We Needed a Celebration

It's been a long time since we had a get-together at our house. Spring was busy: I'm volunteering a couple days a week, I traveled to Philly to watch Ellie graduate, and we had a few health problems along the way. We needed a reason to celebrate at home. Ann set it up, inviting Rob and Dyce and Michelle and Andreas for dinner.

Pregaming with Chenin Blanc

Superstar Wine: Anjou Blanc
Chenin from Thibaut Boudignon

Whipped Feta with Spicy Honey and Pine Nuts

We had been saving a magnum of Anjou Blanc from Thibaud Boudignon for just such an occasion. He is a winemaker who came from obscurity to global reknown (at least among sommeliers) in a blink, now making some of the best wines in the Loire. These are not old school wines, however. They are precise and angular and suit my palate to a tee. Although he is best known for his outstanding Savennières, I prefer his base level Anjou Blanc for its simplicity and laser-focused acidity.

I let the wine guide the appetizer course, selecting a cheese dish that would be a great foil for the incredible acidity of the Boudignon wine. Over the years I have done many versions of baked feta and whipped goat cheese, but never whipped feta.

For garnishes, I made spicy honey (half a cup of honey and a tablespoon of sambal oelek) and toasted a handful of pine nuts. I chose to garnish with honey expressly to echo the honey and beeswax aromas and flavors of the Chenin Blanc.

Whipped Feta

For the whipped feta, I decided to add 20% goat cheese by weight to help loosen the feta which I was afraid would be too grainy whipped alone. I was quite happy with the results as apparently were all the others—none was left at the end of the evening.

400 grams of excellent sheep's milk feta

100 grams of fresh goat cheese

squeeze of lemon juice

drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Soften both cheeses at room temperature. Place both in a food processor and process until whipped, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

The raw whipped cheese tasted flat so I squeezed in the juice of an end of a lemon that I had left on the cutting board from making lemon slices for the chicken. I drizzled in an equal amount of olive oil; call it a tablespoon of each. The feta is salty enough; the whip did not need more salt.

Setting the Table: First Time in a Long Time

Ann and I went back and forth on the menu for a few days. At first, she wanted a reprise of a chicken tagine that I made some years ago, actually, an entire meal that I had made before. I resisted repeating myself, feeling that it is a cop out of sorts. But then she changed her mind to simple roasted chicken on white beans.

She was dead set on the tomato salad flavored with fennel pollen from the menu that I did not want to replicate. She talks about that salad often, but it's funny how I barely remember the dishes (so many thousands) that I have cooked. Thankfully, this blog is a repository of dishes that I have made, so there is a record even if I no longer recall them.

Roasted Chicken
with White Beans, Artichokes, and Garlic

The orginal roast chicken, as I conceived it, had no white beans. But I added them to subsequent iterations because something magical happens when you roast chicken on top of them. As always, quality matters. Use the best beans you can find. In this case, I used yellow eye beans from Rancho Gordo. These are among my favorite all purpose white beans ever and a stalwart at the restaurant.

Roasted Chicken with White Beans, Artichokes, and Garlic

6 heads of garlic, broken into cloves and peeled

3 lemons, sliced

1 pound of dried white beans, cooked

3 400-gram cans artichoke hearts

1 bunch of Italian parsley, destemmed and roughly chopped

2 large sprigs of rosemary, destemmed

drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

12 chicken thighs

salt

pepper

Mix the garlic, lemon slices, white beans, artichoke hearts, parsley, and rosemary with a drizzle of olive oil. Season as necessary. Place the mixture in the bottom of a roasting pan. Toss the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and arrange on the bed of vegetables. Roast in a hot oven (400F) until the chicken skin is crisp, about two hours. Check the beans occasionally. If they are drying out, moisten them with a little bean broth or chicken stock.

Tomatoes with Fennel Pollen and Shallots

Nobody needs a recipe for this simple tomato salad that is as surprisingly delicious as it is easy to make. It is merely a mixture of halved grape tomatoes, minced shallots, fennel pollen, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, all to taste. 

Shout Out to El Mentridano

Ann and I, we are fans of light bodied reds with good acidity and some structure, wines that let their aromatics do the talking. While we are not fans of the usually overripe Spanish Garnacha, we both agree that El Mentridano, a high-altitude, lightly expressed Garnacha from Méntrida, near Madrid, is delightful. It offers a nose of cranberries, cherries, black tea, and a slight earthiness, all positives in our book. Color is light and tannins are polished, all backed by an attractive sour cherry acidity that keeps the wine vibrant. It reminds me of Nebbiolo in many ways. We had real problems, likely bottle shock, with this wine about six months ago, but after sitting in the rack for that period, it is back to normal. We must buy more—it is an indispensable summer red that pairs with a vast range of foods.

Herding Cats Again: Impossible to Get Everyone to Cooperate

Ann Made Her Delightful Summer Pudding (Berries and Brioche)

Michelle Made Her Best Batch Yet of Lemon Bars

We needed a night to sit back with friends and catch up. The simple menu is just what we needed, tasty and yet easy to prep in advance, with zero à la minute cooking that let us enjoy the company of our guests.

Wine and Beans

After a long flirtation with beer in Bend, we are back to wine.

Bend has more brewpubs than I can shake a stick at, and—let's face it—after five years in the wine industry drinking nothing but Pinot and barrel sample after barrel sample, a beer tasted good, damn good.

In the last couple of years, we have discovered Viaggio Wine Merchant and become regulars. Regulars to the point that we invited the crew for dinner. An everybody bring a bottle kind of dinner. I made a cassoulet, a perfect foil for a bunch of hearty wine on a cold day.

The Crew

I gave up on trying to get people to pose for a photo, so I snapped the one above where only Butch is listening to my plea to face the camera. I managed to get me and Gordon framed in the mirror.

Mushrooms for the Crostini

Mushroom Crostini with Taleggio

Cooking Chicken Livers, Shallots, and Thyme for
Chicken Liver Mousse (not shown)

Ten Places is a Stretch for our Dining Room

Look at the Crust on This Cassoulet

This cassoulet just started going right from the get-go. It's all down to the super-concentrated stock that I made the day before. All that gelatin started browning in the first hour. I forget how many punchdowns this went through, six or eight, no doubt.

Rogue's Gallery

It was a good night. Right to left: Force Majeure Parvata Red Mountain 2021, Nicolas-Jay Chardonnay Affinités Willamette Valley 2022, Williams & Selyem Zinfandel Bacigalupi Vineyard Russian River 2022, Domaine Guiberteau Saumur Les Chapaudaises 2018, Sylvain Pataille Bourgogne Aligoté La Charme aux Prêtres Marsannay 2022, Quinta do Vesuvio Porto 1991, Sealionne Syrah-Viognier Floyd Walla Walla 2023.

I am fairly certain everyone's favorite was the Guiberteau Saumur in magnum, one of the best Cab Francs I have tasted.

Mandarinquats and Sumo Citrus

Jenny was so kind as to bring us a bag of citrus that I got into after everyone left. I had never had mandarinquats (super-sweet rind, super-sour flesh) or sumo citrus (all around delicious) before.

Bendiversary 2026: Cassoulet Encore

Once again, seemingly more quickly this year, February is upon us in a flash. We have crammed our February celebrations (Valentine's Day, my birthday, and the anniversary of our moving to Bend) into a single celebration that we call our Bendiversary. It is now tradition that I make a cassoulet for us and our friends. We invited Rob and Dyce and Michelle and Andreas; sadly, Rob and Dyce were feeling poorly and had to back out.

Celebrating with Michelle and Andreas

While I am in the kitchen cooking, Ann handles the table in the dining room and always does such a nice job. 

For our meal, cassoulet is a given, leaving only an appetizer to devise, along with the de rigueur salad, the necessary light and acidic counterpoint to the heavy and decadent cassoulet. For once, I thought not about what guests would like, but what I would like for an appetizer to celebrate my birthday.

If I had some foie gras, I would have made torchons. If I had rabbit liver, I would have made a terrine. Sadly, while those items were always available to me in the restaurant trade, I cannot get them here. Never fear, I started my charcuterie career with chicken livers and they would suffice beautifully for this meal.

I chose to make a mousse, a dead simple affair involving cooking minced shallots and fresh thyme in butter, then adding chicken livers and cooking until just barely done. Lacking cognac (it's a pain in the rear to visit the liquor store), I drizzled in a bit of high rye bourbon and let that cook off. The livers went into the food processor with a bit of white pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. After spinning them up, I added just enough heavy cream to smooth out the paste. I transferred the mousse to a bowl while still warm, letting it set up in the cooler overnight.

Croustades, Mousse de Foie de Volaille, Cornichons

Brut Sparkling Nerello Mascalese
Excellent with Liver Mousse

When I made cassoulet at the restaurant, several times a month in the winter, I had access to all the classic ingredients: large white Tarbais beans, house-made duck confit, meaty and garlicky saucisse de Toulouse, and plenty of poitrine de porc (pork belly). After we butchered one of our hogs, cassoulet was sure to be on the menu. Now in retirement, I do not have access to hogs, ducks to confit, and many other things. Happily, I can get outstanding American-grown cassoulet beans from neighboring California. Everything else, I have to wing, substituting things that I do have.

Traditionally, cooks make cassoulet in an earthenware pot called a cassole, from which the dish has taken its name. At the restaurant, we made it in a huge rondeau, a flat round braising pan that would take an entire shelf in our commercial oven. At home, I have a decent-sized enameled cast iron cocotte that serves six. I also have a smaller rondeau that serves eight. When I have made cassoulet in the past, I have made batches from a kilogram of beans, enough to serve a dozen or more. Heretofore, I split the cassoulet between the cocotte and the rondeau with excellent results, if slightly different cook times.

In the last year or so, I purchased a deep roaster that could easily hold the entire batch, simplifying my life. Never having used this pan for cassoulet before left the cooking and cook time a bit of a crapshoot, but it worked wonderfully.

I cannot believe how many people put bread crumbs on cassoulet. Scream with me: FAUX PAS! One of the glories of a cassoulet is its crust. This crust develops over time. Once it forms, I punch it back into the liquid and let it reform, again and again, up to seven times. This is cassoulet. The following series of photos shows the progression.

Cassoulet Assembled, Ready for Oven

Cassoulet, After 4th Punchdown

Cassoulet Ready to Serve, After 7th Punchdown

Cassoulet is a load in the stomach, meaning that it really needs no side dishes. I always serve it with a salad with a really classic acidic mustardy shallot vinaigrette. The acid helps refresh the palate from the rich flavors of the long-cooked beans and meats. This dressing I made with mustard, tarragon vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and minced shallots. I make the tarragon vinegar by stuffing a bottle of rice vinegar with fresh tarragon and leaving it in the dark pantry for weeks to flavor. The salad changes with my mood and what is available. This is is baby spinach, julienne of apple, julienne of fennel, and toasted slivered almonds.

Spinach, Apple, Fennel, Almonds, Shallot-Tarragon Vinaigrette

So Good!

I am already looking forward to my next cassoulet, which I am going to make in less than a week for a wine event we are having at the house.

Cooking up a Birthday Dinner

Annie had yet another birthday to celebrate and because we had just days before gone out to pretty much the only restaurant we like for our anniversary, we decided to stay in and celebrate with a nice meal here at home, just the two of us and Rob and Dyce.

I was motivated to cook. Coming off a busy summer and a three-week trip to Iceland, I really had not cooked a decent meal in months. I am not talking day-to-day cooking which is generally a one-pan meal that takes 15 to 30 minutes to prep. Post-restaurant, a one-pan meal is about all I am inclined to make without some special reason. Ann's birthday provided just such a special reason to put some effort into planning and cooking.

Another Birthday in the Books
Celebrating with Diebolt-Vallois Brut Rosé

The menu was inspired by Ann's recent dental work that left her unable to chew on one side, requiring food that is soft in texture. I do not find restrictions like this a problem. On the contrary, boundaries, such as a vegetarian meal or soft foods as in this case, help me narrow the focus.

Left to my own devices, I could come up with way too many ideas, which is why at the restaurant, trips to the farmers market or walking through our pantry were most helpful in designing a menu for the night. They helped narrow the scope to ingredients that were immediately available. Though many cooks find "Chopped" types of competitions where they must use a specific set of ingredients to be too restrictive, I thrive on it.

For this birthday dinner, I imposed another restriction: the menu should involve as little à la minute, last-minute, cooking as possible so that I could spend time with our guests rather than at the stove. And like an idiot, I got so wrapped up in entertaining that I forgot to take pictures during dinner.

In creating the menu, the restriction to soft-textured foods screamed braised meat to me and what better to accompany braised meat than risotto? A soft dessert would be something like a pudding and do you know a simpler or better-loved pudding-like dish than crème brûlée?

For the starter course, a recent inventory of the pantry left me thinking about a bag of white beans, so a white bean soup would start the meal off. My initial thought was a white bean and rosemary cream with some kind of seafood garnish, something that would pair well with a white wine. And as the recent days were warm, I was thinking a room temperature soup with a cool garnish, a crab salad or something else that Ann could chew easily.

Naturally, a menu is also a reflection of the ingredients that are available at any given time. In this small city in the middle of nowhere, hours from any big city, I must design meals around the products that are available, rather than the products I wish were available. For example, there is no good source of seafood here in the high desert, nor is there acceptable rice for risotto. I order my rice from the internet.

Moreover, in my shopping, I knew I would never find ossobuco or lamb shank to braise; however, Costco sometimes has beef ribs. I got lucky and I bought one of their two packages of beef plate ribs. Plan C would have been to score a chuck roast and shred it into the risotto after braising. In the freezer section at the grocery, I also found serendipitously a package of frozen marrow bones while looking for stock bones.

A bonus, the marrow would finish the risotto with butter and cheese in the mantecare stage, the final stage when fat is stirred into the cooked rice to enrich it. After removing the marrow from the bones, I would contribute the marrow bones to the stock pot. The resulting stock would be the liquid in which I would braise the ribs. And then all the braising liquid would ultimately become a sauce for the ribs and risotto.

This menu naturally divided itself into two day's of work. The first day, I would make the stock, cook the white beans for the soup, and bake the crème brûlée, leaving the oven free the next day to braise the ribs. In addition to braising the ribs, the second day would see me finish the bean soup, design a garnish for the soup, and make the sauce for the beef after the ribs were cooked.

Ann thinks that this is a lot of work, but more than anything, it is a lot of small steps, steps that I scheduled around working in the office and taking walks. I do not look at cooking meals such as this as work.

Cooking Marrow Bones, Chuck, and Veg for Stock

Deglazing the Roasting Pan

To start the stock, I browned the ribs in a roasting pan to start creating a fond, brown bits, on the bottom of the pan. After they cooled, I refrigerated them to braise the next day. To the roasting pan, I added stock vegetables (onion, carrot, and celery), beef chuck, and the marrow bones. It took about 45 minutes in a very hot oven to roast and brown everything on all sides, with one or two turns.

After roasting the marrow bones, I scooped out the marrow and refrigerated it for finishing the risotto. Then all the bones, meat, and vegetables went into a stock pot with a couple of smashed cloves of garlic still skin-on, the peels and trimmings from the stock vegetables, a sprig of rosemary, a couple sprigs of thyme, a bunch of parsley stems, and the outer leaves from a leek.

And I threw in a wee bit of chef magic as well: a tablespoon of estratto di pomodoro (rich Sicilian tomato paste) and some dried porcini powder/bits from the bottom of the canister. Neither will be detectable in the final sauce but will add great umami. Deep flavor does not happen spontaneously; it is a thoughtful process of layering flavors.

When roasting vegetables and bones for stock, the idea is to cook them long enough not only to caramelize them, but to build up a good fond, the glaze of brown bits on the bottom of the roasting pan. After removing the roasted ingredients to the stock pot, I deglazed the roasting pan with water, scraping well to clean the bottom. All that caramelized goodness brings incredible flavor to the stock.

The dark and flavorful deglazing liquid went into the stock pot along with beef stock. Using a stock to make another stock is called a double stock; double stocks have additional depth of flavor over single stocks. In this case, for the first meal after the weather turned cold (snow on the mountains!), I wanted a dish that was deep and rich in flavor, ultra-comforting, and pairable with a Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style red wine. I chose an Italian blend that I find pairs comparably to CdP, a Valpolicella Classico Superiore. Valpolicella does not get a lot of love, but there are some great ones out there.

The stock simmered for most of the day before I strained it, reserved the chuck for another meal, and put the strained stock in the fridge to cool overnight to solidify the fat floating on top.

The next day, to start the braise, I cut some mirepoix (an onion, a large carrot, and stalk of celery) into medium dice. I sweated the vegetables with a stalk of rosemary and a couple of minced cloves of garlic in an enameled cast iron cocotte. Removing the rosemary, I added the gelled stock from which I had removed the congealed layer of fat. Arranging the ribs in the cocotte, I covered it and put it in a slow (275F) oven at noon, planning to serve the ribs around 1900.

Second Day: Adding Defatted Beef Stock to Sautéed Mirepoix

Beef Ribs Seared and Ready to Braise

Braised Ribs, Held Hot for Service

Not knowing how long the ribs would take to cook I checked them every half hour after three hours in the oven. They were perfect, soft and succulent, in four hours. I removed them to a half pan, covered the pan with film, and put it back in the oven to hot hold until dinner. The Keep Warm setting on my oven keeps them about 170F, above the temperature danger zone limit of 140F. The FDA Food Code changed this some years ago to 135, but I am an old school chef who learned 140.

I planned to keep the vegetables in the braising liquid as part of the final sauce, a rustic touch rather than a fine dining touch. Other options would be to strain them out or blend them in. After transferring the braising liquid to a sauce pan, I could see a half-inch or so of grease on top of the would-be sauce, so using a 2-ounce ladle, I carefully defatted the sauce.

Bringing the braising liquid to a simmer, I brought it down to the final volume of sauce that I wanted, carefully skimming any film and fat that rose to the surface. Once at the final volume, I decided that I wanted the sauce thicker. At this point, I could have thickened the sauce by blending in the vegetables, the cuisine minceur technique unabashedly stolen from Michel Guérard, (RIP chef) or using the traditional method, adding bits of beurre manié, equal parts of butter and flour kneaded together. I chose the latter.

On to the soup course which I planned to make with fagioli di Controne which Ann gave to me as a surprise. They are labeled no-soak and so I thought that would be a great time saver in making the soup base. These are a rare heirloom bean reportedly of thin skin and great flavor. I was excited to try them.

Fagioli di Controne, "No-Soak" My Ass

Beans, Sprig of Rosemary, Two Cloves Garlic, Ready to Cook

All I can say is that it is a good thing that I cooked the beans the day before, starting early in the morning. At seven hours in, they were still crunchy. Finally, they softened after eight hours and to get to the super soft stage that I wanted for a cream soup required nine hours and 15 minutes. Never again will I fall for the no soak baloney. That said, they do have thin skins and excellent flavor, but they are no easier to cook than any other dried bean.

The next day, I made the soup base by blending the beans to silky smooth in my big blender which does such an excellent job that I had no need to pass the beans through a chinois to make them silky. For service, I warmed the bean purée with a bit of heavy cream and adjusted the seasoning. Finding it a little flat, I added a couple of drops of Sherry vinegar to perk it up. The vinegar did its job admirably.

Lemon and Rosemary, Ready to Infuse into Cream

Back to the first day, after starting the stock and the beans cooking, I made the crème brûlée, choosing to flavor it with lemon and rosemary. To start, I brought two cups of 40% cream (the good stuff, compared to the garden variety 36%) to the scalding point with the zest of two lemons and a sprig of rosemary. After the cream cooled to the point where I could taste it, I added just enough sugar to barely sweeten it and make the flavorings sing. Adding a pinch of salt, I stirred to dissolve the sugar and the salt in the warm cream, then let the cream cool so that it would not curdle the egg yolks.

I strained the now lukewarm cream into a bowl containing 7 egg yolks (3 for each cup of cream, plus one for good luck, an admittedly rich custard base). After stirring well, I strained the custard yet again into a quart measure to remove any egg strands. In the absence of a sauce funnel which I would have used at the restaurant, a standard lipped measure let me pour the custard into the cups without dribbling all over the rims, a culinary faux pas.

I put the custard cups into a half pan before filling them, then to make a water bath, poured cold water in the half pan to come up to the level of the custard in the cups. Some people advocate using hot water but I think the product has better texture the slower it cooks, so I use cold water to retard the cooking.

Use the Torch to Pop Any Surface Bubbles

Before I bake any kind of custard, I run my torch lightly over the surface of the custard to pop any bubbles that may have formed during stirring or pouring. This is not necessary, but it will create a smooth finish rather than one pock-marked by bubbles that popped during baking. I put the custards into a moderate oven (350F) and checked them periodically. These took 35 minutes, all told.

To tell if the custards are done, grab one with tongs and give it a little shake. When the custards are set around the edges with only a quarter-sized spot in the center that is still loose, they are ready to come out of the oven. Remove from the water bath, dry them, wrap them individually with film, and refrigerate for service.

Moving on to the risotto: I discovered early in my planning that I did not have enough Arborio rice in the pantry for four servings, but too late to order some. Not to worry: Israeli couscous makes a fine fake risotto that people never fail to love. And unlike Arborio that I have to order in, I can buy Israeli couscous in bulk at my grocery. It is a pantry staple at our house.

Making the ersatz risotto milanese with Israeli couscous is identical to making the real thing, but just a little bit quicker, say 14-15 minutes versus 20. Start by sweating an onion and saffron in butter or olive oil, add the couscous and cook for a minute, then add chicken stock by dribbles, and cook until it is done, stirring and topping off the stock as necessary. When done, I stirred in a good bit of grated cheese, butter, and the bone marrow. Ann says she likes this better than with rice.

"Risotto Milanese"
Israeli Couscous with Bone Marrow

I needed to make a garnish for the soup. My original intent, when the weather was warm, was to serve a room temperature cream soup with a seafood salad for garnish. Then, the weather turned cold as it does this time of year, dictating a warm soup and warm garnish, turning my original idea on its head.

Fresh seafood of acceptable quality to a finicky chef is hard to find here and crab season closed in August, eliminating crab as a possibility. That left frozen seafood and I found some small white shrimp that would lend themselves to a salad. I had thought to chop them to help Ann chew them, but they were small enough to serve whole.

My working concept for the shrimp was inspired by the Italian white wine I had selected for the course, Roero Arneis. I would just barely cook them in olive oil, garlic, and a touch of tomato paste that would tint the oil red, to be drizzled on the soup for a contrasting garnish. However, during the course of the day, I kept coming back to the Sherry vinegar that I used to give the soup sufficient acid to perk it up, a Spanish touch and not an Italian one at all.

I hit on a warm salad dressing with Spanish flavors. Moments before serving, I cooked the shrimp in olive oil with a touch of pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika) to give the oil the red color, then removed it from the pan. In went some shallots to just brown around the edges, then I splashed the pan with more Sherry vinegar to create a warm shallot-pimentón vinaigrette. I dressed the shrimp, so small that I really did not need to chop them as planned, with a bit of vinaigrette and used the remainder to drizzle on the soup for garnish.

Rob and Dyce Brought
André Clouet Un Jour de 1911 Champagne

While I was finishing the soup, we opened the bottle of André Clouet Un Jour de 1911 Champagne that Rob and Dyce brought. Made in a turn of the 20th century style, this wine is interesting, baked apples and yeast on the palate with a hint of oxidation. This is a much different wine than we usually drink and I enjoyed it because it was so different.

Shrimp and White Beans, Warm Shallot-Pimentón Vinaigrette
Served with Paitin Roero Arneis

Short Rib on Israeli Couscous "Risotto Milanese" with
Serego Alighieri Monte Piazzo Valpolicella Classico Superiore

Lemon-Rosemary Crème Brûlée

Happy Birthday to This Girl!

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.

Ann Made a Flourless Chocolate Cake

1977 Warre's Port that I Bought on Release
It is Finally Calming Down after Nearly 50 Years