Calling all Southern Californian Cambria fans! If you are going to be in or around Newport Beach on Thursday, September 29th, you may want to attend our Cambria Wine Dinner at the Hyatt Regency!

The Hyatt has put together a night of delicious food and wine pairings for the evening, all featuring our Cambria wines! The dinner will feature dishes paired with our Tepusquet Viognier, Katherine’s Vineyard Chardonnay, Julia’s Pinot Noir, Tepusquet Syrah, and Late Harvest Viognier. The dinner is also going to include some just-harvest Cambria grapes that will serve as “edible centerpieces” during the night.
Pp
Here’s a look at the menu:

 If you are interested, you can RSVP by either calling (949) 729-6057, or by e-mailing onie.carreon@hyatt.com. We hope you can make it!

We have another fun Thirsty Girl event coming up which I am really looking forward to! The event this time will be Thirsty Girl LIVE! Seattle. The party will be at Maggiano’s Little Italy Restaurant in Bellevue on the evening of Thursday, March 24^th, from 5:30-7:30pm.   

I last mentioned Thirsty Girl on the blog back in November, right before the Thirsty Girl LIVE! Bay Area event that I attended in San Francisco. Basically, the Thirsty Girl events are wine tasting and networking parties hosted by Leslie Sbrocco, a well-respected wine writer, author, and expert in all things wine. Leslie is touring the country with seven wines that she has picked to be a part of her everyday wine “wardrobe” – seven wines which she thinks are delicious, but are also affordable, and are great wines to drink on a day-to-day basis. These wines include a sparkling wine, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Chardonnay, a Riesling, a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Zinfandel. And of those wines, she has selected Katherine’s Vineyard to be her Chardonnay pick for the Thirsty Girl tour!

This event should be lots of fun, like always! Besides the seven delicious featured wines, there will also be lots of yummy appetizers, each one paired with one of the wines, as well as Thirsty Girl swag to win and lots of fun accessories to wear if you want to take your photo in the Thirsty Girl photo booth! I’ll be pouring Katherine’s and answering questions that anyone has about Cambria.

And if food, wine, and a fun atmosphere aren’t enough of an incentive to come, you’ll also be helping out a good cause! A portion of all ticket sales will be going to the Seattle Dress for Success chapter.

If you wish you could come to the Thirsty Girl event but can’t make it to Seattle next week, you should definitely check out the Thirsty Girl website, especially the section on upcoming events! The Thirsty Girl event tour will be going on for another couple of months, so there’s a chance that they could be coming to your area soon!

 I hope to see you in Seattle!

Dungeness crab season started in Northern America last month, and so if you like crab, now is the time to have it! My family and I enjoyed our first crab of the season last week, and it was amazing. My brother-in-law had gone out crabbing with a friend of his early that morning, brought home the freshly-caught crab, cooked and cleaned it, and brought it over that same evening. The crab was delicious: so fresh it had that almost sweet quality to it, as well as this rich, succulent juiciness that is only found in crab that has just come straight from the ocean.

Some wine and food pairings are classics, and this is one of them. Chardonnay and Dungeness crab are a perfect match, and depending upon the way you cook your crab, any of Cambria’s Chardonnays would make a great accompaniment. Our Katherine’s Vineyard or Unwooded Chardonnay would both go beautifully with steamed crab, where the fruit of the Chardonnay will play with the delicate sweetness of the crab meat. Our Benchbreak Chardonnay has a little more oak and would be fantastic with fire roasted crab, which has a bit of a nutty flavor to it. But really, any Chardonnay will make a tasty combination with crab if it is something that you love and will enjoy!

We ate our steamed crab with Katherine’s Vineyard, melted butter for dipping, and warm, crusty French bread spread with butter as a side. Fresh, sweet crab + French bread + Chardonnay equaled pure deliciousness!

I don’t know about you, but as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I start wishing that I could celebrate it all over again. Which is why I was very excited when I saw this recipe, which calls for turkey and butternut squash. Something about those two foods give me the warm, fuzzy feeling that I get just thinking about Thanksgiving.

Cambria Estate Chef Taki Laliotitis designed this recipe for a pairing with Cambria Chardonnay. As he says, “The sweet buttery flavor of butternut squash pairs perfectly with our Cambria Chardonnay.” Since I know from experience that Taki is an incredible chef, I was very excited to try this out, and I was not disappointed.

This recipe is delicious, and is the perfect way to use up your turkey leftovers! It calls for everything you would normally need to make risotto – butter, turkey or chicken stock, onion, Arborio rice, white wine and parmesan cheese – and then adds in butternut squash and turkey. What really takes it to the next level is the addition of crème fraîche at the end of the recipe. This makes the risotto taste incredibly creamy and delicious.

Best of all, it is super-easy to make.  Taki made it so that it can be cooked in under 30 minutes, and pretty much all that it requires is the ability to assemble the ingredients and stir them all together. I appreciate this, because I am a very inexperienced cook.

Believe me, if I can make this dish, you can too.

While making this, I first assembled all of my ingredients.

You are going to need about 1 ½ cups of cooked turkey meat, either shredded or diced.

Then, you are going to need about 1 cup of butternut squash or pumpkin puree. I was originally going to go with the canned pumpkin puree that is in my ingredients photo, but because I wanted to try making fresh butternut squash puree, I took some pre-cooked butternut squash,

threw it into the blender,

and pureed until smooth.

Then, assemble the rest of your ingredients! Produce,

rice and dairy,

and stock.

I used chicken stock, but if you use turkey stock it will bring out the turkey flavor even more and would probably be even more delicious.

Heat your stock over high heat until you bring it to a boil, and then turn the heat down. It should be warm as you slowly add it to the risotto.

Melt your butter in a large pot over medium-high heat, and then add the minced onions. Cook for about two minutes.

Then add the cup of rice, and stir so that it is lightly coated with the butter. Cook for another two minutes. Be careful not to let the onions caramelize.

Add your ½ cup of white wine. This is the perfect opportunity to open whatever white wine you are going to be drinking with your meal, and to pour yourself a glass after you add the 1/2 cup to the recipe.

Stir until the wine is absorbed into the rice, and then add 1/3 of the heated stock.

Cook until the stock is almost fully absorbed into the rice. It will look something like this:

Then, add some more stock. The stock should be added a little bit at a time. I added it ½ cup by ½ cup.

When the stock has all been added, add the butternut squash puree and the turkey. Heat until they are warmed through, and then add your lemon juice, Parmesan, crème fraîche, thyme and parsley. Stir it all together…

and serve!

Turkey Risotto with Butternut Squash & Crème Fraîche

1 ¼ quarts turkey or chicken stock

4 Tbsp. butter

¼ cup onion, minced

1 cup Arborio rice

½ cup white wine, such as Chardonnay

1 cup butternut squash puree or pumpkin puree

1 ½ cups cooked turkey, diced or torn

1 lemon, juiced

¼ cup Parmesan cheese

2 Tbsp. crème fraîche or mascarpone cheese

1 Tbsp. fresh thyme, minced

1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, minced

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

In a 2-quart pot, add the stock and bring to a boil.

In a separate 4-quart pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted, add the onions and cook for 2 minutes. Add the rice and cook for another 2 minutes, without caramelizing the onions. Deglaze the pan with wine and cook until dry.

Add 1/3 of the boiling stock to the rice and stir until fully absorbed. Turn down the heat to medium and continue stirring. Continue this process of adding small amounts of stock until rice is cooked. Total cooking time will be approximately 20 to 25 minutes.

Add the butternut squash puree and turkey, heat for 1 minute or until ingredients are warmed through. Season with lemon juice and add cheeses and herbs. Adjust final seasoning with salt and pepper.