Blame it on Rioja

Anticuchos of octopus with herbed mashed potato, Chimichurri sauce, and ají panca, at Restaurant La Mar, San Francisco.

If you had told me last winter that one of my favorite dining experiences of the coming year would take place in a restaurant renowned for its ceviche, I would have wondered what you had been smoking. (Something aboout the washed-out white color over-citrused fish takes on. )

Can’t say that I crave ceviche now, but ho! did I love La Mar Cebicheria*, a Peruvian newcomer along San Francisco’s Embarcadero.  The California halibut ceviche, the clásico, was pristine and refreshing and was a nice match for one of the Riojas I had brought along to this working press lunch (and which wine director, Emmanuel Kemiji MS, very kindly let me open), a classic white I had never heard of before, Viña Valoria Blanco Crianza 2000.

Although the wine was a little tight at first, this classic white Rioja, aged in  neutral oak for at least a two to three years, as far as I can tell, was quite a nice surprise as it opened up.

Same went for the wine’s compatability with our second course, Causa Limena: Dungeness crab with avocado pureé, cherry tomatoes, ají amarillo (yellow chili pepper), huanacaína sauce (a kind of cheesy/creamy ají amarillo dressing), and basil cilantro oil.

Then onto octopus skewers (anticuchos) over herbed mashed potatoes with red chilis and Chimichurri, which were so good that they very nearly made me forget that I was working, so badly did I want to just reach out and grab ‘em two at a time between my knuckles.

Similarly up my alley was a Peruvian stir-fry called Lomo Saltado: a bowl full of some of life’s most wonderous things–beef tenderloin, french fries, red onions, tomatoes, rice, cilantro, garlic, soy sauce, and that tasty little yellow rascal again, the ají amarillo. Ay!

In addition to the Viña Valoria Blanco, available at K&L Wine Merchants in San Francisco for $18.99, we also brought along a Muga 2007 Rosado (always a food-friendly choice, $12), and a Marqués de Vargas 2004 Reserva, a great deal at $24 retail (and perfect with my blissed out beef experience).  From the ever solicitous Emmanuel Kimiji MS, we ordered an over-the-top modern-styled, extremely value-oriented bottle of La Montesa, a newcomer from the esteemed Rioja Baja bodega of Palacios Remondo, as in Álvaro Palacios, $36 on the list, about half that in a store, $15.99 at PJ Wine in New York, for example.

*Until someone explains to me satisfactorily why it’s ‘cebiche’ and not ‘ceviche,’ I will continue to use the “v.”

Grapefruit Drizzle: Lily Peachin puts the final touches on a new holiday classic

The great thing about coming up with your own recipe is that you get to do it exactly the way you want–no needless nods to misbegotten ceremony (Ambrosia anyone?) or to someone else’s notion of what goes with what.

Sometimes it’s as simple as bringing together a handful of your favorite things.  In the case of Brooklyn wineshop owner Lily Peachin, that meant composing a salad of Bibb lettuce, avocado slices, and grapefruit sections (a few of her favorite things) and topping the whole thing off with the juicy and colorful  pips of the Christmas-y pomegranate fruit and a drizzle of vinaigrette made from the free-run juice of the sectioned grapefruit.

Lily’s handful of favorites on a plate–a variation on a salad her mom, Gail Peachin, came up with after a trip to Mexico a few years ago–proved such a hit this year,  it may just end up a holiday perennial in her household for many years to come.

Bibb Lettuce Salad with Avocado, Grapefruit, and Pomegranate Seeds

1 Head of Boston Bibb lettuce, ribs removed, rinsed and spun dry

1 Yellow Grapefruit

1 Ruby Red Grapefruit

2 Ripe California Avocados

1 Pomegranate, seeds removed

2 tsp. White Wine Vinegar

4 Tbl.  Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

1.  Over a bowl (to catch runoff juice), peel each grapefruit with a sharp paring knife, making close rounded cuts along the length of the fruit from top to bottom in order to remove strips of both the rind and outer membrane in the same motion.  Once the fruit is peeled (and while continuing to catch the runoff juice), section out each wedge of juicy pulp from its inner, pinwheel-like membrane with close incisions, avoiding traces of both membrane and pith.  Set aside grapefruit sections and reserve

4 Tbl. Fresh Grapefruit Juice

2.  In a mixing bowl, combine the vinegar and reserved juice. Using a whisk, gradually add olive oil until dressing is emulsified.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

(Steps 1 and 2  can be done several hours  in advance.)

3.  Just before serving,  slice avocados into two-inch wedges and remove from skin.  Arrange three or four leaves of lettuce onto six-inch salad plates, topped by three or four slices of avocado and an equal number of grapefruit sections.  Shower plates liberally with pomegranate seeds.

4.  Drizzle each plate generously with dressing and serve immediately.

Serves 4

Lily Peachin is the owner of Dandelion Wine in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. To accompany her salad, of the 500 or so labels she stocks on her shop’s shelves, she recommends both a sparkling 1997 Lambrusco Rosato from the house of Lini in Correggio and López de Heredia’s Rioja Rosado Gran Reserva 1997.

Part of what makes Doug Frost MS, MW such an effective wine communicator is that the guy has a knack for scene setting. It’s also one of the reasons why I feel a strong sense of kinship with him.

The first wine he presented at a Rioja seminar last month in Napa, during the Culinary Institute of America’s “Mediterranean Odyssey” Worlds of Flavor Conference, was a López de Heredia Viña Tondonia 1981 Rioja Blanco Gran Reserva, the product of an archetypically classic winemaking house  quite familiar to any reader of BioR and/or close follower of Spanish wine.

But, hold on a second. Before we get to the wine in question, the scene needs a little settin’, and that’s where Doug Frost comes in.

Twenty-two minutes later, we’ve only just crossed over into the 20th century.

I can’t really blame him.

To understand what makes López de Heredia a ‘classic’ house and this classic style of winemaking developed, you really have to start at the beginning of winemaking in Spain,  at least as it existed in the first few centuries of the common era, around the time that the Romans introduced to the Iberian peninsula an innovation that would remain largely unchallenged for centuries to come as the ‘correct’ way to make wine:  the sandstone press or lagar.

And though it is widely known that Rioja is typically a blend of several different grape varieties, what is not so widely known, I would imagine, is why this is the case.

To uncover the origins of the winemaker’s ‘field blend,’ and to learn how a proto-Rioja might have tasted, check out Doug’s short clip.

More installments to follow.

THESE ARE NOT SHOTS: A scene from Bar Aralar Taberna in San Sebastián.

This week I will be posting daily reports from a trip I made to northern Spain last week with a group of sommeliers and journalists from the U.S. We spent most of our time, of course, paying visits to Rioja bodegas and vineyards, getting to know a bit more about the stories behind the bottles we tasted, but we began our journey in San Sebastián, where, in all of the great pintxos bars downtown you basically have five options by the glass: un cidra (cider), un txacolí (a spritzy, refreshing white wine made in nearby Guetaría with white and red grapes), una caña (a short glass of beer), un crianza (i.e., a Rioja crianza), or un reserva (i.e., Rioja reserva)*.

Monday, September 9, 2008

ARRIVAL
All members of our group accounted for at Bilbao airport. The ever-agreeable Kelly Bucher of the Vibrant Rioja team, a veteran of last year’s whirlwind sommelier/CIA production combo-platter trip that nearly did us in, is my co-host. Alfredo Ogueta, with whom I have traveled in Rioja now on four occasions, is our driver again for this trip, an enormous asset, given his driving skills, impeccable promptness, and his willingness to make phone calls to bodegas and Rioja’s Consejo Regulador, our hosts, on my behalf.

Lost luggage among one in our group sadly meant that our original plan to have lunch in the town of Guetaria at Elkano–a fish restaurant that Gerry Dawes once called “one of the finest in Spain, if not the world”–would not be possible. I had grappled with the wisdom of going straight to lunch from the airport but had concluded that most food and wine people would be willing to push through their jet lag to enjoy such high quality fish and one of Europe’s best wine lists, but my theory would not be tested today.

It was decided that we would go straight to our hotel in San Sebastián and enjoy pintxos later that evening in the city’s old quarter, or parte vieja.

Kelly and I step outside to go over the night’s plan and extract Euros from an ATM a block away. A woman in her early twenties in line behind us wears a t-shirt from CBGB, the infamous, now defunct punk club two blocks from my apartment. We step out onto the promenade overlooking the city’s famous Concha inlet and beach. The weather is perfect and, for a moment, I silently try to calculate a way to run upstairs, throw on a bathing suit, race into the water, come back, shower, and dress, all in time to meet everyone in the lobby in one hour. I abandon my dream.

OUTING
We’re a pretty big group, nine in all: Kelly, myself, plus five sommeliers from around the country and two journalists. They are:

Russel Corzine, Sommelier at Joe’s Prime Steak, Seafood, and Crab, Chicago, IL

Kelli Farwell, Wine Director for the Dressler Restaurant Group in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Rosie Gordon, Sommelier at Plumpjack Cafe, San FranciscoDavid Rosengarten, freelance journalist

David Rosengarten, freelance journalist

Tim Teichgraeber, freelance journalist

Gretchen Thomas, Beverage Director, Barcelona Restaurant Group, Connecticut

Barbara Werley MS, Beverage Director, Pappas Brothers Restaurant Group, Texas

Wild mushrooms, ham, and hake at Casa Tiburcio, San Sebastián

We make our way through the many pintxos (tapas) bars in the parte vieja, an activity the locals call txiquiteo [chee-khee-TAY-o] named after the squat little wine glasses the locals call txiquito (and Riojanos call chatos). Although it’s a Monday, with a couple of my favorites (Bar Borda-Berri, Goiz-Argi) closed for the evening, most bars remain open, including Bar Aralar Taberna, where slices of gamey jamon ibérico pair nicely with a Campillo 2007 Rioja Rosado as well as an uncharacteristically ripe 2001 Viña Alberdí Reserva from Bodegas La Rioja Alta); La Cepa, home to the best revuelto, or soft scramble, in the world, made with ultra fresh gambas and eggs no more than two days old; and Casa Tiburcio, whose wild mushroom dish (which includes the glorious perechico, a mushroom I have written about before) was lemony, earthy, and prodigiously habit-forming.

We finish our night at Bar Bergara across town, known for its creative pintxos. A canape topped with a mousseline of wild mushrooms, cream, and shrimp thrown under the salamander for a few seconds sounds simple enough, but, man alive, it put me under a little happy-trance, an experience punctuated by occasional snorts of Roda I 2004 Rioja.

By that point most of us are at the end of the line. I do wish we could stay here for another day or two. The beach is calling out to me. But we have a few big days ahead of us. It’s time to rest before heading over the mountain into San Sebastián’s chief supplier of red wine, Rioja.

TARANTINO TAPAS CRAWL: From left to right, Gretchen Thomas, David Rosengarten, Tim Teichgraeber, and Kelli Farwell in San Sebastián.

*The reason for the masculine article preceding a feminine noun (un crianza, un reserva) is the unsaid “vaso de,” or “glass of,” or “vino de,” or “wine with”

SECONDS BEFORE A LEMON SQUEEZE: Fluke (foreground) and Black Sea Bass at Artie’s South Shore, with lovely accompaniments, July 2008.

A few weeks back I revisited Artie’s South Shore Fish Market and Restaurant in Island Park, New York, just over the bridge (or one train stop in) from Long Beach.

It was one of those perfect summer days, a Tuesday, and my friend Lily and I decided to turn it into a perfect beach day. With the exception of its “no dogs allowed” policy, Long Beach is an ideal one-day getaway destination for New Yorkers. The beaches are clean and well monitored, and diving into the rolling salt water surf made me feel like I was in a 19th century novella, out taking the cure by the sea.

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Breakfast today, courtesy of LESP. Photo: ADM

One of the more glorious advantages of living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan is my proximity to Russ & Daughters. The Harry Winston of smoked fish, a downtown New York landmark, and a living history of classic Jewish-American gastronomy, Russ & Daughters today is owned and operated by third-generation Mark Russ Federman, alongside members of the family’s fourth generation, including his daughter, Nikki Russ Federman.

Every so often, when I need a physical and/or emotional boost, I walk down to their Houston Street shop, take a number, and breathe it all in, settling my excited nerves until it’s my turn to order.

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Summer served: Grilled chorizo, baguette, and a porrón filled with Muga rosé, September 2007. Photo: Adrian Murcia

It’s one of those cravings that kicks in with some regularity this time of year, usually in the middle of the day: an unmistakable hankering for the garlicky, smoky-spicy, porky flavors of chorizo, the Spanish national sausage, believed to have originated in Extremadura but available around the corner from virtually every street in Spain.

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