#193 - Memorial Day Hodgepodge

We stayed in for the holiday due to the 90-degree heat.

We don't enjoy hot.  If northern California didn't have earthquakes, we'd probably be living there.  Since it does, we'll just visit.  Next trip in three months.

But that's not to say we don't enjoy a hot day with a dip in the pool followed by lounging around on the patio afterwards with a bottle of wine.  We thought we could take or leave that before experiencing such a glorious 'that' at Quinta do Vallado winery in the Douro Valley last September.

While basking in the afterglow of a pool dip in 90-degree heat there, we drank a bottle of white from the winery.  I wanted to get all nostalgic and recreate that on the first hot day in Chicago with the same wine.  Yesterday was that hot day.

So we did.

Lunch:  Tomato salad, mozzzarella di bufala and baguette


Tomato salad made with tomatoes, red onion, garlic, fresno and jalapeño peppers, basil, oregano, white balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.  Mediterranean and all get-out and delicious stuff.

A ball of sliced mozzarella di bufala drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and topped with a handful of fresh basil leaves.  Baguette to mix and match.

Silly good lunch that tasted like a lunch that needs to be eaten once a week.  It's the very core of What We Want.

#192 - Ropa Vieja-ish Flank Steak & Yuca Fries With '06 Mas De Maha

With this, our last bottle of the 2006 Villa Creek Mas De Maha has been drunk.

Our love was quick and firm with this wine, becoming infinitely more firm when we found out how perfect it went with Cuban and Cuban-inspired food.

That's been a pairing that sits in the top-five in our food and wine world, anything Cubany with Mas De Maha and you got yourself a party in your mouth and everyone's invited.

Last night was the best yet.  The wine found itself a second life about a year ago, turning from a Tempranillo-dominated show with the Grenache and Mourvèdre serving as a great supporting cast to something more light and subtle with all sorts of raspberry notes in every form possible exploding everywhere.

A price drop on this wine about a year and a half ago from $31 to $22, probably caused by the Parker review that limited its drinking window to 4-5 years out from bottling, left me leery that it would last if I jumped in and bought a case.

That's too bad because it's sailing along in its second life quite well right now.

And again, with Cuban-ish food, we had a pairing last night that touched the realm of perfect.

Food:  Roja vieja-ish flank steak and yuca fries with pan sauce mayo

Flank steak marinated à la "Flank Steak With Garlic, Oregano, Orange and Cumin", courtesy of the New York Times.

#191 - TK Chicken And Two Eastern French Cheeses With An '02 Paul Pernot Folatières

I like interesting things.  Who doesn't like interesting things?

Interesting things drive curiosity and fuel further forays in the food and wine field.

But interesting is a broad word and sometimes interesting is too much work when all you want is to eat and drink two elements that go together without much effort.

If I wanted to ponder this wine, think about it, pour over its nuances and layers, then great, there's plenty here to think about.

We just wanted a well-crafted white Burgundy that would go with a great chicken while playing well with cheeses from the same general region.

This wasn't that.

Food:  TK chicken, Epoisses and Delice du Jura cheeses, baguette and mâche salad

Better than solid Thomas Keller chicken slathered in white pepper and lemon thyme, juicy and delicious, which is too bad because it felt a touch wasted on the experimentation going on everywhere else.

#190 - Hanger Steak Adobada, Potatoes & Arugula With '08 Firehouse Red

Hey, look, I spelled hanger steak right.  I'm growing (shakes head).

I didn't expect a $15, short-windowed wine would need an hour and a half in the decanter.

A half-hour wasn't nearly enough, leaving us with a wine that, for over half of the meal, offered little outside of new oak and tannin.  We could feel that it desperately wanted to get there, wanted to come out and play but once it did, much of the food on the plate was already consumed.

Zinfandel was the call with this meal.  Or the similarly-priced Schild Estate GMS.

We hadn't had hanger steak in five months and this one was one of the best we've had and it very much wanted a better pairing to help it take off.

On a baseball note, the Angels haven't scored a run in 21 innings.  Runs are important. They help you win games.  In the immortal words of my former baseball coach, "I think if we score more runs than the other team, we might have a chance to win this one."

Just a thought.

Food:  Adobo-marinated hanger steak, potatoes with Michael Symon Worcestershire mayo, arugula and chimichurri 

A recipe from The Week magazine that sounds delicious and it was.  The only alteration was the use of specific chilies, going with ancho, casabel and mulato.  Not spicy hot, just tons of depth all over the place.  Chilies dominated but it was the secondary flavors that lingered so well.  Cloves and allspice jumped out with everything coming together to create a taste somewhat foreign yet deliciously familiar.  A perfect medium-rare sear.  Five months since the last hanger steak meal?  Really?

#189 - Garlic Shrimp, Ethiopian Hummus & Syrian Bread With '07 Brut Cava

But having wrote what I just wrote about Avec, we (and by 'we,' I mean Mrs. Ney) currently have (has) taken the Mediterranean angle and tweaked it to more of a Greek/North African/Middle Eastern bent.

It's a bit of what we currently love and last night fell right into that vein, maybe more than any previous meal.

Garlic shrimp isn't particularly finicky with wine as long as you follow certain guidelines.  A crispness, substantial enough body and especially a nice minerality is vital.  Albariño typically has all those traits and we've loved the combination in the past.  Lively and spritely is the order of the day, something to contrast the oily, garlicky shrimp keeps things balanced.  This recipe of shrimp has a certain smoky richness to it and it needs something with a certain energetic or effervescent quality to work.

We returned to a similar pairing we liked a year ago that showed why bubbles are lovely with food.

Food:  Spanish-style garlic shrimp, Ethiopian hummus, Syrian bread and mint snap peas

Same Cook's Illustrated garlic shrimp recipe from last June.  One head of fresh garlic, one head of black (fermented) garlic, dried thai chilies, bay leaves and extra virgin olive oil cooked up together with the shrimp and served at the table in the cooking pan. Great smoky, deep oil in the pan that demands bread for dipping, hence the Syrian, sesame seed-inflected bread.  This is great stuff, easy to make and can be whipped up for about $20 total.  We wanted shrimp and got shrimp in a form we like most.

Black beans found in the freezer puréed with cooked carrots, extra virgin olive oil, tahini and "berbere" spice blend from the Middle Eastern Market on Foster.  Deliciously weird, tasting almost like chocolate and cinnamon were involved but never fully dark and heavy-ish.  Dark-er but light in taste.  A blend of  chile peppers, garlic, ginger, dried basil, korarima, rue, white and black pepper, and fenugreek, the traditional blend used in Ethiopian cuisine and played wonderfully with the sesame seed bread.

#187 - Chicken, Potatoes & White Barbecue Sauce With '08 Confluence

Yesterday, I bemoaned the fact that a good meal with a good wine became less so because of the pairing, hurting a bit more with the $70 price tag that came with it.

Last night's meal stands diametrically opposed to that - a good meal with an okay wine became so much more because of the pairing, and came with the added benefit of costing a grand total of about $32.

I can get behind that.

White barbecue sauce will be used again but the rest of the recipe was pretty standard, a wine that most likely won't be bought again but had some nice moments by itself, but together, as a combination, it was a flavor I'll remember for awhile.

Food makes wine better and vice versa.  Last night's meal was a great example of that.

Food:  Chicken, pesto potatoes and arugula with white barbecue sauce

A F&W recipe, Big Bob Gibson's Chicken.  A grilling recipe adapted to a 500º oven under a brick.  Great chicken (simple salt, pepper, olive oil), moist chicken, chicken where the skin stayed on the meat and crisped up beautifully.  Pesto potatoes made from leftover mystery pesto in the freezer and apple cider vinegar.  Delicious.  The hit of apple cider vinegar made them taste fresh, outdoorsy and played right into the BBQ-ness of the meal.

#188 - Avec Restaurant

It's odd to realize I've never done an Avec post.

A favorite of ours, some of that has to do with the fact that it was closed for a healthy chunk of the life of this blog due to a fire.  It also has to do with never particularly loving the pairings we've had at the restaurant.

And the fact that our dear love for the place had waned a bit over the last two years, which itself came about for a couple of reasons:

One, the seasonal changes to the menu seemed to become more like tweaks than real changes.  Since, for the longest time, we skipped new places for the safety and deliciousness of Avec, lately it seemed to make for a ripe time to get a bit more adventurous in the city until the internet menu sparked a "gotta have that" feel to it.

Two, and most importantly, Avec was how we had come to eat at home with very similar flavors, regional feels and preparations.  Throw on the fact that we had drunk our way through the wines on the list that interested us in the dozen and a half times we had been there, that the wine list for years itself seemingly only went through minor tweaks instead of real changes and that while I'm intrigued by an unfined, unfiltered, old vines Syrah from the Coteaux du Languedoc, I'm just not interested in paying $150 for it, we always felt we could get the flavors at home with the added bonus of playing in the more general range of our peculiar wine tastes at a third of the cost.

But Avec is probably the best $150-200 meal in the city.  It's a place where you can throw caution to the wind, order everything you want and not leave feeling the wallet pain.  You get a real feel for the place with what's currently tripping chef Koren Grieveson's trigger in a setting that can only make you feel comfortable and relaxed.  When you eat there, it feels like a weekend.

#186 - Gnocchi, Ramps & Speck With '06 Capiaux Widdoes Vineyard

When ordering takeout from a restaurant that has two locations, check to make sure you ordered from the one you intended to drive to.

That's this week's nugget of wisdom.

Nugget #2 - Many times, Food & Wine recipes taste like exactly that - a recipe that photographs well and that's pretty much it.  A tomato, pickled walnut and blue cheese salad for lunch (a Richard Blais recipe from this month's mag) left one impression - it was pretty.

Nugget #3 - If some recipes call for an entire stick of butter, you probably don't need that much.  But if you use less, give the dish a little time to cool down in order to let the amount of butter used to work its magic, get all congealed and become all saucy.  Reserve judgment.

Because once last night's meal cooled down a bit, we came to love gnocchi, ramps and speck.

Food:  Gnocchi, ramps and La Quercia speck with lemon thyme

Here's the recipe, reprinted in last week's edition of The Week, with a few tweaks:  deglazed the pan with Muscadet, added lemon thyme and used 87.5% less butter than the recipe called for, allowing us to eat only a pat of butter per serving instead of 1/3 of a stick(!).

#185 - Stuffed Pepper Extravaganza, Plantains & Ramps With Two Wines

And radishes and corn and pea tendrils and cilantro-lime vinaigrette and a "romesco sauce"and a little chorizo.

We've wanted less meat lately and "a little chorizo" was the sum of all the meat present.

Last night's meal turned into a garden party with the plate looking like a jumble of every possible vegetable in the house and out in the world.

And it was delicious.

Served with two nice enough wines.  Should have stuck with one because I'm feeling it today.

Food:  Stuffed poblano and red Italian frying peppers, plantain mash and ramps with a radish, corn and pea tendril salad

Poblano and red Italian frying peppers stuffed with black beans, potato, Spanish chorizo and leftover Dunbarton blue cheese cheddar from Monday.  Could have roasted longer in the oven as the shells still had some bite to them but good stuff nonetheless.  Tasted balanced with each bite offering a nice hit of spice with the beans serving as the guts and the cheese and chorizo bringing some depth.  Each topped with a version of 'romesco sauce' made from the leftover kumatoes Provençal (from Monday as well) thrown into a blender with almonds and olive oil.

#184 - TK Chicken, Kumatoes Provençal & Green Beans With '08 Turkey Flat Rosé

It's dangerous to know a little instead of a lot about HTML code.  Makes you think you can fix things or create an end-around when it's pretty obvious you can't.

So while you currently can't read these first few sentences because "TinyPic has been moved or deleted," I'll figure this out soon.  Or blow it up.  Either/or.

Quick one today.

Solid Monday night meal made better by the return of a favorite rosé, gone for about two years but inexplicably found on the shelves at Whole Foods.  And a 2008 to boot, which is just oddly odd in the oddest sort of odd way.

Food:  TK chicken, kumatoes Provençal, green beans, Dunbarton blue cheese cheddar, bread and butter 

Standard TK chicken.  Delicious with the difference this time being an almost buttery skin but the chicken became an afterthought with the compilation of great accoutrements.

Kumatoes Provençal.  A take.  Equal volumes bread crumbs, parsley and Bari giardiniera with a healthy portion of anchovies, then baked.  Deep achovy flavor, spectacular level of heat.

Green beans sautéed in the chicken pan with honey, red wine vinegar and thyme.  Felt needed and tasted delicious.  With the kumatoes Provençal and the green beans, there was enough range of flavor, depth and heartiness to feel like a meal in itself.  We gravitated toward these two elements because of that, leaving the chicken mostly as filler.  With the Tuscan bread, KerryGold butter and a beautiful Dunbarton blue cheese cheddar from Wisconsin, a cheddar that both of us thought might be the best cheddar we've ever had, this meal sans chicken could have been enough.

Good food that tasted like a place - distinct flavors that came together to feel like it was intentional, leaving an impression after just a few bites that a glowing satisfaction after the meal was guaranteed.

Wine:  2008 Turkey Flat Rosé ($19 - Whole Foods)

This has been missing for a couple years in Chicago.  A prized and loved rosé in Australia and that's probably why.  It's Mrs. Ney's favorite rosé and it might be mine as well.


Grenache (63%), Shiraz (18%), Cabernet Sauvignon (13%), Dolcetto (6%).

Though a 2008, this one's chugging along quite nicely.  Tasted a touch settled but still a wonderfully wild quality to it, tasting of the land more than polished and pretty.  A Grenache-y gnarly-ness to it with tannins still popping and a gift basket of red fruits jumping up and down with a darker edge to round it out.  Rose petal notes color the frame with a depth one doesn't see in rosés much and a great bite to it.

On various occasions, each grape separated itself out to reveal a singularity to each that was entirely welcome and delicious.

Pairing:  88  A perfect example of the wine staying right in line with the boldness of the food

Very little enhancement but we were both struck with how the structure and body of the wine played right into and stayed right with how big the food flavors were.  This one kept up with no trouble whatsoever.

At times, it seemed like the Grenache singled itself out with the kumatoes Provençal, like it pushed a button and said the Grenache needs to step up here with the heat from the giardiniera.  Same thing seemed to happen with the chicken and the Cabernet's curranty notes perking up.  Identical with the Shiraz and the green beans with a more dark fruit-juicy note.

Full and happy with the added bonus of having a wine that offers so much in, dare I say, a fun package.