Sunday Dinner

Sunday is one of my most favorite days of the week. It's a day of rest. It's a day of laziness. I usually get up around 10 am, sit around watching the news or what ever show may be on and drink a few cups of coffee. Around 2 pm I finally get on with my day. Every Sunday, Noel and I head to Russo's and Shaw's. First thing on my list is Sunday dinner. I love Sunday dinner, it's usually the best meal of the week.

This week I thought we were going to have a friend of Noel's over for dinner, so I choose to make a pork loin. When I found out they could not make it I still made a pork loin. I love PORK!! Especially pork loin. I made a dry rub of fresh herbs, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and minced garlic, and roast the pork at 400 F until the pork has reached 150 F. As you let it sit about 10 minutes took gets to more like 155 F and comes out so juicy. I love good pork. Noel really likes sweet potatoes, so this week I took a large sweet potato and cut it into cubes. I covered the cubes in olive oil and salt and roasted them on the same roasting pan as the pork. At Russo's I bought broccoli. I use broccoli a lot. It's easy to steam and George H. Bush is wrong, it's a delicious veggie. Noel has said to me in the recent past she was getting sick of broccoli. So today I pulled out the food bible, The Joy of Cooking, and looked up a way to make broccoli special. Under the steaming recipe the book suggested tossing the steamed broccoli in buttered bread crumbs. The second I saw the recipe, I knew I had some panko bread crumbs. Oh yeah!! I took two tablespoons of butter, teaspoon of rosemary, and thyme and put them in a glass bowl on top of the stove to melt as the roast cooked. As the roasted finished I mixed the butter and panko, put them in a oven safe frying pan and browned them for a few minutes. I then tossed the steamed broccoli in the panko. It turned a steamed veggi into a great side dish. So fancy, so easy, so good!!

I wanted to have a glass of wine with dinner, but I didn't want to drink an entire bottle. So I went over the wines that I plan on showing this week. The Geografico Chianti Colli Senesi jumped off the wine rack right into my glass. Italian wines aren't my usually first choose but I figured a nice bottle of Sangiovese would go lovely with pork. Boy I was ever so right. This bottle comes from Colli Senesi, a hill side village within Chianti that is known for growing outstanding Sangiovese. This wine is no different. Blended with a small amount of Canaiolo. It is smooth, intense fruity, and well balanced. A perfect Sunday night paring.  

My Love Flows Like the Chocolate In A Lava Cake

So it's Valentine's Day. Sorry to friends that hate this day but I am a married man, and would like to stay a married man. So I show her how much I lover her with a card, a delicious home-cooked dinner and her pick for a romantic movie. Noel is the film guru. She love the big screen so much that she has worked at movie theaters for many years. This Valentine's Day I have cooked my wife one of her favorite dishes, and made Lava Cake for dessert. The dinner is a recipe that I have already posted. Noel loves chicken pot pie! It is so easy to make chicken pot pie from scratch. To make this dinner special, I made her Lava Cake (don't tell her but I made it a little more for me, I LOVE CHOCOLATE CAKE!!) and I paired it with a Pineau des Charentes. She ending up picking the African Queen for a movie. A great classic love story much like our life. I am the river captain and she is the strong woman that shows me the righteous way.

The Lava Cake was easy to make. I bought Noel a kit from Beacon Hill Wine and Gourmet in Melrose. I hate when Rebecca gets cool stuff in her store because I always end up buying it. This caught my eye right away. The kit even came with ramekins!! We had been wanting ramekins forever. Noel and I have put those to good use since I got the kit two months ago. It's a pretty easy recipe. Melt half cup of butter, mix that with the cake mix. Melt some bittersweet chocolate and blend that with the mix, fill the ramekins and bake for 15 minutes. They were so good I almost forgot to take a picture. Chocolate cake really is the way to anyone's heart, especially mine.

I paired the cake with Domaine du Perat's Pineau des Charentes. You are probably thinking "what the what now?" Pineau des Charentes is a fortified wine from France. A wine maker mixes three parts freshly pressed grape must with one part cognac. Legend has it, this was first made by mistake. Some wine maker in the 16th century mistook a barrel with brandy in it for an empty barrel and added his freshly pressed grapes.  The barrel was left alone for a few year until they were celebrating a large harvest. When they found out what they had done they fell in love and a new wine was born. This wine is fruity, sweet, yet a light texture, and it has an intoxicating nose of sweet floral and apricot notes. I love this wine, and find it sad that it is over looked by many people. I found this bottle at my account Greenwood Wine and Spirits in their "Last Chance Section". It was 50% off and I thought to myself ca-ching ca-ching. If you have not had one and you like port, sherry or any desert wines you will love Pineau des Charentes. It was a perfect pairing for the perfect pair.