Sneakeater

About those green beans. I saw some recent Jacques Pepin video where Jacques expresses confusion at how green beans no longer have strings. I've been wondering about that myself. When did that change? What caused it? (Breeding, I imagine.) So there is no longer such a thing as string beans. Don't get me wrong: I don't miss stringing them. (Jacques also expressed his pique at how people these days tend to undercook their green beans. To which I can only say, "YES!")

Fried blowfish tails with Comeback Sauce. Comeback Sauce is great stuff! And I'd set mine against anybody's from actual Mississippi. Blowfish tails are, of course, delicious when fried. The problem is the bone you have to eat around. But in compensation, nature gave them a handle! On the side, some green beans sautéed with onion and tomato. What would have been really good with the blowfish tails, is peas. But I couldn't see taking vegetables from the freezer when I have so many in the crisper. Another wine pairing that essentially made itself. 2017 Domaine Barmès-Buecher Crémant d'Alsace With all that FRY you want bubbles. As far as I can tell, this is a blend of Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay -- two grapes that are so similar you wonder why you'd bother. Can't argue with the results, though. Bone dry. Tart. Very luscious. Pretty persistent, too. Good backstory: Barmès-Buecher was formed when someone from the Barmès family married someone from the Buecher family 40 years or so ago, leading to the consolidation of the two competing families' 17th-Century holdings. Now it's run by their son. Another example of how not all biodynamic wines are Natural. This is quite elegant, and very obviously expertly made: everything is in place. This cost just south of $30, if I remember correctly. Worth every penny.

You don't know the half of it!

There are three kinds of aging, right? 1. Aging before harvest (mutton; that absurdly old-cow beef they serve in Spain) 2. Aging after harvest (what we usually think of as aging) 3. Aging after cooking (letting generally slow-cooked gravied dishes sit in your refrigerator) (in hope that it's only until before the point they start getting worse rather better)

It's so bad that I'm no longer even surprised when beer, McConnell's ice cream, Asian potato chips, Pepperidge Farm Nantucket Double Chocolates, and Mexican Coke and Sprite ring up north of $40. (I don't even want to think what the cashier must think about my eating habits.)

The fuck-up also made a total mess of my stovetop. Soft Scrub is so good at cleaning up messes, I can only guess at the toxic shit that must be in it.

This will be insanely good left over. As long as the shrimp doesn't go toxic.

Interestingly, I committed a fuck-up in cooking the cassoulet that ended up more than doubling the cooking time. But, for obvious reasons, I'm positive it made the cassoulet come out better. While I wasn't really planning to eat way past midnight tonight, it was actually kind of worth it.

Best deployment of Ghost Pepper yet!

A kind of Creole Cassoulet with andouille and shrimp. You would not believe how good this was. Fried okra on the side. It just seemed obvious to me that I'd want a Bordeaux Blanc with this. 2019 Chateau Turcaud "Cuvée Majeur" I think this Entre Deux Mers estate's entry-level white is one of the great wine bargains in the world: a truly excellent Bordeaux Blanc for less than $20 (the last time I looked). So I was eager to try their senior white cuvée. Which, as I previously reported, I have found disappointing: not bad, but a little worse than the cadet cuvée. It was another case of a winemaker's seeking refinement and losing the guts of the wine. Or, as Little Richard put it, "he got what he wanted but lost what he had." With a dish as assertively flavored as that cassoulet, quibbles about the wine evaporate. Who can taste them? True, the gutsier junior cuvée would have been better, as it could have duked it out with the deeply flavorful cassoulet. But this tasted good enough. Drinking the dregs by themselves, does seem a wee bit wan.

I'm almost certain I've had pig anus somewhere. I wish I could remember where.

Those shrimp are lovely.

(Although, stupid videos aside, I'll just say out loud what I know you already know: whatever they have is gonna be pretty great.)

Hmmmm.

Hey to me the anus is like the Holy Grail.

I just find flank steak simplistic compared to cuts I really like. But I'd be the first to concede my technical incompetence.

I mean, I love Fajitas as much as the next guy.

You don't think so?

I saw a notice of that concert and I thought, I hope @Mitchell101 is going.

It's amazing how many recipes you see where you just KNOW they're telling you to way overcook the shrimp.

I think I might not have been clear enough: if you're having steak, this is definitely a bottle to consider. It's kind of MADE for it.

Grilled bavette with housemade perpetual chimmichurri. The elevator pitch for bavette is that it has what's good about its neighbor on the body of a cow, flank steak -- the intense beefiness -- but it also has some marbling, so it isn't dry and one-dimensional like flank steak. That's true as far is it goes. But for "money cuts", I prefer flat iron or oyster or tri-tip steaks. Not that there was anything wrong with this bavette. I mean it was steak, right? On the side, some broccolini flame-roasted/charred/burnt on the közmatik. I let it rest in shoyu and sherry vinegar before cooking/burning; I drizzled it with olive oil after. I wondered how broccolini would respond to this treatment. I guess the answer is: vegetables are good this way. Everything I ate in this dinner had a char. I like that. The wine kind of chose itself. 2006 Achaval Ferrer Quimera This is a Mendoza, Argentina blend of a plurality of Malbec with substantial minorities of (especially) Merlot and (less so) Cabernet Sauvignon, and also some Cabernet Franc. These are all grapes that could go into a Bordeaux, you'll note -- but the proportions would be different. The thing about a dinner like this one is that you're almost bound to have the kind of wine I tend to disfavor. But for that kind of wine, this is quite good. The dark fruit stays within reason, and the secondaries -- the tobacco, the eucalyptus, the smoked meat -- are there, and flow in logically. There's a pronounced acid kick at the end: good thing this steak was marbled. I would call this wine "classy" -- with all the good and bad things that descriptor entails. I read some reviews when this was released counselng drinking it within 5 or 7 years. I feel sorry for anyone who did that.

A dish that was, believe it or not, inspired by something Kyle Connaughton once cooked for Mrs. Donabe. Of course, Connaughton is both much more skilled than I am and much less lazy. So the resemblance between our two dishes ends pretty quickly. Ibushi Gin Donabe-smoked duck breast over rice mixed with shitake mushrooms and charred bok choi-mustard green cross, garnished with flowering garlic chives. Some yamamomo on the side. And lime to squeeze on the duck. I put some sencha in with the apple chips, cuz why not? I can't say I tasted it. Nobody would call this "tea-smoked duck". This was a rare dish for me that looked a little better than it tasted. Not that there was anything wrong with the way it tasted: it just looked really nice. The leftovers will make a knockout fried rice that will barely require any cooking! Another pairing I'm pretty proud of. 2019 Ratzenberger Rivaner trocken I often (well sometimes) wonder what you drink Müller-Thurgau (Rivaner's secret identity) with. It turns out: this. You'd think, based on all the Liebfraumilch there is in the world, that all Müller-Thurgau must be thin and wan. But a well-made one (like this one, I think from the Rhein-Nahe, or lots of the ones made in the Südtirol) has surprising heft. Making it very good with something like smoked duck: the acid cut through the fat, but the flavor was thick enough not to get lost with the meaty smoked duck. Surprisingly, based on other bottles I've drunk from this vintage, this wine seems to be improving with age: this bottle seems materially better than past ones I've had. Given everything (including the togarashi I sprinkled on the duck), this might have been a better pairing if it were off-dry rather than trocken. But I'm not complaining. It worked beautifully.

THAT'S certainly cravable.