Standing rib roast

This is not rocket science -- even the Washington Post had a short blurb about how to do it correctly -- but what I appreciate about Molly Stevens' All About Roasting is that she has all the details in one place that is easy to find and refer to.

The roast was stupendous, crispy brown on the outside, with tender, pink, full prime rib flavor on the inside. We had a three-rib roast weighing 8 lbs (they go up to 5 ribs and 12 pounds). Stevens suggests seasoning it at least a day and up to three days ahead with salt, dry mustard and chopped rosemary, and let it sit uncovered in the fridge. You take it out three hours before roasting, start at 425 for 20 minutes, then turn it down to 325 for one to two hours, until it gets to an internal temperature of 120 for medium rare. Then let it stand 20 to 40 minutes, as the temperature continues to rise and the juices spread back through the meat.

Stevens explains how to shop for standing rib, why you tie it between the ribs (so the slab of fat won't come loose and flip back), and two different ways to carve it. I took the easier way after presenting it to the dinner guests out of the oven, and carved it in the kitchen, cutting along the bone to remove the eye of the beef whole and then slicing it into half-inch slabs. It was gorgeous.

She also had a great recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts with a sauce made of butter slowly browned with mustard seeds and with capers and lemon juice added. You toss the sprouts out of the oven in the sauce and it made for a really yummy accompaniment to the beef.

Roasting is a great way to cook and this book is so useful even for these very simple recipes and techniques because our generation simply doesn't have the savoir-faire that comes from doing all these things regularly and often.

Earlier in the week we used her recipes for pan-seared salmon fillets, finished in a hot oven, and roasted potatoes, with just salt and oil, but very good.

Like her earlier book on braising, this book won James Beard and IACP awards for single subject cookbooks.

Sausages and lentils in the style of Umbria

Another winner from Domenica Marchetti, this was the ideal comfort food for a winter weekday. The lentils get cooked separately in water with a little end of celery, garlic and a bay leaf. The sausages -- I got the sweet Italian sausage from Broad Branch -- is sauteed, and then the chopped onion and more garlic is sauteed in that fat. For the finish, the sausage is added back into the pot, along with the cooked lentils, tomato sauce and beef broth and everything simmers for half an hour before you ladle it into a dish and enjoy. It is a soupy stew that has absorbed all the sausage flavor and developed a rich sauce.

Photo by Ankara via Wikimedia Commons

Earlier in the week, we tried another recipe from Morisson, equally simple. This was just boneless, skin-on chicken breasts seared in a skillet and then finished in the oven with green onions that have been sauteed in the chicken fat. The recipe calls for deglazing the skillet with Vin Jura, or as a substitute, dry sherry. Since I had some fino left over from a recent dinner, that's what I used and it was yummy. Served with brown rice.

Parisian sole

Mimi Thorisson's A Kitchen in France was listed in Saveur as one of the 10 cookbooks to make a good gift and they must have been thinking of the photography. It is one of those books with very few recipes, most of them with ingredients (e.g. quail) that you're not going to find or cook very often. But I thought I'd squeeze what I could out of it, and this proved to be a quick, simple and very tasty recipe that sadly has appeal for only one of us.

I used flounder fillets after consulting Mark Bittman, who says we don't really have sole, even though the Fishery claimed to have a real Dover sole from Britain. They had only one, it was a whole fish and very small, so they didn't even want to fillet it. The fish gets dusted in flour, sauteed, and then sliced shallots get sauteed in the same skillet, simmered briefly in wine and finished with heavy cream. The sauce gets poured over the fish. Following the photo, I served with boiled potatoes and also added steamed broccoli. It had -- from the butter, oil, wine and cream -- a very rich flavor. Leftovers made a great hash for lunch.

Lamb and green bean stew with farro

This autumn recipe from Domenica Marchetti (Soups and Stews, p. 56) is another winner and just right for a gray fall day. WF actually had some boneless lamb shoulder in just the right amount so it went in with the onions, green beans, farro, chicken stock, and crushed tomato to simmer for 2 hours and turn into a lovely, fragrant one-pot dish. A chiffonade of basil, a glass of cabernet, and life is good.

La Piquette

This offshoot of Bistro Lepic was a pleasant surprise not because we didn't expect it to be good but we didn't expect to have such a nice package of pleasant dining experiences. The food is French-inspired but a fresh, lighter take that is more like New French than nouvelle cuisine. The atmosphere is buoyant in a very French way, with a warm decor that is pleasant in the summer and must be cozy in the colder months.

Photo by La Piquette

There was a breezy professionalism to the whole operation -- from the warm welcome, rapid seating, good service to one attentive detail that is too often forgotten -- the food was served piping hot on heated plates. I started with a cream of cauliflower soup that was not too heavy and delicately suggesting the vegetable rather than overpowering with it. Andrea had a salad composee that was a work of art, fresh tomatoes and orange slices arranged around ovals of lentil, quinoa and beet -- all again with delicate flavor and a slight healthy crunch.

My main course was braised rabbit in a cream and basil sauce that had a slight yellow piquance -- saffron or turmeric -- ladled over perfectly cooked and very hot linguini. Andrea ordered the roast chicken, which came with (hot) roasted vegetables and crispy hot fries. The chicken had a tangy Dijon mustard rub set off well with the fries. I had a fresh draft beer and Andrea had a Cote de Provence rose to drink.

We skipped drinks and dessert on a quick week night meal, but they looked good, too. And there's a lot of great choices on the menu to try next time!

A midsummer feast

Saveur magazine is all about culinary travel and often enjoyable to read, but this was the first time we took a whole menu for a dinner party. The June/July issue had an irresistible story by a Swedish journalist about the celebration in his country, complete with beautiful descriptions and photos of the food, and, as always with Saveur, the recipes.

I was in western Finland once at the time of the summer solstice and enjoyed the celebration there of the year's longest day with huge bonfires and some drinking -- and yes, it hardly got dark.

Photo by Miia Ranta via Wikimedia Commons

The prep started a week beforehand with the infusion of some vodka to make aquavit. The Saveur recipe suggested rhubarb, dill, lemon verbena, caraway seeds and juniper berries. I made two batches, adding lavender to both, and then star anise to one and fennel seeds to the other. The results after 72 hours were very smooth and rounded drinks, delicious served straight from the freezer but unfolding nicely as they warmed up. Both were a bit more floral than store-bought aquavits, such as Linie Aquavit. The anise batch tasted more like your typical aquavit, though much softened, whereas the fennel batch was just well rounded. I got some Carlsberg Elephant beer to chase it with.

Midway through the week it was time to put the gravlax into the fridge to cure. The recipe is simple -- 2/3 cup kosher salt, 1/3 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons coarsely ground white pepper for 2 pounds of salmon fillet, with minced dill and vodka sprinkled over the salmon after it's smeared with the curing mixture. At the Fishery they recommended the Canadian farm salmon for the purpose and suggested fitting two symmetric 1-pound cuts together during the curing (a method it turns out that is often suggested on the Web). The fish gets wrapped in double layers of plastic wrap and turned and massaged every 12 hours for 48 to 72 hours. The fillet gets firmer as the curing process "cooks" the flesh. What emerged was that soft, buttery, deeply flavorful delicacy -- a total success, and so easy. We used the crisp bread recipe from the magazine to serve with it and that was fun. This was a crispy flatbread made of fine corn meal batter and liberal amounts of sesame, sunflower and flaxseed, giving tons of texture and flavor to the crackers. Following the directions, we spread softened butter (Danish butter!) on the crisp bread and ate the gravlax on top of that. Together with the aquavit and beer, it was almost a meal in itself! There was Gruner Veltliner for those who didn't aquavit, also a great pairing.

The main course was grilled loin of lamb. The article called for entrecote of lamb but I'm fairly certain there's nowhere to get that cut in Washington. So we substituted boneless, rolled and tied loin of lamb and used the herb paste -- minced marjoram, sage, rosemary, thyme, crushed garlic and olive oil -- applied 30 to 60 minutes before grilling after sprinkling salt and pepper on the meat. I used the Big Green Egg for better temperature control to keep the direct grilling at the medium high heat called for. The bigger lamb loin took almost double the 25 minutes specified for the entrecote to reach the 125-degree interior temperature. But the lamb was a total hit -- tender, intensely flavorful from the rub, but predominantly tasting of meaty lamb.

The menu accompanied the lamb with a tomato "sauce" of cherry tomatoes roasted with chopped basil, shallots, thyme, garlic and olive oil. Once the tomatoes popped, they were stirred together with chopped roasted red pepper, Holland chile, and more oil, basil and thyme. (What you may ask is a Holland chile? A word of advice -- don't google for it during a World Cup where the Netherlands and Chile are playing in the same group.)

Additional accompaniments were shallots grilled in foil with garlic and dill and a potato salad of boiled whole baby potatoes, diced kohlrabi sauteed in butter, and yes, more dill. Everything but the lamb could be served at room temperature though we reheated the potato salad to reliquefy the butter. It is marvelously relaxing to serve cucina fresca in the summer, where everything can be ready ahead of time.

The tomato sauce and shallot were scrumptious and could accompany virtually any grilled meat. The potato salad won points for novelty. Kudos to New Morning Farm for having the kohlrabi, but also a big compliment for Whole Foods with all their bulk seeds and grains, and for a friendly butcher team that helped me out with the lamb.

Saveur called for an almond cheesecake with macerated strawberries, but Andrea preferred to find a non-almond version online and conjured up a perfect cheesecake with sour cream, mascapone and graham cracker crust, which combined with NMF strawberries macerated in sugar and Grand Marnier rounded out the meal with a relatively light touch. We had a southern Cote du Rhone red with the main course, and concluded with Grand Marnier and other digestifs. Full recipes and some great photos can be found online at Saveur.com.

The solstice is called "midsummer" even though it is the day that officially marks the start of summer because historically those celebrating it thought of only two seasons, summer and winter, and the solstices are the middle of those seasons. Another semantic puzzle is that Swedes dance around a Maypole in June. Whatever, God bless them.

Bread Furst

Bread Furst has been a great addition to the vendor offering here. Mark Furstenberg's latest venture -- he is in his 70s -- is a great success. His pain au levain rivals anything in France or Germany, Poilane included, and everything we have had -- bialys, baguette, key lime pie, donuts, cheesecake, chocolate cake, frittata, quiche -- has been excellent. Granted, his bagels are too bready and his croissants are not as good as Fresh Baguette, it has nonetheless become one of our very favorite shops.

Photo by Bread Furst

So we began a perfect Saturday morning -- no humidity, temperature in the 70s, blue skies, pleasant breeze -- with breakfast at Bread Furst, located next to the car wash across the street from my old home in the Albermarle (now rechristened the Avalon). After a cappuccino and croissant, we went the two and a half blocks to the New Morning Farm market at the Sheridan School. There we discovered beautiful asparagus and fresh peas and knew what we were having for dinner.

For a midsummer night's dinner the following week I wanted to infuse my own aquavit, according to a recipe in Saveur. It suggested rhubarb, caraway seeds, dill, juniper berries and lemon verbena as botanicals. We got the rhubarb at the market but of course they didn't have lemon verbena. So we went out to American Plant, since we wanted to supplement the herb garden anyway, and got some lemon verbena and lavender, among other herbs. Having decided we would do Marcella Hazzan's orechietti with peas, pancetta and ricotta, we then swung through some lovely neighborhoods in Montgomery County to go to Vace in Bethesda and pick up the Italian ingredients.

For dinner then we had the pasta dish, which I've made often but only rarely with fresh peas. It is a nourishing and satisfying dish, rich with the ricotta and parmesan and flavored by the pancetta. The peas add a sweet vegetable note of their own. We also roasted the asparagus and dressed it with a lemon vinaigrette for a nice, virtually meatless summer meal on the patio. The asparagus was outstanding after the roasting concentrated the flavor and the vinaigrette accented it.

As to the aquavit -- the jury is still out. I like it, but it is definitely an acquired taste. I've just drained it so it needs to spend a couple of days in the freezer for the real test. I added the lavender and to one jar I added a star anise and to another some fennel seeds. The anise version tastes more like the store-bought, but both have flowery undercurrents you don't really get in the bottled versions.

Bread Furst, by the way, is a very clever name. It plays on Mark's surname of course, and puns with first. Yiddish and German speakers recognize a further pun -- Furst means prince and that make the store Bread Prince, and it truly lives up to its name.

Double-crusted baby backs with fennel and coriander

Succulent -- tender, moist, meaty, flavorful, a real home run. This recipe from Cheryl and Bill Jamison's Smoke and Spice produced what Andrea and I both felt may be the best baby backs we ever had. Part of the credit goes to the wonderful meat from WF, a marbled rack weighing 2-1/2 pounds that I cut in half for marinading and grilling. Baby backs from lean pork often come out dry and relatively tough. These were just the opposite.

The Big Green Egg showed that it can come with moist and tender meat if the cook manages to keep the temperature steady, at 220 degrees in this case. I was beginning to wonder if it really could smoke meat without a pan of water, but it certainly performed well here.

But it was the recipe, with a rub of crushed fennel seeds and coriander seeds, that sharpened and focused the marvelous pork flavor of the ribs, without any interference from a mop or a sauce. We put a prepared sauce on the side, but I have to say the pork tasted best to me without any further addition.

It could not be simpler. Crush 2 tablespoons each of the fennel and coriander and mix with 2 teaspoons each of sea salt and brown sugar. Put half the rub on the ribs the night before. Take them out of the fridge 30 minutes before putting them in the smoker and put the other half of the rub on them. (Disconcertingly, the Jamisons then call for you to turn the ribs halfway through and put the remaining rub on them, so I saved a little back for that purpose.)

They cook for three hours. I started them meaty side down and turned them over halfway. No basting or mopping, just steady control of the temperature. The result was precisely as called for by the recipe -- a crusty surface that contrasts dramatically with the juicy meat.

Fennel is the key spice in porchetta, so it's no surprise that this spice pairs astoundingly well with pork. We accompanied with Rancho Gordo's vaquerita beans -- small, deep red beans -- cooked according to Steve Sando's "pot bean" recipe. One-half chopped red onion and 2 smashed garlic cloves get softened in lard (bacon grease in this case) and then add the beans and their soaking water and cook for 1-1/2 hours. To drink, I had a silky southern Cote du Rhone, though the pork probably could have used a slightly more robust red.

I just heard of this book, which is a revised version of a cookbook the Jamisons did before The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking, which I like so much. This one focuses on smoking/slow roasting, and there is some overlap with Big Book. It was worth if for this recipe alone, though I'm sure we'll get many more great meals from it.

Macon

Owner Tony Brown's playful concept of combining his hometown of Macon, Ga., with Macon, France, with a cuisine that filters Southern dishes through French refinement is a winner. The restaurant that opened this month in the culinary desert of upper Northwest is bright, classy and destined to be mobbed.

My first taste was at a quick stop at the bar when I ordered the pork rillettes snack from the blackboard. It was a fresh and tasty mix of pork and fat, a small portion served with home-pickled onions and a perfectly toasted brioche. It was a great snack! (The drinks were good, too, as I noted in my drinks blog.)

We came back together the next night for dinner. They had a great table for us in the front with the high windows letting in tons of light (it was a pre-bridge dinner, so we were early). The wait staff was a little clumsy in their enthusiasm, but they clearly meant well. After we placed our order, we were served little cheddar cheese crackers with homemade sliced pickles that were a great way to whet our appetites. We split the fried green tomato starter, which was generous enough we both had more than enough to eat. The tomato slices were perfectly done and a small chunk of pork belly on the top set them off nicely, as did the spiced tomato aioli.

I order the trout with lentils, happy to get a fish you see rarely on menus here though it is a standard in much of Europe. It was presented well and only ever so slightly overdone. The lentils and pecan persillade accompanied it nicely. Andrea ordered the scallops and they were cooked just right, opaque throughout but still moist, sauteed in a light dusting of flour with a sprinkling of bacon on top. Only complaint was she found the portion of three scallops a trifle small, though she admitted she was not hungry at the end of the meal. Perhaps that was due to the side order of biscuits -- lovely, flakey, hot bread destined to become a signature dish. These were served with a softened butter (though I didn't take to the honey mixed into it) and a tart pepper jelly. Andrea had a glass of the Chablis and I had, what else, the Macon-Villages.

It is noisy, as small, crowded restaurants tend to be. It would be hard for more than two people to communicate, at least on a Friday night. The great thing is, it's so close, we can go any night of the week!

Grilled branzino

Cooking fish is more about technique than recipes and technique is a question of practice. I practice cooking fish mostly when Andrea has something in the evening, because there's many types of fish she doesn't like -- for instance, whole fish.

To help with technique for a grilled whole branzino, I used a new cookbook, The River Cottage Fish Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher (can you believe it -- he is the fish expert). In their chapter on "Open fire cooking," they have, among other things, the five golden rules of grilling fish -- which basically boil down to "be patient, but don't cook it too long." They are: light the fire well in advance (I have to learn to let the fire sit for a while); preheat the bars of the grill (standard advice for all grilling but particularly important with fish); oil the fish, "not the grill" in italics; don't try to move the fish too soon; be firm and decisive when turning the fish. They discuss various possibilities for grilling -- like putting a bed of bay leaves on the grill or wrapping the fish in wet newspaper (!) that I may eventually try.

I got the branzino at A&H Gourmet, where they had an ice-filled basin with beautiful dorade and branzino. I got the latter because it seemed smaller and more appropriate for one person, but given have big the head and bones were it was actually a bit skimpy and next time I will try the dorade. They cleaned and scaled the fish for me. I rinsed it and patted it dry, squeezed some lemon juice inside and out, sprinkled some sea salt all over, inserted a couple of bay leaves in the inside, and threw some old rosemary on the fire before grilling. I grilled it four minutes on each side, which may have just a tad too long. However, it may be the best branzino I've ever had -- fresh, flaky, delicate in flavor, salty (amazing how well sea salt pairs with fish), just scrumptious. It is a fish you have to chew thoroughly because some bones will make it to your mouth. (Wikipedia informs me that branzino is the northern Italian name for European seabass, known as loup de mer in France; dorade is gilt-head sea bream.)

I accompanied with a kale salad from A&H's new, expanded prepared foods counter and a white Bordeaux that was open. Can't wait to practice more technique!

Drunk and dirty tenderloin

The rap on tenderloin is that it's fairly bland, though tender. This recipe, described by the Jamisons as one of their signature recipes, remedies that with a marinade, a dry rub, a mop and a slow roast of 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours. It seemed a perfect way to inaugurate the Big Green Egg for the season with a splurge for a small dinner party.

A 2-1/4 pound beef tenderloin gets marinated at least 4 hours in 1/2 cup bourbon (the "drunk"), 1 cup low-sodium soy sauce, 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and 4 minced garlic cloves. Drain the marinade and boil it, using half for a mop (add water and oil) and half for a sauce after reducing further. The dry rub is 2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper and 1 teaspoon white pepper (the "dirty"). The tenderloin is seared in a skillet and then put into the barbecue smoker at 180 to 220 degrees.

I decided to experiment for once with hickory and applewood chunks to add some smoke, and probably overdid it a bit. But the meat was fabulous -- crusty, tender, bursting with flavor. It is a poster child for what the Jamisons call barbecue grilling or smoking and ideal for the BGE. The next time I will probably try their alternative "Smoked beef tenderloin with garlic rub" which dispenses with the marinade and combines salt with roasted garlic for the rub, and dial back the wood chunks.

This time we had a nice smothered mushrooms recipe from Marcella, which included dried porcini and its soaking liquid to make a rich sauce, and her green bean salad from the third volume. A great super Tuscan from WTSO paired nicely with the meal. Add antipasti, tomato and mozzarella, and a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler and you have yourself a pretty great meal.

Mintwood Place

This Adams Morgan restaurant strikes just the right note between fine and casual dining with a refreshingly novel menu and great execution. Friends have raved about it and I'm sorry now it took us so long to try it. We'll go back soon!

The ambiance is warm and cheerful, with tan wood tones throughout, and an open feeling with booths and room dividers creating some sense of space. It was loud, but bearable enough for the three of us in a booth.

Photo by Mintwood Place

There was an appealing list of starters -- such as a goat cheese and beet mountain pie, suckling pig croquettes and wood-grilled calf's heart and baby collard greens salad -- that I'll have to try when I can bring a bigger appetite.

This time I settled for the iceberg lettuce and blue cheese, which whetted my appetite for a main course of Spanish mackerel, fennel, piperade, picholine, rouille which was very Mediterranean. I'll confess, I probably would have enjoyed the tagliatelle bolognese that Andrea had more, but you so rarely see mackerel on a menu I just had to try it. The mackerel and garnish -- which the chef offers regularly with different fish -- was quite good in any case. The tagliatelle, served impressively in a big swirl, was outstanding, with a wonderfully full and seasoned sauce. Also extraordinary was the guanciale, chard and spaetzle carbonnade served with our companion's pork chop.

I started with a specialty cocktail, the Bardstown Square -- Redemption bourbon, snap (a ginger thing, I was told), Punt e Mes, Aztec chocolate bitters -- which balanced bitter and sweet in an intriguing way (a little too much chocolate for my taste, however). The bottle of Stangeland Willamette Valley 2012 pinot noir we had with the meal was light and fruity and kept everybody happy.

The bread was warm and yeasty and delicious, the butter was soft (always an important benchmark in our book), the service was quite good -- it was in short an all around great experience. Perhaps due to the torrential rain, I even got a parking space!

Roast chicken with lemon

A cold, rainy spring day seemed like just the right time for this classic recipe from Marcella Hazan. I'd forgotten how simple it is -- and how delicious. I used a 4-lb kosher chicken from WF with the additional step of letting it air in the fridge for a while before roasting it.

Otherwise I followed her instructions -- massage salt and pepper into the chicken inside and out, roll two lemons and puncture them (20x) with a toothpick, stuff them into the cavity, close the cavity with toothpicks and tie the legs together, put in a 350 oven breast side down for 15 minutes, turn it over for 20 minutes, increase heat to 400 for another 15 minutes. Since my 4-pounder was bigger than the 2.5 lbs in the recipe, I allowed a little longer for each phase and tested the temperature for 165. As she says, the chicken is self-basting and has no need of additional fat.

Fir0002/Flagstaffotos via Wikimedia Commons

The result was a very moist and wonderfully tasty chicken with reasonably crispy skin. It was exquisite, filling the kitchen with that roast chicken aroma and rewarding your taste buds with that unadulterated chicken taste.

I felt like lentils on a rainy day and had a small piece of guanciale I wanted to use up, so I googled "lentils pancetta" and got a great little recipe from Mario Batali courtesy of ABC's Chew. This entailed covering a 1/2 lb of lentils with water, bringing to a simmer, adding a halved onion, halved carrot, halved celery, 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard, and 2 ounces of pancetta/guanciale cut into strips. After cooking 20 minutes till tender, drain the lentils, saving a little of the cooking liquid, discard the vegetables, coarsely chop the pancetta and add that back to the lentils with just enough liquid to moisten the lentils. Dress with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper, and serve warm or let come to room temperature -- which Batali rightly says allows the flavors to come out.

Add a salad of baby arugula and a grenache from Spain and you've got a really great meal for a weekday -- plus plenty of leftover roast chicken!

Bonavita

Photo by Bonavita

With super-premium small-batch coffees like Ceremony in Annapolis selling for $15 for 12 ounces, I realized it was time to move on from my dinky little Mr. Coffee coffeemaker. I've been so happy with my Capresso conical burr grinder after a Sur La Table sales assistant recommended it, I decided to follow their advice on the coffeemaker as well and plunked down the hefty purchase price for Bonavita.

This German-engineered appliance gets a lot of praise on the Web as well. It heats the water a little hotter, getting it in the 195-05-degree range considered ideal for making coffee. It has a great spray nozzle that covers the whole filter. One of my problems with the Mr. Coffee was that it wasn't reaching all of the coffee, which was simply too expensive for that kind of neglect. I've found that I use much less coffee with the Bonavita, and of course it tastes much, much better.

Other features I like are that the thermal carafe is lined with glass -- which conserves the heat much better than the all-metal thermal carafe in my old Krups. Also, the carafe has no lid during the brewing process. One of my issues with the Krups was the brewed coffee had to go through the little opening created by the pressure of the lid against the filter bottom, and I felt it got gummed up with old coffee that affected the taste.

So there's no drip-stop function to take the pot out earlier if you're in a hurry, but the whole brewing process is just 6 to 8 minutes. Bonavita is serious in other respects, too. There's no timer. Serious coffee drinkers don't load up their coffee the night before so it can get stale overnight and be there when the timer goes off.

Truly serious coffee drinkers don't believe in any automatic coffeemaker. They insist on pour-over or French press (or Turkish). I've had experience with all these, including the Chemex pour-over. I will probably get a small porcelain filter-holder and kettle to brew individual cups of coffee in the afternoon. Bonavita wants you to make at least 6 cups to get the best result and I don't want two 6-cup pots of coffee a day.

Chicken with escarole, apples and potatoes

This unusual combination from Sara Jenkins' cookbook adds a layer of flavor to the chicken and is fun to make. As she says in the headnote, you accumulate flavors cooking everything in the same skillet, so that when you finish the final sauce with a swirl of butter it all goes over the chicken again.

The recipe calls for 4 skin-on boneless chicken breasts, which most supermarkets don't offer. So I bought the bone-in breasts and de-boned and trimmed the breasts myself, saving the tenders for another day and freezing the ribs and bits for stock. You brown the breasts in olive oil and pop them in a 250-degree oven in a baking pan covered with foil. Pour out the oil from the skillet and add 2 tablespoons butter to saute the pieces of 2 semi-tart apples (I used McIntosh), peeled, cored and cut into 8 pieces.

Earlier, you boil 12 ounces of new potatoes until tender, cool, and flatten with a chef's knife. After sauteeing the apples, you add 2 more tablespoons of butter and fry up the flattened potatoes, about 2 minutes a side. (She doesn't call for it, but I slipped the potatoes into the oven with the chicken to keep them nice and hot.) Next, you add a peeled, crushed clove of garlic to the skillet and start filling it with 2 pounds of torn escarole leaves, adding more as they wilt. Add 1/2 cup white wine and cook until lettuce is tender and liquid is reduced. Return the apple pieces to skillet to warm up again. Plate the potatoes, chicken and escarole mix, swirl another tablespoon of butter into the juices in the skillet, and pour that over the chicken.

The breasts remain moist and their skin has all the flavor from the oil. The bitter escarole is balanced by the apples and the potatoes and butter just round out the whole dish in a very satisfying way. It is a simple, easy revelation.

Urban Butcher

Photo by Urban Butcher

The highlight of this place is the curing room, where they have big, beautiful hams and strings of sausages hanging in a controlled environment. When we had dinner there, the bratwurst appetizer was delicious (though nothing like what goes by the name of bratwurst in Germany) and the steak-frites and burger were both very good. I would go back to buy sausage and ham.

Because what is lacking here is anything like atmosphere or charm (the photos on the website showing an empty restaurant are somewhat deceptive in that regard). Their attempt at nouveau warehouse is strong on a warehouse look and feel, but missing the nouveau element of charm or personality. It is basically just a dump, with hard surfaces, lots of noise, uncomfortable chairs and very tight spaces.

The worst thing, though, for what purports to be a butcher shop as well as a restaurant is the butcher counter, where a dismal array of small cuts vacuum-sealed in plastic have as much appeal as meat made from lego pieces. It's another disappointment in my search for a decent butcher in DC.

My beef, so to speak, with the nouvelle boucherie shops that have sprung up in DC is that it's hit and miss what they will have. You can't go there and count on finding the cut you want for the recipe you've chosen. I have dozens of recipes that want lamb shoulder, for instance, and you can never find that cut anywhere. Whole Foods, of course, only carries popular cuts that sell well (and hardly ever carries veal because it rarely meets their oh-so exacting standards).  The other places are largely adjuncts to restaurants and on a particular day will carry whatever chef didn't use. 

The only place that has come close to offering what approaches a decent butcher counter is Stachowski's, which unfortunately is not very convenient. However, I'm dreaming of the osso buco they had in the counter there and will surely go back one of these days to get that.

Le Diplomate

Photo by Le Diplomate

Finally made it to the uber-trendy French bistro, and it is worth getting enthusiastic about, though maybe not as hysterical as DC has gotten. It is a high-quality take on the the standard bistro items served up in a comfy, warm atmosphere with plenty of buzz, so no complaints.

We had a couple of nice drinks made with bubbly -- mine was the classic French 75 with gin and lemon and was very refreshing. I had the venison terrine, which was just the right mix of fatty and spicy and meaty, with a nice texture and a fresh taste. I followed with the veal escalope served with chanterelle cream -- love the mushrooms! The veal was hot, tender, with just a light coat of flour to soak in the flavor of the fat. Perfect execution. Andrea had an exquisite tuna carpaccio for starter and a lightly breaded salmon fillet that she couldn't stop raving about. To accompany we had a serviceable Brouilly at a very fair price.

Part of the fun for me was simply to soak up the French atmosphere. to see again all those familiar plates, to revel in the retro feel of it. The food is several notches above, for instance, Bistro du Coin or other French bistros in town, and service and atmosphere, too, are way ahead of the others.

Too bad it's so hard to get into.

Sara Jenkins' New Italian Pantry

We love Sara Jenkins' cookbook, Olives and Oranges, and have been waiting impatiently for her to come out with another. In the meantime, she has an app that offers 75 recipes based on 16 pantry items and a handful of fresh ingredients.

I'm sure the recipes are good but I'm not a big fan of the app. For one thing, it is obviously very limited. Even though she cheats on the 16 items -- some of them, such as "pasta and grains" or "onions and garlic", are multiple items -- the recipes I've looked at seem to be simple variations on a theme -- lemon, capers, garlic, parsley, olives, anchovies, etc. So whether it's lamb chops, chicken legs, cod or halibut, you're going to get a combination of these ingredients. Not too exciting.

Since, however, it is really more a technique than a recipe, the directions do encourage swapping out the various elements, and creating your own quick dish.

The app itself leaves much to be desired as app. It is slow, the user interface has gaps -- there is no way to get to the recipe page except to put "all" into the search box. The videos explaining the pantry items are a bit hoaky and very banal. In her cookbook, for instance, Jenkins has numerous specific recommendations for brands of olive oil and other products. Here she just says she cooks with olive oil.

Good effort, but I think she'd be better off getting that second cookbook out.

Palena Coffeehouse

Glazed donuts (Photo by Palena)

The kouign-amann est arrivee. This lovely confection of layered dough, butter and caramelized sugar is a Breton specialty and we discovered it on our recent trip to San Francisco. Wikipedia says it means cake-butter and that pretty well sums it up. It's a bit crispy, very buttery and sweet and delicious.

It is front and center at the wonderful new Palena Coffeehouse. This is the front part of the pre-expansion restaurant, where the bar and cafe menu used to be served. It has been renovated as a coffee bar, serving sweet and savory pastries from 7 (8 on weekends) and desserts in the evening.

Frank Ruta, who has the best cheeseburger in town and one of the best prix-fixe menus, has brought his trademark exacting standards and doing everything himself from scratch now to breakfast. The pastry array is outstanding, with all the usual croissants, scones, coffeecakes and his takes on donuts and bagels with cream cheese. The cappuccinos are very good, nice and creamy in porcelain cups, though the Swing's espresso is not at the level of Dolcezza -- still miles better than Starbucks, which is not even in the race any more for us.

When the young baker brought out a new plateful of kouign-amann a customer asked, "What are those?" She heard "How are those?" and just said "They're wonderful." Andrea asked her what time she got up to bake all this, and she said 3 a.m.

We were a little late catching up to this new operation, which opened in November. We went the previous night for a cheeseburger in the Cafe and only when I went to use the restroom did I discover what they'd done with this section. It's a clever way to optimize use of the building and the kitchen and makes Palena a very special destination.

Ragout of duck legs with turnips

More fowl! It sounds better in French, ragout de cuisses de canard aux navets. This recipe from Anne Willan's The Country Cooking of France was the simplest I could find in a quick browse of the cookbooks in the kitchen (there were many others but too complicated for a weekday). This recipe, a variation on one for a whole duck, was just the right way to use the duck legs that beckoned from the meat case at Broad Branch.

Brown the duck legs and set aside, drain off some fat, brown some flour and whisk in chicken stock and wine and boil to thicken. Put back the duck legs with a bouquet garni and simmer on the stove. In a separate pan, saute sliced onions in the drained duck fat and remove, then saute turnips (sprinkle some sugar on them) cut into eighths. Stir the vegetables into the duck legs and sauce and cook until tender (it took considerably longer than the 15 to 20 minutes she prescribed).

This is a great old-fashioned French dish, complete with thick sauce. The duck never got quite tender but had a great flavor. The turnips lost their bitterness from the sugar and lent an earthy note to the dish, accenting the creamy onion sauce. We had brown rice with it.

I've had a soft spot for Anne Willan since I took a course at the original Ecole de la Varenne in Paris, though she was not the teacher. I saw her soon after my arrival in Washington when she was promoting her Chateau cookbook, which I also have. I haven't got a lot of use out of her books, but this was certainly a welcome find.

Fowl weather

Snow, ice, freezing temperatures -- what could be more comforting than a slow-roasted chicken with potato wedges sizzling in the fat. Especially if the chicken was smeared with a herb paste and stuffed with lemon, garlic and more herbs, resting on a bed of herbs as it roasted away for three hours at 300 degrees.

Photo by Epicurious

This was the recipe we culled from the latest issue of Bon Appetit. We picked our favorite plump roaster, the kosher chicken at Whole Foods, and rubbed the herb paste of coarsely ground fennel seeds and red pepper flakes, chopped thyme and marjoram, salt, pepper and olive oil inside and out. Then put a quartered lemon and a halved head of garlic in the cavity with a couple more sprigs each of thyme and marjoram and placed the bird on sheet pan on top of more sprigs and surrounded by the yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed, quartered and tossed in olive oil. This goes in the oven, the potatoes get turned and the chicken basted every hour while the house fills with this incredible aroma.

The chicken comes out beautiful, moist, shreddably tender, with a crisp, flavorful skin and dark potatoes that manage to be gooey and crisp at the same time. Too often we tear out these appealing recipes and lose track of them. The key here was immediate consumption. This one is a keeper.

We have gradually come to the conclusion that the old WF at Tenley has a better and more interesting selection of produce and perhaps even meat than the big, newer WF at Friendship Heights, where we usually shop. While buying the chicken at Tenley, I noticed that they had not only frozen guinea fowl, which I almost never see at Friendship, but also frozen pheasant. So I took the pheasant home and quickly found not one but two pheasant recipes in Roden's Food of Spain, one stuffed with apples and the other stuffed with duck liver pate. I opted for the healthier apple version and we roasted our pheasant for a festive Oscar night dinner, accompanied by a crunchy, healthy barley and cauliflower salad from Bon Appetit.

As is typical for game birds -- though this was certainly farmed -- the recipe called for larding with several strips of bacon. In addition to half an apple in the cavity, it also had sauteed apple rings in the pot with a sauce made from deglazing the skillet with Calvados (I used applejack). Our bird at 2-1/2 pounds was considerably bigger than the recipe's 1-1/2 pound, so it took considerably longer than the 30 minutes at 425 degrees prescribed in the recipe. No matter, we waited happily. The breast meat was tender, with a more delicate flavor than chicken, just a bit dry in spite of the larding. The dark meat was gamier, altogether different than a chicken thigh, and was especially delicious cold the next day (yes, there were leftovers from a bird that big).

Roden's book has a number of game bird recipes -- partridge, woodcock, quail, and squab in addition to pheasant. Who knew the Spanish were such avid hunters? That's along with a good assortment of chicken, turkey, capon, guinea fowl and rabbit recipes. So plenty to look forward to still.

Mediterranean winter

It's been a hard winter and we've had our usual round of beef stew, chili, sauce bolognese, pork roast and other wintry comfort food. But not every day in the Mediterranean is hot and sunny and these countries have their own winter dishes that have helped keep us warm.

Stewy lamb is a good start. I dusted off our tagine and made Ghillie Basan's lamb tagine with shallots and dates. Lamb shoulder is hard to find so I used butterflied leg of lamb, a small piece that provided just the 1-1/2 pounds called for in the recipe. After browning the lamb, and then the 12 peeled shallots and 4 to 6 garlic cloves, you add turmeric and cinnamon sticks, put the lamb back in and cover with water. Evidently, Basan's tagine is smaller than mine, because when I put in water to cover, it comes out too watery, even after 1-1/2 hours of cooking. The dates and honey go in after the first hour, and a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds finishes it off at the end.

Although it has some of the same ingredients, we moved on the same week to Ottolenghi's lamb meatballs with barberries, yogurt and herbs. Whole Foods now apparently grinds its lamb shoulder so that fresh ground lamb is available, and it made these meatballs -- which also have onion, parsley, garlic, cinnamon, allspice, barberries, salt, pepper and egg -- very tasty. After browning the meatballs, you then saute shallots (again!), add wine, stock, bay leaves, thyme, figs and sugar, place the meatballs back in and simmer for 1-1/2 hours, uncovering it after 30 minutes. Garnish with Greek yogurt and chopped herbs (cilantro, mint, dill, tarragon).

Both dishes were very warming, with the meatballs clearly ahead in the flavor department. We actually threw leftovers from both dishes together and served that over couscous -- lamb, figs, dates, shallots galore.

For my solo fish dinner this week, I went to Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain and found an easy recipe for the monkfish that looked good to me at the Fishery. This called simply for caramelizing an onion and then sauteeing the monkfish in the pan. At the end, you light some rum and flambee the fish. Monkfish has this lobster-like texture and sweet flavor that I like, so this worked perfectly. I got used to the fish in France under its much more appealing French name, lotte (also more appealing than the Spanish rape), where it often appeared on menus. It is easy and cheaper than a lot of other fish.

The Roden recipe was very nice and since Whole Foods had frozen pheasant this week, presumably farmed, I'm looking forward to using her recipe for pheasant with apples. More on that another time.

Ambar

We wanted to get into the super-trendy Rose's Luxury and in our delusion thought we could show up at 6 on a Saturday night and get in the no-reservation place. After they told us it was a three-hour wait for a table and standing room only at the bar, we retreated to the nearby Ambar, a Balkan restaurant, to mull our options and get a drink.

After an hour of sitting at the friendly bar upstairs, sampling their specialty cocktails and the mezze platter, we checked with Rose's that it would indeed be another two hours before we got a table and decided to eat dinner at Ambar. Our helpful bartender recommended his favorites on the menu, and we ended up getting four small plates and two large plates for our party of four.

The food was outstanding. The cheese pie was creamy beneath a fried crust, the sour cabbage stuffed with diced pork belly was scrumptious, the Brussels sprouts with bacon, lemon and garlic was as good as you would expect. The mixed grill was a gourmet version of the Balkan staple, with homemade sausage and marinated steak, and truly a large plate for two as advertised.. Less convincing were the Wiener schnitzel, for some reason served rolled up, and the roasted mushroom crepes, which seemed uncharacteristically heavy.

I ate at many Balkan restaurants during my time in Germany and I'm not sure too many people in the Balkans eat food quite this refined. Ambar is part of Richard Sandoval's restaurant empire (his El Centro DF is also great).

The Piquentum Malvasia Croatia we sampled first by the glass and then with a bottle was a nice balance of fruity and dry, and a great advertisement for the region. I would skip the slivovitz version of an Old Fashioned the next time around and order either the slivovitz straight or a regular Old Fashioned.

8407 Kitchen Bar

Silver Spring is really as close to us as Bethesda, but we hardly ever go there. This restaurant may change things. It is bright and warm, with delicious food -- described as farm-to-table artisanal American -- and good service. Installed in the shadow of Discovery in what appears to be an old garage or warehouse, there's no place like it in Bethesda, and I'd be hard put to name a place in DC that combines quality and comfort quite so well.

We trekked there from AFI (only two and a  half blocks but in freezing cold it was a trek) and sat at the upstairs bar. I had a Manhattan with their handmade mole vermouth, and Andrea had a house cocktail with Old Tom gin and sparkling wine that isn't on their online drinks menu. We ordered a plate of two handmade charcuterie -- the country pork terrine and the trottter tots -- both very fine. I had the pulled pork sandwich, which consisted of a homemade brioche stuffed with tender, sweet pork and very hot fries. Andrea had the risotto starter, which was tasty and delicate and made for a ample meal though both of us had the feeling it was not a true risotto but a baked rice dish. I had a glass of Fying Dog Raging Bitch on tap and Andrea had the Iris Pinot Gris from Oregon.

It was full, and fully booked, on a Saturday night and we were lucky to arrive early enough to get two places at the bar. The upper room is more sheltered and cozier, and livelier with all the table, but the downstairs looked like a perfectly acceptable alternative.

There were many things on the menu that looked worth trying, so we will certainly go back soon. We may even skip the movie and park in the garage right next door.

Cowgirl Creamery, RIP

It was one of the best things in DC but it was hard to get to. The owners of a really great cheese shop admitted that it was location that did them in as they shut the DC store at the end of the year. They seemed surprised that a location near the Spy Museum but far from the office buildings at 12th and 13th did not generate a lot of foot traffic of people doing their grocery shopping.

I'd like to think that was the only reason, and that if, for instance, they had located the shop somewhere in Chevy Chase, they might have had more luck. But I suspect not because I think there's more to it than that.

Washington is just not well suited to specialty food stores. To support these gems, you need living neighborhoods, where people shop and go out in the evening. Perhaps Capitol Hill or 14th Street are getting there, but even prosperous places like Chevy Chase and Georgetown don't seem that welcoming. After all, Marvelous Market failed at its original location at Connecticut and Nebraska and I don't think Stachowski's, for all the quality of its products, is long for this earth.

Which brings up a second point. There is no culture of service or knowledge in the operation of these stores. When we stopped in Stachowski's the other night we were waited on by two young men, one more clueless than the other, with little knowledge of the products or how to handle them. Our shoppers are content to do one-stop shopping at Whole Foods and our society generates young people capable of working as a cog in a supermarket system but with no love or feeling for food.

But there's more. The new Bethesda bakery, Fresh Baguette, has little chance of survival, I think, even though the bakers are genuine French and produce excellent bread and pastries. But they are making little effort to adapt to American tastes, offering up these pathetic sandwich fillings to a sprinkling of customers while Taylor's is mobbed. The butcher stores that have opened here are equally boutique-y, too precious, not something for daily shopping.

Cowgirl Creamery seemed to have well-trained staff who were knowledgeable and passionate about the product, but I rarely saw any of them a second time (though admittedly I went very infrequently). Were they not paid enough? Were the working conditions harsher than they seemed? Again, I suspect that American youth who would be good at the job can't work for what they're paid, and those that will work for that amount don't have the training or the interest in the product.

The long and short of it is that specialty food stores need an urban, foot-traffic culture to thrive and Washington, like most of America, is a suburban, car-driven culture. In that context, and given the stratification in society with no effort to train youth in artisanal food, it will be franchised, process-oriented food places that thrive.

Pan to oven veal chops

They sit on the cookbook shelf in my kitchen calling out to me in big fat letters -- "MEAT" and "TENDER." And yet I rarely use Hugh Whittingstall-Fearnley's The River Cottage Meat Book or Nigel Slater's Tender. But this weekday meal was a huge exception as they helped me throw together an impromptu meal that was easy and scrumptious.

The most appealing thing at Broad Branch was the big, thick veal chops -- always excellent and priced very moderately. Since the weather was too nasty for grilling I looked for an alternative and went first to the Meat book. There, hidden in the description for pan to oven pork chops was a note on a possible alternative with veal chops that was actually a different recipe. The chops are marinated with some peeled lemon zest, lemon juice, thyme and olive oil for just two hours. Then they are seared in a skillet and transferred to an oven dish heated in a 425-degree oven. The skillet is deglazed with water and lemon juice and the liquid added to the oven dish. The chops are roasted 20 to 30 minutes. The sauce is enriched with cream and capers and spooned over the chops.

Tender gave me the perfect complement, using the half-bag of potatoes I had left over from another meal. The potatoes (he calls for new but I just used these red boiling potatoes) get boiled till tender. Meanwhile, you simmer 1 cup heavy cream with 3 crushed garlic cloves and leaves from 8 thyme sprigs and salt and pepper, reducing by a third. Drain the potatoes and lightly crush them in a shallow dish, then ladle the cream over them.

To round it out I served arugula with grated lemon zest, lemon juice and our special Spanish olive oil. Very elegant comfort food! I don't know whether these are English country recipes or where they come from, but I will certainly be looking more often into these books!