Cooking up a Birthday Dinner

Annie had yet another birthday to celebrate and because we had just days before gone out to pretty much the only restaurant we like for our anniversary, we decided to stay in and celebrate with a nice meal here at home, just the two of us and Rob and Dyce.

I was motivated to cook. Coming off a busy summer and a three-week trip to Iceland, I really had not cooked a decent meal in months. I am not talking day-to-day cooking which is generally a one-pan meal that takes 15 to 30 minutes to prep. Post-restaurant, a one-pan meal is about all I am inclined to make without some special reason. Ann's birthday provided just such a special reason to put some effort into planning and cooking.

Another Birthday in the Books
Celebrating with Diebolt-Vallois Brut Rosé

The menu was inspired by Ann's recent dental work that left her unable to chew on one side, requiring food that is soft in texture. I do not find restrictions like this a problem. On the contrary, boundaries, such as a vegetarian meal or soft foods as in this case, help me narrow the focus.

Left to my own devices, I could come up with way too many ideas, which is why at the restaurant, trips to the farmers market or walking through our pantry were most helpful in designing a menu for the night. They helped narrow the scope to ingredients that were immediately available. Though many cooks find "Chopped" types of competitions where they must use a specific set of ingredients to be too restrictive, I thrive on it.

For this birthday dinner, I imposed another restriction: the menu should involve as little à la minute, last-minute, cooking as possible so that I could spend time with our guests rather than at the stove. And like an idiot, I got so wrapped up in entertaining that I forgot to take pictures during dinner.

In creating the menu, the restriction to soft-textured foods screamed braised meat to me and what better to accompany braised meat than risotto? A soft dessert would be something like a pudding and do you know a simpler or better-loved pudding-like dish than crème brûlée?

For the starter course, a recent inventory of the pantry left me thinking about a bag of white beans, so a white bean soup would start the meal off. My initial thought was a white bean and rosemary cream with some kind of seafood garnish, something that would pair well with a white wine. And as the recent days were warm, I was thinking a room temperature soup with a cool garnish, a crab salad or something else that Ann could chew easily.

Naturally, a menu is also a reflection of the ingredients that are available at any given time. In this small city in the middle of nowhere, hours from any big city, I must design meals around the products that are available, rather than the products I wish were available. For example, there is no good source of seafood here in the high desert, nor is there acceptable rice for risotto. I order my rice from the internet.

Moreover, in my shopping, I knew I would never find ossobuco or lamb shank to braise; however, Costco sometimes has beef ribs. I got lucky and I bought one of their two packages of beef plate ribs. Plan C would have been to score a chuck roast and shred it into the risotto after braising. In the freezer section at the grocery, I also found serendipitously a package of frozen marrow bones while looking for stock bones.

A bonus, the marrow would finish the risotto with butter and cheese in the mantecare stage, the final stage when fat is stirred into the cooked rice to enrich it. After removing the marrow from the bones, I would contribute the marrow bones to the stock pot. The resulting stock would be the liquid in which I would braise the ribs. And then all the braising liquid would ultimately become a sauce for the ribs and risotto.

This menu naturally divided itself into two day's of work. The first day, I would make the stock, cook the white beans for the soup, and bake the crème brûlée, leaving the oven free the next day to braise the ribs. In addition to braising the ribs, the second day would see me finish the bean soup, design a garnish for the soup, and make the sauce for the beef after the ribs were cooked.

Ann thinks that this is a lot of work, but more than anything, it is a lot of small steps, steps that I scheduled around working in the office and taking walks. I do not look at cooking meals such as this as work.

Cooking Marrow Bones, Chuck, and Veg for Stock

Deglazing the Roasting Pan

To start the stock, I browned the ribs in a roasting pan to start creating a fond, brown bits, on the bottom of the pan. After they cooled, I refrigerated them to braise the next day. To the roasting pan, I added stock vegetables (onion, carrot, and celery), beef chuck, and the marrow bones. It took about 45 minutes in a very hot oven to roast and brown everything on all sides, with one or two turns.

After roasting the marrow bones, I scooped out the marrow and refrigerated it for finishing the risotto. Then all the bones, meat, and vegetables went into a stock pot with a couple of smashed cloves of garlic still skin-on, the peels and trimmings from the stock vegetables, a sprig of rosemary, a couple sprigs of thyme, a bunch of parsley stems, and the outer leaves from a leek.

And I threw in a wee bit of chef magic as well: a tablespoon of estratto di pomodoro (rich Sicilian tomato paste) and some dried porcini powder/bits from the bottom of the canister. Neither will be detectable in the final sauce but will add great umami. Deep flavor does not happen spontaneously; it is a thoughtful process of layering flavors.

When roasting vegetables and bones for stock, the idea is to cook them long enough not only to caramelize them, but to build up a good fond, the glaze of brown bits on the bottom of the roasting pan. After removing the roasted ingredients to the stock pot, I deglazed the roasting pan with water, scraping well to clean the bottom. All that caramelized goodness brings incredible flavor to the stock.

The dark and flavorful deglazing liquid went into the stock pot along with beef stock. Using a stock to make another stock is called a double stock; double stocks have additional depth of flavor over single stocks. In this case, for the first meal after the weather turned cold (snow on the mountains!), I wanted a dish that was deep and rich in flavor, ultra-comforting, and pairable with a Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style red wine. I chose an Italian blend that I find pairs comparably to CdP, a Valpolicella Classico Superiore. Valpolicella does not get a lot of love, but there are some great ones out there.

The stock simmered for most of the day before I strained it, reserved the chuck for another meal, and put the strained stock in the fridge to cool overnight to solidify the fat floating on top.

The next day, to start the braise, I cut some mirepoix (an onion, a large carrot, and stalk of celery) into medium dice. I sweated the vegetables with a stalk of rosemary and a couple of minced cloves of garlic in an enameled cast iron cocotte. Removing the rosemary, I added the gelled stock from which I had removed the congealed layer of fat. Arranging the ribs in the cocotte, I covered it and put it in a slow (275F) oven at noon, planning to serve the ribs around 1900.

Second Day: Adding Defatted Beef Stock to Sautéed Mirepoix

Beef Ribs Seared and Ready to Braise

Braised Ribs, Held Hot for Service

Not knowing how long the ribs would take to cook I checked them every half hour after three hours in the oven. They were perfect, soft and succulent, in four hours. I removed them to a half pan, covered the pan with film, and put it back in the oven to hot hold until dinner. The Keep Warm setting on my oven keeps them about 170F, above the temperature danger zone limit of 140F. The FDA Food Code changed this some years ago to 135, but I am an old school chef who learned 140.

I planned to keep the vegetables in the braising liquid as part of the final sauce, a rustic touch rather than a fine dining touch. Other options would be to strain them out or blend them in. After transferring the braising liquid to a sauce pan, I could see a half-inch or so of grease on top of the would-be sauce, so using a 2-ounce ladle, I carefully defatted the sauce.

Bringing the braising liquid to a simmer, I brought it down to the final volume of sauce that I wanted, carefully skimming any film and fat that rose to the surface. Once at the final volume, I decided that I wanted the sauce thicker. At this point, I could have thickened the sauce by blending in the vegetables, the cuisine minceur technique unabashedly stolen from Michel Guérard, (RIP chef) or using the traditional method, adding bits of beurre manié, equal parts of butter and flour kneaded together. I chose the latter.

On to the soup course which I planned to make with fagioli di Controne which Ann gave to me as a surprise. They are labeled no-soak and so I thought that would be a great time saver in making the soup base. These are a rare heirloom bean reportedly of thin skin and great flavor. I was excited to try them.

Fagioli di Controne, "No-Soak" My Ass

Beans, Sprig of Rosemary, Two Cloves Garlic, Ready to Cook

All I can say is that it is a good thing that I cooked the beans the day before, starting early in the morning. At seven hours in, they were still crunchy. Finally, they softened after eight hours and to get to the super soft stage that I wanted for a cream soup required nine hours and 15 minutes. Never again will I fall for the no soak baloney. That said, they do have thin skins and excellent flavor, but they are no easier to cook than any other dried bean.

The next day, I made the soup base by blending the beans to silky smooth in my big blender which does such an excellent job that I had no need to pass the beans through a chinois to make them silky. For service, I warmed the bean purée with a bit of heavy cream and adjusted the seasoning. Finding it a little flat, I added a couple of drops of Sherry vinegar to perk it up. The vinegar did its job admirably.

Lemon and Rosemary, Ready to Infuse into Cream

Back to the first day, after starting the stock and the beans cooking, I made the crème brûlée, choosing to flavor it with lemon and rosemary. To start, I brought two cups of 40% cream (the good stuff, compared to the garden variety 36%) to the scalding point with the zest of two lemons and a sprig of rosemary. After the cream cooled to the point where I could taste it, I added just enough sugar to barely sweeten it and make the flavorings sing. Adding a pinch of salt, I stirred to dissolve the sugar and the salt in the warm cream, then let the cream cool so that it would not curdle the egg yolks.

I strained the now lukewarm cream into a bowl containing 7 egg yolks (3 for each cup of cream, plus one for good luck, an admittedly rich custard base). After stirring well, I strained the custard yet again into a quart measure to remove any egg strands. In the absence of a sauce funnel which I would have used at the restaurant, a standard lipped measure let me pour the custard into the cups without dribbling all over the rims, a culinary faux pas.

I put the custard cups into a half pan before filling them, then to make a water bath, poured cold water in the half pan to come up to the level of the custard in the cups. Some people advocate using hot water but I think the product has better texture the slower it cooks, so I use cold water to retard the cooking.

Use the Torch to Pop Any Surface Bubbles

Before I bake any kind of custard, I run my torch lightly over the surface of the custard to pop any bubbles that may have formed during stirring or pouring. This is not necessary, but it will create a smooth finish rather than one pock-marked by bubbles that popped during baking. I put the custards into a moderate oven (350F) and checked them periodically. These took 35 minutes, all told.

To tell if the custards are done, grab one with tongs and give it a little shake. When the custards are set around the edges with only a quarter-sized spot in the center that is still loose, they are ready to come out of the oven. Remove from the water bath, dry them, wrap them individually with film, and refrigerate for service.

Moving on to the risotto: I discovered early in my planning that I did not have enough Arborio rice in the pantry for four servings, but too late to order some. Not to worry: Israeli couscous makes a fine fake risotto that people never fail to love. And unlike Arborio that I have to order in, I can buy Israeli couscous in bulk at my grocery. It is a pantry staple at our house.

Making the ersatz risotto milanese with Israeli couscous is identical to making the real thing, but just a little bit quicker, say 14-15 minutes versus 20. Start by sweating an onion and saffron in butter or olive oil, add the couscous and cook for a minute, then add chicken stock by dribbles, and cook until it is done, stirring and topping off the stock as necessary. When done, I stirred in a good bit of grated cheese, butter, and the bone marrow. Ann says she likes this better than with rice.

"Risotto Milanese"
Israeli Couscous with Bone Marrow

I needed to make a garnish for the soup. My original intent, when the weather was warm, was to serve a room temperature cream soup with a seafood salad for garnish. Then, the weather turned cold as it does this time of year, dictating a warm soup and warm garnish, turning my original idea on its head.

Fresh seafood of acceptable quality to a finicky chef is hard to find here and crab season closed in August, eliminating crab as a possibility. That left frozen seafood and I found some small white shrimp that would lend themselves to a salad. I had thought to chop them to help Ann chew them, but they were small enough to serve whole.

My working concept for the shrimp was inspired by the Italian white wine I had selected for the course, Roero Arneis. I would just barely cook them in olive oil, garlic, and a touch of tomato paste that would tint the oil red, to be drizzled on the soup for a contrasting garnish. However, during the course of the day, I kept coming back to the Sherry vinegar that I used to give the soup sufficient acid to perk it up, a Spanish touch and not an Italian one at all.

I hit on a warm salad dressing with Spanish flavors. Moments before serving, I cooked the shrimp in olive oil with a touch of pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika) to give the oil the red color, then removed it from the pan. In went some shallots to just brown around the edges, then I splashed the pan with more Sherry vinegar to create a warm shallot-pimentón vinaigrette. I dressed the shrimp, so small that I really did not need to chop them as planned, with a bit of vinaigrette and used the remainder to drizzle on the soup for garnish.

Rob and Dyce Brought
André Clouet Un Jour de 1911 Champagne

While I was finishing the soup, we opened the bottle of André Clouet Un Jour de 1911 Champagne that Rob and Dyce brought. Made in a turn of the 20th century style, this wine is interesting, baked apples and yeast on the palate with a hint of oxidation. This is a much different wine than we usually drink and I enjoyed it because it was so different.

Shrimp and White Beans, Warm Shallot-Pimentón Vinaigrette
Served with Paitin Roero Arneis

Short Rib on Israeli Couscous "Risotto Milanese" with
Serego Alighieri Monte Piazzo Valpolicella Classico Superiore

Lemon-Rosemary Crème Brûlée

Happy Birthday to This Girl!

Memorial Day 2024

Another Memorial Day is in the books. Now that we are starting to have some spring weather, Ann has whipped our courtyard patio into shape and has been looking forward to entertaining out there. So we invited Michelle and Andreas and Jen and Will over for a little cookout and relaxation.

Ann Worked Really Hard to Set Up our Outdoor Space
After a Long Winter

It really didn't take long to put together a menu once we decided that the feature would be ribs. When I look back at our Memorial Day posts, they always feature something on the grill, late May typically signifying the beginning of our outdoor grilling season. The menu we arrived at for this Memorial Day was:

Cannellini and Roasted Red Pepper "Hummus"

Dry-Rubbed Pork Spareribs

Barbeque Sauce

Chimichurri

Potato Salad with Sour Cream and Bacon

Grilled Asparagus

Strawberry-Lime-Chipotle Sorbet

I decided to start with a simple gluten-free appetizer dip for Michelle, a white bean and roasted red pepper "hummus" to be served with almond meal crackers, cucumbers, and sweet peppers. And then there would be pork spareribs for which Ann really wanted me to make chimichurri and potato salad. I wanted to grill some asparagus, because grill. And then Ann asked me to make a sorbet for dessert, and so using really the only fruit that is ripe right now, I made a strawberry-lime-chipotle sorbet as the finale to our dinner. 

When you add in making the barbeque sauce and the dry rub that I call "butt rub," that's a fair amount of cooking. So I took my usual approach of spreading it over three days so as not to overwhelm myself, but mostly so I could do the dishes in shifts and not kill myself washing half the kitchen in the hour before our guests arrived. That hour we reserve for relaxation, showers, and a pre-game glass of wine as we await our guests. 

Saturday, I made the fake hummus, a batch of Carolina "mop sauce" that would be the basis for the barbeque sauce, and a batch of dry rub. The mop sauce recipe is at the bottom of this post; you'll find the recipe is outlined here for the spice mix for the ribs that I call "butt rub." In addition, I made a super simple batch of the white bean and red pepper "hummus," the recipe for which also appears at the bottom of this post.

Vinegar and Pepper Carolina "Mop Sauce"

In my world of pork barbeque, very much influenced by East Carolina barbeque, when you put a hog on the smoker to go low and slow, you baste it (using a mop, hence the name) from time to time with a thin and tangy vinegar, salt, and hot pepper sauce. Mop sauce traditionally contains very little sugar which tends to burn with long hours in the smoker. My recipe appears at the end of this post.

First thing Sunday, I made one of the two more tedious dishes, the base for the sorbet. The tedious bit is spending 20 minutes deseeding the sorbet base, a step that is somewhat optional, but hello, I'm a chef! About the only ripe fresh fruit this time of year is strawberries. Because these strawberries were not supremely ripe and tasty, I decided to trick them up with a bit of lime and a bit of chipotle as a surprise. I put spice in a lot of my sorbets; it is both unconventional and interesting to taste a bit of a fruity sorbet only moments later for the spice to creep in on the back of the palate. My recipe is at the bottom of this post as well.

Deseeding the Strawberry Purée

While deseeding the sorbet base, I brought a pan of salted water to a boil and blanched three bunches of asparagus until just barely tender, about five minutes. I stopped the cooking in cold water and put the asparagus in the fridge to await the grill the next afternoon. When I am grilling asparagus, I almost always blanch it so that all it needs to do on the grill is get beautiful grill marks and a bit of smoke. If asparagus has any thickness at all, you risk charring the outside on the grill in an attempt to get it cooked all the way through. Precooking eliminates this risk.

Next I was on to the potato salad that Ann requested. While a potato salad still warm from the just-boiled potatoes has its appeal, I like to make potato salad the day before so it, like the sorbet base, can repose in the refrigerator and have its flavors mingle and become more pronounced. My potato salad recipe also appears at the bottom of this post.

Potato Salad with Sour Cream, Bacon, Green Onions, and Parsley

Monday I made the other really tedious dish: chimichurri. It is only tedious because when I make it for friends, I like to destem the herbs and cut them by hand. Blitzing everything in the food processor makes short work of the sauce, and I wouldn't blame you for doing it, but the texture does suffer. I have previously published my chimichurri recipe; Monday I made a double batch.

Parsley and Cilantro Flavor the Red Wine Vinegar and Olive Oil Base

Thirty Minutes Later, Destemmed Herbs Ready to Chop

Chimichurri with Hand-Chopped Herbs

Soon after tidying up from making the chimichurri, I set about the ribs, because I wanted them to sit in their coating of spices for a couple hours before starting to cook. I do not have a smoker, given that our only outdoor space is a confined courtyard where the smoke would be unwelcome. So, I opt for cooking my ribs in the oven and then finishing them on the grill outside.

My ribs were the three-pack from Costco, not gonna lie. I don't have a good pork supplier here in Oregon. After skinning them (pulling the silverskin layer off the backside using a towel for grip), I cut each of the three racks into three single-serving pieces. I do this because sparerib racks are typically longer than my half sheet trays and I do not want any drips from overhanging racks hitting the bottom of the oven. It might be sacrilegious, but not having to deep clean my oven trumps pristine racks of ribs.

 

Ribs "Marinating" in Dry Rub

When I dry-roast pork in the oven, I almost always place the pork on a bed of onion slabs. The onions add a little moisture to the pork, they keep the pork off the bottom of the pan in the same way that roasting it on a rack would do, and they are a super-tasty bonus that I planned to use later on in making my barbeque sauce.

After standing for a couple of hours to let the dry rub penetrate a bit, the ribs went into the oven. I planned a 3-step cooking process: covered to cook the ribs through, uncovered to develop the bark, and finally, mopped with sauce and re-covered in dry rub and onto the grill for a final char.

I covered the sheet trays with aluminum foil and sealed them tightly before putting them in the oven. These ribs were really thick so they ended up taking about three hours in a slow oven (275F) to get to the point where a toothpick would easily pierce them. At this point, I removed the ribs to clean sheet trays and put them back into the oven for another 45 minutes to develop a nice crust, a nice bark.

At this point, I turned off the oven and let the ribs sit until I was ready to grill them, at which point, I brushed them with sauce, re-coated them in dry rub, and put them on a hot grill for about five minutes to caramelize the sugar in the dry rub and to reheat the ribs.

Appetizer: Cannellini and Roasted Red Pepper "Hummus"

Feast is Ready!

Three Rib Accompaniments
Chimichurri (left), Dry Rub (top), Onion BBQ Sauce (right)

I'm not a big fan of barbeque sauce in that I often think that it obscures rather than complements the hard work of the pitmaster. Accordingly, I always serve a little more dry rub on the side to dust on the barbeque, if guests desire. As I mentioned earlier, Ann is a big fan of chimichurri (honestly, who is not?) and asked me to make a batch of this salsa verde to go with the ribs. And recognizing that others may indeed want barbeque sauce with their ribs, I made a complementary sauce.

This sauce I made quickly in the blender. When I uncovered the ribs, I separated the onions from the liquid in the bottom of the roasting pans. I put these meltingly tender dry rub-flavored onions, three very large ones in total, into my blender. I added three-quarters of the mop sauce (3/4 of a pint) to the blender and gave it a couple quick pulses. Then after defatting the liquid from the roasting pan, I put enough of it into the blender to yield a sauce of the consistency I wanted, the consistency that you see in the photo above. I left a decent amount of texture in the onions.

Jen, Goofing!

Somebody Must Have Told a Good Joke

Will Holding Court

Recipes

Cannellini and Roasted Red Pepper "Hummus"

Once upon a time, I threw a similar dip together using items on hand in my pantry, and the idea stuck. This is a ratio recipe: 4 parts white beans to one part roasted red peppers.

2 15.5-ounce cans of cannellini, drained

8 ounces roasted red peppers, piquillos preferably

two cloves of finely minced garlic

half a teaspoon of Kosher salt

a quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika

one tablespoon of sherry vinegar

two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and smooth it out as much, Season it and serve, or refrigerate it for some hours to improve the flavor. After it warms up a bit, taste it and re-season as necessary.

Carolina "Mop Sauce" for Barbeque

Here's my classic vinegar sauce. I roughly respect the recipe, but I always make it to taste. This makes roughly a pint, plenty of mop for several shoulders or many racks. Traditionally in eastern North Carolina, the peppers used would be crushed dried red peppers or ground cayenne and often there's a touch of ketchup for color and a bit of sweetness. I use the peppers I have on hand (there's no ketchup in my house) which tends to be Huy Fong sambal oelek (crushed red jalapeños) and Huy Fong sriracha. Also typical is brown sugar. I don't happen to use it much and when I do, I buy it in bulk and buy just what I need. But I do have Demerara in the pantry, so I use that.

one pint apple cider vinegar

4 tablespoons of Demerara sugar

2 tablespoons sriracha

2 tablespoons sambal oelek

1 tablespoon Morton's kosher salt

one teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper

Put all the ingredients into a non-reactive sauce pan and bring them to a gentle boil to integrate the sugar and salt. Once cooled, taste for seasoning.

Strawberry-Lime-Chipotle Sorbet

This recipe will yield about a quart and a half of base, enough for 8 servings. I add all the seasonings to taste. This recipe is best when made the day before and refrigerated overnight so that the lime zest has time to do its job. Although it is not necessary to deseed the sorbet base, it's about 1000% better if you go to the effort (and it is effort) to do it.

4 dry pints of strawberries, hulled and halved

2 limes

1 cup sugar, or to taste

half teaspoon of Kosher salt, optional

1 ounce vodka, optional

two tablespoons chipotle adobo, to taste

While I have specified a cup of sugar or to taste, less sugar is not really an option. A good-textured sorbet (I'm not going into theory and Brix levels here) requires sugar even though the fruit might already taste sweet enough. That's why we balance the sugar with additional acid in the form of citrus (or at times a vinegar such as balsamic).

Also, I use salt to help balance the sweet. You'll never know that the salt is there but what you will notice if you taste a base with and without salt, the salted one will likely taste better. Most good pastry chefs will sneak some salt into their recipes for this reason.

Finally, I add a half a shot of unflavored vodka to the base because that tiny amount of alcohol will help break up the large ice crystals in the sorbet and yield a smoother product. By all means, if you cannot have alcohol, omit it.

Before getting started, zest and juice one of the limes. Reserve the other lime for later.

Place the strawberries, sugar, salt, vodka, lime zest, lime juice, and one tablespoon of chipotle adobo in the blender and blend until smooth. Next, push the base through a fine chinois or strainer to remove the seeds. I use a standard 2-ounce ladle to push the base through my chinois. This, unfortunately, is going to take some time and elbow grease.

Zest the other lime directly into the base and taste it. I decided that I needed the juice of half the reserved lime to balance the sweetness and that I wanted another tablespoon of adobo to bring slightly more heat. Refrigerate the base to macerate, preferably overnight. The lime flavoring from the zest will become much more pronounced after sitting overnight.

Taste and adjust seasoning just before putting the base into the freezer. I deemed that this batch of base needed nothing else, but that it not always the case.

Potato Salad with Sour Cream and Bacon

This potato salad is simple and can be served warm or cold or at room temperature. I like to make potato salad the day before I serve it so that it can repose in the refrigerator and have its flavors mingle and become more pronounced. This recipe starts with a ten-pound sack of potatoes and makes a really big bowl of potato salad, because, who doesn't like to eat too much potato salad? I used parsley and green onions in this batch, but you can use the herbs that suit you. How bad would tarragon and chervil be in this? Not at all bad; it would be wonderful.

10 pounds of small potatoes cut into bite-sized pieces

1 pound of bacon cut into lardons and cooked, grease drained

1 pint of sour cream (or more)

1 bunch of Italian parsley, minced

1 bunch of green onions, sliced (or chives, minced)

salt to taste

Place the potatoes in a large pan, add a tablespoon of salt, and cover with water. Cook, about 20 minutes, until the potatoes are just done. Drain the potatoes and while still warm, transfer to a large bowl. Add the the cooked bacon, sour cream, parsley, and onions or chives. Mix well and season to taste with salt.

You can serve this salad warm and it is wonderful. Or place it in the refrigerator overnight to let the flavors of the herbs and bacon bloom. If you refrigerate it, let it warm a bit and then taste for seasoning. Also, you may want to add more sour cream to make it creamier, though I never do because I am lactose-intolerant.

Simple is Best

The Bend Farmers Market is finally back in action after a long winter, letting us switch from sourcing ingredients at the store to supporting our local farmers. This last week, we grabbed a lot of good things: salad greens, arugula, hakurei turnips, sablefish, and beef short ribs. I'm not big on steak, but I love ribs.

Roasted Beef Short Ribs

Friday, while I browned the beef ribs on the stove top, rotating them to cook each of the six sides, I cut some celery and carrots into bite-size pieces. Then I peeled all the cloves of garlic from a head. Into a roasting pan went the celery, carrots, and garlic, then I added a few sprigs of fresh thyme and fresh sage.

Very Lean Short Ribs

Once the beef had browned, I deglazed the pan with a very little bit of water, a couple tablespoons really, and poured that over ribs and vegetables in the roasting pan. After covering the pan tightly with foil, I put it in a slow 275F oven and left it for 4-1/2 hours.

Oven-Ready Ribs and Vegetables

To serve, I spooned vegetables in a bowl, put the ribs over, drizzled it all with a bit of the juices in the bottom of the roasting pan, and gave it all a good sprinkle of salt. This is about as easy as dinner gets.

Father's Day: Beef Short Ribs

On my last run to Costco to get paper towels and toilet paper, I happened by a meat case that had a very few trays of phenomenal looking beef short ribs. And so I fell into the Costco trap, the MO of their business model: I came for the low-priced staples and walked out with an impulse buy. I am not an impulse buyer, except when it comes to food. If I see something interesting to cook, it is coming home with me. You'll never see me loading up on clothes or sweets, but I will splurge on short ribs!

This is a ton of meat for Ann and me, but fortunately, we had surprise guests for Father's Day weekend and I used that as an excuse to braise short ribs for Father's Day. I browned the ribs, then made a braising sauce from mirepoix, rehydrated dried porcini, leftover Super Tuscan Sangiovese, a tiny bit of leftover heavy cream, tomato paste, and veal glace. The ribs braised for 4-5 hours while we showed our guests the town of Bend.

Back at home and after pulling the ribs out of the oven, I removed the meat from the braising pan and defatted the sauce, while cooking a batch of Israeli couscous. I mixed some of the sauce into the couscous and divided it between bowls, topping each with a rib and more sauce. Delicious but incredibly rich, almost too rich for people who don't as a rule eat rich food!

Happy Father's Day to me!

Ribs, Sangiovese, Cream, Tomato Paste

Porcini, Parsley Stems, Celery, Onion, Carrot, Garlic

After Browning the Ribs, Making the Braising Sauce:
Sangiovese, Veal Glace, Heavy Cream, and Water

Ready for the Oven

Pregaming with Moscow Mules on the Patio

Out of the Oven, Prior to Defatting the Sauce

Et Voilà!

Memorial Day 2016

Thanks to crashing out super early on Sunday after our hike, I woke really early on Monday and having a very rare two-day holiday, I set in right away on yardwork, getting the trumpet vine and the three wisteria pruned and a bunch of other miscellaneous things neatened up before Ann came downstairs. I took a break and joined her on the deck for a cup of coffee, a rare treat for us these days to have coffee together, not having to be somewhere.

After coffee, we set in on a bunch more yardwork including weeding and planting the garden, removing a very invasive lemon balm, digging out a Euonymus that was not sited correctly and not happy where it was sited, planting a dozen roses, and transplanting to new beds a slew of volunteers including purple coneflowers, coreopsis, and even a maple tree.

About 1pm, we had mostly finished all the yardwork we were going to do for the day and set off on a quick 3-mile walk about the neighborhood where a new crop of wildflowers was waiting to be seen. While we were out walking, I noticed that none of the black locust trees are blooming this year. The same frost that killed our wisteria blooms must have done the same to the locusts. Pity.

Deptford Pink

Crown Vetch

Ox-Eye Daisy

Sulfur Cinquefoil

Golden Hawkweed

St. John's Wort

Back at home, we decided to cool down on the patio in the shade of the vines with a bottle of Vinho Verde, our first of the year. Its light green apple flavor is so refreshing.

Vinho Verde on the Patio

My Girl!

Ann wanted to see how good my new camera is at bird photos. Not very. The camera is probably just fine, but my 28-135mm lens doesn't have the speed or the reach to do the birds justice. I'm putting a 70-200mm lens on my wish list, small enough to hike with and handhold, but with considerable more reach than the 135.

Male Cardinal Below the Feeder

Mockingbird Guarding the Native Honeysuckle Berries

At noon, I took a break from gardening to run in and throw these ribs in a slow oven. They're coated in a rub that I make myself. I fancied that I might smoke them and grill them and the whole nine yards, but once it became clear that I was really involved in gardening this Memorial Day, I opted for the easy way out in a slow oven.

Ribs, Ready to Cook

Cabbage and Chinese Broccoli Slaw

Pigging Out!

Just today the scales told me that I have lost 25 pounds since Christmas, a pretty good milestone. I just nibbled at breakfast and skipped lunch in order to be able to feast on ribs and slaw. And two portions of each I did have. I kind of regretted eating so much food, but not really! Damn those ribs were good!