Lemon Caper Beurre Blanc – Sauce Divine!

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Work and travel have kept us from blogging over the past few weeks, but we’re back with more wine and food adventures.  Today, we’re describing a dish we prepared recently with an emphasis on the sauce, lemon caper beurre blanc.

I love a great sauce on fish and poultry.  It makes a simple dish much more exciting and creates lots of delicious wine pairing opportunities.  Beurre blanc is versatile and works well on almost any fish (ok, I probably wouldn’t use it on fried catfish).  I’ve watched Mary make it several times and there is a bit of a ballet involved.  Things need to be added in the correct order, at the right time. She is always careful to make sure the butter is cold and hard, and she uses heat some of the time and takes it off the heat some of the time.  It finishes rich and tangy, just as the food is plated, added to the dish just before serving.  I love it! 

Beurre blanc is an example of an emulsion of oil in water.  An emulsion is a suspension of two liquids that don’t normally mix by adding droplets of one liquid to the other, such as oil and vinegar or mayonnaise.  The aqueous or water-based part must be acidic.  You can use vinegar or an acidic white wine, which would be most white table wines.  I don’t recommend the cooking wine that is available at the grocery store.  It is poor quality and has added salt.  When cooking with wine, follow the rule of not cooking with a wine you wouldn’t drink.  The other acidic liquid you can use is citrus juice, which is what Mary uses.  She doesn’t like to open a bottle of wine just for a little for cooking, but it’s fine if you do.  You can use some of the rest to sip while you’re working on dinner.  Now, that’s cooking with wine!  Here’s Mary to talk through the beurre blanc preparation.

I use a very simple recipe.  It is just lemons, butter, dried Provençal herbs, and capers.  Many recipes call for shallots, which would be fine.

I melt the butter in a stainless steel saucepan, although an enamel-coated sauce pan is recommended by Julia. 

After the butter is melted, I add a little of the lemon juice (or white wine) at a time while stirring it into the butter.  In Brian’s chemistry lesson (sheesh!), he said add it in droplets, but I just do it in small amounts, not exactly droplets.  This is the time to add the capers.  You can mash a few of the capers to release more flavors.  Then I let that mixture reduce by about a third to get it to a better consistency.  I add a little salt and pepper. 

Now it’s time to add the rest of the butter.  This is when it is important to turn off the heat and for the butter to be nice and cold.  The butter is melted gradually and stirred to make a rich and buttery sauce.  I want a consistency that is nice and spoonable, not too thin, but not a paste.  It is a recipe that takes a little practice.  Once you do it a couple of times, it’s pretty easy and turns out nicely.

We love to cook on an outdoor grill.  We use our grill at least a couple times a week, year around.  When we cook firm fish, which is often, we almost always grill it.  It’s easy, fast, delicious, and frees the kitchen for other uses.  This dinner is grilled swordfish, which is readily available in the supermarket, seasoned with herbs and spices and a little olive oil, grilled simply on medium high heat for about 6 minutes on each side.

The side dishes were roasted root vegetables and wilted spinach with garlic.  This is the perfect time of year for root vegetables.  They are plentiful, diverse, colorful, and nutritious.  Winter squashes, turnips, parsnips, carrots, and sweet potatoes make an otherwise ordinary dinner more interesting with no more effort than it takes to dice the vegetables and put them in the oven.

  

For just the two of us, we choose only a couple of vegetables so we don’t have a lot left over.  For this dinner I chose beets and rutabaga.  Peel ‘em, dice ‘em, season with salt, pepper, whatever herbs you like, drizzle with olive oil, toss and bake for about 45 minutes.  That’s it!  And they are wonderful!  Brian especially loves the roasted beets. 

Here are the vegetables, right from the oven.  Now, here's Brian to talk about the wine.

When I first envisioned this blog post, I thought it would be about Chablis, but I think I’ll save that detailed explanation for another entry.  Briefly, though, Chablis is considered part of Burgundy, northwest of Dijon and cooler than the rest of Burgundy.  As the name implies, the center of the appellation is the village of Chablis.  The grape of Chablis is Chardonnay.  The soil of Chablis is chalky limestone with disintegrated fossilized seashells, known as the Kimmeridgian ridge, from when the area was under the ocean.  When walking around the village, you notice the streets and sidewalks have a white, chalky, powdery dusting everywhere. 

The cool climate and the soil create a wine with lively acidity, citrus fruit, apple, and mineral aromas and flavors, often described as flinty, with wonderful characteristics of crushed oyster shells, like wet stone.  Little new oak is used in the vinification and élevage, sometimes just stainless steel tanks, allowing the grape aromas and flavors to shine through.  Chablis is wonderful for light fish dishes, especially shellfish.  The saline tanginess of Mary’s beurre blanc is the perfect pairing.

One of our favorite Burgundy producers is Domaine William Fevre in Chablis.  Fevre has some of the choicest holdings of vineyard parcels in the appellation, ranging from the Chablis village appellation wine through various Premier Cru vineyards, and the seven Grands Cru sites, at price points from less than $20 to more than $100 for the Grand Cru wines.

For this dish, I chose the Fevre Chablis 2005.  This is the village level Chablis, not a Premier or Grand Cru.  The grapes come from several vineyard sites, but all of them have the famous Kimmeridgian clay soil.  It provides an excellent example of the appellation without reference to unique characteristics of a specific vineyard site.  If you want to learn what Chablis tastes like, a village-level Chablis from a good producer is the way to start.  It is a good value, inexpensive enough that you can enjoy it often, and pairs well with many foods.  Here are my notes on the wine.

Domaine William Fevre Chablis 2005.  This is a terrific wine at an excellent value, only $15.  It has all the characteristics of Chablis.  The aroma is lemon, tart, green apple, and minerality.  The palate has that great wet stone freshness, bright lemon, great acidity, a delicious chalky, oyster shell quality, and an interesting honeyed note.  It is refreshing and delicious with the right food.  The balance is perfect with moderate complexity and good length.  The alcohol is a lean 12.5%.  Mary “hearts” this wine.

We finished dinner with a slice of Époisses and pecans.  Époisses is a strong smelling, but mildly flavored cheese produced in the village of Époisses, not far from Chablis.  Like many French products, it is known by the place it is produced, reflecting the French belief, refined over thousands of years, that the specific characteristics of a place produce an expression that is different from other places.  Following a good rule that what grows together, goes together, Époisses is an excellent cheese choice to pair with Chablis or other wines of Burgundy.  To be honest, though, we love it with many different wines.  It is definitely one of our favorites. 

Here’s the finished dinner again, ready to enjoy on a Wednesday evening, just a regular weeknight dinner with simple ingredients, freshly prepared, with a little attention to pairings and timing.  It was not an elaborate, expensive, extremely time-consuming dinner, but it was a wonderful way to share each other’s company after another busy day.  Life is pretty darn good.

That’s our post for today.  We hope you enjoyed it.  Keep coming back to Cépage et Cuisine for more wine and food experiences.  Also, check out our nightly Tweets at http://www.twitter.com/cepageetcusine.  Until then,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian

Wines of Thanksgiving and Cajun-Style Dressing

Hello, everybody, and Happy Thanksgiving.  Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Are you having a crowd over for Thanksgiving?  Are you thinking about what wine you’d like to serve?  Or are you going to somebody else’s home for the holiday and thinking you’d like to take a bottle of wine to share? 

Thanksgiving dinner is a mélange of flavors, textures, spices, conversation, and people.  Some of those people are interested in and appreciate wine.  Some don’t.  Some enjoy wine but don’t really think about it.  And some are like Cousin Louie.  He’s a nice fellow who comes to your house for the occasion.  You have provided a lovely dinner with a selection of nice wine after days of shopping and preparation.  As I read in an article recently by Matt Kramer, Louie doesn’t know much about wine, mixes the Chardonnay with the Cabernet Sauvignon in his glass, throws in a couple of ice cubes, and says, “Look I made white Zinfandel.  Now it’s good!”

Thanksgiving is stressful enough, especially for the host.  The good news is that many wines complement the meal just fine and you don’t need to spend much.  After all, it is the love of family and togetherness that are important, not the wine.  The idea is to have several bottles open with white and red choices, maybe even a rosé.  They shouldn’t cost much, but they should be fruity, preferably refreshing, and not too heavy.

We recently hosted a wine and food event to consider just these issues.  We selected three whites and three reds.  In keeping with the holiday, all but one of the wines were American.  The food choices were classically American …  turkey, dressing, gravy.  I went all out and prepared Yorkshire pudding popovers.  We had a first course of cream of butternut squash soup and a dessert course of three wonderful American cheeses and nuts.  This was literally a soup-to-nuts event.  If you’re interested in great wine choices with a traditional Thanksgiving meal, you might find our experience useful.  Here goes!

We begin our discussion with a classically Thanksgiving dish.  Dressing (stuffing to all y’all Californians) is like many dishes.  Everybody has a treasured special recipe.  Mary’s version is Cajun style in honor of our part of the country here in the Gulf South, close to Louisiana, with extravagant vegetables, seasoning, and spicy smoked sausage.  She prepares it a day ahead, allowing the wonderful flavors to integrate more than same day cooking.  Here she is to talk through the ingredients and the preparation.

Brian actually found this recipe years ago and now I make it every year.  Our family that comes for the holiday has come to expect it.  The recipe calls for smoked sausage and cornbread, seasoned with onions, celery, bell peppers, garlic and spices. I make the cornbread a day ahead so it can dry out a little.

The sausage is browned in butter, then the veggies are added: bell pepper, onions, celery -- the Holy Trinity in Cajun cooking.

Spices go in at this point and everything is cooked until the veggies are tender.  The garlic, green onions and cornbread are added and stirred to blend.

At this point, I take it off the heat and let everything cool down so I can add beaten eggs. If I have time and have made it a day ahead, I put it in the fridge overnight and add the eggs the next day. If I have enough homemade chicken broth, I definitely use it because it’s sooo much better, but this time we needed the broth for the soup and the gravy, so I used canned broth. The dressing is so flavorful that the canned broth is fine. I learned from Brian’s mother to make the dressing a little soupy when it goes into the baking dish so it doesn’t dry out in the oven.

Here’s the finished product: colorful, spicy, aromatic, and delicious!  Yum!

Brian here again.  I handled the soup course, but didn’t take photos other than this dish after serving.  I peeled, cored, seeded, and diced a butternut squash, which is actually more than needed for six portions.  I also chopped a large onion and a couple of carrots.  They all go in a soup pot with a little salt and 5 cups of homemade chicken stock.  The stock is the real secret to the richness of flavor.  The soup was kept warm in a crockpot, then half a cup of heavy cream was blended in at the last minute.  A dollop of sour cream completed the presentation.  Let me tell you, everybody loved this soup.  I got lots of compliments, but it was Mary’s homemade stock that made it magical.

I blogged last year about Yorkshire pudding, which you can find by clicking on the dates at the right side of the blog.  They are basically a batter poured into muffin cups with hot fat, which can be the drippings of a roast beef, ham, or just melted butter.  They make these wonderful little muffin-sized popovers which were a hit with the soup.  They were also terrific with the main course.

Here’s Mary to talk about the bird.  We originally thought we would roast a whole bird, but the only one I could find locally a few weeks before the actual holiday was 20 lbs!  Too big!  So, I bought a couple of turkey breasts with the skin and roasted them.  They were just fine!  They were moist, tender, and delicious and I didn’t have to worry about overcooking part of the bird to get other parts done.  These are just as good as whole birds, maybe not as dramatic a presentation, but waaay easier.  I’m doing these from now on!

Here is the plated main course.  I’m happy with how it turned out.  We got lots of wows around the table.  We had a friendly group, eager to learn together, enjoyed each other’s company, shared stimulating conversation, what fun!  Here are photos of our friends, Darren and Babbette and Sara and Lisa.

Instead of the usual pumpkin pie, we chose a cheese course in consultation with Richard Sutton at Saint James Cheese Company in New Orleans (http://www.stjamescheese.com).  Richard is truly an expert.  I tell him what food and wines we’re serving and he always recommends excellent choices.  Once again, I asked for artisanal American products.

The first cheese was Harbison cheese by Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, a pasteurized cow’s milk cheese.  This cheese is very interesting.  Aside from the delicious, mild creaminess, almost a sweetness, the way it is made is fascinating.  It is very soft and spreadable.  The small rounds are held together by tree bark!  You can see what I mean in our photos.  You might also find this video of the cheesemaking process interesting.  Go to http://bit.ly/tYhUcu.   

The second cheese was Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Uplands Cheese in Wisconsin, an unpasteurized cow’s milk cheese.  It was similar to gruyere, kind of an alpine character.  The third cheese was Clingman’s Tomme, a hard, raw sheep’s milk cheese from Locust Grove Cheese in Knoxville, Tennessee.  The name is a riff on Clingman’s Dome, the highest peak in the Smoky Mountains, which will be familiar to our Georgia and Tennessee family readers.

The cheese course also included a delicious combination of pistachios, local pecans toasted with butter and pumpkin pie spice, walnuts, golden raisins, and a drizzle of wildflower honey from one of our neighbors here in Mississippi, less than a mile away.

Now for the wines.  The three whites started with a California sparkling wine, Roederer Estate from the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County.  The second was a delicious Pinot Gris from Elk Cove Vineyards in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.  The third white was a Napa Valley Spring Mountain District Riesling by our friends Charlie and Stu Smith at Smith-Madrone.  To me, it is the only California Riesling that is as good as a fine Mosel or Alsace Riesling.

As is usually the case, the wines were perceived and preferred differently with and without food and differently with the main course and the cheese course.  Everybody enjoyed the sparkling wine and the Pinot Gris.  The Riesling didn’t make quite as much an impression on its own.  It was mature enough to have somewhat reduced primary fruit flavors and a little more of the petroleum quality of a Riesling with some years on it, but it was delicious with food.  I imagine that would please Charlie and Stu.

The reds included one wine from France, a cru Beaujolais from the village of Morgon.  The cépage or red grape of Beaujolais is Gamay, a fruity, smooth, refreshing red wine that is perfect for Thanksgiving.  Not to be confused with the better known and exuberant Nouveau Beaujolais, a cru Beaujolais is a higher quality and more serious wine, yet easy to drink, not too complex, and complements a variety of food.

The classic red wine of Thanksgiving is Pinot Noir, of course.  For our event we selected an excellent example by Jim Clendenen at Au Bon Climat in Santa Barbara County.  This particular version had a few years of maturity and was specifically from Bien Nacido Vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley.  The wines of Au Bon Climat can be counted upon for balance, elegance, and food friendliness.  It was a consensus favorite of the evening, especially among the reds.  The quintessential American red grape is Zinfandel, the big red kind, not the pink.  Zinfandel is big, powerful, ripe with flavors of wild berry, cherry, plum, and chocolate from the oak barrel aging.  It is fruit-forward and high in alcohol.  As predicted, it made a big impression when first tasted, lots of smiles.  It wasn’t quite as good with dinner, but did very well with the hard sheep’s milk cheese that came later.

Here are my notes on each of the wines.

Roederer Estate Sparkling Wine Anderson Valley Brut NV.  This was a really nice sparkling wine, perhaps not as complex as a fine, more expensive Champagne, but very good, especially for the price.  On its own, I actually preferred it to the Riesling among the whites.  It paired very well with the turkey and the cheese and was well received by the group.  It had lovely aromas of grapefruit, apple, fresh mineral notes, and a baked bread quality that is common to many good sparkling wines.  The texture on the palate was fresh, minerally, smooth, with medium body.  The flavor profile additionally revealed lemon citrus along with the grapefruit and apple, plus a nice, cinnamon spice on the finish.  Beautifully balanced, nicely complex, long finishing, and excellent wine.  It was terrific with all three cheeses.  60% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir, 12.0% alcohol.  We paid $21 at Briarwood Wines in Jackson.

Elk Cove Vineyards Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2010.  This is a really lovely wine and makes me want to try more Pinot Gris from Oregon and Alsace.  The color in the glass is pale with flecks of green, nearly colorless, the aroma redolent with peach, apricot, and floral notes.  It is plump on the palate, not heavy, medium in acidity and body.  Lovely peach and perhaps even some tropical notes of pineapple and banana appear on the palate with some spicy elements on the finish.  Nicely balanced, complex, with medium length.  It was my favorite white on its own, but didn't perform quite as well with food.  13.0% alcohol.  This wine was $17 at Colony Wines in Madison.

Smith-Madrone Vineyards Riesling Napa Valley Spring Mountain District 2005.  This dry-style Riesling is the only American Riesling we've tried that we think is as good as a fine Alsace or Mosel Riesling.  As it matures, the aroma profile has a definite petroleum or organic solvent quality with a little fruit in the background.  On the palate, it shows bright acidity and medium body.  The flavors are much fruitier than the aroma with peach, pear, a floral quality, fresh minerality, and an interesting, faintly honeyed note.  Nicely complex, beautifully balanced, medium length, it is not what I would describe as a hedonistic wine, but it did really well with food, especially the spicy elements of the Cajun-style dressing and the mild, creamy Harbison cheese. 12.9% alcohol.  We paid $22 for this wine during one of our visits to Charlie at the winery.

Domaine Pral Morgon Les Charmes 2009.  The fruitiness of this wine makes it a nice choice with traditional Thanksgiving fare.  Aromas of berries, flowers, perhaps rose petals, herbs, and a delightful earthy, mushroomy quality all appear on the nose, quite complex.  The palate was medium-plus in body, had a nice, smooth texture, medium acidity, with raspberry, strawberry, savory, and maybe hints of anise.  We don't often drink Beaujolais, so we were surprised and pleased with the level of complexity.  It was well balanced and long finishing, an excellent wine.  It was not my personal preference, but it was well received by the group.  13.0% alcohol.  $20 at Briarwood in Jackson.

Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir Santa Maria Valley Bien Nacido 2005. Jim Clendenen's wines are always well received.  This Pinot Noir with a few years of maturity was a consensus favorite of the evening, with and without food.  It is just so versatile, pairing well with every course, literally from soup to nuts, as Mary says.  Medium garnet in color, it had lovely earth, forest floor, cherry fruit, and a smoked meat aroma profile.  The palate was fresh, had good acidity, silky texture, and that great mouthfilling quality of a good Pinot Noir without being heavy at all.  The same earthy, cherry, exotic mineral and spice notes appear on the flavor profile.  Beautifully balanced, complex, long finishing, tough to beat this, at least among U.S. Pinot Noir.  13.5% alcohol.  This wine cost $25.

Karly Winery Zinfandel Amador County Pokerville 2009.  As Zinfandel goes, this was very well received.  It had the exuberant berry and ripe plum aromas and flavors, chocolate, and peppery notes.  It got lots of “ahhs” when first tasted and gives that immediacy of impression.  The palate showed a rich, full texture, smooth, low acidity, and flavors of jammy blackberry, raspberry, dark, ripe plum, chocolate, and black pepper.  It was a little warm for my preference, but it was well received by the group, did particularly well with the cheese course, especially the hard sheep’s milk cheese, had moderate complexity, and medium length.  At 14.5% alcohol, it was definitely the powerhouse of the evening.  We paid $13 at Briarwood in Jackson.

Here are more memories of our Thanksgiving event.  It was such a pleasant evening for everyone.

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That’s our post for today.  We hope you like it and find it interesting and enjoyable.  Keep coming back to Cépage et Cuisine for more wine and food adventures.  In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Cheers,

Mary♥Brian