Spinach and Chevre Quesadillas

Spinach and Chevre Quesadillas

With spring comes fresh veggies and this early, Spinach is a great option as it is one of the first to come out of the gate! Paired with a light chevre and Sauvignon Blanc, you’ll find this recipe to be a favorite from now through the Easter Season!

 

1 bunch of fresh spinach, stemmed

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 to 2 garlic cloves (to taste), minced

Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 corn tortillas

2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled (1/2 cup)

1. Wash the spinach but do not dry. If using bunch spinach, chop coarsely. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy frying pan. Add the garlic. Cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds, then stir in the spinach. Raise the heat, and stir just until the spinach wilts. Remove from the heat. Press down on the spinach with the back of your spoon, and drain off any water in the pan. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

2. In a microwave: Place a corn tortilla on a plate. Top with half the spinach, and spread in an even layer. Sprinkle on half the cheese, and top with another tortilla. Press down gently, then microwave for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes, until the cheese has melted. Remove from the microwave, cut into quarters or sixths, and serve. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

In a pan: Place a corn tortilla in the pan. Top with half the spinach, and spread in an even layer. Sprinkle on half the cheese. Turn the heat to medium-high, and heat until the cheese begins to melt. Place another tortilla on top of the cheese, and press down lightly. Flip the quesadilla over in the pan, and heat for about 30 seconds or until the cheese has melted. Flip back over, and remove to a plate. Cut into quarters or sixths, and serve. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

 

Wine Trivia!

Because I got busy with other projects today and still wanted to share something with you, I”m opting ofr the simple entertainment today of trivia for wine…

-Wine is fat free and contains no cholesterol. A 4-ounce glass of table wine has about 80-100 calories.

-Just how many grapes are in that bottle of wine? It takes about six to eight clusters, or approximately 600 to 800 wine grapes (2.4 lbs), to make a bottle of wine.

-One barrel of wine contains 740 lbs of grapes, equivalent to 59 gallons or 24.6 cases of wine.

-It is theorized there are approximately 44 million bubbles in a bottle of sparkling wine/champagne.

Wine: Grayson Cellars Chardonnay

Grayson Cellars Chardonnay

I have a daily occurrence of people walking into the shop looking a great value. They want the $40 bottle’s quality for $10 and I try to find these rare, exquisite values to match their pallet and budget. It’s a tall order, but one Christopher’s Wine & Cheese takes very seriously.

One of the most classic cases being as they look over our selection they see the Rombauer Chardonnay and hang their head in near disgust when the see the price sticker (just as I would in their shoes) and reminiscing with  me of the time they tried and fell in love with the Rombauer Chardonnay and how they have yet to find any other chardonnay they like. I chuckle and smile as the empathy wears heavy on my heart and ask them if they’re willing to try another chardonnay that’s about one-quarter of the price, but a suitable substitute for what they are seeking.

I pull the Grayson Cellars off the shelf and tell them of it’s rich deep malolactic fermentation in French and American Oak Barrels. How the heavy buttery/cream sensation plays with the spiciness of the oaks giving way to a gentle green apple sensation on the fore of the tongue giving way to an explosion of bright pineapple and kumquat sensations on the middle of the tongue and just as you’re swallowing that soothing, comforting sensation of a banana  starts at the hinge of your jaw and works it’s way down the entire length beside of your tongue.

Without doubt, every customer that has tried Grayson Cellars Chardonnay as an affordable substitute for the far pricier Rombauer Chardonnay will return again to purchase this wine many times.

Cheese: Zamorano

Zamorano Cheese

Close to the border with Portugal lies the breathtaking region of Castile-Leon, known across Europe for its spectacular scenery and wonderful cheeses. The most famous of these, justly, is Zamorano, a traditional farmhouse sheep’s milk cheese. This cheese is made exclusively from milk taken from the Churra, which yield the highest grade milk of any breed of sheep. The pure Churra milk gives Zamorano a wonderful texture that is far less grainy than Manchego, its more popular cousin from La Mancha.

Matured in a high humidity environment to encourage the formation of a natural rind, Zamorano is typically aged for six months. Subtle hints of caramel and grass burst through the buttery nature of the cheese, making it ideal to serve with ham, fruit and some crusty bread. The potency of this mature sheep’s milk cheese counterbalances well with the Crianza red from Ribera del Duero.

Recipe: Sesame shrimp

Sesame Shrimp

Ingredients:

1/2lb medium raw shrimp (peeled and deveined)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon peanut oil

2 teaspoons lemon juice

2 garlic cloves (minced)

1 1/2 teaspoons of minced fresh ginger

2 teaspoons  jalapeno pepper finely diced (with no seeds or veins)

1 green onion (sliced)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Step 1: In a sealable bag or sealable bowl combine soy sauce, sesame oil, lemon juice, japapeno and garlic. Add shrimp tossing to coat. Seal and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Step 2: Heat peanut oil in a wok or skillet. Add shrimp (with marinade) and stir fry until the shrimp turn pink (about 3 minutes) serve with white rice. Top with sesame seeds and green onion.

Being a dish that has little to mild heat, this dish pairs well with a nice Malbec such as Don

Don Rodolfo Malbec

Rodolfo Malbec from Argentina.

Five Secret Tips for Choosing a Wine by Yourself

**I’ve reprinted this post from Austin Beeman, why recreate the wheel? He has some great points in this article and I wanted to share them with you, and click here to go see some of his other insights!

We all know that the best way to get help selecting a wine is to talk to the person that designed the retail set or wrote the wine list.  But what do you do when he is taking some (much needed) vacation time?  Here are my five secret tips to picking out wine by yourself.

1.   Beware the Familiar

It is tempting to pick a wine that is most familiar, but unless you consider yourself a sophisticated wine shopper, don’t risk it.  Major wine brands spend millions of dollars saturating the market with their name.  That is time and effort not put into the wine quality.  If the bottle you are looking at is widely popular – run for cover!

Instead, grab something different.  Maybe pick a grape or region that you’ve never had.  Often it will be not only a tasty wine, but a stunning value as well.

2.   For Tonight?  Buy an 89 point wine.

We associate the 100 point scale with be graded in school and we all want the high nineties or one hundred.  That’s perfection, right?  Well the dirty secret of wine scores is that 10 of those points are allocated for age-worthiness.  That 95 or 99 point wine isn’t ready to drink for another decade.  Opening it now is really a waste of your money.

Instead, wines rated 87 to 89 points are ready to drink now.  You’ll pay a lot less for much more pleasure.

3.   Look for Signs with Lots of Words.

When I taste something that excites me, I can get very verbose.  Any wine manager is likely to be the same.  Look at the signs.  If it has a couple hundred words in really small font, you’ve hit the jackpot.  It almost doesn’t matter what the sign says.  That’s a winner.

4.   The Weirdly Expensive Case-Stack.

This tip is similar to the last one.  The Case-Stacks are where retailers put wines that are fast sellers and deep discounts.  So what is up with those four cases of $40 wine?  Well sometimes we’ll taste a wine that is just so darn good that we can’t bear to not have a massive stack of it.  It is totally illogical.  Completely based on raw emotion, I know, but don’t you want a wine that stirs the passions like that?  I do.

5.   Buy Old Wines

Don’t buy old white wines!  Most of those are over the hill.  Instead, look for red wines of at least fifteen dollars and at least 7 years old.  I lean towards European wines for this, but California works as well.  You’d be surprised by how much a little bit of bottle age can do for a good red wine.

Don’t worry about the wine being past its prime. Every good retailer will look to buy good mature wines for their selection.  Even in the wine has been in the store for awhile, the ‘Wine Guy’ would have ‘bargain-binned’ it by now if he thought it was bad.

East Coast Wines defined and made simple!

East coast wines in the US- they tend to get a bad rep, and often that reputation has been well deserved. As with any wine region, or professional group, it only take a few bad apples to ruin the reputation of the entire field. This truly is unfortunate- especially recognizing in North Carolina and Virginia the Wine Industry is burgeoning on greatness. However, too many of our vintners are rushing immature wines to market well before their time, others are trying to emulate  California Wines, and others are simply lazy and spilling bad product into the market place.

I have spent a great deal of time tasting East Coast Wines- Especially those from North Carolina and Virginia for the shop and judging competitions. I have found some wines that are quite nice and show a huge potential for the re-burgeoning industry, and I have found those that ( to be polite) are not very good.

I have  a few thoughts on East Coast Wines and what I expect to see. First, we know East Coast Wines can be great, just look to “pre-prohibition” era wines; both NC and VA were well acclaimed and awarded making these two states hands down the leading American Wine production region for North America. Once it became impossible for farmers to pay the bills from grapes, they pulled those wonderful old vines up and began planting tobacco. Today, tobacco isn’t the cash crop it was just 10 years back and we’re finding grape vines being planted to replace the tobacco- history is starting to prove a bit redundant. Today, most of our East Coast vines are young and still developing root stock careening toward more complex fruit juice and wine.

Secondly, look at the east coast wine region’s terroir compared to most any other place in the world. Most of the AVA’s are located in the Piedmont Regions of the East Coast. The summers are rather hot, humid and mild mid-night breezes; that combined with deep red cecil clay soils. The soil is bright red from ferrous oxide, iron. Grapes seem to have an affinity for pulling ferric compounds into the juice- as the vines continue to expand their root stock through the upper soils into the sapprolite and rock structure, the iron components change into a more primary compound that is not as readily absorbed into the juice. Additionally, it shows one style of a wine maker being lazy; a lazy wine maker with East Coast wines will try to make simple fermentation California-style wines. When this happens, you taste the wine and have a wonderful experience with mouth-feel, flavors, and aromas up to the point you swallow (or spit) at which point you will taste a very metallic sensation (iron). However, those wonderful vintners that go the extra mile and emulate European styles of wine making from France, Spain, Italy, Austria and such produce soft, delicate wines that are a joy to sip and drink.

Thirdly, there are ton of young vintners that are learning their craft and making rudimentary mistakes. Sterilization of chambers between fermentation and bottling. Cleaning equipment and bottles. Actually, working with the fruit and fermentations learning how to be intimate with your fruits. Simply paying attention to the details.

Fourth, the winemaker is claiming to be a NC, VA, or other East Coast Winery; and yet so many of them insist on making kit wines from a concentrate that is not indicative of the region and terrior it is claimed to belong to. Make the wine that represents not only you, but the region you are in and it shall find its niche.

As I wrote these thoughts, I had particular NC and VA Wineries in mind, but to make certain everyone has a chance to grow into what their potential is, I decided not to mention any names –  good or bad. I prefer to think you will go out and visit my friends and neighbors and decide what you think of their products for your self. Additionally, I hope you will give them honest, well thought constructive criticisms of their products when you do the winery tastings.

Eat, drink, and be merry- right in your own back yard!

-C

Wine: Cuatro Pasos Mencia

Cuatro Pasos Mencia

Many customers come in looking a wine for dinner that is unique and new to their palate. I reach over and bring out the Mencia from Cuatro Pasos out of Spain and they often turn their nose up. You see, if you’ve only had wines from Rioja and southern Spain, you’ve experienced very good wines that are very distinct to that region. Often a lot more earthiness and mustiness than the American Palate will enjoy without effort and the perfect pairing.

However, if we head north and west, we stumble in the Duoro and Bierzo Regions of Spain where they’re at a bit more altitude and a bit cooler temperatures with soils that are stonier and not quite as heavy in their mineralogy. Cooler climates typically will result in less tannic acid and we fin our wine today to fit that catagory. Last Spring we had a rose from the Mencia Grape out of Bierzo, and soon found they had a red Mencia Wine from the same winery, Cuatro Pasos.

Mencia is a red grape that has it’s actual origins unknown, but grows rather nicely in Bierzo, Spain. When handled by a master craftsman this wine will show the weight of Pinot Noir on the tongue and the characteristics of Cabernet Franc on the palate. I often refer to it as the kissing cousin of Cabernet France.

Typically, the Cuatro Pasos Mencia pours with a brilliant ruby hue with the radiance of violet starburst throughout. The nose is filled with phenominal aromas of cassis, blackberry, and cherries. After taking time to indulge the nose, taking the first sip is nothing but paradise as an explosion of deep dehydrated fruit flavors evolve across your tongue. Those flavors are initiated with dark plums, deep black cherries, blackberries rehydrating in your mouth and lifted up ona  bed of light white pepper and casis as you swallow.

This is a perfect wine to sit by the fire and sip by itself, or paired against a rich hearty lamb stew it compliments the food with overtones of joy and sensuality. A great new grape at a wonderful price typicaly under $15 in retail establishment’s.

 

Made in America: Marie Hosfield

Marie Hosfield

Neighbors and friends are among a man’s greatest assets in life. Our made in America concept drives us out into our community to make friends with our neighbor’s and through that we discovered a little community in the edge of Blowing Rock called Artist’s Alley, a small community driven around the arts that open their homes/studios once per a year to the world to showcase their talents and wares.

Among the first of the artists we have met there is Marie Hosfield, a artists who works in acrylic paints on canvas. Among the things you will notice with Marie upon first meeting her is a slight mischievous grin of playfulness that translates into her scenes on canvas. Secondly, I found her to have a lot more character and suitability than first met the eye- again I should have looked closer at her art and I would find the same characteristics.

Her art has richness and depth typically found in oils, I in fact at first thought she was painting with oils. In all reality, she uses acrylic paints with finesse and character. She corrected me on my assumption and told me “it’s all in the brush stroke”. Whatever it is, I’m honored to have a friend that is that talented and capable with a brush.

Marie and the Artist Alley gals are scheduled to be here in the shop on the evening of April 15, 2011 for the first Sunset Stroll of Galleries this year during the Blue Ridge Wine and Food Festival. Be sure to come by and visit the ladies and take a bit of  the Pride of Blowing Rock home with you from our local artists this year!

Cheese: Rustico with Pepper

Rustico with Pepper

Rustico is a pasteurized sheep’s milk cheese from Rome, aged for approximately 40 days. As a younger cheese, the texture is softer and more pliable, excellent for melting and shredding. The black pepper adds a piquant bite to the round, lactic sheep’s milk. Pair with Valpolicella and enjoy the mingling of spice and fruit.