—Our readings of food recipes suggest that a formula helps make a recipe successful in print: promise two or more of Quick, Easy, Cheap, and Tasty. Illustrate with a colorful image of the finished product and bank the sure, albeit modest, check.
—So let’s start with the Quick scenario in which close friends drop by for cocktails one evening with new friends and casually mention that the new friends follow a strictly vegan diet. You glance at the platter of Brie on little toasts, cream cheese with chives on celery stalks, and prosciutto wrapped around dates and know that the new friends will see sweetbreads, white lard on grass shoots, and pork belly wraps. Quickly you look in the frig for frozen edamame, fresh snow peas, a package of sugar snap peas, or leftover haricot verts. If the pods have little stems, pull them down to string the pods. Wash them in a bowl a couple of times and drain them. Sprinkle pink Himalayan Pink or other salt over the top of the bowl and steam in a microwave or an air fryer for around 30 seconds. Add a dipping sauce of a touch of soy in sesame or olive oil to the platter.
—Next the Easy part. Add healthy Crudites to any platter that you pass to guests that may have concerns about diet. In addition to the usual celery stalks, carrot slices, broccoli, cauliflower, and cucumber slices, add cabbage slices, avocado slices, pickled red and yellow beets, red and yellow bell pepper slices, picked onions, and romaine leaves. If fact, almost anything vegetable in the fridge will find favor if accompanied by a group of small sauce bowls of salsas minimally doctored with pepper, Worchester, hoisin, or fish sauces.
—Cheap generally describes healthy selections from the produce sections of markets. You may have to stock a few extra items in the frig for the Quick occasions.
—The tasty part depends to some extent on the sauces served with the Quick and Easy items. Our favorite sauce for most food items, complementary wines, will bring your recipes up to a world-class level. Our latest favorite, the 2023 Andrew Murray Vineyards Espérance Rosé from the St. Inez Valley of California, at $30 moves out of the Cheap niche, but it elevates a bowl of steamed snow peas to its peak. The wine offers a blend of slightly off-dry fruit flavors of Mourvèdre and Grenache grapes. It embraces the subtly sweet greens taste of the pod and the nutty flavor of the nascent pea.
—Cheap alternatives to the Espérance Rosé include bargain wines that we have found to be the next best thing to Champagne and the fine Rosé wines of France: the consistent Campo Viejo Rosé from Rioja Spain ($10) and its quieter cousin, the Campo Viejo Rosé from Navarro ($12). Rosé has enough of a sweet taste to avoid a bitter finish and a level of acidity that does not upstage a mild vegetable,
—If you are reading this article in print or on LBKnews.com, you will know that the formula worked again.
—S. W. Hermansen has used his expertise in econometrics, data science and epidemiology to help develop research databases for the Pentagon, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture, and Health Resources and Services. He has visited premier vineyards and taste wines from major appellations in California, Oregon, New York State, and internationally from Tuscany and the Piedmont in Italy, the Ribera del Duero in Spain, the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale in Australia, and the Otego Valley in New Zealand. Currently he splits time between residences in Chevy Chase, Maryland and St. Armand’s Circle in Florida.
—Rich Hermansen selected has first wine list for a restaurant shortly after graduating from college with a degree in Mathematics. He has extensive service and management experience in the food and wine industry. Family and friends rate him as their favorite chef, bartender, and wine steward. He lives in Severna Park, Maryland.
