Culinary Adventures with Camilla

I initially tracked down a bottle of wine labeled - through an online vendor - as coming from the Jura in preparation for David's, of Cooking Chat ,   French Winophiles October event. Then I paired it with a new-to-us dish. Upon further reading, however, I realized that while the wine was from the wrong region, the dish was from the region where the wine was made. Boo. At least the dish and the wine matched! So, now, you don't have to wait till October to get this recipe. It's perfect if you're still in the throes of winter where you live. Plus I was able to locate two bottles of wine from the correct region. Stay tuned for those... In the Glass In retrospect, I should have known that the wine was from the wrong region as I just poured a bottle of Quenard wine for our focus on the Savoie earlier this month. You can read that post A Taste of #vindesavoie: Älpermakkaronen + 2018 JP & JF Quenard Vin de Savoie Chignin  where I write about both Savoie ...

Though a cognate for what comes out of a bright yellow squeeze bottle, this relish has very little in common with that Easter egg-colored condiment.  Mostarda  is a chunky  agrodolce  (sour-sweet) sauce made with whatever fruit you have on hand and is a delicious topping for everything from cheese to roasted meats. Inspired by this passage in Crystal King's The Chef's Secret* , I added two different mostarde  to our Ab Ovo Usque Ad Mala Thanksgiving menu. "'The mostarda you probably know is made with all sorts of fruits, such as figs, raisins, and pears, but in Venezia the mostarda is made with quince, which you can't always find in Roma. Bartolomeo would always lament how much better the mostarda was in Venezia'" (pg. 153). I served the two different mostarde with three different game sausages. This quince-apple mostarda went nicely with the duck and the boar sausages while my cranberry-orange mostarda complemented the venison sausages r...

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf Donati Family Vineyard, one of the  #MerlotMe   event sponsors. Complimentary wine was provided for this post and this page may contain affiliate links. However, all opinions expressed here are my own. October is always a fun wine pairing month as I take part in the month-long #MerlotMe event. And, because, we get many wine samples to taste, I plan many, many dinners to try them all in the weeks leading up to October.  In My Glass Donati Family Vineyard* is completely new to me and I was eager to share these wines with my mother and father-in-law during their weekend visit. I am also embarrassed to admit that I have never tried any wines from the Paicines AVA, despite their proximity to me here on the Monterey Peninsula. So happy to have made this acquaintance. Paicines is about an hour east of me, approximately 17 miles north of the Pinnacles National Monument, and consists of about 4,500 acres ...

Welcome to the June edition of Wine Pairing Weekend. This month Gwendolyn, of Wine Predator, is hosting. You can read her invitation: here . And she invited us to explore and post about Australian wines. If you're reading this early enough, join us on Twitter - Saturday, June 9th - at 8am Pacific time; follow along with hashtag #WinePW. The Down Under Offerings Liz of What’s in that Bottle? says, “You Say Syrah, Australia Says Shiraz.” J.R. of Great Big Reds will be pouring Great Big Reds of Summer: Kreuz, TheBoxer, #WinePW . David of Cooking Chat will be making Grilled Steak with Garlic Butter and an Aussie Shiraz Blend . Lisa of The Wine Chef says Surf And Turf On The Barbie — Shrimp And Lamb Paired With McGuigan Wines Nicole of Somm’s Table  will be Cooking to the Wine: Dandelion Vineyards Shiraz and a Miso-Soy Strip Loin Feast . Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm is Taking a Second Voyage with B...

So, this season I was determined to have the robotics team eat well during both the build season and the competitions. I started a meal train and different families signed up for different weeks. For the season kick-off, I brought lasagna. Apparently, it's been the talk of the team for weeks. One day at breakfast, this happened... R: You know the kids at robotics were talking about your lasagna. C: What about it? R: They were wondering when you were on the schedule to bring food again...and J1 asked if you could bring lasagna. J2 said, "It doesn't matter what she brings, it'll be good. I've had her corned beef and cabbage, too. Besides, it's rude to make requests like that." R: No, her friends make requests all the time. It's not rude. It's how you get what you want from my mom. You just ask. Too true. Well, apparently, they took the advice to heart and when I stopped in to see if they needed anything (you know, I was thinkin...

This quintessential New Orleans dish, holds a special place in my heart. When R was a toddler, he wasn't very good at sitting still for dinner. He would take one bite, run away from the table, come back, take one more bite, and leave again. The sole exception to this pattern was when my mom and dad picked up red rice and beans from a local restaurant. R loved it, sat through the entire meal, and devoured his entire bowl. So, when we were planning the Cajun menu for D's birthday party, R excitedly agreed to make the red beans and rice. I used the Domingo Rojo beans from Rancho Gordo , one of my favorites! I used to buy a ton of dried beans whenever we were at the Ferry Building in San Francisco till I discovered them at Happy Girl Kitchen here in Pacific Grove. Woohoo. Ingredients 1 pound dried red beans, soaked overnight 1 T butter 1 T olive oil 1 C diced organic white onion (you can use yellow, too) 1 C diced organic green bell pepper 1 C diced organic cel...

On our way off the mountain earlier in the week, I noticed a sign near the California-Nevada stateline. It read: "40 Craft Beers on Draft." Ummm...heck yeah. So, when timing worked out after another day near the summit of Mt. Rose, we stopped at the sign. I actually had no idea what the name of the business actually was. Turns out it's the Mellow Fellow at King's Beach. The boys objected strenuously as we pulled into the parking lot. "Mom," they whined, "we can't drink beer. Do we have to stop here?" Yes, look at the line below '40 Craft Beers.' Sausages! Along with the ridiculous variety (read number-that-sets my-little beer-loving-heart-aflutter) of beers on tap, they also had local sausages. Game sausages. I was bummed that the last elk sausage was taken by the customer before us. But we were still able to get venison and pheasant sausages from Village Meats and Mountain Valley Meats. The boys' take on the sausag...

I had some leftover sausages from the dish I was going to make for Carnevale. And I wanted to try something new (to us). I remember seeing a photo of Toad in the Hole and decided to give it a go. The origin on the dish's name - Toad in the Hole - is somewhat disputed. The explanation that resonates with me: it resembles a toad sticking its head out of a hole. This was a hit for seventy-five percent of the family. The Enthusiastic Kitchen Elf said: "It's too eggy - and there isn't enough flavor." But, heck, it was easy. And, for the record, I thought it had plenty of flavor. I read several different version of this recipe before coming up with this process. Note: this is my variation; it's not ultra-traditional. Ingredients cooked sausages (ours were chicken andouille - remember...I wrote non-traditional!) butter for greasing pan 1¼ C milk (I used whole milk) 3 eggs, lightly beaten 1 C flour (I used a white whole wheat) freshly ground salt fr...

Thanks for a (gentle) nudge from the Enthusiastic Kitchen Elf, we are getting back on track in our Cooking Around the World Adventure for the summer. So, here we are at Serbia. On the Map Serbia is country located in the Balkans, sharing its borders with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, and Albania. It is landlocked, although access to the Adriatic is available through Montenegro, and the Danube River provides shipping access to inland Europe and the Black Sea. from LonelyPlanet.com A Few Fun Facts Most Serbian last names end with the letters “ić”. The five most common are: Jovanović, Petrović, Nikolić, Marković, and Đorđević. In 274 AD, Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor, was born in the Serbian city of Nis. Between the 3rd and 4th centuries, a total of eighteen emperors, accounting for twenty percent of all Roman rulers, were born in what is modern day Serbia. The only Serbian word that is used a...