December 8, 2012 Bodhi Day Sit and Dinner Party – Lasagna, Salad and Croatian Cheese and Apple Strudels

December 8, 2012 Bodhi Day Sit and Dinner Party – Lasagna, Salad and Croatian Cheese and Apple Strudels

I sat with my small Zen meditation group of three for a half day from 9:00 am to 3:00 p.m. in honor of Bodhi Day or Rohatsu in Japanese, which is usually celebrated on December 8 and is celebrated as the day Buddha figured everything out and reached enlightenment:  how to break the wheel of suffering and life and death, the law of Karma and understanding the four noble truths and reaching a state of Nirvana or complete awakening or understanding for the first time in 589 B.C.E.   

Shortly after reaching enlightenment the Buddha started teaching the path to enlightenment and the four noble truths.

The four Noble Truths are explained in Wikipedia as follows:

The four truths are presented within the Buddha's first discourse, Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma (Dharmacakra Pravartana Sūtra). An English translation is as follows:^{[web 4]}

1. "This is the noble truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, illness is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are dukkha; union with what is displeasing is dukkha; separation from what is pleasing is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha."
2. "This is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination."
3. "This is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, nonreliance on it."
4. "This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of dukkha: it is the Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration." ^[13][e][f]

   We sat for three 30 minute periods and then had lunch and then an 1 ½ hour informal sit with walks between of the sits and after lunch and then had tea and cookies and talked; a pretty leisurely sitting schedule. 

Lunch was vegetarian and I brought the squash, potato and celeriac casserole we had made Friday night.  J.B. made curried vegetable soup and Chris brought a lovely, round Sage Bakery farmhouse bread made with mixed whole wheat and white flour and butter and apples and a pear.

When I returned home around 3:30 p.m. I found Willy and Bobbie jack hammering the last hardened area of dirt to dig a trench in order to expose the water line from the meter at the street to the house.

Everything was tidied up by 5:00, so we got dressed and grabbed a bottle of Italian Da Vinci Chianti and drove to Ed and Ben’s house in Tome for their Christmas Party.  Ed works for Suzette as her horticulturalist.  He has had several interesting careers, including being a culinary school trained chef and working in the kitchen at El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon (one of Santa Fe RR’s original Harvey Houses) and then for 19 years being a guide for rafting trips on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, before coming to Albuquerque.

We learned that Ed’s ancestry was Croatian when he offered us lovely cheese and apple strudels made with phylo dough.  He told us the story of making phylo with his grandmother by stretching a piece of dough out until it was unbelievably thin to make the wrapping for the strudel.  I especially liked the cheese strudel made with cottage or ricotta cheese and flavored with sugar and lemon juice.

For dinner Ed had made platters of vegetarian and meat lasagna and a large salad with fresh mushrooms and tomatoes and green onions.  Both lasagnas were great, although I especially liked the vegetarian lasagna with its rich creamy mushroom sauce and layers of mushrooms and spinach.

After sitting beside the fire in their new brazier on the second story deck attached to their house, which is nestled among large cottonwood trees near the edge of the Rio Grande bosque, talking and sipping wine.  We ate a lovely dinner of beautifully prepared food with them and their other guests and played an elaborate game of progressive gift claiming organized by Ben and eating Ed’s delicious meal, we went home around 9:30 p.m.   Ed was kind enough to give us a platter of strudels.

Bon Appètit

 

 

  

December 7, 2012, Something old becomes Something New: Dinner – PPI Spaghetti with Clam Sauce

Last Friday night we made Spaghetti with clam sauce for dinner with fresh manila clams from Costco ($3.49/lb.)  This Friday we were tired and did not want to create a big meal.  So I took the PPI clam sauce and the PPI spaghetti mixed with the spaghetti with Pesto from a previous meal of PPI Lamb and sauteed spahetti in pesto sauce that was combined with the PPI plain spaghetti in a bag. 

Suzette combined the PPI spaghetti with the PPI Clams and Clam Sauce in a large enamel casserole and I stripped the threads off ½ cup of sugar snap peas and added those to the mix and Suzette heated the whole concoction until it became a clam soup with noodles.  The result was wonderful, because the spaghetti softened and absorbed the clam and pesto sauce's flavors.

I opened a bottle of 2011 Laurent Reverdy Sancerre that I recently bought at Trader Joe’s ($12.99) to drink with the clam soup.  Suzette and I both agreed that the Sancerre lacked character and the normal zip of citrus and minerality of Sancerre.  It was like drinking dead wine with no character or interesting flavor. Alas, there are some bad Sancerres.  I guess you must pay to get the good stuff sometimes.  One of my rules about buying wine is that sometimes you can buy a good cheap wine, but the price to be paid for that wonderful experience is that sometimes you have to drink some bad wines.  We use the really bad wine for cooking so it is not a total loss.  The Laurant Reverdy Sancerre is a step above a bad wine.  It is a cleanly made but unexciting wine, so it is a  candidate for something like a kir; the addition of some sweet liquor to an inoffensive wine without character or flavor that adds flavor to the wine and makes it interesting enough to drink.  It will never had character, but it with the addition of some interestng flavoring liquor it will be drinkable. 
    
After dinner we heated and ate the wedge of pecan pie that Cynthia Elliott and Ricardo Guillermo had brought on Tuesday evening with scoops of chocolate ice cream.

Later in the evening during and after watching “Moneyball” we made another celeriac, Hubbard Squash and potato casserole.  I chopped and boiled two russet potatoes, the last ½ of celery root.  Then Suzette creamed them with cream and butter and added the plain roasted PPI squash flesh and put that mixture in a pyrex baking dish and garnished it with pinion nuts and Pecorino Romano cheese she had pulverized in the Cuisinart.

Bon Appètit

 

  

December 4, 2012 Dinner – Grilled Lamb, Squash and Celeriac Casserole, Red Pear Salad and Pecan Pie

December 4, 2012  Dinner – Grilled Lamb, Squash and Celeriac Casserole, Red Pear Salad and Pecan Pie

Sometimes just the right amount of food prepared with great ingredients and care makes a perfect dinner.  Tonight was just such a meal.  Suzette talked to Cynthia Elliott the other day and they decided that Cynthia would make a salad and dessert and we would make a vegetable and grill a leg of lamb.  Not a very specific menu, so lots of room to create and Suzette and Cynthia are fully capable of creativity in the kitchen.

On Saturday I went to the garden and gathered a handful of fresh herbs, oregano, garlic greens and rosemary and stuffed them into the cavity of a boneless leg of lamb (Costco $4.99/lb.) and added a couple of Tbsps. of olive oil, and 1/3 bottle of PPI French red wine and marinated it in the meat drawer of the fridge for four days, so it was permeated with herbaceous wine flavor. 

On Monday I went to the garage fridge and brought in a four pound Hubbard squash grown in Suzette’s organic garden at the Center for Ageless Living in Los Lunas.  We cut the squash in half and roasted it in the oven until the flesh softened to almost mush. 

On Tuesday evening I peeled and cubed ½ of a celeriac root (celery root) and one russet potato and we boiled those for about fifteen minutes until they softened and then I found a recipe from Bon Appètit on the internet that said to make a potato and celeriac mash you simply whipped the boiled vegetables with cream and butter.  So Suzette whipped the celeriac and potato with butter and cream and added about two or three cups of the roasted squash and put it into a large enameled casserole pan and garnished the top with chopped pinion nuts and Pecorino Romano cheese. 

Then we turned our attention to the lamb.  Suzette insisted that we segment the leg of lamb into three pieces so that there were two thicker chunks and a thinner piece, so she could regulate the fire and cooking time on the thinner piece so it would not dry out.  This turned out to me one of the revelatory discoveries of the meal.

When Cynthia and Ricardo arrived at around 6:30 p.m. Suzette covered the pot of squash and celeriac and baked it in the oven for about twenty minutes while the lamb was grilling and we sipped a lovely 2006 Cline Vineyards Zinfandel with French spreadable cheese with garlic and herbs spread on toasted slices of a baguette from the new Bosque Baking Company at 922 Coal SW in downtown Albuquerque (tel. 234-6061) that Cynthia and Ricardo brought.

Cynthia said when she arrived that she had baked a pecan pie and everyone likes pie.  I said pecan pie is my favorite and that I wanted the recipe.  Cynthia also brought a salad bowl filled with lovely red pear slices, arugula, spinach, cucumber, cheese squares, and celery and a vinaigrette dressing. 

So, when the lamb came off the grill there was a frenzy of activity in the kitchen.  While I sliced the lamb, Suzette fetched the squash casserole, Cynthia dressed and tossed her salad and I poured more red wine.

Soon after we began eating I saw that we had nearly finished the bottle of Cline Zinfandel because it was so smooth and drinkable, so I went to the basement for another bottle of Zinfandel.  I was inspired by the lightness of the Cline Zinfandel and decided, in accordance with our new policy to drink the older wines in our cellar, to try the last bottle of a case of Pacific Star 1998 B-X Ranch Reserve Zinfandel, we had bought at its production facility at Myers Flat on the Avenue of Giants in the coastal redwoods on Hwy. 101 in Mendocino County in 2008.  Unfortunately, this year when I made a special side trip to Myers Flat to visit the PacStar tasting room, it was closed. 

So when I consulted the internet today, I was thrilled to see that Pacific Star Winery still exists and has its main winery facility at Fort Bragg, CA and that is the most westerly winery in the U.S. and more or less at the end of Anderson Valley, where we have been going every other year to attend the Pinot Noir Festival in Philo.  Anyway, the PacStar Zinfandel was luscious, silky smooth, except for a heavy sediment on the side and bottom.  My recollection was that we paid $90.00 for the case of Zin or $7.50 per bottle. 

We had over ½ bottle of the Pacific Star Zin left when we had finished our plates of food, so we just sat and talked and sipped the lovely wine until it was gone and even afterwards enjoyed the lingering taste of smoothness and light fruitiness.  This is the lightest zinfandel I have ever tasted; an ultimate example of a rich fruity California Zinfandel.   

Finally, we decided to cut into the pecan pie.  Cynthia sliced pieces and garnished them with scoops of Hagen Daz vanilla ice cream.  I brought out my new bottle of raspberry liquor and we tried it but it was a little harsh so we added more Trimbach raspberry liquor to sweeten it.  I put out the Trimbach Mirabelle plum brandy with the raspberry liquor and also made mint tea with dried mint from the garden.  The pecan pie was wonderful with a crisp top covered with pecan halves and without a gooey corn syrup filling and with a terrific crispy crust.   

At 9:00 p.m. we all looked at each other and said it was bedtime and so Cynthia packed up her stuff after graciously leaving us a large wedge of pecan pie and our giving them a container of squash casserole.

I can not tell you how wonderful this meal was.  Everything was interesting and perfectly cooked from the newly discovered bakery in our neighborhood to the lovely pecan pie to the best zinfandel I have ever tasted to the discovery of how to properly cook a leg of lamb to the unusual and the discovery of a new taste and ingredient combination of celeriac with Hubbard squash.  All just great.

Bon Appètit           

December 1, 2012 Dinner - Steak and Mushrooms, Potatoes and Salad

December 1, 2012 Dinner - Steak and Mushrooms, Potatoes and Salad

We worked on Saturday, so when we got home we did not want to fix a big meal.  We had bought a package of boneless rib eye steaks at Costco ($7.99/lb.) on Friday evening that was still unfrozen, so we took out two nice ones.  I also had purchased a bag of teeny weeny fingerling potatoes at Trader Joe’s on Thursday.   We also had a fresh container of butter lettuce with the roots on that we had purchased at Costco, so we decided to make a dinner that I must have eaten a 1000 times in my youth, steak, potatoes and salad.  Suzette said , “Let’s sauté some mushrooms, so I got out the last of the white beech mushrooms, the fresh shitake and the baby portabella mushrooms and sliced and sautéed about two cups of them.

I made vinaigrette dressing for the salad with the last two little sprigs of tarragon from our garden, tarragon wine vinegar and olive oil, ½ tsp. of German deli mustard and one smashed clove of garlic.  I then chopped up two large sprigs of parsley from our garden and about seven or eight chive stalks from the plant in the dining room while Suzette boiled the potatoes and grilled the steaks.  I tore the lettuce and spun it and we threw it in the large salad bowl with slices of palm hearts and Roma tomatoes. When the steaks were cooked we let them sit until Willy arrived home and then we cut them up and served them with potatoes garnished with chives and parsley and salad.  I fetched a bottle of Wellington Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon but it was not as delicious as their single vineyard cabs.    

Bon Appètit

December 2, 2012 Turkey and Dumpling Soup and Turkey Salad

December 2, 2012 Turkey and Dumpling Soup and Turkey Salad

There comes a time after Thanksgiving when one can no longer stand to see all that leftover turkey and one finally bites the bullet and converts it into more or less creative dishes.  We reached that point on Sunday December, with the prospect of lots of Christmas cooking ahead of us, Suzette, dragged in the large pot of turkey broth we had made with a mirepoix (carrots, onions and celery) and herbs from the garden and meat stripped from the turkey carcass, cooked into a thick stock after Thanksgiving and I took the bags of PPI white meat and dark meat plus mayonnaise and pickle relish from the fridge.

While Suzette made her noodle dough, I minced two stalks of celery and two carrots and ½ onion and we heated and then strained the broth to separate the liquid from the meat and we then put the freshly minced celery, onion and carrots into the broth and I began picking through the solid scraps remaining from the broth to remove as much of the meat from the bones and fat as possible. I accumulated about three cups of meat, which we put into the broth also.  Then Suzette rolled out the noodle dough cough and cut it into strips and then squares and I stirred the broth as she put the squares of dough into the broth and we cooked the pot of Turkey and dumpling soup for about another ten minutes to cook the noodles (dumplings).   I poured out the last of the Handley Sauvignon Blanc and we had a bowl of soup and a small glass of lovely white wine for dinner.

Suzette then chopped up the sliced turkey in the Cuisinart and added mayonnaise and pickle relish and made a large bowl of turkey salad.

Earlier on Sunday morning we went to Santa Fe with Willy and met Amy for lunch at Cowgirls on Guadalupe a little before noon.  The day was clear and warm, so we sat outside on the patio.  I like Cowgirls, because the menu is diverse and offers a wide range of choices from semi-elegant, like pear and arugula salad and corn beef hash with poached eggs and Hollandaise Sauce to down scale comfort food, like Mexican food, hamburgers and BBQ.  Suzette ate the corn beef hash and poached eggs special from the Sunday Brunch portion of the menu.  I ate a red pear salad with candied pecans and arugula from the Autumn Menu, Amy had Huevos Rancheros with green chili, fried potatoes and black beans from the Sunday Brunch menu and Willy ordered a BBQ brisket plate from the regular menu.  Willy and I had ordered other items but they were not available so we changed without any aggravation.   The girls ordered Bloody Mary’s that were brought a few minutes after 12:00 noon.  

After lunch Amy went back home and we then went to the Fine Arts museum and the History Museum.  The Fine Arts Museum was celebrating New Mexico’s Centennial by mounting an Exhibit of 14,000 years of New Mexico Art, ranging from beautiful 14,000 year old Clovis points to Modern art, such as a recent piece of fused glass by Judy Chicago.   I was surprised to see two Kenneth Chapman watercolors.  Both were renderings; one of the School of Anthropology on Museum Hill and the other of the Fine Arts Museum in which we were standing.  I do not know if Chapman took a role in the design of the museums or simply served as draftsman of the renderings, but it was great to see the prominence with which his contributions were treated.   Upstairs was a traveling show of fused colored glass, called Chromatic Fusions that was interesting, also.

We then walked over to the History Museum to see the Ronald Woodman photos.  There was a great wide angle shoot from the top of Tome Hill showing the long line of pilgrims trekking up Tome Hill and the entire Rio Grande Valley around Tome and Los Lunas.  We tried to identify Suzette’s facility, but could not.  The History Museum also had an exhibit of religious art including a recent handmade Bible and a number of photographs of the religious diversity of New Mexico from Moradas to Buddhist Monasteries.  

We then walked to the Sweeney Convention Center and saw the Spanish Winter Market and then drove to the Railyard and walked through the indoor Flea, while Willy went to REI.

After dropping Willy off at Amy’s in El Dorado we drove home and began to put together the turkey dishes described above.

Bon Appétit

November 27 Cheese and Gravad lax and November 29, 2012 Book Club Meeting food

November 27 Cheese and Gravad lax and November 29, 2012 Book Club Meeting food

Last week our new neighbors Doug and Crystal called and suggested that we get together for a glass of wine on Tuesday evening because Crystal wanted to get my recipe for gravad lax.  So last Thursday I bought two salmon filets and two packets of dill and made gravad lax over the weekend.

Gravad lax Recipe per 3 pounds of salmon

Two matched filets of salmon weighing a total of 3 pounds

2/3 cup of Salt

1/2 cup of sugar

1 tsp. of black pepper crushed finely

2 bunches of dill

You mix the salt, sugar and crushed pepper.  You put the filets in a dish that just holds the fish so that the liquid generated by the curing process will cover the fish to the greatest extent possible.  Then you lay a layer of dill in the bottom of the dish, then coat the outside of the first filet and lay it in the dish, skin side down.  Then you coat the inside of the salmon filet with a layer of dill and the dry ingredients and do the same for the other filet (coat both sides with the mixture and lay dill on the top of the skin side out of the second filet and pour any remaining mixture on the top of the skin and dill of the second filet and cover dish with saran and put a brick on it to force the ingredients into contact with the fish.   Then I put the dish in the fridge and turn it once after 12 hours so the fish is cured a total of 24 hours.

On Saturday Suzette and I went on a shopping excursion, first to Whole Foods where we bought duck mousse paté and Leyden cheese and then to Costco where we bought sugar snap peas, butter lettuce, an Irish Cheddar, a small wheel of French Brie from Normandy, and a California Goat cheese and two loaves of whole grain bread. 

On Tuesday I went to Trader Joe’s and bought 10 bottles of wine, 2 bottles of Cognac, artichokes, and capers.    

Tuesday night Crystal and Doug arrived at 7:00 p.m. with a bottle of Justin 2007 Isosoceles (88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, and 4 % Merlot, unfiltered) from Paso Robles located near U.S. Hwy. 101 between Santa Barbara and Monterrey in Monterrey County and a wedge of lovely French soft Blue cheese (Mildenbleu?) and a baguette from Whole Foods.  I cut thin slices of whole grain bread and we put out the above described cheeses and the paté and I cut slices of gravad lax and thinly sliced some small cornichons (Trader Joe’s) because I like a slice of cornichon on my pate.  I then sliced and toasted slices of baguette and whole grain bread and we sat in the T.V. room next to the fireplace and talked and ate and drank.  After about an hour we had drunk the Justin, so I went to the basement and brought up a 2007 Londer Vineyards Paraboll and opened it.  Everyone liked its heavier character that was a good match to the weight and character of the Justin.  We also made a salad with the butter lettuce, palm hearts, roma tomatoes, and PPI string beans and a vinaigrette dressing made with the Selman’s olive oil from Chile and Suzette’s homemade tarragon white wine vinegar.  By around 10:00 p.m. we called it a night after lots of lovely cheese and wine and a sliced up fuji apple for dessert.  Doug and Crystal are both marathoners, so they are very careful about what they eat.  

On Wednesday I made myself a plate of PPI turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and gravy and ate the PPI salad and went to meditate.

Thursday evening was my Monthly book club meeting.  This month was my book selection (Three Empires on the Nile) and my responsibility to host the group.  We had ten of the twelve members in attendance.  I put out the same stuff we had eaten on Tuesday minus the French Bleu cheese and salad.  I made a fresh onion dip with dried onion soup mix and sour cream.  I did not have nuts so I looked in my 1000 Recipe Chinese Cookbook and found two recipes for roasted nuts.  So I added cinnamon, allspice, anise and ½ cup of sugar to about ½ cup of water in a sauté skillet and boiled 1 lb. of raw peanuts in the liquid until the liquid greatly reduced.  Then I cooked them in a wok with more sugar and 1 Tbsp. of peanut oil and a dash of sesame for a few minutes so they would get sticky with sugar and oil.  Then I salted and roasted the peanuts in a pie pan and roasted them in the oven for 1 ¼ hours until the liquid evaporated and the nuts turned golden brown.  They had finally dried out and solidified and Suzette broke up most of the larger clusters.

After a court appearance Tuesday morning I went to Lowe’s and bought corn and potato chips, a guacamole dip and Jumex juices ($.33/can) and some bulk items such a banana chips, Japanese rice cracker mix, and sweetened pineapple chunks ($4.99/lb.).  I also put out cookies and chocolates and pretzels.  Keith Carroll had offered to bring a bottle 2007 Archery Summit Dundee Hills Pinot Noir (about an $80.00 bottle), so I agreed to open a bottle of Londer Estate Grown Pinot Noir (about a $35.00 to $40.00 bottle).  I also opened a bottle of Trader Joe’ Napa Valley Semillon ($12.99) white which had a slightly sweet cast to it that several of the members liked and drank.  Most members drank the reds, so after a while I went to the basement and fetched a 2005 Seco Highlands Pinot Noir which is an upscale Kendall Jackson wine that Suzette and I bought at the winery in 2008, grown at Kendall Jackson’s Arroyo Seco vineyard estate in Monterrey County ($20.00).  Unfortunately, the Kendall Jackson had oxidized and was a bit bitter.  So two or three good wines and one stinker.

The Three Empires on The Nile by Dominic Green traces the history of Egypt from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 to the conquest of the Mahdi State in Sudan in 1899.  The three empires are the Ottoman Empire that ruled Egypt, the British Empire that took control over the Egyptian government in the late 1800’s and the Mahdi State that was formed by a religious zealot named Muhammad Ahmad, very much like Osama ben Ladin, on the upper Nile centered in Khartoum, that took control of the upper Nile in 1885 when the Mahdi’s Muslim army of around 100,000 massacred Charles “Chinese” Gordon and most of the populous of Khartoum that did not convert on the spot to Islam and held control of most of the upper Nile for about fifteen years.  Finally in 1898 the British and Egyptian forces under command of General Kitchener armed with British Maxim machine guns, which fired 480 rounds per minute, killed 11,000 and dispersed the remaining 52,000 strong Mahdi army in five hours near Khartoum.

The reason why I picked this book was because the Ottoman and British and Mahdi Jihadist revolution in the late 19^th century in Sudan and Egypt’s political interaction with the British and Ottoman Empire is so strikingly similar to today’s Al Qeada movement and American and NATO involvement in the Middle East and the Egypt’s Arab Spring and lurch toward some form of Western European democracy.  In fact the Muslim Brotherhood that rules Egypt now is the direct political descendant of the Mahdi state of 125 years ago.    How history seems to repeat itself!  

Each meeting ends with a dessert, so I served baklava at the end of the meeting.

Bon Appètit

November 30, 2012 Dinner – Spaghetti with Manila Clams, Kale and Sugar Snap Peas Sauce and Baklava

November 30, 2012 Dinner – Spaghetti with Manila Clams, Kale and Sugar Snap Peas Sauce and Baklava

I went to Costco for a late lunch and bought a 5 lb. bag of manila clams ($16.65).  When I got home I put them in chilled water and ice and rode ten miles.  When Suzette came home we had cocktails and watched the news.  At around 6:30 Suzette said she was ready to cook dinner.  We selected spaghetti and Suzette started a pot of water to cook the spaghetti and asked me to go out to the garden to pick fresh kale and parley, while she started melting a stick of butter and crushed four or five cloves of garlic.  When the butter had melted and I had chopped two large stalks of parsley and de-veined about one cup of kale, Suzette added PPI white wine to the large enamel pot and started cooking clams while I stripped the tough stringy edge off 1 ½ cups of sugar snap peas.  After the clams were steamed in the butter and wine broth and shucked and the sugar snap peas cleaned, we added them and the kale to the large pot and Suzette covered and cooked the ingredients together for about ten minutes and then added back the shucked clams while I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2004 Handley Sauvignon Blanc. 

The wine was deep yellow in color and when we tasted it, it had huge character; like slightly wet smell of the microclimate of a Coastal Redwood forest, like the grove on Navarro Creek in Anderson Valley near where the grapes were raised; moist and herbaceous like freshly growing vegetation but also slightly rotting.  Handley Winery sits on the south facing hillside of Anderson Valley in Philo, California, next to Roederer Estates, so it is prime property.  We served large pasta bowls filled with pasta and the briny, buttery Clam and vegetable sauce floating in its soupy sauce.  The wine was a perfect complement because its strength of character and mature fruit that cut like a knife through the light, briny and buttery sauce.

After dinner, we served baklava from last night’s book club meeting with Greek yogurt and some of Suzette’s poached and roasted candied quince.  I drank a cup of mint tea made with dried mint from our garden.

Bon Appètit