Are wine clubs a great deal? Great - no, but I would say they are a fair deal. We used to have Williams-Sonoma wine club subscription when we lived in New Jersey. It was very nice. Unfortunately they won't ship to Colorado, so I had to cancel. Food&Wine wine club does ship to Colorado, and that is what we have now. I would recommend both of these clubs to anyone who is interested in this sort of thing. The very first thing you should check is that you can receive wines from the wine club you are considering in your state before you get too excited with all the details to avoid disappointment if they can't ship to you.
Most of the clubs that I've seen offer wines that comes out at $15 per bottle with basic subscription, but fancier choices are available with wines in your shipment coming out to $30 per bottle and about $60 per bottle. Most of the clubs also offer free wine replacement - if you don't like a wine they send for any reason, they say they will replace it "no questions asked". I haven't yet had to deal with such a situation, so I can't give you my review of this offer.
Another valuable feature is discounts on wines. That is, if you like a wine that was sent to you to try, you can buy a case (sometimes half cases available as well) at a discount, usually 10% off. And last but not least point of value I see in wine clubs is the write up on the wine with some history and tasting notes as well as suggested pairings and recipes in particular.
One of such recipes is what I am cooking tonight.
Wine
Wine with tonight's dinner is a medium-bodied red - 2010 Mas Grand Plagniol Tradition. It is a Rhone blend of Grenache and Syrah grapes.
We both liked the wine on its own, now time to make a dish to go with it for dinner.
Spice-Rubbed Chicken Drumsticks
Recipe actually called for thighs, but I had drumsticks on the ready, so why not use them. Recipe is from Chef Tre Wilcox (you might remember him from Top Chef), and is available on www.foodandwine.com: click here.
Start with dry roasting the spices, then grind them.
Place chicken (whichever parts of chicken you wish to use) in a bowl, then rub them with salt and the spices.
Let stand. Next cut the vegetables: slice onions, leeks, chop tomatoes.
Recipe calls for browning chicken, also stewing with veggies on the stovetop. I'm skipping all of that. After reading about braising in Modernist Cuisine and understanding how braising works, I will take a more minimalist approach. All that braised dish needs is some moisture inside the braiser and and good braiser that will heat evenly and keep the moist inside and not let it escape. So I create a bed of vegetables, add a bit of wine.
Then place the chicken and add the remainder of the vegetables.
I am using a cocotte by Staub for braising. It is cast-iron, less pricey Le Creuset's cousine from France and I highly recommend Staub cookware. The lid has many little bumps that help promote condensate forming on the lid to drip back down on the food and keep basting it.
Now put the lid on and place the dish into preheated oven (350-370F) and let it do its magic for 1.5-2 hrs. Take it out from the oven, take chicken out of the dish - chicken meat should be very tender and falling off bones.
Let sauce simmer on the stove top, adding a bit of red wine vinegar and a bit of honey.
Season to taste ( I added a few herbs as well, not just salt and pepper), and it's done.
I served this dish with rice.
Enjoy with the wine.
We both enjoyed this dish with the wine - they complement each other nicely. Overall recipe is very easy to make too, even though it isn't fast, but most of the time it requires to cook is the braising in the oven, so it doesn't really require much involvement. Sit back and sip the wine while it is cooking.
Top Chef
It is Wednesday night, and that means new Top Chef episode is on. I am still a bit upset that Beverly is out. I was really cheering for her. Her food looks and sounds amazing (maybe I'll cook one of her dishes some time soon - Bravo's website does provide the recipes), but what I admired most about her is how cool she remains in the kitchen. It was really upsetting to see Sarah win quickfire for a curry dish in which she had rather passive involvement, and by her own admission, her Asian cooking is at level 0. Floyd did the important work on that dish! I won't be crying for Lindsey going out of the competition. Between the two remaining, I will cheer for Paul.
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