Last week was Restaurant Week in Washington, D.C. For those that don’t know, this means that restaurants in the city and surrounding area that wish to participate put together a prix fixe menu from their normal offerings and have this available at a reduced price. It is a way for the restaurants to entice new customers as it is typically cheaper to visit during these special weeks.

Ms Cocktail and I try to visit at least one new restaurant during this week as it is an opportunity to explore something new without breaking the bank. The restaurants post their special menus on a web site where one can browse the offerings before making a choice of place to try. This year, Ms Cocktail and I along with a couple of her co-workers decided to try Café Atlántico in downtown DC.

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For the longest time, I've been avoiding Chilean wines. There were rumors circulating that Chilean farming practices were causing harm not to the environment, but to the workers themselves. Of course, being the great lemming that I am, I bought right into these rumors without doing adequate research. So when Antoinette at Cork and Fork suggested that I try a Chilean wine, I thought it time to revisit my stance on these rumors. All I can say is that to date, my research has shown me no credible proof that there is a connection between farming practices and poor worker health. Caveat emptor.

With that being said, I sat down to this bottle of 2007 Misiones De Rengo Cabernet Sauvignon. This winery is located in the Central Valley Region of Chile which as the name suggests, puts it in the middle of the country. They are clearly in touch with the times as Misiones De Rengo is committed to going green with zero for a carbon footprint in the production of their wines. If nothing else, their web site has a kind of cool flash animation but I would really enjoy more content, especially about their wines.

The wine was a dark ruby color but not so thick that you couldn't see light through it. The nose had a strong petroleum smell with green pepper. You tasted a bit or the petroleum at first, but this quickly gave way to berry and green pepper. This wine was heavy on the tannins and left a puckery finish in your mouth. Overall it had a bit of a rustic feel, not a lot of complexity but it would make a nice accompaniment to a grilled steak.

I am finally back from my family vacation in the Outer Banks. I had planned on posting this recipe while I was there, but you never know what you're going to get when working with other people's equipment and this was no exception. I was able to get the Jamaican Jerk Chicken . recipe up but it was quite the challenge and I didn't get the photo posted until I got back. You see, the biggest challenge wasn't the cooking but the Internet posting. For whatever reason, I had about a two hour window early in the morning when the wireless was working fine, but the rest of the time it was hinkey, very hinkey. That's why you get this recipe now but believe me when I tell you that it was worth the wait.

If ever you want to impress someone like family, friends or most importantly, a date, this is the recipe to do it with. This dessert is truly fit for the gods. In fact, this is nothing new, I'm sure that the ancient Mesopotamians had this one figured out. However, it is so simple and so good that you may want to keep it a secret. You'll look like a genius and you won't spend hours in the kitchen prepping and cleaning up afterwards. It is best, with the Black Mission Figs, but I've done it with Brown Turkey Figs and as the photo shows, the green Calimyrnas Figs. All of them turn out exceptionally well. Also, don't be turned off by goat cheese if you've never tried it. It has a little stronger taste than the milder cow's milk cheeses, but there are plenty (such as a sharp cheddar) that have a stronger flavor than the goat's milk cheese. For this recipe I used the Chevrie Goat Cheese.

Grilled Figs with Goat Cheese and Honey

1 dozen figs
4 oz goat cheese
1 lemon cut into wedges
honey
extra virgin olive oil

Thread the figs onto skewers and spray lightly with extra virgin olive oil. Cut the goat cheese into 12 slices and place two slices on each plate. Grill the figs over direct high heat for four minutes turning once. Place two figs on each plate and drizzle with honey. Serve with a lemon wedge. Makes six servings.

If you haven’t caught wind of it, I’m on vacation down in the Outer Banks this week. I was charged with cooking dinner for the family the first two evenings. I was told that I would have a gas grill available for my use. Haha! Think again. No, what I had available wasn’t even a type of kettle grill with a cover, but one of those open charcoal grills like you find at the state parks. Needless to say, I had to scramble a bit to make things work.

Thankfully, the local Harris Teeter had enough fixings to make things not horrible. While they did not have a chimney starter, they did have both lump charcoal and some Match Light charcoal. The point being, that you want to avoid lighter fluid if at all possible and if not, minimize its use in any way you can. Since there was no chimney starter available for purchase, the idea was to get a core of the Match Light charcoal going, and then throw a bunch of non-petroleum impregnated charcoal on it.

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For those of you that don't know, I am not the best cook in the family. That title easily goes to Ms Cocktail. So when she sets out to make something, I still sit back and take notice, especially when it is something that isn't part of my strengths like dessert. So, the other day, Ms Cocktail was in the kitchen making a dessert to share with her co-workers. I happen to notice that she was melting down some vanilla ice cream as part of her dessert and that observation caused a lightbulb to go off in my head.

Every once in a while, I enjoy a white russian. If you remember the movie The Big Lebowski, The character played by Jeff Bridges is named The Dude and he drinks them throughout the movie except that he calls them Caucasians. He makes them with heavy cream as opposed to milk. Well, I happened to be in my white russian mode and there was this melted vanilla ice cream left over from Ms Cocktail's dessert and I thought that hey, it doesn't need to be made with milk and wham-o! I put the two together. What you end up with is a richness that balances nicely with the bite of alcohol. Truth be told, I don't think I'll ever want to drink one any other way.

White Russian

2 oz Kahlua
2 oz vodka
2 oz melted vanilla ice cream

Fill a brandy snifter with ice. Add Kahlua, float the vodka on top of the Kahlua, the float the ice cream on top of the vodka.

When we Americans think of France, it is often with disdain for our political disagreements on the world stage, or perhaps with enthusiasm for another Lance Armstrong victory in the Tour de France bicycle race, or even images of Paris and the beautiful architecture of places like Notre Dame de Paris that have survived centuries of strife and conflict yet remain unblemished in their splendor. Then there are those of us who when presented with thoughts of the country of France, immediately flash on the various regions and wines the country produces before we ever get to the other stuff.

France uses a system of identifying wines by the region they came from and the region is identified by a designated Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée or AOC. This system is not limited to just wines but is used for other agricultural products in France including cheeses and butters. However, we're going to focus on just the wines here and in this case, just one AOC, Alsace.

Alsace is a region of France that is on the eastern border of the country, right against Germany. The grapes grown there are very similar to those grown in Germany with Riesling and Gewürztraminer being two of the most popular varieties. However, the AOC Alsace is known for producing wines from these grapes that are far less sweet than their German neighbors even though that seems to be changing. When you hear of someone talking about a wine done in an Alsatian style, it means that it is light and crisp with almost no sweetness left, even if it comes from grapes known for making sweet wines.

The wine named One from René Sparr is exactly the kind of wine you expect when you think of a wine done in an Alsatian style except that this is a blend rather than a wine from only one varietal. This wine is a blend of 28% Muscat, 39% Sylvaner, 9.5% Pinot Blanc, 16% Riesling, and 7.5% Klevener de Heiligenstein (an Alsatian designation of the Savagnin grape). (Author's Note: You can get caught up in the history of grapes, where they came from, who brought them to where, from where and so on. These people are called Ampelographers and it is a specialized form of botany.) This wine is a pale yellow in color but not so pale as to be almost colorless. When you first breath in this wine, there is a light floral scent and then a big blast of wildflower honey. You really expect this wine to be sweet but that is totally wrong. There is a light acidity up front with a hint of honey and then a mineral finish that doesn't linger. I really liked this wine, it would be a nice diversion on a hot afternoon or a great accompaniment for a summer time picnic.

I love my Weber grill. I have the Weber Genesis Gold C gas grill with the auxilliary burner and all stainless steel construction. This thing is a complete workhorse as I grill 2 to 4 times a week year round and nothing has broken on it in eight years of service. I love the simplicity of walking over, turning on the burner, pushing the little starter button, and hearing the WOOSSH! as the gas ignites. I do a pre-cooking burn down which means that I turn the grill on high and raise the temperature to at least 500 degrees. This burns off any food, oils, or bacteria that may have been lurking since that last time I used the grill. I brush it down and we're ready to go, a total of about ten minutes grill preparation any time I want to use it.

When grilling, one important lesson to learn is to not play with your food. Get the temperature set where you want it, put the food on the grill, put the grill cover on, halfway through the cooking time flip the food, put the cover back on and then wait until done. There is a reason that even charcoal grills come with a lid and that is so that the grill acts like a little oven to cook your food. The one exception to this rule is when I'm grilling tuna steaks. I get the best tuna I can, sashimi quality if it is available. (Note: Sashimi quality doesn't mean that the tuna itself is better, it just means that the tuna wasn't prepared with any other fish and there was no cross contanimation) The reason is that when a tuna steak is cooked properly, it is just seared on the outside, it is still pink and rare on the inside. This only takes a couple of minutes on a grill over direct high heat and closing the cover drives the heat deeper into the fish flesh, causing it to be overcooked.

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Today finds our intrepid voyager out lost without a compass, map, or shapely Native American to lead him back to known lands. I'm doing some different things to try and bring some life to the video. This is supposed to be a learning experience so some experimentation is to be expected. I am also rapidly finding out that playing the guitar and singing is by far the easiest part of this whole deal. It would be so much simpler if I didn't have to be producer, director, cameraman, lighting specialist, sound engineer and performer all at the same time!

One of the audio enhancements is emphasizing the SM 57 microphone over the SM 58 to get a bit thinner and more rustic tone profile for the recording. I also added a touch of tremolo during the lead section; I'm not sure if this adds or detracts from the overall experience. For the video, I went and played while sitting on a bar stool. I really didn't enjoy doing this and I most likely won't again. I did incorporate multiple camera angles, but because of some timing issues, I had to use a cheezy effect to help distract y'all from some issues. Editing AVCHD files is just not possible in real time with my computer, I'll need a beefier machine if I want to do any serious editing.

That being said, I get a bit more comfortable each and every time I do this. I hope you enjoy it!

I'm a pretty smart guy, but there are a lot of things that I just either haven't studied (astrophysics), haven't experienced (skiing), or just don't get (soap operas). Then there are things that I just never knew existed until I bump into them like this French wine region called Gigondas. I actually had to go to my Book of Wine and dig around to learn something of this Appellation Contrôlée. It exists in Southern France and was once part of the AC Côtes du Rhône-Villages. In 1971 it was granted full AC status for red and rosé wines. The wines from this AC can be no more than 65% Grenache with the other important grapes in this blend being Carignan, Cinsault, Mourvèdre and Picpoul.

The reason that I bring this up is that as I was walking around the local Wegmans (yes I do have a local wine shop but some surprising wines can be found in some supermarkets in this state) when I spied one of the employee picks, this 2004 Chapelle St Arnoux Gigondas and I just had to see what the fuss was about. The color of this wine is a translucent violet. In other words, you can see light through it but it is fairly dark. The nose first gives you the scent of alcohol (it is a 14% wine) followed by chocolate and cherry. The taste starts with a dark cherry which quickly slides to a spicy, peppery finish that doesn't linger on the palate. It is a well balanced, big wine that would be great with a pasta with a heavy red sauce.

While this wine didn't rock my world, I did thoroughly enjoy drinking it. To me, it is much more of a food wine than a sit and drink in the afternoon type wine. The price was a touch high at around $16 for a 750ml bottle but again, the price of a bottle is never directly related to the quality of the product inside.

Back in 2001, Ms Cocktail and I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It really was the experience of a lifetime. Aside from the flat out foot stomped on the accelerator type action that seems to happen everywhere in the French Quarter, there are little moments of quiet solitude that can be stolen if one looks hard enough. One of the things that we took away from this trip was a love for the Cajun and Creole food traditions of this great city. One of the most famous eateries there is K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, the restaurant started by Chef Paul Prudhomme.

One of the things about Ms Cocktail is that she doesn't eat beef or pork. So sometimes if I'm cooking for just the two of us, I've got to modify recipes to account for her tastes. Here are two recipes based on ones found in Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen that I've modified for this very reason. Turkey ham and olive oil is substituted for the Tasso in the Jambalaya along with some other minor changes. As they say in New Orleans, laissez les bon temps roulez!

Chicken Jambalaya

At one time Cajun and Creole cooking were two very distinct styles however that distinction has blurred over the years. One thing that is a constant between the two is the use of the Trinity, that is onions, green peppers and celery. These three ingredients appear in almost every Cajun or Creole dish and it's by varying the amounts of each that the flavor of the dish is fine tuned.

I learned early on in the kitchen that proper prep work makes the cooking easy. Everything needs to be cut, chopped, pureed, or otherwise prepared before you turn on the oven, stove or grill. With that thought in mind, I tend to combine everything that is going into a pot at the same time into one dish before I ever throw things into a pot. My recipes are broken out that way to help make things go easier.

In a perfect world a whole chicken would be used with the meat cut off the bone and the bones used to make the stock for this recipe. Since most of us don't have the 4-8 hours it takes to make a stock from scratch, the use of canned broth or bouilllion is perfectly acceptable.

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