Above: To record the vox for this track, we built a makeshift vocal booth in our hallway, using boxes and blankets.
Here’s another preview from my new collection of songs, a departure from my band’s sexy, pumping, high-energy rock ‘n’ roll.
Un Dimanche: new & different music of mine
All the great songwriters and musicians I’ve ever met say the same thing: make the music because you love to, because you have to.
The main focus of my musical life over the last fifteen years has been our band Nous Non Plus and I’ve been overjoyed by the success we’ve had in performing live and in selling our songs to film and television.
But there’s so much more music that I love and make.
A brilliant 98 Clos du Bourg for an old friend
One of my best and oldest friends was in Austin over the weekend… John “Yele” Yelenosky, whom I’ve known since high school.
Of course, I wanted to open a very special bottle of wine and with temperatures here in the triple digits, Nebbiolo just wasn’t going to be right.
So I reached for this brilliant, youthful bottle of 1998 Vouvray Sec Clos du Bourg by Huet that I had bought a few years ago from the Garagiste.
This wine was razor sharp in its focus, with that unmistakable, nervy acidity that is unique to great Vouvray in my experience. Minerality, acidity, stone fruit, and alcohol (12.5%): each element was distinct and perfectly articulated, but ensemble, each sang in stunning counterpoint with the other. A breath-taking wine…
I’m sure I could have let it age for another ten years but it was a thrill to taste it with John and his wife Megan, both top wine professionals from Southern California (she’s a beverage manager for a major San Diego hotel, wine writer, and Master Sommelier candidate; he’s been the top European sales rep for Southern Wine & Spirits So. Cal. for six years running).
I had already stood the wine upright last week in anticipation of their visit to Austin and then, lo and behold, on Thursday, Brooklyn Guy posted another one of his gems, an overview of recent changes at this landmark winery and tasting notes for some bottles he’s opened recently. Check it out…
Megan and John, so great to see you in the River City! Yall come back now! :)
Gobelsburg Rosé from Zweitgelt is just right
As we head into the final weeks of this pregnancy and settle into the triple-digit temperatures of the Texas summer, the wines I’ve been drinking at dinner are mostly inexpensive, light-bodied (and light alcohol content), under-$20 wines that I buy at our local wine shop, The Austin Wine Merchant (one of the few independent retailers left in the Texas capital).
I’d read about this wine on Brooklyn Guy’s blog (he proclaimed it his favorite rosé for the summer of 2010), but had never had a chance to taste it until I spied it in our local market.
Paired with a spaghetti aglio e olio (spaghetti with garlic and chili flakes), its gentle tannin tamed the garlic’s aroma and balanced the heat of the chili flakes.
I loved the wine and it tasted even better the next day (paired with cast-iron pan-fired burgers, wilted spinach, and whole wheat-flour quesadillas).
That’s all the news that fits… just standing by, trying to make beautiful Tracie P and sweet Georgia P as comfortable as we head into these last weeks before Baby P 2013 gets here… :)
any day now (Parzen family expansion update)
Any day now…
Georgia P arrived nine days before her “official” due date.
Baby P 2013’s due date is July 15 but the doctor says second-time mothers generally deliver early.
So mutatis mutandis, Parzen family expansion could happen any day now.
Little Georgia P doesn’t know how our lives are about to change and we’re really enjoying these last few days as a family of three. She’s such a sweet girl and she sure knows how to make her daddy melt with her smile…
Best meals in Italy: Day 2 at the Dispensa Pani e Vini #Franciacorta
Above: Grissini — bread sticks — are one of Italy’s great gifts to humankind. I’m not talking about the hydrogenated oil-charged grissini that come in a plastic wrapper. I’m talking about the ones that chefs like the amazing Vittorio Fusari bake in-house. Georgia P couldn’t get enough!
Franciacorta Chef Vittorio Fusari and his Dispensa Pani e Vini have become a happy Parzen family obsession. Last week I wrote about the first of two meals we had there earlier this year.
Vittorio’s ability to match brilliant technique and precision with his uncanny knack for sourcing wholesome materia prima have fascinated and thrilled me. Bringing Tracie P and Georgia P to lunch there was one of the highlights of our family trip to Italy in the spring.
Here’s what we ate on the second day.
There is so much great beer being made in Italy right now. We loved the richness of aroma and flavor in the Oppale by 32 Via dei Birrai.
The salmon wasn’t cured. It was served raw, expertly sliced and dressed with a gentle drizzle of olive oil. So simply yet ethereally satisfying.
Vittorio made these penne with green beans especially for Georgia P. Mommy and daddy couldn’t help stealing a bite.
Vittorio’s risotto agli asparagi was a masterpiece. This dish left me speechless.
Poached chicken salad. That’s a lightly breaded, fried egg in the middle. It’s yolk was perfectly runny.
The Bresciani (ethnonym for natives of Brescia, Lombardy, the province that claims Franciacorta) love beef. This was Vittorio’s take on the hamburger. All the bread is baked in-house at the Dispensa.
Manzo all’olio — literally beef with olive oil — is a classic dish of Bresciana cuisine. Slowly braised beef usually served with polenta and/or potatoes.
If I’m in Franciacorta, you’ll usually find me in the company of my bromance Giovanni Arcari (left), winemaker extraordinaire and grand personage of Italian wine. He met us for lunch and we bumped into Eugenio Signoroni, editor of the Slow Food beer and osteria guides. That’s the kind of place the Dispensa is. You always run into food and wine professionals and personalities there.
What a joy to watch our sweet baby girl enjoy her meals at the Dispensa. Our family life is centered around eating well (and by “well,” I mean deliciously and wholesomely) and there is no chef I know who devotes more attention and passion to the wholesomeness of what he serves his guests.
Thank you, Vittorio! The Parzen family is your unabashedly and eternally devoted and grateful fan!
Of men, mice, olive oil tacos & news from La Calle del Taco (Reynosa, Mexico)
Above: At the Austin Ale House, Chef Emilio Oliva is making tortillas and refried beans using extra-virgin olive oil instead of lard. Currently, the pulled pork tacos are a speciality item. If he made them a regular item, I might have to eat there once a day.
To hear Chef Emilio Oliva tell the story, the taqueros who work on the famous Calle del Taco — where taquerías line the street — in his native Reynosa, Mexico, risk their lives daily.
“I come from a town of men and mice,” he told me.
The patrons of the calle, he said, are often armed and if they don’t like your cooking, they might decide to end your career right then and there.
His advice for the taqueros of this rough border town (on the Texan frontier)?
“If you can’t cook a good greasy taco, you might as well go to Wisconsin and pick cotton.”
Happy Father’s Day, These Ladies Adore You
Selvapiana Chianti Rufina good to the last drop
MAN, I love this wine! Look at the color (no Photoshopping here, just a raw photo snapped with a white backdrop). THAT’s the color of Sangiovese.
I paired last night with a thinly cut, bone-in pork chop, slowly roasted Yukon Golds, dripping in extra-virgin olive oil, on the side. It was a beautiful thing…
98.9% natural? Either you is or either you ain’t
When I saw this claim, “98.9% natural,” on a bottle of baby liquid bath soap, I couldn’t help but think of the 1955 single by one of my favorite R&B singers Big Joe Turner: “Lipstick, Powder, and Paint” written by Jesse Stone, who also wrote “Shake Rattle & Roll” (also recorded for the first time by Big Joe Turner).
The song is about a transgender person: lipstick, powder, and paint/either you is or either you ain’t.
It’s kind of like being pregnant: you can’t be a little bit pregnant.
I think that one of the reasons why the expression natural wine stirs such controversy and can evoke such vitriol is how the precious word natural is so often abused in marketing today.
Do Bianchi 