A Finger Lakes Riesling

Late last summer, at the very end of summer, actually, we made a pilgrimage up to the Finger Lakes to immerse ourselves in the New York State wine experience. Although the drive was much longer than I expected (my estimate of 3 hours was dramatically off the mark) and it rained off and on the entire day, it was a rather pleasant journey from the city to the idyllic environs of the Finger Lakes. I couldn't wait to get into the tasting rooms of the wineries that dotted the shores of Seneca Lake. Our first wine tasting journey was at the beginning of the summer, a Memorial Day trip out west to experience the gorgeous scenery and wines of Sonoma County. After having discovered the joys of an entire weekend spent tasting and eating and driving the back country roads of Sonoma I was excited about seeing how New York's Finger Lakes compared.

After spending a few days driving around the lake, hopping from winery to winery and taking in the plethora of sights, sounds, smells, tastes and overall feeling of the place I had to conclude that Sonoma was much more to my liking. I like the energy of Sonoma more, and the quality of the light. Although the Finger Lakes were fun, I couldn't quite escape the feeling that pervades much of upstate New York, that of a place that has seen better times.

Oh, and the food was much better in Sonoma.

These are the wineries the Professor and I liked best, either for the wine, the vibe or just because they were plain fun:

Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard
Fulkerson Winery
Lakewood Vineyards
Red Newt
Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards
Lamoreaux Landing
Ravines Wine Cellars


The Professor's Tasting Notes

Hermann J. Wiemer
Dry Riesling Reserve
2005

A delightful riesling from one of my favorite New York State wineries. It is more elegant and richer than its more cheerful sister, the 2005 Dry Riesling. It has a pretty pale gold color reminiscent of the late autumn sun. Its aroma is softly fruity, with a hint of honey. It's notes are definitely fruity (ripe pears and apples*) without the heavy-handedness or overly-sweetness of some rieslings. We paired it with three different dishes ---ginger-fried calamari, striped seabass on a bed of roasted artichoke, and fresh spring green salad---, and it went with each one equally well. I can imagine it paring beautifully with a variety of seafood dishes, cheese plates and salads. To sum up, this wine plays very well with others.

*I thought I tasted a hint of pineapple, but Dantae was not able to confirm this. He said, "it's yummy!" instead.

Another Sazerac, Please

This past Saturday evening we found ourselves in the Village for a play, A Very Common Procedure at the MCC Theatre. We came quite close to not making the curtain, due to my insistence on cooking mackerel for dinner rather than quickly reheating leftovers and running out the door. And of course I probably would have reheated the leftovers from dinner the previous night at Mandoo Bar had I actually thought to do that. It was the most reasonable thing to do considering the time constraints we running up against. But no, I just had to have the mackerel, didn't I? Yes, it turned out quite well and yes, it was very quick and easy to cook (especially with the Professor helping with the prep) just like Mark Bittman said it would be. But was it worth it? Was having the mackerel worth the incredible stress we experienced while waiting for the downtown 1 train? Was it worth the agony of waiting for an express train at 96th street, the whole time thinking that it very well might have been a huge mistake to try and catch the express train rather than just take the local downtown? Was it worth running along Christopher Street dodging slow poke pedestrians and vehicular traffic while crossing Bleeker against the light?

Yes, because we made it to the theatre on time despite our giving in to our mackerel cravings.

The highlight of the evening though, even after a not half bad dinner and an pretty good play, was the bar we went to afterwards, Little Branch. I've been wanting to check out this joint for quite sometime but never remembered to stop by whenever I was in the neighborhood. The Professor and I were both very impressed by the level of craftmanship employed at this particular bar. Very high quality ingredients, freshly squeezed juices, freshly peeled garnishes and a whole host of other items on display left no doubt that I was going to enjoy whatever it was the bartender concocted. And I did, VERY much.

For our first round I ordered a Sazerac and Hye-Kyung the Presbyterian (rye, ginger, sugar and soda). I had heard of the sazerac somewhere before but wasn't quite sure what it was. A few days earlier I had overheard someone say they ordered one at Little Branch and was impressed. As it turns out, the Sazerac is THE classic cocktail, being one of the first (some say the first) cocktails ever mixed. Chuck Taggart over at Gumbo Pages describes it thusly:

This is an absolutely exquisite cocktail. As you sip it, you come across layer after layer of flavor -- the warmth and glowing burn of the rye, effused with the flavors of spice and honey, the bite of the bitters balanced with the sweetness of the sugar, with the subtle yet complex flavor of the anise underneath and the perfume of the lemon oil from the twist feel like a symphony inside your mouth. This is also a drink that warms up well, revealing even more flavors. Sip it very slowly. Savor it. Take your time with it.

I think this might very well be my new favorite cocktail.

Please Bring Some White Slaves, or, The Joys of T9

For various reasons, tomorrow seems to be the perfect day for cooking a meal for the Professor; a nice meal, one that not only tastes, but also looks, wonderful. That is the goal at least. To aid in that goal I'm enlisting the help of a set of white plates. Aesthetically, nothing presents food as well as a big white plate. It's an empty canvass upon which to place your masterpiece.

The only problem is that I left all my white plates at the Professor's place the last time we threw a dinner party. So I sent her a text message asking her to please bring some white plates when she comes up tomorrow. I should have checked the message before sending it, however, as it came out as "please bring some white slaves."

Ginger Calamari

Just about all of the books I've read recently have been about food; where it comes from, the craft of preparing it, the joys of eating it; the social, political, economic, environmental and health ramifications of our eating habits; as well as the interesting personalities that inhabit the culinary world. My recent reads have included Heat, The Omnivore's Dilema, Kitchen Confidential and, most recently, The Soul of A chef: The Journey Toward Perfection by Michael Ruhlman.

One aspect of these books that I've really enjoyed is cooking from them. No, these are not cookbooks, and they don't contain recipes per se (Ok, The Soul of a Chef does indeed contain recipes, but I didn't know that until after I finished the book, since they are all the way in the back. More on that in a bit), but they do contain entire paragraphs of prose on how to prepare certain dishes, from braised short ribs in Heat to perfectly roasted whole fish in Kitchen Confidential. I've attempted both dishes and they both turned out quite well.

It's fun to sometimes read a very basic description of a dish with perhaps a few sentences on how to prepare it and see how well it turns out in my kitchen. So when I read the following in Soul of a Chef, in the part of the book focused on Michael Symon, I knew I had to try it:

And he did do good food, fun food, worth noting. His fried calamari were the best I'd tasted anywhere. He wanted to get the flavor of ginger into his calamari somehow. He tried grating ginger into the flour coating, but that didn't produce the right effect. He tried putting ginger powder in the flour, but it resulted in a fake ginger taste. He began to think about batter, how some batters use carbonation as a leavener, such as beer batters. He didn't like heavy batters, but this idea led him to the idea of soaking the calamari in ginger-ale and fresh grated ginger. The ginger-marinated squid would then be coated in a peppery flour and fried. "It came out really nice," he told me. He served it with a smooth green onion sauce.

All I had to go on was this brief description, but I figured that was enough. Some squid, some ginger, some ginger-ale, flour and pepper. Surely this couldn't be difficult.

I started with a half pound of clean squid that I picked up at one of the areas best fish markets. The squid smelled of the ocean; it was extremely fresh! This gave me the confidence I needed to prepare another squid dish after getting sick the last time I did so. I sliced the squid into little rings about a half-inch wide and put the rings into a bowl, into which I then poured some ginger-ale, making sure the all the squid was covered by the ale. I then peeled and, using a microplane, finely grated an inch long piece of fresh ginger directly into the bowl. I covered the bowl in placed it into the fridge. I didn't have any guidance into how long the calamari should be marinated for, but I figured an hour should be long enough. Surely it didn't need more than that, did it? It was only after I finished reading Soul of a Chef that I learned that the calamari should in fact be marinated overnight, after first grating the fresh ginger directly onto the calamari and marinating in the fridge for 1 to 4 hours.

Even though I didn't get the recipe quite right the end result was still pretty good. After marinating I dipped the calamari into flour into which I had put a good deal of freshly ground black pepper and cooked them quickly in a pan with canola oil heated to 375 (more or less). Cooking the calamari in two batches turned out to be a very good thing, as I left the first batch in the pan for way too long. Although they were in the pan for no more than 2 and half minutes they were very, very overcooked. That batch was almost too rubbery to eat. About a minute of cooking time yielded much better results, rendering a very well textured, lightly brown, crisp exterior and a nice soft calamari interior. The second batch was VERY tasty. I can only imagine how much more intense the dish would have been had I marinated correctly. Next time that will happen.

Cinema Gewürztraminer

Last night the Professor and I decided to check out the new Alfonso Cuarón film, Children of Men. Since this was a mid-week date so we thought it would be nice to enjoy some nice food and drink while watching the movie. As much as I love freshly popped popcorn and a big soda every now and then while at the cinema, those options just didn't seem quite right last night. We wanted something a little more interesting.

But what?

Then inspiration struck. Why not watch the movie while enjoying a bottle of wine? And why not pair it with some aged cheese and bread? And while we're at it, why not throw in a salad as well? That was the plan the Professor and I concocted before meeting up at the theatre. I told her that morning that I would be bringing a bottle of wine with me to the movie and her job was to provide snacks to go along with it.

The aged cheddar, french bread and asparagus sald turned out to be the perfect match for the gewürztraminer I snuck into the theatre. I opened the bottle the night before and resealed it with a vacuvin so I didn't have to worry about bringing a wine opener. As soon as we were seated I pulled the wine out of my bag and poured us each a glass (paper cups, really), and the immediate area around us filled up with the wonderful aroma of the guwurtz. I briefly worried that someone might pick up the scent and rat us out but then realized that there was probably nothing to worry about as the theatre was mostly empty. All I had to do then was relax, sip some wine, eat some bread and cheese and enjoy the film, which I did.


The Professor's Tasting Notes

Ransom 2003 Gewürztraminer
Mary's Peak & Earl's Vinyards
Willamette Valley, OR


A very dry gewürz from Oregon, it is reminiscent of its Alsatian cousins in that its flavors are rich but understated. Compared to its Finger Lake region (NY) siblings that tend to be brighter, sweeter, and bursting with lychee flavor, this wine tastes more mature and silky. The wine has a beautiful golden hue and is well-balanced. Although it definitely had a rich fruit flavor, I am still having trouble pinpointing the dominant fruit of this wine.

Both Dantae and I didn't really take to it at first, perhaps because we were expecting more of a NY gewürz flavor. However, it really grew on us, especially when we paired it with food (in this case, two kinds of aged cheddar, crusty bread, asparagus-lemon-capers salad, and slices of bosc pear). With an alcohol content of 14.4%, it is easy to feel the effect of it. If you like Alsatian Gewürz, my guess is that you would like this wine.

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes!

Don't these pancakes look good? OF COURSE they do! They’re pancakes! Freshly baked! But they aren't just any pancakes. They're lemony ricotta pancakes!

So anyways, this was my breakfast one weekend morning, and, as you can see below, nearly breakfast for one of my cats as well. The Minimalist column in the New York Times dining section a few weeks ago featured pancakes. The gist of the piece was just how incredibly easy making pancakes from scratch can be, adding, at most, a whopping 30 seconds to the time it takes to make of a batch from a mix. This I knew already though as I've been making a lot of pancakes lately.


What I haven’t been doing, though, is making any attempt to raise my pancakes to the next level. What does raising my pancakes to the next level mean, you ask? Well, in this case it means cheese; ricotta cheese to be precise. And yogurt. And lemon zest. And egg whites that are whipped and then folded into the batter. And a dash of salt. Oh, and using butter in the skillet rather than oil, as I had been doing.

That, my friend, is definitely operating on a higher level than I was before, which was just the plain old flour, egg, baking powder, sugar and milk mixture.

Now, thanks to the New York Times I've got game!

New Year New Adventures

So here it is. My first posting of the new year. It is a bit late, yes, but at least I got my first posting of the year up during the month of January. How many other bloggers can make that claim?

There are a lot of things I’d like to write about in the coming days and weeks. Certainly I’ll have to post about the wonderful jerk chicken and ackee and saltfish dishes I ate while down in Jamaica last month. Then there is the Pan-fried Striped Bass with Lemongrass Cream and Fried Leeks I attempted last Friday that turned out surprisingly well. The idea was to replicate the dish as featured on Clement’s A La Cuisine blog. He doesn’t have a recipe but there is a really nice photo and a few notes. I was literally shocked that it came out as well as it did. And there are a few other dishes I’ve prepared recently that I’d like to post about soon as well.

My intent for 2007 is for it to be a year of learning, experimentation, fun and adventure in the culinary realm. Above all else, though, it will be a year of sharing. I’m planning on cooking much often for friends and family. I’m going to get myself into various soup kitchens around town and prepare meals for people in need. As learning to bake is part of the plan, my co-workers will find themselves munching on all sorts of (hopefully!!) yummy treats. In short, I hope to take my newfound love of cooking and use it to put smiles on people’s faces.

And oh there is so much to learn! So many things to try and master! What is truly wonderful is that this is only the beginning of a life-long culinary adventure. No matter how far I happen to take this, no matter how much I might eventually learn and master, there will always, always, ALWAYS be more out there to learn and discover.

I’m excited!

Being a beginner of course it’s easy for me to stay in Beginner’s Mind. I hope that I remain in that state as I acquire new skills and knowledge, and that if I don’t , I have someone around me who will smack me and remind me.