Most people don't know this but once a year I do two days of food and wine demos at the Virginia Wine Festival ... I think this was my fifth in a row. One couple from north of Baltimore have been to them all. It's the oldest wine festival in Virginia ... we just finished our 33rd at the Fairgrounds in Prince WIlliam County. It started out that I was just going to schedule chefs for four demos each year at the festival ... and at first it was always the 3rd weekend in August, when we could count on the hottest weekend of the summer or torrential thunderstorms. Now we're holding the festival at the end of the September when the weather is a little cooler. It's always been difficult to get chefs to travel to the country on the weekends so after a first year cancellation, I just jumped in and did it. This year I thought I would try and get a chef again and a couple of weeks ago I had another cancellation. So it was me again and that's pefectly fine.
I always have a good time and this year we had record crowds in our seminars ... especially on Saturday when the tent was home to standing room only crowds. I get to tell my stories to a captive audience ... well except for the guy who slept through my 1 p.m. demo and came up tens minutes after it was over and asked for a long gone sample. I didn't feel so bad since he slept through the next wine tasting class and straight through my 3 p.m. session. This time I had someone wake him up for the sampling.
The recipe I did this year was a Mussels dish steamed in Horton Chardonnay. I always think of it as a fall, football kind of food ... and the pot on the stove delivers awesome aromatics throughout the house. The farm raised mussels at Wegmans (it's on the way to the fairgrounds) were wonderful so I picked them up each morning. The two-pound bags had been harvested on the 25th from their Canadian beds. I wanted to show how selecting the best ingredients, treating them simply and using a fruit forward, minimally oaked wine in the cooking and for drinking can be a showstopper for even the novice. Mussles are perfect for that kind of treatment.
The recipe calls for 1/2 bottle of wine for the steaming liquid; garlic, shallots and tomatoes for steeping in the boiling mixture for a couple of minutes and then adding the mussels into the pot, covering and cooking for five minutes more. When the mussles are open, add the chopped Italian parsley and basil ... and stir through the pot with fresh ground pepper and you're ready to serve in bowls with baguettes on the table. I separate the cooking juices and add my own secret ingredient ... cold, cut butter swirled into the broth. On the first day after I ran out of mussels for the overflow crowd, many were happy to have the mussel, tomato, herb broth on the bread -- it looked like a wet bruschetta. They loved it.
At the show I discovered the Shenandoah Growers who produce the living basil you can find in Whole Food Marlet and Wegmans. I used their basil in the demo
The foto is with attendees at the show who asked for a photo ... after their flash failed, I let them use my camera. The second inset foto is with the person who took the first foto. I was thrilled to add at least some entertainment to their day in the country. As soon as I get their names, I will add them to the post.
