Loubia with Lamb Kefta

Andreas and Michelle went to Iceland just before we went to Italy so we haven't seen them in a hot minute. Our schedules finally allowed us to get together to see their absolutely stunning pictures. Iceland is very near the top of our list of places to visit in the next couple of years. I can hardly wait.

Loubia with Lamb Kefta

Andreas likes to cook and likes to pick my brain to learn new things. This time, he wanted to learn about spicing and I believe he mentioned Moroccan food specifically. At the same time, Ann seemed fixated on lamb and white beans, so I decided to do a bean stew common to the Maghreb, a dish called various things in various locales.

Loubia is a stew of white beans that I have encountered often. I know it in French as tagine d'haricots blancs or cassoulet algérienne. I also know that Andreas loves my cassoulet. And I also know that because it requires hours in the oven, it is not a dish that I can show him how to make right before dinner.

So what to do?

I decided keep on with the slow-cooked beans, but show him how to make two condiments for the beans, a red sauce and a green sauce. The red sauce was my version of harissa (red chiles, cumin, coriander, fennel, caraway, cinnamon, salt, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil). The green sauce was my version of chermoula, an analog of chimichurri (parsley, cilantro, lemon zest, coriander, fennel, salt, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil). Chermoula is a typical condiment for fish, but I love it with meat in the same way that I love gremolata, salsa verde, or chimichurri with meat.

Long-cooked and mild dishes such as this loubia can often benefit from a zesty, acidic sauce to help wake up the taste buds. Also helpful is a bright green salad with an acidic dressing, such as the one I made from arugula, julienne of apple and fennel, and a tangy vinaigrette made with Sherry vinegar.

Lamb Kefta in the Classic Shape

First thing in the morning, I put my beans that had soaked overnight in lightly salted water on to par-cook for 90 minutes. I used my old stand-by beans, Steuben Yellow Eye beans from Rancho Gordo. Into the pot, I tossed a large sprig each of rosemary, sage, and thyme which would subtly flavor the beans.

Meanwhile, I got busy making the kefta (kofta, kafta, kufta: your choice). Because I was going to serve the beans and kefta with two assertive sauces, I did not highly season the lamb as I often do. The seasonings are a lot of garlic, a decent bit of a mild paprika, some salt, and a bit of coriander, cumin, and dried chile flakes. All the seasonings I mixed into a slurry with a couple of eggs and some white wine (definitely a no-no in the Arab world; substitute any stock or cream). Then I added a couple pounds of ground lamb and a half a cup of rolled oats.

I typically do add some type of starch to my meatballs and meatloaf to loosen the texture of the cooked product so that it is not super dense. I have used panko, panade (bread soaked in cream), cooked rice, and raw rolled oats all to success. Because I always have them on hand, I use rolled oats most frequently, a bonus if you have guests who are gluten-free.

After mixing the forcemeat (with the best tool of all, my hands), I put it in the refrigerator to settle and so that the oats could start to absorb the liquid and bind the mixture. When the beans were just about at the end of their 90-minute par-cook, I shaped the kefta, diced a leek and a large carrot, and minced half a bulb of garlic.

Then it was standard cassoulet procedure from there: brown the meat (the kefta), cook the aromatic vegetables in the same pan scraping up all the brown bits (the fond) from the bottom of the pan, drain the beans and save the cooking liquid for soup, mix the vegetables with the drained beans and season, put a layer of beans in the cocotte, add the meats, top with the remaining beans, fill with a deeply-flavored meat stock to just cover the beans, and finally bake in a slow oven, replenishing the stock as necessary and punching down the crust every hour or so.

While I Cooked, Ann Set the Table and Chose Utensils and Plates

I wanted to have something to snack on while the girls chatted and Andreas and I made the harissa and chermoula. I decided on a baked feta to take advantage of the oven since it would be going anyway in finishing the loubia. This couldn't be easier to make by whipping up a roasted red pepper sauce in the blender and layering it under and over slices of feta.

The roasted red pepper sauce is a pint jar of roasted red peppers, a couple tablespoons of my homemade harissa, a couple tablespoons of the intense umami-bomb estratto di pomodoro (Sicilian tomato paste), a couple cloves of garlic (minced), and a touch of salt. Ten seconds of whirring in the blender and it's done.

I also cut up some olives (Castelvetrano) and toasted some pine nuts for garnish. I stole a bit of parsley from the bunch that I picked for chermoula as an additional garnish.

Baked Feta in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Olives, Pine Nuts, and Parsley for Garnish

A Couple of Italian Girls

Loubia with Lamb Kefta
Loubia is Generally Saucier; I Made This Just Like Cassoulet

Arugula Salad with Apples, Fennel, and Sherry Vinaigrette
Loubia with Harissa and Chermoula

Goodbye Rob and Dyce

While we were in Italy for three weeks, Rob and Dyce decided, quite suddenly as it appeared to Ann and me from the outside, to pack up their belongings and move to Boulder. They told us about a week after we returned from Italy that they would be gone within days, by the end of October. Talk about dropping a bomb!

A Farewell Cassoulet

As sad as I feel about their leaving, I'm a big believer that everyone has to find happiness where happiness can be found. And so, if Bend is not the right place for Rob and Dyce, they should go and find the right place. We wish them all the best in Boulder; it is a great town. When I was a young man, I spent a fair amount of time camped out at the Hotel Boulderado while calling on customers at the IBM locations in and near Boulder and at HP just up I-25 in Fort Collins.

After they shell-shocked us over dinner at their house, a house that was in the process of being dismantled, we all wanted to get together one final time to celebrate. Rather than celebrate at a restaurant, Ann and I preferred to have them to dinner at our house, where we could be assured of a great meal, restaurant quality in Bend being somewhat suspect. We set a date for the final Saturday night that they would be in Bend.

Later on at home, I asked Ann to ask Dyce what they would really like for dinner. Almost immediately came a response that I would have never expected: cassoulet. Of all the dishes in the world, it was going to be cassoulet. Dyce asked if it would be possible. With only three days left before our planned dinner, the answer was yes, but just barely. I did have a pound of really great beans on hand (Steuben Yellow Eye beans rather than Tarbais, different but equally good) and I could just get the cassoulet made in 72 hours. Cassoulet is only as good as the stock you cook it in and great stock takes a long time to make. For me, it's a three-day process and if I started right away, I had three days to make it.

Having done all the shopping and prep on Thursday and Friday, on Saturday morning, I started the cassoulet cooking. By the time they had arrived at 6:30, I had punched the crust down 9 times. Each time you punch the crust into the broth, it enriches and thickens the broth. Traditional lore in France says you must punch the crust into the broth a minimum of 7 times.

What to drink with dinner? Naturally, we are all huge white Burgundy fans and so I met the guys at the front door with a glass of Bouchard Beaune du Château. While it is all well and good to start with a white, a long-cooked cassoulet demands red. But which?

White Burgundy to Start

Those who drink wine at our house know that we have one wine cooler that we designate the do-not-touch cooler. This is the cooler in which we have all our great wines as well as some that will be great after laying down for a long time. If there were ever an occasion to scrounge in this cooler for a wine for dinner, this would be the time. And so, I pulled out a bottle of 1995 Côte-Rôtie the day before and let it stand upright overnight to settle out any solids. Then I gently decanted it about an hour before they arrived.

Gangloff Côte-Rôtie 1995: Brilliant

It is always a crapshoot when opening an older bottle of wine, but it helps to have held the wine in your cooler since it was released as I have this wine. The fill level was great and the cork could have been new, not 30 years old. Thankfully, there was no whiff of cork taint at all. I cannot count the number of times I have opened old bottles just to have to pour them out. This wine was beautiful, with great color, bright acidity, gentle tannins, and aromas and flavors of leather, smoke, and dark fruit. This bottle was brilliant and everything you want a great wine to be. We sipped it with reverence.

I was so off my game that I forgot to take any people pictures and I just barely snapped any at all.

With a heavy meal like cassoulet, I decided not to do any appetizers. None of the four of us is a huge eater. I made a simple salad of arugula and julienned fennel and apples that I dressed with a vinaigrette made with an acidic sherry vinegar. With a heavy dish like cassoulet, you want some bright acidity to counterbalance the long-cooked beans and high fat meats.

Arugula, Fennel, Apple, Sherry Vinaigrette

Cassoulet and Salad

This post is about saying goodbye to friends; there are plenty of others that address how to make a cassoulet. Here's one that discusses a similar cassoulet.

And so here's to Rob and Dyce! It's been great having you as neighbors here in Bend and we wish you all the best on your new adventure in Boulder. We'll see you this summer!

Curried Chicken Breast Salad

Curried Chicken Breast Salad

Chicken breast is not really my thing, but Ann really likes it a lot. Because of this, recently, rather than buying just thighs, I've taken to buying a whole chicken each week to ten days and using it for at least three meals. I'll start by using the breasts for a dish, then poach the carcass. I'll then pick the meat from the carcass and use it for one dish (such as chicken tinga or chicken and black bean tacos) while the stock contributes to a soup of some sort. 

Ann really likes chicken breast on salad, so I made this one for her, a super quick and easy meal if ever there were one. I start by taking the breasts off the chicken and while they cook over medium heat in a skillet, I assemble the salad.

For this particular salad, I coated the slightly flattened chicken breasts in Madras curry powder. For Indian dishes, I always put together specific masalas from individual spices just for the dish. But for American dishes, I like the convenience of a decent pre-mixed curry powder. After the spice-rubbed breasts sat for a few minutes, I filmed a large skillet with the barest amount of oil and cooked them slowly over moderate heat until just done. These big breasts (off a 5-pound bird) took every bit of ten minutes to cook, with a turn about seven minutes in. The moderate heat keeps my smoke detector from going off and keeps the breasts moist.

I made a quick dressing of a spoonful of unflavored yogurt, a squeeze of agave nectar, a dribble of rice vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a half a teaspoon of curry powder. After mixing it well, I thinned it with water to the consistency I wanted and rechecked the seasonings.

This salad is a mix of whatever greens I had on hand (spinach, arugula, and romaine, I think), diced Granny Smith apple, Marcona almonds, and golden raisins (only in my salad; Ann doesn't do raisins). Good, easy, relatively low fat, low carb, and plenty of fiber. Hard to beat a dish like this for a quick weeknight dinner.

I feel quite fortunate that our local grocery sells bulk Marcona almonds at about $15 per pound. I can get a quarter cup for about a dollar or so and not have to commit serious coin to buy this extravagance. If you've never had Marconas, the Cadillacs of almonds, you should give them a try. But don't blame me if you don't ever want to eat any other kind of almond again.

Cole Slaw

It's been a very long time since I made cole slaw. This is most likely because it is something that I made or handled every day at the restaurant. We always served a big pile of tangy slaw with our exceedingly rich crab cakes, as a foil to the fat and as a palate cleanser. More importantly, making slaw daily let us use whatever vegetables our farmers were bringing to us, no matter the season. It always seemed important to give our loyal farmers a market for their fruits and vegetables.

Cole Slaw

My wife was scared of my slaw long ago when we met because she had known slaws only with gloppy mayonnaise-based dressings. I'm not a fan of this creamy slaw myself, so I always dress my slaw quite simply with rice vinegar and granulated sugar, with a bit of salt to taste. I can't give you a recipe for the dressing for I literally scatter a handful of sugar and a bit of salt on the vegetables and pour over a bit of vinegar. I mix it well and taste. If it needs more acidic bite, in goes more vinegar. If it is too acidic, a bit more sugar will balance it.

It's best to make your slaw early in the day to give the dressing time to wilt the vegetables a bit before dinner. Though it is delicious right away, it gets better with age, to a point. It helps to turn a new batch of slaw every couple of hours to redistribute the dressing. Although you can slice your vegetables with a food processor, I always use a knife. It takes work, but the texture is better and you can work on your knife skills at the same time.

While cole slaw derives from words meaning cabbage salad and while cabbage is the principal component, you should not hesitate to be creative with your slaws. Any fruit or vegetable that is firm enough to slice and that is edible raw is fair game. I made this one from white cabbage, cucumber, carrot, radishes, and an apple.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the things that I remember having put in slaw, each one I made being a function of the season and what was on hand.

Cabbage: white, red, napa, Savoy, brussels sprouts

Firm Leafy Greens: cavolo nero (Tuscan black kale), kale, collards, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), bok choy, choy sum, endive, chicory, Swiss chard

Other Brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, broccolini, stem broccoli, rapini, stem mustard. Broccoli and cauliflower stems are great in slaw, peeled and thinly sliced.

Root Vegetables: turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, carrots, horseradish, radishes (red, breakfast, daikon, Korean), hard winter radishes (watermelon, black, etc), sunchokes, crosnes, beets, celery root, sweet potatoes, parsnips

Other: asparagus, cucumber, cucamelon, fennel, celery, green beans, pole beans, shaved corn, peas, sugar snaps, snow peas, rhubarb, artichoke hearts and stems

Herbs: lovage, parsley, cilantro, chives

Squashes: summer squash, winter squash (butternut slices really well)

Peppers: I don't like the flavor of raw peppers in my slaw, but many people do. They are all fair game, spicy and mild alike.

Onions: yellow, white, red, torpedo, green, cipollini, leeks, green garlic, chives. Onions can dominate, so I only use little bits for complexity, typically red and/or leeks.

Hard Fruits: apples, pears, Asian pears

How off the wall can you get? I once did a slaw including napa cabbage, beets, fennel, and orange segments that I served with fennel pollen-dusted grilled trout. I tend, when using beets, to keep them sliced separately from the rest of the slaw and mix them in just at service, to keep them from turning the slaw entirely beet red, unless I am aiming for a red slaw for presentation purposes.

The things that I avoid for slaw form a much shorter list: tender greens (salad greens, mustards, spinach, etc.) that will not stand up to the dressing, really starchy things that are not great raw (potatoes, eggplant), watery fruits (tomatoes, berries, melons), peppers (out of personal preference, though a bit of habanero in a slaw can be awesome), okra, mushrooms, and shell beans.