Nov 18

Easy Italian Red Sauce with Mushrooms Recipe

Italian spaghetti sauce with mushrooms makes my mouth water with anticipation of a meal that is so easy to prepare. It will probably take longer to write this post than the time required to prepare the meal. For this meal I like to use the prepared homemade Marinara sauce that I have portioned and frozen in Ziploc bags combined with an 16 ounce package of fresh sliced mushrooms. Of course there are other ingredients; Red Wine, Olive Oil and Salt; but these three ingredients are the supporting cast to the Mushrooms and Marinara Sauce.

Ingredients for Italian red Sauce and Mushrooms

Ingredients for Italian red Sauce and Mushrooms

Ingredients:

  • 1 x Bag of Home Frozen Marinara Sauce (6 Ladles)
  • 16 Ounce Package of Sliced Mushrooms (You can use a smaller amount if desired)
  • ¼ Cup of Olive Oil
  • ½ Cup of Red Wine (Nothing wrong if you use more wine)
  • 1 Teaspoon of Salt (I prefer to use Sea Salt)

Preparation:

  1. In a medium size sauce pan over medium-high heat add the Olive Oil and Salt.
  2. Once the Olive Oil is hot, add the Mushrooms and coat them well with the Olive Oil. Reduce the heat to Medium and stir the Mushrooms occasionally for a few minutes.

    Sauteed Mushrooms in a Pot

    Mushrooms Sauteed in Sauce Pan

  3. Then add the Red Wine and allow the Mushrooms to simmer for a few minutes.
  4. Whether you have thawed the sauce in the refrigerator, on the counter, in a bath of warm water or not at all, add the portioned amount of sauce to the Mushrooms and bring the sauce to a simmer.

    Marinara Sauce with Fresh Mushrooms

    Marinara Sauce with Fresh Mushrooms

While the sauce is coming to a simmer, in a large pot bring salted water to a boil in preparation of cooking pasta / macaroni / spaghetti el dente. In time it takes to boil the pasta to perfection, the Red Mushroom Sauce will have simmered to the perfect thickness and is ready for the pasta to be added.

Italian Red Sauce with Mushrooms

Italian Red Sauce with Mushrooms

Drain the water from the pasta and then combined with the sauce on the stove on High heat to combined all of the ingredient for a minute. Remove from the stove, plate and add Italian grated cheese.

Pasta with Mushroom Marinara Sauce

Rigatoni with Italian Red Sauce and Mushrooms

For this meal I used white button mushrooms and rigatoni, but in the end any combination of fresh mushrooms and style of pasta can be combined. To me, what makes this meal special is that not only is it a light meal, but the combination of the slow cooked Marinara Sauce with the Fresh Sliced Mushroom provides both a hearty and fresh flavor in the same meal in 30 minutes or less.

Nov 15

It is the 3rd Thursday in November, so le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé

At one minute past midnight today, the 3rd Thursday in November, millions of cases of Beaujolais Nouveau started their journey across France and then onto the rest of the world. Beaujolais Nouveau is the first new wine of the year.

Because Beaujolais Nouveau is such a young red wine, it can be incredibly fruity compared to older, more mature red wines, and in some ways it can be compared to white wines, so much so that it is one of the few red wines in the world that is best served chilled.

The race from the grape to the glass, is a bit of fun,and though Beaujolais Nouveau won’t win any awards, it is something to be celebrated. Just drink it up before the New Year.

I’m off to track down a bottle or two to have with a some cheese.

Beaujolais Nouveau

Beaujolais Nouveau

Nov 11

Raising a glass to ‘The Macallan’

Rating: ★★★★★

This week I found out that ‘The Macallan‘ were hosting a tasting event in Houston, TX and managed to book a space online. Macallan are hosting lots of  ‘Raise the Macallan‘ tasting events, but you’ll have to visit the website to see if there is one near you. I don’t usually hold much hope for product sales events, but this was not only slick and well put together, it was entertaining, and most importantly they didn’t skimp on the size of the drams. I envisioned having a few small ‘thimble’ sized glasses of whisky to taste, but as you can see from the photo below, we were given a very generous dram of four (five if you count the 10 year old) different Macallans, far bigger than you would get in a bar.

The Macallan

The Macallan

I grew up only a few miles away from The Macallan distillery near Craigellachie, Scotland on the banks of the River Spey, and spent a few summers working in other distilleries in the area, but I didn’t like whisky at all, until my mid 30s. I’m not sure what changed, but I think it was trying different ones until I found some I liked. A lot of my favourite whiskies are from the West coast of Scotland, especially Islay, but my stock favourite is The Macallan 12 year old Sherry Oak and I usually have a bottle of this at home. Apart from the 12 year old and a very nice cask strength Macallan I hadn’t tried any other Macallans, and this seemed like a good opportunity to expand my knowledge.

Whisky aroma smelling station

Whisky aroma smelling station

The start of the event is like cocktail hour. We were are given a 10 year Sherry Oak Macallan to try with plates of hors d’oeuvres. As they said the 10 year old goes quite well with food, but to my taste, I still prefer the12 year old. There were different ‘task’ stations to learn more about The Macallan, including an aroma station set up with the major smell components that you can find in whisky to help train you nose and also find which Macallan you may prefer. After mingling and chatting, we were ushered through to the main tasting event. The presenter talked us through how important the barrels are to the finished product and the history of the Macallan. In between, we tasted a 12 year old Sherry Oak, a 15 year old Fine Oak, a 17 year old Fine Oak and an 18 year old Sherry Oak.

The 12 year old as I said, I already knew,. The 15 year old we were told is popular in Rio de Janeiro, where they mix it with a soda called Guarana. A carafe of Guarana was placed on each table, but to me it sort of ‘drowned’ the quite subtle flavours of the Fine Oak. There was a demonstration of a really cool ice sphere machine inspired by the Japanese art of hand carving ice balls for drinks. It was really cool, but I think they are at least a few hundred dollars to buy.

Japanese ice ball maker

Japanese ice ball maker

When I drink single malt whisky, I only add a little splash of room temperature water to help release some of the subtler aromas of the whisky, and to take any edge of the sharper alcohol flavours. I did this with all the whiskies I tried, but the I wish I hadn’t with the 18 year old as it tasted amazing without the water, but lost a lot of the magic with the water. Lesson learned.

Tasting The Macallans

Tasting The Macallans

Tasting the different Macallans helped me realise that I prefer the sherry oak whiskies rather than the Fine oak ones. All in all, it was a very enjoyable way to spend an hour or so. If you like whisky or haven’t yet found one you like, the ‘Raise the Macallan’ event is well worth going along to compare different single malt whisky against each other.

Slàinte mhath!

 

 

Nov 09

Amazon announce their online marketplace for wine

Yesterday Amazon announced their new online marketplace for wine.

AmazonNot that there isn’t many very good online wine retailers, but Amazon tend to come into a market and shake it up a bit, which is only good for the consumer, at least in the beginning. Though this won’t replace the specialist wine shops and the last minute bottle of wine, it may be a good option for stocking up on bulk bargains for parties or the holidays.

There are over 30,000 different bottles of wine to choose from, but at the moment, shipping is restricted to California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, North Carolina, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

Nov 09

Butter-flying a chicken breast

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed that chicken breast are getting bigger. I sure if you met a modern day it would be ‘Jurassic sized’ if the breast you can by in the supermarkets are anything to go by. However a couple of problems occur with huge chicken breasts. One is that there is a huge variation in the thickness of the meat from one end of the breast to the other. Secondly, I’ve noticed over the years that as chicken breast have become larger, the flavour has decreased.

A solution to both these problems can be solved by butter-flying the chicken breast. In essence you cut along the length of the chicken breast, nearly all the way through, so that the chicken breast opens like a book. This not only evens out the thickness of the meat so that it can cook evenly, but it also increases the surface area to which we can apply flavour, either over the surface, or by stuffing it. Butter-flying a chicken breast unlike flattening it using a kitchen mallet preserves the structure of the meat without breaking it.

How to Butter-flying a chicken breast

  1. First trim the fillet if it is attached and any excess fat, sinew from the chicken breast.
  2. Using a large sharp chefs knife, start cutting along one of the long edges of the chicken breast, about half way down the thickness.

    Cut along the long edge of the breast about half way down

    Cut along the long edge of the breast about half way down

  3. Cut nearly all the way through the breast, stopping about 0.25″ (0.5cm) from the other edge.

    Continue cutting until you nearly reach the other side

    Continue cutting until you nearly reach the other side

  4. Open out the chicken breast like a book

    Open the chicken breast like a book

    Open the chicken breast like a book

You can now season and flavour both sides of the breast, or stuff the cavity for even more flavour.