Tonight’s edition is kind of special. Actually, A LOT special, because one of those alums has offered to cook a meal for the group at his home, and that alum happens to be David Waltuck, chef and co-owner of that late, great Tribeca outpost of civility and refinement.

For the occasion it seemed appropriate to bring both wine and a small cheese course.  I ran into David near his home in the West Village the other day and found out what he’s making:  Cassoulet.*  Which means, of course, red wine. Something rustic, dense, autumnal.  Definitely French.  Madiran. Côte-Rôtie. Something Proveçal.  Maybe I can track down a bottle of Château Simone.  Have to think about that one, do a little research, see what I can spend.

The cheese, happily, I already have on hand. I had planned to visit Formaggio Essex yesterday, see what kind of weird and raw and stinky wheels they had picked up in Long Island City this week, but with the F and G lines amputated this weekend, and with the early sunsets putting the clamp-down on my inter-borough wanderlust, I hopped the B-67 to Bklyn Larder instead, and, after a quick hello to manager Tim Solomon—an Alabama native and likely the most cordial cheesemonger you’re  bound to encounter in the lower 48—I asked managing partner Sergio Hernandez for a run-down on the good stuff.

I’m pleased to report that the first item he mentioned, Vacherin Mont d’Or—seasonal Swiss, raw cow’s milk, rustic, wrapped in spruce bark—sent waves of contentment through my being.  I had come to the right place. Not always so easy to find, made only in the cold months—when high-elevation pastures, the flavor source for all those fabled hard, aged mountain cheeses of west central Europe, get a snow break—Vacherin Mont d’Or benefits from the (relatively) high fat content of winter feed: hay, preferably unfermented.  When ripe and ready, the cheese is spoonable, farmy, fruity, and bacony (the slightly smoky influence transferred from the spruce rind).

Sergio told me to keep the cheese out all night to ensure its spoonability. I complied. My roommate told me this morning that the kitchen smelled like a barn, “but in a good way.”

I remember long ago, in fall 2003 I think it was, I had dinner in the basement of Prune with my high school buddy Chris Loyd and my then-girlfriend Liz Thorpe, and I remember thinking how simple (and brilliant) it was that Gabrielle Hamilton served Vacherin Mont d’Or in whole wheels only, accompanied only by slices of apple and pear.  I loved that. And that’s how I am serving it tonight.

I’d like to write a bit more about the other two cheeses Sergio turned me onto—San Andreas from Bellwether Farms in Sonoma County and a new (to me) Swiss hard cheese called Holzhofer, aged by a woman named Caroline Hostettler, whose name Sergio uttered with no small reverence—but, alas, I have probably already written too much and I still have to get ready and purchase wine.

More to come.

*Every time I think of Cassoulet, I think about another David—David Pasternack, and the inimitable way he would announce it at pre-service meetings at Picholine on nights it was a ‘classic cuisine’ special. (This was a while back, when Dave was Terrance Brennan’s Chef de Cuisine at Picholine, before he went on to his own well-deserved stardom as chef-partner at Esca) “Alright guys,” Dave would say in his thick Long Beach accent, “tonight’s classic cuisine is Cassoulet… in the style of Toulouse!,” pausing for a second or two after ‘Cassoulet’ and elongating slightly the final vowel sound in ‘Toulouse’, dropping his pitch to a low guttural scratch at the same time, and sounding a bit like a late-period Serge Gainsbourg trying to sound like a South Shore fisherman.  Awesome.

For a full line-up of wines, and to sign up to attend, click here.

The Cuisine and Wines of Spain:  Presented by American Airlines
City Winery
155 Varick Street
New York, NY
Monday, November 14, 2011
7 p.m.
Presenter:  Adrian Murcia, Brooklyn Fermented
$75

With the exception of vines as far as the eye can see, the most common sight in Rioja, situated in north-central Spain’s upper Ebro River valley, is probably locals tucking into chulletillas (baby lamb chops grilled over vine cuttings) and cordero asado al horno de leña (leg of lamb roasted in wood-fired ovens) at lunchtime. And since Riojanos have been working the vine here for well over a thousand years, it makes sense that the earthy, cherry/raspberry-scented, Tempranillo-based reds they’ve been turning out for so long should match the flavors of the local diet. The felicitous Tempranillo-lamb combo extends to Rioja and sheep cheese as well; Rioja and Manchego are in fact a classic match. Here silky, sweet, and buttery Ossau-Iraty, a shepherd cheese from the western Pyrénées of France with an ancient pedigree, stands in for its Spanish cousin. Joven, Spanish for ‘young,’ is Rioja’s entry-level red category/age designation and spends less than a year in oak barrels, if it sees any time at all. Peciña’s exuberant, but still recognizably old-world Joven adds sweet tones to the cheese’s unmistakable meatiness, while simultaneously echoing, albeit subtlety, a decidedly umami savory character also apparent in the cheese.

Wine: Slope Cellars, 436 7th Avenue (14^th & 15^th), Brooklyn, NY. tel. (718) 369-7307

Cheese: Bklyn Larder, 228 Flatbush Ave. (Bergen & 6^th Ave.), Brooklyn, NY. tel. (718) 783-1250

Gurrutxaga Txacolí Rosé 2010

Once upon a time, Txacolí, the Basque Country’s national aperitif, hardly ever made it out these good-eating and good-drinking communities. Now, serious shops in the U.S. tend to keep a bunch on hand. And with good reason: these wines refresh and pique the palate nicely. Roses are also now in the mix, and Gurrutxaga is the finest I’ve tasted.

The firm, pasteurized Asturian cow’s milk Queso de los Beyos, slightly dry at first but creamy once it melts in the mouth, gets fruity in the mouth with a little sip of this otherwise rather austere wine. Owing to its Parmesano-like texture, Beyos is also a great cheese to break up into shards and to serve with fresh berries of any kind, the better to compliment the strawberry fruitiness of this fine summer rosado.

Friday, June 24, 2011
7:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.

Great Hall, 1st Floor
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
$65

For centuries, summer travelers have flocked to the balmy Mediterranean coastline of southeast France and northwest Italy in search of salty air and  sunshine. Often associated with free-flowing rivers of inexpensive rosé, the Côte d’Azur and Riviera Ligure also boast stunning wines truly worth writing home about, including a number of head-turning reds from Provence. On the Italian side, the crescent-shaped, little-known region of Liguria produces some of the most aromatically complex—and compulsively gulpable—white wines made anywhere in the world.

And there’s also good news for cheese lovers. Two mountain ranges virtually embrace this 350-kilometer pocket of choice coastline:  the Alpes Maritimes and the Apennines, protective barriers against potentially party-crashing continental climatic influence. But venture an hour or two inland by car, from pretty much anywhere across the entire perimeter of the Riviera, and you’ll encounter a treasury of some of Europe’s finest artisanal cheese terroirs.

Join us for a tasting tour of the Fermented Riviera, as we look for harmony between mountain pasture and coastal vineyard.

Class will take place inside a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called reOrder, an architectural installation housed within the museum’s Great Hall.  Designed by Brooklyn-based creative practice Situ Studio, the installation comprises a series of stretched fabric canopies and integrated furnishings that swell, expand, and augment the profile of the existing monumental columns.

The Brooklyn Museum is open Thursdays and Fridays until 10 p.m., leaving ample time for students to explore the museum on their own after class.

Domaine de Cabasse Séguret Blanc “Les Primevères” 2008

Pleasant Ridge Reserve Extra Aged, Upland Farms Dairy (Dodgeville, Wisconsin), $34/lb. unpasteurized cow milk

Domaine de Cabasse’s floral and tropical-fruity white blend got its name from the colorful primrose (primevères) blossoms that dot the landscape here in spring, a fitting name for this fresh and perfumed warm-weather gulper.  Séguret, a picturesque hilltop town overlooking the Cabasse vineyards, is one of only 19 villages in the Rhône valley of France allowed to append its name to the more generic Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages wine appellation. Dodgeville. Wisconsin’s Upland Farms Dairy makes its Pleasant Ridge Reserve with milk from pastured cows only, crafting this American treasure on the alpine, grass-loving calendar: May to October only.  Alongside complex creamy and meaty aromatic notes, Pleasant Ridge can also offer astounding pineapple-like tropical fruitiness. Here it’s all about complementary notes; no sharp contrasts in flavor or texture: just rich, creamy, pineapple-y goodness and a long, seamless finish.

Wine: Slope Cellars, 436 7th Avenue (14^th & 15^th), Brooklyn, NY. tel. (718) 369-7307

Cheese: Bklyn Larder, 228 Flatbush Ave. (Bergen & 6^th Ave.), Brooklyn, NY. tel. (718) 783-1250

Friday, April 29, 2011
7:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.

Great Hall, 1st Floor
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY
$65
Price includes museum admission

As in its political and social realms, Spain’s gastronomic culture has transformed itself so thoroughly in the past 30 years that even professionals have a hard time keeping up with all the changes. What’s even more fascinating, even as the country becomes synonymous with innovation and modernity, tradition dies hard in this ancient land, making for some interesting juxtapositions and unlikely bedfellows. In this class, as we sample some of Spain’s fermented greatness (including its celebrated jamo?n ibe?rico) we’ll take a sweeping look at what Spain looks like today, where it’s been, and where it’s likely headed.

Class will take place inside a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called reOrder, an architectural installation housed within the museum’s Great Hall.  Designed by Brooklyn-based creative practice Situ Studio, the design comprises a series of stretched fabric canopies and integrated furnishings that swell, expand, and augment the profile of the existing monumental columns.

As it does every Thursday and Friday evening, the Brooklyn Museum will remain open after class until 10 p.m.

Buy Tickets>>

Having arrived in Spain a day early this year—to get a leg up on my jet lag and make sure I was available to greet everyone at the airport the next day (a control thing, I guess)—I decided to skip Bilbao and hop on a bus to one of my favorite places on earth:  San Sebastián, a little over an hour away.

In one of those fortuitous coincidences, my 19-year-old niece, Alex, happened to be crashing in San Sebastián while on an extended European sojourn at the same time, and, knowing she’d been away from home and family for a close to a year, I decided there was but one choice on what to do on our one evening together: go to Bar La Cepa.

Between my last visit to this gem of an eatery in September 2008 and the moment Alex and I turned the corner along San Sebastián’s Concha toward the city’s Parte Vieja, or old quarter, on that balmy Sunday night just a few weeks ago, my sense memory had probably meandered down these same narrow streets toward La Cepa at least a few dozen times.

My mission: to introduce Alex to two dishes very dear to me : revuelto de gambas (soft scrambled eggs with shrimp) and hongos a la plancha (boletus edulis wild mushrooms cooked on the flat-top).

Here was the rub: As long as I’ve known her—which is to say, all her life—Alex has never been a particularly adventurous eater, with a long-standing aversion to all products of the sea.  Following an instinct to keep her social circle to within a few blocks of her crash pad, and on a pilgrim’s budget, she hadn’t really ventured out of her safe zone much—geographically or gastronomically—and had certainly never thought of spend €12 on scrambled eggs.

But being that I was hungry and here for just one night, I didn’t really give her much of a choice.

When our plates arrived, she was tentative at first, but then quietly, methodically, she began to dispatch forkfuls of those buttery, mouth-melty eggs studded with sweet shrimp (I’m told the chef here insists that both eggs and shellfish have to be no more than two days from hen/water), with nearly the same enthusiasm as her uncle, the same incredulous shaking of the head, the same wondering, “how can somethings so simple be so good?”

Then came the wild mushrooms, golden and meaty, salty and autumnal.  In the center of the plate sat a tablespoon, in which sat a perfectly poached egg yolk—the idea being, of course, to tear the yolk membrane slightly, and allow the yolk’s runny contents to run fatty rivulets under the mushrooms, to bind boletus to bread when the dipping commenced.

The dipping of the bread, the shaking of our heads, the smiles continued. And then my realization: that, despite her childhood gastronomic prejudices, Alex was both fully conscious of—and entirely surrendering herself to—a completely unexpected moment.

And the fact that I was witnessing, and was in fact responsible for, a moment that would likely carve itself permanently into her own sense memory, whether she realized it or not, well, that too, was one for the notebooks.

Time felt no different. The bartender was annoyed that we ordered something of the flat top just as the cook was about to break down. The couple next to us lit up cigarettes while were still eating.

But something had changed, and maybe she knew it already.

An uncle can hope. And he can remember, too.

Perhaps “accident” is not quite accurate.  Bordeaux is the wine-and-cheese pairer’s go-to choice for classic Cheddar, so I threw in a twist by selecting a Rioja bodega with an unmistakable Bordeaux pedigree and a wine with a recognizable Old World character. The 2004 Reserva offers a classic Rioja cigar box aromatic profile and slightly vegetal nose–I seem to remember the bodega having some grandfathered Cabernet Sauvignon vines–the better to complement a cheese with root cellar notes and a vegetal character of its own.

The result was pure magic.

Cabot Cloth-bound Cheddar is $25.99/lb at Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village

Marqués de Murrieta Finca Ygay Rioja Reserva 2004 is $19.99/bottle at PJ Wine in New York City.

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