Polls #5 & #6 Results

Polls #5 & #6 have now ended.

The Poll #5 question was: Would you rather have a California Cabernet Sauvignon or a French Bordeaux? This was a close vote, with California inching out France in a 6 to 5 vote. Would California win the other Poll as well?

The Poll #6 question was: Would you rather have a California Pinot Noir or a French Burgundy? This time France seized a commanding victory against California in an 8 to 3 vote.

There are curious results, a division of New and Old World. For Cabernet, people preferred a New World style, a fruitier, bolder, higher alcohol wine. Yet for Pinot, people preferred the more subtle Old World style.

For our next poll, let us return to Food.

Poll #7: If you dine out, what type of entree do you usually order? Steak, seafood, poultry?

North Shore Winers

Would you like to meet other fellow wine enthusiast and attend local wine events? If so, then maybe you should check out The North Shore Winers.

Over six months ago, I created the The North Shore Winers, to bring together people who love wine at fun wine events. We currently have over 130 members. As the organizer, I select or create various wine events for the members of The North Shore Winers to attend. These include wine tastings, wine dinners, winery visits, educational seminars, and more. Most of the events occur north of Boston.

We have attended wine tastings in Reading, Winchester, Medford, North Andover, Woburn and Saugus. We have visited the Red Oak Winery in Middleton and the Turtle Creek Winery in Lincoln. We had a private wine dinner, a Spanish Tapas dinner, at Savory Tastes Café in Reading. We have had two Wine Education Classes in Saugus.

A few of our upcoming events include: Free Wine Tasting of Unusual Grapes on September 15 in Waltham; Free Fall Wine Tasting of over 50 wines on September 20 in Woburn; and a Free Grand Wine Tasting of over 50 wines on September 29 in Saugus.

Membership is free and open to everyone. All you need to do is sign up for the group on Meetup and then RSVP for future events.

So come and join us! Have fun, drink wine and meet some interesting people! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

Empty Wine Bottle: $1

Just a reminder, as the deadline approaches.

Would you like to turn an empty wine bottle into $1. You can do so for about another week, until August 30.

The Vineyard wine store will take your empty wine bottles and give you $1 in merchandise credit for each bottle. You can bring as many as 120 bottles per day. You can then spend your credits up through September 15. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me and I have a couple cases of empty wine bottles ready to turn in.

If you do this, you will be helping the environment. The Vineyard will recycle the bottles or find an appropriate "re-use" for the bottles. This is an excellent recycling program where everyone involved will benefit.

I think this is a great deal and would love to see other wine stores running similar programs.

The Vineyard
554 Turnpike St. (Rt. 114)
North Andover, MA

Zaleks Grill & Seafood

The other day I stopped for lunch at Zaleks in Wakefield. Located just off Main Street, on Princess Street, it is basically a roast beef/seafood joint. But it may be one of the most ambitious such joints I have ever seen.

It is a very casual place. You can sit at one of the tables inside or outside. You might only be able to fit about twenty people at the tables inside. You order at the counter and pick up your order when it is ready. I do not know if they have waitress service at night or not.

One look at their menu though indicates their ambition. You start with roast beef sandwiches, burgers, rolls, wraps and other sandwiches. There are also fried seafood dinners, salads, sandwich dinners and the usual side orders. They also have grilled thin crust pizza, steak tip dinners, and house specialities. More unusual for this type of restaurant, they also have char-grilled fish dinner as well as USDA Prime steaks!

You could order a 16 oz. NY Sirloin Strip for $17.95 or a 10 0z. Filet for $18.95. Or maybe Swordfish ($14.95), Ahi-Tuna ($11.95), or Salmon ($10.95). With the size of their menu, you might have difficulty deciding what to order.

I had one of the House Specialties, the Monte Christo ($5.75). The Monte Cristo has long been one of my favorite sandwiches, though few restaurants carry it. At Zaleks, it is ham, turkey, and swiss cheese on Challah bread, dipped in egg batter and grilled. It is like a sandwich on French Toast. The sandwich comes with French Fries.

The sandwich was certainly very full of meat and cheese. It was a good sandwich, and something I would order again. The Fries were ok. They were shoe string Fries which are far from my favorites. They were cooked fine, not overdone. I just prefer different types of Fries. I think this sandwich was worth the price.

I do plan on returning to Zaleks to try more of their food.

Adventures of an Italian Food Lover

I will travel to Spain at the end of next month, with plans to visit numerous wineries and fine local restaurants. In the near future, I will visit Italy, with the same intentions, to seek out fine wine and food. When I do visit Italy, the book I have just read may be of special benefit. I do wish there had been a similar book for Spain as well.

Adventures of an Italian Food Lover: With Recipes from 254 of My Very Best Friends ($32.50) by Faith Heller Willinger is published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House. Adventures is a hardcover book with 256 pages. It is a combination of travel guide and cookbook, a fascinating mix which is sure to keep your interest.

The book is separated into three sections based on the geography of Italy, including Northern & Central Italy, Tuscany, and South Italy & the Islands. Each section contains descriptions of restaurants, wineries, food artisans and much more. After each specific description, there is a recipe derived from that place. There are over 100 recipes in this book.

As for the place descriptions, the author has travelled to all of the places she mentions. She fills each description with personal, insider information. You feel as if you are being let in on the secrets of Italy, the best and most interesting places to visit. The descriptions make for a fascinating read. Each description also contains detailed contact information. If you are traveling to Italy, you are sure to find places that you will want to visit.

You can read about Mauro Lorenzon, a sommelier skilled with using a saber to lop off the tops of sparkling wine bottles. Or a hotel bar in Venice where Walter Bolzonella creates superb Bellini cocktails. You might learn of Tuscan cheesemakers, Guido and Giulia Pinzani, who make San Gimignano, a saffron-flavored pecorino. Or even Armando Manni, maker of Italy's most expensive extra virgin olive oil. I learned of Bettina Rogosky who makes wines from Caberlot, a hybrid of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. And a brother/sister chocolate makers, Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri who specialize in single-country cru chocolate from Venezuela and other countries. There is so much more to read about, from gelato in Rome to a fish market in Catania.

What about the recipes? Generally these recipes range from easy to medium to prepare and most cooks should not have problems preparing most of the recipes. A few of the recipes do call for more specialized ingredients but the book provides information on acquiring such ingredients. The recipe are generally easy to understand. I have found a number of recipes that I would definitely like to try. These include such dishes as the Sweet and Sour Chicken Bites, Fusilli with Chicken Bone Sauce, Chianti "Tuna" Pork, Tuscan Brownies, Smoked Mozzarella Cutlets, and Lucia's Walnut Cake. There are recipes that should appeal to a wide audience, from appetizers to desserts.

The author's sister, Suzanne Heller, has illustrated the cookbook with her watercolors. Though these watercolors are very nice, none of them depict any of the recipes in the book. And that is the book's only failing, a lack of pictures or photographs of the recipes. Most readers seem to want at least some pictures/photographs in a cookbook, especially of the more complex recipes. That will keep some from buying this book.

I still recommend Adventures though. It is interesting to read, would be excellent for those traveling to Italy, and has some intriguing recipes as well. I certainly would like to see more travel/cookbooks like this for other countries.

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Disclosure: I received a review copy of this cookbook from Random House. I was not under any obligation to actually review it. And if I did review it, I was under no obligation to say anything specific about this book. Everything was solely at my discretion.