Simple NY Style Bagels. Oy, what a recipe!

I don't know about you but, I love a good bagel. When I lived in Florida, trying to get a good NY style bagel was an adventure to say the least. So, for all you transplanted NY'ers as well as those who love a good bagel and a schmear, the following bagel recipe, along a link to my recipe for home-made lox found here, should keep you going. Both recipes are easy to do and well worth the effort!

The bagel was invented  in Kraków, Poland, as a competitor to the bublik, a lean bread of wheat flour designed for Lent. Leo Rosten wrote in "The Joys of Yiddish" about the first known mention of the word bajgiel in the "Community Regulations" of the city of Kraków in 1610, which stated that the item was given as a gift to women in childbirth. In the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, the bajgiel became a staple of the Polish national diet and a staple of the Slavic diet generally.

Bagels were brought to the United States by Polish-Jews, and first gained popularity in New York City, an industry that was controlled for decades by Bagel Bakers Local 338, which had contracts with nearly all bagel bakeries in and around the city for its workers, who prepared all the bagels by hand. The bagel came into more general use throughout North America in the last quarter of the 20th century, which was due at least partly to the efforts of bagel baker Harry Lender,then sons Murray and Sam along with Florence Sender, who pioneered automated production and distribution of frozen bagels in the 1960s.

Fresh Homemade Bagel Recipe

Ingredients 

1 1/4 cups warm water (80 degrees)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons white sugar

3 1/2 cups bread flour

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

3 quarts boiling water

3 tablespoons white sugar

 Optional Toppings
1/2 cup lightly toasted chopped onions (2 teaspoons each)
2 tablespoons poppy seeds (about 1/2 teaspoon each)
2 tablespoons sesame seeds (about 1/2 teaspoon each)
1 tablespoon pretzel salt (about 1/4 teaspoon each)

 Method

Pre-heat oven to  350F (180C)
Mix water, salt, sugar, yeast in a large bowl and let sit for 10 min. Add remaining ingredients. Mix until it forms a single dough ball. (If using a bread machine, place water, salt, sugar, flour and yeast in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough setting.) Allow bread to rise for 45 minutes (bread machine will beep when rising cycle is done). Place dough on a floured surface and cut into 9 equal pieces and roll each piece into a small ball. Flatten balls. Poke a hole in the middle of each with your thumb. Twirl the dough on your finger or thumb to enlarge the hole. Cover with a clean cloth and allow bagels to rise another 40-50 min or until double in size.

Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Add 3 tbs of sugar. Boil bagels one minute on each side, then place on wire rack to allow water to drip off.

Brush bagels with either egg wash (1 egg white and 1/4 cup warm water). Top with your favorite topping. Sprinkle an un-greased baking sheet with cornmeal. Place bagels on cookie sheet about 2 inches apart and bake
20 minutes or until golden brown. Yield: 9 medium sized bagels. Just like Mr. Lender's, you can freeze and enjoy whenever you're in the mood for a delicious bagel.

Enjoy Enjoy Enjoy!

Bon Appetit,

Lou

Talking Cheese with Maître Fromager, Max McCalman

I first met Max a few years back when he was the Dean of Curriculum and Maître Fromager at Artisanal Premium Cheese Center, in New York City. We recently sat down for a discussion on the state of cheese today in America and his latest adventures in the world of cheese.

To give you some background on Max's cheese cred, I'll start with a bit of his bio. This, folks, is definitely a man who knows his curd and is known as America's foremost master of cheese. Early in his career Max worked for a European owned and operated Little Rock restaurant, Restaurant Jacques et Suzanne as Chef de Rang under the tutelage of Maître d'Hotel, Louis Petit. Max became General Manager of Manhattan's The Water Club in 1990. After taking some time off to be a full time dad to his daughter, he joined Picholine Restaurant as Maître d'Hotel where he launched its cheese service in 1995, becoming Maître Fromager and spearheading the installment of the first temperature and humidity controlled cheese cave in a North American restaurant. Max's new 'office' became the talk of the town.

Max authored his first book on cheese 'The Cheese Plate' in 2002 and became an instrumental part in the planning and designing of the Artisanal Bistro in New York City, which featured a retail counter for selling cheese and five separate cheese caves. His second book, 'Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best', went on to be the only cheese book to ever win a James Beard Award. Max was involved in the Artisanal Center as its Maître Fromager and Dean of Curriculum, while still serving as Maître Fromager for Picholine and Artisanal restaurants.

Max has been awarded the title of Maître Fromager as designated by France's Guilde Internationale des Fromagers Comfrérie de Saint-Uguzon, and in January 2011 was given an award from Les Trophées de l'Espirit Alimentaire (French Food Spirit Awards) for Entrepreneurship for 2010. Max's third book, 'Mastering Cheese: Lessons For Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager', went on to win Best Cheese Book in the World, at the Gourmand Cookbook Awards in Paris.

Max's most recent publication is his Swatchbook of Wine and Cheese Pairings. He is one of the founders of the American Cheese Society's (ACS) Certified Cheese Professional program launched in 2004, becoming Chairman of its committee in 2012. Max left the Artisanal company in May of 2014 to focus on the creative endeavors within the cheese industry and is currently developing a new cheese app due out sometime in mid 2015. Whew, quite a list of accomplishments. 

I asked Max of his earliest exposure to cheese and he responded, "As a two-year old, I reached out for a piece of cheese while sitting on the counter. " he recalls, "I had a cold and my mom, said something to the effect that I should stay away from the cheese because I might make the cheese sick. Funny, now, that I have learned more about cheese and it's nutritional properties through the years, and contrary to popular belief, it was in fact possible that the cheese may have been exactly what I did need." He continued, "I grew up in Brazil from ages 5 through 12, but we we're warned off dairy products, so I did not get my cheese/dairy fix on until I came back to the states. I firmly believe I'd be at least an inch taller if I had eaten cheese as a kid," he quipped.

I asked him about his introduction into culinary and speaking on this; he explained, "Growing up in Brazil, I became aware that working in a restaurant was treated as a lauded profession; people took a lot of pride in their work. Being Americans in Brazil. We were exposed to  a lot of fine restaurants. I was always enamored with the theater of a restaurant, I saw that service was treated like an art form. After college, I still looked like I was twelve, and I became a waiter. Back then, it really impressed the girls if you were a bartender, but I was too young." he laughed. "I enjoyed the front of the house as well as the back of the house, but the front of the house appealed to me more, especially due to the interaction with the public and table-side service." 

While working at Picholine,  Chef Terrance Brennan expressed his desire to do a cheese service in the European style and asked Max to become the restaurants Maître Fromager. I asked where his cheese training came from. "I attended tastings around New York City," he replied, "joined the American Cheese Society and learned my craft in the Socratic style, grabbing everything I could find in print, these being the days before the Internet. When customers would ask me about specific cheese, I would learn everything I could about that cheese. It was hands on, no school. Later, I actually developed my own school at Artisanal. 

Max has always espoused the health benefits of cheese, many times over looked. With the trend that dairy and certain fats were bad for us now being somewhat reversed, coupled with new proposed FDA restrictions on cheese making in America with regard to raw milk cheeses (In an Aug. 29 letter to the American Cheese Society, the FDA announced that it would be changing its testing protocol for non-pathogenic bacteria in cheese and admitted that it had made some mistakes in its raw milk cheese testing procedures), I asked Max to expand on this a bit. "There are cheeses that have not met the legal requirements, that are in fact good for you, causing certain cheese-makers to remove these cheeses from their offerings," he stated.

Continuing, he expanded, "I want to believe that the FDA wants to work with the cheese-making industry. There will be changes without a doubt. If we are going to work with the FDA, at least to maintain the status quo (cheese made with raw milk must be aged at least 60 days at a cool temperature), we see now that dairy scientists, artisan cheese-makers, educators, retailers, and also those in the medical fields are all starting to look at cheese-making a bit differently now. I want to believe the debate is starting to make some headway. If the FDA does in fact move the aging from 60 to 90, even 120 days, this will put a lot of people out of business," he explained. "It would be cost prohibitive."

Max has always preached that certain bacteria in cheese are good for you and removing them from our diets may in fact do more harm to our immune systems that not. I asked him to talk about this in more detail. He stated, "Looking at the microbiome ( a microbiome is "the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our body space) that resides in our bodies, I can go for days about the positive health benefits of cheese. We don't teach cheese in medical school. Nutrition receives cursory treatment. This is in fact the next book I want to write. It's not a pretty topic, but cheese has maligned far too long." I asked him for an example of cheese that is 'good for you. "I strongly prefer the unpasteurized cheeses," he replied, "the proteins in pasteurized cheese, when they are denatured, don't bond as successfully; the amino acids don't bond to form protein chains well. Many of the milk-fats, minerals, vitamins and food proteins are reduced and made less bio available by pasteurization and much of the good bacteria being is removed along with the bad." 

"Different species also bring different positives," he expanded. "You get certain nutrients from sheep's milk in higher concentrations, from goat's milk in higher concentrations, from cow's milk in higher concentrations.Contrary to how it sounds, it's one of those ironies, but high fat cheeses can actually help you lose weight. Obesity became prevalent when we started adopting low fat foods. Fat is flavor and to replace the flavor, the food manufacturers substituted, sugars, salts and artificial ingredients that your body doesn't recognize. Take the Mediterranean Diet. What I always found funny is the focus on less meat, more grains, vegetables and fish, But, the true Mediterranean diet has cheese as an everyday part of it."

In keeping with the emerging technologies and the current growing love of cheese here by America's foodies, Max has a new cheese app coming out to help cheese lovers choose the right cheese when pairing. This app will pair not only wines with cheese but cheese with wines, so you'll be able to choose the wine you like and it will give you a list of cheese that would go with it. Conversely, Should you choose the cheese first, the app will give you a list of what wines may be paired with it.

I asked Max if he agreed with me that the 'state of cheese today' in America had changed, with folks being more willing to try new cheeses and if he thought that foodies in the US were becoming more knowledgeable about cheese and willing to make cheeses a part of their diet. He replied, "Absolutely! Cheese consumption in the US has tripled since 1970. We haven't caught up with many countries in cheese consumption per capital but we have recently passed British consumption and Spanish as well.

Back to what I said about the Mediterranean diet, we hear all about fish and grains, and olive oil, etc, but we never hear about the cheese in their diet. Cheese is a big part of the diet, take Italy, France, Greece, Cheese is a huge part of their diet. That's the great thing about Americans, they're increasingly curious about their food. Look at the craft cheese wave, the craft beer wave, even the craft cider wave. I think as far as pairings go, we have gotten a bit obsessive though, as if you make a mistake in a pairing it's some sort of egregious error. I think we over analyze now, instead of just enjoying a piece of cheese and some scotch, or whatever. That said, I don't know another country where people are willing to spend $50, $75 or more, to attend a cheese seminar. Pairing make that possible. Folks love a cheese pairing class though. Now people are even going on cheese themed journeys, or tours, much like wine and beer trail tours, I Joined the Cheese journeys company (cheesejourneys.com) as their Guest Educator for tours to France, england and other domestic tours planned for their 2015 calendar. Maître Fromagers are now becoming as normal as Sommelier.

Lastly, I asked Max to describe his perfect cheese plate for you all, so that when serving your guests, or bringing cheese as a guest, you'll be the hit of the party. Rather than give a specific type of cheese, Max gave me rules of thumb when selecting cheeses for your cheese courses. "First, offers Max, "is to make sure your cheese is at room temperature. Second make sure you offer a minimum of three cheeses and, of course, a variety; one cow's milk, one sheep's, milk and one goat's milk. Vary your textures as well as your intensities of flavor."

"Start with the milder cheese and work you way through to the more intense flavored of cheese. Blues are always popular, especially this time of year. I like raw milk cheeses, but should you have someone who is not comfortable with raw milk cheeses, be sure to include a pasteurized cheese. Don't buy too much," Max continues, "especially when buying good cheeses. Buy enough. Most don't realize a little cheese can go a long way. If you are serving cheeses as an appetizer course, follow the flavors based upon the wine you are serving. Choose a more mild cheese so it doesn't dominate the palette and interfere with what you are serving. I personally prefer having the cheese course at the end of the meal, in the European fashion, so if you are serving a sweet dessert wine, pick appropriate cheese that balances with it.

To learn more about where you can see Max in person, visit his website www.max-mccalman.com. You can also follow Max on Social media at the following links, twitter, facebook & Instagram.

Max is a highly visible advocate for artisanal cheese production, and is renowned as one of the cheese world's living legends for his expertise, insight and passion. He is a dedicated scholar of cheese, where he acts as consultant to the trade, judges at cheese competitions and is a frequent guest lecturer.

I hope you have learned something today and I encourage you to expand your palette and try new cheeses. Experiment, enjoy and be sure to let me know how your next cheese board offering goes. I always love learning new things and hearing about your next great culinary adventure.

As always, Bon Appetit!

Lou

"Holiday Seasoned Nuts, Brittles & Barks"

It’s that time of year, when we spread love through food with family and friends. The season is filled with joy and laughter, and the gift of giving is among us all. It’s sometimes hard to decide what this years’ festive treat will be. But if you like homemade goodies, and can follow some simple guidelines, I am sure you will come out of this feeling and looking like a pro, and have all your loved ones impressed by your efforts!

Brittles
Brittles are such an easy and decorative gift that gleams with craftsmanship and love. Peanut and almond brittle are probably the most commonly prepared brittles during the holidays. But these nutty, sweet, candies are much more versatile than the layperson would know. I’ve baked recipes including spiced pumpkin seed brittle cookies, toffee peanut brittle brownies, and folded chocolate almond brittle into ice cream. Put your favorite brittle in the food processor until it is the texture of sugar, sprinkle on your favorite brulee, and use the kitchen blowtorch to form the crunchy caramelized top we all love! Don’t stop there though, get creative and encourage your friends and family to explore the many ways to enjoy this tasty holiday treat!

Add baking soda or butter to make a more delicate brittle The trick, though, is to make a candy that's truly brittle so that it breaks when you bite it, rather than a hard candy that must be sucked like a lollipop or toffee. By adding baking soda to the sugar syrup, you unleash a zillion minuscule air bubbles that give the candy a porous, delicate texture. Butter also helps to make the candy tender and easier to chew, as well as adding its own rich flavor.

Peppermint Bark
The recipe for peppermint bark uses few ingredients, with only chocolate and mint candies required. Some recipes also add peppermint flavoring. The candies used may be candy canes, or mint candies. The candies should be broken up, and the chocolate is melted. These two ingredients are combined on a baking sheet and then chilled until firm. The bark is then removed from the sheet and broken into pieces in a similar way to peanut brittle.

Seasoned Nuts
Although nuts take center stage in preparations such as brittle, they are far more complex and versatile. Seasoned nuts are a great evening starter, and a fun gift to give. Mixing different varieties or singling out a favorite, is half the fun! Some of my favorites include pistachios, pecans, walnuts, pine nuts, cashews, peanuts, macadamia, hazelnuts, almonds, and adding a variety of seeds like pumpkin, flax or sunflower seeds. Once that decision is made, decide if the mixture is going to be served warm or at room temperature. Typically the nuts are roasted first, then mixed with butter or egg whites to bind, and tossed in a flavorful mixtures of spices. Sweet and Spicy nuts are among Americans’ favorite, using brown sugar or maple syrup and bourbon with cayenne pepper and paprika.

Other favorite flavorings and spices of mine include fresh or dried thyme, cinnamon, ginger, cumin, nutmeg, allspice, soy sauce, and sea salt. To really wow your friends, prepare each nut in a different way, and then mix them together. Try smoking almonds, and candying pecans. Then cayenne roast walnuts and coconut toast some macadamia nuts. Mix all those nuts together and the flavors will really explode on the palette. Try mixing nuts and fruits together like dried cranberries, pineapples, raisins or figs. Get creative with seasonings, and don’t knock it till you try it! Food can be a lot of fun, and your imagination and willingness to try new flavor combinations, will open up so many doors in the world of cooking.

I wish you all a Holiday season full of love and success.

All the Best

Lou

A Simple Guide to Understanding Champagne

It's time for me cover my all time favorite result of the fermentation of grapes, champagne. I absolutely adore it in all its forms and will never, ever, turn down a glass of 'the bubbly'. While Champagne is quite popular throughout most of the year, I was not surprised to learn that a full quarter (25%) of all the champagne & sparkling wine sold in a given year, is done so during the final week of the year between Christmas and New Year's. I'm going to cover the ABC's of this wonderful sparkling beverage and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. Let's start out by examining what makes champagne, well...champagne!

Champagne is produced exclusively in the Champagne region of France, the area from which it takes its name, and only wines made from this region are allowed and can properly be called champagne. While the term 'champagne' is used by some makers of sparkling wine in other parts of the world, most countries limit the use of the term to only those wines that come from the champagne appellation. In Europe, this is strictly adhered to due to its Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status. Other countries, such as the United States, have some leeway with regard to the use of the term 'champagne' by use of a legal structure that allows those producers who have been making sparkling wine for a long period of time to continue to use the term 'champagne' under specific circumstances.

How It's Made
Champagne is a blend of, for the most part, three grape varieties; Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. When making the base wine, grapes are pressed in a very careful method so as not to allow the color or bitter qualities from the skin to flow into the juice. This is especially true of the black grape types. This juice is then set aside and starts the first fermentation and aging process. Each batch of juice is set aside separately and blending is not done until after fermentation. Once this process is done, the juices are blended to make the base wine which is known as cuvée. In some cases, aged samples, as well as those from many different vineyards, are used. In very rare situations, it is possible that close to 100 different samples have been used to make this base wine.

Contrary to legend and popular belief, Dom Pérignon did not invent sparkling wine. Around 1700, sparkling champagne, as we know it today, was born in France. However, the English scientist and physician Christopher Merrett documented the addition of sugar to a finished wine to create a second fermentation six years before Dom Pérignon arrived in the Abbey of
Hautvillers and almost 40 years before it was claimed that the famed Benedictine monk 'invented' champagne. This is the process that gives champagne and sparkling wine its 'bubbles'.

Merrett

Méthode Champenoise is the traditional Dom Pérignon method by which champagne is produced. After primary and bottling, a second alcoholic fermentation occurs in the bottle. This second fermentation is induced by adding several grams of yeast and several grams of rock sugar. According to the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, a minimum of 1.5 years is required to completely develop all the flavor. In years where there is an exceptional harvest, a millesimé is declared. This means that the champagne will be very good and has to mature for at least 3 years. During this time the champagne bottle is sealed with a crown cap similar to that used on beer bottles.

As the yeast consumes the sugars, alcohol and carbon dioxide are produced. Since it is trapped in the bottle, it waits for you and I to 'pop' the cork and release it for all of us to enjoy, and yes, even to sometimes wear. A sediment is then formed that settles to the bottom of the bottle called lees. In the traditional labor intensive method of fermentation and aging, bottles are turned and rotated either manually or mechanically in a process called remuage for a period of up to three months to allow all the lees to settle into the necks of the bottles. After chilling the bottles, the neck is frozen, and the cap removed. The pressure in the bottle forces out the ice containing the lees, and the bottle is quickly corked to maintain the carbon dioxide in the wine. Some syrup is sometimes added to maintain the level within the bottle.

I should note here that when buying 'cheaper', less expensive champagnes, the reason they are less expensive is that they do not go through méthode champenoise, the long and traditional process described above. They get their carbonation in the same way soda does, through compressed carbon dioxide gas blasted into the wine. This is the reason that truly well made champagnes are so delicate. The méthode champenoise creates very small bubbles that last quite a long time, while the compressed air carbonation method creates very large bubbles that have a short life and can actually be quite aggressive.

History of Champagne
Although the French monk Dom Perignon did not invent champagne, it is true he developed many advances in the production of this beverage, including holding the cork in place with a wire collar to withstand the fermentation pressure. In France, the first sparkling champagne was created accidentally; its pressure led it to be called 'the devil's wine' (le vin du diable) as bottles exploded or the cork jolted away. Even when it was deliberately produced as a sparkling wine, champagne was for a very long time, made by the méthode rurale, where the wine was bottled before the only fermentation had finished. Champagne did not utilize the so-called méthode champenoise, the second fermentation of adding of the yeast and sugar, until the 19th century, 300 years after Christopher Merrett documented the process.

Although the first wine-producing vineyards in Champagne appeared between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, the events of the 17th century brought the beginning of champagne as we know it today. The vine-growers of Champagne had learned how to stabilize their wines and keep them fresh for several years. As a result of their hard work and the preciseness, the Champenois also obtained a white wine by combining both black and white grapes using grapes that had been grown in the Champagne region. By the last decades of that century, they mastered the mysteries of effervescence, which was their stroke of genius.

As with most great culinary discoveries, which seem to come from either Italy or France, champagne first gained world renown because of its association with the anointment of French kings. Royalty from throughout Europe spread the message of the unique sparkling wine from Champagne and its association with luxury and power. The leading manufacturers went well out of their way to make sure that they and the champagne they produced was associated with nobility and royalty. Through advertising and packaging, they sought to associate champagne with high luxury, festivities and rites of passage.

In 1866 the famous entertainer and star of his day, George Leybourne, began a career of making celebrity endorsements for champagne. The champagne maker Moët commissioned him to write and perform songs extolling the virtues of champagne, especially as a reflection of taste, affluence, and the good life. He agreed to drink nothing but champagne in public.

Types of Champagne

Vintage And Non-Vintage
Most of the champagne produced today is 'non-vintage,' meaning that is a blended product of grapes from multiple vintages. Most of the base will be from a single year vintage with producers blending anywhere from 10-15% (even as high as 40%) of wine from older vintages. A designated 'vintage' is usually up to the wine maker and specifically tied to conditions that are very favorable. 'Vintage' wine must be composed of at least 85% of the grapes from the vintage year. Under champagne wine regulations, houses that make both vintage and non-vintage wines are allowed to use no more than 80% of the total vintage's harvest for the production of vintage champagne. This allows at least 20% of the harvest from favorable vintages to be reserved for use in non-vintage champagne. In less than ideal vintages, some producers will produce a wine from only that single vintage and still label it as non-vintage rather than as 'vintage' since the wine will be of lesser quality and the producers have little desire to reserve the wine for future blending.

Blanc de blancs
Blanc de Blancs means 'white of whites' and is used to designate champagnes made only from Chardonnay grapes. The term is occasionally used in other sparkling wine-producing regions, usually to denote Chardonnay-only wines rather than any sparkling wine made from other white grape varieties.

Blanc de Noirs
Blanc de Noirs are white champagnes made only from the black grape varieties of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Typically, these sparkling wines are full-bodied and deeper yellow-gold in color. They are ideal for full-flavored foods, including meats and cheeses.

Pink or Rosé
Pink or Rosé champagnes are produced by one of two methods. The traditional method involves the addition of a small amount of Pinot Noir still wine to the base wine or cuvée prior to the second fermentation. The maceration method, or skin contact method, involves the pressing of the grape skins, allowing them to soak with the juice of the grapes prior to fermentation.

Prestige cuvée
A prestige cuvée, or cuvée de prestige, is a proprietary blended wine (usually a champagne) that is considered to be the elite of a producer's range. Famous examples include Louis Roederer's Cristal, Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle, Moët & Chandon's Dom Pérignon, and Pol Roger's Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill.

The original prestige cuvée was Moët & Chandon's Dom Pérignon, launched in 1936 with the 1921 vintage. Until then, champagne houses produced different cuvées of varying quality, but a top-of-the-line wine produced to the highest standards (and priced accordingly) was a new idea. In fact, Louis Roederer had been producing Cristal since 1876, but this was strictly for the private consumption of the Russian tsar.

Cristal was made publicly available with the 1945 vintage. Then came Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne (first vintage 1952), and Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle 'La Cuvée' in 1960, a blend of three vintages (1952, 1953, and 1955). In the last three decades of the twentieth century, most champagne houses followed these with their own prestige cuvées, often named after notable people with a link to that producer (Veuve Clicquot's La Grande Dame, thenickname of the widow of the house's founder's son; Pol Roger's Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, named for the British prime minister; and Laurent-Perrier's Cuvée Alexandra Rosé, to name just three examples, and presented in non-standard bottle shapes (following Dom Pérignon's lead with its eighteenth-century revival design).

Champagnes also come in a variety of sweet to the extra dry. Here is a brief chart that will help you in picking the type that best suits your tastes:

Doux: Sweet
Demi-sec: Half-dry
Sec: Dry
Extra sec: Extra dry
Brut: Nearly completely dry
Extra Brut / Brut zero: No added sugar at all

Sparkling Shiraz
This is a relatively new sparkling wine experience from the Shiraz producers of Australia, and I felt it deserved a mention here. As a fan of Shiraz, I was intrigued and found the wine to have all the characteristics of the traditional Shiraz that I admire, blackcurrants, blackberries, chocolate, cherries, strawberries, hints of tobacco with a rich smoky oak flavor and that trademark peppery finish. Sparkling Shiraz wines should be served slightly chilled. If it's summer, place in the fridge for 30 to 40 minutes. However, if it's mid winter, then room temperature will do fine. The bottom line is you want it slightly cooler than you would serve traditional Shiraz, yet not quite as cold as a Chardonnay.

Opening a Champagne Bottle
The trick to opening a bottle of champagne while maintaining its integrity is to avoid 'popping' the cork. Also note that the better the champagne, the less 'pop' you will experience. Begin by scoring the foil around the base of the wire cage. Then, carefully untwist and loosen the bottom of the cage, but do not remove it. In one hand, enclose the cage and cork while holding the base of the champagne bottle with your other hand. Twist both ends in the opposite direction. As soon as you feel pressure forcing the cork out, try to push it back in while continuing to twist gently until the cork is released with a sigh.

The Drinking
This, of course, is my favorite part. Champagne should always be served chilled (43 to 48 F) and served in a champagne flute, a long stemmed glass with a tall, narrow bowl, thin sides and an etched bottom. You should hold the flute by the stem or base as opposed to the bowl and since 'clinking' seems to be the norm when consuming champagne, don't overdue it and be careful. I am a perfect example of what not to do when holding a delicate champagne flute, as one New Year's Eve, while trying to make a point rather over-zealously, I found myself holding a base and stem while my bowl sailed across the room, getting the attention of a rather large guy who was none to pleased as it hit his forehead, but that, my friends, is a story for another day. I have included below a simple guide as to which particular champagne goes with certain types of food so the next time you are hosting, you can wow all your friends with your acute knowledge of 'the bubbly.'

Blanc de Blanc Champagne: Oysters, crustaceans and gently flavored white fish.
Blanc de Noirs: Lighter meat dishes (pigeon breast, partridge, veal, pork). If it's an aged wine, it can stand up to a bit richer protein such as kidneys or venison.
Non-Vintage Champagnes: Especially young and fruity versions are recommended with cheeses such as Beaufort, Gruyère, Emmental. Older non-vintage champagnes can cope with dishes with darker, nuttier flavors. (Caviar for instance)
Vintage Champagnes: Great with black truffle,scented foods, cheeses such as Parmesan and lightly smoked foods. Younger vintage champagnes can provide a foil for a wide variety of dishes, from fish with rich sauces to poultry (especially duck), light meats (veal and pork) and many cheeses (Chaource and Lancashire). Japanese dishes are also suggested.
Non-Vintage Rosé: Prawns, lobster and other seafood work here.
Vintage Rosé: Aged vintage rosé champagnes have a rich, savoury character that can pair well with meat dishes, and have the power to stand up to high levels of herbs and spices, specifically basil, mint and coriander.
Demi Sec Champagnes: These go superbly with savory dishes, foie gras is an obvious example. If there is an edge of sweetness to the food (caramelizing, a fruit ingredient or sugar,) then this style can provide a better match than a dry selection. These also pair well with most desserts as long as they are not overly sweet.

The only hazard in drinking champagne tends to be that it is so delicate in body and flavor, it is very easy to find yourself a bit buzzed rather quickly. As always, do enjoy it, but don't overdo it. As we all know, anything in excess tends to not be a good thing. I hope that you have learned a bit more about champagne than you already knew, but the learning here is not in the reading, my fellow Champagne-ites, it's in the drinking, so go out and eat, drink and enjoy!



Bon Appetit!

Lou