not drowning, but waving....

[lagilman]

Ah, Monday. Now that I'm trying to keep schedule with an actual 'regular' work-week again, Mondays are all sorts of filled with ...Mondayness. But I still have a really short commute and a very cool job, so I shan't complain.

For those of you itching for a hint of what's to come, there's an excerpt from Blood From Stone over at the Cosa Nostradamus On-Line. And, to get your lazy fingers clicking, LJers who comment there will be entered for a random drawing of copies of Curse the Dark and Bring it On in mass market form, a month before they're available in stores!


Had dinner last night at B Cafe, on the Upper East Side. Mussels and confit pig belly, and Carbonnade Flamande, oh my. Also, salsifis for the first time. Mmmm. Nice little place, solid food, excellent waitstaff, and they seem to have a courtyard in back for warmer weather.

And since it's been a while since my last wine confession:

The bottle we opened to celebrate the final revisions to FLESH AND FIRE was a 2004 Philip Togni Cabernet Sauvignon, a gift from taikyoyo and the lj-less D. Really all I can say about this wine is that it was everything that is classic and good about a Napa Cabernet, and nothing bad.

I've also been drinking a 2005 Cote de Beaune-Villages from Camille Giroud. I picked this up for purely emotional reasons (Beaune was one of the towns I fell in love with while in Burgundy) and 2005 is an amazing year. My personal preference is for the darker fruit of Cote de Nuits, but this is soft, very classic-strawberry pinot noir, and worked very well as a chat-and-cook wine. I also put some of it into the risotto, to excellent effect. $25.

I was also given a bottle of Louis Jadot Beaujolais 2007 by a neighbor and while -- as close readers of the LJ will remember -- I'm not a fan of beaujolais as a rule, this was pleasant, and has excelled at every recipe it's been added to, including the short ribs mentioned last week. Around $10-15

Remember: don't put any wine you wouldn't drink into your food. Your taste buds will thank you.


and now, back to work, me. What's everyone else doing on this lovely Monday of Mondays?

Comments

[mindyklasky.livejournal.com]

What does salsify taste like? I've seen it used in cooking shows, and my best guess is "like celery root" or "like Jerusalem artichoke" but I've never tried it...

[lagilman]

tough to answer, actually. I was told it would taste like oysters, but I got a faintly sweet, faintly woody taste -- like asparagus, without the asparagus flavors I hate, if that makes any sense. Served as a vegetable (rather than pulsed or mashed), the texture was a cross between water chestnuts and a parsnip. I ate them rather than the mashed potatoes that came with my dish, would should say something about how good they were. *grin*

(I would have eaten the potatoes, too, but was too full at that point. Plus, Belgian waffles with Chantilly cream for dessert!)

[mindyklasky.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, Belgian waffles...

Your description makes sense to me (but then, I describe colors as "the blue that is that shade of green" to get at an intensity or tone or something :-)

Sounds like a grand meal!

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

I too prefer the darker Cote de Nuits. This weekend, we had a SAINT-NICOLAS-DE-BOURGUEIL, which was not nice. We have about 200 bottles in our cave and it's a crap shoot whether it will be good or not. Sometimes it's excellent, and sometimes it's not.

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

I mean when we're not taking out a "fine wine", just a table wine.

[lagilman]

ah, back in the days when I had a 200 bottle cellar... then again, I used to look at it and think "what the hell are we stockpiling for, the End of All Grapes?"

I'm running a bit low, though -- only about 15 bottles on-hand, quelle horreur! Must go shopping this weekend, clearly. As soon as a few checks arrive, anyway. :-)

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

Well, normally, we have bottles we are aging (it's cheaper to buy them young!) and bottles that are drinkable right now. But we have more bootles that we are aging than that are drinlable right now. So 5 years from now, we will have a hell of cave. But right now, it's hit or miss.

[shui-long.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that the French tend to drink wine with less aging than the English would think appropriate - at least, judging by restaurant wine-lists, and even more by what's on sale in wine-merchants and supermarkets. Or do discerning French drinkers just put the bottles away at home for an appropriate period?

Of course, cellaring wine can have its failures - I've had to throw out a few bottles which obviously didn't improve with age to the extent that I'd hoped (indeed quite the contrary). I'm particularly disappointed with the half-dozen of '99 Morgon I'd been keeping - opened one recently, and poured it down the drain after one glass. I'm not sure what to do with the other five bottles...

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

I don't know about "discerning French drinkers". We tend to know what we like and try to buy it when it's on sale. But the problem with that is you never know what they did with the bottle before you got it. Even bottles that we have bought at the same time but from different cases tend to be different. We buy table wine (from 7-10€/bottle) by the carton and drink it sooner than later. But we buy "better" vintages young and try to age it. Sometimes it works out for the best and sometimes it works out like your Morgon 99.

[lagilman]

Yeah, I have a couple I'm cellaring, but the finances haven't really been aimed at bulk buying, lately. Once the kitchen renovation is recovered from... *anticipatory glint*