Perfect (and simple) Summer Evening (or anytime) Drink

My good friend (and wine rep...those are good friends to have) Tim Grenier recently shared a simple, delicious summer drink that he picked up from Pete Seghesio of Seghesio Family Vineyards in the Alexander Valley of Sonoma County, CA.

Pour yourself (and a friend or lover preferably) a glass of a nice Zinfandel (no, not White Zinfandel...), and place four or five slices of a nice ripe peach in it.  Let it macerate (soak) in the wine for ten or fifteen minutes, drink the wine, eat the wine-soaked peach slices, and repeat as desired.

Do this outside, on a patio, and enjoy a late-summer evening for maximum effect.

My Favorite Cookbooks

I've seen a few of my favorite chefs come up with a list of their favorite cookbooks recently, and it's always fun to see what they're really in to, and maybe you share an love of a particular book with them.  I'm a cookbook junkie, so when I'm not physically cooking, often I'm reading cookbooks - constructing the dishes in my head, thinking about the techniques, forming new associations that I may not have considered before...and marveling at the pictures (food porn...mmmmmm).

So here's a handful that I keep going back to and what I love about them.  They're all pretty different, but the common thread that ties them all together is that they succeed in being much more than just a cookbook, or a story book with recipes and pretty pictures.  They're books that successfully communicate the philosophy that drives the chef and/or restaurant, and the risk and obsessive determination that goes in to making a world-class restaurant.