June 8, 2014
Chenin Blanc dinner party with Tapenade, Homemade Bread, Grilled Salmon,
Roasted Carrots, Rice, Salad, Mojitos, Clafoutis and lots of Chenin Blanc wine.
We invited 9
of our neighbors for dinner on Sunday evening.
On Saturday Suzette bought about six pounds of Atlantic Farm Raised
salmon and a bag of lemons at Costco.
On Sunday
morning Suzette picked about six or seven turnips and a handful of carrots and
two bags of lettuce and I picked about three dozen snow peas for the
salad. I then cleaned and tore the
lettuce and I cleaned and sliced the turnips, snow peas and carrots and Suzette
blanched them. I also picked about 1 cup
of fresh dill for the salmon.
The menu was
very simple: plank grilled salmon brushed with a sauce of butter, fresh dill
and lemon juice; grilled scapes; roasted carrots; green rice and a salad of
garden greens and vegetables from our garden dressed with a
Green
Goddess dressing
made with
about ¼ cup of each of chives, oregano, basil, and parley (all from our
garden), 1 Tbsp. of garlic (also fresh from the garden), one cup of mayonnaise,
¼ cup of sour cream, 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice, 1 Tbsp. of fennel infused vinegar
and salt and pepper to taste.
While Suzette
went to the Center in the morning to start a repair project, I puttered around
the kitchen, making simple syrup with three cups of water and three cups of
sugar, then making the
Clafoutis
First
scald 1 ½ cup of half and half and heavy cream and 1 1/2 cup of 2% milk in a
sauce pan and let it cool a bit while you place in a
bowl mixing 10 Tbsps. of powdered sugar and 7 Tbsps. of flour and ½ tsp. of
salt.
I made a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stirred into the mixture two whole eggs with three well stirred egg yolks. Then I added the four cups of fresh red bing cherries I had
pitted and cut in half and soaked them with about 3 Tbsps. of cognac and 1 ½
Tbsp. of Grande Marnier night before and folded them several times to coat and
combine the liquor with the cherries.
The recipe usually calls for three eggs and three cups of milk, so the
use of three egg yolks and 2 eggs enriched the custard, as did the increased
amount of heavy cream. I baked the
custard for fifty minutes in a 350˚ oven.
Voila! It was slightly browned on the surface and firm throughout. The extra egg yolk and cream must have
allowed the custard to stiffen and rise a bit.
I put it aside for dessert.
I wanted
some kind of appetizer that utilized the residual heat in the oven. I decided that since I had never made
caramelized pecans before, that I would try to make them with some of the
lovely pecan halves my client, Sammie Singh Jr., raised in his pecan orchard
south of Las Cruces last year had given me.
I found a recipe on the internet that called for whisking 1 Tbsp. of
water with one egg white in one bowl and in a different bowl mixing 1 cup of
sugar with ¾ Tsp. of salt and ½ tsp. of ground cinnamon, mixed together. I followed the instructions, first whisking
the egg white to a froth and then folding 1 pound of pecan halves in that froth
until they were coated with egg white, then stirring the pecan halves in the
other bowl with the sugar mixture until they were coated with the sugar,
cinnamon and salt mixture. Then I placed
the pecans on a buttered cookie sheet and cooked them at 250˚ for one hour stirring
the pecans every fifteen minutes to prevent their sticking together. Voila, the recipe worked perfectly.
At around 2:30 I drove to Lowe’s to
buy four liters of club soda and a 2 lb. bag of powdered sugar to replenish the
larder.
Suzette
arrived home at 3:00 and we set up two 6 foot long tables in the graveled path
along the side of the raised bed garden, which sat 11 easily.
Then Suzette
set up six chairs and she put the plastic table cloth on the table and washed
everything down and filled the bird bath and cut four 1 X 6 inch planks of
cedar to hold the salmon filets and soaked them in the tub, while I made the
Green Goddess dressing and the rice.
Green Rice
I used about ¼ cup each of chopped
chives and parsley and 2 tsps. of fresh chopped garlic to make the green
rice. I put six cups of water with about
1 Tbsp. of Knorr’s dehydrated chicken stock into a large pot and brought it to
a boil. Then I added three cups of rice and reduced the heat and simmered it
for thirty minutes. Unfortunate it was a mistake to try to make three cups of
rice in one pot in my usual manner because the weight of the rice caused the
rice to stick together in one large lump.
We were lucky that Janis brought a lovely platter of roasted carrots
with a herbed remoulade sauce, to save the day so folks did not need to eat
rice for their warm starchy vegetable category.
We told
everyone to come around 6:30, but Melissa Salmons, who was staying with us for
a week, came at 6:00 and we got her situated in the guest bedroom. Terry and Nancy Lamm arrived first around
6:15 with a lovely bottle of 2011 Pillastro Primativo from Puglia that we
opened immediately. The Pillastro had
what I call the new California Zinfandel taste because it is not the harsh
peppery zinfandel we used to get but a softer more complex and integrated
flavor. I liked it a lot. Then at 6:30 other folks started
arriving. Doug and Crystal Baker, fresh
back from their trip to Africa brought us a lovely bottle of 2010 Simonsig
Redhill Pinotage from the Stellenbosch region of South Africa. Barry and Kylene brought slices of a freshly
baked loaf of bread with a bowl of tapenade made with black olives, capers
parsley and grated parmesan cheese as our appetizer. The bread was indescribably delicious and the
fresh tapenade was terrific on it. Barry
is the cook and he is a good one. Then
Janis and Tom arrived bearing a platter of roasted carrots and a small
container of herbed dressing, which Janis described as remoulade sauce. It seemed to be an olive oil based herbed
sauce that went well on the roasted carrots that had partially caramelized. She put them in the oven at a low heat to
keep warm.
While guests drank mojitos and ate
the appetizer and sat in the garden and talked. I tossed the salad and Suzette
tossed the scapes in a large bowl with salt and olive and then grilled the
scapes on the grill until they collapsed and became charred a bit. We then served the scapes as appetizers
also.
While I
chopped the dill and halved the lemon, Suzette heated ¼ lb. of butter and added
the dill and lemon to it, Barry finished slicing the large tomato and then I assembled
the salad with the tomato wedges and the blanched vegetables and tossed the
salad with Green Goddess Dressing while Suzette fetched the water soaked cedar
planks started the salmon on the grill. After
Suzette grilled the salmon on the cedar planks I put rice in a bowl and Janis
took her carrots from the oven and put them on a platter and sauced them and I
filled a large bowl with rice and we were ready to eat. As everyone gathered around the table I fetched
and poured the first wine, a 2010 Moelleux Chateau D’ Epiré that we bought in
Savenniéres in the summer of 2012 as we began to serve the food. Moelleux is usually a little sweeter but this
wine was a beautiful balance of sugar, tannins and minerality that had a
crispness that was impressive. I love
it, perhaps the best of all the wines.
Then we served the best bottle of wine, 2010 Clos de la Coulée de
Serrant. Whereas, Chateau D’ Epiré is an
Appellation Savenniéres Contrólée, Clos de la Coulée de Serrant is one of those
very rare breeds in France, a winery that is so great that it carries its own
appellation; in this case Appellation Savenniéres-Coulée de Serant
Contrólee. Coulée was like a force of
nature in a glass, a compelling strength and character with mineral tannin over notes
and huge fruitiness. It is raised
biodynamically and you could tell that it had sucked up every bit of the
enriched nutrients that it had been fed through the soil. The winery sits on the south facing hillside
on the north side of the Loire River and you can see the stone walls of its
Clos from the restaurant located on Béhaud Island in the middle of the river
where we ate two times. We stayed in
Rochefort Sur Loire in a small chambres de Hotés named Moulin de Geant located
on the hillside above Rochefort on the south side of the river with a lovely view
of the Loire river valley and Savenniéres on the north side of the river. Rochefort and Savenniéres are both located
about fifteen miles southwest of Angers.
We decided to stay in Rochefort because it was the closest we could stay
to Savenniéres and it is centrally located in the Loire river valley between
the Atlantic coast and Tours which were the other places we visited during this
trip.
 |
| the pecans |
After we drank Coulée de
Serrant I opened a bottle of 2012 Famille Bougrier Vouvray which tasted too
sweet and not very complex with a complete lack of minerality after the Epiré
and Coulée de Serrant. Total Wine is the
main importer of this wine and they describe it as
Bougrier Famille Vouvray
Chenin Bl
750ml
Average
Overall Rating
4 / 5
100%1 out of 1reviewers would recommend this product.
Crisp, Honey, Pear, Medium-bodied
Vouvray is up river about 150 miles from
Angers, along the north side of the Loire just about ten miles east of Tours,
so it is similarly situated as Savenniéres but farther upstream. I decided to go to basement and fetch one of
the bottles of Vouvray we bought in Vouvray a Domaine de Aubuisiéres also in
2012. It was much more structured with a
great grapefruit citrusy flavor, but without the tannin minerality of the
Savenniéres. I did not like it as well
as the Savenniéres, but that does not diminish Vouvray much; it just elevates
Savenniéres to my highest pedestal of French chenin blanc whites. Looking at the labels of the two Vouvays, the
Femille Bougrier and the Domaine des Aubuisiéres, I discovered something
interesting about Vouvrays. Vouvray like
Savenniéres is a small village clutching the side of a south facing hillside along
the side of the river, but Vouvray also has a flat plateau on top of that hillside
where the valley rises into open farmland.
The region produces some of the
highest acidity chenin blancs so they have a slightly acidic grapefruit citrus flavor.
We started
the meal by serving a pitcher of mojitos made with fresh mint from our garden
plus rum, club soda, lime juice and simple syrup (made the simple syrup by
being equal parts of water and sugar to a simmer and stopping the cooking as
soon as the sugar all went into solution.
Barry
brought fresh baked bread and a black olive tapenade that was wonderful and
Janis brought an equally wonderful platter of roasted carrot sticks with an
herb remoulade sauce. We served the tender salmon with its dill butter sauce with the rice, salad and carrots.
Finally, the
Clafoutis was brought to the table and the can of whipped cream. I served the Clafoutis with glasses of Chaume
1st Cru 2004 from a small family vineyard we stopped at just east of
Rochefort in the Coteaux de Layon region.
Here is what Wikepedia says about Chaume Premier Cru:
The village of Chaume is situated in
the western part of the Coteaux du Layon area in the commune of
Rochefort-sur-Loire. The village of Chaume used to be one
of the villages which could add its name to the appellation name, to be sold as
Coteaux du Layon Chaume.[2] The requirements for Chaume were slightly
higher than for the other villages. In 2003, INAO elevated Chaume to its own AOC under the name Chaume Premier Cru des
Coteaux du Layon. This choice of name was somewhat unusual for the region,
since no other Loire appellation (in difference from for example Burgundy AOCs) bear the designation Premier Cru or Grand Cru as part of their AOC name. Therefore, the
decision was protested by some other Loire producers, and in 2005 the Conseil d'État annulled INAO's rules for the new appellation,[3] temporarily returning Chaume to its
pre-2003 status. In 2007, the AOC was created anew, now under the shorter and
less controversial name of Chaume and covering 130 hectares (320 acres).[2][4] The vintages 2005 and 2006 were allowed
to carry the new name. Interestingly enough, the must weight and residual sugar
requirements for the new Chaume appellation were set higher than for Quarts de
Chaume.[4] However, Quarts de Chaume AOC producers
still felt that the close association between their AOC's name and Chaume was
causing damage to the value of their wines and continued to object to the AOC
naming, and brought the new AOC to court as well, where it was annulled in May
2009, which would mean that the wine would be back to Coteaux du Layon status.[5] In December 2009 it looked like the
controversy would be resolved by the regional committee of INAO by Chaume being
allowed to call itself Premier Cru, while Quarts de Chaume would be called Grand Cru.
So much for
French wine politics.
I loved the sweet
slightly botrytis flavored Chaume Premier Cru, this most unusual of the wines served
tonight but only the second or third greatest wine of the night with the baked clafoutis
with whipped cream.
We sat and talked
until after 10:00 watching the half moon and Mars in the clear night sky in
what seemed to me to be a very French meal.
Clafoutis is a specialty of the Limousine region of France that is
famous for its dairy cows and rich milk and cream.
The food and
special chinen blanc wines were all great and it was fun to get a group of our
close friends in the neighborhood together for a dinner in our garden.
Bon Appétit
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