New Year's Eve 2024: Mushroom Galette

As is our tradition, we spend New Year's Eve at home or with friends rather than going out to celebrate. We no longer have the desire to stay up late or to be on the roads with a bunch of drunk drivers. And having to be at the restaurant until the crack of dawn each New Year's, I suppose that I am still avoiding New Year's Eve like the plague some 7 or 8 years after I closed the restaurant.

Once upon a time in McMinnville, I made some crostini of wild mushrooms and Taleggio cheese that Ann cannot get out of her mind. It seems that whenever we want to celebrate, she remembers the flavors of that simple appetizer. From that memory, somehow we got to a mushroom and leek galette topped with two flavorful cheeses, one rather more pungent and one with a bit of blue veining.

Mushroom and Leek Galette

I cheated. I used commercial puff pastry that I rolled out into a big rectangle and topped with mushroom and leek ragoût. Then I rolled the edges over like a country tart and topped the mushroom mixture with thinly sliced cheese, followed by a good grating of pecorino romano. After a simple egg wash on the edges of the galette, it went into a very hot oven and baked until brown.

Leek and Mushroom Ragoût

The ragoût is terribly simple. I sweated two leeks in butter, then added three fresh mushrooms: wild chanterelles and domestic oysters and shiitakes. Once these started shrinking down and cooking, I added chopped rehydrated porcini and the highly flavored water in which I soaked them overnight. After about 15 minutes on the heat, the whole became a thick ragoût suitable for topping a pastry crust.

Grand Cru Guiborat Blanc de Blancs Champagne

We were able to get our hands on a bottle of Guiborat Champagne, a blanc de blancs. Although we enjoy all styles of Champagne, we really love crisp and high acid 100% Chardonnay bottlings such as this, especially with rich and fatty food.

And another year is in the books. Our neighbors were only too happy to remind us of this as they continued with the big fireworks mortars until after 3am. So much for getting to be early and getting some good sleep.

Santa Fe: Friday Night on the Town

I took so many photos on our first day in Santa Fe that I felt the need to split the day into two posts. This one covers our Friday night in downtown Santa Fe. The downtown is compact and really approachable on foot, a real surprise for a state capital.

Christmas Lights in the Plaza

After getting cleaned up and dressed for dinner, we started our evening with a glass of sparkling. Rob opened a bottle of Gruet Sauvage, a cuvée that I have never tasted before. Sauvage means wild in French; I take it to mean that the base wine is fermented with natural yeast from the site, but that's just a guess. I liked the wine as well as its simple yet recognizable packaging.

Pregaming with Gruet Sauvage

Many months ago Dyce booked a table at a well-respected restaurant for us and we were all looking forward to trying it. The place was beautiful and we were seated at a nice table. The evening started awkwardly with amuses being delivered before menus. We ordered appetizers to find out afterwards that one was sold out. A good server will know what is sold out or close to selling out before taking the order. The appetizers were pretty tasty and well-executed though we noted that they came out of the kitchen very quickly, almost too quickly. One was missing any visible pork belly, a featured ingredient.

After our appetizer plates were cleared, we ordered mains. These plates were on the table four minutes after we ordered them, an impossibly short time. Despite the astonishing prices of the dishes, the kitchen took little care in cooking or plating. A couple of dishes were salty beyond belief, a side was missing from one plate, and what the kitchen did to a piece of tuna was unforgivable.

I’m not mentioning the restaurant because the GM comped our entire meal (against our wishes) when we told him how poor our food was. He was gracious and appropriately apologetic.

After dinner, we needed a little cheer to help us forget dinner, so we wandered in search of a nice bar. We first stopped into the historic La Fonda, right on the plaza. While this historic Fred Harvey property is luxuriously gorgeous, the main bar was a little too yee haw for us. The gussied up line dancers in their boots and hats were not the calm scene we wanted for after dinner conversation, so we moved along.

Scenes from the Plaza

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

The Loretto Chapel, Former Catholic Church

We made our way past the beautifully up-lit Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, the current Catholic church, then by the Loretto Chapel, former Catholic church, current museum, and home of a marvelous free-standing spiral staircase, ultimately arriving at the Loretto Hotel next door. We took some time to take photos of the hotel building all lit up with holiday lights. In the holiday season, many of the prominent buildings are topped with lights that the locals call farolitos (little lighthouses) rather than luminaria as they are called in the rest of the country.

We also shot a few photos of the lit sculptures out front of the hotel. Santa Fe has significant public art installations that are a lot of fun to see. We live in a town that values public art. Bend too has many, many works of public art, but they are by and large installed in the middle of roundabouts. This means that they are necessarily large to be seen from a distance and unapproachable, being situated in the roadways. By contrast in Santa Fe, many works of art are on a human scale and are situated right on public walkways making them easier to interact with. Neither approach is better or worse than the other; they are just different.

The Loretto Hotel Decorated with Farolitos

A Sculpture Outside the Loretto Hotel

As we wound ourselves further into the interior of the hotel, we arrived at their bar facing a large, lit fireplace surmounted by a massive sheep's skull and horns. After a few minutes wait in the extremely busy bar, we scored comfortable seats directly in front of the fireplace where we enjoyed our nightcaps.

Beautiful Hallway Tiles in the Loretto

That's a Big Ram!

My Best Christmas Present Ever!

On the Way to the Car, Public Art Everywhere

Despite the hiccups at dinner, our day was fantastic and Rob and Dyce gave us a wonderful introduction to their Santa Fe. We went to bed this evening thinking about our upcoming trip tomorrow to see Ghost Ranch where Georgia O'Keeffe painted a great many of her canvases.

Thanksgiving 2023

It's Thanksgiving once again and each and every Thanksgiving, I am blessed to be able to have so much for which to be thankful. But it seems this year of 2023, I really do have extra cause to be especially thankful. In particular, I do not know how I would have navigated two surgeries and the death of my father without Ann by my side. There are many, many other reasons I have to be thankful this year, but that is too long a list to compile and Ann trumps all of them.

Roasted Guanciale-Rosemary Turkey Thighs with Gravy
Pasta Flavored with Sausage, Leeks, Celery, Thyme, and Sage

I look back fondly at all our Thanksgivings past and have no choice to conclude that Thanksgiving at our house is not the raucous, noisy, and crowded affair it used to be. For decades, including before my time with Ann, Thanksgiving was always a feast involving a lot of people, family at times, but mainly people who did not have any other place to celebrate this holiday. A dozen people would have been a small crowd and one year, before Ann's time, we counted 35-40 people for the big feast.

Now that we are empty nesters, it's generally just the two of us and my heart really isn't in putting in a ton of work to not share it with others. My sister and I were lamenting the day before Thanksgiving that we'd much rather cook for a crowd than for two. At least she got to cook for 8 or 9 people this year. Don't get me wrong. I love cooking for Ann, but I think we both miss having company for our big holiday celebration.

Regardless, Ann and I had a great meal although much simplified from years past: turkey rillettes, roast turkey, and a Thanksgiving-flavored pasta. The goal this year was to do the prep (and dishes!) in the two days before the feast day and then let the oven do all the work on Thanksgiving.

This year, like many years, we started our feast day with turkey neck rillettes on crostini with cornichons. Rillettes are a spread of cooked meat in fat, similar to, but more rustic than pâté. They are a wonderful use for the neck meat leftover from making the stock that I use to make the gravy (and in years when Ann makes dressing, to moisten it).

Turkey Neck Rillettes on Crostini with Cornichons

Warming the Rillettes in Front of Fire

Rillettes need to be at room temperature (or in the winter, slightly warmer) so that they will spread easily. It was too chilly in the house to warm them on the counter, so I came up with a way to warm them gently in front of the fire. I got odd looks from my wife, but it was a success.

Sparkling Wine with the Rillettes

Rillettes, because of their fatty nature, need something acidic to work against that fat. So, I top them with cornichons and serve them with a bracing sparkling wine. Any high acid wine would work, but I think of all the choices out there, sparkling works best. This was Crémant d'Alsace.

Homemade Sausage for the Pasta

Two days before Thanksgiving, I made a small batch of sausage for the pasta that I would bake on Thursday. This is ground pork shoulder flavored with white wine, sage, thyme, rosemary, fennel pollen, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and salt.

The day before Thanksgiving, I assembled the pasta so that I could pull it, in ready to bake form, out of the refrigerator on Thanksgiving and put it in the oven while the turkey was roasting. The pasta started with cooked aromatics: leeks, celery, rubbed sage, and fresh thyme leaves.

Primary Pasta Flavorings: Celery, Leeks, Rubbed Sage, Fresh Thyme

Vegetables Sweated and Removed to a Mixing Bowl

Sausage Cooked, Then Mixed with a Spoonful of Flour

Pint of Heavy Cream, Cooked Until Slightly Thick

After cooking the vegetables, I browned the sausage that I made the day before and added a big spoonful of flour. Once the flour was cooked a bit, I added heavy cream and cooked it until the cream thickened a bit. The sausage and cream mixture joined the sweated vegetables in the mixing bowl with pasta that I cooked to just al dente and then cooled under running water. Everything all mixed, I adjusted the seasoning and put the pasta into an oiled baking pan. I topped the pasta with a lightly oiled mixture of panko and the breadcrumbs leftover from making the crostini for the turkey rillettes.

Thanksgiving Pasta, Ready for the Refrigerator

The End Result

Many years ago now, Ann turned me on to putting pancetta butter between the turkey skin and the breast meat to give extra flavor and to help keep the breast meat moist. I have continued that tradition ever since. This year, I made it out of what I had on hand, no longer in the business of curing belly after belly of pancetta for the restaurant. I had some smoked guanciale (pork jowl) and a bit of fresh rosemary in the refrigerator, so I made the butter from those two items. I do have to say that the firmer fat in the jowl (guanciale) chops much finer and more easily in the food processor than does the fat in the belly (pancetta).

Butter, Smoked Guanciale, Rosemary

Turkey Thighs with Guanciale Butter under Skin

Check out That Skin!

Another Thanksgiving in the books, I am beyond thankful for all I have, the people in my life, and the opportunities that I have had and will have in the future, and most of all, for a tremendously rewarding relationship with Ann without whom my life would have little meaning.

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.