#131 - Harissa-Marinated Skirt Steak & Yuca Fries With '07 Santa Ema Merlot

Alrighty.

Last night's wine didn't really taste like wine.

Very little tannin, very little depth, didn't change much and was a bit of a one-trick pony.

It was more like a wine-type beverage.

And we were TOTALLY okay with that.

Food: Harissa-marinated skirt steak, chimichurri, yuca fries with whiskey piri-piri mayo for dipping and an arugula-pomegranate seed salad

Planned for Tuesday, it happened Wednesday because of what happened in the note below (ordered pizza).

Medium to medium-rare skirt steak marinated for two days in harissa paste (hot chilies, garlic, salt, etc.). Good meat. Solid meat. The two-day marinade may have took some of the verve away from its skirt steakiness but it was tasty and welcome nonetheless.

Yuca fries (house favorite) makes any meal, this time with a whiskey-piri piri mayo that left a perfect hint of whiskey and heat that didn't overwhelm.

An arugula and pomegranate seed salad with a chimichurri drizzle to top it off.

Tasted South American good with a little more finesse; one of those meals that falls into the world of 'just good food.'

So meat marinade from the Maghreb and yuca and chimichurri from the Southern Hemisphere. Wine?

Quinta do Vale Meão Meandro was in the discussion. Zinfandel? Wine Spectator's inexplicable and continued love affair with Schild Shiraz was revealed again this week (the 2008 is #7 on the 2010 top 100 list) and we still have the '04 and '05 hanging around.

But...South American flavors and South American wine worked in the past (particularly here and here) and we had a cheapie with a bit of a buzz around it.

Wine: 2007 Santa Ema Maipo Valley Reserve ($11 - WDC)

If blueberry Whoppers existed, that's exactly what this wine tasted like.

All malted milk and milk chocolate with a swirl of blueberry juice, a touch of vanilla that became much more pronounced as the bottle opened up, a touch of cherry, a bit of pepper, some sage and more blueberry Whoppers.

Mostly, the milk chocolate note showed right away and quickly dissipated, transforming into what milk chocolate offers in the way of texture, turning into all malted milk with a ton of vanilla extract in the flavor profile with black pepper and a very secondary cherry note popping up now and then along with sage kicking up towards the end of the meal.

Sure, it was one note, very simple and bordering on weird. But we had absolutely no complaints.

Reminded me of the Flor de Crasto and its Mounds bar domination, the Bogle Merlot that's basically sage milk and the Montes Alpha that was all BBQ sauce - cheap wines that are great one-offs that shouldn't be thought about or critiqued too much. Just drink it and enjoy the wine-type beverage-ness.

Pairing: 88 Like a CSI: episode. Enjoyed it for exactly what it was

Nothing fancy. Nothing trying to be more than it was or could be. Nothing clashed.

Parker gave the wine a 90 and the estate put that on the bottle neck. To that, we say, "you go, girl." It's ten freakin' bucks and Parker throws that in your lap? Use it and abuse it.

For $10, I'd buy more for meals similar to this - food where we're sorta indifferent about the wine pairing (mostly anything would have been fine enough) and food where we just want a little meat and whole lotta yuca with mayo.

A quick note: Monday's Greek feast deserved a big write-up but frankly, it would have been long and frankly (who's Frank?) after the third bottle, the details began to get blurry w/r/t the intimate pairing details. Had a former co-worker over and the wine did flow.

Food: Yellow split pea dip with pita bread, spicy marinated cerignola and Castelvetrano olives and spiced pumpkin seeds to start. Chicken and skordalia with artichokes and fava beans for the entrée. Ouzo-lemon tiramisu for dessert.

Wine: 2006 Raventos I Blanc "L'Hereu Reserva" Brut Cava ($18 - Binny's), 2009 Skouras Moschofilero ($14 - WDC), 2009 Flor de Crasto Branco ($15 - Binny's), 2008 Valtea Albariño Rias Baixas ($17 - Binny's) and homemade Limoncello

All of us couldn't have loved the food more, particularly the yellow split pea dip, which we gorged ourselves on, leaving us full before the great chicken and skordalia, which drew the short stick on being able to fully enjoy it. Tiramisu = yes, please. I don't love tiramisu but this is some good tiramisu.

The wines played their role. Raventos Brut Cava is a favorite, this one a touch less vibrant than previous drinkings but still pretty. The Skouras showed more bitter lemon peel this time around and less depth. Good enough but forgettable. The Flor de Crasto Branco was ALL Portugal with a kaleidoscope of melon, green fruits and wet stones. Mrs. Ney freakin' Loved it. The Valtea Albariño was my favorite with a finer minerality and subtle citrus edge.

Fun food night with good company.

#87 - Garlic Shrimp & Farro Pasta With Vintage Brut Cava

Okay! Fine!

We like shrimp! Happy?

As Mrs. Ney said, "What can we have for a Sunday night dinner when Christo is going to be home but I don't want to cook and I DEFINITELY don't want to shop anywhere else?"

I was home on a Sunday because years of waiting tables has taught that you don't work on holidays like Father's Day. It's one of maybe four or five days a year when people who normally don't go out to eat go out to eat. And that only brings pain.

So...Sunday night at home, a rare thing, that.

Usually reserved as Frozen Food night, this Sunday did include the use of frozen shrimp. Other than that, this was a finely crafted meal taken from solid recipe sources, executed to perfection and lovingly fawned over. I'm channeling my inner-Pat Bruno.

Food: Spanish-style garlic shrimp in farro pasta, jalapeños, orange/lemon zest, mint and basil

Frozen Wild Blue Shrimp ($10.99/lb) from Trader Joe's cooked in copious amounts of garlic and olive oil using this recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Perfectly cooked, having that nice multi-textured bite to them. There were fears it might be a tad garlic-y but they weren't. Great stuff.

Dried spelt spaghetti bought at Fresh & Wild in Toronto, a vacation taken last year that...well...just read this. Snore fest. Good food but we had some issues with things.

Pasta tossed with tons of mint, normal amount of basil and parsley, two parts orange to one part lemon zest and two raw, deseeded jalapeños. Just freakin' sung. Jumped out of the bowl.

Brightness from the zest, a hint of that wheaty quality you got from farro, the right level of heat came from the jalapeño and a refreshing aspect from the mint. Flavors. Just. Kept. Changing.

Getting a little bit of everything in one bite made for a taste I won't soon forget. And we'll be having this again quite soon.

A note to new home cooks out there who patently refuse to use recipes because they think they need to channel some inherent, perceived, improvisational talent they think they have. Use recipes. There are people on this planet that know tons more and have more experience with things of this nature than you and HEY! They publish their results in an easy-to-read format using a step-by-step guide. I say this because the Ney household is sick of listening to people wax on about how they injected their own personality into last night's dinner to weird results. It's not jazz. It's food. Execution and precision is a wee bit more important. Rant done.

Wine: 2006 Raventós i Blanc "L'Hereu Reserva" Brut Cava Penedes ($18 - Binny's)

Grape: Parellada, Macabeo and xarel-lo (biodynamically grown)

Region: Penedes, Spain

We love cava but cava sometimes gets a bad rap. Champagne is the undisputed king of bubbly and the bargain/budget sparkler shopper tends to fawn all over Prosecco before cava. It can be a tad rough and if you like that exact style of roughness, it's great but it's not for everybody, I guess.

We like that exact style but this one isn't your average, everyday cava. It's more fancy pants.

Tons of minerals here with the best type of dryness. Where good Champagne shows brioche notes in their yeasty quality, cava tends to be more in the raw yeast, bread dough vein. This one is more refined, raw at first only to blow off and fall into a nice baguette-type track. Apple and pear throughout but nothing over the top, never clouding the core of minerals and refreshing, tight bubbles. Great cava, spectacularly balanced, under $20 and somewhat widely available. Huge fan and has been on El Bulli's wine list for years.

And just great with the bowl o' shrimp pasta.

Pairing: 91 Refreshed, cleansed and offered up oodles of goodness

With a dish offering heat and zest, a sparkler seemed apt.

And it was in a pretty great way. The cava cleansed the palate of the heat from the jalapeños. It was like hitting a reset button with every sip after a bite of food, allowing us to enjoy the heat without letting the heat become the dominant taste in the meal.

The mineral quality in the wine also worked beautifully with the shrimp and, especially, the orange zest. All the underlying fruit in the wine didn't get lost in the food and the wine retained a sense of self without ever saying, "Look at me!"

A nearly perfect compliment to an impromptu Sunday meal.