Dimitri Comes to Bend

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

Mediterranean Crew: Greek, Italian, Italian

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

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

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

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

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

Dimitri Brought Us a Gift

Chips and Charred Jalapeño Salsa Verde

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enchilada Sauce, Thickened with Flour and Chimayo Chile

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

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

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

Posole Amarillo with Bacon, Green Chile, and Fresh Corn

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

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

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

Enchiladas de Carne Adovada and Posole Amarillo

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

Dessert on the Patio

Ann's Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

July 4 Celebration

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

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

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

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

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

Lamb Burger with Feta and Pine Nuts

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

Lamb Burger Recipe

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

Per pound of ground lamb:

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

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

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

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

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

small handful of toasted pine nuts

2 ounces sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

optional, if you have spice grinder:

pinch dried rosemary, finely ground

pinch dried thyme, finely ground 

Procedure:

Mix liquids and solids well to distribute salt and spices.

Add lamb and gently mix. Using hands is best.

Refrigerate overnight or two nights.

Patty into burgers or shape into kefta (oval meatballs)

Cook to desired temperature. I like medium rare.

Tiropitakia and Tzatziki

Tiropitakia Ready for Oven

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

Orzo Salad

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

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

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

Ann's Beautiful Summer Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

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.

A Summer Dinner with Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gorgeous Tri-Tip (Bottom Sirloin) Slices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pink Shrimp Cakes

Shrimp Cakes in the Courtyard with Lemon-Chive Aïoli

Premier Cru Champagne with our Shrimp Cakes

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

Pimentón-Marinated Tri-Tip Grilled to Medium Rare

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

Israeli Couscous Cooked à la Paella, Finished with Goat Cheese

Padrones Seared with Olive Oil and Salt

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

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

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

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

Ann's Outstanding Summer Pudding

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

All our Dessert Plates Looked Just Like This!

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.