Red Wine Cookery

It’s nice that it is braising season. My house always has a lot of wine hanging around. The fridge, the counters, the shelves are often cluttered with bottles. I try to keep the red consolidated in a 3L bottle to reduce the number of wine bottles hanging around, I go through white wine in cooking faster so don’t tend to need a big bottle. Entering the season we filled that and also had a 1.5L bottle full as well. It’s fine, seriously not a problem, braising is the only way I can cook meat with any sort of confidence and the wine will be put to good use. Braising in wine makes me feel very smart and incredibly practical, easily using leftover bits and bobs and producing something in its own sauce that can also freeze. Cub and I talk about pantry management almost as much as anything else, an unmanaged pantry can feel like an overwhelming mess. It’s also incredibly helpful to see your store of food complexly when it is snowing and you have no desire to leave the house.

a holiday pot roast that glamorously uses an entire bottle of wine

Which I guess is where I was when I decided to make this Alsatian red wine cake. I got Gabriel Kreuther’s new cookbook because in my imagination of the place the cuisine really suits the food available in Chicago right now. I think I was really just thinking about cabbage and pork, which is not incorrect but it is obviously incomplete. I don’t typically go for cookbooks from fancy restaurants, but my friend Sammie recently mentioned this Alsatian soup her boyfriend made for their holiday and I bent my own rule.

Kreuther describes Alsace as deeply green, dotted with vineyards and farms, sharing a border with both Germany and Switzerland. There is a lot of blending of influence in Alsace, in the food and the wine. He says, “Alsace has always been spiritually its own place, neither French nor German, nor Swiss, but a mixture of all. It has no official border. We like to say that, from a culinary standpoint, it combines the finesse and subtlety of French cuisine with the discipline of German and Swiss cultures…” In the wines there are grapes shared between France and Germany like Riesling and Gewurztraminer, though the approach to vinification is so different that one would be unlikely to confuse the two. Most of the grapes grown in Alsace are white wine grapes which make it most common to drink white wine with the pork-rich cuisine. Looking through the book, thinking about Sammie and Riley, I really wanted to make a rich long cooked soup in a crock sealed with a flour and water paste.

However, the cake was the only thing I had the ingredients on hand for and the motivation to make, very happy to relieve the kitchen of some of the red wine. I was a little nervous, like this unsulfured counter wine was going to make a disgusting cake. There are some rules about cooking with wine, like never use a wine to cook that you wouldn’t yourself drink when first open. And if the wine has gone undrinkable it’s not bad to use but you have to cook it enough to move away from its raw state. I wasn’t sure whether the oven would be enough of a transformation, I once made a mousey pan sauce that I will never forget. But the temptation to find a new thing was too great to resist so I went for it.

I’m not a great baker, as I’ve said before. I accidentally broke all of the eggs in the house making this which feels like the product of doing something unnatural to me. Worse though, is the project was started without enough butter. And like I suggested might happen to you it was snowing and not possible emotionally to cross the street for some butter. So I made butter from the leftover cream in the fridge, not something I always have on hand but when I do it is too much. Making butter was so amazing because unlike the cream it did not have to be thrown away after being pushed to the back of the fridge for a month or whatever. And you get buttermilk to make soda bread. Another pantry management tool.

Anyway, the cake is pretty good, fits my standards of the kind of cake worth making (good plain, better with cream AKA appropriate for breakfast, lunch or dinner). Gabriel Kreuther recommends making muscat mousse of all things to go with this! I will make that but will have to open a fresh bottle of wine for it. Muscat usually doesn’t live long in this house.

Traditional Red Wine Cake adapted from Gabriel Kreuther in The Spirit of Alsace: A Cookbook

230g very soft butter, plus extra for the pan

250g all purpose flour

1 tbsp cocoa powder

15g baking powder

½ tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp salt

90g chocolate, shaved or cut in small pieces

250g sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3 tempered eggs

1 ¼ cups “full bodied wine” (I used a rich Gamay/Pineau d’Aunis blend from the counter)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter and flour a 9 ½ inch springform pan or bundt tin. If you only have a 9 inch cake tin that’s fine, I used that, just know that this recipe makes more batter than you will use.

2. In a bowl mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. Then add the chocolate, mix well.

3. Using either a hand mixer or a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until it’s well combined and fluffy. Kreuther suggests 8 minutes should do it.

4. Once combined mix in the eggs one at a time. Beat on high for 5 minutes once all the eggs are incorporated.

5. Take the bowl and add ⅓ of the wine, mixing using a rubber spatula. Then add ⅓ of the dry ingredients. Keep alternating until your batter is well mixed.

6. Add the batter to the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes.

7. Let cool before turning out.

8. You can make an icing by combining 200g confectioner’s sugar with 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 3 tablespoons of water or wine. I didn’t do this.

holiday flicks & wine; christmas dinner for one

 The holidays always have the potential to be pretty sticky, not just because of the virus. Families, travel, relationships - all complicated things heightened in their complexity this time of year. I’ve been thinking a lot about what feels out of the ordinary, fun and special when you can’t see other people. How to make your own treat. One of the things we love about the wines we sell is that they can make a meal, make a night, make a year, really, in the joy they bring us. So there’s that right away, there’s wine, to make things feel nice. Then you can add to that - you can add food, and you can add media, even if you can’t be with others in person. 

movies & wine 

I recommend the following wine and christmas movie pairings, I have tested all of them- 

Die Hard + Anything from Le Petit Domaine de Gimios 

For some reason the sunset stays with me a lot in Die Hard, that peach pink and blue light of the setting sun on the corporate park as the office christmas gets rolling. The first act is my favorite, lots of tension building, lots of story bones being built. Gimios is a beautiful sunset of wine, like looking up at the sky, they make me feel like just a speck in the universe, which relieves a lot of my holiday stress. 

Gremlins + Collecapreta Buscaia 

Em has said this wine tastes like sugar cookie (but without a sweet finish) that delightful biscuity quality of his wine, the butteriness of the cookie a delicious pastry thing that makes a dry finish. A sweet but not sweet wine, one that is quaffable and fresh- tasting but also kind of mellow and bass-toned, keeps your energy up during this film, maybe the most ironic movie ever made? Gremlins also love to drink and watch movies. 

Scrooged + Jean-Yves Peron Cote Pelée

The peppery Mondeuse reflects the wild black late 80s cocaine aesthetic of the IBC corp headquarters, and the leanness of the wine reflects the dark heart of our Ebenezer stand-in. But…can his heart, and this wine, be softened with time and affection? Why, yes! It’s a Christmas miracle - a stern but deliciously drinkable wine, a pleasure to watch unfold. 

Metropolitan + Sete Nfrascato 

The effete of upper Manhattan on their christmas break from prestigious colleges would be drinking orange wine now (actually they do, in the new Gossip Girl). But what really makes this pairing is how the wine has as much to say as the film - a dialogue-dense text as only Whit Stillman could write. There’s layers and layers of delight to unpeel. 

food & wine 

My sister who lives on the west coast might not be able to make it to her plans, and so I was kind of thinking of what she could cook on her own for christmas. 

This is what I imagined for her - 

1. Making Em’s Brandade to have as a snack before dinner but also anytime over the days ahead as a substantial snack. We like to have the brandade cold against warm, crusty toast. If you’re in Chicago you could also buy tinned fish from us - the ones we sell are nice gently heated up before eating, they feel substantial. 

2. Eating olives and drinking white wine like while cooking the quail. Again, if you’re in Chicago, the Giambotta pack also supplies you with a vision of this scenario. I would like my sister to drink Terre Silvate or Les Annees Folles. 

3. For dinner, having the quail and some bitter greens first steamed in a little water (put your greens in about an inch of water, bring to a boil, cover with a lid, turn down the height to medium low for about 5 minutes -  it’s easy if you have a sautee pan with a lid, but anything you can cover with a lid will work) then finished with garlic and good olive oil. For this part of the evening, I recommend Les Petites Fleurs or Rouge Fruit 

4. Cutting up some fruit for dessert with rhum.

Last year at christmas Em and I both made guinea hen for our small households, and I think it’s nice to have a small bird for this holiday. The meat goes so well with fruit and nut flavors, which I like to have at this time, it feels feast-like. If you’re in Chicago, Paulina Market has frozen birds of many kinds, and Eataly, upon writing, had some fresh. In general small birds like quail, guinea hen, squab and pheasant, are not so expensive, and come in many sizes that feed one or two people well. We made 2 small quail per person. I got 4 from Eataly for $10.40. Imagine that! 

The best way to make special food is to put time into it, I believe, as the more time and touch you give food the more love it absorbs. Even though there’s lots of flashy food items around at christmas to spend some coin on, it’s the time that makes something really good. 

I like that you cook this twice, sort of, to make the stuffing and then make the bird. More love. All kinds of grains are common stuffings around the world for stuffing birds, pork sausage is also common in the south. I didn’t find any stuffing recipes with orzo, the rice-shaped pasta from the Mediterranean, on the internet, and it seemed interesting. It’s very piecey, when oil is applied to it, and when it’s in a mixture with other things, it doesn’t clump very much. I like how this integrates with the meat. We also had it in the pantry already, that’s the main thing. 

It’s extra intimate, food that comes in a size for 1 or maybe 2 people, and I would definitely make it again beyond the holidays. 

Roasted Quail with fruit and nuts 

This would be good to serve with some garlicky greens. 

4 Quail, semi boneless if you can find them that way 

2 tablespoons butter 

1 shallot, chopped 

1 cup mushrooms, sliced (any kind will do)

Splash white wine 

1 sprigs of thyme, chopped 

½ c Prunes (dried cherries or raisins would also be good)

1/2 c Madeira, Port or Red wine

½ toasted and roughly chopped Pecans (chestnuts, almonds or hazelnuts would also be good) 

½ c par-boiled Orzo (boil the orzo for about 6 minutes. You could also use - cooked rice, breadcrumbs or another grain like farro or barley) 

Spatchcock your bird, that is, remove it’s torso bones. You can get semi boneless quails which means this work is already done. This makes it easier to carve and stuff. Pat your bird dry and salt generously. Let sit in the fridge a few hours, if you have a wire rack sit them on there. You want dry skin so the bird will crisp. 

Take your prunes or dried fruit and pour your red wine, madeira or port over it to let it soak and rehydrate a bit.

Melt butter in the biggest pan you have, then add shallots and cook on medium heat to soften, 5 - 8 minutes, stirring here and there. Add mushrooms, trying not to overfill the pan, so that they get a little browned. Don’t stir them too much for this reason as well, to get some browning. Season with salt. Splash the wine in the pan and cook 2 minutes, before adding prunes, thyme, pecans. Reduce any remaining liquid until you have a moist but fairly dry mixture. Season again with salt and taste. Set aside. 

Take your birds from the fridge and let come to room temp 30 minutes - 1 hour before roasting. Two things I learned about roast chicken from Thomas Keller - use lots of salt, and make sure the bird isn’t going into the oven cold. 

Heat your oven to 500 degrees F. Put an oven-proof skillet (cast iron if you can) sautee pan or roasting pan (skillet is preferable) in the oven. 

Fill your birds with about ½ c - ¾ c stuffing.

Carefully remove the skillet from the oven (careful it’s really hot!) and place your birds breast side up. Roast for 10 minutes.

Serve up two quail per person. I hope you enjoy eating this small boned dinner. 

Fruit salad 

My Grandfather said all his four brothers and sisters got an orange in their stocking at christmas, which he absolutely adored. They did not have fruit any other time, except for some reason, strawberries in june. Winter fruit is so special. If you’re in Chicago - they have persimmons from California at Jewel Osco for a buck a piece. Eataly has them too, but they are 2.60 dollars each. 

Recently we went to someone’s house for dinner and they poured rum on top of a plate of cut persimmons, and it was shockingly good. 

Asian pear

Persimmons 

Orange 

Lime 

Dark (but not black) R(h)um

It’s honestly delicious to cut up these fruits and eat them without anything on top, if you want to step it up and out, squeeze the juice of one lime on top and pour a little rhum over the cut pieces. 

Collecapretta & pork (a recipe for winter)

Collecapretta

When someone I know shares a wine with me I sometimes remember to ask how they first encountered it or who shared it with them. Because I think it can be the case that one’s affection for a wine is shared with affection for a person or place. Maybe it is the winemaker themselves, a bar, a friend, or a time in one’s life. As these wines often represent small projects, small groups of people, and it can be important to know the lineage of how something got into your hands.

Anyway, the wines of Collecapretta were shown to me by Mac. Who helped me organize a whole evening for them at Cellar Door. That night a lot of people commented that they probably wouldn’t have picked this up off the shelf, mostly because of the label, with its block of writing in Italian, but they were glad they were there and that they had that first encounter.

Mac first had the wines in Boston, either at the Wine Bottega where he used to work, probably at a tasting or from another shop. The importer, Matt Mollo of Selectionaturel is based in Boston and used to be Mac’s boss at the Wine Bottega. Matt was the first importer of the wines at all, bringing them out of Umbria to the States.

While that connection, with however many degrees of separation, is able to summon a closeness to their winery even from Chicago; it works also because the wine feels very singular. Wines described singular would achieve that designation because of how clearly a bottle of the wine communicates ideas about the makers themselves. However unlike many wines that fit this idea for me, they don’t bend the mind about what wine can be at the boundaries of thought but dig deep into what is familiar, showing more than what one realized was possible.

This could be because of the deep roots of Collecapretta, the winery is operated by the Mattioli family who has resided there since the 1100’s. They grow grain and olives (from which they make the best oil) in addition to their vines of varieties of their region like Trebbiano Spoletino, Ciliegiolo and Sagrantino. This iteration of their winemaking taken up by Vittorio Mattioli, however, is comparatively new and not labeled to leave the property until the late 90s. Now, with more international recognition and age, Vittorio is semi-retired. His daughter Annalisa leads the project of the vines and winery. Though when we visited in August of this year (just before harvest), it was the matriarch Anna that showed us around. We went with our friend Marco, who is from Umbria and has been visiting since he was in his teens.

Anna showed us the new wines, mostly all in bottle at this point, as well as a scrapbook of writing about the winery. But our visit was mostly about relaxing and catching up, good for us because it was incredibly hot at the time. Their family is growing, Anna is now a grandmother and has a relaxed air about her as we chat. At one point Anna asks if we are hungry and Marco mentions the heat has gotten to him so he hadn’t really eaten that day. Anna pretended to hit Marco upside the head before disappearing to prepare a platter of cured pork and cheeses, I had just had a big lunch but cannot resist some sausages with their white wines. We also got to try the 2020 olive oil from the tank over the Italian classic, unseasoned bread. This is the winery: small and family oriented. Mac’s stories of harvest in 2016 are of comparatively relaxed days, a small crew comprised of the Mattiolis and friends, jokes, and big lunches in the middle of the work day.

Pork

A real treat is to open a bottle of wine from Collecapretta while you are cooking dinner to have a little glass and then finish it with your dish. The wines are so gourmand I do think they demand food, but actually the smell of your dinner in progress is enough of a preview to make a luxurious pairing. And obviously the tastes as you go to make sure you’re on course. I first realized this I think while making gricia, again there is magic in the cured pork.

While the pasta was the inspiration I’ve been relying on roasted pork shoulder for when I am to make something presentable for people. It acts as sort of a blank canvas so it’s easy to build a meal around and there is no shame in repeating the dish. I like to make sauces to go on top, like these two from Rachel Roddy: parsley pesto and tonnato. Or another Italian salsa like Salmoriglio or Salsa di Dragoncello. The long cook time puts you in the kitchen a bit early and if you have the time to stay in there you can make a couple sauces to accompany. You don’t need me to tell you it’s fun to serve a big piece of meat for the crowd you might find yourself cooking for this month, but maybe you needed this to let you know that a bottle of Buscaia or Terra dei Preti brings this dish home. Perfect for the whole (chosen) family.

Roast pork, serves 4 to 6

If you have the foresight you can season the pork shoulder the night before. 

4 lb Pork shoulder

Salt

Herbs, maybe

Preheat oven to 350

Season the pork shoulder all over if you haven’t already and place it on a baking sheet over the herbs if using. Fatty side up.

Put it in the oven for 4 hours

Rest before cutting thick slices to serve

More new wines tomorrow (Les Lunes, Octavin, Jean-Yves Peron), we will also be at Tusk this Sunday December 19th from 3-8 PM with a mini bar and bottles to go inspired by glow to complement Mary Eleanor's selection of candlesticks and candlestick holders.

le paysan-vigneron

 We have some beautiful new wines in the store this week, including some from Michel Guignier. Michel lives in the small village of Vauxrenard, between the appellations of Fleurie and Chiroubles. Recently, Em and our partners had dinner together. My husband, Dave, really loves the wines of Michel, as do we all. He calls him Mickey Giggles, although I think Mac, Em’s boyfriend,  might have originated that. I think I referred to Michel as a vigneron (winemaker, in French) and my husband kind of corrected me saying, “ah, but he’s a paysan-vigneron."

What was the meaning of this, besides Dave being kind of annoying? 

My mind went to the Duolingo French podcast. There is one episode called “Le Paysan (The countryman).” The show is in English and French and hosted by Ngofeen Mputubwele. Ngofeen speaks English, helping to give context to the story, and his subject speaks in French. This episode is about Cedric Herrou, an olive farmer who lives on the Franco-Italian border and offers shelter to hundreds of migrants struggling to cross into France through the Maritime Mountains. Ngofeen says, “He (Cedric) doesn’t like to be called a farmer, because to him, that’s a job, and a job is to make money. That’s not what Cedric is about. That’s why he calls himself ‘un paysan.’”

Cedric explains, “Je prefere “paysan” parce que j'appartiens à la terre. Il y a un deal entre la terre et moi. Pour moi, un paysan, c’est quelqu-un qui ne pas beaucoup, mais qui est pragmatique. Je développée un mode de vie simple, indépendant, dans la nature.” 

My very literal, not very artful translation of this: “​​I prefer ‘paysan’ because I belong to the land. There is a deal between earth and me. For me, a paysan is someone who does not have much, but who is pragmatic. I have developed a simple, independent way of life in nature.” 

Paysan does not mean simply peasant, countryman, and it is not an insult meaning hick, unless clearly intended that way. Some people use it just to mean farm worker, someone who picks the harvest for instance. I like that to be a paysan, you don’t necessarily have to be a land-owner. It is someone who makes their life about tending to the land. At first I thought it might refer to something like a modern day homesteader, but paysan doesn’t connote ownership and self-sufficiency in quite the same way as we understand it in the US. 

There is no better way to understand Michel Guignier’s wines than to appreciate the paysan-vigneron distinction. Michel works biodynamically. He raises animals (Charolais cows) which sustain his need for compost. Many farmers, including organic and biodynamic growers, have such a need for compost and little space to store it near their plots that they have to supplement their own supply by buying compost from others, often these folks don’t keep animals, even though they work biodynamically. This can actually be a big problem for winemakers - it is expensive and sourcing compost of good quality is not always easy. Michel’s project is of such a different sort from those - in keeping animals and caring for the land just around his home, a little world unto itself. He grows vegetables, wheat. He has fruit trees. His plow horse is called Bistere, after which he has named one of his wines. 

There is a beautiful illustration of his farm from Gergovie Wines. 

I am not sure if it’s the whole world of Michel which makes the wines so delicious, but his cellar certainly does, and separating cellar from farm seems fruitless here. In general, his are quiet wines. Moncailleaux does not come from his farm, but from a little ways away in Moulin-a-Vent. There’s another blog post about a Beaujolais producer who makes a Moulin-a-Vent from fruit beyond her farm, which is robust and bold. Michel chooses not to label this wine after the Moulin-a-Vent appellation, and I don’t find it typically is reflective of the appellation, it is, again, quiet, charming, unfolding like reverse origami. We also have in stock la Bonne Pioche, from a single plot on his farm.  ‘Purity’ is a word that gets used a lot to describe his wines, La Bonne Pioche in particular. I am suspicious of this term in general, but understand its application here, the absence of sulphur, new wood vessel influence, and heavy extraction of tannin, seem to leave just the beauty of the fruit. 

One of things often lost from a wine when you make it in a conventional way, one of the top things natural wines preserve, is texture. Conventional wines strip this away with fining, filtering, and aggressive bottling. Michel’s wines are bright and electric red fruit Gamay, but also, have a wooly, matte texture, that makes them extra captivating. 

For whatever reason these wines tend to arrive around my birthday, or that was when I first tried them. We had a Beaujolais tasting at Red & White. Mac was pouring these wines. I hadn’t tried them yet, I just knew they would be good, if Mac said so. I was so blown away. You don’t often try wine that turns your experience of a region on its ear. I think they are vibrant lights as we near the solstice, something fresh and invigorating to shine the way through winter. 

As mentioned, we have other new wines in store this week as well, including from Caleb Leisure, Zumo Wines and Bardos cider in California, the beautiful Sophia wine from Cantina Giardino, two supple white wines from Collecapretta I will be drinking a lot. 

We also have a new subscription service! Personalized selections in pairs or quartets. We are excited to make selections for you. 

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or comments, we love to hear from you, email us at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM rainbow_wines. À la prochaine!