#256 - Ethiopian Beef & Plantain Stew With Two New World Rhône Blends

Happy Leap Day!

Legend has it that nothing you do on this day counts.

I say with all those quarter-days stacking up, only to burst out into a full-fledged calendar day every four years, it counts!  It counts four times as much as a regular day.

So get outside, go for a jog.  It's beautiful out.  Call your mother and tell her you love her.  Everything counts four times as much.  For the lazy person, this day is "Gold, Jerry!"

Went to the Horn of Africa last night for Ethiopian flavors and came out liking it enough to possibly put it into the weeknight rotation.  Easy to make and a nice diversion in our spice world.

Didn't love it but a solid balance that played well in the world of medium intensity flavors bouncing off each other rather nicely in a small box.

Food:  Ethiopian beef and plantain stew over rice

#198 - Daniel Boulud Fennel Balls And Peppadew Purée With '09 Schild GMS

The 2009 Schild Estate GMS came to the rescue in February after a bottle of cheap Italian wine turned out to be corked.

Same thing happened last night when a 2006 Domaine de Ferrand Châteauneuf-du-Pape turned out to be dreadfully dull, showing all liquid figs and blood with not nearly enough acid we were craving at the time and was needed with the food.

Back in February, we drank the Schild Estate GMS with pork, pancetta and prunes.  Delicious food that we enjoyed but the pairing and the surprising cheapness for such big delivery in the wine was the talk of the night.

Last night was different.  We ate food so good it made me want to swear...loudly.  The Schild this time simply reminded us how versatile it is with food and how we really should be buying a case or two very soon.  It's that food-friendly and that good.

But not as good as Daniel Boulud modified fennel balls.

These are just silly great.

Food:  Daniel Boulud fennel balls with a peppadew pepper purée, candied pancetta and pomegranate seeds with an arugula salad

Basically arancini, Boulud Frenches them up and adds Spanish touches, like something that would be served on the border of Tarragona and Rousillon.

#165 - Pork, Pancetta & Prunes With A Plush '09 Schild GMS

"Don't practice your alliteration on me!"

Yesterday's meal went through a heavy editing process on the fly, much soul-searching and an in-the-shower epiphany that "really tied the plate together."

I'm sure few people find fregola to be an important shower epiphany but last night, fregola brought the food love.

Throw in Rogue River Blue Cheese purchased two months ago yet still chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much, and Mrs. Ney found a winner where, for the four hours of prep before the meal, she didn't think she had one.

She's the Minnesota Twins of cooking. A way WILL be found.

Food: Pancetta-wrapped and prune-stuffed pork tenderloin with blue cheese fregola and bacon fat chard

Pork-tastic! Pork and pork with a side of pork.

Pork tenderloin ($4 - Aldi) wrapped in La Quercia pancetta ($3 - City Provisions, it was a "high-low" meal) and stuffed with prunes and rosemary, all slathered in mustard and roasted.

Medium-well pork tenderloin that was tender and juicy. Both of us really don't care about pork as a main dish. Pork chops can go to H-E-double hockey sticks. Cured pork products are, of course, another story but pork-pork is like a Butterfinger or Hershey bar or some college friends - you have to revisit one every two years to remind yourself why you don't revisit it more often.

That said, tasty pork with charred and deliciously caramelized pancetta with a subtle sweet prune and rosemary hit in the center. Each bite was a Good Bite.

Shower epiphany fregola ($2.50) done in chicken stock, fennel seed and orange zest. Topped with Rogue River Blue Cheese. Done in the risotto style, fregola first introduced itself to us in magical ways during a meal that shall not soon be forgotten. More "Crap, that's good!" here. Rich and rustic, tasting like gussied-up Sardinian peasant food.

Chard ($4) done in bacon fat and Aleppo pepper. Heaping mound, tasted like meat, we loved a few bites and promptly threw in the towel. Just too much.

$18 total for both plates.

We ate well last night, loving what came out of an uncertain meal direction while having no freakin' idea what wine to serve with it for most of the day (a smoky-sweet blackstrap sauce was in play at one time, polenta another).

Things turned out just fine.

Wine: 2009 Schild Estate GMS ($12 - WDC)

Started with a 2006 Nerello del Bastardo, an $8 Trader Joe's Super Tuscan blend that we were sick of looking at on the shelf. Corked. Smelled like cardboard that's been sitting behind the garage for months in the summer heat. Decanted for 2 1/2 hours to see if it would blow off because there was a resemblance of decent wine goodness hanging around, underneath. Nope. Corked. A cheap Italian wine corked? NOOOO!

Settled on a surprisingly cheap Schild Estate GMS blend (55% Grenache, 25% Mourvedre and 20% Shiraz). Schild Estate, of the surprisingly cheap Shirazes that have garnered boatloads of praise over the last few years, seems like it picked up in American market where Pirramimma left off in the quality $25 range. Can't find Pirramimma for the life of us anymore, Schild's everywhere. In our world, Pirramimma's a very personal friend and Schild shiraz isn't that. But it's always been good (enough) stuff in the $25 world. This GMS blend was HALF that.

Smoky herby berry on the nose. Berry fruit basket right away with a big underlying blackberry juice quality that I really loved. Medium-bodied, smooth, open, welcoming with a juicy acidity, turning a touch smoky and meaty halfway down, a hint of licorice on occasion, and finishing with a deft, long, dark fruit touch of sweetness.

Tasted like a nicely restrained Rhône Ranger. More of a naturally occurring sweetness than a sappy sweet finish many of the California blends allow. Like a favorite sweatshirt.

If we paid $25 for this, we would have been happy and may have even bought more. It's not.

It's $12. And entirely food-friendly.

Pairing: 88 A broad and open wine with a meal that we never thought was going to be that

Quality, aged (to put it mildly) blue cheese, rustic, browny, grainy, starchy goodness, caramelized pancetta char, bacon fat greenness, pruney sweetness with herby hints. That's a big basket to capture and the wine captured nearly all of it in admirable and Mom-like ways ("Come with me, sweetie. It's best).

Fielded like a rangy, handsy shortstop and showed a food-ingratiating maturity well beyond its years, lifting things nicely while never allowing its sweetness to dominate.

$30 for a pretty tasty feast.