Reviewed by Dwight
Casimere
WINE(s) OF THE
WEEK-HARDYs NOTTAGE HILL CHARDONNAY $10.99
Celebrate those
lazy, hazy crazy days of summer Aussie style with a great new offering from
down under, Hardys Nottage Hill Chardonnay. What makes it even more exciting is that, in addition to the
intense, bright flavors that we associate with Australian wines, it sells for
about $10 a bottle. You can find a case price online of just $7.99 a bottle if
you do a little Google searching.
Hardys Nottage Hill
Chardonnay is the perfect summer “house wine” because it goes with just about
anything you’d put on the grill; or serve on the patio or backyard picnic
table. Grilled fish, chicken, shrimp, corn on the cob and all kinds of salad
and fruit dishes are the perfect match for its bright, fruity taste filled with
flavors of ripe peaches and nectarines and a bouquet of white flowers with just
a touch of light oak. I lucked out with a recent sale of lobster and dungeness
crab at the local market and made myself a “white” version of that San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf
favorite, Cioppino. The dish is based on a Sicilian dish, Zuppa di Pesce (soup
made of fish) and uses a marine “kitchen sink” mish-mosh of fish, with crab and
lobster as the star attraction. I substituted fresh leek for the onion and
garlic in order to lighten the flavor profile. I also left out the chopped tomatoes that customarily go into
the dish for the same reason and in order to enhance the use of HARDYS Nottage
Hill Chardonnay as a vital ingredient.
Here’s the recipe:
In a large stew pot,
slow cooker or Le Creuset cookware pot, combine ingredients in stages
Ingredients
1/4 cup
extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium sized leek, sliced into thin slivers
1 cup HARDYs Nottage Hill Chardonnay
1
container free range chicken stock from Whole Foods
or Trader Joe’s
4 sprigs fresh garden thyme, or one tablespoon
dried
2 tablespoons of chopped, flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 pounds sea bass, grouper, cod, or any other
fleshy white fish, cut into 2-inch chunks
Salt and pepper
2 medium to large lobsters, preferably live
Maines, broken into pieces
1 large Dungeness crab cleaned and broken into pieces
8 large shrimp, preferably head-on and deveined
(find them in your local Chinatown or at any Korean market)
1 lb. bag or raw mussels, thoroughly scrubbed
A big loaf of Sourdough bread for sopping
Directions
In the large pot, simmer the olive oil with the leek until soft and shiny,.
then start adding the chopped white fish in handfuls and allow to saute.
Add
the Hardys Nottage Hill Chardonnay wine to the pot and reduce wine by about
half before adding the chicken stock, thyme, and parsley. Bring sauce to a
bubble and reduce heat to medium low.
Add
all of the shellfish and cover the pot. Let it all C-cook for about 10 minutes, then turn the pot off
and just let it steam for a few minutes so the flavors can marry.
Remove any mussels that didn’t open.
Laddle the stew out onto your best vintage
Fiesta ware bowls (I use the
handmade pottery bowls I brought back from Sicily last Spring!) Pour the Rest
of the Hardys Nottage Hill Chardonnay, pass around the loaf of Sourdough bread,
letting each person break off a piece in large chunks and enjoy. Molto Bene!
