Biegel wanted to find a way to enjoy wine after fearing she’d have to give it up completely once she became a mom. “After I had a baby, I felt like I just couldn’t even have one glass of wine without having a headache the next day,” she says. “For the last 20 plus years, I’ve made it a priority to eat organically, and then one day it dawned on me: Why am I not drinking organic wine? The more I started learning about organic wine, I realized that it could possibly be some of the junk and additives in the wine that’s making me feel worse.”
Aside from being made with organic grapes, Kind of Wild Wines prioritizes sustainability, from the name down to the packaging. “The labels [on the bottles] each have a different design, made by different artists, and each one represents something to do with the earth and the environment. Our bottles are lower-weight bottles. We don’t put foil around the top. The corks are domestically produced. The labels are made of hemp or linen, [and we use] vegetable dyes for the ink,” Biegel says. The inspiration for the name? “‘Kind of Wild’ is kind of a play on words of: It’s kind of wild that we’re doing this, but also that we want to rewild the planet by promoting ethical farming practices.”
For this edition of Cooking Diary, Katie Lee Biegel shares her favorite summer entertaining tips, what foods to pair with different wines, and the easy frozen dinner she eats multiple times a week.
What are your favorite foods to pair with the different wines?
I like the versatility of pairing wines by season because I get to experience the wine in a different way according to what the temperature is outside. It’s summertime, so I’m all about summer food right now. So for our rosé, I love that it’s fruity without being sweet. I like to do the rosé with barbecue, because I think that sweet, tangy, spicy flavor pairs really nicely with the fruitiness of the rosé. And of course, rosé goes great with any kind of seafood, like a lobster roll or a nice piece of grilled fish. Our Sauvignon Blanc is also excellent with seafood. I love it with pasta. We’re big pasta eaters in our family, so I’ll do a creamy zucchini pasta, or I love to make lemon pasta. The Montepulciano is excellent for a summer red because it’s really good with a little chill on it. Chilled red wines are becoming more popular, and this one, to me, is really perfect for that. I’ll put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes, and it pairs really nicely with grilled sausages, or I like to make grilled portobello mushroom burgers. Our Pinot Noir is also nice slightly chilled, and that’s great if I’m doing grilled salmon or pork tenderloin. The Grüner Veltliner is excellent with vegetables. I go to the farm stand a lot in the summer, so back to that creamy zucchini pasta, that’s also excellent with the Grüner and any kind of grilled veggies. I’m always playing around with the menus.
What are your tips for throwing a successful summer dinner party?
Plan ahead as much as you can. I’m a big fan of list-making, because for me personally, if it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist. I’ve been known to make a dish and put it in the refrigerator and then completely forget that I made it until the next day. I always write out my menu, and then I write out every step that I need to do for that. And I like to give myself a schedule so that I know what time to do each thing, and that just kind of helps me lay it all out. I think that adds to an ease for the evening.
I think it’s really important for summer entertaining to think about lighting. You don’t want to have a party in the dark outside. Your one light on the back porch is not going to be enough. So whether you need to string up some café lights, or get a whole bunch of candles or lanterns, we have some lanterns that I put battery-powered candles in that I love, that help light things up. That’s important. Also think about bugs. If you’re somewhere that is buggy at twilight, don’t have your cocktails outside. Maybe you want to do cocktails inside. Let the no-see-um bugs do their thing, and then go outside after the sun sets and have dinner, or vice versa. As charming as it might sound to have your cocktails at sunset, if there’s a lot of bugs, everybody’s going to be uncomfortable. And then, of course, you’ve got to have lots of alcohol.
Most food trends, I’m not so sure that I get the hype on. I’m not a big fan of trends. I am a classics kind of girl through and through when it comes to food, fashion, home decor, everything. I think when you start getting into the trend category, you’re probably going to end up either wasting your time, your money, or both.
On the flip side, what is one food or drink you think is underrated?
They’re starting to get more traction, but anchovies really do add so much to your cooking. If you’re putting them in a sauce or even a marinade, it’s just going to add that extra [bit] of umami you need that will elevate your cooking so much more. People are coming around to tinned fish so much more now. That one, I guess you could say, is a trend of a classic, so that I can get behind.
What are some non-negotiable items you always have to have in your pantry or fridge?
I cook with garlic powder and onion powder all the time. I think that that’s something that people might look down their nose at. Even if I’m putting fresh garlic or fresh onion, I always add garlic powder and onion powder because I think it just boosts the flavor.
I’m always going to have pasta, because pasta is my go-to when we don’t have anything for dinner. I either make that lemon pasta that I mentioned or cacio e pepe. I always have rice because I have a rice cooker, and that’s my go-to side dish, because my daughter will eat it, and we are happy with it. And I always have frozen salmon.
I love to make salmon from frozen. So I take the frozen salmon, just hard as a brick. I put it in the oven at 450 degrees F for eight minutes. I take it out, season it, and put it back in for about 10 minutes more. That is perfect when you don’t have anything to make. You can just reach in your freezer, and you don’t have to think about, oh, shoot, I didn’t thaw the chicken breast. I am the culinary curator for Fulton Fish Market, so I’m well supplied on my frozen salmon. But we always have it, probably two nights a week.
What tips would you give to people buying fish at the grocery store?
You want to look for fish that is firm. It’s okay to smell it, and you want it to have a nice color to it. Don’t go for anything that’s starting to look a little brown. And unless you live in a state like Florida or South Carolina or Georgia, if there’s shrimp, you’re better off just buying frozen, because it was probably frozen anyway and then thawed, and that’s what you’re taking home. You don’t know when they thawed it. I’m a big fan of frozen seafood for that reason. Salmon a lot of times at the grocery store has been previously frozen and thawed, and it’s sitting there for you. So just be careful what you buy, and get to know your fishmonger, because they’re going to be the ones that point you in the right direction. When you go to the grocery store, introduce yourself to the person who’s working there and say “hi” every time you go in and shop. Same goes for your butcher. And you will for sure get the best steak and the best piece of fish every time. Being nice pays off.
Does your daughter, Iris, ever join you in the kitchen? Is there something you like to make together?
Iris loves to cook. Pancakes are our go-to, we love to make those together. This morning, we got downstairs, and I realized that we didn’t have any eggs, so I used one of her squeezy pouches of applesauce, and it worked quite well. I put cinnamon in there too. So they were apple cinnamon pancakes. She loves making any kind of sweets because she has a wicked sweet tooth, and I’ve really been having her help me a lot more. I got her one of those little kid knives. The other day, she was cutting the tops off of strawberries for me. She cuts her own cucumbers and her own bell pepper strips. She doesn’t necessarily always eat what she helps cook, but I think it’s exposing her more, and hopefully down the road, having her help me massage kale for kale chips will pay off. She’s not buying them yet, but maybe someday.
What about your husband? Is there something you cook together or he always requests you make?
Ryan [Biegel] is an excellent cook. He’s got quite a repertoire of dishes. He actually makes really good salmon too. He makes great pastas. From me, he requests my oven-fried chicken the most. He also loves my roast chicken in the winter, and he really likes when I make a steak. Ryan’s an adventurous eater, so anything that I cook, he’s always ready to try, and he’s always ready to tell me what he thinks would improve it. He is definitely my recipe tester. Sometimes I’ll go, “You’re wrong. That’s not right,” because it’s just my ego. And then I realize, oh, he’s actually right. This could use a little bit more cilantro, or whatever it is.
Can you share any behind-the-scenes info of filming The Kitchen?
We’ve been together now 11 and a half years, so these people have become like my family members. We’re so comfortable with each other. We can say however we feel, and it’s a really nice feeling to have this camaraderie that is both on- and off-screen, that we are truly friends and truly care for each other. I think about the way that we’ve shared so much of our lives with each other — like Geoffrey [Zakarian], when we started, his wife, Margaret [Anne Williams], was pregnant with George, and then he’s sending me pictures of George graduating elementary school and going off to middle school. So it’s kind of amazing, the span that it’s been. Jeff [Mauro]’s son is driving, Alex [Guarnaschelli]’s daughter just graduated high school, and Sunny [Anderson] always makes me laugh.