Quick Dinner for Ann's Girlfriends

Ann invited Erika and Michelle over for dinner just so that they could catch up with each other. I cooked a quick gluten-free vegetarian dinner and we sat around the counter and yakked for a few hours.

Erika Makes Gorgeous Flower Arrangements
My First Time Seeing the Yellow Kangaroo Paw Flowers

I Shoot a Bunch of Candids When People Are Not Expecting It
Sometimes, I Get a Gem

Chips with Pineapple Salsa

Posole Casserole with Poblanos and Fresh Corn

Michelle Made Mexican Chocolate Mousse

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

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 

Valentine's Day: Raspberry, Chocolate, Blood Orange Bread Pudding

I'm pretty new to the whole Valentine's Day thing. When I was in the restaurant business, it was easily our busiest time of the year. Imagine doing a month's worth of business in a one- or two-day stretch, each table being sat twice a night and served seven courses! It took a week before Valentine's Day to prep for the special menu and it took a week after to recuperate. Besides never being home for Valentine's Day, I was also a zombie. It is still a wonder to me that Ann stuck by me through all that.

This year, I wanted to do something special to surprise her. Because of COVID, going out is not an option. But realistically, because I was in the business and know how stressed restaurants are under the crush of business, I would never go out for Valentine's dinner anyway. Still, I cook dinner every night and so cooking dinner would not really be special. I opted instead to make a special brunch.

Raspberry, Chocolate, Blood Orange Bread Pudding

What was different is that for brunch I made something totally out of left field. We don't eat sweets, fruit aside, and our diet is very low in simple carbs. So naturally, I made a Raspberry, Chocolate, Blood Orange Bread Pudding because that would be the absolute last thing that she would expect from me. And I made it under Ann's nose. She didn't know anything about it until about 45 minutes into its baking when it started to perfume the house. I served it with blood orange segments on top to help cut the sweetness.

A Jam Bread Pudding

This bread pudding was inspired by my mother's mother. When I would visit my grandmother during college breaks, she would sometimes smear slices of white bread with butter and jam and shingle them in the bottom of a pan. She would then pour a custard over the bread and a few minutes later, a bread pudding would emerge from her oven.

The challah-based savory bread pudding that I made for New Year's Brunch cemented for me that soft breads such as the store-bought white loaf bread that my grandmother used do not make great bread puddings. A good bread pudding needs a hearty bread with a good crust. A lot of the charm of a great bread pudding is the contrast of the soft interior with a crunchy crust, something you do not get from indifferent bread.

I bought a good quality focaccia for this bread pudding. I used focaccia because it is the depth of my pan and so I could expose the focaccia crust through the top of the pudding. Assembling the bread pudding on the QT was something of a challenge. Each time Ann would leave the room, I would do a bit more: slicing the bread, spreading raspberry jam on each slice, chopping a block of chocolate, making the orange-vanilla custard base, putting all the ingredients together, and "hiding" the pudding in plain sight in the back of the refrigerator.

I made a quart of custard base: a quart of 2% milk, a splash of vanilla extract, the zest of one blood orange, five eggs, and a scant half a cup of sugar. Initially, the pudding took about half the custard, the remainder of which I put in the refrigerator and used to top off the pudding before I went to bed the night before. In all, the pudding took about 3-1/2 cups of custard base.

Valentine's morning while Ann was brushing her teeth, I put the pudding in the oven. She had no idea what was going on until it was just about done and started making the house smell great.

Mimosa, Crossword, and Ed-Made Valentine's Day Card

It's our morning ritual to have our coffee along with a crossword puzzle from the Sunday New York Times. I left a Valentine's card on the table where we do our crosswords. I always make Ann a card (having never felt that buying a card from the store expresses anything about me except that I was lazy) and this year was no different.

When Ann was upstairs printing the crossword puzzle, I brought in the bird condo that you see in the photo below as another surprise for her. She had expressed interest in having one (along with explicit instructions: "the center has to be red") some weeks ago and I demurred, having already a very long list of woodworking projects on my list.

As I was working on those other projects, I took time and converted scrap lumber to the bird condo for her. It now adorns our back gate.

Bird Condo Above Our Back Gate

Once the bread pudding came out of the oven, I made us some mimosas and we sat down to splurge for Valentine's brunch. As good as this bread pudding was, I'd rather have had a savory bread pudding. Note to self.

Simple Trail Mix Recipe

As a chef, it always concerns me when people buy simple foods that they could make for pennies on the dollar, foods such as trail mix. As a hiker, it often amuses me what passes for commercial trail mix. Clearly some people making trail mix have never considered what happens to chocolate when it gets warm.

Simple 6-Ingredient Trail Mix

Trail mix is not necessarily about being healthy; it's about providing fuel that is part instantaneous and part long-term to keep you going on the trail. If you've ever bonked after three or four miles of tough trail because of insufficient fuel, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The following recipe delivers simple sugars and carbs, complex carbs (bonus: plenty of fiber), and lots of salt to keep you going. It's not what your cardiologist or dietician will recommend, but when you're burning 4-5000 calories on a hike, you need lots of easy-to-ingest fuel.

Here's a really simple 6-item trail mix recipe that takes just a few minutes of active work and can be prepared from ingredients readily found in your grocery store.

Simple Six-Ingredient Trail Mix Recipe

4 cups/12 ounces high quality rolled oats (that is, not Quaker and not steel cut)
2 cups/7 ounces slivered almonds
1/2 cup/4 fluid ounces amber (grade B) maple syrup
2 teaspoons Kosher salt
2 cups/8 ounces dried sweetened cranberries (or other fruit of your choice)
2 cups/11 ounces peanut M&Ms

Yield: 2-1/2 pounds trail mix

You'll need a half sheet tray or other rimmed cookie sheet, preferably with a silicone mat to keep clean up a breeze. And you'll need a big bowl to mix everything in.

Start by preheating your oven to about 350F. In a large bowl, mix the oats, almonds, maple syrup, and salt. This quantity of salt will make it taste very salty. When you're out on the trail sweating away, you're going to want this salt. You'll crave it with every fiber in your being. Trust me on this. Too salty when you're not exercising is just right.

Spread the oat mix on a sheet tray (and silicone mat if you have one) and place it in the oven. It's going to take about 30 minutes to get to a consistent golden brown. The oats will brown from the outside of the pan to the middle, so you want to mix it periodically for even browning. I stir it after 10 minutes, again after 10 more minutes, and finally after 5 more minutes.

Bake to Golden Brown, About 30 Minutes

Remove from the oven once it is evenly golden brown and let cool thoroughly, at least 30 minutes and preferably longer. You want all the remaining moisture to evaporate so that mold is not an issue. Pour the oats, cranberries, and M&Ms into a gallon seal-top bag, seal it with plenty of air space inside, and shuffle it about in your hands to mix the contents well.

Lay the bag flat, press out all the excess air, and re-seal for storage. Ann and I repackage it into smaller bags for each hike.

A word or two on ingredients:

Oats. If you don't already know, Quaker rolled oats suck. (Indra Nooyi, call me. I'll tell you just how bad.) High dollar steel cut oats have to be cooked to be edible. Buy the best quality rolled oats you can find. I get mine in bulk from my dry goods supplier.

Maple Syrup. Chefs and pastry chefs use grade B and leave grade A for the tourists. Grade B is cheaper, darker, and more flavorful. Mine comes from Highland County, Virginia.

Salt. It's always Morton's Kosher for me and my restaurant kitchen. Always reliable. If you use another salt with a different crystal size, you may have to adjust the quantity of salt in the recipe.

Peanut M&Ms. I rarely ever use pre-prepared foods. I want really salty peanuts and chocolate in my trail mix. If you've ever rolled your own with chunks of chocolate, you know why Mars has made a fortune telling you "melts in your mouth and not in your hands." Just don't turn the bag over and read the ingredients. Be bad. You're burning a ton of calories on the trail.

Dickey Ridge/Glen Manor Vineyards

The forecast for Sunday was miserable—80% chance of thunderstorms all day—yet by 10:00am none of these storms had materialized, though it had rained during the night and sprinkled at times through the early morning. We finally decided, late though it was, to risk the weather and take a brief hike. Ann decided we should go to the Dickey Ridge Visitor's Center in Shenandoah National Park and walk the trails originating there. We scrambled to put together some lunch and refill our water bottles, upsetting the poor brown dog.

"You're Leaving Me Again. I Just Know It."

Two trails originate directly across the Skyline Drive from the Dickey Ridge Visitor's Center, the Fox Hollow Trail and the Snead Farm Loop, both of which join the Dickey Ridge Trail and run concurrently with it in places. We intended to take the longer Snead Farm Loop first and then do the Fox Hollow Trail or move to some other nearby location for another hike. After a chance meeting with a young ranger at the trailhead, because of an encounter that he just had with a somewhat aggressive bear on the Snead Farm trail, he suggested that we go straight down the hill and not to the right. We didn't know at the time that he had directed us down the Fox Hollow Trail but it quickly became obvious as we continued to bend north on the trail and not south as we had planned.

I can report that the very easy Fox Hollow Trail is really not worth hiking. Given the rainy conditions (it sprinkled a little bit during our walk), we found the trail very slippery. And aside from this toad, there really wasn't much to see other than the small Fox family graveyard. Given the low altitude (right around 2000 feet) and the full leaf canopy, nothing was in bloom on this trail.

Ann's Quick Eyes Spotted This Toad

We made the quick loop back around to the Visitor's Center and then bore right onto the Snead Farm loop. After a half a mile or so, it opened onto a fire road and there were a lot more flowers in bloom along this road.

A Tiny Geranium

Ox-Eye Daisies Are in Full Bloom Now

White Campion Was Everywhere Sunny

Red Clover is Found in Small Patches

Just a Few Roses Still in Bloom

A Particularly Handsome Prostrate Ranunculus

After reaching the fire road, we quickly came upon the Snead Barn, which was abandoned in the 1950s. There's nothing particularly photogenic about it, but apparently Black Vultures are nesting in the second floor. One dove out a window as we approached the barn and landed a few feet away. I could hear more commotion inside.

Cooling Off in a Creek at Snead's Barn

Black Vulture Nesting in the Barn

At the barn where the road ended, we headed back into the woods on a trail which started to climb a bit and the trailside fauna changed as we headed up.

A Penstemon, Don't Ask Me Which

Asclepias quadrifolia, Fourleaf Milkweed

Euphorbia pubentissima, False Flowering Spurge

As we neared the highpoint of Dickey Ridge, a brief opening in the trail afforded us a beautiful view of the Shenandoah Valley looking towards Browntown. And in this opening, we found masses of a beautiful white spurge in bloom.

Near the High Point of Dickey Ridge, Looking Northwest

Near the High Point of Dickey Ridge, Looking West

From the high point, it was mostly downhill all the way back to the Visitor's Center where we were parked. The downhills always bother my knees more than the uphills. Once back at the car we had only done about 6 and a half miles, not a very long day. Ann wanted to do something but wasn't sure what. As we were leaving the Park, Ann asked, "Hey, do you want to go to Jeff and Kelly's?" Given that it was only 2:30, why not? Fifteen minutes later, we were at the winery where we got a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to enjoy outside. Kelly joined us when she could and we caught up for a couple of hours before we headed back to Winchester.

Tasting the New 2015 Sauvignon Blanc

The Vineyard and the Ridgeline Where We Hiked

Beautiful Afternoon to Sit Outside

Kelly Brought us Some Chocolates

Gorgeous Delphinium at the Winery