A sunny sip for springtime Sundays.
March 15th, 2009
Created after I hurriedly grabbed a bottle of white wine for cooking a risotto with only to discover Moscato d’Asti was a sweet bubbly - no good for my risotto, and bound to sit sadly in the fridge going flat.
As an impoverished gourmet, I couldn’t let that happen, so in the grand tradition of morning-after-champagne-cocktails, I employed the citrus maneouver. My current citrus of choice is the meyer lemon, which combines all the best parts of a kumquat (mild, sweet rind), a lime (floral bouqet), and a lemon (lemonyness). The juice of one of my meyer lemons mellowed out the Moscato, whose sweetness in turn brought out the full flavor of the lemon. A spritz of club soda on the top brought the drink from ‘puckering’ to ‘quenching’.
Book: Cooking with Booze
December 20th, 2007
Ah, a book after my own heart: Cooking with Booze. We all know how to cook with wine by now, and thankfully Cooking with Booze focuses more energy on spirits, beer, and hard cider. Even better, whiskey gets the biggest section of all.
The recipes in Cooking with Booze lean towards traditional English fare, with a few adventurous side trips abroad. Some recipes that piqued my interest were Potato Salad with Beer Dressing, Whisky Pancakes, Brandy-baked Brie, and Roast Pork with Apple Stuffing and Cider Sauce.
You can buy the book (obligatory Amazon.com link), or you can view it in it’s entirety online, with the occasional video.