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07/28/1999 Archived Entry: "Questions from E-Mail: On Peppermills, Goat, and Wine"

I get e-mail. Lots of e-mail. And many of your questions are so good I want to share them. Here are a few.

Q. Arthur, I love your web-site! I love coarsely ground black pepper, but am having a hard time finding a pepper grinder that is coarse enough. I loosened the screws on mine, but it doesn't really get very coarse. Any suggestions?


Arthur: I love my Peugeot peppermills from France. One I have for nearly 30 years and it still works beautifully. I will admit, however, that even these superior peppermills have a will of their own. Some grind finer and coarser than others, although, in theory, you can adjustment them – with the top screw as you say. Bridge Kitchenware carries them (and stands behind them). You can go to Bridge (my candy store, I always like to say) at 214 E. 52nd St., in Manhattan, or call at (212) 838-6746 for mail order. They come in various sizes and start at $25. Broadway Panhandler: 477 Broome St, between Greene St. and Wooster St. in Soho (Manhattan) also has them in stock. Many fine kitchenware stores across the U.S. carry them.

Another good peppermill is made by William Bounds, Ltd., in Torrance, California. The Bounds peppermills have a three-tiered adjustment device for coarser or finer grinds. You can find them in many catalogs – such as Crate & Barrel, William-Sonoma, and The Chef’s Catalog. The company manufactures 250 different styles of mills – many of them quite stylish looking -- including cheese, salt, and nutmeg mills. For a retail store that carries them near you, call (800) 473-0504. A warning about the salt mills, however. I have two in my kitchen in Connecticut and, because it is so humid there and salt attracts moisture, both grinding mechanisms have rusted and fused.

Another solution: Don’t use a peppermill. It’s possible you are asking for such a coarse grind that none will do the job. Put the peppercorns in a plastic bag and bang them with a mallet or hammer to break them into the large size pieces you want. As a last resort, you could also buy what is called butcher’s grind pepper – peppercorns that are already broken into large pieces.


Q. My son and his family live in Clinton Corners (New York), and have a wonderful vegetable garden, and pigs, lambs, chickens, and goats. They are going to bring the goats to the butcher (is that the correct term?) and asked me what I would do with goat meat. Well, my Italian grandmother never really used goat meat, lamb or caposella (pardon my poor attempt at spelling) yes, but not goat. Goat cheese is divine and I have bought milky goat body lotion, but that's it. So, Arthur, can you help steer us in the right direction? We do appreciate any ideas you might have. Ciao, Fran.

Arthur: First, Fran, I believe caposella is a dialect word for castrated goat. So your Italian grandmother did make goat. And as she must have known, goat ragu is divine -- "Sunday gravy," as many Neapolitans and Italian-Americans call it. Make your usual meat sauce but with goat instead of whatever meat or meats you usually use -- or use some goat along with your usual meat, be it beef, braciole, meatballs, lean pork or fattier pork ribs … whatever. In Naples at Table. I also have a recipe for roast lamb that I first ate made with goat. It’s seasoned with onion, oregano, rosemary and just a little tomato. But you can roast goat with any seasonings you might use for lamb – say garlic and rosemary tucked into slits in the flesh. Or cook goat into a stew as you would lamb – say, Irish style, with carrots, turnips, onion, and potatoes. Indians, Pakistani, and Caribbean people (most notably Jamaicans) make curried goat -- there are many recipes around. You get the picture. Good question.


Q. You have been a great help to us and we have a quick question. A beautiful little girl has been born and we would like to make a present of a few bottles of wine. We want to put our own label on the back of the bottle saying its for little Chloe and the idea is to open the bottles at her bat mitzvah, in 13 years. Any suggestions as to a wine that will still be good in 13 years and won’t cost a fortune today?

Arthur: I am assuming you would like a wine that has vintage date of 1999 – the year of the baby’s birth -- and I have to tell you that, for the most part, those wines have not been made yet. In the Northern hemisphere, the grape harvest of 1999 has yet to be brought in. Grapes for Southern Hemisphere wines, meaning wines from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, and Chile were harvested in March, however, and those wines are made but won’t be released earlier than the fall of 2,000. Of those, I can tell you that the Australian cabernets and shiraz wines (those are two grape varieties and the wines made from them carry the same name as the grape) are, in general, very fine and because the Australian dollar is weak right now, their price is excellent. You can probably buy a whole case of Australian cabernet for the price of two bottles of French Bordeaux.
We won’t know until late August or September if a vintage year is going to be declared in the Port region of Portugal, but if it is, I suggest buying some 1999 vintage Port. Port is a dessert wine – or for sipping for its own sake, say with a bite of cheese or some nuts – and it is very special,. But because it is not all that popular these days, the prices are quite fare for such a delicacy, You have some time to think about this, though – 1999 vintage port, if there is any made, won’t be released any earlier than late 2002. By the time your baby is bat mitvah age, the wine should be quite nice, but it will be even better when she gets married – no matter how old she is then. Port ages for a very, very long time if kept in at a reasonably cool and consistent temperature -- 58 degrees, more or less.
Storage is, indeed, another consideration. Don’t buy really precious wine to age, then keep it in a place that has dramatic temperature variations (like heating in the winter, air-conditioning in the summer) or is very hot or very cold.
I know you don’t want to spend a lot, but the ultimate wine choice for cellaring would be a fine Bordeaux. The wines of Bordeaux, in the southwestern section of France, are known for their finesse and longevity. These days, however, not all Bordeaux wines are made for long, long storage. It’s mainly the top rank. Wine makers want their stock to be drunk as soon as possible so they can fill in with more wine. If you want to spend as little as possible for the best possible wine, wait until January or early February when you can buy 1999 Bordeaux as a “future.” At the time the wines are made they are also sold, even though the bottles will not be released for at least two, more like three years from now. You can buy good Bordeaux for about $50 a bottle the year it is made. That is about half the price it will be when it is released to the market in about two years. Who knows how much it will be when it is released at retail, in about three years from the vintage date. In 13 years those bottles will be very special indeed. Well, at least prohibitively expensive.
My friend Judy Rundel at Heights Chateau, my favorite Brooklyn wine mercahnt, points out that the “Bordeaux growers are on such a roll” that who knows where Bordeaux prices are going. Bordeaux wines are in such demand that the growers got the same price for the mediocre vintages of 1996 and 1997 as they did for the superior 1995 vintage