This week’s wine of choice was A to Z Wineworks’ 2005 Pinot Gris. Attentive readers of my blog may recall that I served another A to Z wine, a Pinot Blanc, just last month for my birthday. I swear I don’t have any sort of affiliation with A to Z Wineworks. I promise they aren’t paying me or subsidizing my blog in any way. It is simply that this wine was on sale at our local wine store, and, since I really liked their Pinot Blanc, I was naturally curious to see what their Pinot Gris would be like. Plus, I figured this would be a good opportunity to compare the two wines to see if I could detect a significant difference between Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris. I think Pinot Gris tends to be crisper and lighter in body, but so much of a wine’s style depends on what the winemaker decides to do with their grapes, not just on the inherent differences between the grapes alone.

The Pinot Gris was very good. I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about it, but that certainly shouldn’t be taken as a bad sign. It was a perfectly nice, solid wine with lots of tropical and citrus fruit flavor. I could drink it often. I think it’s just that I have been trying too many similar wines lately, and I don’t want to bore everyone by describing yet another wine as “crisp and limey!” Overall, I think I liked the Pinot Blanc better. It was much more flavorful and gutsy than I had expected so it took me a bit by surprise. If you like a more restrained wine, then you would probably like the Pinot Gris more.

For dinner, I served a meal made straight out of my Boistfort Valley Farm CSA box. This is the second week of CSA boxes and, once again, I was very pleased with the contents. I made a simple risotto using fresh peas and garlic shoots, seasoned with just a touch of grated parmesan cheese. On the side, I served carrots with sage and butter, which seems like more of a fall or winter dish to me, but, carrots and sage came in the box so they must be in season. I also had a salad of green leaf and red leaf lettuce taken from the hugest heads I have ever seen – seriously, I could barely pick them up! I topped the salad with goat cheese and a mix of red beets (leftover from last week’s box) and Chioggia beets (from this week’s box.) The Chioggia beets are Italian and, when cooked, are striped pinkish-gold inside. Very pretty. For dessert, we had fresh cherries, which are rapidly becoming my all-time favorite fruit (although last week’s strawberries were pretty hard to top!)

Last night, I made Penne with Sicilian Shepherd’s Sauce from The Italian Country Table by Lynne Rosetto Kaspar. This is a really great cookbook for anyone who loves rustic Italian cuisine, and this is one of my favorite recipes from the book. It is essentially pasta with tomato sauce, but it is the method of preparation that sets this dish apart. It involves the use of a “soffrito.” Soffrito is an Italian term that refers to a mixture of savory vegetables that are pan-fried slowly in olive oil and then used as a flavor base for sauces or soups. To make the soffrito for this recipe, you mince together carrot, celery, onion, parsley and sage leaves and then fry those in olive oil until golden. The key is to cook slowly over medium heat until the vegetables are nice and golden. It took about 20 minutes for mine to achieve the right color. Toward the end of cooking, you add garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. When the soffrito is done, you add some dry red wine and stir, scraping up any brown bits that have stuck to the pan. Finally, you add canned chopped tomatoes and a bit of tomato paste and simmer for a few minutes longer.

What you end up with is a spicy, hearty tomato sauce, totally unlike your basic marinara sauce. But, wait, the best part is yet to come! Because this is a traditional shepherd’s dish, cheese must come into play somewhere. In this case, it is fresh, creamy ricotta cheese which is scooped in big dollops right on top of the pasta. Very rustic! I saw Lynne make this on TV once, and she was so excited about the dish that she got a little carried away and ended up piling on the ricotta like a madwoman. I was a little bit more conservative with my dollops of cheese. The pure white cheese against the deep red pasta is beautiful. Be sure to use the best ricotta you can find for this dish. I bought fresh ricotta at DeLaurenti, and it was so much creamier and tastier than the stuff in tubs that you find at the grocery store.

My wine choice for the evening was Roza Ridge 2003 Merlot, another one of the wines that my parents brought back from their wine tasting trip through Eastern Washington’s Rattlesnake Hills area last month. Roza Ridge is Hyatt Vineyard’s “reserve” label. Robert and I have been fans of Hyatt wines for a while now so it was exciting to try something from this second label of theirs. It was a very nice wine. Lots of black cherry flavor (which I almost actually detected on my own before reading it on the label!) Although the pasta probably would have been perfect paired with a Sicilian red, this Merlot was light enough in body and had enough acidity, that it worked just fine. With all the hype around Pinot Noir and other, hipper red wines, I forget how good a simple, well-made Merlot can be.

If you would like to make Penne with Sicilian Shepherd’s Sauce and don’t feel like winging it based on my loose directions above, you can find the full recipe here.

Robert and I are going backpacking next month so I am currently in hyper meal-planning mode. This means lots of experiments in the kitchen. I feel like a mad scientist, busy figuring out ways to make food more lightweight and packable yet tasty and nutritious. Sure, I could just head down to REI and buy some commercially prepared instant meals, but that wouldn’t be very much fun, would it?

One of the main challenges with backpacking is getting your daily requirement of veggies. You could theoretically carry fresh carrots or other sturdy vegetables with you but, after a day or so they won’t be very good. Plus, fresh vegetables weigh a lot, and weight is always a big issue when you are backpacking. You could fork over the cash and buy dehydrated vegetables from Just Tomatoes. Or, you could buy a home dehydrator which you will use once a year and then need to find space for in your storage closet the rest of the time. But, most people do what I do – simply go without, relying instead on dried fruit and instant beans in place of vegetables. A few days without vegetables isn’t going to hurt you. Still, I just don’t feel right if there isn’t something green on my dinner plate.

My solution? Turn a conventional oven into a makeshift dehydrator! The two keys to dehydrating foods are to be able to maintain a consistent, low temperature (140 to 150 degrees) and to allow air to reach all sides of the food for even drying. An oven may not be the most efficient tool for the job, but I was able to get it to work just fine. After trying a few different low settings, I was able to maintain an oven temperature of about 147 degrees (an oven thermometer comes in real handy here.) I ended up propping the oven door open slightly with a pair of kitchen tongs to get the right temperature. Doing this also helps improve the airflow. Rather than using baking sheets or pans, you need place the food on something that will allow air to move all around it. You can buy mesh screens for this purpose or you can do what I did which was to wrap a piece of cheesecloth around a cooling rack (securing the ends with safety pins helps keep it in place.)

I choose broccoli for my dehydration experiment. First, I cut the broccoli into bite-sized pieces and blanched it in boiling water until it was just cooked through. I then spread it out in a single, uncrowded layer on the cheesecloth and placed it in the oven. I checked on the broccoli every hour or so; 6 hours later, it was ready! It was completely brittle and showed no signs of moisture whatsoever. One whole head of broccoli was transformed into a small 1 ounce handful. I also dehydrated some garlic and capers and used it to make a tasty tuna & broccoli noodle dish which should be delicious out in the wilderness. The broccoli reconstituted fairly well. Its texture was definitely different, but it tasted like broccoli and remained pretty green through the whole process. And, as long as I can see something green in my bowl, I will be one “happy camper.”

Click here for the full recipe>>

Our neighborhood farmer’s market just opened up for the season, and I couldn’t be happier! Robert and I braved the rain and cold on Sunday and headed down to see what was fresh this week. This early in the season, there isn’t quite the same level of abundance that you see in the summer and autumn months, but we still found a few good things to try including some adorable baby turnips. I had never had baby turnips before so I had no idea if I would like them or not. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had adult turnips either. But, I like most vegetables and, at a mere $2.00/bunch, I figured I didn’t have much to lose.

The turnips looked really clean already so I just gave them a quick rinse and then trimmed off the greens, leaving a bit of the stem attached to make them look pretty. I steamed the turnips along with some small carrots for a very short time until they were just tender. Then, I tossed them in a pan with a little butter, salt, pepper and a tiny pinch of sugar until the vegetables were glazed and beginning to brown in spots. I served the turnips alongside orecchiette pasta with fresh fava beans, Red Russian kale (also from the farmer’s market) and the greens from the baby turnips. And for Robert, Cascioppo Italian sausages. The turnips were delicious. Very tender and a little bit sweet. They were actually kind of juicy which, for a root vegetable, is sort of amazing. The turnip greens were appropriately bitter and went really well with the creamy fava beans in the pasta. Hooray for the return of the farmer’s market!

I was really struggling to come up with something to make for this week’s winesday. My problem lately is that, while I really want to try some new red wines, every time I think of a food that I’m craving, it is a better match with white wine. This makes sense since my diet consists mainly of seafood and veggies with a heavy emphasis on Asian cuisine. I don’t eat red meat or much cheese, both of which are ideal matches with red wines. As I was mulling over the possibility of making yet another pizza or tomato sauce based dinner, my mom called to enthusiastically report about a great new dish that she had tried: Baked Polenta with Mushrooms and Gorgonzola. Hey, hearty mushrooms and strong cheese…now, that sounds like a perfect match for a nice red wine. How serendipitous!

In this easy dish, polenta is mixed with cream cheese and gorgonzola cheese making it super creamy. It is then topped with sauteed mushrooms and more gorgonzola and baked in the oven until the cheese on top is melted. It was completely delicious. Someone is always claiming that this or that is comfort food, but this really was the ultimate in comfort food. The earthy mushrooms add a nice contrasting flavor and texture. And the cheese…well, maybe it’s because I don’t eat cheese very often but it was just so darn good. I served the polenta with garlicky rapini and spicy Cascioppo Brothers Italian sausage for Robert.

To go with my polenta, I picked up a bottle of Bric Dei Banditi 2000 Barbera d’Asti. Barbera hails from the Piedmont region of Italy. Sadly for it, Barbera is most well-known for playing second fiddle to the more famous Barolo and Barbaresco wines from that area. Whereas Barolo is something to be saved for a special occasion, Barbera has long been thought of as generic table wine. More recently, however, it is starting earn some well-deserved attention and respect. The Bric Dei Banditi Barbera was deep and fruity without a lot of tannins. While not nearly as acidic as a Chianti, it still had enough acid to pair well with food. The slight smokiness in this wine went exceptionally well with the gorgonzola in the polenta. Very tasty!

For this week’s winesday, I decided to make another recipe from Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen: Kasu Zuke Black Cod. This is a very traditional Japanese dish in which black cod is steeped for several days in a kasu marinade and then broiled or grilled. Kasu, also called sake lees, is the sediment left behind after making sake. It is a rather unattractive looking pale paste but it has a nice, fermented sake aroma to it. It is available in Asian markets (hint: after walking around Uwajimaya twice, I finally found it over by the fish; this makes sense as kasu is used most commonly as a marinade for seafood.)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the black cod that I needed for this dish so I bought salmon instead. Although it has a stronger flavor, salmon is recommended as a good substitute in this recipe because both types of fish are similarly high in oil. The important thing about making this dish is to plan ahead since it has to marinate for two days. Once the fish is in the marinade, however, most of the work is done. When you are ready to eat, simply give the fish a quick turn on the grill or under the broiler. The sugar in the marinade causes the fish to get nice and caramelized and that, or some other alchemic process, makes the skin turn extra crispy and delicious. This is a very rich and flavorful dish so I would suggest serving smallish portions. I served my salmon with wasabi mashed potatoes and asparagus.

Tom Douglas recommends serving this dish with sake (obviously) or a Washington Semillon. I selected L’Ecole No. 41 2005 Semillon, not just because of the cute child’s drawing of a schoolhouse on the label (L’Ecole means “the school” in French,) but also because L’Ecole has always gotten really good reviews for their wines, including the Semillon. The 2005 Semillon wine is very rich and complex in flavor. Descriptions of this wine include “honeyed fruit,” “figs, “caramel,” and “pear.” With minimal oak, it reminded me of the Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs from Australia and New Zealand. The caramely, fruity flavor and richness of the wine matched very well with the salmon.

Click here for Tom’s recipe for Kasu Zuke Black Cod (it’s way down at the bottom of the page and there is some crucial information missing. It should say 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup mirin or sake.) Or, if you’re feeling lazy, you can sometimes find pre-marinated black cod in Asian markets, including Seattle’s own Mutual Fish.

Rhubarb. It’s a strange one. It’s a vegetable, but it’s nearly always used as a fruit. It doesn’t really taste good unless you add lots of sugar. And here’s the real kicker: it’s leaves are poisonous! It certainly makes you wonder why anyone ever bothered with it in the first place. But, luckily for us, they did. For those that may be unfamiliar with it, rhubarb is a vegetable with giant green leaves and long, shiny red stalks (Robert calls it “disco celery.”) It is usually used in desserts, most commonly pies. It is often combined with other fruits, being especially good with strawberries. Although, it is less popular than it once was, rhubarb is slowly starting to make a comeback. Restaurant chefs are beginning to find creative uses for it, using it in soups or making it into chutneys to serve with game and poultry. Some are even touting it as another “superfood” along with blueberries and pomegranates.

For me, rhubarb will always bring back memories of childhood. My mom had a rhubarb plant growing in our backyard and she used to make really great rhubarb pies. She also frequently made rhubarb muffins. I hadn’t thought about my mom’s rhubarb muffins in ages until one day, about a month ago, when I was listening to a podcast about spring vegetables and they mentioned rhubarb. I immediately started craving rhubarb muffins. I asked my mom for the recipe and made them this morning for breakfast. The muffins were delicious, just as I remembered. The tartness of the rhubarb is balanced by a sweet, crumbly cinnamon-sugar topping. And, the little flecks of pink scattered throughout the muffins are so pretty. I served them with a red chard and goat cheese omelet and roasted root vegetables as a little welcome to spring.

Click here for the recipe»

If you were leaving for a week long trip to a remote Costa Rican beach, what essentials would you bring? Sunscreen? Swimsuit? Thai curry paste? Okay, so maybe that last one isn’t exactly what most people would consider essential for a tropical vacation, but, knowing that I get a little nutty if I don’t get my Thai food fix in once a week, I decided to pack a small jar of curry paste with me. Just in case.

After dining out at Sol y Mar our first few nights in Zancudo, we decided to spend an evening in. A homemade Thai dinner was definitely in order! I initially had very lofty goals for my Thai curry. Wild coconuts were falling from the trees all around us in Zancudo (you seriously had to watch your head.) This got me thinking, why not make my Thai curry with fresh coconut milk? I had read previously how to prepare coconut milk from scratch in Cracking the Coconut. Now, I was finally in a position to do so. Well…it didn’t really work as I had hoped. After spending the better part of the afternoon removing a coconut from its outer pod, I sliced my thumb open while trying to poke holes in the eyes to get at the juice. Robert felt bad and offered to help, but I was feeling too defeated to continue with the project. Luckily, the small grocery store in Zancudo sells canned coconut milk.

To get the veggies I needed for my curry, I had to wait for Willy to come to town. Willy is the owner of a fruit and vegetable truck and he comes by every few days. If you need something from him, you put out the “Willy Si” sign that belongs to your cabin and then he’ll know to stop for you. All of the Willy signs are handmade and unique so it was really fun to walk down the road on a Willy day and look at them all. Willy has a huge variety of produce available: lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, mangoes, cantaloupe, delicious pineapple. Even apples, which, being from Washington State, I had to politely decline. Willy also sells cheeses and wine. For my curry, I bought some broccoli and the mystery root vegetable pictured above. I’m guessing it is some variety of taro or yuca.

Now that I had my coconut milk and my veggies, it was time to start cooking. Cooking in the cabina was much easier than I expected. A mere twenty minutes after I started, my dinner was complete! I served my curry over rice with chunks of fresh pineapple on the side. The mystery root was okay. I was told that it was similar to a sweet potato, but I thought it tasted more like a generic starch. Not bad, but not spectacular. The curry as a whole, however, was really good. As much as I love jasmine rice, I really liked the way that the curry went with the Latin American rice that we had. It turned really creamy, almost like a Thai risotto. Robert and I ate our delicious Thai dinner on the porch of our cabina while watching the sun set over the Osa Peninsula. It was a perfect evening!

I decided to challenge myself this winesday by doing Indian food. Because of its bold, oftentimes spicy flavors, Indian food is notorious for being difficult to pair with wine. There are, however, a few general guidelines that you can follow when pairing wines with spicy foods. Most experts agree that wines with a bit of sweetness work well; sweeter wines are less likely to be overwhelmed by spicy food than wines with more subtle qualities. You should also avoid high-alcohol wines as the extra alcohol will only intensify the burn of spicy foods. Finally, it is best to go with a fruity wine (rather than an earthy or oaky wine.) Wines with tropical fruit flavors are usually a good bet with Indian food. Gewürztraminer, with its typically sweet, floral and spicy qualities, is the most common wine paired with Indian food, but,
using the guidelines above, you can find many other wines that work well too.

During the course of these winesdays, I feel that I have shamefully been neglecting wines from my home state. To remedy this, I decided to seek out a Washington State wine for this week’s winesday, specifically, a slightly sweet riesling. I chose Columbia Winery’s 2005 Cellarmaster’s Riesling mostly because the label said “serve with spicy food” (hey, why make it harder than it has to be, right?) Columbia winery is Washington’s first premium winery. Originally known as Associated Vintners, the winery was created in 1962 by ten friends, many of them professors at University of Washington. As with many great success stories, they first set up shop in their basements. Today, Columbia winery produces 170,000 cases of wine each year and many of their wines have won top awards.

For dinner, I chose to make Rechad Fish from Flavors of India by Madhur Jaffrey. This dish comes from Goa, a coastal state and former Portuguese colony in India. According to Jaffrey, nearly every household in Goa has a jar of Rechad Masala sitting on the shelf. Rechad Masala is a bright red paste made from chilies, spices, garlic, ginger and vinegar. It is most commonly used as a stuffing for fish (Rechad comes from the Portuguese “Recheado” which means “to stuff”.) In Jaffrey’s recipe, whole pomfret are stuffed with a small amount of the paste, seared in a skillet and then finished in the oven. A couple of squeezes of lemon or lime finishes the dish. I couldn’t find pomfret so I picked up a couple of small snappers at the fish market. I served boiled baby potatoes and a Goan cabbage salad on the side. The fish was spicy. Really spicy. But, it also had a very interesting flavor due to the inclusion of cardomom, cinnamon and clove in the paste. The wine was pretty heavy on the apricot; it was sweet but not cloyingly so. I thought it went very well with the food.

This is only my second time cooking whole fish. Last time, I got a little freaked out, especially when, during cooking, a row of teeth began to slowly emerge from the fish’s mouth. This time, when the fishmonger asked if I would like the heads removed, I quickly said yes. Then, I felt bad. I really don’t want to be one of those people that always buys their food pre-sliced and pre-packaged and has no idea where it actually comes from. I like buying beets covered in dirt with the tops still attached. I don’t mind having to wash my own spinach. But, when it comes to whole fish, I’m not as open minded as I would like to be. I guess that is kind of at odds with my desire to learn to fish one day! I’m going to keep trying, though. Baby steps. Next time, I’m leaving the head on and embracing the teeth for what they are. I’ll be alright…as long as I don’t look too hard at the clouded over eyeballs – gross!

I usually have my winesdays planned out a few days in advance, but, earlier this week, I was finding myself at a loss as to what to make. There wasn’t any specific food that I was craving nor was there a particular wine that I had been dying to try. This happens to me occasionally as I suspect it does to everyone. Usually when I experience this type of mental block, Robert is quick to suggest Tuna Noodle Casserole (his favorite) followed by Pasta with Tuna and Olives. This time he also threw Pasta Puttanesca into the mix. As soon as he said it, I knew that was what I had to make. I immediately began craving spicy pasta and thinking about what wines I could pair it with. I love it when it suddenly clicks like that! In acknowledgment of Robert’s preoccupation with pasta-tuna combinations, I decided to try a recipe from Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen cookbook, Pasta Puttanesca with Charred Ahi Tuna.

I headed down to DeLaurenti for wine and ingredients. Since I was shopping at an upscale Italian deli rather than the plain old grocery store, I decided to go with a fancy pasta. I picked up a package of Rustichella d’Abruzzo Chitarra. Chitarra is like spaghetti but with a neat square diameter. I normally use Barilla pasta. It’s cheap, easy to find and holds up really well (it never gets gummy.) At three times the cost, I was curious to see if the Rustichella pasta was really that much better than the Barilla.

In the recipe notes, Tom Douglas recommends pairing his Pasta Puttanesca with an Italian white wine or, “for a real dare,” he says to try a Chianti. I took his dare one step further and bought a heavier red: Vallevo 2004 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is typically a rich, robust and fruity yet soft-textured wine. It is made entirely from the montepulciano grape.

I make my own version of Pasta Puttanesca all the time, so I was excited to try a different recipe. Tom’s recipe calls for lemon zest and lemon juice whereas mine calls for red wine vinegar. Other than that, and the fact that he serves his with tuna, the two recipes are pretty much identical. Tomatoes, olives, capers, anchovies, chilies and lots of garlic. The tuna in his recipe is served quite rare. You basically just sear it for a minute per side. Then you slice it thinly and serve the slices over the pasta.

As expected, the Rustichella pasta cooked up nicely. It was much chewier and heartier than I am used to, and it definitely held the puttanesca sauce well, one of the oft-touted benefits of artisan pastas (but, at $2 per pound, I think I’ll probably stick with Barilla.) I really enjoyed the combination of the tuna and the spicy sauce. The lemon really brightened up the entire dish.

The wine was also delicious. Although it was a heavier wine, the spicy & salty flavors of the sauce were not overwhelmed by it. I think the extra chewy texture of the pasta also helped make the dish able to stand up to a hearty wine. By the way, did anyone catch that the wine and the pasta I bought are both from Abruzzo? I didn’t plan that. I didn’t even make the connection myself until after dinner. No wonder they went well together!