I smoked each of the beverages below by submerging the Smoking Gun’s rubber tube in the liquid.  In the case of the wines, it served to both smoke and aerate the drinks (BTW, I never understood why it should be impolite to blow bubbles into your wine – if someone complains, tell them you’re “helping the wine open up.”)  I ran the smoker for about 30 seconds for each beverage, then blew away any lingering surface smoke before tasting. 

The results were surprising…

In order from most awful to best, here are my tasting notes:

As you can see from the tasting notes, sometimes this was just way too much smoke.  However, I think there’s potential for this technique.  I’ve heard of restaurants using hand-held smokers to create dramatic tableside presentations, and I’m sure that somewhere out there, a slick bartender is serving whisky with smoked barrels.  But, as far as I know, this is pretty open territory. 

Next up on the smoked beverages list: coffee, tequila, scotch, milk, Muscat, hot chocolate… if you’ve got ideas, leave ‘em in the comments below.

*Disclosure: The Smoking Gun I am using is on loan from Polyscience

This is one of the first things I learned to make when I started cooking on my own.  It’s simple, hard to mess up, and delicious.  Plus, its a pretty cheap way to dress up plain chicken. 

Makes: 4 servings
Total kitchen time: 25 minutes

Shopping list:

• 1 tbsp. butter
• 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large shallot, finely diced
• 1/2 cup red wine (use a bottle you’d actually drink)
• 4 cups (about 2 packages) crimini or white mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tbsp. Herbs de Provençe (seasoning blend)
• kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. Heat the butter an oil together in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Add the shallot and sauté until soft, about 3 minutes.
3. Add the red wine and stir to deglaze the pan.  The shallots will have started to brown just slightly, leaving wonderful sticky stuff on the bottom of the pan.  The acid from the wine will cause those brown bits to release and get reincorporated into the liquid.  That’s called deglazing.
4. Bring the wine to a boil and let it reduce for about 1 minute.
5. Add the mushrooms, stirring to mix everything together.  Add the salt, pepper and herbs de Provençe.  Reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the mushrooms are soft and tender.
6. To serve, spoon the mushrooms over chicken, pasta, steak, or whatever else your heart desires.

Pictured above, I’ve topped some Hens Provençal with a generous helping of the mushrooms.  I also added some butternut squash, sweet potatoes and turnips to the roasting pan for a bit of extra color and flavor.