Train derailment?
Salumi!!!
More to come later, but for the moment, I'll just say yum! Cotechino sandwich on Giuseppe bread (like ciabatta) with radicchio, onions, garlic and pesto. And Jen was working!
Hi Jen!
A Taste of the Northwest
Last week, I headed out to Portland and Seattle to get a bit of a preview (moving to Seattle in the fall). Had a series of fantastic food experiences.
In Portland, ate at Deschutes Brewery with a couple friends from college. Ordered the NW Steamer Clams, described as being served with "Mirror Pond Pale Ale, saffron and fennel broth, Zenner's andouille, pretzel crostini," for $13. Being a New Englander, I expected medium to large clams, maybe a half dozen, no more than ten. What I actually received was an overflowing bowl of local Manila Clams. I couldn't even finish the entire serving! They were everything I want from Manilas: tender, moist, sweet, briney, gently flavored by the saffron broth and balanced with the spicy sausage.
Later, I had dinner at my cousin's house, and she just whipped something up: pan seared crispy chicken with roasted golden beets, green beans, leeks, and broccoli, all fresh from the local farmer's market. Just so happens that she had a Vouvray in the fridge, which was an excellent complement to the flavors. Great meal!
After Portland, I headed up to Seattle. Planned to meet friends at The Walrus and the Carpenter, an oyster bar in Ballard, but as the wait was an hour, we went next door to Staple & Fancy, Ethan Stowell's newest restaurant. The Chef Stowell specializes in Italian inspired cuisine, focusing on fresh, local ingredients. The menu is small (only 17 items), but runs the gambit from fresh, seasonal produce, to local seafood and meat. And, I have to say, I love the note on the menu that recommends their tasting menu "if you would like to avoid the trouble of ordering altogether, please feel free to hand your menu back to your server and let the kitchen prepare you a family style supper served in four courses...We would also like to inform you that you really should do this." We opted to order on our own, and I had my second phenomenal Manila Clam moment (my GOD I love those little bivalves!). I also took advantage of the wine list which offers full glasses and 3 oz pours. I had the 2000 Lopez de Heredia Gran Reserva Rosé to start, and then the 2006 Fontanafredda Barolo. I've had the Barolo before, and it's not my favorite style, but a half glass of Barolo for $7.50 is still a steal, and delicious. Definitely going to have to head back there in a few months for the tasting menu.
Next on the great Seattle Food Tour was Pike Place Market. Despite the fact that the market is touristy, they have some awesome produce stalls, and of course the famous fish! I saw a number of fruits and vegetables that you just don't see in Boston: garlic scapes, pictured in the album, a whole slew of wild mushrooms, apriums, about half a dozen different berries (that all looked related to raspberries and blackberries), burdock, ginger shoots, and a whole bunch of lettuce greens that I've never heard of, and edible flowers. I'm sure I missed a whole slew of things too. The produce itself is so impressive, not just in the variety, but the fruit is bigger, the colors are more intense, and the prices are so much better than my local Whole Paycheck...ahem...Foods. The next afternoon, we had a reprise of the produce extravaganza at the Queen Anne Farmer's Market. I may be in love.
While we were down by the market, we ate with a new friend of mine at Matt's in the Market, a truly cute little cafe overlooking the main entrance to Pike Place and the famous fish market. They do a great lunch, sort of upscale pub food: simple arugula salad with dungeness crab, popcorn prawns, creative and eclectic sandwiches -a variation on a bánh mì, a lamb burger, fried catfish, and my choice for the day, beef brisket. All the sandwiches came on brioche buns (always fantastic), and with unique sides, like homemade potato chips (cut the long way), or a garbanzo bean-sultana salad. But the best part of lunch was the view, and the fact that the sun came out right after we sat down and streamed right in the windows. Just fantastic.
The big meal of the week was a dinner at Book Bindery, a restaurant right on the Ship Canal in northern Queen Anne that opened last October. This was one of the first places I got truly excited about when I started exploring restaurants in Seattle. The building used to be a book bindery, and now houses both the restaurant and the Almquist Family Vintners. The main dining room and bar only seat around 30 guests, and there is additional seating in a glassed in patio resembling a green house, but unlike most small restaurants, the space doesn't feel small, but rather airy and spacious. The dining room has an amazing attention to detail -peacock feathers in pastel on the wallpaper, and real peacock feathers tucked into vases on a bookshelf on another wall for example. It felt like someone's living room (a really nice one, but still). The food was impeccable: compressed summer melons with la Quercia prosciutto and Maple-Sherry gastrique, a Duo of Pork -a roasted chop and glazed belly with English peas, lolla rosa, and Maple-Bourbon jus-, and lovely desserts -a dressed up financier and some homemade sorbet. The wine selection was small, but matched the food nicely, and they had averna. :-) And by the kitchen, which was open, but just around the corner from the dining room, was a chalk board with a huge picture of Chunks, from the Goonies. Hysterical. Totally made my day!
Last meal of the week might have been the best though, as we made nearly all of it fresh from ingredients we picked up at the Queen Anne Farmer's Market that afternoon: corn on the cob, salad with green onions and edible flowers, fresh berries, mango, and chicken we picked up at the MetropolitanMarket (the local variant on the Whole Foods idea). We ate out on our deck overlooking Elliot Bay just before sunset, and it was beautiful.
Spoiler alert!
At the end of January, I will be in NYC to take the Introductory Sommelier Course and Exam. Two days at the Tribeca Grill. An entire weekend of listening to lectures followed by a 70 question multiple choice test. It's gonna be a blast.
But that's ok, because on that Friday night, I will be dining at Del Posto.
Psyched.
Reviews to follow.
:-)
Holiday Courtesy
The holidays can be very difficult for us industry folks. It is very rare, for example, to find a restaurant which is closed for any of the holidays, let alone all of them. And then, if you're lucky enough to find a restaurant closed for one day, or in even rarer instances, you manage to request time off and actually get it, you have to relinquish control.
Unfortunately, those of us who work in that upper echelon of the food industry are mighty spoiled. We are used to holding food and wine and beer and cocktails and pastries to high standards that mere mortals can never hope to achieve. As I begin preparations for both Christmas Eve and Christmas celebrations with friends (I am one lucky bitch this year), I realize that it is, in fact, less important that I pair the wine perfectly with my prime rib roast, butternut squash puree, sauteed swiss chard and fancy arugula salad, and more important that our family friends who always bring the wine, feel comfortable doing so. Damn, I hate having a conscience.
So please, to all my family and friends this week, bear with me. I love you all and I so enjoy our time together. I just need a couple minutes to turn off my restaurant head.
And now, I have to go set my Panna Cotta.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
P.S.
I can't help it. I have back up wine selections waiting in the wings. I know. I have a problem. I'm sorry.
Informal Wine tasting with the fam
Opened up a few bottles of favorites and a couple i’d been saving this weekend. My family has been branching out and really expanding their wine appreciation, so I decided they were the best people to share these with.
We started the afternoon with the Alma Andina Torrontes and the Sutton Cellars Rattlesnake Rose.
Torrontes is one of my new favorite summer whites. Crisp and refreshing, with ripe orchard fruit (apple and pear), a touch of melon, lime and meyer lemon, this Torrontes, one of the best examples I've come across yet. One of the things I love about this varietal is that it is very well balanced, with impressively full flavors and a clean, acidic finish. Many full flavored white wines have been oaked or over ripened, which often sacrifices the freshness of the flavors and can leave the mouth feeling too plush, and often cloying on the finish. Also, unlike the more famous Sauvignon Blanc, Torrontes does not seem to have a tendency towards off-putting smells like asparagus, cat pee, etc, which are so often the results of under-ripe SB. All in all, this Torrontes has enough flavor to stand up to the richness of grilled fresh vegetables and meat, but is not going to overpower something more delicate, like fish.
When Carl Sutton set out to make a rose, he took his cues from Lopez de Heredia which is an unusual choice. These rosadas are made with fairly robust Spanish grapes (Tempranillo, Garnacha, and Viura) and then aged, in oak barrels, for 4 and a half years. And THEN aged some more, unfiltered, in bottle. And the Heredia website claims you can keep these roses for around 10 years. UNBELIEVABLE!!
And so, this rose is made from big, red grapes (85% Syrah, 10% Carignane, 5% Tempranillo), spends a good amount of time in contact with the skins (as evidenced by the color, which is almost as dark and ruby red as a young Pinot Noir), fermented with wild yeasts, and then aged, sur lie, for 14 months! We drank the 2006 vintage, super old for rose, and it was still fresh, crisp and refreshing, bone dry, with raspberry, strawberry, candied cherries (the good ones by luxardo, not the fluorescent red ones) and a little bit of vanilla and doughy flavors. Absolutely Love this Wine! I know there's at least one place in the Boston area that has it on tap (yes, Carl sells it in kegs too), but I cannot ever, for the life of me, remember where that is.
And then I busted out the good stuff.
In 2007, I bought $20 worth of raffle tickets at my church youth group's annual auction, and won this magnum of Bouchard Aines & Fils 1997 Gevrey-Chambertin. Here's a bit about the 1997 vintage:
"Challenging weather at the outset of the growing season led to outbreaks of coulure with the final crop being significantly reduced (in some cases by as much as 50% compared to the 96s). June and July were relatively cool and damp but August was extraordinarily hot with many grapes suffering from heat stress. Storms in early September brought welcome relief to the shrivelled grapes. The remainder of the month was predominantly dry and the grapes were harvested with high sugar levels and thick skins. The wines are charming, succulent and fruit driven. They possess lower acidity and less grip than the 96s, and will generally be ready to drink prior to the 95s and 96s. Many are drinking well now. Some exceptional wines at the higher end of the quality scale have the structure and weight to ensure their longevity and will amply repay extended cellaring."
I've been waiting over three years to open it with people who'd appreciate it. Finally, my family caught up, and this was definitely worth the wait. The wine was a beautiful pale brick red color, and a bit cloudy from the settling of the sediment. 
As I had hoped, the nose was absolutely breathtaking with developing fruit flavors ranging from fresh raspberry to dried cranberry, with a good bit of cherry and strawberry as well. Then there were the layers of earthy flavors -leather, straw, old cedar chest. The mouth was equally stunning: bone dry with a nice mix of fresh and baked berries, a touch of the earthiness, excellent body (medium with a bit of weight from the sediment), smooth and round feel, and a long finish with supremely fine tannins.
As the vintage notes suggested, the fruitiness of the wine held up 13 years, the lower levels of acidity and tannin lent to an exceedingly velvety expression, without sacrificing juiciness. Gevery-Chambertin's are often described as one of the most austere examples of Burgundian Pinot Noir, characterized by higher tannins and acid than other regions, but I have to say, this particular year was not what I would describe as austere, but expressive, and exciting, and so worth it.
We finished the meal with a lemon poppyseed bundt cake, fresh berries, ice cream and the Otima 10 year Tawny Port. Excellent end to a great day of great wine and great people.
Same program, slight station change
Going to try using Posterous for my food and wine musings for a while. See how I like it. So easy to post to, and that's Huge for me. We shall see what happens!
Natural History
Old vines are more prevalent than you might think. Two of my favorite wines to sell by the glass in the last few months were both old vine wines, one white and one red. The first, a 75 year old Verdejo, by Botegas y Vinedos Shaya from Rueda, Spain, has ruined me for other Verdejos. In fact, I enthusiastically ordered a Verdejo at another restaurant recently, only to be very disappointed with its thin, acidic presentation. The tangible difference between the Shaya, as a light to medium bodied white with a surprising richness of both odor, flavor, and mouth feel, and the weak, sour, example I ordered, is something that can be attributed to the age of the vines (although, I have to mention that there, of course, could be serious differences in the methodologies utilized by the two producers).
The other old vine wine that I absolutely adored was a 2005 Salice Salentino "Pezzo Morgana" by Li Veli. This was a seminal wine. Salice Salentino is a small appellation in southern Italy, Puglia to be exact, and is made out of the native Negroamaro grape. I have found this particular appellation to generally make very affordable, well balanced, structurally sound full bodied reds, and so I buy a lot of them for my personal consumption. The Li Veli blew all of those others away. We had this available on our glass pour list in the early winter this year, and ran through the entire stock surprisingly fast. The wine was like a cabernet sauvignon in body and structure, with savory qualities similar to a zinfandel or a syrah, balanced with dark, rich fruit, and huge earthy characteristics. My tasting notes, especially the flavors and odors, changed every time I tasted this wine. Unfortunately, we sold out of this wine in less than two months, and we were unable to get more: the producer ripped up all of the vines and replanted the vineyard in 2006.
I'm very excited to read more about this documentation project as I think it has the potential to help in the effort to preserve old vines throughout the wold. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back the other way and average consumers will start to have more interest in the new, the unusual, and the extraordinary. Until then I have one bottle of the Pezzo Morgana. Hopefully it will tie me over.
And this is what's wrong with capitalism...
Hey, Waiter! Just How Much Extra Do You Really Expect?will comment on later...too infuriated to be cogent.
Amazing quotes and ideas about wine from a grower in Alsace
