Spaghetti Squash with Bison Ragù

Being limited to the house by COVID started us off the wrong path, gaining a ton of weight through the summer when we are normally a lot more active than we were this year. We've really been watching what we're eating and drinking since the end of August and we're down over a combined 30 pounds now.

We're eating a lower-carb diet and the carbs we are eating are complex carbs such as beans and oats. In addition, we are watching our fat intake, eating mostly lower fat proteins. In recent weeks, we are shifting to a mainly seafood and vegetarian diet, so the meat that we are eating is limited to what we have stored in the freezer.

We still had a pound of 90% lean ground bison in the freezer and what better to do with ground meat on a cold day than a ragù? We also have a local produce store that is seasonal, closing just before Thanksgiving each fall. In the last week or so, everything is marked way down and we stocked up on storage vegetables: onions and several winter squash, including a few spaghetti squashes. So it is natural with our low-carb outlook to want to put our lovely bison ragù on ersatz spaghetti, roasted spaghetti squash.

Spaghetti Squash with Bison Ragù

Don't get me wrong: this dish is not handmade pasta with long-cooked salsa bolognese, but it is a waist-friendly dish for a cold day, delicious in its own right.

Soffritto for Ragù

Sauce Starting to Cook

Note Color Change in Finished Sauce

When I am making a long-cooked full-fat ragù, I first cook cubes of meat in plenty of fat to brown it well, then remove them from the pan, leaving behind the fat in which to cook the soffritto with garlic and dried basil. My soffritto is generally equal parts onions, carrots, and celery, and I typically have a higher vegetable to meat ratio than is traditional, because I am often trying to stretch a little meat a long way.

Once the soffritto is soft, I deglaze with white wine and reduce that to nothing, then add a good amount of heavy cream and a bunch of peeled and seeded tomatoes along with the meat. The sauce will then cook for several hours until is ready to go, the meat being shredded just by the action of stirring the pot. You need to be attentive to stirring the pot towards the end because the sauce will be really thick and can burn easily enough.

Right, so that's the traditional method that takes hours to make. But what if you only have 45 minutes to get dinner on the table and you want a low-fat sauce?

I start by browning lean ground meat, in this case bison, as best as I can with a little pan spray. When the meat is cooked through, I add the soffrito right in with the meat and cook for a few more minutes until the onions turn translucent.

Then I splash the pan with a little white wine for form, not because there are any brown bits on the bottom of the pan to scrape off into the sauce. I omit the cream to lower the fat, but also because I find that cream takes hours to integrate into the sauce and become that je ne sais quoi for which salsa bolognese is renowned.

The tomatoes go in and the sauce cooks for as much or little time as I have before needing to get dinner on the table. The sauce above cooked for about 45 minutes. You can see the color change from beginning to end.

Kitchen Basics: Roasting Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti Squash Ready for Oven

Stringing Roasted Spaghetti Squash with a Fork

Roasting spaghetti squash is dead simple. The only tricky part is splitting the squash in two lengthwise, principally because the squash wants to roll on the cutting board. If you are uncomfortable with the squash rolling a bit, wedge a dish towel under both sides to form a cradle for it.

Drive the tip of your knife into the top of the squash and lever the blade down like the handle of a paper cutter. Then remove the knife and reposition it to the end of the cut you have opened, repeating until you split the squash in two.

The stem end is often a really tricky proposition in that the stem will not split, so start at the stem end and work your way to the other end, leaving the stem intact. When the two haves are nearly separated and joined only by the stem, you can break the two halves apart with your hands.

Using a spoon, scrape out all the seeds. You can roast and eat the squash seeds if you like or put them in the compost pile so you have baby squash coming up everywhere in the spring!

Oil the cut surfaces of the squash and place the cut faces down on a sheet tray. Place in a moderate oven (350F) and roast until you can easily pierce the shell with a knife, half an hour or longer.

Remove from the oven and let cool to the point where you can handle the squash. Using a fork, scrape out the squash strands lengthwise down the squash, leaving an empty shell.

You can pitch the shells or for something different, you can combine the squash with other ingredients and stuff it back into one of the halves, then rebake it for twice-baked spaghetti squash. If your stuffed squash wants to roll on your sheet tray, wedge both sides with a ball of aluminum foil.

Happy Fourth!?

In this crazy year of 2020, July 4th was an opportunity for many to celebrate, but it seemed really off to me and I am sure to Ann as well. Our neighborhood had been planning to get together to eat, drink, and shoot off some fireworks for weeks, the 4th being something good and fun and normal that we could all look forward to, to help us get through the depressing news about this pandemic and the lack of leadership from our president.

Happy Fourth! Ann's Pallet Flag in the Back Yard

It was quite a stunning day, weatherwise, and we spent nearly the entire day outdoors as we are wont to do now in our dry season. In Oregon, we make the most of the summer, because it rains for the rest of the year. The morning we spent on the back patio, doing the daily crossword with coffee, and watching the hummingbird forays through the flower gardens.

Eggs with Salmon, Chives, Capers, and Sour Cream

Around mid-day, we migrated to the front patio and ate breakfast about one in the afternoon with a scramble designed to use the fat belly flaps off the steelhead trout that I broke down the day before. In addition to the trout, in the eggs are sour cream, capers, and chives from the garden. It was delicious, but I won't mix sour cream in with the eggs again. The sour cream disrupted the normal creamy texture of the eggs to yield a slightly grainier dish that wept water. Live and learn.

Red, White, and Blue Berry Smash

About three and feeling a bit morose, Ann declared it Happy Hour, "We need a red, white, and blue cocktail!" During this pandemic, our house cannot be the only one in which 5 o'clock comes at random times. I rummaged the kitchen and ended up with a cross between a gin and tonic and a Tom Collins: red raspberries, white liquor, and blueberries. It was tart, refreshing, and the recipe will follow in a subsequent post because Ann wants me to remember it for the future. If I don't write it down, it will be gone from my head in 48 hours.

Oh yeah, shout out to our neighbor Rennika who brought us the berries from her family's farm! Blueberries and all manner of caneberries are a staple agricultural product of our valley.

Bison Burger with English Cheddar, Pickles, and Bacon

In looking back over previous posts about July 4, a consistent theme seems to be burgers. We don't eat them that often, so they have become something of a treat for us and something of a 4th ritual. We picked up a package of ground bison at Costco earlier in the week, just for burgers. Bison has such a great meaty flavor that is sadly lacking from most beef these days. The meat is a little leaner than I like for a good burger, but so very tasty.

While I was out shopping, I forgot to get a bag of chips to accompany our burgers. How sad is it that I didn't just run up to the store two minutes away and grab a bag? How sad is it that I have to weigh the potential risk for bringing this damned virus home to Ann every time I think about leaving the house? How sad is it that there are no casual trips out, only necessary ones? This pandemic sucks.

We made the reluctant decision earlier in the week to opt out of the neighborhood Fourth gathering, for two reasons. First, the incidence of virus is growing here in Oregon, albeit not as bad as in other locales, and second, our dog Grace is absolutely terrified of fireworks. We wanted to be home to comfort her. Charlie doesn't like the fireworks so well, but he's so damned deaf now that he curled up and slept through them.

Even though it doesn't get dark here this time of year until after 10pm, the booms and pops started about 9:30. Reluctantly we went inside, to help muffle some of the sound and put Grace at more ease, scant good that it did do.

I really, really wanted to be out in the alley behind our houses, kicking back a few brews and watching fireworks, if not to totally seem normal, at least to get the hell out of the house and interact with human beings other than my wife. It's a small sacrifice to skip the fireworks, I know, but it certainly seems a much larger sacrifice in a day when every decision seems to be a sacrifice or at least a tradeoff against health risk.

MELT Gourmet Cheeseburgers, Leesburg VA

Ann saw someone talking about MELT Gourmet Cheeseburgers on Facebook last week and decided that we needed to ride over to Leesburg on Sunday and check it out. In looking at the place on line, I could see there's a lot of hype about this restaurant, a lot of hype: Best Burger in Loudoun County, Best Burger in Virginia, on people's lists of best burger joints in the entire country. For all this, I had never heard of the place before, not that I am really all that attuned to what is happening in the burger world. I eat one or two a year and that pretty much is the sum total of all the beef that I eat in a year.

Ann's Bison Burger: Best Looking of the Lot

We arrived in Leesburg about 12:15 and our wait in line at this counter service-only restaurant was not long. The restaurant occupies a pretty small storefront in a shopping center with a couple of tables on the sidewalk, a few tables inside, and a counter along the sidewall opposite the open kitchen. We sat along this counter. The tables are pretty cramped. If you're allergic to people, this is not your scene.

You order at the back of the restaurant at the end of the counter fronting the kitchen and then a runner brings you your food to your table. Or rather they holler out the table number and hope for you to flag them down so that they know where they are going in the chaos that is a packed room. There is no tipping, but the tip line on the credit card slip let you donate to the local humane society and so I did, what I would have normally tipped the server/food runner.

Carter came with us, so we were three and we ordered three different burgers. Carter ordered a basic bacon cheeseburger mid-rare, Ann a bison burger mid, and me, a green chile burger rare. I must say that all the burgers were cooked spot on, exactly as ordered. In my experience, this is not something you encounter every day.

All the ingredients were fresh, buns being baked as we sat there, and the toppings were generous. My burger in particular had a ton of bacon on it. I didn't find the roasted poblano chiles until the second half of the burger: they must have slid to one side. And by that time, I was done. These burgers are immense and way more than any one person needs to eat. I left a quarter of mine and could easily have stopped after a half. Ann's bison burger was really great, perfectly seasoned. My burger was desperate for some salt and pepper. Not sure about Carter's burger: it got hoovered in just a few seconds.

So far, creative menu, burgers cooked correctly, and good quality ingredients, including the beef. Massive portions. No issues there. As I mentioned earlier, seasoning of the burgers was inconsistent. The buns, despite being baked in house, were not my thing. They were too soft to stand up to the burger and all the toppings: by the time I got my hands around the burger, the bun had become so soaked with juices that it wasn't much of a bun any longer. I also like my buns cooked longer with more of a crust. They were coming out of the double-door oven very pale. Moreover, I want my bun toasted on the flat-top before the burger goes on. Ann's was at least noticeably toasted. My bun was not.

I never felt like my burger and the topping meshed into a coherent whole. The green chile burger sounded much better on paper than it was in execution. Mine had too much shredded lettuce and special sauce that pretty much drowned every other flavor. I think this is a situation where less is more and a little restraint would have made a big difference.

Onion Rings Did Not Scratch My Onion Ring Itch

We also ordered a plate of fries and a plate of onion rings. Again portions are huge, but the skinny shoestring fries just are not in keeping with the immense burgers. Five Guys still has the best fries in our area, though their burgers suck. The onion rings were a disappointment. I'm looking for large rings of beer-battered onions; these were not it. The quality of the fries and the onion rings did not match the quality of the burgers. Prices are what they are. Three burgers, one beer, two milk shakes, one fries, one onion ring: $75.

In sum, nice menu, very good quality ingredients and beef. Burgers cooked perfectly. Some dings on execution for inconsistent toasting of buns and seasoning, but this is a factor of how busy they are. Nobody on that line has a moment to come up for air, let alone concentrate on quality. Onion rings and fries not quite to the standard set by the beef. Overall, very good quality for a burger joint. Lives up to the hype? I don't think so. And I can do better at home and so it's not worth the 45-minute drive for me. If I lived closer, I might visit once a year when they are not very busy and order a burger with minimal toppings.

A Day with Tom and Ann

Sunday afternoon was a beautiful if chilly day, a great day for the easy drive over to Tom and Ann's in Capon Bridge. Carter protested going over and over to the point where we had to threaten him with losing every privilege he has to get him to shut up. He sulked all the way over, but that silence was golden!

After we were effusively and hyperenthusiastially greeted by Levi, we spied that Tom had already opened four bottles of wine: a 2011 Sokol Blosser Pinot, a 2012 Owen Roe "The Kilmore" Pinot, a 2011 Hartford Court Old Vine Zin, and the star of the day, a 2010 Insignia. Insignia isn't generally my style of wine, but this one was delicious.

Wine Star of the Day

Neither of the Pinots really floated my boat, but the Owen Roe really bloomed when tasted with these bison meatballs with a gochujang-apricot glaze. Not only were the meatballs delicious in their own right, but the spice in the glaze and the ginger in the meatballs really made the Pinot sing. I have got to remember this for my own pairing dinners.

Bison Meatballs with Gochujang-Apricot Glaze: Culinary Star of the Day

Cornbread with Bacon

Cold Day, Hot Stew!

For dinner, Tom made a big pot of venison stew which he served with cornbread. That's a pretty good choice for a cold December day!

Venison Stew on Cornbread

After lunch, we adults watched "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" with a whole cast of our favorite actors, while the boys snoozed away the afternoon on the couch.

Levi and His Buddy Carter

Once again, thanks to Tom and Ann for their hospitality and kudos to Tom for another wonderful meal.

Recycling: Buffalo Tacos with Mango Salsa

Buffalo Taco with Mango Salsa

Wow! Has spring sprung? Where it was largely brown last week, everything is a beautiful shade of green this week. Sunday out at Delaplane Cellars, where Ann and I were catering the barrel tasting, was even more gorgeous than the week before, especially with the massive cherry tree in front of Jim and Betsy's house in full riot of bloom.

At the tasting, two of my pairings were shrimp and mango salad with the 2012 Chardonnay, to bring out the tropical flavors in that wine, and pulled bison with blueberry compote with the 2011 Springlot Bordeaux blend. We had a pretty good quantity of each left over after the event.

As you might imagine, Monday April 15th was a special day in paperwork hell and after I finished wrestling at the office with not only the usual Monday paperwork, but 2012 taxes and 2013 first quarter estimates, I wasn't in the mood to cook. But, it occurred to me that with almost no effort, I could recycle the two leftover catering dishes into a great dinner.

How Good Does This Look?

To the mango and shrimp salad, which was equal quantities of diced mango and diced shrimp tossed in a bit of bright lime dressing, I added cilantro, green onions, garlic, black beans, a couple of finely minced jalapeños, more lime juice, and a good bit of salt for an almost instant mango salsa.

One Man's Pulled Bison is Another's Carne Machaca

The inspiration for the dinner was this big bowl of pulled bison which struck me as a really tasty version of carne machaca (literally, crushed meat) from Northern Mexico where beef or pork was preserved by drying it, then rehydrated and pounded to soften it. Tacos de carne machaca have always been a favorite food of mine. In the modern era, now that we have refrigeration, carne machaca is no longer dried first in most restaurants. Although it is possible to buy commercially prepared machaca seca, most restaurants do as we do: braise the raw meat slowly and then shred it. It doesn't hurt that in our case, we reduce the cooking liquids to a syrupy glaze and mix them back into the meat for maximum flavor.

A Rainy Glen Manor Sunday

With all due respect to Mark and Kelley with whom we were slated to go kayaking this past Sunday, last week beat me up incredibly. To the point where I slept in Sunday morning until 9am for the first time in months. To put it in perspective, I am up every single day between 6 and 6:30am. And so we reluctantly called off kayaking for another time when I will actually give a damn. Guys, I'm sorry. I just felt so broken last weekend.

Sunday (I was going to use the verb "dawn" but then I wasn't conscious at any time near dawn, was I?) was overcast and threatening rain, which from our perspective was a good thing; we've had hardly a drop of rain in August and all the thunderstorms (nearly every day) would roll up to the yard and hang a hard left and scoot to our north, leaving us high and dry. Or they would tease us by sliding just to the south.

But I get really antsy about rain this time of year. I have way too many friends in the wine industry to be excited about rain during harvest season. I will cringe reflexively each time that it rains between now and mid-October. Still, I must admit that the prospect of a rainy, sleepy Sunday was just what I wanted: no agenda, no pressure, no deadlines, no place to be at no time in particular.

And while I was sitting in my chair (yes, I have appropriated a chair in the sunroom as my own) Ann came over and said, "Hey, let's go to Glen Manor today, just you and me, and sit and drink a bottle of wine and talk!" She was just so damned enthusiastic and beaming from ear to ear, so how could I deny her? And the prospect of sitting at the winery watching the rain stream down with a glass in hand? How bad could that be?

And so I went to retrieve Carter from a friend's house where he spent the night and stopped in at the restaurant for a few picnic supplies and some fixings for dinner. Then we hit the road for Front Royal and points south with me riding shotgun in a semi-comotose state. The rain started pretty gently as we were heading down 522, but I could see a line of squalls in the distance and could see where the road was obscured about a half a mile away by the teeming rain.

Getting through the very narrow but violent squall line, we drove through a few more sprinkles down to Glen Manor. On the way, I was thinking that there would be a very good chance that we could catch Jeff at the winery on a rainy day when being out in the vineyard was not an option, or at least, not a good option. And sure enough, his truck was parked outside the winery when we arrived.

Bird Netting: White on Original Vineyard; Black on the New Vineyard

Because of the rain, traffic at the winery was very light and I hate that for Jeff and Kelly, but it let us spend the afternoon chatting with them and catching up, something that none of us get to do with any regularity. We got a couple more good blasts of rain before the front moved through and although we were pretty light on rain in Winchester, Jeff said that they had got an inch and a half already before we arrived. But you can see that the site has good slope and good drainage, so hopefully this is a non-issue. Only the Sauvignon Blanc is in play right now and most of that is already in the cellar.

Hmm. The '11 Franc is not yet Released. Go Figure.

Reds are scarce now at the winery because demand is a bit higher than production, always a good problem to have. Jeff was kind enough to let us have a bottle of the 2011 Cab Franc a couple days before its official release date and we thank him for that. It really has come around very nicely. The last time I tasted it was in barrel back in April. Some of the knees and elbows that were sticking out back then have come back in. In a crappy year, this is a good wine. It's not a great wine, but then, the weather gods didn't give anyone great red wine in 2011, giving us instead rain each day of September, a vintage nobody will forget.

Olli Calabrese and Ubriaco del Piave

2012: Banner Year for Virginia Figs!

I just love this time of year: fig season! 2012, for whatever reason, has produced the best fig crop that anyone can remember and we have them coming out of our ears right now, an awesome problem to have. I brought some figs, an Olli Calabrese, and a wedge of Ubriaco del Piave cheese along with some bread for our lunch. Poor, poor, poor us!

Good to See Kelly Laugh!

Telling Dumb Jokes!

The (rightly) Notorious Ghost Chiles, the Naga or Bhut Jolokia

Once the rain blew off, we moved outside to enjoy the day and the view, especially of all the butterflies on the twin butterfly bushes just outside the tasting room. Kelly also has herbs and some vegetables growing in the beds and you can see where the deer have clipped the tomato vines way back. But for some reason, they aren't touching the ghost chiles; go figure! Kelly gave me a bunch of ghost chiles to bring back to the restaurant to turn into sambal. And speaking of deer, we saw a young 4-point buck, antlers still in velvet, standing beside the driveway on the way up to the winery. I don't guess he will last long once hunting season opens.

Two Great Wines

Back at the ranch, we sat out on the patio and drank some really nice Sancerre before heading inside to make a pasta for dinner. This time of year, we have tomatoes coming out of our ears and almost always have leftover mozzarella from the night before. I cut up one of the red Abraham Lincolns from our garden, a pink Mortgage Lifter from Mark, and a Black Trifele from Beth, along with a couple balls of leftover mozzarella. Then I caramelized a large onion and several cloves of slivered garlic and browned a bit of buffalo-chipotle sausage. In went a pound of strozzapreti pasta and a big handful of shredded basil from the garden. Awesome!

With the pasta we had a most delicious Easton Zinfandel from the old Rinaldi Vineyard in Amador County. Zin would not be your first guess if you tasted this blind. Yes, it has big plummy dark fruit, but it is a very transparent ruby wine with excellent acidity and firm, but very supple tannins. This wine is the finest expression of Zinfandel that I have ever had and is miles away from the bulk of the Lodi crap that saturates the market. Bill Easton, bravo!

Pasta, It's What's for Dinner

PS. I just love the so-called black tomatoes. They are none of them black, but rather a greenish to purplish red. The endearing quality in them for me is that they are all high acid tomatoes and that acidity is the key to a great tomato.

Seís de Mayo

This is the first posting of four on our recent party on Seís de Mayo.

I'm not one to celebrate made-up holidays like Cinco de Mayo, that mostly American creation fueled largely by the beer companies, but I don't need an excuse to have a party! Ann decided a few weeks back to have a small party on the 6th of May so she could show off her delicious quinoa salad and try out new recipes for tequila sangria and margarita cupcakes.

Pre-Game Huevos con Chorizo

After a week off from work, I hadn't really cooked anything in days, so I was ready to do a little work. I hit the kitchen at 8am and worked steadily until shower time at 2. Ann joined me around 10 and we prepped and talked and pre-gamed it a little bit. I just love it when the two of us are messing around in the kitchen! Define "messing around" however you see fit. ;) Many people would be daunted by this much work in the kitchen, but I love it and don't get to do enough of it at work.

With all the chorizo, peppers, and onions laying around, who can blame us for having a big plate of huevos con chorizo at noon with some beer chasers?

Pre-Game Beers

Here's the menu:

   Fried Asparagus with Cilantro-Pimentón Aïoli
   Oven-Baked Tortilla Chips
   Mango-Tomatillo Salsa
   Guacamole
   Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Avocado, and Lime-Cumin Dressing
   Quesadillas with Chorizo, Bison Skirt Steak, Poblanos, and Onions
   Margarita Cupcakes
   Tequila Sangria
   Beer

Joining us for the festivities were Kelly and Marco Due plus Neil and Patty. Neil is home on a break from his tour in Iraq and I haven't seen him since he deployed last fall.

Kelly and Marco Due being entertained by....

The One and Only Ann!

It's Good to be Stateside, Beer in Hand!

Patty always tries to hide from the camera

Grayce trying to prove she is a lap dog

This post is huge, so I have broken it down into several smaller pieces. Three more to come.

Seís de Mayo: Quesadillas Etc.

This is the third post of four on our Seís de Mayo party.


Sangria

To warm everyone up when they arrived, I made two big pitchers of so-called sangria from Pinotage (a South African grape that is the scion of two French grapes, Pinot Noir and Cinsault). This is not really sangria so much as it is a berry wine punch, but I was under orders. ;) I mixed the wine with tequila and St. Germain and then added mixed berries, fresh pineapple, lemon slices, lime slices, and agave nectar.

Pinotage: Fruity and Inexpensive, Just Right for Sangria

Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Avocados, and Lime-Cumin Vinaigrette

Ann makes a delicious salad of quinoa, black beans, red onions, avocados, tomatoes, garlic, cilantro and whatever else she feels like putting in it, all dressed with a simple vinaigrette flavored with lime juice and cumin. It's just a wonderful side dish (or even a great vegetarian summer main dish).

Quinoa Salad

Quesadillas with Chorizo, Bison Skirt Steak, Poblanos and Onions

Quesadillas are fun to make for a crowd, either on a grill or as I did it, in a pan on the stove. You can put just about anything you want in them, but I was in the mood for chorizo. The cheese we used was some generic pre-shredded white cheese from the grocery labeled "Queso para Pupusas," cheese for pupusas, that amazing Salvadoran stuffed tortilla. Any melting cheese will do.

And what better to go with sausage than peppers and onions? The five pounds of onions and peppers that I started with cooked down by at least half. I was planning for leftovers anyway, because how useful is it to have onions and peppers in the fridge?

We also had a tiny bit of bison skirt steak leftover, so I cooked that too.

Bison Skirt Steak, Nice and Rare

And I leave you with two parting shots.

I can feel your jealousy from here, dear reader.

Stay tuned for the final episode in which dessert gets made!