#285 - Fish In Shrimp Sauce & Maduros With '01 LdH Gravonia Blanco

Or filhote com molho de camaroēs e bananas, if you want to practice your Brazilian Portuguese.

That meal, the third in today's roundup, came off so utterly surprising that we vowed to eat fish once a week from this point out. With a recipe like this and eating it with a wine like the 2001 López de Heredia white, that might be something that lasts longer than the mere proclamation.

Hot Chicago days brought about food from hot climes this weekend.

Monday saw skirt steak in green sriracha sauce (Food & Wine - Susan Feniger), sweet potato fries, mayo for dipping and arugula salad with 2008 Orin Swift Saldo ($26 WDC).

It's a meal that naturally follows the utterance, "I want something California blendy, maybe something Zinfandel-ish." Grab some cheap cut of beef, maybe marinate it, maybe not, get a good char on it, throw on some interesting sauce you found on the interwebs or in a magazine like green sriracha sauce, toss a bag of sweet potato fries in the oven, whip up a fancy mayo for dipping (like pan juice mayo), finish with an arugula salad and drink something New World, big and blendish. Orin Swift, Villa Creek, Owen Roe (the Ex Umbris started this business).

Very little kitchen pain, flavors galore, tastes like a fancy BBQ and everything comes in under $50. This meal is our "let's just order a pizza and drink something we have in the house." It's essentially the same price, same amount of time, only a bit more work and delicious as all get-out. Green sriracha is something delicious. Doesn't resemble sriracha in the traditional sense. It's more of a broad definition akin to an Asian chimichurri or pesto, led by basil, coconut and lemongrass and worth a look. The Saldo more stayed its delightful self than offering a whole lot in the way of real, true-blue enhancement but that's all what really wanted. No clashing and tons of juicy dark goodness. Pairing Score: 88

#263 - Sea Bass a la Veracruzana & Duck Fat-Saffron Potatoes With '01 Heredia Blanco

Classy.

That was the word of the night.  Along with crazy-fancy-classy.

We've been in a bit of a LdH slump of late, finding many of the more recent vintages sort of pedestrian.  Good enough with strong echoes of what we want/love from drinking Heredia but many have just missed.  I think we were spoiled by a batch of '78 Bosconias and a bunch of '96 Gravonias a few years ago.  Heredia never lost that enormous place in our heart, we just haven't gravitate towards the stuff we had on hand.

And then the 2001 comes along. And then we have this food with it.  And then we break out of our Heredia slump with a 500-foot bomb to right that warrants a bat flip and happy trot that can only say, "Slump...GONE!"

It was the kind of home run that makes the bat feel weightless, your stride feel effortless, your muscle memory find its rhythm again, like it never left.  It's the kind of home run that reminds you how pure, singular and transcendent it all can be.

This was the kind of food, wine and food and wine pairing that doesn't need to scream its virtues because it knows, with utter confidence and vision, that what it offers is so damn good.

Food:  Sea Bass a la Veracruzana with duck fat-saffron potatoes and mâche salad