Christmas Baking

There is one Christmas Day ritual which JC has to follow: eating panettone for breakfast.
To fulfill this duty I made Mataloc this year.

Mataloc is a panettone-like bread from the lake Como area in northern Italy.
I used a recipe from "The Italian Baker" by Carol Field. Comparing with the panettone recipe in the same book, they are very similar with maybe little less butter for Mataloc.

I didn’t have a panettone pan so used a cake pan. 

The outcome was ... colossal!

The texture could be similar to brioche than airy panettone but it tasted just like panettone.

I have never had Mataloc. I’ve never even seen it therefore I don’t know if the Mataloc I made had even the slightest resemblance to the original bread, but JC loved it and that’s all that matters, at least for this mission.

For the dessert I made the Black Forest cake.
It is the traditional German cake with Kirschwasser flavor.
Since the Black Forest cake uses whipped cream, not butter cream, it is of course sweet but there is some lightness in its sweetness rather than being heavy or rich.

The sponge cake was soaked with the Kirschwasser syrup and cream was whipped with Kirschwasser, so we had this cake with Kirschwasser.

Cleanliness of the spirit together with the light sweetness of the cake created smooth pairing.

Next day we had this cake with the sparkling wine.

Domaine Collin Crémant de Limoux
This is a rosé sparkling wine from southern France made with a traditional method.
Fresh aromas and flavors of apple, plum and cherry with bitterness of apple skin.

I thought that the bitterness of the wine would collide with the cake but, in fact, with the cake the bitterness disappeared and the wine went good with the cake, especially with the cherry and surprisingly very good with the cream！

Prima Materia Tasting Room

Even with the shelter in place order we can still enjoy wine tasting.
Last month, we went to Prima Materia’s tasting room In Oakland.

Prima Materia is a winery in the Lake county, California. 

It is a small wine producer with a focus on the traditional style wine making and its tasting room in Oakland is also small but open for tasting with the outside tasting space.

Their tasting menu comes like this!

Chardonnay
Clean citrus/flower aromas with a little bit of bitterness of citrus zest. A hint of bruised apple. 

The texture is oily like ripe pear.

Rosé
This wine is a blend of Barbera and Aglianico.
Complex aromas of fresh coffee beans, candied rose, liquorice, red cherry and strawberry are supported by good acidity, bitterness of grapefruit and a tiny tannin of dried fruits.

Sangiovese
Freshness of mint and tomato stems, and richness of plum and bitter chocolate.
Well integrated tannin. It is a clean, easy to drink wine.

Negroamaro
Marshmallow, fresh black cherry and black olives.

The richness is blended with well integrated tannin.

Barbera
Sweet aromas of cherry blossom, herbs, cranberry and cherry.

Fruits, acid and tannin are well balanced.

Refosco
Refosco is a red grape from northern Italy.
Rich aromas of sweet tobacco, black cherry, pomegranate, cooked tomatoes and dark chocolate are balanced with a good amount of acidity.

Aglianico
Complex aromas and flavors of spice, herb, coffee, violet, cherry and raspberry.
Tannin is high but well integrated and it's easy to drink especially for Aglianico.


All of them are well-made, easy to drink wines with pleasant finish.
I don’t see any reason not to want to drink them!

Thanksgiving Lamb Dinner

The turkey is a staple of the Thanksgiving dinner table.

However, since we are not a big fan of the turkey meat our Thanksgiving dinner menu rarely includes a turkey.

This year was not an exception: we had Lamb Wellington for the Thanksgiving dinner.

I made the puff pastry the day before and JC made the lamb Wellington with it.

We opened red Bordeaux wine for this dinner.

Les Pagodes de Cos Saint-Estephe 2014

The full-bodied red wine from the left bank.

The first impression was the abundance of fruits like ripe red and black fruits or fruit syrup, then herbs and cigar gradually appeared.

Soft tannin and the fruitiness made this wine very approachable.

And the pairing of lamb and red Bordeaux was of course success.

Cake salé

Baking a lot means eating sweets a lot.
Even I, who’s got quite a sweet tooth, started to feel like that I was taking too much sugar.

I wanted to keep baking but reduce sugar intake, so I chose Cake salé as my next baking project.

Cake salé means savory cake in French.
Ingredients are just like a cake: flour, egg, fat, but without sugar.
Fillings I used were olives, dried tomatoes, caramelized onion, corned beef and cheese.
I also needed to add white wine so asked JC to get some.

He brought Giacomelli Azienda Agricola Giardino dei Vescovi Colli di Luni Vermentino 2017
White wine from Liguria, Italy, with the beautiful golden color and the aromas of orange blossoms and a hint of hazelnut.

He chose this because the savory quality and the rich texture of the wine would be good with the cake.

Without sugar the cake didn’t rise like sweet cakes but the taste was good.
The texture of the cake gives faint perception of sweetness which makes saltiness of fillings round.
As a rule of thumb, wine used in cooking was good to pair with the food.

19th Century Beef Pudding

Since I mostly stay home due to the pandemic I bake more often. 

To bake often it would be more fun to do it with some project in mind.

British baking is always intriguing to me. I’ve been fascinated by English pies and puddings in story books and pictures from when I was a kid.

One thing always puzzles me in the British baking is suet.
Suet is the fat of cows and mutton, and I couldn’t really imagine how it would be integrated in pastries - it seems to be a good time to challenge baking with suet!

Shredded suet

I used a recipe of 19th century beef pudding from Regula Ysewijn’s Pride and Pudding.

Suet for baking can’t be any fat. It has to be the specific hard fat found around kidneys and its higher melting point of between 113 and 122F makes it ideal for cooking, creating a light texture without burning quickly.
Fortunately the butcher we contacted knew exactly what we were looking for.

To make the suet dough mix suet and dry ingredients well then add liquid. 

Roll out the dough then place it in the mold. 

Add the beef filling, pour the beer and cover with the leftover dough.

JC was excited with this project too and made the filling with beef, vegetables and herbs.
Steam for one hour. 

I thought the dough would be very greasy since it was made with beef fat, and didn’t grease the mold thinking the fatty dough would be easy to be removed from the mold. Mistake. 

The dough wasn’t greasy and it stuck inside the mold.
It took a big crack on the pudding to take it out from the mold but the flavor was surprisingly good.

The combination of the beef filling and the dough tasted ... like Chinese buns (and I love Chinese buns)!

JC opened Producteurs Plaimont Saint Mont 2016
He bought this Tannat-based red blend wine from southwest France at Costco. It’s not easy to find affordable Tannat here.

It was full-bodied wine with fruits somehow overshadowed by the strong structure. 

It wouldn’t be a kind of wine to enjoy by itself but was good with the strong flavor of the pudding.

I'm overall satisfied with the suet in savory pudding project.
Next time I’d like to try making sweet pudding with suet.

Tomato Tarte Tatin

This time of the year we are gifted with the abundance of tomatoes in the garden.

I usually make tomato sauce but this year I wanted to try something different and found an interesting recipe: Cherry Tomato Tarte Tatin !

The recipe is from the book The Art of The Tart by Tamasin Day-Lewis.
It’s a real tarte tatin, not just the name. 

The filling is simply cherry tomatoes with caramelized balsamic vinegar and baked under the puff pastry.

It’s very simple recipe - after making the pastry dough there was nothing really left to do - therefore I didn’t have too much expectation but it was really tasty!

The picture in the book shows bright red color of tomatoes but my tomatoes were baked much longer (I used a bigger pan) and lost the beautiful color.
It’s less appealing but for the taste, well-baked tomatoes were sweeter and suited for this dish, I guess.

The wine we had with was Kirkland Rioja Reserva 2015

Very good wine with lots of fruits and soft tannin, especially for its price ($7.99!).
Its concentrated red fruits went very good with sweet and sour baked cherry tomatoes.

Oven Efficient Dinner

The Shelter in place order is still in effect but stores have been gradually opening with restrictions.

The other day I was walking neighborhood and saw an antique shop with the display outside the store. There I found a cute orange Pyrex with a lid which I fell in love with instantly and brought back home.

This is a perfect size for the Basque cheesecake I wanted to make.

Basque cheesecake is baked at very high temperature to create its distinct burned surface. It is the same temperature as baking bread so I planned to bake baguette at the same time. Then JC decided to cook the lamb for dinner in the oven too.

He seared the lamb then finished cooking in the oven.

We had two wines for this dinner:

Clos Cibonne Côtes de Provence Tibouren 2018

Castelli Green Valley of Russian River Valley Nebbiolo 2014

Refreshing rose wine with a hint of citrus peel-like bitterness cut grease of the dish, and the Nebbiolo with high, soft tannin was a good companion to the flavorful lamb.

Dessert was the cheesecake ... well, it had to be rested overnight so we had the dessert next day.

For this Basque cheesecake, we had Primator Double Bock. 

This is a dark colored beer from Czech Republic; It’s rich with fruit, even tastes sweet, but light in body.

Pairing was great. It tasted like bitter sweet coffee.