#261 - Company, Food, Dogs & Wine

Company is nice, especially good company.

Good company makes for a breezy five hours of chatter while watching the dogs do funny/stupid stuff.

And eat frankly spectacular food.

The last time (bottom of post) one member of the 'company' came over, yellow split pea dip and ouzo-lemon tiramisù took the night.  We ate well then.  This time beat it, offering three elements in particular that expanded our food world in great ways.

Menu:  Roasted tomatoes and anchovies over feta, asparagus and radish salad, lapsang souchong-smoked lentils under duck and pomegranate seeds, rosemary farro & buttermilk poundcake topped with candied kumquats

#220 - Bill Kim Chicken, Soba & White Asparagus With An '03 Hirtzberger Axpoint

We've had a nice survey of quality grüner veltliners over the past two years, thanks mostly to the suggestions from our favorite wine person at Wine Discount Center.

Last night's offering, a 2003 single vineyard released at $45 and now sold for $20 due to the perceived lack of acidity needed for aging in the initial reviews right out of the shoot, is the best one both of us have ever had.

While the acidity certainly didn't define the wine, it tasted like the subdued level of acid most likely experienced right away, in 2004 or 2005, was arrested, staying in the realm of low-ish but nonetheless utterly performing its due diligence, lifting everything else, rounding out the edges, turning the wine into a three-dimensional delight as if it was merely a couple of years old instead of eight.

The big reviewers and their short drinking windows for Austrian wines continue to give us the best wine values when they're halved in price one year after Wine Spectator or Wine Advocate says they're done.

It's one example of how the domination of the market by the big-boy reviewers actually benefit wine drinkers.  Cheap goodness all around.  Of the 25 or so we've bought at a severe discount from the release price over the last three years, maybe two or three weren't Good Stuff.

#209 - Orecchiette & Lentils With 2010 De Falco Falanghina

Shorter one day as yesterday's prodigious length burned up any useful part of my brain.

Last night's meal wasn't better than bison flank, risotto and Duorum but if you caught us in the right mood, or the bison meal caught us in a crabby one and this one in a friendly, "the world's so nice!" one, orecchiette and lentils with falanghina might have won.

In short, it was close, and closer than we expected.

Probably because it's a Lidia Bastianich recipe that fills you up while leaving you feeling so, so clean.  She does that.

And it was meatless...except for a bit of ham dust.

Food:  Orecchiette and lentils

A modification (s) from Lidia's recipe, substituting orecchiette for rigatoni.  I got a thing with how the orecchiette's little cups catch more sauce.  Less messy and you get more of the good stuff.