2014 Snowpocalypse Food Week

A roundup of first-of-year food heavily influenced by the fact that leaving the house for more than five minutes might have resulted in death.

Well, not quite death but...geesh!

Monday Dinner

Sausage, grapes & tomatoes with kale salad and baguette, served with 2012 Trader Joe's Reserve Barbera Mendocino County Lot #88 ($10 - TJ's) 

Recipe from Orangette, though we add grape tomatoes and rosemary in the roast.

Previous Pairings: Great with wild boar sausages and a bottle of 2003 Pirramimma Shiraz McLaren Vale. To lesser but nice effect with weisswurst and 2009 Ponzi Dolcetto Willamette and Trader Joe's sweet sausages and 2010 Centonze Frappato Sicilia IGT.

#306 - A Potpourri Of Pairings

Geesh! It's been two weeks.

We here at FWW haven't been in the type-y mood as this election has sapped the strength of even the strongest of oxen. It's been head-in-the-sand time in our house, sitting very still, letting the time pass and hoping it does without incident, desperately wanting the polls reflect an accurate reality.

The Ney house endorsement is to the right. Always has been, always will be.

But it's time to clean house. Keeping busy on something other than following election coverage will help to keep me sane during this longest of days.

Today's effort is merely for cataloguing purposes, as nothing in the last two weeks blew us away. But some nice moments of pairing pleasantness occurred so let's put those to electronic paper.

#265 - Fenugreek Shrimp, Blackeye Curry & Raita With Two Wines

Odd Monday mélange consisting of...

A fenugreek shrimp preparation from the Arabian Peninsula, a black-eyed bean curry from West India and.... KFC and Champagne!

Yep.  We did that.  And it was kinda awesome.

KFC and Champagne lunch along with this dinner:

Food:  Fenugreek shrimp, black-eyed bean curry, raita and naan

Mrs. Ney whipped up a fenugreek spread.  Fenugreek seeds soaked overnight and blender-ed with garlic, handful of coriander leaves, salt, green chili and a dash of lemon juice until a paste emerged.

Cooked up the shrimp with the paste in the mini cast-iron and done!

Done and delicious!  Great shrimp prep.  Easy shrimp prep.  Into the rotation shrimp prep.  Perfect touch of heat mixing with an intense and vibrant herby core.  Indian in that sense from a recipe that wasn't Indian.  It was Yemenite.  But as a composed dinner, it mixed and mingled with the rest of the Indian fare quite nicely, thank you very much.

#235 - Still Alive!

Geesh!  It's been a month (?).

An annoyingly lingering month-long cold and the lack of greenbacks in the wallet lately has led to the absence of good food and wine in our house.  No point spending money on stuff we can't taste.

But things seem to be back to normal for the most part so two easy favorites were right and proper to jump back on the tasting horse.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella, tomatoes and basil with baguette and two sparklers

I extolled the virtues of Trader Joe's pre-packaged marinated mozzarella in olive oil and herbs a few weeks ago as a near-perfect quick and easy lunch option.  Marinating your own seemed to be an exercise in willingly wasting your time when something that good came so easy and fresh.  Mrs. Ney gave it a shot anyway...just to know.  The result was something just as good, but work.  Better mozzarella but not by much.  Better olive oil but not by much.  She gussied up the TJ's version with fresh tomatoes/kumatoes in the past so a freshness was still present and wanted, even needed.  In the end, part of the joy in this type of meal is the spontaneity.  No thinking about it the day before and prepping.  It's probably the best buy and eat lunch in our world right now.  Grab a baguette and bubbles and there's little that creates a break from a workweek quicker than this.