Friday, November 27, 2015

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #20

This piece in the New Yorker on a former favorite daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church is worth every second.

The Apu Trilogy was just released on Criterion. But this Sunday, Turner Classic Movies will be showing all three starting at 7pm CT. Set that DVR, people.

'Spotlight' is a fine film. Well-paced, nuanced, detailed, and understated performances from people that typically don't choose to go that direction. But here's hoping we don't get all crazy and proclaim it the best film of the decade around awards season.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $104 for food and $100 for wine = $204

Total food and wine cost for the month: $382 for food and $465 for wine = $1404

Sunday: Meatballs, Tomato Sauce, Basil and Pugliese with 2012 Barreri & Rovati Barbera d’Asti Superiore

Food Details: Sunday Dinner. Meatballs cooked in "red sauce." Put on a plate, cheap mozzarella sprinkled on top, the entire thing broiled to get the cheese all melty, toasty and gooey. Copious amount of basil on top of that. Sliced Pugliese bread. So...a slice of bread, meatball-cheese-sauce on top of bread, basil on top of that. Eat, repeat.

Did We Like It? Yep. Tasted like chicken parm and Chicago deep dish had a baby, with fresh basil and good bread making it taste much better than what that mashup would suggest.  

How Was The Wine? Medium-bodied, trending bolder. Juicy and structured. Trader Joe's Italian barbera offering, differentiating itself from their Mendocino barbera with its Old World, higher quality, earthy background.

And The Pairing? Big Freakin' Winner. This wine and the basil were bestest friends. Tasted like going to an Old School American-Italian restaurant, one you're not too thrilled about visiting, and finding why the old couple at the table next to you keep telling everyone they've been eating there for 35 years.

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

Saturday: Vegetable Tart and Herb Salad with 2014 Trader Joe's Reserve Pinot Gris Yountville Napa

Food Details: Tart made with red pepper, onion, carrots, celery and herbs. Herb salad on the side.

Did We Like It? It's French bistro food. Always satisfies on such a happy, basic, elemental level. You eat it and say, "I'm completely satisfied and need nothing more here."

How Was The Wine? Missed. We liked it well enough a few weeks ago with porchetta and asparagus flatbread. Didn't work here in the least.

And The Pairing? See above. Watery, flat, boring, and tired.

Cost: $4 for food, $8 for wine = $12

Friday: Goat Picadillo with 2014 La Granja 360 Tempranillo Cariñena

Food Details: Picadillo (from Sam Sifton in NYT Cooking) using one pound of goat meat and half-pound of ground pork. Olives, onions, garlic, leftover tomatoes and juice from pizzas, cinnamon,  cumin, nutmeg, bay, red wine vinegar. A Cuban stew over white rice mixed with leftover wild rice from Thanksgiving.

Did We Like It? It's easy stew with dirty, deep and delicious Cuban flavors.

How Was The Wine? $4 tempranillo that tastes like a bit more than $4.

And The Pairing? Basic wine and food business. No complaints from Mrs. Ney. I skipped wine. Need a break.

Cost: $12 for food, $4 for wine = $16

Thursday: Ottolenghi Quail, Farro-Wild Rice and Snap Peas with NV Moutard Brut Champagne

Food Details: Thanksgiving food! Quail from D'Artagnan in New Jersey, made in the typically weird deliciousness manner of Mr. Ottolenghi. Miso paste burnt in the oven, then blended with sugar, mirin and sherry vinegar. Salsa of pickled walnuts, pomegranate seeds, sherry vinegar and parsley. Quails sautéed, then glazed with the burnt miso butterscotch and placed under the broiler until it bubbled. Farro and wild rice base on the plate, quails on top, pickled walnut-pomegranate seed salsa on top of quails, snap peas with mint on the side.

Did We Like It? Damn fine Thanksgiving meal. Damn. Fine. No family this year for us, which meant no six-hour, round-trip car ride and everything that family holiday entails. Just loafing around, sitting on the couch and then eating this meal. The grizzly, aggressive, dark miso glaze was taken down a notch beautifully by the delicate meatiness in the quail, without the quail flavor being lost in the least. The pickled walnuts brought a funk that you'd think pickled walnuts would bring, while the pomegranate seeds kept them from going too pear-shaped here. Oddly delicious wild rice. Funny what an long absence of a food-type thing will do to your taste buds. Snap peas with mint are snap peas with mint. They = bright and happy. This was a meal worthy of its holiday-ness, all with new flavors galore. Very happy.

How Was The Wine? For $35, this was perfectly fine Champagne, even playing above the Champagne price tier. All pinot noir and funky as heck underneath its standard Champagne-ness on entry. Medium bubbles, medium acid, medium fruit expression, but all adding up to something more for $35. Nice stuff.

And The Pairing? Mrs. Ney worried about this one. What were the burnt miso and pickled walnuts going to do to the wine? This ended up ab-sol-ute-ly scrummy for the most part. A sturdy backbone in the wine allowed it to play well, only flattening out once or twice, but mostly staying buoyant and utterly interesting here. A big Thanksgiving Miracle!

Cost: $37 for food, $35 for wine = $72  

Wednesday: Homemade Sheet-Pan Pizzas with 2014 Broc Cellars Love Rosé California

Food Details: Same pizza prep as two weeks ago, using pizza dough recipe from Lucky Peach, this time substituting Caputo's blue bag pasta flour instead of farina 00 because we had that on hand. Would not do it again. 48-hour proof, but the gluten and its elasticity was a bit moody. Sausage, fresh oregano, tomato sauce (from Cook's Illustrated) and Boar's Head Mozzarella (which isn't the best, but served and we had it on hand) for one pie. White pizza of grape tomatoes, mozzarella and arugula for the other.

Did We Like It? Good. Nice to have two big sheet-pan pizzas with flavors in front of us for a leisurely two-hour meal. Didn't match the extreme goodness of the potato-rosemary pizzas from two weeks ago, though. That crust was boss.

How Was The Wine? A grenanche gris-zinfandel-barbera blend, done up rosé style from Broc. $17. Had that gloss and buff to the fruit we love from Broc Cellars, with underlying earthy flavors, all coming at you in a low-alcohol format. A drier veneer, but a trampy sweetness deeper down that wanted to be liked, and was in spades. Big fans.

And The Pairing? Pizzas and a friendly wine with zinfandel and barbera in it. What's not to like?

Cost: $10 for food, $17 for wine = $27    

Tuesday: Fried Haloumi, Beet Salad and Green Beans with 2013 Garzon Albariño Uruguay

Food Details: Fried haloumi: sliced, fried in mini-cast iron at a lower temp than usual, resulting in fabulous haloumi, probably the best we've had. Herbs put on late in the frying helped as well. Palmina winery yellow beet salad (recipe) using marcona almonds instead of walnuts this time, just for funnsies. Tangerine-marinated cerignola olives (from The New Spanish Table cookbook). Blanched green beans with onions and red bell peppers, made into a salad and tossed with the olive marinade. Baguette to dip, top and dunk in the cheese oil.

Did We Like It? A big pile of vegetable and cheese happiness. Great haloumi. Wouldn't do the marcona again, as it resulted in a sweetness with nothing to counter that, but beets are always welcome. Good to have green beans. Felt like it had been a long time. Delicious meal overall.

How Was The Wine? Our second Uruguayan albariño, after the Bouza. Won't be our last either. These two rank right up there with Rías Baixas albariños in terms of quality, and offer a distinctive well-water and sunshine edge. Six months stainless steel on its lees for this one and you can taste it. A bright-light creaminess throughout, with notes of peach and tangerine. Bumpy-bouncy acid. We really enjoyed it. For $16, a great deal in the GOOD albariño world.

And The Pairing? The wine loved the green beans. A lot! And the beets and green beans together. This was a good example of a veggie meal with a moderately zippy and distinct wine offering something new to a meal we love and have had a dozen times.

Cost: $18 for food, $16 for wine = $34

Monday: Trader Joe's French Pizzas with Trader Joe's Brut Rosé Sonoma County 

Food Details: Take these French pizzas from TJ's and gussy them up with asparagus, walnuts and pecorino. Done.

Did We Like It? Ham, gruyere, caramelized onions, asparagus, walnut, pecorino. Flavors. On the cheap. Virtually no work. A lunch trip to Garcia's, where I inexplicably ordered fish tacos...from Garcia's, resulted in easily a top-five worst meal ever for me. I was comical how overcooked and under-seasoned they were. Rough work week for Mrs. Ney, so easy-peasy pizzas were just the ticket.

How Was The Wine? New Trader Joe's product, a brut rosé from Sonoma County made from pinot noir and pinot meunier, done up in the Champagne method. Quite delicious for $10. Fruit plays in the background here, with its dryness and a touch of funk dominating in a nice way. Guzzle-worthy stuff for $10.

And The Pairing? Fine enough. This wine will be popping up a lot over the next month or so.

Cost: $13 for food, $10 for wine = $23  

Thursday, November 19, 2015

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #19

Links:

Wonderful Karl Ove Knausgaard piece (speech) in the New Yorker this week, with a bonus video of the superlatively great Jhumpa Lahiri at the bottom.

This piece on Rhonda Rousey couldn't be more spot-on.

The Davis Theatre in Lincoln Square is a dump and has been for decades. That's about to change.

And Jon Bonné checks back in on Abe Schoener of Scholium Project for the Chronicle.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $110 for food and $125 for wine = $235

Sunday: Salmon, Bagels and Cream Cheese with 2014 Berger Grüner Veltliner Kremstal

Food Details: Trader Joe's salmon, bagels, herbed-up cream cheese, kumatoes, arugula. Rip, top, eat.

Did We Like It? More easy food that brings an enormous satisfaction that belies its easiness.

How Was The Wine? All of Berger's freshness here on full display. Stony, peppy, lively, proper hits and hints of greens-citrusy fruit. A bit of an ammonia note kicked up for me, but that didn't deter me from finishing it off.

And The Pairing? The ammonia note, that was more like a farmhouse well next to the pig sty note, actually helped here. Weaved into the salmon, taking it to a down and dirty place that resembled being on said farm...in a good way.

Cost: $19 for food, $15 for wine = $34 

Saturday: Pick-n-Choose Meat and Cheese with 2014 Alloy Wine Works Grenache Rosé Central Coast

Food Details: Ham, salami and red leicester cheese with peppers on ciabattini with sundried-tomato mayonnaise and herb salad

Did We Like It? Always and forever. It's pick and choose your bite, in whatever order you want, with whatever toppings that trips your fancy.

How Was The Wine? More Alloy Grenache Rosé in the can, our fave rosé this year. Dirt-covered, juicy grenache showed up in bunches. Perky, substantial, bright and happy can o' rosé.

And The Pairing? Had everything anybody would ever want. It's like standing at the food spread on a table at some sort of function you don't want to be at, and enjoying everything in front of you, while avoiding all the people you don't want to talk to. It's a double-whammy of happiness, with guzzle-able rosé to accompany all of that.

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

Friday: Pizzas and Arugula with 2015 Viñas Chileans Reserva Rosé Valle Central

Food Details: Digiorno tomato/cheese and pepperoni pizzas, topped with arugula.

Did We Like It? Rough work week for Mrs. Ney. Easy food is smart food. Buy two, get one free offer made this an easy choice.

How Was The Wine? Best thing about the meal. This is $4, fresh, fruity, round, bouncy and delicious. Cabernet-syrah blend done up rosé style. Nice find here.

And The Pairing? Good wine, mediocre pizzas. That's what it was.

Cost: $12 for food, $4 for wine = $16

Thursday: Rotisserie Chicken, Charred Onions, Yogurt and Ancient Grains Bread with 2014 Terrasse du Moulinas Blanc Elegance Languedoc-Roussillon

Food Details: Whole Foods prepared rotisserie chicken, charred onions done up Melissa Clark-style, over labneh-yogurt with parsley and pomegranate seeds, and Whole Foods Ancient Grains bread. Rip, top, eat.

Did We Like It? We're going to eat this charred onions and yogurt business until we're sick of it, which I'm betting won't be anytime soon. It goes beautifully with the meat of your choice. Chicken here, lamb and goat in the past. Prepare your food, slice your bread, put it in front of you on the coffee table, turn on your mindless entertainment for the evening, sit back, relax, and enjoy the goodness for an hour or two.

How Was The Wine? Great find, also at Whole Foods. A one-liter bottle of a Langeudoc white blend (grenache blanc, vermentino, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc). It's a four-act play, with the grenache blanc and chardonnay offering softness, freshness and roundness in different forms, while the vermentino (which shows up big here) and the sauvignon blanc offers perkiness, cut and bite, also in different forms. Keeps vacillating back and forth between the four and the result is impressive for the price. It's $10, one liter, and one of the better wine bargains found this year. Should be a very versatile white blend that's cheap and plentiful. What else does one need?

And The Pairing? Exactly what anyone would want here. Not transcendent, just a cheerful pairing offering slice-and-dice acid when needed and softness, body and depth when wanted.  Delicious.

Cost: $16 for food, $10 for wine = $26

Wednesday: Sean Brock Patty Melts and Punched Potatoes with NV Marietta Christo #2 Sonoma-Mendocino Counties Rhone Blend

Source: Sean Brock burger patties (from Heritage, page 121), Sam Sifton faux pomme frites, Serious Eats sun-dried tomato-garlic mayo

Food Details: Burgers griddled, on seeded light rye bread (I can't hear "rye bread" without thinking of this now), with pepper jack cheese and shaved raw onion. Punched potatoes, drizzled with rabbit oil, baked in the oven. Quick dipping sauce of sun-dried tomato and garlic for both the potatoes and patty melt.

Did We Like It? Yes, sir. And the patty melt got oodles better as it came up to room temperature. Classic patty melt flavors (a "fancy food" when I was 19) with all the patty melt nostalgic goodness (maybe should have gone with American cheese). Damn fine, crunchy, creamy, rabbit-oiled potatoes. Delicious as heck dipping sauce. Everything we wanted from patty melts and potatoes-in-some-form was here.

How Was The Wine? Syrah, grenache, petite sirah and viognier. This is our first Lot #2 after having Lot #1 a half-dozen or so times. Lot #1 was pure joy in the bottle; loose, expressive, a wine that takes its time to give you everything it has. Lot #2 felt quiet here, giving some of the smoke-blackberry-lavender business that we love from this wine, and taking its time to give it all in one sip. This might need a bit of time, as it opened up more as the meal progressed, but it missed a completeness the Lot #1 had (and last had with a very similar meal).

And The Pairing? A ton of basic happiness here, but it somewhat lacked that second and third level that we've found in the Lot #1; that viognier-like "voooooop!" at the end; that point where you can't stop taking a bite and reaching for the glass because it's so gosh-darn good. After an hour open, we did find whispers of the Christo magic, so... We'll see.

Cost: $10 for food, $16 for wine = $26

Tuesday: Vietnamese Cornish Game Hens, Scallion Pancakes and Spicy Fish Sauce with 2013 Darting Muskateller Kabinett Trocken 

Source: From Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World, Vietnamese Cornish Game Hens, page 334. Lucky Peach Spicy Fish Sauce. Scallion pancakes from Serious Eats.

Food Details: Aldi Cornish Game Hens ($3.59 each!), marinated in garlic, shallot, fish sauce, ginger and honey; roasted in a 500-degree oven on a preheated griddle for 22 minutes, drizzled with sesame oil after roasting. Spicy fish sauce of Red Boat fish sauce, garlic, chiles, white wine vinegar and lime zest (added) for dipping, dunking and drizzling on everything. Scallion pancakes, charred up in the cast-iron. Salad of cucumber, radish, scallions, arugula, basil, mint, cilantro and pomegranate seeds.

Did We Like It? Mrs. Ney, after seeing the lacquered-burnished-blackened birds, said, "Well, at least the salad will be good." But the full-blown glossy char on these lil birds was absolutely essential. It created a quick crust that seemingly protected the bird from drying out, leaving perfectly juicy bird meat throughout (the breast meat was freakin' perfect). Perfect inside meat with fish sauce-sesame oil crusty skin, dripped in a Lucky Peach fish sauce-sauce that's bright, perky and crackling delicious. Best scallion pancakes yet (or Chinese fry bread - we like the fry breads). A salad where the basil's bitterness took over, unfortunately. But this meal was an enormous shock, though it shouldn't have been, really. That Bittman book has hundreds of recipes and we have all our lives to cook through it. It's $5 right now on Amazon! The beef cheeks in chickpea purée was one of the better meals we've ever had.

How Was The Wine? Speaking of best meals ever, we last had this muskateller with probably the best meal of the year. Certainly the best pairing. Less so here, as it lost its definition of classiness and pure sunshine. This time it delved more into its fruit and talc, becoming more of a blue collar, workhorse wine attempting to counter the flurry of Asian flavors on the plate and mostly succeeding.

How Was The Pairing? We were rather content with the muskateller. Loved the talc that remained steadfast in its presence. But a cheap Trader Joe's Mosel riesling was cracked to compare and it did things with its fruit and seamless transition to that second, gaseous, riesling-and-minerals level that the muskateller didn't. It wasn't fancy riesling in the least, though it found a place with this food quite nicely. But if a wine has talc, it comes from a place we like. That's the truth.

Cost: $17 for food, $18 for wine = $35  

Monday: Uzbeki Lamb Plov with 2008 Avanthia Mencia Valdeorras

First, a Monday lunch of Greek sandwiches and olive oil chips with 2014 João Portugal Ramos Lima Loureiro Vinho Verde kicked off a very productive weekend of house cleaning and winter-is-coming organizing. Feta-pepper spread (from week #17) with cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula, onions and black olives from Barcelona, from a sister of a work friend, marinated in herbs from said garden. Leftover Pugliese bread, toasted. Trader Joe's olive oil chips. Our favorite, cheap, $8 loureiro. THAT was a Happy Lunch. A new favorite dinner, which is basically Uzbeki paella in a way, rounded out a great food day.

Source: Recipe here, via Cucee Sprouts

Food Details: Last eaten in July, and we loved it then. This version was better, simply because the lamb bones were cooked in the braise. A savory, boney, gelatinous, succulent juice-sweat resulted, and it was be-aut-i-ful. Farm City lamb shoulder, chickpeas, carrots, barberries (doubled the barberries, omitted the raisins in the recipe), garlic, cumin, tumeric, basmati rice. A one-pot meal that's considered the national dish of Uzbekistan. Tomato-onion-mint salad on the side.

Did We Like It? (Swear word) yeah! That marrow sweat-juice business...it was a sumthin-sumthin. This is homey, country-style lamb stew taken to another, complete place. It's the bestest.

How Was The Wine? We opened this wine a week ago, didn't find it interesting in the least, put a Preserva disk in it, and left it on the counter. With its $40 price tag, dumping it, or even drinking it with a more simple, weekday meal seemed sad. So we gave it a go here and were rewarded. This settled into a medium-bodied beauty with smoky cherries/raspberries and spicy tobacco, bright minerals and perfect jolt of acid with this food. Maybe we opened this too soon. Maybe it needed a healthy decant. While we found the smallest bit of a watery thread from it being opened for a week, this was a complete pairing surprise.

And The Pairing? There's some elemental crossover between plov and paella, mostly in presentation and strut. Like the first time we had this food, with the Abacela Tempranillo, there was some nice pan-Spanish pairing perkiness, with the mencia loving the lamb and lamb sweat, leading to a "good enough!" experience. And it loved the tomatoes. Just loved them. So...good stuff, we say.

Cost (for lunch and dinner): $22 for food, $48 for wine = $70      

Thursday, November 12, 2015

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #18

For the winter...we have all the meats.

Patrick Modiano's Occupation Trilogy, so far, captures all the moral ambiguity and farce that came with the manipulation of moral ambiguity under the Vichy regime during WWII. Bad, weak-willed people given their chance to do bad things. It's been a treat. An odd treat, but a treat nonetheless.

This week, we've had great boar, delicious Veracruz scallops, and we found our house pizza dough. So...success.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $88 for food and $114 for wine = $202

Sunday: Mozzarella, Tomatoes, Basil and Pugliese Bread with VinTJ's Arneis Russian River Valley

Food Details: Exactly the above. Trader Joe's marinated mozzarella (has all the oil and herbs in one container), campari tomatoes, copious amounts of basil and Pugliese bread. Slice, top with all of it, eat.

Did We Like It? Yeah. Easy as all get-out, filling, and satisfying.

How Was The Wine? Trader Joe's arneis from Russian River. We like the Italian varieties grown in California. We find that infinitely interesting. Here's a moody one. A bit watery in terms of distinctive arneis flavors, with apples and pears and anise and a leafy quality, but it was all there...except with the mozzarella.

And The Pairing? Fine stuff with a tomato-bread-herbs-oil bite, approaching that "just drink Italian wine with Italian food and be done with it, because it's good" quality. But with the mozzarella, it tasted like a dead ferret got into the tank.

Cost: $8 for food, $8 for wine = $16

Saturday: Fenugreek Blackeyed Pea Curry, Naan and Celery Raita with 2014 Veramonte Sauvignon Blanc Casablanca Valley

Source: From 660 Curries, page 321, "Fenugreek-Perfumed Black-Eyed Peas;" Celery raita here, via Bawarchi.com

Food Details: Black-eyed peas, onion, garlic, ginger (added), peppers, tomatoes, dried fenugreek leaves, turmeric. Make the day before. It's better. Celery raita and naan, to dip, dunk and cool.

Did We Like It? Tough call on whether the curry or the celery raita was better. When you have celery in the house, this raita is what you do with it. It's delicious. The curry (our new house curry) was blazingly hot the day before, but mellowed out so well. Perfect level of heat, happy cooling from the raita, tasty Trader Joe's naan, a product that I could make a case for being a top-five, all-time TJ's product (along with seafood sausages, dark chocolate gelato, Picpoul, Muscadet...). It's incredibly versatile, has great chew, acceptable depth, and not wildly expensive.

How Was The Wine? Chilean sauvignon blanc on the cheap. Tangerine and grapefruit and herbs with nice, punchy acidity. We've had a couple of vintages of this one. The 2014 might be the best. Everything was in balance, with every layer giving way to the next in graceful fashion, allowing it to play above its price tag.

And The Pairing? Happy. The acid did its cut-and-slash with the food, then the wine showed its herbal-fruity side and juicy finish. My Saturday work night was filled with nutters. Coming home to this...? Wiped away.

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

Friday: Mexican Red Rice with 2014 VinTJ's Vermentino Russian River Valley

Source: Rick Bayless recipe here

Food Details: Bayless' Mexican red rice with jalapeño chicken sausages, leftover kale and leftover lentils. Sour cream and cilantro on top.

Did We Like It? It's a staple. An easy staple. A happy staple. This one with leftover rabbit oil-dripped kale and tea-smoked lentils from the week. Brought texture and depth to a meal that can sometimes get a little mushy in terms of texture.

How Was The Wine? Two new labels arrived at Trader Joe's: this vermentino and an arneis, both from Russian River Valley. The vermentino, with this meal, brought some lime notes with a wee touch of minerality and herbs. Simple vermentino, nothing special, but for $8, a decent little wine when you want/need a modicum of citrusy snap to perk up and weave into the food.

And The Pairing? I pretty much hated this wine by itself. Had that garbage dump waft to it. But with this food, a fine level of enjoyment merged; ironing its pants, straightening out the wine's ties and fluffing its coat. Misses on the second and third level of goodness, but it's $8. Not too shabby.

Cost: $7 for food, $8 for wine = $15

Thursday: Pick-n-Choose Chicken, Tomatoes and Herb Salad with NV NV Grifone Bianco Sicily

Food Details: Mariano's glazed rotisserie chicken, campari tomatoes, herb salad and ciabattini buns. Rip your bun, top it with all the rest, eat.

Did We Like It? Don't wanna cook? Buy all this stuff, cut that chicken in half, slice, salt and pepper your tomatoes, dress your salad, put it all on a plate and eat food that pushes the all the food buttons. Pro tip from people that do this regularly: Put the half-chicken under the broiler - it crisps up the skin and adds a delicious, crispy dimension.

How Was The Wine? Drank the rest of the Charles Smith Pinot Grigio, which didn't really add much here. The Grifone Bianco, a riesling-moscato blend, is the default wine for this meal. Meh on its own, with this food, it's long and complete. A touch less so here, but still nice. It likes kumatoes, but we didn't have any in the house.

And The Pairing? See above.

Cost: $11 for food, $16 for wine = $27

Wednesday: Potato-Rosemary Pizzas and Arugula with 2014 Tablas Creek Vermentino Paso Robles and 2014 Charles Smith VINO Pinot Grigio Columbia Valley

Source: Pizza dough, via Lucky Peach. Learn it, know it, love it.

Food Details: Boiled potatoes, Boar's Head fresh mozzarella, rosemary and olive oil on top of the above-linked crust. Arugula on top. Two rectangular pizzas cooked on 18" x 13" pans, oiled. Five minutes lowest rack, 7-9 minutes middle rack. Preheated 500-degree oven. 48-hour proof on the dough in the fridge. Two balls.

Did We Like It? HUGE surprise. Perfect dough, at least what can be done with our oven. Thin and crispy, with oodles of flavor. Perfect amount of salt and yeasty depth. We have found our house pizza dough! This was potato pizza, but with the arugula and rosemary, the flavor and weight was so bouncy and light. We ate both pizzas and didn't feel like we just ate "POTATO PIZZA!" in the least. Big success, and impossibly easy to make.

How Was The Wine? Vermentino from California? Yes, please. A bit pricey at $25 retail but real vermentino deliciousness with this one. Punchy, scrummy entry of citrus, tangerine, herbs and salt; a somewhat quiet mid-palate, but that leads right to a more complex, broad finish of minerals, Asian herbs and Asian citrus leaf. Oh, for this to be $18. Put this in the La Val Orballo albariño price world and we'd be buying six a year. $27 with tax gives us pause, but it's rather delicious.  But then there was Charles Smith being Charles Smith...

And The Pairing? We were quite happy with the vermentino and these pizzas. It loved the rosemary. But a couple of glasses of the Charles Smith VINO pinot grigio turned into all sparkly, twinkly stars with this food. It was perfect. We have found our pizza dough, and we've found the wine to go with it.

Cost: $7 for food, $27 for wine = $34

Tuesday: Wild Boar, Kale and Tea-smoked Lentils with 2008 Duorum Colheita Duoro

Source: Francis Mallman's pork tenderloin with burnt brown sugar, orange confit, and thyme, via News OK, using wild boar from D'Artagnan.

Food Details: Boar brined overnight in lapsang souchong brine, braised in orange confit oil for three hours, coated with coconut sugar and thrown under the broiler, raw lacinato kale tossed with black lentils cooked in more lapsang souchong, pomegranate seeds, all drizzled with thyme and braising oil.

Did We Like It? This was very good boar, eating like brisket in a way, and every flavor coming through. Loved-loved-loved the orange confit oil. It defined the meal along with the tea smoke. This was melt-in-your-mouth meat with a big pile of meaty, smoky kale, and it was deep and dirty-delicious.

How Was The Wine? Opened a 2008 Avanthia, a mencia from Valdeorras in Spain and it was strike-two for the week in terms of 'first wine choice' boringness. Tasted tired and quiet. Moved on to the 2008 Duorum, a red Douro blend of touriga nacional, touriga franca and tinta roriz. Dry, savory, medium-bodied, medium acid, medium verve. A nice Douro red blend for under $20. Happy dirt. The 2007 Reserva was great, this one less so, but good guts here while simultaneously having an overall ethereal presence.

And The Pairing? We were just glad we found a wine that was good enough after opening a $40 Avanthia that brought nothing to the table. This was a tough pairing - a lot going on with the food - and the Duorum brought enough slice and dice for us to be moderately satisfied.

Cost: $24 for food, $19 for wine = $43    

Monday: Veracruz-style Scallops, Rice and Kale with 2013 Noêlla Morantin Chez Charles Vin de France

Source: Fish Veracruz-style, via Saveur, using scallops

Food Details: A house fav with sea bass, this time with scallops. A blend of tomatoes, capers, olives, garlic, onion, manzano peppers, said pepper juice, rosemary, parsley, bay, all the goods; placed over annatto yellow rice. Seared scallops on top of that. Baby kale salad with pomegranate seeds on the side.

Did We Like It? Happy-slappy Veracruz goodness. And good to have scallops again. Felt like it'd been years. Check the link above to the sea bass versions. This was the spiciest version yet. Not blazingly hot, but it certainly permeated every bite. This meal has all the stuff we like while maintaining an overall lightness and spunky punch.

How Was The Wine? In the link above, you'll see a white López de Heredia in some form or vintage, because it's stupid-perfect with this food. A bottle of 2004 LdH Gravonia Blanco couldn't keep up with the heat in this meal, even coming up a bit boring by itself: salty, too much pineapple-like fruit and smoked oil, something that lesser vintages of Heredia sometimes possess. We probably opened this too soon, as 2004 was considered a very good vintage in Rioja. Moved on to an already-chilled bottle of natural sauvignon blanc from Touraine, and it was freakin' lovely. Pure, clean sauvignon blanc that's much lighter than most SB while maintaining an intensity and expression all the way through. Bit of lime, some ginger, some Thai basil, perfect acid, but mostly a prettiness, lightness and integrity of flavor that we loved. Unique sauvignon blanc to us, and we'll be buying more, most likely.

And The Pairing? With the Heredia being such a dud here, the Chez Charles brought everything we wanted from a wine that wasn't going to bullied by the heat in the food. Nice lime linkup with the orange zest (addition) and good acid that provided just the right cut. But this meal was mostly about how much we liked this wine. Big fans.

Cost: $22 for food, $26 for wine = $48  

Thursday, November 5, 2015

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