Quick Dinner for Ann's Girlfriends

Ann invited Erika and Michelle over for dinner just so that they could catch up with each other. I cooked a quick gluten-free vegetarian dinner and we sat around the counter and yakked for a few hours.

Erika Makes Gorgeous Flower Arrangements
My First Time Seeing the Yellow Kangaroo Paw Flowers

I Shoot a Bunch of Candids When People Are Not Expecting It
Sometimes, I Get a Gem

Chips with Pineapple Salsa

Posole Casserole with Poblanos and Fresh Corn

Michelle Made Mexican Chocolate Mousse

Pineapple Salsa

We eat a lot of fish tacos at our house. Probably once a week, I get some local rockfish, put a dry rub on it, and cook it for tacos. The variables in our tacos are the slaw (I make a big batch every three weeks or so) and the salsa, which I generally make to order. Tangy tart pineapple salsa is just wonderful on fish tacos and it could not be simpler to make.

Tangy, Salty, Fresh, Spicy Pineapple Salsa

This is a classic salsa in my book, containing nothing but a fruit, an onion, cilantro, spice, lime juice, and salt. Click here for a tutorial on dicing pineapple.

1 pineapple, diced
1 serrano chile, finely minced (deseed for less heat; I do not)
1 bunch green onions, diced
1 bunch cilantro, destemmed and chopped
juice of half of one lime (or more depending on how sweet or tart the pineapple is)
half a teaspoon of Kosher salt, or to taste

Certainly you can substitute any onion for the green onion and any spice for the serrano. It's your salsa; make it your way.

Kitchen Basics: Dicing Pineapple

Pineapples can seem daunting to prepare because of their odd shape, but with a couple of tricks, they become child's play. Following is a photo essay on prepping pineapples. The end result here is diced pineapple, which I ultimately used for salsa, but using these techniques, you can cut your pineapple into whatever size pieces you desire.

Lay the Pineapple Flat on the Board

Remove Both the Top and Bottom

Standing on End, Remove the Sides in Strips
Cut Deep Enough to Remove the "Eyes"

Once Peeled, Slice in Half Lengthwise, Then Again Into Quarters

Remove the Core on the Bias

Four Quarters Ready to Slice

Bottom to Top: Quarter, Strips, Halved Strips, Dice

Chipotle-Marinated Grilled Pork and Pineapple Salad

Shockingly yellow daffodils in full glory on Monday at dawn heralded a beautiful spring day, signaling from the moment that the dogs and I stepped outside that morning that we were going to eat dinner outside on the patio for the first time this year, as long as the weather gods did not send us a late afternoon thunderstorm. And I knew then that I was going to grill something for dinner. I am not immune to that same urge to put meat to fire that infects everyone else this time of year. It has been how many cold, dreary, months of leaden skies since I have fired the grill?

And then just after noon while I was at work, the text arrived, "some kind of huge salad for dinner?" Hmm, well, that did kind of put a kink in my plans for something grilled, and by something grilled, I meant a burger, a big, fat, voluptuously delicious, grease dripping down the chin, burger.

Chipotle-Marinated Grilled Pork and Pineapple Salad

My burger-lust unsated and shelved, I started working plan B. Plan B was some means of combining grilled meat with a salad. And Plan B happened to be formulating just as I walked by a huge pile of pineapples at the market. Grilled pineapple? Yeah, I'm a fan. Now what? Heat and sweet? Yes sir! Chipotle and pineapple. It just has to be pork. I'll get some thinly sliced pork shoulder, marinate it in chipotle, grill it, some pineapple, and a sweet pepper, and then build a salad on that. Perfect!

Grilled Pork, Pineapple, Peppers and a Salad on Top

Feeling these same spring urges that I felt, Ann put a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge so that it would be cold by the time we both got home. We sat out on the patio and drank our first bottle of white wine of the year. There is something special about that first bottle of white out on the patio, the same patio that had been covered in snow for so many months. Spring, it seems, is finally here!

This dish was beautiful and a good choice for outdoor dining, but damn it, I want a burger!

Thai Vegetable Chow Mein

The usual Monday morning conversation centered around what to make for dinner. No surprise there for a couple of hardcore foodies. We had hung up with a baseline consensus around pho or other rice noodle soup. A few minutes later I get a text from Ann: "Can you do those noodles in a pancake?"

Of course, I thought, but didn't really get to thinking about what to do other than a basic chow mein until much later in the afternoon when I remembered that when I had been weeding in the garden very early in the morning and that I had noticed that we have lots and lots of Thai basil that needed to be used.

From there, it wasn't a big stretch to combine Thai flavors with Chinese technique.

Thai Chow Mein

I decided as long as was mixing metaphors that it wouldn't hurt too bad if the vegetables were a mish-mash too. After work as I was heading home, from the market I collected sugar snaps (ours got pulled out of the garden this past weekend, sadly), an orange pepper, grape tomatoes, a pineapple, a knob of galangal, cilantro, bamboo shoots, and a pound of fresh noodles. From the pantry, I got fish sauce, ground white pepper, and dry roasted peanuts. And from the garden, I got lots of fresh Thai basil and garlic (Chinese) chives.

Flavoring Paste Basics

I made a seasoning paste to flavor the dish with from cilantro stems, galangal (aka kha or Thai ginger), shallots, white pepper, and fish sauce. Fresh galangal is very assertive, much more so than ginger, so I only used a few slices, finely minced, in my seasoning paste.

I fried the noodle cake and removed it to a platter, then I fried the seasoning paste and added the vegetables. After everything was warmed through, I added a few more splashes of fish sauce and tossed in the basil and chives.

A bit of prep work, but easy to execute and delicious!

A Relaxing Weekend

This past weekend was about feeling good about getting some work done in the yard and then rewarding ourselves by relaxing. Sunday we made a trip to Delaplane Cellars after a morning in the yard. And Monday, after a morning in the yard and a short trip in to work, we ate and sipped wine during the afternoon. I needed a slow leisurely weekend to start to feel good about the yard and to just slow down and enjoy. It was a great weekend!

Relaxing Lunch on the Deck at Delaplane Cellars

Sunday morning started sunny and pleasant but the humidity was up and by 10:30 or so, it seemed like the clouds were building for afternoon thunderstorms. But the nice morning let me get a lot of needed work accomplished in the yard. The younger wisteria are growing like crazy now and need weekly work to train them to our pergola. And since we are gardening on a budget, I was able to transplant a volunteer maple tree and a volunteer crape myrtle from one of the front beds to our property line out back. It felt good to finally get something accomplished in the yard rather than merely trying to recover from the damage from last winter.

In the afternoon, even as the clouds piled up in the sky, we made the quick drive to Delaplane Cellars where we tasted through the current line up and then retired to the deck with a bottle of 2012 Left Bank Bordeaux blend. Left Bank is the blend from the winery's own grapes and though the fruit is very young, it makes for a delicious and easy drinking red.

We saw Jim mowing grass between rows as we lunched and ultimately he and then Betsy joined us out on the patio where we chatted for a couple hours before we had to head home in the late afternoon.The wind got up a couple of times forcing us to furl the umbrellas and we got a few stray raindrops, but it didn't ever amount to enough to force us in. Back home in Winchester on the other side of the Blue Ridge, we saw that it had rained in our absence. Good luck for us!

Monday Lunch: Chipotle Black Bean and Mango Tacos

I worked hard all last week to keep my Monday workload to a minimum and that let me work a couple more hours in the yard before heading in to work to finish up my Monday chores. On the way home, I stopped at the market and grabbed some things for lunch and dinner. Lunch, out on the patio under the umbrella, was these black bean and mango tacos that took all of five minutes to put together from canned black beans, a mango, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of green onions, and a can of chipotle salsa.

Shrimp, Lop Cheung, and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

Dinner was another outdoor affair, this time, lettuce wraps with a dipping sauce. For the dipping sauce, I used the white parts of the green onions and the stems of the cilantro from lunch, along with garlic, sambal oelek, lime juice, fish sauce, and agave nectar just to take the edge off the lime.

I threw together a quick stir fry of lop cheung, tiny shrimp, sugar snaps, lime leaves (discarded before we ate), garlic, white pepper and fish sauce. This I mixed with the raw ingredients: pineapple, roasted peanuts, fresh tomato, orange sweet pepper, and lots of Thai basil. As you can see in the photo, the wraps are mostly vegetables with a tiny bit of shrimp and sausage for flavor.

What a Great Day!

Chorizo, Pineapple, and Chipotle Tacos

Chorizo, Pineapple, and Chipotle Tacos

Today, I planned to be at work most of the day mostly babysitting a contractor but also getting my usual Monday deskwork done. I had no plans to be at home by noon and no plans to eat lunch with my lovely wife, but the moon and the stars aligned: I arrived at 7:30 and powered through my paperwork and glory of glories, the contractor arrived at 8:05 and was out before 10am!

My errands all complete, I stopped into FoodMaxx on the way home. I wanted to make something light and full of flavor and had pretty much decided on crab tacos when I realized that I failed to grab crab from work. No worries. I grabbed a tray of Salvadoran chorizos along with a pineapple, some green onions, cilantro, and a can of chipotle adobo.

At home, I cooked the sausage and mixed it with the other raw ingredients, tossed with the adobo and salt. Ten minutes of work yielded these most awesome of tacos! Because I used a slightly green pineapple (can you really find a ripe pineapple in the US?), I didn't need any lime juice to cut the richness of the sausage.

These are so good that I am salivating as I type! We're probably going to do these at the restaurant for our street food extravaganza during Rally in the Alley in April!

Meeting Levi

Sunday, we drove out to Tom and Ann's in Capon Bridge, WV, ostensibly to have a leisurely afternoon lunch with them, but the ulterior motive was certainly to meet their new dog, Levi, who was most certainly the star of the show, despite all of Tom's many culinary efforts. So, meet Levi....

Levi

Lev's a big boy and very eager to please, no doubt because he came from a local shelter after a couple failed placements. His sweet disposition doesn't change the fact that he's 85 pounds of happy wagging tail. That thing's a weapon! I found out quickly when I took him for a walk that he has a rock fetish: excavating and carrying rocks seems to be his thing!

Cheese and Salame, Two of the Basic Food Groups

We arrived to this wonderful spread of cheese and salame: Gorgonzola Dolce, Stilton, Fiscalini Cheddar and Asiago Stravecchio (extra vecchio/older than 18 months) for cheeses, and a chorizo picante and rosette de Lyon for sausages. The rosette de Lyon in particular was outstanding. We do a lot with Fiscalini cheeses at the restaurant and I just love the products from this farm in Modesto, CA.

Tom, Doing his Thing

After warming up with some cheese, sausage, and wine (an Alto Adige Gewürztraminer, a Sierra Foothills Sauvignon Blanc that I brought, a Napa Zinfandel, a Sierra Foothills Cab, and a Columbia Valley Syrah), Tom got on to lunch proper: ham, potato gratin, and carrots. All quite wonderful, but just couldn't compete with Levi! ;)

Ham with a Pineapple-Jalapeño Sauce

Gratin of Potatoes with Stilton

Carrots and Dill

Brochetas de Camarones, Mango-Habanero Salsa

I was looking for something easy for the grill yesterday when it struck me on seeing some beautiful shrimp at the market that I should do skewers/kebabs/brochettes/brochetas. I am usually philosophically opposed to skewers of mixed foods because the foods generally have different cooking rates and to get everything cooked, naturally something else must be overcooked.

Here's a tip for you for doing skewers. Put each different item on a separate skewer so that you can take it off the grill when it is done. Then you can take a little bit from each skewer to make up each plate.

Shrimp, Tomato, Pineapple, and Pepper on Sugar Cane Skewers

In this case, I wasn't worried because the tomatoes, pineapple, and sweet peppers are all ready to eat in their raw state, so all I had to worry about was cooking the shrimp, which took about three minutes on the blazing hot grill. The marinade you see is minced garlic and cilantro stems, panela (unrefined sugar cane sugar), dark rum, olive oil, black pepper, and a touch of fish sauce.

While I was at the market, I grabbed a six-foot length of sugar cane and split it into skewers. Ann and Carter seemed to enjoy nibbling on the scraps.

Don't Let the Beauty Fool You: Habaneros are Wicked Hot!

Aren't these habaneros gorgeous? Ann kept wanting to taste one in her bull-in-the-china-shop way and I kept telling her to leave them alone. I think it was Carter's Jamaican friend who finally convinced her, "You don't want to do that!" I'm not a big fan of habaneros because I find them too fruity for most applications, but the one place that I like them is in fruit salsa.

And, where did the fake énye from? It's habanero, after Habana, not habañero. Oh, and quoting Ann later, "You put in just ONE?" "Yes, without the seeds." I told her. Don't mess around with them!

Mango Salsa with Habanero, Black Beans, and Pineapple

And lo! Fruit salsa. Mango, slightly on the green side as I like it best for salsa, black beans, pineapple scraps from the skewers, cilantro, red onion, red pepper from the garden, lime juice, and panela.

Panela

You might know panela by a different name or shape. From Mexico, it generally comes in small truncated cones and is called piloncillo, after the truncated cone shape into which the sugar cane syrup is molded. You also find it in blocks, bars, and big squares. In Mexico, the term panela most often refers to a cheese, formally called queso de panela (cheese molded in a basket), and abbreviated simply to panela. Panela is identical to the jaggery that you will find in Indian groceries; jaggery I see most often as hemispherical lumps or broader, relatively squatter cones than piloncillo. No matter what it is called; it is all the same stuff. If you had to substitute something for it, dark brown sugar would kind of work, but it would be better to use a splash of molasses with some other sweetener for panela has a great molasses undertone to it.

Honeymoon: Thursday Breakfast

Thursday May 2, Newberg OR

Thursday morning when we came down to breakfast, the table was set with a different collection of herbs. Today it was blooming rosemary and blooming sage from the flowerbeds outside.


Breakfast Herbs

Grilled Pineapple

Rhubarb Muffins

I mentioned in yesterday's breakfast post that Kristin set the table with several of her homemade jams and jellies and today was no exception. When she was going through the list of jellies to accompany her rhubarb muffins made with rhubarb from her back yard, she saw me double take when she said Queen Anne's Lace flower jelly. Say what?

Queen Anne's Lace is a common weed; in fact, there's a 5-acre field of it behind our house. Who knew you could make jelly from the flowers? It's a wild carrot and the leaves and blooms have a distinctly herbaceous carrot top-like scent. I expected the jelly to be grey-green and herbal, yet I was looking at a light peach-colored jelly with a slight quince flavor profile. It was neat to experience this transformation from green and white herb to blushing pink jelly, but I didn't find it sufficiently flavorful for me to want to run out and make a batch. A novelty, yes; a staple, no.

Delicious Eggs Baked with Asparagus; Potatoes

After this delightful breakfast, we headed south towards Salem to visit the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, but that's a tale for another post.