by Nancy Yos
It started out well enough, and I had such good intentions. My aim for the evening was to make, finally, really, successfully, coq au vin. It is a classic French dish of course, chicken in red wine, the very name of which reminds me of my high school French class. I seem to remember we planned an authentic French dinner as a kind of celebratory good bye to senior year and all that, and one of the items some brave soul was going to prepare was coq au vin. Somebody else volunteered to make buche de Noel. I daresay she is still at it. I aimed to make le coq now, despite previous, downright routine, unhappy experiences with the entire point of the dish and the evil nemesis of my kitchen career, braised chicken pieces. Why shouldn't I try one more time, since I had as my guide the superb Made...
by Nancy Yos
And as Groucho would say, "there's not a thing you can do about it, I've had three of the best doctors in the East!" All wine books summarize the famed 1855 classification nicely. In that year, Emperor Napoleon III, himself an interesting fellow -- the product of a marriage wherein the first Napoleon had joined his brother to his stepdaughter -- asked the authorities in Bordeaux to draw up a short list of the district's finest wines in preparation for an Exposition in Paris. Different wine authors today give slightly different details. His imperial highness may have asked the winegrowing chateau owners themselves for the list, and they for fear of creating mutual jealousies may have fobbed the job off on the local Chamber of Commerce; or he may have asked the Chamber of Commerce first, wh...
by Nancy Yos
Sylvia Windle Humphrey deserves inclusion in my little hall of fame simply because of her charming name. Can't you just picture her in long Edwardian skirts, writing elegant cookery books by gaslight, and then moving sedately off to a charity function on the arm of the distinguished Mr. Humphrey? In fact, we must move her forward in time, closer to our own era. She was the author of A Matter of Taste, published by Macmillan in 1965. My copy of this book is yet another of my library-book-sale, cast-off, jacket-less, one dollar treasures. It is a cookbook, filled with unusual recipes whose sources she thanks gracefully in her brief acknowledgements (why were authors so much briefer about acknowledging people then?) -- brief but tantalizing. Who was Mimi Ouei, and does the Artistic Cooking S...
by Nancy Yos
We may as well begin, more's the pity, with the lovely legend that is apparently not true. Syrah, the grape, is so named because it came originally from Shiraz, in Persia. The vine was brought back from the Near East by a Crusader in the thirteenth century, one Gaspard de Sterimberg. He became a hermit and lived in a hut on a hillside in the Rhone valley in France, where syrah grows at its best. In fact syrah's most famous (and deeply expensive) wine is called L'Hermitage, after the recluse's home. Sigh. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wouldn't it be positively delicious if it turned out all this is true? It's possible, you know. Even though it seems we are forever learning that the grand things of the past really didn't happen, still each new cohort of professional historians has to earn its vario...
by Rinku Bhattacharya
It is cool and green here in New York and spring is in bloom. The daffodils are fading making way for azaleas, lilacs and dogwoods and gorgeous pink crabapple flowers. The crabapples trees spread the green with a carpet of pink flowers almost out of the scenes of some Bollywood romance and the wine of the season is Rose - that is if you are looking for a wine to pair with spice food. Other advantages that these wines bring for you is their affordability and the instant beauty that they bring to the table making it a perfect recession proof celebration option. Rose wines are a wine that is not completely red due to the color of the grapes and tends to really have a hue that is pinkish orange in most cases. Rose’ wines are sometimes not quite sophisticated enough for wine snobs, but reall...
by Nancy Yos
I spent a virtuous week last week, not only trying a new recipe I had always planned to try, but making great use of leftovers. I made a boeuf bouilli for the first time -- this is a simple "boiled beef," much like pot roast except you pile meat and vegetables into a pot, cover them with water, and cook, not browning the meat first. Years ago, I owned a James Beard cookbook in which the recipe appeared, and of it, Beard commented that "many a man with a sophisticated palate would choose simple bouef bouilli as his favorite meal." The remains of it, not things like the potatoes and turnips but the broth and beef, went into a spaghetti sauce the next day. Then, a chicken fricasee -- chicken with lemon cream sauce -- left me with too much lemon sauce on my hands. Much too much. It served to ...
by Nancy Yos
Sometimes, you know, you let the family fend for itself for dinner. (I declare sometimes they prefer it. Yay! microwaved hot dogs on a paper plate! And then we can do what we want.) In my case, fending meant a sandwich of last night's leftover roast chicken, on nice store-bought wheat bread -- I say, wheat bread -- with mayonnaise and a little salt. And potato chips. And a little glass of 2007 Sutter Home sauvignon blanc, at something like $8.99 a one-and-a-half liter (jug) bottle. In spite of all this ordinariness there is something important about a leftover roast chicken, or indeed about any roast chicken, and that is that of course you will want to find in it, if you have not done so already, the delicacies: the oysters. Madeleine Kamman, in The New Making of a Cook, explains. The "o...
by Nancy Yos
It was a fat-bottomed bottle, deep green, antique looking and charming. The price of this Cotes du Rhone white, $6.99 at a local liquor store, was also charming. My first impressions: a plain, glowing pale yellow color; syrupy in the glass; in taste, bread-like, dry, seeming to fill the front of the mouth with a certain bitterness; a faint whiff of nuts. As if you could drink an oily nut-bread. If you care to log on to the website of Cellier des Dauphins, you will get your first indication that what we are drinking here is a French version of a Gallo or a Sutter Home wine. That is not intended as a slur on Gallo or Sutter Home or Cellier des Dauphins, either. This is after all an AOC wine, from an Appellation d'Origine Controllee, meaning its production has at least legally met certain q...
by Marisa Dvari
Quick! What are the 10 “Cru” wine regions in Beaujolais? Even if you make your living as a sommelier or study wine, the question is daunting. Very possibly, most Americans do not know what, or where, Beaujolais is - and that is perfectly fine, since I’d wager just as few French people would know what, or where, Temecula is (an AVA wine growing region in Southern California). The (red) Gamay grape that is the basis of Beaujolais makes such a delightful picnic wine, please regard this as your very basic introduction to Beaujolais 101. Beaujolais is a region in France just below Burgundy, yet while Pinot Noir (for red) and Chardonnay (for white) rules in Burgundy, Gamay rocks in Beaujolais. Unlike America, the French name their wines after the region, not the grape. If a server a...
by Marisa Dvari
Think of a Ferrari and you think of a gorgeous sports car, right? A sleek, sexy icon of pleasure that personifies quality and luxury. So when I was first poured a glass of sparkling wine called Ferrari, I made the obvious assumption: the producers wanted to cash in on the automobile’s aura of allure. “Ferrari is a very common last name in Italy,” says charming winemaker Marcello Lunelli (aren’t Italians always charming?) whose family has owned the famous, award-winning brand for more than 50 years. “It is like Smith or Jones in America.” Marcello goes on to explain the exciting story of his family, which begins in romance novel fashion with the birth of Ferrari’s founder, Giulio Ferrari, in Trentino, Italy in 1902. Ferrari was the first to successfully plant Chardonnay gra...
