Another reason to go to Temescal

Chris Lee and Samin Nosrat, formerly of the Italian restaurant Eccolo in Berkeley, have started the Pop-Up General Store. They make sausages, ravioli, and other good stuff and make them available, along with other artisanally made food products from their friends, by pre-order every week or so. You pick them up at the historic Temescal streetcar depot (Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 47th Street in Oakland).

I ordered their boudin blanc and butternut squash ravioi this week. The sausages are still sitting in my refrigerator, waiting for the right moment and the right friends to show up. The ravioli found both at JK's apartment last night. As my Piemontese friend Angelo would say: eccezionali! A creamy, luscious squash filling plays off perfect pasta. Samin emailed me cooking instructions, including a simple brown butter and sage sauce. Some Parmigiano Reggiano and black pepper sealed the deal. There is so much (appropriate) sweetness in the filling that these ravioli hover between dinner and dessert. I ate the remaining ones as a snack today, and my only thought was, "why aren't there more?!"

Samin suggested a southern Italian white, so I went for DeFalco's Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio ($16): body, freshness, volcanic minerality. It worked.

Click here for the Pop-Up General Store's January 20th offering.

Fortifying your cooking

After yesterday's screed against recipes that don't sufficiently specify fortified wines in their lists of ingredients, today I'll be more helpful and offer some general guidelines.

Sherry: Usually Fino or Amontillado. Fino (including Manzanilla, which is simply a Fino aged in the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda) is the lightest, driest style of Sherry, and works in almost any recipe. Amontillado (a Fino that's aged longer in barrel) has a more assertive, nuttier flavor. I reserve it for recipes with mushrooms, game birds, and other hearty flavors.

Port: Usually Ruby, but a younger, simpler Tawny can work. Ruby is the most wine-like of Port styles - i.e., it's still sweet and rich, but it has more fresh, red-fruit flavors. Tawny Port is aged a long time in barrel, which gives it the tawny color and more nutty, caramel-y flavors. One practical issue: Tawny keeps for a long time after you open the bottle, so it's a good choice for occasional cooking and occasional drinking. Ruby Port usually loses its freshness within a week or two. If you have some Vintage or LBV (Late Bottled Vintage) in an open bottle, those will work, too, but don't buy these for cooking. Chowhound has a recent discussion about Ruby versus Tawny in cooking.

Madeira: Sercial or Verdelho if you can find and afford them; otherwise Rainwater. Sercial is the lightest and driest style. Verdelho is a little fruitier and rounder. Rainwater is similar to Verdelho in character, but a lot simpler and cheaper. Bual and Malmsey are too rich and sweet for most savory dishes; save them for drinking! This page includes a detailed guide to Madeira grape varieties and styles.

Marsala: Dry for savory dishes (especially fowl; for example, Chicken alla Marsala and some versions of Chicken alla Marengo; also veal scaloppini). Sweet for sweet dishes (zabaglione, tiramisù, etc.)

Chowhound has a useful discussion of using Port versus Madeira in cooking.

Two caveats:

(1) As usual, don't use any wine for cooking that you wouldn't drink. In particular, avoid "cooking Sherry" and other, similar travesties. They're usually of terrible quality and often are adulterated with salt and/or additives.

(2) Sherry, Port, Madeira, and Marsala are among the world's great wine styles, so don't limit them to cooking!

Of recipes and fortified wines

Today I'm making roasted guinea hen with bay leaves, Madeira, & dates. The recipe is from Judy Roger's exceptional book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I really love this cookbook; it's detailed, well-written, and deeply insightful - not to mention, full of great recipes. Her roast chicken recipe trumps all others, in my view.

However, I have a quibble and a more general criticism:

(1) Gerald Asher's wine pairing recommendations are way too specific. For example, he recommends Qupé Central Coast Syrah 1999 for this guinea hen recipe. Asher justifies this specificity as an expression of real wines from real people and places. OK, but including the vintage?!

(2) The guinea hen recipe calls for 1/2 cup Madeira. What kind of Madeira? Rainwater? Sercial? Bual? Malmsey? These are vastly different types of wines, from the relatively light and dry (for Madeira) Rainwater style to the thick, rich, sweet, Port-like Malmsey. They would give vastly different results in the recipe.

The latter is, of course, a general gripe about recipe writers. I've lost count of the number of times customers have come into the wine shop asking for a fortified wine for a recipe (Sherry, Port, Madeira, or Marsala), without any guidance in the recipe about what style of the specified wine category to use. Each of these is a wine region that makes a variety of very different styles of fortified wines, from dry to sweet, lighter to richer, fresher to more aged.

We often can figure out a reasonable recommendation from the style and other ingredients of the recipe, but it isn't always obvious. These generic suggestions also reflect either sloppiness or ignorance on the part of the recipe writer. Would anyone get away with publishing a recipe that says "sauté 1 lb. of meat and add 1 tsp. of some herb that grows in Provence"?!

So here's my plea to recipe writers: When you specify a fortified wine as a recipe ingredient, indicate what kind (or kinds, if there's more than one option):

Sherry: Fino? Amontillado? Oloroso? Cream? PX?
Port: Ruby? Tawny? LBV? Vintage?
Madeira: Rainwater? Sercial? Bual? Malmsey?
Marsala: Dry? Sweet?

By the way, I'm using dry Marsala instead of Madeira with this recipe, simply because I have a bottle of Marsala open. If I were going to use Madeira, I'd probably choose Rainwater.

Hungarian Princess Wine

Wine lovers know Hungary as the source of Tokají, the legendary sweet wine made from botrytized grapes. But the country makes dry wines as well. After all, Hungarians have to drink something before they get to dessert! We just got a new dry Hungarian white in the store... now take a deep breath and say it with me: 2007 Matyás & Zoltán Szöke Mátrai Királyleányka. No, I don't speak Hungarian either, but as far as I can tell:

• Matyás & Zoltán Szöke are the father and son who make the wine, and Szöke is their surname.
• Mátrai (or Mátra on the front label, or Mátraalja on the wine maps), is the region in northern Hungary.
• Királyleányka (Kee-rye-lay-ohn-kha) is the grape variety - probably a cross between Kövérszolo and Leánykaname according to http://www.chew.hu/kiralyleanyka.html, in case you were curious. Kati, our wine rep from Blue Danube, says that the name means "princess" in Hungarian.

So I'm just calling it Szöke's Hungarian Princess wine for now. It's mineral and floral rather than fruity, with some body and a nice, dry finish. It works as an aperitif, it worked last night with a motley dinner of gouda, tomato bruschetta, and a green salad. And it's way cheap for the quality of the wine: $11.99. Remember: You don't have to be able to pronounce it to enjoy it.

Green Food and Green Wine

"If it grows together, it goes together" - this wine pairing maxim expresses the empirical observation that the wines grown in a region often go well with the foodstuffs grown there and the local preparations of those products (given sufficient generations of local winegrowers, other farmers, and cooks to work things out, of course). The colors of last night's meal gave rise to a a different and more fanciful maxim: "If it glows together, it goes together". In this case, it's true!

Green vegetable flavors like fava and green bean, and especially the more aggressive artichoke and asparagus, are tricky with wine. My top three pairing picks: (1) Ligurian white wines, including vermentino and pigato, (2) Austrian grüner veltliner, and (3) sauvignon blanc, especially from the Loire Valley. Besides the subtle green tint of each of these types of wine, they all includes aromas and flavors that echo those "green" flavors - in a subtle way of course; too much green-ness is obnoxious in wine!

(1) Ligurian white wines: Liguria is the home of basil, pesto, artichokes, and all manner of other greennees. The vineyards clinging to the rugged Ligurian hills are green. The bottles are green. The labels seem to feature green. It all grows and glows together.

(2) Austrian grüner veltliner: It's a little like sauvignon blanc, but to my palate spicier, tangier, more multi-dimensional.

(3) Sauvignon blanc: I'm not particularly fond of the bell pepper - tomato plant - green bean thing that comes from a naturally occurring compound called pyrazine that's present in the sauvignon blanc grape variety and in some green vegetables. For that reason I drink more grüner veltliner and Italian white wine than sauvignon. But that's a preference rather than a pairing warning - a small amount of that assertive greeness in sauvignon is fine by me, as long as it's balanced by stronger mineral and maybe fruit flavors. Many people can tolerate a larger hit of pyrazine, and in any case, it indisputably makes for a good pairing with green vegetables.

And speaking of green, both the vermentino and the favas from last night's dinner were organically grown.

Lovin' Liguria

Liguria is my second favorite Italian region - after Piemonte, of course. Maybe it's the contrast from Piemonte - sea and seafood and vegetables and everything light and lithe. Tonight: Green Risotto with Fava Beans and 2007 Santa Caterina Colli di Luni Vermentino ($18). I've been drinking this wine once a week lately, whether at home or at Adesso wine bar. Ligurian Vermentino is perfect with all kinds of green vegetables, not to mention with fish or simply as an aperitivo. Fair warning: the 2007 vintage is almost gone. I hope that the 2008 arrives soon and is at least three-quarters as good.

This wine comes to us thanks to Ernest Ifkovitz, a former PMW employee who now imports a great portfolio of mostly organic, biodynamic, and sustainable Italian wines under the name PortoVino. Come in and ask us to show you some of the other groovy wines that Ernest has discovered.

Albiker is back

I sang the praises of Bodegas Luberri's Rioja Joven 'Albiker' 2004 in August 2005. When the 2005 vintage landed a couple of months ago, it was a little discombobulated, so we haven't had the wine since then. But we retasted the 2005 today, and it's back in form (wines, like people, often need some time to grow up). This is a positively slurpable red, all fruit and no oak, plenty of acidity, and just plain delicious. It's hard to imagine food that it wouldn't accompany gracefully, and it plays particularly well with spicy dishes (including tonight's spaghetti all'aglio e olio, which I laced with extra pepper flakes).

In August 2005, I asked, "So where the hell does the name 'Albiker' come from?" Our distributor for the wine, Sean Diggins, set me straight. The winemaker' s two sons are named Alberto and Iker, and he came up with Albiker as a name that gives each of them their due. For most Americans, the name probably suggests a guy named Al who rides a Harley. For me, however, the name will continue to call to mind an Arabic member of Hell's Angels ("Al" being the Arabic definite article: "The"). Yes, a little learning is a dangerous thing. But a little Albiker is a wonderful thing, and a lot of it is even better.