the legion of the purple teeth

This Sunday, the BF made a request for a healthy dinner. He knows if he left it up to me, we’d be eating something fried in butter, drenched in cream, followed by a cheese course and a dessert course. I would also act like I forgot about the existence of vegetables. This is another recipe learned from my last class at Hipcooks…

In class we did it with oyster mushrooms that looked fresh. I had to make due with dried shitake mushrooms from Mitsuwa market down on Alameda in Little Toyko, soaked in hot water to bring them back to life. I sauteed them up with some olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and 3 cloves of chopped up garlic, added in a handful or 3 of roasted pine nuts (a Tony favorite), then indelicately shoved the messy mix into a big pocket cut into the salmon filets. You can’t see the stuffing here because I purposely hid it from you! Haw! Wrapped the puppy in rice paper and then sauteed it until the wrapper was crispy and brown. Guzzled it with this:

We had a slight misfire with the wine sitch for dinner. I had a bottle of Rose from 05 waiting in the fridge and it looks like it had gone bad – it was too dark for Rose, and kind of had a vinegar nose. So I tried my second best option, a bottle of Pinot I had hiding away in the cellar. At least now I have confirmation that I can start opening all the 2004 Santa Barbara pinots. After popping the cork, the smell of fresh, fruity BERRY notes flooded our noses – strawberries and cherries – smooth tannins – rich and elegant, not flabby and flat. Snooty wine jerks are always talking about pinot with salmon, and now I get it. Something about the oil in the fish and the bright lively fruit in the pinot just goes damn well together.

More about this bottle – Longoria Wines

I stalk this grape. I stalk Mourvèdre and Petite Verdot because everyone else is out chasing cult cabs and princess-y pinot noirs like they are the blonde square-jawed jocks and privileged prom queens of the wine world. To me, Mourvèdre is the new foreign exchange student. He is swarthy, bold. He looks like he plays the guitar. Probably speaks French and Spanish. Okay I’m getting a little carried away. This is what happens when you drink too much, kids!

This bottle was recommended to me by Steve, the knowledgeable wine dude at the Glendale Whole Foods. He always seems to show up just in time to give me the inside track. He sees he holding a cheap bottle of Malbec and I ask about it. “Ehhh, try this, this is bolder. Do you cook? Do you LIKE to cook?” He explains that this Spanish blend of Monastrell (what they call Mourvèdre in Spain), Cabernet Sauvignon, and a little Tintorera goes perfectly with certain flavors in Spanish cuisine. I know this sounds…very W.C. Fields-ish but I love wine with breakfast on leisurely Sunday mornings. I don’t get TANKED, people. But a nice mouthful or two of nicely paired wine with a breakfast followed by plenty of water is not a cardinal sin. And I should know, after 12 grueling years of Catholic school.

Breaking It Down
Full Name: Bodegas Castano Solanera 2004 (Yecla)
Technical Details: 65% Monastrell, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Tintorera at 14.5% alcohol.
Interesting Label Stuff: “produced from the oldest vines of the indigenous Monsatrella variety” – “aged in oak for 10 months”
The Occasion: Breakfast. Namely, this frittata:

And? Steve the wine dude from Glendale Whole Foods (STWDFGWF?) advised me to enjoy this tannic and dry red wine with a food item that’s been goosed up with some kind of Spanish flavoring. The onions in the frittata were fried with Spanish smoked paprika which danced well with the tart, dark fruit flavors in the wine. I grated some Iberica Spanish cheese on top (because everything always needs cheese) and that too was a perfect match for the wine, which proves once again the conventional wine wisdom you should sip wines with the native foods made nearby (mmm, I just thought of Santa Maria BBQ tri tip sandwich with a Santa Barbara syrah…) Strangely enough, upon opening, it went perfectly with the fried paprika-spiked frittata and could do battle with the onions, the potatoes and the cheese without being drowned out. Enticing, rich and warm on the nose, a hefty-ish alcohol level, lovely and dark in the glass. And one day later the wine was perfect on its own – it had mellowed out just a bit, and was much less unruly and bold. And fine, if you’re one of those people that insist on knowing, Robert Parker gave this bottling a solid 92 points. At $11 a bottle, I can totally go back to get another one and just have it with tapas – thick ribbons of Serrano ham, hunks of Manchego, some spicy chorizo? Yeah, the good stuff.

Buy it at Wine.com

A few months ago I started taking classes at Hipcooks in the Brewery art colony. It was part of a general order from the head shrinker that I both put myself in the position of student or newbie to someone else’s experience *and* do something outside of my comfort level. Before that first cooking class, I was more of a Food Network passive junkie who bought cookware and chef’s gadgets and just let them pile up in my space-cramped kitchen. Perhaps it was that joke on SNL in the There Will Be Blood skit when the narrator says “Food Network – porn for fat people” that also helped me get off my butt and start using all my kitchen junk. If Crate and Barrel insists on being irresistible to me on paycheck Fridays, I better put it all to good use. And if I’m gonna do all this damn cooking and wine guzzling, I better blog about it too, eh? So here’s part one in a series about ‘not being a lazy fat-ass who just watches bobble-headed people making food whilst eating Doritos’.

Here’s my latest effort. The recipe is from the last Hipcooks class I took, “Healthy, Fresh and Zingy 3″ – a goat cheese tart.

I was slightly intimidated to give this a shot because of the crust making. Who the hell wants to take the time to make a crust? Crust making sounds like something John McCain does naturally, in his sleep! And to top off my general paranoia, in class when this was demo-ed to us, our instructor whipped out a pre-made crust, par-baked and light golden so we never actually saw the labor involved in person. But like most things in life, if you just follow the damn instructions you’re going to be okay! So for once, instead of being impatient, I really let the dough sit for an hour in the fridge as instructed! I rolled it out between plastic wrap as instructed! Wow, so this is how baking works! My only major screw up was not having enough flour and using whole wheat flour as a substitute. Despite this tweak, I think it came out pretty damn good. My major proof in support of its damn goodness is the fact that I baked this on Saturday and come Monday morning, exactly one quarter of it was left. Yes, we ate it all. It’s like a fancy pants cheesecake – half goat cheese, half cream cheese, spiked with lemon zest both in the crust and in the filling, and topped with slivered almonds. We did not pare it with any specific beverage, although damn. I bet it would be good with cool, crisp proseccoto cut that creaminess, but not too acidic to kill its light citrusy, vanilla subtleties. Mmmm, **Homer voice** citrusy, vanilla subtleties…