While doing some research on wine and the sulfur smell in them (Virgina Tech website on wine making) I found out about a wine blending class to learn to make Meritage wines at a Virginia winery. The winery is one of two hosting this course from Virginia Tech and while looking at the other events I found information about the class on April 18th. (so far not signed up to take either class, but probably will)

The Meritage wine is American wine made with the grape blend commonly found in Bordeaux wines. A Mertitage red wine must be made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec, and Petit Verdot grapes. A white wine version of Sauvignon Blanc, Semillion, and Musadelle grapes. No grape can be more than 90% of the wine The winery is limited to making a maximum of 25,000 cases a year and the wine must be one of the two most expense wines made at the winery. The winery must also join the Meritage Association in order to put the Mertitage label on the bottle.

While shopping at Dean and Deluca in Georgetown this weekend I found some interesting ingredients, SALT. Not your ordinary iodized table salt, kosher salt, sea salt, or herb salt blends, but different styles and colors. Pink Himalyan, Black Lava Sea Salt, Chardonnay smoked salt, Murray River(Salmon colored from Australia), Alaea (dark red salt from Hawaii). I'm interested in how these will effect the flavor in dishes and improve flavors.

I will be experimenting with a few dishes on how these salts are used in finishing dishes and the unique flavors that they impart.

Yesterday I went to DC to wonder around, see the cherry blossoms and just get away from the small town atmosphere. While in Georgetown there was a line around a building...for cupcakes. Georgetown Cupcake has 2 bakeries, in Georgetown and Bethesda. The line for a cupcake wrapped around the bakery and in front of the door to the restaurant next door. The people in the line say yes the cupcakes are worth the 45 minute or more wait to get a couple cupcakes. Why not find out how good a 45 minute cupcake is? So we waited in line. While in line you would hear people in taxi's stuck in traffic and others walking by saying things like "I would never wait that long for a cupcake."

Cupcake flavors- Everyday= Chocolate, Chocolate (yes 2 different styles with chocolate), red velvet, vanilla, choc and vanilla, vanilla and chocolate
On Saturdays- Chocolate ganache, coconut, chocolate coconut, lemon berry, and mocha
Seasonally this time they had- salted caramel, cookies and cream, and Irish cream
Price= 1 at $2.75, 6 for $15 and 12 for $29

After waiting for 45 minutes we decided lets just get the full dozen and try all but the coconut ones. How good is a cupcake that requires over a 45 minute wait to get one? DELICIOUS, WOW it is an amazing cupcake.

After the wait I learned that if you call ahead the next day with your cupcake order they will box them for you ahead of time and you can avoid the long line. But if I do an impromptu trip down in the Georgetown area I will probably wait in line again for a Georgetown Cupcake.

Unfortunately many people afraid of missing out on something would not wait in a line for a cupcake, but in reality miss out on delicious food.

Many times I've heard people say things like the food takes so long to make, but tastes so good. There is an ART to food that sometimes requires a wait, you have to decide do you want quick shitty food or are you willing to wait for something amazing.

As discussed in the first post entitled wine and junk food I gave wine and pairings that were suggested from various sommeliers across the country. I decided to try the Oreo and port pairing and tell a little about it.

The cookie- Nabisco Double Stuffed Oreos
The wine- Rozes White Reserve Porto

Port wines are from the grapes in the Oporto region of Portugal. After the wine is made it becomes fortified with brandy. This style originated in 1693 when the British were have trade disputes with the French. To protect the wine during shipping brandy was added. Over 80 different types of grapes can be used in the making of Port, but to have the name Port be recognised it must come from the Douro Valley in Northern Portugal.

Rozes White Reserve Porto- Amber color, Nose- Oak, hint of spice, Flavor- sweet, vanilla, orange, nuts, long finish, heavy texture slightly syrupy, the kind of drink thick enough to stick to your bones on a cold day to help warm you up.

The pairing- Similar weights in food, milk goes better with Oreo's then Port,
When Oreo top is twisted off- Port overpowers the cookie without the cream,
Flavor best with bottom of cookie and the port, flavors balance better and flavors shift from cookie to port back to cookie.

Hollandaise sauce is one of the five mother sauces in French cooking along with espagnole (brown sauce- like demi-glace), Veloute (made with white stock), Bechemel (cream sauce), and tomato.

While I was reading the 1998 James Beard Award winning cookbook Cookwise. While reading the section on emulsion sauces I stopped at the hollandaise recipe and reread three times. This recipe was slightly different then the way I was taught to make it. So I decided to look up the recipe for hollandaise sauce in other cookbooks that are highly trusted:
1. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Childs
2. The Joy of Cooking 75th anniversary, Rombauer
3. Sauces, James Peterson 1991 James Beard Award Cookbook of the Year
4 How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman, 2009 James Beard Award General Cooking

Each book suggests a different ratio of egg yolks to butter. Sauces and the Joy of Cooking recommend using clarified butter (milk fats removed) and the other books recommend using all of the butter. Julia Childs recommends adding a Tablespoon of cold butter after heating the egg yolks so stop the yolks from continueing to cook. The Joy of Cooking also suggests adding a dash of hot sauce and cookwise says to add cayanne pepper. How to Cook does not recommend adding water to help stabelize the emulsion while whisking.

Whichever recipe you decide to look up and follow will still be delicious, especially if you use the freshest and highest quality ingredients. I'm looking forward to making Eggs Benedict in the morning and using a local hand made butter I found at a Trickle Springs Creamery, Chambersburg. (It looks like Julia Childs recipe has the most butter in her hollandaise recipe, I think I'll follow her recipe this time)

With this weeks passing of the new health care bill new requirements for restaurants go in effect next year. Any chain restaurant consisting of 20 or more locations will be required to label the menu with calories for all regular menu items (limited time and daily specials will not be required to have this.)

While most people might not know that a large order of fries from Five Guys consists of over 1,400 calories, it is still a pound of french fries. If you didn't know this, here is a summary of what you need to know--IF YOU EAT A POUND OF FRENCH FRIES EVERYDAY AND YOU DON'T SWIM MORE THEN MICHAEL PHELPS YOU WILL PROBABLY GET FAT.

There are more unhealthy things in what we eat then just calories, they are only part of a nutritional plan. Most people who are grabbing fast food everyday are not concerned with the calories in the fries, they want it quick and they don't want to have to do it. And if they are really worried from seeing the calories from the fast food place, they will probably just open a can of something where the calorie label is on the other side.

Also, restaurants like Ruth's Chris would be required to label the menu with calories. If I'm going out to a finer dining restaurant eating USDA prime steak cuts it's a treat I don't care about how many calories I'm eating, nor do I want to know.

If you want people to learn to eat healthier in starts in the garden, ocean, field, and the kitchen. Provide more opportunities for people to do this while teaching the health aspects.

While in Chicago for the St. Patrick weekend celebrations I noticed many restaurants doing FLIGHTS of food or wine. A flight is three or four tastings of a similar product.

One restaurant, oENOlogy, offered wine, cheese, and chocolate flights. Unfortunately, we passed by this restaurant since it was going to be open until 11PM and didn't feel like going after dinner from a day full of seeing everything we could in Chicago. The menu was consisted entirely of flights. You could order wines, cheeses, and chocolate in flights. Each wine flight consisted of three wines themed around an idea such as location, style, pairing similarities, etc., a fancy name was chosen on the concept of the flight. Cheese and chocolates were served in the same way. By doing this you could learn how the flavors of the wine change with different cheeses and chocolates.

Before we left we went to a brunch restaurant called Orange, one of their specialties is the pancake flight which changes every week. Ordering this you get four stacks of three silver dollar pancakes, each with different toppings. This week included pancakes with lucky charms and cream, Guinness yogurt with cantaloupe, bacon and orange marmalade, and Irish cream pancakes. While not all of these pancakes tasted as great as other options available, I enjoyed the concept.

As a chef you must constantly create 4 unique recipes based on one common recipe, but the possibilities are endless for a restaurant that wants to try this. I believe this would be a great way to promote holiday and seasonal foods on a menu, and provides the stability and change of a menu that customers love. Still haven't seen this in Baltimore yet, if you do, please send me a message about who is doing this style of dining on their menu.

This is the last weekend to taste the wines from the barrels on two of the southern Pennsylvania wine tours, Uncork York and Barrels on the Brandywine. If you decide to do the Barrels on the Brandywine tour be sure to also stop at VaLa winery which is not listed on the trail website, but still in the area of the tour.

Barrel tastings let you try wines before the wine is finished and bottled by the winemaker. A few years ago I went to one of these tours and tried the same wine from 4 different vintages, comparing the flavor changes from different weather patterns over the years and time in the bottle or barrel.
Maybe I'll see you along one of these trails this weekend.

Lately I've been hearing more and more from Tiffany how much she wants a Kansas City Style BBQ sandwich. There are 4 major styles of BBQ in the country and followers of each feel that their style is the best.

Kansas City BBQ- Typically made with beef, Dry rubbed with a mix of spices, often sliced but some places will serve it shredded. The charred burnt fat is served with the the cut to add more flavor. BBQ sauce topped on beef when served. The style of the sauce is thick and sweet, with a ketchup/tomato base. KC Masterpiece is the common grocery store version of this sauce.

Texas- Typically made with beef, slow cooked and smoked for about 18 hours until the outside gets a pinkish color, usually when cooked there is no dry rub or BBQ mop added while cooking. The beef is sliced and served on a white bread bun. The sauce is typically tomato and chili powder based and thinned out with vinegar. Some places smoke the BBQ sauce in the smoker with the beef briskets.

Carolina- Slow cooked dry rubbed pork shoulder smoked over hickory for 6-8 hours. Served shredded so the meat soaks up as much flavor as possible. The sauce varies across the states, but will usually be served on a bun with coleslaw and vinegar.

Memphis- Pork shoulder slow cooked and thinly sliced with BBQ sauce.

I just read a study about the paintings of THE LAST SUPPER. The amount of food present at in the pictures has had a growing trend in the artwork over the past thousand years. The report states that the amount of food present increased by 69%, plates increased in size by 66%, and the amount of bread increased by 23%. They studied the food in size relationships from the heads of the apostles, not the size of the paintings. There was no mention of more or less wine over the years.

The study compares it to the trend we have of supersizing our meals.

I'm curious if this is not just a statement on modern society eating to much, or if trends in down turns show more or less food. I wonder if in the time of plagues, droughts, famines etc. if the food is increased to show (power and wealth of Jesus) or reduced so the people can be like the lord even in meals.

On a recent weekend helping a friend in his restaurant we decided to put caramel sugar cages over desserts. Seemed like a simple enough task, heat sugar with a little water to over 300F, pour it over a greased dome shape, take off, and we would have a cage of sugar surrounding the dessert. Unfortunately, as easy it sounds it didn't work as well as we hoped.

What are some reasons things may of went wrong?
1. Using an aluminum kitchen pot. Many candy making cookbooks suggest using a copper pot when caramelizing sugar due to its even heat distribution. Unfortunately, with copper pots there are also drawbacks, cost (cheapest one I found on a quick search was $350), copper leaking into food (many pots are now lines with stainless steel to prevent this), and safety in the kitchen since the pot can get so hot it may set oven mitts on fire if you pick it up.

2. Too hot or too cold. Temperatures for sugar cages should be between 320F-356F depending on how dark you want the cage to become. Around 320F the mixture is still clear, but quickly begins to brown as it gets warmer. To hot and the kitchen smells like burnt marshmallows and a burnt black bubble rises out of the pan. The stages mentioned on candy thermometers mention softball at 235F, hardball at 260F, soft crack at 275F, and hard crack at 300F. Non of these temperatures will be effective in trying to form sugar cages.

Sugar heated to a light amber color will be harder due to more sucrose in it to harden, while a darker caramel will cook out most of the sucrose creating a softer caramel.

3. The water from the tap. Slight impurities in the water can also cause caramelized sugar to fail. Instead of using Baltimore City tap water, try using distilled or purified water.

4. Doing to much at a time. If you are going to caramelize more then 2 lbs of sugar at one time add it in smaller batches. This way you are not trying to dissolve the sugar all at once.

5. Wet vs. dry method. The dry method of making caramel involves heating granulated sugar without water, while this method is quicker it requires the chef to constantly stir the sugar to prevent it from burning. With the wet method a 1/2 c of water is added for every pound of sugar. This method will take long but requires less active time for the chef to be stirring watching the pot.

6. Lower the heat when adding corn syrup, this will ensure that the mixture does not boil too much at the beginning stages, and add the corn syrup to sugar water that is boiling.

7. Not washing the pan down. As the mixture evaporates, sugar crystals will build up along the sides of the pan, use a clean, wet pastry brush to wash the sides of the pan.

8. Improper cooling. When the sugar reaches the desired color, cool it by putting the bottom of the pot in cold water to stop the cooking process, keep the pot in the water until the sugar has stopped bubbling.

Note: Hot sugar burns, and is likely to leave scars if you get it on you. Be careful trying this at home.

The nominations for this years James Beard awards has been released. I want to take a minute to congratulate all local nominees in the Maryland, DC, northern Virginia area. So congrats to:
Jose Andres, Minibar DC- for outstanding chef
Amanda Cook, CityZen at Mandarin Oriental, DC- Outstanding Pastry Chef
Cathal Armstrong, Restaurant Eve, Alexandria, VA- Best Chef: Mid Atlantic
Peter Pastan- Obelisk, DC- Best Chef: Mid Atlantic
Bryan Voltaggio, Volt, Frederick, MD- Best chef: Mid Atlantic
Johnny Monis, Komi, DC- Rising Star Chef of the Year
Tim Carman, Washington City Paper, "How Not to Hire a Chef/ The Canning Process"- Newspaper feature writing aboutr restaurants and/or chefs
Joe Yonan, The Washington Post- Newspaper Food Section

Congratulations to all and good luck. Hopefully in the near future we will see more chefs from the Baltimore area make the list.

In the April 2010 Issue of FOOD AND WINE magazine there is an article titled "20 Wine Pairings to Try Before You Die." While most of these didn't really surprise me, chardonnay and lobster, sauvignon blanc and white fish, Zinfandel and BBQ ribs, one really got my attention DORITOS AND CALIFORNIA PINOT NOIR.

California pinot noirs usually have a jammy, fruity flavor when compared to other pinot noirs around the world, such as the burgundy from France.

Later in the week I plan on trying this food and wine combination, but it has sparked my curiosity about what other junk food and wines pair well together. According to the Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page book WHAT TO EAT WITH WHAT YOU DRINK classic junk foods do pair well with drinks other then a good beer. Cheese puffs go best with Champagne, but also taste great with pinot noirs, burgundy, chardonnay, and anything highly acidic. Doritos with Champagne and Spicy Doritos with Zinfandel. Twinkies pair well with Asti. Nachos pair well with sparkling wines and Zinfandel. Oreo's and port. Potato chips and Champagne and BBQ potato chips and Zinfandel. Pretzels and white zinfandel. Tortilla chips and Champagne or Sauvignon Blanc. Popcorn and champagne or chardonnay. Also Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Arizona winemaker suggests popcorn with truffle salt on his 2005 Primer Paso Syrah.

Usually I just grab a Smithwick's, Yuengling, or Natty Boh out of the fridge when I'm eating chips and other junk foods, but am looking forward to trying these and other combinations in the near future.