Hoping for Wild Flowers in Happy Valley

One of my goals is to get up to Happy Valley, four miles above Tumalo Falls, to witness the gorgeous wildflower bloom. It's quite amazing to see acres and acres of purple shooting stars and yellow cinquefoils. Throw in glorious white marsh marigolds along the edges of the creeks and swampy areas and you have quite the tableau.

Timing the peak wildflower bloom is always a crapshoot: two years ago, the last week of June was too late and last year, it was almost perfect. I haven't been able to find out good information about the condition of the trail, so I set out to find out for myself. Even though it is very early, I'm itching to get up there and shoot some pictures. Worst case, I figured, is that it would be a pleasant mosquito-free walk. By the end of the month, the little terrorists will be out in man-eating swarms, the downside of the main wildflower bloom.

Tumalo Falls, Raging with Meltwater

The weather forecast in Bend was a sunny 71, though it was only about 63 in full sun when I left the house at 9am. As soon as I turned west on Skyliners, I saw dark gray clouds massed over the mountains and those clouds were coming towards me. It was impossible at any point to see any peaks. Halfway out Skyliners, I started running through wet patches on the road from showers that I had just missed.

Moreover, as I climbed from 4000 feet in town to 5000 feet at the foot of Tumalo Falls, the thermometer continued to drop. With the sun long forgotten, it was a misty and rainy 47 when I got my truck parked just over the bridge, pointed back in the direction of town. That's the best parking spot at Tumalo in my opinion because you don't have to fool around with navigating the tiny and crowded parking lot as you are leaving.

Long story short, I would not see the sun all morning and while it was misty, real showers were infrequent and short. The bigger issue in staying dry was to make sure to shake the water off the brush before I walked through it. I was comfortable walking in shorts and it would warm to 53 degrees by the time I returned off the mountain.

For perspective, let us say that the parking lot sits at 5000 feet and four miles up the mountain, Happy Valley sits at 6100 feet, give or take. The log bridge that marks the halfway point is about 5600 feet. The snow started around 5300 feet and it was possible to fairly easily navigate it and the deadfall to about 5500 feet. At 5500 feet, I pushed on to nearly the log bridge before I ran out of defined track and was mainly breaking trail through the snow. I turned around at 5600 feet after a quarter mile of slogging through solid snow, just before the halfway point.

There were no wildflowers above the main falls. After the snow cut my hike short, I decided to nose around below the parking lot to see what was in bloom there on along the creek. The following photos are in the order that I shot them. While it wasn't a great day weatherwise, any day on the trail beats a day banging on a keyboard.

A Misty Rainy Day

Raindrops on Woodland Strawberry, Fragaria vesca

Littleleaf Huckleberry, Vaccinium scoparium
Tiny, a Dozen Blooms Will Fit on a Dime

Handsome Sticky Currant Foliage, Ribes viscosissimum

Alpine Jelly Cone, Guepiniopsis alpina

Endangered Whitebark Pine, Pinus albicaulis
The Lowest I Have Ever Seen at 5320 Feet

Grand Old Ponderosa, Pinus ponderosa, on Tumalo Canyon;
Oddity in a Forest of Doug Fir, True Fir, Spruce, and Mountain Hemlock

Prince's Pine, Chimaphila umbellata, with Last Year's Seed Pods

Oregon Boxleaf, Paxistima myrsinites, in Bloom

Wide Spot with Engelmann Spruce, Picea engelmannii

A Little Greenleaf Manzanita, Arctostaphylos patula, Still in Bloom
Pinemat Manzanita Not Yet Blooming

Anemone Closed Against the Rain, But A. lyallii or A. deltoideum?
My Gut Says Lyall's but You Must Count Stamens

A Jacob's Ladder, Polemonium sp.
Thousands of Plants, but Only One in Bloom

One Final Oregon Grape in Bloom, Berberis aquifolium

Sticky Currants Blooming Everywhere, Ribes viscosissimum

First Paintbrush of the Year, Castilleja sp.
We Have 26 Species of Paintbrush Here

I Love the Interplay of the Green Leaves and Dead Wood
Plumed or False Solomon's Seal, Maianthemum racemosum

Woodland Strawberry, Fragaria vesca

First Asterid of the Season
I Want to Say Senecio triangularis

A Yellow Stream Violet, Viola glabella

Last of the Western Serviceberry in Bloom, Amelanchier alnifolia

A New Plant for Me
Northern Black Currant, Ribes hudsonianum

Even though I was a couple weeks, at least, early in trying to climb to Happy Valley, and despite the somewhat Willamette Valley-style gray and rainy weather, I still had a great mosquito-free walk. I'll try again in a couple of weeks.

Playing with Pizza

Pizzas around here in Central Oregon are expensive and, with a couple of notable exceptions, not worth trying. This is a shame because we love a great pizza. Ever since we got invited to a party where they had a gas-fired outdoor pizza oven and we fired our own pies, a little voice has been nagging in the back our minds.

Amatriciana-Style Pizza with Arugula and Olive Oil

That little voice has been saying, "If pizzas are such junk, make your own." And why not? I'm a (retired) chef, I can handle dough and a peel, and I have always been able to hack together an acceptable pie at any time. But why not put in the time and testing to really put out a great pie?

This is the year that we have decided to get serious about pizza: Ann ordered a new natural gas-fired Ooni pizza oven a couple weeks back and it has finally arrived. After two trips to the hardware store for fittings, I got it plumbed into the gas line that also supplies the fire pit out on our patio. 

Saturday, I fired it up and let all the oils burn out of it in preparation for its maiden voyage. That morning, I also made a batch of dough for an 8-hour ferment for our first run. I think I prefer a longer ferment, but I was also itching to try the oven out that day, rather than wait for an overnight ferment to complete.

The test batch was a safe 60% hydration/3% salt version made with Caputo 00 flour with the aim to make four 250g balls. The results were better than just about any pie here in Bend, but not where we are aiming. We're not looking for acceptable; we're looking for professional quality. It's going to take a lot of experimentation to determine what works the best with the flour we have available here, this oven, and our elevation. Honestly, I do not know how high elevation messes with pizza.

1000g of Dough

Four 245g Dough Balls, Ready to Proof

Proofed and Ready to Go

First Pie: Pesto, Mozzarella, Pecorino, Fresh Basil

Rosé on the Patio Waiting for Oven to Heat

First Pie!

First Pie: I Didn't Rotate it Quickly Enough

Lessons learned on day one. The crust was a bit doughy and I believe that this is a combination of too hot an oven coupled with insufficient hydration. In my mind, I have been toying with a hydration approaching 70% but I thought I'd start with a foolproof 60% which is easy to work until I hone my dough handling skills. Obviously, I need to rotate the pie a little quicker which is merely a function of being able to determine the crust color in the dark interior of the oven. And finally, 250g is the perfect size pie for us.

So for day two of testing, I decided to make another batch of dough at 65% hydration. I rejiggered my recipe accordingly and made the new batch, also a kilogram and also using Caputo 00. The idea was to do an A-B test with one pie from the new 65% batch and an 8-hour fermentation against a leftover dough ball at 60% which had re-proofed in the refrigerator for another 24 hours. Not exactly modifying a single variable, but illustrative nonetheless. Ann would be tasting blind, but I would know which pie was which.

For these pies, we decided to do an Amatriciana-style pie using Sicilian estratto di pomodoro (world's sexiest tomato paste) thinned with water and a little grease from rendering guanciale as the sauce. Then I would put some of the rendered guanciale and mozzarella on top of that.

Rendering Guanciale

Left: 60% Overnight Ferment, Right: 65% Same Day Ferment

After tasting both pies, we both had definite opinions and as it turns out, we agreed. For this test, I dialed the oven back to about 7/8 of its maximum heat to give the crust just a few seconds longer to cook. We both liked the texture of the 65% hydration dough better, so now we will move on to something higher, perhaps 67%. I am still not happy with the black charring on top of that pie though; it may be I need to cook it slightly less. Or this may have happened when I elevated the pie on the peel to quickly finish an area that looked undercooked. Time and experience will sort this out.

Pesto and Sun-Dried Tomato Pies on Day Three
Left 60% Ferment, 48-Hour Proof; Right: 65% Ferment, 24-Hour Proof

On day three, I did not make any new dough and tested one of the original 60% dough balls from two days prior against one of the 65% balls from the day before. Again, we preferred the crust of the 65% pie; however, after all this time in the refrigerator, it seems the flavor of the original 60% dough was starting to gain some character.

This is going to be a many-week process of refining the recipe. Next up, I'm going to switch flour and go back to the flour that I always used at the restaurant, King Arthur Sir Galahad. While in the minority, one of my favorite pizza joints uses this flour to great effect and if I can achieve the same thing, King Arthur is way cheaper and way more available in this part of the world.

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.