Mad Men Again. WWDD?

So it seems like my drink of choice last week should have been a Royal Mai Tai based on the Mad Men season premiere that opened at The Royal Hawaiian hotel. I have to admit that I totally love that hotel, in spite of the less than exotic location of Waikiki beach. It actually just makes me think of The Brady Bunch and the infamous tiki doll. Love that ep.

But I digress. I am working my way through the Mad Men cocktail list and tonight will be enjoying a French 75, supposedly the creation of Henry from Henry's Bar in Paris during the First World War. It can be served on the rocks or strained into a Champagne flute. I like to serve salty snacks any time I serve Champagne or a Champagne cocktail so you might want to try these zucchini fritters, especially later this summer when you can't seem to get rid of all of the zucchini that comes your way. WWDD? (What Would Don Do?) Smoke a cigarette and drink...alot.

Zucchini Fritters

3 medium zucchini (about 1 1/2 pounds), coarsely shredded
Kosher salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup chopped dill
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons chopped mint
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
Freshly ground pepper
Vegetable oil, for frying
1 medium cucumber—peeled, halved, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 cup Greek-style plain yogurt

1. Using the large holes of a box grater, grate the zucchini into a medium bowl. Add 1 tablespoon salt, toss and let stand for 5 minutes. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible (press into the sides of a mesh strainer) and transfer the zucchini to a large bowl. Stir in the eggs, flour, chopped dill, parsley, mint, feta, and pepper. Mix to combine. 

2. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat until the oil sizzles when you drop a small amount of zucchini mixture into the pan. Carefully drop about 2 tablespoons zucchini mixture into the pan. Repeat, spacing the fritters a few inches apart.

3. Cook the fritters until golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Lower the heat to medium. Turn the fritters, and continue cooking until golden, 2 to 3 minutes more. Transfer the fritters to a plate; set aside on a warm place. Cook the remaining zucchini mixture, adding more oil to pan if necessary. Garnish with parsley sprigs and lemon wedges, if desired. Serve.

OPTIONAL: In a food processor, coarsely puree the chopped cucumber. Transfer to a medium bowl. Stir in the yogurt and the remaining 2 tablespoons of mint and season with salt and pepper. Serve with the fritters.

French 75

1 ounce simple syrup
1 ounce fresh lemon juice
2 ounces gin
4 ounces chilled Champagne

1. Combine the first three ingredients into an ice-filled martini shaker. Shake vigorously and strain into a Champagne flute. Top with Champagne, and garnish with a lemon peel.

Oscar the Grouch

It's that time again. Leap year! But since I don't have anything to say on that topic, let's discuss the Oscars and the fact that I haven't seen any of the top ten nominated films. OK. I saw The Descendants which I particularly liked for the Hawaiian music, and the crazy stoner surfer boyfriend who tags along wherever George Clooney takes the fam. But beyond that, I've seen nothing! Normally by this time I would have crammed in every last movie so that I would have been prepared to crush whatever Oscar pool I found myself in. But for some reason, this year I lost interest. Sigh.

Maybe it's my aversion to movie theaters because of my fear of getting bedbugs, or, I've just become even more lazy. That said, there's no reason why I can't still enjoy the red carpet (judging from afar) and then make a plan to see all of the winning films after the fact. Unlike the Super Bowl, there will be no chicken wings and nachos served. Only some bubbles and tasty, moderately healthy snacks. Actually, these peanuts will be perfect for my next Cinco de Mayo party...I should get to work.

Edamame Hummus

1 bag (12 ounces) frozen shelled edamame

2 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons tahini

3 - 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, to taste

Zest of one lemon

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Pita chips, crackers, cucumber slices and endive leaves, for serving

1. Bring edamame to a boil in a medium saucepan with enough water to cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, about 4minutes. Drain in a colander and run under cold water.

2. Pulse the edamame, garlic, tahini, juice, zest, oil, salt, cumin and pepper in a food processor until the mixture is blended. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time if the mixture is too thick. Cover and refrigerate until party time. Serve with pita chips, crackers and sliced veggies for dipping. Makes about 2 cups.

Killer Peanuts

4 cups toasted shelled peanuts

1 tablespoon chili oil or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon sweet or hot paprika

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 300˚F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Add the peanuts and oil ito a large bowl and toss to combine. Add the remaining ingredients and toss to coat evenly.

3. Transfer the nuts to the prepared baking sheet, spread out evenly, place in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes.

4. Remove the nuts from the oven, stir with a metal spatula and set aside to cool before serving. Makes 4 cups. Serve with an ice cold drink.

Goldie Collins

1/4 cup vodka

2 tablespoons simple syrup

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Ice cubes

Champagne

Orange peel, for garnish

1. Add the vodka, simple syrup, and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Top off with Champagne and garnish with the orange peel. Makes one drink.

Weekend Update

I suppose that most of you are counting down the minutes until you can leave the office today. (157!) Unless you left last night? Lucky! I had the opportunity to spend the weekend at the beach, but I've squandered it to be locked up in my apartment reading and memorizing everything there is to know about sparkling wine. It would be better if I was also sampling everything I needed to know about sparkling wine, but I'm not sure about the quality of my information retention if I did. Maybe I could give it a try...

Anyway...since I won't be doing anything exciting this holiday weekend, all I have are memories of the past weekend spent tromping through the woods with Carmeliza and friends. (The mosquitos are already out BT dubs!) Since we spent ample time hiking and working up an appetite, we hit up a local butcher for provisions so that we could hang out at the house to grill and chill.

We started by sampling four sparkling wines. (There were four of us and I had to study!) Luckily the rain held off, so we grilled up a ton o' meat products starting with some hunks of pork belly cooked up with fresh figs. Can't go wrong with some pig & fig! We followed up the pig with some cow and grilled up some super tasty rib eyes that were drizzled with the rendered pork fat from the cooked pork belly. Oh yes we did! What will you be grilling this weekend??

French Onion Dip

Just because you enjoy Champagne you don't have to stick to oysters and caviar as your only snack, though it's a pretty effing fab combo. Thing is, I'm pretty sure that I would shuck my thumb right out of its socket if I attempted to prep my own oysters, and I'm also pretty sure that there are better ways for me to spend my caviar money. Like on Champagne. And potato chips.
Hold the phone. Did I just say potato chips?? Why, yes, I did. Fatty, salty snacks are way better with an extra brut or brut style sparkler (which contain a very, very little amount of sugar) than...say...wedding cake. Trust. Have a cup of coffee with that cake and have some Champs with your snacks! And furthermore, by Champagne I mean, THE sparkling wine from the Champagne region in France. Similar style sparkling wines from anywhere else in the world, including France, are simply: sparkling wine. By law. Whether a cava from Spain or a sparkler from Cali or a Franciacorta from Italy, it's all sparkling wine, people. Not that there's anything wrong with that. My budget is more Prosecco than Champagne anyway.
But I digress. Back to my dip. As much as I hate sour cream and similarly gloppy substances, I've always been a sucker for that dried onion soup mix stirred into sour cream and scooped up onto a nice salty chip. Oh. Yeah. That screams summer BBQ to me. Lately the rage has been to make the dip using caramelized onions (if making a dip can be called a rage). And let me tell you, it's worth the hour spent cooking those babies down to their essence because the result is super fantabulous. Coupled with a glass of bubbly, that's a memorable Wednesday night (along with good friends like Wendy, Stacy, Jen, and Alyssa)! Stop saving your Champagne for special occasions, peeps. It becomes a special occasion when you pop open that bottle (watch your eye!). And a bag of chips.

Caramelized Onion Dip
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 medium onions, thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 (8-ounce) container sour cream (1 cup)
4-ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
Potato chips, for serving
1. Melt the butter and oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and ½ teaspoon of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue cooking, stirring occasionally to loosen any onions that may be stuck to the bottom of the pan, until the onions are deep golden brown, about 30 minutes more. Remove from the heat and let cool. 

2. In a medium bowl mix together the cream cheese, sour cream, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper until smooth. Stir in the cooked onions, reserving a tablespoon for garnish, if desired. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve with the chips. Makes about 2 cups.

I'm 200. Raise a Glass.

People, I'm up to 200 blog posts. For reals. That's cumulatively more writing than I've done...ever. Including college. What does it all mean? Absolutely nothing. But thank you so much for reading, commenting, not commenting and telling me what you think about my posts in person. I'll be toasting myself with a glass of Champagne that I bought on sale at K&D Wines in NYC (see below - you should too!) and opened the good old-fashioned way. Not with a saber. Cheers!

The Art of Sabrage

Mmmm...wine.

Have you ever seen anyone saber a bottle of Champagne before (it's the noble art of sabrage to you Francophiles out there)? In person? Me neither. That was the WOWW moment at a food and wine event I attended last week at Bouley to help launch a new DVD series called The Everyday Guide to Wine. Towards the end of the night our host, Master of Wine Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, grabbed a jeroboam of Champagne and her trusty saber, and in one fell swoop sliced off the top of the bottle. It was pretty rad. Why don't I have a trusty saber??? Probably because sabering a bottle of Champagne can be really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. By the way, a jeroboam is a 3 liter bottle of Champagne (aka a Double Magnum) or in layman's terms, a bottle containing the equivalent of 4 standard sized bottles of bubbly. In other words, it's a big ass bottle. Wait a second. Now that I think about it, we never actually drank from that giant bottle. Where did it go?!? Did the staff drink it? Maybe there wasn't actually anything in it. Hmmm...


Duck!

Anyhoo, The Teaching Company recently published this new educational DVD, a series of 24 half-hour lectures about wine, one of hundreds of courses available through The Great Courses. Looking through the syllabus, it's not unlike how my WSET advanced certification class at the International Wine Center was structured, but without the anxiety of a final exam or the price tag of a 16 week course. And you can go at your own pace, inviting friends over to "study" together.

The Teaching Company put on a great event at Bouley where, aside from the sabrage, we were treated to a four course food and wine tasting. I had never been to Bouley before so when I walked in, the vaulted ceilings made me feel like I was in a wine cave. It was the perfect venue.


The Cave aka Bouley.

The tasting evolved in typical fashion from light to full bodied wines, a Sauvignon Blanc to a Cabernet Sauvignon, paired with complimentary foods. You can see from the menu below what we tasted, in addition to roasted Long Island duckling with spring garlic and almond broth which was paired with the Pinot Noir, and a 2007 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon which was paired with a dry aged prime beef, glazed bone marrow, and red wine sweet onions (both dishes cut off from my menu photo). Delish. Everything was delish.


The tasting menu...at least part of it.


Last bite of the skate. The fish, not the winter sporting good.

I'll never be able to cook like David Bouley or be a super taster like Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, but I'm pretty confident that I could put together a decent meal with complimentary wines. At least I'm pretty sure my buds wouldn't say no if I invited them over for food and drink. And with The Everyday Guide to Wine I'll have a great point of reference for my future wine endeavors. But only wine endeavors that don't include a saber. For that I'll just have to stick to DVDs of Star Wars and light sabers.


Red red wiiiiiiine. Thank you, UB40. That song will never leave my head.

Tiny Bubbles

Ta-dah! (Yes, you're in the right place!) In honor of my 100th post, I decided to launch a mini-redesign. Thanks to my great friend, Amani, (she did the heavy lifting...I learned a lot) my ugly blue template has been transformed! (Did you know that there are blogs about how to build a better blogger blog?) I hope to make a few more tweaks here and there (as we figure out how to do them) just to keep things looking fresh, but the overall look will remain as is. I hope you like it!

And, since this is the perfect opportunity for some tiny bubbles, I've included a recipe for a classic Champagne cocktail. Cheers!



Classic Champagne Cocktail

1 sugar cube
3 dashes of Angostura bitters
5 ounces Champagne or brut sparkling wine, chilled
Lemon twist for garnish

1. Drop the sugar cube into a chilled Champagne flute. Add the bitters. Top with the Champagne. Stir gently. Garnish with a strip of lemon peel, first twisting it over the glass to release the oils. Serve immediately!