Loubia with Lamb Kefta

Andreas and Michelle went to Iceland just before we went to Italy so we haven't seen them in a hot minute. Our schedules finally allowed us to get together to see their absolutely stunning pictures. Iceland is very near the top of our list of places to visit in the next couple of years. I can hardly wait.

Loubia with Lamb Kefta

Andreas likes to cook and likes to pick my brain to learn new things. This time, he wanted to learn about spicing and I believe he mentioned Moroccan food specifically. At the same time, Ann seemed fixated on lamb and white beans, so I decided to do a bean stew common to the Maghreb, a dish called various things in various locales.

Loubia is a stew of white beans that I have encountered often. I know it in French as tagine d'haricots blancs or cassoulet algérienne. I also know that Andreas loves my cassoulet. And I also know that because it requires hours in the oven, it is not a dish that I can show him how to make right before dinner.

So what to do?

I decided keep on with the slow-cooked beans, but show him how to make two condiments for the beans, a red sauce and a green sauce. The red sauce was my version of harissa (red chiles, cumin, coriander, fennel, caraway, cinnamon, salt, garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil). The green sauce was my version of chermoula, an analog of chimichurri (parsley, cilantro, lemon zest, coriander, fennel, salt, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil). Chermoula is a typical condiment for fish, but I love it with meat in the same way that I love gremolata, salsa verde, or chimichurri with meat.

Long-cooked and mild dishes such as this loubia can often benefit from a zesty, acidic sauce to help wake up the taste buds. Also helpful is a bright green salad with an acidic dressing, such as the one I made from arugula, julienne of apple and fennel, and a tangy vinaigrette made with Sherry vinegar.

Lamb Kefta in the Classic Shape

First thing in the morning, I put my beans that had soaked overnight in lightly salted water on to par-cook for 90 minutes. I used my old stand-by beans, Steuben Yellow Eye beans from Rancho Gordo. Into the pot, I tossed a large sprig each of rosemary, sage, and thyme which would subtly flavor the beans.

Meanwhile, I got busy making the kefta (kofta, kafta, kufta: your choice). Because I was going to serve the beans and kefta with two assertive sauces, I did not highly season the lamb as I often do. The seasonings are a lot of garlic, a decent bit of a mild paprika, some salt, and a bit of coriander, cumin, and dried chile flakes. All the seasonings I mixed into a slurry with a couple of eggs and some white wine (definitely a no-no in the Arab world; substitute any stock or cream). Then I added a couple pounds of ground lamb and a half a cup of rolled oats.

I typically do add some type of starch to my meatballs and meatloaf to loosen the texture of the cooked product so that it is not super dense. I have used panko, panade (bread soaked in cream), cooked rice, and raw rolled oats all to success. Because I always have them on hand, I use rolled oats most frequently, a bonus if you have guests who are gluten-free.

After mixing the forcemeat (with the best tool of all, my hands), I put it in the refrigerator to settle and so that the oats could start to absorb the liquid and bind the mixture. When the beans were just about at the end of their 90-minute par-cook, I shaped the kefta, diced a leek and a large carrot, and minced half a bulb of garlic.

Then it was standard cassoulet procedure from there: brown the meat (the kefta), cook the aromatic vegetables in the same pan scraping up all the brown bits (the fond) from the bottom of the pan, drain the beans and save the cooking liquid for soup, mix the vegetables with the drained beans and season, put a layer of beans in the cocotte, add the meats, top with the remaining beans, fill with a deeply-flavored meat stock to just cover the beans, and finally bake in a slow oven, replenishing the stock as necessary and punching down the crust every hour or so.

While I Cooked, Ann Set the Table and Chose Utensils and Plates

I wanted to have something to snack on while the girls chatted and Andreas and I made the harissa and chermoula. I decided on a baked feta to take advantage of the oven since it would be going anyway in finishing the loubia. This couldn't be easier to make by whipping up a roasted red pepper sauce in the blender and layering it under and over slices of feta.

The roasted red pepper sauce is a pint jar of roasted red peppers, a couple tablespoons of my homemade harissa, a couple tablespoons of the intense umami-bomb estratto di pomodoro (Sicilian tomato paste), a couple cloves of garlic (minced), and a touch of salt. Ten seconds of whirring in the blender and it's done.

I also cut up some olives (Castelvetrano) and toasted some pine nuts for garnish. I stole a bit of parsley from the bunch that I picked for chermoula as an additional garnish.

Baked Feta in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Olives, Pine Nuts, and Parsley for Garnish

A Couple of Italian Girls

Loubia with Lamb Kefta
Loubia is Generally Saucier; I Made This Just Like Cassoulet

Arugula Salad with Apples, Fennel, and Sherry Vinaigrette
Loubia with Harissa and Chermoula

Mother's Day Dinner

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

Cooking Fools: John and I Assembling Gnocchi

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

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

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

A Little Snow for Mother's Day

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

Special Guest Cady

Working for his Dinner, John Cooks Maiitake

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

Appetizer: Potato Salad with Argentinean Red Shrimp

Potato Salad with Argentinean Red Shrimp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dessert: Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar

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

Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar

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

Sablefish with Pimentón White Beans and Piquillo Salad

We brought home a gorgeous piece of ultrarich sablefish recently, but the rest of the cupboard was pretty bare promising some difficulty in coming up with a presentation for the fish. When ideas are hard to come by, I know just what to do. My food ideas flow best when I have my hands on food, such as at the market or farmers market. At the restaurant, I would often go into either the walk-in or the pantry and paw my way through the inventory to start the idea flow.

Naturally, I started rummaging our home pantry to get an idea for what to do. I spied a bottle of Sherry vinegar and that was all it took to get the ideas zooming about my head. The association went something like: Sherry vinegar, Spain, Spanish ingredients, that leftover half a jar of piquillo peppers in the fridge, a nice garnish of a piquillo salad, peppers, smoked paprika, smoked paprika wants some kind of neutral foil to let it do its smoky thing, white beans, white bean purée, fini.

Including salt and garlic, this dish comprises seven ingredients. One thing that I continually impressed on my line cooks in our daily menu meetings was to simplify dishes and not to add items just because they might be cool. Each item in a dish should be there for a specific well-founded reason. A hallmark of a veteran chef is knowing when enough is enough.

Sablefish with Pimentón White Beans and Piquillo Salad

That said, I would have made a couple additions to this dish at the restaurant. First, I would have made two deep red-colored oils for an additional plate garnish, one meat-based and the other vegetarian. The first would have been made by steeping chorizo in warm olive oil and the other by doing the same thing with just pimentón, smoked paprika. In this way, I could garnish the plate to look the same for people who do not eat meat and people who eat meat, but just not pork.

And no doubt, for the second addition, the piquant bite of some micro-arugula would add a complementary color and taste. It's just that at home, I don't have flats of micro-arugula sitting on the counter awaiting my scissors. I do miss that about the restaurant: the ability to cut herbs and put them immediately on the plate before it was whisked off to the dining room.

I Cook Sablefish Skin Side Down

After the Skin is Crisp, Finishing the Fish

For the white bean purée, I wanted to go rustic, so not totally smooth. To do this, I cooked a bit of garlic in olive oil, then added cooked beans, and a touch of pimentón. The beans cooked for a few minutes with the addition of some water and then using the back of my wooden spoon, I mashed them roughly, adding water and salt as necessary.

White Beans Cooking, Before Mashing

Pimentón is one of the great contributions of Spain to the culinary world. When I say pimentón, I don't mean just any smoked paprika, but the famous name-protected Pimentón de La Vera from Spain. There really is no substitute for it, and while it is expensive relative to other ground peppers, a little pimentón can go a long way. Often I have tasted dishes in which the cook has been heavy-handed with the pimentón and the dish has become a bit acrid, bitter, and overly smoky.

Pimentón is available in dulce (sweet), agridulce (bittersweet), and picante (hot). I have always bought the agridulce version as it seems most versatile to me. If I want the dish to be picante, I have lots of other weapons in my aresenal to add to the pimentón. From having been smoked over oak, the pimentón adds both a smoky flavor and a haunting smoky aroma to any dish to which it is added.

I use it often to build richness and a sense of meatiness into vegan and vegetarian dishes. In fact, a woman who was eating a vegan diet excoriated me in my dining room and in a subsequent on-line review. She insisted mistakenly that I had added bacon to her dish that contained only pimentón. She refused to eat the dish that I had gone out of my way to prepare for her. But such is the power of pimentón to convince people that a dish contains meat when in fact, it does not. For that, I love pimentón and will always have it in my spice cabinet.

Piquillo Salad

I have talked previously about the need for something acidic to complement the super rich and fatty sablefish. This is the role that the piquillo salad plays for this dish. More specifically, it is the sherry vinegar that helps cut the richness. The salad is utterly trivial: sliced piquillos, a touch of minced garlic, salt to taste, and a sprinkle of Sherry vinegar to taste.

Piquillos are another of the great gifts of Spain to the world. Their inimitable flavor, both sweet and rich at the same time, is a true joy. They are best served simply so that they can take their starring role at the table.

This was a wonderful way to experience an awesome piece of sablefish. Besides having beautiful flavors that complemented each other tremendously well, the dish took no more than 15 minutes to execute! This is my kind of dish.

Black Bean Burgers

Black Bean Burgers and Salsa

I could eat these black bean burgers every day. Monday, I cooked black beans with garlic, cumin, onion, chipotle salsa, poblanos, cilantro stems, oregano, and the merest hint of cinnamon. And we ate black beans topped with salsa. When we had taken our beans out for Monday's dinner, I added a few tablespoons of masa harina to the beans and cooked them for another minute, until they seized up. Then they went in the fridge to get good and cold. I pattied them out last night, covered the faces in panko, fried them, and served them with a batch of impromptu salsa.

This salsa was grape tomatoes, white onion, green onion, poblano, cilantro, sambal oelek, salt, and because I didn't have any limes, sherry vinegar. Sherry vinegar is a nice and different touch. And the masa is a great touch. It adds a nice sweetness to the spicy beans.