#265 - Fenugreek Shrimp, Blackeye Curry & Raita With Two Wines

Odd Monday mélange consisting of...

A fenugreek shrimp preparation from the Arabian Peninsula, a black-eyed bean curry from West India and.... KFC and Champagne!

Yep.  We did that.  And it was kinda awesome.

KFC and Champagne lunch along with this dinner:

Food:  Fenugreek shrimp, black-eyed bean curry, raita and naan

Mrs. Ney whipped up a fenugreek spread.  Fenugreek seeds soaked overnight and blender-ed with garlic, handful of coriander leaves, salt, green chili and a dash of lemon juice until a paste emerged.

Cooked up the shrimp with the paste in the mini cast-iron and done!

Done and delicious!  Great shrimp prep.  Easy shrimp prep.  Into the rotation shrimp prep.  Perfect touch of heat mixing with an intense and vibrant herby core.  Indian in that sense from a recipe that wasn't Indian.  It was Yemenite.  But as a composed dinner, it mixed and mingled with the rest of the Indian fare quite nicely, thank you very much.

#264 - Spice-Rubbed Skirt, Beet Greens & Sweet Potato Fries With '06 Long Shadows Sequel

Pretty great food weekend (Monday through Wednesday for us):

• Veggie strawberry caprese with a pork chop-y Ponzi Rosato
• Vadouvan roast chicken with a disappointing Marc Hebrart Champagne
• Sea Bass a la Veracruzana with a stellar LdH Gravonia

And now spice-rubbed skirt steak, beet greens and sweet potato fries with this little gem.  Odd that vadouvan roast chicken and Champagne would be the lowlight of the weekend.  That was Good Eats, just not comparatively.

The Long Shadows story is a gosh darn interesting one.  Nine world-class winemakers, all part-owners in the enterprise, take their skills developed over decades in making fine wine around the world and come together to make wines from their favorite grapes that express the distinction and potential Washington exhibits.

This one, a syrah with a 2% kiss of cabernet (? - 2007 is that), is made by John Duval of Penfolds Grange fame.  His 28 years as chief winemaker at Penfolds Grange shepherded the winery to the top of the Australian wine world.  He now creates his own wine under his own name along with this co-op project.

After drinking this, we're intrigued, even at the price.

Food:  Spice-rubbed skirt steak, sautéed beet greens and tomatoes, whole Vidalia onions and sweet potato fries

#263 - Sea Bass a la Veracruzana & Duck Fat-Saffron Potatoes With '01 Heredia Blanco

Classy.

That was the word of the night.  Along with crazy-fancy-classy.

We've been in a bit of a LdH slump of late, finding many of the more recent vintages sort of pedestrian.  Good enough with strong echoes of what we want/love from drinking Heredia but many have just missed.  I think we were spoiled by a batch of '78 Bosconias and a bunch of '96 Gravonias a few years ago.  Heredia never lost that enormous place in our heart, we just haven't gravitate towards the stuff we had on hand.

And then the 2001 comes along. And then we have this food with it.  And then we break out of our Heredia slump with a 500-foot bomb to right that warrants a bat flip and happy trot that can only say, "Slump...GONE!"

It was the kind of home run that makes the bat feel weightless, your stride feel effortless, your muscle memory find its rhythm again, like it never left.  It's the kind of home run that reminds you how pure, singular and transcendent it all can be.

This was the kind of food, wine and food and wine pairing that doesn't need to scream its virtues because it knows, with utter confidence and vision, that what it offers is so damn good.

Food:  Sea Bass a la Veracruzana with duck fat-saffron potatoes and mâche salad

#262 - Strawberry Caprese With Ponzi Rosato & Vadouvan Roasted Chicken With Marc Hebrart

Quickie today.

A lunch and dinner recap for cataloguing purposes.

Lunch:  Strawberries, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, evoo and balsamic with baguette and butter

A slight alteration from a favorite Monday lunch with the inclusion of the strawberries, taken from Around My French Table (still finding uses for that book in nice ways).  Much like the French pot chicken from the same book, we had good grub, tasty grub, and grub we probably won't make again.  Well...it fall into a 'maybe' category.  Something about the utter freshness of a traditional caprese with its olive oil playing with the cheese and tomato in such a pure way was missed here.  Nonetheless, this had a hot patio feel to it.  Pleasant, slightly sweet strawberry juice added a nice change of pace.

The 2010 Ponzi Rosato ($15 - Winery) was a shocker.  A rosé of pinot noir, it was all beautifully cooked pork chop with herbs, pinky meat juice and bone, with virtually zero fruit. Sa-Vory!  As savory a rosé as we've ever had, making for a more than merely pleasant diversion.  We'd buy more.  This has a big place.  But since it's not available in town, with shipping and such, it puts it into a realm of thinking twice about it.  Low 20s?  Ummm....

#261 - Company, Food, Dogs & Wine

Company is nice, especially good company.

Good company makes for a breezy five hours of chatter while watching the dogs do funny/stupid stuff.

And eat frankly spectacular food.

The last time (bottom of post) one member of the 'company' came over, yellow split pea dip and ouzo-lemon tiramisù took the night.  We ate well then.  This time beat it, offering three elements in particular that expanded our food world in great ways.

Menu:  Roasted tomatoes and anchovies over feta, asparagus and radish salad, lapsang souchong-smoked lentils under duck and pomegranate seeds, rosemary farro & buttermilk poundcake topped with candied kumquats

#260 - Shrimp With Riesling & Barolo-Braised Beef With Nebbiolo

Sometime this summer, we'll hit post #300 here at Food With Wine.

When that happens, we'll also come in at around 300,000 words, give or take.

Or well over half of War & Peace.

(...Pause...reflect...throw up a little in my mouth...)

Let's just move on.  Putting it in that context is troublesome.

Shrimp Lunch!  Always an exclamation point with shrimp lunch (!) because it feels fancy pants.  Good lunches are important.  Makes the day feel long.

Lunch:  Rosemary, pineapple, red bell pepper, jalapeño shrimp with baguette and mâche salad

#259 - Flatiron, Romesco & Manchego Artichokes With '01 Beronia Gran Reserva

A buffet of Spanish and Spanish with a side of Spanish.

In our world, that's Happy Food!

And it felt like it's been years.

Some of that absence comes from the fact that we beat that drum rather heartily from 2007 to 2010, utilizing The New Spanish Table to its fullest extent.  Some of that comes from an expansion out from Spanish into more pan-Mediterranean flavors, finding nooks and crannies in that world, mixing and matching, finding its joys and what we like.

Some of that also comes from the stake that Ad Hoc's Spanish night nearly drove into our Spanish heart.

But mostly, in reality, it's not true. We've eaten Spanish over the last year, just maybe not Spanish, Spanish, Happy Food, Spanish...

...or the kind of Spanish that leaves no doubts that it was Spanish - food, wine and all.

And the kind of Spanish food one might get from a decades-old neighborhoody restaurant on a hidden, cloistered, beautifully lit plaza late in the evening in Madrid that patently refuses to change with the times yet opens to long lines every night.

Cuz it's Happy Food.

Food:  Garlic flatiron steak, romesco, manchego artichokes, parsley oil, arugula salad and baguette

#258 - Anise-Flavored Volatile Compound Salad With '11 Kim Crawford SB

Technical stuff above.

That technical stuff comes from Taste Buds & Molecules by François Chartier, a molecular sommelier-type person that did the important, mind-numbing legwork that led to the beginning of understanding the essential aromatic and flavor components of food and wine on a molecular level.

I can already tell that I'm going to be reading this book again.  It's a technical wonder, sometimes refrigerator manual dull, but it successfully makes sure that you get tasty nuggets at critical points to keep your interest (and keep your eyes open).

Ultimately, I've been left with a feeling that my eyes have been pried open, willingly, to the molecular joys of combining foods with wine in the same molecular realm.

It's important work, critical work, and after having this meal based on a recipe found in the first 50 pages, it's a freakin' magical work.

We got something rather over-the-top ridiculous.  I've written about the joys and not-so joys on having food contained in a small box of flavors on this here blog numerous times.  This is something else, something oodles more, something that redefined what a flavor box really is, at least to us.

This was an anise-flavored volatile compound explosion!

#257 - Vitello Tonnato With '10 Paitin Arneis

Just missed.

And sometimes when a pairing just misses, it tumbles into the realm of rather bad.

Give this wine even a touch more acid (well...more than a touch) and this pairing might have been something stellar.

It didn't, though.

Tons of finesse and oodles more complex on its own (and frankly downright gorgeous in the glass), with the vitello tonnato it got beat up, pushed around and generally came off like watery pear juice.

Great food, blah wine.  Meh.  We were good.

Food:  Vitello Tonnato with potatoes and herbs

From a 180 year-old recipe over at Jamie Oliver's site, it hit every freakin' note we wanted from the meal.