With the holidays fast approaching, I often find myself in one of the most stressful times of the year. No, I’m not worried about family get togethers, painful travel, or finding appropriate presents for loved ones.  Every year at this time, I have to start selecting wines for the annual Sagient holiday party.  Over the years, the company has grown and the holiday party has grown with it.  What once was a small group of people sharing a table in a downtown steak house has become a full restaurant buy-out complete with multi-coursed tasting menus and paired wine selections.

As with any large party, picking the appropriate food and wine can be a major pain.  This year, however, I’m feeling more pressure than usual.  Maybe since I’m now “in the business,” I feel that my wine selections for the party will be more carefully scrutinized.  Maybe it’s because we have more wine drinkers in the office these days and so the standard cabernet/chardonnay selection just ain’t going to cut it anymore.  Or maybe it’s because in this tight economy I feel obligated to get a little more cost-conscious on selections without giving up on quality.  Whatever the reason, it is crunch time on wine selections with the party only four weeks away.

And so it was with much amusement (and just a little bit of envy) that I came across a posting on a NY Times blog about the recent holiday party held by Paulson & Co.  Paulson & Co. made about a zillion dollars last year shorting the subprime housing market and apparently is on track to do quite well again this year (shorting is betting on a price or asset to decrease in value).  So, what did these “master of the universe” types have for their holiday party? All first growth Bordeaux.  Not too bad, right?  You can see the menu below and read the article and see the full menu by clicking here.

 

 

For the Sagient team members who follow this blog - sorry, no first growth Bordeaux this year.  What is on tap?  Well, I enjoy torturing the staff a little bit so we’re going to keep the selections (and the location) secret for a while longer.  One thing that I can disclose is our final “wine” selection of the evening.  Nothing like a shot of cheap jet fuel grappa to end the year!

Here’s looking forward to the 2009 holiday party where we’ll hopefully be toasting with some Bruliam pinot noir!

 

Lamb Stew with Chickpeas and Pomegranate Molasses

(co-opted from Cooking Light January 2006)

Please scroll down for the video.

Stew is a delicious, satisfying, seasonal specialty that is relatively easy to make.  You can add or change ingredients on the fly - like substituting one root veggie for another (who cares if you use carrots, parsnip, potato, or rutabaga?).  It’s virtually indestructible, simmering for hours over low heat while infusing your kitchen with that heady smell of hearty comfort food and sweating onions.  You can double batches with ease, freezing some for a busy evening or allowing leftovers sit in the fridge for a few days, as the flavors develop even more complexity and harmony.  Use the “low and slow” cooking technique, which entails cooking with low heat for a more prolonged period of time.  Increasing cooking time at lower temperatures helps dissolve and tenderize the muscle tissue of the cheaper, tougher cuts of meat commonly used for soups or braises.  These meats also have a higher fat content that prevents them from becoming dry and tough after hours in the pot.  Look for beef stew meat, leg of lamb, or pork shoulder.  There is no reason to splurge for Kobe beef, New York strip or rack of lamb for simple stews.  Besides wasting money, it spoils the simple, humble grace of great soups.  I assure you that after 2 hours of simmering, your meat will be spoon tender and wonderful.

Below I will detail the 7 easy steps that will transform your life and restore the power to you.  If you envision it, you can be it!  Just kidding.  However, I will simplify and demystify the 7 easy steps that define great stews, so even a novice cook can wow pals and in-laws with a soulful, rich, homemade meal.

 1.  RIGHT PAN & RIGHT MEAT

Choose a Dutch oven or a large, heavy, lidded enamel pan with tall sides, like one of those gorgeous Le Creuset oval braisers, preferably in that creamy spring blue or that golden orange wash (are you listening, Brian?).  A tight fitting lid ensures no liquid escapes during prolonged simmering and that heat stays constant within.  But any heavy-duty soup pot and lid will do.  As I mentioned, ask your butcher which cuts of meat work best in stews.  This particular recipe specifies lamb leg.  Try to cut your meat into roughly equal sized cubes, so it cooks more evenly.  (FYI: The butchers at Homegrown Meats in La Jolla will happily cube the lamb leg for you).

2.  SAUTE AROMATICS

Aromatics include stuff like onions, leeks, garlic, and shallots.  Use any combination to create a base flavor for your stew.  Allow the onions to turn golden brown and carmelize a little.  You should have brown bits stuck to the bottom of your pan.  These sticky pieces of food create big flavors later on.  Once you’ve browned the onions, remove them from the pan so you can start on your meat.

 3.  DREDGE IN FLOUR

I like to use seasoned flour with salt and pepper.  Dredge the meat cubes in flour and then shake off the extra.  The flour helps create a tasty, crispy brown crust on the meat that seals the juice inside.  The admixture of flour fluff and melted fat also creates a roux of sorts that helps thicken your final product.

4.  BROWN YOUR MEAT

Heat your oil and then add your meat in batches.  Please don’t crowd the meat.  You must ensure your meat cubes have enough space around them to adequately brown up on all sides.  Remember, you’re just searing the outside of the meat; it is still totally raw in the middle (so don’t sample it just yet).  Aim to get a nice layer of brown yummy bits on the bottom of your pan.  You need these for flavor.

5.  DEGLAZE

Add your liquid (traditionally wine or broth) and scrape the bottom of your pan as you pour, and the broth comes to a boil.  The browned bits, called a “fond,” should release fairly easily.  This is the best part.

6.  LOW & SLOW

Cover and simmer your stew.  Simmering is not boiling or vigorously percolating or even chugging along.  Simmer means bubble- pause- bubble- bubble- pause.  It is a perambulating stroll, not a sprint.  Your meat needs time.  Believe me, if you go from raw chunks to cooked through in 20 minutes, your meat will be rubber.  So relax.  Have a glass of wine or read a book.  Hang out.

7.  ADD VEG LAST

So you can’t really “simmer” carrots for 3 hours.  You’ll have grey, tasteless, texture-less mush.  So unless you’re going for puree, add veggies last.  They only need 20 or 30 minutes, depending on their size.  That way you’ll confidently identify a carrot cube from the potato wedge with each bite.

 

Feel free to change up this recipe or pair it with another wine varietal altogether.  The Middle Eastern-inspired flavors of the pomegranate molasses sing out for allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, and even a pinch of clove.  Experiment, and add other spices for fun.  You can also toss in golden raisins, dates or dried fig.  It’s all good.  Drop me a line and let me know how your stew turned out and the wine you chose as its partner.  I’d love to know.  A Bruliam Kitchens Production follows below.  If you can’t see the video, please click here.

 

  

From Cooking Light January 2007

Ingredients

Cooking spray

2  cups  chopped red onion

6  garlic cloves, minced

1/3  cup  all-purpose flour (about 1 1/2 ounces)

2  pounds  boneless leg of lamb, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces

1  tablespoon  olive oil

1  teaspoon  salt, divided

2  tablespoons  pomegranate molasses

2  (14-ounce) cans less-sodium beef broth

2  cups  (1/4-inch) slices carrot

1  (15-ounce) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained

2  tablespoons  chopped fresh mint

1/2  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper

4  cups  hot cooked couscous

Preparation

Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add onion; sauté 10 minutes or until tender and golden brown. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Spoon onion mixture into a large bowl.

Place flour in a shallow bowl or pie plate. Dredge lamb in flour, shaking off excess. Heat oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add half of lamb mixture; sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook 6 minutes, browning on all sides. Add browned lamb to onion mixture. Repeat procedure with remaining lamb mixture and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Add pomegranate molasses and broth to pan, scraping pan to loosen browned bits; bring to a boil. Stir in lamb mixture. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour or until lamb is just tender.

Stir in carrot and chickpeas. Simmer, uncovered, 45 minutes or until lamb is very tender. Remove from heat; stir in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, mint, and pepper. Serve over couscous.

 

Perhaps you’ve noticed there are no Brigade photos of either me or Brian in our Bruliam t-shirts.  “Show me the love,” you cry.  “Represent!”  Still, I promise this egregious omission does not reflect beleaguered passion or wishy-washy commitment.  And so I confess, I secretly harbor a wish to emblazon the Bruliam logo on my personal sportswear.  My first crush was a custom swim cap.  My mind adrift during a grind in the pool, I’d mentally Photoshop badass, Michael Phelps inspired pictures of me sporting reflective swim goggles and a Bruliam cap, mid stroke butterfly.  Never mind Olympic athletes complete the 100m fly in roughly 1/3 the time of my best, dog-pant, wheeze-inducing PR.  Even if I couldn’t convince Brian to play photographer at 6 am at our local, high school pool, at least I’d have a custom cap for my impending triathlon debut.  I’d hoped to wow readers with sagas of finishing first - as-in the first person out of the water after the 1599^th competitor.  But sadly, my sporting event provides mandatory, color-coated caps (mine grey and red- for old and slowed to a stop?).  Undaunted, I’ve discovered the internet advertises custom caps for as low as $3.30 per cap- if you’re buying 100 of them.  So any swimmers out there please drop me a line.  I can handle 5 or 6 caps on my own; I just need 94 more pool pals.

Next I sought to cajole our Bruliam t-shirt provider into printing our logo onto my well-worn, favorite running t.  What’s the harm in decorating a disintegrating, Road Runner clearance rack shirt, if they’ve already got our logo via pixelated JPEG?  I even offered to overnight ship the fraying frock so I’d have it in time for my race.  Well apparently conflicts in quality control preclude their printing on anything other than garb pedaled by their distributors.  Sure they have tech shirts available for purchase, but I have immutable standards of cheapness when it comes to buying gym duds.  I sweat in them, then wash and dry and sweat some more, so I limit my running purchases to the bargain basement.  Parsimony aside, it’s already too late to order a custom top for race day.

But a tri comprises 3 expensive sports, so opportunities for customization abound.  For in the heart of all sports heroes, tenacity precludes abject defeat.  Nonetheless, I think my generous spin teacher (and Ironman competitor and Brigade member “M.S.”) would flip if tried to spray paint the front of her bike helmet with a gargantuan “Bu,” even if I promised to turpentine and return the borrowed helmet in the condition it was loaned.  A huge Bruliam logo sewn to my chest on the front of my wetsuit would be sensational; I am all for being a human billboard.  Unfortunately, the wetsuit is borrowed from our Saturday night babysitter (and triathlete and Brigade member “M.D.”), and I can’t risk the future of my meager social life for business, despite a perverse temptation to channel Superman.  And so I am reduced to adorning my bike - a very fancy, shockingly expensive loaner bike from a once professionally -sponsored triathlete neighbor and friend.  She’s not yet a Brigade member but suspect she’ll never enroll if I crash her bike because my vision was obscured by the giant Bruliam poster I’d affix to the aero bars.  But I still have 6 days until raceday.  So does anyone know a person who knows someone who’s befriended the cousin-once-removed who once sat next to Lance Armstrong’s personal hairdresser?

 

Last week, the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition ran an article titled “Cracking the Code of Restaurant Wine Pricing,” which sought to divulge the reasons behind the staggeringly disparate prices of identical bottles of wine in different restaurants across America. (The article is available by clicking here, but a paid subscription to the WSJ may be required).  The variable cost per bottle was attributed to multiple factors including non-uniform state alcohol tax laws, whether restaurants bought wine as futures, at wholesale, or through second or third party merchants, restaurant volume, and a restaurant’s reputation as a “fine dining” (and I suppose “wining”) establishment.  While some readers are justifiably outraged to learn that their best friends in, say, Dallas paid 30% less for the same bottle of wine they just imbibed at their local steakhouse in Idaho, I blithely factor the overage costs into the general theme of “my dining experience.” 

Obvious price gauging aside, I’ve become more Zen since having kids.  And when I say “my dining experience,” it broadly encompasses the spectrum from dinners at home with my family to eating out in restaurants, high and lowbrow alike.  For instance, I can make fish at home.  If I purchase fresh Alaskan halibut from the local fishery for $21.99/ pound, I can pan sear it, crust it with almond or macadamia nuts, or fry it in panko.  It may have an Asian flair with citrusy teriyaki or ponzu flavors or sit on a bed of roasted red peppers and chorizo, in a preparation I co-opted (i.e. ripped off) from Jack’s La Jolla.  It is certainly cheaper to make this stuff at home than pay $28 to $40 per entrée in a restaurant for similar fare.  Of course this does not even begin to factor in the costs of appetizers, wine, dessert, coffee, cheese courses, mezze, aperitifs…as you can see by my credit card statements. 

Yet at home, even my most fastidious mise-en-place fails to prevent my grubby-fingered children from sticking their dirty mitts into my seared fish proclaiming, “Lily try this.”  Inevitably this is followed by pause - chew, chew, chew - pause - spit, and “Lily no like this.”  Now I have slimy, saliva-y, half-chewed food in my hand, and a nonplussed kid trotting off to watch Dora in the other room, my meal disintegrating in disgusting, partially digested chunks.  I know.  I know; if I were as consistent with my parenting skills as my knife skills, meals at home might be more pleasant.  But given the facts, why wouldn’t I pay $5,435 (the actual cost of a 2003 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon at Prime Steakhouse in Las Vegas) to have someone make my children disappear for a few hours, let alone a snappy 23 minutes (I have low expectations)?  And so I happily pay more than three times wholesale cost to drink a glass of wine in the company of adults - and adults only.  Enjoying wine in a restaurant makes for entertaining adult banter; gulping a glass of wine at home makes my children tolerable, if not marginally amusing.

Nonetheless, I am not wholly immune to the frustrations of absurdly astronomical institutional wine pricing.  Years ago, before kids, Brian and I packed a stellar picnic basket to accompany a summer evening with the San Diego Summer Pops.  Naïve and brain-dead, we put a bottle of cheap Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay (OK, this was a long time ago) on the top of the basket in plain view.  Of course, it was deftly confiscated by an intimidating, music loving 72 year old granny who volunteered for bouncer duty.  Then, to stoke our ire further, the exact same bottle of wine was sold back to us at the concession stand at a 300% mark-up. 

So what is the moral of the story?  Next time you need to evade those pesky wine police, put your bottle of wine at the very bottom of your picnic basket.  Then place a folded bath towel on top, obscuring the bottle and creating a “false bottom” of sorts.  Layer the cold packs next, posturing as if you’re using the towel to absorb the condensation from the ice packs.  Last, carefully layer your food on top.  Voila!  It’s a fool-proof, methodical way to beat the system every time, so you won’t feel so glum the next time you pay $62 for the same bottle of chard you just bought at Costco for $14.99!

 

I first traveled to New York City in 1996 on business.  Like most other first-timers, I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer size, magnitude, noise, and movement of the city.  As I took a cab back to the airport at the end of the week, I distinctly remember wondering how anyone could possibly live and function in this city.  As I returned again and again (and again and again and again, and, well, you get the idea), New York actually seemed to slow down.  I adjusted and began to feel more at ease in the city.  I learned the subway system; I found favorite restaurants and hang-outs, and, probably, most importantly, I learned when it is just easier to walk even if it is raining/snowing/120 degrees outside (actually, what’s really most important is to remember to pack a few extra shirts when it is a 120 degrees and a thousand percent humidity!).  And then a really interesting thing happened.  I started to run into people I knew on the streets.  Sometimes they were business contacts and sometimes long lost college acquaintances, but almost every time I’m now in New York I’ll unexpectantly run into someone I know.  And so, over the course of twelve years and 50+ trips to New York, the city has transformed from totally overwhelming to a very small world.

What does this have to do with wine?  Quite a lot actually.  For most people, walking into a wine store or opening a voluminous wine list at a high end restaurant feels just like the shock and awe of a first time visit to New York.  And it is only with time, repeat visits, lots of trial and error, and hopefully some friendly guidance that one becomes fully comfortable in either of these alien environments.  And then, every once in a while, wine, just like New York, throws you a surprise and reminds you that it really is a small world.

This past weekend, we took the kids to Los Angeles to visit family and friends.   On Friday we had dinner with Kerith’s brother and sister-in-law at Osteria Mozza, the new-ish restaurant from Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton.  The food was really fantastic - lots of great cheese, fresh pasta, and delicious main courses.  The wine list was devoted to mostly Italian varietals and was a little overwhelming even for us.  We’ve been to Italy before and feel fairly comfortable with Tuscan wines, but we are lost when it comes to anything produced north or south of Tuscany.  We decided that we wanted to try a barolo since they typically have some of the same traits as pinot noir.  Barolo is made from nebbiolo grapes and is usually characterized as refined, elegant, and sensual - just like great pinot noir, albeit more tannic.  After some back and forth with the sommelier about various producers and vintages, he steered us to a single vineyard barolo, the 2003 from Saffirio sourced from the Persiera vineyard.  The wine was smooth, food friendly, with lots of dark fruit on the nose, and just the right amount of tannin, overall, a great delight and accompaniment to the dinner.  In a nod to marketing, one of the things that stood out was the label featuring a gnome that looked remarkably similar to that weird mascot on the Travelocity commercials.  The only bummer of the evening was that we requested to take the label home with us, but after waiting about fifteen minutes, we had to give up and leave.  Without the label to remember the wine by, we left with the realistic expectation of never seeing or tasting this fine wine again.  And that would have been that, except for what happened next.

On Saturday we met our good friends Darren and Susanna at Hatfields, another new-ish hot spot.  Again, the food was excellent, with standouts including the Croque Madame appetizer and the lamb entrée.  Our friends brought along the wine for the meal.  First up was a 1990 Perrier Jouet Fleur de Champgne, a remarkable sparkler made from chardonnay and pinot noir.  It had sumptuous aromas and was a great start to the evening.  Then, with a flourish and a promise of a unique and delicious wine to come, Darren pulled from his bag……..yes, none other than the exact same 2003 Saffirio Barolo from Persiera vineyard from the evening before.  The gnome on the label was a dead give-away, and the wine was just as delicious on night two as it was on night one.

The odds of the sommelier at Osteria Mozza recommending this small production, family owned wine from their roughly 100 barolo offerings and then having the exact same bottle show up the very next night via our friends’ private cellar are almost too small to conceive.  By comparison, I probably have a better shot at beating Michael Phelps in the 200M freestyle.  It just shouldn’t happen. 

But then wine, just like New York, has the tendency to compress time and space, bring people together, and ultimately become the exception that proves the rule.  And so, on Saturday night in L.A., by way of a dunce cap wearing gnome from Piedmont, Italy, we were reminded again just how small a world this really is.

 

 

Old-school, traditional, food and wine dogma dictates white wines pair with fish and red wines with meat.  However, rigidly adhering to this reductionist mantra deprives you of a terrific, new classic fish-wine pairing: pinot noir and salmon.  The meaty, fatty, yet delicate texture of salmon naturally partners with the velvety, smooth mouthfeel of good pinots.  One example includes pairing grilled salmon and a pinot redolent with smoky aromas.  The pinot’s smokiness from the barrel oak “toast” mingles with the char on the grilled fish, merging the two flavors.  In foodiecon (”foodie lexicon”), this principle is called “bridging.”  Sure summer is the ultimate grilling season, but with days already getting shorter, I thought I’d give you a basic “cook-it-in-the-kitchen” approach to salmon that can take you through the winter.

Most people are afraid to cook fish.  Dry, overcooked fish is worse than catfood, while an unintentionally rare filet may leave dinner guests queasy.  My preferred technique is to pan sear the fish until the top is golden, and finish it in the oven.  Pan searing creates a great caramel color, seals in flavor and juices, and wins aesthetic points; then the oven’s contained, dry heat can finish the job.

Rigorous culinary research and hours in the test kitchen yielded this easy recipe for a killer pinot-based sauce.  (Truth be told, a 30 second Google search unearthed this recipe from the New York Times, and I added the mushrooms.  But I did make the sauce 3 different times before sharing it with you).  With Brian’s fishing extravaganza as inspiration, I give you my second cooking video:

Technique Tip #2: Perfect Seared Salmon with Pinot Noir Sauce

  

If you are reading this in your e-mail and cannot see the video in the box above, please click here to access this post on our website.  Once the page has opened, scroll down to the video box and click on it to start the video.

 

Receipe:

4 fresh salmon filets, skin intact, about 6-8 ounces each

8 oz mixed exotic mushrooms (morels, cremini etc)

1 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided

½ cup sugar

2 cups pinot noir

1 small sprig rosemary

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon and 2 teaspoons butter, divided

 

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2) To prepare mushrooms, heat 1 teaspoon of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of butter in a small pan. When the oil is almost smoking, add mushrooms, and cook until mushrooms are brown and liquid absorbed. Season with salt and pepper. Keep warm.

3) Place sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with rounded sides and heat to medium. Cook without stirring until sugar liquefies and begins to turn brown (10 minutes). Turn off heat and carefully add the wine. Turn heat to high, and cook, stirring, until caramel dissolves again. Add rosemary spring, and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally.  Remove the rosemary after about 5 minutes.  Then continue to cook the liquid until the mixture is thick and syrupy, reduced to just over ½ cup, about 10-15 minutes.

4) While sauce is reducing, heat oven-proof, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a small bowl. Brush each filet with oil. Season well with salt and fresh pepper. When pan is hot, add salmon skin-side up and sear 3-4 minutes until fish is golden in color. Flip fish so it is skin-side down. Transfer pan to the oven, and cook 10-12 minutes, until fish is opaque throughout and flakes easily with a fork. Remember, salmon is fatty so you have more leeway in the over-cooking department. But be judicious since salmon will continue to cook internally even after it’s removed from the oven.

5) After your sauce is reduced, add balsamic vinegar and butter. Reduce heat to medium low, and cook until butter melts. Add your sauteed mushrooms to the sauce, and season with salt and pepper. Serve the sauce over salmon.

 

Being gone all last week in the Great White North and deluged with work upon my return, I thought it best to dedicate this week’s post to catching everyone up on some outstanding issues:

1.  We are now officially members of the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association!  We took a little heat in the comments section over our contest, but we’ll continue to poke good natured fun at the establishment (at least until we become part of that establishment and then we’ll shun those damn young upstarts).  Next week we’ll start our discussion of our second wine region, the Santa Lucia Highlands.  I can’t wait to see how many people we inadvertently piss off up there!

2.  The Bruliam Brigade pictures are streaming in, and we greatly appreciate them.  We’ve gotten into a rhythm of posting the pictures on Tuesdays so if you send us a photo it may be a couple of weeks before it is posted.  Please be patient and don’t be dissuaded from sending us your best picture.  By spacing the pictures we’re actually increasing the odds of your winning a $250 monthly donation prize.  I’m sure there is some convoluted calculus proof that can show this, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.  Also, we got our second shipment of shirts in today.  For those of you patiently waiting, they’ll be in the mail shortly.

3.  You may recall that Seth M. won a $250 donation prize for being the first person to submit a Bruliam Brigade photo.  He has asked that the prize be donated to Teach For America.  We’re pleased to oblige, and the check is on its way.

4.  As this post is published, Kerith is taking her midterm for the UC Davis course Introduction to Winemaking: Vinticulture & Enology 3.  Will she correctly differentiate bud break from veraison?  Probably.  Can she accurately locate France on a map of Europe?  Ummm, not so much.

5.  OK, now for what you really want to know.  Yes, I survived the trip.  Yes, I actually caught fish.  And, yes, I drank a lot of wine (and scotch, and bourbon, and, well, you get the idea).  Thanks to a recommendation from travel agent extraordinaire (and one of Travel & Leisure magazine’s Top Super Travel Specialists and member of the Bon Appetit magazine travel agent advisory board) Doris White, we stayed at the King Pacific Lodge in northern B.C., and I highly recommend the property if you’re looking for a good medium between outdoor adventure and coddling.  What does that mean?  Well, when I say that “I actually caught fish” I mean that I sat on the boat while the guide baited the hook, got it in the water, and set it in the fish when we got a hit.  When the hook was set, I got off my butt and reeled for a while until the fish was close enough to the boat for the guide to net it.  Then the guide would remove the hook, stun the fish, bleed it out, and reset the bait to start over.  While he was doing this, my responsibility was to ensure there was enough slack in the fishing line and to open my next beer.  Although I screwed up the slack in the line part at least five times, I am especially proud of my consistency in getting the beer cans open. 

Finally tally?  Five salmon and one halibut: short of the eight salmon / three halibut max, but enough to fill the freezer and keep the family fed through the long winter months here in San Diego.  In all seriousness, the place was spectacularly beautiful, the staff and accommodations were first rate, the food was fantastic, and best of all, we had a great group of fellow lodgers up there with us.  Other than the 30 minute flight in a 60+ year old Grumman Goose float plane, the trip was totally stress-free. 

Photographic evidence of our pseudo-manliness is included below.  Don’t we both look stunning in neon red?  Sorry ladies, we’re both taken.

 

 

If you can’t see the picture, please click here.

And the wine?  Well, to be honest it was good but not great.  They certainly had a big varietal selection at the lodge, all from B.C. and pretty much anything you can imagine.  From chardonnay to cabernet to pinot to cab franc, they even had a merlot-pinot blend, something new to me.  What was perhaps most remarkable was the lack of uniqueness in all the wines.  The wines were identical to anything you’d find in mid-tier wines from California, New Zealand, France or any other major wine producing region.  Why?  I think it is because B.C. charges a 117% tariff on all imported wines (similar tariffs are assessed in most of the other provinces).  Yes, you read right - 117%.  That means the $30 bottle of Mondavi Chardonnay is $65 before any mark-up by a retailer or restaurant.  As such, for an average Canadian consumer it is nearly impossible to buy anything other than Canadian wine on a regular basis.  But, even our beer guzzling, hockey loving neighbors to the north want decent wine from time to time, so what to do?  Their solution is to create copy-cat wines that can be sold at reasonable prices within Canada.  So, while good, the wines at the lodge were uniformly unremarkable and not really worth writing about.

However, in Vancouver I had a couple of outstanding Canadian wines at a restaurant called West.  If you are ever in Vancouver I highly recommend this place.  The sweetbreads preparation was probably the best I’ve ever had, and the risotto was pretty close to perfect.  I sat at the bar and chatted up the bartenders and sommelier for most of the night.  They turned me on to the Foxtrot Vineyards Pinot Noir from the Okanagan Valley.  This wine has elements of dark fruit and spice with just the right amount of oak (not a lot of smoke or earthiness which I prefer in pinot, but still quite delicious).  For dessert, I had to try a Canadian icewine and went with a vidal icewine from Ontario (vidal is the grape varietal).  I wish I could tell you what it was, but I was a little buzzed at this point and just assumed that I could check it on the restaurant’s website when I got home.  Unfortunately, they don’t have their wine list online, but I have an e-mail into the sommelier to get the producer and vintage (**See update below).  What did it taste like?  Crazily enough, it tasted like grapes.  Yep, pretty much the sweetest, smoothest, richest grape juice you can imagine.  It was absolutely delicious, but I can’t think of any other wine I’ve ever had that actually tasted like grapes.  Isn’t It Ironic? Don’t You Think? (Sorry Alanis.  No more bad Canadian jokes, I promise).  So, if you ever see vidal icewine on the menu, give it a shot.

OK, enough of the summer re-runs and fish tales.  Starting next week it’s all new programming!

UPDATE 8/1/08:  I received an e-mail back from the sommelier at West.  He informs me that the vidal icewine I had was, in fact, from B.C. - the Ganton & Larsen Prospect Vidal Ice Wine 2006.  The tasting notes I’ve linked to here say the wine tastes like honeyed mango and tangerine.  I still just got grapes, but then again I was buzzed enough to think the wine was from Ontario!

Yes, really.

As you read this I am somewhere in the wilderness of northern British Columbia near the Alaskan border with my good friend Darren battling my penchant for sea sickness and sunburn in an ill-fated attempt to bring home a freezer full of salmon and halibut.  When not doing that, I am hiking and kayaking blundering through the wilderness in a fruitless attempting to prove my manhood.

For those of you who know me, you realize how completely ridiculous this is.  For those of you who are real fisherman (like my Uncle Ron), you probably just coughed your morning coffee up through your nose thinking about me trying to pull this off.  For the rest of you, let me put it to you like this: the suggested packing list included a Gortex or similar jacket.  I went out and bought a neon red one so that when I do get lost in the woods, the rescue party has a better chance of getting to me before the bears.

What’s the upside?  Well, hopefully lots of fresh frozen fish (shhh, don’t tell Kerith that when you factor in all of the costs of this trip, this will be the most expensive fish she’s ever eaten.  It’s going to make Masa look cheap).  And, the booze is all inclusive at the lodge but limited entirely to wines from B.C.’s Okanagan Valley.  Having never tried any wine from that region, I am greatly looking forward to that treat.  Oh, and the floatplane.  I love when you have to provide your weight so that they can properly balance the airplane.  That always makes me feel really safe. 

So, if I buck the odds and survive this combination of Deadliest Catch and Man vs. Wild, I’ll be back next week.

 

Pizza topped with pinot-soaked, caramelized onions and mushrooms, crispy prosciutto, and potato.

 Forgive me, gentle readers, if this entry is cumbersome and unwieldy for its premise requires some foundation.  At our blog’s inception, I anticipated sharing wine-friendly and wine-based recipes to inspire you to incorporate wine into your daily routine.  After all, if you need ¼ cup of wine for a recipe, why not finish the bottle with dinner?  However, after seeing my first recipe framed on the blog space, it looked too long, tedious, and intimidating.  The density of culinary verbiage required to explain pizza-making belies the lovely simplicity of the recipe itself.  Frankly, I guessed most readers lacked the gumption to make yeast-based dough and would simply bypass the recipe challenge.  I struggled to contrive a means of making the recipe more accessible.  Then suddenly, I imagined filming a cooking segment!

Eureka!  I shared my enthusiasm with Brian who was more sobering about the prospect.  Ghastly lighting, a gizmo-free, cheap video camera, and unscripted chaos predict a celluloid disaster; he counseled against it.  Undaunted, I decided to make an ass of myself.

Ultimately the genesis of this video was an ad hoc, off the cuff decision.  I scrapped a well-thought plan to film salmon next week in my exuberance to try it now.  My step-dad was hanging around our house watching TV, having declined an invitation to spend an hour chatting with my mom’s flamboyant hair dresser during her appointment.  Since I was making pizza for dinner anyway, I asked Roger to film the process.  I literally pushed the dirty plates to the side (maximizing the only real value in a cheap, narrow angle lens with poor zoom) so the kitchen appeared presentable, and I started talking.  Lest you imagine I donned an apron to inspire professionalism, I confide that I spent the morning at the Children’s Museum where my darling artiste doused me with yellow paint.  Somehow it seemed more efficient to grab an apron than change my shirt.  (I swear I was not this sorry or pathetic when I was a practicing MD).

Now let me reiterate the obvious: this was filmed at home, in my kitchen, almost entirely with “first takes.”  It is unscripted, amateurish, revealing, and frankly embarrassing.  The video transitions are abysmal, and Brian says it reminds him of “Wayne’s World” segments on SNL.  Believe me, I am no Rachel Ray or Nigella Lawson.  My intent was simply to demonstrate a few kitchen tricks to assuage your fears about working with yeast.

With no further ado, I present our first cooking video:  Pizza Dough 101.  Recipe follows.

 

 

If you can’t see the video in the box above, you can click here to view it.

Now you’ll be laughing all the way to Trader Joe’s to buy your premade pizza dough from the refrigerated display case!

 

RECPIE #1: PINOT PIZZA

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tsp granulated sugar

½ cup good quality pinot noir

2 sweet onions (like Oso sweet or Hawaiian sweet onions), thinly sliced to 4-4 1/2 cups

8 oz mushrooms, cleaned, washed and thinly sliced

3-4 thin slices prosciutto

6 oz. fresh ricotta cheese (fresh from an Italian market is best, although the stuff in a tub works, too)

1-2 small Yukon gold potatoes, very thinly sliced

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1-2 tablespoons of cornmeal for pizza crust and flour for dusting

1 basic homemade pizza dough (recipe follows)

Fresh parmesan cheese for grating on finished pizza

 

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.  Place pizza stone in oven (if using). 

2. Heat olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat.  When oil is hot, add onions and spinkle with sugar.  Sweat onions until they begin to turn translucent and soft (5-10 minutes).  Add mushrooms.  Mushrooms will release liquid and slowly start to turn brown.  After 15-20 minutes, when the pan is dry and onions are golden brown (carmelized), add pinot.  Reduce heat and simmer until all of the liquid is absorbed.  Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.

3. While onions are cooking, prepare the potatoes.  Place thinly sliced potatoes in a single layer on a Silpat or parchment paper-lined baking sheet.  Lightly spray with cooking spray, and par cook 8-10 minutes.  Remove from oven & set aside.

4. Sprinkle workspace with flour.  Roll pizza dough into a 12 inch circle.  Sprinkle cornmeal on pizza peel (if using) or baking sheet.  Place rolled dough on peel or baking sheet.

5. Cover entire pizza surface with caramelized onion mixture, leaving a ½ inch rim at the periphery.  Top with dollops of ricotta cheese. 

6. Cut prosciutto into thin strips and arrange them radially, like spokes of a wheel, from the center of the pizza to the periphery.  Alternate “spokes” of prosciutto with “spokes” of potato.  You should have alternating stripes of prosciutto and potato.

7. Bake for 10-11 minutes.  Then broil 1-2 minutes until procsuitto is crispy.

8. Top with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Serve with leftover pinot.

 

Pizza dough:

Disclaimer: I copped this basic pizza dough recipe from Cooking Light (9/2006). 

Ingredients

2 teaspoons honey
1 package active dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
3/4 cup warm water (100° to 110°)
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 10 ounces), divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
 Cooking spray  or olive oil
2 tablespoons stone-ground yellow cornmeal

Preparation

1. Dissolve the honey and yeast in 3/4 cup warm water in a large bowl. Let stand 5 minutes or until bubbly.

2. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Add 2 cups flour and salt to yeast mixture; stir until a soft dough forms.

3. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic (about 6 minutes); add enough of the remaining flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands (dough will feel slightly sticky).

4. Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray (or olive oil), turning to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°), free from drafts, 30 minutes or until doubled in size. (Gently press two fingers into dough. If the indentation remains, the dough has risen enough.).  Punch dough down and allow to rest 10-15 minutes.

5. Roll dough into a 12-inch circle (about 1/4 inch thick) on a lightly floured surface. Place dough on a rimless baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Crimp edges of dough with fingers to form a rim. Lightly spray surface of dough with cooking spray, and cover with plastic wrap. Place the dough in refrigerator for up to 30 minutes. Bake according to recipe directions.

 

Next week we’ll return to our regularly scheduled story and complete “Where Does Wine Come From: Part 4.”

 

An eye-opening aspect of starting Bruliam Wines is witnessing the dramatic increase in available resources and the corresponding decline in capital required for a startup.

When we started Sagient Research almost ten years ago, we spec’ed out a website design and sent it out to a handful of firms to bid on the project.  The winning bidder came in at $50,000, which we thought was reasonable.  Two weeks into the project, they revised the bid to $300,000.  No explanation was given other than the project was going to be more complicated than they thought.  Well, we fired them immediately and decided to go it alone.  We hired our own programmer and have maintained at least one programmer on staff ever since.  On the hardware side, we attempted to use outside hosting services but even the biggest hosting services were slow and unreliable in the late 1990’s.  We ended up buying our own server and today maintain our own small farm of 16 servers.  Keeping these services in-house required a high initial capital investment and continues to require great time and effort to maintain.  But, having everything in-house gives us a competitive advantage.  We can fix mistakes and change, add, or update our products much faster than any of our competitors, thereby increasing our customer loyalty and retention.

However, little of that tech expense is necessary for many new startups today.  With Bruliam, we run our blog with a free software program called WordPress.  We hired Pro Blog Design to create the look and feel of the site and we use DreamHost to host the site.  We even turned to GoDaddy to register our domain name and host our e-mails (what can I say, I’m a sucker for their commercials). 

Total tech start-up cost?  About $1,200. 

Total time?  About 6 weeks for the site design from start to finish.  Everything else was instantly available over the web.

What does this mean?  It means that there are fewer barriers to entry for new businesses.  Now anyone with a good idea and a little entrepreneurial spirit can launch a new product or service and, more importantly, create a market (local, domestic, and international) for what they are selling.

That said, the Internet is not a business model; it is a delivery and marketing mechanism.  Most of the original dot-coms failed to understand this premise, and even today many of the Web 2.0 companies still don’t seem to understand it (yes, I know FaceBook is cool; it also loses hundreds of millions of dollars a year).  Business is still about creating a product / service that people want or need and deriving revenue from that product / service with high enough margins to cover costs and make a profit.

In our case, the cost of delivery and marketing is less than one half of one percent of what it was ten years ago.  So it stands to reason that with much lower capital expenses and overhead costs, our profit margins should go up and our chances of long term success should exponentially increase…

…so long as our wine doesn’t suck. 

But that’s a post for another day.

 

Have you ever dreamed of making wine?  I have.  I am drawn to the beautiful vistas of wine country- rows of vines clinging to a hillside, full leafy canopies, and green tendrils creeping up wooden stakes.  Think of a postcard: fat bunches of grapes, wet with morning dew, and “Welcome to Napa Valley” in bright yellow letters at the bottom.  I visualized this during labor, when the OB told me to “relax and breathe” (as if!).  Sometimes I imagine that if I could capture that magic my life would be better, amplified- like life in HDTV.  What if I lived in Napa Valley and did my grocery shopping exclusively at Dean & Deluca and the local farmer’s market?  Sure my grocery bills would explode, but their tomatoes probably taste sweeter, their produce juicier, and their greens leafier.  Would my kids actually eat kale if it were 100% organic and from an outdoor stall?  I imagine myself spending all day cooking and baking seasonal dishes from scratch.  While the kids frolicked in our (perfectly groomed, naturally) backyard, my husband, my friends, and I would sit down to a leisurely dinner at our restored, antique, wood farm table.  We’d crack open a bottle of Bruliam pinot.  Think of the “slow food movement.”  Eat organically!  Choose local produce!  You know the drill.  As the sun set, we’d finish those last, precious drops of wine.  We’d put our sleepy kids to bed and wax poetic about our perfect, civilized life, at one with the land.  Aaahhhhhh. 

OK, the reality is that none of my kids eat anything green.  While I do love to cook and often make things from scratch, I am not above reheating frozen gnocchi from Trader Joe’s.  I can coax (or bribe) one kid into a few teeny, weensy bites of apple if I promise banana bread as the dangling carrot.  Our kitchen table, far from a precious antique, is now permanently ruined from Lily banging her plastic snowflake fork into the wenge veneer.  We do drink wine with dinner, but the “soundtrack of our lives” is The Wiggle’s “Henry the Octopus” theme song.  But what’s the harm in trying to steal some of that dream?  Who doesn’t long for some tranquility when our lives are so crazy?  Elbow deep in dirty diapers and soggy spaghetti, I didn’t know a thing about enology, the wine business, marketing, or web design.  Brix, pH, and relative attributes of old vs. new oak seemed pretty unlikely, but here we go…

This is by far my most dreaded moment in social situations, and it comes up again and again. “Have you gained weight?” or “When did all of your hair fall out” are much easier to handle than “so, what do you do?”

After almost ten years as CEO of Sagient Research, I still don’t have an easy and quick way to answer this question. I thoroughly envy the people who can give a one-word answer, I’m a: lawyer, doctor, dentist, bus driver, axe-murderer. All of those even have pre-programmed responses and conversation points.

The best I’ve come up with is, “I run a financial data and research firm. We collect vast amounts of information, package it and sell it to Wall Street institutions and Fortune 500 companies.” Now, imagine trying to force that out after a couple of glasses of wine in a loud room to a person who really wasn’t expecting to get hit by that load of bricks. It is an absolute conversation stopper. Maybe if we lived in New York or even San Francisco or Chicago where there is a big financial community, people would know what the heck I was babbling on about. But in San Diego you can forget about it. I might as well be speaking Swahili.

Kerith has a great one word explanation for what I do - “Brian is in Data.” Nobody understands this, but it is obtuse enough that everyone is afraid to question it. I, however, can’t bring myself to say, “I do Data” or “I’m in Data”. I’m simply too much of a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan to besmirch the good name of the best android ever to have graced the small screen.

I’ve often fantasized about simply making up professions for myself to get through the awkwardness. I’m a plumber. I’m a carpenter. I’m a male hair model. But now that we’ve started Bruliam Wines, maybe (just maybe) I can get away with “I’m a Winemaker”.