#291 - Ratatouille & French Feta With '11 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé

The price on the Tempier rosé shot up sometime in the mid-aughts, from around $30 to the current price of almost $40.

Which raises a question. Is a rosé ever worth $40.

The answer is, of course, yes.

Why would rosé ever be seen as some ersatz version of wine not worth a higher price? That's just silly talk.

Also, when drinking Domaine Tempier's rosé, you're not exactly searching for value. It's a rosé experience, a benchmark, a peek into how one of the masters of the juice and style expressed the grapes in that year.

But let's just say for drops and chuckles you're craving a Tempier rosé and have ratatouille on the docket for dinner. Should be great, right? It was. Very nice grub and juice, separately and together, even if we drank it way too young.

But for $20 we could have drunk another Kermit Lynch import (a wine made by Mr. Lynch himself) the Domaine Les Pallières Au Petit Bonheur Rosé and found very similar pairing love.

Was it $20 flushed down the toilet. No.

#290 - Yakitori Hanger & Yuca With '05 Quinta Do Vale Meão

Or hanging tenders, as the Whole Foods label said.

We didn't know hanger steak had another name like hanging tenders.

Learn something new everyday.

And it's quite a little product. $8/lb as opposed to $14/lb at Paulina. These trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes, ready to be skewered so we did it up Asian-style and ate it with our favorite starch and one of our favorite wines.

Food:  Yakitori hanger and onion skewers with yuca fries and arugula salad

Hanger steak cubes marinated in soy sauce, mirin, dry sake, brown sugar, black pepper, garlic and ginger, a Saveur recipe using beef instead of chicken. Meat skewered with yakitori-soaked onions interlaced between each cube. Parsley and mint dumped on top. Well-done hanger. Oops! But oddly delicious nonetheless with the marinade leading the way at every turn. The meat simply became a vehicle for the deep Asian mouth surprise ("That's what she said!").

#289 - Linguine Al Limone & Avocado-Kumato-Corn Salad With '10 La Spinetta Vermentino

Odd combo.

Delicious combo.

Essentially an antipasto and a primo (look at me!) made into a meal.

A Saturday night dinner on an unexpected night off that hurt financially but felt needed psychologically.

A 20-degree midday temperature drop yesterday without any rain developing made it impossible to not find ourselves in a good mood. And eating this food with that weather?

Happy. Happy, happy, happy stuff.

Food:  Pasta al limone & avocado-kumato-corn salad

The simple, basic, delicious pasta both of us were craving. A David Rocco recipe to boot (changed a bit) and yet another example of how the Italians get things so right.

Linguine with tons of lemon juice and zest, garlic, olive oil, the rest of the balsamic/juniper pecorino from a few days ago (sprinkled on top), parmesan (in the sauce), lemon thyme (added to the recipe) and parsley. Uncomplicated and straightforward pasta with perfect balance; the boatload of lemon in two forms cut through both cheeses at just the right level, leaving behind the best of both in our mouths with the parsley and lemon thyme then mixing in beautifully. Dumb in how good this tasted and it takes about 10 minutes to make start to finish.

#288 - Spiced Lamb Riblets With '10 Villa Creek Garnacha & Tapas With Albariño & Malvasia

Indian, Spanish and 4th of July-inspired food this week.

Served along with torrontés, Slovenian zelen, albariño, malvasia, New World grenache and pinot noir.

A rather lavish three-day spread. That's how we celebrated Independence Day.

That and staying out of the oppressiveness of outside, a brutality of heat so brutal that we skipped Winnemac Park fireworks this year. And from the relative lack of long and sustained firework bangs coming from two blocks away, so did mostly everyone else.

But we ate like people do on the 4th. American-inspired food with American wine. Can't say we're not flag-wavers.

Food: Barbecue-like lamb riblets, tomato salad and corn on the cob

#287 - Chakundari Chicken Tikka, Beets & Zucchini Cakes W/ Crios & Slovenian Bubbles

We love Hema's Kitchen on Devon.

This meal, made at home, rivals Hema's with Indian flavors and spices flying everywhere while offering something slightly more northern Indian in origin, as opposed to the central Indian wonder that comes from Ms. Hema Potla.

I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to regional Indian cuisine but Mr. Bittman has the rundown on beet-marinated chicken here.

As Mr. Bittman says, go find dried fenugreek leaves for this recipe. We found ours at Pars Persian Store on Clark. It makes a big difference, as it opened us up to another distinctive and deep flavor that now seems necessary and wanted.

Food: Chakundari chicken tikka, roasted beets, zucchini cakes, naan and raita

Recipe for chakundari chicken tikka (beet-marinated chicken) here. It's a bit of work but entirely worth the effort. Dried fenugreek leaves, ginger, garlic, yogurt, garam masala, cumin, all the Indian goodness, flavors that are bright yet deep and dark at the same time. I'm not going to attempt to describe the flavor of the chicken, it just bounces and expands all over the place. Top three chicken in my world.

#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.

#285 - Fish In Shrimp Sauce & Maduros With '01 LdH Gravonia Blanco

Or filhote com molho de camaroēs e bananas, if you want to practice your Brazilian Portuguese.

That meal, the third in today's roundup, came off so utterly surprising that we vowed to eat fish once a week from this point out. With a recipe like this and eating it with a wine like the 2001 López de Heredia white, that might be something that lasts longer than the mere proclamation.

Hot Chicago days brought about food from hot climes this weekend.

Monday saw skirt steak in green sriracha sauce (Food & Wine - Susan Feniger), sweet potato fries, mayo for dipping and arugula salad with 2008 Orin Swift Saldo ($26 WDC).

It's a meal that naturally follows the utterance, "I want something California blendy, maybe something Zinfandel-ish." Grab some cheap cut of beef, maybe marinate it, maybe not, get a good char on it, throw on some interesting sauce you found on the interwebs or in a magazine like green sriracha sauce, toss a bag of sweet potato fries in the oven, whip up a fancy mayo for dipping (like pan juice mayo), finish with an arugula salad and drink something New World, big and blendish. Orin Swift, Villa Creek, Owen Roe (the Ex Umbris started this business).

Very little kitchen pain, flavors galore, tastes like a fancy BBQ and everything comes in under $50. This meal is our "let's just order a pizza and drink something we have in the house." It's essentially the same price, same amount of time, only a bit more work and delicious as all get-out. Green sriracha is something delicious. Doesn't resemble sriracha in the traditional sense. It's more of a broad definition akin to an Asian chimichurri or pesto, led by basil, coconut and lemongrass and worth a look. The Saldo more stayed its delightful self than offering a whole lot in the way of real, true-blue enhancement but that's all what really wanted. No clashing and tons of juicy dark goodness. Pairing Score: 88

#284 - Farmers' Market Jubilee

Two Lincoln Square Farmers' Market-driven meals with two adult wines.

Huge haul of veggies for a mere $14! And we have a boatload of snap peas left!

Meal #1 - Indian Carrot Salad. Recipe here (another Jamie Oliver recipe). Last eaten here (wanted a bigger Oregon pinot expression with the wine there and got it with this one). A base of Minnesota wild rice topped with ground lamb gussied up with garam masala and mixed with carrots, carrot greens, cilantro, mint, sesame seeds and topped with pomegranate seeds. A dressing of olive oil, lemon, cumin, shallots and ginger drizzled over the top of the massive mound of mouthwatering goodness.

A pretty perfect blend of spice and earthiness with this meal, edging more towards earthy with that earthiness brightened up by the zing in the dressing and pomegranate seed pop. This was a huge plate of food that never felt like too much because of its freshness, vacillation and interplay of flavors. Coriander in the garam masala led the spice march with the carrot greens (a product that has the evocative smell of whacking weeds in Iowa on a hot August day) taking things down to a garden-y quality without making it taste too Garden-y!

Just great stuff that made us feel so clean.  And the wine helped make much of that happen.

#283 - Gigante Beans & Scallops In Pea Purée With '11 Palmina Pinot Grigio

We were thinking last night that if a person could have only two sources of recipes from chefs/food people in which they had to eat, nothing else, that person would eat quite well with Jamie Oliver and Michael Symon.

It would be the trifecta: cheap, diverse and heavily herbed food goodness that would never get boring.

Mrs. Ney takes from oodles of sources in many forms in our apartment and on the interwebs, but anytime we see those two on TV, either from the bevy of Jamie Oliver's BBC shows or Symon's Suppers on The Cooking Channel ( a show that seems to be rounding into a Jamie Oliver-type show for the American audience), it gets both of us instantly excited to Eat. That. Food!

Another source Mrs. Ney found that she's starting to see as a pretty great little thing is the Palmina website recipe page. It's Italian food with a California edge catered directly to the wines Palmina makes; tried-and-true recipes made specifically not only for the varietals they offer but more for the specific expression of Palmina's Italian varietals. In other words, Italian wines with a California edge. Palmina took the time to get in there and find what works with their wines and that's a good thing. Our last experience taken from their site, polenta panini & roasted beet salad with the 2010 Palmina Malvasia Bianca was something pretty great - fancy, delicious patio food and wine.

This one was no different.

#282 - Michael Symon Chicken & Delice de Bourgogne With '05 Jobard Meursault-Blagny 1er Cru

Unbeknownst to us, Monday was National Cheese Day.

I'd like to thank the Maker that we accidentally had cheese with dinner. Can you imagine the humiliation if we didn't?

It was even more nice that we had a cheese we love, Delice de Bourgogne, with chicken we love and white Burgundy, which rounds out a true (and easy) favorite over the last couple of years.

Our white Burgundy collection isn't anything deep or broad, but we usually have a few on hand, nothing radically profound, but a couple that are age-worthy.

That became a problem couple of weeks ago when we read this from Matt Kramer at Wine Spectator:

"Starting with the 1995 vintage, that "better tomorrow" often didn't arrive. White Burgundies that should have been gloriously fresh-tasting, vibrant and dimensional five or seven years after the vintage proved to be nothing of the sort. In fact, they were dead, victims of what has come to be called premature oxidation. Affected wines have a dark yellow hue (where they should be a vibrant lemon-yellow); the scent is oxidized, almost Sherry-like; and the flavor is flat, devoid of fruitiness, essentially shot. This for wines that should just be beginning to become mature."

Premox. We had no idea. Might explain this. White Burgundy for us has been a recent dalliance but that's a big blind spot. Places like Burgundy and Barolo are regions put on the back burner due to the price, making for big holes in our knowledge of those places and, apparently, a large thing like this evaded our wine news radar.

Don't think we would have dropped the bucks on this bottle had we known. But we did and got lucky.

#281 - Piri-Piri Chicken, Couscous & Pineapple With '10 Berger Grüner Veltliner

Holy crap!

From a technical pairing standpoint, this was just awful. Truly terrible stuff. This was Ishtar. This was Battlefield Earth. This was even bad inside of bad, like "Take me to the teleportation platform!" inside Battlefield Earth.

We planned a Portuguese white, 2009 Van Zellers Branco ($18 - Spanish Table), to drink with this No Reservations Mozambique episode-inspired piri-piri chicken but...corked. No backup chilled. The 2010 Berger Grüner Veltliner, a common fridge wine in this house, was the only option. And what an option it was!

Food was piri-piri chicken thighs (page 118, The New Portuguese Table) cooked under a brick. Tasted like fancy buffalo wings in a good way. Whole wheat Israeli couscous cooked in chicken stock with crushed coriander and fennel seeds; sliced green onions mixed in post-cooking. Great cheap option that can be gussied up and was. Overripe pineapple. Lemon thyme dumped over everything. Arugula salad with evoo and white balsamic vinegar to finish. Tasted like roadside café food thrust upon you when your car breaks down in the middle of Louisiana nowhere and something about it leaves a big, happy impression on you.

The wine pairing was another story. Just shocking how bad it was. So bad that any critical tongue was put in our back pocket and we just sat back and took it in, which made for an oddly happy dinner. With the food, the 2010 Berger Grüner Veltliner ($13 - WDC), usually a delicious little mid-afternoon guzzler, tasted like zucchini juice, bean-soaking water and, at times, milk just about to turn had a baby. Hilarious how bad it was with the piri-piri (and we knew it would be). Made nice efforts with the couscous, even good at times, but once the piri-piri hit our tongues, it was all downhill from there. But like watching Battlefield Earth, there wasn't one moment I was going to get up and leave (yep. Saw it in the theatre in anticipation of such howlingly terrible stuff). It was so bad it was almost good.  Pairing Score: 60  

#280 - Chimichurri-Marinated Flank Steak & Potatoes With '06 Mollydooker Carnival Of Love

Got rid of it!

And thank God! Both of us were sick of looking at it and both of us were sick of having it come up in the discussion when figuring out pairings over the last few years.

I mean the wine, of course.

97 points Wine Advocate, #8 on the Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2007 (the 2007 checked in at #9) so...critical darling and most likely the reason we bought. That and being available at Sam's. We loved Australian wine at the time. Still do. But if this sort of wine came up on some list now and we saw it out in the world, there would probably be more of a pause and pass.

We're learning.

Food: Chimichurri-marinated flank steak, salt-crusted potatoes, balsamic-roasted pearl onions and arugula salad

#279 - Shrimp Lunch With '10 Strub Riesling & Greek Dinner With '09 Villa Creek Avenger

Hey, it was thigh-soaking hot last Memorial Day as well.

And we went Greek then, too!

And we had Villa Creek wine just a few days before last May Remembrance with ropa vieja, a meal we were just talking about last night!

This is eerie. Moon cycles or something.

Our pairings were better this May holiday than last, with a quality bargain riesling and a surprisingly savory Villa Creek number that I think shows the vintage and the work Villa Creek put in to create something rather delicious.

Lunch:  Leek-saffron shrimp and bread for juice dipping with 2010 Strub Niersteiner Brückchen Riesling Kabinett ($18 - WDC)

#278 - Yogurt/Saffron-Marinated Top Sirloin & Potatoes With '04 Resalte de Peñafiel De Restia Crianza

A Selbach-Oster dinner at Yusho on Tuesday left me contemplating buying another cellar.  Mr. Johannes made the night something to remember. Great guy.

Home classic revisited yesterday after a moderately long absence.

The 'home classic'-ness came from a marinade of saffron, onions, yogurt, ginger, lemon juice and olive oil.

Stupid great with bison and '07 Duorum Reserva.

So good with flank steak and duck fat potatoes that it trumped Portuguese buggy-bear love, the '04 Quinta do Vale Meão.

With the ubiquitous pan-Mediterranean flavors in the marinade, your wine direction is pretty open, but we've always loved the Spanish-Portuguese connection, something with a smoky, mineral undertone.

Ribera fits like a glove.

Food: Yogurt/saffron-marinated top sirloin, rosemary-garlic potatoes and arugula salad

#277 - Michael Symon Chicken, Salsa Verde & Fava-Corn-Avocado Salad With '08 Viñátigo Verdello

We spent four days in Portland/Willamette Valley last week.

Here are some highlights:

• No sales tax! 
• The Portland airport smells like wet dog. 
• Firehouse Restaurant has good food that needs more depth but a great wine list. 
• The new Nissan Sentra has fantastic get-up-and-go but it's a little too slopey. 
• No sales tax! 
• Owen Roe winery is a warehouse with a road sign and gravel road leading to it that makes you think you might be bound, gagged and thrown in the basement. But by golly! Great private tasting! 
• Nick's Italian Café in McMinnville pumps out delicious, old-school vittles with a huge nod to the new and a great, cheap, Oregon-focused wine list picked to match the food. 
• Expected the Willamette Valley to be more...bucolic.
• The beautiful grounds at Ponzi match their beautiful wines. 
• At Voodoo Donut, simple is better.
• Stumptown Cold Brew gets us closer in finding the best bottled coffee 
• I thought I'd found the Holy Grail of Viet/Thai food while eating at Pok Pok but it didn't resonate as much as I thought it would (and then it did. I really did). 
• No sales tax! 
• No self-service gas stations, which was a touch odd. 
• Potato Champion's worth it for the curry ketchup and anchovy-tarragon mayo alone. 
• Olympic Provisions has a top-notch ham sandwich and bratwurst. 
• Flagship Powell's Books made me miss bookstores. 
• Andina's Peruvian grub hit a big place in both of us. 
• No sales tax! 
• Four days of sun and mid-70s...in Portland, continuing our vacation streak of great weather (knock-knock).  

Maybe should have went skydiving. Maybe should have seen the coast. But nice little getaway overall. We both thought that if we worked for a corporation and were told we were getting transferred, with the myriad of just terrible possible options, if we were told we were going to Portland...for two years...we'd both say, "Oh...okay...we can do that." It's a nice place with nice people and tons to do.

On the food. We like home food and we like Chicago food just a bit more. In our small sample size, we missed the depth and maybe the surprise.

Speaking of home food, this is why we Like it:

#276 - Rabbit Sausages, Chicken Thigh & Smokey Blue Fregola With '11 Ponzi Pinot Gris + 1

Ponzi-licious.

Ponzi acid, guys. Ponzi. Acid.

It's what they do oh-so well (among other things) and these two meals really showcased that.

Good weekend. Found Ring Day on Monday followed by tuna Niçoise with --> Ponzi Pinot Noir Rosé followed by this meal.

Plus, dog obedience class is over. We got our Wednesday nights back. You should see how much she kinda-sorta-not really remembers it all.

A trip to Oregon wine country for us soon. Drinking Ponzi seemed right and proper....and Ponzi-licious (I'll stop that now).

Food: Rabbit sausages, chicken thigh, blue cheese fregola and baby kale salad with meat juice

#275 - Spanish Hanger, Rosemary Potatoes & Rapini With '96 Contino Gran Reserva

May 7th will henceforth be referred to as Found Ring Day.

I lost my wedding ring cleaning out the neighborhood storm drains Sunday.  Convinced it was lost to the city sewer gods, I nonetheless made a seemingly hopeless effort to find it. As I was looking, an older gentleman on a bicycle, smoking a cigarette, curious as to what I was doing with a rake around a storm drain, asked what was happening. I told him, he was sympathetic, we talked, he mentioned I should look to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, and he peddled away. I found it three minutes later.

I'm not a religious man, but...

So moderately fancy wine to celebrate.

On a side note, this was the replacement ring if said ring wasn't found. That's a freakin' gorgeous ring.

Food:  Hanger steak, rosemary potatoes and rapini

#274 - Weisswurst, Grapes, Tomatoes, Pierogis & Rapini With '09 Ponzi Dolcetto

While not necessarily a meal fit for the first hot and humid day of the year, this sausage, grapes and tomatoes recipe, first eaten as a weeknight meal a few weeks ago and loved every second of it, has easily shoved its elbows into our food rotation.

Its five best qualities:

1. Delicious
2. Easy to make
3. Versatile as all-get out for wine pairings
4. Tasty enough for quick dinner AND sorta fancy dinner
5. Delicious

In fact, it's a meal perfect for showcasing a wine you crave. Reverse it. Modify the recipe. You crave a wine and don't necessarily crave a specific dinner? Modify this one with herbs. Got a Portuguese wine just sitting around and want it? Add a dash of five-spice.  How 'bout a GSM? Sage and pepper it up. Maybe South African syrah blend? Bet a sprinkling of mint and black olives would be interesting. Possibly a Ribera del Duero? Char up the sausage and drizzle in a touch more balsamic.

It's a platform for so much because it possesses wine's origins in the grapes with a tomato acid that doesn't drive the dish.

Mrs. Ney wishes she would have added rosemary to link the Italian variety here but we quickly warmed to the pairing while getting everything the wine offered.

Food:  Weisswurst, grapes & tomatoes with potato pierogis and rapini

#273 - Roasted Chicken, Brillat-Savarin, Bread & Butter With '02 Gimmonet Special Club

Been awhile.

Wine-related things have happened, just little of anything that wowed us.

A Blackbird dinner featuring older-vintage Sanguis wines brought interesting food, if low in acid, and pairings that puzzled us a bit.  Texture perfection has seemingly been the MO at Blackbird over the last few years and they nail it.  It's memorable stuff in that respect.  It just doesn't get under our skin these days like acid perfection does and that, in our experience, takes a backseat at Blackbird.

With wines all a wee touch over 15% alcohol, more grizzly bear elements in the food seemed warranted. A stupid-good sous-vide quail was gobbled up by the Infidels, a bigger syrah-cab-grenache blend.  An amuse of fluke and lardo needed an acid lift from the Acromion, a roussanne-viognier blend, and the wine just didn't offer such a thing.  The Optimist showed better with ahi and beef tongue than our home experience while The Bossman, a personal favorite, fell flat, turning gritty with black bean agnolotti, ricotta, peas, morels and wasabi.

Sanguis is about decadence. Blackbird excels in different food arenas. Odd fit.

But the winery owners are just the tops and they have a customer. Blackbird as well because the experience is always something that feels like visiting friends.

In other news, the sign of a good wine shop comes from a game. If you browse the selection in a given wine shop and someone told you that you could only drink wines from there the rest of your natural-born life, would that upset you? Would you feel like a large gaping hole opened up in your wine world?  Would you palpably feel like something, a big something, was missing? I don't think I'd feel that to any large extent with Vinic in Evanston. Great diversity, great owner, great bargains and an atmosphere you want to spend time just walking around in.  Rare, very rare thing in Chicago. An Evanston alcohol/city combined sales tax approaching 15%, which was a surprise, but worth it.

On to a back-on-the-equine pairing of chicken and fancy Champagne.

#272 - Polenta Panini & Roasted Beet Salad With '10 Palmina Malvasia Bianca

Winery website recipe eaten with a wine from the winery recommended for the recipe.  Or the other way around.  Potato, potahto.

They usually get it right.  And this one was right, delicious, pure, springy, new and just gosh darn wonderful.

I was thrilled enough with two Palmina reds to join their wine club because we typically have a jones for varietals grown in places not typically grown.

Palmina covers much of the better-known Italian grape spectrum and our experience with three of them, a nebbiolo, barbera and this malvasia, has just been the tops.

Lunch:  Polenta-anchovy-caper panini with lemon-yogurt dip and roasted beet salad

#271 - Ropa Vieja & Tostones With '09 Villa Creek Willow Creek Cuvée

Cinnamon stick!

That's what was missing!

And a longer decant!

That, too!

On what else can I add an exclamation point?!

The Angels' bullpen and Scioscia's love affair with Kevin Jepsen makes me want to stick a hot poker in my eye!

I have more Angels-related exclamation point business but we'll table them for now.  Long season ("It'll be okay, It'll be okay" - rinse and repeat).

Good meal last night, friendly and fresh with a wine bringing the New World fruit we crave with ropa vieja but we missed the bridge to the wine.  And that was the missing cinnamon stick.  Oops.

And we missed the tempranillo a little that's been so successful with ropa vieja in the past.  Nice diversion here, though.  And maybe a beef that's more down, dirty and gnarly.  Okay!  That's it.

Food:  Ropa vieja and tostones

#270 - Hanger, Vanilla Mash & Rapini With '08 Owen Roe Merlot

Portland vittles and Willamette wine trip next month!

A trip that includes a visit to the Oregon outpost of Owen Roe.

Those crazy cats have become a bit of a favorite.

This wine was no exception.  In fact, it might be the best full-on 100% merlot I've ever had.  We don't drink much merlot except when we have a rare yen for the fat pile that is vanilla mash.

This time, we wanted merlot, oddly, with the hanger, vanilla mash and rapini business coming along for the ride, which is the way the meal itself turned out because this is a silly good merlot that strikes every chord of balance:

Expressive without being obvious, elusive without being a tease, fruity without being a hammer, earthy without being gritty, full and round without bringing milk chocolate cream, layered and long without a sappy linger.

Want more now, please.

Food:  Hanger steak, vanilla mash, rapini and Jamaican pickled onions

#269 - Lidia's Fava Bean & Ricotta Salata Strozzapreti With '09 Girard Sancerre Rouge

It's just pasta.  Except when it's not.

Because when you eat like Lidia Bastianich, you eat well and we're amassing a nice little catalogue of meals and pairings based on Lidia's recipes.

She makes "simple food, poor food," food that chefs love to talk about with the same pretentious pitch, cadence and emphasis, and you roll your eyes because it always seems like it comes right out of a manual mandatorily issued to every chef looking to bloviate endlessly about why he or she is so awesome.  It's the chapter that follows the chronicling of the mystical nature of Chef Passion and how you can taste their Passion.  Two chapters later tells us that local, sustainable and organic is the only way to eat and live, like they're the first ones to discover such a thing.

Lidia doesn't do that.  She just says, "This is good food.  Eat it.  Because it's good."  She doesn't need to sound like a 21 year-old college student who just got out of a Art History 1959-1964 seminar with a desire to convince the world that they somehow had something to do with Art History 1959-1964.

Food:  Fava Bean & Ricotta Salata Strozzapreti

#268 - Pistachio-Crusted Lamb Rack & Pea Risotto With '09 Freeman Pinot Noir

The problem with gaining a bit of wine knowledge is that one - and when I say one, I mean me - has to resist the compulsion to think they know their tastes, like it's something quickly achieved with a bit of effort and then everything is done.

The same can be said about wine knowledge in general.  Just when you think you have a firm grasp on wine-related things, something comes along that rather bluntly tells you that you're - and when I say you're, I mean me - an idiot.

It's akin to the adage about youth, life and aging.  At 18, you don't know anything.  At 20, you think you know everything.  At 25, you're back to being a moron.

With wine as in life, attempting to get to 'a point' of knowledge is a fool's errand.

Case in point (and this continues to shock me with its foolish foolishness).  Two years ago, my 37 year-old brain figured California pinot noirs and California wines overall weren't going to give me the character and finesse I want from wine.  Good ones are going to be good but big and forgettable.  Nothing that's going to get into your bones.

It was a shortcut.  We have a bit of money to spend on wine but nothing like a war chest to spend willy-nilly on just anything.  My experience with California over the years said I could basically eliminate it in the quest for Good Wine with maybe a little dalliance here and there.

I'm an idiot.  If pressed, my favorite, huggy-bear wines still come from France and Spain.  But if someone told us we could only drink wines from the United States for an entire year, with what's going on in Oregon and Washington these days, we would happily do it and crap, would we drink well.  Not a huge surprise there. But, at times, as we continue to be...surprised by California wine...it a bit of a revelatory, educational and joyful...surprise.

Food:  pistachio-crusted rack of lamb wrapped in pancetta, pea risotto and grilled whole scallions

#267 - Greek Chicken Thighs, Skordalia & Spicy Carrot Purée With '10 Sigalas Asirtiko-Athiri

Shorter post today, mainly because this pairing didn't get out of the gate in any happy sense.

Greek chicken dinner.  Eat Greek.  It's what's Good.

But the wine could have been cheap, low acid, throwaway Savennières if given blind.  Interesting expression, just not something that kept our interest in the least.

Food:  Greek chicken thighs over skordaliá and spicy carrot purée with pita for dipping

Chicken thighs marinated in lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, oregano, dry white wine, garlic, onion and black pepper, then grilled.  Served over skordaliá made with skin-on potatoes, almonds, breadcrumbs, garlic, lemon, extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice.  More rustic and simply outstanding stuff with the chicken juice bleeding all over it.

Moroccan-spiced carrot purée.  Caraway, ginger, roasted garlic, and harissa blended into puréed carrots.  It's a favorite always and forever.  Pita for dipping.

Great meal.  Too bad the wine couldn't keep up.

#266 - Quebecois Cheese, Smoked Trout & Other Stuff With NV Egly Ouriet Champagne

Visual post. Delicious and fancy lunch with a Champagne that may have been the best yet.

Wine:  NV Egly-Ouriet Champagne Brut 1er Cru Les Vignes De Vrigny ($60 - Binny's)

100% Pinot Muenier, 30 months on lees, disgorged 7/10.

Something magical here.  Medium-bodied.  Nose of dried mesquite with buttercream and yeast.  Darker but not a particularly brooding or shy bubbly.  More confident and thoroughly expressive in what it wants to be.  Almost had a pinkish hue to it.  A smoked tangerine/pear fruit gives way rather quickly to buttercream, fennel and a fancy nutmeg spice that drove the ship, turning it drying and woodsy to finish in the best possible way.  Perfect acid, bubbles that kept everything in line and a great, pause-worthy finish where everything came together like a surprising and satisfying end to a great film.  Worth every cent.

Pairing:  89  Fine and dandy, best with the butter

Most complete with baguette and butter, making everything in the wine sing on cue.  A green apple and smoked trout bite brought every element in the wine to the front of the mouth party nicely while the cheese, a Duvillage 1860 product from the same Quebec cheese house that brought us Moondust, amped up a great funk in both.  Nice stuff together.  Would probably alter the food with this wine in the future, cuz we're definitely buying more of this stuff.
 

#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.

#264 - Spice-Rubbed Skirt, Beet Greens & Sweet Potato Fries With '06 Long Shadows Sequel

Pretty great food weekend (Monday through Wednesday for us):

• Veggie strawberry caprese with a pork chop-y Ponzi Rosato
• Vadouvan roast chicken with a disappointing Marc Hebrart Champagne
• Sea Bass a la Veracruzana with a stellar LdH Gravonia

And now spice-rubbed skirt steak, beet greens and sweet potato fries with this little gem.  Odd that vadouvan roast chicken and Champagne would be the lowlight of the weekend.  That was Good Eats, just not comparatively.

The Long Shadows story is a gosh darn interesting one.  Nine world-class winemakers, all part-owners in the enterprise, take their skills developed over decades in making fine wine around the world and come together to make wines from their favorite grapes that express the distinction and potential Washington exhibits.

This one, a syrah with a 2% kiss of cabernet (? - 2007 is that), is made by John Duval of Penfolds Grange fame.  His 28 years as chief winemaker at Penfolds Grange shepherded the winery to the top of the Australian wine world.  He now creates his own wine under his own name along with this co-op project.

After drinking this, we're intrigued, even at the price.

Food:  Spice-rubbed skirt steak, sautéed beet greens and tomatoes, whole Vidalia onions and sweet potato fries

#263 - Sea Bass a la Veracruzana & Duck Fat-Saffron Potatoes With '01 Heredia Blanco

Classy.

That was the word of the night.  Along with crazy-fancy-classy.

We've been in a bit of a LdH slump of late, finding many of the more recent vintages sort of pedestrian.  Good enough with strong echoes of what we want/love from drinking Heredia but many have just missed.  I think we were spoiled by a batch of '78 Bosconias and a bunch of '96 Gravonias a few years ago.  Heredia never lost that enormous place in our heart, we just haven't gravitate towards the stuff we had on hand.

And then the 2001 comes along. And then we have this food with it.  And then we break out of our Heredia slump with a 500-foot bomb to right that warrants a bat flip and happy trot that can only say, "Slump...GONE!"

It was the kind of home run that makes the bat feel weightless, your stride feel effortless, your muscle memory find its rhythm again, like it never left.  It's the kind of home run that reminds you how pure, singular and transcendent it all can be.

This was the kind of food, wine and food and wine pairing that doesn't need to scream its virtues because it knows, with utter confidence and vision, that what it offers is so damn good.

Food:  Sea Bass a la Veracruzana with duck fat-saffron potatoes and mâche salad

#262 - Strawberry Caprese With Ponzi Rosato & Vadouvan Roasted Chicken With Marc Hebrart

Quickie today.

A lunch and dinner recap for cataloguing purposes.

Lunch:  Strawberries, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, evoo and balsamic with baguette and butter

A slight alteration from a favorite Monday lunch with the inclusion of the strawberries, taken from Around My French Table (still finding uses for that book in nice ways).  Much like the French pot chicken from the same book, we had good grub, tasty grub, and grub we probably won't make again.  Well...it fall into a 'maybe' category.  Something about the utter freshness of a traditional caprese with its olive oil playing with the cheese and tomato in such a pure way was missed here.  Nonetheless, this had a hot patio feel to it.  Pleasant, slightly sweet strawberry juice added a nice change of pace.

The 2010 Ponzi Rosato ($15 - Winery) was a shocker.  A rosé of pinot noir, it was all beautifully cooked pork chop with herbs, pinky meat juice and bone, with virtually zero fruit. Sa-Vory!  As savory a rosé as we've ever had, making for a more than merely pleasant diversion.  We'd buy more.  This has a big place.  But since it's not available in town, with shipping and such, it puts it into a realm of thinking twice about it.  Low 20s?  Ummm....

#261 - Company, Food, Dogs & Wine

Company is nice, especially good company.

Good company makes for a breezy five hours of chatter while watching the dogs do funny/stupid stuff.

And eat frankly spectacular food.

The last time (bottom of post) one member of the 'company' came over, yellow split pea dip and ouzo-lemon tiramisù took the night.  We ate well then.  This time beat it, offering three elements in particular that expanded our food world in great ways.

Menu:  Roasted tomatoes and anchovies over feta, asparagus and radish salad, lapsang souchong-smoked lentils under duck and pomegranate seeds, rosemary farro & buttermilk poundcake topped with candied kumquats

#260 - Shrimp With Riesling & Barolo-Braised Beef With Nebbiolo

Sometime this summer, we'll hit post #300 here at Food With Wine.

When that happens, we'll also come in at around 300,000 words, give or take.

Or well over half of War & Peace.

(...Pause...reflect...throw up a little in my mouth...)

Let's just move on.  Putting it in that context is troublesome.

Shrimp Lunch!  Always an exclamation point with shrimp lunch (!) because it feels fancy pants.  Good lunches are important.  Makes the day feel long.

Lunch:  Rosemary, pineapple, red bell pepper, jalapeño shrimp with baguette and mâche salad

#259 - Flatiron, Romesco & Manchego Artichokes With '01 Beronia Gran Reserva

A buffet of Spanish and Spanish with a side of Spanish.

In our world, that's Happy Food!

And it felt like it's been years.

Some of that absence comes from the fact that we beat that drum rather heartily from 2007 to 2010, utilizing The New Spanish Table to its fullest extent.  Some of that comes from an expansion out from Spanish into more pan-Mediterranean flavors, finding nooks and crannies in that world, mixing and matching, finding its joys and what we like.

Some of that also comes from the stake that Ad Hoc's Spanish night nearly drove into our Spanish heart.

But mostly, in reality, it's not true. We've eaten Spanish over the last year, just maybe not Spanish, Spanish, Happy Food, Spanish...

...or the kind of Spanish that leaves no doubts that it was Spanish - food, wine and all.

And the kind of Spanish food one might get from a decades-old neighborhoody restaurant on a hidden, cloistered, beautifully lit plaza late in the evening in Madrid that patently refuses to change with the times yet opens to long lines every night.

Cuz it's Happy Food.

Food:  Garlic flatiron steak, romesco, manchego artichokes, parsley oil, arugula salad and baguette

#258 - Anise-Flavored Volatile Compound Salad With '11 Kim Crawford SB

Technical stuff above.

That technical stuff comes from Taste Buds & Molecules by François Chartier, a molecular sommelier-type person that did the important, mind-numbing legwork that led to the beginning of understanding the essential aromatic and flavor components of food and wine on a molecular level.

I can already tell that I'm going to be reading this book again.  It's a technical wonder, sometimes refrigerator manual dull, but it successfully makes sure that you get tasty nuggets at critical points to keep your interest (and keep your eyes open).

Ultimately, I've been left with a feeling that my eyes have been pried open, willingly, to the molecular joys of combining foods with wine in the same molecular realm.

It's important work, critical work, and after having this meal based on a recipe found in the first 50 pages, it's a freakin' magical work.

We got something rather over-the-top ridiculous.  I've written about the joys and not-so joys on having food contained in a small box of flavors on this here blog numerous times.  This is something else, something oodles more, something that redefined what a flavor box really is, at least to us.

This was an anise-flavored volatile compound explosion!

#257 - Vitello Tonnato With '10 Paitin Arneis

Just missed.

And sometimes when a pairing just misses, it tumbles into the realm of rather bad.

Give this wine even a touch more acid (well...more than a touch) and this pairing might have been something stellar.

It didn't, though.

Tons of finesse and oodles more complex on its own (and frankly downright gorgeous in the glass), with the vitello tonnato it got beat up, pushed around and generally came off like watery pear juice.

Great food, blah wine.  Meh.  We were good.

Food:  Vitello Tonnato with potatoes and herbs

From a 180 year-old recipe over at Jamie Oliver's site, it hit every freakin' note we wanted from the meal.

#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

#255 - Jerk Chicken, Biscuits & Pineapple With Two Wines

Here's jerk a Rastafarian would respect.

Heat that permeates every level, delicious citrus complementing the heat with spice and herbs that keeps everything in line.

Not surface heat here.  This went deep along with everything else seeping deeply into the chicken while the heat never crossed the line into eye-watering, mouth-blazing territory.  Marched right up to that line but never crossed it, allowing every other flavors to take its turn at bat.

Instead of cooking the chicken under a brick, this one was roasted upright in the oven in the cast-iron.  The results were something spectacular, bringing a more dirty-delicious caramelization to bits of the chicken skin.

This was one glorious looking chicken when it came out of the oven and the taste delivered on that promise.

Food:  Jerk chicken, cheddar-scallion biscuits and pineapple with radishes

#254 - Sausage, Rapini & Tomato With '09 Palmina Barbera

Everyone frets over the authenticity of foods: its provenance, its ingredients, its handling, the people behind it, etc.

All those things are important but we prefer terrible and terribly funny instructions on the back of, say, a package of orecchiette that tells us to stir "approximately carefully" to tell us what's in the package and who made it.

No faceless corporation or mass-produced factory product allows that!  That's some tremendously small operation that goes to freetranslation.com, cuts and pastes and calls it a day.  Good for them.

Orecchiette, sausage and rapini is a house favorite.  We don't know what we did before discovering it a few years ago and promptly put it in wide rotation.

The joy comes in its simplicity and rusticity.  Soul-satisfying stuff to the nth degree.

Last night's Oscar food was a diversion from the well-worn path, incorporating tomato, carrot, celery and onion, making a stew and mixing it into the traditional form.  A Mario Batali recipe taken from the Palmina site, it's a good one, deep and rich and tasty.  We just ever so slightly missed the rustic, simple Love of the more simple version and its delicious white wine accompaniment.

That said, we ate and drank very well here.

Food:  Orecchiette, sweet sausage and rapini with a mirepoix and tomato base

#253 - Bison With El Jefe & Lamb Curry With Tavola

Sandwiched between these two meals was a drunken trip to Bar Toma and the Gambero Rosso wine tasting at Union Station.

We're glad we went to Bar Toma.  It's a beautiful space offering an interesting, pan-Italian collection of vittles (revolving around Rome and broadening out) with a nod to something a touch more Mediterranean.  Didn't love it.  Some salting and temperature issues (really across the board on temp) kept it firmly in the world of Like while never sniffing Love.

But the sandwich bread, these two meals along with Shrimp Lunch, brought enough goodness to keep the food weekend (Monday thru Wednesday) in the camp of "That's a break from the workweek and that's the point!"

And I think we wrote off the Ponzi Tavola way too soon a few years ago.

Meal #1:  Bison flank steak with chimichurri and yuca fries with smoked paprika mayo

#252 - Mantuano Shrimp, Sheep Feta & Arugula With Two Wines

Shrimp Lunch!

We finished up the Argiolas Rosado with this meal, which was the wine served with red beans & rice, my first tweet on the Twitter machine for this here blog (look over there --->).  I'm late to things but still patently refuse to Facebook.  No need in my world to know what Johnny McDouchington from high school English is doing these days (Johnny McDouchington, you know who you are).

Today's shrimp recipe is brought to you by Tony Mantuano, he of Spiagga fame (and The Purple Pig collaboration).  We'll be partaking in Bar Toma before the Tre Bicchieri tasting at Union Station tomorrow.  My expectations are...tempered.

But Mr. Mantuano is some crazy genius.  When taking into account the time it takes to prepare black garlic shrimp (infuse the oil, let it cool, blah, blah, blah), this one is too easy-peasy for words.  Five minutes and it's summertime refreshing and delicious.

Food:  Ouzo-flamed shrimp with lemon, parsley and garlic, sheep feta with pink peppercorns and honey and an arugula salad