[TN] '05 Chidaine Vouvray

Sounds like a lovely dinner and a fine wine to match, Mark. While I don't see myself heading to the Seasons Café any time soon (have enough favourite food haunts to revisit before I leave Chicago next month), I'll keep an eye out for the Vouvray.

Cheers,

Salil

Sounds like a great place Mark. Over here we are seeing many new restaurants proposing a deliberately reasonable fixed price menu around

Your post made me think of something. We are often discussing wine in a definite food context, in fact the F in AFW may not be all that accidental. Just as we have a FAQ mostly about wine areas, would it be risky of me to suggest that we start a section about wine-centric eateries, good restaurants that propose an interesting wine list, not just Michelin stars but also affordable places, wine bars that are serious about food and bistrots that are serious about wine. We could group them under the headings of the places most likely to be visited by AFWers, cities (Chicago, NYC, SF, Paris, London, ...) and regions (California, Provence, Tuscany...) and so on.

Sounds great Mark but I have a question. I've always thought that by it's nature Insalata Caprese was already deconstructed since basically it's just sliced tomato, mozzerella and basil with a little olive oil. How do you further deconstruct that?

I was TEMPTED to make a similar comment, but figured there was some clever bit of molecular rearranging that I had not thought about. Maybe the tomato was white and the mozzarella red? Maybe the olive oil was solid and the other ingredients liquid?

Good question, Bill. As I make it, insalata caprese usually has sliced tomato and mozzarella layered. In this case, the heirloom tomatoes (not ripe, my one and only complaint) were wedged, the mozzarella, in one slab, breaded and fried with basil oil drizzled over both. "Deconstructed" may not be the best word to describe it, but I couldn't think of better.

Mark Lipton

Sounds more constructivist than deconstructivist...

Of course, how can heirloom tomatoes be ripe in April? They don't ripen till june-july in our hemisphere... unless they are hothouse heirloom tomatoes, a bit of an oxymoron...

cheers

Mike

Thanks for the explanation Mark. I feel your pain in regards to the unripe tomato. Insalata Caprese is one of my summertime favorites when I can pluck a ripe tomato still warm from the sun from my garden and pair it with fresh mozzerella (I buy the curd from a local deli and make my own) with fresh basil from the garden and a drizzle of good olive oil. A nice glass of chilled Rose and I'm happy.

Well, while I find seasonal tomatoes the best, I don't think that hothouse heirloom tomatoes would actually be an oxymoron. Still an heirloom variety, right?

Thanks for report Mark. A Chidaine bottling that I haven't run across yet.

Well, yes, but to give you an example in France I can buy Giant Ox Heart tomatoes from a plastic tunnel in Brittany that taste like coloured water. Heirloom to me implies taste :-)

Yeah, I don't really see the sense of making a classic summertime dish in April, but the chef's judgment seemed sound enough on the other items, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't a bad creation, but just lacking in comparison to the memory of the Real Thing.

Mark Lipton

How about "reconstructed" ?

Exactly

Took the words out of my mouth!

I was trolling around looking to enlarge my range of mussel recipes when I happened upon Patrick Chazalet's site and his mussel "risotto" recipe. I was pleased to see yours! And sufficiently amused to see the outraged "who is this guy daring to criticise P.C." comments that I wrote in myself. I had wanted to do it tonight, but Jacquie has said a very firm "no", so I shall be cooking a more conventional mouclade but with a touch of saffron, and (dragging this kicking and screaming back on topic) serving it with a Mikulski 2002 Meursault-Genevrières.

-- All the best Fatty from Forges

Sorry for being completely OffT, but this immediately reminded me of an Austrian jazz clarinettist whose stage name was "Fatty George" ... ;-)

M.

Dear FfF

I am great friends with P.C., but like to intervene whenever he proposes overly francisized (?) versions of italian cuisine... :-)

Cooking should be something that gives free reign to the imagination, so far be it from me to bring up dogmatic notions of tradition and so on, but... there is a limit. Imagination will be enhanced, rather than hindered, if one has a minimum of "culture" about a cooking genre. Keeping in mind that I am an italian living in France by choice, and that I love much of french culture and cuisine, here are:

My Pet Peeves about the French Rearranging Italian Recipes

Risotto - italian rice (the japonica type, also found spain, egypt, japan) has a definite cooking time, you need not taste for "doneness" as the french recommend, only for taste and salt, as vialone rice cooks to perfection in 15 minutes, carnaroli and arborio in 17. Plus or minus 1 minute according to how "al dente" you like it. The french tend to like it not al dente at all, so they cook it beyond recognition for 20 or more minutes. In italian this is referred to as soup, or gelatin.

Risotto II - italian rice becomes creamy thanks to the starch it releases. This is the reason why you never rinse rice (like the japanese do) for risotto. The french think the creaminess comes by adding crême fraîche. If you are going to cook risotto in a funny way and add cream, call it something else, call it riso gallico or something. It might even be good, but it is too far off to be called risotto. BTW, japanese koshihikari rice makes great risotto, try it with shiitake mushrooms prepared like you would a risotto di porcini.

Spaghetti carbonara - this staple that has kept many a student alive through his studies is extremely simple and fast to prepare. You quickly drain the cooked pasta, and while hot (but not over the fire) you pour onto it egg yolks and fried bacon bits with lots of pepper and grated pecorino or parmigiano and some olive oil, letting the heat of the pasta gently cook the egg until it's creamy. The trick is to get it creamy, if you miss it will dry up. In France, somebody has decided that one needs to put lots of onions and... guess what! Crême fraîche again! No guessing with how much to cook the egg yolk, just throw cream. And with the onions and cream and egg, it looks like somebody threw up on your plate. Most unattractive and unpleasant in the mouth.

Polenta - with the discovery of maize in America, polenta quickly spread to Italy and singlehandedly solved famine problems (but not vitamin deficiencies). It is by definition something that accompanies other foods, you would not eat bread or potatoes alone... So polenta typically goes along with roast meats or grilled fish, and much like bread or potatoes you use it to soak up the juices of the meat. It consists of cornmeal, water and salt. PERIOD. Leave it to the french to a) make it runny, b) add cheese, pepper and all kinds of flavours. This is seriously missing the point. The flavour comes from the other items on the plate, the polenta must remain fairly neutral, other than its peculiar aroma of slightly burnt maize.

Cappuccino - in France, short of being in a real hip place, you will get a coffee with a pile of whipped cream on top. Definitely not cappuccino, which is made by foaming milk under a steam jet and adding it to the coffee.

Mike Tommasi wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

Will confess to being a little bit of a criminal here, I like mine done at 20 (or occassionally 21 as I find that adding things sometimes cools the risssotto during cooking and produces the need for longer cooking) but would as soon pour in coffee as some cream.

Thank you for reaffirming what I "always" knew but have scant evidence in the food business to prove! Throw out the cream.

My particular peeve is the insistence on deep frying eggpant when making any dish called eggplant parmesan or the like. eggplant bakes very well thank you. the deep fried eith sauce pouted on is easy to make quickly in a restaurant but it has nothing of the flavour of a baked eggplant which has had a chance to meld with the sauce.

The Australians always add a dose of chocolate to a Cappuccino, lovely result

I'm with you on this~

So this is a variation, perfectly OK. It does not alter the basic structure. Vive l'Australie !

great post. Mark, ordered a bottle of the Argiles, you made it sound tempting!

Other Patients on Wine Therapy disagreed with my assessment of this wine as crisp. It seems that Chidaine's '05 Vouvrays have become rather controversial on the Wine Internet, so be prepared to disagree with me, too ;-) FWIW, I think that our bottle was a trifle colder than most people may drink their Vouvrays, so perhaps that accounts for some of the difference in perception...

Mark Lipton

Anyone I know? I tend to trust those I've found common ground with more than random tasters. Just looked up Gilman's comments on '05 Argiles. I won't post whole thing here, but includes:

"Joseph Coulter" wrote .....

Generally, a shake or two of powdered chocolate on top of the foam.

In NZ, many cafés will offer the option - chocolate or a shake of cinnamon.

My pet peeve is the making of cappuccino from low fat milk - blearck!!!!!!!!!!