The Rest of Us

[Behemoth]

Sweet mustard, gotcha. If you can get them, Händlmaier and Develey are the local brands. A little horseradish mixed in is really nice. 

[Sneakeater]

Thanks!

[Sneakeater]

I think Lowensenf is actually owned by Devaley. 

[voyager]

Totally recommend.   This stuff is addictive.

re okra, next time try it simply blistered in oiled pan, then Maldon salt.    Great smoky flavor, no slime.

[Sneakeater]

Fregua Sarda cun Arrizzonisi e Cori di Tonnu (Sardinian fregola with sea urchin and cured tuna heart).

When I first started making this dish a year and a half ago, it was an attempt to imitate La Ciccia in San Francisco without ever having been there.  Now I guess it's a memorial.

Perhaps spurred on by regret at now having missed out on La Ciccia forever,* this was definitely my best iteration yet.

On the side, some sautéed squash with cherry tomatoes.

These two dishes represented my first cooking with fresh tomatoes this season!

The fregola is one of those dishes where there really is a single clear best pairing

2019 Cardedu Vermentino di Sardegna "Nuo"

Cardedu are Sardinia's middle-of-the-road Natural winemakers:  nothing like the maniacs at Dettori.

When this particular cuvée started, I think it was almost orange.  Now, it's a pale yellow like a normal Vermentino.  Still some oxidation, though (which as far as I'm concerned only made it go better with the sea urchin).

Lot of salinity here:  it tastes like it was made on an island.  With some nice stone fruit.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY this is what you drink with fregola with sea urchin.

_________________________________________________

* I know that a restaurant called La CIccia is still operating in San Francisco.   But if instead of closing Franny's in Brooklyn Franny and Andrew had sold the name and premises to a VC group, none of us Franny's loyalists would acknowledge the new place as “Franny’s”. 

[Sneakeater]

My inner 11-year-old would laugh uncontrollably if I observed that it is hard to believe how much scum fregola generates (used to thicken the sauce duh).  My inner 11-year-old would reach the height of hysteria when he realized I poured that scum over gonads.

I am NOT going to let my inner 11-year-old dictate what I can and cannot write.

[Sneakeater]

Help I can't breathe my inner 11-year-old is making me laugh so hard.

[Sneakeater]

I don't know what possessed me to post my recipe for this sea urchin dish the first time I made it (having done extensive research and collated several different recipes like a junior league Felicity Cloake).  But I'm sure glad I did.

[Sneakeater]

(I deviated from it this time duh.  [FRESH tomatoes for one thing.]  I don't follow my own recipes exactly any more than I follow anybody else's.)

[Sneakeater]

Pied de Porc Sainte-Ménéhould

That supreme creation.  (What is Sainte Ménéhould saint of, anyway?  Animal fat?)

Elizabeth David's recipe in French Provincial Cooking is at least twice as long and detailed as the one in French Country Cooking.  I guess in the provinces they pay attention to what they're doing, whereas in the country they just throw things into the pot and under the flame and hope for the best.

A ramekin of Sauce Sainte-Mènèhould, which I never bothered with before but which really aces this dish.

And a purslane salad.  What did you expect?

If you wanted to be geoculturally correct, you'd have a (still) Côte Champenois with this.  But who has that overpriced underperforming wine around?  So we hop over to Burgundy and go down to its other end for one of the oceans of good cheap (for Burgundy) Bourgogne Blanc that I always seem to have.

2016 Domaine Jean-Pierre Sève Mâcon-Solutre

Nothing special.  Just good.  And textbook.

Apples, pears, lemon, minerals.  Longish finish.  Yum.  (A bunch went into the cooking, too.)

[Sneakeater]

I was going to say that I disproved the principle that you can't oversalt tomatoes tonight.

But what I think I really proved is that you can undertoss a salad.

[Sneakeater]

The only thing that meal was missing was cranberry beans. 

[Wilfrid]

I have been seeing lamb breast in the supermarket, and you know that is just asking for the same treatment.!

[Sneakeater]

I actually prefer the lamb breast.  

[Sneakeater]

Oklahoma Onion Burgers with duck fat fries and a spigarello salad with a bizarre improvised Korean Ranch dressing (what do they call ranches in Korea?).

This must be the first time in history that an Oklahoma Onion Burger was made with a cheese other than American.  It was not an improvement.

But it tuns out I don't really like Oklahoma Onion Burgers.  They're a variation on smashburgers, and I don't really like smashburgers.

OTOH, unsurprisingly when you think about what's in it, Sauce Sainte-Ménéhould turns out to be a perfect burger condiment.  Not that the Sainte-Ménéhoudians probably know that.

I'm terrible at multitasking (always have been), and I burned the fries.  They were still (barely) edible, though, cuz fries.

N/V [as far as I can tell] Francesco Vezzelli Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro "Rive dei Ciliegi"

This heaviest kind of Lambrusco goes GREAT with burgers.  Almost as well as Coke.

I don't know why this isn't a classic pairing.