Tuesday, July 28, 2015

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #3

Vietnamese brioche sandwiches from La Patisserie is a freakin' game-changer.

Why it took us so long to get to this beautiful place is a mystery to me, particularly when it's about eight blocks away and you can buy ten sandwiches that have the diameter of a softball for about $12.

Ham and cheese, curry chicken, curry beef, chicken pot pie, bbq pork for this order.

Buy them, make a salad, pop a sparkler (Luis Pato this time), and poof! Great Monday Lunch.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $97 for food and $197 for wine = $294


Sunday: Cornbread Panzanella with 2014 Trader Joe's Petit Reserve Pinot Grigio Monterey County

Source: Adapted from this recipe, via The Smitten Kitchen. Used the basic idea, including the buttermilk-lime dressing (adding anchovy, tarragon, and a bit more acid). Cornbread here, via Cooks Illustrated. Made the day before, halved the recipe, used rice milk.

Food Details: Crouton-ed up the cornbread, toasted them off. Mixed together black beans, onions, avocado, heirloom tomato, croutons, huge handful of arugula, and the dressing. Put it on the table, pop your wine, take your time, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Did We Like It? We thought it was going to be taco salad panzanella, but this turned into more of a California-style panzanella. And we loved it. Bright, herby, filling, end-of-week flavors. Big fans.

How Was The Wine? We don't hate this pinot grigio. Light, breezy, lightly creamy, peachy. Not too shabby at all on its own. Not with this food.

And The Pairing? A creamy element in the wine matched up with the buttermilk, but there wasn't enough bouncy acid to cut through the bevy of flavors on the plate. It was merely present and didn't turn ugly at any point. Best that can be said. Mrs. Ney switched up to the Espiral Vinho Verde and at least found the acid I didn't have.

Cost: $13 for food, $7 for wine = $20


Saturday: Kielbasa, Lentils and Frisée with 2013 Schloss Gobelsburg "Gobelsburger" Grüner Veltliner Kamptal

Source: Recipe here, via Epicurious.

Food Details: Lentils cooked up with carrots and celery, fennel sweated tender-crisp, kielbasa sliced and warmed up with lentils and fennel. Dill rat-a-tat-tatted and mixed in. Warm mustard-fennel seed dressing tossed with all of that. A big pile of frisée thrown on top of ALL that. Mini-ciabatta, buttered.

Did We Like It? Felt like it's been a couple of years since we've had this. Used to be rather prominent in the food rotation. The kielbasa and lentils are always good, but it's the mustard and fennel for me that makes this meal stand out. We probably eat fennel once every 6-8 weeks. That break between consumption allows fennel to taste fresh and new every time. With the kielbasa and lentils backing it up, warm mustard floating around, and the frisée cut bringing a superlative degree of 'RAW,' it tastes New-School Bavarian/Austrian in a great sense (I barely know Bavarian-Austrian, but...).

How Was The Wine? One of the better $14 wines out there. It's entry-level grüner veltliner that gives much more than most entry-level wines in their respective categories. Nice fruit, energy, roundness and edge. Less of the distinctive grüner flavors that you get from higher-level, single-vineyard stuff - like some that say "LENTILS! - but this offers a simplicity and refreshment along with some of that, particularly on the gaseous finish.

And The Pairing? Very nice. That'll do. A basic happiness was there. The Schwarzbock or Berger might offer more here (and their one-liter-ness is appealing). Schwarzbock, with its oodles of minerals and grassy-green notes, is quite good. And the Berger brings a guzzle quality that's always welcome. But this worked.

Cost: $10 for food, $14 for wine = $24                   


Friday: Savory Potato Tart and Salad with 2008 Domaine Sylvain Langoureau St.-Aubin

Source: Recipe here, from David Tanis at NYT Cooking.

Food Details: Make a pie crust, sauté up some leeks in chicken stock (addition to the recipe), use the fancy mandolin to cut the potatoes into paper-thin slices, assemble your pie and bake it off. Make a simple salad. Put pie slice on the plate, salad next to it, done. It's Paris bistro lunch food at its freakin' best.

Did We Like It? It made us swear, we loved it so much. I challenge anyone to eat this and not think, "I should be paying a lot more for this! It's delicious!" The addition of leeks offers a French country garden note and chicken stock brings the slightest hint of a background meaty lilt (tried bacon fat with this once. Weighs it down a touch). Slicing the potatoes this thin is key, making for a restaurant-quality texture to the entire pie. It's next-level stuff. Herb salad blend to mix and match in between bites of pie. Don't finish with the salad. Mix this one in. It brings more of The Joy, especially when a wine of this quality is at the table.

How Was The Wine? It's been sitting in the house for over four years, bought at Wine Discount Center when it was still Wine Discount Center. Probably recommended to us by Amy or Sean, and probably bought as a sort of inventory wine with little more thought behind it. I sorta forgot it was even here. We also burned ourselves out on white Burgundy a couple of years ago and took a break. Then, almost by accident, we ran into a wine of this caliber. Lordy! $25, made in the same way as the more spendy white Burgundies, and it's all sorts of lovely. Typical pear-apple fruit, but the love came in the oh-so pretty use of oak on the mid-palate here. Like a delicate, bouncy balloon on a breezy spring day. Simply sparkled. Like Auxey-Duresses and Viré Clessé, in Saint-Aubin, you find $25 white Burgundy that tastes like wine at twice the price. Loved. It.

And The Pairing? Nearly perfect, particularly when we take into account that this was a weekday meal for us (we're not Mon-Fri people). Coming home to this washed away all my workplace $&#^@.

Cost: $8 for food, $25 for wine = $33
                

Thursday: Chicken, Tzatziki, Kumatoes, Arugula and pita with 2014 João Portugal Ramos Lima Loureiro Vinho Verde

Food Details: Harvesttime roasted chicken, homemade tzatziki, salt and peppered kumatoes, arugula and pita. Open a pita, throw all the stuff above inside the pocket and go to town.

Did We Like It? Yes. It's pick-n-choose with a Greek bent. Well, not so much pick-n-choose. We used everything for each bite. More of an easy-peasy dinner. No cooking. Just whip up a tzatziki, slice some sort of tomatoes, dress some arugula, put it all on a plate and eat it. Feast. Good batch. Harvesttime chicken was lacking in skin-glaze goodness, though.

How Was The Wine? It's $7 at Binny's. Lightly fruity, lightly floral, happy acid, cheap as hell. Loureiro is delicious. We like it. We've had some fancy ones, but this is the loureiro we drink the most...by far. Mostly because it has all the loureiro goods for $7.

And The Pairing? Good enough. All the basic elements were there. Lift, nuance, snap, pause. Nothing superlative. Just nice.

Cost: $11 for food, $7 for wine = $18


Wednesday: Moroccan Goat Meatballs, Farro And Barley with 2013 Broc Cellars Carignan Alexander Valley

Source: Recipe for Moroccan meatballs here, via Leite's Culinara. We use a lot of Mr. Leite's recipes, because he likes food. Mrs. Ney used the recipe as a guide. Alterations: ground goat meat, buttermilk/butter instead of crème fraîche, shallot and parsley instead of cilantro, manzano pepper instead of cayenne, orange juice instead of lemon, and used one 14 oz. can of tomatoes to beef/juice it up.  And the big one: farro/barley pilaf instead of rice, with the addition of dried apricots, almonds and scallions.

Food Details: See above and see the picture to the right. Arugula salad to finish.

Did We Like It? Mrs. Ney didn't want it/didn't want to make it. And it turned into such a pretty, bright, spicy, slow North African dinner with flavors we love bouncing around all over the place. This capped off a pretty great food and wine weekend (see below). On the wine...

How Was The Wine? Broc being Broc. We want everything they make. And are working to make that happen. They make nero d'Avola? Sparkling cabernet franc? Valdiguié in multiple forms? I. Want. All of it. Loved the 2012. The 2013 is less floral, more concentrated red fruit - smoked dark raspberries here - with a beautifully angled slender body, great lift and a spicy finish. All with a background feeling of walking through a garden set right on the ocean. Clean, herby, and cool. Vacillates so nicely between being svelte/tender and showing an attitude/having a chip on its shoulder.  Tailed off a touch after 1.5 hours, but it's delicious. We need more very soon.

And The Pairing? LOVES. GOAT. It's perfect. Goat and this wine play in the same weight region, with both able to pick up what's happening around it and take everything to a better place. And I'm beginning to think Broc just makes their reds to like Middle Eastern-inflected goat. The valdiguié loved goat-stuffed artichokes last November. Their style and light Middle Eastern flavors... Gee whiz, that's good. Big surprise dinner here with a wine that really loved the food.

Cost: $12 for food, $29 for wine = $41                     


Tuesday: Tuna Niçoise with NV Pommery Rosé "Brut Aganage" Champagne

Food Details: Niçoise salad of A's do Mar oil-cured tuna, grape tomatoes, baby potatoes, onions, green beans, Niçoise olives, capers and one hard-boiled egg for me with a dressing of tarragon, dijon, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, white balsamic, salt and pepper, all over arugula. It's a heaping mound of healthy, delicious goodness. Whole Foods ancient grains bread with butter to round it out.

Did We Like It? Oh, my, yes. Not the greatest version of Niçoise we've had, but that's like saying that playoff win wasn't the best playoff win your favorite team has won. Still a playoff win. Who cares? It's a win in the playoffs. And using this oil-cured tuna instead of cooking up some rare tuna from Whole Foods cuts the cost of this meal by about $18, with virtually no loss in quality, because we just want the vegetable bounty anyway. We'll get our rare tuna experience from Szechuan peppercorn-crusted tuna at some point. It's better.

How Was The Wine? Champagne Rosé, nearly half-off at Binny's (down to $50 from $90), and quite good. Plums, blood orange, figs, dry as all get-out, rolly bubbles, nice gas. A damn good Champagne rosé that was clean and moderately complex. Never would have guessed this was 60% chardonnay. Red grapes at the fore, with pinot noir serving as the guider and meunier bringing the interesting weirdness. Nothing wildly extravagant or great here, just Champagne rosé done well. And nice to have it again. Been awhile for us. And we want it by the bucket now.

And The Pairing? Niçoise and rosé, in any form, brings the love. No exception here. Wasn't "slap-my-face" great together, with flavors bouncing off the walls, but we had zero complaints.

Cost: $25 for food, $50 for wine = $75
      

Monday: Marinated Hanger Steak, Cold Sesame Noodles and Cucumber Salad with 2000 Clos Fourtet Saint-Émilion

Source: The Silver Palate Cookbook and The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. It's a thowback dinner! A remake of the first "fancy" meal Mrs. Ney made a month after we moved in together 13 years ago.

Food Details: Hanger steak marinated in olive oil and homemade yakitori sauce from the freezer, basted in the same sauce. Cold sesame noodles from SPC (page 79), using 1/4 of the mayo the recipe calls for. Nobody needs two cups of mayo in their noodles. Cucumber salad with Asian flavors, from NYT Cooking, placed on top of the noodles. Carrot-garlic-ginger topping for the steak, from SPGTC (page 275). The result tasted like a well-done time warp back to 2002, then back to 1978. We loved it. Made us think, "Okay, they weren't stupid eaters back in 1978. They made good food, representative of a region, with what was available." Growing up in Iowa, eating a lot of meatloaf and pot roast, sometimes I forget that might have been true for the rest of the country.

How Was The Wine? Stupid-great, silly-good! We have a boatload of Bordeaux that has to be drunk quite soon. This begins that journey. One-hour decant. We were surprised how Old-Old World it was, and French specifically. No compromises here, very Frenchy-French from a great year in Bordeaux. Blackberry liqueur on the nose to start, turning into something like walking through a well-kept old house. We could smell the years. Not dusty, really. Just old. As if you can smell the attic. Nice flowers. Ripe-ish fruit, full-bodied, but never a bully. A bit of Jack Daniels at times. Happy length, fine tannin perking up on the finish, nice acid. This was big, and texturally a touch more flamboyant than we typically drink, but golly, we loved it. Had those pauses and breaks that allowed us to think about it for a bit instead of being bombarded with a bombastic, bellicose, belligerent nature that comes from so many aggressive fruit bombs. A 15-year-old Right Banker, from the house that originally got us into Bordeaux, and it's simply great right now. Could have waited on this one, didn't, and loved it. Real presence.

And The Pairing? That's probably what made us love the wine even more. Slipped right into this food that came off Asian only in a Silver Palate sense ("Apparently cilantro didn't exist in the 70's"). Held its ground beautifully. Different with each bite while maintaining its core goodness so nicely. Big winner here.

Cost: $18 for food, $65 for wine = $83      

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #2

It continues...

El Carrito, on Peterson and Lincoln, makes solid Mexican street food tacos that don't skimp on ingredients and are priced right. Two steak tacos and a southwest salad for $7? 

Yep. 

My bi-monthly drive right by that intersection makes it an option.

And...creepy clown alert! A bit close to home.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $92 for food and $118 for wine = $210


Sunday: Pick-n-Choose Meat, Cheese and Bread with NV Elvio Tintero Grangia Favorita Blend 


Food Details: Speck, salami, provola, arugula, Provençal mustard, and baguette. Pick and choose your combination of food-types on the plate to put together for each bite and go to town.

Did We Like It? Yep. It's a long, meandering meal perfect for Sunday night (the end of my week, second-to-last for Mrs. Ney). No cooking. Just throw a bunch of stuff on the plate, dress your arugula, cut your baguette, pour the wine, eat and enjoy.

How Was The Wine? Might be my new favorite cheap white. Piedmontese favorita blend (50% Favorita, 25% Moscato, 20% Arneis and 5% Chardonnay) that's light (11.5%), ever-so-slightly fizzy, lightly sweet, and deliciously mouthwatering. And it's $10! Great gaps and pauses here that extend it out nicely. Tastes like walking through an orchard on a surprisingly chilly morning.

And The Pairing? Quite good. Mustard messed with it on occasion, but the salty cured meats and this wine really like each other.

Cost: $15 for food, $10 for wine = $25         


Saturday: Southern Chicken Sandwiches with 2013 Charles Smith VINO Pinot Grigio Columbia


Food Details: Breaded Southern-style chicken breast sandwiches with pickles, mayo, kumatoes, onions and lettuce on pretzel buns. Olive oil chips. Sandwiches and chips.

Did We Like It? Oh, my, yes. For me, after a crappy work shift clouded by the general annoyance of watching people chew for a living, coming home to jazzed-up, sunny, picnic food wiped the slate clean.

How Was The Wine? We don't like pinot grigio, but we like THIS pinot grigio. Its 2013-ness makes for a wine that's losing some of its distinction, sparkle and polish, but the acid and citrus blossom notes are hanging on enough to 'bring the happy.' We'll be buying this one until Mr. Smith stops making this one. It's $13.

How Was The Pairing? Good. Enough. After two days of terrible wine, The wine's quality was more than welcome. The pickles messed with its segues a bit for me.

Cost: $12 for food, $13 for wine = $25  


Thursday and Friday

Wifey worky pool party on Friday. She ate food there, with jug Aldi Lambrusco, probably. It's fruity and tastes like the 80's in not a bad way. Or when you go to someone else's church service that's much more wealthy than your church, take communion, and realize that even their 'blood of Christ' is more fancy. I ate work pizza and drank a glass of chilled gamay from Thursday. Still...not good. Bit like chilled wood polish.

Meatloaf and potato salad on Thursday. Opened a bottle of wine that's been sitting around the house, WELL past its drinking window, the 2009 Gilles Bonnefoy Côtes de Forez Gamay, and it was just that. Good stuff a little over a year ago. Not so much now. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Cost: $8 for food, $12 for wine = $19


Wednesday: Fried Haloumi, Yellow Beet Salad with Walnut Gremolata and Garlic Bread with 2013 Palmina Sparkling Malvasia Bianca Larner Vineyard SBC

Source: Beet salad recipe straight from Palmina's website for malvasia pairing (this beet salad is a house fav)

Food Details: Yellow beets, roasted. Slathered with a walnut, garlic, lemon-orange zest and juice and anchovy blend. Put on top of arugula. Haloumi fried off in mini cast-iron with parsley and olive oil. Jamie Oliver garlic bread. Rip, cut, dip, eat.

Did We Like It? Always. The beet salad is a 3x a year thing. It's stupid-great and stupid-easy. Fried haloumi, same. Who doesn't want fried Greek-Cypriot cheese? It's delicious even after it gets a bit waxy. Plenty of bread to do as you do. Arugula to keep it lifty. Complete and satisfying meal.

How Was The Wine? The star. Loved it. More fresh on New Year's Eve, but we liked it better here, as its malvasia-y floral notes became FLORAL notes! Apricot blossoms to start with oodles of dying white flowers backing it up. Bubbles just barely hanging on, but I got something akin to a great Cava-like mineral finish occasionally. Turned into a delicate sour-bitter beer about halfway through and we loved it. Nutmegged pear fruit in the background throughout. It was like a Haruki Murakami novel. It took about two minutes to realize that this was going to go to deliciously odd places and we're going to love it.          

And The Pairing? So great with the beets. Less so with the haloumi but still happy. A leisurely meal with loveliness at every turn.

Cost: $15 for food, $36 for wine = $51


Tuesday: Uzbek Lamb Plov and Kumato/Onion/Arugula Salad with 2010 Abacela Tempranillo Umpqua Valley

Source: Recipe here, via Cucee Sprouts

Food Details: Lamb, chickpeas, carrots, barberries, garlic, cumin, tumeric, basmati rice. A one-pot meal that's considered the national dish of Uzbekistan. And boy, does it have people that are passionate about the assemblage of it, right down to the carrot cutting. I heart the tyranny of the authenticity brigade. Recipe followed to the letter, but left out the raisins and used barberries fished out of the torshi seer. Kumato, onion and arugula salad to finish.

Did We Like It? The result was a delicious, savory, light, homey, country, lamb and rice dish that both of us utterly loved. And will be having again. Probably soon. Very easy to make. The kumato salad rounded out of perfectly great meal. We're beginning to think we gravitate more towards land-based Mediterranean-Middle Eastern food instead of something more sea-based. Gets into our bones more.      

How Was The Wine? Tempranillo from southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley. Abacela has two, one for aging and this one. Happy, round, fresh dark cherries, getting plummy later. Smooth texture, medium length, nice acid keeping everything lifty, enough tannin to keep everything in place.

And The Pairing? The wine served as a pleasant supporting actor to the star on the plate. Missed that third-level, Spanishy, Ribera, lamb-and-tempranillo complete greatness, but got kinda close. Liked it.

Cost: $10 for food, $30 for wine = $40


Monday: Nando's Peri-Peri in Lakeview

Food Details: Full chicken platter for two, fries and mashed peas. Chicken slathered in peri-peri, heaping mound of fries with peri-peri mayo for dipping, mashed peas with mint parsley and chili. Open on Monday and straight-through from lunch to dinner, if we want spicy chicken and fries and don't want to make spicy chicken and fries, Nando's does it well. At 3pm, because we're old.

Did We Like It? Like other souped-up, fast-casual places out there, it's just good enough to say "this will work and it's cheap enough to justify the expense." There's some flavor, preservative or otherwise, that all of the Shake Shacks, Five Guys, even Urban Bellys of the world use that make it taste somewhat similar. Something there we can't quite pinpoint. And all of this can be made at home at 1/2 the price, but no kitchen time + no dishes = why not, once or twice a year. $15 more and we'd make it at home, but it's not. Amsterdam Falafel still reigns in the fast-casual category, though. That's The Stuff.

How Was The Wine? the 2013 Cara Viva Lisbon Branco is probably a wine made specifically for Nando's. Zippy, easy, with enough guts to stand up to the hot sauce. No complaints at all. Tasted like Portugal in nice ways. They probably pay $3 a bottle for it and charge $17 but who cares?

And The pairing? Refreshing. It helped in the overall impression of the meal.

Cost: $32 for food, $17 for wine = $50

Thursday, July 16, 2015

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #1

Let's mix it up. 

We're going to track every meal and wine pairing for one year: the contents, source, success, lessons, and the cost. 

Each post will be one week's worth of meals, from Monday to Sunday, and added to as we eat-and-drink it. 

Monday through Wednesday is our weekend and Thursday through Sunday is our workweek.

Week #1, so far, has had a "nostalgia food" feel to it.

Total Food and Wine Cost for the Week: $83 for food and $130 for wine = $206

   
Sunday: Edwardo's Pizza with 2012 Trader Joe's Barbera Mendocino

Food Details: Strack & Van Til-bought Edwardo's Chicago-style spinach pizzas, topped with rosemary onions to up the quality here. They were the best part of these pizzas that won't be eaten again. Not our bag. Malnati's is better and it's not even close. We do the Chicago-style business a couple times a year and we'll stick to Lou.  

Did we like it? Edible, filled a hole.

How was the wine? Typically good with Chicago-style pizza, the barbera was nothing more than present. Better than the wine we originally opened, a bottle of 2011 Luis Pato Beira Atlântico Colheita Seleccionada Baga-Touriga Nacional (hence the addition of rosemary onions), which tasted like Christmas coffee cake gone wrong, then a LEAN cab after a quick aeration. In the fridge. We'll check it.

And the pairing? Food was on the table. Wine was in the glass. That's it.

Cost: $13 for food and $23 ($13 - Luis Pato) for wine = $36


Saturday: Smoked Turkey, Ricotta and Asparagus Naan Pizzas with 2013 Berger Grüner Veltliner

Food Details: Trader Joe's Naan, topped with smoked turkey, ricotta blended with cream cheese and basil oil, asparagus, corn, onion and pepper jack cheese, baked until everything was melty and warm, with a handful of arugula on top of each afterwards.

Did we like it? Yes. Had to use up some ricotta so dinner turned into this. And it made ten naan pizzas for just the two of us, so lunches over the next couple of days are covered. Arugula on top completed it.

How was the wine? The one-liter Berger is a fantastic deal. Basic, everyday grüner done well. Its 2013-ness here made for a less shiny and sparkly grüner but a basic goodness was present...enough.

And the pairing? Fine. The primary-tertiary flavors were fading but the acid was still there. Asparagus is a pairing asshole, particularly for the weekday, "nothing too spendy" wine realm. Grüner can get close.

Cost: $13 for food and $13 for wine = $26
      

Friday: Turkish-style Braised Green Beans, Meatballs and Bread with 2012 Domaine de la Chanteleuserie Bourgueil

Source: Recipe here, from John Willoughby, via NYT Cooking

Food Details: Turkish-style braised green beans is the star here, with a dollop of yogurt, spritz of lemon on top. Freezer meatballs (have no idea what meal they were originally from). Whole Foods freshly baked wheat bread loaf with a underdone, doughy center. Used the non-doughy edges. Take some bread, top it with the beany-yogurt mixture and a bit of meatball, eat, pause, think about it, and enjoy the goodness. In the same sort of family as Turkish beany surprise (which is sorta like Egyptian ful), swapping out borlotti beans for green beans.

Did we like it? Remember when you ate meatloaf and green beans growing up? Remember when some of soupy juice off the meatloaf and green beans began to mix together? Not great, right? Here, it's fancy-ass delicious soup that has eight different flavors bouncing around in your mouth, all playing off each other.

How was the wine? This is the abandoned Bourgueil cabernet franc from Monday. We put in the fridge and served it chilled. It's nice when abandoned wine can be salvaged into something useful. Four days open and chilled turned it into a twiggy, raspberry chocolate truffle that was dropped in dirt. Rather delicious.

How was the pairing? Happy. They liked each other. Made better by the fact that the wine wasn't a total write-off.

Cost: $7 for food, $17 for wine = $24  


Thursday: Chicken, Kumatoes, Herb Salad, Ciabatta & Cilantro Mayo with NV Grifone Bianco Sicily

Food Details: Strack & Van Til BBQ-flavored rotisserie chicken, kumatoes (salt and peppered), TJ's herb salad dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper, TJ's mini-ciabatta buns and cilantro mayo from Wednesday's cheeseburger tacos. Put all of it on a plate, rip your ciabatta, assemble into open-faced mini-sandwiches with all of the ingredients, eat and enjoy. It's a house staple, pick-and-choose meal when Mrs. Ney doesn't want to cook or spend any time in our tiny-ass kitchen. It's delicious every freakin' time.

Did we like it? Always. The Strack & Van Til chicken wasn't BBQ-y in the least. First time for this chicken. Wouldn't do it again. Mariano's chicken and whatever glaze they put on it is oodles better.

How was the wine? It's a $5 Trader Joe's riesling/moscato blend from Sicily. Boring on its own, we happened upon this stupid-great pairing about a year ago. It goes from borderline insipid without food to this wispy, light, balanced, refreshing $5 quaffer with THIS food.

And the pairing? Not as delicious as with the Mariano's glaze, but it mimicked that with enough completeness to satisfy.

Cost: $12 for food and $5 for wine = $17 
 

Wednesday: Stupak's Cheeseburger Tacos with NV Marietta Cellars Old Vine Red Lot 61

Source: recipe from Alex Stupak, via Lucky Peach

Food Details: Goopy meat and chihuahua cheese cooked in lard (added onions). Flour tortillas, salsa roja, cilantro mayo, avocados, tomatoes and limes. Bagged curly fries with more cilantro mayo for dipping. Assembled and went to town.

Did we like it? the first two were rather spectacular - nostalgic, fresh, fatty, early 80's family reunion-y with my brother playing Jethro Tull on the banjo - but it suffered from a sameness and diminishing returns. Mrs. Ney would make it again. In a year. Maybe.

How was the wine? Marietta Cellars Lot 61, at $11, proves California can make table wine very well (Jon Bonné's interview with Levi Dalton three years ago discusses this - good listen). This drinking, it was more dirt, meat char, balsamic strawberries and spice, showing more of its zin-based heft and less brightness this time. Always delicious and a house favorite.

And the pairing? Good. Fine. Nice. Nothing wrong here. Picnic goodness, but few surprises.

Cost: $12 for food and $11 for wine = $23


Tuesday: Waxman Spring Gnocchi with 2013 Domaine Vacheron Sancerre Blanc

Source: recipe from Jonathan Waxman, via Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking

Food Details: Homemade gnocchi, using Caputo pasta flour. Frozen peas and fava beans. Grape tomatoes and freezer celery pesto. Topped with parmesan, parsley and mint.

Did we like it? Yes. Needed soft food due to Mrs. Ney's dental cleaning. Tasted a bit out of season (and frozen is a nice substitute, but not ideal), but the gnocchi were light and delicious, and everything was cooked well. DO NOT make gnocchi ahead of time and layer them with wax paper! Lesson learned. And salt your pasta water, idiot.

How was the wine? Perfection. Hot damn, Vacheron makes a delicious sauvignon blanc. Lemongrass and smoky lemon/lime peel. Darker minerals galore. Great balance, weight, pauses and length. It's Sancerre without the moodiness. Less of a unwelcome cloudy day, more of a springtime sunny breeze.

And the pairing? The wine ruled the day, boosting the springtime-veggie-in-the-dead-of-summer meal to a better place.

Cost: $8 for food and $30 for wine = $38


Monday: Lamb Skewers, Potatoes and Green Beans with 2011 Jonata The Paring Red Blend

Source: For lamb marinade, go here (under Greek grilled chicken). Standard Greek meat marinade for this house.

Food Details: Paulina lamb skewers, marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, onion, parsley, oregano and garlic, oven roasted Yukon Gold potatoes with paprika-garlic oil drizzled on top, sautéed green beans.

Did we like it? Yes. Happy, Greek/Spanish meat and potatoes meal.

How was the wine? We didn't go Spanish or Portuguese here. Didn't crave it. Started with the 2012 Domaine de la Chanteleuserie Bourgueil and abandoned quickly. No presence, watery finish. Not the first time with that one. Popped the Jonata The Paring cabernet-centric blend (40%, with merlot, cab franc, sangiovese, petit verdot and syrah in there). This one is cabernet without screaming it. Fresh, figgy, cinnamon, touch of coffee. Round, dark, pretty edges, very nice.

And the pairing? Head and shoulders above the Bourgueil. It loved the potatoes and saddled up to the lamb quite happily.

Cost: $18 for food and $24 for the wine = $42


Inter Alia:

* Christina Tosi's Birthday Cake is A Thing. Recipe here, via MilkBar Store (where it's $48 if you simply want to buy it).

Altered a bit. We had 8" pans, so Mrs. Ney used those. More simple to make than a cursory reading of the recipe would suggest. And the Crisco in the recipe makes it like crack. Can't stop eating it! It tastes like every birthday cake you had growing up jammed together, then drizzled with delicious fat in the form of a frosting-like crumble. It's over the top, but not offensively in the least.

* Decent batch of the best chocolate chip cookies recipe on the planet, from Saveur. Used white sugar this time. Liked it.

* The 2014 Laurent Miquel Pere et Fils Cinsault Syrah Rosé ($10 - Lush), paired with homemade margherita pizza and a bianca with tomatoes and arugula, was light and fresh, but forgettable. Wouldn't buy again. Very good margherita and boring, overcrowded-with-cheese bianca. Worst dough experience yet, though. Loads of cursing. Don't use homemade dough made three months ago and then frozen. Lesson learned. Good dough recipe (looking for it...) with a great salt level. Almost pretzel-like. Better than ATK. And we lost the pizza stone. Cracked in the oven.