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

Lamb Chops and Gigantes Plaki

Spring is starting to arrive in fits and starts here in Bend although one day will be warm and sunny and the next brisk and cool. There's likely to be more snow to come but the grass is starting to green. And this is more than enough to get my grilling juices going after a winter of seeing the grill out by the patio under a mantle of snow.

Ann invited Michelle and Andreas over for dinner this past weekend, and Michelle's mom Jean was in town, so of course she was welcome too. I no longer remember the thought process behind the menu for the night, but I am pretty sure it was built around a bag of huge Royal Corona beans from Rancho Gordo.

Grilled Lamb Chops, Spinach with Onions and Dill on Gigantes

I decided to make these huge beans into the classic Greek gigantes plaki, baked beans in tomato sauce. I'm pretty sure that grilled lamb chops followed from this thought. After a sunny day that was great for cleaning up the grill after a winter of disuse, the sky turned partly cloudy and spit a little rain just before our guests were ready to arrive. Nonetheless, we turned on the fire pit and sat outside anyway.

Royal Corona Beans Soaking Overnight

Uncooked Huge Beans

After soaking the Corona beans overnight, I par-cooked them with a couple bay leaves, a few dried rosemary needles, and four smashed cloves of garlic. I started the beans at 2pm, knowing our guests would arrive at 6 and figuring it would probably be 7:30 before we sat down to dinner. At 5:45, I was a bit concerned about the beans. Although they had been softening constantly through the afternoon, three hours on the stovetop was insufficient to render them creamy. After another 90 minutes in the oven though, they were just fine. Whew!

Tomato Sauce for Beans

I made a simple tomato sauce for the beans by sautéing an onion, a large carrot, and two stalks of celery in olive oil with garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, a bit of fresh thyme, and a fair amount of dried oregano. I also added ground cinnamon, just what would fit on the tip of a knife blade. To me, this dish doesn't taste right without it.

Ann, however, has a different opinion. She has a pretty firm rule that anything sweet or any spice that we Americans consider a pie spice does not belong in a savory dish. So, the sauce wasn't her favorite.

Once the vegetables had started softening, I stirred in a tablespoon of really amazingly concentrated Sicilian tomato paste called estratto. Then, I deglazed the pan with the juice of a lemon and added a can of crushed tomatoes and let the sauce bubble away for 20 minutes or so, just to bring the flavors together.

At 5:45, I scooped the still-cooking beans into the sauce and mixed them well. After transferring them to an oiled half hotel pan, I drizzled a little of the bean cooking liquid over the beans and covered the pan. They baked covered at 350F until dinner time, about 90 additional minutes.

Gigantes Plaki

Our guests arrived shortly after I put the beans in the oven and Ann had poured me a glass of wine, a Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc blend from Walla Walla. We headed outside on the patio by the fire pit with a plate of risotto cakes to have for an appetizer. I like finger food for an appetizer and because Michelle is gluten intolerant, bread such as crostini is out. So, I tend to make rice cakes when she comes over.

Plain Risotto Base: Arborio, Onion, White Wine, Chicken Stock

Lemon, Dill, Feta, and Pine Nut Risotto Cakes; Tzatziki

I made a plain risotto with chicken stock, though I often use water. When the rice had cooled, I added a lot of lemon zest and fresh dill, a good sprinkle of crumbled Greek sheep's milk feta, a handful of toasted pine nuts, and two raw eggs. After mixing the rice well, I shaped it into cakes and seared the cakes.

First thing in the morning, I made tzatziki to accompany the cakes. Each time I make tzatziki, I make it slightly differently depending on what I have on hand and how I'm feeling, but I did publish a basic recipe here.

A Touch Chilly Outside Around the Fire

First thing in the morning, I put a bunch of lamb chops in the fridge to marinade. The marinade was quite simple: olive oil, a splash or two of red wine, a lot of chopped garlic, dried rosemary, and dried oregano. I turned the chops in the marinade every couple of hours.

Lamb Chops Ready to Grill

Lamb Chops, Ready to Plate

After I grilled the lamb chops, we headed inside where I cooked a couple pounds of small spinach. I chopped an onion and cooked it to tender in olive oil, then tossed in the spinach which wilted in short order. I added a big handful of fresh dill and seasoned with salt.

I decided to plate at the stove rather than serve everything family style. I put a bed of gigantes on each plate and then scattered some feta, fresh oregano, and salt over the top. After garnishing the gigantes with a healthy drizzle of olive oil, I put some spinach on top and then added the lamb chops.

All in all, it was a very simple meal and scratched my grilling itch. I'm so glad that we were able to share it with Michelle, Andreas, and Jean.

Leek and Dill Mussels

Ann and I love mussels. Living in Central Oregon in the desert affords us no real opportunities for access to mussels, however. I took it upon myself to special order a bag of mussels at the store in hopes of surprising Ann.

The store notified me when they arrived and I hurried to get a 5-kilo (11-pound) sack of mussels from Puget Sound west of Tacoma. Sadly, I got no price break on the full bag and ended up paying a small fortune for them.

The mussels ended up being European mussels, no doubt farm-raised, very thin shelled and quite fragile, with extensive beards but otherwise clean, unevenly sized, almost all alive, and with tiny meats. I was disappointed and would not buy them again. Ann was happy just to have mussels and was less disappointed than I.

My disappointment comes from my experience with East Coast mussels. At my restaurant I started off serving farmed PEIs but their erratic quality and supply chain issues convinced me to switch to wild Cape Cod blues, the best mussels I've ever eaten. These Cape blues are now the gold standard by which I judge all mussels and these Puget Sound mussels sucked in comparison.

Quality issues aside, the following discussion about cleaning and preparation applies to mussels from any source. The goal is to clean the mussels of any foreign matter, to remove the so-called beards with which they attach themselves to surfaces, and to discard any broken or dead mussels.

Step One: Cover the Mussels in Water

The first thing that I do is to cover the mussels in fresh water. This will cause any live mussels to close their shells. Any mussel that floats is alive; in closing, they can trap enough air to float. You know that these mussels are good and you can start cleaning them.

Mussel with Beard

I've cleaned hundreds of thousands of mussels in my life and I believe that the best thing to use is a dishtowel, as unpopular as that may be at your house. [Hence why I buy bundles of bar mops from a restaurant supply house and discard them once I mess them up too badly.] Use the towel to get a grip on the slippery beard and pull it down towards the hinge, the pointy end of the mussel that is closest to the camera in the photo above. With a little tug, it should pull right out. Then using the towel, wipe any dirt off the mussel.

As you work your way through the mussels, you will run out of floaters. Just because mussels have sunk to the bottom of the bowl does not mean that they are bad or even dead. It may mean that they remained fully closed without any trapped air inside their shells or it may mean that they were a little slow to close on contact with the water and filled with water.

As you consider a mussel, if its shell is broken, discard it. If it is closed tightly, wiggle the shells a bit between your fingers to see if you can move the two shells apart. Sometimes the closed shells are full of mud and no mussel; these shells will separate fairly easily.

If a mussel is slightly open, you need to determine if it is alive. Give the two shells a gentle squeeze together. If the mussel is alive, this will trigger it to close. If it does not respond to this stimulus, throw it out.

Once the mussels are cleaned, they are ready for the pot. Cook them in a covered pot (or as we did at the restaurant, using two skillets, one inverted over the other as a makeshift lid). I generally start by sautéing a bit of onion, garlic, leek, or shallot in olive oil or butter.

Once that starts to smell good, I add the mussels to the pan making sure to leave head room for them to open their shells. Then I splash the wine with a small amount of cooking liquid, generally white wine. I have used and you could use just about any liquid including tomato juice, red wine, beer, broth, coconut milk, and so forth depending on how you want to sauce the mussels. You only need a little liquid because when the mussels open, they will release plenty of their own liquid.

Mussels Steaming in Sautéed Leeks and White Wine

In very short order, the mussels will open and the meats will go from translucent to solid color. At this point, I remove them to a service bowl discarding any mussels that failed to open.

At this point, I finish the sauce to pour over or enjoy on the side with the mussels. In this case, I added fresh dill to the mussel broth and whisked in some cold butter to lightly thicken the sauce. You really want to be careful with mussel broth not to reduce it no matter how great the temptation. Mussel liquid is highly briny and often tastes lightly of iodine, both flavors of the sea.

I once, as a young chef, had the bright idea to highly reduce the mussel liquid and use the resulting sauce to nap the cooked mussels, two mussel meats put into one half shell. Nice idea. But after a long time gently bringing the sauce to napping consistency, I tasted it to correct the seasoning. And I immediately spit the over salty, iodine-tasting mess in the trash. Don't be like young Ed. Learn from his lesson.

Butter and Dill for Finishing the Mussel Sauce

Steamed Mussels, Leek and Dill Broth on the Side

For me, the primary reason for cooking mussels is the resulting tasty broth. Sometimes I serve mussels in a bowl of broth; sometimes I put the broth on the side for dipping the mussel meats in. One of the joys of mussels is drinking all that great broth after you have eaten the mussels, or more hedonistically, using lots of great bread to sop up the broth. It irked me to no end to have customers at the restaurant not eat the broth after I spent all that time and effort in making it.

Leek and Mussel Soup

I'd never throw away any mussel broth and we had a lot left over after eating the mussel meats. The following evening, I put it in a soup pan, added a couple more leeks, and a splash of half and half. When the leeks were tender, I blended it to ultra-smooth and served it, still frothy from the blender, in coffee cups accompanied by slices of quesadilla for dipping.

Bottom line, I was terribly disappointed in the quality of these spendy mussels, but the two dinners from them made me very happy.

Seafood Supper

Without a doubt, seafood is one of our favorite food groups and last night I made a couple of seafood dishes that I'd like to remember, hence this post. Sadly, I have cooked so many dishes in my life and professional career that I have forgotten more than I remember. Seafood features much less frequently in our diet than we would like, because despite being only 3-1/2 hours from the coast, good seafood is really hard to come by out here in the high desert. Believe it or not, our best source of seafood is often Costco. That's kind of hard to admit for a chef who used to buy directly from the boats, but it's true if a little sad.

John and Heidi came over for dinner last night and we all gathered around the kitchen island to eat. We had really hoped to at least have appetizers if not dinner out in the courtyard around the firepit. But wouldn't you know that it rained, albeit lightly, for the first time since spring? And after some really warm and smoky summer days of late, there was a marked chill in the air and way more humidity than we are accustomed to. Is fall here already on the last day of August? For goodness sake, it just finished snowing on the 19th of June!

Goat Cheese Crostini with Pink Shrimp and Fennel Pollen

Summer here in Oregon is pink shrimp season. Though these tiny shrimp are harvested in the ocean close to shore, they are often called Bay Shrimp. They are netted, then cooked and peeled and are available pretty reliably through the summer. I have been trying to find ways to work with them, an opportunity that I have not had before this summer. Last time, I made them into delicious shrimp cakes. This time, I made them into a quick salad to sit atop crostini.

The crostini are topped with a schmear of softened goat cheese and pink shrimp seasoned with a really great olive oil, lemon zest, salt, and fennel pollen. After I put these delicious appetizers together, I drizzled them with more olive oil, salt, and fennel pollen, then topped each with a fennel frond.

Roasted Steelhead Trout on Fines Herbes Israeli Couscous

I really love the marriage of fish with fines herbes, so I put the two of them together in this dish. Fines herbes is an herb mix used in classic French cooking with seafood, poultry, and other very light proteins. The canonical mix is parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil, but I use whatever I happen to have on hand. This time the herbs would be Italian parsley, tarragon, and dill. Why is chervil so hard to find? I used it quite a bit at the restaurant, but I had to grow my own.

I boiled the couscous to almost done, then drained and mixed it with a steelhead cream sauce to finish cooking. Just as the pasta was finishing, I added sugar snaps (mange-touts) cut into one centimeter lengths, a big mound of finely chopped herbs, and a quick grating of pecorino romano. The steelhead cream sauce I made by cooking two minced shallots in butter, then adding a quarter cup of brined capers and roughly a quarter pound of diced steelhead trim leftover from portioning the fish. After the fish cooked a bit, I added a pint of cream and let it reduce by half. I made the sauce ahead and rewarmed it before adding to the couscous.

After roasting the fish, each portion went onto a bed of the couscous (which intentionally mimics the look and feel of risotto) and I topped each with a dollop of saffron aïoli and a dill sprig.

Salmon Cakes

I'm starting to get back in the habit of taking Tuesday and Wednesday evenings off to spend with Ann if business is slow enough and slow enough early week it has been. After some back and forth about eating in or eating out, we decided on eating in.

In trying to find something healthy to eat for dinner, I remembered that I had a couple sides of small Steelhead Trout in the refrigerator and had just scored some amazing small cucumbers at the farmers market. Pretty quickly I arrived at salmon cakes with cucumber salad.

Salmon Cakes in the Pan

Salmon cakes really could not be any easier to make. The exact flavorings are different each time that I make them. I skinned the fish, cubed it, and tossed it in the food processor with some whole grain mustard, two minced shallots, a big bunch of chopped dill from the garden, and a big handful of capers. I processed it to the consistency you see in the pan above and then formed it into four-ounce cakes, which I cooked to crispy on the outside and medium rare in the middle. I see all kinds of recipes that include egg and breading to help hold the cakes together. This is about as necessary as egg and bread in hamburgers to help them hold together.

Salmon and Cucumbers, a Classic Combination

The cucumber salad is equally trivial to make. After slicing the cucumbers thinly, I added just a little Greek yogurt, a little sugar, a little rice vinegar, and a little salt. End of story. Delicious!

Salmon Burgers

Ann had mentioned liking salmon burgers at some point last week and as I buy a side of salmon each week to snack on after work, I decided to turn this week's salmon into salmon burgers for her. I'm no stranger to salmon burgers: they were on the lunch menu at the restaurant for a couple of years in the early days until I figured out that nobody comes to my restaurant for sandwiches. It's a shame for it's a great sandwich.

Salmon Burger

Making salmon burgers is pretty trivial. I took the pin bones out of a side of salmon and skinned it, then cut it into large dice. Into the food processor it went and I pulsed it until it was the consistency of burger. To this I added a bunch of a quarter cup of capers, a half teaspoon of salt, a quarter cup of whole grain mustard, and a big handful each of chopped fresh dill and sliced green onion. I pulsed it again a couple of times to mix everything and then formed it into bun-size patties. A couple of minutes per side in a hot pan and we were eating. These burgers really are great.

Snowshoe WV Tuesday

Tuesday morning when I took the dogs out, while the sun had not yet come up over the mountain behind us to the east, and even though it was cold and windy, I could already tell that the clouds and humidity from the day before were gone and that it was going to be a lovely, if cool, day, a great day for our planned walkabout and subsequent picnic.

Eggs with Broccoli, Cream Cheese, and Dill

After a delightful breakfast of scrambled eggs with cream cheese and broccoli, we headed out to go see the sights at Snowshoe. Once we passed the golf course on the right on the way up the hill, I could see acres and acres of hillside covered in ramps. Mark said that a couple weeks prior when the ramps first started coming out that cars were parked all over the shoulder of the road and the hillside was covered with foragers.

Top of Snowshoe Mountain Looking Due West

At the top, we toured the resort, bringing back memories from years gone by, and we stopped at this clearing on the steeper west side of the mountain. You cannot see it in the picture but way down as far as you can see grass is a big whitetail doe happily munching away. This ski run has not been used for whatever reason, probably because it is super steep.

It Was Cold on Top

The wind was very stiff, coupled with temperatures in the 40s up on the ridge, and it proved to be chilly when we were exposed, severely limiting the time we spent gazing about like the tourists we were. We moved along to the top of the hill and a grove of spruce trees under which the ground was covered in moss or "green snow" as the locals have dubbed it. We walked along the mountain bike trail under the trees with the dogs and eventually came to the USGS marker at 4848 feet, marking the highest point on the mountain and the second highest point in West Virginia. What surprised me is that it looked like slightly to the west, parts of the hill were actually a foot or 18 inches higher than where the marker was located. The spruce grove was a great break from the wind and a great diversion for the dogs.

Green Snow

After circling back through the main village, we took West Ridge Road back along the west side of the hill and looked at some of the crazy condos with impossibly steep driveways, ultimately circling back to the east side of the hill and making our way down to the valley and Shavers Lake. While it was warmer in the valley by the lake, the wind was screaming right up the valley and so after watching the deer wander around within feet of us, we sought shelter at the picnic tables on the deck in the lee of the Boathouse restaurant just opposite the Ballhooter ski lift.

Shavers Lake

Picnicking in the Sun

We had a long, leisurely lunch of cheese, crackers, and salame while basking in the sun. Mark, Kelley, and I set out on a trek around the lake on the mile and a half loop trail. While we walked for about 45 minutes, Ann and the dogs soaked up the sun on the Boathouse deck. Grace was a very happy dog: outside doing her favorite thing, being passed out in the sun.

Still Snow on the Ski Runs

About two thirds of the way through the hike, we crossed the earthen dam that creates Shavers Lake. I took this photo near the water intake for the pump house that runs the snowblowing equipment and you can see that even at the first of May, there is still a bit of snow on the ski runs.

Killer Pasta

Back at the house, Kelley and Ann went in the kitchen and created this pasta while Mark and I sat and yacked. It has spicy sausage, mushrooms, and zucchini in it and Kelley says she modeled it on a pasta I once made. Whatever the origin, it was a great bowl of pasta. I just love this cavatappi/cellantani/spirali shape. This was a great dinner for our final meal in West Virginia before heading back to Funchester in the morning. Great job ladies!

Beef Short Ribs and Orzo Casserole

Sunday April 12 was dedicated to one thing: getting to 9pm and episode one of the fifth season of "Game of Thrones." But we still had to eat. During our morning coffee ritual, Ann asked the question, "Do you have any meat?" As in, were there any unloved proteins in the cooler at work?

Poking around the cooler at work yielded some local beef short ribs: the amount Martin's delivered last week was just too much to fit in our braising pan. And Ann had a plan to make an orzo casserole, so we grabbed some of that too while we were in town. I sensed that the short ribs pleased Ann greatly: she's definitely the carnivore in our family. I could live pretty happily without any meat at all, except for pork. But if I have to eat beef, there is none better than our local beef from Martin's Angus Beef.

Beef Short Ribs

Back at home, I rubbed the ribs with salt and pepper and put them in a 350F oven so that they would be done by dinner time. They ended up in the oven for 5 hours and were as tender as could be.

Lunch

Meanwhile, the kitchen full of great smells was driving us crazy. There is nothing to stoke hunger more than something delicious roasting away in the oven and perfuming the entire house with hunger-inducing scents. We desperately needed to eat some lunch as we binged on the new season of the "Breaking Bad" prequel "Better Call Saul" before watching the last couple of episodes of "Game of Thrones" season 4 in preparation for the season opener, so I warmed up some focaccia in the oven and pulled out a local goat cheese crottin and a salame. If you feel like you've seen this before somewhere on this blog, you might be right. Bread, cheese, and salame is one of our favorite casual meals.

Orzo Casserole with Gruyère and Dill

Ann wasn't feeling super well, so I made her orzo casserole by tossing cooked orzo with a quick chicken stock velouté, grated Gruyère, and fresh dill. The sprinkle of grated pecorino on top browned very nicely after about 45 minutes in the oven.

Orzo Casserole, Roasted Beef Short Ribs

When I say that beef doesn't float my boat, I really mean steak doesn't float my boat. Braised or gently roast beef is a very different matter. I thoroughly enjoyed this delicious meal and judging from the lip smacking sounds across from me, I would say that Ann did too. Even Carter made a rare appearance to eat something other than peanut butter or cereal.

Quick, Midweek Dinner

Grilled Scallops on Risotto of Israeli Couscous

Last night was Thursday March 12 and the first beautiful evening after the spring clock change, the glorious first evening of the year when the weather and the light were both good enough to grill out. From long years of experience at the restaurant, I know that this means an empty dining room. I used to get so twisted up about this phenomenon and the cashflow implications, but after more than a decade of it, I now subscribe to the old adage, if you can't beat them, join them.

Accordingly, I left the restaurant to the crew (poor, poor bastards) at 5 p.m. with a few scallops and stopped by the store on the way home, searching for something. I left the restaurant with the idea that I would grill the scallops and serve them over an Israeli couscous risotto, something that would take 20 minutes or less to execute, but I needed something to go in the risotto or at least a vegetable garnish. Being in a very spring mood, I grabbed some sugar snaps, a leek, and some dill for the risotto.



Scallops, Sugar Snaps, Dill, Pecorino, Israeli Couscous, Leek, Saffron

Risotto of Israeli couscous is shorthand for saying that I cooked the couscous, a small, round pasta, in the same manner as I would have cooked Arborio rice for a risotto. First, I sweated the leek and saffron in some butter and once the leek had gone translucent, I added the couscous and water to just barely cover. As the couscous absorbed the water and the water evaporated, I added more water bit by bit until the pasta was cooked and the liquid incorporated. Next I added the raw chopped sugar snaps (chopped to mimic peas and to not be significantly larger than the pasta), a handful of chopped dill, and a half a cup or so of grated pecorino romano cheese. I stirred well, seasoned to taste with salt, and added a bit more water to achieve the texture I wanted.

Before I started the risotto, I fired up the grill and let it get good and hot for about 15 minutes while I prepped and started the risotto. Then I sprayed the grill down with Vegalene and placed the scallops on for about 4 to 5 minutes. They turned out as you see in the initial photo above.

Tips I have learned from years of grilling scallops (they are not the easiest thing in the world to grill because they want to stick mightily):

1. Start with dry scallops. Dry is a trade term for a shucked and rinsed scallop. Wet is a trade term for scallops that have been treated with a chemical (sodium tripolyphosphate) that acts as a preservative. Not only does it extend the shelf life of the scallops, it helps it retain water, and a scallop that retains water is a heavier scallop and one that nets more money for the seller. Unfortunately, when you cook said scallop, it oozes that retained water back out and you'll never get that scallop to brown.

2. Start with large scallops. U-10s to be exact. That is under 10 to the pound. You need a big scallop to stand up to the heat of the grill.

3. Start with a very hot grill. The grill bars need to be very hot to sear the scallop. Once seared, the scallop will release from the grill.

4. Just before placing the scallops on the grill, spray the grill and the scallops with Vegalene, a commercial pan spray. Don't screw around with inferior grocery store pan spray. If you're serious about grilling, go to the Internet and get some Vegalene.

5. Leave the scallops longer than you think you should. As I said, for these big boys, they were on the grill 4 to 5 minutes. It takes time to get that great sear so that the scallop will release. Don't rush it.

6. Cook the scallops on one side only. After you have left the scallops on the grill long enough to get great stripes on the show side, they don't need any further cooking.

Beautiful U-10 Dry Scallops

These scallops are gorgeous and you'll notice that some have a pink, orange, or coral tint. If you've ever shucked a female scallop and you've seen the bright coral color of the ovary (which we call the roe and is delicious), you have a good idea where this color comes from. Sometimes the females produce too much of the carotenoid zeaxanthin that colors the ovary and it leaches into the adductor muscle, the part that we eat. Hence, the colored meats are from female scallops. There is no difference in taste.

A Beautiful Mediterranean Sunday

Sunday was a fantastic day to be outside and Ann and I headed out around 11:30 to wait for Karen to arrive, talking, sipping Pinot Gris, and sitting on the patio in the shade of the pergola. Karen arrived a little while later and we spent a most enjoyable afternoon on the patio catching up, until after we ate lunch late afternoon and headed in to cool off in the air conditioning.


My Two Lovely....

....Dining Companions

Thank You Karen!

Karen brought a couple bottles of Willamette Pinot of which this Boedecker was the superior. She knows exactly what I love to drink.

Mezes: Olives, Hummus, Grape Leaves, Red Pepper Salad

Earlier in the day, I put together this platter of dolma/dolmades, red pepper salad, olives, and hummus. I make the hummus fairly loose with lots of lemon juice, olive oil, and for a special flavor, sesame oil rather than tahini. Try it some time. I took my meal cues from the beautiful breezy warm Mediterranean weather and created a meal that would be recognizable almost anywhere in the Eastern Med.

Turkish Chopped Salad

Early in the day, I chopped red peppers, cucumbers, red onions, and tomatoes. Just before dinner I dressed the salad with lots of chopped parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

Pork Kofta with Feta, Dill, and Mint

I had a hankering for kofta on the grill, but I didn't have any lamb I felt like grinding so I used pork (frown if you must) and seasoned it the same way with feta, dill, mint, garlic, oregano, and various spices (such as allspice, coriander, etc.).

Dinner is Served: Kofta, Salad, and Tzatziki/Cacık

And here you see our dinner, ready to eat, with the kofta, the salad, and a bowl of thick tzatziki that I made the day before. Turkish cacık is rather thinner than this in my experience: I like it thicker.

Meeting Levi

Sunday, we drove out to Tom and Ann's in Capon Bridge, WV, ostensibly to have a leisurely afternoon lunch with them, but the ulterior motive was certainly to meet their new dog, Levi, who was most certainly the star of the show, despite all of Tom's many culinary efforts. So, meet Levi....

Levi

Lev's a big boy and very eager to please, no doubt because he came from a local shelter after a couple failed placements. His sweet disposition doesn't change the fact that he's 85 pounds of happy wagging tail. That thing's a weapon! I found out quickly when I took him for a walk that he has a rock fetish: excavating and carrying rocks seems to be his thing!

Cheese and Salame, Two of the Basic Food Groups

We arrived to this wonderful spread of cheese and salame: Gorgonzola Dolce, Stilton, Fiscalini Cheddar and Asiago Stravecchio (extra vecchio/older than 18 months) for cheeses, and a chorizo picante and rosette de Lyon for sausages. The rosette de Lyon in particular was outstanding. We do a lot with Fiscalini cheeses at the restaurant and I just love the products from this farm in Modesto, CA.

Tom, Doing his Thing

After warming up with some cheese, sausage, and wine (an Alto Adige Gewürztraminer, a Sierra Foothills Sauvignon Blanc that I brought, a Napa Zinfandel, a Sierra Foothills Cab, and a Columbia Valley Syrah), Tom got on to lunch proper: ham, potato gratin, and carrots. All quite wonderful, but just couldn't compete with Levi! ;)

Ham with a Pineapple-Jalapeño Sauce

Gratin of Potatoes with Stilton

Carrots and Dill