Pepper and Onion Burritos

It's football season and Carter plays on Monday nights, kind of cramping our Monday night dinner style, so I had to think of something quick that I could throw together between getting home from work and rushing off to the game. For some crazy reason, I had burritos on the brain yesterday, even though I am not a huge fan of flour tortillas. But what to fill them with?

And then I remembered, the peppers are coming in hot and heavy from the garden: both the Corno di Toro Rosso and the Jimmy Nardello peppers are in full swing. In the photo below, the cornos are the larger, straighter and darker peppers. The Jimmy Nardellos are redder, smaller, and more curved. They are both awesome peppers and I like to grow both each year, though the smaller Jimmy Nardellos have the best pepper flavor of any I have ever tasted. Here's what Baker Creek Seeds, my supplier, says about Jimmy Nardello:

This fine Italian pepper was grown each year by Giuseppe and Angella Nardiello, at their garden in the village of Ruoti, in Southern Italy. In 1887 they set sail with their one-year-old daughter Anna for a new life in the USA. When they reached these shores, they settled and gardened in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and grew this same pepper that was named for their fourth son Jimmy. This long, thin-skinned frying pepper dries easily and has such a rich flavor that this variety has been placed in "The Ark of Taste" by the Slow Food organization. Ripens a deep red, is very prolific, and does well in most areas.

Bounty from our Garden

So what to do with a bounty of frying peppers? Fry them, of course, with onions. And what completes this trio, especially in a quasi-Italian household? Sausages, of course. But since I was doing burritos, I went with a Salvadoran chorizo rather than sweet Italian sausages. The peppers did not suffer from this!

Peppers, Onions, Chorizo, and Slivered Garlic Frying

I wanted a touch of cheese in my burritos, but fresh cheeses really don't agree with me. I know that Ann would have loved some gooey mozzarella in her burrito, but I can't do it. So I got a bag of grated cotija, the Mexican equivalent of Parmigiano Reggiano, and sprinkled a bit over. Cotija adds a texture that Parmigiano does not.

Burrito with Cotija Before Rolling

Glen Manor/Panzanella

Sunday September 7th was one of those beautiful fall days that we dream about all summer. After it being 93 degrees and nearly 100 percent humidity the day before, a welcome cold front blew through in the night bringing both rain and delightful temperatures. I noticed right away on Sunday morning when taking the dogs out that I didn't walk into a wall of water in the air as I had done the entire week before, the hottest and most miserably humid of the summer.

Based on that miserable weather, Ann and I had planned to picnic on Sunday up on Skyline Drive (which you can see just below the ridgeline in the photo below), up at elevation to get away from the heat. I had already put a bottle of Côtes de Gascogne Blanc in the freezer to chill for the picnic. But after we both went outside on the patio for morning coffee, I told her that the cold nip in the breeze was not white wine drinking weather, that it was decidedly red wine drinking weather and suggested that we scrap Skyline and go rather to Glen Manor and drink red wine and look up the mountain. No complaints from her!

Early Fall at Glen Manor (see the bird netting on the vines?)

We were the first to arrive at the tasting room, about 12:15 and got to spend about a half an hour catching up with Jeff and Kelly before people started showing up, at which point we took a bottle of T. Ruth red blend and our container of panzanella out on the lawn and pulled up a couple Adirondack chairs to take in the view for the next three hours or so. At times, the breeze was downright nippy, but on the whole, I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Our Mini Feast: Panzanella, Water, and T. Ruth

I had big plans to throw together a proper picnic menu. I was going to fry some quail, devil some quail eggs, and make a little potato salad. I was, I promise. But Saturday got away from me in that we had a bunch more prep at the restaurant than we had anticipated and so the end of dinner service Saturday night arrived with me having prepped nada for our picnic.

Serendipitous Panzanella

As I was packing away my station for the weekend, I noticed a container of croutons on the counter, unloved and unneeded, having been used as salad garnish some weeks ago when we actually had salad greens. August heat is most unkind to salad greens and it is very rare that we would have a green salad on the menu during that month.

And next to the bin of croutons were several balls of unsold fresh mozzarella that we had made right before dinner. [<rant>I'm just going to say it here: customers are knuckleheads. You can get Insalata Caprese at the restaurant for about 6 weeks a year. Order it when you see it!</rant>] And then I remembered that I had a bin full of chopped salad that would not carry through the weekend. And there you have it: instant panzanella.

You should have seen Ann freak out when I covered the croutons in water: she loves, loves, loves croutons! I soaked them for a minute and squeezed them out, diced the mozz and added it, and then poured over the chopped salad and gave the whole a big stir. A bit of salt and a touch more olive oil finished it.

The chopped salad is made from cucumbers; red, yellow, black, and green tomatoes; red, yellow, and purple peppers, a couple ears of corn, and sliced queen olives, all dressed with olive oil, sherry vinegar, minced garlic, and salt.

Egg Drop Soup

Egg Drop Soup

We had planned to have guests over for dinner on Monday night, but Ann texted early morning saying she wasn't feeling well and had cancelled dinner. And then she texted to ask if I would make some soup even though we had just made soup the week before. She knows that I don't like to repeat the same things.

I decided this time rather than going the Vietnamese route, to do more of a classic Chinese soup. And then when I got home, I mentioned that I might poach an egg right in the soup so that we could break open a nice runny egg into the soup. But she asked me to make her stracciatella, the Italian version of egg drop soup.

And so I put on a big pot of water with a couple pounds of chicken necks, half a pound of ginger, some garlic, some green onion bulbs, some cilantro stems, and some celery leaves. After this cooked very slowly for about 90 minutes, I put in a whole chicken and let it poach until it was done, another couple of hours. I fished the chicken out and let it cool while I strained the broth.

From here, just a small matter of some vegetable prep: thinly sliced snow peas, straw mushrooms, bamboo shoots, pickled mustard stems, sliced green onions, and tiny baby bok choy.



Garnishes (except the chicken) Ready for Soup Bowls

Once the garnishes were prepped, I put them straight into our soup bowls and then beat a couple of eggs while the stock came back to a wicked boil. Into the stock went the eggs. And then I ladled the boiling stock into our soup bowls.


Soup Bowl Ready for Broth

I love soup. So really, no real hardship to make it two weeks running.

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

Tough weekend. I couldn't eat all day Sunday for a minor medical procedure on Monday and after getting out of that, I needed something really comforting to eat. Enter phở gà.

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

When I make pho, it is typically the more common beef version, but when I am not 100%, chicken suits me (and most of us) better. It was Ann's idea that I make chicken noodle soup: good call!

Here are my tips for making phở gà:

1. Poach the chicken until it is done, remove it from the broth, pick the meat from the bones, and return the bones to the stock to keep enriching it. This way, you achieve both goals: rich broth and tender chicken. Leaving the chicken meat in too long just renders it tough.

2. Char the onion and ginger on the flame for a few minutes before adding to the stock. It adds great depth of flavor.

3. Sweetness is optional. I almost never add sugar to chicken pho. But I often add just a touch of Chinese sausage (lop cheung) to the broth at the last minute. It imparts a certain sweetness. This is certainly non-traditional, but it's my bowl of soup, damn it, and I will cook it the way I want.

4. Have a light hand with the seasonings. To a half gallon of stock, I added four star anise and half a stick of cinnamon for just 20 minutes so that the flavor was there, but really in the background. You want the delicate chicken flavor to come through.

5. Knock yourself out on garnishes. I love pickled mustards stems from China, so I garnish my soup with them, but not with so many that I mask the delicate chicken broth.

6. I don't add either hoisin or sriracha to my bowl with chicken as I would with beef. Again, I want the chicken to be front and center.

Pork Larb Lettuce Wraps

I didn't have a clue what to make for dinner last evening. I wasn't hungry and I wasn't really craving anything. So when Ann sent me an email in the morning asking if we could have pork lettuce wraps for dinner, I was totally jazzed at not having to think about dinner. The figuring out dinner part is the hard part; the execution is always the easy part.

Pork Larb Lettuce Wraps

Last week, I made shrimp larb for dinner and I thought I would reprise that with pork this week. While Ann was off at a meeting, I went out to the garden and picked Thai basil and mint, whose leaves I mixed with cilantro leaves and very thinly sliced red onion in a bowl. And then I sliced some shallots, some Thai chiles, and minced some garlic. The final step in getting set was to mix some lime juice, brown sugar, fish sauce, and Thai chiles to make a sauce to drizzle over the wraps.

When Ann texted me to say she was coming home, I browned the shallots hard in a pan, then threw in a bunch of minced garlic and sliced chiles. Next went in the pork, a touch of brown sugar, and a splash each of fish sauce and water. When the pork was cooked through, I removed it carefully to the bowl containing the herbs and red onion, and returned the liquid to the stove where I reduced it to a syrup and then poured it back over the pork.

I omitted the toasted rice powder: we're watching our carbs. We hate watching our carbs but it is working. I could kill for a bowl of pasta now after three months of low-carbing it!

Focaccia

I learned about fougasse in the south of France long before I had heard of focaccia, which seems to be nearly ubiquitous here in the US now. I've also heard it called both fouace and fouée as well in France. In Liguria which sits directly between the south of France and Italy proper, I know people who call it fugàssa (and some who pronounce it minus the final vowel as in fougasse) and over the Pyrenees, it is called mainly hogaza but also fogassa in some regions. But it all stems from the Latin panis focacius, literally hearth bread. By any name, it is a simple and delicious bread and I set about making some this weekend.

Baked Focaccia Topped with Pesto and Tomatoes

Dough on Final Rise

Ready for the Oven, Topped with Olive Oil and Truffle Salt

Delaplane Cellars

It's been many months since we have been out. Our finances have not permitted us any discretionary funds this year. While still not great, things are easing up a little, and we decided to reward ourselves with a lunch at Delaplane. As we drove up the driveway, we could see a few grapes here and there starting to turn color: last time we were here, the vines hadn't even bloomed.

Beautiful View Looking South from Tasting Room

Left Bank 2012 Does not Suck

Cheese and Bread: a Great Lunch!

After lunch, Jim and Betsy came down from the house and joined us and we sat and chewed the fat until closing time. Jim may or may not have opened a couple bottles of Williams Gap 2012 during that time. ;) It may or may not have been good to taste that wine in advance of our Thursday night dinner at the restaurant featuring the wines of Delaplane.