Mother’s Milk

So much for not marketing.

I was really hopeful that this wine would be an exception to my general rule about Australian wines (I have had some decent ones). Somebody out there thought that his wine was great and I picked it up in the PLCB for about $16 (not so bad). I hadn’t had a decent Syrah in a while, and thought it might be fun for Erin and I to share something nice.

Unfortunately, this wine turned out to be a fairly typical marketing nightmare. Comic book label, catchy-name (hey, who doesn’t want to drink “Mother’s Milk”?) The wine turned out to be super-alcoholic, though. Not a lot of fruit quality, plenty of tar and heavier flavors, lots of rich spice (particularly clove), and hefty wood, but the main thing going here is that it smells mostly of alcohol. Yeah, OK, so they estimate an ABV of 14.5 % but still, I love Pax wines, which regularly creep up to 15% or more, but they manage to make something that smells like wine not ethanol. I should add that with a little time (and air) the wine mellowed out. So, long story short, it’s not all bad. When Erin first opened the bottle, she thought it was cooked (overexposed to heat, ruining the wine) and in a sense, it is. The grapes were more likely than not very over-ripe at harvest, and once you have too-developed flavors in the grapes, it’s hard to go back. I wish people would focus on making wine, not ridiculous stories.

One potential saving grace is that it is screw-cap, so if you want a catchy-looking wine with a cool label and a great tag, go for Mother’s Milk, if you want something that tastes like wine and that you can actually inhale the aromas without choking, then you may want to skip this wine, or give it an hour in an open bottle or maybe even decant it (if you’re into that sort of thing) and it should be decent.

Almost Meatless Blogger Potluck: Pizza Strata

My assignment: follow a recipe from Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond’s Almost Meatless cookbook for their Almost Meatless Blogger Potluck.

I love to cook, but I never follow recipes and I am extremely impatient. I would never have been able to make this Pizza Strata without a recipe and it is the perfect meal to make for guests. I hate being tied up in the kitchen while guests are over, so this strata can be completely prepared either the night before or the morning of a dinner party and then just popped in the oven an hour before you want to eat. Served with a simple salad and some brownies or ice cream for dessert, the strata looks and tastes like the main event. And, if you have friends with young children, I’m pretty sure this would make foodies of all ages very happy.

Additionally, it is versatile and tastes just as delicious eaten as leftovers. You could leave out the pepperoni if you are a complete vegetarian and, as I ate some right out of the baking dish the next day, I found that it was perfect as a cold snack. Reheating is unnecessary.

On to the recipe.

I roasted the tomatoes the night before and refrigerated them overnight. I used 6 huge “Ugly” heirlooms instead of the 10 plums the recipe calls for.

(I did a bit of improvising when I made this. Forgive me.)

I really like to prep. While the tomatoes were roasting for three hours, I prepared the ricotta/spinach mixture, pepperoni, and cubed the loaf of Italian bread so it was all ready to assemble in the morning.  Disclaimer: I did not toast the bread like the recipe said to do for two reasons. Reason #1: I forgot. Reason #2: the breakfast strata my family makes once a year doesn’t call for toasting so I decided that this would be a bit of an homage to that (after I forgot). Maybe the Almost Meatless ladies can comment on why I should have toasted the bread. 

Since the recipe called for the assembled strata to sit for 1 hour minimum but overnight if possible, I decided to put everything together in the morning and let it sit in the fridge all day until I was ready to bake it for dinner.  Layered in the baking dish were the cubed bread, ricotta/spinach/pepperoni mixture, other cheeses (mozzerella and provolone), and roasted tomatoes. Poured over top was a mixture of eggs and milk.

After one hour, it came out of the oven looking like this (see below). My husband even commented before he tasted it: “If anything else, this is a really great-looking meal.”  It was also really yummy: crisp and crunchy on top, cheesy and gooey in the middle, with the bread soaking up all of the egg and the tomatoes making it moist but not wet.  In retrospect, if I were to do anything differently, it would be to cut the pepperoni in smaller pieces so that its flavor permeated more of the strata.

This is the kind of recipe you want to make over and over. It’s comfort food. It’s versatile. It looks and tastes really great. And being an impatient, improvising, perfectionist, I’ll be practicing my technique on this strata for a long time.

Recap and Reflection

I am taking a breakfast sandwich hiatus this week to reflect on what is important in a breakfast sandwich. Is it the quality of the carbohydrate delivery system? Is it the taste and tuckage of the egg? Or simply taking the extra step to put the ketchup directly on the sandwich instead of throwing in packets as an afterthought? I have learned a lot these past few weeks and what it boils down to is taste. How refreshing.

To recap, here are the ten sandwiches I’ve tried so far, from highest to lowest score:

Bagel Shop: 89
Ali’s: 84
Sexy Green Truck: 81
Ernie’s: 69
Richie’s: 67
Adriatic Grill: 61
Ray’s: 60
Eppy’s: 56
McDonald’s: 54
Tommy’s: 53

Now let’s compare their total scores to what their Overall Taste score was:

Bagel shop: 10
Ali’s: 9
Sexy Green Truck: 9
Ernie’s: 6
Richie’s: 6
Adriatic Grill: 6
Ray’s: 6
McDonald’s: 6
Tommy’s: 5
Eppy’s: 4

Overall, if your sandwich tastes good, you’re going to get a good total score.

So, where should I go next? I’m running out of vendors. Anna’s Middle Eastern is closed for the summer and I know she would be a contender with her breakfast burrito. Any other ideas?