From The Sea

Last night Noel went to her mother's house to visit her grandmother and help set up her best friend Samij's baby shower. The only good part of spending the night away from my wife is I get to eat what ever I want for dinner. Noel hates seafood. I know she's from New England how can that happen? It happens a lot and it always confuses me. Since she doesn't like seafood I very rarely get to eat it, let a lone cook it. After a quick trip to Russo's yesterday I had the great idea to find a nice fish market in the area. Yelp sent me to New Deal Fish Market in East Cambridge. This place had everything, and I was kind of overwhelmed. The guy behind the counter could see how overwhelmed I was. He came over and gave me great advice. I always get salmon, even this time I almost got salmon. I told him how I get to eat very little fish and that I would love to have something a little different. I came upon a Red Fish an ocean perch. It's the kind of fish they sell with the head still on. He told me it was a local white fish and to broil it with a little oil, salt, pepper and hit it with lemon when it comes out of the oven. It was a little small so I also got a dozen little neck clams. Thanks to Noel's friend Samij I now know how to shuck clams.

When I started looking up ideas for a sauce to go with the clams. I found one at foodnetwork.com, a Cucumber Mignonette Sauce. So easy to make, just mix a cup of white rice wine vinegar with minced garlic, half cucumber minced, grated ginger, fresh ground pepper and cilantro leafs. You need to let it chill for at least one hour and up to a full day. Have you ever been by yourself and still said out loud "WOW"? I did after trying this sauce. The flavors of the sauce with the salty raw clam went perfect together. I could have ended my meal there and been happy.
But I didn't have to I still had the ocean perch. The guy told me to rub a little olive oil, sea salt and black pepper and broil for eight minutes. I've been buying a scallion infused oil at Russo's that helps give a faint hint of flavor that I thought would go great with a white fish. The fish was outstanding!! I ate everything down to the bone. I even got all Anthony Bourdain and ate the checks and the meat from the rest of the head. I flirted with the idea of eating the eye balls but at the last minute decided it was a little gross. I am adventurous, I've eaten a pig's eye at a pig roast but that eye looked more like a escargot. The fish's eye looked like an eye. While at Russo's I bought a Chayote squash. It's from Mexico and kinda has an appleish flavor to it. I like but again it's not Noel's thing. I found a really cool recipe at allrecipes.com. Cut the squash into 5ths, cook it in oil, sugar, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, minced garlic and red wine vinegar. (I even made my own red wine vinegar it's easy 1 part red wine to 3 parts white vinegar.) This was a meal that I will not ever forget about. I love fish and this was like a meal you may get at Legals Seafood!!

The wine was a no brainier. Last year I had a work with with the wine maker at Red Newt Winery in the Finger Lakes in New York. I was the last work with that week so he left me with two extra bottles of wine he had. Last night I finally opened the Reserve Dry Riesling. The first time I tried the wine it shocked my palate. I have tried dry rieslings in the past, some have been "dry", others the acid is so out of whack it almost hurts your teeth. This wine is perfectly dry. The acid is strong but fair, and the fruit is so joyful. It's a tart ripe lemon, orange peel and apricot, with strong minerality that just went fantastic with the food. This wine could go great with a large range of foods, deserts, or just by itself.       

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.

Dinner For Six

We finally hosted our first dinner party. Noel and I haven't had an apartment large enough to fit the two of us, let alone have six friends over for dinner. Finally we have an apartment large enough. Our friend Jen has been trying to get us to set up a dinner party for a few months now. About two weeks ago I was drinking port and thought how fun it would be to cook with it. I Googled port sauce and found a recipe that screamed dinner party from www.epicurious.com. Next was finding four friends that would like to come over and enjoy the meal. That wasn't hard at all, the first four people I told about the party, RSVP right away. We got our suburb friends Jon and Lucie to brave the big, bad city. Jen had to come because she is the one that put it in my head to have a party and that would have been real shitty to not invite her to our first dinner party. My friend Meg was a no brainier, not only is she a huge foodie but she is a wine rep. and has great taste in wine. She even brought the wine that I enjoyed with the dinner.

Coming up with the menu was the best part. I knew that I wanted to make the recipe that I found the night I was drinking port, Roast Beef Tenderloin with Port Sauce. I also knew that I wanted to make a blue cheese, bacon, potato souffle that Noel and I had made a few months ago. For a veggie I made a quick stir-fry of asparagus, ginger and garlic and I made a quick beets, feta salad with and oil and honey dressing. Jon helped out with the appetizers. A panko, fried green bean dish that we get at The British Beer Company in Framingham, and a duck and fig flat bread that was to die for. The flat bread was so easy to make. I cut in half 15 figs and roasted duck legs that I had bought at the Boston Wine Expo so the meat fell off the bone. I sauteed the figs in about 50 ml (aka a nip, aka an airplane bottle) of bourbon. After the figs soaked up the bourbon I added the duck and sauteed for a few more minutes. Jon then took the naan flat bread and covered it in Gorgonzola and Bel Gioioso cheese and the figs and duck. Then he quickly caramelised some onions and put them on top of the bread before sticking in the oven for about 15 minutes at 400F.

The beef tenderloin came out so much better that I had even thought it could be. The recipe calls for a dry brine to be done 24-36 hours before cooking the meat. To do this you have to salt the hell out of the meat and leave it uncovered in the fridge. You would think the salt would just dry out the meat, but instead of drying out the meat it makes it juicy and tender! The recipe says it only takes 30 minutes in the oven at 450F but I used a meat thermometer and it took 45 minutes to get up to 130F. The port sauce I made the night before. I love making sauces, they add so much to a meal, look really fancy, yet are soooo freaking easy to make. The only thing I would have done different is instead of using three cups of beef broth, I would use two. Also I used a tawny port and I may use a ruby next time. Although I DO LOVE TAWNY PORT!!!!!! This was the best meat I have ever cooked. It came out so tender and juicy, and cooked perfectly medium rare (More like medium medium rare. I would have liked it more pink but the friends I was with told me before cooking they like their meat more medium. So I compromised instead of cooking to 120F I went to 135F.). Perfectly cooked, good cuts of meat is the meaning of life!!!! 

As I said my friend Meg came to the dinner. She too is a wine distributor in Massachusetts, so she too LOVES good wine!! When She walked in the door she took out of her bag a few bottles of wine that she had been pouring at a wine tasting earlier in the day. She told me try the Rioja first. Valsacro is a high end Rioja that danced on my tongue. Dark, full bodied with dark cherries and olives. It was a great treat as I finished cooking the meal. With dinner she told me she brought a wine that was from her private stock, something she bought a few years ago, while she was a wine buyer at Whole Foods. Florestra Apalta a Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 from Santa Rita in Chile. I LOVE CHILE'S WINES!!! Chile is my second favorite wine country, right after France. The climate is perfect, and the quality, and value of the wines are incredible! These Cabernets in my opinion are better than anything Napa can throw at you, and usually at half the price. Full bodied, cigar box, black fruits, cassis, black currants, and nice tannins. This bottle was no different. Plus the perfect amount of age helped soften the wine just a touch. This was the perfect bottle of wine to go with my first dinner party. Thanks Meg for helping me take it up a notch!!!!! 

Every Day Pork Chops Get a Flavor Boost

Everyday, one of the many recipe websites that I've joined sends me a recipe that sounds great. I love these sites, its makes the question, "What's for dinner?," easier to answer. The problem is, many times, I don't have the ingredients at the ready and I forget to get stuff the next shopping trip. Thursday, I got a recipe sent to me from FineCooking.com. I especially love this website!! You can pick by recipe, by ingredients, and so much more. It's like the Joy of Cooking (the ultimate food bible) on steroids!! A lot of the recipes on this site are from people like you and me. You get fancy home cooked meals.

Friday I had some pork chops that needed to be cooked. At first I was just going to make real simple, salt and pepper, pan seared chops. Then I opened the email. "Everyday pork chops get a flavor boost." I thought, "how cool is that? I was going to make pork chops that night anyway." The recipe was Pork chops with cider-dijon pan sauce. The second I saw the words "pan sauce," I was hooked!!! Over the holidays I got really good at making gravies and sauces. I love making a sauce with the meal. It's so fancy and so easy to do!! The best part about this recipe is that I had everything but an apple and apple cider. I had to go to whole foods anyway to grab cat food, so I also grabbed the apple, but could not find cider. They had apple juice, but no apple cider. Being a wine rep. I am in and out of liquor stores all day, so I just grabbed a 22oz Magners cider. They taste the same as regular cider and you get an easy drink pairing for dinner. Plus, by the time you're done cooking, you've cooked the alcohol out. Noel is a bit of a cider snob and I am sure she wished I had used a better cider, after all I only used a half cup in the recipe and we drank the rest of it.

The recipe was pretty easy. What You Need:
2 pork chops (it calls for bone in chops I used regular chops)
2 Tbs butter
tsp salt
tsp pepper
1 sweet red apple halved,cored, cut into small cubes
1 medium shallot
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup cider
1/2 cup chicken stock
Tbs dijon mustard, better if you use the grainy kind
tsp fresh thyme (thyme is my favorite herb!!!)
Pre-heat oven to 425F. Melt the butter is a skillet over medium/high heat. Salt and pepper the chops and cook them on both sides for about two minutes. Long enough to brown them on both sides. Then stick them in the oven for about eight minutes or if you are using a meat thermometer, when it reaches 145F. While they are in the oven, reduce the heat to medium/low and add the apple, thyme and shallots and cook until they are slightly browned, about two minutes. Add the cider, scrape any bits left from the chops, and reduce by half, again about two minutes. Last add the stock and mustard, stir and reduce by about half, yet again about two minutes. Serve the sauce over the chops. This meal looked like and tasted restaurant quality yet was easy to make.

I served it over rice and a side of steam broccoli. The broccoli I steamed in water, chicken stock and tsp butter. That is fat kid broccoli!!! Along with the cider this meal was a perfect end of the week meal!! Fancy enough for Friday, yet easy enough to make after a long day/week of work. I can't wait to see what the next email has in store for my dinner!!

Sorry Bambi But Your Meat Is Just So Good

Its been a long time, too long, since I have last posted. I was going to post about my Thanksgiving Dinner but I figured it was to easy to talk about it. Then I was going to talk about my Christmas Eve dinner that I cooked but I didn't. I also could have blogged about the Christmas Day Dinner but I got lazy. I have cooked some great meals and some not so great meals. I was going to blame it on being busy with work and life, but the truth is I have been too lazy to blog. One of my many New Year's Resolutions is to blog more.

To ring in the New Year, Noel and I went and visited our friends Erik and Sami J on Martha's Vineyard. Two of the best people I have ever met. We had a few great meals, drank good wine and beer, and watched some great fireworks. Erik is the ultimate outdoors man!! One day when he got home he noticed a deer in his backyard. He grabbed his bow and got the doe. How bad ass is that?! I bribed Erik with a few bottles of wine and he sent me home with a few venison steaks and a roast. They had a great cookbook on how to cook venison, and I found a few great recipes, so I couldn't wait to get home and try them out.

Tonight's recipe is Saffroned Venison and Beans from The Complete Venison Cookbook. Sounds easy enough, and I love using Saffron. All you need is a cup Navy Beans (these are called Navy Beans not after their color but because they were a staple in U.S. Navy cooking. I was looking for 20 minutes before reading labels), a  pound of venison cut into cubes, bacon fat (venison is very lean meat and bacon fat helps. Its easy to cook up some bacon for the fat), three tomatoes quartered, small onion sliced thin, can of corn, bell pepper quartered, 1/8 tsp pepper, 1/4 tsp saffron, 1 tsp brown sugar, 1/2 cup dry white wine and two tsp salt.

You need to first cook the beans. This is easy, but takes a long time. First, make sure to rinse the beans. Then put them in a saucepan and add enough water to cover the beans. Bring them to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer for two hours. Add the salt and cook for another hour. As the beans are finishing, take a few strips of bacon over medium/low heat in a skillet. Render the fat off the bacon (this is my favor part...eat the bacon). Brown the venison. Add the tomatoes, onion, salt, pepper, saffron, brown sugar and wine. Let simmer until the meat is tender. Drain the beans and add them with the bell pepper and corn to the venison and cook until the bell pepper is tender.

The meal came out well. The beans could have cooked a little longer, I could have used smaller, riper tomatoes and, had I known it would come out more like a stew, I would have cut the bacon up and added it to the mix. But for the first venison meal I've made in more than 10 years it came out better than expected. I can't wait to make the other cuts of venison I have.

So what do you drink with venison? Cabernet Franc, Carmenere, Chianti, Gigondas (or anything from The Rhone Valley), Syrah- the choices are endless. Venison has a great gamy taste that goes really well with many big, bold, bad-ass wines. If I had a Cab Franc in my cellar right now, I would have opened that. But, sad monkey, I didn't have one. So I opened my BOOM BOOM Syrah. This Columbia Valley Syrah comes from one of my favorite wine makers, Charles Smith.This wine is perfect Washington wine. Bright, fresh and smooth. Full Bodied, dark meaty fruit with a touch of spice and sweet tobacco. 

Bubbles and Chicken Pot Pie Make a Happy Wife

Noel told me after her first bite, "This is my favorite thing you have ever made ever." This past week we almost forgot to use chicken before it went bad. I decided on it's sell by date to bake the chicken and refrigerate it to keep it good for a few more days. But what could I make? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, make Noel a meal she will never forget. Now all I had to do is figure out what wine to serve with the meal that she would like. She's not a big fan of wine and I often have to drink a bottle to myself. As I drove from store to store today I called her and asked her what kind of wine she would like to have. After a few suggestions we both agreed on sparkling wine. I picked a bottle from Loire Valley. I love the wines from the Loire, especially the sparkling wines.

The chicken pot pie recipe I found was real easy to make.The recipe was from pillsbury.com. I liked using this recipe mostly because they suggested using their pie crust. That took out a very important, pain in the ass step!! I've used their pie crusts for apple and pumpkin pies and they taste great. Now that I had the crust all I had to do was make the tasting chicken stew. I baked the chicken breasts two days before and after they cooled I chopped the breasts into tiny bite size chunks. So I had most of it ready before I even started to cook.  Wow was this easy, I should have made this recipe years ago!

Pre-heat the oven to 450. You are going to need a medium saucepan. Chop a medium size onion (I used a red onion) and add it to 1/3 cup of butter over medium heat. After the onion has softened add 1/3 cup flour and a dash of salt and pepper. Mix all this together and gradually add 1 3/4 cup of chicken broth and 1 cup of milk. Stir often until the mixture has thickened. Add the chicken and vegetables and take off the heat. Now this is where I did something different. The recipe called for frozen vegetables. I don't have frozen veggies in my house. I chopped up half a large carrot (quickly steamed the small bite size bits for a few minutes, just enough to soften the carrots), I also chopped up brussels sprouts and asparagus. Add the chicken and veggie mixture to the bottom pie crust and cover it with the other pie crust. I also sprinkled Herbs de Provence on top of the pie before I stuck it on the oven. Bake the pie for 30-40 minutes (until crust is golden brown). 20 minutes into baking the pie cover the edge with strips of tin foil to prevent burning the edge. Why buy pre-made chicken pot pies when this is so easy and you get to pick what veggies you use?

As I drove around today trying to decide what sparkling wine to buy, I came up with either a Lorie Valley or Alsace sparkling wine. I finally got to Liquor Land on Mass. Ave in Boston. I love this place. If you were driving by the store you wouldn't think this store has the selection it has. Sure its a large store but it's kind of in a weird area of the city. It's in  more of an industrial area, but it has a parking lot and is near 93. This store is always packed. Emmett one of the wine buyers has a great palate and has been buying wine for many years. I'm sure he would not like me to tell you how many as it will make him look old, so I'll leave it at many years. He knows almost every bottle that he has in the store, so I knew he was the right person to ask for a recommendation.

He suggested I pick up a bottle of Montlouis Sur Loire Brut by Francois Chidaine. Lorie Valley, as you may know, is one of my most favorite wine regions in the world. There are so many different styles of wines (even from the same grape) so you could never get bored. I mostly drink the reds from Lorie, however the sparkling wines, especially from Chenin Blanc will always make me happy!!  Chenin Blanc is one of the top grapes grown in the Loire. Thanks to the high levels of acidity this grape can be made in several different styles from sparkling to beautiful dessert wines. This wine is fantastic and not all that pricey at $19.99. It has a deep flavor that makes you think of  the great Champagnes. The nose reeks of toast (in a very good way) and the palate is roasted pears wrapped in browned toast. What a great pairing!!