October 24, 2014 Dinner party at Tom and Janis LaFountain’s The Shed’s recipe for baked enchiladas with red sauce and toasted garlic bread

Friday night was a special deja vu experience that had the chance of being replicated.  It was a close to going to The Shed as one can get and not go to the Shed.

Somehow Janis obtained the Shed’s recipe for its red sauce and made baked enchiladas identical to those at The Shed and even replicated the dish identically by making the same type of toasted French garlic bread.  I was blown away.

There are two other observations that I need to make about the meal.  First is that beer is a far better emulsifier of the hot and heavy flavors and ingredients in the enchiladas.  We usually drink beer when we eat at The Shed, but tonight because Doug and Crystal favor red wine, we drank red wine.  Unfortunately for me, I stayed up half the night with digestive discomfort, unpleasant enough to not sleep, but not unpleasant enough to cause any pain or lack of function.  I watched movies on TV and marveled at the excellence of the meal and that soon I would have the ability to prepare a credible Shed enchilada, because Janis had promised to send me and you the recipe.

Here is the recipe:

The other noteworthy thing, lies in the wine selection.  Janis and Tom had bought several bottles of Spanish red wine.  One was an Eguia 2009 Reserva Tempranillo and the other was Marques de Riscal Reserva.  Both wines are produced in Elciego, Spain, which is in the middle Rioja.  I tasted the two reds side by side and noticed that the Riscal was noticeably smoother and cleaner tasting.

 

After dinner the reason why the Eguia was more earthy and the Riscal cleaner tasting occurred to me.  When we were in Spain several years ago I took a tour of Riscal during which we visited its fermentation and aging areas.  I recall that they showed us the area where they rack the wine and, as I recall the guide said that Riscal racks the wine four or six times in the first 1 ½ years.  Here is Wikipedia’s description of racking.

Racking, often referred to as Soutirage or Soutirage traditionnel (meaning racking in French^[1]), also filtering or fining, is a method in wine production of moving wine from one barrel to another using gravity rather than a pump, which can be disruptive to a wine.^[2] The process is also known as Abstich in German and travaso in Italian.^[3]
Alexis Lichine's Encyclopedia of Wines and Spirits defines racking as "siphoning wine or beer off the lees (in the case of wine) or trub (in the case of beer), into a new, clean barrel or other vessel."^[4] Racking allows clarification and aids in stabilization. Wine that is allowed to age on the lees often develops "off-tastes." A racking hose or tube is used and can be attached to a racking cane to make the task easier. The racking process is repeated several times during the aging of wine.^[4]

So we had in front of us the perfect example to the benefits of more racking versus less racking.

Both the Eguia and the Riscal were carried the same classification as reservas, so they had been produced from grapes grown near the same small village in Spain and aged in the same manner, yet one had a noticeably cleaner taste.  I concluded that the difference must be due to the number of times the wine was racked.

Here is the classification system for Rioja per Wikepedia:

Classification[edit]

Rioja red wines are classified into four categories. The first, simply labeled Rioja, is the youngest, spending less than a year in an oak aging barrel. A crianza is wine aged for at least two years, at least one of which was in oak. Rioja Reserva is aged for at least three years, of which at least one year is in oak. Finally, Rioja Gran Reserva wines have been aged at least two years in oak and three years in bottle. Reserva and Gran Reserva wines are not necessarily produced each year. Also produced are wines in a semi-crianza style, those that have had a couple of months oak influence but not enough to be called a full crianza. The designation of crianza, Reserva etc. might not always appear on the front label but may appear on a neck or ^After back label in the form of a stamp designation known as Consejo.^[8]

For those of you who, like me, like to delve deeper into the legal regulations of things, here is what the consejo designation on the label of a food product means:

The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA – Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación) regulates the quality of Spanish foodstuffs via a labelling system which establishes, among other things, a Denominación de Origen for the country's highest quality produce. A semi-autonomous governing body (Consejo Regulador) exists for each region and for each food type, comprising skilled, impartial members who investigate the quality, ingredients and production process of each product, ensuring they attain specific quality levels. They report to a central council at national government level but are normally based in the largest population centre of a given region and are responsible for enforcing its geographical limits. Products labelled Denominación de Origen, apart from being of superior quality, are expected to carry specific characteristics of geographical region or individual producer and be derived from raw materials originating within the region. Like most of these designations, a fundamental tenet of a DO label is that no product outside of that region is permitted to bear the name.

So the answer to why the Eguia tasted more earthy is the lack of as much racking as the Riscal, even though they are the same type of grape grown in the same area and produced to a reserva level of quality.  If you don't rack as much, you get a less clean tasting, more earthy tasting wine in a tempranillo reserva.

  

After dinner we ate pieces of Suzette delicious Tres Leches cake.

We said goodnight at 10:00

Bon Appétit