The Silk Road of Wine

What's for Dinner: Grilled Lamb Skewers with Yogurt-mint Dipping Sauce

This recipe comes straight from the excellent Mark's Daily Apple site (written by Mark Sisson of Primal Blueprint fame).  It is easy and delicious - before you go to work in the morning, marinate cubed lamb for 8 hours in a mix of cumin, onion, garlic, olive oil, parsley, lemon juice and allspice.  (I added a few pinches of red pepper flakes to liven things up).  Then fire up a charcoal grill in the evening, skewer the lamb (don't forget to pre-soak if you use wood skewers) and cook for 6 minutes per side.

While it is cooking, you can whip up the yogurt-mint dipping sauce, which is a real treat in itself.  In a food processor, toss in full-fat organic Greek yogurt (you want the thick stuff in this case), lots of fresh mint leaves, some parsley, cumin and lime juice - add fresh garlic and cucumber if you want your sauce to resemble tzatziki.

What to drink with it?  Keep it simple.  There are some bold flavors at work here between the charcoal-grilled lamb and the marinade, so your best bet would be a beefier red wine with a bit of spice and not overly tannic like a Cabernet.  A Rhone-style wine or a lighter, less fruit-driven syrah would be my first choices.

How to Make a Great Hamburger at Home

  If you love a good burger but are leery of ground meat these days (if you are not, this NY Times article may give you pause), then here is your solution.  This recipe is inspired by "The Julia Burger" in the excellent cookbook The New Steak by Cree LeFavour, who was herself inspired by Julia Child in a Jacques and Julia rerun.

The recipe itself is simple.  Buy a good-quality steak (hangar, top blade, skirt, sirloin; mine is always organic and grass-fed, but whatever your personal preference and budget), estimating about 1/3 lb or a bit more per person.  Trim any visible fat and cut into 2-inch cubes.

Break out your big food processor (the Cuisinart 14 cup size is perfect here), toss in the meat chunks, and add 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt and lots of freshly ground pepper.  Pulse the meat a few times, long enough to break up the big chunks and allow the meat to hold together.

Form your patties gently, without making them thicker than 1 1/2 inches and without squeezing them - you want them to be a little airy.  

  Now comes the fun part - cooking!  You'll pan-fry them the same way we cooked steaks in the 3 Keys to Cooking a Perfect Steak at Home - take the biggest, heaviest cast-iron skillet you can find, turn the burner on high and spend 10 minutes doing something else.  Slicing your tomatoes, making the guacamole, kicking back with a glass of wine - whatever it takes, just leave the skillet alone while it heats up until smoking.  Around the same time, turn on the oven to 170 degrees - this will be your post-grilling warming oven.

Cree uses peanut oil for her burgers.  To keep it paleo-friendly, I favor canola oil which can stand up to higher heat than olive oil before oxidizing.

Sear the burgers on high heat for 3 minutes on each side,   with perhaps a minute more on each side at a lower flame.  Then throw the whole skillet into the warming oven for 3-4 minutes to let the meat rest.

Avocado, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes, grilled onions and mushrooms, you name it - everything goes well with these burgers (I eat mine over a salad and don't ruin it with cheese, but feel free).  Enjoy with a fun, unpretentious wine like a Chianti, Merlot, or a Rioja!

Book Review: American Game Cooking, by John Ash and Sid Goldstein

  I recently discovered the intriguing cookbook American Game Cookingat a used bookshop.  It is written by the chef John Ash (whose cookbooks have long been a favorite of mine, especially the eponymous John Ash: Cooking One on One) and Sid Goldstein (who authored the quirky but pretty good The Wine Lover's Cookbook), so I figured it was worth a shot.

Add to that the fact that I love to try different preparations of game when  restaurants offer it and that my diet has nearly entirely shifted to the Paleo Diet for Athletes over time, and this cookbook seemed like a good match. 

I've prepared about a dozen recipes from the book thus far, and it does not disappoint.  What I like best about the book is the fact that it is focused on the way game arrives at most diners' plates these days - that is, via farm-raised sources rather than hunting.    Why is this important?  Though the animals are fundamentally the same and "farm-raised" is a bit of a misnomer since the animals are raised on vast acreages where they are allowed to roam freely without hormones, antibiotics, etc., the preparation and cooking methods differ fairly significantly due to the method of slaughter and the stresses involved in the hunt, which impacts the toughness and taste of the meat.

Ash and Goldstein concentrate on the primary farm-raised game birds and meats one is increasingly likely to find in grocers or butchers: wild boar, buffalo, duck, goose, partridge & grouse, pheasant, quail, rabbit & hare, squab, wild turkey, venison, and other exotic game animals (e.g., rattlesnake, alligator).

If you take only one overriding message from the book, it is this - do not overcook game!  The reason game is so much better for you than feedlot-raised beef or chicken (excepting organic, grass-  fed versions whose nutritional profile more closely matches their game cousins) is because it is extremely lean, with 80-90% of its calories coming from protein, and lean meat cooks faster and at a lower temperature than commercial beef or poultry.

For each dish, Goldstein provides a short paragraph describing his preferred wine pairing(s).  His notes are very helpful since he provides do-it-yourselfers with the "why" behind his selections, e.g., a full-bodied Chardonnay to highlight the citrus character of a certain sauce, or a young Pinot Noir to suit the mildly gamy flavory of sauteed squab.   

Favorite dishes I've made so far: 

• Sauteed Buffalo Sirloin Steaks with fresh herbs and mushrooms
• Duck Breast with mint-hazelnut pesto
• Southwest Venison fajitas with papaya-avocado salsa
• Turkey Mole

What's for Dinner: Pollo in Salsa Piccante (Chicken in Piquant Tomato Sauce)

  This is a fantastic autumn dish from The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy by Domenica Marchetti, and is perfect for when the weather turns colder and the sun begins to set much earlier after turning back the clocks.  Nothing beats a long-braising dish as the leaves are falling - even the introductory note to this dish makes you hungry just reading it:  

Meaty chicken thighs are simmered to tender succulence in a lush, spicy sauce of onions, tomatoes and anchovies.  Why thighs?  Because they have lots of flavor and can stand up to long simmering without losing moisture.  As for the anchovies, I won't even try to make a plea in their defense; I don't believe they need one.  They are a staple in southern Italian cooking and I wouldn't think of making this dish without them.

The author calls for removing the chicken skin after browning the thighs, which certainly lowers the fat content of the dish, and then simmering them in a Dutch oven for 90 minutes.  I altered this dish slightly by using thighs on the bone and cooking them for an additional 30 minutes or so, and the results were stellar.

Serve it over polenta with a hearty southern Italian red wine like a Nero d'Avola.  One tip would be to make a big batch (I cooked 10 thighs) since there is little incremental work required - leftovers can be frozen or used throughout the week over pasta or as a topping for pizza.  Enjoy!  

What's for Dinner: Galician Fish Steaks

If you are eating anything from Galicia, you know it has paprika.  Although the word itself is Hungarian and the spice originated in America (it was brought to Spain on the Caravela Santa-Maria in the 15th century), it became most strongly  entrenched in the cuisine of Spain in its northwest corner, Galicia.

This delicious dish (Merluza a la Gallega) comes from the very good cookbook, The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas, and is simple to make - perfect for a nutritious weeknight meal.  Chop an onion, slice some potatoes (use a mandoline to speed things up), toss in the spices and simmer them with some water in a covered dutch oven on the stovetop for about 20 minutes.

Then uncover, place the fish steaks or fillets (any firm-fleshed fish that flakes easily will work; I used local wild rock cod fillets) on top of the bubbling potato-and-spice mixture, and bake in a 350 degree
 oven for 10-15 minutes.

Open a bottle of wine (a Barbera d'Asti was my choice) while you wait for dinner - the starch from the potatoes creates a wonderfully unctuous sauce that would pair equally well with a crisp white or a light red wine.  Enjoy!

What's for Dinner: Tunisian Beef Stew with Olives

Most Tunisian food is blazing hot, easily the hottest of the North African cuisines.  This dish, however, plucked from the excellent cookbook Real Stew by Clifford Wright, highlights the flavors of the Maghreb without the excessive fiery spice.

It is essentially a long-simmered (3+ hours) beef stew with lots of cayenne pepper, chile powder and Tabil (a spice mixture with air-dried garlic, caraway seeds and coriander that means "seasoning" in Tunisian Arabic).  After the first 90 minutes, I was sure this dish was going to be too hot.  However, the difference comes in the last 90 minutes - by adding a cup and a half of green olives and covering the pot, the combination of the olives releasing their oil and the steaming effect of the cover serves to significantly mellow the heat.  

What you are left with is nothing short of a stellar beef stew.  I paired it with a 2005 Domaine de Nizas Coteaux du Languedoc (60% syrah, 35% mourvedre, 5% grenache), which had a bit of blackberry and pepper.  While I'd like to say I picked the wine after extensive research, I only did a cursory glance in the wine fridge and asked "what wine is closest geographically to Tunisia?  Southwest France, that will have to do ..." (a riff on If It Grows Together, It Goes Together).

3 keys to cooking a great steak at home

I used to always screw up steaks whenever I cooked them at home.  Whether overdone or undercooked (even for someone like me who favors the rare side), either way they were inedible.  

I was frustrated, both with the waste of money and with the growling in my under-fed stomach.  Finally the secrets to cooking a great steak at home were revealed when I read the excellent The New Steak cookbook by Cree Lefavour.  

I still haven't mastered my charcoal Weber grill, but that is a long-term project.  When it comes to pan-frying a steak, though, the three tips that have made the biggest difference:

• Take your steak out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature on the counter (1 hour or so).  You can speed up the process a bit by resting them on a conductive surface like a thick copper skillet.
• Use the biggest, heaviest skillet you can find - a big, ugly, relatively inexpensive cast iron skillet is my weapon of choice.  Put it on the stovetop (no oil at this point), turn the burner up to high, open all your windows and go do something else for 10-15 minutes - preparing side dishes or salad is a good option.
• Once the steak is cooked to your liking (3 minutes per side for thin steaks like flank or skirt), put the steak and skillet directly into a 170 degree oven for 5 minutes.  This lets the meat rest and locks in all of its flavorful juices.  Even if you are really hungry, don't skip this step - it makes all the difference.

It's personal preference as what sort of cut and provenance you prefer.  I'm a healthy foodie, so it is always organic, grass-fed lean cuts for me - Whole Foods has a wonderful selection to choose from.

Choose a gutsy red with lots of tannins - a French Cotes-du-Rhone or Spanish tempranillo is a good value choice - and you are all set for a great meal!

Andrea Immer is a genius!

Andrea Immer has been one of my favorite wine commentators (along with Jancis Robinson and Karen MacNeil) for a long time, and she has recently risen to the top courtesy of her stunningly good wine & food pairing book: Great Tastes Made Simple.  Without a doubt, this has been the one book on wine pairing that I return to often, and always with (gastronomic) reward.

Future postings will go into a bit of detail on her suggested pairings, but try on the most basic for size:

- A French Sancerre
- An Italian Chianti
- Soft goat cheese
- Italian prosciutto
- Hummus

Try the wines individually with each of the foods, e.g., try the Sancerre with all 3 foods before moving to the Chianti, then try each of the foods with each of the wines.  She delineates the different flavor profiles and what you should be experiencing with each of the combinations, but it is even more fun to try it on your own and see what you think.  You will be quite impressed by what subtle flavors emerge in each of the different pairings -- who knew that Sancerre (tart, acid) would pair so well with goat cheese (tart, acid)?          

If you want to get even deeper into Andrea's wine pairings, she just put out a beginner and advanced set of DVDs on the subject:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-08-11-andrea-robinson_x.htm?csp=34

What we are reading now: A Very Good Year

  Just started the forthcoming A Very Good Year (a chronicle of our backyard California wine industry), and it seems quite promising -- will have a full review once finished in the next week or two.