Welcome to the Cooking with C.C. Blog. I will be discussing all things food and travel related. Be sure to join me for information from recipes, cookbooks, restaurants and places to visit. I look forward to hearing from you!
Amizetta Wine Dinner
We were invited to attend a wine dinner at the Ledges last Thursday featuring the wines of Amizetta. This is the second wine dinner this year featuring Amizetta. Spencer Clark, the founder and proprietor of Amizetta wines traveled to Huntsville to host this dinner. The previous dinner was hosted at Mason Dixon and Perry and Edward Clark came to town for that dinner. (For a writeup of that dinner, click here.) We have visited Amizetta when we've been in wine country and it is one of the stops on the 2016 California Wine Country Extravaganza. After much arm twisting, Spencer agreed to allow us to taste the current release (2012) along with next years release (2013) for this evening. The 2013's were bottled in July and won't be publicly available until mid-next year. I've never had the opportunity to taste a vertical like this in the past. It was extremely educational to see the difference in the wines, both as a function of the vintage as well as an extra year in the bottle. The other great fortune of the evening is that we were seated with Mr. Clark for dinner and had the opportunity to learn more about the…
Pumpkin Scones
Last year, I had been asked about Pumpkin Scones, so I put together a recipe for the annual "Holiday Breakfast" class. (For a "classic" cream scone recipe, check this post.) This past Friday night at the Sparkman High School football game, I finally had to put on a jacket. So, the fall season is in full swing and with October starting this week, I thought this would be a great recipe to share with you. When I was working the recipe, the dough was way too wet and sticky. I was reading an article about Pumpkin Bread in Cook's Illustrated. The problem they were solving was the raw taste of the canned pumpkin. By cooking to pumpkin puree, it caramelized some of the sugars and enhanced the pumpkin flavor. Then there was a note that it also drove off some of the liquid - bingo. Solve two problems at once. So, I made another batch, cooked the pumpkin, adjusted a couple of other ingredients and I had a dough that would work. It was still a bit wet and sticky, but it was to a point that was manageable. A little extra flour on the pan and a firm up…
Asian Rim Restaurant
As sometimes happens, Lori and I found ourselves with a free Friday night this weekend. We started at the Wine Cellar for the Friday night tasting. I really wanted to go because two of the Whitehall Lane wines were on the menu. (Whitehall Lane is one of the stops in Napa Valley on the California Wine Country Extravaganza next July.) This was one of my favorite tastings in a long time - we loved the Whitehall Lane and found several other wines we had not tried before as well. After the tasting we decided to head over to Asian Rim for dinner. Asian Rim is located near downtown Huntsville near Huntsville Hospital in the Twickenham Square area. We arrived fairly early, so it was not terribly busy when we arrived. We were early enough for Happy Hour - which for us was 1/2 priced appetizers since we had already enjoyed our "adult beverages" for the evening. Lori ordered the Thai Style Steamed Dumplings and I ordered the Godzilla Roll. The dumplings included chicken, shrimp, water chestnuts and shitake mushrooms steamed and served with a dipping sauce. The Godzilla Roll included shrimp tempura, crab, cucumber and avocado served with an Ugani…
The Original Public House Revisited
It’s been a while since Lori and I had dinner at the Original Public House. (You can see the original post here.) Since this past week was Huntsville Restaurant Week and the Original Public House had a nice $10 special, we decided to head there for lunch this past Wednesday with my boss to discuss upcoming plans. This was the second time in the last couple of months that I visited for lunch. Both of us had the pretzel crusted chicken sandwich. The sandwich includes the chicken cutlet topped with bacon, spring greens, cucumber salad, spicy honey mustard served on a grilled baguette. Everything was extremely tasty – the contrast of the bacon with the cucumber salad, complemented by the honey mustard. I loved the baguette, but if I had a small negative thing to say, the bread almost overpowered everything else – there was just so much of that good stuff. I had the creamy coleslaw as my side (Trying to be just a bit healthier since the special included dessert – or at least that’s what I told myself). Once we finished our sandwiches, it was on to dessert. We had two choices – carrot cake or brownie. We…