Memorial Weekend Wrap Up
Grilled and slightly smoked things and two really damn fine bottles
Don't worry. This is not going to be a newsletter with paragraph after paragraph detailing everything I ate and how it was prepared over the long holiday weekend. Yes, there will be a few more photos than normal and I'll briefly touch on a few recipes and the whys behind them, but nothing overtly long when it comes to describing the food. It is a slightly longer newsletter as I do touch on two of my favorite wines from the weekend.
Before the wrap up I'll mention I'm planning on focusing this newsletter a lot more in the near future. I don't know on what, specifically, at this point, but having a routine (which is something I find helpful and generally stick to in other aspects of my life) combined with a clearer focus (say, cooking three recipes from the same cookbook, trying the same wine grape across different regions, ect) will hopefully provide more value in this little weekly exercise both to you and to me. It's something I've heard voiced across a few substacks I subscribe to --re: feeling slightly less inspired and marred in the rut, so to speak -- and I'm feeling similar. Regardless, small changes coming.
The Food
Rainbow Trout in Tomato Sauce with Herbs, Garlic, and Lemon
This dish has become a summer classic over the last few years. I watched Brad Leone and Steven Rinella make this and their enthusiasm and general antics won me over. It's a simple recipe to prepare: get as many rainbow trout as you deem necessary to feed who is showing up for dinner. Coat the trout in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Fill the cavities with slices of lemon and herbs. We used thyme. Pour over a good amount of tomato sauce, at least 2 cups, and add a whole head of garlic, sliced in half, to the sauce, and scatter more herbs in the sauce. Salt and pepper and place on the grill or in a low-temped oven. Grill for at least 25 minutes, preferably over a lower heat, until the flesh is flakey and the skin easily separates from the flesh. The sauce will reduce, becoming a sort of paste, and should be slathered on bread.
This is good, and quite delicious with crusty bread, but I will say rainbow trout is a finicky fish, not wanting to naturally absorb the flavors you try so hard to coax into it (I am not talking about smoking the fish. Obviously, rainbow trout + smoke is a tried and lovely combination). While I enjoy it, I don't think I'll make it again next summer. Time to look for a new dish to incorporate into the summer repertoire. The bonus was the leftover trout which we turned into a trout and olive frittata and trout cakes, both decidedly better than the dish we started with.
Venison Shoulder with Spring Onions and Rosemary with a Rhubarb Glaze
I found this recipe while exploring Granor Farms website and doing a bit of digging on Abra Berens, a badass chef native to Michigan. One of these days in the distant future I'll make the trek to Southwest Michigan and eat there, but that's for another time.
Her recipe calls for lamb shoulder and me being me and having venison shoulder made the connection and easy switch. I'll link to the recipe here, and I highly encourage you to attempt it: it's no fuss, feeds a lot of people, and is, most importantly, fucking tasty.
The only other modification I made was using half the amount of rhubarb and adding California peaches to the glaze. The farmers market was not open before my trip up to my folks cabin and so I settled for Meijer rhubarb, which was, frankly, Not Great. I had to toss nearly half the package the day after I bought it, and suspecting as such, bought some peaches to adjust. Why peaches? I don't know. Doesn't a rhubarb-peach glaze sound good? Raspberries would have probably been the more logical choice but intuition and arrogance often trump logic.
Paired with the wine honorable mention: Kirkland Chateauneuf du Pape - 2022. This is serious juice and an absolute steal for the price. If you’re a Costco member keep your eye out for it.
The Wine
We drank some stellar bottles with these meals but I'll focus on two that really stood out.
Strange Wine Co. Pinot Noir - 2022.
The first was a Pinot Noir from Michigan from up and comers Stranger Wine Co., new to me. Before your preconceived notions of Michigan wine cloud your opinion, I'll let the Somm who picked out this bottle for our May wine club speak on the topic:
[…]one of my least favorite conversations is the one sided one where someone refuses to drink a Michigan wine for whatever pre-conceived idea they have. At the risk of offending guests, I fiercely advocate for the Michigan wines I love and often recommend them over and alongside similar French and Italian wines. Winemakers and grape growers here in Michigan are working their asses off to change the Michigan Wine narrative, and they deserve support not because they are local (which is important yes) but because they are delicious and deserve a place at dinner.
She is more than correct. Stranger Wine Co's 2022 Pinot Noir is excellent: I don't mean excellent for a Michigan wine; I mean excellent in the sense I would describe a Willamette Pinot or the Burgundies I can afford. It was light, perfumed, tasted of cherry cola, red fruit, and "with a wildness that is very appealing." Additionally, Stranger Wine Co. includes geeky information on the back of the bottle like the soil type, ph at bottling, how much sulfur was added, aging potential, and a lot more nerdy shit that I find earnestly enduring and fun to know.
During the day, we drove the hour-plus to Nordhouse dunes to hike and eat lunch on the beach of Lake Michigan. Hiking the dunes and lakeshore and inland forest directly off Lake Michigan, proceeded by popping this cork a few hours later, felt like a great way to complete the circle of the day. We drank it over the course of hours, but paired it with a simple summer sausage pasta with sauteed sweet peppers. I understand this will be a pretty hard bottle to find for most folks unless you order from their website. But I intend on purchasing more of their juice. Not because it is just from Michigan, or because it is only delicious, but because these hard working people have a vision, a plan, and the skills to produce extraordinary wine. Being a few miles (relatively) down the road only makes it that more badass.
Reverdito Barolo - 2017
I've been hanging on to this bottle for a while. At least two years. For some folks that's an eternity, for serious wine collectors it's a walk down the road. Barolo comes from the Piedmont region of Italy and is often referred to as the King of Italian Reds. Made from the Nebbiolo grape (Barbaresco is also made from Nebbiolo and is talked of as the Queen of Italian red. Barolo and Barbaresco are the names of the towns these wines come from.) Barolos almost always need some extended bottle aging to fully express themselves. I am a novice when it comes to Barolos due to their price points. They can retail as some of the most expensive bottles in your local wine shop but options are available in the $35 - $60 range. For transparency, I believe I paid $47 for this. Barolos need time in the bottle due to the incredibly tannic nature of the Nebbiolo grape. (One way to get around this if you don’t have ten years to wait out the tannins is to decant the bottle. Exposing the wine to air will open it up. It will not give you the same experience as a properly stored and aged wine, but it can help.) If you've ever had a glass of wine that feels like it immediately dries your mouth out, sorta like overly steeped black tea, you're familiar with the sensation. I often, as do others, refer to wines with a lot of tannins yet to relax as being "grippy."
It is not uncommon for people to wait at least ten, twenty, or even thirty years to open Barolos that come from known and respected vineyards. Never doubt the patience and optimism of certain wine nerds, to be sure. I didn't want to wait another three years, or longer, to open this one. The time felt right and I'm glad I did. I uncorked it a good hour before dinner, poured a small glass a few minutes before we sat down to lamb chops, and tasted. It was still a tad grippy, but the classic light-bodied, rose-petal and dark earth flavors Barolo is notorious for was undeniable. The longer the bottle was open and as we drank through it, those grippy tannins became more and more rounded out.
If you feel like splurging and have the patience, talk to someone in a wine shop and see what they recommend. There are wonderful options of Langhe Nebbiolo, and others, meant to be consumed young that paint an accurate picture of what you can expect from your entry Barolo.