Autumn in the Berkshires – October 23, 2011

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Mary and I are taking a short trip to New England to soak up the color, literally, and enjoy the culture, food, and wine.  We’re ensconced in the western Massachusetts village of Lee.  The foliage is spectacular, although a bit past peak, and the locals tell us the colors are not as vivid as usual.  As Mary says, we don’t know what we’re missing because we haven’t been here before and the countryside seems impossibly beautiful to us.  Just take a look at the intensity of the color of this tree.

The Housatonic River flows through this area and powered many textile mills long ago.  Here are a couple of photos of the river and the old mill at Lee.

I went for a jog and discovered Laurel Lake just north of town.  You can see some trees along the shore are already bare, but the scenery remains beautiful.

We set out on an afternoon drive to see what there is to see.  Here are some images from Lenox, just a few minutes to the north.

This large shrub or small tree is common here, its leaves fiery red in autumn.  Can anybody tell us what it is?  Please comment!  We’re very curious.

After stopping for lunch in Pittsfield at the Nook & Cranny, a tiny little corner place open only for breakfast and lunch, we crossed into Vermont, only a 45 minute drive from Lee.  This beautiful hilltop is just across the state line.

A pumpkin patch with hundreds of pumpkins, various squash varieties, and local syrup and fruit was a nice roadside stop.

Red Radio Flyers were for children to use to pick their pumpkins for Halloween and pull them back to the barn for purchase. 

This interesting dried corn is called strawberry corn.

Dalton, Mass, is another old mill town on the Housatonic.  Here you can see the old mill, the dam on the river creating a mill pond and falls.

Back in Lee at the end of the day, this is the Lee Congregational Church.  It could use a paint job, but it is a beautiful, imposing structure.  The cornerstone gives us a glimpse of its history.

Our short-term home away from home is the Chambery Inn, an old schoolhouse built in 1885 and known as St. Mary’s School, saved from the wrecking ball and relocated to its present location in 1989.  It is now a bed and breakfast inn, owned by Robert and Olga Healey.  We have met Olga and some of her staff, all delightful people. 

Some of the guestrooms still have the original chalkboards and fixtures from the school.  The photos below also show a diploma from 1919 and one of the original school desks.

Breakfast to order arrives at our door at our requested time each morning, including a generous thermos of Green Mountain coffee and the local newspaper.

Mary sets it up on a small table in front of the gas logs fireplace.  We relax in the privacy of our room, sip coffee, read the local news…wonderful!

Dinner Sunday evening was at Bistro Zinc in nearby Lenox.  It is a lovely setting in a beautiful New England town.  It has many typical French bistro menu items … coq au vin, steak frites, pork roulade, and grilled loin of rabbit.  Mary had cassoulet and I had boeuf bourguignon.

 

The appetizer course for Mary was a salad of arugula, beets, and goat cheese.  The goat cheese had an interesting golden crust of Panko bread crumbs, which we’ve never seen.  The salad dressing was an orange, fig, and fennel vinaigrette.  Here’s Mary to describe the salad.

I loved loved loved this salad! I had never seen nor tasted goat cheese prepared this way. I thought it was a crabcake at first. The crust was crispy yet the creaminess of the cheese just melted in my mouth. The beets contributed a sweetness to the salad which balanced perfectly with the tanginess of the goat cheese and dressing.

My first course was a soup of pureed potato and leek in a cream base.  It was warm, rich, creamy and delicious.

Mary’s main course was cassoulet with duck confit, pork belly, and pork sausage with Peruvian lima beans.  The dish arrived with the duck confit still on the bone and a sprinkling of bread crumbs.  Here’s Mary again.  The cassoulet was excellent!  The duck was tender, pulled right off the bone, and had that slightly salty, rich flavor of long cooking with herbs and spices.  The pork belly and sausage were also delicious, but there was just too much meat in there for one person to finish, try as I might!  The beans were fine, but to be honest, I prefer regular white northerns for cassoulet.  Cassoulet is the perfect dish for a chilly autumn night in the Berkshires and I enjoyed it very much.

Brian here again.  The boeuf bourguignon was fork tender, comprised of braised short ribs with roasted carrots, onions, and mushrooms, served alongside goat cheese mashed potatoes.  I guess I’m spoiled to Mary’s boeuf bourguignon.  We’ve had the dish several times in French restaurants here and in France, and Mary’s is better or at least as good as any I’ve experienced.  Guests in our home who are experienced in French cuisine have said the same.  The Bistro Zinc expression was good, but on the whole, unremarkable.

The wine list was a disappointment, much less than what was indicated on the website.  It was almost all domestic, no Burgundy, no Rhones, only a few Bordeaux.  With all due respect to the great wines of California, Oregon, and Washington, which might pair just fine with the food, a restaurant that claims to offer Bistro fare should offer French wines.  Cassoulet cries out for wines of the Languedoc or southwest France.  Those experienced with boeuf bourguignon would say a good red Burgundy, Rhone, or Bordeaux would be best.  French wines are more likely to offer the balance and complexity to complement traditional French cuisine.  The list at this restaurant may be a reflection of what they are able to sell to mostly American patrons, but I would suggest at least a slightly expanded list with more options.  And while I’m offering constructive feedback, nicer stemware would be good, but to be fair, we have dined in French bistros that use exactly this kind of wine glass.

From the available options, I selected a Bordeaux called Mauvais Garçon, French for “bad boy.”  The winemaker, Jean-Luc Thunevin, describes himself as a “garagiste,” starting out making wine at home in his house or garage.  You can see the wine has a playful label which includes an arrow pointing to the garage.  This wine is a Merlot with a splash of Cabernet Franc.  The grapes are sourced from throughout Bordeaux, so the label indicates only a general Bordeaux appellation, not a specific area.  Here are my notes on the wine.

Mauvais Garçon Bordeaux 2007.  Definitely modern in style with new oak providing a big hit of chocolate and vanilla, the wine eventually opened to reveal a little Bordeaux character of currant and cedar.  On the whole, it was aromatic of dark fruit, currant, dark cherry and plum without much varietal integrity at first.  On the palate, it was fleshy, full-bodied with low acidity but not unbalanced.  The palate was soft and easy without the edgy structure I like to see in good Bordeaux.  Plum, currant, dark berries, and chocolate all highlighted the flavor profile.  Reasonably balanced, moderately complex, medium in length, not really my style but drinkable, and paired adequately with dinner.  95% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 13.0% alcohol.  As Miles said in Sideways, “quaffable but not transcendent.”  The restaurant price was $46.

The other disappointment on the menu was an absence of a cheese course.  This may be even a bigger oversight than the wine list.  Even if they can’t sell a great deal of French wine, I expect a nicely selected cheese course would do well in a bistro-style restaurant.  Plus, western Massachusetts and Vermont are well known for delicious, artisanal cheeses.  They had a variety of other dessert options, including a delightful-looking profiterole that was enjoyed by table parties on our left and right, but Mary didn’t want to partake unless I had some kind of dessert, too, so we opted out of dessert.  Instead, we just sipped on the remainder of our wine, enjoying each other, discussing the events and beauty of the day, and the ambience of the location and the restaurant.  All in all and even with the minor critical observations, it was a delightful end to a delightful day.

That’s our post for today.  We’ll have one more report from the Berkshires in a few days when I have time to get another post up on the blog.  In the meantime, here’s another picture of my wonderful wife at Bistro Zinc.  Life is good.  Keep checking back for more wine, food, and cultural adventures here at Cépage et Cuisine.

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian

Champignons Rôtis et Farcis au Chèvre

Bonjour à tous!  Hello, everybody and welcome back to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Today, we’re highlighting a delicious appetizer course we discovered in France and have enjoyed several times at home.  The dish is mushrooms roasted and stuffed with goat cheese.  It is wonderful before many meals, but especially before poultry, lamb, and beef dinners.  The mushrooms have an earthy, savory quality that segues nicely into hearty dishes.

Stuffed mushrooms have been around forever.  They are versatile and can be prepared in lots of ways.  We enjoyed this particular version at La Grange a Dîme, a restaurant in Montreuil Bellay, a small town in the Loire Valley.  We had such a nice time that night.  Here’s my pretty wife, smiling at me in the light of a table lamp at La Grange a Dîme.  The first course of a prix fixe dinner was mushrooms stuffed with local Chèvre, seasoned with herbs and pepper, then grilled in a wood-fired brick oven.  They were sensational!

At home, Mary uses small Portobello mushrooms, commonly labeled at the grocery store as “baby bellas.”  They are just the right size.  Any good goat cheese is fine, although we prefer a Chèvre if we can find it.  Other ingredients are the herbs, pepper, and parmigiano reggiano.  Here’s Mary to discuss the preparation.

The recipe couldn't be easier and takes only minutes to prepare.  I just stuff the mushroom caps with a generous portion of goat cheese.

I press the stuffed mushroom into freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, which is my modification of the basic recipe.

Then I season generously with herbs de Provence and pepper, and in the oven they go.

They need only about 20 minutes at 350 degrees and they come out golden and sizzling.  Let them cool for a few minutes and enjoy!  This easy appetizer course is a crowd pleaser that can be whipped up in no time.  You could even prepare it in advance and pop them in the oven when you’re ready.

Here’s Brian on the wine. 

I would say enjoy the mushrooms as a first course with whatever wine you’re enjoying with dinner.  If you want to have a separate wine for the mushrooms, which we sometimes do just standing at our kitchen counter and having lively conversation with friends, then a great choice is an inexpensive rosé like this one.  We’re great fans of La Vieille Ferme, a producer in the Cote du Ventoux in the Southern Rhone Valley.  They offer red, white, and rosé, perfectly enjoyable and inexpensive enough that we also use them for cooking.  The rosé is light, refreshing, with aromas and flavors of red berries, melon, and spice.  You can’t go wrong with a good rosé.  It is easy to drink, doesn’t require a lot of attention, and is terrific with so many foods, including these stuffed mushrooms.  This wine is a combination of Grenache and Cinsault and is available in Jackson for $11.

That’s our post for today.  We hope you enjoyed it.  Keep checking back here at Cépage et Cuisine for more articles about food and wine.  Don’t forget you can also follow our nightly tweets on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cepageetcuisine.  See you next time!

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian

Coquilles St. Jacques à la Provençale

Bonjour a tous!  Welcome again to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Today we’re describing a dish we love and, once again, giving credit where credit is due, it is from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  The dish is scallops gratinéed with wine, garlic, and herbs.

Along with our love of French food, wine, and culture, Julia’s book has transformed our hobby, taking our enjoyment of fine wine and food to a higher level (a blog post for another day).  This scallop dish is easy, delicious, doesn’t take too long, and is terrific with a lovely white Burgundy.

Here are our scallop friends.  They can be kind of confusing…sea scallops, bay scallops, jumbo scallops, on and on.  We used sea scallops for this recipe, which are larger than bay scallops and better for searing.  Scallops are mollusks, found all around the world and consumed in many different cultures.  Something we’re trying to eliminate in preparation is the grit that is sometimes found in them.  Apparently, the problem is that most scallops are harvested by dredging the ocean floor, which drives grit into the shell.  Diver scallops, which are harvested by hand, have much less grit.  Rinsing and soaking the scallop helps cut down the grit, but we still notice it sometimes.

Also, scallops have a tough piece called the catch muscle, the part that attaches to the inside of the shell.  That needs to be removed before cooking.  You can see it looks like a tag attached to the scallop.

It usually peels right off by hand and is thrown away.  The scallops are then patted dry and ready for cooking.

Here’s Mary to talk about preparing the dish.

Here are all my ingredients…the scallops, of course, onion, shallot, garlic, fresh thyme, bay leaf, a good Swiss cheese like Emmental, my faithful La Vieille Ferme white wine, butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, and flour.

I chopped the onion, shallot, and garlic and started a sauté in a little butter, first with the onion, then adding the shallot, then the garlic.

While that was cooking, I sliced the scallops crossways or horizontally, about 3 slices for each scallop. 

I dredged the slices in flour, shaking off the excess, and they were ready to go.

In a different pan, the scallops went into hot melted butter and the olive oil, turning to get a nice pretty browning on each side.  I had to be careful with this because they cook very quickly and I didn’t want to overcook them.  They only need a couple of minutes on each side.

Then I added about a half cup of the wine and a little water.  That cooled things down.  I added the onion-shallot-garlic mixture and the thyme and covered the pan to simmer for a few minutes.  That helps all the flavors to integrate.

I uncovered the pan and simmered the mixture just long enough to reduce it and thicken it a little.  It smelled so good!

Here are my oval dishes, all buttered and ready to go.  I love these dishes.  They’re perfect for a single portion dish like this one or fish or potatoes.  Similar dishes are readily available in many sizes.  We got these at Sur la Table.

I spooned the scallops and sauce into the ovals, then topped them with the grated Emmental and dots of butter.

The dishes went into the oven under the broiler to heat the mixture through and brown the cheese.  This photo is a little fuzzy, but you can see how it looks right out of the oven.  Something we learned recently is the word gratin actually means a browned crust.  Americans are used to the term, au gratin, just meaning “with cheese,” but the correct meaning is the browned crust.  Potatoes au gratin have that great crust.

I plated the dish over a bed of whole grain linguini, keeping the gratin on top.  The pasta isn’t part of Julia’s recipe, but it wouldn’t be unusual in Provence.

Paired with a nice salad with olives and fresh sliced tomatoes, it was a wonderful dinner.  Delicious!  Here’s Brian to talk about the wine, which was amazing with the scallops.

We have had the scallop dish a few times, so I knew it was going to be fantastic.  Julia’s recipe in Mastering calls for chilled rosé or white wine of Provence, like the La Vieille Ferme we used for cooking, but I went all out and selected Corton Charlemagne by Vincent Girardin.  This is a Grand Cru from the famed hill of Corton in the Côte de Beaune, among the grandest and most thrilling Chardonnays in the world.  I wrote about the fascinating history of Corton Charlemagne in our trip blog back in May.  Here is a photo of the vineyard. 

Grand Cru wines are complex, usually fuller in body and richness, but still elegant, generally just more interesting than most wines.  They evolve in the glass, revealing new aromas and flavors as the meal progresses.  They need a little time, both in the bottle before opening, and in the glass over the course of a leisurely dinner.  They really require something of the consumer, a little thought and examination of the wine, and not quaffed down too quickly.  They are not everyday wines.  Open one of these with someone you love or a very special guest who understands and appreciates rare and wonderful wines.  That’s what I had in mind for this wonderful dinner and my wonderful wife, Mary.  Here are my notes on the wine.

Domaine Vincent Girardin Corton Charlemagne 2001.  This is a stunning Chardonnay.  Golden in color, the aromas were complex with lemon, tree fruit, and a fresh, minerally scent.  The palate was full-bodied, creamy, with good acidity, and fresh flavors of lemon, peach, apple, a little hazelnut quality, but not at all oaky.  With time in the glass, new layers were revealed, caramel and butterscotch, and the peach notes more noticeable.  Exquisitely well balanced, perfect for a seamless pairing with a dinner of scallops, complex, the finish sails on and on, 13.5% alcohol.  We grieved when the bottle was empty.  The pedigree of Corton Charlemagne is obvious.  We paid $65 for this wine, which is a bargain.  It would easily cost over $200 in a restaurant.

Here’s a delicious dinner.  Come on over and join us!

Vin d’amis, that’s our post for today.  We hope you enjoyed it.  We love the wine, the food, and we enjoy sharing it with you.  Keep checking back for more adventures about wine and food at Cépage et Cuisine.  Don’t forget, you can follow our nightly tweets on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cepageetcuisine. 

Cheers,

Mary♥Brian