Tag Archives: Tawny port

Yummy for your tummy

As a chef’s wife, I am constantly having to raise the bar on nightly dinners. Not that chefs are hard to please; quite the contrary. A little known secret about fancy-schmancy chefs is that because they spend their day cooking gourmet food, when they come home, really, all they want is a sandwich and a cold beer.

However, I’m competitive, and I like showing off in the kitchen. So imagine my surprise when looking for recipes using pomegranates (which are in season right now and are gorgeous, not to mention full of anti-oxidants), I found a fantastic recipe on Weight Watcher’s website! Using POM pomegranate juice, which I love; fresh beets, which I always want to get but am flummoxed by what to do with them; and citrus (on sale right now-Yes!), this side dish is only 5 points, and extremely satisfying. In fact, I found very little variance from how a chef would prepare this dish, and the recipe, other than that a chef would probably add Extra Virgin Olive oil and some crumbled goat or feta cheese at the finish, for a mediterranean flavor.

Don’t worry about the quality of the port wine that you use in the recipe, just get the least expensive. But do get the Ruby port, and not the Tawny. “Tawny” refers to the winemaking method whereby the port is aged in wood, so when the wine reduces (cooks down) in the recipe, you could be left with some bitter flavors. “Ruby” is always what you want to look for when buying port wine for cooking. And note that cooking wine eliminates the alcohol, which reduces the calories!

I’m off to go have fun in the kitchen! Catch up with you later……

Check out more healthy Weight Watchers recipes here.