bloviatrix

The Dog House

Liberte Coconut Dessert Yogurt with diced mango. Absolutely fabulous.

BTW, we had an awful wine last night. Carmel Winery Cabernet Franc Judean Hills 2002. It was all alcohol. No flavor. We actually poured most of the bottle down the drain which is something we very rarely do. My tasting notes says: "Aaaargggghhhh" BTW, I got a postcard today from Skyview saying their Pesach sale starts March 14th. Skyview Wines

Bloviatrix, I did a search on eG and found no discussions at all by Katie or anyone else .. and on Google?Your search - Tierra Selva j Yecle Dolce - did not match any documents. ← This is the thread I was referring to.

If you're willing to go beyond eiswein, try the Tierra Selvaj Yecle Dolce. It wonderful and goes brilliantly with anything chocolate. If you do a search you'll find Katie Loeb's comments about it as well.

If you come across Terras de Belmonte, let me suggest you try it. It's become one of our house wines. It's a really nice red and even your non wine drinking friends will enjoy it because it's not bone dry. It can be sipped on its own or drunk with food. (Blovie is pouring himself a glass as I type) You might want to wander around that site for a bit. They have a great kosher wine selection. I think I'm in the shop a least once a week

Any chance you can get up to New York on April 10? Gotham Wine is sponsoring their 2nd annual kosher wine tasting (they're doing an Israeli wine tasting next sunday). If it's anything like last year, it will be amazing -- all the distributors were there as well as some of the wine makers. And while you're in town you can go to Skyview in Riverdale where they'll open a couple of bottles as well. Best part -- both places have great sales the month before Passover.

Pam beat me to it, but I was about to suggest Hafner. Is Georgia one of those states that allows wine delivery from out of state? Otherwise you're either going to have to make a trip or lure someone down to Atlanta for a visit.

I find that chopping vegetables is a total zen for me. When my knife is good and sharp I just get into a rhythm and although I'm paying attention to what I'm doing, I kind of zone out.

A couple of menu revisions. Turns of the sausage are Spicy southwestern venison sausage (I just browned them off and they smell very good) And I made a cranberry-tangernine salsa. It's highly unusual we eat this well at lunch unless I'm entertaining.

We're going out for dinner tonight. Tomorrow's lunch will be: Venison sausage on baby spinach dressed with mustard vinaigrette Oven-baked barbecued brisket Creamy cole slaw

Blovia: And how exactly did you do that? I am only afraid of two things in the kitchen: folding egg whites into batter (I went through a few week period with horrible genoise experiences -- they broke my will) and filo (I'm too much of a perfectionist -- I see only my flaws). ← I got over "egg white folding fear" by forcing myself to make things that require the technique. Don't add a lot of the whipped egg whites at a time and work slowly.

I made a pot of lentil soup for tonight's dinner. I picked up some beef-fry which is kosher mock bacon product (although it appears to me to be like corned beef). I've been playing around with all sorts of variations on lentil soup so I rendered off the fat and then sweat the mirepoix. Added some ground cumin and tomato paste and then a combination of vegetable broth and water. Once that came to a boil I added the lentils and let the whole thing simmer for about 30 minutes when I threw the beef-fry back into the pot. Soup was good. Blovie ate about quarts worth. The meat added some additional flavor, but I think that I would add more going forward.

BTW, Scharffenberger is kosher - KSA. El Rey is certified, but I don't know how reliable it is and they never responded to my e-mail. And some Dagoba products are kosher as well.

What type of fish is this? The blue looks fake.

Now I definitely have to re-up my DTV.

Sounds like you have a couple of admirers.

I'm just a home baker. But I'll be happy to try and help. Parve desserts can be a pain in the ass. As you know, margerine bakes differently than butter. And although I've been reasonably happy with the results of normal margerine in cakes, I've been working with the Healthy Balance which is trans-fat free and I'm having mixed results. You might want to contact the PC at Solo and talk with him about how he is managing. I recently sampled some of his pastry and they were really good -- the dough was so flakey I couldn't believe it didn't have butter in it. His name is Morgan Larrson. I believe he used to be at Aquavit. You can check out his menu here.

OTBN was amazing!! I really feel I made a meal that was worrthy the bottles of wine we drank. But because we did the meal on Friday night it was kaddosh, holy by making shabbos that much more special. The food was fabulous -- if I must say so myself -- and the wines turned out to be delicious. Plus, the company was superb. I received a great compliment last night -- our friends who joined us went to Solo the other night and one of them ordered the lamb. Turns out, mine was better. In the end, I made a mustard vinaigrette for the greens. And then I made duck gribenes from the skin and I put a piece on the top of each plate for a bit of crunch. And, if you haven't tried them yet, the roasted green beans were delicious. I could've eaten all of them by myself. (I actually, I tucked into the few remaining ones the next day ) The Chateau Giscours turned out to be lovely. The tannins had soften nicely. Initial nose was the mushrooms, truffles, earthy bordeaux smell that I adore and find oddly comforting. Then the fruit started to reveal itself. It really went perfectly with the lamb. The other wine we had was a Jonathan Tishbi Special Reserve 1999 Cab. Sauv. Sde Boker Vineyard. We drank this with the duck. This was also fabulous. Very fruity with a bit of oak in the background. As it sat in the glass it seemed to get a bit sweeter. We toyed with opening something for dessert, but it was getting late and we all wanted to make it to shul the next morning. As for the ginger cake -- it was a disaster. You can read about all my problems starting with this post and continuing with several others further down the thread. I'm glad I made the Chocolate Deception in addition.

Chiffon Cake? ← Thanks for the suggestion. I recently got over my fear of folding whipped egg whites into batter, so that might work.

I've used it quite a bit and I still haven't made up my mind about the product. Regular margarine doesn't give the same "rise" as butter. And this mostly affects cookies -- they tend to spread out more. But, I've never noticed textural differences in cake. But the Healthy Balance is different. It's quite brittle right out of the package. I've baked with it a bit -- my gingerbread cookies came out well as did my hamentaschen. I've had mixed results in my flourless chocolate cake -- but in that case I'm not sure if the graininess was caused by something else. I'm really at loss. I prefer to bake with butter. But, because most of my entertaining is based around meat meals, if I want to serve some form of cake I need to use margarine.

I find it kind of depressing the girls don't have access to the kitchen. When I "lived in" (which I did for 2 years) the kitchen was the hub of activity. Admittedly, there wasn't a lot of serious cooking going on, except for Rush when the sisters in the Hotel School would whip up some pretty impressive dishes, but I think about all the late nights we spent roasting marshmellows over the stove and I realize that a lot of bonding went on.

Try it!! I made this for dinner last night without the nuts and it was delicious. I could've eaten the whole bowl by myself. It will definitely join the rotation.

The cake was a total disaster. First, I couldn't get it out of the pan. I used a knife to loosen it from the sides. Banged on the bottom. Nothing. And when we finally got it out, there was a big chunk stuck to the pan. It seems the cake didn't cook all the way through. But it tasted ok. Now we're trying to figure out what caused the problems. Was it the fact I added the fourth egg late? The placement of the rack? Or that I used Healthy Balance, which is a trans-fat free margerine (I needed a parve cake for a meat meal)?

I guess it depends on the cable (or dish) company you have, with time warner cable it is channel 106. ← You'll only get BBC America in NYC if you have digital cable.