Kendall-Jackson: Dinner & wine Degustation

Titania Wine Cellar Inc., headed by Wine Master Tita Meneses Trillo invited special friends to a Kendal-Jackson dinner held at Aqua Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort & Spa last November 6. And your favorite food columnist was on the guest list made by Trevor Stevens, Director of Food & Beverage who personally supervised the preparation of this lovely dinner.

Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates is both a vineyard and winery which was founded by Jess Jackson in California in 1974. The Kendall-Jackson brand continues under the mother corporation, Jackson Family Wines.

In the 1980s, this company “rejected the California wine industry’s trend toward vineyard-specific wine labeling.” It disregarded the prevailing concept of terroir in favor of blending wines from different regions to produce a desirable wine character.

But what is terroir? It is a “French term in wine and coffee used to denote special characteristics that geography bestowed upon them.” There are many elements of a terroir like the climate, soil type, geology, vinification and the underlying principle is that wines from a certain terroir are unique and can never be duplicated outside that area.

It is a matter of time to determine who is right or wrong but the gods seem to favor Kendall-Jackson since it is now a large and growing wine empire with investments in other areas of the world like “wineries in Italy (Tenuta di Arceno), France (Château Lassègue), Australia (Yangarra Estate Vineyards), and Chile (Viña Calina).”

This means more work for your favorite food columnist, pairing these exquisite wines with delicious food. And the business of food and drink always start with what to drink during the cocktails, red wine like Camelot Red Zinfadel or white wine like Camelot Sauvignon Blanc. I often start with a white wine because the wine usually served during the first course of a dinner is a white wine and a red wine following a white wine confuses my palate.

The dinner began with the Citrus Marinated Salmon on potato carper and scallion Mediterranean greens and dill vinaigrette and this was matched with a very refreshing white, the Vintner’s Reserved Chardonnay. Nice!

Second dish was the Truffle Pasta on 2004 Grana Padano, Rocket leaves, Roma Tomato, wild mushrooms and Truffle cream; white wine was the Collage Semillon Chardonnay. This is great pasta, and the taste is what the Japanese calls umani, savoriness or full-ness of flavor and a meaty tone. It was made from the laganelle al tartufo and I declare that this was one of the very best pasta I ever had.

A meat dish was then served, the Pumpkin ravioli on Milk feed Medallions rolled in smoked Pancetta on green asparagus matched with a nice red wine, the Vintner’s Reserved Cabernet Sauvignon. 

The nuances of each wine served were discussed by Jeff Cook, representing Kendal-Jackson and your favorite food columnist, forever the perpetual student, listened to the intricacies of the wines served.

Dinner ended with a dessert, A Sweet Study in Chocolate, the Callebaut Panna Cotta, Hazelnut Napoleon on Nero Amaro, white chocolate Tiramisu.

A very interesting dinner indeed!

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Escaño Heirloom Recipes

One of Cebu’s venerable families is the Escaño clan. With roots from Malitbog, Southern Leyte, they bridge the gap between two islands with their own shipping firm, the Escaño Lines, and with two other prominent families, the Garcias and Aboitizes, they founded the Visayan Electric Company (VECO).

In the 1950s, a branch of the family, Jesus and Gloria Escaño built their home in 94 Juana Osmeña St. and when you have seven children, expect a lot of friends to become the “adopted” sons and daughters of Jesus and Gloria. And the family kitchen has to work overtime since these “adopted” children have to be fed.

Your favorite food columnist knows the feeling since he was once an “adopted” son of the Castro family. So many were considered regulars in the dining table that before breakfast is over, cooking na sad ang lunch and so on and on. And what were considered “fiesta” fare in our homes were ordinary dishes in the Castro family.

We knew that something special was cooking when dozens of land turtles were scrubbed clean then starved for a week after being fed bananas for months. These turtles are cooked whole, into a soup. The soup tastes like the liquid in balut! The turtle is then cracked open and everything inside is eaten (shell and scales, excluded.) That turtle soup was a trademark in the Castro Family.

And in Cebu at that time, restaurants were an exception; kitchen and household help plentiful, family cooks in the more economical endowed households developed their interpretation of a recipe (that’s cooking with character!) to make the dishes more delicious.

Say for example a recipe that calls for a live pig to be cooked for lechon. What kind of pig do we use, native or hybrid pig? What would be the ideal live weight of the pig for lechon? If you start with a 10 to 15 kilo pig, the native pig is the obvious choice since at that weight, it would be about three months of age while a hybrid would be barely a month old and the flesh contains more moisture, hence lesser dry matter and it is the dry matter (including the fat) that gives the flavor to the lechon.

The next question would be what kind of native pig, one from Cebu or a pig that comes from Central Luzon? These two pigs are created equal but what the pigs eat make a difference in the character of the fat deposits in the pigs. Normally, pigs eat the by-products of a locality and Luzon pigs eat a lot of rice bran which produce a very firm type of fat even when cooked. Cebu has very little rice so most pigs are fed with coconut; hence the fat deposits are very soft and literally melts out once a cooked lechon is cut!

In this example of a recipe, we have several choices for the kind of pig; we have not studied the cooking methods used, spices and stuffing, if any, the kind of firewood to be used, type of lechon sauces and finally the target audience. Kung small family celebrations, small sized pig; kung fiesta, plenty of visitors, pwede anay na lang!

Today, the general public is welcome to try the Escaño Heirloom Recipes at Don Merto’s Restaurant, Casa Escaño (253-5563, 253-5564, [email protected]). And your favorite food columnist, once again, has to work very hard, exercising his taste buds to report to my beloved readers, a taste of these glorious dishes while reminiscing about the past, as an “adopted” son.

Personally, my favorites are the Hot Mushroom Dip, Traditional Caesar Salad Cheese Ring, Gambas al Ajilo, Pancit ni Maxi and the Panna Cotta.