Sweet dark cherries simmered in ruby port wine with a hint of star anise and cinnamon is the ideal topping for a perfect ending dessert. Serve over ice cream, as a filling for éclairs, or a spread for cheesecake.

4 servings

Ingredients

1 cup ruby port
¾ cup sugar
1 lb fresh or frozen pitted cherries
1 cinnamon stick
¼ teaspoon ground star anise
5 teaspoons cornstarch
5 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla

Equipment

Small saucepan, cherry pitter (or paring knife), plastic gloves, plastic cutting board

Preparation

Prepare the cherries:
Pit the cherries using a cherry pitter or paring knife. To use a paring knife, cut around the circumference of the cherry, pull the halves apart and remove pit.

[Chef’s note: Cherry juice will stain. Use care when pitting the cherries by using plastic gloves, cutting boards and frequently wiping up juice spills on your counter.]

Make the sauce:
Combine the port wine and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the cherries, cinnamon stick and star anise and simmer for 5–10 minutes until the mixture reduces and starts to become syrupy.

[Chef’s note: If using frozen cherries, you might need to simmer a bit longer to defrost the cherries and reduce the resulting water.]

Mix the cornstarch and water together to make a slurry, stirring until completely dissolved. Add the cornstarch slurry to the sauce and bring to boil. Reduce the heat, and continue to simmer until the mixture is thick and shiny. Remove from the heat and cool completely. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Service

Serve over your favorite ice cream or creamy rice pudding. The sauce can also be spread over cheesecake.

Variations

For a great homemade Cherries Jubilee Ice Cream, bring a quart of good-quality vanilla bean ice cream to room temperature, mix the Cherry Port Sauce with the ice cream and place back into a freezer-safe container. Freeze 24 hours, then serve.

Recipe and photo by Lia Soscia

 RP240: More Spanish Wines from Alimentaria: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today, it’s more from my trip to Barcelona for the Alimentaria Show. First, I speak with Sonia Anglada Verges from Freixenet, the largest producer of Cava in the world. Then, it’s Ricardo Arambarri Perez from Vintae.com, which has wines form all over Spain. Finally, we speak with an American importer, Andrew Booth, from The Spanish Table, who was there to discover new products for the American Market.

Theme Song: “Go Fish”, by Big Money Grip, from the Podsafe Music Network.

ReMARKable Palate is a production of The Culinary Media Network. www.culinarymedianetwork.com

 Vinus.tv: Nico James: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ryan Opaz interviews Nico James, a wine importer and distributor in Barcelona. Nico is a British/Caribbean expat living in Spain who imports German, Alsatian and Austrian wines into Spain. Ryan caught up with Nico at the Alimentaria Fair in Barcelona at the end of March. Here, Nico speaks about how he’s using the internet and his video blog to educate consumers, producers, and other importers about his wines and about the wine business in general.

NicoJames.es

We’ll be adding these English-language shows from Vinus and Catavino to our CMN lineup from time to time, and we’re pleased to welcome them as a content provider. They’ll have plenty of coverage of the upcoming European Wine Blogger’s Conference (EWBC) in Vienna, Austria, this coming October 22-24th, 2010.

Travel & accommodations provided by INCAVI. Blogger trip organized and administered by www.catavino.net.

 Vinus.tv: Culinary Media Network: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Vinus.tv is a Spanish wine video site run by Eduardo Benito of winescreen.com, which normally produces all it’s content in Spanish. Catavino.net partners with Vinus.tv to produce videos in English at Wine events of interest to an English-Speaking audience. Well, since Chef Mark interviewed Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from Catavino for the ReMARKable Palate Podcast, turnabout is fair play!

We’ll be adding these English-language shows from Vinus and Catavino to our CMN lineup from time to time, and we’re pleased to welcome them as a content provider. They’ll have plenty of coverage of the upcoming European Wine Blogger’s Conference (EWBC) in Vienna, Austria, this coming October 22-24th, 2010.

We’ll be adding several other videos from Vinus to give a slightly different perspective to the coverage Chef Mark is doing about the visit to Catalunya. Bienvenidos!

Travel & accommodations provided by INCAVI. Blogger trip organized and administered by www.catavino.net.

 CMN Travels Catalunya: A Visit to Freixenet: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We started out our Catalunya explorations the day before the start of Alimentaria with a visit to one of the largest wine producers anywhere, Freixenet. This is without a doubt the largest winery I’ve ever toured, and as the largest producer of Cava in Catalunya, they have quite a bit of demand to keep up with.

Freixenet is famous around the world for it’s Cordon Negro and Carta Nevada brands, which are mass market affordable cavas. Their yearly New Years ads featuring movie stars and musical acts are well known in Europe, and the familiar black bottle of the Cordon Negro can be found all over the States.

But Freixenet owns many wineries all over Spain and other parts of the world, producing a wide range of still and sparling wines. If you’ve traveled in the Sonoma Carneros region of California, you may be familiar with the Gloria Ferrer Winery, which is owned by Freixenet. The Ferrer family founded Freixenet, and continues to hold a stake to this day.

For lunch we tasted 6 different wines from their lineup, including a Rosé Cava made from Pinot Noir, an Albariño made in Rias Baixas, a Rosé from neighboring Montsant, A new wine, Oroya, made especially for sushi by a Japanese winemaker in Spain (composed of Airen, Macabeo and Moscatel grapes), and a 100% Malvasia Cava. The Malvasia is a dessert Cava with fruity notes, and a hint of maple and buttery pastry.

After lunch, we had a tour of their facility, with sections of the winery dating from 1914, and 4 subterranean levels where we got to see the ENORMOUS capacity of the facility, which produces 200 million bottles a year. The facility is so large, they take you around in a little “Cava Train” like at Hershey or a ride at Disneyland! Our guide was very knowledgable and quite charming. Here’s the video of the afternoon visit:

A production of the Culinary Media Network.
www.culinarymedianetwork.com

Travel & accommodations provided by INCAVI. Blogger trip organized and administered by www.catavino.net.

While in Barcelona for Alimentaria last week, I met with Gemma Urgell, a journalist, writer and PR rep for Catalan wines and food products. In addition to representing some really cool folks who are working on a project to produce black truffles commercially in Catalunya (which will generate truffles as well as protect the natural eco-system), Gemma is co-founder of NuestraCausa, a citizen movement that aims to increase citizen’s voice in policy decisions in Catalunya. She interviewed me on camera for her #talkingabout project, which features people talking about their passions, jobs, dreams, and projects to change the world. It looks like I was just spouting off for 5 minutes, but in reality Gemma edited this down from a 20 minute conversation we had in both English and Spanish. She just kept the parts of me talking in English about the use of Social Media to discuss food and wine, and how wineries can better use the web.

#talkingabout – Chef Mark Tafoya from redall on Vimeo.

I’ll have much more content from this trip, not only the discussion of social media, but our regular food and wine focused content about my discoveries in Catalunya & Barcelona’s La Boqueria market. For now, you can find great roundups of the week from Catavino.net, which has a great feed gathering all the content created by the participating bloggers during the course of the week and ongoingly:

Alimentaria “Live” feed from Catavino

Audio Podcast: ReMARKable Palate #238: Barcelona & Social Media with Catavino.net

Disclosure: Travel and accommodations provided by INCAVI. Blogger trip organized and administered by Catavino.net

 RP238: Barcelona & Social Media with Catavino.net: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve just returned from Barcelona, Spain, where I was a guest of Ryan And Gabriella Opaz from Catavino.net, as we explored the Alimentaria fair, the Empordas wine region, and the food sights of Barcelona. Here we discuss the week, and how they are changing the Spanish wine world by using Social Media. www.catavino.net

Travel and accommodations provided by INCAVI.

Theme Song: “Go Fish”, by Big Money Grip, from the Podsafe Music Network.

ReMARKable Palate is a production of The Culinary Media Network. www.culinarymedianetwork.com

Chef Mark is running amok in Spain this week with our friends Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from Catavino, and though internet connections are always challenging while we’re on the road, this time I can help from the domestic side!

Focused in Calatonia (or Catalunya), the northeastern corner of Spain, the group has been touring various wineries including Freixenet, the largest cava producer in the world. They are also attending the Alimentaria festival in Barcelona, and from what I can see, having some marvelous meals. (Last night’s Twitter stream featured plenty of sex on a plate.)

Chef Mark has posted some Facebook albums, so take a peek for yourself:

Tour of Freixenet

Dinner at 5 Centits (5 Senses — oh my yes)

Tapas and Tasting

I’ll continue to post updates as Chef Mark sends them, but in the interim you can follow him on Twitter.

 RP237: Finger Lakes Wines with Steve Shaw: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, we speak with Steve Shaw, owner and winemaker of Shaw Vineyard in the Finger Lakes Wine Region of Upstate New York. We met at a lunch at Savoy Restaurant in SoHo to taste Finger Lakes wines paired with seasonal winter foods. Steve spoke a bit about his Cabernet Sauvignon to those gathered, adn then he sat with me to tell me about what drew him to the wine business and what he sees for the future of the Finger Lakes.

Theme Song: “Go Fish”, by Big Money Grip, from the Podsafe Music Network.

ReMARKable Palate is a production of The Culinary Media Network. www.culinarymedianetwork.com

 RP236: The Wines of Manchuela: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, we speak about the wines of the Manchuela region of Spain, a relatively new DO in an area that’s nonetheless been making wines for centuries. I was at a luncheon unveiling these wines for the first time to the American Wine press, and got to taste a number of their whites, rosadas, and especially their reds made from the Bobal grape.

Last week, we offered a copy of The Flexitarian Diet to a lucky commenter. Our winner is Nadine Lefkowitz from www.topanien.com! Congratulations. Contact me with your address and we’ll get a copy sent out to you, Nadine!

I’m so excited to announce that we’ve FINALLY published the long awaited Knife Skills 101 Video Course in the Cooking With Chef Mark school of our CMN Academy! It’s an 8 lesson series of videos, totaling more than 45 minutes, where I teach you the fundamentals of choosing a knife, sharpening your knives, knife safety, and how to slice, dice, and chop a number of vegetables, from onions, carrots, peppers, mushrooms, garlic and herbs. You can check it out at: http://academy.culinarymedianetwork.com.

Theme Song: “Go Fish”, by Big Money Grip, from the Podsafe Music Network.

ReMARKable Palate is a production of The Culinary Media Network. www.culinarymedianetwork.com