Cooking World

Mulled wine (from German gluhende Wein - hot, flaring wine) is irreplaceable in a cold season. This drink is perfect for long winter evenings and open air activities. It is usually prepared from red (less often white) wine with sugar and kitchen herbs, cinnamon and cloves, sometimes rum, cognac, liqueur and lemons are added.

Mulled wine is also recommended during recovering after infectious diseases, or at physical and mental exhaustion.

Directions:

The most important - mulled wine should not begin to boil! The temperature should be about 70 C. The wine should be heated in fire-resistant utensils until the white foam disappear.
It is important not to forget - mulled wine does not bear cooling, as the wine heated up once, loses for ever the bouquet and flavoring qualities. Use high glasses to prevent fast cooling.

If the structure of mulled wine includes hot water, it should be boiled just before use.

Mulled wine may be kept in a usual thermos. By the way, the drink will only win from it: it will slightly thicken and be brewed. The only condition - if you are going to thermos a drink for more than an hour, take out lemon peel, or the wine will be bitter.

Unique climate. The simultaneous closeness of Maipo valley to mountains and a coast exerted influence on a climate. Conditions for grapes growing are amazing. Day time heat is compensated by cool night breezes from the ocean, and mountains protect vines from cold winds and rains. Hot droughty summer and short soft winters - here are the basic features of the region. The fluctuation in day time and night temperature reaches 20 degrees, which influences well grapes acidity level. Wines turn out saturated, complex, but due to high acidity light and unobtrusive.

The river Maipo stretched from the East to the West also influences soil of the valley. The vineyards located along the river-bed, grow on stony soils, and wines here are mineral. On more remote sites because of sand and clay wines are more dense.

The first-class. In this valley have been located the oldest wineries of the countries: Concha Y Toro, Santa Rita, Cousino Macul, Tarapaca, Carmen. 8 thousands hectares out of 10 thousands are set aside for red kinds. The most popular are red wines from cabernet sauvignon, though each manufacturer has the own approach. So, light wine Cousino-Macul Maipo Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 possesses the bright fruit aroma, inherent to Beaujolais wines. And perfectly structured wine Casillero del Diablo Maipo Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1996, made by Concha Y Toro winery, on the contrary, is remembered by the saturated taste of a black currant and herbs with rich fruit and oak notes.

Designer Roberto Kavalli, obviously, does not recognize relaxation. Now he is going to launch a new wine collection.

Cavalli Collection and Cavalli Selection actually are blends of such wines, as Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and Alicante Bouchet, created from the grapes grown by Kavalli’s family on their own vineyard in Tuscany. Cavalli wines will appear on sale next year in Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland and the USA.

The first 5000 bottles (with traditional for Roberto Kavalli leopard prints) will be sold in Tuscany prior to the beginning of sales in other countries. A vineyard is managed by designer’s son Tommaso, while Roberto Kavalli is concentrated on management of his fashionable empire. «Tomasso has never asked me about anything», has told the designer in interview to WWD.

«He is a true idealist. He has never used popularity of my name, however I needed 40 years to create the brand - why do not use it to sale wines?»

Pierre Herme - the most fashionable confectioner in the world.
Despite of the age, which doesn’t get into a category of middle-aged, the successor of four generations of bakers - confectioners from Alsace has had time to do a lot. He was the head-confectioner of legendary house Fauchon and the head of well-known Parisian confectioner’s shop Laduree, has opened own house Pierre Herme Paris and school of confectionery art, has published the whole series of books.

Today boutiques, cafe, luxury supermarkets, chocolate bars with his name on a show-window work not only in Paris, but also in Tokyo and New York. The owner of loud titles prepares dishes not only according to classical French recipes, but also creates his own, mysterious desserts. Only one his dessert can combine bitter and sweet, sour and spicy substances.

The world of haute cuisine is a ringer of haute couture, therefore every year Herme House creates at least two collections: spring-summer and autumn-winter. Each of them is devoted to the certain theme and has its own name.

In the London hotel The Langham, located nearby the Bond Street, has opened cocktail-bar Artesian.

The creator of bar’s interior was well-known designer David Collins, the author of private apartments for many celebrities, founder of numerous fashionable London institutions, as, for example, Claridge’s Bar and Noby Berkley in Metropolitan hotel. Artesian’s interior combines exotic east motives and magnificent accessories in pseudo-colonial style.

Rum is a main shtick of Artesian. Many years ago this drink was an essential line of the budget in colonial England. It has not lost the popularity in modern Britain.
Bar has more than twenty cocktails on the basis of rum and about fifty variety of thus drink, including Havana Club Maxito Extra Anejo (Cuba), Brugal Siglo de Oro (Dominican republic), Bacardi Ron 8 (Puerto Rico), Barbancourt 15 Reserve du Domaine (Haiti), Oronoco Premium white rum (Brazil), Zacapa Black Label Limited Edition (Guatemala), Plantation 1998 (Nicaragua), Santa Teresa (Venezuela).
It is necessary to add, that Artesian should be also visited by quite decent collectors of gastronomic impressions. Even for the sake of the traditional English tea and the evening gastronomic menu, which is updated daily.

Amino acid cysteine helps to reflect attacks of nocuous microbes. It makes mucous membranes impenetrable for pathogenic organism. The maximum quantity of cysteine is contained in fish, soya products, cereals, cheese, cottage cheese, fowl.

Breakfast should include at least one sour-milk foodstuff - kefir, curdled milk, ryazhenka or yoghurt.

Theoretically each meal should begin and come to an end the vitamin additive. To fill up stocks of vitamin C, which helps an organism to restore after illnesses, you should eat sauerkraut, drink hips broth or tea with a lemon.

For preventive maintenance and treatments of cold doctors recommend a chicken broth – it accelerates regenerative processes in an organism, removes an inflammation in a throat and softens cough. Low-fat meat rich with proteins will provide fast recovery of immune cells.

Doctors-dieticians recommend in a cold season to use for food fruits-vegetables of yellow and orange colors - oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, lemons, pumpkin, cooked carrots, etc. They contain “antiviral” vitamins A, Е, C, and also special substances - bioflavonoids, promoting their assimilation.

In winter we require an additional portion of vitamins and microelements. In an optimum and the most balanced ratio they are in oatmeal porridge.

This porridge on nutritional value is the most close to breast milk. In contains vitamins A, Е, В1, В2, В6, amino acids, and contained in this porridge biotin cures dryness and peeling of skin, loss of hair. It allows to use porridge even outwardly - as beauty masks for face.

B vitamins are considered by dieticians as vitamins of beauty. Their shortage can be evident by red stains on face, labial fissures, and hair and nails become weak and fragile. The main source of vitamin B - lean meat, liver and graham bread.

In the winter we suffer from often colds, lack of sleep, anoxaemia, problems with mood. Why? Because we eat “as in the summer”.

The majority of winter problems can be solved having changed the diet system. Only keep up that your daily diet weights not less than 2000 kilocalories, - decrease in caloric content of a diet weakens immune protection of an organism. Let alone malnutrition, which is disastrous for appearance in combination with cold. Also in winter it is better not to keep to neither “albuminous”, nor “carbohydrate” diets - organism needs everything.

Bananas for happiness
In winter, when daylight hours are shorter, we are in want of serotonin - «hormone of happiness». Its secretion demands light, therefore in a cold season its level invariably reduces.
Bananas and chocolate can help to avoid winter depression. Other natural antidepressants are fat acids, contained in fat fish, sunflower seeds and olive oil. Selenium can also help. It is contained in nuts, sea fish, red meat, liver, kidneys, sunflower seeds.

General food value of a daily diet of the child in the age of 1-1,5 years makes to 1300 kcal. The child who has stepped 1,5 year’s boundary, needs 1400-1500 kcal, and three-year’s child need 1550-1600 kcal a day. Breakfast and dinner - 25 %, a lunch - 35 %, afternoon snack - 15 %.
Certainly, volume of the food depends and on children’s appetite. If the child has good appetite, do not abuse it; do not accustom your child to excessively plentiful meal. First or last it will lead to superfluous adipopexis and health disorders. If your child has poor appetite and not always wants to eat, temporarily do the fifth food intake as an additional supper at 21 o’clock or an early breakfast if the child wakes up too early - at 5-6 o’clock AM. Additional food intake may include a glass of warm milk, kefir or yoghurt with cookies or a slice of a roll.

The food is digested in a stomach of the child on the average within 3-4 hours; therefore intervals between food intakes should be approximately equal to this time. Time of feedings should be constant, deviations from this time should not exceed 15-30 minutes.

If to speak about frequency of a meal, it is recommended to feed the child four times a day. High-protein food (meat, fish) children should take in the first half of a day, as it needs more time to be digested in a stomach, and the second half of a day is good for a dairy – vegetative and carbohydrate food.

An important point in a diet of children of 1-3 years are requirements to culinary handling of food.
Till one and a half years soups and porridges are made grinded, and meat and fish - as a souffle, steam cutlets, meatballs.
Vegetables and fruits are also given mainly as purees or being chopped.

From one and a half till three years special mechanical and thermal processing is still very important. Well boiled soft porridges, gentle baked puddings and other dishes of more or less dense consistence gradually remove purees and souffles from a child’s diet.

The majority of second servings are still made by cooking and stewing, but there are also the first fried, for example, low-fat cutlets.
In children’s meal it is well to use the specialized foodstuffs of industrial production. These are dry fast porridges, dry dairy drinks, canned meat, fish and vegetables, fruit purees and juices.
Such foodstuffs solve a number of problems: save time, guarantee an optimality of nutrients, ecological and epidemiological safety.