Amateur Wine Reviews 9: This Time, We're Still Doing This

So this Chateau Ksara’s Reserve de Couvent. Becca says that’s Reserve of the Convent in some crazy dead language, and for some reason right now she is fingering a rosary, so I guess I’ll go with that. I obviously like this wine. First off, not to obsess, but the label doesn’t just have a picture of an old-timey building; the label itself is actually a castle! I mean, that’s double the classic label design.
Next, I like adventure, and this wine is like a lip-searing journey through the world’s largest liquorice scented tannery. Finally, I support economic diversification, and wine making is an important component in the Beqaa valley’s agricultural and estonian-kidnapping based economy.
I recommend this wine to anyone who feels that they do not get enough astrigence in their diet.
Ratings:
Label: 3 whole castles of badass
Wine: Well, we did finish it, for what that's worth. I guess grade-wise that's a minimum of sixty percent?

Amateur Wine Review 8: La Florencia

I deleted Amateur Wine Review 7 because it was not funny, although it did have a funny name.
This shit is bananas, mostly in the sense that I dislike bananas, but also in the sense that artificial banana is the flavour of amoxycillin.
Let me explain in brief. The bottle insists on red fruit aromas or some such, and delicate touches of this and that. All true; not noted, however, is the lingering taste of what I deduce is tannin flavoured cough syrup. I suspect it is a combination of the %14 percent alcohol and a fair amount of tannin, but this wine has a distinctly antiseptic finish. Other than that, it's lovely - so as long as you drink constantly and your mouth is never empty, you'll like this wine - chug away, my friends.
Rating: 2/La Florencia is for external use only. Avoid contact with eyes; if this happens, rinse thoroughly with a better wine. In case of accidental ingestion, seek professional assistance.

Amateur Wine Reviews 6!

Ladies! Gentlemen! People who do not associate with either group! It's amateur wine review time!
My roommate/good friend/arch-nemesis Misha just came back from Israel (it was some sort of enjewing expedition the contours of which I find perplexing despite my knowledge of various bruchas [sic]) and he knows me well - he brought me wine.
The wine is Sion Creek White, from the Golan winery, which is apparently Israel's crazy mega-corporation of winery. I wouldn't know, though, because every other word (besides those already recounted, such as the name) is in Hebrew.
What do I know about the wine? Well, it is pretty delicious. Off-dry, sort of - peary? I approve of it, and its minimalist thistle on the label. I mean, it's no castle or lion or lion riding a castle, but it's a start. Basically, I am giving this wine my endorsement. I mean, you're never going to see it, because is this wine available in Ontario? No. It's not. So I've now had a sublime, transcendent wine experience that none of you suckers ever will. This wine was stunning, it was like looking through a glass that contained the essence of divinity. It was like heaven, wrapped in nirvana. It excused anything Israel might ever do by its existence. Basically, I'm going to hype this wine so high that you travel all the way to Israel to try it, and then when you do and you say "Oh, this is merely quite good rather than revelatory as he had implied," I'll leap out from behind an olive tree and go Ha! You did this at great personal expense! I hope you didn't read this end part, or it will ruin my plan.
Review: 10000%! (This plays into the earlier deception)

Amateur Wine Reviews Volume 5: Lusitano

"Volume 5," you say? "What happened to the incredibly exciting volumes three and four?" Well, my poor hypothetical and in all likelihood non-existent reader, I didn't bother writing 3 and 4 because they were about white wine so, lets forget that. They tasted - I guess - white winy? Satisfactory!
But this one! This is a wine to excite. This is a wine to thrill - this is the wine of a horse named... lusitano.
For anything in this review to make sense, I need to reproduce, unabridged and the entire thing firmly (sic), the blurb from the back of the bottle.

This wine will remember you some Lusitano horse breed characteristics, of nobel temper, fervent but generous, docile and sufferer, of elevated taste and agile pacing, but smooth and of great comfort for the horseman. Taste it.

That's right! You've heard of Japlish, and possibly Spanglish, and of course Moldovlish; now you know Portuglish. Oh yeah, this wine is from Portugal. It is actually quite good. It's a little bit sweeter than I like - perhaps its Nobel temper makes it explode with flavour a bit too much? It has a fervent, yet generous, little bit of cinnamony taste? It's nice, quite smooth, and went well with both garlic and buffalo mozzarella, respectively in the manner of docile and suffer. So it meets all of my requirements.
However.
I would like to point out - I am not a horseman. I have seen horses. I have ridden a horse. It was a harrowing experience, one that scars me to this day and makes me twitch in fear at the sight of hay or swarms of flies around giant mammals. And as such, this wine failed to provide me with any great comfort. I have mixed feelings about this - obviously, I am not the target audience for this wine. I just feel that from a marketing standpoint, the horseman is not what I would consider a growing demographic. Also, checking on wikipedia, I see that among the features of the Lusitano horse that this wine failed to emulate were sloped croups; nor is it of the baroque type.
Therefore, I must reluctantly say that as a wine, this is a great success; but as an emulation of the Lusitano breed of horses, it is at best mixed in results.
Result:
For the wine: Taste it.
For the horse emulation: everything but the withers.

[Note: Another editor, who will remain nameless, recommended that I include the world "eqwine." Her puns will be disallowed from here on out - ed]

land of plenty

spring!

it's warm.
that means one thing: farmer's market time.
here's some good old bright-green-first-vegetables-of-spring food porn.

Wine Reviews Two: Is that all I do here?

I'm trying to get a read on the taste of this wine, but the situation is complicated by the excellent anise flavour I've got going right now. And every time I clear my palate to try and taste the wine, I eat another bite of this. The wine has a liquoricy nose, a slightly fennel-scented finish, and an all-sorts body?

Anyways, the wine is Le Bourgogne; Chanson Pere & Fils 2007. This strikes me as a pretentious choice of name. I will not bill myself as The Torontonian. Nor is our food Canada Food. In any case, I give the name a roundly negative review.
The label lacks also any pictures of castles, although a tiny lion does make up for that.





You may notice I haven't said anything about the wine yet, really. That's because it's sort of - winish? I mean, I know I'm no expert. Or really a beginner. But the dominant flavour here is, frankly, wine. It's nicely balanced, pleasantly tart and all, but I have to say the taste is that of some sort of red wine.
It's sort of like - it's like getting a B- on a paper that you didn't really try on? I mean, your expectations aren't really that crazy going in (mostly due to the lack of castle on the label) but you still can't help being disappointed even though it is completely, averagely satisfactory.

Final rating: I guess a B-? Is that applicable? It will have to stay after class.

Recent Kitchen Adventures

Apple Empenadas

Baked Samosas with Tamarind Chutney

Opinionated Amateur Reviews - LAN

Shit son, we have a blog?
I guess that means that I should - like you do- review whatever it is that I am eating or drinking at all times.
And what better place to start than with this lovely bottle of wine? LAN Rioja [capitalization in original] found its way into my kitchen today, and I couldn't be more pleased about it (this is rhetoric; I could, conceivably, be more pleased.) The 2004 "reserva," as they call it in, I presume Spain, is quite good; smooth, slightly sweet, enough tannicitivityness to keep me happy without feeling too tannic in the mouth. The label has a helpful maturation guide on the back, which satisfied my love for both red wine and graphs. Furthermore, the label has a lovely tiny castle on the front, which is cheerfully - I don't know, Moorish? The bottle is a good value (I guess? Declarative statements like that make me sound knowledgeable) at however some-odd teen dollars, so I recommend that you get a bottle and some friends for a - wait for it, wait for it - LAN party tonight.
LAN rating: quake 2/unreal tournament.

recycling!

FUN FACT!
You can render, filter and reuse lard to reduce expense and waste.
GUESS WHAT I AM DOING THIS AFTERNOON.
Also making stock out of beef bones.
Man, making confit was a pantry-staple-generating venture, apparently!

the recipe looked like this:

1/4 c soy sauce
1/4 c brown sugar
cloves
five spice powder
several cloves of garlic, crushed.

mix all of this together and cure 2 lbs of beef in it for 2-3 days
(tough cuts work best: brisket, stewing beef, or if you can get them beef cheeks)

cook the beef at 200 degrees F for 4-6 hours, in 4 c of beef fat (I used lard)

lemongrass is the shit

In the future, this will become curry paste.

why our mouths love going out for breakfast.

1. It is wildly self-indulgent. I could very easily have made the same eggs-and-toast that sit before me.
2. It is usually inexpensive.
3. It is reliable. Anyone can make a passable omelet.
4. If it is not noon on a Saturday, you can easily get a table.
5. It is often far more casual and relaxed than dinner. And quieter.
6. Huevos Rancheros.
7. Your drink is constantly being refilled from a steaming pot.
8. Bacon.
9. It doesn't matter what you're eating, you can always put maple syrup on it.
10. Buttered toast is one of life's great comforts.
11. Cocktails at 11AM are socially acceptable in this context.
12. Pancakes.

mouths that love cake

Wherever you stand in the cake-vs-pie debate, it's a heated issue.
And then there's the even more complicated cup pie-vs-cupcake problem.

While you're contemplating, here is a cake recipe that could cause you to switch sides.
(From Claudia Fleming's The Last Course)

Ginger and Stout Cake

1 cup stout
1 cup molasses
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp cardamom
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Liberally grease a 9x5" loaf pan, bundt pan or cake pan.
In a saucepan, bring the stout and molasses to a boil. Turn off the heat and add the baking soda. Set Aside.
Whisk the eggs, sugar and oil together. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, spices and baking powder.
Combine the stout mixture and the egg mixture, add this to the flour. Add the fresh ginger.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour. Cool and serve.

I served this with blood-orange sorbet, made by combining the the juice of blood oranges with lemon juice and simple syrup and processing it in my ice-cream maker. Very easy!

why our mouths love quebec

I have a fondness for Quebec.
Perhaps it's that I spent 18 years of my life learning to speak French.
Perhaps it's that I have misplaced my patriotism in an area of this country that I have only visited and never inhabited.
I've studied the province's film, its theatre, its literature, and especially its food.
Speaking Quebecois French, additionally, is an entirely different beast that learning Parisien French. There are dozens of regional dialects, and idioms and expressions have evolved entirely separately than the rest of the world. It's basically taken colloquial 16th-century French and isolated it on a different continent for five centuries. What makes me proudest of Quebecois as a language is its limited use of what we in class called 'Anglicisms'. In Paris, parking is labelled Le Parking, whereas in Quebec it's still Le Stationment d'Auto. In Paris they fill up their cars with GAZ and in Quebec they use PETROL.
In any event, what matters here is that Quebec food is rich, simple and delicious, and uses local ingredients to ingenious effect.
It's the sort of food that'll keep you warm through a rough winter, and tastes like home.
I hosted a dinner party featuring traditional Quebecois dishes last week (with one Acadien dish as well).
Here are the highlights.

The Richest-Tasting French Onion Soup You May Every Try. (and it's vegetarian!)

All of the Onions. All of them. (At least 2 kilo), sliced thinly
1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
2 Pints Stout or Dark Ale (please don't use Guiness unless you live next to the factory. Try a local brew)
2L Vegetable Stock
Bouquet Garni of thyme and bay leaves (bunch thyme, 2-3 bay leaves)
Salt and Pepper

In a large stockpot, carmelize the onions for as long as you can in the vegetable oil (at least 4 hours, but go for the whole day if possible). You can't have too many onions. You'll either have thicker soup or more soup, so you can't go wrong.
Deglaze with the beer. Add the stock, bouquet, salt and pepper and simmer, reducing by 1/3. This will take several hours.
Continue adding salt and pepper to taste. If it needs something more, season with a bit of vinegar and maple syrup.
It's best served the following day, so refrigerate overnight if possible and bring slowly back up to heat over the course of an hour or two, adding a bit more water to account for any water that will simmer off while you heat it, usually 2-3 cups.

Presentation
This is the trickiest part. Everyone expects the croutons, the melty cheese. You can either ladle the soup into serving bowls and top with the croutons and cheese, and broil in the oven for a few minutes, or serve the soup VERY VERY hot and offer guests croutons and cheese to top as they serve themselves, which is a nice option for those who don't eat dairy. Also, then it's far less work and you look extra accommodating.


Poutine with Mushroom and Wine Gravy

1 kilo potatoes (It ultimately doesn't matter what kind, but I usually go for Yukon Gold)
enough high-temperature-stable vegetable oil to half-fill a large frying pan
1 lb cheese curds (More if you have a cheese-crazy crowd.)
You could also use shredded/crumbled/cubed cheese. I've used raclettes and cheddars to great effect. You'll need something that tastes good when melted, which some cheeses do not, and melts at a sort of medium temperature. (ie not a brie)

Cut the potatoes into fries and rinse them with water. Thinner fries will fry up more quickly, but are more likely to burn if you aren't careful. Thicker fries take longer to cook through and longer still to crisp up, but will remain soft and fluffy on the inside. Choose based on your personal french fry preference and how much attention you can pay to the fries while they're cooking.
Technically, the best french-fry method is to blanch them at 300 degrees until they're cooked through, and then fry them to order at 375 degrees to crisp them. This method is super-great if you happen to have a temperature-controlled deep fryer, but tends to be cumbersome at best if you do not. Instead, I fry them crisp the first time, as if I were serving them right away, and then cool and drain them on tea towels on a baking sheet. When I'm about to serve them, I reheat them in the oven, which crisps them up anyways because the heat in the oven dries them out. This means my fries are more crispy, but aren't as soft on the inside. I like fries this way anyhow, so it works for me. You could also try blanching the fries in water and then frying them in hot oil, a method that is dangerous (because of the splattering of the water) but perfect almost every time.

Mushroom and Wine Gravy

3 Portabello Mushrooms, diced.
3 Large Onions, diced.
1/2 Head of Garlic
1/2 Bunch of Thyme, leaves only.
Salt and Pepper
750ml bottle of dry red wine

In a saucepan, carmelize the onions and garlic in a splash of oil. Take your time, let them soften into almost nothing. Add the mushrooms and do the same, sauteeing until they are very soft. Add the seasonings. Deglaze the pan with wine. Simmer, reducing by 2/3, season to taste. I use the gravy as is, but if you'd like a smooth, more traditional-looking gravy, run it through a blender with a bit of stock to thin it, or use an immersion blender.


Presentation
I like to serve poutine in a large communal bowl and let guests help themselves, but this can be messy. However you choose to serve it, layer hot fries and cheese in a bowl and pour the gravy on top. Garnish with thinly sliced chives or green onion, or a dollop of creme fraiche.


I also served Ployes, a traditional Acadien dish, with a twist.
They're usually just buckwheat pancakes served with syrup or other breakfast-like toppings.
I based mine on a recipe from Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant in Montreal and covered them in cheese, bacon, and a maple reduction sauce, and pork tenderloin instead of the restaurant's famed foie gras.
The recipe is already posted here on Planet Green, thanks to a special guest at dinner that night.

why our mouths love fuschia dunlop

The affair began one September day in 1993. My friend Zhou Yu invited me out to lunch on my very first visit to Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan Province. We ate in a modest restaurant near the bus station, a small place tiled in white like a bathroom, with a few tables and chairs and nothing on the walls. I can still remember every taste of that delicious meal. The preserved eggs, with their green-and-yellow yolks and amber whites, cut into segments and arranged around a pile of chopped green peppers like the petals of a flower. Cold chicken chunks, tossed in a piquant dressing of soy sauce, chilli oil and Sichuan pepper. A whole carp, braised in a sauce of chilli-bean paste laced with the heady fragrances of ginger, garlic and spring onions. And fish-fragrant aubergines, a dish which remains my personal favourite, the golden, buttery fried aubergines cooked in a deep red, spicy sauce with hints of sweet and sour. Later that afternoon, as we sat in a riverside teahouse sipping jasmine blossom tea as the sunlight danced through the leaves of sheltering trees, I realised I had fallen in love. I would have to return to Chengdu.

A year later it was my fond memories of eating in the city which brought me back to Chengdu. I was there ostensibly to study at the university but I had only to step outside the campus to be overwhelmed by the hubbub of Sichuanese life with its sprawling teahouses, bustling restaurants and vibrant lanes. Every morning I would be seduced anew by the scent of frying guo kuei, pinwheel pastries with a spicy pork filling and a scattering of toasty sesame seeds. A hundred yards or so from the door of my room, just beyond a side gate of the university, was a market overflowing with fresh and seasonal produce. Fish leapt and eels wriggled in tanks of water, ducks and chickens squawked in their pens. Vegetables and fruits were piled up in great bamboo trays: water spinach and bamboo shoots, garlic stems and bitter melons, seasonal treats like three-coloured amaranth leaves, loquats and 'spring shoots', the tender leaves of a local tree. One stall sold a dozen different types of beancurd; others displayed great sackfuls of glossy red chillies and pink Sichuan pepper, or enormous clay urns filled with rice wine.

Fuschia Dunlop

From Shark's Fin Soup and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China