I DID look for the recipe Ruthanna, so thanks for posting it. I found some clams casino recipes and figured it was something like a clams casino "deconstructed." What fascinates me is that yellow rice. I have to find a good recipe for that, since BF got a 10 LB bag of rice for Christmas from his stepson. I have all the ingredients too, to make it. Maybe I will do it sometime while I am home in Allentown. Just a week and a half more.

My daughters spent part of their childhood here in Spain where it was often customary to give the children a few drops of wine in a glass when it was being poured for the adults at the table. But it was diluted for them with a good squirt of the ever-present mesh-covered squirt bottle of carbonated water that graced most tables during that time. It was used for diluting drinks or drinking straight and was useful for moistening a napkin to mop off any food spills on your clothing while you dined LOL. If you see old photos of Europeans dining in restaurants or even at home pre-1970s you will often see the familiar mesh-covered sifon bottle on the table. I always had one on my dinner table. We would take the empty bottles back to the corner store and for a peseta or two (think cents) get a full bottle in return. (Now does that make me sound old!) This is one way I have made salmon and it was good. I'm accustomed to cooking with wine and wouldn't worry about serving this to children...but you could just give a small amount of the sauce if you were concerned. Here's how it looked when I made it: - Makes 4 servings. 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon dry mustard 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 4 (6-ounce) salmon steaks or fillets 2 teaspoons honey 3 teaspoons olive oil, divided 8 cups spinach leaves 1/2 teaspoon minced peeled garlic 2 cups red seedless grapes, halved 1/2 cup dry red wine Combine salt, mustard, thyme and pepper; mix well. Rub salmon fillets with honey and sprinkle with half the seasoning mixture. Heat 2 teaspoons of olive oil in a nonstick skillet. brown both sides of salmon fillets. Toss spinach and garlic with remaining 1 teaspoon oil in a 13x9x2-inch baking dish. Place salmon on spinach, cover loosely with aluminum foil and bake at 300°F for 10 minutes. Sauté grapes in skillet used to brown salmon. Add wine bring to a boil, season to taste with remaining seasoning mixture; reduce by half. Serve salmon on spinach; top with grape sauce. Served on a bed of spinach and spiced with garlic, thyme and mustard. Recipe Source: California Table Grape Commission. SharonCb

No "jessyf", you guys haven't scared me off. Yes, I am well aware that most red wines go with red meats, and most white wines go with white meats/fish/seafood. Yeah, I'm still new to cooking with wines, but most of the ones I've tried out so far have been really awful, with an exception of a few. Sure, I might have my own tastes, but hopefully this will help narrow it down a little bit... 1) Looking for a dry / sweet red wine which won't be too tannic/sour when reduced into a sauce for a red meat dish. Specifically Italian/French RED wines... 2) Looking for a more full body/flavored WHITE wine. I've been using only Riesling so far (because it works well). I mainly do chicken dishes, and rarely any SEAFOOD, because family members are allergic to those things. 3) I am NOT looking for a white wine for FISH, other than Salmon. I have a different way of cooking fish, and various kinds (ocean fish only).

I think lindac is correct. The point of adding wine is essentially to bring in some acidity. You are not going to get the complex flavors of a great wine in your stew - it will be cooked and transformed. That's why great restaurants don't use great wine in their cooking. And if you're doing a reduction, taking a bottle of wine down to maybe a cup, there is no reason to use anything great. That's the reason I suggested something fairly tasteless. For example, if you are cooking some mussels with garlic and shallots and wine, and you were to use a really grassy Sauvignon Blanc from Rueda say, you may find notes of bell pepper and grapefruit, and if you were to use a muscat or gwertztraminier, you would have floral and fruity notes and neither would really be great with the mussels. Sauvignon blanc from the Loire is a classic wine to use in that dish, but most of those, from Sancerre say, do not have the pronounced green flavors that some of the others do. With red wine it's a little more complex because many red wines are aged in wood. That is generally not something that enhances the flavor of a dish. As a matter of fact, whenever someone has done a little study of the issue, the simpler, fruitier wines were preferred. But your information on wine is very mistaken. "Cheap" can result from many factors, which could include the relative strength of the economy where the wine was made. Consequently, we can find bargains in the US that come from Argentina, whereas if their economy were stronger, the wines would be more costly. Lightly tapping grapes to release juice? Each individual grape? I promise you that nobody in the world does that. Some wines are made via carbonic maceration, in which case the weight of the grapes in the container crushes a few and the juice starts fermenting. The grapes at the bottom of the tank start fermenting inside their own skins in some cases. The new Beaujolais is made like this and it's also used in other areas to produce light, fruity wines that aren't meant to age and that are in fact good for cooking. In other cases, the grapes are in fact crushed and allowed to macerate with the skins. The juice is then drawn off. This is what is called "free run" juice. If the mass of skins, etc., is gently pressed, there can be additional juice that is squeezed out. That is no longer free-run juice, but is is not low quality. There are many ways of pressing the skins. For example, you can have an inflatable bladder that gently presses out the remaining juice. Incidentally, one of the wineries that uses this charges over $100 a bottle for their wine. And yes, sometimes the stems and seeds are crushed too. Some winemakers feel that the tannins and flavors that are obtained that way add complexity to the wine. Guigal in the Rhone for example, uses whole cluster fermentation, which means that he does not de-stem the grapes before making wine. Then when the juice is pressed, you get some of the flavors and tannins from the skins and seeds. His la Landonne goes for about $270 a bottle and it's entirely whole cluster fermentation. Dropping 1/3 of the crop is called "green harvesting". in that situation, bunches are cut off while still green so that the remaining clusters ripen more evenly and supposedly have more concentration. People around the world do it and people around the world debate whether or not it's actually useful. The idea is that lower yields produce more concentrated flavors. Well, you can accomplish low yields in many ways, including the density of your planting. But don't assume that all expensive wines are from vineyards that have been green harvested. I assure you that is not true. As far as headaches - that comes from alcohol. Sulfur is present in the grapes themselves as it is a component of some amino acids. THere is no science whatsoever supporting the claim of sulfites causing headaches, although there is an urban legend that won't die. Since I cook almost daily and have been doing so for many years, and since I always have open bottles of wine in the house, we've been cooking with all kinds of wine. I promise you that if I use a white or a red in my spaghetti sauce, you will most likely not know the difference. As far as not drinking it and not cooking with it - that's not a bad rule. However, I would even hedge there. Someone gave me some Yellow Tail shiraz. I certainly wasn't going to drink it but it did make a great marinade with some soy sauce, star anise, ginger, honey, and garlic. Cheers!