What's Cooking (Take Four)

A worthy celebration, Jenise. Sounds like a delicious meal. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I've always wondered what Gary Puckett meant by the "Union Gap".

Last night, we went hyper-local, with locally made pasta with local pancetta, porcinis, butter boletes, ramps, and scapes (we needed to get rid of the alliums). With that, we had a corn salad and a tomato dish that was billed as a dip but was really more of a pico de gallo sort of thing that we served on slices of (local) bread as a bruschetta. Dessert was a blueberry fennelseed cake that my wife made, which was not so entirely local.

My life has been very busy lately but I've finally gotten back into the kitchen. I riffed off a French recipe for braised fennel to add a couple pounds of cut-up pork shoulder and a pile of sweet onion. I'm looking for a variant choucroute sort of thing. It's in the fridge, mingling with itself; I'll warm some up for dinner on Wednesday. (There's arctic char for tomorrow!)

I also made some double-stuffed potatoes with shallot and pancetta, I poached some Anjou pears in a wine-honey-grenadine mix with star anise, I made a batch of vinaigrette for salads, I gussied-up a plain sheet of focaccia with a pestle full of herbs, seeds, and garlic, and I re-purposed the brine from my pickled ramp bulbs to pickle a couple of cut-up mini cucumbers.

Tonight was gnocchi with the end of a batch of red sauce flavored with strips of red bell pepper and a little stir-fry beef. Hearty stuff.

ETA: Oh, yes, almost forgot: turned a pound of coffee into cold-brewed concentrate. Iced coffee drinks for me!

Simplicity tonight: a deconstructed BLT sandwich.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Wow, Jeff, you've been busy!

Last night was a leftover asparagus tamale and the rest of the Cherry Garcia I made on Sunday. NO ambition.

We just had takeout Thai food last night, but our daughter made lemon posset for dessert. It was served in the lemon shells with raspberry coulis. This is one I'm surprised we don't see more of. It's dead easy to make and really tasty.

Simple but good: Cast iron spatchcocked chicken, corn on the cob, and some leftover sides.