3CUPS Blog

Cooking seafood is simple, but not easy. I have a recipe today, which is my kind of cooking. It doesn't require the precision of pan searing fresh fish, but using the time honored technique of braising. The recipe comes from friend and cookbook author Molly Stevens and braises fresh shrimp in a simple Mediterranean broth, click here for recipe.

Fresh southeastern shrimp are available in our local markets these days and this dish goes amazingly well with our weekend wine, a Muscadet (Moose-cah-DAY) from France’s Loire Valley.

First the wine… Muscadet is an underdog, a Rodney Dangerfield wine, "it gets very little respect."  It comes from an area in the western part of the Loire Valley where the river dumps into the Atlantic.  Because the wine is produced so close to the ocean it takes on an oceanic quality which makes it perfect with seafood.

The New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov wrote a terrific article, click here for article, where he explains that although everyone describes Muscadet as the perfect wine with oysters, no one orders it because it is usually the cheapest wine on the list and no one wants to seem like a cheapskate.

“Near the end of the Loire River, just before it runs out to sea, the river cuts through one of the most geological formations in the viticultural world. For those in the know, it is one of the great terriors of France. This is Muscadet." Jon-David Headrick