Archive
The Story of an Apple Cake
Don’t worry, this will not be a story about apple wine. At the minimum, it will be about food and wine. So the weather was beautiful, and the apple-picking trip (almost an annual tradition in the fall) was inevitable, especially considering the free weekend day. Our favorite place to pick apples is Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, Connecticut. This place never disappoints – apples are good and abundant, and getting them off the trees is a lot of fun.
Once you have a lot of apples, what do you do? No, not wine. And for me – not an apple pie either. I don’t really like liquid pies, so my personal preference is an apple cake. How do you make an apple cake? Actually, quite easy. Here is the recipe:
4 apples (Granny Smith is the best as they are usually sour enough to stand against sweet dough)
3 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of flour
Cinnamon ( by the taste).
Butter to grease the pan
Bread crumbs
Core and peel the apples, and slice them thin. Make the dough: blend eggs first, then add sugar, and then flour. Make sure you end up with liquid and consistent dough. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425F.
Grease pan with butter and cover with bread crumbs. Bread crumbs should cover the bottom and walls of the pan. Remove excess bread crumbs. Your pan should look like this:
Then, put sliced apples into the pan and sprinkle them with cinnamon (the amount of cinnamon goes by the taste):
The dough goes on top:
And then the pan goes in the oven:
Bake it first for 15 minutes at 425F, then reduce the heat to 375F and continue for another 45 minutes or until the top is brown enough (you can check readiness with a wooden toothpick). DO NOT OPEN the oven until the end – you have to let the cake rise. At the end of the process, you end up with this:
And this is the look inside:
Yep – Yummy!
Do you think this post is about food only? No, of course not. Yes, you can have this cake with ice cream, coffee, and/or tea. But this blog is about wine, so how about it? 
I’m glad to report that Bartenura Malvasia Salento IGT 2009 from Italy, a sweet, lightly fizzed wine worked quite well with that apple cake, complementing each other.
Here we are – tasty and very simple cake ( takes about an hour from start to finish) and simple easy wine – all together equal to a great and enjoyable evening.
Cheers!
P.S. By the way, what would you pair the apple cake with?
The Capital Grille Experience – Great Wine and Dine
It is interesting how we experience things in life. Some things just happen, and some are long-planned and anticipated, maybe for no reason at all (as long as we get the experience we want before we cross the finishing line, we are doing good, right?). 
Same as Norton grape on my “to try” list for a long time ( see my last post on the subject), The Capital Grille was on the “to visit” list also for a while, at least from the moment the restaurant opened in Stamford. So finally this experience came through due to a combination of good circumstances – we had a good reason to visit (our anniversary), The Capital Grille was participating in Stamford Restaurant Week (as the restaurant is expensive, that makes it a lot more affordable), and The Capital Grille was running Master Wine tasting event, with 11 wines assembled by The Capital Grille’s Master Sommelier George Miliotes (you know by now that wines come first in this blog). So we decided that we have a great opportunity to see where the “we wine. we dine” motto of The Capital Grille will take us, and there we went.
What a great experience! (should I declare this post complete?). From food to wine to service we had a great time all the way. Talking about food, the Wagyu Beef Carpaccio appetizer had an incredible flavor profile combining razor-thin slices of Wagyu beef, Parmesan cheese, and fresh arugula. Next, I have to say that nice thing about ordering steak done to your liking is that in addition to the standard scale of rare-medium-well done you can specify something like medium-rare plus, which is more than rare but less than medium – and then it is even better when you get the steak precisely the way you wanted ( yeah, I know, this is what we typically expect – but how often our expectations had not been met?). All four steaks had being done perfectly as requested, and the sides were outstanding (for the personal taste, Roasted Mushrooms had been my favorite).
Now, let’s talk about wine. The Master Event selection included 11 wines from California, Spain, and Australia, which in turn consisted of 6 reds, 3 whites, sparkling, and dessert wines. I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of wines from 2003 and even 2002. All the wines were very good and considering that the price of the Master Wine Tasting event was $25, I believe it presented a great value. As this is mostly a wine blog, let’s take a more detailed look at the wines included in this tasting (I’m going in the actual order of tasting). For what it is worth, each wine has a “drinkability” rating attached.
The Chook Sparkling Shiraz, Australia – was not tremendously impressive, medium body dry wine with bubbles 🙂 – Drinkability: 7
Whites:
Penfolds Bin 311, Thumbarumba 2008, Australia – I was recently surprised ( in a good way) by the quality of Penfolds Chardonnays. This particular wine was very nice, with a hint of oak and vanilla and a pleasant finish. Drinkability: 8-
Cambria Bench Break Chardonnay 2006, Santa Maria, California – This was one of the two “best of tasting” wines – it had a very noticeable amount of vanilla, butter, and toasted oak, but all of it was extremely balanced. This wine had great finesse. Drinkability: 8
Botani Muscat 2008, Malaga, Spain – beat all expectations. Incredible aromatics, fresh floral and various citrus fruit notes, great acidity – very nice wine overall. Another “best of tasting” wine. Drinkability: 8
Reds:
Triton Tinta del Toro Tempranillo 2008, Castilla y Leon, Spain – This wine was very dense and very earthy. In general, Toro wines are concentrated – and this one didn’t exhibit even a hint of fruit. I would guess it is either a food-only wine, or it needs time (probably both). Drinkability: 7
Avante Mencia 2009, Bierzo, Spain – Mencia makes some of the hottest wines right now. This wine was very interesting, light and fruity, with a hint of spicy cedar, with substantial tannins and a very, very long finish ( did I mention the long finish?). Probably will evolve with age. Drinkability: 7+
Greg Norman Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2002, Coonawarra, Australia – I have to honestly admit that I’m not a big fan of Greg Norman wines. This wine had a lot of eucalyptus notes and some dark berries, but it did lack an “umph” factor. Drinkability: 7
Greg Norman Reserve Shiraz 2003, Limestone Coast, Australia – same story as the wine before – lots of fruit, but not enough substance. Drinkability: 7
Freemark Abbey Cabernet Sauvignon Sycamore Vineyards 2003, Napa Valley, California – interesting wine, a bit all over the place. Has fresh fruit and fresh acidity, soft tannins. Drinkability: 7
Beringer Bancroft Ranch Merlot 2003, Howell Mountain, Napa Valley, California – Best of the red wines. Very good fruit, tannins and acidity which leads to overall good balance. This wine was perfect with the steak. Drinkability: 8-
Dessert:
Jorge Ordonez Muscat of Alexandria Victoria #2 2007, Malaga, Spain – nice dessert wine, has lots of honey, white peach and pear notes, has medium acidity and not enough minerality. This wine perfectly complemented the Classic Creme Brulee dessert. Drinkability: 7
As usual, here are some pictures:
Wagyu Beef Carpaccio:
Dry-Aged Steak au Poivre with a Courvoisier Cream Sauce:
Roasted Mushrooms (Portabella, Oyster, Shiitake and Crimini):
And last but not least, Steak Oscar:
As I mentioned before, the service was excellent, thanks to Mike Sabini – all the wine and food were showing on time and in proper order.
All in all – there are still few days left in both Master Wine Tasting and Stamford Restaurant Week programs – get up and go, use a good opportunity to experience great wine and food – in the words of Capital Grille, wine and dine.
Dixie Grill – Another Place You Have to Know About
To begin with, I would like to state that by no means I plan to become a restaurant critic and compete with Zagat. But as this blog is about wine, food and life, visiting a restaurant provides perfect mixture of all three elements.
On the way to the the airport, thanks to my another dear friend, Pablo, I was again lucky to experience great food and wine, this time at the place called Dixie Grill Bar. It might be a tourist notion, but same as in the case of Le Champa Del Mar, I believe you have to actually know about that place in order to get there. Coming from outside, it is hard to tell there is a restaurant behind the wall. Inside, the place looks simplistically stylish and has very nice ambiance. The only thing which is out of place, in my opinion, is paper napkins instead of actual cloth napkins – I would not even think that I will pay attention to something like this, but it appears that I do.
Anyway, let’s talk about wine. Based on Pablo’s recommendation, we went with wine called Yiron 2006, from Galil Mountains. The wine is a Cabernet-based blend (Cabernet Sauvignon with addition of Merlot and Syrah). It has a nose of dark berries with some cedar notes, and on the palate has a good balance of fruit, tannins and acidity. All in all, it was a very good wine which was evolving with the time during dinner, so it was actually a very good choice. For those who knows my rating system by now, I will rate it at…
Drinkability: 7+
Few more notes about this wine. First, it is available in US, so it would be possible (and worthwhile) to find it. I also want to mention that Daniel Rogov, famous Israeli wine critic gave this wine a 91 rating ( which is good). And on the subject of Israeli wines, Gary Vaynerchuck, a wine internet celebrity from Wine Library, recorded an episode on Israeli Kosher wines with Daniel Rogov, and you can see it here.
And for the food – as usual, a picture worth a thousand words, so here we go:
Beef Carpaccio
Fried truffle Gnocchi with mushrooms
Le Champa Del Mar – Keep the Cava Coming
Let me start from a thought, which is not original at all – it is great to have friends (huh, wow, who would’ve even thought, right? :)). My dear friend Kfir, was taking an amazing care of me in Israel, ensuring the culinary experiences. After the great time at Norma Jean, he brought me into another one of his favorite places – Le Champa Del Mar, cava bar.
The place is more or a less a hole in a wall – you have to know where you are going in order to get there. Once inside, you will find a bar and a few tables – and lots of delicious foods in the perfect bar format – tapas. In the best traditions of the Spanish cuisine, there are lots of great choices, all in the tapas, or “small snacks” format – cheese and olives, octopus, chorizo, Serrano ham and so on and so on, all watered down with variety of Cava – a sparkling wine from Spain. 
Cava is the only wine served at Le Champa Del Mar, hence the name “Cava Bar”. There is about a dozen of varieties, starting from simple Brut and going into Reserve Cavas. The great thing about Cava in general is that while the bubbles a slightly bigger than in the classic champagnes, it typically has more life in the glass compare to the equal level of champagnes ( and a lot cheaper!). We had a Brut Nature Classic and Brut Rose Classic, coming from Vallformosa winery in Spain. While Brut Rose tasted somewhat flat, Brut Nature had a great balance of acidity and yeasty fresh bread flavours, perfectly complementing “full-bodied” tapas (in case anyone is interested in my rating, I would put Drinkability at 7). I guess the only issue was the fact that all those Cavas where way easy to drink, and therefore disappearing very quickly… But we managed to overcome this challenge quite successfully.
And to give you better idea about Le Champa Del Mar, here are few more pictures:
Tapas Selection at Le Champa Del Mar
Cava is popular at Le Champa Del mar
Smoked duck breast – very delicious!
Just to conclude – another great place for food and drink – find it and enjoy!
Norma Jean – Best Place for Scotch and Food in Israel (and Beer too!)
Let’s set things straight – this post will be more of a photo report. The words fall short to describe an amazing experience at Norma Jean, Bistro/Bar in Tel-Aviv. The best place to sit is in the bar, as stuff is extremely friendly and knowledgeable. You can start with the beer, which comes form all over the world, and needless to say, each served in its own proper glass. While you enjoy your first beer and glass and waiting for the food, your eye can rest on the walls full of scotch:
Among many bars, I’ve seen those where you will pay $500 for a shot, and but I never saw the one with such a selection of really great scotches which you can actually afford!
And then comes food – all fresh, succulent and great tasting:
Bread with Feta Cheese
calamari
and sausages
Of course the next step is the scotch. Based on the friendly recommendation, we couple of new scotches which we never had before. First one was coming form Speyside, a belnd of three different single malts, called Monkey Shoulder in the honor of those who developed a “monkey shoulder” condition throwing peat with the shovel, while making a great scotch for the rest of us:
Monkey Shoulder – very smooth and delicate, with the hint of smoke at the end
The next one was Laphroaig Triple Wood, matured in the 3 different kinds of wood barrels, as you can see on the label:
The smoke flavor and bite on this one were immense, like breathing the air coming from the smoker (or may be just chewing on the cigar :)). Too strong by itself, addition of 3 drops of water made a miracle – the scotch opened up beautifully, with big flavor profile and lots of depth.
And then… yep, a special dessert for the scotch lovers! Tartufo, made out of the best Belgian chocolate with addition of pepper and scotch:
Great way to finish the evening of great tasting food and drinks.
I know that the picture worth a thousand words, and this is why you can see a lot of pictures. However, one should really experience the taste, this is where picture fails short – and this is why, if you even the smallest opportunity – head to Norma Jean in Tel-Aviv, you will not be disappointed.
Cheers!
Last Bottle Sign Up ($10 credit)
Talk-A-Vino 