paul o' vendange

Craig, don't know much about the Washington terroir; where are Armin Diel's vineyards within the Nahe region, and how does it compare to the Washington site?

Laurel, Seattle is a beautiful town. Sorry to say I have lost touch with friends from there (of Seattle Rep), but would one day like to pay homage again. Maybe you could make room for one more french restaurant about 5 years from now?

THAT'S IT! Brilliant. Could become the next wave of american cooking - neo-apocalyptic GMO Sourcing, NAGS for short.

Spoken with the zeal of the field. Forage on, NeroW!

Laurel, I don't know where you live, but I am jealous. I'm looking out the 18th floor of the Chicago Loop. I think I see a three-eyed carp walking across the Chicago River bridge. Sounds great.

Well, Nickn, I guess I always feel a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Maggie, why don't we just host a "nothing but really hackneyed aphorisms allowed" contest? Like jazz, it could be the only indigenous writing we could truly call our own? I'll start. I have been waiting for a reply for some time now, but realize it won't be coming any time soon...after all, A WATCHED POT NEVER BOILS. (gauntlet thrown).

Just had lunch with chicken breast supremes, sauce poivrade, and the above-beans and rosemary oil. Tonight, ribeye, bordelaise, frites.

Ahem. Maggie, I think we should just cash it in. I don't know if it's possible to match the brilliance of those openers. But then, Rome wasn't built in a day, so we might as well shoot for the stars and leave no stone unturned.

A variation on FL's "Double lamb rib chop with cassoulet" - lamb loin chops; "cassoulet" of white and pinto beans, haricot verts, yellow wax beans, soy beans; "quick" lamb sauce and rosemary oil. Delicious. Started with a "napoleon" of phyllo (I usually want puff, but phyllo is so much easier - bought!), herbed three cheeses, ratatouille, and calamata tapenade, plate drizzled with balsamic glaze and basil oil. As I work through the FL book, I am coming home to something. It was always my bent to try and be inventive in composing a plate, and I spent a lot of time thinking of a "sauce" to accompany the main dish, in this instance lamb; trying to "make something" spectacular out of the item by the use of a (usually) non-integral sauce (an example is a whitefish I make - plate a roast red pepper coulis, then a mound of spinach, the whitefish, and topped with deep fried [to "carbonized"] finely julienned leeks...) and inventive garnishes. Chef Keller's use of integral, quick sauces, and his simply elegant plate composition is bring me to think more deeply about extracting the intrinsic quality of a food, trusting that, seeing where it can take me. Something about his cooking looks to me almost stark, yet in its simplicity, there is a softness, and invitation to enjoy the thing; it speaks volumes over the foams, towers, almost aggressively abstract plate composition I have seen elsewhere. I know this is nothing new, and I certainly don't mean to leap into the "foam/no-foam" fray, or related arguments, especially in a "what did you have for dinner" forum. But I think it is an interesting place to be, culinarily speaking. It's more and more where I want to go.

Veal Kidneys with mustard sauce; perigord-style white beans; braised endive.

Straightforward daube provencale; with a really beefy Bandol (La Bastide Blanche - and I do mean beefy, as in beef broth, hide, and smoke; a nice layer of liquorice, though, with herb - lavender?).

Malachi, something I got while working in California was pineapple sage, yet (admittedly, without digging too deep), have not seen it since - this was the sage I used in the above-mentioned rabbit braise, and it was out of this world. Ring a bell from your neck of the woods? Apologize to all for the double posts - not sure why this is happening, nothing obvious coming up. Not trying for double bandwidth, my hot wind's enough once around, to be sure!

Malachi, something I got while working in California was pineapple sage, yet (admittedly, without digging too deep), have not seen it since - this was the sage I used in the above-mentioned rabbit braise, and it was out of this world. Ring a bell from your neck of the woods?

Change of plans - all FL. Got some nice black sea bass from Fox & Obel, going to try FL's black bass with saffron-vanilla sauce, spinach. Mussels (from mussel stock used in saffron-vanilla sauce) with sauce mignonette or sauce gribiche. Dessert - candied fennel, rhubarb confit, and a (bought) strawberry-basil-vodka sorbet.

Change of plans - all FL. Got some nice black sea bass from Fox & Obel, going to try FL's black bass with saffron-vanilla sauce, spinach. Dessert - candied fennel, rhubarb confit, and a (bought) strawberry-basil-vodka sorbet.

Malachi - agree, the Allagash Tripel is excellent, never had the gran cru. I do like Ommegang's Ommegang "burgundian" brew. More, I'm jealous of their "terroir," upstate NY on 160 acres of beautiful country, a converted chicken farm, if memory serves. I also like some of Unibroue's products (Fin Du Monde, Maudite, their wit Blanche de Chambly); I lean to golden, abbey and trappist ales more than wit (La Chouffe, Orval, Duvel), but love the wit on a hot summer's day. * * * Dinner tonight - celestin blondeau sancerre '98 (father's day gift), striped bass, artichokes barigoule (a la FL).

Malachi, wonderful. Sage and cherries, will have to try. Once made a rabbit braise with coffee, sage, demiglace, others - sage is an awesome herb. And Allagash white is a great beer. Have you tried Ommegang's offerings? 160 acre brewery in god's lap isn't bad...

Grilled pork chops - marinade: rosemary, cracked pepper, shallots, garlic (ungodly amounts of garlic), olive oil. Indirect grill under cover with sprigs of water-soaked rosemary. Sauce Robert (I love this sauce for all meat grills, esp. pork) Pommes anna. Paulaner Munchen lager. Helles, straight and dependable. 72 degrees, light wind. My 2.5 year old shaking glitter on the father's day card he's fashioning as a "surprise." Is this heaven?

Thanks again, Mark. To the extent possible, I would always like to find a good, solid representative of a given wine style, in order to know, "this is cahors," and not "this is an anomaly of the vintner," all in order to distinguish the great houses, regions, grapes, etc. (to the extent possible; e.g., I acknowledge there is not truly "one thing" as a Bordeaux). Sounds like you have given one for the Madiran, and I will be looking for it. First, let me slay that roebuck I've been stalking with my teeth...

Mark - thanks for the heads up on the Madiran - I will give it a try. Have to say, as ridiculous as it sounds, the visual of the Cahors was almost enough to sell me. Like drinking blood.

This may be out there, but I think it may be an interesting jumping off point for discussion. I am fond of Rhone wines generally, and thus Cahors/Malbec wines are not typically my first choice. Not knowing much about these wines, I called my cousin (Rick Boyer, winemaker for Jekel Vineyards/Richard Boyer Wines) to give his thoughts. He indicated that he had been to Cahors last year, and had a tremendous time. Seems there was an outdoor "art" festival consisting of all kinds of ribaldry and mayhem, all of it around the wine... The land is rough, sparse, and the people seem to have a certain rough-hewn "to hell with the others" bent when it comes to their wine, if I've gotten him right...they know their wine is rough, highly tannic (and in the bottle I recently tried, I would say high in lactic or malic acid) and huge - not too complex, to me, just big. And they like it that way. Not my taste, really - as I say, I prefer the forward, velvet fruit and spice of the Rhone, particularly Gigondas. But then, when I thought of the people, and the land, which is loaded with wild game (venison, fowl), I did see a perfect marriage with grilled meats, not aged at all, but wild as hell...I think now of boar, glistening with fatty remnants, grilled with local herb-crust and married with the tannic/acid, undeniably beautiful black wine. So, the point of my post: How much do you think the "cultural" terroir comes into play - not just the geographic inheritance, but the historical, and cultural, milieu of a given place - in the making of given wine(s)? All hype, or useful to understanding the "realm of play" of a given body of wines?

Torakris - interesting article. From a brewer's perspective, yield is often at war with the quality of the finished product; more extract in the mash tun often comes by final runnings which are loaded with impurities (largely tannins, anthocyanogens, and high alkalinity by-products) which will greatly affect the final product. With sake, given that the finished product is wrought at the end, and pressing is exactly what is needed, it was sad for me to see so much loss by retained sake in the rice - and I would have liked to employ the alcohol addition method. Here, yield and quality seem complementary, not at odds. I'm with the article's conclusion: as long as it's known and by design (as opposed to by deceptive or shoddy trade practice), I care only about the quality of the final product, and if that can be abetted by the use of ethanol, making it superior to "pure" products, then so be it.

Lemon and Thyme Roasted Whole Chicken, garnished with roasted whole-heads of garlic. Fresh thyme, minced shallots, minced lemon rind, lemon juice, kosher salt, pepper, stuffed under the skin of the bird; whole roasted garlic heads, both about an hour at 400. Simple, the fresh herb and lemon acts as a room vaporizer. Not quite ChefG's rosemary fumes, but redolent of la belle campagne... Xan, the beurre blanc with salmon, but making a pilgrimage to Isaacson's again, they've got grouper, mediterranean sea bass, who knows?

I, too, use backs. Really, really cheap, work great. Whatever I've done, the single most important technique I've employed is to soak the bones in ice water for a good while before adding them to the stock pot to simmer, up to a couple of hours, changing the water often. Making a white (veal, or chicken) stock, I find that without this process, the skimming/clarifying process during the simmer is much more laborious, as the bones are much more productive of impurities (albumin, blood, etc.). With brown stocks (at least those where I've roasted bones, unlike FL), not a problem, as fats/proteins are kicked off with the roast and pour off prior to deglazing.

By the way, Xanthippe, I love blood oranges, wish they were more readily available. Your tartlet sounds great. I want to make a blood orange beurre blanc for some more fish this week, if I can get ahold of the oranges...