Stay Rad

Last night I reached into my samples that I recently received from Cornerstone Cellars, and pulled out this bad boy…

Cornerstone Oregon 2010 Willamette Valley Chardonnay

This is another wine that I have had before, but never with food.

Color: Golden yellow.

Nose: A very pretty scent of butter and apples.  There is a good stone minerality to the aroma as well.

Palate: Very tasty.  Creme brulee and lemon custard meet a great acidity and plenty of minerality.

Score: This is a hella good, and balanced Chardonnay.  This is not your over-the-top California butter bomb.  This Oregon wine is straight up Burgundian!  90 (When I first tried this wine at the tasting room in the Napa Valley, I gave it a 91)

Now…

On to the food.

I’ve been in a farm-fresh type of mode with my food lately.  Last week, I picked up a bunch of brussels sprouts at the farmers market.  Usually I will roast these guys with some olive oil and rosemary, but I wanted to try something different…

So I lifted this recipe for Apple-Blistered Brussels Sprouts from Michael Mina’s website Cook Taste Eat…

Get about a pound of brussels sprouts, chop off the butts, peel the leaves off into one bowl, and toss the hearts into another…

Halve the hearts and saute them in some good olive oil…

Remove the hearts and layer them in the bottom of your bowl…

To the same hot pan, add about a cup of fresh apple juice and a couple of pats of butter. Bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer…

Add the brussels sprouts leaves to the pan with some salt and pepper. Let ’em cook down for a few minutes…

Layer the leaves on top of the hearts in your bowl. Top it with some salt and pepper. Serve and enjoy.

The sprouts were really good.

The leaves picked up some nice sweetness from the apple juice, but the hearts maintained a crunchy, earthy characteristic.  Very tasty!

When paired with the Cornerstone Chardonnay, the sprouts amped up the butteriness of the wine.

The pairing was good, but I couldn’t let this wine pass without matching it up with one of my favorite Chardonnay pairings…

Wavy Lay’s! The salty and crunchy chips totally brought out the apple flavors in the Chardonnay.

Yum!

Stay Rad,

Jeff

Tags: Apple-Blistered Brussels Sprouts, Cornerstone Oregon 2010 Willamette Valley Chardonnay, Wavy Lay's

This entry was posted on November 16, 2012 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.