roses rising: pink champagne gelee

My friend Bacchus, aka Frank, the Emperor of Titans, sells wine. If you listen to his business phone it ends, in his sexy Belgian accent "and remember.... ALWAYS drink good wine."

Frank taught the Guyman and I how to drink good wine. While it is not a regret, there is something you need to know: as you drink good wine, you cannot go back. You will begin to take mouthfulls of stuff and look for a way to spit it out, because folks, there is a LOT of bad wine out there. I'm not talking just about whole classes of wine, like white zinfandel (which has no reason to exist in Annalena's view), pink merlot (God save us) but also with all classes. There are bad chardonnays. There are bad pinots. And at some point, you will encounter them. I guarantee it. And there are degrees of bad. The TRULY awful stuff, you throw away. the stuff that you wouldn't drink, but is ok, you cook with. And that's across the boards, even with sparkling wines. For example, Annalena has a rule: she will not drink sparkling wine made in countries who's language possesess no vowels, or which permit words with six letters and no vowel. She has other rules too, but they all boil down to: do not settle for what is not good. And if it's borderline, cook with it. I keep some bottles for that very reason. And hence, this recipe, made not with champagne, but with "cremant" , another French sparkling wine.

I found this recipe when the thought of making a "gelee" for a dinner came to mind. I knew I had seen something in Claudia Fleming's wonderful book "The Last Course." Her recipe does in fact call for champagne, but I do not think she would mind.

I want to give all of you who are with me to this point a warning: this recipe is a bit complex and at the end of it you may very well be saying "I did all that work for..." Bear with me. Make the second recipe, which follows, for the peach sorbet. You'll have an absolutely beautiful dessert that deserves a photo. (In fact, I think I'm going to ask the Guyman to do that for this when we serve it).

Let's set out the ingredients. You need a bottle of pink sparkling wine of some sort. NOT sweet, but "brut" You will also need 2 cups of sugar, about a half dozen large sprigs of lemon verbena,about 8 peaches, white, yellow or mixed, and 5 teaspoons of gelatin.

Let's look at that last measurement again: it's a weird one, isn't it? You don't often hear of "5" of anything in a recipe. And, those who are mathematically inclined, will say "well, 6 teaspoons is two tablespoons, I'll use that."

DON'T. One of the challenges of cooking is getting gelatin right in desserts. Unless you want J E L L O (and some will), measure by the teaspoon, or measure a tablespoon and two teaspoons. You will be rewarded (Incidentally, did you know that Jello was once considered a sign that a family was wealthy? That's because for Jello to work, you need a refrigerator, and if you had a refrigerator, you were monied. Isn't that fascinating? Sort of like being able to buy canned orange juice).

Ok, enough sociological digression. Open the wine carefully, and pour it into a pot. Add a cup of water, the two cups of sugar, the lemon verbena, and bring it to a simmer. let it cook away for ten minutes, while you chop up the peaches. You don't need to peel them, and you don't need to use scientific precision, but do make sure you cut away the pit parts. Get them in the champagne mixture, crinkle up a piece of wet parchment paper and cover it, and let this cook for twenty minutes (you CAN cook the peaches whole if you like. Then you have material for another dessert if you like).

After the twenty minutes, fish out the lemon verbena and compost it. Fish out the peaches, and put them aside, together with half a cup of the liquid. If it looks cloudy, strain that liquid. In any event, put most of it aside. Take half a cup and mix it with the gelatin, and let it sit for five minutes. Now, heat it for about a minute to dissolve the gelatin.

Take that big pot of liquid and measure out four cups of it. Of that four cups, measure 3/4 cup into the hot liquid, to cool it a bit, then mix them all together.

That's an awful lot of intricate steps, isn't it? I warned you. You will also have left over liquid, of which Ms. Fleming tells you not what ato do. I would use it in a fruit soup or to poach some other fruit.

You now have four cups of liquid with the gelatin in it. You can pour this all into one big mold, or one large bowl, or as I did, eight small ramekins. Carefully put the stuff in the fridge, and let it chill overnight . (The original recipe said 4 hours. At four hours, I despaired of it every solidifying).

The result is a very pale, beautiful gelee which will look beautiful on a plate with the rose' raspberry sorbet, and...

the peach sorbet you can now make. You have 8 cooked peaches, with very soft skin, so you don't have to peel them. Puree them in a blender or food procesor with that liquid you saved. If you like things a little sweeter, add half a cup of syrup made from 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water. Taste and adjust however you like, and then when it's cool, put it into the ice cream maker, for a peach sorbet.

Now, think about the pretty plate: you have the very dark rose raspberry sorbet, the pale pink of the peach sorbet, and the mauve clarity of the gelee ("Mauve clarity?" Sounds like a drag name or a rock band name).

Christa, queen of pink, this is for you. Try it. Bet you're very happy with it.

And as everything CONTINUES to come up roses, we will be making rose geranium pound cake next time around.

I bet you can hardly wait.