Third Bendiversary

February has historically been a feast month for us. It all started a long time ago as a way for Ann and me to celebrate an anti-Valentine's Day of sorts. It has since evolved.

Andreas, Kasia, Dyce, Ann, Michelle, Rob, Mike, Meredith
Sorry Andreas, You Rocked Back out of the Frame

Being in the restaurant business, I was always on the brutal business end of Valentine's Day. It was a time when we prepped for days and days to handle the jam-packed restaurant for a night, or two if we were lucky. And it was not optional: there was no other traffic at the restaurant in February and we depended on the instant cashflow of the big night or nights to tide us through the fallow time of a cashflow negative winter season. Did this conjure images of Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub for you?

Moreover, Ann was stranded at home on Valentine's Day, the prototypical chef-widow, watching TV while all her friends and neighbors were out celebrating. I would come home late and exhausted, in a mood for nothing but a shower, a beer, and a pillow.

We had other friends in a similar situation and we had many friends who were winemakers. Because of our tremendously busy schedules, times for us to get together and celebrate life were few and far between. Fortunately, February is a slow month in both the restaurant and winery worlds. And so Ann put together what she termed an anti-Valentine's dinner. Over the years, it became customary for me to make a big cassoulet, a humble but ever so comforting dish of beans.

I cannot speak for many restaurateurs and chefs, but most that I know do not want fancy food when they celebrate. They have enough fancy restaurant food on a daily basis to be sick of it. What they want is excellent comfort food.

Cassoulet became our go-to not only because it is excellent comfort food, but also as a counterreaction to the prescriptive Valentine's menus that we served. Valentine's Day in the business is a night that people who do not go out often to fine dining restaurants descend upon fine dining restaurants.

These people scrimped and saved their money (and thank you to them for helping us get through the lean months) for this once-a-year night out. These folks wanted a very strict and limited selection of items that they perceive as valuable for their cash outlay. In other words, the menu must contain lobster, steak, and chocolate and must not be too avant-garde. We were permitted no risks in the menu.

This kind of menu was a strict departure from our normal multi-course menu, but it was necessary to ensure that the restaurant were packed to generate the cash that we needed to operate. This kind of menu, however, was no fun for us to cook. As chefs, we found it boring and a mere ticking of the boxes to attract clientele.

And so cassoulet became the antidote to both fine dining and a strictly prescriptive menu. It was exactly the kind of dish that I both wanted to cook and to eat on a cold February night.

Cassoulet After the Seventh Punch-down

What began as an anti-Valentine's celebration has taken on additional meaning over the years. My birthday is near Valentine's. It is a given that chefs are working on their birthdays serving food to other people celebrating their own birthdays. Chefs rarely have a chance to celebrate and so this dinner became a way for me to celebrate my own birthday, especially after retiring from the business. And, we moved to Bend just before Valentine's Day and it has been such a wonderful place to live that we added a celebration of our so-called Bendiversary to our feast night.

It was a foregone conclusion that I would make another cassoulet this year and so I did. It is an easy dish to make, but it requires a lot of time to achieve the layering of flavors that makes a great cassoulet. I put the cassoulet together over three lazy days. To go with it, I made a roasted garlic and chive goat cheese spread for an appetizer and an arugula salad with fennel and apples. Ann made a flourless chocolate cake that we served with 1977 Warre's Port.

Roasted Garlic, Chives, and Goat Cheese

Kasia, who manages the cheese department at our local store, brought two great cheeses, one a blue and one a washed rind. Along with it was some amazing honey that she and Mike brought back from Piemonte. Mike also brought two bottles of wine that he made, a Tempranillo and a Malbec, both from Walla Walla grapes. Rob and Dyce brought Savigny-lès-Beane. I was busy kibbitzing and forget to get photos.

Ann Made a Flourless Chocolate Cake

1977 Warre's Port that I Bought on Release
It is Finally Calming Down after Nearly 50 Years

Chicken and Sugar Snap Fried Rice

Fried rice is one of my favorite foods and over the decades, I've made a lot of versions. Just because the dish originated in Asia does not mean that fried rice has to follow an Asian flavor model. I made the following with leftover grilled chicken, sugar snaps, dill, chives, and lemon zest. The fresh herbs I threw in at the last second before plating. Then I zested a lemon on top. It was delicious

Chicken and Sugar Snap Fried Rice
with Dill, Chives, and Lemon Zest

Speaking of grilled chicken, Ann found a marinade that she wanted me to use consisting of onion, parsley, garlic, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and oil, all blended. After making this marinade, I realized that it is almost identical to the way I make jerk paste for chicken. My jerk paste is made from shallots, green onions, a Scotch bonnet pepper, allspice, fresh thyme, and oil. Aside from the flavoring, the idea of blending onions or shallots is pretty much identical.

Grilled Chicken

Frittata 101: Gravlax, Leek, and Chive Frittata

We eat a lot of eggs, a couple dozen between the two of us each week. They're just fantastic for quick, inexpensive meals. Ann hardboils eggs often. I scramble them or make omelettes. And a couple times a month, I make a frittata, a regular feature on the lunch menu at the restaurant. Making frittatas at home is a recent thing: our resident Italian has claimed heretofore that she doesn't like them. I'm glad that phase is done with; she asked me to make this gravlax and leek frittata.

Gravlax, Leek, and Chive Frittata

Frittatas are real winners for dinner, not to mention brunch. They take almost no active work to make: just a touch of prep, then into the oven for a few minutes depending on size. And they are wonderful for cleaning out the refrigerator. Almost anything goes in a frittata.

Last week, I still had some leftover gravlax in the refrigerator along with some leeks left from making leek fritters. It sounded like a great start for a frittata.

Here is a step-by-step for making frittatas.

Two Leeks Before Cooking

I first prepped two really large leeks. Why two? Because I had exactly two in the refrigerator that I wanted to use before they went south. And also because leeks cook down into almost nothing.

Two Leeks Cook Down to Very Little

One of my secrets to making good eggs is that some spice helps them taste eggier without being spicy. I rarely use sriracha except for eggs; otherwise I find it almost too sweet and not spicy enough. You can see that I put a healthy amount in the eggs along with the chives and some salt. This amount of sriracha in 8 eggs will not be detectable to most palates.

Eggs, Chives, Salt, and Sriracha

Things that you want evenly dispersed in the frittata, such as salt, herbs, and spices, mix directly into the eggs before whipping them really well with a fork. Keep in mind that I use extra large or larger eggs. The number of eggs will depend on the size pan you are using. For one person, use a standard 8-inch restaurant skillet which wants three eggs. For two or three people, use a standard 10-inch restaurant skillet which wants eight eggs. None of my pans are non-stick. In fact, the pan that you will see below is actually a stainless steel clad aluminum skillet. If you do it correctly, eggs won't stick to any pan.

Leeks, Eggs, and Gravlax Ready to Cook

Once your oven is to temperature (350-375F will be fine, although we did them at 500F at the restaurant.) you are ready to cook your frittata on the range top. Start your pan on a high flame. Once it gets hot, add a good amount of oil to fully cover the bottom of the pan. Whip the eggs one last time and pour them in the pan. 

Frittata, Flame Off, Ready to Bake

Immediately turn off the flame. With the flame off, you can take your time in adding the fillings to the frittata. If you leave the flame on, you are likely to end up overcooking the bottom of the frittata. Just drop the fillings right on top; they will sink in a bit.

Frittata, Ready to Slice

The final step is to put the frittata in the oven, set a timer, and then relax. You'll know when the frittata is done. As soon as the eggs in the very center are cooked, the frittata is ready to come out of the oven. Cook time depends on a lot of factors, but a general rule of thumb is that in a moderate oven, an 8-inch frittata will take about 8-9 minutes and a 10-inch frittata will take about 18-20 minutes, give or take.

If your pan was clean and hot and you added enough oil to cover the bottom, your frittata will slide right out of the pan onto your cutting board. Sometimes they will stick in small spots, in which case, slide your spatula under the frittata to free it. I generally let the frittata cool for a couple of minutes if I am going to slice it, as in the photo above. I serve small frittatas whole while I cut large ones into 8 slices.

Frittatas are one of the most cost-effective and easiest dinners that I know. Next time you need to clean out the fridge, why not try one?

Frittata Ideas

As I mentioned earlier, just about anything that you want will go into a frittata. They are useful for using up leftover vegetables, meats, and cheeses. Make sure that any meat that you add is already cooked. Consider using leftover starches as well: potatoes, corn, beans, pasta, croutons, and rice have all found homes in my frittatas. Here's a quick list of ideas.

Shrimp, Baby Corn, Thai Basil, Green Curry Paste
Tomato, Spaghetti, Basil
Corn, Poblano, Chorizo
Potato, Hard Chorizo, Piquillo
Smoked Sausage, Ricotta, Chive, Pecorino
Spinach, Feta, Tomato, Oregano
Broccoli, Bacon, and Swiss Cheese
Rapini, Cannellini, and Porcini
Smoked Sausage, Onion, Tomato, Pesto
Sausage, Mushroom, and Smoked Gouda
Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese, Capers
Chorizo, Jalapeño, Cilantro, Queso Fresco
Salmon, Red Onion, Dill, Lemon Zest
Asparagus, Bacon, and Cheddar
Caramelized Onion, Pancetta, and Cheddar
Roasted Chicken, Corn, Poblano, Oaxaca Cheese

Pancetta, Rapini, and Fresh Mozzarella Cheese

Bread Cubes, Fresh Tomato, and Basil

Spaghetti Squash, Pine Nuts, Nutmeg, and Lemon Zest

Crab, Herbed Cream Cheese, and Chives

Roasted Red Pepper and Goat Cheese

Wild Mushrooms, Caramelized Onions, and Brie

Fennel, Tomatoes, and Olives

Annie Does Leek Fritters

Annie cooked for me! For a couple of weeks, she had been talking about making dinner for me and asked me to get some leeks and sour cream for her from the store. She wanted to make a recipe from Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen cookbook, Leek Fritters with Garlic Sour Cream. It's not often that Ann cooks. I love it when she does because she's a great cook! Her dinners always make me happy.

Leek Fritters with Chive Sour Cream

I was happy, but surprised when Ann asked me to help her in the kitchen to cut the leeks, green onions, and garlic. It's tough for her to be in the kitchen with me because sometimes I forget that I am no longer a chef and no longer in charge of the kitchen. As a chef, my job was always to be checking up on things, tasting, giving feedback, and instructing on technique.

In a home kitchen, when addressed to your wife, no matter how well intentioned, this stuff comes across as patronizing and irritating. I get it and I am trying to keep my mouth shut. After all, as Ann says, we're cooking dinner at home, not running a restaurant. I think I'm getting better, but old habits die a slow, slow death.

Poaching the Leeks

The original recipe called for finely minced garlic for the sour cream and lemon topping for the latkes. Ann had asked me to mince garlic for her and I did so, thinking it would have gone into the latkes, because that's what I would have done. But then she put it in the sour cream, saying, "I don't know about all this raw garlic in the sour cream."

Ann made it, tasted it, and wasn't very pleased. After some hesitation born of wasting food, she ended up pitching it and making a chive sour cream instead, a much more pleasing sauce.

Mixing in the Flour and Egg à la Latkes

After cooking the leeks and mixing in the green onions, flour, and egg, Ann started cooking the fritters using my old cast iron skillet, latke style, two by two. Any idea how hard it is to watch them cooking and smell their delicious aroma, yet having to wait for them to be done to dig in?

Cooking Leek Fritters

When the fritters were cooked, we ended up on the front patio dining al fresco. It was worth the wait! These leek fritters were so awesome that Ann vowed to make them again. But next time, she's going to sweat the leeks instead. We agreed that poaching dilutes flavor, while sweating concentrates flavor.

My Griswold #8 Skillet from the 1930s

For years while I was in the restaurant business and did not really have time or energy to cook at home, my old Griswold cast iron skillet stayed in the cabinet. Every now and again, I'd rub it down with a bit of oil, but it went unused for years.

Now that I'm retired and cooking all the time, the old skillet is back in action once again where it deserves to be. I've never seen a finer, flatter, and more well-seasoned skillet in my life. This skillet is in immaculate condition and will long outlast me, as long as it has an owner who will take care of it as it was before it ever came to me.

I am vague on the provenance of this skillet. I am certain that my mother gave it to me, probably after I had graduated from college and was setting up my first post-student kitchen, back in the mid-1980s. But where did she get such a treasured gift?

Was it a family heirloom? Certainly all the women on her side of the family were great cooks and every one of them had such a pan, if not several. I know that Mom had a range of pans from small skillets to vast chicken fryers. For all I know, it could be her mother's or one of my great grandmothers'. I will never know for certain, because there is no one left alive who could tell me.

It's not a unique pan in any way such that perhaps one of my living aunts might recognize it as belonging to someone in particular. The Griswold #8s were among the most highly produced size and therefore the most common and now the least valuable on the collector's market. Still, I find it amusing that a pan that I have used for all of my adult life is now a collector's item.

But because it is a collector's item, it is easy to date and value the pan. This pan was cast in the 1930s and in perfect condition as it is, could fetch $75 to $250 dollars. A pan that cooks this fine is of far more value in use in our kitchen, however, than it would be sitting on some collector's shelf gathering dust.

I hope one of our children will adopt this pan some day. But who knows how much their generation and subsequent generations will value such a venerable and untrendy workhorse?

Guilty Pleasure: Fried Rice

I have very few guilty pleasures in my life. If I were making a list, though, fried rice would be right up at the top.

Sunday, Ann and I were discussing shrimp around noon as an idea of what to have for dinner without ever concluding anything before we took a nap. After awaking, I started prepping vegetables from the refrigerator.

Seeing me working, Ann asked what I was making for dinner. When I said shrimp fried rice, she thought that she had told me earlier in the day that she wanted shrimp fried rice. But she only thought it, never saying it out loud. I guess we were on the same wavelength!

Broccoli Stem, Carrot, Red Onion, and Chive Fried Rice

There are precious few shrimp in the dish above. Duh! I forgot to prep the shrimp. Oh well, we didn't need them anyway.

Fried rice is one of the great clean out the refrigerator dishes. Leftover bits and pieces of lots of things can find a home in fried rice. Use whatever you have at hand, but avoid wet ingredients that will turn your rice into mush. I found a half a red onion, a carrot, and the stems from about five heads of broccoli.

Broccoli stems are a great treasure in the kitchen and I have never understood why people pay top dollar for them only to pitch them in the trash. Use a paring knife to pull the skin off all the way around the stems and dice the sweet, crunchy interiors as you would any other vegetable. They are wonderful raw and lightly cooked, having a sweet flavor something like kohlrabi.

Peeling broccoli stems is a good down-time activity. I sat out on the back patio with a bowl of stems and a paring knife and peeled the stems while chatting with Ann. this makes me recall that I used to go to a Chinese restaurant where mid-afternoon, the entire crew would sit around tables with bus tubs of broccoli stems to peel, chatting away, and waiting for the dinner rush.

Prepped Vegetables Ready to Cook

As I was at the stove making the fried rice, I couldn't help but chuckle as I remembered overhearing a conversation in the restaurant between a line cook and his mom:

"Seriously, Mom! A recipe? For fried rice? The recipe is in the name: fry some rice!"

Cooking the Vegetables with Ginger and Garlic

Well, there's slightly more to it than that, but not much. Fried rice, when really well made is a wonderful thing: too bad so many restaurants make such terrible fried rice.

Fried Rice Tips

Rice. Use cold, leftover medium to long grain rice for fried rice. Cold rice doesn't clump as much as hot rice and is easier to break into grains if necessary. If you don't have leftover rice, don't sweat it. We don't ever have leftover rice at our house because of portion control. We would pig out on rice if we had it around, so we only make what we need. For this fried rice, I cooked it an hour before needing it, spread it out on a sheet tray to cool, and popped it into the fridge. Done.

To Egg or Not to Egg. A lot of fried rice contains egg. I do and I don't. Last night, because I forgot the shrimp, I added two eggs for a bit more protein. There are several ways to add eggs to fried rice and I do them all from time to time:

• You can cook the egg beforehand into a really thin crepe-like omelet, dice the omelet, and add it as a garnish to the rice. 

• While the rice is frying, you can crack one or more eggs into the rice, then stir fry them along with the rice. This leaves streaks of white and streaks of gold.

• While the rice is frying, you can add beaten eggs to the rice. This gives a more uniform dispersion of gold. Last night, I beat the eggs, added a 1/2 cup of fresh chives from the garden, and a slug of soy sauce. Then I added this mix to the rice at the very end.

Seasoning the Oil. Traditionally, you would season the oil in the wok by frying garlic and ginger slices until golden, then removing and discarding it, before cooking the rest of the dish. I like a stronger flavor of ginger and garlic, so I add both, finely minced, when I am cooking the vegetables. Because I don't have a wok and I don't have particularly high heat, I'm not worried about the ginger and garlic burning.

There is also another way, a non-standard one that I learned from a Thai chef in making khao pad, Thai-style fried rice, which at the time was the best fried rice I had ever eaten. He created a special curry paste of shallots, cilantro stems and roots, green chiles, galanga, and white pepper. Then he would fry a spoonful of this fiery paste in his wok before starting the dish: absolutely fragrantly mind-blowing. I do this from time to time by dropping all the ingredients into the Vita-Mix with enough oil to emulsify. Granted, I get better results by banging this out in my big green granite mortar from Thailand, but I am not cooking in a Thai restaurant, or any restaurant.

No Wok, No Fear. Fried rice is best when you get a great sear on the rice, something that is hard to do without a wok. I don't have a wok and I don't have ventilation worth a darn either, so I have to do things a bit differently at home. I build my fried rice in stages. First I cook the longest cooking items: the vegetables and proteins, in a couple of batches, adding them to a big bowl when done. Then I cook the rice, perhaps in batches, adding it to the bowl. When I'm done, I mix it all together and serve. The point is to not overload the pan so that it stays hot.

Seasoning. At the end of cooking, it is typical to add a splash of soy or fish sauce to season the rice. I like only a little in my rice, preferring to let guests season their own bowls at the table. I use soy sauce when I'm in a Chinese or Korean mood, fish sauce when I'm in a Southeast Asian mood. In this case, I mixed the soy sauce directly into the egg mixture.

Ideas. Use sesame oil or a mix of a neutral oil with sesame oil for a twist. Spicy: curry paste, white pepper, green chiles, kimchee, gochujang. Herbs for last minute addition: chives, garlic chives, Chinese chives, green onions, Thai basil, cilantro, kaffir lime leaves. Proteins: egg, shrimp, tofu, pressed spiced tofu, seitan, ham, lop cheung (Chinese sausage), roast pork, roast duck, roast chicken. Vegetables: broccoli stems, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), turnip, radish, kohlrabi, rutabaga, baby corn, corn kernels, carrots, peas, sugar snaps, snow peas. Other: shiitake mushrooms, tree ear mushrooms, pickled mustard stems, peanuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. Use your imagination but keep it simple so as not to overload the dish. Pick a protein, something green, and one or two items for contrast.

New Year's Eve at Home

Why would you want to spend New Year's Eve at home?

Considering I have worked the prior 15 New Year's Eves as the chef and owner of a restaurant, the answer to that question ought to be obvious! If I never see the inside of a restaurant on New Year's Eve, that will be just fine with me. And of course, Annie was over the moon to have me at home. So we headed to the grocery store to see what we could find. I was in a seafood mood, but there's no good seafood in any grocery store around here. The best we could do was to grab a pound of Dungeness crab, wicked expensive and to my East Coast-born and -bred palate, not as tasty as blue crab. So I decided to do a crab risotto.

While standing in the store, Annie started describing an appetizer that she wanted, "something with mushrooms, gooey, and sexy!" Instantly I flashed on a mushroom crostino, so we got some dried porcini, some fresh shiitakes, and a small piece of funky Taleggio cheese to finish the mushrooms with.

Pashey Sparkling by Trisaetum

Leeks and Shiitakes

Porcini, Shiitake, Leek, and Taleggio Crostini

Who's Happy?

Risotto in the Works with Pancetta

Mise: Pancetta, Goat Cheese, Crab, and Chives

Dungeness Crab Risotto with Pancetta, Chives, and Goat Cheese

Mother's Day Risotto



Morel and Asparagus Risotto

How paradoxical is it that I buy and cook so many rare and wondrously expensive foodstuffs and yet never eat them myself? I guess I save all the really good stuff for the paying customers. For Mother's Day though, I decided to surprise Ann with some morels. We are getting fantastic local morels now and this heat is bringing the season rapidly to a close. If we are going to partake of these super-expensive foraged treats, now is the time.

Knowing that I would be out in the yard for the better part of the day mulching all of our flower beds, I needed to come up with a dish that would be simple to execute, not take more than a half an hour, and would be delicious.

I decided on risotto because I know how much Ann loves risotto and because of a really not so good version we had last weekend at a local restaurant. I can't tell you how deflating it is to really anticipate a dish at a restaurant and then to have it come to the table poorly made. I decided to make exactly the dish I expected to be served and to make it correctly.

Fresh Herbs! Love!

To go with the morels, we have tons of local asparagus now (I have been stuffing myself silly on asparagus for two weeks now, eating nearly a pound a day!) and the herbs in our garden are in full swing. In fact, the herbs look so great now that I almost don't want to cut them. Almost.

Pilferage

While I was out in the garden, I pulled the last leek from last year and added it to the risotto along with a few ounces of Surry sausage from our good friends at S. Wallace Edwards in Surry, VA. Ann helped stir the risotto while we both sipped a little wine. Happy Mother's Day!


Crab and Smoked Salmon Benedict

Crab and Smoked Salmon Benedict

I'm really not much of a Benedict fan, but Ann is and so I set out to make one for her on Easter Sunday. She wanted to put the Benedict on a crumpet, but there are no crumpets to be found in our town, and I did not have the desire to make them, although I have promised to make crumpets for her sometime soon.

Lacking crumpets, I borrowed a little bit of creamy Arborio rice pudding from work and mixed in a good bit of grated Pecorino Romano cheese and some fresh chives from the garden. I formed the rice into perfectly circular forms using a ring mold and then seared them in a black steel pan, hot holding them in a very slow oven while the rest of lunch was cooking. Next up were the crab cakes, which also went into the oven to stay warm.

Then I attempted to make a hollandaise and failed utterly. It happens even to us professionals. I was trying to make too small a batch with the wrong equipment. So I went for the handy dandy squeeze bottle of pimentón sauce in the fridge.

The assembly was very straightforward: rice cake down, finely minced smoked salmon next, then crab cake, then poached duck egg, then pimentón sauce, and finally, a few snipped chives.

Although it looks great and was well cooked, the dish didn't really work for me. All the flavors and textures were too similar, a white on white experience for me.

Smoked Salmon Hash with Poached Duck Eggs

On Thursday, when Sarah brought us the first duck eggs of the year (who knew the girls were laying already?), I knew I wanted to poach some on Sunday morning and put them over a hash of some kind. Saturday night as I was leaving the restaurant, I went on a scavenger hunt to see what I could find: an end of smoked salmon, some unloved slabs of sweet potato, some smoked sausage, three little yellow potatoes, a few chives, and four duck eggs. Outstanding!

Smoked Salmon, Sweet Potatoes, Smoked Sausage, Potatoes, Chives, Duck Eggs

Smoked Salmon Hash with Poached Duck Eggs