Over at SupermarketGuru.com you can find answers to frequently asked questions about storing wine.

Questions include:

• Should I be storing the wine I drink everyday in a special way or place?
• Where should I store wine I don’t plan to drink immediately?
• Where should I store wine after it is opened?
• How long will an open bottle of wine keep?

Thanks to their answers I have decided that I should not delay getting a proper wine rack any longer. My collection may not be very large but I had no idea that upright storage could actually deterioriate the quality! Because space is an issue I am currently leaning towards the following…

• The Metrokane Houdini Expandable Wine Rack
• Wrought Iron Swirl Wine Rack

My favorite out of the pack however is this stackable 12-Bottle Wine Rack.

Stackable 12-Bottle Wine Rack
• Securely holds 12-bottles
• Extra sets are available for additional space
• Adjustable shelves
• Each rack is stackable so you can add as many or as few as you need

I’ve chosen it because my collection is stored in a cabinet (remember wines like to be in a cool, dark environment), however if I wanted something that would be on display for short periods I’d probably go for the Wrought Iron Swirl Wine Rack

This post was originally published September 6, 2006. It has been updated once since then.

Have you tried splashing Angostura bitters on your ice cream? Because Angostura has a light uplifting flavour with some citrusy undertones I find it works better with pale colored icecreams like vanilla and citrus-flavored icecreams like orange and lemon.

This post was originally published November 23, 2006. It has been updated once since.

Why not try a few dashes of Angostura bitters in your cup of coffee today?

This post was originally published December 8, 2006. It has been updated once since then.

Reader’s Question: When I fry pholourie on my own it falls apart in the oil but when my students do it it comes out perfect! Help please!

Hi there! There are many different possibilities. The top ones that come to mind are your batter may not have sat long enough, be dense enough or the oil may not be hot enough. Send pics if possible, and until then check my Pholourhie post for step by step pics and instructions. Best Wishes

If you have other suggestions for our reader why not leave them in the comments? Thanks!

For more Caribbean recipes check out the Caribbean Cooking section of Veni Mangé – The Trinigourmet Amazon Bookstore!

The first time I gave grilled cheese sandwiches serious thought as a culinary rallying force was when I initially came across Kalyn Denny’s South-Beach centered blog ‘Kalyn’s Kitchen’ some time in 2006. In it she posted a passionate response to columnist Pete Well’s article in Food & Wine “In the Belly of the Blog” where he stated that the major of food blogs amount to little more than dull meanderings about cheese sandwiches.

Having never really had grilled cheese sandwiches outside of my own home, I found her argument interesting, but had nothing to judge it against. After a few moments of ponderous silence, I filed the article in the back of my head under ‘curious’ and went on with daily life.

Then early last year I passed by a friend’s house around lunchtime. She offered to make some grilled cheese sandwiches and I was thrilled. Cheese, two slices of bread, and a microwave, what could be snappier right? Wrong. Imagine my shock as she turned on her gas-top stove and started buttering the bread on both sides! Unable to disguise my amazement she asked me if I had never made it that way before? Then continued, that it really was the best way to make grilled cheese, as the butter gave the bread additional flavour and a lovely color.

Made sense However when I asked her when she was going to put the pepper sauce, it was -her- turn to look aghast! I guess there are as many ways to make grilled cheese sandwiches as there are grilled cheese sandwiches How do you enjoy yours?

It’s time again for another Tuesdays with Dorie, and I’m starting to feel rather warm and nostalgic now towards my ‘recent’ acquisition. Although the sheer volume of Baking: From My Home to Yoursis intimidating (over 400 pages!), the style of writing, and step by step directions make each recipe approachable and almost effortless. This time around the assignment at hand was a classic French Dessert called Île Flottante, that’s Floating Islands to us Anglais-philes

This recipe is one I had never heard of before this challenge, so I really felt a bit adrift at first (get it? adrift? *drumroll* ) but it seemed simple enough. I’ve made meringues and I’ve made custard, and floating islands are basically a combination of the two. The simplicity of this dish, where the sum of the components creates a whole that is greater than each of its parts, also goes a long way towards making it a household staple.

According to Dorie:

For the French, this dessert is not only a classic, but often a childhood touchstone. In a country where people are more likely to buy their desserts from a neighbourhood patisserie than prepare them at home, îles flottantes remains a mainstay in the make-at-home repertoire, in some part because it is so easy and in some part because it’s a naturally showy dessert.

Excerpted from Baking: From My Home to Yours

From beginning to end I found this recipe particularly easy to follow. Make sure that your milk is simmering rather rapidly, otherwise the meringues will not expand (see below) and set on the outside as well as they should. I learnt this with the first two ‘islands’ that I tried.

My favourite part of making this recipe was drizzling the caramel. I quickly realized that by holding my fork in the air for an extra second or two, my caramel would begin to harden and I’d essentially be spinning sugar! As this was something I had only seen done on television, I got quite giddy. Within seconds I was twisting, twirling and looping away, and I think the results were rather attractive if I do say so myself Jason quickly tried to jump in on the action, drizzling onto his own islands with careful deliberation (see right). As the caramel strands set they created a delicious crunchy counterfoil to the airy ‘nothingness’ of the meringues and the creamy egginess of the custard. Definitely a delightful dessert, and one that Jason has already told me several times, I -must- make again

P.S: For the recipe, visit Shari of Whisk: A Food Blog, who picked Floating Islands as this week’s challenge.

Fresh sprouts. There is nothing like them. They are crunchier, sweeter, more vibrant in flavour than anything you can buy on a supermarket shelf. Up until last month I never wondered too much how bean sprouts came about and figured it was too complicated a process for a home cook to undertake. That was until my raw foodie friend Elspeth posted some pictures of her lentil sprouts. When I asked her where she got the seeds from she said they were regular dried supermarket lentils. Oh rly?

Armed with that curiosity I decided to look online for guides to home sprouting, and believe me I found many. Honestly, many of them have instructions that are way too complicated. They almost made me scared to begin. Fortunately I was able to distill them to the bare essentials, and those essentials are what I have been following in the weeks since with great results.

To begin: I soak the required amount of beans in enough water to cover about 2 inches overnight

The next day: I drain them into a colander and put it into a cool, dark cupboard.

And that’s it! Twice a day I rinse them off, go through to get rid of any seeds that haven’t sprouted by the second day, and to remove any loosened skins.

By the 4th day they are ready to get some sunlight. This activates the chlorophyll! A few hours is more than enough.

At this point they are ready to eat, either raw or in a dish of your preference.

The following pics show the above lentils as they progressed.

Lentil sprouts are my favourite sprouts to eat raw, they are especially sweet. However I am now playing around with chickpeas, mung beans and alfalfa seeds. Needless to say my humble little colander is feeling the strain. Don’t get me wrong, if you just need sprouts occasionally a colander is ideal. However, now my mom loves them so much she wants to have them on hand ’round the clock! She also is putting in requests for seeds that are not always on the agenda of my own weekly sprouting needs.

That’s why last week I put in an order for a tri-level Kitchen Crop Sprouter that will allow me to harvest 3 different types of sprouts simultaneously! I’ll write about it in more length once I’ve given it a test run (it arrived yesterday!).

So why would one go through the trouble of sprouting one’s own beans? Well for one the sheer economics. Sprouting my own beans, compared to buying them in the supermarket costs pennies on the dollar. The beans/seeds are easily available from supermarkets and specialty stores and the results are fresher and crispier than any I’ve purchased. Plus there is no wastage as I only sprout what I need, as I need, and the sprouts continue to stay fresh in the fridge for several days if I have any leftover.

The other reason why sprouting one’s own beans makes sense is the sheer nutritional boost that seeds undergo when they are sprouted.

From ISGA-sprouts.org:

…researchers at the universities of Pennsylvania and Minnesota, Yale and McGill have found that sprouts retain the B-complex vitamins present in the original seed, and show a big jump in Vitamin A and an almost unbelievable amount of Vitamin C over that present in unsprouted seeds. While some nutritionists point out that this high vitamin content is gained at the expense of some protein loss, the figures are impressive: an average 300 percent increase in Vitamin A and a 500 to 600 percent increase in Vitamin C. In addition, in the sprouting process starches are converted to simple sugars, thus making sprouts easily digested.

Not all seeds are suitable for raw consumption or raw sprouting. For a list of suggested seeds (and those to avoid) visit Wikipedia’s entry on Bean Sprouting. Happy Sprouting!

This post has been submitted to Grow Your Own 2009 hosted by Andrea’s Recipes

Today’s post was inspired by Kochtoph’s Food-O-Graphie event where food bloggers talk a little about the technical preferences that they have behind the photos that they share. As I sometimes get asked what camera I use for my shots I thought it may be helpful for some of you out there

The pic above is of a raw zucchini pasta with marinara sauce that I made as a quick lunch this New Year’s Eve. It’s really simple, just peel a zucchini with a vegetable peeler until you get to the seeds (some keep the skin, I don’t ). Then in a food processor combine sundried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, fresh basil, sea salt and pepper. Combine until you get a good pesto-like texture and the flavour balances are to your liking. If you have red pepper flakes and/or chopped olives feel free to add them at this point as well Then toss with the ‘noodles’ and enjoy! It’s really quite good Now, unto the technical stuff!

My current camera is a Canon PowerShot A540. I chose it because a DSLR is way out of my price range at the moment, however this model of Canon allows one to manually adjust one’s settings in much more intricate ways than many point and shoots. It also allows one to add a limited amount of lenses. I haven’t used this option yet but keep meaning to get a macro lens… maybe in the New Year?

My preferred settings to shoot my food photos with are Portrait setting in Manual adjustment mode. Although the automated Macro mode is better for closeups than nothing at all, it sometimes focuses on an area of the shot that I didn’t have in mind, or isn’t as ‘sharp’ as I think it should be. With the manual focus feature I can override such technical ‘presumptions’.

Although the main benefit of the Portrait setting is that it uses a large aperture setting to blur the background while keeping the primary subject in sharp focus I also like it because it has some convenient White Balance choices as well. (Daylight, Cloudy, Halogen, Tungsten and several others). These come in handy in a pinch, especially if I am shooting with artificial light or on an exceptionally overcast day.

Ninety percent of the time I try to rely solely on natural lighting, however depending on the time that I finish cooking or the weather I sometimes use artificial directional lighting to enhance the appearance of things. I don’t have any professional lights (another possible investment down the road) so right now a lamp or two does the trick

Well, that’s about it

If you have any questions just ask I’m still learning as I go along, and have found many useful tips and hints at Digital Photography School, many of which I’ve been integrating, I have big hopes and ideas for the shots that I’ll be taking this year and am hopeful that I can bring them into realization.

And who knows, maybe by 2010 a Nikon D80 cameramay not be that out of hand

My fruit jar for this year’s December black cakes is slowly but steadily rising. Whenever I buy dried fruits I set aside half of what is leftover into the jar and top it up with rum or cherry brandy (depending on what I have on hand). The fruits are so macerated that they almost melt on my tongue upon contact. This is the first time that I am soaking my fruits this far in advance and I’m already finding it a rewarding (and economical) experience More update pics as the bottle fills

On an unrelated note, anyone know where I can get tamarind locally? I’m having no luck getting my hands on some. I have stuff I wanna make! Let me know your suggestions