Shrimp Skagen salad in avocado halves: A special treat for a special #SundaySupper wine event

It's Saturday night as I write this. It's been a busy week: I've been buried in a project that has gone on for nearly a year, which I finally completed on Friday night. On top of that, I spent much of last week in a daze (or an amped-out crazy fit) because I injured my shoulder rather severely last week and have had to take painkillers and steroids to cope with the pain and inflammation. It's been a long time since things were going in the right direction. 

Even this week's #SundaySupper event seemed daunting. This week is a special wine event, in which we are working with Schlossadler International Wines, a wine distributor with a popular international wine club that sends you a selection of wines right to your home. I was one of the members of the #SundaySupper group who was chosen to get wines sent right to my door as part of this week's event. Me. Getting a free box of wine to blog about. Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? And to be honest, I was incredibly flattered and excited when I was chosen. But then the reality of the week set in, and I realized I had made this commitment, and I was damn well going to do it, but I wasn't looking forward to it, and I was tired and hurting, and wa, wa, wa. 

Then things began to turn around a bit. On Wednesday, I got the box with three lovely bottles nested inside and a fun little logo on the inside cover. Just getting the box was exciting. A happy, special treat in the middle of a tough and dreary week. 

   

Then came Thursday. I churned through more work, trying to hit some milestones before quitting for the day, taking my little boy to the park for a while, and dealing with shoulder pain and meds crazies, and trying to look forward to making the food I had committed to make for dinner, because we had invited one of our best friends, Dave, over to join our dinner and our wine tasting that evening. By five, I felt awful and miserably exhausted, again. It was ridiculous. But I kept going. I was going to power through this and have fun dammit! I cleaned the shrimp, made the mayo, made the Skagen salad, halved the avocados, and tried to get some decent pictures of my dish. But the salad slid off the top of the avocado halves, while I grumbled about my bad pictures, and Mike joked about me complaining that my food wasn't photogenic enough. (I suspect there's a lot of kind of thing in food-blogging households.) 

Then we popped open the first bottle of wine, the 2010 Kotuku Sauvignon Blanc, poured some glasses (a small one for me; I didn't want to mess around much with mixing wine and strong medication), and dug into our avocado halves with shrimp Skagen salad and relaxed. Settled into a pleasant evening with great friends, some terrific food, and a great wine, and started to slough off some hard days and enjoy some of the best things about living. What had been a very tough week turned around and became a genuinely pleasant experience. The wine was crisp and refreshing and went well with the shrimp Skagen salad and avocado.

After dinner, we decided to try one of the other wines, the 2006 H.O. Becker, Kerner Auslese, which comes in a rather wildly pinkish-red bottle, but turns out to be white. According to the flier that came with the wines, it's a cross between a Riesling and a grape named Trollinger. (Also according to the flier, it's a "Jacuzzi" wine, a phrase that makes me shudder.) I typically love Rieslings, but most I have had are on the dry side. This particular wine had a beautiful flavor, but was a bit too sweet for my taste (I could easily imagine reducing it to a syrup to drizzle on something). The flier suggested pairing it with mixed greens, balsamic strawberry vinaigrette, and Stilton cheese, so I got some Stilton out of the refrigerator (which I had purchased with just this eventuality in mind), and we had a post-dinner snack of Stilton and wine. The salt of the cheese was just what was needed for the sweetness of the wine.   

And now we come to tonight, when I felt obligated to try that last bottle of wine, the 2010  Ernst Holler, Blaufrankisch, with a dinner of turkey breast sauteed with smoked paprika and a side of creamed corn, both fresh from this morning's farmers market, and I was delighted. This was definitely my favorite of the group: The color is extraordinarily deep, dark, and beautiful (I am sure I have mentioned I've got a thing for color before, right?), and the flavor is just a little spicy and a little smoky and gets better and more complex as it stands in your glass.

And so in the end, this box of wines turned a crummy week into a week of trying new things, of pairing foods with wines, of elevating the everyday (and certainly the lousy day) and making life a little more special. And this may be the lesson I have to learn from this week: You may have to go above and beyond to make life special and worthwhile, but if you don't, what's the point? It's all just drudgery if you don't. At any rate, I want to thank the people at Schlossadler for turning my week around. 

The recipe for Shrimp Skagen salad is incredibly easy and very festive. It's a typical Swedish party dish and can be served on toast, in a baked potato, or in an avocado half as I did here (the creaminess of the avocado is especially rich and wonderful with the creaminess of this salad). (Like the Skagen toast recipe I made for Swedish midsummer a few months ago, you can find most of the ingredients at IKEA; I know it's not local, but in this case, it seems kind of necessary.) The recipe for the dish follows, but don't forget to skip to the end of this post to find the whole list of great food and wine slated for this week's #SundaySupper. Also, there's a special discount for free shipping for anyone who wants to join Schlossadler's wine club.

Shrimp Skagen salad in avocado halves

• 1 500-gram bag of frozen northern shrimp, defrosted, peeled, chopped (set a few whole ones aside as a garnish)
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup sour cream, or creme fraiche
• 1-2 Tbsps herring roe, to taste
• 1 Tbsp fresh chopped dill (or 1 tsp dried), to taste 
• 2 ripe avocados, halved
• thin lemon slices, halved

Mix the shrimp, mayonnaise, sour cream, dill, and herring roe in a bowl. Chill for an hour to let the flavors come together. Top the avocado halves with a tablespoon or two of the mixture and garnish with thin lemon slices. 

     

Now, grab a glass of wine and join this week’s special #SundaySupper wine event. Here are some of the great recipes featured during this event, and don't forget to follow the hashtag #SundaySupper on Twitter at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time.   

• A Midsummer’s Picnic w/ Wine by GirliChef
• Shrimp Scampi with Homemade Garlic Toast by Big Bears Wife
• Jerk Turkey Burgers with Mango Slaw by ENOFYLZ
• Wine & Dine with Schlossadler International Wine Club by Wine Everyday
• Elegant Pot Roast by Daily Dish Recipes
• Chicken with Feta and Sundried Tomatoes + Apple Crisp by Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Shepherd’s Pie with Red Wine Mushroom Gravy by Juanita’s Cocina
• Pork Piccatta by Family Foodie
• Shrimp Skagen Salad in Avocado Halves by Tora’s Real Food

But the fabulous recipes don’t stop there, there are more amazing recipes to pair with these fabulous wines:

• Shrimp Salad With Lemon Tarragon Dressing by Magnolia Days
• Red, White and Cordon Bleu by Cindy’s Recipes and Writings
• Chicken Florentine by There and Back
• Penne Rigate with a White Ragu Sauce by Momma’s Meals
• Moules a la Provencale by The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen 
• Delicious BBQ Ribs by Pippi’s in the Kitchen Again
• Chicken and Mushroom Chicken Piccata by Small Wallet Big Appetite
• Ginger Roast Chicken with Red Wine Plum Sauce by Sue’s Nutrition Buzz
• Beef Stroganoff  by From Fast Food to Fresh Food
• Strawberry-Pink Champagne Sorbet by  The Messy Baker Blog
• Italian Style Baby Back Ribs by Cooking Underwriter 
• Muscat and Raspberry Cake by Happy Baking Days
• Pretty in Pink Champagne Macarons  by Crispy Bits & Burnt Ends
• Late Harvest Citrus Cake by Vintage Kitchen Note
• Roasted Sausages with Grapes by Comfy Cuisine

Wine Pairings by  ENOFYLZ

Join us at 7pm ET for our #SundaySupper Chat with @schlossiwines. Follow along on twitter by using hashtag #Sundaysupper or using Tweetchat.  We love to feature your recipes on our #sundaysupper pinterest board and share them with all our followers.

We have a special discount for all participants: Free Shipping when you join The Wine Club by Schlossadler Wines use code FFSS1.

Next Shipment is October 2012 ~ Halloween Day  Ghostly Whites, Haunted Red for all friendly spirits everywhere.

Follow Schlossadler Wines:

Twitter @schlossiwines 

Facebook Schlossadler International wines 

Website: www.schlossadler.com

Musing on American food, eating black bean and sweet potato tacos for Meatless Monday

The Three Sisters. Corn, beans, and squash. The three staples of many Native American diets and when planted together in a milpa, a remarkably sustainable way to raise crops. Eaten together, they form the basis of a diet that provides most of the nutrients a body needs. In a sense, these three form a universe.

Several years ago, I learned of the three sisters in Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, an excellent book that surveys much of the archaeological research about the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus. For some reason, much of the information, though no longer in doubt in the scientific community, has not made it into standard history books, leaving many with the impression that the Americas were wide open, naturally rich with game and edible plants. A garden of Eden, virgin, untouched, when in fact it was a cultivated space, designed to produce in abundance, then emptied of its people through the tragic introduction of a foreign virus. But that part of the story many know.

So why bring this up in a blog about food? Because food is one of the most immediate and powerful ways to experience and transmit culture. Recipes are handed down from generation to generation, telling us about our history: Who made this? How did he or she make it? What was the time and place like when this was made? Also, many people identify a sense of self and a sense of home through the foods they eat, through the smells that suffuse their kitchens reminding them of their grandmothers and other family perhaps long gone. And regardless of how much we experiment with foods from other cultures and are able to enjoy and appreciate them, when we need comfort and a sense of home, we make what we know, or we adapt the new to our old traditions.

America is and is not new to me. I have now lived here most of my life and I became a U.S. citizen in December of last year, but my family hails from the North, and I lived many formative years in Sweden. Most of my relatives still live in Iceland, Finland, and Sweden. That is the culture I was raised in. In those places, I feel history in the curve of a hill and the particular green shades of springtime. But America is my new home, and part of my search to connect with this place and feel as deeply attached to it is to explore local foods.

Sadly, however, it seems that the ancient foodways of this area of the Americas are not well known. Most traditional Southern foods (and yes, Virginia is southern) seem to have been brought over from Europe and Africa and adapted to local conditions--not a bad thing, simply not reflective of what natives ate here prior to the arrival of Europeans (and in many respects familiar to me). I think to understand more about what native Americans ate, you have to look farther south. In my case, I look to Mexico, because knowledge of traditional foods and practice with ancient cooking techniques seem strong there. Of course, I suspect this is only the beginning of my exploration of American food.

For tonight's dinner, I was inspired by a recipe by Brady Evans from Kalle Bergman's Honest Cooking magazine, but I had some local conditions I needed to adapt to (the tortillas in my freezer were too small to make burritos for one) and I wanted to play my own riff on the combination of sweet potatoes and black beans. This recipe features two of the three sisters, corn and beans (I can't bring myself to figure out what to do with my last remaining winter squash yet).

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Tacos
These have three main components: beans, sweet potatoes, and chile sauce.

For the beans:
1 cup dried black beans
4-5 cups water
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 large onion, chopped (you will use the rest for the sweet potatoes)
1 cup crushed canned tomatoes
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp coriander
salt to taste

For the sweet potatoes:
2 medium sweet potatoes, 1/2 inch dice
1/2 large onion, chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

For the chile sauce:
3 dried Ancho chiles (break them open and clean out the seeds)
1 medium onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
1 cup (or more) water
1 Tbsp dried oregano

To serve:
10 small corn tortillas

1 avocado, sliced into cubes

pepitas (toasted would be lovely, but I didn't have time to try it)
queso fresco, crumbled

1. Pick over the beans and rinse them (sometimes dried beans can have small rocks or other debris). Boil in plain water (do NOT add salt or they will never soften) for 60-90 minutes (test after about a hour to determine if they are soft enough for you; they should maintain their integrity, but not be crunchy or hard). Set aside.
2. Make the sauce: In a dry frying pan over medium heat (I used my trusty iron skillet of course), place your dry chiles and let them toast for a while. Turn them over from time to time until they blister a bit.
3. Add two tablespoons olive oil to the pan with your chiles. When the oil has heated a bit, add your chopped onions. Let them cook low and slow with the chiles until they start to brown and caramelize a bit (adding some sweetness to your sauce). Then add garlic and let it become fragrant (but don't let it burn). Finally, add about a cup of water to the pan.
4. Scrape the chiles, onion, garlic, and water out of the pan (set it aside for later) and into a blender or food processor and buzz until smooth. Add about a cup of crushed tomato. You can add more water if the consistency is too thick.
5. Put the mixture into a small saucepan, add one tablespoon oregano, about a half tablespoon of salt (or more or less to taste) and let it bubble slowly on low heat while you work on the sweet potatoes and beans. Note that this mixture will be a bit bitter on its own, but will balance the sweetness of the sweet potatoes nicely.
6. Add two tablespoons olive oil to the same frying pan you toasted the chiles in. Let the oil heat up, then add the onions. Cook them until they are translucent and then add the sweet potatoes. Let these cook on slow heat, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft and the onions are slightly browned. Add salt to taste and set aside (or keep warm).
7. For the beans, add two tablespoons olive oil to another pan and fry the onions until they are slightly browned (I wanted to try using shallots, but alas, onions is what I had). Then add beans to the pan (be sure to drain them first; you can set aside the bean liquor for another use, such as for a soup, if you like). Add a  cup of crushed tomato, 1 tablespoon cumin, and 1 tablespoon coriander, and maybe a clove of crushed garlic if you like. Let the beans cook until most of the liquid evaporates and salt to taste.

Now, you have your components: tortillas (heat according to package instructions--yes I use packaged tortillas because I still don't know how to make them), beans, sweet potatoes, chile sauce, avocado, pepitas, and queso fresco. Set all these out in separate bowls to let people assemble tacos to their own tastes. These are a nice hearty meal for a Meatless Monday.