#202 - Turkish Beany Surprise, Explorateur & Asparagus Salad With An '07 Cab Franc

We nearly went to Cleveland yesterday for the annual Lola mini-vacation.

After some cocktails and a bit of wine Monday, it sounded like the best idea ever.  Then, fifteen minutes later, not so much.

So a 'vacation' downtown for the day, something we haven't done in years, substituted and probably exceeded a trip to the Cleve, especially given the ten hours in the car that would have been required.

Xoco for lunch (delicious), Sable Bar + Kitchen for cocktails right after (really delicious) and an early dinner at Purple Pig (Crap! That was good!) made for a pretty great getaway during one of the most gorgeous strings of weather days in Chicago in years.

On Purple Pig, a vintage 2005 Juvé y Camps Reserva de la Familia Cava made for a largely good pairing with the food but alone, so wonderfully funky, it made our minds dance with visions of what we could whip up at home that would slide right into the spritely yet deep funk this one offers.  Great stuff here.  Entirely reasonable $52 at the restaurant and $15-17 on the webbywebs.

Monday's meal that led to the downtown vacation also had some revelations.  One, Turkish Beany Surprise made two days before for an impromptu Meatless Monday turned out to be an awesome idea.  Mrs. Ney was leery of such things, or at least bored by the idea of it.  Two, (whisper) I think I like cabernet franc.  Like...a lot.  Three, eat your cheese two months past the expiration date every time.  It's what Jesus wants.

#296 - Sea Bass a la Veracruzana & Saffron Rice With '96 Heredia Gravonia

Back in 2010, right around this time of the year, we drank up one of our Quinta do Vallado wines in anticipation of a stay at their winery in Portugal.

And on that trip, we had wistful and unrealistic yearnings to hop over to Rioja from the Douro and visit another winery that holds a massive place in our wine hearts, López de Heredia.

"It's only six hours away. We're already here, have a car. Can we pass it up?"

Yeah, we found out we could pass it up. That's a long time in a car on a trip that already had six hours booked in said vehicle.

So we're going back to the Iberian Peninsula next month, this time to Rioja, to visit the place we yearned to visit two years ago. Time to drink up a few Heredias in the meantime.

Gotta prep.

After experiencing Veracruz-style sea bass with the 2001 LdH Gravonia in May and all its pairing glory (probably the best pairing we've had this year), seeing where the 1996 is with nearly the same food platform felt right and proper.

It didn't reach the May pairing heights but it was still quality Heredia food and wine stuff.

#229 - Pancetta Lamb, Pea Purée & Potatoes With '06 Ken Wright

Let's get link-happy.

We've mostly eaten our lamb in a supporting cast sense this year, using it as a protein to complement an interesting recipe here (Turkish beany surprise) and/or to try an ignored grape/style there (cabernet franc/Amarone).

We've had it out in the world this year (-ish) at Taxim (sausage form) and Blackbird (saddle form/rack form) and didn't have it out at Bacchus, unfortunately.

Or, when lamb was made to be the star of a meal, something like a potato-kale cake, fregola and carrot purée or, well, Turkish beany surprise, came along and stole its thunder.

Back to the lamb basics last night:  Lamb made to complement the lamb, support the lamb and star the lamb with flavors leaning more toward clean American.

When that happens, it's pinot noir.  Tried and true, always delicious and tastes like Home, tradition, holiday, friendship and Love ("To every season, turn, turn, turn...").

Food:  Pancetta-wrapped lamb, pea purée, pomegranate seeds and roasted potatoes with mâche salad

#178 - Lamb, Turkish Beany Goodness & Rice With An '05 Cab Franc

Things learned or reaffirmed last night:

1.  Find a good meat purveyor.  That's understood.  But also find a second-favorite meat purveyor when your favorite feels a wee bit too expensive for the budget or the meal (1a. - and find a cheapo you can trust for those really tight weeks).

2.  Keep trying grapes you don't love.  That's understood.  But when you pick a bottle containing said grape, pick a good one and spend a couple of bucks extra.  Otherwise, it's like watching baseball for the first time and checking out the Astros.  That's not good baseball.

3.  Recipes with names you can't pronounce are usually pretty good stuff.  If the name lasted this long and wasn't translated into something like Turkish Beany Surprise, there's probably a good reason for it.

4.  Watching Red Sox Nation go into full-blown apocalypse mode this early in the season has been a joy to watch.

Food:  Lamb, zeytinyagli barbunya, basmati rice and asparagus

Medium-rare lamb, tasty lamb, not a lot of lamb but we were fine with the amount, simple lamb full of enough lamb goodness.  From Gene's Sausage Shop in Lincoln Square.  $20 for both plates as opposed to $30-35 from meat purveyor numero uno, Paulina Meat Market, also on Lincoln.

24-hour marinade of puréed onion, cinnamon and olive oil for the meat, cast-iron seared and finished in a 450-degree oven.  Onions came through, cinnamon not so much but perked up with the wine.  Good meat but the side dish made the meal.

Zeytinyagli Barbunya, a Turkish bean dish from The New Book Of Middle Eastern Food (page 327).  Borlotti beans soaked overnight and mixed with onions, garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, sugar, Aleppo pepper, dill and parsley, minus the tomato paste to keep it lighter.  It's a dish similar to ful, the Egyptian fava bean dish but without the lemon juice.  Extraordinarily subtle flavors with everything taken down a notch from what we expected.  Light, but once the tongue quickly adjusted, we relished in its low-key goodness.  Like most good recipes, every ingredient could be tasted, all surrounded by a thin, delicious liquid that brought everything in line.  This is great stuff, bringing the entire meal down in intensity, tasting fresh, light but never making us feel like we were going to have to hit the snacks two hour later.

Basmati rice and asparagus to round out the meal.

Ate well.  Could have gone in tons of directions with the wine.  A lighter syrah or mouvèdre blend might have beefed up the meal.  A Rioja might have mingled well with its tobacco, cedar and cherry notes though after eating, I tend to think it might have clashed.

We went with a grape we don't love.  Cabernet franc.

Wine:  2005 Charles Joguet Les Verennes du Grand Clos Chinon ($35 - Red & White)


100% cabernet franc.  Two hour decant and it needed it.  Extremely tart right out of the bottle.

Settled into something quite pretty.  The main reason we don't love cab franc is the wet leaves.  Check that.  Not wet leaves.  Drenched old wet leaves, like when you have to dig out the eaves in the spring from all the detritus from the previous fall.  That's been our limited experience with 100% cab franc.

But as usual, find a good one and the goodness makes it good.  Lots of raspberries in different forms throughout with a small hit of cherry and even a tiny bit of concentrated blueberry underneath.  Secondary flavors of tobacco and some sort of dark spice.  Fine structure offering layers galore all wrapped in a medium body with some of the prettiest, understated acid I've had in a long while.  Tannins played its right and proper role in lifting and mixing all the flavors.

Never turned ugly or odd at any turn with the food, always taking cues from the food and doing good things.  Which brings me to the defining flavor in the wine.  With the asparagus especially, something was sitting in its core that we couldn't put our finger on.  Something slightly creamy with spice and acid.  Then Mrs. Ney nailed it.  It tasted like great homemade ketchup.  

The wet leaves were there but never dominated.  No real green herbs hits or twigginess though, which I expected from a cab franc.  Just a pretty wine drinking well now, could easily be held for years and from a very good vintage taken from a small parcel of ungrafted vines of Franc de Pied instead of grafting on phylloxera-resistant American rootstock (that's really old-school).

It took me awhile to get there but I'll be buying more.  Flickinger is currently selling it for $30.

Pairing:  89  The wine was in lockstep with the weight and grace of the food

Came down to what didn't happen.  Nothing ever reared an even slightly ugly head.

The cinnamon in the meat rub and the Aleppo pepper in the zeytinyagli barbunya shot right to the wine's core, perking up the wine's edge and lifted and intensified the fruit in a great way.

And the ketchup with the asparagus made for the most surprising and funny note of the night.

We could have gone in a ton of directions with this meal and each would have been different and most likely good stuff.  Even an oily, herby and lemony white would have been entirely interesting with only a small tweak or two with the food.  It was that light considering it was lamb.

But in the end, the impression left on me was that the Les Verennes Du Grand Clos served so well that it probably would have landed in the upper tier of any pairing.

So...success.  And delicious.

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.

                   

Christmas

Let's kickstart this here blog back up.

The 365 Days of Food and Wine experiment, while interesting, sapped my ability to accurately describe the delicious food Mrs. Ney made. It got to the point where my word canon reached the very end of its description limit. I'd re-read things I'd written and think, "Hot damn that's boring!" And that wasn't doing any justice to the time and effort Mrs. Ney had put in to researching, thinking about, and making dinners.

The break was needed, but it's time to step back in, because while we hope anyone searching for food and wine pairing advice - a vexing and frightening proposition for many - comes across this site and comes to understand that it's not that frightening, mostly we want and need the reference. We also like to see how our year and tastes flowed and changed.

Christmas seems a good place to start.

Food: Bittman Lamb Osso Buco with Sean Brock Grits and Rapini

Mark Bittman osso buco recipe, from NYT Cooking. Lamb osso buco from D'Artagnan, seared, then cooked for 90 minutes on the stovetop with garlic, anchovies, sage, marjoram, rosemary, white wine, salt and pepper until tender. Meat removed, sauce reduced, served on the side. Cracked pink peppercorns sprinkled on top of lamb. Sean Brock grits, from Heritage: A Cookbook (page 74 - "How to cook grits like a Southerner"). Simple rapini done up with salt and pepper that somehow didn't taste so simple.

Luscious lamb. Frenchy touches with northern Italian guts. Osso buco is never going to be the best meat I've ever had in my life, but when it hits, like here, it's a meat-melty wonder. Rather perfect grits, as Mr. Brock seems to offer with most anything he offers (see burgers, patty melts, steaks, grits, griddle cakes...he's one of our house food guiders to the delicious). Silky, but corny and buttery, with a surprising jump and lightness. A great balance and vacillation between all the flavors. When some of the anchovy pan sauce bled into the rapini, it was maybe the best rapini we've had in a good long time.

This was a dinner worthy of Christmas, after a shockingly easy Christmas Eve visit to the family.

Wine: 2015 Jolie-Laide Trousseau Gris Fanucchi-Wood Vineyard RRV

We loved the poop out the 2014 Jolie-Laide Trousseau Gris, first had at Chez Panisse two Septembers ago. So board and giving. The 2015 is more sturdy and focused in its flavors. It gets more directly and quickly to the point it's trying to make. Bitter orange peel galore, like Chinotto or Aperol in presence and aggressiveness. Wispy touches of herbs and minerals, particularly on the back-end, even something tea-like thrown in there on occasion. This one needs to warm up significantly in order for it to stretch its legs and become more elastic and playful. The 2014 was all ethereal, sunshine-y goodness, but sputtered with some food. The 2015 is more punchy, and that over the course of the next year might make it more suitable to the flavors we love.

Pairing: Once it reached the right temp...nothing wrong with that.

I opened a 2005 Gourt des Mautens Rasteau (Jérome Bressy) and decanted couple of hours before dinner, but it didn't budge from its hairy-backed, tannic self, and would have been just terrible with how delicate the lamb was. But the Jolie-Laide served us quite well. Not perfect, not by any means. Once it warmed up though, there was enough weaving in-and-out with the grits and lamb together to say, "Slap Daddy! That's just fine!"

Lunch: Homemade duck pâté with Rogue Flora Nelle Blue Cheese, fig marmalade, baguette and salad, served with 2011 Matthiasson Vermouth. Mrs. Ney whipped up A LOT of duck pâté, this one more country in style with its small chunks of duck meat. Turned into one of those pâtés one eats and thinks THIS is how all pâté should be. Every flavor bouncing and jiving with each other. Rogue Flora Nelle has that ideal touch of blue streaks while still retaining a clean brightness to it. House fav.

All served with a Matthiasson Vermouth that's been sitting in this house way too long, and it was great here. Smoky tangerine peel, blood orange and bark. Still going quite strong. A bite of cheese and fig marmalade on baguette with a sip of vermouth was as pairing-perfect as it gets.

Damn good (and lazy) Christmas Day! We didn't get to the "Feast of the One Fish" (brandade). It's in the works for New Year's Eve. With bubbles. We need bubbles. So we'll have them. Because bubbles are essential in life.

After the jump is a list of all the pairings we've had since this blog stopped, some of it in shorthand. It's for our reference: