Sourdough, Memorial Day Weekend, Wine

Lori’s sourdough loaf.

Lori has been working on her sourdough starter, just like everyone else in the Bay Area, California and the world.  She calls her starter “Seymour”.  Technically it should be called Audrey II, but everyone remembers the name Seymour, and the line “Feed me!”, and so the starter became Seymour.  (The only other thing you remember from Little Shop of Horrors is Steve Martin as the dentist.) 

The key to enjoying sourdough, though, is not the starter, it’s what you do with the starter.  Sure, anyone can make a loaf of bread.  Almost anyone; I couldn’t.  But what about dinner rolls, which can conveniently become slider buns?  What about sourdough pancakes and waffles?  (Shout out to our friend Marybeth Binder who made the glass mosaic custom backsplash for our stove when we renovated the kitchen a couple of years ago.)  Personal opinion is that the blueberry sourdough waffles were much better than the pancakes. The crunchy and soft of the waffles just worked.

For the sliders, I worked from another recipe from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.  It was modified to half ground chicken, half ground beef, with grated zucchini, diced onions, minced garlic and jalapenos added in, plus spices like cumin.  Then there was a yogurt sauce, with lemon zest and juice, and sumac.  Really good; might not ever make a conventional hamburger again.  We paired that with a bottle of 2017 St. Anne’s Crossing Primativo, Sonoma Valley, Shumahi Vineyard.  Great dinner. 

Pink Pinot Noir for Memorial Day barbeque.
Lori practicing 6 foot social distancing in our backyard.

The sourdough blueberry waffles were brunch on Memorial Day.  For dinner, a social distancing dinner in our backyard with kids and grandkids, we did a simple chicken barbeque with corn on the cob and a salad.  It was a warm day, and roses were the order of the day.  We opened two roses of Pinot Noir, one the 2017 from Balletto Vineyards, the other the 2018 Lazy Creek Vineyards (now owned by Ferrari Carano).  Both were quite nice, and had more body and bite than usual for rose of Pinot Noir.   

2015 FEL (Cliff Lede) Pinot Noir, Anderson Valley: delicious.

Last, but certainly not least, was the bottle of 2015 FEL Pinot Noir, Anderson Valley, that we opened Saturday with dinner.  We didn’t cook, but supported one of our local restaurants and brought in dinner from Valette.  Great restaurant in Healdsburg, when you get a chance to travel to the wine country again.  FEL is the second label from Cliff Lede Vineyards in Napa (named from Cliff’s mother’s initials), which we visited about 3 years ago, just after the 2017 Tubbs Fire.  This was a really nice Pinot Noir when we visited, and even better now.  A great example of Anderson Valley Pinot Noir. 

L’Chaim,

Larry