Tag Archives: James River Cellars Reserve Chardonnay

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Comfort Foods

Just a quick note to say that, in my humble opinion, there’s nothing more comforting than soup and a sandwich for dinner when you’re sick.

My darling hubby has a cold. He’s not sick often, but when he gets a cold, it knocks him for a loop. Because of that, I pulled out my favorite recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup (see previous post on this blog) to get him on the road back to “healthy”. This recipe is a classic… Simple, clean, and full of chicken soup goodness.

Try it the next time someone in your household is feeling under-the-weather. Add in an easy grilled cheese sandwich and you’ve got a great meal full of love. Doesn’t it just look like it’ll make you feel better??

Wishing you health as we head into the middle of March!

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Recipe: Chardonnay Cassoulet

It was snowing yesterday and I wanted to make a stew that would make me feel warm.  Thinking about what always makes me think of roaring fires and home-cooked meals, I decided to make a chicken cassoulet.  For those who think that a cassoulet is something beyond their abilities, I would strongly suggest trying this recipe, then sit back and bask in the compliments.  This is a simple, stove-top casserole that has all the elements of a meal that would normally take all day to cook.  Thankfully, with a few simple substitutions, this dinner can come together fairly easily and be just as tasty (in my opinion).  I’ve adapted a recipe that I originally found through a weight-loss program cookbook, so it’s not quite as trim as it might be, but it IS pretty yummy.

Ingredients:ChardonnayCassoulet

  • 1 package (8 total) boneless, skinless chicken thighs
  • 1 package diced prosciutto (my grocery store sells this, pre-packaged, in the deli area)
  • 2 cups baby carrots, sliced
  • 2 cups celery, diced
  • 1 large leek, cleaned and sliced
  • garlic, chopped (I typically use 2-3 cloves)
  • 2 cans cannellini (white kidney) beans  (I use them with their liquid and smash one can for thickness)
  • 2 cups chicken stock/broth
  • 1 cup Chardonnay (I like to use James River Cellars Reserve Chardonnay – use your favorite)
  • 1T dried lemon thyme (I have a jar of this from a friend – use regular thyme if you prefer)
  • 1T dried poultry seasoning (the leafy stuff, not the ground variety)
  • 2 bay leaves
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Using a stock pot sprayed with Pam, brown chicken thighs on both sides  and then transfer to a plate.  Set aside for a bit.
  3. In same large pot, saute prosciutto until lightly crispy.  Add veggies (carrots, celery, leek, and garlic) and saute until vegetables begin to wilt.
  4. Add remaining ingredients and bring everything to a simmer.  The meal will now look like a soup, even with the mashed can of beans.  (*First photo on the top left of the collage)
  5. Add the chicken and collected liquids to the mixture, push the meat deep into the broth, and put the lid on the pot.  (*Middle photo on top of the collage)
  6. Pop the stock pot into the oven and bake until the meat is falling apart and the broth has thickened, about 1 1/2 hours.  Remove the two bay leaves and discard.
  7. Using an immersion blender, blend 3-4 times in very short bursts to thicken the vegetables but not destroy the chicken.  You can also spoon a cup of the vegetables into a blender, pulse until smooth, and return to the dish.  This will also thicken the meal without destroying the meat. (*Right side photo on top of the collage)

I love the addition of a hearty sourdough bread with this meal (as shown in the bottom photo of the collage).   While this meal takes some time to make, it’s really the baking that takes the most time.  Skill-wise, it’s not much more difficult than making soup, so it’s definitely worth a trip to the store for a few special ingredients to make this for dinner.

I mean, really… how many times do you get to use a special french word to describe something so homey and comforting?  I could have easily called this dinner a “Chardonnay Casserole”, but it sounds so much more unique and mysterious when I get to use the word cassoulet.  Heck, even my computer wanted to change that word to casserole.

Silly computer…

I hope you’ll try making this dinner… and feel free to tell me all about your own trials and tribulations… sharing is what makes cooking so much darn fun to me!

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Recipe: Chardonnay Cranberry Sauce

I’ve been looking at cranberry sauce in a different light this year…  I used to make a simple cold relish-like cranberry mixture, but have found that I really like the thicker consistency of a cooked cranberry sauce instead.  It works better in a leftover sandwich and just tastes better to me.  I posted a sauce recipe that was blended with figs and cassis, but that just didn’t seem “clean” enough for me.  I wanted that true, tart cranberry taste on both the first bite as well as the finish so here, dear reader, is the result of that search.

Cranberry Sauce Collage

I started with my sister, Jessica’s, cranberry sauce recipe and deviated a bit.  Here are the directions to Jessica’s Cranberry Sauce:

Empty a 12-oz bag of fresh or frozen cranberries into a saucepan and transfer 1/2 cup of said cranberries to a small bowl.  Add 1 cup sugar, 1 strip orange or lemon zest, and 2 Tablespoons of water to the pan and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves and the cranberries are soft, about 10 minutes.  Increase heat to medium and cook until the cranberries burst, about 12 minutes.  Reduce the heat to low and stir in the reserved cranberries.  Add sugar, salt, and pepper to taste and cool to room temperature before serving.

I loved the idea of making a cooked cranberry sauce, but wasn’t so sure about having so many whole berries in the final product.  Apparently, when our mum made this for Jess, she stomped all the berries down and made jam instead of cranberry sauce, so I was warned to make this ahead of time.  We each have our preferences, so my version uses the following changes to Jessica’s basic Cranberry sauce recipe…

  • Grate half an orange instead of using a strip of zest – next time I’ll probably try grating the entire orange or grate half an orange and half a lemon.  The citrus taste is pretty darn yummy.
  • Replace the water with 2 Tablespoons of James River Cellars’ Reserve Chardonnay.  I think our stainless chardonnay would work well in this recipe as well, but I’m planning to use an entire bottle of the Reserve Chardonnay throughout my Christmas dinner, so you’ll see it pop up a few more times before the holiday meal is complete.
  • I lightly chopped the 1/2 cup of reserved berries (as seen in the center photo) so the uncooked berry pieces aren’t as huge.

I like the small changes I made to my sister’s fabulous cranberry sauce… they seem more in keeping with the way I cook and the final product is really tasty.  Feel free to experiment with flavors that you enjoy and come up with your own version of a new family favorite.

It’s really all about playing with your food…and using The Force to come up with something new… are you ready to try it?

 

 

 

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Recipe: Pumpkin Pie Tartlets

Ok… so this recipe doesn’t have to be made in “tartlet” form, but I was trying to make something that would be easy to transport to a Happy Hour function and the amazing sale on filo dough shells at my local grocery store sealed the deal for me.  I made a double recipe and used it for two boxes of filo shells AND an extra large graham cracker crust pie shell… and it worked perfectly.  The filo dough shells aren’t my favorite choice for this recipe – the shells are a bit too “papery” and I much prefer having something with a buttery or graham cracker-y taste – but they served their purpose and allowed me to make a “single serve” treat for my friends.

Since I’ve been working at James River Cellars for over a year now, I knew that I was going to try and incorporate some wine into the recipes that I traditionally use for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  I’ll probably use more wine (in slightly concealed amounts) when I repeat this meal for Christmas, but I started with the pumpkin pie recipe, with great results.

This recipe, given to me by my mother-in-law, only calls for 2T of water so I felt fairly safe substituting it with James River Cellars’ Reserve Chardonnay.  What took me most by surprise was the consistency change that happened when I added the milk mixture to the dissolved Knox brand gelatin.  Thankfully, the glue-like consistency loosened as the mixture came up to temperature, but it was a little disconcerting at first.

My version of Mom’s No Bake Pumpkin Pie (my husband’s favorite pumpkin pie)

1. Blend together  1-14oz can sweetened condensed milk (I use the fat-free version), 1 egg (slightly beaten), 1t ginger, 1/2 t nutmeg, 1/2 t salt and set aside.

2. In 2 qt saucepan, sprinkle 1 envelope Knox gelatin over 2T water (in this case, James River Cellars’ Reserve Chardonnay), let stand ONE MINUTE, then stir over low heat until gelatin dissolves.

3.  Blend in milk mixture that you made in step 1.

4.  Stir over low heat until slightly thick, about 5 minutes.  NOTE:  Don’t worry if the gelatin mixture seems like glue at the beginning… it will loosen up as the heat brings everything to temperature and allow the entire mixture to thicken.  Don’t be hasty and remove from heat too early – this is how the pie eventually sets up as it cools.

5.  Blend in 1-16 oz can solid pack pumpkin (not seasoned can of pumpkin pie) and whisk thoroughly.

6.  Pour into pie shell (I use a pre-made graham cracker pie shell, cuz that’s what M likes best – feel free to substitute a traditional pie crust if you prefer) and chill for several hours.

7.  Cut and serve with cool whip or Redi-whip.

If you decide to make an entire recipe of little baby pumpkin pies, know that you’re going to need three boxes of shells… it makes a lot of those things.  I simply like the idea of using the word “Tartlets” in a post after hearing John Lovitz turn the word into something hysterically funny on Friends so long ago…  if you’re not familiar, feel free to click on the “tartlet” link above… you’ll be laughing pretty quickly!

I wish you all a joyful Thanksgiving and a most blessed Holiday Season!

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A Recipe Redux: a new twist on leftovers

A “redux”, by definition, means of a topic, restored, brought back, revisited.  This recipe is my way of showing you, dear reader, how to take something that clearly isn’t going to work in its present state and turn it into something that has your family and friends saying “wow.. what is this?”  I had the opportunity to make a totally new recipe from some leftovers and was so thrilled with the results that I simply had to share them.

Every so often, there is leftover food from an event at our winery.  Caterers don’t want to take cooked food home and not everyone thinks about bringing food storage bags to take away the excess, so the employees and volunteers become the willing recipients of this cooked bounty.   This happened recently and I was very excited to try my hand at creating something totally new and different from the plate of food I had to bring home.

What did I have to start?  The caterer had made a beef tenderloin with a tasty brown sauce, scalloped potatoes, crab cakes with a mango salsa, and a great green salad.  There was enough left over that plates were made up for the three staff members working the event (I love when caterers think of this, since I feel funny traipsing into someone else’s event and grabbing some of their food) that included individual portions of each item.  Since I knew the salad wouldn’t make it home (and it wouldn’t be enough to feed M and myself), I ate that while still at work.  I now had three slices of cooked beef tenderloin with sauce, a serving of scalloped potatoes, and two small crab cakes (with that yummy salsa) to take home for dinner.  The crux of the problem was that this wasn’t going to feed both my husband and myself… oh, what to do… what to do…

My Redux:  Once I got home, I sliced the beef into thin strips and removed the salsa topped crab cakes to a separate plate.  I decided to simply warm up the crab cakes, which was the best solution for us… we love crab cakes!  I then proceeded to make dinner.  Using 1T butter and 1T of flour, I made a roux, allowing the mixture to bubble a bit to cook out the flour taste.  Next came some wine, to extend the sauce.  In this case, I used a nice amount of Cabernet Sauvignon (that I already had open in the fridge) and about 3/4 of the same amount of Reserve Chardonnay (that I also had open in the fridge).  The sauce now was slightly pink and needed a bit of seasoning… some simple salt and pepper worked nicely.

I now had a sauce but felt that it wasn’t quite enough.  I added the serving of scalloped potatoes to the mixture and squished it down (great cooking term, eh?) to allow the butter and cheese in the potatoes to add some richness to the sauce while the potatoes (when smashed) added depth.  After stirring the mixture a bit, I added the beef strips and sauce to finish the dish.  For leftovers, this was looking pretty amazing!  I did add some more Chardonnay to thin out the sauce, since the potatoes had cooked a bit and added a little too much depth.  Once everything tasted “right”, I plated this over some brown rice and added the warmed crab cakes on the side.  It was a perfect amount for two and my husband’s question of “what is this?” was just the line I needed to feel fabulous when I replied:

“Oh, it’s just leftovers”

See if you can come up with a way to use your leftovers in your own version of a Recipe Redux… you might be pleasantly surprised with what you create if you just think outside the box!