Sunday, July 17, 2011

Taylors Estate Shiraz 2009 with Thanks to Adam from Taylors for the sample

Shiraz
  


Day 1:
Aromas of dark plum, spice, wood.  Bouquet flows onto the palate.

A highly drinkable wine that is not jammy or confected. It's not all upfront fruit flavour or un-necessarily high in alcohol, this wine whilst lingering doesn't taste fruity throughout, the oak tannins take over carrying the flavour through to the finish.  Well structured and integrated, will progress over the next 5 years.

Day 2:
Suits a range of meat dishes but can also handle food with a bit of spice.  I had it with home-made tandoori chicken and it wasn't overpowered :)

Day 3:
Tried over three days, at it best on the 3rd. Dark cherry coming thru, dealt with the leftover tandoori with aplomb

Final analysis: Highly Recommended. Gold medal Sydney International Wine Comp. 14% Alc

http://www.taylorswines.com.au/

Winter feasts





Beef, Borlotti Bean and Sausage Braise

This idea came to me in a flash: what to do with borlotti beans I had just bought from the market. One idea was to make a vegetable soup (healthy but boring), a better idea was to team it with braised beef (less healthy but heaps more fun). I thought I'd go the whole hog (or more precisely the ox) and chuck in a couple of good peppery thick beef sausages to complete the shebang.

Ingredients

1/2 dozen thick beef snags (I bought the gourmet style peppery beef snags from Woolies about $5.99 for 6)
1/2 kilo or so beef offcuts on the bone (about $5 again from Woolies, they marketed them as soup bones, but i could see more potential)
1 finely chopped brown onion
2 carrots cut into 5cm pieces(these were the sweetest carrots I've ever eaten, fresh from the Italian lady at Griffith markets)
1 tsp of vegie stock powder
1 cup water
sea salt
olive oil

Method
Turn your oven onto 150deg C ie low
brown beef in a hot pan drizzled with olive oil. season with sea salt. transfer to a warmed oven dish* and place into the oven. slowly braise for 2 hours

Brown sausages in the pan and set them aside, draining excess fat if warranted
light fry the onion for a minute or 2 set it aside

Meanwhile, soak your borlotti beans in cool water for an hour
Drain, and cook for 1/2 -1  hour or until just tender. Don't salt them or they will harden!
After 2 hours, beef will be braised, add your beans, onion, carrot, water and stock powder and top with the browned snags. Cook for another hour with the oven turned up to 200degrees :)

Serve with mash and steamed silverbeet...

*I like my second hand terracotta dish with glass saucepan lid it works well