So, over Xmas we were given a three-liter bottle of crappy port. I'm pretty sure I don't want to actually drink it, but I suppose I could cook with it.
Any suggestions?
Marinade beef / add to a beef stew?
Use it in a Marsala - like sauce?
Slow - cook a pork roast in it, pot roast style?
..and damnit, is it a ruby or a tawny port?
Ruby, I believe.
Cool, I've never had tawny, so I can't really speak for it. I get the fealing it should be more white wine / marsala - esque, and might play well with chicken, so a chicken marsala dish might work. I think ruby port would overpower the chicken.
There's always making glugg or high-test sangria I suppose.
Open the bottle and let it air out for a half hour. See if that helps.
If you're not man enough to drink a bottle of crappy port, you can always feed your effete highbrow mouth with some port-glazed duck breast. Just reduce the port with some peppercorns, a bay leaf, and some mirepoix over low heat for a couple hours, strain, reduce further until it coats a spoon, slather on cooked crispy duck breast (or whole duck, if you want), and stick it under a salamander for a minute or three until the glaze begins to bubble and get a lacquered look.
add some beef stock or demiglace during reduction and you have a wonderful sauce to serve over game meat like elk or moose.
Quote from: East Coast Hipster on January 06, 2011, 08:35:19 PM
If you're not man enough to drink a bottle of crappy port, you can always feed your effete highbrow mouth with some port-glazed duck breast. Just reduce the port with some peppercorns, a bay leaf, and some mirepoix over low heat for a couple hours, strain, reduce further until it coats a spoon, slather on cooked crispy duck breast (or whole duck, if you want), and stick it under a salamander for a minute or three until the glaze begins to bubble and get a lacquered look.
add some beef stock or demiglace during reduction and you have a wonderful sauce to serve over game meat like elk or moose.
God that sounds so good.
Somewhere deep down in this subforum is my thread "pate, the making of", with a pictorial account on how I made pate. It was delicious, and required port.. not 3 litres though.
If the search wasn't down I'd have linked it.
I don't know what the hell I'd do with 3 liters of shitty port. Mix it with apple cider and make hot spiced cider, maybe?
Anything mentioned in this thread is good
also- baked apples
Seriously, though, man up and drink it. I've downed many a bottle of both Fairbanks and Taylor in my time and look at me now - I'm a stunning example of the pinnacle that humanity can aspire to.
Well, yeah. But. I'm afraid that I don't really want to drink "just" to get drunk anymore. I kind of want a pleasant experience. Or at least an experience that isn't close to choking down fortified flat Welchs' grape soda.
The glaze idea makes me wish I got 3 litres of crap port for xmas.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 07, 2011, 07:29:35 PM
Well, yeah. But. I'm afraid that I don't really want to drink "just" to get drunk anymore. I kind of want a pleasant experience. Or at least an experience that isn't close to choking down fortified flat Welchs' grape soda.
if getting drunk in and of itself is no longer a pleasant experience, why drink at all? I mean, let's not delude ourselves, the reality is that pretty much all booze tastes like crap and we wouldn't drink ANY of it "for the taste" if it contained no alcohol.
Some wines I've had, maybe once in a while with certain foods. But yeah, if I'm honest...
Quote from: East Coast Hipster on January 07, 2011, 08:05:33 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 07, 2011, 07:29:35 PM
Well, yeah. But. I'm afraid that I don't really want to drink "just" to get drunk anymore. I kind of want a pleasant experience. Or at least an experience that isn't close to choking down fortified flat Welchs' grape soda.
if getting drunk in and of itself is no longer a pleasant experience, why drink at all? I mean, let's not delude ourselves, the reality is that pretty much all booze tastes like crap and we wouldn't drink ANY of it "for the taste" if it contained no alcohol.
Your statement and my statement are in conflict. Please read my statement again and answer in a more appropriate manner.
Oh, missed that. Gotcha.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 07, 2011, 08:10:14 PM
Quote from: East Coast Hipster on January 07, 2011, 08:05:33 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 07, 2011, 07:29:35 PM
Well, yeah. But. I'm afraid that I don't really want to drink "just" to get drunk anymore. I kind of want a pleasant experience. Or at least an experience that isn't close to choking down fortified flat Welchs' grape soda.
if getting drunk in and of itself is no longer a pleasant experience, why drink at all? I mean, let's not delude ourselves, the reality is that pretty much all booze tastes like crap and we wouldn't drink ANY of it "for the taste" if it contained no alcohol.
Your statement and my statement are in conflict. Please read my statement again and answer in a more appropriate manner.
apologies, dear chap. And you are quite right, Muffy and I dearly love a dram of good scotch before the canape course, and grand marnier is the only apertif one ever needs.
\
:judge:
Quote from: East Coast Hipster on January 07, 2011, 08:05:33 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 07, 2011, 07:29:35 PM
Well, yeah. But. I'm afraid that I don't really want to drink "just" to get drunk anymore. I kind of want a pleasant experience. Or at least an experience that isn't close to choking down fortified flat Welchs' grape soda.
if getting drunk in and of itself is no longer a pleasant experience, why drink at all? I mean, let's not delude ourselves, the reality is that pretty much all booze tastes like crap and we wouldn't drink ANY of it "for the taste" if it contained no alcohol.
Getting drunk is no longer fun for me. Tipsy is fun. More than three-four drinks and I get headachy and a little nauseous, like a pre-hangover announcing the hangover to come... and so, I personally prefer to make every drink something I enjoy the act of drinking. This is why I still have a quantity of mediocre Scotch in my kitchen... I'd rather drink no alcohol than one I dislike.
Dammit, my mom had a port-requiring recipe for which she was going to use the 25-year old bottle my dad unearthed from the stash of shit she managed to stockpile willy-nilly when he went in the clink. My dad of course said FUCK NAW and just decanted it to get the chewy bits out.
Will ask the mothertypeunit what the fuck it was she was going to make before dad usurped the use of his own (while probably ill-begotten but still HIS) goods.
Also, I LURV ECH's recipe and will be making suchlike if I can get my hands on the ingredients.
Quote from: Nigel on January 09, 2011, 07:51:48 PM
Quote from: East Coast Hipster on January 07, 2011, 08:05:33 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 07, 2011, 07:29:35 PM
Well, yeah. But. I'm afraid that I don't really want to drink "just" to get drunk anymore. I kind of want a pleasant experience. Or at least an experience that isn't close to choking down fortified flat Welchs' grape soda.
if getting drunk in and of itself is no longer a pleasant experience, why drink at all? I mean, let's not delude ourselves, the reality is that pretty much all booze tastes like crap and we wouldn't drink ANY of it "for the taste" if it contained no alcohol.
Getting drunk is no longer fun for me. Tipsy is fun. More than three-four drinks and I get headachy and a little nauseous, like a pre-hangover announcing the hangover to come... and so, I personally prefer to make every drink something I enjoy the act of drinking. This is why I still have a quantity of mediocre Scotch in my kitchen... I'd rather drink no alcohol than one I dislike.
Now we're splitting hairs. You call it "tipsy" I call it "less drunk". Still intoxicated from alcohol regardless of what you call it. My point was that we've only taught ourselves to enjoy the taste of alcohol to ANY degree because of what it does to/for us. I don't think there is an alcoholic drink in existence that would be widely enjoyed for its taste if it contained no alcohol whatsoever.
Mix it with sprite. Or cough syrup.
Hell yeah. RoboPort. If there's anything more ghetto than that, I can't think of it.
I had some cheap port a while back and made a "classier" version of the Classy Lady (Wild Irish Rose and Coca Cola mixed 50/50) with it. It was pretty "good".
Wait I remember, mix it with IRN BRU !!!! :D
It's called "Iron Cock", that is, if the port is named "something cock or other". Payne made one for me. It's interesting. I can't really remember, but it wasn't awful or anything.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 23, 2011, 10:58:06 PM
It's called "Iron Cock", that is, if the port is named "something cock or other". Payne made one for me. It's interesting. I can't really remember, but it wasn't awful or anything.
best done outside in the irn bru bottle.
If you still have the port, reduce it to 1/3, buy a block of cheap stilton, break it into chunks, put it in a box, add the port and some bay leaves and one star anise pod. Let sit cold and eat it with a spoon.
Quote from: Sepia on March 09, 2011, 11:18:56 PM
If you still have the port, reduce it to 1/3, buy a block of cheap stilton, break it into chunks, put it in a box, add the port and some bay leaves and one star anise pod. Let sit cold and eat it with a spoon.
...I think that's pretty similar to what my dad was telling me my mom wanted to do with HIS port...sounds good, actuallly.
It's very nice. Add some crackers with caraway seeds, a little spinach tossed in oil and you have a dish
Damn that sounds good...
I dissagree with those in this thread that say alcoholic beverages taste like crap. I no longer drink, and if I could buy a good NA stout or some NA wine, I would. Love a chewy stout, but they are so high in ABV.
Non alcoholic stouts or wines would not, by definition, be included in the "alcoholic drinks taste crappy we've just trained ourselves to like them" debate. And you can buy both of those things, BTW. I'm pretty sure that Clausthaler makes an NA stout and there is an NA wine called "Fre", though it's terrible. You'd be better off just adding a splash of vinegar to some grape juice.
Thing is, if you had never in your life enjoyed any alcoholic beverages, would you still have a hankering for either of those things?
what's wrong with learning to enjoy new things that you didn't enjoy before?
cause following that reasoning you're just allowed to enjoy warm clothing, shelter, basic food, water, health and sex.
at least, I think that's pretty much the list of stuff that people instinctively enjoy and yearn for even if they never experienced it before.
maybe with the exception of food, water and health.
cause you can't say "you wouldn't be hankering for food if you had never had anything to eat before in your life", cause they'd be dead.
so therefore nobody is allowed to enjoy any kind of food ever.
QED
but don't listen to ECH he doesn't like Grolsch, what does he know about food, anyway?
I never said that there was anything wrong with it. In fact, I heartily endorse it. Just making an observation, that's all.