Tuesday, April 24, 2012

#272 - Polenta Panini & Roasted Beet Salad With '10 Palmina Malvasia Bianca

Winery website recipe eaten with a wine from the winery recommended for the recipe.  Or the other way around.  Potato, potahto.

They usually get it right.  And this one was right, delicious, pure, springy, new and just gosh darn wonderful.

I was thrilled enough with two Palmina reds to join their wine club because we typically have a jones for varietals grown in places not typically grown.

Palmina covers much of the better-known Italian grape spectrum and our experience with three of them, a nebbiolo, barbera and this malvasia, has just been the tops.

Lunch:  Polenta-anchovy-caper panini with lemon-yogurt dip and roasted beet salad

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

#271 - Ropa Vieja & Tostones With '09 Villa Creek Willow Creek Cuvée

Cinnamon stick!

That's what was missing!

And a longer decant!

That, too!

On what else can I add an exclamation point?!

The Angels' bullpen and Scioscia's love affair with Kevin Jepsen makes me want to stick a hot poker in my eye!

I have more Angels-related exclamation point business but we'll table them for now.  Long season ("It'll be okay, It'll be okay" - rinse and repeat).

Good meal last night, friendly and fresh with a wine bringing the New World fruit we crave with ropa vieja but we missed the bridge to the wine.  And that was the missing cinnamon stick.  Oops.

And we missed the tempranillo a little that's been so successful with ropa vieja in the past.  Nice diversion here, though.  And maybe a beef that's more down, dirty and gnarly.  Okay!  That's it.

Food:  Ropa vieja and tostones

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

#270 - Hanger, Vanilla Mash & Rapini With '08 Owen Roe Merlot

Portland vittles and Willamette wine trip next month!

A trip that includes a visit to the Oregon outpost of Owen Roe.

Those crazy cats have become a bit of a favorite.

This wine was no exception.  In fact, it might be the best full-on 100% merlot I've ever had.  We don't drink much merlot except when we have a rare yen for the fat pile that is vanilla mash.

This time, we wanted merlot, oddly, with the hanger, vanilla mash and rapini business coming along for the ride, which is the way the meal itself turned out because this is a silly good merlot that strikes every chord of balance:

Expressive without being obvious, elusive without being a tease, fruity without being a hammer, earthy without being gritty, full and round without bringing milk chocolate cream, layered and long without a sappy linger.

Want more now, please.

Food:  Hanger steak, vanilla mash, rapini and Jamaican pickled onions

Monday, April 9, 2012

#269 - Lidia's Fava Bean & Ricotta Salata Strozzapreti With '09 Girard Sancerre Rouge

It's just pasta.  Except when it's not.

Because when you eat like Lidia Bastianich, you eat well and we're amassing a nice little catalogue of meals and pairings based on Lidia's recipes.

She makes "simple food, poor food," food that chefs love to talk about with the same pretentious pitch, cadence and emphasis, and you roll your eyes because it always seems like it comes right out of a manual mandatorily issued to every chef looking to bloviate endlessly about why he or she is so awesome.  It's the chapter that follows the chronicling of the mystical nature of Chef Passion and how you can taste their Passion.  Two chapters later tells us that local, sustainable and organic is the only way to eat and live, like they're the first ones to discover such a thing.

Lidia doesn't do that.  She just says, "This is good food.  Eat it.  Because it's good."  She doesn't need to sound like a 21 year-old college student who just got out of a Art History 1959-1964 seminar with a desire to convince the world that they somehow had something to do with Art History 1959-1964.

Food:  Fava Bean & Ricotta Salata Strozzapreti

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

#268 - Pistachio-Crusted Lamb Rack & Pea Risotto With '09 Freeman Pinot Noir

The problem with gaining a bit of wine knowledge is that one - and when I say one, I mean me - has to resist the compulsion to think they know their tastes, like it's something quickly achieved with a bit of effort and then everything is done.

The same can be said about wine knowledge in general.  Just when you think you have a firm grasp on wine-related things, something comes along that rather bluntly tells you that you're - and when I say you're, I mean me - an idiot.

It's akin to the adage about youth, life and aging.  At 18, you don't know anything.  At 20, you think you know everything.  At 25, you're back to being a moron.

With wine as in life, attempting to get to 'a point' of knowledge is a fool's errand.

Case in point (and this continues to shock me with its foolish foolishness).  Two years ago, my 37 year-old brain figured California pinot noirs and California wines overall weren't going to give me the character and finesse I want from wine.  Good ones are going to be good but big and forgettable.  Nothing that's going to get into your bones.

It was a shortcut.  We have a bit of money to spend on wine but nothing like a war chest to spend willy-nilly on just anything.  My experience with California over the years said I could basically eliminate it in the quest for Good Wine with maybe a little dalliance here and there.

I'm an idiot.  If pressed, my favorite, huggy-bear wines still come from France and Spain.  But if someone told us we could only drink wines from the United States for an entire year, with what's going on in Oregon and Washington these days, we would happily do it and crap, would we drink well.  Not a huge surprise there. But, at times, as we continue to be...surprised by California wine...it a bit of a revelatory, educational and joyful...surprise.

Food:  pistachio-crusted rack of lamb wrapped in pancetta, pea risotto and grilled whole scallions

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

#267 - Greek Chicken Thighs, Skordalia & Spicy Carrot Purée With '10 Sigalas Asirtiko-Athiri

Shorter post today, mainly because this pairing didn't get out of the gate in any happy sense.

Greek chicken dinner.  Eat Greek.  It's what's Good.

But the wine could have been cheap, low acid, throwaway Savennières if given blind.  Interesting expression, just not something that kept our interest in the least.

Food:  Greek chicken thighs over skordaliá and spicy carrot purée with pita for dipping

Chicken thighs marinated in lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, oregano, dry white wine, garlic, onion and black pepper, then grilled.  Served over skordaliá made with skin-on potatoes, almonds, breadcrumbs, garlic, lemon, extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice.  More rustic and simply outstanding stuff with the chicken juice bleeding all over it.

Moroccan-spiced carrot purée.  Caraway, ginger, roasted garlic, and harissa blended into puréed carrots.  It's a favorite always and forever.  Pita for dipping.

Great meal.  Too bad the wine couldn't keep up.

Monday, April 2, 2012

#266 - Quebecois Cheese, Smoked Trout & Other Stuff With NV Egly Ouriet Champagne



Visual post. Delicious and fancy lunch with a Champagne that may have been the best yet.

Wine:  NV Egly-Ouriet Champagne Brut 1er Cru Les Vignes De Vrigny ($60 - Binny's)

100% Pinot Muenier, 30 months on lees, disgorged 7/10.

Something magical here.  Medium-bodied.  Nose of dried mesquite with buttercream and yeast.  Darker but not a particularly brooding or shy bubbly.  More confident and thoroughly expressive in what it wants to be.  Almost had a pinkish hue to it.  A smoked tangerine/pear fruit gives way rather quickly to buttercream, fennel and a fancy nutmeg spice that drove the ship, turning it drying and woodsy to finish in the best possible way.  Perfect acid, bubbles that kept everything in line and a great, pause-worthy finish where everything came together like a surprising and satisfying end to a great film.  Worth every cent.

Pairing:  89  Fine and dandy, best with the butter

Most complete with baguette and butter, making everything in the wine sing on cue.  A green apple and smoked trout bite brought every element in the wine to the front of the mouth party nicely while the cheese, a Duvillage 1860 product from the same Quebec cheese house that brought us Moondust, amped up a great funk in both.  Nice stuff together.  Would probably alter the food with this wine in the future, cuz we're definitely buying more of this stuff.