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.

Caldo Da Morire

We had company this weekend, and went to John's birthday on Friday; I'll post about that out of order because I'm waiting for a photograph. Today was pretty Italian in spirit, if unconventionally so: arancini (supplì) for breakfast, and penne for dinner. I took the leftover risotto from the other night and formed it into balls around fat, crispy lardons of our homemade bacon (think that phrase is one I'll tire of soon? Stick around and find out.) Then I rolled them in an egg wash and flour seasoned with curry powder and fried them up in canola oil enriched with the rendered bacon fat. Homemade bacon fat. To accompany, omelets with fresh herbs and some local caraway-studded cheese that I forget the name of, and a salad of whichever unlucky greens looked most tasty when I went a-pickin'.















Our guests departed, and we finessed lunch with bits and pieces, so come dinner time I put together something primal and gluttonous. Last night we had burgers and sausages (merguez and bratwurst) we bought at Fleisher's. I have to say that their brats are good, even very good, but their merguez is kind of wimpy; when I make it it's intensely flavored and I make my own harissa to season the meat, and the results are more like the much-missed Pascal's. The burgers were an alloy of their bork (beef and pork ground together) augmented with more beef so the resulting ratio was more like 1/3 pork. Seasoned and grilled, they made for pretty awesome burgers, especially with green mash and our first all-garden kimchi of the year. But there was meat mixture left over, so I used it for the base of a pasta sauce, that also included a jar of our own tomatoes from last summer, garlic, plus peas and copious herbs from the garden. And steamed broccoli on the side; the heads are not so big, but we've never had sweeter or more flavorful broccoli. It also gets this flourescent green when steamed, and keeps it for a long time; served perfectly tender it's still an unreal gorgeous color.

We continued our rosé tour (last night 2007 Châteaux du Rouët (Côtes de Provence) and de Campugets (Costières de Nîmes,) tonight a Domaine de Laure Côtes de Thongue. In lieu of any tasting notes, let me just say that well-made rosé from Southern France does not disappoint, with any food- or without- especially when it's this hot and humid. It's just perfect. (Domaines Ott notwithstanding, because it's WAY overpriced.) Other, new world rosés, well, if you like them, then enjoy them. To me, too many of them taste either like fresca or watermelon jolly ranchers.

Down Home

It had been a while since Chris and Sirkka visited, between his incessant touring and my own recent travels, so we were all pretty happy to get together for a meal. The kids played really well together, affording us some quality adult chill time during both preparation and eating. To begin, my newly invented shiso mojitos: shiso, agave, lime juice (should really be yuzu, but good luck finding that fresh) rum, and sake. The agave balances the sour lime, and the sake dries the whole thing out so it has none of the cloying taste of so many tropical drinks.

I muddled and stirred them in a beautiful vintage Japanese glass cocktail set (with matching spoon) that I got Christine for her birthday. (For those of you paying disquietingly close attention to this blog, the vintage lamps were the main gift and this was a little extra something I couldn't resist.) We served them in some of my Grandfather's cool old rocks glasses; it was a total time warp but for the fact that "shiso mojito" would have been incomprehensible pinko gibberish back during the original cocktailian epoch.

And then there was food. The last of the super-useful smoked duck broth, diluted a bit with water, added wonderful depth to a saffron and pea risotto (I also fried one strip of bacon in there so I could give our guests a little sample; the rendered fat added a little oomph and did elegantly lascivious things with the parmigiano at the end.) There's just something about rice, bird broth, saffron, and peas. And local organic chicken legs, with a gentler than usual rub followed by bastings of the homemade BBQ sauce on the grill, and frisée mash that Chris expertly churned in the suribachi, and quickly sautéed beet greens and multicolored chard with garlic. And Sirkka's pie made with their sour cherries and our strawberries. There's something about those things too.

They brought a 2006 Sheldon Santa Lucia Highlands Chard- Dylan is a friend of the band (I met him years ago backstage in Oakland when they opened for the Dead) and makes a mean wine. We had some of his rosé at their place this Spring, and it's delightful. We followed it with another Bret Bros. Pouilly-Fuissé, and it was a perfect sequence. On a weekend, I could easily have reached for one of the great white Burgs in the fridge to complete the Chardonnay trifecta. But we all had work to do in the morning, and I suspect the wine at tonight's shindig will be completely off the hook.

I'm Just Here To Help The Ball Club

The garden is getting to the point now where my job is simply to produce substrates, mediums, and vehicles which can allow the plants to shine. Our escarole is perfect, so I lopped off the inaugural head and sautéed it briefly with a couple of cloves of garlic then deglazed the pan with smoked duck broth. If you're noticing a pattern here, it's one of our favorite ways to eat greens- sometimes with lemon in place of broth- and smoked duck broth does to greens what you might expect the heavenly offspring of chicken broth and bacon to do.

For the main course, I wanted to do cold soba with a sesame sauce, but since we were out of soba I used rice noodles instead, and changed to a peanut sauce for a little more of a Pad Thai feeling. The peanut sauce- peanut butter, lime juice, sesame oil, rice vinegar, agave syrup, nam pla, soy sauce, sriracha, truffle oil- coated the noodles, with none left over to pool in the bottom of the bowl. I blanched peas and broccoli and tossed them into the noodles along with lots of lime and Thai basil. The slightly bitter, smoky escarole cut right through the rich, sweet, spicy noodles, and the sweet peas added a high note. To drink, a cocktail I invented during a bout of insomnia last weekend and tried for the first time. I'm going to refine it with ingredients I bought today; I'll describe it in the next post.

Who's Your Daddy?

Though it looks like an excess of consecutive red meat consumption around here, there was actually a day in between- my last day of solitude- wherein not much interesting was et. This meal honored the return of my family, who actually really missed me and were pretty excited to be home again. I defrosted a butterflied piece of lamb leg and gave it a quick rub with Moroccan-type flavors. While it rested, I made a mash/pesto hybrid by spinning radicchio and frisée in the food processor with garlic, ume plums, rosemary, mint, thyme, oregano, lemon juice, truffle oil, and lots of olive oil (all the herbs came from the herb garden, which is an unruly jungle of fragrant goodness.) I also put on a pot of quinoa.

And I steamed a lovely mixture of peas, rainbow carrots, and chioggia beets that I had picked earlier with Milo. It's pretty sweet to have him "help" me shell peas exactly the way I "helped" my Mom do it all those years ago- by eating them as fast as possible. We also picked the last of the bolting gai lan, which he loves; he ate all the flowers raw and scarfed the leaves down after I sautéed them with garlic and olive oil then deglazed the pan with smoked duck broth. The meat came out just right; the to halves were different thicknesses, so the thinner half was medium rare and the thick half was very rare. Thus everyone got pieces to their liking, and there's an undercooked hunk that can still handle some heat without turning to leather. We finished a 2000 Gros Noré Bandol that I opened a couple of nights before, and the intervening time open let it soften into burly, leathery grace- like a hairy biker dude with years of ballet training.

A Steak Sandwich, And A Steak Sandwich

Over the last few days I've been enjoying the merry situation that ensues when a laptop, DSL modem, and camera all decide to stop working within days of each other. It's a freaking laugh riot, and I'm interpreting it as a sign from God that this blog is an abomination. Therefore, I'll be changing the blog to johnmccainisTOTALLYastraighttalkingmaverick.com in the hopes of avoiding the brimstone, burning, and the lake of fire, and the eternal torment (aka Verizon tech support) and all that stuff whenever I finally get hit by a bus.

In the meantime, though, skipping over the myriad meals that came during what I'm referring to as my "Involuntary Amish" period (which included some bad-ass falafel, the pictures of which lie buried in a card I can't access right now) I present the sublime deliciousness of this here sammich. The family was out of town for a few days- I bailed on the trip ostensibly to get a lot of important work done, but in reality it afforded me extensive quality alone time with the robot phone tree whose fruit is some half-trained Russian guy named "Steve."

I had made myself a beautiful ribeye- sous vide at 52˚ C for two hours- but I ended up not eating much of it because I was exhausted (I actually did get a ton of work done, but we had a couple of epic storms that woke me up on two different nights. This, and the equipment failures, is why I think God hates my blog.) So the next night I took the beautiful just-cooked hunk o'meat and seared it hard in some homemade bacon fat. While it rested, I made mayonnaise with a little horseradish and truffle oil, and green mash with frisée, ume plums, garlic, and copious olive oil (and more truffle oil.)






















On a toasted local baguette with just-picked selvatica arugula and a glass or three of a 2006 Siduri pinot, it wiped away almost all the stress of the last few days. The second one, with more wine (to study its evolution as it reacted to the air- you know, research) pretty much took care of the rest, and restored my faith in food as medicine. The clouds broke. The sun is back. The garden is still lousy with strawberries. The DSL goblins are banished. All is well. I can say the following things with complete certainty: searing steak in bacon fat is pure genius, making your own custom-flavored mayo is too, and you can totally buy new cameras on the interweb. So we're back in business.

Fleeting Mojo Restoration

It was such a pleasure to be home for a few days in a row; I got to settle in to the rhythms of the garden and kitchen, where the plants tell me what to eat and I can generate leftovers that inform and give depth to subsequent meals. It also meant that I could finally make another big crock of kimchi, since our Asian cabbages are getting huge. This batch was cabbage, carrots, chioggia beets, radishes, baby red onions, both lime and Thai basil, and a cayenne pepper from last summer.

As far as dinner went, this time around it was the first of our peas that gave me the idea, as well as some stray chard that I pulled out of the carrot bed while I was weeding. I remembered the crabmeat in the freezer- crab and peas are genius together- and the smoked duck carcass needed to be brothed. So I cooked a bundle of udon in the strained duck broth until it was almost tender, then added peas, shredded beet greens, crab, and a beaten egg to it at a bare simmer for a couple of minutes. As a garnish, I sautéed the beet stems in a little homemade bacon fat from the jar.

On the side, I made a nice little bowl of the cabbage that wouldn't fit in the fermenting crock braised with lardons of our beloved magic sex bacon and cider vinegar. Tangy, rich, and tender, it was great by itself and even better stirred into the soup. I opened another of the Jack Blot Vouvrays, and it was pretty damn perfect. I wish I had more; there's only one left.

Makin' Bacon

This began ages ago, with a local, organic pork belly that I squared off (and used the trimmings to make salt pork) then cured with salt, sugar, maple syrup, togarashi, pink peppercorns, bay leaves, and coffee for about 6 weeks. It could have gone much less, but I could not.

















Smoked- along with the duck- yesterday on a nice mix of our own maple & apple wood plus grape vines, it achieved a sublime deep smokiness along with a complex sweet-spicy-porkitude that words simply will not suffice to describe. Imagine your favorite sex act on a plate, and you'll be close. I set some thick (1/8 inch) slices to frying on Monday morning and everyone in the house (7 people) was in the kitchen drooling expectantly within a minute or two.

















Having this in the fridge makes me want to use it in everything I make, although it is so good by itself I wonder if it will last long enough to get much use as a supporting player in anything. I pretty much need to go get another belly right away. Honestly, it's like being able to microwave your own meth. And when it's all used up, I'll still have the skin to play with.






















Want some?

Lhude Sing Cucu

Jeff and Eve came to visit, and we had pulled a duck out of the freezer in anticipation.  I lit the smoker, and in addition to smoking the duck (on a mixture of maple, apple, and grape vines- all from our yard) I also smoked the bacon that had been patiently curing in back of the fridge for so long (more on that later.)  In addition, I made polenta, green mash, caramelized turnips (they've gotten really big in the last week or so) and cooked chioggia beet and turnip greens together with some of the newly-smoked bacon.

We started with some of our duck prosciutto and thin slices of the still-warm bacon as an appetizer, accompanied by a 2006 Jacky Blot Triple Zéro- a no-dosage sparkler that is super clean and elegant and works well with salty meat like this.  Then we piled all the food on the table and got to work on it.  Nothing remained.  We drank a Pleiades XVI, and then a 2003 Jaboulet Vacqueyras which are both outstanding wines, and go famously with high-end peasant food like this.

For dessert, since I had picked TWO QUARTS of strawberries that morning from our 4 x 8 foot bed, I mashed some of them in the suribachi and stirred in whole yogurt and maple syrup, then ran it through the ice cream machine and served it on top of more strawberries.  I must say that "June-bearing strawberries" is one of the great triumphs of truth in advertising; these varieties are insanely prolific and intensely sweet.  They easily prove Butler's assertion  that "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did."

Other People's Food

It's been a while since my last post, and I've covered a lot of ground since then, but I will keep this entry brief by concentrating on the highlights, and the pleasure of having had other people cook for me for much of the last ten days.  In Chicago last week, Jeff and Eve- with whom our tradition of mighty dinners really got rolling during grad school there in '94- made a simple yet perfect dinner of grilled duck breast, asparagus, couscous salad, and fruit for dessert.  They will be here tomorrow for a night; I'm looking forward to reciprocating with some much-awaited home cooking of my own.

The following night, Rick (who first turned me on to sous-vide cooking at home) made some monster T-bones in his water bath, plus roasted potatoes and braised carrots.  He's got a superb wine collection, and we drank a 1981 Kathryn Kennedy cabernet that tastes much younger than almost 30 years old, followed by a 1991 Dujac Clos St. Denis that is still a baby.  The more wine I drink, the more I come back to the simple truth that age is everything with well-made wine.

Last Monday, we had the pleasure of attending the wedding of some dear friends up here, and the subsequent reception at their house.  The groom is French, and they roasted a whole lamb on a spit in the back yard; there was much goodness to go with it.  A couple of other noteworthy flavors from these last few days included a 1997 López de Heredia rosé that had wonderful sherry and port notes underneath the elegant acid, the late dinner I had with my Brother at the Fatty Crab in NYC, and the later Korean barbecue post-opening in Williamsburg last night- complete with an open container citation (for a quarter inch of wine in a plastic cup I absentmindedly had in hand) on the way over as an appetizer.

What wedding is complete without a didjeriduet?

Hellenistic

The spinach we planted in March is starting to bolt, so I took that as an opportunity to yank most of it up and do something fun with it. We loves us some spinach pie here, so I made it the center of a warm day dinner (though it does need the oven, it's better eaten once it's cooled off a bit.) The haul from the garden also included bolting arugula, some lettuces, and a few random herbs.






















My Mom used to make this a lot, sometimes with broccoli mixed in, and I loved it then too, but when cooked in a baking dish the bottom dough always got soggy and gross from the liquid that the greens throw off during cooking. It was more than a little like wet newspaper. So today, innovation: the greens, chopped and tossed with three eggs beaten with lemon juice, crumbled feta, salt, pepper, and minced garlic became the filling for a giant log so that all the dough would crisp up and be delicious all the way around.











It worked. Plus, it sliced up really nicely into big rounds that plated all pretty-like. They enjoyed the company of beets- which roasted in foil alongside the big fat Greek stogie- and a superb salad. Tangy, soft and rich inside, crispy and flaky outside, without a trace of sogginess anywhere; this one is a keeper. There was also some chicken, but whatever about that. Behold the glory that was the interior of my baked brassica bat:

Not Completely Terrible

I made some pretty good salsa over the weekend to go with some simple burritos, and there was a fair amount left over. The tomatoes available now aren't so good for eating by themselves, but spun in the food processor with lime juice, onion, garlic, and cilantro they do all right. Milo suggested- pretty impressively for someone not yet four- that we run the leftover salsa through the ice cream machine. He's used to unusual things going in there, so today we did, and bought some seafood to go with it.


















The seafood included shrimp, which I hardly buy any more, but I had a profound hankering for Vietnamese summer rolls. Normally I make these with tofu, but I'm not eating soy right now. With bean thread noodles and our own lettuces, mizuna, and mint, they delivered exactly the clean flavor I craved- balanced perfectly by a tangy peanut-lime sauce. I saved the shrimp shells to make a broth, and roasted some cauliflower. Once all brown and nutty, I puréed the cauliflower with the strained shrimp broth to make a thick soup. A little salt, and that was all; a trip through the tamis would have made this much more elegant, but I was trying to keep it simple.






















And then a few scallops, seared in olive and sesame oil, served with the salsa sorbet and the deglazings of their pan (which I had also sautéed the shrimp in.) A good, easy three-course meal that combined light and rich, and kept the portions nice and small. Some wine would have been nice, but I'm not drinking either for a bit. That will change on Wednesday, when I bet there will be some special treats in store.