Savory, Savory, And Savory, With A Side Of Savory

Maybe needed a splash of balsamic, because this meal was SAVORY.

Food: Flap meat, patatas bravas and cumin carrots, with parsley and rosemary

Rosemary flap meat, seared medium-rare. It's very near the top of our favorite beef, because it's oozing with beefy flavor while still being gnarly like hanger and fresh like skirt. Grilled potatoes with patatas bravas sauce. Tomatoes, onions, garlic, paprika, chili flakes, white wine...tastes like a piquillo pepper purée without the piquillos. And tastes like everything Spain is. Oven-roasted white and orange carrots with cumin. Parsley dumped over everything. Steak and potatoes without the boringness of steak and potatoes. Less sweetness came from the carrots than Mrs. Ney thought, so this meal was quite savory. It's our kind of food, but a drizzle of balsamic might have been nice.

Wine: 2009 Verdad Tempranillo Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard Edna Valley ($20 - Binny's) 84% tempranillo, 8% grenache, 8% syrah. A cool-climate tempranillo that tasted like it. Sour, darker cherry, very nice leather, toast and wee hint of cardamom. Medium-to-full body, medium finish. Just enough acid to keep all the soldiers marching to a proper beat. A finished product, well-made, and likes food but doesn't NEED it. It's rare we want red wine by itself. This one has that drink-alone friendliness to it. Enjoyed this one. Liked its strut. And drinking well right now.

Pairing: A very pleasant one, tasting like a well-written pop-thriller novel that breezes along a quick and efficient clip. A roundness emerged in the wine with the (mostly) Spanishy grapes dancing with the Spanishy food, as they do, and as the pairing thought-process intended. It's nice when that works to such a degree. A bit of astringency came from the rosemary, but didn't muck things up.

Cuban Wild Boar Shoulder with 2008 Twisted Oak Ol' Chumbucket And Lou Malnati's with Marietta Cellars Old Vine Red Lot #61

More California wine.

Because, in the past year, we've had our prejudices utterly debunked by a wide range of California wines. H/T to Mr. Bonné.


#1  Cuban wild boar shoulder with yuca fries and mojo sauce, served with 2008 Twisted Oak Ol' Chumbucket Calaveras County ($28 - Lush)

Two-ish pounds wild boar shoulder (from D'Artagnan), brined in water + [3-1 orange-lime] juice, sugar, salt, garlic, cumin; stuffed with pancetta, prunes, oregano; wrapped in more pancetta; rubbed with dark brown sugar; braised in Malta. Based on a Roberto Guerra pork shoulder recipe, using boar instead. Mojo sauce for yuca dripping and dragging the boar through, made with charred garlic scapes, guava paste, evoo, sherry vinegar and cumin. Mucigelatinous wonder! Goopy texture that didn't make us miss our favorite condiment with this type of meal - spicy mayonnaise. The mojo brought a garden-like punch to a meal that wanted such things. Solid batch of yuca. Aggressive Cuban flavors galore, something we like oh-so much and liked them here very much.

Quick Hits

Highlight of the late-week: savory doughnut fry bread!

If you're making dinner and want to incorporate doughnuts into it without sending yourself into a shame spiral, Blackfeet fry bread is a perfect alternative. Top it with goat barbacoa, pickled onions, spicy tomatillo salsa, sour cream, mint and cilantro, and you got yourself goat flatbread that tastes just like it sounds.

But we lost the goaty-ness of the goat. The cascabel-guajillo-ancho chile blend and slow roast made for a very rich slather that obscured the brightness goat needs in order to strut to goaty goatness. Very good one-off, though. We were excited about eating it, it was satisfying, but if given blind, it might have been pork. The Argus Cidery Tepache Pineapple Wine ($15 - Lakeview Liquors) helped things along though, finding its strut with this food. The goaty richness pumped up the clove-cinnamon spices and turned the pineapple flavor into PINEAPPLE! Good stuff. Saved things in a way. Kept things interesting.

Jamie Oliver Greek Chicken with herby vegetable couscous & tzatziki has a very specific flavor for me. It was the lunch I had right after getting back from sequestered jury duty. A weird day, that one. Flavors: allspice, fresh oregano, lemon zest and juice, mint, peppers, sweet corn (added), avocado (added), cucumber, yogurt, feta, black olives, watercress (added), green onions, couscous... so...Stuff. Thrown together. Then eaten. A "15-minute meal" that took me an hour. Fine enough version. Had all the vegetal-spice joy that we wanted after rich goat. Served with a bottle of 2012 Casa de Saima Reserva Bruto Bairrada ($20-ish - Perman), a bical-maria gomes-chardonnay blend. Pretty tangerine skin and bright cream with fine bubbles and medium length. We liked it. Fresh, moderately complex, nice. We'd buy another bottle if we were at Perman, but wouldn't make a special trip for it. Fit well with this food. Something strange going on with Greek food and Portuguese wine. Always seems to work.

Sausage and rapini, a house staple that we have about once a month, is BFFs with minerally, poppy, Italian white wines and occasionally something juicy, red and Italian. Opened a Matthiasson Tendu Red to start and got only "wine" from first sip (lil flat, sorta Life Saver-y). So we went with a new favorite, the 2013 Charles Smith Vino Pinot Grigio Columbia Valley ($13 - Binny's). It has all the goods. Length, cut, polish, juicy exotic fruit without screaming, "I'm pinot grigio! Aren't I cute?" and that sorta gaseous-delicious mid-palate that expands everything to a point of such happiness. It's just G-O-O-D, and it was again here with sausage and rapini. Turned good food into a long and leisurely meal.

Hey, I kept a three-meal roundup kinda short. I'm growing.    

Duck Pâté with 2013 Forlorn Hope Ost-Intrigen And 40-Clove Chicken With Palmina Sparkling Barbera

A dishwasher-less Monday lunch and dinner.

The horror!

I think it was Oscar Wilde, or perhaps the band Cinderella, that said it best: "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone." (Oh, holy crap. There's a Best of Cinderella CD?)

Lunch: Homemade duck pâté, manchego cheese, sweet potato tapenade and ciabatta mini-buns, served with 2013 Forlorn Hope "Ost-Intrigen" Ricci Vineyard Carneros St. Laurent ($32 - Pastoral)

Saveur duck pâté recipe, followed to the letter, except for using pancetta instead of bacon. Easy to make (relatively) and quite delicious. Ducky, with great balance. Everything in the pâté serves a purpose and did it very well. Trader Joe's "anejo" manchego cheese. It's older and better than the standard stuff at TJ's, tasting gosh-darn close to the good stuff. Sweet potato surprise in the form of tapenade, adding pickled mustard seeds and olives to a fine-dice of sweet potato. Sweetish, pickle-y, and briny, all in one bite. Ciabatta to rip and top.

Very good lunch made better by the wine. The Forlorn Hope St. Laurent, the first time we've had this grape, follows a similar pattern when comparing it to all the other Bonné-inspired wine buys-and-drinks over the last year. Lighter, lower alcohol, almost ethereal, with fruit that's distinctive, swirly, very pure, and nearly always surprising/delicious/bright/new. Some are mossy in a good way. Others have had nice twigy-leafy notes. All have been at least intriguing, mostly quite good, with a few being 'hot-damn!' great. This St. Laurent is ALMOST a hot-damner. Medium body, trending towards light but never goes there. Rose petal nose. Bursting dark raspberry/blueberry coulis, with background floral accents keeping everything savory and tart. A bit top-heavy/front-loaded but stretched out a bit throughout the drinking, becoming a touch longer. A happy wine, offering a poppy acidity and mineral cut. Like a pinot noir and gamay had a baby, then they put a California-fresh sheen on it. Liked it muchly.

And helped along by the fact that it admirably slid right in with the food, snuggled up warmly and got very cozy. We'd do it again, cuz it was good.            


Dinner: Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, gnocchi and Proveçal yellow tomatoes, served with 2013 Palmina Sparkling Barbera SBC ($32 - Winery)

Saveur recipe again (with the addition of sage and oregano to the cooking liquid), last had in July with Scholium Rhododatylos. This pairing was oodles better. Garlic and garlic with a side of garlic for this food. Then, some more garlic. Five HEADS. Even pre-roasted, as was done here, that's a lot. If you don't like garlic, this meal is the bane of your existence. If you do, it's eff'in perfect. Great chicken, doughy-delicious gnocchi, and anchovy-heavy tomatoes Provençal. If I searched this blog for 'tastes like Love,' I'd probably get 200 results. This meal is near the top.

Palmina just started making sparkling malvasia and barbera in 2013. We had the malvasia for New Year's Eve. THAT was a good NYE. This barbera is a licorice-blackberry bomb, while staying lightly effervescent. Both the malvasia and the barbera aren't the bestest, most complex sparklers we've had. But we'd drink both by the bucket. They're wines with a smile on the face.

And the barbera was nearly perfect with 40-cloved chicken; countering, turning, adjusting so nicely. A little more oregano in the food might have made it perfect but we were just fine.  

Cassoulet And Grenache, Potato Pie And Pinot Meunier

Hey, Bordeaux, you aren't all that.

For what seems like the hundredth time, another Bordeaux came off too uppity and obstinate to play nice with food like a simple savory pie consisting of really wine-fussy ingredients like potato, chicken stock, black pepper and leeks. How dare we try to force such things?

I can't remember the last time I saw a wine turtle like a bottle of 2003 Fombrauge did last night. Fine by itself. Whiny little baby with food.

Two pairings.

#1 Cassoulet with 2012 A Tribute To Grace Santa Barbara County ($35 - Vin Chicago)

Seems like every time some national (insert food) day happens, Mrs. Ney has, by coincidence, already planned it. Today is National Cassoulet Day. We had it Wednesday, at the outbreak of the nose hair-singeing cold here in Chicago. So, right and proper food.

No weisswurst, which is our favorite (previous cassoulets here). Shop was out. Duck sausages, pork shoulder and duck stock this time. Cook's Illustrated recipe. White beans, porky essence, crusty, juicy, lovely. Bone-warming stuff.

And quite nice with Angela Osborne's cheaper grenache, the gray label, a culled Santa Barbara County offering. The white label was so pure and clean. We liked it, but its delicate nature left us wondering if we could really love it enough to buy more. This one, the gray label, has more rawness and verve, less of a spit-shined veneer. Similar rose-y floral notes, but with grit and dirt. Harder-edged minerals, pretty bright red fruits with a darker berry undertone. More punch.

And that helped with the cassoulet. I wanted grenache, thought about a Les Pallìeres, and eventually settled on this. Solid play. Very friendly with the quality version of cassoulet. Similar weights in the food and wine made for satisfied bites and sips.

Hoppin' John, Flap Meat, And Lamb Niçoise With Three Favorite Winemakers

I haven't heard much carping, mostly because I haven't been out in the world much over the last two weeks. But let us remember how this winter's weather has been so far.

When it's minus-7 this week, and a foot of snow rests under every step, how about we just shut up about it? There has been no literal 'winter of our discontent.' It's been boss. And pitchers and catchers report in six weeks.

Three meals, three wines.

#1  New Year's Day Hoppin' John, pea gravy, buttermilk biscuits and Iberico ham, served with 2011 Luis Pato Ferñao Pires Beira Atlântico ($28 - Lush)

Hoppin' John is thought to bring good luck if eaten on New Year's Day. Black-eyed peas, same. Pork, ditto. So, black-eyed pea Hoppin' John, using Sean Brock's red pea Hoppin' John recipe, from Heritage. Trader Joe's Iberico ham, because I was too lazy to go find country ham, and Thomas Keller fatty-delicious buttermilk biscuits, from Ad Hoc At Home, because they're fatty-delicious.

New Year's Eve: A Recipe

So you like fennel and want to eat a good chicken dinner at 6 o'clock tomorrow?  Have a plan.

Buy a loaf of country bread and a 3-4 pound Air-Chilled chicken today.  Take the chicken out of its packaging, insert 4 bay leaves and 4 thin slices of lemon under its skin, rub it with 1/2 tbsp ground white pepper, 1/2 tbsp kosher salt, and 1 tsp fennel pollen.  Put in a slightly-too-big container in your fridge, so it gets some air around the skin.  Let it stay there overnight.  Pick a white wine that makes you happy (like Palmina Sparkling Malvasia), and a cheaper sparkler (like Trader Joe's North Coast Brut), and throw them in, too.

At 3 o'clock tomorrow, take the chicken out of the fridge and out of its container so it gets room-temp air circulating around it, and turn the oven on to 450º.  Put on a good podcast or some sing-along music.  Tear up your bread into bite-sized pieces.  Drizzle the pieces with olive oil, put them in a single layer on a sheet tray.  Halve 24 oz of small yellow tomatoes, and very thinly slice 1/4 of a lemon, removing the seeds as you go.  Drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them cut-side-up in a single layer on another sheet tray.  By 3.30, the oven will be hot, so the tomatoes go on the top shelf, and the bread goes lower.  15 minutes later, the bread should be nicely toasty and some of the tomatoes should be charred and/or bursty.  Remove them from the oven, dump the bread into your biggest mixing bowl, gently transfer the tomatoes/lemon slices (with all the juices) onto a plate to cool.

Dick around for a little while.  Delight in how wonderful it is that the winter holidays are over.  Make a mixer for your sparkling wine:  1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice, 2 tbsp maple syrup, and 1 tbsp bitters.  Add 1 1/2 tbsp of this concoction to each glass of sparkling wine that you pour, and you should have the right amount for the whole bottle.  Don't be skeptical:  this is delicious stuff.

It's probably around 4 o'clock, now.  Chop 2 fennel bulbs (reserving the fronds, if you have them), 2 medium onions or/and shallots into similarly-sized bite-sized pieces.  Together in a bowl, toss them with 4-ish chopped anchovies and a gentle glug of olive oil with thyme, salt and pepper.   At 4.15 throw the big cast-iron pan into the oven on the bottom shelf.

Make a vinaigrette.  Warm some moderately crushed fennel seeds and 2 chopped garlic cloves in 1/4 cup olive oil.  Remove from heat, add 2 tbsp nice white vinegar, 1 tsp dijon, and a lot of chopped tarragon.  Salt and pepper, maybe a pinch of sugar.  Set aside.

At 4.30, rub the chicken all over with olive oil, and remove the pan from the oven, remembering that empty cast-iron never looks hot. . . .  Dump in the chopped fennel/onion.  Lay the chicken on top.  Throw it back into the oven.

Do you need to refresh your drink?  Is the music striking your fancy?  Should you take a shower and/or go have a quickie?  There's time for these things, now.

At 5 o'clock, rotate the chicken pan 180º in the oven.  Chop big clumps of parsley and dill, and reserved fennel fronds, if you have them.  Are you supposed to call your mother?  Don't do that or anything else that might cause stress.  Have another cocktail.

At 5.15, turn off the oven.  At 5.30, take the pan out:  put the chicken onto a plate by itself, dump the juicy hot fennel/onion over the toasted bread and mix it up.  Get the flatware, wine glasses and wine onto the table.  Admire the chicken.  At 5.45, dump the chopped herbs and the vinaigrette into the bread/fennel.  Toss.  Load the dishwasher.  A few minutes later, add two big handfuls of arugula, the cooled tomatoes with their ooze, and whatever juice has accumulated under the chicken.  Toss gently.  Divide the panzanella between your plates, or plop it all onto a platter with the chicken on top.  Take everything to the table, and go to town.  Be proud of yourself, accept compliments, and taste the happy.