#293 - Gazpacho, Chorizo-Stuffed Date "Brisket" & Potato-Kale Cake With '08 Gramercy Inigo Montoya

Spanish inspired and Spanish delicious.

Simple meal, Wednesday meal. Something about some meals we eat on Wednesday tastes like we're eating on Wednesday.

This tasted like Wednesday, a early-to-bed day that gives a nod to fancy while keeping the cooking agony to a minimum.

Drink more fancy wine with it and boom! Fancified.

That's Wednesday.

Food: Gazpacho, chorizo-stuffed date "brisket," potato-kale cake, mayo and manchego

#292 - Roasted Chicken, Salsa Verde, Amaranth Leaves & Radishes With NV Pierre Peters "Pour Albane" Brut Rosé

What are amaranth leaves?

We had no idea. Don't even know what species we ate last night but I tell you what. They're delicious! Like Swiss chard but, you know, good (I've never been a fan). Big, cheap bundle at Whole Foods necessitated a purchase.

A Champagne rosé seemed like a good catch-all for chicken, salsa verde, amaranth and radishes (and we wanted to drink it) but this was an example of a wine being too delicate to play the role of herder. And an example of maybe checking the price tag before letting the wine serve as a herder. That's not something one should do in this price range.

Oops!

Food:  Michael Symon chicken, Michael Symon salsa verde, amaranth leaves, radishes, Seeduction bread, butter and rose petal jam

Symon roasted chicken. It's better chicken. Go here to see the prep. Mrs. Ney turned the oven off from its high cooking temperature 15 minutes before the time allowed to see if that brought about a juicier chicken all around and success! Moisty moistness galore. Lemony, herby, delicious.

Symon salsa verde - it's salsa verde in a different form, loaded with dirty delicious anchovy-caper flavor that's cleaned up in such a new, lifty way by the parsley-mint-olive oil driver (I plagiarized myself from here. Good meal, that. Fond memories).

#291 - Ratatouille & French Feta With '11 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé

The price on the Tempier rosé shot up sometime in the mid-aughts, from around $30 to the current price of almost $40.

Which raises a question. Is a rosé ever worth $40.

The answer is, of course, yes.

Why would rosé ever be seen as some ersatz version of wine not worth a higher price? That's just silly talk.

Also, when drinking Domaine Tempier's rosé, you're not exactly searching for value. It's a rosé experience, a benchmark, a peek into how one of the masters of the juice and style expressed the grapes in that year.

But let's just say for drops and chuckles you're craving a Tempier rosé and have ratatouille on the docket for dinner. Should be great, right? It was. Very nice grub and juice, separately and together, even if we drank it way too young.

But for $20 we could have drunk another Kermit Lynch import (a wine made by Mr. Lynch himself) the Domaine Les Pallières Au Petit Bonheur Rosé and found very similar pairing love.

Was it $20 flushed down the toilet. No.

#290 - Yakitori Hanger & Yuca With '05 Quinta Do Vale Meão

Or hanging tenders, as the Whole Foods label said.

We didn't know hanger steak had another name like hanging tenders.

Learn something new everyday.

And it's quite a little product. $8/lb as opposed to $14/lb at Paulina. These trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes, ready to be skewered so we did it up Asian-style and ate it with our favorite starch and one of our favorite wines.

Food:  Yakitori hanger and onion skewers with yuca fries and arugula salad

Hanger steak cubes marinated in soy sauce, mirin, dry sake, brown sugar, black pepper, garlic and ginger, a Saveur recipe using beef instead of chicken. Meat skewered with yakitori-soaked onions interlaced between each cube. Parsley and mint dumped on top. Well-done hanger. Oops! But oddly delicious nonetheless with the marinade leading the way at every turn. The meat simply became a vehicle for the deep Asian mouth surprise ("That's what she said!").

#289 - Linguine Al Limone & Avocado-Kumato-Corn Salad With '10 La Spinetta Vermentino

Odd combo.

Delicious combo.

Essentially an antipasto and a primo (look at me!) made into a meal.

A Saturday night dinner on an unexpected night off that hurt financially but felt needed psychologically.

A 20-degree midday temperature drop yesterday without any rain developing made it impossible to not find ourselves in a good mood. And eating this food with that weather?

Happy. Happy, happy, happy stuff.

Food:  Pasta al limone & avocado-kumato-corn salad

The simple, basic, delicious pasta both of us were craving. A David Rocco recipe to boot (changed a bit) and yet another example of how the Italians get things so right.

Linguine with tons of lemon juice and zest, garlic, olive oil, the rest of the balsamic/juniper pecorino from a few days ago (sprinkled on top), parmesan (in the sauce), lemon thyme (added to the recipe) and parsley. Uncomplicated and straightforward pasta with perfect balance; the boatload of lemon in two forms cut through both cheeses at just the right level, leaving behind the best of both in our mouths with the parsley and lemon thyme then mixing in beautifully. Dumb in how good this tasted and it takes about 10 minutes to make start to finish.

#288 - Spiced Lamb Riblets With '10 Villa Creek Garnacha & Tapas With Albariño & Malvasia

Indian, Spanish and 4th of July-inspired food this week.

Served along with torrontés, Slovenian zelen, albariño, malvasia, New World grenache and pinot noir.

A rather lavish three-day spread. That's how we celebrated Independence Day.

That and staying out of the oppressiveness of outside, a brutality of heat so brutal that we skipped Winnemac Park fireworks this year. And from the relative lack of long and sustained firework bangs coming from two blocks away, so did mostly everyone else.

But we ate like people do on the 4th. American-inspired food with American wine. Can't say we're not flag-wavers.

Food: Barbecue-like lamb riblets, tomato salad and corn on the cob

#287 - Chakundari Chicken Tikka, Beets & Zucchini Cakes W/ Crios & Slovenian Bubbles

We love Hema's Kitchen on Devon.

This meal, made at home, rivals Hema's with Indian flavors and spices flying everywhere while offering something slightly more northern Indian in origin, as opposed to the central Indian wonder that comes from Ms. Hema Potla.

I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to regional Indian cuisine but Mr. Bittman has the rundown on beet-marinated chicken here.

As Mr. Bittman says, go find dried fenugreek leaves for this recipe. We found ours at Pars Persian Store on Clark. It makes a big difference, as it opened us up to another distinctive and deep flavor that now seems necessary and wanted.

Food: Chakundari chicken tikka, roasted beets, zucchini cakes, naan and raita

Recipe for chakundari chicken tikka (beet-marinated chicken) here. It's a bit of work but entirely worth the effort. Dried fenugreek leaves, ginger, garlic, yogurt, garam masala, cumin, all the Indian goodness, flavors that are bright yet deep and dark at the same time. I'm not going to attempt to describe the flavor of the chicken, it just bounces and expands all over the place. Top three chicken in my world.