Chardonnay. Lots of people love it. Grocery store shelves are jam packed with it. It’s on virtually every restaurant wine list, even the most lacking. And yet, I have never managed to find a Chardonnay that I am crazy about. But, then again, I’m not a big fan of oak, a flavor predominant in most Chardonnays. A little bit of oak fine, even good in some cases, but I typically prefer less woody whites such as Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. If you’re like me, and don’t enjoy the flavor of oak, then you too probably find yourself staying away from Chardonnay. This doesn’t have to be the case, however. If you are interested in experimenting with Chardonnay, but fear the oak, you have several options. You can always opt for the classic low-oak Chardonnay: White Burgundy. Or, you can test your patience by sorting through all of the California Chardonnays looking for the few that advertise low-oak on their labels. My best recommendation, though, is to seek out Chardonnays from New Zealand and Australia where wine makers favor stainless steel fermentation over oak fermentation resulting in no-oak wines.

This brings us to my wine selection for the week: Kim Crawford 2005 Unoaked Chardonnay. Kim Crawford is one of New Zealand’s most well-known wine makers and this specific wine is a prime example of the unoaked Chardonnays that New Zealand wineries are famous for producing. It’s a very tasty wine. It is noticeably full-bodied, as a good Chardonnay should be. Most of the reviews online describe the wine as tasting of apples with some citrus and tropical fruit flavors. It has some other flavor in there that I, as usual, can’t pin down. It could be the “butterscotch of malolactic fermentation” as it says on the label. Or, it could just be the chardonnay grape itself which I’ve never tasted without oak.

For my winesday meal, I made crab cakes and served them with a butternut squash, potato and parsnip hash and a spinach salad with pear and roasted beets. The wine paired really well with the richness of the crab and the sweetness of the squash. As a side note, I used Trader Joe’s panko (Japanese style breadcrumbs) to coat the outside of my crab cakes. I’ve used other brands of panko before, and they work just fine, but the Trader Joe’s panko is amazing. It is super crisp; each crumb is like a little shard of glass. It makes an excellent crust. I pan-fried my crab cakes in only a couple of tablespoons of oil and they came out so crispy, you would have sworn they were deep-fried.

I had the holiday off today but, unfortunately, Robert did not. He had to brave the freezing temperatures and ice on his own this morning, poor thing. Usually, when I have the apartment to myself for the day, I like to make something extra special for dinner. The kind of meal that creates a huge mess and takes way more time to make than I would be willing to spend on a weeknight.

Today, I decided to make a second recipe from Cracking the Coconut: Keang Pet Daeng (Spicy Red Curry Paste.) For this recipe, you need a bunch of ingredients including, among other things, red chilies, shrimp paste, galangal, lemongrass and coriander seeds. According to the recipe, you are supposed to pound the ingredients one at a time in a large mortar and pestle. I only have a small mortar and pestle so I pounded some of the softer ingredients, such as garlic and shallots, in that and then used my mini food processor for the rest. I figured there was no way that I was going to be able to puree dried red chilies or lemongrass using my mortar and pestle. I don’t have that much strength or stamina. So, my curry may not have had the “complex” flavor of a paste that has been pounded forever but I’m OK with that.

Once the paste was done, the rest of the meal was pretty simple. I simmered baby eggplants, kabocha squash, fresh bamboo shoots and tofu in the curry paste and coconut milk until done. Then I added some kaffir lime leaves and a ton of thai basil at the end. I served it over steamed jasmine rice with stir-fried greens on the side. It was pretty darn good and rivals Robert’s green chili stew from last night as the spiciest dish of the month. However, I’m not sure I will make it again. It was a lot of work and, considering that there are good commercial chili pastes out there and that I live within arm’s reach of about 10 different Thai restaurants, it’s probably not really worth my time. It was a fun experiment, though.

Side note: The tofu that I used in this recipe was from Thanh Son Tofu right down the street from me on 12th! I picked it up at Uwajimaya. It was really good. Nice and firm and it didn’t have a trace of that sour flavor that some commercial tofu has. It pays to buy locally!

It has just been one storm after another here in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Cold. Wind. Torrential rain. My upcoming trip to sunny Costa Rica can’t come soon enough. As the wind rattles the windows and the rain pours down, my thoughts keep drifting to my last sunny vacation: Greece. In that vein, I decided to choose a Greek wine for this week’s winesday. I chose 2005 Kouros White. This wine comes from the Patras region of the Pelopponnese peninsula and is made from the indigenous rhoditis grape. There are actually over 300 native varietals in Greece. Bottom line: never buy a merlot or chardonnay from Greece. This wine was pretty good. It had flavors of pear and was very crisp. A good food wine, for sure.

For my dinner, I made Lingcod in Grape Leaves with Pine Nut-Fig Butter from Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen cookbook. The fish market hadn’t had lingcod in for about month so they gave me some actual cod instead (even though I think lingcod is more similar to halibut but, since they didn’t have halibut either, it doesn’t really matter much.) Also, there weren’t any good dried figs at my store so I used dates instead. For this recipe, you mix pine nuts, figs (or dates), thyme, and lemon zest with butter and then spread this over the pieces of fish. Then, the fish are wrapped in grape leaves and cooked in the oven in a white wine and shallot broth. I served it over couscous with lemon, mint and parsley. It was a delicious meal and went very well with the wine. It was almost good enough to transport me, briefly, past the snow on the ground to a warmer place.

Last week, when I was exploring my new favorite wine store, European Vine Selections, I picked up a bottle of 2004 Pelerin Roero Arneis. Roero Arneis is a white wine that hails from the Piedmont region of Italy. It also has the distinction of being the first white wine that Robert ever enjoyed. A few years ago, Robert was in New York for the Macworld conference and, while he was there, he happened upon a tiny, speakeasy-style bar called Single Room Occupancy. The ladies behind the bar were really excited about this new wine they had gotten in, Cascina Chicco Roero Arneis, and they convinced him to try it even though he didn’t like white wine. Well, he ended up liking it a lot so we started looking for Roero Arneis whenever we were shopping for wine. Robert has since gone on to try and like many other whites but, whenever we see a bottle of Roero Arneis, we usually pick it up for sentimental reasons.

I’ve heard Roero Arneis described as “light, delicate and perfumy” and, conversely, as “robust; a red wine disguised as a white wine.” I think the Pelerin Roero Arneis probably falls more toward the robust side but, sadly, it was a bit oxidized. It tasted a bit more like sherry than wine which usually indicates oxidation. Oh well. It’s bound to happen every once in a while.

Although Roero Arneis is not a very well-known wine, the Piedmont region is home to some of Italy’s most famous wines including Barolo and Barbaresco. The Piedmont is also known for having some of the best cuisine in Italy. This is, after all, where the slow food movement started. Influenced more by neighboring France than Southern Italy, the Piedmontese prefer butter and cream over olive oil. Rice and polenta are favored instead pasta dishes here. Piedmont is also home to the famous white truffle.

For my winesday meal, I decided to focus on the foods of Piedmont. In keeping with the Piedmontese preference for rice dishes, I made Risotto con Finocchio (Fennel Risotto.) I also made a vegetable dish inspired by a very famous recipe from this region, Bagna Cauda. Bagna Cauda is a mixture of olive oil, butter, anchovy, and garlic that, as with fondue, is kept warm over a low flame. Italians dip bread cubes and raw vegetables into it. I, instead, drizzed it over lightly steamed vegetables. I also made Grissini which are very long, thin breadsticks. Grissini originated in Torino, Italy but are found virtually everywhere in Northern Italy. They were very fun to make. My baking stone wasn’t quite large enough, though, so I had to twist some of my Grissini into wild, curvy shapes in order to get them to fit!

Now that the chaos of the holidays is pretty much over, I’m getting back to my normal routine and that means the return of weekly winesdays! For this week’s winesday, I decided to go with a very traditional Burgundian meal: Oeufs en Meurette. Oeufs en Meurette is poached eggs in red wine sauce served over toast. The recipe that I used is pretty long and time-consuming but not at all difficult. As a plus, a lot of the work can be done ahead of time. I was able to get it all done after a short day of work, however, including peeling the baby onions by hand. The eggs are poached in the red wine causing them to turn a creepy gray-purple color. Fortunately, they get covered up by the sauce (which was only a slightly creepy purple color.) As expected, it was quite a rich dish but, what the heck, it’s still the holidays! This is the best time to treat yourself to really yummy, fattening foods.

My matching wine was, of course, a red Burgundy. I went with a bottle of 2004 Domaine du Prieure Pinot Noir. The wine was much lighter than most pinot noirs I’ve tried. In the glass, it looked just like cranberry juice. I’m not sure if it was this particular wine or if all the wines of Burgundy are this light. I guess I’ll have to try another to find out. By the way, all red Burgundy wines are made from pinot noir grapes except for Beaujolais which is made from gamay grapes.

In a really smart move, I decided to skip the rush of Pike Place Market and visit a small wine shop in my neighborhood instead: European Vine Selections. I am in love with this shop! I should have been going there this whole time. It has a really great selection of wines from all over the world packed into a pretty small area. It’s a very low key store. No pretentiousness and no pressure. Wines are stacked irregularly (in some cases, hazardously) in cardboard boxes, many with a decent layer of dust. Descriptions of some of the wines are available, written in barely legible handwriting. I went a little crazy while I was there and bought several other wines including a bottle of Prosecco for New Year’s Eve. If you’re ever up on the north end of Capitol Hill, you should definitely check this store out.

This year’s Scandinavian-themed Christmas Eve dinner was a roaring success! Considering that nobody in my family is Scandinavian or really has ever eaten much Scandinavian food, we were quite happy that the dinner turned out as well as it did. Here is the menu and links to the recipes where available:

Swedish Meatballs
Roasted Pork Loin with Cardamom-Currant Jelly Sauce
Poached Salmon with Mustard-Dill Sauce
Mushroom Pie
Kukkakaalilaatikko (Cauliflower Rye Casserole)
Potato Pancakes with Sour Cream and Homemade Applesauce
Braised Red Cabbage with Apples
Romaine and Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream-Dill Dressing and Blue Cheese

Although the meatballs were addictive, the pork loin was beautiful and the cauliflower rye casserole won for most amazing name, the biggest hit of the evening was the mushroom pie. The filling, which consisted of little more than mushrooms, onion, thyme, and cream cheese, was so good. It was really hard not to just serve it up right then and there as our lunch. The crust had a bit of leavening in it which made it puff up. The end result was closer to a mushroom pot pie than a tart. I had some of the leftover pie for lunch today which was definitely the high point in my first day back at work.

More photos from our dinner are below. The last photo is of the baby hats that my mom and sister and I made for a charity called Caps to the Capital. We knit the hats and then let everyone at our Christmas party choose one that they could submit in their name. Aren’t they cute?

Yesterday, I made a big batch of posole (or pork and hominy, depending on where you’re from.) Posole is so good in the wintertime. In New Mexico, it is commonly served at Christmas or on New Year’s Day when it is said to bring good luck in the new year. Posole can be extremely basic, consisting of little more than broth and hominy, or it can be made into a much more deluxe dish by adding meat, vegetables and spices. Mine was pretty simple: cubed pork, hominy, onion, garlic and spices. I made some red chili to drizzle on top which really gave it some heat. I also like to add a splash of tequila to the bowl before digging in!

And yes, for those that are keeping track, I normally don’t eat meat but, every once in a while, I like to treat Robert to the real thing. I actually ate about 4 cubes of pork myself before I started to feel strange and ashamed. FYI, I do have two excellent, completely vegetarian hominy recipes on my website, Posole Verde and Hominy and Squash Stew.

We are right in the thick of what Robert refers to as the “whipped cream holidays.” This is the span of time (roughly November to February) during which whipped cream starts to appear on the cocktail menu of every restaurant and bar in the country. If it’s got kahlua, creme de menthe, bailey’s, or frangelico in it, it’s going to be topped with whipped cream. People where I live practically count the days until eggnog and peppermint lattes show up in the coffee shops. I usually stay away from any beverage made with excessive amounts of sugar and cream; I prefer my coffee black and my cocktails basic. This year, however, I found myself wanting to make eggnog. I have absolutely no idea where this impulse came from because I have never been an eggnog drinker. But, there it was, this strange desire to indulge in a sweet, fattening holiday drink. I would soon be participating in the “whipped cream holidays” just like everyone else.

On Saturday, Robert and I wandered down to our local liquor store so that he could replace his diminishing supply of Maker’s Mark and I could get the rum I needed for my eggnog. I was originally planning on using the eggnog recipe from How to Cook Everything which is for a very quick, uncooked eggnog. But, then I came across this recipe which had been given rave reviews by all who had tried it. In this recipe, you cook the egg yolks slowly in spiced milk and then, after it has cooled, you add cream and lots of rum. It was a little bit more work but really was not that difficult. The only tricky part was combining the hot milk slowly with the egg yolks so that they don’t curdle.

I let my eggnog sit in the refrigerator for several hours before serving. It was very tasty and, as expected, extremely rich (see the recipe notes for calorie and fat count, if you’re curious.) I’m pretty sure the rum was actually the healthiest ingredient in there. That same evening, as Robert and I were sipping our eggnog, we happened to flip to the Food Network right when Emeril was making eggnog for his audience. His preparation was very similar to mine but, for some reason, his eggnog was coming out a disconcertingly bright shade of yellow. More frightening, however, was the extremely lumpy texture that his eggnog had taken on. It looked like scrambled eggnog. And this was the premade version that he pulled out of the fridge to serve to his guests, not the version he had been making live, which would have been slightly more forgivable. As we watched in horror, we began to appreciate the smooth texture and spicy, rummy flavor of my eggnog so much more!

For tonight’s winesday, I served Louis Jadot 2005 Beaujolais-Villages. Beaujolais is a French wine that is meant to be drunk young and typically has a very fruity, juicy flavor. It is also distinctive in that it is the only red wine that is traditionally served lightly chilled. It goes well with many foods and, because of its juicy quality, it has a very broad appeal. If you don’t like beaujolais, you probably won’t like any other red wines. Louis Jadot beaujolais wines are widely available. I think I’ve even bought this wine at Trader Joe’s. It tastes of berries and spice and even a little bit of…grapes! Imagine that. It tasted to me like what you think wine tastes like when you are a little kid. This wine would be equally good as a holiday wine as it would be served at a summertime picnic.

For dinner, I decided to do a pomegranate-glazed salmon. I thought that would be a nice, festive match for the wine and I’m currently on a pomegranate molasses kick. I was hoping to develop this recipe for the website as part of a group of holiday-inspired dishes but I think it still needs some work (see my cooking notes below if you are interested in what I did.) The salmon itself was really good (local king salmon from Pure Foods Fish) but the glaze was just a tiny bit too sweet for me. However, the meal overall was really good and very pretty: pomegranate-glazed salmon, celery root and potato mashers, and sauteed swiss chard.

Here is my loose recipe for pomegranate-glazed salmon. Whisk together 1/4 cup fresh orange juice, 2 T pomegranate molasses, 2 t brown sugar, 1.5 t lemon juice, 1.5 t soy sauce and 1 t dijon mustard. Sear 2 salmon fillets on both sides until just done. Transfer to warmed plates and cover with foil. Add 1 tablespoon minced shallots to the pan, stir for 20 seconds, add the pomegranate mixture and cook until thickened. Add 1/2 tablespoon butter and salt and pepper to taste and spoon the sauce over the salmon. I think this recipe could easily be expanded upon. Rosemary, mint, star anise or five spice powder, and balsamic vinegar would all make interesting additions.

Even after last week’s Thanksgiving wine extravaganza, I hadn’t had enough so I decided to do, not one, but two winesdays this week! You know how whenever you visit Mom’s house, you always come back with stuff? On Thanksgiving, I came home with a bunch of yarn and my mom’s old pizza stone and paddle. I make pizza fairly often so I was really excited to what kind of difference cooking them on a baking stone would make. I wanted to keep things nice and simple for my first time using the stone so I went with Pizza Margherita. A classic! Nothing more than tomatoes (or an extremely basic tomato sauce), fresh mozzarella and chopped basil. For the crust, I followed this recipe which is originally from Cooks Illustrated magazine. You can always trust those folks at Cooks Illustrated. Interestingly, this recipe calls for some cake flour which is lower in protein than all-purpose or bread flour and is usually considered to be a poor choice for breads. I think that the cake flour helps to make thin crusted pizzas softer or something. Or maybe it makes them crisper. Whatever the reason, the crust was excellent! Beautifully browned and crisp. It was really fun sliding the pizzas from the paddle onto the hot stone like a real Italian baker. I think some of the Italian I learned in college even starting coming back to me. My wine choice for that evening was Bolla 2005 Valpolicella. Valpolicella hails from the Veneto region of Italy, also home to Soave, Barolo and Amarone wines. The wine was decent and easy to drink, although I thought it was much better with the pizza than on its own. It was a little on the tart side to be considered a good sipping wine, I thought.

Last night, for my second winesday of the week, I made Spicy Mussels with Ginger and Lemongrass and paired them with a New Zealand wine: Matua 2005 Sauvignon Blanc. New Zealand is very well known for its Sauvignon Blancs and Matua was the very first winery in New Zealand to make one. The wine was delicious! Zingy and limey with just enough tropical fruit flavor to round it out. The mussels were also really good. Although the broth was rather spicy thanks to an abnormally hot jalapeno, the fresh, oceany flavor of the mussels really came through. I’ve had bad luck with mussels in the past so I was relieved that these ones were so good (especially since I had to walk down to Pike Place Market in freezing temperatures in order to get them. At least I pretty much had the market to myself. The poor vendors all looked so sad and cold, though!) The mussels recipe comes from the Food & Wine website. This website has a lot of suggestions for food-wine pairings so you should definitely check it out if you are interested in wine (or food.) I’ve been getting a lot of good ideas from them.