We Needed a Celebration

It's been a long time since we had a get-together at our house. Spring was busy: I'm volunteering a couple days a week, I traveled to Philly to watch Ellie graduate, and we had a few health problems along the way. We needed a reason to celebrate at home. Ann set it up, inviting Rob and Dyce and Michelle and Andreas for dinner.

Pregaming with Chenin Blanc

Superstar Wine: Anjou Blanc
Chenin from Thibaut Boudignon

Whipped Feta with Spicy Honey and Pine Nuts

We had been saving a magnum of Anjou Blanc from Thibaud Boudignon for just such an occasion. He is a winemaker who came from obscurity to global reknown (at least among sommeliers) in a blink, now making some of the best wines in the Loire. These are not old school wines, however. They are precise and angular and suit my palate to a tee. Although he is best known for his outstanding Savennières, I prefer his base level Anjou Blanc for its simplicity and laser-focused acidity.

I let the wine guide the appetizer course, selecting a cheese dish that would be a great foil for the incredible acidity of the Boudignon wine. Over the years I have done many versions of baked feta and whipped goat cheese, but never whipped feta.

For garnishes, I made spicy honey (half a cup of honey and a tablespoon of sambal oelek) and toasted a handful of pine nuts. I chose to garnish with honey expressly to echo the honey and beeswax aromas and flavors of the Chenin Blanc.

Whipped Feta

For the whipped feta, I decided to add 20% goat cheese by weight to help loosen the feta which I was afraid would be too grainy whipped alone. I was quite happy with the results as apparently were all the others—none was left at the end of the evening.

400 grams of excellent sheep's milk feta

100 grams of fresh goat cheese

squeeze of lemon juice

drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Soften both cheeses at room temperature. Place both in a food processor and process until whipped, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

The raw whipped cheese tasted flat so I squeezed in the juice of an end of a lemon that I had left on the cutting board from making lemon slices for the chicken. I drizzled in an equal amount of olive oil; call it a tablespoon of each. The feta is salty enough; the whip did not need more salt.

Setting the Table: First Time in a Long Time

Ann and I went back and forth on the menu for a few days. At first, she wanted a reprise of a chicken tagine that I made some years ago, actually, an entire meal that I had made before. I resisted repeating myself, feeling that it is a cop out of sorts. But then she changed her mind to simple roasted chicken on white beans.

She was dead set on the tomato salad flavored with fennel pollen from the menu that I did not want to replicate. She talks about that salad often, but it's funny how I barely remember the dishes (so many thousands) that I have cooked. Thankfully, this blog is a repository of dishes that I have made, so there is a record even if I no longer recall them.

Roasted Chicken
with White Beans, Artichokes, and Garlic

The orginal roast chicken, as I conceived it, had no white beans. But I added them to subsequent iterations because something magical happens when you roast chicken on top of them. As always, quality matters. Use the best beans you can find. In this case, I used yellow eye beans from Rancho Gordo. These are among my favorite all purpose white beans ever and a stalwart at the restaurant.

Roasted Chicken with White Beans, Artichokes, and Garlic

6 heads of garlic, broken into cloves and peeled

3 lemons, sliced

1 pound of dried white beans, cooked

3 400-gram cans artichoke hearts

1 bunch of Italian parsley, destemmed and roughly chopped

2 large sprigs of rosemary, destemmed

drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

12 chicken thighs

salt

pepper

Mix the garlic, lemon slices, white beans, artichoke hearts, parsley, and rosemary with a drizzle of olive oil. Season as necessary. Place the mixture in the bottom of a roasting pan. Toss the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and arrange on the bed of vegetables. Roast in a hot oven (400F) until the chicken skin is crisp, about two hours. Check the beans occasionally. If they are drying out, moisten them with a little bean broth or chicken stock.

Tomatoes with Fennel Pollen and Shallots

Nobody needs a recipe for this simple tomato salad that is as surprisingly delicious as it is easy to make. It is merely a mixture of halved grape tomatoes, minced shallots, fennel pollen, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, all to taste. 

Shout Out to El Mentridano

Ann and I, we are fans of light bodied reds with good acidity and some structure, wines that let their aromatics do the talking. While we are not fans of the usually overripe Spanish Garnacha, we both agree that El Mentridano, a high-altitude, lightly expressed Garnacha from Méntrida, near Madrid, is delightful. It offers a nose of cranberries, cherries, black tea, and a slight earthiness, all positives in our book. Color is light and tannins are polished, all backed by an attractive sour cherry acidity that keeps the wine vibrant. It reminds me of Nebbiolo in many ways. We had real problems, likely bottle shock, with this wine about six months ago, but after sitting in the rack for that period, it is back to normal. We must buy more—it is an indispensable summer red that pairs with a vast range of foods.

Herding Cats Again: Impossible to Get Everyone to Cooperate

Ann Made Her Delightful Summer Pudding (Berries and Brioche)

Michelle Made Her Best Batch Yet of Lemon Bars

We needed a night to sit back with friends and catch up. The simple menu is just what we needed, tasty and yet easy to prep in advance, with zero à la minute cooking that let us enjoy the company of our guests.

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

José Restaurant, Dallas

We considered several options to get to San Angelo TX to visit with Carter for his 25th birthday. The most efficient proved to be to fly to Dallas, rent a car, and drive the four hours to San Angelo. With a return flight to Oregon at 10am on Monday morning, we decided that we would return to Dallas on Sunday evening and camp out at a hotel near the airport, especially given the inefficiency of the rental car system at DFW.

This schedule left us with the opportunity to have a nice dinner in Dallas on Sunday night, a night when many restaurants are not open. Of all the places we could have gone, we chose José near Love Field in north Dallas, an easy drive from our hotel near DFW. José is known for its elevated Guadalajaran-inflected food and drink, a celebrated female chef in AQ Pittman, its use of house-made masa from corn brought in from Mexico, and a segment on "Taco Chronicles," the Netflix show that you do not dare watch if you are remotely hungry or trying to lose weight.

The Very Handsome Floor-to-Ceiling Back Bar at José

As a chef, when I go to a restaurant, I just want the kitchen team at that restaurant to show me what they do well. The restaurant knows far better than I do what they do well. So, why should I order off the menu if I have the option to let my hosts decide? It's a rare restaurant that will roll with a request to just order for Ann and me (there are some technical POS issues, but that's more a cop out than anything), so when I e-mailed asking if they would just order for us, I was pleasantly surprised to get an affirmative response from GM Victor Rojas within a short while.

Just as we were seated, a runner dropped off a basket of totopos and a couple of salsas, one red and one green. The green salsa was one of the standouts of the night. It was almost identical to the usual salsa verde I make at home, except that it was smoother and less rustic. I really enjoyed it. It's the small things for me that make an experience.

Within a couple of minutes of our being seated, Victor appeared at our table bearing amuses and introduced himself. He would take great care of us personally for most of the evening and we greatly enjoyed chatting with him.

Blue Corn Sopecito with Blue Crab Salad

While we were munching on the tiny sopes and contemplating the cocktail menu, I had a chance to look around the spacious dining room of the building that was once a dry cleaner. The industrial steel clear span framing gives a large open interior and high ceilings that leave room for an immense custom floor-to-ceiling back bar that is the focal point of the room.

Back to the table, the star of the sopecitos was not the crab, but the blue corn masa from which they were made. One of the primary reasons we selected this restaurant is because they nixtamalize their own corn and grind their own masa. Nixtamalization is the process of soaking dried corn kernels in a basic solution that dissolves the hard outer shell, the pericarp, of the kernel.

It is a process that my great grandmothers would have used to make the hominy (posole) so prevalent to the Scots-Irish Appalachians. When I was a boy, I would often see ash hoppers at country auctions. People would fill these hoppers with ashes from the fireplace and the rainwater would filter through the hopper and drain into a bucket below. The solution in the bucket would be lye, potassium hydroxide. Today, rather than using lye, we use refined hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) called cal to nixtamalize corn.

Victor helped us choose cocktails. I had a riff on a Manhattan called the The José Way Manhattan, a dark complex mixture of mezcal, amaro, Banane du Brésil, vanilla, and Angostura bitters. Ann had a smoked tequila Old Fashioned of reposado, agave, and a couple of bitters. We really enjoyed our cocktails; they are similar to what we are making currently at our home bar where Ann's Oaxacan Old Fashioned will hang with anybody's.

Ann and Her Smoked Tequila Old Fashioned

The José Way Manhattan

Victor also brought us small glasses of the house mezcal and said that he had gone to Mexico to help make it. After smelling its unusual fruity nose similar to an eau de vie or schnapps, I asked how it was made. It is a pechuga of 100% espadín piñas. The pechuga used in the redistillation came from things that he sourced at the market: apples, guavas, and chile chilhaucle. I have had pechugas flavored with all sorts of things, but this was the most unique mezcal that I have ever tasted, a smooth and highly refined spirit that I enjoyed.

Arugula with Peaches, Fresnos, Grilled Okra, and Goat Cheese

Next up was an arugula salad course, the standout of the meal for me. The salad was plated on a spread of goat cheese from fairly local (Waco) Pachi Pachi Farms. The best parts were the fresh salad ingredients: sliced peaches, sliced mildly spicy Fresnos, and the revelatory ingredient, sliced grilled okra. I also loved the crunch of the toasted quinoa sprinkled on the salad.

As a southerner, I have grown, harvested, and cooked okra all my life. Even though I have cooked it myriad ways, I never thought to grill it gently. The smokiness from the grill enhances the small tender okra without activating any of its slime. In the highest form of chef flattery, I may rip this off, if I can ever find some tender baby okra out here in Oregon where it is essentially non-existent. 

Champagne Telmont

Our cocktails were done after the salad, so wanting a wine that would be able to stand up to anything that might come next, we went the sparkling route, ordering a bottle of Champagne Telmont. A label that we have not had before, it was a fine all-purpose wine with lots of red fruit dominating the nose, the palate balanced by a healthy addition of Chardonnay.

Dobladas de Pollo Enmoladas

Our first course with the Champagne was a plate of dobladas covered in mole. I detected chicken thigh meat, poblanos, and a white melting cheese inside the fresh tortillas and the top had a good sprinkle of queso fresco. To be honest, I wasn't expecting mole in a self-styled Jaliscan/Guadalajaran restaurant, but I have never met a mole I did not like.

Victor referred to the mole as "aged mole," meaning that each new batch contains some of the previous batch, old school, the way it has always been and should be done. He regaled us with the story of the line cook who thought to put the final batch of mole before COVID into the freezer to be used as a starter on the far side of the pandemic. Good looking out!

The mole on these dobladas was a fairly dark, fruity, complex sauce that in my world I would call a mole poblano. As much as I loved this mole, I cannot help but wonder how this combination of chicken, poblanos, and cheese would respond to a mole verde or pipián.

The star of this dish was neither the mole nor the filling. To quote Ann, “that tortilla though!” She would have been content with a stack of those tortillas and a ramekin of that excellent salsa verde. As would I.

Carne Asada, "Patatas Bravas," Salsa Roja

The Carne was an Excuse to Snack Fresh Tortillas!

We would get more awesome tortillas with our next dish, a cast iron dish of carne asada, onions, and peppers, served with whole roasted potatoes tossed in spice ("patatas bravas"), and a beautiful salsa roja. The eye opener from this dish was the salsa roja, an intense concentrated tomato sauce. The sauce was enhanced with smoky chile morita. The texture of the sauce and the smokiness reminded me in the best way of a beautiful roasted eggplant sauce.

Again, while the meat was awesome (sous vide tenderloin, I think), the tortillas and the salsa roja stole the thunder. Ann and I asked for more tortillas with which we polished off all that delicious sauce.

Coconut Flan with Candied Amaranth and Pepita Topping

Neither Ann nor I are dessert eaters because sweet flavors are not really our thing. Flan is so often cloying and pedestrian, but not so in this case. The pastry chef had a deft hand with the sugar and the addition of coconut milk made this flan much more interesting than usual. 

After dinner, Victor brought us little glasses of dark, barely sweet Fernet-Vallet as a digestif, a nice parting gesture. We thanked him profusely for his hospitality, the willingness to order for us, the excellent staff training, and of course, a delicious meal for which I would like to thank all the BoH team, especially the prep cooks and dishwashers who never get any credit, but without whom, nothing would happen.

The stand-out components of our meal were none of the star players. The glory goes to the supporting actors: the masa, the grilled okra, the salsa verde, and the salsa roja.

I compliment Victor, a consummate hospitality professional, and the service team on their attentiveness. I always love going to a restaurant where the entire service team takes responsibility for all guests, not the usual "not my table, not my problem" attitude. The FoH staff at José are well trained. Not a lot of guests would notice this, but then, I'm not an average guest, having owned, cooked at, and run a fine dining restaurant for a very long time.

Roasted Beet and Turnip Salad

It's now getting on to good weather and I'm out walking and hiking as much as I can these days. That's not leaving me a lot of energy for cooking, creating new dishes, or even time to write about them. Here's a departure from all my recent wildflower posts.

After a visit to an early farmers market and coming away with early season ingredients including arugula, beets, and pretty little white Hakurei turnips, I decided to make a salad. 

Roasted Beet and Turnip Salad
with Arugula, Goat Cheese, Croutons, and Spiced Hazelnuts

The very best way I know to treat beets for salads (if you're going to cook them at all) is to roast them. I wrap them in a single layer in an aluminum foil packet and place them in a moderate oven until I can pierce them easily. For these smallish beets at 350F, that was about 45 minutes in the oven. The smaller turnips I treated the same way, but only roasted them for about 20 minutes. I just wanted to soften them and not cook them quite all the way through.

For the salad, I peeled and chopped the beets, quartered the tiny turnips, made some croutons quickly in a skillet on the range, and then toasted whole hazelnuts in olive oil in that same pan before tossing them with a little of my pork spice rub. Everything went into a salad bowl with a bunch of arugula and some crumbled goat cheese. After drizzling the salad with a little extra virgin olive oil, a bit of really good balsamic vinegar, and a sprinkle of salt, I tossed the whole thing and Ann and I set about feasting.

I was really pleased with the addition of the beets to this salad. Their pepperiness complemented the arugula and contrasted pleasantly with the beets.

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 

Pork and Potatoes

So Ann has this habit of picking up people wherever we happen to be, and if she likes them well enough, inviting them to dinner. Such was the case recently when we met Evan and Justin around the fire pit at our local pub while we were getting a couple beers after a movie two Fridays ago. Ann decided that they were coming to dinner along with Justin's fiancée and soon-to-be wife Maria, who was not in attendance around the fire.

Ann also decided that I was making pulled pork. To be fair, she did ask me to make pulled pork, but she knows that I will never refuse her requests if I can fulfill them. Besides, I am too happy to cook for anyone who is a good human and a good eater. I'm no longer in the restaurant business, so my tolerance for picky and high-maintenance eaters is nil, having had to cater to such people all my life. But for good people, I will gladly cook any time and any place.

Ann, Maria, Justin, and Evan
We Had a Great Night with Great People, Food, and Wine

I still approach dinners at home the way that I would at the restaurant. Even though we changed the menu every day at the restaurant, we would start the week off by sketching out where we wanted the menu to be by the weekend, and trying to pull as much of that prep forward into the earlier part of the week when we were not as insanely busy as on the weekend.

Ditto for dinner at home. On the day of the dinner, I don't want to have spent the entire day prepping such that I am too tired to spend quality time with my guests. So when I sketch out a menu for a dinner, I try to spread the work out over multiple days. In this case, the menu was not very complicated so for the Saturday night dinner, I started with some small tasks on Friday.

The menu was straightforward:

Whipped Goat Cheese with Puttanesca Topping

Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

Scalloped Potatoes with 'Nduja

Green Salad with Pickled Shallots, Spiced Pecans, Pomegranate Seeds, and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Pulled Pork, 'Nduja Scalloped Potatoes, Green Salad

The tasks that I could do ahead on Friday I did on Friday: making the dry rub for the pork, spicing the pecans, and making the puttanesca topping for the whipped goat cheese. I've covered my spice rub for pork ("Butt Rub") in detail before and you can find a recipe here. I pretty much followed the recipe except for when I tasted this batch of rub, I wanted both a bit more sugar and salt which I added.

"Butt Rub" for the Pork Shoulders

Spicing pecans is a useful technique and we used to make many pounds at a time at the restaurant as they were a key component in certain dishes, such as our Fall Salad, a mix of cubed roasted winter squash, cubed Asian pear, and Cajun-spiced pecans, all dressed in a vinaigrette made from local apple cider reduced 8-fold, and served molded in a ring mold with a flourish of just-cut micro-arugula on top. [I sure miss the days when our growers would deliver living flats of microgreens to the restaurant, micros that we would clip seconds before they hit the plate.]

I used to toss the pecans in melted butter and then add some spice rub and mix them well to coat them with the spices. And that was good, but I noticed that when one of my line cooks prepped the pecans, they always tasted way better than mine. I watched her when she made the next batch and saw that she heated the pecans and butter together in a pan until the pecans were well-roasted before coating them in the spice mix and a generous pinch of additional salt. Even an old chef can learn new tricks.

While at the restaurant we used our Cajun spice mix (aka "Magic Dust") to spice pecans, I wanted for this dinner to echo the same flavors in the pork, so I used the pork rub to spice the pecans. I have found that menus hang together better if you can echo some flavors throughout, but not so much as to be tiresome.

Spicing Pecans: Cook Until the Pecans are Roasted

Spicing Pecans: Tossing with Spice Mix and Salt

The next Friday task was to start in on the goat cheese that we would have for our pre-dinner appetizer course with sparkling wine. The idea for this appetizer was to whip some fresh goat cheese to a light, airy, and spreadable consistency and then to top it with a highly-flavored olive oil.

But what to top the goat cheese mousse with? I wanted to be a bit creative. When I start thinking about creating dishes, I am often influenced by ingredients on hand, dishes that have appealed to me recently, or some other external input. In the restaurant, I would often, when in need of inspiration, walk into our well-stocked pantry (We stocked 15 different types of rice, for goodness sake!) where I would surf the shelves, seeking ideas.

In the case of this appetizer, I have been thinking a lot recently about making a chili-garlic crunch as that has been all the rage in the last year or two, and for good reason. Moreover, I have been thinking about spaghetti alla puttanesca as those bold flavors really appeal to me.

And there you have it, this topping is the answer to the question everyone has been asking: What if chili-garlic crunch and pasta puttanesca had a baby?

Chili-Garlic Crunch
Boiling Olive Oil Poured over Chile Flakes and Fresh Garlic

I started by making a simple chile-garlic crunch. While heating a cup of olive oil on the stove, I put 7-8 cloves of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons of chile flakes, and a tablespoon of dried basil in a heat-proof bowl. When the oil got very hot, I poured it over the mixture, instantly frying it, and let it cool on the stovetop.

Whipped Goat Cheese with Puttanesca Topping

Once the oil cooled, in went the remaining ingredients: minced anchovy fillets, brined capers, oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes, and chopped green olives. Then Ann and I tasted the mix and adjusted it. The oil seemed too prominent, so I added some acidity in the form of first a touch of balsamic vinegar for sweetness and acidity, then a touch of red wine vinegar for straight-up acidity. A bit of salt helped round out the flavors (surprising to me that it needed salt because of the anchovies, capers, and olives).

I left the mix on the counter overnight to macerate and for all the flavors to come together: it takes time for flavors to infuse into oil. The flavors were definitely better on Saturday morning than Friday afternoon. We left the whipping of the goat cheese to minutes before our guests arrived and one the mousse was spread on a plate and topped with the oil, I scattered on a large handful of chiffonaded fresh basil to lighten and freshen the appetizer.

Slow-roasting 15 pounds of pork shoulder is an all-day affair. A prior post outlines my method in which I bring the roasts up to 165F, wrap them, and return them to a very slow oven to bring them up to a final temperature of 195-200F. Despite it being an all-day affair, I couldn't bring myself to get in the kitchen until after my morning coffee, so I did not get the two shoulders into the oven until just after 9am. Accordingly, they were not ready until roughly 7:00pm.

Spice-Rubbed Pork Shoulders Ready for Oven (or Smoker)

Pork Shoulders at 165F, Ready to be Wrapped and Put Back in Oven

Fall-Apart Tender Pork Pulled Using Tongs

To go with the pulled pork, I had the idea to do scalloped potatoes with thyme and 'nduja, the Calabrese spreadable salame. I was hoping that the 'nduja would melt into the cream and I was not at all disappointed. I built the casserole by putting a layer of sliced raw yellow potatoes in an oiled gratin, then topping the layer with a sprinkle of salt, fresh thyme, little dots of 'nduja, and a drizzle of heavy cream, continuing in this fashion until the gratin was full. It baked for an hour, covered, in a moderate oven, and then uncovered for another half an hour or so until it browned on top.

Building the Potato Layers

The Finished Potato-'Nduja Gratin

To act as a foil for the rich pork and potatoes, I wanted a green salad with a relatively acidic dressing. I decided to put spiced pecans, pomegranate seeds, and pickled shallots in the salad and because the pomegranate was really ripe, I got a good bit of juice in the process of knocking the seeds out. That pomegranate juice would form the basis of the dressing when combined with whole-grain mustard, Sherry vinegar, agave nectar, and extra virgin olive oil, all buzzed together with the immersion blender.

Greens with Spiced Pecans, Pomegranate Seeds, Pickled Shallots,
and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Pickled Shallots Put up in December

By the time the potatoes and pork came out of the oven, we had been talking and drinking wine for a good hour and perhaps 90 minutes. Everyone was ready to eat and it all turned out wonderfully. We continued the merriment well into the evening when someone, Ann I think, suggested opening a bottle of Port.

1992 Quinta do Bomfin Port

By the time the Port was opened and decanted, a lot of wine had been consumed and we had all got a hankering for something a little sweet to go with the Port, despite having gorged ourselves on pork and potatoes. I stood at the counter and assembled crackers topped with Cambazola cheese and fig compote, the remainder of the compote that we made at Christmas to give to our friends.

This 375ml 1992 Quinta do Bomfim is fully ready to drink; the tannins have mellowed and the fruit on the wine is no longer improving. This is unlike the 750s of 1977 Warre's whose tannins are still rough and youthful. I can hardly believe the $16.95 price sticker on the bottle!

It was a great night chez nous and I thank our lovely dinner guests for sharing in the merriment with us!