Green Goddess Chicken and Grilled Endive with 2014 Bokisch Albariño

There are few better things in life than roasted chicken with a punchy-green sauce, big pile of veg, and a zippy albariño that knows when to take the volume of the zip down a notch.

It's not just the tired descriptors related to its simplicity and honesty, which it has. Or that it has everything anybody would or should want or need with food and wine, which they should.

Mostly, it's about when you're finished, and you drop your knife and fork on your plate and say, "Hot damn, that was delicious in every way!"

Serve it with a wine that knows when and where to take a pause after a bite-sip and watch it explore, slowly, all the graceful fruit and minerality it has; like it's reading a great passage of a book and it wants to you understand every word as it builds to a crescendo.

That's Bokisch albariño in our world. Under $20, sea-spritz lilting in and out everywhere, even though the Terra Alta Vineyard where the grapes are grown are nowhere near the ocean, and simply happiness in a bottle.

Green Goddess chicken, from Melissa Clark. Funks up the house like a stampede of wet dogs just came through your house, but well worth it. Endive, slathered in leftover GG sauce, then grilled; mixed with (home) roasted peppers. Roast your own. It's worth the work. Parsley tossed in with everything, topped with more GG. Baguette and butter on the side. Little better in this world.

Served with 2014 Bokisch Albariño Lodi Terra Alta Vineyard. Stainless steel, no oak. Citrus basket, smoky melon rind (almost composty, but in a good way...sunbaked), slow and casual in revealing itself, pokey even. Then gives a graceful burst of acidity and punch. Great pulse and tempo, tailing off like a beat of drums in a Paul Simon song.

These two...this food and wine...they're best buds.

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

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

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

But free money is better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Szechuan Tuna and Blood Orange-Black Olive Salad with 2007 Ponzi Pinot Noir

Missing out on a possible dream apartment by a matter of hours made our hearts drop. It wasn't the end of the world by any means, but for a few hours, something close to that feeling came over both of us, in no small part a testament to what the physical and psychological hellhole our current apartment has become.

When a better place in many, many ways opened up, two days later, we grabbed it by the balls and had sex with the leasing process. This. Was. Going. To. Happen.

And it did. Life is better.

Eating rare Szechuan tuna freshness during the application process also made things better, a meal we've had a ton of times before, but not lately.

Szechuan peppercorns, cardamom, white pepper, coriander and thyme ground up and crusted on the tuna, seared rare. Served with blood oranges and black olives tossed with shallot, thyme, cumin and hazelnut oil. Mâche salad with pomegranate seeds. Seeduction bread on the side with butter. Über-satisfying. Beautiful dry low heat with a background bright, almost sweetness brought by the Szechuan peppercorns to the great rare tuna. Eat this food and you'll feel as clean and bright as the freakin' food.

We have a few leftover Ponzi pinot noirs laying around since we mostly moved on from Oregon pinot noir a few years ago. Still like it, just not buying it. Here, a 2007, we found an awful lot of deliciousness for a wine with a more than fair amount of age on it. Fresh wet earth, dying roses, and settling, yet a still lively red fruit blend in very nice proportion. Almost a molasses bread note floating around in the back. Entirely pleasant, and rather nice all-around here with the tuna, bread, mâche, everything. It was a nice reminder why we liked Ponzi in the first place.

Now, two months of sifting through everything we own and finding out what goes.

And we're hiring movers. Because we're adults and that's what adults do.

Tomato Crostata with 2014 Domaine Glinavos Paleokerisio

A quick pairing that's characteristic of the weekday food made in this house.

Or. Check that. This tomato crostata with honey-thyme glaze, from Melissa Clark of NYT Cooking, makes for an utterly satisfying weekend meal done on the (fairly) quick and cheap.

It has everything: a flaky, buttery crust; lil punches of thyme; a light background body of cheese; a garden-quality "abbondanza!" glut of tomatoes (multi-colored used on this one - pic above is from a previous) and an arugula "eats your greens!" side salad that rounds everything out.

It's Happy Food and Bistro Food, food that Mrs. Ney has made a lot over the last year and a half, because it doesn't get old. Walking through the aisles thinking about dinner plans and find cheap tomatoes at your local green grocer? Make this. Just...make it.

And maybe drink some $12 Greek orange wine with it. It's $12. Twelve. Available at Vin Chicago. It's another somethin'-somethin' that works on weekdays (because it's cheapy-cheap) or weeknights (because it's fancy with the right food).

Made from the local Debina, Vlahiko, and Bekari grapes (never heard of any of them), it goes through prolonged skin contact, hence its orangey-ness. Off-dry and semi-sparkling, with smoked orange/tangerine peel backed up by heavily-spiced poached pear. Friendly and long, with lovely dried baking spices on the finish. Tons of energy here.

It was delicious here on a cold-ass Chicago day. And this tart works with a ton of moderately zingy whites, like grüner or a Portuguese white blend. But, with this Greek orange goodness, might I recommend Yotam Ottolenghi chorizo chicken with baby peppers and potatoes (38% of the way down the page)? We've done that pairing twice over the last few months and that's chorizo juice-chicken Love. That's get-your-hands-dirty, finger lickin' stupidity.      

New Year's Eve and Day

Going through the process of finding another place to live turns one's brain to a gooey, drippy mess.

In the 13 years of living in our same place, moving always came up, and the cost-benefit analysis (along with sheer inertia) kept us planted where we were. But no more. It's time to stop staring at crappy hardwood floors and "weathered" walls; hearing EVERYONE come in and out of the apartment building, with the accompanying doors and gates slamming; and it's time to not live below what sounds like a gaggle of apes playing with a football.

Thank all that is holy. It's time to live like adults.

Two meals, one to close out a REALLY shitty year and one to open a new one.

New Year's Eve "Feast Of The One Fish" with 2008 Gaston-Chiquet Special Club Brut

Food: Jacques Pepin brandade. Salt cod, more celery root than potato, almond milk, garlic, cayenne, pecorino, etc. Served with charred bread. Mustard-ized ($10) asparagus for veg, and it's been too long because they were freakin' delicious. Everything was delicious. Silky texture with the brandade. One of the top batches ever made in this (soon-to-not-be-our) house. Perfect balance between the celery root lightness and meatiness of the salt cod, with the almond milk lending a wee touch of nutty goodness. Just a great bite of food on perfectly charred bread. Great way to close out this year's silliness.

Wine: $58 Special Club from Vin in Barrington. This one is also available at Binny's (!). We got three and need three more, because this one has a LONG life ahead. Barely any fruit right now, just fireworks-like minerals everywhere. It's chalky, it's lean, it's a bit floral and it's all sorts of awesome. This one might turn out to be one of our Champagne threads over the next ten years.

Pairing: Wasn't perfect, yet somehow that made it better. Brandade isn't an ideal pairing accompaniment with Champagne, but we found loads of goodness "in this corner, and that corner, and over here and over there." And super with the asparagus. Overall, top-notch, TOP-NOTCH!


New Year's Day Hoppin' John with 2010 Antica Terra Pinot Noir Willamette Valley

Food: Sean Brock Hoppin' John - New Year's good luck food, with 12 green grapes as well - from his Heritage: A Cookbook, page 16, over Anson Mills Carolina Gold rice (we're out and gotta git mo - can't live without that now...). Sean Brock shortcut collard greens mixed with mustard greens and pomegranate seeds. Pan gravy to dribble over all the goodness, and this was good. Subtle, but a subtlety that PER-SISTED all the way down and well after swallowing. This isn't our food, but nice to have once a year (or every other).

Wine: I'm not a red Burgundy expert. Too spendy for us. But blind, this is what a damn good red Burgundy tastes like, with teeny-tiny wisps of New World sun. PLENTY of earth in about five forms, with integrated, pretty fruit, and lil pops of roses all the way down. Hell, I thought I tasted a little truffle at one point. A beautiful wine. Really, quite beautiful. We forget sometimes that Good red wine is Really Good.

Pairing: The wine was the star, as it was all class. But this one weaved into the subtlety in the food and didn't bully, didn't demand things. It only took what was offered and gave all it could with each bite and sip.

Now, we need word on our apartment today or my head is going to explode.

Like...now.

Or...now.

Anything yet?