Best Food Writing 2010 Part 9

But, without a doubt, the most pleasurable way to eat fresh sardines is a la brasa, grilled outside in the open air over hot embers. The flavors are at their robust finest, the flesh sparkling and briny, shaded with smoky oils. Inside, that distinct smell of searing sardines is overpowering, even pungent (and immediately alerts every neighbor as to what's on the stove), but outside, among green leaves and dusty loam, or on a sandy beach with sea breezes, it's evocatively, stirringly aromatic.

Food in Catalonia is frequently celebrated simply for itself and a sardinada is a celebration of sardines. Abundant and inexpensive, sardines make a perfect centerpiece for large gatherings of friends, extended families, even village feasts. The peak of the sardinada season is de Virgen a Virgen ("from Virgin to Virgin"), between the feast days of Carmen-July 16th, when maritime parades and watery blessings of the seaman's protectress marks summer's start-and of the a.s.sumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven-August 15th. This is the hottest period of the year, when meals are served especially late and preferably out-of-doors, and, more importantly, when sardines gorge themselves on the warm sea's abundant plankton and fatten to their most flavorful.

My first summer in Barcelona, I joined a group for a sardinada along the coast south of the city. As cuttings of orange trees burned down to embers, the group a.s.sembled, bearing aperitivos, bottles of wine, desserts. Freshly caught sardines were brought out, kilos of them, at a calculation of eight or so per person (though some of our friends have been known to put away two or three times that many). When the embers were ready, the sardines were laid whole-neither head nor tail trimmed, nor innards removed-in a double-handled grill rack. Set just a few inches above the embers, the fish cooked for a couple of minutes on each side until the skin turned crispy gold and the eyes went white. We sprinkled the fish with a pinch of coa.r.s.e sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil, then devoured them, picking them up with our fingers as fast as they were cool enough to handle. Sublime.

I've eaten plenty of grilled sardines since, and the distinctive, rustic flavor always brings me back to that first summer-plucking sardines from a hot grill, fingers blackened and greasy, surrounded by a growing pile of sucked-clean spines (and empty wine bottles). I may not have yet been able to understand much of the conversations swirling around me, but I already knew that I had arrived in the place where I would settle.

And if I want to take myself back further, back to my cramped room in London as an impressionable student, or, more potently, to some distant and dusty place as an eager, unsure wanderer, all I need to do is peel back the lid of a sardine tin and extract a single silvery fish from the packed cl.u.s.ter.

Sardines in Escabeche Sardines in Escabeche Serves 4 Serves 4 1 pound fresh, whole medium sardines (about 16) 1 pound fresh, whole medium sardines (about 16) 1 cups virgin olive oil Salt Flour for dusting cup white wine vinegar 6 garlic cloves, unpeeled with loose outer white paper re- moved 3 sprigs thyme 1 teaspoon Spanish pimenton dulce pimenton dulce (sweet paprika) (sweet paprika) 3 bay leaves 12 whole peppercorns Gently scale the sardines with a knife. Remove the head and guts in the following manner: hold the sardine with one hand and with the other rock the head first upwards, breaking the neck, then downwards, and finally firmly pulling it toward you, drawing out the guts. Run a finger through the cavity to make sure it is clean. Rinse well with cool, running water and pat dry.

In a large skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat. Salt and dust the sardines with flour and fry until the skin is golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn gently to avoid breaking the skin, and fry the other side until golden, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a rectangular earthenware, ceramic, or gla.s.s dish. Lay in the sardines side by side, alternating head-tail directions so that they fit snugly together.

In a non-reactive saucepan, bring the rest of the oil, the vinegar, garlic, thyme, paprika, bay leaves, and peppercorns to a boil. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

Gently pour the marinade (including the herbs) over the fish. The fish should be mostly covered.

Let cool. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 day and as many as 10.

Remove 1 hour before serving and serve at room temperature.

RARE BREED.

By Molly O'Neill From Saveur Saveur

Cookbook author, memoirist, and former New York Times New York Times food columnist Molly O'Neill has lately made a deep excursion into American food history, researching her new book food columnist Molly O'Neill has lately made a deep excursion into American food history, researching her new book One Big Table. One Big Table. Who better to hang out with a heritage poultry breeder? Who better to hang out with a heritage poultry breeder?

Beyond the town of Lindsborg, with its church steeples and 2,000 or so houses, the Kansas prairie is a flat forever. There's nothing to absorb wind or sound. The whinny of gears in a pickup; the bullish snort of a combine harvester turning frosty dirt-the noises of a winter afternoon seemed bigger than anything mortal. Standing in a field on Frank Reese Jr.'s farm outside town as the shadows grew longer, I felt truly alone.

I pictured Reese, a poultry breeder who was born near here, shepherding his turkeys across this same, endless horizon as a boy and wondered whether he too had felt alone. From an early age, he had the job of ushering birds on his family's farm from the barn to the open range so that they could peck for insects. He took to the role, and to the birds. When the other children in his first-grade cla.s.s wrote adoring sonnets to their cats and dogs, Reese crafted a personal essay t.i.tled "Me and My Turkeys."

He was surprised by the looks he got. In his young mind, love was love, and he has no memory of ever not loving turkeys. That is the only way he can explain having devoted his life to preserving the traditional American breeds that were once common on dinner tables across the country. After all, though Reese is a perfectly good cook, he's not the sort of fanatic who'd spend decades chasing the Platonic ideal of an ingredient. He also doesn't seem like the type of person who'd take up the banner against industrial farming.

In fact, Reese, who is 61 years old, would prefer to spend his evenings reading antique poultry magazines or the spiritual writings of Saint Augustine and Saint Teresa. He is solidly built and speaks in measured tones. In his well-pressed flannel shirt, he looks as if he might have stepped off a page of the 1954 Sears, Roebuck catalogue.

And yet, to food lovers, animal lovers, and many family farmers, this fourth-generation farmer from Kansas is more than just a turkey breeder with old-fashioned ways. He is a saint. Reese is the man who saved American poultry.

From the outside, the farmhouse at the Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch, which is what Reese calls his farm, looks like a monument to a vanished way of life. Set on a corner of the 160-acre spread, the three-story home has Victorian trim and a fresh coat of white paint. It is framed by two red barns and a venerable elm tree, the kind you'd expect to see a swing hanging from. A pie should be cooling on the sill of the kitchen window. Kids should be chasing around the yard.

But Reese is a bachelor. Instead of family portraits and Norman Rockwell prints, turkey-related art hangs on the walls alongside his collection of religious art and blue ribbons from poultry shows. The house is well tended-Reese restored the white pine woodwork and ordered burgundy-colored Victorian-style wallpaper from the designer wallpaper company Bradbury & Bradbury for the dining room and sitting room-but the scent of diesel fuel and turkey coop from Reese's work clothes laces the air. Feed catalogues, fan letters, tax forms, utility bills, and photographs of turkeys are arranged in neat piles on the dining-room table. I'd spent the day visiting the farm with Reese, and he'd invited me in from the cold. The house was utterly quiet but for the sound of the farmer riffling through the papers on the table. Finally, finding what he was after, he waved a black-and-white portrait of a handsome Bronze turkey. "Charlie!" he exclaimed.

"Out of a thousand turkeys," Reese said, "there is always one who wants to be with you all the time. Charlie was my first. When I was a kid, the neighbor's dog got his tail. The vet took one look and said, 'You better just butcher him.' I went nuts and said, 'You fix fix him!' So he sewed his tail back on, and Charlie and I hung out for the next ten years." him!' So he sewed his tail back on, and Charlie and I hung out for the next ten years."

For decades, Reese a.s.sumed that he'd gotten so friendly with turkeys when he was a kid merely to make the best of a frustrating situation. "I was the youngest and too little to drive the tractor or handle the cattle or pigs," he said, "so I got sent to the poultry house." Eventually, though, he came to the awareness that there had to be more to it than that. "My father once said that he took me to the state fair when I was three and that all I wanted to do was drag him through the turkey exhibits," Reese told me. "So maybe I was just born this way."

Until he'd grown enough to manage turkeys on his own, Reese showed chickens. He took his first blue ribbon at the Saline County Fair when he was eight years old and won every year for the next decade. Starting at the age of ten, he showed turkeys too.

"I got beat a lot," he said. "Back then, there was no kids' division, and I was up there showing with all the old, legendary turkey breeders: Norman Kardosh and his Narragansetts, Sadie Lloyd and her Bourbon Reds, Cecil Moore and his Bronzes." The older turkey breeders may have taken home the blue ribbons, but they also took note of Reese's talent. These farmers and enthusiasts had spent lifetimes preserving American barnyard breeds, some of whose bloodlines could be traced to the 1890s. Until Frank Reese appeared, none of those breeders had anointed an heir to continue their legacy. Each knew the clock was ticking.

Growing up, Reese was never more in his element than he was at poultry shows. These bustling events, which took place across rural America throughout the 20th century (and still do, in some areas), culminated in big annual national compet.i.tions, where farmers and hobbyists displayed prized birds that they'd bred for hardiness, meat quality, reproductive prowess, and physical beauty. Held in vast exhibition halls, the juried contests were similar to dog shows, a Best in Show Best in Show milieu in which hair dryers were aimed at feathers rather than fur. "If you won the national show, you were set because everybody wanted to buy your birds," said Reese. milieu in which hair dryers were aimed at feathers rather than fur. "If you won the national show, you were set because everybody wanted to buy your birds," said Reese.

The shows were also where older breeders mentored potential successors. "They taught me the breed history," Reese remembered. "They had me sitting on the ground with my standards book, studying each bird." Reese was talking about Standard of Perfection Standard of Perfection , a guide published by the American Poultry a.s.sociation that recognizes eight distinct varieties of turkey that are considered to be the purest farm breeds and describes the ideal physical characteristics of each one. The book, first published in 1874, harks back to an era when the differences between common breeds of chickens and turkeys were as dramatic as the differences between, say, a Great Dane and a Dachshund. These varieties were raised for different uses: big roasters for Sunday dinners, tough and flavorful stewers for soup, plump-legged fryers, and so on. , a guide published by the American Poultry a.s.sociation that recognizes eight distinct varieties of turkey that are considered to be the purest farm breeds and describes the ideal physical characteristics of each one. The book, first published in 1874, harks back to an era when the differences between common breeds of chickens and turkeys were as dramatic as the differences between, say, a Great Dane and a Dachshund. These varieties were raised for different uses: big roasters for Sunday dinners, tough and flavorful stewers for soup, plump-legged fryers, and so on.

Norman Kardosh, a breeder from Alton, Kansas, was Reese's most influential teacher. "Norman taught me about the importance of fine breeding, how it ensures the survival of the best bloodlines and how that, in turn, ensures biodiversity among the species. Without those two things, any creature is doomed to extinction."

At some point in the late 1970s, after earning a nursing degree and finishing a stint in the army in Texas, Reese realized that standard bred birds-as the types of poultry recognized in Standard of Perfection Standard of Perfection are called-were in trouble. He was raising turkeys at his home south of San Antonio and competing on the side. "I'd always competed against 50 to 100 birds at every show. Suddenly it was just me," he recalled. are called-were in trouble. He was raising turkeys at his home south of San Antonio and competing on the side. "I'd always competed against 50 to 100 birds at every show. Suddenly it was just me," he recalled.

American farmers just weren't raising standard bred birds anymore, at least not in significant numbers. "The commercial industry had developed a couple varieties that cost less to feed, fattened up faster, and sold well, and farmers raised these to the exclusion of all others," Reese explained to me. "This means that one flu could wipe out every bird in this country." To make matters worse, he said, commercial birds-a broad-breasted white variety developed in the 1950s-all tend to taste the same. "They have no flavor! No individuality!" he lamented.

Reese began expanding his flock. Meanwhile, he worked as a nurse at a hospital in San Antonio and eked out additional money by taking odd jobs and even modeling. In his early 30s, Reese looked every inch the Marlboro Man, whom he once portrayed in an advertising campaign.

Texas was fun, said Reese, "but it was no place to raise a turkey." So, in 1989, he moved back to Kansas, bought a farm outside Lindsborg that he called Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch, and ramped up his breeding program. He was more worried than ever about American poultry. "The bloodlines were dying out. Norman didn't want to believe me," Reese recalled. "He was in his late 70s, but he got in his truck and went looking for his birds. He went to every farm he'd sold to, and he didn't find one Norman Kardosh Narragansett." Reese's other mentors were beginning to pa.s.s away. "Norman was the last to go," Reese said. "I promised him that I would not let these birds die off the face of the Earth."

By 2002, Reese had increased the national population of standard bred turkeys to such an extent that he was able to sell to some restaurants and individuals. "The only way to save these birds is to get people to eat them," he said. Reese created a cooperative of several farmers in Kansas and sold 800 heritage turkeys-as the farmers branded their standard bred birds-that first year. Two years later, Reese took on a business partner, a young poultry farmer named Brian Anselmo, whom Reese considered to be the next heir to the old-breed poultry legacy. In 2007, the number of farmers in the Good Shepherd co-op grew to a dozen; they sold 10,000 old-breed turkeys that Thanksgiving. It wasn't much compared with the 46 million industrially raised turkeys sold during that holiday each year, but it was a milestone nonetheless.

In 2008, Anselmo died suddenly of complications of asthma at the age of 28. Reese, recognized by then as the premier source of old-breed birds in the nation, became even more focused on selling his breeding stock. "I'm all these birds have now," Reese said. Nowadays, he's pouring his energy into plans for the Standard Bred Poultry Inst.i.tute, a place where farmers will learn how to breed, raise, preserve, and cook these birds. He is building the facility, using his own savings and, he hopes, donor money, on the ridge just beyond his barns. "I'm leaving it all to them," Reese said.

We'd been sitting in his dining room for a long while. Outside, the wind was keening around the house. Reese pushed back from the table, and I followed him as he walked to the kitchen, zipped a barn jacket over his flannel shirt, pulled on a stocking cap, and walked out his back door.

We headed toward the pasture next to the larger of the two red barns. There, under a darkening sky, hundreds of turkeys were already crowding at the fence, strutting excitedly, puffing their feathers, and craning their wobbly-skinned necks. The birds mobbed Reese as he pushed through the gate. At the center of this shiny, feathery universe, Reese chattered and scolded. Bending down, he scooped up a huge Bronze and cradled it in the crook of his arm.

"This is Norman," he said, beaming. The bird had bright eyes and copper-colored feathers with black edges. He put Norman down, and the animal spread its lush tail feathers in an impressive rainbow. "Isn't he something?" said Reese. "We've been hanging out for a few years. Norman isn't going anywhere. Norman's staying right here."

THE CHARCUTERIE UNDERGROUND.

By Mike Sula From Chicago Reader Chicago Reader

Reporting and blogging about the Chicago food scene, Mike Sula immerses himself in the Windy City-its restaurants, food carts, markets, bars, local color, and politics. The best way to change intrusive meat-curing regulations? Sula goes undercover with a sympathetic gang of illicit sausage makers.

Every Tuesday morning a refrigerated white truck with an anthropomorphic pig painted on its side pulls up in front of a house on a tree-lined street in a North Sh.o.r.e suburb. A Wisconsin farmer emerges and unloads three to four boxes filled with pork shoulders and bellies butchered from naturally raised pigs. He walks across the lawn and hands them off through the front door before driving on to the city to make his regular deliveries at the likes of North Pond and Frontera Grill.

Inside, a 37-year-old ap.r.o.n-clad stay-at-home dad and furniture maker named Erik prepares his preschool daughter's lunch box in the kitchen. Then he joins his business partner, Ehran, in prepping for the day's bacon curing and sausage stuffing.

Erik and Ehran, also a stay-at-home dad, are the princ.i.p.als of E & P Meats, a budding underground charcuterie business with an e-mail list of more than 200 customers. Once a month they drive into the city and surrounding suburbs to drop off vacuum-sealed packages ordered from a rotating menu of about 15 meats they've stuffed, cured, and smoked entirely on the premises of Erik's handsome home. The deliveries are about half of the 40-60 orders they fill-the other half are collected by customers who show up at the door.

When I visited last month they were rubbing down a few pork bellies with rosemary sprigs and a salt cure and experimenting with a new Italian sausage recipe. On the back porch, alongside the potted rosemary, three smokers issued thin white plumes that filled the neighborhood with a sweet, meaty perfume. Two contained slabs of bacon and the third-a ceramic tile Big Green Egg-held half a dozen of the paprika-and-mustard-rubbed chickens that Erik periodically smokes for favored mothers of his daughter's cla.s.smates.

"We end up giving away probably, I don't know, 60 pounds of meat a month or more," says Erik. "Keeps all the neighbors happy if they don't like the smoke smell." They haven't made a profit yet.

Because they sell meats that aren't prepared in a licensed commercial facility, Erik and Ehran are operating outside the law. But some laws, they fervently believe, were made to be broken. "It's one of those things that's kind of overregulated," says Erik. "People have been canning and curing forever. It was invented to preserve food and keep things healthy."

The charcuterie resistance is growing. Professional restaurant chefs without legal licensing or dedicated facilities cure their own meats out of view of the health inspectors all the time. And Erik and Ehran aren't the only ones making and selling outside of those professional kitchens: A former restaurant chef is currently curing two dozen duck b.r.e.a.s.t.s in a south-side warehouse; they'll end up on restaurant menus sometime around the holidays. Personal chef Helge Pedersen cures and ages lamb legs for the Norwegian salted meat fennelar, along with guanciale, soppressata, and pancetta, in a dedicated refrigerator in his Humboldt Park apartment and another in a garage s.p.a.ce on Western Avenue. He sells them to friends as he hones his craft in antic.i.p.ation of the day he opens his own retail s.p.a.ce.

Laurence Mate is an amateur charcuterie maker downstate who doc.u.ments his projects on the blog This Little Piggy. To make an end run around the government regulations governing the production and sale of charcuterie, Mate-another furniture maker-had a law student help him figure out how to set up a private club for members, who must register on his Web site in order to make "donations" by the pound for his terrines, sausage, pulled pork, and the spicy Calabrian salami pate nduja. He hasn't been challenged so far. Like Erik and Ehran, he makes no money and does it for the love of the craft. But if he had to cut through all the red tape required to produce and sell his products like a retailer, he says, it wouldn't be worth the effort.

"The regulations are written for industrial food operations," says Mate. "And if you apply them to small-scale local producers, no one's gonna do it. It's legislating local food out of the market. Unfortunately, the health departments don't appreciate that. But that food is actually safer. It's easier for someone on that small scale to move things more quickly and be more careful. Local markets are self-regulating. If there's anything wrong with your products and someone gets sick from it, then you're out of business."

Not surprisingly, the Chicago Department of Public Health disagrees. "That person's comment reminds me of the criticisms leveled at Upton Sinclair and others a century ago who advocated for a safer food supply," e-mailed spokesman Tim Hadac. "True, the local market 'self-regulates'-but it does so sometimes at the expense of consumers' health and even lives. Every year in the U.S. food-borne illness causes an estimated 300,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. We in public health prefer commonsense, science-based regulation that focuses on prevention of food-borne illness before it occurs."

Of course plenty of those illnesses were borne by regulated food. "The revival of local food economies is being hobbled by a tangle of regulations originally designed to check abuses by the very largest food producers," wrote locavore-in-chief Michael Pollan in his open letter to whoever would be president in the New York Times New York Times last fall. "Farmers should be able to smoke a ham and sell it to their neighbors without making a huge investment in federally approved facilities. Food-safety regulations must be made sensitive to scale and marketplace, so that a small producer selling direct off the farm or at a farmers' market is not regulated as onerously as a multinational food manufacturer. This is not because local food won't ever have food-safety problems-it will-only that its problems will be less catastrophic and easier to manage because local food is inherently more traceable and accountable." last fall. "Farmers should be able to smoke a ham and sell it to their neighbors without making a huge investment in federally approved facilities. Food-safety regulations must be made sensitive to scale and marketplace, so that a small producer selling direct off the farm or at a farmers' market is not regulated as onerously as a multinational food manufacturer. This is not because local food won't ever have food-safety problems-it will-only that its problems will be less catastrophic and easier to manage because local food is inherently more traceable and accountable."

When you know who made your food, Erik and Ehran add, you know what you're eating. "A friend came to me and said 'I love your sausages-don't tell me what you put in there,'" recalls Ehran. "I said, 'No, I will tell you. Ask me, and I will tell you, because it's not leftover sc.r.a.ps.'"

"It's no longer scary to know what's in your sausage," says Erik. "It's just pork shoulder and about five spices."

E & P Meats was born a little over two years ago after a wine-fueled soul-searching conversation between Erik and his wife, who produces TV commercials. "We were getting kind of drunk and talking about what we could do so she could quit her job," he says. "And I said, 'Oh, maybe we can make sausage.' So I went the next day and bought the best grinder I could find at the kitchen store."

Guided by Susan Mahnke Peery and Charles G. Reavis's Home Sausage Making, Erik and a friend, Phillip (the p in E & P), began grinding out bangers, brats, and Italian sausages. They hosted parties in Erik's backyard, catered an outside event, and even made a few sales before Phillip's wife was transferred to Michigan, taking him out of the picture.

Enter Ehran, an Israeli-born ex-cinematographer and frequent guest at Erik and Phillip's sausage parties. "I've been cooking all my life," he says. "I think part of me getting to cooking was coming here and not having food as I'm used to-food that is made more at home, by hand."

The pair began studying recipes from a number of published sources along with developing their own-particularly for bacon. Ehran a.s.sisted with an informal sausage-making workshop given by a friend who teaches at Kendall College. "All the Jewish people here say, 'Oh, what is an Israeli boy doing making bacon?' says Ehran. "I grew up eating pork."

"It took us like six months to get our formulas right," Erik says. Willing guinea pigs tested varieties such as maple and applewood smoked, an unsmoked Irish bacon, and more obscure recipes like a hammy French salt pork commonly used in the lentil dish pet.i.t sale. Free samples of paprika-rubbed turkey breast, pistachio-truffle sausage, and sage breakfast links were doled out to friends, neighbors, teachers, and their children's schoolmates. Ehran even flipped a vegetarian acquaintance with their pastrami.

"Having to pay for them was just a natural transition," says Ehran. "They didn't complain."

In May they each took a 15-hour course from their local health department and subsequently received state licensing for food service sanitation-the first step in going legit. That same month they released their first menu, consisting of four bacons, and thus began what has since become known as the monthly ritual of Meat Week.

Near the beginning of each month they release a menu-now usually several bacons, a sausage, and maybe a deli meat-and orders begin popping up in their in-box. Then they spend a frenzied few days putting up the bacon and grinding and stuffing the sausage. "We work like crazy," says Ehran. "Usually we'll go four nights past midnight. The kids are asleep."

As word spread and they began taking on customers outside their immediate circle of friends, the demand began to take a toll on the equipment. A few months ago Erik's Waring sausage grinder, bought at Sur la Table, caught on fire in the midst of processing 40 pounds of meat.

E & P may not yet be profitable, but they do make enough money to afford some professional equipment upgrades they find on Craigslist, "usually from some giant guy with a beard," says Erik. "And they're always disgruntled. The guy we bought the refrigerator from-I told him what I was doing and he's like, 'Stay small.'"

"I think that once we got the slicer there was no way back," says Ehran. "I also realized that I don't know how I lived without one all my life."

Their recently released holiday menu offers pistachio bacon brittle, cold-smoked Scottish salmon, and a membership in a six-month-long bacon-of-the-month club for $50. But they have yet to delve into the more complicated production of aged hams and long-cured and fermented meats like salamis. They'll need to jump over many more regulatory hurdles to get legal for that, but they're getting ready to start practicing, converting a storage room in Erik's bas.e.m.e.nt into a cedar-lined temperature-and-humidity-controlled curing room.

And they're not planning on being outlaws forever. Early next year Erik will be taking a course on the FDA's food safety management system, the Hazard a.n.a.lysis and Critical Control Points. He'll need to do that as well as submit a plan for approval to inspectors from his city's health department before E & P can open its own dedicated and fully licensed production and retail s.p.a.ce. It's a notoriously difficult and expensive process, but something has to be done soon. Their wives are losing patience with the chaos of Meat Week, which keeps getting longer and longer.

"We're definitely looking to move into a place where we can have Meat Week every week," says Ehran.

WINES FOR DRINKING, NOT OVERTHINKING.

By Salma Abdelnour Salma Abdelnour From From Food & Wine Food & Wine

Author of the upcoming Jasmine and Fire Jasmine and Fire, a culinary memoir about Lebanon, freelance food/travel writer Salma Abdelnour has a knack for capturing the essence of a destination through its food. Here, she matches the spirit of certain comfort foods with the right wine.

Ever since I was too short to reach the checkout counter at the supermarket, I've had an insatiable curiosity about food. The less I know about a certain ingredient, the more I want to taste it and talk about it-whether it's Galician berberechos berberechos clams or white-boar soppressata. But when it comes to wine, I tend to keep my mouth shut. I drink wine nearly every day, and I enjoy learning about varietals and regions and producers. But wine lingo and wine trends intimidate me, and I second-guess my tastes and instincts. I'd be mortified to be overheard gushing about something totally pa.s.se, like White Zinfandel. Let's be clear here: I hate White Zinfandel. (I'm supposed to hate it, right? Or is it coming back in style?) clams or white-boar soppressata. But when it comes to wine, I tend to keep my mouth shut. I drink wine nearly every day, and I enjoy learning about varietals and regions and producers. But wine lingo and wine trends intimidate me, and I second-guess my tastes and instincts. I'd be mortified to be overheard gushing about something totally pa.s.se, like White Zinfandel. Let's be clear here: I hate White Zinfandel. (I'm supposed to hate it, right? Or is it coming back in style?) To get over my wine anxiety, I decided to conduct an experiment: What if I took wine off its pedestal and treated it the same way I treat everything else I eat and drink? I would talk to some of the world's most respected experts and compare wine to foods and beverages I'm comfortable with-namely, burgers, bacon and coffee. Maybe then I could finally overcome my insecurities.

The White Castle Burger of Wine My first question to the experts: What's the White Castle burger of wine? Just as chefs like to boost their street cred by admitting to certain lowbrow tastes-from fast-food fries to RC Cola-I wondered if sommeliers had guilty pleasures, too. I had two goals: One, to make them fess up some embarra.s.sing secrets. And two, to feel less mortified if I happen to enjoy a wine that's unfashionable, even trashy-because if professionals privately drink decla.s.se wines, then the world is safer for the rest of us.

Some experts, like David Lynch, the wine director at San Francisco's Quince, told me that wine geeks who are slumming it will drink beer or certain "disgusting" cult spirits, like amaro amaro. Others, like Berkeley-based wine importer Kermit Lynch (no relation), begged off the question. One famous expert I spoke to sniffed, "A lot of wine professionals would admit, privately, that they like Silver Oak. But please, that's off the record." (Silver Oak is a popular California Cabernet that's considered outmoded by sn.o.bs.) The most convincing answer came from Laura Maniec, the wine director for B.R. Guest Restaurants (which includes Las Vegas's Fiamma Trattoria and Manhattan's Blue Fin). "Ask most sommeliers, 'Do you drink Pinot Grigio?' and no one says yes," Maniec told me. "But if you blind-taste them, you'd be surprised how many guess it's a very young Gruner Veltliner Federspiel, Chablis or Albarino. They don't admit that they like Pinot Grigio, but they do like it in blind tastings."

I asked her to point me toward a really good Pinot Grigio, and for fun, we agreed to meet at a White Castle to conduct a tasting. I think we both just wanted to eat some sliders. So as not to get arrested, we brown-bagged the bottle, a 2006 Schiopetto Pinot Grigio from the Italian region of Friuli ($30), and poured it into Riedel gla.s.ses masked by Styrofoam cups.

The wine was, indeed, refreshing. "I like the ripe honeydew, apple, tangerine and Meyer lemon flavors in here," Maniec said. "It has a rocky minerality and a long finish. How can anyone say they don't like this?" We were pleased with how well the wine complemented the french fries, too. "Usually fries are best with Champagne," Maniec said. "But the saltiness works well with any acidic wine." For my future french-fry cravings, Maniec recommended another, less expensive Pinot Grigio that she's a fan of, the 2008 Tiefenbrunner delle Venezie from northeastern Italy ($15).

She then brought out a surprise bottle: Zinfandel. Many wine pros don't admit to drinking New World wines like Zinfandel, Maniec explained. "We tend to drink high-acid, earthy wines that take us to the place they're from. New World wines don't tend to have as much terroir. But Zinfandel is always true to its colors. It tastes like ripe, cooked fruit." We tasted one of her favorite Zinfandels, a 2007 Kunin from California's Paso Robles region ($24), and it was, quite frankly, sublime with the White Castle burgers. "Saying you don't like this," Maniec said, "is like saying you don't like chocolate."

The Bacon of Wine My next challenge: to discover the bacon of wine. Whether I'm tasting fried Jimmy Dean at a diner or slow-braised Berkshire pork belly at the sw.a.n.kiest restaurant in town, I'm eating bacon-and I'm probably pretty happy about it. There had to be a wine equivalent, a varietal so fundamentally delicious that I'd love it without having to think too hard about it, whether the bottle cost $10 or $400.

A few experts I talked to chose Pinot Noir. "The acid is soft, the tannins aren't aggressive; it's drinkable juice," said Paul Grieco, the wine director and a partner at Manhattan's Terroir, Hearth and Insieme. Kermit Lynch gave a very specific suggestion: "White Burgundy from a sunny year, from a good winemaker. It will please those who are into terroir and those who just like the taste of Chardonnay."

But, unexpectedly, the most popular pick was Merlot. "It's an easy wine to drink, for the most part. And some of the world's best wines, like Bordeaux's Chateau Petrus, are made with Merlot," said Eduard Seitan, the wine director and a partner at Chicago's Black-bird, Avec and the Publican. Matt Skinner, the Australian sommelier who works with London-based chef Jamie Oliver, also chose Merlot: "When I started learning about wine, I read a description of Merlot as plush, round, inky, sweet, full. I thought, I want to drink that. It's like a bear hug from your grandma. It's safe and warm. It puts its arms around you and says, 'It's OK. I'm not here to challenge you, I'm just here for you to enjoy.' "

A wine that's pure, uncomplicated joy: That's what I was looking for. I asked Skinner to recommend two bottles, one under $15, the other over $30. Then I enlisted F&W wine editor Ray Isle to try them with me at my Manhattan apartment. "Merlot is one of the great grapes of the world," Ray explained as we opened Skinner's first recommendation, a 2007 Errazuriz Merlot Estate from Chile that sells for $13. "It's more plush and forgiving than Cabernet Sauvignon, although that can be both a virtue and a drawback. But when it got so popular in the 1990s, farmers started overproducing it and the wine quality fell. Merlot itself is not the problem; the problem is what people did with it."

We poured two gla.s.ses of the Errazuriz, and I took a sip. The wine had loads of dark fruit, a lush and velvety feel, and then still more fruit. "This wine hits one note-but it's a nice note," Ray said. I didn't have to pay close attention to catch the nuances; there weren't many. Then again, when I'm eating a BLT, I'm not exactly focused on the nuances of the bacon in the sandwich, either.

Next we opened Skinner's second recommendation, a 2005 Chateau d'Aiguilhe Cotes de Castillon from Bordeaux, which is mostly Merlot blended with some Cabernet Franc. "For $35, that's a really pretty wine," Ray observed. "It has what Merlot wants to have, that deep, dark fruit. The Chilean bottle was more one-note, but this Bordeaux is more like a chord."

Half an hour later, after the Errazuriz had opened up a bit more, it became more subtle and beguiling. Now it was inching closer to pork belly instead of a diner BLT-not that I was quibbling either way.

The Coffee of Wine For my last experiment, I wanted to find a wine that was as versatile as it was reliable-a wine that I could happily drink every day. I was looking for the coffee of wine.

Again, I got a range of answers from the experts I queried, from Riesling to Champagne to Syrah. But the response that seemed to really nail it came from Alpana Singh, wine director at Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants, which includes Everest and L20 in Chicago: "For me, Sauvignon Blanc fits that bill. For the most part it's reliable, zippy, goes with a wide variety of foods-spicy dishes, sushi, lots of things. The acidity perks up your palate."

It's also her fallback pick at restaurants, Singh says. "If I don't know how the wine has been stored, I'll order Sauvignon Blanc. At least it has been refrigerated and will have some acidity to preserve it. There's a big difference between good and bad coffee, but if you really need caffeine, you'll drink bad coffee. It's the same with Sauvignon Blanc."

I decided to test her theory by drinking Sauvignon Blanc every day for a week. On the first night, I had just returned from a week of joyful overeating in New Orleans when I was invited to dinner with friends. They served a 2005 Sincerity from Chile, and the acidity made me salivate in a way I didn't think I could muster post-Louisiana-gluttony. It wasn't the best Sauvignon Blanc I'd ever had, but it worked well with the braised artichokes, roasted asparagus and b.u.t.tery, pine-nut-studded rice-even though artichokes and asparagus are notoriously tough to pair with wine. Score one for Sauvignon Blanc. Night two: I met a friend at a terrific Bosnian hole-in-the-wall in Queens, and afterward, I brought home a sugar-syrup-drenched spongy cookie called hurmasice. I ate it with a gla.s.s of 2008 Te Muna Road Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand's Craggy Range ($20), one of the wines Singh recommended, and together they made a splendid nightcap.

On subsequent days, Sauvignon Blanc was a fantastic utility player, pairing well with everything from a Bibb lettuce salad with olive-oil-packed tuna to spicy pulled-pork tacos and grilled-eel sushi. I alternated between the Craggy Range and another wine Singh likes, the 2007 Westerly Vineyards from California's Santa Ynez Valley ($20).

The only time Sauvignon Blanc failed me: One night, after talking a friend through a bad breakup, I went home and poured a gla.s.s of the Craggy Range. But the acidity wasn't quite the soothing sensation I was looking for just then. I needed something a little rounder, warmer and more instantly uplifting. An espresso, perhaps, or a gla.s.s of Merlot. Or maybe what I really needed was one of my favorite new guilty pleasures: a White Castle burger, paired with a big fat Zin. But this time, hold the guilt.

MOXIE: A FLAVOR FOR THE FEW.

By Robert d.i.c.kinson From Gastronomica Gastronomica

The quarterly journal Gastronomica Gastronomica is a mix of scholarly articles and essays by pa.s.sionate amateurs-like this account by Nashville-based writer and public administrator Robert d.i.c.kinson, who just had to satisfy his curiosity about a vintage soda pop. is a mix of scholarly articles and essays by pa.s.sionate amateurs-like this account by Nashville-based writer and public administrator Robert d.i.c.kinson, who just had to satisfy his curiosity about a vintage soda pop.