The Rest of Us (cont.)

[Sneakeater]

I'll say this, though:  even if last night's superspoofed wine had more left in it, this Naturalish entry was still like a breath of fresh air.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

We'll be seeing Addictive Salted Cabbage again.

I'll tell you that.

[Sneakeater]

Maybe somebody snuck into my apartment at night recently and placed this bottle in the part of my storage "system" I'm just getting to.

[Sneakeater]

When I was a boy and then a teen, one thing I used to love were the patty melts you'd get at Walgreen's in Roosevelt Field.  At the very first, I thought they were weird:  a cheeseburger on rye bread?  Without ketchup????  But as I ate my first patty melt, my boyhood self saw that the (copious) onions, gently fried to sweetness, were all the condiment the cheeseburger needed, and the rye bread was a great foil for all the grease (and tasted great with the Swiss cheese).

You can imagine how my heart sank when, after Walgreen's took over Duane Reade several years ago, the one around the corner from me reopened without the addition of a lunch counter.

Clearly, if I ever wanted a patty melt again, I'd have to take matters into my own hands.

And now this is another thing I can't keep myself from remaking.  I love it -- and I can make it.  (It's a lot of cheese, meat, and butter, though.  You can bet I'ma be eating fish or vegetables for the next couple of days.)

On the side, a different cold cabbage salad from yesterday:  pickled cabbage and bush beans.  This long-term inmate of my refrigerator is really getting good now -- but it didn't have the magic property I'd hoped for of erasing all the (delicious) greasy fat in the patty melt from my digestive system.

The wine pairing was the result of manifestation.  I thought about what would be my ideal pairing for the patty melt, and then I tooled around in my storage units and found I had something that, unlikely as it seemed, filled the bill exactly.

2010 Château Martinat

This Bordeaux from the Côtes de Bourg has the unlikely cépage (even for a Right Bank) of 80% Merlot and 20% Malbec.  No Cabernet Franc along with the Merlot, no Cabernet Sauvignon -- just Malbec.

But that was just what I wanted here.  The Merlot for its odd affinity with Swiss cheese.  The Malbec for the charred ground beef.  (The Cabernets would have been just too refined.)  And to boot, the Côtes de Bourg is (purportedly) called "the Little Switzerland of the Gironde" (I need to get some on-site confirmation of that).

And this wine pairing worked just the way it was supposed to:  Merlot is good with Swiss cheese, probably because of its copious but soft fruit.  Same for the sweet onions.  And Malbec and charred beef duh.

You could say that it's emblematic of the limitations of this wine that it tasted as you'd expect:  no less but certainly no more.

Or you could say, JESUS CHRIST THIS WAS A WINE TO DRINK WITH A PATTY MELT.

This wine is absolutely fine now.  But any future changes aren't going to be for the better.  Drink up, if you happen to have any.  Preferably with a patty melt.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

So how much did this wine cost me when I bought it upon release?

For some reason, the figure $15.99 keeps popping into my mind.

I have all these friends who started drinking wine only when that study came out saying red wine had health benefits.  But they only bought spoofed supermarktet wines, cuz they didn't want to spend a lot of money and didn't care to learn anything about selection.  After all, they were drinking the wine for its chemical properties, not its flavor.

So then other studies came out debunking the red-wine-is-good-for-you studies.  And these friends then announced they didn't like wine anyway.

Well DUH.  All they'd drunk is spoofed supermarket wine.

They should have tried something like THIS.  A perfectly soundly made, perfectly good (but no better than "perfectly good") wine for the same price.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Sneakeater

[MitchW]

I miss Roosevelt Field.  And the racetrack, which back then had good knishes and franks!

[Sneakeater]

I ATE those knishes and franks!

[Sneakeater]

So after this dinner, I clearly wanted some Roto-Routering amaro.

There's one that continues to be my fave.

Varnelli Amaro dell’Erborista

The only sweetener in this is honey.  The rest of its ingredients are different kinds of bitter stuff.

So what you get is the clearest, most direct shot of bitter shit -- but variegated bitter shit:  there's nothing simple about the flavors at play here -- with a hit of honey.

This seems like it should be simple.  But it's not:  it's one of the more complex amari that frequently find their way over my tongue.

For many years now, this has served as exactly what I'm looking for when I look for an amaro.

It certainly worked that way tonight.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Sneakeater

[hollywood10]

Drinking some 2021 Kirkland Gigondas from Costco.  The label claims it is balanced and will improve over the years.  Tastes balanced and very good (not great) to me now.

[Sneakeater]

What I am pretentiously going to call, even though I'm sitting in Brooklyn, Filet de Lotte Dijonnaise.

This was from a very old Pierre Franey recipe.  From before Nouvelle Cuisine.  From when French food was 90% butter.

We're not going back there, and I guess it's a good thing.  But you can't deny how sheerly delicious this kind of food is.

(Some of the modern commentators on the Times Cooking App complain that this recipe is underflavored.  The complainers don't say so, but I'd bet money they lowered the Butter Q.  Fail!)

Some lightly sautéed purple bok choy on the side.  I probably would have done better to steam it, what with all that butter in the fish sauce.

Speaking of the sauce, aren't Black Trumpet mushrooms outrageously good?

The wine took no thought whatsoever.  None.

2022 Maxime Crotet Bourgogne Blanc "Matilda"

Maxime Crotet is a Frédéric Cossard protegé, making him one of the few Natural winemakers in Burgundy proper (so not counting Beaujolais).  He makes negocient wines.  We used to diss those when I was coming up in Wine World.  But if you want to get started in Burgundy and you don't come from A Family, what are you going to do?  It's not like any normal person could afford to buy vineyard real estate there.

This wine is very good.  It's recognizably Chardonnay, but a very sharp thin version.  The flavor is, to use the applicable cliché, laser-focused.  You taste the exotic fruit, SHARPLY.  You taste the citrus, SHARPLY.  The minerals almost cut.

What's wrong with this wine is its price tag in the mid-$40s.  It's a very good wine -- but to me it isn't a $40 wine (much less a $45 wine, which is what I think it actually cost).  It's a high $20s wine, maybe low $30s on a good day.  But I don't rule reality.  And Natural Burgundies are few and far between.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Was it a good pairing?

DUH

[Sneakeater]

I complain about Dame's taking the easy way out by dumping tons of butter on their fish and then everybody says it's delicious.  Why do I think it's OK when I do it?

Well, at Dame I'm paying someone to cook for me.  Whereas cooking for myself at home, I'm just grateful when whatever is on my plate turns out to be edible, much less delicious.

(Also, the mustard slathered on the fish before baking might better balance the butter than whatever's going on in much of what they do at Dame?)

Edited December 5, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Eating alone at home, you don't have think twice about licking the sauce off the plate!

[Sneakeater]

So I've finished dinner, and I'm still a little peckish.

So I remember I bought this apple pie at the Greemarket this morning when I was so depressed at the meager vegetable offerings.

And I think, I could have a slice with some Laird's Bonded.  It would be good!

And I do.

I WAY overpoured the Laird's Bonded.

On the one hand, it's delicious.

On the other hand, when I get up to start work tomorrow (which actually is today), I'm really going to regret drinking all this Apple Brandy.

Which I'm definitely NOT regretting right now as I drink it.

Life is complicated.

[Sneakeater]

On 12/1/2023 at 10:08 PM, Sneakeater said:

([A patty melt is] a lot of cheese, meat, and butter, though.  You can bet I'ma be eating fish or vegetables for the next couple of days.)

So why then did I have two nights of fish swimming in butter?  Cuz it's my nature.

Swordfish piccata.  Where in Italy does this dish even come from?  It must be the South, since I grew up eating piccatas (mainly veal), and Southern Italian was all we had on the South Shore of Long Island.  And they certainly like their swordfish -- the typical fish used in piccatas -- in Sicily.  But do they even have butter down there?

On the side, my beloved fioretti roasted with Nonnata di Pesce (in case piccatas are Calabrian),

I was very excited about the pairing.  Even if it didn't come from Southern Italy (or Central or Northern Italy, for that matter).

2022 Anders Frederik Steen & Anne Bruun Blauert Hold me closer

You could say that Danes living in the Northern Rhône are as far from Southern Italy as you could get.  But one of the best winemakers in Sicily is from Belgium, so who knows?

Steen is like Abe Schoener in that, in once sense, he has no idea what he's doing.  He loves drinking wine, but he wasn't trained in making it.  So he makes intuitive decisions and sees how things come out.  I don't think he makes any cuvée in more than one vintage.  Every year is a different set of wines.

This one is Charonnay and Sauvignon Blanc co-fermented, with some Marsanne from the previous vintage thrown in toward the end.  It's then aged in an old foudre that, although foudres are common in the Rhône, Steen got from someone in Alsace.

An interesting thing about this wine is that it doesn't taste a thing like its cépage would lead you to think.  It doesn't taste like Chardonnay.  It doesn't taste like Sauvignon Blanc.  If anything, it tastes like that thrown-in Marsanne.  But sharper.

Another interesting thing about this wine is that it's absolutely delicious.  The thing I'm fixating on right now is this minty finish that it has.  But probably what's best is the fruit at the start:  it tastes like pear, but much tarter than a normal pear (if this were what pears tasted like, I'd like them).  Then, a long mineral finish (there's also some tea in there, I guess suggesting some skin contact), with lots of acid, leading into that mint kick I mentioned at the very end.

I tend to love Steen's wines.  Not just like, but love.  Given his approach, you've got to be ready for the occasional miss.  But like Schoener as he's developed, the misses are less frequent than his intuitive approach would lead you to expect.  And much more so than Schoener's, Steens wines aren't just "interesting" but delicious.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Chilaquiles rojos con chorizo y camarones seccos.  Leftover and none the worse for it.

I'm surprised I've never heard the resemblance of chilaquiles and matzoh brei remarked on.

Leftover squash and beans on the side.  This time I eschewed the balsamic-honey drizzle.

I had so much success with a blended Mitteleuropean Natural white as a pairing for this last week that I decided to try another.

2021 Heinrich Naked White

This Austrian Natural white comes from the border with Hungary.  The grapes are variously sourced, so it's not a field blend.  The cépage this vintage was 38% Pinot Blanc, 37% Chardonnay, 11% Pinot Gris, 8% Grüner Veltliner, and 6% Welschriesling (which again is not related to Riesling).

A very tasty wine, notably unfunky for a Natural.

At first I thought this was a little staid compared to its predecessor pairing from Milan Nastarec in the Czech Republic.  But then I noticed that the producer recommends you give the bottle a small shake before pouring.  So I shook it around a little, and BOOM.  The wine became MUCH more sprightly.

This is positively weird.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Nastarec still wins, though.

[Sneakeater]

Pizzichi di Farro with squash, sage, guanciale, and ricotta salata.  (This is what happens when a single person has to buy a butternut squash because there aren't any personal-size delicatas.)

What made this dish was my canny choice (nobody else is gonna say it) of a farro pasta.  Its nutty flavor was exactly what the squash wanted.

On the side, kale sautéed with shallot, garlic, and capers.  The last time I tried to make this, I didn't like it much.  But since then, I learned the right way to saute kale.  The sharpness of the capers nicely cut the richness of the pasta.

I couldn't be sure the wine pairing would work.

2021 Summer Wolff Ette

Summer Wolff used to work wine in New York.  Maybe some of you know her (I don't).  Now she makes wine in the Piemonte.  I would, too, if I could.

This is made from Baratuciat, a nearly extinct white grape from outside Turin.  Don't get the wrong idea, though:  it isn't some ancient wine grape; and in fact it wasn't used to make wine, as far as any records show, until the very end of the 19th Century -- before that, it was primarily a table grape.

That history sets off alarms:  this could be one of those "forgotten" grapes that deserved to be forgotten.  But no:  this is delicious.

Baratuciat means "cat's testicles" in the local dialect.  Some say that's because of the shape of the grapes.  Others say it's because of their taste.  I'm not taking sides.

At least in Summer Wolff's hands -- and there are only two people who are now producing Baratuciat wines, Summer Wolff and her husband (a pretty canny strategy, as no matter which one outsells the other, they both still benefit) -- this is an absolute treat.  If I had to try to describe it, I'd say it's like a Sauvignon Blanc with a lot of Chenin Blanc and a touch of Chardonnay -- but with a bitter almond finish (you can really taste it) that lets you know this is a Piemontese white.  It is seriously good:  tart fruit, honey, roundness and then bitterness on the finish.  It's like a flavor festival.

And, glory be, it worked better as a pairing than I could have hoped.  Think of it:  tart fruit, honey, roundness and bitterness.  Just what this dish would want.  (All that and cat's testicles!)

I couldn't have known that, as I had no idea what this wine would taste like.  Just some surmises, based on the few descriptions I could find.  But the pairing was like definitive.

I urge you to seek this wine out.  Shit, try Wolff's husband's, too.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

I don't like enforced gender roles, either.  But I can't help but note that Summer's label is picture of a pretty flower, whereas her husband's is of a cat peeing.

[Sneakeater]

Summer Wolff also makes a Freisa, and you can bet I'm now dying to try it.

[Sneakeater]

9 minutes ago, Sneakeater said:

I don't like enforced gender roles, either.  But I can't help but note that Summer's label is picture of a pretty flower, whereas her husband's is of a cat peeing.

Oh wait.  If the name of the grape means "cat's testicles", maybe it isn't peeing.

[Sneakeater]

Here's a little sandwich I made up myself.  I think it could catch on if folks would just try it.

Ham and swiss on rye with mustard.  (I did improvise a bit by doing that thing where you slather the rye bread with mayonnaise -- I mixed in some La Boite Mishmish, since that spice blend tastes kind of hammy -- and lightly brown it; I wish I could remember what food writer I stole that idea from.)

On the side, some raw miner's lettuce dressed with a mustard vinaigrette.  This is a very delicious green.  (Miner's lettuce is also called winter purslane, and I didn't know you could get it before February.  But here it was on my plate.)

I knew just what wine to drink.

2019 Ratzenberger Rivaner

Rivaner is another name for Müller-Thurgau.

I got the idea for this pairing from the fact that Südtirolian Müller-Thurgau is so nice with speck.  But it makes sense with a wine that's a little citrusy, and a little full, but with a very strong acid finish.

Now I don't know if it's because of the synergistic pairing, or because this wine wanted some bottle age, or just my mood.  But I'm enjoying this (my last) bottle much more than any of the previous ones.

I'm kind of betting on the bottle age.  The different flavor elements are nicely integrated here, in a way that amplifies each.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

Yeah, this is nuts.

This wine has always left me kind of cold.  But I'm really liking this!

[Wilfrid]

You wouldn’t put the lettuce in the sandwich?

[Sneakeater]

I DO NOT WANT GREEN VEGETABLES DILUTING MY MEAT AND CHEESE.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Sneakeater