Conference turris::cooks

    I get a fairly cheap bottle of sherry from the package store.  Usually
    I ask the proprietor what he/she has that would do for cooking.
    They can point out what's not totally bletchy but is not too
    expensive.
    
    --Louise   

    Try chinese rice wine (not to be confused with Japanese Sake). 
    It has a nutty sherry-like taste and it cost about $3-$4 a bottle.
    You can find it any liquor store in chinatown.
    
    Good luck,
    
    Vin
    

    There are a number of reasonably good California sherries.  While
    I don't drink much of it, I love to use it for cooking.  There is
    one in particular called "Livingstone Cellars" - I don't remember
    the manufacturer, but it is one of the larger California vintners.
    I especially like to use their cream sherry (about $3 a bottle)
    for "marsala"-style dishes.

    
    
     I use either the Chinese rice wine or Dry Californian sherry 
    either from Pastene or Gallo. DON'T buy the stuff from the
    supermarket it LOADED with salt. Pastene and Gallo also make
    decent maderia and marsala I use for cooking and they are really
    cheap in any package store <usually less than $4/bot>.
    
    -mike
    

        Julia Child frequently says, "If it's good enough to drink, it's
        good enough to cook with" -- then she takes a healthy belt of
        whatever is in her hand.
        
        I've also heard her say, "If it's good enough to cook with, it's
        good enough to drink" -- then she takes a healthy belt of
        whatever is in her hand.
        
        She also says things like, "This is a lovvvvvely bottle of
        Chateau du Mouton de Poisson du Boeuf a la Mode" -- and probably
        any $4 bottle of dry red would do. But I love her anyway.

    I also use the Livingstone Cellars Dry Shery whenever I am cooking.
    Just go to the liquor store and pick up some sherry for whatever
    you are cooking.  It has to be cheaper than buying little nips every
    time a recipe calls for sherry or wine, and it doesn't go bad (at
    least not at the rate I use it, which can be very slow).  
    
    I always keep a bottle of sherry, a carafe of white wine, and a
    carafe of rose wine in the fridge for cooking (and drinking). That
    way, I don't have to worry about if I have it before I start cooking.

    Ill fifth the recommendations here.....I usually get a bottle of
    Taylor at the NH liquor store....any sherry will do...
    
    I also use it to store my fresh ginger....I have a small jar that
    I put the ginger root into and cover with sherry....into the
    refrig and it keeps for a long time....then when the ginger is
    done, or any time during that time, I use the sherry and it has
    a great flavor of ginger.
    
    Ive also done the same thing with white and red wine and garlic....
    
    Rick

    I use Savoy&James Cream Sherry. It lasts forever and I find the
    drinking flavor as good as Harvey's.
    

    I use the Gallo Livingston Cellars Dry Sherry for cooking.  It's
    one of the best inexpensive sherries available and I live in
    California where there are a lot of them.
    
    You have been using Cream Sherry, however, which is sweeter.  If
    you switch to a dry sherry, you may find your food has a different
    flavor, better or not depending on your tastes.  If you want to
    stay with a cream sherry, Gallo Livingston Cellars makes one of
    those also.               
    
    						Enjoy.
    

    
    my compliments to captain bligh (sp.) .5.  you made me smile and
    brightened up my afternoon.  i watch julia whenever i find her on
    but hardly never miss the frugal gourmet.  (love that garlic) but
    anyhow my two cents is for the 'if you can drink, you can cook with
    it'.  and therefore, we always use the wine that is the refrigerator
    at the time.  (sometimes i use vermouth, don't see 'much' of a
    difference ?) and come to think of it, i don't see much of a difference
    between red and white wines (not burgandy of course but the rose's
    and white and zinfadels).  is there really a big difference there?
    
    cja
    

         
    Rep .10
    
    .10> and come to think of it, i don't see much of a difference
    .10> between red and white wines (not burgandy of course but the rose's
    .10> and white and zinfadels).  is there really a big difference there?
           
     I agree most of the time there isn't much of a difference but be
    careful if you are making a white sauce or something light in color.
    The rose has a tendency to turn light colored sauces a pale gray.
    While the color might not affect the taste of the dish it might
    ruin the appearance of it. Which we all know is a big part of cooking.
    I learned this lesson the hard way. 
    
    -mike
    

    I once bought a bottle of Amontillado sherry, noticed its nutty
    flavor and didn't like it.  Over the years I would pour myself an
    occasional glass and kept getting disappointed.  (Why, my Christian
    Brothers Cream Sherry actually "improved" over time!)
    
    Giving up, I put the Amontillado next to my cooking wines and tried
    it one evening with chicken.  Exquisite!
    
    Just goes to show: if it's too good to drink, eat it.  :)
    
    Frank

    Well, I went into the liquor store Friday night, and pretty much
    bought the cheapest bottle of cream sherry I could find.  I think
    I ended up with the Livingston - they actually had a bottle of Sherry
    for $1.98, but I figured that was way to cheap.
    
    When I cook with wine I use the Julia Child routine, and I chug
    plenty out of the bottle.  The problem with the Sherry is that I
    just don't like it at all, so I refuse to taste it.  I won't even
    drink the Harvey's I used to buy.
    
    Thanks for all the suggestions.
    
    	-Nancy

For drinking, you haven't really had sherry unless you've tried Lustau's line
of sherries.  But these are too good to waste as cooking wine.

For cooking, I tend to use "industrial grade" California or New York sherry,
such as Taylor's or Gallo "pale dry sherry."  Since I mostly use it for Chinese
cooking, I don't have much call for sweet sherry.  For that, I'd use Harvey's.

--PSW

    My wife asked me to get a bottle of dry sherry for a chinese stir fry
    recipe she wants to try. I looked at what they had and bought a bottle
    of Taylor's Cooking Sherry. Somehow I forgot that she asked for DRY
    sherry, now we're wondering if this stuff is an acceptible substitute 
    for dry sherry, or if I should take it back and get what she asked for.
    
    Anybody know enough about this to comment?
    
    Thanks,
    
    Ed

    
    Most experts advise never buying "Cooking" wine of any sort--it's full
    of salt and other additives.  Taste it.  You'd never drink it and the
    rule I try to use is never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink.  
    
    (I break this rule frequently, however, because you can't buy anything
    _but_ "cooking" wine here on Sundays.)
    
    Mike

  Mike's right, it won't taste as good as real sherry (by a long shot),
  but you should be able to substitute it for dry cooking sherry without
  affecting the recipe much. 

  If the recipe specifically calls for cooking sherry, then it probably
  already accounts for the added salt. Unless the recipe calls for a
  large amount (like over 1/2 cup), the difference in such a recipe
  between dry sherry and what you got will be slight. Your sherry will
  have a slightly stronger flavor.

    I did notice that the label on the back (of the cooking sherry) said 
    something about it being "a combination of drinking sherries" or
    some similar thing. It sounded nice, but made me wonder if that really 
    means "bottom of the barrel dregs," or "batches that were intended for 
    drinking but failed to meet expectations," or merely a mixture of what 
    they have left over after bottling the predetermined number of cases of 
    each kind for the season.
    
    Thanks for the comments,
    
    Ed
    

    Very simple test: have a glass. If it's not something you'd hunker
    right down and inhale, why cook with it?
    
    	/Harry

cooking sherry may adversely affect a recipe quality...in general, the
sherry set aside as cooking sherry is not deemed acceptable to drink and
it varies wildly in quality.

That said, any recipe that calls for dry cooking sherry CAN be fine if you
substitute a dry white wine.  The taste will not be the same as with sherry,
but the recipe will be edible.  In fact, it may end up being your preferance
as it has become for several of my recipes.

My rule of thumb is: if I have no sherry, I use white wine.  If I buy sherry,
I buy drinking sherry only.

    Get the cheap wine in the bins that are 2 for $5.00 (or someting like
    that).  They're great for cooking.
    
    Also, (cheap) cognac is good in some recipes.
    
    				-d

If it says "cooking sherry", usually it is really poor grade stuff and it may
also have salt added.  Avoid it.


RE: .15

Sweet sherry is not a substitute for dry sherry in Chinese cooking.  It has
too strong a flavor and also the sweetness will upset the balance of a dish.
If I had nothing else, I'd try the substitution, but make sure you reduce the
sugar or molasses (aka thick soy sauce) present in the dish to compensate for
the sugar in the sherry.

--PSW

cooking wine with salt added is esentially a way of selling wine in places
like Britain that add massive excise duty to drinking wine without attracting
the duty (ie denature to the point that even the Customs & Excise inspector
can't drink it and you don't pay duty :-)

However they are almost universally low quality wine.

Incidentally I presume the sherry must itself be a substitute in the recipe, 
since the Chinese don't normally use it...

/. Ian .\

>      <<< Note 1660.22 by PSW::WINALSKI "Careful with that VAX, Eugene" >>>

>Sweet sherry is not a substitute for dry sherry in Chinese cooking.  It has
>too strong a flavor and also the sweetness will upset the balance of a dish.

  I completely agree, especially if you're talking about real sherry.
  But with cooking sherry, which is so terrible to begin with, the
  difference between using the "sweet" or the "dry" in a dish will be
  slight. It will, as you say, have a stronger flavor, but that will
  probably not ruin the dish much more than it's already been ruined by
  the cooking sherry to begin with. That's why I'd guess that if a
  recipe already calls for cooking sherry, it won't be much damaged by
  the "wrong" cooking sherry.

	Not being a wine drinker, I know little about the differences
	between types of wine.  So when a recipe calls for dry sherry,
	or read wine, or white wine, or regular sherry, and so on it is
	difficult to know what to do.  I really do not want to keep all	
	these different types of cooking wines on hand so is there one
	or two that I can use in almost all recipes?  Cooking sherry seems
	to be the most commonly used cooking wine.  Can I substitute
	it for red wine or white wine?

	Karen

RE: .23

Pale dry sherry is commonly used as a substitute for shao hsing (sp?) rice wine,
which is the authentic ingredient.


RE: .24

In Chinese cooking, I usually use N.Y. State or California jug stuff labelled
"Pale Dry Sherry" or "Cocktail Sherry".  Real fino sherry (e.g., Tio Pepe,
Lustau, Sandeman's) also works, of course, but it's a waste of good wine to use
that stuff in cooking.


RE:  25

Sherry is a white wine that is fortified with brandy.  The real stuff comes
exclusively from the Jerez de la Frontera district in Spain ("sherry" is an
anglicisation of "Jerez").  You can also get wines that call themselves "Sherry"
that are made in New York or California.  They are somewhat like the real thing
and generally more useful for cooking because they are much cheaper than
authentic sherry (at least in the U.S.).  Sherry has a distinctive nutty aroma
and flavor that is quite different from other white wines.  You can't substitute
sherry for white wine in a recipe, usually.

Within the general class of sherry, there are a number of distinct subtypes.
The most important is dry vs. sweet.  "Dry" wines, including sherry, don't have
any appreciable sugar content in them.  Dry sherries (or semi-dry) will be
labelled "dry", "pale dry", or "fino".  Sweet sherries are often labelled
"cream sherry".  The dry kind is what's used in Chinese cooking.  You want
sweet sherry for desserts such as trifle.

Red and white wines taste very different and red wines in particular add their
color to a dish, so it is always best to use the type of wine indicated in the
recipe.  A lot of places sell wine in small containers (125 ml or so), so you
might consider those instead of buying a whole bottle, if you only use wine
for cooking.

I would avoid anything labelled "cooking wine" or "cooking sherry" because it
is most likely (1) very poor quality, and (2) has salt added.

--PSW

    
    Re: .25
    
    I think that if you were to keep a bottle of reasonably good
    dry white wine and one of dry red on hand, you'd be ready for
    just about anything, short of a sweet dessert.
    
    
     

    How long would a bottle of wine last in the refrigerator?  I use wine
    rarely when cooking, and when I do am always afraid that what I have
    on hand from several months ago has "gone by".  
    
    S 

RE: .28

Even refrigerated, the lifespan is measured in days, not weeks or months.

--PSW

  I would add some info to the previous. With decent wine for the
  purpose of drinking, it's quite true that most wines will last only a
  few days or a week or a bit more (unless you use one of these nitrogen
  or vacuum preservation systems). But some medium quality wines seem to
  hold on for months with little change after the first few days.
  They're not great to drink at that point, though they may not be
  totally bad, and they can be ok for some kinds of cooking. For
  example, we've had bottles of inexpensive italian dry white wines
  around for a few months, and then used them for poaching and other
  dishes. Also, some inexpensive french reds have gone into stews with
  good results. Unless you already know the wine will hold up ok,
  though, you can't really count on it. It's really hit or miss. But if
  you have room in the fridge, there's little to lose by keeping it.
  Many times it will be no good, though.

    Here's a few of my thoughts, from my own experience, and from things I
    have read.
    
    If you open a bottle of wine to have with dinner, and let's say you
    drink half of it, then you put the remainder in the refridgerator, even
    by the next night it won't taste as good.  The reason, of course, is
    the air that replaced the wine in the bottle.  The longer the air is in
    contact with the wine, the more the wine degrades for drinking. 
    Freezing the remainder of the wine as soon as possible after opening
    and pouring it will help keep it fresher for drinking at a later time. 
    Obviously, it's because the air can't act the same way on frozen wine.  
    
    If you're going to cook with the leftover wine, it doesn't really
    matter if you freeze it or not.  Cooking the wine certainly "ruins" it
    quicker and to a greater extent than a few weeks in the 'fridge.
    
    Wine's worst enemies are air, high temperature, and sunlight.  When you
    buy wine at the liquor store, make note of it's location in the store. 
    If it's kept in a place where the sun hits it day after day, it may
    have degraded in taste, depending on how long it's been exposed.  If
    that's what you discover when you open the bottle, well, you can always
    just use it for cooking.
    
    Steve