Forks in Our Road: Third Bendiversary

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Third Bendiversary

February has historically been a feast month for us. It all started a long time ago as a way for Ann and me to celebrate an anti-Valentine's Day of sorts. It has since evolved.

Andreas, Kasia, Dyce, Ann, Michelle, Rob, Mike, Meredith
Sorry Andreas, You Rocked Back out of the Frame

Being in the restaurant business, I was always on the brutal business end of Valentine's Day. It was a time when we prepped for days and days to handle the jam-packed restaurant for a night, or two if we were lucky. And it was not optional: there was no other traffic at the restaurant in February and we depended on the instant cashflow of the big night or nights to tide us through the fallow time of a cashflow negative winter season. Did this conjure images of Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub for you?

Moreover, Ann was stranded at home on Valentine's Day, the prototypical chef-widow, watching TV while all her friends and neighbors were out celebrating. I would come home late and exhausted, in a mood for nothing but a shower, a beer, and a pillow.

We had other friends in a similar situation and we had many friends who were winemakers. Because of our tremendously busy schedules, times for us to get together and celebrate life were few and far between. Fortunately, February is a slow month in both the restaurant and winery worlds. And so Ann put together what she termed an anti-Valentine's dinner. Over the years, it became customary for me to make a big cassoulet, a humble but ever so comforting dish of beans.

I cannot speak for many restaurateurs and chefs, but most that I know do not want fancy food when they celebrate. They have enough fancy restaurant food on a daily basis to be sick of it. What they want is excellent comfort food.

Cassoulet became our go-to not only because it is excellent comfort food, but also as a counterreaction to the prescriptive Valentine's menus that we served. Valentine's Day in the business is a night that people who do not go out often to fine dining restaurants descend upon fine dining restaurants.

These people scrimped and saved their money (and thank you to them for helping us get through the lean months) for this once-a-year night out. These folks wanted a very strict and limited selection of items that they perceive as valuable for their cash outlay. In other words, the menu must contain lobster, steak, and chocolate and must not be too avant-garde. We were permitted no risks in the menu.

This kind of menu was a strict departure from our normal multi-course menu, but it was necessary to ensure that the restaurant were packed to generate the cash that we needed to operate. This kind of menu, however, was no fun for us to cook. As chefs, we found it boring and a mere ticking of the boxes to attract clientele.

And so cassoulet became the antidote to both fine dining and a strictly prescriptive menu. It was exactly the kind of dish that I both wanted to cook and to eat on a cold February night.

Cassoulet After the Seventh Punch-down

What began as an anti-Valentine's celebration has taken on additional meaning over the years. My birthday is near Valentine's. It is a given that chefs are working on their birthdays serving food to other people celebrating their own birthdays. Chefs rarely have a chance to celebrate and so this dinner became a way for me to celebrate my own birthday, especially after retiring from the business. And, we moved to Bend just before Valentine's Day and it has been such a wonderful place to live that we added a celebration of our so-called Bendiversary to our feast night.

It was a foregone conclusion that I would make another cassoulet this year and so I did. It is an easy dish to make, but it requires a lot of time to achieve the layering of flavors that makes a great cassoulet. I put the cassoulet together over three lazy days. To go with it, I made a roasted garlic and chive goat cheese spread for an appetizer and an arugula salad with fennel and apples. Ann made a flourless chocolate cake that we served with 1977 Warre's Port.

Roasted Garlic, Chives, and Goat Cheese

Kasia, who manages the cheese department at our local store, brought two great cheeses, one a blue and one a washed rind. Along with it was some amazing honey that she and Mike brought back from Piemonte. Mike also brought two bottles of wine that he made, a Tempranillo and a Malbec, both from Walla Walla grapes. Rob and Dyce brought Savigny-lès-Beane. I was busy kibbitzing and forget to get photos.