We Needed a Celebration

It's been a long time since we had a get-together at our house. Spring was busy: I'm volunteering a couple days a week, I traveled to Philly to watch Ellie graduate, and we had a few health problems along the way. We needed a reason to celebrate at home. Ann set it up, inviting Rob and Dyce and Michelle and Andreas for dinner.

Pregaming with Chenin Blanc

Superstar Wine: Anjou Blanc
Chenin from Thibaut Boudignon

Whipped Feta with Spicy Honey and Pine Nuts

We had been saving a magnum of Anjou Blanc from Thibaud Boudignon for just such an occasion. He is a winemaker who came from obscurity to global reknown (at least among sommeliers) in a blink, now making some of the best wines in the Loire. These are not old school wines, however. They are precise and angular and suit my palate to a tee. Although he is best known for his outstanding Savennières, I prefer his base level Anjou Blanc for its simplicity and laser-focused acidity.

I let the wine guide the appetizer course, selecting a cheese dish that would be a great foil for the incredible acidity of the Boudignon wine. Over the years I have done many versions of baked feta and whipped goat cheese, but never whipped feta.

For garnishes, I made spicy honey (half a cup of honey and a tablespoon of sambal oelek) and toasted a handful of pine nuts. I chose to garnish with honey expressly to echo the honey and beeswax aromas and flavors of the Chenin Blanc.

Whipped Feta

For the whipped feta, I decided to add 20% goat cheese by weight to help loosen the feta which I was afraid would be too grainy whipped alone. I was quite happy with the results as apparently were all the others—none was left at the end of the evening.

400 grams of excellent sheep's milk feta

100 grams of fresh goat cheese

squeeze of lemon juice

drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Soften both cheeses at room temperature. Place both in a food processor and process until whipped, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

The raw whipped cheese tasted flat so I squeezed in the juice of an end of a lemon that I had left on the cutting board from making lemon slices for the chicken. I drizzled in an equal amount of olive oil; call it a tablespoon of each. The feta is salty enough; the whip did not need more salt.

Setting the Table: First Time in a Long Time

Ann and I went back and forth on the menu for a few days. At first, she wanted a reprise of a chicken tagine that I made some years ago, actually, an entire meal that I had made before. I resisted repeating myself, feeling that it is a cop out of sorts. But then she changed her mind to simple roasted chicken on white beans.

She was dead set on the tomato salad flavored with fennel pollen from the menu that I did not want to replicate. She talks about that salad often, but it's funny how I barely remember the dishes (so many thousands) that I have cooked. Thankfully, this blog is a repository of dishes that I have made, so there is a record even if I no longer recall them.

Roasted Chicken
with White Beans, Artichokes, and Garlic

The orginal roast chicken, as I conceived it, had no white beans. But I added them to subsequent iterations because something magical happens when you roast chicken on top of them. As always, quality matters. Use the best beans you can find. In this case, I used yellow eye beans from Rancho Gordo. These are among my favorite all purpose white beans ever and a stalwart at the restaurant.

Roasted Chicken with White Beans, Artichokes, and Garlic

6 heads of garlic, broken into cloves and peeled

3 lemons, sliced

1 pound of dried white beans, cooked

3 400-gram cans artichoke hearts

1 bunch of Italian parsley, destemmed and roughly chopped

2 large sprigs of rosemary, destemmed

drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

12 chicken thighs

salt

pepper

Mix the garlic, lemon slices, white beans, artichoke hearts, parsley, and rosemary with a drizzle of olive oil. Season as necessary. Place the mixture in the bottom of a roasting pan. Toss the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and arrange on the bed of vegetables. Roast in a hot oven (400F) until the chicken skin is crisp, about two hours. Check the beans occasionally. If they are drying out, moisten them with a little bean broth or chicken stock.

Tomatoes with Fennel Pollen and Shallots

Nobody needs a recipe for this simple tomato salad that is as surprisingly delicious as it is easy to make. It is merely a mixture of halved grape tomatoes, minced shallots, fennel pollen, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, all to taste. 

Shout Out to El Mentridano

Ann and I, we are fans of light bodied reds with good acidity and some structure, wines that let their aromatics do the talking. While we are not fans of the usually overripe Spanish Garnacha, we both agree that El Mentridano, a high-altitude, lightly expressed Garnacha from Méntrida, near Madrid, is delightful. It offers a nose of cranberries, cherries, black tea, and a slight earthiness, all positives in our book. Color is light and tannins are polished, all backed by an attractive sour cherry acidity that keeps the wine vibrant. It reminds me of Nebbiolo in many ways. We had real problems, likely bottle shock, with this wine about six months ago, but after sitting in the rack for that period, it is back to normal. We must buy more—it is an indispensable summer red that pairs with a vast range of foods.

Herding Cats Again: Impossible to Get Everyone to Cooperate

Ann Made Her Delightful Summer Pudding (Berries and Brioche)

Michelle Made Her Best Batch Yet of Lemon Bars

We needed a night to sit back with friends and catch up. The simple menu is just what we needed, tasty and yet easy to prep in advance, with zero à la minute cooking that let us enjoy the company of our guests.

Dimitri Comes to Bend

Surprise! Our friend Dimitri texted out of the blue on Monday that he and his friend Joe would be in Bend for the weekend. Dimitri still lives in Northern Virginia just outside of DC, so he was not on our bingo card for weekend visitors. He and Joe, a friend currently from Virginia but from Portland in the past, were flying into PDX. After visiting Oregon wine country and exploring Portland, they would be driving to Bend for a long weekend.

Mediterranean Crew: Greek, Italian, Italian

Dimitri and Joe had plans to dine out on Saturday at the same time we were at the Trevor Noah show at the amphitheater, so we set a get-together for Sunday starting with pre-game at Viaggio Wine Bar. We met them there after they returned from a day trip to Crater Lake, which if you have never seen before like Dimitri, I guess you have to see. But honestly, battling buses of tourists is not my thing and I would have preferred to visit Paulina Lake instead.

Dimitri and Joe are fellow winos, so we thought that a visit to Viaggio would be welcome. There, they could drool over the curated selection of bottles on the shelves and Coravin selections on the glass list. Where else can you find shelves full of Wachau and Kamptal Riesling, Piemonte wines of all sorts, or Rhônes for days? Maybe in large cities, but in the small city of Bend three hours in any direction from civilization, the selection at Viaggio is miraculous.

After a bottle of Pibarnon Bandol rosé, we drove to the house where all I had to do was assemble dinner. In planning dinner, I wanted something that I could put on the table with little to no effort. Gone are the days of à la minute cooking where cooking is the focus rather than our guests. Hence our menu of chips and salsa verde, enchiladas de carne adovada, and posole amarillo with bacon, corn, and green chiles. Ann made another summer berry and brioche pudding and I had plenty of lemon-thyme sorbet base in the fridge ready to go into the freezer.

How I arrived at this menu is anyone's guess. I was definitely looking for a slow-cooker meal that would not involve a lot of active cooking on my part. Probably in the back of my mind was the kilo of Chimayo chile that I scored in New Mexico in December. And then, I found some really good looking pork shoulder at the store. Also, who does not like enchiladas? Chips and salsa as well as posole are natural companions to carne adovada, so that part of the menu should not be a surprise.

Before we get into dinner however, Dimitri came bearing a gift, a 2014 Glen Manor Petit Verdot. I texted Jeff, "A friend showed up with a bottle of this," to which he replied, "Keep that friend!" I remember this wine. I believe I did a pairing for it for a barrel tasting. I could be wrong; 2015 was a hot minute ago.

Dimitri Brought Us a Gift

Chips and Charred Jalapeño Salsa Verde

My usual salsa verde is tomatillos (large can, drained), cilantro (one bunch), garlic (4 cloves), and a serrano chile. When I am lazy, I used canned tomatillos rather than roasting fresh ones. I am often lazy these days. I wanted to change it up a bit with some smokiness, so I charred two jalapeños and used them instead of the serrano. I also threw in an avocado and a pinch of smoked paprika for added smoke.

It was good, but next time, I want it smokier. Maybe I try using a charred poblano. Definitely will char fresh tomatillos on the next iteration. It will be a fun experiment. A batch of salsa verde or chimichurri is usually in our refrigerator: we eat a lot of vegetarian and fish tacos that benefit from salsa.

Saturday, I made a batch of slow cooker carne adovada. Like most dishes, I used no recipe for this super simple stew. I started by cutting the pork shoulder into large cubes, then browning one side of the cubes, followed by transferring them to the slow cooker as each batch browned. I want the flavor that browning creates, but I find that browning all sides of the meat tends to contribute to dryness. Browning one large side of the pork chunks suffices to yield both flavor and succulence.

After the meat was all browned, I added a diced onion to the pork pan along with call it a dozen minced cloves of garlic. Once the onions cooked, I added a a bit of Mexican oregano, rubbed between my palms into a powder, a lot of spicy ground Chimayo chile, and a lesser amount of ancho powder to add some balance to the Chimayo chile. The chile was probably a cup in total, 3/4 Chimayo and 1/4 ancho. After stirring this into the onions well, I added perhaps a couple cups of water, a splash of Sherry vinegar, and a small amount, perhaps a tablespoon, of agave nectar. Once this sauce came together, I poured it over the pork, stirred well, and put the slow cooker on.

I believe that adovada must have acidity; your grandmother may disagree as is her right. Not a lot of acidity, but some. So I always put a bit of vinegar in mine (as I do my Mexican-style chorizo). I also think that spicy Chimayo chile needs just a hint (below the taste threshold) of sweet to help mellow it, hence the agave.

When the pork was cooked, some six or seven hours later, I separated the liquid from the pork. I separated the meat and the cooking liquid for several reasons. With the liquid chilled, I could peel off the layer of pork fat that I did not want in my sauce (and use it to cook anything else; who does not love chile-flavored lard?). Because I was making enchiladas, I wanted a more solid filling that would not bleed through the tortillas. And, I wanted a thicker, more intense sauce to fold into the filling and to cover the tops of the enchiladas.

After defatting the cooking liquid, I reduced it as far as I could without it becoming too salty. I salted the pork cubes during browning. But it was a really mellow thin sauce after hours of braising and I wanted a thicker, more in-your-face chile sauce for the enchiladas. I made a quick paste of a tablespoon of flour (for thickening), half a cup of Chimayo chile, and a little of the reduced braising liquid. After stirring really well to remove all lumps, I stirred this slurry into the sauce and cooked it gently to thicken.

Enchilada Sauce, Thickened with Flour and Chimayo Chile

Once we got back to the house, assembly of the enchiladas was trivial. I mixed some of the carne adovada with some of the sauce and the meat shredded as I stirred it. After seasoning it to taste, I rolled the tortillas around this filling, placing them in an oiled half hotel pan, seam side down.

I digress, but this is my blog, so I will digress if I want to. When I retired from the restaurant, I kept one of the half hotel pans for my home kitchen. If you have worked in food service and are of a certain age, you will remember that hotel pans used to be thick and heavy, not thin and flimsy as they are today. I kept one of the old school thick pans for home use and I use it often. I had some really awesome hotel pans too, but they are far too large for home cooking.

I spooned more sauce over the top of the rolled tortillas to make them into true enchiladas ("sauced with chiles") and then scattered over just a bit of melting cheese. I used mozz, but any melting cheese such as queso chihuahua, queso quesadilla, queso oaxaca, queso asadero, or Monterey Jack would be perfect.

Posole Amarillo with Bacon, Green Chile, and Fresh Corn

I am a huge fan of hominy. I grew up on it, always fried in bacon grease as it is traditionally served in the South. It was good. When I was in grad school in Texas, I learned that the rest of the world does not see the dish the same as I grew up with. Posole is always always a stew with pork, red chile, and white hominy. It was good: I loved this stew at first bite. Then I went to New Mexico and found that they often serve a drier posole as a side dish, more akin to my southern hominy, but with local chiles. It was good. Then I started making casseroles of hominy bound with cream sauce. It too was good. What I figured out is that posole dishes are as numerous and varied as the people that make them. I feel free to riff on this ingredient in any way that seems appropriate to me.

Over the years, I learned that hominy is not always white. It is the color of the corn from which it is made and as we all know, corn comes in many shades: white, yellow, red, and purple. I have used the different colors for effect over the years. I used a lot of maíz morado, purple hominy, at the restaurant. This time, I felt like using yellow hominy.

This time, I fried up some bacon most of the way done, then added diced red onion and garlic and let that cook. Then I added the hominy and diced mild green chile (Anaheims that I torched on my patio). It too was good. I made it Sunday morning and refrigerated it. While the enchiladas were in the oven, I reheated the posole and sliced the kernels off two ears of corn. They went into the dish as a sweet counterpoint to the smoky green chile vibe going on. It was even better.

Enchiladas de Carne Adovada and Posole Amarillo

After dinner, it had cooled off enough to go outside so Ann put the tunes on out on the patio and we all took our dessert, summer berry pudding and lemon-thyme sorbet, outside. I opened a bottle of 1977 Warre's Port, because I save those kinds of wines for fellow winos like Dimitri and Joe. It was a great night!

Dessert on the Patio

Ann's Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

July 4 Celebration

Each year, we celebrate the Fourth of July and the country where we live. I am not a political person, but this year, I am decidedly not feeling at all patriotic, nor am proud of certain things that are happening in our country. Still, we persevered with our celebration in the hopes that this country will right itself. Right is a poor choice of verbs in this instance. Perhaps I should have chosen the verb center.

We invited Rob, Dyce, Dyce's parents who are in town from Italy, and new friend Brad to throw down with us.

Lyn, Brad, Neal, Dyce, Ann, and Rob

The menu ended up as a pseudo-Greek affair. I like burgers for the 4th, but had a hankering for my lamb burgers which blow beef burgers out of the water. From there, it was not a stretch to want to pair the burgers with tzatziki and horiatiki. But then, Ann wanted orzo too, so I combined the orzo and horiatiki to create a cold pasta salad. Then I wanted an appetizer I could make in advance, so after a bit of head scratching, decided on tiropitakia, cheese-filled phyllo pastries. Ann volunteered to make her delicious berry and brioche summer pudding and asked me to make a sorbet. We settled on lemon-thyme and the menu was complete. The recipe for the sorbet is in a separate post.

Some wine was drunk; some food was eaten; some fun was had!

Lamb Burger with Feta and Pine Nuts

I love my lamb burgers and this year, for a change, I recorded a rough recipe because I have had requests for it in the past.

Lamb Burger Recipe

This recipe scales well so I have expressed it in terms of seasonings for a single pound of lamb. In reality, I made a 4-pound batch and I eyeballed everything. It is always a good idea when mixing a batch of forcemeat like this, to cook a tiny bit and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Also, this mix gains flavor in the refrigerator so plan on mixing everything a day or even two in advance. I scaled out six-ounce burgers, my preferred size.

Per pound of ground lamb:

1/4 c dry white wine (substitute red wine or water or stock)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon Pimentón de la Vera agridulce (smoked paprika)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced (I used way more than this!)

small handful of toasted pine nuts

2 ounces sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

optional, if you have spice grinder:

pinch dried rosemary, finely ground

pinch dried thyme, finely ground 

Procedure:

Mix liquids and solids well to distribute salt and spices.

Add lamb and gently mix. Using hands is best.

Refrigerate overnight or two nights.

Patty into burgers or shape into kefta (oval meatballs)

Cook to desired temperature. I like medium rare.

Tiropitakia and Tzatziki

Tiropitakia Ready for Oven

Our appetizer was the tiropitakia (little cheese pies) that you see in photos above. I just went with my gut which said to mix chopped kalamata olives, chopped marinated sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, lemon zest, and grated pecorino cheese with a tub of ricotta cheese. For savory pastries like this, I brush the phyllo layers with olive oil (and for sweet pastries, I use butter). I brushed the tops of the little triangles with olive oil and sprinkled them with oregano and coarse salt before baking until browned in a moderate oven. A recipe for tzatiki is in this post.

Orzo Salad

The pasta salad was simple. I mixed a bunch of olive oil, lemon juice, kalamata brine, and oregano (my usual horiatiki dressing) in a large bowl. Then I cut the horiatiki vegetables and cheese smaller than usual, because otherwise, they would dwarf the small orzo pasta. The usual suspects are: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and feta. I omitted peppers because I didn't feel like I wanted them. So there.

I put all the salad ingredients into the dressing for about an hour to marinate. The red onions, I sliced very thin and soaked in several changes of cold water to mellow them out. In the morning, I par-cooked the orzo a couple minutes shy of being done, knowing that it would finish softening in the refrigerator. This is a useful technique for all pasta salads. After cooling the pasta under running water, it went into the vegetables and I tasted for salt. Salt this salad carefully because the kalamata brine, olives, and feta are already salty.

Into the fridge to mellow for a few hours the salad went. Just before serving the appetizers, I put the salad in a serving bowl and garnished with the onions. Just before serving dinner, I mixed everything well to distribute the onions and redistribute the dressing.

Ann's Beautiful Summer Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

A Summer Dinner with Friends

It's been a few weeks that we haven't seen Rob and Dyce as both our schedules have been a bit busy this summer. We (well, Ann and Dyce are the planners) decided to have dinner Saturday night and invited them over to our house. In part, we wanted to make a nice dinner to thank them for their hospitality during our recent trip to McMinnville and wine country. But we also wanted to drink a little wine and sit out in our courtyard and have a pleasant evening, the recent wildfire smoke having abated somewhat.

Dinner would be on me. Ann stated that she would make her summer pudding for dessert, which is a good thing, because I don't eat sweets, don't care about dessert, and wouldn't have even thought about making any.

I'm the breed of chef that needs to be hands-on with foodstuffs in order to pull together a menu. That is, seeing and touching food starts my mind cranking through the endless possibilities to arrive at a menu. Without that input, I really don't get anywhere. I find it hard to create a menu in a vacuum. My menus have always been a response to what is fresh, what is best, and what is seasonal: the menus at my restaurant changed every day of the 15-plus years that I owned it.

My menu was informed by two shopping trips : Wednesday to the local Bend Farmers Market and Friday to Costco, still, believe it or not, one of the best places to secure center-of-the-plate proteins in Bend. It's not like the restaurant where I had access to anything and everything you could imagine, but it is what we have to work with out here in the high desert.

Wednesday at the farmers market, I saw just one pint of Padrón peppers and into my bag they went. When Ann asked me why I bought them, I answered, "to have another weapon in my arsenal." I didn't buy them with a plan to use them in Saturday's dinner, rather to have them on hand for whatever use because I am not going to pass up an opportunity to buy and eat one of the world's most delicious peppers.

That happy accident behind us, we went to Costco on Friday, primarily to secure new eyeglasses for me, my first in 15 years and sorely needed at that, but also to look around for interesting proteins. For me, interesting does not mean expensive. It merely means something that looks really good and which piques my chef-interest. We added a tray of tremendous looking and highly marbled USDA Prime tri-tip slices and a container of tiny Oregon pink shrimp, for a quasi-surf-n-turf dinner menu.

We're not big beef eaters (I might eat steak once per year) but it seemed like the safest bet. Dyce isn't a big fan of oily or fishy fish (the kind that we really love) or lamb, both of which looked really good, so we opted for beef. My preference would have been a nice cut of pork, but there wasn't anything on offer other than some rather ordinary and very lean top loin.

By the way, I have never worked with tri-tip, which when I was growing up was called bottom sirloin. I believe the name tri-tip originated in California long after I grew up. In any case, at my restaurant, weekly, I shared a local 180-day corn-fed Angus steer with several other restaurants and my share consisted of short ribs and skirt steak. Somebody else got the sirloin. Moreover, in a very high-end restaurant, it is hard to get customers, who walk in the door salivating for tenderloin or strip steaks, both fairly uninteresting cuts from a chef's perspective, to order more prosaic cuts such as tri-tip. Fortunately, I could move my skirts and ribs on the nightly tasting menu.

Gorgeous Tri-Tip (Bottom Sirloin) Slices

Reflecting on the menu and remembering the padrones that I bought at the farmers market, my mind turned a bit towards Iberia when planning dinner. And in a back-and-forth with Ann about menu ideas, she mentioned that she might like some Israeli couscous. This reminded me that at the restaurant, we often made Israeli couscous in the style of paella and I was off to the races with a plan for dinner.

Tri-Tip Marinating in Pimentόn, Olive Oil, and Garlic

First thing on Saturday, I mixed up a marinade of smoked paprika (Pimentόn de la Vera), garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper and slathered it on the tri-tip slices. Into the refrigerator they went to await their turn on the grill just before dinner.

After this, I turned my mind to the tiny pink shrimp that I planned to use for an appetizer. Again, I took my cue from Ann. As we were kicking ideas around and after I had rejected a bunch of more usual ideas, she asked, "Why not shrimp cakes?" I loved that idea for ease of preparation and ease of eating. I can make cakes of pretty near anything and I have during my restaurant career. But never shrimp, however.

While I drained the shrimp (already pre-cooked and shelled, if you have never worked with these tiny so-called bay shrimp that actually come from the ocean off the Oregon coast), I got busy chopping fines herbes: tarragon, dill, Italian parsley, and chives. I mixed the tiny drained shrimp with these herbs, a tiny amount salt (they are naturally fairly salty), white pepper, one egg (for two pounds of shrimp), and just enough mayo and panko to hold them together. Ann and I tasted the mix and I adjusted it by adding more parsley and dill. Into the fridge the mix went for several hours. This achieves two goals: it stiffens the mix as the panko starts to do its binding trick and the herb flavors bloom into the mix. 

After this, I made a quick lemon and chive aïoli using a single clove of garlic that I pounded to a paste with a touch of salt in my big green granite mortar. You have to be really careful with garlic paste in an aïoli because the garlic flavor will bloom in the sauce over time and can get really out of hand. One garlic clove is sufficient to make a cup of sauce. After mixing in finely minced chives and the zest of a lemon, I put the resulting aïoli in the fridge. All the flavors bloom (get stronger) and come together over the course of a couple hours.

An hour or so before Rob and Dyce were to arrive, I pattied out two-ounce cakes and pan-fried them. A trick with a really loose cake-mix like this is to lower the heat a touch and let the cakes really brown well. The crust will help them hold together.

Pink Shrimp Cakes

Shrimp Cakes in the Courtyard with Lemon-Chive Aïoli

Premier Cru Champagne with our Shrimp Cakes

After yakking and eating our fill of shrimp cakes (plus boiled peanuts that Rob and Dyce cooked and brought over) on the patio in the courtyard, it was time to grill some steaks in the gathering dusk. Grilling steaks, I'm an old hand at, having run the broiler station at the restaurant for years. Ordinarily, I grill steaks with two turns on each side to get beautiful crisscross grill marks, but these large, chunky steaks being square in profile, I cooked with one turn on each of the four sides, to a rosy medium rare by feel. Years of experience on the broiler means that I can pretty much tell temperatures of steaks just by looking at them.

Pimentón-Marinated Tri-Tip Grilled to Medium Rare

The steaks having been grilled and it getting dark outside, we moved our show into the kitchen. The steaks rested on the counter while I made the Israeli couscous and seared the peppers. Earlier in the day, I had prepped my sofrito just like I would have for paella: finely diced poblanos, red peppers, red onion, and green onion, along with minced garlic. These veg went into a pan with some saffron and pimentón to cook and then I added Israeli couscous and water (for paella, I spend a lot of time making a great stock). When the couscous was just tender but still had a bit of remaining bite, in a twist, I stirred in four ounces of softened goat cheese. This has a similar enriching effect to stirring butter and cheese (mantecare) into risotto.

Israeli Couscous Cooked à la Paella, Finished with Goat Cheese

Padrones Seared with Olive Oil and Salt

Plate Up: Couscous, Sliced Tri-Tip, Padrones, Pimentón Sauce Drizzle

Along with dinner, we opened a couple of bottles of Barbaresco, one of our favorite beef wines. Dinner was admittedly rich yet quite flavorful and so we wanted a wine that would help cut the richness (tannic or acidic) but not hide the myriad of flavors in the couscous (lighter bodied), so we chose a youngish Barbaresco. We just love the tannins and flavors along with the light body of the Nebbiolo grape.

So many sommeliers would have paired this with a bigger bolder wine such as a Cab, Cab-forward Bordeaux, or big Syrah such as Côte-Rôtie. To my palate, those big fruity wines hide all the nuance of the dish. What do I pair with Cabernet? I don't. To my palate, pairing Cab with food is akin to using a sledgehammer to nail in a tack.

And now we come to the highlight of our meal, Ann's summer pudding. None of us are dessert eaters, but she insisted. Her summer pudding starts with briefly cooking strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries in a scant amount of sugar. Then she lines a trifle mold with challah or brioche and then fills the mold with alternating layers of fruit and bread until the mold is filled. It sets in the refrigerator (blueberries in particular have a lot of natural pectin) and then is unmolded. She served it with a touch of cream whipped with dark rum.

Ann's Outstanding Summer Pudding

Ann served Dyce and Rob first and I asked her for a third of what she served them, not really wanting dessert and already very full from dinner. Not one to listen to me, she passed me an entire serving telling me to eat what I wanted and she would finish the rest. I took one bite and told her that she better make her own plate. It was so delicious that I ate the entire thing! We all did. This is one of those dishes that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Brava Annie!

All our Dessert Plates Looked Just Like This!

A Special Fourth

This Fourth of July 2021, among all the 4ths Ann and I have celebrated, was one of the most special. Thanks to COVID, we have been unable to see our friends Donald and Terry since the end of 2019. Thankfully, now that travel restrictions have eased and (at least here in the Pacific Northwest) vaccination rates are high, we are starting to get back to somewhat of normal. Donald and Terry finally made a trip down to the Willamette Valley from their home in Seattle for the first time since 2019. Their lives have been on hold as much as ours have.

Cheers with Soter Brut Rosé

Ann and I had decided, before we knew that Donald and Terry were coming to Oregon, to keep our Fourth of July food simple by grilling hamburgers. At first Ann wanted me to make my freaking awesome potato salad, but through a somewhat convoluted process, we ended up with smashed potatoes with cheddar, bacon, and green onions on the menu. Ann started off wanting to make a flag cake with fresh berries, but the final menu included her terrific summer pudding made of berries and challah.

To further simplify our meal, we decided to buy hamburger buns and challah from local merchants rather than do the baking ourselves. Accordingly, we walked downtown on Thursday and stocked up for our Sunday feast: berries, flowers, burger buns, red onions, red lettuce, green onions, challah, garlic, and ground beef.

Our Haul

Donald Made a Tin of Awesome Parmesan Stars

Delightful 2017 Jacob Martin Pinot

2010 Ghost Hill Pinot in Magnum

After catching up, we settled into a long afternoon of wine, Wine Opoly, and Cards Against Humanity. A wine glass may or may not have been broken. We had an incredible 2017 Walter Scott X Novo Chardonnay with our games. I have not tasted a finer Chardonnay in a very, very long time. Thank you to Don and Terry for this special treat.

Grace Missed Her Friend

Burgers are pretty simple fare and so they rely on the quality of the beef and the toppings. Although I am spoiled for life by the beef from Bill and Holly at Martin's Angus Beef in Virginia, our local Eola Crest beef is excellent. I grilled the burgers to rare and topped them with bleu d'Auvergne which we got at a local cheese shop and which has the perfect creamy texture to melt well on burgers. Initially I wanted to go with an Oregon cheese, but I'm sorry, I won't pay $39 a pound for any cheese. That's what the cheese shop was asking for a local blue.

After baking the bacon between sheet trays in the oven, I roasted the red onion slabs in the bacon grease for a super decadent treat. For a spread for the buns, I used some of the local fresh garlic (did you know that we grow a lot of garlic here in the Willamette Valley?) to make a chipotle aїoli.

Burger Fixings

Smashed Potatoes with Cheddar, Bacon, and Green Onions

For dessert, Ann cooked a bunch of local mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries) in sugar and then layered them and slices of challah in a soufflé dish. Refrigerated overnight, the pudding solidified and unmolded easily. We served that with whipped cream and a mixed berry sorbet that I made from all the leftover berries in the house, plus a bunch of cherries that I liberated from a nearby tree.

Ann's Pudding: Mixed Berries and Challah

Donald texted the following day to call the day "epic." I don't think there is a better way to describe our first visit with friends since the beginning of COVID in 2019.