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

Walla Walla: Holocene Wines and Dining In

This is the final post in a series about our recent trip to Walla Walla over a long weekend to celebrate Ann's 60th birthday. It covers our last acts in Walla Walla, a Monday afternoon tasting at Holocene Wines in Milton-Freewater and our subsequent quiet dinner cum tête-à-tête of cheese and salami on the grounds of our inn.

Dimitri has been a member of Force Majeure for some time and is a regular buyer of their wines. As such, he was invited to a DC-area Force Majeure event where he met Carrie Alexander, wife of FM winemaker Todd Alexander. When we visited FM earlier in the weekend, Dimitri had brought along a bottle of wine as a gift for Carrie, but alas, she was not in town. He left it for her.

At some later point in the weekend they ended up connecting, resulting in Carrie kindly inviting us to come taste at the soon-to-open Holocene tasting room in old Milton-Freewater on Monday afternoon. Holocene is Todd and Carrie's personal project which focuses on Willamette Valley Pinots and Chards. It's no secret that I am retired from the Willamette wine business and that those wines are my favorites. Ann and I were eagerly anticipating our tasting.

We arrived to a nearly deserted downtown Milton-Freewater about ten minutes ahead of Dimitri and the gang. The address that we put into the GPS brought us to a beautiful old brick bank building bearing no number or signage in a cute old downtown that seems on the bleeding edge of gentrification. I imagine that this will be a very different and much more bustling area in the next five years as smaller operations are priced out of the expensive Walla Walla downtown.

Undeterred by the lack of signage, Ann and I went into the stately old building that is clearly undergoing renovation. Carrie came out of the back where she was working and greeted us, apologizing for the renovation mess and letting us know that we would be the first group to taste in what is soon to be the new Holocene tasting room. I think I speak for Ann when I say that I was floored by the beauty of the old building which is going to make a great statement about the Holocene project when it opens.

Carrie gave us quite the eclectic tasting of Todd's wines. In addition to making wine for Force Majeure and his own Holocene label, he also makes the wines for the cult-favorite Red Mountain label WeatherEye, many of whose wines are bottled in flare-sided Calvados bottles. I just know from experience getting my labels placed correctly on flare-sided Port bottles that these labels were a good bit of a challenge for the bottling truck operator.

WeatherEye Whites in Calvados Bottles

Skin Contact Color

Force Majeure Grenache

Twin 2021 Holocene Pinots

After we purchased some Pinot (the 2021 Apocrypha from Antiquum Farm grapes), we said goodbye to Carrie and wished her great luck with the new Holocene project. Outside on the sidewalk, we all said goodbye to each other. Ann and I would be heading back to Bend in the morning and on Wednesday Dimitri and the group would be heading back to Spokane for their flight back to DC.

After going hard all weekend, Ann and I wanted a quiet evening alone to decompress and have some one on one time for each other. Rather than try to find a restaurant open on a Monday night, a night on which most good restaurants are dark, I suggested that we stop at the Walla Walla Grocery Outlet on the way back into town, to buy a little cheese and salame to eat outside under the canopy of our inn. Ann was super enthusiastic and that is exactly what we did.

Relaxing Quietly with a Bottle of Holocene Pinot Noir
Great Wine in Crappy Plastic Glasses

View of The Wesley from the Patio

We sat outside until it was pitch dark, probably earlier than usual because of the mounting clouds, and until we were chilly enough, despite the gorgeous Holocene Pinot, to retire to our room and pack our stuff for departing in the morning. We went to bed exhausted from a long weekend of go-go-go, but also happy with our experience in meeting new friends and discovering Walla Walla for the first time.

Paella

Ann has been talking about me cooking a paella for months. Our last experience in doing paella at the beginning of October was that the weather was brutally hot, so she scheduled it this fall for the end of the month. Naturally, it was the hottest day we have had in a month, topping out at 83 degrees and somewhat uncomfortable in the sun. Fortunately, the gusty winds out of the south made it somewhat bearable.

The Guest of Honor

Once guests started arriving, we could see the telltale darkness on the horizon out west and several of us started looking at the radar to see how bad and how soon the rain would be. How soon? A lot sooner than the predicted 6:30. How bad? Some gusty wind and a bit of rain, not enough to send us inside, the wisteria vines on the arbor giving us enough cover.

Searing the Chicken and Chorizo; Look at the Wind!

Sofrito Cooked, Stock Coming to Boil

Rice About Half Done, Adding Mussels

Mussels Just Open, Shrimp in, Max Flame for Soccarat

With all the wind, I couldn't get the paella done as quickly as usual; the heat was blown off the pan. Such is cooking outdoors over a fire. Of the hundreds of frames I shot, these are all the photos worth looking at and many of these are pretty terrible. I'm afraid I'm not very good with the camera. I was trying to use my 50mm prime lens and I still don't have it figured out. I need to find another strategy for shooting handheld interior shots in low light without resorting to flash. (The little voice is saying, "use the iPhone, idiot!").

Glen Manor Vineyards

We finally made our first visit of the year to Glen Manor Vineyards; our last visit was in late November. Seriously? Has it been that long? Our calendar is so full that we just cannot get to do the things we want to nearly as often as we like. Through much persistence, Ann finally put together a group of us (more than six: Shh! Don't tell Jeff!) for a picnic there this weekend: Matthew and Michael, Bill and Drew, Mike (Dennis is overseas), Amanda and Dimitri, and Michele and Christophe.

When we walked in around 1pm, Kelly, Jorge, and Jane were all busy pouring for a counter full of tasters. Amanda and Dimitri were already there and tasting and the rest of the crew arrived over the next hour or so. Kelly brought over a glass of 2012 rosé for us to sip on while waiting to taste: it was really great to see them busy! The 2012 is a beautiful wine, but there isn't enough of it for us to pour it at the restaurant. When the counter crowd finally thinned out, Jane finally tasted us on the 2011 Cabernet Franc, which is one of the very best wines I have tasted from 2011, and the much more structured and predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 Vin Rouge. We're still waiting on Jeff to release the 2012 Sauvignon Blanc, which I needled him about when he showed up late in the day, after having been out spraying in the vineyards since 2am, poor bastard.

Kelly, Jorge, and Jane Busy, Busy!

On a very overcast day that was threatening rain, Kelly was kind enough to save us seats under the shade canopy outside and that was fortunate because at one point, a squall blew through from the southeast. It was so loud in approaching that we all turned and watched it blow right up to us. Rarely do you see a line of rain approaching like this. In any case, it was over about as quickly as it blew up and we didn't miss a beat.

Mike "I don't like rosé" Hoffmaster

Matthew and an Especially Nice Photo of Michael's Chin

Dimitri and Amanda

What is She Thinking About?

Excellent Eats

The eats were fantastic. Ann baked a loaf of sage and roasted garlic bread, I baked a pepperoni-spiced terrine (paprika, garlic, pistachios, Mangalitsa pork belly, a ton of ground fennel seed, red wine, basil, and oregano), Michele made a great pasta salad, and M&M kicked in tuna tartare. I also brought along an amazing Valençay clone cheese from Shepherd's Whey Creamery, and two salame from Olympic Provisions: chorizo navarre and salchichón.

Variable Weather: Rainy to Bright Overcast with Late Sun

A Jigsaw Puzzle Photo: Compare Here

Ann Holding Court with Drew and Bill

Just as Mike and I were leaving to go get Carter, Jeff finally arrived after a quick nap and a shower. I am sorry I didn't get more time to talk with him but it was good to see him nonetheless. I did however get a few minutes to chat with his brother Steve and a couple minutes chatting with Kelly. It's been too long since we were there and that just wasn't enough time to catch up.

Amanda, Dimitri, Bill, Drew, and Mike all joined us back at the house, but Mike left before I threw together some pasta. We continued the festivities out on the patio.