The Rest of Us (cont.)

[hollywood10]

The right Gewürtztraminer with some good Chinese dishes is the way to go.  But some don't cut it.

[Sneakeater]

At least if you're me, every once in a while you've got to have a great honking greasebomb of a Paulista fried mortadella sandwich.  You begin to get bad-tempered if you don't.

The time had come.  The only variation was that I used up some of my patented housemade hot pepper-spiced Ican'tbelieveyouthinkthisistartarsauce® instead of mayonnaise as a foil for the mustard.

Some of my patented housemade Ican'tbelievethiscabbageradicchioandbroadbeansaren'tpickled®.  Better every day.

I don't keep recurring to Lambrusco with this sandwich out of some connection with Bologna, where they like their mortadella with that wine.  This sandwich is Brazilian, not Romagnan.

I keep recurring to Lambrusco because it really is a great wine to drink with greasebomb meat and cheese sandwiches.

NV Lini 910 Lambrusco Rosso "Labrusca"

This is Lini's entry-level Lambrusco.  And it's fabulous.

A perfect example of a fun (dare I say glou) wine with a surprising bit of substance.  Which you wouldn't expect in a sub-$20 Lambrusco.

So yeah, gobs of dark berry fruit.  It's almost syrupy (like a heavily syruped fountain Coke) (my favorite kind).  But other stuff, too.  Herby savory stuff.  And -- since I've never tasted this in this wine before, I almost have to suspect a flawed bottle (but it's a flaw I like) -- smoke.  So at least this particular bottle would be like the greatest barbecue pairing of all time.

This is another of those wines that's quite simply joyous.  Although part of the joy is how perfectly it complemented that sandwich.  (A lot of it is the bubbles.)

Edited November 14, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

You know what this would be great with?  A smoked meat sandwich!  They have Lambrusco in Canada, right?

[Sneakeater]

I don't think this is the kind of bread they use for this in São Paulo, but for once I had a Portuguese roll available to me at a time I was making this sandwich.  And for this non-Paulista that is the absolute best kind of bread to have this sandwich one.  (In São Paulo I think they go for hero rolls.)

[Sneakeater]

And @Wilfrid will be interested to know (or at least will be polite enough to pretend to be interested) that this time I followed every extant recipe and got the mortadella thinly sliced, rather than following my inclinations as I've always done and gotten it thickly sliced.

And I'm almost sorry to have to note that the sandwich comes out better this way.

[Sneakeater]

(And I mean now that I think of it, I even see why it should be expected it would.  But I was too bullheaded to see that.  I just kept thinking:  fried, thick.)

[Wilfrid]

I definitely want to eat it.

[Sneakeater]

When the tortillas get hard, the hard make chilaquiles.

Chilaquiles verdes con chorizo.

Amazingly, this was a less greasy pork dish than what I had last night.  I wonder how many times in history that was able to be said about chilaquiles con chorizo?  (In a way, that's a trick question, cuz in Mexico chilaquiles are a breakfast food.)

There's no glory in being able to say that you really know how to make chilaquiles -- but I can now say that.

Calabasitas on the side.

One of the good things about having a mind-deadening day job is that it leaves you plenty of bandwidth to think in the background about important things, like the night's wine pairing.

When this one came to me, it was like a jolt.

2014 Cruse Wine Co. St. Laurent

Believe it or not, St. Laurent with mildly spicy Mexican meat dishes is kind of A Thing (at least among those who know and appreciate St. Laurent).

That's because St. Laurent is typically a low-tannin low-alcohol wine with plenty of flavor and a good amount of acid.

The potential fly in tonight's ointment is that this isn't a St. Laurent from the grape's native Austria.  It's from Sonoma.  Which makes you worry about the alcohol level.  (You want low alcohol because alcohol makes spices taste materially spicier.)  And the acid.  (You need acid in the wine for the same reason you spritz the food with lime juice.)

Well, no worries about the alcohol level:  this clocks in at a highly reasonable 10.95% ABV (they must have really wanted to report something less than 11%).  Worries about the acid were warranted, though:  this had less kick than an Austrian one would -- noticeably less.  Just had to squeeze more lime juice on the chilaquiles.

It's definitely fuller in flavor and texture than an Austrian.  That has its good aspects and its bad,  but with this food I'd say that net-net it was an advantage.   I could taste it over those chorizo-ridden chilaquiles.

And it bears emphasizing that while this might be fuller-flavored than an Austrian St. Laurent, that's still St. Laurent flavor:  you could almost identify this blind.  To me, that flavor is charactherized by dark dark fruit tempered by dark dark herbs and smoky tobacco.  It's a very stern wine.

You often hear people say that St. Laurent is for no more than medium-term (6-7 yrs.) aging. Which is nonsense:  I've had 12-year-olds I thought were lovely.  The nine years on this bottle certainly did it no harm.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Cellar temp no decant, BTW.

This wine was bigger enough than the Austrian original that I think a decant would have been beneficial.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

If you're wondering about the geocultural support for the pairing:  (1) California once part of Mexico; (2) Emperor Maximilian.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Mitchell101]

We had exactly that for breakfast Saturday with a bunch of eggs on top. 

[Sneakeater]

Chilaquiles.  They're not just for breakfast any more.

[Sneakeater]

(Of course, I had eggs on top of mine, too.)

[Sneakeater]

Za'atar-encrusted loin lamb chops.  With (Colman's) mint sauce:  that really is a match made in heaven.

Sautéed mustard greens (whatever the yellow hot pepper I put into it was -- visual pun yo -- it was really good).  Roasted Jerusalem artichoke.

I don't know what I did to burn the Jerusalem artichokes to a crisp.  I really have to work on my roasted-vegetable timings.

It did burn the flatulence right out of them, though.

But I live by myself, so who cares?

I enjoyed my entry-level Baudry so much last week that I couldn't help but think of how good wines like that are with lamb chops.

2012 Domaine Bernard Baudry Chinon

This is the junior Baudry cuvée that later was given the title of "Le Domaine" blah blah blah.

This bottle is even better than last week's.  The dark fruit is so insinuating.

What this is making me think is that last night's wine, St. Laurent, is most often likened to Pinot Noir -- but what it's most like, to me, is a lighter Cab Franc.  They both have that very appealing dour affect (St. Laurent more so), that darkness at the very front.  (Nobody would call Pinot Noir dark.)  (Pinot Noir, Gamay:  those are wines of joy.  Wines like the one I'm drinking, they're something else.)

Anyway, in this wine, you get that dark fruit.  You then get the green pepper for which Loire Cab Francs are known.  And a hint of eucalyptus.  It all flows seamlessly.

This is just so good.

This wine is, obvs, in a very good place right now.  If you have a bottle you can reach for, I really urge you to do so.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

This is, for a non-Natural wine, very close to my ideal flavor profile:  lots of it, but thinly textured.  (I mean, that's my ideal for Natural wines, too.  It's just that with Natural wines, you expect it.)

If I had another bottle of this in front of me -- and I'd only have to move a couple of feet to accomplish that -- I'd probably drink it right up.

Good thing I'm lazy.

[hollywood10]

2022 Raisins Gaulois red wine.  A beaujolais adjacent wine with nice mouthfeel and flavor.

[Sneakeater]

Oh!  I haven't had that in ages. It's nice!

Thanks for the reminder!

[Sneakeater]

Shrimp Calypso over rice, garnished with scallion.  Fry cabbage on the side.

Since Shrimp Calypso is nothing more than shrimp marinated and then sautéed in Matouk's Calypso Hot Sauce, and since Fry Cabbage -- you know this, you've had it as the side dish on like 90% of the West Indian plates you've had -- is nothing more than cabbage, onion, and garlic fried till it just starts to brown, I directed all my culinary "creativity" at the rice.  I seasoned it with those Caribbean staples clove, cinnamon, and bay leaf (the rice was aged with laurel to begin with).  I chopped in a Caribbean-style mild red hot pepper (in the West Indies they call them "seasoning peppers").  I cooked the rice in coconut water.

Both in itself and as a complement for the spicy shrimp, this worked very very well.

Wine with this???????  I came upon the idea of a demi-sec Chenin Blanc.  I then thought of bubbles.

2022 Les Capriades Méthode Ancestrale "Pet'Sec"

There might have been a little residual sugar in this Loire Chenin Blanc Pet Nat, but it was not demi-sec in any way.  OTOH, the bubbles did their job.  So not the pairing of my dreams, but not a failure.

Good wine, though.  A very little funk, maybe a very little oxidation, gives it an edge.  The tart fruit and the bubbles just give pleasure.  I don't think I'd ID as Chenin Blanc if nobody told me, though.

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

So I did some research, and I see that one reason Matouk's Calypso Hot Sauce is one of the great off-the-shelf condiments in the world is that they pickle the Scotch Bonnets they use in it.

It totally tastes that way!

[Sneakeater]

FROM THE FRANCO-AMERICAN MID-ATLANTIC:  Pan-fried Blackfish (or Tautog, to honor the people from whom we stole this productive and beautiful land, committing genocide in the process) with warm herb vinaigrette.

FROM CHINA:  Bok choi slow-sautéed (not stir-fried:  there was too much going at the last minute with that fish to permit simultaneous quick attention-prone cooking of the vegetable) with garlic, light soy sauce, and oyster sauce (it would have benefited from a splash of Shaohsing, but my bottle -- although it turned out be exactly where I thought it was -- didn't manifest itself until after I had finished eating dinner).

FROM TRINIDAD:  The leftovers of last night's West Indian style rice.

As you can see, this dinner was all over the map geoculturally.  But I had a feeling these disparate elements would go together fairly well.  And while I'm not saying you'll soon see every restaurant in the country aping this combination, the spice of the rice, the umami of the Bok Choi, and the herby tang of the fish complemented each other well enough.

Also, it helped clean out my fridge.

Now that I know how to cook, these mini-essays are getting boring to write (and I imagine to read).  Mishaps are fun.  "I wanted to do this -- and I did do this" can't help but seem smug.

The wine was mainly chosen for the fish, but it had the potential of going with all three disparate elements.

2021 Julien Brocard Chablis "Vigne de la Boissonneuse"

It's hard to talk about $40 as being  a reasonable price.  But Chablis doesn't come cheap.  And this wine is just terrific.

It's not any kind of Cru.  But it is single vineyard (the first one this maker farmed biodynamically, back in the '90s -- so he's attached to this cuvée, even if it's far from his priciest).

It has that Chablis magic:  laser-like precision, while still retaining some of Chardonnay's generosity of flavor.  As such, it's the Chardonnay for ABCs (if there still are any).  And it's one of the great food wines anywhere.  (And, as such, it's what's good about Chablis for less than $50 -- which doesn't seem like a bargain, but almost kind of is.)

The wine loved the fish (and vice versa).  Its Riesling-like qualities paired it with the Bok Choi.  It was reasonable with the spicy West Indian style rice -- here the sort of latent generosity (not quite roundness, but let's a tendency in that direction) tripped it up a little.  But only a little.

Considering how much I like it, and how useful it is as a dinner pairing, I wish this wine was cheaper.  Despite its price, I can't say I wish I didn't like it so much or that it wasn't that useful.

Brocard makes a Petit Chablis.  I guess I have to give it a try.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Where I think a lot of the writing about Chablis goes wrong is, to read what's written about it, you'd think Chablis tastes more like Sauvignon Blanc or even Muscadet than like Chardonnay.

That's just wrong.  It tastes like Chardonnay.  You could identify it blind.

It just tastes like Chardonnay with no flab whatsoever.

[Sneakeater]

Which is why, BTW, for all its rep as a pairing for oysters, I think Chablis is better with simply prepared herby fish dishes cooked in a pan.

Muscadet (or a Martini) is for oysters.  Beverages with no fruit whatsoever.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

I had a little room left after dinner.

NV Famiile Vallein Tercinier Cognac Brut de Fût Petite Champagne "Lot 70"

This is pretty fantastic.

This is the real thing.  Cognac -- but not too smooth.  (Brut de Fût means "cask strength", as I am confirming as I drink this down.)  The full flavor range of a classic Cognac, but as Tina Turner said in the intro to her and Ike's version of "Proud Mary", not "nice and easy" but "nice and rough".

But yet, this doesn't taste like an Armagnac.  It tastes like an extremely characterful Cognac.

So you don't taste too much grape.  But you go through a full herb and spice shop:  licorice, baking stuff, cinnamon (a very little) and clove (a bit more), chocolate, oaky vanilla, I mean I can't even begin to catalogue everything I'm tasting here.

Famille Vellein Tercinier takes what must be considered a "modern" approach, resulting in more flavor-forward drinks than what would be strictly trad.  In principle -- and usually in practice -- that's just what I don't want.

But I can't argue with what's in this glass.  It is just SO fucking satisfying.

How I'll feel when it's time to start work tomorrow morning is another question.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Sneakeater

[mongo]

it was a person of impeccable taste who recommended that to you. i still have a couple of bottles left.

[Sneakeater]

You know I'd forgotten where I'd heard about this.

Thanks @mongo!

Edited November 21, 2023 by Sneakeater