#203 - Tuna Niçoise With A 2010 Les Pallières Rosé

Tuna Niçoise as a meal presents something akin to alchemy.

Given 15 different elements in their mostly unadulterated forms on a plate, the joy comes in combining two or three or four or more of the elements to see what new flavor presents itself.

The result is a cavalcade of distinct flavors created entirely by you, in the order you like, wonderfully beholden to the micro-craving you have in the second before taking a bite and culminating in one of the most clean, refreshing and wanted feelings of satisfaction right after putting the napkin down for the final time.

It's been upgraded from a top-fiver to one of the top-three meals in my world.

With rosé, it might be perfect because as a pairing, it's a function that you can manipulate and correct as you eat, finding the best collections to keep the wine right where you want it if you starts to gradually run off the rails.  Too much onion in that bite with tomatoes, green beans and a bit of tuna?  Use less in the next bite and suddenly the food-wine combo becomes something so much more.

And with rosé, you get a wine straddling both wine worlds: refreshing and crisp like a white with the guts and depth of a red.  A good one is a chameleon adaptable to multiple environments.  Tuna Niçoise offers a bevy of different food environments and the Les Pallières is certainly a good one.

#64 - Tuna Niçoise And A Bandol vs. Bulgarian Rosé Beatdown

Tuna Niçoise has increasingly become the follow-up meal to the un-follow-up-able (my high school English teacher just rolled over in his grave. Is he dead? Crap. Now I have to find that out).

It followed Blackbird last October. It followed dry-aged filet with the 1964 Heredia, the best wine I've ever had, in February.

It follows things of that level because it would be silly to try to match them or try to follow them up in the least. Tuna Niçoise's deliciousness lies in the freshness along with the gargantuan mountain of food on the plate that takes two hours to eat.

You can pick and choose from 5,000 different combinations of bites. It's all very democratic.

In that democratic vein, two rosés to taste, sample and compare seemed appropriate.

Food: Tuna Niçoise

Same preparation as in February:

"Clean you out!"

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

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

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

This time, it was served with "Seeduction" bread from Whole Foods, a hearty, dense, dark wheat bread with a big, nutty flavor. Didn't go with the tuna niçoise but we didn't care. It's great stuff.

Topped off with bacon-maple gelato from Gene's, made in Indiana with bacon cured in-house at Gene's and served with waffle galettes. That's good eatin'.

Wine: 2008 Domaine de la Bégude Rosé Bandol ($20 - Vineyards Wine Mercant - Cleveland) & 2006 Slavyantsi Rosé Rose Valley Bulgaria ($12 - Gene's Sausage Shop - Lincoln Square)

The Bandol rosé had the typical, well-crafted rosé color in the glass. Shimmered a bit. A nose of strawberries and raspberries. On the palate, it was what Bandol rosés are, sort of the essence of red wine stripped down and lightened up. Meaty with an almost sanguine quality. Dry, long finish that kept changing as it went down, ending with a meat juice and alcohol note. Nice, pleasant, lighter, a bit different. Liked it. Bandols are good and we should drink more of them.

But the Bulgarian rosé (no info or pic on the webby-webs) was oddly more interesting, probably because it was Bulgarian, came from Gene's Sausage Shop, was a four year-old rosé and didn't suck in the least. Very dark pink in the glass. Green olives on the nose with a huge alcoholic hit right away. Made from cabernet grapes, it opened up nicely as it was given some air. Probably liked it better because of what it did with the food.

Pairing: 86 A flurry of food and wine choices to pick from

By itself, the Bulgarian rosé wasn't anything special. With the food though it turned into strawberry shortcake with every bite. Surprised us completely. Any combination of the tuna Niçoise, be it the bitterness of the arugula, the brininess of the capers and/or olives, the acidity of the tomatoes, it was strawberry shortcake. The wine had a cabernet backbone and was still kicking quite nicely for a four year-old rosé...from Bulgaria...bought from a sausage shop.

We reached for that much more than the Bandol even as the Bandol was an entirely pleasant wine that was probably better from a technical wine standpoint. It just didn't offer us much in the way of surprise. Paired nicely, didn't get thrown off its game in the least but we couldn't let go of the Slavyantsi that offered strawberry shortcake where there previously wasn't strawberry shortcake.

#39 - Tuna Niçoise With '99 Prager

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

But we did just fine.

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

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

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

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

Food: Tuna Niçoise

"Clean you out!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pairing: Nothing Wrong With That

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

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

#99 - Two Favorites With Two Wines

Tons of catch-up to do. A messed up left hand and vacation (forthcoming and our 100th post!) has set me back a few days.

It's funny to constantly be reminded what wine can do for a meal.

The first one was an example of one of our favorite meals - so clean, fresh and filling - that once again informed us that rosé is really the only way to go with it.

The second one was an example of a fair-to-middling meal utterly taken over and elevated to such great heights by the wine, stupefying us as to how such a thing could have even happened.

#1 Tuna Niçoise with 2009 Domaine Collotte Marsannay Rosé ($17 - WDC)

I'll just plagarize myself as typing is a process right now.

Tuna Niçoise will Clean you out!

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

Just a big abundance of food that never gets old. Acid from tomatoes, bitterness from arugula, brininess and earthiness from the capers and olives, carb hit from the potatoes with great, fresh Whole Foods tuna - a bit less of it this time, which was prudent.

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

Paired this time with a 2009 Domaine Collotte Marsannay Rosé made from pinot noir. The Saintsbury Vin Gris of Pinot Noir might be the best we've ever had with tuna Niçoise but this one performed admirably. Softer, bright and pure, showing mostly strawberry cream. Enough backbone to stand up to mostly anything on the plate but not tannic or aggressive in the least.

A pleasing rosé for a reasonable price offering something a bit more distinctive than a run-of-the-mill pink. We might like a rosé to bring a bit more in a darker, more complex vein but it was light and fresh in an Ugly Betty sort of way.

A solid 88 pairing score. No complaints at all and just reassured the notion that there's not much better than tuna Niçoise and rosé is the only way to go in our world.

#2 Falafel, pita, tomato salad and cucumber yogurt with 2006 Villa Creek Mas De Maha ($22 - Binny's)

Lots of tasty flavors with the meal. Everything represented but the falafel came out a little toasty and the pita a little crispy. It was a quick dinner right before vacation with our minds more on that. Some parts were delicious and the falafel was kinda great, if a bit overcooked.

But something happened on the way to the forum. I've written about our love for Villa Creek Mas De Maha (60% tempranillo, 20% each of grenache and mourvèdre) in the past. It's awfully great with Latin food, especially anything with a Cuban bent. When we had it with hanger, plantains and tomato salad, it was pretty revelatory, like we found one of the perfect pairings that exist in the world. Something happens to the Mas De Maha with spice and tomatoes. It takes the entire plate of food with those elements by the hand and leads it to the promised land.

In the past, it's been with meals that were good on thier own. With this one, it picked up the plate by the back of its pants and said, "get your ass to the land of goodness!" I can't ever recall a meal so lifted to such a better place by the wine.

A 95 pairing score due to what was an archetypal example of what wine can do to and with food.

#276 - Rabbit Sausages, Chicken Thigh & Smokey Blue Fregola With '11 Ponzi Pinot Gris + 1

Ponzi-licious.

Ponzi acid, guys. Ponzi. Acid.

It's what they do oh-so well (among other things) and these two meals really showcased that.

Good weekend. Found Ring Day on Monday followed by tuna Niçoise with --> Ponzi Pinot Noir Rosé followed by this meal.

Plus, dog obedience class is over. We got our Wednesday nights back. You should see how much she kinda-sorta-not really remembers it all.

A trip to Oregon wine country for us soon. Drinking Ponzi seemed right and proper....and Ponzi-licious (I'll stop that now).

Food: Rabbit sausages, chicken thigh, blue cheese fregola and baby kale salad with meat juice

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #17

Pastoral opened up a store and restaurant in Andersonville this week.

We've always liked Pastoral. While the Broadway store hasn't been an "only stop" kind of destination, mainly due to the distance and us not being cheese people, their wine selection was always right in line with where our tastes were going. Even with a markup of $4-7 more per bottle than around town or on the internet, they've always has a couple of things you simply can't find in Chicago.

Their new location has 2-3 times the selection of Broadway and you can tell the people that stock it like their wine. It's a few blocks away and on my weekly errand route. We'll be regulars.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $80 for food and $126 for wine = $206

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

Food Details: Feta cheese blended with pepper relish from last Sunday and mint oil from Monday. It's spicy feta cheese spread made from leftovers! Paulina Market "spicy lamb sticks," sliced. Arugula salad dressed with white vinegar, olive oil, s/p. Mini-ciabatta buns. It's PICK. AND. CHOOSE. Bread+feta spread+lamb salami+arugula. Eat. Repeat. Greeky.

Did We Like It? Jebus! Yes. Yes we did. Best weeknight meal this week. It's right up there with sausage, zucchini, tomato and cream cheese surprise in the world of taking bread, topping it with creamy-spicy goodness, and repeating it about 40 times. Kick back and relax for about an hour with food that's your friend.

How Was The Wine? Lightly fruity, lightly floral, lightly acidic. It's $8 loureiro.

And The Pairing? As Mary Berry would say, "That's scrummy." The Lima gives the impression of having lighter acid, but there's a strong backbone underlying everything with this one, which was perfect here, as it wasn't going to be pushed around by the spiciness in the food. Great meal. Might have it for Christmas lunch.

Cost: $10 for food, $8 for wine = $18 

Saturday: Ottolenghi Pumpkin Soup and Portuguese Corn Bread with 2015 Viñas Chileans Reserva Rosé Valle Central

Sources: Ottolenghi pumpkin soup here (at the bottom), David Leite's Portuguese Corn Bread here.

Food Details: Pumpkin soup of canned pumpkin, chickpeas, harissa paste, shallots, garlic, cardamom, cumin, dried apricots, preserved lemon, rose water, etc., topped with yogurt and cilantro. Portuguese corn bread made with fine-ground cornmeal, flour, yeast, salt and water, formed into loaves and baked.

Did We Like It? Probably a one-off. But fine and good soup that became rather fancy with the wine. Peasant-style, mountain-type bread that looked great but was a bit dense due to me working it too much. I'm not a soup eater. But this was good soup and made better by $4 Chilean rosé.

How Was The Wine? Cabernet-syrah blend done up rosé style. $4. Trader Joe's. 2015. Incredibly fresh; big, upfront swirl of bright cherries and strawberries, beautifully bouncy acid, fuller body, delicious in every freakin' respect. Big surprise. We thought this was a bad rosé year, but the end of the year has brought some pretty gosh-darn good ones.

And The Pairing? If this wine wasn't present, this meal might have been 30% worse. It's what a happy wine can do to food: Make. It. Immensely. Better.

Cost: $6 for food, $4 for wine = $10

Friday: Orecchiette, Sausage and Rapini with 2012 Trader Joe's Barbera Lot #88 Mendocino County

Food Details: Orecchiette with sausage, rapini, onion, red pepper flakes, parsley, bread crumbs and evoo.

Did We Like It? Once or twice a month dinner. Has been for years, mostly because it's classic Italian that has what we want on a work-night: meat, bitter, carbs, a little heat and herbs. A Big Bowl of Good.

How Was The Wine? Juicy, darker red fruits, a lil underbrush, spicy finish. Medium body that grows fuller, punchy acid for a red, something barbera done well. It's become a case-a-year type thing. 

And The Pairing? Italian with Italian. It's always happy. If you're stumped on a pairing for Italian food, start with Italian wine and you're halfway there.

Cost: $7 for food, $10 for wine = $17

Thursday: Potato-Chicken-Serrano Naan Pizzas and Arugula with 2013 Charles Smith VINO Pinot Grigio Columbia Valley

Food Details: Leftover chicken, leftover serrano, artichoke hearts, onion, grape tomatoes, nicoise potatoes and herbed cream cheese on naan. Arugula salad to put on top.

Did We Like It? It made 10 of them! For five extra dollars! No flavor dominated. They became a nice mélange of subtle flavors that elevated itself to something much more than "leftover food put on a bread-like platform." Yes. We liked this. A very fine weeknight meal.

How Was The Wine? This is the last of the 2013 VINO. Just bought six of the 2014, because this is "house white" in the best sense. Fruity, persistent, juicy, silky, peppy and clean. Has the 15% more attention to detail that takes this wine out of the "oh, pinot grigio...sure...why not" realm. $10 right now at Binny's.

And The Pairing? Nothing that made us think about the delicious nooks and crannies here with the grub and juice dance. Just nice food, wine we like, and nothing that turned pear-shaped.

Cost: $5 for food, $11 for wine = $16

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

Food Details: Niçoise salad of A's do Mar oil-cured tuna, grape tomatoes, mustardized potatoes, onions, green beans, Niçoise olives and capers, with a dressing of tarragon, shallot, anchovy, garlic, dijon, extra virgin olive oil, hazelnut oil, white balsamic, a touch of lavender, salt and pepper, all over arugula. Baguette and butter on the side. It's a heaping mound of healthy, delicious goodness.

Did We Like It? We think this night's Niçoise, a meal we've eaten dozens of times, might have been the best yet. Everything was so perfectly seasoned! And something about leaving the lemon juice out made everything else pick up the slack here, turning it into a meal playing in the lower, more earthy levels of flavor, letting each element show off their punch. Something about that let the tarragon pop. And the lavender. And textures took center stage. This was wonderful. But this wine is the best wine we've had this year.

How Was The Wine? We first had it at Chez Panisse Café in September and were blown away (read about the wine here). "Such prettiness and purity. Shimmered and sang a beautiful song. Dirt, flowers and stars." A tough to find wine, but we found it. I'm not telling where until I get over there and buy more. I could use 12,000 superlatives that describe the loveliness of this wine, but why spend the time? It's simply The Best. Utterly complete, beautifully floral, perfect acid...tastes like your favorite author's prose.

And The Pairing?A close second to Ottolenghi fish and cocount-peanut salad with 2013 Darting Muskateller as the pairing of the year. It tasted like watching a dog dig a huge pile in the yard and watching how much fun they're having doing it. "She's gettin' down there! Going' deep! God, she's having a blast." This wine dug into this food so perfectly that we did a lot of swearing while eating it. Wow! Terrific with the food, and frankly stupid-perfect with the baguette and butter.

Cost: $18 for food, $37 for wine = $55    

Tuesday: Greek-ish Chicken, Ottolenghi Corn Cakes and Celery Root-Apple Salad with 2014 Quinta do Porrais Branco Douro and 2014 Trader Joe's Cuvée Azan Picpoul de Pinet Languedoc

Source: Ottolenghi corn cakes and salad here (at the bottom) using celery root instead of beetroot for the salad.

Food Details: Chicken marinated in evoo, onion, lemon juice, white wine, garlic and oregano, roasted.

Corn cakes - that were more like corn soufflés - flavored with tarragon, celery seed, fennel seed, cumin, etc. (see recipe), with a nugget of feta in the middle of each.

Celery root, apple, celery leaf salad with a dressing of yogurt, celery-fennel seed, sherry vinegar and lemon juice.

More dressing on the side to dip and dunk (great with the chicken).

Did We Like It? Mrs. Ney thought the chicken might be more of a meat side, but this was quality chicken; juicy and bright. The corn cake-soufflés were little corny pillows of deliciousness. Very soft, but never gooey. Like bread pudding and a soufflé had a baby. Freaking great salad, with an earthy celery root hit and tons of crunchy goodness. Very good meal.

How Was The Wine? We love the Quinta do Porrais Branco, Vale Meão's entry into white wine. It's the best 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 and talc, things that typically take 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. But here, with this food, while it was quite pleasant, even delicious in spots, it couldn't hold a candle to the complete pairing loveliness that the Trader Joe's picpoul brought.

And The Pairing? We liked the Porrais here, but it got clipped by a few bites, and had its legs swept out from underneath itself on others. We would have been fine and happy if we stayed with it, but one sip of the picpoul with this meal confirmed that something was missing with the Porrais. Fireworks with each bite and a sip of picpoul, with each element exploding into the fullest version of itself. That Trader Joe's picpoul...man...it's one of the best values out there. At it's $8!

Cost:  $14 for food, $22 for wine = $36

Monday: Serrano-topped Endive, Red Pepper-Manchego Crostini and Pea Shoot-Persimmon Salad with 1999 Domaine Aux Moines Savennières Roche aux Moines

Source: Ottolenghi Caramelized endive with serrano ham here (eliminating sugar and subbing pecorino for parmesan).

Food Details: Endive, seared in cast iron, topped with a blend of breadcrumbs, pecorino, thyme, cream, salt and pepper. Topped with serrano ham, baked.

Baguette slices, brushed with rabbit oil, topped with fresno/red pepper relish from Sunday Sandwich Day and manchego, toasted into crostini.

Salad of pea shoots, persimmons, charred scallions, parsley, candied walnuts and pomegranate seeds.

Mint, blanched, puréed with olive oil, strained; drizzled over everything.

Did We Like It?  Yeah. Kind of a lot. When trying something new, there's always an initial debate going on in our heads over whether we'd have it again. It's a "Hey, this is quite good! But would we have it again?" Halfway through, it was an unqualified yes. It's light, but never too light, and feels like 50 different flavors that all get along very well. The endive-serrano was the star, tasting like little pillows of lightly-caramelized clouds with serrano adding just the right meaty substance. Good crostini with a touch of manchego sheepy-ness and surprising heat. Fantastic, persimmon-led salad that tastes very Ottolenghi, even though the recipe didn't come from him. Matched up with the Ottolenghi endive-serrano perfectly in weight, texture, and Ottolenghi-ness. We REALLY liked this.

How Was The Wine? $27 for a 16 year-old Saviennières, so not too shabby. Plenty here to be of interest. Very alive, even youngish for its age. Nice pear and honey, olive oil and salt. Moderately intense, good acid. But...

And The Pairing? Finicky little bugger with food, as Saviennières can be. Flat with the endive-serrano, BRU-TAL with the salad, but very complete, jumpy, and layered with the crostini, so we stuck with those and the wine. Opened a Trader Joe's Albero Cava Brut to matchy-match with the elemental Spanishness of the manchego and serrano, and it led to a more happy, less persnickety pairing.

Cost: $20 for food, $34 for wine = $54      

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      

#235 - Still Alive!

Geesh!  It's been a month (?).

An annoyingly lingering month-long cold and the lack of greenbacks in the wallet lately has led to the absence of good food and wine in our house.  No point spending money on stuff we can't taste.

But things seem to be back to normal for the most part so two easy favorites were right and proper to jump back on the tasting horse.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella, tomatoes and basil with baguette and two sparklers

I extolled the virtues of Trader Joe's pre-packaged marinated mozzarella in olive oil and herbs a few weeks ago as a near-perfect quick and easy lunch option.  Marinating your own seemed to be an exercise in willingly wasting your time when something that good came so easy and fresh.  Mrs. Ney gave it a shot anyway...just to know.  The result was something just as good, but work.  Better mozzarella but not by much.  Better olive oil but not by much.  She gussied up the TJ's version with fresh tomatoes/kumatoes in the past so a freshness was still present and wanted, even needed.  In the end, part of the joy in this type of meal is the spontaneity.  No thinking about it the day before and prepping.  It's probably the best buy and eat lunch in our world right now.  Grab a baguette and bubbles and there's little that creates a break from a workweek quicker than this.

#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 

Hoppin' John, Flap Meat, And Lamb Niçoise With Three Favorite Winemakers

I haven't heard much carping, mostly because I haven't been out in the world much over the last two weeks. But let us remember how this winter's weather has been so far.

When it's minus-7 this week, and a foot of snow rests under every step, how about we just shut up about it? There has been no literal 'winter of our discontent.' It's been boss. And pitchers and catchers report in six weeks.

Three meals, three wines.

#1  New Year's Day Hoppin' John, pea gravy, buttermilk biscuits and Iberico ham, served with 2011 Luis Pato Ferñao Pires Beira Atlântico ($28 - Lush)

Hoppin' John is thought to bring good luck if eaten on New Year's Day. Black-eyed peas, same. Pork, ditto. So, black-eyed pea Hoppin' John, using Sean Brock's red pea Hoppin' John recipe, from Heritage. Trader Joe's Iberico ham, because I was too lazy to go find country ham, and Thomas Keller fatty-delicious buttermilk biscuits, from Ad Hoc At Home, because they're fatty-delicious.

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

Tuna Niçoise With 2018 Groundwork Picpoul Nouveau

Glou-glou, chuggable, smashable (my most-hated), fresh, open, fun, patio-pounder (feels like hyphened words from 2004).

Whatever term you want to use for an easy natural wine (or something on the natty spectrum), the wine still HAS to be interesting, have a second and maybe third level, and offer some sense of grace, even quirk.

It can't just approximate the grape's essence while not tasting like butt, particularly since glou-glou is going for upwards of $40 a bottle of late. I'm looking at you, Broc.

That's not really a slight on Broc Cellars. We've drunk and enjoyed the vast majority of their wines. But $40 for a picpoul, a Broc wine we've loved in the past, it runs against the nature of what picpoul is. It might be priced right for the economies of making it, but that doesn't take away the lament we felt when their wines went from "we have our bargain Cali-Natty deliciousness!" to "we simply can't afford this on a regular basis anymore." That's our economies, especially when many of Broc wines have pairing competition from Chinon, Portuguese baga, Beaujolais cru, Italian weird, Spanish juicy, and frankly anything off-region Frenchy. If you drink wine regularly, the $8-10-20 difference is hundreds of dollars over the course of the year.

On that note, here's one we can afford on a regular basis. It's from Sans Liege, the Paso-based winery that plays in Rhône-y grapes with dalliances elsewhere, like here. the 2018 Groundwork Picpoul Nouveau is carbonic picpoul blanc, with 10% picpoul gris for color. It's $18 at Vin on Elston, and the entire Groundwork line is $20 and under. With a delicate floral note weaving in and out of creamy berries and touch of bitter watermelon rind, the wine kept changing with each bite of the tuna Niçoise (potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, onions, parsley, olives, capers, A's do Mar oil-cured tuna...the usual - a delicious version).

This wine brings The Interest, approaches a third gear (but needs the right food to get there), transcends the sum of its parts, drinks like a four-season wine, and with this food it all tasted like a vacation lunch somewhere on a sun-drenched bay.

For $18.

Avocado Fattoush With 2011 Ponzi Arneis

Monday lunch.

Avocado fattoush from NYT, based on a recipe from Einat Admony, incorporates much of the goodness from fattoush, with a lot more stuff in it.

The result, for me, was the best salad-as-entrée I've had in a long time. I can't count Niçoise as a salad. It's more than that, mostly because when it comes to the essence of "a lot of stuff in it," Niçoise takes the cake. It's a salad defined by its 'stuff.'

With the addition of scallions and pomegranate seeds, which are ingredients added in this house whenever possible when Mrs. Ney feels that it won't screw up the delicate balance of a good recipe from a good person, we felt it only added without distracting.

Oodles of mint and creaminess from the avocado and (Bulgarian) feta here, and every bite brought all the flavors from the recipe without becoming a big bucket of "TOO MUCH!"

Great balance with each nibble and forkful, and for a total of about $7 per plate, no restaurant salad-as-entrée is going to touch this. It's just not. You can try, you can pontificate, you can say, "NOOO! You haven't had this salad I once had in Park Slope, and I know, because I know..." Stop it. The world needs less of you. Everyday. All the time.

Served with a 2011 Ponzi Arneis Willamette Valley ($25 - Winery w/ shipping). I was a bit leery of its 2011-ness but no worries in the least. Fruit is fading but all the secondary happiness that this wine has shown in the past was all there. Nice tension still present, a rocky note at times, touch of peach fuzz, pleasant, long enough, gassy finish. Even some nice pauses between transitions. Nothing earth-shattering, just a wine that both (1) never got in the way of our food enjoyment and (2) extended our love of the salad by weaving into the mint and sumac just enough to feel like a third flavor emerged.

Ask for more and you're just a greedy f&#k.

And believe me, in our world, very few people ask for this much.

They should.

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.

#291 - Ratatouille & French Feta With '11 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé

The price on the Tempier rosé shot up sometime in the mid-aughts, from around $30 to the current price of almost $40.

Which raises a question. Is a rosé ever worth $40.

The answer is, of course, yes.

Why would rosé ever be seen as some ersatz version of wine not worth a higher price? That's just silly talk.

Also, when drinking Domaine Tempier's rosé, you're not exactly searching for value. It's a rosé experience, a benchmark, a peek into how one of the masters of the juice and style expressed the grapes in that year.

But let's just say for drops and chuckles you're craving a Tempier rosé and have ratatouille on the docket for dinner. Should be great, right? It was. Very nice grub and juice, separately and together, even if we drank it way too young.

But for $20 we could have drunk another Kermit Lynch import (a wine made by Mr. Lynch himself) the Domaine Les Pallières Au Petit Bonheur Rosé and found very similar pairing love.

Was it $20 flushed down the toilet. No.

#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.

#181 - Tuna, Cannellini Beans, Arugula & Tomatoes With Two Non-Italian Whites

That's what the meal needed.

An Italian white.

But nope.  I had to try to get creative and see what else would work.

Thought process:  Cannellini beans in cassoulet has worked well in the past with rosé.  Tuna niçoise, the same.  Too miserable of a day for rosé.  We like rosé any time of the year except on days that straddle the time between damp and freakin' damp and miserable.

Basil, lemon juice and shallots were in play.  Albariño.  Rocky rocks would have been great.  Minerals always good.  Oddly didn't trip our trigger at the time.  

Sancerre, New Zealand or California sauvignon blanc is the typical recommendation for dishes such as this.  Just had a Sancerre and I just didn't want it.  A California one would probably have been lovely.

Prager riesling is a bit of a force-fit for the meal but we had a bit of a jones.  I liked the Croatian Malvasia three weeks ago with monkfish and veggies and just bought two more.  I didn't heed my own notes.  "Light package."  This meal needed more white wine guts, a wine made for the warmer weather food on the plate, a wine with more mouth-watering acid to take everything to a better place.

That didn't happen but we ended up fine.  The food was so good we ended up not caring.

Food:  Tuna and cannellini beans with arugula, grape tomatoes and Seeduction bread

Whole Foods tuna cooked rare.  Simple salt and pepper seasoning.  Beautiful slab of tuna for $13 taking what we learned from previous tuna meals and buying a smaller piece.  Sometimes, too much tuna is TOO MUCH TUNA!

Built on a bed of arugula and basil with a pile of cannellini beans in the center cooked from dry beans (key) and tuna on top.  Grape tomatoes sprinkled around and a vinaigrette of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, white balsamic vinegar, oregano, parsley, shallot and mustard drizzled over everything.

Cannellini beans were the star, tasting at times like the essence peppered mashed potatoes without the mush.

But the surprise came in the acid level.  Acid galore in the preparation but the acid was so well integrated it never overtook one bite.  Little, proper spikes everywhere.

Whole Foods Seeduction bread - best bread in the world - to munch on.

A fresh and clean meal with substance.  In other words, beautifully balanced food that felt needed after mac and cheese pizza.

Wine:  2009 Matosevic Alba Malvazjia Istarska ($15 - WDC) & 2007 Prager Riesling Steinriegl Federspiel ($33 - Binny's)

Three weeks ago, we adored the Matosevic Alba Croatian Malvasia.  Pretty herbs and citrus with a herb water core all wrapped in a light package.  This time, not so much.  A baby aspirin and gauze quality dominated while overall coming off a bit clunky.  Tasted like we were drinking a glass of wine that had been left open in a hospital supply closet for too long.  Not terrible, just not interesting in the least.  Some bottle variation here.

While the Prager should have been saved, we had no real attachment to it after reading the early reports on this one.  What resulted was that this one could probably have used a decant as it became infinitely more interesting as it warmed and opened up an hour into the meal.  Started out with a boring blend of limestone, lime and choppy acid but settled into something more friendly.  Became more graceful and subdued showing a transition from lime to a more delicate lemon and pear fruit core with the minerals becoming more fine and a floral note popping up.  Light, almost pretty sugar but the alcohol separated itself out throughout the meal, becoming less so as it opened up and settled down but still there.  Almost dry, more off-dry.  Overall though, it felt like a wine that went through a brutal workout to get to the bottle.  Never elegant, which is something Prager excels at.  Nice, just never pretty.  I'm still trying to figure out if federspiel is even my bag.  My limited experience so far says the bigger smaragd style is more my speed.

But it worked best with the food.

Pairing:  84  No clashy but no matchy

We were fine.  Italian white was the way to go, though.  Should have picked up a Greco when I thought of it.  A Friulano or even a Soave would probably have worked beautifully as well.  Or jumping into a California sauvignon blanc might have been at least interesting.

Became one of those pairings though that emphasized what it was not.  No clash.  The wine satisfied the basic definition of being there and being welcome.

Nothing exciting but the food made up for it in spades.

Simple, delicious, well-prepared food can do that.

After waiting tables in Italian restaurants for nine (gasp!) years, I had given up on Italian food as something I wanted to eat.  Got sick of the whole concept of the style after serving it so much.  Too familiar and wanted flavors not associated with work.  That's changed dramatically in the last year.

If you told me I'd be craving Italian food with Italian wine a year ago, I'd have thought you were a crazy person.  Last night again reaffirmed its newfound goodness, even when both elements weren't present.

Or should I say, because both elements weren't present.