Port. Up until I a few years ago I hadn't thought much about it. In fact, if you'd asked me about it a few years ago I might have thought you were talking about that place ships go in the midst of a storm. But then I thought it was just one of those drinks you had to have a smoking jacket and a cigar for.
But it's not. Let me explain.
Just the other week my friend Billy was up for a few days so I had him over for a guys night in. You know the kind of evening . . . nothing fancy just meat and potatoes on the grill. That's a dinner any guy can cook.
Well, any guy should be able to cook.
Dinner began on the weekend when I was wandering through my favorite grocery store, Caputo's, and landed at the meat counter. Now the thing I love about Caputo's is the guy behind the counter. He knows his meat. He's not some slick, just push the special kind of guy. He's a meat guy.
My grandpa would have loved him. They would have talked shop for hours. You see, back in the day my grandpa was a butcher at the Philadelphia Farmer's Market. I didn't know him then as he waited until he had six kids to leave that behind and become a minister. I would have loved to know him then. I have a photo hanging in my kitchen area of him working the counter.
And the counter was crowded.
The guy at Caputo's reminds me of him. I can't wait to get to the counter to ask him about his weekly specials -- and every so often I hit it big. Just before Christmas they had a fabulous prime rib for under $9 a pound. This time he cut some rib eye steaks to order a little over an inch thick. At Christmas I followed a Good Eats special on aging meat and thought these steaks could use a little dry aging themselves.
So I dropped a couple of paper towels on the bottom of my meat aging appliance and put the steaks on top, closed it up and put it in the refrigerator for about 5 days. Never heard of a meat aging appliance? You can make your own just like I did.
It's nothing more than a plastic cake carrier with about 70 holes drilled in it. Typical guy do it yourself stuff. I bet that Sur la Table would be charging upwards of $100 each for something that 20 bucks and an electric drill can accomplish in about 5 minutes.
When Billy arrived I poured a couple of glasses of Ed Sbragia's Andolsen Cabernet Sauvignon. I had two bottles of the 2005 vintage and before the night was over both would be dry as the rib eyes. I had the steaks out and at room temperature and I sprinkled a healthy dose of my bbq rub over the steaks.
I'm going to have to adjust my rub mixture for grilling rather than smoking because there's a healthy amount of brown sugar in the mix and as you know flame and sugar don't mix real well.
I also cut up some potatoes, onions and mushrooms and put them in a foil packet along with a little bit of olive oil and rosemary and dropped those on the grill. Then I trimmed some asparagus and oiled and seasoned them and had them ready to go on a grill sheet when the steaks were about done.
It was still a little chilly here in Chicago so I didn't spend the time just standing around the grill like I would have been later this summer. This turned out to be a bit of an issue because while I was inside, the steaks got a bit too much char on them (OK they were burned a little).
Surprisingly everything was done at the same time so while the steaks were resting, I prepared a couple of plates and opened up the second bottle. It was a great evening with a combination of serious discussion sprinkled in amid the plans to make a culinary trip to New Orleans with Billy and his wife Molly this fall. There was plenty to laugh about, too.
As the evening came to a close I decided to open up a Pine Ridge Vineyards Black Diamond Port. To be honest I didn't know what came over me. Between the two of us we'd already finished off a couple of bottles of wine but c'est la vie.
And I'm really glad I did.
A couple of glasses later the only thing I can say is that that port put a couple of exclamation points on the evening. The wine was like a dessert all by itself. It was sweet but not too much so. I've had some ports before but nothing like this. And other than Seghesio's Dionigia it's a take it or leave it affair.
Storm or no, my cellar (such that it is) will always have a couple of bottles of each. It's something that will turn even the most basic of dinners into a truly spectacular and memorable experience.
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