Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Amy,

Thanks for the copy.

You know, if we all share our 20 free articles, there are 40-some of us active on the board ....

Anyway, I agree that it's a crime to cook with really fine wine. I also cook with a lot of cheap white wine which is barely potable (currently is something called TwoFin, which my grocer has for $4). Nobody can tell the difference. However, I would drink it as long as it wasn't my first glass.

Reds are more sensitive because off flavors in bad reds are stronger. Really, it all depends on why the wine is bad; if it's oxidized, or just insipid and thin, that doesn't matter. But, if the wine is corked, sour, too tannic or musty, those flavors will be concentrated in the cooked wine. Disaster.

Notably, I used to make a mushroom-redwine marinara sauce a lot for big group spaghetti dinners. So one night I'm making this for 8 people in a Berkeley rooming house. Something was off about the sauce, so I added more red wine. Big mistake; the cheap red was sour as a lemon and I had to throw the entire gallon of tomato sauce out. Nobody let me forget that in a hurry.

Julia's adage was said during an era where "not good enough to drink" wasn't even two-buck-Chuck. In 1968 it was Lancer's or Martini & Rossi which had been open for a month. Julia herself was not at all pretentious about drinking wine. Somehow the phrase "good enough to drink" got transmuted into "good enough to serve to important guests", which isn't the same thing at all.

Funny (and true) story about Julia and two-buck-Chuck.

My aunt's cousin ( a really fun and gregarious guy) was friends with Julia. One day maybe ten years ago (Julia was living in Santa Barbara at this point) they were both invited to dinner at a friend's house. Jim (the cousin) went to Julia's house to pick her up. Somehow they got started on a discussion of Trader Joe's at which point Jim asked Julia is she was familiar with two-buck-Chuck. She was not, but was fascinated by it. So much so, she insisted they stop at TJs on the way to the dinner to buy some, which they did.

Well, you can imagine being the host to Julia Child. You slave, you fret, you plan absolutely everything, including (of course) the selection of wines to go with the meal you've painstakingly created. And then, Julia insists you serve the two-buck-Chuck she brought with the main course.

Priceless.

Amy

soooo...what did she think of it?

You know, I was laughing so hard when he told me this story, I didn't ask.

Amy

They might not sue you, but they will most certainly serve Fuzzy with a DMCA takedown notice if Google's indexing happens to swoop through here and accidentally tattle back to NYT HQ about what you did. So be aware of what you type.

--Geekboy

Geekboy,

So, if I get a takedown notice, I take it down. No big deal.

Betcha a nice bottle of wine I don't get one. (can I ship wine to your state?) (no fair tattling)

You should bet him some nice SF microbrew. I don't know if you were around on TOBB when Geekboy and JB were planning their wedding. They had beer tastings with each course, as I recall.

Amy

Amy, GB,

Oh, I have a nice one-time batch of "wet hop ale" from Rogue Brewing. I still have 4 bottles left ...

Not a beer drinker...send it to GB.