Dinner with FAMILY and more!!! - "Home Feast (Cajun Style)"

Okay! Time for the wine dinner with family!!  My entire family decided to visit me and my wife during the spring break, so we planned a wine dinner since I get the double points! =) They drove all the way from NYC, and my brother and my wife decided to be the chef of the day. As soon as they got here, we all went to Kroger to shop all the required ingredients. The main dish was Cajun Boil, and the wine of the day was Sweet Mountain Laurel from Chateau Morrisette winery.

Finished, completed, and ready to eat status of Cajun Boil

Just by looking at it, it looked so delicious and tasty. I had never tried any real Cajun dish at all, so it was a great opportunity to try it with family members and wine of course!

More detailed step-by-step making process will be presented in this blog, so stay tuned!!

My wife and I picked the wine just because it would go really well with the main dish, and also my mom and grandma were couldn't drink high alcohol, tannic, and dry wine. So, here's our hero wine!!

Sweet Mountain Laurel from Chateau Morrisette, Floyd, VA

This was the wine that made everyone happy. It even made my mom and grandma buy the wine on their way back to NY. Please note that the wine in the group picture below is the same wine with just different label color since the winery changed the label design.

Here's my wine review just by itself:

Clear and light Golden plum color. Very strong aroma of sweet grape hits your nose, but it is very pleasant strike to your nose. I asked more detailed information about this grape aroma at the winery, and they told me it was a "Fox grape." It was not familiar name, and I was told that only people in the Southwest Virginia region call it "Fox grape." The aroma was very similar to the American grape, Concord grape.

Light body, clean, crisp, and sweet grape flavors on the palate. Its very light bodied and well balanced sweet and acid components complement each other. It's a fruit bomb, grape bomb to be exact. Its sweet grape aroma and flavor remains in your palate throughout the entire palate made me smile, and I couldn't stop drinking. It will be a great appetizer wine, and it will also go really well with spicy seafood dishes since its sweet component will balance the hot and spicy component of the food very well.

It's time to prepare the awesome meal!!

All the ingredients are all ready to go and waiting for the chef's orders!!

All the major player were in and ready to go. Vegetables, fruits, spices, sauces, and other ingredients are shown. Also you can see the crab legs are being washed and prepped on the top right corner. I realized that cooking was not easy task and required a lot of effort, ingredients, and time. Huge Thanks to my brother, Kyu for cooking a great and awesome meal for us!!

Chef Kyu is preparing the main ingredients, such as potato, sausage, crab legs, shrimp, and corn.

Kyu was preparing his masterpiece by peeling the corn, potato, and more. Also crab legs and sausages were being cleaned and cut into bite size.

My wife came to help with the corns, and she's being a good assistant. Also, you can see the shrimp near the top-center.

Since it was a huge task involving a lot of preparing, washing, and cleaning, my wife volunteered to be an assistant. I tried to help, but got kicked out of the kitchen area due to my poor culinary skill and patience. All of the prepared and ready to go ingredients will go into the big pot shown above.

Crab legs are not ready. Cleaned and cut. Looks so good!!

Since the whole crab was so expensive and too big for the pot, we decided to get a frozen crab legs since it was cheaper and easier to handle and cut into serving size.

Garlic warriors!!! My wife and Kyu is battling through the mighty garlic aroma!!! The corns are cut and ready to go into the pot.

For this dish, preparing the vegetables, crab legs, shrimps, and other ingredients were the most time consuming process. It took them almost an hour just to prepare the ingredients

Sauces and spices for the main dish shown

Mom was checking the status of the cooking process and made sure he's doing it right

Nothing and no one can be better than mom's cooking and her recipes. That's why mom had to check the progress every step of the way even though Kyu was a pretty good cook already. It's totally okay with me since I was about to enjoy awesome dishes with my family.

Boiling time. He had to boil it about 20 minutes in order to get the best taste out of it.

This is how you cook, wait, and supervise!!! My wife is "helping" Kyu!!! haha

We use our phones anytime and anywhere. It's called multitasking!!! way to go hon!!!

Okay! Dinner is served!!!  That is me pouring wine for everyone

Everyone was gathered for the wine dinner with family. Thanks to Kyu for cooking, and thanks to grandma and mom for visiting us all the way from NYC. While Kyu and my wife were making Cajun Boil, mom magically made "Korean California roll" with leftover vegetables and seafood. Wow!!! 

Cheers!!!! Bottoms up!! Just kidding!

As you can see, everyone was speechless and so focused on the food and wine!! Enjoy everyone!!

After 20 minutes, we had to take this photo to show how good the dish was!!!

We were all happy not only the food and wine was awesome, but also we enjoyed it as a family, very happy one of course. Everyone's face became red except mine. I guess I was born to be a wine drinker after all.

Wow! we finished all the food except a few shrimps and potatos!! Amazing!!!

This wine dinner with family was more than awesome and more than I expected. The wine and food was more delicious with loved ones. 

Here's my review for the wine and food paring:

The white wine had very strong aroma and taste of sweet grape which balanced the hot and spicy seafood dish very well. Whenever I feel hotness on my palate, I was able to wash it away with the wine and the palate was left with sweet grape, so I could continue eating without searching for the pepto-bismol. I think semi sweet or semi dry white wine will be a very good choice for paring with spicy seafood dishes as well. The California roll with white wine paring was also satisfactory and interesting since it was my first wine and sushi paring since the clean and smooth character of the wine matched very well with sushi/roll's clean and fresh taste.