Another lovely Wine ??

Well, OK. So this is not a stellar wine. Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. In this case, we are looking at the manservant of the prince.
Ron remembered Mezzacorona from his days at Chateau Pomijie and thought it would be worth revisiting. From what he could remember it was overpriced and just OK.
That was more than 15 years ago, and what do you know. He feels the wine has stayed true to his memory all those years ago!
We over chilled it, and ate it with a spicy fish pie and it actually complemented the meal quite well, but as we sipped that last glass it had warmed up a little and was just way 'over pronounced' with a very tiresome & lacking finish.

All was not lost, the Fish Pie (new recipe for Ron too) was stellar (albeit a little rich for the arteries).

Ingredients

A nice piece of fresh salmon

Fresh white fish (haddock, cod,)

2 lbs mussels, clams or both!

8 lovely fat shrimp (fresh - with head on)

(When buying the fish, ask the fishmonger to give you the scraps (skin, etc) from the trimmings of your fish. It is great for your fish stock)

1 bunch of baby leeks,

1 cup grated Gruyere

3 cups fish velouté

Small bag new potatoes (boil them, and allow to cool)

4 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced

2 tbps unsalted butter

2 cups white wine

1 cup Noilly Prat (dry vermouth)

2 cups fish stock

1 cup heavy cream

Now, before you get started - make sure you like fish and cream. It ends up kind of like a fish shepherd's pie.

Put the mussels/clams in a large pot with a little olive oil and about 1 cup white wine.

Put on the lid for 5 minutes. When all mussels have opened, pull them out, then throw in the whole shrimp. Let them cook just for a few minutes.

Take them out, take of the heads and peel them.

Keep heads, tails etc.for fish stock.

In a separate pot, put the heads, tails etc. of shrimp, the trimmings from the fishmonger into a pot and add 1/2 cup white wine. Allow to cook for 15 minutes.

If you have some fish or lobster stock in the fridge, now would be a good time to add this.

If you do not, sauté the shallots and leeks in a pan with some butter until soft.

Add the wine and dry vermouth a splash at a time, allowing it to fully reduce.

(now, it is called Velouté)

Add the cream, then strain the juice from the fish stock you have cooking right into the shallot/leek mix.

Take the pieces of raw fish and place into the fish sauce. Allow to cook for a few minutes.

Remove mussels from shells. Take all fish, sauce, mussels & shrimp and put into your fav. casserole dish. Slice baby potatoes on top of this mixture and then sprinkle with the Gruyere cheese.

Allow to cook in the oven for at least 20 minutes (fairly high heat) until the potatoes have crisped up a little and the cheese is melted and a little crispy.

As mentioned earlier, it is quite rich but I assure you very very tasty and especially of you are lucky enough to get fresh fish.

Yumba!

That is all the WiseWords for today,

WiseMóna