#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.

#182 - Lamb, Spicy Carrot Purée & Onion/Tomato Ragout With '07 Antica Terra

Five days, my butt!

Two weeks ago, we opened a 2004 Joseph Swan Syrah and two weeks ago minus one second, we dismissed it as too cough syrupy.

Using a Wine Preserva wine preservation disk - little plastic round stoppers made for restaurants and their wine-by-the-glass programs - we shoved one down the bottle and tossed it above our sink to let it sit there, staring at me as I did dishes and wonder why the heck I haven't dumped it yet every night.

The disks are made for keeping the wine from oxidizing for 'up to five days.'

It's been two weeks and it was delicious.  Better than when we first had it by miles showing much more distinctive and typical syrah qualities of concentrated dark fruit, herbs, smoke, tobacco and leather.  Where were you two weeks ago, my friend?

With last night's meal and the other times we've had spicy carrot purée, it should probably be listed first in the description of the meal as it's been the leading act in two recent great meals (well, except for the fregola - consider it 1a in that one...well...1aa because the Hobbs and fregola pwned [look at me, I'm all internet-speaky] the night but you got my drift).  It's that good.

Food:  Spicy carrot purée, lamb and tomato/onion ragout with pita bread

North African Feast.  Well-made large flavors all over the place.  Medium-rare lamb marinated in onion, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, cinnamon and cumin - pan-seared and finished in 425° oven.  Melty, tasty lamb that actually took a back seat to everything else, serving as an accompaniment more than starring.

Because the star was the spicy carrot purée (did I mention that?).  1.5 pounds carrots, extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, harissa, roasted garlic and cumin seeds.  So creamy, perfectly spiced and just bang-my-head-on-the-coffee-table fantastic.  Tasted like Love.  With a bite of lamb slathered in the purée, it tasted like flavors that people have been eating for centuries.  Ancient, delicious and un-improvable.  Pita bread for dipping with the leftovers.

More ancient and delicious flavors existed in the ragout. Pearl onions (frozen), can of Muir Glen roasted tomatoes, dried cherries, orange juice, garlic, ginger, orange zest, coriander, cumin, cinnamon stick, lemon thyme and bay leaves with parsley over the top.  The orange elements in the dish became vital to the overall enjoyment of the meal, adding a brighter citrus acid to go along with the tomatoes and mingling with the lamb and purée beautifully, making everything feel complete.  Something about the ginger as well.  Made the ragout seem to want the purée to mix with it with the spice level in the ragout tasting like someone has been tinkering with it for years and finally nailed it.

Mint leaves drizzled over all the food.

North African flavors driven entirely by spice abounded with very little (bad) fat and small portions of meat.  All for $20 and ended up tasting like it was exactly the meal we wanted at that specific time.

The wine didn't really have a chance but developed quite well over the course of the meal.

Wine:  2007 Antica Terra Pinot Noir ($43 - WDC)

No decant, just opened 15 minutes before the meal.  Could have used it.  Should have, actually.

Nose of a basket of darker berries smelled right next to a grass fire.  Closed and uninteresting at first but deeper and directed by an unidentifiable spice angle.  The great thing about good pinot noir comes from its quick development.  Good ones change so quickly, sometimes with segues and transitions so quick that the wine is completely different from one sip to the next with very little connection.  This was one of those.

The spice turned from undistinguished to prevalent darker cinnamon, allspice and clove on a dime, mixing with a very creamy cherry, a touch of blackberry and a muddy earth and sticks river bank element.  Very long finish that lingered nicely with a fine balance overall.  Smoother tannins already but plenty there to think this one has many years ahead of it.  Medium to fuller-bodied with a focused dark fruit concentration at its core mixing with some gnarly herb bush notes.  Jumped back and forth often, sometimes coming off bigger and darker with other times going more light, almost milky and peppy.

At $43, both of us felt that a bottle a vintage was our limit but good stuff nonetheless.  Made by Maggie Harrison, an assistant winemaker at Sine Qua Non for almost ten years so the pedigree is certainly there.

Pairing:  90  Food won but the wine did a good job of trying to keep up

After a bite of lamb with spicy carrot purée, asking for a wine to match and enhance its deliciousness almost seemed greedy.

The pairing's moderate success came in watching the wine transform into something delicious when there were few early expectations and the fact that much of the wine's specific spices played in the regional ballpark of the North African flavors on the plate.

Nice stuff, wouldn't do the pairing again.  We wanted more in the pairing as this wine begs for more simply prepared food where the wine can play more of a role in the combination.

Has the guts and is delicious stuff but needs to be a bigger fish in a smaller, less explosive food pond.

But with food this good, the fact that the wine never struggled to keep up made for something good enough in our world.

#125 - Lamb, Fregola and Carrot Purée With '03 Hobbs Gregor Shiraz

Or...

Fregola and carrot purée with a side of lamb.

And total up this meal ($185 - that's with wine shipping), add it to the TK chicken total from two days ago and we still haven't spent what we spent dining on a mediocre meal out in the world ten days ago.

I'm just gonna keep floggin' away. Feel free to join in if you like.

Today is a example of a meal nearly soul-satisfying (I'm working on my overuse of superlatives - full-on soul-satisfying probably should be reserved for something close to a religious experience, like the Browns making the playoffs, so we'll go with 'nearly').

And it made it to the realm of nearly soul-satisfying without the help of some beautiful and ridiculous protein. It came down to what the rest of the plate offered up to the wine.

And what a wine it was.

Food: Coffee-crusted lamb on carrot purée with a fregola "risotto"

Trader Joe's lamb rack with a crust consisting of coffee, cocoa powder, olive oil, soy sauce and rosemary, cooked medium-rare to medium. We probably like our lamb more rare to medium-rare ("Look at us!") but this was perfectly fine lamb, tasty and good, that was entirely out-shined by everything else surrounding it.

The Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner award went to:

Fregola "risotto". Fregola is a Sardinian semolina pasta that looks like toasted Israeli couscous and tastes like love (it's been mentioned everywhere in the last two months. I'm sure we won't hear a peep about two more months. That's how the foodie world works). Done in a risotto style using onion, pine nuts, fennel seed and chicken stock, then garnished with Rogue Creamery's "Smokey Blue" cheese and basil.

Freakin' gorgeous stuff right out of the pan and still utterly great an hour and a half later as it sat on the plate and congealed. Rich but never too rich. Substantial without being a gut-buster. Just the right amount of fancy blue cheese so it didn't become a blue cheese-infected glop of silliness. But that blue cheese was key.

Carrots roasted with olive oil and balsamic vinegar drizzle; puréed with water and roasted garlic then garnished with mint. A very good purée made better by the sweetness offered by the balsamic vinegar. And that balsamic was key.

This was delicious food. If we would have eaten it with decent northern Rhône, Californian syrah or anything else, we would have been happy and full.

But we didn't. We ate it with this:

Wine: 2003 Hobbs Gregor Shiraz ($158 - Endless Vine)

An Australian shiraz done in an Amarone-style where the grapes are partially dried to intensify the flavors.

Conflicting reports on the drinking window on the webby-webs with this one. Some who drank it recently talked about the alcohol showing up too much right now. Others found it too port-like.

Not us. We found it to be drinking so utterly beautiful right now, like if the Browns had made the playoffs or something (stop it!).

Popped one hour before the meal. No decant. Blackberries, olives and something like walnut oil on the nose. A round, generous, open and supple texture on the palate with blackberries quickly turning to blueberries, grilled bushy French herbs and some grilled meat. But the surprise was the fruit, texture and perfect acid. Not a hint of raisin that we've gotten from this wine before. More like super concentrated, lively, bursting fruit of blueberries with a baseline of black currants. The blueberries playing a huge role in a texture that tasted like a blueberry latte but without the obvious coffee element (so...like Starbucks and their coffee-flavored milk). Just massive depth, rich but not overextracted, big but balanced as heck, and never came off port-like while entirely hiding the 15.7% alcohol. Never disjointed in the least with such graceful acid and tasted like sunshine, lollipops and puppies rolling in a sun-drenched meadow (Crap! I'll work on the superlatives some other time).

Pretty great stuff on its own and probably one of the top 20 bottles of wine we've ever had but just stupid good with the food.

Pairing: 96 Sex in the bottle and on the plate

We both don't want blue cheese ever again without this wine. Something about the base nature of the blue cheese and the acid in the wine neutralizing each other out, allowing this weirdly beautiful kaleidoscope of flavors to burst forth in the most pure way. Everything was amplified times a thousand. Toss in this rustic semolina background with a starchy brown ooze coming off the pasta and it tasted like (even more) love.

The sweetness from the balsamic vinegar in the carrot purée came in second place in the race for the stupid good. It let the fruit in the wine take a step down from the spotlight and allowed all the secondary flavors shine. The wine became more herbal with a touch of vanilla from the French oak popping up, even a green vegetal note, like if grilled green veggies were sweetened, began to come through. Same texture and the fruit was present but the alternating tastes from the carrot purée and the fregola showed everything this wine had to offer in such glorious ways.

The lamb, while good, was just kinda "there". Nothing special with the wine, even shortening the finish. Bold flavors on the lamb were put there because of the assumption that this wine needed it. It didn't and even kinda killed some of it.

Can't describe how well this wine is showing right now. Bring in a touch of well-crafted, more refined blue cheese, offer up a little sweetness on the plate, maybe do a simple preparation of ostrich instead of lamb and you got yourself somethin' like the Browns making the playoffs.

And this was a happy accident. Mrs. Ney had no idea where things were going with this. Even the wine was chosen about two hours before dinner.

We fell ass-backwards into probably one of the top three best meals this year and another Australian wine that debunks the current trend of poo-pooing such things.

#196 - Harissa Hanger, Spicy Carrot Purée & Sherry Onions With '08 Mas Carlot

Good things are good.

Last night's dinner was good, great actually.

Bridesmaids is not so much good, well, sorta almost good, marginally almost funny, not the worst way to spend a 97 degree day.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is quite good and should probably be seen in 3-D, just make sure to go in with knowledge of Werner Herzog's penchant for meandering through the material in a way that can only be seen through his eyes.  Do that and you'll love it.  And the postscript absolutely has a place.

I cannot recommend Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, an 800 page manufactured drama of the most inconsequential inconsequentialness.  If you're interested in the behind-the-scenes fights over how the ESPYs made it to air, then this is for you.  For me, it's like listening to other people's stories about their children.  Keep it.  The Pale King, DFW's unfinished novel, was bought for summer reading but instead I chose to finish this pile of poo.  And it's 800 pages!  Did I mention that?

But back to the good.

Ever eaten high quality soil?  We have, last night, on the plate and in the glass and it was delicious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven-hour Goat Leg, Carrot Purée, Watercress, Pistachios and Naan With 2013 Donkey & Goat Carignane

Eat more goat.

Because goat is good. And cheap. Go to Farm City on Devon, people. Farm City on Devon. When we moved to Chicago 11 years ago, our first meat purchase at Paulina Meat Market felt like we'd made a quantum leap in the quality of our meat, and food in general. The discovery of Farm City in the last year or so feels like another step forward in quality and pleasure. This is fantastic stuff. If you find food to be merely sustenance, that's too bad. Winnowing something you do at least twice a day, something with the potential to offer so much joy down to simply 'energy' feels sad to me.

This meal had a passing resemblance to one of our favorite meals over the last few years, the place where great goat became known to us, at Komi in D.C..

It's well-done goat, a seven-hour roast of goat, slathered with harissa paste, cooked with tomatoes, onions, garlic, bay, verjus, etc. (recipe here - Molly Stevens, modified to a slow roast in a closed dutch oven). The heat from the harissa mellowed out in the roasting, turning this goat into delicious and balanced goat. It's not medium-rare goat, which was so damn close to Komi's goat, but this is perfect build-your-own goat bites with these accompaniments:

1. Watercress, pistachio and orange-blossom salad (Ligaya Mishan)

2. Spicy Carrot Purée (Claudia Roden)

3. Homemade naan with nigella and fennel seeds (Aarti Sequeira)

All three recipes followed to the letter. All of them easy, with enormous pay-off by themselves and relative to the work involved.

Naan topped with goat-tomato-onion-juice, followed by carrot purée and a heap of watercress and herbs. Pick and choose, mix and match. This meal was about 20 mini-flatbread bites of some of the best food we've had this year.

Served with 2013 Donkey & Goat Old Vine Carignane Testa Vineyard Mendocino ($30 - Binny's). Nice plum, nice funk after the clean, polished front entrance. Pure fruit, medium length, maybe a touch young, as it didn't stretch itself out much. Missed the floral and mineral notes from the wine notes. Pleasant, but not what we were looking for here. With carignan, we want that country feel, a rustic burliness that shows up just when you think it's a fine enough, light-ish quaffer. Good carignan is like a movie that takes a perfectly dark turn. Didn't find that here, at least with this food. But Donkey & Goat is basically across the street from Broc Cellars in Berkeley. That trip is gonna happen sometime.

#232 - Spanish Niçoise-y Salad, Greek Feta & Carrot Purée With '09 Síria

Fancy stuff, in the food and in the wine.

The fancy came from the purity and abundance of flavors and the ability to taste every one of them in any given bite.

The tastes:  carrots, anchovies, parsley, honey, mint, harissa, thyme-infused olive oil, pickled onions, sesame seeded Syrian bread, feta, kumatoes, Greek black olives, caraway seeds, pink peppercorns, garlic, lemon juice, dill.

So Greeky, kinda Spanishy, bit of North African, all comprising a tapas-y type feel, a little dip here, a bite there and loving every bit of it.

Served with a wine made from a grape new to us as a 100% bottling and possessing a balance, vitality and Portuguese weirdness that slid right into the food in delicious and new ways.

Food:  Spanish-y Niçoise salad, greek feta in honey and pink peppercorns, carrot purée, thyme-infused olive oil and Syrian bread 

#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.

Mid-August Mishmash of Meals

Waiting...

Still waiting...

Don't skip a spring vacation and then book your fall vacation five months ahead of time. The lack of a spring vacation, with all the attendant annoyances involved with that, along with the taxed anticipation that morphs into "GET HERE!" for the upcoming vacation is just too much. Screw you, time! Move it!

We're waiting, but it's almost here. Should be good.

A quick round-up today, mostly chronicled to make sure the Owen Roe Cabernet Franc gets a write-up. Oh, and to remind ourselves to not make Anne Burrell's falafel recipe. Too much work for too little pay-off.

Christmas

Let's kickstart this here blog back up.

The 365 Days of Food and Wine experiment, while interesting, sapped my ability to accurately describe the delicious food Mrs. Ney made. It got to the point where my word canon reached the very end of its description limit. I'd re-read things I'd written and think, "Hot damn that's boring!" And that wasn't doing any justice to the time and effort Mrs. Ney had put in to researching, thinking about, and making dinners.

The break was needed, but it's time to step back in, because while we hope anyone searching for food and wine pairing advice - a vexing and frightening proposition for many - comes across this site and comes to understand that it's not that frightening, mostly we want and need the reference. We also like to see how our year and tastes flowed and changed.

Christmas seems a good place to start.

Food: Bittman Lamb Osso Buco with Sean Brock Grits and Rapini

Mark Bittman osso buco recipe, from NYT Cooking. Lamb osso buco from D'Artagnan, seared, then cooked for 90 minutes on the stovetop with garlic, anchovies, sage, marjoram, rosemary, white wine, salt and pepper until tender. Meat removed, sauce reduced, served on the side. Cracked pink peppercorns sprinkled on top of lamb. Sean Brock grits, from Heritage: A Cookbook (page 74 - "How to cook grits like a Southerner"). Simple rapini done up with salt and pepper that somehow didn't taste so simple.

Luscious lamb. Frenchy touches with northern Italian guts. Osso buco is never going to be the best meat I've ever had in my life, but when it hits, like here, it's a meat-melty wonder. Rather perfect grits, as Mr. Brock seems to offer with most anything he offers (see burgers, patty melts, steaks, grits, griddle cakes...he's one of our house food guiders to the delicious). Silky, but corny and buttery, with a surprising jump and lightness. A great balance and vacillation between all the flavors. When some of the anchovy pan sauce bled into the rapini, it was maybe the best rapini we've had in a good long time.

This was a dinner worthy of Christmas, after a shockingly easy Christmas Eve visit to the family.

Wine: 2015 Jolie-Laide Trousseau Gris Fanucchi-Wood Vineyard RRV

We loved the poop out the 2014 Jolie-Laide Trousseau Gris, first had at Chez Panisse two Septembers ago. So board and giving. The 2015 is more sturdy and focused in its flavors. It gets more directly and quickly to the point it's trying to make. Bitter orange peel galore, like Chinotto or Aperol in presence and aggressiveness. Wispy touches of herbs and minerals, particularly on the back-end, even something tea-like thrown in there on occasion. This one needs to warm up significantly in order for it to stretch its legs and become more elastic and playful. The 2014 was all ethereal, sunshine-y goodness, but sputtered with some food. The 2015 is more punchy, and that over the course of the next year might make it more suitable to the flavors we love.

Pairing: Once it reached the right temp...nothing wrong with that.

I opened a 2005 Gourt des Mautens Rasteau (Jérome Bressy) and decanted couple of hours before dinner, but it didn't budge from its hairy-backed, tannic self, and would have been just terrible with how delicate the lamb was. But the Jolie-Laide served us quite well. Not perfect, not by any means. Once it warmed up though, there was enough weaving in-and-out with the grits and lamb together to say, "Slap Daddy! That's just fine!"

Lunch: Homemade duck pâté with Rogue Flora Nelle Blue Cheese, fig marmalade, baguette and salad, served with 2011 Matthiasson Vermouth. Mrs. Ney whipped up A LOT of duck pâté, this one more country in style with its small chunks of duck meat. Turned into one of those pâtés one eats and thinks THIS is how all pâté should be. Every flavor bouncing and jiving with each other. Rogue Flora Nelle has that ideal touch of blue streaks while still retaining a clean brightness to it. House fav.

All served with a Matthiasson Vermouth that's been sitting in this house way too long, and it was great here. Smoky tangerine peel, blood orange and bark. Still going quite strong. A bite of cheese and fig marmalade on baguette with a sip of vermouth was as pairing-perfect as it gets.

Damn good (and lazy) Christmas Day! We didn't get to the "Feast of the One Fish" (brandade). It's in the works for New Year's Eve. With bubbles. We need bubbles. So we'll have them. Because bubbles are essential in life.

After the jump is a list of all the pairings we've had since this blog stopped, some of it in shorthand. It's for our reference:

#229 - Pancetta Lamb, Pea Purée & Potatoes With '06 Ken Wright

Let's get link-happy.

We've mostly eaten our lamb in a supporting cast sense this year, using it as a protein to complement an interesting recipe here (Turkish beany surprise) and/or to try an ignored grape/style there (cabernet franc/Amarone).

We've had it out in the world this year (-ish) at Taxim (sausage form) and Blackbird (saddle form/rack form) and didn't have it out at Bacchus, unfortunately.

Or, when lamb was made to be the star of a meal, something like a potato-kale cake, fregola and carrot purée or, well, Turkish beany surprise, came along and stole its thunder.

Back to the lamb basics last night:  Lamb made to complement the lamb, support the lamb and star the lamb with flavors leaning more toward clean American.

When that happens, it's pinot noir.  Tried and true, always delicious and tastes like Home, tradition, holiday, friendship and Love ("To every season, turn, turn, turn...").

Food:  Pancetta-wrapped lamb, pea purée, pomegranate seeds and roasted potatoes with mâche salad

#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):

New Year's Food Week

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

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

#212 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New feature here at FWW.

It's TWIB notes, a roundup of food and wine from weeknight meals, BYOs, lunches, leftovers and anything else that might have happened that involved food with wine.  Just hum the theme to This Week In Baseball while reading and it becomes interactive.

Let's get right to it.

Sunday Dinner:  Leftover Daniel Boulud Fennel Balls With a 2007 Rhône tasting

Boulud fennel risotto balls leftover from June, when they exploded to great effect with a cheap 2009 Schild Estate GMS.

Mrs. Ney made 50 balls then, we ate 18 in June, another 18 Sunday and brought some to co-workers to sample...and there's STILL MORE!

Original recipe here. Switched up the pepper in the coulis the first time, using sweet picanté peppadew and it was one of many things we adored about that meal.  Back to the original recipe this time, using piquillo peppers and blending in some leftover carrot purée.  Not as good but still tasty.  The fennel balls as well suffered from not being freshy-fresh but it turned into gussied-up Fancy Frozen Food Sunday in delicious ways.  Pomegranate seeds drizzled over the entire plate again with an arugula salad with lemon thyme to finish.

#215 - Borlotti Bean & Blue Cheese Fregola Risotto With 2003 Hobbs Gregor Shiraz

Grab Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman, we're jumpin' into the WABAC machine.

Last October, we had a top-three meal of 2010 consisting of lamb, fregola risotto and carrot purée with this wine and ruminated about not even needing the lamb.  It did little with the wine while the superlative stuff on the plate was the blue cheese fregola and what it did with the Hobbs Gregor.

Last night, we omitted the lamb, replaced it with borlotti beans and were all the better for it, resulting in a meal that was all of the "Yes!" and none of the "meh."

It was a whittling down, a honing in on what absolutely shined with one of our favorite wines, taking that relatively narrow flavor explosion from a side dish and expanding it out into a meal not driven by a protein but introducing elements that mimic what's good about a protein, like depth and char and meaty qualities.

And that's what happened.  We not only didn't miss the meat, we didn't want the meat because everything we want in meat was there in meatless form.

It became a meal that proves the notion that big-boy, burly and deep shiraz doesn't always need meat to tame it.  There are a ton of different avenues to pursue that makes for stupid-good stuff.

"After all, Sherman.  Isn't it important in life to avoid a Hobbesian choice?"

"Oh, Mr. Peabody."

Food:  Borlotti bean & blue cheese fregola risotto with arugula salad

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #29

This Ted Cruz piece in Mother Jones is bananas. HI-larious!

The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up to The Act of Killing is worth every second. It's not so much the stares and enthusiasm from the killers, it's the giggles and pat, uniform responses over regret. 

20 days until pitchers and catchers report.

C'mon.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $103 for food and $191 for wine = $294

Sunday: Salmon and Bagels with Two Wines with 2013 Jackys Preys Cuvée de Fié Gris Touraine and 2014 Terrasse du Moulinas Blanc Elégance Languedoc-Roussillon

Food Details: Trader Joe's smoked salmon, charred-scallion cream cheese, kumatoes and arugula. Rip, top, eat, repeat.

Did We Like It? Something about this meal on Sunday night, as my workweek ends and Mrs. Ney's comes to a close, helps reset things. It's clean, fresh, bountiful and delicious every time. The charred scallions in the cream cheese with the kumatoes made it taste a whole lot like bacon to me. Strange and welcome.

How Were The Wines And The Pairing? Both were what they always have been for us in the past, but both fell flat here with the food. VERY flat, never getting off the ground in terms of integration, cleanse or lift. Probably the charred shallots. Who knows? 

Cost: $20 for food, $21 for wine = $41   

Saturday: Rick Bayless's Tomatillo Chicken with 2014 Sauvignon Republic Cellars Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough

Food Details: From Mr. Bayless (recipe). Layered in the crock-pot: onions, potatoes, chicken, cilantro, tomatillos, pickled jalapeños and juice; salting each layer through the tomatillos. Four hours on high. Over rice with toasted coriander seeds.

Did We Like It? Always. A big dollop of sour cream here helped tone down my "free-form" dispensing of the hot juice. If we made a '50 Essential Meals' list, this would be on it.

How Was The Wine? $7 Trader Joe's New Zealand SB. Juicy tropical notes with lemongrass background and big acidity.

And The Pairing? Its perception of sweet fruit countered the spice, while the acid helped cleanse. Nice match with this food. Felt a couple ticks above a basic weeknight pairing.

Cost: $7 for food, $7 for wine = $14

Friday: Banh Mi Sandwiches

Food Details: Sifton's "vaguely Vietnamese pork tacos" for the pork turned into banh mi with the addition of lemongrass and carrot/jicama pickled salad. Ba Le baguette ($1 for two! - big bargain). Olive oil chips.

Did We Like It? Big Win! No wine.

Cost: $13 

Thursday: Hummus and Tabbouleh with 2014 La Granja Blanco Rioja

Food Details: Homemade hummus using up Monday's Solomonov tahini sauce plus two cans of chickpeas. Kale tabbouleh (Melissa Clark recipe) using fregola instead of bulgur. Pita.

Did We Like It? Perfectly simple hummus, pita and tabbouleh dinner. Had everything we'd want, plus ALL THE FIBER. That's all I'm gonna say about that. This tabbouleh is certainly 'a thing.' Loved it.

How Was The Wine? $5. White Spanish wine, a verdejo and viura blend, with crispness, dryness and creaminess; lightly floral, lightly citrusy. Tastes like vacation every time.

And The Pairing? No complaints.

Cost: $4 for food, $5 for wine = $9  

Wednesday: Jamie Oliver Indian Carrot Salad with 2014 Broc Cellars Vine Starr Zinfandel Sonoma County

Food Details: House staple. (Recipe) Crisped-up ground lamb with garam masala. Carrots and shallots dressed with lemon, ginger, cumin, Thai peppers and olive oil. Roasted cauliflower as a new addition, cuz we had to use up the cauliflower. Spinach blend mixed in with cilantro and mint. Sesame seeds on top. Naan and radish raita on the side. 

Did We Like It? A very good, spicy version of something we have often, because it had all the vitamins and tastes like Love. Roasted cauliflower was very welcome, though wasn't essential and didn't improve this already great meal. Don't make any radish raita recipe that says to sauté the radishes. Completely loses the radish effect, turning the raita from a refreshing, crisp cleanser to something quite boring. Overall, such a good meal. And the wine helped.

How Was The Wine? Gotta drink the Broc. More is coming. 12.8% alcohol on this zinfandel, with fresh red berry fruit and enough heft to identify as a zin while loving how so stupid light it is. Screams for food, and it didn't disappoint. 

And The Pairing? This food was spicy and the zinfandel, as zin does, countered that spice, opening up a great length in the wine and lovely fresh berry refreshment. Initially thought this might be a somewhat odd choice for this salad, but it worked in spades. Both of us fell in love with the wine. 

Cost: $14 for food, $32 for wine = $46    

Tuesday: Beef Cheeks and Chickpea Purée with 2008 Sanguis Endangered Species Act 1-3 Santa Ynez Valley

Food Details: Recipe from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes In The World. Paulina beef cheeks marinated in garlic, cloves, black pepper/corns, green peppercorns, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and the TJ's barbera. Braised/roasted for 3 1/2 hours. Chickpeas skinned (creates a wonderfully smooth texture) and puréed with rosemary, stock, salt and pepper. Fried shallots on top. Parsley over everything.

Did We Like It? Curious. Yes, we liked it a lot. Both of us felt some diminishment from having this a couple of times before relatively recently. Blew our minds when we first had it. Now, it feels like something we should have every other year to maintain that "blowing of the mind." Curiously, when we first had it, the first 8-10 bites were utter enjoyment and it tapered off after that. This time, it got better as it cooled down. Fried shallots are boss. 

How Was The Wine? A surprise. We bought a fair amount of Sanguis wines after a Sanguis dinner at Blackbird a few years ago, then we sort of lost interest and they sat in the cellar neglected. This one, a syrah blend with a little viognier and roussanne in there, was essentially popped and poured after checking it an hour before. Lovely savory blueberry, black olive, some sort of cinnamon-driven spice mixture, and mint notes. Fairly concentrated but never a big fruit bomb. And remained savory throughout. Happy viognier lift at the end. A bigger wine in terms of alcohol but this maintained its happy place admirably. Shocked by how savory it was. It's drinking well right now and currently half the cost of what we bought it for (gulp).

And The Pairing? Very good, almost great. Loved the purée and shallots. Liked the beef cheeks. Mostly, we were happy to find a meal that utilized and served this wine so well. That's the goal. Always. 

Cost: $35 for food, $83 for wine = $118        

Monday: Fish Cakes and Fried Pickled Potatoes with 2009 Domaine des Baumard Clos du Papillon Savennières

Food Details: Fish cakes made with swai, three freezer scallops, eggs, pepper, coriander, ginger, cayenne, garlic, breadcrumbs, cilantro and flour, pan-fried. (from "fish balls" recipe in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, page 196). Michael Solomonov's fried pickled potatoes (recipe). Cilantro and sesame seeds on top. Harissa tahini to dip in everything.

Did We Like It? This is the best fish cake recipe we've ever had, and we've had these fairly often of late. The texture of them allows for space and enjoyment of every ingredient. The "new" in this meal were the pickled potatoes. Potatoes soaked in pickling juice; drained and patted dry, then fried. It's like having delicious fry-based food that comes off so gosh-darn light and peppy. So two fried items on the plate and not one bite tasted like a big plate of fried food. This was a great meal.

How Was The Wine? Quiet compared to other Savennières we've had, including this one from a different vintage. All the notes of Savennières chenin, but with a paced, ethereal quality, and that was frankly welcome, as we worried over whether this was going to work with the food. Light chamomile and tea,very little wax that showed up more as an impression of wax, poached apricot and pear, and a finish that was a brief summary of everything before. 

And The Pairing? At first, we weren't sure this was working as we starting eating, but as we got into it, we enjoyed the subtlety and grace it offered. Backward expression that took some getting used to, finally landing on a great deal of enjoyment. 

Cost: $10 for food, $43 for wine = $53    

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.

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #4

Ever buy tickets to a show a couple of months in advance and think at the time, "That will be fun. Dinner and show downtown during the summer. It'll be a nice night out." 

Then the show begins to approach, and slowly you begin to think, "Why are we going to see this person. He's fine and all, but...did we really just PAY money to see this person?" 

That'll happen this week. We'll see. 

Update: Completely fun show. A professional, veteran comic that knows how to entertain. 

Total food and wine cost for the week: $89 for food and $110 for wine = $199

Total food and wine cost for the month: $361 for food and $555 for wine = $916


Sunday: Big Greek Salad with 2014 Sigalas Assyrtiko Santorini

Food Details: Greeky salad of kumatoes, kalamata olives, onions, green pepper, corn, salami, feta, dill and oregano, over arugula, dressed with white wine vinegar (red for Mrs. Ney - a mistake, she said, with the wine), olive oil, salt and pepper. Buttered mini-ciabatta buns on the side. "A Big Salad….it's a salad, only bigger, with lots of stuff in it ..."

Did We Like It? Both of us worked hard this Sunday. A Big Greek Salad helps in forgetting the bad parts of most of that hard work, leaving, "Yeah. That sucked. But look what in front of me on the plate! It's a Big Greek Salad! I need nothing more right now."

How Was The Wine? We loved the 2014 with fried haloumi, skordalia, pita, and tomato-fennel salad in May. Pretty minerals and acid with wonderful length and gaps. Less so this time.

And The Pairing? It had the acid we wanted overall with the food, but became a little clipped and moody with the red wine vinegar for Mrs. Ney and the green pepper for me. Not everything we wanted in terms of pairing paradise, but still the kind of meal where you pause halfway through, lean back like Costanza's girlfriend after the risotto, and relish in the goodness.

Cost: $9 for food, $22 for wine = $31


Saturday: Dirty Rice with 2013 Michel Léon Vin D'Alsace Gewürztraminer 

Source: Recipe here, from Susan Spicer via Food & Wine, recipe halved.

Food Details: Andouille chicken sausages, wild rice, mirepoix, chicken stock, herbs, ground pork, chicken livers, chopped scallions on top, habanero hot sauce added. It's a big, honkin' bowl of rice chockablock with meaty, herby, Cajun flavors.

Did We Like It? Always do. It's strangely deep and dirty, while being simultaneously clean. Probably have it four times a year. Rotation food that pops up when the crave hits.

How Was The Wine? It's $10 gewürztraminer, sold at Trader Joe's, that's better than any we've had in this price range, and even a bit above. We don't particularly like gewürztraminer, mostly because they can be more hit-and-miss than other grapes we like (i.e. - we don't take a chance on a random gewürztraminer in a store just for funnsies. We gotta know if it's going to be good).  But it picks up spice, herbs and heat well. Get one with a nice sweetness and acidity play and it can elevate itself to something quite nice with the right food. Michel Leon is our default gewürztraminer because it always delivers. Its shimmering and bouncy acid lifts the lychee and grapefruit notes to something that tastes elevated and sprite-like. As it did here with heat, herbs and Cajun accents here.

And The Pairing? The wine was a great refresher, countering everything in the bowl quite well, particularly with the excess hot sauce I dumped on top. WHEW! That was HOT for the few first bites!

Cost: $9 for food, $10 for wine = $19
      

Friday: Chicken Parmesan and Garlic Bread with 2012 Trader Joe's Barbera Mendocino County

Food Details: Chicken breasts, breaded, fried. Mozzarella from Monday and tomato sauce dumped on top, then baked off. Basil on top. Pugliese bread, sliced, slathered with a butter, olive oil, parsley and garlic spread, broiled off.

Did We Like It? It's a "use stuff up and eat like it's 1986!" dinner. The fancy restaurant near my hometown growing up was Rastrelli's, an Italian-American place where everyone went for their graduation-reception-"just got my braces off!" dinner. This meal tastes like I just got my braces off (and this is still on the menu at Rastrelli's, by the way). Homey, goopy and delicious.

How Was The Wine? It's our house red for weekday Italian meals, because it's juicy, bright and friendly, with an underlying spicy edge. We always wonder if we should have something different and inevitably wander back to this one, because it delivers.

And The Pairing? Lively and lovely. Simple Italian-American meal with a wine that kept things on the bright side.

Cost: $12 for food, $10 for wine = $22


Thursday: Fava Bean and Ricotta Salata Strozzapreti with 2014 Quinta de Porrais Branco Douro 

Source: Recipe here, via Lidia's Italy, using strozzapreti instead of cavatelli.

Food Details: Onions sweated with garlic and red pepper flakes. Fava beans added to the pan with some pasta water and reduced down to a sauce. Strozzapreti, cooked, drained. Fava-onion-garlic sauce added to the added to the pasta in the pasta cooking vessel and swirled, plated. Dressed with ricotta salata, pecorino, dill, tarragon and parsley.

Did We Like It? Best batch yet! Less of a saucy-sauce this time, which allowed the dill and tarragon to come through, taking this batch to a different place, and we loved it. This is great with fresh fava, it does make a difference, but bagged fava didn't leave us wanting here at all. It's a simple dish where the triangulation of the fava, ricotta salata and onions is simple Italian cooking on full display.

How Was The Wine? We were stunned to hear Francisco Olazabal of Quinta do Vale Meão made a white Douro wine at Quinta de Porrais, about an hour northwest of Vale Meão in the Douro Superior. How did we not know this? High elevation, cooler climate; 55% códega do larinho and 45% rabigato. It's at Perman Wine for $14 (and somehow about $4 at Jumbo - a strange, but pleasant supermarket chain all over Portugal - like if K-Mart and Jewel had a baby). This might be the best expression of a Douro white we've had. Cool climate gaseousness and acid. Plenty of space offered to enjoy its subtle hints of flowers and spiced pears at your leisure, with only of hint of honeydew, something that typically takes Douro whites to a rather basic, boring place. This isn't a fancy white. It's just all the Douro white parts in all the right places. And it LOVED this food.

And The Pairing? The dill, tarragon and parsley medley made for a firmer, greeny background in this plate of food and the wine picked up on it and ran, rounding and extending itself out beautifully. While the finish reminded you of what you just tasted, just in case you forgot. This is a fairly versatile meal. We've had it with frappato, Sancerre, even a Douro red from Duorum. This was the best yet. Just the tops. We bought four bottles when we heard this existed. After having this meal, we bought four more two hours later. They'll be gone by winter.

Cost: $16 for food, $14 for wine = $30          


Wednesday: Cornish Game Hens, Amaranth Greens and Pretzel Rolls with 2013 Broc Cellars Mourvèdre Martian Vineyard SBC

Food Details: Cornish game hens (domestic - Harvesttime - $3.69/bird), spatchcocked (fun word to say, along with dessert - a schichttorte), stuffed with a fig jam/kalamata tapenade under the skin (David Leibovitz), roasted Dorie Greenspan-style (from Around My French Table, a book that's been good to us, page 225). Amaranth greens, leaves removed, tender stems sauteed with a shallot, garlic; leaves wilted in that pan; drizzled with balsamic. Lemon spritz on bird and greens. LaBriola pretzel dinner rolls, butter and lavender jam.

Did We Like It? We liked the "lil chickens!" Could be a good vehicle for other "lil chickens!" preparations down the road on the cheap. And the tapenade was delicious. But these amaranth greens are just the tops. We've had amaranth greens once or twice before and liked them. Bump that up to LOVE with this meal. These are rarely stocked in Mrs. Ney's supermarket sweep. You see them, you buy them. All sorts of greeny-planty-earthy goodness here. Grown-up greens. Pretzel rolls with butter and lavender jam that brought more "Holy crap! That's delicious!" shouts. Overall, we liked it. My goodness, we liked it.

How Was The Wine? More Broc being Broc. Smelled like smoky brisket right away. Turned into a light mourvèdre that highlighted its floral-bright fruit character with low alcohol, light spice and sunny disposition. There's something that Broc Cellars does with their reds. About 2/3 of the way down, a place where many reds concentrate, get a little showy, strut around, try to show how masculine they can be, Broc allows space at this point. There's a pause to allow food to frolic. That's why we love them. Same with this mourvèdre. Because...

And The Pairing? So freakin' perfect with the amaranth greens, taking this wine to a maximum expression. Long, broad, juicy, rich, balanced; everything on full display. A bit short with the game hen and tapenade, which was surprising. Figured we had a match there. But with these greens, it made the entire meal into something memorable. One of those times where you say, "Why do people care so little about their food and wine pairing when this exists in the world?"

Cost: $15 for food, $24 for wine = $39               


Tuesday: Peanut Chicken Satay, Pot Stickers and Carrot Salad with Watermelon Sangria

Food Details: Chicken satay using peanut sauce from the freezer (golly! Was this from TWO years ago?). Surprisingly great freezer sauce, vacillating nicely between peanuty and coconuty; concentrated, yet light. Chicken, sauced and skewered, grilled off. Trader Joe's vegetable pot stickers. Here's a product good enough to avoid making pot stickers if you don't have the oomph to make pot stickers, pan seared, then steamed, and delicious. Multi-colored carrots for carrot salad. Ponzu for drizzling and dipping. Extra peanut sauce for dipping.

Did We Like It? We did. "This is really pleasant," was the phrase of the night. Pan-Asian flavors that satisfied the Asian-flavor jones, quite nicely, thank you very much.

How was the booze? Watermelon purée from the freezer, lychee juice steeped in lemongrass leaves, mint, manzano pepper, ginger beer, liter bottle of 2014 Innovac!ón Malbec-Syrah Rosé Mendoza ($8 - Whole Foods). Sangria? More of a delicious spritzer. We got all of the flavors included at first sip, then it become so broad and friendly about a 1/3 of the way down. Thought about adding gin, then abandoned adding gin, because gin is satan's spawn the day after for us.

And the pairing? Pleasant and friendly, friendly and pleasant, we liked this. Great minimum goodness across the board. Floor was raised with every bite and every sip. At $5 a plate and about $10 total for the booze, we say big winner in terms of dollars-to-satisfaction ratio.

Cost: $10 for food, $10 for booze = $20  


Monday: True-Blue Pick-n-Choose with Laurent Savoye "Magma des Granites" Vin Mousseaux Rouge

Food details: Heirloom tomato, salt, peppered and oiled. Celery and fennel seed mostarda (fun word to say in combination with dessert - a blueberry/peach crostata). Sliced roast beef. Salami. Marinated mozzarella balls (barely eaten). Arugula-parsley-basil salad. Baguette. Pick-n-choose on crack.

Did We Like It? Yeah. Definitely certain combos. Way too much food, a result of trying to turn the all elements of caprese that we had on hand into a dinner. Big winner here was a baguette, mostarda, salad and heirloom tomato bite. So gosh darn fresh and vertical in flavor. Mostarda-roast beef-bread = happy. In the end, a fine and good pick-n-choose with a garden-like quality. But this wine, man... This wine...

How Was The Wine? Outrageously good. A mousse-y gamay from Beaujolais, this was jumpy, jaunty, juicy, light and delicious. Round and upfront blueberry-blackberry fruit. Big herby background. Tasted like eating black fruits right from your picking basket, seeds, dirt, vines, leaves and all. Straightforward bubbly red that's so friendly and done oh-so well. It's $20, from Vin Chicago, and can't be recommended more highly.

And The Pairing? A baguette, mostarda, salad and heirloom tomato bite with a sip made the wine become an HD 4K version of itself. On a 90" TV. Rather ridiculous stuff. Nice with the roast beef. Less so with salami. Less-less so with the cheese and greens. But this wine, man... This wine... We'll be buying much more.

Cost: $18 for food, $20 for wine = $38