2009 Essenzia Old Vine garnacha

thick, opaque purple
grapey scent
very dry
earthy, bittersweet chocolate
rustic and tasty

Retail, about $10

Is it too soon to think about leftovers (plus one more pinot noir)?

The recipe is Creamed Turkey and Apple Hash, from The Best of Food and Wine, 1987 Collection. 

In a medium saucepan, melt 4 Tbsp butter; add 1 small onion, minced, and cook a few minutes until softened.

Stir in:

1 cup turkey stock or chicken broth
1 tsp lemon juice

Bring to a boil and boil over high heat until the mixture reduces by half, about five minutes. Add:

2 cups heavy cream
2 tsp soy sauce (I forgot the soy sauce and found the dish didn't suffer for it)

Simmer until reduced again by half, about 10 minutes. (Be sure to take the time to do this. The reduced stock and cream will take on a wonderful very pale champagne-and-toffee color, while the lemon juice prevents all of it from tasting cloyingly rich.)  Add:

4 cups shredded cooked turkey

and cook for 10 minutes. Finally, stir in:

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, sliced thin

and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Season the hash with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with a few minced scallions.

It is very delicious. Cream tends to do that.

And the pinot noir is a 2009 SCV, Sonoma Coast Vineyards. I can offer tasting notes after I open it for my own dinner tonight.

Retail, about $35 to $40.

2010 Nederburg Lyric

A blend of sauvignon blanc, chenin blanc, chardonnay -- South Africa.

Excellent -- crisp, almost fizzy, zingy, and bright
It seems I was wrong about the myth of the patio sipper -- (I was young and naive)
this is one

And it, too, might be superb with your Thanksgiving dinner. Pinot noirs shouldn't have all the fun.

Retail, about $10

Nederburg

Your Thanksgiving dessert? -- how about apricot oatmeal bars?

An old handwritten recipe for apricot oatmeal bars sits at the back of one of my oldest cookbooks, within easy reach just inside the back cover. No source is credited for it. It's a favorite because it is full of fruit, easy to make, and very sweet. Whatever its true origins, the recipe must be fairly well known because plenty of examples are out there in the ether-net, too.

Begin by preheating the oven to 350 F and buttering a square 8 x 8 x 2 baking dish. In a bowl, mix:

1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 cups quick rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar. (My recipe calls for a full cup of sugar, but that makes the bars much too sweet.)

Cut into this flour mix 3/4 cup cold butter, in small chunks, until the mixture takes on a feeling of rich solidity and resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle about 3 cups of it into the prepared dish, and press to form an even layer. Bake about 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven, and spread the crust with 1 jar (12 ounces) apricot preserves. Sprinkle remaining flour-oat mixture on top and press down gently. Finish baking for 25-30 minutes.

Note: back in the days when I was Examiner.com's Chicago Baking Examiner, I felt constrained to add more information, as follows -- Oats give these cookie bars a nice jolt of nutrition that many sweet treats don't necessarily have. A low-fat version substitutes apple juice and canola oil for the whopping one and a half sticks of butter, and an even easier version calls for melted butter in the first place, plus the use of a larger pan which reduces baking time. There is something leisurely and satisfying, though, about the rhythmic work of cutting in cold butter to a dough and seeing and feeling it take on its proper consistency under your hands. The results are rich and delicious with your after-the-feast coffee, or even better, strong plain black tea.

Barbecued beef short ribs in your clay cooking bowl

The barbecue sauce recipe has been adapted from our old kitchen Bible, Marion Cunningham's 1986 revision of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. The clay cooking bowl, darkened with use,

is a Pampered Chef product, albeit probably long since discontinued. The short ribs are best if they are bone-in. Serve it all forth with garlic-laced mashed potatoes and a vegetable or two of your choice. The accompanying wine should be as big and fruity as you like -- a nice Chilean carmenère would do very well. 

Barbecued beef short ribs in a clay cooking bowl

Preheat the oven to 350 F. In the bottom of your clay bowl, mix

1 and 1/4 cups tomato juice
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup vinegar
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 small onion, peeled and halved

Put in about 2 to 3 pounds bone-in beef short ribs, or about 8 to 10 ribs. The bowl will be crowded, so turn the meat over in the sauce or brush the sauce on with a pastry brush so that all the ribs are soaked as well as possible. Bury the onion in the sauce, and cover the bowl with a sheet of tin foil. Place the ribs in the oven and bake for one hour; then reduce the heat to 225 F and continue baking for four more hours.

By dinnertime the meat will fall off the bone, and will have rendered all its fat. This makes the bubbling sauce very greasy, of course, so if you want to serve it in all its deliciousness, you can use a bulb baster to vacuum up the good juices from underneath the layer of fat. Squirt them into a gravy boat for presentation and you are ready to eat.

2009 Fogdog pinot noir

Bright lush color
Bursting, almost fizzy with strawberries --
typical musk or tarriness is not so evident
a little vanilla
Excellent -- pair it with something rich and creamy --

-- or your Thanksgiving turkey, of course.

Image from Freestone Vineyards

2009 The Crossings pinot noir (New Zealand)

Awatere Valley, Marlborough, New Zealand --

startlingly light, bright currant jelly color
that pinot noir scent -- earthy, tarry, "gamy"
light silky acidity, berries


... and very good with a baked short rib stew and garlic mashed potatoes. A pinot noir's musky delicacy can be as surprising as its clear, jewel-like color when it sloshes into the glass, especially if you have spent several weeks sloshing cherry-sweet malbecs, thick, black carmeneres, or chocolate-coated zinfandel blends (all the rage) into that same glass.

Which leads me to admit that, really, I am suffering an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the samples that nice people at wineries and winery PR firms send me. (Thanksgiving pinots is the theme of the latest shipments. Remember when I used to drop broad hints that I'd be delighted to be offered a sample one day? It's true, I am delighted.) Or, as my daughter complains when she ventures into the little pantry to get some comestible, and turns around and stubs her toe on yet another cardboard box -- "We're tripping over wine in this house." Followed by an equally frustrated  "...and we're tripping over cats," as one or other of our large furry roommates, absorbed in rubbing meaningfully against a human leg, trots away in alarm from a misplaced human foot. The pantry is where we keep the kibble, too, so of course the lords of the manor imagine any darkening of its threshold is all about that.

Absent a short rib stew with garlic mashed potatoes, will The Crossings pinot noir complement Thanksgiving? Yes, I think so. Delightful. 

Retail, about $15 to $20.

Thanksgiving pinot noirs, redux -- 2008 Big Fire, 2008 R. Stuart "Autograph"

Both are from R. Stuart Winery, McMinnville, Oregon. Big Fire is their more approachable pinot, R. Stuart Autograph the "step-up" label. I preferred the latter.

2008 Big Fire pinot noir

very pale, clear red
earth, fresh, faint floral --
very light, very subtle fruit (too light?)
almost as gentle as water -- a little burst of acid and tannin at the end
will accompany any food

Retail, about $20

2008 R. Stuart "Autograph" pinot noir

All of the above, only this time a gray charcoal drawing colored in --
more berry-like fruit, more of a pinot's earth and musk
more acid, more body, more interest

Start here?

Retail, about $30.

Here come the Thanksgiving pinot noirs --

-- among which, and starting off in no particular order, is 2010 Llai Llai, from Chile's Bio Bio Valley.

In Llai llai, pinot noir's distinctive earth-tar-hung game-forest floor-musk aromas lean more toward (very clean) forest floor and wholesome chewy bread crust; be forewarned the delicate, fresh berry flavors that follow will not last beyond the first night, so if you open this for Thanksgiving, drink up. That seems to be true for many of the good, inexpensive holiday pinot noirs I have been lucky enough to sample lately.

Llai llai pinot noir retails for about $12 to $15.

2008 Girard Artistry

Chocolaty-sweet
every red fruit in the world, covered in chocolate

(The blend is 59% cabernet, 19% cabernet franc, 5% petite verdot, 11% malbec, 6% merlot.)

Delicious, but this will be cough syrup in short order

And it was. Retail, about $30 to $40.

Girard Winery

2010 Roth Estate chardonnay

Thus far, my favorite California chardonnays have been the kind that remind me of a piece of tart apple dipped in the most expensive gourmet caramel I can imagine -- that is, my favorite chardonnays have had a heavenly caramel aroma, a lot of juiciness and a dollop of something buttery and vanilla-like at the end. All in all, very delicate. Roth Estate chardonnay is like that, but it has also long, unfolding tastes in between the apple and the gourmet confection, tastes that seem to give you more acidity and even something like grittiness. Interesting, if not so delicate. Is this what experts call the "middle palate"?  

Anyway, the Roth is most delicious, a big wine deserving of a big meal. It might even be one of those chardonnays that you may pair with beef. A steak, done French-style with a pat of butter melting atop it, or old fashioned beef Stroganoff laced with sour cream, might make it and you very happy.

Bischoff Premium Doppelbock

Chestnut brown in color, a head the color of mocha. Smell and taste, both very like molasses. Bitterness -- remember our bitterness scale? -- 1.5.

Very fine, I am sure, only not quite like the Duchess.

Let's make some cocktails

During a recent stay-at-home vacation, the kind where you take field trips to the local and beautiful autumn woods,

I ventured to the local liquor superstore to splurge on a bottle each of good gin, scotch, and vodka, so as to begin stocking my liquor cabinet with the basics needed for future treats. It is amazing how many basics there seem to be. Rum and brandy are next on my shopping list, but after that, if I want to be truly at the ready, it seems I must lay in tequila and all sorts of liqueurs and fruit brandies, plus the contents of a fruit stand, plus gallons of sugar and flavored syrups ("orgeat" is my favorite so far -- it sounds so medieval and probably is, being almond milk syrup), and assorted colas and un-colas. 

These lists and almost all my other knowledge of cocktails comes from one master, Charles Schumann and his American Bar. He is the nice gentleman, remember, with the very high standards. In American Bar he won't make a typical Long Island Iced Tea, for example, because he considers it disrespectful to the spirit(s) to mix gin and vodka just for a start. He also demands care and discipline with his garnishes, positively abhorring a stuffed olive in a martini ("what place does a stuffed olive have in a Martini?"), permitting only a green olive with pit. The fact that he proffers no explanation for this makes me trust him all the more, on everything. He must know, or he wouldn't be so confident, right?

To be sure there are other, earlier masters one may also consult on the art of cocktail mixing. After all, somebody must have taught Mr. Schumann. The cognoscenti begin, it seems, with Jerry Thomas, "the father of all bartenders," who published his How to Mix Drinks or A Bon Vivant's Companion in 1862. Not far behind him in authority is Harry Johnson, another nineteenth century bar owner who published a Bartender's Manual twenty years later. Today we may turn to the fine website Liquor.com and learn from contributor Jim Meehan, author of the newly published The P.D.T. Cocktail Book, what he has in his library. Mr. Meehan's five favorites are:

The Artistry of Mixing Drinks by Frank Meier (1936)

Barflies and Cocktails by Harry McElhone (1927)

Cocktails: How to Mix Them by Robert Vermeire (1922)

The Gentleman’s Companion by Charles H. Baker (1939)

The Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock (1930)

I look forward to unearthing and reading these as soon as I can, but for the moment I dip into a second, humbler source, a dog-eared old promotional booklet from the Calvert Distillers Company called The House of Calvert Party Encyclopedia (1960). It hails straight from the Mad Men era by way of a local library's cast-off book sale, and looks every inch (ounce?) of it.

The pamphlet has been useful in giving me cocktail recipes of almost Schumannesque simplicity, calling for two or three ingredients only, and therefore just right as teaching tools and easy on my modest inventory. Thus far the Calvert Party Encyclopedia has taught me to make -- and heavens, if I can do it, you can -- :

the Bee's Knees

1 tsp. honey
the juice of 1/4 lemon
1 and 1/2 ounces gin

Mix in a cocktail shaker and serve in a cocktail glass (no garnish is suggested -- would an apple slice be good, or would it be an abomination?).

the Gin Rickey

1 and 1/2 ounces gin
the juice of half a lime

Mix in a shaker and pour over ice into a highball glass, then fill the glass with club soda. The recommended garnish is a slice of lime, but I opted for two green grapes speared on a toothpick.

the Highland Fling

1 and 1/2 ounces scotch
1 tsp. sugar
3 ounces milk 

Shake all ingredients well with ice, pour into a highball glass and dust with nutmeg.

the classic dry Martini

1 part dry vermouth
4 parts gin

Stir with ice and pour into a martini glass, to be topped off only with a green olive with pit. It seems we stir the martini -- never mind what James Bond says -- to avoid "bruising" the gin. Even the kid nephew in Auntie Mame, able at the age of eleven to mix a "Lucullan little martini" for the scandalized Mr. Babcock, says so. There is a tradition of swirling the vermouth in the glass and then gracefully tossing it out, before proceeding with the martini really. I seem to recall reading that this tradition reflects vermouth's usefulness, in bygone days, simply in disguising the taste of poor gin. Vermouth qua vermouth wasn't particularly wanted.  

Talking of unwanted things, the one spirit missing from our copyright 1960 pamphlet is tequila. Perhaps it wasn't popular, or perhaps the Calvert company didn't sell one at the time. Whatever the reason, tequila's absence means that margaritas are missing, too. As is another classic cocktail, the pina colada. Where it belongs, in the section on rum drinks, we find instead near-forgotten joys like the Pirate's Prize (2 parts dark rum, 1 part sweet vermouth, 1 dash bitters) and the Parisian Blonde (1 part dark rum, 1 part curacao, 1 part cream).

 

Now in order to do up our cocktails right this weekend, we novices should acquaint ourselves with some mechanics. American Bar advises that we must never mix more than two cocktails at once in a shaker. We see how conducive this rule would be to quiet romantic evenings. But, if we must savor our treat alone, then five or six ice cubes per recipe are desirable (use only three or four for a doubled version). Put the liquor into the shaker last; any juices or sugar syrups go in first. Ten seconds of shaking is enough for cocktails that mix easily. Those including egg or heavy syrups will need twenty seconds. It is the drinks that mix very easily, but are served very cold, or those that would turn murky with shaking, that are stirred with ice instead. Remember the Martini.

And as Mr. Schumann exhorts in red type and ALL CAPS: "A Good Cocktail Doesn't Mean a Big One." If you grew up watching the adults mix their Four O'Clock Drinks of about half an inch of Canadian Club in an ice-filled highball glass, with three inches of ginger ale then poured on, you will be startled at the diminutive size of what American Bar allows you to have. The Calvert Party Encyclopedia agrees at least that you must measure your liquor. "It will go further." The measurement repeated over and over again, in both books, is 1 and 1/2 ounces. This is 3 Tablespoons, a jigger, a gill, or 4.2 cl (centiliters). How small is a jigger? Quite small. The penny in the picture above, propped against the family heirloom pewter jigger, should help to show scale.

So a recipe for a classic martini,which consists only of a jigger of gin and a half teaspoon dry vermouth, will put a little over three full tablespoons of vital liquids into your glass, plus another half ounce of water (about a tablespoon) which the stirring with ice adds. Nothing like your parents' generously sized CC & ginger ale, and nothing like the huge glass canisters, full nearly to the brim, gripped by the earnestly debating men in the Calvert photo of 1960. And anyway why doesn't the girl get a drink, too?

I suggest that when she's done listening to the talk, she go out to the kitchen and mix herself a Gunga Din. It's my new favorite.

To five ice cubes placed in a cocktail shaker, add

half a jigger of dry vermouth
a jigger and a half of gin
"the juice of a quarter of an orange" (a little less than a jigger)

Shake for ten seconds. Serve in a cocktail glass garnished with a slice of fresh pineapple.  

And wear all the jewels you've got.

The Plantation Cookbook's Chicken and Peaches, 1972

Can orange juice, peaches, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic, nutmeg, and basil produce something good, -- when combined with fried chicken?

In the hands of southern cooks, certainly. Having experimented with this Plantation Cookbook (1972) a few times, and salivating as I do over the mere Kindle-reading of Dishes and Beverages of the Old South (Martha McCulloch-Williams, 1913), I begin to suspect that American Southern cooking may rank perfectly comfortably with the world's more frequently acknowledged culinary treasures -- the French, the Italian, the Chinese. Perhaps the enthusiastic use of butter accounts for this excellence. We know the French saying "butter is the best cook." But it's the frank exaltation about food that seems to show a civilization's sophistication in the kitchen. Ninety-eight years ago Martha McColloch-Williams wrote, in her opening chapter "Grace before meat:"

Proper dinners mean so much -- good blood, good health, good judgment, good conduct. The fact makes tragic a truth too little regarded; namely, that while bad cooking can ruin the very best of raw foodstuffs, all the arts of all the cooks in the world can do no more than palliate things stale, flat, and unprofitable. To buy such things is waste, instead of economy. Food must satisfy the palate else it will never satisfy the stomach. An unsatisfied stomach, or one overworked by having to wrestle with food which has bulk out of all proportion to flavor, too often makes its vengeful protest in dyspepsia.

... I am leading up to the theory that it was through being the best-fed people in the world, we of the South Country were able to put up the best fight in history, and after the ravages and ruin of civil war, come again to our own. We might have been utterly crushed but for our proud and pampered stomachs, which in turn gave the bone, brain, and brawn for the conquests of peace.

Two generations later, the authors of The Plantation Cookbook -- no byline is given except to the Junior League of New Orleans -- do not wax quite so eloquent about the power of good food in history. They save their prose for the glories of Louisiana only, and for the thirty-odd fine New Orleans houses, bearing romance-novel names like Rosedown, Beauregard House, and Shadows-on-the-Teche, whose biographies form the first half of the book. The prose begins like this:

An eerie marsh, a land of green flocking sprinkled over still, dark water -- a dip of the wing and the jet-age traveler is introduced to Louisiana. It is a strange land, this lake-studded fringe of the state. It makes one think of the Greek Limbo, where lost souls wander mournfully through the gray mists ....

I am always impressed with what seem, now, unusual cultural assumptions made by authors and editors of yesteryear. Who writing a cookbook today, what cookbook-writing committee like a Junior League especially, would refer to "the Greek Limbo" amidst recipes for gazpacho and riz au épinards? What cookbook-writing committee would tell us with a straight face that "the names of heroic explorers like DeSoto, LaSalle, Iberville, Bienville are familiar to schoolchildren everywhere, and rightly so"? I was a schoolchild in 1972 and I remember nothing of Iberville. DeSoto and LaSalle, a little.

Or do we wax too curmudgeonly about the dumbing down of educational standards, impossible cultural expectations, cookbook style, and all? Should we return simply to the chicken and peaches?

Here they are. The ingredient list may seem outlandish, but compared to almost everything else in The Plantation Cookbook, it is outlandish mostly in omitting that cup of heavy cream and that stick of butter which every other offering seems to include. Ah yes. Surely Louisiana and its queen city are not French for nothing.

The Plantation Cookbook's (Junior League of New Orleans') Chicken and Peaches, 1972

• 1 and 1/2 cups orange juice
• 2 and 1/2 cups sliced fresh peaches
• 3 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 3 Tbsp. white vinegar
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. nutmeg or mace
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. basil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 16 selected pieces frying chicken, lightly salted
• 3/4 cup flour mixed with 2 tsp salt and 1/3 tsp black pepper
• cooking oil
• garnish: crabapples or fresh mint

Prepare the sauce in a medium sized pan: combine the orange juice, peaches, sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, basil, and garlic. Simmer, tightly covered, for 10 minutes.

Then, dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour. Pour the cooking oil into a large heavy skillet to a depth of half an inch, heat, and brown the chicken well. Remove and set aside.

Discard the excess oil, but save the browned bits; add 1/3 cup of the simmering sauce to the skillet. Replace the chicken in the skillet and pour the rest of the sauce and the peaches over.

Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until the chicken is done. Serve on a hot platter, garnished with crabapples or fresh mint.