May 17, 2016 Lunch – Savoy, Jadot Wine tasting at Artichoke, Dinner – Guinness Beef Stew and Corn Bread
Rich invited me to lunch at Savoy today. This was my first lunch. Rich ordered an Aji Tuna Bowl, which had a center cut filet of Aji tuna seared on red smashed Potatoes and some vegetables. The bowl concept as Rich explained it is to join a choice of a protein with a choice of a starch and a choice of a vegetable in one bowl. There are lists of ingredients to choose from, so you build your own meal. Not unlike our standard approach to dinner menu planning ($17.00?).
I chose a Ceaser Salad with extra white anchovies ($9.00).
After lunch I drove to Artichoke for Southern’s Louis Jadot wine tasting. I love these events. They are usually associated with some event in the international wine trade. The three I have attended have all been major French wine producers; Trimbach, Drouhin, and now Louis Jadot.
The event is a tasting to the trade of the range of offerings by the producer from the every day offerings on most restaurants wine lists to the highest level of achievement of the producer. With the preeminent producers like Jadot that gets to the heights of Burgundy wines.
Huge flights of both whites and reds were offered. The best red was a 2009 Corton Clos du Roi for $100.00/bottle. There were lots of good whites. My favorite white was Chassange Montrachet, a $65.00 bottle.
My favorite red was the Corton Gran Cru Clos du Roi from Beaune.
Jadot is the other great burgundy producer, other than Drouhin.
Jadot has been selling Burgundy wine since 1797.
There was actually a very nice entry level Burgundy Pinot Noir for around $12.00/bottle.
Artichoke prepared a table of appetizers geared to the wines. Smoked meats, cheeses, beef sliders, and a lovely marinated Jerusalem artichoke, caper, white anchovies, and baby arugula salad. Baby arugula must be the salad ingredient of the moment. We ate it all across Ontario and Quebec on our trip. White anchovies seem to also be my fish of the day, since I had just eaten a clutch of them on my Ceaser salad at lunch.
A Clos is a walled field. Here is the location of the vineyard. In France, each field of grapes in the areas of highest quality wine, such as Burgundy, carries its own quality designation (Grand Cru is the
Highest designation), as well as the location of the field on the label.
We came home around 3:15 for a meeting.
It was a cool, rainy, windy afternoon.
At 6:00 Willy expressed an interest in cooking his Guinness Irish Beef Stew. We agreed and he went toughed store for mushrooms, a parsnip and stew meat.
He added carrots, onion, celery and beef broth to make a lovely thick stew.
While the stew was stewing, we discussed a vegatabl and Suzette suggested corn bread, so I found a recipe in Mark Bitterman’s Simple Food Cookbook for corn bread and Suzette I worked together in the kitchen to make the cornbread. Suzette added some yogurt to the wet ingredients (milk and an egg). I added some fried onions to the batter when it was ready to be put in the baking dish.
After 30 minutes of baking at 350 degrees the cornbread was golden brown and Suzette cut squares of cornbread. And put them in a bowl and we ladled spoonfuls of Guinness stew over the corn bread to combine the two.
I opened a 2009 Clearwater Meritage from Napa and we drank it after we finished the bottle of 2014 Henri Morel Cotes du Rhone Villages. I liked the heavy, yet complex Meritage with the stew. It lacked the silkiness of the French Cotes du Rhone, but it was fun to drink a wine that made the stew taste more delicate.
I ate some Clafoutis for dessert and went to bed early after the Oregon Primary results were announced and during Bernie Sanders victory speech a little after 9:00.
Bon Appetit
No comments:
Post a Comment