Avocado Fattoush With 2011 Ponzi Arneis

Monday lunch.

Avocado fattoush from NYT, based on a recipe from Einat Admony, incorporates much of the goodness from fattoush, with a lot more stuff in it.

The result, for me, was the best salad-as-entrée I've had in a long time. I can't count Niçoise as a salad. It's more than that, mostly because when it comes to the essence of "a lot of stuff in it," Niçoise takes the cake. It's a salad defined by its 'stuff.'

With the addition of scallions and pomegranate seeds, which are ingredients added in this house whenever possible when Mrs. Ney feels that it won't screw up the delicate balance of a good recipe from a good person, we felt it only added without distracting.

Oodles of mint and creaminess from the avocado and (Bulgarian) feta here, and every bite brought all the flavors from the recipe without becoming a big bucket of "TOO MUCH!"

Great balance with each nibble and forkful, and for a total of about $7 per plate, no restaurant salad-as-entrée is going to touch this. It's just not. You can try, you can pontificate, you can say, "NOOO! You haven't had this salad I once had in Park Slope, and I know, because I know..." Stop it. The world needs less of you. Everyday. All the time.

Served with a 2011 Ponzi Arneis Willamette Valley ($25 - Winery w/ shipping). I was a bit leery of its 2011-ness but no worries in the least. Fruit is fading but all the secondary happiness that this wine has shown in the past was all there. Nice tension still present, a rocky note at times, touch of peach fuzz, pleasant, long enough, gassy finish. Even some nice pauses between transitions. Nothing earth-shattering, just a wine that both (1) never got in the way of our food enjoyment and (2) extended our love of the salad by weaving into the mint and sumac just enough to feel like a third flavor emerged.

Ask for more and you're just a greedy f&#k.

And believe me, in our world, very few people ask for this much.

They should.

TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

What's the difference between TWIB Notes and Quick Hits?

Nothin'.

Someday - I'm shooting for July of 2017 - I'll figure out how to organize this here blog. Same with painting the apartment.

Better food week than last. French roast chicken, a great elderflower cheese, cocoa hanger steak with fancy Portuguese wine, and a panzanella salad whose preparation made the kitchen look like a gaggle of wild muskrats got loose and went to town.

"Put A Bunch Of Fresh Stuff On It."

In the tradition of "put a bird on it," with vacation coming, it's "clean out the fridge and freezer and put fresh stuff on it" month.

That typically makes for interesting dinners, but never sub-par dinners. Throw a bunch of fresh stuff on a meal and it's rare that stocked-up, wrapped-up, Ziploc'ed meat and vittles thrown into the freezer a couple of months ago tastes like such.

Simply make fresh marinades and "put a bunch of fresh stuff on it" and it's winner, winner, freezer-food lunch and dinner!

Meal #1

#299 - Two New House Favorites With Two Wines

Back to home flavors after Rioja with two meals that epitomize new home flavors.

New in the sense of taking old favorites and tweaking them, moving old faves forward, keeping them fresh and new.

The first meal, Symon roasted chicken with down-and-dirty salsa verde and a tomato-corn-arugula salad, has become new with the weekly visits to the Lincoln Square Farmers' Market. Where roasted chicken used to reach such great heights with a simple roasting of the bird and tossing down some Fancy French cheese with good bread to slather with said cheese and sop up bird juice (that phrase sounds weird), the newness of the new comes in the impeccably fresh salad ingredients in various forms that become more than just side salad.

To wit. Here, the tomatoes were stupid-ripe and bursting with proper tomato flavor. Take advantage now. Not much time left in that realm. And it's corn season, folks. Use it and abuse it until you're sick of it. Predicted to be the worst crop in 17 years (news that piques an Iowan's interest, like me, because that was the de facto, 'the sky is falling,' grocery store-coffee shop-Casey's conversation everyday growing up), here was delicious corn complementing the tomato in great ways.

So...Michael Symon roasted chicken (chronicled many times on this here blog), this time an enormous Whole Foods five-pounder with a shimmering golden skin and juicy (even the breast) meat. One of the better ones of late. Tomato and corn salad with an arugula bed which was more about the tomato and corn than the arugula. Salsa verde, It's salsa verde in a different form, loaded with dirty delicious anchovy-caper flavor that's cleaned up in such a new, lifty way by the parsley-mint-olive oil driver (plagarized myself there). It's the thing on the side that sits there, saying, "Use me how you like. I don't care. Salad? Sure! Taste that! Chicken? Yep! Told ya. All of it together? That's what I'm about." Whole Foods Seeduction bread with butter to round things out.

#286 - Roast Chicken & Endive in Rosemary-Balsamic With '11 Ponzi Arneis

Continuing the theme.

A lot of Michael Symon and Jamie Oliver lately and this meal was no different.

A simple meal with Symon chicken we've chronicled here a few times already and a easily made endive (chicory) salad with rosemary and balsamic taken from Jamie Oliver's 30-Minute Meals. Oliver garlic bread that eschews butter to top off the goodness.

Wine thoughts: red and chicken is boring to us. Sparkling might have been nice but we like a wee touch of spice or a bread and cheese leader to counter/play with bubbles. White wine was the leading candidate to start but the meal needed acid in the wine to stand up to the balsamic and the roasty caramelizing, the major flavor drivers on the plate. Balsamic's Italian, lemon and bay in the chicken are common Italian ingredients. Garlic bread. What's more Italian? Arneis has acid and it's Italian. So we drank Italian...from Oregon.

Food: Symon chicken and Oliver chicory salad with garlic bread

I'll plagiarize myself: Go here to see the prep. "Lemon peel and bay leaves shoved under the skin (with that, garlic and onions put up its rump) has made for a better whole roasted chicken experience. Juicy thigh, delicious salty, lemony skin, bay leaf flavor flyin' everywhere."

It's better chicken. Onions cut in half and stuck in the pan with the chicken to roast. A caramelized wonder, my friend.