Shrimp, fennel and quinoa pilaf

We liked the quinoa pilaf in this recipe from Rebecca Wood a lot and the shrimp is a good pairing but we felt the shrimp needed a little more flavor. Rather than let the shrimp cook by steaming in the baked pilaf once it's removed from the oven -- which is cute, economical and healthy but leaves the shrimp bland and unadorned -- we would probably saute the shrimp with some oil and garlic and add to the pilaf that way.

The pilaf is easy. Chop 2 fennel stalks (why 2?) and their fronds separately. Chop an onion and mince a clove of garlic and saute in olive oil with 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper for 10 min. Add the fennel and 1 to 1-1/3 c. washed quinoa (Wood distinguishes between imported and domestic quinoa and I forgot to look) and saute another minute or two. Then add 1 peeled, chopped tomato, 2 c. of stock or water (I used half chicken stock and half water), 2 Tbl Worcestershire sauce, and 1/2 tsp salt, bring to simmer, cover and put in 350-degree oven for 25 min. Remove from oven, fluff up the quinoa, put 1 lb peeled, deveined shrimp in and cover for 10 min. Sprinkle the chopped fronds and grated nutmeg on top of each serving.

We got medium shrimp from the Fishery and as always they were plump, fresh and shrimpy. Cooking by the pilaf steam alone did not quite finish it, so I popped it back in the oven for an extra minute or two. The pilaf had a nice little kick from the cayenne. I accompanied with Sara Jenkins' shaved fennel salad (using the bulb from those stalks) -- slice the bulb on the mandolin lengthwise on narrow side, toss with parsley leaves, then toss with lemon juice, olive oil and salt. A white Bordeaux went really well with it.

Deborah Madison

Deborah Madison, who helped start the Greens restaurant and now writes cookbooks in Santa Fe, has become our cookbook author of the month as I focus on shopping at the farmer's markets. We actually had three meatless meals last week, relying primarily on her Local Flavors.

The pasta with golden fennel was easy. Trim, quarter and (vertically) slice the fennel, saute it in butter and oil,  then add salt, toss with the juice of 1 lemon, add a cup of water and braise, adding water by the 1/2 c. until fennel is tender. Boil and drain the pasta (we used fettucine), stir it in the fennel and added a mix of minced garlic, chopped fennel greens and lemon zest. Ours came out very lemony because I used a big lemon, but it makes a nice refreshing meal.

The superstar of the week was the celery root and wild rice chowder. Boil 1/2 c. wild rice separately. Trim and peel celery root and chop into bite-size pieces. Saute in butter with the chopped white parts of 2 leeks, a diced celery rib, a thinly sliced russet potato, 1/4 c. chopped parsley, a bay leaf, a thyme sprig. Add 2 c. vegetable or chicken stock and simmer for 20 min., then add 2 c. half-and-half or milk (guess which one I used), and cook until tender. Purree 1 c. of soup and stir it back in. Serve in bowl with a mound of wild rice topped with chopped parsley and a drizzle of truffle oil. Heavenly.

We also used the endives baked with Gorgonzola from her earlier cookbook, The Savory Way, to accompany a festive steak dinner, and a recipe for winter squash and quinoa soup from Rebecca Wood's The Splendid Grain (just OK, there are better butternut squash soup recipes).

Chicken breasts braised with hard cider and parsnips

Mick's Chicks at the Sheridan School farmer's market offered bone-in skin-on chicken breasts so I ordered some of those. It turns out they were huge; I generally prefer chicken breasts that aren't so big. The 2 half-breasts weighed 2.6 lbs together, almost the 3 lbs called for in Molly Stevens' recipe for 4 halves. I also got the parsnips at the farmer's market.

This is a great recipe for parsnips and creates a nice, wintry sauce that keeps the breasts from seeming too dry. I did overcompensate too much for their size and kept them in the oven a bit too long. They were a bit tough, though I attribute that in part to their size. But these are quibbles -- the meal was delicious.

Very simple: Fry 4 slices of thick-cut bacon cut into 1/2-in strips in 2 Tbl olive oil until just crisp, about 6 min. Remove with slotted spoon and drain off all but 2 Tbl of fat. Salt and pepper the chicken breasts and brown, starting skin side down, for 4 to 5 min on each side (and a further 2 min on the fat end for big ones like this). Remove and set aside. Saute 1 large minced shallot for 1 min and add 2 c. hard cider. Deglaze and reduce to 1/2 c. Add 1 Tbl chopped rosemary and a further 1/2 c. cider and reduce to 3/4 c. Then put in 1 lb parsnips, peeled and cut into 3-in x 1/2-in sticks (cut out woody core), spread bacon pieces over that, place chicken skin side down, cover with parchment paper sticking out over pan, cover and put in 325 degree oven. After 25 min., turn chicken pieces and braise another 20 to 25 min. until breasts are cooked through. If parsnips are not tender or sauce is too soupy, remove chicken and cook further on stove.

Kabob Bazaar

I had a craving for kabobs so we tried this place in Bethesda. The kabobs were actually pretty good and the atmosphere, if not exactly cozy or ethnic, was comfortable enough. Service was good, there is a bar with wine and beer. We had a nice eggplant confection as a starter and I had the whole Cornish hen kabob, which had a very nice flavor. It's easy, quick, close, cheap and has free parking in the back, so it could become a standard in our repertory. It beats Cafe Divan on all those counts and is quite superior to Parthenon. Unlike Moby Dick or Cave Mezze Grill, it is a real sit-down restaurant.

Alternatives to Whole Foods

In the wake of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's latest idiocy on the subject of Obamacare, I'm giving some thought to an experiment -- a couple of weeks or longer shopping exclusively at alternatives to Whole Foods.

Most immediately it would mean shopping regularly at the Co-op, which I visit only infrequently, and Chevy Chase Supermarket, which I virtually never visit. It would also mean buying more stuff at Broad Branch Market and to look more often at the Brookville Market. And it would mean being more consistent about shopping at farmer's markets, not only Sheridan School but Silver Spring and others.

It would probably mean more planning. It's easy for me to hop in the car at lunchtime, buzz down to WF and grab lunch at the salad bar and pick up whatever I decide on the spur of the moment for dinner that night. If I were to shop in different places for the things I get in one stop at WF -- vegetables, bulk items and health products at the Co-op; meat, dairy and supermarket items at Chevy Chase; meat and prepared foods at BB -- then I would have to make one trip a week to each place do.

That's why it's an experiment. The main drawback would be staying away from the salad bar at WF and the other prepared food counters. Cheese might be a problem, too, since we can hardly chase down to Cowgirl Creamery everytime we want cheese. So it's not a boycott so much as an expression of dissatisfaction with WF -- not only because Mackey is an ignorant bigoted idiot but because any chain that size has a pernicious effect on the type of food culture we need to work towards in this country.

When I lived in Princeton, I rented an apartment from a woman who ran a local health food store. She was hit by the arrival of Wild Oats, one of the health food chains that originally pioneered the idea before WF gobbled them all up. I also shopped at two family-owned supermarkets -- McCaffrey's and Pennington. I bought eggs from the farmer down the road and signed up one season for the local CSA.

So I need to give more support to local independent stores, too. There are others -- Vace's, the Women's Farmer's Market in Bethesda (some cheese there), A&H Gourmet, the Fishery. Wonder if I could go a full month with the experiment to really test it? Will update.

Prosciutto-wrapped pork loin roast

Sometimes a meal comes together just perfectly and that's what happened with this dinner that started with a smallish (2 lb) pork loin roast that we got from the Blue Rooster Farm stand at our farmer's market on Saturday. I found this nice recipe in Molly Stevens' Roasting. It actually is "with rhubarb and sage" but she notes that when rhubarb is not in season (which is most of the time) you can substitute plums or apples. The latter, of course, always go great with pork. I had a vague memory that Julia Childs has a recipe for creamed Brussels sprouts and thought that would be a great accompaniment.

The pork recipe is very easy. With the mortar and pestle, you make a paste of garlic, chopped sage, orange zest, salt and black peppercorns then stir in 2 Tbl olive oil. Spread this over the pork; you can do this ahead of time but since I had to let the roast thaw out I didn't have time for this. Then drape 3 or 4 thin slices of prosciutto over the roast, tucking the ends underneath. Drizzle with olive oil and pop in a 325-degree oven. After 45 min., spread the apples (or rhubarb) -- peeled, trimmed and cut into 1/2-in. pieces, tossed with brown sugar, a little more minced sage, optional ground pink peppercorns (I had some so I used them), a pinch of salt, and 1 more Tbl olive oil -- into the roasting pan with the pork. Roast another half hour more or less until a temperature of 140 to 145. Let it sit for 10 or 15 min before slicing. The pork was tender, moist, delicious and had an extra little zing from the orange zest. The apples were great with it.

Julia actually has a couple of recipe for creamed Brussels sprouts -- one where you leave them whole and bake them in the oven that she says is good with fowl and the other where you chop them and simmer them in cream on top of the stove, which she decided in her wisdom was preferable with veal and pork. So of course that's the one I used. I blanched 1-1/2 lbs of trimmed sprouts for just 5 min (Julia uses a lot of water and salt for blanching and I can't argue with the result. Drain, cool, roughly chop, then melt butter (needless to say she uses lots, so I cut it back a bit) in the skillet, shake the chopped sprouts around, add 1/2 c. heavy cream and simmer 8 to 10 min. Finish with a little more butter and chopped parsley. The Brussels sprouts were heavenly. They were organic sprouts from WF -- the only ones they had and I got the last two 12-oz. packages -- and turned out to be terrific.

As part of an effort to use up some of our accumulated vinegars and new olive oils I did fix up a quick salad, even though we usually skip that for weekday meals. All in all, it was real feast for a weekday and plenty of leftovers.

Olio2go

It's one thing to read about the worldwide renaissance in artisanal olive oils in Tom Mueller's Extra Virginity, and another to try to find some of the great oils he describes on this side of the Atlantic. But Luanne Savino O'Loughlin has brought Italy much closer with Olio2go, an online store with an enticing retail outlet in Fairfax.

Olio2go offers a dizzying array of Italian olive oils from every region. In an age when bulk olive oil emporia are proliferating -- the DC area has new stores in Bethesda, Alexandria and Frederick -- Olio2go adopts a different philosophy of importing only estate-bottled oils. Luanne's argument is that bulk transport means the oil goes through a number of containers before it gets to those pretty stainless steel containers in the store and then into the bottle you take it home in. Even if you believe in the integrity of every middleman involved -- and this is the last thing you believe in after reading Mueller's book -- the risk of accidental contamination or dilution is high.

There is apparently something of an argument going on among olive oil purveyors on bulk vs. bottled, but there's no arguing with the quality of the oils you can taste at the store if you are able to make the trek to the small strip just off the Beltway. We were able to taste a baker's dozen of 2011 and 2012 oils, along with some balsamic vinegars and other gourmet products. We managed to narrow our selection and bring a good sample home. We picked the ones we liked but found afterwards that two of the three oils we bought, Capezzana and Laudemio, were the first-named favorites listed by Sara Jenkins in Olives and Oranges. The third, a 2012 Sicilian oil from Frantoi Cutrera, also impressed us.

Italy is still the standard-setter in olive oil, but of course many other countries, including the U.S., produce great oils. To paraphrase, so many oils, so little time. But it is an incentive to eat more salad to dress with these great oils, or to serve ourselves some oil as an appetizer just as so many restaurants do. We like McEvoy's, a California oil sold at Cowgirl Creamery, and I will certainly try other American oils. But Olio2go is a great way to get some of the finest Italian oils and I look forward to making regular trips there.

Carbonnades a la flamande

This Julia Childs standby was a favorite of mine in Europe but I hadn't made it in a long time and it seemed perfect as cold weather comfort food. It was better than ever! Whenever I compare Julia's version to others floating around, I always come back to hers. Some cut the beef into chunks and dredge it with flour, add a carrot or other aromatics. Julia's recipe gives you unadulterated beef and onions braised in beer.

I used a 3-lb chuck roast, which wasn't easy to cut into uniform 2x4x1/2-in slices as called for in the recipe, but the odd, ragged pieces were fine, too. Brown the beef in a film of oil and set aside. Add 1-1/2 lbs of sliced onion to the skillet and cook about 10 min., until lightly browned. Remove from heat, add salt and pepper and 4 crushed garlic cloves. In a casserole, place a layer of beef sprinkled with salt and pepper, spread a layer of onion, then repeat. Heat up 1 c. of beef stock in the skillet and add to the casserole. Pour in 2-3 c. of lager beer until meat is just covered, add 2 Tbl of light brown sugar and a herb bouquet of parsley, thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a simmer on top of stove, cover and put into preheated 325-degree oven for 2-1/2 hours, taking care to keep liquid at a gentle simmer. When the meat is tender, drain the cooking liquid into a saucepan, degrease it, and stir in 1-1/2 Tbl arrowroot or cornstarch mixed with 2 Tbl wine vinegar and cook 4 to 5 min. Pour the sauce back over the meat and heat up together when ready to serve.

The first night we had buttered tagliatelle with the carbonnades and the second night, parsley potatoes from the farmer's market. The WF chuck was super tender and the rich, oniony broth set off by the vinegar and herb bouquet gave it a different flavor than a traditional brisket recipe. We had a very nice Rioja with it.

Black's Bar and Kitchen

One of our favorite small bites is to sit at the bar at Persimmon and order the fish tacos appetizer and a glass of wine. But it turns out Persimmon is closed for renovation, so we made a return trip to Black's Bar and Kitchen nearby in Bethesda.

I'm glad we did -- the food was great and a weekend night during a holiday was uncharacteristically mellow and nice. I ordered the grilled whole fish, branzino, and Andrea ordered the salmon, so we got our fish fix. My fish was perfect -- moist, tender, with the delicate branzino flavor (and presumably a good dose of butter). I ordered a side of the brown butter cauliflower with my unadorned fish and it was very nice, with some fennel stems mixed in. Andrea was very happy with her salmon.

It was a reminder of the consistently high quality of Jeff Black's restaurant group. Addie's we always like, though it's something of a schlepp. Ditto for Black Market Bistro in Garrett Park. Black's Salt is good, but a bit pricey and we'd just as soon spend the money at Pesce as a rule. But this Bethesda Black's is convenient and this will encourage us to go more often.

Pork and green chile stew

This recipe from the Pink Adobe cookbook was a big hit at New Year's when we served it with corn sticks. Because we were serving a lot of people -- I tripled the recipe -- I toned down any chance of heat. I had to use canned green chiles and got the mild chiles, and used only a fraction of the fresh jalapeno called for. So there wasn't much heat, but the meat really did melt in your mouth and the broth, based on my homemade chicken broth, was rich and delicious.

The recipe calls for 2 lbs of boneless pork cut into 1-in cubes. I used Boston butt, which is pork shoulder. The cubes are browned in 2 Tbl of olive oil, then add 1/2 c. chopped onion and 1 minced garlic clove and stir in with the meat. Add 1/4 c. flour and stir to cook for a couple of min. Then add 2 c. chopped tomatoes (I used canned, diced tomatoes) and 2 c. chopped green chiles (I used Hatch mild chiles from Amazon), 1 chopped jalapeno, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and 1/2 tsp sugar. Mix all this together then add 1 c. chicken or beef broth. Cover and simmer for 1 to 1-1/2 hours until meat is tender. The recipe suggests serving with flour tortillas. The recipe serves 6, so tripling it gave us plenty and provided some nice leftovers. I made it a day ahead and degreased it after the fat had congealed at the top.

Keeping with the Mexican/Southwestern theme, we offered tequila shots and sangrita in addition to champagne and wine, and a velvety Mexican chocolate pot de creme for desert, with a dab of creme fraiche mixed with heavy cream -- very cinnamon-y and chocolatey.

Eggnog

We had a delicious homemade eggnog over the holidays using the recipe for making it in quantity in Joy of Cooking. I've used this before but it was particularly successful this time for reasons that escape me.

I halved the full recipe, which calls for 12 egg yolks beaten until light in color, then beat in gradually 1 lb. confectioners' sugar and 2 c. of liquor (dark rum, brandy, bourbon, rye or a mixture of these -- I used bourbon). Let this mixture stand, covered, for 1 hour "to dispel the 'eggy' taste." Then beat in 2 to 4 c. more of liquor, 2 quarts heavy cream and an optional 1 c. peach brandy. I had some old peach brandy in the cabinet but it tasted musty and got thrown out so I did without. Cover and refrigerate this mixture for 3 hours. The final step is to beat 8 to 12 egg whites "until stiff but not dry" and fold this into the egg mixture. I grated fresh nutmeg over the individual servings.

This was of course very rich and creamy. Everyone who visited and tried it loved it. The liquor component might be too strong for some people even using the lower range specified. I beat everything, including the egg whites, by hand and that certainly worked well. What was nice this time was that it remained creamy and frothy over 3 days (even a half portion was a lot to drink). Other times I've tried this it separates out a bit into a frothy top and a more fluid eggnog.

Hemingway 51: Green Isaac's Special

I was surprised at Philip Greene's presentation last month when he said Hemingway was way ahead of the trend for coconut water, because I had never heard of it. But sure enough, it is now a very trendy drink and Whole Foods has a whole shelf full of coconut water, so I tried out this cocktail from Islands in the Stream.

It starts with 2 oz. of gin, mixed with 4 oz. of coconut water and 1 oz. of lime juice, along with 2 to 4 dashes of Angostura bitters, shaken and poured with ice into Collins glass, and garnished with a lime wedge. It was eminently drinkable, though something of an acquired taste that is probably acquired much more easily on a hot day in the Caribbean than in a Washington winter. It is refreshing (coconut water is supposed to restore those elusive electrolytes), though not immediately competition for a gin and tonic. I'll try it again in the summer.

Greene notes the drink is also called a "Tomini" and in another place a "Tom Collins" with the ingredients specified.

Al Dente

Zagat sent out a helpful post this week about a dozen new popular restaurants and this casual dining place by chef Roberto Donna was one of them. It's located in the old Sutton Place Gourmet on New Mexico Avenue in the same complex as Chef Geoff's and we were able to get a reservation for a bar seat.

The food was quite good. My roast veal with porcini sauce and potato tart was tasty and a nice dish for the price ($19). Andrea's "Del Plin" pasta -- a fresh, short pasta -- stuffed with potato and leeks and topped with a crumbled sausage called cotechino (and butter and parmesan) was outstanding. The pasta was warm and yummy and the sausage very flavorful; it was served in a broth that combined all the flavors. The Caesar salad we split as a starter was plentiful and fresh. Bread was a nice hard crust and the wines -- a Soave and a Barbera -- quite smooth and moderately priced.

The ambiance, however, is not great. The decor is what I would call early Euro trash, made more garish by the bright neon lighting. It looked more like a truck stop in Belgium, or Italy, than a warm and cozy restaurant. A former gourmet foodshop with big plate-glass windows may not be an ideal location for a restaurant. The music when we arrived, somewhat on the early side, could only be described as horrid, a loud rap that might have appealed to the bar crowd over at Chef Geoff's but hardly to the clientele of families and middle-aged couples we saw here. They transitioned later to Christmas crap as the restaurant filled up. A final, niggling complaint -- the parking attendant neglected to observe the validation and failed, as we only realized later, to give us the proper discount on parking.

All that said, the food will certainly bring us back. Prices are on a par with Arucola and the quality is a step or two up.

Braised 'fresh bacon'

Tom Colicchio couldn't  help bragging that GQ voted this recipe their favorite meat dish of the year, but only after debating whether to call it "fresh bacon" or "pork belly." I prefer the traditional name. Fresh bacon is a bit pretentious, though it does establish the link between this fatty cut of pork and the streaked bacon you buy.

This is one of the recipes he uses to demonstrate braising and it is excellent. It takes a long time, but is very easy. Put the 2 lbs of pork belly in a skillet with 1 Tbl of peanut oil, fat side down, and cook for 15 min over medium heat. Remove pork and drain off all but 2 Tbl of fat. Add 1 chopped onion, 2 chopped carrots, 2 chopped celery stalks, 2 peeled garlic cloves and sautee for 20 min, until vegetables start to turn brown. Put pork back in, fat side up, with 2 c. chicken stock (he calls for his brown chicken stock where he cooks a chicken stock a second time with brown chicken pieces but I just used store-bought). Bring to a simmer and put in 350-degree oven. After 1 hour, add another cup of stock and cook for another hour. Let it cool in braising liquid. Remove pork (take off skin if you were lucky enough to find pork belly with skin on), cut into 4 serving pieces and make cross-hatch pattern in the fat. Strain braising liquids, discard solids. Bring liquid to simmer and skim off fat. Return pork to pan and put it in 400-degree oven for 20 min. Serve in shallow bowl with some braising liquid. I served tiny boiled purple potatoes with it which you could mash in the bowl and soak up the liquid.

The meat has an intense pork-y flavor not at all like bacon but more like a juicy bit of braised shoulder. It is of course super-tender after all this cooking and the braising liquid is flavorful and surprisingly light.

Roast chicken

I'm delving into Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef with his simple technique demonstrations. I usually find chef cookbooks too complicated and precious for home cooking, but this stuff seems harmless enough.

His technique for roasting a chicken has two unusual twists. The first is to brown the chicken in the skillet on top of the stove. You put the chicken "on its side" and brown for 7 min. then turn it over to the other side for 7 min. Then set it breast side up and put the skillet in a 375-degree oven. The chicken was washed, patted dry, salted and peppered, 2 sprigs each of rosemary and thyme in the cavity and trussed before being browned in 1 Tbl of peanut oil.

The second twist is to add 2 Tbl butter to the skillet after the first 20 min of roasting, then roasting another 30 min., basting every so often. When done, let the chicken rest for 15 min., carve and sprinkle coarse sea salt over the pieces. The chicken was very flavorful, and the browning and butter gave the skin a nice taste, while the basting kept the breasts moist. The thighs had a bit of that burnt grease flavor that using a roaster grid is designed to avoid, but I don't mind that.

'Ask your butcher'

One of my pet peeves about cookbook authors is their pretense that we all live in a world with a friendly neighborhood butcher who is waiting behind the counter with every conceivable meat product ready to carve and cut it to my exact specifications.

What world are they living in? I don't think even most residents of New York or San Francisco have a butcher like that, let alone the rest of us in industrial foodland USA.

Tom Colicchio -- who is not necessarily the worst offender, only the most recent -- says in a recipe for pork belly "to be sure to have your butcher leave on the skin."

Me, I'm just happy that Whole Foods has started carrying pork belly regularly so that I don't have to chase around to a Korean supermarket to find it. Here's how the dialogue goes with the person who happened to be behind the WF meat counter yesterday as he put two slabs of pork belly with no skin onto the scale for me:

Me: "I don't supposed you have any pork belly with the skin on."
Him: "Naw, we don't sell it that way. Anything else, today?"

End of conversation. What next, Tom? Whole Foods is one of two places where I can conveniently shop for high-quality meat. A computer decides what cuts they are going to offer based on which product moves the most through the store. Truth be told, there was one meat-cutter at WF who I could talk to about things like my pork rib roast "honor guard" last year, but I haven't seen him for months and there is no discernible continuity in the people behind the meat counter. Only the expensive cuts are displayed in the case and everything else is packaged in cellophane in another meat case. What you see is what you get and I've not found them in general to be responsive to requests.

The other place where I regularly buy meat is Broad Branch Market, which obviously has a very limited selection of just certain cuts, and the kids behind the counter serving you don't know the difference between a strip and a ribeye. Lots of people like Chevy Chase supermarket, but everything there is pre-cut and wrapped in cellophane, which of course is the way most supermarkets these days handle meat.

More specialized butchers are few and far between. Wagshal's is too far and more often than not service there has been surly when I do venture to make the trip. Some the new boutique butchers springing up in Alexandria and other snob locales basically seem to be adjuncts to restaurants, to off-load what chef doesn't sell, so you can get what they have or of course special order it a week in advance.

Which is the way it is, but it would be nice if cookbook writers could abandon their fictional bubble and talk to people who live in the real world. For instance, Colicchio could have said: "In this recipe, leaving the skin on enhances the flavor if you can find pork belly like that, but otherwise it tastes fine with the skin removed."

Hemingway 52: Cognac and Benedictine

This was actually the second drink we had at the Last Exit when author Philip Greene was guest-bartending. He found this straightforward combination, served in an Old Fashioned glass with ice and a lemon peel, in an unpublished short story of Hemingway's, "The Mercenaries: A Story." Hemingway had just returned from ambulance service in World War I and his narrator meets some professional soldiers in a dive in Chicago. They introduce him to this drink, which they first tasted in Sicily, even though it combines two French cordials.

Greene says Martell's is the cognac called for and it's clear you don't want a really good one to mix in a drink. It tastes a bit like a stinger -- brandy and white creme de menthe, also served over ice -- without the cloying sweetness of the creme de menthe. Instead, there is the herbal smokiness of the Benedictine, redolent of monastic incense. As Greene notes, you can now buy B&B in a bottle all its own.

I have a fondness for these herbal liqueurs, Chartreuse being the most representative. Perhaps it is an acquired taste, because I know many people are repelled by them. I had ordered this drink for Andrea, thinking she wouldn't like the Jack Rose, but it turned out she preferred it to this one, so I finished it.

I don't regularly keep any of these liqueurs and haven't had one since the last bottle of Chartreuse ran out. But I may get some Benedictine as the next herbal cordial to have on hand.

The vintner's wife's pork chops

I'm grateful that many cookbook authors don't hesitate to include even very simple recipes because it helps turn a quick weekday meal into something tasty and different. This recipe from Susan Herrmann Loomis's Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin is basically just a fried pork chop, sauteed 3 to 4 min on each side and then cooked with the skillet covered for another 7 min. Remove the chops and cover with foil to keep warm. Add 1/2 c. water to the skillet and a finely chopped shallot and garlic clove. Stir to deglaze the pan and reduce the sauce. Add 4 chopped cornichons and then 1 Tbl Dijon mustard, stir to combine and pour sauce over chops. Sprinkle minced parsley over them.

Though attributed to a vintner's wife, there is no wine in this recipe, but the combination of mustard and shallots makes a hearty red wine appealing and I had a southern Cote du Rhone.

Among the minor marvels at Broad Branch Market is their tub of cornichons for 4.99 a pound -- which gives you a nice pint for less than 3. They are real French-style cornichons and I usually have a tub in the fridge.

Salmon fillet poached in olive oil

We liked Paula Wolfert's Pork coddled in olive oil so this seemed like a good simple recipe to try for a weekday meal. Sprinkle a 1-lb center cut salmon fillet (skin removed) with salt an hour before cooking and put back in fridge. Meanwhile, heat 2-1/2 c. (!) olive oil in a skillet just big enough to hold the fillet to simmering point with 3 sliced garlic cloves and a sprig of thyme and cook until garlic turns golden brown. Turn off heat and let stand until ready to cook the salmon. After an hour, rinse the salmon and pat it dry. Remove the garlic and thyme and heat the oil back to 155 degrees (using a candy thermometer to measure), put in the salmon, adding more oil to cover if necessary, and poach for 12 min. at 145 degrees. Turn off heat and let it cook further in the oil until it is opaque and flaky.

The fish came out silky and tender -- not at all oily! -- gently infused with the thyme and garlic flavor. It was heavenly. Yes it's a lot of olive oil and a bit of an extravagance since we are not likely to be able to re-use the oil, but it's a very nice way to cook salmon for a change of pace.

Wolfert suggests a salad of arugula with shaved rhubarb and cucumber to accompany. Obviously there's no rhubarb available this time of year, so I just left it out. The peeled cucumber gets sliced on a mandolin, then tossed in salt and left for 10 min. Rinse and drain the cucumbers, add to a couple handfuls of arugula, toss with lemon juice and sprinkle shredded mint leaves over the top. The wonderful tangy taste of the arugula comes through unadorned and sets off the salmon very nicely.

Hemingway 53: Jack Rose

As part of his unceasing efforts to promote his book on Hemingway's cocktails, Philip Greene worked as guest bartender at the Last Exit in Mount Pleasant one night this week offering various versions of the Jack Rose cocktail. There is the bar's version, made with Calvados; the classic version with just Laird's applejack, lemon juice and grenadine; and the more elaborate version he attributes to Harry MacElhone of Harry's New York Bar in Paris and which he thinks is the one Hemingway meant when he referred to the drink in The Sun Also Rises.

I went straight for this version, which adds gin, red and white vermouth and orange juice to the original ingredients. It was very good -- refreshing with a good kick to it.

I was curious about the drink since the Jack Rose bar in D.C. is one of my new favorite places. Oddly, there is no whiskey in the cocktail that lent its name to this fabulous whiskey emporium but it's a catchy name in any case.

Harry's Bar was a favorite of mine in Paris. One of its claims to fame is that the Bloody Mary was invented there (there are other claimants as well). One day I was there and Harry's son, Andy MacElhone, was explaining to a TV crew that the original Bloody Mary never had celery in it as they filmed one of the crack bartenders mixing up a sample.

The bartender put the finished drink on the bar with a flourish, MacElhone finished his explanation, the TV crew turned off their spotlights and began packing up to leave. So I said, "What's going to happen to this drink?" MacElhone laughed and said, "Give it to him, he thought of it first."