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Wow, another study that says that people are impressed by expensive wine, but that when they don’t know the price, they don’t have any idea of…the price! I’m mocking this paper just a bit, but the point is pretty basic. People tend to choose less expensive wines when they don’t have price information. It’s not a huge difference, and then only if you toss out the outliers.

I don’t think that this is anything particularly newsworthy; people will obviously tend to choose wines they like. Many people choose particular wines because they have found that, for instance, Dry Creek Valley Zinfandels have a peppery characteristic that is pleasing. But when you eliminate the more generic wines within the varietal, the remaining wines will be more expensive. Read more »

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Stephen Bainbridge is a well-regarded law professor and a blogger, who also takes food and wine pretty seriously. I am not enamored of his taste in wine, and he sometimes uses short cuts in his cooking that I wouldn’t, but he is undeniably a worthwhile read. Here are his thoughtful comments about Rachel Ray and The Food Network. I ranted a bit on a similar topic, but Bainbridge does a fine job here.

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This is the blog of Michael Laiskonis, the pastry chef at Le Bernardin, a nice little fish joint on 51st St. in Manhattan. Aside from it being a very interesting blog, it is a wonderful example of what separates me and, probably most of you, from professional cooking. Laiskonis’s perspective is radically different. He approaches food from directions I can’t even fathom.

I was reminded of this gulf yesterday when I had a pleasant chat with a friend who was a successful, professional chef. He mentioned that he used to experiment with pairing red wine with seafood, and that it was a difficult feat. It occurred to me that he looked at food from a perspective not unlike that of a scientist. Read more »

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Photograph by Michael Yon

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It requires very little effort to find good pork ribs. Unlike prime, aged beef, which requires significant effort and, in many cases, a trust fund. The warehouse stores carry good-quality, untrimmed pork ribs for incredible prices. I am familiar with how efficiently freight moves in this country, but it still impresses me that they can get this stuff all over the country, in good condition, and charge less than $2/lb. I am sure that if you wandered around Pennsylvania or upstate New York or Iowa and found an artisanal hog butcher, he would be happy to sell you gorgeous rib racks — just not for $2. That is what is so impressive about commercial ribs; they are almost always really good. But there is a reason for that, and it is called fat. Ribs are cooked at low temperature for a long time, so most of that fat has a chance to melt away, and as it melts it bastes the meat, keeping it moist. The long cooking times also help tenderize the meat and break down the connective tissue and collagen, all of which contributes to flavor and texture. Read more »

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This was my last bottle of Williams Selyem, and I am very pleased that it was not completely over the hill. I waited a few years too long to drink this wine, but it has retained a fair amount of fruit without being overwhelmed by that unpleasant, lean structure that I find in older California Pinot Noirs. This was, obviously, a fully mature wine with nicely integrated tanins. That sounds stupid and pompous, but what it really means is that the tanins blended nicely with the other flavors of the wine. It threw just a bit of sediment, and was a surprisingly dark and thick looking red. The finish was nice, although not particularly long. The fruit was disappearing, but there was enough to make this a very nice wine Read more »

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I was never a big fan of his wines, but Robert Mondavi’s relentless enthusiasm for Northern California wines was an important driver in the region’s rise to the ranks of wine-making greats, on par with Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barossa Valley, Barolo and a few other places on earth.

I remember going wine tasting at his beautiful facility in the Napa Valley and being whisked off to a private tasting by a friend of a friend who happened to work there. We tasted some very nice wines (and one great one), were treated like royalty, and even went skinny-dipping in a local lake.

He will be missed by the wine-making and drinking world, and by the many charities that he supported. But most of all his drive and boundless energy, all focused on making the Napa Valley the best wine-making region in the world, will be difficult to replace.

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I won’t bore you with a description of a very pleasant evening spent at Mario Batali’s pizza joint in the village. I will rave, but just a little bit, about his simple but delicious pizza dressed with nothing but thin slices of lardo (pig fat), a bit of olive oil and some chopped rosemary. Simple, elegant and very tasty. And don’t get high and mighty about too much animal fat. The slices were quite thin, and just perfect. Tons of flavor but not too rich. Had we ordered a pizza with any kind of meat there would have been considerably more fat on the food.

Okay, one more thing. The service was excellent — professional, relaxed and informed. If you can cage a table (it was packed at 7:00pm), ask to be seated in Lourdes’ area. She made an already fun evening even better.

Filed under: Restaurants | 2 Comments »

The Walrus and The Carpenter

Lewis Carroll

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright–
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.

Read more »

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