Forecast: 100% Chance of Snow-Shoeing

Tuesday during the day we got seven inches of new powder by dark with another 6-10 inches predicted overnight. As we readied for bed, I told Ann excitedly there was zero percent chance that her gym would be open in the morning and 100% chance of our snowshoeing.

When we awoke in the morning, even before I got out of bed to look out the window, I read that schools had been cancelled for the day for the first time in a very, very long time. Out here in ski country, school just doesn't get cancelled for snow, so we must have got quite a bit. One glance out the window would confirm it: a winter wonderland!

Post coffee and after shoveling the sidewalk and driveway, I went into to the garage to retrieve our gear, gear that I had staged some weeks ago, pulling it out of its summer storage location in anticipation of our first big snowfall which in this dry El Niño year had so far eluded us. Then we went upstairs and started pulling on our layers for going out and doing active work at 23F with bluebird skies.

Base layers, check

Top layers, check
Sunglasses, check
Snow boots, check

Gaiters, check
Gloves, check
Snowshoes, check
Camera, check
Spare battery, oops!

Because this was our first time ever showshoeing, it took a few extra minutes to put our snowshoes on, having to become acclimated to the operation of the bindings. Naturally, we have different brands of snowshoes with very different bindings. We were all set to start snowshoeing last winter, but I broke my foot and had to have surgery, eliminating any outdoor activity for several months.

We set off down the gravel COID Road along the South Reach of the Deschutes River, the first snowshoers of the day. The only tracks on the trail were from a couple of cross country skiers, one of whom was our next door neighbor Mike whom we met as he was returning from his ski. How awesome is it to be the first person to leave tracks in the snow?

Red Osier Dogwood

Bluebird Skies!

Doug Fir

Ponderosa Pine

Scouler's Willow

Sadly, my chronic back pain has been acting up recently and shoveling all this snow has really exacerbated my condition. Two miles down the trail was about all the abuse it could take, despite the gorgeous surroundings. The pain and a very dead camera battery saw us turning around and heading back to the house. I staggered back probably five minutes after Ann got back.

Naturally, I didn't take all the pictures that I wanted as I underestimated the effect of 23F temperatures on my camera battery. Naturally, I walked out of the house forgetting to pick up the spare battery off the counter on the way out the door. Even warming the battery in an interior pocket did not help.

Also, probably as a result of my using gloves, I managed to get the camera into a weird bracketing mode that shot three photos and merged them into one HDR version, using up precious camera battery in so doing. I did not discover this until more than an hour into our walk. That's my single biggest beef with my Sony digital camera: my big hands find it so, so easy to inadvertently change the camera settings without any warning at all.

With apologies to MasterCard, making the first tracks in 15 inches of fresh powder: Priceless!

Paccheri Pie, Step-by-Step

Ann and I love pasta; it is one of our absolute favorite foods and our go-to any time that we want comfort food. At some point in the past year or so, Ann had spied a photo of paccheri baked in a springform pan and we resolved to make it during the holiday, ordering in paccheri, a cut that is not available locally here in the food desert that is Central Oregon.

Paccheri Pie

Paccheri, pronounced like "packery," is a pasta from the south of Italy, from Campania, the region whose capital is Naples, birthplace of Ann's biological parents. How fitting for her that we should be using this pasta! Paccheri is similar to a really fat and thick rigatoni, albeit not quite as long as rigatoni but much wider in diameter with thicker walls.

Specifically, we bought paccheri lisce, the smooth version (as opposed to rigati, "ridged" or millerighe, "thousand ridged") from a new-to-me pasta maker called Marulo. Marulo hails from the Torre Annuziata neighborhood of Naples, situated right at Pompei.

This pasta is wickedly expensive, running about $13 for 500g at retail; wholesale is about half of this, but I no longer need wholesale quantities of anything to feed the two of us. However, it may be the best quality commercial dried pasta that I have ever eaten and for a special occasion, worth every penny.

As an aside, how can a leading brand of pasta in Italy be that crap that Barilla makes? Granted, Barilla in the States is made in the States, and Barilla in Italy is made in Italy, but still...I guess there is no accounting for taste in either country.

One reason that I love paccheri so much is that I love pasta with bite–keep your wimpy capelli d'angelo and the like. Give me a thick toothy pasta any day. Ditto for Ann.

Paccheri is new to us at home, but I used to cook it from time-to-time at the restaurant, but rarely and mainly for staff meals. We were never trying to compete with our good friends at the neighboring Italian restaurant. (But, hey, they're northerners and what do they know about paccheri, eh?). So, can I help it if one of our best selling entrees in the final couple of years was triofe al pesto with pulled beef shortrib, my homage to Liguria? Or that we made gnocchi damn near every day?

We planned to make our paccheri pie for friends in the week between Christmas and New Year's, but that plan evaporated on account of illness. Instead, Ann and I assembled and baked the pie on New Year's Eve just for the two of us, after our plans to celebrate New Year's Eve with Rob and Dyce also went up in smoke, again because of illness.

Following is a recipe for enough beef ragù and ingredients to make at 25cm (nominally 10") springform pan of paccheri, sufficient to feed 6-8 people.

Beef Ragù

Making beef ragù is a labor of love. The preparation is simple, but it takes time. In this case, the sauce took roughly eight and a half hours, but only 30 minutes of that was active preparation and searing. The other eight hours saw the ragù cook slowly on the stovetop until the meat fell apart. This is a perfect dish to put in a slow cooker and forget. If you do use a slow cooker, you'll need to remove the lid in the last hour or two of cooking to reduce the liquid in the sauce.

For beef, I used flatiron from the chuck, a cut that will take longer to fall apart than others, but whose flavor is unmatched. Besides chuck, you can use any flavorful braising cut that you like such as short ribs, shank, or neck. I wanted to use short ribs, but they're almost impossible to find here in town.

You're probably best served by making the ragù a day or two in advance of cooking the paccheri pie, especially because it is easier to stuff the paccheri with stiff, cold sauce rather than loose, liquid sauce.

As for any sauce that is going to reduce, season the sauce after it has reduced so that you do not oversalt it. Cook until the sauce is very thick; you really do not want a lot of liquid to leak out of the paccheri pie while it is baking.

The following recipe yields about two liters of sauce.

3 pounds beef shoulder, shank, short ribs, or other braising cut, in 1-inch cubes
4 ounces guanciale, diced
1 large onion, finely diced
1 large carrot, finely diced
1 large stalk celery, finely diced
4 large cloves garlic, finely minced
1 sprig rosemary
1 tablespoon dried basil
8 fluid ounces (1 cup) dry red wine
8 fluid ounces (1 cup) milk, cream, or half and half

1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes with their juice
salt to taste

Debone and Dice Beef into 1"/2.5cm Cubes

Working in Batches, Brown the Beef and the Guanciale

Browned Beef and Guanciale

Mise en Place: Onion, Celery, Carrot, Garlic, Guanciale, Rosemary

Sweat the Vegetables in the Pan After Meat is Browned
Add Basil, Garlic, and Rosemary; Scrape All Brown Bits from Pan

Deglaze Vegetables with Red Wine;
Add Meat, Tomatoes, and Milk;
Scrape Any Brown Bits off the Bottom of the Pan

Cook at a Simmer Until Beef Shreds Easily and Sauce is Thick;
Add Water as Necessary and Stir as Needed

Paccheri Pie

The assembly of the paccheri pie is easy. You'll need a 25cm (10") springform pan and a sheet tray to catch any sauce that leaks out while baking. Par-cook the paccheri in boiling salted water until just about done. These cooked for about 18 minutes and would have taken about 20 to be fully al dente and ready to eat. Stand the pasta on end in the cheese-coated mold and stuff them with sauce.

You'll find that cold sauce works better than warm sauce and that your fingers are the best tool for stuffing the pasta. Spread a layer of cheese over the top. Don't be shy with the cheese; it is the glue that holds the pie together. Bake in a moderate oven (350F) until nicely browned.

After the pie bakes, let it cool for a few minutes before running a spatula around the edges and unmolding it. A pie this size will feed six easily and eight with a substantial side dish.

500g paccheri

pan spray or olive oil

1/2 cup grated pecorino

2 liters beef ragù

8 ounces (250g) grated mozzarella

Paccheri Lisce, Boil in Salted Water Until Almost Done

Coat the Springform with Oil or Pan Spray and Grated Cheese

Arrange Par-Cooked Paccheri in the Mold

Stuff the Paccheri Tightly with Sauce

Cover the Top with Grated Mozzarella

Ready to Bake

Bake in a Moderate Oven Until Well Browned, About an Hour

This paccheri pie turned out to be a really fun dish to make and to eat and it seems like a great dish for company in that you can make it in advance and throw it in the oven at the last minute so that it can cook while you are mingling with your guests.

Christmas 2023: The Word is "Subdued"

You know what? Colds suck.

Sometimes in life, all your plans end up for naught, what in the software business we used to call "overcome by events." This holiday season was such a time in our lives for Annie and me. We had all kinds of plans to celebrate with friends, to make some great food, and to open some really nice bottles of wine, not much of which happened.

Three days before Christmas, Ann started dragging and it just got worse. By Christmas Eve, she had a full-blown cold which took until the 30th to wear off, just in time to celebrate New Year's Eve with Rob and Dyce. New Year's Eve day, Dyce called to say that on the heels of their trip to Italy, he'd been sick and now Rob was down with it. So much for New Year's Eve; we pushed our celebration out to the first weekend in January, this coming weekend. 

Ann planned to make a lot of different cookies to share with friends and neighbors, especially the lovely kids next door. She ended up only making one kind and I ended up baking them while she went to shower to try to make herself feel better. I spent an entire day making a beef ragù to stuff into paccheri pasta for a gathering at our house. We canceled that and the ragù sits in the refrigerator still. Christmas Eve, we were going to friends' house for smoked brisket and I was going to make a casserole of pommes dauphinois; we begged off.

Christmas Day, we were going to make a batch of some sort of Calabrese rolled pasta such as fileja with a spicy 'nduja sauce. That didn't happen either. Just after Christmas, we were going to Yakima to see an old friend and spend the night exploring the beer of the Yakima Valley. I ended up going by myself, fighting horrible fog both ways, jamming the trip into a single day.

We had planned to pour some nice bottles for our holiday meals; they sit untouched in the cooler.

How does the old saying go? "Man plans and Fate laughs." Truth.

Here's what we did manage to accomplish for the holidays in spite of illness.

What Ann Calls "Monster Cookies," for the Neighbor Kids

Putting a Brave Face on Feeling Miserable

Christmas Eve, we had no plans to dine at home, having been invited for brisket at our friends' house. We canceled first thing that morning, not wanting to infect anyone else. Still, Ann was trying to make herself feel better and asked me if I would get a loaf of bread and a La Tur cheese, then roast the piece of lamb shoulder that I had in the freezer. I obliged, but it just wasn't the same, the way she was feeling.

La Tur Cheese

Roasted Local Lamb Shoulder
Served with Red Wine-Whole Grain Mustard Sauce

Usually, I plan a nice brunch dish for Christmas Day, but with Ann not feeling well, I assumed breakfast was off. Later on in the day, she asked me for some eggs, so I made some creamy eggs with bacon, green onions, and Brie, stirred fairly constantly to make them medium-curd, an intermediate between the large curds that I normally do and the tiny curds of oeufs brouillés that I make every so often. These eggs were right sexy.

French Scramble with Bacon, Green Onions, and Brie

Fortunately, we got our tree the second week of December and had plenty of time to decorate it before Ann fell ill. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have bothered. We have retired all the old ornaments and are starting over with a food and drink-themed tree. If you enlarge the photo below, you can see that all of the garland is made from beads and wine corks, thanks to many years of effort by great friend Donald.

Don't You Have a Garlic Ornament on Your Tree?

Home Sweet Home!

Christmas Day, Ann and I had planned to make a spicy batch of homemade pasta for which I had ordered some 'nduja, that spicy spreadable salame from Calabria. I had given up on making dinner, just planning to graze out of the refrigerator, but late in the afternoon, Ann asked if I would make a simple, non-spicy pasta for us for dinner. And, so I obliged her with the simplest pasta I know, amatriciana, with only three ingredients: guanciale, tomato passata, and salt.

Rendering Guanciale for Amatriciana Sauce

Spicy 'Nduja, Left for Another Occasion

Did a Rat Take a Bite out of the Pecorino?
No, That's a Clear Sign that Ann Was in the Cheese

Penne Amatriciana

Delicious Sancerre Rouge

We didn't open any of the really good bottles for the holidays, but with our amatriciana, we did open a fairly obscure red Sancerre which was delicious and stylistically very different from our Oregon Pinots, the relatively big tannins and high acid working well with the pasta sauce.

So for our holidays in 2023, things just didn't go as planned. But that is life. Nothing is ever perfect and all you can do is play the hand you are dealt the best that you are able. I think Ann and I did a pretty good job making the best of our marginal hand, even if things were subdued. I'm just sorry that she felt so rotten the entire time.