20 September 2008

Let's continue

Two days after that last post, I received a package in the mail at work. My mother bought me The Flavor Bible (Thanks mom!). I've been leafing through it almost religiously searching for "the answer" or at least some inspiration (it really is a great title, the puns could just go on but I'll stop here). And, of course, my new flavor obsession does not appear in this book.

Muscadines and/or scoppernongs.

These little southern morsels don't need a dictionary to inform me of their flavor. It's GRAPE. And not just like, red and green grapes, but the artificial flavor of grape you get out of Welsh's jelly or the purple popsicle. Yum.

They taste great with cheese, and the overabundant imagery of californian tourist packets of grapes and wine and cheese comes to mind. How appropriate that I, a Californian transplant, find the "southern grape" to be so delicious.

I'm coming up with ideas for muscadines. Cheese, perhaps Gorgonzola. Honey. Stephen told me to come up with something easy and delicious and then make it look complicated. Okay.

But really, Monday is a chance to experiment for everyone. It's a chance for the judges to practice with the new rules, and maybe a chance for me to break out a beverage that has been instrumental to creating a coffee community in Atlanta. It really requires nothing more than popping the top of a bottle, but out of any of the drinks I've come up with it, I find it inspires me the most. It certainly doesn't meet any type of Oos and Aahs with culinary types, and its flavor matchings are a little obvious, when you think about it. But the creation of this beverage has been for the regulars, the lovers of octane, and it meets my coffee obsession with an overwhelming "Hey y'all," an homage to my new southern roots, fertilized with coffee.

As for the SERBC I think I'll stick to the muscadines or other food experiments, but for Monday I might just put on that southern twang.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Danielle,

Having received two Google Blog Alerts directing us to your Web site this week, we thought it was time we stopped by to say "hello" and to thank you for the kind words for our books THE FLAVOR BIBLE and CULINARY ARTISTRY. (Our thanks to your mom, too, for her excellent taste in culinary literature!) Believe it or not, our book WHAT TO DRINK WITH WHAT YOU EAT actually lists Muscadine, and indicates possible pairings (e.g. goat cheese, wreckfish).

Delicious wishes,
Karen & Andrew
www.becomingachef.com

idlewild said...

Danielle, I say go for chocolate with your muscadines and see what happens! Love, JoMamma ;-)

Anonymous said...

As a true southerner (without an accent, lamentably) muscadine is in my blood. My Grandmother made the best muscadine preserves (which for the uninformed is vastly superior to jelly) which I will unfortunately never have again....I will say that while muscadines are associated with the south if you want true hardcore southern hunt down some mayhaw fruit this upcoming spring...

Goat cheese seems like a better idea with muscadines than gorganzola...There is something about the slightly bleachly smell of gorganzola and the sweetness of muscadines that doesn't seem to jive in my brain. The saltiness of the goat cheese seems to have any anti-cloying effect on the muscadines...

I will admit that the muscadine idea is a good one (much better that rhubarb)...and you are so right about the fact that they taste like fake grape flavoring...

Fun muscadine facts:

They are the reason that the south is not a prime growing region for wine...they interbreed with the selectively bred grape varietals and screw up the taste...not to mention that they grow faster and are much harder to kill than snooty wine grapes...

The French live in fear of them getting loose in their growing regions...

So do the Californians...

It takes a lot of work to make muscadine wine not taste horrible...not that my Grandfather (a devout Southern Baptist) didn't try...a lot...

Muscadine does not seem to appear in the Microsoft Word dictionary...weird...fel9