Bendiversary 2026: Cassoulet Encore

Once again, seemingly more quickly this year, February is upon us in a flash. We have crammed our February celebrations (Valentine's Day, my birthday, and the anniversary of our moving to Bend) into a single celebration that we call our Bendiversary. It is now tradition that I make a cassoulet for us and our friends. We invited Rob and Dyce and Michelle and Andreas; sadly, Rob and Dyce were feeling poorly and had to back out.

Celebrating with Michelle and Andreas

While I am in the kitchen cooking, Ann handles the table in the dining room and always does such a nice job. 

For our meal, cassoulet is a given, leaving only an appetizer to devise, along with the de rigueur salad, the necessary light and acidic counterpoint to the heavy and decadent cassoulet. For once, I thought not about what guests would like, but what I would like for an appetizer to celebrate my birthday.

If I had some foie gras, I would have made torchons. If I had rabbit liver, I would have made a terrine. Sadly, while those items were always available to me in the restaurant trade, I cannot get them here. Never fear, I started my charcuterie career with chicken livers and they would suffice beautifully for this meal.

I chose to make a mousse, a dead simple affair involving cooking minced shallots and fresh thyme in butter, then adding chicken livers and cooking until just barely done. Lacking cognac (it's a pain in the rear to visit the liquor store), I drizzled in a bit of high rye bourbon and let that cook off. The livers went into the food processor with a bit of white pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. After spinning them up, I added just enough heavy cream to smooth out the paste. I transferred the mousse to a bowl while still warm, letting it set up in the cooler overnight.

Croustades, Mousse de Foie de Volaille, Cornichons

Brut Sparkling Nerello Mascalese
Excellent with Liver Mousse

When I made cassoulet at the restaurant, several times a month in the winter, I had access to all the classic ingredients: large white Tarbais beans, house-made duck confit, meaty and garlicky saucisse de Toulouse, and plenty of poitrine de porc (pork belly). After we butchered one of our hogs, cassoulet was sure to be on the menu. Now in retirement, I do not have access to hogs, ducks to confit, and many other things. Happily, I can get outstanding American-grown cassoulet beans from neighboring California. Everything else, I have to wing, substituting things that I do have.

Traditionally, cooks make cassoulet in an earthenware pot called a cassole, from which the dish has taken its name. At the restaurant, we made it in a huge rondeau, a flat round braising pan that would take an entire shelf in our commercial oven. At home, I have a decent-sized enameled cast iron cocotte that serves six. I also have a smaller rondeau that serves eight. When I have made cassoulet in the past, I have made batches from a kilogram of beans, enough to serve a dozen or more. Heretofore, I split the cassoulet between the cocotte and the rondeau with excellent results, if slightly different cook times.

In the last year or so, I purchased a deep roaster that could easily hold the entire batch, simplifying my life. Never having used this pan for cassoulet before left the cooking and cook time a bit of a crapshoot, but it worked wonderfully.

I cannot believe how many people put bread crumbs on cassoulet. Scream with me: FAUX PAS! One of the glories of a cassoulet is its crust. This crust develops over time. Once it forms, I punch it back into the liquid and let it reform, again and again, up to seven times. This is cassoulet. The following series of photos shows the progression.

Cassoulet Assembled, Ready for Oven

Cassoulet, After 4th Punchdown

Cassoulet Ready to Serve, After 7th Punchdown

Cassoulet is a load in the stomach, meaning that it really needs no side dishes. I always serve it with a salad with a really classic acidic mustardy shallot vinaigrette. The acid helps refresh the palate from the rich flavors of the long-cooked beans and meats. This dressing I made with mustard, tarragon vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and minced shallots. I make the tarragon vinegar by stuffing a bottle of rice vinegar with fresh tarragon and leaving it in the dark pantry for weeks to flavor. The salad changes with my mood and what is available. This is is baby spinach, julienne of apple, julienne of fennel, and toasted slivered almonds.

Spinach, Apple, Fennel, Almonds, Shallot-Tarragon Vinaigrette

So Good!

I am already looking forward to my next cassoulet, which I am going to make in less than a week for a wine event we are having at the house.

Loubia with Lamb Kefta

Andreas and Michelle went to Iceland just before we went to Italy so we haven't seen them in a hot minute. Our schedules finally allowed us to get together to see their absolutely stunning pictures. Iceland is very near the top of our list of places to visit in the next couple of years. I can hardly wait.

Loubia with Lamb Kefta

Andreas likes to cook and likes to pick my brain to learn new things. This time, he wanted to learn about spicing and I believe he mentioned Moroccan food specifically. At the same time, Ann seemed fixated on lamb and white beans, so I decided to do a bean stew common to the Maghreb, a dish called various things in various locales.

Loubia is a stew of white beans that I have encountered often. I know it in French as tagine d'haricots blancs or cassoulet algérienne. I also know that Andreas loves my cassoulet. And I also know that because it requires hours in the oven, it is not a dish that I can show him how to make right before dinner.

So what to do?

I decided keep on with the slow-cooked beans, but show him how to make two condiments for the beans, a red sauce and a green sauce. The red sauce was my version of harissa (red chiles, cumin, coriander, fennel, caraway, cinnamon, salt, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil). The green sauce was my version of chermoula, an analog of chimichurri (parsley, cilantro, lemon zest, coriander, fennel, salt, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil). Chermoula is a typical condiment for fish, but I love it with meat in the same way that I love gremolata, salsa verde, or chimichurri with meat.

Long-cooked and mild dishes such as this loubia can often benefit from a zesty, acidic sauce to help wake up the taste buds. Also helpful is a bright green salad with an acidic dressing, such as the one I made from arugula, julienne of apple and fennel, and a tangy vinaigrette made with Sherry vinegar.

Lamb Kefta in the Classic Shape

First thing in the morning, I put my beans that had soaked overnight in lightly salted water on to par-cook for 90 minutes. I used my old stand-by beans, Steuben Yellow Eye beans from Rancho Gordo. Into the pot, I tossed a large sprig each of rosemary, sage, and thyme which would subtly flavor the beans.

Meanwhile, I got busy making the kefta (kofta, kafta, kufta: your choice). Because I was going to serve the beans and kefta with two assertive sauces, I did not highly season the lamb as I often do. The seasonings are a lot of garlic, a decent bit of a mild paprika, some salt, and a bit of coriander, cumin, and dried chile flakes. All the seasonings I mixed into a slurry with a couple of eggs and some white wine (definitely a no-no in the Arab world; substitute any stock or cream). Then I added a couple pounds of ground lamb and a half a cup of rolled oats.

I typically do add some type of starch to my meatballs and meatloaf to loosen the texture of the cooked product so that it is not super dense. I have used panko, panade (bread soaked in cream), cooked rice, and raw rolled oats all to success. Because I always have them on hand, I use rolled oats most frequently, a bonus if you have guests who are gluten-free.

After mixing the forcemeat (with the best tool of all, my hands), I put it in the refrigerator to settle and so that the oats could start to absorb the liquid and bind the mixture. When the beans were just about at the end of their 90-minute par-cook, I shaped the kefta, diced a leek and a large carrot, and minced half a bulb of garlic.

Then it was standard cassoulet procedure from there: brown the meat (the kefta), cook the aromatic vegetables in the same pan scraping up all the brown bits (the fond) from the bottom of the pan, drain the beans and save the cooking liquid for soup, mix the vegetables with the drained beans and season, put a layer of beans in the cocotte, add the meats, top with the remaining beans, fill with a deeply-flavored meat stock to just cover the beans, and finally bake in a slow oven, replenishing the stock as necessary and punching down the crust every hour or so.

While I Cooked, Ann Set the Table and Chose Utensils and Plates

I wanted to have something to snack on while the girls chatted and Andreas and I made the harissa and chermoula. I decided on a baked feta to take advantage of the oven since it would be going anyway in finishing the loubia. This couldn't be easier to make by whipping up a roasted red pepper sauce in the blender and layering it under and over slices of feta.

The roasted red pepper sauce is a pint jar of roasted red peppers, a couple tablespoons of my homemade harissa, a couple tablespoons of the intense umami-bomb estratto di pomodoro (Sicilian tomato paste), a couple cloves of garlic (minced), and a touch of salt. Ten seconds of whirring in the blender and it's done.

I also cut up some olives (Castelvetrano) and toasted some pine nuts for garnish. I stole a bit of parsley from the bunch that I picked for chermoula as an additional garnish.

Baked Feta in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Olives, Pine Nuts, and Parsley for Garnish

A Couple of Italian Girls

Loubia with Lamb Kefta
Loubia is Generally Saucier; I Made This Just Like Cassoulet

Arugula Salad with Apples, Fennel, and Sherry Vinaigrette
Loubia with Harissa and Chermoula

Goodbye Rob and Dyce

While we were in Italy for three weeks, Rob and Dyce decided, quite suddenly as it appeared to Ann and me from the outside, to pack up their belongings and move to Boulder. They told us about a week after we returned from Italy that they would be gone within days, by the end of October. Talk about dropping a bomb!

A Farewell Cassoulet

As sad as I feel about their leaving, I'm a big believer that everyone has to find happiness where happiness can be found. And so, if Bend is not the right place for Rob and Dyce, they should go and find the right place. We wish them all the best in Boulder; it is a great town. When I was a young man, I spent a fair amount of time camped out at the Hotel Boulderado while calling on customers at the IBM locations in and near Boulder and at HP just up I-25 in Fort Collins.

After they shell-shocked us over dinner at their house, a house that was in the process of being dismantled, we all wanted to get together one final time to celebrate. Rather than celebrate at a restaurant, Ann and I preferred to have them to dinner at our house, where we could be assured of a great meal, restaurant quality in Bend being somewhat suspect. We set a date for the final Saturday night that they would be in Bend.

Later on at home, I asked Ann to ask Dyce what they would really like for dinner. Almost immediately came a response that I would have never expected: cassoulet. Of all the dishes in the world, it was going to be cassoulet. Dyce asked if it would be possible. With only three days left before our planned dinner, the answer was yes, but just barely. I did have a pound of really great beans on hand (Steuben Yellow Eye beans rather than Tarbais, different but equally good) and I could just get the cassoulet made in 72 hours. Cassoulet is only as good as the stock you cook it in and great stock takes a long time to make. For me, it's a three-day process and if I started right away, I had three days to make it.

Having done all the shopping and prep on Thursday and Friday, on Saturday morning, I started the cassoulet cooking. By the time they had arrived at 6:30, I had punched the crust down 9 times. Each time you punch the crust into the broth, it enriches and thickens the broth. Traditional lore in France says you must punch the crust into the broth a minimum of 7 times.

What to drink with dinner? Naturally, we are all huge white Burgundy fans and so I met the guys at the front door with a glass of Bouchard Beaune du Château. While it is all well and good to start with a white, a long-cooked cassoulet demands red. But which?

White Burgundy to Start

Those who drink wine at our house know that we have one wine cooler that we designate the do-not-touch cooler. This is the cooler in which we have all our great wines as well as some that will be great after laying down for a long time. If there were ever an occasion to scrounge in this cooler for a wine for dinner, this would be the time. And so, I pulled out a bottle of 1995 Côte-Rôtie the day before and let it stand upright overnight to settle out any solids. Then I gently decanted it about an hour before they arrived.

Gangloff Côte-Rôtie 1995: Brilliant

It is always a crapshoot when opening an older bottle of wine, but it helps to have held the wine in your cooler since it was released as I have this wine. The fill level was great and the cork could have been new, not 30 years old. Thankfully, there was no whiff of cork taint at all. I cannot count the number of times I have opened old bottles just to have to pour them out. This wine was beautiful, with great color, bright acidity, gentle tannins, and aromas and flavors of leather, smoke, and dark fruit. This bottle was brilliant and everything you want a great wine to be. We sipped it with reverence.

I was so off my game that I forgot to take any people pictures and I just barely snapped any at all.

With a heavy meal like cassoulet, I decided not to do any appetizers. None of the four of us is a huge eater. I made a simple salad of arugula and julienned fennel and apples that I dressed with a vinaigrette made with an acidic sherry vinegar. With a heavy dish like cassoulet, you want some bright acidity to counterbalance the long-cooked beans and high fat meats.

Arugula, Fennel, Apple, Sherry Vinaigrette

Cassoulet and Salad

This post is about saying goodbye to friends; there are plenty of others that address how to make a cassoulet. Here's one that discusses a similar cassoulet.

And so here's to Rob and Dyce! It's been great having you as neighbors here in Bend and we wish you all the best on your new adventure in Boulder. We'll see you this summer!

Brined Roasted Steelhead with Fennel-Orange Slaw

We end up eating a fair amount of steelhead trout and salmon, to the point where I am looking for ways to cook it other than on the grill or in a steel pan. I remember years ago at the restaurant, sometimes I would brine and roast fish and that's what I decided to do in this case. Brining gives fish a silky, sexy texture and this piece of steelhead was amazingly moist and delicious.

Brined Roasted Steelhead with Fennel-Orange Slaw

It's hard to come up with garnishes for dishes in the middle of winter because so few things are in season. Fortunately, winter is a great time for both citrus and fennel. On spying a nice fennel bulb at the market, I brought it home to make into slaw for the steelhead. Haricots verts have very good shelf life and are not too bad during winter, so I brought some of those home to roast as well.

Brining Steelhead

A decent brine is a tablespoon of Kosher salt per cup of water. For this brine, I put two tablespoons of salt and a tablespoon of sugar in a pint of water. The steelhead was in the brine for about two hours. Even ten minutes in the brine improves both texture and flavor. I did not salt the fish otherwise.

Fennel-Orange Slaw

This fennel-orange slaw could not be any simpler to make. It contains one fennel bulb, core removed and shaved, the segments of two large navel oranges, and a bit of shaved red onion. It is seasoned with salt, sugar, red wine vinegar, and the orange juice that I squeezed from the oranges after removing the segments.

Arugula and Duck Salad

Arugula and Duck Salad

I love a good salad and seeing some baby arugula at the farmers market on Saturday caused me to want a salad, so I grabbed a bunch of random salad things on my way home Saturday night: a pomegranate, a roasted duck breast, a few orange segments, some shaved fennel, some toasted pine nuts, and a little grated Manchego cheese. I made a dressing of mustard, balsamic vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil. I ate three helpings!

Pasta Fagioli

Pasta e Fagioli

"I had an open can of cannellini in the walk in."

Alex, what is "Why did you decide to make pasta fagioli tonight?" Saturday evening, for Sunday dinner, Ann asked me to surprise her because we were staying in and cooking, a decision taken directly from the weather forecast which predicted a wintry mix all day (but, typical of such forecasts, never came to be). From making another batch of minestrone last weekend, I had the bulk of a huge can of cannellini in the cooler that needed to be used.

While trying to decide what to make, I remember Ann telling me that I went the entirety of 2014 without making her a batch of pasta fagioli, (clearly, she forgets this batch), so I thought that I would  surprise her with one of our favorite comfort foods.

All the Ingredients Save White Wine and Cannellini

Each batch, and there are at least four batches documented here on this blog, is different. In this case, there was too much snow in the garden to go hunting for thyme and sage, so I was content with parsley and rosemary from the cooler. And no time or desire to go shopping for a box of ditalini, so we made do with orzo from the pantry. The mirepoix for this batch was onion, carrot, celery, and a fennel bulb. I always add fennel if I have it, but I usually don't have it. Pancetta is de rigueur, but sausage or bacon would do in a pinch. Lucky for us, I always have a slab or two of pancetta hanging in the cooler and another in the cure. And finally, I cooked the pasta directly in the beans. Ordinarily, I cook them separately. All this is by way of saying, it is a simple pot of beans and pasta and no matter how you make it, it will be delicious.

Tag Team Dinner: Minestrone and Bread

Sometime earlier in the week, Ann asked if I would make minestrone for dinner on Sunday and she volunteered to make a loaf of bread to go with it. Sounded good to me. Except. Except I have heretofore always made minestrone in the summer using the bounty of the garden. I have never thought of it as a winter soup before. And as Ann can all too well attest, I am guided by nothing if not the seasons in my cooking. Though once I thought about it, I reasoned that people damn well make soup year round (particularly in winter) using whatever vegetables are at hand. I know that Ann wishes a lot of times that I would just stop with the thinking and cook whatever she wants, but then I wouldn't be the person that she married, would I?

My Minestrone, Ann's Black Pepper Pecorino Bread

Minestrone Mise

I love soup and I've made a lot of minestrone in my life. Each batch is different, but the common qualities are: it is a brothy soup with big chunks of vegetables; it is not a long-cooked soup; it always contains beans and pasta; and it is always seasoned with a chunk of Parmigiano rind. Vegetables vary depending on what is on hand. I love Swiss chard in mine in the summer; white cabbage stands in now while the ground is frozen, though I would have preferred cavolo nero.

Sometimes, there are benefits to owning a restaurant, such as having quarts of ready-prepped mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) and slabs of house-cured pancetta in the walk in. That along with diced tomatoes, a piece of white cabbage, and a bulb of fennel comprised the vegetables in the soup. Seasonings were pancetta tesa, a sprig of rosemary, garlic, pesto, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and a Parmigiano-Reggiano rind. Beans were canned cannellini, though in summer I use fresh bird egg beans and chunks of flat romano beans. Pasta, because of the terribly limited selection of soup pastas at the grocery store, was ditalini.

I started by trying the cubed pancetta in extra virgin olive oil with the stalk of rosemary, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and the slivered garlic. Once the pancetta and garlic went transparent, in went the carrots, onions, celery, 3/4s of the cabbage, and 3/4s of the sliced fennel.

To prep fennel, cut off the stalks and peel off any tough outer parts. Quarter the fennel vertically. Remove the core by cutting each of the four pieces on the bias. Then slice each piece horizontally against the grain into 1/8" (4mm) slices.

After the vegetables sweated for about five minutes, I added the tomatoes, the cheese rind, and a quart each of chicken stock and water. At this point, the vegetables simmer for about 30 minutes. Still to go into the pan: the beans (already cooked, don't want to overcook), the pasta (it goes in for the last 10 minutes), the pesto (doesn't need to cook, swirled in just before serving), and the remaining cabbage and fennel (goes in five minutes before serving, for freshness and crunch).

When I was ready to serve dinner, I brought the soup to a boil, seasoned it, and added the beans, and the pasta. Five minutes later, I added the cabbage and fennel. When the pasta was done, I swirled in the pesto and served.

The soup was particularly delicious and about as simple as can be. A couple days later, my Italian wife confessed that she had only ever eaten minestrone out of a can! How can this be? How do you grow up in a multi-generational Italian family and not have fresh minestrone? I suspect that there is no going back to the can now for her; she has been spoiled.

Getting Her Hands Dirty

Years ago, I used to bake bread all the time, but Ann has adopted that task for herself and she makes an excellent loaf of bread. She doesn't generally knead the dough, but this one ended up so sticky that she had to add a lot of flour to it. Still, the bread, flavored with lots of black pepper and grated pecorino cheese, was really great.

Ann's Delicious Black Pepper Pecorino Bread

It's always fun to get in the kitchen with Ann and a couple glasses of wine and do our thing. As much as I like to cook, I like it better when we do it together. We make a great team!

Naan Pizza

Early Monday morning as I was getting ready to leave work to head out on my usual restaurant-related errands, I got an emphatic text from Ann to the effect of "let's have veggie naan pizzas for dinner (and I don't want to hear any arguments from you)". Well, OK, then. Let's have naan pizzas.

Fortunately, Costco has OK naan in stock, so I grabbed them and a ball of fresh mozzarella. At the market, I got a bulb of fennel and a couple of red peppers. Back home, I sliced the fennel, peppers, a mound of garlic, and two huge onions and put them on a low flame for about three hours. The veggie pizza topping was nice and soft and caramelized by dinner time.

Naan, Caramelized Onion/Fennel/Peppers, Fresh Mozzarella

Carter seems to be squeamish these days about certain vegetables including peppers and fennel, but I notice that if I bury them on a pizza, he eats them. Maybe not enthusiastically, but he does eat them. Besides being a great way to get some vegetables into your teenager, naan pizzas are quick and delicious!

A Lazy Summer Sunday

Money being tight these days, we are spending a lot more time at home cooking and playing on Sundays that we would normally do during the summer. I really, really wanted to go to Glen Manor Vineyard this weekend, but that costs money we don't have, so I shut my mouth and we put together a great menu for the day.

Wine Line Up: Argyle Pinot Noir and Elk Cove Pinot Gris

It ended up being an Oregon wine day. We had Elk Cove Pinot Gris with our shrimp croquettes for lunch and Argyle Pinot Noir with our mussels for dinner. We had a local Catoctin Creek Petit Verdot on hand as well, but it never got opened.

Annie Frying Her Shrimp Croquettes

Shrimp Croquettes: Roux and Shrimp, Chilled and Breaded

Sometime this past week, Ann had made shrimp croquettes by folding cooked shrimp into a thick roux, chilling it, molding into croquettes, and rolling them in panko. She fried them up for lunch on Sunday. They were delicious with the Pinot Gris.

Watermelon Salad with Mint, Feta, and Red Onions

Mussels with Chorizo, Red Onions, Fennel, Garlic, and Orange Zest

For dinner, I made a watermelon salad by dicing seedless watermelon and feta and mixing that with thinly sliced red onion and chiffonaded fresh mint from the garden. A pinch each of salt and pepper and a splash each of extra virgin olive oil and Sherry vinegar finished the salad.

A big bowl of mussels accompanied the watermelon salad. I started by cooking the onion, garlic, and chorizo, then adding a bit of fennel confit (grilled, slow poached in oil, and covered in a tangy vinaigrette) and white wine. The mussels went in and finished steaming in a couple of minutes. I pulled them out and then reduced the sauce just slightly and poured it over the mussels. A good loaf of crusty bread hot out of the oven finished our lazy summer Sunday supper. A great day at home with my wife!

Bucatini

The photo below doesn't do last night's dinner justice. You have to imagine bucatini wallowing in melted goat cheese comingled with chorizo oil and pretend to smell the heavenly scents of roasted red peppers and fennel confit coming off of it. Sorry you weren't there. This is a spectacular bowl of pasta.

Bucatini with Chorizo, Roasted Red Peppers, Fennel, and Goat Cheese

Monday, all afternoon I had planned to do a shrimp, pineapple, and chorizo filling for tacos for dinner. But as we got to dinner and after having watched a couple episodes of The Sopranos in which everyone was eating pasta, Ann begged for me to make some bucatini. I'm trying to be good and limit the amount of pasta that I eat until I can shed a bunch of this winter blubber, but I let her sway me to the dark side. I combined the chorizo that I brought home for tacos with last night's leftover pizza toppings (fennel confit, marinated roasted red peppers) and some fresh local goat cheese. This was an incredibly good pasta!

I'm not a big fan of thin, long pasta cuts (spaghetti, fettucine, linguine, etc.), liking a cut with more body to it. For long pasta, bucatini or perciatelli as it is called by some, is my cut. I have been whining here on the blog about the dearth of decent pasta in the local groceries, so I bought a case of bucatini for the house. Problem solved!

Pizza!

Last week, we decided to have no plans on Sunday, to work in the yard in the morning, to be lazy in the afternoon, and to grill pizza for dinner. Mission accomplished!

In the morning, we got some much needed work done in the yard and in the garden. New rosemary to replace the ones that the winter killed, much pruning and weed pulling, and cucumbers and squash planted in the garden. And much admiring of the clematis which are now in full bloom.



6-7" Wine Colored Clematis Blooms in the Early Morning Sun

These Clematis Blooms are Small but Beautifully Shaped

Ann made a batch of dough on Saturday morning and let it sit overnight. In the afternoon, I started working it into small balls for pizzas.

Ready for Their Final Rise

Once the heat of the day got going (and truth be told, our neighbor's kid got the lawnmower cranking) we reluctantly headed indoors from sitting around the patio, post gardening. We've just started watching The Sopranos, so we put on an episode of that, in which Uncle Junior tries to whack Tony, and then Ann wanted to see The Godfather, which she had never seen before. All this indolence is thirsty work so we opened this lovely bottle of Ponzi Pinot, a gift from dear customers Gerry and Mary Elizabeth Greenwood who have just returned from Oregon and for whom we cooked a tasting on Saturday night.

Being one of the original wineries in the Valley, Ponzi is not unknown to me and although I have tasted many bottles over the years, 2011 is a new vintage for me. And I was excited to try it because 2011 has proven to be my all time favorite Oregon vintage, the cool weather attenuating the fruit and amplifying the acidity, right in the sweet spot of my palate. Ann said, "This is a fabulous wine." Smelling of dark cherries and leather, it reminded me so of Burgundy, my original wine love. Gerry and Mary Elizabeth, my most sincere thanks for your kindness and generosity.



Awesome! Tasted Blind, it Could be Burgundy

With my wine, I do love some cheese on a lazy Sunday and how fortuitous it was that Suzanne from Shepherd's Whey Creamery messaged me to let me know that she had some Valençay cheeses on the "ripe side that are screaming your name." She knows that I love my cheeses ripe, ripe, ripe. And so I got three of them at the market on Saturday that were beyond the sell-by date. The damned government and its sell-by dates. What the hell do they know about good cheese?



Phenomenal Valençay-Style Cheeses from Shepherd's Whey Creamery

Towards 8pm as the sun was getting low in the sky, we headed outside again and I started up the pizza factory, having already prepped the toppings: roasted red peppers marinated in olive oil, garlic, and basil; smoked sausage; fennel confit; sliced grape tomatoes; fresh mozzarella, and grated pecorino romano.

Pizza Toppings Ready to Go

How Good Does This Look?

She's a Happy Girl!

Grilling pizza is unlike baking it in the oven. It turns out to be a wholly different procedure as I found out some years ago when invited to grill pizza at the farmers market, something I do each summer now. You want fairly moderate heat, unlike when baking pizza when you want it as hot as you can get it. My grill has four burners, two on the left side of the grill and two on the right. I only light one side of the grill and I only have the flame about 2/3 of the way up.

Spray the hot side grill bars really well (and do this for each pie) with pan spray before putting a stretched dough on the hot side of the grill. Close the lid and leave it closed for a minute. Open and rotate the dough with a spatula (it should be firm enough by now to move easily). I rotate the dough because I have yet to see a home grill without hot spots and I want to distribute the heat a little more evenly. Another 45 seconds to a minute should do it.

Once the bottom-side is cooked, flip it over and drizzle the cooked side (now the top) with a little olive oil and sprinkle it with salt. Then apply your toppings and close the grill. A minute with the lid closed should cook the bottom. Move the pizza to the cold side of the grill for a couple of minutes to finish cooking the toppings while you make the next pie. Enjoy!