I’ve always been a fan, especially in colder months, of keeping a pot of soup going day after day by adding leftovers or new ingredients to it every day or two (reheating it fully every time) so that it remains a work in progress- hitting certain plateaus of completeness but then undergoing slight or radical changes based on the nature of what gets added and subtracted. This particular version had its genesis back in the…
Year: 2006
3 couples came to dinner the night before my birthday, so I bought a bunch of good things and figured out how to put them together. I knew I wanted slow-cooked lamb shoulder, so that morning I put a 4-pound beauty into a big pot with the usual aromatics plus lemon, cumin, kombu, dried porcini, wine, soy, and vinegar and, once bubbling, put it in the oven for about 8 hours at 225˚. Then I…
An unbelievably beautiful day today; I spent some of it moving rhododendrons to make room for the garden, which is tilled and awaiting a fence. I went shoppping too, to get things for tomorrow’s dinner, and I picked up some wild salmon among other things. Crusted with sesame seeds, and seared, it sat on mashed sweet potatoes and kale sautéed with a bit of pancetta and garlic. Just right for the cool evening; the richness…
Tonight, in honor of the rain, good hearty fare that hit all those exalted kid-food notes while still being refined and healthy. Instead of breading and frying the slices, I usually bake them with a little oil and salt, or sautée them so they’re soft. Grilled is best, because then you get the amazing alchemy that fire works on eggplant combined with the whole bubbly cheese and tomato sauce context, but the rain tonight precluded…
We’ve been enjoying the combination of cauliflower and tofu in a coconut-based curry, so I revisited it, but this time the sauce had the rest of the kabocha and gravy added to thicken and deepen it. Broccoli, peas, and a nice mix of seeds and pastes rounded out the flavors. It’s important to let this kind of thing simmer a bit to really reduce and marry the flavors; it also greatly benefits from having the…
Sort of Moroccan, with a Southern twist: a whole chicken slowly stewed with lemons, olives, cumin, ras el hanout, onion, celery, carrot, sweet potatoes and herbs until it was falling-apart tender, then all solids removed to bowl & board while the liquid thickened with some flour to make a fantastic gravy. Meanwhile baby spinach wilted with garlic and more lemon, and gave a nice tangy counterpoint to the rich sauce. A Pleiades XIV couldn’t have…
Noah and Deanna came up for a night, so we had crispy tofu in a pungent peanut sauce (PB, sesame oil, vinegar, lime, umeboshi paste) as well as faux BBQ tempeh (molasses, ketchup, tamarind, vinegars, hot sauce) rice, roasted kabocha, and the last of the red cabbage from rib night. We drank a 2003 Turley Keig vineyard zin and a 2003 Siduri 2003 Sonatera vineyard pinot noir.
Cooked slow, until they fell off the bone, with onion, celery root, carrot, riesling, cumin, shiitakes, garlic and herbs, and served over quinoa. Chris made an amazing salad from their garden, and cooked Richard and Susan’s black radishes in sake and soy until they were perfectly tender. We started by finishing the riesling, then had a 2002 Marquis Philips cabernet S2.
The paella rice (after having been made into maki for lunch the next day) now became supplì, or arancini, with bacon and mozzarella inside and corn meal outside since we had no bread crumbs. A very simple tomato sauce, salad, and Susana Balbo’s Syrah/Bonardo blend. Comfort food for the fall.
For the second night of their stay we made paella. 5 kinds of sausage from Fleisher’s (one each of what they had) plus scallops and clams, plus chicken legs, all in arborio rice with saffron and a broth made from earlier chicken bones and carrots, celery root, onion, and parsley. I browned the chicken, sausage, and scallops in the same pan, using their rendered fat, then threw in the onion and rice to start the…