Smoky Tea Lamb, Tomato Vinaigrette, Grilled Potatoes & Asparagus With 2008 Domaine Tempier Rouge Bandol

BROWN FOOD!

The last time we had the 2008 Tempier Rouge, it was a big bowl of tannin.

This time, three-and-a-half years later, we found a medium-bodied, deliciously simple country wine that reminded us why wines that scream OLD WORLD (!) need to get back into our rotation.

Another New York Times recipe, lamb with a smoky slather, using lapsang souchong tea leaves to give it a distinction, tea earth, and depth. Subbed loin chops for the leg, skipped the sauce from the recipe. Tomato vinaigrette using golden tomatoes, a drinkable Spanish condiment to douse and spill on everything (house fav). Grilled potatoes that Mrs. Ney wished she'd cut in half before grilling because wet-ish potatoes suck. Tasty, fresh asparagus. Had to use up a turnip so...a grilled turnip, sliced.

As Anne Burrell says, "Brown food tastes good." As you can see. It's brown. And good.

Lamb-potato-tomato-asparagus-turnip-acid-char-tea-cumin-garlic-thyme. So...flavors.

Nice meal with flavors that were restrained enough to allow the Bandol to dance its old-style Bandol dance. Funky to open, with dusty, poopy black fruit and licorice. More medium-bodied than I expected, never wandering out of that realm. Medium length, sparkly, lifted finish. Tasted like a happy table/country wine in the best sense. $40? With the utterly welcome funkiness and the reminder of why Frenchy funk is so good, it tasted worth the price tag. Not all the time, but with this meal, it worked.

Mourvèdre-dominant wines have such a loveliness as they're settling down, kicking their feet up in their favorite chair, and coasting into retirement. They're rarely crabby, just confident. With this food, it allowed the wine to embrace its confidence and eschew any crabbiness. So, success, I say.  

Easter Roast Chicken With 2012 Orballo & La Cana Albariños

I've always loved Synecdoche, New York.

It's such a glorious mess, with that mess coming together to create something pretty great.

Easter roast chicken resembled that last night. The garbanzos were overcooked, the chicken a touch overdone, April corn that barely tasted like corn, avocados that we were looking forward to were simultaneously underripe AND brown so we ditched 'em, all sorts of slight missteps.

Yet, in the end, we got a dinner full of Easter goodness on a rare beautiful day in Chicago, giving us everything we could want.

Dinner: Green goddess chicken with a mustard green, garbanzo, kumato and corn salad, and Pugliese garlic bread, served with 2012 Orballo Albariño Rías Baixas ($18 - Binny's) & 2012 La Cana Albariño Rías Baixas ($13 - Howard's)

New York Times recipe here. Herby, garlicky, anchovy-laden Green Goddess dressing slathered all over the halved chicken and roasted at 500º. The addition of dill turned it into the best version of this great dressing-sauce we've had. Used it on the chicken, to dress the salad and top the garlic bread. This is a rip, top, layer and dunk meal; making lil open-faced sandwiches with various combinations to create different bites.

Mustard green-garbanzo-kumato-corn salad. Fresh, clean, happy. Mustard greens packed a mustardy punch, which helped things along quite nicely.

Salads Days With Prager Grüner Veltliner And Andrea Calek Blonde

After our initial euphoria over a Mariano's opening up mere blocks from our house, reality has set in over just how much we'll be shopping there.

This week's "Explosion of Salads" serves as a good example.

Salad #1: Sea bass with garbanzo beans, mustard greens, barley, farro, mint and celery leaves, served with 2009 Prager Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Wachstum Bodenstein ($40 - Vin Chicago)

Fish over salad that tasted chefy, like someone experimented with these combinations 15 times until they got the balance right in every bite. Outside of the goat, this was probably the best meal this year.

Based on this recipe, swapping out fava beans for utterly cheap, fresh garbanzos from Harvesttime, leaving out the fennel flowers, including some pecorino in the barley/farro mixture, adding mint and roasted garlic to the vinaigrette, and putting celery leaves on top of the sea bass.

With a nod to a spring that won't f'in come to Chicago, this meal, with the greeny greenness and an underlying earthiness from the barley/farro business, was a party in our mouths and everyone was invited. It was WOW! food. As good as sea bass a la Veracruzana, a house favorite. Both meals use the fattiness from the sea bass perfectly by staying in the realm of light and clean without ever seeming too light and clean. A gravity and substantialness exists with every bite offering something different and deep. We became sated and satisfied by the flurry of flavors and sheer abundance of everything. Great Meal. Tasted like Zuni.

Quick Hits: This Week In Food And Wine

Light red wine week.

With a Champagne followed by tempranillo mixed with Coke tossed in. That's how we roll.

So...funky week. We liked it.

Monday Lunch: Salad of avocados, tomatoes, edamame, pea shoots, arugula, parsley, cilantro, sunflower seeds and standard dijon-tarragon vinaigrette, served with NV Piper-Heidsieck Brut Champagne ($30-ish - Trader Joe's)

We initially thought this salad would be fine enough, then two bites in, phrases like "this is awesome!" started to get tossed out. Fresh, of course, but also woodsy-seedy-gardeny with the pea shoots and sunflower seeds. Strangely came off like a mid-winter salad eaten to remind you that 'the winter of your discontent' isn't a permanent thing. Fresh, bright AND brooding can co-exist together. Served with what might become our new cheap Champagne. Ayala has become too specific and food-moody in our world. The 'Peeper' gave flinty minerals and smoke first with a broadness and happiness without ever being so eager to please. Both of us thought it could have been a Blancs de Noirs. Chardonnay didn't seem to be playing any role whatsoever except for a small tangerine peel lift on the end. Only 15% of the blend is chardonnay and I think that's what we prefer. The bubbles exploded with the sunflower seeds and sprouts, turning even more broad and round while still being focused and refreshing. Big Monday lunch winner.

Quick Hits

Three meals, three $20 wines.

Many people think $20 is the sweet spot for wine - that place where quality meets price.

I think that's mostly true. Sometimes though, that $20 place can leave you wanting more from the wine. Just a touch more. It's so close.

Here's three.

Meal #1: Celery root brandade and fennel-blood orange salad with 2012 Mark Herold Acha Blanca Albariño California ($21 - Binny's)

Jacques Pepin brandade, swapping out most of the red potatoes for celery root, just for funnies, and using rice milk instead of dairy. The result was a lighter, less POTATO!-y brandade with subtle hints of celery root mingling with salt pollack (Devon Market) in pleasant ways. Fennel-blood orange salad mixed with arugula and topped with pecorino. We loved this salad before mixing it with the arugula. Big blast of licorice freshness. The arugula took that down a notch. But this salad will see a lot of play this summer if blood oranges are somehow still around. Baguette to dip and dunk. Happy meal here.

Goat Inspired By Komi With 2006 Prager Riesling Smaragd Bodenstein And 2012 Bastianich Rosato di Refosco

Last year, we had two meals out in the world that brought us such utter face-slapping joy, when we received the bill and saw what they were charging us for the face-slap, we both screamed, "I need to pay more!"

One was in Cihuri, Spain, at El Trujal del Abuelo, where a five-course meal featuring the best fat-slathered beef I've ever had and two pitchers of their stunningly fresh rosado cost a stupid-cheap 75 Euros. For both of us.

The other was in D.C., at Komi, a place that, if we were into ranking stuff, which we do on occasion just for funnsies, sits mere baby steps behind Etxebarri as the best meal of our lives. If you should be in D.C., eating at Komi will remind you--and if it doesn't, you're doing it wrong--why eating out can be an experience that feels like a gift, a feeling that seems to be fading in the current restaurant environment that too often feels like a calculated cash grab. "This chef wants out in....6 1/2 years...and he's retiring to...Majorca."

In our one experience there last June - a number that will change to two within the next year or so - Komi is the furthest thing from that.

Flap Meat, Arancini And Kale With 2004 Two Hands Beautiful Stranger

"What the hell is that?"

"Olives! Olives everywhere!"

"That's...sparkling wine acid!"

"Grapefruit. Geesh! Grape. Fruit."

"Like grilled grapefruit."

"Tons of it."

"My God. There's so much acid and it's freakin' awesome!"

"All acid and still balanced at tens years old!"

"Didn't get this the last time."

"Is that chinotto? Some sort of weirdly delicious bitter peel."

"It wouldn't be a white wine if I drank it blind but...maybe an orange wine?"

"Yeah...there's dark cherry at its very narrow core but..."

"Sassafras."

"Ash."

"And olives. So many black olives!"

"This might be my favorite wine ever. Probably not but it might be. It's up there."

"It's real close. So strangely delicious!"

A Week Of One-Offs

This week's food and wine is brought to you by the letter 'P.'

And taking days off work.

One of those days including working the coupons to get $45 off a Target trip. Another was making pasteis de nata, little Portuguese tarts  brought to you by a shortcut Jamie Oliver recipe, resulting in silly-great little nuggets of delights that for some ungodly reason we didn't get while in Portugal. So...winner week in our book.

Plus, there was partridge, peas, pancetta, pearl barley, all paired with a potent potable from Pfalz. And pizza.

"Don't practice your alliteration on me!"

Sunday "Off for Oscars" Dinner: Chorizo-stuffed dates, Uruguayan baked cheese, baguette and arugula, served with 2009 Pingus PSI Ribera del Duero ($35 - Binny's)

Quick Hits

Bocadillos, Basque shrimp, chicken-sprout sandwiches, lemon-dill hanger steak & Sun-Wah Beijing duck and fish balls. With the wines above, in order.

We ate and drank fine enough this week, but thoughts on food, wine and their pairings were gobbled up by this comically terrible winter. If this shifting jet stream business has any validity, that this TYPE of winter is here to stay...we might have to live someplace else. In Chicago, it's going to be cold, it's going to be gray, and it's going to last you the rest of your life.

Boar/Pork Belly Rillettes & Guinea Hen Hash With 2009 Quinta do Vallado Tinto Douro

Hash.

Souped-up hash.

Leftovers made fancy.

With a $20 wine that we thank all that is holy nobody purchases at Binny's, yet some buyer there keeps stocking it year after year.

More for us.

Check that. I'm convinced there's one other customer in the city that's wise enough to know the deliciousness of Portuguese wine. And we jostle with him or her for the city's stock. They sit on the shelf for months after we've procured enough for us, and visit after visit they remained seated, until one day they're gone. And one day, we're going to meet that person. And it's going to be like grabbing the last Cabbage Patch.

There will be a stare-down and there might be a fight.

Food: Boar/Pork Belly Rillettes & Guinea Hen Hash

Fish Cakes, Chermoula, Beet-Carrot Salad & Dill Rice With 2010 Forlorn Hope La Gitana Torrontés

We drink well in Chicago.

The selection has been fine enough in many respects. Most of the time, we feel lucky to be offered more than so many places in the country.

Then I read Jon Bonné's book, The New California Wine, and I got a bit irritated again. I go wine shopping now and (again) all I can think about is how there's so much sameness on the shelves in the city.

So when we took a trip to Lush recently and saw a bottle of Forlorn Hope Torrontés on the shelf, even if it was a 2010, I bought it.

Bonné wrote about Matthew Rorick (Chronicle profile here) and Forlorn Hope in that book. I'd heard of the name, never tried any of his wines, and certainly wanted to after reading Rorick enjoys making small-production wines from grapes rarely grown in California.

That's one of our wine loves, drinking wine from grapes not typically grown in a particular wine region.

"California torrontés? What? Put it in the cart!"

And we drank it with food that Mrs. Ney never thought would be this delicious while she was making it.

Frenchy-French On Crack & Rillettes, Salumi, Cheese & Andrea Calek Blonde

Drink wine from great importers like Kermit Lynch, Terry Theise, Neal Rosenthal, Cream and such, and you're going to end up drinking a boatload of organic, biodynamic and natural wine.

None of them stock their portfolios based on whether the wines are org-bio-nat or anything in-between. The wines they carry are wines they like that typically come from small producers that put a premium on subtlety, grace and good farming. That usually means not dumping a bunch of crap on their crop to some (or all) extent.

We don't drink org-bio-nat wines because they're that. We buy wines from good importers (mostly) and their wines happen to fall in that realm. We're not dogmatists. Dogma is "RIGHT OUT!" in our house.

But over the course of our wine drinking, our taste for wines that we like and want has been developed by those great importers, in a way that's almost like having a good hitting coach. It's become, in a small way, a cross-section of our own jones and how those importers can satisfy it. Not always but rather significantly. Heck, I liked the Yellow Tail sparkling rosé so there's that.

So as we wade deeper into the natural wine world, something that's been a big jones of mine lately, we're finding some limits in our tastes, but we're also finding wines chockablock with interesting interestingness. Which is all we ever want. Give me something interesting. If it's interesting, you're constantly engaged. If it's interesting, true surprise is possible.

Drinking the same thing night after night is boring.

Indian, Epic Chicken-Bread Salad & Lebanese With Trousseau, Sancerre & Susucaru

There's something about having 40-degree weather in the long-range forecast that brings an optimism not felt in months.

And then I go against one of my deep philosophical beliefs in life, a tenet so integral to my day-to-day happiness that betraying it, even briefly, brings such a deep, rusted patina to my being that it can take weeks to shed.

I read internet comments.

This week's Asimov column. Comments. Don't.

For the record, it's never really been a problem finding many of Asimov's picks in this house. It's called the internet, email or (gasp) a phone.

But I digest. This was "We finally got the hemp bedspread!!!" week, something that's been over two years in the making. But here's what happened in the food realm.

Salami-Haloumi! With Luis Pato Cheap Goodness

Apparently I'm taking pictures of our food now. Feel free to scold me on the street, should you see me. I deserve it.

Haloumi cheese, fried low and slow in olive oil and oregano. Olympic Provisions Greek salami, arugula with dill and pomegranate seeds. Baguette to dip, dunk and top. Served with 2012 Luis Pato Maria Gomes Vinho Branco Beiras ($10 - Lush). 

Haloumi = bestest of the best in the cheese realm right now. Don't like it? You're a moron. Olympic Provisions Greek salami = not the best. We love that shop. This product is herbed-up butter upfront and salami underneath. Ratio is off, to our taste. Best batch of arugula in a winter with poor arugula.

We met Luis Pato at the Bin36 Portugal tasting last spring (look at us, we're so neat!) and he was the nicest man on the planet that was suffering through a barrelful of stupidity in that room. If his name is on the label, we're buying it since that experience. This one, his basic Maria Gomes wine, was marked down at Lush, an oddity for a shop that can feel a little spendy at times (I have "feelings" about small wine shops in Chicago lately after being ripped off on three Sicilian wines recently).

Here's citrus peel and woolliness in the glass that became freakin' delicious as it warmed up. Bet he's proud of this one. Bet he drinks it often. Look at this picture up there. Stare at it. That's a Portuguese face. They don't want to be known. Don't want to get all these interviews. Don't want anything other than being left alone. Think about how that mentality translates to wine. Think about how that would translate to good, cheap wine. That's this Luis Pato Branco. And all of his wines.

$10? You're f'in crazy.

Solid Monday lunch because haloumi is the shit. Happy arugula with dill and pomegranate. Delicious wine. What more do you want?

Green Goddess Chicken & Endive-Tomato-Avocado Salad With Uruguayan Albariño & Palmina Arneis

New York Times recipe, part deux, for the week.

Coming off Monday's Florence Fabricant Chinese chili, Melissa Clark chimed in last night with a marinade we've had before a few times in dip form. Mrs. Clark likes food. She particularly likes salt-acid-herb-driven food. So we like her.

Green goddess chicken recipe here. Ours looked like their picture. Except for the professional photography, as you can see. Should have put it through a grainy filter, like everyone else. Wouldn't that have been neat? We all need a heightened sense of reality thrust onto the mundane, don't we?

Recipe followed to the letter. Smoked up the house something fierce, but the result was delicious, summertime chicken and freshy-fresh salad that gave the middle finger to this "fun" winter that Chicago is experiencing.

So...delicious half-chicken for each of us, crispy-roasty-deep with fresh flavors vacillating back and forth with the char in beautiful ways. A salad of endive tossed with the green goddess dressing, chopped; grape tomatoes, scallions and sliced avocado. Handful of parsley dumped on top of both plates. Garlic bread on the side. More dressing to dip and dunk as we saw fit.

This was stellar. So expletive-ly satisfying.

Chinese Chili & Asian Cornbread With 2011 Trader Joe's Reserve Syrah

We expected very little.

"Meat in a bowl" and cornbread.

Not the most inspiring impression to start the meal.

But as with most New York Times recipes, the bar on its minimum level of happy-goodness is raised.

Toss in green chili cornbread and this was an enormous surprise, with a wine that shocked both of us with its savory change-y-ness throughout the meal.

Chinese chili recipe here.
Green chili-cilantro cornbread recipe here.

TJ's brisket ($20) used, resulting in a large bar-raise in terms of meat. Look at the list of ingredients in the recipe. If you want to be a happy cooker, making even the simplest of meals that satisfy, surprise and just all-around feel like teeny-tiny mini-vacations every night. You have that stuff on hand at all times. It's not expensive, most of this stuff lasts forever, and if something is "on the verge," cook something with it. Simple.

I just had Taco Bell for the first time in probably three years, as I was sucked in by the "loaded grillers" commercial and I'm a weak man at heart. I feel like I just ate a soapy chemical bomb, mostly because there were no herbs and acid. The tummy wants herbs and acid. And garlic. And pop.

This meal had that. A swirl of Asian flavors, always staying light, always offering something different with each bite, always feeling like we were eating something purposeful and substantial. It went from a meal when plopped down that screamed "just eat it!" to something slow-down, pretty, deep and delicious.

French-Spanish-American With French-Spanish-American, Plus Other Stuff

Jolly good food week.

We had wine and food that matched up with their countries, something somewhat rare for a string of three meals in our house.

Usually, there's some crossover or playing around, just to keep it frisky.

#1 Chicken thighs, fennel and olives with crispy potato roast, served with 2010 Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe La Crau Blanc ($58 - Saratoga)

French and French. Thomas Keller recipe. Last had here with the exact same wine and vintage.

It's $8 food with spendy wine. Two changes to the recipe. Tarragon added and thighs marinated in leftover Michael Symon salsa verde (from meal below).  It is what the name of the recipe says it is, except when it comes together, it tastes like food that's been eaten and refined over the course of 200 years. That's what Thomas Keller recipes taste like. He makes food that taste...so...perfectly...in proportion. Everything serves a purpose at just the right level. That's what we found here again. Cheap food. Fairly easy food (that's saying something for Keller recipes). Utterly delicious food. This wine with this meal can't get better. Just can't. It's slap-to-the-face good.

Quick Hits

Quick Hits in a true quick-hit manner.

1. Enough Said occupies a rare place in film, particularly of late. It shows all the natural sloppiness, resulting terribleness, and enduring hope that comes with...existing. And living with the history of being yourself for so long, a unique thing in an age where constantly reinventing yourself and TEDTalking your way to happiness seems to be the path to...something. Enough Said is genuine without ever shining a light on its attempt to portray that. I've always thought, in the discussion of older women not being able to land juicy roles in Hollywood, that looking to Juliette Binoche and Kristen Scott Thomas (who's done amazing work in a slew of smaller films) should be the template. Both have aged so damn gracefully as actors by taking roles that never shy away from being juicily complex and flawed as characters. James Gandolfini is very good here, and gets much of the press as this was his last film, but this is a star turn for Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She lets so much in and, as a result, gives so much.

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.

Neyers Vineyards Spotlight - Grilled Sirloin Skewers, Posole and Grilled Rapini With 2010 Neyers Mourvèdre

Jon Bonné's new book, The New California Wine: A Guide to the Producers and Wines Behind a Revolution in Taste, is doing something to me.

While it's certainly connecting loose nuggets, disconnected facts and vague geographical notions collected while drinking and reading about California wine, it's also debunking some lazy prejudices that have metastasized in my brain over the years.

It's been a flurry of "What? Nooo. He's that guy?" and "Well...that's explains why we liked both of those wines. The same person made them!"

New Year's Food Week

After a complete car breakdown ("She's gone! The CR-V is gone! Oh, the humanity!"), the hardest work week of the year for Mrs. Ney, family Christmas visit, and now weather that resembles something out of a post-apocalypic sci-fi movie, easy food made its way to our (coffee) table this week.

The pic over --> there was one of the best. Moroccan carrot purée, sheep feta in Indian honey and pink peppercorns, Syrian sesame seed bread, arugula, dill, lemon thyme, parsley and pomegranate seed salad with Frank Cornelissen Surucaru #5 ($22 - work), a red and white grape field blend fermented together on their skins for 45 days. The result is a dry rosato wonder that's as floral as it gets. It's as if bright earth and cloves were thrown up in the air above about 40 dozen roses. Great stuff and want so much more, as it reminded us of the more conventional sangiovese rosé at 2 Amy's in D.C., with all its dryness and roses jumping around everywhere, frolicking away. Where that one was all delicious happy fun in the glass, the Susucaru #5 has on more of a thinking cap.

An Utterly Haphazard, Completely Unreliable, Probably Not Complete List of Our Favorite Food and Wine Of 2013

Our Best of 2013 list, chronicled by month.

Criteria for this list: Good food, good wine, buggy-bear pairing love, something unique, something we very specifically loved, just whatever struck our fancy and deserved a list-type spot.

In short, some big impressions of the year past.

So...good, very good and great are listed, with the meh, huh?, and terrible not listed. Because who has the time for the bad in life? Just move on.

Hanger Bo Ssäm & Scallion Pancakes With 2008 Rôtie Cellars Southern Blend + One

Ridiculous wine savings alert!

All Dagueneau Silex is $25 off at Binny's right now. You won't see a better price for the best wine on the planet (not just white wine) in my book.

Mrs. Ney just gave me the 2010 and 2011 for Christmas! Mrs. Ney knows what Mr. Ney likes.

And Mrs. Ney had a "fun" time picking up one of the vintages. We're not snobs about pronunciation of wine-related things. Call it what you want, pronounce it how you must. It should never stop a happy wine conversation. Just don't get all uppity and be entirely wrong at the same time. It's...



Oh, and this is the furthest thing from a trophy wine.

Strange customer service experience all around in Chicago of late. Happens every year when it's extremely hot or extremely cold. People get cranky and weird.

Two meals this week that reinforce the idea that food and wine together don't have to be GREAT in order to feel necessary, happy and important. Many times, it's about raising the floor of meals instead of shooting for some enormously high ceiling. If your seemingly average, everyday meals can attain unique levels of satisfaction, you've won.

And you'll be fat and happy.

Piri Piri Chicken, Carrot-Orange Salad & Fried Haloumi with 2010 Muti Albarino & 2011 Dourosa Branco

See that phone that looks like it's from a '90s movie over there? Yeah...that's gone. Poor wifey. Our house got a major phone upgrade across the board yesterday.

We're evolving.

So, to celebrate, piri piri chicken, that delicious Portuguese goodness that gets all blazing hot, smoky and acidic all at once.

Dinosaur-sized chicken quarters ($.69/lb at Harvesttime) done up Jamie Oliver piri piri style. Chicken was fine, but mostly we wanted the sauce.

Could have made the forthcoming salad as a dinner-sized number, dumped a bunch of piri piri on it, served it with the cast-iron-fried haloumi cheese (half sheep/half goat - $6.50 at Harvesttime - good to know a quick alternative is close to home), and been just as thrilled with this meal.

Carrot and orange salad, from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (page 80). Sliced carrots mixed with a bunch of cilantro and green onions. Dressing of the juice of two oranges, one lemon, 2 tbsp. of orange blossom water and a wee touch of pistachio oil. Silly Great Salad.

Haloumi, fried in the mini cast-iron with oil, pink peppercorns and oregano. New house favorite. It's basically fancy fried cheese. And that's why it's delicious.

Pita bread, brushed with oil, topped with Himalayan black salt (Middle Eastern grocery on Foster), wrapped in foil and thrown in the oven.

A buffet of Portuguese-Middle Eastern greatness here that we flipped for immediately.

Two wines, a 2010 Raul Pérez "Muti" Albariño Rías Baixas ($35 - Binny's) & 2011 Dourosa Branco Douro ($14 - Binny's).  The Dourosa white, a rabigato blend, was all Douro on the cheap with food. Rather flat and boring by itself, but tasted like the Douro air with the grub.

The star was the Muti Albariño. Elegant and pure for sure, with some minor age on its tires, this came off like a very dry chenin blanc, getting all crazy Vouvray winemaker-like. Orange, minerals, wool, honeysuckle, lifted by a lemon peel note towards the end. Happy and light, yet a bit broody at times, and thinking. Somewhat short on the finish but nothing that detracted from its deliciousness. We're liking the Raul Pérez bottlings we've had. This was no exception.

And a fine and good pairing to boot. Food stayed delicious, the wine remained itself, not tremendous linkage and lift but with the hotness here, the minimal amount of interplay was a surprise. Loved it.

Thanksgiving Week

Happy food week.

And a lot of sitting.

Monday dinner of beef bourguignon, Tuscan kale salad with Grana Padano (New York Times recipe) and Pugliese bread, served with 2005 Chateau Fombrauge St.-Emilion ($40 - Binny's). We left most of the meat alone, preferring to dip and dunk with the bread, while loving this kale salad with its dark green depth and parmesan roundness. I don't know what I'm going to do with all the Bordeaux we own, because it's just not doing anything for me right now. Let's hope that changes. Here, this Fombrauge, a solid, value-driven Right Banker that's always satisfied, satisfied with this food as well, linking up, allowing to be itself, which is Good. Just felt perfunctory as an overall meal.


Tuesday lunch of grilled bocadillos (Pintxos cookbook) with La Quercia, manchego and kumatoes on Pugliese. Arugula salad on the side. Served with 2012 Charles & Charles Rosé Columbia Valley ($14 - Whole Foods), a syrah-forward blend. Best pairing of the week, as the sandwiches took the syrah to an earthy, balanced, Old World-ish place, but with the typical Washington freshy freshness. This was fantastic. Something about these grilled sandwiches... Trick seemed to be getting them more burned in parts than just grilled.

Wanting Something Different

We love Home Food.

And Mrs. Ney has built up, over the years, a food canon that satisfies every possible yen, much of it chronicled right here on this weird blog.

It's just that...sometimes...she doesn't want Home Food.  

So it's New Food to finish out the year. We have all these cookbooks. Let's use them.

Plus, we're suddenly and temporarily poor. Time to get creative.

Meal: Momofuku pork belly ssäm with mustard seed sauce, Brussels sprouts in fish sauce vinaigrette and lemongrass farro

Thai Skirt Steak & Papaya Salad With 2009 Hélène d'Orléans Vouvray Brut +1

For those wishing to sit on your couch instead in the theater for four hours, according to the New Yorker, At Berkeley with be broadcast on PBS in January.

Best morning read: Terry Theise on Charlie Trotter.

Excerpting the below quote isn't fair to the piece because this is not what it's about, but I loved that somebody said this, particularly the "95%" part:

"I sometimes was bemused by Trotter's wine list, thrilled though I was to contribute to it. Let's say, it was very large, and also that it seemed to have a lot of wines designed to attract and reassure a certain kind of "well-heeled clientele" without particularly referring to the food. But this is an abiding complaint of mine; restaurants with massive capital tied up in red-wine inventory when 95 percent of their food is white-wine food. And yes, I've heard all the protestations that "people expect it," but if someone "expects" a 16-ounce T-Bone steak he isn't going to Trotter's to find it. Why should he "expect" to drink Silver Oak Cab with his quince soup?"

It's a problem and has always been a problem. Many restaurants Mr. Theise is talking about do indeed  also have thoughtful white wine selections, catered to their menu in a broad sense, with a few intriguing, rare, off-the-beaten path numbers that prick up your ears. But it could be more than a few if these places didn't think a 15 vintage vertical of Silver Oak and every first-growth Bordeaux was somehow necessary.

Roasted Chicken, Salsa Verde & Arugula With 2010 Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly +1

Spiral - Netflix - all 40 episodes - do it now. Season 5 may drop as early as spring 2014.

The Dagueneau Silex is magic in a bottle. If pushed, that's most likely my favorite wine.

Here, the Blanc Fumé de Pouilly, at half the price, gives you almost everything you want from the Silex. Instead of Silex's 120 different flavors, you get only 72. It's a shame so many people in our lives tell us that they'd never spend x number of dollars on a white wine. That's kooky talk. There's nothing like Dagueneau wines. Nothing in the least.

This 2010 was no exception.

Food: Roasted chicken, Symon salsa verde, arugula, bread and butter

Roast your chicken how you like roasting your chicken. We're a hybrid of Thomas Keller and Michael Symon roasters.

Symon salsa verde. Keep this mostly true to the recipe, because anchovy, caper, garlic, shallot, parsley, mint, some sort of hot pepper, olive oil, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, salt and pepper together is a witches' brew of flat-out stupid-greatness. Added smoked almonds and tarragon this time. Do that. Because it's good.

We're Been In A Slump

We've been in a bit of a food and wine slump of late and I blame a certain Chicago restaurant that shall remain nameless.

Again.

Something about that meal left us deflated and annoyed.

Anne Burrell's chicken Milanese, though, thrust itself into our lives and won't be leaving anytime soon. Because it has the structure of food that we love most: meat + raw greens + pickled veg, all eaten in one bite. It's a party in your mouth! Pair it with a quality pinot gris, like the 2011 Owen Roe Pinot Gris Crawford Beck Vineyard ($20-ish - Winery), a pretty white that has the verve to bring a second and third level of pretty, and it's a slump buster, my friend! A 2012 Ponzi Pinot Gris ($15 - Winery) was less pretty/gutsy when this was revisited a couple of weeks later, but this meal, done this way, is why we like this food and wine crap.

A twist on said meat + raw greens = Goodness business, a kielbasa and lentil salad with warm mustard-fennel dressing over escarole with a 2011 Schwarzbock Grüner Veltliner ($10 - Vin Chicago - new name for Wine Discount Center) made for similar pauses of joy (recipe).

That's been the food and wine winner over the last month, but there have been other pairings with varying levels of success. With the open of red wine season, we've oddly been left wanting with many of the red wines we've had recently. That's gotta change.

Some notes on meals so we don't forget:

Anniversary Cavalcade Of Flavors

Anniversary week!

I suggest taking time off work, plan to do nothing and do that, take naps, set aside entire blocks of time and fill it with no plans whatsoever. Do. Nothing.

In other words, we crushed it.

Eat good food. Eat Szechuan tuna, Moroccan rabbit loin, souped-up hanger steak, anchovies and mint pasta, Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce with linguine, fattoush with pita and hummus. Make your tummy happy. Happier than people in my world that I KNOW had buffalo wings twice this week and washed it down with a bag of red-hot Cheetos and Monster energy drink. Do you know why you're crabby, on edge and staring out into a dark abyss? That's why.

And drink good wine with good food. It makes life happier, longer, broader, prettier, even more evocative. Better than stuffing grub in your craw in order to merely fill a hole.

Lamb & Farro-Pomegranate-Fava Salad, Two Rosés, & A Chicago Restaurant

In our world, a couple of grains of cumin on a dish that lists cumin as a key ingredient isn't going to cut it. Two consecutive dishes in a 12-course tasting menu that come off creamy first, both containing parmesan, is weird, especially when it defines the lead-in to the proteins. Using filet, a cut defined more by its delicate and luxurious texture than punch of flavor, makes for a finish to the middle of the meal that was way too quiet. And a bit gray. Orchard fruits diced the same way in consecutive courses and a trail of preciousness on at least three courses led to a lot of sameness.

Two impressions stand out - sameness and lack of punch. We just passed the 10-year mark in Chicago. If you would have told me seven years ago that we'd be sick of the higher-end Chicago food scene, I'd have said, "You're cuckoo." We are. We're sick of the sameness; what has become the Chicago flavor, a flavor that comes off...timid. Not refined, technique-driven or local farm-showcased.

Timid.

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.

Quick Hits

Quick Hits, a collection of pairings that didn't blow us away yet had their merits. Or...record-keeping.

The inaugural edition is brought to you by food that isn't Spanish. We're going to put you to bed for a couple of months, sweetie.

#1 - Bison flank steak with potato latkes and blue cheese, paired with 2008 Efeste Syrah Ceidleigh ($30 - Wine Discount Center)

Rioja And Basque Country...For The Second Time

Returning to the same vacation spot as last year brought about a sense of familiarity with maybe a splash of non-surprise. We knew that when we booked it. But we're not busy people. We don't enjoy "busy." A vacation for us shouldn't be that. It should be a pause, a respite and a jolt out of our everyday, humdrum routine. A dash of familiarity often facilitates that. This time, it did. And while something "new" like Croatia or Morocco (this place looks too stellar for words) will be next year's pause, returning to Rioja and Basque Country this time brought about strange and welcome empty brains in both of us and a sense of calm from the second we pulled into the Hotel Viura parking lot. We knew this place, this region, this air, this quiet, and all of that was just so damn palpable.

Just like last year when all of it was new, it felt...wanted, which is all one can really ask from a vacation.

Peppercorn-crusted & Pomegranate-glazed Lamb Riblets And Farro with 2009 Angela and Ponzi Pinot Noir

Anya von Bremzen, author of The New Spanish Table, a cookbook that has seen such a workout in this house that it's falling apart, brings us this lamb chop recipe that came so deliciously tart, tangy, deep and delicious that the meal ended up being a 2009 Willamette pinot noir comparison from two of our favorite producers. We wanted to extend things out and take our time.

Some alterations in the cooking:

* A dry rub on two pounds of lamb riblets ($6/lb - Whole Foods) of ginger, salt, black pepper, Szechuan pepper, cardamom, coriander and fennel. The same rub used on the best tuna on the planet, left in the fridge for two days, glazed with pomegranate molasses, black currant whole-grain mustard, garlic and black pepper and thrown under the broiler to get it all rib-sticky.

* Similar compote recipe of plums, garlic, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, fenugreek; green onions, cilantro, parsley (just like Food & Wine recipe, but added cardamom, omitted dried mint, savory, and tarragon).

Lamb riblets put over the compote, farro as a starch and pomegranate seeds and mint dumped over everything.

Brandade & Fava-Corn-Avocado Salad With 2006 Marc Hebrart Special Club

Puréed fish and stupid-fresh salad with the best showing of Marc Hebrart in our limited Marc Hebrart world.

This is fancy Champagne that's still a little tight after seven years off the vine and two years in bottle. But it comported itself quite nicely with this food, never leading the way but never stepping back, always standing shoulder-to-shoulder with what was on the plate and leading to a meal that expanded out and opened up so much space in which to frolic and enjoy.

Food: Brandade and fava-corn-avocado-tomato salad

Best home brandade yet. Third one, I believe. The key may have come in using Fustini's white balsamic (crap. now I want that lemongrass mint business) instead of lemon juice, offering much greater and more integrated acid depth than previous versions. You buy that. It's not cheap but if you're making food, why not MAKE food?

Jacques Pépin brandade recipe (natch), using rice milk instead of cow. Salad of fava beans, corn, avocado, tomato, onion, lemon thyme and parsley, tossed with white balsamic and olive oil. It's our favorite summer salad with Colicchio Thai-style watermelon-radish certainly in the mix. Baguette to dip, dunk and dive.

We knew this would be good, just not as wide in flavors and goodness as it was.

More home happy food.

The wine helped to bring "the happy."

Birthday Asian Bison "Satay" & Watermelon-Radish Salad With 2011 Raventos Perfum de vi Blanc

After a Cuban-style Hot Pocket lunch to help "recover" from a day of pool and wine bacchanalia, Asian freshness and a birthday lounge day was on tap.

Two things. First, don't eat Hot Pockets. I think everyone knows that. But it said "Limited Edition Cuban-style" and we had a coupon, two factors that led to such a body abuse. Second, the "lounge" part wasn't really an option. Movement was slow and made everything iffy. Stupid pool. Sucks us right in.

Pretty standard pairing play here. Asian flavors, floral wine, with the hope that the acidity and impression of fruity sweetness plays like the 2011 Ponzi Pinot Gris did with the watermelon-radish salad did last month. We missed a superlative elevation of food and wine flavors with this one but found both components playing like old friends that haven't seen each other in a decade and just needed some time to get back in the groove. And they eventually got close.

Food: Bison flank "satay" over lemongrass rice with watermelon-radish salad and extra basting sauce for dipping

You don't have to peanut up your satay when this recipe from Cook's Illustrated is so delicious. Split the basting sauce, reserving a third to dip and dunk the bison at the table. Some alterations. Oodles more shallot and ginger added. And not skewered...and no peanut sauce so...not really "satay."  

"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

TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Four meals, four wines.

Beef, smoked mackerel, chicken and tuna. Rioja, Sancerre, torrontés and pinot gris. Spanish, veggie explosion, Mexican, Thai.

Squeezed into these four meals were 32 vegetables and 28 herbs, spices, wines and juices.

Or...flavor.

Monday

Oh...Hello Again

Last December, we bolted for the highlands of the Chicago Tribune's blogging community, doing the same stuff we did here but over there.

Not realizing it was more of a Facebook-intensive group - and not being a Facebooker - we're back at the friendly confines of Home. We like Home. Because Home is Good.

But some of it is bittersweet. ChicagoNow is doing some great things. And we ate and drank extraordinarily well (index page) during our time on that site so we'll keep that up for the time being for reference purposes and figure out what to do with it.

Some highlights during our brief sojourn:

Oh, the rabbit loin with Darting Pinot Meunier! ... A Holy Grail of sorts, Two Hands Beautiful Stranger, was found, getting some of the last few bottles out there in the world and we drank it with great bison ... Quality meal at Elizabeth ... New Year's Eve Egly-Ouriet and Dagueneau Silex was an orgy of food and wine flavors. Silex is the best wine on the planet in my book (though Gail Simmons disagrees. She prefers Picton Bay) ... Sea bass and Waxman recipe endive salad with Hippolyte Reverdy Sancerre. C'mon! ... Pork butt bo ssäm. Fancy-ass Asian buffet ... Wild boar Christmas dinner and pheasant terrine lunch made us feel all mountainy ... Two more Bordeaux fails. Toss it on the pile (not even going to link) ... Our favorite meal on the planet, tuna Niçoise, saw more love, getting all dirty-delicious with a Les Pallìeres rosé ... Thomas Keller chicken thighs with fennel, lemon and olives and bacon fat crispy potato roast and Vieux Télégraphe Blanc opened up another ridiculously great food and wine pairing door in our world ... Veggie explosion with 2009 Quinta do Cardo Síria. Hot damn! ...  Chicken in lemongrass barbecue sauce with Selbach-Oster. So open! So much space! ... Frappato's the Stuff in my world right now. It was the stuff times 50 with fava bean and ricotta salata strozzapreti ... Duck leg confit, tea-smoked lentils and beets with a very pretty Efeste Jolie Bouche syrah shocked the pants off us ... Tuna, blood oranges and heirloom tomatoes with Owen Roe Pinot Noir Durant? Always happy food but unique pairing here, though ... Beets, carrots and avocado salad with duck breast and a bargain New Zealand pinot simply exploded with loveliness in the mouth ... Lamb-stuffed artichoke cups and garbanzo beans over pistachio-saffron rice with a Moroccan syrah was new and new with a side of happy-slappy new ... A trip to D.C. made for a great food escape with Jaleo, Minibar and 2 Amy's. But Komi. Oh, Komi. There's little better in this world ...and more. So much more.

We ate so well during these last nine-ish months, getting more seasonal, eating smaller portions of meat and a crapload more veggies (proper adjective for that). Things got more complex in ways and never suffered from it, always elevating things instead of dragging meals down. It feels like we drank a touch more thoughtfully as well, taking more care to match up secondary flavors in the food with wine that made such a thing sing.

This is what we Like. It's our hobby, our joy. I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again), Food and wine deeply integrated into one's life as part of one's day, one's rhythm, feels like a frickin' Gift.

Big plans in the works for this new (old) site. Maybe we'll even get all podcasty (or not). I've taken a couple of months off and we missed the reference.

"We're back!"