I’m Melting! I’m Melting!

For the last few days it has been hot here. Really, really hot, and humid. The weather is supposed to break tonight, but for the moment it’s safe to say that if crotch sweat were crude oil, George Bush would be invading my shorts. Last night, I made good hot-weather food: Vietnamese Summer rolls with tofu and a zingy peanut sauce, plus sautéed escarole with copious garlic and a little BBQ chicken broth. Tonight, though, a couple of things at one of the local stores inspired me so I ended up sweating over the proverbial hot stove. It was worth it.

First, I got some wild Alaskan salmon- always an excellent place to start. Then, they had real, fat, perfect bolete mushrooms from nearby woods. Local porcini. And also more local heirloom tomatoes (ours are flowering, but still at least a month off.) The garden did the rest.

So dinner ended up being the following: seared salmon with a fennel-seed crust, plus radicchio mashed with olives to make quenelles, mushrooms sautéed with garlic and deglazed with wine, tomato, peas, and zucchini. Really simple, but the purity and freshness of the ingredients helped elevate the dish. I will play more with the bitter greens and olives mix; it’s got a lot of potential. Also possessing potential is a 2005 Bourgogne “Cuvée les deux papis” by Alex Gambal that I swore I wouldn’t open and yet the salmon demanded it. Since I obviously do not possess the willpower to resist the 05s until they’re ready, I will at least decant them from now on to give them a chance to open up a little.

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9 Comments

  1. Heather
    July 10, 2008

    Our tomatoes are also flowering-but-a-month-off, but everything really blew up this past week. My beans are growing a foot a day, I swear.

    Alaska salmon is the goods. Loved the crotch sweat joke.

  2. cookiecrumb
    July 10, 2008

    That’s your best-dressed plate ever.

    Shut up, Heather. Gross. Don’t encourage him.

  3. genevelyn
    July 10, 2008

    you funny with that Bush reference

  4. cook eat FRET
    July 11, 2008

    i cringed at the crotch sweat reference… you boy you.

    my crotch merely perspires…

    porcini’s send me, but funny enough i’ve never been a huge salmon lover…

    beautiful food all around. as usual…

  5. peter
    July 11, 2008

    Heather: I knew you’d appreciate it.

    CC: Thanks. Secretly, you laughed and laughed.

    Genevelyn: Me funny.

    Claudia: I’ll leave it to Heather to make a “glisten” joke.

  6. cookiecrumb
    July 11, 2008

    I was just gonna say “glow.”
    And yes, I laughed.
    Ew.

  7. Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
    July 12, 2008

    Local porcini? Where, pray tell? I keep looking for them, to no avail…

  8. Brittany
    July 21, 2008

    I was shoveling taco salad into my face when I read the crotch sweat comment. Normally I would have laughed my ass off- but crotch sweat and taco salad just turns my stomach.

    Good thing the actual food sounds delicious.

  9. peter
    July 23, 2008

    CC: I knew it.

    Hank: There’s a store here that deals with local foragers. More then that. I can’t say.

    Brittany: Having never had taco salad with actual crotch sweat in it, I’ll take your word for it. You’re the masterbaker, after all.

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