Maybe it’s yet another sign of global warming. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Either way, we’ve been enjoying 70° weather in the San Francisco area for the past week or so. Mitigates quite a bit for not having a team in the Super Bowl yet again.
I used the occasion yesterday to make first cycling trek for 2009 over the Golden Gate Bridge. Sausalito was glorious in the mid-afternoon radiation, and I managed to time things so I watch the sun slip below the Pacific as I crossed the Bridge back to San Francisco.
The only nadir to my ride was the legion of clueless tourists crossing the Bridge on rented Blazing Saddles bicycles. Any regular cyclist will tell you that these folks are more hazardous than the rampant potholes we are continually swerving to avoid as we cross the City. Someone needs to look into equipping all Blazing Saddles bicycles with radio-signal locks—you know, like the kind they put on shopping carts so you can’t remove them from the Safeway parking lot—that disable the rentals as soon as they reach the foot of the bridge span.
Still, a two-hour bike ride always perks up my appetite, so I arranged for the Ginkgo Girl to pick up a couple of Dungeness crabs from the nearby San Bruno Supermarket. I’m not about to reveal my preferred recipe for steaming crabs here, although I will allow that Two Buck Chuck Chardonnay is a perfectly serviceable wine to use as base for the broth.
In our house, it has been a long-standing tradition for everyone to name his or her crab for a designated nemesis or thorn in one’s side (Cindy Noah, Jack Choe, Mike Nelson, Jackie Dague and the entire roster of the 2002 California Angels—over the years, you have all met your proverbial fate). My partner in Sostevinobile, David Latimer—a mellower sort than I—takes exception to this practice and needs to be left alone in the kitchen so that he may make peace with the crabs before they meet their certain demise.
The Ginkgo Girl has no similar problem with our ritual, but yesterday I exercise a bit of droit du seigneur and named the two crabs George and Dick in honor of their pending departure from the national scene. Certainly many will wish this culinary execution had been more than symbolic.
In honor of this momentous occasion, and to complement my excellent cuisine, I chose a favorite mid-priced champagne, the 2004 Iron Horse Brut. Ooops! I know I’m supposed to call it a sparkling wine, as it heralds from the Russian River Valley and not the eponymous French AOC. Be that as it may, there are still may superb méthode champenoise wines made here on the West Coast and in other regions around the world. While I am not yet ready to concede the arrival of sparkling wine from Long Island, I have been consistently impressed many of the sparkling wines produced in Mendocino, Sonoma, the Willamette Valley and elsewhere. Many, of course, are branches of their esteemed French and Spanish counterparts, but of the independent sparkling wine houses, Iron Horse has always stood strongly alongside the more-recognized names like Schramsberg and Scharffenberger. Paired with cracked Dungeness and a tangy homemade aioli, the 2004 Brut did not disappoint.