Fork and Gobble It: The Honeymoon Hasn't Even Begun

I'm a late bloomer. I found my career late, my spouse late, now I'm taking my honeymoon late. But just like career and spouse, I'm doing this right. This isn't going to be one of those pre-designed resort getaways to a Caribbean island version of an adult Disneyland. No way Jose, we're going back to the Motherland, back to Italy. Specifically, we're off to Tuscany.

I met Jens Schmidt in 2004 at his Villa in a little town called Colle Val d'Elsa just outside of Sienna. His company, Montecastelli Selections was putting on an open house at the villa to highlight all the producers of wine and food products his company exports. I was to be his guest as I was also a customer. Upon my arrival there the first thing I wanted to do was cook dinner for my host. This endeared me to he and his wife instantly. An impromtu meal of fresh Dorado (a small white fleshed fish) cevishe, grilled sausages, and ratatouille followed along with many bottles of wine. I never forgot the beauty of that villa and I swore I would get back there someday.

So here we are seven years later and I'm married to a woman who loves food and wine as much as I do and I know exactly where I want to go with her for our honeymoon.

As with everything I do, this would not be a typical honeymoon. The villa is so beautiful and so beautifully situated, that it would be easy just to do nothing but eat and drink locally. That would suit me perfectly but my wife has other ideas. A compromise would have to be found. A visit to Florence to see Michelangelo's David is in order. I also remembered reading many years ago about a trattoria there called Garga owned by a husband and wife who served inventive and delicious food. He, Giuliano Gargani, cooks up dishes like Veal Scallopine with Avocado in Truffle Cream while Verdi blairs from the open kitchen. I was relieved to find that they are still there and I booked a dinner reservation immediately. I can't wait to see the dining room vividly painted by local artists and taste the food I'd read about.

A visit to a wine estate would also have to be planned. La Rasina in Montalcino, makes wonderful Brunellos, (we carry them in the store) and is easily reachable by car. I booked us a visit to see the vineyards and tour the winery. The operations there are currently under the supervision of a third generation family member, Marco Mantengoli. He is an affable, and energetic young man who I had met on my first visit to Montecastelli. I look forward to meeting him again. His wines are excellent and receive consistent good press from the Wine Advocate and the Wine Spectator.

On Jens's recommendation we will also lunch at a two star Guide Michelin restaurant right there in Colle Val d'Elsa. Arnolfo is run by Gaetano and Giovanni Trovato, the former being the Chef and his brother being the Sommelier. The food is local, sustainable, whimsically presented in great detail, and I expect ... delicious.

I expect of course for all this sacrifice and compromise to have my share of doing splendid nothing. And I will cook for my host again. It will be like completing a circle for me.

Look for complete reports in two weeks. Until then ... Ciao!

On Wine: With or without food?

On Wine: With or without food?
By Laurie Daniel

The California wine industry, taking its cue from European wine culture, long has preached the pleasures of lingering over a meal with a bottle of wine. Entire books have been written about pairing wine with the appropriate foods. I once heard Julia Child declare to a wine gathering that "any meal without wine, with the possible exception of breakfast, is uncivilized."

But wait. A funny thing happened on our way to becoming the world's largest wine-consuming nation. American wine lovers don't necessarily see wine as something to be drunk with food. Recent research shows that nearly 60 percent of the wine consumed by avid U.S. wine drinkers does not accompany a meal. About one-quarter of the wine they drink is consumed on its own, in situations where food of any kind is a no-show. One-third of the wine is consumed with snacks or appetizers, or while the consumer is preparing a meal.

"The industry spends so much time on wine and food pairing," says Christian Miller, research director of Wine Opinions, the California-based market-research firm that conducted the study, "and the implication is that the public" doesn't care that much.

Rather, Miller says, Americans are "developing a notion of wine as a drink." More than half the respondents report drinking wine at casual non-meal get-togethers at home. "That's a wine occasion, not a food occasion," Miller says.

Even though this applies to wine drinkers of all ages, he adds, so-called millennials "are leading the charge." Three-quarters of this group born after 1980 say they "kick back over a bottle of wine" with their friends.

Some other surprising findings were in the Wine Opinions research. When I think of wines that are drunk on their own, as an aperitif or with appetizers -- wines that are called "sippers" in my house -- I generally think of lighter whites or maybe sparkling wines. But a majority of high-frequency wine drinkers (defined as drinking wine daily or several times a week) in the survey do not classify certain types of wines as stand-alone wines and other types as wines that should be consumed with food.

In fact, dry red wine, the leading type of wine for all occasions, is also the leading category of wine consumed without food. It was followed distantly by dry white wine, then by semisweet, off-dry or sparkling wines. "The notion that wine without food should be lighter or white," Miller says, doesn't hold up anymore. Nearly half of respondents reported drinking dry red wines without food weekly or even more often, Miller says.

My first reaction to the news that so much wine is consumed without food -- or, at least, without a meal -- was to wonder whether this might explain why so many wines these days are soft, plush and low in acid. I find acidity to be essential when I drink wine with a meal, because that acidity cuts through the food and leaves you ready for more. But without food, a high-acid wine, whether red or white, can be less attractive and downright puckery to some drinkers. Where red wines are concerned, a firm tannic structure helps the wine to pair well with hearty meat dishes. But mouth-drying tannins aren't so great when you're sipping wine as a cocktail.

Although the Wine Opinions survey didn't delve into the question, Miller notes that "there's been this obsession with smoothing out tannins" in red wine. He adds, "Smoothness might be something that has paved the way for more dry reds without food."

Wine still finds its place at the table, though. "It's still the leader in what you drink with a proper meal," Miller says, "but obviously it's extended far beyond that."

While I was a little dismayed when I first heard about this research -- all those columns about pairing wine with food apparently are falling on deaf ears -- I've come to believe that it's actually a sign that the United States is developing its own wine culture. And that's a good thing.

As for me, I'll continue to drink most of my wine with meals -- although, in truth, I don't really need a reason to drink a glass of good wine.

This article originally appeared on mercurynews.com on 4/21/11.

Fork and Gobble It: Crossing the Streams and Parting the Sea

Being half of a mixed faith/heritage marriage, I have made a lot of observations and notes to self over the last few years about the differences in traditions and holidays. Every time I think about our intermingling traditions, it reminds of that scene in Ghostbusters ... "Don’t cross the streams!" She was raised in the Jewish faith, me a Roman Catholic. This time of year I think about dyeing eggs and eating lamb and she makes chopped chicken liver and stuffs her face with as much pizza as she can eat up until the first night of Passover. Luckily for her, during my brief 18 year stint as a culinary professional, I was taught about Passover food by a pair of restaurant owners I worked for. I came pre-loaded with the software on how to prepare Matzoh Brie, and chopped chicken liver. Last year in preparation for the week of all the bread, pasta, etc., that she would not be able to eat, she requested that I adapt my meatloaf recipe to be in keeping with these dietary requirements. Meatloaf made with matzoh meal instead of fresh breadcrumbs????!!!!!! Seemed foreign to me but for the sake of marital bliss I would give it my best effort. It turned out well enough to be deemed an instant tradition.

This year in anticipation of the holiday and the cooking that goes with it, my wife brought home matzohs and matzoh meal for the holiday meatloaf. Unfortunately, no one had clued in our new arrival Elvis the Coonhound about these goings on. I came home one afternoon last week to find two boxes of Passover matzohs shredded, partially eaten, and distributed to every room in the house. He had done the same with the box of matzoh meal and artfully worked it into representations of sand dunes to commemorate Moses wanderings in the dessert. I think he must now be Jewish by ingestion and we have formally re-registered his breed as "Cohenhound." So now it was back out to the grocer's for more matzoh and matzoh meal. The meatloaf must go on!

Matzoh Meal Meatloaf

-2 oz. Olive oil or Kosher Canola oil as per your requirements
-1 clove garlic minced
-1 medium to large onion diced small
-1 large green bell pepper diced small
-3 ribs celery diced small

Saute the vegetables in the oil until they begin to dry out and start to brown. Set aside to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 350F

-3# 80/20 ground beef
-vegetables from above
-3 whole eggs
-1 cup matzoh meal
-2 Tbsp salt
-1 tsp black pepper
-2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
-½ cup ketchup or BBQ sauce
-a healthy squirt of Sriracha

Mix the above together well adding more matzoh meal if necessary. The texture should be wet but it should hold shape. We like to take a small bit of the mixture and microwave it until done to taste for seasoning and adjust if needed.

Form the mixture into two even sized loaves and sprinkle with dehydrated chopped onion if desired.

Bake at 350F for approximately 1 hour or until the loaves reach 160F internal temperature.

Two meatloaves should be enough to sustain one person for the entire Passover holiday.

Speaking of which, Kosher for Passover wines do not need to be an abysmal experience of overly sweet and syrupy wines. There are some killer wines coming out of Israel these days and producers like Yarden, Barkan, and Ella Valley are making really excellent Cabernets and Merlots to go with said meatloaf. For my personal preference, I chose a Cabernet Sauvignon by Hai called The Patriots from the Judean Hills region of Israel.

This wine is complex, full bodied and thoroughly delicious. It shows aromas of coffee, red currant, and kirsch with fine grained but very assertive tannins. It retails for about $14.00 and will convince you that the Concord grape stuff may be fine for a traditional toast, but for drinking, this is the real deal.

By the way, it is probably a good thing Moses was Jewish and not Italian. If it had been one of my people leading the crossing of the Red Sea we probably would have stopped for lunch. At least the seafood would have been really fresh. "Hey, who packed the Soave?!"

Wine 101: Chianti

I've always been intimidated by Italian wines because they're not as cut-and-dry as other wines, where if you "know your grapes" you pretty much know what to expect out of the wine. With Italian wines, thet are named after the regions they hail from rather than the grapes within, so you need to know which grapes are grown in which region.

The region of Chianti is in the wine growing region of Tuscany, which sits in North-Eastern Italy. Chianti is composed of mostly the grape sangiovese, and the law requires that in order for a Chianti wine to be named as such it must be composed of at least 75% sangiovese. Other grapes in Chianti are canaiolo, and two white grapes: trebbiano and malvasia. Chiantis that are blended with more of the white grape varieties tend to be lighter bodied, while varieties with mostly the res grapes have a fuller and richer feel.

There is a region in Chianti called Classico that spans for roughly 100 square miles, and wines from that region tend to be medium-bodied with firm tannins and high acidity. Chianti Classico wines have to conform to vigorous rules from the Italian government. The different regions of Chianti Classico have unique characteristics that come through in the wines.

The black rooster (or gallo nero) is a symbol of the Consorzio Chianti Classico, a foundation of producers in the Classico region. The foundation was founded with the aim of promoting the wines in the region, improving quality and preventing wine fraud.

What to eat with Chianti? Well, it's a great table wine and it's perfect for every day drinking. Traditionally it goes well with anything with a tomato-based sauce. However, Chianti is very food-friendly and goes well with a wide range of things from white meats or even with fish like swordfish or tuna.

Winery to power production with solar panels

Winery to power production with solar panels
by Todd McHale

SHAMONG, NJ - Valenzano Winery took another step toward going green on Wednesday.

The winery started construction of a new solar panel system at the vineyard off Route 206.

"It's nice to see this day come. We've been looking into doing this for about two or three years," Anthony Valenzano said after watching the first solar panel rack constructed on the 48-acre farm.

All told, more than 350 solar panels will be placed on about a quarter acre of the property in the coming weeks.

Valenzano, who owns the winery with his father and brother, said the solar panels are just the latest "going green" initiative the winery has undertaken. The winery also has installed a geothermal system for the facility's heating and cooling.

"We will eventually be using 100 percent renewable energy," Valenzano said.

On Wednesday, the Valenzanos joined the developer SolarSense of Radnor, Pa., the system's designer, installer and other business associates involved in the project to celebrate the occasion.

When complete, the $750,000 system will produce about 102,000 kilowatt hours annually.

The system ultimately will generate enough power for all the production, wine tasting and the banquet facilities at the 31,000-square-foot complex.

"Once it's up and running it's going to be good for the environment, because it's going to reduce the carbon emissions," Valenzano said. "It will also reduce our costs which we will pass on to our customers."

He added that he doesn't know of many businesses that have gone as far as the winery has in pursuit of harnessing renewable energy.

The project was developed by SolarSense, which paid for the system and put together a power purchase agreement.

During a short ceremony prior to construction of the first solar panel rack, Chris Fraga, founder and CEO of SolarSense, handed Valenzano an oversized check for $185,000, which is the estimated amount he expects the winery will receive in energy savings over the life of the 15-year agreement.

Opened in 1997, the Valenzano Winery has a network of farms in South Jersey that grow produce for their products, such as their famed cranberry wine.

The Valenzanos purchased the farm on Route 206 about four years ago. A year later, the owners began expansion of the facility in order to provide entertainment space and a tasting room larger than any other in the state. Today, the facility is a state of the art winery with kitchen facilities for serving light fare and catered foods, behind-the-bar wine rack with a 2,500-bottle capacity and a production facility that produces more than 68,000 gallons a year.

This article originally appeared on Phillyburbs.com on April 7, 2011.

Fork and Gobble It: Embracing my Heritage

When I was a child, my grandmother would cook enough for three armies and we'd all convene at her little apartment in Bloomfield, NJ and eat. While that tradition unfortunately has gone away in my family, I still recall those recipes and turn to them regularly. This week I realized there was one dish that even through the course of all these years I had not prepared in my own kitchen... Eggplant Parmigiana! Not the version you get in any pizzeria that uses frozen breaded eggplant slices and canned sauce, but the real deal. The kind of preparation you start knowing you'd better fry off more eggplant than you need because anyone who passes through the kitchen will be picking at the freshly fried slices, crisp in their coating of seasoned breadcrumb and moist and tender on the inside. Yeah, this had to be done.

It is an assembly of a dish with multiple steps especially if, like myself, you make everything from scratch including the "Italian Seasoned Breadcrumbs." Where did they get that from anyway?

This recipe makes one large (10.5”x 14.5”) pan.
-7 cups fresh breadcrumbs seasoned with:
--1 ½ cups grated parmigiana cheese
--½ cup dried basil
--½ cup dried oregano

-3 cups of flour seasoned with:
--2 Tbsps salt
--1 Tsp black pepper

-7 eggs lightly beaten

-5 small to medium purple eggplants, peeled and sliced into discs 1/2" thick

Bread the eggplant by first dredging in the flour and shaking off the excess, then dipping in egg, and then coating with the breadcrumbs. In order to keep your hands relatively clean and more workable, use only one hand to coat the slices with egg so that one hand is wet and the other remains dry.

When all the eggplant is breaded, get a large skillet and fill it with ½ olive oil, ½ vegetable oil to a depth of about 1" and heat it over a medium flame. The oil is ready for frying when a tiny amount of breadcrumb is dropped in and it falls to the bottom of the oil and immediately rises and begins to fry.

You will now need:

-1 quart tomato sauce
-1 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced very thin
-more grated parmigiana cheese

When all the slices are fried, take the baking dish and ladle some tomato sauce into it just enough to coat the bottom. Put in a layer of eggplant slices. Top this with scattered slices of mozzarella and sprinkle grated parm on that. Then repeat ~ sauce, eggplant, cheese, until the pan is filled.

Pre-heat the oven to 350F.

Finish off the top layer with a generous amount of sliced and grated cheese and a little more sauce. Cover the pan with a piece of parchment or wax paper and then aluminum foil. Bake for 30 mins covered and then remove the paper and foil and finish baking until golden brown.

Allow the pan to cool for about 15 minutes, portion and serve with more grated parmigiana cheese.

Nona would have been proud. Come to think of it, I should have saved some for Paulie. It would be nice to see the expression on his face.

We did pop a cork on a Chianti that night. Monteguelfo Chianti is medium to light in body with flavors of cherry, tobacco, and bright acidity to keep up with all that tomato sauce. It is silly inexpensive too. Just the kind of thing you want to be drinking watching Sopranos re-runs... Kapeeesh?

Fork and Gobble It: Everything's Coming Up Roses!

Me and Elvis the Coonhound have been taking note of the changes outside the last couple of weeks. Crocuses and Daffodils are poking up along with Hyacinths and buds on the trees. Spring is really here. Yeah, it might be snowing in Pennsylvania as I write this, but there is no denying it, spring is truly here. Along with all the environmental harbingers of the season there are also vinous ones... rose wines. Real roses, not White Zinfandels, not various pink wines that exist all year long, these are the wines that come out in the spring and are around for a limited time because they are only made in small quantities.

Taditionally rose wines were a way to make the first money from a particular vintage. Real roses are made in the fall, and released the following spring. The vintage coming out now is 2010. I know. I just purchased our annual case of the very limited (and very inexpensive) Chateau Lancyre Pic St. Loup Rose 2010.

It comes from the sub-region of Pic St. Loup in the Languedoc region in southern France. Roses are meant for the most part, to be drunk young and fresh. They are generally light in body, with fresh flavors of fruit, crisp and bright acidity, and depending on their origin, different mineral components. Although some like Lancyre can age, and some age really well, you want to look for the vintage from the previous year. The bulk of roses start to develop secondary characteristics (they're starting to fall apart) after a year.

These are versatile wines that pair well with light foods, like the grilled fish or roasted chicken we prepare throughout the summer, or a simple plate of dried sausage or cheese. They also work as stand alones or cocktail wines that are balanced so as to be pleasant to drink without food.

Just about every wine producing region in the world makes a version of this seasonal wine. Many of my favorites come from Europe as I favor the less fruity styles of producers, but I have some California favorites also such as the fuller bodied rose' of Pinot Noir made by Etude.

Most of these label shots are of last years wines.

A full, round, and lush style of rose', this wine has a big mouthfull of ripe Pinot Noir fruit balanced with moderate acidity making it a good pair for grilled tuna or salmon.

Quite the other extreme is an Italian rose produced in a Tyrolian abbey in northern Italy. The Abbey of Mure-Gries makes a rosato from the local red grape Lagrein which is bone dry, minerally and very food friendly. It is one of those wines which you have to be ready to purchase when it is released as it is made in very small quantities.

Possibly one of the Holy Grails of this seasonal spawn of pink wine is the famed rose of the Provencale Bandol producer, Domaine Tempier.

While not as dark in color as some other rose wines, this wine is full of nervy mineral flavor mingled with soft fruit and the acidity that makes wines like this great. I might even go so far as to pair this with a cheeseburger (with mushrooms of course!)

In addtion to my beloved Chateau Lancyre, which is made from Grenache and Syrah and has ample fruit to make it quaffable but surely better with food, I tried another 2010 rose last night. Jean-Luc Colombo, a high quality and somewhat roguish producer in the northern Rhone Valley makes a light and very pleasant rose' made from Syrah and Mourvedre. Luckily it is plentiful. Very easy to drink and immensely refreshing, with flavors of zingy strawberry, and wet slate, I paired it with some beautiful Fluke filet cooked acqua pazza or crazy water style. Very simply, I roasted onion and potato and haricot vert with olive oil, salt and pepper, then doused the pan with white wine and poached the fish in the wine.

When the real heat of summer finally hits, I look forward to getting home and popping open one of these delicious and invigorating wines. Sounds silly, but at 5pm on a hot, humid afternoon it all becomes very clear... or rosey.