Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

Yesterday, it was Gingerbread; and today it’s Champagne-Vanilla Ice Cream, as ‘Blow the Bank’ returns a touch of class to the 4^th of July.

Sometime toward the end of last year, the great and always entertaining Rowena of Rubber Slippers in Italy and I were discussing the pleasures of foods and wines, when Rowena suggested wine ice cream. It had never occurred to me to add wine to ice cream, even though I had tried all sorts of other concoctions, from the very good addition of balsamic vinegar to the very bad addition of Tabasco sauce.

Why Tabasco sauce? Well, I love it — almost as much as I love ice cream. I’ve even been to the McIlhenny family’s Avery Island in Louisiana where it’s manufactured (with InterWined’s Jacob Gaffney, in fact). Seen the Buddha; seen the alligators; bought a t-shirt that was ruined when the city of New Orleans and my ground-floor apartment were flooded in the summer of 1994. So, why shouldn’t I add between 20 and 30 drops of Tabasco to my ice cream? Because the fiery flavour of each drop intensifies as it cuts straight through the ice cream like a blade through butter, that’s why.

Frankly, I blame all of it on those Tabasco adverts that ran on American television in the early 1990s with the likes of Dan Ackroyd daring you try Tabasco sauce with all of your favourite foods. “So what do you put it on?” Not ICE CREAM! Not ice cream…

So what about wine and ice cream? After all, alcohol and ice cream really isn’t anything new. There are many ice cream cocktails and several alcohol ice creams. But wine ice creams? Admittedly even though I was wary of a Tabasco-like fiasco, I was intrigued and found myself agreeing to make wine ice cream as soon as I purchased an ice cream maker.

Well, I bought an ice cream maker last week. And true to my word, one of the very first ice creams I made was Champagne-Vanilla with a bottle of Bricout Premier Cru Cuvee Prestige Brut, £13.30 per bottle from Tesco (available online by the case).

Unlike with the ice cream Tabasco sauce, this was a perfect match. The champagne works to enhance and sharpen the flavour of the ice cream, while the vanilla keeps the balance and helps prevent the champagne from becoming too strong or overbearing.
InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Champagne-Vanilla Ice Cream

Keep reading...

Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week as part of a two-day 4^th of July spectacular, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you a bucket of Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream”. Sure, it’s a cliché; but one look in my freezer will prove that at least the first part’s true. Regardless of the weather or season, when it comes to my culinary affections, ice cream always reigns supreme and leaves me wanting more.

Need proof: on a recent trip to visit my sister in Rome, what was top of my list of things to do? See the Trevi Fountain? Tour the Vatican? Nope; it was find a gelateria. And, yes, I did see the Trevi Fountain and tour the Vatican, lest you think I’m some sort of cultural heathen. It’s just that I did both with a cono of gelato in my hand. (In fact, the best gelato in Rome comes from a gelateria very close the Vatican. Seek it out.)

From Japanese Yukimi Daifuku on the streets of London to a single scoop of vanilla pressed into the top of sugar cone and served my grandmother’s kitchen in a scene ripped for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, I love ice cream. I’ll scream it loud and scream it proud.

The Web is awash with quick and easy recipes for gingerbread ice cream. The problem is most involve simply adding a bit of gingerbread crumbs to some bog-standard brand of ready-made vanilla in a loose and free-wheeling interpretation of the word ‘recipe’ not even worthy of the back of a packet of Hamburger Helper and a Campbell’s Soup tin or whatever other cultural reference implies adding one ready-made food to another and calling it a quick and easy recipe for anything in the name of ‘fast food’. If you really want beef stroganoff and don’t have the time to prepare it, buy it ready made and order it from a restaurant. If that sounds somewhat unforgiving, it’s meant to do.

InterWined is all for quick and easy recipes — few of us have the time for anything else — when quick and easy means simple and straight-forward to prepare. Not fast for the sake of speed. Recipes shouldn’t be fast at the expense of quality or flavour. Without those, there’s little point in following a quick and easy recipe much less eating quick and easy food, outside of staying alive. And I, for one, have never been terribly keen on things that double as songs titles for the Bee Gees. Don’t even get me started on that joke that started the whole world crying. Seriously, how bad did that joke have to be? Can you even call it a joke if all it does it make people cry?

Not-entirely InterWined’s Own Recipe for Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream is definitely no joke. Based on a recipe for gingerbread ice cream from KitchenAid, it might not be as fast as some on the Web, but it is certainly quick and easy to prepare without sacrificing flavour or quality. This is premium ice cream made with organic milk and free-range eggs and infused with freshly-baked gingerbread cookies from the start to ensure that the ice cream, not only took on the colour of the cookies, but evenly absorbed the full, rich flavour of the gingerbread. One bite of this and you’ll never do quick and easy ice cream for the sake of quick and easy again.

Not-entirely InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full*

Gingerbread Ice Cream

Keep reading...

Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ ends its month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood, with a decidedly European-take on a well-recognised transatlantic treat.

One word describes the 2003 Château de Fesles Bonnezeaux (12.5%) from the Loire Valley and available from Oddbins in the UK and Wine Chateau.com in the US (with numerous vintages available in Canada, New Zealand, and mainland Europe): smooth.

Made from 100% botrytis Chenin Blanc grapes, the Bonnezeaux screams smooth operator…not unlike the way Sade used to do on the radio. It has a fine golden colour with a rich, slightly creamy fresh fruit flavour with a hint of vanilla or nutmeg thrown in for good measure and makes for a stunningly attractive match to the smooth and silky mix of cream and fruit found in InterWined’s Own Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake.

Like the hamburger and countless other “American” foods, the American cheesecake is rooted across the Atlantic in the kitchens and dinning rooms of a host of different European traditions. So what makes a cheesecake American? New Yorkers and Chicagoans might tell you it’s the baking.

But it’s not.

It’s the cream cheese. Cream cheese is a wholly American invention. Not until William Lawrence invented his now famous Philadelphia cream cheese in 1872 on his farm in New York State and its eventual owners, Kraft Foods, managed to manufacture a pasteurised version in 1912, did any cheesecakes resemble the stuff of today, whether or it was cooked as the New Yorkers and Chicagoans would recommend, or uncooked as the British and many others prefer. Before then, all cheesecakes were made the European way with a filling made of ricotta, mascarpone, quark, or Neufchatel cheeses.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the American preference for baking doesn’t continue. Indeed, outside of perhaps only a handful of US restaurants and cities, the cooked cheesecake remains the more time-consuming norm. And while InterWined hates to pick sides in this most delicious debate (both are great!), for the sake of time and convenience, why not throw American preferences to one side and enjoy the speed and ease of a simple, smooth uncooked cheesecake, such as InterWined’s Own Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

Keep reading...

Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you InterWined’s Own Pear Pithivier.

With so much religious observation last week, InterWined thought it was time for a little secular celebration and decided on the seemingly areligious little French pithivier. At least, that was the intention, until InterWined remembered its other name — la Galette des Roisor cake of the kings.

In other words, the exotic — indeed urbane and cosmopolitan sounding — pithivier is in fact good old, provincial, Catholic king cake made to commemorate three kings’ day and the epiphany.

And, while it might not look like the multi-coloured king cake of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras fame, the two are essentially one and the same.

So, so much for that idea…

The good news is, religious or not, InterWined’s Own Pear Pithivier is a great way to end the week, especially one marked by rain, cloud, wine, snow, hail, and a hint of sunshine. Who says it only rains in England?

Matching the weather and the pithivier is the 2005 Maculan Torcolato, made from 85% Vespaiola, 10% Garganega, and 5% Tocai, (13.5%), £16.99 from Oddbins. A mix of honey, fruit, sugar, acid and wood (thanks to French oak barrel aging), the wine is one of the prides of the Maculan winery, having won numerous awards since the 1970s. Like the best dessert wines, the Toroclato avoids any cloying or sickly sweetness. Exhibiting an excellent balance it’s simple, clean, and unassuming.

According to the Oddbins Web site, the Maculan Toroclato is perfect with almonds — and InterWined agrees. So, sit back and enjoy a glass of a great Italian dessert wine with a pear and almond pudding fit for a king.

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

Keep reading...

Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you InterWined’s Own Black Cherry Chocolate Palmiers.

The great European palmier might be the most simple little snack imaginable — given what little effort and time they require. They might also be one of the most versatile. They can easily accommodate most sweet and savoury fillings from jams and preserves to cheeses and thinly-sliced cuts of meat.

Many traditionalists consider palmiers simple coffee candy, something meant to help you kick start the day on this long-run February. Yet, why limit it to pairing with a simple morning cup of java? Why not let it help end your day, or month, too? In this case, with a brilliant wine.

A truly delectable match for the cherry, chocolate flavours found within the folds of puff pastry that make up InterWined’s Own Black Cherry Chocolate Palmiers is the 2007 Torrontes Tardio from Familia Zuccardi in the Medoza Valley of Argentina.

This late harvest dessert wine (85% Torrontes/15% Viognier) available for £6.99 from Oddbins and in California via Mission Liquor & Wines (as Santa Julia Torrontes) is oft-proclaimed to be pure nectar. And, it’s an apt description. There’s a honeyed-fruit sweetness that starts on the nose and lingers on the palate that ably matches the cherry-fruit and chocolate palmier filling.

A winner: 9 pts. or something equally ridiculous.

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

Keep reading...

Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week ‘Blow the Bank’ returns to Beatrice Peltre, La Tartine Gourmande, and her Versatility in a Spinach and Sweet Potato Cake to bring you Mostly InterWined’s Own Apple & Cinnamon Sweet Potato Muffins.

For many eaters, muffins are synonymous with one meal — breakfast. But, long before the humble blueberry muffin appeared in a powder from Betty Crocker or its low fat oat cranberry cousin went on sale at Starbucks, the muffin was a tea cake and before that a bread.

So while Mostly InterWined’s Own Apple & Cinnamon Sweet Potato Muffin makes an excellent breakfast muffin — and it does to be sure — it also makes a superb dessert cake and, even, a superior alternative to the more common apple sauce and potato found served alongside a nice pork loin or chop. (Don’t believe me, try it and you’ll see.)

On this occasion, InterWined chose to serve it as a dessert or pudding, as some people might prefer.

The 2006 Peter Lehmann Botrytis Semillon (12.5%), £7.99 from Oddbins for a half bottle and widely available in the US for approximately $18-$20, made for an almost perfect match. Why almost perfect? The wine is just a tad too sugary sweet. Peter Lehmann’s chief winemaker confidently proclaims the 2006 vintage its finest ever produced, and InterWined is hard pressed to disagree. This wine is fresh and, mostly, easy-to-drink. The colour is a honeyed gold, with the slight sense of honey continuing on the nose before really hitting the palate with a burst of honeyed fruit. This is wine made from bees, if ever there was one.

But, for InterWined, it all comes back to the sensation that there is just a tad too much sweetness in the wine. Normally, if one finds a dessert wine too sweet it would indicate an imbalance. Yet, in all honesty, I don’t think that there is one. The slightness of it all could equally suggest that my complaint is simply one of personal preference. (Maybe I just don’t like wine made of noble rot, as much as I thought I did.)

In terms of the pairing, what might have made this a more prefect match and probably helped to overcome any nagging sense of sweetness would have been to increase the amount of sweet potato and cheese by a few millimetres and sprinkle into the mixture a few more twists of pepper mill. But be careful when doing so, too much grated potato or cheese and the muffin will loose its very appealing lightness and become quite stodgy.

In the end, Mostly InterWined’s Own Apple & Cinnamon Sweet Potato Muffin with Peter Lehmann’s Botrytis Semillon: 8.something rather impressive but equally probably rather meaningless, something Robert Parker Scale-esque like 86/100. Whatever that means.

Mostly InterWined’s Own Recipe In Full

Apple & Cinnamon Sweet Potato Muffin
(Makes six muffins)

Keep reading...