A cherry zinfandel barbecue

Just in time for your Fourth of July barbecues, here is a sauce recipe, from MyRecipes.com, that includes two all-American things: cherries and zinfandel wine (the full red version, not the "white").



The ingredients list is mesmerizingly long but intriguing nonetheless, and once you saute a bit of onion and garlic until they soften, everything else just gets thrown right in. Thusly:

Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a saucepan. Add and saute 1 medium onion, chopped, and 2 Tbsp. diced garlic. When the vegetables are soft -- remember not to burn the garlic, which is always a bad thing -- knock yourself out adding:

1 and 1/2 cups dry red zinfandel, 1 cup ketchup, 2/3 cup dried tart cherries, 3 Tbsp. cider vinegar, 3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, 3 Tbsp. lightly packed light brown sugar, 2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard, 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh ginger, 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, 1 tsp. anise seeds, 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

Bring the sauce to a boil, and then lower the heat and simmer until it thickens slightly, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the sauce cool slightly before pouring it into a blender. Add 2 Tbsp. lemon juice, and whirl in the blender until everything is smooth. Taste and add up to 1 more Tbsp. lemon juice if needed. Use warm or at room temperature for grilling pork ribs, or perhaps dark meat chicken or even venison?

The ketchup and light brown sugar will make this sauce quite sweet, so don't forget the lemon juice at the end. Its use here exemplifies Mrs. Humphrey's advice that lemon is one of the two or three great and underappreciated kitchen necessities, along with other things we don't often think about, like vanilla and ginger -- which is also here in this sauce.

And I do believe, if I were adventurous, I might try substituting fresh cherries for the dried tart ones. Maybe then I could experiment with adding two of the cherry's good friends, nutmeg and allspice, to the sauce, and then wouldn't it be delectable on grilled duck? It's all in the spirit of independence.

My Recipes.com

Wine from the Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival

Free Run Cellars' pinot meunier rose: a pale, rich rose color, very light and dry, with a steely taste that grew more intriguing with each sip. $12.99.

Pinot meunier, a relative of pinot noir, is one of the grapes of Champagne -- the others being chardonnay and pinot noir. According to the Herbsts of The New Wine Lover's Companion, its fruitness, high acidity, and high yield make it valuable enough to be the most widely planted grape in the Champagne region. It does well in very cool climates, which explains its presence in snowy Michigan. Meunier's unusual name comes from the French word for "miller," and refers to the underside of the vine's leaves looking as though they are covered in flour.

The fascinating steel-and-fruit taste of Free Run's example seemed to just ask for a pairing with something lusciously fatty -- deep fried county fair food, perhaps? -- and indeed the winery website suggests shellfish or cream based sauces to go with.

More good news: yes, Free Run Cellars can ship to Illinois.

Boeuf bouilli

Over the years I've more than once made the mistake of getting stern with my cookbooks. If a big one provides me with only one or two recipes that I find useful -- as if that's the cookbook's fault! -- I give them away. I have given away a few whose absence I now regret. Thank heaven for eBay.

One of the big ones I unhappily dumped long ago is James Beard's New York Times Cookbook. In it, I recall a recipe for boeuf bouilli, boiled beef, a dish Beard described as very often the one thing that a man with a sophisticated palate wants to return to when he grows surfeited with elegant ragoos. It is basically a pot roast in which one does not first sear the meat to give it a brown color. Luckily, I found what seems a recipe of Beard-worthy authenticity in The American Heritage Cookbook, published in 1964. The editors there claim that this version comes from Etienne Lemaire, "Jefferson's steward in Washington."



Boeuf bouilli is exceedingly simple. In a heavy kettle, place 4 to 5 pounds lean beef, 1 large onion stuck with 6 cloves -- sometimes they crumble as you poke them in -- 3 carrots cut in chunks, 3 or 4 stalks celery, also cut in chunks, 1 turnip, quartered, 1 parsnip, cut in chunks, a handful of parsley, and 4 to 5 peppercorns. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil, and boil for 5 minutes. Skim off the froth, and add 1 Tablespoon of salt. Cover the pot, lower the heat, and simmer for 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours, until the meat is very tender.



Bouef bouilli comes out lacking a seared pot roast's good color and gravy, but occasionally the simplicity is worth it. First, enjoy the broth, plain and flavorful; then, serve the meat and vegetables on a platter, with commercial horseradish or the more authentic Horseradish Sauce alongside.

Horseradish Sauce

Mix 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard with 1 Tablespoon cold water to make a smooth paste. Combine this with 6 Tablespoons freshly grated horseradish, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Let this stand 10 minutes. Then, fold it into 1/2 cup heavy cream which you have already whipped.

Potatoes and cabbage are a nice accompaniment to this, either cooked right in with the beef or prepared separately, perhaps as Colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage, previously sauteed in butter, stirred into them). The wine of choice with all this elegant simplicity, I think, would be an elegantly simple chardonnay -- Jefferson might have called it a Montrachet -- or, why not? Champagne.

And from M. Lemaire the steward's perspective, one more good thing about boeuf bouilli is that any leftover meat and broth can help flesh out a tomato sauce for spaghetti later in the week. With that, you'll want a nice Chianti.

Field trip: Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival

It's hard to know just what to expect from a "Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival." One of the ladies on our tour bus summed it up by saying, "...accent on Fest." I imagined the images below, only graced also with colorful tents on the beach sheltering tables and chairs, the tablecloths lifting and wafting in the soft lake breeze. I imagined baskets of wine plunked in the sand in shady nooks, waiting to join their fellows sitting opened and chilling in big silver ice buckets. And I imagined happy people floating around from tent to tent, tasting, talking to winemakers, and nibbling perfect wine-matched treats.



Certainly there were happy people wandering around tasting, but they were all under one big tent, in the beach parking lot. Who knew that a canvas roof above asphalt could collect and reverberate sound so? And, merely by being there, all of them were $15 lighter in the wallet than they had been that morning: cost of admission to the tent, $10, cost of a set of tasting tickets, five for $5. Cost of a full glass of wine, $5, or a full glass of premium wine, $7. Alas, no bottles of wine for sale to bring home.



So, amid these lovely images, you must imagine in the background all the experiences that come to mind with the phrase "county fair." Minus the rides, to be sure, but including the pounding loud, pounding thumping music.



At one dollar per one ounce tasting, we were compelled to be canny, and share samples when it seemed the nice winemakers weren't looking. Not that I begrudge them their money. I know that all too quickly, "wine tasting" translates into "free booze" for many otherwise honest and upright people. The public can become extremely puzzled and even irate when the pouring stops; they see themselves as doing the winemaker, or the retail shop, a favor by trying the product and becoming a potential customer. They don't see the open, empty bottle as a dead loss to the businessman. Unless he recoups.



So, yes, Fenn Valley, Tabor Hill, St. Julien, and all the rest are entitled to recoup. I wonder how it was done? No cash changed hands in the tasting tent. People bought tickets first, and gave over the right number of tickets for what they wanted. Did the wineries then turn in their tickets to the Weko Beach officials, in order to be reimbursed? What about the $10 admission fee, which bought no one any wine? Did the wineries divide this as well, or did it go to the park? I'm curious because of course there are anxious laws about alcohol in state parks, and about alcohol around children (and there were plenty of children present). I'm sure the tickets and the laws and the children and the ban on bottle sales were all connected.



The festival was as well run as it could have been, and it must be popular, too. When an event has a whole fleet of shuttle buses ferrying people back and forth from the venue to the town parking lot every ten minutes, you can be sure the organizers have learned and applied many lessons from years back.



It just happens to be an event I wouldn't return to any time soon. Perhaps our expectations were wildly unrealistic. Bottles in shady nooks, indeed. We were informed that the festival would only fold its tent at ten o'clock at night, so originally we were prepared for a long and interesting day. But, having arrived at 2 pm., everyone thankfully met up within a few hours and then agreed that returning home at 5:30 was a far more comfortable plan. The photo of the clouds above, taken through the bus window on the way home, looks kind of like a benediction, doesn't it?

What's wrong with this picture?

Nothing too much is wrong with it artistically, I hope. And nothing is wrong with buying a wine from Redwood Creek, another inexpensive grocery store selection -- and another pinot noir from Europe, sold through a California winery because California's pinot crop has struggled for the past several years. Or so I was told when working in Ye Olde Wine Shoppe. I begin to suspect that pinot is sourced from Europe because California can't produce enough of this fussy grape to meet demand, or because California winemakers are jolly decent enough to produce good cheap pinots even if it means buying the stuff wholesale from the "pays de l'Ile de Beaute." Incidentally Redwood Creek wines were first launched in 2002 as a secondary label of Frei Brothers, which is in turn owned by Gallo.

No, what's wrong with the picture is the mismatch between the varietal and the shape of the bottle. A tall, high "shouldered" bottle like this one is traditionally used for Bordeaux and Bordeaux type wines, cabernet sauvignons and merlots. These are wines, the best examples of which will need long aging, during which time they will throw sediment -- the last remains of yeast cells and other good unfiltered things settling out of the wine and collecting at the bottom or along the sides of the resting bottle. When the bottle is at last opened, those high shoulders will, provided the pourer uses a careful hand, catch most of the sediment before it sludges out into the decanter or glass.

The pinot noir grape, however, is not the grape of Bordeaux. It's the grape of red Burgundy and usually its wine comes in a slope-shouldered bottle, as do chardonnays, which are white Burgundies. (White Bordeaux, whose grapes are sauvignon blanc and semillon, also come in high-shouldered bottles, although white wines don't produce the sediment that great reds or vintage ports will. Tradition as well as practicality lies behind bottle shapes.) Pinot noir is the one red wine that does not throw sediment, because it lacks the thick skin and therefore the tannins and the anthocyans -- a Greek compound word literally deriving from "flower" and "blue" -- the natural coloring agents that tint a deep red wine deep red, and then precipitate out with time.

Although it may seem confusing at first, knowing these two basic bottle shapes and what they traditionally contain is a great help when shopping for wine, especially when you plan to give the wine as a gift. (It helps to be able to explain roughly what the wine will be like.) The high-shouldered bottle is a Bordeaux: think cabernet sauvignon, merlot, dark color, heavy tannin, and the great chateaux like Mouton and Latour, or a great sweet white like Sauternes. The slope shouldered bottle is a Burgundy: think pale, acidic pinot noir, or dry, rich chardonnay, and as an aide-memoire remember with this you are in eastern France, far from Bordeaux's Atlantic coast. There is only one other basic bottle shape to worry about, and that is the tall, tapered "hock" bottle, used for German rieslings.

Other wines from other countries packaged in these three bottle shapes will be packaged so because the wines share the characteristics exemplified in what we might call the mother shapes. According to Jancis Robinson in her Wine Course, this is why you will find tannic, powerful Barolos from Italy in bordeaux bottles, and softer, fruitier Riojas from Spain in Burgundy bottles. Australian, French, or California rieslings, sweet or dry, will stand in tall, long-necked hock bottles.

And this brings us back to our Redwood Creek, French-harvested, un-sedimented pinot noir in a high-shouldered, sediment catching Bordeaux bottle. Why?

My guess is that bottle shapes simply don't matter anymore for inexpensive wines meant to be drunk right away. I know that the Bordeaux shape packs, ships, and stores more efficiently than the fatter Burgundy shape. Will we someday then see merlots in hock bottles, and rieslings presented like a Montrachet (white Burgundy)? Or are the jolly decent people at Gallo just toying with our little heads?

See also: In which I buy a weird-shaped bottle

Inside-out hamburgers

I do begin to think that my life's work must and shall be the investigation of The Culinary Arts Institute of America, a ghost of a place that once had a Chicago address. The good people there produced fascinating old cooking pamphlets and books only to be had now at public library cast-off book sales. I keep snapping up retro material, and when I turn to the title page for publication information, so often I see Culinary Arts Institute. What happened to it? But should I, really, devote myself to this? The best people seem to write so much grander things. Gertrude Himmelfarb, aged God knows what, has just come out with a new biography on George Eliot ... stupendous, stunning, the reviewers say.

But meanwhile, my life's path being less than Himmelfarbian, here is an example of the retro material that catches my eye.



Inside this one is a preparation which the authors, circa 1956, called Ground Meat Towers. As they are, really, sets of hamburger patties baked in a sauce with a bread stuffing between each set -- hence, each "tower" -- I have been very clever and have renamed them Inside-out hamburgers. If you wish to try them, be aware that you will make three things in succession: a tomato and mushroom sauce, a bread stuffing, and twelve seasoned hamburgers. Then you will brown the hamburgers, assemble everything, and bake it.

Mental pictures (or, hang it, real pictures) of the necessary ingredients might be helpful. Your sauce begins here.



Melt 1/3 cup butter in a heavy saucepan, and add 1 cup thinly sliced onion and 1/4 cup chopped green pepper. Stir and cook until the onion is translucent. Add fresh sliced mushrooms -- the recipe calls for only a 4 ounce can, so a handful of fresh pieces is enough. Stir and cook until the mushrooms give off a little moisture.

Add: one 14-ounce can of tomatoes, 2 whole cloves, 1 bay leaf, 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. thyme, 1/4 tsp. pepper. Cover and simmer 20 minutes, then turn off the heat and set aside.



Next, a mental picture of the stuffing ingredients.



In another skillet, heat 1/4 cup butter, and again add and cook until translucent 1/4 cup finely chopped onion and 1 stick of chopped celery (the recipe calls for minced celery leaves but my batch had almost none, so I substituted a piece of celery). Put into the skillet about 4 cups of soft cubed bread crumbs. Mix in 1/2 tsp. salt and a dash of pepper. Now moisten the stuffing with something -- the recipe calls for a mixture of 1 beaten egg and 1/3 cup milk, but you could as well use broth or wine. Blend the stuffing lightly, shape it into 6 patties, and set them aside.



Phase three. What you need for the hamburger patties (ground beef not shown).



Mix together 2 pounds of ground beef, 1 medium chopped onion, 1/4 cup chopped green pepper, 2 beaten eggs, 2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce, 1 diced clove of garlic, and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Shape into 12 patties. Brown the patties in 1/4 cup "fat." I used olive oil.

Now it's showtime. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 13 x 9 x 2 baking dish. Place 6 meat patties in the dish. Place a stuffing patty on each, and top each with another beef patty. Pour the sauce over and around the "towers." Bake for about 25 minutes, or until the hamburgers are cooked entirely through.



I imagine you'll want to know how it tasted. All in all, good, but soupy; since I did not fully cook my hamburgers but only seared them first, they gave off so much moisture in finishing baking that the bread stuffing ended up a bit soggy. Still, it made for an interesting Sunday afternoon experiment, and it taught me to ask: why don't we think of green peppers more often, when we are grilling or frying hamburgers? We associate green peppers with hot dogs and we pile hot peppers on roast beef sandwiches, but simple green pepper in these patties was delicious.

The wine of choice was an old favorite, a California red blend called Hey Mambo. To wit: chocolate covered blueberries. And a weirdly luscious pairing.

Shall I, then, investigate the Culinary Arts Institute, and find out whither and wherefore it ever was, and why it is no more? As I flip through Sunday Night Suppers, I am distracted: here is Sausage and Spaghetti with Cheese Sauce, and there Hawaiian Pancake, which dares to combine cheddar cheese and pineapple in one recipe.

And here is the delightful introduction to the pamphlet, in which the authors kvell, shall we say? -- over how relaxed and fun all this work is. Dear me. I think the physicists are right, and time and space somehow warp each other, and 1956 was a different planet.

Sunday night suppers have a charm all their own .... Six and a half days of serious menu labors are out of the way. Now is the perfect time for a bit of frivolity, for creative experiment, for sharpening the special knack of cooking in a chafing dish.

The whole family can be included in the casual preparation of Sunday night suppers. Tie an apron on Pop. Let Sis stir up a batch of cookies or a quick bread. Invite a couple of guests or a whole roomful. Everything is easier, simpler, more friendly in the relaxed pause of a Sunday evening.

Five reds

Here is a harvest -- a cellar? --- of inexpensive, grocery-store red wines, all ranging in price from $5 to $10.

Whenever I see "South Eastern Australia" on a label I think immediately of Jancis Robinson's words: that grape sink.


The dark red label of the tempranillo, above, reads "vino de la tierra de Castilla y Leon." This means that the wine is classified as below Spain's top tier of Denominaciones de Origen (DO) and Denominaciones de Origen Calificada (DOC or DOCa) wines. It is instead the equivalent of the French vin de pays, country wine. Tempranillo is the principal grape of Rioja, although this vino de la tierra is not a Rioja.



For the past few years, "California" pinot noirs have been imported from Europe because the California pinot harvests have been poor. It seems that at least at Beringer, the grape is back. On this label you will see no fine print saying, confusingly, "vin de pays d'oc, product of France," or "provinicia di Pavia, product of Italy."

My grocery store's first petite sirah! The millenium has arrived.

All of these reds were pleasant, tasting of various quantities of blueberry jam, cherries, barbecue sauce, smoke, and chocolate. The pinot noir stood out, a little; its thinness and acidity made it a little more refreshing than the others. On the whole, they remind me of the complaints voiced by wine experts of the advance of "the global red" (Michael Broadbent's phrase) -- the uniformly thick-tasting, fruity, sweet, smooth Red Wine whose high end examples win gold medals and whose low end examples flatter newcomers' simple tastes.

I wonder, would an actual jug wine, a la Carlo Rossi, taste much different from all of these? And must I really begin shelling out $30 a bottle for some even remotely interesting "good values"?