Italian-style roast pork shoulder

I stumbled upon this recipe when I was looking for an image of spit-roasted chicken and found a blog with a spit-roasted porchetta, citing the recipe in Real Cajun by Donald Link. The book looked good anyway, so I bought it and, to my surprise, found that Link does not spit-roast the pork shoulder -- he just sears and roasts in the oven.

What a revelation! I can take any roast that fits on a spit and cook it in my grill! I finally was able to try it as we marked the victory of I'll Have Another (love the name) in the Kentucky Derby. (I was rooting for Bodemeister, but a good race is worth celebrating.)

The recipe calls for a 7 lb boneless pork shoulder (Boston butt). My butcher friend at WF explained they cut the shoulders in half, so that generally they weighed 3-1/2 to 4 lbs. Plus there's a small bone in it. He offered to remove the bone, so I had him do the butterfly part, too, since I didn't find Link's directions for doing it very clear. I was leery of cutting the seasoning completely in half, and as a result the roast was a bit salty and garlicky (which we didn't mind). I'll give the portions for the full 7-lb roast and you can safely cut in half to get the taste Link wants.

Mix together 2 Tbl minced garlic, 3 Tbl salt, 1 tsp ground black pepper, 1 Tbl ground fennel, 1 Tbl chopped thyme or rosemary and spread the seasoning over the inside of the butterflied shoulder. Link also makes several incisions of an inch or so to get the seasoning into the meat. Roll it up and tie it and put 2 Tbl salt and 1 tsp pepper on the outside.

Link sears the meat and roasts it in a 325-degree oven for 1-1/2 to 2 hours to an internal temperature of 145 to 155 degrees. I put it on the spit and roasted it for about 50 min. Link has you put the roast on a bed of sliced onion and vegetable oil in the roasting pan, so I just onion and oil in the drip pan underneath the spit. We had steamed artichokes as a starter (and we couldn't figure out why we don't do that more often!), and accompanies with braised endives.

The first time I had real Italian porchetta was in a little hole-in-the-wall hostaria in Assisi and of course I fell totally in love with. This great recipe is as close as I'm going to get to it here, I think. We thought it tasted a bit of pancetta, so maybe fennel is one of the ingredients that gives pancetta its taste.

Chicken and dumplings

One of my fondest food memories is a Methodist church dinner which had the best chicken and dumplings I've ever eaten. I was young and I don't remember where it was -- probably Pittsburg. I try new recipes now and again in the hopes of finding something as good, but haven't had any luck so far. But that's OK -- it's fun trying.

This recipe from Andrea Reusing's Cooking in the Moment has a lot of steps but is basically pretty simple. The result is quite tasty, though not as great as that Methodist church dinner in my memory. One is tempted to think you could get as good a result with fewer steps. She recommends a real laying hen, but I have no idea where you'd find one of those. I used one of the kosher chickens from WF.

Put the chicken (including neck, gizzard and heart, if available) in a 6-qt pot and cover with 3 qts water. Bring to a boil. Start skimming off scum as it gets to a simmer and continue skimming and simmering for 5 min. Then add a carrot, a celery stalk, an onion cut in half and an unpeeled head of garlic cut in half crosswise, as well as 2 bay leaves, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp black peppercorns. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 10 to 15 min.

You're supposed to pull out the chicken and cut out the breast meat at this point, which is supposed to be done and just pink at the bone. My chicken breasts were still partly raw so I put it back in for another 10 min. Reusing says to put the chicken back in the pot and cook for a further 20 min. (I shortened because of extended time for the breast meat), then add the dark green top from a large leek and 20 (count 'em!) parsley stems (chop the leaves for garnish) and cook for another 10 min. Remove the chicken, cut off the legs and let cool. Strain the broth and discard the vegetables and chicken carcass. Reusing says you should have 2 qts of broth. I didn't measure, but the end product came out soupier than I like, so maybe I had more than 2 qts or 2 qts is too much. I would reduce or simply siphon off some of the broth. (Though her photo of the dish, shown here, looks about as soupy as mine.)

Make the dumpling batter by whisking together 2 c. flour with 1 Tbl. baking powder and 1 tsp. salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together 2 eggs, 1/2 c. buttermilk and 1 stick (8 Tbl) melted butter. Combine the liquid ingredients with the dry ingredients and stir with wooden spoon to make (very thick) batter. Add 2 Tbl each of chopped parsley and "thinly sliced" chives (why not say chopped?).

Remove the skin from the chicken, tear the meat from the legs and tear both breast and leg meat into bite size portions. Rinse pot and pour broth back into it. Bring to a boil and put 2 diced carrots, 2 diced celery stalks, and the diced white and green parts of that large leek into the broth with 3/4 c. white wine. Cook for 4 min., then add the chicken meat with 1 c. heavy cream. Check seasoning and bring to a simmer.

Form the dumplings with 2 teaspoons and drop them into the simmering stew. Stir around to keep separate. When all the dumplings are in, cover and cook for 5 min. Serve with garnish of chopped parsley and chive batons and plenty of ground pepper.

The chicken takes on a lot of great flavor from the aromatics. The broth is a little thin. Maybe it was just too much but it might help to boost the flavor with a bouillon cube. We made the full recipe so I'm eager to see how it tastes reheated as leftovers.

Bandolero

An outing this week reinforced my already confirmed opposition to small-plate restaurants and Top Chef and added something new for me to dislike: Pop-ups. I think they should be more honest about this new trend to preview restaurants in another locale and just call them rip-offs.

So visiting the Bandolero pop-up, previewing a new DC venture by Mike Isabella of Top Chef fame, turned out to be a perfect storm of things I don't like. Worst of all, the food wasn't that great. Mediocre is the word that most often comes to mind. (Fortunately, good company and Negra Modelo draft beer made it a great evening anyway.)

One of my companions at dinner, Peter Gilbert, offered a blow-by-blow account of the meal in his No Limits blog that I'm pretty much in agreement with, though I question how any other Latin cocktail could surpass a caipirinha.

Certainly the $65 prix fixe, not including drinks, ridiculously overpriced the food we got in terms of quantity and quality (hence, rip-off), even if you consider that since tax and tip was included it corresponded to $50 on a normal menu. While it's long been clear that the primary purpose of a small-plate menu is to increase the restaurant's profit margin, a prix fixe pop-up seems designed to amplify that effect, even though it should essentially be a marketing expense.

The reason I don't watch Top Chef -- I only know Isabella was on it because Andrea is an avid watcher and for  that reason was eager to try this restaurant -- is that it turns cooking into a sport, making food something like a football that gets skillfully passed around until it lands on the diner's plate. I have no illusions that Top Chef is closer to what happens in a restaurant than anything that goes on in my kitchen, but I don't have to watch it (you know the old saying about sausage...).

Bandolero was not very Mexican, confirming once again my belief that it's pretty much impossible to get good Mexican food this side of the Mississippi. I liked the Umbels' previous restaurant, Hook, and wish them well in this endeavor, but as Peter optimistically says, it is a work in progress.

Rehoboth weekend

Big hat tip to Rehoboth Foodie, whose diligence in reviewing and reporting on the food scene in Rehoboth Beach provides a very useful resource. We had a great weekend there and food was one of the highlights.

It got off to a good start by stopping at the Red Hook Lobster truck on the way out of town. It was parked in Bethesda at Woodmont and Norfolk and when we got there at 1, there was virtually no line. It was very convenient because we could sit outside at the tables in the little triangle called Veterans Park. The lobster rolls are really delicious. I still prefer the warm lobster with drawn butter. The rolls, the chips, even the soda are all top quality and it just set the right culinary tone for the weekend.

Our favorite Rehoboth restaurant, The Back Porch, wasn't open yet, so we went the first night to a relatively new place, The Henlopen City Oyster Bar. It was top-rated in Trip Advisor and got very favorable comments from Rehoboth Foodie. It is tucked into a modern building and fairly noisy, but very light and with enough decor to create a nice buzz and ambiance. There was a short wait, but we barely had our drinks from the bar when we were seated. I split a dozen Turtle Cove oysters and they were delicious -- fresh, briny, very cold. It had been a while since I'd had raw oysters and these tasted especially good.

For a main course, I went for the grilled wreckfish, since I'd never had a wreckfish before. The waiter explained it was a mild, white fish from off the coast of the Carolinas, and it had a nice sweet taste. I got purreed rutabaga as one of the sides and that went really well with it. The other dishes all got rave reviews, too, and only the spirit of adventure kept us from going back there the second night. I split a 22-oz. Dogfish Head IPA to accompany; the advantage of the big bottle is that it tastes really like draft beer.

To try something different, we went to Planet X Cafe the second night. They had a wedding shower party so we had to sit in the bar area, but the service was great and the food was fine. I had a crispy roasted pork shoulder, which, typical for their menu, had a vaguely Asian flavor. The signature dishes, a Thai shrimp curry and stacked eggplant, appeared to be excellent. Both restaurants claim to use locally sourced organic ingredients so it is forgivable that the waiter came back and said they couldn't fulfill our orders for Caesar salad.

Lunches were also great. The first day we made the trek down to Bethany to get our favorite cheesesteak subs at Surf's Up. The second day, I got fish and chips from Go Fish on Rehoboth Ave. This was the real deal, with fresh, moist cod and a lovely crisp beer batter. The fries (British chips) were not so great but someone else had some Thrasher's fries and they went really well with the cod.

We also enjoyed sitting at The Coffee Mill, located in a tiny passage off Rehoboth Ave. The owner entertained us with the story of how he had acquired the business a couple of years ago to keep it from closing. They have a great selection of coffees and pastries and we incorporated it into our morning routine.

Duck ragu with pasta

This recipe from Molly Stevens using duck legs complements the previous duck breast dish after Broad Branch Market unexpectedly offered duck parts in its meat counter.

Trim extra fat and skin flaps from 4 duck legs, pat them dry and salt and pepper all around. Put them skin side down in a hot skillet or braising pan (no need for fat since they quickly render fat) and brown them for about 7 min. Turn and brown flesh side for just 3 or 4 min. and remove. Pour off the fat, add 1 Tbl olive oil, and braising aromatics (1 medium yellow onion, 2 carrots, 1 celery stalk -- all cut into 1/2-in. pieces) and saute over medium heat for 7 or 8 min. Add 4 thinly sliced garlic cloves, 1-1/2 Tbl chopped rosemary, and 1/4 tsp ground allspice and cook for another min. Add 2/3 c. white wine and reduce for 6 min., then add 3/4 c. chicken broth and reduce again for 6 min. Add chopped tomatoes and juice from 14-oz. can and simmer for 3 or 4 min.

Return the browned duck legs to the braising pan, tuck in 2 bay leaves between the legs, cover with parchment paper, pushing it down to nearly touch the legs and overlapping the sides of the pan. Cover tightly and put in preheated 325-degree oven. Check within first 30 min. that is not simmering too vigorously and let cook 2 hours altogether. Remove from oven and let cool in braising liquid for 20 min. to 1 hour (or overnight in fridge). When ready to serve, bring pasta water to boil, remove the duck legs and take off the skin, break up the meat into bite-size chunks with your fingers, and return meat to sauce (skim fat off sauce if needed). You can either cut up the skin and add to sauce or cut into 1/2-inch pieces and fry 6 to 8 min. in a separate skillet and remove to drain to make cracklings. Boil the pasta (we used perciatelli, a tubular spaghetti they have been selling at Whole Foods), drain, and serve some ragu on top of each portion, with cracklings on top of that.

This has everything we like -- braised meat, flavorful sauce, pasta -- so it was a big hit. It's nice to be able to add duck to a more workaday repertoire.

Duck breast with apple sherry

Our little Broad Branch Market has a nice meat counter with a consistent array of very good beef and sausages and occasionally other things. For the first time yesterday, I saw duck -- breasts and legs sold separately and both at reasonable prices. (I've been buying a fair amount of duck lately and had a good idea of what the market was.)

So we ended up having duck breast for dinner and using this simple recipe from Susan Loomis's Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin, which I haven't had much occasion to use until now. The "apple sherry" she refers to is pommeau, a mix of apple juice and calvados. She lists tawny port and semi-dry sherry as substitutes.

You heat up you skillet over medium heat and put 2 13-oz. duck breasts skin down and cover for 8 min. Then turn over to flesh side and cook another 2 or 3 min. Remove duck and drain all the fat -- there's a lot of fat rendered, which is why you don't need any other oil. Return the duck to the skillet skin side down, reduce heat to low, cover and cook another 5 min. or so. Loomis emphasizes that you don't want to overcook the breast, which should remain fairly rare, or it will start to get tough.

Remove the duck and pour in 1/2 c. pommeau or substitute, and 2 Tbl of cider vinegar. Reduce 5 to 7 min. until syrupy, remove from heat, stir in a cut up 1 Tbl of chilled butter, swirl till dissolved and pour over duck breast, sliced on the diagonal. I served with rice and Greek salad.

There was not much in our liquor cabinet. Tawny port was gone. An old bottle of Amontillado sherry tasted a little dubious, and some very old Marsala looked a little vile. The white port, which has a tawny color and is semi-dry, seemed OK, so that's what I used. The duck was delicious and tender, but I was not thrilled by the sauce. It would be worth trying again with pommeau, if I ever come across that.

Braised pork chops and creamy cabbage

Just when you thought it was time to put the cold-weather cookbooks downstairs, along comes a cool spring day that makes a nice braised dish seem very appetizing. This recipe from Molly Stevens' All About Braising is simple enough for a weekday and tasty enough for an out of town guest.

Pat 4 1-in. thick bone-in loin pork chops dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper on both sides. Dredge the chops in flour (shaking off excess) put them in a skillet with 3 Tbl of hot olive oil without crowding (I did them in two batches). Don't move them for a good 4 min. so they form a crisp brown crust, then turn them over for another 3 to 4 min. Remove and set aside.

Melt 2 Tbl of butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add 1 tsp. caraway seed and 1 tsp. yellow mustard seed and saute for 1 or 2 min. until the seeds start popping. Add 2 thinly sliced medium shallots and cook for 2 min., then add 1/2 of a small cabbage (about 1 lb.), shredded, and turn heat down to medium-low. Stir and let cabbage wilt, not brown, for 10 min. Add 1/2 c. white wine and simmer for 1 or 2 min., then add 1 Tbl cider vinegar and 2/3 c. water. Stevens also adds a chicken bouillon cube to boost the flavor. Place the chops into the simmering braise, overlapping if necessary, cover and cook for 20 min., turning the chops halfway through.

I worried my chops were too big to cook just 20 min. and blithely let them sit there longer while we waited for our guest, so they got a bit overdone. Take Stevens' word for it, 20 min. is enough. Remove chops, turn up heat and add 1/4 c. heavy cream and let it boil away for 5 min. or so until the sauce thickens and the cabbage gets all creamy. Spoon the cabbage over the chops. We served with wild rice.

Spit-roasted chicken

Warm weather means outdoor cooking. I put the rotisserie extender onto the Weber and prepared one of the the Jamisons' options for spit-roasted chicken -- just rubbing herbes de Provence onto the chicken with some olive oil. I also sprinkled salt over the chicken and into the cavity, and just for good measure, put a couple of lemons a la Marcella Hazan into the cavity with some sprigs of thyme.

I followed two Jamison directions I haven't paid too much attention to in the past. One is to loosen the skin -- not to put something underneath it, but apparently just to get it to crisp up better. It certainly worked. The other was to tie the chicken more tightly using their criss-cross twine method (take 4 ft of twine, bind the legs with the middle of the piece, then criss-cross around the chicken, being sure to bind the wings, up to the neck). I roasted it to 170 degrees in the thick part of the thigh.

This time I used one of the Amish chickens from the co-op. It costs more, but it had a really nice flavor, stayed moist, etc. The innards, which I sauteed separately, were also delicious. Whole Foods has started carrying no-name own brand chickens, and while I know they are always boasting of their high standards I've been a little skeptical since I read that their 365 extra virgin olive oil did not test very well.

The kale also looked very good at the co-op, so I got it, even though neither of us cares that much for kale. It is supposed to be super-healthy, so I found a recipe in Deborah Madison's Local Flavors that combined it with red beans, cilantro and feta cheese. Even starting at 1 p.m. I was able to soak 1/2 lb. Rancho Gordo pinquito beans for 4 hrs, then cook with 1/2 c. chopped onion and 1/2 tsp thyme leaves for an hour or so, until tender. Madison says to add salt at the beginning, but I still prefer to add salt at the end of cooking beans.

Separately, you trim 1 bunch kale leaves away from the tough stems, chop into 1-in. pieces and cook in several quarts of boiling salted water for 5 to 7 min. and drain. You take another 1/2 c. of chopped onion and saute that in 2 Tbl of olive oil with 1/2 c. chopped cilantro for 10 min. Add the kale and beans w enough of the bean cooking juice to make sauce and simmer it all together for another 10 min. Finish with sprinkling of 1/4 c. chopped cilantro, 3 oz. crumbled feta cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. It was a very nice recipe and of course you don't even taste the kale. Can't beat those Rancho Gordo beans.

Roast fresh ham with a honey-whole-grain-mustard glaze

This really nice recipe from the Washington Post Food section turned into a great Easter dinner when we paired it with some classic sides -- old-fashioned scalloped potatoes and buttered cabbage.

Since we always celebrate Passover with Andrea's family, Easter is kind of hit and miss and this year's little celebration was totally serendipitous. I no longer subscribe to the Post but someone left a copy behind Wednesday when I was at Starbucks so I brought home the Food section, which had this recipe. Then by coincidence I was shopping at Whole Foods for Thursday dinner and they had several nice-looking fresh hams in the meat case. So I got one, planning to cook it for the two of us and eating leftovers for a couple of months. But we ran into friends on Saturday who had made no other plans for Easter, so they said they'd join us and we turned it into a full-fledged Easter dinner.

I'm not sure I've ever eaten fresh ham before and fairly certain I've never cooked it. This was simple and tasty and gave us a, well, fresh perspective on ham. It is neither cured nor smoked, so probably closer to pork roast than what we think of as ham. It is, however, the cut that is used to make ham -- the rear leg. The Post headnote says there is the meatier butt portion, from higher up on the leg, or the lower shank portion. WF labeled their cut "sirloin," so either I was looking at the wrong sign or they goofed. This was clearly the butt portion and weighed in at 7-1/2 lbs (the recipe calls for 10 lbs but they must use bigger pigs). It had a lovely layer of white fat around the top half and was tied with just two strings.

One or two days beforehand, you make a crisscross pattern in the fat (I removed the string and re-tied afterwards), rub salt and pepper (4 tsp salt and 2 tsp freshly ground pepper) over the whole ham, then mix up a rub of 2 Tbl olive oil, 1 Tbl chopped rosemary, and 3 chopped garlic cloves and rub that over the whole ham. Put in a big Ziploc bag and refrigerate, taking it out 45 min. before roasting.

To roast, you preheat the oven to 450 degrees, put the ham in a large roasting pan, and cook for 20 min., until browned, and then turn oven down to 325. Rotate the ham front to back once or twice and cook for 2-1/2 to 3 hrs, reaching an internal temperature of 150 degrees. During the last 2 hrs of cooking, apply a glaze made of 1/2 c. honey, 1/2 c. whole-grain mustard (I used Dijon), 1 Tbl white wine vinegar and 1 tsp chopped rosemary. The ham develops a lovely dark crust. I pulled it out after about 2-3/4 hrs when temperature was reached and just let it sit for an hour so with a fold of aluminum foil over it. It was still just a bit warm when I carved and sliced and tasted really excellent that way. You put some more whole-grain mustard on the table.

We found the recipes for the sides online and they were the perfect foils in their classic simplicity for this fresh ham. We also baked some drop buttermilk biscuits and had some of Andrea's super-duper dark chocolate macaroons for dessert. A very smooth and mellow Malbec was a great accompaniment.

Supermarkets

Various things about Whole Foods have been frustrating me lately -- their increasing tendency toward "Giant"-ism (pun intended), the growing array of pre-cut and packaged fresh fruits and vegetables, the indifference and arrogance even toward customers.

I was annoyed this week when a few things I bought there before were no longer available. Bear with me on this. It sounds petty in detail but it's to make a larger point. I know there are people with real problems and this is not one of them, but this is a blog about food and it is my hobby.

So I ran out of sea salt. LOL, I know, but I am one of those people who thinks they can taste a difference in flavor between sea salt, kosher salt and regular old salt. The brand I've bought twice at Whole Foods is Celtic Sea Salt, which is coarse and grayish and comes in a 1 lb cellophane package. I like it, I've gotten used to how "salty" it is so I can dose dishes properly, etc. No longer there. Ditto for the bulk coarse sea salt WF used to sell. Now they have something called Real Salt, which claims to harvested from ancient seabeds in Utah or someplace. May be good, but I hesitate to buy it because it will probably not be around when I run out again. It seems to me a year or two ago there were half a dozen coarse sea salts on offer, and now I don't see any.

The other two things I could no longer find were smoked oysters and bouillon cubes, two supermarket staples since time immemorial. Very occasionally I like smoked oysters as an hors d'oeuvres, so when I ate my pantry can last week I put a replacement on my shopping list. Gone. In that row were six identical cans of sardines, but not a single can of smoked oysters. (Yes, I asked; it was not a temporary absence, they no longer carry it.) Bouillon cubes, of course, are borderline politically incorrect (salt etc.) but Molly Stevens called for it in recipe as a flavor booster and why not. No sign of them. Instead there was a row of "Better Than Bouillon" -- jars of vegetable-based goop with artificial chicken and beef flavors. Guaranteed they won't be there in six months.

I decided to finally make a long-planned trip to investigate the Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan. Could it be the combination of WF and Safeway that would make one-stop shopping possible and worth the extra distance? HT was a perfectly nice little supermarket, perhaps a notch above Safeway, but not different enough to go the extra mile and certainly no replacement for WF. (For the record, they had the smoked oysters and bouillon cubes, but no sea salt; and they were all very friendly.)

Which serves to remind me that even if by some miracle a Wegman's were to be located at a convenient distance there will never be one-stop shopping and that I should welcome the diversity of multiple providers. By consistently frustrating me, WF has reminded me that I should routinely shop at the myriad other vendors available, none of whom can ever provide one-stop shopping. I go to Vace and ACH in Bethesda far too rarely. I can get more of my bulk food and produce at the Grubb Rd. co-op. Safeway is not great, but it is very convenient for the normal supermarket offerings (betting they have smoked oysters and bouillon cubes, too) . I can look more carefully at the limited offerings at Marvelous Market, Addie Bassin's, the Fishery and other places that stock gourmet foods along with their main products.

So, thank you Whole Foods for being the increasingly crass commercial operation you are and reminding me that the perfect supermarket is, well, a grand mirage.

Monkfish roasted with herbs

"Lotte" was always a good choice on a French menu, usually cooked to perfection and smothered in a buttery sauce. Once called the poor man's lobster because it was cheap, but not any more. Monkfish sounds more prosaic and anyone who sees a picture of the whole fish will have trouble eating it. But I like the dense texture and nutty flavor.

This recipe from Mark Bittman, however, was not a  great success. It's full title, oddly, is "Whole monkfish tails roasted with herbs." Oddly because all the recipes are just for tails and he calls for fillets in this recipe just as he does for his other monkfish recipes, so there's nothing particularly whole about them.

This is where the trouble starts. Bittman says 4 to 6 fillets of monkfish tails, about 1-1/2 lbs. He must buy his monkfish on another planet, because a single fillet I got at the Fishery weighed 3/4 lb. It was definitely a fillet as he described it, because there was no bone down the center.

But for the first time ever I'm inclined to let some of the blame fall on the Fishery. These may have been extraordinarily big monkfish. In any case, the texture was more fibrous than I'm used to -- the "denseness" was missing. I suppose it was reasonably fresh but the flavor was not great.

One can always assume that my execution was not perfect, and fish are always tricky, but this is a fairly simple straightforward recipe. Remove any of the gray membrane remaining -- easier said than done and I was surprised that something from the Fishery still had a considerable amount. Dredge the fillets in 1 c. flour, mixed with 1/2 c. chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil, chervil, tarragon, rosemary, chives, etc.) and salt and pepper. Brown in 3 Tbl. olive oil in a flameproof baking dish (I won't go into what happened with my Emile Henry oven dish, but it behooves you to make sure the dish is flameproof). Add 1 c. any fish or chicken stock (or white wine, or water, or mix) and put into preheated 450-degree oven for 20 to 30 min. Serve with rice or bread, pouring pan sauce over the fillets.

It wasn't horrible, but it lacked the finesse of other monkfish recipes I've tried. Bittman says he came upon it in a restaurant and this is his effort to duplicate it, but I suspect he hasn't kitchen-tested it that thoroughly. Oh well.

Rosa Mexicano

There's two things I don't like about Rosa Mexicano. The first, and bigger, is that it is so blatantly commercial, kind of like a Starbucks version of a Mexican restaurant. It is brassy, designed, loud in a way to give it an artificial buzz, efficient in an amateurish way. It is not pleasant to be inside and a good restaurant experience is always about more than the food.

The second thing I don't like, however, is the food. It's not bad. There is a reasonable approximation of some Mexican flavors and dishes, but again in a sanitized and commercial way. The quesadillas are like from cookie cutters and you do find yourself wondering how many of these dishes arrive at the restaurant in a package. We got the starter of 3 vegetable quesadillas, including one with huitlacoche, which we grew to like in Mexico. The mole I had (it was a special and I don't recall the details) was OK. I'm not saying it came out of a jar, but you had to wonder when and where it was made. The portions are relatively small and prices are relatively high.

The chain recently installed its third DC restaurant in what for a long time was a sleazy Brazilian restaurant, so it's bound to be an improvement to the neighborhood. But I won't rush back. I find the food at Surfside better and the atmosphere more congenial, and I'd make a return visit to DF Centro before RM. Oyamel even on a bad day, per our last visit there, is an overall better experience.

I think it's probably impossible to find good Mexican food this far east. I don't expect to have Mexico City or San Miguel quality here, but we do have the feeling that there's probably some hole-in-the-wall Mexican in DC that would be a better eating experience than RM. What we really need to do is go to Oaxaca!

Braised lamb shoulder with green tomatoes and Concord grapes

Loved this Sara Jenkins recipe, but let me hasten to add that I didn't use lamb shoulder, green tomatoes or Concord grapes. It is a late summer recipe, but I wanted to have lamb in the early spring and this one looked easy and good.

Whole Foods of course finds it inconvenient to stock lamb shoulder. My butcher friend there, Andres, explains that when they get shoulder, they just sell it as ground meat. So the "lamb stew meat" in the packaged section was leg, New Zealand leg, but what can you do? It was cut to the 1-1/2 in. cubes called for in the recipe and it was lean, tender and delicious.

No green tomatoes, but a package of some odd brown tomatoes called Kumatos, from Mexico. So at least they weren't red and seemed like a good size to cook whole. Finally, no Concord grapes, but some seedless red muscat grapes from Chile. At least I didn't have to take a toothpick and push out the seeds in each grape, as instructed by Jenkins.

So the rest was easy. Toss the lamb cubes in 2 tsp salt and several grindings of pepper. Brown the lamb in 1/4 c. olive oil. Jenkins specifically says to brown in one layer, don't crowd, but you only need to brown on one side, push to the edge of the pot and put in the rest. Remove the lamb and drain off all but 3 to 4 Tbl. of the fat (since the meat was lean, I didn't need to drain off anything). Brown 4 medium green tomatoes and 4 garlic cloves (she doesn't say peel them, but I did) for 3 min., turning often. Return lamb to pot, and add 1-1/2 c. grapes and 3/4 c. white wine. Put into a preheated 350-degree oven for an hour. Serve with rice or couscous (I opted for rice) and make sure each serving includes a tomato and a garlic clove.

What happens is that the grapes burst and the tomatoes also give up a ton of liquid so you have a wonderful soupy meat sauce, nicely balanced with sweetness and acidity. The lamb had a wonderful flavor and leftovers were great. Maybe I'll try it again in late summer with green tomatoes and Concord grapes!

Tuna Provence style

Solo dinner again so went to the Fishery and got some tuna for Mark Bittman's recipe. We had a lot of the ingredients on hand from the cassoulet over the weekend, so it was pretty easy.

Bittman makes a point of letting the skillet get hot before putting in the oil and browning the tuna. I'll give the amounts he gave for 4 servings, though I cut in half and saved leftovers for another meal. Dredge 1-1/2 lbs. tuna steak in flour and saute in 1/4 c. olive oil, 2 min. on each side, then set aside.

Put 3 cored and chopped tomatoes, 4 crushed and peeled garlic cloves, 2 chopped "green frying peppers" ("the long, light green kind" he specified, which Safeway called "pepper cubanelle"), several sprigs of thyme, salt and pepper, 1/4 c. black olives, 1 c. white wine, and 1/4 c. chopped parsley into the skillet and cook over medium heat for about 10 min., until the tomato starts to break down. (Perhaps because I cut the recipe in half, this dried up on me, so watch carefully.)

Put the tuna back in for 5 to 6 min., turning once, and serve with another 1/4 c. chopped parsley sprinkled over it. I had some red bliss potatoes in the fridge from my last fish dinner so cooked those as s/mashed potatoes. Not much can go wrong with a recipe like this -- great provencal flavor and healthy tuna meal.

Cassoulet de canard confit

Cassoulet is of course the ultimate bean dish. For those of us who cut our gastronomic teeth on Julia Child's books, her arduous three-day recipe for cassoulet was the mountain you had to climb. It's a great recipe, and like all of her recipes, really works if you methodically follow all her steps.

But her recipe using pork, lamb and "sausage patties" was concocted at a time when many ingredients weren't widely available in the U.S. and is just one variation of a dish that has many, many variations. She lists confit d'oie as an option in her recipe, whereas most cassoulets in France and nowadays here in French restaurants would consider confit an essential ingredient.

So I was very happy when a friend sent me this recipe, which he extracted from a studious reading of the more interesting sections of The Wall Street Journal. It says it is adapted from the Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, Calif. It is a much simpler version of cassoulet, heavy on the garlic, and without Julia's addition of tomato, a controversial choice among cassoulet enthusiasts. It turned out extremely well and was a big hit with our dinner guests.

The key here, not surprisingly, is the beans. The recipe calls for 1-1/2 lbs. of tarbais or runner cannellini beans. Dreamer that I am, I somehow thought I would come across tarbais beans at Balducci's or Whole Foods. I didn't and toyed with the idea of just getting cannellini or navy beans, but a little research showed that what tarbais and runner cannellini have in common is that they are a good deal bigger than regular cannellini beans.

I still had time to order from my favorite bean supplier, Rancho Gordo, and had them rush 2 1-lb bags of their runner cannellini beans. Steve Sando's beans have never disappointed us and I'm very glad I took the trouble to get these beans. They were plump and meaty, they held their shape but were melt in your mouth tender. They of course absorbed all the wonderful flavors that go into cooking a cassoulet.

You start two days ahead of time by covering the beans with room-temperature water to soak overnight. The day before dinner, you drain the beans and put them in a large pot with a bouquet garni of peppercorns, bay, garlic and thyme, as well as 1 peeled and halved onion, 1 peeled and crosswise halved carrot, and 1 split leek. The recipe calls for 1 2 oz. piece bacon skin or trimmings, which may be easy to find in Yountville, but I wouldn't know where to find it here. So I just put in a small ham hock. You cover the beans with up to 4 qu. of no-salt chicken or duck stock (I used 2 qu. of low-sodium chicken stock and added 1/2 qu. during cooking). Cook until tender, 1-1/2 to 2 hours. You pour everything -- beans, stock, aromatics -- into a bowl to cool and then refrigerate overnight.

So it's a shortcut of sorts to flavor the beans. Julia makes a big point of using all the cooking juices from the various meats to flavor the beans, but this works and the beans have tons of flavor.

The other thing to do before the final assembly is to fix the garlic puree. You take 3 c. (!!) of peeled garlic cloves, cover with canola oil and simmer for 1 hour or so, until the cloves are tender when pierced with a knife. It's a lot of garlic, but not as overpowering as you might think. I did use a couple of packages of peeled garlic cloves; these are vacuum-packed now and seem as pungent as cloves you peel yourself. Let it cool and refrigerate until you're ready to puree and mix with beans.

For the final cooking, you preheat the oven to 300 degrees. The recipe calls for 1 lb. of "garlic sausage" and I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I opted to use Whole Foods fresh mild Italian sausage, which some websites listed as an acceptable substitute for saucisson de Toulouse, a standard ingredient in cassoulet. Since the sausage was fresh, I cut it into 2-in. chunks after sauteing it in 2 Tbl. duck fat, rather than before, as the recipe directs.

The recipe calls for 8 legs of duck confit, and notes you can either fix it yourself following Julia's recipe or buy those ready-made from D'Artagnan. I had noticed the duck confit at Balducci's when I got D'Artagnan's fresh moulard legs for last month's duck recipe, so I didn't hesitate to go back there for the confit legs. They are individually vacuum-packed and keep a month or so in the fridge. They are same large, meaty moulard legs I bought fresh, only cooked in the confit style. The recipe suggests browning the confit legs as an option, which I did.

So on to the final assembly. You drain the beans, discarding the aromatics but keeping the stock. You reduce the stock by half in a large stockpot. Meanwhile, you drain the oil from the garlic cloves, puree the garlic, and whisk it into the reduced stock along with 2 Tbl Dijon mustard and 3 Tbl butter, emulsifying it all. You add the beans to this mixture and toss to coat. The beans should be moist, neither dry nor soupy. Add 1 Tbl or so of salt to season. Turn all this into a heavy ovenproof pot and "nestle" in the sausage and duck.

To prepare the topping, you heat 3 Tbl duck fat in a skillet, add 1-1/2 c. breadcrumbs and saute until the crumbs are golden brown. Off the heat, add 3 Tbl each of chopped parsley and thyme. Sprinkle this over the bean mixture, cover and put into the oven for 45 min. Remove the lid and cook for a further 15 min. Serve immediately.

As I said, it was really tasty. I cooked it for a good hour covered and 1/2 hour uncovered. It stayed moist enough though next time I would leave the bean mixture slightly soupy to give you more leeway in cooking time. We preceded with a simple green leaf salad with avocado dressing -- not notably French but good and fresh and light before the cassoulet. Said friend above who started this whole adventure was kind enough to bring several bottles of 2009 Chateauneuf du Pape to accompany the meal and it turned out to be a superb choice.

Dessert was an exquisitely delicious prune upside down cake that Andrea found in Food and Wine. The prunes are poached in a syrup of white wine, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon, placed into individual ramekins and covered with caramel sauce, then topped with a yellow cake batter made with olive oil instead of butter. This appealed to us because it seemed very southwestern French and was so different and original. The execution was flawless and made for a very special dessert, served with creme brulee ice cream, and followed with Clear Creek plumb eau de vie.

Margarita weather

With the temperature near 80 and the weather more like summer than spring we mixed the first margaritas of the season on Friday. Using the last of the Cointreau (hard to go back to Triple Sec after you've had the real thing) and the Stirrings mix I picked up last week, we had our margaritas with Whole Foods made-in-store guacamole and chips.

To complete the theme and to take advantage of the beautiful grilling weather, we had some Southwest chicken kebabs from Cheryl and Bill Jamison's The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking. I've never done too much with skewers, I guess because it's more work, but they have some good recipes and I'm willing to try some more.

This has the colors of the Mexican flag and makes for a very nice presentation. The actual skewers consist of the marinated chicken chunks alternating with orange bell pepper, red bell pepper, lime slices and chunks of orange.

The 1-inch chunks of boneless skinless chicken thigh get marinated just for an hour in a paste made up 1/3 c. tequila, 1/3 c. fresh lime juice, 1/3 c. pickled jalapenos w. 2 Tbl of liquid from the jar, 3 Tbl. vegetable oil, 4 scallions white and green parts coarsely chopped, 2 or 3 peeled garlic cloves, and 1 tsp salt, all purreed together into a paste. You stir in 1/4 c. fresh orange juice and/or 2 Tbl Triple Sec (I used just OJ). Pour in with chicken in a ziploc bag and refrigerate.

For the skewers, you cut 3/4-in. dice of the red and orange bell peppers, 1/4-in. rounds of 2 limes, and 1 big orange cut into chunks, each with skin on it. I actually alternated 2 chicken chunks with the other stuff, and ended up with one skewer that had no fruit and leftover bell pepper. Brush the skewers with melted butter and grill on medium heat (4 to 5 second hand test) for 8 to 10 min., turning to cook all sides (I actually took 12). Optionally, you can brush again with melted butter after you take them off the grill (skipped this, too).

We ate with warm flour tortillas and the kebabs were delicious. Chicken thighs have lots of flavor anyway and the marinade added to it. I used mild jalapenos; hot or a mix of hot and mild would kick up the heat. They were good as is but if you dressed up with sour cream and salsa they would be a big hit with company.

Palena

We have been meaning to go to the formal dining room at Palena for some time and try the prix fixe menu there. So for a special occasion this week we went to test just how well Frank Ruta's famously meticulous and exacting standards worked in practice.

It was fabulous. The best food we have had since Paris. We opted for the more expensive six-course tasting menu and there was not a false note in any of the six courses (nor in the two amuse-bouches, the palate-cleansing sorbet, or the coffee sweets). Everything was fresh, refined, cooked just exactly right, and aesthetically enticing. In addition, the decor and service were just right, very professional but never stuffy, and enhanced the overall dining experience. Despite the high price, it is a great value proposition, given the quality.

Our menu started with a crudo of striped bass on lime creme fraiche. There was the subtlest taste of sea in the fish, not obscured by citric acid, but nothing that would offend those who don't like a fishy taste. The pan-seared sea scallop with pancetta and mushrooms that followed was just superb; you can hardly do scallop like this at home. The rabbit ballotine was a delicate concoction that magically combined the heartiness of the rabbit with the lightness of a ballotine. But it was the gnocci with goat cheese that virtually stole the show; exquisite, full of butter without tasting heavy or greasy.

The main course was roasted chicken breast, which may sound pedestrian to some for a gourmet tasting menu, but this was tender, with a pure real chicken flavor and a light crisp skin and may have been the best chicken breast I've ever eaten. The dessert medley contained a chocolate mousse and an olive oil ice cream, among other delights, but perhaps because it was at the end of such a big meal, we had trouble figuring out what was which -- but they were all good!

I also ordered the wine pairings and they were fine, but six half-glasses for $51 was not a great value, and I would pass in favor or ordering by the glass or the bottle. A half-glass served with each course simply does not make for relaxed sipping between the courses.

The restaurant was just half full on a week night, which was great for us because it was lively enough but not noisy or hectic. I presume Ruta can meet his fixed costs with the expanded cafe operation, where we have often enjoyed the hamburgers and other more mundane offerings. The prix fixe is clearly a labor of love and a standard-setter for DC. I highly recommend this gem to residents and visitors.

Marcella Hazan comfort food

Julia Child certainly pioneered gourmet cooking for our generation, breaking down the complex dishes into easy steps. But Marcella Hazan injected the fun of simple, easy Italian dishes into the equation with The Classic Italian Cook Book, and nowadays it is her recipes we go back to while it's rare that we still do Julia's.

Two perennials that we do every year at least once, though rarely on the same weekend as we did this year, are the pork loin braised in milk and the sauce bolognese. Both dishes apparently come from Bologna, the capital of Emilio-Romagna, generally considered the epicenter of Italian cuisine. Both combine meat and milk in a very un-kosher fashion. Both are incredibly simple and delicious.

For the pork, you take a 2 lb. tied roast, brown it in 2 Tbl. each of butter and oil, salt and pepper, add 2-1/2 c. milk and let it cook for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, turning the pork occasionally and basting it. Add more milk if necessary. When pork is tender, remove and drain fat from pot, add some water and boil quickly to loosen cooking bits. Slice the pork and drizzle the pan juice and brown milk curds over the slices. For the first time, I actually followed Marcella's suggested accompaniment of fried artichoke wedges and they were terrific with the pork.

The sauce bolognese is almost as easy. You soften 2 Tbl chopped onion in 3 Tbl each of butter and oil, add 2 Tbl each of chopped celery and chopped carrot and cook gently for 2 min. Add 3/4 lb. ground beef, breaking it up and cooking over medium heat only to color it. Marcella makes a point in her head not of how important it is not to brown the meat, so that it can get sweet and velvety in the subsequent stewing. She calls for 1 tsp. salt in with the meat but we find that too much and reduce it to 1/2 tsp. Then add 1 c. white wine and cook over medium high heat until evaporated. Then 1/2 c. milk and cook over medium until evaporated. Then 2 c. canned Italian tomatoes, roughly chopped, with their juice. When the tomatoes start to bubble, turn down heat to simmer for 3, 4, or even 5 hours.

Often I do a double portion and freeze some, but since it is already spring I just did the recipe portion (which she optimistically lists as 6 portions). Every time we have it we agree we should have it more often.

Shad roe

Shad roe has always held a particular appeal to me because it was a favorite dish of Nero Wolfe, the fictional detective who got me interested in both food and mysteries. I suppose author Rex Stout picked on shad roe because it is an esoteric gourmet delicacy. Or maybe he just liked it himself.

It is certainly an acquired taste. Like sweetbreads, shad roe is vaguely repulsive-looking in both its raw (see below) and cooked states. I've not always been happy with my efforts at cooking shad roe. I think it's a bit tricky and I haven't had enough shad roe cooked by others to really know how I measure up.

I wandered into The Fishery yesterday because I was solo for supper. Shad roe has a short season in the spring and, like everything else this year, has arrived early. I bought one pair, which cookbooks tell you is enough for two people, but I don't think so. Total weight is 6 to 8 oz., and even though it is rich, half of that is a pretty small portion.

I turned to Mark Bittman's useful primer, Fish, for a basic recipe and settled on the variation with garlic butter, partly because the roe gets floured before sauteeing. So I dusted the roe in flour, sauteed 3 to 4 min. on each side in 2 Tbl. butter, removed and kept warm, put 2 more Tbl. butter in skillet, softened 1 tsp. minced garlic and squeezed in 2 Tbl. fresh lemon juice and drizzled over roe. I accompanied with boiled potatoes.

The roe had a nutty, subtly fishy taste that I liked. I may have slightly overcooked them because I think the texture could have been a little less dry. I may experiment again before the season is over.

My farmhouse kitchen

One of my dreams is a farmhouse kitchen. In Hamburg, I had an apartment with an old tile stove, complete with brass rail, that I outfitted with a modern gas range, and then got an old pine hutch to complement the rustic look. The renovated barn that I had in Princeton had great rustic cabinets made from the original wood from the stalls and I acquired an (overpriced) farm table to go along with it.

We talk about renovating our kitchen here one of these days in the style of an Italian farmhouse, and maybe one day we will. My dream is about that idyllic picture of a kitchen that is the center of meals and gatherings. It usually goes with an outdoor table with lots of friends and family sitting down to a feast. In Umbria, for instance, when I rented the house outside Perugia, there was that atmosphere of a comfy kitchen giving on to a gravel terrace with every meal taken outdoors.

But I've decided that a farmhouse kitchen is a frame of mind. I'm really quite happy puttering around in my half-updated conventional kitchen even though it will never appear in House Beautiful. What makes the kitchen comfortable is not the decor or the equipment, but what you're doing there, how you feel about cooking and how good the result tastes. I realized in France that it's not the size or charm of the kitchen that determines what kind of meal comes out, but the cook. Here, too, what counts is that I enjoy what I'm doing, that I take the time for it and that it's relaxing.

It is good food and the company that creates the atmosphere, not a picture-perfect setting. If I lived in a village I grew up in, yes, I would have family and friends dropping by for informal meals. But I live in a semi-suburb in DC and all my friends are very, very busy, so "dinner parties" are scheduled weeks in advance. I'd like to have more frequent, informal meals with friends, and maybe I'll hit upon a way to arrange that. But in the meantime, I'll just go on making plans weeks in advance. It's still a lot of fun.

Za'atar chicken

I bought some Za'atar spice mix some time ago because Sara Jenkins said she liked it, so I've been wanting to try this roast chicken. She explains that it is a mix of wild dried thyme, sesame seed, sumac and salt. For this recipe, you take 2 Tbl. and mix with 3 Tbl. of butter at room temperature and 4 finely chopped garlic cloves. You smear the butter mixture underneath the skin of the breasts and thighs on a whole chicken. You rub olive oil over the chicken, salt and pepper. You put 1/2 a small peeled onion in the cavity with 4 springs of thyme and a 2-in. strip of lemon peel (skin only, no pith), and more salt and pepper. Tie the legs together and put the chicken on a rack in a roasting pan and pop into a 425-degree preheated oven. Turn the heat down to 350 degrees after 15 min. Baste the chicken with pan juices every 20 min. and roast for 1 to 1-1/4 hrs. (165 degrees internal temperature). Let it sit 10 min. before carving/serving.

The chicken was delicious. It staid very moist. The spice flavor was very subtle -- the mix might be a little old. I had expected more of a Middle East flavor, but the overall effect was so good, that's not really a complaint. I served it with couscous and a braised fennel and tomato recipe from Patricia Wells.

I've gradually come to the conclusion that Patricia Wells is not that great a cookbook author. I met her a couple of times long ago in Paris when I worked for her husband, Walter, at the Herald Tribune and have dutifully collected a number of her books over the years. The Food Lovers' Guide to Paris, which made her fortune, is a nice book and she is a better food writer than cookbook author. I've rarely had anything of hers come out really great, and this fennel recipe from her Provence Cookbook was no exception.

I'm probably just spoiled by other, better writers (Sara Jenkins!), whose instructions are totally reliable and who anticipate any deviations or possible mishaps. In her recipe, Wells has you trim and quarter 2 lbs of fennel bulbs (this was only 2, no surprise), and peel and quarter 2 large onions (I used 2-1/2 medium onions, had 1/2 onion left over from chicken above). You sweat the onions in 1/4 c. olive oil in a covered skillet for 5 min., then add the fennel, cover and cook for another 10 min., add the six peeled and halved cloves of garlic and 1/2 c. white wine and reduce for 5 min. Then add a 28-oz. can of plum tomatoes and cook for 30 min.

This is where the trouble begins. She says to crush the tomatoes to break them up; that doesn't really work. Why not chop them or just get the chopped tomatoes? The sweating had made the onions somewhat tender, but the fennel remained firm and crisp and 30 min. of simmering didn't change that too much. Were these bigger, more mature fennel bulbs than Wells gets in her market in Provence. Perhaps, but a word of warning would have been nice. It's nothing a little more cooking won't fix, but it throws your meal timing off. Also, while you can hardly go wrong with these ingredients, this recipe could use a little pepping up with a herb. I'm hopeful that warming it up and cooking it some more will make it a good second-day dish.

So I'll continue to use her books (I have so many of them!) but will treat her recipes with more skepticism.

Roast chicken with Dijon mustard

It may be that no one has done a cookbook on roasting before because it's so simple. I've always admired cookbook authors, however, who are not afraid to put in simple recipes. It was one of the things that drew me to Marcella Hazan. Those of us who haven't really learned in a cooking tradition can benefit from descriptions of the simplest techniques.

So I appreciate Molly Stevens filling her All About Roasting with simple recipes. This one involves taking chicken pieces -- she recommends cutting up a whole chicken but you can use any bone-in, skin-on pieces -- and massaging them in 1/3 c. Dijon mustard, salt and pepper and leaving them in the bowl covered with plastic (outside the fridge) for 1-1/2 hrs. (alternatively, 4 hrs. in the fridge). Then you put them into a baking dish where they're not squeezed or overlapping (9x13), put a dollop of creme fraiche on each piece (1/4 c. altogether), and pour 1/4 c. white wine or vermouth around the pieces (not over, or  you'll wash off the mustard), and pop them in a preheated 375-degree oven for 45 min.

When done, remove the chicken pieces to a platter and cover loosely with foil. Pour sauce into saucepan and reduce by half for 4 to 8 min. Stir in 1 to 2 Tbl. lemon juice and 2 Tbl. chopped herbs (tarragon, chervil or parsley) and ladle sauce over chicken pieces. Serve with rice or buttered noodles.

Whole Foods had a great Friday special on whole chickens so I got one and used this recipe. It was really very good -- the chicken stayed very moist and had a lot of flavor from the mustard (though not sharply mustardy) and the sauce had a wonderful chicken flavor from the rendered fat. We had the buttered noodles and they soaked up the sauce nicely. I had parsley on hand, so used it, but this would be divine with tarragon.

Chick peas

I'm a fan of chick peas in all its forms -- hummus, falafel, cooked, purreed -- and just hit the indexes the other day to find a recipe. Came up with Garbanzos a la Catalana (chick peas with tomatoes, fresh sausage and peppers) from an early Paula Wolfert book, Mediterranean Cooking. She says it's very popular in Barcelona, where they use a special Catalonian sausage.

Very simple in concept, though a little labor intensive, you soak the dried chick peas overnight, then cook for 1 hour or until tender, and drain, reserving 2 c. of the cooking liquid. You prick and brown a mild pork sausage -- I used Whole Foods mild Italian -- and then cut it into 1-in. chunks. In the grease, you saute 1 c. chopped onion, 1 tsp. minced garlic, and 1 c. diced green pepper along with 5 oz. of slab bacon or lean salt pork that you have simmered in water for 10 min. Then you add 4 large peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes, grating of nutmeg, 1 tsp. ground thyme, salt and pepper, cover and cook for 10 min. Then you fold the sausage chunks into the tomato sauce, put the chick peas into a 13-in. wide, 2-in. deep baking dish, spoon the tomato sauce over it, "moisten" with the cooking liquid, cover with aluminum foil and put into preheated 375-degree oven for 1-1/2 hrs., stirring occasionally.

This was a quick pre-bridge dinner for us, but you could dress it up with some bread and salad. If you like chick peas at all, this an easy, tasty recipe.

Duck legs braised in port and dried cherries

I knew if I kept searching I would find duck legs one of these days. I had a chance to swing by Balducci's in Wildwood Shopping Center and found a package, conveniently enough, of exactly the four moulard legs weighing 3-1/2 lbs. called for in this recipe from Molly Stevens' All About Braising.


It seemed perfect for this week's special event (which we don't celebrate at a restaurant). You start the day before by grinding 1 tsp. lightly toasted coriander seeds with 1/2 tsp. black peppercorns and 1/2 tsp. allspice berries, then mix that with 1 Tbl. chopped thyme and 1-1/2 tsp. coarse salt. You rub this spice mix over the duck legs, which you have trimmed of fat and skin flaps, and refrigerate overnight. Also, you take 1/2 c. (3 oz.) of dried, unsweetened cherries and "plump" them overnight in 1 c. tawny port.

The next day you brown the duck legs in a cast iron skillet, putting them skin side down over medium heat and not moving them for about 7 min. Check that the skin has crisped then turn over to brown flesh side for 3 or 4 min. No need to add fat because the legs render fat quickly. Drain off the fat from the first batch and repeat with second batch. Keep 2 Tbl. of fat to saute 1 large, thinly sliced shallot for 1 or 2 min., then add the cherries and port and reduce in half for 4 or 5 min. Add a bay leaf and 1 c. chicken stock, and reduce in half again, for about 8 min.

Place the duck legs in a 4 to 5 qt. braising pan, pour over the braising liquid, cover with parchment paper, pushing it down towards the legs and leaving an inch or so around the outside, cover tightly and put into preheated 325-degree oven. Check after first half hour that liquid is not simmering too fast. After 1 hr. cooking, turn legs over. Cook for 2 hrs altogether.

Remove the legs to a sheet pan and pour braising liquid into saucepan. The legs will have rendered a lot more fat, so skim that off the top and reduce the liquid to a syrupy sauce. Check for seasoning and keep at a low simmer. Meanwhile, turn the oven heat up to 475 degrees and put the legs in skin side up to crisp, for 8 to 10 min. Put on a platter and ladle the cherry-port sauce over it.

Now I like duck, and braised duck in particular, and this was pretty spectacular. Following Stevens' suggestion, we accompanied with creamy polenta and a California Zinfandel and it was truly a special meal for a special occasion.

Jerusalem artichokes

I'm sure it's my fault but I'm always a little disappointed with Deborah Madison and the other folks from Greens. We have three of the cookbooks from Greens and about all I ever use them for is techniques for grilling vegetables (which are quite good!). I bought Madison's Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmer's Markets when it came out precisely so I could go to the farmer's market, buy whatever looked good, and come home and find a nice recipe for it.

It hardly ever works out that way. I find generally that, as in the other books, the recipes are just too complicated, requiring too many other ingredients, and designed more to be a vegetarian meal rather than a vegetable dish. That may be great for vegetarians, but, while I don't mind the occasional vegetarian meal, I generally want vegetables as a side to a meat dish.

Anyway, the Sheridan School farmer's market had Jerusalem artichokes, so I bought some and looked for a recipe in Local Flavors. There was one for Jerusalem artichokes, artichokes and lentils that I decided to go ahead with and just leave out the artichokes. It calls for only 1/3 cup black or green lentils, which you cook for 25 min. in 2-1/2 c. water with 1/2 tsp. salt. Drain and reserve the liquid.

If you have artichokes you trim and quarter them, then dice them, and put them in a bowl with lemon juice to keep them from discoloring. You scrub the Jerusalem artichokes (don't need to peel them) and slice them into 1/3-in. slices. You put both vegetables in a skillet with 1-1/2 Tbl. of olive oil and 4 shallots, peeled and sliced into 1/3-in. slices. Sautee all this for 4 to 5 min. and season with 1/2 tsp. salt and some pepper, add 3/4 c. of the reserved lentil broth, cover and simmer for 20 min. Then add the lentils and 2 tsp. chopped tarragon or marjoram and cook for 5 min. Stir in 2 Tbl. butter and sprinkle 1 Tbl. chopped parsley over it. Madison says to serve with a small dried pasta or as a side to roast chicken or duck. We served with gnochetti sardi.

This was tasty enough, though fairly sluggish looking (not great for presentation at a dinner party, for instance). It would have helped if I added some lemon juice even without the artichokes (no doubt the artichokes would have helped, too, but they wouldn't add any color) and had a fresh herb instead of dried tarragon. It was just not compelling enough that I would ever do it again.

Perhaps it is just the fate of Jerusalem artichokes to be part of fairly dull-looking dishes. I found fewer recipes than I thought I would when I actually brought them home (you know how it is, you see nothing but Jerusalem artichoke recipes until you finally have some and then you can't find one to save your life).

Persimmon

Ever since some friends introduced us to the art of sitting at the bar at Persimmon and making a meal out of their ample starters -- the lobster roll and fish tacos are our favorites -- that has been the way we visit this longtime Bethesda restaurant.

But the bar was full the other night and a table opened up just as we arrived, so we sat in the main dining room and decided to go whole hog by ordering entrees. The food was very, very good, on a par with Matisse and certainly not any more expensive.

We split the fennel and arugula salad, which was fresh, crisp and perfectly dressed, with delicious shavings of ricotta. I had the roasted magret of duck with a celery root galette and hash of sweet potato, bacon and duck confit. It was all stacked attractively in a small pillar with a thick, dark sauce and it was excellent. Andrea got the pan-seared salmon with artichokes, mushrooms and basil risotto. She reported it was tasty but noted that the salmon portion was too small at something like 4 oz.

We'd always had reservations about the noise level in the main dining room, which is quite small. And it was indeed very noisy. But the warm ambiance, the full panoply of tablecloths, silver and all that stuff, as well as the quality of the food, made it all bearable. The server was a little stressed and let it show; the bar, ironically, was extraordinarily slow in getting our drinks out. In short, we will probably still opt for the bar seats first, but we might be more venturesome in our ordering.

Beef stew with juniper berries

In her Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy, Domenica Marchetti helpfully has the recipes divided into the four seasons and I had long since earmarked this one to have sometime in winter. It gets a lot of flavor from a marinade that uses a full bottle of wine. It was delicious with beef, though she says it can also be used with boar or regular pork.

The recipe calls for 3-1/2 lbs of boneless chuck, trimmed and cut into 1-1/2" cubes. The cut I got was marked "local beef" at Whole Foods and was very tender for chuck. It was easy to cut into cubes though there were a couple of slabs of fat to remove. You put the meat cubes into a Dutch oven and throw in 1 small thinly sliced yellow onion, 1 peeled and coarsely chopped carrot, 1 large coarsely chopped rib of celery, 4 small sprigs of fresh rosemary, 6 fresh sage leaves, 2 fresh bay leaves (I used dried), 4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, 1 Tbl slightly bruised juniper berries, 1 tsp black peppercorns. Then you pour in the bottle of red wine (she says Chianti, I used a California blend), stir things around gently, cover and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours (I did 22).

To cook the stew, you extract the pieces of meat from the marinade and pat them dry. You strain the marinade into a bowl and throw away the solids, saving the liquid. You brown the meat in 2 Tbl of olive oil, about 5 min. Add more oil if necessary and saute 1 large or 2 medium chopped yellow onions and 1 peeled and finely chopped carrot for another 5 min. Then add a paste made from 1 clove of garlic pressed through a garlic press and 1 tsp salt, cook for another minute or two. Return meat to pot, add a new sprig of rosemary and 1/2 tsp juniper berries, and pour in the reserved marinade liquid, adding water if needed to cover the ingredients. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2-1/2 to 3 hours.

Since she recommended a saffron risotto as an accompaniment and I want to improve my risotto technique, that's what I fixed, though it's somewhat extravagant for a weekday meal. I did better this time, but it still needs some work. Following Marchetti's directions, I sauteed another chopped onion in butter and oil, sauteed the rice (carnaroli this time), and ladled in the broth a half-cup at a time. Halfway through I added in 1/2 tsp chopped saffron threads dissolved in a half-cup of the broth. She said 20 to 25 min. at medium heat, and I think this is too fast and too hot. I checked Marcella Hazan afterwards, and she says regulate the heat so that the rice cooks in 30 min. My problem is always that it cooks too fast, so I think I need to lower the heat. Also, Marchetti specified 3x liquid to rice but Marcella has 3-1/2x ratio. So a little more time, a little more liquid, and a little less heat next time! Added butter and parmesan at end, of course. A very nice meal with plenty of leftovers.

Pan-to-oven pork chops with garlic

The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is one of those books I love having, but I can't say I've been able to use it much. Partly because it is really a very pedagogical book about meat, written with English style and wit, but many of the lessons are specific to the British context they are written in.

Still, I'm sure there are many wonderful things in it if I can find them. This particular dish is really more of a technique than a recipe and Hugh (I hesitate to use the hyphenated surname) suggests some interesting variations.

The operative word here is garlic. You take one large head or two normal heads and "release" all the cloves without peeling them (anyone who remembers Gerard Depardieu in "Green Card" knows just how to do this). Crush them slightly with the blade of a knife, but the peel will keep them from burning. Now, embarrassingly, I had closer to one normal head of garlic because I thought wrongly there was more on hand, so we probably missed out on the full impact of this recipe.

You place an ovenproof dish that can hold 4 pork chops in the oven and heat it to 425 degrees. Then you heat "a little" olive oil in a skillet and fry the garlic cloves there for a few minutes. Add the chops and brown them just one minute on each side, seasoning as you turn. Remove the chops to the ovenproof dish, scoop out the garlic cloves with a slotted spoon and distribute over the chops, and deglaze the skillet with 1 c. white wine. You reduce by half and pour over the chops. Hugh makes a big point of having the "bony end" of the chop sticking up in the air so it will get crispy while the meaty end stays in the braising juices, but none of my chops had a protruding bony end. You return the dish to the oven and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, basting the chops halfway through. He suggests serving with mashed potatoes and steamed greens, though we had risotto cakes left over from Henry's Super Bowl party.

The technique works for any kind of chop, Hugh says. He offers suggestions for veal with lemon and capers or lamb with garlic and anchovies, but those will be for another day.

The Vineyard at the End of the World

My review of The Vineyard at the End of the World: Maverick Winemakers and the Rebirth of Malbec by Ian Mount appeared today in The Washington Independent Review of Books:

Aficionados will lap up this history of the Argentine wine industry and its signature grape, Malbec. Writing in a lively, journalistic style, Ian Mount combines colorful vignettes and extensive interviews of the key players with a wealth of information to provide the definitive word on what has become a mainstay of New World wine.

Mount writes authoritatively about wine. His deft descriptions explain why it’s important how vines are planted, how the grapes are picked, how high the pH level should be, why oxygen must be avoided at all costs, how modern equipment and techniques have improved the product, and how revolutionary the last three decades have been in creating a wonderful new world of wine.

The story he tells is truly astonishing. Argentina has a tradition of wine growing and production dating back to the conquistadors. Waves of Italian immigrants well-schooled in Old World vineyards gave the country a robust wine culture. But Argentina often remained mired in autarkic economic policies, at times a political and economic pariah in the world community. Through much of the country’s history, Argentine vintners produced a cheap, substandard wine, (“plonk” is one of Mount’s favorite words) suitable only for domestic consumption.

It was only as the wine revolution in Europe and California was under way that a handful of intrepid Argentine winemakers brought in these foreign consultants to study the challenges posed by the hot, dry climate of the country’s western wine-growing regions. Hoping at first to compete in a global market dominated by Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, they developed Argentine versions of these varietals that gave them their first export products.

Through trial and error, patience and skill, the winemakers and their foreign consultants eventually came to the realization that the Malbec grape, one of the original constituents of fine Bordeaux wines that had survived as an ugly-duckling varietal in the New World, offered the best opportunity to create a distinctive, world-class wine. With its dark, inky color and fruity flavor, Malbec previously had been used to lend body to thin clarets. By adapting the grape to the Argentine terroir and using modern techniques, a new generation of winemakers was able to create a wine that could not only stand on its own but enrich what had become a truly global market.

Mount tells the story with verve and distills a great amount of research and reporting into his book. But he makes the reader work a little harder than necessary by failing to mold the story into a tight narrative. The wine connoisseur will relish every detail, but the general reader and casual wine consumer may not have the motivation to read through the early chapters about the settling of western Argentina and the often extraneous details about some of the colorful characters involved.

Without a strong narrative arc, the book, even though it is roughly chronological, emerges as a somewhat disjointed series of anecdotes, vignettes, snatches of historical research and a textbook on wine production. Rather than plunging us immediately into the historical beginnings of the Argentine wine industry, Mount could have made it easier for the reader by starting with the success of Malbec — this is what we’re most familiar with — and then going back into history to explain where it all comes from after he had us hooked.

When Mount does get to the series of events that brought the new Malbec wines to the world, even though he clearly has talked to numerous sources on three continents, his account seems to rely heavily on Nicolás Catena and the role of his family company. However crucial Catena’s contribution might have been, the book at times reads almost like a corporate history.

Nonetheless, Mount does not gloss over Catena’s failings, describing him at times as Machiavellian. The author presents both sides regarding Catena’s final break with his longtime consultant, Paul Hobbs, but the parting was obviously acrimonious because of competing claims about who should get the credit for discovering Malbec.

In any case, The Vineyard at the End of the World is a great read for anyone caught up in the romance of wine (or, for that matter, the romance of Argentina). It is amazing in retrospect that the breakthrough for Malbec and for Argentine wines in general took place in the mid-90s, less than two decades ago.

For expert and casual consumers alike, the dazzling array of wine choices now available at affordable prices has reached Bacchanalian proportions. Ian Mount’s book, focusing on this one important location, helps us appreciate the history, the talent and the hard work that has gone into making that possible.

Darrell Delamaide, a Washington, D.C.-based writer, has visited vineyards on four continents. His latest book is The Grand Mirage, a historical thriller.

Lamb and lettuce stew with Avgolemono sauce

I'm so impressionable that as I was reading Murder in Mykonos I was getting "homesick" for Greece. Granted, my five-week visit to the Peloponnese and several islands decades ago hardly makes Greece a second home, but it left a powerful impression on me. In any case, author Jeffrey Siger's great descriptions took me back and prompted me to break out the ouzo for an aperitif and rummage through Andy Harris's Modern Greek for this recipe. It's very simple, ideal for a weekday and delicious. The lamb is a bit of a splurge, but it's still cheaper than going out for a burger these days.

You take 3 lbs. of boned leg of lamb, trimmed and cubed and brown it in 3 Tbl. of olive oil for 10 min. Then you add 2 "heads" of Romaine lettuce (I used 2 of the Romaine hearts that are now sold in packages), finely shredded; 2 bunches of green onions, finely chopped; and a small bunch of dill, finely chopped, and cook, stirring, for another 10 min., until the greens are thoroughly wilted. Then you add salt and pepper, and water to cover (I only needed 2 c.) and simmer for 1 to 1-1/2 hours, until meat is tender (only took an hour).

You let it cool some before whipping up the Avgolemono sauce. Now Andrea rolled out that word like she was born in Greece, though she admitted she'd never made it, but while I'm pretty sure I've had it in Greek dishes, I'd never encountered it in a recipe before. Anyway, very simple. You lightly beat two eggs, whisk in the juice of 1-1/2 lemon, whisk in a ladleful of the broth from the stew, and then stir it all into the stew and cook over low heat a few minutes for it to thicken. Serve with bread (I used ciabatta in the absence of a decent hard-crust bread).

The lettuce had disintegrated to the point that Andrea asked whether the sauce had been purreed. Nope. A nice, different flavor and a great light stew.

14th Street NW

The bustling 14th Street corridor is also adding some interesting food stores and my intrepid neighbors venture across the park to explore them.

Smucker Farms, located in the Amish country of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, has opened an outlet at 2118 14th St. (at V), which carries meat, dairy and baked products from the Amish farms, and the usual assortment of jams, pickles and other farmer's market products. I got some uncured bacon, a slab of ham, and other goodies for a surprisingly high tab. I'm sure the quality is good, and I know you have to pay premium prices for these small-production foods. But I do have a bit the feeling, as I do at the Dupont Circle farmer's market, that the vendors are testing the upper limits of what they can charge. We'll see how prices develop here as time goes on.

There is also a nice little bakery, Le Caprice, at 3460, worth further exploration.

It is of course in these gentrifying neighborhoods that interesting new shops will spring up. It certainly bears monitoring.

I'm still waiting for a real butcher -- someone who displays the meat in the case and to whom you can talk about getting odd cuts. For instance, Molly Stevens has a porchetta recipe that calls for a boneless pork loin with the belly flap attached and the skin on. She readily concedes you can't get this from your normal supermarket butcher, and I'm betting that this is yet another test Wagshal's will flunk. Nor have I been impressed by the two "butcher shops" in Alexandria. There is a meat renaissance going on in the real food meccas but it looks like we still have to wait here in poor old DC.

Penne with red and yellow pepper sauce

From The Italian Farmer's Table again, super simple: Brush 2 red bell peppers and 2 yellow bell peppers with olive oil and roast 30 min. in 425-degree oven. Put in plastic bag for 20 min. and peel and cut into strips. Saute 2 peeled garlic cloves in 2 Tbl olive oil until golden then add pepper strips for 5 min. Put all in blender to purree. Return to skillet and add 1/4 c. heavy cream, salt and pepper and warm through. Cook and drain the pasta. Drain and toss with the sauce, adding 1/4 c. parmesan and topping with 1 Tbl. chopped oregano.

Blue44, Take 2

At a neighbor's insistence, we tried Blue44 again and I have to say the neighbor was right. It deserved a second look after a rather desultory experience last spring when it first opened. Perhaps it is the new chef, or simply hitting their stride.

The menu had a number of appealing items on it, but I started with something that does not appear on the menu and which was really terrific -- the gumbo soup. The chef is from New Orleans and this is a flavorful, spicy concoction with big chunks of chicken and andouillet, hot peppers and onions and, presumably, gumbo filet. It is offered, when available, as a soup of the day, and that's one diem that should be carpe-d at every opportunity.

Then the dilemma of what to do next, because it is a filling starter. One in our party who also had the gumbo wisely chose another starter, a homemade merguez on baguette. It was a modest portion but looked very tasty. Another gumbo eater wisely chose the half-sandwich option available only for the grilled cheese of the day -- in this case with braised beef as well as cheese between the toasty bread. This looked more ample and surely would have completed a meal for a normal appetite.

I rather unwisely, from the point of view of quantity, chose the black velvet chicken, a sandwich so named because a breaded chicken cutlet is topped with a truffled goat cheese and a fig jam on baguette. The chicken needed salt -- and this is hard to correct on a sandwich -- but it was a great combination and I managed to do it justice by leaving some of the bread. I will say that the baby back ribs ordered by another in our party, smoked with a dry rub and glistening with a non-tomato sauce, looked very tasty -- and were devoured with great relish by the lucky recipient. It means that I will have to go back again soon to try them.

It was rainy Saturday lunch so that even though the restaurant was surprisingly full, it was not overcrowded or noisy. The decor and ambiance are pleasant. There is a certain amount of distraction and noise that will be unavoidable in a family-friendly neighborhood restaurant, but I think it can be a good target late on weekday evenings or for this type of Saturday lunch. The quality can compete with Buck's and the menu offers a great deal more variety.

Risotto with caramelized onions and gorgonzola

This was another recipe from The Italian Farmer's Table, also simple enough for a weekday. It is a rich risotto and very tasty. The trick is to caramelize red onions by taking 3 thinly sliced red onions and putting them into a skillet with 3 Tbl melted butter, coating them and letting soften over medium heat for 5 min. Then you add a pinch of salt, reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for about 30 min., stirring occasionally. Then you raise the heat to medium high, add 1 c. ruby port and let the onions simmer for another 25 min. They reduce quite a bit in volume and the liquid completely evaporates.

During this last part, make the risotto. This recipe has you saute 1 finely "diced" medium yellow onion in 2 Tbl of butter in a 12-in. saute pan for 8 to 10 min., then add 2 c. arborio rice and cook for another 2 to 3 min. You then pour in 1/2 c. dry vermouth and let that evaporate before you start to add the 1 qu. chicken broth, ladle by ladle. I don't do risotto often enough and my technique still needs some work. The rice was cooked al dente but too dry; I needed to add more liquid to keep it creamy at the end.

To finish, you stir in 1 more Tbl butter, 1/4 c. parmesan and the caramelized onions. You serve and top with 4 oz. crumbled gorgonzola. It's a great dish if you like caramelized onions and risotto (and gorgonzola!) as much as we do.

Roasted pork tenderloin with grape sauce

Pork tenderloin has got to be one of the easiest, best-tasting cuts of meat to cook, but acquiring it has become something of an art here. Whole Foods gets its delivery on Wednesday, but, as one of their butchers patiently explained to me some time ago, the relatively small shipment of pork tenderloin has to be allocated among all the WF stores in the city.

As a result, the tenderloin is almost always gone by the weekend. This effectively means that if you want tenderloin, you have to shop for it on Wednesday or Thursday. Last weekend, for instance, our first choice was tenderloin, but no dice, so we had to settle for rack of lamb (sigh).

So when I was shopping Thursday I got a single tenderloin for us and tried a simple little recipe from The Italian Farmer's Table by Matthew Scialabba and Melissa Pellegrino, which purports to have gathered home recipes from farms in Northern Italy that host paying guests.

I actually used the roasting technique from Molly Stevens' Roasting, which is the recipe that caught my eye last weekend. She browns the tenderloin on all 4 sides over 8 minutes and puts on a sheet pan to roast at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 min (she actually says 13 to 18) or to 140 to 145 degrees. The other book has you brown it on one side, then turn over, put two pats of butter on the cooked side, and stick the skillet in the oven. Six of one, etc., but I liked the idea of actually browning it on all sides. Scialabba and Pellegrino specify grapeseed oil for the browning and since we had a small bottle tucked away in the pantry, I used that.

In both cases, you salt and pepper beforehand. Stevens even recommends seasoning several hours beforehand, but I didn't manage to do that. Let me parenthetically add that I've become a true believer in sea salt (as opposed to kosher salt) and believe it truly does enhance the flavor. It was Sara Jenkins who made this point forcefully in Olives and Oranges. There are some people who think it doesn't make any difference, but I'm pretty sold on it.

What I liked about the Farmer's Table recipe was the grape sauce. You take 1 c. of grapes (red, green or mix) and put them in the skillet with a little salt for 3 to 5 min., until they start to give up their juices, then you swirl in 1 Tbl honey mustard, 1 Tbl warm water and 1 Tbl chopped thyme and cook together for 1 min. When the tenderloin is done, you let it rest a few minutes, then slice and spoon the sauce over the slices.

The photo in the book (I often start using a new cookbook by taking the ones that are photographed first) showed what looked like sauteed apple wedges on the plate as well. I could have just sauteed some apple wedges but I sneaked a quick peek at a tenderloin recipe in Anne Willan's Regional French Cooking, which she accompanies with caramelized apple rings. You don't peel the apples, but just core them and slice into thick rings. You dip one side in 2 Tbl of sugar and put into a skillet with 2 Tbl butter, cover and cook at high heat for 3 to 5 min., then sprinkle the top side with more sugar, turn over, cover and cook (be careful, the second side cooks much faster and mine got a little dark).

We had with a green salad and a Mondavi fume blanc.

Chicken baked in yogurt with spinach

I haven't done too many specifically Greek dishes and I'm not sure Modern Greek by Andy Harris is as kitchen-tested as some of the bigger names in cookbook writing, but this was a pretty good recipe.

It calls for 4 bone-in chicken breasts (meaning halves of course) that you brown in a skillet where you have sauteed 2 sliced onions in 2 Tbl. olive oil and removed them with a slotted spoon. You put the browned chicken breasts with the onions into an oven proof dish and cover that with a yogurt mix.

Now Harris either has runnier Greek yogurt that I got at Whole Foods or he has cheesecloth that's much more porous, because I got nowhere with his direction to strain 2 lbs (4 c.) of Greek yogurt through a cheesecloth. I don't think a steamroller could have gotten that stiff yogurt through the cheesecloth. I finally was able to strain it through a sieve (and not my finest sieve), though since he gives no explanation of why you strain it I'm not sure what it achieved. Just beating it would have smoothed it and made it more fluid, if that was the objective.

So anyway you add 2 cloves finely chopped garlic, 3 Tbl. all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. dried mint, 1 tsp. ground cumin, salt, pepper, and 2 lightly beaten eggs to the yogurt and mix well. This is the mix you spread over the chicken and onions. You sprinkle 2 Tbl. of grated parmesan (or kefalotiri if you happen to have that) and pop it into a 350-degree oven for 40 min.

As always, these breasts from WF were huge, so I left the chicken in the oven nearly an hour and the yogurt mix was just set and browned. I could only guess how much salt to use in the yogurt mix and I erred on the low side; next time I think I would just salt and pepper the chicken directly after browning. My mint flakes were evidently 10 years old because they contributed nothing.

The recipe also calls for 2 bunches of steamed fresh spinach as an accompaniment. This was great and we had a green salad, too.

Roasted rack of lamb with spiced honey glaze

What a special treat! We liked the double rack pork rib roast so much we wanted to try another recipe from Molly Stevens' new book, Roasting.

For this one, you combine 1/4 c. honey, 2 Tbl. butter, 1 tsp. paprika, 1 tsp. cumin seed (toasted and ground), 1/4 tsp. ground ginger and a pinch of cayenne. You sprinkle the 2 1 to 1-1/2 lb. racks (8 ribs each) with salt and pepper, brush half the glaze onto the racks and put into a 425-degree oven. After 10 min. baste with the drips of glaze and check temperature every 5 min. to get to about 135 for medium rare.

Add 3 Tbl. lemon juice and 2 minced garlic cloves to the remaining glaze in a saucepan, bring to a simmer and reduce to a syrup, season. Rest the racks of lamb then carve and dribble with glaze syrup and sprinkle with chopped mint. I carved double chops and used chopped parsley because I couldn't find mint.

This was a very special meal, which we paired with her vegetable suggestion, quick-roasted sugar snap peas with sesame salt.  You take 1 lb of the sugar snap peas, pull of strings as necessary, spread on sheet pan and toss in olive oil. You roast them about 12 min. in a 475-degree oven, until blistered and blackened in part. You prepare the sesame salt by toasting 2 Tbl. of sesame seeds in a skillet, mixing with 1/4 tsp. sea salt and grinding to a coarse mixture. When peas are ready, put them in bowl and sprinkle with the sesame salt.

For wine, we had a very nice Bordeaux I had been saving for a special occasion.