Seafood Supper

Without a doubt, seafood is one of our favorite food groups and last night I made a couple of seafood dishes that I'd like to remember, hence this post. Sadly, I have cooked so many dishes in my life and professional career that I have forgotten more than I remember. Seafood features much less frequently in our diet than we would like, because despite being only 3-1/2 hours from the coast, good seafood is really hard to come by out here in the high desert. Believe it or not, our best source of seafood is often Costco. That's kind of hard to admit for a chef who used to buy directly from the boats, but it's true if a little sad.

John and Heidi came over for dinner last night and we all gathered around the kitchen island to eat. We had really hoped to at least have appetizers if not dinner out in the courtyard around the firepit. But wouldn't you know that it rained, albeit lightly, for the first time since spring? And after some really warm and smoky summer days of late, there was a marked chill in the air and way more humidity than we are accustomed to. Is fall here already on the last day of August? For goodness sake, it just finished snowing on the 19th of June!

Goat Cheese Crostini with Pink Shrimp and Fennel Pollen

Summer here in Oregon is pink shrimp season. Though these tiny shrimp are harvested in the ocean close to shore, they are often called Bay Shrimp. They are netted, then cooked and peeled and are available pretty reliably through the summer. I have been trying to find ways to work with them, an opportunity that I have not had before this summer. Last time, I made them into delicious shrimp cakes. This time, I made them into a quick salad to sit atop crostini.

The crostini are topped with a schmear of softened goat cheese and pink shrimp seasoned with a really great olive oil, lemon zest, salt, and fennel pollen. After I put these delicious appetizers together, I drizzled them with more olive oil, salt, and fennel pollen, then topped each with a fennel frond.

Roasted Steelhead Trout on Fines Herbes Israeli Couscous

I really love the marriage of fish with fines herbes, so I put the two of them together in this dish. Fines herbes is an herb mix used in classic French cooking with seafood, poultry, and other very light proteins. The canonical mix is parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil, but I use whatever I happen to have on hand. This time the herbs would be Italian parsley, tarragon, and dill. Why is chervil so hard to find? I used it quite a bit at the restaurant, but I had to grow my own.

I boiled the couscous to almost done, then drained and mixed it with a steelhead cream sauce to finish cooking. Just as the pasta was finishing, I added sugar snaps (mange-touts) cut into one centimeter lengths, a big mound of finely chopped herbs, and a quick grating of pecorino romano. The steelhead cream sauce I made by cooking two minced shallots in butter, then adding a quarter cup of brined capers and roughly a quarter pound of diced steelhead trim leftover from portioning the fish. After the fish cooked a bit, I added a pint of cream and let it reduce by half. I made the sauce ahead and rewarmed it before adding to the couscous.

After roasting the fish, each portion went onto a bed of the couscous (which intentionally mimics the look and feel of risotto) and I topped each with a dollop of saffron aïoli and a dill sprig.

Mother's Day Dinner

Back in the restaurant days, we closed every Sunday without exception, including Mother's Day. Would-be customers would sometimes get irate and/or indignant that we would not be open on the day that they wanted to take mom out. Rarely ever did they consider that people who are in the restaurant business are human beings and that some things, such as being with family, are more important than money.

Cooking Fools: John and I Assembling Gnocchi

To make the most of our Mother's Day day-off from the restaurant, Ann and I would often host a Mother's Day dinner at our house, especially when Ann's parents were alive and able to make the hour-long schlep to our house. We fell out of the habit when her parents became unable to make it and then soon after, we relocated to Oregon away from our families. Then COVID decided to shut everything down for a couple of years.

And now in 2022, Ann decided that she wanted to have a dinner once again for Mother's Day. She even knew the dishes she wanted me to make: a potato-salad modeled on one we had eaten at a local restaurant and goat-cheese gnocchi. While I loved her ideas, I really didn't want to have two dishes that would have me doing last minute cooking, what we call in the business à la minute dishes, keeping me away from socializing with our guests, which is what I thought the idea was.

That issue, coupled with my objecting to having carbs on carbs in subsequent courses, fell on deaf ears and in the spirit of marital harmony, I ceased demurring. One thing I have learned is that when Ann is entrenched on some point, I really, really, really, really must want to try to move her off that position. In this case, it was just easier to shut up and cook! And I mean this lovingly with no ill intent!

A Little Snow for Mother's Day

When I think of Mother's Day, I think of mild temperatures, green grass, and flowers galore. But that isn't the case here in Bend, Oregon where it is really snowing hard as I type this. It won't amount to much down here by the river, but up in the Cascades, you can be sure they're getting dumped on. Still, we have pretty much of a spring menu for today and I guess that we will have to pretend that the weather is beautiful.

Special Guest Cady

Working for his Dinner, John Cooks Maiitake

For our Mother's Day affair, John and Heidi and Tim and Susan joined us. Tim was kind enough to bring a couple bottles of blends from his private stash, one Napa and one Columbia Valley. Tim and Susan also brought along their dog Cady whom we were very happy to entertain. It was great having a dog in the house again after having had to put Grace down just a very few days ago!

Appetizer: Potato Salad with Argentinean Red Shrimp

Potato Salad with Argentinean Red Shrimp

We have dined twice now at a very charming and competent Italian restaurant called Bosa. One of the appetizers on their current menu is Grilled Calamari on Potato Salad. The potato salad contains tomatoes, olives, garlic crema, and Sherry vinaigrette. The flavor combinations are wonderful and hats off to the cook on the grill station; the calamari has been perfectly cooked on both occasions that we have eaten it.

As much as we loved the calamari, the revelation for us was the potato salad under the squid. I made a mental note that I would try to recreate that salad and make it my own. I have always thought that one chef taking an idea from another chef is the ultimate compliment and nowhere akin to thievery. That I found your dish sufficiently wonderful to add it to my repertoire says how much I respect you. I never understood chefs who rant about people "stealing" their dishes.

Not having access, yet, to decent squid, I decided to make do with some lovely Argentinean Red Shrimp on top of the potato salad of roasted baby creamer potatoes, grape tomatoes, cracked olives, and a few capers. It sounds to me as if Bosa used two dressings, a garlic crema and a Sherry vinaigrette, but my version is an all-in-one dressing made of garlic confit, Sherry vinegar, salt, sour cream, and water.

Entrée: Goat Cheese Gnocchi with Chicken Confit, Asparagus, Peas, and Maiitake

Goat Cheese Gnocchi with Chicken Confit, Asparagus, Peas, and Maiitake
Crispy Chicken Skin Garnish

When Ann and I started discussing the idea of goat cheese gnocchi, we knew we needed a salty ingredient to play off the relatively neutral gnocchi. At the restaurant, I would have used house-cured duck confit or house-cured country ham (prosciutto), both of which we kept on hand at all times. Here at home, however, I don't have access to or have need for these items, so I decided to make a quick chicken confit to serve as the salty ingredient.

Then I went "foraging" at the various markets around town, trying to find some spring ingredients. In addition to sugar snaps, pea shoots, and purple asparagus, I wanted some mushrooms, specifically morels. I did find some ratty looking morels, but they were absurdly priced at $80 per pound, so I brought home some maiitake instead. I also decided, since I was going to make chicken confit, to confit some garlic at the same time and include it.

This is a lot of ingredients for one of my dishes, but it is what I had on hand and needed to use. Were I to do the dish again, I would simplify to gnocchi, asparagus, chicken confit, morels, and a splash of cream to bring them all together.

Gnocchi Mise en Place: (clockwise from top left)
Sugar Snaps, Pea Shoots, Purple Asparagus
Toasted Hazelnuts, Maiitake, Chicken Confit, Garlic Confit

I made the gnocchi and prepped the garnishes in the morning, leaving the final cooking and assembly for the dinner itself. I really don't like to do à la minute dishes for parties because it takes me away from guests. In this case, the meal was super sauté heavy, so I asked for a volunteer to reduce the time we were at the stove. John gladly accepted the challenge and he set to work cooking all the garnishes while I browned batch after batch of gnocchi in brown butter. Once we were done and had gently mixed all the ingredients in a large bowl, I plated the gnocchi and topped each plate with a crispy chicken skin.

Dessert: Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar

May 4th was the first day of the Bend Downtown Farmers Market and we were excited to visit it last week. It is still very early days for the market here on account of our weather, but at least some vendors are making the trek across the Cascades to bring us some fresh product from the Willamette Valley, such as these strawberries from the Woodburn area. They were neither super ripe nor super tasty as far as strawberries go, but they were better than nothing. Ann wanted them tossed with a little sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar and so that's what we had.

Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar

After several years of not cooking a nice meal for Mother's Day, it sure was nice to get back in the saddle again and to have good friends with whom to share the occasion.

Cold Dish for a Hot Day

Ahi Tataki on Salad of Sugar Snaps, Tomatoes, and Corn

What to eat on a very hot day? Something cold and fresh. This salad really hit the spot and represents everything I have learned as a chef about simplicity and letting ingredients shine.

I knew I hit the mark when Ann asked the question on eating the salad, "What did you do to this?" I replied "Nothing." When you have ingredients this fresh and high quality, you don't have to do a thing. Learning this lesson has taken decades.

A new trick for an old chef. I have learned (perhaps re-learned) this summer that if you put a quick blister on sugar snaps, you can coax the peas into a deliciousness that tops even their totally raw state. Very many sugar snaps have never even made it home this spring from the farmers market, having been snacked by Ann and me on the walk home. That's how delicious they are totally raw.

To make them even better, I heat a pan over blazing heat, generally on the grill outside. Just as I'm ready to cook, a touch of oil (in this case, sesame) goes into the pan, and then the peas go in to sit for a few seconds to char the pods a bit, and then are tossed with a sprinkle of salt until the pods go from raw green to bright green all over, a minute or so. The result is still nearly raw (certainly the peas inside the pods remain raw) and beguilingly delicious.

The salad in the photo above adds halved small tomatoes and raw shaved corn. On top of this are slices of tuna that I seared in the cast iron pan after the peas came out. A sprinkle of really good salt finishes the dish. Sublime.

Split Pea Soup

It's a kind of miserable day here in Oregon just five days before Thanksgiving, a drippy, bone-chilling kind of day. It's not terribly cold, in the low 40s, but we are socked in by a fog that makes it gray and raw. It's a day on which I just cannot seem to get warm. In short, it's a perfect soup day. Good thing I have split pea soup on the menu for this evening.

Split Pea Soup in the Slow Cooker

Split pea soup is comfort food to a lot of the world. You'll find beloved versions by various names all over the northern hemisphere in the North America, Scandinavia, Europe, Russia, and probably a great more places as well. Its popularity no doubt stems from being cheap, delicious, and almost trivial to prepare.

Split pea soup is a very old dish, an ancient peasant food, well documented by Romans. If you think about the northern British dish pease porridge or pease pudding, the word pease dates back to Middle English, to the 15th or 16th century. As an aside, the word pea is a false singular back derived from the word pease, which was a mass noun with no singular. The dish is probably in our DNA now, being far, far older than that: read more here.

Pease porridge, a thick purée of yellow split peas cooked with ham (or salt pork), is clearly the progenitor of our American split pea and ham soup, a much thinner version made with green split peas. My version for a quick dinner is made without any meat at all. For company, I might include a ham hock and/or some country ham in the soup.

Moreover, no longer living in the country ham capital of the US (Virginia), I wouldn't even know where to find a good ham bone out here in Oregon. We always saved the bones from our Thanksgiving and Christmas hams with which to make a great pot or two of split pea soup. And in the days when we used to boil our country hams to cook them, we would save the ham stock to make split pea soup. But these days when Ann and I are eating meat only sporadically, we go without.

Although I love the soup now, it was not love at first sight. You must admit that the drab green lumpy soup is at first glance pretty off-putting. And off-putting I thought it in about 1970 when my mother first made the soup (she may have made it prior, but I had no memory of eating it prior). I would eat anything (and I still will) to the point where my siblings called me the human vacuum cleaner. But balk I did at olive green soup.

My mom did try every trick in her book to get me to taste it, for the entirety of an afternoon after school. In the end I relented, though I am not sure what persuaded me to try it other than simple hunger, and split peas have taken their rightful place on my list of favorite soups.

Split Pea Soup Recipe

As for a recipe, it is soup. That means nobody cares about exact amounts or an exact list of ingredients. This version was two pounds of green split peas, two medium onions, two large carrots, two stalks of celery, six cloves of garlic (minced), a bunch of silver thyme from out front (leaves plucked), two bay leaves, a couple teaspoons of Kosher salt, a big pinch of black pepper, and a gallon or so of water. In the crockpot on high for four hours and voilà!

For me, I crave the flavor of thyme in my split pea soup. It is missing something if I don't pick up a background hint of thyme. And so I always go out to the garden and bring some in for my batch of soup. I have many thyme plants in the yard, but my favorite with the best flavor is a variegated thyme called silver thyme.

Dinner with Tom and Ann

On Sunday the 24th, a delightful late winter afternoon, Ann, Carter, and I drove out to Capon Bridge, WV to have dinner with friends Tom and Ann Matthes at their gorgeous new house situated in the Dillon's Run stream valley between two ridge lines just west of Capon Bridge proper. Wow! Do they have a beautiful single-level house on a gorgeous site. We are extremely jealous in that this is very similar to the style of house that we are hoping to build for our next (and hopefully final) home.

Still Life with Wok

Ann and I brought along a couple of bottles of Crémant de Bourgogne to start with. I really like this 100% Chardonnay bottling from Bailly-Lapierre. I keep mentioning it over and over in this blog; maybe it's because it's really nice affordable bubbly. Ann has turned a bit sour on this wine over the last year and I am not sure why. This bottle was delicious.

Carter Drinking Sprite with the Big Dogs

Tom offered Carter, now taller than his mother, a glass of Sprite in a Champagne flute so that he could be one of the gang while he sat on the sofa and surfed subways on the iPad. That's it Tom! Just what we need. Get the kid all sugared up! I do have to say that even if we have our issues at home, Carter is always a gentleman when out in public with us. Good on him! And he's a lucky kid because he gets to feast on (and loves) all this great food. What's he going to do when he gets to college and is faced with that slop?

Cuban Wedding Shrimp

We started at the counter in the kitchen with a dish that Tom called Cuban Wedding Shrimp. Though I have sincere doubts about its Cuban heritage, it is tasty. And I don't have any idea how Tom made it, but if I had to recreate it, I would make a sweet and sour marinade of orange juice, rum, vinegar, and brown sugar. Then I would sweat some peppers and onions (don't forget the garlic) and poach the shrimp and cover the whole thing in the marinade for a while. Then I would strain off the marinade and reduce it for a sauce. These shrimp were monsters too, maybe U-12s.

Pinot, Oh Me, Oh My!

Pinot fanatic that I am, imagine my surprise to see this line up on the counter when we arrived! We drank from right-to-left: Amalie Robert Pinot Meunier Willamette 2010, Buena Vista Pinot Noir Carneros 2009, Torii Mor Pinot Noir Dundee Hills 2009, and Campion Pinot Noir Carneros 2006.

Ann and I are certainly no strangers to Amalie Robert Pinot Meunier, it having been on the restaurant wine list for a while. We have tasted the 2008 and 2009 vintages of this super cranberry-colored wine, but not the 2010. I was a little disappointed in the 2010 as it seemed a touch flabbier than I recall in 2008 and 2009.

Nor are we strangers to Buena Vista Pinot, it having been on and off the wine list over the years, and we can recall a delightful afternoon sitting at National Harbor sipping this wine after a Cirque de Soleil show some years ago. It is has big and lush dark fruit with touches of cotton candy, tasting a touch more Santa Barbara to me than Carneros in this vintage. My least favorite wine of the day; Ann's favorite.

Now for my style of wine, the Torii Mor Dundee Hills. I just loved this wine and have tasted it on and off over the years. It manages that delicate balancing act that makes Willamette so special: it manages to combine the crisp acidity of Burgundy with the best new world aromatics. Delicious!

This was my first taste of Campion wines, though I know the label and know that this is the new project of Larry Brooks from Acacia. Very well made wine, though not to my taste. Big, lush dark fruit, with loads of spice.

If I had to rank these in my order of preference: Torii Mor, Amalie Robert, Campion, Buena Vista. If I had to guess about Ann's ranking: Buena Vista, Campion, Torii Mor, Amalie Robert. All wines from Charlie Fish at Murphy Beverage in Winchester.

Duck Confit Quesadillas

After the delicious shrimp, Tom made duck confit quesadillas that he served with a mayo-based sauce and a salsa of corn, tomatoes, and yellow and green squash. This makes me long so much for the grilled vegetable salsas that we do at the restaurant in the summer! I love duck confit so much!

Jalapeños

Sometimes it's the little things that catch my eye, such as this saucer of jalapeño slices. Maybe it is the contrast of the organic peppers against the industrial stainless steel. [Did you ever wonder where Jalapa is? It just occurred to me to check it out. Due east of La Ciudad and slightly northwest (and almost a suburb) of Veracruz sits Xalapa. Who knew?] Tom knows I like a little heat in my food, though jalapeños barely register on the Ed scale.

Sam I Am

During the intermezzo between the two appetizer courses in the kitchen and dinner proper in the dining room, we chatted in the living room where Sam, the chocolate lab, occupied one of the two sofas. As we were chatting, I happened to spy a couple of turkeys on the hillside across the creek about 75 yards away. We all gathered to watch them strut and shuffle through the underbrush looking for food and as they made their way north along the creek, I counted 22 of them, 20 hens and 2 toms.

Tom Stir Frying Pea and Cashew Fried Rice

After our interlude with the turkeys, Tom got to making fried rice with peas and cashews to go with his Asian pork shoulder. I *love* fried rice of any kind; I may love it better than pasta, which is saying a lot.

Action Shot

Asian Pork Shoulder with Sauce

Tom braised the pork shoulder in an Asian-inspired marinade that tasted predominantly of soy and star anise, never a bad thing! It tastes a lot like the marinade that we use for lamb and venison at the restaurant. Delicious!

Phenomenal Cheeses

And now for the stars of the show, the cheeses and bread for the final course. There is nothing finer in my book than good cheese and bread for dessert and these were excellent examples of each. Tom got the cheeses from Zingerman's in Ann Arbor. Before restaurant, I used to source a lot of things from them. I love the company, the catalog, the products, and the customer service.

From the triangular wedge on the bottom left going clockwise, the cheeses are: Montgomery's farmhouse Cheddar, L'Amuse Gouda, raw milk Stichelton, Fort St. Antoine Comté, and Detroit Street Brick. The Cheddar is smooth and delicious and is a great example of what Cheddar should be. The Gouda as you can see has a little age to it, but nothing like that of the 5-year old hard Gouda we serve at the restaurant. This one still has a smooth paste in the center and is developing caramel flavors out towards the edge: best of young and old Gouda in a single cheese. The Stichelton, while it looks and tastes like very good Stilton, cannot be so named because to be labeled as Stilton, the cheese must be made from pasteurized milk and this is made from raw milk, all the better. The Comté is a wonderful mountain cheese and is one of the finest of its kind that I have ever tasted, sweet, nutty, and complex.

The star of the cheeseboard, I left for last, the place of honor. This Detroit Street Brick, named for the pavers in the street outside Zingerman's deli, is a cheese I have never tasted before in my life, nor have I tasted anything similar. I just don't have enough superlatives in my vocabulary for this creamy goat milk cheese studded with green peppercorns and enrobed in a hint of a bloomed rind. This cheese stands with the very best goat cheeses I have ever eaten.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Tom served Warre's Otima 20-year old Tawny Port with the cheese. Yum! And I would be even more remiss if I didn't mention the outstanding rosemary and roasted garlic loaf that my Ann baked for the cheese course. Wonderful!

Ann's Awesome Rosemary-Roasted Garlic Bread

So after reading this, you might be jealous. You should be!