Tender vs. Delicious

If someone said you could eat something that was either delicious or tender, which would you choose? For me it is easy – I always take delicious. One is a adjective to describe how something tastes and one is an adjective that describe how something feels. Granted feeling and texture play a role in how much we enjoy something we eat, but I think how something tastes plays the greatest role.

Steak is a great example of the delicious vs tender debate. The prized filet mignon is one of the most tender cuts of beef, but in almost all cases lacks that distinct deliciousness that makes a steak a steak. This is why you often see a filet wrapped in bacon (delicious) or a porcini crust (also delicious). Ask any butcher what cut they would always keep for themselves, nine out of 10 would not pick a filet. Maybe a flat iron, skirt steak, or NY Strip which have a tremendous amount of flavor at the expnse of overt tenderness. Or maybe the sainted ribeye which has 10X more flavor than a filet and may be just as tender.

Don't fight against delicious for the false flavor of tender. Yes delicious can be tender and tender can be delicious, but if you are serious about your delicious – put tender on the back burner.

This is just a warm up for the smooth wine vs delicious wine debate.

New Awesomeness

We have put a new dish on the menu that is classical, simple, rich and don't forget exquisite. We have added pommes aligot (phome - aligo) as a side to our new braised veal breast.

While the veal breast is so very delicious after being braised for five hours with cinnamon and castelvetrano olives, it is the pommes aligot that steals the show. This is a classical French dish from the Auvergne region. This recipe calls for equal parts potato and cheese with some cream thrown in to ensure the scale is tipped from decadent to a certain primordial richness that speaks directly to the core of being a human. It is that good. Come into the WK and find out for yourself.

Wine Myth Busting 101

Swirling a glass of wine then looking intently at the glass and commenting on how great the legs look on a particular wine makes you sound like you know what you are talking about and opens the door for yet another sly double entendre at a cocktail party. But alas, those legs don't quite mean what you think they mean - in either sense.

Those "legs" or the less sexy name "tears" dripping down the inside of a glass of wine are simply an indication as to the fact there is alcohol in the wine. More legs indicates more alcohol and not much else. If you measure a wine's quality by the level of alcohol in the wine those legs might mean something to you. But if you measure a wine's worth by what it tastes like, then... Open up and say ahh.

If you were interested the nerdy explanation for wine legs follows below.

The scientific explanation for wine legs is a result of the varying evaporation rates and different surface tensions between alcohol and water (The major components of wine.). The wine crawls up the glass as you swirl it because alcohol has a lower surface tension rate than water and pulls itself up the side of the glass. Then as the alcohol evaporates faster than the water, because of its lower boiling point, the water forms droplets and falls back down the inside of the glass. Or something like that.

Drink what you like.

The Thrill of Disappointment

Tonight I experienced one of the many things that can happen when you open a bottle of wine.  Instead of being met with the scent of something exciting and new, I was met with something that smelled old and tired.  Sometimes a bottle is full of wine that has become less than pleasant.   Whether it is from 'cork taint' (aka 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA)), oxidation or any other various wine maladies, a bottle of wine can sometimes be far from perfect just on a technical perspective.  We are not talking about wine that is subjectively good or bad.  We are talking about wine that has a fault the size of the San Andreas Fault (aka largest fault in the World) and is not good on any level.  

To me thought it is this chance that gives wine a certain I don't know what, (aka je ne sais quoi) that makes it a bit more beguiling than other beverages.  If you want to be rewarded when you open a bottle of a wine with a something much better and/or interesting than you had originally thought or hoped, you must also be willing to suffer the disappointment of  a promising bottle gone bad.  To know the thrill of victory is to know the sting of defeat.  With wine sometimes you end up with a freshly opened bottle of wine and empty glasses as the wine in the bottle has ceased to be and will offer up none of its intended promise. Then sometimes you open a bottle of wine you have never had before or an older wine you know and you are swept off your feet by a wine that could bring a tear to your eye and a heavy relaxing sigh after each sip.  If you are going to drink wine and hope to have new and different experiences you must be willing to understand that you take the good, you take the bad (aka The Facts of Life).  

Little Green Bottle

Sometimes you don't finish a bottle of wine.  Sometimes you even plan to not finish a bottle you open.  Then sometimes you finish more wine than you should.  The solution for the latter is for another time.  The solution for what to do with left over wine is our topic for today.  

The best, most cost effective and simple way to preserve an opened wine is to remove it from its current bottle home and put it into a smaller bottle home.  Like empty nesters selling their four bedroom colonial for a two bedroom rancher.  When I know I am not going to finish a bottle of wine when I open it i break out my mini green bottles first thing.  (This happens more often than not, as the Mrs. and I disagree on wine choices.)  I use the litte 8oz green bottles (pictured above) that were previously ginger ale bottles.  These small green bottle are perfect because they prevent wine deterioration and make for a handy single serving size.  Fill each of the 8oz green bottles as close to the very top of the bottle as you can, at least up to the small neck of the bottle.  Now only the smallest portion of wine is exposed to oxygen as possible.  Oxygen and wine's relationship is like the friend who comes to visit for a few days that turns into a few weeks..  At first oxygen makes wine seem bigger and better than it was, until it has been around too long, then it becomes the wine's mortal enemy.  So keeping oxygen away from wine until you want them to cohabitate is essential in preserving wine.  The fridge is the place for all unfinished wine regardless of color and creed.  The cool air temperature in the fridge also helps to reduce the wines proclivity to self destruction much like it does for any and/or all meat, produce and cheese.  

So in review:

1 Fill small green (8oz) bottle with extra wine to the tippy top of the glass jar. (Put the top on the small green bottle.

2 Refrigerate said jar.

3 When you get home pour yourself a glass out of the well preserved wine.

4 Say hi to the family and change your clothes

5 Drink well preserved wine.  

Enjoy.  

A Necessary Option

Sometimes necessity is the mother of unusual choices.  After a long day, sometimes a glass of wine and something to eat is a necessity more than an option or choice.    

Thusly tonight I had the pleasure of a pot of Amy's Organic Mac N' Cheese and a glass of Barefoot Chardonnay.   As you can see by the awesome golf ball stopper, the Chardonnay had already been opened prior to my arrival and drinking.  (It was used for a pork shoulder recipe.)  You can also see, if you look closely, that a spoon is the preferred utensil for mac n' cheese.  Mac n' cheese is best eaten out of the vessel it is cooked in so as not to miss a morsel of cheese. 

Sometimes wine is just for drinking with no further thought than that.  Sometimes you drink a wine because it is cold, has some alcohol in it and provides a certain amount of refreshment.  In those circumstances the Barefoot Chardonnay was exactly what the doctor ordered.  Fresh fruit of apricots and pineapple with a little bit of vanilla cream.  The wine was as refreshing as a yellow Gatorade after a mile run on a summer Virginia day.  That's it.  That's all the wine was designed to, and so it did.    

Drink whatever the hell you like when ever you like.  If for some crazy reason you don't finish it, use a fun bottle stopper and put the wine in the fridge (Yes red wines as well.  The fridge works its preserving magic on red wine just as it does red meat.) until tomorrow.  

A Forgotten Vineyard

There are few things more depressing than a forgotten vineyard.  All that hard work going into planting the vines in perfectly straight rows, training them and then carefully harvesting the bounty of grapes.  To then just leave it and walk away is a sad a sad thing.  Almost like starting a blog and semi-diligently logging posts, then leaving it fallow for so many months with no new attention paid.  

Well we are here to reclaim our lost blog.  We will hack out all the underbrush, retrain the vines and began anew.  So please have patience as we begin our process of reclamation and regrouping to produce a better and more well maintained product.