Food, Wine and Travel ... With Recipes: TableConversation.com

A Prize-Winning Pinot Gris

It may seem odd to walk into a tasting of French wines searching for something to drink with spicy food.

But that is what I cook most of the time, so I was looking for a wine that would not just go with the food but stand out on its own.   

And I found it, a glorious Alsatian Pinot Gris, the 2006 Grand Cru Zinnkoepfle from Albert Hertz. (That's Hertz holding the bottle in the photo).

The wine is slightly sweet, with an intriguing honeyed herbal edge. It can age for years, said Hertz, explaining that Zinnkoepfle  is a vineyard area with soil that imparts a special flavor to wines produced from grapes that grow there.

After hand-harvesting, the Pinot Gris was fermented and aged in oak foudres. These are large oval barrels typical of Alsace. The shape reduces air contact, Hertz said, and makes it possible to squeeze more barrels into a cellar.

Hertz was in the United States to look for an importer. It shouldn't be too hard to find one for this wine, because in May it won a gold medal in the 2009 Pinot Gris du Monde competition in Strasbourg.

The price would range from $20 to $25, not bad for a wine this interesting. 

What Happened to Maracas?

Maracas has disappeared. This family-owned Mexican restaurant on 5th Street in downtown Los Angeles had a long history but couldn't prevail against developers.

The building in which it was housed is being renovated, and the ground floor has been gutted. A sandwich shop is gone. A dental office has posted a new address, but Maracas left no clues. Will it return, reoopen in a new location? Or is it gone forever?

The street seems empty without the cheery little fellow in a sombrero who stood just outside the door holding the day's menu.

Even worse is the loss of good, old fashioned, home style Mexican food.

Here, in memoriam, is my recreation of the last dish I had there, chicken in tomato sauce with chipotle chiles.  It's easy to make. It's delicious. But how I would love to taste it again at Maracas.

POLLO EN SALSA CHIPOTLE
Chicken in Chipotle-Tomato Sauce

2 pounds chicken breasts on the bone
4 cups water
Salt
1 ½ pounds tomatoes
1 small onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
1 teaspoon oregano
Few grinds black pepper

Place the skinned chicken breasts in a deep saucepan. Add the water and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, loosely covered, 30 minutes.

Let the chicken cool in the broth.  When cool, drain the chicken  and tear the meat off the bone in thick strips. Strain and reserve the broth.

Meanwhile, roast the whole tomatoes, onion and garlic on a lightly oiled griddle until spotted with brown. Remove any loose peel from the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in quarters and place in a blender with the onion, garlic and chipotle chiles. Blend until pureed. Strain through a sieve.

Rinse out the blender with 1 cup of the reserved chicken broth and add to the sauce. Reserve the remaining broth for another use, such as cooking rice to accompany the chicken. 

Place the sauce in a large saucepan and add the oregano, 1 teaspoon salt and black pepper. Bring to a boil.  Add the chicken and heat in the sauce to serving temperature.

Accompany with rice.

Makes 4 servings.

You Won't Want to Miss This

An evening with Johnny Depp?  Dinner at Spago?

Not if the date is Friday, July 10. I'm heading to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles that night for the 4th annual East LA Meets Napa benefit.

It's a tasting of great Mexican food prepared by restaurants such as La Casita Mexicana, Casa de Moles "La Tia," Rivera Restaurant, El Tepeyac, Guelaguetza and many more.

Take a look at samples of what you'll get to taste: an oyster with green cucumber caviar from Rivera and a vegetable roll topped with nut mole and pomegranate seeds from La Tia.

Wines will be provided by Napa wineries with Latino owners and/or winemakers. Among them are Cobblestone Vineyards, Sequoia Grove, Karl Lawrence and Robledo Vineyards. So far, 23 restaurants and 20 wineries have committed.

The event benefits AltaMed  Health Services, a non-profit that provides medical care and other assistance to those who can't afford it. It's been operating in Southern California for about 40 years.

East LA Meets Napa takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. July 10 at Union Station, 800 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Tickets are $125. To order, go to www.altamed.org. For more information, call (323) 889-7886.

Great Shrimp from the Grill

Put these shrimp on the barbie, and you'll put them there again and again.

The recipe is from my friend and former colleague in the food section of the Los Angeles Times, Mary Ellen Rae.

Mary Ellen is now giving cooking classes, catering parties and private cheffing through her company, Personal Touch Gourmet.

The shrimp are one of her most popular party appetizers. (I tasted them at a holiday party at her home and couldn't get them out of my mind, they were so good.)

Infused with lemony flavors associated with Thai and Indonesian cooking, they also taste of fresh dill, a seasoning from another part of the globe.

The recipe is really convenient. Part of the marinade seasons the shrimp. The rest becomes a dipping sauce. 

If you're not an outdoor cook, you can grill the shrimp with equal success on a stovetop grill pan (that's what I do). Skewer them on decorative bamboo picks for a party appetizer, or serve them over fragrant jasmine rice at a summer buffet.

For more information about Mary Ellen's classes, go to http://www.personaltouchgourmet.net.

LEMONGRASS AND DILL GRILLED SHRIMP
(From Mary Ellen Rae of Personal Touch Gourmet)

1 pound shrimp (21 to 24 to a pound)
3 lemongrass stalks
1/3 cup chopped dill
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil

Preheat the barbecue grill.

Peel and devein the shrimp.

Remove the tough outer leaves of each lemongrass stalk and trim the stem end. Finely dice the bottom 4 inches of each stalk. Discard the leafy tops.

Place the lemongrass, dill, garlic, shallot, salt and rice vinegar in a blender or food processor.

While the machine is running, slowly drizzle in the oil. Blend until smooth. Add more salt if wanted.

Reserve half of the marinade to use as a dipping sauce. Coat the shrimp with the remaining marinade and set aside for 15 minutes.

The shrimp can also be prepared in advance and marinated in the refrigerator. In this case, remove them from the refrigerator and let them stand at room temperature 20 to 30 minutes before grilling.

Grill the shrimp 2 to 3 minutes on each side or just until no longer translucent in the center.

Serve on bamboo picks with the dipping sauce.

Makes 8 appetizer servings.

What to Eat the Morning After

A late night, an early morning appointment and a fogged brain. This called for a serious restorative, like two big mugs of steaming Colombian coffee and a plate of empanadas de platano.

The empanadas weren't the usual pastry turnovers. Instead of flour dough, the wrappers were made of mashed platanos (plantains). The fillng was a tiny bit of thickened milk. Fried golden brown and sprinkled with sugar, they were heavenly.

The place where I had them was Merendero Salvadoreno, near downtown Los Angeles. This small, neighborly Salvadoran restaurant takes its name from the Spanish word "merendar," which means to snack, have tea or light food between meals. 

The menu offers hearty combinations of meat, rice, beans, salad and tortillas, but I prefer to merendar when I go there, choosing from a list of Salvadoran "antojitos" (snacks).

These include Salvadoran tamales--silky, soft tamales wrapped in banana leaves and filled with a strip of chicken (or pork), bell pepper, potato and a couple of green olives.

Even better are tamales de chipilin, the dough riddled with a nutrient-rich leafy green that is known as chipilin in Central America and as chepil in Oaxaca, where I bought similar tamales for a couple of pesos. 

Merendero fills them with a delicious soft bean puree. They're not on the printed menu, but a sign on the wall one day announced that they were available.

Of course Merendero has pupusas. To say that about a Salvadoran restaurant is like saying that a hamburger stand has hamburgers. 

The same spicy, vinegary cabbage relish (curtido) that accompanies pupusas also comes with pasteles de carne, which are turnovers filled with ground pork, potato, tomato and bell pepper.

After eating a couple of snacks on one visit,  I ordered chilate con nuegados de yuca y dulce de platano simply to find out what it was. Huge and starchy, I found out, but I liked it anyway. 

Nuegados are chewy fried fritters made from the root yuca (cassava). They're not sweet, but the syrupy. dark banana mixture in which they sit makes up for that.

Chilate is a hot thick corn drink that contains whole black peppercorns. You can buy mixes for that drink, peppercorns included, in markets in the neighborhood.

There is only one part of Merendero's menu  that I would avoid. And that is the "American Fast Food" section, which includes just two items, hamburgers and cheeseburgers.  I'd choose empanadas de platano over those any day.  

Empanadas de plantano are two for $2.50 at Merendero Salvadoreno, 1621 W. 6th St., Los Angeles, CA 90017. Tel: (213) 483-3460. Open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday through Sunday.