white wine | Cooking With Fire

We’ve been going out so much lately that I haven’t cooked a great deal. Ron had a busy day of tennis yesterday and we wanted to stay in, relax, watch O.J.: Made in America, the new documentary about O.J. Simpson on ESPN, and prepare our own food for a change. I saw a recipe on the Food and Wine website that I wanted to try as we had a lot of spinach in the refrigerator to use: Asian Pork Noodles with Spinach.

Asian Pork Noodles with Spinach

I wasn’t able to find ground pork at the local grocery store, so I decided to use ground turkey instead. The other changes that I made to this recipe were that I added 1 cup of halved cherry tomatoes when I added the spinach, about 2 tbsp. of sesame oil just before serving for extra flavour and to balance the acid, and garnished with both chopped cilantro and basil. To give the dish a little crunch, you could garnish with some chopped peanuts as well.

This was a very good dish (4 out of 5 stars), quick to prepare, nutritious and delicious. I would make it again, for sure.

As with all Thai food, this dish would pair well with a well-chilled, fruit-forward, lower-alcohol white wine like Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Viognier or Pinot Gris.

We had the chance on our drive up the coast to visit an iconic restaurant, Gladstones, situated on the ocean front on the Pacific Coast Highway (Pacific Palisades) and in business since 1972. The view is spectacular and the surfers were out in large numbers – all competing to catch the best waves on a bright and sunny spring afternoon.

We had a great waiter, Andreas, whose mother was Jamaican and his father, a chef, German Swiss. As a chef himself, he pointed us to some delicious dishes, both on and off the menu. We started with six Kumamoto oysters, small, sweet and delectable, served with a glass of unoaked William Hill Chardonnay from the California Central Coast (Ron) and a Starborough Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand (me). Kumamoto oysters originally came from Japan but are now grown along the western coast of North America. Andreas then suggested that we try his favorite oyster from the British Columbia coastline (from Baynes Sound on the east coast of Vancouver Island), Fanny Bay, which are smooth, firm and flavorful because of the cold water they are harvested from. We enjoyed both varieties immensely.

Another of Andreas’ favorites that we tried were the steamed white clams cooked in an amazing sauce of garlic, shallots, Fresno chile and white wine. The garlic ciabatta crostini they served with it was perfect to soak up and savor the leftover sauce.

Ron and I shared their market catch of basil pesto crusted halibut, served with roasted Brussels sprouts and finished with a bacon jalapeño jam sauce – delicious! With the halibut, we shared a glass of Cakebread Chardonnay from California’s Napa Valley.

We’d had a decadent lunch that lasted several glorious hours and decided to finish with a cup of coffee and a shared dessert we couldn’t resist: Banana Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce. This was a truly fabulous end to a memorable meal on an absolutely perfect day. Thank you, Gladstones – your well-deserved legend lives on!