Richard Parker’s Fall Soup & Gearbox Sangiovese

It’s wonderful to be relieved of responsibility of preparing a Sunday repast. On an Autumn day, leaves drifting downward in the crisp air, having a man frog on hand to labor in the kitchen is a good thing. And today Richard Parker (my man frog) prepared his famous blend of meat and veggies in a rich broth that just sings Autumnal fare. Sometimes we refer to this dish as game day chow. Why? You put the recipe together just before the 1:00pm football game, put it in the slow-cooker and then focus on the game. Then by the end of the first half of the 4:00pm game, it’s time to take-up napkins and spoons. Time to break off a piece of crusty French bread, take a sip of “drinking” red & tuck in!

The wine? This is a wine that I have used with a previous recipe. Forgive me. I love the wine that much for the informality of tonight’s dinner. Simply put, you can put this wine against any comfort dish and it works. I love Gearbox even better slightly chilled.

Gearbox Sangiovese ’14 (Lodi, CA)

Sangiovese is the great grape of Tuscany, famous for the Chiantis and the world class Brunello that they make. This wine tastes like a stand-out Tuscan red but with more supple fruit, a more friendly supple mouthfeel, still a great food match but with an added silky soft finish. The wine is brimming with red berry fruit, spent a year in neutral oak. The wine is a steal! A great Barbeque red, rich tomato based sauces even great with spicy foods. Dark bing cherries, and raspberries with hints of cinnamon and cloves, and a bit of thyme. Superb fruit on the palate with bright acidity. This wine is an extremely versatile red, the ultimate crowd pleaser.

Richard Parker’s Autumn Soup

Ingredients

6 ounces of Tanqueray Gin
½ ounce of Noilly Pratt Dry Vermouth
1 lb lean ground beef
2 whole carrots, diced
4 celery stalks, minced
1 medium onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can crushed tomatoes (28 oz)
2 whole bay leaves
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (15oz)
1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed (15oz)
1 cup ditalini pasta, uncooked
Grated parmesan cheese

Directions

  1. Put gin and vermouth into a glass pitcher, fill with ice, stir vigorously while incanting, “You who know all, thank you for providing us juniper and all the other obscure ingredients responsible for creating this sacred liquid!” Strain into a pre-frozen Martini glass of admirable size.  Skewer the olives on one of those tacky cocktail swords, place in glass. Immediately begin consuming.  Now you can begin the food prep, and the cooking!
  2. Put everything except beans, pasta and cheese into a slow cooker
  3. Cook on low 7-8 hours, or high 3-4 hours.
  4. 30 minutes before the end, add in beans (drained and rinsed) and dry pasta. Add salt and pepper to taste
  5. Remove bay leaves before serving. Top with grated parmesan.

n.b. Richard calls this “soup”; but truth be told it has the consistency of a thick chili. I used ground bison.  And, no… browning of the meat is unnecessary.  No fears, the dry pasta cooks in the soup. A crusty garlic bread is a terrific side dish.  And if this dish sounds too simple.  It is.  Just don’t tell Richard Parker.  He’s a proud frog and takes his craft seriously.

richard-parker-serves

Richard Parker serves a light refreshment before supper.

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Games Before the Digital Age

Having just acquired a rather nasty case of shingles, a reminder of my overly protected childhood (but clear evidence of not overly protected enough) when I contracted chicken pox, I find myself in a fair amount of pain. My effected area is my left leg, from knee to ankle, giving good portions of my leg an uncanny resemblance to a cooked Maine lobster tail.

A famous (but not famous enough for me to remember his name) 4th Century Nepalese monk developed the now renown distraction technique when dealing with pain issues. My preferred method of distraction would be to line up 3 beakers of gin, and down them in rapid succession. Regrettably, my medical people put the kibosh on that approach since it would be in conflict with some rather large and expensive pills I have been obligated to take.

Meanwhile, if I had followed my method I would probably be passed out still in my blue chair, completely oblivious to the pain. Instead I am fully awake, very much aware of the pain & burning in my leg (which if I didn’t tell you before, is my favorite leg), praying that these designer pills will fully kick-in before Candelmas Day.

As an alternate form of distraction, I decided to apply myself to looking at pre-digital games, and ranking them according to the length of time it took before outright boredom and irritation set in. I felt that this important task (I think of it as a public service) required the help of my personal think tank (a group of brainy retainers, including a Phd from Cornell, the person who has cut my hair since 1996 and Stew Leonard’s Cash Register Monitor) to develop the metrics necessary to create an accurate ranking. Once the results were tabulated, we turned the document over to an intern at Deloitte-Touche for authentication, and possible oversight.

I am pleased to present the results (as I look longingly at the brilliant dark green bottle of the Tanqueray, a mere 27’ from where I now sit).

1. Dreidel: 38 seconds (I wanted to put down 15 seconds, but was advised that a number that low would hint at anti-Semitism)
2. Parcheesi: 10 minutes
3. Chutes & Ladders: 20 minutes
4. Monopoly: ‘til 10 minutes before the game is actually concluded. Great game, but the end-play is borrrrrrrring!
5. Clue: ‘til the game is concluded
5. Risk: 20 minutes if played with two people; but doubled with each additional player.
6. Scrabble: Two hours, as long as dirty words and made-up words can be used (otherwise I don’t play).
7. Cribbage: ‘til the game is concluded. Must be played on a hand carved cribbage board in a room with at least two padded wing chairs and a large standing world globe.
8. Gin rummy: ‘til the deli and Dr. Brown’s soda runs out.
9. Chess: ‘til the game is concluded; but the game would reign supreme if the chess pieces were made out of chocolate or different flavors of licorice. Then if a person captured an opponent’s piece, he or she would get to eat it! And then consider this. Since the game is representative of war and battle, players should be encouraged to wear opposing military costumes. Ferinstance, one person dresses like a Hoplite and the other like a Don Cossack. And you not only get to eat your opponent’s Bishop, for example, but you get to punch him in the balls! And, and… if he captures your Rook, then he gets to light the torch and scorch your left leg!

Taking applications for those wanting to be added to my think tank.

n.b. Since my original writing, it turned out that I didn’t have shingles, but rather a raging skin infection.  The docs in the ER advised me that if the infection had been left untreated I would have developed a good case of gangrene.  And then, on a different tack, the pain I was feeling in my leg was a good “dress rehearsal” for the pain I would if should I get shingles.  Time to get the shingles vaccine! And/or increase the amount of Tanqueray Gin in my strategic reserve.

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Lunch with Kara Morrow

Columbus Magnet School, I’m thinking 1988.  My Shaina was in Carol Lewis’ kindergarten class, and I was taking advantage of a Wednesday off from work to join in for lunch.  Carol would take wallpaper samples from area home decorating businesses, cover place mat sized discards in plastic wrap and assign a name to an incoming class member.  Then, for lunch… lunch for kindergarten taken in the class room… a student was given the task of putting the place mats on the three (or four?) tables in the room (n.b. there are no desks in Columbus School. Established on the Bank Street model.  Tables, block corner & spaces).

A parent coming for lunch, Carol would let daughter or son set the tables.  I had a guest mat.  And Shaina put Kara Morrow at our table.  And so began a memory for my life time.

I brought a simple sandwich (probably bologna and cheese) and a clementine. Shaina?  Probably a turkey roll-up, string cheese, a Clementine (we’re Clementine people) and a juice box.  And one person down to the left of me, Kara brought a lunch that would put a smile on the greatest of gourmands. And tribute should be paid to her Mom, Lokie, who prepared this repast.  I wish I could remember in detail the variety of foods that Kara tucked into.  I can’t.  But I can well remember the joy in her expression as she worked her way thru… Sandwich? Cup of soup? Carrot and raisin salad? Rice pudding? You get the idea.

And so a simple picture has remained with me going on nearly thirty years.  A picture that I love, in part because it gives me a chance to connect to a picture of Shaina at that age.  My Dad told me years ago that you remain young when you can see life through the eyes of the young.

Since the days at Columbus, I chanced a meeting with Kara, then high school or college age… I think it was at a SoNo Art Festival.  She was with friends, and it was just a “hey, how are you!”  I loved it, and it triggered the memory of Columbus School.  I may have mentioned that lunch, probably not. Sorta silly to bring up so incidental a detail.  But that lunch would never have been far from my mind.

And perhaps our lunch that day found its best representation in a book that I loved to read to my children:

“Well,” said Frances, laying a paper doily on her desk and setting a tiny vase of violets in the middle of it, “let me see.” She arranged her lunch on the doily. “I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup,” she said.

“And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread.  I have celery, carrot sticks, and black olives, and a cardboard shaker of salt for the celery.  And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries.  And a vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with… and she made the lobster-salad sandwich, the celery, the carrot sticks, and the olives come out even.”

bread-and-jam-for-frances

A beautiful picture.  A beautiful memory for me, only to sadly learn that for Kara, life didn’t come out even.

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Bistro Beef Stew & 2010 Il Molino di Grace Chianti Classico

I have been beating the drum for years on the ease of pairing wines to the “comfort food” dishes that we enjoy everyday. For example, go to that “small place”, a bistro or café, off the beaten path, say in France, and order coq au vin?  Haute cuisine?  Hardly.  Merely comfort food in a French accent, and then served with a local wine. But is there a need to serve a French wine because it is coq au vin?  Absolutely not!  A Montepulciano d’Abruzzo would be just as good a Loire Valley Red.  And therein lay the fun of the interchangeability of good regional wines… they just work with a whole bunch of different cuisines!  Invariably these regional wines share a common element… good fruit, dry finish with a palate cleansing level of acidity.  A sip of wine stimulates your desire for the next forkful of food (assuming you like the food!).  Wine… food… a little conversation, and another sip of wine, a bite of food & etc.  And that formula works as well in our homes as well as it would in Le Bistro Such & Such!

The cooler weather is here, and so is beef stew season!  Here is another dish (like meatloaf) where there is an abundance of recipes to follow.  There probably isn’t a beef stew that you can’t riff-off to suit your mood and ingredient availability.  And that certainly goes with this recipe.  I love that a slow cooker is used.  Prep it, assemble it, forget it!

I have selected a Chianti Classico to serve with the stew.  The bottling law in Chianti was changed in 1995.  Tight laws were lifted to allow the producers to modernize their winemaking techniques: plant their vines in a high density pattern to help lower grape yields and improve concentration of flavor; eliminate the requirement to use lesser red grape varietals and white grapes in the blend; and permit the use of new French barriques for aging.  The result?  A huge uplift in quality.  The Chianti Classico I am recommending is clearly not the Chianti we had as undergraduates!  Great with the comfort dish described here, great with many other comfort dishes, but also a great wine to serve with you best steak.

Il Molino di Grace Chianti Classico ‘10 (Tuscany,Italy)
The Il Molino di Grace Winery is one of the stand-outs in Chianti Classico. There have been vineyards on the property for over 300 years but took on its current form when the property was purchased by Americans Frank and Judy Grace in the 1990’s and incorporated the centuries old water mill (Il Molino) in to the name of the Winery. They hired Tuscan winemaking genius Franco Bernabei to make the wines. Bernabei has won more Tre Bicchieri awards than any other winemaker in Italy. He also makes wines in the Classico zone for greats like Fontodi and Felsina. Decanter – “Complex and very long on the nose, with damson fruit, sweet spice and an underlying earthiness. Medium weight palate with tight, fine tannins and excellent follow-through, finishing with ripe, rich fruit and wild herb notes.” 95pts Decanter

BISTRO BEEF STEW

Ingredients
6 ounces of Tanqueray Gin
½ ounce of Noilly Pratt Dry Vermouth
A goodly amount of ice
3 olives stuffed with blue cheese
3-4lbs Boneless beef chuck roast, cut into 1½ inch chunks
2 tbsp Olive oil
½ cup Dry red wine
¼ cup All-purpose flour
2 tbsp Tomato paste
1 tbsp Minced fresh garlic
2 cups Low-sodium beef broth
2 tbsp Herbes de Provence
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp A-1 steak sauce
1 Dried bay leaf
2lbs Baby red skinned potatoes, quartered
10 Medium carrots, cut into 2inch pieces
1 cup Frozen pearl onions
½ cup Frozen peas
2 tbsp Fresh lemon juice
Chopped fresh parsley

 Directions
1. Put gin and vermouth into a glass pitcher, fill with ice, stir vigorously while incanting, “You who know all, thank you for providing us juniper and all the other obscure ingredients responsible for creating this sacred liquid!” Strain into a pre-frozen Martini glass of admirable size.  Skewer the olives on one of those tacky cocktail swords, place in glass. Immediately begin consuming.  Now you can begin the food prep, and the cooking!

2. Dredge meat chunks in flour. Brown beef in 2 batches in 1 tbsp oil per batch in a large skillet over high heat. 4-6 minutes per batch; transfer to a 6qt slow cooker.

3. Deglaze skillet with wine, scraping up any brown bits. Add beef broth, stir in flour, tomato paste & garlic cook for a minute and whisk ‘til smooth.  Add herbes de Provence, Dijon mustard, A-1 sauce & bay leaf.  Season with salt and pepper.

4. Add potatoes, carrots and onions to sauce, mix thoroughly then pour sauce over beef.  Cover slow cooker and cook beef ‘til fork tender on high setting 5-6 hours, or low setting, 7-8 hours.

5. Stir in lemon juice and frozen peas.

6. Garnish with fresh parsley

n.b.  Herbes de Provence is a blended spice that usually includes oregano, thyme, savory, lavender, basil, rosemary, fennel & sage.  Easy to source thru mail order; but I went to 3 different local food markets before finding it. The lemon juice adds a finishing “brightness” for the stew.  And putting frozen peas into the stew just before serving is brilliant… the hot stew immediately warms up the peas sufficiently, while maintaining a firm texture in the peas.

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