Random Gourmet & Viognier Overindulgence

The dish: Mushroom curry, homemade pickles, and sticky saucepan carrots

I am going on a road trip tomorrow so I was looking to use up all the groceries from my fridge. I had a big bag of carrots (my Mom got a tooth pulled and I thought I would make porridge with soft veggies for her), and a big box of white button mushrooms my Mom got. I don't normally buy white button mushrooms since they are pretty tasteless (you could try a crimini maybe?) so I had to ponder for a few minutes what to do with them. I decided to slice them up and make a quick mushroom curry from the jar (actually, do this one second, I didn't realize the carrots would take so long - close to an hour boiling off the stock).



We picked this breakfast skillet pan up at a yard sale for $1. Best yard sale find ever. Perfect eggs all the time, non stick!

I dumped the sliced mushrooms and a sliced shallot onto the pan with a healthy cut of butter and salt. (I learned from a mushroom farmer at the Lansdowne market in Old Ottawa South that butter and salt are a mushroom's two best friends. Melt the butter and toss the mushrooms around in it for awhile till they've soaked it all up and the onions have started to caramelize (med heat). Don't leave them or they will burn, though a little charring adds flavour. Add a heaping tablespoon of Indian curry from the jar - I think I would recommend a butter chicken sauce but all I had was Raj Masala Balti Curry Paste. (Though I like Patak's as a brand). When the shallots are caramelized and the mushrooms browned, the curry is ready. Since my curry paste was tomato-based rather than butter-based, I turned off the heat and threw on a sliced-up fresh tomato and tossed that around in the residual heat for a bit. I would recommend the butter curry and no tomatoes if you do it right. I served this over some wholewheat couscous, which I realized is so much more flavourful than regular couscous, and goes really well with the buttery flavour of the mushrooms.

Next I decided to try Jamie Oliver's Sticky Saucepan Carrots for a fun way to cook carrots:



Find the recipe here, or google it if the link location has changed. This is a great way to bring out the natural flavours of carrots.

A few precautions:
1. This recipe really requires fresh market carrots. Since they are only seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper and cooked in their own juices, the whole dish relies solely on the flavour of the carrots, so supermarket carrots just don't cut it.
2. When he says "use medium-sized carrots", do as he says even though the luscious picture in the cookbook makes it look like he used the fattest carrots he could find in the bunch. It's not a problem of them cooking through, merely a flavour issue.
3. When he says fill the pot with water halfway up the carrots, err on the side of less than halfway or you'll be waiting forever for the stock to boil off. One-third-way might even do the trick since once it gets boiling, the water will roll up higher than the actual volume to cook most of the carrot (see picture above, where I only filled it halfway).



The finished carrots. Use lots of butter (I ran out) to get a tastier char on the bottom.

Lastly, I added a side helping of some homemade pickles I made a week ago. I used a kimchi base from the jar since it was my first time, but it just has the most basic ingredients, so doing it fresh shouldn't be too hard (garlic, salt, chilli pepper, sugar, ginger, vinegar). I used pickling cucumbers, fresh ginger slices, and daikon radish, but you can try your own favourite veggies and post the results! (Definitely pickle some fresh ginger slices though, they are divine and add flavour to the other pickles). I added a little sesame oil for flavour, and then vinegar to fill the jar (though I was worried they would get too sour so only filled halfway and laid the jar on its side, turning it whenever I was in the fridge over the course of 24-36 hours. You could experiment with filling it the whole way but diluting the vinegar with water.

My pickles are kind of bastardized pickles Chinese style. They are more marinated in vinegar than pickled (no chemical change) but I prefer it that way because the vegetables keep their original fresh and crisp flavour. That also means, though, that you can't store them in the jar for too long or they get soggy. (Though that is never a problem for this pickle-maniac!)


The final dish.

After dinner I opened the bottle of Viognier 2007 from Fielding Estate Winery that we picked up in Beamsville Bench, Niagara, which won Gold at the All Canadian Wine Championships. I normally like drier whites, but this one was so unique and flavourful I couldn't resist it. In addition to Fielding's description (click the link above), I would add that this wine has a distinctly pineapply tropical flavour with a strong honey note, though there is a musky edge (not sure if I would call it spicy, more like the bitter flavour of a nice fruit rind, with a heady aroma reminiscent of papaya or durian) to lift the sweetness into a greater complexity. It was soooo tasty I ended up drinking the whole bottle while watching An Arctic Tale. Don't do that, I don't recommend it. Get a friend so you don't drink the whole bottle. That honeyness doesn't sit well in your head the next day.



My new best friend, Colleen, who was handling my tasting (what do you call a wine expert working in a winery? not a sommelier?), seemed to be able to read my tastebuds like a tongue psychic. According to Colleen, Fielding specializes in aromatic whites. Everything she picked out for me ended up being my new favourite. I came home with the 2007 Viognier and the 2007 Sauvignon Blanc (a beautifully balanced wine half fermented in stainless steel, half fermented in oak). As I was paying for the wine, she apologized for not being able to chat more with me since they were busy catering a wine party. I promised I'd be back.

This is exactly the kind of treatment that makes me want to return to a winery. I'll never understand why anyone working in any customer service field thinks that snobbery and elitism ups their reputation (that's you, prick at Organized Crime with mediocre wine!). Fielding was recommended to me by a lady from Hidden Bench just up the lane (a class act in its own right with above average though not mindblowing wines -- I will blog about them as soon as I open a bottle!). The lady at Hidden Bench said Fielding was her favourite, and now Fielding is my favourite too -- they just had such a wide selection of really excellent and unique wines, you couldn't possibly get sick of going back for more.

As an added bonus, Fielding and Hidden Bench are in the most beautifully scenic hidden horseshoe. If you can only make one stop, this horseshoe could keep you busy for an afternoon if you take your time. This is off the QEW highway. Find the full Niagara Wine Route map here.



Notice that North and South Service roads run along the highway - a safe and scenic route for cyclists, which solves that driving + wine tasting problem.

More about my wine tour soon!