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

July 4 Celebration

Each year, we celebrate the Fourth of July and the country where we live. I am not a political person, but this year, I am decidedly not feeling at all patriotic, nor am proud of certain things that are happening in our country. Still, we persevered with our celebration in the hopes that this country will right itself. Right is a poor choice of verbs in this instance. Perhaps I should have chosen the verb center.

We invited Rob, Dyce, Dyce's parents who are in town from Italy, and new friend Brad to throw down with us.

Lyn, Brad, Neal, Dyce, Ann, and Rob

The menu ended up as a pseudo-Greek affair. I like burgers for the 4th, but had a hankering for my lamb burgers which blow beef burgers out of the water. From there, it was not a stretch to want to pair the burgers with tzatziki and horiatiki. But then, Ann wanted orzo too, so I combined the orzo and horiatiki to create a cold pasta salad. Then I wanted an appetizer I could make in advance, so after a bit of head scratching, decided on tiropitakia, cheese-filled phyllo pastries. Ann volunteered to make her delicious berry and brioche summer pudding and asked me to make a sorbet. We settled on lemon-thyme and the menu was complete. The recipe for the sorbet is in a separate post.

Some wine was drunk; some food was eaten; some fun was had!

Lamb Burger with Feta and Pine Nuts

I love my lamb burgers and this year, for a change, I recorded a rough recipe because I have had requests for it in the past.

Lamb Burger Recipe

This recipe scales well so I have expressed it in terms of seasonings for a single pound of lamb. In reality, I made a 4-pound batch and I eyeballed everything. It is always a good idea when mixing a batch of forcemeat like this, to cook a tiny bit and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Also, this mix gains flavor in the refrigerator so plan on mixing everything a day or even two in advance. I scaled out six-ounce burgers, my preferred size.

Per pound of ground lamb:

1/4 c dry white wine (substitute red wine or water or stock)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon Pimentón de la Vera agridulce (smoked paprika)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced (I used way more than this!)

small handful of toasted pine nuts

2 ounces sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

optional, if you have spice grinder:

pinch dried rosemary, finely ground

pinch dried thyme, finely ground 

Procedure:

Mix liquids and solids well to distribute salt and spices.

Add lamb and gently mix. Using hands is best.

Refrigerate overnight or two nights.

Patty into burgers or shape into kefta (oval meatballs)

Cook to desired temperature. I like medium rare.

Tiropitakia and Tzatziki

Tiropitakia Ready for Oven

Our appetizer was the tiropitakia (little cheese pies) that you see in photos above. I just went with my gut which said to mix chopped kalamata olives, chopped marinated sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, lemon zest, and grated pecorino cheese with a tub of ricotta cheese. For savory pastries like this, I brush the phyllo layers with olive oil (and for sweet pastries, I use butter). I brushed the tops of the little triangles with olive oil and sprinkled them with oregano and coarse salt before baking until browned in a moderate oven. A recipe for tzatiki is in this post.

Orzo Salad

The pasta salad was simple. I mixed a bunch of olive oil, lemon juice, kalamata brine, and oregano (my usual horiatiki dressing) in a large bowl. Then I cut the horiatiki vegetables and cheese smaller than usual, because otherwise, they would dwarf the small orzo pasta. The usual suspects are: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and feta. I omitted peppers because I didn't feel like I wanted them. So there.

I put all the salad ingredients into the dressing for about an hour to marinate. The red onions, I sliced very thin and soaked in several changes of cold water to mellow them out. In the morning, I par-cooked the orzo a couple minutes shy of being done, knowing that it would finish softening in the refrigerator. This is a useful technique for all pasta salads. After cooling the pasta under running water, it went into the vegetables and I tasted for salt. Salt this salad carefully because the kalamata brine, olives, and feta are already salty.

Into the fridge to mellow for a few hours the salad went. Just before serving the appetizers, I put the salad in a serving bowl and garnished with the onions. Just before serving dinner, I mixed everything well to distribute the onions and redistribute the dressing.

Ann's Beautiful Summer Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

Blackberry Sorbet

Oregon summer is synonymous with blackberries. Domestic or wild, they are the constant thread through the summer months out here. The industry is huge and besides plain old blackberries, we have so many different crosses and cultivars: youngberry, dewberry, ollalieberry, tayberry, loganberry, kotaberry, and (DC's favorite) marionberry spring instantly to mind.

Paradoxically, wild blackberries, the native Pacific kind and the noxious invasive Trailing Himalayan, are also our biggest scourge, rapidly covering acres of valuable property with vicious and hard to eradicate vines, the de facto kudzu of the Pacific Northwest.

It's fair to say that we have a love-hate relationship with blackberries. But now that it is berry season, love is prevailing a bit over hate.

Blackberry Sorbet

What to do with our bounty? I'm not a big dessert fan, but in the heat of the summer, I really do love a good sorbet, one that comes across more flavorful than sweet. And that is where our latest haul of blackberries ended up: in the ice cream maker.

Blackberry Sorbet Recipe

For roughly one quart of sorbet, you'll need the following:

3 dry pints of ripe blackberries
1 cup of simple syrup
zest and juice of one lime

Place the berries and simple syrup in your blender and blend until smooth. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and discard the seeds. Add the lime zest. Gradually add lime juice until you achieve the sweet-tart balance that makes you happy. Refrigerate the sorbet mix until cold. Spin it until frozen in an ice cream maker.

Ice Cream Machine

Ice Cream Machine in Action

I'm not a big fan of single-purpose kitchen equipment, as I have discussed in numerous posts. However, there is one piece of single-purpose equipment that I brought all the way from the restaurant in Virginia to our new home in Oregon: a professional ice cream machine. It's big, it's really heavy, and Ann insisted that we bring it.

Why? Well, if the texture of the blackberry sorbet in the top photo doesn't tell you everything that you need to know, there's not much else I can say. A great machine makes ultra-smooth sorbets, ice creams, and gelati. The key is even refrigeration and consistent churning that makes the tiniest ice crystals which feel like silk on your palate.

This machine was wildly expensive when I bought it a decade or more ago and a replacement would be even more spendy today. It was in service all night, every night at the restaurant, churning out sorbets for intermezzos in our nightly tasting menu. The machine has thousands of hours of run time, yet I venture to say, it will long outlast me.

I wouldn't buy one just for my home (it would cost a mortgage payment) but I am sure glad that I have one.

Moulard Duck with Blackberries

Moulard Duck with Blackberries

I'm still getting used to this whole cooking at home thing. Monday night, I still had a couple Moulard duck breasts left from closing the restaurant and Ann asked for them in some Asian style. Looking about the fridge, there wasn't a lot in terms of garnishes, but I did find a few blackberries from the farmers market, some celery, carrots, and an orange sweet pepper.

The duck breast is scored, seared, and roasted until rare/medium rare, then rested, sliced, and fanned on the plate. For one garnish, I made a quick salad of julienned carrots, peppers, and celery which was tossed at the very last second in a dressing of soy, black vinegar, agave, sambal oelek, and sesame oil. For the blackberry garnish, I did a quick gastrique by caramelizing minced shallot in sesame oil then adding blackberries, black vinegar, and agave and seasoning to taste.

Really simple and 15 minutes start to finish.

Eurasia, Virginia Beach

After such a wonderful night the evening before, it was really disappointing to think about leaving Asheville, if not because Asheville is such a wonderful place then because it meant that our only vacation period of the year was quickly drawing to a close and that we would soon be staring workaday reality in the face again for another 51 weeks. Our final breakfast at Carolina B&B started with fantastic blackberries in a basil-infused syrup with loosely whipped vanilla cream. After this, we were served a bacon and broccoli egg bake with asparagus and a banana muffin. It was a great breakfast, but we couldn't linger, as much as we would have liked to, facing a 7-hour drive to Virginia Beach.

Delicious Blackberries

Bacon and Broccoli Egg Bake, our Final Breakfast in Asheville

We were checked out and on the road by 10am, tentatively putting us into Virginia Beach around 5pm which was fine but I was worried about Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic. We didn't have dinner reservations until 8:15 so there was no real rush. The drive east and north from Asheville was a long boring interstate trip with no views, but we did note that the rest stops in NC are super, clean, and very well maintained.

Leaving Asheville, it was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the low 80s and we were rolling with open windows, blaring classic rock on the radio. By the halfway point though, it was clouding over and getting noticeably chillier. By the Virginia state line and cruising east on US 58, we had the windows up and were struggling to find any radio station not playing Christian music or conservative talk. Both my families are from Southside Virginia but that still doesn't make it feel like home. And what a culture shock after leaving the crazy and totally leftwing Asheville.

Seven hours after departing peaceful spectacular Asheville, we arrived in the land of the 6-lane interstates and high-rise buildings just in time for bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic and a low gray ceiling that shrouded everything in a mist too large to be a fog and not enough to be rain. It was a cold, dreary, damp, aggravating afternoon when we pulled into the hotel near the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts where Carter and his fellow students from all over the state would give their performance on Saturday afternoon.

After resting for a little while at the hotel, it was a dark, rainy, crappy night when we set out for Eurasia just a few blocks off the beach. Friends had recommended that we try this restaurant, located in a strip mall. Sorry in advance for the crappy photos; the lighting was just low enough to make everything on the cellphone camera grainy.

We started with cocktails. Ann had a cocktail called Absolutely Perfect made from Absolut Mandarin, St. Germain, cranberry juice, and prosecco. It was quite nice and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't rip it off for the restaurant. Jazzed by the Crusta that I had at Rhubarb, I asked for a Sidecar and I sort of got a Sidecar, but really, in a rocks glass with a little ice and a slab of lemon? Not the best bar work that I have ever seen.

"Absolutely Perfect," A Really Good Cocktail

A Sidecar?

I was just glancing at the wine list in preparation for digging into it when I saw the same wine we had the night before in the 2012 vintage and I looked no further. This was equally delicious as the 2001 but without the benefit of bottle age. It was however, way, way less expensive.

Baby Barbaresco

As usual, I pretty much let Ann figure out the food while I figured out the wine. She decided on Ahi Tuna Tartare with ginger, sriracha honey, diced egg white, quail egg, and wontons. If you're going to do a dish that everyone does, you need to step up your game to make it shine. Sadly, this tuna was really middle of the pack. The tuna itself was underseasoned and needed texture. The egg whites were crudely whacked making me wonder about the care that the kitchen actually puts into their dishes.

Tuna Tartare

Served alongside the tuna was a beet and burrata salad with "grains" (whatever they were), an avocado mousse, preserved lemon, black pepper crackers, and toasted almonds. The dish really didn't hang together as a salad for me, the burrata was OK but not memorable, and the beets were woefully undercooked.

Beet and Burrata Salad

Next up was olive-oil poached octopus with orange, grilled scallion, hoisin, and a plantain chip. The octopus was fairly good, but I don't understand how the other ingredients play together or help the octopus in any way. It reminds me of a junior cook throwing a bunch of ingredients at a plate because they sound cool.

Olive Oil-Poached Octopus

The best dish of the night and the one that hung together best concept- and flavor-wise was rock shrimp with cavatelli, oyster mushrooms, and ramps in a butter sauce. The delicate shrimp and pasta was buried in an avalanche of cheese and there was way too much butter sauce for the amount of ingredients. This could have been a stellar dish, yet it ended up being heavy-handed and clumsy.

Shrimp and Cavatelli

Ann was also intrigued by the dish called Chef's Steak & Eggs: Guinness-braised short ribs, white polenta, crispy poached egg, and braising jus. The egg was really well done but the rest of the dish wasn't at all memorable. I'd hoped for some awesome short ribs; they weren't.

Steak and Eggs

We wanted to have more wine but with us having to drive and it being dark, rainy, and us in an unfamiliar place, that wasn't a good idea. So I took a chance and asked the server if we could get another bottle of wine to go along with a cheeseplate. She made both happen in fairly short order. Back at the hotel, we had our dessert: cheese and Barbaresco from Dixie cups.

Barbaresco in Dixie Cups

Craggy Gardens, NC

Thursday morning saw us take breakfast in the dining room of the B&B, starting with "Mango Madness," sliced strawberries, diced mango, and blackberries tossed with sugar and mint. Our second course was oeufs brouillés on puff pastry with a couple of slices of smoked salmon and a ramekin of mushrooms in cream. I call the scrambled eggs by their French name because they were whisked in the classic French style yielding very wet scrambled eggs with really small curd. We've served a lot of duck eggs this way for tasting recently. They are delicious.

As interesting as the conversation around the breakfast table with the other guests was, our agenda was to go to the peak of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, so we took our leave quickly and headed north.

Mango Madness

Oeufs Brouillés, Smoked Salmon, Mushrooms in Cream

Already on the north side of Asheville, we picked up Town Mountain Road and followed it to its termination at the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's clear that at least close to town, a lot of money lives out this road: lots of high priced houses, impeccably manicured lawns and gardens, fancy gated communities, the works. Further out the road and closer to the Parkway, it became much more rural and closer to the scenery we had seen the first few days of our trip.

Our rough agenda was to meander the Parkway to Mount Mitchell, climb it, and then head down the mountain to Burnsville, grab some lunch, drop in and say hello to Neil and Kay, and then head back to Asheville for dinner. Craggy Gardens wasn't either in the picture or out of the picture, but I wanted to stop there if we had a chance, which it turned out, we absolutely did.

One of the Reservoirs Just off the Blue Ridge Parkway

The Craggy Gardens Visitor Center is situated in the middle of a large parking area in an exposed saddle on the west side of the Parkway. It is also perched at the top of a very steep precipice affording outstanding views out of the windows on the back side of the tiny little gift shop/visitors center. We arrived at the Visitor's Center after errantly ending up at the Craggy Gardens picnic area a little further south on the wrong end of the trail that we wanted to walk. We merely wanted to see the bald, not engage in a long hike. A quick check of the map on my phone sent us in the direction of the Visitors Center where we took the trail at the southern end of the parking area and it was a very short walk indeed to the bald where we spent 20 minutes or so nosing around.

Walking Through the Rhododendron Thicket

Just a short way up the trail through the overarching rhododendron thicket, the trail opens onto the bald and just off to the side is a shelter. Looking at the unusual post and beam construction with twin posts, linked by notched bridging, supporting the roof leads me to believe that this is an old shelter. A closer inspection led my inner woodworker to suspect that this wood is chestnut and if so, that would date the shelter to the early part of the 20th century or before, given that the chestnut blight wiped out all the chestnuts basically by the beginning of the second World War. Maybe it is a Depression-era work project like a lot of the amenities on the Parkway.

Craggy Gardens Shelter

Walking the Bald Past Mounds of Catawba Rhododendrons

The bald, exposed at 5500 feet, must have pretty horrific weather at times and certainly a very short growing season when compared to the valley floor. This is readily evident in the stunted growth of the trees, especially this one with the very twisted branches that topped out less than my height, yet with a trunk that is probably ten inches in diameter.

Stunted Tree, Maybe 6' Tall but Very Old

Catawba Rhododendrons in Full Bud, Craggy Pinnacle to Right

Unfortunately, the Catawba rhododendrons open fairly late, especially at this elevation, and we were too early for the bloom by a few weeks. It must be a glorious sight to be up here when all the rhododendrons are in bloom! The floor of the rhododendron thickets had some flowers we had not seen in any great quantities on this trip: wild hydrangea, red trillium, and a bleeding heart relative called squirrelcorn (Dicentra canadensis) that I had not seen before.

Wild Hydrangea

Red Trillium, Trillium erectum

Squirrelcorn, Dicentra canadensis

One other surprising thing for me was the Northern Juncos who were clearly settled in for the summer here. I have not encountered breeding juncos south of upstate New York before. We watched several of them gathering nesting materials and here is a great photo of a male on territory giving his trilled "This is my turf!" call. Back home, the last of ours migrated north just a week or so ago after spending all winter with us.

Northern Junco, Trilling

After our short morning hike, we would continue north up the Blue Ridge Parkway, climbing and climbing towards Mount Mitchell.