Chris is briefly back from tour, so they all came over for a hearty winter dinner. I put a wild boar roast in the oven at 9 AM and by 6 PM it was a divine pasta sauce. Since I had a full day in the studio, I finely minced the aromatics that went into the boar- carrot, onion, garlic, dried porcini- so they would disappear in the final sauce. Once the boar roast had browned, along with the above, in some smoked duck fat, I added a splash of wine, half a shot of espresso, a bunch of fennel seeds, water, and tomato paste, brought it back to a bubble, and threw it in a 250˚ oven for 8 hours (turning it once around halfway through.)
We made fresh fettucine with the pasta machine, and steamed broccoli and cauliflower, and a salad with avocado and onion, and Sirkka made a blueberry-apple-dried apricot bundt cake for dessert. We drank two different 1999 Brunellos: a Gorelli “Le Potazzine” and a Ciacci Piccolomini “Vigna di Pianrusso.” Tarry, rich, and only just getting warmed up, these are those rarest of wines that can work with both wild boar and blueberry cake and then shine even brighter when the food is all gone.