I'm Cookin'

One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year is my Les Halles cookbook by Anthony Bourdain!  I have jumped right into creating masterful dishes.  French cooking is unlike anything in the world, and that is why I am going there in May! Woooo! 

Ahh, Boeuf bourguignon, the classic French dish that has swooned many people through out the world.  This dish was soooo good, the meat so tender.  Anything made with wine, and a red Burgundy especially is guaranteed to be good.

So what is in this classic dish you ask?  I hope that you are not hungry right now, if you are grab a snack, because it will just make you even hungrier, even drool.

Paleron of beef
Salt and pepper (no your never gonna get it... no not this time.... remember that song.. awesome) (EDIT:  2/2, I stand corrected, the song above was En Vogue not Salt n Pepper, Thanks Chelsea :) )
Olive oil
Onions
Red Burgundy
Carrots
Garlic clove
Bouquet garni
Flat parsley

Hungry?? Grab a Snickers.  So basically you add all of this stuff in pot and let it cook for 2-3 hours until the meat is just juicy and tender.  The only tricky part to cooking this dish is browning the meat, you have to make sure your oil is hot enough (right before it starts to smoke), secondly you need to get your simmer right so the sauce reduces and is concentrated when ready to eat.  Also, because you are only using a cup of Burgundy you will have a lot to drink!  Another awesome plus!

I can't explain how good this dish was!  The meet so tender, so juicy, so yum.  It's perfect for a cold to warm day.  Writing this is making me soooooooo hungry!

After this dish I decided to make another classic French dish, pot-au-feu!  Just reading this recipe made me want to cry from the joy of the types of meat were in this bad boy.  Vegetarians please do not proceed pass this sentence.  Dishes like this make me wonder how anyone can be a vegetarian.

The ingredients:
Paleron of beef
Oxtail
Short ribs
Veal shank (bone in so you an suck the marrow)
Cloves
Onions
Leeks
Celery root
Carrots
Potatoes
Cabbage
Bouquet garni
Salt and pepper
Cornichons (for garnish)
Gros sel (for garnish)
Hot prepared mustard (for garnish)

This is another stew like dish, basically simmering meet with all of the goodness above for 3 hours.  The hardest part to the recipe was the "slow simmer" which was constantly hard to hit all night.  We also realized that we didn't have a big enough pot to do it all in one so we split the recipe and just used two.  There was soooo much food in this thing that we had the ability to experiment a little with left over juices.  The meat itself was amazing, slowly simmered meat cannot be touched by an oven.  This meat was so tender and juicy, it just fell off the bone.  It was meat candy!  

Veggies!

Lots of MEAT

ooooooo yeah

My mezz (Mise en Place)

Get that simmer!

Done goodies

MORE MEAT

Marrow n Bones

The main meal was awesome!  Then my brother (yes I'll give credit where credits due) had the idea of taking the left over juices and some of the veggies and throwing them into the blender to make a soup!!  Brilliant!  It was better than most soups I've had in restaurants!  We added a little gros sel (French grey sea salt) and whammy we had a soup!

Now the soup was very good, but we had tons of juice left so why not reduce the crap out of it and concentrate the flavors (basically making a demi-glace I think).  So after another two hours we had a concentrated soup that we again added with veggies to turn into a soup.  And it was so flavorful... did I just learn the tricks of restaurants.... yessss, I think.  I kind of like this cooking thing!

Reducin'

Look at the lines, you can see where it started!

So now we had another soup, tons of left over demi-glace which I froze for later recipes.  The following night we had some left over short rib because we bought too much, so we made a bbq sauce from scratch and had some ribs!

Soup heating up

Cookin', look at them ribs!

Bon appetit

2008 Apothic Red, California (G's Tasting Series)

The last couple posts have seen some extraordinary/pricey wines however this wine will not damage the credit score!

2008 Apothic Red, California
consumed Sunday January 2, 2011, with family/love, Retail $9.99

A wine that won't break the bank and will please the palate.  The wine is big fruit.  The wine itself is a blend of Zinfandel, Syrah, and Merlot, the first two I love.  The Merlot simply rounded it out nicely.  Red fruit and a little chocolate on the nose with a nice bright cherry down the guzzler and that's what you are getting with this one.  The wine was also well balanced and enjoyable to drink.  Again, a nice easy going wine for any budget.  The wine really surprised me for a cost of 10 bucks.
***
 

1999 Chateau Haut-Brion, Bordeaux Blend (G's Tasting Series)

Thomas Jefferson loved this wine and so do I.  In fact Jefferson was the first person to import a First Growth Bordeaux to the United States.

This wine is from the Graves region of France and the only wine in the region to be given the Premier Cru Classes (First Growth).  It is also the only wine that uses the Pessac-Leognan appellation.  Haut-Brion tends to have the most Merlot and Cabernet Franc out of any First Growths.  Typically somewhere around 30 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cabernet Franc.

1999 Chateau Haut-Brion, Bordeaux Blend, Pessac-Leognan, Bordeaux
consumed Thursday, December 30, 2010, with family/love, Retail $149.99 (half bottle)

People in the wine industry seem to always ask, "how did you catch the wine bug?"  You typically hear answers like, I was drinking X and it came to me that I need to be in this business or I was drinking this wine while sitting a top a vineyard and looking out over the ocean or I had a wine that brought me back to a place, a place that is ingrained in my head.  I've never really had a story quite like that, or what the majority of stories are, which is a little intimidating I guess.  I guess my story is more about friendship and a dream which is really central to this blog.  A friend of mine, Mike, emailed me one day when I was working at my last job and simply said, "in 5 years, if I got into wine, would you join me and manage the money." It was probably a little more animated than that.  For the people that know Mike, you can only imagine! ha.  That is when I really started to think of taking my passion for wine and turning into a way of life.  That is my story.  Okay, so what's the point?  If you've read my 'Welcome to my journey' post then you know what's up.  So the reason for saying it again, is that I now have two answers to the question, how did you catch the wine bug?  One is unconventional, at least in terms of the stories I have heard (read above if you haven't been paying attention :)) and the other answer is a 1999 Chateau Haut-Brion (well technically there are 3 answers, a 1992 Rochioli West Block as well)!  So I guess I have an arsenal of answers, sense I am wordy as can be seen by this very blog, I will use all 3 answers.  And after that long winded explanation of things.... here is my tasting note.

This wine, for me, is why I love wine and why wine is so different.  It is truly an expression of the land, all it is is fermented grapes that is it, nothing else.  If terroir were a wine, this would be it.  As we saw with the Chateau Pavie, this wine has just layers and layers of complexity.  However, this complexity does not cause it to be out of control.  It is balanced perfectly.  The first smell gives way to a beautiful bouquet: sweet, sweet, candy cherry, a little raspberry, pepper.  Then a layer of earth washed over me, and as I focused on this smell all I could come up with was gravel, then stone.  It was subtle, it just reminded me of rocky soil.  Then I remembered reading something in the Wine Bible about the soil in Graves, and yes, Graves is named after it's gravelly soil.  It was so exciting trying to figure this out and gratifying, I was just going nuts when I started to sniff it out.  As I look at my tasting note this is exactly what I had written, "gravel, dirt? soil, what's the soil? earthy, I can smell the soil, gravel, stone, check book (Wine Bible)."  I finally got around to tasting the wine, and it was just as good as it smelled.  Fruity on the palate, flavors concentrated, slight pepper.  The finish was long and sweet.  One quick note, it wasn't as tannic as the '99 Pavie from Saint Emillion, coming out of a 375ml bottle, this wine was ready to drink.  It was silky smooth.  What a great wine!
******

1999 Chateau Pavie, Bordeaux Blend (G's Tasting Series)

Wowwy Wow!  It's Wednesday.  It's a little late in the day to be posting this but I was up in Healdsburg and Napa for most of the day!  Ahhh!  Wine Country.

As promised here is the first of two tasting notes on some super good Bordeaux's.

After much searching, I finally was able to get my hands on a couple premier grand crus from the Bordeaux region of France.  This is one of those bottles, well a half bottle to be exact.  It's a 375ml, which is a half bottle so the price that I will reveal below reflects that.

Chateau Pavie is a "right bank" Premier grand cru classe B wine from the Saint-Emillion region of France.  It lies just southeast of the village of St. Emillion.  The wine is comprised of roughly 60% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon.  By law Bordeaux red wine must contain 1 or more of the following grapes, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec (yes the French did it first), Merlot, and Petit Verdot.  Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are the two major grapes while the rest are used in smaller amounts for blending.

1999 Chateau Pavie, Bordeaux Blend, Saint-Emillion, Bordeaux
consumed Monday, December 20, 2010, with family, Retail $72.99

Upon releasing this wine from its prison, I recall that, in fact, in 1999 I was just a Junior in High School and had never even thought about drinking wine.  I was just a punk kid haha.  I snap back to the bottle in hand, I pour it into the decanter to let the thing breathe.  I mean it's been locked away for 11 years.

This is possibly one of the main reasons I love wine.  This wine, this wine, was just so splendid.  Layer after layer revealing deep intense aromas. Once you figured out one smell something else would come out in punch you in the face, it was that intense.  The new aromas were subtle at first but once I focused on the smell it came out in a big way.  The first aromas that came to mind were pepper, raspberry, and earth.  Earth is hard to explain but it was as if I could smell the soil, fresh soil and stone.  As a secondary note, I began to smell the ever slightest bit of licorice and a bit of leather.  After an additional hour of the wine beginning opened a started to get a slight chocolate note.  Near the end I swear I was starting to get a little eucalyptus or mint on the nose and at that point I decided to actually taste the wine and enjoy it! 

The mouth feel was brilliant.  The wine was so vibrant on the tongue, just lovely.  Bright red fruit, a little spice, and leather which lingered through the retro nasal (after taste) pleasantly.  I swear I was tasting that wine for the rest of the night even after it was gone.  I was also surprised that the wine was still pretty tannic, meaning it can probably age even further and continue to develop in the bottle.  The wine also had beautiful color, opaque blood red. and a more orange burgundy color at the edge of the glass.  Just an awesome wine, I cannot wait to visit France!
****** 

Next week, 1999 Chateau Haut-Brion!

A Day at the Ferry Building

Well, after being away for so long it feels good to be back in 50-60 degree weather and where the sun just shines and shines, we have been getting a little rain so its been a little cloudy, however, the last few days have been sunny!  A run outside in January is necessary!

I've been told by my Mom to check out this wine bar in the Ferry Building for sometime.  We departed at maybe 11am and arrived to the city around 11:45am to which everyone was hungry so we decided to stop in MarketBar in the Ferry Building for some lunch.  Since it is Dungeness crab season we decided to start with the deviled eggs with chipotle aioli topped with the lovely, lovely, yummy crab.  It was amazing, so fresh as you could imagine!  I then had a simple chicken sandwich on, yes, of course, sourdough bread, and some sort of fruit chutney.  It was super good, I'll definitely go back!

After lunch we made our way over to the Wine Merchant where we sampled some wine.  I tried an interesting wine from California, a varietal called Negrette.  The grape is predominately grown in Southwest France.  The wine was pretty interesting.  I do remember it being pretty big, maybe even like a Cab.  Since we were just hanging out and having a good time, I didn't really focus too much on the wine, I just drank it!  This is a wine that I would certainly like to revisit.

My Mom had a sweet from the Jura region for France, again, something I would like to revisit.  I don't remember the name of the wine however, I will be on the hunt for this sweet wine from Jura, France.

Overall, a pretty neat wine bar in the Ferry Building, the staff was pretty knowledgeable which is always important!

Picture my brother took outside the Ferry Building

2009 Charles Shaw, Merlot (G's Tasting Series)

Wooo, it's Wednesday!  Time for an exciting tasting note!

The venerable Charles Shaw or better known to us Trader Joe junkies as simply "Two Buck Chuck" is an interesting wine for the price of $1.99.  Yes, it is still $1.99 in California, where on the east coast I believe its a little more these days.  I wanted to do a real tasting note on Charles Shaw in order to compare to many of the wines that I have had over the last year or so.  First, here is a couple facts about Charles Shaw, the label is owned by Bronco Wine Company, headed by Fred Franzia (formerly of Franzia Brothers wines), yes that Franzia, the box wines!  They make all sorts of wines from the Charles Shaw label, including Cabernet Sauvignon, White Zinfandel, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Shiraz (Wiki Charles Shaw).

And....

2009 Charles Shaw, Merlot, California
consumed Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010, with my brother, Retail $1.99

Well, there really isn't much going on with the Charles Shaw.  It has aromas of red fruit, green pepper, a little black currant, but mostly just the smell of alcohol and maybe a little wine!  The wine itself tastes under-ripe, probably due to the fact that the grapes are likely from all over California where varying growing conditions exist.  There was no finish with the wine aside from an unpleasant jolt of green or under-ripeness which is present through out the front and mid palate.  However, for the value, it is an okay buy.  If you are just looking for a wine that will taste like wine and that you will drink that night and really don't want to spend too much money on, this will work.  One of the rather depressing realizations about tasting this wine was that it tasted as good as some of the red Michigan wine I have tasted and paid way more than $1.99 for.  Out of maybe 10 red wines I have tried from Michigan, maybe 3 tasted better than this Charles Shaw.  However, this will not shake my confidence in the Michigan wine industry and its potential.
*

I am working hard on the other tasting notes for the Bordeaux first growths.  There is just so much to digest and convert into a blog post.  I promise at least one will be up next Wednesday!