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: