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!"

#310 - Walnut-Pomegranate Chicken & Rapini With '01 La Rioja Alta Viña Ardanza Reserva Especial

Three months ago in Rioja, during the best vacation of our lives, a restaurant was recommended to us by someone in the know on one of the nights we didn't have any food plans.

Los 4 Arcos in Briones, particularly for their lamb roasted over wine vines, a tradition quickly becoming a rarity in Rioja, as we were told.

I think everyone has those places they're told about where the possibility of eating THAT becomes almost mythical in their brains. It becomes a bit of an obsession, something that HAS to happen, especially after driving there, up a myriad of zig-zagged, impossibly narrow "streets" to the very peak of the hilltop town only to find out they were closed for their September vacation.

So that lamb, the thought of eating that lamb, morphed into THE lamb, the one that has transformed into the pinnacle of having lamb and we haven't even eaten it yet.

Stupid and silly brain stuff, that. But with tentative plans to go back to Rioja (and Hotel Viura, Arzak and Etxebarri), Los 4 Arcos will hopefully be able to accommodate us because that's lamb that we want to eat, both because of what it is and what it's become in our brains.

I say all this because this meal with this wine jettisoned itself into that superlative Spanish food and wine world we love so much, that place where the meal tastes like something Given. Something that makes you say, "Nah. THIS doesn't exist. It doesn't!" It tastes like an intimate history of a place that we seemingly know but weren't born there, only been to a couple of times and don't even really know the language. It's stuff that feels like a gift.

Just does.

#309: TWIB: A Potpourri of Pairings

We're in slowdown mode here at FWW but let's whip out some food & wine pairings had over the course of this busy holiday week in the tradition of "Boom! Roasted!"

Things we learned during this Thanksgiving blur: Leave Amarone Classico on the shelf. Spend $4 more for the good albariño. Kermit Lynch could release a Night Train-based beverage and we'd buy it. The 2007 Vale Meão STILL isn't ready. Rubber, plastic and petrol tastes terrible in wine form (or any form, really). Cheap Crasto doesn't taste cheap. And food is good.

I also learned that Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Decalogue will utterly destroy the hearts and minds of anyone with a heart and mind. This is ten hours of real and honest filmmaking with some spectacular acting that makes you mad when you realize it has to end, as you want to stay in that world so completely. Can't recommend it more highly.

Let's do some cataloguing:

#308 - Crab Cakes w/ TJ's North Coast Sparkling & Moroccan Phyllo Pie w/ '10 Calera Viognier

All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) and the sky is gray (and the sky is gray) California dreamin' (Cal-if-orn-ia dreamin') on such a winter's day...

I can't get the song out of my head! The Mamas & The Papas was splashed all over last night's film.

I'd put off watching Chungking Express for about 17 years. Probably rented it three times (speaking of Three Times, that film left Rain & Tears by Aphrodite's Child firmly implanted into my brain for about a month), but just never got to actually pushing play on the remote. No reason. Just didn't. My loss all those years. Gorgeous stuff.

But Slant Magazine's recent feature chronicling their top-200 films of the 90's has caused me to get off my butt (or on my butt, as it were, on the couch) and work the list, catching up on the films I missed, filling in the holes created by so much time wasted on silly things too numerous to list here (but I'm looking squarely at you, NFL).

So, as California Dreaming rumbles around in my head, I offer two California wines with food that made the California freshness sing.

#307 - Vietnamese-Marinated Lamb Riblets With '09 Dandelion Shiraz-Reisling & Brandade With '09 San Clodio

Golly, election night was barrels of fun.

I never expected the Obama ground game to nail it so completely, so thoroughly as they did. Can't wait to see the final breakdowns, county-by-county, with real data showing demographic shifts. Thank you Republicans for continuing to hold onto a 1980s playbook for the 2012 world. You continue to warm the cockles of Democratic hearts with your ignorance as to how this country has changed.

Enough of that. Food and wine is party-neutral. With these two pairings, we found one that was technically fine but tremendously boring and one that took us right back to Portugal in the best possible sense.

Pairing #1: Vietnamese-marinated lamb riblets, jalapeño-cream cheese pierogis and soy-balsamic roasted pearl onions with 2009 Dandelion Vineyards Lion's Tooth of McLaren Vale Shiraz-Riesling ($20 - Binny's)

Election night food! We stayed away from a bacchanal on election night. Our nerves couldn't take it.

#306 - A Potpourri Of Pairings

Geesh! It's been two weeks.

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

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

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

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

#305 - Five Spice-Rubbed "Hanging Tenders" & Sweet Potato Fries With '10 Owen Roe Lady Rosa Syrah

During a wine tasting at Owen Roe last May, as we became a lil tipsy and frolicked in the joy of the wine we were tasting, a flurry of box-checking next to the wines we loved and wanted to purchase left us in a state of confusion afterwards.

"What in the heck did we just buy?"

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, when we received the wine, that we saw what happened that day.

All we know is that we bought three of the Lady Rosa Syrah so...we must have liked it. Right?

That question was answered last night and, while this one still needs some time, happy smoky loveliness in the glass was the result, something that played into the five spice-rubbed meat and sweet potato goodness to a point of pretty enough pairing pleasure, if not perfection.

Food: Five-spice "hanging tenders" with sweet potato fries and adobo-orange zest mayo for dipping

#304 - Cacio E Pepe With '11 Vera Alvarinho

The biggest reason I continue to do this weird little blog is because there's no end to it.

There's no end to food. No end to wine. No end to pairings.

You can eat and drink everyday from birth to death and not even touch the tip of everything offered by this strange world. It just keeps going! Just abide by a few simple pairing rules and lunch or dinner jettisons itself out of merely lunch or dinner into a pause, a moment, a suspension of the normal flow of the day where the clock, the to-do list and the usual life annoyances no longer register.

Done well and they're tiny vacations.

Every. Day.

Food: Cacio e pepe pasta with arugula salad

Recipe from Saveur. Two alterations. Oregano added and Sardinian pecorino fioretto used in addition to pecorino romano.

Less is more with Italian pasta and that's why it's good. Get too cute, think you're all that, and you've ruined the joy of its simplicity.

And watch how cheap mini-vacation joy can be.

#303 - Borlotti Bean & Blue Cheese Fregola Risotto With '07 Sanguis Oracle Of Delphi

15.3% alcohol in a wine is quite a lot.

But when done well with particular attention paid to a refreshing acid lift on the finish, you've got wine that is rather friendly and inviting instead of tongue-killing and port-like.

That's what we got last night from this 2007 Sanguis offering comprising of 96% syrah and 4% viognier.

Put into a food world like borlotti bean and blue cheese fregola risotto with a little Cleveland bacon to match the meaty notes in the wine and you've got a winner.

Many wine types poo-poo such largesse in a wine. They say to keep your reds under 14% and your whites under 13%. Admirable goal, that. Under 15% is commonplace in our house, but keeping your reds under 14% excludes so much freakin' great wine.

The world is big. The wine world is big. Big wines made well can and do have a place. Just like large food flavors - bacon as an ingredient in virtually everything, BBQ, whole roasted pig's sticky-sweet goodness, spicy Thai, etc. - large wines on occasion can be the truth. So let's stop saying wines HAVE to be one certain way. It works the other way as well.

Yes, Parker's love of the big-boy bombs has had a detrimental effect on the emphasis of subtlety, grace and finesse in wine. But isn't the wine world pulling the same philosophical jujitsu when it comes to diversity by outright dismissing higher alcohol wines? Getting down and dirty with a plate of food chockablock with massive flavors necessitates a wine that can keep up. That's gonna mean a bit more alcohol that many may want. But made well and it's happy-slappy stuff.

Dismiss higher-alcohol wines whole-hog and you dismiss the food pairing joy that can come with such things.

So let's make that distinction. Higher alcohol in and of itself isn't a terrible thing. It's bad winemakers that patently refuse to do a good job of integrating it into a larger picture in the glass.

#302 - Anniversary Roasted Chicken With '03 Dom Pérignon

Every once in awhile, my curiosity piques over the ridiculously extravagant.

Over the stupid stuff, the silly things in life made strictly to say, "I am lavish. I am ornate. I harken back to the spirit of rococo, the baroque. By possessing me, you are saying something about what you are, how you live and most importantly, what you're not. And you're going to pay a hefty sum for me...to keep out the riff-raff."

Wine is not immune. Not even close. In fact, the wine world may be one of the last of the supposed luxury worlds that, in some circles, is still meticulously protecting their exclusivity with ever-increasing gateway prices that would feed a Guatemalan village for a month.

For juice. I don't become curious over the status-chasing stupidity of it all. I just sometimes wonder, "What does it taste like?"

With all that said, that's not really Dom Pérignon. Their release prices have held rather steady and, in a relative high-end wine sense, reasonable over the years. You can get a cuvée for about a C-note and a half upon release. It starts to go up from there as demand begins to outpace supply and $150 is nothing to sneeze at for sure.

But we'd never had a Dom Pérignon and an anniversary dinner to celebrate number eight was coming up. We could go out into the world and continue our streak of being let down by anniversary/birthday-type dinners (long, uninterrupted stretch there - and my Thanksgiving crappy movie streak is prodigious) or we could stay in, eat a favorite meal and drink fancy-pants wine for half the price. Even think about following said fancy-pants wine every anniversary and watch it evolve.

The end result was delicious, enormous, chickeny chicken, fancy French Basque cheese (hey, we were just on the other side of that border) and a Champagne that tasted of fancy vanilla bean, butter and not much else.

This Dom Pérignon (I refuse to call it Dom) is just a baby but that was the idea. Start it out early and see where it goes over the years. After having it, we were left with a palpable sense of "keep it." Nice to have, now know what it is in a sense, beautiful texture worth every bit of its price tag but we'd take an Egly-Ouriet at half the price any day of the week.

#301 - Cleveland Followed By A Cleveland Meal

31 hours out our door and back through it.

That was our trip to Cleveland to stock up at West Side Market, eat at Lolita and see Louis C.K. kick off his current tour.

Big stock-up at West Side Market with all the Cleveland goodness now in our freezer. Pierogis, gnocchi, bacon, jerky, sausages, stuff that tastes like Cleveland and only Cleveland. We've tried Chicago pierogis. They're not Cleveland pierogis.

Meal at Lolita. Bruschetta and bone marrow to start. Chicken and duck confit as entrées. Bottle of 2008 McCrea Yakima Valley mourvèdre-forward blend to drink. I have a thing for Lolita - the atmosphere, the portions, the flavors, the Tremont neighborhood, our waitress, the lighting, how laid-back it is, how delicious the food is, the honesty of it all after all these years, the totality of the experience. It's just good in every way.

I won't give a review of Louis C.K.'s show. I'll just say it's the best thing I've seen on stage in my life (small batch, to be fair). I saw Carlin a couple of times. This was better. I've never laughed that hard, that long, that thoroughly.

So...took off at 7:30am on Wednesday, got into Cleveland at 2:30pm, went to West Side Market, dumped stuff at our hotel, got to Lolita at 5pm, ate, went to Severance Hall at 7:30 to see Louis C.K., done by 9:30, went to sleep and left the next morning, back by 2:30pm.

Seemingly tight schedule but it wasn't. Because everything in Cleveland is ten minutes away with no traffic. And from the time we sat down at Lolita to the time we left Severance Hall was the most entertaining "dinner and a show" I've ever had in my life.

Not too shabby.

So to celebrate the greatness and ease of such a Cleveland trip, a Cleveland meal to finish the day.

#300 - Romanian Skirt Steak, Spring Onions & Scallion Sauce With '07 Twisted Oak The Spaniard

Hey...we made it to 300 pairings.

Or 300 posts with probably 450 pairings.

I guess, given the societal significance attached to numbers ending to double zeros, I should sum up what we've learned lo these last almost three years.

Learned...? Hmm. I guess that is the word here. Because we have learned, while it's always been a rather organic process dictated entirely by our own random curiosity.

In many ways, food with wine has become what we love, what we do, it's our hobby, the thing we find infinitely interesting and...fun. Finding that in our 30's was something unexpected and joyful.

We knew all that when I started this blog but it's become a little more entrenched, more of a love I would say, more essential and true when talking about what we like in life. Because it's good.

So good.

Like this.

#299 - Two New House Favorites With Two Wines

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

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

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

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

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

#298 - Rioja

Getting away and coming back always leads to a state of precariousness. How do you maintain the sense of calm and exhale you find the moment you set down in a foreign land upon your return? Or more realistically, how do you conserve at least a piece of it? How do you stop it from too quickly transitioning from a feeling to a memory?

It's never a perpetual suspension. Never an enduring sensation floating weightlessly on the right side of that line. It's always merely a delay.

This trip, a trip to Rioja, wine country that has become so dear to our wine hearts over the years, left me with a sense that the feeling will stay a feeling a wee bit longer. It will float for a bit, holding steadfast for a period of time acceptable. Because Rioja has that thing, that Spanish thing making it so Spanish as we know and love it. A way of moving that tastes like the food and wine taste. More Spanish than Barcelona, even Madrid, more languid and wonderfully meandering, more something that took us out of life here to a restful there. To a place that became very "there."

And to our relative surprise, it was never really about the wine.

The highlights:

#297 - Spanish Pork & Saffron Potatoes With '91 Heredia Bosconia GR

Pork.

It's fiiiine and God bless those people that love it so, putting pork slogans on t-shirts, inking pigs on arms (and possibly other places, if you read the news this week - I suppose that was the next inevitable tattoo spot in this day and age) and just generally preaching from the altar of swine.

For us, it offers little. Sure, you can screw with it like no other meat (Whaaaa?), making for a blank slate on which to paint your food art. That has value. Pork is by no means valueless. We like pork in various forms. But we don't anticipate pork. Not like lamb, duck, flank, hanger, shrimp (see below), roasted chicken, you get it.

Pork is like watching Chopped to us - fine enough food TV entertainment to record and watch commercial-free but never in real time. And I've certainly never anticipated the airing and viewing of Chopped. It's sorta just 'there' with all its predictable structure and snooze-worthy content (usually halfway through the entrée course). Yet we watch, because it's on TV.

We eat pork because it's available, cheap and, at times, like this time, can satisfy the 'use stuff up' food meme of the next two weeks as we wait for vacation.

Spanished-up pork is also a good platform for Heredia reds.

And this one was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gotta prep.

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

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

#295 - Shrimp Lunch With Huet Pétillant & Lamb Dinner With Ponzi Reserve

Season 2 of The Killing finally entered and exited my world this week. I'm typically behind on TV and movie things, especially when I can frolic in the superlative joys offered by the Angels' bullpen.

Not once in the 13 hours of the season did I even remotely guess the ultimate killer. Great show, great show! And clues were there throughout both seasons.

In this week's food world, Popeye's chicken and Belgian waffles with watermelon-jalapeño sangria is wrong, we did it and I don't wanna be right.

In this week's restaurant world, Green Zebra is worth a trip. Thoughtful wine list, pretty and quiet space, good food, great staff. We had some salting issues and maybe a feeling that dishes were created first to not offend. Tepid is not the word but, at times, offerings entered that realm. Clean flavors but sometimes clean can become a bit sanitary and Green Zebra felt a bit like that. Bottom line is we'd go again. Not in a hurry and, unfortunately, can't really touch Ubuntu in the veggie flavor explosion world, which is too bad because Green Zebra is here and not 2104 miles away (only 33 hours in current traffic according to Google Maps. Or 691 hours on foot).

Two pairing offerings this week, both with juice that came from houses we both love, both coming off for the most part delicious but both leaving us a little wanting.

#294 - More Than Just Hanger, Potatoes & Green Beans With '07 J. Bookwalter Protagonist

Olympics grub and juice.

I've found myself watching more Olympics coverage than I ever imagined. Basketball, tennis, water polo, rowing, kayaking, gymnastics, tons of swimming, volleyball, beach volleyball and whatever else NBC has put in front of my face (except for the moment of silence for the Munich victims. And the 7/7 victims. NBC tells me what's important in life).

Also, if you're a liberal like me but don't understand that tingly feeling you get in your special place when you see an American athlete accomplish something he or she has been training for their entire life. If you feel it somehow reinforces America's imperialism, Salon has you covered. Because it's what they do:

"However, I’ve outgrown the lust for an overpowering victory that has us, medal-count-wise, leave everyone else in the dust. I’ve outgrown it because while I know our athletes deserve our support and respect, I also know that the same respect is due all the competitors from all the nations at the games — and respect is something wholly different from complete conquest." 

Salon is like sports radio. They lecture morons.

Food:  Hanger steak, potatoes, green beans and onions

#293 - Gazpacho, Chorizo-Stuffed Date "Brisket" & Potato-Kale Cake With '08 Gramercy Inigo Montoya

Spanish inspired and Spanish delicious.

Simple meal, Wednesday meal. Something about some meals we eat on Wednesday tastes like we're eating on Wednesday.

This tasted like Wednesday, a early-to-bed day that gives a nod to fancy while keeping the cooking agony to a minimum.

Drink more fancy wine with it and boom! Fancified.

That's Wednesday.

Food: Gazpacho, chorizo-stuffed date "brisket," potato-kale cake, mayo and manchego

#292 - Roasted Chicken, Salsa Verde, Amaranth Leaves & Radishes With NV Pierre Peters "Pour Albane" Brut Rosé

What are amaranth leaves?

We had no idea. Don't even know what species we ate last night but I tell you what. They're delicious! Like Swiss chard but, you know, good (I've never been a fan). Big, cheap bundle at Whole Foods necessitated a purchase.

A Champagne rosé seemed like a good catch-all for chicken, salsa verde, amaranth and radishes (and we wanted to drink it) but this was an example of a wine being too delicate to play the role of herder. And an example of maybe checking the price tag before letting the wine serve as a herder. That's not something one should do in this price range.

Oops!

Food:  Michael Symon chicken, Michael Symon salsa verde, amaranth leaves, radishes, Seeduction bread, butter and rose petal jam

Symon roasted chicken. It's better chicken. Go here to see the prep. Mrs. Ney turned the oven off from its high cooking temperature 15 minutes before the time allowed to see if that brought about a juicier chicken all around and success! Moisty moistness galore. Lemony, herby, delicious.

Symon salsa verde - it's salsa verde in a different form, loaded with dirty delicious anchovy-caper flavor that's cleaned up in such a new, lifty way by the parsley-mint-olive oil driver (I plagiarized myself from here. Good meal, that. Fond memories).

#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!").