Aroma Cucina

Wine Blogging Wednesday

Old World v. New World

Wine Blogging Wednesday is a blog event created by Lenn Thompson. Read more about WBW here.  The basic gist is that a host proposes a wine to taste, you taste, then blog about it.

This month’s pick is Old World Reisling. My first reaction was “Blech. I don’t like Riesling’s, too sweet.”  But, I was going to be open-minded. Quit snickering.

Not knowing my Old World from my New World Rieslings, I decided to subject our guinea pig dinner guests, Mitch & Ali to a little blind tasting. 
The Old World: Chateau D’Orschwihr Riesling Bollenberg 2006, France.
The New World: Grant Burge (Barossa) Thorn Eden Valley Riesling, 2006, Australia

Served with roasted quail over bulgur wheat.  For anyone remotely interested in why bulgar is spelled about 25 different ways, click here.   It’s amazing how much importance something like this can take on when there are 2 bottles of wine being drunk! I’m also a firm believer in tasting wine with food; it’s the way god intended wine to be drunk.

The Australian Riesling came out of the bottle with a bit of a fizz, or maybe it was just a sparkle, but it had a pleasant, peachy nose with hints of citrus, moderately lingering finish.
The French Riesling was clearer, more direct with hints of lemon peel, but also a cooling minerality and a longer finish.

The night wore on and we continued to sip and to eat and funny things started happening in the glass.
Our Aussie friend, well, she just sort of relaxed in the glass, and got a little flabby, a little too lazy. She’s just a party girl at heart.
Our French friend remained….austere.  That was the word Mitch used, when he nailed the Old World wine.  It stayed upright and proper all through the meal while continuing to refresh and enhance the palate. 
The Chateau d’Orschwihr was empty by now, so we returned to the Grant Burge for a final sip, and on its own, not in a comparison tasting, it was quite a nice, easy to drink, summery tasting wine.
Moral of the story: Rieslings are good. They should be a great, food friendly summer wine choice. See, pays to be open minded. Come on, quit snickering!

Good Dumpling House

One of the benefits of living downtown is our proximity to Chinatown, where it is easy to find good eats.  I don’t normally write about restaurants, but our local go-to lunch place, the Good Dumpling House is an exception.  It’s a trifecta: quick, inexpensive and delicious. 
We went in the other day for some of those steamed pork and chive dumplings and I happened to have my camera in hand. Our waiter/cook friend, depending on the day, he can either be chopping away in his chef attire or else he is nattily dressed as the head waiter, saw my camera and realized this was a chance for a little publicity.
The Good Dumpling House is a very modest establishment, but they truly care about their dumplings and the astonishing amount of foot traffic they get is testimony to the quality of their dumplings. And their shark fin soup isn’t bad either!

Good Dumpling House, 214 Grand St. Chinatown, NYC

Practical Application

Two nights ago as I was making dinner, the salad greens were a little....limpy.
Thinking about that lettuce video from yesterday, I threw the greens into a bowl of water for 20 minutes as I got the rest of dinner ready.
Guess what...it worked! The greens weren't market fresh crisp, but they were way better than they had been before their cold water bath.
Good to know, right?

Lettuce leaves and water.

A picture, or a YouTube is worth a thousand words. The effects of water on lettuce....does this mean we should store our lettuce in a tub of water? From those mad scientists at blog.khymos.org

If you need....

another reason to knead: diversity.
My one lump of bread dough yielded:
2 small boules
6 dinner rolls
8 walnut currant breakfast rolls.

The no-knead method, in the Crueset yields one loaf of bread.

I freeze the bread immediately after it cools and then we have bread for the week. Turn the oven on 350F, put your bread in, when the oven gets to 350 your bread is warm and ready to eat. If it's a larger loaf, leave it in a little longer.

In Defense of Kneading

Mark Bitman, in his NY Times column, hit a nerve with his no-knead bread recipe. He didn’t invent it, but his article motivated a gazillion people to bake bread.  All well and good, but somebody please explain why this is better than kneading.
•    The time element is the same if you use a pre-ferment like a poolish or a biga.  (Make a small batch of bread dough, with some sort of yeast; leave it in the fridge overnight).
•    You get to work out all aggressions on the dough, it’s a great upper body workout and it only takes 10 minutes. You want to eat the bread, so you need to work out at least a little.
•    You have the satisfaction of feeling the dough go from a flour ball to a lively, living thing. Quicker satisfaction than gardening.
•    And you cannot compare the mess element. I’ll clean up after a knead, any day. Take a click and compare the flour factor from an enthusiastic Chez Pim as she sings the praises of the no-knead method.   

Here is my counter top this morning after kneading.
Which mess would you rather clean up??  So, somebody tell me why this method is so wonderful, and if you say because you get a good crust baking in the Crueset, try a spray bottle squirt in the oven. You get to fool around, make great hissing sounds and you get a terrific crust. (Warning: do not hit the light bulb with the wet spray!)
So, somebody, please explain the allure.

NOLA Givback

Last year at the IACP conference, the food writer’s section was given the challenge to raise awareness about New Orleans. We were asked to spread the word, to not let people forget. The powers that be in the US government didn’t step up to the plate, so it’s up to us.  There are groups going there to help rebuild housing, and that’s a very good thing; but just visiting and being there also helps.
In my sidebar, there is a page that is linking to others that are blogging about New Orleans. If you are posting about New Orleans, send me your link and I’ll give you a link to all these other bloggers. It’s a little thing, but little things add up.
I can’t make houses for the people still sleeping under the bridges, I can’t buy a new schoolhouse, but I can make some noise. Join me.
Check out the new blog additions of Tripe Soup and Ruth in Condechi.

New Orleans Connection

Have some fun, take a look at Judy's lively photos and blog from New Orleans. Over a Tuscan Stove.
Judy was reminded of Florence and the flood in 1996, I thought about New York and  9/11. And what you remember is how people pull together to help each other. Judy mentions Jessica Harris's comments when she addressed the IACP conference. Her first words were, "I hear train whistles." And she went on to describe and have us listen to the sounds and the rhythms of her beloved New Orleans. I'll always remember the way she cocked her head and listened to the staccato beat of knives chopping. Honey, there wasn't a dry eye in the house when she was done!

On a wackier note: I think there is  a connection between New Orleans and Venice. They are both below sea level, the inhabitants of both cities like to dress up, they feel like separate nations unto themselves, and it's easy to eat well in New Orleans and Venice. They would make odd 'sister cities', but that's ok.

Food Prices Rising, Everywhere

Is it a Chicken Little moment? Is the sky falling?
You can always find doom and gloom stories about rising food costs, but there seems to be a consensus that we are heading into a ‘perfect storm’ of troubles. As global inhabitants, we are all facing:
*low grain inventories,
*higher demand for food products for biofuels,
*a rising demand for grain from China and India to feed their more affluent population,
*major grain exporters like Kazakhstan are stopping exports so they can feed their own  populace
*bad growing seasons in the Ukraine and Australia are further limiting supplies.
Its all converging, and it's happening now.

Japan is out of butter. That seems improbable, fantastic, for a major world power to be out of butter.

Montrel's Bistro in New Orleans

I couldn’t leave New Orleans without have a plate of crawfish. I was a bit leery of trying a touristy looking place in the French Quarter, but my misgivings were mis-founded.

Aunt Frieda was in charge of the boiling cauldron of crawfish, and as I sat facing her, it was like watching a ballet. The crawfish went into a fragrant spicy bath loaded with onions, whole uncut heads of celery and other mysterious ingredients, and then they came out shiny red and delicious.

Montrel’s just took over the space a few months ago and he is trying his hardest to make a go of it. He lures people in by giving them free samples of the crawfish and showing them how to break them apart and suck head and tail. This dude loves his work. Even when people weren’t crowding around to taste the crawfish, he was still eating them. He samples a few with every demo he does; all afternoon long. Impressive.
He called his aunt to come and help, and she’s happy to help, but working over the hot pot is tiring, and your whole body smells of spices at the end of the day. She’s happy to help; she’ll do what she can to pitch in. Frieda lost her husband a short while ago, and she left after Katrina, but now she’s back so she can help the family. The young kid handing out psycho colored ices, he’s family too. Not as enthusiastic as Montrel, but he’s doing his bit.

Everybody has a story in New Orleans, and the art of story telling is alive and well in this town.
P.S. The bread pudding was outstanding as well!