sunday Sunday SUNDAY!

We had a birthday party to go to yesterday, so the afternoon was not as domestic as I wanted. It was leisurely, though, so when we did get home I had lots of energy and got right to work in the garden ripping out the spent peas and replanting the bed with radishes of all sorts. Some dried peas had already begun to sprout, so I gently moved them under the sunflowers at the end of the bed so they'll have something to climb. Peas in the fall are nice, but daikon are better.

I made three big jars of pickles, which I'll post as soon as I photograph them. Dinner was a combination of several dishes prepared separately and eaten all together; a bit more time could have turned this into an elegant multi-course meal if the occasion had called for such. As it was, we enjoyed it out on the screened porch with the breezes and the chirping birds.

I started by seeding and mandolining a couple of cucumbers into a bowl, then kneading them with salt until they gave up their liquid. I squeezed them out, then dressed them with the local soy sauce and cider vinegar. I took a sweet potato and steamed it, then made a variation on our beloved tahini-miso sauce using black sesame paste, white miso, and raspberry vinegar in place of lemon juice. I used the same pan with the steamer in it to cook a small head of local cauliflower that a friend gave us since their CSA had given them too much. I tossed it in olive oil, cider vinegar, and a bit of leftover green mash once it was tender.



















I dug what looks to be the last of the Washugyu beef from the freezer (meaning it's time for another trip to Mitsuwa) and thawed it in a marinade of miso and white wine, then gave it a quick sear and deglazed it with soy sauce and more cider vinegar. It's a joyful thing to have high-quality soy and vinegar made locally, and my pantry is much happier for it.



















In the same pan, I sautéed oyster mushrooms and garlic, then flamed them with sherry and added sherry vinegar for good measure.



















We carried all the little bowls out to the porch and helped ourselves, using my newest plates; I recently joined a ceramics co-op and these are the first to fire there. There's just an electric kiln, so we fire to cone 6, but these look like they fired to cone 10 in gas because of the very nice glazes one can get these days. There will be lots more ceramics in the coming months. And food to put on them.

What The Thunder Said

Our muggy heat broke rather dramatically this evening with a torrential downpour, accompanied by rollicking summer thunder. The rain was perfectly timed, coming as it did on the heels of several very hot days, and we'll sleep better tonight as a result of the front's passage. Such meteorological benedictions were sufficient to inspire me to actually cook something, though the cooking part was mercifully short. Most of the time was spent rolling out fettucine.

We're lucky to live on a nice little road that is a lot like Sesame Street in terms of its child-friendliness, so when I realized that we had no eggs–right after dumping a bunch of flour in a bowl–I sent our small child to the neighbors' house to ask for a couple of eggs. He came back a few minutes later, saying that they hadn't had any so he just went to the next neighbors and got two eggs from them. Cute and smart–I may just keep him after all. I sent him back with a thank you zucchini, and once again thought about getting some chickens.

We mixed eggs and flour together, gave it a quick knead, and let the dough sit for a bit while we picked another zucchini (duh), salad, and basil for the sauce. Which was simple tomato and garlic, with chopped basil added periodically throughout its reduction and thickening to emphatically inflect the red purée with fat green flavor. (I find that adding basil in waves while a sauce cooks makes for a more complete and saturated basil flavor in the result). I sautéed the zucchini, sliced into rounds, in a bit of butter, then deglazed the pan with a drop of cider vinegar. I made a simple but ardently arresting vinaigrette of walnut oil, mustard, and sherry vinegar, and that was dinner.





















There's not much in the world that's better than food like this, when the ingredients are perfect and the execution just gets out of their way. There were no leftovers.

Let Be Be Finale Of Seem

Another hot-weather dinner, and another round of homemade sushi for the clamoring tribe. Sockeyes are in season, and though very not local, they are sustainably caught and most delicious. This has become somewhat of a weekly ritual for us while our local-ish source is out of town; we get the best fish we can and I make a variety of sushi while the family sits and devours it all. I eat mine intermittently throughout, sometimes with a nice plate at the end after they're sated.


















I would have had a better picture but the camera battery died right after this shot. Other components included shiso, spicy sauce (that tomato-cream sauce from the day before plus sriracha and miso), tomato, chard, Thai basil, and avocado. I sautéed some mixed garden greens (chard, red and black kale, collards) with garlic and deglazed with local ponzu. Yup. Read the next article. It's a wondrous way to eat, all gardeny fresh and fishy and cool; I had a powerful yearning to live closer to the ocean so that this sort of occasional indulgence would be more of a logical frugality.

The real star of this meal was dessert, though. Our big blueberry bushes, bought last year from Lee, fruited prolifically, and I netted them in time to keep the birds from stealing all of our berries (though one poor robin got caught and died in the brutal heat before I found and cut it loose). A blue jay also got caught, but we freed it. I'm getting to know our avian neighbors at an intimate proximity, but honestly neither of us are thrilled about it, as much as I enjoy watching them from a foot or two away. Next year I'll be building a birdproof enclosure for all our blueberries, including those in the herb garden which I'll be moving so they can be next to their bigger brethren. Nets are a big pain in the ass even without dead birds; they snag and pop off berries both ripe and unripe as one tries–however gingerly–to remove them come picking time.

So now that your appetites are thoroughly aroused, here's the blueberry ice cream I made. It was a straight up vanilla custard to which I added some blueberry juice, then added a bunch of whole berries as the machine churned. The addition of the juice imparted a luscious blueberry flavor to the ice cream without adding too much color (the insides are white, after all) and the frozen berries had that wonderful tartness which plays so well with sweet cream. This was an ideal straddling of adult sophistication and youthful hedonism, and a most welcome treat on another muggy evening.

Baby, It's Hot Outside

The combination of heat and burgeoning garden have made cooking pretty simple lately. I make the rounds, picking what needs it, and that's what we eat, with as little actual cooking as possible. But I still feel motivated to mix it up a little, since it definitely makes the family happier and more engaged with dinner; heat saps appetites and the boy is obsessed with catching butterflies so he'll dash from the table if he sees one out the window.

The humidity and temperature are creeping up again, and in a day or two we'll be back at full swelter. I took maximum advantage of the cooler spell to do a bunch of outdoor chores, and now I'm back inside with the A/C on 77 (and on the economy setting) in my little office, working on the next article. Once it's done, though, I have to clean out the wood shop, which is going to be an orgy of filthy misery. (It's important that you all understand just how horribly hard it is to be me).

To begin, I took a cucumber, four small tomatoes (they're coming in early), nasturtium leaves, a big purslane plant, and half a zucchini (every meal includes zucchini in some form or another; I've been picking them small to avoid overload) and blended them all smooth with a bit of Brother Victor's sherry vinegar and a pinch of salt. I put the blender jar in the fridge for an hour to chill, then blasted it one more time before serving.


























Gazpacho really is a brilliant invention; the relatively low profile of the tomatoes and the lack of peppers in this mix did nothing to diminish the result: a supremely refreshing and ridiculously healthy first course.


























Next up, some good ground beef mixed thoroughly with lots of minced green onion tops and a big spoonful of azuki bean miso, then formed into brochettes. There was some tomato purée left in the fridge, and a bit of heavy cream, so I combined them with some mustard and reduced the mixture to a viscous thickness. I sliced the rest of the zucchini into rounds, and toasted some sprouted wheat tortillas on the stove to soften them, and we headed out onto the porch.


























I had lit the shichirin about half an hour earlier, so it was incandescently hot. We grilled zucchini, then the skewers, and made little wraps with them and sauce. Not particularly ornate or complex, but extremely tasty. The kitchen stayed cool and cleanup was a breeze. It's hard to ask for more in this weather.

The Inverse Correlation Of Convenience And Flavor

It finally rained, and then cooled down a bit to the point where the mere idea of turning on the oven wasn't suicide-inducing. I had planned to grill pizza, but figured out too late that we were out of charcoal. So on went the oven. I also turned on the attic fan, which pulled in cooler air from outside and sucked all the oven heat out through the top of the house. It's a brilliant invention and we use it most summer evenings.

I've gotten so used to using our sourdough starter that I had forgotten how quick dried yeast is to raise dough. Since I thought to make pizza the same day, I picked up a bag of yeast and banged out a simple dough recipe from a book I haven't really used before: Eric Kastel's Artisan Breads, which I got (for free) when I wrote my bread piece back in the spring. All my other trusted books require a biga, or preferment, and I was looking for one that did not, since there was no time. It does assume that you'll retard the dough overnight to improve flavor, but I skipped that part. It called for malt syrup and sugar, for which I substituted honey, and I also added about 30% whole wheat flour for taste and nutrition.

In an 80˚ kitchen, and with honey added, this ball of dough more than doubled in volume in about 40 minutes. I rolled it onto the island top, cut it into four pieces, shaped them loosely, and let them sit while I picked, washed, and cut up various toppings. The results, from top to bottom, are as follows:

1. Smoked ham, red onion, leftover sautéed beech mushrooms, and basil
2. Broccoli and garlic
3. Zucchini
(These three all had local fresh mozzarella on top)
4. Pizza rossa with arugula salad added after it cooled to room temp (a personal favorite)

The toppings were all good, especially the insane smoky ham. The crust? Not so much. No character, and the faint sweetness made it taste kind of like a cracker, which I did not enjoy. I'm sure that retarding the dough overnight adds a bit of complexity, but from now on I'm going to think ahead and get our starter fed and ready for this sort of meal. There's just no substitute for a wild starter when it comes to flavor and chew.

The leftovers did make an acceptable breakfast, though.


























I'm posting this on yeastspotting, where they spot all kinds of yeast.

That's Not Ironic, It's What Happened

This meal actually took place before this wretched heat wave, which should be self-evident since it involved using the stove for more than 90 seconds. Our meals lately have been quick and minimally heated, and I'm not even taking pictures because it's all I can do to remember to keep breathing. Funny how after last summer's desperate railing against the incessant rain has begotten this desperate pleading for the heat to be broken by some rain (we haven't had any in something like two weeks now). If it doesn't rain tomorrow I'm going to have to put the sprinkler on the garden for three or more hours. The seedlings can't take this.

I rubbed some lovely local lamb chops in some lovely local miso and let them sit, then wiped off most of the miso, then seared them in the iron pan, turning a few times. I pulled them out and sautéed first some locally grown shiitake, then our own mixed greens in the same pan, and then served all of the above with some of the beet-currant sauce from John's birthday appetizers and some leftover escarole mash. Freaking delicious, and way more interesting than the turkey burgers I made tonight. I'm such a giver.























Miso makes an extraordinary marinade for meat, caramelizing to a beautiful and flavorsome crust...

...I swear that if I sit here typing for one more minute with beads of sweat running down my back I'm going to off myself. Turn off your computers and go do a rain dance, for crying out loud.

Joint Custody

John called me a few weeks ago and said "Do you want a whole artisanal Tennessee ham?"

"Sure," I said, on account of I'm not a complete idiot. "Why and how?"

The band's publicist, it turns out, during or after Bonnaroo, had been driving around and stopped at some joint in Gallatin for lunch. The ham sandwich–smoky, fatty, and piled high for $6–was one of the best he'd tasted. So he talked to the proprietor, learned the story, and placed the order. The story is that the owner has been on a mission to revive the tradition of dry-cured country hams, feeling as he does (and rightly) that those icky, rehydrated "honey-baked" hams and their ilk are an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. So he's working with a local farmer to raise pigs that are happier and fattier than the awful, industrially produced standard. He's not using any heirloom breeds, because he wants to be able to offer his "prosciutto" sandwich at a price that a truck driver can afford. His hams are cured, aged for a year, and then smoked for a good deal more (making them more like a smoked hillbilly jamón).

Now John has been pretty much off the pig for a while, so he figured I'd be interested in keeping it company. And just this morning I was wondering when it might arrive. Then, after lunch, whilst outside tying our exploding tomatoes to a trellising structure I had just built, who should I see walking up to the house carrying a large white bundle?




















It arrived swaddled (from the inside out) in: a recent copy of the Tennessean, a black trash bag, and a complete layer of white duct tape. It weighed close to 25 pounds. I say "weighed" because we accidentally ate some of it after unwrapping it. Just to be sure it was OK. And it's quite a lot more than OK. There's a fair amount of pepper in the cure; after the silky, smoky bite there's a lingering heat not unlike good pastrami. And as you can see, there's plenty of fat. I'll be using the fat for cooking for the forseeable future, even as we slowly whittle this leviathan down to the bone.
















I went and found a heavier-duty hook amongst my vast collection of random hardware and installed it in a choice location where it is unlikely to concuss any passing friends or family, and there it hangs. That's it on the right, next to some guanciale, duck breast, and bresaola, all the products of the meat-curing class we had here a couple of weeks ago. The kitchen smells GOOD.























I told John that he can have visitation rights. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go carve off a few more slices. Just, you know, to make sure it's still OK.

I Love A Parade

We were in Vermont for the weekend, enjoying some absolutely perfect weather. Some swimming, a little (unsuccessful) fishing, and general relaxation were the totality of the agenda. And eating. That too.

I brought a cooler full of garden, and we worked our way through it over the course of our stay. To begin, a glorious treat in the form of our first zucchini flowers stuffed with local smoked gouda, dredged in local eggs and whole wheat flour, and fried quickly. I served them on a plate that my Mother made sometime before she made me.



















Next up, we had a variation on many of our recent meals: some form of protein on top of stir-fried garden on top of a starch. They're all sort of phone-ins, but as long as I keep mixing up the specifics and the ethnic leanings, I can create the illusion of variety. In this case it was beautiful grass-fed ribeye atop broccoli, peas, carrots, zucchini, green beans, and herbs on brown rice vermicelli with a somewhat spicy Thai-adjacent sauce of sesame oil, rice vinegar, nam pla, soy sauce, curry powder, and a bit of maple syrup. Lots of Thai basil helped.



















The next night, we had wild sockeye salmon with garlic scapes and an interesting sauce that I'll be working on over the coming months; it was sort of an accident, and got me excited about an intentional version that could go one of several ways. I seared the salmon in an iron skillet, which was pretty hot, and as I messed around with my sauce components it got hotter still. So when I went to deglaze with wine, and found that there was hardly more than a sip left in the bottle, and then followed with maple syrup, the syrup caramelized pretty hard before I added more moisture in the form of vinegar and soy sauce. So I whisked in a bit of sesame oil and poured it over the fish. It hardened into an almost candied crust with excellent flavor and a too-durable chew, but it got me thinking of Heston Blumenthal's salmon with licorice crust and how the caramel could be modified to be more supple and seamless with the meltingly tender rare-in-the-middle fish. So I'll get back to you on how that goes.


























After dinner I turned some local strawberries and rhubarb into that perennial favorite, even adding a lattice because I was asked nicely.



















Our last night we had Vermont-raised quail on garlic scape risotto with sautéed bok choy. We bought the quail at the Saturday farmers' market, and they were very tasty, but I was pretty mad that I had been sold six semi-boneless birds frozen in a pack only to find that there were in fact just four in there. I will be contacting the farm to determine whether this was an honest mistake or just sleazy hucksterism.




















We returned home to a happy garden (a friend watered it ) and ate stir-fried garden with tofu on leftover refried brown rice. Tonight we ate penne tossed with sautéed garden and guanciale. See what I mean? But because I care, I'm not going to bore you with those pictures. Instead, I'll leave you with a couple of shots of a very unhappy mouse who we found upon our arrival in Vermont. It had probably eaten a crumb of old poison somewhere in the house, and was easily scooped into a container and released outside. Milo was very taken with its fuzzy cuteness, as we were too; if they didn't gnaw and shit on everything and carry deer ticks, I wouldn't mind their ubiquity. There was much other captured and released wildlife as well–butterflies, a frog, a salamander, tadpoles–but none had the nimbus of fuzz that this little varmint did.

Sour Grapes (But In A Good Way)

I was out of town, so this link is a few days late. The new issue of Chronogram came out on the first, and in it is my profile of a Benedictine monk who makes extraordinary vinegars. I've been messing around with them a great deal in the kitchen, and they are a joy to use and to eat.



























photo by the not-at-all sour Jennifer May

Growing

The garden expansion is not 100% done yet, but it's close enough to photograph. All of the light-colored beds (along the back and right sides) are new, and the metal fence posts show where I expanded outwards in two directions. There's a new 4x12' bed hidden behind the hydrangea in the near right corner, bringing the total to 20 beds (Milo gets a 3x6' spot for himself, to plant, weed, and tend on his own). Another one (4x9') is planted to scorzonera and salsify, which John wanted since he has no garden and they're not easily found in stores. The others I've begun to seed with various things, though for most of them I'm going to wait until the end of July so all the brassicas don't bolt.




















The lavender bed left of the gate with the iron shelves in it was the happy result of a neighbor's gift of the shelves. I'm going to be planting or mulching the outside perimeter to keep the lawn and field from invading the garden. The cedar fence posts I pulled up make excellent edging for perimeter beds, and haven't rotted at all after being buried. Where the lavender used to be, I'm going to plant prickly pears since they're super-hardy and can handle the dry spot under the eave. After I prune the hydrangea back, I'll be making a flower bed on the other side of the gate. Or maybe more asparagus.

It feels good; I should have listened to my inner farmer at the outset when we put this in four years ago. It's a good size now for something approaching year-round vegetable independence, though far from full subsistence. Careful succession planting will be the key, as will getting a viable root cellar up and running this fall in the crawl space under the house. Down the road I'd like to build a greenhouse attached to the South side of my studio, but the way I want to do it will cost more than I can spend right now.

This fall I'll be planting some fruit and nut trees out in the field, and I might make a smaller garden out there too so winter squash can run amok without smothering other crops. But for now I'm content and have room to stretch out a bit, even planting some flowers just for fun. The fruit bushes (currants: red, white, pink, black, clove; raspberries: red, black, yellow; blueberries, gooseberries, lingonberries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, hardy kiwis, cherries, and prickly pears) are coming along nicely. Combined with the garden expansion, it's been a productive season so far. And I've been reminding myself that I have actual jobs other than this, so I need to cut myself some slack when it comes to the self-sufficiency thing. I do wish I'd put some of these plants in the ground right when we moved in, because they'd be that much farther along. But we have plenty to eat, and much to look forward to. And that's really all there is to it.

Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

I taught a class on meat-curing here on Saturday (we covered gravlax, guanciale, lardo, bresaola, duck prosciutto, and then had a tasting of everything, plus some bacon). It was well-attended, and I think people enjoyed it and took away some useful knowledge. And hoo boy is there a lot of salty meat in the fridge. I gave the curing salmon to some Boston friends to take home with them, but come dinner time there was an alarming lack of actual food ready to eat. So I took the big beef eye round (16" or so) and cut 6" off. This did two things: it meant that I could fit the remainder in a much smaller pyrex loaf pan to finish curing, and it gave me a pre-seasoned hunk o' beef with which to make a quick and wondrous meal. The cure was salt, a bit of raw sugar, rosemary, garlic, thyme, juniper berries, and smoked paprika.






















See that dark ring around the outside? That's how far the cure penetrated in the few hours it sat after class. I very nearly just sliced it up like this and called it a night. But instead, inspired largely by the skillet still full of rendered duck fat from Friday's searing (see previous post), I reheated it and gave the roast a good browning all around.




















Having abandoned carpaccio, I put the meat in the oven for a bit to cook some more while I sliced and fried some potatoes in the same duck fat.

















The meat came out looking good, and I sliced it fairly thinly to at least allude to the carpaccio I'm now sort of wishing I had made.


























There was some leftover escarole-walnut pesto, so I dolloped it around with reckless insouciance, garnishing the platter with a nasturtium flower. And we tucked in. Given today's heat, I truly can't believe that I cooked all of this. And I have an industrial-strength hankering for carpaccio. But Saturday was cool, and roast beef and duck fat potatoes fit the bill. The cure gave the rounds of beef a salaciously salty crust and a rich herbal flavor. And the rest of the beef will be ready to hang in a day or so.

Canapés

John's birthday party was Friday, and it was to be an all-finger food potluck. I didn't have a ton of time to plan or shop, so I made do with things around the house, centering on two forms of duck from the freezer. I defrosted a moulard breast and two pieces of foie gras–both local–and went outside to pick currants. The pink and white currant bushes I planted last fall have taken off, loving their new environs and fruiting prolifically. I got just shy of two pounds of fruit from them both, doing a not very thorough job so there will be more to enjoy in the coming days.



















Figuring these would make a good sauce for duck, I simmered them with a little honey until they were all exploded and undulating, then I strained the liquid (more of a thick purée) into a bowl. The pink and white currants have a very different flavor than the black; this sauce almost resembled apple sauce in flavor and color. I added a drop of blackcurrant brandy to fortify it.

Meanwhile, I cooked a beet in some water, stick-blending it into a smooth sauce with some cider vinegar when soft. I made tart crust, and picked a few things for garnish. Stamping circles out of the crust with a small glass, I pushed the rounds into a small muffin tin and baked them until lightly browned. Sometimes I like to put a quarter in the bottom of each one to keep it flat, but this time I just let them puff up into appealingly irregular little pastry cups. Into each on I put a squeeze of beet purée, a morsel of seared foie, a dollop of currant sauce, and then a mâche flower and a nasturtium petal. I dropped a chunk or two of big Celtic sea salt on each one to finish it.



















The duck breast got scored and seared to rare, and I brought it over to their house to serve with escarole pesto and a combination of the leftover beet and currant sauces. Sliced, on crackers with pesto and the lurid fuchsia purée, it made for a nice companion to the little foie tartlets. But I didn't bring the camera, so you'll have to imagine it.

Rosé FAQ

I was at an extraordinary wine dinner recently, and in chatting with the very expert guests I sort of stumbled on an interesting consensus: almost everyone I talked to about the subject agreed that a well-made rosé was as good a choice as any to match with a wide variety of foods, especially in the warm weather we're enjoying. One professional specifically told me that at a recent tasting of big-name juice, he returned to a simple rosé as one of his favorite wines of the night, refilling his glass with it rather than some over-hyped behemoth. Everyone nodded knowingly when I said that summer is my time to save some wine money by buying cases of affordable pink, keeping precious powder dry for bigger cold-weather reds to match with rich stews and braises later on. When it comes to the most basic ratio of pleasure per dollar, good rosé is about as rewarding as wine gets. So here's a little primer for the novices among you.

I'm referring to the style I like best (and just about only): bone-dry and lightly colored, and almost invariably from the South of France. I'll use Provence as shorthand, but that can be extended into several neighboring regions; what matters to me is the style and the irresistibly tasty garrigue (wild herbs) that perfectly balances the fruit and acidity in a well-made example. If you're not familiar with it, or have only ever had white Zinfandel (oh, the horror. Seriously, end-of-Apocalypse-Now HORROR) then this post is for you.

Q: How is it made?

A: Red grapes are crushed, but then the juice is drained off of the skins after a short time, taking only a fraction of the color; this method is called "saignée" or "bled," as the juice is bled off the skins before picking up enough color to make it red. The result has mainly characteristics of a white, but with a subtle and seductive complexity in the form of red fruit flavors and a gentle grip of tannin that help it stand up to sturdy food.

Q: What does rosé pair well with?

A: Pretty much anything you would normally eat in hot weather, from vegan lentil salad to barbecued chicken or even burgers. It's superbly food-friendly.

Q: Is there a certain kind of glass I should serve it in?

A: It comes in a glass.

Q: Rosé is pink. If I drink it, will it make me gay?

A: While at first blush (heh) rosé can resemble such extremely girly beverages as the cosmo, when it comes from the right part of the world and/or is properly made it can in fact be defined principally by masculine flavors like woody herbs and minerals. And strawberries, pretty often, but in a good way.

Also, if it bothers you so much, drink it out of an opaque mug. And maybe talk to a professional about why this is something you worry about so often.

Q: Is it expensive?

A: It's cheap; most bottles sell for under $15 retail and that money is well spent; quality is high across the board from good producers. Ask your local reputable seller which he or she recommends, making sure to specify that a Provençal profile is what you're after. Syrah, Grenache, and Carignane are all widely used down there, along with other varietals (Bandol rosé, made from Mourvèdre, can be special. Tavel, the only appellation in France that is only rosé, is unique and often beautiful). Some bottles can get up into the $20 range, and in some cases there's more complexity to be found there. Again, talk to your store and try a few. Use the case discount to your advantage; toss a couple bottles of $6 red and white in for cooking with, and enjoy the ten or fifteen percent savings on the whole case. It's easy to walk out with 10 very drinkable bottles for $100.

Another helpful fact: if you find yourself paying upwards of $40 for a bottle of Domaines Ott, then you are a complete asshole.

Q: Should I serve it cold? Cool?

A: Chilled is good, but I like to let them warm up a bit over time. The color and flavor imparted by the grape skins also means that some of the rich and volatile compounds that make red wines so interesting end up in rosés. Letting them come up to near room temp by bottle's end can be an interesting exercise in teasing apart the strands of flavor in a given wine. A good bottle can almost work like three different wines: ice-cold, it's pretty much a white; in between, it's rosé; approaching warm, it's almost a light red. Now that's a bargain.

Q: Isn't there good rosé made in other parts of the world?

A: Yes, but to me far too many of them taste like candy or soda. If you're trying to seduce a high school student, something like that might be right up your alley. If not, and you're a complete newbie, start in Provence so you learn what it's supposed to taste like.

Q: Do they age?

A: Surprisingly well, in some cases. Lopez de Heredia from Rioja is famous for easily lasting 10 years and developing all sorts of sexy nuance along the way. There's a Tavel I like from 2005 that's drinking beautifully right now, and which matches with all sorts of surprising things. For the most part, though, they're meant for quaffing soon after purchase. Drink them.

Q: Are you going to suggest some good ones?

A: I can, but there's no guarantee your local store will carry them. The three stores near here where I usually shop for such things have selections that overlap hardly at all. Also, if you actually read this blog then you'll know I often mention bottles that I enjoy with dinner. You can use the handy "search" feature to find posts that feature such mentions. I do think that people learn more when they buy a few to see what they like rather than buying a name because somebody told them to.

I hope this helps. Honestly, there's nothing besides a first-rate local microbrew that offers so much versatility and pleasure in the summer drinking category. And since summer is officially under way, you should all get to it. A good bottle will make your next meal better, whether it's a simple BBQ or a fancy dinner that you spend three days preparing.

Also, chicks dig it.

Grueling

I haven't really been feeling the cooking urge lately. I'm just too busy outside making space for and planting food to be bothered to make very much of it. That will change, though; we have a couple of potlucks coming up, and I'm teaching a class on meat-curing on Saturday, and as the garden gets up to full speed there will be much that needs freezing or otherwise eating. But for now, I'm getting busy with the shovel and such, and then looking around sort of bewildered when I come in at the end of the day, as if dinner is something that I haven't really considered at all. Because I haven't.

Today was just such a day. The garden expansion is just about done, so today I did other things: prune the willow tree back so it's much more open and friendly underneath and not shading the asparagus any more. Cut the branches into pieces and compost them/save the fat ones for burning. Rip out a strip of lawn against one side of the garden fence and replace it with all of the lavender which I dug out of its previous bed where it wasn't getting enough water (since it was partly under the eave of the screen porch). And weed both sides of that piece of fence, mulching it hard, to keep the lawn from encroaching upon the garden. Weeds are bad enough without letting grass grow right up against the fence. The new design has buffer zones of heavy mulch or plantings around the fence to further exclude grass and weeds.

All of this will make a lot more sense when I post pictures, which should happen soon (I promise). In the meantime, how about another half-assed dinner? This one has the virtue of being almost entirely local from top to bottom. To begin, grass-fed stew meat from the freezer. I cut the stew-sized chunks into much smaller cubes, trimming off any tough bits as I went. I browned the meat in butter, removing it when nicely colored, adding diced onion (the only non-homegrown vegetable), green garlic, brocoli, kale (2 kinds), fennel, chard, herbs, peas, and carrots, and let it all get contentedly tender before splashing in a bit of wine and the rest of some beef-chicken stock with soba noodles in it (first straining out the noodles and other solids). And I let it simmer for a minute, thickening it with a dollop of beurre manié flavored with mustard, while the first-rate local polenta arrived at a doneness.


























I poured the meaty mixture into a gratin dish, and topped it with polenta into which I whisked a goodly portion of leftover green mash made from escarole and endive. And popped it in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes to color and bubble the topping. I threw some minced fennel fronds at it as it cooled.



















Now polenta is neither mashed potatoes nor a flaky pie crust. It doesn't cohere into something other than that which it covers, allowing for textural contrasts and the like. Serving it made both layers into one, resulting in a glorious porridge of grain and stew that glistened seductively while smelling like pure and comforting nourishment. It started out sunny and hot today, but clouded over and then began to rain by midafternoon–perfect weather for exertions and transplanting. And stewy things that involve turning on the broiler. Tomorrow it's going to be stinking hot and humid again, so I'm thinking about turning the leftovers from this meal into popsicles.

Ghost, Or Goat, Or Ghost Of Goat, Or Both

I haven't been hitting the blog with due dilligence of late, I know. First, I had an article due, but now it's done. Second, I have been outside. A lot. The garden expansion is coming up on finished, and will result in a big increase in bed space. That post should be up next week. In related news, I have a major farmer's tan, only with flip-flop lines on top of my feet. It's been seriously hot. Now after last summer I am just about the last person you'll find who will go on record complaining about this, the most perfect spring ever. But the raging heat has fucked up my salads in a big way. "How?" You may ask–and well you may–and here I am, helpfully, to share with you a heartbreaking tale of the ravages of climate change. (I'm not as fat as Al Gore, so you should listen to me).

Normally I succession-plant my salady-type things up until about the solstice, then relent for a bit until mid-august or so. This year, all our favorite greens shot pretty much straight up after about May 15. Keep in mind that our normal average frost-free date is a couple of weeks after that. So the salad bed is full of raging, verdant sun-boners, and we're moving on perforce to other things, except the other things aren't fully (or at all) ready. Basically, this should be primo salad time, but we're puréeing all the greens to make bitter mash and pesto, which we love, but which are not the same as big, squeaky-fresh bowls of leaves.

There's no question that I have a bunch to learn as a gardener. But it would be a lot easier if we weren't being whipsawed by such meteorological extremes. Having said that, the nightshades and curcurbits are going crazy, and we've got fat carrots and beets. And peas, though my half-assed trellis needs a major stimulus package right about now (the Democratic kind, involving infrastructure–not the Republican kind, involving rented cock).

So the other day was the farm market, and we went over to scare up some protein for dinner. It manifested itself as a couple of pounds of bone-in goat meat, cut up for stew. I browned the cubes in a bit of fat in the pressure cooker, then removed them and tossed in onion, carrot, and herbs to color, and then returned the meat with enough of the chicken-beef stock from before to cover it all. Sealed up and hissing contentedly, I left it for about 45 minutes. Once cooled and opened, I added in the rest of the lovely fuchsia soup from a few posts ago, plus a fat handful of minced herbs, and served it all on brown rice. Looks kinda drab, especially given my plaintive whining about how hot and summery the spring has been. But sometimes you need goat stew to set everything right, and the taste was far from drab.

Honest Goodness

The stock I used to make the pink soup (from the last post) was a mixture of roasted and stewed chicken bones plus raw T-bones and trimmings from two local, grass-fed steaks. Sometimes a big, juicy steak-on-a-plate is just what you need, while other times something a bit more refined is called for. In the latter case, I like to trim the meat off the bone, and then trim away anything that does not make for beautiful eating. I sliced the resulting steaks into thin slices and marinated them in sake and gochujang at room temperature for about an hour while I dealt with the other parts of the meal.

There were some bell pepper pieces left from a crudité sort of thing at Kindergarten, so I sliced them thin. I peeled and steamed some sweet potatoes, tossing the slices in yuzu juice and olive oil. I took a few bunches of frisée and spun them with cider vinegar, mustard, and garlic to make a sublimely gorgeous mash. And I took some leftover quinoa and tossed it with salt-kneaded cucumber, baby carrots sautéed with peas and guanciale, herbs, vinegar, and oil to make a pilaf type assembly.























We grilled the peppers and meat on the shichirin–charred and rare respectively– slathering it all with mash and mooing in appreciation at this amazing plate of food. When the spuds and peppers are our own, we'll do this again; it was a big tortilla away from unbelievably high quality street food.

Le Potager

We're very slowly getting to the place where more than greens are regular parts of the daily grazing–where what I bring in from the garden is sufficiently varied in color and texture that I can make almost anything I can think of entirely from our own produce. With the new expansion, this should be even better next year, but for now we're off to a good start.

This is what came in the other day:





















And this is what it became, with the help of some superlatively flavorful stock made from a mixture of stewed chicken bones and raw t-bone steak bones and trimmings simmered for hours, then strained. I added the vegetables and a shake of Lebanese couscous:


















The beets turned everything an appealing hue and the taste was a wonderful mix of super-fresh and deeply savory. The garden makes dinner such an easy pleasure. Once the expansion is finished, there will be more hot amateur farmer porn. Watch this space.

Felonious Gelatinization

I've been kind of on a gelling kick lately, due to the combined influences of hot weather and a clamorous child with a vivid culinary imagination. When made using judicious restraint with the proportion of gelatin and fresh, mostly local ingredients, the result is a world away from the ghastly neon cubes and quivering, striated, molded "salads" that have stigmatized the genre so thoroughly.




















Using minimal gelatin makes for a silkier, more giving texture, and sheet gelatin is superior to powdered. I took whole local strawberries, puréed with a splash of limoncello (made by friends) and pushed them through a strainer; whole fruit adds a wonderfully rich texture to the bite. And the flavor is stunningly clear. Making this a treat that appealed just as much to grown-ups as to the mouthy enthusiastic originator of the strawberry gel idea was a layer of puréed (non-local, obviously) lychees that I blended with a drop each of vanilla and maple syrup; it seemed that the combination would do something dusky and mysterious to the bright lychee flavor. Once both layers were set, I cut small rectangles and served them garnished with lime thyme leaves and thyme flowers, pouring a bit more of the limoncello around them in the adult bowls.

First off, lychees and strawberries get all kinds of busy together. Second, the maple-vanilla notes combined with the lychee mixture were chock full of unctuous, jammy win. Herb flowers and lemony booze added elitist, America-hating notes of effete sophistication and smug self-satisfaction. What else could you ask for from dessert? Also!

Variations On A Theme

This all began with a High School friend posting on Facebook that she was smoking a pork butt as a precursor to making pulled pork for dinner. "Hmmm," I said, "I have some pulled pork in the freezer, already smoked, braised, de-fatted, and pulled–ready to go, in other words." So I defroze it, and made corn muffins, using the very same local coarse polenta that I used to dredge the quail. This polenta is going places; I had the chance to chat wth Don, who mills it, yesterday at the farmers' market, and he told me some exciting news that is going to bode well for this region and the farmers thereof.




















I've made this before, and it's unbelievably good. Wilted greens on the side (in this case, the last of our spinach; the unseasonable heat made it all bolt, so I've replanted its spot with summer lettuces and escarole) do their part to add balance and some semblance of healthiness to the plate. And the leftovers are wicked rolled up in whole wheat tortillas with eggs, beans, avocados, and pretty much anything on the tasty side of the Sunday Times. Honestly, the accrued flavor equity that goes into this bowl of gorgeousness is hard to beat when it comes to subsequent meals.

And speaking, coincidentally, of subsequent meals, why, here's one from this very evening.

Imagine that.

See, Milo made this "mixture," as he likes to call them, last night, and it was a keeper, so we did. Sometimes he gets a little too enthusiastic with adding stuff and it goes horribly wrong, but this time around he kept it pretty harmonious. He ground fennel seeds, 5-spice, ginger, some sort of curry powder, and flour together in the small suribachi until it was a nice smooth paste. I put it in a container, thinking that it would make an excellent flavored flour for samosas the next day (today) since we have so very many peas right now.





















In that pan are the last of the pork, onion, green garlic, red potato, shredded kale and chard, cilantro, Thai basil, peas, vindaloo paste, flour (to roux-ify the oil), sake, and some tomato purée. I mixed his flavorful mixture in with flour and cold butter and spun it into a good tart crust.


















I punched circles out of it, and pushed them gently into the lasciviously greased compartments of a muffin pan, then filled them with the thickened meat and vegetable preparation. I pushed circular caps down onto the little pies, crimping them tight, and put the tray in the oven.






















While they baked, I picked a salad. I do like to pick my salads at the last minute; it makes a noticeable difference in the freshness and quality of the greens come eating time. I thought to myself "How do you make salad taste Indian?" There aren't so many raw salads on the menu at your typical Indian restaurant–since, according to several friends who have traveled extensively over there, eating uncooked greens in that part of the world can result in a serious gastric apocalypse–I just tossed the greens with a mixture of olive and pure mustard oil with a bit of good local red wine vinegar. And I made a heretically quick fake sauce with tomato purée, hoisin sauce, tamarind paste, and passion fruit juice.

Heresy or no, these were terrific. Sauce and salad also pulled their weight. A fitting send-off to the luscious quart of pork from last fall which fed us for most of this week.