Memorial Day 2024

Another Memorial Day is in the books. Now that we are starting to have some spring weather, Ann has whipped our courtyard patio into shape and has been looking forward to entertaining out there. So we invited Michelle and Andreas and Jen and Will over for a little cookout and relaxation.

Ann Worked Really Hard to Set Up our Outdoor Space
After a Long Winter

It really didn't take long to put together a menu once we decided that the feature would be ribs. When I look back at our Memorial Day posts, they always feature something on the grill, late May typically signifying the beginning of our outdoor grilling season. The menu we arrived at for this Memorial Day was:

Cannellini and Roasted Red Pepper "Hummus"

Dry-Rubbed Pork Spareribs

Barbeque Sauce

Chimichurri

Potato Salad with Sour Cream and Bacon

Grilled Asparagus

Strawberry-Lime-Chipotle Sorbet

I decided to start with a simple gluten-free appetizer dip for Michelle, a white bean and roasted red pepper "hummus" to be served with almond meal crackers, cucumbers, and sweet peppers. And then there would be pork spareribs for which Ann really wanted me to make chimichurri and potato salad. I wanted to grill some asparagus, because grill. And then Ann asked me to make a sorbet for dessert, and so using really the only fruit that is ripe right now, I made a strawberry-lime-chipotle sorbet as the finale to our dinner. 

When you add in making the barbeque sauce and the dry rub that I call "butt rub," that's a fair amount of cooking. So I took my usual approach of spreading it over three days so as not to overwhelm myself, but mostly so I could do the dishes in shifts and not kill myself washing half the kitchen in the hour before our guests arrived. That hour we reserve for relaxation, showers, and a pre-game glass of wine as we await our guests. 

Saturday, I made the fake hummus, a batch of Carolina "mop sauce" that would be the basis for the barbeque sauce, and a batch of dry rub. The mop sauce recipe is at the bottom of this post; you'll find the recipe is outlined here for the spice mix for the ribs that I call "butt rub." In addition, I made a super simple batch of the white bean and red pepper "hummus," the recipe for which also appears at the bottom of this post.

Vinegar and Pepper Carolina "Mop Sauce"

In my world of pork barbeque, very much influenced by East Carolina barbeque, when you put a hog on the smoker to go low and slow, you baste it (using a mop, hence the name) from time to time with a thin and tangy vinegar, salt, and hot pepper sauce. Mop sauce traditionally contains very little sugar which tends to burn with long hours in the smoker. My recipe appears at the end of this post.

First thing Sunday, I made one of the two more tedious dishes, the base for the sorbet. The tedious bit is spending 20 minutes deseeding the sorbet base, a step that is somewhat optional, but hello, I'm a chef! About the only ripe fresh fruit this time of year is strawberries. Because these strawberries were not supremely ripe and tasty, I decided to trick them up with a bit of lime and a bit of chipotle as a surprise. I put spice in a lot of my sorbets; it is both unconventional and interesting to taste a bit of a fruity sorbet only moments later for the spice to creep in on the back of the palate. My recipe is at the bottom of this post as well.

Deseeding the Strawberry Purée

While deseeding the sorbet base, I brought a pan of salted water to a boil and blanched three bunches of asparagus until just barely tender, about five minutes. I stopped the cooking in cold water and put the asparagus in the fridge to await the grill the next afternoon. When I am grilling asparagus, I almost always blanch it so that all it needs to do on the grill is get beautiful grill marks and a bit of smoke. If asparagus has any thickness at all, you risk charring the outside on the grill in an attempt to get it cooked all the way through. Precooking eliminates this risk.

Next I was on to the potato salad that Ann requested. While a potato salad still warm from the just-boiled potatoes has its appeal, I like to make potato salad the day before so it, like the sorbet base, can repose in the refrigerator and have its flavors mingle and become more pronounced. My potato salad recipe also appears at the bottom of this post.

Potato Salad with Sour Cream, Bacon, Green Onions, and Parsley

Monday I made the other really tedious dish: chimichurri. It is only tedious because when I make it for friends, I like to destem the herbs and cut them by hand. Blitzing everything in the food processor makes short work of the sauce, and I wouldn't blame you for doing it, but the texture does suffer. I have previously published my chimichurri recipe; Monday I made a double batch.

Parsley and Cilantro Flavor the Red Wine Vinegar and Olive Oil Base

Thirty Minutes Later, Destemmed Herbs Ready to Chop

Chimichurri with Hand-Chopped Herbs

Soon after tidying up from making the chimichurri, I set about the ribs, because I wanted them to sit in their coating of spices for a couple hours before starting to cook. I do not have a smoker, given that our only outdoor space is a confined courtyard where the smoke would be unwelcome. So, I opt for cooking my ribs in the oven and then finishing them on the grill outside.

My ribs were the three-pack from Costco, not gonna lie. I don't have a good pork supplier here in Oregon. After skinning them (pulling the silverskin layer off the backside using a towel for grip), I cut each of the three racks into three single-serving pieces. I do this because sparerib racks are typically longer than my half sheet trays and I do not want any drips from overhanging racks hitting the bottom of the oven. It might be sacrilegious, but not having to deep clean my oven trumps pristine racks of ribs.

 

Ribs "Marinating" in Dry Rub

When I dry-roast pork in the oven, I almost always place the pork on a bed of onion slabs. The onions add a little moisture to the pork, they keep the pork off the bottom of the pan in the same way that roasting it on a rack would do, and they are a super-tasty bonus that I planned to use later on in making my barbeque sauce.

After standing for a couple of hours to let the dry rub penetrate a bit, the ribs went into the oven. I planned a 3-step cooking process: covered to cook the ribs through, uncovered to develop the bark, and finally, mopped with sauce and re-covered in dry rub and onto the grill for a final char.

I covered the sheet trays with aluminum foil and sealed them tightly before putting them in the oven. These ribs were really thick so they ended up taking about three hours in a slow oven (275F) to get to the point where a toothpick would easily pierce them. At this point, I removed the ribs to clean sheet trays and put them back into the oven for another 45 minutes to develop a nice crust, a nice bark.

At this point, I turned off the oven and let the ribs sit until I was ready to grill them, at which point, I brushed them with sauce, re-coated them in dry rub, and put them on a hot grill for about five minutes to caramelize the sugar in the dry rub and to reheat the ribs.

Appetizer: Cannellini and Roasted Red Pepper "Hummus"

Feast is Ready!

Three Rib Accompaniments
Chimichurri (left), Dry Rub (top), Onion BBQ Sauce (right)

I'm not a big fan of barbeque sauce in that I often think that it obscures rather than complements the hard work of the pitmaster. Accordingly, I always serve a little more dry rub on the side to dust on the barbeque, if guests desire. As I mentioned earlier, Ann is a big fan of chimichurri (honestly, who is not?) and asked me to make a batch of this salsa verde to go with the ribs. And recognizing that others may indeed want barbeque sauce with their ribs, I made a complementary sauce.

This sauce I made quickly in the blender. When I uncovered the ribs, I separated the onions from the liquid in the bottom of the roasting pans. I put these meltingly tender dry rub-flavored onions, three very large ones in total, into my blender. I added three-quarters of the mop sauce (3/4 of a pint) to the blender and gave it a couple quick pulses. Then after defatting the liquid from the roasting pan, I put enough of it into the blender to yield a sauce of the consistency I wanted, the consistency that you see in the photo above. I left a decent amount of texture in the onions.

Jen, Goofing!

Somebody Must Have Told a Good Joke

Will Holding Court

Recipes

Cannellini and Roasted Red Pepper "Hummus"

Once upon a time, I threw a similar dip together using items on hand in my pantry, and the idea stuck. This is a ratio recipe: 4 parts white beans to one part roasted red peppers.

2 15.5-ounce cans of cannellini, drained

8 ounces roasted red peppers, piquillos preferably

two cloves of finely minced garlic

half a teaspoon of Kosher salt

a quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika

one tablespoon of sherry vinegar

two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and smooth it out as much, Season it and serve, or refrigerate it for some hours to improve the flavor. After it warms up a bit, taste it and re-season as necessary.

Carolina "Mop Sauce" for Barbeque

Here's my classic vinegar sauce. I roughly respect the recipe, but I always make it to taste. This makes roughly a pint, plenty of mop for several shoulders or many racks. Traditionally in eastern North Carolina, the peppers used would be crushed dried red peppers or ground cayenne and often there's a touch of ketchup for color and a bit of sweetness. I use the peppers I have on hand (there's no ketchup in my house) which tends to be Huy Fong sambal oelek (crushed red jalapeños) and Huy Fong sriracha. Also typical is brown sugar. I don't happen to use it much and when I do, I buy it in bulk and buy just what I need. But I do have Demerara in the pantry, so I use that.

one pint apple cider vinegar

4 tablespoons of Demerara sugar

2 tablespoons sriracha

2 tablespoons sambal oelek

1 tablespoon Morton's kosher salt

one teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper

Put all the ingredients into a non-reactive sauce pan and bring them to a gentle boil to integrate the sugar and salt. Once cooled, taste for seasoning.

Strawberry-Lime-Chipotle Sorbet

This recipe will yield about a quart and a half of base, enough for 8 servings. I add all the seasonings to taste. This recipe is best when made the day before and refrigerated overnight so that the lime zest has time to do its job. Although it is not necessary to deseed the sorbet base, it's about 1000% better if you go to the effort (and it is effort) to do it.

4 dry pints of strawberries, hulled and halved

2 limes

1 cup sugar, or to taste

half teaspoon of Kosher salt, optional

1 ounce vodka, optional

two tablespoons chipotle adobo, to taste

While I have specified a cup of sugar or to taste, less sugar is not really an option. A good-textured sorbet (I'm not going into theory and Brix levels here) requires sugar even though the fruit might already taste sweet enough. That's why we balance the sugar with additional acid in the form of citrus (or at times a vinegar such as balsamic).

Also, I use salt to help balance the sweet. You'll never know that the salt is there but what you will notice if you taste a base with and without salt, the salted one will likely taste better. Most good pastry chefs will sneak some salt into their recipes for this reason.

Finally, I add a half a shot of unflavored vodka to the base because that tiny amount of alcohol will help break up the large ice crystals in the sorbet and yield a smoother product. By all means, if you cannot have alcohol, omit it.

Before getting started, zest and juice one of the limes. Reserve the other lime for later.

Place the strawberries, sugar, salt, vodka, lime zest, lime juice, and one tablespoon of chipotle adobo in the blender and blend until smooth. Next, push the base through a fine chinois or strainer to remove the seeds. I use a standard 2-ounce ladle to push the base through my chinois. This, unfortunately, is going to take some time and elbow grease.

Zest the other lime directly into the base and taste it. I decided that I needed the juice of half the reserved lime to balance the sweetness and that I wanted another tablespoon of adobo to bring slightly more heat. Refrigerate the base to macerate, preferably overnight. The lime flavoring from the zest will become much more pronounced after sitting overnight.

Taste and adjust seasoning just before putting the base into the freezer. I deemed that this batch of base needed nothing else, but that it not always the case.

Potato Salad with Sour Cream and Bacon

This potato salad is simple and can be served warm or cold or at room temperature. I like to make potato salad the day before I serve it so that it can repose in the refrigerator and have its flavors mingle and become more pronounced. This recipe starts with a ten-pound sack of potatoes and makes a really big bowl of potato salad, because, who doesn't like to eat too much potato salad? I used parsley and green onions in this batch, but you can use the herbs that suit you. How bad would tarragon and chervil be in this? Not at all bad; it would be wonderful.

10 pounds of small potatoes cut into bite-sized pieces

1 pound of bacon cut into lardons and cooked, grease drained

1 pint of sour cream (or more)

1 bunch of Italian parsley, minced

1 bunch of green onions, sliced (or chives, minced)

salt to taste

Place the potatoes in a large pan, add a tablespoon of salt, and cover with water. Cook, about 20 minutes, until the potatoes are just done. Drain the potatoes and while still warm, transfer to a large bowl. Add the the cooked bacon, sour cream, parsley, and onions or chives. Mix well and season to taste with salt.

You can serve this salad warm and it is wonderful. Or place it in the refrigerator overnight to let the flavors of the herbs and bacon bloom. If you refrigerate it, let it warm a bit and then taste for seasoning. Also, you may want to add more sour cream to make it creamier, though I never do because I am lactose-intolerant.

Father's Day 2023

Ann set up a dinner with Rob and Dyce on Father's Day in which she planned to make risotto-stuffed poblano peppers. I love it when she cooks. Rob and Dyce volunteered to bring some cheese and wine to kick off the evening. I ended up making a Margarita sorbet for dessert. All in all, a great evening.

Ann's Risotto Stuffed Poblano with Lime Crema

Rob and Dyce went way overboard with the cheese, including artfully arranging the three cheeses on a board with grapes, figs, dried apricots, Marcona almonds, a jar of chutney, and three types of crackers. The three cheeses were a Comte, a locally smoked Cheddar, and the star of the show, a super runny Quinta from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. This is a bloomed rind cheese similar to Vacherin Mont d'Or and was so ripe that we sliced the top off and scooped out all the yumminess from inside.

Rob and Dyce's Cheese Board

Poblanos, Peeled, Seeded and Ready to Stuff

Early in the day while Ann was out, I torched the poblanos, then peeled and seeded them. The procedure for this is outlined in a post from a few years back. Also, I sliced some fresh corn from the cob for Ann's risotto. Later in the day, Ann took over in the kitchen and made the risotto base, then stuffed the poblanos, and readied them for the oven.

Kitchen Queen Making Risotto

Once the risotto base was done, she stirred in some fresh corn kernels, a bit of chipotle adobo, and a big handful of grated pepperjack cheese to make the filling for the poblanos. The peppers got a sprinkle of cotija cheese on top before going into a hot oven for 40 minutes, followed by five minutes under the broiler to brown a bit.

Poblanos Rellenos Just Out of the Oven

After dinner, I started up the venerable ice cream machine on a Margarita sorbet base that I made earlier in the day, recipe below. I have never made such a sorbet before and took a wild guess at how to make it. The end result was awesome, so I wouldn't change a thing. It is somewhat expensive to make, however, requiring a lot of fresh limes and most of a bottle of tequila. The results though!

It Takes a Lot of Limes to Make Sorbet

My Venerable Musso Ice Cream Machine

Part of the reason for the success of the sorbet was that I made a different one each night at the restaurant and so I have a lot of experience at it. But a bigger part of the success is down to the machine in which I made it, my 20-year old Musso machine from Italy. Weighing in at nearly 70 pounds, this beast is barely portable from the garage where I store it to the kitchen where I use it. It will knock out a half gallon of sorbet in about 20 minutes and will keep doing it all night long, witnessed by its use in the restaurant where it ran for the better part of each night, churning out intermezzo course after intermezzo course for over a decade.

The Margarita sorbet recipe follows. I have divided it into two parts for ease of explanation.

Tequila Simple Syrup

The following recipe yields about 2 liters of syrup, a bit more than you will need to make a 2-liter batch of Margarita sorbet. Save any leftover tequila syrup for your bar where you can use it in tequila and mezcal cocktails. I have specified a liquid volume of sugar because I am lazy: I use a single one-liter measure to measure the sugar, then the liquid ingredients, limiting the amount of dishes that I have to wash.

500 ml reposado tequila
1500 ml water
500 ml granulated sugar

Add the three ingredients to a 3-quart or larger saucepan, stir well, and bring to a slow boil. Once all the sugar is incorporated into the syrup, turn off the heat and let the syrup cool before using. Syrup can be stored at room temperature for a couple of days. For longer storage, I put it in a squeeze bottle in the refrigerator.

Margarita Sorbet

This is a base recipe for 2 liters (basically a half gallon) of sorbet. 

juice of a dozen limes (about 500 ml)
enough tequila simple syrup to make 2 liters (about 1500 ml)
one shot of Curaçao (about 50 ml)

Mix all the ingredients and taste for sugar-acid balance. I like mine on the tarter side. Add more lime juice or tequila syrup as you see fit. Refrigerate until cold before putting it in your ice cream machine. Adding the bit of alcohol in the Curaçao will help to lower the freezing point of the mix and will help ensure a smoother sorbet with smaller ice crystals. It will also extend the freezing time by a bit (in my case, 25 minutes versus 20 minutes). You can transfer the sorbet to a freezer for a half hour or so to fully firm up.

Hatozaki Small Batch Whiskey

We finished the evening with a nightcap of Hatozaki Small Batch whiskey. I'm a devoted Scotch drinker, but recently I have been branching out to taste malts from other part of the world. I find this whiskey, like almost all Japanese whiskey, smooth and mellow. I prefer rougher and tastier Scotch, but it is no real hardship educating myself on the worldwide differences in malts. Happy Father's Day to me!

July 4: Whitewater and Hot Dogs

After a couple of days full of late afternoon thunderstorms, something we had not witnessed in the four years we lived in the Willamette Valley and also something that, perversely, we missed from Virginia, we got a fully sunny forecast for the early part of July 4th. We needed to get out of the house after being cooped up, but last time we were out, Ann messed up her feet pretty badly. I would get in pretty serious trouble if I said "I told you so!" about wearing new shoes on a long walk, so I won't say "I told you so!"

Long and short, we wanted to get out for a little exercise, but walking very far on Ann's bum feet was not in the cards, nor was doing anything with any kind of elevation gain. We decided to head to the Benham Falls East side trail head and make the brief flat walk along the Deschutes River to the falls and back, before heading back home to prepare a July 4th hot dog dinner.

The road to the trailhead/boat launch leaves US 97 at the Lava Lands Visitors Center where I was surprised to see a Forest Service employee manning the entrance gate on a federal holiday. For the four miles from the entrance to the parking area, we played Frogger with the local rodents. Every few hundred yards, another little critter tried to play tag with our tires: Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels, tiny Yellow-pine Chipmunks, and a lone Douglas' Squirrel schlepping a Ponderosa Pine cone across the road.

We arrived early in the morning when there was plenty of parking in the small lot and headed downriver for the short walk to the falls, which we visited about three weeks ago, but from the west side of the river, walking upriver from Dillon Falls. From the parking lot to the falls, we had large amounts of the walk to ourselves, but by the time we reached the falls, people were swarming in from the west side. The walk back was a circus of people, screaming kids, bikes, and general mayhem stemming from the holiday. We were glad to leave the masses behind and head home. As we were leaving, overflow cars from the parking lot lined the entrance road for a good quarter mile.

Yellow Salsify, Tragopogon dubius

Woods Full of Blooming Western Columbine, Aquilegia formosa

American Vetch, Vicia americana

Oxeye Daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare

Footbridge Crossing from East to West Side

Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis sp.) Growing on Beaver Dam

Red-Wing Blackbird Protecting His Turf

Raft of Invasive Yellow Iris, Iris pseudacorus
and Blooming Red Osier Dogwood, Cornus sericea

Song Sparrow Serenading Us

More Yellow Iris in Front of
Highly Poisonous Water Hemlock, Cicuta maculata

Sharp-leaved Monkeyflower, Erythranthe decora

River Side Rock Formation

Cliffside Penstemons

Mass of Penstemons

Penstemon Blossom Detail

Riverside Yellow-Pine Chipmunk

Woods' Rose, Rosa woodsii

A St. John's Wort, Hypericum sp.

Diamond Clarkia, Clarkia rhomboidea

One of a Pair of Highly Vocal Ospreys

Sticky Cinquefoil, Drymocallis glandulosa

Mulie Doe on Trail

Beautiful Lupine, Lupinus sp.

Turbulent Water at Head of Benham Falls

Looking Downriver from Top of Benham Falls

Rock Island in Falls

Woodland Pinedrops, Pterospora andromedea

Looking Upriver at Benham Falls

Given the rampant pace of increase in new COVID cases (aren't we done with that sh*t yet?!!?), we decided to stay at home and not brave public spaces with masses of holiday celebrants. In the mid-afternoon, I made us a couple of caipirinhas to set the mood. Later on, I cooked some small potatoes that I made into potato salad (sour cream, bacon, and parsley) and then grilled some hot dogs that we scored earlier in the week just for this little mini-celebration.

Although we don't eat hot dogs very often, when we do, we are questing after a faint memory from our collective childhoods in which a hot dog was a hot dog. It seems that our requirements for hot dogs are modest, yet we cannot find one that really scratches our itches. We want three things: deep flavor, succulence, and above all, that elusive and inimitable snap when you bite in. We got two different kinds from a local farm, a regular dog that was fairly good and one styled a Louisiana Hot that was pretty bad with all manner of fake flavors. Our search for the holy hot dog grail continues.

Caipirinhas 

Hot Dogs and Potato Salad