#258 - Anise-Flavored Volatile Compound Salad With '11 Kim Crawford SB

Technical stuff above.

That technical stuff comes from Taste Buds & Molecules by François Chartier, a molecular sommelier-type person that did the important, mind-numbing legwork that led to the beginning of understanding the essential aromatic and flavor components of food and wine on a molecular level.

I can already tell that I'm going to be reading this book again.  It's a technical wonder, sometimes refrigerator manual dull, but it successfully makes sure that you get tasty nuggets at critical points to keep your interest (and keep your eyes open).

Ultimately, I've been left with a feeling that my eyes have been pried open, willingly, to the molecular joys of combining foods with wine in the same molecular realm.

It's important work, critical work, and after having this meal based on a recipe found in the first 50 pages, it's a freakin' magical work.

We got something rather over-the-top ridiculous.  I've written about the joys and not-so joys on having food contained in a small box of flavors on this here blog numerous times.  This is something else, something oodles more, something that redefined what a flavor box really is, at least to us.

This was an anise-flavored volatile compound explosion!

#257 - Vitello Tonnato With '10 Paitin Arneis

Just missed.

And sometimes when a pairing just misses, it tumbles into the realm of rather bad.

Give this wine even a touch more acid (well...more than a touch) and this pairing might have been something stellar.

It didn't, though.

Tons of finesse and oodles more complex on its own (and frankly downright gorgeous in the glass), with the vitello tonnato it got beat up, pushed around and generally came off like watery pear juice.

Great food, blah wine.  Meh.  We were good.

Food:  Vitello Tonnato with potatoes and herbs

From a 180 year-old recipe over at Jamie Oliver's site, it hit every freakin' note we wanted from the meal.

#256 - Ethiopian Beef & Plantain Stew With Two New World Rhône Blends

Happy Leap Day!

Legend has it that nothing you do on this day counts.

I say with all those quarter-days stacking up, only to burst out into a full-fledged calendar day every four years, it counts!  It counts four times as much as a regular day.

So get outside, go for a jog.  It's beautiful out.  Call your mother and tell her you love her.  Everything counts four times as much.  For the lazy person, this day is "Gold, Jerry!"

Went to the Horn of Africa last night for Ethiopian flavors and came out liking it enough to possibly put it into the weeknight rotation.  Easy to make and a nice diversion in our spice world.

Didn't love it but a solid balance that played well in the world of medium intensity flavors bouncing off each other rather nicely in a small box.

Food:  Ethiopian beef and plantain stew over rice

#255 - Jerk Chicken, Biscuits & Pineapple With Two Wines

Here's jerk a Rastafarian would respect.

Heat that permeates every level, delicious citrus complementing the heat with spice and herbs that keeps everything in line.

Not surface heat here.  This went deep along with everything else seeping deeply into the chicken while the heat never crossed the line into eye-watering, mouth-blazing territory.  Marched right up to that line but never crossed it, allowing every other flavors to take its turn at bat.

Instead of cooking the chicken under a brick, this one was roasted upright in the oven in the cast-iron.  The results were something spectacular, bringing a more dirty-delicious caramelization to bits of the chicken skin.

This was one glorious looking chicken when it came out of the oven and the taste delivered on that promise.

Food:  Jerk chicken, cheddar-scallion biscuits and pineapple with radishes

#254 - Sausage, Rapini & Tomato With '09 Palmina Barbera

Everyone frets over the authenticity of foods: its provenance, its ingredients, its handling, the people behind it, etc.

All those things are important but we prefer terrible and terribly funny instructions on the back of, say, a package of orecchiette that tells us to stir "approximately carefully" to tell us what's in the package and who made it.

No faceless corporation or mass-produced factory product allows that!  That's some tremendously small operation that goes to freetranslation.com, cuts and pastes and calls it a day.  Good for them.

Orecchiette, sausage and rapini is a house favorite.  We don't know what we did before discovering it a few years ago and promptly put it in wide rotation.

The joy comes in its simplicity and rusticity.  Soul-satisfying stuff to the nth degree.

Last night's Oscar food was a diversion from the well-worn path, incorporating tomato, carrot, celery and onion, making a stew and mixing it into the traditional form.  A Mario Batali recipe taken from the Palmina site, it's a good one, deep and rich and tasty.  We just ever so slightly missed the rustic, simple Love of the more simple version and its delicious white wine accompaniment.

That said, we ate and drank very well here.

Food:  Orecchiette, sweet sausage and rapini with a mirepoix and tomato base

#253 - Bison With El Jefe & Lamb Curry With Tavola

Sandwiched between these two meals was a drunken trip to Bar Toma and the Gambero Rosso wine tasting at Union Station.

We're glad we went to Bar Toma.  It's a beautiful space offering an interesting, pan-Italian collection of vittles (revolving around Rome and broadening out) with a nod to something a touch more Mediterranean.  Didn't love it.  Some salting and temperature issues (really across the board on temp) kept it firmly in the world of Like while never sniffing Love.

But the sandwich bread, these two meals along with Shrimp Lunch, brought enough goodness to keep the food weekend (Monday thru Wednesday) in the camp of "That's a break from the workweek and that's the point!"

And I think we wrote off the Ponzi Tavola way too soon a few years ago.

Meal #1:  Bison flank steak with chimichurri and yuca fries with smoked paprika mayo

#252 - Mantuano Shrimp, Sheep Feta & Arugula With Two Wines

Shrimp Lunch!

We finished up the Argiolas Rosado with this meal, which was the wine served with red beans & rice, my first tweet on the Twitter machine for this here blog (look over there --->).  I'm late to things but still patently refuse to Facebook.  No need in my world to know what Johnny McDouchington from high school English is doing these days (Johnny McDouchington, you know who you are).

Today's shrimp recipe is brought to you by Tony Mantuano, he of Spiagga fame (and The Purple Pig collaboration).  We'll be partaking in Bar Toma before the Tre Bicchieri tasting at Union Station tomorrow.  My expectations are...tempered.

But Mr. Mantuano is some crazy genius.  When taking into account the time it takes to prepare black garlic shrimp (infuse the oil, let it cool, blah, blah, blah), this one is too easy-peasy for words.  Five minutes and it's summertime refreshing and delicious.

Food:  Ouzo-flamed shrimp with lemon, parsley and garlic, sheep feta with pink peppercorns and honey and an arugula salad

#251 - Blood Orange & Black Olive Tuna With '08 Antica Terra

Boy, the 2008 Oregon pinots are going to be a fun follow.

I have no idea if I'm going to love them but the development and life should be a long, great romp.

If only a touch more fresh acid on the finish existed.  IF. ONLY.

Right now...right now...the 2007 Antica Terra seems to be more together, more composed and expressive of what it is and is going to be.

The 2008 is a bit scatterbrained but precocious.  The talent is there but too many thoughts are floating around in its brain to know what it wants to be.  "I want to be a scientist!  I want to be a astronaut!"

There's no doubt this is going to be a good wine.  Right now, it's a waiting game. Delicious stuff but too all over the place to enjoy it by itself.  With food, with the best freakin' tuna on the planet, the wine followed the food lead like a good little soldier waiting for its time in the sun.

Food:  Blood orange, black olive and pomegranate seed tuna over frisée with Seeduction bread, rose petal jam and Kerrygold butter

Still.  Best.  Tuna.  Ever.  

#250 - Oxtail Ropa Vieja Over Rice With '08 Villa Creek Mas De Maha

Super Bowl dinner.

I'd like to thank NBC for delivering a broadcast so much less LOUD than anything FOX has ever done.  And no dancing robot.  Life is better without dancing gladiator robots (though the trumpets before the trophy ceremony was a bit much).

I'd like to not thank NBC for being less loud because I rather enjoy hating on the Super Bowl.  Haters always be hatin'.  And I'm a hater.  I admit it. It's just so much spectacle for spectacle's sake.

Cassoulet with pink wine used to be Super Bowl tradition.  It's a riff on ropa vieja with Villa Creek Mas de Maha now.  Last year was ropa without the vieja and a 2006 Mas de Maha.  This year, it's oxtail ropa vieja with our second drinking of the 2008.

Food:  Oxtail ropa vieja over white rice and an arugula salad

#249 - Fregola 'Risotto,' Borlotti Beans & Pancetta With '05 Colonial Estate Exile

We had something close to pairing perfection two days ago.

Right after cracking the Colonial Estate Exile, taking a sip and tasting a chunk of Rogue Smoky Blue, I thought we were going to beat it.  At least approach it.

We didn't beat it but got close.

Tons of extreme like here.

Blood marinated in balsamic.  Who doesn't want that?

Drink it with a big mound of slightly goopy goodness and you got yoself sum lovin'.

Food:  Fregola 'risotto,' borlotti beans, La Quercia pancetta, fennel, shallots, pine nuts, pearl onions, carrots, chicken stock, basil and Rogue Creamery Smoky Blue Cheese

#248 - Braised Endive & Tomato Stew-Salad & Scallops With '02 Michel Brégeon Muscadet

Putting the scallops at the end of the title description was on purpose.  They weren't needed and weren't particularly good.

What was good, even great, was everything else.

A Jonathan Waxman recipe, the stew-salad tasted like a garden in the best possible way.  Braised endive!  Who knew?

Mrs. Ney gussied it up with preserved lemon, sunflower seeds and sprouts, lemon thyme and parsley leaves.  While Mr. Waxman might guffaw at such piling on to his more simple, 3-4 ingredient approach to things, with the scallops so lacking in scallopy goodness, we both think the end result might have been better than if the recipe was followed to a tee.

That's because this wine drinks so freakin' well and I'd venture to say this pairing sits in the top 1% of pairing perfection in our world.

#247 - Lamb, Vanilla Mash & Rapini With '05 Bodegas Astrales

Fine and good (enough).

Both of us thought, after taking a first bite of vanilla mash, that the meal could have slid in so much better with a Bordeaux more than this particular Ribera.

It was an odd showing for this vintage of Astrales.  Typical haunting Ribera nose, promising a deep smoky goodness but we didn't get that, at least not in the expression we expected.  A bit of a tenuousness to its backbone throughout its 47,000 different changes throughout the meal.  Felt like it was hanging on for dear life or pulled a hammy or something.  A confidence was present but felt more like a bravado hiding a deep insecurity.

We liked but didn't come close to loving this vintage of Astrales, our first (2004 here).  The test came when we took a break from eating.  Both of us had no inclinations to reach for it and drink it by itself.  The conclusion was "it's good," which is really just damning with faint praise.

Food:  Rosemary-garlic lamb with vanilla mashed potatoes and rapini

Trader Joe's lamb chops marinated in rosemary and garlic, then drizzled with balsamic and olive oil, cooked a perfect medium-rare.  We enjoyed the lamb.  It was good lamb.

Vanilla mashed potatoes, though, are the most sexy food on the planet.  Madagascar vanilla and we could taste it.  These tasted like Love on a pillowy cloud of Love.  Fat and fat with a side of fat but, golly, they're the most delicious thing ever.  Thomas Keller recipe.  Natch.

#246 - TK Chicken & Pea Risotto With '09 Daniel Chotard Sancerre

Weird winter.  Great winter.

The kind of winter in Chicago that doesn't make me feel like winter is never going to end.  The kind of winter I like - something that feels more like an extended respite from nice weather as opposed to typical Chicago winters, which usually feel like a test of one's soul.

Last night's meal tasted like spring, or a precursor to spring, or an announcement of a forthcoming spring - helped by the fact that it's felt all winter like spring will, in fact, arrive.  Past winters rarely offered such building hope so early or at all.  Nice thing, that.  Kept me spry.  Maybe not this spry, but spry enough.

Spring flavors and spring wine in the dead of winter that hasn't felt like the "dead of winter" in the least.  If you run into someone in Chicago griping about this winter, tell them to shove it.  This has been awesome.

#245 - Spanish-Style Hanger & Almond-Saffron Potatoes With '05 Pico Madama

Last night's progression on the thoughts of the wine:

1.  Meh
2.  Ummm...
3.  Certainly has a lot going on...
4.  This is pretty good stuff but not really our bag...
5.  I don't know...kinda like it...wouldn't buy it again...
6.  Well...if it was on sale...
7.  I think this might have a place...
8.  Crap...there's a lot going on here...
9.  I'm not saying I wouldn't buy it again...
10.  Boy, that settles and sits reeeally well.

A 50/50 monastrell/petit verdot, we expected more of an interesting diversion than something that was going to sit in our wheelhouse with such a Spanish-Spanish meal.  I can't say we loved this wine with the food but I can say that our opinion of the wine grew more and more favorable throughout the meal.  Not because it necessarily opened up as the meal progressed (though it did a little bit), more because we sort of gave ourselves over to what it offered - its generosity, its limitations and all.

#244 - Bo Ssam With Sparkling Riesling & Vouvray Sec

Crazy mad genius David Chang becomes more so once you see how easy it is to replicate one of the staples at his restaurant, Momofuku Ssam Bar in NYC.

The New York Times gives you the recipe, it's not labor-intensive in the least (just takes some monitoring) and only costs about $30 for the whole lot.

It's bo ssam, a salty, sticky, deeply delicious pork butt wonder that serves as the centerpiece to a Korean lettuce wrap buffet of goodness.

Chang leads the party here but a supporting cast of Michael Symon (pickled onions), Bill Kim (kimchi from Urban Belly) and Jacques Pepin (scallop pancakes) rounded out the party quite nicely, thank you very much.

And the wine...yeah...good enough with one being a winner.

Food:  Bo ssam pork with scallop pancakes, pickled onions, ginger- scallion sauce, ssamjang sauce, rice, kimchi and boston lettuce for wrapping

#243 - Walnut-Pomegranate Chicken Thighs & Israeli Couscous With An '03 Heredia Cubillo

Strange and delicious collection of food-wine meals of late.

Borscht with smoked trout on rye (cheap gewürztraminer), a meal that tasted like really fancy Arby's (Bogle Phantom) and this one, vittles that tasted like a Spanish-Persian food baby that secretly had a Greek father. Oh, the scandal!  Almodovar should make a film about it.

Who could play the ghost that represents the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War?  I'm going with Kathy Najimy.  Almodovar loves to gender-bend.

It's been years since we revisited the Heredia Cubillo world. I think the first one I ever had was the 1999 or 2000 vintage and I was oh-so impressed with its tobacco- orange peel-leafy bigness.  Sure, it was a bit of a bumpy ride going down but something about it appealed to me.

When picking out this wine for this meal, I was struck by how much I haven't craved it in recent years.  We've had oodles of meals where a Cubillo could have excelled but nothing about it has recently screamed, "Drink me!"

Some of that lies in the fact that much of Heredia's upper line is only $10 more than the Cubillo line.  Cubillo's appeal comes from its pokey weekday lunch of tapas and a match-matchy goodness that's defined by its appealing rough edges.  Tastes gritty, rough and weathered, like the leathered skin of an old Spanish goat herder.

But, for $10 more, a Bosconia or Tondonia turns that gritty goodness into such wonderful grace and finesse that it tastes like something that should cost so much more.  To wit:  go here.

Cubillo has a place.  It's just not a place we've wanted to return to lately.

Last night reinforced that impression a bit.

#242 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Let's do a connect-the-meals-with-wines puzzle!

Here are the wines:

1.  2009 Ponzi Pinot Noir
2.  2006 Ponzi Pinot Noir
3.  2004 Terre Rough Syrah Sentinel/Pyramid Block
4.  NV De Vallois Saumur Brut
5.  2005 Edmond Cornu & Fils Chorey-les-Beaune

And here are the meals:

1.  Roasted Chicken, Moondust Cheese & Mâche
2.  Braised Pork Shoulder, Savory Scones & Brussels Sprouts
3.  Szechuan Peppercorn Tuna, Roasted Beets & Frisée
4.  Semiramis Hummus & Dolmas

Clue:  the tuna and white Burgundy would have been terrible together!

Frankly (who's Frank?  Frank Lee Gifford!), only one pairing really worked on a superlative level and another was just flat-out awful.

#241 Orange-Green Olive Duck & Farro With A 1970 Heredia Bosconia

A New Year's tradition of sorts continues.

Just saw my first New Year's jogger, running as if he'd never run before, awkward and sloppy, jiggly and panting, so slow that the dog and I could almost keep up, looking like the Nike corporate headquarters puked up all over him, the tags freshly clipped off of all of it.

It's the kind of run that says this run, despite all good intentions, will not be repeated tomorrow.  It's the kind of run that instantly decouples the mind's best-laid, blind hope from reality with a hard smack in the face, telling you everything about what you've done and haven't done over the course of the last year.

Been there, buddy.

Good Luck.

We closed 2011 (Good Riddance. You kinda sucked.) with a magically delicious meal and a wine like no other, a wine older than either of us and a wine currently performing so much better than my New Year's jogger.

It was an aggressive beast worth every freaking cent.

#240 - Linguiça, Potato-Kale Hash & Manchego With '07 Vallado Tinto

In July of 2010, we paired this wine with duck leg stew and a tapa spread.

Delicious wine by itself then, but not delicious with the food.

I remember the flavors and pairing of that meal pretty well.  Reading that post now after seeing how this wine showed last night, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't ready to go a year and a half ago.  Tannins were just opening and becoming accommodating enough then but everything else hadn't come out of its shell quite yet.  Throw on a gravy-like duck leg entrée and the fact that Portuguese reds typically scream for food less subtle and stewish, I don't think the wine had much of a chance.

Portuguese reds want simple, bold flavors with less complete integration.  They want a little char, a little bitter, a little starch.  They want rustic to match their rustic guts and then use that as a launching pad to expand out from there.

Last night's meal was that and the wine was true to form.  Textbook, really.  Mrs. Ney nailed it.  The wine tasted like War by itself.  All iron and blood with churned up earth.  With a bite of potato-kale hash and linguiça, an expanding balloon of dark but sparkly and round plum completed the delicious frame and turned this wine into one of the best showings of a $20 wine we've ever had.

I thought this wine was worth every bit of the $20 price tag a year and a half ago but probably not much more.  I was wrong.  This one's plays well above its price and has plenty of drinking life ahead.

Food:  Linguiça, potato-kale hash, marinated manchego, fig-almond cake and baguette

#239 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Family.

That's all I gotta say 'bout that.

So Merry Christmas-Happy Holidays to everyone out there looking for a wine pairing and stumbling across our humble little website.  Or if you've somehow been redirected from a dental implant (?) site as it says in my statistics page.  The mind is awhirl with ideas how THAT happened.

Wooly bubbles, an out-of-this-world bargain Eiswein, a disappointing Heredia and Hema's Kitchen made at home highlight this week's roundup.

Let's get started.

Meal #1 - Pork liver pâté, Chaource cheese and baguette with Anselmann blanc de noir Eiswein & Ayala Zero Dosage Champagne

#238 - Short Ribs in Ancho-Pumpkin Mole & Potato Far With An '08 Quinta Cruz Touriga Nacional

Ever had an ancho-pumpkin mole, a starch that tastes like crêpe batter and shredded potatoes had a baby and then washed it down with blackberry licorice juice?

We have.  Last night.

Tasted like we tried a restaurant in some niche neighborhood in west Chicago where French-Hungarians settled decades ago but heavy influence from Mexico seeped in and someone decided to open a place that catered to both.

And it was delicious.

Food:  Short ribs in ancho-pumpkin mole, salty-sweet potato far and arugula with pomegranate seeds

#237 - Thomas Keller Buttermilk Fried Chicken & Onion Biscuits With NV Pierre Péters Blancs de Blancs

Continuing the jones theme.

More bubbles, this time with fried chicken, a pairing that fits like a glove in many eyes.

Last November, a first run at TK fried chicken achieved that with a Királyudvar sparkling.  That sparkler brought some great acid with dominant peach pit and grapefruit notes, supporting the chicken, wedge salad and buttermilk biscuits, keeping everything lifted, 3-D and surprisingly light. Good food memory there.

Here we had a more fancy, idiosyncratic bubbly offering flavors we didn't expect from a 100% chardonnay.  Cherry pit followed by white raspberry describes the evolution with more traditional citrus, yeast and toasted baguette serving as the backbone down deep.  Less friendly mix and mingle with the food as last November's success but nothing that clashed in the least.

Food:  Thomas Keller buttermilk fried chicken, onion biscuits and mâche with pomegranate seeds

#236 - Hanger, Latkes & Rapini With '08 Owen Roe Yakima Red + Anteprima

Champagne and Washington expect to get a lot of play in our house over the next few months.  They're our current jones, it seems.

Washington wines, in our limited experience of 10-15 bottles or so over the last few years, seem to be less about the winemaker, like so many California wines (and even Oregon wines to an extent), and more about the land.  An Old World sensibility really does come through with an inevitable New World freshness merely outlining the body.

More restraint and hands-off construction and less chasing of that one-note, unibody flavor so loved by so many.  Less easily identifiable flavors and more mystery brought on by not screwing with it so much.

Our nascent exposure to Washington wines has been a good one, something that seems to have opened a floodgate of sorts.  We're on board.

I've sort of jumped off the Bordeaux train lately due to expense, its food limitations and, on a certain level, boredom.  It's such a niche wine not exactly lined up with the food we typically eat.  But Washington, a wine region that pays homage left and right to Bordeaux blends and tradition, seems to be broadening that a bit with wines offering a wider food basket its wines can match up with.  They're less...rigid.

#235 - Still Alive!

Geesh!  It's been a month (?).

An annoyingly lingering month-long cold and the lack of greenbacks in the wallet lately has led to the absence of good food and wine in our house.  No point spending money on stuff we can't taste.

But things seem to be back to normal for the most part so two easy favorites were right and proper to jump back on the tasting horse.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella, tomatoes and basil with baguette and two sparklers

I extolled the virtues of Trader Joe's pre-packaged marinated mozzarella in olive oil and herbs a few weeks ago as a near-perfect quick and easy lunch option.  Marinating your own seemed to be an exercise in willingly wasting your time when something that good came so easy and fresh.  Mrs. Ney gave it a shot anyway...just to know.  The result was something just as good, but work.  Better mozzarella but not by much.  Better olive oil but not by much.  She gussied up the TJ's version with fresh tomatoes/kumatoes in the past so a freshness was still present and wanted, even needed.  In the end, part of the joy in this type of meal is the spontaneity.  No thinking about it the day before and prepping.  It's probably the best buy and eat lunch in our world right now.  Grab a baguette and bubbles and there's little that creates a break from a workweek quicker than this.

#234 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

About two months ago, a meal of Bill Kim chicken, soba noodles and white asparagus with an '03 Hirtzberger Axpoint led us to thinking we'd just had the best grüner veltliner ever.

Graceful, nuanced and delicious at every turn.

So much so that I rushed out the next day and bought two more bottles.  Now, it's only been two months and we saw a touch of acid depletion in that first experience but this week's drinking of that bottle left me perplexed.

The acid two months ago ever so tenuously kept it in the world of delicious in great ways, coming off like a healthy Mickey Mantle, the later years.  This week, Mick's knees buckled trying to stretch of single into a double and it feels like he'll never be the same again.

Without the tiny acid lift, we got flab, flab and more flab tasting like the cheapest of cheap that had been left open in the fridge for days.  One more left.  Maybe it was just a bad bottle but nothing in the way of food flavors tried with two different flavor worlds did anything to make it remotely interesting.

Let's get to it.

#233 - Flank Steak, Cuban Beans & Sweet Potato Fries With '09 Ex Umbris

Freezer food!

And delicious freezer food it was, geared toward drinking a New World syrah, which was once again wanted and craved by both of us.

Funky that after drinking wine pretty seriously for years that an entirely new craving and joy can come from a style of wine already explored and somewhat dismissed.

Like many things in life, keeping an open mind and returning to explore the foundations of previously firm opinions just to see if they continue to be just is not only important but necessary.  It keeps one young, allowing intellectual curiosity to continue to be a driving force.

Tying such a thing to wine seems to be a bit much but in a small way, I have been surprised by our new embrace of California/Washington syrah.  Sure, we loved Australian shiraz in the past, even some California syrah, and still do but moved away from them in favor of lower alcohol, more idiosyncratic and many times terroir-driven wines, as many people do (and don't shut up about) as they progress up the chain of wine love.

Our recent dalliance/return in/to the bigger style feels like something that, in some form, will stay.

Here's why.

Food:  Flank steak, Cuban black beans and chipotle sweet potato fries

#232 - Spanish Niçoise-y Salad, Greek Feta & Carrot Purée With '09 Síria

Fancy stuff, in the food and in the wine.

The fancy came from the purity and abundance of flavors and the ability to taste every one of them in any given bite.

The tastes:  carrots, anchovies, parsley, honey, mint, harissa, thyme-infused olive oil, pickled onions, sesame seeded Syrian bread, feta, kumatoes, Greek black olives, caraway seeds, pink peppercorns, garlic, lemon juice, dill.

So Greeky, kinda Spanishy, bit of North African, all comprising a tapas-y type feel, a little dip here, a bite there and loving every bit of it.

Served with a wine made from a grape new to us as a 100% bottling and possessing a balance, vitality and Portuguese weirdness that slid right into the food in delicious and new ways.

Food:  Spanish-y Niçoise salad, greek feta in honey and pink peppercorns, carrot purée, thyme-infused olive oil and Syrian bread 

#231 - Two Birthday Meals

Insert Jack Benny joke here.

Like...for the condition that must exist before the joke starts ad infinitum.

For a birthday such as that, two of the classics, or new classics, or...heck, just two meals that we've come to immensely enjoy seemed apt, right and proper.

Italian lunch and sort of Cuban dinner.

And sandwiched between both meals was an Iowa loss to Minnesota so Happy Birthday to me, indeed.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella and kumatoes with baguette

#230 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New puppy in the house.  She came with everything that comes in the new puppy package.

Mostly good, though.  Promising.  Quite promising.  We think we like her.

Three meals and three wines this week, given a TWIB post to highlight two new wines that we very much enjoyed, even if they weren't something that evoked splendor in the glass (see what I did there...).

Meal #1:  TJ's $4 roasted chicken, Brussels sprouts with pancetta, baguette and butter

#229 - Pancetta Lamb, Pea Purée & Potatoes With '06 Ken Wright

Let's get link-happy.

We've mostly eaten our lamb in a supporting cast sense this year, using it as a protein to complement an interesting recipe here (Turkish beany surprise) and/or to try an ignored grape/style there (cabernet franc/Amarone).

We've had it out in the world this year (-ish) at Taxim (sausage form) and Blackbird (saddle form/rack form) and didn't have it out at Bacchus, unfortunately.

Or, when lamb was made to be the star of a meal, something like a potato-kale cake, fregola and carrot purée or, well, Turkish beany surprise, came along and stole its thunder.

Back to the lamb basics last night:  Lamb made to complement the lamb, support the lamb and star the lamb with flavors leaning more toward clean American.

When that happens, it's pinot noir.  Tried and true, always delicious and tastes like Home, tradition, holiday, friendship and Love ("To every season, turn, turn, turn...").

Food:  Pancetta-wrapped lamb, pea purée, pomegranate seeds and roasted potatoes with mâche salad

#228 - Moroccan Phyllo Pie With '08 François Villard Condrieu

If you'd asked me two weeks ago where Condrieu is located, I'd have guessed southeastern France.

And that's about as specific as I could have been.

Squeezed between Côte-Rôtie and Saint-Joseph in the northern reaches of Northern Rhône, Condrieu and its surrounding AOCs represent a huge blind spot in my wine world.  Heck, red Burgundy, much of Northern Italy and the Northern Rhône...you may as well be talking about carburetors and manifolds or something because I'm clueless.  All of it shoots right over my head.

That will change in time.  It's usually some unassuming bottle bought on a whim that cracks the code of a region/AOC/style, sending us scurrying to find out more.

This François Villard viognier might be one of those bottles.

Delicious, fairly unique stuff that if given blind, I'd have thought it was a white Burgundy in many ways from some Burgundy AOC I know nothing about.

Hate to get wine-sappy here but that's one of the great things about wine.  There's always a new surprise.  Always something you've never had.  Always something you didn't know.

Food:  B'stilla - Moroccan phyllo pie with arugula and pomegranate seeds

#227 - Dry-Aged Filet And Potato Cakes With '05 Clos Apalta

Anniversary Dinner!  Number Seven.

Crap.  Now I have the Grizzly Adams theme song in my head.

With a sick dog, we didn't have the option to celebrate the occasion out on the town, but last night we got flavors that didn't taste like home flavors, so mission accomplished in many ways.

A carménère/cabernet blend is not home flavors (or 'out' flavors either).

A roasted vegetable chimichurri.  Not home flavors.

A zucchini/carrot veg medley.  Not home flavors.

The whole meal didn't taste like home and we liked it.

Don't need it again but we liked it.

Food:  21 day dry-aged beef filet, potato cakes and zucchini/carrot medley with chimichurri

#226 - Two Meals And Two Wines

Last night's wine was an example of a wine made so much better by the fact that both of us wanted nothing but California syrah.

Rare thing, that; wanting California syrah to such a degree.  Sometimes, satisfying a yen jettisons the opinion of a wine from the "yeah...good stuff" realm into the "that's the best thing I've ever had in the history of history!" silly superlative world even if it merely shows typical, open and proper.

The key came in the non-fancy fancy food with flavors on the plate we haven't had before, which was the goal of the meal.

And what flavors they were.  The collection of Iberian peninsula cookbooks continues to amaze.

Food:  Spicy Azorean garlic-roasted pork with fideos, black olive gremolata and pickled onions

#225 - Flank Steak, Duck Fat Potatoes and Toscano Cheese With '04 Vale Meão

I still surprised how medium-bodied this wine was.

Every review for every Quinta Do Vale Meão wine talks about its 'richness' and 'powerful body.'  We always got something leading towards richness and power but they always pulled back from the edge at the right time so words like 'finesse' and 'grace' and a 'pretty touch of earth' were always bandied about.

Big, full, rich wines can of course (and do) have those elements but in the context of liking a wine, for us, those words denote something that isn't really big, full and rich.

Vale Meão wines always love to have a dalliance with bigness and fullness but, in the end, come back to what they are:  their own unique place of the very definition of the top end of medium-bodied - flavors that evoke richness with a body to balances all that out.  The really good ones charge right up to the full-bodied line, taunt the big boys on the other side and then just stay there, taunting, "Look what we can do! Screw your extraction!"

Having said that, the 2004 is and has been for us closer to the world of a standard medium-bodied than we expect from Vale Meão, even missing some of the aspects we love about their wines, in particular a touch of Asian spice and a hidden surprise 2/3 of the way down.

Food:  Flank Steak, duck fat potatoes and Toscano cheese with an arugula salad

#224 - Bill Kim-Inspired Pork Stir Fry With '09 Selbach-Oster Riesling

A stir fry sauce inspired by the lamb and brandy dumpling filling from Urban Belly on California drove the meal last night.

And after the success we had with riesling (Hirtzberger Smaragd Hochrain) at Urban Belly in December, a return was welcome, if a bit off the mark in pairing terms.

The slight miss came from the sugar in the Selbach-Oster Spätlese as it needed more acid/spice from the food to balance things out and the fact that, for now, the higher level of sugar in this Spätlese just isn't our bag.

The wine bullied the meal a bit, we liked the food much more than the wine by itself and we missed a salty/mineral play and higher acid that we want from white wine right now.  That about sums it up.

An Austrian Smaragd was the play here after having the meal.  Such is life.

Food:  Bill Kim-inspired pork stir fry over polenta

#223 -TK Chicken, Chaource & Baguette With '00 Gaston Chiquet

A treasure trove of Spanish, Portuguese and Canary Island goodness arrived yesterday from our San Francisco trip and a visit to the Spanish Table in Berkeley.

Should be a tasty, Iberian-inspired winter.

Time to play catch-up.

A standard Thomas Keller chicken meal went through the stratosphere with the second-best Champagne we've ever had.

Food:  TK Chicken, Chaource cheese and baguette with mâche

More modifications to the TK chicken as Mrs. Ney finds a happy balance between deliciousness and breezy prep.  Good one here.  Might be a keeper.

#222 - Duck, Farro, Oranges & Green Olives With '02 Heredia Bosconia

As López de Heredia typically releases their reds eight to nine years after the vintage, we've recently had a bit of an Oreo cookie experience in terms of superlative Heredia goodness.

Serving as the cream, it was the 2001 Bosconia that blew us away two Augusts ago, served with patatas bravas, linguiça and Iberico ham, Idiazabal cheese and arugula.

Serving as one chocolate cookie, the 2000 Bosconia was helped along immensely by the lavender lamb, piquillo marmalade, pistachio fregola and asparagus but showed a dark, brooding nature and those signature tea tannins wrapped in cinnamon and hints of orange peel that make Heredia so good.

Last night's meal was the other chocolate cookie layer.  It's the 2001 that stands out in my mind as something so wondrously more broad in scope, depth, length and satisfaction.  So pretty, so evocative.

2002 was an extremely difficult vintage in Rioja with bombardments of frost early in the growing season and a rainy June.  Bosconia was spared much of the damage but yields were down significantly across the board, according to their website.

The result, as per usual with Heredia, is a wine that's all Heredia, hitting all the typical, deliciously joyous notes, even if it's not jumping out of the glass and sailing on forever.

But what it brought to the star of the night, the food, was more than we thought.

#221 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Our last post, Bill Kim chicken, soba noodles and white asparagus with the 2003 Hirtzberger Axpoint Grüner Veltliner, was the highlight of our grub and drink week but with a week off work for the annual September restaurant vacation, food and wine together at dinner every night nicely complimented my pokey, meandering, highly unproductive hiatus from asking, "Would you like another Coke?"

Some value plays in this week's TWIB Notes.  Friendly French on three occasions, one fine and good enough German offering and a deliciously surprising back-and-forth with two off-region tempranillos, with all the wines under $20.

#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.

#219 - Skirt Steak, Mushrooms, Spinach & Vanilla Mash With '00 Clos l'Oratoire

It's tough to have the 2003 Clos Fourtet work as a Right Bank Bordeaux benchmark for us.

When we drank a 375ml of that Clos Fourtet in 2006, it was all dark, dirty, sneaky and haunting.  I thought I had experienced a wine epiphany.  "I think I love Right Bank Bordeaux!"

In our experience since then, they've been finicky in our world.

No exception last night.  We cracked this 2000 Clos l'Oratoire about an hour before drinking to see where it was, found it muted and tight, decanted for an hour but still barely got a crowbar in the door jamb.  After two hours, with much of the food consumed, the wine started to hit its stride with the acid coming to the fore, bringing everything into balance but even that window seemed exceedingly small.

As I said.  Finicky.

When it did hit its stride with small touches of ash, tar, blackberry and lead framed well, both of us still thought, "Nothing special here."

But the French-type feast was very much wanted.