Stuffing Tomatoes with Rice and Bellies with Wine

I'm a nerd. I love gadgets. I love my Blackberry like it's my child, but I love kitchen gadgets even more. Last week, Serious Eats featured a fun wine gadget: the Vinturi Essential Wine Aerator. As soon as I read that it would make my "$7 wines taste like real winners too" I knew I had to have it. One stop at Bed, Bath, & Beyond and $40 later, I had my new toy.

Margaret and I had planned a wine & dinner night tonight - my first opportunity to try out the new gadget. I had jokingly purchased a $7 wine to see how fabulous the wine aerator could make it. Margaret also brought over a cheapo wine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting your wine on for a few dollars, but with my new gadget, we were about to wine and dine. 

The gadget is really easy to use - you just pop in the filter, hold over your wine glass, and pour in slowly. In order to test the effectiveness of the aerator, Vinturi suggests that you sample wine that has been aerated and compare it with the same wine straight from the bottle. My little Bio major and I thought it would be fun to test this product to see what it would do with our $7 wines.

Here I am with craptastic wines and a fantastic gadget:

Close up of the gadget:

First, pour a little sip of the wine straight from the bottle:

Then pour a sip through the aerator. Be careful not to spill. 

Sample the sip that was poured straight from the bottle.

VOMIT a little as it burns your esophagus.

Then sample the sip that has been passed through the aerator. 

Smile at your delicious $40 wine.

Mmm, good. We noticed that the wine was much smoother and tasted less aciditic. After quite a few samples, we decided to start cooking. Wine + cooking = FUN.

Fun and a whole lot of forgetfulness. I forgot to photograph most of the cooking. I had bought all the ingredients needed for the Christina Orzo recipe because I thought it was so good. We decided to revamp the recipe and make Orzo Stuffed Tomatoes.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound shrimp
• 2 large heirloom tomatoes
• 1/2 cup orzo
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 medium vidalia onion
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 2 tsp fresh oregano
• 2 oz goat cheese
• salt & pepper

Directions:

• Cook rice according to directions. Set aside.
• Preheat oven to 375*.  Cut tops of tomatoes and set aside. Scoop out tomato pulp and set aside with tops. Dice tops & pulp.
• In a medium pan, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion; saute for 3 minutes. Add garlic and crushed red pepper; saute for 1 minute. Add reserved tomatoes, wine, and shrimp. Cook until wine evaporates and shrimp is fully cooked.
• Combine rice, tomato mixture, and goat cheese. Place tomatoes in a baking dish and add rice mixture among the shells. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until tomatoes are tender. Serve immediately.

Creamy tomato and rice mixture:

Action shot! Hair blowing into the...steam. So hot right now. No, really. I told you it was 375*.

Duh, I love posing with my food. Duh, I drank too much wine and had a sassy little head tilt going on. Fug. Stop judging, please.

Glamour shots of the stuffed tomatoes:

Glamour shots of the wine lovers:

So...we might have had too much $7 wine because we were acting like it was $1,000,000 wine. Now we're making banana bread. Gotta go! XO.