Some kind soul nominated this here blog for an awards-type competition. So if you like what you read here, why not click over and vote (come on, gimme 5 hats) so I can build enough traffic to get a book deal for something that I’m working on. I have no idea who nominated me, but thanks. Not sure what the deadline is, so be skippy. If I win, I will send you BACON. Tonight, continuing…
Category: Wine
I didn’t have a ton of time yesterday, so I convection-baked chicken thighs with a spice rub and put them on top of polenta with some roasted Roma tomatoes (roasted alongside the chicken) and a salsa made with more tomatoes (Roma and pink Brandywine) plus red onion, cucumber, lemon juice, and poblano broiled until the skin blistered and came off easily. I had thought about going the chiles rellenos route, but the wife is not…
I took delivery of our first seafood order, which had been swimming happily around the North Pacific the day before, and delighted in the very, very happy place that our food is going to. Up until now, the fish selection around here has been pretty bad, and I’ve had to console myself with the world-class local meat, cheese, and grain and our own produce. But fish is so wonderful, and gets me so inspired to…
I took a quick trip to the city last week, and was lucky enough to line the trip up with a little shindig at Kris‘ place (Ken is out of town for a big chunk of every summer.) Mary was there, of course, with her guy and another friend. Kris put me in charge of salad, so I brought down a bag of various things and tried to get there a little early so I…
I’ve got some more posts on tap, but I’m tired right now after dealing with our garage sale all day. I hear more and more stories about people losing tomatoes to the blight- including, horrifyingly, our immediate neighbor- but so far ours are soldiering on. To celebrate what might be an all-too-brief luxury, we’re diving into our pink brandywines every night for dinner, dressing them with just a bit of crunchy salt, olive oil, basil,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The garden is really hitting its stride now, offering a wider array of perfect options for organizing a dish around. The beets have been getting me excited, not least because they go with so many different flavors. They’re also beautiful. John’s birthday party offered me an excuse to monkey around with some of the different directions a beet can go, and try to combine them in an interesting way. Inspired by the bite of foie…