Easter dinner

Very simple, very nice. My brother was visiting and he likes to celebrate Easter (so do I, really). I got a butterflied leg of lamb from Whole Foods (actually two, since they seemed to be half legs) and used the "Basque" marinade from the Jamisons' Big Book of Outdoor Cooking. This was just 1/2 c. olive oil, 1/4 c. sherry vinegar, 1/4 c. minced fresh tarragon, 6 cloves garlic minced, 1 Tbl coarse salt. Mix and pour in Ziploc bag with 4-1/2 to 5 lbs lamb, pounded to uniform thickness, 1-1/2 to 2 in. for overnight marinade.

Pull out and drain the lamb an hour before grilling. Jamison talks about 2-heat grilling but I just fired up the Big Green Egg for direct heat and grilled for about 20 min. turning 3 or 4 times, and let it rest 10 min before slicing. Really good -- A. even said it might be the best lamb I've done.

We accompanied with a Fingerling potato salad that we had tasted the previous weekend at La Cuisine in Alexandria during a tasting of French olive oils. This one demonstrated the virtues of Picholine oil. It has 1-1/2 lbs potatoes, boiled till tender, 4 hardboiled eggs, mustard, garlic, 1/4 c. white wine vinegar, 1/2 c. Picholine oil (so fruity and peppery), blanched green beans, salt and pepper. You add a little water to the vinaigrette (and we left out the 2 anchovy fillets). This is a real keeper, and I think the oil does make a big difference.

Cote du Rhone was the wine, brown sugar shortcakes with a strawberry-rhubarb compote and whipped cream the dessert. Happy Easter indeed.

Pork shoulder braised in hard cider

When Steve Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo and author of Heirloom Beans, a cookbook that has given us many great meals, mentioned that Cooking in the Moment by Andrea Reusing was his favorite cookbook of the moment, that was reason enough to order it. Specifically, the comments mentioned this recipe, which made a second good reason.

And it was delicious. As simple as Marcella Hazan's classic pork loin braised in milk, this yields an equally tasty and very hearty dish. The recipe calls for a 5-6 lb. pork shoulder, but Whole Foods doesn't cut them that big, so I settled for their biggest, a 3.5 lb piece of meat. You insert a dozen slivers of garlic in the meat, salt and pepper, sear in 2 Tbl of vegetable oil, and remove to sautee a sliced carrot, quartered onion and apple cut into chunks in 1 Tbl of the oil (though I used new oil). Add 2 c. of hard cider and 1 c. of regular cider and a head of garlic cut in half, bring to a simmer, put pork back in, cover with parchment and lid and put in preheated 300-degree oven for 3 hours.

The dry hard cider adds an edge to the sweet cider and both flavor the pork with the other aromatics while the braise keeps it moist. Since my piece of meat was smaller, I probably didn't need the full 3 hours, but it doesn't really matter.

We accompanied it with a delightful little recipe from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors. You slice half a small Savoy cabbage, the white of a large leek, and a quartered fennel bulb, wash them (don't dry them) and put the vegetables in a sauteuse with 1 Tbl butter and salt and cover to let them steam, not brown, for 10 min. In the meantime you reduce juice of one lemon to 1 Tbl and then, away from the heat, swirl in 3 Tbl butter. You chop 3 Tbl of parsley or chervil (I used parsley) together with the zest from the lemon and add half of that to the butter and half to the vegetables. Then you toss the vegetables in the butter. Madison refers to it as a "big green mess" but it was delicious, preserving the freshness of these flavorful vegetables and getting some real zing from the butter and lemon.

Cookbooks

Cross-posted from my book blog, Cogito Ergo Sum

It is a fair question when you already have literally hundreds of cookbooks why you should ever buy a new one. It's safe to say that I could do a Julie and Julia and cook one recipe a day from my existing cookbooks and not run out until it was time to go to the old folks' home.

But, like everything else, taste in cookbooks change. Julia Child deserves all the credit she gets for revolutionizing Americans approach to food and cooking, but not too many people will be cooking the recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The only three I still use regularly are cassoulet, ratatouille and boeuf carbonnades.

I have numerous cookbooks I've picked up along the way that simply are not very good cookbooks. I have English-language books on Swiss cuisine I bought in Switzerland -- totally useless even when I wanted to do Zuercher geschetzeltes recently. I have another with South African cuisine that I've never used. I have a big book on Spanish cuisine, in Spanish, that I use every once in a great while simply to decipher the recipe for paella with the aid of a dictionary. I have the Larousse gastronomique in French, but it may as well be in Greek for all the use I get out of it. I still have a few cookbooks in German, but they're not very practical to use here. Chef's cookbooks are by and large useless, I find -- too complicated, too many hard to find ingredients, not practical, etc. -- and I think sometimes their purpose is to convince you that you have to go to a restaurant to get a really great meal.

The modern classics -- Julia Child, Marcella Hazzan, James Beard -- still sit on my shelf, along with Elizabeth David and others in that first wave of cookbook authors. There's no reason to think that just because these books are devoid of lovely color photos that the dishes produced from these recipes will be any less delicious. New cookbooks nowadays have a color photo virtually every other page. And that of course is an art it itself, and can sometimes bear little resemblance to what you will come up with following the recipe, given all the tricks and shortcuts the photographers use.

But times change, and just as translator Richard Howard says every generation should have a new translation of the classics, many of the standard dishes can use a freshening up and "translation" for the current generation. For one thing, Julia and Marcella had to find substitutes when ingredients readily available in France or Italy were not so easy to find in the U.S. Some dishes they would not even include for that reason. Now, many of these ingredients are much easier to come by and mail order is much more sophisticated.

A cookbook written today can cater to the new focus on fresh, local products, put more emphasis on vegetables like kale and broccoli, give advice on sustainable sourcing -- addressing concerns that hobby cooks a generation ago didn't have.

But cookbooks themselves are under threat from online recipe sites like Epicurious. These books with their gorgeous photos -- and it is the photos now that distinguish them from the online recipes -- are not searchable. In pursuit of the seasonal, it's nice now to go to the farmer's market and pick what is in abundance and looks good, and hunt up a recipe for it when you get home. But who wants to plow through a half dozen indexes to find a good treatment for rapini. Just put it in the search box at Epicurious and you have dozens of recipes to choose from.

So managing cookbooks becomes a logistical challenge. We keep about 60 in the kitchen in our pseudo-hutch -- several of the standards, many favorites, and others that get swapped out seasonally -- braising books in the winter, grilling books in the summer. But the only way I can actually get to the recipes in these books is to pick one or two at random and leaf through them, noting recipes that are appealing and seasonal, and then arbitrarily selecting some to put on a shopping list and actually cook. In this way, we find many wonderful dishes that you could easily repeat, though we hardly ever do. Some we cook for guests, others just for ourselves (concluding almost invariably that this would be great for guests).

Not surprisingly, I find myself gravitating most often to Mediterranean dishes -- French, Italian, Spanish, or regional cookbooks that include Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco and so on. Paula Wolfert is a current big favorite, but Sara Jenkins' Olives and Oranges is also one I turn to a lot. I have several Indian cookbooks, but it's not that easy to assemble the ingredients if you just want to cook Indian every once in a while. We have a number of Mexican cookbooks and perhaps we can do more with them this summer.

But it's a wonderful problem to have. As I've said before, we live in something of a foodie paradise right now, with a true cornucopia of choices. Who knows what tomorrow brings. While my attitude is not exactly "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die," I am inclined to order a new cookbook from Andrea Reusing when Steve Sando recommends it, and save the $20 to buy it by skipping that pizza and beer and staying home with leftovers instead. (It cost $20 from Amazon, but retails for $35, and I have to say cookbooks are something I will generally buy from Amazon. I don't understand why Politics & Prose, for instance, hasn't caught on and made it an incentive for their membership to offer a permanent discount on cookbooks.)

Pot-roasted chicken with gnocchi

This is a kind of Italian version of chicken and dumplings. It is the first recipe I've tried from my new Canal House Cooking #5, and it appealed to me because it's a simple recipe for a weekday meal, given that I skipped the gnocchi-making and just bought fresh gnocchi at Whole Foods. It turned out well enough but I'm not convinced about this cookbook series.

You are supposed to rub 2 Tbl spoons of softened butter onto the chicken. My butter was soft and my chicken was dry, but it just clumped along the skin and did not spread at all. Oddly, then, I thought, you also rub 2 Tbl of olive oil onto the chicken once you've put it in a enamel cast-iron pot. You salt and pepper it, pour in 2 c. water and 3 sprigs of fresh sage. Then you cover and put the pot into a preheated 375-degree oven.

So far, so good. But then it says to roast a 3-4 lb. chicken (mine was 3.5 lbs.) only 30 min. before taking off the lid, basting the chicken, adding 4 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds, and returning to oven uncovered -- for only 15 min.!

I was skeptical about the time and I was right. The chicken was still snow white after 15 min. (supposed to be crispy, golden), so I turned up the heat and after another half hour (total 1 hr 15 min -- about what I would have expected), it was golden enough to be presentable and the juices ran clear. It was still plenty moist (I basted it some more in between). You remove the chicken and let it sit 10 min. before carving.

You cook the fresh potato gnocchi in batches in simmering, salted water, removing with a slotted spoon after they float on the surface for 10 sec. and put on a heated plate. When the gnocci are done, you toss with melted butter and parmesan. Then you serve gnocchi in a wide bowl, with slices of chicken on top, spooning over some broth and carrots. The chicken has a great flavor, the broth is rich and rounded from the sage and carrots, and the gnocchi are a lot like dumplings.

It worked fine for a weekday meal. I see a problem for serving it to guests, though, because getting it to the table with everything hot is a challenge. I'm also concerned that the timing was so far off. Added to that, the cookbook has a quirky selection of recipes and I don't see too many that I'm interested in doing. Bottom line: May not get another Canal House cookbook. I got this one because one of the authors in a book I'm reviewing recommended the series. Pretty photos seem to be the main attraction.

I may try to follow their recipe for gnocchi some weekend, though. It doesn't look that hard, just a little time-consuming for a weekday.

Assaggi Mozzarella Bar

Assaggi means "tastings," though for a while I thought it meant just plates because of the nice collection of ceramic plates on the wall. The specialty is a mozzarella plate with buffalo mozzarella, buffalo ricotta and burrata along with condiments like grilled zucchini, roasted peppers and green tomato marmalade. This is ideal for sharing and the four of us also shared the salumi plate with prosciutto, salami, speck and a couple of other cured meats.

The cheeses were creamy and delicate and paired very nicely with the condiments. While the portions were not huge, the combination of plates was enough to make us all comfortable with just ordering pasta as a main course. I got the dill tagliolini with Dungeness crab meat and green peas, which was different and tasty. Others seemed quite happy with their choices as well, though I didn't taste any of them. The hard crust bread was delicious and they brought more when you asked.

We accompanied with a very nice Aglianico, a black grape varietal from the Basilicata and Campania regions of southern Italy, which I don't think I'd ever had before. It was among the more moderately priced selections (the online menu doesn't have it so I don't have the details) and turned out to be very good value, with a rich, mineral taste, quite velvety. We liked it well enough to order a second bottle.

It's a testimony to the richness of Italian cuisine that this Bethesda restaurant can carve out its own distinctive niche among Italian offerings and introduce us to things that are new. All in all, very pleasant and worth revisiting. Note to those who care about this, it is fairly noisy and we even had a table at the end of the bench that was not in the noisiest part of the restaurant.

Rehoboth restaurants

We ate at two great restaurants in Rehoboth over the weekend, Espuma and Mariachi. They were coincidentally the two closest restaurants to our B&B on Delaware Ave. but I had picked them independently based on reviews in Tripadvisor and Rehobothfoodie.

Espuma is a truly innovative fine dining experience, based on Mediterranean cuisine. I had a ham hock ravioli starter, which has a surprisingly delicate pork taste, and a beautiful halibut filet that managed to be nice and crispy on the two sides and creamy and moist in between. Another in our party had the signature bacon and eggs, with the egg soft-boiled and somehow enshrouded in a crispy crust. The four of us made a dent in the menu, which had just changed that day. Other dishes included a beef cheek cassoulet with melt in your mouth meat, a classic paella with a wonderful smoky flavor, and the 3-day Berkshire pork. When our first two pinot noir choices were not there they gave us a nice discount on a more expensive pinot. Plus, the bartender is very creative and I had an unusual absinthe mojito with a very complex flavor that I grew to love.

A little downmarket the next night was Mariachi, a warm and friendly Mexican a cut above in quality and freshness. We shared the guacamole and pupusa starters and I had the marinated pork chunks (masitas de puerco), which was very good.

It was a treat to have such good choices and to be able to walk there. Our favorite Rehoboth restaurant, Back Porch, won't open before Easter.

Red Hook Lobster Pound

Food trucks are all the rage here and elsewhere and none is more sought after than Red Hook, offering authentic Maine-style lobster rolls. So there I was stupidly standing in line in the rain with two dozen other people waiting for the truck to open for business in front of the Subway at Wisconsin and Albermarle. But, hey, in nice weather, the line would probably have been much longer.

The lobster roll is great, no question about it. Lots of lobster, toasted bun -- I got the Maine-style with the mayonnaise dressing though many were ordering "Connecticut" style (warm butter) because of the inclement weather. Didn't get the "meal" -- an extra $3 gets you chips and soda (real Maine soda!). It's better than the very good lobster roll at Persimmon and more generous than the one at Tackle Box. Would I stand in line 20 min. or so again to pony up $15 for lunch -- probably, but certainly not every week.

The service, once they got going, was very efficient -- a big plus, especially when it's raining. Of course, it stopped raining about the time I got my roll and retreated to my car to eat it.

The DC lobster truck is a spinoff from a Brooklyn restaurant. I wonder how much they will expand the operation -- just one truck for DC, but other trucks for Va. and Md.? Or several trucks everywhere? We'll see.

Red Hook does a pretty good job of alerting their Facebook and Twitter followers where they will be. It's social networking and smartphones that make these mobile gourmet snacks possible in the first place. Unfortunately, it means that like all trendy places, they will be mobbed if they are any good.

Pork coddled in olive oil

Once in a great while you come across a new technique that opens up undreamed-of flavors. Marcella Hazan's pork loin braised in milk was that kind of revelation and it is a dish we cook at least once a year.

This dish, again from Paula Wolfert's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, is a similar revelation and promises to become a standby. Our first encounter with a coddled dish came only a couple of weeks ago with the salmon coddled in olive oil at Marcel's. I had already dog-eared this recipe in the Wolfert book and was eager to try it after sampling the salmon dish.

This called for boneless pork shoulder cut into 2-in. cubes. I used the pork shoulder I had bought frozen from Blue Rooster Farm (though I think the pork actually comes from a neighboring farm). It looked so red in the package I wondered at one point if they had accidentally given me beef. But it looked like a pork shoulder cut and real heritage pork, of course, belies that ill-advised campaign about "the other white meat."

One of the things I enjoy about cooking is playing butcher, and I enjoyed cutting this off the bone and into cubes. A recent issue of RealEats described a butcher course for hobby cooks in California and I would happily take one if it was offered here.

The cubes then are tossed in a mix of coarse salt, crushed black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves crushed to a powder, bruised fennel seeds and 2 sprigs of thyme. The pungent smells of the spices as you worked them in the mortar was terrific. You seal the meat and spices and put in the fridge overnight. The next day, you squeeze the cubes in one layer in a dutch oven and cover with 2 c. of EVOO. I had recently decided it was worth spending the extra money on a premium imported oil like Colavita rather than Whole Foods 365 brand because something I read suggested that the WF brand was something less than highest quality. Very little of the oil actually goes into the meat and Wolfert suggests using the oil again after draining it off afterwards, but that didn't seem very appetizing to me.

You bring the oil slowly to a boil on top of the stove and then put in a 250-degree oven for 2-1/2 hours, inserting a half-head of garlic. Wolfert says to keep the oil from boiling too much and browning the meat. I'm not sure how you avoid browning the meat, though. She talks about it remaining pink, and I will set the temperature lower next time, but this pork definitely got brown on the outside -- while remaining pink on the inside.

The meat is done when you can tap a chunk and it falls into pieces. It's hard to describe how good that first bite tasted when I pulled out a chunk, tapped it into pieces and tasted it. The savory pork, the pungent spices, the silky oil, the garlic all conspired to create a very special balance of flavors. I set it on the screen porch to cool and warmed it slowly again for serving.

It is served with Tuscan beans. I used cannellini soaked overnight, and then cooked a couple of hours with 2 bay leaves, a dried hot pepper, and 2 peeled cloves of garlic. Wolfert says to serve the warmed-up pork on room temperature beans but we decided that next time we would warm up the beans again, too.

For the final assembly, you drain the pork and let the meat drippings settle in the drained off oil, pour off the oil and make a vinaigrette with the drippings, whisking in 3 Tbl of fresh oil and 1-1/2 Tbl of red wine vinegar, and dress the beans with that. You mound the beans on a platter, sprinkle paper-thin slices of red onion soaked in wine vinegar over the beans, add the pork chunks and garnish with arugula. We accompanied very nicely with a Cotes du Rhone.

Clear Creek Distillery

Addie Bassin's had a tasting by Clear Creek Distillery, which is based in Portland, Oregon and makes grappas, eaux de vie and liqueurs. The owner, they said, studied distilling methods in Alsace and Switzerland and makes genuine European-style digestifs.

It's all true. The Williams Pear brandy is on a par with any Poire William I tasted in France, and the pinot noir grappa has the pleasant bite of a good Italian grappa or a nice marc. These pleasures don't come cheap -- $25 for the 375ml bottle -- but I'd had a hankering for a good eau de vie and grappa for some time.

The liqueurs at the tasting were not my cup of tea, but then not everyone likes the dry alcohol taste of eaux de vie, so each to his own. The rep also had a Mirabelle and a Kirchwasser that Addie Bassin's doesn't carry but it seems Ace Beverage does, so I will pay them a visit one of these days because both of those were on a par with a high-quality European product. I tasted the muscat grappa, but didn't like that nearly as well as the pinot noir.

One quirky specialty was a spruce brandy. This, the rep admitted, was not a true brandy like the others, which are actually distilled from the fruit, but a grain alcohol infused with the flavor of tender spruce buds. I enjoyed it, but it's doubtful that I would pay $50 for the 375ml bottle that this very labor-intensive product commands, even if it were available here.

Kudos to the owner, Steve McCarthy. He took a liking a quarter-century ago to these European fruit brandies and realized that his parents' Oregon orchard, which grows particularly fine pears, would be ideal for transplanting the tradition to the U.S. They also make a single malt, which I'd be interested to try sometime.

Our first set of guests to try it really liked the pear brandy. Oddly, the distillery rep said they serve the eau de vie from the freezer, which I think sacrifices a lot of the subtle flavor of the brandy. I remembered too late the technique of some places in Europe of swishing some ice through the snifter and then pouring the brandy in to help open up the flavor. Will try that next time.