Mashed Potatoes with Kale and Olive Oil

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Mashed Potatoes with Kale and Olive Oil
For this recipe, be sure to wash the kale well (or spinach, or chard) - dirt and grit hides in the leaves. I don’t like floppy leafiness in my potatoes, so I chop the kale quite finely. If you stir the kale in too much it can lend a slight green cast to your potatoes, so i just barely stir it in right before serving. Also, on the potato front - feel free to use unpeeled potatoes if you like something a bit more rustic (and nutritious). I picked up some yellow-fleshed German Butterball potatoes at the market last week and they added the visual illusion that the mashed potatoes were packed with butter. Didn’t miss the real thing a bit. 3 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks sea salt 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 bunch kale, large stems stripped and discarded, leaves chopped 1/2+ cup warm milk or cream freshly ground black pepper 5 scallions, white and tender green parts, chopped 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan, for garnish (opt) fried shallots, for garnish (optional)Put the potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Add a pinch of salt. Bring the water to a boil and continue boiling for 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, chopped kale, a big pinch of salt, and saute just until tender - about a minute. Set aside.Mash the potatoes with a potato masher or fork. Slowly stir in the milk a few big splashes at a time. You are after a thick, creamy texture, so if your potatoes are on the dry side keep adding milk until the texture is right. Season with salt and pepper.Dump the kale on top of the potatoes and give a quick stir. Transfer to a serving bowl, make a well in the center of the potatoes and pour the remaining olive oil. Sprinkle with the scallions, Parmesan cheese, and shallots.Serves 6.

Mashed Potatoes with Kale and Olive Oil Recipe - 101 Cookbooks

 

 

Very Nice

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Very nice doesn’t get much attention these days as everyone wants the “best” - meaning the pointiest wine of all. The Carlo Massimiliano Gritti winery in central Italy’s verdant Umbria is producing wines that are probably too nice to get big points, but they are indeed very lovely wines to enjoy with your dinner. With moderate alcohol levels and oak only where it’s deserved, these wines are are to be admired for their harmony instead of their volume.

The 2004 Ca’ Andrea (60% sangiovese, 35% canaiolo nero, 3 % montepulciano) is the least expensive and the most enjoyable of their offerings. Not that their other wines aren’t well done, but this wine is the most distinctive. Brilliantly fresh and zesty, this is a style of wine that reflects the pure Italian heritage of making a wine that is perfect with a meal.  Their 2004 Muda (70% sangiovese, 20% montepulciano, 10% merlot) is bigger and more robust. The sangiovese and montepulciano in this blend are still blissfully oak free and, fortunately, their brightness is not diluted by the pointless  addition of oak aged merlot. As with the Ca’ Andrea, you can’t help to be seduced by the bright lively flavors of this wine. The 2003 Il Doge (90 % sangiovese, 10% merlot)  is their stab at getting big points and, lucky for us, they got it wrong. Instead of yet another oaky Super Tuscan (Super Umbrian in the case) they have produced a silky, complex wine with just the right punch of tannin. A full flavored Tuscan style steak would be well matched by this elegant wine.

The wines from Carlo Massimilano Gritti wines are to be admired for their restraint, balance and for what they are not. Sometimes what a wine is not is more important than what it is.

Bummed Out About Burgundy

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For me, red Burgundy is the ultimate wine. Yet it’s also the ultimate disappointment. It is also a very expensive disappointment.

 It was a night I wanted to splurge and so I reached for a great name and vineyard on the wine list with relative confidence. The 2004  Domaine Jacques Frederic Mugnier Nuits Saint Georges, Clos de la Marechale should have been, at the very least, a lovely pinot noir, but it wasn’t. Thin with uninteresting tart flavor laced with tequila and wet cement notes, the bottled remained unfinished at the end of the evening. A sure sign of mediocrity as it was served to a table of winemakers.

Clearly this restaurant purchased this wine without tasting, something they would never do for a domestic pinot noir.  Too many wine buyers are intimidated by Burgundy’s fame and reputation. This lack of scrutiny means some very bad wines at very high prices for their customers.




Quasi Perfect: 2003 Apogee, Pepper Bridge Vineyard, Walla Wally Valley, L'Ecole 41

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apogee 03.jpgThis is simply a stunning wine, someday it will be a breathtaking one. With a balance that a California wine could only dream about these days, here is an American hope to challenge  the elegance of fine Bordeaux. It’s not that such graceful power could not be constructed in Napa, but winemakers there are too point hungry to exercise any self control. L’Ecole No. 41 exhibits displined self-confidence in making an entire portfolio of wines driven by balance and style rather than power and points. In about five years this will be a wine to be remembered.

49% cabernet sauvignon, 45% merlot, 5% malbec, 3% cabernet franc 

Big, Brawny and Delicous

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dovercanyonsyrah.jpgBig wines are not my favorites, but sometimes they just seem to work. Such a wine is the richly seductive 2004 Dover Canyon Winery Syrah, Jimmy’s Vineyard, Paso Robles. I expected only my palate to be blown away, but it was me that was blown away instead. This wine is just concentrated delicious.

Make no mistake, this is a big wine for big food, but at the same time it maintains its balance perfectly as it is structured more on its acids than its alcohol. Sure it is loaded with big forward fruit, but what beautiful fruit it is - no simple fruit bomb here. While there is plenty of cassis throughout this wine, it is not the simple sweet cheap liqueur flavors you usually find in California syrah, but an electric, thoroughly bittersweet cassis essence that has the biting bitter sweetness of real black currents.

I matched this big beauty with a prime ribeye, well crusted with coarsely ground tellicherry peppercorns, grilled rare and served drizzled with black truffle olive oil. A drop or bite was not left. 

Wines like this transcend personal preferences. They are so distinctive and so well made that if you have any passion for wine at all you can’t help but to love them. 

Chenin

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Poor chenin blanc, everywhere it grows outside of its home turf it makes wine that’s only a dim shadow of the greatness it achieves in France’s Loire Valley. Every once in a while I’ve had some exciting American Chenin over the years, but everyone who was making it gave up in the face of market ignorance.

Those wines disappeared years ago and I had given up on American chenin, but while visiting the Hogue tasting room in Prosser Washington, I could not resist buying a bottle of their barrel fermented chenin. Now I wish I had bought a case.

The 2004 Hogue Terrior, Barrel Fermented Chenin Blanc, Andrews Vineyard, Columbia Valley is simply a stunning chenin blanc. Rich and complex with that unique continuation of mineraly dryness blended with honey and figs that makes this variety so compelling, this is an outstanding American chenin blanc. Matched with some gigantic King Crab legs, this was simply a wine to remember. While Hogue is mostly known for producing good, solid everyday wines, this is a far more elevated wine that is of such quality that it can seduce us into thinking that chenin may find a home in Washington.

Well, we can always hope.

Belli Gemelli

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The passing of winemaker/artist Bartolo Mascarello caused much  concern for the future of the label, but anyone familiar with the Barolo scene knew that Bartolo’s daughter, Maria Teresa, had taken the reigns of this venerable estate some years ago and, if anything, had only improved the wines. While a majority of the attention deservedly goes to Maria Teresa’s Baroli, those missing her other wines are making a mistake.

Her current releases of 2004 Bartolo Mascarello, Barbera d’Alba, Vigna San Lorenzo and 2005 Bartolo Mascarello, Dolcetto d’Alba, Vigne Monrobiolo-Ruè are beautiful twins, though certainly not identical twins as they each reflect the beauty of their varieties and vineyards, but are twins related by a pure winemaking style that makes them both sing on the palate.

These are two wines that lift the spirit and your meal. No they don’t challenge the complexities of her Barolo, nor should they, but you will find no better examples of Barbera and Dolcetto in their purist form. These are wines to buy by the case (if you’re lucky enough to be able to do so) for drinking over the next several years.

Hot Pepper

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Norm McKibben is Walla Walla. Obviously, you also have give credit to Leonetti, L’Ecole No. 41 and Woodward Canyon, whose great wines showed the possibilities of this region, but it was Norm that pushed it over the top. In 1991 he planted Pepper Bridge and in 1994 he purchased Seven Hills Vineyard making him the owner of two of the Northwest’s finest vineyards and the two vineyards that define Walla Walla. 

As well as Norm speaks, nothing can speak better than his wines at Pepper Bridge, which are nothing short of spectacular. The Pepper Bridge wines, merlot and cabernet sauvignon, are wines that make you stop and take notice that you are tasting wines on a different level. Sourced from both Pepper Bridge and Seven Hills vineyards, these wines prove the potential for greatness in wines from Walla Walla.These are world-class collectibles that should be cellared for years before pulling their corks. Those that wait will be rewarded with wines of incredible depth and complexity. Those that don’t will get the same thing, but on a lower plane of consciousness.

Tasting Walla Walla

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An impressive group of Walla Walla's winemakers recently cruised through town and hosted a fairly definitive tasting of the wines of this exciting AVA. Over forty wineries showed a full range of their wines to some eight hundred wine enthusiasts and trade.

Such opportunities bring out the focused madman of my personality and, foolishly, I seriously attempted to attack the room by varietal. Saving the whites for last, which I always think is a good strategy in mass tastings, I first powered through the merlots, circling the room and skipping other wines so as to focus my attention on that variety. Completing the merlots, I headed back to confront the cabernets, which I followed by the blends.

Once again, I confirmed the truth about these mass tastings. That is, that the wineries in the second half of the alphabet, in general, make less interesting wines than those in the first half.

I'm a pro, obsessed with tasting, with three decades of tasting experience and I can't do it. The wines offered by tables in the last half of these tasting marathons just don't have a chance to show well. While a great promo for the AVA, this was certainly no place to judge the quality of the wines or make buying decisions. These mega-tastings should only be considered social events, with a good time for all the only goal, but getting anything but the most general impressions of a certain wine's quality is all that you can hope to discern. Recognize these events as the promotional cocktail parties they are and leave your tasting notes book at home.

Misinformation

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“As with any well-mixed margarita. Madeira should be sweet, fruity. acidic, salty and bitter all at once.”

That’s just wrong, Sercial and Malmsey have has much to do with each other as Fino and Cream Sherry. This is just another example of the misinformation commonly published in the wine columns of our nation’s newspapers.  Why is it that major newspapers don’t bother to apply the same journalistic standards they apply to the rest of the newspaper to wine columns? As I travel throughout the USA I can’t help but be astounded by the amount of  wine misinformation that is allowed to pass as journalism in America’s newspapers.

The writer above also recently told readers that there were no wines labeled “pinot gris” produced in Alsace. That too is just wrong.

Editors may not know a thing about wine, but they are not experts in every topic covered by their newspapers and still they demand that someone who knows should check the facts. Of course, in the other areas of the newspaper, the editor can depend on, for example, the sports editor to know something about sports, but in the food section you can assume the editor knows little or nothing about wine. Can you imagine hiring a sports editor that knows nothing about baseball or a business editor that never heard of the New York Stock Exchange?

Outside a few shining examples, like the New York Times, few newspapers care much for the accuracy of their wine columns, seeing them only as vehicles to increase advertising.

So much for journalism.

Flying to the Moon on Gossamer Wings

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gossamer wings.jpg

The delicacy was astounding. How is it possible to be so delicate, so refined, yet so dramatic and hypnotizing. The first sip only teased,  a mere shadow of what was to come. With each following taste the complexity expanded like the Universe, while the body and power stayed within our solar system. It remained haunting and demanded your attention from first to last for, if you were not open to its charms, you surely would miss them. Such was the 2001 Domaine Dujac Morey Saint-Denis. A more perfect example of the delicately powerful refinement that is at the heart of pinot noir you will not find. Pinot noir at its finest intoxicates your emotions more than your brain. Yes, it intoxicates your brain too, but in this case it’s just bonus points, not the main attraction.

American Wine Blog Awards Finalist

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finalistlogo.jpgI’m pleased and flattered to announce that I have been selected as a finalist in The American Wine Blog Awards, which were created and are hosted by Tom Wark of Fermentation. If you would like to vote for the award winners (hint, hint), please click on this link, which will take you to Fermentation to mark your ballots.

It is particularly rewarding to me to have been singled out for the “Best Wine Blog Writing” award as it is the pleasure that writing brings me that led me to create Wine Camp in the first place. So vote now and vote often and my sincere thanks to those who nominated me and to the finalist selection committee for finding my work worthy of this honor.

Mimmo’s Bruschetta

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Mimmo’s Bruschetta

-Small, very ripe (preferably homegrown) tomatoes, sliced

-1 or 2 large cloves of fresh garlic, peeled and one small end sliced off.

-The best extra virgin olive oil you can find — preferably a big, rich oil from the south.

-Thin loaves of crusty French bread (you want slices close to bite size)

-Fresh oregano finely chopped

-Fresh basil cut or torn into small pieces

-Freshly ground black pepper

-Sea salt

Cut the bread into thin slices and lightly toast. Rub the toast with the raw garlic to taste (a latex glove makes this process a breeze, and a fresh one at that). Arrange on a large platter and lightly salt and pepper each piece of bread and top with a slice of tomato. Liberally drizzle all with extra virgin olive oil. Lightly sprinkle with oregano and top each with pieces of basil.

It's A Boy!!!

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boyk.jpgIt’s been a long hard road with more bumps than rest stops. I’ve tried and tried to love the Rhone Rangers, but few have delivered interesting wines. The only really consistent one has been Steve Edmunds and those wines were born out of his unique sensitivity and search for terroir-driven wines that make you think instead of just drink.

Tonight I opened yet another “Rhone Blend” more out of duty than interest, but upon inserting my expecting to anesthetized nose into the glass, I found that elusive quality that Rhone wines often deliver but New World wines rarely do. That is the combination of power and balance and a richly intoxicating earthiness. “Boy” did I find one!

The 2004 “The Boy” from K Vintners in Walla Walla Washington is one of the very few blends of Rhone varieties that I’ve tasted that can take on fine Chateauneuf du Pape in depth and complexity. A blend of 50% grenache, 18% syrah and 14% mourvedre (very CdP-like) this is a wine that sings in a deep rich, warm baritone.

First you should focus on what this wine is not. It is not a dark purple, oaky cassis fruit-bomb nor a port-like monstrosity. What it is is a big, yet balanced and richly complex wine. Its deep scarlet hue is still translucent with just a touch of garnet  - more pinot than Rhone Ranger. The aromas are wonderfully spicy with a deep, warm earthy touch of wild mushrooms, steak tartare and truffles layered with a smoky sweetness.

While eastern Washington may be renowned for its cabernets and merlots, wines like this will soon make you think the Rhone should be the inspiration for Washington’s winemakers instead of Bordeaux.

What stands out most about most about this wine compared to its other west coast cousins from California and Washington is this wine never got boring - one glass demanded a second. After all, that is the difference between commercial plonk, over-extracted goo and real wine.