• 19 idleness day

    From MICHAEL LOO@1:123/140 to ALL on Thursday, September 26, 2019 09:07:48
    This meal was built around Chateau Montus 1993 (Madiran),
    the baby of that winemaker we mentioned before, Brumont.
    It's a superb wine made from the Tannat grape, famous for
    being hard to tame and making an everlasting wine. It had
    been demonstrated through this trip that cellaring wine in
    ideal conditions makes them close to as long-lived as we
    are, and this quarter-century old wine was still in its
    first youth, not yet smoothed out in middle age, but about
    ready to drink. With a big wine (the Tannat here is blended
    with Cabernet to milden it), red meat is the normal pairing,
    and Ian made 55 degree (131) lamb with madeira sauce. I was
    not quite in agreement with the cooking temperature, as the
    gristlier bits had just begun to denature and would have
    gone gooey and delicious at maybe 57. With normal cooking,
    the direct heat makes the edges go above that temperature,
    but with sous-vide, that never happens, so you get these
    strings which amuse me but aren't ideal for others. Madeira
    sauce was a brilliant if classic accompaniment; this would
    be one of the few situations where I'd have liked truffles,
    but it's not season for the best variety.

    Local new potatoes poached in stock were delicious, as much
    as potatoes can be, and green beans from the garden were
    done crisp-tender, sweet, and lovely.

    Dessert was red and white peaches from the garden in caramel
    syrup, perfectly simple, and as they say simply perfect.

    --

    I made omelet for breakfast; for me, they'd bought some pasta and
    a jar of Bolognaise sauce, so I borrowed some hot pepper from the
    main house and made myself capellini bolognaise piquante, using
    2/3 jarred red stuff and 1/3 butter into which I'd frizzled some
    garlic and hot pepper and almost evacuated the kitchen. The sauce
    was okay but sweetened in the American style and with a flavor
    reminiscent of Spam, so I added still more peppers. It did the job.

    Not much going this day. Lilli was feeling peaked, and our modus
    operandi seemed to be one day on and one day off, so we didn't
    do much this day.

    In the evening, after being amused with beer and the Internet (and
    for me, getting a connection to Doc's), Swisher and I went back to
    the main house for cocktails and dinner. More of that local Coteaux
    de Glanes, available in red, pink, and white, followed by Cajun meat
    loaf from an echo recipe with "very hot" sauce. It was good in the
    mildly ketchuped standard way, improved by Ian's using a superior
    ketchup, either artisanal or made by himself. It was mildly spicy,
    with the very hot sauce adding just enough but not very very.

    Mash, again local potatoes, went very well, as did sweet and tender
    steamed broccoli from the garden.

    Today's wine was Chateau Ksara Reserve du Couvent 2007, a slightly cooked-tasting Cabernet with pruny and coffee-chocolate notes, When
    Ian said that he was pulling one of the top Lebanese wines, I was
    hoping for Musar, but this proved to be almost as eminent at a
    fraction of the price. It had a big palate and a big finish and
    stood up to spicy food, which Musar probably wouldn't have.

    Dessert was Victoria sandwich - an old recipe featuring layers of
    a moist sponge with buttercream and strawberry jam. Nice; I had
    the classic accompaniment of tea with this.
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