Thursday, November 30, 2017

It's bon. Have a bonedro

Just when you think that after 40 plus years in the wine trade you have tried everything along comes my brother David with a bottle of bonvedro. Barossa grown, red and fruity. From a grape of Portuguese origin Australians used to incorrectly call carignan
Because I'm the unsophisticated brother I'll finish this bottle of 2016 Village Belle Bonvedro after chilling it a bit. And then I'll broach another one.
I'm sure it will pass the two bottle test.
Details at
http://www.glug.com.au/index.php…

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Red wine makes you sleepy, but spirits make you confident

Red wine makes you sleepy, but liquor makes you confident — Quartz:

"Unofficially, everyone knows that different kinds of booze will give them a different kind of night. But now, data from one of the largest surveys on drug and alcohol use finally prove it: hard liquor gives most people that extra ~swag~."




'via Blog this'

Sunday, November 19, 2017

A return to Russian cooking

Kachka: The Word That Saved A Family During WWII And Inspired A Chef : The Salt : NPR:

"On a sunny weekday afternoon, chef Bonnie Morales leads me past the Q subway line in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. We are going shopping for Russian food.

Morales owns Kachka, a restaurant in Portland, Ore., that serves food from the former Soviet Union. It's one of the most popular places to eat in one of the hottest food cities in the country.


Kachka
A Return to Russian Cooking
by Bonnie Frumkin Morales, Deena Prichep and Leela Cyd

Hardcover, 389 pages

Now, Morales has a new cookbook — also called Kachka. Its publication inspired this jaunt to Little Odessa, the kind of neighborhood where the child of Eastern European immigrants feels at home.

"Because there's such a concentration of people from the former Soviet Union," Morales explains.

People like Morales' own Russian Jewish immigrant parents. (Her husband is part Mexican; her maiden name is Frumkin.) She was born in the Chicago area, and as a child in the early 1990s, her relatives flocked to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every week, it seemed, her parents threw another party welcoming new arrivals with a spread of cold appetizers called zakuski.

"



'via Blog this'

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Lost Kitchen Restaurant Made Chef's Small Hometown A Dining Destination : The Salt : NPR

Lost Kitchen Restaurant Made Chef's Small Hometown A Dining Destination : The Salt : NPR:



"One of America's most coveted dining experiences is a 40-seat restaurant in a converted grist-mill in the rural village of Freedom, Maine.



Chef Erin French, who is self-taught, opened the Lost Kitchen in her hometown of Freedom without much of a plan. She loved the space, and at first thought she would make English muffins and offer brunch, not convinced that the village of just over 700 people could become a dinner destination.



"When I first decided that I wanted to do this, everyone thought I was completely crazy," French says. "Why would anyone come all this way to have dinner?""



Well, come they have — in droves. French's food, with its focus on local, fresh, unpretentious cooking, has created a legion of fans. Each year, the restaurant opens reservations on April 1. But this year, things got out of control.



"The phones rang to a point where our security system went down and we had over 10,000 phone calls stream in in the matter of a few hours, French says. "The entire restaurant was booked."



Booked for the whole year. Calls came in from as far away as New Zealand, along with offers to open another restaurant in Las Vegas. But French first learned to cook in her dad's diner and is committed to keeping things simple.



"The food at Lost Kitchen is not Earth-shattering or ground-breaking in any way, and it's not fancy — we don't sous vide anything, we don't make foams or fancy purees, it's just simple food," she says. "I don't want anyone to feel intimidated when they look at this and I never want to plate a dish that you have to look at it and say, 'What is it?' "

'via Blog this'

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Chinese police find 14,000 bottles of fake Penfolds wine in counterfeiting scam

Chinese police find 14,000 bottles of fake Penfolds wine in counterfeiting scam:



Beijing: Shanghai police have seized 14,000 bottles of fake Penfolds wine being sold by counterfeiters in China.



The fake Penfolds wine was being sold through Alibaba's online flea market Taobao, as well as pubs and karaoke bars.



The three-month investigation followed a complaint to Alibaba by Australian wine company Treasury Wine Estates that suspicious retailers were charging "extraordinarily low prices" for Penfolds wine in its fastest growing market.



Alibaba called in police, who said at a press conference on Wednesday that 13 suspects had been detained, including Mr Dai, a wine dealer who was selling fake Penfolds for 200 yuan ($40) per bottle online, while it should retail for 600 to 3000 yuan ($120 to $595).'via Blog this'