Month: July 2009

July 29, 2009

Would you rather drink white wine that exhibits characteristics of a) apples or b) milk? Good God. Update: This comes on the heels of drinking a 2003 Treana Marsanne/Viognier blend (66%/34%) on the recommendation of someone in a local wine store I like. I loves me a Rhône white, so I asked her how “California” it was. She said “Oh, not at all- lots of minerals.” And it was on sale, for around $20, so…

July 27, 2009

On Saturday we piled in the car- along with Oren, who took the bus up from the city- and headed to the Berkshires for Richard’s 60th birthday party. It was every bit the party we all knew it would be, and we all brought something since it was a surprise; Susan could not have made anything ahead of time without giving it away. This is a real shame, considering that they have the most unbelievable…

July 23, 2009

So that pork belly from the market? Well it came in roughly 1lb. hunks (skin on, bless them) so I figured I’d try a couple of different cures in the interest of advancing human knowledge in the cutting edge field of Bacon Science™. One got a pretty traditional cure, but with coffee and chili powder, and the other got a goodly slather with a paste made from yellow miso, yuzu miso, mashed ume plum, yuzu…

July 23, 2009

Every Wednesday we have the Farmers’ Market in town, and it’s one of the best things to happen here in a while (this is the second year). There’s music, and a flea market in the adjacent field, and prepared food as well as the usual produce, cheese, bread, meat, and wine. There are cooking classes for kids, and the weather has actually been pretty good on most of the recent days. It’s always fun to…

July 21, 2009

We went to Vermont for one night so I could meet with the contractor who’s helping keep part of the house from falling off, and invited Chris along as well so the kids could play together. He brought some ready-to-bake bread; they’ve been using the same sourdough starter we use, though with a different blend of flours. The trip up really gave it a chance to rise, so by the time we arrived it was…

July 18, 2009

Sort of a strange thing to make when the weather is finally season-appropriate, but for some reason I had a hankering for a freezer full of wobbly pig reduction. So I betook me to Fleisher’s and hit Josh up for whatever lower portions of pig legs he had lying around. The recipe calls for Madeira, but I used a simple white so it would be more neutral in flavor. And the aromatics all came from…

July 17, 2009

Tasting, that is, though not something we do very often. Plus, it’s annoying to clean up after. But the ingredients spoke, and would not be denied. I made another batch of pimentón mayonnaise and used it as a binder for the leftover halibut which I had flaked apart with forks. I used my brand new hexagonal cookie cutters to shape them, then dipped them in curry-seasoned panko and browned ’em up. While that was happening,…

July 14, 2009

We organized an impromptu dinner with Gerard and Alison because we hadn’t seen them in ages. They brought a big hunk of beautiful halibut, and I got all geeky with a variety of local mushrooms and some leftovers. The two vivid purées (sweet potato and purple cauliflower) from the other night became- with the addition of some eggs and flour- crêpe batter, and some fresh oyster and shiitake mushrooms made a nice duxelle with some…

July 13, 2009

I ordered a bunch of geometric cookie cutters for making the next batch of plates, and when they arrived they got me thinking about all sorts of other possibilities, on account of I’m a sucker for geometry and all. Our neighbor brought us over a trout, and I had broken my no-buying-vegetables-in-summer rule (which is fairly easily broken) at a nearby farmers’ market for some purple cauliflower because ours didn’t come up this year. And…

July 9, 2009

This post is dedicated to Brooke and Brittany. They’re sisters. They’re both pretty obnoxious, and prone to cheap sexual innuendo, especially when it comes to jokes about hot beef. (Hey, girls- did you know that “innuendo” is Italian for suppository?) They live in Portland, or Seattle, or some other silly pseudo-city out West, where they smoke weed, play hacky sack, and hang out with other negligent reprobates. For a while it was hard to decide…