Christmas 2022

Christmas 2022 was very quiet for us. The kids are scattered to the wind in Colorado Springs, Winston-Salem, and Philly, eliminating any chance of seeing them. My siblings and father, our only remaining parent, are in Alabama and my father was in the hospital, barely coherent since Thanksgiving and just barely hanging on. Ann, as an only child, doesn't have any other family.

Even though it was just the two of us, for once we were both at home simultaneously and not rushing around tending to an ill parent or in the process of moving as we were last year, our house sold out from under us less than two weeks before Christmas. This would be our first Christmas in our new home in Bend.

For Christmas Day, we received an invitation to visit with friends for dinner at their place, but sadly they got sick and had to cancel. While we are just fine on our own, Christmas is a time to celebrate with friends and family. Our Christmas ended up being mostly just another day, pretty anticlimactic all in all.

A bright spot was our Christmas tree, something we did not get last year in the middle of moving, and as pretty a fir as I have ever seen. We have just learned that for $5, you can cut your own tree off a National Forest and we thought to do that, but deep snow and lack of planning sent us looking for a pre-cut tree.

Next year in late summer and early fall, we will scope a couple options for stands of trees to cut that have relatively easy ingress and egress. Right now, I know where a bunch of decent trees are, but getting to the trees and getting back to the truck would be very tough.

Our Gorgeous 8' Fir

Because of our invite for Christmas Dinner, we moved our fancy dinner to Christmas Eve, a full pork rack, frenched and herb-crusted, accompanied by creamed leek scalloped potatoes.

Herb-Crusted Rack of Pork, Creamed Leek Scalloped Potatoes
Savigny-lès-Beaune Premier Cru Burgundy

While prepping, we opened a bottle of Jeeper Champagne, a house that I don't know. I bought it on spec, hoping for the best. Truth be told, it was a delightful blend with both red fruit and Chardonnay characteristics and a great buy for the price. I was impressed by this blend from parcels all over the Champagne.

With our pork roast, we opened a bourgogne rouge, a 2017 Chanson Savigny-Dominode. La Dominode is arguably the best cru of Savigny and Savigny is in my experience one of the best values in the Côte de Beaune. The combination of depth of fresh fruit against lively acidity («tension» diraient les français), coupled with tobacco aromatics and precise tannins was delightful. This is the best Pinot we have had in a long time, and having worked in the Willamette wine industry with and around some excellent Pinots, that is saying something.

Champagne, de Rigueur for a Celebration

As for our roast, although I prefer to do my own butchery, I don't have the space or refrigeration to do so like at my restaurant where we practiced whole animal butchery as a matter of course. That leaves me buying cuts at retail. The standards practiced for the retail trade would have engendered my wrath had they happened in my restaurant. A case in point: the photo below shows the shoddy work that passes for a frenched rack of pork. I spent 15 minutes cleaning up the rack such that it was suitable for presentation.

A So-Called Frenched Rack of Pork

What a Frenched Rack Should Look Like

The Herb-Crusted Rack, Resting Before Service

There are, I suppose, lots of ways to herb crust a rack. At the restaurant, we mostly crusted racks of lamb and for elegant tastings, racks of rabbit. This would involve mixing smooth Dijon mustard with herbs and seasonings appropriate for the meat and slathering that on the rack, before coating it in panko, the mustard mixture helping the panko to adhere. The leftover flavored mustard would be used at the last moment to thicken a pan sauce for the rack.

I wasn't terribly keen on a mustardy flavor for the rack of pork, mainly because I did not want to detract from either the accompanying potato dish or the red Burgundy. To that end, I mixed a scant couple of tablespoons of Dijon mustard with a good quantity of mayonnaise and added finely minced fresh rosemary, thyme, and Italian parsley. This I slathered on the top side and ends of the rack, then sprinkled it with salt and pepper. Finally, I pressed on a thin layer of panko and put the rack into the fridge for a couple of hours so that the crust could set up.

Two hours and a half hours before we wanted to eat, I heated olive oil on medium flame in a roasting pan on the stovetop and left the rack in the pan, crust side down, until it browned all over, about ten minutes. Flipping the rack over, I put it in a moderately slow oven (325F) and cooked it about 90 minutes, until the thermometer read 150F in the big end. The rack would rest for 30-45 minutes while the potatoes were finishing.

Ann wanted scalloped potatoes and I wanted creamed leeks, so I combined the two, sweating leeks in butter, then adding a touch of flour and building a nice leek béchamel with some half-and-half. I sliced the potatoes thinly and mixed in the béchamel. These went into the oven, covered, for the final 45 minutes that the pork was cooking.

Potatoes Ready for the Oven

When the pork came out of the oven, I removed the cover from the potatoes and cranked the heat to 400F and continued cooking the potatoes until they became brown on top.

Creamed Leek Scalloped Potatoes

Our Christmas Eve dinner was exceptionally good as was the amazingly beautiful bottle of Burgundy. The only thing missing was somebody to share it with.

Salmon Burgers

Once again, Ann was the impetus for bringing a dish to the table. The September Oregon Coho season was just open for 24 hours when the quota was met and as luck would have it, our store had a couple of the fish. I came home with a 2-pound chunk of late-season wild Oregon Coho salmon and I asked her how she'd like me to serve it. To be honest, I hadn't even thought of salmon burgers until she suggested it.

Her suggestion was great. Coho is not a very fatty salmon to begin with, not like chinook or king, and adding a bit of fat and flavor is a great thing to do to this kind of salmon. And we had just had some seared Coho earlier, from hatchery fish, so a change would be welcome. I would never put a fat piece of king in the food processor like this Coho. It would get seared or grilled to medium rare and the scrap would become salmon tartare, full stop.

I call the patties that you see in the photo below salmon burgers, made from raw salmon, to distinguish them from salmon cakes, made from cooked flaked salmon. These salmon patties are more akin to hamburgers than to fish or crab cakes. 

Salmon Burgers sans Buns

We used to make similar salmon burgers for our lunch menu at the restaurant, where we would usually serve them seared medium on a grilled brioche bun with cucumber slices, lettuce, red onion, and an herb- and caper-mayonnaise. At home, however, we omit the buns and the condiments.

Salmon Burger Mise en Place

The photo above shows all the ingredients for salmon burgers, starting in the lower left: Italian parsley, shallot, capers, Dijon-style mustard, an egg, Coho, and cayenne pepper. I don't typically add salt because both the capers and mustard are salty; in fact, that's why they are in the recipe: to add salt. To be certain, after I spin the mix up in the food processor, I taste it for seasoning and adjust as necessary.

The egg is not necessary. I add it only because I am working with lean Coho (right, you see no cream-colored stripes of fat in the red flesh) and I wanted to add a bit more fat and moisture to the burgers. If I were making this with fatty farm salmon rather than lean wild salmon, I would omit the egg.

Also, the herb or herbs that I use varies from batch to batch. Although this batch was made with Italian parsley, I more often use dill. If I had it, I would use chervil and in the very early spring before anything else had come up, I would use chives. Any or any mixture of the classic fines herbes will work just fine.

Please note that I only ever use flat-leafed Italian parsley. It is so much easier to work with and more flavorful than curly parsley, so it is all I ever grow. Now that I think about it, I don't think that my grocery store even carries curly parsley. If you ever read the word parsley on this blog, I'm talking about Italian parsley.

Note also that just as you wouldn't think about a binder in a hamburger, you shouldn't think about adding panko or other breadcrumbs to salmon burgers. The raw flesh has plenty of protein to bind the cake into a decent patty without any filler.

Ready to Process

To ready the ingredients for the food processor, pull or cut out the pin bones, if any, from the salmon. Skin the salmon and cut the filet into large cubes. Mince the parsley and the shallot. Add the ingredients to the food processor and pulse until you have a workable paste with quarter-inch chunks of salmon in it.

Four-Ounce Salmon Burgers Ready to Cook

Patty the burgers into whatever size you want. Because I am serving each person two cakes, I opted to make four-ounce cakes. At the restaurant, to have the patties fit our buns, we served one seven-ounce cake. I prefer my patties to be on the thicker side so that I can get a good sear on both sides while still having the center be warm but not cooked, about medium.

Salmon Burgers

Here's a decent starting point from which you can make your own modifications to suit your taste. Makes 8 4-ounce cakes.

2 pounds Coho salmon

1 shallot, minced

1/2 bunch parsley (or other herb such as dill), minced (1/2 cup in total)

2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard

1/2 cup capers

1 egg

1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste 

salt as needed

Bone and skin the salmon. Cut into large cubes. Put in a food processor with the remaining ingredients. Pulse on and off until the salmon just forms a paste similar to hamburger. Season to taste. Patty. Sear in a hot pan until brown on both sides, but warm and uncooked in the center.

Rack of Lamb from Hell

Recently, I happened to find a rack of lamb at an affordable price and decided to make a great meal out of it. I also brought home from the farmers market a bunch of cavolo nero and a quart of new potatoes, stopping by the store for a bottle of Nebbiolo, probably our very favorite varietal. This was going to be a celebratory meal: we just can't afford rack of lamb or Nebbiolo very often.

Rack of Lamb, Roasted New Potatoes, Cavolo Nero

It's not often that I cook a restaurant-quality meal at home. I don't have the ingredients, the kitchen, the staff, a commercial dish machine, or, if I'm being honest, the driven desire to do it any longer. But every once in a while, I do like to make a great meal for my favorite diner, Annie. I don't do it to impress her: she's seen all my tricks by now. I do it because I want to do it for her; in short, it's the principal way that I show her that I love her.

You'd think that with me being a chef, that everything would go along just great in the kitchen. You'd be wrong. Life happens to chefs too, but I think we're probably more accustomed to stuff going wrong in the kitchen and figuring out how to get dinner on the table anyway. The photo below is proof of that.

At the restaurant, when things would go wrong, I was so focused on solving the problem while managing an entire kitchen and a board full of checks that I had no time or energy for getting upset. Here at home, however, when things go wrong, I have plenty of time to get mired in anger and rant and fume.

I'm having a hard time letting go of the mindset that everything must be perfect. That's hard to do after a career in an industry that expects perfection and is unforgiving of even small mistakes. Restaurant Gods forbid that lamb chops go out medium instead of medium rare: you're going to get crucified on the review sites.

When you own a small restaurant and you and your staff depend on you to keep the doors open, the pressure to avoid negative reviews that might slow traffic is overwhelmingly intense. That pressure cooker mentality is not good for anyone's mental health.

So, while this is a story of how to prep a frenched lamb rack like you might find in a restaurant, it is also the story of a cascading series of problems that erupted while putting this dinner together. It is also an introspective story in my quest to let go of the restaurant mindset. It's not a particularly noble story, but it is an honest one.

Lamb Rack as Bought

So here is the lamb rack, before it turned into the rack from hell, just as it came from the butcher. It has been frenched by cutting away the meat from the tips of the bones. While most people would be satisfied with this lamb rack as is, I'm used to running a restaurant at a higher caliber. For my standards, there is way too much fat cap left on the rack and the bones are not nearly clean enough. You can see how especially sloppily the first bone has been frenched.

Trimmed Lamb Rack

I spent about ten minutes prepping the rack, a not insignificant amount of labor. First, I trimmed the fat cap back to what I wanted. I didn't want all the fat on top because I wanted to put a crust on the rack. In addition, there is another layer of fat that you cannot see below this top layer. You can see this in the first photo where I have cut the rack into chops. Also, you can see the pile of trimmings that I have removed from the so-called cleaned bones by scraping them down with a knife.

Mustard Glaze Ingredients

For this presentation, I wanted to coat the rack in breadcrumbs and to get the breadcrumbs to adhere to the meat, I made a glaze of mustard, olive oil, rosemary, and garlic. This is a classic French technique that you can detect from the phrase à la diable, in the style of the devil, on old-school menus. The reference to the devil results from the spicy piquancy of the mustard.

 

Mustard Glaze

I use olive oil to thin the mustard mix to the point where I can brush it on the lamb rack. I coated both the top and bottom sides of the meat and then rolled the rack in panko, pressing the panko into the mustard glaze. Other breading will work, but I really prefer the crust that panko gives. Panko for the restaurant came in the same size bags as 50-pounders of flour. We used to blow through those giant bags of panko.

Breaded Rack of Lamb

You can see the breaded rack above. I don't put breadcrumbs on the end, but you could if you wanted. It would be more difficult, but not impossible, to brown the breadcrumbs on the ends.

Seared Rack of Lamb

Next up, I browned the rack in a pan, to give the breadcrumbs some color and to firm the crust. Here is where things started to go south. I don't have a pan that is big enough to really sear the rack, as you can see from the bones hanging over the edge of the pan. Also, on the far left of the photo, you can see where a lot of the crust fell off. I was getting pretty irritated at this point, asking myself quite loudly why I put all this effort into dinner, just to have it start falling apart. To be fair, I was raging.

Back in the restaurant days, we would keep mustard and panko handy. We'd repair the damage and brown the patched spots by basting them with boiling oil until they were as browned as the rest of the crust. I just wasn't equipped to do this at home, having already cleaned up the breading station.

I was so invested in the labor in prepping the lamb rack to this point that I got really torqued, beyond any rational basis. All the while, Annie kept urging me to let it go and telling me that it didn't have to be perfect.

New Potatoes and Rosemary, Ready to Roast

A few minutes before the lamb went into the oven, I put the new potatoes in to roast and gave the cavolo nero a quick sear. Cavolo nero, black cabbage in Italian, is also called lacinato, Tuscan black kale, and dinosaur kale, my least favorite name for this wonderful green. I'll have to do a post on it sometime. It took years at the restaurant to find someone who would grow it for us. Once I found that person, cavolo nero was a near constant on the menu.

Roasted Rack of Lamb, Resting

When the potatoes were about halfway done, I put the lamb rack in the oven. This is where things really, really started to piss me off. Not using my brain, I put the lamb rack on a sizzle platter, as I have done a million times before at the restaurant.

This reminds me of a table of 18 people, 14 of whom ordered lamb racks. And naturally, they ordered them all five temperatures from rare to well done. It's pretty intense not only to cook fourteen racks simultaneously, but to time them such that they all come up to different temperatures at the same time. And then there is the small problem of keeping track of which is which. I was a crazy lamb-cooking chef that night!

This night, however, I thought to go sit down with Ann while the rack roasted to temperature. Shortly after doing so, she asked me, "Why is smoke pouring out of the oven?" And before I could get to the oven, the smoke detector started blaring and would continue to go off for the next ten minutes.

If you think I was irritated by the crust falling off, that was nothing compared to opening the oven, being blinded by smoke, and seeing a pool of lamb fat burning on the bottom of the oven, all the while being serenaded by the @#%$#! deafening klaxon of the smoke detector.

Remember the second layer of fat that I mentioned earlier? It started melting in the heat of the oven and ran down the bones which, of course, were hanging over the edge of the sizzle platter. Drip, drip, drip all over the scorching gas flame cover at the bottom of the oven. Idiot!

I transferred the rack to a sheet tray, like I should have done in the first place. And while cleaning molten fat from the bottom of the blazing oven while the gas was roaring, in not quite my finest hour, I yelled obscenities at the f'ed up nature of our kitchen, our super-sensitive smoke detector, the shitty ventilation, and less than ideal home cookware.

With Annie's soothing words, I finally got myself calmed enough to move on with dinner.

Timing lamb racks, especially whole 7- or 8-bone racks, is tricky. One end of the rack is much larger than the other. Half racks, 3- or 4-bone racks, are a lot easier because the size difference between the two ends is much smaller. It's the same for the rack of any animal, but larger racks such as pork, elk, or beef are so much bigger that the timing is not nearly so critical. Antelope racks are smaller and also a bit trickier to time.

When I cook a whole lamb rack, I am looking to take the rack out of the oven when the large end is still bleeding rare. After resting, it will finish medium rare while the small end will end up an acceptable and juicy medium. When I plate a whole rack for two, I divide the chops between the two plates so that each diner gets some less done chops and some more done chops.

When the large end of the lamb rack reached 118F, I pulled it and set it up on the cutting board to rest for 20 minutes. There is no profit in cutting a roast right out of the oven. It will bleed out all over. To allow for resting, you need to count on an additional 5-7 degrees cook up while it rests, which is why I pulled the rack when the large end was very rare. As you can see in the photo, it ended up at very pretty medium rare, just where I wanted it.

Reducing Petit Verdot

While the rack was resting, I went about making a sauce, a modified beurre rouge, a classic French butter sauce. To do so, I reduced a glass of inky dark Petit Verdot until it was syrupy and then stirred in a couple large spoonfuls of the leftover mustard glaze which thickened quickly. I set the pan on the counter to cool, an important step for making any butter sauce.

Red Wine and Mustard Reduction

When I was ready to finish the sauce, I put it back on a moderate flame and added enough water to thin it so that I could whisk it. As I was gently warming the sauce, I whisked in a couple tablespoons of ice cold butter, cut into small cubes. As the butter melts, it thickens the sauce. You have to do this at cool temperatures or the butter sauce will break, leaving a separated oily mess in the pan. So it is always best to let your pan cool before trying to finish the sauce with butter.

 

Finishing the Beurre Rouge

Finally, I plated everything while Annie poured us glasses of Nebbiolo. Being retired, our budget rarely stretches to afford Barolo or high-end Barbaresco, so we have to drink around the edges of the area. And Vietti makes a great declassified Nebbiolo that can only be labeled as Langhe Rosso. For the budget conscious Nebbiolo fan, year in and year out, Perbacco is a smart buy.

The plate up was simple as you can see in the photo at the very top of this post. I put a bit of cavolo nero on top of a pile of roasted potatoes in the middle of a large plate. Then after making a teepee of lamb chops around the potatoes, I napped the edges with the beurre rouge.

Vietti Perbacco, A Great Inexpensive Nebbiolo

In the end, after all the disappointment and fuming on my part, the rack from hell provided a wonderful, sumptuously luxurious meal, our first in a very long time. I thank Annie for putting up with my irritability.

Revisiting the beginning of this post, I see part of my problem letting go. Annie is not a diner; she's my wife. She's not reviewing my food on Yelp. She's my biggest cheerleader and her dinner doesn't have to be perfect. She loves me regardless. And paying our mortgage no longer depends on what comes out of the kitchen. Someday, I hope to really take that to heart. It's an ongoing struggle.

As for dinners from hell, remind me sometime to regale you with the story of the packed house Saturday night when we had to, unknown to guests, shut the kitchen down to fight a blazing grill fire. For twenty long minutes, nothing came out of the kitchen, a night that I will never forget and one that puts my trivial lamb rack trials in perspective.

A Lazy Summer Sunday

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

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

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

Annie Frying Her Shrimp Croquettes

Shrimp Croquettes: Roux and Shrimp, Chilled and Breaded

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

Watermelon Salad with Mint, Feta, and Red Onions

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

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

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

Guilty Indulgence

My Guilty Indulgence: Perciatelli Aglio e Olio

Some people crave chocolate, some people ice cream. Me, I crave pasta and garlic. Call me weird; I don't really care. If I am down, a plate of pasta aglio e olio will do the trick in elevating my spirits.

I wasn't down last night, but I was hungry and not in the mood to cook. Ann was feeling off her game and didn't want dinner. Lucky me, I had a bit of par-cooked perciatelli in the fridge.

We partially cook our pasta at the restaurant and then finish it to order; it helps get orders to the table faster. If we had the luxury of having someone to cook pasta exclusively, then we could do it to order. But we don't, so we par cook it. And that means that we sometimes have leftover pasta that didn't get served. And so it was on New Year's Eve. Lucky me, as I said earlier.

There is nothing simpler than warming garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, adding a little salt and water, and finishing some long pasta in it. And my special bonus to myself: topping it with a touch of grated pecorino romano and some panko and dried basil that I toasted in olive oil.

And that's my guilty indulgence. Pasta and garlic: perciatelli aglio e olio. Late night bar hopping drunk food!

As I was eating my bowl of noodles, Ann said, "Our house should always smell like this." Amen!

Greek Festival

Camera woes, camera woes! Mark and Kelley picked us up on Sunday and we headed to the Greek Festival at the local Greek church where we met Billy and Shawn and where Amanda and Dimitri joined us a few minutes later. When the gang was all together, I started to shoot photos, only to find that my battery was dead. Flat dead. How can the damned thing sit on the USB charger all night and be dead the next day?

Suffice it to say that we started with a couple of bottles of nameless red wine that would have been better used as a starter for vinegar. A blend of Agiorgitiko, Mandilaria, and some other grape that I forget, it is best forgotten!

The way that it works at this festival is that all the gilling goes on out back of the church: the souvlaki, gyros, and spitted lamb. And inside: all the pastries (always awesome) and other hot dishes such as pastitsio. From past experience, the inside food is just so-so, so we have been limiting ourselves to the grilled food. Last year, we tried the souvlaki and while they smelled good, they were very disappointing. So this year, we all got in the line for gyros, which turned out to be really good and so much better than what we had at Opa! last weekend. The tzatziki provided with the gyros was absolutely terrrible, though. I do believe that it was nothing other than cheap ranch dressing. Such a travesty!

Shawn, half Greek herself and on her home turf at the church where she was baptized, had the inside hook up: her uncle was grilling the lambs. He kept bringing us bits and pieces, especially lamb liver and venison tenderloin.

We finished up with loukoumades and galaktoboureko, the loukoumades fried while you watched and then drizzled with honey and crushed walnuts. The galaktoboureko was sinful, just sinful. I don't really do sweets, but I have this thing for a little bit of galaktoboureko!

Afterwards, all of us save for Billy and Shawn, went back to the house to get our drink on and to have dinner. I got the camera battery charged a bit, at least enough to shoot a few shots.

Delicious Strozzapreti!

For dinner, we threw together a quick pasta. I cooked down some of my homemade pancetta with slivered garlic while others chopped tomatoes and fresh mozzarella that was leftover from Saturday night dinner service. All this went into a big bowl with a lot of fresh basil. Then the hot strozzapreti went in. I toasted a bunch of panko in the leftover pancetta oil and put that over for some crunch. Delicious!

Finally, Some Good Red Wine!

After the crappy wines of the afternoon, for dinner, we opened a bottle of Topiary and Dimitri brought a bottle of Domaine Skouras Synoro 2007. The Synoro is a blend of 40% Cabernet Franc, 40% Merlot, and 20% Agiorgitiko. The excessive mercaptan nose of burning rubber tire was tough to wade through, but once it blew off, the underlying wine was nicely balanced between fruit and acid.

Chinese Egg Noodles

Last night, we had no book at the restaurant and it being a gorgeous day, I said to hell with it and left Tony to handle the kitchen. The day had been crazy warm (over 80 degrees on March 14th) so we could eat outside for the first time in 2012. I figured with it being grilling weather, Wednesday—historically the slowest night of the week, and March (just before the dreaded Madness starts) that I could get home for an evening, and I was right.

I called Ann earlier in the evening to probe offhandedly what she might like for dinner, not letting on that I might be coming home later. In fact, I told her that coming home would be impossible. Devious me! I wanted to surprise her by showing up out of the blue and also making something for dinner that she really wanted.

All the dishes she mentioned were pastas and I knew we had a package of fresh Chinese egg noodles, thinner than but about the same width as taglierini or fettucine, in the fridge that we needed to use. I haven't had pasta—my favorite food—in months as I am slowly working off the winter gut. Actually, the gut didn't come from the winter but from the pasta orgy we had all last summer.

And so here you see our pasta made with all the bits laying around in our refrigerator: rendered pancetta, tomatoes, mashed avocado, thinly sliced garlic, green onion, toasted panko, and sautéed shrimp.

Good? Did I hear you ask if it were good? I made enough to feed four people and we sat on the patio whisking away the pesky fruit flies trying desperately to drown in our 2006 Linden Petit Verdot and we.....ate.....the.....entire.....bowl!

And what a great time it was too, sitting outside on the patio on March 14th, barefoot and wearing shorts and a t-shirt, eating pasta, drinking great wine, not being in my windowless restaurant kitchen, and having great conversation with my best friend!

Black Bean Cakes

You can call them black bean burgers all you want, but I reserve the word burger for meat, so black bean cakes they are in the vernacular of Ed. For some reason that remains unclear to me, we ended up having black bean cakes for dinner last evening. I know that I volunteered to make them, but why? Ann says it was because we saw some on TV the night before that looked good. Long story short, we dined on black bean cakes last evening. And they were delicious!

Did I mention that we love beans and that black beans are among Ann's most favorite? I love them all and Steuben Yellow Eyes most of all. Someday soon I will post about them; we have a date with them on the 12th of February for our Valentine's dinner. Stay tuned.

Last evening saw a couple of firsts for us: first meal that Ann has really wanted to eat since her surgery (and that is a very, very good thing) and first time that I have ever used a residential food processor (no, no, no bueno). Go ahead, call me spoiled, but I still love my big commercial machine.

And I found out the answer to the age-old question "How many 4.25-ounce black bean cakes can you get out of a #10 can of beans?" The answer friends is 26, or 13 servings.

Making black bean cakes is as simple as cooking up a sofrito (2 diced poblanos, 2 diced onions, 3 tablespoons ground cumin, 1 tablespoon pimentón, 1/2 cup minced garlic, 1/2 cup minced cilantro stems, salt and pepper) and mixing the cooked sofrito with a #10 can (6.5 pounds) of partially blitzed beans, 2 cups panko, and 4 eggs, then forming them into cakes. Refrigerate the cakes a while to firm them up, press them lightly into panko, fry them, then transfer to a hot oven for 3-4 minutes to warm through.

If you're going to the effort, you might as well make a big batch as I did. Black bean cakes freeze well.