Colored Glass
It’s never too early to teach your kids about wine. Even Little Miss Fussy knows the first two steps of wine appreciation:
– First you look at the color
– Then you take a deep sniff
Enjoying wine is primarily about taste and smell, but one of the things that is wonderful about wine is how it can use all of the senses. Paying some attention to the color of the wine shouldn’t be forgotten.
This is why it’s important to have clear wineglasses. Colored or tinted wine glasses are a terrible idea. I don’t even like glasses that are beveled and might refract light, thus changing the true color of what’s in the glass.
Clear wine bottles, on the other hand, are a travesty.
Good Apéritif, Bad Apéritif
There is something very civilizing about an apéritif. It’s almost a toast to the meal to come. Not only can a little bit of wine or booze stimulate the appetite, but it can calm the mood and help put you in the right frame of mind for the feast that is about to unfold.
I’m a big fan.
And really I can’t say that I have a favorite. Often it depends on my mood, the food that will follow, the season, and what’s on hand. Mrs. Fussy once had a fondness for a glass of Prosecco before a meal. My mother sometimes enjoys a small glass of cream sherry.
But recently I had a bit of an apéritif disaster that I wanted to share, just to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you.
Eating Seasonally Now
Apparently there is some confusion about what it means to live in Albany and eat locally and seasonally. There is good reason for it, especially in March.
Spring may feel like it’s in the air, but it’s going to be a long time before just-picked produce starts arriving from my CSA. Heck, when the rest of the country is enjoying their first local asparagus of spring, it’s possible we will still have snow on the ground.
Last year around this time in a post entitled Eight Months of Mud and Ice, I wrote on this topic from a different angle. That story was focused on the larger role restaurants can play in educating diners about the stunning food that is produced in the region.
But when Ruth Fantasia recently gave MezzaNotte a 3.5-star food review for a braised short rib that was served atop sautéed summer squash and red peppers, I had to speak up. Because while it may be challenging to eat local and seasonal foods now, it is far from impossible, and it can most certainly be delicious.
Flavored Coffee
Coffee should taste like coffee. This is the purist’s mantra. Flavored coffee is an aberration. Something invented for people who dislike coffee so much that even cream and sugar aren’t enough to make it enticing. No, for these coffee haters who need their hot morning jolt of caffeine, they require a drink that tastes like candy, or nuts, or pastry.
It even begs the question, why drink coffee at all?
Then again, chocolate should taste like chocolate, and yet I do not think twice about having chocolate truffles that are infused with the flavors of chai or hazelnuts or Grand Marnier. Even serious chocolatiers who sell single origin chocolate wafers also sell delicate flavored chocolate confections.
Ultimately, chocolate and coffee are fundamentally similar foods. At their best, both offer an incredibly rich and textured sensory experience. So why is it okay to have flavored chocolate, while having flavored coffee is looked upon with disdain?
Shameless Self Promotion
Are there any long-time readers out there who still remember Deli Days? Perhaps you wisely blocked it out. Allow me to refresh your memory, and at the same time explain to all of the new folks what happened.
I love Jewish food. What can I say, it’s in my blood. Well, back in October 2009 I was involved with an organization that was brining a speaker to SUNY Albany to discuss a bit about the history of the Jewish deli in America. I found the lecture to be really interesting, if not as food focused as I might have liked.
Anyhow, to get people excited about this event, I ran ten consecutive days of posts all about my favorite deli foods. The final post really served to recap the previous nine and stands as a testament to a good idea that just went on too damn long.
You can love a pastrami sandwich, but I guarantee that if you have one a day for ten days, it’s going to be a long time until you even bear to stand the smell of the stuff.
Well now I’m involved with another organization that is doing something exciting with Jewish food. Lucky for you, I’ve learned my lesson. There will be no month long Jewish Food Frenzy. Instead I’ll tell you about the event today, and in the weeks to come I may have some additional relevant stories to share.
Also, this time instead of just helping to promote the event, I’ll be an active participant.
A Refreshing Idea From a Local Winery
I’ve been hard on New York wine. My suspicion is that given the sweetness of much of the wine grown in the state and some of the grapes that seem to grow well in the area, New York could eventually be a world-class producer of brandy.
Given the state’s recent adoption of craft and farm distillery licenses, all that remains is finding someone who can do it well.
But there are some wines that stand out from the mass of fruit-infused, sweet and simple bottlings that rightly or wrongly have largely defined New York wine for the American consumer. And some of those wines are right in our back yard. Just last night I happened to stumble upon a blog written by the owner of the Hudson-Chatham winery in Ghent, NY (Google says it’s a 45 minute drive from Albany).
Carlo DeVito is growing grapes in the Hudson Valley and using them to make wine. Maybe not necessarily the wine he always dreamed of making, but the best wine he can coax from the land. And for that I salute him.
Making Cheap Bourbon Sing
Somehow my priorities got all out of whack. Last night I had the rare opportunity of partaking in Mrs. Fussy’s coveted bottle of Macallan 15 Fine Oak, and I said no.
The title of the post betrays me.
Instead of having something wonderful, I opted for something pedestrian: cheap bourbon. But it wasn’t just cheap bourbon, I was going to do a cheap bourbon tasting. Really I prefer to do tastings with four similar but different items, but last night I had to suffice with just two.
These were the two bottles of bourbon that came in from the Astor Wine & Spirits mega order a couple of weeks ago, and had yet to be opened. The anticipation was killing me. After all, one of them was recently named the Best Buy Whiskey of the Year by Malt Advocate. I needed to know, is it any good?
Learning to Cook: Building Flavor
There have been some new lurkers around here in the past few days. These have been readers who clicked through on Times Union blogger Amanda Talar’s post about her desire to cook more.
If you are one of these new readers, welcome.
If you are not, welcome back.
Today’s post is on a subject I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, but other things have always seemed to take precedence. However given:
1) Amanda’s recent desire to learn to cook
2) An unfortunate soup recipe I saw from another local blogger, and
3) The ever-shortening window to write about soups and stews,
The time is nigh.
Here’s the thing. More important than recipes is understanding cooking methods and techniques. And soups especially are one of those things that attract novice cooks. They’re easy to make, hard to mess up, and allow for a lot of creativity. But if you are working without a recipe, you should at least start with a basic knowledge of how to build flavor.
Don’t worry. It’s easy.
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