Flat Creek Estate Wine....giving away a bottle of heaven!

In partnership with Flat Creek Estate and our dedicated drones at RAW Marketing, we will be giving away a bottle of Flat Creek Estates Syrah to one lucky fan who we draw from the combined entries.  I tasted this bottle of heaven at the Buffalo Gap Food and Wine Summit back in April and, even in my vino-induced haze, knew that this was by far the best of all the wines there.  (And there were a lot.  I tasted ALL of them.  And then I went back for refills just to be sure.)  It turns out that that these Texans at Flat Creek know what the heck they're doing with grapes and a barrel. 

Just enter your name and email address below to enter! The contest will run from 8:00am Saturday, June 4th to midnight Tuesday, June 7th. One lucky winner will be drawn from the entries at random and will be declared   "THE WINNER!"  The winner will then be announced Thursday afternoon on our Facebook page and by email.

"This wine is 100% Syrah & 100% harvested from Flat Creek Estate vineyards that are a decade old this year. Syrah is one of the best reds for Texas and this Syrah just keeps getting better. Starting two years ago, the vineyard training method was changed to the Smart-Dyson method allowing greater fruit production while improving already excellent fruit quality. This training method is visually very attractive as it produces a "curtain" of vines extending to the vineyard floor & reaching toward the sun. The Syrah vineyard welcomes you when you enter the Estate."

• Fill out the form below (your info will be kept confidential and I promise not to sell it to naughty websites or flood your email with spam about black market pharmaceuticals).  I need your contact info if you win!

Name:


Email:

Oh, and if you would like to know more about Flat Creek Estate, and follow everything they have going on, you can find their Facebook page here: Flat Creek Estate.

Good Luck!...now go my pets, and spread the word!  Who doesn't like free wine?  And GOOD free wine, at that!?

How to be a wine snob without knowing anything about wine

Dear Tricia, I know that pairing red wines with red meat is and white wines with white meat is the standard rule, but that's really all I know about wine.   I'm not good at this kind of thing- is there anything else you can tell me that's easy to remember, but makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about?

You sound just like me.  "Just tell me enough to make people believe what I'm saying."  This didn't go over well with my chef instructors at the Culinary Institute of America, so I stuck around for the whole 2 years to learn everything I could instead.  But with wine, you'd have to start reading now and not stop until you were 120 years old to learn everything. And then after a 5 minute break, you'd still have to keep reading because trends change so quickly.  There's a lot to learn, so here's the Cliff's notes.

You can stick with the red wine and red meat rule or the white wine and white meat rule, but you also want to think about sauces or how the meat is prepared and go with that.  For example, chicken or pork with something lighter like pine nuts and braised leeks is going to do well with a white.   But chicken or pork in a hearty caper and shallot sauce would pair well with a red.   All you have to remember is with something is heavier, you want to pair it with a red.   Did you just pair a red with a white meat?  You rebel, you.  

Anytime you've got a super rich, heavy food, like duck or sausage, you want a really tannic (read: it makes your mouth start to pucker) red to help cut through the fat.  This is where you leave the realm of drinking wine that tastes nice and move into really complimenting your dinner and making it taste even better.  It's yin and yang.  Regis and Kelly.  Cheech and Chong.  The same goes for something fried- you want something help help cut through the oily flavor and texture.  Think of your basic tempura shrimp, and this counts even if its just take out, you want to pair it with an acidic white to help cut some of the oil.  Think pinot grigio or any un-oaked* white from Chile or Argentina.

Let's talk "oaked" and "un-oaked."  All this means is whether or not the wine was aged in oak barrel or a steel barrel.  Steel barrels give white wine a crisp, drier flavor and body.  California wines are mainly aged in oak barrels, and that gives them a heavier, richer body, which I happen to hate.  Millions of people think otherwise, but whatever, it's my mouth.  I once had an organic chardonnay that tasted like I was making out with an oak tree.  It was Bonterra and it was nasty.  Never again, Bonterra. You disappoint me for life, regardless of your organic namesake.

Food and Wine magazine came out with a list of new wine pairing guidelines a little while back and there were a couple of good points for you to remember if you want to sound like you know what you're talking about.  "Serve an un-oaked wine with anything you would squeeze a lemon or a lime on." That citrus, clean flavor acts like a little squeeze of lemon on any kind of fish, even salmon.  Yeah, throw that one at your friends and watch them look at you like you know a thing or two.

For spicy foods, alcohol makes things taste spicier.  So drink something lower in alcohol content.  (Remember that post I wrote about getting jalapeno in your eye?  You would not want to pour wine in your eye.  Just a heads up.)  You can't go wrong with a reisling when you're eating spicy food.

For desserts or hors d'oeuvres, you can never go wrong with champagne.  And as I've said before,
offering your host or hostess of a dinner party a bottle of champagne will always go over much better than a Chinese finger trap.  Who doesn't love a little bubbly?  Someone with no soul, that's who. 

The most important rule of wine is to drink what you love and not take it too seriously.  If you're going with what's trendy, just know that wine trends change all the time.  Remember when "Sideways" came out?  Paul Giamatti's character made his love for pinot noir and his hatred for merlot very clear.  Coincidentally, merlot sales dropped 2% that year, while pinot noir sales went up by 16%.  But if you love merlot, then keep drinking merlot with whatever you like.  Having the confidence to know what you like and what you don't makes you more much more credible than spewing off a bunch of random wine vocabulary words.   And if anyone gives you any bull, just tell them you're into non traditional, alternative wines right now.  No one ever knows how to respond to that one.

Wine and Dessert and Yum and Yes Please.

Dear Tricia, Can you make dessert with wine?  I need something new to make for dessert and I think I want to try doing something with wine, but I'm not sure how or with what.

Absofreakinlutely.  There's a couple of ideas I have for you- one is super amateur if you're not feeling so adventurous or if you're pressed for time, and one requires just a little more work. 

1.  Pouring a really yummy dessert wine over fresh fruit.  Seriously, it's that simple.  Cut up some strawberries and peaches, put them in a little bowl and pour a sweet dessert wine over it- no more than a quarter cup or so.  Then toss the fruit in the wine, sprinkle some raw sugar (the brown sugar that has really big grains) on top, and put a little dollop of whipped cream on it.  You can use the stuff from the can- I don't judge.  It's really light and summery, and it takes like 18 seconds.  You can also do the same thing with sorbet.  Just pour a little bit of wine on top and serve it in a martini glass.  You just took dessert and made it uber fancy.   Your rich neighbors will be oh so impressed.  Even better, take the fruit, top it with the sorbet, AND pour the wine on top and serve it all in a nice glass.   Holy yes please.

My favorite wine to do this with is St. Supery Moscato.   All of their stuff is awesome, but the Moscato is good enough to make you want to drink it straight out of the bottle with a straw.

2.  Poaching.  Don't be afraid of that word.  Poaching is not as hard as it sounds, especially when it doesn't involve eggs.  You can poach pears in white or red wine here, just pick whatever you like the best. 

Pour 3 cups of wine and 1 cup of sugar in a pot.  Bring it up to a boil so that the sugar dissolves.  While you're waiting on that pot to boil (because that's kind of boring and I'm sure you'd rather be doing something else), take a pear and peel it with a vegetable peeler.  Then you want to cut it in half, lengthwise.  When your wine and sugar has come to a boil, turn it down until its just barely bubbling.  So if you boiled it on 10, you want to turn it down to about 4.  When it's simmering, take the pear halves and put them in the wine/sugar/heaven concoction.  All you're doing is cooking them so that they get soft, but while they're softening up, they absorb all the flavors of the wine, that lucky little pear. 

The pear slices will want to float up- sometimes you can take a big metal bowl and press it down on the pears just until they're submerged.   If you pour water in the bowl it keeps it weighted down and the pears in the wine.  See that?  You're like a poaching McGyver.  You want to cook the pears until they're tender, just enough so that if you try to put a butter knife in the pear, you shouldn't have to push very hard at all.  Think of the texture of canned pears- that's what you're going for.  When the pears are soft, leave them in the pot and put the whole thing in the fridge.  If you stir the liquid around often, it'll cool down faster.  I know, you're thinking "But Tricia, why don't I just take the pear out of the liquid?  It'll be so much faster that way."  It'll also dry the pear out and no one will want to eat your gross dried fruit with a thick skin on it.  This way the pear stays moist and keeps absorbing the flavors at the same time. 

When it's cool, scoop out the middle part where the core usually is and get rid of that.  Serve the pear with a little spoonful of creme fraiche in the scooped out part and drizzle it with honey, straight from the bottle.  Throw a few crushed pistachios or almonds around it and you're done.  Freaking sweet, my friend.

My favorite white wine to do this with is any riesling, but like I said- just pick your favorite and go with it.  There's no wrong way.   For reds, anything by Fall Creek is killer.  Again, their wine, especially the shiraz, is so good you want to just take a bath in it.  The thought has totally crossed my mind on multiple occasions. 

Now go impress your friends with your new found dessert skills.  Go forth and be fancy.  And if someone will buy me one of those wine rack bras, I totally promise to use it and give you a full review of its merits.

So... do you just boil the wine, or what?

Dear Tricia, I have no idea how I'm supposed to cook with wine.  I don't know what to cook in it, when to add it, or what kind to use.  Please help this clueless reader.

No need to be embarrassed of your clueless-ness here.  I understand how daunting it can be to try something that seems oh so gourmet, but its actually very easy and you have lots of options.  Let's talk fancy pants vocabulary first.  When you're talking about cooking with wine, what you're usually doing with it is deglazing the pan.  You know how after you cook meat or veggies in a pan and there's that layer of brown residue stuck to the bottom?   Well that brown stuff is where all the extra flavor is.  It's called fond and you want to get it off the pan and into some kind of sauce.  Pouring a small amount of liquid in the pan usually does the trick.  That's what deglazing is: pouring some kind of flavorful liquid in the pan to get the fond off the bottom.  You can use stock, you can use vinegar, or you can use wine.  Wine is great because it gets the fond off the bottom and adds tons of extra flavor at the same time. And it looks like you know what you're doing.
So let's pretend you're cooking a nice chicken breast in that pan.  And when you're done with the chicken, you take it out and set it aside and wonder, "Hmmmm, how can I get this delicious fond off the bottom of the pan and create a lovely little sauce to pour over the chicken and impress my girlfriend?  Oh, I know!  I'll use some white wine and it'll be so good that she'll be ready for make-out city later!"  So pour in about a quarter cup of wine (usually you'd want to use something you're ok with drinking, not that bottle in the back of your fridge that's been open since last Halloween)  and stir it around with a spoon or a whisk.  The little brown bits will be released from the pan and then you want to wait while the wine cooks down to a teeny tiny amount, which is called reducing.  After its reduced in half  (which is really a mere few spoonfuls), add some a touch of chicken stock and about a tablespoon of butter.  Whisk in the butter, throw in a bit of salt and pepper,  pour that over your chicken breast and you're done.  See?  You've learned the words reduce, deglaze and fond all in 2 paragraphs.  Watch as I expand your horizons even further.   Yeah.  Get ready.
Let's talk Italian food for a hot minute.   When I make marinara sauce (and I say that word like an American does, not like Giada on the Food Network with her overly-enunciated Italian accent, jarringly thrown in the middle of a sentence) I like to brown my onions, peppers and garlic and then get the fond (yeah, it comes from vegetables too) off the bottom of the pan with some red wine.  I pour in about a half a cup and let that reduce until its almost syrupy.  There's no rule here about how much to pour in.   You could pour in an entire bottle and let it reduce, it'll just take longer.  (And then what would you have to drink while you're cooking?)  After its reduced, I'll add the tomato sauce and then season it up.
 So let's go back and review this.  I know it sounds like a lot at first but it's super easy.  Add the wine (while the pan is still over high heat) and let it reduce by half.  Add a touch of stock, a tablespoon of butter, and season it.  
As far as what kind of wine to use with what, you usually want to use red with something heartier, or with red meat. White wine is great for fish and chicken.  Again, use something you'd want to drink.  Cooking with wine is not a way to get rid of bad or old wine.  Then your sauce will just taste like old wine sauce.  Eww.
When you get comfortable with sauces, start getting creative.  Put some chopped up artichoke hearts and a squeeze of lemon in white wine sauces.  Add some capers and fresh herbs to red wine sauces.  And always season and taste it.  Salt and pepper go a looooong way, especially if you're trying to get to make out city with your lady later. 
Let's also talk about open flames for a second.  You know how when you're watching chefs on TV and they pour some wine in the pan and it all catches on fire for a second?  Looks fun, right?  Well mostly likely that's not going to happen in your kitchen unless you tip the pan and try to invite the fire into the alcohol.  Also, wine doesn't have as much alcohol in it as cooking with sherry or hard liquor.  Those guys will flame up no problem, but if you're using a gas stove and are afraid of becoming a burn victim, just pour it in and don't tip the pan.  

Girls Just Want to Have Fun... And Wine... And Snacks... And Wine.

Dear Tricia, Can you recommend savvy healthy snack options to compliment wine night with the girls?

Why of COURSE I can! Not only am I a pro at combining entertaining and food, but I'm also a pro at drinking wine. Sure, I know a lot about it, but I'm just better at drinking it.
So we've got a few things to pay attention to here: savvy, healthy, and for my and every other young professional's sake: convenient. This helps me narrow it down, because I prefer to just set out an entire wheel of brie with a knife. (And that's just when I'm drinking wine without any guests coming over.) For healthy, you can't really go wrong with a homemade bruschetta. Fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar... it's healthy, its colorful, and its refreshing because right now its like 150 degrees outside and no one wants hot artichoke dip.
So, for a very simple version of homemade bruschetta, (pronounced "broos-ket-a", not "brush-etta"), here's what you'll need:

4 ripe Roma tomatoes (Smell them to check if they're ripe. Do they smell like a tomato? Are they soft, but not mushy?)
1/8 cup fresh basil, chopped (You can find it in the produce department of the grocery store in little plastic containers.)
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon of salt
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 Tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

1. Chop the Roma tomatoes into pieces. How small? Well, small enough to make them easy to scoop up with a piece of bread or pita bread, and small enough so that its not messy when you eat it. That's how you have to think when you're cooking: how can I make this easy to eat? (And that goes for you, Mr. Sushi chef who always makes spicy salmon rolls the size of coaster.)
2. Rinse and dry the basil. Pull the leaves off the stems (just throw them away or discreetly leave them in your nosy neighbor's mailbox), and chop the basil in to pieces as small as you can get them. Don't worry about them getting stuck in your teeth when you eat the bruschetta. Everyone's going to be eating it, so you'll all have green flecks in your teeth together. Consider it a bonding experience.
3. Mix the chopped tomatoes, chopped basil, garlic powder, salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Then let it sit in the fridge for about 30 minutes until you taste it. When you let bruschetta (or salsa too) sit before you eat it, the flavors blend together like the members of The New Kids on the Block. Sure, you can put them out on stage and they'll sound OK, but when you give them some time to rehearse (especially after a 15 year hiatus), they're going to sound completely awesome. And don't laugh at that: I'm serious. I know that everyone of you had a little crush on Jordan Knight.
4. After the bruschetta sits, take it out and taste it. Does it need more salt or garlic? Go ahead and add it. A recipe is just a guide: its what you do to make it your own that makes you a rock star in the kitchen. Serve your bruschetta with slices of baguette (get fancy and toast them in the oven for a few minutes), or pita chips, or anything that tickles your fancy. Have fun with it.

If you don't have time to put anything together, like if I come over unannounced because I need a drinking buddy or need to talk about my boyfriend, there are some really helpful things to have on hand to make a quick antipasto platter. Things like canned artichoke hearts, mixed olives, and hummus can make a really beautiful plate to serve for snacks and they're very healthy. A great way to serve artichoke hearts, cold and right out of the can, is just to drain the water out, cut them in quarters, and toss them in a little Italian dressing. You can get fancy and serve sliced prosciutto or with them, add some mixed olives in a cute dish, and then throw some fresh cut red bell peppers on the plate too to serve with some hummus. All these are things you can buy in the store: you just have to open the containers and put them on a platter. And no matter how lazy you are (I'm talking to myself here), its really simple and takes less than 5 minutes. Some of the more upscale grocery stores even have antipasto bars with all kinds of goodies that you can package up yourself and just pay by weight.

Let me break down the nutritional information on these two snacks:

Bruschetta: Even though there's some salt in it, the recipe is predominantly tomatoes, so you're getting lycopene, polyphenols (antioxidants that counteract things like your skin drying out from having too much wine on girl's night), Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K (helps prevent bruising if you happen to run into doorways on occasion like I do), fiber, and each tomato is roughly only 25 calories. Fresh basil also has plenty of Vitamin K in it to help keep away those naughty little random bruises.

Antipasto platter: Again, this plate definitely has some salt in it, but the olives are super high good fats that take care of your skin, hair, nails, and even help your metabolism. Hummus has lots of Vitamin A, protein and complex carbohydrates (so you'll feel full), fiber, and the fat content is almost entirely unsaturated.

If you're not already the most popular girl at wine night, this will definitely push you to that level. And if you're not comfortable being the most popular girl at wine night, just take a cue from... we'll call her "Sue"... and bring a lame bag of pretzels every time. Yeah, you know who you are...

The yes's and no's of vino

Dear Tricia, I know this isn't a food question, but how can you tell which wines to match with different foods? I like to bring a bottle of wine to my friends' for dinner, but I never know what you're supposed to match with what.

The rules of wine and wine pairing have drastically changed over the years. First of all, there's so many more wines than there were 20 years ago; especially American wines, so along with all the new options, there are different rules to follow.
The first rule is: drink what you like. Seriously. With all of the wine snobbery that keeps people afraid of learning about it, all you need to know is what you like and what you don't like, and stick with that.
Second: the old-school idea of matching red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat and fish doesn't necessarily apply anymore. For instance, red wine goes great with salmon... if your friends are making salmon, I'd recommend a Pinot Noir. If you're wine shopping on a budget, there's some amazing wineries from the Pacific Northwest that make great but cheap Pinot Noirs. Red meat usually pairs the best with a red wine. But chicken can also pair well with it... something richer like a chicken with a heavy cream sauce like alfredo can pair well with a red. White wine can also go well with heavier foods like curries. If you're just not sure, you can totally stick to the old school rules of white with white meat and red with red meat. But don't be afraid of being "wrong."
Spicy foods are balanced out well with a white wine: kind of like when I hang out with my Mexican homie Eddie. He's a spicy kind of guy... especially after 4 shots of Jaegermeister. And since I'm the whitest girl ever, we balance each other out nicely. So when it comes to Chinese, Thai, Indian, or Latin influenced foods, go with a white wine: a Sauvignon Blanc or a Pinot Grigio is a light and easily drinkable wine for those.
If you're just bringing a hostess gift to your friends, you can never go wrong with champagne. Its bubbly, festive, and makes people happy. Seriously! If you ask your friends, "Which would make you happier? Champagne? Or a Chinese finger trap?" they'll surely choose the champagne. No contest. Watch the happiness ensue.
So... to sum it up: as long as you choose a good wine, don't worry about what you think it'll pair with. If you're not sure, then stick with the red with red meat rule and the white with white wine rule. If some uppity wine snob scoffs at your pairing, feel free to lecture him on limiting the possibilities in his life and denying himself of his rightful happiness. Drink what you enjoy. I happen to like boxed wine. And you know what? It pairs beautifully with my Whataburger and my Taco Bell.