Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer: Goodies for a cause

By Cathy Huyghe   0 comments.

The thing about fundraisers is that you have to give something — cash, normally — in order to get. And what you get is often intangible: a good feeling or the sense that you’ve done something worthwhile.

This week, the “get” is a little more tangible and a lot more tasty.

Starting today and going through Mother’s Day on Sunday, some 150-plus restaurants, bakeries, and cafés all over greater Boston will donate 100% of the proceeds from designated desserts to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

It’s called Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer, and in the past 10 years it’s raised almost $400,000 for the cause.

I suspect its success has a lot to do with the kind of desserts — very tangible, very tasty — that are on offer. The list is heavy on chocolate (souffles, bouchons, tortes), fresh fruits (raspberries, strawberries), cupcakes, cheesecakes, and even whoopie pies (one version crafted with pink filling, another served straight up with milk).

Comfort food galore.

Check out the full list of restaurants and zoom in on one in your neighborhood.

Then stop in. And enjoy the feeling that you’ve done something worthwhile — for breast cancer research, and for your belly, too.

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.

Blooming all over Boston: Flowers and rosé wines

By Cathy Huyghe   0 comments.

Whether it’s along Marlborough Street or deep in the Boston Common, trees are in bloom. Whether the cherry trees catch your eye or you have a soft spot for magnolias, springtime is, for many of us, the best time to be outside in Boston.

The blush of first blooms also has come inside, in the form of this year’s crop of rosé wines. They’re pushing their way forward as wine shop owners position the rosés nearest their doors on prime, “buy me!” real estate.

I would, too.

Because rosé makes for absolutely perfect drinking right now, and you’ll want to sample a few of the latest, freshest offerings to hit the shelves.

Rosé is perfect because there’s something liminal about it. It isn’t quite one thing, but it isn’t quite the other either. Friends say that’s its charm: it is completely of its own category. Foes say that’s its downfall: it’s too indecisive (or undecided?) to be convincingly a kind of wine with its own merit.

Personally, I appreciate rosé’s “place in between” because – right about now – I can sympathize. Right about now, when I’m getting dressed I’m pulling from both my winter sweaters and my summer capris. Right about now, when I’m choosing a dish at a restaurant I’m pulling from vegetable-filled primavera and hardier ragú.

And right about now, when I’m deciding on a wine I’m pulling from more rugged grapes that are also handled with a light touch.

Rosés can be dark in color, with hardly a trace of the “salmon” descriptor you often find with rosés. They can be very bright, almost luminescent ruby. Those have just enough depth and just enough illumination.

They are substantive without being ponderous.

Which is exactly what we’re looking for right about now: a reason, and a way, to just lighten up.

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.

Wine and personality: Dr. Su Hua Newton at BOKX 109

By Cathy Huyghe   0 comments.

At first glance, Dr. Su Hua Newton seems an unlikely winery owner. She is a scientist by training. She wears a red blazer and black tights that just might be leather. She and her husband, Peter Newton, came to Napa way back in the day, when the valley’s landscape was more likely to be growing walnuts than grapes.

But then Newton begins to speak — as she did Friday night at the Newton Vineyard wine dinner at BOKX 109 Restaurant in Newton — and you realize the roles of winery owner, winemaker, and marketer suit her to a T.

That’s because she is intelligent and pragmatic (useful for one of the first-comers to the Napa wine scene). And because she is vivacious and charming (you’d have to be, to pull off some of the achievements Newton Vineyard has accomplished).

Plus, she is self-effacing and funny, and definitely not taking herself too seriously.

That last — an energy of self-deprecation and humor — helped open the door to the lively, even boisterous crowd that gathered in BOKX 109′s private dining room recently. Newton Vineyard’s reputation typically inspires a hushed reverence, thanks to wine critic Robert Parker’s 96-point rating of Newton’s wines, its inclusion in Parker’s ranking of the world’s 100 greatest wine estates, and premium price points per bottle. Newton Vineyard’s history, in other words, evokes an expectation of stuffiness.

Until Su Hua Newton is in the room.

That was the case on Friday. Maybe some of the guests came to the dinner anticipating a certain level of seriousness. What they got instead was communal seating around just a few tables in the room, exciting food (and I do not say that lightly), and the edge and the flair of BOKX 109, packaged with the unusual — even daring — flight of unfiltered wines from Su Hua Newton’s vineyards.

Maybe the next time these guests see Newton Vineyard on the wine store shelf, they’ll remember Dr. Newton’s sense of humor more than the unfiltered character of most of the wines. Maybe they’ll remember their conversation with fellow guests more distinctly than how well the Red Label Chardonnay paired with the oysters (outstanding though the food at BOKX 109 is).

Or maybe what they will remember is that Napa is full of personalities like Dr. Newton’s — personalities that flavor more than the wines.

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.

High-low mix strikes edgy balance at Deep Ellum

By Cathy Huyghe   0 comments.

I went for the french fries.

“They’re legendary,” a friend of mine said, referring to the malt vinegar and fleur de sel version at Deep Ellum in Allston. I’d agree — referring not just to the taste but also to that high-low mix that characterizes so many of the dishes on the menu.

Deep Ellum manages to balance high and low — whether you’re talking about the items on the menu or the interior decor or the drinks list — and that balancing act conveys a sense of edginess that appeals to a wide swath of customers.

Deep Ellum is a brunch joint and a late-night bar. (Kitchen hours are 11am to midnight, plus Sunday brunch starting at 10am.)

In the morning, you can go with a breakfast burrito or duck confit hash.

Late at night, stop in for a cocktail — or go with Veuve Clicquot or a sparkling white wine from a single-serve can.

Deep Ellum’s menu is well-edited and carefully designed. (The only thing that’s really huge about it is their beer selection: 28 on draft, 80 bottled.) It’s not an all-things-to-all-people menu, but with dishes flavored intensely and variously, they leave the customer happily skirting Deep Ellum’s edge.

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.

Resveratrol the old-fashioned way

By Cathy Huyghe   0 comments.

There’s not a wine drinker among us who hasn’t heard of the potential health benefits of resveratrol — you know, the chemical compound found in the skin of red grapes and, it follows, in red wine as well. The possibility of resveratrol having anti-aging effects and cardiovascular benefits is just too tantalizing, and it’s been a hot topic in the scientific community in recent years.

Makes for great dinner conversation over a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, yes?

Well, call me old-fashioned but I prefer to get my resveratrol the way Bacchus intended. As popular as it may be in supplement form, I’d rather find it in my glass. So long as there’s a good red to drink, and I’m happy and among friends, I figure a long and healthy life is headed my way anyway.

I’ll leave research to the scientists — including some of our neighbors over in Technology Square in Cambridge — who’ve seen a tough week for resveratrol-related studies.

Imagine this. A group of scientists at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals decided to get up-close and personal with the chemical composition of red wines. Not because it’s happy hour, and not because they prefer red over white. They’re doing it because it’s their job.

Intrigued? Well, in 2008 Sirtris was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline, and GlaxoSmithKline has continued to research a proprietary version of resveratrol called SRT501. That is, perhaps, old news to some of you.

The new news, reported on by a number of sources this week, is that the clinical trial of SRT501 has been halted due to possible safety concerns. It’s a setback, to be sure — but it’s all part of the research process.

And it’s certainly no reason to set down the syrah.

We may not have discovered the fountain of youth just yet, but the right glass of wine certainly can feel like it. And perhaps we needn’t look for it at all.  Just remember the words of Oliver Goldsmith: “I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.”

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.

Reducing your handicap on high-alcohol wines

By Cathy Huyghe   1 comments.

Given the choice between an 11% abv (alcohol-by-volume) wine or one that’s 15.5%, I’m much more likely to go for the one with less alcohol. It’s not that I’m a lightweight – I can handle the alcohol – but more often, it has to do with the sweetness of a non-dessert wine that such high levels of alcohol manage to convey.

Fortified wines — such as sherry, port, and vermouth– are another story, because alcoholic spirits have been intentionally and traditionally added. But I feared that my preference for lower-alcohol wines in general handicapped me when it came to fortified wines.

Take Cognac.

At first, when I took a sip of it, I managed to inhale at exactly the wrong time so the aroma – the highly alcoholic fumes – reached my nose and my palate too soon, interrupting the taste and leaving me with the unappealing impression of a hygienic solvent.

Which was not such a good thing.

So I did what any eager learner would do. I sought out opportunities to inform myself about the subject in question. In this case, “informing myself” meant tasting as many Cognacs as often as possible, and that practice did, in fact, reduce my handicap on high-alcohol wines.

Here was the meat of the “lesson plan,” pieced together over several weeks of tasting with friends, at home, and at public tastings at wine shops around town.

    * Frapin Grande Champagne V.S.
    * Frapin VIP XO
    * Grand Champagne Château Fontpinot

Here was the catch: my handicap (that is, my negative reaction to the high alcohol) lessened in inverse proportion to the price of the bottle in question.

In other words, I liked the more expensive cognacs the best.

Oy.

The VIP XO, for example, at $199.99 per bottle retail, was rich and structured and long on the finish. (Some people call it “masculine” though I have no idea what that means.) It was easy on my nose and very smooth going down without any of the raspy heat of examples I had tasted earlier.

So what was the takeaway? What was the lesson of this experiment?

The lesson, fortunately, is not to buy only very expensive bottles of Cognacs.

The lesson, rather, is to keep tasting, keep learning, keep differentiating, and keep experimenting until something – like the Frapin VIP XO – clicks into place.

It’s an exercise, this “try, try again” thing – otherwise known as reducing your handicap.

I’m game.

Cathy Huyghe writes the WGBH Foodie blog. Read new WGBH Foodie posts every weekday, in which Cathy explores myriad ways and places to experience good food and wine.
 

About The Daily Dish

The Daily Dish brings you regular recipes from public media's favorite chefs.

Holiday Sweets

Stained Glass Cookies
Lemongrass Cheesecake
Molasses-Tapioca Pudding
Doughnut Muffins
Maple Pecan Squares


  RSS

Topics

• Biography & Profiles
• Boston
• Cooking
• Foodie Blog
• Health
• Lifestyle
• Newton
• People & Profiles
• Pop Culture
• The Daily Dish
• WGBH Local News

 

You are on page 55 of 62   |   << First Page < Prev Page Next Page > Last Page >>