The past couple of nights I had two really fun food and wine events so I thought I’d share some pics with you all.
At Home with Heidi Farm to Fork Cooking Class
On Monday night, I joined the Charlotte Food Bloggers – an awesome group of which I’m a new member – for the a cooking class put on by Heidi Billotto, a Charlotte-based culinary expert and teacher. She helped us make an entire meal with all local NC and SC-sourced ingredients, mostly from local farms. It was really cool and so much fun!
Our salad course was so delicious! To make it, we took the beets, washed them and wrapped them in foil pouches before we roasted them. This was so great because once they were roasted you could literally just wipe off the skins with a paper towel. We added fresh rosemary and thyme, the thin-sliced radishes, sea salt, and a blood orange olive oil from Pour Olive. The combination of flavors was amazing and something I’m definitely going to recreate at home!
The cucumber soup was also so easy and SO GOOD – you simply take 4 cucumbers, cut them up and place them in a food processor to purée. Then add 1 cup buttermilk and 1 cup plain Greek yogurt, the zest of one lemon, and sea sat to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve! This soup is served chilled and is so refreshing for summer!
I am making this tapenade for sure again – it would be good on anything! You use a couple of cups of any kind of pitted olives, about 3 tbsp of capers, several stalks of celery, 2-3 tomatoes, the zest from two lemons and one orange, and a cup of minced flat-leaf parsley.
The fish was a pan-roasted snapper with the tapenade I just mentioned above. Heidi shared the Canadian rule with us—to figure how much time you have to cook your fish, it’s 10 minutes per inch of the fish’s thickness.
If anyone is interested in cooking classes with Heidi I’d definitely recommend it! She hosts small groups, corporate dinners, and big parties and more info can be found on her site here. We had such a great night of food and wine with her!
Trefethen Dinner at Corkbuzz
Last night I went to a wine dinner hosted by Trefethen at Corkbuzz. Do you guys know and like Trefethen wines? I had done a tasting before at Trefethen, but it’s always nice to experience the wines by themselves without any other ones to distract you!
Trefethen wines are great classics — I’m a big fan of their Chardonnay (which I noticed was on sale at wine.com so I’m linking here!)
In addition to the 2016 Chardonnay, we also tried the 2016 Dry Reisling, the 2015 Merlot (which was a huge crowd favorite!), the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2015 Reserve Dragon’s Tooth Blend. (The 2015 Merlot isn’t released yet publicly but I’m linking to the 2014 Merlot here.)
I really liked ALL the wines (as evidenced by my credit card bill of purchase this morning !) The Chardonnay and Merlot are great values and good everyday drinkers, but the Cabernet and Dragon’s Tooth are just big, wonderful reds.
Here’s a look at some of the food they paired with the wines – I won’t go into details since it’s been a big post for food, but suffice to say it was delicious!
If you need me, I’ll be at the gym for the rest of the week!!
Cheers!
xx — BB
This looks cool, Trefethen Chardonnay is favorite of ours, too! Have you had their Halo?
Such a great wine! The 2013 Halo I haven’t tried yet – I noticed it was still available on their site but it’s pretty steep ($220). Have you had that vintage?
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