Easter 2023

Ever since Ann's father passed away in 2016, we really haven't celebrated Easter all that much. With no family to cook for, it has seemed kind of pointless. This year, Rob and Dyce invited us over for Easter ham dinner which was much appreciated. It is very hard to find anyone who is willing to cook for me. People are intimidated by feeding a chef, but paradoxically, as a bunch we are just pretty happy to have anyone cook anything for us at any time.

Easter Sunday late afternoon we drove across the river to Rob and Dyce's house on a beautifully sunny day. We were greeted with delicious cocktails whose name I can no longer remember, if ever I knew. As I recall, they consisted of St. Germain, lime, mint, and sparkling wine. They were refreshingly delicious and worked well with Dyce's deviled eggs made with pickled jalapeños.

Deviled Eggs with Jalapeño

Going over to their house is always a treat for us in that we are guaranteed to get our dog fix in visiting with Lola and Reilly. We really miss our dogs and these two help with that. Lola's a crazy bundle of non-stop energy, while the smaller Reilly is much more sedate, but rules the roost.

Busted!

Reilly is Never Far From Rob

Rob smoked a Kurobuta (Berkshire) ham from Snake River Farms, a regional (next door in Idaho) purveyor of fine beef and pork. You'll see a lot of their products in high-end restaurants in this area.

Rob's Ham Fresh from the Smoker

Dyce made a salad to accompany the ham that was equally tasty and unusual. Don't quote me on this as I was too busy eating to dissect it, but I believe the salad was primarily shaved raw brussels sprouts, roasted artichoke hearts, cannellini, Italian parsley, and grated cheese (pecorino or Parmigiano) in a shallot vinaigrette.

Dyce's Salad of Brussels Sprouts, Cannellini, and Artichoke Hearts

Rob had asked me some weeks ago to make pommes Anna to accompany the ham. When he asked, neither he nor I knew that the vast majority of times that I have made pommes Anna at home, it has been for an Easter celebration. I determined this by looking at all the pommes Anna posts I have made over the years. Some coincidence!

I tried something new for this pommes Anna that I cannot recommend. Because we were having the potato dish at Rob and Dyce's house, I wanted to do the majority of cooking at our house and then finish it at theirs so that it would be hot for dinner. Pommes Anna cooks in two steps: first, covered to essentially steam the potatoes done and then uncovered, to dry them out a bit and finish the dish.

I decided to do the covered cooking at home and transport the potatoes to their house still covered and finish the uncovered cooking part in their oven. While in theory this was a good idea, in reality, during transport, the potatoes glued themselves to the bottom of my cast iron pan and would not release. I put the finished cake back together as well as I could, but it was a disappointing outcome. Now I know.

Pommes Anna with Yellow Potatoes

With the ham and potatoes, Rob opened a stunning dry Riesling from the Nahe, the 2020 Schäfer-Fröhlich Bockenauer Felseneck Riesling Grosses Gewächs. This was a first-class wine and a natural pairing with ham. Ham is a tricky dish to pair with wine because it is often very salty, smoky, or sweet, or really any combination of those three.

While Riesling is a great choice, we don't have any in the cooler from last summer, so what to bring? My pairing rule of thumb has always been, when in doubt: Pinot Noir. Because of the inherent sweetness of ham, I prefer a younger wine that still has a lot of its fruit, so I opted to bring a 2021 Patty Green Pinot Noir Estate Old Vine Ribbon Ridge, which is one of the best of the splendid 2021 Willamette Valley wines that we have tasted.

And finally, a few more photos.

As always, Ann and I so enjoyed our time with Dyce, Rob, and the girls. If we do it again, I won't be splitting the cooking of the pommes Anna between houses!

Spatchcocked Game Hen with Bacon-Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Ann has been talking about spatchcocking a chicken for many months, but I have been unable to find a small chicken, one of say 3 pounds. Spatchcocking is a cooking method in which you remove the backbone of a bird to flatten it out so that it cooks evenly. We used to do this all the time with quail at the restaurant. Spatchcocked birds lend themselves to cooking on a grill or in a pan as opposed to a whole fowl which wants to be roasted in the oven.

The importance of size for me when spatchcocking a bird is that the smaller ones seem to cook best using this method. As the birds get larger, it becomes harder to cook the thighs to done without overcooking the breast.

When I was a kid, the size of a broiler chicken was 3 to 3.5 pounds and a monster chicken, the one that my mom wanted to feed our family of five, was a four-pounder. They've slowly been creeping up in weight ever since to the point where a tiny bird is now four pounds, while most are over five pounds with some pushing five and a half.

Spatchcocked Game Hen with Bacon-Roasted Brussels Sprouts

A few weeks back, I finally found my small chickens when I happened on Cornish game hens in the freezer case at the store. I did not know, but a quick conversation with the meat manager informed me, that they are a regularly stocked item for any time that I want to spatchcock a bird.

Running about a pound and a half to perhaps two pounds, these small birds are nothing more than very young, 3- to 4-week old chickens. The Cornish part of the name comes from being a cross between the Cornish and White Plymouth Rock breeds, but the terms game and hen are misnomers. They're not game in that they are domestic chickens, nor are they hens in that both males and females alike are marketed under this label.

To spatchcock a bird, lay it on your cutting board breast side down and remove the backbone. You could use a knife to remove the backbone by cutting closely along either side of it, but kitchen shears work so much better. {I save the backbones for stock.) After removing the backbone, flip the bird over skin-side up and give the center of the breast a good push with the heel of your hand. This should break the sternum (keel bone) and likely the wishbone as well, allowing the bird to lie flat.

My cooking technique for game hens is a two-step process. First, I sprinkle the birds generously with salt, pepper, and dried thyme and then brown them on both sides, basting with hot oil from time to time. In this particular case, I browned the chickens in bacon fat left from cooking the bacon for the Brussels sprouts (see the bottom of this post). Second, I place the birds on a sheet tray in a moderate oven (say 350F) and roast them until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165-170F. After this, the birds need to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Browning Spatchcocked Bird on the Stovetop

While the birds are resting, I like to make a quick pan sauce for them by pouring off all the oil in the pan in which I browned them, leaving only the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Then I will deglaze with water (really, water is fine) or chicken stock to make a really simple pan sauce to drizzle over the birds.

Pan Sauce for the Birds

For service, I like to cut the birds in half lengthwise, which should be trivial if you snapped the sternum and wishbone before cooking them. Then I like to lay one half on the plate with the other draped over it at a 45-degree angle as you see in the lead photo of this post. It's totally not necessary, but I think it makes the plate look nicer and more compact, while giving the plate a little height. Just a quick plating tip from an old chef.

Now on to the Brussels sprouts which my wife claims to despise, snarking about them every time she saw the stalk of sprouts in the fridge. I haven't cooked sprouts in a very, very long time and here's why. As a seasonal restaurant with everything locally grown, foraged, and fished, we only served what we had available and in the winter, that meant a gracious plenty of Brussels sprouts.

Customers coming to a fine dining restaurant (mind you this was many years ago now; today sprouts are on menus everywhere) were loath to part with good money to pay for a pedestrian storage vegetable such as sprouts. Naturally, they wanted asparagus with everything, regardless of its 4-week window of availability in late spring.

So, we had to devise a way to entice them to order Brussels sprouts. We ended up shaving the sprouts and searing them hard with sliced shallots in duck fat, with a large quantity of chopped confited pork belly ends (the parts left after we sliced the pretty parts for other dishes). Then we sprinkled the sprouts with white sugar and let it caramelize, only to deglaze the whole with white balsamic vinegar. Voilà!: sweet and sour sprouts with pork belly and duck fat.

At first, we sold a few portions here and there, but over time, we created a monster. Every table would order at least one portion of sprouts and most tables would order multiple portions to the point where I was begging my growers to increase production and sell me all that they could grow. They say that familiarity breeds contempt and so it was for me with sprouts. I cooked enough in my career that it took me a very long time to ever want to see another one.

Recently, I saw a really nice display of sprouts on the stalk at the grocery store and brought a stalk home with me. For those who have never seen sprouts, the tiny cabbages grow all along a tall central stalk. They are harvested by snapping the little sprouts off the stem from the bottom to the top as they grow to size. In some cases, farmers cut the entire stem and send the whole thing to market. I like sprouts in this form because they have no cut ends to brown, desiccate, and require trimming.

Sprouts, Shallots, Bacon, and Bacon Grease Before Roasting

For home, I like to roast halved sprouts in a moderate oven (say 350F) until they are good and brown on the cut side. In this case, I cooked 4-5 slices of bacon cut into strips (lardons in chef-speak) until they were done, then tossed the halved sprouts and sliced shallots with the bacon and enough bacon grease to coat everything.

Then I pour the sprouts onto a sheet tray and arrange the sprouts such that they are all cut side down. This will let the cut sides brown nicely as you see in the very first photo in this post. Cook until the sprouts are soft and the cut sides are crispy. I want to say that I put the sprouts into the oven about 20 minutes before the chickens and then took them and the chickens out after 30 additional minutes for a grand total of about 50 minutes in the oven.

Oh, and the verdict from the snark in the family? I only gave her a few sprouts to try and before I could serve my plate, she asked for more. Win!

Gochujang-Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts

I love gochujang, that somewhat spicy, funky, thick and sticky, fermented Korean paste of red chiles, glutinous rice, soy, and barley. Although many people would find gochujang highly spicy, in my world, it's pretty mild as spicy things go.

Gochujang-Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts,
Ann: "Damn it! You're Trying to Get Me to Eat Vegetables!"

Back during the height of COVID sequestration, I started toying with the idea of gochujang and carrots, using those carrots as a base for a fish dish. Initially, I tossed the carrots in a gochujang-based sauce before roasting them, but in more recent iterations, I have taken to roasting the carrots first, then tossing them in the sauce after cooking, à la Buffalo wings. I prefer this method because I can roast the carrots just to doneness without having to worry about the sauce burning in the high heat of the oven.

Last night, in expanding on the theme I decided to do a strictly vegetarian dish of roasted carrots and brussels sprouts in gochujang sauce over rice. From the get-go, Ann was asking, "What protein are you going to serve that on?" She's not quite of the "if it's not meat, it's not a meal" ilk, but vegetarian is harder for her than for me. I could happily live on vegetables without any meat at all, but that would really test Ann's limits.

Gochujang Sauce

My new iteration of gochujang sauce shows some evolution from the original as well. Last night, I mixed a lot of gochujang with a little rice vinegar, some agave nectar to balance, a little soy for salt, a touch of sesame oil for complexity, and finely minced garlic. A couple of tablespoons of warm water helped make the sauce fluid enough. This would make a really tasty Buffalo wing sauce, come to think of it.

Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts

One of Ann's favorite meals is a simple roast chicken and I share her enthusiasm for it. When she asked me last week to roast a chicken for her, I could not refuse. A roast chicken has a lot going for it: it is delicious; it is a simple dish to prepare; and, it provides leftovers for additional meals.

Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts

Chicken Trussed and Ready to Roast

To ready the bird for the oven, I patted it dry, stuffed some rosemary sprigs into the cavity, trussed it with string, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and put it in the roaster, surrounded by Yukon Gold potatoes, brussels sprouts, peeled cloves of garlic, and more rosemary sprigs.

Then it went into a moderate oven (350F) until the legs moved freely in the joint. The internal temperature in the thickest part of the thighs was 165F and I'm sure it finished ten degrees higher than that. This 4-pound bird was in the oven for 90 minutes.

I truss my bird because that's the way I learned to cook poultry, old school classic French technique called ficeler un poulet. I don't know what they teach new cooks, but I fear that I may be of the last generation to truss poultry so that it cooks evenly and looks nice on the table. I fear that new cooks may not even know how to cut up a chicken, let alone roast a whole one. Do I underestimate our culinary schools? I don't know; I never attended. They did not exist in my youth.

Along with hard boiling an egg and making a decent omelette, roasting a chicken is a basic culinary skill. I like to roast a bird or two a year to keep my practice up, though there really is not too much to it other than knowing when to take the bird out of the oven so that the dark meat is cooked and before the white meat dries out.

One of the best things about a roast chicken is that it provides additional meals. We ate roast chicken and vegetables the first night, chicken tinga the second night, and vegetable soup with chicken stock the third. Not a bad yield for a $5 bird.

Thanksgiving 2014

And another Thanksgiving is in the books, for Ann and me, our 6th, this one a good bit smaller than in years past. But though it was smaller, it is always a pleasure to gather with friends and family at the table to celebrate another year. It was really easy this year. With it snowing on Wednesday, there wasn't any business at the restaurant and I was able to prep most of the meal at work, letting us go slow and relax on Thanksgiving itself.

Ann and her Parents

Who is That Photo Bombing the Girls?

Appetizers: Turkey Rillettes, Galantine, and Cornichons

A Really Nice Right Bank Bordeaux

Ann Always Sets a Beautiful Table



Apple Cider-Brined Turkey Thighs Only This Year; No White Meat for Us

Ann's Bread and Saltine Cracker Dressing

Ann's Bistro Mash: Half Sweet Potatoes, Half Red Skin Potatoes

Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts with Pork Belly

The Obligatory Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Sweet Potato Tart with Cassis Cream and Black Walnut Streusel

And a 1991 Port to Finish off the Meal

Thanksgiving 2013

Darn! I thought we were going to do something different this year for Thanksgiving: a turkey and smoked sausage paella. Now wouldn't that have been fun? But alas, it wasn't to be. After agreeing to the paella, Ann changed her mind and decided we needed to cook the same old meal that I have been doing for about 30 years. I don't really mind the traditional Thanksgiving, but it is no longer something that excites me. Maybe because Ann doesn't cook all that often, she gets excitement and satisfaction from the once-a-year big feast. Speaking only for myself, I regularly cook for lots more people than we have over for Thanksgiving and so not only is it not a big feast, but I am bored with the menu, something we avoid at the restaurant by changing the menu nightly. Alas, maybe next year....

Lest you think I am complaining, I am not really. I had a wonderful time with all our friends and family and enjoyed getting in the kitchen with Ann and making it happen.

Here are some people shots. My camera is useless indoors if there is any motion and people, unlike food, just will not hold still. I couldn't even get a single decent photo of Mary, of the seven or eight frames, not a one was worth a damn. I dislike my camera. My cell phone does a better job.

Love the Light on the Place Cards

Found Centerpiece: Pampas Grass, Juniper, Leeks

Mark and Kelley Brought Huge Antipasti Trays

Cindy Brought Awesome Cheeses

Mash, Half Sweet Potato, Half Potato

Ann's Spinach Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing: Amazing and New!

We did actually have a new dish this year: a spinach salad with caramelized red onions, crispy shiitakes, bacon, and blue cheese with a hot bacon vinaigrette. I think Ann set out to make sautéed greens but picked a salad recipe by mistake. What a great mistake!

Ann's "Burnt" Sweet Potato Torte

Ann called me on Wednesday afternoon to say that she had burned her sweet potato torte and asked me if I could bring a dessert home, so I threw together a quick sweet potato cheese cake to replace it. It turned out she was freaking unnecessarily and her torte was excellent, if a tad brown on top. And so we had two sweet potato desserts, though my cheese cake was two thirds cheese and only a third sweet potato, just to give it some color.

My Sweet Potato Cheese Cake

Another delicious Thanksgiving with friends and family in the books. You should have been there!