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Food Thread: Young Is Good! (No, It's The Food Thread, Not The Lincoln Project)

We had a very nice dinner last night with some new friends, and for the occasion I decided to open a very old wine. While I am not a Bordeaux fan I have a few, and since they sometimes age well, I thought it might be interesting.

And it was, but it was clearly over the hill. And not by a a little bit! My guess is that I missed its peak by 15 years. That being said, it was still fun to open and enjoy with people who knew a bit about wine.

Unfortunately it isn't my last old bottle. I am one of those stupid wine collectors who made the reflexive assumption a long time ago that older was better. And even though I have had a huge amount of first-hand experience that strongly suggests the converse, I do not drink my wine young enough. And that is sad, because aside from a very few bottles, like Thomas Jefferson's collection, wine is meant to be drunk and enjoyed, not gazed at through glass.

Winemaking is better than ever, and both the technology and the farming techniques have combined to allow winemakers to make stuff that is excellent, without requiring quite as much age as the traditional methods produced for centuries.

"Yeah...so what?" Well, even if you aren't a wine collector or just keep a couple of bottles around for shits and giggles, I'll bet a fair number of you have been given a bottle of wine to celebrate some special occasion. So drink it. Drink it now! Don't wait.

On a completely unrelated note; is anyone interested in a bunch of very old wine that has been stored correctly?

[Asking for a friend...]

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Trust California to discover a new way to make life there even more of a pain in the ass. Food waste becomes California's newest climate change target. And the solution of course is to mandate recycling. Because mandates that demand solutions that do not yet exist are always the best way to reach a goal.

I wonder whether the greenhouse gases produced by composting and conversion into biofuel are exactly the same as those produced by simply discarding organic waste? It doesn't matter, because the mandarins in Sacramento and their masters at the various NGOs that drive so much policy in California have decided, and if their solutions are nonsense, well then they will pass a law!

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Pork ribs are, along with beer, peanut butter and beef cattle, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. But which kind? I know that there are legions of otherwise normal, well adjusted Americans who for some reason like baby-back ribs.

In case you don't know the difference, the baby-backs are taken from the back of the pig, and the spare ribs are taken from the belly, near the bacon. Read that again...NEAR THE BACON!

So why would anyone buy baby-backs when for less money one can buy spare ribs? For a few reasons that I don't think are particularly important, but here goes. The baby-backs are smaller and more tender and do not require as much cooking. And...uh...that's all I can think of.

Spare ribs are meatier, have more connective tissue, and most important have more fat, because....come on...you know the answer!

I will now climb down of my pork-rib high horse and suggest that if you want to cook baby-backs, you try this recipe.

Crispy fried baby back ribs sounds like a crappy Chinese restaurant preparation, but it is a perfectly sound recipe that takes advantage of all the good things about baby-backs while minimizing the downside (less fat). I will try this in the near future and get back to you if I remember.

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From commenter "Kathy" comes a nice looking marinade with a creole (Cajun? What's the difference?) flair.

Hot Sauce? I don't put it on any foods but do use it when marinating shrimp or pork medallions before grilling:

CREOLE BBQ MARINADE

1/4 cup butter
2 tbsp. creole mustard (or 2 tbsp. yellow mustard plus 1/4 tsp. Cajun seasoning)
juice of 1 lemon, strained
5 large cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. Tabasco sauce
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt (omit for shrimp)

In a small pan, melt butter on low heat. Add rest of ingredients. Stir until blended and warmed through, then allow to cool. For best results, apply marinade to shrimp (30+ minutes) or pork medallions (overnight). Peeling shrimp before applying marinade will make serving and eating less messy, but there will also be less flavor.

She then sent me a second email, warning me that the marinade looks sort of gross. Yeah...sometimes that happens, but looks can be deceiving.
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Chicken cutlets for Chicken Parm or just for snacking or slicing onto a salad or into a sandwich or a million things. Check how much they cost at the corner deli and then reconsider the minimal amount of skill required to make them.

Oh, and they aren't frying at an insanely high temperature, so there isn't much spatter. And damn! They are great!

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Here's a nice simple recipe for chili, and it has a bit of a twist...blending some of the beans to thicken it. I like little tweaks like that.

But you know? I can't recall a bad chili recipe. It's just good, pretty much no matter how you make it. Unless you you something weird like tofu or ersatz meat or some other abomination before the food gods.

Beef & Black Bean Chili with Chipotle & Avocado

No carrots though. Too bad, because they really add a certain je ne sais quoi to chili!

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This guy is great! And until this week completely unknown to me. But Sefton told me about him, and now I am telling you!

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Avocados sans thumbprints, beef short ribs that have meat on them (not the stupid little sliver of bone they sneak into the packages), carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, spare bottles of Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Old Bourbon, an herb garden that actually produces herbs (but no basil!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

And don't think that you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm watching you...all of you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.