Cooking with Wine

After Ellen's tasty post where wine is incorporated,  I was thinking about how much I love to cook with a little wine here and a little wine there. I  don't always have a bottle of wine open like you would in a restaurant setting. And, I don't particularly like buying the little screw top bottles of cooking wine. I'm fine with some Two Buck Chuck in white or red for this job. So in the case of Ellen's recipe, you need 1/2 a cup of white wine. (I'd almost never have this around, I'm not a white wine drinker.)

So, an easy, simple step I take, is freezing left over wine. If I need a cup of wine for cooking, I open the bottle then repackage the rest for later.

Because of the alcohol, wine doesn't freeze too terribly hard and thaws pretty easily. Think about the shape of the bottle or jar you use. One simple way to do it is to use an ice cube tray and bag the frozen cubes. I'm not big on plastic in the freezer though and I tend to want a bit more than a cube so I freeze it in the perfectly shaped ramekin.

I don't think I ever leave the drippings from a roast or steaks or turkey. Do you deglaze your pans? It makes for the tastiest sauces and isn't something that should be particular to chefs. You may have deglazed, just by adding water and making gravy. But when you make steaks, try this:

• Pour off a little bit of the fat
• Make sure to removed blackened pieces (brown is good and carmelized)
• Pull the pan off the fire for a minute
• Add wine 
• Return the heat
• Scrape with a spatula
• Let it boil down and concentrate
• Finish with a little bit of butter

Taste it, and add salt, pepper if you like. Now you have a perfect accompaniment for the steak, etc. Or, a wonderful thing to freeze and add to a soup base.
Easy.
All from some extra wine in your freezer.

Guest Contributor: Ellen Pastusak and Creamy Tuscan Chicken

My friend Ellen is fun. She's one of those people who seems to just be in love with all aspects of life. She has an ease and simple humor in her approach. She's also straight-forward without the extra wrapping.

She offered this delicious and fairly simple recipe. As I read it, I dreamed of the history, it must have come from some fabulous trip with her husband to some wonderful corner of Italy. So I asked about the history. She replied, "I actually saw this recipe on the package of Fosters Farm chicken I got at Costco." She said something about it being more elegant if she'd found it in GOURMET magazine, at which point I forgot all about the little Tuscan village and got a little teary eyed (I do miss GOURMET).

Well, this is elegant simplicity at it's best and I bet you'll love it. (Don't you wish you could dip a little rustic bread in that pan!)

Ellen's right about the sum of the parts, each ingredient in this recipe is good, but when you put them all together they are perfection!  And the ingredients together are Ellen's take on a quality, comforting dinner entree. A proven winner. And she promises, it tastes splendid reheated.

Here's the recipe.:

Creamy Tuscan Chicken a la Ellen

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

2 T. olive oil

salt and pepper

Sauce:

1/2 cup white wine

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1 cup heavy cream

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1 cup packed fresh spinach

1 cup fresh basil, rough chopped

1.  Heat oil in non-stick pan on medium high heat.  Season chicken with salt and pepper. Cook on medium high heat for 8 minutes per side.  Remove chicken from pan and set aside for later use.

2.  Add white wine to hot pan and let reduce by half.  Add mushrooms and saute for 4-5 minutes.  Add heavy cream, garlic and Parmesan cheese.  Mix well and bring to simmer.  Add spinach and basil and cook until spinach becomes tender.

3.  Place chicken back in pan with sauce to reheat - simmer for 5 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 165.  Serve alone or with pasta or risotto.

(to quicken cooking time, flatten chicken with mallet before cooking)

Give it a try and leave your thoughts in a comment!