5206 replies to this topic

[voyager]

I don't use no mayo.

[AaronS]

I made it with two ranch packets last time and it was so good.

[Wilfrid]

I’ve still never made it. I am worried that if I do I will need to make it forever. I did successfully hand off the corn soofle to my daughter.

[Sneakeater]

No one can eat just one.

[voyager]

Can't do corn soofle. It's just too sweet for me and mine. But, as the ultimate doubter of Mississippi Roast, I now confess to being a true believer. But, hey, it's just a chunck of beef (or pork) with a lot of salty seasonings, butter as you will. I scrutinized our leftovers from the other night to look for coagulated butter or meat fat. NONE. The problem is that you read the recipe and KNOW what's in this, while that luscious beef you ate out the other night, you have no idea. It's probably much worse.

[Sneakeater]

It just tastes really good. That’s all there is to it.

[Sneakeater]

(If you scrutinized MY leftovers you’d find coagulated butter and meat fat. But to me that’s part of the fun.)

[Sneakeater]

(Wonder why my food always comes out looking like camel vomit.)

[Wilfrid]

Like we are all now familiar with camels.

[Sneakeater]

It seemed to be the animal of the week.

[Sneakeater]

(more cowbell)

 

Mississippi Roast,

It's time to give up the ghost.

Mississippi Roast,

This batch has come to a close.

 

Reheated and, in the deathless phrase of Sam Sifton, "piled high on a sandwich roll."

 

On the side, unreheated sautéed kale with chili oil (what could be better with this roast?) and fried potatoes, taken home from a restaurant a few nights ago.

 

I knew what I wanted to drink.  It's a bit grand for reheated home leftovers with unreheated restaurant doggie-bag leftovers (a meal I barely cooked).  But it was perfect.

 

2016 Ruth Lewandowski Boaz

 

Well, I said I wanted a natural wine this time.  But with all that fat in the Mississippi Roast (at least the way I, as opposed to Evelyn and voyager, make it), I wanted some tannin along with the acid.  But still, plenty of fruit.

 

Voila (as we don't say when serving a Mississippi Roast).

 

Evan Lewandowski, who makes this wine, is crazy.  The grapes are grown in California (Mendocino), and fermenting starts there.  But then he trucks them to his native Utah to finish the job.  You can see why he named his winery "Ruth", after perhaps the most famous migrant in all of (sort of) Western literature, and why all his wines are all named after characters from that story.

 

This is mainly Carignan, with some Grenache and a bit of Cabernet Sauvignon.  Blackberry and licorice are what you taste (and smell) up front.  Like most natural wines, this doesn't really have secondary flavors.  It's more like the initial flavors linger on, becoming more complex (you might even say smokier) versions of themselves as they stay.

 

There's some funk here -- but nobody would call this wine Bretty.  For a natural wine, it's positively elegant.  (To be clear, for a "normal" wine it isn't.)

 

This was as close to perfect with the Mississippi Roast sandwiches as I could hope to come.

[Sneakeater]

I decided to rejigger my wood pigeon on toast recipe. Out with the wine. I would cook the gizzards, along with smoked garlic and shallots, on the toast underneath the bird, to make it easier to smear the toast with them. Although this didn't really need (or want) any sauce, I had a leek that was about to cross over to the other side, so I made a leek gravy.

Some sorrell/bay leaf preserve. And sautéed hydroponic greenhouse red spinach.

Oh, and I spatchcocked the pigeon. My first attempt ever at doing that. And I fucked it up in maybe the most embarrassing way possible (I can't believe I'm even telling you guys). I removed the breastbone instead of the backbone! (Don't worry: I recovered the meat clinging to the breastbone and put it in with the gizzards and stuff on top of the toast.) This made the pigeon, if anything, harder to eat than if I had left it whole. How could I do something so stupid? I guess that's what comes from being an alter spatchcocker. (I'll leave it to StephanieL to explain that joke to voyager.)

Tasted very good, though. The gravy on the spelt toast with the gizzard gunk slathered on was actually kind of great.

This called for a mature Bordeaux. But, tooling through my storage units, I found something more interesting.

1994 Boncompagni Ludovisi, Principe di Venosa, Fiorano Rosso

The next-to-the-last vintage produced by The Prince In His Caves, before age and ill health impelled him to tear up his vines and retire. (His daughter married into the Antinori family, and after he had died and could no longer stop them, the Antinoris replanted the vineyards and resumed production of the wine. But it isn't anything like the same.)

This is a red wine made by a man who was by all accounts a maniac, from the principal Bordeaux grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, inside the Rome city limits. He practiced strictly organic farming, and was happy to keep the fine white mold that grew in his cellar and covered all his barrels right where it was.

It is almost silly how young this wine tastes. Except for how long the final touch of eucalyptus lingers on your tongue, you'd think it's only maybe a decade old. The black cherry fruit is bright, the leather flavor is clear. Well, not just except for the length of that minty finish: you don't get flavors this well integrated in a youngish wine. But you don't get flavors this bright in an old wine.

Twenty-five years and it tastes like this. Salud!

[Sneakeater]

If you're curious how I came to be able to buy a bunch of red and white Fiorano from the 1994 vintage (this is my next-to-last bottle of the red) about fifteen years ago:  https://www.nytimes....gic-cellar.html

[AaronS]

is that where the scholium wine gets it’s name? I always assumed it was a reference to books.

[Sneakeater]

No it’s from this.