North Fork Wine

We're usually on the South Fork of Long Island, but for our anniversary (it's been a year today!) we wanted to head North to do a little wine tasting. It was so much fun! The weather was perfect and each winery we visited was great. It was really fun to see the differences between them and try all of the wines.

I think Palmer was our favorite - the setting was so pretty, and the 2009 Reserve Cabernet Franc was great, and the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon was really rich and deep and interesting, and the 2012 Pinot Blanc was fruity and crisp. We also went to Lieb, where our favorite was the 2008 Reserve Cabernet Franc. The tasting room is modern and somewhat industrial, and there's not much charm with vineyards in view or anything, but the staff is very attentive and explains the wines really well.

Pomegranate-Garlic Lamb

This is delicious and pretty easy and impressive for a dinner party. We had our very good friends, Stephen and Kara, over last night to test out the new china. It was all very grown up. Thank you to all of our great friends for getting us all of those amazing candlesticks, plates, platters, vases etc - they will all be well used!

I've been making lamb a lot lately, using pomegranate molasses. It's a great ingredient. It's tart and sweet. I got two racks or lamb from Trader Joe's (they actually have really nice, Frenched racks of lamb) and marinated them in a mixture of pomegranate molasses, lots of garlic, some fresh ginger, and some dried herbs. The lamb was juicy and so flavorful.

I served it with some sauteed asparagus and Israeli couscous.

Gnocchi

 

Since my friend Chelsea got me a food mill (thank you!) and I'd been wanted to try out the gnocchi board again, I made Jamie a special gnocchi dinner last night. (We're not taking our honeymoon until after Christmas, so I wanted this week to have some special dinners.) The gnocchi was super fluffy and nice and the gnocchi board made them look so professional. The food mill also makes nice, uniformly ground up potatoes for the dough. Be sure to cool the ground up potatoes thoroughly before adding the flour for light gnocchi. I altered the recipe a bit from these very fancy gnocchi I made for New Year's.

A few more wedding presents in this pic! And some flowers from the wedding in the back

Serves 2-4
Ingredients:
2 potatoes (I used Russet, but Yukon Gold are good too, or a mix), skin on
1 egg
About 3/4 cups flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup cream
1 crushed garlic clove
1/2 cup grated pecorino romano
salt and lots of freshly grated pepper

Directions:
Put the potatoes in a pot of well salted water. Bring to a boil and cook until very tender - a fork should easily go in and out of the middle of the potato - about 45 minutes. Immediately peel the potatoes. You can hold the potato in one hand with a dish cloth to avoid burning yourself, and peel with a paring knife. The skin will slide right off.

Braised Pork Chops

I couldn't wait to try out my beautiful new cherry red Le Creuset braiser! It was an early wedding present from one of my very best friends, Alice, and her boyfriend Ryan. (Thanks guys!!!) I LOVE it. I feel so fancy owning such a pretty and well made piece of cooking equipment. Jamie requested pork chops, so I googled around and found a few recipes for braised pork chops, then kind of made up my own. They were tasty! And pretty easy, too.

Ingredients:
2 pork chops (preferably boneless)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 bay leaf
water

Directions:
Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan.

Doesn't the oil look so nice in the pot?