#39 - Tuna Niçoise With '99 Prager

It was hard to follow what was probably the best meal of our lives two nights ago.

But we did just fine.

Last night's meal was a return to the wine from the very first post here at Food With Wine.

And tuna niçoise is a Ney family favorite that was long overdue.

The Prager came off a bit different this time. Less dying fruit, more relative zip.

Could have been the soy sauce in the wine can chicken glaze from the first meal. We've had some odd (read: awful) experiences with soy sauce and white wine in the past (mostly coming from playing around outside of a traditional Asian pairing with sauvignon blanc and Italian malvasia). Maybe it was the absence of it with this meal that brought a little more life to the Prager this time. Don't know. Possible, I guess.

Food: Tuna Niçoise

"Clean you out!"

Seared rare tuna with cherry tomatoes, black olives, capers, green beans, potatoes on arugula with olive oil drizzled everywhere and two hard-boiled eggs for me.

Just a big mountain of food that never gets old. Acid from tomatoes, bitterness from arugula, brininess and earthiness from the capers and olives, carb hit from the potatoes with great, fresh tuna and lots of it.

We have it six to twelve times a year. Kind of resets the food clock with its mountain of fresh goodness.

Wine: 1999 Prager Riesling Weissenkirchen Smaragd Steinriegl ($16 - WDC)

Not available on the webby webs anymore, which makes me lament the fact that we didn't buy more. Only three left.

On another note, while the Austrian (and German) wine labels can be a tad confusing to say the least, pronunciations can be doubly confusing. Forvo is doing a decent job of trying to rectify that. It helps a wee bit when you're able to at least pronounce the word when you're trying to find out what everything means.

With wine can chicken four months ago, dried fruits seemed to dominate the wine. It was great in that way. Dried peaches, a little spice and a butterscotchy element were the notes at the time. Mineral and flower. Still alive but there was a sense that it didn't have a long time left, even with our relative inexperience with such things.

Not really the case this time, which makes me think some of those predictions may have been influenced by the food. More vigor and zip this meal with the Prager. Tasted younger with peach and nectarine notes, more creamy spice upfront and a more balanced dry element than the last time. More elegance as well with a pleasing floral aspect and a lemon...ish...something.

Maybe we'll put one away for 5-10 years just to see what happens.

Pairing: Nothing Wrong With That

I can't think of anything else that would have been better. It's tuna niçoise. 12,000 things are going on with it so drinking something that simply tries to field everything while not trying to be flashy seems to be the most prudent way to go.

That's two baseball references in two days. Pitchers and catchers just reported. That's where my brain currently lies.

#200 - Revisiting The Very First Pairing

It's fun with numbers!

Today, for the 200th post, we revisit the very first pairing we ever did for this blog, Wine Can Chicken with 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinriegl, which started out the blog with a bang and served us much better than post #2, Church Cookbook Lasagna with 2008 Castle Rock Pinot Noir.  My bowels are probably still scraping out the nastiness of that concoction.

We soon rebounded from that calamity though with pairing post #5, Wine Can Chicken and saffron risotto with 1996 Heredia Gravonia that saddled right up to the food in great Spanish ways.

Thomas Keller Chicken quickly usurped Wine Can Chicken as the chicken standard with pairing post #83, our first foray into seriously considering chardonnay as a drinkable grape and something we might actually want.  But WCC found itself left in the dust, so much so that Mrs. Ney struggled today to find her WCC mojo in the kitchen, something that once upon a time came to her quite naturally.

Since this is #200, let's look back at other number milestones in 25-post increments that starts out with a boatload of more chicken (and risotto):

#19 - A Threesome For The First Week Of 2010

Actually four meals with wine in the last week.

The fourth involved a trip to Ceres' Table in Andersonville, a new, Italian-influenced restaurant with American accents from the guy that manned the Boka and MK kitchens in Chicago.

We were left with a choice between this new, recommended restaurant three blocks from our apartment and taking a trip to Mado. Mado - BYO. Ceres' Table - not. Mado = awesome. Ceres' Table = neighborhoody place that makes us immediately suspicious that it won't be money well spent and we'll leave thinking "meh". Mado = our own wine. Ceres' Table = no internet list to filter through and determine whether they're serious about offering good wine at something approaching reasonable restaurant prices.

Three blocks away won out.

Day after holiday at 5pm meant we had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves (=ing awesome).

The menu:

Appetizers - rabbit confit gnocchi, pistachio-inflected country paté and veal tongue

Entrées - flat iron steak and venison

Dessert - crème brûlée and banana bread pudding

Wines - bottles of Szoke Kiraly Hungarian white and Scutari Nero d'Avola with two glasses of Prosecco (one white, one rosé)

In our limited experience, Hungarian whites offer something that oodles of people would love if they gave them a chance. This one was wonderfully balanced with well-integrated fruit, highlighted by pear and orange blossom and a floral note that allows it to silkily wash down the throat. The Kiraly grape, indigenous to Hungary, is better known for Tokaji dessert wines but the dry styles deserve more press.

The nero d'avola was a typical nero d'avola with maybe a bit less spice. Solid fruit, no rough edges, nothing special or exciting but paired well with the entrées. Entry level but decent.

The wine list offered at least four other wines that would get me back in the door. Both a 100% nerello mascalese (seems to be a newer trend/reversion to the old style by omitting the cappuccino) and a Cannonau sounded great (even a couple of negroamaros). It's thoughtful, emphasizing lesser-known Italian wines but offering a hodgepodge from around the world that would pair well with the menu.

Ceres' Table overall falls into a rather quixotic category. I think I can safely say it's the best restaurant in the Andersonville/Lincoln Square food world (soundly trumping the oddly-loved Bistro Champagne). We did it up, which allowed us to get a better sampling of everything they offer than probably 99% of the people that eat there. Guiseppe, the owner, takes a bistro-type angle, offering simply-prepared food but doesn't cater to morons. There's a depth of flavor here unlike anything north of Fullerton and he does it with ingredients that challenge people to somewhat expand their palates.

In short, it's nice to have that near us. Some nice touches include entrées hovering in the mid-teens/early-twenties price range, an eclectic wine list with the majority in the $30-$40 range, all desserts are $5 and LaBriola bread offered gratis.

This isn't food you will remember a year later but it's food that you'll remember two weeks after you have it. If it wasn't so close, I'd still keep an eye on the internet food and wine menu to see about a return trip. Since it's so close, we'll go back, probably soon.

Back the home food and wine with three pairings in the last week.

Meal #1: Modified Tbikhit Qra with 2007 A to Z Pinot Noir - $18 Trader Joe's

Tbikhit Qra is a north African casseroley-type thing consisting of chickpeas, pumpkin, spinach, onion and harissa with lamb added to this particular recipe. Big bowl of clean, surprisingly light goodness and spectacular juice to the whole dish that stuck in your cheeks.

The pairing seemed pretty obvious with pinot noir of some sort holding the top-five slots on the option list. Since Mrs. Ney was a bit leery as to how the dish would turn out, we went with something fairly cheap and safe.

A to Z Pinot Noir is available pretty much everywhere. For many, it's the kind of wine that allows you to get into something a little more complex than your standard, cheap varietal wine without breaking the bank. It's $18.

For the first half of the meal, It was simple, maybe a little too simple, but fine enough with the food. The second half of the meal, though, the wine started to open up, becoming more dark with more cinnamon and a pleasing juiciness. Still a just-above-average pinot noir but in the value category with enough acidity to go with tons of other food choices. Oddly, it was better, great actually, drinking it first and then taking a bite instead of the usual other way around.

Good midweek meal that we'll revisit it again.

Meal #2: Asian Wine Can Chicken with 2005 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinreigl - $25 WDC

The first offering here at Food With Wine involved the 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinriegl. It went over the label terms there. Six years on, this one shows a similar life trek. Where the 1999 was dying a glorious, very imminent death, the 2005 showed what could only be described as showing the first signs of age. The wrinkles around the eyes were starting to show.

And that made it pretty great. The fruit has started to concentrate and is just starting to dry. Intense with tropical fruit and an overtone of green apple and a bit of peach. Still a tad light, though. Elegant with a lifting finish.

It paired in the way you want Asian-inspired food to pair. Great counterbalance to the salt and hoisin crust with a bit of orange peel on the chicken.

Prager is one of the wineries we will follow in some form every year going forward and this exact one was the wine that made us stand up and take notice of better crafted, more expensive whites.

Meal #3: Pistachio-crusted rack of lamb wrapped in Serrano ham and 2006 Ponzi Pinot Noir

Speaking of wines we'll follow, Ponzi Pinot Noir is one of the top five. It's the wine that made us love Oregon pinot noir. For the first time, the 2006 (which we've had a ton) is starting to show some graceful age.

Every other time we've had it, the 2006 Ponzi was exactly the same - a lighter wine with cherry and other red fruits playing around in the background and a pronounced floral note that made the finish glorious. Just great balance and a perfect amount of acidity. We hadn't had this one for a few months and were immediately surprised by how deep it's become. The balance and acidity is still in harmony with a body that's changed from lighter to medium, fruit so much deeper I thought some darker black fruit might be there. It's been entirely interesting and wonderful to actually taste, for the first time, some of our wines age in our relatively-brief wine drinking world.

The recipe for the lamb called for pancetta but I bought waayyyy too much Serrano ham for New Year's Eve and it had to be used up. The purpose of using pancetta was to allow the fat to leech into the lamb. Serrano doesn't have that fat but it wasn't a problem at all. The Serrano, instead, became fully crisp and the unique earthiness that comes with it worked beautifully with the pistachio/oil and the lamb, offering something probably better than what pancetta would have. Tasted like a charcuterie plate was slathered on the lamb. As everything fell onto the arugula that accompanied the meat, it became one of the best salad concoctions I've had in a long time.

Nothing was greatly enhanced by the food and wine pairing. It was rather one of those nicely complimentary pairings where nothing hurt anything. Good food stayed good food. Good wine stayed good wine.

#1 - Wine Can Chicken & '99 Prager

Food: Wine Can Chicken

Quickly making its way into our rotation, Wine Can Chicken is simple. Take a soda can (I think I've made the transition from 'pop' to 'soda.' Got sick of the looks.) and fill it 2/3 of the way with a decent, cheap white wine and fill the rest with whatever herbs you want/have within reach.

Mrs. Ney used herbs de Provence, more rosemary, lemongrass and orange blossom water if I recall correctly.

Stick the can up the chicken's rear, prop it upright so it looks like it might come alive and stick it in the oven.

The glaze for the chicken was Asian-ish since Riesling pairs so well with such things, comprised of a soy sauce, hoisin, ginger beer reduction with salt.

All of it was served on mâche with baguette and butter.

Wine: 1999 Prager Riesling Weissenkirchen Smaragd Steinreigl - $16 Wine Discount Center

Why so cheap for a '99 Austrian Riesling from a good house? Probably because most of the reviews for the bottle consider it to be past its drinking window.

Robert Parker of Wine Advocate:

The 1999 Riesling Smaragd Weißenkirchen Steinriegl has a mineral-dominated nose. This medium-bodied, silky-textured and tangy wine is redolent with lemony minerals,quinine, and flowers. This admirably balanced wine should be consumed the next 7-9 years.

Other places on these internets had it for upwards of $45 so we figured why not? We've had this 2005 before and loved it.

Here's what the terms on the bottle mean purely for the purpose of forcing me to learn this stuff:

Wachau: Highly-respected Austrian region known for its Rieslings and Grüners

Smaragd: Wachau-specific designation. Has to do with when the grapes can be picked, when the wine can be released and has the highest alcohol level (> 12.5%), low sugar level, typically the richest and driest (compared to Federspiel with an alcohol level between 11.5 & 12.5% and Steinfeder below that). Order = Steinfeder (light, racy), Federspiel (elegant, medium-bodied) and Smaragd (ripe, full-bodied)

Steinriegl: Particular vineyard/area

Weissenkirchen: City near Steinriegl

By golly, that seems excessively complicated. Here's a pretty good primer.

Pairing: It worked quite well

I don't have oodles of experience with being able to immediately recognize with complete authority whether a wine is past its prime, but the fruit was drying out, almost completely there.

But there was still a liveliness to this wine, especially when the salt came to the party, bringing out it's acidity. What I saw as hints of smoke and nuts, Mrs. Ney saw as a butterscotchy element (she has an infinitely better palate than me). Dried peaches and a little spice with a tiny floral note (?) as well.

Oddly, it paired best with the baguette and butter, making me think if it would be best drank as a pre-dinner aperitif kinda thingy with a lil snack.

In the end, though, the wine didn't conflict at all, stood up to everything and brought an pleasing element to the table. Reminded me of the Robert Lopez de Heredia whites not in its flavor profile but in what brings to a pairing - a dried element that is expressed first in its fruit and secondary flavors and it's style second. Wasn't bone-dry, rather something approaching off-dry (?) and everything was still rather focused. Deep yellow in the glass that resembled urine.

We just bought four more bottles to watch this one die a nice death.

The Reason

No reason, really.

Mostly, we at the Ney household have tried a wine and food log probably five times. Never stuck. So this is an exercise attempting to catalogue things in an easily searchable format, something I can quickly whip out in the morning after waking up while last night's meal is still fresh in the melon.

I'm 37, bald as all get out, wait tables and really like wine.

I'm under no illusion that anybody else will care but, if you happen to, well, like the structure of the NBA playoffs, everyone's a winner!

Some background. I'm nowhere close to an expert. I've been around wine in the restaurant business, watching people chew, for 13 years now but I only became what would be considered seriously into it five years ago. Sure, I know my grapes, where they're from, what I like, what I tolerate and what I pretty much hate.

There's a saying in golf that applies. If you're a bogey golfer, you're better than 85% of the golfers out there. But that doesn't mean you're a good golfer. Everything's relative. When it comes to knowing wine, I would conservatively say that I merely have a pretty solid baseline.

This will be an attempt to actually track a gloriously wonderful process and joy: Food and wine. What worked. What didn't. What could have worked if.... And what had no chance in hell of working ever in the history of history.

I can't tell you my favorite wine. Probably depends on the food. Plus, I don't think I can say with any degree of certainty what that one bottle is. Still working on that.

Right now, overall, it trends toward French. Loire with a Chenin Blanc bent, Right Bank Bordeaux but...Spanish always, Portuguese Douro table wine (Quinta do Vale Meao, still chasing the 2007 Duorum Reserva), Oregon Pinot Noir (Ponzi, Ken Wright) and a new jag that we're only now discovering is quasi-cult California Syrah (Sanguis).

So...we'll see. Might be fun. Who knows? I can learn, pass it along, maybe you'll be compelled and you can teach me things.

In it's basic form, wine is good. And good wine is freakin' transcendent!

Why not write about it?

First up: Wine Can Chicken! with mâche and baguette with a 1999 Prager Smaragd Steinreigl Riesling.

Wine Can Chicken is quickly becoming a staple in the Ney household. Because it's delicious. All that gobbledygook after Prager I knew for about two weeks two years ago and promptly forgot the meanings behind it. All I remember is that it's an Austrian Riesling in the dry style and we got a great deal on it at Wine Discount Center on Elston for $15.99 a bottle.

First report tomorrow.

#83 - Thomas Keller Chicken, Mâche & Cheese With Two Chardonnays

We have a few prejudices that we're more than willing to let linger as we find our wine feet.

Mostly, it's "screw Cabernet and Chardonnay". We just don't enjoy their guts as much as other wines. We know good Cabernet and Chardonnay are good and have had a few good ones. And we know we'll eventually get to them more at length. But we also know that "good" costs money, especially with those two grapes.

With both of us having worked in the restaurant business/wine retail-ish world for so long, we've had tons of overpriced and bad Cab and Chard. They can wait while we spend our money getting into the nuances of wines and regions that we truly enjoy. We've opened up to virtually every style of wine. These two linger as a judgment though and we have no impulse to mess around trying to find bargains of two grapes we don't care about.

But, last night, threw a wrench into the works a bit. And both of us thought that might happen.

A wine writer for the now-defunct New York Sun quoted Henry James when discussing the Királyudvar Sec, a glorious wine that we've had on multiple occasions since November and a wine we almost switched to last night:

In a rare moment of concision, the novelist and critic Henry James observed, "There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise, and the taste for emotions of recognition."

We seek out surprise in wines. But, for us, the impulse hasn't been there to be surprised by Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Champagne has been recently scratched off the "don't freakin' care about" list. I can't believe I'm writing this but Chardonnay...you're now off the list. Cabernet...(and Malbec and Tannat and Zweigelt...OH!...and Pinot Grigio, something that's well ahead of Cabernet in our 'screw you' world)...you are the only ones really left.

Thanks to what might have been the perfect recipe to get into Chardonnay, the response to last night's meal was, "Why was THAT so good?!"

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with pea shoots, mâche with avocado vinaigrette and baguette with Burgundian cheese and Irish butter

Here's the recipe. Get to know it because it's stupid good. Better than Wine Can Chicken, five words I thought I'd never say, and easier to prepare.

No one element of the chicken made it delicious. It was the total product. Simply prepared and tasted exactly like what people mean when they extol the virtues of simplicity with an almost brightness in its earthy goodness. It's the new "Winner Winner" in Chicken Dinner.

The Burgundian cheese, delice de Bourgogne, nearly matched the chicken. Like brie without the brie-ness. Intensely creamy without choking you with its creaminess and just enough funkiness that knows when to go away. Served with LaBriola baguette. No baguette is better and it's not every close.

Mâche with an avocado vinaigrette made with crappy, store-bought guacamole that was used previously for a quickly whipped-together taco lunch a few days earlier. Just extra virgin oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Complimented the chicken beautifully and served to help the already present brightness in the chicken along. Pea shoots brought something more crunchy and became the bridge between the mâche and the chicken.

We could have served any of our favorite wines with this meal and would have loved it.

But it's Try New Things Summer.

Wine: 2007 Domaine de Roally Viré Clessé ($20 - WDC) and 2008 Craggy Range Chardonnay Kidnapper's Vineyard ($17 -WDC)

2007 Domaine de Roally Viré Clessé

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

AOC: Viré Clessé in the Mâconnais subregion of Burgundy

Vintage (WS): 92 Precise, pure and elegant, with lively structures if harvested late; at worst unripe if picked early

2008 Craggy Range Chardonnay Kidnapper's Vineyard

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

Region: Hawkes Bay

We sampled both wines before the meal and the Burgundy was the undisputed winner right out of the bottle. More golden yellow than the New Zealand wine, which had a crisp green in the glass, the Domaine de Roally had a huge barnyard funkiness to it that was deliciously weird. A bit of oak and butter but the hay and something that was almost lavender (without the overt lavender quality) was unique and good. Initially, the Craggy Range was all buttered toast, the exact quality that we don't enjoy at all about Chardonnay, with a wee hint of pear.

Things changed over the course of the meal though. The Craggy Range quickly showed more nuance with more expressive pear and hints of lime and a clean, refreshing acidity with the excessively buttered notes falling into the background. Almost delicate with even some limestone notes. Mrs. Ney put it perfectly. Blind, it could have been an enjoyable California Sauvignon Blanc.

Very much less acidic and more rich, the Domaine de Roally evolved into buttered baked fruits with the barnyard quality integrating more into the fruit profile and tons of minerals. A better, more interesting wine than the Craggy Range with an elegant coating of the throat as it went down.

Comparing both styles seemed apt given our aversion to the grape and we benefitted from it. It was a classic Old World/New World thing with two great examples of both. And both at or under $20.

Just really enjoyable and "surprised" the heck out of it.

Pairing: 94 As a total meal, that's the score but it's tough to score something like this

Nothing went off the rails but some things were better with a specific wine. And some things were the definition of perfect.

Eating the delice de Bourgogne and baguette with the Domaine de Roally would turn anyone skeptical of what wine does with food and what the French unequivocally get right with food and wine in about two seconds. Pure silk and made us pause.

The mâche and avocado vinaigrette with the Craggy Range did nearly as well. The lime and mineral notes in the wine exploded and together, they both sang.

The chicken played right down the middle, serving both wines well and we alternated back and forth, picking up what we wanted, when we wanted it at each particular time. Mostly, it was the nice backbone of minerality in different forms in both wines that made the chicken pairing (particularly with the nicely salted skin) work so well. Oh, and we slathered butter on the chicken because Thomas Keller told us to. You don't question Thomas Keller. Delicious with the Domaine de Roally.

I'm not going to say we going to rush out and buy up as many Chardonnays as we can as soon as possible. But in our world, it's found a small niche, made that way by what might have been the perfect meal to make that happen.

A quick note. Went to Mado Tuesday for another goshdarn good meal. Appetizer menu was meat platter of chicken liver paté, testa and copa, roasted carrots in ras el hanout goat cheese and cumin honey, farm fresh egg on toasted cornbread, citrus-cured lake perch, and asparagus and peas with Parmigiano-Reggiano. Entrees were spaghetti with spring onion, chilies and bread crumbs and eggs in purgatory, a sort of Sicilian green olive, spiced tomato and breadcrumb stew. We were happy and full.

Eaten with the 2007 Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir Ulises Valdez Vineyard ($75 - Binny's) and the 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinreigl ($16 - WDC). The Prager has been discussed here numerous times. It's almost done and the degree in which it's leaped toward its death was even more intensified since the last time we had it. All dried flowers and apricots with only a hint of sugar. Got better as it opened up. We've enjoyed every second of watching this one go. The Paul Hobbs, bought when I was in a spendy mood and apparently more open to overpriced California offerings, didn't come close to living up to its price tag however. Very Californian with that syrupy quality and pleasant enough fruit and decent balance. If I spent $30 on it, I would have thought it was a fine enough wine, even good. At $75, I was a bit pissy about it.