Twinkle toast

A few days after the New Year, John Eisenhart, chef of Pazzo Ristorante in Portland, Oregon, found himself with several open bottles of leftover Prosecco. “I didn’t want to drink—or serve—flat Prosecco, so I tried using it to make sorbet and risotto, neither of which turned out very well,” he recalls. Next the chef put the fizz-less wine in a CO2 canister and refrigerated it, with the thought of creating Prosecco preserves. “The result was tasty but the execution was cumbersome,” he reports. So Eisenhart went the traditional route, cooking the Prosecco with sugar, lemon zest and pectin into a shimmering jelly—perfect on toast.

Although Eisenhart enjoyed the jelly on toast, he never has enough leftover Prosecco to turn into a breakfast condiment. Instead, he serves a dollop of the jelly on Pazzo’s cheese plates. He found it goes especially well with Italian cheeses, like gorgonzola, fontina, Parmagiano and urbriaco, “Guests ask for it on the cheese plate and we’ve gotten a number of requests for the recipe,” he adds. Now the challenge is to serve enough glasses of Prosecco—but not finish the bottle.