A Visit from Home

A very long time ago, in grade school back in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, I played on the school soccer team for a couple of years with my buddy Chris. We both lived a very long way out in the county (and at that time, country) and were destined the following year (tenth grade) to attend Albemarle County High School, located on the outskirts of town, a 45-minute bus ride for me.

The student population was overflowing the high school, so the County built a new school much closer to Chris' house than to mine. The County then had to divide the students between the two schools. Chris was a lock-in to attend the new Western Albemarle High School. My situation was up in the air for some months: the dividing line would be right next to my house, one side or the other. Ultimately, the County decided that I would stay at the old high school. 

Had I lived another couple hundred yards down my country road, Chris and I would be be both headed for the new school. But fate would not have it so. The issue quickly became moot however, because at the end of my ninth grade year, just before the high school split, my father took a job in Alabama. Adios Virginia and all my friends.

Fast forward three years later, when I headed back to Charlottesville from Alabama to attend the University of Virginia. Who would be in my dorm but Chris? How crazy that we should both select the same college and be assigned, out of 20 or so freshman dorms, to the very same one! College being what it is, after first year, we developed different interests and went different ways.

Now add another 30 years or so to the tally and you find me in my restaurant in Winchester, Virginia. A customer of mine approached me about a friend of hers who made chicken pot pies to sell and who needed a commercial kitchen in which to make them so as not to fall afoul of the Health Department. My customer asked if her friend, Perrin, might rent my kitchen on Sundays when I was closed.

We set up a meeting between Perrin and me and I was already working at my desk on some paperwork when I heard the front door chime. Perrin walked in, introduced herself in her over-the-top ebullient manner, and said that her husband Chris would be coming in.

In walks this guy, totally backlit in the doorway with the dining room lights off. But something feels very familiar about him. He walked into the light and I looked at him and he looked at me and boom! Chris and I were together again. And it turned out that he and Perrin lived not five houses away from mine, not that I would know it, working all day and all night every day at the restaurant.

Perrin ended up renting the kitchen for a short while and then I ended up hiring her and one of her great friends, my next door neighbor Shawn, as lunch line cooks. Some time after that ran its course, Perrin and Chris decided it was time for a change and moved to Whitefish, Montana. They became friends there with Robert, my next door neighbor from grad school at Texas A&M. Clearly you can tell that this is a story about intersecting lives and fate.

After Whitefish, Chris and Perrin moved on to Portland for better employment opportunities for Chris, a school teacher. Then I retired from the restaurant business and decided to get into the wine business, as a pretty easy transition from the restaurant. After surveying the wine producing areas of the US, Ann and I decided on the Willamette Valley in Oregon where we currently live, about thirty miles south of where Chris and Perrin live.

Although Ann spent a decade in Winchester, she never got the chance to meet Chris and Perrin before they relocated west. But Ann and Perrin did manage to hit it off on the telephone. The two of them are very alike, two peas in the proverbial pod. In terms of outgoing personality, they could be sisters. Chris and I are much more reserved and let our wives handle the communication and planning.

Now that we are all four living in Oregon, we see each other when we can, which has been impossible during COVID, but is easing up now that Ann and I are retired.

Living in wine country, we get lots of tourists from all over coming to sample our world-class wines. Everybody wants to visit us and coming to wine country provides a great excuse for Perrin, Shawn, and I, old neighbors and colleagues, to get together and relive the old days. And drink a bunch of great Pinot Noir!

In July of this year, with COVID loosening its grip on the country and air travel, Perrin planned a girls' vacation for several of her friends from back home Winchester, the town where I lived for 25 years and in which my two daughters were born. Naturally, the girls planned to rendezvous with us in wine country where we would taste some wine, then head back to our house for more of the same and some munchies.

Maysara Winery Tasting Room Entrance

They left the choice of wineries up to Ann and me. Given that they were coming to wine country on a Monday, many wineries were closed. Add to this that many wineries are short-staffed because of COVID and even more wineries than normal were closed on Monday. Fortunately, we have hundreds of wineries within a short drive of the house.

We chose to visit Maysara Winery. They always do a nice job with their tastings and are a good introduction to Willamette Valley Pinot Noir for visitors. And they are located in a picturesque hollow between lots of hills, many planted to vines, others allowed to be what they have been for a very long time, a wildlife haven of Oregon White Oak savannah.

Maysara Tasting Room

The Weather Was Gorgeous

Shawn, Ann, Perrin, Catherine, Bridget, and Kelly

A Charcuterie Board

Perrin and Ann, Two Peas in a Pod

On the Patio in the Shade of Corkscrew Willows

Wild Turkeys at Maysara

After our tasting and catching up for a couple of lazy hours while sitting under the trees on a beautiful day, we went inside to buy some wine and have some shipped back to Virginia. And then we headed the 20 minutes back to our house in McMinnville to drink more wine and eat some munchies out on the front patio.

Dips: Artichoke Tapenade, Piquillo-White Bean, and Black Bean

After getting out of the restaurant business, I have finally figured out that it is way more important to me to spend time with my guests rather than to spend all my time in the kitchen cooking for them. What good is it if people come to visit you and you're stuck in the kitchen the whole time?

Accordingly, the day before, I made three different dips that we served with pita and tortilla chips. I put them out on the counter before we left for Maysara so that they would be at room temperature when we returned. They weren't high cuisine, but they were just what the doctor ordered for an informal afternoon gathering on the porch.

Charlie Took Right to Kelly

It was really great to catch up with everyone from back home and to show off to them our fantastic Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.

Cold Dish for a Hot Day

Ahi Tataki on Salad of Sugar Snaps, Tomatoes, and Corn

What to eat on a very hot day? Something cold and fresh. This salad really hit the spot and represents everything I have learned as a chef about simplicity and letting ingredients shine.

I knew I hit the mark when Ann asked the question on eating the salad, "What did you do to this?" I replied "Nothing." When you have ingredients this fresh and high quality, you don't have to do a thing. Learning this lesson has taken decades.

A new trick for an old chef. I have learned (perhaps re-learned) this summer that if you put a quick blister on sugar snaps, you can coax the peas into a deliciousness that tops even their totally raw state. Very many sugar snaps have never even made it home this spring from the farmers market, having been snacked by Ann and me on the walk home. That's how delicious they are totally raw.

To make them even better, I heat a pan over blazing heat, generally on the grill outside. Just as I'm ready to cook, a touch of oil (in this case, sesame) goes into the pan, and then the peas go in to sit for a few seconds to char the pods a bit, and then are tossed with a sprinkle of salt until the pods go from raw green to bright green all over, a minute or so. The result is still nearly raw (certainly the peas inside the pods remain raw) and beguilingly delicious.

The salad in the photo above adds halved small tomatoes and raw shaved corn. On top of this are slices of tuna that I seared in the cast iron pan after the peas came out. A sprinkle of really good salt finishes the dish. Sublime.

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.

A Day to Remember

I never imagined that we might see temperatures like this in the Willamette Valley, where our average high for June 28 is about 75 degrees.

It was almost as bad yesterday during the Garden Tour. Our house was on the tour and I was outside all morning, with temperatures well above 100, reaching 110 by the time we quit, and topping out at 112 for the day.

Overnight, the low only dropped to 75, our usual high, a record high overnight low, and it was over 100 well before noon, topping out at 115 about 3:30 this afternoon. Fortunately, a cold front came through and it dropped 20 degrees in about 30 minutes later on.

So many of our plants suffered so much damage, despite my irrigating heavily in the days leading up to and during this heat wave. I hope we never see these temperatures again.

Redoing the Kitchen

Our kitchen as we bought it from the builder had a large blank space in its center, a perfect place for an island workspace. We had decided a couple years ago to build a rustic worktable for this space, but only lately have we had the time and money to bite off that project.

Building this worktable and the accompanying pot rack is the first step in redoing the kitchen. The next stage will see a new hood replacing the stupid microwave directly in my face obscuring my view of the range. And then we're talking about ripping out most of the upper cabinets and replacing them with more rustic open shelves.

Worktable and Pot Rack

As a retired restaurant chef, working in an efficient kitchen matters to me and the kitchen wasn't really working for me. My prep space was in the wrong place for easy access to the refrigerator and to the range. This worktable solves that problem beautifully and the kitchen works so much better now.

Even though the island worktable looks like it belongs here naturally, having it take so much space in the kitchen was a massive change visually, aesthetically, and functionally. To make sure that we were OK with the workflow, we mocked up the island first with cardboard, then with the actual table top perched atop large cardboard boxes. After a couple of weeks, it felt good and natural, despite being extremely awkward at first.

I violated every rule in the kitchen design book with the walkways in this kitchen. All the so-called experts will tell you that you need 36" aisles at a minimum for a single-cook kitchen and 42-48" for multi-cook kitchens. Well, I found out that was horseshit when I designed my last home kitchen with 48" aisles. At my restaurant, we moved the plating line around until we found the optimum width from the hot line and that was 30 inches, even with three cooks.

That narrow width made it easy to work at both the hot line and on the plating line efficiently. At home, my 48" walkways felt decidedly huge and terribly inefficient. Thanks, so-called "experts!"

In our present kitchen, the side walkways are 30.5" and the distance between the prep surface and the range is 32".  These narrower aisles work so much more efficiently, even with the two of us in the kitchen.

Raw Parts from an Architectural Salvage Store

First Order of Business: a Good Pressure Washing

Pot Rack: Pipe Fittings and Recycled Parts

The pot rack is recycled Douglas Fir, one-inch pipe fittings, Victorian hinges on the corners for decoration, and hand-forged iron drawer pulls for the pot hangers.

Building the Table

The table is made from four newel posts and Douglas fir rails and shelves. Because the newel posts were hand-turned, they are not totally identical and so the side rails attached at slightly different points to keep the shelf level with the floor. The rails are true 2"x4" and the shelving is true 1" stock, with the exception of the center shelf board, which is 7/8" shimmed to be flush.

Shelf Rails and Cross Support Installed

Recycled Door Casing Apron and Shelf Installed

Table Top Perched on the Base

The tabletop at 36.5" wide will not fit through our doors, so Ann and I brought the base and the top into the house separately and then I fastened the top to the base using large screws in slots in case things shift around with our winter humidity (which we know will happen). The top is recycled Douglas fir barn boards (1-3/4" thick after planing the bottom side), glued up, and finished with tung oil.

Likewise, all the raw fir is rubbed with tung oil. The only other finish is a transparent gray wash on the legs, rubbed off in a good many places to preserve the rustic look.

Something Old, Something New

From earlier in the spring, a couple of dishes celebrating the first asparagus of the year and the final butternut squash from winter storage, "Something Old, Something New."

The first dish took full advantage of a rare sunny spring day to grill both the asparagus and the butternut squash, giving them a nice char that works against the sweetness of the scallops. Garnishes are a quick sweet chile sauce and Korean chile threads known as sil-gochu.

Scallops with Grilled Asparagus, Grilled Butternut, Sweet Chile Sauce, and Chile Threads

Grilling the Veg

Black Steel Gives a Perfect Sear Every Time

Sweet Chile Sauce (Agave, Sambal, Salt)

The second dish came on the following night when the weather turned back to its usual rainy springtime norm, making us want something warm and comforting, the genesis of the butternut lentils, a batch of brown lentils cooked with cubes of the bell of the butternut, the leftover bits that I couldn't slice for the grill the evening before. The salad is shaved raw asparagus dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.

King Salmon, Butternut Lentils, and Shaved Asparagus Salad

Halibut Cheeks and Asparagus alla Piccata

Just getting around now, on the first rainy day in ages, to posting some photos from the spring. Been super busy working on remodeling the kitchen and getting the gardens in shape for the summer. There are just too many temptations in good weather, such as walks downtown to grab a hazy IPA, to want to sit inside in the office and post to the blog.

Halibut Cheeks and Asparagus alla Piccata

This was a celebration of the very first asparagus of the year and the re-opening of halibut season. Just a simple dredge of Wondra on the halibut cheeks and then a pan sauce of lemon juice, white wine, shallots, and capers. Simplicity at its best, which is all that premium quality fish needs or deserves.