Pinot Noir

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Weekly Wine and Food Pairing

March 18, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 5 comments

Today is my Friday! I can not even believe that this time tomorrow I will be on a flight to San Francisco and then on my way to wine country!

Earlier this week I took some inspiration from The O2 Diet and made
salmon salad stuffed cucumber boats. Now, the actual recipe called for a chicken, in addition to a bunch of other ingredients, but I improvised. I wanted to use salmon because of my informative afternoon at For the Health of it on Friday, and luckily we had some high quality canned salmon in the house.
Little secret. . . I actually buy this as a treat for my cats, and I decided to try some last week. Its tasty! And it is nice to keep on hand. Sometimes its nice to have some non perishable items. With our crazy schedules, food, especially fish, sometimes goes bad before we can eat it!

I started out by draining all of the liquid and giving it to the kitties.
They were very happy 🙂 I mixed the salmon with a good shake of curry powder, 2 chopped apples, and 3 spoonfuls of 0% Greek yogurt.

I stirred everything together, then put it in the fridge to chill while I worked on the other components of the meal, roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes.
When we were ready to eat, I cut a cucumber lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, and stuffed the halves with the salmon salad.

With Brussels roasted to perfection. this quick dinner provided enough fruit, veggies, and protein, along with a mix of flavors and textures. The cucumbers were SO crunchy!

I originally planned on pairing this with Sauvignon Blanc, which I think would have gone really well with this dinner. However, you might recall that earlier this week we had a never ending monsoon, and long, cold, gray days. As a result, we decided on a lighter bodied red, the first Pinot Noir produced by our favorite local winery, Travessia Urban Winery. You may have seen write ups on Travessia’s wine in earlier posts, one about their wine club event and the Coastal Wine Trail kickoff.

Light in color and body, this wine differs from Travessia’s other wines in that it is not made with Massachusetts grapes. Rather, it is made from Russian River Valley grapes. It is a very easy to drink wine, smooth, silky with a delicious hint of cherry. It went very well with our dinner despite the fact that it was a fish dish, and I can see it pairing well with many different meals. Its a good food wine that I would drink well into the summer because of its lightness.

If you live in New England and haven’t tried Travessia wine yet, you should!

And because she’s so cute and can open cabinets herself, a photo of Smuckers 🙂

I hope its a beautiful day wherever you are today. Enjoy it!

P.S. If you live in the Boston/Cambridge, MA area, there is a great event going on this Tuesday, March 25, at the Seaport World Trade Center. Cooking for a Cause benefits East End House . According to the press release I received:

“East End House has been offering vital programs and services to children, families, and individuals in East Cambridge, Cambridge and the surrounding communities for one hundred and thirty-five years. Currently, they offer affordable, nationally accredited childcare and after school care, a middle school out-of-school-time program, a one-on-one mentoring program for at-risk youth, an innovative youth science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) program, emergency food assistance, senior support services, and volunteer and community outreach programs. With your help, we will continue to offer high quality programs that meet growing community needs.”

Cooking for a Cause features a long list of amazing local chefs like Jody Adams from Rialto, where I dined this week, along with other favorites of mine including Dante DeMagistris from Dante, Andy Husbands of Tremont 647, Will Gilson from Garden at the Cellar, and the amazing Tony Maws from Craigie on Main in addition to many others. Help a great cause while eating food from Boston’s best! 🙂

Also, just a reminder that my ALLY Foundation raffle ends THIS WEEKEND. To encourage entries, I have changed the raffle pricing. $10 gets you 2 entries, $15 gets you 4 entries, and $20 gets you 6 entries.

The prizes?

$100 gift card to Williams Sonoma

A mixed case of wine from Wine Cellar of Stoneham

A custom granola blend from me & goji

One month membership to all Healthworks Fitness Centers

A private tour and tasting for 10 at Westport Rivers winery

Visit htttp://firstgiving.com/meghanmalloyteamally for information on The ALLY Foundation and on my Boston Marathon fundraising!

Tags: Food, Pinot Noir, salmon, wine, wine and food pairing

Wednesday Wine and Food Pairing

February 23, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 9 comments

After creating a couple of dishes to go with thesamples of wine that I received from Jacob’s Creek (You can find the recipes here and here), I thought that it would be fun to do a weekly Wine Wednesday wine and food pairing post. I actually had two more bottles of Jacob’s Creek and since I did not have time to use them for the Superbowl as intended, I wanted to kick off this new series with one of the bottles. I chose the 2007 Pinot Noir to pair with a dish that I created while grocery shopping this weekend: Pan fried golden potatoes topped with eggplant pisto, goat cheese, and olives. It turned out to be one of the best dishes I have made in awhile, so simple, so healthy, comforting, and filling. And absolutely delicious!

The ingredients for the pisto:

1 large eggplant, chopped, salted, and rinsed

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 whole yellow onion

‘1 TSP garlic powder

3 TSP olive oil

Splash balsamic vinegar

I slowly cooked all of the ingredients mixed together for about 45 minutes until everything pretty much fell apart and melted together. The smell was amazing! Once the eggplant was soft enough,( and this took awhile!) I started slicing the potatoes verrrrrry thinly so that they would brown in just a little bit of oil in a pan, just thicker and a little bit softer than potato chips. As soon as they were done, I topped them with the pisto mixture, goat cheese, and Spanish green olives with pimientos.

I was excited to open the Jacob’s Creek Pinot Noir because I had never tried this wine before and because I have been pleasantly surprised by the other wines sent to me on their behalf. The verdict? The Jacob’s Creek Pinot Noir is very easy to drink. There is an obvious ripe strawberry flavor, and it has a smooth, clean finish. I would say that as far as pairing it with this dish, I could go either way. The wine didn’t overpower the dish, but it didn’t seem like they were perfect partners either as it did when I paired the Riesling and fish cakes in Part I of my Superbowl pairing posts. Still, we enjoyed the meal, we enjoyed the wine, and it was all good.

I hope you enjoy my adventures in food and wine pairing each week. As always I am open to suggestions and guest posts on this (or any topic!) I love to hear from all of you about what you are eating and drinking!

Tags: Food, Jacob's Creek, Pinot Noir, recipe, vegetarian recipe, wine, wine and food pairings

Willamette Valley Wines

October 19, 2009 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | No comments

Our visit to the Brix Wine Shop Oregon wine tasting on Friday got me thinking about my very brief trip to Oregon wine country last summer. I was in Portland for our National Sales Meeting, and while I did not get to see too much of the city, we were treated to some fabulous meals and a half day trip into the Willamette Valley wine region. On a cool and cloudy summer day, we boarded vans from Portland and drove out to the Willamette Valley. While there were some similarities to California wine country, this region had a feel all its own. The climate is definitely different, more rainy, creating more of a lush green valley, a contrast to the very dry Napa and Sonoma we saw this past summer! Throughout the course of the day, we visited 3 wineries, Sokol Blosser, Erath, and Domaine Drouhin. We tried about 15 wines over the course of the day, just tasting sips. There was a lot of variety, but of course the name of the game here in Oregon was my love, Pinot Noir. This tasting was awhile back, but the wines that stand out the most were the Erath Gewurtztraminer, Erath Oregon Pinot Noir, Sokol Blosser Dundee Hills Pinot Noirt, and Domaine Drouhin Laurène Pinot Noir. For tasting notes, please visit the wineries’ sites as it has been a very long time. I will have to try these wines again to remember more details and to see if I still like them, but I definitely know that you can not go wrong with any of these wineries. Last summer, I purchased 6 bottles at Erath, 4 Pinot Noir and 2 Gewurtztraminer. Let me tell you that trying to get a half case of wine home on a cross country, 6 am flight when you were out at a work dinner until about midnight the night before is not fun. Picture me, laden down with luggage, and pushing a box of wine with my foot across the airport floor. Then imagine me, who thought for some reason that Erath wine could only be purchased at the vineyard, when I found it at Trader Joe’s the following week. Live and learn. You can also visit the wineries’ websites for more photos. This region is absolutely stunning with my idea of perfect weather. It was nice to leave the hot Boston summer and to be able to feel really chilly nights and just warm enough days. Though my visit to the Willamette Valley was just a taste of what this region has to offer, I already know that I love it and want to return to the Pacific Northwest to visit more wineries and to write about the uniqueness of the wines that this area has to offer. Portland also seems like a great city with some really good restaurants. I can recommend the Hotel Monaco, a Kimpton Hotel in Pioneer Square and Vino Paradiso for group events. If you have ever been to or live in Portland or the Willamette Valley wine region, I would love to hear some of your favorites. I am not sure when I will go back, but its always nice to have recommendations! By the way, my absolute favorite Pinot Noir at the moment is Belle Vallée 2008 whole cluster Pinot Noir. It is delicious, but I am working my way through a variety of Pinots. I think they may call for a separate post altogether. . . Do you have a favorite wine right now? If you have any recommendations let me know!