I bought this wine after we came back from our wine country trip and we were all enthused about wines. It was 50% off at Safeway (from $20) and it seemed like a good deal. I’ve been meaning to drink it every since, but after our initial enthusiasm with drinking wine, we kind of forgot about it.
Tonight I made a nice dinner and decided it was a good time to have some wine. Yes, I had made chicken and a white would have been more appropriate, but I didn’t have any in the fridge and I wanted to open this wine once and for all.
I found it to not be a bad choice at all. The wine is definitely robust, but it didn’t overwhelm the chicken. It has hints of black cherry and is somewhat chalky – the finish is pretty sharp. It’s not an easy to drink wine, but it feels nice in a cold night – it warms you up.
Year: 2007 (Page 3 of 11)
Some times mistakes can turn up well. Last Monday I went to the supermarket with my shopping list, which was supposed to include 2 1/4 lbs. of sweet onions for a Calabrian onion soup I meant to make. Alas, I wrote 2 1/4 lbs of sweet peppers instead – an easy mistake to make given that I had peppers on my mind, Calabrian cuisine uses a lot of peppers. I didn’t buy 2 1/4 lbs of sweet peppers because that seemed like a lot, peppers don’t weigh that much. I saw a little bag of small sweet peppers, though, and decided to buy those instead. When I got home I realized my mistake, and I was left with the problem of what to do with the peppers.
Amazingly enough, I couldn’t find any recipes for baby sweet peppers – other than stuffed peppers, which I wasn’t crazy about. So I thought and thought and decided to go with what I knew, and make this recipe for pollo al chilindron or chicken with peppers. I didn’t do it exactly like last time, I didn’t use green peppers, both because I didn’t have any and because I thought that would make it too spicy for the kids (not that I should have bothered, as they didn’t eat any). The results were pretty good, however. It wasn’t delicious, but it was homey and satisfying, comfort food. I ate the sauce with bread and it was very good.
Sunday we went to Ardenwood Farm for their Fall Festival. They had food there (the most pathetic tri-tip sandwich ever, barely any meat and flavorless) and a bunch of demonstrations, including baking demonstrations of food cooked the old fashioned way in an old stover. One of the things they made were these amazing crispy cookies. Their program came with a recipe for “Oatmeal Crispies”, and while these cookies (recipe below) were also very good, they weren’t as good or as sweet as those I tried at the festival. Still, they are worth making.
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups white flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3 cups oatmeal
- 1 package chocolate chips
Cream together the butter and the sugars. Mix in the eggs and then vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking soda, salt, oatmeal and chocolate chips. Bake at 350F for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.
This morning we went to yet another Friends of the Library booksale at the San Leandro library. I didn’t mean to buy too many cookbooks, I have no room as it is, and it’s not like I ever use them. But once again, I couldn’t resist them. So this is what I got:
A Taste of Florida, by Dorothy Chapman – I guess I’m adding Floridian, to the list of cuisines I’ll probably never cook.
The wine lover’s cookbook by Sid Goldstein – Mike found it. It’s not a book of wine-based recipes (darn!), but of recipes with recommended wine pairings. It gets good reviews at Amazon.com, and it seems it’s the kind of book one has to read and not just get recipes from. Seems like a good buy.
The Greens Cook Book by Deborah Madison. I am, as you may know, an anti-vegetarian, I eat barely any vegetables, but I do cook vegetarian food from time to time and I thought it’d be a good addition to my cookbook collection.
The Complete Book of Caribbean Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. I already own two or three Caribbean cookbooks, but there are so many islands in that area that I can always use another one. And this book tells you from which country each recipe is.
Middle Eastern Cooking and American Cooking: The Northwest from the Time-Life Foods of the World collection. This is a really old collection – the books are from the 1960’s and 70’s, but I’ve found some good recipes in some of them. I have quite a lot of them now, as I keep buying them when I see them at the library sales.
And this is it – until the next sale 🙂
The following is a letter I got vis a vis my review of The Station House at Point Reyes Station. Apparently I’m not the only one who finds the food bland. I encourage my readers to comment on my blog or e-mail me about the restaurants I’ve reviewed (whether agreeing or disagreeing with me)
—-
Hi Margarita
I should have checked your review before visiting the Station House cafe but
alas I did not and it was our loss. We decided to have dinner there as it
was recommended by a local but it was very disappointing to say the least.
To start with, our hostess seemed to have a bit of an attitude when we were
seated and it went downhill from their. Our waitress came to take our order
and had to ask the chef about what we wanted three different times; Could
they just steam the veggies? could we just have garlic with no butter on the
Mussels? and could we have the salad dressing on the side.
My wife had the 1/2 pound of steamed mussels, a salad with no dressing and
and steamed veggies, I had the special of the day, chippino and a cup of
clam chowder. We waited about 1/2 an hour for our food (no popovers or bread
was served and no one returned to fill our water glasses).
When the food finally arrived my wife’s steamed mussels were on the short
side (more like 1/8 of a pound) and the dressing was on the salad. It took
about 5 min. to get the busboy to take the salad back and get another, that
was the last we saw of the salad! We asked for some bread and the busboy
finally got it for us.
My chippino was ok but not worth the 20 dollars we paid for it. The clam
chowder was watery and it was difficult to tell if it had any clams in it.
The service was very bad and as you said the food was insipid. The waitress
checked back with us once towards the end of the meal however it was a
prefunctionary walk by. The best part of service was the busboy who was a
lot more attentive and even apologetic.
Needless to say we will not be returning to the station house cafe.
Best regards
Stan Gelber
Saturday night, Mike and I went to Women of Taste, a benefit for Girls Inc. – a local charity that works to empower girls. The event features women chef presenting some of their food. There are a couple dozen (or more) tables, each one manned by a retaurant, cattering company or winery – and you go from table to table picking up small bites of what they have to offer. It’s a great idea and we had a lot of fun doing it. Some of the food was really good (a goat cheese on endive bite from a catering company, a caviar appetizer from a restaurant I can’t remember and a BBQ pork sandwich from T-Rex in Berkeley), but a lot of it was merely pedestrian. There were a lot of brochetta or brochetta like things – understandable, given that the restaurants must provide 1,200 pieces of food for free. Other than the BBQ sandwich, and a couple of tiny fish bites, there was no protein at all. The wines were much better. I liked the syrah from Concannon winery in Livermore and whatever red wine I had from Handley Cellars. The Barefoot Cab, however, was pretty much undrinkable. There were a lot of sweets – including a pretty good cheesecake from Trader Joe’s, ice cream from Fenton’s and an amazing chocolate Truffle from Boulevard.
There was also a silent auction (we didn’t win anything), and live music.
As I said we had a great time, run into some political acquaintances, and we’ll probably go back next year. Tickets are expensive, $125 each ($100 if you buy them well in advance, which we didn’t), but they benefit a good cause. About 1,200 people attended, but in general the lines weren’t too long.
Last night I made Coq au vin, a favorite recipe of mine. I got that recipe from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine, and I’m not sure how authentic it is. When I’ve had coq au vin at restaurants, the sauce has been more bitter and more liquid. However, it’s absolutely delicious (if incredibly fattening), and I’d recommend it as a special treat.
My sister Kathy came to visit us this weekend. Her birthday is on Monday, so we decided to celebrate it while she was here. She wanted a special dinner, and I told her I’d cook anything she wanted me to (except for Beef Wellington, I just couldn’t commit to that). She chose this recipe for Short Ribs Braised in Porter Ale with Maple-Rosemary Glaze that I had made before. I decided that I wanted to braise with wine instead, so went to epicurious and found this recipe which sounded pretty good. It was! Restaurant quality I would say.
I did use 3 1/2 tablespoons of the herb mixture on the ribs. I considered putting the rest of the mixture on the pot (I think there must be another use for the mixture or they wouldn’t ask to make so much), but ultimately didn’t. Not sure if it’d have made a difference. I also didn’t put the vegetables on the blender after cooking. I’d already messed up enough plates and I didn’t have to have more dishes to wash (we don’t have a dishwasher). The sauce was a little chunky but still delicious.
In all, I’d make this recipe again in a heartbeat.
I served it with mashed potatoes, and, before the meal, my Mixed Green Salad with Gorgonzola Vinaigrette, which is delicious and a favorite of Kathy. For dessert we had birthday cake.
I made this 1956 recipe for Rosemary chicken a few nights ago. I rotisseried the chicken rather than roasting it, which meant I couldn’t really baste it during the cooking process. It was fine. Mike really liked the flavor of the chicken, though it was too mild for my taste. The skin tasted great, but it wasn’t crispy enough. I don’t think I’d make it again.
I just found out, by looking at my web logs, that a month ago Cary Tennis linked to my review of Lovejoy’s from one of his columns. I think that’s very cool because I love Car Tennis, he’s by far my favorite advise columnist (not that I read that many advise columns, mind you). So I’m thrilled he read something I wrote – even if he was mildly making fun of it.
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