Blog Archives
2007 Casa Da Corca Douro and Vegan Meat Sauce
With Shavout coming up and the desire to take it a bit easy, I made some lovely vegan meat sauce along with quinoa and pasta. The vegan meat sauce is so easy to make and so absolutely tasty that I thought it best to put the recipe here.
Vegan Meat Sauce Recipe
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 diced onions
- 3 diced zucchini
- 16 oz. of thickly cut mushrooms
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp basil
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 packages (16 oz. each) of Yves ground soy (or the Trader Joe package)
- 2 28 oz. cans of diced tomatoes
- 1 cup (or more) of red wine
Heat the oil till almost smoking and throw in the diced onions until they are nicely caramelized. After that throw in the zucchini and saute them till they soften. Then throw in the mushrooms and cook them till they start to soften, but do not let them get too soft or browned as you want them to still have a bite. Finally throw in the spices and then the last four ingredients and cook for another 30 or more minutes until the sauce thickens, stirring often and making sure nothing sticks.
I enjoyed this over a bed of quinoa and my wife had pasta, but this goes well over any starch you may desire. It has good bite and flavor, while also being low in calories and fat.
To pair with this dish I opened a bottle of the 2007 Casa da Corca. I guess the saying, you get what you pay for really lived up to its billing. This wine was on sale during the Passover sales and this one was not worth it. The wine is fine, but not one that I wanted to waste my Shabbos wine on. Either way, drink UP if you have some and do not let it stay too long in the bottle. Either enjoy it right after you open it or save the rest to pour into a great pot of vegan meat sauce!
The wine note follows below:
2007 Casa da Corca Douro – Score: B to B+
The nose starts off with an conspicuous amount of toasty oak followed by blackberry, black cherry, a hint of raspberry, tobacco, and lovely smokey notes. The mouth is medium to full bodied with almost mouth coating integrating tannin, a large dose of blackcurrant, that is balanced with good oak extraction, earthy notes, and herbs for a pleasant mouth feel. The finish is long with citrus zest, at times, lovely espresso coffee, vanilla, licorice, and cloves. This is in drink up mode. The wine is not showing mevushal characteristics, but is quick to fade, losing its brightness and flavor profile within hours of opening. DRINK UP!
Pan Seared Pepper Encrusted Salmon, Mango Madness Sauce, Roasted Vegetables, and Casa Da Corca Douro
To temper the heat of the pepper I once again created a sweet sauce, but not like last time’s recipe, as my wife is not a huge fan of cooked peppers. This time we again started with browned red onions, but instead of filling up the sauce with sweet peppers, we used wonderful mangos! Yep, we bought a pair of really ripe mangos and cubed them into the pan, followed by garlic. Instead of cubed fig, we used cubed dates, which worked fine. Finished the sauce with some white zinfandel and agave.
Mango Madness Sauce
2 or 3 sweet onions
2 ripe mangos
Few cloves of crushed garlic
7 or 8 dates cubed
375 ml of light white or rose wine
2 tbsp of agave nectar
On the previous Sunday we went to local farmer’s market in Los Gatos, and we picked up some lovely fresh yellow and red beets, along with some early yellow and green squash. We roasted these in the oven along with a bit of garlic and olive oil, and waited till the vegetables caramelized, and we were good to go. We had some green salad as well.
To pair with these dishes, I went into the cellar to look for something with body, while not being over the top. I chose a wonderful wine that comes from Portugal; Casa Da Corca Douro. The funny thing about wines from Portugal is that it all started with the release of the 2003 Terras de Belmonte (Land of Belmonte) that was by the then imported by the Abarbanel Wine Company. Since that time, Abarbanel has gone out of business, which is a true shame, as they were a solid company with great wines, and a good competition to Royal Wines. I have nothing against Royal Wines, but every business that is consumer based, needs competition. Since then, Royal Wines started importing the Casa Da Corca, a still red wine, along with two Port wines. I found some wonderful articles around the city of Belmonte, but the best one may well be this one. Even the country is getting behind it, by advertising the fact that kosher wine is back in Portugal. Portugal has so much more to offer than just Port, and I am happy to see that there is fine kosher wine being made there. That said, the other two wines produced in Portugal are not being imported to the US, maybe because there is no appetite for them, or maybe because the product is inferior, or maybe because it is too hard to produce, given that there is no fulltime Rabbi in Portugal, that can manage the process. Either way, I hope we will see more coming from this region in the future.
The wine note follows below:
Wine Musings Blog 