365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #25

Top...Whatever Number...Pairings of 2015 (no order except the top few, so a bit of an order):

1. Ottolenghi Fish, Cocount-Peanut Salad and Rice with 2013 Darting Muskateller Kabinett Trocken

2. Tuna Niçoise with 2014 Jolie-Laide Trousseau Gris Fanucchi-Wood Road Vineyard Russian River Valley

3.  Roasted Chicken and Fennel Panzanella with 2014 Broc Cellars Picpoul Blanc Luna Matta Vineyard Paso Robles

4.  Fava Bean and Ricotta Salata Strozzapreti with 2014 Quinta de Porrais Branco Douro

5. Sausage, Zucchini, Tomato and Cream Cheese Surprise with 2014 Alloy Wine Works Grenache Rosé Central Coast

6. Lamb Chops, Charred Shallots, Yogurt, Tomato Vinaigrette and Pita with 2014 Charles & Charles Rosé Columbia Valley

7.  Yakitori-marinated hanger steak, yuca fries and Tuscan kale salad with 2006 Quinta do Vale Meão Douro

8. Lamb Salami, Feta spread, Arugula and Ciabattini Buns with 2014 João Portugal Ramos "Lima" Loureiro Vinho Verde

9. Big. Greek. Salad. With Lillet Sparkling Rosé

10. Bee-Pollened Pork Shoulder and Griddle Cakes with 2009 Jean Bourdy Côtes du Jura

11. Galician Tuna Empanadas With 2012 Forlorn Hope "Que Saudade" Sierra Foothills

12. Argentinian Skirt Steak and Shishito Pepper, Inland Cress and Frisée Salad with 2012 Luca Malbec Uco Valley

Was this our best food and wine year, Mrs. Ney? Probably, I say. I missed a few. There's still a couple of vague notions of "Wow, that's good!" meals rumbling around in my brain that I can't specifically remember. Odd there's no goat meal. Just wasn't an amazing goat-wine year.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $185 for food and $229 for wine = $414

Sunday: Smoked Chicken and Sprout Sandwiches with 2014 Alloy Wine Works Grenache Rosé Central Coast

Food Details: Whole Foods packaged smoked chicken slices, mashed avocado, kumatoes, pickled onions, Monterey jack cheese, mayo, and alfalfa-fenugreek sprouts, on Mariano's Italian-style batard bread. Olive oil potato chips.

Did We Like It? A nice batch, wet overall due to the pickled onions but the crusty bread helped a bit. Fine and good Sunday night sandwich-and-chips meal.

How Was The Wine? $8 grenache rosé in the can. We've been over this. House fav.

And The Pairing? But not here. A bit astringent and a tad boring here, probably due to the copious amount of mustard seeds and peppercorns floating around in the sandwiches from end-of-batch pickled onions.

Cost: $30 for food, $16 for wine = $46

Saturday: Argentinian Hanger Steak and Shishito Pepper-Living Cress-Arugula-Blue Cheese Salad with NV La Posta Tinto Red Blend Mendoza

Food Details: (David Beran recipe) A recreation of this meal from September, using hanger instead of skirt. Overnight hanger marinade of basil, thyme, shallot, peppercorn and olive oil. Salad of living cress, arugula, celery and leaves, mint, charred shishito peppers and Rogue Creamery Blue Cheese. Dressing of charred lemon and olive oil. Trader Joe's potato pancakes for starch.

Did We Like It? I don't know what it is about this meal. There's a lively ping-ponging of flavors, mostly lightly bitter and always popping. Just when you want it taken down a notch, here comes the blue cheese to offer creaminess and depth. Brilliant meat marinade. One of the best we've had. I cooked this one. Notes: use the cast-iron. Easy on the dressing.

How Was The Wine? Laura Catena manages five of her family's wineries in Argentina and owns two of her own (Luca and La Posta), all while working as an ER physician in San Francisco. So...yeah...geesh... We had her Luca Malbec with this meal last time, a classy, polished malbec that liked the food enough. Her 2013 La Posta Tinto, a malbec-bonarda-syrah table wine blend, was better as a pairing with this food prep. Smoky herbs and happy fruit, it tastes wildly similar to the unpretentious non-vintage red blends that we love so much, like the Marietta Cellars line. Blackberry bush notes with a touch of cherry that starts to trend sweet, but takes a quick turn to dry at just the right time. A real personality here. We loved it. And will buy more.

And The Pairing? As I said, we really liked the Luca, but it demanded our attention too much and went a bit pear-shaped with the salad. The La Posta Tinto wants one thing. It wants beef-centric food with other food toys to show off how versatile it is. One of the better table-style wines we've had of late. Big thumbs up.

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

Friday: Green Goddess Chicken Panzanella with 2014 Berger Grüner Veltliner Kremstal

Food Details: First, a few notes on lunch. Caviar and crème fraiche on potato chips with pear-celery-hazelnut salad quickly turned into pear-celery-hazelnut salad with potato chips because the caviar was too fishy. Nice salad, but the real winner was finding our new house Champagne - Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut. When trying to find a $50-ish Champagne that simultaneously will bring elegance without breaking the bank, we've gone from Gaston Chiquet to Ayala to Paul Bara to Pierre Peters to just trying just about every $50-ish Champagne out there. Liked them all to a certain degree, went through phases where we drank multiples of each, but Bollinger tasted like "This is what we want right now." Such elegance and grace with this drinking. Egly-Ouriet is 'for the special' so 2016 will probably be a good amount of Bollinger.

The panzanella...was an enormous amount of food! Whole Foods chicken marinated in Ms Clark's green goddess dressing, roasted. Heaping plate of fava, roasted ancient red pepper (seriously, "ancient" is its variety name), charred red onion, arugula, scallions, crushed marcona almonds, Pugliese bread croutoned-up, and more green goddess dressing tossed with all of it.

Did We Like It? Not the best version of panzanella but a damn good one. The fava beans took center stage here, taking everything into a realm of a fava garden-warmness (if that makes sense). Juicy chicken, different flavor combination with each bite, all that you'd want from Food.

How Was The Wine/Pairing? A bit off. Grüner is typically a workhorse with food, but this bottle, while technically fine, seemed a bit tired when drunk by itself and offered the same with the panzanella. Opened a bottle of cheap Trader Joe's La Granja Blanco Rioja and found a surprisingly nice matchy-match with the food, tasting like they were oddly made for each other. Much better than the Berger and not even close.

Cost: $58 for lunch and dinner, $70 for wine = $128  

Thursday: Persian Beef, Barberry Sauce and Buttered Almonds with 2004 La Rioja Alta Viña Ardanza Reserva

Food Details: (Recipe, with beef shank instead of chicken) Last had in April, this is essentially Iranian stew that doesn't resemble any stew we'd ever had before first eating it. Beef shank, tons of marrow, barberries, almonds, cardamom, turmeric, cinnamon, black pepper, rice, snap peas, mint.

Did We Like It? It's perfect stew, because every ingredient constantly bounces off each other in every bite, going deep but staying bright and lively. A wonderful back-and-forth between the dark, deep beef-marrow that played with the spices, then the barberry sauce tart-sour lifty perk. Buttered almonds that calmed all of that down with a huggy-bear nutty finish. It's brilliant stuff.

How Was The Wine? Stupid Spain. You're lovely. And you feel and taste like Home. Fruit remained in the background with this drinking, offering only a roundness and occasional cherry punch. This one was all about the sweet spice, vanilla, cedar, tobacco and Spanish air that makes good, old-style Rioja so great. We took one drink and we were back in Villabuena de Álava.

And The Pairing? This stew is right in our wheelhouse for the wine we like, but the barberries can be tricky. A graceful red with sneaky guts is needed. This one was just that. We loved it.

Cost: $15 for food,  $33 for wine = $48    

Wednesday: Chiarello Chicken Tacos and Jicama Slaw with Argus Cidery Tepache Pineapple Wine

Food Details: Michael Chiarello chicken taco recipe. Basic. Chicken thigh meat slowly simmered in onions, garlic, serranos, both paprikas, cumin, and oregano. Jicama slaw made with herbs, mayo and sour cream. Lime to spritz. Hot sauce to douse. As basic and minimalist as great tacos get.

Did We Like It? After having these, this quickly jumped right to the top of our "I want tacos that are easy and cheap, but delicious" list. We have mostly everything to make these tacos on hand at all times. The juice alone I'd drink. Loved it.

How Was The Wine? Pineapple wine made in Texas. We're fans, ever since having it at Minero in Charleston. Spicy grilled pineapple in a bottle. Frothy, almost beer-like but never all the way there. It demands you to pay attention to it in the best way.

And The Pairing? Here's a meal that settles things. No much futzing about with various fancy sangrias with tacos for us. Chill and drink this. It's everything you want-need from a taco-pairing beverage.

Cost: $16 for food, $16 for wine = $32

Tuesday: Ottolenghi Tuna and Blood Orange-Black Olive Salad with NV Philippe Glavier Rose Idylle Celeste Champagne

Food Details: (tuna recipe) Half-pound of Whole Foods tuna oiled, seasoned, seared, chilled, coated in mustard and ground pistachios and blood orange zest, chilled, sliced. Charred fennel and shallots, blood orange supremes, nicoise olives, raw mustard greens. pink peppercorns, fennel fronds and pistachio oil on top.

Did We Like It? We have a bit of a thing for blood oranges and black olives with rare tuna. Typically, Mrs. Ney studs it heavily with various shades of peppercorns, cardamom and ginger. This meal was a switch-up, looking to Mr. Ottolenghi for a different tuna prep. We liked it muchly, digging the mustard and pistachio goodness that got deep into the tuna. But it wasn't the superlative love we find from white-pink-black peppercorns, coriander, cumin, cardamom, ginger and fleur de sel. Nice change of pace, though. This meal had everything anybody would ever want from "Flavor."

How Was The Wine? Roasted carrots and curried-up watermelon rind. You read that right. That was the biggest, most clear impression we got from it. For $50, meh.

And The Pairing? Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Like stadium popcorn, "It's neutral!"

Cost: $22 for food, $50 for wine = $72  

Monday: Anne Burrell Chicken Milanese with 2014 Matthiasson Tendu White California 

Food Details: Recipe here. Make it, eat it, and you'll make it 200 more times throughout the course of your life. It's that good.

Did We Like It? Top-third of all the Anne Burrell Milaneses we've had. Not the best, but a very strong version. This meal just has that extra something that makes you say, "THAT's perfectly balanced food!"

How Was The Wine? We haven't loved the 2014 version of the Tendu White, feeling that the chardonnay toned down the spritely bounce that the 2013 offered. Mr. Matthiasson said the vermentino - which is the vast majority of the three-grape makeup here, along with French colombard - didn't have the requisite acidity to go 100% vermentino in 2014. But this drinking was adequate. While still not getting as much distinction as the 2013 had, nice acid-vague fruit back-and-forth to be happy enough.

And The Pairing? Fine. Frankly better than I expected.

Cost: $12 for food, $30 for wine = $42

Bison Hanger and Shishito Pepper-Watercress Salad with 2014 Broc Cellars Cabernet Franc

There's nothing better in life than 'free.'

Free food is nice. Even when food isn't anything spectacular, it's free, so who cares.

But free money is better.

We move in a month, and 13 years living in the same apartment, with the same things, located in the same place for years because our current apartment is so damn small that moving things around always felt like a futile effort, has made us look around at the stuff we have and say, "Hell no. That's not coming with us."

So new sofa and dining room table was...needed. Hours on the internet. Hours thinking about them off the internet. Then trips to stores yesterday. Blu Dot is nice, but committing to a $4000 sofa seemed (nearly) the opposite of wise. DWR was a fanciful adventure, but thanks for the water. And Restoration Hardware was something out of Black Mirror. Truly a dystopian shopping excursion. "Here's six floors of sameness to lure you into a decision based on the tiniest of differences and based solely on wanting to get the f@*k out of there."

Then we stepped into Roy's, found a sofa AND a table that landed at the perfect intersection of style, cut, and value; and we bought both for probably $3-4000 less than we might have spent just to be done with shopping.

So...free money. Free money is best.

Bison hanger, potato pancakes and feta-shishito pepper-celery-watercress salad with 2014 Broc Cellars Cabernet Franc Santa Barbara

David Began recipe from Food & Wine. Bison hanger from D'Artagnan, marinated, seared medium rare. Potato pancakes from Trader Joe's, because there's no easier and delicious starch that compliments a meal like this, dipped in Kewpie. Charred shishitos mixed with watercress, feta, pomegranate seeds, celery and celery leaves. We like a lot of salads. This one's in the top 10% for me, as it has bite coming at you from eight different angles. This entire meal has bite and presence and joy. Better with blue cheese instead of feta, but when 48,000 thoughts regarding the logistics of moving are in your brain, an extra errand to get one ingredient isn't happening. This wasn't even the best version of this meal, but it was entirely welcome.

Not the best pairing either. Malbec is the play here. This food likes malbec's robustness and fruit to soften the edges just a wee bit, but we didn't care. Lighter, fresh cab franc-y notes with the Broc. as per usual, with a touch of smoke backing up the freshness, and very delicate earth finishing things up.

Mostly, we have to move all our wine. Bringing wine INTO the house? Nope. So jamming some wines into food for the next month is what's going to occur. But on the scale of "FINE," where a "fine" of 10 is an annoying, get-out-of-my-face fine, and a "fine" of one is "hey, that was just fine, I have no beef with that." This pairing was about a two.


A Couple of Notes: Spanish-style garlic shrimp, roasted feta with honey and pink peppercorns, baguette and salad; served with 2004 López de Heredia Viña Gravonia Rioja. I wanted viura, but the 2004 is NOT READY! Don't do that. Still a lot of Heredia deliciousness, but this one is tight and doesn't want you in there (giggity). A supplemental bottle of TJ's La Granja Viura brought the Spanish Patio Happy in more evocative, Spanish Patio ways.

Scaccia and salad with 2015 Broc Cellars Nero d'Avola Ukiah. I love Broc. We don't love the nero d'Avola. Grape juice to start. Added some black pepper to the scaccia and more of a plummy, spicy, wine impression showed up to the party, but this is our third or fourth go with Broc's nero d'Avola and while it seems to be shooting for "utterly gulpable and drinkable," it doesn't hit that place for us. It's the wine-club throw-in that sits on the shelf, waiting to get picked last for dodgeball.                

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #44

Here's a nice little reminder from D'Artagnan that air-chilled chicken is the only chicken. Whole Foods carries them as well. Worth the extra greenbacks.

In the novelty food products world, for which I'm a huge sucker, the new Pepsi 1893 line is an...effort, but not worth the greenbacks. And Milky Way brownies are an abomination.

Down week in the wine world but not in the food world.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $105 for food and $119 for wine = $224

Total food and wine cost for the month: $442 for food and $439 for wine = $881

Sunday: Naan Pizzas with 2013 Regis Minet Pouilly-Fumé Vieilles Vignes

Food Details: Naan bread topped with leftover asparagus pesto mixed with cream cheese, ham, onions, leftover smoked mozzarella, peppadew peppers, and a big handful of dressed arugula.

Did We Like It? They're a weeknight house dinner platform for leftover stuff. And it's always, in the least, a satisfying dinner. Tack on "very" to satisfied with this batch.

How Was The Wine? Went fancier for weeknight wine here, and gee-whiz, the acidity and flinty minerals were just lovely. More straight-forward than other vintages of Minet, with predominantly lemon citrus notes, followed by minerals, all wrapped inside a coat of bright acid. But golly that package had all the fanciness of a great piece of furniture. Like when you see something in a living room and say, "Damn, THAT's a great chair!"

And The Pairing? Fairly ho-hum, but fine food and fine wine made for a great end of my week, especially after spending five minutes explaining to a customer who could eat tomatoes but not tomato sauce that our sauce is ONLY blended tomatoes. She wasn't having it.

Cost: $12 for food, $21 for wine = $33    

Saturday: Kielbasa-Potato-Kale Hash with 2014 Charles Smith Velvet Devil Columbia Valley

Food Details: (recipe from The New Spanish Table). Loosely based on that recipe, turning it from cake to hash. This time, using kielbasa as meat. Historically, this recipe is used as a bit of a blank slate to mix together left in the house, with potato and kale as a base. Pecorino cheese to finish.

Did We Like It? The kielbasa took it out of the Spanish realm and into a more generic "hash" world, and it served quite well as a weeknight, "warm you up" plate of food, particularly when it was 38 degrees in mid-freakin'-May here in Chicago.

How Was The Wine? Mostly merlot, with a little cab, malbec and cab franc mixed in. A dancing little number on its own, with pretty, bright, round, dark red fruits with a bit of tobacco underneath and balanced, prevalent, happy acid. But...

And The Pairing? BRU-TAL. Really, quite terrible with this food. But good to find a bargain merlot that offers...something. And this offers much more than just "something," as Mr. Smith typically does.

Cost: $5 for food, $10 for wine = $15

Friday: Tuna Pick-n-Choose with 2015 Baskoli Txakolina 

Food Details: Leftover olive oil-poached tuna from Wednesday, with peppadew peppers, onions, avocado, dressed arugula and mini-ciabatta. Rip, top with everything, and eat.

Did We Like It? Sorta great! If there's a bite of food that represents the bridge between food we ate 5-7 years ago and now, this would be it. Spanish-influenced simplicity with a tapas-pintxos nod, where a bite has all the acid, fishy, bitter, onion-pepper pop, cream and starch you need.

How Was The Wine? It's $9 Trader Joe's txakolina. And nothing here is really in proper txakolina order here. The sea spritz and mineral is off. The fruit perk is nearly nonexistent. Its slight sparkle shows up at weird times, hiding what could be good underneath, but...

And The Pairing? It's $9, half of the cost of a good Txakolina. And with this food, it offered more than enough Basqueness for us to be very satisfied.

Cost: $8 for food, $9 for wine = $17    

Thursday: Green Chorizo Tortas with NV Evolution Sparkling White

Food Details: Melissa Clark green chorizo, made into tortas. Chorizo mixed with black beans, with chihuahua cheese as the meat-cheese base. Habanero vinegar. Marinated onions, sliced avocados and arugula on top. All that inside torta bread. Mexican Bugles for side. Made four big sandwiches.

Did We Like It? We could sell these out the apartment window and make a silly amount of money. Had that perfect meat-cheese melty-ness, freshened up by the avocado and arugula, and an overall composition of delicious.

How Was The Wine? Nine grapes done up Champagne-style. Muscat, gewürztraminer, pinot gris, white riesling, chardonnay, pinot blanc, sylvaner, muller-thurgau and semillon. You read that list, particularly since it leads with muscat and gewürztraminer, and you'd think this would be sweet-ish. At least highly fruity. It's not. It's quite dry, with some very pleasing bitterness and herb stem notes. More pinot blanc and muller-thurgau than anything else. Quite nice, and we'll be buying it again.

And The Pairing? Didn't really go with the sandwiches, but we weren't displeased. Good food and surprising wine that don't ultimately go together but don't horribly clash can be Just Fine.

Cost: $14 for food, $14 for wine = $28  

Wednesday: Scaccia with 2012 Paringa Sparkling Shiraz Barossa

Food Details: Saveur recipe, and will be had six times a year henceforth. It's lasagna bread, but has none of soupy boringness that, for me, comes with lasagna. Semolina dough, San Marzano tomatoes, sharp provolone and smoked mozzarella to approximate caciocavallo, basil and garlic. Arugula salad to finish.

Did We Like It? It's our new Sunday night dinner! Fairly simple, just takes (mostly inactive) time. It's tastes like my first experience with good Italian food as a child in the 80's. Better, of course, but quite evocative. Everything is in proportion and everything is offered at the right level. Not bready, not too cheesy, not too tomatoey. Just DE-licious.

How Was The Wine? Shiraz likes basil and we had to drink this sparkling shiraz. Licorice, black fruits and froth. Fine enough, nothing super-duper by any means.

And The Pairing? Same with the food. Fell into the category of "nice to have wine here." That's really all it offered.

Cost: $15 for food, $13 for wine = $28

Tuesday: Tuna Niçoise with 2014 Terrasse du Moulinas Blanc Elégance Languedoc-Roussillon

Food Details: Olive-oil poached tuna Niçoise on butter lettuce with gaeta olives, capers, onion, grape tomatoes, haricots verts, fingerling potatoes, and hard-boiled eggs for me.

Did We Like It? A less delicious version of home tuna Niçoise. The on-sale butter lettuce sat there, limp and tasteless, offering nothing. Made it feel like there was a hole in the meal.

How Was The Wine? Started with an older 2010 Domaine de la Pepìere Quatre Muscadet and it offered little in the way of anything resembling enjoyment. Moved on to this year's house white, a grenache blanc, vermentino, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc blend from the Languedoc that has the acid and sparkle we do enjoy. Thought it was fading when last drunk, but here it matched up rather beautifully in the way regional food and regional wine tend to do.

And the Pairing? This tasted purposeful together. Not spectacular, just Provence Purposeful. With that, we found tons of enjoyment.

Cost: $23 for food, $31 for wine = $54

Monday: Hanger Steak and Watercress-Shishito Pepper Salad with 2012 Broc Cellars Cabernet Franc Central Coast

Food Details: (recipe) Whole Foods hanger steak (medium-rare) with a salad of watercress, shishito peppers, celery and leaves, and Rogue Flora Nelle cheese. Potato pancakes for starch.

Did We Like It? Our third time having this deliciously meaty-bitter-creamy dinner and it's still is all kinds of lovely. A bite with everything - hanger, watercress, shishito and cheese - is stupid how great it is. Get good cheese. Rogue is essentially our only source for blue cheese-like cheeses now. The fresh edge it offers is perfect.

How Was The Wine? Last had with Persian beef and barberry sauce, it's full of shiny red fruits, violets and cinnamon on the nose, a bit less in the intensity of that on the palate for the first 2/3, then finishing with something like a rum raisin smack. Still chugging along quite nicely. One left.

And The Pairing? Not as good as the La Posta Malbec with this meal, but there was a grace here that was welcome. And it showed some guts with the bevy of bitterness on the plate.

Cost: $28 for food, $19 for wine = $47

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: