Feeling Carniverous?

If you took a look and thought to yourself, “I’m looking at 30 pounds of short ribs,” then you would be correct. I have my first catering job coming up Wednesday and asked my dad to go to Ottomanelli’s to pick up some short ribs for me. Along the way we had a little miscommunication and we wound up with 30 pounds.


What did I do? First I focused on prepping the short ribs for my catering job on Wednesday night. Then I cancelled my dinner reservation at AOC Bedford, called my friend Allegra over (we were celebrating her birthday) and opened up a 1967 Proddutori Del Barbaresco to go with the other short ribs that I cooked. When all was said and done I cooked about 20 of the 30 pounds of ribs.

After dinner I worked on perfecting my mini chocolate cakes and finished on some fine herbs and gruyere gnocchi. I think next Sunday comes the short ribs and red wine tasting with the other 10 pounds that are now resting nicely in my freezer.

Wine Dinner

My interest in wine has been constantly growing over the last year or so. At first I was completely clueless. I knew a couple of wines that I liked but other than that I was completely in the dark. Then, as my interest and knowledge of food began to grow, so did my understanding of wine. I started to better understand regions and vintages, and even a little of the winemaking process. All of this new found knowledge was incredibly helpful when it came to ordering a bottle in a restaurant or pairing drinks with my own food. However, until recently, I never really had much to do with wine unless food was involved as well (except for my summer excursion to Napa and Sonoma, but that was vacation.)

This past Sunday was the first time I ever cooked something to pair with wine and not the other way around. A friend of mine who works in a wine shop recently decided to purchase a bottle of 1998 Chateau Margaux Margaux (Cost=Much more than I can afford.) and asked me if I could make an appropriate dish to eat with it. I was truly honored and decided to make a dinner of it by bringing one of the harder to find bottles from my cellar, (the closest in my room) a 1981 Kartauserhofsberg Riesling.

I wanted to pick a somewhat elegant red meat to go with the Margaux and also find a suitably luxurious appetizer to come before the Margaux and pair with Riesling.

I thought foie gras was a logical choice as an appetizer and a great pairing with an acidic , barely sweet (Riesling loses a lot of its sweetness as it ages) wine. While lamb chops would be a logical choice for the Margaux.

The end results ended up being seared foie gras over brioche with grapes, hazelnuts and Bartlett pears and lamb chops and lamb meatballs over Israeli couscous with swiss chard, pine nuts, dried cherries, crispy mint and a cherry port wine sauce. (I actually meant to buy rib chops because they look nicer but was given shoulder chops. Either way, the taste was good.)

We also ended up having a delicious dessert blend made in the
port style from California to go with chocolates from around the world and some Non Vintage Perrier Jouet Champagne to go with some cheeses.

In the end both of the main wines we had were delicious and worked really well with the food. The Riesling was a nice foil to the rich foie gras but also complimented the grape and pear flavors. It was also light and a relatively low alcohol content so as not to spoil us for the next bottle. I thought the Margaux was really high quality wine, very full and with nice structure that gave the wine a powerful mouth feel while lacking the harshness of strong tannins. (That’s the best I can do.)

Was it worth the price? Not at my income level. But I do know that creating a meal around a bottle of wine certainly makes it memorable and I was more than happy to have my first delicious sip of a Chateau Margaux.