Thursday, May 26, 2016

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #46

Two New Yorker stories this week:

* 'The Big Uneasy,' on the new political activism at Oberlin College, offers many nuggets that will made you say, "Eeeeeasy, stomach." The $8.20 "activist" wage, though, was the one that got me thinking. Why 20 cents? I'm infinitely curious about the math.

* 'The Bank Robber,' an account of Hervé Falciani, a computer tech guy at H.S.B.C. in Switzerland finds a loophole in the bank's firewalls and steals the names, account numbers and balances of thousands of people using the bank to evade taxes in their home countries. Then the intrigue starts.

A Bigger Splash has its moments, has the setup, has the setting, has the acting chops and has a skeletal arc that seemingly should work. It doesn't. I found it rather lifeless, even borderline tedious in its execution and flow.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $81 for food and $114 for wine = $195

Sunday: Broiled Feta and Garbanzo-Corn-Avocado Salad with 2014 Bokisch Albariño Terra Alta Vineyard Lodi

Food Details: Broiled feta, topped with pistachio oil, olive oil and parsley. Veggie explosion salad of fresh garbanzos, raw corn, avocado, charred scallions, fresno pepper, roasted garlic, cilantro and mint. Baguette.

Did We Like It? Jesus! Yes! Vegetable explosion, indeed! We used to do a version of this salad (with fresh fava) a lot a few years ago. Good to have you back, old friend. You're all sorts of freshy-fresh. And broiled feta is broiled feta. Who doesn't want that? A Great meal, our first Sunday Dinner with our schedules switches. We could get used to this.

How Was The Wine? Mrs. Ney joined the Bokisch wine club this year, receiving a mixed case of Spanish-based wines a few weeks ago. This is our first dive into that shipment. And if this is any indication of what she received, we'll be quite happy with the purchase and membership. Like Palmina, Bokisch likes food-friendly wines, so we like them. This albariño, from the Terra Alta vineyard and aged six months in stainless steel (as opposed to the Las Cerezas Albariño that utilizes 50% neutral French oak), offers a bevy of fruit layers, revealing themselves slowly, casually and cleanly, and finishing with a tart-acid pucker and perk. Long, delicious. And it's delicious in every sense, better than most cheaper Spanish albariños out there. Big fans, and only around $15 with club discount. A case of just this might be in the offing.

And The Pairing? LOVED the broiled feta and was friendly enough with the salad. Mostly we loved this food - beautiful as it gets - and loved finding out that we loved this wine.

Cost: $16 for food, $15 for wine = $31      

Saturday: Smoked Trout, Salami, Herbed-up Cream Cheese, Arugula and Bagels with 2014 Orballo Albariño Rías Baixas

Food Details: Trader Joe's smoked trout and Calabrese salami; cream cheese made with charred onion, parsley, pickled serranos, lemon thyme, celery seed and sherry vinegar; arugula dressed with sherry vinegar and olive oil; toasted bagels. Rip, top, eat.

Did We Like It? Lovely back and forth, alternating between a trout bite and a salami bite. It's a pick-n-choose riff on salmon and bagels.

How Was The Wine? All class. We've gone cheap lately on wine, and having this house classic, with all its acid-and minerals driven sparkle and shine, made for a lovely dinner, and a reminder what Good wine brings.

And The Pairing? Most of its goodness came in having a wine of this quality at the table with food that brought a flurry of flavors. Nice pairing, though the sherry and trout together with a sip of wine was stellar.

Cost: $13 for food, $19 for wine = $32

Friday: Shortcut Pipian with 2015 90+ Cellars Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough Lot 2

Food Details: From Rick Bayless and his Mexican Everyday cookbook, page 235, substituting chicken breasts for salmon. It's short-cut pepita chicken. Instead of roasting and blending pumpkin seeds and making your own salsa, Mr. Bayless takes store-bought tomatillo salsa, chicken broth and tahini to create a short-cut, nutty-green, rich sauce to pair with chicken and rice. So Mrs. Ney did that, over coriander rice with peas and cilantro.

Did We Like It? Big Bowl of Shortcut Goodness. Mrs. Ney tweaked her work schedule after years of the exact same go-in, get-off (giggity). Going in later means getting off later, and that's led to some unintended annoyances. Like getting off at 3pm and immediately diving in to making dinner. No couch time, no TPIR, no decompression. Shortcut is best with that. And this shortcut is a good one, approximating pepita chicken quite well.

How Was The Wine? It's just cheap New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Nothing special. Crisp, clean, with tropical notes and a bit of depth. Still has that New Zealandness that isn't loved in our house by and large. But...

And The Pairing? I Loved It! I could have this meal and wine next week and not love it at all. Time and place kind of thing, I'm thinking. First hot and humid days in Chicago and the wine refreshment of zippy tropical fruits, maybe. A fine, more subdued, darker in tone shine to the tropical notes showed up in the wine with the food, and it took its time to unravel and unwind in such a pleasing way. Big fan.

Cost: $9 for food,  $9 for wine = $18            

Thursday: Vietnamese Lemongrass Beef and Noodle Salad with Leftover Wine

Food Details: NYT Cooking recipe. Made as is, except swapping out skirt for flank. Flat Asian rice noodles, beef, daikon, scallions, cucumber, carrots, fish sauce-based sauce (garlic, ginger, Fresno, lime, etc.), cilantro, mint, basil... All the goods.

Did We Like It? Firmly planted into the weekday food rotation! It has everything and anything everyone and anyone would need and want and love. Two things: this salad doesn't need any beef more than $6/lb. Good, quality cheap beef from a good place is sufficient, and the flat Asian noodles got in the way a bit, particularly after a few hours (when I ate it after work) and the next day for lunch. True, thin vermicelli is probably the play. Otherwise...crap. This is Great. Oh, and cut the sugar in half at least. Needs a little. Not four tablespoons.

How Was The Wine? Leftover fridge wine for both of us. The intended and intentional wine choice, a bottle of Charles & Charles Riesling was a non-starter with the food. Mrs. Ney had a can of Lila Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough. I finished up the Lima Loureiro and the Chilean Rosé. The Lila was acceptable. The Lima, same, with a veggie bite. And the rosé was slappy-happy-pappy with a beef bite. Just the tops.

And The Pairing? The rosé was the biggest surprise. With the fish sauce, lime, Fresno and everything else in the food that seemingly shouldn't excel with a cab-syrah rosé from Chile, the opposite occurred. Delicious bright dirt and shocking length with a mouth-watering finish. Who knew? Crazy stuff.

Cost: $18 for food, $3 for wine = $21    

Wednesday: Chicken Salad, Arugula and Mini-Ciabatta with 2014 João Portugal Ramos "Lima" Loureiro Vinho Verde

Food Details: Leftover yakitori chicken from Monday turned into chicken salad, with Solmonov pickled cauliflower-vegetables, cilantro and mayo. Dressed arugula. Mini-ciabatta buns. Rip, top, eat.

Did We Like It? Nice, fine, good. Light, used stuff up, satisfied.

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

And The Pairing? Meh. I started with a can of Lila Sauvignon Blanc New Zealand. WOW! That Was Awful with this food.

Cost: $5 for food, $8 for wine = $13

Tuesday: Au Cheval

Food Details: Single for her, double for me. Two orders of fries and two root beers.

Did We Like It? It's a fine-ass burger, one of the best in the city. After years of people telling me "You HAVE to go to Au Cheval," we finally went. Best in Chicago/Best in the Country? We disagree. But a fine-ass burger, indeed.

Cost: $0

Monday: Yakitori Chicken, Green Garlic, Cucumber Salad and Grilled Miso Corn on the Cob with Bollinger Champagne and Trader Joe's Brut North Coast

Food Details: Saveur yakitori sauce, made with duck and rabbit bones. Yakitori slathered on spatchcocked chicken cooked under bricks (Bittman) in the cast-iron, split in half, one for each of us. Green garlic stalks charred under bricks in empty cast-iron. Grilled in-husk corn slathered with white miso butter and sprinkled with togarashi. Smashed cucumber, Fresno pepper and mint salad on the side (mashup of Nancy Singleton Hachisu and Fiona Beckett). Basil sprinkled around. More yakitori on the side for dipping.

Did We Like It? Oddly, we cared less about the chicken than everything else on plate, because everything else was delicious, though the duck-rabbit bone yakitori offered serious funk and gamey undertones. A Japanese-ish feast. White miso butter and togaroshi on grilled corn will be had a few more times this summer, I'm thinkin'. Deeply flavored and refreshing cucumber salad. All in all, a joyful and scrumptious array of flavors flying everywhere.

How Was The Wine? Bollinger is Bollinger. Elegance, length, shine. It's the best under-$50 Champagne in our book. And it was happy here. But the Trader Joe's sparkling, serving as a second bottle because we knew we'd blow through the bottle of Bollinger toute-suite, was the winner of the night with the food.

And The Pairing? The Bollinger was ever-so-slightly clipped by the food. A teeny-tiny bit of its shine and glow was dimmed. Then the TJ's Brut entered the playing field and, in one of the bigger pairing shocks in a long time, we got bubbles that brought an insane level of mouth-watering length and integration into the food. It was like this $10 wine was specifically made for this meal and this meal alone, particularly with the miso-togaroshi corn. This wine has NEVER been like this. Not even close. There was a lot of gasping.

Cost: $20 for food, $60 for wine = $80  

Thursday, May 19, 2016

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #45

Three-day consumption of fiber:

Monday: Beet greens and barley...

Tuesday: Yellow beets and curly endive...

Wednesday: Cauliflower and arugula...

Equals...wow...yep...FI-ber!

Total food and wine cost for the week: $79 for food and $136 for wine = $215

Sunday: Ottolenghi Meatballs and Fregola with 2015 Viñas Chilenas Reserva Rosé Valle Central

Food Details: (Ottolenghi Guardian recipe - second one down) Meatballs and fregola with alterations: lamb instead of veal, feta instead of ricotta, basil instead of oregano, and nutmeg instead of all-spice. It's use-stuff-up, what's-in-the-house, done up Ottolenghi style.  

Did We Like It? Oh, my, yes. Big bowl of adult Spaghetti-O's. And not necessarily a one-off. This was quite good, and highly adjustable to what's we have siting around in the house and needs to be used up.

How Was The Wine? This is $4, fresh, fruity, round, bouncy and delicious for $4. Cabernet-syrah blend done up rosé style. One glass for each of us. We're trying to cut down.

And The Pairing? Fine.

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

Saturday: Cuban Black Beans over Rice with 2014 Charles Smith Velvet Devil Columbia Valley

Food Details: NYT Cooking Cuban black bean recipe. Alterations: swapped out the ham hock for a big beef marrow bone; poblanos for green peppers; fresh oregano; cider vinegar; honey for brown sugar; half the beans, hence half the garlic (it's only two of us). Over white rice.

Did We Like It? This. Is. Delicious! Absurd complexity here. Highly recommended and most certainly with enter into the food rotation. It has all the Cuban happiness anyone could possibly need. A Cuban mother would be proud.

How Was The Wine? Quickly abandoned the Alloy grenache rosé (no bueno) for leftover Velvet Devil Merlot, which at least (VERY least) offered a textural match-up that offered a minimum level of moderate enjoyment. No wine for me.

And The Pairing? See above.

Cost: $8 for food, $0 for wine = $8  

Friday: Vegetable Tart with 2015 Trader Joe's Grower's Reserve Sauvignon Blanc Napa

Food Details: Buckwheat flour tart shell. Filling of carrots, onions, smoked sun-dried tomatoes and basil, mixed with mustardy-garlicky cream cheese, finished with parmesan. Herb salad on the side. It's bistro food!

Did We Like It? Missed a bit. Sandy buckwheat flour and a filling that didn't pop. Tasted vaguely Italian, actually.

How Was The Wine? Formerly a house $6 fav, this is the third or fourth vintage in a row that tastes like a watery, melony, white Napa mess. No order, no presence. This had a good run a few years ago, bringing the cheap-and-solid goods. No longer.

And The Pairing? Meh.

Cost: $8 for food, $6 for wine = $14

Thursday: Chimichurri Chicken over Brown Rice

Food Details: Freezer chimichurri as a marinade for chicken breasts, with fennel, onion, tomatoes, olives and parsley, with more chimichurri to finish. Over brown rice (one potato added). It's Use Stuff Up dinner!

Did We Like It? Herby, zingy, vegetabley. A fine meal for a Use Stuff Up dinner. No bread here, either. Sorta taking a break from bread, at least in the volume with which we've consumed it over the last few months, cutting it out where it's not needed. Not going gluten-free, just that "nobody needs this much bread!"

How Was The Wine? No wine. Nothing was in the house could have shined with this meal, so why jam it in?

Cost: $6

Wednesday: Goat Kofta and Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Two Vintages of Alloy Wine Works Grenache Rosé

Food Details: Ottolenghi goat kofta with roasted cauliflower-hazelnut-pomegranate seed salad with arugula. Pita. Tahini. Rip, top, eat.

Did We Like It? We've been over this. It has everything everybody could ever want in a bite of food. There's little else I can say. Multiple versions here.

How Was The Wine? We haven't been shy about telling the world that the Alloy Wine Works grenache rosé in the can from Field Recordings is rather silly-great. We went through probably a 36 cans of the 2014. The 2015 just came out, so there was much rejoicing. So, vintage throwdown. The 2014, while its fruit is muddled and overall zip waning, it still has most of the pop, grit and grizzle it's had in the past. It (still) has a personality, a strut. The 2015 is less so. It's rather quiet, missing what the 2014 brought: an in-your-face guava and strawberry burst, following by such friendly bright dirt and pop. This year tastes like more of an attempt to Old World it, with more graceful layers and breeze, but so far - and we will have more - the thing that made 2014 so cheap-happy gets lost in the translation for the 2015. We started to do a cost-benefit analysis comparing this and other cheap weekday rosés. The one-liter Innovacíon at $10 brings similar enjoyment for half the price.

And The Pairing? Fine and good. No complaints. Nothing special. Who cares. The food was stupid-great.

Cost: $12 for food, $18 for wine = $30    

Tuesday: Rabbit Croquetas and Yellow Beet Salad with 2014 Jolie-Laide Trousseau Gris Fanucchi-Wood Road Vineyard Russian River Valley and 2013 Palmina Malvasia Santa Barbara

Food Details: Chicken stock week, so it's clean out the freezer time. Leftover-freezer, Jose Andres' rabbit croquettes, and Palmina yellow beet salad with walnut-anchovy-zest gremolata over curly endive. Pan con tomate using ciabatta.

Did We Like It? Sort of a mishmash of two favorites that don't really go together but still bring all of the happy goods. Croquetas still freshy-fresh. Yellow beet salad that's always good.

How Was The Wine? I overbought the Jolie-Laide, last year's wine of the year, and we may have put it in the "save" category a few too many times when thinking about food pairings, as this wine isn't one that's going to last forever. But the result was surprising. A beautiful leafy-tea note has emerged. While the fruit is fading, and the acid slowing down as a driver, this now has some gray-hair grace to it that's delicious. The Palmina has been a perfect pairing in the past with this beet salad, and we had one more in the house that also HAD to be drunk. It's slower now, creaky, like it's had two knee replacements, and the acid is also slowing, but what we thought would probably be rather dead brought a modicum of beet salad-Palmina malvasia goodness to enjoy it for what it was.

And The Pairing? Plenty of delicious elements on the table to pick and choose our food-wine adventure, which led to a compiling together of a dinner that felt like a buffet of enjoyment. Nothing spectacular here, but certainly was a Happy Bounty.

Cost: $8 for food, $63 for wine = $71

Monday: Calabrian Quail and Orzotto with 2012 A Tribute To Grace Grenache Santa Barbara Highlands

Food Details: The Guardian quail, marinated in currants, passito, thyme, red wine vinegar, olive oil, s/p. Substituted chorizo for nduja. Cast-ironed quail, chorizo crisped up, pan sauce over all of it. Barley orzotto with beet greens (no mascarpone or wild garlic).

Did We Like It? This isn't "our food," but it was quite tasty. There was a sweetness from the currants here that we don't gravitate towards, but it didn't get in the way in the least. Nice balance, and delicious orzotto - creamy, woodsy, hardy and a nice counter to the sweetness. We liked this.

How Was The Wine? This wine  has been sitting around the house for a bit. The food demanded a lighter red with guts, and we didn't want pinot noir on this night. Beaujolais? Maybe. Lighter dolcetto? Possibly. Baga was what we wanted but we didn't have one that was ready in the house. This bottle was opened wearily, as it came off a bit light last time. Not this time. Lightly smoky, lightly meaty, lightly spicy, and darker in tone than last time. All of that together brought a more robust presence than it showed with lamb rosettes 18 months ago. Very happy with the overall result.

And The Pairing? Not perfect, not great, but very nice. A fine length remained with some of the more robust flavors on the plate. Best with the orzotto, but held its own with the quail and chorizo. We're probably not going to remember this meal or pairing next week. That's okay. Enough deliciousness here to chalk it up to a nice Monday dinner that made for a leisurely, happy meal.

Cost: $25 for food, $45 for wine = $70          

Saturday, May 14, 2016

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: (recipeWhole 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

Thursday, May 5, 2016

365 Days Of Food And Wine: Week #43

Between our dog having a heart attack every time it thunders and the year-long road construction outside our house, sleep has been a precious commodity of late.

So I declare The Summer of Sleep!

...particularly since nothing political is worth consuming until November. Gonna be a rough summer for the republic, everyone.

Drinking higher-end, well-crafted wines can help you understand what lower-end, mass-produced wines get right. When one of them gets it right, one of those cheapy-cheap wines gets the balance between fruit, herbs, acid and refreshment perfect relative to what you paid, your surprise level is sometimes higher than when you have a pedigreed wine higher up the dollars scale. With that, this house recommends the Lila Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough in the can. Four-pack of 250mls for $10.

Total food and wine cost for the week: $108 for food and $76 for wine = $184

Sunday: Charred Onions, Arugula and Ancient Grains Bread with 2014 Amancay Torrontés La Rioja

Food Details: (recipe). Charred onions and shallots over yogurt. Arugula and Ancient Grains bread. Lemon-thyme vinaigrette for the onions and arugula. Rip bread, top with stuff, eat.

Did We Like It? A Mother's Day double for me left me clueless as to what Mrs. Ney made for dinner. To come home to charred onions and yogurt is like coming home to a Technicolor version of Home. De-licious!

How Was The Wine? Lightly fruity, lightly floral. It's $7 Trader Joe's torrontés.

And The Pairing? I enjoyed a well water note in the wine this time. Overall quite acceptable. It loved the vinaigrette.

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

Saturday: Piri-Piri Chicken and Feta Potatoes with Lila Canned Wines

Food Details: Mr. Oliver's piri piri sauce dumped on top of [seared-to-seal] boneless chicken breasts and sauteed red, orange, and yellow "ancient chiles", baked in 400-degree oven for 15 minutes; boiled (old! sprouty!) potatoes mashed with leftover feta, dill, cilantro, and evoo.

Did We Like It? Chicken, spice, peppers, potatoes, feta. Who doesn't want any of that. And it's better together.

How Was The Wine? More Lila cans. I don't know how long our mild fascination will last with these little numbers, but for now they're juicy, poppy and fun. I got a cherry Now-n-Later note in the rosé this time. The sauvignon blanc is the undisputed winner between these two.

And The Pairing? Acceptable.

Cost: $12 for food, $5 for wine = $17    

Friday: Zucchini Babaganoush Pick-n-Choose with 2015 Innovacíon Rosé Mendoza

Food Details: Recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden (page 65), using roasted zucchini instead of eggplant, with tahini, cumin, lemon juice and olive oil. Kumatoes, arugula and pita. Compile a bite using all the goods and eat.

Did We Like It? Delicious babaganoush that kept adjusting to all the other elements and changing its personality. Sometimes a big hit of lemon, other times a hit of cumin, tahini pop on occasion. Every bite was deliciously different, with planty arugula and oddly solid pita from Middle Eastern Grocery (usually don't love it). Zero diminishing returns or eating fatigue. That rarely happens with Mrs. Ney's pick-n-choose, because she brings a bevy of spices, acid, veggies, herbs and greens to the plate that...if you get tired of something like that, well, you have no tongue. A great meal all around.

How Was The Wine? One-liter rosé, malbec and syrah, $7.50 at Whole Foods (on sale with 6-bottle discount). Our first 2015. Tastes like dirt and iron, backed up by dark cherry and plum. At this price for a liter, we're tickled pink (oof).

And The Pairing? No complaints whatsoever. Iron Earth!

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

Thursday: Rotisserie Chicken Pick-n-Choose with 2015 Barbadillo Palomino Fino Cádiz

Food Details: Harvesttime dinner! Rotisserie chicken and a new bread made in-house there, 99¢ braided sesame loaves from that crazy-cheap grocery store. With that, herb salad blend from Trader Joe's, leftover homemade za'atar mixed with olive oil. Rip a piece of bread, slather with za'atar, top with chicken and greens. Eat.

Did We Like It? It's pick-n-choose. Of course we did. Solid new bread option here and cheap as heck.  Za'atar brought all the background complexity needed, eschewing tomatoes for the simplicity and deliciousness it brought without them. And it worked better with the wine.

How Was the Wine? I'll plagiarize myself from the last time we had it: Trader Joe's palomino in not-sherry form. We love how the label says it's "fruity." Nope. This is categorically not fruity. This is dry, clean, savory as hell, light, refreshing, dry, and dry. It's a blank slate. Add food that likes it and things happen. It gets into the food and tastes like standing in a dried-up wheat field in a hot, late-summer day. And it tastes like something an old Spanish man has been drinking at the exact same time everyday for 60 years. In a world of superlatives, this is not something to call some superlative. It's a nice, quiet, evocative drink. A teeny-tiny small moment in the glass. It simply makes you smile.

And The Pairing? Like a nice, meandering walk through a quiet city on a hot day.

Cost: $11 for food, $6 for wine = $17

Wednesday: CHEESE!

Food Details: Dog storm anxiety, zero sleep because it, and the resulting aborted trip to Milwaukee to watch the Angels led to Bill's Drive-In for lunch and Jimmy's Pizza Cafe for dinner. CHEESE! Oof.

Cost: $40  

Tuesday: Halloumi, Heirloom Tomatoes and Garlic Bread with 2014 Santo Assyritiko Santorini

Food Details: Fried halloumi; heirloom tomatoes, (Ottolenghi) slow-roasted yellow tomatoes, roasted lemon slices, red onion, pomegranate seeds, fresh oregano, evoo, white balsamic; pea shoot salad with mint; garlic bread

Did We Like It? For some reason, we didn't eat "tomatoes as meat" last year, not spotlighting them as much as we had in the past. Good to have them back. And good to have the first, real, spring "GARDEN! on the plate" meal of the year. Tons of freshness, bite, planty deliciousness everywhere. The fried halloumi with bread is always great, but the star here was everything else: heirlooms, spectacular roasted lemon slices and yellow tomatoes with its roasty-ness contrasting with the freshness of the pea shoot salad, mint and fresh tomato chunks. It's the kind of meal everyone should eat once a week. Resets the body. Except don't follow it up with more cheese the next day, like we did.

How Was The Wine? Sigalas Assyritiko has been the undisputed assyritiko winner in our house for years. But finding an assyritiko that's cheaper than the $23 price tag on the Sigalas would be nice. So here's a $15 alternative that plays above the price difference between the two. Salt, fruit, minerals and zip in a cheaper, slightly more subdued package than Sigalas. It's nice, I might buy it again, but can't fully commit. And BUT, as mentioned above, the Lila Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough in 250-ml cans showed that uber-cheap canned wine has come a long way of late. From the company that makes 90+ Cellars wine, we didn't love the rosé, but the sauvignon blanc brought lovely levels of grapefruit, mint and acid without bringing too much of any of it. It's refreshment in a can; nothing serious but it's not meant to be taken so. Huge surprise, particularly since New Zealand sauvignon blanc isn't something we love in the least. Typically it's too much muchness. Not here.  

And The Pairing? Greek whites have a specific food place in our house. This type of meal is one of those places, but it's also a meal that can go with a flurry of higher-acid, minerally whites. This meal was very pleasant with the Santo, offering everything we needed with the food to find completely acceptable, even lovely at times, pairing pleasure. But with the surprise of the can, and the mint-mint matchy-match in the food and wine, there was an odd level of...grace...in the can of sauvignon blanc that won the night. Who'd a thunk?

Cost: $15 for food, $20 for wine = $35    

Monday: Anne Burrell Chicken Milanese with 2015 Broc Cellars Picpoul Luna Matta Vineyard Paso Robles

Food Details: Anne Burrell chicken Milanese, pickled onions, shishito peppers and watercress salad, pecorino/hazelnuts/parsley/lemon zest crumble, and ciabattini buns.

Did We Like It? Mrs. Ney doesn't know why, but the crust on this version of Ms. Burrell Milanese was the best we've had since she started making this superlative meal four years ago, covering dozens of eatings. And probably the best version overall once we discounted the newness factor of the first few versions. The shishitos and watercress brought a raw-bitter element that drove right up to the "too much!" door but never entered. A Capital-G Great meal.

How Was The Wine? Disagreement. Both of us found goodness in the glass here. Mrs. Ney loved it, I found an ever-so tiny oxidized, maybe bottle shock (?) note that I couldn't fully get past. Tons of orange-fennel in many forms with this vintage it seems (which is only our second of this wine). Mrs. Ney loved its balance, tiny salt hit and acid integration, I found it the smallest bit tired, like it went into its shell and wasn't going to give all it had. We'll see how the other three bottles drink. Should be fairly soon.

And The Pairing? Same as above. Mrs. Ney found loveliness all around, I wanted more.

Cost: $13 for food, $30 for wine = $43