Red Bicyclette Rosé

It is hot in Texas. Over 100 degrees all week and, let me tell you, grocery shopping today was a chore. When I finally got home and took a cool shower, I was ready to face my Saturday night Grand Dinner, with a little help. I decided to see if rum was an acceptable substitute for vodka in a pomegranite martini . . . and it is. A little too sweet, so I might add lime juice the next time, but it was cheerful and refreshing and had the desired effect of making me think I could clean and cook a tenderloin roast after running around in the heat. Tonight's entrée was Filet de Boeuf En Croute, which is a fancy name for a tenderloin roast smeared with pate, wrapped in puff pastry and baked. It's really good and pretty easy. Just season and brown the roast on all sides (I'll bet you could use a pork tenderloin instead of beef), bake it for 10 minutes in a 400 degree oven, spread pate all over it (I use the liver paté from World Market that's about $3.50 a can), wrap it in puff pastry and bake for 30 minutes at 425 degrees. I served it with mashed red potatoes, asparagus, sauteed mushrooms, and homemade focaccia.

And Red Bicyclette Rosé. I picked up a bottle when I was at Super Target -- it was under $8 and a nice blend of syrah and grenache, from the Languedoc region of southern France, which makes for a good rosé. I liked it. It was crisp and dry, as promised, and not too sweet. Probably a little light for tenderloin, but it was too damned hot to get out anything else.

I also bought a Chardonnay from that label and will give it a try tomorrow. A friend of mine wants a review of Chardonnays, which are not my favorite whites, but I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

I love French wines and I have thought that my ideal retirement would be a quiet village in Provence. I avidly read Peter Mayle's books on the region and was charmed until I read his description of a "mistral," a weather phenomenon common to Provence. The word seems to invoke something subtle and not particularly foreboding but, as I read Mr. Mayle's description, I realized that Provence and Texas share a commonality: what they call mistrals, we call blue northers.

A blue norther, for those of you who don't live in Texas or Oklahoma, is a weather event in which the temperature of the day can drop up to 40 degrees in an hour, brought on by a blast of artic air that sweeps from Canada straight down all those flat states (both Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas) with speed and vigor. There are certain times of the year that it really pays to listen to the weather forecast; otherwise, you could cheerfully leave home with a sweater in the morning and by noon be wishing for an overcoat. You just have to see (and feel) it to believe it. I wouldn't mind one right now!

Pinot Noir and . . . Drumsticks

No, I don't mean a chicken drumstick, I mean an ice cream drumstick (vanilla, no nuts, the way Jackson likes it). I started munching down on it and then realized there was a little bit of pinot noir left in my glass, so took a swallow and . . . well, that taste sensation will never make it into Wine Spectator magazine.

However, a nice chunk of semi-sweet or less dark DARK chocolate and a glass of red wine is something that everyone who likes red wine should try at least once. It's been popular among wine aficianados for a while, but I am here to agree that it is a lovely, sophisticated ending to a meal. Just as a shot of chilled vodka changes the taste composition of caviar, chocolate and red wine create a wonderfully satisfying savory/sweet flavor.

So here I am on this Friday night standing at the kitchen counter typing on my laptop because I put a kink in my neck from overuse of the computer yesterday. I'm waiting for the time when I can take another muscle relaxer and watching Oliver Stone's "JFK." (Yes, I know it's not historically accurate, but I still find it very entertaining and well done, and Gary Oldman perfectly channels Lee Harvey Oswald.) And, to get my mind off my throbbing neck and shoulder muscles, I am thinking back to the best steak I've ever eaten combined with the first time I ever had a glass of syrah.

Tenderloin in all of its incarnations is probably the main reason why I, a tender-hearted animal lover, can never be truly committed to being a vegetarian. It's just too damned good.

Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I found myself in England visiting friends. They took me to the County of Kent, near Leeds Castle, to a pub that was old enough to remember the days of Henry VIII. On the outside, it looked like a cheerful beer garden with Tudor architecture and umbrella topped tables in the yard, but inside it was a pub straight out of the world of Harry Potter. Low, dark wooden beams, uneven stone floor showing wear from centuries of footsteps, bookshelves on the walls, a large fireplace with a roaring fire -- the ambience alone, along with a pint, would have been wonderful, but there was a meal to be consumed.

Honestly, I don't remember anything I ate that night except for the main course: a thick slice of rare tenderloin, reverently atop an equally thick slice of homemade paté nestled on a slice of French bread. This was, without a doubt, an orgasmic meal, and I savored every bite.

The tenderloin was accompanied by a bottle of syrah, and the full-bodied spicy red wine was a perfect accompaniment to the steak and paté combination. Since then, I have enjoyed syrah and shiraz (location of the grapes -- the Rhone for syrah and Australia for shiraz -- is the only difference between the two) on many occasions. I think it's well suited to a winter's evening along with a hearty meal, and I will always associate it with a memorable night in Kent.

Musings to Escape A Boring Week

Well, it hasn't been THAT boring, but it has been busy. If I was a good journalist/blogger, I'd have a few posts set aside for the days when I look at my computer screen and go completely blank (like yesterday). However, since this is a stream-of-consciousness sort of blog, though, it's hard to store up streams of consciousness for an uninspired day.

Dinners have been haphazard and not noteworthy at all the past two days, so I'm going to skip over that part. I had a wise old lady tell me once that, when she was at a loss for what to cook and her husband was walking in the door (those were the OLD days when the wife was supposed to be in a dress, dinner ready, and martini to hand to her husband as he walked in from The Office), she'd melt butter in a pan and add some chopped onion to it while she was trying to decide what to fix. That made the kitchen smell great, like real cooking was going on, and bought her some time.

That's always a good start. If you have base items you rely on (mine would be garlic, of course, and shallots or onions), then you can add to the concept with different herbs, spices, meats, and vegetables, and make kind of variations on a theme. For example, the family was kind of tired of boneless skinless chicken breasts but that's what I had to cook (and I was pretty tired of it too). To dress it up a bit, I sauteed the inevitable garlic and onions (I was out of shallots that week), browned the chicken breasts on both sides, added some white wine and spices, enough whipping cream to make a sauce, and wrapped the chicken breasts in puff pastry with the sauce inside. I baked those until the puff pastry browned on top, and there was dinner, with a side of steamed vegetables or a salad, and maybe potatoes or buttered noodles. It was the same old chicken inside but it looked different and tasted pretty good.

My mother used to take ground beef and cook it with garlic, onions, tomatoes, and whatever other vegetables she had lying around, and serve it over a baked or mashed potato. There are all sorts of ideas -- "desperation dinners," if you will -- and all you are limited by are your imagination and the contents of your kitchen.

If you treat cooking like a game, you'll not only have fun with it but will come up with unique and delicious meals. Oh, sure, sometimes they'll be more unique than delicious, but those make for great family stories!

Best Pizzas Ever

Yes, we all know about the chains, the old reliable pick-something-up-on-the-way-home-from-work type of pizzas. Most of them are filling but unremarkable. A few of them (like my vodka drinking) lead to vows of abstinence after partaking.

And no, we didn't have pizza for dinner AGAIN -- I was talking about anchovies and that led to thinking of Great Pizzas I Have Had.

Paris, France: It is an unlikely place to associate with pizza, but somehow this little restaurant off the Boulevard Hausseman managed to take the humble pizza pie and give it a new twist. The crust was traditional thin crust, obviously handmade with just the right amount of texture and chew to keep it from being as dry as a cracker, with a delicate layer of tomato sauce, just enough cheese, and . . . smoked salmon slices arranged artistically around a dollop of créme fraîche. The combination of flavors was irresistible, and I determined to try it at home.

I can't get the thin crust part right -- my bread machine makes good pizza dough, but the dough lends itself cheerfully to a thicker crust than the one I had in Paris. However, there's a pizza place in Plano that does make a decent thin crust cheese pizza so I can take that and add the smoked salmon and créme fraîche, open a bottle of French wine, and have an approximation of that night in Paris.

Believe it or not, créme fraîche isn't that hard to make. I found the recipe, along with a great Créme Fraîche Scones recipe, on www.epicurious.com, which has replaced most of my cookbooks as my go-to for dinner ideas.

Put one pint of heavy whipping cream in a bowl, whisk in 2 Tablespoons of buttermilk, cover tightly, and leave for 12 hours in a warm area. I learned the hard way not to leave it on the counter that receives the air conditioning vent draft. One time I stuck it in the oven but put post-it notes all over the kitchen so I would remember to take it out of the oven before preheating. After 12 hours, put it in the fridge. It's good for 3 weeks (if it lasts that long), and in addition to the creme fraiche scone recipe, it's wonderful in sauces, in mashed potatoes, OBVIOUSLY on pizza, on berries -- wonderful stuff.

There's a restaurant in Dallas called Fireside Pies (two locations, I think) and they also have great pizza. My favorite has truffle oil and anchovies on it. I was tempted to ask for fresh garlic on it too but since I was out with the family, I figured if I did they'd make me walk home. As it was, I had to order the anchovies on the side or be doomed to eat an entire pizza by myself, a feat I haven't attempted since I left high school. I do love anchovies. They add great flavor to pizza, provide the kick in homemade Caesar salad dressing, and taste great with egg salad or just plain on a cracker with a glass of wine.

Liquor Free Zone Tonight

First off, since you may be wondering, the vichyssoise turned out perfectly. It was the base for tonight's dinner, along with chicken-and-four-cheese ravioli topped with Emeril's Roasted Gaaahlic pasta sauce, and a side of garlic toast. The children, who turn up their noses at cold soup, had fried catfish, French fries, salad and raw carrots.

The fig tree in my backyard is heavy with fruit and this year the tree has been discovered by a family of mockingbirds. I don't mind sharing with them, though. They aren't taking bites out of all of the figs, just eating a few of them and I think they're taking care of any bugs that may also be interested in my Celestina figs. Last year I had enough of a harvest to make a few jars of fig preserves, so I'm hoping for that much this year as well, but the mockingbirds may have other plans. In the meantime, I'm enjoying fresh figs for dessert and breakfast and taking some to my friends (who respond with fresh cantaloupes and tomatoes).

By the way, speaking of that bread machine, a great use of sweet bread dough (in addition to making rolls or a loaf out of it for dinner) is to roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick, spread butter on it, heavily sprinkle a mixture of brown sugar, white sugar and cinnamon, roll it up and cut it into cinnamon buns, to be baked the next morning at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. It makes the house smell wonderful, too, like a bakery. Or you can put a loaf of bread on the night before, set the timer, and awaken to the smell of fresh baked bread.

Or you can make biscuits with little or no trouble. The absolute EASIEST recipe is from the Ultimate Southern Living cookbook, but it's been making the rounds since at least the 1970's, when I lived in Australia and got the recipe from a little old lady in Sydney (who called them cream scones). Ready? Here you go:

2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup whipping cream

Mix well, pat or roll it out to 1/2 inch thickness on a floured surface, cut the biscuits with a biscuit cutter, greased glass, or cut with a knife. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes until light brown on top.

Trust me, it doesn't get any easier than that.

Vichyssoise and Beaujolais

A long, long time ago, there was a lovely French restaurant in Dallas called Le Boul' Mich. It was located in an old frame house off McKinney Avenue, on Worthington, and was one of those wonderfully unpretentious restaurants that served the most marvelous food. It was like visiting a French home. Madame presided over the kitchen. You had one fork, one knife and one spoon with which to eat and a prix fix meal of four or five courses, depending on the market and the whims of Madame.

Her sauces were legendary, as was her vichyssoise, and when the sad day came and Madame hung up her apron and, presumably, moved back to France, she was kind enough to share her vichyssoise recipe with her Dallas fans. I didn't think the original recipe truly reflected the delicate taste, so over the span of a year or two (did I mention that I'm stubborn?) I worked on the recipe until I found a never-fail version that works for me. So here you go:

3 leeks, split down the middle and cleaned (you'd be amazed how much dirt you'll find nestled inside) -- use the white and light green parts just down to the dark green, because if you use all of the dark green you'll have very fibrous soup

1 medium onion, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 medium potato and 1 small potato, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 can chicken broth

1 can beef broth

1 Tablespoon (or thereabouts) beef bouillon powder

Water to cover or almost cover all of the veggies

Bring to a boil and then simmer, uncovered, until the liquid is reduced by at least half and everything is mushy. Pureé the mixture and chill for a few hours or overnight. To serve, ladle a portion of the puree into a soup bowl and add a tablespoon or so of heavy cream and mix it up until you have the consistency and strength you enjoy. If you want to get fancy, sprinkle chopped chives on it before serving, but that's too much trouble for me, really. After all, I cooked the damned thing! That's presentation enough.

Tonight's wine offering was a very nice Beaujolais which provoked an argument about whether one could detect the taste of cherries. I say yes, Chris said no, but he could smell lavender, and the one who usually settles the matter -- Jennie, whose palate has always been quite discerning and able to distinguish the different layers of a good wine (no, we don't let her drink but we do let her taste and value her opinion) -- merely said, "it tastes like wine." She's got her mind on her First Car right now, to the exclusion of everything else, which is understandable. Cherries or not, this is a good wine and went well with the shrimp alfredo that I made for dinner.

I TOLD you the vichyssoise has to chill overnight!

"Big Night," Scallops and Mussels

Saturday night is traditionally movie night at our house, children upstairs or out of the house, and something special for dinner. Tonight I fixed a seafood medley of scallops, mussels and small lobster tails. I get a box of frozen New Zealand mussels that are already scrubbed and on the half shell, which makes preparation very easy. Chop garlic and shallots and mix with Italian style bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders, and red pepper flakes. Put mussels in a single layer in a baking pan, sprinkle with white wine and lime juice, and cover with the bread crumb mixture. Drizzle with olive oil and bake at around 400 degrees (give or take) for around 15-20 minutes, depending on whether the mussels were frozen when you started doing this. As for the scallops and small lobster tails (we're talking scampi size here, but they were cheap), I chopped up more garlic and shallots, and ginger, and added soy sauce, olive oil, cooking sherry, paprika, and a dash of tabasco sauce, and marinated half of the scallops and itty bitty lobster tails (did I mention that these things were SMALL??) while I wrapped thin slices of bacon around the rest of the scallops because I was a little hesitant about what the marinated ones were going to taste like.

Meanwhile, I'd finished a glass of rum and passion fruit juice, made bread dough in my Zojarushi bread machine -- more on that later -- and watched Eddie Izzard's "Glorious" concert. I'm the Queen of multi-tasking.

I fired up the grill and added a small package of wood chips that are created for gas grills, to give food that wood-grilled flavor. They work. I'm going to buy stock in the company. After tripping over the basset several times, I was able to get the scallops and lobster tails on the grill, the mussles in the oven, and a glass of that really great rosé that I mentioned a few posts ago (Albertson's had it on sale for $6.59 today!).

As for the Zojirushi bread machine, during my 27 years of married life, I've literally worn out three bread machines from constant use, so the last time around I decided to get the Mercedes of bread machines: http://www.zojirushi.com/ourproducts/breadmakers/bbcc_x20.html. So far it's stood up to regular use and turned out consistently wonderful loaves of bread and batches of bread dough.

The movie, "Big Night" (1996), appropriately enough, was about cooking one great meal. I love movies that are made because someone liked the story, and not because a large committee of overpaid Hollywood executives decided that this would be a slick movie that would make lots of money. It's like a great meal: not perfect, but warm, interesting, and made with imagination and love.

Pears

I noticed this morning, when I dropped by the house of my friend Margaret to pick up her son for work, that her pear trees are heavy with fruit and the pears are starting to get a nice blush on them, foreshadowing a ripe harvest come September. A couple of years ago Margaret, Bonnie (who lives across the street) and I decided we were going to be Earth Mothers and do mad and marvelous things with those pears, providing sustenance for our families and friends (not to mention Christmas presents). One Saturday morning in September, fortified by a pot of Godiva Liqueur-laced coffee and a jug of Bonnie's incredible Bloody Marys, we set to work.

Knives and Bloody Marys are never a good thing, but we somehow managed to avoid losing any body parts or blood in the processing of about 40 pounds of pears. In spite of the tonnage, we didn't even make a dent in the harvest, and it wore us out for two years. I do believe that we're going to tackle it again this year, but on a slightly less grandiose scale.

That first year, we enthusiastically made pear preserves, pear butter, pear chutney, and pear liqueur. We chopped and sweated and cooked and tasted and ended up with a lot of really great canned goods to keep, swap, and give as gifts. We were also exhausted, hot, and VERY sticky. I do believe we smelled of pears for days (hmmm, pear perfume -- we didn't try that).

This year we may just do the pear liqueur as it was reasonably easy and required NO cooking, although I might try the pear preserves again. The preserves didn't gel as well as they should have done, even though I had some lemon in the mix, but it had a wonderful flavor that was augmented by the addition of chopped crystalized ginger.

The liqueur was easy and delicious. Get some of the big 32-oz. canning jars. Put two pears, peeled, halved and cored in each jar. Add a piece of vanilla pod, a piece of cinnamon stick, a couple of cloves, and a cup of sugar to each jar. Fill with vodka or brandy, or vodka with a little bit of brandy added just for the hell of it. Cover tightly and store in a cool, dark place for a couple of months. Shake the jars every day or two for the first week or so until the sugar dissolves, and then leave it alone for a while.

Our timetable was from Labor Day weekend to Hallowe'en, just because we couldn't wait any longer to see how it tasted. We always get together at my house for Hallowe'en because my neighborhood is better for trick-or-treating (dense suburban housing), and we three would make tons of food and eat and drink while the dads took the kids out looking for candy. The kids are practically grown up now, but it's become a tradition for us to get together and enjoy the evening, and now the dads get to hang around the house too while the kids are out partying, and the kids will drift in and out to graze on the food in between attending the parties.

On that Hallowe'en evening we decided to see how the liqueur was progressing, and we opened a jar, strained it, and started sampling. The combination of flavors is quite delicious and will [INSERT WARNING LABEL HERE] make you completely forget that you are basically drinking straight vodka (or brandy). The next time we were smart and used small liqueur glasses instead of wine glasses. Lesson learned. The well steeped pears, chopped with a little liqueur and a few chopped walnuts, made an excellent ice cream or crepe topping.

I bought lovely glass bottles and stoppers from World Market and created a very personal handmade Christmas gift of the liqueur for several friends. (Would've had more if we hadn't opened that second jar on Hallowe'en, but it was worth it!) Since there's so much flavoring added, you don't have to buy top end vodka or brandy for this recipe, unless you feel strongly about it.

One of these days I would like to try the whole fermentation-to-make-homemade-wine-or-brandy routine, which a dear old friend of ours in England used to do with great results, but that will have to wait until I have more time to concentrate on the scientific process. Right now, I'm just having fun!

2008 Heimberger Vin D'Alsace Pinot Blanc and . . . Pizza

Alright, I have totally tossed in the towel regarding cooking nutritious, exciting meals this week. Suffice to say that equipment malfunctions at work crowded out any culinary whimsy today. As began to close down my laptop, though, I remembered that I'd read about a free wine tasting at Parker Wine Cellars (www.parkerwinecellars.com), and it just happened to be on my way home. "Aha," I thought to myself. "RESEARCH."

Parker Wine Cellars does a free tasting every Thursday from 5-8 p.m. This week they were featuring a 2008 Heimberger Pinot Blanc, a 2005 Chateau Des Roques Vacqueyras and a 2005 Chateau Haut Veyrac Saint-Emillion Grand Cru. All were excellent and fairly reasonably priced, beginning at $13.99 for the Pinot Blanc, which I bought. It was surprisingly full-bodied for a white wine, yet managed to be dry, not syrupy, and flavorful, with delicate hints of fruit dancing across my palate.

The two red wines were lovely but out of my price range, at least today (but I've got my eye on that 2005 Chateau Des Roques Vacqueyras, a marvelous blend of grenache, syrah, and one other grape whose name eludes me -- starts with an "m," I think). I do love French wines. There's something about the aroma blooming from an opened bottle that evokes the centuries of history ensconced in the mountains and valleys of the wine country.

Still intending to cook, if only Sloppy Joes, I went home with my treasure and was promptly whisked out of the house by husband and excited 16-year-old to look at a potential First Car. By the time we got done examining the car, it seemed prudent to just pick up a pizza on the way home.

A 2008 Heimberger Vin D'Alsace Pinot Blanc is probably not the best accompaniment to a thick crust hamburger pizza, but by the time I got around to eating, it tasted just fine. Actually, it went well with the rest of the genips, so if I was actually behaving like a wine connoisseur as befits someone with a wine blog, I'd no doubt serve the wine with a few artisan cheeses, fresh figs, sliced green apples, and grapes, instead of mozzarella (on the pizza) and genips.

From now on, I'm definitely going to stop by Parker Wine Cellars every Thursday night on the way home from work.

It's THAT Time of the Week

I'm sitting here on a conference call with our time and billing vendor and our IT company trying to resolve a problem with the time and billing system, and my brain is thinking ahead to the evening, and the All Important Question: what am I going to fix for dinner?

My imagination tends to peter out mid-week, and we end up dropping by one of our favorite restaurants for take-out. However, this week I need to stay away from that expensive temptation, so I'm trying to flog my unresponsive mental recipe book to see what I can come up with. I'm also trying to remember what I have in the freezer for emergency meals. Periodically I'll cook a brisket, shred it, and freeze portions in freezer bags for use later on. The shredded beef can be mixed with barbecue sauce for sandwiches, made into hash with chopped onions, garlic and potatoes, or made into a lovely meat pie with the addition of puff pastry and some quick gravy.

I'll buy a trimmed brisket, put it in a roasting pan with the fat side up (so it will cook into the meat and keep it from getting dry) and pour Stubbs' marinade, or a bottle of barbecue or chili sauce, or red wine and soy sauce over the brisket. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and shove it into the oven right before bedtime. Turn the oven on to 200 degrees (do not preheat) and leave it there for about 8 hours, i.e., while you sleep. It's a little odd to wake up in the morning to the smell of roasting meat, but it gets the job done. Other people more talented than I will make mouthwatering brisket on the grill, but I haven't attempted that yet. My grilling abilities, like my sauce-making, tend to be quick and impatient, so I limit myself to steaks, chops and chicken breasts. Sagittarius needs to channel Virgo when cooking.

There is a glass of wine in my future after this day of failed time & billing program, recalcitrant (and now non-functioning) postage meter, and whatever problems are ensconced within the red message light on my phone (I'm still on the conference call). Our "house red" is usually a cabernet sauvignon, merlot or pinot noir, by either Fetzer or Beringer, depending on the budget. Sipping a glass of wine after work while fixing dinner is a conscious relaxation aid for me, a distancing from all things rushed and work-related. And as I picture myself in the kitchen with a glass of wine, I think I may try to persuade the family to accept spaghetti for dinner. (I also keep homemade meatballs in the freezer, which will be a recipe for another time.)

Fish 'n Mac 'n Cheese 'n Pinot Noir

This is an AWESOME pinot noir. I was privileged enough to have a glass of it today at lunch, and while it's out of my budget range ($25 for a bottle -- you don't want to know how much it was per glass), I can vouch for the fact that it may just be worth the price of the bottle. It was light, with a hint of fruit but not an overpowering taste, and a smooth, delicate finish.

So, back to last night's dinner. In addition to the fried rice, Jennie and I finished off the leftover chicken, Jackson had Gorton's fried shrimp (I may live in the South but I'm not that good at frying foods), and I made blackened tuna steak for Chris.

Now, I don't do traditional blackened fish. When the Cajun concoction first became popular, I discovered that when I properly blackened the fish, it also involved billowing smoke, screaming smoke alarms and occasionally an impromptu visit from the fire department. After a few such episodes, the slightly less dramatic presentation afforded by simply grilling the fish with the spices seemed more prudent.

Spice mixture:
1 Tablespoon sweet paprika
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 teaspoon white pepper
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teapsoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano

Combine seasonings, spread olive oil and some lime or lemon juice on both sides of the filet and coat both sides with the spice mixture. Grill to your satisfaction. I like it practically raw. This works well with almost any kind of fish you'd care to try. I usually use either tuna or tilapia.

Tonight's fast food offering (late getting home from work/taekwondo again tonight) was chicken fingers, steamed broccoli, and homemade macaroni and cheese. The chicken finger recipe came from the back of the Bisquick box, so I'm NOT going to repeat it here -- suffice to say it ain't gourmet cooking, but the family likes it, so there.

Macaroni and cheese is easier than most people think, really, and it's a great comfort food that can be served on its own, with steamed veggies, or as an accompaniment to any meat dish. My mom's recipe is pretty easy: boil water and cook 2 1/2 cups of elbow macaroni until just tender (after all these years, I just KNOW when it's done, but I think it's about 8-10 minutes). Drain macaroni and set aside. In the same pot (think easy clean-up, people), melt 2 Tablespoons of butter and then mix 2 Tablespoons of flour in it until smooth. Add 2 cups of milk and bring to a boil, stirring until thick (if you're a patient Virgo -- we Sagittarians just stir until we get impatient, thicken the sauce with the cheese and call it good). Add salt and pepper to taste and dump in 8 ounces or a little more of shredded cheese. I use the Mexican Blend which consists of a few different cheeses and, if I pick up the wrong package as I did last weekend, a little jalapeno (I wondered what those dark flakes were!) but fortunately no one noticed that one but me. Stir in the drained macaroni, dump everything in a casserole dish and top with more shredded cheese. Bake at 375 degrees (or whatever temperature you have the oven going at -- this is a forgiving recipe, as most of mine are) for about 15 minutes until the top gets lightly brown and delicious looking. Leftovers microwave really well the next day too.

From high end pinot noir to Bisquick chicken fingers -- my range is pretty all-encompassing! Leave no cork unturned or food untried (though some, like Stinky Tofu, which lived up -- or down -- to its name, are better tried once and then backed away from slowly)!

Monday, Monday

As a postscript to Sunday's cooking and drinking, here's a picture of the rosé that won my heart this past weekend. I bought this bottle and a bottle of Clos du Bois Rosé and, just for me (no libel intended), I found the Marqués de Cáceres to be the better wine. When chilled, it's crisp, dry and has a good clean finish with no dodgy aftertaste. And it's under $10 per bottle, which is always a good thing!

The chicken came out great but not as good as Kirby's (or so I was informed by my 16-year-old -- it's a tough crowd at my house!), and I made extra rice so tonight I'm going to make chicken fried rice to accompany whatever fish filets I'm planning to pull out of the freezer. To make chicken fried rice, you need cooked chicken chopped into small pieces, a scrambled egg, chopped carrots, onions, and garlic, soy sauce, salt, pepper, a dash of sesame oil and, of course, rice. The secret to a nice fried rice is to chill the rice at least overnight so that some of the moisture departs from the grains. Pour a little canola oil (you don't want a heavy oil for this) in a frying pan or, preferably, a wok, heat it up, and scramble the egg. Remove the scrambled egg to a bowl, add a little more oil to the pan or wok, and then add the chopped carrots, onion and garlic. Swish them around for a minute until you smell the garlic and onions cooking, and then dump the rice in. (NOTE: Before you put the rice in, use a fork or your hands and separate the grains so you don't end up with rice clumps.) Stir the rice, turning it over to toast it a bit and, when it's hot and well cooked with the oil, add the chicken and scrambled egg, and sprinkle salt, pepper, and a generous helping of soy sauce (enough to make it a nice light brown fried rice color) and mix it all together. When it's the temperature and consistency that you like, drizzle a few drops of sesame oil on it, stir again, turn off the heat, and you're done! You can, of course, put whatever vegetables you like into the fried rice, like peas, broccoli, green beans -- it's all up to individual tastes. You can change up the meat, too, or make it all vegetarian, depending on what you have in the house.

Whatever I do to the fish will be a subject for another blog, because I haven't decided yet! So many choices, so little time (this is a Jackson-to-taekwondo night).

Genips, Rum and Reflective Sunday

Yesterday while shopping at Fiesta Mart, a Texas (as far as I know) supermarket chain that specializes in ethnic foods and really fresh veggies, fruits and seafood (i.e., still swimming in the tank fresh fish), I found a long-lost friend: genips (see photo). Also known as genepas or mamocillas, this fruit was one of my favorite things to eat when I was a kid living in St. Croix. The season for ripe genips is very brief, and we kids would fill paper grocery bags full of the ripe fruit and sit in happy, sticky bliss as we sucked the ripe pulp off the seed. It's a lot of work for little reward, because there's only about an eighth to a quarter of an inch of soft fruit wrapped around an enormous seed, but to me it's worth it. I haven't seen or eaten a genip for 40 years, so the produce people in Fiesta Mart were quite amused at the public display of excitement I made when I realized what I'd found. My family was benevolently pleased for me, and Jackson generously tried a small taste in a show of familial solidarity but decided it was not to his taste. That's okay -- more for me.

So today is dedicated to my island life, in honor of the genips and because of the heat, with short shorts, passion fruit juice and rum, and a second trip to Fiesta Mart for more genips.

My rum of choice is Cruzan Rum, which is made on St. Croix. See www.cruzanrum.com. I have a sentimental attachment to the rum factory, but irrespective of sentiment, it's damned fine rum. Try it -- you'll like it. I'm partial to the dark rum, but the light rum is great for mojitos (muddle mint leaves in a glass, add sugar or simple syrup, club soda, lime juice, rum and ice cubes),and they now make a bunch of flavored rums which are great over ice or mixed with fruit juice or club soda.

The factory has been in the hands of the same family since its inception, and as a seventh grader I had the privilege of taking a tour with the rest of my science class. My father contracted with the rum factory to service the instruments that kept all of the machines functioning properly (this was a long time ago, before computers, but we did have color back then), so he was always welcome.

I know that in this Politically Correct era a science class field trip to a rum factory sounds downright evil, but we thought nothing of it and somehow managed to grow up to be functioning adults anyway with the minimum of alcohol abuse in our backgrounds. At the end of the tour, we were each presented with two samples of rum, one light and one dark. Dad promptly confiscated mine (damn). One of my friends, who now has a wonderful kayak fishing business in Corpus Christi -- see www.blueheronadventures.com -- made a big show of drinking the samples at school during lunch, forgetting a few important things: (1) we lived on a VERY small island; (2) our dads were friends; (3) chances were REALLY good they'd run into each other during the day and chances were even better that the subject of the field trip would come up. They did, it did, and Steve's dad was waiting for those two samples after Steve got home from school. GROUNDED! But Steve managed to turn out okay too, so no harm done.

As for cooking, I am making my friend Kirby's never fail chicken recipe. Kirby was born in Taiwan and raised in Hong Kong, and her cooking is amazing. Here's what you do: Take a whole chicken and, the night before you want to cook it (or a couple of hours before), rub it with white or rice wine and white pepper. When you're ready to cook it, heat a pot of water containing a cup of white or rice wine, a few slices of ginger, 2 tablespoons of salt (or half a cup if you like things salty) and enough water to cover half the chicken. When that starts to boil, put the chicken in breast side down and cover it. Turn the heat to 7 or medium hot and cook for 30 minutes if it's a 3-lb. chicken or 20 minutes if it's less than 3 lbs. At the end of the cooking time, turn off the burner and leave the chicken in the pot for at least 3 hours. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID. Slice it up and arrange it nicely on a plate and pour the sauce over it.

SAUCE: Heat olive oil (any oil for high heat, but I'm partial to olive oil) until you see steam and then add four finely chopped green onions, a finely chopped piece of ginger slightly bigger than your thumb and one teaspoon of salt. Stir evenly and spread on chicken.

This is a very delicately flavored dish and I'm planning to serve it with jasmine rice and steamed bok choy, if the kids will let me. Kirby thought I should include a photo of the finished product, but I can't slice chicken and arrange it as well as she does, so I'll leave it to your imaginations and just go with the photo of the genips.

How to Survive Texas Heat

Move. Okay, that's one problem solved!

However, the reality of this Saturday morning consists of one goal: to get my weekend errands done before the temperature hits 100 degrees. Judging from the length of wet tongue hanging out of my basset hound when I let him in from the great outdoors a few minutes ago, I've probably blown that goal already, but it was a nice thought.

Though I adore red wines, in the middle of a Texas summer it's sometimes just too damned hot to drink them, and I'm too much of a purist to put an ice cube in a glass of wine. Ain't happening. I am forced, therefore, to find icy alternatives to a mouthful of full-bodied red flavor. A glass of sauvignon blanc is good. A bottle of chilled French rosé is even better.

Rosé wines are a delicate balance between red and white, and some wine snobs don't even think of them as wine, though they're not in the same category as the bottled mixed drinks that my friend Kittie calls "bitch pop." They're varietals, mixtures of more than one type of grape, such as syrah/grenache, and the color comes from leaving the grape skins in the wine for a little while. Like any wine, rosés can run the gamut from sweet to dry, and I'm always looking for the dry ones. Rosé d'Anjou is one of my favorites but it's sometimes hard to find in Dallas. La Vieille Ferme Cotes Du Ventoux is very nice as well, and reasonably priced (under $12per bottle). Rosés are a fruity wine, very light, and perfect for summertime sipping. I usually have a glass (or bottle) with a dish of pasta primavera or grilled fish.

Easy pasta primavera (a/k/a Nina's comfort food): saute chopped garlic, mushrooms, asparagus, black olives -- really, whatever vegetable you have lying around -- lightly in hot olive oil. Add a little cooking wine or a dollop of whatever you're drinking while you cook. Add chopped tomatoes if you like. Season with salt. Pour over cooked pasta and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Eat while reading a good book (I'm into Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas quartet at the moment).

Can you tell I like garlic? My mother was Greek and I grew up with garlic in just about every dish except chocolate cake. I love the fragrance of fresh cut garlic and the comforting flavor and aroma it adds to my cooking.

Food and wine, when prepared and savored properly, should engage all of the five senses in symphonic harmony and leave us pleasantly satisfied. For that matter, life itself should engage us that way, but too frequently we are caught up in a robotic day-to-day rushed routine that causes us to lose touch with our senses. My advice for today is to take time to enjoy something thoroughly today. Be in the moment and shut out everything else except that one event.

Cooking Wine

We've all done it: purchased a bottle of wine on spec because a friend recommended it/we liked the label (if it's called Bitch Red Wine, it's got to be good, right?)/it just seemed like a good idea at the time/it was cheap (pick one or more). You get it home, uncork it, have a taste, and feel your taste buds clamoring to leave your mouth for safer pastures as the little guy in charge of your stomach dives for the Eject button (see "Osmosis Jones").

I know it's tempting to make the Grand Gesture and pour it down the sink - after all, the drains have been sluggish lately - but refrain. What you have here is COOKING WINE.

Dump the red wine in a beef stew or over a roast before you put it in the oven. Use the white wine to deglaze a pan and make a lovely sauce base for chicken or fish. Poach fish fillets in it. Stir a little into the mushrooms you are sauteeing to add extra flavor (either red or white will work for mushrooms). Save it for your next batch of trash can punch. Serve it to your in-laws.

A favorite recipe at my house: Brown seasoned (with salt & pepper or Cavender's Greek Seasoning) pork chops on both sides in butter or olive oil, add a couple of tablespoons of chopped garlic and about half a cup of white wine and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the chops. (Actually, my rule of thumb is to start a pot of potato chunks to boil for mashed potatoes and when they just start to boil, begin the pork chops. By the time the potatoes are done, the pork chops are done.) Remove the chops to a platter and thicken the gravy (I use a little cornstarch mixed with water). Serve with mashed potatoes and whatever veg takes your fancy (squash, perhaps?). And, of course, a GOOD white wine (pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc, or one of the German whites) for drinking.

I'm not much of a chardonnay drinker, since I like very dry wines and I think chardonnays as a wine category have been served to death, but if you have a favorite, let me know!

Vodka

Last night was take-out Chinese and ice water for dinner. (I don't drink wine EVERY night, people!) Since I don't consider shrimp with lobster sauce to be worthy of a blog (though it was delicious), I'll make today's blog an AA-worthy confession.

Hello. I'm Nina Scott and I can't drink vodka.

Damn, that was hard to say. See, I really like vodka. I could wax lyrical about the sweet and tart taste of a pomegranite martini on a hot day, or the marvelous complexity of flavors that an icy shot of vodka gives to a mouthful of caviar, or the sensual feeling of sipping a dirty martini prior to ordering the perfect steak . . . well, you get the idea.

Somehow, some way, over the past two years my aging body has betrayed me. Oh, I still look good, but like last year’s iPod and the 9-year-old hot water heater we replaced yesterday, some things don’t function as well as they used to.

It all started one New Year's Eve with the aforementioned iced shots and caviar. I had wine that evening too, and a glass of champagne, and the next thing I knew the room was spinning and I was having an intimate encounter with The Great Porcelain God. Surely that was an aberration? Alas, no. After the second (or maybe the third - I'm kind of stubborn) time I had that reaction, my wise friend Travis, affectionately known by fellow ex-cult members as the District Overbeer, told me I should never mix the grain with the grape. Okay, fine. I could do that. Just vodka or just wine in an evening - no big.

That philosophy worked once or twice, but no more. The final straw was when vertigo hit after sipping only HALF of a long-awaited and excellent White Russian. I give up. No more Absolut. No more Tito's Handmade Vodka (excellent and made in Texas, by the way). No more [*sob*] pomegranite martinis, the mainstay of my Texas summers.

May my liver rest in peace.

Two Buck Chuck (continued)

I'm not done with Two Buck Chuck yet. I'm savoring the bottle of cabernet sauvignon that I brought back from California and had a glass last night while I fixed dinner. It's a challenge trying to please the palates of two teenagers and one husband (the basset hound will eat anything), so a glass of wine soothes the less-than-serene part of me that surfaces after I receive the varying reactions to my response to the daily question "what's for dinner?"

Last night I browned the pieces of a cut-up chicken in olive oil with a handful of chopped shallots and garlic, sprinkled everything with Cavender's All Purpose Greek Seasoning, and laid the chicken in a baking dish. I deglazed the pan with some white wine from my husband's jug of Cavit Pinot Grigio (a nice, respectable, crisp white wine, by the way, if you’re into white), poured that over the chicken, dumped a can of fire roasted tomatoes and a can of Great Northern Beans over everything and baked it at 425 for 45 minutes. I served it with spinach cheese tortellini.

I thought it tasted pretty damned good for an after-work, gotta-get-it-on-the-table-before-Jackson's-taekwondo-class meal. Husband: "tastes like chicken." Son: "it's okay." Daughter: "will you make me some pasta instead?" Basset: "gimme gimme gimme gimme."

Thank you, Chuck! By the way, if you want to read the story behind Two Buck Chuck, check out the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaw_wine.

Introduction

I'm no expert on wines, but I love the learning process. While on a Personal Discovery Journey to California last week, I made the acquaintance of Charles Shaw wines, a/k/a Two Buck Chuck, and I was totally charmed by it. The shiraz was rich and fruity; the cabernet sauvignon had the requisite buttery finish - I found no fault with either of them. I'd love to see these wines in Texas, but they're a California perk and something to look forward to the next time I'm there.

Speaking of that, I've decided that my next career incarnation (like, NOW) will include the exploration and discovery of delicious, unpretentious and reasonably priced wine. I'm not a millionaire and am not likely to become one unless I win the lottery, so I enjoy the inestimable thrill of a mouthful of fermented grapes from a bottle that doesn't blow my entire monthly food budget.

I'm going to write about what I drink. Should be simple enough, right? All suggestions for my next bottle of wine will be welcomed and given the serious attention that this subject deserves. I prefer red but will give a good white my consideration as long as it's dry. So then, settle back on a bar stool or a comfy chair, and welcome to my virtual wine bar!