I was adamant this year that I wanted to go out to dinner for my birthday and not to stay home and cook. I've never been one to go out to eat too frequently, and with the grad school budget that frequency has become even smaller. However, this seemed like a good excuse to go out and let someone else cook for us!
However, it's nearly impossible to keep us out of the kitchen for an entire Saturday so we decided to put together a few appetizers and a signature drink to share with our guests before heading out. We poured through a few cookbooks and in a shocking turn of events got a little carried away, but everything was delicious!
Grilled Prosciutto Wrapped Goat Cheese Stuffed Asparagus
Ceci Bruschetta
Pepperonata
Cucumber Tartine
Sparkling Wine with Watermelon, Ginger and Lime Agua Fresca
Showing posts with label wine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wine. Show all posts
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Thai Explosion
Inspired by the delivery of the newest Food & Wine, Jason and I decided to try our hand at making some Thai recipes. We've been exploring with eating more asian and thai foods in general but this was our first foray into home preparation!
As a main course we prepared a Stir-Fried Red Rice with Sliced Sirloin Steak and Peas.
On the side we made a Tumeric-Roasted Cauliflower (not a far departure from all the cauliflower roasting we've been doing this winter) and a Thai Potato Curry.
The cauliflower and stir fry dishes both came out of Food & Wine. The thai potato curry was born out of a need to use up some organic potatoes that were on their last legs and a quick google search.
We were happy to find almost everything we needed to purchase at our Co-op (the Dill Pickle Co-op). The co-op actually had both fresh turmeric and bulk ground turmeric! We used the ground for this recipe. We headed to Treasure Island for the steak and green curry paste.
The meal turned out incredibly well. We drank with it a 2008 Gessami Gramona Penedes White Wine, slightly sweet and aromatic with great acidity that paired perfectly.
As a main course we prepared a Stir-Fried Red Rice with Sliced Sirloin Steak and Peas.
On the side we made a Tumeric-Roasted Cauliflower (not a far departure from all the cauliflower roasting we've been doing this winter) and a Thai Potato Curry.
The cauliflower and stir fry dishes both came out of Food & Wine. The thai potato curry was born out of a need to use up some organic potatoes that were on their last legs and a quick google search.
We were happy to find almost everything we needed to purchase at our Co-op (the Dill Pickle Co-op). The co-op actually had both fresh turmeric and bulk ground turmeric! We used the ground for this recipe. We headed to Treasure Island for the steak and green curry paste.
The meal turned out incredibly well. We drank with it a 2008 Gessami Gramona Penedes White Wine, slightly sweet and aromatic with great acidity that paired perfectly.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Christmas Eve Eve
Labels:
holidays,
Restaurants,
wine
Ever since Jason and I started hosting Christmas Eve dinner, we have set aside Christmas Eve Eve as date night. It started the first year because we had been doing so much work and planning and cleaning and really needed to get out of the house, take a deep breath and relax with eachother before the onslaught.
The last 3 years we have had our Christmas Eve Eve date night dinner at Think, a BYOB restaurant on the edge between Bucktown and Logan Square. We've had many dinners there and always a lovely time and have always enjoyed deciding what wine will be the special wine for the year.
Unfortunately, Think closed recently and we were forced to rethink our date location. We decided to go with Magnolia, a great neighborhood restaurant in Uptown. The website doesn't do them justice and unfortunately I didn't take any photos. But the interior is simple and warm, with exposed brick and beamed ceilings and minimimalist photos on the walls.
As an appetizer we split the mussels which were delicious. Some of the largest mussels I've had in a long time, served in the proverbial white wine and fennel sauce with a baguette.
For an entree we split the grilled beef tenderloin which was topped with braised short ribs, served over spinach with a couple of ricotta dumplings on the side. It was fantastic. The idea of the beef tenderloin short rib combo threw me in theory but worked perfectly in actuality. The short ribs were used sparingly on top of the tenderloin and added a touch of sweetness and an interesting textural contrast.
To drink we brought the 2002 Concha y Toro Don Melchor that I had given Jason for Christmas about 3 years ago.
A perfect Christmas Eve Eve to get us in the Christmas spirit.
The last 3 years we have had our Christmas Eve Eve date night dinner at Think, a BYOB restaurant on the edge between Bucktown and Logan Square. We've had many dinners there and always a lovely time and have always enjoyed deciding what wine will be the special wine for the year.
Unfortunately, Think closed recently and we were forced to rethink our date location. We decided to go with Magnolia, a great neighborhood restaurant in Uptown. The website doesn't do them justice and unfortunately I didn't take any photos. But the interior is simple and warm, with exposed brick and beamed ceilings and minimimalist photos on the walls.
As an appetizer we split the mussels which were delicious. Some of the largest mussels I've had in a long time, served in the proverbial white wine and fennel sauce with a baguette.
For an entree we split the grilled beef tenderloin which was topped with braised short ribs, served over spinach with a couple of ricotta dumplings on the side. It was fantastic. The idea of the beef tenderloin short rib combo threw me in theory but worked perfectly in actuality. The short ribs were used sparingly on top of the tenderloin and added a touch of sweetness and an interesting textural contrast.
To drink we brought the 2002 Concha y Toro Don Melchor that I had given Jason for Christmas about 3 years ago.
A perfect Christmas Eve Eve to get us in the Christmas spirit.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Cass Wine Dinner
1st Course - Seared scallop served on a bed of lentils topped with crispy bacon and sage served with Viognier
2nd Course - Spinach tortellini in a creamy gorgonzola sauce with prosciutto and spinach served with Grenache
3rd Course - Beer boiled grilled bratwurst over homemade red sauerkraut with 4 types of mustard served with Syrah
The meal was delicious and the wine pairings right on. We both agree that the lentil and scallop dish was our favorite. Dessert were just some simple, store bought pizelles followed by Apples to Apples!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Fattoria Montagliari 2008
This time, we knew where we were going. Our last stop of the day.
Rounding the curve we spotted the winery! We pull in and enter the tasting room. Who is there, but David? We exchange pleasantries and he pours us the first glass of wine. As we're talking we let him know that we have been here before, describe the circumstances around our last encounter and he remembers us!
We talk and drink and talk some more. Turns out he is in talks with someone in the US and we might be seeing his wine in Chicago in the future. He brings in his mother and daughter. His daughter is about 13 and obviously studying English in school. They were all great.
We bought a bottle of wine. Unfortunately we left it in a hot car one day at the end of our trip and it was ruined. Guess we'll have to go back. Or maybe Jason will run into David in Sam's one Saturday.
Remind me to send David a picture or two of the wedding, we promised we would.
Rounding the curve we spotted the winery! We pull in and enter the tasting room. Who is there, but David? We exchange pleasantries and he pours us the first glass of wine. As we're talking we let him know that we have been here before, describe the circumstances around our last encounter and he remembers us!
We talk and drink and talk some more. Turns out he is in talks with someone in the US and we might be seeing his wine in Chicago in the future. He brings in his mother and daughter. His daughter is about 13 and obviously studying English in school. They were all great.
We bought a bottle of wine. Unfortunately we left it in a hot car one day at the end of our trip and it was ruined. Guess we'll have to go back. Or maybe Jason will run into David in Sam's one Saturday.
Remind me to send David a picture or two of the wedding, we promised we would.
Fattoria Montagliari
Tasting wine in Tuscany is great. You get on the main highway through the area, the 222, and start driving. The area is so beautiful, it's almost indescribable, although countless people have tried. Every so often, you see a sign pointing you toward a tasting room with the tell-tale black rooster. You pull in. Sometimes they're open, sometimes not. If so, you drink wine. That's that. No crowds, no fees, no disneyland air about it. And the best thing about venturing into smaller vineyards, is that sometime it literally is the owner pouring the wines.
Such was the case with David.
The story starts a couple of years ago on our last trip to Tuscany. Jason, Nancy and I had taken off one day to do some exploring. It was October. The weather was beautiful, warm during the day, but not too hot, cool in the evenings, but not too cold.
We're driving the main road pulling into any vineyard that catches our fancy. We are passing through the town of Panzano, turn a corner and there we see Fattoria di Montagliari. Great name, huh? It looks charming, we're thirsty, so we go in.
We enter their tasting room. A great wooden room with shelves full of bottles and pictures and a couple of benches for sitting. I would love to have a library in my house that was like this room, perhaps with some comfier chairs. We start talking to the man behind the counter. His English is good, and from his accent, we determine that he is not Italian, but German. He looks tired. But not as tired as the man sitting on the bench in the corner. Messy hair, rumpled clothing and wine stained teeth. This guy, however, is Italian. We're not really sure what's going on.
So the German pulls out a few glasses and he and the gentleman in the corner start discussing which one of them should do the pouring and explaining of the wines. After a few minutes of arguing over whose English is better and back and forth the German starts pouring us wine, but we can see that the Italian isn't going to keep quiet. He starts talking, and talking. And as he talks, it dawns on us that it is his name on the bottles of wine that we are drinking.
David Migliorini. His family had purchased the Montagliari estate within the last 50 years.
This guy was a nut. Seriously. And to top it off they had just finished the harvest. So he hadn't slept in two days. It turns out that the German is a good friend of his who comes every year to help with the harvest. We realize that there is a picture of he, David and another man in a frame on a shelf, looking slightly toasted. David tells us that was from a harvest years before, back when they were younger and crazier.
So we sat, and we drank, and we talked, and we talked and we talked.
We start talking about the business of importing wines and the difficulties involved for smaller wineries like Montagliari to get their wines distributed outside of the country, and especially in the US. FedEx requires you to purchase giant shipping crates, much bigger and more expensive than one small winery could afford. There are apparently also hurdles and roadblocks in place preventing groups of wineries from banding together. And don't even get David started on the distributors in the US.
"The distributor business in the US is controlled by the Mafia in the United States. It is crazy. I go online, I can order a gun from the US and pick it up at the post office in 7 days. You? you want to buy my wine when you go back home, you cannot. You need to write to your senators about this problem. Write to your senators!"
At the mention of the Mafia, Jason gets nervous and starts looking over his shoulder, as if men in vests with machine guns might jump out from around the corner at any second. David notes his discomfort and reassures him that we are too far north to have to worry about it. In the south, people would never talk about the Mafia, the Camorra or 'Ndrangheta. Apparently in the north it is safe!
Needless to say, this visit was the highlight of our day in the countryside. Also needless to say, we bought wine. Jason and I drank the 1997 (or was it 1999?) Chianti Riserve on New Years Eve. Laurie was in town with us, but she was pregnant, so Jason and I drank it all.
Such was the case with David.
The story starts a couple of years ago on our last trip to Tuscany. Jason, Nancy and I had taken off one day to do some exploring. It was October. The weather was beautiful, warm during the day, but not too hot, cool in the evenings, but not too cold.
We're driving the main road pulling into any vineyard that catches our fancy. We are passing through the town of Panzano, turn a corner and there we see Fattoria di Montagliari. Great name, huh? It looks charming, we're thirsty, so we go in.
We enter their tasting room. A great wooden room with shelves full of bottles and pictures and a couple of benches for sitting. I would love to have a library in my house that was like this room, perhaps with some comfier chairs. We start talking to the man behind the counter. His English is good, and from his accent, we determine that he is not Italian, but German. He looks tired. But not as tired as the man sitting on the bench in the corner. Messy hair, rumpled clothing and wine stained teeth. This guy, however, is Italian. We're not really sure what's going on.
So the German pulls out a few glasses and he and the gentleman in the corner start discussing which one of them should do the pouring and explaining of the wines. After a few minutes of arguing over whose English is better and back and forth the German starts pouring us wine, but we can see that the Italian isn't going to keep quiet. He starts talking, and talking. And as he talks, it dawns on us that it is his name on the bottles of wine that we are drinking.
David Migliorini. His family had purchased the Montagliari estate within the last 50 years.
This guy was a nut. Seriously. And to top it off they had just finished the harvest. So he hadn't slept in two days. It turns out that the German is a good friend of his who comes every year to help with the harvest. We realize that there is a picture of he, David and another man in a frame on a shelf, looking slightly toasted. David tells us that was from a harvest years before, back when they were younger and crazier.
So we sat, and we drank, and we talked, and we talked and we talked.
We start talking about the business of importing wines and the difficulties involved for smaller wineries like Montagliari to get their wines distributed outside of the country, and especially in the US. FedEx requires you to purchase giant shipping crates, much bigger and more expensive than one small winery could afford. There are apparently also hurdles and roadblocks in place preventing groups of wineries from banding together. And don't even get David started on the distributors in the US.
"The distributor business in the US is controlled by the Mafia in the United States. It is crazy. I go online, I can order a gun from the US and pick it up at the post office in 7 days. You? you want to buy my wine when you go back home, you cannot. You need to write to your senators about this problem. Write to your senators!"
At the mention of the Mafia, Jason gets nervous and starts looking over his shoulder, as if men in vests with machine guns might jump out from around the corner at any second. David notes his discomfort and reassures him that we are too far north to have to worry about it. In the south, people would never talk about the Mafia, the Camorra or 'Ndrangheta. Apparently in the north it is safe!
Needless to say, this visit was the highlight of our day in the countryside. Also needless to say, we bought wine. Jason and I drank the 1997 (or was it 1999?) Chianti Riserve on New Years Eve. Laurie was in town with us, but she was pregnant, so Jason and I drank it all.
How to Deal With Jetlag
Thursday, June 12th
So we settle in to rest in our home for the next few days, Guardia. This was the house where my parents and Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Jerry would stay for the week. It is adorable, a great kitchen with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a backyard area.
However, we just needed to clean up and relax. Oh, and put down the wedding dress.
I guess I haven't mentioned that we carried the wedding dress from Chicago to Florence. And when I say "we" I guess I really mean "Jason" since he did most of the carrying. We started referring to it as "Bernie". One large piece of dead weight we couldn't let out of our sight. When we left I had been worried about the state the dress might be in once we arrived. But today, I was too damn tired to care.
We relaxed for awhile, walked around the property a bit. By 3:30pm we were fading. And fast. We knew that falling asleep might screw up our sleep/wake cycles for the week. We had to think fast. What could we do? The prospect of going into Florence seemed to daunting in our state. But we couldn't stay where we were or we would be sound asleep.
So, we did what anyone else would have done, drove to Greve to drink wine!
The town of Greve is about a 45 minute drive from Torre a Cona, in the opposite direction from Florence. It is the heart of the Chianti Classico region. The last time we were there, Jason, Nancy and I had quite an experience and met some characters tasting wine in Chianti.
So, renewed by our sense of purpose, we took off into the countryside. First stop Vicchiomaggio. http://www.vicchiomaggio.it/eng There, we met a lovely woman named Nancy working in the tasting room. She spoke impeccable Italian, but was a British ex-pat who had been living in Italy for about 8 years.
Stop number two, the tasting room of Villa Calcinaia. Villa Calcinaia was to be the location of our "rehearsal" dinner on Monday. One Saturday afternoon at Sam's Wine, Jason had met Count Sebastiano Capponi, whose family, the Capponi Counts had owned the property since the 1500s and who was in charge of the wine making business. Jason had brought me home a bottle of their chianti but I was curious to taste the rest. So we stopped.
The woman running the tasting room spoke little English, although certainly more english than we spoke Italian. We seemed to get across to her that we were getting married and that we were having dinner with our group on Monday night on the estate. We tasted through all the wines and they were great. I loved their white, the Comitale. We also tried their 3 Chiantis (Piegaia, Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Reserva) and the Super Tuscan, Casarsa which is 100% Merlot. Outstanding. I didn't know how this dinner would all play out on Monday but I was getting excited. To be honest, at this point I didn't even know if anyone was going to show up, if this wedding planner actually existed, if we would really get married. But at this point too happy to care!
Our final stop was the one we had been talking about all year. We were going back to see David.
So we settle in to rest in our home for the next few days, Guardia. This was the house where my parents and Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Jerry would stay for the week. It is adorable, a great kitchen with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a backyard area.
However, we just needed to clean up and relax. Oh, and put down the wedding dress.
I guess I haven't mentioned that we carried the wedding dress from Chicago to Florence. And when I say "we" I guess I really mean "Jason" since he did most of the carrying. We started referring to it as "Bernie". One large piece of dead weight we couldn't let out of our sight. When we left I had been worried about the state the dress might be in once we arrived. But today, I was too damn tired to care.
We relaxed for awhile, walked around the property a bit. By 3:30pm we were fading. And fast. We knew that falling asleep might screw up our sleep/wake cycles for the week. We had to think fast. What could we do? The prospect of going into Florence seemed to daunting in our state. But we couldn't stay where we were or we would be sound asleep.
So, we did what anyone else would have done, drove to Greve to drink wine!
The town of Greve is about a 45 minute drive from Torre a Cona, in the opposite direction from Florence. It is the heart of the Chianti Classico region. The last time we were there, Jason, Nancy and I had quite an experience and met some characters tasting wine in Chianti.
So, renewed by our sense of purpose, we took off into the countryside. First stop Vicchiomaggio. http://www.vicchiomaggio.it/eng There, we met a lovely woman named Nancy working in the tasting room. She spoke impeccable Italian, but was a British ex-pat who had been living in Italy for about 8 years.
Stop number two, the tasting room of Villa Calcinaia. Villa Calcinaia was to be the location of our "rehearsal" dinner on Monday. One Saturday afternoon at Sam's Wine, Jason had met Count Sebastiano Capponi, whose family, the Capponi Counts had owned the property since the 1500s and who was in charge of the wine making business. Jason had brought me home a bottle of their chianti but I was curious to taste the rest. So we stopped.
The woman running the tasting room spoke little English, although certainly more english than we spoke Italian. We seemed to get across to her that we were getting married and that we were having dinner with our group on Monday night on the estate. We tasted through all the wines and they were great. I loved their white, the Comitale. We also tried their 3 Chiantis (Piegaia, Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Reserva) and the Super Tuscan, Casarsa which is 100% Merlot. Outstanding. I didn't know how this dinner would all play out on Monday but I was getting excited. To be honest, at this point I didn't even know if anyone was going to show up, if this wedding planner actually existed, if we would really get married. But at this point too happy to care!
Our final stop was the one we had been talking about all year. We were going back to see David.
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