Dimitri Comes to Bend

Surprise! Our friend Dimitri texted out of the blue on Monday that he and his friend Joe would be in Bend for the weekend. Dimitri still lives in Northern Virginia just outside of DC, so he was not on our bingo card for weekend visitors. He and Joe, a friend currently from Virginia but from Portland in the past, were flying into PDX. After visiting Oregon wine country and exploring Portland, they would be driving to Bend for a long weekend.

Mediterranean Crew: Greek, Italian, Italian

Dimitri and Joe had plans to dine out on Saturday at the same time we were at the Trevor Noah show at the amphitheater, so we set a get-together for Sunday starting with pre-game at Viaggio Wine Bar. We met them there after they returned from a day trip to Crater Lake, which if you have never seen before like Dimitri, I guess you have to see. But honestly, battling buses of tourists is not my thing and I would have preferred to visit Paulina Lake instead.

Dimitri and Joe are fellow winos, so we thought that a visit to Viaggio would be welcome. There, they could drool over the curated selection of bottles on the shelves and Coravin selections on the glass list. Where else can you find shelves full of Wachau and Kamptal Riesling, Piemonte wines of all sorts, or Rhônes for days? Maybe in large cities, but in the small city of Bend three hours in any direction from civilization, the selection at Viaggio is miraculous.

After a bottle of Pibarnon Bandol rosé, we drove to the house where all I had to do was assemble dinner. In planning dinner, I wanted something that I could put on the table with little to no effort. Gone are the days of à la minute cooking where cooking is the focus rather than our guests. Hence our menu of chips and salsa verde, enchiladas de carne adovada, and posole amarillo with bacon, corn, and green chiles. Ann made another summer berry and brioche pudding and I had plenty of lemon-thyme sorbet base in the fridge ready to go into the freezer.

How I arrived at this menu is anyone's guess. I was definitely looking for a slow-cooker meal that would not involve a lot of active cooking on my part. Probably in the back of my mind was the kilo of Chimayo chile that I scored in New Mexico in December. And then, I found some really good looking pork shoulder at the store. Also, who does not like enchiladas? Chips and salsa as well as posole are natural companions to carne adovada, so that part of the menu should not be a surprise.

Before we get into dinner however, Dimitri came bearing a gift, a 2014 Glen Manor Petit Verdot. I texted Jeff, "A friend showed up with a bottle of this," to which he replied, "Keep that friend!" I remember this wine. I believe I did a pairing for it for a barrel tasting. I could be wrong; 2015 was a hot minute ago.

Dimitri Brought Us a Gift

Chips and Charred Jalapeño Salsa Verde

My usual salsa verde is tomatillos (large can, drained), cilantro (one bunch), garlic (4 cloves), and a serrano chile. When I am lazy, I used canned tomatillos rather than roasting fresh ones. I am often lazy these days. I wanted to change it up a bit with some smokiness, so I charred two jalapeños and used them instead of the serrano. I also threw in an avocado and a pinch of smoked paprika for added smoke.

It was good, but next time, I want it smokier. Maybe I try using a charred poblano. Definitely will char fresh tomatillos on the next iteration. It will be a fun experiment. A batch of salsa verde or chimichurri is usually in our refrigerator: we eat a lot of vegetarian and fish tacos that benefit from salsa.

Saturday, I made a batch of slow cooker carne adovada. Like most dishes, I used no recipe for this super simple stew. I started by cutting the pork shoulder into large cubes, then browning one side of the cubes, followed by transferring them to the slow cooker as each batch browned. I want the flavor that browning creates, but I find that browning all sides of the meat tends to contribute to dryness. Browning one large side of the pork chunks suffices to yield both flavor and succulence.

After the meat was all browned, I added a diced onion to the pork pan along with call it a dozen minced cloves of garlic. Once the onions cooked, I added a a bit of Mexican oregano, rubbed between my palms into a powder, a lot of spicy ground Chimayo chile, and a lesser amount of ancho powder to add some balance to the Chimayo chile. The chile was probably a cup in total, 3/4 Chimayo and 1/4 ancho. After stirring this into the onions well, I added perhaps a couple cups of water, a splash of Sherry vinegar, and a small amount, perhaps a tablespoon, of agave nectar. Once this sauce came together, I poured it over the pork, stirred well, and put the slow cooker on.

I believe that adovada must have acidity; your grandmother may disagree as is her right. Not a lot of acidity, but some. So I always put a bit of vinegar in mine (as I do my Mexican-style chorizo). I also think that spicy Chimayo chile needs just a hint (below the taste threshold) of sweet to help mellow it, hence the agave.

When the pork was cooked, some six or seven hours later, I separated the liquid from the pork. I separated the meat and the cooking liquid for several reasons. With the liquid chilled, I could peel off the layer of pork fat that I did not want in my sauce (and use it to cook anything else; who does not love chile-flavored lard?). Because I was making enchiladas, I wanted a more solid filling that would not bleed through the tortillas. And, I wanted a thicker, more intense sauce to fold into the filling and to cover the tops of the enchiladas.

After defatting the cooking liquid, I reduced it as far as I could without it becoming too salty. I salted the pork cubes during browning. But it was a really mellow thin sauce after hours of braising and I wanted a thicker, more in-your-face chile sauce for the enchiladas. I made a quick paste of a tablespoon of flour (for thickening), half a cup of Chimayo chile, and a little of the reduced braising liquid. After stirring really well to remove all lumps, I stirred this slurry into the sauce and cooked it gently to thicken.

Enchilada Sauce, Thickened with Flour and Chimayo Chile

Once we got back to the house, assembly of the enchiladas was trivial. I mixed some of the carne adovada with some of the sauce and the meat shredded as I stirred it. After seasoning it to taste, I rolled the tortillas around this filling, placing them in an oiled half hotel pan, seam side down.

I digress, but this is my blog, so I will digress if I want to. When I retired from the restaurant, I kept one of the half hotel pans for my home kitchen. If you have worked in food service and are of a certain age, you will remember that hotel pans used to be thick and heavy, not thin and flimsy as they are today. I kept one of the old school thick pans for home use and I use it often. I had some really awesome hotel pans too, but they are far too large for home cooking.

I spooned more sauce over the top of the rolled tortillas to make them into true enchiladas ("sauced with chiles") and then scattered over just a bit of melting cheese. I used mozz, but any melting cheese such as queso chihuahua, queso quesadilla, queso oaxaca, queso asadero, or Monterey Jack would be perfect.

Posole Amarillo with Bacon, Green Chile, and Fresh Corn

I am a huge fan of hominy. I grew up on it, always fried in bacon grease as it is traditionally served in the South. It was good. When I was in grad school in Texas, I learned that the rest of the world does not see the dish the same as I grew up with. Posole is always always a stew with pork, red chile, and white hominy. It was good: I loved this stew at first bite. Then I went to New Mexico and found that they often serve a drier posole as a side dish, more akin to my southern hominy, but with local chiles. It was good. Then I started making casseroles of hominy bound with cream sauce. It too was good. What I figured out is that posole dishes are as numerous and varied as the people that make them. I feel free to riff on this ingredient in any way that seems appropriate to me.

Over the years, I learned that hominy is not always white. It is the color of the corn from which it is made and as we all know, corn comes in many shades: white, yellow, red, and purple. I have used the different colors for effect over the years. I used a lot of maíz morado, purple hominy, at the restaurant. This time, I felt like using yellow hominy.

This time, I fried up some bacon most of the way done, then added diced red onion and garlic and let that cook. Then I added the hominy and diced mild green chile (Anaheims that I torched on my patio). It too was good. I made it Sunday morning and refrigerated it. While the enchiladas were in the oven, I reheated the posole and sliced the kernels off two ears of corn. They went into the dish as a sweet counterpoint to the smoky green chile vibe going on. It was even better.

Enchiladas de Carne Adovada and Posole Amarillo

After dinner, it had cooled off enough to go outside so Ann put the tunes on out on the patio and we all took our dessert, summer berry pudding and lemon-thyme sorbet, outside. I opened a bottle of 1977 Warre's Port, because I save those kinds of wines for fellow winos like Dimitri and Joe. It was a great night!

Dessert on the Patio

Ann's Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

July 4 Celebration

Each year, we celebrate the Fourth of July and the country where we live. I am not a political person, but this year, I am decidedly not feeling at all patriotic, nor am proud of certain things that are happening in our country. Still, we persevered with our celebration in the hopes that this country will right itself. Right is a poor choice of verbs in this instance. Perhaps I should have chosen the verb center.

We invited Rob, Dyce, Dyce's parents who are in town from Italy, and new friend Brad to throw down with us.

Lyn, Brad, Neal, Dyce, Ann, and Rob

The menu ended up as a pseudo-Greek affair. I like burgers for the 4th, but had a hankering for my lamb burgers which blow beef burgers out of the water. From there, it was not a stretch to want to pair the burgers with tzatziki and horiatiki. But then, Ann wanted orzo too, so I combined the orzo and horiatiki to create a cold pasta salad. Then I wanted an appetizer I could make in advance, so after a bit of head scratching, decided on tiropitakia, cheese-filled phyllo pastries. Ann volunteered to make her delicious berry and brioche summer pudding and asked me to make a sorbet. We settled on lemon-thyme and the menu was complete. The recipe for the sorbet is in a separate post.

Some wine was drunk; some food was eaten; some fun was had!

Lamb Burger with Feta and Pine Nuts

I love my lamb burgers and this year, for a change, I recorded a rough recipe because I have had requests for it in the past.

Lamb Burger Recipe

This recipe scales well so I have expressed it in terms of seasonings for a single pound of lamb. In reality, I made a 4-pound batch and I eyeballed everything. It is always a good idea when mixing a batch of forcemeat like this, to cook a tiny bit and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Also, this mix gains flavor in the refrigerator so plan on mixing everything a day or even two in advance. I scaled out six-ounce burgers, my preferred size.

Per pound of ground lamb:

1/4 c dry white wine (substitute red wine or water or stock)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon Pimentón de la Vera agridulce (smoked paprika)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced (I used way more than this!)

small handful of toasted pine nuts

2 ounces sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

optional, if you have spice grinder:

pinch dried rosemary, finely ground

pinch dried thyme, finely ground 

Procedure:

Mix liquids and solids well to distribute salt and spices.

Add lamb and gently mix. Using hands is best.

Refrigerate overnight or two nights.

Patty into burgers or shape into kefta (oval meatballs)

Cook to desired temperature. I like medium rare.

Tiropitakia and Tzatziki

Tiropitakia Ready for Oven

Our appetizer was the tiropitakia (little cheese pies) that you see in photos above. I just went with my gut which said to mix chopped kalamata olives, chopped marinated sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, lemon zest, and grated pecorino cheese with a tub of ricotta cheese. For savory pastries like this, I brush the phyllo layers with olive oil (and for sweet pastries, I use butter). I brushed the tops of the little triangles with olive oil and sprinkled them with oregano and coarse salt before baking until browned in a moderate oven. A recipe for tzatiki is in this post.

Orzo Salad

The pasta salad was simple. I mixed a bunch of olive oil, lemon juice, kalamata brine, and oregano (my usual horiatiki dressing) in a large bowl. Then I cut the horiatiki vegetables and cheese smaller than usual, because otherwise, they would dwarf the small orzo pasta. The usual suspects are: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and feta. I omitted peppers because I didn't feel like I wanted them. So there.

I put all the salad ingredients into the dressing for about an hour to marinate. The red onions, I sliced very thin and soaked in several changes of cold water to mellow them out. In the morning, I par-cooked the orzo a couple minutes shy of being done, knowing that it would finish softening in the refrigerator. This is a useful technique for all pasta salads. After cooling the pasta under running water, it went into the vegetables and I tasted for salt. Salt this salad carefully because the kalamata brine, olives, and feta are already salty.

Into the fridge to mellow for a few hours the salad went. Just before serving the appetizers, I put the salad in a serving bowl and garnished with the onions. Just before serving dinner, I mixed everything well to distribute the onions and redistribute the dressing.

Ann's Beautiful Summer Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet

I have problems digesting lactose, so ice cream is verboten in my diet. I hate this because I love ice cream as much as the next person. Unfortunately, that love is unrequited. And so, for decades now, I have concentrated on making delicious sorbets. I made a different flavor each night at the restaurant as an intermezzo in our tasting menu.

It requires little imagination to understand that I became bored and weary of certain flavors, especially single-flavor sorbets with my chef palate running to multi-layered flavors. Thus, I experimented with unusual flavors and herbs in creating something that at first bite tasted of fruit, but yet delivered something else entirely as the sorbet melted onto the tongue. Think: zucchini-dill, apricot-rosemary, raspberry-chipotle, and so forth. In that vein, for our recent Fourth of July celebration, Ann and I chose lemon-thyme as a mouth-puckering acidic punch-in-the-face counterpoint to her delightful summer berry pudding.

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

I am not a pastry chef, so I really do not worry terribly about the kinds of sorbet things that pastry chefs do, such as creating the perfect 28 brix syrup. Yawn, right? At home, I keep it simple, measuring both the sugar and the liquid by volume, a no-no for certain in pastryland. But, easy? Darned straight.

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet

This recipe is really easy as long as you commit to squeezing all that lemon juice. A liter of juice represents the juice of probably 24 lemons and with a hand squeezer like mine, it is a work out. If you cannot commit to squeezing lemons, find some other flavor to make, because any substitute for fresh lemon juice will taste off.

This recipe makes two liters of sorbet, the size of my machine; quarts are fine substitutes. This recipe scales up or down just fine. Although a machine gives the best results (I have a professional machine that is muy cara), you can freeze this sorbet in a flat container in the freezer, raking the ice crystals apart periodically with a fork. Adding a shot of vodka will help prevent big ice crystals from forming.

1 liter granulated sugar

3/4 liter water

1 bunch fresh thyme

zest of 6 lemons

1 liter freshly squeezed lemon juice

In a 2-quart sauce pan, heat the sugar, water, and thyme and let it bubble gently for about five minutes to start infusing the thyme flavor.

Turn off the heat, and add the lemon zest to the cooling mixture. Stir well and let stand for a couple of hours to infuse.

Strain the syrup and the lemon juice into a bowl or container and mix well. Refrigerate until cold.

Freeze the sorbet once the base is cold.