All about Men and the women who love them!
What does it really mean to be a fisherman? What about a life always depending on the power of the nature? Find it out in Andrea Vagnoni’s words and images.10000x better (and faster) than take-out! And the chicken is perfectly tender with the creamiest, most flavor-packed sauce ever!
When Ben was out of town last week, two very important things happened.
One. Butters was sulking hardcore, waiting for his dad. Even though I’m the one that has been feeding him, walking him, clothing him and loving him every single second.
Two. I had no one to share this chicken tikka masala with! So I had all four servings in one whole day. Oh, and I also had maybe 5 pieces of garlic naan to sop up all that creamy sauciness.
So here are my tips.
Chicken breasts can be substituted, but chicken thighs are highly recommended here.
Make sure you have plenty of naan for serving, preferably garlic naan.
Be sure to make this when your husband is out of town. Because you won’t want to share this.
10000x better (and faster) than take-out! And the chicken is perfectly tender with the creamiest, most flavor-packed sauce ever!
Tag @damn_delicious on Instagram and hashtag it #damndelicious.
The post Easy Chicken Tikka Masala appeared first on Damn Delicious.
On the job, sommeliers may nudge diners toward certain personal favorites, but ultimately they serve the wines their customers demand. On their own time, in their own cellars, though, they can lay down the wines they love best.
We asked nine wine pros from Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners what’s in their personal cellars, and their answers included both the classics and the up-and-comers, from Rhône legends to Aussie Rieslings—to “I just end up drinking it all.” Read about these experts’ collections, and get some inspiration for your own!
Wine Spectator: What’s in your cellar now? What types of wine do you personally collect?
Richard Hanauer, beverage director for Chicago-based RPM Restaurants, including two locations of Best of Award of Excellence winner RPM Italian and RPM Steak
Hermitage—buckets and buckets of Hermitage, red and white. Since my youngest wine-drinking days, I have always been obsessed with “the wines of the hill.” Chave, Chapoutier and Jaboulet are the regular occurrences, but I also have bottlings from smaller wineries and co-ops. When I’m not focusing on my favorite hill during the weekends, I love drinking Australian whites and Loire reds during the week.
Nancy Oakes, chef and co-owner, and John Lancaster, wine director, of Best of Award of Excellence winner Boulevard in San Francisco
Oakes: Right now I’m on a big white Burgundy kick—[and] I picked the wrong time to be on a white Burgundy kick because other people are on it too. I have a whole wall of Cabernets that I rarely touch.
We have a house in Healdsburg, [Calif.], so I also try to collect the wine of my friends up there, so like Radio-Coteau, and I still love Kistler and Rochioli, my direct neighbors.
Lancaster: At home we drink a lot of Loire Valley whites, Sancerre, stuff like that. Like Nancy, I love Burgundy, white and red. I have some Bordeaux in my cellar; when I first started collecting wine I collected Mouton-Rothschild. But mainly my cellar is Northern Rhône, white and red Burgundy, and a little bit of New World stuff.
Lenka Davis, wine director at Award of Excellence winner Barbareño in Santa Barbara, Calif.
After evacuating our house twice last winter, I drank the best bottles with close friends. I don’t have a single regret and keep the stock now to bare minimum. After all, I built the wine list in the restaurant I work for around the wines I would like to drink anytime, and have 200-plus choices I can make every night.
Ryan Bailey, wine director at Best of Award of Excellence winner NoMad Los Angeles
My cellar is pretty diverse and consists of stuff I am aging, as well as bottles close at hand to drink when friends come over. I have a solid amount of Champagne, older Rieslings, white Burgundies, younger Northern Rhône Syrahs and some random older bottles from California.
Luciano De Riso, wine director at Best of Award of Excellence winner Grand Old House in George Town, Cayman Islands
I enjoy mature Italian wines—Guado al Tasso, Giusto di Notri and Flaccianello are my favorites. Southern Rhône reds are always present—Pégaü, old Beaucastel—and Cornas from Clape are standouts for me.
I do collect based on important dates. I was born in 1982, and I have a few of them, including Sassicaia and Cheval-Blanc. 2015 is the year that I will invest the most in, as it is my son’s birth year. I already have a Duclot case, Sassicaia, a few Rhônes, and Leflaive whites from this great vintage.
Seán Gargano, wine director at Award of Excellence winner The Legal Eagle in Dublin, Ireland
My cellar only holds what I drink on a weekly basis. My big regret is that I did not begin collecting earlier. I used to tend to get impatient and drink most of what I had intended to lay down. Then my children came along, and they suck up all of the money I would use to invest in wine. Little nuisances.
Elizabeth-Rose Mandalou, wine director at Award of Excellence winner Allora in Sacramento, Calif.
My restaurant focuses on Italian wine, so naturally I have a mostly Italian wine at home. I also have a lot of wine that is sentimental; several bottles of Franciacorta I picked up on my last visit to Italy a few months back, gifts from friends and guests, and lots of magnums.
I am an equal-opportunist when it comes to wine, so sometimes there will be something really random; Georgian or Macedonian, just for the sake of trying new wine! I do have a few nice bottles of Rioja and Bordeaux, too. The most unfortunate aspect of my collection at home is that it is shockingly humble considering my line of work.
Carlin Karr, wine director at Best of Award of Excellence winner Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder, Colo.
I like to drink all kinds of wines but always have grower Champagne, Chablis, Grüner Veltliner, Northern Rhône Syrah, Sangiovese, southern French reds and whites from producers like Mas Jullien and Château Simone, Nebbiolo and Bordeaux with age in our wine fridge at home. Those are on my regular playlist. My husband and I also have an off-site cellar where we stash away full cases of more blue-chip Burgundy, Barolo and Rhône producers.
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Duncan Welgemoed of Africola in Adelaide Australia presents an interesting point of view at Food on The Edge.
What happens when 26 of the world’s cutting edge chefs combine forces with 20 contemporary artists? Find out from 9 Feb to 12 May at Cookbook in Montpelier.
Here’s our second instalment of #FDLMoment: our favourite pics on Instagram capturing fine dining moments all over the world.
Michelin starred Lorenzo Cogo and Yasuhiro Fujio improvise in a one-off menu, blurring the boundaries between Italian and Japanese cuisine. See the dishes.
Champagne is one of the most iconic wines for special occasions. Here are 10 simple tips to serving it at its finest, with the ritual it deserves.The shareholders of Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti have appointed Perrine Fenal to replace Henry-Frédéric Roch as co-director together with Aubert de Villaine. Fenal is the daughter of Lalou Bize-Leroy, who served as co-director from 1974 until 1992 and now heads Domaine Leroy.
DRC has been run by members of the de Villaine and Leroy families since Henri Leroy, grandfather of Perrine Fenal, bought 50 percent of its shares in 1942. Leroy was succeeded by his daughter Lalou. When she left in 1992, her late sister Pauline Roch’s son Charles took the helm with de Villaine, but died in a car accident three months later. His brother, Henry-Frédéric replaced him, serving until November 2018, when he passed away.
Stay on top of important wine stories with Wine Spectator’s free Breaking News Alerts.
“For 26 years, he has accompanied me with competence and friendship,” de Villaine told Wine Spectator. “Henry had a strong idea of the duties of our families regarding the domaine. He was on my side for all the important decisions we had to take. Our collaboration was excellent. He was very appreciated at the domaine and by all his peers in Burgundy for his kindness, human approach and generosity.”
From 1992 until 2004, Fenal, 55, was DRC’s exclusive importer and distributor in Switzerland, where she resides. Since then, she has been a member of the domaine’s advisory board. That role will now be filled by her cousin, Isabelle Roch.
Zooey Deschanel, actor, musician and OG Millennial, has played a kooky roommate (New Girl), elf love interest (Elf) and ukulele (her band She & Him), and she can now add vineyard farmhand to her résumé. Deschanel visited Napa’s Long Meadow Ranch with MasterChef emeritus and host of the online series Purpose Project Alejandro Toro, on the show’s latest episode—and the ranchers quickly put them to work.
In the segment, the property’s farm to table manager Kipp Ramsey first takes the duo out to massage some dirt and plant kale, then leads them in picking tomatoes and herbs, and preparing a salad and squash risotto in the kitchen. Finally, all sit with Long Meadow owner Laddie Hall for a midday repast: tomato tartare with kasundi and egg yolk, and pork belly with green tomato and beet BBQ, among other dishes, Ramsey relayed to Unfiltered. The group wash it down with glasses of the winery’s Anderson Valley Chardonnay and rosé of Pinot Noir, as well as Napa Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc.
“I believe [Deschanel and Toro] are doing a great job to spread the word on how people can source and grow their food,” Ramsey said via email.
The visit came about because, while Deschanel once played a woman fleeing a toxic attack on humanity launched by the earth’s trees (The Happening; spoiler alert?), her relationship with the plant community in real life is much more positive: She’s a sustainable food activist, and Long Meadow practices organic and biodiverse farming. The garden powers on-site restaurant Farmstead, a Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winner.
“We had a chance to peek at the ‘whole process,’ understanding that what truly completes full-circle farming, in this case, is the commitment to community people like Kipp Ramsey and Laddie Hall have,” Toro told Unfiltered via email. “So once again I get to circle back on my mission, which is spreading the good word through food, travel and community.”
Purpose Project, produced by Tastemade and Capital One, isn’t done with North Bay wine country there, though: Toro later visits Garden Creek Vineyards and noshes at Sebastopol’s Zazu Kitchen with wine folks Chris Benziger, and Dan Barwick and Sonia Byck-Barwick of Paradise Ridge; the former lost his home and the latter their winery in the 2017 wildfires. He ends his trip picking clusters and tasting wine at Ceja Vineyards, owned and run by the kids and grandchildren of immigrant campesino vineyard workers.
“We even had the opportunity to stomp on some of our grapes. It was the classic ‘I Love Lucy‘ old-fashioned introduction to winemaking—unforgettable experience to say the least!” marketing and sales director Dalia Ceja, who also appears in the segment, told Unfiltered.
Perhaps no Bostonian this side of Sam Adams is more closely associated with beer than New England Patriots tight end and spring break avatar Rob Gronkowski. But after a long and illustrious career of crushing defenses and Buds Light, the 29-year-old has earned a respite from the years of cheap hits and suds his body has been subjected to, and at this week’s Super Bowl victory parade, Gronk signaled as much with his beverage of choice: a bottle of 2014 Hundred Acre Napa Valley Cabernet.
Gronk is ready for the Patriots’ parade with a full bottle
(via @7News) pic.twitter.com/NNLaI0P2eP
— ESPN (@espn) February 5, 2019
“A lot of these guys, their public persona is that they’re rough and tough football players, but they’ve got sophisticated tastes,” Hundred Acre founder and owner Jayson Woodbridge told Unfiltered. While the rest of the team partook of Luc Belaire bubbly after Sunday night’s triumph, Gronk kept the wine party flowing on his duck boat in Boston before switching to beer and the other questionable edible he is known for, Tide Pods.
“I’m in Australia right now, so at the crack of dawn here, before I even woke up, my phone just starts going crazy,” Woodbridge said, after photos of Gronk swigging his wine started appearing online. “People writing everything from, ‘I hate the Patriots, but I love this guy’s tastes’ to ‘He’s awesome, he’s an animal, I love it.'”
Woodbridge could not confirm or deny if Gronkowski ever visited the winery, though he did acknowledge he is pro-Patriots. “How they get people riled up—that’s the fun part.”
When artist Sam Debey accidentally spilled coffee on a watercolor he was painting years ago, his first thought was that the project was ruined beyond repair. But he noticed that the way the coffee stretched and dried across the page “had a really neat effect,” and the mistake turned into a medium, with Debey gaining a reputation for his coffee paintings. It wasn’t long before Debey tried another drinkable, dark substance that proved to be even more difficult but stimulating to work with: wine.
Courtesy of Sam Debey
“With coffee you can make it extra strong for darker values or dilute it for lighter ones, but with wine you don’t have that flexibility,” Debey told Unfiltered. Now, his wine purchases are two-fold—he’ll pour out less than a sip for each painting and then sip the rest himself. Both his palate and palette require drier, more tannic reds. “To anyone giving wine-painting a shot, I would suggest steering clear of white wines, unless you’re painting a polar bear on a snowy backdrop,” he said. “Also you don’t want anything too sweet, because that will make the painting sticky or maybe even rot over time.”
Debey’s subject matter differs from past wine-artists who’ve dabbled in comics, architectural renderings and blotches. Using a calligraphy quill and a fine brush, Debey sketches “quirky” ideas that tell a story—like his plane-with-wine-glasses-instead-of-engines painting. “Subjects [as] absurd as the medium I’m using [are] the way I like to go.”
You may have ? the news yesterday about the Unicode Consortium’s new batch of emojis for 2019. Did you need a visual shorthand while texting “garlic,” “yo-yo,” “falafel,” “safety vest,” “banjo” or “orangutan”? Congratulations, you have been given voice.
But if you were invested in the Great #WhiteWineEmoji Campaign of last summer and fall, you no doubt immediately scrolled down to the “drinks” category of the new v.12 emoji list only to find “mate” (hipster tea), “ice cube” (famously not a liquid) and “beverage box,” which theoretically could contain white wine, but it’s not quite what the wine-emoji agitators at Kendall-Jackson had in mind.
The company, which has spearheaded the design and Unicode proposal for the white wine emoji, fired off an admirably salty press release this morning: “Where’s a white wine emoji when you need one? That’s what Kendall-Jackson is asking. It would’ve come in handy for their virtual cheers yesterday, when news broke of the 230 new emojis just announced.”
K-J director of marketing Maggie Curry obliged us with a more detailed update on the situation. “The development of a new emoji is a technical and lengthy process, and one of the obstacles facing the white wine emoji actually involves the adoption of a new technology for color variation for all emojis,” she explained via email. “Once in place, it would allow for different colors of the same emoji—as with skin tones” if you press and hold on your phone.
“Who would ever think a winery would have a part in new technology implementation and an emoji for the global keyboard across the world’s billions of phones? It is exciting to say the least.” K-J is now submitting a new proposal and hoping the Consortium approves it at one of their upcoming conclaves in April or July. That would allow a rollout sometime in the spring-to-fall 2020 timeframe. For now, we raise our beverage boxes to that.
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