Dover Canyon Winery

Tyler Florence's "Classic Clam Chowder"

With rain in the forecast, and Dan gone to Santa Cruz for a few days, I decided to build a roaring fire and make a big pot of hearty clam chowder.  I used FoodTV chef Tyler Florence's Classic Clam Chowder recipe but with a few adds of my own.

First, a couple of dozen littleneck clams went into the pot, along with some Italian parsley and bay leaves from the garden, a whole bulb of garlic, sauteed onions and a slurp of white wine.  When the clams were steamed open, I pulled them out and coarsely chopped them.  Into the broth went  some half and half cream, more diced and sauteed onions, cubed Yukon Gold potatoes, lots of fresh Italian parsley and garlic chives (I love garlic chives), and some sweet oven-roasted corn.

Served with some garlic-Parmesan baguettes and Dover Canyon viognier.

Tasting Room Bread Recipe: Safflower-Coriander Loaf

We've gotten several requests for our tasting room bread recipe.  People even want to buy loaves from the tasting room!   We provide our fresh-baked loaves strictly as a palate cleanser, but we're happy to share the easy recipe.

We bake our tasting room bread in an upright-style bread machine.  We prefer an upright model to the horizontal pan machines because it consistently produces a more thoroughly mixed, fluffier, and uniform loaf.  The basic recipe is for a large 2 pound loaf of white bread, but we add two secret ingredients:  coriander seed and safflower.  Coriander seed gives the bread cubes a citrusy crunch.  Reddish-orange safflower petals from the thistle-like safflower plant (also known as "poor man's saffron) give the bread a deep yellow color and a subtle tobacco-like aroma.  We find safflower in the bagged displays of Mexican spices at our local grocer.

Here's the recipe, which you may want to adjust depending on your basic bread machine recipe . . .

Our Goose is Cooked!

For Thanksgiving, we decided to cook a goose.   Dan stuffed the bird with coarse chopped white onion, carrots, celery, whole cloves of garlic, and fresh bay.  The skin was rubbed with grey French sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, then dusted with paprika.

I snapped another picture when the goose was half-done, but failed to get another snap in at dinnertime—it smelled too good and we just served her up, with the roasted vegetables and garlic, and a side of Cranberry Tequila Salsa. 

The grand old bird also gave us goose frittata and later in the week, homemade goose stock, simmered with more mirapoix (onions, celery, carrots), caramelized onions for darker color, garlic, ginger root, asparagus ends and Italian parsley. 

The goose broth then became the base for a hearty meal of French Onion Soup (although I don't know why we call it that when everything in it was grown in America ...) made with caramelized sweet white onions,  topped with a thick slice of our homemade safflower-coriander bread, and melted Mozzarella cheese.  We added a tiny dollop of white truffle oil to the soup before topping with the cheese and broiling it, and another tiny drop to finish. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Harvest Pizza

Homemade pizza is one of our favorite harvest dinners.  We start a batch of fresh dough in the bread machine, frequently peppered with herbs from the garden.  We let it rise while we finish up on the crushpad, and then collect some heirloom tomatoes and baby squash from the garden, and the last few leaves of basil before a frost.  A few vegetables and odds and ends from the crisper, we can assemble a loaded up, homemade pizza that is hot, fresh and quickly prepared. 

Color, flavor, and texture piled high on a cheesy pizza.

• 1 prepared 12" pizza crust
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped or pressed
• 1 teaspoon cornmeal
• 3 roma tomatoes, sliced
• 1/2 cup chopped, pre-cooked ham
• 1/2 cup fresh asparagus tips
• 1/2 cup fresh or grilled mid-season yellow corn
• 1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped mandarin orange bell pepper
• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated

Serves 4

In a small bowl, combine the garlic and olive oil. Heat the oven to 425º, with a pizza stone inside.

Brush the pizza crust generously with the garlic-infused olive oil. Sprinkle the pizza stone with cornmeal, lay the pizza crust on top, and bake for 5 minutes, until the crust begins to sizzle.

Remove the crust and brush on the remaining olive oil and garlic. Arrange the tomatoes, ham, asparagus, yellow corn, peppers, and basil over the crust. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over all. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the crust and cheese begin to brown. Remove and allow to cool until cheese is set. Serve immediately.

Gazpacho Cordobes with Chilled Dessert Viognier

Chef and customer Ilya Zarkhin promised to send us this link to a recipe for Gazpacho Cordobes which he paired at home with a chilled Dover Canyon 2001 Dessert Viognier "The Terraces."

Ilya says, "The freshness of cucumbers and tarragon in the soup will couple nicely with the nuttiness and almost sherry-like quality of the aged viognier dessert wine.  Let me know how you like it."

Traditionally, Gazpacho Cordobes is served with a glass of Manzanilla Sherry.  We mixed up our fresh tomatoes and used fresh yellow, red, pink and purple heirlooms; whatever was available in the garden, and substituted one yellow bell pepper for a red.

Unfortunately, it was gone before I got a picture.  Please send us yours!

How to Cook Without a Plan

With the advent of the 2008 harvest, time both expands and compresses—long hours of crush work and not enough time for errands, groceries, and leisurely dinners.

Dan and I have certain basic dishes that we always fall back on during harvest. Risotto, pasta and bruschetta sauces are our diehard favorites.

We love risotto for nights when we need something healthy, satisfying and comforting. Once you’ve made a basic risotto successfully, you will never need to look at a recipe again. The technique is simple and ingredients can be scavenged from the garden or vegetable crisper. We’ve included a basic recipe for risotto, but we also want to share a few simple tips for making risotto the Dover Canyon way.

Risotto

Risotto is an Italian rice dish made by slowly stirring hot chicken, beef, or vegetable stock into rice, generally the small, round arborio rice. The result is a creamy, soul-satisfying glop to which you will add condimenti—vegetables, herbs, and possibly cream or cheese.  Although the dish is amazingly simple, you will want to start with a high quality arborio or carnaroli rice.  Grocer-discount brands of arborio are tasteless and never really soak up the broth (maybe the rice is fossilized) resulting in a dusty, gritty texture.  So a good quality arborio makes all the difference.  We order enough to see us through harvest from A.G. Ferrari Foods.

The Dover Canyon Pantry

During our harvest season, which begins in early September and extends into November, we are hit with a double-whammy—no time and lots of visitors.

Harvest, or crush as it’s referred to in the wine industry, involves long hours. Working sixteen hours a day for ten days straight is not uncommon. If fruit ripens all at once, the hours can be even longer, and the weather can be brutal.  And on some evenings we may have a group of people hanging around at 7 pm--vineyard owners, other winemakers, family and friends--and we'll suddenly realize they all need to be fed.

So maintaining a well-stocked pantry, freezer and fridge is critical to our personal well-being and health, and really handy if we want to do some spontaneous entertaining.

One chilly October night we finished cleaning the press at one o’clock in the morning. Frozen to the bone, exhausted, and hungry, we went home and made an omelette, because it was the only thing we could think of that would be fresh, hot, and ready in ten minutes. We kicked off our boots and fell asleep on our sofas in front of a roaring fire, fully clothed.

Whether you’re a stock broker, a software engineer, or a vineyard owner, we all experience seasons of stress and effort that can be invigorating, but also exhausting. Getting together with friends is a gentle respite from pressure—but who wants to spend that rare free afternoon running around town collecting groceries and supplies, and then preparing an elaborate and time-consuming meal?  A well-stocked pantry makes preparing impromptu dinners much easier. In fact, quite a few of our favorite classic, one-dish meals call for basic ingredients like chicken broth or chopped tomatoes.

Here are some good pantry basics for fresh, quick dishes. If you stock your cupboards with these items, you will always be able to concoct a delicious meal with any simple cut of meat and a handful of vegetables.

August Pasta Salad and Old Vine Zin

And not just any pasta salad.  Customer Cheryl Dean enjoyed her husband's creative pasta salad with a bottle of Dover Canyon 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel.

On her blog, Wine, Food and Photographs, Cheryl reports:

Sorry, no pics of the pasta! I just forgot! And, we ate it so fast, it was GONE in no time! Hubby made a great pasta salad last night: sliced up radishes, cucumbers, red onions, added small tomatoes and GIANT black olives. Marinated it all in an Italian dressing, then added a sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese and pine nuts and VOILA! Served with hot pita bread. YUM, YUM! Oh, and some 2006 Dover Canyon old vine Zinfandel! WOW! Here's a pic of the Dover zin!~Wonderful!

This crunchy, summery pasta salad sounds like just the ticket for our warm August evenings.

How to Smoke a Duck: Viognier-Saffron Smoked Duck

The Fourth of July is a quiet day for wine touring . . . people are usually heading to the beach or the lake with kids and grandparents in tow, so Dan and I made our first cooperative smoked duck.  I have used the Weber smoker before to smoke duck, and I have a total of four smoked ducks under my belt (literally).  But this was Dan's first time to be involved in the process since the Trinidad Turkey.  Although it turned into a Chinese circus ("You're in charge!" he kept saying.  "But I totally disagree with the way you are doing this.") the duck survived in all its smoky, juicy radiance.

Our cooperative recipe goes something like this . . .

Baby, you can light my fire!

With the approach of warm weather, blue skies, spring bulbs and lambs, our thoughts turn to grilling. It’s time to dust off the barbecue and uncover the patio furniture. Here are our top ten tips for enjoying hearty meals hot off the grill.

It all boils down to how do I get it started? and when is it done? Everything in between should be simple and fun. Dan and I prepare appetizers on the grill for hundreds of people on wine festival weekends. For the most part, we’ve had great success, except when I set fire to the barbecue itself (a feat Dan didn’t think possible), or the time our friends decided to use walnut firewood to start a twelve-hour barbecue fire, good for dinner and breakfast.

We use a Weber kettle-style barbecue, because we like the intense heat produced by coals, as well as even heating when the lid is closed. Our 26" Weber can get up to 600° very quickly with the lid closed. We don’t actually grill at that temperature, in our saner moments, but we can grill on cold, windy evenings while we’re working on the crush pad, without losing heat to wind and frigid outdoor temperatures. We also have a gas grill, which is a great backup for busy grill evenings, but we’ve found that in cold, windy conditions gas flames just cannot keep the grill hot enough, even with the lid closed. Gas emitters clog with grease and ash, and since we grill often, that’s extremely inconvenient. So we stick with our trusty Weber, piling coals in the middle for a nice hot center, and leaving the edges open for radiant heat, or piling them to one side if we’re going to rotisserie. We can also use moistened wood chips and herbs in a coal barbecue.

Here are our ten simple steps for successful and enjoyable grilling: