The Rest of Us (cont.)

[Sneakeater]

I'm crushed.

[Sneakeater]

My illusions are shattered.

[Anthony Bonner]

it had to happen eventually

[Sneakeater]

Squash and guanciale in sage butter on fettuccine.  (Not the optimal pasta shape for this dish.  So shoot me.)

A perfect mid-week supper.  Good thing it's Wednesday.

Sautéed spigarello on the side.  (There was some hot pepper in it cuz, 'tis the season.)

I formed a felt belt belief sometime late this morning that a Natural California Grenache Gris (I don't think they truck their grapes to Utah for vinification anymore) would be just the thing with this.

2021 Ruth Lewandowski Grenache Gris "Naomi"

This is a Grenache Gris made from ridiculously old -- more than 100 years -- grapes.

I'll say up front that this tastes to me like it's too young.  The acid (very necessary to cut the flabby richness of Grenache) isn't yet quite integrated.  It isn't bad.  It's just that you can see (OK taste) that it's going to get better.

That said, you expect quality from Ruth Lewandowski and you get it.  What's good about their wines is that despite coming from California, they're quite restrained.  Which is especially interesting with as unrestrained a grape as Grenache Gris (the pink clone of Grenache).

At this point, the acid is there from the start.  So the first thing you taste is apricot -- and acid.  Then you taste some peach -- and more acid.  And so on.  But that apricot and peach are luscious enough that you just go with it.

I drank this too cold.  I gave it the full white-wine chill.  It would have been better at maybe a tiny bit below cellar temp.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Some hazlenuts, too.

(I expected that:  it's why I thought this would go with the squash.)

Edited November 2, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Me and squash is funny.

I think of squash as something I don't much like.

But almost every time I eat it, I love it.

[Sneakeater]

Oh yeah this wine is opening RIGHT up.

[Sneakeater]

Dry-aged Ribeye (Flannery's) with a porcini pan sauce.  (It was supposed to be these chanterelles I smoked earlier in the week for this purpose, but I somehow lost them) (it's not fun watching yourself succumb to dementia in real time).

You can say a lot of things about me, but you can't say I can't cook steak.

Syracuse salt potatoes on the side.  They are SO good.  Wonder if Lou Reed ate them when he was in college?

And reheated pan-roasted broccoli with garlic.

The wine was sort of automatic.

2010 Château Tour St. Bonnet

The St. Bonnet aggregation is sort of legendary for being overperforming high-quality inexpensive mainstream Bordeaux.  If I asked you how much this bottle cost, I don't think your guesses would include, "under $20".  (Indeed, 10 years ago when I bought it I think it might have been more like $15.)

This is a wine that you're always told to drink fairly young, within 5 or 6 years from release.  But I was curious to see how it aged, so I put this bottle from this generally long-lived vintage aside.

It can age.  As much as I've liked all the other bottles of Tour St. Bonnet I've had in my life, I like this one the best.

This is a Médoc Cru Bourgeois.  It's 45% each of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and the rest is a bit of Petit Verdot to toughen it up.  It has a rather high ABV of 14%, but you don't taste that (we'll see in the morning if you feel it).

This just tastes like classic Left Bank Bordeaux:  no more and no less.

It's better than it was when it was young because the young fruit was more exuberant; now it's restrained and perfectly blended into the gestalt.  This is one smooooth wine.

This wine is so typical it's almost an insult to you to describe it.  You start with some dark berry fruit.  You move into some herbs and mushrooms.  And you detect the expected accents of leather, cedar pencil, and tobacco (they're such a cliché that it's almost hard to believe you actually taste them -- but you do).  Acid on the finish -- but by now not that sharp.  The tannins are perceptibly there, but you note them more than actually feeling them (which is as it should be) (even with a steak as fatty as a Ribeye).  Length could be longer:  my only real complaint about this wine.

A lot of people just don't like mainstream Bordeaux.  They wouldn't like this.  But if you do like mainstream Bordeaux, you should be kicking yourself if you don't have a bottle of this in this vintage lying around.

How was it as a pairing?  It's the knee-jerk for a reason.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

I guess I should make the obligatory observation that Flannery really IS great stuff.  It IS better than my butcher's dry-aged Ribeye.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

I thought I'd have some left over for a sandwich or something.

But the only thing left was the bone for the stockpot.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Oh wait a minute.

This wine rewards a long decant.

Because the last glass is kind of IINSANE.

$15.99?????  REALLY??????????

[Sneakeater]

Hmmmm. Some sources say that the residual 10% of this wine isn't all Petit Verdot, but rather half Petit Verdot and half Cot/Malbec.

I'm voting for the latter only because this wine is suaver than you'd expect something 10% Petit Verdot to be.

[Wilfrid]

Sadly that vintage doesn't seem to be available in the States.

[Sneakeater]

Where were you in 2013?

[Sneakeater]

I don't have any brussells sprouts.

But I do have bluefish.

Bluefish Dijonnaise. 

I tried to make this Rick Moonen recipe once before, unsuccessfully.

It's so easy, it's a little hard for me to see what I could have fucked up.  But I can usually find a way!

This time was fine.  Although broiled briefly at very high heat, this still had some of the mushiness of baked bluefish, which I find unappealing.  But only some.  The mustard-mayonnaise-thyme topping you can't disagree with.

Also:  BLUEFISH.

On the side, some choy sum with oyster sauce (OK, it's a little more complicated than that).  Cuz I understand Cantonese food is a staple in Burgundy.

The general wine choice was a given,, if not the specific.

2021 Division Chardonnay "Un"

Division is a Willamette Valley producer that first garnered attention with a Gamay.  I haven't tried it yet:  it's not like I don't have tons of Beaujolais (and a little Loire Gamay) hanging around.  But now I'm kind of eager to.

Because this is good.

When Oregonian wines were first coming to prominance, I think they suffered from a little overselling (or at least mischaracterization).  The claim was, the climate up there resembles Burgundy's, and so these wines tasted like Burgundies.

Well that ignores two important factors:  terroir and culture.  Because the fact is, the Oregon wines never tasted like Burgundies.  What they tasted like were tastefully restrained New World wines.  They had the simple directness that is both a bug and a feature of New World wines.  But they lacked the overdone bigness that warmer climates to the south have given many California efforts.

So this doesn't taste like a Burgundy.  It's quite linear.  It has almost no richness (but no, it doesn't taste like a Chablis, either -- although that's closer).

But I'll tell you what it does have.  It has intense amounts of flavor -- but,  if you can understand what I'm trying to say, it's reserved flavor.  It doesn't clobber you on the tongue with big fat flavorbombs.  It just sort of puts them before you.

And what are these flavors?  I'd say it's all the primaries of a good Chardonnay -- the apples, the lemons, the exotics -- but in extremely tart form:  not quite crabapple, but in that direction.  It's almost puckery.  But that, I hope you understand, is a good thing.

But then, there are almost no secondaries.  As I said:  direct and linear.

I think a Burgundy -- even the modest Mâconnaise wines I habitually drink (which is why I had none at hand tonight) -- would have been a better pairing for that fish dish.

But this is a good wine.  Because, for all I've carped about the implications, the flavor is intense.  It would be good with a fish fry, and very good with oysters.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

I'm from the South Shore of Long Island.  Although that means in most ways that I'm culturally deprived, I can fry fish.

That said, one of the best cooking tips I've ever gotten was one I got only recently from Hank Shaw:  when frying flounder, chill the fish in the refrigerator for an hour or more after breading it.  That way, the very flat fish won't overcook when you fry it to golden.  (Also, it seems to me that the chilling sets the breading.)

I made a hot chili tartar(ish) sauce for dipping (I don't think traditional tartar sauce has so much Old Bay Spice dumped into it) (not to mention not having hot chili pepper) (I left out the pickles, although I kept the capers).

On the side, some oven-"fried" sweet potatoes (in tallow, like Golden Age McDonald's!) (duck fat would have worked better).

Over the Summer, I established a new go-to wine pairing for fried fish.

2022 Fabulas Pecorino "Fecerunt"

Why do I think Pecorino is such a terrific fried-fish wine?

There's the slight nuttiness (matching the peanut oil I fried the fish in).  There's the salt at the finish.  Three's the acid, of course.  There's citrus, which is good.  And a little hint of mint, which you wouldn't think to want but works very nicely.

Whatevs, I do love this pairing.

I just love Pecorino, TBH.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Sneakeater

[bloviatrix]

I learned that you should refrigerate after breading because it gives the protein a chance to dry out which yields a crispier crust.

[Sneakeater]

That totally makes sense!

[Sneakeater]

Leftover fettuccine with Calabrian-style bluefish ragu (OK they wouldn't use fettuccine as the pasta in Calabria).

On the side, spigarello drizzled with Saba.

While we're on the subject of Calabria, may I say that the Calabrian producer Maddona dell'Olivo makes some of my absolute favorite olive oil?

Considering how much fish and how much hot pepper they eat in Calabria, it's a little surprising they don't make much white wine.  For those, you have to cross the strait to Sicily or go to nearby Campania (the whites from neighboring Apuglia are no great shakes).

Sicily's work best.

2021 Vino di Anna Jeudi 15

This Etna wine is 40% Gracanico, with the rest comprised of two separate field blends.

The interesting thing about Gracanico is that it's the same grape as Garganega.   Meaning the principal white grape of the Veneto and Lombardy is also a player way down South in Sicily.  Who knew?

This doesn't taste remotely like a Soave.  But it does taste fuller and more round than even "big" Sicilian white grapes like Carricante.  (The fact that I can write that sentence makes me worry momentarily that I drink way too much.)  What it's getting from the galaxy of other Sicilian grapes in the blend -- and let's not forget, from the terroir and let's really not forget the climate so unlike up North's -- is a strong salinity at the finish.  And yes, it is sharper than Soave, even if not as sharp as you'd expect from a Sicilian white.

This is a really good wine, don't get me wrong.  But I could have done better with other wines from the locale as pairings.

I have to think about what this very good wine would be best with.  You know what?  Chicken Scarpariello -- a dish unknown to Sicily (although I guess the East Coast Red Sauce immigrants derived it from the food of their native Calabria and Sicily).

Edited November 7, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

This is also another wine that would be a plausible pairing for Spaghetti Carbonara.

[Sneakeater]

Probably one of the least festive Birthday dinners in the history of Birthdays (albeit more festive than mine last year) (I mean, I'm sure people's birthdays were worse in the Middle Passage or the Shoah).  But as we'll see, I partially brought that on myself.

Duck confit (I googled it and learned that means you slow cook it along with confetti, making it an especially appropriate party dish) and Yellowfoot mushrooms sautéed with garlic over mustard greens and shallots with a mustard vinaigrette.

I didn't confit the duck.  D'Artagnan did -- and they didn't do it well.  This was just not a prime product.

I did make that mustard vinaigrette, and although it may seem silly to get excited over a salad dressing, it was a knockout (if I say so myself).  I think we'll be recurring to this later in the week.

Yellowfoot mushrooms look nicer than their close cousin Chantarelles.  But they taste a little worse, cuz they're a little milder.

You always hear two things about Yellowfoots:  (1) because of the way they're constructed, they reduce a lot in cooking, so you need to buy way more than you think you'll need; and (2) because of the way they're constructed, they cook a lot faster than you expect, so you have to allot less cooking time to them than you're used to.

And sure enough:  I was afraid I was buying too many, but after they cooked down I had way too few; and I overcooked them (not so they tasted bad, but so they looked mushy).  They really sop up butter, BTW.

A slice of Blackout Cake (also not made by me) for dessert.

You usually go with a hearty Southwestern (France) red with confit of duck.  But you could go with an Alsatian white.  I decided to split the difference with an Alsatian orange.

As I was cutting my Birthday Cake, I realized that I should have popped a bottle of Champagne, an excellent pairing for confit of duck.  But I was too fixated on feeling sorry for myself to think of anything genuinely festive.  A life lesson.

That said, my chosen (depressing) pairing worked just the way I hoped.

2022 Les Vins Pirouettes Eros de Vincent

You expect good extreme Natural wines from Les Vins Pirouettes, and you usually get them.  This was one.

This is a blend of Pinot Gris (which, let's not forget, is genetically identical to Pinot Noir, a tried-and-true duck confit pairing), Riesling, and a third grape that some say is Sylvaner and some say is Auxerrois.  I can't say my tasting this wine enables me to add anything to that debate.

You do taste the Pinot though.  And it tastes like some of the best Pinot Gris you've ever had.  Sharp, tart, bt with some underlying substance.

The reasoning behind the pairing was based on the high fat content of duck confit.  This particular version was not that high fat -- i mean, who needs that, what was D'Artagnan thinking, I want a better one -- but duck leg is still duck leg, and this still had enough fat to bond with the orange wine's tannins while the wine's acidic sharpness cut through it.

I wasn't sure it would be so, but another advantage is that this wine is very savory.  Not only is it bone-dry in that Alsatian way.  The secondary flavors are all savory rather than minerally.  (Maybe that suggests Sylvaner rather than Auxerrois?)  And there's a very saline finish keeping it up.

I don't know what makes a wine "Eros" rather than "Brutal!!!".  But I do have feelings for this bottle.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

I started this bottle at cellar temp.  It's only getting better as it heats up.

I'm going to have to come to terms with not drinking orange wines with serious chills.

[Sneakeater]

Amiright?

 

[bloviatrix]

Belated happy birthday.

[Sneakeater]

Thank you!