Rosé Sunday

I know a couple – early 40’s, successful, wine connoisseurs – who is so smitten with rosé wine they actually dedicate a whole day to it. They toil all week, drinking chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon, and then when Sunday rolls around they spend it paying homage to the pink stuff.

Not just any pink stuff, though. No, these two oenophiles pop open a bottle (or two) of the good stuff. So good, in fact, it’s not available in stores and they either pick it up directly at the winery or they have it shipped to them – or both. The wine is Arrowood La Rosé, and probably retails (if you could get it) for about $20.

I’ve been on a rosé kick for the past three years, ever since I tasted Chateau d’Aqueria Tavel in Avignon, France. It was a complete revelation – a blush wine that was bone dry! My only other experience with pink wine was with sickly sweet white zinfandel that my friend Besty used to drink. And now I, too, am smitten. Every since that fateful sip, I’ve been on a continuous quest for THE perfect rosé.

Apparently, lots of wine drinkers are discovering the joy of rosé because it seems everywhere I turn I’m reading something about a top ten list of rosés. Of course, it’s summer and technically rosé is a summer wine, but wine wonks drink it all year long, like me, because it is such a food friendly wine.

The Provence region of France is the birthplace of rosé, but every wine producing region is now making some sort of rosé. The French style is dry, crisp, with fruit in the background, and generally made with a blend of Cinsault, Grenache and Syrah.

California is producing a variety of rosés, some French-like, but also a great deal like other California wines – fruit bombs. I tend like those fruit forward rosés, like Arrowood. I just can’t seem to get my hands on that particular one. The fruit flavors in rosés tend to taste like strawberries, cherries, or watermelon, especially if Grenache is in the mix.

I would suggest that you go to your best wine store (one with a good selection of rosés and a knowledgeable staff) and buy three or four different rosé styles. Do a taste test and see what style you like. Some like the pinot noir rosés (not me). Some prefer Grenache heavy ones (me – I love the strawberry and watermelon flavors).

Here are the five rosés I’m drinking now. All of them are fruit forward. None are sweet like white zinfandel, but only the Bonny Doon is what I think of as bone dry. The sweetest, even though it isn’t really sweet, is the Chateau Ste. Michelle. All of these wines are under $20, and some under $10.

Chateau Ste. Michelle Nellie’s Garden Dry Rosé

La Vieille Ferme Rosé

Crios de Susana Balbo Rosé of Malbec

SoloRosa

Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare

Survey Says...

I ran across a blog last night (I don’t even know how I got there… I started on one blog, a link from my brother, and once I got there, I saw another interesting link which led me to another blog, and of course, that blog had a cool link. So 50 layers in, I ended up on this particular blog that had a survey…. Whew!)

The survey asked: what is your favorite kind of food: Asian, Mexican, Indian, Italian, French or Other? Do you notice anything about this list? I did. My first thought was, where is American? Are we ‘other’? And what is American food?

American food is apple pie, right? And ice cream, and fried chicken, and grilled cheese, and a hamburger, of course (no, the Germans didn’t invent the hamburger…we did…and German wasn’t on the list of options, anyway).

Now, Mexican food is my favorite cuisine, so I’m not trying to cause trouble here; I was just curious as to why this list didn’t have an American option. We do have a cuisine, you know. So then I pondered, do other countries have food surveys that list American as an option? Is it considered ethnic like we consider Asian or Indian food?

These are the things that run through my brain at the end of the evening, when the dishes are done, the last drop of wine is drunk and I really should be taking out the trash instead of surfing the web.

Pay it Forward

In the course of dining out the last couple of days, two things struck me as worth mentioning.

The first surprise came when I received the check at Bombay Spice, a restaurant claiming to "redefine" Indian cuisine by replacing fattening gee and cream with olive oil and fat free yogurt. That's a whole other post but back to the check.

I opened the bill and there was a silver dollar with a note that they recognize gas prices are crazy, it costs more to even drive to dine out now and they were so glad that we came. Interesting concept. I left the silver dollar for the server (on top of her tip, of course). You know, pay it forward?

The second surprise came today on the menu at Lisa G's. The menu announced a partnership between the restaurant and the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. The restaurant is allowing young adults to come and train in the restaurant (with their job coach). Interesting concept. And generous and touching, too. Pay it forward by helping others help themselves.

Sink or Swim

It's here! My new baby...my new sink! Oh joy, oh joy.

I finally picked out a sink after debating it for, oh I don't know, 3 years? What kind of sink to get? Stainless steel or one of those new composite sinks by Blanco?

Maybe I should stick with the porcelain coated cast iron sink that came with the house? I finally decided that stainless steel would suit me just fine, but with deep, large bowls big enough for my stockpots.

It was time for my old sink to go. The faucet was leaking, the porcelain finish was long gone, and the sink itself had serious dings from surviving 1,000 recipe testings for my three cookbooks, 500 cooking class preps, and a few meals I made just for us when testing and prepping wasn't in session.

I bought the sink from Loews, because they offered to come and install it, too. That turned out to be problematic. The first guy they sent over, Mr. "No," was not only just plain rude, he said I'd better be prepared to be without a sink until I found someone who could do tile work, if that became necessary. He didn't do tile work. He didn't know if it would need tile work, but if it did, he couldn't do it. He said the problem was that Loews didn't know how to sell sinks. I sent him on his way and called Loews.

They lined me up with another installer who did do tile work, in addition to installing sinks, if in fact, any tile work needed to be done. He didn't show up. I call Loews and they called him. He called me and we rescheduled. He did eventually come and he was charming, polite and quite competent. Turns out he didn't need to cut out any tile out after he removed the old sink but he could have, whereas Mr. No couldn't have.

None of that matters now. I have a new sink. It looks great. There is only one problem. I don't like it. I hope that I'm just suffering from separation anxiety over losing my old sink, and that I'll come to love this sink. But it's different. And I'm not sure I like it. But it doesn't leak and it sure does look good. So maybe I will like it in a few days or a week. I hope so, because it's mine now.

Word Nerds Rejoice!

I managed to escape the bookstore without buying a single cookbook. Yes, I know, a minor miracle. There is a simple explanation, though. I ran out of time before I could peruse the cooking aisle. I did, however, make a contribution to my fellow food professionals by purchasing a reference book on the history of coffee (for an article I'm researching) and Holly Hughes Best Food Writing 2007.

But what's really cool, is the new Bill Bryson book I bought. If you don't know this prolific, bestselling English author, he is best known for A Walk in the Woods about the Appalachian trail and A Short History of Nearly Everything, (the latter which we bought as an audio book and listened to while driving to Crested Butte, to Santa Fe and to Tucson a couple summers ago. It may be a short history of everything, but it's a long, long book...fascinating, but long.)

This new book is Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Now, I know not everyone is comfortable curling up with a good dictionary, but I think it's perfectly normal -- and I'm having fun learning the difference between frowsty and frowzy. (The former means stale, the latter means dingy.) I did not know that before I cracked open his book, and am actively plotting my first chance to interject both words in the same sentence.

Word nerds rejoice!

Outed...Sort of...

It's true.... I'm writing for PHOENIX Magazine now. I had only told a couple of friends because I wanted to see my name in print before I started telling the world. Just because I turned in articles, didn't mean they would soak up ink on a page, I thought. But today, a friend forwarded me a blog entry from the Phoenix New Times restaurant critic, Michele Laudig.

She writes in her 6/19 post that the magazine unveils three new scribes, including me. I haven't seen the July issue yet...it's June 20, for crying out loud... but regular subscribers apparently get the next month's issue about two weeks before it hits the newsstand.

I am extremely honored to write for PHOENIX Magazine. I loved reading long-time critic Nikki Buchanan's reviews, even though I didn't always agree with her, nor experience the same dining experience she did that formed the basis of her reviews.

Not often, but occasionally, I thought her choice of words were brutal and unnecessarily hurtful. There are ways to convey you have issues with food and/or service without interjecting heart-piercing words. But I admired her talent for writing -- describing food so that the reader could taste it -- and her wealth of knowledge about food and restaurants in general.

Before I agreed to write for the magazine, I met with the editor. Rumors were swirling about the circumstances of Buchanan's departure. It was a "He said, she said," scenario. I grew up as the daughter of a newspaper editor. My Dad had built a figurative firewall around his news/editorial department that the advertisers were constantly trying to climb over. He never once caved in even though the pressure, at times, was unrelenting.

I felt comfortable enough after my meeting with the editor to start writing for the magazine, and I made it excruciatingly clear that I would bail if anything happens in the course of my work for them that compromises my standards. I do understand that advertisers bring money to the table. I also understand that the real customer is the reader, and the reader has every right to expect and receive credible information from the writers that is in no way influenced by advertising dollars.

My goal, in writing for PHOENIX Magazine, as it is for every other client I write for, is to be honest, to entertain, and to share the passion of food I have with all who read what I write.

The South's Gonna Rise Again...

Frankly, my dear, I would say it already has, based on the number of southern cookbooks released in the past couple of years. The newest addition, is called Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, by Martha Hall Foose.

A couple of months ago, another southern cookery book, Bon Appetit, Y'all, by Virginia Willis came out and before that, it was Y'all Come Eat by Paula Deen's hunky son, Jamie. The Lee Brothers introduced the Lee Brothers Southern Cookbook, and before that, The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock.

Earlier this month, the James Beard Foundation announced it's cookbook awards, and guess who won the Americana category? The Glory of Southern Cooking by James Villas. The picture of perfectly fried chicken on the cover is deliciously tempting.

There is a new cookbook on Southern cakes. I didn't realize that we had enough cakes to fill a cookbook, but apparently we do! There are 6 or 7 different recipes for coconut cakes alone. Seriously.

I can't think of another region of the country that gets as much attention (at least in the cookbook world) than the South. Maybe Texas, which is technically part of the South, but don't try to tell us Texans that. We like to think we're kind of unique.

So, what do you think? Do you think this amount attention given to the cooking of the South is warranted?