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

Crunchy Fish Tacos

I've recently revived an old technique for fish tacos and Annie loves the results. Here's how I turned a couple of Pacific Cod fillets into fish tacos.

Pacific Cod Fish Tacos

In recent years, I have been coating fish fillets for tacos with a spice rub and roasting them in the oven. This is certainly a healthy way to eat fish, but many people will miss the crunchy crust of fried fish in their tacos. That got me asking myself how I can get a crispy crust on fish for tacos using a minimum of oil.

Thinking back many decades to when I was just learning how to cook Chinese food (as if there is but a single Chinese cuisine, ha!), I remember using cornstarch not only to thicken sauces and soups, but as a way to coat meat for wok frying. And so I decided to use a bit of cornstarch on fish fillets and to fry them in as little oil as possible.

I cut the cod fillets into pieces that will fit into my pan and then sprinkle both sides with seasonings (sometimes my fish rub, link above). For this particular batch of fish, rather than use a rub, I merely sprinkled both sides with salt, ground New Mexican chile, and a touch of granulated garlic. Then I put a thin coat of cornstarch on both sides.

Pan-Searing Pacific Cod Using Almost No Oil

We eat a lot of tacos at our house because they are quick, tasty, and who doesn't love finger food? One way that I make them quick to prepare is by keeping a lot of garnishes on hand in the refrigerator on a regular basis. These include pickled jalapeños, salsa verde, romaine bottoms, and a squeeze bottle of thinned chipotle sour cream. By planning ahead, tacos take less than ten minutes to bring to the table, just what I want on a busy day or on a day when I don't have the energy or desire to cook an involved meal.

Fish Taco Toppings: (L-R) Pickled Jalapenos, Tomatoes,
Salsa Verde, Cilantro, Chipotle Sour Cream, and Romaine

I've published the recipe for salsa verde before, but it's just a bunch of cilantro, a large can of drained tomatillos, a serrano chile, two cloves of garlic, and a pinch of salt, all blended. We use romaine lettuce on our lunch sandwiches and I always keep the bottoms of the bunches in a bag in the fridge. When it's time for tacos, I slice the bottoms thinly for a crunchy garnish. Chipotle sour cream is merely sour cream, water, salt, and chipotle adobo.

Super Bowl Dip

After many years of cord cutting, we're finally able to watch the Super Bowl at home for the first time in ages. When we realized this, of course, we had to have some food to go along with the game. Pretty much immediately, I thought of the quasi-traditional 7-layer dip that so many people serve. And I asked myself, "How can it make it tastier and more fun?"

Ready to Watch the Super Bowl

I spent a little time thinking about what might comprise the layers in the dip and started making a list of things that individually would be really good with nacho chips.

You can see what I came up with from bottom to top in the photo above:

• Chipotle-Garlic-Bacon Frijoles Refritos. I debated the longest time about what kind of beans to use for the refritos, finally settling on pintos rather than either black beans or mayocobas. Traditionally, beans are refried in lard which I don't have on hand. Rather, I fried up a few slices of bacon and put the cooked pintos, a couple finely chopped chipotles, and rather a large amount of minced garlic into the bacon grease. After I mashed the beans to smooth and cooked them until they separated from the edge of the pan, I chopped the bacon and added it to the beans before seasoning them.

• Salsa Fresca. My fresh salsa is easy to make and delicious, consisting of finely chopped grape tomatoes (in lieu of large tomatoes in the late summer), white onion, cilantro, a finely minced jalapeño, with lime juice and salt to taste.

• Tinga de Pollo. I haven't made this delightful taco filling in a few months and I don't know why as it couldn't be simpler. To prepare it, I place slabs of onion in the bottom of a roasting pan, then layer on a bunch of chicken thighs lightly dusted with a spice mix of New Mexican ground chile, cumin, granulated garlic, salt, and Mexican oregano. The thighs roast until they are done and ready to come off the bone. After they cool, I pick the meat off the bones and add it to half the onion slabs that I have roughly chopped. The other half of the onions goes into the blender with a couple of chipotles en adobo and a small can of tomatoes. After I blitz the sauce, I pour it over the chicken and onion mixture and cook it down until most of the liquid is evaporated to make a delicious taco filling.

• Queso Fundido. Who doesn't like a gooey queso with chips? There are all kinds of ways to make queso fundido (melted cheese) but honestly, the easiest is just to throw some Velveeta and a little milk into the microwave. I added pickled jalapenos and chopped pickled nopalitos to the queso to give it a bit of zing.

• Chorizo. Mexican chorizo may be my favorite taco filling, especially when mixed with eggs. No eggs in this batch of chorizo, however, that I made from pork shoulder, ground Chimayo chile, cumin, garlic, salt, Mexican oregano, and a touch of red wine vinegar for acidity.

• Guacamole. It wouldn't be a Super Bowl dip at all without guacamole. The avocados are tiny now and hard as bricks, so I bought a bunch of them and kept them on the counter for a week to ripen. I made the simplest guacamole ever from avocados, salt, and lime juice, just looking for a nice citrus flavor to lift the rest of the heavy ingredients.

• Cotija Cheese. Grated cotija serves the same role in Mexican cuisine as pecorino does in Italian. I wanted it not only for its white color to serve as a backdrop for the top garnishes, but also to add a bit of saltiness to the dip.

• Top Garnish. The point of gilding this particular lily was to bring to freshness to the rest of the ingredients. On the top, I spooned on the remainder of the salsa fresca and scattered over some sliced green onions. Before topping the whole with a little bouquet of whole cilantro leaves, I used a squeeze bottle to drizzle on a crisscross of thinned chipotle sour cream.

Black Bean Tostadas with Poached Eggs

Huevos Rancheros, rancher-style eggs, makes a wonderful breakfast and, in my book, an even better dinner. It's a dish that Americans love and have adopted and modified (or corrupted, depending on your punto de vista) and taken (or stolen) as their own. The original dish was probably lightly fried tortillas topped with eggs and pico de gallo (salsa fresca), but has evolved beyond that, especially in the States where it almost always includes beans and cheese. Following is another loose variation on the theme, black bean tostadas with poached eggs, from a dinner last week.

Black Bean Tostadas with Poached Eggs

While I love to fry tortillas in oil for the rancheros, it's better on my waistline if I bake them between two baking sheets so they become tostadas. About 25 minutes in a moderate oven with a couple of turns will do it. Baking them between two sheet trays keeps them relatively flat.

Tortillas Baked Between Two Sheet Trays

Left over in the fridge, I had a little salsa colorada (dried red chiles, chile soaking liquid, garlic, Mexican oregano, and salt, all blended and fried in oil, then thickened with a little masa harina). So I put a bit of that on top of the tostadas before spooning on frijoles refritos (see below). The salsa helps start softening the tostadas so they become more like the lightly fried traditional tortillas.

Salsa Colorada

While the tostadas were in the oven, I made some quick refried black beans, cheating by starting with two cans of precooked black beans. I start by cooking very finely minced onion with minced garlic and minced cilantro stems in oil (lard, traditionally) until the onions are translucent. Then in go the beans and some liquid (bean cooking liquid, stock, water, whatever). You wouldn't hate me if I said that a finely minced chipotle may have fallen by accident into the pan as well?

Next, as the beans start to come up to a gentle boil, I introduce them to my bean masher, Sra. Machadora, my antique maple bean masher. After working them over for a few minutes until they are smooth, but not too smooth, I reduce the liquid to the consistency I want and then season them. Don't salt them before reducing the liquid or you risk oversalting them. 

Introducing the Beans to the Machadora (Bean Masher)

To complete the dish, we need some salsa fresca aka pico de gallo. I wasn't looking for anything fancy here, just a rough condiment of tomato, onion, serrano, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. It could not be any simpler, or better for that matter. 

Salsa Fresca/Pico de Gallo

The plate-up is trivial. Schmear the tostadas with salsa colorada, spoon over the frijoles, and add a poached egg. Most versions use fried eggs, but I love poached eggs. They are way sexier than fried eggs, plus I can cook six at a time versus only three fried eggs. I prefer to serve everyone at the same time. On top of the eggs, a spoonful of salsa colorada and another of pico de gallo with a sprinkle of grated cotija cheese finish the dish. ¡Buen provecho!

Spring Grilling: Carne Asada

Here in beautiful Bend, Oregon, spring is starting slowly with the appearance of the first buds on trees and the advent of milder, though still cool, temperatures. The nicer weather has inspired me to get my grill cleaned up and reassembled after the move from McMinnville in February. My goal: to grill the  package of skirt steaks, labelled also in Spanish, arracheras, that I came across at the grocery store.

Tacos de Carne Asada

Skirt steak is not all that common at grocery stores here in the PNW, which is a shame, because it is the perfect cut for carne asada, thin and flavorful. No lie, it is one of my most favorite grilling cuts.

Carne asada, literally grilled meat, with beef being implied, isn't typically a meal in itself, though it can be. The grilled skirt steak is generally chopped and used in other dishes, such as tacos. In norteño culture, carne asada can also mean the event at which the meat is grilled, a barbeque in American terms.

To celebrate the coming of spring and the first barbeque in our new home, I decided to make carne asada tacos with a quick salsa roja, cilantro, raw onion, and a sprinkle of cotija cheese, pictured above.

Arracheras on the Grill

For carne asada, skirt steaks are generally marinated before grilling and a lot of people use a wet marinade. I prefer something simpler, rubbing the steaks with oil, a generous amount of salt, a bit of freshly ground cumin, minced garlic, and finely chopped cilantro stems. I left the steaks in the fridge for 3-4 days to absorb the rub, though this is certainly not necessary. I've never been a big fan of wet marinades on steaks, because I feel that the liquid inhibits the really great grill sear and char that you see in the photo below.

Grilled Skirt Steaks: Carne Asada

I also go against conventional wisdom in grilling my carne asada to medium going on medium well. Convention says that skirt steak is tough and so you want to cook it rather less than more. Having grilled thousands of skirt steaks, I have to disagree. I have found that a tough, stringy steak like a skirt steak is very hard to chew when rare to medium rare. And so I opt for medium to a bit beyond, say medium well.

Recipe: Salsa Roja (Guajillo-Chipotle)

I make all manner of salsas and keep them in the fridge to have on hand whenever I want some. In general, I don't use tomato in my red sauce, but this time, I decided to stretch my supply of dried chiles with a can of tomatoes.

Toasting Stemmed and Seeded Guajillos

Chiles After Toasting and Soaking

Finished Salsa Roja

Following is the recipe I used for this batch of mildly spicy red salsa. You can alter it as you see fit.

4 guajillo chiles, stemmed, toasted, and soaked

4 chipotles en adobo

6 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (or lime juice)

1-28 ounce can tomatoes in juice

salt to taste

Remove the stems and seeds from the dried chiles. If you are not certain how spicy the chiles are, you might want to wear gloves while doing this.

Toast the chiles in a dry pan until they start to smell good, but stop before they char. Move them around while toasting so that they do not burn.

Off heat, cover the chiles with water and let them soften. This will take an hour or so.

Drain the chiles and place them along with all the other ingredients in the blender. Blend until smooth. If the salsa is too thick, thin with water. Season to taste with salt.

Bonus Dish: "Steak and Eggs"

When grilling carne asada, it always makes sense to me to make more than I need because the leftovers are really useful for a quick meal. In this case, I made steak and eggs with the largest skirt steak. First, I cooked the leftover onions from the tacos from the night before, then added the diced skirt steak and the leftover cilantro. I just warmed the meat through, trying not to cook it any further.

Reheated Carne Asada with Onion and Cilantro

"Steak and Eggs"

The "steak and eggs" is a bowl of scrambled eggs topped with the reheated carne asada, fresh tomato, salsa verde, pimentón sauce, more cilantro, and a sprinkle of cotija cheese. Recipes for salsa verde and pimentón sauce are here.

Recipe: Roasted Potatoes and Asparagus with Salsa Verde

Roasted Potatoes and Asparagus with Salsa Verde

The other day, our store had a big bag of small potatoes on special and we brought one home along with a bundle of asparagus whose price has plummeted with the arrival of spring in a lot of parts of this hemisphere, here excepted. We won't see spring temperatures for a few weeks, but a guy can live vicariously via the produce in the stores, can he not?

I ended up roasting one sheet tray of asparagus and another of the baby potatoes, then mixed the asparagus with some of the potatoes for our dinner. We liked the combination so much that I decided to do it again.

But meanwhile, leftover from this dinner was a small container of roasted potatoes and being a hungry guy, I pulled them out of the fridge for my lunch. Right next to them was a container of recently made salsa verde and I thought, "Self, wouldn't these two be good together?" And I put them together and they were good and I filed that note away for our next roasted potato and asparagus dinner.

And that brings us to dinner last evening, pictured above. While the potatoes and asparagus roasted, I made a batch each of salsa verde and another of my pimentón (smoked paprika) sauce, recipes below. This salsa verde is a new sauce that I started making in the last year; the pimentón sauce, I've been making since before opening the restaurant, some 20-plus years ago.

The combination of vegetables with the bright and spicy green sauce contrasted with the rich and smoky orange paprika sauce was as good as I had imagined it would be. And it made a fantastic dinner on a cold March night, warm, comforting, spicy, smoky, low calorie, lowish fat, and most importantly, delicious.

Recipe: Roasted Potatoes and Asparagus with Salsa Verde

You don't need a formal recipe or fixed amounts to serve this dinner. For entrée-sized portions, for every two people, start with a pound and a half each of baby waxy potatoes and asparagus. This would also make a wonderful side for a grilled steak, in which case, this amount would likely serve four people.

1.5 pounds small waxy potatoes
1.5 pounds asparagus
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 cup salsa verde
2 tablespoons pimentón sauce

Preheat your oven to hot, about 400F. Toss the potatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper and put on a sheet tray. Break off the tough ends of the asparagus and cut the remaining tender stalks to serving size; I cut each stalk into three pieces. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper and put on another sheet tray. Place the two sheet trays in the oven and roast the vegetables until done. The asparagus will likely take 20-25 minutes while the potatoes, depending on size, will take 35-45 minutes.

Combine the roasted vegetables with the half cup of salsa verde and toss well. Divide into two serving bowls and drizzle with the pimentón sauce.

Recipe: Salsa Verde

This is a recipe that I have published before, but it's a short one and easier to include it here than to go and chase it down. I mainly like to use fresh vegetables versus canned ones, but this sauce is a great use for canned tomatillos because it avoids you having to cook the tomatillos before making the salsa.

I specify serrano chile in the recipe simply because it is a reliably spicy chile that is available everywhere all year round. In practice, I make the sauce with whatever spicy green chile I happen to have. Last year, it was most frequently Sugar Rush Peach peppers because a friend gave me a plant.

You'll need a good blender to make this sauce. Here's a plug for my venerable VitaMix, veteran of the restaurant kitchen. At one point, we had five of them between the kitchen and the bar at the restaurant. And we probably went through about a dozen of them total over the 15-year life of the restaurant. 

1 28-ounce can whole tomatillos, drained
2-3 large cloves garlic
1 serrano chile, sliced
1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt (to taste)

Place all the ingredients in the blender and starting on low speed, gradually increasing the speed as the ingredients liquefy, blend until you achieve a smooth sauce. Season to taste with additional salt, if necessary. Will keep, tightly covered under refrigeration, about a week.

Recipe: Pimentón Sauce

This sauce is such a good flavor enhancer and color booster for a dish that we used to make it by the gallon at the restaurant, about a week's supply. Quantities are approximate in that I never measure exactly. Quality matters: use a great brand of real Pimentón de la Vera from Spain, not some knock-off. And restraint matters: pimentón gets really bitter when used in large amounts, so go easy until you get a feel for how you like it. The following recipe yields about a cup of sauce.

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Pimentón de la Vera
1/2 cup water
salt to taste

Start by putting the mayonnaise in a bowl and sprinkling the pimentón and a dash of salt over it. Mix thoroughly with a spoon, pressing the pimentón against the bowl as needed to remove any lumps. Mix until the paste is evenly colored throughout. Add water in small amounts, mixing it in well before adding more. Thin the sauce to the consistency that you desire. Season with salt as necessary. Store under refrigeration almost indefinitely. I typically load the sauce into a squirt bottle to make garnishing easy.

Thanksgiving 2021

Like last year and thanks once again to COVID, our Thanksgiving this year was subdued, just Annie and me. For weeks, Ann had been asking me to reprise the Thanksgiving lasagna from last year, so I made it once again this year.

The ingredients and method are all outlined in last year's post, so I won't be going into them again here. Once again, it was an awful lot of busy work (spread over three days, although nothing difficult) for a dinner for two people, and still, the reward was worth the effort.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes and Ham, Salsa Verde

Mid-morning, we were starting to get hungry and knowing that we would only eat two meals today given the caloric weight of dinner, I decided to make a substantial breakfast to carry us through to dinner. In about five minutes, I whipped up two bowls of scrambled eggs with ham and tomatoes, topped with salsa verde, thanks to the ever-present container of salsa verde in the refrigerator.

Salsa Verde

This salsa is so delicious and so simple that I generally keep a batch in the refrigerator to adorn any dish that needs a little pick-me-up.

1 can of whole tomatillos (14 ounces net wt.), drained
1 bunch of cilantro, stems and all, roughly chopped
1 large clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Add all the ingredients to a blender. Starting on low speed, blend to a smooth sauce. Season to taste with salt.

After breakfast, we started watching Peter Jackson's new Beatles documentary, Get Back, which feels entirely different from the original Let it Be film that I saw decades ago, much happier in tone. As I look 60 years of age straight in the face, I realize that the Beatles really have been a huge part of the soundtrack of my life.

Our watching was interrupted periodically sending and receiving Thanksgiving wishes to and from friends and family. After the movie in the early afternoon, Ann and I got started on our mini celebration with me opening a bottle of Prosecco and Ann setting the table.

Prosecco poured, we got to work on dinner. I had done all the prep on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, leaving only the last-minute items for Thursday. I started by using the drippings from roasting the turkey thighs to make a batch of gravy with double turkey stock. I mixed the gravy with a mixture of pulled neck and thigh meat for one of the layers of the lasagna.

The stock was slightly different this year in that I made a double stock, the first stock made from roasted turkey necks. After picking the meat off the necks and thighs, I roasted the bones and then used them to make a second stock using the first stock instead of water.

Making Roux for Gravy

Turkey layer complete, we then went on to the béchamel layer, making it pretty much like country sausage gravy. I fried up the country sausage that I made on Wednesday (ground pork shoulder, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, sage, thyme, garlic) with chopped porcini mushrooms that I rehydrated the day before as well. Then in went a bit of flour and a quart of milk, and voilà, sausage-mushroom béchamel. Or fancy sausage gravy, depending on where you come from.

Meanwhile, we brought a big stockpot of salted water up to a boil and then par-boiled our lasagna noodles for four minutes, many minutes shy of being done. We layered up the lasagna: turkey, herb and vegetable ricotta, béchamel, turkey, béchamel, cornbread crumbles. While it was baking in a 375F oven, 45 minutes covered, 30 minutes uncovered, we opened a bottle of 2016 WillaKenzie Pinot Noir Triple Black Slopes to have with our dinner.

Cinco de Mayo

Time to celebrate! Ann and I are now three weeks or so past our COVID booster shots and we feel relatively safe to socialize in small groups outdoors with others who have also been vaccinated. To better get to know our neighbors, from whom we've been at a considerable distance over the last year, we're embarking on a series of porch parties, the first of which we held on Cinco de Mayo.

Unlike a lot of previous affairs, we kept this one really simple and now that we're retired, simple will be the model going forward. I made refried black beans with salsa fresca as a chip dip and a large bowl of rajas con crema, creamed strips of poblano chiles with corn, for tacos. Liz brought a platter of pork quesadillas and Sandy brought a black bean salad. Annie made tequila-lime cupcakes for dessert.

Annie was in charge of décor, arranging everything just so and picking some flowers for the bar. Libation-wise, I made a batch of margaritas and put cheap Mexican beer and white wine on ice. Easy.

After everyone left, Ann and I cleaned up from dinner (disposable plates and cups, not very Oregon eco-blahblah, but easy) and then went back outside on the patio to enjoy the first really beautiful night of the year.

This was the most normal we have felt in a very, very long time. What a relief! Maybe the light at the end of the COVID tunnel is not a train after all.