Cheap Red Wine Roundup

When my Amway business really takes off I'll be able to drink only really good wine but until then I need to find some reasonable cheapies. I suppose I probably spend just as much money buying cheap wine and dumping it as I would if I just bought wine I knew was pretty good but like most value-seeking fools I get drawn to a "deal". The wife and I were at Cost Plus recently and to kill time while she selected soaps based on flowers I've never heard of I browsed the wine section. I figured it was a good time to grab a few bottles of sub $10 that I knew from experience were tasty if not memorable. The varied results are as follows:

The Amateur Hour Line-Up (Cline Zinfandel in trash, not shown)

• Bogle 2003 Petite Sirah: as I mentioned before, I like this fruity one and it's one of the best of this motley crew. If you can't find it for $10 or less then don't bother.
• Rosenblum Zinfandel (Vinter's Cuvee XVII): Sounds fancy but I wonder if 'Cuvee' mean 'scraps' in French. A bit of a bitey finish but overall it's pretty good and worth its $8.
• Rosso Shiraz: I couldn't find a year, probably because the winery doesn't even know. The use of the "Shiraz" term is a bummer but for $6 at Trader Joe's it's worth it (but probably not worth $7) .
• Cline 2002 Zinfandel: I know, only the Syrah is pictured, sorry, we drank the one bottle of Zinfandel we bought, or we stripped furniture with it, I can't remember.
• Ravenswood 2002 Zinfandel: They call it 'Vinter's Blend' but I think they meant to label it 'Vinter's Blind' because that would explain why they bottled this Windex and called it wine.
• Cline 2002 Syrah: One of the best of the lot. It's a little rough around the edges but has some interesting flavors. I think I paid $7 and was pleased.

Ravenswood and Cline's Zinfandel were disappointing because some years they are tasty and the best deal around but I guess 2002 was an off-year. Maybe Chuck Shaw bought up all the best Fresno grapes out from under them.

Marlbling: USDA vs. the human eye

However long it takes a mouse in a lab to learn that touching the bell results in a shock, I'd take longer. I know that marbling, the intermingled bits of fat in a piece of meat, are the key to flavor and tenderness in a piece of beef but I still blow it. I see steaks on special and slough off my better judgment and buy some piece of meat so lean that this cow must have had an eating disorder. My logic runs from the thickness of the steak to the great price but it always ends up the same. The best judge is not the price or even the USDA grade. The highest grade, Prime, is pretty much a sure bet for flavor and while the next one down the ladder, Choice, is usually better than its subordinate, Select, there is no substitute for your own visual inspection. If this picture doesn't spell it out then nothing will. These two rib eye steaks were sitting right next to each other in the meat case and were both graded the same - USDA Select. The beautifully flecked one on the right was delicious while the other was Kevlar tough and virtually inedible. I fell on my cleaver and gave the wife the good one. I deserved to go hungry for pulling such a boner (although that outer ring of meat was still pretty good). Note the EOS Petite Sirah on the right - it was delicious.

Petite Sirah Update

Here is a rundown of some I've tried lately: EOS - The Reserve is great, dense and about $25/bottle. One of the best ones I've had. They have another more expensive one aged in some special French oak that was one of the most interesting wines I've ever tasted but was almost $50. I think it may need a couple years to soften and I may need a couple years to save up. Bogle - Great Value, $8 if you hunt around, kind of grapey Concannon - Supposed to be good ("first producer of Petite Sirah") but the bottle I had was harsh without much character. Maybe it was a bad year ($14). Guenoc - like Bogle but a couple bucks more Turley - I had one at their semi-annual event and it was fantastic but not worth the $125 they were asking. What wine is worth that much anyway? Castoro - decent, nice and dry but not that much going on ($15) Peachy Canyon - hopefully they'll do another like the last one (which is long gone) because it was great ($21). Tobin James - solid, decent body and not too fruity. Worth the $18. Wolff - you'll probably never find this probably but it's nice and under $20. Full and dry. Victor Hugo - about as good as the winery's silly name although some people I know swear by it. I'll have to give it another try.

Penman Springs - a small, Paso Robles producer. Similar to Wolff, this was good and around $16. Current release just about gone.

Malloy O'Neil - Another Paso Robles winery and this was very good. We tasted a bunch of their wines and they were all outstanding. The PS is about $25, which was about the average price for all their wines. They make a bunch of intense, high-alcohol reds so either you like that or you don't. The tasting room opened in mid-November 2005.

David Bruce - Supposed to be really good but only okay. I got it for about $13 at Costco and wouldn't buy it again. In the queue: Fife, Vinum, Rosenblum, Nadieu and Stag's Leap (if I can find it at a decent price)

Sweetbread update

I couldn't resist. While browsing the meat department at Spencer's I stumbled across the velvety, white flesh pressing up against the plastic wrap. The absurdly low price sealed the deal - I had to try to make sweetbreads at home. I asked the butcher lady and she said she'd never tried them let alone cooked them but "the cowboys buy them all the time". I wondered what they did with them as I tossed them into my basket. When I got home I scoured cookbooks and found the best information from my old Julia Child and James Beard recipes. Removing the outer membrane, soaking/flushing with cold water and par boiling seemed like consistent guidelines (although some think parboiling removes too much flavor but these are the same nuts who talk glowingly about mutton). I spent a fair amount of time cleaning them up by pulling and trimming excess fat and membrane while rinsing. I also soaked them overnight. All this was done covertly, without the wife's knowledge, for her benefit (the concept would just upset her). I really wanted to grill them but most recipes were for boiling or sauteeing. I was grilling chicken breasts for dinner the next night so I decided to use my best judgment and grill up the gland at the same time. As the waiter at Jocko's told me, they took a long time to cook. But unlike the sweetbreads I had at Jocko's a few months ago these were not too chewy. I grilled them for about 45 minutes with great results. The golden crust contrasted nicely with the interior that lacks any English language description I can provide. They were mild, tender and tasty. The wife refused to eat more than a piece smaller than my Adam's apple. She admitted it was good but she wasn't in the mood for secretion organ meat that night.

Salmon Cakes - Worth a Fry

When it comes to seafood cakes, crab cakes may be king but good crab isn't always at your clawtips. Canned crab is so flavorless my cat would turn it's leathery nose up at it and "sea legs" (imitation crab meat) are an effront to anyone with a sense of taste and shouldn't be legal. On the other hand, decent salmon is readily available and makes a decent cake. My finite brain did not come up with this idea on its own - I stumbled across it in one of my Cook's Illustrated books (if anyone actually reads this post and actually wants the recipe, make a comment and I'll dig it up and post it). It was pretty straightforward - chop the salmon, mix with herbs and binding material, coat with panko Japanese bread crumbs then fry in an inch of hot corn oil until golden (3 minutes per side). I served them with a mayo based lemon-herb dipping sauce, roasted potatoes and broccoli. I really dug them and so did the "wind beneath my wings".

Fried Squash Blossoms

At our Farmer's Market, which actually has farmers at it, a lady was selling baby squash with the blossoms still on them. The wife would often wax poetically about the squash blossoms she had in Italy before she met me so I was naturally interested in trying them. I knew they were a rare find because they lasted a matter of hours once picked. I seized the opportunity and tried making fried squash blossoms with dinner. For the recipe I culled the internets because my Italian books didn't cover it. All the recipes had different theories on how to handle them so I winged it with a basic batter and a ricotta/herb/pine nut stuffing. I stuffed, battered then fried them in corn oil for a few minutes. If you're actually interested in trying this a quick internets search will give you some decent recipes. Bottom line - pretty good. Let's face it, a fried flower doesn't have much taste so it's not like it's going to steal the flavor crown from truffles or hamburgers. I feel a tad guilty that I've removed the mystique surrounding the wife's memory of the "blossoms in Sorrento" but what good is a spouse if they can't shatter your delusions?