So today I am bringing out my inner Julia Child and attacking her Beouf Bourguignon. Yes, yes I watched the Julie & Julia movie and now want to cook every recipe in Julia’s book. Well minus the meat jello looking thing. I have made asparagus w/ hollandaise sauce and Julia’s bruschetta as well. By the way, the bruschetta with the pan “grilled” bread….OMG!!!!
However this post is not at all about the cooking but rather one specific ingredient called for in the Beouf Bourguignon. *On a side note I just love saying that with french high pitched accent and all*. We are talking about the red wine the recipe calls for. As I searched the wine aisle I realized I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.
For those that don’t know me, I don’t really drink. On the rare occasion I do have a drink it’s always one of those fruity girly drinks that you can barely taste the alcohol in and I still ask them to put less than usual. I was told I would like wine and one time I have in a bellini that was mixed so perfectly I could not taste it. Err wait, is that champagne in that drink. No matter, obviously I am not well versed in Wine talk like some of my friends.
I don’t like any wine that has ever had the luxury of making it past the smell stage into my mouth. Sweet, dry, red, white, whatever else they all taste bitter to me. Blech. Obviously there is a lot more to wine than the four things I mentioned above but that is pretty much the extent of my wine knowledge, except I do know you drink different ones for different things. Since I am utterly clueless about wine when it comes to drinking I sure as all heck don’t know anything about it when it comes to cooking with it.
Back to my problem on the wine aisle. I needed a red wine for this recipe. While I was looking I realized right then I didn’t know which was white, red or purple (is there even purple in wine). Unless it said something like WHITE zinfandel or I could see through the bottle I had no idea what in the world I was looking for. Obviously I could only see which ones were white or pinkish looking and I knew that was not what I needed.
Standing there looking like a schmuck for about 20 minutes at the very least, I tried calling someone who is well versed in wine talk. Unfortunately they were not home. So then I did what I could to save myself more humiliation and strange looks from others for walking back and forth trying to figure out what exactly I need, I googled “best red wines for cooking”. I figured google was the only way to get this answered without asking all the people walking around.
Trusty Google, as always, didn’t fail and took me right to a cooking talk website. Listing several to choose from I was finally to the point of annoyance and wondering why regular old cooking wine won’t work, I closed my eyes and picked. Okay not really, but I was close. I did however, just pick merlot because I have heard of that before. So how shall my Beouf Bourguignon turn out, one will know in a few hours. If smell is any indication I may have just rocked at wine picking even though I haven’t the slightest inkling about Merlot.
I may never be a wine connoisseur or wine drinker but I will learn to cook with it, oh yes….I will!
Toni Patton
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It drives my friends crazy when I order a virgin appletini or daquiri! I’ve never acquired the taste for alcohol – I’d rather have a milkshake or something else for those calories! I’m silly enough on my own! 🙂