#139 - Szechuan Tuna, Olive/Pepper Salsa & Saffron Risotto With '07 Evening Land

Check out the new (work in progress) drop-down menu.

It's pretty, turned out oodles better than I thought and I don't want to stare at HTML code ever again.

Now to today's offering as I brace for another Angels baseball season without a lineup that realistically competes with the Yankees and Red Sox. Oh, and watching the Iowa football team fall apart. That's been fun, too.

I must admit, I've always loved tuna with rosé so darn much that taking a swipe at tuna with pinot noir never entered my brain. It's what my brain does. It gets stuck on things.

But beef up the tuna with some szechuan peppercorns, add some green olive and shallot business and why not?

Especially when this Oregon bottle brought the twiggy mud.

Food: Szechuan peppercorn-crusted tuna with a olive-pepper salsa, saffron risotto and paprika mayoed asparagus

Beautiful dry low heat with a background bright, almost sweetness brought by the Szechuan peppercorns to the great rare tuna. Szechuan peppercorns tingle the tongue in a similar way to when you put your tongue to a nine-volt battery (we had a whole one as a parting shot at Bonsoirée a few years ago - wild stuff, a gimmick but fun). Mrs. Ney got that same sensation this time. I missed it, instead getting it in much lower doses.

A salsa/relish to accompany the tuna consisting of tangerine-marinated cerignola green olives (Puglia, Italy), peppadew (sweet picanté peppers), shallots and parsley made into a relish/salsa with lemon juice added (recipe from The New Spanish Table). Mingled nicely with the tuna, bringing a creamy nuttiness from the olives with a hint of sweetness from the peppers with an herbal note. Flavors jumped around in welcome ways.

Smoky glazed asparagus slathered with paprika and mayo with cumin, garlic, salt, olive oil and lemon juice. From a Nate Appleman (A16, SPQR in San Francisco) recipe in Food & Wine. Surprisingly tasty and might be better than mustardized asparagus.

Saffron-pistachio risotto to round things out. We had Five Guys for lunch so a starch seems superfluous. Always good (saffron risotto that is, but Five Guys, too) and this one was but after all the freshness packed with big flavors on the plate, the goopy comfort that comes from saffron risotto seemed almost out of place.

This was Great Food, surprising food, food layered and wonderful in so many ways.

Tuna and pinot noir? Yes, please. Doin' this again real soon.

Wine: 2007 Evening Land Pinot Noir Seven Springs Vineyard Eola-Amity Hills ($33 - WDC)

Opened 20 minutes before pouring, which turned out to be a good thing as the tannins showed up in bunches about an hour and a half into the meal.

A pure, translucent medium red in the glass, mossy on the nose. On the palate, huge elements of earth and twigs, like a tree branch dragged through soupy mud. Didn't taste like it was from Oregon with less forward dark red fruits - mostly dark raspberry - or that distinctive rose petal/leafy quality we love in some Oregon labels. Tasted like Burgundy (at least in my limited experience with red Burgundy) with a good core of minerals and fine grains of earth in a medium body with a pleasing backbone of acid. Almost haunting and brooding. Almost. But distinctive and tasted like a specific place/plot/terroir-y type wine of significance for the price (which we got for dirt cheap at the time).

2007 vintage reports for Oregon initially reported disaster but we've had some good experiences with the 2007's. Lighter, yes, but still complex enough. This was no exception.

And it stood up to the food in solid and surprising ways.

Pairing: 89 Creamy earth explosion with the tuna

Like if you made a mud, twigs and raspberry creamsicle and drizzled it with a dusting of dried, crushed flower roots. Seemed like the pinot noir and tuna were made for each other.

The surprise of the night, though, probably came from how the asparagus matched up with it. The cumin and paprika jumped out with the wine. Both of us didn't expect the asparagus to do anything but pinot noir and cumin can do amazing things together and it did.

Dud with the saffron risotto (really awful stuff, actually - tasted like eating dirt with rust shavings in it) so I cracked a 2009 Crios Rosé of Malbec just to see if it performed better. Fine enough but didn't come close to what the Evening Land was doing with the tuna and asparagus.

Went into the meal with some level of trepidation over the wine and proved to be quite luscious and unique.

A quick note: A Sunday night meal of jerk chicken, plantain-sweet potato mash and mint snap peas as I gave away my shift due to the apocalyptic weather reports in Chicago. Served with NV Frey-Sohler Cremant d'Alsace Riesling Brüt ($16 - WDC), a cheapie from a label we've liked in the past for its price point. Nothing too spectacular here. Mostly fruit of lime peel/pith with respectable bubbles and a refreshing angle that made it merely tasty without ever breaking out of that box (read: forgettable). Could do worse in the sparkling category for $16 but could do better as well. Food on the plate = yummy and finger-lickin' jerk goodness but the wine didn't help things along or offer anything in the way of "wow" (pairing score: 84).

Szechuan Tuna and Blood Orange-Black Olive Salad with 2007 Ponzi Pinot Noir

Missing out on a possible dream apartment by a matter of hours made our hearts drop. It wasn't the end of the world by any means, but for a few hours, something close to that feeling came over both of us, in no small part a testament to what the physical and psychological hellhole our current apartment has become.

When a better place in many, many ways opened up, two days later, we grabbed it by the balls and had sex with the leasing process. This. Was. Going. To. Happen.

And it did. Life is better.

Eating rare Szechuan tuna freshness during the application process also made things better, a meal we've had a ton of times before, but not lately.

Szechuan peppercorns, cardamom, white pepper, coriander and thyme ground up and crusted on the tuna, seared rare. Served with blood oranges and black olives tossed with shallot, thyme, cumin and hazelnut oil. Mâche salad with pomegranate seeds. Seeduction bread on the side with butter. Über-satisfying. Beautiful dry low heat with a background bright, almost sweetness brought by the Szechuan peppercorns to the great rare tuna. Eat this food and you'll feel as clean and bright as the freakin' food.

We have a few leftover Ponzi pinot noirs laying around since we mostly moved on from Oregon pinot noir a few years ago. Still like it, just not buying it. Here, a 2007, we found an awful lot of deliciousness for a wine with a more than fair amount of age on it. Fresh wet earth, dying roses, and settling, yet a still lively red fruit blend in very nice proportion. Almost a molasses bread note floating around in the back. Entirely pleasant, and rather nice all-around here with the tuna, bread, mâche, everything. It was a nice reminder why we liked Ponzi in the first place.

Now, two months of sifting through everything we own and finding out what goes.

And we're hiring movers. Because we're adults and that's what adults do.

#217 - Szechuan Tuna, Beets & Pea Shoots With '06 Ponzi Pinot Noir

The last time we had the 2006 Ponzi estate bottling of pinot noir in April, I remember starting to wonder how long it had left.

The acid that typically and uniquely surrounds and penetrates any year of this Ponzi offering had previously showed signs of fading in this vintage.

Last night's experience was the opposite.  The acid seems to have simply transitioned into a different phase as opposed to showing a linear regression to death.  This acid was alive, jumpy and dominating in a way that we sorta loved.

The experience still stayed more in the world of seeing where the wine had evolved to instead of coming off delicious, fresh and balanced but in the realm of understanding why acid is so important to wine and enjoying it for where it currently sat in its life, good drink I say.

Food:  Szechuan Tuna with beets and pea shoot salad

#242 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Let's do a connect-the-meals-with-wines puzzle!

Here are the wines:

1.  2009 Ponzi Pinot Noir
2.  2006 Ponzi Pinot Noir
3.  2004 Terre Rough Syrah Sentinel/Pyramid Block
4.  NV De Vallois Saumur Brut
5.  2005 Edmond Cornu & Fils Chorey-les-Beaune

And here are the meals:

1.  Roasted Chicken, Moondust Cheese & Mâche
2.  Braised Pork Shoulder, Savory Scones & Brussels Sprouts
3.  Szechuan Peppercorn Tuna, Roasted Beets & Frisée
4.  Semiramis Hummus & Dolmas

Clue:  the tuna and white Burgundy would have been terrible together!

Frankly (who's Frank?  Frank Lee Gifford!), only one pairing really worked on a superlative level and another was just flat-out awful.

#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.

#143 - Asian Beef Filet & Sweet Potato With '07 Quinta do Vale Meão

This is the stuff we should have smuggled home from Portugal!

The 2003 Quinta do Vale Meão Douro opened the gates for us in spending money on the Old World a few years ago. Fantastically creamy, rich fruit doused with Asian spices and charred meat and herbs all over the place. I can tongue-remember everything about that wine.

Then we went back to the 2002, which came off a touch less rich and didn't develop as well in the glass (some say it's drinking beautifully right now).

Shot ahead to the 2004 and found it so confident and delicious (recently had it again in March). The 2005 was recently guzzled at the stellar Chafariz do Vinho Enoteca in Lisbon at a patently ridiculous $85 price tag.

In our world, Vale Meão is two things. One, it's the one wine that causes more hemming and hawing about the quality and preparation of the food. For us to crack one, the food has to be something special from conception. Two, until the day we die or they stop making it, Vale Meão has a customer every vintage no matter the price tag. It's our Lafite-Rothschild, our Ausone, our Pingus. When it's cracked, it's a holiday in our house.

Food: Asian beef filet with asian spiced sweet potatoes and a watercress salad

Quality beef filet from Paulina Meat Market. Not the most beautiful marbling, according to Mrs. Ney, but good stuff.

A Saveur recipe doused with sake, soy sauce and generous amounts of sea salt and cooked rare to medium-rare. Melty in the mouth with a grassy bamboo note from the sake coming through beautifully. Less so with the soy sauce. The joy came in every bite but especially an end bite with more of the beef char and the sea salt that came off more like a sea water deliciousness than coarse hits of salt. Perfect. It's a great recipe. Use it. With quality meat, the standard advice is to not screw with it. Screw that. With this recipe, it's entirely elevated.

Sweet potatoes dressed with butter, szechuan peppercorns and cocoa nib. Done up to accompany the wine. Good stuff, interesting stuff, just didn't match up with the wine in the least. Fell short and that diverted our attention away from it. Became something simply on the plate.

But the watercress salad blended with mint and dressed with sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, szechuan peppercorn and cocoa nib oddly played right into the meal. Something about the mint and how it plays with Douro reds forgives other elements, like the similar peppercorn/cocoa nib on the sweet potato, and opens things up. The mint was the bridge as a minty/eucalyptus note typically pops up on the finish of these wines.

Mrs. Ney declared it to be the best food in months in this house. I tend to agree. I'm still hung up on TK chicken. And the first meal we had after the flavor wasteland that was Portugal in many ways, the beef filet with English cheddar, might have been right there in terms of flavors from the food.

But she was talking about the complete meal. With that, I agree in spades.

And the wine was actually slightly better on its own.

Wine: 2007 Quinta do Vale Meão Douro ($75 - Wine Chateau)

Hour and a half decant and could have used much more. Dark crimson core with a purplish hue swirling around. Closed nose of charred meat and smoked plums (do people smoke plums?). Reticent as all get out. 2003 and 2007 were vintages that our wine tour guide at Vallado confirmed to us to be the most exciting vintages in the Douro in the last ten years. 2003 was hot from beginning to end, bringing the fruit right to the front of the line in all their glory. 2007 saw early rain that cut yields but an even ripening after the rain and perfect harvest weather brought great balance. Looking at it through that lens and comparing the two wines, that was confirmed in the glass last night.

The fruit was mostly hidden, popping up in the background halfway down but still propping up everything. Mostly smoked plums followed through from the nose, some cassis and jumbled mix of red berry. But the wine was defined by its charred meat rubbed in fine earth note that vacillated back and forth between offering a minty note and something like roadkill...in a good way. Less dark chocolate and less obvious Asian spice notes right now than previous vintages. Interesting acid, something that almost tasted like what tangerine/blood orange acid notes offer. Lifty and brightening. And I swear an actual blood orange note kicked up with a szechuan peppercorn bite. And not just from the peppercorn. Tasted like it was IN the wine. Fit like a glove.

The tannins needed a taming, though. More decanting was needed. They never took away from the enjoyment of the wine but nonetheless shortened the silkiness of the finish. One or two more years and this is gonna be a great wine. Once the fruit shows a touch more assertiveness and the tannins bring more integration to the party, this might be a "top ten of the decade" sort of thing.

Pairing: 92 Wine=95, Meat=94, Pairing=92

As a pairing, it didn't touch the 2005 Yalumba Hand-Picked Shiraz-Viognier with the same preparation of beef filet in January. Something about how the sake-soy sauce-salt combo blows open a wine with already bigger, more forward fruit. Just a fancy feast for the senses.

The Vale Meão was better on its own rather than with the food, showing more guts, potential and just a flurry of nuance.

With the meat, that was toned down a bit. Mostly, the charred meat/roadkill notes played right into the charred beef filet in pleasing and delicious ways. The sake lift in the meat worked with the gorgeous acid lift in the wine. Both played together nicely but a sip of wine and a bite of meat separately bought more pause-worthy, ponderous moments.

The sweet potatoes shortened the finish in unexpected ways, especially since we've done Asian sweet potatoes before with Vale Meão and liked it. Probably needed more a fruity core presence with the wine to pull that off.

But the wine rebounded with the watercress. Didn't sing but with greens and red, who knows what's going to happen. The mint in the salad cozied up mighty kindly with the wine.

....Yep....best meal in months.

#183 - Sake-Soaked Wagyu Beef & Sweet Potato Fries With '05 Yalumba HP Shiraz-Viognier

We eat meat, love meat and crave meat.

But this year, we've eaten much less meat, more lean meat and mostly mini versions of meat with each meal.

Under the auspices of 'you can have too much of a good thing,' we started to experience the fact that bigger portions of meat, even six ounces of meat, on the plate detracts from the after-burn from and basking in the enjoyment of a good meal.

We've been wanting our veggies more, our greens more and a well-prepared starch more with a smaller portion of meat at the center of the meal to complement instead of bullying such things.

We've always eaten well-balanced meals but being from the Midwest, we haven't completely shed the upbringing of meat and meat with a side of meat.

Eight ounces of wagyu beef, a slab of dead animal that tasted like a delicious grilled stick of butter, will force anyone to reconsider the peculiar details of an upbringing.  Sort of like eating the Meat Monster.

Mrs. Ney was prudent and stopped at four ounces of meat-butter consumption.  I did not.

Food:  Sake-soy soaked wagyu beef, sweet potato fries with red thai curry mayo and watercress

The Fish Guy on Elston wagyu beef ($36 for 16 oz.) cooked rare.  Not cheap but it's wagyu.  Oddly though, it left us wanting a bit.  This was the first time we cooked up wagyu at home.  Had it and loved it in various forms out in the world but never at home.  Dunked in salt, then sake, then soy sauce, then finished with a crusting of szechuan peppercorns; from a Saveur recipe and the same recipe used in the superlative #143 Asian beef filet with 2007 Quinta do Vale Meão in December.  Quality stuff but begged the question:  If you're going to buy one of the best cuts of meat on the planet, should you go whole-hog and buy the best cut of one of the best cut of meat on the planet?  Both of us weren't driving down to Fox & Obel and probably drop $20 more to get the same amount but we ended up wondering if he should have.  If done again, that would feel right and proper.

Beautiful taste, great marbling but we both felt like eating eight ounces of anything that tastes like a grilled stick of butter needs in its most basic form to be much...less.  Three to four ounces would have been prudent and even necessary.  Something about taking that first bite and seeing the task before you with so much more meat on the plate forces the meat to loudly star.  Stop halfway through?  Again, I grew up in the Midwest in a big family.  You clean your plate.  Still haven't shed some of that upbringing.

But the Asian preparation of the wagyu was delicious stuff and it's versatile with so many other cuts of beef.  Sake and soy come through beautifully, imparting a deep but bright and lifting quality that lingers nicely with a popping and bright szechuan peppercorn hit backing it up.

That played right into the sweet potato fries and Thai red curry mayo for dipping.  We like our mayo and this one sits in the top five.  With the meat prep and sweet potato-mayo-Asian goodness, we were happy.

Uplands Cress watercress bag from Jewel, roots and all in the bag, stemmed and then wilted in the meat pan.  A better watercress by every measure.  Planty and raw with a punch of something that tastes like the white bits in potting soil in the best possible way.  No other watercress will most likely ever hit the plate in this house.

Tasty food galore.  Asian-y, delicious and played right into one of our favorite wines.  But four ounces of beef filet offering something less of a "LOOK AT ME, I'M WAGYU!" might have been better.  We needed more low-key beefy goodness to allow every element of the meal to alternately take the stage and belch out to the rafters.  We needed a meat that would shut up and let others show their acting chops.

It was like watching Nicolas Cage chewing scenery with his bloated Nic Cage-ness at every possible turn.

Wine:  2005 Yalumba Hand-Picked Shiraz Viognier ($30 - Winerz)

Probably the fourth bottle we've had of this vintage.  Used to be available in town but sadly has gone away.

Biggest impression of the night was how little it's budged since we first had it.  Still chugging along, longer life here and cheap, cheap, cheap for what you get.  More dark cherry and wild berry with an underlying darker fruit note and a small creamy edge but plenty of dark, meaty fruit skin.  The fruit since our last experience seems to have became a bit more tight and focused.  Some nice grip.

Secondary flavors of herby sage, a touch of pencil and even something similar to sweet paprika with mature, paced transitions leading to a finish that kept going.  Viognier still lending a juicy acid feel to it, lifting it out of the ordinary Australian shiraz world and into something more pretty and friendly.

Followed a great arc throughout the meal, becoming more open and delicious halfway through and ending on an irony sanguine note that was utterly delicious.  Not fruit bomby, this is graceful stuff.

Again, shocked how little age this one has shown over the years.  Falls into the 2003 Pirramimma world for us - a wine that we'd buy a case of just to watch it die a fun death.      

Pairing:  89  Enough basic goodness but the world, like the meal, needs less of Nic Cage being Nic Cage

If we cooked up four ounces of beef filet with the same preparation, this one could have been great.

Good stuff paired the wagyu with the Asian preparation playing its part more than the meat.  Szechuan peppercorns continue to shine with Australian shiraz for us.

Nice with the sweet potato fries and Thai red curry dip and strangely good at times with the watercress, especially as the wine hit its later, irony stage.

We liked this meal but expected more, though.

And as Mrs. Ney says, "People that bitch about Australian fruits bombs can kiss my butt!"

Good ones are Great Stuff in our world.

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.

#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

#171 - Bittman Chicken & Momofuku Soba Noodles With Two Demi-Secs

After the odd (read: bad) food week last week, this week's gotten off to a rollicking start.

The best puttanesca (also a Mark Bittman recipe like today's chicken entry) I've ever had on Sunday followed by a trip to Semiramis Monday brought things back into food focus. Good to have flavors again.

Unfortunately, none of the wines with those meals brought much to the table in terms of enhancement.

The 2008 Trader Joe's label Super Tuscan blend Trentatre (33 by another name - a third each of cabernet, merlot and montepulciano) with puttanesca was all cinnamon and wet leaves. Good stuff by itself, if a bit low on the acid front, but offered little with the explosion of dark creamy anchovy, black olive and caper deliciousness in the bowl.

Semiramis was its usual tabletop full of Lebanese wonders but the 2008 A to Z Pinot Noir (#75 on the 2010 Wine Spectator 100) isn't anything noticeably better than their previous offerings in our world. Worth exactly what we paid, in other words. $18 and a wine that asks the question, "If I'm spending about $20 anyway, why not go up a level and get some distinction?"

The NV Cantina del Taburno Falanghina Extra Brut, a new personal favorite, performed a bit better but really never got out of the realm of 'nice to have ya here, buddy'. Semiramis has always been a tough match.

Last night's dinner was no different when it comes to food and wine pairing love for the week. Very little enchancement to speak of and only made us think about we might have worked.

Food: Bittman chicken, Momofuku ginger scallion noodles and sugar snap peas

A black char on the Bittman chicken (chicken-under-a-brick) led to pronouncements of "At least the noodles will be good!" but an odd thing happened. The char actually brought some level of goodness to the plate. The chicken stayed moist and the rub of tamarind, five-spice and ginger came through in great ways with the char offering something more. Wouldn't recommend this path to your Bittman chicken but stuff happens in the kitchen.

But the Momofuku ginger scallion noodles were the star. A Saveur recipe from David Chang of Momofuku Noodle Bar (and four other restaurants in New York including Má Pêche, which is on our list of places to go soon and has the deliciously weird Arbois from last week on their wine list), it's a simple concoction of ginger, scallions, soy sauce, canola oil, serrano peppers (modified), sherry vinegar and salt and whipped into soba noodles (modified). Bright, hot, defined and probably one of the top three noodle dishes I've ever had. Explosive flavor happiness in the mouth.

By the end, the sugar snap peas (mint, cilantro, sesame seeds and szechuan peppercorns) and the chicken pulled off the bone were mixed together with the noodles and turned into a mélange of Asian wonders.

Good recipes make good food. I wish more people understood that.

Wine: 2005 Foreau Vouvray Demi-Sec Domaine Clos du Naudin ($36 - WDC) & 2007 Dr. Konstantin Frank Riesling Semi-Dry ($15 - WDC)

Pop and pour on both. Much debate on the interwebs about a decant for the Foreau. Phillippe Foreau himself says not to decant. Even more debate on whether the Foreau is proper to drink right now. Again, Foreau himself loves the idea. So we're good.

Foreau: Honeyed pears, honeyed pineapples and honeyed peaches on the palate with a smoky apricot skin once it warmed up. A delicate, pretty, sugared edge showing a deft touch of grace and skill that utterly defines the wine. A touch upfront with a medium finish and enough acid to keep things focused. Liked it - almost loved it - but missed the mineral presence that comes from Hüet's expression of chenin blanc, something that would have made this wine silly good (and a critique that I'm sure every producer in Vouvray hates reading - no matter how good a wine turns out, Michael Jordan seems to always be in the room). It's that separation with chenin blanc in our experience, that entrance of pretty, lightly sugared, honeyed fruit washed away by a singular mineral mid-palate with pretty acid and a returning, darker, honeyed fruit to the finish that brings the three-act play that makes Hüet's so distinctive and wonderful. We got all of that but the minerals and we missed them.

Dr. Konstantin Frank: Less pretty with the sugared edges but more of a floral and lemon angle than the Foreau. Had moments of quince and spice as well. A nice riesling for $15, though, at three years old, has probably lost some of its acidic vibrancy and came off a touch weighty. Again, would have benefited from a minerality that just wasn't there but we came to like it over the course of the night.

All in all, we both admired how well the Foreau was put together and it certainly was the wine we reached for the most during the dinner, but the Dr. Konstantin Frank kept it shockingly close.

Pairing: 83 Missed the minerals

A flat pairing, nothing that said eat and drink me, more in the vein of having two nice wines with food in its most basic sense but feeling more like a wine tasting with random food sitting around than a chance to match food and wine.

And only made us think of what might have worked. A grüner veltliner with its basketful of minerals and lentil notes might have exploded with the soba noodle base. The roter veltliner left in the fridge felt like a missed opportunity.

Just wanted something more, something that felt elevated and we never got there, though the sesame seeds all over the plate did some admirable things with both wines.

Spicy, oniony Asian food should have matched the sugar in both wines. Seemed like a no-brainer and a foolproof pairing.

It missed.

#163 - Blood Orange-Black Olive Duck & Farro With Two Pinots

About a month ago, a Moroccan-inflected tuna preparation blew us away.

It had Everything along with Everything we Love.

With blood orange season quickly coming to a close, it seemed right and proper to find out how versatile the recipe is with other proteins.

Result: Tuna, tuna and only tuna.

It change yo' life.

Tried lamb a couple of weeks ago (no write-up). Fell flat, never elevating itself with the combination of ingredients. Last night, somewhat similar results with duck, a bit better, but still made us contemplate bright and sunny tuna dreams.

Food: Blood orange and black olive duck, chestnut farro and mâche with pomegranate seeds

Duck rubbed with coriander, szechuan peppercorns, pink peppercorns, cardamom and ginger, seared medium-rare. A salad of blood oranges, gaeta olives, onion, parsley and walnut oil placed on top. Virtually identical to the tuna prep.

Quality duck. We liked it. But there was little melding of flavors. Not necessarily fighting flavors, more like flavors simply placed next to each other. Some things worked. Black olives and duck. Interesting. Onion slathered in blood orange juice with duck. Nice. Walnut oil presence tasted like it wanted to be there, unlike most of the ingredients.

But little jumped out and the peppercorn presence, something that exploded with the tuna and wine, was muted, missing that possible bridge between the brighter blood orange/briny black olive that could have ingratiated itself to the duck.

Farro cooked in chestnuts, duck stock and thyme. Always delicious and always with duck. Made better with a little duck fat/juice run-off bleeding into the bottom of the pile. Silly good.

Mâche salad with pomegranate seeds and a dressing of walnut oil and juice from the blood orange/black olive/onion salad. Spectacular stuff. Peppery with a walnut oil hit, all brightened up by the juice. Complex.

This was good food. If we didn't know duck and this was our first duck we would have been more interested in duck. But we know duck and love duck, particularly herbes de Provence duck which the best duck in the duck world and this duck was not that duck. Good duck, just not That Duck.

With the tuna, we did two Oregon pinot noirs and it was stupid awesome with a side of wow. Last night wasn't that but our opinion of one of the wines dramatically changed over the course of the evening as the wine changed.

Wine: 2005 J.K. Carriere Pinot Noir ($40 - Binny's) & 2005 Domaine Daniel Rion et Fils Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Beaux Monts - 375ml ($38 - Knightsbridge)

Let's start with the Vosne-Romanée. Very little experience with quality, Big Boy red Burgundies. This was an attempt at finding a starting point with such things. Vosne-Romanée, home of the Richebourgs, Romanée-Conti and La Tâches of the world at the Grand Cru level. This is one of the 13 Premier Cru wines designated by climat (Les Beaux Monts).

Cloudy nose that smelled a bit like English muffins with dark cherry juice spritzed over it. And you stuck your nose into the glass while standing in a barn. One-dimensional medium-red-with-a-darkish-edge cherries on the palate with an unfocused (yet softish) acidity that seemed to not know what to tackle first. Bit of oak floating around, taking on a charred toast edge on occasion, like toast that's been dropped in a bowl of herbs and a touch of cinnnamon. Overall, came off cloudy. Serviceable but barely. I wonder if the half-bottle format is forcing things along at a pace this wine doesn't naturally want.

The J.K. Carriere was a different beast. Dark cherries with a forest floor quality on the nose that followed right through to the palate. Touch of herbs, bit of game. Like the Vosne-Romanée, we were initially struck by how UN-struck we were with the wine. No signature notes or unique announcements of their presence occurred. Both came off somewhat...boring.

With no experience with either wine, five years on each and a half-bottle format for one, no decant, just opened 20 minutes before drinking. Over two hours and with the half-bottleness, the Vosne-Romanée didn't budge and my conventional wisdom thinks it should have. The J.K. Carriere most certainly did.

It started to show up about an hour in and exploded from there out. All beef juice and gamey notes took over, becoming a Big Beefy Joy. Dark cherries receded but hung around in the background with this rather pretty beef juice presence supported by game, all rolled in herbs and forest floor/tree moss blending into a something quite good. Truly tasted like someone cooked up beef and quail medium-rare in herbs, put them on the plate, let it sit for a time and then drained off all the juices on the plate and put it in a glass.

Didn't think much of it at first and then it turned into something that might have a place in our Oregon wine world, just took a bit to find out where they were going with it.

Pairing: 80 Felt like a singles mixer that never gets off the ground

Neither of the wines seemed to want to mix and mingle with the food. Like they were too shy to get in there and get talkin'.

We loved what the peppercorns did on the tuna and with the Ponzi and Ken Wright. The peppercorns left the party five minutes in, went to another bar, never to return. That was probably our biggest lament.

Mild spikes of interesting at times but nothing jumped. The J.K. Carriere, when it became Big Boy Beefy was entirely more intriguing by itself (the first red wine in a long time that we wanted to down alone, without food) and the Vosne-Romanée never felt like it wanted to be there at all.

Both were best with the mâche salad. Never a good sign.

#173 - Scallops & Tuna With Three Wines

Mrs. Ney threw down the gauntlet a few months ago and demanded that the world "Beat THAT!" when we had the best tuna preparation we've ever had.

Last night's meal, a dinner with a co-worker, actually came close.

Same Moroccan-inflected tuna. It didn't beat the previous one but this meal's joy came from everything else we had with it, how all of it complimented each other and how it built to the tuna.

In the end, the tuna became just one of three elements that we'll be revisiting again and soon.

Pre-meal opening: Spicy carrot purée with Seeduction bread, Kerrygold butter and rose petal jam

Wine: NV René Geoffroy Rosé de Saignée Champagne ($60 - WDC)

Same bread and accoutrements as the last tuna meal. Best bread ever. All raw dark grains without being too raw. Creamy, rich butter and floral-as-all-get-out jam.

But the love came from the Moroccan-spiced carrot purée. Cumin, ginger, cinnamon and harissa blended into puréed carrots. Tasted creamy without any cream added. Silky and more delicious with each subsequent bite. We fell in love quickly using the Seeduction bread to dip.

The René Geoffroy is 100% pinot noir (disgorged July, 2010) somewhat disappointed. Only the second rosé de saignée we've had with the Christmas Larmandier-Bernier being the first. That might have been some of the problem. Having only two and the first being that, a comparison inevitably came into play. Nice, small, fine bubbles. Light roses and strawberries notes dominated with a solid red berry core supporting everything but it came off a touch flat, missing an acid lift. Didn't wow us with its depth and concentration like the Larmandier-Bernier did.

And with the Love in the Bowl that was the carrot purée, it became an afterthought.

Appetizer: Scallops with a pea purée and pancetta

Wine: NV Gruet Brut Rosé ($15 - Binny's)

The dinner guest has a partner that doesn't eat seafood of any kind so we seafooded him up. Two scallops, seared beautifully with a nice touch of sweetness to them that sang with the subtle, spring-like greenness of the pea purée. Great hit of dark, charred meatiness from the pancetta without being too smoky. If someone ever asked what was the most balanced bite of food I've had recently, this might be it. Came off purposeful, thoughtful and nuanced following the carrot purée as the meal felt like it was building properly. More of a darker carrot purée lifted up and cleansed by an intense freshness with the pancetta serving as a bridge.

The Gruet Brut Rosé, compared with the Geoffroy, showed more liveliness with a crisp and bright core. Not a technically better wine, tasting more like a very pretty $15 brut rosé, but more wanted, more playful. Cherry and citrus notes with a bit of cream dancing around and propped up by some great acid. More bright notes that played into the scallop preparation more effectively than the Geoffroy and the carrot purée did.

Entrée: Moroccan-inflected tuna with blood oranges and black olives with an arugula and pomegranate salad

Wine: 2008 Ponzi Pinot Noir Willamette Valley

Some differences with the January tuna (recipe there). This one had less of a pink and Szechuan peppercorn presence due to the fact that we didn't know the level of peppercorn tolerance our guest had. Still utterly present, just not at the level we like. Medium-rare tuna that Mrs. Ney thought could have come up to room temperature a little more before searing, but nonetheless mimicked almost identically what happened in January. Hits of peppercorn, cardamom and coriander mingling beautifully with the blood oranges and black olives. The joy comes in the fact that one bite brings 20 different tastes that vacillate between dark and bright, deep and light while all of it coming off entirely clean. Still the best tuna ever.

Served, like in January, with the 2008 Ponzi Pinot Noir. Started to get a little bit of palate fatigue but still picked up similar notes as last time. Not quite fully open for business yet but still had that signature Ponzi floral, leaves and black tea notes backed up by cherry and plum fruit. Forest floor moss and tobacco interlaced throughout with the acid allowed everything to come through in a pure way. Even pleasantly gnarly at times.

Pause-worthy again with the tuna. A match made in heaven. It was a new food and wine pairing place for us last time and brought all of the same joy this time.

Finished the meal with dessert brought by our guest. Poached pears done in apple cider, orange and lemon zest with mascarpone and orange zest on the side. Served with Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur, a spirit that's been sitting in the pantry that we forgot about. Delicious stuff and a great finish.

Pairing: 94 The food was the focus but the wine, especially finishing with the Ponzi, played a welcome role

In fact, when it came to the food and wine goodness, it was mostly the Ponzi with the tuna.

We liked what the Gruet offered, bringing a different, more red-fruit freshness to the scallops, but as a technical pairing, it wasn't the enhancement we necessarily wanted. More nice to have around than great match.

And the Geoffroy just didn't stand a chance with the loveliness that was the carrot purée.

Nothing new in terms of a pairing presented itself but that Ponzi and tuna, oh that Ponzi and tuna. Always, everyday and often. It saved the food and wine night.

In the end, with this much completeness and complimentary flavors in the food, we didn't really care that the first two wine selections didn't live up.

We ate too well to care.

#251 - Blood Orange & Black Olive Tuna With '08 Antica Terra

Boy, the 2008 Oregon pinots are going to be a fun follow.

I have no idea if I'm going to love them but the development and life should be a long, great romp.

If only a touch more fresh acid on the finish existed.  IF. ONLY.

Right now...right now...the 2007 Antica Terra seems to be more together, more composed and expressive of what it is and is going to be.

The 2008 is a bit scatterbrained but precocious.  The talent is there but too many thoughts are floating around in its brain to know what it wants to be.  "I want to be a scientist!  I want to be a astronaut!"

There's no doubt this is going to be a good wine.  Right now, it's a waiting game. Delicious stuff but too all over the place to enjoy it by itself.  With food, with the best freakin' tuna on the planet, the wine followed the food lead like a good little soldier waiting for its time in the sun.

Food:  Blood orange, black olive and pomegranate seed tuna over frisée with Seeduction bread, rose petal jam and Kerrygold butter

Still.  Best.  Tuna.  Ever.  

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.

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.

#155 - Moroccan-Inflected Tuna With Two '08 Oregon Pinots

"Beat THAT!" Mrs. Ney says to her future self.

"Not likely!" says me.

Best tuna we've ever had.

If this tuna showed up on a 20-course tasting menu, it would the one course I'd remember three years later. Except we each had six full ounces of the stuff sitting in front of us.

As an overall meal, with both wines to go back and forth, this meal easily sits in the top two or three in the few years.

And, for everything, on the plate and in the glass, it cost a grand freakin' total of about $80.

Don't need a Groupon for that!

Food: Moroccan-inflected tuna with blood oranges and gaeta olives, arugula and pomegranate salad and Seeduction bread, Kerrygold butter and rose petal jam

The recipe:

Tuna: 12 oz piece: crusted with:

(1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds

3/4 tsp pink peppercorns

3/4 tsp szechuan peppercorns

seeds from 5 cardamom pods

1/2 tsp fleur de sel

4 thin slices peeled ginger,

mashed all together in mortar & pestle - from Around My French Table)

Blood orange suprèmes and gaeta olives (shallot, thyme, cumin seeds, walnut oil)

Arugula, parsley & pomegranate seeds salad (walnut oil, salt, black pepper)

Seeduction bread, Kerrygold butter, French rose petal jam

Tuna seared rare and placed on top of the blood orange and olive salad. The first bite was one of the purest taste experiences (don't care how pretentious that sounds) I've ever had. Every flavor on the tuna and under it came through so balanced, so beautifully seasoned, so pause-worthy that words aren't gonna do it. Right away, the cardamom and peppercorn hit freshened, brightened and lightened by the blood orange juice, cleaned by the ginger and then brought back to a savory, darker depth of deliciousness by the gaeta olives. Seemed like 12 levels of flavor in every bite without being murky or muddled and nothing obscuring the tuna in the least. Great acid, pretty floral notes from the spices. Can't say anything more.

Best. Tuna. Ever.

Accompanied by Seeduction bread from Whole Foods. Played an important role with its rustic, dark bread edge, leveling out the entire meal with country, sort of unrefined presence brought to something more refined by quality Kerrygold butter. But the rose petal jam, adding yet another floral component, seemed integral, enforcing again what we want: bright, clean food with a strong acid backbone, the protein strongly driven by herbs and spices that serve as the primary lifter and the supporting cast being different levels of diversion and cut while tying into everything else.

Who doesn't? That's textbook. But in the details, this meal is the First example in our food world.

Arugula, parsley and pomegranate seed salad to finish.

Wine: 2008 Ponzi Willamette Valley ($33 - Binny's) and 2008 Ken Wright Shea Vineyard 375ml ($22 - Binny's)

Two of the best noses on wines I've smelled in a couple years at least. The complexity on both of these wines coming out of the glass...wow! Both felt like the first real experience we've had with the 2008 Oregon vintage and, if these wines are any indication, all the hype is warranted.

A return to the 2008 Ponzi after having it two months ago with ridiculously good lamb and saffron risotto. Didn't show particularly well then but it's showing much better now. Popped and poured then. Opened about 30 minutes before dinner this time.

Plum, roses, forest floor, a touch of tobacco and lipstick on the nose. On the palate, the plum transitioned to a more muted black cherry with a touch of blueberry juice. Very muted, actually. All secondary flavors right now, showing a big rose petal component with everything going right into the mid-palate. Tea and cola notes to finish. Bitter tea leaves, actually, that weren't unwelcome. Flat-ish cola after about two hours open, which may mitigate a long decant in the future.

Again, and consistent with we utterly love about Ponzi, a ton of roses and the very distinct, bright, lithe and lifting acid that only comes from Ponzi. We'll know Ponzi acid blind until the day we die. It's why we capital-L love it.

Great wine and it's only going to get better. Much better.

But the Ken Wright beat it from a technical sense, helped along by its half-bottleness. Massive wet tobacco nose intermingled with an spiced orange peel, loam-potting soil, piles of rose petals and fuzzy blackberry. All of that followed on the palate and all of that danced around beautifully, all in a streamlined and seamless structure, finishing with the tobacco again going right into a graceful touch of a flower bundle. Softer acid than the Ponzi. Dark with brighter flecks on occasion. Just so well-made and gorgeous. Starts out big but goes right into a perfect medium-bodied weight halfway down. Pretty. Changed. Flowers everywhere. And I've always love tobacco notes but I can't think of a time when I enjoyed it this much.

Odd that this was the first red Ken Wright we've had since the start of this blog. This will be changing soon.

In the end, what jumped out though, were the floral notes and acid in both wines and how they fit so perfectly with the food.

Pairing: 99 Made me think about life changes, like needing an apartment with a patio

Because if this meal were eaten on a late July day, at dusk as a searing day heat gave way to a surprisingly calm, cooling night, outside with friends, I might have wet my pants a little.

The cumin in the blood orange-gaeta olive blend under the tuna fit like a glove with the Ken Wright and the coriander in the crust blew up with the Ponzi. Each, all and everything showing so much purity and love in the glass and on the plate.

That's it. Everything tasted like so much Warm Huggy Love.

#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):

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #3

Vietnamese brioche sandwiches from La Patisserie is a freakin' game-changer.

Why it took us so long to get to this beautiful place is a mystery to me, particularly when it's about eight blocks away and you can buy ten sandwiches that have the diameter of a softball for about $12.

Ham and cheese, curry chicken, curry beef, chicken pot pie, bbq pork for this order.

Buy them, make a salad, pop a sparkler (Luis Pato this time), and poof! Great Monday Lunch.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $97 for food and $197 for wine = $294


Sunday: Cornbread Panzanella with 2014 Trader Joe's Petit Reserve Pinot Grigio Monterey County

Source: Adapted from this recipe, via The Smitten Kitchen. Used the basic idea, including the buttermilk-lime dressing (adding anchovy, tarragon, and a bit more acid). Cornbread here, via Cooks Illustrated. Made the day before, halved the recipe, used rice milk.

Food Details: Crouton-ed up the cornbread, toasted them off. Mixed together black beans, onions, avocado, heirloom tomato, croutons, huge handful of arugula, and the dressing. Put it on the table, pop your wine, take your time, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Did We Like It? We thought it was going to be taco salad panzanella, but this turned into more of a California-style panzanella. And we loved it. Bright, herby, filling, end-of-week flavors. Big fans.

How Was The Wine? We don't hate this pinot grigio. Light, breezy, lightly creamy, peachy. Not too shabby at all on its own. Not with this food.

And The Pairing? A creamy element in the wine matched up with the buttermilk, but there wasn't enough bouncy acid to cut through the bevy of flavors on the plate. It was merely present and didn't turn ugly at any point. Best that can be said. Mrs. Ney switched up to the Espiral Vinho Verde and at least found the acid I didn't have.

Cost: $13 for food, $7 for wine = $20


Saturday: Kielbasa, Lentils and Frisée with 2013 Schloss Gobelsburg "Gobelsburger" Grüner Veltliner Kamptal

Source: Recipe here, via Epicurious.

Food Details: Lentils cooked up with carrots and celery, fennel sweated tender-crisp, kielbasa sliced and warmed up with lentils and fennel. Dill rat-a-tat-tatted and mixed in. Warm mustard-fennel seed dressing tossed with all of that. A big pile of frisée thrown on top of ALL that. Mini-ciabatta, buttered.

Did We Like It? Felt like it's been a couple of years since we've had this. Used to be rather prominent in the food rotation. The kielbasa and lentils are always good, but it's the mustard and fennel for me that makes this meal stand out. We probably eat fennel once every 6-8 weeks. That break between consumption allows fennel to taste fresh and new every time. With the kielbasa and lentils backing it up, warm mustard floating around, and the frisée cut bringing a superlative degree of 'RAW,' it tastes New-School Bavarian/Austrian in a great sense (I barely know Bavarian-Austrian, but...).

How Was The Wine? One of the better $14 wines out there. It's entry-level grüner veltliner that gives much more than most entry-level wines in their respective categories. Nice fruit, energy, roundness and edge. Less of the distinctive grüner flavors that you get from higher-level, single-vineyard stuff - like some that say "LENTILS! - but this offers a simplicity and refreshment along with some of that, particularly on the gaseous finish.

And The Pairing? Very nice. That'll do. A basic happiness was there. The Schwarzbock or Berger might offer more here (and their one-liter-ness is appealing). Schwarzbock, with its oodles of minerals and grassy-green notes, is quite good. And the Berger brings a guzzle quality that's always welcome. But this worked.

Cost: $10 for food, $14 for wine = $24                   


Friday: Savory Potato Tart and Salad with 2008 Domaine Sylvain Langoureau St.-Aubin

Source: Recipe here, from David Tanis at NYT Cooking.

Food Details: Make a pie crust, sauté up some leeks in chicken stock (addition to the recipe), use the fancy mandolin to cut the potatoes into paper-thin slices, assemble your pie and bake it off. Make a simple salad. Put pie slice on the plate, salad next to it, done. It's Paris bistro lunch food at its freakin' best.

Did We Like It? It made us swear, we loved it so much. I challenge anyone to eat this and not think, "I should be paying a lot more for this! It's delicious!" The addition of leeks offers a French country garden note and chicken stock brings the slightest hint of a background meaty lilt (tried bacon fat with this once. Weighs it down a touch). Slicing the potatoes this thin is key, making for a restaurant-quality texture to the entire pie. It's next-level stuff. Herb salad blend to mix and match in between bites of pie. Don't finish with the salad. Mix this one in. It brings more of The Joy, especially when a wine of this quality is at the table.

How Was The Wine? It's been sitting in the house for over four years, bought at Wine Discount Center when it was still Wine Discount Center. Probably recommended to us by Amy or Sean, and probably bought as a sort of inventory wine with little more thought behind it. I sorta forgot it was even here. We also burned ourselves out on white Burgundy a couple of years ago and took a break. Then, almost by accident, we ran into a wine of this caliber. Lordy! $25, made in the same way as the more spendy white Burgundies, and it's all sorts of lovely. Typical pear-apple fruit, but the love came in the oh-so pretty use of oak on the mid-palate here. Like a delicate, bouncy balloon on a breezy spring day. Simply sparkled. Like Auxey-Duresses and Viré Clessé, in Saint-Aubin, you find $25 white Burgundy that tastes like wine at twice the price. Loved. It.

And The Pairing? Nearly perfect, particularly when we take into account that this was a weekday meal for us (we're not Mon-Fri people). Coming home to this washed away all my workplace $&#^@.

Cost: $8 for food, $25 for wine = $33
                

Thursday: Chicken, Tzatziki, Kumatoes, Arugula and pita with 2014 João Portugal Ramos Lima Loureiro Vinho Verde

Food Details: Harvesttime roasted chicken, homemade tzatziki, salt and peppered kumatoes, arugula and pita. Open a pita, throw all the stuff above inside the pocket and go to town.

Did We Like It? Yes. It's pick-n-choose with a Greek bent. Well, not so much pick-n-choose. We used everything for each bite. More of an easy-peasy dinner. No cooking. Just whip up a tzatziki, slice some sort of tomatoes, dress some arugula, put it all on a plate and eat it. Feast. Good batch. Harvesttime chicken was lacking in skin-glaze goodness, though.

How Was The Wine? It's $7 at Binny's. Lightly fruity, lightly floral, happy acid, cheap as hell. Loureiro is delicious. We like it. We've had some fancy ones, but this is the loureiro we drink the most...by far. Mostly because it has all the loureiro goods for $7.

And The Pairing? Good enough. All the basic elements were there. Lift, nuance, snap, pause. Nothing superlative. Just nice.

Cost: $11 for food, $7 for wine = $18


Wednesday: Moroccan Goat Meatballs, Farro And Barley with 2013 Broc Cellars Carignan Alexander Valley

Source: Recipe for Moroccan meatballs here, via Leite's Culinara. We use a lot of Mr. Leite's recipes, because he likes food. Mrs. Ney used the recipe as a guide. Alterations: ground goat meat, buttermilk/butter instead of crème fraîche, shallot and parsley instead of cilantro, manzano pepper instead of cayenne, orange juice instead of lemon, and used one 14 oz. can of tomatoes to beef/juice it up.  And the big one: farro/barley pilaf instead of rice, with the addition of dried apricots, almonds and scallions.

Food Details: See above and see the picture to the right. Arugula salad to finish.

Did We Like It? Mrs. Ney didn't want it/didn't want to make it. And it turned into such a pretty, bright, spicy, slow North African dinner with flavors we love bouncing around all over the place. This capped off a pretty great food and wine weekend (see below). On the wine...

How Was The Wine? Broc being Broc. We want everything they make. And are working to make that happen. They make nero d'Avola? Sparkling cabernet franc? Valdiguié in multiple forms? I. Want. All of it. Loved the 2012. The 2013 is less floral, more concentrated red fruit - smoked dark raspberries here - with a beautifully angled slender body, great lift and a spicy finish. All with a background feeling of walking through a garden set right on the ocean. Clean, herby, and cool. Vacillates so nicely between being svelte/tender and showing an attitude/having a chip on its shoulder.  Tailed off a touch after 1.5 hours, but it's delicious. We need more very soon.

And The Pairing? LOVES. GOAT. It's perfect. Goat and this wine play in the same weight region, with both able to pick up what's happening around it and take everything to a better place. And I'm beginning to think Broc just makes their reds to like Middle Eastern-inflected goat. The valdiguié loved goat-stuffed artichokes last November. Their style and light Middle Eastern flavors... Gee whiz, that's good. Big surprise dinner here with a wine that really loved the food.

Cost: $12 for food, $29 for wine = $41                     


Tuesday: Tuna Niçoise with NV Pommery Rosé "Brut Aganage" Champagne

Food Details: Niçoise salad of A's do Mar oil-cured tuna, grape tomatoes, baby potatoes, onions, green beans, Niçoise olives, capers and one hard-boiled egg for me with a dressing of tarragon, dijon, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, white balsamic, salt and pepper, all over arugula. It's a heaping mound of healthy, delicious goodness. Whole Foods ancient grains bread with butter to round it out.

Did We Like It? Oh, my, yes. Not the greatest version of Niçoise we've had, but that's like saying that playoff win wasn't the best playoff win your favorite team has won. Still a playoff win. Who cares? It's a win in the playoffs. And using this oil-cured tuna instead of cooking up some rare tuna from Whole Foods cuts the cost of this meal by about $18, with virtually no loss in quality, because we just want the vegetable bounty anyway. We'll get our rare tuna experience from Szechuan peppercorn-crusted tuna at some point. It's better.

How Was The Wine? Champagne Rosé, nearly half-off at Binny's (down to $50 from $90), and quite good. Plums, blood orange, figs, dry as all get-out, rolly bubbles, nice gas. A damn good Champagne rosé that was clean and moderately complex. Never would have guessed this was 60% chardonnay. Red grapes at the fore, with pinot noir serving as the guider and meunier bringing the interesting weirdness. Nothing wildly extravagant or great here, just Champagne rosé done well. And nice to have it again. Been awhile for us. And we want it by the bucket now.

And The Pairing? Niçoise and rosé, in any form, brings the love. No exception here. Wasn't "slap-my-face" great together, with flavors bouncing off the walls, but we had zero complaints.

Cost: $25 for food, $50 for wine = $75
      

Monday: Marinated Hanger Steak, Cold Sesame Noodles and Cucumber Salad with 2000 Clos Fourtet Saint-Émilion

Source: The Silver Palate Cookbook and The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. It's a thowback dinner! A remake of the first "fancy" meal Mrs. Ney made a month after we moved in together 13 years ago.

Food Details: Hanger steak marinated in olive oil and homemade yakitori sauce from the freezer, basted in the same sauce. Cold sesame noodles from SPC (page 79), using 1/4 of the mayo the recipe calls for. Nobody needs two cups of mayo in their noodles. Cucumber salad with Asian flavors, from NYT Cooking, placed on top of the noodles. Carrot-garlic-ginger topping for the steak, from SPGTC (page 275). The result tasted like a well-done time warp back to 2002, then back to 1978. We loved it. Made us think, "Okay, they weren't stupid eaters back in 1978. They made good food, representative of a region, with what was available." Growing up in Iowa, eating a lot of meatloaf and pot roast, sometimes I forget that might have been true for the rest of the country.

How Was The Wine? Stupid-great, silly-good! We have a boatload of Bordeaux that has to be drunk quite soon. This begins that journey. One-hour decant. We were surprised how Old-Old World it was, and French specifically. No compromises here, very Frenchy-French from a great year in Bordeaux. Blackberry liqueur on the nose to start, turning into something like walking through a well-kept old house. We could smell the years. Not dusty, really. Just old. As if you can smell the attic. Nice flowers. Ripe-ish fruit, full-bodied, but never a bully. A bit of Jack Daniels at times. Happy length, fine tannin perking up on the finish, nice acid. This was big, and texturally a touch more flamboyant than we typically drink, but golly, we loved it. Had those pauses and breaks that allowed us to think about it for a bit instead of being bombarded with a bombastic, bellicose, belligerent nature that comes from so many aggressive fruit bombs. A 15-year-old Right Banker, from the house that originally got us into Bordeaux, and it's simply great right now. Could have waited on this one, didn't, and loved it. Real presence.

And The Pairing? That's probably what made us love the wine even more. Slipped right into this food that came off Asian only in a Silver Palate sense ("Apparently cilantro didn't exist in the 70's"). Held its ground beautifully. Different with each bite while maintaining its core goodness so nicely. Big winner here.

Cost: $18 for food, $65 for wine = $83