Author Archive
Posted on April 25, 2011 - by Adrian Murcia
Domaine de Cabasse Séguret Blanc and Pleasant Ridge Reserve Extra Aged
Domaine de Cabasse Séguret Blanc “Les Primevères” 2008, AOC Séguret Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages (Vaucluse, France), $17.99/750ml - 30% Grenache Blanc, 25% Roussanne, 25% Viognier, 20% Clairette
Pleasant Ridge Reserve Extra Aged, Upland Farms Dairy (Dodgeville, Wisconsin), $34/lb. unpasteurized cow milk
Domaine de Cabasse’s floral and tropical-fruity white blend got its name from the colorful primrose (primevères) blossoms that dot the landscape here in spring, a fitting name for this fresh and perfumed warm-weather gulper. Séguret, a picturesque hilltop town overlooking the Cabasse vineyards, is one of only 19 villages in the Rhône valley of France allowed to append its name to the more generic Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages wine appellation. Dodgeville. Wisconsin’s Upland Farms Dairy makes its Pleasant Ridge Reserve with milk from pastured cows only, crafting this American treasure on the alpine, grass-loving calendar: May to October only. Alongside complex creamy and meaty aromatic notes, Pleasant Ridge can also offer astounding pineapple-like tropical fruitiness. Here it’s all about complementary notes; no sharp contrasts in flavor or texture: just rich, creamy, pineapple-y goodness and a long, seamless finish.
Wine: Slope Cellars, 436 7th Avenue (14th & 15th), Brooklyn, NY. tel. (718) 369-7307
Cheese: Bklyn Larder, 228 Flatbush Ave. (Bergen & 6th Ave.), Brooklyn, NY. tel. (718) 783-1250
Posted on April 19, 2011 - by Adrian Murcia
Fermented Spain: Wine, Cheese & Ham
Friday, April 29, 2011
7:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.
Great Hall, 1st Floor
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY
$65
Price includes museum admission
As in its political and social realms, Spain’s gastronomic culture has transformed itself so thoroughly in the past 30 years that even professionals have a hard time keeping up with all the changes. What’s even more fascinating, even as the country becomes synonymous with innovation and modernity, tradition dies hard in this ancient land, making for some interesting juxtapositions and unlikely bedfellows. In this class, as we sample some of Spain’s fermented greatness (including its celebrated jamo?n ibe?rico) we’ll take a sweeping look at what Spain looks like today, where it’s been, and where it’s likely headed.
Class will take place inside a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called reOrder, an architectural installation housed within the museum’s Great Hall. Designed by Brooklyn-based creative practice Situ Studio, the design comprises a series of stretched fabric canopies and integrated furnishings that swell, expand, and augment the profile of the existing monumental columns.
As it does every Thursday and Friday evening, the Brooklyn Museum will remain open after class until 10 p.m.
Posted on March 6, 2011 - by Adrian Murcia
Speak, Edulis: San Sebastián’s Bar La Cepa and the Conscious Etching of Sense Memory
Having arrived in Spain a day early this year—to get a leg up on my jet lag and make sure I was available to greet everyone at the airport the next day (a control thing, I guess)—I decided to skip Bilbao and hop on a bus to one of my favorite places on earth: San Sebastián, a little over an hour away.
In one of those fortuitous coincidences, my 19-year-old niece, Alex, happened to be crashing in San Sebastián while on an extended European sojourn at the same time, and, knowing she’d been away from home and family for a close to a year, I decided there was but one choice on what to do on our one evening together: go to Bar La Cepa.
Between my last visit to this gem of an eatery in September 2008 and the moment Alex and I turned the corner along San Sebastián’s Concha toward the city’s Parte Vieja, or old quarter, on that balmy Sunday night just a few weeks ago, my sense memory had probably meandered down these same narrow streets toward La Cepa at least a few dozen times.
My mission: to introduce Alex to two dishes very dear to me : revuelto de gambas (soft scrambled eggs with shrimp) and hongos a la plancha (boletus edulis wild mushrooms cooked on the flat-top).
Here was the rub: As long as I’ve known her—which is to say, all her life—Alex has never been a particularly adventurous eater, with a long-standing aversion to all products of the sea. Following an instinct to keep her social circle to within a few blocks of her crash pad, and on a pilgrim’s budget, she hadn’t really ventured out of her safe zone much—geographically or gastronomically—and had certainly never thought of spend €12 on scrambled eggs.
But being that I was hungry and here for just one night, I didn’t really give her much of a choice.
When our plates arrived, she was tentative at first, but then quietly, methodically, she began to dispatch forkfuls of those buttery, mouth-melty eggs studded with sweet shrimp (I’m told the chef here insists that both eggs and shellfish have to be no more than two days from hen/water), with nearly the same enthusiasm as her uncle, the same incredulous shaking of the head, the same wondering, “how can somethings so simple be so good?”
Then came the wild mushrooms, golden and meaty, salty and autumnal. In the center of the plate sat a tablespoon, in which sat a perfectly poached egg yolk—the idea being, of course, to tear the yolk membrane slightly, and allow the yolk’s runny contents to run fatty rivulets under the mushrooms, to bind boletus to bread when the dipping commenced.
The dipping of the bread, the shaking of our heads, the smiles continued. And then my realization: that, despite her childhood gastronomic prejudices, Alex was both fully conscious of—and entirely surrendering herself to—a completely unexpected moment.
And the fact that I was witnessing, and was in fact responsible for, a moment that would likely carve itself permanently into her own sense memory, whether she realized it or not, well, that too, was one for the notebooks.
Time felt no different. The bartender was annoyed that we ordered something of the flat top just as the cook was about to break down. The couple next to us lit up cigarettes while were still eating.
But something had changed, and maybe she knew it already.
An uncle can hope. And he can remember, too.
Posted on March 6, 2011 - by Adrian Murcia
Table-Slamming Match: Cabot Cloth-bound Cheddar and Marqués de Murrieta Rioja Reserva 2004
This is about a flavor match between a wine, Marqués de Murrieta 2004 Reserva, and a cheese with an unusually long name, Cabot Cloth-bound Cheddar Aged at the Jasper Hill Farm, encountered quite by accident during a class I co-taught at Murray’s Cheese two years ago, the kind of match so good, so emotionally satisfying, that one feels the urge to slam the table with one’s fist.
Perhaps “accident” is not quite accurate. Bordeaux is the wine-and-cheese pairer’s go-to choice for classic Cheddar, so I threw in a twist by selecting a Rioja bodega with an unmistakable Bordeaux pedigree and a wine with a recognizable Old World character. The 2004 Reserva offers a classic Rioja cigar box aromatic profile and slightly vegetal nose–I seem to remember the bodega having some grandfathered Cabernet Sauvignon vines–the better to complement a cheese with root cellar notes and a vegetal character of its own.
The result was pure magic.
Cabot Cloth-bound Cheddar is $25.99/lb at Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village
Marqués de Murrieta Finca Ygay Rioja Reserva 2004 is $19.99/bottle at PJ Wine in New York City.
Posted on March 6, 2011 - by Adrian Murcia
Fermented Harmony: Wine & Cheese 101
Friday, March 25, 2011
7:00p.m.-8:30p.m.
Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion
Brooklyn Museum
Price (includes museum admission): $65
Double your gustatory pleasure (and sharpen your fermented learning curve) by exploring the world of wine and cheese through the flavor affinities that bind them. Although not an exact science, wine and cheese harmony tends to abide by a few basic principles. And while not essential to fermented pleasure, finding a perfect match can pay deliriously sensuous dividends far exceeding the sum of its parts. Join Brooklyn-based writer and ‘fermented educator’ Adrian Murcia—formerly the fromager and assistant sommelier at Chanterelle Restaurant in Tribeca—for an unfussy, mindful foray into the art of comparative tasting. Students will sample five dedicated pairings, learn the basics of each constituent element, study the logic behind each match, and assess the results as a group.
