An Utterly Haphazard, Completely Unreliable, Probably Not Complete List of Our Favorite Food and Wine Of 2013

Our Best of 2013 list, chronicled by month.

Criteria for this list: Good food, good wine, buggy-bear pairing love, something unique, something we very specifically loved, just whatever struck our fancy and deserved a list-type spot.

In short, some big impressions of the year past.

So...good, very good and great are listed, with the meh, huh?, and terrible not listed. Because who has the time for the bad in life? Just move on.

Hanger Bo Ssäm & Scallion Pancakes With 2008 Rôtie Cellars Southern Blend + One

Ridiculous wine savings alert!

All Dagueneau Silex is $25 off at Binny's right now. You won't see a better price for the best wine on the planet (not just white wine) in my book.

Mrs. Ney just gave me the 2010 and 2011 for Christmas! Mrs. Ney knows what Mr. Ney likes.

And Mrs. Ney had a "fun" time picking up one of the vintages. We're not snobs about pronunciation of wine-related things. Call it what you want, pronounce it how you must. It should never stop a happy wine conversation. Just don't get all uppity and be entirely wrong at the same time. It's...



Oh, and this is the furthest thing from a trophy wine.

Strange customer service experience all around in Chicago of late. Happens every year when it's extremely hot or extremely cold. People get cranky and weird.

Two meals this week that reinforce the idea that food and wine together don't have to be GREAT in order to feel necessary, happy and important. Many times, it's about raising the floor of meals instead of shooting for some enormously high ceiling. If your seemingly average, everyday meals can attain unique levels of satisfaction, you've won.

And you'll be fat and happy.

Piri Piri Chicken, Carrot-Orange Salad & Fried Haloumi with 2010 Muti Albarino & 2011 Dourosa Branco

See that phone that looks like it's from a '90s movie over there? Yeah...that's gone. Poor wifey. Our house got a major phone upgrade across the board yesterday.

We're evolving.

So, to celebrate, piri piri chicken, that delicious Portuguese goodness that gets all blazing hot, smoky and acidic all at once.

Dinosaur-sized chicken quarters ($.69/lb at Harvesttime) done up Jamie Oliver piri piri style. Chicken was fine, but mostly we wanted the sauce.

Could have made the forthcoming salad as a dinner-sized number, dumped a bunch of piri piri on it, served it with the cast-iron-fried haloumi cheese (half sheep/half goat - $6.50 at Harvesttime - good to know a quick alternative is close to home), and been just as thrilled with this meal.

Carrot and orange salad, from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (page 80). Sliced carrots mixed with a bunch of cilantro and green onions. Dressing of the juice of two oranges, one lemon, 2 tbsp. of orange blossom water and a wee touch of pistachio oil. Silly Great Salad.

Haloumi, fried in the mini cast-iron with oil, pink peppercorns and oregano. New house favorite. It's basically fancy fried cheese. And that's why it's delicious.

Pita bread, brushed with oil, topped with Himalayan black salt (Middle Eastern grocery on Foster), wrapped in foil and thrown in the oven.

A buffet of Portuguese-Middle Eastern greatness here that we flipped for immediately.

Two wines, a 2010 Raul Pérez "Muti" Albariño Rías Baixas ($35 - Binny's) & 2011 Dourosa Branco Douro ($14 - Binny's).  The Dourosa white, a rabigato blend, was all Douro on the cheap with food. Rather flat and boring by itself, but tasted like the Douro air with the grub.

The star was the Muti Albariño. Elegant and pure for sure, with some minor age on its tires, this came off like a very dry chenin blanc, getting all crazy Vouvray winemaker-like. Orange, minerals, wool, honeysuckle, lifted by a lemon peel note towards the end. Happy and light, yet a bit broody at times, and thinking. Somewhat short on the finish but nothing that detracted from its deliciousness. We're liking the Raul Pérez bottlings we've had. This was no exception.

And a fine and good pairing to boot. Food stayed delicious, the wine remained itself, not tremendous linkage and lift but with the hotness here, the minimal amount of interplay was a surprise. Loved it.

Thanksgiving Week

Happy food week.

And a lot of sitting.

Monday dinner of beef bourguignon, Tuscan kale salad with Grana Padano (New York Times recipe) and Pugliese bread, served with 2005 Chateau Fombrauge St.-Emilion ($40 - Binny's). We left most of the meat alone, preferring to dip and dunk with the bread, while loving this kale salad with its dark green depth and parmesan roundness. I don't know what I'm going to do with all the Bordeaux we own, because it's just not doing anything for me right now. Let's hope that changes. Here, this Fombrauge, a solid, value-driven Right Banker that's always satisfied, satisfied with this food as well, linking up, allowing to be itself, which is Good. Just felt perfunctory as an overall meal.


Tuesday lunch of grilled bocadillos (Pintxos cookbook) with La Quercia, manchego and kumatoes on Pugliese. Arugula salad on the side. Served with 2012 Charles & Charles Rosé Columbia Valley ($14 - Whole Foods), a syrah-forward blend. Best pairing of the week, as the sandwiches took the syrah to an earthy, balanced, Old World-ish place, but with the typical Washington freshy freshness. This was fantastic. Something about these grilled sandwiches... Trick seemed to be getting them more burned in parts than just grilled.

Wanting Something Different

We love Home Food.

And Mrs. Ney has built up, over the years, a food canon that satisfies every possible yen, much of it chronicled right here on this weird blog.

It's just that...sometimes...she doesn't want Home Food.  

So it's New Food to finish out the year. We have all these cookbooks. Let's use them.

Plus, we're suddenly and temporarily poor. Time to get creative.

Meal: Momofuku pork belly ssäm with mustard seed sauce, Brussels sprouts in fish sauce vinaigrette and lemongrass farro

Thai Skirt Steak & Papaya Salad With 2009 Hélène d'Orléans Vouvray Brut +1

For those wishing to sit on your couch instead in the theater for four hours, according to the New Yorker, At Berkeley with be broadcast on PBS in January.

Best morning read: Terry Theise on Charlie Trotter.

Excerpting the below quote isn't fair to the piece because this is not what it's about, but I loved that somebody said this, particularly the "95%" part:

"I sometimes was bemused by Trotter's wine list, thrilled though I was to contribute to it. Let's say, it was very large, and also that it seemed to have a lot of wines designed to attract and reassure a certain kind of "well-heeled clientele" without particularly referring to the food. But this is an abiding complaint of mine; restaurants with massive capital tied up in red-wine inventory when 95 percent of their food is white-wine food. And yes, I've heard all the protestations that "people expect it," but if someone "expects" a 16-ounce T-Bone steak he isn't going to Trotter's to find it. Why should he "expect" to drink Silver Oak Cab with his quince soup?"

It's a problem and has always been a problem. Many restaurants Mr. Theise is talking about do indeed  also have thoughtful white wine selections, catered to their menu in a broad sense, with a few intriguing, rare, off-the-beaten path numbers that prick up your ears. But it could be more than a few if these places didn't think a 15 vintage vertical of Silver Oak and every first-growth Bordeaux was somehow necessary.

Roasted Chicken, Salsa Verde & Arugula With 2010 Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly +1

Spiral - Netflix - all 40 episodes - do it now. Season 5 may drop as early as spring 2014.

The Dagueneau Silex is magic in a bottle. If pushed, that's most likely my favorite wine.

Here, the Blanc Fumé de Pouilly, at half the price, gives you almost everything you want from the Silex. Instead of Silex's 120 different flavors, you get only 72. It's a shame so many people in our lives tell us that they'd never spend x number of dollars on a white wine. That's kooky talk. There's nothing like Dagueneau wines. Nothing in the least.

This 2010 was no exception.

Food: Roasted chicken, Symon salsa verde, arugula, bread and butter

Roast your chicken how you like roasting your chicken. We're a hybrid of Thomas Keller and Michael Symon roasters.

Symon salsa verde. Keep this mostly true to the recipe, because anchovy, caper, garlic, shallot, parsley, mint, some sort of hot pepper, olive oil, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, salt and pepper together is a witches' brew of flat-out stupid-greatness. Added smoked almonds and tarragon this time. Do that. Because it's good.

We're Been In A Slump

We've been in a bit of a food and wine slump of late and I blame a certain Chicago restaurant that shall remain nameless.

Again.

Something about that meal left us deflated and annoyed.

Anne Burrell's chicken Milanese, though, thrust itself into our lives and won't be leaving anytime soon. Because it has the structure of food that we love most: meat + raw greens + pickled veg, all eaten in one bite. It's a party in your mouth! Pair it with a quality pinot gris, like the 2011 Owen Roe Pinot Gris Crawford Beck Vineyard ($20-ish - Winery), a pretty white that has the verve to bring a second and third level of pretty, and it's a slump buster, my friend! A 2012 Ponzi Pinot Gris ($15 - Winery) was less pretty/gutsy when this was revisited a couple of weeks later, but this meal, done this way, is why we like this food and wine crap.

A twist on said meat + raw greens = Goodness business, a kielbasa and lentil salad with warm mustard-fennel dressing over escarole with a 2011 Schwarzbock Grüner Veltliner ($10 - Vin Chicago - new name for Wine Discount Center) made for similar pauses of joy (recipe).

That's been the food and wine winner over the last month, but there have been other pairings with varying levels of success. With the open of red wine season, we've oddly been left wanting with many of the red wines we've had recently. That's gotta change.

Some notes on meals so we don't forget:

Anniversary Cavalcade Of Flavors

Anniversary week!

I suggest taking time off work, plan to do nothing and do that, take naps, set aside entire blocks of time and fill it with no plans whatsoever. Do. Nothing.

In other words, we crushed it.

Eat good food. Eat Szechuan tuna, Moroccan rabbit loin, souped-up hanger steak, anchovies and mint pasta, Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce with linguine, fattoush with pita and hummus. Make your tummy happy. Happier than people in my world that I KNOW had buffalo wings twice this week and washed it down with a bag of red-hot Cheetos and Monster energy drink. Do you know why you're crabby, on edge and staring out into a dark abyss? That's why.

And drink good wine with good food. It makes life happier, longer, broader, prettier, even more evocative. Better than stuffing grub in your craw in order to merely fill a hole.

Lamb & Farro-Pomegranate-Fava Salad, Two Rosés, & A Chicago Restaurant

In our world, a couple of grains of cumin on a dish that lists cumin as a key ingredient isn't going to cut it. Two consecutive dishes in a 12-course tasting menu that come off creamy first, both containing parmesan, is weird, especially when it defines the lead-in to the proteins. Using filet, a cut defined more by its delicate and luxurious texture than punch of flavor, makes for a finish to the middle of the meal that was way too quiet. And a bit gray. Orchard fruits diced the same way in consecutive courses and a trail of preciousness on at least three courses led to a lot of sameness.

Two impressions stand out - sameness and lack of punch. We just passed the 10-year mark in Chicago. If you would have told me seven years ago that we'd be sick of the higher-end Chicago food scene, I'd have said, "You're cuckoo." We are. We're sick of the sameness; what has become the Chicago flavor, a flavor that comes off...timid. Not refined, technique-driven or local farm-showcased.

Timid.

TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

What's the difference between TWIB Notes and Quick Hits?

Nothin'.

Someday - I'm shooting for July of 2017 - I'll figure out how to organize this here blog. Same with painting the apartment.

Better food week than last. French roast chicken, a great elderflower cheese, cocoa hanger steak with fancy Portuguese wine, and a panzanella salad whose preparation made the kitchen look like a gaggle of wild muskrats got loose and went to town.

Quick Hits

Quick Hits, a collection of pairings that didn't blow us away yet had their merits. Or...record-keeping.

The inaugural edition is brought to you by food that isn't Spanish. We're going to put you to bed for a couple of months, sweetie.

#1 - Bison flank steak with potato latkes and blue cheese, paired with 2008 Efeste Syrah Ceidleigh ($30 - Wine Discount Center)

Rioja And Basque Country...For The Second Time

Returning to the same vacation spot as last year brought about a sense of familiarity with maybe a splash of non-surprise. We knew that when we booked it. But we're not busy people. We don't enjoy "busy." A vacation for us shouldn't be that. It should be a pause, a respite and a jolt out of our everyday, humdrum routine. A dash of familiarity often facilitates that. This time, it did. And while something "new" like Croatia or Morocco (this place looks too stellar for words) will be next year's pause, returning to Rioja and Basque Country this time brought about strange and welcome empty brains in both of us and a sense of calm from the second we pulled into the Hotel Viura parking lot. We knew this place, this region, this air, this quiet, and all of that was just so damn palpable.

Just like last year when all of it was new, it felt...wanted, which is all one can really ask from a vacation.

Peppercorn-crusted & Pomegranate-glazed Lamb Riblets And Farro with 2009 Angela and Ponzi Pinot Noir

Anya von Bremzen, author of The New Spanish Table, a cookbook that has seen such a workout in this house that it's falling apart, brings us this lamb chop recipe that came so deliciously tart, tangy, deep and delicious that the meal ended up being a 2009 Willamette pinot noir comparison from two of our favorite producers. We wanted to extend things out and take our time.

Some alterations in the cooking:

* A dry rub on two pounds of lamb riblets ($6/lb - Whole Foods) of ginger, salt, black pepper, Szechuan pepper, cardamom, coriander and fennel. The same rub used on the best tuna on the planet, left in the fridge for two days, glazed with pomegranate molasses, black currant whole-grain mustard, garlic and black pepper and thrown under the broiler to get it all rib-sticky.

* Similar compote recipe of plums, garlic, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, fenugreek; green onions, cilantro, parsley (just like Food & Wine recipe, but added cardamom, omitted dried mint, savory, and tarragon).

Lamb riblets put over the compote, farro as a starch and pomegranate seeds and mint dumped over everything.

Brandade & Fava-Corn-Avocado Salad With 2006 Marc Hebrart Special Club

Puréed fish and stupid-fresh salad with the best showing of Marc Hebrart in our limited Marc Hebrart world.

This is fancy Champagne that's still a little tight after seven years off the vine and two years in bottle. But it comported itself quite nicely with this food, never leading the way but never stepping back, always standing shoulder-to-shoulder with what was on the plate and leading to a meal that expanded out and opened up so much space in which to frolic and enjoy.

Food: Brandade and fava-corn-avocado-tomato salad

Best home brandade yet. Third one, I believe. The key may have come in using Fustini's white balsamic (crap. now I want that lemongrass mint business) instead of lemon juice, offering much greater and more integrated acid depth than previous versions. You buy that. It's not cheap but if you're making food, why not MAKE food?

Jacques Pépin brandade recipe (natch), using rice milk instead of cow. Salad of fava beans, corn, avocado, tomato, onion, lemon thyme and parsley, tossed with white balsamic and olive oil. It's our favorite summer salad with Colicchio Thai-style watermelon-radish certainly in the mix. Baguette to dip, dunk and dive.

We knew this would be good, just not as wide in flavors and goodness as it was.

More home happy food.

The wine helped to bring "the happy."

Birthday Asian Bison "Satay" & Watermelon-Radish Salad With 2011 Raventos Perfum de vi Blanc

After a Cuban-style Hot Pocket lunch to help "recover" from a day of pool and wine bacchanalia, Asian freshness and a birthday lounge day was on tap.

Two things. First, don't eat Hot Pockets. I think everyone knows that. But it said "Limited Edition Cuban-style" and we had a coupon, two factors that led to such a body abuse. Second, the "lounge" part wasn't really an option. Movement was slow and made everything iffy. Stupid pool. Sucks us right in.

Pretty standard pairing play here. Asian flavors, floral wine, with the hope that the acidity and impression of fruity sweetness plays like the 2011 Ponzi Pinot Gris did with the watermelon-radish salad did last month. We missed a superlative elevation of food and wine flavors with this one but found both components playing like old friends that haven't seen each other in a decade and just needed some time to get back in the groove. And they eventually got close.

Food: Bison flank "satay" over lemongrass rice with watermelon-radish salad and extra basting sauce for dipping

You don't have to peanut up your satay when this recipe from Cook's Illustrated is so delicious. Split the basting sauce, reserving a third to dip and dunk the bison at the table. Some alterations. Oodles more shallot and ginger added. And not skewered...and no peanut sauce so...not really "satay."  

"Put A Bunch Of Fresh Stuff On It."

In the tradition of "put a bird on it," with vacation coming, it's "clean out the fridge and freezer and put fresh stuff on it" month.

That typically makes for interesting dinners, but never sub-par dinners. Throw a bunch of fresh stuff on a meal and it's rare that stocked-up, wrapped-up, Ziploc'ed meat and vittles thrown into the freezer a couple of months ago tastes like such.

Simply make fresh marinades and "put a bunch of fresh stuff on it" and it's winner, winner, freezer-food lunch and dinner!

Meal #1

TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Four meals, four wines.

Beef, smoked mackerel, chicken and tuna. Rioja, Sancerre, torrontés and pinot gris. Spanish, veggie explosion, Mexican, Thai.

Squeezed into these four meals were 32 vegetables and 28 herbs, spices, wines and juices.

Or...flavor.

Monday

Oh...Hello Again

Last December, we bolted for the highlands of the Chicago Tribune's blogging community, doing the same stuff we did here but over there.

Not realizing it was more of a Facebook-intensive group - and not being a Facebooker - we're back at the friendly confines of Home. We like Home. Because Home is Good.

But some of it is bittersweet. ChicagoNow is doing some great things. And we ate and drank extraordinarily well (index page) during our time on that site so we'll keep that up for the time being for reference purposes and figure out what to do with it.

Some highlights during our brief sojourn:

Oh, the rabbit loin with Darting Pinot Meunier! ... A Holy Grail of sorts, Two Hands Beautiful Stranger, was found, getting some of the last few bottles out there in the world and we drank it with great bison ... Quality meal at Elizabeth ... New Year's Eve Egly-Ouriet and Dagueneau Silex was an orgy of food and wine flavors. Silex is the best wine on the planet in my book (though Gail Simmons disagrees. She prefers Picton Bay) ... Sea bass and Waxman recipe endive salad with Hippolyte Reverdy Sancerre. C'mon! ... Pork butt bo ssäm. Fancy-ass Asian buffet ... Wild boar Christmas dinner and pheasant terrine lunch made us feel all mountainy ... Two more Bordeaux fails. Toss it on the pile (not even going to link) ... Our favorite meal on the planet, tuna Niçoise, saw more love, getting all dirty-delicious with a Les Pallìeres rosé ... Thomas Keller chicken thighs with fennel, lemon and olives and bacon fat crispy potato roast and Vieux Télégraphe Blanc opened up another ridiculously great food and wine pairing door in our world ... Veggie explosion with 2009 Quinta do Cardo Síria. Hot damn! ...  Chicken in lemongrass barbecue sauce with Selbach-Oster. So open! So much space! ... Frappato's the Stuff in my world right now. It was the stuff times 50 with fava bean and ricotta salata strozzapreti ... Duck leg confit, tea-smoked lentils and beets with a very pretty Efeste Jolie Bouche syrah shocked the pants off us ... Tuna, blood oranges and heirloom tomatoes with Owen Roe Pinot Noir Durant? Always happy food but unique pairing here, though ... Beets, carrots and avocado salad with duck breast and a bargain New Zealand pinot simply exploded with loveliness in the mouth ... Lamb-stuffed artichoke cups and garbanzo beans over pistachio-saffron rice with a Moroccan syrah was new and new with a side of happy-slappy new ... A trip to D.C. made for a great food escape with Jaleo, Minibar and 2 Amy's. But Komi. Oh, Komi. There's little better in this world ...and more. So much more.

We ate so well during these last nine-ish months, getting more seasonal, eating smaller portions of meat and a crapload more veggies (proper adjective for that). Things got more complex in ways and never suffered from it, always elevating things instead of dragging meals down. It feels like we drank a touch more thoughtfully as well, taking more care to match up secondary flavors in the food with wine that made such a thing sing.

This is what we Like. It's our hobby, our joy. I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again), Food and wine deeply integrated into one's life as part of one's day, one's rhythm, feels like a frickin' Gift.

Big plans in the works for this new (old) site. Maybe we'll even get all podcasty (or not). I've taken a couple of months off and we missed the reference.

"We're back!"