Triumph! Last night we at outside again. It took a few extra layers, but the sunlight was delicious. Also delicious? Planked salmon, grilled asparagus and an oyster experiment. There’s no real recipe, but here’s a rundown:

Soak a cedar plank for a couple of hours
Drain a pint of local oysters
Toss with olive oil, grated garlic, lots of chives and a spoon of chili sauce (I used my new obsession yuzu kosho, which tastes like feisty sunshine). Let sit around while the grill heats up. Heat the plank up on the hot grill. Ten minutes later, lay those oysters out on the plank and cook till just firm, turning once. (about 7 minutes)

You can skewer the oysters and cook them directly on the well oiled grate. I tried this too, and it made pretty grill marks, but we preferred the moister planked oysters.

It was a hot gazpacho afternoon, and at last, I had some good
tomatoes from the market.

Meanwhile back at home I was sure I had some cucumbers. But of course I didn’t. Those suckers were zucchini.

But there is nothing to do a gazpacho craving once it has settled in. I wanted gazpacho, and I had some good melon (kissing cousin to a cucumber, right?) and a little celery (for a little green snap); couldn’t they make for a refresshing combo?

The answer is yes.  Being bad
with grocery lists can sometimes lead you to interesting discoveries.

Desperado gazpacho

1 sweet onion, peeled and chunked

6 oz celery, trimmed and chunked

6 oz cantaloupe, peeled, seeded and chunked

2 cloves garlic

1 jalepeno

1 6” hunk baguette, chunked

6 ripe tomatoes (about 36 oz), cored and chunked

3-4 tablespoons sherry vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 to 2 cups water

3/4 tsp. salt, plus more to taste

Put all these ingredients in a bowl (use just 3 tbsp.
vinegar), except for the water.  Toss
them  and let them sit around together
for ½ hour while you do something else.

Puree the mix very smoothly in a blender—you’ll need to do
2-3 batches. Add ½ cup water or so to each batch.  . Adjust the texture with more water (or
olive oil!)  if you need to—I like my
gazpacho smoothie-thick .  Taste and
adjust the seasoning with more salt or vinegar if you like.

Keep gazpacho around
in a pitcher so you can keep cooling yourself off.  If you must garnish, a swirl of oil and a
celery leaf will do!

The weather here in Seattle is just beginning to look summerish, but you never know which way it will go. That’s why soupe au pistou, the Provencal take on minestrone (but made better still with pesto!) is a great way to go. Filled with all sorts of green deliciousness, it still reads bright and gardeny and fresh, but it can still warm you up should the day turn awful and rainy. Here’s a rough and ready recipe for the whole shebang, which will serve 8-10 people.  Don’t worry too much about following it precisely, though. A good vegetable soup welcomes all comers–I do recommend you take the time to cook your own white beans from dried, however. It’s such a great chance to layer extra flavor into the mix.

A not entirely traditional Soupe au Pistou

2 generous tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, peeled, sliced (or do as i did and slice up a whole tiny head of green garlic, white parts only)

2 small onions, peeled, sliced

2 leeks, white and light green
parts only, peeled, sliced and washed

6 small zucchini, trimmed, and cut
into quarter-inch half-moons

1 pound green beans, trimmed and
tailed, and sliced into half inch chunks

2 bunches escarole, spinach and/or
kale, trimmed, washed and sliced into ribbons, about a pound

2 cups small white beans, cooked,
with cooking liquid reserved (see below) or 2 cups canned beans plus 2 cups
vegetable broth (preferably homemade)

4 cups of water

Salt to taste, about 2 teaspoons

1 teaspoon fennel seed, crushed

½ teaspoon Turkish red pepper flakes like Marash, or ¼
teaspoon red pepper flakes

½ cup of pesto(see recipe below)

In a large soup pot, heat the olive
oil over medium-low heat, and add in the garlic, onion, and leeks. Pour in ¼
cup of the water to help encourage steaming, and cover the pot. Let cook until
the onions have wilted, glossy and fragrant, about 10 minutes.

Next, stir in the greens (escarole,
spinach and/or kale). Add a pinch of salt and cook for another 5 minutes. Add
in the zucchini slices and the green beans and  stir and cook for another
five minutes. Pour in the remaining water, turn up the heat to a boil, then
turn the soup to a simmer and cook until the zucchini and beans are tender,
about 15 minutes.  Stir in the white beans (and their cooking liquid or additonal vegetable broth, if using canned beans
), plus the fennel seed and the red pepper flakes. At this point you can puree all or
part of the soup with an immersion blender. I like it partially pureed for a
little thicker texture. Stir together, and taste the soup for seasoning.
If more salt or red pepper is needed, add it.

To serve, scoop into bowls and
swirl a spoonful of pesto on the top of the soup.

To cook white beans:

Note: you’ll want to do this earlier in the day or the night before

1 ½ cups white beans, soaked
overnight (cannellini, flageolet, or domestic “little white beans”)

¼ cup olive oil

1 head garlic, the stem sliced off
about ¼ way down the bulb

The top of one leek

3 sprigs thyme

1 peeled carrot

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Drain the soaked beans and place in
a medium sauce pan with water to cover by 2 or 3 inches.

Tie the leek top, thyme, and bay
leaf together with kitchen twine (this isn’t essential, but makes it easy to
remove the aromatics later). Place this bundle, together with the carrot,
garlic and salt, into the bean pot. Bring the liquid to a boil, and then simmer
until beans are tender—40 minutes to an hour,depending on the bean size and
dryness.  Let the beans cool in their liquid. Remove the leek, herbs,
carrot and garlic from the pot, reserving the garlic, if desired. (The sweet
cooked garlic can be squeezed out of its papery wrapper into soups, purees, or
sandwiches for extra flavor).

Pesto

6 ounces basil, washed, and stems
removed

I clove garlic, peeled, roughly
chopped

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted

½ cup parmesan cheese

Bring a pot of salted water to a
boil and have ready a bowl full of ice water. When boiling, dunk the basil
leaves in the water. In 15 to thirty seconds, scoop the leaves out of the water
with a slotted spoon or skimmer, and place directly into the cold water bath.

Remove the basil from the ice water
and squeeze them in small handfuls so they are quite dry and compact. Roughly
chop.

Place basil and garlic and ½ cup
olive oil in a food processor, and pulse until a rough paste. Then, while the
machine is running, pour the remaining olive oil into the chamber and process
until the pesto is smooth. Pulse in the pine nuts, and then the parmesan
cheese.

Michael Ruhlman had a funny excerpt from his new book, a recipe for roast chicken in which he recommends having lunchtime sex with your partner after you’ve popped the chicken in the oven.  I did not get laid making this pork dish, but I suppose I could have if I hadn’t had to get the kids to school and get a proposal off to an editor, while it was in the oven.  Food that cooks slowly in the oven gives you a chance to get busy or just be busy.

I also like Ruhlman’s note that there is so much emphasis on family dining these days, and not enough on other kinds of at-home meals:  Some meals should be taken with all of your kids, some with just one, some with friends, and some with your lover, who, if you’re married, is hopefully your spouse.  Ruhlman’s a big fan of a regular at-home lunch and, when feasible, some afternoon delight to go with. “Just because it’s deeply pleasurable doesn’t mean it’s an indulgence. Think of it as a business lunch, important business for the two of you. Schedule it.”

The recipe below is only nominally helpful to readers, since it is based on an odd cut of meat, which I found at Rain Shadow Meats, but couldn’t resist: pork brisket. I love beef brisket, and have eaten it for countless Passovers, but I’d never had the cut from a pig before. Since the pork in question came from one of my favorite local farms, Jones Family Farm on Lopez Island, I decided to give it a try. Since I was improvising, I used what I had around, including a not-sweet cranberry juice from an Oregon cranberry farm. What can I say? I didn’t have any open wine around, and the cranberry juice is so tart, it’s almost like red verjus. It worked just fine. If you can’t find Vincent Family Cranberry juice around, try finding unsweetened cranberry juice at the local natural foods market. You can then add a spoon of honey or agave to the recipe.

Even if this pork didn’t get served as a sexy lunch break, it was very tasty, and it didn’t take much thinking. I served it to friends, an impromptu weeknight gathering, with long-cooked broccoli and roasted potatoes and a little too much wine for a Thursday. Just because something’s intensly pleasurable doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

Pork Brisket (seduction optional)

2 ½ pounds pork brisket from Lopez island (the same amount
of shoulder should work, too)

2 teaspoons kosher salt

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

1 tsp olive oil

1 8 oz onion

2 heads garlic, tops sliced off

10 sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

¼ tsp pepper corns

1 small dried cascabel chile

1 cup sour cranberry juice, like Vincent Family farms

1 cup water

1)     Trim extra fat from the pork and then season
with the kosher salt and the paprika. Leave it to sit at least ½ hour, but even
better, overnight in the fridge.

2)     Heat a heavy lidded pan of medium depth over
medium-high heat.  Add the oil, then pat
the pork with a paper towel, and place it fat side down in the pan. Brown the
pork for about 5 minutes, then flip over and brown the other side.  Add the onion, the garlics, cut side down,
the carrots, they bay, thyme and peppercorns and the chilie. After the second
side is brown, pour in the cranberry juice, and the water. Bring to a boil
then, place the pan, covered in the oven.

3)     Cook until the pork falls apart into strands,
about 3.25 hours. Remove the meat from the juice, and let the meat cool in the
refrigerator. Strain the juice, retaining the garlic. Let the juice cool in the
refrigerator, and then skim the fat from the surface.

4)     To serve, reheat the meat in the reserved meat
jus. Squeeze the cooked garlic on top of the meat and serve with a good
spoonful of jus.

The battle was between me and the nettles, and the nettles
were winning.  Not actually the way you’d expect them to, with their nasty little stinging hairs (nettles, by the way sting with formic acid, the same venom that fire ants wield). No, I was having a massive hay fever attack. I don’t think I’m allergic to nettles themselves,
but something pollen-like had settled on their fuzzy leaves, and it was my
undoing.
My whole nettle project was some time in the making—last year
on Vashon Island, I’d noticed scads of overgrown nettles in the woods, and I had to
wait until spring until they would be young and tender again. But when I went
back last weekend, I was excited—it’s spring again!– and the shoots are tender.
It’s hard to find them in the city (you can though, at my friend Katherine’s shop
Marigold and Mint, and some farmer’s markets).  With gardening gloves on and a pair of kitchen scissors, I gathered a paper shopping bag full of nettle plants.

The sneezing started about the time I went inside and started to trim the leaves, with scissors, one by one off the stems. Meanwhile, I set a large pot of water to boil, prepared a big bath of ice water, too. Once the leaves were cleaned, I dunked them into the hot water in batches and cooked them for a couple of minutes. Then, using a slotted spoon, I scooped the leaves out of the water and into the ice bath to chill.

Aaachoo! Finally I took off my gloves, washed my
hands, and squeezed handfuls of the now non-stinging nettles until they were no
longer drippy. I stashed the leaves into Ziploc bags, threw them in the fridge,
and then collapsed on my couch, too exhausted from sneezing to think about
nettles for the rest of the night. We ordered pizza.  I had also been too exhausted to photograph
the process, so here, if you don’t know the procedure, here is a slightly different
variation on what I did.
Once the nettles are prepped, however were easy as pie to
work with.  And they are wonderful to eat, with a haunting woodland flavor–sort of a broody, fuzzier cousin to spinach.  I decided to showcase their wild beauty in a greek-style phyllo pie.

Nettle Pie
Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus about 1/4 c. for brushing phyllo

10 ounces blanched, squeezed and chopped nettles (the
product of about a shopping bag full of fresh nettles)

3 ounces aged pecorino cheese, grated

4 ounces ricotta

1 egg (2 oz), lightly beaten

3/4 cup greek yogurt

1/2 ounce mint (about 1/4 c., chopped)

1/4 ounce scallion (about 2 tbsp chopped)

one package of ready-made phyllo dough–I used the slightly thicker country style phyllo

Salt and nutmeg to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a large skillet, heat the two tablespoons of olive oil and sweating the onions over medium heat. Add the nettles to the onions and with good
pinch of salt, and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, to let the flavors
marry a bit.

Mix together the  pecorino, ricotta, egg, greek
yogurt, and herbs, and set aside.

Line a cast-iron skillet with 6-8 layers of phyllo
dough, brushing olive oil between each layer as you go. Let the ends of the dough hang over the pan, they can be trimmed later.

When the nettles are lukewarm,  mixed them with the
ricotta mixture and adjust the seasoning with salt and a bit of nutmeg.  Then scoop the whole shebang into the
prepared skillet and topped the filling with another six layers or so of
phyllo. Trim the edges with kitchen scissors to about ½ inch past the pan, and then brush all those vulnerable
little phyllo ends with olive oil, just for good measure.

Place in the oven.  I had to
leave the house unexpectedly, so after 10 minutes of cooking I turned off the
oven and hoped for the best. I came back ½ hour later to a perfectly browned
pie. You might choose to just bake the pie at 400 for 25 minutes or so until the dough is nice and crisp and honey brown.

I was so excited to eat the pie when it was done
that I forgot to snap a picture. It was lovely, though.

A few weeks ago, I’d defrosted a big shoulder from a local pig I’d bought a quarter share in. It was monday, and i planned to have friends over on tuesday, so I thought I’d braise the meat the day before.  And then the simmering cold I’d been dealing with all weekend turned from being a minor drag on my day –like seaweed on my kayak paddle–to an all out bout of sickly fatigue. I had to go to bed, but I had a seasoned pork shoulder to deal with. So I turned the oven on low, got out my trusty enameled braising pan, and stayed upright just long enough to brown up the meat and some fennel. Then I dumped the whole affair in the oven and crashed for three hours. Sure I could have skipped cooking altogether, but it made me feel like I was being productive, even when I couldn’t be otherwise.

I felt better the next day when our friends came to eat the reheated pork with us. Married for a few years, they don’t have kids and don’t plan on having them.  It’s a sad fact of life that we tend to see more of our friends who have young kids too–we’re all in the same boat.  Friends without kids seem so adult, while our social time is so tethered to home. We’re forever running off early from parties, or going to events solo, in order to leave one person home with the brood. But it’s an important stretch to spend time with to people who aren’t always thinking of toilet training and handwriting and the management of screen time. With such friends, I catch glimpses of a former self, and a self that I can still try to cultivate, even though my head’s in the toy bin for some stretch of each day.

So much the better if I can welcome back the return of good health with  them and a little delicious braised meat.

I don’t feel well pork

2-3 pounds bone in pork shoulder

1 tbsp fennel seed

1 tbsp kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 tsp red pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 fennel bulbs cut in wedges

1 head garlic, top cut off to expose the cloves

1 cup green olives

1/3 cup capers

¾ cup verjus

 Early in the day or the night before, trim any big chunks of fat off the pork and then season it with the salt, pepper fennel and red pepper. Place on a plate and refrigerate, uncovered.

An hour or so before cooking, bring the meat out of the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

 In a large lidded braising pan, heat the oil over medium high heat. Pat the meat dry and brown it in the pan. After it has browned on one side, turn the meat and add in the fennel and  the garlic, clove side down. When it is brown on the second side, add the verjus, and scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Add in the green olives and capers, and 1/3 cup water. Cover and let cook for about 3 and a half hours, until the meat is totally tender.

I’m a big believer in using color in meals, but sometimes things that are pale and monochromatic are delicious too. The other night I was working with winter root vegetables, beautiful Methow Valley pears, and pork from the Snoqualmie valley. My great friends C and B were coming over, and they promised to bring a dark leafy number. But as it turned out they didn’t get home before dinner and the only color on our table was a local red blend.

I’d braised the pork chops in milk blended with capers, a trick I’d learned from Marcella Hazan (who has taught me lots of tricks–this one was originally a recipe for veal chops, in Marcella Says), and I roasted the pears with nothing more than a drizzle of maple syrup on top of them. They emerged from the oven dun-colored and taut, and wrinkled up a bit as they cooled. As for the root vegetables–potatoes, rutabaga, and turnips:  I made them into a gratin, a process I find almost as fun to do as to eat. there’s a rhythm to laying down all those overlapping scales, and remembering to season each layer.

The meal might have looked like milquetoast, but it was most satisfying on a wintry night of wind and rain. In some ways the pale colors helped us focus on the salty tang of the capers, the juicy burst of sweet pear flesh, and the pastel nuances of the many layered gratin.
Rutabaga gratin 

1 tablespoon butter

1 turnip, about 8 oz, peeled

1 rutabega, about 8 oz, peeled

2 pounds yellow finn potatoes, peeled

¼ c. dried porcini mushrooms

1 c. boiling water

1/3 c. cream

1/3 c. milk

4 sprigs of thyme

Salt or truffle salt

Freshly ground black pepper

¼ c. grated pecorino cheese

Preheat the oven to 425.

In a little bowl, soak the mushrooms in the boiling water. After fifteen minutes, strain. Reserve the mushrooms for another use (like an omelet!) and mix the steeping liquid with the cream and the milk.

Get out your mandolin and the potatoes, rutabaga, and turnip into super fine slices (thinner than 1/8 of an inch if you can.) It’s ok if they are thicker, but the thinner you can go, the more fun the gratin is. Don’t slice your fingers.

Butter an 8X8 baking dish (or a baking dish with a similar volume). Cover the bottom of the dish with a single layer of potato slices, overlapping them like fish scales. Salt sparingly. Repeat for another layer of potato. Salt lightly again, and sprinkle with a few thyme leaves and a pinch of black pepper. Make a new layer, this time with rutabaga. Season it lightly with salt. Ladle a bit of the porcini liquid into the dish, and then make two new layers of potatoes, seasoning very lightly every layer. Sprinkle this layer with a few thyme leaves and a pinch of pepper, and then lay down a turnip layer. Add a little more of the porcini liquid. Now lay down two more layers of potato slices, seasoning with a bit more thyme, salt, and pepper. Drizzle with the remaining porcini liquid, and press down upon the slices to firm up and even them out a bit. Sprinkle with the cheese and  a few more thyme leaves. Cover with aluminum foil and bake covered, for about an hour. Remove cover and cook until the vegetables are tender and the surface is covered with patches of amber brown–another 20 minutes or so.

I like to always have a little granola at the ready.  It is important, after all, when trying to seem spontaneous with your entertaining that you have a few yummy things ready to go for spur-of-the moment guests.  And morning entertaining is often a good time to pull off spur-of-the-moment: Expectations at 10 am on a Sunday  are always a little less overwhelming than they are at primetime (say Saturday night at 7:30).  A little coffee, a little something sweet-ish to nibble on and you’re good to go. 

I also love the process of making granola—it’s so tempting to throw every last seed, nut and dried fruit into the mix, but granolas are always best when made with a theme in mind. In this case I had the idea of a sort of southern Mediterranean mix. When I made the syrup to toss with the oats, I threw a sprig of rosemary in with the honey and oil, then followed through with the theme with some pine nuts, golden raisins and chunked up dates. The rosemary asserts its piney presence, but it doesn’t get too pushy.

Now I’m just waiting to spring an invitation on someone. You know, spontaneously.

Mediterranean Granola

4 c. rolled oats

½ c pine nuts

½ c. wheat germ

¼ tsp. kosher salt

Finely grated zest of one orange

¼ c. canola oil (you could use olive oil, I suppose, to make it even more Mediterranean, but that would risk being a bit too much), plus a little more for greasing the pan.

¼ c. honey

1 sprig rosemary

1/3 c. golden raisins

6 medjool dates, pitted and chopped into raisin sized pieces.

Preheat the oven to 325 (I like to use the convection mode on mine) and oil a sheet pan that has a lip. In a very large bowl, mix together the oats, pine nuts, wheat germ, kosher salt, and orange zest. 

Put the oil, honey and the rosemary into a small pan, and bring to a boil over med-high heat. Let boil until the bubbles are bigger and sturdier, about 3-5 minutes. (You don’t want the honey to darken much, however). Being careful not to burn yourself, pour the hot honey syrup in a spiral around the oats, and stir, stir, stir. 

Spread the oats out in an even layer on the sheet pan.  Bake until the oats are a couple of shades darker, and the pine nuts are the color of honey. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the raisins and dates, then turn the fruit into the granola with a spoon or spatula. Let cool completely.

Pull out the rosemary twig (the leaves will probably have mixed in with the granola).