GASTRONORMOUS

A blend of Zinfandel and red Rhône grapes, this drinkable red is as straightforward as it gets. Best described as uncomplicated, Sonoma County has created a clean blend free from the pretension associated with many of the higher-end reds produced in the area. Marietta 47’s appetizing fruit notes are bold enough for even the most novice drinker to appreciate, and a high drinkability factor has made this bottle one of the region’s top sellers.

While many highly developed European table wines have strong acidic and tannic qualities, this prototypical Cali blend is sweet and thoroughly delightful. Off-dry and midweight, this wine, like most of Marietta’s bottlings, is extremely well balanced. Upon opening, a dark fruit and berry bouquet is immediately evident. The fruit-forward nose is a jammy combination of blueberry pie, raspberry sorbet, and apple strudel. An elevated presence of oak lends this bottle its “baked” essence, imparting flavors of hickory and pecan pie perfect for holiday sipping.

It is this blend’s mild sweetness and soft tannins that make it a party favorite. Because Marietta 47 is both pleasant tasting and fairly priced, it would make a great addition to any Thanksgiving menu. Your guests can enjoy this sippable red as they nosh on appetizers, and it will grow even brighter when paired with buttery dishes like mashed potatoes. Only a sweet and truly balanced red like Marietta 47 could ever hold up to Grandma’s candied yams.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Available in New York at Astor Wines & Spirits for $11.99

I am not going to be home for Thanksgiving (In fact, by the time you read this, I will hopefully be basking in the sun on a Mexican beach! yea!), but that hasn’t kept me from thinking about great recipes, tips, and tools to help you out on the best Thursday of the year.

Crate & Barrel is having a great Thanksgiving sale. Along with some things that are reduced in price for a reason, such as maple leaf garlands, a turkey dish (See left. Kitschy, yes, but still wrong.), or copper pumpkins, are some awesome on-sale items, like a turkey brining kit, and even the pan to cook the turkey in. Plus, there is a baster/injector that looks and sounds exactly like the baster/injector I mentioned last week, but it comes in a cool green color, and now at C&B, is it only $4.95! Holy smokes, get over there!

Wonder what the differences between kosher, free-range, and organic turkeys are? And what is all the hub-bub about Heritage turkeys?  The Kitchn has a demystifying article on the topic. The also have a great list of a ton of yummy-looking stuffing (my favorite part of the meal) options! They have also compiled a ton of recipes for appetizers (my second-favorite part of the meal)! I can’t wait to make the cheddar olives! A friend of mine made these for a party, and I couldn’t get enough of them! The Kitchn actually has a lot of great Thanksgiving tips and recipes, so really, if you are hosting a Thanksgiving meal, it would be a crime not to use their website as a resource.

If you are of the vegetarian persuasion, you should check out 101 Cookbooks special Thanksgiving post. Roasted pumpkin salad, golden-crusted brussell sprouts (forget green beans, I love brussels sprouts at a holiday table!), kale and olive oil mashed poatoes, and the unusual yeast-raised cornbread all look exceptional.

Gourmet also has a helpful page of menus for a vegetarian Thanksgiving.  I don’t mean to bombard you with vegetarian options, but come on, if you aren’t one yourself, you know there is going to be at least one sitting at your Thanksgiving table, eyes shifting accusingly between the golden bird and you. You might as well try to conciliate them with a mushroom and farro pie.

Back to meat and their products, the NY Times Dining Section has a useful story on how to do turkey gravy the right way.

Well, a friend or two may or may not be popping in over the next week, but I will be back on Monday, December 1 (Really? December already?), to regale you with tale of food and fun in Mexico!

Daniel Meyer (not THE Danny Meyer?) at Bitten, extols the virtues of stale bread. No, really.

Forget those high-fructose corn syrup-laden* oatmeal bars from the market, why not make Chocolate & Zucchini’s couldn’t-be-easier banana, oat, chocolate breakfast bars! Yum.

Just last Saturday, The Hubs and I went to the Farmer’s market, where I spied some quince, and wondered aloud, “What do you do with quince?” According to David Lebovitz, they are great poached.

Grub Street lets you know where to eat out on Thanksgiving in the case turkey is not your thing.

In the case you are actually cooking (turkey or not), mustard-roasted potatoes look like they would make a great side dish! (via Smitten Kitchen)

*Despite what the corn-industry commercials say, it is bad for you.

Hey folks, sorry for a lack of posts lately, which is due to lack of time and maybe lack of inspiration, though not lack of fodder. It is also partly due to the fact that I received a spiffy new camera as a birthday gift form the Hub, but have not yet read the instructions, and my attempts at creating fab food photos on my last night out was instead a fantastic failure!

That night out, by the way, was a meal at L’Asso, a brick oven pizza place, which serves pizza according to the rules of the DOC. L’asso has been one of my favorite pizza places in the city over the years. But last Friday it all just seemed a little mediocre (though maybe my pizza-loving taste buds were spoiled by the truly exceptional pizza I had at the Atlantic Antic).

We ordered an old standby of an appetizer, the fresh mozzarella and pistachios. Sounds weird, but in the past it has been delicious. It looked the same, with an entire ball of mozzarella, sectioned like an orange and scattered with roasted pistachios and drizzled with reduced balsamic, but just was just not as tasty as it has been in the past. We couldn’t put our finger on what was wrong, but it just wasn’t as milky, salty, fresh, and savory as usual.

We ordered one of the tartufo pizzas, with mascarpone, portobello mushrooms, truffle oil, and gorgonzola, and the Pizza Roma, which is topped with walnut pesto, mozzarella, rosemary, and walnuts. The former was really good, with just the right amount of truffle oil, which can be overwhelming if used in abundance, a chewy crust, and the right proportion of toppings. The Roma, however, bombed. It didn’t have a lot of flavor, except for the burnt flavor of the walnuts. It was a musty-tasting waste of good pizza dough.

All in all, this visit was a great disappointment, especially as we have had so many excellent meals there in the past. I wouldn’t say I won’t go there again, but it will be a while.

photo via lassonyc.com

L’Asso
192 Mott Street (at Kenmare)
212-219-2353

The night before L’Asso, I celebrated my birthday with The Hubs and some friends at Clover Club on Smith Street. I had been to this place before, too, but unlike L’Asso, this did not disappoint. I encouraged my friends to eat beforehand because the drinks here are expensive, and I didn’t want the bill to be too big. Well, I guess everyone was running as late as I was, because we all showed up hungry for food, as well as expertly mixed libations.

We ordered too many drinks to name them all, but they were all delicious (and I guess they had better be at prices approaching $15 a pop). I especially recommend the Bermuda Swizzle, which has a spicy, very unusual flavor, provided by exotic ingredients such as Velvet Falernum, which I had never heard of before visiting Clover Club, had you? Many of the cocktails utilize unusual ingredients, or sometimes ordinary ingredients are mixed in unusual ways, as with the El Diablo, which is silver tequila (check!), mixed with lemon (okay.), ginger (ginger?), and cassis (say what!?). But they all work.

We sampled a number of their small-plates style dishes, from the oyster po-boy, to the deviled eggs, to the pigs in a blanket (that’s what I said!), all were delicious. The stand out for me, though, was the beet crostini. I have seen this dish on many a small-plates Italian menu, but this was by far the best I have ever had. It started with a base of good, crusty, toasted bread brushed with a bit of olive oil, then topped with a thin schmear of goat cheese, a pile of brunoise‘d (thanks, Top Chef!) beets, thyme, and a dash of honey. I think that it was the ingenious inclusion of honey that pushed this dish over the top. We actually asked for a second order after the polished off the first—ok, and I ate most of it, but still, the fact is a testament to the scrumptiousness of the plate.

The service at Clover Club is friendly and attentive, and not at all snobby as they seem to be at many old-timey, club-chaired, serious-cocktail-lover cocktail lounges. The atmosphere is quite cozy, despite the soaring ceilings, with wood paneling, plush furniture, and even a little fireplace in the back. By the way, if you are over the age of 30, and/or not on the make, try to get a table in the back room, which is much quieter and more civilized. I whole-heartedly recommend Clover Club, especially for a special occassion, or when you are feeling swanky. It ain’t cheap, but it is a delightful experience all-around.

photo via metromix new york

Clover Club
210 Smith St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
718-855-7939

Coming to you on Saturday!

I didn’t know if I was more excited about the new season of Top Chef, or the winsome repartee about it by Adam Platt and Josh Ozersky on Grub Street. It turns out Ozersky is off the gig this season, and Daniel Maurer has replaced him. While certainly witty enough, I am not sure the chemistry of previous TC-post-mortems is there yet. Maybe it’ll help if they come up with cute nicknames for each other as Platt and Ozersky did, it’d help bolster the fun quotient. Is it just me that loved Platt calling Ozerky “Cutty?”

I happen to love broccoli, even when it is “squishy,” but when The Amateur Gourmet proclaims a recipe the “Best Broccoli of your Life,” I take it as an imperative to try the recipe. It does look and sound incredibly tasty.

As part of her “Thanksgiving Series,” Food Mayhem features a recipe for pumpkin lasagne. Um, yum!!

Too-sweet sweet potato haters, rejoice! Bittman offers four marshmallow-free sweet potato recipes. As someone who thinks that sweet potato (and butternut squash) recipes often skew so sweet as to mask their earthy, savory characteristics, I was thrilled to see this post. The shredded SP’s with brown butter and sage look especially enchanting.

Or, if you really like sugary sweet potatoes, why not use caramelized onions to sweeten them up! As seen over at the Kitchn. Sounds scrumptious!

Sweet wines don’t receive the same respect as other varietals, but they can be as complex, delicious, and deserving of admiration as their dry counterparts. Made by halting fermentation halfway through the wine making process—before all the sugar is converted to alcohol—these wines stay sweet because they are essentially part juice. A pleasing touch of sugary juice makes “off-dry” wine a wonderful start to any party, perfectly quaffable as your guests arrive.

St. Urbans-hof is a low-alcohol German Riesling with a fresh and appealing tartness. Like most German Rieslings, St. Urbans-hof is noticeably sweet at first sip. Comparable in taste to Moscato, this honey-forward cousin to the Italian bubbly is very smooth. A distinctly light body gives this bottle a very airy feel, though without the bubbles. As a rule, alcohol is what gives wine its body: the higher the alcohol content, the more viscous and syrupy-textured the wine. A great analogy is to think of the body of a wine on a similar scale as milk. For example, one percent, whole milk, and heavy cream all share the same flavor qualities, but its the thickness and richness of the liquid that varies. German Riesling is the skim milk of wine, and St. Urbans-hof is no exception.

The sweetness of this bottle is complemented by a citrus-like tartness, creating a fresh and breezy wine. St. Urbans-hof has moderate notes of granny smith apples and lemons upon opening, with a bouquet that mellows out to show softer white peach and melon qualities as you sip. High levels of acidity make this wine undeniably refreshing and a bit less sugary-tasting than other sweet Rieslings you may have tried. Because St. Urbans-hof is both light and sweet, it is ideal for pairing with similarly light and sweet dishes—this would be perfect with pre-turkey crudité, fruit, and cheese, or after dinner with a slice of spiced pumpkin pie.

Available in New York at Astor Wines & Spirits for $12.99

With Thanksgiving a few weeks away, I can’t help but start thinking about tools that will come in handy in cooking that big ol’ bird. I came across this cool ultra-modern baster at Sur la Table. Boy, basters have come a long way from the mustard-yellow bulb-topped Tupperware one my Mom used when I was growing up. This one could not be more sleek and modern-looking. And who doesn’t want a sleek and modern baster? What is really cool about this, though, is that the special perforated tip allows for better control over distribution of basting liquid. No more violent splushing (yes, splushing) of juices haphazardly over random parts of the turkey. Plus, this baster comes with a second injector attachment, thereby alleviating the embarassment you would endure in having to tell people that Ron Popeil talked you into buying his injector. [$12 at Sur la Table]

We threw out the rest of the  last apple pie I reported on, due to a weird and unpleasant mushroomy/bacony (depending on who you ask) flavor we suspected might have been caused by an off apple. I now fully comprehend the adage about that one bad apple… Anyway, I was determined to make another one, this one with better apples, and a homemade crust, which I didn’t have time for last time.

All the pie crust recipes from Joy of Cooking, my go-to source for basic recipes, used a combination of butter and vegetable shortening, the latter of which I resist in both practice and concept. But one can’t just substitute all butter in such a recipe because it has a different weight, and more water content, than shortening, and an off-balance water-fat proportion can totally derail a good pie dough. So I turned to my recipe box, which happened to contain a long-forgotten recipe for an all-butter pie dough from my sister-in-law’s grandmother, Maxine. Here’s the rather concise recipe:

Maxine’s Pie Dough

2 c all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter
3 T ice water

Sift flour and salt. Add butter and mix. Add ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time. Mix until dough forms. Roll out as desired.

The recipe actually calls for softened butter, but I used cold butter as that is the norm for pie dough, no offense to Maxine. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. Well, eventually….

I elaborate here as there isn’t much to the instructions portion of the recipe—Maxine came from a generation in which pie-dough-making was such a basic part of female existence, that it must have been a scandal not to know how to make it.

I don’ t have a pastry blender, so I used two table knives to cut the dough (see action shot, left). It takes a lot longer, but gets the job done eventually. I needed more ice water than 3 T to get the dough to hold together. I also don’t have a rolling pin, so I used a wine bottle which I had soaked to get the label off and cleaned and dried thoroughly. (A wine bottle works like a charm, and actually, if you ask me, better than a wooden rolling pin.) I had to use a ton of flour to get the dough to roll out, and even still, it didn’t hold together, and half of the recipe hardly covered the bottom of the pie pan. Plus, there were all sorts of holes in it, it looked like a nightmare in swiss cheese. I started rolling out the second half, and it was just an equal if not worse disaster. I realized I had to start over again.

That is the point at which I realized that I had mistaken the half-cup measure for the one-cup measure. I had put only one cup of flour into a recipe that calls for two! Ay ay ay. The second time around, the pie dough was a rousing success! I haven’t made pie dough in a long time, so it was a little rougher looking than the Pillsbury ready-made-pie-dough-pie I made, but a 100 times more delicious!

I used 6 apples (2 golden delicious, 2 pippin, 2 jona gold), which were piled really high in the pie pan when raw, but really baked down a lot (you can cook the apples first if you want to bypass that phenomenon, but I find that makes the apples too soft once the pie is baked). I tossed the raw apples with 3 T flour, juice of half a small lemon, 3/4 c sugar, and spices (1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 each of powdered ginger, nutmeg, and cloves). It was just the perfect amount of spice–it added some zip without overpowering the flavor of the apples. Just before putting the pie dough top on, I arraned a few little pieces of butter on the top of the pile of spiced apples.

I baked the pie at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, then put it on a cookie sheet and turned the temp down to 350, for about 30 more minutes, per the JOC instructions. I wish that aromanet existed, because I would love for you to have smelled this pie as it was baking. I guess you will just have to try it yourself at home! Happy baking!

There was a story in the NY Times this week about the guy who makes the possibly-best-pizza-I-have-ever-had. Nice to know the story of the genius behind the port-o-oven.

I ate at Noodle Pudding once. I expected great things. I was underwhelmed. After reading this post by Mark Bittman, though, I think I need to give it another try. I mean, orichette with broccoli rabe and croutons, come on!, that sounds awesome. But of course, he injects his food writing with so much character and atmosphere, he could write about eating cheese whiz from a can and make me crave it.

Food Mayhem made maple-pecan sticky buns for the comfort-food-themed election party. Lord, they look amazing. I wish she had come to my election night party. Like, seriously, that would have been cool.

The Kitchn addresses the eternally important Thanksgiving meal question: How do you keep the mashed potatoes warm?

As I mentioned the other day, the all-American menu for Election night consisted of: baked beans, corn casserole, a salad, and apple pie. As you can tell from the pictures, this isn’t the most attractive meal you have ever seen, but it was darned tasty.

Since I had to accomplish the both baked beans, salad, and pie after work (plus, the Predicate was bringing the corn casserole, which would need to get heated up in the oven), I jumped into action immediately after coming home from work.

I started with the pie as I wanted to give that as much time as possible to set after baking, as per the instruction which stated it needed to sit at room temperature for 3-4 hours before eating. Luckily, because of the apple peeling-coring-slicing machine I have, I was able to prepare a pie’s worth of apples in less than 10 minutes (aftermath, left), which was awesome. I pretty much followed the apple pie recipe from The Joy of Cooking, except added more cinnamon and less sugar than that recipe calls for. Also, I, gulp, used Pillsbury ready-made pie dough. I just didn’t have the time to make and roll out my own. To mix things up a bit, I shredded some sharp cheddar cheese and pressed it into the bottom crust of my pie. (If you have never had sharp cheddar cheese on a slice of apple pie, you haven’t lived! Truly!). After getting that into the oven, I started on my baked beans.

I once made baked beans, years ago, for my friend Eddie, and literally every single time I have seen him since then he has mentioned them–such was their deliciousness. Unforunately, I have no idea what I did with the recipe, so I had to find a new one for my Election Night Party. After looking at Epicurious, I decided upon the Hot and Smoky Baked Beans recipe. My friend KK once told me that the key to successfully use Epicurious recipes is to read the reviews, which often offer tips for revision. I find that to be consistently true, so when I noticed that many reviews for this recipe said the beans weren’t saucy enough, I decided to increase the sauce-to-beans ratio. The recipe really couldn’t be easier, and it was totally delicious. The only thing I would do differently next time (and there will be a next time!), is I would not use the Great Northern beans the recipe calls for. I thought they were too big and tough-skinned for the recipe. I think next time I would use smaller Navy beans, which are more traditional for baked beans, anyway.

We ended up not having a liberal-loving arugula salad, but just a simple mixed greens salad as that was what was available at the store. The Predicate’s corn casserole was amazing. This is an extremely unhealthy dish, and not something you want to eat all the time, but it is so good. It is sort of like a hot dog in that you can only truly enjoy it if you are ignorant to what goes into it. But if you really must know, here is a recipe for it. Sounds gross, but it is magic. The apple pie look beautiful (see below), but ended up having a bit of a funny taste to it, caused, I think, by one of the apples (I used several types) that tasted a little funny–no fault of the recipe, which worked really well.Over all, the patriotic meal was tasty, especially paired with the dry Lambrusco (ok, not American at all!) that we popped to celebrate our candidate’s victory.