Hooking Up With the Foodies
WBW-IMBB and ROSÉ

For one beautiful day (today), we have all gone Martha. This month’s combined effort of ‘Wineblog Wednesday’ and ‘Is My Blog Burning’ forces us to look at the complete package: the food and the wine. So welcome to wineland, dear foodies. In deference to all your great work, I could only seek inspiration for the culinary part of this exercise from one your sites. As I often lurk on a number of food blogs, I decided to jam on a recipe from one of my regular reads, Anne’s Chicken in Every Granny Cart.

As it has been cold, dreary and rainy for what seems like two months straight, I was in the mood for something spicy, something that tasted of sunshine. And for me, any vechicule for eating lots of fresh coriander makes me feel as though summer is around the corner. So here is my kid- and time-friendly take on Anne’s:

Pollo con Mole Verde & Frijoles con Puerco (detailed recipe here)

The Mole Verde
It’s May and I live in the country, so there was no way I was going to find fresh tomatillos. Couple this with the fact that I had an hour and a half to get this on the table, corners had to be cut. One of the remnants of my summer 2005 preserves was a half-litre bottle of salsa verde, so I decided that I would use this as the base for my mole. I sweated off the onion and garlic, added lime juice, my salsa (made from last summer's garden-grown tomatillos, coriander and scorching hot chiles), and let it reduce for 45 minutes till it was nice and thick… super fresh mole! Long live canning!

The Frijoles
This is killer. As the Mole was way too spicy for even my gastronomically adventurous children, I had to tone down the heat on this course. I followed Anne’s recipe except for using red wine instead of verjus , and replacing the jalapenos with a green bell pepper (as the chorizo already had some heat). I threw in a handful of fresh coriander at the end and topped it off with yoghurt instead of crème fraîche. I just finished the last of it with my morning eggs. Long live leftovers.

The Pollo
Again I followed Anne’s inspiration by pan-searing some chicken thighs, placing them on a dollop of mole and finishing them off in the oven. On the side, I made a basic white rice and a tomato-cucumber-coriander salad. As Anne so succinctly put it, holy frijole!

The Wine
Toscana Igt 2005, Rosato, Carpineto ($14…saq)
Corona exists for a reason. This type of mouth-blistering heat, while oh-so-satisfying, does little to accentuate the finer points of any wine. I just wanted cool and fresh and for me, that spells Rosé. As far as pinks go, Carpineto’s Rosato always makes my top three every summer. With grapes sourced from Greve in Chianti, this fuschia-tinted rosé is all fruit, with super ripe raspberry and cherry in the forefront. Great acidity and a surprising richness make this an excellent meal rosé…and it worked wonders with our little Mexican heatwave.

2006 ranking: #1 of 2