Inspired jointly by many quality leftovers, the exploding garden, and a glorious cool day, I took best advantage of all three and made a salmon and smoked chicken pot pie. Unused salmon from the other night, plus frozen smoked chicken broth (and meat) plus fresh green beans and the last of the peas from the garden all combined with a roux I had made from the drippings last time we roasted a chicken to make…
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Our neighbors Susan and Stewart came for dinner, and I was working all day so I had to improvise. The smoked chicken carcass became a lovely broth, strained and reduced, while the salmon that Christine bought got a double treatment as both tartare and sashimi. Haricots and shiitakes, blanched and caramelized respectively, plus shaved chioggia beets and the remaining smoked chicken meat all went into a terrine that was glued together by the reduced broth.…
Super simple, yet super good: penne in a sauce of ground lamb, onion, garlic, lots of herbs, and fresh peas plus canned tomatoes with a gorgeous salad. To drink, a 1998 Franciscan Magnificat that did a good job with the lamb while still being quite young; it has a lot of reticent Bordelais complexity and should really open up over the next 10 years.
For a summer Sunday, I fired up the smoker and put in a salt & peppered chicken. One of the happy features of this house is a huge maple tree in back, which shades the patio and drops small dead branches in storms, so there’s always a nice supply of dry maple kindling to add to the apple wood in the firebox. After about an hour, I put on a few of Fleisher’s brats to…
The view yesterday The many squash volunteers from the compost Under the zucchini canopy Lettuces still going strong Beans peaking
A three-part dinner tonight, inspired by the garden and a few things from fridge and pantry. First, crispy tofu tossed in Christine’s new favorite sauce, the hybrid tahini/guacamole with scallions and cilantro to finish. Next, a stir-fry of just-picked goodness including carrots, beans, peas, beet, and yellow squash (the only one not from the garden, but still local) and last pad thai noodles with beet greens and a sauce of dried shrimp, garlic, ume vinegar,…
We learned this from John, and I think he learned it from Richard. It’s a kind of pesto, but made with a bitter green from the endive/radicchio family like pan di zucchero or radicchio; lately we’ve been using the galia endive because it’s at its peak. Frisée makes a divinely creamy mash. The suribachi is the ideal tool for making mash, and though it takes a bit of work, the result is well worth it,…
Sirkka and Danny came over for a mellow Friday dinner. Christine had been to Fleisher’s earlier in the day, and their housemade sausages are very good, so I whipped up a variation on her Mom’s sausage pasta sauce- with hot & sweet sausage and lots of herbs. Whole wheat spaghetti has a nice body and flavor for a big sauce like this (even though we don’t like the other shapes; the penne, etc. are too…
Christine bought wild salmon and a beautiful piece of chicken-of-the-woods today, and the colors were just gorgeous together, so I was inspired- especially since I spent all day drawing on a big sheet of MDF and needed some color. Plus, the greens beans have arrived, going from tiny to 6 inches long in about two days. I reheated brown rice with water to that magical twice-cooked creamy state, and cooked the fish skin side only…
I bought and read Barbara Kingsolver’s latest book a few weeks ago, and it’s both an inspiration and validation to what we’re doing here, and to what more and more people are doing around the country: growing and eating as much local food as we can. It’s the best kind of activism, since it involves copious pleasure while at the same time using less fossil fuel to bring us our dinner. It also helps, I…