What's Cooking (Take Four)

Larry, thank for reminding me of New Mexican calabacitas. They are on my menu for cooking on Saturday.

Do you have Viking ancestry?

Viking? No. I don't get the connection.

Monty Python's Flying Circus. The Spam sketch. That sketch is the origin of the term spam for junk email.

-Paul W.

I had a friend over last night for a meal. Since I have no energy, I opted for something simple and easy. Besides, the whole idea was to drink wine, not spend time chained to the stove.. I found a package of air-chilled chicken breasts for a song, which I sliced in half horizontally to make them thinner. I sauteed them, poured a brown mole sauce over and sprinkled with sunflower seeds.

I made the mole sauce by using the mole paste in a jar and thinning it with water and chicken stock (made from the Costco chicken we ate a couple of weeks ago). I had a box of red quinoa that I cooked up with some dried strips of cloud ears to add a little texture. Then frozen peas for color. Nothing took more than 15 minutes. Quick, easy, and tasty.

Wines were a New Mexican Gruet champagne (a 1st-rate label if you've never tried it) and a pinot noir. And a good time was had by all.

Wines were a New Mexican Gruet champagne (a 1st-rate label if you've never tried it) and a pinot noir. And a good time was had by all.

Gruet is an old winemaking family from Champagne in France. The owner of the domaine is a big cowboy movie fan and was touring the US Southwest. While in New Mexico he met up with some ex-pat French winemakers who were growing pinot noir in the hills overlooking Truth or Consequences NM. It seems that there is a limestone outcropping there and the soils are very similar to those of Champagne. Gruet was impressed enough with their wines that he set up some of his relatives to make wine in NM. And so Gruet was born. Most of their production is sparkling wine made methode champenoise but they made still pinot noir, too.

As Larry said, the sparkling Gruet from the NM grapes was first-rate and offered outstanding QPR. Unfortunately the family sold off the business. The new owners mainly use Pacific Coast grapes these days and the wines, alas, no longer have the magic of the NM offerings. It was good while it lasted.

-Paul W.

Regarding gai lan (Chinese broccoli), my local supermarket carries it. Apparently gai lan with an oyster sauce-based sauce (hao you jie lan) is popular dim sum item. I found a recipe for that online. I'll have to try it out.

-Paul W.

We've got a fancy Hawaiian-Japanese fusion place downtown that serves spam sushi.

With Gruyère!

I read Jeff's post and thought "Noreetuh" but then Rahsaan's comment puzzled me. But I see on their musubi menu they now have added "Spam and Cheese" which indeed uses gruyere.
Paul, that's what we do with gai lan 90% of time- blanch, then stir fry with garlic and finish with oyster sauce (the premium version now, thanks for tip).

We've got a fancy Hawaiian-Japanese fusion place downtown that serves spam sushi.

With Gruyère!

I read Jeff's post and thought "Noreetuh" but then Rahsaan's comment puzzled me. But I see on their musubi menu they now have added "Spam and Cheese" which indeed uses gruyere..

Oh, so the Spam and Gruyere musubi is a new addition. I finally got around to going the other week and thought it was great all around. One of my dining companions ordered the Spam and Cheese, but I couldn't bring myself to try it!

As Larry said, the sparkling Gruet from the NM grapes was first-rate and offered outstanding QPR. Unfortunately the family sold off the business. The new owners mainly use Pacific Coast grapes these days and the wines, alas, no longer have the magic of the NM offerings. It was good while it lasted.

Thanks for the background, Paul. I had been a fan of Gruet wines but then they went downhill. I had chalked it up to the usual assortment of variables but "new owners" is pretty, well, catastrophic.

Do you have Viking ancestry?

Viking? No. I don't get the connection.

Monty Python's Flying Circus. The Spam sketch. That sketch is the origin of the term spam for junk email.

This sketch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

Note that it was much more obviously funny 40+ years ago.

Is this of concern to anyone who eats Spam? "Concerns about Spam's nutritional attributes have been raised due to the fact that it contains twice as much of the daily dietary recommendation of fat as it does of protein, and about the health effects of salt and preservatives"

Thanks for the heads-up, Karen. I looked into the sources used by the author: they are inconclusive (they actually wrote, "results are conflicting and methodological lapses are apparent").

The root of the question is whether consumption of meat processed with nitrites is linked to the development of various cancers, esp. colon cancer and pancreatic cancer.

Spam is in the same (casual) food-group as bacon and salami. So, very tasty but I wouldn't build the whole meal on it.

yes, pretty solid link between nitrate cured meats (cold cuts, bacon, Spam, etc) and cancer. But my annual consumption is maybe 4 pieces of spam musubi at Noreetuh, maybe 6 breakfasts with bacon, a few summer BLTs, some charcuterie at wine tastings and picnics. The clear correlation is people who eat bacon multiple times a week (or maybe hawaiian level spam consumption). I think the same goes for the salt and fat effects- maybe not wise to do daily.

Yes, I did some reading on sodium Nitrate, It is not a good thing and is said to be a cancer-causing chemical.

Look at the bright side. Sodium nitrate is better than botulism.

The other thing noted in the study is that the causative link between nitrites and cancer was far smaller than the link between smoking and cancer.

New marketing campaign: "well, it's better thsn smoking!"

... "Concerns about Spam's nutritional attributes have been raised due to the fact that it contains twice as much of the daily dietary recommendation of fat as it does of protein..."

What does that even mean. Surely it depends on portion size.

Today's menu is filet mignon steak marinated with soy sauce, Worcestershire, garlic powder, and bold pepper. A side dish of zucchini, baby summer squashes, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, red onion, fresh garlic, lemon wedges, and corn cut off the cob, will be added at serving. A baked potato will round out the meal.

I paid a visit to the Gruet website. They are marketing their NV sparkline pinot meunier rose as a New Mexico wine. It would be interesting to compare that wine to the other Gruet NV offerings, which are made mainly frokm Pacific Northwest grapes.


-Paul W.

Lovely weather today so I'll be making grilled chicken thighs with ras el hanout dry rub.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Lamb osso buco here.

[Jenise]

We'll be away overnight and meeting friends in their suite for a home-cooked pasta meal. Coincidentally I had a single Maine lobster tail in my freezer larger than my foot, and I wear a size 10!, that I thawed out and poached. I also had on hand a bag of sugar snap peas. I blanched and slivered those and in combination with a few cherry tomatoes and mizuna from my garden, these will become the cold starter course for tonight. Pretty pleased with myself to come up with something so elegant without going to the store.

I paid a visit to the Gruet website. They are marketing their NV sparkline pinot meunier rose as a New Mexico wine. It would be interesting to compare that wine to the other Gruet NV offerings, which are made mainly frokm Pacific Northwest grapes.-Paul W.

About 30% of Gruet's grapes come from NM, but sales outpaced production so they had to outsource from CA and the Northwest.

FWIW, from Wikipedia:

Gruet Winery is a New Mexico winery and family business founded in 1984. It specializes in Methode Champenoise sparkling wines using Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, and also produces some still wine. It traces its history to Gilbert Gruet's Champagne house, Gruet e Fils, which he established in 1952 in Bethon, France. After a visit to New Mexico in 1983 and meeting with a group of European vinters who had successfully planted vineyards there, Natalie and Laurent Gruet planted an experimental vineyard of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Engle, New Mexico about 10 miles from Truth or Consequences. The first release was in 1989, principally sparkling wine. In 1993, Gruet opened its own winery and tasting room in Albuquerque.

Gilbert's son Laurent became the chief winemaker in 1987. Sofian Himeur, the grandson of Gilbert Gruet, briefly served as assistant winemaker before leaving to work at Iron Horse, and then VARA Winery & Distillery.

Initially, the production was marketed to restaurants, including to sommeliers in New York, where it became a favorite. Over thirty years, production increased from 2,000 cases to 200,000 cases annually. As of 2017, it had become New Mexico's largest wine producer.

In 2015 Gruet was purchased by Precept Wine of Seattle, Washington.

Reception
Gruet has been called by Vinepair "America’s best sparkling wine.” Wine Spectator rated its non-vintage brut sparkling wine at 90 points,and in 2017 ranked Gruet's Brut as a top 100 value wine. Bon Appétit called it as "crisp, dry, [and] elegant", and a "best bang for your buck". Martha Stewart Living praised its sparkling rosé.

In blind tastings in the Champagne region, against French champagnes, its blanc de blanc placed second and third. At the 2020 San Francisco International Wine Competition, Gruet's Blanc de Noirs won gold, and its Blanc de Blancs won silver. The same year, it also won gold for its Brut Rose, and silver for its Blanc de Noirs and Blanc de Blancs at the Houston International Wine Competition and gold medals for its Sauvage and Brut Rose at the Sunset International Wine Competition.

I cooked a pot of Royal Corona Beans on Monday. I added onion, garlic, oregano, and the best-canned tomatoes I have ever eaten. These come from CA and the taste is excellent. Bianco DiNapoli Organic Whole Peeled Tomatoes made for a great pot of beans.