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| All of us at dinner |
This week we decided to make
spaghetti and meatballs. For some reason it just felt like a pasta night. We
started off by looking at what we had and went from there. We had a ton of
pasta, a starter sauce, half an onion, and some pancetta. We needed to buy meatballs,
mixed veggies, cheese, garlic bread, and of course brownies. I happen to always
be appointed master chef because I am an HNFE major and my roommates tend to
think I know the most about cooking (which is probably true considering one of
them almost caught the whole house on fire once while cooking).
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| Garlic Bread in Prep |
We decided that
we wanted to use half of the loaf we got for an appetizer and make the rest
into garlic bread for the meal. Now, we decided to get multigrain bread… so it
was a little hard to decide when the inside was done cooking. After putting the
bread in, I got started on the garlic bread. The main ingredient of course is a
heaping amount of butter. After the butter is covering the bread in a rather
thick layer, you add some salt free garlic and herb seasoning, a little bit of
Italian seasoning, and a generous amount of cracked black pepper. Then you
sprinkle cheese on top to your liking.
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| Sauce Prep |
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| Sauce with Meatballs |
After prepping the bread, I started the
water for the pasta and the base of the sauce. For the sauce I started with
sautéing the pancetta and onions in a pan. I then added a small amount of olive
oil and minced garlic. After letting the onions caramelize, I added the base
sauce and meatballs to the pan. At this point, I added some spices and sugar to
the sauce and turned it down to simmer. The pasta started cooking and it took
barely any time. After draining it, I added some olive oil to make it less
sticky. We left everything on the stove to stay warm while we tried the wine
and ate the appetizer. Between the three of us, we got two different bottles of
wine to try. They were Ebano and Crucero. Both were $7.95.
Ebano was 2007, 100% tempranillo from the Ribera del Duero
region of Spain.
The winery review said: The 2007
Ebano 6 is 100% Tempranillo aged 4 months in French oak. Dark ruby red in
color, it displays a pleasant bouquet of cedar, spice box, violets, black
cherry, and blackberry. Medium-to fullbodied on the palate with savory flavors
and plenty of spice, this racy, vibrant Tempranillo has enough structure
to drink well over the next 5-6 years and is a very good value.
My thoughts on the wine: It smelled of berries and dark fruit. It was
very mellow with a spicey finish.
Crucero was a 2010, 100% Carmenere from the Colchagua Valley region of
Chile.
A winery review said: Deep ruby. Cherry, blackcurrant and dark
cherry on the nose. Juicy dark fruit flavors turn slightly bitter in the middle
palate and are framed by dusty tannins. Finishes with tightly focused bitter
cherry and pepper qualities and decent length. This gets better with a bit of
aeration.
My thoughts on the wine: It smelled very peppery. This
proved to be true in the taste as well. All you could taste in the wine was
pepper. It was cracked black pepper all the way.
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| Appetizer |
The appetizer was Brie cheese with
the baked bread. By itself the appetizer was amazing, but then again, I love
cheese. With the cheese, the Ebano tasted very spicey. The bread and cheese
kind of muted the taste so all you got was the spicy sensation. I believe this
was due to the fact that the bread was kind of heavy. The cheese and bread
actually made the peppery aspect of the Crucero milder. It helped tone down the
wine.
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| The Dinner |
We decided that we needed to have
some veggies with our meal because we didn’t add any to the tomato sauce. We
had steamed potatoes and green beans in a Parmesan butter sauce. The Ebano wine
was again more spicy with the food, however, this particular side brought out
the berry in the wine. The Crucero was more muted with this side. The pepper
did not take over your mouth. It was very good with this particular dish. Next was the spaghetti and
meatballs. The main dish made the Ebano slightly spicy and slightly sweet finish.
The Crucero was very spicy with this dish and the pepper explosion made a
reappearance.
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| Me cutting the finished bread |
The garlic bread was the last thing
that I tried with the wine. The Ebano did not taste much different. It was a
tad bit spicy, but mostly tasted like it originally did. The bread brought out
the pepper in the Crucero. It was more of a pepper explotion than when I first
tried it. I think this is because I used a generous amount of cracked pepper on
the bread.
Overall, the dinner was a great
experience. Everything was very good… although I probably wouldn’t get the
Crucero again. I did end up liking the Ebano, which is interesting because in
my initial tasting notes I did not like the wine.
