Polenta with Mushroom Ragoût

It's been a quiet few weeks at home since we got back from Santa Fe in early December, weeks in which we have uncharacteristically not done any entertaining. At long last, we had Andreas and Michelle, newly engaged, over for dinner. Ann asked me to make polenta with mushroom ragoût and then suggested a Caesar salad served on a romaine leaf to go with the polenta. I decided to roast some olives for a simple appetizer.

Roasted Olives

Roasted olives may be the easiest thing in the world to make. Fundamentally, you toss olives with herbs, spices, garlic, and olive oil and roast them for a few minutes in the oven.

Olives, Ready to Roast

I mixed several kinds of olives from various sources with minced garlic, fresh rosemary leaves, tangerine peels, red pepper flakes, dried oregano, fennel pollen, and a splash of olive oil. They sat on the counter for a couple of hours before I put them in a moderate oven and roasted them for 15-20 minutes or so.

"Caesar Salad"

Caesar salad has been done over and over and over and I wanted to do something different, while still adhering to Ann's vision of a salad served on a romaine leaf. In my reimagining, I would use a lemon-anchovy aïoli both as the base of a dressing and as a garnish. And I would add the bulk of the cheese to the salad in the form of a pecorino romano crisp. Finally, Ann wanted croutons, but Michelle cannot eat gluten. I wrestled with fried polenta cubes before deciding to go with chestnuts spiced with oregano, garlic, salt, and a touch of pimentόn. 

Starting the Aïoli: Anchovies, Garlic, and Peppercorns in Mortar

After pounding two cloves of garlic, three anchovy fillets, and four black peppercorns to a smooth paste, I mixed this base with a cup of commercial mayonnaise and the zest of one lemon. I put it into the refrigerator to bloom and marry the flavors for several hours. I used commercial mayonnaise because I only wanted a final yield of one cup of aïoli. I find it much easier to make mayonnaise in quart quantities, and I just did not want that much product in the refrigerator.

Next I grated a big bowl of pecorino romano, most of which I formed into long pecorino crisps on a silicone mat on a sheet tray. The rest, I reserved to mix into the salad.

For the chestnuts, I spiced them like I would croutons, by melting a little butter in a pan and cooking the freeze-dried chestnuts for a minute, then tossing them with a mix of salt, granulated garlic, dried oregano, and a pinch of pimentón.

I have these freeze-dried chestnuts thanks to my friends Yael and Dan back in Virginia. They grow truffles in an orchard that they planted in front of their house. Hazelnuts and chestnuts are the happy side-effect of growing truffles. I have been working with the chestnuts to find good uses for them and this is a very natural and delicious use. These spiced nuts are an addictive snack, not to mention a great way to add crunch to a salad.

To make the salad dressing, to a half a cup of aïoli, I whisked in the juice of a lemon and an equal amount of olive oil. Then I thinned the dressing to my desired consistency with cool water, an amount probably equal to the lemon juice and olive oil. I re-seasoned with a tiny pinch more of coarse ground black pepper. The remaining aïoli went on the plate to anchor the pecorino crisp in place so that the salads could go to the table with mishap. 

"Caesar Salad" with Pecorino Crisp, Anchovies, and Spiced Chestnuts

I greatly prefer this salad to any other Caesar-type salad that I have ever had. It seemed to be a great hit with everyone.

Polenta with  Mushroom Ragoût

The star of the dinner was polenta topped with a sexy ragoût of mushrooms and an even sexier poached egg. The poached egg was my addition to Ann's idea. The yolk just adds extra creaminess to the dish. I also flavored the polenta with a big sprig of rosemary as it was cooking for about an hour (my corn was fairly coarsely ground).

Rosemary Polenta, Mushroom Ragoût, Grated Pecorino, Poached Egg, Green Onions

I cooked the polenta at least 90 minutes in advance and held it warm, ready to finish at service, using a trick from the restaurant. Once the polenta had cooked, I laid a piece of film wrap directly on the surface of polenta and forced all the air out from under the film. In this way, the polenta stays warmer and does not form a skin on the surface. Then at service, I swirled in a bit of butter and cream and stirred it rapidly while bringing it right back up to temperature.

And now some food porn pictures from the mushroom ragoût, made by sweating a couple of leeks in butter with a bunch of fresh thyme, then adding the fresh mushrooms and cooking, then adding the reconstituted porcini and its rehydrating liquid, all to be cooked down to a nice ragoût.

Rehydrating Porcini
The Water From This is Liquid Gold, an Umami Bomb

Paper Sack of Chanterelles, Oysters, and Shiitakes

Prepped Mushrooms Ready to Cook

It felt good to get back in the kitchen and cook something other than our standard low-fat, complex carb-laden nightly fare. It feels good every now and again to splurge a bit at the table. And I think I came up with a winner of a salad technique.

Everyone had a good time and we put a hurt on a few bottles of Langhe Nebbiolo.

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.

Christmas Lima Beans Bourguignon

As I continue to play with the box of dried beans that I got from Rancho Gordo at the beginning of the year, next up on my list was the bag of gorgeous Christmas Lima Beans, huge limas with chestnut-colored mottling.

Christmas Limas After Overnight Soak

These huge beans are reportedly quite meaty, so I decided to treat them like meat. And I was disappointed with the results, truth be told. But not all our dishes can be wins, can they? Not if we're experimenting.

Rummaging through the pantry, I saw my canister of dried porcini and that cued me to braise these limas with bacon, onions, porcini, and red wine, in the manner of boeuf bourguignon. 

Dried Porcini

Mirepoix: Leek, Onion, and Carrot

I cut several strips of bacon into crosswise strips called lardons and then rendered those lardons. The lardons went into the slow cooker with the beans while I poured off most of the bacon grease and sweated the leeks, onions, and carrot in the remaining grease. As the onions became translucent, I sprinkled a couple tablespoons of flour over the vegetables and cooked the mixture for another couple of minutes. Finally, I added a half a bottle of Pinot Noir to the pan and let the sauce thicken for a couple of minutes before pouring it over the beans in the slow cooker.

Christmas Limas with Porcini Liquid, Porcini, Bay, and Thyme

Added Bacon Lardons, Mirepoix Sweated in Bacon Grease, and Pinot Noir

7-1/2 Hours Later: a Big Bowl of Beans

I mentioned above that I wasn't happy with this dish. It was tasty and perfectly edible, but I won't be doing it again for two reasons. First, the melding of the beans with the bourguignon technique yielded something less than the original dish made with beef. The delicious red wine gravy added nothing to the beans. And second, after soaking overnight and then braising for 7-1/2 hours, a full third of the beans were still crunchy and not cooked through. To me, this seems like a quality issue with the beans and not an issue with my cooking of them.

These beans are so beautiful. I'm a bit sad that I'm not jumping for joy after having cooked them (and truth be told, probably will never again do so).

Thanksgiving 2023

It's Thanksgiving once again and each and every Thanksgiving, I am blessed to be able to have so much for which to be thankful. But it seems this year of 2023, I really do have extra cause to be especially thankful. In particular, I do not know how I would have navigated two surgeries and the death of my father without Ann by my side. There are many, many other reasons I have to be thankful this year, but that is too long a list to compile and Ann trumps all of them.

Roasted Guanciale-Rosemary Turkey Thighs with Gravy
Pasta Flavored with Sausage, Leeks, Celery, Thyme, and Sage

I look back fondly at all our Thanksgivings past and have no choice to conclude that Thanksgiving at our house is not the raucous, noisy, and crowded affair it used to be. For decades, including before my time with Ann, Thanksgiving was always a feast involving a lot of people, family at times, but mainly people who did not have any other place to celebrate this holiday. A dozen people would have been a small crowd and one year, before Ann's time, we counted 35-40 people for the big feast.

Now that we are empty nesters, it's generally just the two of us and my heart really isn't in putting in a ton of work to not share it with others. My sister and I were lamenting the day before Thanksgiving that we'd much rather cook for a crowd than for two. At least she got to cook for 8 or 9 people this year. Don't get me wrong. I love cooking for Ann, but I think we both miss having company for our big holiday celebration.

Regardless, Ann and I had a great meal although much simplified from years past: turkey rillettes, roast turkey, and a Thanksgiving-flavored pasta. The goal this year was to do the prep (and dishes!) in the two days before the feast day and then let the oven do all the work on Thanksgiving.

This year, like many years, we started our feast day with turkey neck rillettes on crostini with cornichons. Rillettes are a spread of cooked meat in fat, similar to, but more rustic than pâté. They are a wonderful use for the neck meat leftover from making the stock that I use to make the gravy (and in years when Ann makes dressing, to moisten it).

Turkey Neck Rillettes on Crostini with Cornichons

Warming the Rillettes in Front of Fire

Rillettes need to be at room temperature (or in the winter, slightly warmer) so that they will spread easily. It was too chilly in the house to warm them on the counter, so I came up with a way to warm them gently in front of the fire. I got odd looks from my wife, but it was a success.

Sparkling Wine with the Rillettes

Rillettes, because of their fatty nature, need something acidic to work against that fat. So, I top them with cornichons and serve them with a bracing sparkling wine. Any high acid wine would work, but I think of all the choices out there, sparkling works best. This was Crémant d'Alsace.

Homemade Sausage for the Pasta

Two days before Thanksgiving, I made a small batch of sausage for the pasta that I would bake on Thursday. This is ground pork shoulder flavored with white wine, sage, thyme, rosemary, fennel pollen, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and salt.

The day before Thanksgiving, I assembled the pasta so that I could pull it, in ready to bake form, out of the refrigerator on Thanksgiving and put it in the oven while the turkey was roasting. The pasta started with cooked aromatics: leeks, celery, rubbed sage, and fresh thyme leaves.

Primary Pasta Flavorings: Celery, Leeks, Rubbed Sage, Fresh Thyme

Vegetables Sweated and Removed to a Mixing Bowl

Sausage Cooked, Then Mixed with a Spoonful of Flour

Pint of Heavy Cream, Cooked Until Slightly Thick

After cooking the vegetables, I browned the sausage that I made the day before and added a big spoonful of flour. Once the flour was cooked a bit, I added heavy cream and cooked it until the cream thickened a bit. The sausage and cream mixture joined the sweated vegetables in the mixing bowl with pasta that I cooked to just al dente and then cooled under running water. Everything all mixed, I adjusted the seasoning and put the pasta into an oiled baking pan. I topped the pasta with a lightly oiled mixture of panko and the breadcrumbs leftover from making the crostini for the turkey rillettes.

Thanksgiving Pasta, Ready for the Refrigerator

The End Result

Many years ago now, Ann turned me on to putting pancetta butter between the turkey skin and the breast meat to give extra flavor and to help keep the breast meat moist. I have continued that tradition ever since. This year, I made it out of what I had on hand, no longer in the business of curing belly after belly of pancetta for the restaurant. I had some smoked guanciale (pork jowl) and a bit of fresh rosemary in the refrigerator, so I made the butter from those two items. I do have to say that the firmer fat in the jowl (guanciale) chops much finer and more easily in the food processor than does the fat in the belly (pancetta).

Butter, Smoked Guanciale, Rosemary

Turkey Thighs with Guanciale Butter under Skin

Check out That Skin!

Another Thanksgiving in the books, I am beyond thankful for all I have, the people in my life, and the opportunities that I have had and will have in the future, and most of all, for a tremendously rewarding relationship with Ann without whom my life would have little meaning.

Tartiflette

Tartiflette. It sounds like a classic French dish, doesn't it? Why is it then that when I was learning the rudiments of French cuisine, both refined haute cuisine and provincial country-style cooking, that I never heard of tartiflette? For potato dishes from the alpine region of France, I learned pommes dauphinoise, gratin savoyarde, and péla (Madeleine Kamman, I owe you thanks for illustrating the culinary highlights of the Savoie). But never did I ever hear of tartiflette, a dish I would end up decades later making in tiny single-serving portions for our tasting menu at the restaurant.

The reason for the gap in my culinary formation and education is simple: tartiflette is a new dish, a dish created as a (very effective) marketing vehicle for Reblochon cheese, one of my very favorite washed rind cheeses in the world. In the 1980s, the Le Syndicat Interprofessionnel du Reblochon (the cheesemaker's trade group) dusted off the traditional péla recipe, updated it, and gave it the new name of tartiflette (after the Savoyard word for potato, tartifle) to help boost sales of their cheese. Brilliant strategy, brilliant execution.

Tartiflette with Smoked Brisket

My journey leading to this post started with my wife plotting with Dyce a weeknight dinner for which Rob would smoke a brisket. Seemingly quite out of nowhere, Ann volunteered me to make a "sexy potato dish," which she relayed to me as a request to make a tartiflette. Why not? Tartiflette is a super simple dish to put together and it is among the best and tastiest of potato and cheese dishes in the world.

The issue of making an authentic tartiflette in the US is real. The dish is classically made using yellow La Ratte fingerling potatoes which I have grown and adore, but which are scarce to find if you don't have a garden. And then there's the Reblochon. I found out the hard way about 1992 that the USDA gets pissy if you bring this raw milk cheese into the country. Queue your "nanny state" comments up. I ended up having to donate the cheese I was bringing back from Paris to our government for destruction. Rat bastards!

But the concern about authenticity of a dish that in culinary history has literally just been invented seems misplaced. It hasn't been around long enough to take on a serious air of authenticity. And so, over here in the States, without any worry at all, I make do using the ingredients that I do have, making sure to honor the spirit of the dish, if not the letter. Reblochon, I love you, but I cannot get you, so I use one of your cousins that I can get.

Taleggio, another stinky washed rind cheese, makes a great substitute as do many other cheeses. In Virginia at the restaurant, I used to use the local Grayson washed rind cheese. In my hunt about town, the market where I get my cheese only had a little bit of Taleggio, so I supplemented it with a nice hunk of Brebirousse d'Argental, a soft sheep's milk cheese that is quite outstanding.

Lardons and Leeks with Fresh Thyme Springs

To make the dish, I started by cooking several slices of very thick cut smoked bacon that I cut into crosswise strips called lardons. After the lardons were halfway cooked, I poured off most of the bacon grease (saving it for some other deliciousness to come in the future) and added one huge leek, sliced. Traditionally you would use a yellow onion for this dish, but I am here to tell you that leeks are superior in every sense. You will not regret substituting super delicious leeks for garden variety onions.

Bacon, Leeks, White Wine, and Mascarpone

After the leeks had become soft, I added a splash of dry white wine and let that cook down for a couple of minutes. At this point, one would typically add crème fraîche to the dish. I did not have time to make crème fraîche, (heavy cream, a bit of buttermilk with active culture, and leave it on the counter overnight or until it thickens), so I went the store-bought route.

Alas, the cheese manager at the store told me that unfortunately, the New York Times had just published a recipe featuring that cultured cream and that she had sold out of all four cases that she had in stock. There's more than one way to skin a cat, however, and I had seen both mascarpone and clotted cream on the shelf. Either would do as a substitute, but I went with the mascarpone because it is also cultured, unlike clotted cream which is merely heated to thicken it.

So into the pan went the mascarpone and it cooked down until thick; mascarpone has so much fat content that you do not have to worry about it breaking even if you boil it. When thick, I seasoned the leek mix with salt and white pepper, removing the thyme stalks.

Meanwhile, I had peeled several yellow potatoes and cut them into thick slices. They were merrily boiling away in heavily salted water until I could easily pierce them. Tartiflette is in the oven only long enough to brown the cheese on top and that is not long enough to cook the potatoes, so they need to be pre-cooked.

Assembled Tartiflette

When assembling a tartiflette (other than tiny portions for tasting menus), I like to put them together in layers to facilitate seasoning the potatoes, which even though are boiled in salted water, require a bit more salt. In an oiled gratin, I arrange a layer of potatoes (about two slices thick) which I sprinkle with salt. Over this, I spoon half the creamy leek mixture. I follow this with a final layer of potatoes, salt, and leeks.

The final layer consists of the cheese. I like to split the cheese down the middle horizontally and place it rind side up on top of the potatoes. Notice the sheet tray under the gratin. Overflowed cream and cheese are going to make a dire mess of your oven if you do not take precautions. Don't blame me if you end up spending an hour scrubbing burnt cheese from the bottom of your oven.

Cooled Briefly, Tartiflette Ready to Serve

This casserole wants to cook in a moderately hot oven, say 400F (200C, gas mark 6 or 7) until it browns. I want to say that this large tartiflette took about 30 minutes to become golden brown.

And there you have it: tartiflettte, a pseudo-classic from the Savoie and favorite of skiers everywhere. In another century, it surely will have gained classic status.

Truckee: Easy Sunday in Truckee

This is another post in the series about our visit to see our friends Kelley and Mark in Truckee, CA, our first time to the Lake Tahoe area. Today, Sunday, was all about taking it easy after our long drive down from Central Oregon yesterday. Today would see us laze about, then get a delicious breakfast with Mark and Kelley, take a short walk at 9000 feet with some fine feathered friends, dip our toes in Lake Tahoe for the first time, and while all this was going on, have our crockpot produce some really fine ragù to share with Mark and Kelley. In short, it was a delightful day.

On this vacation, after our recent whirlwind of visits to neighboring states of Idaho and Washington, we were hell bent on relaxing and staying in more of our normal routine in California. Since my retirement, our morning routine each day at our home, barring some highly unusual event, is to make a pot of coffee and do several NY Times crossword puzzles while enjoying our coffee. It's our thing. Make of it what you will. We take comfort in the ritual.

After a so-so night's sleep, the two of us jammed into a tiny, soft bed, I was pretty violently kicked awake and assaulted by my life partner. What on earth, I wondered. It turns out that Ann was attacked by a Komodo Dragon in her sleep and she was fighting it off! Rudely awakened, I got up to ease my aching back and set about figuring out how to make coffee.

To facilitate relaxing and staying in more of our normal routine, we brought beans, a grinder, and all the adulterants that Ann adds to her perfectly good coffee to contaminate it, but we depended on our hosts to provide a coffee maker. I found what I call a single-serving coffee maker in the kitchen and ultimately a tiny filter to fit it and a few minutes later, Ann and I were ensconced on the sofa with our puzzle books in hand. Really, the coffee wasn't bad even though I had to guess how many beans were appropriate for this tiny pot. The second pot was spot on!

How Cute! A Single-Serving Coffee Pot!

Our Normal Morning Routine

We were up, thanks to a very early bed time, no doubt for several hours before Mark and Kelley who were at the restaurant until close. But we were in no hurry to do anything and were content with a lazy morning with no agenda. At some point, Ann and Kelley decided that we would drive into town about 11-ish and that the four of us would get some brunch before taking a quick hike up above Lake Tahoe.

I confirmed that Mark and Kelly would come over for dinner and made a mental note to start the crockpot of meat sauce before we left. While I was waiting to go into town, I poked around a bit outside the condo we were staying in and came across a large bird's nest on top of a large outdoor light on the back porch. I'm guessing that it was the home of some baby Steller's Jays.

Steller's Jay Perhaps?

Ann and I did not have a chance to look about the Truckee-Tahoe area yesterday. We merely got off I-80 at CA 89 and then drove to our condo at twilight. Today, after rendezvousing with Mark and Kelley at their house, Mark would drive us down CA 267 to Kings Beach where we would see Lake Tahoe for the first time as we navigated east to Incline City on the Nevada side of the lake. If you're ever wondering if you're in CA or NV, just look for the casinos.

As we entered the west end of Incline Village, Mark detoured off the ring road around the lake to take Lakeshore Blvd right down on the water, where we could see the mansions of the ultra-wealthy all along the shore. Incline Village is super spendy, no doubt thanks in large part to its location just across the border in Nevada whose favorable tax rates attract California money. There's a ton of Bay Area tech money, Hollywood film money, and old school old money in the area.

At the end of Lakeshore Blvd, we backtracked into Incline Village to have brunch at Sage Leaf restaurant. In a stroke of good fortune, Mark was able to find an open parking space just opposite the restaurant. I have to say that we had a really great breakfast. I wasn't going to have anything to drink with my meal, but then when Ann (always the instigator) ordered a Bloody Mary, I followed suit. I ordered it spicy and, unusually in my experience, it was spicy, a good omen for our forthcoming food.

It was noon and I was torn between a traditional breakfast or a lunch entrée. I decided to roll the dice on a lamb burger (because I love lamb) and was rewarded with a delicious burger that actually tasted of lamb. My fries were a bit old, but the duck fat fries accompanying Ann's burger were hot and delicious. Mark got a traditional old school breakfast plate and Kelley got biscuits and gravy; both plates looked good. Ann and I, we're so used to sub-par food that this was a very pleasant meal indeed.

Sage Leaf: Delicious Lamb Burger

After breakfast, we had to wait on several confused drivers jockeying for position in the cramped parking lot before we could pull out to head up the Mt. Rose Highway. On the way up to Chickadee Ridge, we stopped at an overlook for our first real views of the lake, of Crystal Bay more specifically. It is almost impossible to take in the entire lake as it runs 22 miles north-south along the NV-CA border and 12-miles east-west. At this point in the day, the water was still capped with a mist, a mist that would burn off by the time we would return to the shore line.

Misty Crystal Bay from Mt. Rose Highway

We continued up towards the Mt. Rose ski area and parked on the side of the road just shy of Ophir Creek. We started walking on an access trail to the Tahoe Rim Trail, our goal being to see if we could see any of the local Mountain Chickadees. Mark and Kelley had heard that the tiny little birds were used to landing on people's hands to eat birdseed. I think we were all a bit skeptical and we did not bring any birdseed; I'm not down with feeding wild animals. Your mileage may vary.

We were 50 or so yards down the trail when our skepticism vanished, as the following pictures will attest. It was a very cool experience having a tiny little bird land on my hand, one so close that I could barely get my camera far enough away from it to focus! Try framing, focusing, and shooting a traditional non-point-and-shoot camera with one hand some time! As the tiny creatures buzzed noisily in the trees about us, at one point, I had four of them vying to land on my hand at once.

Priceless! A Skeptic No Longer!

So Close I Could Barely Focus, Especially with One Hand

From the access trail, we joined and continued on the Tahoe Rim Trail for a mile or so, maybe two, as we explored the landscape, ultimately turning around after having sat up on a granite outcrop looking down on the lake.

Looking out over Tahoe Meadows

Joining the TRT

A Crazy Lodgepole Pine

We started our walk something shy of about 9000 feet of elevation and climbed to just around 9000 feet according to my phone. That's a really good elevation for the endangered Whitebark Pines, a couple of which I thought I may have seen, but I did not know if they grew this far south. And I didn't notice any Clark's Nutcrackers around in the woods along the TRT. Those two species are pretty symbiotic and you typically will not find one without the other.

The woods along the TRT are full of Western White Pines, a closely related species that is easy to confuse with Whitebarks. While the trees are very similar in appearance, the cones are diagnostic for they do not look anything alike. It was not until I came upon this grouping of young Whitebarks, likely from a forgotten Clark's Nutcracker seed cache, that I found a diagnostic purplish Whitebark cone. I would finally see a Clark's Nutcracker a half mile or so down the trail.

Group of Young Endangered Whitebark Pines, Pinus albicaulis
Likely a Sprouted Seed Cache

Clark's Nutcracker

This trip to the Tahoe area would provide my first encounter with the Jeffrey Pine, a pine that is very similar to our local Ponderosas, but whose range is largely restricted to the Sierra Nevada. I probably have seen them before in Yosemite, but I was much younger then and not really focused on my surroundings. I first spied two of them right off Mark and Kelley's back porch on Saturday. On Sunday, we saw many huge specimens along the TRT. They are notable for their huge cones of which I have a photograph in a later post. 

Jeffrey Pine, Pinus jeffreyi

Salt and Pepper Sierra Nevada Granite and Pinemat Manzanita, Arctostaphylos nevadensis

Looking at Sand Harbor

Huge Western White Pine, Pinus monticola

Hillside Full of Granite Glacial Erratics

Lodgepole (aka Tahoe) Chipmunk

Late Blooming Tufted Phlox, Phlox caespitosa

Mountain Coyote Mint, Monardella odoratissima

It's Sagebrush, but Tiny! Low Sagebrush, Artemisia arbuscula

After sitting up on a large granite outcrop staring out at the distance, we wandered back to the truck via a different path, completing a circuit. From there, we headed back down to the lake to Sand Harbor on the undeveloped east side of the lake which is primarily park land. We scrambled down a bank to the crystal clear water that was quite chilly to the touch. As we were scrambling through the manzanita scrub, the experience reminded me of the shore of Paulina Lake back home.

Clear Tahoe Water

I think that perhaps Mark and Kelley wanted to do more in the afternoon, but Ann and I had had plenty of exploration for one day and were residually tired from our long drive the day before. Plus I had a pot of meat sauce cooking back at the condo and I did not want it to dry out or scorch. As we made our way back to Truckee from the lake, Kelley mentioned to Ann that it might be possible for us to change to a much nicer house for the remainder of our stay. From Mark and Kelley's, Ann and I headed back to the condo where we were staying while Mark and Kelley went to check out the condition of the other property.

When we arrived back at the condo, the glorious aroma of meat sauce greeted us. Soon enough, we got a text telling us to pack our stuff and head to the new location. So we packed our stuff and grabbed the hot crockpot full of meat sauce and headed up the hill to a gorgeous house in the Tahoe Donner neighborhood high above Truckee and Donner Lake. We proceeded to open some wine and we got busy in the large, well appointed kitchen. Dinner was a quite simple affair of meat sauce over casarecce pasta with some asparagus.

Casarecce with Ragù, Asparagus

This meat sauce, I prepped on Friday so that it could cook autonomously while we were out and about in the Truckee area. I started by rendering a fair amount of chopped bacon. The bacon went into the crockpot, while I browned cubed beef chuck in the bacon grease. After three batches of beef cubes browned, I poured off most of the grease and added three huge leeks, cut finely, to the pan. Once they were cooked, they too went into the crockpot along with a big bunch of dried porcini mushrooms that I had rehydrated the night before.

While all this was browning, I was making a braising sauce from a quart of half and half, a pint of red wine, a quart of beef broth, and a pint of porcini rehydrating liquid. This three quarts of liquid cooked down to a single quart, that when cooled, I added to the bacon, beef, leeks, and mushrooms. When the contents of the crockpot liner were cool, I put them into the refrigerator to get cold for the trip in the ice chest all the way to California.

Start of a Great Meat Sauce

After a leisurely dinner and wine at the dining room table, we moved to the large glassed-in great room with its vaulted 25-foot ceiling and stone fireplace to watch some comedy on Netflix. Late in the evening, Mark and Kelley headed back down the hill into town and Ann and I headed to bed, opening the windows a bit on either side of the bed to bring in some cool mountain air. At home in the desert, we always have the windows open to let in the cool night air.