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…
Year: 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,…
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…
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…
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…
Last week, while I was making some new plates at the ceramics studio the owner showed me some of the amazing variety of mushrooms that are growing on her property. I am very, very far from qualified to ID fungi, but black trumpets are an easy spot and she has a couple of big, fat patches growing on the sites of long-ago cut hardwood stumps. In exchange for my eye, and for a follow-up email…
Complaining about the weather is about as pointless as activities get, I know, but the amount of rain we’ve been getting is beyond ridiculous. The temperature barely cracked 70˚ all weekend in Vermont- though it didn’t actually rain there- and yesterday it pissed down all afternoon. Poor Milo shivered through his first swimming lesson. Today the sun is actually somewhat visible, but it’s cold out. I’ve lived in England, so I can handle it- I’ll…
We went to Vermont for the weekend, to check on the progress of the repairs being done there and to revel in the perfection that Vermont in high summer exemplifies. The raspberries are coming in, and the wild strawberries carpet the meadow- especially around the tree where my Mom’s ashes are buried. Milo loves it there, and we invited a friend and her daughter who is as close to a sibling as he has. The…
You know those precooked chicken sausages that hang out in the freezer section? The organic ones with 1990s-era flavor combinations like sundried tomato and porcini mushroom? Well, because our grocery options up here are limited, occasionally my wife goes a little crazy from the limitations of a couple of small stores and grabs at anything that we don’t normally buy. And so it was that these things were in the fridge. Because they’re pre-cooked, and…
The near-constant rain is impeding the growth of the heat-loving plants, and if it keeps up it’s a safe bet that most of our tomatoes and peppers won’t ripen and our cucurbits will succumb quickly to a plague of powdery mildew. And the slugs are as big as schnausers. But the greener things are thriving- roots are getting fat, and our salad isn’t bolting like it normally does. This month will tell whether we are…