0 Feast of St. Valentine

A quick glance at the blog shows that we've hardly kept the "cada semana" pace of late -- we have gone from one holiday to another without pausing. Fortunately, the convergence of a snow day, a Saturday, and a holiday brought us back into the kitchen ... all day. This was especially the case since Valentine's Day is definitely a day we avoid restaurants. Why struggle to get a table for food that is probably not as good as what we can make ourselves?

We started the day, of course, with some good coffee. Coffee with heart, no less: some hand-ground El Corazón from Just Coffee in Madison was the perfect start to the day. We usually eschew blends, but this blend does include Nicaraguan coffee, along with ethically-sourced coffees from Colombia and Ecuador. The blend of medium and dark roasts make this both sweet and smokey -- the perfect romantic coffee.

Coffee was served in our matching cicada-wedding mugs. It might seem peculiar to have big insects involved in our romantic day, but our wedding took place in the midst of an epic swarm, so we have a soft spot for these hard bugs.

Brunch was bacon and French toast -- made even more French by the inclusion of a bit of Courvoisier VSOP in the batter.

Soon after brunch, we began preparing dessert, since it would need time to chill. We used a mousse recipe from Boston Globe Magazine. It is in one of those articles that describes a recipe in detail, with variations following. Despite our best efforts, we missed a step this way -- using water where we should have used rum -- but it worked out OK. We discovered we did not have rum anyway -- HOW DID THIS HAPPEN AT CASA HAYES-BOH? -- but substituted bourbon, adding it where there should have been water. It worked out very well in the end. (See below.)

It being a romantic holiday, for the main course and beverage we turned to two favorites that will be familiar to regular readers oft this blog -- Intercourses and Booty Food, respectively. Both of these books are full of fun and interesting foods, as well as fun and interesting essays on love and romance.

For the main course, we selected enchiladas with asparagus, beans, and chicken. We've not made enchiladas much before. We found these to be absolutely scrumptious!

A lot of good food is not easy to photograph, and this is no exception. It looked best at this intermediate stage, before final assembly and baking.

The finished dish photographs best at a distance.

For the beverage, we worked for the first time with fresh pomegranate to make margaritas. With four feet of snow on the ground, a frozen beverage might have seemed an odd choice, but the fresh summery fruits were very welcome, and we were fortunate to be in a very warm and cozy home for the occasion.

The dessert was AMAZING and we will certainly be making this again. We were glad to be using local eggs we could trust, and we paired it with Farmer's Fizz from our favorite vineyard. We learned recently that sparkling Pinot Noir is a thing, and a thing that pairs perfectly for chocolate. So despite our loyalty to local white sparklers, we will be spending some time in the coming year looking for that wine!

Detail: Feast of St. Valentine

0 Mulled Mead

To celebrate the first chill of autumn (and the fact that we'd been married 10,000 days!) James and I decided to try Mulled Mead using some of our own homemade Mead. We adapted this recipe we found online. 

We started by heating up the Mead in a saucepan, and then added two cinnamon sticks, a few whole cloves, a couple of whole peppercorns, a whole nutmeg (cut in half), a pinch of ground ginger, a dash of cardamom, and a splash of Triple Sec, we let the concoction boil, and then let it simmer for about 25 minutes. We removed the whole spices with a strainer and poured the Mead into two glasses along with a shot of Amaretto and a tablespoon of honey.

A great celebratory drink!

Detail: Mulled Mead

0 Lammas, Not Llamas

For the holiday we celebrate with this meal, we double the "M" not the "L" -- that would be a meal we had two months ago in the Andes.

Image: Earth DNA

Lammas is one of the cross-quarter dates, August 1 being halfway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. We are celebrating a day early because, frankly, we are heading to our favorite vineyard for music on the actual date. Our celebration coincides, as many are aware, with the shared birthday of J.K. Rowling and her famous protagonist.

Traditionally, its celebration involves a lot of grains, as observers contemplate the work they have done in the summer and the harvest yet to come. For our celebration, we turned to the pages of -- faithful readers have already guessed it -- The Wicca Cookbook, choosing a recipe that looked appealing, and pairing it with something we could make with food on-hand from our CSA.

What appealed to us was Grilled Trout, on page 124, which the authors suggest we associate with the sacredness of water. The recipe is somewhat vague as to how the fish should be used, though in retrospect it seems a whole, cleaned fish for each diner was intended. After going to the sea this morning, I worked in one of my favorite cafes until my favorite fishmonger was open, knowing that I could get trout or something like it, along with some advice.

I settled on a one-pound fillet of striped bass, and modified the recipe accordingly. I started by whisking together a half cup each of corn meal and wheat flour; the recipe calls only for flour, but elsewhere the book extolls the connection between corn and lammas, so we decided to use both. I added a tiny bit of salt (we usually do not use any, but we have learned that if a recipe calls for salt, we should use at least a pinch), pepper, marjoram, and finely-minced parsley. I divided the bass steak (it was not really even, so I later gave Pam some of my over-sized "half"), brushed it thoroughly with melted butter, and dredged it in the flour mixture. I then placed it on a cookie sheet and broiled it in the oven (mid-level rack, not top) for six minutes.

We drizzled this with fresh lemon and enjoyed it alongside Pam's famous Not-Your-Mother's Green Beans and a glass of our recently vinted Cloverfield Gewürztraminer 2014. We followed this with Pam's rendition of a favorite from the Hogwart's Express.

So for this recipe we wanted trout but used bass; at the end of 2012 we wanted bass to christen our Maryland cook book but used haddock. On Maryland Day the following year, we prepared a shrimp dish that reminded us of Dan Akroyd's approach to fish preparation 
(The link above has the full transcript; only a portion of the skit is available as video).

Detail: Lammas, Not Llamas

0 Cab Coolers

We'd been planning on making Cabernet Sauvignon Coolers for a few months, and decided that this would be the weekend for it, when serendipitous-ly, I found two bottles of Charles Shaw (aka three-buck Chuck) "Cab" on a wine rack of what was otherwise empty wine bottles on Saturday when I cleaned out the basement. How lucky is that? It was like finding money!

The recipe comes from our Intercourses cookbook and is pretty simple, although it is not something that can be whipped together at the last minute as it needs several hours for cooling and freezing. I started by boiling together 3/4 c. Cabernet Sauvingnon and 1/2 c. each of water and sugar in a saucepan. After it boiled I put it on simmer for a few minutes, then took it off the heat to cool a bit. Next I added 3/4 c. white grape juice and 1/3 c. lemon juice and put the mixture into the refrigerator to cool completely. Once cool it was poured into ice cube trays and then frozen. Once frozen, the ice cubes were removed from the tray and put into our blender and pureed. I needed to add a bit more wine to the mix to get it moving in the blender. I divided the frozen treat into two bowls, and garnished with mint (from our garden), and grapes.  A refreshing dessert for a summer evening.

Bonus! This recipe filled two ice-cube trays, and we only needed the cubes from one for last night's fare, so we will be able to enjoy this treat again this summer with only a minimal of prep time!

I must say Intercourses sure doesn't fail to please!

Detail: Cab Coolers

0 Merlot, Cravo e Canela

Each week, the Boston Globe Magazine presents a trio of recipes around a common theme. As winter draws nigh, the theme this week was warm, mulled wines. Of the Gluhwein, Glogg, and Elderflower options, I chose the first, simply because I knew I could find the ingredients handily.

Once Pam's annual lasagna was in the oven and the kitchen was clear, I began preparing the grog. Since we had no guests for dinner, I halved the recipe, using just one bottle of Merlot. I used the juice of five clementines along with a couple strips of the rinds. I heated the juice with brown sugar, cloves and cinnamon (hence the Sonia Braga reference in the title of this post).

I then added the Merlot and simmered it for an hour, so that the syrup would combine with the wine, and the wine would be infused with the spices and fruit. I then fortified the mixture with cherry schnapps (brandy or kirsch would have been fine as well), and removed the solid infusants.

I placed just a bit of rind in each of two warmed mugs, and filled them up with this perfect winter warmer. A more soothing beverage would be difficult to imagine.

Now if only Netflix carried Barreto's classics!

Detail: Merlot, Cravo e Canela

0 Have Some Mead, Honey!

It has been well over a year since we wrote about mead in this space, when the original fermentable (predating coffee, beer, wine, and perhaps even tea) was paired with both dinner and dessert for Pam's birthday. A year prior to that, we had shared some over our 24th anniversary dinner.

Mead goes way back!
Cambria Griffith, edibleWESTSIDE

Many bees had contributed to that birthday dinner, which included honey in just about every bite and sip (since Pamela means honey). We had found a wonderful mead to accompany each of these meals, but toward the end of the latter one, we had pretty much decided we needed to make our own, and started the process shortly thereafter.

The process began, of course, with a little bit of reading. All of our zymurgy projects to date have involved kits -- from places such as Beer Wine Hobby in Walpole -- that required very little research. We have been the paint-by-numbers artists of the beer and wine world so far.

I was attracted to Ken Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker, whose title is a meme based on a classic VW hippie owner's manual, the original "idiot" book. If Muir and Gregg could get me through the rebuilding of a 1965 Vee-Dub, surely Schramm could get us through our first batch of this ancient, golden elixir. It was from Schramm that I learned just how long mead has been around -- predating most world religions -- and just how simple the ingredient list is.

All that is needed for mead is honey, water, yeast, and patience. A lot of each, except for the yeast! But where to get 15 pounds of honey? That's right, for a 30-bottle (5-gallon) batch, we would need almost enough honey to balance the family doglet on a scale. One approach would be to get several big jars at Costco, but that did not seem right at all. Why make mead at home without any local ingredients? So I turned to my friend Lori of Moonsong Farm, about two miles from our house. This allowed me to support a local business and would justify the commitment to the local community of pollinators through our modest efforts in the NWF Garden for Wildlife program.

Details are in the book, but the process essentially involves careful heating and cooling of a honey-water mixture in a sterilized vessel, the addition of a small amount of yeast, and closer with a water-locked lid. Following that, we simply waited, and waited, and waited before transferring the solution to bottles. For a small portion of the batch, we added priming sugar (adding sugar to honey sounds strange, but it was necessary), and using beer-bottling techniques instead of wine, to contain the resultant pressure. In this way, we created about two cases of "flat" mead and a half case of carbonated, "sparkling" mead.

After a lot more waiting -- a total of about ten months -- we slightly chilled and then opened a bottle of the wine-style mead. At first we both noticed a bit of astringency at first, but the flavor seemed to mellow and improve with each sip. We certainly look forward to the rest, and to sharing it with friends!

These very bees may have been involved!

I look forward to the advice Schramm offers on other fruits, as we recently enjoyed more the wines of more than a dozen fruits (small samples of each!) at the inimitable Kerrigan Brothers of Appleton. For future batches of straight mead or mead-fruit blends,, we may also use a pump-operated wine filter to reduce cloudiness and bring out the terrific colors of honey and fruit wines!

Detail: Have Some Mead, Honey!

0 Really Red Fish

One advantage of my new rowing habit is that it has given us better access to fresh seafood. We remain fans of Fresh Catch, whose Mansfield store is a convenient source for both fresh seafood and quality meats. Being in the most active fishing harbor in the United States on a regular basis, however, means that we can have fish for dinner that may have been swimming under my boat earlier in the day.

Not literally, of course: by the time the boats come into the harbor, the fish are already on board, and only the harbor seals are likely to snack on those swimming under our whaleboats. Still, a geography student who grew up on the edge of the harbor has introduced me to two seafood markets -- Kyler's and Fisherman's -- where the fish practically swim up to the counter.

Sockeye image: AllTackle.com

Before I went seafaring this morning, Pam browsed Barton Seaver's Cod and Country -- the bible of sustainable seafood and the inspiration for our Peppery Pairing post back in March. On page 153, she found Warm Poached Salmon in Red Wine Sauce, clearly a good reason to look for salmon when I arrived at Kyler's after my row. For some reason, the wild, red sockeye was the same price as farm-raised pink salmon, so I went with the "fishier" option. On careful reading later, I saw that Seaver recommended pink salmon, but I think he would still have favored the wild over the farm-raised.

The recipe calls for heating the oven, only to 200 degrees, and then heating a thinly sliced shallot and a couple of sprigs of thyme in two cups of red wine. The wine should not be generic "cooking" wine in his view, since the cooking -- especially with the dramatic reduction used in this recipe -- would accentuate any flaws. We considered our home-vinted Pinot Noir, but decided to go all in, and I chose a Beaujolais. Specifically, I got two bottles of 2011 Beaujolais-Villages from Louis Jadot (est. 1869), made in Beaujolais -- bien sur! -- from Gamay grapes.

The two bottles were distributed as follows -- one half of the first bottle for poaching and one half for the chefs (Pam made a wonderful salad that had really been in the field at Colchester hours earlier); the second bottle was served (by and to us) to accompany dinner and a movie. Even in more usual circumstances where we just a more modest amount of wine in the cooking, I recommend cooking with something that can be served proudly with the meal.

Seaver is very specific about the heating and poaching -- the liquid in the pan should be maintained at 170 degrees (which I did) and the salmon should be cooked in 12 minutes (which it was not). I eventually realized that the problem was my lack of attention to one detail. Seaver specifies the use of a saucepan barely big enough to hold the salmon. I had one large piece, cut in two, but only occupying about 2/3 of our large, indispensable cast-iron skillet. I should have used a smaller pan, so that the fish would be entirely in the steaming wine.

Eventually, then, the fish was cooked through, and I transferred it to a warm platter in the oven. Then I turned up the heat on the remaining wine and shallots, until the two cups was reduced to two tablespoons. (I was reminded of a Northern Exposure episode in which Maurice did something similar with beef, at great expense.) Once the wine was reduced, I removed the thyme sprig, and melted two tablespoons of butter into the sauce. I then poured this over the fish and served it with some fresh bread and Pam's wonderful salad and a slightly-chilled second bottle of Beaujolais. Because the tasting notes from Louis Jadot mentioned strawberry as a major part of the flavor profile, I put a few strawbs into the salad, to good effect.

Detail: Really Red Fish

0 Another Ish Turkey Dish

Earlier this week, Pam made one of our comfort foods, known as Crusty Mexican Bean Bake. It is essentially a Sloppy Joe casserole on a biscuit-like base. Sometimes we make it with just beans, but since #1 Daughter was enjoying the Big Apple without us, we splurged and used a half-pound of ground turkey along with the kidney beans in that recipe.

Which left us with the second half-pound and several options on Wednesday night. On the short list was Turkish Turkey Taco, a favorite from The Well-Filled Tortilla that is emblematic of the situation that gave rise to this Nueva Receta project in the first place: at least 50 percent of our use of the book was that one recipe. Because we had all we needed for that recipe except tortillas (we've found somewhat reasonable tortillas for sale locally) and a jalapeño, we were about to follow that tried-and-true path again, when Pam decided to open the trusty tortilla tome in search of something a little different.

She found Spanish-style Ground Beef and Pork on pages 84-85, the name similarly connoting a dish that is probably as Spanish-ish as its precursor is Turkish-ish. No matter, it seemed -- and turned out to be -- both simple and delicious.

One adjustment I made was to heat olive oil infused with Persian lime, in place of ordinary olive oil, simmering onion, bell pepper (we used a frozen medley of this), pine nuts (the real deal this time), orange zest and thyme. I then added the ground turkey and a small amount of frozen breakfast sausage to get some of the mix intended in the recipe without buying more meat. Of course this was all browned in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, after which I added a generous pour-over of our home-vinted Chardonnay.

The result: warm and delicious! The next time I try this, I would avoid pre-cooked sausage, though I managed to chop it in pretty well. I would either use just turkey or perhaps a mix of ground turkey and Italian-style turkey sausage.

Detail: Another Ish Turkey Dish

0 Poached Salmon

While we were at Kyler's Catch purchasing our lobster for Pi Day we also bought a salmon filet for Friday's meal. I used Bruce Carlson's Cooking Seafood and Poultry with Wine to find this simple recipe. The filet was place in a foil wrapper along with 3/4 c.of white wine, one smallish chopped onion, some dried parsley, and a bit of butter. The foil was double folded around the fish to keep all the liquid inside. The package was placed in the oven at 375 for about 25 minutes. Once the fish was cooked through I used the liquid in the package as a base for the sauce. Three tablespoons of flour were added to the baking liquid in a saucepan along with 1/2 c. light cream and mixed over a low heat  The fish was then placed on a platter and topped with the sauce, and shredded parmesan cheese. The fish was then placed under the broiler until the topping was just brown. This made for a succulent, and juicy meal. Three people ate this dish, and all three earned their clean-plate-ranger badge.

Detail: Poached Salmon