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Portuguese Wine Dinner

Saturday night we hosted six friends (4KMnD, EN and our blogless "Indian" friends V+S) for a dinner to sample Portuguese wines. The basis for the menu was taken from an article on Food and Wine's web site, Celebrating Portugal's Green Wine, but I had to fill it in with some other dishes -- I don't like carrots or fish, and we had a vegetarian in the crowd. For dessert I wanted to have a little "sampler" so we could try different port/dessert pairings. The menu was very fancy, as you can tell from all the diacriticals and foreign words:

Hors d'Oeuvres
Cheese and Crackers
Wine: Aveleda Casal Garcia Vinho Verde NV Branco [NH]

Appetizer
Asparagus Tart with Lemon-Herb Crème Fraîche
Wine: Arca Nova Vinho Verde 2002 Branco Seco [NH]

Soup
Kale, Potato and Chouriço Soup with Gruyère
Wine: Castas de Santar 2001 D&astilde;o [NH]

Interlude
Blood Orange-Lemon Granita

Entrée
Roasted Pork Loin stuffed with Apricots and Prunes
Roasted Red and Golden Beets
Spring Vegetable Paella
Wines: Sentus 1997 Douro and Covela 2000 Minho [N/A in NH]

Dessert
Espresso Crème Caramel
Chocolate Raspberry Ganache Cake
Fresh Berries
Wines: Fonseca 10 Year Tawny Port [NH] and Warre’s 1994 Late Bottled Vintage Port [NH]

Read on if you are interested in recipe and wine notes...

I'm not a big white wine fan but I really like the first wine on the menu, Aveleda's Casal Garcia Vinho Verde NV Branco. It is very acidic and almost a little bubbly. Very crisp and refreshing -- and cheap! Wine Spectator gave it an 84 and says: Crisp fruity white, with lemon and green peach flavors. Tangy finish.

I practiced making the Asparagus Tart recipe earlier in the week. I thought it was OK; it was very rich which was probably fine for an appetizer served in small portions, but I thought the flavor needed something else to give it a little more interest. The recipe takes a lot of work -- not really hard but time consuming: make the dough, wait an hour, roll out the dough, wait an hour, bake dough for an hour, fill the tart, bake for an hour. So, I tried another recipe as a candidate to replace the tart -- a Spanish Tortilla (really a fritatta) with Red Pepper-Almond Refresco (from the May 2004 Cooking Light) but was not happy with it at all. So I decided to stick with the tart, and then stumbled on an asparagus soup recipe that included the Lemon-Herb Crème Fraîche as a condiment, and that sounded like a good match. I thought it worked pretty well, and was a great match for the wine. I think everyone agreed the wine Arca Nova Vinho Verde 2002 Branco Seco was good stuff, even though it received an abysmal score of 73 from WS, with the unappetizing comments: Yeasty, sour smell. Tastes malty. Maybe we just happened to get an uncommonly good batch up here in New Hampshire.

I knew Kale soup was a Portuguese staple, so I searched out several recipes and after some testing decided on this one. I skipped the first step of sauteing the chouriço in the soup pot, and used vegetable stock as the base, so the soup itself was vegetarian. Then just before serving, I sauteed the chouriço (Portuguese sausage -- I used a turkey version) in a separate pan and added a spoonful to each dish individually. The Castas de Santar Dão 2001 is a soft red that I thought made a good pairing with the soup. Wine Enthusiast scored it an 86 and describes it as: This blend of Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz and Alfrochiero receives six months’ aging in second-use French oak, which keeps the price moderate while imparting a subtle smoky, chocolaty note. Cherry and leather flavors pick up a slight bitter almond note on the finish.

I like serving granita since it buys me a little extra time to prep the entree. The Blood Orange-Lemon Granita was based on the Lemon Granita recipe I have used in the past, although I used about 2/3 of the sugar called for so it would be less sweet and I used 1/2 cup of fresh blood orange juice and a 1/2 cup of lemon juice. I also included some blood orange zest which gave it some extra flavor and added some red-orange colored flecks of to the pink ice.

I practiced all the dishes of the main course (plus some that didn't make the cut -- Carrot Pudding, blech!) during the week leading up to the dinner. I was really impressed with the Roasted Pork Loin stuffed with Apricots and Prunes recipe. To read it, it does not sound like much, but it tastes great and the gravy it makes is wonderful. I used the Arca Nova to marinate the roast. For side dishes, I chose roasted beets because, well, I've been into them lately, and I figured anyone who didn't like them could get plenty of other veggies from the paella.

Paella is a Spanish dish, traditionally of rice seasoned with saffron (making it yellow) mixed with vegetables, seafood, shellfish and chicken. I made up my own Spring Vegetable Paella recipe and figured that while paella was not strictly Portuguese, Spain was close enough and it would make a good starch side for everyone and a hearty enough main vegetarian dish. There seem to be several different methods for paella out there, so I worked from four different ones to come up with my own, which my wife and I sampled for dinner Friday night. My recipe included: aborio rice, vegetable stock, saffron, smoked paprika, onion, garlic, red pepper, summer squash, zucchini, tomato, frozen artichoke hearts and frozen corn, and was topped with toasted slivered almonds and lemon wedges. (Lemon, we discovered, is key to the flavor).

We served two wines with the main course. The Covela 2000 Minho is one I had found at a store on Cape Cod and supposedly can be found nowhere else. I could not find any info on it online, but I knew I liked it from the last time I had it. The other wine, Sentus 1997 Douro, is one of our absolute favorite wines because it just tastes so different and unique to us. Wine Spectator scored it a 90 and perhaps describes it best: A ripe, powerful red, with a nice focus and plenty of leather, smoke and dark plum flavors and aromas.

And finally, dessert. I'm always amazed at how my like or dislike for a port can change drastically based on what it is served with, so I wanted to have a sort of mix-n-match dessert. I had made the Espresso Crème Caramel last week and thought it went very well with the Fonseca 10-Year Tawny Port, so I repeated that pairing. I also bought a small chocolate cake from a local bakery and served some fresh berries, because I thought chocolate and berries would be a good match for the Warre’s 1994 Late Bottled Vintage Port. I guess some people at the table still decided they don't like port.. I think they just need to keep working at it!