Port Dinner "Three Decades of Taylor" - July 2010

Continuing with wine "demolition" dinners theme; Rob and Wendy hosted a port demolition dinner in July 2010.

A "Three Decades of Taylor" 1975, 1985 and 1994 Taylor Fladgate ports.

The evening started with a white port and a savory cake made by Karen. The white port was a Ramos Pinto. Nutty, good flavors, good acid level, high alcohol level, good raisin-like flavors.

The savory cake was very good. The texture led us to believe that cormeal was an ingredient, but it wasn't...very nice combination with the white port.

Meanwhile, Rob decanted the ports. Of course the cork in the 1975 was very brittle and more or less completely fell apart. Pulling old corks is very tricky to do....Old corks get dry and crumble very easily.

Next we tasted the ports:

• 1975: Light red in color, still concentrated woody nose going toward nutty, some sandalwood character with spice. A nice old port.
• 1985: Brick Red. Not as concentrated as the 75 nose. A little brunt sugar in the nose. Still very good.
• 1994: Very purple in color, very concentrated grape-y nose, slight veggie character. Nice port, needs time to age.

The first course up was the Cauliflower soup. The recipe and my notes for this recipe are in another post, here the link...

http://myrecipesref.blogspot.com/2010/07/cauliflower-soup-with-stilton-port.html

The soup seemed to go well with all the ports. The 94 port seemed to get a little hotter in the finish with the soup. The 75 was just great with the soup, the 85 opened up with some nice nutty character in the nose and tasted very nice.

The sauté calamari with sweet pepper sauce was the next course. The calamari was very tender and the sauce was a nice sweet and spicy addition. I think that the white port went the best with this dish.

The main course was grilled pork with a mole sauce with a side of potatoes, apples, cabbage, and bacon with corm muffins. All the ports went with this dish and made me think that ports go with everything!

After drinking the ports with the above courses, we needed another wine to go with the cheese course and dessert. Rob opened a 77 Fonseca.

The Fonseca tasted different than the other ports with a greenish, minty flavor. Very nice, but just different.

and we finished the dinner with a selection of cheeses and a nice baked apricot that had great concrentrated flavors. Of course, the ports were great with the cheeses.

Fava Bean Recipes

This winter I planted Fava beans in the garden for spring harvest. I had saved seed from last year, and had a lot of seeds left over..... So I just threw them into the garden...and of course they all came up and I was overwhelmed with Fava beans during harvest.

I decided to throw the seeds into the garden because the plants are good for the soil as nitrogen fixers, and vineyards grow them as a green cover crop. e.g. they are better than weeds!

After having fresh Favas in salads for a few weeks, I needed to find some interesting Fava bean recipes.

Here is my favorite:

http://en.petitchef.com/recipes/fava-bean-pesto-with-shrimp-fid-848273

The recipe comes from the fabulous Manressa restaurant in Los Gatos. The recipe article calls for this dish to go with Verdelho wine, but I think that it is so good that it will go with almost any dry white wine, and would stand up to ones with some tropical fruit such as Verdelho or Malvasia, etc.

I made a few changes to fit what I wanted to do.....

I did not use a mortar to mash the beans, I just used my Cuisinart to puree the ingredients and that works well if you take care to not overdo it.... you want some texture.

The flavor of the mint is important. I have two kinds of mint in my garden; Pineapple and Chocolate. The pineapple mint is more delicate than the Chocolate which is very strong hot and peppery. I used the pineapple in the pesto, and chopped Chocolate mint as a garnish. I'm not sure I would use peppermint in this recipe....

I used about 1/2 of the olive oil called for in the recipe so the texture was more of a paste rather than a standard pesto.... I think this was a good choice for spreading on the bread, but if you use the pesto on pasta, add more oil{the called for amount}

I used a Italian country loaf sliced in half long-wise, brushed with olive oil and roasted. The pesto was spread on top, the shrimp added, topped with chopped mint, and salt and pepper. A drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice finished the dish. The bread was then cut into serving size.

I prepared this dish twice for our wine tasting group and

it was a BIG hit! very very good.

Two other recipes I prepared using the Fava Pesto....

1. Used it as a standard pesto with pasta.... very good, not as strongly flavored as basil pesto.

2. An appetizer dish inspired by a first course that we had at the "Taste" restaurant in Plymouth, CA.

We had the assignment to prepare a course to go with sparkling wine for our "Gourmet Dinner Group". Below is a picture of our course.

This recipe was inspired by the course at "Taste" so there was no real recipe.... it is the Fava Pesto, with a small amount of Baratta cheese, some crispy Prosciutto topped with chopped chocolate mint. We served the appetizer as a bite size portion in the Chinese soup spoons.

The Prosciutto was crisped in the microwave for 1 minute on high and chopped into bite sized pieces.

I served this dish cold, but I think it would be better served warm so that the creaminess of the Baratta cheese comes out, and the pesto is not so solid....

Notice the "Tomato sliders" dish in the background of the above photo that my wife Doris made....outstanding dish! and was the best of the night. The "Tomato Slider" dish will get it's own entry in this blog.

Cauliflower Soup with Stilton - port dinner

After the success of the Sauternes dinner, the group decided to have a port dinner. So after some brainstorming a few recipe ideas that would be different and "might" go with port came to light.

Doris and I are making Cauliflower Soup with Stilton with Chili Toasts.

The group thinks that hot spicy foods may go well with port... It's an adventure! The explorations is what's important... one way or another, we'll learn something.

Here's the link to the recipe.

Cauliflower Soup

The Ports that we are having with the dinner are:

• A white port {Wendy will provide.. the idea that this may go with the first course soup..}
• George and Doris: '75 Taylor
• Glenn and Sylvie: 85 Taylor
• Rob and Wendy: 94 Taylor

The dinner is tomorrow night, so an update will follo

w in a few days.

OK an update on the soup.... following the recipe will result in a very bland tasting soup which was very surprising given how much Stilton cheese it contained.....But I kind of anticipated that going in, so planned to garish with crispy bacon, and serve it with spicy, hot chili toasts.

However, the soup by itself was so bland that I had to add a teaspoon or so of salt, lots of ground pepper, and some garlic and onion powder.

Final additions at serving time were chives as a garnish, and a drizzle of truffle oil.

So after the above changes, the dish was very good, definitely a make again recipe. The chili toasts are a necessary side with the soup.