Vegetarian Sunday

Let's just start with the disclaimer that we are not vegetarians. Anything but, actually. We love our charcuterie, for example: we are those people that keep a drawer full of salame and cheese in our refrigerator. Though Ann is by nature quite a bigger carnivore than am I. I'm always having to fend off her requests for a big hunk of meat on the grill, which interests me not at all. But now it is summertime and the weather is hot and we naturally gravitate towards eating lighter food. Plus we have all these glorious vegetables at our disposal now. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising that we eat a fair amount of vegetarian meals in the summer. And yesterday was one of those days. We didn't plan it that way purposefully. It just evolved that way from what we really wanted to eat.

Lunch al Fresco

This last week at the restaurant kept me really busy, especially executing a wonderful 50th anniversary menu on Saturday. It meant extra long hours for me and 100% of my focus, leaving no time for Ann or thinking about the weekend. She hates these weeks when she really feels the true chef widow. So Sunday morning dawned without any plan. After I spent a couple hours in the back yard working, Ann finally joined me and we got to thinking about what to eat. Lunch was easy: she wanted a reprise of last weekend's Mediterranean mezes plate that I did when Karen dropped by.

A few chickpeas in the food processor, slicing a few roasted red peppers, and a little baguette in the oven and instant lunch.

Roasted Red Pepper Salad

Some days ago, Ann had brought up the idea of a grilled vegetable sandwich but we never got around to it for some reason or other. I brought it back up Sunday and it stuck. So when I made the roasted red pepper salad for lunch, I made extra for our dinner panini. Slice roasted red peppers, chiffonade fresh basil, mince garlic, add salt, pepper, Sherry vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil. Toss. Done.

Grilled Vegetable Panino

This is one of the very best sandwiches that I have ever had. I split a loaf of focaccia, brushed the cut faces with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and grilled to a crispy golden brown. Then, while the zucchini, yellow squash, and red onions were grilling, I spread the grilled faces of the bread with pesto. From there, it was a simple matter to layer the sandwich: zucchini, red onion, yellow squash, roasted red pepper salad, and provolone cheese. I left the top off and put it under the broiler to melt the cheese and then put the top back on and cut it into small panini.

Ever the expert on all matters, teenager Carter argued with us (but still ate the sandwich) that these are not panini because they have not been pressed. We had to school him a bit in the Italian language. At almost 15 years of age, he still knows that parents are dumber than dirt!

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.

Easter 2014

Like other such Easter mornings, I was awakened far too early by the sunrise service at one of the two nearby churches (or maybe both). Amplified voices are just what I need at sunrise after a long, hard dinner slog the night before. But I'm used to it and I don't really begrudge the churches their once-a-year celebrations. They didn't really get the dogs too riled this year, so it was possible to sleep on-and-off through the service. And bless Ann for getting up before me and taking the dogs outside. Not having to do that one day in my life is priceless, not that I really mind, but just this simple luxury was wonderful.

Anemones in the Morning Light

Easter to me means spring flowers, but this year, everything is 2-3 weeks late on account of our long, hard winter. So this year, I had to suffice with our earliest late winter/early spring flowers, anemones, which are quite stunning in the bed out front of the house.

Duck Eggs: Breakfast of Champions

Now that we have a steady supply of duck eggs, four weeks later than in any prior year, Ann asked me to bring some home for Easter breakfast. What a great idea! Duck eggs are so fabulous! These ended up scrambled and eaten in breakfast burritos.

Bob and Mary, Guests of Honor

After attending Easter Mass, Bob and Mary drove out from McLean to have lunch with us. Ann did a fantastic job of putting together a very simple menu that we could execute with very little effort, a good thing because I am now 51 weeks without a vacation and am whipped. My tolerance for large crowds and complex cooking is nil.



Dolmades to Start

We started with dolmades and really delicious goat cheese and green olive crostini.



Along with Green Olive and Goat Cheese Crostini

Ann picked up a recipe somewhere for the olives and they turned out wonderful. We pitted and roughly chopped them, then Ann added orange zest, fresh thyme, and garlic chives. That little pop of orange is really marvelous. Keeper!



Milk-Braised Pork Shoulder, the Main Event

For our main course, Ann decided on milk-braised pork, always a delicious thing! On Saturday, I sliced a few steaks off of a pork shoulder and braised them in milk on a bed of crushed garlic cloves, fresh thyme branches, and a couple of bay leaves. About six hours this pork spent in a slow oven, six hours of becoming super unctuous.

Twin Food Processors

To go with the pork, she decided that we should have pommes Anna, that amazing French classic potato dish. It is an old-school dish and I am an old-school kind of chef. Here you see my twin food processors: a knife and a mandoline. Even at the restaurant, it is very rare that I use our big Robot Coupe.


The Perfect Pommes Anna Pan

And likewise, I eschew the fancy copper cocottes for pommes Anna in favor of the old Griswold cast iron frying pan. As you will see, it does an amazing job at this and many other tasks. I don't understand why everyone doesn't have a cast iron pan. Well, I do. They take work to keep up and most people are lazy.



Ready for the Oven



We Really Need Smell-o-Vision for These Pommes Anna!

And so our dinner was very simple, yet with outstanding flavor. The plates, as Ann commented, were very pedestrian and a great departure from what we do at the restaurant, but the flavors were outstanding: fall-apart tender pork, sensual pommes Anna, and the first broccoli of the year. Easy to prepare and even easier to eat.

"The Most Boring Plate Ever," says Ann; but How Delicious?

Ann decided to make for dessert a batch of lemon cupcakes (because her mom loves lemon cake) with cassis buttercream.



Gearing up for Buttercream

And the result was gorgeous! I am not a dessert eater and these were outstanding. Brava Ann!


Awesome Finale! Cassis Buttercream on Lemon Cupcakes



Vegan Feast

Some weeks ago, shortly after announcing that she had gone vegan, Yael invited us to dinner. Although I cook my share of creative vegan meals at the restaurant, I don't really get the whole vegan thing. I enjoy hard cheeses and pork way too much for that, though otherwise I could be very comfortably a vegetarian. Still, I have no problem eating vegan especially when the food is made by such a gifted cook as Yael! After you look these pictures, you will see the vast effort that she underwent to put on this dinner (and the resulting food for an army)!

Very soon after we arrived at their place out in the county just northwest of Winchester, we were ushered into the dining room with the table set thus:

Add caption

I did have to give Yael a little grief about the beautifully set table. If the meal is vegan, why is the table set with steak knives? ;)

Oregano, Zinnias, Thyme, and Sage Decorated the Table

Hummus and Salad with Sesame-Sunflower Seed Pita

Spaghetti with Carrot and Zucchini Ribbons

Asparagus Tips Wrapped in Grated Parsnips Rolled in Beet Slices

Dolmades!

Eggplant

Spinach in Pastry

Mushroom Cigarettes

I loved everything! My favorite dish of the day would have been the eggplant, though with its filling of ground cashew nuts, it was too rich for me to eat much of it. And the beet dish has my chef brain working overtime.

Easter 2013

In between snowstorms and rain falling from sullen grey skies, the sky became clear enough on Wednesday evening for me to see the full moon, meaning that Easter was just around the corner. I had thought about it a little bit about a month ago when Ann first brought up doing lamb again for Easter. I thought about it for about five minutes, long enough to scratch out a menu on my clipboard—yes, in this digital world, this particular dinosaur's personal assistant is a clipboard—and then promptly forgot about it until I saw the full moon.

I don't know why, but it somehow seemed fitting to do a little Greek food for Easter this year. I just had a hankering for some honest, home-cooked Greek food with no shortcuts. So I set about this menu on Good Friday by getting my pita dough started and then prepped most of the dinner on Saturday during the day, and what little was left over à la minute on Sunday.

Tom and Ann Matthes joined us for dinner. We had expected Ann's parents but her dad, Bob, was not feeling well. We missed them.

Mezés

Olives

Pita

Taramosalata

Marinated Cucumbers

Dolmades

Dinner

Arni Lemonato (Slow-Roasted Lamb)

Roasted Potatoes

Horta: Spinach Braised with Onions and Dill

Dessert

Orange Salad with Pistachios, Candied Pine Nuts, Feta, Mint, and Olive Oil
Cheeses

Dolmades and Marinated Cucumbers

Top to Bottom: Tzatziki, Olives, Taramosalata

I made tzatziki from really awesome goat milk yogurt and traditional taramosalata from bread, tarama, olive oil, grated onion, and lemon juice. I wish that my tarama (mullet roe, bottarga) had a more pronounced fishy flavor, but it was still good.

Ed-Made Pita

As I mentioned earlier, I started pita dough on Friday to let it ferment through several rises to develop flavor. Then I baked several sheet trays of it on Saturday and rewarmed it in the oven on Sunday. I make pita from the exact same dough that I make focaccia and pizza dough. And I make naan from the same dough, substituting yogurt for the olive oil.

Arni Lemonato me Patates, Horta

For the lamb this year, I decided to go with shanks because they are my favorite cut, but I decided to do something different: slow roast them. For whatever reason, I have always braised them in the past. I cut 5-6 slits in each shank and inserted a sliver of garlic, rubbed them with olive oil, and gave them a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper, then roasted them in a very hot oven for about 20 minutes, turning once, until they were browned all the way around. I squeezed a couple lemons over the shanks and sprinkled them with oregano, then added about four ounces of water to the bottom of the roasting pan and double-wrapped it in foil. The shanks cooked in a slow oven for an additional two and a half hours.

I scored some pretty Kennebec potatoes at the farmers market and they got roasted in a very hot convection oven until crispy done. The star of the plate was the horta, the greens, which I only wilted instead of braising. I only used spinach this time because Ann is a bit iffy on other greens and I wanted her to enjoy them. I sweated a finely diced onion in olive oil with several slivered cloves of garlic, then added the spinach and just wilted it. Into the pan next went a little feta cheese, fresh dill, and the first tiny mint leaves of the year from the garden. A quick season with salt and pepper and we had a fabulous side dish.

Tom's Cheeses: Gouda, Detroit Street Brick, Gorgonzola, Cabot Cheddar

Tom and Ann brought cheese for dessert. The orange gouda and the goat brick, I've already discussed in a prior post. The cheese in the front right is Cabot's (yes, the same people who make so-so block grocery store cheese) Clothbound Cheddar, that has been aged by affineurs in Vermont for a minimum of 13 months. Really, really delicious Cheddar that even the Brits would be forced, albeit most grudgingly, to admit is worthy. The hit of the day for me though was the Gorgonzola Naturale, just above the Cheddar in the photo. The texture is just so damned creamy and perfect on this particular wheel of cheese. Splendid!

Blood Orange Salad

No doubt we all know by now that I just don't care for sweets for dessert, though I do have a fondness for fruit. So I made a salad of sliced blood oranges and then tossed chunks of blood oranges with olives and feta and put that over the sliced oranges. I drizzled this with honey and extra virgin olive oil then sprinkled it with salt, pistachios, candied pine nuts, and the cutest, tiniest baby mint leaves from the garden.

Glen Manor Vineyards Barrel Tasting

Sunday morning April 1st came way too soon and not soon enough. Way too soon in the sense that I wanted to sleep a lot longer than I did after being crushed at work the week before. And not soon enough in the sense that I couldn't wait for the crush to be over and behind me.

What crushed Tony and me at work was two catering jobs on top of two different tastings, a workload from hell. I feel bad for Ann who had to deal with me all week, half zombie, something less than half human. She's a good woman for putting up with me and my job, my other wife. The thing that most crushed us: providing tasting pairings for 250 people at the Glen Manor Vineyards barrel tasting, plus a bunch of cheeses, salume, and terrines.

But how awesome was it Sunday morning trying to get going and smelling this fantastic loaf of roasted garlic bread that Ann was baking? What a beautiful loaf of bread!
Here is the lovely lady responsible for that tasty loaf. She's just learning how to make bread, but is doing quite the amazing job at it already. Here she is out back of the Glen Manor tasting room: when she smiles, she lights up the entire room!

After a couple of errands including dropping by the restaurant to pick up some things, we finally got on the road to Glen Manor. Our foray to the restaurant netted a couple of cheeses, some olives, a few grapes, a big hunk of veal terrine, and a chorizo.

As soon as we arrived at Glen Manor, we met up with friends Donald and Terry. I believe Donald is saluting the chef who is probably harassing him about being a pastry queen:


Donald needn't worry about a little friendly teasing when he puts out product like this! Tiny chocolate cupcakes filled with raspberry jelly, precious little jewels they were!
And soon after, we saw Cristophe and Michelle Perini relaxing in the sun out back while waiting for our turn for the cellar tour. We collected Cristophe and Michelle at Linden once upon a time and reconnected with them just recently. We have a habit of collecting interesting people who like to eat and drink, our favorite sport.

After an introductory sip of 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, already bottled some weeks ago and already selling in my restaurant at a brisk pace, we headed down into the cool, dark cellar to taste the new wines and a couple of 2010s for contrast. Unfortunately, there are no photos from the cellar: it was too dark and I didn't want to be that obnoxious guy blowing everybody's eyes out with the flash.

We tasted the 2011 Cabernet Franc with a piece of pork belly topped with a dried cherry and red grape olivada on a tortilla chip. The Franc has a nose that seems to be consistent from vintage to vintage, one that I would call beefy. The Franc is pleasant enough and the pairing was pleasant enough as well.

From there, on to the 2011 Vin Rouge, which is very soft and supple this year, but with more acid structure than the Franc, no doubt due to the Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend. I paired rabbit and pork rillettes with the Vin Rouge. We used a lot of bacon fat in the rillettes, trying to amplify the smoky aspects of the wine's nose. I thought the pairing was pleasant enough as well. For contrast, we tasted the 2010 Vin Rouge, which had more of everything, just like the vintage. 2011 sucked; 2010 was really hot and produced huge wines.

Next up was the 2011 Petit Verdot, the grape that Jeff says did the best of all in 2011. This is a really big fruit bomb with not too much in the way of structure. It nees to be drunk sooner rather than later. I did a chocolate, ancho, blueberry, and pecan pain d'épices to pair with it. Our friend Jorge (Randall was at choir until just about the time we left) was pouring the Petit Verdot and he had already come up to me earlier saying how good he thought the pairing was. Jorge is a little prone to hyperbole so I reserved judgement, but I did know that the cake was pretty amazing. After tasting though, I gotta say that I hit this one out of the park. It is very difficult to imagine a better pairing with this wine.

Then on to the 2010 Petit Manseng, which is about as delicious a big dessert wine as I have had in years. Big alcohol, 15% plus, big dried and tropical fruit, and big acid, plus some herbaceous and petrol complexity thrown in. Next came the monster 2011 Petit Manseng made from juice that averaged 45 Brix. 45? You have got to be kidding! It is huge in every sense and not a wine that I can take more than a few sips of. And because it is so sweet, I wanted to pair it with something very savory and salty: gorgonzola cheese and apricot-mango-ginger-chipotle chutney on a thyme-pecan-pecorino romano shortbread.

The final tasting stop had moved out of the cellar and onto the crush pad, where we could see what a gorgeous day it had turned out to be, despite starting off threatening rain in the morning. We headed around back and comandeered six adirondack chairs and three small tables on which we spread our feast. There was so much food that we could have fed a small army. I am pretty sure that I only got photographs of part of it.

Donald and Terry brought this amazing fig jam to go on a creamy fig-flavored cheese and on a rum-raisin cheese. Wow, what fun!

Here are some of the things that we liberated from the restaurant: a 4-year old farmhouse Gouda (boerenkaas), a really stinky Valfino cheese from Wisconsin, a veal terrine, and a hard Spanish chorizo.
Dolmades and olives from Donald and Terry. I love dolmades!

And finally Terry shows off his tart skills once again with this sun-dried tomato and artichoke tart. Despite his so-called "difficulty" with the crust, it was an amazing creation!
As the sun was getting too hot (especially for my hair-challenged pate), we moved up under the awning off the tasting room where we were joined by good friend and wine sales rep Bill McKenney and Bill's big boss Peg Downey of Downey Selections, which distributes the Glen Manor wines. Stay tuned for our annual adventures with the Downeys at their portfolio tasting in a few weeks!


Finally, here's a picture of Kelly and her nieces, horsing around on the berm just outside the tasting room.