Chicken Soup For The Son

Milo has a cold, so garden goodness in the form of carrot, onion, celery, and parsley went into a pot with chicken thighs to make broth. The carrot, subsequently cubed, and the chicken meat combined with the strained broth, wild rice, and orzo to make a simple, archetypal dinner that he slurped up with abandon and yet was refined enough for us to enjoy on a less sniffly level.

Off The Hook

Noah and Deanna stopped over on their way back to Brooklyn which gave me the perfect excuse to try the pizza dough recipe from Local Bread. Not only is it the new book from our local bakery founder, but the recipe comes from the very place in Campo dei Fiori in Rome where I used to go for bread and pizza rossa almost every day (though truth be told, often I wouldn't get that far since there was another, closer place with equally good pizza- but inferior bread.) Someday I would love to write a guidebook for walking tours of the pizzerie rustiche of Rome, with favorite little churches and less famous sights thrown in.

This is an insanely wet dough, but stretchy, so I did manage to get it out near the edges of the peel. We made two: the first with cherry tomatoes and fresh herbs all from the garden, and the second with potatoes from the garden and black trumpet mushrooms from the woods. The crust was a winner, and I was transported back to those magic times spent eating this perfect food while leaning against the fountain in Piazza Farnese. I also made a crudo of wild salmon and sautéed the last of our escarole to make room for spinach in the fall, and we made the tomato and cucumber salad that we have almost every day. We started with rosé, then moved on to a 1997 Soletta Cannonau Riserva which was quite rich and still young. For dessert, we had Roquefort and Stilton with a 1996 Château Theulet Montbazillac.

Lettuce Soup

I owe the inspiration for this to cookiecrumb, who referred me to Becks & Posh based on the "Bolted Lettuce" post from the other day. The happy presence of duck broth in our freezer (they leave those giblets in there for a reason) made it even better, and let me clear out a large part of the lettuce bed for the fall crop. All the various bolted varieties went in: butterhead, red and green oakleaf, and a few random others from the shaggy remnants of the mesclun row. A handful of pine nuts for density, plus some yogurt for opacity and complimentary tang rounded out the pot and got churned to smithereens with my beloved stick blender. With truffle oil and daikon sprouts, it was soup and salad together (plus, in the picture, it has clouds in it.) Our first white tomatoes commingled happily with their yellow, orange, and red brethren and yellow cucumbers in a lovely side salad. Another Pink Flamingo rosé made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of all our senile lettuce.

Pretty Yummy

I pulled some organic chicken legs out of the freezer and made a sort of stew around them using only things from the garden: green beans, chard, tomatoes, kale, zucchini, carrot, celery, shallot, basil, oregano, parsley, and scallion all got added at different times so they could cook the right amount of time before serving. Finished with a dollop of tomato sauce from Milo's pasta (normally he eats with us but today he needed something earlier) and served on brown rice from curry night it was simple yet gratifying and almost totally local. We had some Magnien Bourgogne rosé and then moved on to a Pleiades that I opened on Monday night- his wine seems impervious to the effects of air and time- it was as rich, young, and complex as if I had just popped the cork.

A Perfect Dinner

Tonight we went to Cris & Sirkka's place, since he's back from tour for a minute and their garden needed some grazing to get it under control (although we hardly made a dent; it's at least as big as ours and has been going crazy in his absence.) Sirkka made ravioli with zucchini and feta filling, Chris smoked salmon on the grill, and they made chard and mash as well. I made a salad of tomatoes and yellow cucumbers from our garden with basil form theirs, and we tossed the ravioli in shiso pesto they had in the fridge. All washed down with a couple of yummy French rosés: a Listel Vin des Sables "Pink Flamingo" (Grenache/Cinsault/Carignane) and a Murray Family Routas (Grenache/Syrah/Cinsault.) Summer eating at its best- unpretentious, yet utterly delicious, healthy, and mostly homegrown.

Bolted Lettuce

Now normally this is the bane of the gardener, since it means it's too hot to grow sweet, tender salad greens until summer is almost over. But the slight bitterness and firmer texture of bolted lettuces allow other treatments to offer themselves, (though I likes me some bitter in my salad too.) Mash makes good use of midsummer lettuce trees, and so does wilting or even braising; try it and be delighted. Plus you can bring one huge head to a party and make a salad for 12 with no problem. I am really enjoying the learning that comes with a garden, and the appreciation for subtle differences in flavor and texture as plants move through their life cycle.

Tonight, a tofu coconut curry with beans, kale, and tomatoes from the garden, and a 2003 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Sclossberg Riesling Spätlese.

Roughing It

We were in Vermont with family for the weekend, and it was perfect weather and good eating. We brought all the greens from the garden, and supplemented them with local bread, cheese, and sausages. I also lugged along the smoked duck carcass to make a broth on the second night, with soba and sliced filet of beef. The first course was salmon as sushi with brown rice and sashimi with the now-familiar sauce of hot garlic sesame oil followed by lime juice and tamari. I found a bottle of 2005 Hilberg/Pasquero Vareij, which I love but haven't seen for a while, and it was its usual crazy mix of blueberries, jasmine, and feet.

The Mollusc

Chris is on the road, so Sirkka and Nissa came over to hang out on a rainy, even chilly afternoon. A trip to the store yielded a bag of Cape Cod mussels, and some spinach fettucine. The garden gave carrot, fennel, celery, shallot, and green onion plus basil, parsley, thyme, and oregano. A few slices of guanciale got the pan going, and all the rest of the veggies sweated until soft. Then wine, mussels, and the cover while the pasta cooked. Then herbs and all tossed together in my Mom's big bread-rising bowl. I also wilted some escarole with oil, garlic and lime juice, and Christine made a salad. Sirkka made coconut ice cream. We drank a 2006 Bourgogne rosé by Frédéric Magnien. Delightful.

The transformative power of salt part 2

This time, two duck breast halves, salted overnight, then dusted with pepper and wrapped in cheesecloth went in the trusty wastebasket to hang for a week. When dried, they'll be much like prosciutto. With any luck our melons will be ripe by then and we'll have a feast.

Pete's-a-Pizza

Christine recently bought me Hamelman's Bread book, and I tried his recipe for pizza dough. It came out well; using a biga, or pre-ferment, for taste and texture is the secret. Next time I will probably add half whole wheat for health and flavor. I made two- the first was guanciale and shiitake, the second endive/basil pesto with cherry tomatoes. Given our oven's upper limit of 500˚, another important key to success is to get it nice and thin-right up to the edges of the peel- so it cooks quickly and gets good and crisp. The small effort required and the possibility of storing the dough in the fridge (or freezer) until needed mean that with a tiny bit of planning this can be a near-constant option. It does make me want to build a brick oven outside, though.

Day of the Duck

Indeed. So First off, I managed to pick a ton of green beans and kale, then blanch and freeze them while the duck smoked on our very own apple wood; its neck and giblets went in a pot with carrot, celery, shallot and parsley from the garden to make a broth for freezing until needed. The duck legs, breasts, and fat I ordered arrived, locally sourced, which means that tomorrow is confit and prosciutto day- it all gets salted and seasoned in anticipation of two very different yet equally alchemical treatments.

To accompany the luscious, smoky bird, our standard sides, since there was no time for anything fancy: mashed sweet potatoes and kale (some of the big batch I blanched.) Leftover endive mash and a gooey red wine reduction (Marquis Philips is the best for this sort of thing, including poached pears and tart glazes) with 5-spice and honey rounded out the meal. A 1997 Marchesato degli Aleramici Brunello was still kind of a big tannic bitch, but had good fruit and complexity. I'm a big fan of 1999 Brunello right now, and the 2001s are of course wonderful, but 97 is a bit of a sleeper; it needs more time but represents a good value in the face of the Wine Speculator hype surrounding more recent vintages.

A Shortcut To Mushrooms

One of our shortcuts to town goes right by Elijah's, and we stopped in to give Kurt a pickle- they just came out of the crock and I must say I nailed them; they're just like Grandpa made- and Kurt gave us some beautiful chicken-of-the-woods (yellow and orange) and chanterelles.















With the guanciale ready for action, I grabbed some worthy companions from the garden and went to work turning all of it into a heavenly pasta condimento.














Rendered guanciale, sizzled mushrooms, softened fennel, chard, and zucchini, herbs and tomatoes (our first) added at the end with a glug of wine to deglaze and soften everything all got tossed with penne, salt, and some olive oil to finish. Insane, summery, earthy, local, and perfect. The guanciale is more or less indistinguishable from bacon, so a little bit gave this dish a sublime unifying lift. We finished a 2006 Murray family Routas rosé (grenache/syrah/cinsault) that we opened last night to go with tofu, sweet potatoes, and mash. It worked well with both. We love summer. We love pink wine.

Back In The Saddle

Christine returned from the city, bearing a beautiful enameled cast-iron gratin dish that she got for 13 bucks at the dollar store around the corner from our place. It's indistinguishable from Le Creuset, and got me inspired, given that I had made a merguez mixture a couple of days ago, figuring to grill it on sticks like before. Milo and I had already picked a beet, carrots, and potatoes earier in the day, as well as both kinds of cucumbers, which made a salad appetizer that- along with some local sweet corn- kept them quiet while I made the rest.

So out came the mandoline, which made short work of the above plus half a zucchini from yesterday and all went into the new pan in layers and into the oven; it's finally cooled off so this actually wasn't insane. Kurt from Elijah's café gave me a bunch of fresh black trumpet mushrooms from undisclosed woods nearby (for free, since he likes our garden) and I sautéed them with the usual mushroom ensemble of garlic, parsley, and wine. The carrots, steamed and tossed with cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, salt, lime juice, parsley, scallion, and oil became a Moroccan dish that echoed the spices in the ground lamb. A little leftover pesto, thinned with olive and truffle oil, worked well as a finishing/unifying sauce, and we had some Château Roquefort Corail to begin and some Pleiades XV I opened yesterday to finish. A worthy homecoming, and but for the wine, salt, pepper, lime, and oil made entirely from homegrown or local ingredients.

Hot, Therefore Cold

It was quite hot and muggy today, and after a swim in the river Milo and I needed something light yet satisfying. The zucchini are going off again, so I made them into "noodles" with the saladacco and churned a thick, yummy sauce of fresh and dried tomatoes, pine nuts, pesto, and oil in the food processor. With a lovely cold glass of Les Domaniers Puits de Moret Côtes de Provence rosé (the Ott acquisition, which blindfolded I might guess was a chardonnay) it filled us up and scoffed at the heat. Being able to navigate the full spectrum from raw and vegan food to homemade pork paté- depending on ingredients, weather, and occasion- is to my mind one of the keys to great eating.

What I Didn't Do On My Summer Vacation

Cook, that is. Christine is in the city for a week so I'm making next to nothing, letting the garden and Milo determine what I have to do. Tonight he had black beans (canned, to my chagrin) plus leftover sweet potato and fresh endive mash which he loves and eats by the handful out of the suribachi while I try to make it. I had tofu tossed with most of the above and some quinoa and pickles. Tomorrow, probably pasta with pesto and salad. I want to make bread, but it's stinking hot (although the nights are cool and perfect.) I'm not even drinking much wine. It's like vacation in Bizarro World- in that I'm not actually on vacation- but it's nice to not cook much for a while and just coast.

Chops

As I mentioned yesterday, our 1976 Clos des Mouches was cooked, so today I marinated pork chops in it with garlic, herbs, salt, 5-spice, and a pinch of brown sugar. They went on the grill after a sliced zucchini got a nice char (I don't grill veggies with oil any more; the flare-ups are carcinogenic) and then got tossed in oil, salt, and thyme. I also steamed a sweet potato and made an endive mash. Given the once-in-a-lifetime luxury marinade, I opened the other one, figuring I'd make a reduction for a sauce, but it was lovely, subtle, and still fruity and tart. Amazing. Considering I got these for 20 bucks a piece, it's not surprising that some of them are bad, and it's like found money when they're good.













Dessert was a big yellow watermelon:

Open Source Cuisine

Some dishes are pretty sacrosanct; the lack of even one ingredient will cause me to change plans since it's not worth it. Others are more malleable by nature, or I haven't yet honed my understanding of the definitive version (relatively speaking, of course) and so I feel license to experiment. In this case, Ma Po Tofu, which we love, gets done differently every time as long as pork, tofu, and peas around- although I did make a version of this plenty often during my 18 years as a vegetarian. In this case, the pork was leftover paté mixture that didn't fit in the terrine, and thus already seasoned. The peas couldn't have been fresher, since Milo and I picked them about 10 minutes before dinner, and the tofu was my favorite- really tangy and rich. With some fresh ginger, Shao Xing rice wine, brown rice vinegar, sesame oil and lime basil to finish, it anchored the other dishes quite well: red quinoa, sautéed galia endive, and Chris' beet greens and turnips from last week. The beverage to accompany this rich yet healthy feast, and the welcome rain: a 2005 Latour Montagny 1er Cru "La Grand Roche" which worked very well, since as usual I didn't make it spicy even though I really wanted to.

It's so easy being green

Liz had yet another dinner party, and I had a hankering to make paté again. So as before, ground pork, rendered bacon fat and the bacon plus spices, garlic, and this time cream, Calvados, and stale bread went in a terrine and into the oven. For some reason it broke- the fat separated out- so once cooled a tiny bit I puréed it all back together again and pressed it in the fridge for four hours. It worked really well, becoming basically rillettes, and the key was to let the food processor really go at it for quite a while, which obliterated the crispy lardons and pink peppercorns I had added, but made it very creamy and smooth, with no grainy aftertaste. Unmolded (I lined the pan with parchment to make it easy) onto nasturtium leaves with a side of pickles, it made for a decadent appetizer.

















For dinner, everyone's gardens contributed an emphatically color-coordinated array of dishes. David and Judy brought a huge slab of halibut from the city, John made shiso pesto for the fish, green mash, a green bean-butter sauce for Liz's potatoes, and braised zucchini. We brought an enormous green oak-leaf lettuce that fed 12 people, and Liz made shredded pan di zucchero with pine nuts. We drank a White Barn "rosé" which is made, per the winemaker's instructions, by mixing one bottle of his grenache with one bottle of his viognier (it's tangy, complex, and insane) followed by 3 bottles of 1976 Drouhin: 2 delicious Clos de Vougeot and a sadly exhausted Clos des Mouches (I'm going to use it to marinate pork chops this weekend), a 2000 Aquila sangiovese, and a 1985 Chianti that I forget the name of. Dessert was 2 crazy vegan pies Liz made, vegan chocolate-cashew pudding I froze in the ice cream maker, and some local gelato from the new place in town.

Pickles

Here's a quick shot of the crock (note the trough around the lip for water to seal it) and the resulting giardinera; everything but the salt is from the garden and they're tangy, crunchy, and delicious. We've given away or eaten all but one jar, so in a couple of days it's going to be time for round two. There is nothing they don't complement and enhance, and they're as healthy as food gets.

Rrrrrrribs

First, the carrot ice cream. All the kids came with me to the garden first thing in the morning and we pulled a nice bunch of different colors. Chopped and steamed with a pinch each of Vietnamese 5-spice and cayenne, then puréed, pushed through a tamis, stirred into a nice custard, and then frozen once chilled, the result was a really good accompaniment to the peach tart I made later when everyone was out sightseeing. Next time I will roast the carrots in foil rather than steam them, and use proportionally more; this batch was light on the carrots to keep it kid-friendly.

The rest of the meal was country ribs, with the house rub and house sauce, smoked for a little over 2 hours- less than I like, but good enough for full effect. Also mashed sweet potatoes, escarole with garlic and lemon, and roasted beets. To celebrate their visit, we drank a bottle of Billiot's Brut Réserve Champagne, my new favorite. Champagne is wine, and his is very good wine, made mostly from pinot noir. Factory Champagne is usually garbage; go grower and taste the difference.

Pesto

Christine's family is here for the weekend, and we made fresh fettucine with pesto from our basil, using walnuts as well because we were low on pine nuts and Nettle Meadow fromage blanc in place of parmigiano. Ethan, who is 10, rolled out most of the pasta and did a fine job. All the kids were excited to make it from scratch. We had a huge salad, and the sausages that remained from the night before- my Brother came down from Vermont with a huge bag of Pascal's finest, including rabbit and fig crepinettes that were sublime. We drank a 1997 Tassinaia that had a lot going on, and seemed young at first, but was a little limp by the end. The kids and I went into the garden after dinner to pick carrots for dessert; they each pulled up a different color. Sydney asked to make carrot ice cream. "Tomorrow," I said.

Nice One

Chris and Sirkka joined us after a nice swim and visit to the store for some fish- tuna and salmon. They brought beets, greens, and cooked turnips, and daikon pickles from their garden. We made a salad from ours. Sirkka quartered the beets and roasted them wrapped in foil; we tossed them in Banyuls vinegar, salt, and a little olive oil. Chris made beet greens in dashi with garlic and chopped cooked turnips. I made Lebanese couscous with peas, mint, shiso and chives, and Nobu-style sashimi from the fish with a hot garlic/sesame oil then sudachi/nama shoyu sauce drizzled over all, and finished with jalapeños on a bed of nasturtium leaves.

Dessert was a creamy Roquefort with a half bottle of Chambers Rosewood Vineyards Rutherglen Muscat- a great pairing that created an ethereal blue-veined panna cotta in the brain.

High-End Junk Food

This actually started in my studio, where I noticed that I need another large tomato can for paint thinner. So I decided to make pasta tonight, but we were out of pasta. Thus a trip to the store, where they have this stuff called cheese, in this case taleggio and the local fromage blanc that can become so very many things. And it was raining today. And so the ingredients spoke, and dinner was penne with a roux-based sauce of taleggio, fromage blanc, white wine, dried tomatoes in oil, many herbs from the garden, and a good dose of truffle oil, plus an epic salad of many leaves and a lovely bottle of 2006 Château de Parenchère Bordeaux clairet. I forgot to add peas. Best of all, no canned tomatoes ended up being harmed during the making of this meal.

Weirdly Cool

I try as much as possible to be open to the confluence of ingredients, influences, and the day in question when making dinner; the best examples of my cooking seem to reflect all three in equal measure and still remain original, nourishing, and yummy. Tonight was a decent example. Our friend Leanne emailed to thank us for the giant zucchini we gave them yesterday and said she had made fritters- latkes of sorts- with potatoes and the squash in question. Remembering John's soup from a year ago, and having the smoked chicken bones on hand, I thus triangulated a meal I hoped would reflect all of the above plus the wet, cool day and our passage through it.



















First, the chicken bones made a lovely, smoky broth. I chopped the zucchini, some garlic, shiso, and cilantro and let them sit until the broth was ready to strain. All then cooked for about 2 hours with a handful of pine nuts until very soft, then the stick blender made a smooth, velvety soup. I had planned to crumble feta on top, and it would have been great, but we'll have to try it tomorrow since it was rich and creamy enough- especially with a dribble of truffle oil. While the soup was cooking, Yukon gold potatoes and a Chioggia beet, shredded in the food processor, plus an egg and a bit of seasoning became summer latkes, garnished with the last jar of the homemade applesauce from last fall. As we finally enter the blessed period of local fruit, it seemed fitting to use it up and make room for this year's bounty.













I opened a 2001 Guigal white Hermitage to go with all these subtle yet wide-ranging flavors; it did pretty well but ultimately a riesling might have been better. The soup is a tricky match. Today also saw the planting of cabbage, collards, and turnips in the garden for fall crops.

Wicked Good

Ground bison sautéed with red onion and spices, a salsa of more red onion, local tomato, lemon juice, cilantro, avocado, and baby cucumbers from the garden on nice spelt tortillas with a bit of rewarmed brown rice. A nice, chilly 2003 Selbach-Oster Bernkasteler Badstube riesling auslese did nicely with the spices. Quick, easy, and damn yummy.

The transformative power of salt

This arresting sculptural presence is in fact a hog cheek, cured for a week in salt, pepper, garlic, and thyme, and hung from a piece of 2 x 12 left from making the garden beds inside the metal mesh wastebasket from my office (which I washed.) Now it sits in the crawl space under the house for a week to dry a bit, and then it's guanciale.

Next to it is a 5 liter crock full of carrots, beets, baby turnips, radishes, scallions, pak choy, fennel, green beans, horseradish, Swiss chard, dill, a still green cayenne pepper- all from the garden- and a 5% salt solution. The crock in question has a nifty trough around the lip for water, making a seal so bubbles can escape but contaminants can't get in. It also has weights to keep the veggies submerged. I'm going to check on it in a week as well. It's exciting and gratifying, this growing and preserving of food, and best of all it's better tasting and better for you (and for the planet) than any other way of eating.

Garden Party

We went over to Liz's house for a garden-clearing dinner; even though it was just the three of us it gave us an excuse to cut a ton of salad and kale. I smoked two more small chickens and slow-cooked a bunch of kale kraut style with a bit of smoked chicken broth and lots of vinegar, plus mustard, fenugreek, coriander, and cumin seeds for about two hours. I also chopped a head of radicchio really fine and added olive oil, truffle oil, salt, and pepper and let it marinate.















Liz made a couple of pizzas, a frittata, and an insane vegan chocolate raspberry torte with a hazelnut crust and chocolate mousse (enhanced with avocado, shoyu, and balsamic vinegar.) There was way too much food, but the happy result of that was eating fantastic leftovers for three meals today.

Chinoiserie

A quick one tonight, but with some good flavors. First, shiitake caramelized in a spoon of the smoked chicken fat, then I threw in green beans and let them green and soften a bit, followed by a glug of Shao Xing rice wine and a drop of sesame oil. Then, in the same wok, I crisped up some tofu, added some red onion to soften, and deglazed with rice vinegar. To finish, a dollop of tamarind paste and a splash of yuzu juice, and very last some peas, tossed just until they turned bright green. Pretty standard, but attentive use of various condiments gave the dishes rich and distinctive flavors, plus the peas and beans from the garden added their own magic.

"No, kitty! That's MY pot pie!"

Inspired jointly by many quality leftovers, the exploding garden, and a glorious cool day, I took best advantage of all three and made a salmon and smoked chicken pot pie. Unused salmon from the other night, plus frozen smoked chicken broth (and meat) plus fresh green beans and the last of the peas from the garden all combined with a roux I had made from the drippings last time we roasted a chicken to make a pretty fabulous dish. A few cubed potatoes (bought before I realized how big ours are already) and a topping of the Best Pie Crust In The World® completed it. On the side, an enormous sautéed costata romanesco zucchini- which really do grow to baseball bat size in 2 days- and a Mas de la Rouvière Bandol rosé to drink. The poor cat was bug-eyed and frantic as his walnut-sized brain tried to comprehend chicken AND salmon in the same dinner, as well as why he wasn't getting any (don't worry; I gave him some later.)

Crazy make-em-ups

Our neighbors Susan and Stewart came for dinner, and I was working all day so I had to improvise. The smoked chicken carcass became a lovely broth, strained and reduced, while the salmon that Christine bought got a double treatment as both tartare and sashimi. Haricots and shiitakes, blanched and caramelized respectively, plus shaved chioggia beets and the remaining smoked chicken meat all went into a terrine that was glued together by the reduced broth.
























Given the short time frame, it didn't get quite cold enough to gel, but was really yummy. We drank, in order, a Château Roquefort Corail rosé, then a 2003 Millbrook Hudson Valley reserve chardonnay they brought which was quite yummy -if not quite living up to the Burgundian claims on the label- I will seek this out and see how it ages. It augurs well for us getting more of our wine locally. Then a Pleiades XV to introduce them to the wonders of Thackrey. For dessert, we had kind of a fluke: a gorgonzola that was improperly inoculated, so only the rind was blue; the interior was pure white and tangy. Delicious, though, and despite the lack of blueness still a good match for a half bottle of 2000 Château Theulet Montbazillac.

Pasta

Super simple, yet super good: penne in a sauce of ground lamb, onion, garlic, lots of herbs, and fresh peas plus canned tomatoes with a gorgeous salad. To drink, a 1998 Franciscan Magnificat that did a good job with the lamb while still being quite young; it has a lot of reticent Bordelais complexity and should really open up over the next 10 years.

Smokin'

For a summer Sunday, I fired up the smoker and put in a salt & peppered chicken. One of the happy features of this house is a huge maple tree in back, which shades the patio and drops small dead branches in storms, so there's always a nice supply of dry maple kindling to add to the apple wood in the firebox. After about an hour, I put on a few of Fleisher's brats to smoke as well, and they were a revelation: instead of tightening up like they do over direct heat, they stayed soft and kept all their juice while getting a good smoky flavor too. I also cooked a big bunch of kale kraut style- slowly with onion and cider vinegar- made radicchio mash, and red potato salad with cornichons and herbs like my aunt Martha's recipe (the key being to toss the still-hot potatoes in copious vinegar so they soak it up, then add the oil.) Given my Grandfather's mastery of chicken-smoking, this meal is one I easily could have had 20 years ago (although without the mash.) We drank our very last Siduri pinot, a 2003 Sonatera.

Garden Update

The view yesterday
















The many squash volunteers from the compost
















Under the zucchini canopy
















Lettuces still going strong





















Beans peaking

Variety

A three-part dinner tonight, inspired by the garden and a few things from fridge and pantry. First, crispy tofu tossed in Christine's new favorite sauce, the hybrid tahini/guacamole with scallions and cilantro to finish. Next, a stir-fry of just-picked goodness including carrots, beans, peas, beet, and yellow squash (the only one not from the garden, but still local) and last pad thai noodles with beet greens and a sauce of dried shrimp, garlic, ume vinegar, sesame oil, truffle oil, ponzu, nama shoyu, nam pla, and agave syrup. A Mas de Gourgonnier rosé was not a perfect match; the riesling in the fridge would have been better, but I opened the rosé thinking aperitif while I cooked and it seemed silly to open another one.

A Note on Mash

We learned this from John, and I think he learned it from Richard. It's a kind of pesto, but made with a bitter green from the endive/radicchio family like pan di zucchero or radicchio; lately we've been using the galia endive because it's at its peak. Frisée makes a divinely creamy mash. The suribachi is the ideal tool for making mash, and though it takes a bit of work, the result is well worth it, since it can accompany a bloody piece of meat as perfectly as the most ascetic vegan fare.

You smash a garlic clove and grind it up with some olive oil, then add an ume plum or two and keep grinding. Then some pine nuts, toasted if you have time, and then the shredded greens and some more oil. Lemon juice is grand, and truffle oil takes it to a higher place, but pretty much everything besides the garlic, greens, and oil is optional. The bitterness is smoothed a bit by the ume and oil, and it is a cleansing addition to any plate- try it and see how it cuts through fatty meat, or enhances pretty much anything. You can easily find a suribachi at your local Asian market or online. We use the food processor all the time, but this brilliant variation on the mortar and pestle is just the ticket for a coarser, more rustic preparation, and allows you to get it just the way you like it. Plus, it's nice to move sometimes when you cook, and the bowl makes a pleasant ringing sound while you grind.

Casual

Sirkka and Danny came over for a mellow Friday dinner. Christine had been to Fleisher's earlier in the day, and their housemade sausages are very good, so I whipped up a variation on her Mom's sausage pasta sauce- with hot & sweet sausage and lots of herbs. Whole wheat spaghetti has a nice body and flavor for a big sauce like this (even though we don't like the other shapes; the penne, etc. are too mealy) and there were good sides, mostly from right outside the kitchen: mash, sautéed pak choi, Sirkka's radish pickles, a great salad and her cherry canten with whipped cream and berries for dessert, enhanced by our new gelato place's passion fruit sorbetto. Not bad. A 2001 Domaine la Millière CDP and a 200 Hilberg-Pasquero Barbera "Bricco Gatti" both did well by this good, honest food.

Taste the Rainbow

Christine bought wild salmon and a beautiful piece of chicken-of-the-woods today, and the colors were just gorgeous together, so I was inspired- especially since I spent all day drawing on a big sheet of MDF and needed some color. Plus, the greens beans have arrived, going from tiny to 6 inches long in about two days. I reheated brown rice with water to that magical twice-cooked creamy state, and cooked the fish skin side only so it was still raw on top. Mushrooms, then beans, then baby fennel followed in the same pan, refreshed with a tiny bit of butter to help give the mushrooms some moisture. Mash made from endive and herbs, ume plum, oil, and pine nuts and a pan sauce of a splash of wine and agave rounded out the meal.

A nasturtium flower finished the plate and a Pleiades XV, always an excellent salmon wine, astonished again with its insane nose and funky elegance. We were lucky to be able to compare it With the 2002 Novy Page-Nord syrah that we opened last night to go with pizza; after the yummy but kind of monolithic purple fruit and chocolate of the Novy, the Pleiades had some of the same toasty funk and layered quality that Sujit's Echezeaux had at the party a while back.

Mission Statement

I bought and read Barbara Kingsolver's latest book a few weeks ago, and it's both an inspiration and validation to what we're doing here, and to what more and more people are doing around the country: growing and eating as much local food as we can. It's the best kind of activism, since it involves copious pleasure while at the same time using less fossil fuel to bring us our dinner. It also helps, I think, to not be an absolutist; salt, pepper, olive oil, coffee, most of our wine and spices, and fruit in the off-season all come from somewhere else, and I think that's OK. We live, after all, in a global economy.

My Mother had a garden when I was growing up, and some of my earliest memories are of doing what Milo is doing right now- "helping" by picking peas or strawberries then eating them all. In the age of the scientifically honed marketing of awful crap pseudo-food to the very young, I look at our garden as an antidote- or at least a vaccine- against the corporate factory food machine that is killing our soil, our wildlife, and our people in front of our eyes. We vote in elections, true, but voting with our eyeballs (we have no TV reception) and with our wallets (by choosing this kind of food, among other things) are just as important; the free market is an instrument of activism too. Beyond polemics, though, my son is learning that food comes from the ground, and he eats more kinds of food than any other kid his age that I know of. We eat together almost every night, and every day he asks to go outside and look for berries, or mint, or to come in the garden and eat peas or radishes. And he asks for truffle oil on his risotto. He'll be three in September.

Risi e Bisi

Those peas, those peas. This right here is honestly why I bought the chicken, notwithstanding the crispy, wife-pleasing goodness of the roasted bird. The carcass made an excellent broth, and we all picked peas (Milo is very good at picking, but eats them all) plus salad and herbs. Super simple risotto ensued, flavored with the peas tossed in at the very last minute, plus parsley, parmigiano, and truffle oil. I made the risotto on the wet side, according to tradition and the aforementioned wife, who is after all half Italian as opposed to my zero percent (don't let the URL fool you.) Milo asked for extra truffle oil on his rice. That's my boy.

On the side, a perfect salad, featuring our new official house vinaigrette of walnut oil and sherry vinegar, which is nutty, sharp, and rich, yet transparent so the character of all the different greens and herbs can shine through; today's offering included mesclun, mustard, mizuna, parsley, cilantro, nasturtium, dill, shiso, and chive. To match the dinner, a 2005 Les Domaniers de Puits Moret which is bottled under the Domaines Ott label but isn't an estate wine. As a result, it costs about 10 bucks less and delivers a nice, crisp, pale pink accompaniment to this kind of food.

Basic

Last night, a simple roast chicken with brown rice. Also, shiitake caramelized in the chicken fat, and baby veggies (carrot, turnip, beet) from the garden roasted in foil alongside the bird then tossed with peapods in the wine-deglazed mushrooms. I bought the chicken as much for the carcass as for this meal; the peas in particular call out for something good this evening, and the perfect cool weather is allowing for all kinds of cookery that sweltering would never permit.

A 1996 Louis Max Charmes-Chambertin was good, but thin and still tight- it felt stuck in third gear- some more time would help, but it was our only one.

Dim Something

Many leftovers and not much time led to this variety of small treats; there's nothing like having nori, and other wrappers around to turn random scraps into elegant bites. The goes-without-saying summer rolls, wontons made with a filling of leftover curried chick peas puréed with the last of the sweet potato salad fromm John's birthday, and maki made from some brown rice remnants and filled with the purée, a bit of barramundi Milo had the other night, scallions from the garden, and snap peas. We drank a Bonny Doon vin gris which comes admirably close to the French model they're emulating.