To be fair, I’m not a fan of sparkling wines full stop.
I love sparkling… I have had Champagne, Crémant, Prosecco, Sekt or Cava both white and rosé but I have never had a red one and I admit I cannot imagine the taste…
That porkbelly looks tasty 
I have had a bottle of Крим, GeorgianUkrainian sparkling red wine, and it was unpleasant to a quite remarkable degree. None of the three of us who were there finished even one glass.
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Sparkling reds are mostly an Australian thing, first made in South Australia in 1881. We used to call them “sparkling burgundy” until the EU made us stop because, they said, “Burgundy” was a French territorial designation despite the French not using it. They passed out of fashion during WWII, have made a comeback since the eighties.
Anyway, they are red wines, made by the method Champenoise, predominately of shiraz grapes. They tend to be sweetish full-bodied red wines that foam like champagne. Inferior ones are too sweet, more expensive examples are drier but never really dry, and cellar well to thirty years or so. I like to have something else in the blend besides shiraz, such as cabernet sauvignon, or durif. My favourite used to be Cofields Sparkling Durif, but it is no longer available commercially, so I go for the Mick Morris Sparkling Shiraz-Durif from the same district (Rutherglen).
Drink chilled.
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Ratatouille:
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Speaking of acquired tastes (I really quite like anchovies), I have got something that I’ve been wanting to post since Easter.
I am wondering if any of you know this or have a similar dish:
This is a Solei or “pickled egg”. Traditionally, these are/were sold as quick snacks at pubs. In my family (and maybe others?) we make them for Easter. Just hardboil eggs, crack the shell somewhat but leave it on and then put them in a saturated saline solution for a week in a cool dark place. There are recipes with spices but these can lead to funny tastes and I have stopped trying to improve upon the perfection of simplicity.
To eat: remove the shell, cut egg in half, extract the yolk, fill the egg with mustard, vinegar and oil, season with pepper and salt put yolk on top. Finally, shove half an egg into your mouth and enjoy. The trick with the spoon is a recent one making it easier to deal with egg whites that have holes in them (we used to “repair” those with mustard.
I managed to make my partner acquire this peculiar taste.
The pickled eggs can be bought at stores but I’ve never done that. I think these are mostly popular in the Ruhr Valley where my parents are from.
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Ooh!
These are traditional in pubs and fish-and-chip shops in the UK. I have trouble finding them, so I make my own, often with “Princesses’ Brine” (from a Swedish cookery book, 3 parts salt, 3 parts vinegar, 20 parts water). I’ve occasionally thrown in a few pepercorns and such.
The seasoning is not a usual UK thing so I shall have to try it…
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Go with spicy mustard and sherry vinegar. The whole thing needs to go right into your nose 
It is my second best usage for sherry vinegar–the best is for poaching eggs. Usually, I prefer milder types of vinegar.
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Can’t stand pickled eggs. But I’ve only tried them from the big jars in a chippy so maybe they’re nicer done ‘properly’. I do love eggs in nearly every format so maybe I ought to give it a try!
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Sherry vinegar is, as far as I am concerned, the knees of the bee and les couilles du chien. I don’t think of it as unmild. Mellower than most red wine vinegars. Has a bit more kick than cider vinegar, true. Splendid for salads, especially potato-based.
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I recently made some lemon curd and found two different uses for adding it to mascarpone: filled cookies and a freshly invented lemon tiramisu. Hope coffee and lemon works somehow
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Weekend before last I made some very simple fried chicken wings. Kinda like the ones on Midnight Diner Tokyo stories, only no soy in the marinade, and only corn starch.
That way my kids could actually eat them. Which they did.
I will stay they did need a little something to makeup for the missing soy. I did a light dust of Himalayan salt which did the trick. Really deep chicken flavor.
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Late last week we stopped in at the natural foods store a few blocks from where we now live. They aren’t going to become one of our regular places to shop—they seem to be largely an outlet for supplements, with a much smaller selection of both meat and produce than Sprouts, and their prices are higher—but they have some things worth an occasional visit. One that I picked up to try was a mild Italian sausage made with no added sugar (surprisingly hard to find in meat products!).
This weekend I tried it out in a pasta dish (brown rice pasta, as we’ve stopped using wheat pasta). I cooked it in olive oil with mushrooms, red bell pepper, and a little zucchini, seasoned with basil, black pepper, marjoram, onion powder, and parsley, and then stirred in the pasta and let it cook for a few minutes more. It had quite a good flavor, to which the Italian sausage contributed a lot, and it was still good today, when we ate the other half of it cold for lunch.
Here’s what it looked like:
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There is pasta made from rice?
As non wheat pasta I usually pick Dinkel (apparently this is spelt) which is not gluten free though. We also have pasta made from lentils but I haven’t found a really good type.
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Was it Natural Grocers? If so, we only buy certain things from them. We, as a family, go through a lot of eggs (at least half a dozen per day, sometimes more depending on the meal plan), and they have a discount program for eggs. It’s also a very convenient spot to consistently buy goat’s milk (my oldest daughter seems to have a dairy allergy so we’ve switched her to goat milk and coconut yogurt). And, occasionally, they will have a good selection of produce, but we never bank on it.
The name sounded right, and checking Google Maps confirms it. They do have a few things that are both good and worth the price; I expect we’ll visit from time to time. Not for eggs, though; we have friends who keep laying hens and give us eggs during the season for them, and we can buy eggs quite inexpensively at Dillon’s. On the other hand, they have a first rate selection of brown rice pasta.
There is in California, and in Kansas. We used to dislike it, because a lot of brands turned into repulsive slime if they weren’t cooked exactly right, but then we found an American brand called Tinkyada or Pasta Joy that really suits us: cooks in 15 minutes, has an excellent slightly nutty flavor, and seems quite robust, as well as being gluten free (not an issue for us—C avoids wheat because of its glycemic index—but I note it because other people will be interested, perhaps).
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My sister will be turning seventy soon, and has requested a dinner of my canneloni alla Bolognese for the party who will be driving her off for her weekend in Orange. Ragu alla Bolognese takes four days to cook, so I started it last night:
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We have it here, but I much prefer the kinds made from lentils or from chickpeas.
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Four.
DAYS!?
Heavens. I hesitate to make a pasta sauce that takes 4 hours!
I admire your drive and talents!
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