The Pig

I love pork so when someone suggested meeting at this new Logan Circle snout-to-tail restaurant, it had a lot of appeal. We did have a great time, with the table next to the window as separate and as quiet as it could be in a noisy restaurant. Prices for both food and drink were reasonable and the food was fine.

However, thinking back on it I realized it seemed to be to be a bit of a toy restaurant. For one thing, it was mostly small plate, so the portions were not satisfying. Second, it is a restaurant based on a gimmick and virtually everything came across as a bit gimmicky. There is a 4 oz. beer, which indeed caters to a certain niche of non-beer drinkers, but looks like it belongs in a doll house. The menu, the decor, the pig theme in general is late American cutesy. It doesn't hark back at all to the genuine tradition of charcutiere. I went to the original snout-to-tail restaurant, Fergus Henderson's St. John, on one of my trips to London. It is a very sophisticated place, with real portions (and of course much higher prices). The Pig is like a toy version of that restaurant.

I opted for the small plate called porchetta even though a discussion with the waitress established that it was stuffed pork belly, so nothing like the real Italian porchetta, and I was suitably disappointed. It was a roasted or fried slice of pork belly, stuffed with a tasty potpourri of pork parts, but had nothing of the fragrance and tender meatiness of the real thing. The braised cheek that I tasted was quite good, but of course the portion was very small. The "small pig" plate of dried meat we all shared as a starter was very tasty, but there were only three meats and two of them were ham. The sides we shared were quite good, especially the roasted Brussels sprouts. We shared a couple of desserts, a toffee and a panna cotta, that were fine. The beer I had, Devil's Backbone from Virginia, was fresh and tasty and at 5.25 a good deal.

In this case, it really was the company that made the meal and The Pig provided a comfortable venue with a lot of buzz for that and reasonably good food. So I'm not complaining, I'm just saying I won't rush back.

Corduroy

We had a splendid meal at Chef Tom Powers' restaurant, splurging for a special occasion at what has become recognized as one of the best restaurants in town. I've been a fan of the chef since he sat at the bar at Vidalia one night when I was bartending and left me a very generous tip. We went to his place once before, when it was still located in a hotel. Now it is in a stylish row house, which, unfortunately for the ambiance, is across the street from the convention center.

In fact, the interior, though cozy and not too noisy, had a bland expense-account look to it, and most of our fellow diners appeared to be out-of-town men in business suits. Nonetheless, we were installed in an intimate sheltered 2-top and were perfectly happy. We opted for a la carte rather than the "surprise" tasting menu. I had a lobster carpaccio for starters, which was quite delicate -- perhaps a bit too delicate -- but exquisite. Andrea had a much heartier wild mushroom blintz, a special. The blintz was fried and more like a spring roll, but the mushrooms were perfectly cooked and seasoned. For the main course, I had the antelope, which was supremely tender and tasted like venison, not at all gamey (I presume these are farmed, not wild, antelope). Andrea had the guinea hen, which was strongly flavored with fennel. The breast was roasted, moist with crispy skin and the thigh was confit, with a rich dark-meat flavor. For dessert, Andrea got the baked chocolate sabayon, which was very chocolate-y but a little too baked for my taste. I got the bourbon and chocolate ice cream, which was fine, but nothing special.

We took advantage of the corkage fee, as is becoming our custom in expensive restaurants, by bringing our own bottle of Barolo. More about the wine at my wine blog. One of the reasons I rejoined Wines Til Sold Out was precisely to get these expensive wines at a discount, so this was a $90 wine at $40. So with the corkage fee of $25, we still saved a bundle on wine -- the Barolo and Corduroy's menu was $160. We had a cocktail beforehand and I had a Barolo grappa with coffee (I said we were splurging). The service was good, the waiter entertaining. Chef even sent out a little sample of his delicious cauliflower soup after I told the waiter about my Vidalia encounter. All in all, a delightful evening. There is a apparently a $30 menu available at the upstairs bar, so we may go back some weekday soon for that.

Ad hoc recipes

I enjoy browsing through my cookbooks and planning menus for the week ahead, but good recipes come from many sources. Over the weekend, I used the recipe -- more just a technique -- for flank steak that appeared in the NY Times Dining section last Wednesday. You rub the steak with salt, cracked pepper, rosemary leaves and garlic slivers and let it sit for an hour. Preheat the oven to 450 and put a cast iron skillet in to warm up a half hour before cooking. Then sear the steak in the pan (in the oven) for 5 min. on the first side and 3 to 4 min. after you turn it over. It works quite well, leaving the steak seared and tender. Ours had quite a bit of fat on it, so it was nice and juicy. To serve, slice on the diagonal and drizzle with olive oil. The recipe for what Italians call tagliata goes on to add parmesan shavings and arugula but we did fine without that. Instead, I paired it with a broccoli crustless tart from Elizabeth Minchilli that I pinned on my Recipes to Try board on Pinterest. Essentially a quiche -- you bake the cooked broccoli with a mix of eggs, cream and cheese -- it worked really well with the steak.

For a solo dinner yesterday, I stopped by The Fishery and decided once again to try shad roe. After reading some 30 Nero Wolfe mysteries with each one mentioning shad roe at some point, it's hard not to keep trying. This time I went to Google (Epicurious, oddly enough, had never heard of shad roe) and found some nice treatments. I ended up gently sauteeing the pair of roe sacs in butter in a cast iron skillet, and then serving with some caramelized shallots and a lemon caper butter sauce. I cooked a rice pilaf to accompany, though it turns out basmati rice is not ideal for this. Still not totally sold on shad roe. It's an acquired taste and hard to acquire if you have it only once a year.

Eating in the burbs

Various meetings took me to the suburbs for dinner this week. I met an old friend who has moved to Alexandria at Geranio, an old-style Italian restaurant on King Street. It was refreshingly relaxing and un-pretentious and we both had the signature lobster risotto, which was truly outstanding. The rice was perfect and they were restrained in the use of butter -- no cheese -- so that the lobster flavor came through. Presumably they used some sort of broth and/or butter made with lobster, because the flavor permeated the rice. The lobster itself was fresh and tender. I had a grilled portabella and arugula salad which was also perfectly prepared and my friend ordered a light dolcetta d'Alba to accompany the meal.

For the final class in my introductory Italian course, the instructor took us to Pizzeria Da Marco in Bethesda, run by a fellow Genovese he knows. The restaurant offers genuine thin-crust Neapolitan pizza and I got the DOP version with buffalo mozzarella and an extra topping of prosciutto. The pizza was (nearly) as good as 2Amys but the ambiance of the large space in a new brick building left much to be desired. As a result, however, it was not nearly so crowded and noisy as trendier places and is a good fall-back if you just want to have a good pizza.

Our trip over to Silver Spring to Charm Thai was just a way to get some quick and easy dinner. I say it every time that I'm surprised how close Silver Spring is. The restaurant gets good reviews in Yelp but I made the mistake of asking for my seafood drowned noodles to be "extra spicy." The kitchen evidently took that as a dare. I was able to choke it down but next time I will just order what's on the menu. Andrea liked her very spicy crunchy chicken but the duck roll appetizer we split was pretty blah. The restaurant is totally devoid of charm -- this may be why I forget how close Silver Spring is -- with the tables lined up a long counter that serves take-out customers. In my new project to get better acquainted with Thai cuisine, I will certainly go back there, but will be more judicious in my menu choices.

Aromatic braised pork shoulder

The emphasis is definitely on "aromatic" in this recipe from Susan Hermann Loomis's Cooking at Home On Rue Tatin. The various aromatics virtually disappear as individual notes in a blend of flavor that infuses the tender meat.

The pork butt cut from Blue Rooster farm is a thick, flat piece of meat with a bone in it and it worked well in this recipe. Brown the meat on both sides in olive oil, remove and put in 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced onions, 1 sliced fennel bulb and soften for 5 min. Put meat back in, add 3 c. water and put 3 bay leaves, 4 garlic cloves, a handful of lemon thyme and 2 unpeeled coins fresh ginger into the water. Sprinkle 1 Tbl coarse sea salt over it, cover, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 min. Uncover and put in 400-degree oven for 1 hour, turning the meat every 20 min. Let the meat sit for 15 min before slicing (Loomis doesn't say anything about removing it from braise but it's the only thing that makes sense in the context).

Interestingly, Loomis calls for spring or filtered water to avoid a possible chlorine taste from tap water. This never occurred to me before, but I used the filtered water I have for coffee -- why not? Couldn't find lemon thyme so just used thyme. Andrea actually missed tasting the fennel and thyme. I supposed I could have cut the fennel a little thicker, and vertically instead of horizontally to have bigger slices that held together better and retained more flavor. Loomis recommends a white wine with this dish and we had a white Bordeaux.

I haven't used too many recipes from this book, but this was terrific and encourages me to look here more often.

Range

The food at Bryan Voltaggio's innovative restaurant is delicious, but the overall dining experience is an unsatisfying combination of precious and pedestrian. The spread-out space in Chevy Chase Pavilion made Andrea think of an upscale cafeteria while it reminded me of a restaurant at a European train station. Range even made up for the lack of train passengers by providing hordes of waitstaff bustling around and an amazing number of suits running around with little earphones to keep the 300-seat restaurant humming.

To our surprise, however, there were a lot of empty seats and no waiting on a Saturday night. Besides the tables (many which remained empty for much of the time we were there, though we were told none was available for an hour and a half) and the crowded bar, there were the marble lunch counters running along the various cooking stations and we sat at the first empty seats we saw, at the bread station, which of course was the least interesting to watch.

But we were there for the food, so it was fine. Everything we ate was excellent. However, it reinforced my animosity to small plates. It worked for us to get a "pizza" to split for a starter, order two meat dishes and a side of Brussels sprouts while sitting at a lunch counter and leave, barely, full. But I don't think it would be totally satisfying sitting at a table, especially if with friends, and counting it as a great meal.

The "pizza" was really just a flatbread with a sprinkling of bacon and onions and some dibs and dabs of fresh cheese. The ingredients were good but this was nothing faintly resembling a pizza. I ordered the veal sweetbreads, and they were exquisite -- creamy white with a thin crispiness on the outside. Andrea ordered the pork cheeks, and they, too, were tender and very fine, though the dish was not hot enough. Needless to say, the portions, while somewhat bigger than a Jaleo small plate, were smaller than a normal entree. The roast Brussels sprouts were also great, though they came tossed in a fish sauce, which the menu neglected to mention.

The menu, in fact, may have swung too far away from those flowery descriptions that used to distinguish menus and was a little terse. Perhaps we should have asked for details. The wine menu online is different and I didn't make an note, but Andrea had a Chablis, which was nice, and I had an Italian red.

The restaurant is new, and I suspect that after a year they will have backed off from some of the odder innovations. I will go back at some point, but I'm not in a hurry.

Cabbage soup diet

Crash diets are of course suspect, but the measure of success in any diet is not how much weight you take off or how quickly but how well you keep it off. We were encouraged to try a second round of the cabbage soup diet because we successfully kept off the 10 lbs. we lost in the round last summer.

So this time, from March 1 to 7, I once again lost about 10 lbs -- in fact, the total for the two rounds is 21 lbs -- and that feels great.

I got the feeling sometimes during the past week that the only reason cabbage is used is to keep you from eating too much of anything, because you can only force so much of that down. We did our best with alternate versions of the soup -- adding fennel and basil to make it more "Italian," using stock instead of water -- but in the end you're stuck with a bland soup that is just bubble and squeak without the potatoes.

It is the baked potato day and the two steak days that save it. I think we will try another form of dieting the next time around, but you have to give the devil its due -- this diet is effective.

Fish rule

I had a craving for fish so I went to The Fishery and ended up getting fish for both lunch and dinner. Just for myself, because Andrea doesn't eat anything that tastes "fishy," I got the Spanish mackerel fillet, which I don't see there all the time.

Mackerel is supposed to be especially good for Omega-3 and I've dabbled with the canned version. I was wondering if this skin-on fillet was going to be too fishy even for me.

I sprinkled a little salt and lemon juice on it, dredged with flour and shook of excess and fried it in some olive oil. It looked thicker in the skillet than it did in the store but it fried up quickly. It tasted really good, bursting with a freshness that made me feel I was right at the ocean. I served with just a green lettuce salad, using one of our splendid Italian olive oils and, in keeping with the Spanish theme, some sherry vinegar.

For dinner we had salmon, which Andrea does like. This time, the Scottish farm salmon looked better to me, so even though it was more expensive this is the one I got. We usually just get the regular farm salmon. The wild salmon is almost too lean for Andrea, but I find the domestic farm salmon pretty fatty. This was a good compromise, unctuous but full of flavor, and, again, very fresh. We served it with broccoli that was parboiled and sauteed in oil and garlic.

Fish are great when they are very fresh and The Fishery has never let us down on that score. The guy breaking down the fish was alone when I came in so he quickly finished scaling a couple of big fish while I waited. But this is one place I never mind waiting -- I could watch them work the fish as entertainment. One funny note: The broccoli I bought there, I noticed when I got home, had a Safeway band on it, so I don't know whether Safeway delivers them wholesale or they just go over to the store and buy retail for resell.

Stachowski's

A couple of reliable foodie friends separately recommended this Georgetown deli to us so we made the quick trip down the Parkway Sunday for a twofer -- sandwiches for lunch and a cold cut spread for the Oscars.

Everything they said is true. The handcrafted charcuterie looks great and everything we took home tasted great. While not quite a real butcher shop, it doesn't have the boutique-y air of the dreadful places in Alexandria. Somebody there knows something about charcuterie, though probably not the eager young assistant who helped us but who erred on the skimpy side when we ordered a slice of pate or a quarter-pound of soppressata -- will watch more closely next time.

The sandwiches are truly stupendous. Mine was packed with thick slices of hand-cut pastrami, warm and smokey and not too greasy, between slices of a dark, grainy bread from Bakery Lyon -- our new favorite bakery -- that was strong enough to bear the strain. It was way too much for one meal. The pickles were also delicious. Andrea got a turkey club that was equally packed with tons of turkey, layers of bacon and some fresh-looking avocado.

In addition to the two homemade items above, we got some very nicely sliced Serrano ham, that was a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth cured ham. Our haul from Stachowski's, combined with our cheese from Cowgirl Creamery made a great spread for watching the Oscars, washed down with our respective wines, a Spanish tempranillo for me and an Italian Gavi for Andrea.

Will definitely be back for sandwiches and samples of the other charcuterie products, and why not try the meat while I'm there, though one of our friends was not impressed with this side of the business. More to come.

Pork tenderloin with caramelized pears

This Epicurious recipe was a real home run -- simple and delicious. I had a couple of small tenderloins -- less than a pound -- from Blue Rooster, so made a half-recipe. The tenderloin gets cut into 1-in. medaillons, flattened and quickly sauteed. Served with the pears sauteed in butter and sugar and the sauce which is wonderful balance of shallots, butter and cream with a lift from pear eau-de-vie and a splash of pear nectar.

It makes a pretty plate. The tenderloin was very tender and tasty, the sauce divine and the sweet Anjou pears were a great foil. We served with roast broccoli that had some shredded assaggio cheese sprinkled over it and I drank a Nero d'Avola wine from Sicily (one of the wine pairings mentioned in Epicurious). A keeper.

Cashion's Eat Place

First time back in a long time, found the best feature to be the bar. Fun, comfortable, good drinks. I had the signature fig-infused, barrel-aged  Manhattan -- pretentious but a nice smooth drink. Dinner was fine, though service was erratic -- one of those waitstaff who is so chatty and eager to please that they spend way too much time talking to you and other diners instead of getting on with it. One of our party got the wrong dish and ended up eating dinner after the rest of us were practically finished.

The bread, outsourced to Bakery Lyon, was outstanding. Serving portions for the food were stingy -- the sampler of mezzes was evidently intended for one person, not be split at the table as we did. Thimble-sized servings. I had the pulled goat, which tasted good but was again on the meager side. Cheese plate typically had slices the size of a nickel.

Would not rush back for dinner but would sit at the bar.

Savory braised chicken with aromatics

This is the first recipe I've tried from Niloufer Ichiporia King's My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking, and it's a good reason to try more.

Parsi refers to the descendants of the Zoroastrian Persians who came to western India more than a millennium ago, settling in Guajarat and spreading out from there. Robert Kaplan talks about them in his book Monsoon, which was the first selection of my new book group. I had bought this cookbook some time ago, but was daunted as I am by most Indian cooking by the need to find garlic and ginger purrees. However, I discovered a jar of each in the pantry, purchased at some point at an Indian grocery store and forgotten about. I will probably get around to making my own some day but these store-bought versions seemed a good way to get started.

The recipe is simple and worked well for a weekday. This is one of those talky cookbooks -- which is fine -- but I almost missed her note that it is better to brown the chicken thighs separately because those we get in the U.S. are relatively fatty. Otherwise, they are browned in the skillet after you sizzle the cinnamon stick, 5 cloves, 3 cardamom pods and 3 dried red chiles in 3 Tbl of vegetable oil.

The dish is called khari marghi, and the variation that seemed most appealing to me was the pateta ma marghi, which adds potatoes to the simmering chicken. Also, in the case of fried potatoes, King suggests using coconut milk or milk as the braising liquid to make a good gravy. I had a can of coconut milk in the pantry, so I lengthened it with a bit of milk and added it to the skillet with the aromatics and browned chicken to simmer for 30 to 40 min.

For the fried potatoes, I found a nice technique at Simple Organized Living. I peeled and quartered the California Golds, dried them and then -- this was the nice innovation in this version -- put them in the microwave for 3 to 4 min. so that the interior would have a chance to pre-cook. Often recipes have you parboil the potatoes to get this result, but this was an easy alternative. Then I fried them in a good amount of oil, drained them and added them to the braise about 15 min. before the end.

My execution was not flawless and I had problems here and there with the seasoning, but that was easily fixed and it made for a very nice dinner. I had a salad and an Umbrian Merlot to go along.

Braised pork belly with glazed turnips

Another easy Molly Stevens recipe. I got the pork belly from Blue Rooster farm at the Sheridan Farmer's Market a few weeks ago and picked up the turnips at the Bethesda Farmer's Market on Sunday.

Pat the 2-lb pork belly dry and put on a rub of black peppercorns and toasted coriander seeds chopped not too fine in a spice grinder and then whirred again with coarse salt to mix. She also wants dill seeds chopped too, but since I could only find dill weed I mixed some of that into the rub. Rub all over and cover with plastic for a day or two.

To cook, pat it dry again, brown fat side down in olive oil for 8 min or so, remove and saute coarsely chopped carrot, celery and onion for another 8 min or so. Add chopped garlic, 4 whole cloves and 2 bay leaves for another minute, add 1/2 c. white wine, boil down and add 1 c. chicken stock. Bring to simmering, put the pork belly in fat side up and put in 325-degree oven for 2 to 3 hrs. Let cool in braising liquid, remove, make cross hatch in the fat, degrease and strain braising liquid and keep 1/4 c. for the turnips, and return pork belly and braising liquid to pan and put in 425-degree oven for 20 min.

For the turnips, peel and cut into 1-in. wedges, put into skillet with some fat, 1 tsp sugar and the reserved braising liquid, bring to simmer, cover and cook 10 to 12 min., then remove cover and let liquid evaporate.

The pork belly had a wonderful flavor but was very fatty and rich. The turnips almost scorched because it is too little liquid but they were very tasty and it was a perfect combination. Served with a salad.

Wines of Italy

After living in Paris for 11 years, I felt pretty comfortable with French wines. I have a feel for the various regions and labels and for the most part understand what I am getting. Italian wines, by contrast, have been a terra incognita, with the obvious exception of Chianti Classico. Italian labeling was never as systematic as the French and in any event Italian winemaking lagged the developments elsewhere, often giving them a fusty air of mediocrity.

That's all changed now, though the bright new designer labels don't really give you the same kind of information as French labels. In his How to Love Wine, NY Times critic Eric Asimov suggests a self-tutorial as a way of getting to know wines. Buy a case of different wines, he says, and systematically try them, with food as rule, and make careful notes as you go along.

So as part of my new Italy fever, I've embarked on a self-tutorial on Italian wines. Addie Bassin's, it turns out, displays their large collection of Italian wines by region anyway, so it was fairly easy for John, who assisted me, to select 6 wines in the $15 to $20 range (which Asimov says is the sweet spot for good value) from different regions. I already had a little notebook for recording wines -- I briefly tried to record them all but realized that was pointless because I would rarely buy the same wine again -- and it has now been re-purposed for this self-tutorial. As a further study aid, I'm using Google Maps tools to customize a map and locating each wine as it is consumed. In my map searches, beautiful photos of vineyards kept coming up, so I created a pinboard for these.

Much like learning the language itself, it will be a slow process requiring some patience. But the reward presumably is that I will be much more conversant with the world of Italian wines. According to Asimov, you can drill down further in subsequent stages. For instance, if you find that you like the Piedmont wines best, restrict your tutorial to those wines, and then to a particular terroir in Piedmont and so on.

Coffee grinders

I scoffed, I'll confess, when I read that coffee aficionados nowadays insist on having a burr grinder to prepare acceptable coffee, taking it as a simple ratcheting up of the fetishism that overtakes so much in our pursuit of food today.

However, as I read more, I began to wonder if there was something to it. The argument is that a blade grinder, like my trusty old Krups, chops and chops at the beans over and over again, resulting in uneven chunks and, when continued for enough time, a slight burn taste as the machine heats up. A burr grinder, by contrast, touches the bean just once, theoretically grinding it evenly as it passes through. The speed of passage governs whether it is a fine or coarse grind.

But when I saw the large, clunky grinders at Williams Sonoma I thought I'd never get one because they take up too much room. At Sur la Table, however, they had the Capresso Infinity grinder, which is much more compact. Two different salespeople there on separate visits claimed they had that grinder and used it and loved it. The coffee really is better, they insisted. It was an Amazon reviewer who finally tipped the scale, though, because he said he had tried a different coffee maker (check), a different filter (check), filtered water (check), but it was finally the burr grinder that made the difference in getting a really good cup of coffee.

So I took the plunge, and yes, the coffee does indeed have a cleaner, brighter, fuller taste. In fact, it's pretty amazing how much better it tastes. The new grinder fits right in the spot where the old one was and is in fact much easier and neater to use. At this point, I'm totally happy with it.

Chicken noodle soup

Two points to make about a delicious soup that we ate for days nursing a cold: 1) it marked one of my rare attempts to cook something without a recipe; 2) it was the fruit of my alternatives to WF campaign.

It's surprisingly hard to find a recipe for this classic -- not even Joy of Cooking has one. Also, I wanted to make it on the basis of the chicken stock I cooked according to Sara Jenkins' recipe, so I wasn't making soup from scratch. I made the stock from a "soup chicken" from Mick's Chicks at the Sheridan School farmer's market, plus an extra carcass he sells for stock and the usual aromatics, simmered for 4 hours and strained. Most of it I froze into ice cubes and stored in the freezer but I used some of it for what was essentially a deconstructed chicken soup.

The stewing chicken was useless after 4 hours so I bought 2 of the humongous skinless boneless breasts from Broad Branch and poached them in water with sauteed mirepoix. I shredded the cooked chicken into some of the stock and added the poaching liquid and mirepoix. I also added back some of the fat I'd skimmed off the top of the stock after it cooled. I boiled the Mueller's dumpling noodles separately, then added chicken and noodles and poaching liquid until I had the right balance in the soup, and stirred in some chopped parsley. It had, needless to say, a wonderful chicken flavor. I kept it going through the week by adding more of the chicken or noodles as needed.

So, yes, how hard can it be to cook this without a recipe. I feel like I left something out (cloves? bay leaf?) to round out the flavor, so will pay more attention the next time I do have a soup recipe. None of the ingredients came from WF.

Braised root vegetables with lentils

This vegetable extravaganza from Deborah Madison is perfect therapy for someone like me who cooks in order to something with their hands. There is a ton of peeling, slicing, chopping, mincing, boiling, sauteing, braising, mashing -- but the result is a rich, earthy stew that is perfectly satisfying.

Rather than duplicate the long and complicated recipe here, this time I will just refer to Madison's Local Flavors. There are 4 separate steps to produce this assembled dish. The first is make a red wine sauce with dried porcini, mushrooms, onion, carrot, celery, parsnip trimmings, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, rosemary, salt, pepper, flour, tomato paste, red wine, mushroom soy sauce and butter. Then you make the braised vegetable dish with red pearl onions, those parsnips you trimmed, carrots, mushrooms, olive oil, butter, and more more salt, pepper and aromatics and some that red wine sauce. Separately, you make a potato and rutabaga puree and in another separate pot, cook the lentils, either black "caviar" or French green. To assemble, make a mound of puree in a deep dish, spoon in the braised vegetables and the cooked lentils with more of the red wine sauce and top with chopped parsley. The red wine and aromatics give it a French country flavor. The root vegetables hold up well as leftovers.

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.