Hello everyone, happy Saturday!
As I promised, I will describe the wine tour from last weekend, a basic outline of this past week, and another little surprise at the end regarding my amazing dinner from last night!
As you know, I am taking a wine course here through the Stratford Chefs School, so it seemed like a good idea to go along with the school on the wine trip that was offered. Early Saturday morning last weekend, my roommates and I headed over to the old prune to get on our bus. The tour began after 2 hours of driving, at the featherstone winery. It is quite a small winery compared to many of the other ones we drove by. Freezing cold, missing my hat, and quite exhausted still, we walked over to get our glasses, and to taste a wine as we met the owner. Because it is really late, the vines are in dormancy, and are bare, which actually allowed us to understand what was going on a bit more than if there were grapes on the vine surprisingly. We got to watch the owner as he showed us how they are pruned in the spring. Quite a bit of work, as it is all done by hand for 40 acres! What a crazy experience that must be every spring. Seeing the vines, and the passion of the owner was pretty amazing. We tried the black sheep riesling first, which has to be one of my favourite wines so far. The idea behind riesling is that it is super crisp, and it takes a lot of work to perfect it. I'm not amazing at describing wines yet, so I'll let you know that it's amazing, and leave it up to you to try it if you wish. After seeing how the vines work, and learning some neat facts about how a lot of the work gets done outside, we got a tour of the rest of the process, from vine to bottle. From the massive pressers that crush all the juice out of the grapes, to the fermentation tanks. The most interesting experience had to be when we were given some of the unfiltered riesling to taste directly from the tank. As the glass was poured, it just had the most amazing smell, and the taste was fantastic, but as it sat in the glass, now being exposed to oxygen, within five minutes the entire tasting experience changed, and the wine developed into something that was completely different! Anyhow, I wish I could get a bottle of unfiltered riesling now, but that just doesn't happen, but I would highly recommend that if you have the opportunity to go to a small local winery and take a tour and learn, that you do so. The second winery we went to was Stone Creek Winery. It is quite a bit larger, and I expected to see a lot more, and to learn a lot more, however I was relatively disappointed, as the 'winemaker' (or tour guide) just gave us glass after glass of wine, explaining how it should taste, not how it is made or how it came to taste like that. Many of my classmates... and probably myself... had a bit too much to drink, but they were literally just giving it away! Anyhow, after the tour, and seeing the oak barrels, we got the opportunity to chill in the lounge inside, and taste more wine! Of course, this was so that we'd hopefully buy something, but I think I'd much rather save up, and get a good bottle from a small local winery instead. I did however try a pretty amazing ice wine, and although I said in an earlier post that I couldn't appreciate it, I have found that it must have just been that bottle. This ice wine was absolutely fantastic, and I will begin expanding my horizons, and trying new wines of all types in the near future, before making an assumption and conclusion as to whether I like it or not.
After the tour, we went to the stone road grill, or "Rest" as it is called. It was an unbelievable dinner or pork! Beginning with a soup... it was... (as I go to find the menu because I may or may not have been slightly intoxicated at this point and can't remember what it was exactly)... A smoked muscle Chowder, with a 2009 Lailey Vineyard Chardonnay. (and yes, they gave us more wine for dinner) I was however very impressed with how well the wine and soup complimented each other, quite an eye opening experience to wine pairing. The Entrée was a Slow Roasted Tenderloin/Truffled Marrow Jus, Romanesco Cauliflower and Cheese Sauce... And.. Smoked Ham Hock Ravioli/ Borscht Salad, Parmesan and Oregano Sausage with Braised Baby Fennel. Ok... I know you're thinking that sounds like a ton of food, but actually it was a tiny portion of everything listed there, nicely presented on a plate. The pork tenderloin had the consistency of a marshmallow, it was SO tender, and unbelievably tasty! I am going to make it my goal to learn how to re-create this dish someday! This was served with a Red Tail Merlot from the Featherstone winery, which was the first vineyard we toured.
For desert, a Confit Apple Crumble, with Smoked Maple Bacon Ice Cream, and Ice Syrup. Yes, that's right, Bacon ice cream! it even had a nice crispy little piece of bacon sticking out the top, what a fantastic dinner. I was quite content. We then headed back to Stratford, and decided to hang out for a short while at the local pub. I would have only stayed for a half an hour, but there was a celtic band playing, and one of the players played the uilleann pipes! Pretty much the hardest, and most amazing instrument in the world to play. Needless to say, I stayed for quite a while enjoying the music, and socializing.
Monday, two days after the tour we began our Deep-Frying/Braising week. Deep fried, english style fish and chips for myself and my buddy to create that evening. What a perfect way to end a Monday, deep frying fish and chips, and eating deep fried everything for dinner! Day two was very similair, eating plenty of deep fried foods, this time for breakfast though. I got to make spring rolls, and then wednesday, no practical cookery, and a huge lunch hour off. I re-did my test that I did poorly on last week, and I think I did much better, at least I hope I did as it will reflect my midterm mark greatly. Braising was our practical cookery lesson for Thursday and Friday. Now, eating massive roasts for breakfast, what an interesting experience. Probably the most unhealthy week here so far, but I haven't gone hungry once this past week, that's for sure. Especially Monday evening. The story about monday evening, during practical, is that as we entered the class, one of the level two students came in with this massive tray of food, obviously from pastry class. It was a super sweet, creamy, merangue, lemon something or other, super sugar dessert. Enough to feed a small army. We were allowed to eat it, so I began taking a bit everytime I walked by. This eventually turned into a competition, of how much could each person eat. One of my classmates in particular was the most competitive, but I was determined to eat the most, and to prove the nutrition teacher wrong, that just eating more will make me gain weight. I must have eaten at least a third of the thing to myself, plus tastings of all the deep fried foods, and a couple cookies on top of that. I have never experienced a 'sugar high' like that before, and until my one roommate pointed it out, I never believed in the idea of a person being 'hyper' genuinely, and not just as a mental choice. I can honestly say, that I had more energy than I have ever had before in my life, which allowed me to get quite a bit of progress done on my mountain of homework, as I waited for my body to calm down enough to go to sleep.
Now for my amazing dinner from last night. The story begins on Thursday, as I went to one of the local butchers. I asked about a Haggis, and he happened to have one, already prepared, and ready for me to take home. I bought it, and placed it in the fridge here to thaw for a couple days. Friday night came, and I began my process of cooking a traditional scottish dinner! I had gotten some potatoes and yams earlier in the week, so the meal could be complete. I put my kilt on, took the haggis out of the bag, and placed it into simmering water. It has to simmer for an hour or two, so I went to my room to check my e-mail and such, and came downstairs, to see that the string holding the stomach closed, had slipped off. This was extremely inconvenient, as the haggis was beginning to seep from stomach slowly, and there wasn't much I could do about it. First thought,... Call Lydia, my awesome roommate, to help me take it out of the hot water, and to figure out what to do. We used tongs, and finally got it out of the water, and decided that it would be impossible to tie off the end again with it as it was. We decided to use some cheesecloth to wrap it, and to hopefully seal the end enough that it would stop leaking out. This did not work... instead, I had a sheeps stomach, with ground offal slowly leaking out, and just covering the outside of the stomach, in between the outside of the stomach and the cheesecloth. I called Lydia again, and for the second time, we removed the haggis from the water, and began to think of how to save this meal that I had invited a few people to enjoy with myself. I found a ziploc bag, and we placed the haggis into the bag, punctured a hole to ensure the bag didn't explode, and then placed it back in the water. This seemed to work, as we had the bag pretty tight. The haggis cooked, I began my yams and potatoes, and after an hour and a half, and a lot of panicking, my meal was completed. Five of us ate, drank a small glass of Scotch Whiskey, and every single person enjoyed my meal! A few other of my classmates were asking about it, and are wanting to try it, so I will hopefully be cooking this amazing meal again in the near future.
This has been my week so far, I am sorry that I have not uploaded pictures, but it takes quite a bit of time to post, and even longer for pictures, as I have to go through them, edit some, and the adding takes a few hours sometimes depending on how many there are, and how happy my internet seems to be with me. I will attempt to get some pictures up soon, but I can't make any promises. Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoy this post, and I hope to get some feedback as to how you think I could improve, or whether you like the style in which I am writing currently. Thank you again, and have a fantastic weekend!
