Wine and Beans

After a long flirtation with beer in Bend, we are back to wine.

Bend has more brewpubs than I can shake a stick at, and—let's face it—after five years in the wine industry drinking nothing but Pinot and barrel sample after barrel sample, a beer tasted good, damn good.

In the last couple of years, we have discovered Viaggio Wine Merchant and become regulars. Regulars to the point that we invited the crew for dinner. An everybody bring a bottle kind of dinner. I made a cassoulet, a perfect foil for a bunch of hearty wine on a cold day.

The Crew

I gave up on trying to get people to pose for a photo, so I snapped the one above where only Butch is listening to my plea to face the camera. I managed to get me and Gordon framed in the mirror.

Mushrooms for the Crostini

Mushroom Crostini with Taleggio

Cooking Chicken Livers, Shallots, and Thyme for
Chicken Liver Mousse (not shown)

Ten Places is a Stretch for our Dining Room

Look at the Crust on This Cassoulet

This cassoulet just started going right from the get-go. It's all down to the super-concentrated stock that I made the day before. All that gelatin started browning in the first hour. I forget how many punchdowns this went through, six or eight, no doubt.

Rogue's Gallery

It was a good night. Right to left: Force Majeure Parvata Red Mountain 2021, Nicolas-Jay Chardonnay Affinités Willamette Valley 2022, Williams & Selyem Zinfandel Bacigalupi Vineyard Russian River 2022, Domaine Guiberteau Saumur Les Chapaudaises 2018, Sylvain Pataille Bourgogne Aligoté La Charme aux Prêtres Marsannay 2022, Quinta do Vesuvio Porto 1991, Sealionne Syrah-Viognier Floyd Walla Walla 2023.

I am fairly certain everyone's favorite was the Guiberteau Saumur in magnum, one of the best Cab Francs I have tasted.

Mandarinquats and Sumo Citrus

Jenny was so kind as to bring us a bag of citrus that I got into after everyone left. I had never had mandarinquats (super-sweet rind, super-sour flesh) or sumo citrus (all around delicious) before.

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.

New Year's Eve 2024: Mushroom Galette

As is our tradition, we spend New Year's Eve at home or with friends rather than going out to celebrate. We no longer have the desire to stay up late or to be on the roads with a bunch of drunk drivers. And having to be at the restaurant until the crack of dawn each New Year's, I suppose that I am still avoiding New Year's Eve like the plague some 7 or 8 years after I closed the restaurant.

Once upon a time in McMinnville, I made some crostini of wild mushrooms and Taleggio cheese that Ann cannot get out of her mind. It seems that whenever we want to celebrate, she remembers the flavors of that simple appetizer. From that memory, somehow we got to a mushroom and leek galette topped with two flavorful cheeses, one rather more pungent and one with a bit of blue veining.

Mushroom and Leek Galette

I cheated. I used commercial puff pastry that I rolled out into a big rectangle and topped with mushroom and leek ragoût. Then I rolled the edges over like a country tart and topped the mushroom mixture with thinly sliced cheese, followed by a good grating of pecorino romano. After a simple egg wash on the edges of the galette, it went into a very hot oven and baked until brown.

Leek and Mushroom Ragoût

The ragoût is terribly simple. I sweated two leeks in butter, then added three fresh mushrooms: wild chanterelles and domestic oysters and shiitakes. Once these started shrinking down and cooking, I added chopped rehydrated porcini and the highly flavored water in which I soaked them overnight. After about 15 minutes on the heat, the whole became a thick ragoût suitable for topping a pastry crust.

Grand Cru Guiborat Blanc de Blancs Champagne

We were able to get our hands on a bottle of Guiborat Champagne, a blanc de blancs. Although we enjoy all styles of Champagne, we really love crisp and high acid 100% Chardonnay bottlings such as this, especially with rich and fatty food.

And another year is in the books. Our neighbors were only too happy to remind us of this as they continued with the big fireworks mortars until after 3am. So much for getting to be early and getting some good sleep.

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).

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 

The House of Good Smells

Happy 11th Anniversary to Us!

Saturday the 30th was the 11th anniversary of the sunny and happy day that we gathered with friends and family in our back yard in Winchester, Virginia and made our marriage official. Naturally, we wanted to celebrate and had been planning our anniversary dinner for a couple of weeks, both of us having arrived separately at having dinner at home versus going out to eat. Restaurants in Bend have let us down consistently this summer and I think we were both looking for something really good for dinner.

I call this post "The House of Good Smells" for a very obvious reason. Thanks to cooler outdoor temperatures, this was really the first time that I cranked up the oven and cooked for a lengthy period of the day, perfuming the air with the sinful smells of baking bread, sautéing mushrooms, and braising pork. After a warm summer, what a treat and a tease! There is nothing like smelling great food cooking all day and knowing that you cannot dig in until dinner time!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

After kicking around several ideas for our celebratory dinner, no doubt informed by the turn of seasons, we arrived somehow at milk-braised pork shoulder as the main course. Then Ann asked if I would make pommes Anna to go with it. Of course. I then thought, seeing how rich those two dishes are, that we should have a simple green salad with an acidic vinaigrette to cut through the fat. And then, no doubt responding directly to the chilly fall weather, Ann asked if I would reprise my mushroom toasts for an appetizer. And voilà! Menu planning done. And darned if we didn't come up with a classic French bistro menu.

Wild Mushroom and Cheese Tartines

Pork Shoulder Braised in Milk

Pommes Anna

Green Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette

All that was left was to invite our good friends Rob and Dyce to celebrate with us. They arrived for dinner with outstandingly gorgeous flowers, a maple-pumpkin pie, and a bottle of olive oil-washed The Botanist Islay gin for pre-dinner martinis. They are experimenting with fat-washed spirits for their menus at their restaurants in Florida and decided that Ann and I should be guinea pigs. Poor us! I've had bacon-washed Bourbon, but never olive oil-washed gin before. The Botanist, on the spectrum of gins, is on the more delicate and floral side and is perfect for the application of olive oil, which softens the alcoholic feeling of the spirit and contributed a vegetal green olive component. Interesting. Very interesting to my chef palate.

How Stunning are Those Flowers?
Thank You Rob and Dyce!

Pouring Olive Oil-Washed Gin for Martinis

Ann's plan was to sit outside around the fire pit and have appetizers and drinks as the sun was setting and she had been making sure that our courtyard was just so with candles and fall-colored, terracotta-hued throw pillows. Naturally, the weather did not cooperate, with a multi-day rainy streak and cold to cool temperatures leading into the weekend. As needed as our first bit of rain since May was, and as beautiful as the powdered sugar dusting of snow on the Cascades is, I could tell that she was bummed by this turn of weather.

Weather: Rainy, Cold, and Gray
A Marked Contrast to our Sunny Wedding Day

Martinis poured around and toasts offered, we got to finishing up the wild mushroom tartines to accompany our drinks. Earlier in the day, I had made the tartines from a baguette; I would have made them the day before, but our rare patch of high humidity would have been working against having crisp toasted tartines. Early morning, while the tartines were browning in the oven, I prepped and cooked the mushrooms. When we were ready to eat, all we needed to do was to melt some cheese into the mushrooms, top the tartines with the mushrooms and some extra cheese, and put them into the oven to warm.

Tartines Ready for Oven

At the restaurant, we made thousands upon countless thousands of tartines. The process is simple and begins by slicing baguettes on the bias about 7mm wide, call it 3/8 of an inch. These go onto a sheet tray and get drizzled with oil. We used to brush the oil onto them with a paint brush at the restaurant, but really, drizzling works just fine. Then flip them over and drizzle the other side. Place another sheet tray on top such that the bread slices are trapped between the two pans; this will keep them from curling as they cook.

Put them into a moderate oven (call it 350F) and pull them after 20 minutes. Flip the tartines over and put them back into the oven for another 15 minutes. Pull them and flip them again. Cook until they are colored and crisp. Remove from the oven, uncover them, and let them cool to room temperature. If you are not going to serve them right away, store the cold tartines in a sealed bag or container so that they do not go soft in the ambient humidity.

Mushroom Mise
Rehydrated Porcini, Shiitake, Oyster Mushrooms, Shallot, Thyme

Mushrooms Ready to Cook

Mushrooms Ready to Add Cheese

At its essence, this appetizer is simply sautéed mushrooms on toast. But it is a bit more than that and its genesis is in Ann asking me years ago for "something with mushrooms, gooey, and sexy!" Although the mushrooms have varied each time that I have made these delicious bites, rehydrated porcini are the sine qua non of the dish. Their earthy and inimitably delicious flavor, I augment with fresh mushrooms, chanterelles (girolles) in the past, but this time, shiitakes and oysters, about a third each.

I always start by sautéing either leeks or shallots and fresh thyme (I just adore thyme with mushrooms) in butter or olive oil, then add chopped fresh mushrooms. Once these mushrooms have cooked down, I chop the rehydrated porcini and add them to the pan along with the carefully decanted mushroom soaking liquid. Porcini will often have sand or debris on them that will sink to the bottom of the rehydrating bowl and you really don't want that stuff in your dish, so be careful.

Just as we were ready to assemble the tartines, I melted a decent amount of Tallegio cheese into the mushrooms. I wanted, in this instance, to use a French cheese such as Reblochon, but Reblochon was not to be found at our store. This dish, made to pair with an older red Burgundy, really relies on using a stinky cheese. An aged Munster would have been delicious as would have almost any great washed rind cheese, such as Grayson from my talented friends at Meadow Creek Dairy in Galax, Virginia, great purveyors to my restaurant. Tallegio is just perfect as well and that is the cheese I used. Just before the tartines went into the oven, I put another slice of cheese on top to melt over the mushrooms.

[Total aside about Reblochon: Long, long before 9/11, I once went on a wine-buying trip to France and returned on Air France from Charles de Gaulle back to Dulles. At the duty free in Paris, I picked up a Reblochon to take home and boarded the flight. On arriving back stateside, I filled out my declaration card indicating a Reblochon and four cases of wine. After retrieving my wine in the baggage section, I loaded a handtruck with the wine and placed the Reblochon on top. At Customs, they had a conniption about the cheese and confiscated it without even glancing at the four cases of wine on which I owed duty, but which was never assessed. The cost of the Reblochon was far less than the duty (a dollarish per liter) on the wine, a very fair trade!]

Assembling the Appetizers

Mushroom and Tallegio Tartines

When I put the tartines on the top shelf of the oven, I had a chance to glance at the pork shoulder that had been braising in milk most of the day. Milk braising is a very old technique, documented way back into the 1600s, but no doubt predating the invention of books. If you think about it, cooking lamb shanks slathered in yogurt is a classic Persian technique that is still common from the Indian continent to the Middle East.

While pork shoulder braised in milk is known as an Italian dish (miale al latte), I learned the dish in my study of French peasant cooking. Ann owns a gorgeous cookbook called Pork and Sons (originally in French, Cochon et Fils) by Stéphane Reynaud that documents this technique among many others. Some years ago, this book re-reminded me of the milk braising technique which had slipped my mind.

The beauty of this technique is that the lactic acid in the milk helps tenderize the meat and ultimately, the milk mixes with the pork juices and reduces to an incredibly flavorful and gelatinous sauce. It is a technique worthy of remembering; the results are so sublimely good and tasty. It will have you asking how something so terribly simple can be so amazing.

Pork Mise: Milk, Pork, Thyme, Rosemary, Garlic, and Bay Leaves

Still Life with Pork

The Finished Product, 6 Hours in the Braise

I don't know how many times in my life I have made Pommes Anna, that classic French side dish that converts the three simplest ingredients (potatoes, butter, and salt) into something incredibly sublime, something way, way, way more than the sum of its parts. I've been making it so long that I have forgotten how I learned the dish. Although it was probably documented in La Technique by Jacques Pépin, my bible when I was teaching myself classic French technique in my late teens, I no longer remember with any clarity. And it is impossible for me to check, having donated about two thousand cookery volumes to the library at my local culinary school when I retired from the restaurant.

In any case, the dish involves layering potatoes, melted butter, and salt in a heavy pan over a low flame. When the pan is full, you cover it and put it in a hot oven for 20-25 minutes. Then you uncover it and cook it until it is just done all the way through, another 20-25 minutes. After pouring off the melted butter (and saving that for another day) you put a plate on top of the pan and invert it. Presto!

Pommes Anna, Just out of the Oven

Pommes Anna, Unmolded in All its Glory

To finish off our meal, I made a super simple salad. I had been thinking a classic bistro salad such as frisée with lardons, but with all the richness in our dinner, I really wanted something simple, peppery, sharply acidic, and palate cleansing. That ended up being baby arugula (salade de roquette) with a tarragon vinaigrette, a dressing that my dear wife just loved. I hadn't known before this year how much she adores tarragon, an herb that is much underappreciated in America. It is an herb whose licorice undertones I thought might put her off. My bad!

The night before making the salad, I chopped finely a handful of tarragon leaves and placed them in a newly-emptied mustard jar with a quarter cup or so of rice vinegar, a super mild and only lightly flavored vinegar. After sealing the jar and shaking it up to get all the mustard off the walls of the jar, I let it stand on the counter overnight to infuse. My tip to you: keep your emptied mustard jars in the pantry until you are ready to make a dressing using the leftover bits of mustard remaining in the jar. After using the jar to make a dressing, then you can recycle it.

When ready to make the dressing for the salad, I added a tablespoon or two of roasted hazelnut oil and then enough really good Tuscan extra virgin olive oil and salt to taste. Shake it hard to emulsify between tastes and additions. I probably used two parts oil to one part vinegar. Less to my taste would be a milder dressing closer to the classical vinaigrette ratio of three parts oil to one part vinegar.

I don't have a set recipe for vinaigrettes at home: they depend on my tastebuds and each dressing has to be adjusted just so. If I want a more acidic dressing (for counteracting a fatty pork shoulder, for example), I would use a lower oil to vinegar ratio. Otherwise, more oil. Also, the quality of the acidity matters too. Some vinegars are really acidic and require more oil (or even water) to tame them. Some vinegars are very mild and want less oil so that they are not overwhelmed. My rule of thumb: start with two parts oil to one part vinegar and add oil bit by bit until you are happy with it.

My Stealth Vinaigrette Maker: Newly-Emptied Mustard Jar

And that's pretty much the saga of our anniversary dinner. The food was so good, even if I say so myself. That pork, I cut it with my fork, it was so freaking tender. From the umami-laden appetizer to the crisp acidity of the salad, it was just a memorable meal. And the maple-pumpkin pie that the guys brought over was the perfect little bite to finish it off with, not too sweet and not reeking of pumpkin pie spice. The pie was well done.

After Rob and Dyce departed, I realized that there's only one real downside to celebrating at home and that is the somewhat large pile of dishes that has to be attended to after your guests have left. It's a small price to pay, but cleaning the cocotte below was a pain in the butt. I'd do it all over again for another bite of that damned pork, though!

Dirty Dishes: Fun Times!

Our anniversary celebration was a great one and I am looking forward to spending the time until the next one with my very best friend, the woman that I adore and who loves me to death. Ann, I love you!