New Year's Eve: Latke Board

New Year's Eve 2025 is right at the top of my list of most memorable year-end celebrations. And for all the wrong reasons. Somehow, I picked up a nasty case of food poisoning, and by the time that midnight rolled around, I had all the classic symptoms.

The cautious drive home down the slippery butte in the icy and misting rain-fog-snow mess was excruciating as I fought back wave after wave of gut wrenching nausea. I finally got to sleep around 0300 and when I awoke the next morning, I had strained the ribs on my right side. Fun times.

I should have known something was up earlier; I did not even feel like taking photos which is uncharacteristic.

Small Potato Latkes for NYE Caviar

We made plans with Rob and Dyce to have caviar and Champagne at their house to ring in the new year. All of us really like caviar and I happen to like latkes with my caviar, although the more I think about it, really great potato chips are fantastic and so much easier. In any case, a couple years ago, I came up with an idea for New Year's along the lines of a charcuterie board: a latke board. I had never heard of or seen anyone doing any such thing, but when I typed the phrase into my handy dandy search engine, up popped thousands of photos of people who beat me to the punch.

This reminds me that there is little truly original thought in cooking; dishes are built from a long lineage of precursors. Long ago in my restaurant days, a line cook from another restaurant angrily confronted me outside my restaurant, accusing me of stealing a dish from the menu at his restaurant. As busy as I was, I did not have the time or the energy to look at another restaurant's menu, let alone steal a dish.

I believe that it might have been some kind of beet and goat cheese salad. Because people have been putting beets and goat cheese as long as there have been beets and goat cheese, I am certain that it was not original to either the young cook's restaurant or mine. It was on thousands of menus long before our two.

In any case, my latke board idea reminds me that two people can come up with the same idea independently. My idea was to make several different kinds of latkes, a few pickles, and a few spreads, all of which would work with caviar.

Shallot Pickles and Cucumber Pickles Curing

My Latke Board
Potato, Celery Root, and Sweet Potato Latkes
Cucumber, Shallot, and Cornichon Pickles
Smoked Trout Mousse, Saffron Aïoli, Horseradish-Dill Sour Cream
Smoked Salmon and Caper Mousse

If you can name a root vegetable, I have made latkes from it, and likely fries and chips, or for you Brits, chips and crisps. Of the three vegetables that I picked for this latke board, potatoes will always be the best, but celery root latkes are equally phenomenal. The little sugar in sweet potato latkes is interesting, but makes the latkes want to stick to the pan and want to burn before they are done. Reducing the heat is necessary for making sweet potato latkes.

Latkes with smoked trout mousse was a regular feature of the lunch menu at the restaurant for many years, probably a decade. Ultimately, I believe it was a series of fad diets that did them in. For many years, the ladies who lunch would not order anything fried, no matter how tasty. In any case, apparently I had a reputation for making latkes, as the following cute "diploma" will attest. My oldest daughter, then but a tiny girl, awarded me a "specialty in making potato pancakes." How cute is this!?!

Chef's Diploma with
Specialty in Making Potato Pancakes

For caviar for the restaurant, I always bought from Browne Trading Company in Maine. I still buy from them, but the retail prices are a shock after paying wholesale for decades. Rob bought caviar from a company that is new to me, OM. Their ossetra and Browne's Siberian Supreme malossol were the best of the bunch.

We All Bought Caviar

Potato Chips, Best Vehicle for Caviar

Being the designated driver, I could only but sip a little of the delicious Champagne on offer at Rob and Dyce's. I managed to photograph the two that we bought so that I could remember them. The Gonet-Médeville is a lovely blanc de noirs. The André Clouet "Chalky" looks pretty gimmicky in its white wrap, but it is a fine 100% Chardonnay blanc de blancs. I like it, but I like many others better.

Here's hoping that 2026 proves better than New Year's Eve's inauspicious start.

Estouffade d'Agneau à la Provençale

Ann has been thinking a lot recently about dishes she wants me to make. She had been leafing through a French country cookbook and was intrigued by a Provençale farmhouse recipe for a lamb stew. At her urging, I bought a lamb shoulder at the farmers market a couple of weeks back and set out to make a stew.

My stew is modeled on one called an estouffade which can also be called a daube after the daubière, the specialized pot in which the stew cooks. By either moniker, this stew is made most typically from red meat, lamb or beef, that has been marinated with vegetables and red wine and then cooked slowly in a covered braising dish of the cook's choice, be it cocotte, doufeu, or daubière.

The word estouffade might seem familiar to you as it is to me. When I was a teenager in Alabama, I was highly influenced by Cajun cuisine which calls certain stews étouffées. Both words come from the verb étouffer meaning to smother, but are distanced from each other in time and by an ocean, the one being Parisian French and the other Acadian French, the form of French that migrated to first Québec in the 1600s and then later to the bayou country of south Louisiana. In the latter half of the 20th century in Cajun country, étouffée move further away from estouffade to become a roux-based stew of shellfish, typically shrimp or crawfish, less commonly of crab or white fish.

Estouffade d'Agneau; Purée de Celeri-Rave

Enough with the language history and on with the lamb stew that you can see on a pile of celery root purée. At the farmers market, I picked up a couple of nice celery roots, the first of the year, with an eye towards braising chunks of them in the stew instead of potatoes. But after lugging them home, I decided to turn them into a purée and serve the estouffade over them.

You can see how transparent the broth is and it's just what I wanted for a home dinner. But for restaurant service, I would have reduced the broth and amped it with lamb glace and potentially have thickened it with a beurre manié, a mixture of butter and flour kneaded into a ball. I would have also cooked the vegetables separately and combined everything at the last second before plating. But then, that just wouldn't be home cooking, would it?

A stew is something that you are supposed to throw in the oven or on a back burner and forget about, not slave over. The French even have an awesome verb, mijoter, that captures this idea of throwing something on low heat and forgetting about it and letting it do its thing until it achieves awesomeness. Sure, we have braise and we have simmer, but they don't capture the full essence or insouciance of mijoter.

Making a daube or estouffade is at least a two-day process. On the first day, you prep and marinate the lamb and vegetables and make the stock. You cook and serve the lamb on day two, or as in my case, on day three.

Lamb Shoulder, Carrots, Leeks, Rosemary Ready to Marinate

First, break down the lamb shoulder, cubing the lamb into chunks while reserving the trim to make a stock in which to braise the stew. Put the lamb in a large bowl.

Next, prep the vegetables: carrots in chunks and leeks, sliced into centimeter-wide coins. More traditionally, cooks use onions, but I had some beautiful leeks that I wanted to use. Add the vegetables to the lamb.

Add whatever herbs you want: I opted for rosemary only. Add seasoning: garlic, salt, pepper, and orange zest. Orange zest is a sometimes added to Provençale stews along with olives and rosemary. This happens to be a flavor combination that resonates with me, so that's what I did.

Toss everything together with a half a bottle of red wine and then put it in the refrigerator at least overnight. My lamb marinated two nights because I wasn't ready to cook it the next day.

Lamb Trim for Stock

Lamb shoulder contains a lot of fat and gristle, unlike the leg which is leaner. I prefer shoulder for stews because it braises out more tender than leg, though either will do. You could even start with pre-cubed kebab meat, but then you won't be able to make stock from the trim.

You can see that I got a lot of trim. In fact, from a 2.4-pound lamb shoulder, I only got a pound and a quarter of lamb cubes to stew.

Browning Trim for Stock

To make the stock, brown the trim well, to the point where all the surfaces are caramelized as you can see in the photo above. When they are brown, pour off as much of the fat as you can and then add water. I added a quart of water and brought the stock down to a cup and a half. And then I added another quart of water and did it again.

Stock, Ready to Refrigerate

Once the stock has reduced, I like to refrigerate it overnight so that I can pop the layer of fat right off the top and discard it. There are lots of ways to degrease a stock, but for a dish that takes two days to make, you might as well let the refrigerator do the hard work.

Estouffade Almost Ready for Oven

When you cook the lamb, you have two options. You can separate the lamb from the marinade, pat it dry with paper towels, and brown it. Or, you can just dump it in a pan and start cooking. You get slightly different flavors: a rich caramelized lamb flavor versus a lighter, fresher lamb flavor.

In my house, browning the lamb isn't an option. Because the lamb has been marinated and is full of liquid, it takes a very high flame to brown it, even after it has been patted dry. That is absolutely guaranteed to set off my smoke detector, so browning is out for me. Moreover, I did not want any added fat from browning the meat.

Some people would separate the lamb from the marinade and then cook the marinade to reduce the liquid in it. I didn't feel like going this extra step. It would have resulted in a thicker, darker sauce, but I was aiming for a lighter, less heavy dish.

This is the point at which you would add any ingredients that were not in the marinade. For my part, I added a couple dozen black olives as would be typically done in Provence. I also fished out the rosemary sprigs and, as you can see above, I put the lamb stock in the pan. Some people would also add some tomatoes at this point, but that's not the flavor that I wanted.

The pan went into a moderate oven (about 350F) covered for about three hours and uncovered for a final half hour to help concentrate the braising juices slightly.

Once the lamb was done and cooling, I made a batch of celery root purée and then served dinner. Because I was careful to limit the fat (carefully prepping the lamb, defatting the stock, no added olive oil, no thickening of the sauce with beurre manié, and no butter or cream in the celery root), we ended up with a pretty light and fairly healthy dinner.

Estouffade d'Agneau à la Provençale

The following recipe will feed four people easily and six if necessary. Allow two days to make this stew.

2-1/2 pound lamb shoulder, or 1-1/4 pounds of lamb cubes

10-12 medium carrots, in chunks

2 large leeks, in centimeter-wide rings

8 sprigs rosemary

1 teaspoon Kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

8 cloves garlic, minced

zest of one orange

half a bottle of red wine

1-1/2 cups lamb stock

24 Nyons or other black olives

Follow the detailed procedure above. To recap, mix the lamb, carrots, leeks, rosemary, salt, pepper, garlic, orange zest, and red wine. Refrigerate at least overnight, stirring from time to time. Place the marinated lamb in a baking dish and remove the rosemary. Add the olives and lamb stock. Cover the dish and bake until the lamb is almost done. Uncover and cook another half an hour.

Celery Root Purée

It's fall now in the Willamette Valley and that's exciting for me because we're starting to see the return of the root vegetables to the farmers markets. This week marked the return of the celery root, nice fresh smallish ones. And it so happened that I was shopping for something to serve with a lamb stew. Celery root would be perfect.

I had it in mind to cut the celery root into large chunks and braise it in the stew, but I changed my mind. Instead, it ended up as a purée under the stew. Celery root has a very mellow and mild celery flavor and it makes a wonderful purée that is a fairly healthy stand-in for mashed potatoes. Of the root vegetable purées, parsnip is my favorite with celery root not far behind. We served a lot of each at the restaurant where the servers would get the invariable question, "What did you put in these mashed potatoes?"

Celery Root Purée 

I was aiming for low-cal celery root purée, so I thinned it with a dribble or two of the cooking water while blitzing it somewhat successfully in my wife's mother's antique first-generation Cuisinart. It knocks things down, but it doesn't give the ultrasmooth purées we served at the restaurant.

At the restaurant, I would have put the celery root in the big commercial two-horsepower robot coupe, then passed it through a very fine chinois to remove any fibers, and then I would have respun it in the robot coupe with heavy cream to make a decadent mousse. Or rather, I would have been off doing executive chef things such as payroll while one of the cooks made the mousse. ;) Yeah, that chef life rocks!

Celery Roots

These celery roots are just in from the farmers market and are trimmed much closer than I have ever seen them before. The bottoms have a mass of crazy roots which you can see on the left, while the tops have celery stalks and leaves sprouting out. You can see where the top was trimmed on the celery root on the right.

If you're new to celery root, a word of advice. The medium size roots such as these (they're about softball size) are preferable to the larger ones. When you start getting roots as large as pomelos and larger, you'll find that they are often soft and pithy in the center and sometimes stringy to the point of being useless.

Trimmed Celery Roots

Trimming celery root is not rocket science.  All the fuzzy brown skin has to come off. A vegetable peeler is not going to be of much use: use a knife to slice off the skin until you expose bright white flesh.

Cubed Celery Root Ready to Cook

Once the celery root is cleaned, you can do whatever you want with it. It is good raw in slaws, salads, and in that quintessential French bistro appetizer celeri rémoulade, fine julienne of celery root dressed in a mustardy rémoulade sauce. Some people shred the celery root for that dish, but I don't care for the shredded texture. I only shred celery root for latkes and it makes fine latkes. Celery root can do anything a potato can do (baked, boiled, steamed, braised) and it makes outstanding French fries.

But today, we're making a purée and that starts by cutting the raw celery root into roughly even cubes so that they all cook at the same rate. The biggest fail in making a purée is to have hard chunks in it because most but not all of the vegetable was cooked through.

Cover the cubes with water, stock, milk, or cream. Although cream is decadent as hell, I have lactose issues and currently, COVID-induced waistline issues, so I opted for water. Simmer until tender then transfer the cubes to the food processor. Pulse, adding cooking liquid or other liquid as needed, to yield the texture purée you're seeking. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. You may want to add a pat of butter, but I did not.

Roulade of Pork Tenderloin

Ann's mother Mary moved in with us this past week and she spent the majority of Sunday afternoon at hospice with Bob while Ann took the afternoon off and we sat around and didn't do much. We're all exhausted. Late afternoon, we went to see Bob, pick up Mary to bring her home, and stopped by the restaurant to forage for dinner.



Prosciutto-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin; Roasted Potatoes and Celery Root

I knew I had a couple of unloved pork tenderloins left from a big party and during the day on Sunday while trying to figure out what to do for dinner, Ann asked me if I would stuff them with spinach and ricotta cheese. So we rummaged the restaurant kitchen for some spinach, ricotta, truffled bread crumbs, and pecorino romano for the stuffing.

Stuffing pork tenderloins isn't a problem or even difficult, but I'm a restaurant chef and presentation is key. Just stuffing a pork tenderloin does not lead to a great looking plate. So I endeavored to wrap the two triangular loins into a single prosciutto-wrapped log from which I could cut beautiful slices, a technique that we use all the time at the restaurant, albeit more frequently for rabbit loin than pork tenderloin.

Butterflied Pork Tenderloins

The technique I use is the same for any loin or tenderloin. First, I split the meat down the middle, open it up, and use a heavy pan to flatten the meat into a single uniformly thick roughly triangular steak. I season both sides of the meat.

Ready to Roll

Next, I lay film out on my work surface and then on top of that lay prosciutto out in a rectangle that is slightly wider than the tenderloins are long and half again as deep as the two pieces of meat are wide when laid side-by-side with the pointed ends of the triangles facing in opposite directions, such that the meat forms a rectangle. Hard to describe in words, but easy to see in the photo, and uncomplicated to do.

Once the prosciutto and the meat are laid out, I put the filling on top of the meat and spread it not quite to the edges of the meat. To make this filling, I mixed sautéed spinach with the ricotta, pecorino romano cheese, and truffled panko in no particular quantities, but let's say roughly equal parts of spinach and ricotta and about half the quantity of pecorino and panko. And then I seasoned it.



Rolled and Ready for the Oven

Using the film, I roll the loin making sure that it stay tight and using the extra length of prosciutto to ensure that the roll stays well sealed. And then it goes into a moderate oven on an oiled sheet tray until it reaches 135F in the center. Pull it out and let it rest and the temperature will climb another 10 degrees at least to 145F, exactly where you want it. I like to cook pork roasts lower and slower (say 350F): there's less shrink and less chance of overcooking, yielding a moister product.

Roasted and Cooled

Once the roast has stood for twenty minutes or so, you should be able to slice it easily with a sharp knife. While mine was standing, I popped a roasting pan of potato and celery root cubes into the oven to accompany the pork. I kicked the heat up to 400F and turned the convection fan on to really crisp up the veg.

Potatoes and Celery Root

Mary and I were talking earlier in the day about celery root and how much we like it (too bad daughter Ann didn't get the vegetable gene!) so I made sure to bring one home to roast for dinner. It's quite a versatile vegetable and can be prepared in any way you can prepare a potato and as a bonus, it is wonderful raw. Use a sharp knife to trim off all the roots and skin and then use the cleaned root to do what you will with it. Celery root makes awesome mash, fries, and chips, is amazing raw in celery rémoulade, as well as diced as a replacement for celery in mirepoix. It is unquestionably one of our most underappreciated vegetables.

Beef and Barley

It's cold, damn cold this winter. I'm not a person to complain about the cold: I like it usually. But there have been entire days this winter when I have been chilled inexplicably to the core and have not been able to feel warm. In weather like this, I definitely crave stick-to-the-ribs food capable of warming not only my chilly bones but my soul. And beef and barley fits that bill perfectly.

Raw Ingredients

On Sunday, before we took off to spend the afternoon at Delaplane Cellars to have lunch, I put all the ingredients for beef and barley in the slow cooker so that it would be ready and waiting for us upon our return.

My basic idea for beef and barley is to put stock, mirepoix, a bouquet garni, and barley in the slow cooker. Then brown the meat and add it to the cooker. Then deglaze the pan and add that to the cooker. Then walk away for hours.

For a really good, chef-quality result, the reality is a touch more complex than that. The day before, I made a huge stock pot of brown beef stock and reserved a half gallon for Sunday to serve as the flavor base of the dish. My idea of beef and barely is a little beef, too little to properly flavor the dish, and a whole lot of barley. It is a grain dish, not a meat dish, in my culinary lexicon and so a great stock is necessary to add deep meat flavor.

The bouquet garni came straight from the garden (yes, I put on my knee-high boots to wade through the snow drifts): sage and rosemary from above the snow and some thyme buried under a coat of snow. And I threw in a couple of bay leaves harvested back in the fall, from the pantry. Herbs, especially this time of year, add flavor nuance to an otherwise very mellow dish.

And variety in the root vegetables comprising the mirepoix will also help. I used what I had on hand: carrots, leeks, celery root, turnips, and red and yellow onions. Some people put potatoes in theirs; I prefer turnips. Into the slow cooker they went along with an ounce of dried porcini mushrooms (for yet another layer of flavor, a deep earthy one).

Browning the meat adds still more flavor and after I browned the beef shin and removed it to the slow cooker, I put a couple tablespoons of tomato paste and a small handful of finely minced garlic into the hot sauté pan and cooked it, stirring all the while, until the tomato paste was caramelized. I deglazed the pan with water and once I had scraped all the bits off the bottom of the pan, I poured all over the meat in the slow cooker. Tomatoes are another source of umami in addition to the beef and the mushrooms. The more layers of flavor at this party, the better.

I added a half gallon of water and a tablespoon of salt, stirred it all well, put the lid on, and spent five minutes washing up the kitchen, before walking out the door with Ann.

Neither Pretty nor Glamorous, but so Delicious!

Back at home later that evening, I pulled the beef shin out of the cooker and let it cool, before shredding the meat and adding it back. Once I adjusted the salt, I scooped out big steaming mugs that we ate in front of the fireplace while watching a movie, warm at last during this bitter winter. Life is good!

Delaplane Cellars/Pasta Fagiole

I'm working on way too many things at work right now, so many that my head is constantly spinning and I am unable to get any badly needed downtime even when I am not at work. So, Ann has purposely not scheduled anything for us to do on Sundays in March so that I can just chill on my day off. Even though we didn't have anything planned on Sunday, it did seem to be a good idea towards late morning just to get away from the house and have a little lunch/wine and try to unwind.

We needed to get to Delaplane to pick up some wines (we are members of their club) and since it is the closest of the upper tier wineries to us, we often end up there when we don't have any other plans and so we did on Sunday. The change of context worked for me. I was able to relax with the help of a half bottle of really good wine, my best girl, and a total change of scenery!

A Special Treat 

We arrived in the tasting room shortly after noon and were among the first to arrive for the afternoon, which turned out to be fairly slow but not atypical for this time of year. Although I don't wish slow times on anyone, it is so much easier for me to relax without tons of people around. As a restaurant guy, I love the buzz and the people, but I'm on all week and when I'm not at work, I don't necessarily want to be on. I need a little off time to recharge my batteries.

Upstairs on the mezzanine level, Jim was conducting a class on wine and food pairing called Sunday Sipping, with food supplied by Tarver King and crew at the nearby Ashby Inn. Betsy spied Ann and me while we were tasting through the line up and brought us each a sample of the final pairing along with a taste of their Petit Manseng. Tarver made what he calls potted cheese (basically a gelatin-stabilized cheese mousse) of Challerhocker cheese and milk topped with a bit of honey and accompanied by a biscotto.

Cheese geek that I am, I freely admit that I don't know much about Swiss cheeses other than the usual suspects and Challerhocker is a new cheese to me. It's a washed rind cheese that melts well. The salty cheese mousse with the sweet floral honey was a great contrast to the sweet Petit Manseng. This highly savory contrast is always my approach to a pairing with a great sweet wine. In my current frame of mind, I probably would have gone with an unctuous pork liver terrine, but this pairing and the presentation were excellent.

The wines being tasted at the counter are all reds now, the whites being sold out and the new 2012 vintage not yet ready for prime time. I am particularly surprised at the 2011 reds; they are very drinkable, especially for the worst vintage that I can remember.

Our Favorite: 2010 Williams Gap Bordeaux Blend

Ann and I gravitated to our favorite of the current wines, the 2010 Williams Gap red blend of four traditional Bordeaux varietals, basically equal parts of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc with the balance Petit Verdot.

Cheeses and the Fennel Sausage from Croftburn Market

We always seem to get the sampler plate of whatever cheeses and sausage they have on offer and this time the cheeses were uninspiring, but the fennel sausage from Croftburn Market in Culpeper was delicious. We like the charcuterie from Croftburn a lot, but recently we have been spoiled by the amazing salame from Olympic Provisions in Portland. Nothing against the home team, but those guys on the left coast have got it figured out. I've even learned some tricks for my own charcuterie by tasting theirs.

Mousse Truffée

Ann has never seen a piece of truffled liver mousse that she could pass up, so we ordered a slice to go with our bread. There is something luxuriously comforting about a piece of hot crusty bread slathered with silky liver mousse!

Baguettes, Good and Crusty

After Jim finished his tasting upstairs, he wandered over and sat and chewed the fat with us until he and Betsy left for brunch up the street at the Ashby. He was kind enough to grab a bottle of the 2012 Springlot Sauvignon Blanc and pour a glass for each of us. It has a really tropical nose and decent enough acidity, though a person could want more acid. 2012 was a bit too warm at times for that though. Springlot is across the valley directly west of the winery and up at a pretty good elevation; Jim pointed it out to us from the winery. With only 18 cases made, the general public will never see this wine and we were delighted and surprised to be able to taste it.

Midafternoon, we headed back to the house where I started prepping for dinner and then went to fetch Carter while Ann was baking another awesome loaf of bread for dinner.

Root Veg and Pancetta

I had promised to make pasta e fagiole for dinner this winter because Carter likes it so much, but I hadn't yet got around to it. It kept getting bumped by other equally delicious dishes. So I made it a point to make some this weekend and I gathered some celery root, carrots, onions, pancetta, garlic, sage, and rosemary and went to town on it after we got back from the winery.

Pancetta Loves Rosemary, Sage, and Garlic

Ann also made some bread dough on Saturday so that we could have a loaf with our beans. I'm giving away her secret here: she bakes it in the big cast iron cocotte. Not only does it give the loaf shape, but when covered for the first part of the baking, it traps in the steam necessary to give the bread great oven spring.

Sadly, this loaf didn't turn out too well. Our primary oven appears to be malfunctioning and we ended up moving it to the secondary oven. The loaf suffered for want of a decent oven, but not enough to keep us from gorging on the bread to the point where we were too stuffed to want the pasta and beans!

Ann's Bread Secret: Cast Iron

Pasta e Fagiole

Just a Wednesday Night Dinner

Wednesday evenings are one of the few nights Ed and I get to have dinner together. Sometimes I cook but most nights Ed does the cooking as it is a true labor of love for him, and who am I to complain. Tonight Ed whipped up a roasted pork tenderloin accompanied by roasted haricots verts and wedges of celery root. I had never had celery root until tonight and all I can say is that I have a new favorite vegetable. The flavor is that of a sweet celery and the texture like a potato. I am in heaven as I think of the many ways I can enjoy it - mashed, pureed or maybe even a soup. I am very excited for Ed's next trip to Freight Station Farmers Market so he can bring home some more of this ugly, uninteresting, knobbly root.