Pig and Pinot

Sometimes the unrelenting nature of the restaurant business gets to us and so it has done the past couple of weeks, October being among the very busiest of times at the restaurant. It is incredibly difficult to have a meaningful relationship when the other woman is a restaurant. And so Ann and I just needed some us-time before I get started on another very busy month that will see us catering two large dinners at Delaplane Cellars.

In my copious spare time at the restaurant, which is to say none, I managed to find time to put together a plan for Sunday, thinking all the while that Carter would be off at Tom's house working to make some cash. I decided to make a frittata for brunch with a Bloody Mary for each of us and then I thought that we could walk around the State Arboretum of Virginia in the afternoon to take advantage of what I thought would be beautiful fall weather. While we were walking, I would have a pork shoulder in the oven going low and slow and that would be awaiting our return. Or so went the plan. Most of it happened, but that's not the important part. The important part is that Ann and I got to spend a great day together without having to be anywhere or do anything.

Brunch: Bloody Marys and Frittata

We ate brunch rather earlier than I wanted because I needed the oven free to roast the pork. For the frittata, I sweated a bit of onion with Surry sausage, then added the eggs, ricotta, chives, and grated pecorino. In no time at all in a very hot oven, it had gone golden brown around the edges and puffed beautifully in the middle. It turned out that Carter would not be leaving so Ann woke him in time to join us for a late breakfast. While the frittata was in the oven, I mixed up a Bloody Mary for each of us and garnished them with skewered lime and olives and a branch of lovage from the back porch. Lovage has delicious but unique celery flavor, stronger than regular celery, and we love it.

The Bloody Mary is something of an art form at our house and our efforts are far from the watery tomato juice cocktails that most bars serve. I made the mix on Saturday afternoon and like many things that need time to come together, it was better for having sat in the refrigerator overnight. I started with tomatoes, celery, and a little poblano chile which I pureed in the big blender. To this I added four elements of heat: chipotle for a little smoky back of the throat stealth heat; red Thai curry paste for a slow burn with vegetable notes of galangal and cilantro root; a small boatload of horseradish for its nasal cavity gymnastics; and for all purpose heat, about a tablespoon of Calabrese chile paste with its smoky lip-stinging goodness. The other ingredients were salt, olive brine, lemon juice, and lime juice.

Pork Shoulder Before Roasting

Just before we sat down to brunch, I put the pork shoulder in the oven for dinner. This is half a shoulder from a Red Wattle x Duroc hog from a farm in nearby Shepherdstown WV. I decided to cook it very simply so that we could taste all its delicious porkiness unmasked, so I rubbed it with my standard pork shoulder rub and put it on a layer of onions on a sheet tray. [Those onions would prove to be the best part of the dish, having been caramelized in pork fat for hours!] I put the shoulder skin side up so that as the inch of subcutaneous fat melted, it would baste the meat. After sealing the whole thing in aluminum foil, I put it into a slow oven (275F) for the next 8 hours. Can you imagine what the house smelled like on Sunday? Pork Heaven for those of you without imagination.

My pork rub is salt, brown sugar, pimentón, cayenne, white pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder and is very similar to rubs used by all competition BBQ teams. Sometimes I add a little ground thyme, but my spice mill died, the restaurant being hell on small appliances. Although you can buy lots of commercial rubs, if you have access to a lot of spices, making your own is trivial.

My Infamous Farmers Market Slaw

What better, I ask you, with pulled pork than some really fresh cole slaw? I make a batch at the restaurant each day from hand-sliced vegetables from the market. Naturally, each day's slaw varies. I kept it simple at home. Our version was red and green cabbage, carrots, and a touch of celery. The dressing is nothing but plain granulated sugar and rice vinegar plus a sprinkle of Kosher salt. Right after brunch, I chopped and mixed the slaw and left it on the counter to work and soften until dinner.

We took our drinks out to the patio to enjoy the fall sunshine, but that lasted only about ten minutes before we threw in the towel and came back inside to watch movies. The temperature was really nice, 50ish, but the wind was screaming out of the northwest at 10-15 miles per hour, simply no fun at all. The wind put an end to my plan to go walk around the arboretum and enjoy the day outside. So we enjoyed ourselves inside instead.

Looks Like the Vultures Got This Pork Shoulder

I had no sooner taken the pork out of the oven than Ann had attacked it! We stood around the counter and rolled little burritos of pork and cole slaw. I also made a little dipping sauce for the pork: rice vinegar, salt, and a squirt of sriracha. This is a sauce typical of parts of Virginia and the Carolinas: no tomato, no sweet, and very thin. It's my kind of sauce, this so-called mopping sauce used for basting pig while it cooks, made without sugar to keep it from burning.

Chief Vulture in Charge

The wine star of our day was this bottle of Sonoma Coast Pinot from William Knuttel. It was just the right bottle at the right time and for us, had a perfect balance of fruit and acid with enough restraint and finesse to satisfy us both.

A Delightful Bottle

A great weekend, all in all. Starting with brunch and bloodies and finishing with pig and Pinot. What more could a person want?

J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works and Charleston WV

This past weekend, I took advantage of an invitation from Nancy Bruns of  J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, the restaurant's new salt supplier, to visit their facility and have dinner with them. They are situated in Malden WV, a suburb of Charleston, the WV state capital, a bit under a 5-hour drive from Winchester. To visit would require clearing my schedule on Monday and spending Sunday night in Charleston. But Ann and I needed some time away, just the two of us and even if it was not ideal spending 10 hours in a car, at least it was us-time with no dogs, kids, employees, or work to worry us.

About a month ago, I got a hotel room on the river in Charleston and asked Ann to clear her schedule, but never let her know where we were going or what we were doing. She was a good sport about it, mostly, though deep down some surprises make her a little uncomfortable: "What if I don't have the right clothes?"



Finishing Salt from J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works

Before leaving at about 10:45 on Sunday morning, I made some sandwiches for the road because I just can't stand fast food and eating while driving saves a lot of time. And because where are we going to find food better than I can make?

Building Sandwiches for our Road Trip to Charleston

Toasted focaccia topped with pesto, goat cheese, roasted red pepper, fresh tomatoes, and a Chianti-flavored salame from Volpi in St. Louis made wonderful sandwiches for our trip out. I made four sandwiches, two for each of us, out of half a loaf and Carter made a single sandwich out of the other half loaf and consumed it on the spot without so much as breaking a sweat. Teenagers!

Focaccia, Pesto, Goat Cheese, Tomato, Roasted Red Pepper, and Salame

I drove all the way to Charleston, so I couldn't take any pictures on our trip there, a real shame because the scenery was beautiful. We started with decent early fall color in Winchester which had faded by the time we exited I-81 for I-64 West in Lexington, two hours south of us. But that soon changed as we started to climb up from the Shenandoah Valley into the Allegheny Mountains and by the West Virginia border, the sugar maples were flaming and the Virginia creeper was a deep crimson. Even the hickories were starting to turn yellow, which they are not yet at home.

In all my days here in Virginia (and that is most of them), I have never been west of Lexington on what is now I-64/the West Virginia Turnpike. The scenery between the state line at Lewisburg all the way in to Charleston is phenomenal and it amazes me that there is a road at all traversing this rugged mountainous terrain. I have heard stories about people heading out west on old US-60; I imagine that I-64 shaves hours off that trip.

After winding through the mountains on I-77 from Beckley on, with one tight curve after another, it was a relief to hit the relatively flat and straight stretch along the Kanawha river leading the last few miles into Charleston. Driving the city portion of US-60, Kanawha Boulevard, along the river led us past huge mansions and the Capitol building in an almost deserted downtown. The streetscape along the river is well done and quite beautiful as you can see in the photo below.

We almost made it to the hotel without incident; however, we found the street barricaded right at our hotel with no access to the hotel from any direction. I finally drove past the barricades on the west side of the hotel and into the parking lot. The street was blocked for the annual car show, which is apparently a "big deal." You can see a couple of cars still in the street in the photo below, what looks to me like a mint-green T-bird and a candy apple red Chevelle Malibu rag-top, though my grasp of cars is pretty suspect. For most of the way from Beckley to Charleston, we were surrounded by about fifteen or so Virginia-plated new Corvettes. I guess they were coming to see the cars too, but the show was over and most were gone by the time we arrived around 3:45pm.

View from our Room: The Kanawha River

Just Below our Room in the Street

We brought a couple of bottles of Delaplane wines with us, a bottle of Williams Gap 2012 as a gift for our hosts and a bottle of Duet 2012 that we drank in the hotel room while winding down from the road and getting ready for our tour of the salt works and dinner.

We Took Some of Virginia's Finest to WV

I was excited to find a more-or-less local salt to use for finishing at the restaurant in place of the fleur de sel from France that we had been using. Nothing wrong with the French product, but I do like to keep our dollars as close to home as possible, and 9 out of 10 tasters preferred the JQD salt to the fleur when tasted blind. I found out about J. Q. Dickinson salt through the chef grapevine: a couple of chefs whose opinion I trust recommended it to me. So I ordered a pound of it and we tasted it blind against the other salts we had in house at the time. We were very impressed with the salt. Not only is it a lot more local than what we had been using, it tastes great too.

On arriving at the salt works on the grounds of a landscaping company about 10 minutes east of downtown along US-60 on the flats along the Kanawha River, we saw these very neat round stones. I have no idea what forces shaped them this way. By way of history, the Dickinson family started making salt on this property in 1817 and descendants Lewis Payne and Nancy Bruns, brother and sister, have revived the process on the family farm which is also home to another family business, the landscaping company.

How Cool are These Rocks?

Of course, to make salt from brine, one has to have brine and there are apparently large pockets of brine below the ground in this part of West Virginia, which in the mid-19th century was the leading producer of salt in the US. The brine for the current operation comes from a new well that extends 350 feet below ground. Brine is pumped into a large holding tank where it is aerated to oxidize the iron in the brine. The iron oxides settle to the bottom of the tank and the brine is taken off the top of the tank and flows by gravity to the concentrating beds in the adjacent greenhouse. As the sun concentrates the brine, impurities crystalize out.

Lewis Payne Describes Salt Crystallization to Ann; His Sister Nancy Bruns Looks on

Once the brine concentrates, it is removed to crystallizing beds in a separate greenhouse. In the photo above, you see Lewis explaining the process to Ann while Nancy looks on. The crystals you see are salt that have formed as more water evaporates. The concentrated brine is a super-saturated solution so any further evaporation will cause crystallization of salt.

Salt Rake; Beautiful Craftsmanship

Once the salt has crystallized, it is raked to the sides and allowed to drain. And then it dries for a prolonged period before being pulverized (if necessary), sifted, weighed, and packaged. The salt rakes, combs, and scoops that they use are all handmade locally and are true works of art.

High Tech Salt Drying Apparatus

Here you see the salt, wrapped in towels, drying before being packaged. After touring the salt works, I came away impressed by the amount of labor and passion that it takes to make, process, and package the salt.



Beautiful Retail Packaging

The retail packaging for the salt and the nigari is beautiful and simple with an earth-tone aesthetic. Nigari is a coagulant that is traditionally used to curd tofu and is the mineral-rich liquid left once the salt has precipitated out. I knew about its use in making tofu, but it never occurred to me to use it in making ricotta. I always make ricotta with vinegar or lemon juice, but Nancy made the ricotta for our dinner using her own nigari. Live and learn.

Ricotta and Hazelnut Crostini with Honey and Salt

The caterer had set out several plates of hors d'oeuvres including these crostini topped with the ricotta that Nancy had made, hazelnuts, honey, and a sprinkle of JQD salt for contrast.

At Dinner Outside the Salt-Works

After the tour, we dug in to a most delicious buffet of local foods from a local caterer. The quality of the food was fabulous.


Tomato Salad; Awesome Sweet Potatoes

Although the tomatoes were primo, it was the sweet potatoes that stole the show. They had a mild jalapeño dressing that made them spectacular.

Quinoa Salad

From talking to several attendees, all people in the trade and mostly foodies, I understand that quinoa is a grain that is being researched as a cash crop for West Virginia. It wasn't clear to me if the quinoa that we had was locally grown or not.

Swiss Chard in Beautiful Pottery Dish

This very simple salad of chiffonaded Swiss chard and a touch of ricotta was delicious. This chard is very young and very mild without any of the iron flavor that older chard gets.

Excellent Pulled Pork, Brioche Buns, Smooth Ambler BBQ Sauce

The star of the dinner was this pulled pork, which was as good as any pulled pork I have had in years. The brioche rolls that it was served with were absolutely delicious and made by a bakery in Charleston. The other accompaniments were cole slaw and a barbeque sauce made with Smooth Ambler Old Scout Bourbon from over in Lewisburg. The bourbon gave the tomato-based sauce a distinct vanilla and wood flavor that was great, but not on my pork, thank you. This pork was so good that it didn't want any sauce.

String Trio

We were entertained during dinner by this trio with the guy on the left alternating between his mandolin, his fiddle, and his banjo. That's some talent!

Kanawha River and Kanawha Boulevard by Night

After dinner, it was starting to get chilly so we headed back to the hotel in Charleston, which is as pretty by night as it is by day, maybe prettier. I'd like to say we slept well, but that would be distorting the truth. At first other patrons kept us up by making a ton of noise in the corridors and then the alarm clock in the unoccupied neighboring room went off at 12:15am and once again at 5:45am. At 5:45, we decided to throw in the towel and hit the road back. We got away about 6:20 and as we drove by the Capitol building, I couldn't believe that ours was the only vehicle on the road on a Monday workday. Can you imagine driving South Capitol Street in DC by yourself at 6:20 in the morning?

Anniversary Paella

In the restaurant business, we celebrate our personal milestones on days off. Work days are for helping others celebrate their milestones. I wish it weren't so, but it is the nature of my occupation. This past Sunday was the day closest to our actual anniversary and to celebrate we invited a dozen or fourteen friends over for tapas, paella, and a case of Tempranillo, which our friends, who are not shy about wine, promptly emptied!



Paella Mixta

We really had a beautiful day and I kicked the hardwood fire off about ten minutes to four in the fire pit out on our patio. At 4:30, I started the chicken, which was followed by the chorizos, the tiny Salvadoran ones called tuzas (gophers), and my mirepoix of red peppers, onions, and hard Spanish chorizo. After this, into the pan with a spoonful of pimentón and my picada (parsley and garlic). Then a gallon of mixed stock (chicken, pork, mussel, and saffron), right up to the bottom of the handle rivets.

Once the stock came to a boil, a kilo and a half of rice went into the pan at 5:00 and was done by 5:25 or so. After 15 minutes of resting under a couple of towels, we all dug in, scraping big hunks of the crunchy socarrat off the bottom of the paellera.

Rear to Front: Chicken Wings, Salvadoran Chorizos, Red Prawns, Mussels

I thought I had lucked out and got some amazing red prawns. They sure look good, but their texture was pasty and the flavor very fishy. Not again for me. They are a new product that I was checking out for my seafood company. No bueno.



Figs, Goat Cheese, Jamón

For starters for our guests while I was out back tending the fire and the paellera, I made two tapas: these halved figs topped with local goat cheese and wrapped in ham. And I threw together some sautéed onions and red peppers from the garden with some thyme and eggs for a tortilla. Finally, as Spaniards will often do for a quick tapa, we raided the pantry for some marinated olives, peppers, and lupini.

Mixed Olives, Peppers, and Lupini



Red Pepper and Onion Tortilla

For wine, I picked a really smooth Tinta de Toro crianza from Finca Sobreño. It's a ripe Tempranillo that tastes of darker fruit, blackberries and cassis, without a lot of aggressive wood and with tame tannins. A great party wine.

A Nice Tempranillo (Tinta de Toro)

Of Artichokes and Red Snapper

Yesterday was a gorgeous fall day with temperatures just into the 70s. We took advantage of the late afternoon weather to sit out on the patio and have a glass of Côtes de Gascogne Blanc, before heading inside. After Carter got home, I roasted red snapper topped with artichoke pesto for dinner and despite his protests, Carter wolfed down two huge pieces.

Red Snapper with Artichoke Pesto, Roasted Vegetables, and Saffron Aïoli

Enjoying a Glass of Côtes de Gascogne Blanc Before Dinner

Artichoke Pesto; Corno di Toro Peppers

After relaxing out on the patio, I threw together a quick artichoke pesto by spinning up artichokes, garlic, pine nuts, grated pecorino romano cheese, and extra virgin olive oil in the food processor. I left it pretty thick because I wanted to top the fish with it.

To a big roasting pan, I added a big handful of grape tomatoes, a couple scoops of olives with lupini beans, rings of Corno di Toro peppers from our garden, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic in chunks, some rosemary, and a splash of extra virgin olive oil. I moved all this to the sides of the roasting pan and put four nice pieces of red snapper in the middle of the pan. I spread artichoke pesto on top of the fish and into a very hot oven it went until the fish was cooked, about 20 minutes. I cranked up the broiler just to brown the top of the artichoke crust.

I served the fish sitting on top of a scoop of the roasted vegetables, with a dab of aïoli and a sprig of rosemary for garnish.

Meh. Give me Willamette Pinot Please.

Against my better judgment, I thought we would give California Pinot one more chance. And once again, I should have known better. There is nothing wrong with this Pinot and a lot of people will really love its big plush fruit and high alcohol, but for me, there was too much fruit, too much alcohol, and not enough acid. Bummer.

A Perfect Fall Sunday

We could not have asked for a better fall day here in the very northern tip of Virginia. The sun was shining most of the day with a few clouds from time to time and a rather nippy breeze out of the southwest. It felt good to put on a jacket for the first time since late spring and it felt even better to be able to sit outside on the patio and enjoy some precious time with Ann, while drinking a bottle of 2009 Linden Hardscrabble Red. I'm afraid this bottle was a little off: it was a bit disjointed with less fruit than usual, more woodiness, and coming off tart. Still, it's been a long time since we wanted to sit outside and drink red wine. Fall is our collective favorite season.

Fall Sunshine and Red Wine

Bread, Cheese, and Hard Chorizo: a Stellar Lunch

When I bought this little Camembert-like goat cheese at the farmers market on Saturday, I texted a picture of it to Ann, who replied, "I'll make a loaf of bread." And a loaf of bread she did make! This one was bacon-gorgonzola: awesome!

Casarecce, Pancetta e Salvia

For dinner, I made the pasta we have been trying to have for three weeks, with my very own pancetta and sage. This last batch of pancetta that I put up, I might have forgotten and left in the cure for at least three weeks rather than the usual week, and it has turned out to be the best pancetta I have ever cured. Delicious, but after months of strictly watching my carbs, extremely filling. Who would have thought that there would be leftovers from 500g of pasta after Ann, I, and Carter got done with it? That wouldn't have happened six months ago!

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.