COWBOY SPAGHETTI & 2022 BODEGA A NOEMĺA MALBEC

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Jim

This recipe is from Allrecipes which hooked me with this intro: “Everyone will love this cowboy spaghetti, a fun twist with bacon, cheese and pasta in a spicy beef and tomato sauce.  The best part is that it’s a one-dish meal, cooked in a cast iron skillet.”   It has a Bolognese-y feel, but less elaborate than my Bolognese recipe in cooking steps, some different spices and far less cook time. Further I switched out spaghetti for fusilli.  OK, Picasso had his “blue period” – I am in my “fusilli period”. I love the screw-like cylinder shape of this pasta.  Fusilli clings to sauces beautifully and it doesn’t require twirling pasta on a fork (with or without the aid of a spoon)… simply stab two or three cylinders with your fork and scoop up some sauce on your way to your mouth.  Then say, “Eeeeee –hah!”  And that’s about as cowboy as it gets!

For a wine I selected a Malbec that I had just tried at a wine tasting I hosted.  The theme for the tasting  was “90pt Wines Under $30”.  It was my favorite wine from the tasting.  Malbec would not be my first choice for pasta dishes.  My go-to would be one from my quartet of comfort food reds: Valpolicella, Barbera, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo or Côtes du Rhône.  But this Malbec is different from any other Malbec I’ve tasted and it paired perfectly with the pasta.

Bodega A Noemía Malbec ’22 (Patagonia, Argentina)
It is neither the straight-forward fruit simplicity of inexpensive commercial Malbec’s, nor is it the highly polished opulent styled upper-tiered Malbec’s.  Rather, this is an amazing blend of Old World balance and restraint with New World flavor interest.  It’s a mineral tinged beauty unlike any other Malbec I’ve had.  I think the Vinous review is excellent: “A bright, purple-hued wine, it offers fresh plum and cherry [mentholated-cherry, my take] on the nose, complemented by delicate lavender and herb undertones. Dry and moderately lean, fine-grained tannins and a juicy mouthfeel lead to a long-lasting, flavorful finish. This is an unusual red within the Argentine context.”

Cowboy Spaghetti

Ingredients
6 ounces of Tanqueray Gin
½ ounce of Noilly Pratt Dry Vermouth
3 blue cheese stuffed olives
A goodly amount of ice
6 strips of bacon
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp fresh ground black pepper
1  pound ground beef
1½ cups beef broth
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp tobasco, or to taste
8 oz spaghetti (I used fusilli!)
1 10 oz can of diced tomatoes with green chiles (Ro-Tel)
1 4 oz can of tomato sauce (I used 8 oz)
1 14.5 oz can fire roasted tomatoes
½ cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese
Scallions, sliced for garnish

Directions
1. Put gin and vermouth into a glass pitcher, fill with ice, stir vigorously while incanting, “You who know all, thank you for providing us juniper and all the other obscure ingredients responsible for creating this sacred liquid!” Strain into a pre-frozen Martini glass of admirable size.  Skewer the olives on one of those tacky cocktail swords, place in glass. Immediately begin consuming.  Now you can begin the food prep, and the cooking!

2. Place bacon in a large cast iron skillet and cook over medium-high heat, turning occasionally until slightly crisp.  Remove bacon to a paper-towel lined  plate.  Let bacon cool, then roughly crumble and set aside.

3. Add onion to the same skillet with bacon drippings and sauté until softened.  Add garlic, salt and pepper.  Stir ‘til fragrant.

4. Add ground beef.  Cook and stir until beef is crumbly and no longer pink.  Lower heat to medium low and sir in beef broth, Worcestershire & hot sauce.  Stir in half the crumbled bacon.

5. Break spaghetti in half and scatter over the ground beef. Pour in tomatoes w/green chiles, fire-roasted tomatoes and tomato sauce over the spaghetti. Spread evenly.  Cover and cook on low for 20 minutes.

6. Remove lid.  Stir and combine the spaghetti and sauce.  Smooth mixture and spread the shredded cheese over the top, sprinkle with remaining bacon.  Cover, let cheese melt.  About 5 minutes.  Garnish with sliced scallions.

7.  Serve. Eeeee-Hah!

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This Election Cycle

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Jim

I’m not a fan of DJT.  But he has correctly alerted us to the cascading threat of the tens upon tens of millions of criminals descending on our borders, many escapees from insane asylums. And who do not come from Sweden, or other good countries. {SPOILER ALERT: I am glad my grandparents got here under the trip wire, arriving in Ellis Island before, when a generation later, Jews seeking refuge in America,  fleeing the iron fist of Nazi Germany in 1939 on the MS St. Louis, were denied entry.   Perfectly understandable.  The State Department, and sympathetic voices in Congress – showing a little anti-Semitism below the hem line – worried that among these Jews there were spies and  the seeds of a Firth Column planted by the very Nazis who sent them into exile.}

Today we are told, tens of millions.  Tens of millions.  Tens of millions (perhaps the entire population of Honduras) , willing to take entry levels jobs just to be here and maybe have the same hope that my grandmother had at age 17 when she traveled by herself from a shtetl in Warshawa gubernia by train to the port of Bremerhaven and boarded a ship to America. She had the name of a cousin in New Haven, and paid for her room and board by being a maid in the multi-family house where her cousin lived.

Tens of millions.  Criminals.  Released from insane asylums and prison cells.  Drug smugglers and rapists.  And here is the crux of the crisis: swimming across the Rio Grande they are welcomed by a cadre of Leftist-Radical-Communist-Fascist-tree-hugger operatives who give them voting ballots and board them on buses to take them to Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin & Arizona where complaint election boards will grant them residency. Voting on Election Day, and then taking the most menial jobs away from good American folk who didn’t want the job anyway.

Oh, my friends it’s happening.  The “steal” is on.  Just look at Connecticut, as blue as the azure sky, and the Nutmeg State is sending an excess of citizens to flood the swing states.  According to reliable sources, 190,000 are bound for Pennsylvania, 165,000 to Georgia, 145,000 to Michigan and 17 to Nevada (my sister’s extended family love to go to Vegas).

Thank the stars in Heaven that there is a watchdog in Mar-a-Logo.

Rumor has it that the population in Texas alone has swelled to twice the population it was in 2004. Enuf is enuf!! I can hear him now: “Not on “T”’s watch!  Folks we got trouble, terrible, terrible trouble.  Trouble! Trouble, that begins with the letter “T” and that rhymes with “T” and that stands for immigration.” (with apologies to Meredith Wilson)

Not for nothing, who was watching the turnstile when Friedrich Trump entered America in 1885?

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Gin ‘n’ Tonic Martini

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Jim

Are you kidding?  A Gin ‘n’Tonic Martini?

To explore new worlds,
To seek out new life and civilizations,
To go where no man has gone before.

First, I am not on a five year mission.  I was just looking to finish off a bottle of Tanqueray Rangpur Gin.

Second, and this must be understood if you go further in this brief essay, I am a committed Martini traditionalist.  This most classic of cocktails is made with gin and, at your discretion, varying smidgens of dry vermouth.  The choice of swapping vodka for gin, even with the endorsement of James Bond, is the path to perdition.  It’s the slippery slope that brings us to Chocolatini, Espressotini, Fruit-Bombatini and other offensive departures from the genuine article.

This, if you didn’t know, is to give folks the opportunity to sip a friendly, less lethal, more appealing (?) concoction from an “up” glass (aka, martini glass) to add, perhaps, a veneer of sophistication to their cocktail choice. Sorry, it’s simply weak camouflage for a drink with training wheels.

Third, in my years past, I  consumed countless gin ‘n’ tonics, particularly during the warm weather months.  PRO TIP: the most important ingredient in a G&T is the tonic.  The next most important ingredient is a plump fresh lime.  Gin is the side show, which is why you don’t have to invest in a fancy shmancy gin to make a great drink – with one exception, which we will return to anon. And then there is this piece of good news:  a restaurant or bar will never (NEVER, EVER) make a G&T as good as the one you make in your home!  Why?  Because there is no tonic from a soda gun that can come close to the fresh taste and effervescence of a newly opened bottle of top quality tonic that you get at your Stop & Shop!! Buy the small bottles.

The recipe for a gin ‘n’ tonic is simple.  Put ice into a highball glass, add a jigger of gin (1½oz), top with tonic, squeeze a wedge of lime into the glass, rim the glass with the lime & drop the lime into the glass.  But, with no more effort you can substitute a “nothing” gin for Tanqueray Rangpur gin.  This fancy shmancy gin is actually worth it.  It’s a lime infused gin that makes so much sense for this cocktail.

We finally return to the matter at hand.  What would happen if we engineer a hybrid of a classic martini with a pedestrian, tasty but still pedestrian, gin ‘n’ tonic?  I devised an experimental recipe: 2 jiggers of Rangpur Gin, 1 jigger of tonic put into a mixing tin with plenty of ice.  Shake vigorously with a solemnity of purpose.  Strain into a pre-frozen up glass.  Finish with a squeeze of fresh lime, rim the glass with the lime, plop lime into the glass.

As I saw things, there were three possible outcomes for this brave new departure where no man has gone before.

One, fail. It ruined a gin ‘n’ tonic, and it ruined a martini.
Two, Winner winner, chicken dinner.  Unqualified success
Three, Interesting.   Sorta like hearing your blind date has a good personality.

OK.  I think I may give this another shot later in the warm weather season, when I might be drinking a gin ‘n’ tonic anyway.

Oh, before I leave.  I went on a blind date once, and the friend who made the intro never once mentioned Sandy’s personality.  Although she did say she was from Brooklyn.

The fixin’s

My sacred mixing “tin”


Richard Parker, my man frog, serves up the finished product

for a more detailed treatise on my Martini experience http://summerofjim.com/?p=110700

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Birthday Dinner @ California Grill February 2, 2024

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Jim

In the words of that great man of American Letters, Yogi Berra, and I quote: “It was dejà vu all over again.”  The Cali Grill has been my go to place for the past 8 year to celebrate National Groundhog Day, which conveniently takes place on the same day as my birthday.  And it also marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox.

There is a wonderful mixture to Cali Grill’s vibe.  Not quite boisterous, but not subdued; not cozy, but not crowded.  Not intimate, but not crazy busy.  Not stuffy; but purely suited for enjoying very good cuisine, very good wine and an opportunity to catch a pretty amazing view of Cinderella’s Castle.


Typically I ask for a table along the window which offers a primo view of the fireworks display over Cinderella’s Castle.  But this year I changed my request to get a specific server.  Walter was our server last year and he was hands down one of the two best servers we have ever had on Disney property (or elsewhere for that matter).  We lucked out getting Walter last year. I wasn’t leaving it to luck this year…  I happily sacrificed a window table in order to ensure being seated in his section.

Martini Time! Sadly Disney is running out their inventory of Tanqueray Gin. Not just at the Cali Grill but at all their other sit down restaurants.  But I could postpone making the decision to quit Disney over this egregious shortfall because Cali Grill still had a bit of Tanqueray N0.10 still in play.  Color me happy!

The dinner at the Cali Grill is prix fixe @ $89 for three courses.  A wine pairing is available for each course, and once again I opted for the higher tiered selection of wines  @ $69.

I had hoped to repeat my first course from last year, Braised Beef Short Rib Wontons, which was a  fabulous starter. But it wasn’t on the menu this year, so I opted for the Spicy Kazan Roll (Crab, Shrimp, Scallops, Tuna & Fireball Sauce).  A brief pause here.  I’m not a fan of sushi, sashimi or any other expressions of uncooked, or nearly uncooked fish (although I regularly scarf down fresh shucked clams and oysters).  Kazan Roll?  I thought it was going to be a fish-based egg roll, with a crisp tasty exterior.  Wrong!  Walter instructed me on how to place some of the fireball hot sauce on each of the rolls, and armed with chopsticks I dug in. 

Yes, it was very good.  And made better because I had a glass of Trimbach Riesling Cuvée Frédérick Emile ’15 as the pairing.  I used the 2014 vintage in a tasting this past November and knew the wine is star quality in every vintage (it is only made in good years).  And the 2015 indeed rated a shade higher than the excellent 2014.  But to quibble over a point or two is a fool’s mission in a wine at this quality level. 

For my main course once again I went with the Fire-Roasted Venison.  I order Venison just about every time I see it on a menu (in fact I had Venison at Jiko in the Animal Kingdom Lodge two days earlier.  Also excellent).  I love a good cut of steak; but I can prepare that anytime at home.  Venison is a treat.  The Chef swapped out the sides from last year and replaced them with Butternut Squash Gnocchi, Parsnip-Almond Purée, Roasted Cippolini Onions, Glazed Apples, Chanterelle Mushrooms & Venison Jus. This dish was superbly prepared and I enjoyed a new vintage of wine that had been in the flight last year. The Duckhorn Merlot Three Palms Vyd ’20 was in perfect sync with rich flavors of the venison and the sides.  Great wine in concert with a great dish – what could be better than that?

Last year I paired the dessert course (a Chef’s Selection of California Cheeses) with the Ruinart Blanc de Blancs.   There was nothing noteworthy in the cheese board, so this year I opted for the Peanut and Banana Torte (Shortbread, Peanut Ganache, Miso Caramel, Nut Crumble and Caramelized Bananas).  Peanut and Bananas?  Isn’t that an Elvis thing?  No matter, I’m sure that the King would have knocked off a couple of plates of this dessert, and it was a definite upgrade over last year’s cheese plate!   The key for me was the Champagne.  I would love that Blanc de Blancs with anything – including the Kazan Roll, the Venison and even a peanut butter and banana sandwich!

THE WINES SERVED

Trimbach Riesling Cuvée Frédérick Emile ’15 (Alsace, France)
The 2015 Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Emile is clear and intense but highly refined on the nose that perfectly blends mineral with concentrated lemon and smoky flavors. Round, concentrated and very elegant on the palate, this is a slightly sweeter than normal Riesling, but it is highly finessed, well-structured and perfectly salty with a long and tension-filled finish. Fine tannins reflect the limestone/marl terroir of the Geisberg Grand Cru with the southeast-facing Osterberg Grand Cru. The 2015 will not go on the market earlier than 2022. 95+pts Wine Advocate

Duckhorn Merlot Three Palms Vyd ’20 (Napa, CA)
A cuvée of 98% Merlot and 2% Malbec. The Duckhorn Vineyards Three Palms Vineyard Merlot is an iconic wine that always demands attention with its yearly release. The 2020 vintage is alluring, persistent, and classic. Epic, elegant and profoundly complex, this stunning wine draws you in with aromas of fresh cranberry, huckleberry, crushed rose petals, raspberry and graham crackers. On the palate, mesmerizing layers of black fig and cocoa powder mingle with the lush berry flavors, with a sophisticated note of minerality emerging on the long, resonant finish. 94pts Wilfred Wong

Ruinart Blanc de Blancs (Champagne, France)
100% Chardonnay. Based on the 2019 vintage and disgorged in 2022, Ruinart’s newly released NV Blanc de Blancs bursts with characteristically reductive aromas of yellow orchard fruit, citrus oil, iodine and toasted bread. Medium-bodied, pillowy and fleshy, with lively acids and a saline finish, it is an attractive Champagne that incorporates 20% reserve wines.
91pts Wine Advocate

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