certainly nobody on the west coast knows how to make a proper bagel, right? New York has that special water or something that makes their bagels superior.

When I was a little kid, we used to get bagels from a place called Bagel Boys of New York (long since closed.) Although it has New York in the name, this was a west coast joint. I remember their bagels being really good. I loved helping my mom choose which flavors to include in her baker’s dozen. My favorite was the salt bagel (not too surprising considering that I was also the child who was jealous of my rabbit for having its own salt lick - fortunately, my salt addiction has faded as an adult, although I’ll still take savory over sweet any day of the week.) Sometime in the late 1980’s / early 1990’s, bagels became really popular, and bagel shops started popping up everywhere. The only problem was that these bagels were doughy and soft, and they came in novelty flavors like blueberry and chocolate. I’m no bagel expert but I do know that a good bagel is supposed to be dense and chewy with a browned, slightly crisp exterior. Not soft like a dinner roll! And, I’m sorry, but chocolate is not an acceptable flavor for a bagel.

These days, when I need a bagel, I head up to Bagel Deli on 15th Ave. It is only a few blocks from my apartment, and their bagels are actually pretty good. I think so anyway; I’m sure for the bagel freaks out there, they are just as controversial as any other west coast bagel. They are very dense and have a nice, shiny outer shell. I like pumpernickel the best followed by sesame, everything, and my nostalgic favorite, salt. I topped Saturday’s bagel sandwiches with lettuce and a salmon, shallot and caper salad. They were yummy, if a bit dry (they were, after all, a day old by the time we went hiking.) As an added bonus, I’m fairly certain the act of chewing though these super-dense bagels helped keep us warm on top of the snowy mountain. Do you have a favorite bagel spot in town?

So, what wine can you serve with southern food? The simple answer is probably beer. Since southern food is sometimes quite spicy, particularly dishes of Cajun or Creole origin such as my blackened catfish, it can be a tough cuisine to match with wine. That said, there are certainly wines out there that can be paired with southern food, especially if you, like me, aren’t too concerned with perfect wine-food pairings. One year, for Christmas, we did a Cajun-themed dinner, and the gentleman at the wine shop recommended serving a fruity, spicy Shiraz. That worked out quite nicely. However, with it being summertime, I think the perfect wine to serve with a southern meal right now is a nice, dry rosé. Rosés are known for being extremely food friendly. They are sometimes called picnic wines because they can be served with such a wide range of foods (the nickname also refers to the fact that they are ideal for casual occasions; these are not overly serious wines.)

I picked out a bottle of Domaine de la Petite Cassagne 2007 Costières de Nîmes Rosé from the huge rosé display at my store. This wine comes from the Costières de Nîmes appellation in southern France, an appellation known for having a very distinctive soil that consists primarily of round pebbles. Red wine predominates in this area followed by rosé. Only a very small percentage of white wine is produced. Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Carignan and Cinsault are the primary grapes. The Domaine de la Petite Cassagne Rosé, in fact, is made using nearly all of these grapes: it consists of 50% Grenache, 15% Syrah, 20% Cinsault, and 15% Mourvedre. This is truly a hand-crafted wine. Not only are the grapes grown organically and in small quantities, specific vines are designated for rosé production only and are pruned and picked in such a way as to produce the best rosé possible (unlike at many wineries where rosé is more of an afterthought.)

The wine is a bit darker in color than other rosés, though not quite as dark as the Chateau Ste Michelle 2006 Nellie’s Garden Dry Rosé that I featured last year. I really like rosés that are on the darker side since that usually means that they will have a bit more heft to them; they are still closer to a white than a red, but you get a bit more of the complexity that people normally associate with red wine. Strawberries and sweet herbs, such as tarragon and anise, are the common descriptions used for this wine. Refreshing and gulpable are two words that come to my mind (but, at 13.5% alcohol - higher than you might expect for a rosé - you’d probably be better off sipping rather than gulping.) It was a great wine to serve with my southern meal. The spiciness of the catfish didn’t overwhelm the wine at all and, because it was a slightly heavier rosé, it was able to cut through the richness of the cheddar grits quite nicely. It’s summertime, pick up a bottle of rosé!

After an amazingly traffic-free drive down Highway 2 on Saturday afternoon, we arrived in Leavenworth famished! We immediately headed down to München Haus, a classic Leavenworth eatery where I knew I could get my hands on the one thing that I was craving: sauerkraut. Hey, this is a Bavarian village after all! München Haus is located right in the heart of downtown Leavenworth. It is less of a restaurant, and more of a glorified beer garden (or is that biergarten?) Communal picnic tables are arranged around a small courtyard where bands sometimes play. The restaurant is primarily outdoors, although most of the seating is covered by roofing or large umbrellas which provide much needed relief from the hot sun (or snow, depending on the season; in the winter there is also a big open fireplace in the courtyard to keep everybody warm – sounds cozy!)

München Haus specializes in one thing: bratwurst! They have a wide variety of brats to choose from including standards such as kielbasa and knackwurst, as well as more unusual fare like curry wurst and vegetarian wurst. You order and pay for your brat at a window and then grab a seat in the seating area and wait for your order to come up. Beer and wine is sold at another counter and, since this is Washington State, they feature plenty of local brews and wines in addition to the expected German imports. All brats are cooked to order on an open grill. München Haus is a very busy place, and I’m fairly certain that this has something to do with the aroma coming off that grill. It is pretty hard to resist. It may also be because München Haus’ food is relatively cheap. Our two brats came to $11.

Robert had the München Haus Beer Brat, an all-pork bratwurst boiled in beer. I ordered the vegetarian wurst. I really didn’t expect much from my wurst but, since I was in it mainly for the sauerkraut anyway, I wasn’t too concerned. Boy was I surprised! München Haus’ vegetarian wurst was amazing. It was spicy and flavorful, with plenty of delicious caraway seeds sprinkled throughout the “meat.” But, best of all, it was somehow actually juicy. Vegetarian meat substitutes have gotten better over time, but the one thing they are never able to imitate is the juiciness you get with a piece of meat. Not so here. I don’t know if München Haus just slathers it with grease before grilling or what, but it was great. I think Robert was even a little jealous. Topped with a smoky porter mustard (one of about 30 different mustard offerings,) horseradish, chopped onion and München Haus’ famous apple cider sauerkraut, this vegetarian wurst made me one happy camper (for that night at least – the next night, of course, I was fated to become one truly unhappy camper!) We washed our brats down with München Haus’ house brew: Alpine Brewing Company’s Marzen Amber. After dinner, we did a little shopping, cooled off with some huckleberry ice cream in a waffle cone, watched Bavarian music in the park and grabbed an Icicle Ale at Gustav’s before heading back to our hotel.

Robert and I just got back from our first backpacking trip of the season. We headed up to Lake Caroline in the Wenatchee National Forest. I wish I could say we had a great time, but, unfortunately, the mosquitoes had made it their goal to cause us misery. I have never seen such ruthless bugs! They were so bad at Lake Caroline that we decided to climb higher and higher into the mountains, hoping to find a windier, bug-free spot. No luck. We found wind and colder temperatures, but just as many mosquitoes. Even our 100% DEET wasn’t enough to keep them at bay. We ended up packing our things early the next morning and heading home, a day earlier than expected. Oh well, things can’t always be perfect. That’s the risk you take when you go into the backcountry. Robert and I have really good luck with backpacking up until now so we were probably due for a less than ideal trip.

At least, this trip afforded me the opportunity to try out a new backpacking recipe. This time I made “Alpine Peanut Noodles.” This recipes features angel hair pasta and my signature dehydrated broccoli in a spicy Asian peanut sauce. Black sesame seeds add an exotic touch - a little bit of gourmet while you’re out in the mountains! Weighing in at 12 ounces, this meal is bit heavier than I prefer for backpacking. After the exhaustive climb we did on Sunday, I am more motivated than ever to make my meals as lightweight as possible (without having to resort to commercial, freeze-dried camping dinners - blech!) That said, my Alpine Peanut Noodles were worth the extra weight. They were spicy and filling, just what you need after a long, hard day of hiking. It’s just too bad we couldn’t enjoy the meal thanks to the swarms of mosquitoes making a meal out of us!

Alpine Peanut Noodles

1 large head of broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces
8 ounces angel hair pasta
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/8 teaspoon ground dried ginger
1/8 teaspoon (or more) cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ounces peanut butter
1.5 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to between 140 and 150 degrees. Blanch the broccoli in a pot of boiling water until just tender. Drain thoroughly. Wrap a piece of cheesecloth around a cooling rack and secure the ends using safety pins (or use a mesh screen). Spread the broccoli out on the cheesecloth arranging it in a single, uncrowded layer. Open the oven door a few inches to create airflow, making sure that the temperature remains between 140 and 150 degrees. Dry the broccoli in the oven, checking every hour or so, until completely dried and brittle (5 to 6 hours). Remove from the oven and let cool.

Put the broccoli and pasta in a plastic baggie (I break up the pasta into smaller pieces to make it fit.) Put the garlic granules, ginger, cayenne, brown sugar and salt into a small packet. Put the peanut butter into another small container (I actually buy JIF’s “to-go” cups which are 2.25 ounces each. I’m not a big fan of JIF peanut butter, but the small cups are perfect for backpacking.) Pour the soy sauce, vinegar and sesame oil into a small plastic bottle (for the soy sauce, you can also use those tiny packets that you get with Asian take-out - three packets is about right for this recipe.) Put the sesame seeds into another little packet. Place all of this into a larger baggie along with written cooking instructions. Now, it is ready to be taken on any backpacking trip!

To prepare the meal, bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and broccoli and cook until almost done (about 4 minutes.) Drain most of the water out, leaving about 3/4 cup of water in the pot. Add the spices and cook for another 30 seconds. Stir in the peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar and sesame oil until well-mixed. Sprinkle in the sesame seeds and enjoy!

With my winesday menu thus determined, I needed to find a good wine to serve with it. What wines are good with pesto? A whole variety it turns out. Of course, any wine from pesto’s homeland of Liguria would be an excellent match (although I’m sure people from Liguria would balk at my basil-free spinach pesto.) Some people recommend choosing a grassy, herbaceous Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris in keeping with the herbal nature of pesto. Others believe that any white, as long as it isn’t oaky or sweet, will be a good match for pesto. Still others feel that the aggressive flavors of the garlic and parmesan cheese in pesto makes it an ideal match for a medium or even a full bodied red.

A couple of people online recommended serving pesto with a white wine called Gavi. Almost immediately upon walking into my wine shop, I spotted a Gavi. It was serendipity. Clearly, I was meant to serve this Gavi with my uber-green meal. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find too much information about Gavi so I don’t have much to share other than that it comes from the Piedmont region of Italy and is made primarily from the Cortese grape. It is also known for being one Italy’s premier whites (often with a price tag to match.) The Gavi that I bought, Tre Donne 2006 Gavi, is made in a small winery run by three sisters in the Langhe area of Italy. The man at the wine shop described it as having “nice, clean fruit.”

The wine and meal proved to be a really great match. My spinach pesto was not overly garlicky so the delicate Gavi was not overwhelmed in any way. The wine was lovely. It had a light yellow color and a citrusy, ever so slightly floral aroma. Robert also detected something outdoorsy in the nose, like pine but not actually pine. Interestingly enough, the flavor reminded me of retsina but without any of retsina’s distinctive pine flavor. It was lemony but not overly tart; just bright and fresh tasting. A perfect summertime wine!

A mere $5, gets you a crusty, chewy baguette filled with crisp butter lettuce, vinaigrette and mayonnaise, and two plump sardines, their beautiful, shimmering silver skin charred to perfection. If you are squeamish at all, don’t worry. Their heads and tails have been removed; you’ll only have to contend with a vertebral column or two. The baguette is guaranteed to tear your mouth apart, and the sandwich drips everywhere, but it is so worth it. The sardine sandwich comes with just a few cornichon on the side but, if you desire a more filling meal, a large bowl of frites only costs $4. When we go to Presse for breakfast, which we do frequently, I almost always order the sardine sandwich. Yes, that’s right, for breakfast - I like to get my omega 3’s in early in the day! They’re good for your brain!

Move over gelato, ice cream is back! There is a huge ice cream renaissance happening in Seattle right now. People have been raving about Molly Moon’s in Wallingford ever since it opened in May. With such unusual and tempting flavors as Balsamic Strawberry, Cardamom and Salted Caramel, it’s no wonder why. Full Tilt Ice Cream, which just opened for business a couple of weeks ago, is definitely on my to do list. How can you go wrong with pinball, ice cream and Mexican popsicles? I don’t even know what a Mexican popsicle is but I know that I must have this summer. My only problem with Full Tilt is, how on earth do they expect me to choose between Mango Chili and Blackberry Cinnamon? I guess I’ll just have to order a scoop of each!

Robert and I are lucky enough to have our very own neighborhood source of ice cream awesomeness: Half Pint Ice Cream. The gal that runs the show is sweet as can be. She comes up with some great flavors and makes every attempt to incorporate sustainable and local ingredients into her ice cream. Although, Half Pint doesn’t have a permanent location in the hood, you can find her selling ice cream at the Capitol Hill Farmer’s Market every Sunday morning (she is also at the Lake City Farmer’s Market on Thursdays from 3 – 7 pm.) Get there early because this ice cream goes quickly.

Four different flavors of ice cream are offered each week. Classics such as Rocky Road and Mocha Almond (featuring coffee beans from Victrola) are offset by slightly more unusual offerings like Chai Vanilla and Mexican Chili Chocolate. I really lucked out on opening day of the farmer’s market. Toasted Coconut, one of my all-time favorite ice cream flavors, was on tap that week. I took a pint home and savored its creamy coconut goodness over the following days (okay, it might have taken me more like a day and a half to polish it off.) This week, although tempted by another personal favorite – Pistachio – I ended up being won over by the Lemon Basil Sorbet. As was everyone else it turns out. Each person in line with me, after tasting a sample of the sorbet, immediately proceeded to order a scoop or two. Not for the faint of heart, this sorbet has a very intense, tart lemon flavor. Every once once a while you even come across a delicious little piece of lemon zest to chew on. The basil flavor, while not overly pronounced, adds a nice refreshing quality to the sorbet. Yum! I might need to make it my goal to become an ice cream connoisseur this summer.

Viognier is thought to have originated in Dalmatia and subsequently been brought to France’s Rhone Valley by the Romans. Although it thrived in France for around 2000 years, by the mid to late 1960’s, Viognier was nearly extinct! This was due, in large part, to the disastrous phylloxera epidemic of the 1800’s that wiped out most of the wine crops throughout Europe. These days, Viognier is experiencing a bit of a resurgence. It is now grown in France, Australia, South America and many other parts of the world. It does well in several U. S. states including Washington, Texas, Colorado and Virginia. Still, it is not a hugely popular grape (like everything else, though, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before it is “discovered.”) Part of the reason that Viognier is not more prevalent in the wine market may be due to the fact that it is a notoriously difficult grape to grow. It is prone to mildew and must be picked at just the right time in order to display its unique aroma and flavor characteristics. Those finicky Viognier grapes!

Viognier is probably best known for its concentrated aromas and lush, tropical fruit flavors. These wines typically display a deep, golden color and a rich, creamy mouthfeel. Honeysuckle, orange blossom, apricot and tropical fruit aromas are all characteristic of Viognier. Although the bouquet commonly suggests sweetness, the wines are normally dry on the palate. Viognier is often compared to Gewurtztraminer and Chardonnay. These wines have a low acidity and frequently have sky-high alcohol contents. Shellfish and spicy foods, especially Thai and Vietnamese dishes, are great matches for Viognier.

For dinner, I made shrimp tikka but, instead of making the mango salsa from that recipe, I accompanied it with this sweet and sour mint chutney. I served the shrimp with sautéed pea shoots and steamed black rice. The brilliant orange shrimp combined with the black rice made this quite a stunning meal to look at. The shrimp was very flavorful, and the chutney provided an appealing sweet, spicy and refreshing note to the meal.

The wine was definitely intense. Its aroma reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite place – flowers mixed with some sort of sweet and strongly-flavored fruit. Robert and I both thought it tasted like apricot nectar. It was almost oily in texture; really thick and full. Definitely not a gulper, this wine. To be honest, this is not my favorite style of wine. I generally prefer whites that are crisp, light and minerally or herbaceous. But, it was good, and I did enjoy drinking it. And, it was a very nice match with the shrimp tikka and mint chutney: an exotic wine for an equally exotic meal!