By Kevin Finch on March 31, 2009
For an article I’m writing entitled “A Beginner’s Guide to Wine” I spent time this past week talking to the wine guru at the Rocket Market, Carl Carlsteen. Near the end of the conversation he mentioned a Chilean producer that has impressed him with a number of their wines. The name, I’m sure somewhat tongue-in-cheek, is Cono Sur.
Carlsteen pointed out one Cono Sur bottle on the shelf featuring a grape I’d literally never heard of: Carmenere. Yet on the strength of his recommendation I snagged a bottle for $9.99.
My bankable wine knowledge is still quite limited and I love tasting wine with others to see what they pick up that I may or may not have noticed in my sniffing and sipping. Yet I’m going to make an exception with the 2007 Cono Sur Carmenere. BUY THIS BOTTLE. I loved it.
I’m still weak on describing what I taste in a given wine, but this Carmenere tasted spicy/smoky in one moment, sweet in another, and has a depth missing from a lot of big American reds.
The grape, it turns out, is a kissing cousin in the Cabernet family and was originally planted in France’s Bourdeux region. Yet it fell out of favor.
Across Europe the Carmenere vines were torn out and replaced with other varieties. Thankfully though, this took place only after Carmenere vines had been introduced to South American vineyards in the mid 1800s. Almost all of the current Carmenere comes from Chile, but I would put money on a comeback elsewhere.
In the meantime, buy this bottle.
Posted in wine | Tagged 2007 Cono Sur Carmenere, Bordeaux, Carl Carlsteen, Carmenere, Chilean wine, Cono Sur, Cono Sur winery, Rocket Market, wine, wine guru |
By Kevin Finch on March 28, 2009
The same night as my recent encounter with foie gras, I was introduced to Chartreuse.
If you have yet to be introduced, allow me. Chartreuse is a liqueur made by Carthusian monks at the Grande Chartreuse monastery in Voiron, France. Since 1605 it has been distilled using a secret formulation of 130 herbs, flowers, and extracts, and the recipe has been protected by the order through political turmoil, property confiscations (two) and religious persecution. They’ve managed to cling to the prized formula, so the story goes, by never writing it down but instead entrusting it to the memories of three monks.
Not only is three a nice Trinitarian number, it also provides for redundancy if, say, one of the three monks steps outside the door of the monastery and gets hit unexpectedly by a bus packed with German tourists or slips on wet tile at the top of the stairs and… you get the picture.
After hearing the story of the liqueur, it took only seconds (I’d estimate the number at three) for me to begin to construct the plot of a great murder mystery. I began to devise simultaneous means of demise for all three keepers of ‘treuse or outline ways that they could be eliminated in such quick succession that the formula would be lost or could be stolen under duress.
Still, before I spill the beans, I’d be curious how you might imagine the three monks entrusted with the formula might come to meet their Maker. Anyone?
Posted in culture, play, travel | Tagged Carthusian monks, Chartreuse, France, herbs, monks, murder, murder mystery, mystery, Voiron France |
By Kevin Finch on March 26, 2009
Last night at an undisclosed location in the Inland Northwest, I ate the best foie gras of my life.
For the sake of accuracy I should note I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten foie gras in any noticeable quanity before, but for a lead sentence I prefer hyperbole to accurancy nine times out of ten.
This confession allowed, it was stunning. Hand-carried in from France for a private dinner last night, the foie gras was served with toasted baguette, fig-orange preserves, and a glass of Sauternes. The Sauternes is the classic sweet white wine paired with the decadent fat of a fine foie gras. Last night’s slice fit the definition of fine, and it didn’t hurt to be eating it in a room with actual Louie the XIV furniture.
There have been several times recently I’ve felt more sophisticated than I have any legitimate right to feel; last night was one of them. Still, I’m conflicted. Is foie gras one of the highest pinacles of haute cuisine or is it obscene given that the traditional method of preparation requires the duck or goose about to donate its liver is confined and force-fed for several months before slaughter? I have yet to decide, but I’d be curious to hear your input. Where do you come down on the grand question of foie gras?
Posted in cooking, culture, play, travel, wine | Tagged duck liver, foie gras, French cuisine, goose liver, haute cuisine, Louie the XIV furniture, Sauternes, sweet white wine |
By Kevin Finch on March 18, 2009
How best to describe Winona? LaDuke in a Native American leader and, as such, it it hard not to collect the title “activist” as well but rather than refine a rant and hit the speaking circuit, she seems to have instead put her passion into doing a great deal to help her tribe and quite a few other along the way. I had the chance to hear her describe some of what she has done through Native Harvest last night.
Convinced that the huge issues facing us all in the coming years will be food security and energy security she had committed the last several decades of her life to creating capacity for both on her reservation in Minnesota. There is the heritage maple syrup operation with 5000 taps, a wild rice mill, a farm, restaurant, and organic coffee roaster.
She is pushing for wood stoves to be returned to homes of families that have had to fight to keep their power on through the winter. She has begun to buy up used wind turbines and install them on farms on the reservation. With a wry grin she notes: “Have you noticed that Indian land has some of the highest winds around? I consider this an opportunity.”
In her spare time she has also started a school, day care, reintroduced sturgeon to a local lake, and received FCC approval for a radio station.
She observes that short term thinking seems to have produced as many problems as progress and that the Native cyclical worldview could be a huge gift in helping us reclaim a good life not defined by over-consumption. The call, she says, is to make decisions with seven generations in mind rather than just the profits for the next quarter. Think of it, she suggests as “positive window shopping for your future” and uses a very broad definition of ‘your’ future to include your children and your children’s children and your children’s children’s children out to the seventh generation.
Two of the top growth industries in our country right now are waste management and prison system. Both suggest we are currently living in a throw away culture where both things and people are tossed aside when broken. It is so common now to hear the phrase: “Just throw it away.” LaDuke asks the question: “Where is ‘away’?”
Thanks Winona for challenging me to think. I grew up on a reservation too, and was only too happy to leave. I may need to go back and learn a few things.
Posted in culture | Tagged coffee, cultural crisis, energy security, food security, maple syrup, Native culture, Native Harvest, organic coffee, prison system, reservation, restaurant, sustainability, waste management, wild rice, wind turbines, Winona LaDuke |
By Kevin Finch on March 14, 2009
One of my strong childhood memories is of driving in from Hughes Bay with grandpa for a glass of milk and a powdered sugar donut at the Lakeside Mercantile. Then while he finished the paper and his cup of coffee at the counter, I would wander the aisles looking at cans of food or fishing tackle or, more often than not, reading comic books from a revolving rack by the front windows.
Nearly 35 years later the Mercantile is long gone. Now the building houses a real estate office and a maze of other offices for who knows what.
So today, instead of a trip into Lakeside for a donut, I went in with my father to see the upscale brewery and pub several hundred yards down the strip of Highway 93 that defines the town. The Tamarack Brewing Company has been serving up beers brewed on site and pub food for several years now, but I had not managed to make it in yet. Maybe I was still pouting about the Mercantile closing twenty-five years earlier and cutting off yet another link to my past.
The other reason for my delay is that I’m also just learning to bother with beer. It took a passionate group of home brewers in Washington State to get me interested in allotting any of what I consider to be precious calories to anything other than food and an occasional bottle of wine.
But today milk and donuts weren’t in the cards. Beer and fish were.
The Dock Days Hefewizen was a good call with Tamarack’s Alehouse Fish and Chips. I settled on the fish and chips because the menu announced that the kitchen used fresh line-caught Whitefish from Flathead Lake. I know better than to think that one of the neighborhood boys caught my fish at the dock on the other side of the highway, but I was excited anyway that they featured a local fish rather than something flown or shipped or trucked from thousands of miles away. I support local food, and if that food is battered and deep-fried, all the better.
Throw in some house-made tartar and the fire in the fireplace next to our table and it was a lunch almost good enough to make me stop moaning about change.
Posted in dining, drinks, play, travel | Tagged change, donuts, fish and chips, fish-n-chips, Hefeweisen, Lakeside Montana, Lakeside MT, Montana, Tamarack Brewing Company |
By Kevin Finch on March 5, 2009
Hom Bow is a sweet pillowy Chinese bread often wrapped around a savory filling like barbeque pork and then steamed or baked. I love hom bow, and now I’m interested in finding a way to make the dough at home. It occurs to me that a number of savory leftovers in the fridge could be transformed into snacks or outright meals wrapped in hom bow dough and steamed. If you have any leads on a decent recipe, I’d welcome the input.
Posted in cooking | Tagged barbeque pork, bbq pork, Chinese pastry, hom bow, savory filling, steamed buns |
By Kevin Finch on March 3, 2009
Daryl – the iconic figure behind the best maple bars on the planet has not returned to Spokane’s Donut Parade after nearly dying in ICU as a rare disease attacked. But on my last visit a little over a week ago, Daryl’s maple bars are back on the shelves and the magic is still there. For forty years he was the maple bar man, but apparently he was able to pass on some of his secrets. The current bakery crew is turning out fine product that is still far better than anything else available. I admit, this had me up worrying at night.
Get well Daryl and long live your brilliant bars.
One welcome change: the name “Donut Parade” is now painted on the door in rough letters. For years there was almost no indication outside that the best maple bars on the market were available inside. If you drove by on Hamilton, chances are you’d only see what appeared to be an abandoned building. Of course they still don’t have anything so obvious as a sign.
Posted in dining | Tagged bakery, best maple bar, Daryl, Donut Parade, donuts, maple bars, Northwest restaurants, restaurants, signage, Spokane restaurants, Spokane WA, Washington restaurants |
