Auld Lang Syne

New Year's Eve always make me feel a bit melancholy.  Forced fun and mandatory kissing have never been my idea of a good time.  And let's face it, trotting out Dick Clark every year is just sad.  Once the hoopla of Christmas is over, it's like one long funeral dirge to bury the old year.  This year is no different, although instead of thinking about lost opportunities and lost friends, I've been thinking a lot about lost traditions. 

My mom is Italian and my dad is Southern.  Growing up, New Year's Eve was marked with an age-old dish from the Adriatic Coast: fried fish smothered in anchovy sauce.  In the old country it was likely the Church's way of supporting the local fish industry, and it stuck.

Then, on New Year's Day we'd be greeted by the smell of black-eyed peas simmering over a ham hock.  Your luck in the New Year was measured by how many of the slimy spotted beans you'd be willing to eat.  Not eating any was a pact with Bad Luck, and thus, not an option.  I could usually coax one down my throat.

When I married, my husband--normally more than happy to snarf down anything I put in front of him-- could never get his palate around the anchovy sauce, and I pretty much quit eating back-eyed peas the year I turned 18.  My children don't have these traditions, and for some reason--that saddens me.   Call it middle age or just misplaced nostalgia, but this year I'm ringing in the New Year with fried fish, anchovy sauce and black-eyed peas.  Auld Lang Syne, my friends, auld lang syne.

Fried Fish

1.  Purchase about 2 lbs of a mild, but firm white fish, like haddock or flounder, scaled and filleted.  Avoid tilapia, it's too fragile for this recipe.

2.  In a small bowl mix about 2 cups of Italian bread crumbs and 2 Tbs dried parsley.

3.  In a small pie plate or fluted dish, vigorously beat 2 eggs until the whites and yolks are fully blended.

4.  Heat about 1/4 inch of olive oil in a large frying pan until just smoking.

5.  Dredge a fish fillet with the egg wash, then dredge it through the breadcrumbs so that it is fully coated on both sides, and then dredge it through the egg wash one more time.  Fry it until golden brown.  Repeat with every piece of fish until you're done.  You may need to mix up more egg wash and breadcrumbs.

Anchovy Sauce

1.  On low heat in a large sauce pan, mix together the following:  Two 27-ounce cans of tomato puree or crushed whole tomatoes, 2 large cloves of garlic--mashed, 1 Tbs dried parsley, 1 can of flat anchovies, with the oil, 1/4 tsp dried red pepper flakes, 1/2 Tbs capers--chopped, 1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives (optional), salt and pepper to taste.    Simmer for about 2 hours until thick.  Add a can of tomato paste about half-way through if necessary.

2.  Serve over the fried fish and a generous helping of rotini pasta.

Black-eyed Peas

1.  Rinse and clean one pound of dried black-eyed peas.  Drain.

2.  Chop and saute over medium heat one small onion until soft and translucent--about 10 minutes.

3.  Add the now-cleaned beans to a large sauce pan, and cover with water--about 4 cups.  Add the cooked onion and one ham hock.

4.  Simmer over medium-low heat until tender.  Drain any excess water.  Remove the hammock and add any bits of meat to the beans.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Remark on how much better these taste since when you were a kid.

5.  Have a very Happy New Year.

Bloody Borscht

I've figured out why the Russians lost the Cold War. It wasn't the influence of Western culture or military spending during the Reagan administration. The Russians lost the Cold War because of borscht. The national soup of the Motherland is one mother to make. A country can only do so well economically when a disproportionate share of its labor force is spent making soup. Historians may ultimately disagree, but I'm sticking to my theory.   There's a reason that there's a McDonald's on Red Square and it isn't because Big Macs taste so good. The Bolsheviks were done in by borscht.


Borscht 
An adaptation of a recipe by Ann Simon.

1.  Cover a one and a half pot roast, bone in, with water.  Believe it or not, it's tough to find a pot roast these days with the bone in.  I wound up paying 67cents a pound for two beef bones.  It was more than a little annoying to pay $2.50 for a couple of bones that the butcher was going to throw in the trash, but hey, it's the capitalist way.

2.  Add about 1 Tbsp each of the finely chopped stems of cilantro and dill.  This step takes FOREVER because you have pull off the leaves and THEN chop the stems.  Those stems are tiny.  It takes A LOT of stems to get to a Tablespoon.  Save the leaves to garnish when serving--assuming you get that far.

3.  Let the beef and stems simmer on medium heat for about one and half hours, and every 10 minutes or so, skim off the fatty foam. 

4.  Saute in a separate pan about 1/2 cup each of a small dice of carrots, celery, and onion.   Set aside.

5.  Slice really thin one small cabbage or half of a big cabbage.  I recognize that "big" and "small" are relative terms.  "Big" would be the size of Boris Yeltzin's head;  "small" would be about the size of Vladimer Putin's.  

Big Head of Cabbage

Small Head of Cabbage

6.  Meanwhile, boil about 2 pounds of beets in yet another pot.  Boil for 20 minutes until tender.  If, like me, you are running out of space on your stove top, you can also roast the beets for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees, or until tender.    Let them cool.

7.  You forgot to keep skimming the broth, didn't you?  





Bloody, bloody borscht

 8.  When the beets have cooled, peel them.  This is a messy job.  Wear rubber gloves or you'll wander around with more beet blood on your hands than Joseph Stalin had human blood on his.

9.  Grate the beets.  Actually, go buy or borrow or steal a food processor and use that instead.

10.   Check the pot roast and the broth.  Taste the broth to ensure that it is sufficiently "beefy."  If not, add a bouillon cube.  This is also known as cheating.

11. Remove the pot roast from the broth and add the sauteed onions, carrots, and celery.

12.  Simmer for 10 minutes and add the sliced cabbage.

13.  Simmer for 5 minutes more and add the grated beets. 

14.  Peel and dice one potato;  add to the mix.  Are you starting to feel like this recipe is the culinary equivalent of War and Peace?

15.  Add one red or green pepper, thinly sliced.  Simmer some more.

16.  By this time, the beef has likely cooled so that you can cut it into small pieces; add the cut-up beef.

17.  Add 3 sliced tomatoes and the juice of one lemon to preserve that better dead-than-red color.  Cook another 15 minutes.

18.  Add two cloves of minced garlic and 2 tsp of horseradish..

19.  Serve--finally--with a dollop of sour cream and the dill and cilantro leaves for garnish.

20.  If you are Russian, look up from the task and realize that the Cold War is over.

Braised Bambi

My father and my oldest brother like to hunt.  Every year they trek out into the Great Beyond together and manage to take out a dear, elk, or some hapless wild hog.  I'm really not the least bit jealous.  I tried the whole hunting thing back in my teens in an attempt for some father-daughter bonding.  All I really got out of it was a bruise from my elbow to my shoulder when I mistakenly grabbed my dad's 12-gauge shotgun instead of my 20-gauge.   Damn thing blasted me 20 feet out of the duck blind and onto to my rear-end in the middle of a Texan swamp.  My father still busts out laughing at the memory.  No thank you.   At heart I'm a city girl.   The closest I get to the great outdoors is living on a fairly wooded lot in the middle of suburbia.

Which is why it is a total surprise to me that I like wild game.   I may turn my nose up at getting out in the brush to hunt, but I'm the first one looking for hand-outs when there's a 12-point buck to be divvied up.  And even though I am a miserable hunter, my father dotes on me, so I'm usually the first beneficiary of his largess.  After each of his expeditions, there's usually a cooler of the kill waiting for me--conveniently already skinned, trimmed, and shrink-wrapped in plastic as though I picked it up at the Wegman's butcher shop.  My dad knows his girl.  This year I scored elk and a hind quarter roast of deer.   The elk was easy--rubbed it with garlic and threw it on the grill; deer is always more of a challenge.   If it isn't properly prepared, it can be tough, chewy, and, well,  taste like deer.  It's sort of an irony, but the fun part of wild game is getting it to taste like beef--unless you happen to be making squirrel, and then the challenge is getting squirrel to taste like chicken.  It will if you bake it slowly in cream of mushroom soup.  I recognize, of course, that no one will read ever read this blog again if I feature a recipe on squirrel, so instead, let me serve up some venison. 

Braised Venison
Adapted from a recipe by Bruce Reeder

1.  Get yourself a 4-5 pound venison roast.  I'm not sure how you do this if you don't hunt yourself or have a friend or family member that does.  You could start hanging out at shooting ranges or get yourself a job behind the gun counter at Walmart.  Join the NRA?  Become a Republican?  There are ways.

2.  Generously rub the roast with olive oil, and salt and pepper.  Lightly coat with flour.

3.  Generously coat the bottom of a large saute pan with olive oil, about 2 Tbs, and a similar amount of butter--one large pat. 

4.  When the butter begins to foam, pan sear the roast on all sides--about 3-4 minutes per side until lightly brown.

5.  In a crock pot, add the following:  one envelop dried onion soup mix, 1 can cream of mushroom soup, 1 can beef consomme.  Stop and think for a second how much sodium is in each of these items.  Put your salt shaker back in the cupboard.

6.  Add: 2 large onions, coarsely chopped; 4 carrots, peeled and diced; 2 stalks of celery, chopped; 1 cup burgundy wine; 1 Tbsp rosemary.

7.  Stir and mix well.  Add the seared roast.

8.  Turn the crock pot on to "low" and go do something else for about 8-10 hours.   You can hike, rake leaves, stack wood, go to the mall, or do a ton of laundry.  When you are done you can come home and find that Bambi literally falls off the bone and is floating in a thick hearty broth, that yeah, pretty much tastes like beef.  Thanks, Dad.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

My husband is learning to cook and much to my amazement, he isn't half bad.  The fact that he has discovered the crock pot helps.  Cooking is a breeze when all you have to do is throw a bunch of stuff in one pot, turn it on, and walk away.  Still, he deserves credit for making progress. When he was single, his entire repetoire pretty much consisted entirely of oatmeal, minute rice with canned tuna, and for variety, he'd make a Lean Cuisines.   He could  also microwave a potato.  Garlic was  "ethnic."

The refrigerator of his bachelor days sported a bottle of French's mustard, a six-pack of Guinness, and lefover pizza.  Frankly, that refrigerator was the only way I knew he wasn't gay (not that there's anything wrong with that).  In my defense, he dressed really well, and collected antiques.  What can I say?  My prior boyfriend had thumb-tacked a Patriots bath towel to his window for a curtain, so the fact that my husband had insulated drapes that matched a Queen Anne wing-back armchair gave me pause.  I think I let out an audible sigh of relief when I opened that refrigerator door.   The poor guy didn't know how to make a sandwich, but thank the good Lord, he was straight!!

For the past 16 years, we've had a fairly egalitarian marriage:  I do all the cooking and he does everything else.  Unfortunately, with that crock pot he has recently caught on that cooking isn't as difficult as he feared.  He has discovered the joy of cranking up the tunes while you stir, chop, and saute--particularly if it means that someone else has to do the dishes, the laundry, the yard work,  pay the bills, and take the kids to soccer.  Damn.  I should take a hammer to that crock pot.  I've had it GOOD.

Slow Cooked Lamb & Beans
Courtesy of Wegman's  (Actually, I'm inferring such courtesy by the fact that they publish a quarterly recipe magazine ).

1.  Dust 4 lamb shanks with flour, salt, and pepper.  Wegman's features a pre-made "pan searing flour" that's really quite handy.  ( Oh come on, if I'm going to plagiarize Wegman's whole-cloth, the least I can do is make a few cheap plugs for some of their merchandise).

2.  Sear the lamb in a sauce pan coated with about 2 Tbsp of olive oil, heated over medium-high heat.  Brown on all sides--about 8-10 minutes.  Transfer the lamb to a crock pot.

3.  Add 8 oz of Wegman's cleaned and cut mirepoix to the pan--OR--save yourself about $4.00 and chop into a small dice: 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, and one small onion.  ( The pre-cut mirepoix is outrageously expensive; I do have some ethical standards.  Of course, new cooks like my husband get intimidated when they see an ingredient in French, and Wegman's knows how to exploit such naivety.  Cunning buggers, those Wegman's folks.)  Saute until the vegetables are tender.

4.  Add one bay leaf and one cup of dry white wine.  Reduce until the mixture is a little thick.

6.  Add 6 Tbsp of flour.

7.  Transfer mixture to the crock pot with the lamb.  Add:  the zest of one lemon, the juice of one lemon, 3 cans (15.5 oz each) of cannelli beans, 1 28 oz can of roma tomatoes with basil, and 32 oz of chicken stock. 

8.  Cook on HIGH for 5-6 hours, or on LOW for 8-10 hours.  (A dish that only requires one temperature setting appeals to novice cooks.)

9.  Stir in 1 tsp rosemary and 2 tsp thyme just before serving.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Ooh and aah over your husband's efforts.  Tell the little lad how fetching he looks barefoot and in the kitchen.

Deck the Halls

I spent most of Sunday putting up the Christmas lights on the house.  Every year I practically kill myself in December trying to get ready for Christmas.  December is simply too short, so I've stretched the madness into November.  I'm not proud of it, but I've joined the retailers who start putting up their decorations right after Halloween.  It seems, however, that the Christmas spirits are not amused, and all I know is that no cooking got done.

Recipe for Take-out

1.  Wake up and remember that you stored the Christmas lights someplace other than the place that you have stored them for the last 10 years.  Smile smugly and silently congratulate yourself on your excellent memory.   Now wipe that grin off your face when you realize that you don't remember where that other place is.

2.  Two hours later discover the Christmas lights below the stairs where you have always stored them because you told yourself last year not to be an idiot and think that you would remember a new location next year.

3.  Dutifully take an inventory and plug in every single strand of lights to make sure they work.  Notice that one strand only lights up half way, and spend the next half hour looking for replacement bulbs.

4.  Spend another 30 minutes risking electrocution as you reinsert and rearrange bulbs on the recalcitrant strand to get it lit.  Give up and admit that you have to go to Walmart.

5.  Spend 30 minutes looking for your car keys.

6.  Enter Walmart committed to only buying replacement lights.  Walk out with several pointsettas, a couple of picture frames, peppermint candy canes, and a bag of Tostitos because you already sense some stress eating in your future.

7.  Get home and brag to your husband about your fiscal restraint because you passed on the 3-foot lighted candy canes that were only $2.97 each.

8.  Eat lunch-er, the bag of Tostitos--because by this time you have frittered away the entire morning.

The female/male connection

9.  Start arranging the basket lights on the bushes, and encourage your children to join you.   Realize how much they've grown when they start to snicker at your directions to properly line up the "male/female" connections.  Understand that they are still children when despite your directions they still wind up at the end with  female/female connections and have to flip the lights around--and then flip them yet again.

10.  Two hours later begin stringing the icicle lights from the porch.  Start cursing loudly when you discover that the plugs on the lights you just purchased don't connect with the lights you purchased 4 years ago.

11.  Take a deep breath.  Determine that if you move all of the new lights to right side of the porch, and all of the old lights to the left side, all the connections will marry up.  Spend 45 minutes rearranging the lights.  Laugh out loud when it all works, then bemoan the fact you got cocky when you discover that your extension cord is two inches too short.

12.  Spend 30 minutes looking for the right extension cord.  When you can't find it, give a fleeting thought to driving back to Walmart.  But because it ain't over until it's over, try one more time to rearrange the lights and the existing spaghetti bowl of extension cords.  Pump the air with your fist when you get it to work.

13.  Plug it all in to revel in the glow of the holidays.  But first look up with dismay to realize that one strand  of lights across the top of the porch is only half-way lit.  Repeat step 4 and shake your head in defeat on the drive back to Walmart.

14.  Walk out this time with enough electronic hardware to rebuild Apollo 13.  Run into an old colleague who doesn't recognize you at first either because you haven't showered or because you have a maniacal glint in your eye--probably both. 

15.  Get home and restring the last freaking strand of lights just as the sun is setting. 

16.  Plug it in.  The lights look absolutely, positively beautiful.  Start thinking that the whole day was oh-so-worth-it just as your husband asks you if you intend to leave the lights turned on because, hell, it isn't even Thanksgiving yet.--and by the way, "what's for dinner?"

17.  Shoot him a dirty look and let him know that oh yeah, he's buying take-out.  Fa la F'ing la.

Champagne Brie Soup

Cheese and crackers are the bane of my existence.  Nothing is guaranteed to sabotage my diet like those chunks of pure fat placed on crunchy disks of pure carbs.  Nuts and chips and chocolate all present a certain temptation, but it's one I can usually avoid.  When it's cheese and crackers, however, I'm a goner.  I think I'm an addict.  I was at a party on Saturday night and devoured not only the cheese tray, but when dessert came, I discovered that creamy Gorgonzola on shortbread is as decadent as it is delicious.  I gained three pounds in one freaking day.  Nor am I a snob for the higher end cheeses and crackers.  When I really need a fix, I've been know to snarf down saltines and plastic-wrapped American cheese slices.  It isn't pretty.

I suppose you think that right about here I'm going to wow you with some delicious new substitute for cheese and crackers that I learned in some 12-step program.  You are expecting that I scoured the world web of recipes and have discovered the Holy Grail--an hors d'oeuvres that pairs beautifully with wine, tastes amazing, and has negative calories.  OK, two out of three isn't bad.  Today I offer champagne brie soup.  On a cold night, this soup, which blends butter, heavy cream and a full pound of melted brie is a religious experience.  What can I say? The beauty of this dish is that it is so absolutely, positively laden with fat and calories that by comparison, cheese and crackers is downright healthy.  I have to justify my addiction somehow.  Just like methadone is better than heroin, cheese and crackers is better than champagne brie soup.  Hey--whatever it takes to support my habit.

Champagne Brie Soup

1.  Melt 2 sticks of butter over low heat.

2.   Add 1/2 cup flour and beat with a whisk.   This is called a roux.  It is very very fattening.

3.  Add 1 cup chopped onion and 1/2 cup chopped celery and saute until the onions are translucent and the celery is tender; about 3-5 minutes.

4.  Add 1/2 tsp white pepper and 1/2 tsp. red pepper.   Actually measure these out.  I don't know why, but each time I've guesstimated the soup has turned out too spicy or too bland, and when I measure, it's perfect.  Weird; it's not like this is baking.

5.  Add 4 cups of chicken broth and turn to high heat.  Don't let the chicken broth fool you.  There is nothing remotely healthy about this soup.

Remove the rind.  It tastes like chalk.

6.  Remove the rind from a one-pound wheel of brie.  Cut the brie into small cubes and stir constantly until melted.  Yeah baby. 

7.  Lower the heat and add 2 cups of heavy cream and 1/2 cup of champagne.

8.  Continue to simmer until heated through and serve. 

You can make this soup up to 2 days ahead of time, but wait until just before serving to add the cream and the champagne.  This really is a lovely soup to have on hand for the holidays.  If I have a batch on hand, you are welcome to stop by for a cup.  The first one's free.

Fun with Dick and Jane

Fifty years is a long time.  1961.  John Kennedy was president and Barack Obama was an infant.  It was also the year that my in-laws, Dick and Jane (yes, really) were married.  A fiftieth anniversary is a lot of things--it's 50 years of memories and 50 years of stories, but mainly, it's a really good reason to have a party--a fancy one.  And so we did.  We gathered the clan, which after 50 years has grown to 21, and pulled out all the stops:  china, crystal, silver, and a meal that used 3 lbs of butter, 10 lbs of beef tenderloin, and at least 6 cups of heavy cream.  It's the kind of party that, candidly, you really can only have once every generation years because I'm not sure you would otherwise survive it. 

A word here on fancy dinner parties, which I recognize are a dying breed.  It's funny really.  The average bride-to-be will spend countless hours figuring out her "registry," will dutifully ooh and aah at the haul of china, crystal, and silver she gets as shower and wedding gifts, and then she will summarily stuff it all back in its original box and store it in the crawl space over the garage.  For a very long time.  If not forever.  Instead, when she and her husband entertain, they'll head to Costco for a tower of paper plates and a box of silver colored plastic utensils.  There's a belief, I suppose, that if you use your good stuff, it will break, tarnish, look "used", and will otherwise never be in the wondrous pristine condition as when you first got it.   It's not a short step from there to putting plastic runners down your hallways and covering your seat cushions with cellophane.  Don't do it.  Use your stuff. 

Be careful with it.  Baby it.  Pamper it.  Clean it with ammonia-free detergents and store it in layers of bubble wrap.  And yes, I am fully aware of how much work that it is, but for God's sake USE IT.   Expect and understand that along the way it will get chipped, scratched, and broken.  That's OK.  Puttin' on the Ritz is fun, and after 50 years, you'll be happier for the memories than with unopened boxes.  Just ask Dick and Jane.

Individual Beef Wellington--a dish served best on bone china.
1.   Pat dry with a clean paper towel eight 4 ounce cuts of beef tenderloin-trimmed of all visible fat.  Generously salt and pepper.  (OK, I made 24 of these bad boys, which took 5 hours, and on some level was simply insane, but for an 8 person dinner party, this recipe really isn't that bad.)

2.  Heat about 3 Tbs of olive oil in a large frying pan, and sear each steak until it is brown--about 3 minutes per side.  Set aside and chill.

3. In the same frying pan, because you want to scrape up all the good bits of seared meat and juice, add 2 finely chopped shallots and 2 cloves of minced garlic.  Add a little olive oil if necessary.  Soften--about 5 minutes.

4.  Add 1 cup of Madeira and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes or until the Madeira is reduced to about 1/2 cup. 

5.  Add 1/2 cup of beef broth and simmer for another 3-4 minutes.  Remove the sauce from heat and refrigerate.

6.  In the same pan (because there are some tremendous flavors in this pan about now) add 2 Tbs  butter, one large Mayan or Vidalia onion, thinly sliced, and 2 Tbs of chopped shallots.

7.  As the onions and shallots begin to soften, add 8 large thinly sliced mushrooms.  Salt and pepper.

8.  Continue to cook on medium heat until the mushrooms are lightly browned.  Set aside to cool completely.

9.  In a small bowl, beat one egg to make an egg wash.

10.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out one puff pastry sheet and cut into 4 squares, each large enough to fully wrap one tenderloin steak, about a 6.5 inch square.

11.  Put one heaping Tbs of the onion/mushroom mixture on a puff pastry square, and then top with a tenderloin steak.  If you want to go really high-falutin', you can also add a small two inch square of pate, or one Tbs. of crumbled Gorgonzola between the mushrooms and onions and the beef.

12.  Wrap each corner of the puff pastry over the steak, and seal the seam with the egg wash.

13.  Repeat for each steak, which will require a second puff pastry sheet for the last four steaks.

14.  Arrange each Beef Wellington on a non-stick baking sheet, seam side down.

15.  Chill at least one hour and up to one day.

16.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Brush the top of each Beef Wellington with the egg wash.  Bake 20-30 minutes until the puff pastry is golden brown.

17.  While the Beef Wellington is cooking, bring out the now fully chilled Madeira sauce.  Heat until hot and add 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream.   Spoon the sauce on that plate of china you agonized selecting, and top with a Beef Wellington.  Pair with mashed potatoes and a nice crisp green vegetable.

Osso Bucco

Veal Shank

 If you don't like the idea of killing baby cows, then go ahead and X out of this post now.  This is not a posting for vegetarians or politically correct carnivores.  This is osso bucco--a stew made from veal shanks, or dead baby cow.  Try to forget images of soulful brown eyes and plaintive bleating on the way to the slaughter.  The folks from PETA would hate this recipe, but then, they don't know how good it tastes.  In Italian, osso bucco literally means bone with a hole in it, but it could just as easily mean "how did I live this long and never experience this?" The shank is a donut-shaped bone from the calf's lower leg; it is surrounded by tender succulent meat, at least that's how it gets when you slow cook it for hours in wine, sherry, and broth.  Inside the donut hole rests an amazing dollop of bone marrow, which--once you forget that it's bone marrow tastes like the little piece of heaven that it is.

Osso Bucco is the one dish that once prompted my husband to eat a full dinner twice.  As I recall, he had come back from some evening gathering, and I asked in my ubiquitously-wifey manner:

"How was your meeting?"

"They served osso bucco."

"But you already ate dinner."

"But it was osso bucco."

"Oh my God, you had TWO dinners!" [read: you gluttonous pig].

Says husband, nodding in shared disbelief, "But it was osso bucco."

When I thought about it--he was right.  Osso bucco is worth it.  Just don't think about the baby cows.

Osso Bucco
 By Todd English

1.     Lightly dust four large veal shanks with a mixture of salt, pepper, and flour.  TIP:  If you pat the shanks dry with a clean towel first they will brown better.  Moisture on any meat thwarts this browning process.

2.     In a large dutch over or saute pot, heat approximately two Tbs of olive oil on medium high heat.  Add the veal shanks and cook until they are golden brown--about 5 minutes on one side and two minutes on the other.  Set the shanks aside.

3.  Add one cup of chopped raw bacon to the pan, and cook until it begins to render its fat--about 2 minutes.  Add 6 cloves of thinly sliced garlic.

4.    Dice the following: 1 sweet Mayan or Vidalia onion, 2 large peeled carrots, 3 celery stalks , 2 leeks (white part only), 2 cups shitake mushrooms,.  Add it to mixture.

5.  Add 2 Tbs fresh rosemary, 1 tsp fennel seeds, and 1/2 tsp pepper flakes.  Stir to thoroughly mix.

6.  Return the shanks to the pan and add 3/4 cup dry white wine and  1/2 cup dry Sherry.  Cook 5 minutes.

7.  Add 4 cups of low sodium chicken broth, the zest of one orange.  Bring to a low simmer.

8.  Roast at 425 degrees for 2 hours.

9.  Transfer the shanks to a plate and return the pan to medium high heat.  Add 2 Tbs Dijon mustard and simmer for 10 minutes.  Return the shanks to th pan and cook until heated through; garnish with fresh parsley.

10.  Serve with hot polenta, a full bodied cabernet, and good friends who have no compunction about dining on cute little farm animals.

Soup for the Soul

Life isn't fair.  I learned this in college when I stayed up all night studying for an exam and got a "B" while my room mate spent the same night at a bar with her boyfriend and got an "A", but I've had it easy.  That life isn't fair is harder to reconcile when a colleague retires from a lifetime of work and within 6 months his wife is dead from a rare brain tumor.  Or when an innocent child struggles with a debilitating illness.  Or when clean living yields breast cancer and leaves in it's wake a motherless family.   It simply, fundamentally, isn't fair.   Life rewards and punishes with a whim and caprice that is breathtaking in its randomness.  And God, if there is a god, doesn't seem to give a rat's ass.  I have a hard time with that. 

I envy those who can cling to their faith in the face of adversity.  I wish that I could turn to prayer to find comfort and solace and know that at the end of the day it all makes sense and that it will all be alright.  I can not.  At the end of the day, after all of the prayers, rosaries, or novenas, I'm left only with the realization that life is not fair and that there's not a damn thing that I can do about it.  Except for one thing.  I can cook.  If I can't make things better, and God appears to choose not to, then at least I can cook.  I make soup or sauce or supper and try to make sure that when people I know suffer they don't do so alone and they don't do so hungry.   Life may be nasty, brutish, and short, but it need not be unkind.

Soup

1.  Gently saute in olive oil a finely diced mire poix, i.e. a fine dice of one medium-sized onion, about 3 large carrots, and 2 celery stalks.  Saute over low heat until just tender--about 10 minutes.

2.  Add approximately 6 cups of water.

3.  Add 1 lb of washed lentils, and one hammock or ham bone for lentil soup; OR

4.  Add l lb of dried peas and one hammock or ham bone for split pea soup; OR

5.  Add a chicken carcass for chicken soup; OR

6.  Add cabbage, tomatoes, spinach, and green beans for vegetable soup; OR

7.  Substitute beef broth for the water and add beets and cabbage for borscht.

8.  The possibilities are endless--much like the endless ways that life isn't fair.

9.  Simmer on the lowest possible heat for about an hour and half.  Season with salt and pepper.

10.  Cool;  remove any bones; leave the meat.

11.  Pour it into a Tupperware container and take it to someone who needs it.  And if they are really hurting, don't give a second thought to whether you get your container back.

As Time Goes By

 


Camel Hump Mountain, Vermont

 I lived in Vermont the year before I got married.  My landlord and landlady were generous people straight from the pages of Vermont Country Living.  He sported an overgrown beard and plaid shirts and she traipsed around in fur-lined Birkenstocks and hand-dyed wool sweaters.  When I left to start my life anew in the South land, they gave me a simple contraption in which you can make home-made apple sauce, because to a Vermonter, store bought apple-sauce from Mott's is like Prego or Ragu to an Italian. 



Authentic Vermont Appe Sauce Maker

Every fall for the first 3 years we were married I pulled out the apple-sauce maker and dutifully made a few jars of fresh, unadulterated apple sauce.  I gathered my pre-school nieces and nephew around me and revelled in their delight as we smushed up apples and mixed them with sugar and cinnamon, and I dreamed about the day when I could make applesauce with my as-yet unborn children.  And then.  And then the children came.  All three of them.  One sleepless year after the other.   Three babies in 26 months; no twins.  There was no apple sauce.  There was only teething and dirty diapers and frustrated trips to lactation consultants that ended blissfully with trips to Costco to buy Enfamil.  


Halloween 2005

And before I knew it, fall was all about coordinating matching costumes and carving pumpkins and getting to know new teachers that made my children construct stupid dioramas out of cardboard that fell apart right as they walked onto the school bus.  And now fall is about shuttling kids to soccer and karate and having a teenager that I hardly know anymore because she won't talk to me.  And I have never made apple sauce with them.  Not once.  Ever.  Until now. 

I had always pictured that our apple-saucing would begin by bundling the children up with a picnic lunch and heading out to a far-flung orchard to pick our apples right off the tree.  We'd sing songs on the way out, frolic in the crisp autumn air, and then the children would sweetly fall asleep on the way home while I held my husband's hand in contented silence.  Yeah right.  When I mentioned an orchard the kids got a panicked look in their eyes and quickly retreated to avoid what they have come to call "Forced Family Fun."  My husband merely snorted something about too many bees and wanting to power wash the back deck.  Fine.  If we aren't going to have a day of Walton-family apple picking I'll buy the stupid apples at the grocery store, which I did.

Die, Infidel, Die!

Then I forced my children to gather around me for our First Annual Making of the Apple Sauce.  My youngest fled the kitchen screaming that the process of boiling apples and then smushing them into apple-sauce oblivion was "disgusting;"  my teenager crossed her arms, rolled her eyes and then sighed in utter boredom as she sauntered back upstairs to her lair of adolescent angst. Only my son stuck around.  He pretended that each boiled apple was the head of an enemy combatant to be tortured and pulverized in the vice grip of the death machine that is the apple sauce maker.   Nice.  Not exactly the Hallmark moment that I was going for.   So much for the Annual Making of the Apple Sauce.  This is one, I think, that got away from me. 


 Don't get me wrong.  I don't believe that my children will be scarred or emotionally crippled by the fact that annual apple sauce making is not one of our traditions.  Children, it turns out, are very forgiving.  It seems,  however, that time is less so. Missed opportunities are just that.  Missed.

Homemade Apple Sauce

1.     Spend way too much money on about one and a half pounds of locally grown apples.  Don't go crazy trying to figure out what kind to buy.  If you get apples that are too tart, you can just season them with more sugar.  I happen to like Gala.  You do want to avoid Red Delicious, however.  All they are is red.


2.     Dump the apples into a large saucepan with about two inches of water.  Boil the hell out them until they are soft and tender; about 5 minutes.  You will know they are ready because the skins will be cracked and the soft white flesh of the apples will be started to spill out.  My youngest wasn't all wrong--they do look disgusting.

3.    Drain off any excess water, cover, and while they cool, take your teenage daughter to the mall to buy a dress for her cousin's wedding because, NO--you can't wear jeans and one of Daddy's Red Sox t-shirts to a wedding.


4.    Get out the Apple Sauce Maker from the garage.  Clean the spider webs off of it.

5.    Dump the boiled apples into the apple sauce maker and pound and grind the pulp from the apples out through the colander-cone.  If you don't have an apple sauce maker, just make the apple sauce like you would mashed potatoes:   core and peel them; cut them into chunks, and then boil them until they are soft and tender and easily mashed with a potato masher.

6.    Season with cinnamon and sugar.

Grilled Cheese

It's been a week of uninspired cooking.  That happens sometimes; I mean there's a reason that people buy Stoeffer's lasagna, although I never could figure out why they actually eat it.  My family has been surviving for the last few days on rotisserie chicken, leftovers, and grilled cheese sandwiches.  The grilled cheese sandwich, however, gets a bum rap.   It is highly underrated.  Pair it with a hearty soup and it's transformed into a fully satisfying meal.  But you have to get it right.  This isn't the dish to be fancy or high-falutin.'  Bring out the white bread, butter, and some honest-to goodness highly processed American cheese-bright orange.  I used to whole hog and get Velveeta, but when they moved it out of the refrigerated case and started selling it on a stand in the middle of the store, I got a little grossed out.  It's supposed to be cheese, afterall, but if it can survive for months in a vacuum-sealed sheet of tin-foil, then it's a pretty safe be that Velveeta isn't even food.

The key to a good grilled cheese sandwich is low heat.  Low heat is counter-intuitive because as the quintessential quick and easy food, you want it fast, which means you'll flip the heat to high, and then all is lost.  High heat toasts the bread before the cheese is melted, and half the experience of a good grilled cheese is letting all that molten cheese run out from between the bread slices so that you can later suck it off an index finger that you dragged across your plate.  But don't let you kids see you do that or they will peg you for the hypocrite that you are because you've been telling them since they were 18 months old not to lick their fingers.

  Soft, Delicious, Nutritous? I WONDER.

Now when I say "white bread" I don't mean "Wonder Bread."  Just like Velveeta isn't cheese, Wonder Bread isn't bread.  Wonder bread is white and that's pretty much where the similarity to bread breaks down.  Get a good Italian loaf and either buy it sliced or slice it yourself-thin, 1/4" slices.  If you want that cheese to melt you can't expect the heat to make the all day journey through a one inch slice of Texas toast.  Plus, to get any flavor from the cheese, you'd have to pile on multiple slices and then, getting it to melt-again becomes a challenge.  Nope.  You want thin slices of good Italian bread, into wich you place two-to-three slices of American cheese.  Cheddar works ok too, but then put the heat even lower because a good cheddar takes even longer to melt.  Butter the outside faces of the sandwich and then pop it all on a griddle or pan set to -that's right- LOW HEAT.

Ain't it good to know, you've got a friend

It's been a rough week.  Sleep and I have parted company.  I like Sleep.  I always thought Sleep and I got along just fine, but this week for some reason Sleep is pissed and he's staying away, and I've been staying awake.  It just sucks.   As I lie in bed each night, my body aches for Sleep.  I can't think of anything but Sleep, and I desperately want Sleep to come back.  But despite my best efforts to entice him back into my bed, he's ignoring me, and I'm up at 3 a.m. watching recorded episodes of Modern Family.  One of the first casualties has been both my cooking, and hence, this blog.  When you haven't slept, your body automatically prioritizes those things upon which to expend energy.  Breathing comes first, and it pretty much ends there.

This blog, fortunately, has been rescued by my dear friend, next-door neighbor,
published author (http://www.amazon.com/Jaguar-Sees-Lacquer-Box-ebook/dp/B004LB4Z0U)*, and fellow-blogger (http://annsannotations.blogspot.com/),  Ann Simon.  She will share with you a dessert dressed up as breakfast.  It sounds amazing, but my eye-lids are getting heavy, my body is getting warm, and I sense that perhaps Sleep is willing to reconcile, so I'm off to see if I can't talk him into some zzzzzzz's.

Strawberry Croissant French Toast
By Ann Simon

We all stand in awe of Cynthia's cooking, I think we can admit that.  At least, we all sit at her table with awe. 

When I first met Cynthia, she would spend an afternoon "relaxing," cooking red sauce or mouth watering eggplant parmesean.  I, of course, the devoted neighbor, did my part by tasting her endeavors and accepting invitations to family dinners.  Okay, they weren't always invitations as my husband has been known to yell across the fence, "Cynthia!  What are you making for dinner?"   

I don't mind cooking.  I am a decent cook.  However, you will NEVER find me relaxing in the kitchen.  My reaction to approaching the stove is akin to hearing the Star Trek claxon screaming "Avoid!  Avoid!"  On the other hand, I do love to eat. We are currently in the middle of ten days in Nova Scotia.  We eat sea food in the evenings and enjoy various B&B breakfasts in the mornings.  There's a modest amount of hiking that goes on in between, but, let's face it, that's pretty much an excuse to sit at table again.  Oh, yes, Richard, we've done our share of sampling Nova Scotia's wine as well.  One word for you, Jost. 

Yesterday, the English Country Garden B&B (Indian Brook, Nova Scotia) offered a breakfast dish well worth sitting down for.  It's probably even worth entering the kitchen to cook because it's not difficult to make while the results are spectacular.  It is:



Strawberry Croissant French Toast

Take one fat croissant and slice it lengthwise.
Smear cream cheese on the bottom slice and top with
fresh, sliced strawberries.
Dip the entire thing in egg mixture and fry like French Toast.
Serve with maple syrup.  (Use real maple syrup; don't waste the fake stuff on this.)

Sit with a cup of coffee or tea and eat while gazing on the mist rising from the inlet beyond the garden.

*  Jaguar Sees:  The Lacquer Box will soon be available for the Nook and I-Pad on Smashwords.

Great Expectations

My daughter made dinner last week.  This is not any kind of a remarkable feat.  She is, afterall, 13 years old and has mastered the only skill truly required to cook:  she can read.  Still.  It seems like it was 20 minutes ago that I was making airplane noises while I scraped pureed peas off of her lower lower lip with a plastic-coated spoon.  What the hell happened?  Apparently children grow up without your permission.  Who knew?

It didn't help that she pulled my volume of Julia Child off the shelf and decided to make supreme de volaille archiduc.  Really?  Chicken breast sauteed in onions and paprika in a Madeira-cream reduction sauce?  I had figured when I gave her the green light to cook dinner that we'd be dining on Cap'n Crunch.  Of course, as I gingerly turned over about $15 worth of chicken breast, I realized that we still might.  Indeed, I had visions that this poor chicken was destined to make a charred journey from shrink wrap-to stove-to trash.  Secretly, I wondered if I had any meat sauce stashed in the freezer that I could pull out after what I was sure would be a chicken cremation. 

I was mistaken.  The dish was everything you would expect of chicken breasts sauteed in butter and then slathered with heavy cream and booze.  It was amazing.  Eating my words never tasted so good.  My daughter had the whole family practically licking every morsel and drop of it off the plate with our tongues.  

I have often observed that the secret of successful parenting is to simply lower your expectations.  It seems, however, that the real joy of parenting is watching your children exceed them.


Supreme de Volaille Archiduc (something in French)
By Julia Child

1.   Rub 4 boneless chicken breasts with fresh lemon juice and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2.  Finely mince one medium sized onion (about 2/3 cup).  Drop the minced onion into boiling water for 1 minute; drain, run cold water over them, and drain again.  This technique lets you quickly soften the onion, but by pouring cold water over the hot onions, you stop them from continuing to cook.

3.  Heat 4 Tbsp of butter in a large saute pan until foaming and add the blanched onion and 1 Tb of  red paprika.  Cook the onions over very low heat for about 10 minutes.  Low heat here is critical.  Butter burns really quickly;  if your pan is too hot you can turn your back for a minute and wind up with a black slurry.

4.   Add the chicken breasts and saute until they are slightly golden. 

5.  Move them to a casserole dish and finish them in an oven pre-heated to 400 degrees, about 20-30 minutes.  Julia Child claims that the meat is done when it "is springy to the touch"--whatever that means.  I have to either stick a meat thermometer in it or cut it open peak inside, a fact of which I am not particularly proud, but which I passed down to my daughter.   

6.   Pour into the now emptied pan that you used to saute the chicken, 1/4 cup beef broth, 1/4 cup port, Madeira, or dry white vermouth.  We  used Madeira.

7.  Add 1 cup heavy cream.  Yeah, baby, yeah.  This recipe tastes amazing for a reason.

8.  Add back in the reserved onion and paprika mixture.

9.  Stir the sauce constantly over high heat until the cream boils down and slightly thickens.  Season to taste with lemon, salt, and pepper.

10.  Serve the sauce over the now fully cooked chicken breast and garnish with parsley.  Pair it with anything that will absorb the sauce:  risotto, potatoes, polenta and a fresh green, such as those frozen green peas that languish for months in the back of your freezer.
11.  Ask your daughter when she's making it again.

Do Bears Eat Muffaletta?

 Although I promised that I would report on how the muffaletta held up on the Appalachian Trail,* I'm truly and simply grateful that I survived the experience.  Wouldn't you know that 10 minutes into my inaugural hike into White Oak Canyon, my friends and I unwittingly stumbled upon a bear.  A black one.  A big black bear. To those of us who grew up in the 1970's, bears aren't all that frightening --at least initially.  I come from a long culture of cool, kind, bears.  There's Yogi Bear, Sesame Street's Fozzie Bear, Pooh Bear, and of course, the perennial favorite--Gentle Ben.  Which all explains, of course, my intial reaction to the giant black bear that ambled across the trail--less than 30 feet in front of us:  "Ahhhh, look at dat beeeaaarr."   And then, a split second later when I realized that I wasn't at the National Zoo with protective guard rails, but rather, was out in the wild, where arguably, I was pretty much an hors d' oeurves--at least for bears: "HOLY SHI*; that's a F******* BEAR."  Suffice it to say that I gave little thought to the muffaletta wrapped up tightly in tinfoil like a small nuclear device in my backpack.  Although if I'd thought about it, maybe I would have pulled it out in the hopes that our cool kind bear would have preferred to dine on it rather than us.  

None of that mattered.   Ranger Rick is right--unless you have the misfortune to stumble across a cub, most bears have little interest in humans.  We dutifully made a lot of noise, although we were still careful to do it in a manner that was neither aggressive or threatening.  Gentle Ben continued to amble along, gratefully, blessedly, away from us.   

My heart didn't stop pounding for another 45 minutes.  For most of the day every stump and bush looked like a bear, and the quick scurrying of squirrels in the leaves caused a sudden rush of adrenalin.  This all means that when we finally settled down to dive into my muffaletta that we had most assuredly earned it.  The muffaletta was amazing, although truthfully, it paled in comparison to the graceful dance of water on the rocks that is White Oak  Canyon.

     

*  See Hiking the Appalachian Trail (September 14, 2011) for the Muffaletta recipe and an explanation of why in the world you would ever pack one for a hiking trip.

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

The Falls at White Oak Canyon

I am going to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail this weekend.  Don't jump to any conclusions.  Unlike former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, I'm not planning a tryst with my Argentinian lover.  Remember that this is a boring suburban cooking blog.  I'm getting together with a couple of girlfriends and we're heading out to a place called White Oak Canyon in the Shenandoah National Park.  Technically, this canyon is NOT on the Appalachian Trail.  The "AT," to those in the know, is a trail from Maine to Georgia that follows the ridge line of the Appalachian Mountains.  Because this is a canyon, it isn't on the ridge, and hence, it's not exactly on the Trail.  Ah, purists-sort of the same mentality that hates jarred spaghetti sauce.  Ridge, smidge.  The way I see it, if I'm closer to West Virginia than to a Nordstrom's, then I'm on the Appalachian Trail.




OK, OK; poison ivy concerns me too.

  Candidly, this is my first ever real hike.  I'm a big walker, but that's about as rigorous as my exercise gets.  I'm told that hiking is different.  I suppose I should be buzzing about pulling together trail maps, a compass, water purification tablets, and studying Native American plant species, but I'm not.  The National Park Service states that this is a four-hour hike, safe for those between the ages of 6 to 60.  Hence, I don't think survival equipment is really required, and unless I'm eating them, I could care less about plants.  No; there's really only one thing that concerns me.  Lunch.

I figure that we'll arrive at the Park around 10 in the morning.  It's a four-hour hike, and unless we carry our lunch with us, we won't be able to eat until two o'clock.  Given that at heart I'm a namby-pamby, it might even be closer to three o'clock, what with all the multiple water breaks and rest stops.  I can do a lot of things, but waiting until two or three in the afternoon to eat lunch is not among them   Carry it in it is.  So here's the dilemma:  a really good picnic lunch is going to be heavy, what with the plates, utensils, and tupperware--not to mention the food itself.  I suppose we could opt for a utilitarian meal of power bars and raisins, but let's be honest: power bars are disgusting, and so are raisins--unless they are in an oatmeal cookie.  The obvious alternative is sandwiches, but they'll be a smushed up mess after being jostled in a backpack for two hours.   What to do?  What to do? 

I have an idea.  A muffaletta.  A muffaletta is sort of an antipasto salad wrapped up in a thick hunk of Italian bread.  The beauty of it is that you typically make a muffaletta the night before you eat it, and some recipes even call for you to to let it sit overnight under a heavy can or two in order to compress all the flavors.  Ah--you see where I'm going here.  All that backpack jostling will actually make my muffaletta taste better--part of the recipe as it were.  Ultimately, it's really just a sandwich, so it should be pretty light.  Add a couple of apples or oranges that carry pretty well, some canned chips, and a delightful lunch--worthy of an inaugural hike on the Appalachian Trail--might just be in our future.

Muffaletta

1.   Go buy a really high-quality whole loaf of Italian bread.  DO NOT BUY IT SLICED.

2.  Cut the loaf in half horizontally.  Place it on a large piece of tinfoil--sufficient to entirely wrap the loaf once it is fully stuffed.  Depending on how much you intend to stuff it, you may want to pull out some of the breading on the inside of the loaf.  Take the removed breading and immediately shove it into your mouth.  It's really really good. 

3.  Mix vigorously in a small bowl:  two Tbs of olive oil and one Tb of good-quality balsamic vinegar.  Drizzle this dressing on the interior of each side of the loaf.

4.  Generously spread each side of the load with any or all of the following:  chopped olives (green or black or both), thinly sliced red onion, slices of roasted red peppers, pesto, basil leaves, tomatoes, or chopped artichokes.

5.  Line the loaf with several ounces of your favorite deli meat:  ham, salami, turkey, roast beef, mortadella, or any combination thereof.

6.   Layer in a few ounces of your favorite cheese:  provolone, asiago, and/or mozarella.

7.  Reassemble both sides of the loaf to make one giant honkering sandwich.  Wrap it really tightly in the tinfoil. 

8.  Wrap it up again with another piece of tinfoil; put it in a large ziplock freezer bag and then put it in your backpack--on top of the water bottles, apples, and anything else that's heavy.  No need to take unnecessary chances with the smushing.  You want the flavors pressed in, but too much jostling and you run the real risk of turning it into a soggy mess.

9.  Drive out to White Oak Canyon.  Hike about 2 miles into the canyon with good friends and enjoy both your lunch and the magic of the moment.  Or at least that's the vision; I'll let you know how it turns out.

Wine 101

Wine intimidates me.  It's difficult for me to admit to this fact because I am married to a wine freak.  Pretty much every day we're popping open some varietal I've never heard of, and he's going on about the weather in Napa and what the Parker scores are.  Most of daily life is like Wine 101.  The problem is we've been married for 16 years, and by this time I should have my degree; instead, I'm pretty much stuck at Wine 101.  About all I can do is tell you the difference between a red and a white.  Um.  They're both good.


I think part of the problem is that hubby dearest knows
my palate such that I don't have to.  When it comes to wine, I get to be June Cleaver and let Ward deal with all the tough issues like how to disclipline Wally and the Beaver, and,oh yeah--decide what to drink. 

I have, however, learned two things.  The first is that when the right food is paired with the right wine, the experience and flavor of both is enhanced.  (And when the right food and wine are paired with the right people, well--that's pretty much a spiritual experience.)  For example, take my tomato sauce.  I pride myself on this sauce, and even my children know that jarred sauce in my kitchen is like ants at a picnic.  My Ragu-loving husband, however, can do one thing to make it better:  serve it with chianti classico reserva.  This higher-end chianti stands up to the acidity of the tomatoes and allows every single molecule of flavor to tap dance on your tongue.  Same thing happens when you  take a ruby port and serve it with the richest creamiest darkest chocolate dessert you can find, and suddenly your richest creamiest darkest chocolate dessert becomes utterly and simply:  MORE.  It's heaven.

The problem, of course, is knowing what pairs with what, and here is the second thing I've learned.   If you don't have a husband or a trusted fried that can pair your wine, find someone who can.  There are hundreds of such people; most of them own wine stores.  There is simply no shame in not knowing in how to pick the right wine.  There are about a million wines out there, and only professionals or weirdos like my husband can keep track of them all.  Note that I didn't say find someone to pick your palate.  Your palate is your palate.  It's sort of like sex, if it isn't good for you, then it simply isn't good.  The right wine guy will know this.

I don't frequently do shout-outs on this blog, but my favorite place to go for wine is Vienna Vintner in Vienna, Virginia.  The proprietor is guy named Victor Mendes, and he's about as approachable and unpretentious as they come.  You are greeted with not just with a smile, but on Saturday afternoons, he has a full spread of wine and food out for sampling at the back of the store.  Hit it at the right time, and you feel like you've walked into a really good party. Victor understands that wine and food are like a good marriage-each one does what they can to make the other better.  So when you sample his wines, you get a sense not just what they will taste like, but how they will hold up to particular flavors.  There's also usually someone there, if not Victor himself, who is more than willing to explain to you what it is you are drinking, and thus, after awhile, you start to learn what it is you like, and what you don't.  Go there often enough and you might actually learn enough about wine to graduate from Wine 101.