The Gifts of the Vine

fig. a: "...drink wine, feel fine!"

This year we were pretty single-minded when it came to our annual AEB holiday bash: it was all about the wine. Sure, we still made plenty of food to serve to our guests, but everything was meant to encourage hours of focused oenophilia.

fig. b: wine by Olney

We imagined a party that would inspire our guests to bring an interesting bottle or two, uncork them, share generously, and drink deeply. We imagined a party that would be 100% free of Château Dep.* We imagined a party we might have invited both Richard Olney and Kermit Lynch to.

fig. c: big burgundy

It worked! We had people who called us in advance of the party and said, "Yes, but what kind of wine?" To which we responded, "Think beef Burgundy, think French cheese, think pâté." Some of these people really went all out. Some people really got into the Burgundian vibe. Some people even brought magnums.

We also imagined a wine-soaked Christmas affair, and wine-soaked it turned out to be. I'm not sure if it was just the effects of all that wine piled on top of the effects of all those delicious French '75s (Champagne, gin, lemon, sugar) that we started out the evening with, but this year's edition was easily the most bacchanalian AEB xmas party in the eight years (!) we've been throwing this party. Mission accomplished!

This was the menu that did it all:

French '75 punch

fig. d: Beef Burgundy by Olney

boeuf à la Bourguignonne (follow the link for our recipe)
cheese platter (featuring the most extraordinary Vacherin Mont D'Or)
baker's foie (recipe follows)
baked, stuffed onions à la Olney (follow the link for Michelle's recipe)
baked mushrooms à la Joe Beef (recipe follows)
marinated beet salad
bitter greens salad
oysters on the half shell (TY, F.!)

Far Breton
panforte
Christmas cookies

Mandarin oranges (lots and lots of 'em!)

And here are a couple of the featured recipes:

The first is an adaptation of an incredibly simple and drop-dead lovely pâté de foies de volailles recipe from Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread. This pâté is a stunner. We had some guests who told us it was the single best thing they'd ever tasted. Ever. Like I said, it's really good, and as easy as a pâté recipe gets. You can also use chicken livers, but duck livers really make it.

fig. e: baker's foie

Baker’s Foie

1 small shallot, finely chopped
6 black peppercorns
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
6 duck livers
olive oil
1 tbsp fresh thyme, leaves only
6 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup cognac
1/2 tsp salt

for the cognac butter:
3 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tbsp cognac
pinch of salt

Make a simple syrup by mixing the sugar and water in a saucepan and bringing to a simmer. Add the chopped shallot and black peppercorns and bring back to a simmer. Poach the shallots and pepper in the simple syrup for ten minutes. Strain the shallots and peppercorns and set aside. Discard the simple syrup.

Rinse the livers in cold water and remove any visible fat or connective tissue. Heat a heavy skillet over high heat and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. When the oil begins to smoke, carefully add the livers and sear for about 30 seconds. Quickly turn the livers and sear for another 30 seconds. Add the thyme and cook for a few seconds until it is aromatic. Remove the pan from the heat and pour off the excess oil and fat. While the pan is still hot, add 2 tablespoons of the butter and 1/4 cup of the cognac, and deglaze the pan, stirring to loosen any brown bits sticking to the bottom. Transfer the contents of the pan to a food processor, add the candied shallots, and let cool for 8 to 10 minutes.

Once the livers have cooled, add the remaining 4 tablespoons butter to the food processor and process to a thick puree. Add the salt and the remaining 1/4 cup cognac and process again. Taste and add more salt if needed. Pour the liver puree into ramekins or into a suitably sized loaf or pâté pan.

To make the cognac butter, place the butter in a small bowl. In a small saucepan, heat the cognac until it is hot to the touch. Add it to the butter along with the salt. Stir the butter until it has a liquid consistency and then pour it evenly over the pâté. Cover and refrigerate until the cognac butter has set. Serve cool or at room temperature with toast or bread or crackers.

[based closely on a recipe that appeared in Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread]

The second is another crazy-easy, crazy-tasty recipe, this time from our good friends at Joe Beef. The Art of Living According to Joe Beef states that, "This dish is best prepared in a cast-iron frying pan, served family style at the table," and they're right--the sight and the smell makes people go wild. Another wickedly good hors d'oeuvre!

fig. f: baked shrooms

Baked Mushrooms with New (or Old!) Garlic

16 large white mushrooms, stem ends trimmed
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
2 garlic flowers or garlic cloves (in season)
6 sprigs thyme

Preheat the oven to 450º F. Score each mushroom cap with shallow cuts about 1/8 inch deep. Spread the butter and oil in the bottom of a heavy ovenproof pan. Season the bottom of the pan with salt, pepper, and the paprika. Place the mushrooms, cap down and side by side, in the pan. Tuck the garlic flowers (if using) and thyme among them.

Bake the mushrooms for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the pan juices are bubbling and the mushrooms have shrunk and roasted. Serve bubbly.

[recipe from The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts by Frédéric Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson]

That spread got demolished! We had just enough beef burgundy for leftovers the next day, but otherwise those vineheads cleaned us out. But they paid us back in laughs, memories, outrageous behaviour, and all-around good times.

Hope you've enjoyed the holiday season this year. All the best in 2012!

aj

* If you're not from Québec, this is local parlance for the abysmal, insanely overpriced vins ordinaires that are available from our supermarkets and dépanneurs (corner stores), hence the name. Why the government, which otherwise holds a monopoly over the sale of alcohol (with the exception of beer, which, again, is largely available from the deps and supermarkets) in this province, should feel that the sale of sub-grade wine at every corner store and supermarket in Quebec is acceptable is another matter.

New York Winterlude 3

Sadly, day 3 of New York Winterlude 2009 was only a half day. For a good reason, though. We had plans to make it to the Catskills by mid-afternoon, so that we could relax and have dinner and an overnight with friends in the country. So we got up early, picked up our car, and made our way down to Greenwich Village.

There we paid quick visits to two Greenwich Village classics for the very first time. Both had been part of our constellation of New York pilgrimage destinations for years, but "our constellation of New York pilgrimage destinations" looks a little like the Milky Way--it could keep us busy for years. Plus, it's always changing.

fig. a: two little birds

Anyway, first on our itinerary was the legendary O. Ottomanelli & Sons on Bleecker Street, a true neighborhood butcher famed for their meat-cutting prowess and the superior quality of their meats (including free-range, organic, and pastured). We were on the lookout for osso buco, and osso buco was what we found. They weren't cheap, but these were big, meaty shanks, and our butcher was all too happy to talk technique with us. We gazed longingly at O. Ottomanelli & Sons' famous aged steaks, but the only cooler we'd brought along was our Igloo Playmate, so we had to limit ourselves to those shanks.

fig. b: we know cheese!

Next stop: Murray's. We'd visited Murray's Grand Central location, but this was our very first time visiting the flagship store, and it was just as mind-blowing as we expected. The selection was unreal--including dozens of artisanal American cheeses from the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast that we'd never heard of--but even better was the service. These people knew their cheeses. These people were passionate. They also knew their pairings. And they were generous. We sampled so many cheeses, and so many wonderfully complex cheeses, that our tongues were positively tingling afterwards. We picked out a couple of New York cheeses and a heady Basque number, scribbled down some wine notes, and somehow we managed to pull ourselves away...

...to Brooklyn. There we'd decided to finish our pizza tour with a visit to a (then) recently opened pizzeria that had been highly recommended to us by some of our readers (you know who you are). Now, Motorino has since climbed to the upper echelons of New York's pizza world--hell, they even took over Una Pizza Napoletana's fabled East Village location when Anthony Mangieri decided to leave New York for sunnier climes--but at the time they were still relatively under the radar (i.e., all the hardcore NY pizzaheads had at least heard about them, Pete Wells had written a "dining brief" about them for the New York Times, but Frank Bruni had yet to put them at the top of his list of New York's best "New-Generation Pizzerias," and Sam Sifton's review was still a year away).

fig. c: mmmmotorino

We had two stunning pizzas there, including the Margherita DOC you see pictured above, and we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw their insanely generous lunchtime prix fixe menu, but what really impressed us was the single-minded determination of Motorino's chef and chief pizzaiolo, Mathieu Palombino. He was busy training a couple of new hires that day and all I'm going to say is that he knew exactly what characterized a Motorino pizza and he was absolutely unwilling to accept anything less. No wonder our pies were so damn perfect.

fig. d: sage advice

We left Brooklyn totally satisfied and utterly convinced that, if anything, New York's Pizza Revival was picking up steam, and we made our way onto the Palisades Parkway and headed north.

fig. e: winterlude's end

O. Ottomanelli & Sons, 285 Bleecker Street, New York, (212) 675-4217

Murray's Cheese, 254 Bleecker St., New York, 888.MY.CHEEZ or (212) 243-3289

Motorino, 319 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, (718) 599-8899 & 349 East 12th Street, East Village, Manhattan, (212) 777-2644

The Land of Milk and Honey and Bacon and Cheese and...

1. Shelburne Farms maple-cured, cob-smoked bacon
2. Dakin Farm maple-cured, cob-smoked bacon
3. Shelburne Farms honey
4. Flag Hill Farm Cyder
5. Amish butter
6. Ayinger Ur-Weisse Dünkel Weizen
7. Stratford Organic Creamery whole milk
8. Celebrator Doppelbock
9. Dakin Farm cob-smoked bacon odds and ends
10. Dakin Farm Maine blueberries, packed in water
11. Shelburne Farms smoked cheddar
12. Dakin Farm yellow-eye beans
13. Lazy Lady Farm "O My Heart"
14. Orb Weaver cave-aged farmhouse cheese
15. Orb Weaver Vermont farmhouse cheese
16. Bee Haven Honey Farm pure Vermont honey
17. Dakin Farm buckwheat pancake mix
18. Vermont Common Cheddar Crackers
19. King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
20. Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen blue cheese
21. Gore Dawn Zola blue cheese
22. Jasper Hill Constant Bliss cheese
23. Black Gilliflower apples, a.k.a. Sheep's Nose apples
24. Stevens Lady apples
25. Cabot Creamery salted butter

Yep, you guessed it. We just made another one of our famous cross-border shopping expeditions to Vermont. Actually, we went down on a weekend getaway, to get out of the city, go for walks, and have another nice meal at American Flatbread, but one thing led to another. "...An endless banquet" is digital proof that we've found Montreal to be nothing if not rich (in at least two senses of the word) when it comes to its food culture, but there's something about our friends to the south and the landscape they call home that never fails to impress us. And somehow this admiration of ours has a way of turning into a lot of little food expenditures. The reason for this has something to do with our weakness for dairy. Good dairy, that is. And what, exactly, is so special about Vermont's dairy? Well, that has something to do with the kind of pasture land you find in Vermont, with the fact that Vermonters, to a degree that's almost unheard of these days, continue to hold on to their farms, and with the fact that the number of people who keep cows in Vermont (even just one) is so much higher than the average. Noel Perrin said so much back in 1978 in First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer, his account of small-time farming, and life among small-time farmers, in Vermont, and this situation has continued to hold until now. In fact, in Perrin's mind these factors helped explain why Vermont was better looking than its neighbor to the east, New Hampshire.

QUESTION: Why is Vermont more beautiful than New Hampshire? ANSWER: Because of Vermont farmers. Remove the farmers, and within ten years New Hampshire would surge ahead.

This is a serious argument. If you just consider natural endowment, the two states are both fortunate, but New Hampshire is more fortunate. It has taller mountains, it has a seacoast, it even owns the whole northern reach of the Connecticut River, except a little strip of mud on the Vermont side.

But New Hampshire's farmers mostly quit one to two generations ago and started running motels or selling real estate. The result is that most of New Hampshire is now scrub woods without views. Dotted, of course, with motels and real estate offices.

A lot of Vermont farmers, however, are holding on. Almost every farmer has cows, and almost every cow works night and day keeping the state beautiful. Valleys stay open and green, to contrast with the wooded hills behind them. Stone walls stay visible, because the cows eat right up to them. Hill pastures still have views, because the cows are up there meditatively chewing the brush, where no man with a tractor would dare to mow. (That's the other argument for butter besides its taste. I once figured that every pound of butter or gallon of milk someone buys means that another ten square yards of pasture is safe for another year.)

Sure, Vermont is suffering from sprawl and free-market economics these days in a way that it wasn't 30 years ago, but not nearly to the extent that most every other corner of North America is. And some things may have even improved over the last three decades, like the farmstead cheese scene. And the strength of the farmstead cheese scene has everything to do with the fact that Vermont has so many cows, and especially so many cows raised on small farms. And there is something to be said about Perrin's argument. I mean, as much as we love mountains and forest and that kind of thing, there's something to be said for pasture land and the views it affords. So maybe it all does boil down to this: four legs good.

You'll notice that we brought back a lot of Vermont dairy: organic milk, artisanal butter, and lots of farmstead cheese. We've hardly worked our way through our treasure trove of cheeses yet, but so far standouts include Lazy Lady's O My Heart, which is as creamy and as delicate as they get, and Orb Weaver Farm's cave-aged cheese, which has a wonderful caramel side to it. And let's not forget those Vermont Common Cheddar Crackers, made with real Grafton Village cheddar. Who needs Smartfood when you've got something as classic and as versatile as your Vermont Common Cheddar Cracker. Plus, who can argue with 175 years of experience? So cheese and cheese-based products were a hit.

But the other major discovery was Vermont bacon. Now, as much as I like bacon, I'm certainly not an all-out bacon fetishist, not the kind of person who left vegetarianism behind for bacon, not someone who'll take bacon any way they can get it. I've got some standards. Luckily, it's easy to get very good, high-quality bacon around these parts. Even our two local grocery stores--Sa & Fils and P.A.--have truly excellent bacon available behind their counters--throw in some of the city's premium boucheries/charcuteries, like La Maison du Roti or La Boucherie du Marché, or the city's amazing Eastern European charcuteries, like Charcuterie Hongroise or Slovenia, and you're laughing. But, believe me, you've never had anything like the bacon we found down in Vermont. Cob-smoked (as in corn cob-smoked), maple-cured bacon. Thick-cut, succulent, smoked and cured beyond perfection. I still can't get over it. We bought a couple of packs for our own personal, breakfast-time consumption--one pack of Shelburne Farms, one pack of Dakin Farm--and then we bought a couple of 1-lb. packages of Dakin Farm cob-smoked "odds and ends" just to cook with. We're talkin' heaven.

The next best discovery was beans, real New England baking beans, yellow-eyes and soldier beans. 2006 harvest. I know. You're thinking to yourself, "Beans?" You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes. They cooked to perfection in a fraction of the time the last batch I made did, and instead of being a characterless vehicle for the baked beans' other ingredients, they had a real flavor of their own, and cooking them created a rich pot liquor, just like it's supposed to. I can tell you one thing: I'll never use supermarket-bought navy beans ever again. That's it. It's over. Why would I ever go back? Together with a 1/4-pound of those Dakin Farm "odds and ends," I made the best damn batch of beans I've ever made. Seriously. Forget about "world-class." These were otherworldly.

Then there's the honey. Fantastic stuff, and at a fraction of what honey costs here in Quebec. I've still never quite understood the Great Price Hike of 2002 (or was it 2003?), the one that jacked up the price of honey by at least 60-80%. Whatever the cause, it doesn't seem to have affected Vermont's beekeepers.

And if that wasn't enough, we found apples, too. Somewhat rare stuff. Stevens Lady Apples, a tiny, perfectly colored, perfectly formed, slightly flattish variety, that, it's said, was kept tucked away in ladies' bosoms for safe-keeping until needed as a breath freshener. And Black Gilliflowers, a.k.a. Sheep's Nose apples, a cooking variety prized for its slightly spicy flavor.

Some people go on a trip and buy t-shirts and snoglobes and keychains, and that's cool. Other people go on a trip and buy milk and honey and bacon and cheese and beans and apples, and that's cool too. Trust me.

aj

[You can find out all about Shelburne Farms and Dakin Farm, etc. via the miracle of the Internet, and you can even order some of this stuff online, but wouldn't you rather go for a nice drive?]

Real Vermont Cheddar

The most unexpected find on last week's cheese and pizza trip to Vermont was without a doubt Jasper Hill's Bayley Hazen Blue, but we'd set out in search of real Vermont cheddar and we'd vowed not to return to Montreal before we'd found some. It's not that you can't find decent cheddar in Quebec--it is, after all, one of the province's traditional cheeses--but the small cheesemakers who have refashioned the cheese industry here over the last 20 years have looked elsewhere for inspiration, but mostly to France. As a result, we've yet to find a truly fantastic Quebec artisanal cheddar. (I have to admit, I'm a little picky when it comes to cheddar. During the two years I lived in London, I spent a great deal of time at Neal's Yard Dairy boning up on my British cheeses.) Head south of the border, though, and cheddar is king and, not surprisingly, artisanal cheesemakers there have sought to develop superior alternatives to the mass-market cheddars that dominate the U.S. market.

In Cabot, VT, we visited Cabot Creamery, a fairly large-scale cheesemaker, but one that functions as a cooperative, representing hundreds of the state's dairy farmers. (If you read Saveur you're probably familiar with their folksy ads featuring a veteran dairy farmer asking readers to, "Please buy [his] cheese.") We sampled a large selection of Cabot's line of cheddars, muensters, jacks, and other cheeses, including a very good select 2-year-old, but, in the words of Jeff Daniels' character in The Squid and the Whale, they weren't "serious." However, we were pleased to see that they had Grafton Village's Four Star Mature Vermont Cheddar. Grafton Village had made Saveur's list of the 50 best cheeses in America (they were #17), and they've been making fine cheeses since 1892, so we were eager to give them a try.

Grafton Village's Four Star Cheddar is exactly the kind of cheddar we've been looking for: extra, extra sharp, crumbly yet creamy, with a candy-like finish. We're well-stocked with cheese accompaniments at the moment, including an excellent Apple-Quince chutney that Michelle made last week, so we've been having that Four Star with crackers and preserves, but mostly we've been savoring it straight-up. It's so good you really just want to have it unadulterated. "Serious."

Note: We're presently in the process of lobbying Yannick to start stocking some of your finer Vermont cheeses. If our bid is successful we'll be sure to let you know.

aj

Bayley Hazen Blue

Vermont blue and figs
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

A few years ago, I came across a cheese map of Quebec which detailed where the fromageries were and what they had to offer. We used this map a lot to find amazing local cheeses, and it became one of our main excuses for our weekend trips across the province. Quebec, like some other parts of North America, has been experiencing a renaissance in artisanal cheesemaking so you can find dozens and dozens of small cheesemakers scattered across the countryside. Thank God! There are so many incredible local cheeses right now in Quebec, such as Riopelle, Athonyte, Le Pizy, Valbert, Victor et Bertholde, and hundreds more, and so many of them are made with raw milk, too. Clearly there's a lot to be excited about, but there's still room for improvement. For reasons that might seem obvious, the cheeses that have emerged as part of this renaissance have tended to be French in style, rather than English, or Italian, or anything else. This is both a blessing and a curse. It means we have some very impressive high cream content cow's and goat's milk cheeses, but it also means that we're short on artisanal versions of the English-style cheeses that were staples here earlier. Another one of our weaknesses is in the area of artisanal butter production. To be rolling in French-style cheeses but to be lacking in French-style, fresh-churned butter is simply absurd.

Meanwhile, just south of the border, a parallel dairy renaissance has been underway. It's not that Vermont produces any more cheeses than Quebec, but step into nearly any general store in Vermont (and nearly every small town has one) and you'll find lovely local cheese, butter, milk and cream readily available. So, for instance, the blue cheese pictured above is something we bought at a little general store in Greensboro. We stopped in there looking for directions to Jasper Hill Farm, which is also in Greensboro and which we'd heard rave reviews of, but we were told that the farm didn't have a retail outlet. And, in any case, the woman at the store wasn't exactly sure where Jasper Hill Farm was located anyway. Lucky for us, they happened to stock Jasper Hill Farm's cheeses, so we picked one up. It's called Bayley Hazen Blue, and it is simply amazing, a perfect cheese. It might well be the best blue I have ever had in my life. We ate it with an apple-quince chutney and were blown away by its flavour.

Jasper Hill Farm makes only five different cheeses, and they are much sought-after by restaurants and boutiques in America. They have the aforementioned blue, Bayley Hazen, Aspenhurst, a Leicester-style cheese which is aged for one year--this year's vintage is sold out already, Constant Bliss, a soft-ripened cheese, washed-rind Winnemere, and another blue called Bartlett.

Our Jasper Hill experience was so good that plans are definitely in the works to make a trip to Vermont to pick up whatever else we can find of theirs, since their cheeses are unavailable in Montreal. * If anyone is interested in going in on a whole wheel of cheese, let me know. I can think of no better Christmas present...

If you want to plan your own Vermont cheese tour check out the Vermont Cheese Council's site. You'll find everything you need to know about Vermont goat's milk, sheep's milk, and cow's milk cheeses, recipes, and your very own spiffy Vermont cheese map.

m

* For those of our lucky readers in NYC or SF, Murray's ** and The Cheese Board regularly carry Jasper Hill Farm's cheeses.

** Did you know that the Murray's crew have a blog?