Cooking with wine!!

Hey Guys-

The question today has to do with cooking with wine-- Kelly B. asked me "How do you know which wine is best for cooking different recipes?".

This is a great question. An excellent cooking wine is 'Carlo Rossi'. This wine is inexpensive and it is usually sold in large quantity size bottles. As far as making a court bouillon or braising beef in a red wine, any red or white cooking wine will do. As far as making a reduction sauce or using a sparkling white wine in a fruit salad or things of that nature, you may want to get specific varieties of wine. The reason for wanting to specify the variety of wine is depending on what the dish is used with. You may want to accent specific notes in each dish. Sometimes you may want to pull out the smoky notes of a white wine when prepared with a fish, or you may want to produce a nice pinot for the spicy attributes it would add to a rack of lamb. Or you may want to reduce a sweet port with some berries to be topped with vanilla ice cream. Anytime your using the wine in a dish for it to be a specific component of a dish it IS important to decide on specific wines to use. On the other hand, anytime your using wine to de-glaze a pot, braise a lot of meat or create a poaching liquid etc. your normal inexpensive cooking wine will do.

So now let me tell you about my cool encounters with food yesterday!! :)----

When I walked into the kitchen to prepare for service on both pasta and fish station, I see a hotel pan of veal sweet breads soaking in water. My immediate reaction was to run to my Chef and ask him what we get to do with the sweet breads. Sweet breads are a delicacy that began in the 16th century. There are 3 different kinds of sweet breads which come from mammals; There are sweet breads of the thymus glands, the pancreas, and the heart. The most commonly ate now days is the thymus gland. In all honestly, it is a really good version of something that tastes like CHICKEN. It's name originates from 'sweet'; meaning how light and airy the texture is as opposed to how dense and rich the savory part of muscle is that we normally eat. And 'breads'; came from the word 'braed' in old english meaning flesh. I should have taken pictures of this, I will try to today. But when looking at eat, one would think I was a brain. The graphic truth aside, if I fried some of this up and didn't tell you what it was--you would think this was the best chicken nuggets you've ever had. The sweet breads are going to used in what Chef called a "surf and turf". The bottom of the dish will have a muscle puree with white wine steamed muscles on top and golden fried nuggets of sweet bread. Around it with bright colors and bold acidity a medley of veggies that started being pickled last night. I can't wait to try the finished dish today and I will keep you posted and try and get you a picture of the dish.

Please don't forget to send your questions to chefbazblog@gmail.com

Thanks and I'll talk to you soon-

Chef Baz