Spaghetti and Meatballs

Yeah, OK, spaghetti and meatballs is trite and not very Italian, and who the bleep cares? Ann was in the mood for this classic American comfort food this Sunday, so after we got up, we headed over to FoodMaxx to pick up some tomatoes, garlic, pasta, and ground pork. I prefer pork meatballs to all other kinds: pork is silkier and tastier and well, porkier! And porkier is always better; you know the old maxim, "You can never have too much pork!" Because FoodMaxx has the best ground pork in town (other than what I grind for the restaurant), we went there rather than a more traditional American grocery.

Spaghetti is such a lame cut in my book (and in Ann's too); it's too thin and lacks the bite that I want in my pasta. I was looking for perciatelli (aka bucatini depending on the manufacturer), but FoodMaxx, catering to the Latino and Asian crowd, is not the place with dozens of pasta options. Good pork yes, good pasta, not so much. So we ended up with fettucine which is the wrong cut entirely, but at least it has more heft than spaghetti.

Garlic Anyone?

With the exception of the garlic in the photo above, these are very alien packages of food. Working in a restaurant, I am used to gigantic quantities of everything. The cashier at the store was very cute when she said, "You guys must really love garlic!" We really do, but even for us, this is a lot. This is only a week's supply at the restaurant, however.

Meatball Seasoning: Sage, Parsley, Fennel, and Garlic

I don't have a meatball recipe, surprise, surprise. Just a general idea. And it starts with really nicely ground pork, a splash of heavy cream, a bit of panko just to keep things loose, a dose of garlic, and whatever herbs happen to be growing in the garden. Salt, I generally do to the ratio of a teaspoon per pound of meat. If you're ever unsure about how your meatball mix is going to taste, cook a little bit and taste it and re-season as necessary.

If you look very closely at the photo below, you will see that the meatballs are just barely pressed together. For best texture, that's all you want to do, just bring them together as gently as possible. The proteins will bind the meatballs as they cook. If you cram them together, you risk a tough meatball and a tough meatball is a rookie mistake. You're not a rookie are you?

Ready for Sauce

For sauce, I generally do a blender marinara: put tomatoes, garlic, salt, pepper, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and basil in a blender and whir it for a couple of seconds. Et voilà! In this case, when I opened the cans of tomatoes, they had already been blitzed so I just dumped everything on top of the meatballs, covered the whole in aluminum foil, and put it in a 300 degree oven for a long while. With meatballs, as in cooking all forcemeats and charcuterie, lower and slower is better. You will end up with a much more tender and succulent product.

I have no idea how long the meatballs were in the oven for mid-afternoon, Jen and Dewi called quite unexpectedly and said they were on their way back with the Dobies from a dog show in Pennsylvania and asked if they could stop in. Of course they could stop in; we hadn't seen them in months! They arrived about an hour later and we took all four of the dogs to the basement and let them romp. It was funny to see Grace, our "big" dog, and usually the aggressor, having the tables turned on her by the big Dobies, Austin and Pepper. And then it was hilarious to see our little guy Charlie giving both the Dobies what for when they tried to mess with him.

Anyway, after a long while of watching the dogs romp and trying to keep them from knocking over our glasses of red wine, we went upstairs to the delightful smells of meatballs slowly braising in marinara, whereupon I put on a pot of water, cooked the fettucine, and we all sat down to an impromptu dinner.

Fettucine, Meatball Marinara, Pecorino Romano

Yeah, They Were Delicious!

Our Wedding: Friends

After the ceremony, it was party on! Boo Snider pulled out his guitar and serenaded us and then played a few tunes. I noticed that he and several other diehard Redskins fans bolted right after this to go catch the game: party poopers!

Boo Sang for Us

Nice Photo of the Old Epiphone Taken by My Father

Watching the Ceremony

Jim and Sandy

Congratulations from an old Friend

Tom and Amanda

Dennis and Dimitri

Dennis Horning in on my Girl!

Mike and Dennis

Mikey

Photographer Extraordinaire with the 500kw Smile

Clowning Around

Ricky and Brittany

Kenny and Mel, Traitors: Bailed Early to Watch Football!

Bill McKenney Holding Court; KO and Photographer Steve Wright

Cake Decorator Donald and Cindy

Terry Relaxing Without the Camera

Kelley, Mark, and Jen

Pretty Smiles

Dewi Armed for Combat

Billy and Shawn

Preston and Myret

Patty Always Hides from the Camera; Stealth Shot of her and Neil

Bistecca alla Fiorentina

Many weeks ago Ann said that she would like to have her parents and some friends over for Father's Day and would like to do a big porterhouse on the grill and serve it sliced over a bed of arugula with shaved parmigiano reggiano. What she was really saying is that she wanted me to get the steak and grill it! On Father's Day, she wanted me to cook, of all things! ;) No matter! I love to cook and I really get to do so very little of it at work that I don't mind cooking on my days off.

Ann's parents Bob and Mary joined us along with Jen and Dewi and Donald and Terry. Jen spent the morning baking and brought another of her infamous shiitake and fingerling tarts along with cheese- and herb-filled puffs and puff pastries layered with mustard.

Shiitake and Fingerling Tart from Jen

Herb- and Cheese-Filled Puffs; Puff Pastry

With the appetizers we started with Prosecco and then moved to the bottle of Philippe Portier Quincy that Dewi brought. I have had more Pouilly-Fumé and Sancerre than Quincy in my life, so I was expecting a dry and crisp wine and not the big rich super-ripe Sauvignon blanc with a hint of residual. It reminded me much of Jean Thévenet's Mâcon-Clessé inasmuch as it stands so far out from its peers.

Donald Brought us Flowers from his Garden

What to serve with beef? Potatoes of course! And it is prime potato season right now in Virginia. These beautiful baby red potatoes were just dug and are at their peak of flavor. While I was grilling the beef, Donald and Ann tended the potatoes. There is no better dish in this world than a dish of new potatoes, simply boiled, and then mixed with butter, salt, pepper, and lots of fresh Italian parsley. That we used truffle salt on the potatoes just did not suck!

The First New Potatoes of the Year

Boiled, with Butter, Parsley, and Truffle Salt

Way back in May, I started talking with Keith Marx at North American about custom cutting me a couple of gigantic porterhouses from his grass-fed Angus beef. They arrived about the first of June and have been dry aging on this rack in the cooler ever since. You can see that I lost a little weight by dry aging the steaks, but that only concentrates the flavor. But Holy Steak, Batman! These Fiorentinas are 4" thick! I don't eat much beef, but when I do, let it be said that I don't screw around!

Awesomeness! Dry Aged Grass Fed Porterhouses (yep, that's 4"/10cm thick)

Liberally Rubbed with Olive Oil, Salt, and Cracked Pepper

Charred on one Side

I only lit the two right burners of the four burners on the grill and let the grates get hot for 30 minutes before putting the steaks on. I gave the steaks two turns of about five minutes each before flipping them and giving them another two turns of about 10 minutes total. At this point, I moved them off the direct flame and onto the two unlit burners on the left side of the grill and let them bake for a few minutes longer, checking the temperature with a thermometer every couple of minutes. I pulled one steak at 110F (rare) in the center and the other at 120F (medium rare). After this, they sat for 30 minutes on the cutting board before slicing.

Resting for 30 Minutes

Top Loins on Left; Tenderloins on the Right

Sliced, on a Bed of Arugula with Tomatoes and Shaved Parmigiano

For dessert, Ann made great use of a loaf of focaccia and our local berries (strawberries, red raspberries, black raspberries, and blueberries in a dessert that she calls a Summer Pudding, like a trifle without the cream. Most delicious and not too shabby with a glass of '77 Warre's Port.

Ann's Summer Pudding

The Label Says it All

My photography was really off this weekend. Almost none of the candids I snapped were worth a darn. I can understand that towards the end of an evening, the photo quality might go to hell, but the candids were the first things I shot. Go figure.

Pizza Party

There is not much better casual food than grilled pizzas. All the work (thanks to Ann for doing all the prep work for this party while I was off at a graduation party for my daughter) can be done in advance so that all you need to do is grill pizza dough and let people top their own. Ann made and balled all the dough from the no-knead recipe that we use at the restaurant. It makes a fabulous crust. Tip for anyone reading this who has never grilled pizza: grill the dough on both sides to firm it up, then remove it from the grill and top it, and then return it to warm everything up.

Antipasto

For appetizers for a crowd, a big antipasto platter is about as easy as it comes. We've got five or six kinds of sausage including a couple of kinds of sopressata, hard Spanish chorizo, and hot calabrese from our friends at Olli Salumeria down in Richmond. Four kinds of cheese, grapes, and tomatoes round out the platter. Behind it you see marinated bocconcini of mozzarella, mixed olives, and artichokes marinated in olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, garlic, and basil from the garden.

We started with sparkling wine with our antipasti: Prosecco, Crémant de Bourgogne, and a 2008 vintage blanc de blancs from Thibaut-Janisson down in Charlottesville.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce, Pesto, Spicy Sausage, Goat Cheese, and Basil

We ate so many mini pizzas that I lost track. For toppings, we had pesto, a roasted red pepper sauce, hot and mild Italian sausage, fresh mozzarella, pecorino romano, local goat cheese, caramelized onions, local shiitake mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, olives, fresh arugula, and fresh basil from the garden.

Chocolate Chianti Cupcakes

Ann made these cute little chocolate and red wine cupcakes for dessert. And speaking of Chianti, we put away a few bottles with our pizza!

Dewie and Pepper

Jen and Pepper

Shawn and Ann

Shawn and Billy

Kelly

Marco Due

Baby Robin

The whole while we were out on the patio, the parent robins kept up a constant airlift of bugs and native honeysuckle berries to the (at least two) babies in the nest in the wisteria on the pergola.

It's not a party until someone is wearing a bra on his ear!

How did the brown dog score pizza?

The beautiful sunflowers Shawn brought us.