Brigits_Flame, November Entry 01: Wine.
Okay. New month, new contest. Let's see if I can remember my deadlines.
Apologies for never finishing Week 2's from October. Got sick of it, stuck to the election headlines, neglected my B_F. It won't happen again.
But hey! Let's see if I can be tempted into writing fiction for next week (assuming I make it). Haha, this Nonfiction class I'm taking has really turned me against it. It has to stop (the non-fic, I mean). Anyway, I present this week's entry, the prompt being "wine".
“You know, it’s the Argentinian wines that are really coming into their own these days,” I said, the other day last week. Alex and I were in Schnucks, which is a grocery store. Alex did not care at all, and I couldn’t tell.
“Oh,” she said.
“I mean, it’s kinda crazy - fruit-forward whites, reds that go with fish - sort of the viticultural enfant terrible, if you read me.”
“I have no idea what you are saying,” she said. We were trying to decide between two Australian wines, each about 5 or 6 bucks per bottle; should I get Yellowtail - the one with the kangaroo on the label, or Little Penguin - the one with the, er, little penguin? We went with the Little Penguin, which was an ’07 Cabernet Sauvignon. Such, such are the joys.
I think I like cooking with wine more than I ought to.
As of this writing, I am not legally permitted to purchase, sell, or, I believe, consume alcohol in the United States. I’ve never been particularly gung-ho about drinking, and I have never been intoxicated to the point of illness or foolishness, even since arriving at university. But I do like wine, dark beer, and Sambuca cocktails. And I love to cook with wine, and talk about wine, even if I just parrot whatever Joshua Wesson the Low-Cost Wine Guy says. I mean, c’mon! How cool is wine?
Sometimes my exuberance gets me in trouble.
Example: I made macaroni and cheese the other night, a few days after buying the Little Penguin cab. And this mac-and-cheese came not from a box, mind; this was a highfalutin casserole with three cheeses, half-and-half, and white wine. The casserole has a creamy, pleasing consistency, with a rather savory tang (I use really sharp Vermont cheddar). But when I was cooking, I realized I had enough macaroni noodles to make two baking-dishes-worth, and enough cheese and half-and-half. I only lacked the white wine; I only had enough for one recipe.
I pouted. And then thought for a bit. This was a Cabernet Sauvignon, and from my limited vitibarometer, that meant it was pretty tannic and tangy. “Why not?” I thought. “What’s a little purple?”
So I set about preparing the next batch. And then I had a realization: I hadn’t remembered to borrow a corkscrew from my neighbors. And it was late, too late at night to ask for one. It was a Sunday night, and the macaroni and cheese was for dinner, the following evening.
A setback, you say? Pish. These things have never stopped the determined mind. I went for the stubby serrated-knife in the silverware drawer. It is a sturdy, fine knife, with a thick rubber hilt with grooves for easy gripping. A very safe knife, as far as these things go, to uncork a bottle of wine with.
Uncorking wine with a knife is not a delicate or elegant process.
I drove the knife about a half-inch into the cork and then began twisting, pulling up very gently and gradually. But I doubted myself, and pulled the knife out too soon. I tried to pluck the cork out with my fingers but it was still far too firmly into the neck of the bottle.
So the knife went into the cork again, and this time I was perhaps a bit too forceful because the cork shot down into the neck of the bottle, displacing about a tablespoon or so of wine with great pressure. The spray coated my glasses, the stove, the counter. I moved, angrily, to kick the oven, but thought against it. Breathed. “Well,” I thought aloud, “it’s open.”
I poured out the proper measure of wine and the béchamel sauce became an alarming raspberry sort of color. Mixing it with the pasta made it look grayish, and in the casserole pan, after having spent the night, foil-wrapped, in the fridge, the pasta had absorbed some of the wine’s pigment, looking brown and perhaps a little eerie.
Seeing the two casseroles side-by-side that night at dinner, my roommate said, “Is that one whole-wheat pasta?”
“No,” I said, thrusting a finger in the air. “It is an experiment of SCIENCE!”
It turned out fine; perhaps a bit fruitier than the white-wine one, but such things come with the territory. Purpled cheese, though. That’s a little weird.