Late January Dinner

In the past several months, we've pretty much stopped going out to eat at restaurants around Bend. The lousy food we have had in the past couple of years has made us really tired of spending a lot of money with almost no return. For myriad reasons, quality and consistency of restaurant food is lacking and so for our special meals lately, Ann and I have been cooking at home and inviting friends over to dinner.

This past weekend, I really had no overarching theme for the menu; I simply wanted to use (and use up) items that we had on hand already. In addition to a bunch of stuff to use up in the refrigerator, we have a pretty robust pantry that includes a great many items that we can use to cook whatever it is that we want.

Ann was in charge of cocktails and dessert. For cocktails, she made us one of her favorites, dirty martinis with blue cheese-stuffed olives. I am sorry to say that white liquor isn't my jam and although the cocktails were well made, I just couldn't drink mine and opened a bottle of Crémant d'Alsace to go with my appetizer. As much as I would like to be a martini guy, I am resigned to never being one.

Lovely Dirty Martini

Blue-Cheese Stuffed Olives

For appetizers, I had more Scottish cold-smoked salmon and sea trout caviar leftover from our aborted New Year's Eve celebration that I wanted to clear out of the refrigerator. So I envisioned an appetizer of smoked salmon, smoked salmon mouse, and sea trout caviar that is similar in many ways to the smoked salmon smørrebrød that I made a couple of weeks back when we got pounded by snow. Because this appetizer needed to be gluten-free, I cut cucumbers on the bias to mimic crostini. 

Smoked Salmon, Smoked Salmon Mousse, and Sea Trout Caviar

For the main part of our meal, it was pretty much a no-brainer that we were going to have pork tenderloin. A recent foray to Costco saw a package of four tenderloins come home, two of which were salted away in the freezer, leaving two more in the fridge that needed to be cooked. I decide to stuff a tenderloin with goat cheese and spinach and wrap it in prosciutto, a technique that I developed for the restaurant and which is documented in a separate post for anyone curious about how to do it.

The beauty of this dish is three-fold: it looks a lot more complicated to pull off than it is, it looks beautiful, and you can prep it well in advance, leaving only the final roasting to be done and freeing up your time to visit with your guests.

Searing the Prosciutto-Wrapped Stuffed Pork Tender
(cut in half so it would fit into the pan)

Seared Pork Tenderloin Rolls, Prepped in Advance, Ready to Roast

To accompany the pork, I turned to our pantry where I found the tail end of three separate bags of Arborio rice that I wanted to use or consolidate. Moreover, we just ran out of dried porcini and ordered a new bag which is more than will fit into the canister. I wanted to use the overflow that would not fit in the canister and so it seemed pretty natural to make an earthy risotto to go with the pork.

One of the neat things about risotto is that you can par-cook the base about ten minutes and let it cool. This then means that it will only take 8-10 minutes to have the risotto ready. In other words, all I had to do when guests were over was spend ten minutes at the range finishing the risotto while the pork roast cooled and rested. I spent the rest of my time socializing and enjoying the evening.

I get really tired of chefs making out like risotto needs some kind of crazy voodoo to pull off correctly and that it takes far too long to prepare to put it on the menu. In fact, I have good friends who run a restaurant whose menu claims that a simple plate of risotto will take the kitchen 45 minutes to make, and oh by the way, that will be $45 for the plate. Ridiculous. I love you guys, but that's ridiculous.

Spinach and Goat Cheese Stuffed Pork Tenderloin on Porcini Risotto

Ann asked also that I reprise the salad that I made last weekend and I obliged her. She just really loved the combination of ingredients: greens, spiced pecans, pomegranate seeds, and pickled shallots all combined with a pomegranate-pickled shallot vinaigrette. You can find all the salad magic covered in prior posts: spicing pecans, pickling shallots, and making the vinaigrette. 

Greens with Pickled Shallot and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

In keeping with the theme of using up, I remembered that for the holidays, Ann had prepped a batch of her delicious shortbread made with orange zest, rosemary, olive oil, sea salt, and very little sugar. Unfortunately, she became sick before she could do all the baking that she wanted to do. I suggested that we take the remaining log of dough from the freezer, cut it into discs, bake them, and then dip the shortbread cookies in melted chocolate for an easy finish to dinner. I sliced; Ann baked; I melted the chocolate and dipped the cookies; and Ann applied sea salt to the chocolate. Tag team and done!

Chocolate-Dipped Orange-Rosemary-Olive Oil Shortbreads

As a final thought, I love having leftovers in the refrigerator that can be repurposed into another meal. The following evening, I formed some of the leftover risotto into cakes that I crusted in a pan while gently rewarming the two remaining slices of stuffed pork tenderloin. While I poached four eggs, I whipped up a little of my pimentón sauce with which to finish our dinners of leftovers.

Leftovers: Stuffed Pork Tenderloin and Risotto Cake
Topped with Poached Eggs and Pimentón Sauce 

Ersatz New Year's Eve, At Long Last

Ann and I had planned for much of the year with Rob and Dyce to go to their house on New Year's Eve to celebrate the change in years with them. They had stocked up on Champagne and caviar for the evening and we bought caviar to bring as well. And, I had planned quite an elaborate latke board to bring as well, because who doesn't like caviar on their latkes?

Caviar Feast

Rob and Dyce headed off to Italy for the holidays and on return, both were sick. And Ann was sick. And I threw out my back, again. And we kept putting off the caviar in hopes that we could all be well at the same time, at least well enough to enjoy the caviar.

Finally, after four or five delays, we managed to get together. Ann and I had long since consumed all the ingredients for the latke board, but we hung on to the caviar. And so it was that on Sunday night, now in late January, we got together for a very subdued celebration, it having been more than a month since we got together last.

Rob opened some really nice Champagne while we were there. Sadly because of the imminent threat of icy streets, I needed my wits about me and nursed a glass and a half over three hours.

Rob very kindly made some blini to go with the caviar while we brought along a big bag of potato chips and a ramekin each of dill-horseradish sour cream and saffron aїoli. Potato chips and caviar is a well-known pairing with Champagne and a bit of my saffron aїoli makes it just that much better. I made the aїoli knowing that Dyce is a fiend for it.

Rob Made Blini

Caviar Anyone?
(top left, clockwise) American Paddlefish, Sea Trout, White Sturgeon Royal, and White Sturgeon

A word about caviar. The caviar market has led to the terrible exploitation of several species of fish, most notably the assorted sturgeons from Eastern Europe and Russia. In fact, it is mainly illegal to harvest many species in these areas because of this rampant abuse. As a responsible restaurateur, I only sourced farmed caviar from reputable suppliers for the restaurant and I continue post-restaurant to do the same.

Rob is quite the caviar connoisseur and splurged for a couple of different tins of farm-raised White Sturgeon caviar from Sterling in California, our West Coast supplier of choice. Ann and I have had this caviar before for our own celebrations and it is a wonderful product. White Sturgeon, the primary sturgeon species in the US West, is not quite as good as either Beluga or Ossetra, but it tastes quite good, comes sustainably from fish also used for meat production, and is priced more affordably.

Knowing Rob was going to get sturgeon roe, I wanted to bring something different and so I turned to the Portland Maine-based supplier to my restaurant, Browne Trading Company. I got a tin each of American Paddlefish and Sea Trout caviar, both of which we used at the restaurant in addition to sturgeon.

Native to the Mississippi River basin, American Paddlefish is a threatened species that is now farmed, like White Sturgeon, for caviar. The Sea Trout caviar comes from Rainbow Trout farmed in the ocean off Denmark. The appeal of the Sea Trout caviar, besides its delightful salmon color, is its unique texture. Each egg pops when you eat it to release a delightful, but decidedly non-fishy, flavor. If you have ever balked at salmon caviar because of its fishiness, trout caviar will be a revelation.

In addition to our not having seen Rob and Dyce in more than a month, we have also missed seeing their kids Reilly and Lola, who wasted no time in greeting us at the door and keeping us company throughout the evening.

Princess Reilly

Lola Wants Snacks

I'm glad we finally got together to eat this caviar before it went bad. We're already talking about next New Year's Eve.

New Year's 2020

2020 in Review

Many have characterized 2020 as a horrible year and one that they are glad to see in the rearview mirror. While it was certainly the most memorable year of my life and one that changed my life totally and irrevocably, I cannot say that 2020 was all for the bad.

Ann's Take on 2020

Given the extraordinary nature of the year, it would be easy to focus on the bad: living through a contentious presidential impeachment, rethinking our lives in the face of a global pandemic, going stir crazy being holed up at home, finding empty supermarket shelves at the onset of the COVID quarantine, losing my job, having a president who encouraged racial and social division, canceling our long-delayed vacation, enduring a presidential election cycle unlike any other, suffering the death of Ann's mother and attending her funeral by watching an empty church on the internet, coping with our dog's cancer diagnosis, barricading ourselves indoors with towels under the doors for just over two weeks because of massive forest fires, and seeing riots in major cities exceeding what we saw in 1968.

While that is a lot on the negative side of the balance sheet, lest you think that 2020 was a total shit show, the positive side is not negligible and potentially tips the scales to the good:

• The loss of my job was exactly the impetus that I needed to retire. To be honest, I was scared of pulling that trigger myself both for financial reasons (committing to a thin fixed income) and for personal reasons (my sense of self has always been bound to my work). Financially, we've learned to live on our adjusted income and emotionally, I'm used to being retired now, though it took several months to divorce myself from feeling that I needed some external purpose in my life.

• The pandemic that caused us to wear masks everywhere and to worry about social distancing also forced us to quarantine at home. As a result, Ann and I spent a lot of time together for the very first time in our marriage. It has proved to be wonderful.

• Our pharmaceutical companies undertook truly heroic efforts to deploy a COVID vaccine, efforts that are just now starting to come to fruition. Just as heroically, our amazing healthcare providers risked and continue to risk their personal safety to care for the ill. As a world, we now have first-hand experience in tackling the next global epidemic. I hope our politicians will have learned from this.

• Our three kids are well. Carter jumped through significant hoops, some COVID-imposed, to enlist in the Army and now has discovered a path forward for himself. Although it is early days for him, he seems to be thriving. The girls, Ellie and Lillie, despite both working in medicine and having daily contact with patients, are healthy. We are proud of all of them, but are equally glad that we do not have to go to work daily as do they.

• Being retired and being isolated at home gave me the time and motivation to tackle all those house and yard projects that have been on the someday list.  The yard and the house have never looked better. Ann's vision for the interior is coming along beautifully. She is a talented decorator and her results are impressive.

• Time at home and closure of restaurants has brought me back into the kitchen. After three years away from the restaurant and cooking simple post-work meals only begrudgingly, I am re-finding my love of cooking and I am finally delighting in cooking all those things that make my wife happy. 

• Likewise, I have missed writing for many years. It is my therapy. The time to sit and organize my thoughts is a bonus born of this epidemic.

• Finally, all this cooking and the drinking to combat the quarantine blues caused us both to put on a lot of weight, like a lot of people. But at year end, we find ourselves down a combined fifty or so pounds, our clothes fit (I had to get a new, smaller wedding ring), and we are walking a lot. We're not in super cardio-shape because our local terrain in the valley is flat, but we're way better off than in the first months of quarantine.

On balance then, 2020 was not as horrible as many feel it to be. Moreover, if 2020 has done nothing else, it has made me think about how well off we really are and how thankful we should be for the small things in our lives that we too often take for granted. I am:

• thankful that we no longer own a restaurant and have to worry about keeping it open and keeping the employees paid so that they can pay their bills. Several of our favorite places have closed permanently and tragically there are more to come. My heart goes out to all.

• thankful that we no longer have school-aged children that we need to educate safely and responsibly. I cannot imagine juggling home schooling and trying to work for a living.

• thankful that we had the financial ability to retire rather than face job-hunting in this environment. So many people are so much worse off.

• thankful that we have a strong marriage that has only gotten stronger during the epidemic. I am quite sure that it has had the opposite effect on many marriages.

All this said, I am really hoping that with the roll-out of the COVID vaccine that 2021 sees a return more towards what we consider normal. I am not so naïve as to think that our 2019 normal will be our normal going forward, but I hope that we make good strides on moving away from 2020 normal. The thing that I first want to do after all this virus mess is said and done is to go sit with Ann at a bar with a cheeseburger and a beer, talking to any and all at the bar. That's not such a big ask, is it?

New Year's Eve

Early in the day, we went to our local park for a five-mile hike, knowing that we were going to eat badly on New Year's Day. 

We did not plan much for New Year's Eve other than opening a bottle of Champagne and having a nice piece of fish for dinner. Earlier in the day when we went to Newberg to pick up the caviar that we ordered for celebratory Egg's Benedict on New Year's Day, we also picked up a stellar portion of wild Steelhead Trout. The side from which our piece came was huge (I'd guess that fish was 10+ pounds) and resplendent with its pink stripe and black dots. I pan seared it and it was delicious.

Marc Hébrart Premier Cru Champagne with our Steelhead Trout

With our fish, we had a very sexy Marc Hébrart Champage, a cuvée called "Mes Favorites." Delicious raspberry notes from Pinot Noir made this one of the best Champagnes that I have ever tasted and I've tasted a lot.

We ended up heading to bed early, though I stayed up until after midnight, the first half an hour of the new year spent comforting Grace who was terrified of the neighbors' fireworks. It would have been a great year to have held a quiet get together with some of our neighbors to toast the new year, but alas, we start 2021 with the same social distancing to which we had become inured in 2020.

New Year's Day

While we made no plans for New Year's Eve, we had been planning a special Pacific Northwest eggs Benedict for brunch the next day, a Benedict fashioned of toasted crumpets, smoked salmon, halibut, poached eggs, hollandaise, and white sturgeon caviar. All three fishes are native to our rivers and seas here in Oregon.

Ann Set the Table While I Cooked

We opened a bottle of grand cru grower Champagne for brunch, this one more lemony from being 50% Chardonnay and 50% Pinot Noir. It did not suck, but it was not in the same class as the premier cru Marc Hébrart from the evening before. It always amuses me when a premier cru (a lesser cru than grand cru) outperforms a grand cru. Of course, the grand cru was only two-thirds the price of the premier cru, so the market is under no illusions as to which is better.

Hollandaise Set Up

Making hollandaise is a classic kitchen task that every chef should master. In French cuisine, hollandaise is one of the five mother sauces upon which almost all other classic sauces are built. A good rule of thumb for home use is that four egg yolks and a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice will incorporate and thicken a quarter of a pound of melted butter, enough for 4-8 healthy portions.

I made a 2-yolk batch, a very difficult task because the volume is so small that it is so easy to overcook and curdle the sauce. A much bigger volume gives you a lot more leeway with the temperature. I had to watch the sauce like a hawk while dribbling butter into the egg yolks over a pan of boiling water. Most of the time, I had the bowl on the cold counter to keep the heat in check. If you're just learning, start with a big batch of hollandaise.

Pacific Northwest Eggs Benedict

Making this eggs benedict at home is a tricky proposition in that the halibut, the poached eggs, and the hollandaise are all last minute (what we chefs call à la minute) items that vie for a single cook's attention. In a restaurant, we would have at least three cooks involved in this dish: one poaching the eggs, one making the hollandaise, and one cooking the fish. And if labor is no object, you really want a fourth person doing the plate-up and calling for each ingredient as necessary.

At home, I toasted and plated the crumpets and smoked salmon while the halibut was cooking. I held the halibut warm between two domed plates while I made the hollandaise. As soon as the hollandaise was done, I dropped the eggs in the water bath. Then I started plating the halibut, pulled the eggs out of the water, rewhisked the hollandaise, and finished the plate-up. That's a lot of cooking with precise timing for a lone cook.

Farmed White Sturgeon Malossol Caviar

Out here on the West Coast, we have a much better selection of domestic caviar than on the East Coast. I wish we had this selection during my restaurant days. Back then, I never served any endangered or overfished fish, always seeking more environmentally friendly wild-caught species. The same thing went for caviar, except that for caviar, I preferred eggs from farm-raised sturgeon rather than endangered wild populations. Our domestic white sturgeon caviar can be really outstanding. At home, I still insist on caviar from sustainable operations that do not harm wild fish populations.

I prefer malossol caviar because it is less salty than regular caviar (you can hide a lot of sins behind salt, too). I remember the word малосоль from my Russian classes in college, a combination of мало ("light" or "a little") and соль ("salt").

Ann's No-Knead Olive Bread

Olive-Pecorino Focaccia

Continuing our "bad" New Year's eating spree, Ann had put up a bowl of her no-knead bread dough flavored with Kalamata olives and pecorino romano cheese the evening before. This is really significant in that we have been eating almost no simple carbs such as bread since August. For dinner on New Year's Day, I shaped the dough into a focaccia and baked it. We were going to have it with cheese and Pinot Noir, but we were wined out after the bottle of Champagne at brunch and really not hungry enough after the big brunch to want cheese along with the bread. If the truth be told, we really just craved the bread!

And so 2021 is now off and running. May it treat us all better than 2020.

Three Sheets, Portland

Ann's birthday arrived just days after we landed in Oregon and just days after our anniversary. I wanted to take her out for a nice meal and I wanted her to meet one of my former sous chefs, Danny Robayo, before he decamped for a new restaurant venture in Hawaii. I had some great talent in my kitchen back in Virginia and Danny is an all star. His exec gig at Three Sheets in Portland is about his fourth or fifth restaurant since becoming an executive chef in his own right and I couldn't be prouder of what he has become.

When we planned to move, I was excited to be able to hook back up with him. Over the course of the summer though, it became apparent that we might miss him: I did an extensive interview with his new employers in Hawaii and knew that he had been offered that gig back in September. We just did make it to his restaurant with only days to spare. In fact, I met his replacement who was in the restaurant training to take over the reins. That's how close we were to missing each other.

Three Sheets is a brand new restaurant on Hayden Island along the south shore of the Columbia River and is situated in what looks to be a condo building right at the Columbia River Yacht Club. We chose to come for Saturday brunch because that would be one of the slower shifts and hopefully would leave us more time to visit with Danny. As it turns out, we did get to spend several minutes with him at various points in the morning and we got to meet his wife and family as they came in for breakfast.

The Birthday Girl

And Her Date

We got ourselves situated and when our server asked if we'd like a Bloody Mary from their bar, who could resist? She offered to let us garnish our own, but we left her to do it, not expecting these crazily decorated concoctions! I love pickles of all sorts, so it was no hardship to feast on these meal-worthy cocktails. Garnish aside, the texture and flavor of the bloodies was fantastic!

Excellent Bloody Marys

I wasn't sure what to expect. Danny told me that he'd cook us something when I called him earlier in the week. He dropped by the table and told us to order entrees and he'd take care of the rest. So, at this point, we were pretty much starving and ordered two of their vast entrees from the menu, not knowing that we would soon have more food than an army could eat.

Steelhead Caviar with Blinis and Squid Ink Mascarpone

Ann and I are not huge eaters. We like to eat, but this plate of blini with squid ink mascarpone and a tin of steelhead trout caviar was a good start towards satiating our appetites. What a beautiful appetizer!

Matsutake Mushrooms on Pea Purée

Next came this plate of matsutake mushrooms on a pea purée. I'm surprised at green peas in October, but the seasons are very different out here. This was a beautiful dish.

Pork Belly and Quail Egg on a Biscuit with Syrup

Next up was an entire breakfast, a split biscuit stuffed with pork belly, topped with a quail egg and drizzled in maple syrup. At this point, we were already plenty full and our entrees had yet to make an appearance at the table.

Hangtown Fry

For my main course, I ordered a Hangtown fry with soft scrambled eggs, fried oyster, and pork belly all sitting on a grilled slice of sour dough bread, garnished with harissa. Really delicious.

Grilled Cheese with Duck Egg

Ann went for an adult grilled cheese, topped with an over easy duck egg. The plates are huge and so the mammoth slices of bread appear to be normally sized, but don't let appearances fool you: the portions here are enormous.

King Salmon on Fresh Chickpeas

Now a good 2-1/2 hours into our feast, out comes Danny with this plate of king salmon, "just because you have to try this." The salmon was cooked perfectly, but I expect no less from Danny and his kitchen, and it was a really spectacular piece of fish. Not all salmon is created equal, and this stood head and shoulders above most.

What made the dish so outstanding was not the salmon, but the fresh chickpeas, just slightly cooked and mixed with a mild harissa and feta cheese. I love fresh chickpeas and was fortunate to have Yael to grow them for me at the restaurant. They're a pain to shell out, but they taste so wonderful. This is probably the single best dish I had in a restaurant in 2017.

Lobster and Matsutake Mushroom Risotto with Black Truffles

On the way out the door, Danny handed me a cardboard to-go container and whispered conspiratorially, "I know you'll know what to do with these." Not that I couldn't already smell the truffle from several feet away, but I resisted opening it until we got home to find a couple matsutakes, a couple lobster mushrooms, and a black truffle. I did indeed know just what to do with them and made this risotto a couple days later when we had finally gotten sufficiently hungry to eat again.

My great thanks to Chef Danny Robayo for taking great care of us, affording Ann and me the much-needed time to sit and talk for a morning, and of course, for the goodie box. Danny, I wish you all the luck with your move to Hawaii and in opening your new restaurant.

Pommes Anna for Christmas

There hasn't been much to celebrate this year at our house but we've put a brave face on it and gone through the motions anyway. For Christmas Day brunch, Ann decided some days ago that she wanted pommes Anna and so how could I refuse?

But seriously, you ever heard of doing pommes Anna for Christmas? Me either.

Ann's Snowman Christmas Tree

A Little Splash of Color

Playing Christmas Carols

It wasn't all sadness this year though. Ann managed to convince Carter to come play some Christmas carols at the piano with her. That's a pretty decent accomplishment given that he's a teenager that really wants nothing to do with parents.

Pommes Anna Takes Serious Quantities of Butter

Pommes Anna is one of the great classics of French cuisine, introduced to America largely by Julia Child. For anyone inclined to the kitchen, it really is quite a simple dish to make. I have made dozens and dozens of them in my life. In France, they actually sell copper pans specifically designed for making this dish, but really, any heavy bottomed round pan can work and this is a perfect excuse for me to pull out the old Griswold number 8 cast iron pan, made sometime in the 1930s.

Ready for the Oven

You can use about any potato for pommes Anna. I typically use russets because their high starch content helps the cake stick together. I sliced these by hand, though I often use a mandoline. The first layer is key: it will be your show side, so take your time and make the first layer look nice. After putting a good bit of melted butter in the bottom of the pan which should be on a low flame, I lay the first potato slice in the center and spiral my way out to the edge of the pan.

Between each layer, I pour over more melted butter and sprinkle on some kosher salt. After the first show layer, how you do the subsequent layers is fairly inconsequential. The real goal is to make the layers tight and even with as few gaps as possible, especially around the edges. The more edge contact with the side of the pan, the better and more solid your edge crust will be and that will help hold your potato cake together.

Out of the Oven

I use the bottom of a large pan to compress the potatoes into as flat a cake as I can before it goes into the oven and then again when I pull it out to uncover it. I cover the cake with foil and put it into a fairly hot oven, say 400F, for about 25-30 minutes. Then I will pull it out and check the doneness of the potatoes. If the potatoes are fairly soft, I will compress the cake again and then put it back in the oven uncovered this time until I see a good crust formed all the way up the sides, another 15 minutes or so. The top layer of potatoes will be starting to brown by this point.

Ready for Christmas Brunch

Let the cake cool for a minute and then pour off the butter from the pan. You'll need to hold the cake in the pan as you tilt it to drain the butter: a plate works well for this. Then invert the cake onto whatever serving plate or platter you're going to us. I decided on a cake stand, since the pommes Anna was the star of our brunch.

A Touch of Indulgence

It is now tradition that we have Champagne and caviar for Christmas, and so I got two different caviars for our brunch. I scrambled some eggs to go with our pommes Anna and we topped the eggs with caviar. It was a bright spot in our Christmas season.

Christmas Day Bubbles and Caviar

Caviar and sparkling wine is something of our tradition for Christmas. This year, I scrambled some eggs and made some crostini to use as vehicles for shoveling caviar into our faces. Eggs are a delightful foil to salty caviar.

Virginia Bubbles

Crostini, Eggs. Bubbles, Caviar

Eggs are the Perfect Foil for Caviar

From Virginia to New Mexico

A White Christmas

Snow for Christmas? Sure, they sing about it in all the carols, but let's face it: here in Virginia, January and February are our snow months. [So somebody splain to me why it snowed October 27th last year. Global warming?] I can't remember the last White Christmas here in Virginia; that's how rarely it happens.

As a rule, I don't look at the weather forecast very often. As a restaurateur, it just depresses me. Any hint of snow in the forecast and our business is going to hell. So what a crazy surprise on Christmas Eve when Ann and I got out of the theatre mid-afternoon from watching the so-so Hobbit to see it snowing hard, hard, hard with a couple inches already on the ground! Our Christmas Day was bracketed by snow the day before and the day after this year, with more on the way tonight.

The Juncos Love the Thistle Feeder

So what better weather to sit near the fire and indulge in our annual ritual of sparkling wine and caviar? This year I picked a really awesome Virginia sparkler from Thibaut-Janisson down near Charlottesville, the Brut de Chardonnay. I am not sure that if I tasted blind that I could tell this from Champagne. Yes, people, it is that good and it comes from Virginia! We always splurge and get 250 grams of a domestic paddlefish caviar and in the ultimate display of gluttony, eat it directly from the tin! And so we did this year.

T-J and Caviar, our Christmas Ritual

And later in the day, we opened a new cheese. I paid way, way too much money for this cheese for Ann because of the story behind it. Antonio Carpenedo wanted to make a unique and memorable cheese in honor of his marriage to his wife Giuseppina in 1961 to celebrate their 50th in 2011. I bought the cheese because this is a sweet sentiment and I wanted to see what kind of cheese a master cheesemaker would make for such a special and once in a lifetime event.

The result, Blu '61, is a blue cow's milk cheese from Treviso, soaked in Passito di Raboso wine and topped with wine-soaked cranberries. Definitely something different!

According to the sales literature, the cheese was supposed to be:

"Soft and creamy, piquant, fruity, sweet, salty, elegant, harmonious, aromatic, and heady. You will remember where you were the first time you taste this, it is that memorable."

Yeah, not so much. Our cheese doesn't have any blue and the paste is still kind of chalky and underripe. I have never been so disappointed in a cheese in my whole life. You win some and you lose some. I lost some today.

But Antonio and Giuseppina, Felice 50° Anniversario!

Blue '61: Quite the Story!