Penney’s Palate

Tommy’s family is spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with us. We decided to have a nice Christmas Eve Dinner, which turned out to be FABULOUS! The dinner was actually fairly simple and only required a little bit of preparation here and there throughout the afternoon. Harris Teeter had standing rib roasts on mega-sale, so we picked up an 8-pounder and experienced an immediate $40 savings by using our VIC card on one item. We had a roasted red pepper leek and potato soup for an appetizer, then served the rib roast with asparagus and bakery rolls. Desert was spectacular, a Nutella tart that I stole from someone else’s food blog.

Tommy and I have had the soup before but we thought that it would be a nice way to start the dinner. Elena was sick, so we thought that she could at least partake in this part of the meal if she wasn’t up to the rest. It was a nice, creamy incorporation of leeks, red peppers and potatoes. It was just as good as the first time that we made it.

The rib roast was insanely easy to make and way more delicious than expected given the minimal time that it took to prepare. The rib-eye portion of meat was okay (Tommy thought that this part was great). Then there was the portion on top of the rib-eye that was closest to the herb mixture. It was this portion that I wanted to eat forever and ever. It was marbly and full of seasoned goodness. We served this with asparagus, which I’m sure was good and I know I ate, but I do not remember the asparagus. The taste of the meat is still lingering in my head.

The nutella tart was the first tart that I have made. The crust came out absolutely perfect. The filling wasn’t as rich as I was expecting it to be, which was nice because it turned out to be a nice light-to-medium desert after a very filling carnivorous meal. I served it with whipped cream spiked with what else but frangelico.

Herb and Horseradish Crusted Standing Rib Roast

Ingredients
8 lb standing rib roast, with bones
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp pepper
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup horseradish sauce
2 tbsp fresh thyme
1.5 tbsp rosemary, roughly chopped
1.5 tbsp sage leaves, roughly chopped
7 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

Preparation
Heave oven to 325 degrees. Put rib roast in a roasting pan fat side up. Apply a very generous amount of salt and pepper. Combine butter, horseradish, thyme, rosemary, sage and garlic in a food processor. Pulse until mixture is blended into a paste. Spread paste on top of rib roast, and on sides (we tried spreading on the sides and it didn’t stay very well). Put in oven and bake until the middle of the meat reaches 125 degrees (about 3 hours). Let sit for at least 20 minutes before carving. Serve and enjoy.

Chili that I have made in the past has lacked flavor. In my search for a chili recipe tonight (I was craving chili since the weather here has turned cold, windy, and rainy), I wanted a recipe that included a lot of spices so that I could make sure that my chili didn’t turn out plain. I found a recipe with a little too many spices, so I reduced it down to my best judgment. The results were a spicy chili (spicy for me probably means mild to most) full of chili-flavor. Pinto beans instead of kidney beans were a first for me, but I thought that the pinto beans was a nice way of adding beans without making it seem quite so beany. Kidney beans are larger and a little rougher in texture, so you know that you’re eating a bean. I didn’t really notice the pinto beans in the chili. It made about 5 normal-sized servings, probably only 3 servings if you are eating chili by itself for a meal. Also, I like a nice meat-to-chili-to-bean ratio, but if you like your chili more meaty than saucy, the original recipe called for 3 lbs of ground beef. I felt that was a little bit too excessive for Tommy and I, who are perfectly happy to eat vegetarian meals.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pounds ground beef chuck
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 green bell pepper, roughly chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons chile powder
1 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoons ground coriander
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoons chopped thyme
1 teaspoons chopped oregano
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cups low-sodium beef broth
One 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained
One 14-ounce can diced tomatoes with the juices
5 chipotle chiles in adobo, seeded and finely chopped
1 cup tomato sauce
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Preparation
Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add ground beef and cook just until brown, about 5 minutes. Add the onions and green pepper to the pot and cook until onions are translucent, about 8 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic, chile powder, cumin, coriander, sugar, thyme, oregano, black pepper and cayenne pepper and cook for 10 more minutes stirring occasionally.

Stir in the beef broth, pinto beans, diced tomatoes, chipotle chiles, tomato paste and vinegar. Bring to a simmer and cook for 90 minutes stirring occasionally.

Serve by itself or with additional chili necessities such as white rice, crackers, cheddar cheese, sour cream, fritos, etc. I plan on eating it a few ways since we have about 3 servings left over. YUM!

Chili that I have made in the past has lacked flavor. In my search for a chili recipe tonight (I was craving chili since the weather here has turned cold, windy, and rainy), I wanted a recipe that included a lot of spices so that I could make sure that my chili didn’t turn out plain. I found a recipe with a little too many spices, so I reduced it down to my best judgment. The results were a spicy chili (spicy for me probably means mild to most) full of chili-flavor. Pinto beans instead of kidney beans were a first for me, but I thought that the pinto beans was a nice way of adding beans without making it seem quite so beany. Kidney beans are larger and a little rougher in texture, so you know that you’re eating a bean. I didn’t really notice the pinto beans in the chili. It made about 5 normal-sized servings, probably only 3 servings if you are eating chili by itself for a meal. Also, I like a nice meat-to-chili-to-bean ratio, but if you like your chili more meaty than saucy, the original recipe called for 3 lbs of ground beef. I felt that was a little bit too excessive for Tommy and I, who are perfectly happy to eat vegetarian meals.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pounds ground beef chuck
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 green bell pepper, roughly chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons chile powder
1 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoons ground coriander
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoons chopped thyme
1 teaspoons chopped oregano
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cups low-sodium beef broth
One 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained
One 14-ounce can diced tomatoes with the juices
5 chipotle chiles in adobo, seeded and finely chopped
1 cup tomato sauce
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Preparation
Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add ground beef and cook just until brown, about 5 minutes. Add the onions and green pepper to the pot and cook until onions are translucent, about 8 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic, chile powder, cumin, coriander, sugar, thyme, oregano, black pepper and cayenne pepper and cook for 10 more minutes stirring occasionally.

Stir in the beef broth, pinto beans, diced tomatoes, chipotle chiles, tomato paste and vinegar. Bring to a simmer and cook for 90 minutes stirring occasionally.

Serve by itself or with additional chili necessities such as white rice, crackers, cheddar cheese, sour cream, fritos, etc. I plan on eating it a few ways since we have about 3 servings left over. YUM!

Napa Valley, Chavez & Leeds Vineyard - Rutherford

We chose to drink this wine because I had a pot of chili on the stove. The chili was a little on the spicy side, so the wine had to be able to stand above and beyond the flavors in the chili. The choice of petite sirah was perfect. It is critical for this wine to be decanted, unless you want to drink a wine that has extremely strong tannins. After an hour and a half in the decanter, the wine mellowed out. The tannins seemed more silky in structure and the wine had a nice balance from start to finish. I felt like the finish actually got a little thicker and had a hint of a creamy component.

I didn’t get much from the nose, only the smell of alcohol. Sometimes I feel like that is all I smell in some wines, and then sometimes, a wine will come along where I can distinctly pick out smells, with no alcohol lingering at all.

I didn’t like drinking the wine while eating my chili, because it seemed to have a bitter taste. After I finished eating my chili and allowed my mouth to cool off a bit, it tasted much better, as described above. Tommy enjoyed the wine with the chili.

I give it 88 points. As I am drinking it now, I feel like it has changed even more. It seems like it is getting even smoother. I prefer it not quite as smooth. Overall a nice wine for a nice dinner. I love wine.

Tommy and I have had this bottle of wine for about 6 months now. We had it at a restaurant with some friends and liked it enough to seek out a bottle at our local wine store. It has gotten lost in our inventory of wines because, well, it is a Rodney Strong Merlot. But tonight we wanted a light red and this one jumped out at Tommy. I wasn’t too thrilled to open it, but I also didn’t want to make any decisions tonight, so I was happy to have it. It was a nice surprise.

I would highly recommend seeking out this wine if you’re interested in a light bodied red wine. It had a silky texture and just tasted good. For those that do not drink wine very often, this wine would be a good wine to try. Tommy smelled a hint of cinnamon that quickly faded. The back of the bottle says “…plum and berry aromas, a toasty vanilla character, and a lingering finish”. I didn’t get the vanilla, but I definitely smelled the plums. It didn’t have a finish that jumped out at me as unique, but the wine from start to finish was well balanced.

We bought it at TotalWine for only $12. For $12, I think that this is an excellent value. I also think that this would be a good bottle to bring to someone else’s house, when bringing someone wine is necessary. I score it 89 points. It is a good example of a Merlot, but it didn’t have anything over the top to get the 90+ points. We drank it with our pork and risotto and it went well with both of those.

While driving home tonight I was a little bummed because I thought that we would have a boring dinner. I had 2 boneless pork chops in the fridge and I knew that we needed to do something with them tonight. Tommy suggested making a small serving of risotto to serve with the pork. So we gathered anything that we had here to make up our risotto ingredients. I picked out a simple recipe of pan-fried pork chops and modified it to accommodate the ingredients that we had. The pork turned out most excellent (I thought it would be boring and tasteless), and the risotto was a perfect complement to the pork. I heavily salted/peppered the pork and I think that that was part of what made the pork so tasty. I also got my pan temperature just right before starting (I typically get the oil too hot and then burn the first batch, but I didn’t have more than one batch tonight, so getting it just right the first time was of MUCHO importance). Tommy made the risotto, and although it varied slightly from our normal way of making risotto, it turned out pretty good.

Pan Fried Boneless Pork Chops
Serves 2

3 tbsp olive oil
4 small boneless pork chops 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick (I bought two thick chops and cut them in half)
Generous pinches of kosher salt
Pepper
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups panko

Heat a pan with oil on medium heat. Put the cheese, eggs, and panko in three separate bowls. Generously salt and pepper the pork. Coat the pork in the parmesan cheese, ensuring good coating all around. Dip pork in egg and coat on both sides. Coat pork with the panko, ensuring good coating of the panko. Put in pan with the heated oil and fry on one side for 5-6 minutes. Turn over and fry for another 5-6 minutes or until middle of pork registers at 150 degrees (I did 5 minutes on each side and I also turned down the heat to medium low once I put the pork in the pan, time might vary based on pan and heat).

Tomato Risotto
Serves 2

1 tbsp butter
2 pearl onions (can substitute regular onion or shallot, whatever you have)
1/2 cup arborio rice
2/3 cup white wine
3 cups chicken broth (ours was low sodium, left over from the Melanie’s polenta that we made)
4 cherry tomatoes, quartered
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan

Melt 1/2 tbsp butter in pan on medium heat. Add onions and cook for 2 minutes (do not let them turn brown). Add rice and heat until toasted. Add wine, stir, and let wine absorb into rice. When wine gets low, start adding stock about 2/3 cup at a time, letting each addition get absorbed before adding more. Continue until rice is a good eating consistency. Add tomatoes and last addition of stock. When finished, add remaining 1/2 tbsp butter and cheese. Serve immediately.

I like to analyze the wine that I drink at home not only for how it tastes, but also by the way that it got to our house. We have random wines that we bought, not knowing anything about except for what the back of the bottle says. We have wines that people have bought us as gifts, wine that we read about somewhere and just HAD to have it, and so on and so on. Sometimes these are the reasons that I pick out a particular bottle of wine to drink one night or another.

Tommy’s sister Elena bought us this bottle of wine for an anniversary gift. She went to England and Spain over the summer and went to the Torres winery in Spain. This bottle of wine traveled in a little wooden box all the way from Spain to Charleston. Her story of running here and there trying to catch trains and then planes while dragging a suitcase and carrying a wooden box with six wines in it was rather humorous.

This wine was a very nice Cabernet. I would say that if you’re looking for a Cab to drink, this was a very good example of a delicious Cabernet. It smelled and tasted of sour cherries. The finish had that big fruity bang of a finish that good Cabernets have. We opened the bottle and let it sit for about 90 minutes before we started drinking it. It went well on its own and also with our steaks that we ate.

I’ve been trying to rate the wines that I drink on a 100-point scale. Tommy has been doing this and records his ratings in our Cellar Tracker. I usually agree on the score that he gives a wine, but every once in a while we differ. We both agreed that this wine deserves 89 points. While it was a very good Cabernet, it didn’t have anything remarkable about it that would have pushed it to the 90 points.

Earlier this week I made meatloaf. I wrote about it, but when I hit the post button something happened and I lost everything. So here is a brief version. I used Alton Brown’s recipe and I followed it EXACTLY, so I will just link to it instead of writing out what I did. Tommy mentioned that it would have been better if I had made some extra sauce (in addition to what gets smothered on the meatloaf while baking) because the bites that didn’t have any sauce on them were just okay. There were some unique flavors that I have never had in meatloaf before. Overall it was very tasty. I halved the recipe, and we had enough left to eat it with mashed potatoes and asparagus the next night.

Alton Brown’s Good Eats Meatloaf

This wine comes from the Yadkin Valley area of North Carolina. I have forgotten what a “typical” Merlot tastes like (if there is such a thing as typical), so I can’t say if it was a good Merlot or not. I can say that I liked it though. It was pretty full of oak, but not too over-the-top with the oak. I don’t seem to taste (or recognize) when red wines have oak, but this was very apparent. I liked that it didn’t have too much funkiness going on. Tommy didn’t like this wine, which is great for me because I know that I have 1/2 bottle of it in the refrigerator that we will not be competing for.

We drank this wine with meatloaf and belgian endive and it went very well with the flavors that were in the meatloaf. Neither the wine nor the food was competing with each other or my palate.

I like risotto. My favorites are the standard way, and tomato risotto with zuchini. Tonight I veared away from the standard risotto with a Butternut Squash risotto.The butternut squash was a little too sweet for the risotto, but sage did an excellent job of cutting through the sweetness so that the squash wasn’t too overpowering.

Overall a pretty good meal (I served it with broccoli that was saute’d with toasted garlic). Next time I would use my butternut squash for a different application, perhaps butternut squash ravioli with brown butter sage sauce? Or soup.

Butternut Squash Risotto
(serves three)
5 cups chicken stock, kept on hot on medium heat
2 tbsp butter
1 shallot
1 garlic clove
1 cup arborio rice
1 cup white wine (this time it was Wine By Joe Pinot Gris, usually it is a Chardonnay)
Butternut squash (I used 1/2 of a 2.5 lb squash)
5 sage leaves, chiffonaded
1 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Cut a butternut squash up into chunks, skin and seeds removed. Roast in the oven on 350 for 30-45 minutes until cooked (should be fairly soft). Mash up the cubes with a fork until most of the large chunks are gone. It is okay for a few chunks to remain.

Melt 1 tbsp of the butter in a large saute pan over medium head. Add shallot and garlic and cook for a few minutes (do not let the shallot turn brown). Add the arborio rice and toast. Add one cup of wine, give the rice a good stir, and then cook until most of the wine is gone (if rice starts sticking to the bottom of the pan, you have let too much liquid cook off). Add the chicken stock 2 ladle-fulls at a time, adding more when most of the liquid has evaporated. This process should take about 25-30 minutes. Make sure that you stir often (according to Rachel Ray, stirring helps the rice to release the starch, which makes the risotto rich and creamy). When you notice that you’re almost at the end of your chicken stock, taste the rice. Once it is al dente, add 2 more ladle-fulls of the chicken stock. During the last 3 minutes of cooking, add the butternut squash. During the last minute of cooking, add the remaining tablespoon of butter, the sage, and the cheese. Stir until melted. Serve immediately.