wine and food pairing

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Thursday Wine and Food Pairing

March 11, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 7 comments

Two weeks in a row! I did miss posting my normal Wednesday Wine and Food Pairing yesterday because I really wanted to share all of my photos from Taste of the South End. It was a great event, and I wanted to strike while the iron was hot!

This week’s wine and food pairing is actually from last Friday. I worked from home which is one of my favorite things ever. Without having to waste the time of a commute, I got SO much done and was able to throw together an easy spinach lasagna.

I started out with about 4 cups of fresh baby spinach.

 

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And a 14 ounce can of Trader Joe’s marinara sauce, which I doctored up with extra garlic, basil, oregano, and a teeny glug of olive oil.

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The filling was a large container of part-skim ricotta, one whole egg, a handful of nutty, salty parmesan, and a cup of part-skim mozzarella.

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I used the “no boil” lasagna noodles. Starting with a layer of sauce in the bottom of a glass baking dish, I layered sauce and spinach, noodles, cheese filling, sauce, etc. The recipe I was roughly following called for another cup of mozzarella sprinkled on top, but we really didn’t need it.

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Cover tightly with foil and bake at 375 for about 40 minutes. For the last 4 minutes, I put the broiler on which resulted in bubbly brown deliciousness.

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For the wine pairing, I broke into the latest wine that we bought at the Bin Ends fine wine flea market. We tasted a few Sicilian wines there and decided to add a few bottles to our rack.

On this particular evening, we opened a Cossentin Nero d’Avola. This Sicilian wine was a perfect match. Dark red and tasting of dark berries and a little bit of anise, this wine worked well with the richness of the cheese as well as the acidity of the tomato sauce. We have another bottle of this Nero d’Avola left as well as a bottle of Francesco Nicosia Nero d’Avola waiting for us at Bin Ends. I love trying new grapes! The Nicosia wine that we ordered has the perfect blend of fruit with a hint of black pepper which I LOVE in a wine, so I will definitely be giving that its own post once we go pick it up!

Are you ready for the weekend?! I am so happy its almost here and more than looking forward to getting my 21 mile run. . . and my longest pre-Boston Marathon run over and done with!

What are you doing this weekend? Does it involve wine? 😉

Tags: Food, lasagna, pairing food and wine, Sicily, wine, wine and food pairing, wine and food pairings

Life Goes Better with (White) Bordeaux

March 9, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 10 comments

Spring, spring, spring! It still feels like spring, and after a fabulous 10 mile run on Monday night, we decided to open the bottle of  Château Fage 2008 Graves de Vayres Blanc Bordeaux sent to me by the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux campaign. You can read my post on the lovely red that they sent me here.

The white Bordeaux is a lovely pale straw color as you can see here on a sunny spring-like day 🙂

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The nose was slightly floral and woodsy with a very mild citrus fruit taste. Its a very easy wine to drink, not a white that makes you pucker because its too acidic, and not at all buttery or oaky like a Chardonnay. It was perfect chilled for just about an hour as it was cold but still warm enough to really let all of those flavors come out. I am very grateful to the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux campaign for introducing me to another white wine that I like. With warmer days upon us, I have been looking at our wine rack and thinking we may have too much red 🙂 I had never tried white Bordeaux before, and I love that I had the opportunity to try this bottle. Life Goes better with Bordeaux is hosting an event in Boston this May, and I am looking forward to trying more Bordeaux wine, both at the event and before then! If you haven’t checked out their website, do, as it provides helpful suggestions for Bordeaux wine based on the wines you already know you like.

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Since it was such a lovely day, and I was feeling super fit and healthy after my run, I decided on simple salads with lots of yummy ingredients to go with the wine.

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Its funny how I pretty much never get sick of salads, because I am constantly buying new ingredients to add to them. Its a great way to fit in many servings of fruits and veggies at the end of the day. Plus its a nice way to get out of cooking if you just worked a whole day and had a big workout 😉

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Our Monday night salad was a base of baby spinach (about 3 cups for each of us) topped with shredded cabbage, avocado, beets, pickled vegetables, olives, jalapenos, carrots, and Trader Joe’s mango chicken sausage. With all of those yummy flavors, you don’t even need dressing! The zing and the crunch of the pickled veggies especially bring a lot of deliciousness to the salad without adding any fat. The salad went great with the wine, and I suspect the wine would go great with any light meal or mild cheese. As the representative that sent me the wine noted, it would be great for a picnic! Ahhh dreaming of wine country picnics 🙂

What are your favorite salad toppings? Is a salad enough to fill you up as a meal, or do you like to eat something else with it?

Have you enter my Secrets of a Skinny Chef giveaway? It ends on Friday, and my charity raffle for The ALLY Foundation and the chance to win a $100 Williams Sonoma gift card, in addition to a bunch of other great prizes, ends on my birthday, March 20! Since its charity Tuesday on Twitter, might you consider helping me spread the word today? I’d appreciate it! 🙂

Tags: Bordeaux, Food, giveaway, salad, wine, wine and food pairing

Life Goes Better with Bordeaux

February 4, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 7 comments

I certainly think so! Several weeks back I received an email from the PR firm working on the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux campaign. My first thought, obviously, was what a fun job! My second, yes I would love to sample Bordeaux wine as a part of the campaign.

The samples arrived the day before my marathon travels in January began, and I have not had time to sit down a properly taste/review the wine until now. I have been greatly looking forward to it though!

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In addition to a bottle of champagne which I have not yet tasted, I was sent a red Bordeaux from Chateau Larose-Trintaudon from Medoc, France. The 2004 blend was 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot and had a deep purpley color in the glass and on my teeth 🙂 Perhaps the only downside of my penchant for red wine?

We used the new aerator that I received as a Christmas gift to aerate our glasses of wine and then let them breathe for about 20 minutes before taking a sip. The nose on the wine definitely included hints of tobacco and ripe raspberries. The mouth feel of this wine was like silk, very round and smooth with a nice, long finish, and lingering hints of those berries again. I have to say that I have not tasted many wines from Bordeaux, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed this wine. It was very soft, for lack of another term, and lacked any sharp alcoholic or acidic flavor which was very nice. The label noted that it was aged in 100% French oak which made me worry at first that it would have an oakiness to it which this wine did not have at all.  We drank it with a very creamy brie, and the cheese brought the fruit out of it very nicely. I would drink this with cheese again.

The Life Goes Better with Bordeaux campaign’s website is very interesting and helpful for newbies like me who want to learn about wine and wine regions. They also offer information on food and wine pairings and wines in different price ranges. My absolute favorite part of the site, besides the history of Bordeaux was the “Find your Bordeaux Match” section. You can choose a wine that you are familiar with, like a Napa Cabernet, and they suggest a Bordeaux wine that you might like. This is such a helpful tool, and I know that I will be using it again so that I can discover Bordeaux wines with flavor profiles that might be similar to other wines that I enjoy.

Many, many thanks to the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux for the samples and for opening my eyes to a region I have yet to explore. One I pop open the bubbly, I will be writing about that as well. Until then, enjoy the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux website!

Please don’t forget about my raffle to raise money for The ALLY Foundation! Each entry is a $10 donation on my fundraising page: http://www.firstgiving.com/meghanmalloyteamally. The prize is a $100 gift card to Williams Sonoma! The ALLY Foundation is doing incredible work protecting us from violent sex offenders, and I am proud to be running the 2010 Boston Marathon for them. Anything that you can donate will help!

Tags: Bordeaux, cheese, wine, wine and food pairing, wine samples, wine tasting

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