~Charlotte

Andrew’s Vinegar Discussion:
At Goods Gourmet we carry a wide range of vinegars from Melfor, a very mild Alsatian condiment (French law says you can’t use ‘vinegar’ for anything under 6% acidity) to the A’Olivier fruited vinegars that hover around 8% acid.

We were making potato salad for a Memorial weekend party anyway so we decide to split a batch between three different vinegars. The base recipe calls for red wine vinegar. For the option closest to that we chose a Banyuls vinegar made in far southern France near the Spanish border. The wines of Banyuls are usually sweet, red dessert wines though they make some fine dry wines as well. This vinegar, while technically a red wine vinegar, pushes more towards the sherry vinegar profile of nut and citrus flavors. It’s big, but not brawny.
The second vinegar was the Cattani Organic White Balsamic. This is nothing like the very expensive, syrupy aged traditional balsamics nor is it akin to the mass produced grocery balsamics. Whatever the production, this is a highly perfumed, slightly sweet vinegar with some acid kick. It’s very tasty right off a spoon, but we had not cooked with it before.
The most unusual of the group was the Roman Vinegre from Alan Coxon, a British chef and food historian. Alan has spent huge chunk of his own money developing and marketing vinegars modelled after what would have been used in ancient Greece, ancient Rome and medieval England. The Roman vineger, very bright with a noticeable floral note that traces back to chamomile, is a very well made vinegar that Alan suggests be used where rice wine vinegar is called for.
Tasted straight up, the Banyuls is the strongest, the White Balsamic the sweetest, and the Roman the most herbal. Concensus was that the Banyuls was the best overall, but opinion was split on the other two. No one disliked the sald made with Roman vinegar, but we agreed that it needed the right setting an smoked ribs was not its best match. On its own or as a side with shellfish it would be great, but red meats or smoked versions of the ‘other white meat’ were not well suited. The salad made with the White Balsamic was very appealing but needed to be served in small portions due to the sweetness. Not cloying, but noticeable.
This little head-to-head was a lot of fun and very inspiring. The short story is that there is a world of great flavors out there to explore and ya’ll should take every opportunity to stray from the familiar path inot the exciting unknown.

It was a composed salad with mixed greens, Point Reyes blue cheese and Harvard beets, so we hit law school.

President Obama started his post high school education at Occidental College in California, so we chose a mighty fine blue cheese from Point Reyes, California. Nothing to do with Occidental College, but its at least from California.

We couldn’t find any food ties with Columbia University where he completed his undergraduate degree, but we DID find that it was a group at Columbia who developed the well known California cheese advertising campaign so we settled for that.

This thread has hung me up from writing more frequently because I keep thinking we’ll re-make some of these dishes and take pictures. I’m going to wrap this up for now and move on to other topics.

I started with polenta made from a very fine grained Bramata Italian polenta from Moretti mixed simply with water and salt. It set up just fine when it cooled and the first attempt was to mold this straight polenta in mini muffin tins. A champagne cork worked well to tamp the polenta. These cups actually held together, but were plain and lacked texture. We gave them a ‘B’.

The next step was to mix in a bit of egg (I used a quail egg since it was a small trial amount), mold them and then bake them (400 F for about 15 minute). The texture was a little better, but they didn’t hold well. Graded out to a ‘C’.

Trial three was a success. The polenta was again mixed with egg, but with the addition of potato starch. This mixture was molded, baked, then unmolded and broiled to crisp it up. These held very well, took a nice toast and were great with the stewed greens & fish – ‘A’ cups. We’ll post the final recipe once we make a big batch, but for a batch of polenta made with 1/2 cup of polenta and 2 cups of water I think we’ll end up using 2 eggs and 1/4 cup of potato starch.

I can’t say that I’m an advocate of little fishies. I do like anchovies and find Thai fish sauce to be a MAJOR player in my secret ingredient arsonal, but I’ve not been a rah-rah guy for preserved fish. I can say that I very much liked the texture of these anchovies and we had a lot of fun experimenting with them.

First we tried them versus some tinned sardines from Matiz Gallego. Have to say that, if I had to make a choice, I’d choose the Matiz sardines but mostly because the kicked the crud out of any other sardine I’ve tried. That said, the boquerones were more fun to match. Just on a Nairn’s oat cake they were fishier than the Matiz sardines but firmer and with a pleasant vinegar twang. Next step was with a dap of goat cheese (twang on twang) that was good, but too rich. We added a touch of spicy sundried tomato paste (from Moulins Mahjoub in Tunisia) and that helped round things out. Far better was the boquerone with a smear of Geeta’s mango chutney (Major Grey should prostrate himself in front of this chutney) and the pinnacle of our experimentation was this with a nugget of goat cheese. A very interesting smoked flavor evolved that didn’t belong to any one component.

Best drink match was honestly a Belgian triple from Unibroue called La Fin du Monde. An Alsatian Gewurtztraminer was okay, but needed more acid to stand up to the richness of the appetizers. Riesling perhaps.

As good as the scallops were the daily pizza special stole the show. The crust was rich and nicely browned – almost a brioche dough. The texture was similar to an early Noble Romans crust. That foundation was brushed with white truffle oil and topped with sundried tomatoes, portobello mushrooms, & Gruyere. There were probably a couple of other things, but I’ve wasted too much time trying to track them down. The point is that it was a perfect combo between the super-savory truffled pizza and the fruit-driven Malbec. Bravos all around.

The main room costs $30 per person and the reserve+main ticket is $50 so we spring for the reserve room to look for cellar candidates. They post the offerings on-line so I always have a gameplan. We started with Champagnes. The Nicholas Feulliatte Palmes d’Or (their tete de cuvee at $140/bottle) was bone dry – almost dusty – on entry and had a very complex finish with a lot of toast. The Feuillatte Rose at $40 was simpler but very well made. I seldom find tete de cuvees that I think warrent the extra $$ and this was no exception. If I was going to splurge I’d pick the Bollinger ‘Special Cuvee’ at $80 over the Palmes d’Or. Better yet track down some Gosset Brabant Reserve Brut. Used to be around $45 but I haven’t seen any in awhile.

A small number of whites were next. Tasting the Chateau Boillot Chassagne Montrachet ($70) next to the Kistler McCrea Vineyard Chardonnay ($95) was interesting. The Boillot definitely needed some food, but showed all the style and reserve you expect from white Burgundy. The Kistler was not as bombastic as some older vintages I’ve tried, but still had the high oak polish common to high end California chardonnay. Neither had the ‘Wow factor’ of the Condrieu we tried last year that ended up coming home with us.

Pinot offerings were well thought out – Domaine Serene Jerusalem Hill, Bergstrom Cumberland Reserve, Penner-Ash, and Goldeneye. The Bergstom ($50) was our favorite, but I doubt any will end up on our cellar.

The surprise of the night was the 2005 Northstar Merlot ($30). It was not as massive, but better balanced that the Schafer Merlot ($55). We do plan to get some Northstar. The Domaine Pegau Chateauneuf-du-Pape was superbly made the price has gotten out of control. At $80/bottle we’ll look for CDPs at half that and 90% of the stuffing. The cellar is currently overbalanced to Cabernets so we didn’t taste through these and saved ourselves for other wines.

The main room is hard to do after the reserve room due more to palate fatigue than wine quality. Some bottles that broke through included Verget du Sud’s Viognier/Marsanne at $16, Klinker Brick’s Old Ghost Zinfandel at $38, the Cruz de Piedra Garnacha (Spain, $11 – can find for $9), and a High Not Malbec at $15.

This is a great way to scout out bottles both inexpensive and dear. If you live in Monroe or the surrounding counties put it on your calendars for next year and givei it a whirl. Word of caution – the pours are small but with that many wines you need to pace yourself.

We decided on a modified Valencia style as well as a vegetable paella for the smaller pan. The big guy had two kinds of domestic dry chorizo (one very spicy and the Bilbao that we carry that is chunkier/meatier but considerably milder), mussels, clams, chicken and lobster tails. The veggie paella had peas, red & yellow sweet peppers and artichoke hearts.

Dave brought the burner base for a Cajun cooker and we fired it up to check the flame spread but decided on doing the paella inside over two burners. The result was quite good, but I tried too hard to develop the socarrat (the caramelized bottom crust) and ended up burning the center. The edges were tasty, though. The vegetable paella was finished in the oven (per the Penelope Casas recipe we used as the framework) and never did develop any kind of socarrat.

Everyone contributed some great wines. The best we brought down was a 2001 Valsacro Dioro Seleccion J & D. This was recommended to me after a lengthy discussion by the Spanish wine ‘go-to’ guy at Sam’s in Chicago (the food/wine store, not the WalMart barn store). It’s been hanging out in the cellar since we went to the International Housewares show a few years ago. It’s 50% tempranillo, 40% grenaceh and 10% carignan. It has the nice smokey, cured meat nose I like in Riojas without the common mustiness. Though still tannic, the mouthfeel is more approachable than a lot of gran reserva level Riojas and there oak regimen doesn’t seem to have been as extreme. Very nice, though not a perfect pick for the seafood heavy paella. Overall, a grand night.