asian jewish deli

If I’m coming to dinner, it is almost a guarantee that a bottle of wine will come with me. Over the last several years I have purchased and stored away bottles from fine retailers such as Garagsite, McCarthy & Schiering, Central Market, various wineries, and even Target (2006 Cloudline Pinot Noir on clearance, classy!).

Dinner tonight was at my friends Lorna and Henry’s house, and I decided it would be fun to bring an anonymous bottle, wino style.

What did two learned palates make of this bottle? Is it Château Lafite or Château le feet?

This was an interesting test of label persuasion because I knew what this wine was and had high expectations for it. I easily could have fooled myself into thinking it was a great wine based on the label, but I was disappointed in the initial showing and found that it was only slightly more satisfying after airing. I think we all agreed that it was a decent bottle, but nothing special.

The wine was a 2005 Mark Ryan Dead Horse, my absolute favorite winery and wine in past vintages. This bottle had none of the darkness, chocolate, coffee, and stone fruit that I expect from Dead Horse. Is the lackluster showing something to be chalked up to being too young? Or perhaps it was just a bad bottle? I have several more bottles of this particular wine, and only time will tell.

Grilled pastrami Reuben on rye with chopped liver, mostly all home made. The best sandwich in Seattle, and you can’t have one! Well, maybe someday if if it ever becomes easier to serve home cured meat at a farmer’s market stand.

About a year ago I set out to make my own pastrami, inspired by the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman as well as a tasty visit to Kenny & Zuke’s in Portland. K&Z’s pastrami is heavily spiced, heavily smoked, and much fattier than the average pastrami you can get in most deli cases. It became the baseline I was trying to replicate.

It took a couple batches, but I finally settled on a procedure that gave consistently delicious results:

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Looking for the best way to cook a thick steak? Look no further than this article by Alain Ducasse. In it, he describes cooking a thick cut ribeye slowly on the stove top over medium heat. Tonight I used his method to cook up a three-inch thick dry aged ribeye with spectacular results!

Witness the crust after the first 10 minute flip:

10 minutes later plus a seven minute rest and it’s time to slice:

Perfectly rare to medium-rare, and the dry aging made the meat buttery soft.

Pantry/fridge staples: potatoes, Gruyere cheese, eggs, veal demi. Put them together and it sounds like high-end poutine to me!

Something simple for dinner tonight ended up dirtying three pans and required the deep fryer, but look at those fries! It was worth it! Potatoes cut into 3/8″ fries, Mornay sauce, veal demi with a large spoonful of La Madia black truffle cream, and topped with a soft cooked egg.