A Drowsy Numbness Pains My Sense

One of the great joys of parenting is that it's like having a VIP preview to all of the season's latest must-have microbes. Milo got a cold on Friday, and of course inevitably I got it a couple of days later. Since it was just the two of us this weekend, I made a big vat of minestrone with a chicken carcass, lots of roots and herbs from the garden, alphabet pasta, and heirloom cranberry beans. He's been zealously working his way through it for the last four days.

For myself, after I put him to bed (when one of us is away, he gets to stay in our bed, which is a treat for both of us) I made a meal of utmost simplicity and luxury. A big local ribeye, seared à point in a little bacon fat and served on a big pile of the latest batch of kimchi. I washed it down with a 2001 Serpico, which is softening enough to drink well, but needs more time to get where it wants to be. Having said that, I'm cooling some on these big Italian bruisers; Piedmont is really where the action is, though the prices and the required aging time make it a long-term relationship.

















The next day- I think; I feel ever so crappy- I made something that popped into my head a while back when I was trying to think of what to do with the hard end of a piece of our duck prosciutto. As it has aged and continued to dry, it moved through the firmness spectrum from prosciutto to bresaola, and now it's bonito-hard. So that inspired me to treat it like bonito; I made "oshitashi" with swiss chard and a blood orange ponzu, then grated some of the duck on top. On the side, quick-pickled chard stems from the same plants. It worked really well, and next time I cure duck I will smoke it and set some aside for longer aging in order to have "duck dashi" as a pantry staple.
















Then, to celebrate the last jar of last year's yellow tomato purée- which is as sweet and velvety as tomato sauce knows how to get- I made a semi-deconstructed version of my Mother-in-Law's sausage pasta. The problem with her version is that the sausage, as it simmers in the tomato sauce, tightens up into dense little pucks so that although the flavor is good, texturally the wonderful juicy snap of sausage is lost. So I cooked some locally-made hot and sweet sausage in a pan until they were just shy of done, and took them out. Into all the rendered fat and brown goodness I dumped minced onion and garlic, then deglazed with a splash of white wine from the fridge. I removed the top couple inches of clarified tomato water from the quart jar (the solids sink down, so this helped thicken the result as well as giving me about a cup of clear yellow tomato nectar for another use) and poured it in. As it simmered and reduced, I cooked penne, and tossed it into the sauce when it was nearly done along with a handful of peas. Meanwhile, I reheated the sausages to sizzling and sliced them into the pasta, adding their juice. It was a success; the creamy sweet tomato sauce (well-infused with the pan drippings) was the ideal pedestal for the crispy, juicy, spicy sausages, and the sweet peas added another dimension.

Urbane Urban Urbanity

Another week in the city got me across the goal line; I won't be back for much more than schmoozing and food-related activities for a while. It's ironic, because all of a sudden our old neighborhood is hipster central, with an embarassment of culinary and commercial riches that we could not have imagined only a few years ago when we lived there. So it's sad to return, but the pangs of regret are mitigated some by the size of the rent checks I now get, plus the fact that I love our life here in the sticks, particularly as it relates to our garden and the first-rate meats, birds, and grains we have direct access to now. Also, the boy is ecstatic and spends most of his life outside, as is proper.

As a respite from my toils preparing the ground floor apartment, I was able to go out for some meals- two of which were excellent. Monday night, Mary and I took a friend who was paralyzed in a hit-and-run last winter out to Dressler (his choice) in Williamsburg, which has a pretty reasonable corkage fee, so she and I planned ahead and came well prepared with a Burgundy-themed evening. I left my notes in Brooklyn, but the food was good to very good- pretty straightforward, but well-executed, and with quality ingredients- and a couple (the two that Mary brought) of wines were superior. In my defense, I bought mine the day before and the worse of the two was solely on the rec of the guy in the store. The better one was from a domaine that has since ben bought by Camille Giroud, for whom Mary's beau makes the wine.

Thursday was John's bachelor party lunch at Nobu Fifty Seven; the guys in the band have known Shin for many years-since he was at Hatsuhana, I think- and have followed him as he moved around to different restaurants. He hooked us up with an omikase extravaganza that lasted for three hours. Nine guys, 12+ courses, and semingly bottomless daiginjo sake. Most amazing, by the end of it all we were neither stuffed nor drunk. Perfection. I took a crap phone picture of the mammoth platter of sushi he sent us to conclude the meal (but before the bananas foster with rum ice cream and the molten chocolate cakes with intense matcha ice cream served in a bento box) that I will spare you.

Now I'm home, and it's just me and Milo for a few days, so I'm playing with kid food permutations involving healthier and fancier ingredients.

There Will Be Food

About 14 years ago my Mom took me scuba diving in Belize. The national dish there- as I remember it- is rice and beans cooked in coconut milk, garnished with onions and habañero peppers pickled in vinegar. It's a great combination; the rice and beans are rich, creamy, and thick, and the pickles are crunchy, sharp, and fiercely hot. Since we still have an excess of habañeros, I made 2 quarts of the hot onion pickle today with our red onions (as well as a whole mess of basil-nasturtium-sorrel pesto for the freezer, but that's another post.)

For the "rice" I took a cup of the local 10-grain mixture we love so well and put it into my new pressure cooker with a can of coconut milk, soaked kidney beans, herbs, spices, a little lemon juice, and a few chopped cloves of garlic. After about 20 minutes it was a lovely thick porridge studded with plump beans and perfumed with the garlic and powders (chile, cumin, paprika, plus mustard seeds.) I salted it and it was done. A grope of neon onions on top and a little chervil completed the ultimate post-tropical peasant dish; the grains are so nutty and creamy and wonderful, and the crunchy onions have that long, beautiful fruity habañero afterburn. To quench the heat, a lovely 2005 Trimbach Gewürztraminer that rained peaches and lychees onto the bright pink-and-orange fire, and whet the ferrous edge of the blood-red beans.

Hey, Puddy

For tonight's dinner the pork shoulder steak I bought at the farmers' market yesterday gave me something to focus on, and I had it pretty well figured out by dinner time; a few last details inspired by fridge and garden rounded it out into an excellent season-spanning meal. I brined the meat in kimchi juice, then cooked it sous-vide at 65˚ C for two hours. Meanwhile, I took a jar of the most recent kimchi, (which is actually sauerkraut, since it's only cabbage and carrot) and braised it in a pan in which I had rendered and crisped lardons of the penultimate slice of homemade bacon. In addition, I put a cup of whole triticale into the rice cooker and made a reduction sauce of cherry juice, balsamic vinegar, and brown rice syrup. While all of this was going on, I made mash with thinnings of the galia endive that we love best in this form, and which is growing in well for fall and winter.

All was ready pretty much at once, which is nice, and the various intense flavors made for a compelling variety of different bite combinations. I seared the meat up in a pan with a little of the rendered bacon fat in it, and used the crispy filaments of fat that remained as a garnish for the plates. The bacon added a nice supporting porkiness that helped the meat find extra favor with the cabbage, and the sweet/tangy sauce, nutty grains and bitter, garlicky mash provided a full spectrum of flavors and textures on the plate. As with so many other meals, a Pleiades XVI was absolutely perfect with this; I'm still in mourning that it will never be made again. If you see any in a store (for about $25) BUY IT. (This goes for any Pleiades, but earlier vintages are scarce as hen's teeth these days) You will thank me later. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until I run out- it is, for the money, hands down the Best Wine in America.

Like Cheney, But Without The Dick

OK, I'm still using the old camera, so the picture is not exactly flattering. The ancient beast is near-useless in subpar light, and loves the flash like Sarah Palin loves a meth-dusted mooseburger. (Or like the ancient beast loves Sarah Palin.) But the salad, the salad- my Mom used to eat like this most of the time- perfect greens tossed with a few choice proteins, or pasta tossed with a panoply of vegetables was her dinner more often than not.

Since our fall lettuces are finally getting up to speed, and I hit our weekly farmers' market for a whole wheat baguette and some goat cheese (and a nice, juicy piece of pork- see tomorrow) it seemed logical, nay imperative, that I comprise it all into one gorgeousness of a meal that would immaculately convey the fleeting warmth of summer in such a powerful way that not only would we would feel it as we ate but also that you, gentle readers, would vicariously partake of some portion of reflected waning sunlight simply by reading and be the better for it.

Thus lettuces and herbs- positively squeaky with just-picked freshness- tossed with the nudest of vinaigrettes became the luxe featherbed for roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary (all picked minutes before) boiled local eggs, and the aforementioned baguette and herb-rolled chèvre that I toasted up real nice. To accompany, like a retinue of lascivious yet courtly ladies sauntering down our curtsying gullets, a Jacky Blot Vouvray "Clos de la Bretonnière" that is as resplendent a courtesan as ever a peasant repast like this could imagine in its most lavish fantasies.

Hotness Cubed

Yesterday was Milo's fourth birthday, so we let him choose dinner. "Pizza" was the verdict. So I made pizza dough and tomato sauce, and pulled other ingredients from the fridge. The pizzas were well received. True story.

Today, in between trying to keep an eye on him while he tear-assed around the driveway on his new bike ($10 from the used bike guy in town, and the best ratio of glee to expense I have ever seen) I tried to get on top of the garden by weeding, thinning, and picking the things that needed to be weeded, thinned, and picked. From the picked things, I made a variety of first-rate condiments. First, some sambal. As you can see, there are many kinds (including the ancestor sauce to Ketchup) but here I was trying to duplicate some that friends brought us from Holland last winter- it was hot, but with ginger, kaffir lime, and sugar to balance it out. We went through two pint jars of it in no time- honestly, my wife would have injected it straight into her veins if she could have. Since our hot peppers are going off like fireworks right now, I tried to use a bunch of them up in a few different ways.

For the sambal, I chopped the cayenne peppers with Thai and lime basil, red onion, garlic, dried shrimp, and ginger, then mashed it all into a paste in the suribachi with some lime juice and a little sugar and agave syrup. It turned out pretty great, and is within sight of the intended goal; lime basil is nowhere near as potent as kaffir lime leaf, but has the advantage of growing in my garden. This version was also raw, and in future I will try cooking it to help it thicken and develop flavors. In any case, our first half-pint is already in rotation and I made a dent in the cayenne crop.

Next up, more kimchi; the last batch was just cabbage and carrot, and this time I wanted spicy. So I went back to the classic mixture of cabbage, carrot, green onion, ginger, and garlic plus Thai basil, chervil and six chopped red serranos with their seeds and membranes. In two weeks it should be perfect.

Last, the hottest of all our peppers- the habañeros. We are lousy with them, and so I tried an idea I had earlier to try to use up a lot of them. The garden has a lot of pink things in it right now, so I used that color as my guide and pulled out the juicer. Red and white carrots, chioggia beets, watermelon, red onion, and radishes all went into the juicer, along with about half our ripe habañero crop (seeded, but with some membrane left in) and four limes. I dissolved some salt in a little cider vinegar on the stove and mixed it in. The foam from the top of the bowl that the juicer drained into was nuclear and delicious. The juice blend was a little less nuclear- there was a lot of membrane in the foam- and bursting with all the pink flavors harmonizing together. The photo gives an idea, but it's really pink- not at all orange or red like regular hot sauce.

About Freakin' Time

Finally, after much schlepping, I get to be home for a week. Then, after about 5 days back in the city, I'll be home for a good long chunk of time and get to return to the normal pace of life. I can't wait. Meanwhile, this week will be taken up with much canning and pickling since everything's finishing up for the season. I have three or four beds planted with winter crops, ready for their plastic covers once the temperature starts to drop at night. If all succeeds, we'll have greens, salad, herbs, and a good variety of roots to last us deep into winter.

There wasn't a ton of time to make this, but it's hard to beat garden stew in any form. This version had chicken thighs, which simmered with potatoes, carrots, radishes, onions, garlic, radish greens, yellow beets and a nice mix of herbs (basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, sage, and chervil) for about an hour until all was tender and the jus was golden and unctuous. And that was it; another one-pot wonder brought to you by the plants outside our back door. Because I left the camera's USB cable in Brooklyn, you will have to go on with your life without having gazed upon a bowl of vegetables and chicken with chopped parsley scattered insouciantly on top of it.

Blogger Dinner

After a few tries over the last several months, Brooklynguy and I were finally able to meet for dinner in Park Slope. We went to Al Di La's wine bar, where you can eat their food without having to wait in the inevitable line for the restaurant part. We wandered vinously through Italy, the Loire valley, and Champagne while enjoying seafood soup, octopus & chick pea salad, and two different pastas- a beet and ricotta ravioli and some lovely fat yet delicate malfatti with chard and ricotta. We got grilled chard stems on the side.

The great thing about the blogosphere- apart from the stupid, stupid name- is that it's the ultimate meritocracy; we read and return based on the quality, originality, and frequency of the content. I tend to prefer reading passionate amateurs with good grammar and wide-ranging knowledge who do not agressively (or at all) monetize their sites. A sense of humor is important, too. I thus have a pretty good idea that those people whose blogs I enjoy (and who don't get offended by my comments, especially since I cannot bring myself to use smiley punctuation or exclamation points to signify sarcasm or enthusiasm) would be people whose company I would enjoy in real life.

Thusfar that seems to be the case; we began with a working knowledge of each other's tastes and backgrounds so we didn't have to deal with all the formalities that normally attend a first meeting. And by the end of the night we had covered a lot of ground. I will be attending a wine-people shindig next week chez Brooklyncouple, and have to figure out what to bring, given that he's even pickier than I am. Who knew the interweb was good for meeting people who share your interests? Have dinner with your favorite local bloggers this fall- you'll be glad you did. Or you'll end up having to get a restraining order. Could go either way.

Tasting Dinner

I'm still in the city, and it's OK, but I miss family and garden with increasing intensity each day. The other night I was invited to Kris and Ken's place for dinner, and Mary came straight from the airport to join us; she's back from France to gather her stuff before moving back there for good. Kris made a simple yet elegant dinner, and we had superlative wines to accompany each course.

First, his crab cakes- covered in roasted corn and served with a spicy mayonnaise. After beginning with a 2002 M. Grünhäuser Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett for an aperitif, we had a 2003 Colin-Deleger Puligny-Montrachet 1er cru "La Truffière" with the crab cakes. It was outstanding, with layers of fruit and minerals that intertwined hypnotically.

Next, a perfectly roasted chicken with potatoes and green beans. Archetypal, and super-traditional, but immaculately prepared. Mary opened the 1989 Camille Giroud Gevrey-Chambertin 1er cru "Les Cazetiers" and though on its way out, it rallied after a few minutes open and gave us all of its remaining fruit and perufme.

With the cheese, we had the bottle of 1999 Ciacci Piccolomini Brunello I brought and decanted upon arriving. These guys being who they are, they immediately pegged it as a 1999 Brunello, but I didn't give it away. Mary remembered that she had stashed some Brunello in their fridge, so she dug out a bottle of 2001 The Ciacci Riserva to compare. 2001 was an epic vintage, and the contrast was amazing; mine was perfect, and absolutely at its drinkable best, while hers was super-concentrated and needs another 5-10 years to calm down a little. Best of all, it was a complete coincidence that she pulled it out, because I still hadn't told them what we were drinking. Wines are always best drunk with other wines, and with company like this.

The only sad note was the fact that the magnum of 1993 Giroud Vosne-Romanée Chaumes she brought back for me- a gift for John's wedding- shattered in her luggage. We were all pretty upset that such a thing of beauty had been lost.

A Fistful Of Basil

I'm off to the city tomorrow, for an unknown period of time (probably a week) so this will be the last post for a bit since the laptop is kaput. I do have a couple of nice things scheduled, so if I can I'll post them while I'm there. Tonight's dinner is unremarkable to look at, for sure- but to taste, well, that was another matter. It began with some ground (local, organic) turkey. Now this is a bland meat, made all the more so by the inexplicable absence of fat. It makes a passable burger, or meatball, or even part of a sausage, but not without copious flavoring and usually heroic doses of duck fat.

In this case, however, such is the bounty that is pouring forth from the garden every day that all I had to do was throw it in the mix- though it definitely got an assist from the lobster broth we brought back from Vermont. So turkey, white carrot, white beet, yukon gold potato, onion, beet greens, green beans, Roma tomatoes, zucchini and herbs all went in a big pot along with a pint of the broth (after the meat and roots browned a bit) and simmered or about 30 minutes I thickened the liquid with a little flour about halfway through. The result was a one-pot meal that spanned sweet and hearty, and had astonishing freshness and depth for what was essentially a pot pie without the crust on top. Ingredients are almost everything.

















I kept this simple and confined to one pot because the rest of the stove was covered with our two biggest: the huge stock pot and the far bigger speckleware canning bath (which, on our crap-ass stove, takes about a week to boil, even when filled with piping hot water from the tap.) Into the big stock pot went a ton of our sauce tomatoes, supplemented with about ten pounds more I picked up at the farmers' market yesterday, plus a mound of basil, parsley, and garlic. After about an hour of gentle simmering, I ran it all through my Grandmother's food mill that we retrieved from a drawer in VT and canned it all.

We ended up with 14 pints total- a good start, but I want to make more; these worked out to about $2.50 per pint as compared to around $3.50 for the big organic cans which come from California or Italy. Now those contain more, but one jar of this has more flavor and would handsomely cover a full box of pasta, so these win hands down. The people I bought the paste tomatoes from have some beautiful yellow ones that I'll buy and sauce when I'm back. I opened a 1998 Turley Moore "Earthquake" Vineyard zinfandel, which at 10 years old is an eloquent rebuttal to those who find zin cloying and lacking in complexity. Yes, it's fruity and rich (like Elton John) and nobody's going to confuse it with a Côte-Rôtie, but it's elegant, graceful, and just plain beautiful. But that's why Helen Turley is famous.

Harmonic Convergence

I was talking to a friend last week- who teaches fish at the Culinary Institute- and I mentioned that we tried some organically farmed salmon from New Zealand recently and that it was excellent. He said that when they can't get the Alaskan king salmon, that's what they use. I'm still trying to decide how I feel about farmed fish, and there are certainly degrees of difference between how varying companies do it. I need to do more reading.

In the meantime, here is some of that fish, made into nigiri sushi with the last of the fennel risotto from Vermont. I also turned a zucchini in the saladacco, then marinated the "noodles" in a mixture of salt, soy sauce, cider vinegar, nam pla, and yuzu juice for about half an hour. I squeezed them dry and served them in a little ball- they acquired a lovely silky texture and a nice balance between the flavors of the squash and sauce. Playing the role of tsukemono this evening were more of the honeydew pickles. I also "made" a big plate of black krim tomatoes with salt and oil. Very clean, fresh, and satisfying- a seamless fit with this gorgeous weather we've been reveling in.

Add More Balls

Just as we brought some excellent raw and cooked materials to Vermont, we also returned home with leftovers that have been enriching the meals back here. In this case, I used the fennel risotto, the end of the seared duck breast, and some local blue cheese that I can't remember the name of to make supplì- or arancini- to go with a little of the first batch of sauce from our plum tomatoes that I made to can for winter.

Rolled in egg, cornmeal flavored with paprika, and then fried, there's not much more to say. Everyone loves rice balls. Everyone also loves Pleiades XIV, and even though Sean won't be making any more I can't stop drinking them. We also had wilted chard and cucumber salad with red onion and parsley. Another treasure we brought back from VT were a couple of jars of my Grandmother's freezer jam (strawberry and raspberry) which, considering that she died in 2000, are far more finite and precious. It was hard to be there and see all the apples and blackberries ripening perfectly and not being made into jam, jelly, and pies. We did the family tradition of near-constant high-quality eating proud, but it made me sad to drop the ball on all the bountiful fruit.

Laborless Days

We spent the long weekend in Vermont, and Sirkka and Nissa joined us for a couple of nights. Though the last two days were crystalline late-summer perfection, the beginning of our stay was gray and a little muggy- though it didn't actually rain more than a few drops. So we let the kids do their thing, and between what we brought from home and what we picked up at the farmers' market, we did all right for ourselves on the culinary front.

Friday night, we had pretty straight-up surf and turf: a couple of big lobsters (dispatched in the humane fashion; thanks to Linsey for the link) steamed with local corn and served inelegantly beside local grilled organic ribeyes. The steaks got a nice morel-wine-coffee-chicken broth reduction to play with and the lobsters got that little white pitcher full of melted butter. And there was rice and kale. I had made a quart of chicken broth before we came, and bringing it along- plus all the gardeny goodness- gave us one of those little extras that make deliberate home cooking so good.

For wine, Sirkka brought us a 2005 David Bruce petite sirah, so I went down to the cellar and pulled out a 2000 Carver Sutro petite to compare. Initially, the C-S seemed bigger and richer, but by the end of the meal the Bruce had developed some wonderful lean leather that brought it back into the lead. We'll call it a tie, but only because we ran out of both and couldn't see how they evolved further.





















We came back from the farmers' market laden with mostly meat and cheese- since we have gardens- including some local ground beef because I got it into my head that spaghetti and meatballs would be just the ticket for a cloudy afternoon. So upon return home, I took the container of our own roasted tomatoes we brought and puréed them with garlic, herbs, chicken broth, and wine to make what was easily one of the top three tomato sauces any of us had ever eaten. To do justice to the sauce, I mixed the meat with garlic, wine, minced morels left from the steak sauce, and basil, parsley, and fennel fronds. Browned in oil, then simmered in sauce, they had real depth and richness, and since there was no egg involved they weren't too heavy. The combination was one for the ages; it hit all the classic comfort food notes, but also had a freshness and subtle complexity that made it sublime and contemporary.

It also, remarkably, wasn't the coma-inducing gut bomb lunch we expected it to be. Did I mention we had wine as well? A 2003 Patricia Green pinot noir. But we did control the portion size, and limited ourselves to one glass of wine.















That night, I took all the lobster shells and corn cobs from the night before and made broth, which in time lent its gorgeous flavor to a fennel risotto. When I do things like this, I like to cook the vegetable a few different ways to accentuate the flavor and offer different takes on taste and texture possibilities. Sliced bulbs went in the soffrito at the beginning of the process, and minced fronds went in to finish (along with Mimi's washed-rind gouda that we picked up from Taylor farm) and since I cooked a duck breast to go with the rice, I crisped up a bunch of chopped fennel stalks in the fat for a garnish. To complete, another wonderful brought-from-home ingredient: the second jar of honeydew pickles, this one in kimchi juice with a small amount of olive brine added for color and variety. The extra few days in the brine really added something; they were insane, and as good a companion as seared duck ever shared a plate with.

We did another New World wine comparison; the rest of the Patty Green pinot from lunch up against a 2003 Beaux Frères pinot. Now this wasn't a fair fight; it wasn't one of her single-vineyard wines, and thus only cost about a third of the B.F. But it was still interesting to try two Oregon pinots from adjacent years and see how different they could be. Having said that, for all the ecstatic (female- note to self) eye-rolling over the Beaux Frères, it went straight to that cherry-and-licorice place that is so common among better New World pinots- which is not a bad place, but is not even a tiny little bit like the place that pinot goes to in better (or even lesser) Burgundies.





















And last, after they left, I took a pound of lamb stew meat we brought and made it into a hearty stew that bridged the seasons admirably; it was hot and beautiful during the day, so we walked and swam, but the nights cooled to the point where a lamb stew seemed appropriate. with sweet potatoes, zucchini, onion, garlic, chard, herbs, cumin, cinnamon, a bottle of local porter, and ample time for the meat to relax and the flavors to meld together, we had ourselves a refined bowl of pleasant peasant goodness. I drank another bottle of the porter with the stew.

It's A Series Of Tubes

We were in Vermont for the long weekend, and I'll get that post together soon. In the meantime, a dinner Milo and I had last week that was remarkable only for the incredible tomatoes we used throughout. To start, two kinds of heirlooms dressed only with Maldon salt and good olive oil. Perfection.

















Then, penne tossed with sautéed guanciale (just because it's not dry yet doesn't mean I can't start using it) plus a highlight reel of the late-summer garden: plum tomatoes, chard, fennel, onion, garlic, and five different herbs. It takes the very simplest of starchitecture to let these gorgeous ingredients show off their surpassing sweetness and complex depth of flavor. Lacking rosé, I popped a 1998 Gros Noré Bandol, which at ten years is just terrific- if a little heavy for this kind of food- and made all the better for the fact that I paid around 16 bucks for these when I bought them back in 2002.

Sesshed Out

Yesterday was the guys' last day in the studio working on the second of their three Radiolarian records, so I brought some snacks by around dinner time to help get them across the finish line. I had an idea the other day for a Thai curry custard- kind of a cross between a chawan-mushi and a pôt-de-crème. So I took some coconut milk and chicken broth, simmered them with green curry paste, Thai and lime basil, ginger, and garlic, then strained the mixture and whisked into some egg yolks. I steamed the custard in little bowls until firm.


















Prompted by an impatient Milo, we had cut open an unripe honeydew the other day. Not wanting to waste it, I cut it up and put it all in jars of kimchi juice (one had some olive brine in it too) to make quick pickles. We had some duck breasts in the freezer, so I plopped one in the water bath at 52˚ C for an hour, then seared it up to crisp the skin. Wanting to make a good sauce from our immediate surroundings, I mashed the last of the blackberries with some shiso, brown rice syrup, and a little reduced riesling and then strained it.





Here's a hungry Chris eyeing the duck with impure intent. We served the duck on the pickled melon, with the sauce on top, after we ate the custards. I also made more spicy green beans, this time with just-cured Asian-flavored guanciale; I made four jowls, but gave one a different cure with five-spice, ginger, cardamom, bay, and togarashi. It doesn't suck, in fact so much that it's an open question whether it even gets to dry before we use it all.







John "only" had Thackrey's wine at the studio, so we were forced to drink a 2000 and 2002 Aquila, followed by a 2005 Orion and another 2005 Orion. It was tough, but we choked it all down. I'm insanely jealous that they are going to be barrel-tasting all his new wines next week at his place. After we finished this simple repast, they went back to work and I shot some video of it for Billy. Then Sirkka showed up with some serious after-snacks from Elephant. Another rough day at the office.

Collaboration

On short notice, we went over the Chris & Sirkka's place for dinner. Chris and the guys are recording, so we tried to time it for his return home. After some consultations about ingredients, we brought over a few things and all got to work while the kids played. I stuffed some of their crookneck squash with a mixture of sautéed squash necks, onion, garlic, and crabmeat, then covered them with breadcrumbs and parmigiano. Sirkka dug and roasted some potatoes (their garden is incredible) and Christine sautéed chard with some of our lardo.

They had bought some escolar and scallops, and marinated the scallops in wine and soy sauce, so we seared them and deglazed the pan with the marinade plus agave nectar to make a sauce. I minces a cucumber and a serrano to make a little salsa/salad to go with it and cut through the richness. This is exactly the kind of dish I had in mind when I made these plates, but we never used them before I gave them to Sirkka for her birthday. We polished off an open bottle of a Trimbach pinot gris.














Chris threw the fish on the fire when he got home, and we put everything else on the table. Damn fine. We brought our last Choffelet-Valdenaire Givry, and it was an excellent match. The end.

Curried Garden

Coconut curry is one of our go-to mindless meals; it's healthy, delicious, infinitely malleable, and suited to weather of all seasons. This time of year, all I have to do is push my metaphorical shopping cart through the garden and toss in everything that looks good. Today's specials were carrots, red and green onions, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, Thai and lime basil, cilantro sprouts, and nasturtium leaves.

With the addition of half a can of coconut milk and some cubed (local) tofu- plus the requisite spices it made for a perfect, easy dinner. I had a good amount of our giant cabbage left over from a fresh batch of kimchi I made in the morning, so I braised it in Riesling and ras-el-hanout for a nice green side dish. And speaking of Riesling and no-brainers, that is in fact what we drank: a 2007 Peter Stolleis Kabinett Trocken Haardter Herzog, which was perfectly nice with the food. The most interesting thing about the wine was the glass stopper used in place of a cork- I've never seen it before- with a thin plastic gasket that I can't imagine would keep its seal over a long period. But this is not a wine meant for aging, and I applaud the recyclability.

Partying Like It's Millenovecentonovantanove

John came over on his one free night before the touring begins again; it's always a treat to have some real time with him since he's so busy and we usually get together in bigger groups for dinner parties. I didn't have a lot of time to put together anything fancy, but this time of year the ingredients are so great that they really just need to be arranged on a plate. We began with a corn soup I whipped out- simmered kernels with onion, puréed, strained, added butter, seasoned, garnished with serrano, truffle oil, pepper, and chive. It was an excellent match with the 1992 Fiorano semillon that John brought; another wonderful part of having him over solo means that we can break out the very best wine and enjoy multiple glasses of it. Read the piece about it- it's a great story, and having tasted it, it seems even more appropriate that the new Ferrari is also named Fiorano- it was a fascinating, complex creature, and more than lived up to its fairy-tale reputation.





















As the white evolved, I made another course to show it in a different light. Crisp lardons of our bacon- amazingly, there's a little left- served with kimchi warmed in a little bacon fat and topped with a quail egg gently fried in still more of the bacon fat. Simple, but rich and deep, and it tied bacon and eggs to pork and cabbage pretty handily. With this course, the wine tasted less like sherry and more like a sort of dry burgundian dessert wine, if that makes any sense.




















For the main course, it was simple Summer picnic food all the way. Chicken legs grilled with a simple spice rub, penne with basil-sorrel-nasturtium pesto, two kinds of heirloom tomatoes with salt and oil, wilted chard, sautéed zucchini, local black trumpet mushrooms with garlic and calvados, and tomatillo salsa. There are so few weeks when the heat of the sun comes back to you through the food on your plate, and we are in the thick of that time right now. Corn, pesto, and tomatoes especially are so beautiful and this meal let them all do what they do best.

For the wines, we started with a 1999 Solaia, which is dense, rich, and gorgeous- tasting the way a Cali cab wishes it could be, with all the structure, leather, and spice, but none of the cloying sweet fruit- everything is so seamless and integrated. Next up, a 1999 Giusto di Notri, which did all the same things but with a completely different personality. The two together made for an excellent mini-study of Super-Tuscans from that year. For desert, John brought a 1999 Fèlsina vin santo, and we paired it with a Roquefort. Pure beauty, and another astonishing glimpse of Tuscany nine years ago.

Pizza

In the cooler weather, I've been craving homemade bread, but as a lead-in pizza crust did the trick. To give it some extra zing, I thought to grill it in order to avoid heating the house up with a 500˚ oven. We made two: a Margherita, and a zucchini, onion, tomato, olive, and herb. the olives came from elsewhere. We grew the rest, and the flour and cheese were local. Our tomatoes are peaking, so they made their own sauce. The grill imparts such a lovely, smoky flavor; it's like a BBQ-inflected wood-oven job. It also handsomely contrasts crisp and chewy as the botom gets dark brown and the top stays blond. I used our customary half white-half whole wheat dough to get the best of both worlds.

To drink, a Pleiades XVI- I just learned that he's done making it- the vineyard is no longer his to work with, due to outbidding or other nefarious development- so this is the last year for it. I just ordered another case, and I have to say that I am more than a little sad to see the passing of America's best wine under $25. For any of you who see a bottle- especially if you live on the West coast- buy it. It's the greatest pizza (or anything) wine you've ever had. The only thing mitigating my grief at this change is the fact that he'll be rolling out three or four new wines, including a white.

There's No Place Like Home

I am so happy to be back, and just working in the studio until it's time to make dinner, with an occasional break to garden a bit so the perfection of these days doesn't pass me by. Right before starting this meal, I finished a drawing that looks like wallpaper that William Morris would have designed if he'd had access to certain indole alkaloids.

We eat a lot of salmon; it's delicious, healthy, and most of all if it's wild and Alaskan, it's sustainable and not overburdened with heavy metals. But the regularity does put some pressure on me to come up with new ways to prepare it. Or not. This time around, I did nothing original, but the fish was so lovely that it didn't need too much help (or heat) to make it sublime.

First off, a tartare with lime, chive, olive and sesame oils, and red onion- atop a cucumber salad with cider vinegar, lime basil, shiso, parsley, and more olive oil. The nasturtium flowers added visual ooh and that clean, peppery crunch for which they are justifiably prized.




















Milo eats almost everything from the garden, if not all the time. But green beans are a no-go. To make this into a net gain, I use the opportunity to make them screaming hot szechuan-style and we adults scarf them like crazy. They're madly addictive, and I'm getting closer to that magic Chinatown flavor. So second, a sashimi with the hot oil/ponzu treatment and another heaping bowl of the spicy green beans plus wilted radish sprouts thinned from the fall crop and quinoa for some grainy goodness. I tossed the quinoa in the almost-empty cucumber salad bowl so it picked up the dressing and leftover bits for extra flavor.

We opened the perfect companion for food like this: a Bret Bros. Pouilly Fuissé. I already reviewed it here, and I'm unlikely to do better, so there you go. We've got half a case left.

White On Rice

Chioggia beets occasionally lack any of the brilliant pigment that gives them their gorgeous candy-striping; the result is a pure white beet. One of the shades of rainbow carrot we planted is also a beautiful, creamy white, and since I had planned to make carrot risotto- oh, smoked duck broth in the freezer, how I love thee- combining the white roots with the white rice seemed like a neat idea. I roasted the roots with some garlic cloves and oil, then stick-blended them with milk, parmigiano, and truffle oil into a thick purée. I forgot my color theme and used a red onion, but by the time all was finished there were only a few flecks of purple left. The duck broth gave it a gorgeous smoky depth, and the roasted roots added earthy sweetness- and surprise, too, since they were invisible.

Our first eggplant got Milo really excited, so we picked it and cooked it down with a perfect plum tomato, garlic, parsley, basil, and cider vinegar to make a lovely little batch of ratatouille that I served on top of the rice with wilted beet greens and garlic on the side. In addition, our black krim tomatoes are in, so we had fat slices of those dressed only with Maldon salt. The effect of just that salt on those tomatoes is much the same as that which a particularly hot pair of undies have on a particularly hot and otherwise unadorned female body. A bottle of 2005 Latour Bourgogne was decent, but tightly wound and nowhere near as good as the Faiveley from the other night. The fact that post-"Sideways" they've written "Pinot Noir" on the label in big letters with "Bourgogne" smaller below it is a pretty lame sign of their intended audience.

Vermont

We met family and friends in Vermont for the weekend, and I finally got some much-needed rest. Friday we had beautiful steaks that I grilled outside along with copious zucchini from our garden, plus kale sautéed with lardo and lemon. I marinated the steaks in wine, soy sauce, and rice vinegar for an hour before grilling, and we drank (after some rosé) a 1997 Beringer reserve cab that was just as good as steak wine gets. Perfect.

The next night I took a whole rabbit we also brought up and broke it down into chunks (with the bones still on, and organs reserved for extra flavor.) It made a lovely stew with our lardo, turnips, onion, carrot and herbs, plus a bottle of beer, some of John's leftover beef broth, dried currants, and cumin and cinnamon for a little Moroccan edge. The combination of lardo and light beef broth enhanced the rabbit flavor without overpowering it at all, and the sweet currants and Mahgreb spices gave it a gently exotic perfume. To emphasize this theme, I sautéed some of our rainbow carrots in a little butter, then added more cumin, cinnamon, and cayenne, plus lemon juice and a little maple syrup. We made more kale, and brown rice. John took the picture with his iPhone, which might have something to do with why it's so blurry. We drank more rosé and then a 2005 Faiveley Bourgogne.

We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Three meals here- all made in haste- but sharing a profound pleasure at being home and taking dictation from the garden. The first was a beautiful trout that our neighbor gave us a while back, which I cooked en papillote (my preferred method for trout) with thyme and shallots. To accompany, a salad of cucumber, cherry tomato, and red onion from the garden, dressed with cider vinegar and good olive oil. I refried some rice from the fridge with dried shrimp, tofu, corn from a leftover cob, and a random glug each of rice vinegar, nam pla, soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil. I'm pretty sure we drank another Givry.























Next, Chris and Nissa came over (Moms were in the city together.) I had been to Fleisher's earlier buying pig jowls to make more guanciale- they obligingly let me in on a non-retail day and cut the four jowls off of two heads while I waited- so while there I grabbed some of their excellent brats and dogs from the freezer as well. The sausages grilled up really nicely, and played well with braised cabbage, escarole mash, and kimchi from the garden plus a big bowl of brown rice. It was a pleasure to eat garden greens in three forms: raw, pickled, and slow-cooked, and the kids had fun combining different garnishes with the meat to find the best bite. Chris brought a 2004 Latour Chassagne-Montrachet, and it kept the Dads very happy.

Last, I saw some local tomatillos at the store and once again broke my rule and bought some. Spun with lime, serranos, and cilantro, they made for a flourescently flavorful salsa that we ladled onto whole wheat tortillas topped with shredded chicken thighs I simmered in a fraudulent yet delicious adobo sauce (onion, garlic, spice powders, tomato paste, water) and re-steamed rice. We're loving the brown rice these days, in case you hadn't noticed. Short-grain, that is. We drank a Sicilian rosé, the name of which escapes me, but I'm not going to schlep downstairs to write it down and then come back up here to record it. $12. Delicious. Deftly handled acid, spice, and chicken fat, throwing off strawberries and herbs as it did so. Ergo: rosé.

Payoff

The summer of back-to-back-to-back-to-back physically and mentally demanding projects is over. There are some chores left, but nothing monumental. It's such a pleasure to look back instead of forward on all this work. And it's great to be home.

The pyramid went together easily, and painted up nice and garish- as befits a piece for a big rock festival. It was on the hill in the VIP area, so a bunch of bands did interviews in front of it. At night, with the lights all around, it kind of looked like a psychedelic dalek. So it had that going for it.






















Not much culinary news, though there's a new and damn fine wood-oven pizzeria a block from our place in Brooklyn, which is both a joy and a sure sign that the neighborhood has really arrived. From a sheer pleasure and excitement point of view, though, the best bites of the week were the snacks at the backstage after party on Saturday night; the roster for the festival included a bunch of acts I don't know or like, but Cat Power was there, and the Kings of Leon, and the Roots, and best of all these five polite and charming young English chaps who closed out the first two nights with a combined five hours of pretty astonishing work.

Don't Let Your Meat Loaf

There was talk of burgers; good beef was procured. But just because I'm posting doesn't mean I'm not working like a lunatic- having never before built a skinny octagonal pyramid 16 feet high that can be assembled on site in a field with no power tools, I've been frantically doing math (which I sucked at last time I had to do any, over 25 years ago; I was the only person in the history of my high school to have to take algebra II three times) and cutting lots of lumber at 14˚ and 22.5˚ in the hopes that it will all work. I'll find out on Monday.

Isn't that interesting? It's all a long way of saying that I was NOT about to light a fire and make burgers. So I took all the meat and mixed it with herbs, an egg, ketchup, breadcrumbs (toasted heels ground in the food processor) plus onions, garlic, some duck fat, and smoked coffee. While it did its thing in the oven, I blanched more of our green beans- they're finally under control- and mixed them in with chick peas and kidney beans I soaked and then put on to simmer during an afternoon water break. The beans also got onion and garlic and herbs, plus lots of vinegar and olive oil. My Grandmother made wicked three-bean salad and this would have made her proud. I took some ketchup, mustard, and kimchi juice and reduced them to make a sauce, and wilted some chard with garlic.

The meat tasted like an imaginary food halfway between meatloaf and pâté (it was even better fried up this morning with eggs and beans) and everything did what it was supposed to, including yet another 2003 Jaboulet Vacqueyras- which is the Colt 45 of wines: it works every time. Milo just put on the awesome compilation of Bollywood action movie soundtracks from the 70s that he loves, so I have to go dance with him.

More Like It

The green beans needed urgent attention, and were just about at the too-big place where they get all chewy and you have to leave them alone and wait for the beans. And Milo doesn't like green beans, so I took advantage of both things and made them super-hot Chinese style- one of our favorite things. With copious garlic and ginger, two chiles de arbol, a big glug of sambal oelek, and rice vinegar, soy sauce, nam pla, sesame oil, and a little flour to thicken the sauce, they were incredibly good and perfectly hot.

The rest of the meal was kimchi juice-marinated salmon baked with togarashi and black sesame seeds, fried rice with red and green onion, and a pesto made from radicchio, plus Genovese and lime basil in roughly equal measure. I made a little reduction sauce with the fish marinade, adding mango juice and red wine, and we drank a Jacky Renard Irancy. Words can't express how much I needed to make and eat this meal.

Hey, Look- Food!

This tasted better than it looked, but it wasn't my best work. Kind of re-entry into the world of the living. Mixed garden veggies (beans,peas, potatoes, beets, zucchini, carrots onions, garlic- all added at different times so that they would each be perfectly cooked at the end) with fenugreek and lemon juice formed the base, along with brown rice. On top, chicken thighs simmered slowly in coconut milk, garam masala, and some other spices that I forget now, along with copious Thai basil, added every few minutes or so in order to thoroughly perfume the dish. And to drink, another lovely Givry; they're gone now but these light reds are hitting the spot until I go buy more rosé.

What Another Week

Not so culinary; the family was in Chicago partying with Grandma so I used the week to rebuild our shower from scratch. The job was so consuming, and the time so tight that I reverted to bachelor-animal mode, eating junk (and not that frequently- I often skipped lunch) that I loaded up on right after dropping them off at the airport. I didn't even go into the garden all week, despite the attention it desperately needed, because I didn't have the time or brain space to deal with it. Actually, I did go in there once, but it was to grab a 5-gallon bucket to mix grout in. One day I had a cheeseburger for breakfast, worked 12 hours, showered, had a cheeseburger for dinner, and went to bed.

In my defense, they were organic.

I did go out one night; Liz had a dinner party and it was a blessed relief to eat real, garden-based food with wonderful people. I brought nothing. I am so far off my game it's silly.

On the upside, though, I got it from here (day two)





















to here (day 7) and only swore 5,712 times in doing so. The best part was Sunday, as I was tiling, and a thunderstorm knocked out the power so I got to continue by candle/flashlight. The only problem with this kind of upgrade is that while the shower looks like it belongs in Dwell, the rest of the bathroom now looks like Double-Wide Weekly.






















Now I have a couple of frantic days in the woodshop building the pieces for a 16-foot high octagonal pyramid that I have to assemble at a big rock festival in the city next week. After that, I get to return to being the guy with a garden and a blog (and a family) who is relaxed and witty and generally fun to be around.

What A Week

It was like summer camp, only without the archery, macramé, or nature wedgies. I worked dawn to dusk on an 8 x 80 foot wall in some seriously hot weather, but I got it done, and made a little time to work on the labyrinth too. Dinners are communal, and prepared on a rotating basis, so I busted my ass to be able to contribute on Thursday. Anthony went out and procured all the necessaries, so I made paella for the crew- having remembered to bring my pan with me. Tom- who took the picture below- was incredibly helpful with preparations and a damn fine guy to talk to as well. I felt bad for those on dishwashing duty, because I characteristically dirtied pretty much every pot and surface they have. Outdoor kitchen or no, I can make a mess.

It was pretty straightforward- a shrimp shell broth with onion, carrot, and herbs- lots of saffron plus the shrimp in the rice, with peas from their excellent garden- and clams and mussels to finish. Time and a couple of pescatarians combined to keep sausage and/or poultry out of the mix. The rice expanded to fill my pan, so I steamed the bivalves in the pot with a bit of broth in it, then dumped the accumulated liquor into the rice to finish it before serving. So the shellfish were on the side, with a gazpacho (tomato, red pepper, cucumber, zuchini, onion, citrus, herbs) appetizer, papaya/avo/onion/cilantro/lemon/orange salsa, and salad to round it all out. And wine. I brought up a bunch, and we poured much of it: three rosés (all French) and then a 1997 Teófilo eyes Ribera del Duero (I LOVE THIS WINE BUT IT WAS MY LAST ONE) and a Thackrey Pleiades XVI.

Good times. And it's good to be home now.

















From left to right: Brace, Anthony, Paul, and yours truly drinking rosé out of a jelly jar.

Three Steaks Are Better Than One

A return to the source of the mighty boletes resulted instead in a bag of gorgeous wild oyster mushrooms, variety being the spice of life and all. And there were also beautiful organic NY strip steaks. And there were ideas. I couldn't find a winner among the competing ideas, so I declared a tie, and decided to trim and cut each steak into three pieces, then give each one its own sauce. But first, because when I get fancy sometimes dinner is an hour or three late, I whipped some ricotta with black olives and layered it between gently sautéed zucchini. With some caramelized turnips with vanilla on the side- that I originally intended to go with the meat- the little towers made for a nice first course.











Then, quickly, I cooked the mushrooms with garlic and wine, spun some bolted frisée and endive with olive oil in the food processor, and made a roux-based stilton sauce with butter, soymilk, kimchi juice, and truffle oil. (By "quickly" I mean not that quickly.) But once I seared the steaks- cooked for an hour sous-vide at 52˚C- in a pat of smoked duck fat, the three sauces did in fact work for eye and tongue alike. This presentation also eliminated "meat fatigue," Christine's name for what happens halfway through a big steak even when it's very good. Each piece offered enough contrast to keep every bite interesting until all was et, though in future I will season each one differently before they go in the water bath so there's a deeper level of both contrast (with neighbor steaks) and harmony (with sauces.) For wine, a pleasant wild card in the form of a gift bottle of 1996 Marqués de la Concordia Rioja, which is a nice compromise between old and new winemaking styles; once decanted it got better with each glass and- while not a world-rocker- was an excellent match for this welter-to-middleweight food. I'll be on a residency next week, and not cooking or posting much, so I wanted to finish the week in fine summer style.

I'm Melting! I'm Melting!

For the last few days it has been hot here. Really, really hot, and humid. The weather is supposed to break tonight, but for the moment it's safe to say that if crotch sweat were crude oil, George Bush would be invading my shorts. Last night, I made good hot-weather food: Vietnamese Summer rolls with tofu and a zingy peanut sauce, plus sautéed escarole with copious garlic and a little BBQ chicken broth. Tonight, though, a couple of things at one of the local stores inspired me so I ended up sweating over the proverbial hot stove. It was worth it.

First, I got some wild Alaskan salmon- always an excellent place to start. Then, they had real, fat, perfect bolete mushrooms from nearby woods. Local porcini. And also more local heirloom tomatoes (ours are flowering, but still at least a month off.) The garden did the rest.






















So dinner ended up being the following: seared salmon with a fennel-seed crust, plus radicchio mashed with olives to make quenelles, mushrooms sautéed with garlic and deglazed with wine, tomato, peas, and zucchini. Really simple, but the purity and freshness of the ingredients helped elevate the dish. I will play more with the bitter greens and olives mix; it's got a lot of potential. Also possessing potential is a 2005 Bourgogne "Cuvée les deux papis" by Alex Gambal that I swore I wouldn't open and yet the salmon demanded it. Since I obviously do not possess the willpower to resist the 05s until they're ready, I will at least decant them from now on to give them a chance to open up a little.

Hells Yeah

We had some friends over for dinner who live close by but for some reason we don't manage to see often enough- even though the kids all get along so well and we always have a great time together. I had an idea recently, spurred by the bacon, so I wrapped scallops in bacon, glued with activa, and vacuum-sealed them into tiny muffin tins to help them keep their shape. After about 8 hours I opened the bag, popped them out, and dropped them into a shrieking hot pan for about 30 seconds on a side, then cut the heat and added a glug of flat old champagne from the fridge to deglaze, and covered them. Meanwhile, more champagne reduced with kimchi juice and then finished with a pat of butter became the sauce for these luscious morsels, and I garnished them with rosemary and chioggia beet slices. Not the worst appetizer ever made.

















And while all this was going on, two chickens smoked merrily on our own apple wood, and potatoes boiled for salad. Now I know that there are loyalties and traditions when it comes to potato salad. I also know that they're reduced to mere nonsense in the glare of genius that once again my Grandmother's version brings to the subject. Dress cut, still-hot potatoes with good vinegar(s), olive oil, pickles, scallions, garlic, salt, pepper, and copious herbs from the garden and you will bask in the reverent gratitude your guests/hosts/random sycophants radiate towards you as they wordlessly wolf it down. As far as the chickens are concerned, green mash is the best companion a cooked animal ever shared a plate with, and a salad should go without saying. Notice the skin of the chicken- like Catwoman's rubber suit, and twice as tasty.

We drank, in order, a "Triple Zéro" sparkler followed by a Clos de Brettonière- both by Jacky Blot (see last night's post; I'm loving the Loire right now for summer quaffers as well as world-class ageable reds) and moved on to a 2005 Spinetta nebbiolo and a 1999 Lisini Brunello- both decanted, they ramped up the Earth and funk to a pretty sublime level in a perfect way as I hoped they would, and handled the food admirably. We finished with a shot each of our friend's illegal applejack (eau de W. vie, as he calls it, since it's made from WV apples) that gives Calvados a run for its Euros.

Rolls With Punch

I went to a couple of stores, looking first for fish and second for other things to give me ideas; if I don't have a clear idea in mind, the sight of good-looking ingredients gives me focus. So I found some excellent marlin, and decided I'd make hand rolls since we had some brown rice in the fridge. The hand rolls would need sriracha mayo (duh) so I got eggs and oil. I also broke my "don't buy vegetables between May and October" rule because there were some beautiful local garlic scapes and ours haven't scaped yet.

In addition, there were finally local hothouse tomatoes, so I loaded up on those. Thus, predictably:

















And then the rolls. Sriracha-lime mayonnaise, avocado, red onion, sylvetta arugula, and chervil joined the panko-togarashi crusted marlin that I quickly dropped in some hot oil before slicing. It was a pretty insane combination, and kept me busy rolling seconds and thirds (though, as the photo shows, speed-rolling sushi is not my best event.) I also chopped the scapes and sautéed them hot with a zucchini until there was some good brown on them, then squeezed in some lime juice and dumped the mixture in a bowl. They were as good as it is possible for a side of veggies to be. We drank a 2006 Jacky Blot Vouvray- "Les Caburoches" this time; soon I hope to have an excuse to compare this one with the one we got from Mary.

Pot Piety

Probably the single best thing about a garden in summer is that if there are even a couple of pantry staples in the house the question "what's for dinner?" becomes a reason to smile rather than worry. In this case, with some leftover lentil soup and half a recipe of pie crust in the fridge, a sumptuous and exalted pot pie was brought into being on short notice. I took a little hunk of salt pork- just to give the bacon a break, you understand; I can stop any time I want to- and sizzled it, then added garlic, then oil and flour for a roux, then more of the BBQ chicken broth, and then a host of gardeny goodness: turnips, golden beets, baby red onions, zucchini, pak choi, peas, carrots (in three colors) and a panoply of herbs.

Now if I had simply reworked the lentil soup with the extra veggies and broth, I could have expected a reaction from wife and child not unlike a that which a bucket of grilled weasels hoisted (grinning, if in a strained way) from the trunk of a stolen Chevy Nova would have elicited. But this is where the crust comes in. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: my Grandmother's pie crust is the best in the business, period. Ask anybody who has eaten of my tarts (sweet or savory) and they will attest to the sublime, buttery, ne plus ultra perfection of this crust. I could stamp coins out of it and they would be worth more than money. Drape this crust over your half-assed leftover vegetable soup, throw it in the oven for 40 minutes, and all of a sudden you're the MAN. Throw in a bottle of pink, girly, Raffault Chinon rosé- with its gorgeous balance of the red fruit and delicate grip against tart acid and reasonable alcohol (12.5%) and all of a sudden you're not so much a man as a sensitive yet still masculine person who everyone can agree is worth having around, and also really really desirable.

Souper

It's been raining a lot, and while not exactly cold, the weather did afford the opportunity to make soup. I began by making broth with the BBQ chicken bones from last week, then crisped up a thick slice's worth of lardons from the sadly diminishing slab of bacon (the dwindlement seems to be a side effect of using it in every damn thing.) And then, into the fragrant fat, carrots, turnips, baby red onions, and garlic to caramelize. I deglazed with random wine from the fridge door, dumped in the lentils and a fistful of herbs, and covered all with the strained chicken broth.

Once the lentils were just tender, I added peas, minced onion greens, and hunks of our first zucchini. At brightest green, they signaled doneness, so into bowls soup went. And on top of the soup, parsley, pepper, and a dribble of truffle oil. I originally was thinking lentil salad, but the bones and the weather pushed me this way. The broth and bacon- due to already cookedness of bones and one-sliceness of bacon- imparted a transparent smoky richness, while the earthy-sweet turnips got along really well with the lentils and the peas offered a nice fresh leguminous contrast. It was like a sharp summer suit: all the proper elegance but without the heavy structure, and a treat on a cooler day. I found more of the 2003 Jaboulet Vacqueyras at the store- they had a case in back- so it was with much happiness that I opened one to go with this dinner.