Wine!
Jack
Deatherage, Jr.
Or what I think of as "rotted
fruit juice containing alcohol." I can’t help but
wonder about the fans of wine. I vividly recall my first
and only taste of champagne. "Rotten grapes"
were the words that popped into my head as the liquid
squirted through my lips into a kitchen sink. I thought
of the movies where a man would drink champagne from a
woman’s slipper, so enthralled by her beauty was he. He
drank from her slipper to improve the taste of the
"rotted" grape!
Even when my daily goal was to become
drunk, wine was seldom my agent of choice. Wine made me
more foolish than normal and produced a throbbing
headache the next day. It also left my stomach so
disordered as to make eating unpleasant, a condition
that would have caused me to quit drinking if beer hadn’t
been available!
I haven’t been drunk since Jack III
was born. I haven’t drunk a beer in years and only
recently thought to try wine because I might have
changed my mind about its taste. Jerry Brandon, owner of
"the green store," suggested a wine he thought
drinkable.
I bought a bottle, uncorked it,
sniffed and sipped the liquid. It was horrible. I used
it to de-glaze my frying pans. To my surprise it wasn’t
bad once it had been cooked into a thick sauce! I was on
to something and used the undrinkable stuff in my sauces
and marinades. But I still hoped to find some bottle
that was drinkable. Just a couple of ounces before a
meal to aid the digestion.
I went through enough brands and types
to get a working knowledge of wine. If the bottle is
corked, soak a chicken in the wine or use it to flavor
sauces. If the bottle has a screw cap, it’s probably
fit to drink. And less expensive too. What a deal!
A roasting chicken (giblets removed),
2 cups of Chardonnay (vineyard doesn’t matter as long
as the bottle was corked), a chopped clove or 2 of
garlic, a teaspoon or so of marjoram, salt and pepper to
taste, 3 stalks of celery cut into 1 inch pieces, 2
medium onions- peeled and cut in half, and about 12
ounces of sliced button mushrooms.
Place the chicken in a bowl that fits
it snugly. Mix the wine, garlic and marjoram and pour
over the bird making sure it gets into the cavity. Let
the bird soak for a couple of hours turning it over a
few times. After removing from the wine, salt and pepper
the bird and place it in a roasting pan.
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Add the
celery and mushrooms to the wine mix and let soak until
the oven is ready, about 15 minutes. Remove the shrooms
and celery from the wine and stuff them in the bird. Add
the onions and any extra shrooms and celery to the wine
while the bird is roasted under cover for 1 hour. Place
the extra shrooms, celery and onions in the pan at the
end of the hour. Cover again and roast about another
hour. Remove cover and turn the heat up to 400 F. Let
the bird brown for about 15 minutes.
Remove the bird and veggies from the
pan and pour off any liquid to make a sauce or gravy.
Carve or tear the beast as you like when it has cooled
enough to handle. Now would be the time to unscrew
the cap from a bottle of good drinkable wine.
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