May 2nd - Steaks with Bleu Cheese and Philip Togni Cabernet

May 2nd - Steaks with Blue Cheese and 1985 Philip Togni Cabernet

My wife recently got My Last Supper from the library, which details what 50 world class chefs said they would have for their last meal on Earth. It’s an interesting book and the responses make for a interesting read. It’s definitely an interesting book to check out. Jose Andres, whose cooking I admire greatly, described a picnic in Asturias, Spain which consisted of piles of incredibly fresh seafood, but also had a course of steaks with Cabrales bleu cheese, which is really what got me going.

I was thinking about steaks and bleu cheese and knew I had to have them. I found a couple of cross rib steaks (which are cut from the Chuck) and some good bleu cheese (not Cabrales unfortunately, but any good, creamy bleu will do for steaks). I’ve been in a roasted potato kick of late, so I had more roasted potatoes and added a few onions into the mix as well. I picked up some mushrooms as well. I grilled the steaks on the Weber over a medium hot fire. Cross rib steaks are incredibly flavorful (most of the chuck cuts are) but can be tough if you cook them too long. I gave them a decent sear but pulled them off when they were still very rare. I put the blue cheese on and watched it start to melt. The potatoes and onions went on the side as did the mushrooms (which I sautéed with garlic and finished with sherry and parsley).

I had a bunch of beers I could have chosen from, but really do love red wine and steaks, so I opened my last 1985 Philip Togni Cabernet. I met Philip Togni when I worked in NY and spoke to him about this wine and he told me that it would never be fully mature and I could be buried with it. That was in 1992. The wine was 23 years old but was in fantastic shape. It wasn’t really as brown at the edge as I would have thought, and it still had a huge tannic bite to it. But it had massive fruit. It had the classic cassis, cedar and plum notes that great California cabernet has. It was not in the newer, modern, fruit bomb style. This was a big, brawny intense wine. He was right, it wasn’t mature and probably could have gone another 10 years easily. But it was amazing. Really amazing. In fact it was one of the best California cabernets I’ve ever had. The only thing that comes close was a magnum of 1976 Cuvaison cab I tasted in 1991 and a 1986 Diamond Creek Gravelly Meadow that I had in 1996. The tannins were tamed by the fatty richness of the steaks and the creaminess of the cheese. The fruit was rich, dark and intense. It was one of the finest cabernets I’ve ever had. The real irony was that I was also preparing for a beer lecture I’m supposed to do this weekend. Nothing like great wine to get you focused on beer.