Dancing Spoon

Stopper Wars

Wine About

by J. Michael Wheeler

If a bottle of wine sealed with a cork spoils, you say the wine’s corked. If a bottle of wine sealed with a screw cap spoils, would you say the wine’s screwed?

Natural cork, the bark from the Portuguese cork tree has been keeping the air from bottled wine for over 300 years. But cork’s been in trouble for the past couple of decades. Cork taint, the musty “this wine’s gone bad” taste, is caused by the chemical compound TCA (trichloroanisole). TCA is introduced to a cork by a natural mold. It can occur at the harvesting, manufacturing, or storage stages. Imperfect corks can also allow too much oxygen into the bottle, termed random oxidation, and cause the wine to spoil.

Winemakers have recently been exploring alternative closures; the most popular of those have been plastic stoppers (12% of current world market) and the screw cap (7% of current world market). But many new closures are becoming available.

F&W’s Best Chefs '08

Chefs Best

by J. Michael Wheeler
Food & Wine Best Chefs 2008
Each year, for the last 20 years, Food and Wine magazine has picked up-and-coming chefs and dubbed them Best New Chefs. In 1998 that list contained Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller; a pretty auspicious start. The July ’08 issue presents this year’s crop of chefs who have "been in charge of kitchens for less than five years." The article also includes each chef's easiest recipe. It's interesting to note that five of the best ten chefs emphasize local ingredients.

Here are the results from Food and Wine (July ’08):

Old Time Summer Dishes

Cooking Simple

Carrie Gamble’s grandmother grew up on a 42-acre orchard farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania complete with chickens, cows and pigs. There was a bounty of farm fresh foods served at every meal. Carrie has collected those recipes and memories in Grandmother's Cookbook. Here she shares two of her grandmother's summertime recipes for a simple String Bean Salad and Corn and Apple Fritters.

Find "Green" Food

Green Be

by J. Michael Wheeler
The Map to Greener Eating
I'm a big fan of the Sundance Channel's The Green. It is "television's first regularly-scheduled programming destination dedicated entirely to the environment." It is presented by Robert Redford.

The Green online will present multimedia content focusing on the earth's ecology and concepts of "green" living that balance human needs with responsible care for the planet.

And a lot of that balance has to do with food. Growing, producing, shipping, and eating. As part of The Green there is ECO-MMUNITY, which consists of blogs, Greenzine, and now ECO-MMUNITY MAP that can help us find "organically delicious foods." You can search sections like Select Green Food and Farmer's Markets. Here's the link:

ORGANICALLY DELICIOUS FOODS
Selection of food is arguably the most personal environmental choice that a person will make in their lives. Discover food vendor options that can improve your health and satisfaction. We hope you enjoy what we have collected so far and encourage you to make markers for your favorite retail food locations.

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Too Hot to Cook Dinner

Gloria Cooking With

Too Hot to Cook Dinner
by Gloria Bakst
When summer becomes too much of a great thing, when it gets really hot and really humid the last thing you want to do is heat up the kitchen to cook dinner. And when it gets too hot even to grill, try this no-heat meal from Gloria.

This salad is so refreshing and cool to eat on a hot and humid night.  No cooking is involved. For protein I will add a container of lump crabmeat, sardines, or anchovies, and a hard boil egg. This is a very filling, delicious and easy meal.

Grill With Seaweed?

Cooking Outdoor

by J. Michael Wheeler
Burn Baby, Burn
Of course if you use a gas grill for your outdoor cooking your selection of fuels is, well, gas. But for those of us who prefer to cook on real fire, there are more choices. Here are some of them:

Lump Charcoal Usually made from softwood. It comes in a variety of sizes. Easy to light, but quick burning.

Charcoal Briquettes Slow burning, easy to find. Some claim they give food an unpleasant taste.

Self-igniting Charcoal Briquettes or lump charcoal treated with a flammable substance. Easy to light. Let all of that flammable substance burn away before cooking.

Wood Hardwoods like oak and olive burn slowly and the aromatic smoke imparts a great taste to the food. Wood fires must be tended carefully to keep an even and steady heat.

Inventing the Grill

Cooking Outdoor

by J. Michael Wheeler
Fire up the Grill (oh Buoy!)
Paint it black and the kettle grill pictured here looks pretty much like the one in over 85 million American backyards today. But this one is the very first. It was made in 1952 by George Stephen Sr., an avid backyard griller who was frustrated by the uncontrollable flame on the open braziers of the day. George worked at the Weber Brothers Metal Works, makers of marine buoys. Determined to build a better grill, he took one of the Weber buoys and cut it in half and then fashioned a dome shaped grill with a rounded lid. The backyard cookout has never been the same. (Neither was the Weber Brothers Metal Works. By the late 1950’s Stephen bought out the company to concentrate on making Weber Grills.)

For all of your grilling needs, visit the Grill Store at Dancing Spoon. Click here.

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Plank Grilled Snapper

Gloria Cooking With

Cedar Planked Snapper #2
by Gloria Bakst
Cedar planks add unique and intriguing flavors to your foods as they grill. Soak your planks in water for one hour or longer before grilling. (See Using Cedar Planks for Grilling) When the grill is hot put the plank on the grill, smooth side down and char, turn the wood over and then place fish or chicken on top to cook. The planks maybe reused.

This recipes tastes best with baby snapper fillets. Soak cedar planks for 1 hour or longer.