Tag: Cooking

Legendary French chef Jacques Pépin opens MAD5 symposium with a talk about his craft and how learning the skills is a foundation to express your talent.

Chef Josh Niland’s battle with cancer in childhood taught him resilience. A skill which bred success for his restaurant Saint Peter ad Fish Butchery.

The new edition of SPYC is coming: apply now to join the world’s biggest talent search to find the best young chef in the world!

Make-ahead freezer-packs! Now you have ready-made smoothies for the entire week. Simply add your milk and blend! That’s it!

I’m finally doing the 2019 New Year, New You resolutions here. I’m just about one month late!

But hey, better late than never, right? Plus, I need to be doing something to balance out this and this.

So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re prepping for the week ahead with these make-ahead smoothie freezer-packs!

Simply assemble your smoothie ingredients into mason jars, pop them into the freezer and freeze. (You can also use quart-size freezer bags if you don’t have enough space in the freezer. Either will work just perfectly.)

That’s it. I’m serious. That’s really really it.

When you’re ready for your smoothie, simply take out your jar from the freezer and blend with your choice of milk. Boom. Done.

The post Freezer Green Smoothie Packs appeared first on Damn Delicious.

The nation’s top charity wine auction raised nearly $16 million last week. Murky weather did not dampen the excitement at the 2019 Naples Winter Wine Festival, held Jan. 24–27 at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. Saturday’s live auction raised nearly $13 million, narrowly surpassing last year’s $12.8 million. And with online auction results still coming in, the event total could eventually exceed $16 million. Since its 2001 inception, the festival has raised more than $191 million for children in need in Collier County, Fla.

A vertical wine tasting and luncheon on Thursday, starring Burgundy’s Maison Joseph Drouhin and Oregon’s Domaine Drouhin, kicked off the weekend. That was followed by Meet the Kids Day and a vintners dinner on Friday, which showcased 18 celebrity chefs, including Charlie Palmer and Tom Colicchio, and more than 30 winemakers, including honored vintners Daphne and Bart Aruajo of Accendo Cellars in Napa.

The excitement persisted during the event’s live-auction main event, featuring 60 lots offering a range of experiences including fine wine, luxury cars and a trip to the 2020 Olympics. The live auction’s Fund-a-Need lot, earmarked for children’s mental health initiatives, raised almost $3 million.

---

Want to get the latest news on collectible wines and the auction market? Sign up for Wine Spectator‘s free Collecting e-mail newsletter and get a new top-rated wine review, collecting Q&As and more, delivered straight to your inbox every other week!

---

Other top wine lots included a four-person visit to Bordeaux’s five first-growths, and bottles from the 1982 vintages of Château Haut-Brion, Château Latour, Château Margaux and Château Mouton-Rothschild and a five-liter bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild’s 1982. The lot sold for $240,000. A lot featuring eight rare double magnums of Screaming Eagle’s first Cabernet Sauvignons, from 1992 to 1999, sold for $350,000.

Four couples won the chance to join Shahpar and Darioush Khaledi of Napa’s Darioush winery aboard a luxury yacht for a cruise along the coasts of southern Italy and Croatia, and four double magnums of Darioush Darius II Cabernet Sauvignon 2015. The lot sold for $400,000.

We have dozens of recipes to make sure your super bowl party’s a winner, from burger to gluten free and vegan options, take your pick and make a winning menu.

You’ve probably seen Zac Posen’s gowns, handbags and accessories on red carpet–strutting celebrities, or his appearances as a judge on Project Runway and on his 2017 Netflix documentary House of Z. But long before his career in fashion began, the American designer spent his childhood in the kitchen mimicking his mom’s baking with clay models of pies. “Experimenting with food developed into a great love of the creative,” Posen says.

In 2017 Posen, 38, published a cookbook, Cooking with Zac: Recipes From Rustic to Refined (Rodale Books); he frequently posts pictures of his kitchen successes on social media under the hashtag #cookingwithzac. “Food for me is my fashion detox,” he explains. “It’s what I do on the weekends, it’s what I do when I go home. It’s really my fashion release.”

The longtime love affair with food eventually sparked a passion for wine. Adding to his typical client list of models and celebrities, Posen has dressed up bottles of VieVité rosé and Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio, deeming fashion and wine the “perfect match.” Posen spoke to Wine Spectator editorial assistant Brianne Garrett about his favorite pairings from his cookbook, his “nerdy” fascination with the history and science of wine, and his surprising connection to the Champagne region.

Wine Spectator: What cultivated your love of food and wine?
Zac Posen: I’ve always cooked. I grew up in a very creative household, and my father [is] a painter, Stephen Posen. At the end of the day he would cook, every day, and he believed very strongly about having dinner together as a family in a very traditional manner.

Growing up, I have to give major credit to New York City, a food capital. I grew up in SoHo, and SoHo was not a residential area, so there weren’t really supermarkets or food shops. But what we did have was Chinatown, from the produce to the fish to the Asian ingredients. And we had Little Italy—amazing pastas, cured meats [and] cheeses.

By the time I was in my early teens, I would voraciously read cookbooks and watch pretty much any cooking shows that I could find on TV. I love to entertain, and I have cultivated a repertoire of different menus and learning about different ingredients, and then that leads us to wine.

WS: When did wine enter the mix?
ZP: My grandfather on my mother’s side opened a liquor store shortly after Prohibition in New York City. My grandparents were kind of self-cultured people, and although I never knew the wine store—it wasn’t around by the time I was born—I think that heritage, and understanding his search and quest for importing and bringing different wines and spirits to his store, was something that was in my household.

My first fashion show experience was sponsored by Ecco Domani over 17 years ago. I won something the first year called the Ecco Domani Award—a fashion fund where they found emerging designers and talent and gave them a prize. If I [hadn’t won] the prize, I would never have been able to put on my [own] fashion show. Then, three years ago, we started on a two-year project on the development of labeling [with Ecco Domani], and then that led to last summer’s introduction to a really luxe, niche brand called VieVité and developing a gorgeous rosé for the summer. It all starts with tasting the wine.

WS: How does wine play a role in your cookbook?
ZP: I feel like wine is like a great perfume, and it’s a really personal thing. There was a big question when I was doing my cookbook [whether] we were going to do a cocktail section or a wine-pairing element to it. I definitely have some writings in the book about pairing with wine, but I really wanted to give that personal trust to the reader and to the creator. But certainly there are numerous pairings and [examples of] cooking with wine throughout the book.

Wine is an ingredient within the book, so whether it’s a roast or braising with wine, it’s definitely part of how to elevate the experience. The VieVité rosé pairs incredibly well with my branzino. The floral notes in the wine, the dryness to the sweetness of the fish—it’s perfect. I recently made my lamb chops about two weekends ago at my parents’ farm, where I do a lot of my cooking, and I brought out a very precious and rare bottle of Lafite, and it was delicious, absolutely delicious.

WS: Are you involved in any other creative wine and food projects at the moment?
ZP: I’m part of the Order of Champagne, and I was inducted into this years ago. One time I had contemplated wanting to put together a feature film on the history of the making of Champagne. I just find the whole history of [wine] brilliant and fascinating and special. It’s a special, decadent side of our history and of our luxury. Even being in Rome a few months ago and seeing these ancient, clay transport pots of wine or oil—it’s unbelievable, the history of this and the importance of it.

I’m [also] deep into agriculture. I garden and I plant and I grow a lot of my vegetables, so just understanding the cultivation of vines and of the soil and the vineyard is something that—in my nerdiest, science side—is fascinating to me.

I think food, wine and fashion are love, and I want to share that love. And I also feel like my place here on this planet is to promote and empower people to get in touch with their own creativity. Food and wine are great avenues and stimulators for that.

---

A version of this interview appears in the March 31, 2019, issue of Wine Spectator, “Bordeaux’s Classic Cabernets,” on newsstands Feb. 19. See what else is new!

Find out how to cook Pigweed – a delicious, wild, edible green – with these three pigweed recipes.

Former Noma chef and owner of Amass Matt Orlando has turned to beer with the opening of Broaden & Build bar, restaurant and brewery in Copenhagen.