Yummy Fungi and Merlot

Saturday, Noel and I were in Russo's getting our weekly produce. Noel asked if I wanted to get any pasta they sell. I was shocked when she said ok to mushroom ravioli. I love mushrooms!! Noel, not so much. I knew I had to make a meal that would help the mushrooms be a background taste. I decided to add thin steaks, and roasted brussel sprouts. What a meal!!

I did have to come up with a sauce for the mushroom ravioli. I found on food.com a great cream sauce with Marsala. I love Marsala, most people think it's only a cooking wine, but it is a great after dinner wine too. This sauce was so easy to make and helped make this meal outstanding. Perfect for this meal. To start you need to saute a small diced onion and three cups of mushrooms for about three minutes. When we were at Russo's, I grabbed baby shiitake mushrooms for the dinner. YUMMY!!! After the room smells of mushrooms cooked with onions (about 3 minutes) you add 1 1/3 cup Marsala. I used real Marsala for this recipe, there are "cooking" Marsala's but what fun is that? You would never want to drink that after the recipe was done. After you boil the mushroom/Marsala mix for four minutes you need to add 1 1/3 cup heavy cream and 1/8 cup milk and heat until warm. Salt and pepper to taste and serve over the ravioli. This sauce came out amazing!! I even made sure to pour a little on top of the steaks and brussel sprouts.

The wine was easy to pick. My buddy, Mike from Peirano Estate, was out in the market two weeks ago. I love this estate, especially their Merlot. It comes from 6 clones, 3 from California, Italian clone #9, and from Bordeaux clone 181 and 134. Don't tell anyone but I heard the owner was at Petus and found clone 181 on the ground and pocketed it. What a bad ass!!! This Merlot is great. So many people over look Merlot. Sure it's not the most exciting grape, but give it to the right wine maker and you get a fantastic wine. This wine has a beautiful bouquet of cherries and blackberries in cream. The palate is a wonderful array of flavors. The plum, cherries and cranberry notes help welcome this old friend back into your life. What a great pairing with this meal.

Happy Anniversary

Wow, I can't believe it's already been a year. When Noel first told me to start a blog I thought who would care, but I have found there are people out there. Thank you so much for sharing great meals and amazing wines with me!!

I was trying to think about what I should cook and blog about for my first year anniversary. My very first post was about meatloaf. I love meatloaf!! Over the year, anytime I have made my own tomato sauce I have used some of it in a meatloaf. I've got pretty good at making meatloaf. Thanks too our friends SamiJ and Erik, I still have some venison in my freezer. I decided to make a venison meatloaf for this very special occasion. The best part of using the venison in my freezer, I got to grind up the meat myself. Noel and I bought a Kitchen Aid blender on Ebay a while ago and it came with the meat grinder attachment. How gourmet!!! I cut up the steak into cubes so it would be easier to put it through the grinder, and seasoned the meat with salt, thyme and rosemary. Venison is not a real fatty meat. When I was at Russo's I bought a slab of double smoked bacon. I cut off a large chuck from the fattiest side and ground it up with the venison to add a little fat and flavor. Bacon makes everything better!!

After I had the meat ground up it was time to make the meal. I wanted to make a meatloaf with a gravy so I went online to find a recipe. What an age we are in!! My grandmother, even mother had to rely on cook books. I have a few cook books but I mostly rely on the internet. I found a great recipe for venison meatloaf on Georgia Outdoor News. The recipe calls for a red pepper chopped, small onion chopped, celery chopped, cup of bread crumbs, two eggs beaten, cup of tomato puree, BBQ sauce, and brown sugar. I didn't have enough regular bread crumbs so I used panko bread crumbs. I mixed all the ingredients and the meat together formed it in a loaf shape and stuck it in a 375F oven for about an hour, when my meat thermometer reached 135F. I found a quick recipe on line to make a mushroom gravy. The recipe called for a mix of mushrooms but I only used baby shiitake, figuring they would pair best with the venison. When I first tasted the meatloaf I couldn't believe it was venison. There was no gamy flavors at all and the gravy made the meal!!! I served it with mashed potatoes and roasted brussel sprouts, garlic, onion and carrots. It was such a great meatloaf, I would serve this to anyone who told me they hated venison, and I wouldn't tell them it was venison until they had licked their plate clean. And trust me they would lick the plate clean!! Noel and I did!

While the meatloaf was in the oven I went over to my wine fridge and picked the perfect wine for this meal. A while back I was doing a wine tasting at Bacco's Wine and Cheese in downtown Boston. I love this place. It's the kind of wine shop that I would one day love to own myself. His space is small, so his selection is small but it is GREAT!!!! They carry wine from every region and because they are limited on space they are very selective on what wine they bring in. All the employees try the wine (even the Cheese Wiz) with Bob and the sales rep. They only take in wines that they all agree on. Bob does have the final say, but he really cares and trusts what his employees think. He only hires employees that know their shit. One of his wine guys has lived all over the world and has a real strong passion for wine and food, and his cheese wiz always brings in crazy good cheese!! It's the kind of store that you could go to everyday and always see something new. They have a wine and cheese tasting everyday!! Well except Tuesday, when they have a beer and cheese tasting. 

After my wine tasting I told Bob I wanted something different. He went right to this wine from Portugal. This is a country that is so often over looked. Most people only think of Port when they think about wine from Portugal. I love Port, but they really have so much more to offer in wine. Espirito Lagoalva was perfect for my meal. A blend of Castelao and Touriga Nacional, the wine had beautiful raspberry and blackberry fruit, a nice hint of spice and great smooth tannins. What a perfect pairing to a venison meatloaf!!!  My mouth is getting excited just thinking about the wine. If you haven't had a wine from Portugal then you need to put your computer down and run to your local wine shop. If you find Espirito Lagoalva then it's a must buy!! The best part about Portuguese wines, they are not expensive, you can find great values under $15. Thanks Bob! I don't think I could have had better wine with this meal!!

There has been some great recipes and even better wines over the past 365 days and there are still many more to come. I want to start blogging more recipes, I would love to have at least one a week. Right now I average about three a month. If there  is anything you cook or any wine that you drink that you think I need to try please contact me here or email me dangazaille@gmail.com. Together we can make the next year that much better!!! 

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!!