Eating Home

Aaah, back up in the northeast where the weather was as warm as it was in Florida!  It was just glorious.  I decided to give our stomachs a break and eat at home this week.  But here's the question that most ask, 'what to drink with dinner?'

Last Monday, March 19th was St. Joseph's Day, the patron saint of workers.  As such, the traditional Italian meal to celebrate the day is to eat pasta con le sarde, pasta with sardines.  A friend's nonna, or grandma as the Italians call their grandmothers, was kind enough to share her pasta with us and it was delish.  Traditionally, it is a dish prepared with canned or fresh sardines, fennel, bucatini pasta (the fat spaghetti with a hole in through the middle) and finished with toasted bread crumbs (to signify the sawdust of the working man).  Any southern Italian who eats seafood for Christmas Eve would be familiar with this dish.  It's an acquired taste due to the fishiness.  Guiseppe and I happen to like it.  Nonna's recipe was made in a tomato-based sauce, which was not how most recipe books would instruct, but more of a reflection of her southern Italian roots.

I decided to go into the wine refrigerator and pull out something from the archives.  Specifically, a 1994 Flaccianello della Pieve IGT by Fondoti.  This wine comes from the Tuscany region of Italy.  The pronunciation for the wine is FLACH-ah-nello dell-ah Pyev-EH.  This is a 100% sangiovese wine, the same grape used for chianti.  I tend to prefer my wines with SOME time so the tannins (the grippy feeling you feel in your mouth) and the alcohol had time to soften.  What is left is soft, supple, fruit and elegance in a glass.  Flaccianello was definitely that.  The first sip really caught Guiseppe's attention.  He's been into pinot noirs lately.  Why?  More so because all the wines produced these days are SOOOO heavy, alcoholic, full bodied and ripe.  Flacciannello was like a Chanel suit -- timeless and elegant.  It was probably delicious in 1994 and it still is now. 

The Flaccianello complemented the pasta con sarde so well.  The acidity on the wine was still very present.  It married well with the tomato-based sauce.  I ate better that night at home than I did for the past 2 weeks eating out.

The history of Fondoti is pretty romantic.  It's owned by the Manetti family.  They got into the winemaking business in the late 1960s.  The family before that were Florentine terra cotta tile producers.  Sandwiched in the region of Chianti, it is a midpoint between Florence and Siena.  If you have never been to the Chianti region, I highly encourage you to visit as Fondoti also has farm stays.  While the Manetti family has been around this region forever, the winemaking facilities are modern.  The vineyards are 100% organic.  In addition to the Flacciannello della Pieve, pinot noir, Chianti Classico, cabernet sauvignon and syrah is also produced here.  All this commitment doesn't come cheap--I did a quick search on wine-searcher.com and 1994 isn't sold anywhere anymore.  The more recent vintages are 2006-2008 and it ranges from $100-$150 a bottle.  Yowsers.  I think we may have paid $50 back in the mid 1990s.  I'd better check to see how many bottles are left!

Links:
http://www.fontodi.com/eng/default.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Joseph

Spring Break and the Malbec Challenge

Florida is beautiful this time of year.  It's spring break.  Everyone is down from the northern states to enjoy their second homes and the gorgeous 80 degree weather.  We are at, what is called, peak season now.

In as quickly as the winter came, I cannot believe we're approaching the end of 'the season' already.  Where did the time go?  I think the trip to the southern hemisphere messed me up a bit.

What does one do in Florida during the winter?  Well, there's always a card came, that's for sure.  Whether one plays canasta, bridge, rummy or mah jong, one will always find players that meet regularly.  I am a bridge player myself, but have only been playing for about 5 years.  I understand it takes YEARS before one can master the game and the bidding process.  I don't have a weekly game yet.  My only company right now is the app that I practice with until I have enough confidence to bid that no trump!

There's also golf.  Guiseppe belongs to an all men's club, boo hoo.  So no golf down here for me unless we go out to play with another couple.  Then there's the pool and the beach.   All day putting around and before you know it, it's time for dinner.  Going out consumes our evenings.  Meeting up with friends, clients and family for dinner.  As I mentioned in a previous blog, no one eats home in Florida.  It's a social state and eating out is the price to pay. 

One night, Guiseppe and I met up with friends who took us to The Bistro Restaurant & Bistro in Jupiter.  It is located off of US1 and owned by a jovial Irishman named Declan.  In fact, seems like everyone that works there has that Irish brogue.  It's part of the charm of the place.  A paunchy man named Liam greeted us at the door and set the tone of the evening.  The staff could not have been more cheerful or more willing to serve.  The service was, exceptional.

The menu had something for everyone.  It was Irish, American, French, Italian and Asian all on one menu.  Fish and chips, a specialty, and what I ordered that light, was light and airy.  Not oily in the least.  The French fries were shoestring in size and crispy.  The French onion soup was delicious as well.  Our friend, Joe, had the lobster ravioli in a cream sauce topped with caviar.  Sometimes cream sauce is so heavy you might as well drink from a carton of half and half, but not this cream sauce.  It was tempered with the right amount of stock that it didn't coagulate once cold. 

On this night, I had a glass of malbec from Argentina.  Malbec was once a blending grape from Bordeaux, France.  It was planted in Argentina and found success as a single varietal.  In France, malbec as a single varietal is found in Cahors.  How does a grape from two different areas be so the same yet so different?  Malbec from Cahors is dark, like squid ink.  It is full in the mouth with big tannins.  Malbec from Argentina has softer tannins and though still dark in color, it is not near black like Cahors.  It is more approachable as a red wine.  Flavor-wise, both have the same plums, chocolate, red cherries on the palate.  Both are medium to high in acidity. 

For dessert, The Bistro had souffle.  Be still my heart.  I love souffle.  What's not to love?  They even offered a choice of Grand Marnier and chocolate.  I opted for the Grand Marnier and it was sublime. 

Finally, I highly recommend the reader to do a side-by-side tasting of an Argentinian and French malbec.  Taste the differences.  Then tell me what you think.


Links:
http://www.thebistrojupiter.com/

Wine Pairings

Today is my birthday.

I celebrated by having dinner with good friends.  Guiseppe and I took a bunch of our friends to my favorite Chinese restaurant, Hop Kee, in Chinatown.  It's a BYO king of place and I brought the wines for the evening.  My good friend, Lucille, brought a red wine from Cinque Terre -- the five towns in the Liguria region of Italy.  My selection of wines consisted of a rose sparkling wine, white and California pinot noir.

But here's the question I get asked all the time: how do you pair wines with food?

Here is my answer:

It doesn't always have to be sweet to work!  Yes, riesling and gewurztramer work just fine, but think outside the box. 

Asian food has layers of flavors.  It's true, it is one of the harder foods to pair wines with.  Put it simply: when in doubt a sparkling wine pairs amazingly well with Asian cuisine.  The acidity cuts through fat and the lemon flavors in the sparkling wine 'accents' the multitude of flavors in the cuisine.  Also, I find that if you pair a spicy wine with spicy food, that works well too.  Like a Rhone red.  Or this Vino Rosso from Campogrande.   It's a red table wine that has lots of spice, berries and is quite smooth.  It tasted so washing down my lo mein and beef.  Tried it with the fish with vegetables and it tasted equally as good.

I find that full bodied wines work with full bodied foods -- think big chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon with filet mignon.  Steak au poivre?  What about a Rhone red?  Lots of pepper in that wine to complement that pepper-crusted steak. 

Lemon Chicken?  Fish?  What about a white with acidity and lots of flavors of citrus rinds, lemon juice, white pepper?  What about an Austrian Gruner Veltliner, Italian soave, pinot blanc or even a sauvignon blanc?  Think of it this way: if you were to put lemon juice on that fish, why not just sip the wine for the juice?

If you are at a total loss, here's my advice: chardonnay for white, pinot noir for red and champagne baby!  Always the bubbly for any occasion.

Jennifer