Passover and Wine

Here is little bit of "did you know?" . . . there is a difference between kosher wine and kosher for Passover wine.

First let's consider that all wines require yeast for fermenting the grapes. The most common type of yeast used for fermentation is usually made from a mold that grows on grains like wheat, barley, oat, rye and spelt. These grains are considered chametz foods which are actually leavened foods that are prohibited during Passover.

Therefore the Kosher for Passover wines are fermented using the yeast produced from the sugars in the grapes. Also, the wine must not contain common preservatives like potassium sorbate.

Now that we established there is no chametz (or leavened foods) in the wine for Passover, the grapes must be handled by only Sabbath observing Jewish males from the beginning of the 'crush' through the bottling of the wine and there must always be a rabbi supervising the entire process.

Not to confuse you, kosher wine can be made using yeast from grains but it is NOT 'Kosher for Passover'. So it's safe to say that all kosher wine is NOT always kosher for Passover.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to kosher wine. Today there are many award winning kosher wines produced in many popular wine regions around the world from France to South Africa, Australia, Spain, California, as well as Israel.

There is more than just Manischewitz in every wine shop across the nation.

Happy Passover!

Salute!
Winelady Cooks

Kale Chips

I joined this month's GREEN theme Monthly Color Challenge at kidswonderart. The kale chips are a nice color green and it's an easy recipe so I thought it was perfect for the challenge.

Don't we all love potato chips? But we can do without all the calories and salt. Kale chips might be an alternative.

In the last two weeks I've seen Kale Chips featured in a magazine article and on a couple of cooking shows. I even found lots of photos of Kale chips on Pinterest like the one at the bottom of the post.

I had to try them -- it sounded so easy and they looked crispy. But you know, whenever you see something in a photo or on t.v. that looks so terrific, and then you try it, it just is no way, no how, nothing like you imagined it should be.

I was determined anyway so I picked up a HUGE bunch of kale and my chip journey began. I have to say it really was as easy as the magazine article stated, and the cooking hosts' instructions were spot on.

Well I'm all for easy and SIMPLE -- break off the leaves from the stalk, wash/rinse and dry, dress them a little and bake.

I made a lot and so I had a half of a try left over. No problem, just wrap them in wax paper and keep them in the fridge for the next day. They stayed crispy, and the next day when I shared them with one of the most picky eater's in the family I was shocked when said she 'loved 'em'. Hey, it's a vegetable, you never know if it'll be a 'like' or 'no thanks', but you should definitely try.

These can be a 'side' with sandwiches or burgers, or just a healthy afternoon snack.

KALE CHIPS
Ingredients

• 4 large kale stalks
• 1-2 TBLS. olive oil (or olive oil spray)
• kosher salt
• chopped garlic (optional)

Instructions

1. This step is optional - saute the finely chopped garlic in olive until softened and the garlic flavors the oil. Add salt/pepper and set aside.
2. Wash kale stalks in cold water and dry well.
3. Break off the thick leaves from the stalk and place in a bowl.
4. Toss the kale leaves with the olive oil mixture (or use the spray and sprinkle with salt/pepper).
5. Bake in 425 degree oven for 10-15 minutes or until the leaves are crisp and still green. If you over-bake them the leaves will turn a shade of brown, but they are still good.

ENJOY!

Source: sterlingstyle.net via MarkChristina on Pinterest

Mangia!
Winelady Cooks

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Recipe Lion Spring Recipes & Giveaway

Guest Post at Green Eggs & Moms

I was honored to be asked to do a guest post for Anne Mercado at Green Eggs and Moms.

I started baking cookies with my grandsons when they were about 3 years old. As they
got older we graduated to baking cupcakes and making ice cream.

Safety is always first and I was happy to share with Green Eggs and Moms some of the things I did to keep the boys safe while we are in the kitchen.

If you cook and bake with the kids visit Green Eggs and Moms for lots of tips and hints.


Mangia!
Winelady Cooks

Vin Santo or Vinsanto?

We were out 'n about recently and we were hungry so we decided we would stop at the first place we saw -- quite adventurous for us. Turned out we were pleasantly surprised by the entire experience especially when we were given a complimentary glass of vin santo with our dessert.

What is vin santo? or vinsanto? It's common for most people to associate vin santo with the sweet dessert wine made in Tuscany which is historically known as 'holy wine'. In Italy it is a tradition to serve vin santo with biscotti. I remember my great uncle dunking the biscotti in his glass of wine.

This traditional Tuscan dessert wine is usually made using white grape varieties Trebbiano and Malvasia. The 'old world' way to make this style of dessert wine is to lay out the grapes on straw mats in a warm and well ventilated area of the house. I'm guessing that this still may be the way some winemakers dry the grapes though today there might be a designated building where the grapes are dried rather than in their home.

This style of wine is said to have originated in Tuscany, Italy. Today, vin santo is produced in several designated wine regions (DOC's and IGT's) in Italy.

So what's vinsanto? Is it the same as vin santo?

This looks like we're splitting hairs but it seems that in ancient Greece the Venetians occupied the island of Santorini. History tells us that the ancient Greeks made a sweet wine they called Paso using their native white grapes which were dried in the sun before aging them in 'vessels'. The Venetians called the wine vinsanto which was actually the 'place of origin' for the wine.

The Venetians took this process with them back to Italy and began calling their wine vin santo which they made using their native white grapes.

When the Greeks realized the Italians were taking claim to the vin santo, the Greeks fought for and won the right to the name Vinsanto (one word) which is for the wine made only in Santorini.

Hence, there is Vin Santo, the ever famous Italian dessert wine from Tuscany and the 'one word' named wine called Vinsanto only made in Santorini.

Just another "who knew?".


Salute!
Winelady Cooks

Irish Soda Bread

I decided to make Irish Soda bread today.   My grandson was intrigued by the name and asked me what kind of soda is used in the bread.

I encouraged him to do a search on his iTouch and then asked him to let me know what ingredients I would need.  

This was a great way to get in an easy history lesson and he would be more likely to retain the information doing it himself.  

Of course he was a little disappointed when he found out the soda was actually baking soda and not soda pop. Oh, bummer!

All was not lost because we learned about the traditional Irish Soda Bread. It seems that in the mid 19th century soda bread was made as the "daily" bread to be eaten with the family meals.

The bread was made with only flour, baking soda, sour milk and salt. It didn't 'keep' for more than a couple of days and had to be baked often.

Traditional soda bread is what the folks in Ireland consider to be a basic table bread, or a brown soda bread, which is made with whole-meal flour. Or it can be a white soda bread made with white flour and soda, buttermilk, and salt.

The ingredients used for baking traditional soda bread does not contain sugar, butter, raisins, or nuts; the dough shouldn't be kneaded; it is not cake-like and it shouldn't be sweet. It is very different from the American soda bread made in our local bakeries today.

So here is a very EASY and simple Irish Soda Bread recipe I adapted from About.com

Irish Soda Bread
Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour sifted
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Add the dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine the baking soda and salt.
3. Make a well in the center and add 1 cup of the buttermilk -- setting aside the remaining 1/2 cup. Stir in the dry ingredients and buttermilk with a wooden spoon until the milk is absorbed and then gradually add in the remaining milk until a soft dough is formed.
4. The dough will quite sticky, you may have to add 1/4 cup more flour until it is workable.

5. Sprinkle a little flour on your hands and counter and form the dough into a ball.
6. Place it into an 8" inch cake pan that has been sprayed with pam.  
7. Wet a large knife and slice it almost half-way through the dough to make a large cross.
8. Bake for 40 minutes or until it is lightly golden on the top and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

My sister the cook makes this all the time and she said they enjoy it with a bowl of hearty soup or beef stew.   

The next morning she slices the bread and makes toast, spreads on some butter and jelly and has it with coffee.  Sounds delish.

Top o' the morning to you!

Cheers!

Winelady Cooks

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Gallery of Favorites @ Premeditated Leftovers

Sulfites in Wine, Yes, No Maybe So

There are many people who claim that wine gives them headaches. Some claim that it's the red wine and my hubby is totally convinced it's the white wines he drinks that give him headaches.

There is a Red Wine Headache syndrome, sometimes called RWH. Yes, this is a real phenomenon and there are many who are looking for a cause and some relief. But is the headache caused by the sulfites in wine?

To date, there is no evidence to suggest that headaches and wine are related to a specific element such as sulfites.

Some winemakers do add sulfites, but it is also worth noting that a 'natural' component in grape skins is sulfites. Sulfite is also a by-product of the fermentation process when yeast is added, therefore any wine, and every wine is likely to contain sulfites. 

Grape skins also produce histamines which would explain why some people have a sensitivity to red wine.

Let's go one step further and check out some of the foods we might eat everyday that contain sulfites.

• baked goods
• soup mixes
• canned vegetables
• vegetable juices
• dried fruits (bananas, apricots, pineapple, etc.)
• guacamole
• molasses
• bottled lemon and lime juices
• bottled tea
• apple cider and sparkling grape juice
• foods in a salad bar 

Not to be flippant, but do you walk around with a headache everyday after eating these foods? I wouldn't think so. You'd be quite miserable trying to get through the work day with a headache everyday.

There could be other reasons why you may have a headache when you drink wine; perhaps you are drinking wine on an empty stomach, or you may have had too many glasses of wine.  

Grape skins also produce histamines which would explain why some people have a sensitivity to red wine. Or you may have an allergic reaction to the alcohol or the tannins in the wine.

You should also know that a typical reaction to sulfite sensitivity would be signs of breathing problems, and those who are asthmatic may experience a headache.

So next time you indulge in a glass of wine and get a headache it could possibly be that you have a sensitivity to the alcohol, grape tannins, or the histamines.

Drink responsibly and if you are sensitive to wine enjoy club soda with a lime twist. It's refreshing and good for you.


Salute!
Winelady Cooks

Convenience Foods vs. Cooking From Scratch

So how lucky are we in this new millennium to have convenience foods available which allows us to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible because we are over-scheduled and over-stressed?.@#%&!. 

I'm fortunate to have learned to cook from my mom who only cooked from scratch using fresh produce and recipes that were handed down from her mother.  Back in the day there was not much of a selection of processed foods and whatever was available was probably very expensive.

The only packaged items my mom used were rice and macaroni pasta.  Oh yes, she always bought us oreos and chocolate chip cookies but our cakes and pies were made from scratch.

Today things have changed, and even though we cook from scratch we have fallen into the convenience food trap.  It's the trap that is causing us to become 'sugar and sodium junkies' and we're adding junk in our trunk -- who needs that!

The kicker to this trap is that we can never lose the weight we gain from eating all that 'junk' and it's making us and our kids sick.   So if there is some way we can help our kids and ourselves to stay well we want to try.  

My daughters and I want to try to make changes in our eating habits and hope that we can convince the kids and gramps that everything is more delicious when we make it from scratch.   How lucky for us that their husbands are great cooks in their own right and will be supportive in our quest.   That helps!!!

We slowly started ditching the commercial baked goods - no hardship there because we love to bake.  The next step is to find recipes for other foods that we can make at home without buying additional equipment or ingredients that are difficult to find.

Subscribe to my feed and follow on twitter, facebook and pinterest to stay up to date with the recipes that we will be making and the reviews comments from our peanut gallery - I'm sure they will be vocal.

What do we all love to eat?

• pizza
• burgers
• pop tarts
• pretzels
• cookies
• ice cream . . . I could go on, but I'm getting hungry now so I have to stop and make dinner.

See you soon!


Mangia!
Winelady Cooks

Spaghetti With Red Sauce - Easy & Light

The Crazy Cooking Challenge this month is spaghetti with a red sauce. This was a fun challenge for one who grew up in an Italian/American family when we would have spaghetti/macaroni with sauce gravy at least twice a week back in the day.

However this Crazy Cooking Challenge became a real challenge trying to find a red sauce recipe from a fellow blogger and not from a recipe collection or professional chef site.

I'm guessing some might think making a spaghetti sauce is complicated and takes too long to prepare and cook, and today, who has the time to spend prepping a recipe and cooking it for hours.   I also thought about how many are trying to limit the carbs in our diets which would certainly eliminate the spaghetti sauce recipes.  Just a thought . . .

Here is good news for carb watchers and cooks who like easy and quick recipes - like me.  My spaghetti sauce recipe is easy to prepare, light and still made in the same traditional Italian style of my grandmother and mother. 

I found a delicious recipe for pesto meatballs with a quick tomato sauce at Erin's blog Art Food and Life.    Now we're cooking!

My tomato sauce recipe is similar to Erin's with just a few differences. It's very common to find Sunday's red sauce to be made a little different in almost every Italian home in America.

Our family recipe for Sunday Gravy spaghetti sauce uses only garlic, or only onion - never both in a pot of gravy sauce.   I use red wine, which I only started adding in the last 10 years. Grandma and mom didn't use grandpa's homemade wine which is what our family drank.  Back in the day when I was growing up buying wine was unheard of since many Italian families had their own winemaker.

Now my recipe for spaghetti with red sauce is a marinara sauce, which only means it has no meat in it.  In our family, a marinara sauce is light and is not cooked too long (it's cooked only long enough for the tomatoes to break down and the flavors to come together).

If you would like to have meat in the sauce it's very easy to add.  You can make meatballs and add them to the sauce. Or, for simplicity,

• add 1 pound of ground beef, pork or veal to the shallots and using a wooden spoon break up the meat a little and cook until a pink (approx. 3-5 min.)
• pour out the excees fat
• then add the tomatoes and continue on with the recipe making sure the sauce simmers gently so the meat doesn't get tough.

This will be a bolognese style sauce.

Easy Spaghetti Sauce (Prep 10 min./Cook 45 min.)
(Serves approximately 4-5)
Ingredients

• 2 TBLS. olive oil
• 1 large shallot chopped
• 1/2 tsp. sugar or 1/2 of a very small carrot peeled
• 1/4 tsp. of red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1 28 oz. San Marzano peeled tomatoes
• 1 14 oz. tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup dry red wine (chianti or merlot)(optional)
• 1 TBLS. chopped fresh basil leaves or dry basil if fresh is unavailable
• 2 TBLS. chopped fresh parsley
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 lb. spaghetti cooked according to package directions

Directions

1. In large saucepot heat olive oil and saute the chopped shallots until translucent (approx. 3-5 minutes), then add in the sugar and red pepper flakes if using. Stir well with a wooden spoon.
2. Add in the can of San Marzano tomatoes and using a potato masher crush the tomatoes which makes a chunky tomato sauce. If you don't like a chunky sauce, put the canned tomatoes* in a blender first and then add to the pot. *(Using the peeled tomatoes makes the sauce lighter than if you use only tomato sauce.) Add in the 14 oz. can of tomato sauce and if you choose to use the carrot add that now as well.
3. Cook the sauce on a low-medium heat to simmer for about 35 minutes then add 1/4 cup red wine and simmer another 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Cook spaghetti (I use Dreamfields brand) according to package directions and place in individual dishes adding sauce over the spaghetti.

Sprinkle grated or shaved Reggiano cheese over the spaghetti which is optional.

With this easy recipe you can save money and never buy sauce in the jar again. If you double the recipe you can freeze the sauce in appropriate size containers for at least two or three more meals. This will save you LOTS of time and money. Cook once, eat twice or even three times.

I use the last of the leftover sauce on my homemade pizza. Another easy recipe coming soon and the kids can help. Follow me to be sure you don't miss the recipes.

Mangia!
Winelady Cooks









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Chocolate Pudding & Low Cal?

If I was given a choice of dinner or dessert, I would take dessert every time - and if it's chocolate . . . well, there are no words : ).

I came across this chocolate pudding recipe while I was searching for something else (can't remember what it was now) and I saved it because I had to try it.

Cooking and baking in the microwave is not always a success. The results are often rubbery or the taste is awful and you can probably do a dozen tries and never get a good product.

BUT, this chocolate pudding in the microwave recipe turned out quite good and it tasted great even on the second day. Not bad for microwave cooking.

Before I get to the full recipe for making a pudding in the microwave you should be comfortable with your microwave and know how powerful it is. The next tip for microwave cooking is you have to keep a watchful eye on the item while it is cooking, and be flexible with the recipe.

I found this recipe on a site called grouprecipes.com and I substituted a few ingredients for a healthier (if that's even possible) version. I substituted organic agave for the sugar, SmartBalance butter alternative for the regular butter, and I used 1/2 the amount of milk and substituted coconut milk for the rest. If you are familiar with milk alternatives you can use the one you prefer. It's all about the taste you like and are used to.

Quick Cooking Chocolate Pudding
(Yields approx. 4 servings)
Ingredients

• 1/3 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened)
• 2 TBLS. cornstarch
• 3 TBLS. agave
• 1 cup 2% milk
• 3/4 cup coconut milk
• 2 TBLS. Smart Balance (or butter)
• 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips (60% cocoa)

Directions

1. Sift the cocoa powder and the cornstarch in a large microwave bowl and blend together with a fork.
2. Next slowly pour in the milk and, using a fork, stir well to break up any lumps and then stir in the agave.
3. Add in the butter.
4. Microwave on 100% power for 4 minutes. Keep a watchful eye on it and if it's bubbling into a very high mound after 2 - 2 1/2 minutes, take it out and stir well then continue cooking.
5. After the 4 minutes stir well by folding the mixture into the center, then stir in the chocolate chips and cook another 2 minutes checking that it doesn't bubble over.  If bubbling too much stir well if needed and continue for the remainder of the 2 minutes.
6. The mixture should be a creamy, slightly thickened consistency and it should have a bit of shine to it.
7. Pour into individual dessert dishes and cover with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming.
8. Chill a few hours and serve with non-dairy topping, or whipped cream.

This is a rich and chocolatey pudding and a delicious dessert anytime, even for special guests.

Mangia!
Winelady Cooks




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