The cuisine of Southwestern France ranks among the most iconic and delicious in the whole country. What would you say to an eight-day culinary tour of this incredible region, living at a gorgeous retreat with a big pool? What if we also had a yoga teacher on site, so we could all eat and drink guilt-free?
Category: Wine
For someone as passionate about fermentation as I am, it’s surprising that I never made any alcohol until recently. The reason was largely that I figured I’d never be able to replicate anything close to the wines I like, and even if I did the quantity would be too small to warrant the effort. But there’s more to drink than wine, and four years in the new garden is producing a lot more fruit than it used to. And since lactic and acetic acid fermentations (including with koji) are pretty second nature to me, I wanted to try something new.
At the end of February, I spent a long weekend in the city on assignment for Food Republic, covering a couple of natural wine fairs, New York’s first. You can read the preamble I wrote beforehand, and then the post-game recap. Both events were gratifying, with impressive wines across the board and some terrific people and meals thrown in for good measure.
The new Fish & Game newsletter is out today, and it includes a profile of Hirotake Ooka, one of the four extraordinary natural winemakers I visited last month during a quick trip to France.
Sometimes a meal just comes together, like George Peppard’s plans always did on the A-Team. This almost always happens as a result of careful listening to what the garden, fridge, and pantry have to say. Ignore them at your peril.
Here’s a piece about Phyllis Feder of Clinton Vineyards that I wrote for the current issue of Edible Hudson Valley. I just sent off another piece about local wine that should be in the fall issue, so stay tuned for that.
Lovage is a new favorite of mine in the garden. Apart from the fact that it’s a perennial, roaring back in early spring for some of the first new domestic greens, it has a beguiling aroma that’s like celery and citrus and fenugreek all rolled into one. As it’s peaking right now, ready to flower, I cut some stalks thinking that since they’re so fat they might take well to being treated like a vegetable. Cutting them released their perfume, which combined with the scintillating sunlight and the parch in my throat to unleash a savage hankering for an icy gin-based beverage featuring lovage.
Consistent with the tradition in this house, there was no turkey for Thanksgiving. Turkey is boring and hard to cook well unless you take it apart. We did, however, have Milo’s awesome Lego turkey as part of the centerpiece. Also keeping with tradition around here, the meal was a seven-course exploration of whatever perfervid visions had swum into my insomniac mind during the preceding week. It’s funny; I was listening to the radio as I made the dough for the foie gras oreos—one such idea—and the guest was saying something like “The key to a stress-free Thanksgiving is never to cook something new for the first time when people are coming over.” I think that takes all the fun out of it; three out of the seven courses were things I just made up and figured wouldn’t suck.
Today was hot, so dinner needed to be something on the lighter side, but the day was also strenuous; our various exertions of summer camp, rehearsals, and gardening called for serious sustenance. Besides the garden, my sweat-inducing activities included errand running, among which grocery procurement, so I bought two small pieces of fish: tuna and bluefish, thinking to do two different things with them.
In the July Chronogram I profile Eminence Road Farm Winery, which I have mentioned already a few times in recent posts. If you live in the region, their wines are well worth searching out. Anyone interested in natural wines could do worse than to read Alice Feiring’s Naked Wine and Jonathan Nossiter’s Liquid Memory, both of which I enjoyed and found highly informative.
More photos after the jump.