Fennel, Celery, Blood Orange and Pistachio Salad

Today was Open Door Weather at the office and I have zero complaints.  It is sunny, surprisingly warm and the sky is without a single cloud.  Birds are chirping.  I know this sounds like a big fuck you to my east coast sisters, but y'all just had a few Snow Days to tromp through freshly fallen snow and go sledding and have an excuse to drink spiked cocoa and binge eat all the snacks whilst watching every episode of Friends.  I have no excuses.  I HAVE to go outside and go to work and NOT wear all my pretty knit scarves and sometimes it gets too hot in my office and the only solution is to open all the doors, which are extremely tricky to lock again.  I guess I have a few complaints.

Apologies, that was extremely annoying.  I'm done.  Let us enjoy that sunshine.

BUT it is Winter Salad Season and despite the midday warmth, evening temperatures dip cold enough to merit chucking the fresh greens and going for something slightly heartier.

Cue fennel and the oh-so-seasonal blood orange, which are two of the greatest lovers in culinary history.  These ingredients are paired in endless variations, but in this salad here, I stay classic.  No frills, nothing too fancy.  Essential: the madonline.  Slice that fennel really thin.  Ooo la la.

We paired this salad with oven roasted trout, which was excellent, but any mild white fish would be welcome if you'd like to make this into a full meal.  To drink: Copain's 2013 Tous Ensemble Chardonnay.  We often drink Copain as Daniel worked there for nearly two years, but it never gets old.  The newest vintage of their Tous Chardonnay was the perfect pairing for this meal - vibrant and lemony, but with enough floral and stone fruit notes to feel balanced and food friendly.  Lemon verbena, peaches, and sunshine.  Such a gem in this unseasonable season!

FENNEL, CELERY, BLOOD ORANGE and PISTACHIO SALAD
serves 2

1 medium fennel bulb, sliced very thin (keep the fennel fronds for garnish)
4 stalks celery and leaves, sliced thin, leaves chopped
1 medium scallop, sliced thin
juice of 1/2 lemon
4 blood oranges
1 tablespoon olive oil
handful pistachios, toasted
10 - 12 mint leaves

Slice the fennel very thin with a mandoline.  Put in serving bowl.  Slice celery and shallot and add to bowl.  Add lemon juice and stir to coat vegetables.

Cut the rind and pith off the blood oranges.  Slice the fruit into rounds and add to bowl.  Squeeze the rinds over the bowl to get as much blood orange juice in the salad as possible.   

Gently toss with pistachios, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Just before serving tear the mint leaves and add to bowl.  Garnish with more mint and fennel fronds.

Date night with Pinot Noir.

We live in a very small town.  Not as small as the town I grew up in, but by most people's standards, Guerneville is a very very small town.  We have a handful of restaurants and even fewer good ones, a used bookshop, a hair salon, some art galleries, a coffee shop, and my little cafe/market.  So when Daniel and I decide that a date is much needed, Guerneville's options for dining get tiresome very quickly.  Fortunately, just around the corner, tucked away on the other side of the Russian River is a fancy fancy hotel and restaurant, Applewood Inn, that just so happens to have a Michelin Star.

As one would expect, a Michelin Star in the touristy heart of the Russian River Valley means you can charge a whole lot for your dishes and your dining room will be bustling almost every night.  Good for them!  And lucky for us, they have a night for locals, showing Guerneville some love.  Every Sunday night Applewood offers a three course meal for $30, and corkage is waived if you bring a Russian River Valley wine.

Every week I check in on the menu that is posted online, and this past Sunday's looked superb.  Garden lettuces with chevre, pistachios and apples, followed by crispy duck confit with lentils and fennel salad?  This is a wine lovers dream meal, and oh we are wine lovers.

To drink with the duck, we had to bring Pinot Noir.  There are few pairings that are as classic and perfect as duck and Pinot Noir.  But which Pinot?  We decided upon Copain to get around paying corkage (even if it isn't Russian River fruit, they waive it for us - working in the industry has plenty of perks here).  But Copain has a number of Pinot Noirs, each bottle with its own personality.  We wanted something with more structure and body, a wine that could stand up to the flavorful and fatty duck.

We chose the 2009 Kiser "En Bas," one of Copain's single vineyard designate Pinots.  I've found all of Copain's Pinots to be lovely - very well balanced and exceptionally delicious - but the ones from the Kiser vineyard in Anderson Valley are particularly pretty.  Besides, we're running low on our stock, so we had to revisit this wine to decide if we wanted to purchase more.  The '09 "En Bas" needed to decant, so we sipped it slowly and let the flavors unravel over the course of a long meal.  Notes of ripe cherries, fig and raspberry mingle nicely with a soft woodiness and subtle warm spices.  Think clove and cinnamon and allspice.  This wine is a beautiful garnet color and is light on the palate, but has a density of robust flavors, which paired wonderfully with the huckleberry sauce that moistened the duck and flavored the lentils.  The bright fruitiness of the sauce contrasted the richness of the duck meat, and the wine captured all of those elements in one simple sip.

I took a picture of the duck confit, but honestly, their plating on this one was not that exciting nor pretty.  Best that you just imagine a gorgeous plate of duck and lentils and fennel and leave it at that.  They did much better with the salad course, which was fantastic and looked appetizing. 

Turns out we really like the '09 "En Bas" and probably should snatch a few more before the vintage sells out.  I'll add that to the to-do list.  And maybe you should too. 

Waste not.

Last week at my little farmer's market, I spied Daniel's favorite - bunches of heirloom carrots in all their multi-colored, tangled glory.  If you look at them in just the right way, you'll find they have legs and arms and thank goodness they are rubberbanded together because they might just get up and walk right out of your tote.  I've been told that their gnarliness is an indication that growing conditions weren't quite right, but I think they're fabulous.  They are roots after all.  I snatch up a few bunches and hold tight, happily squirreling them home.  With a simple splash of olive oil, salt and pepper, they're into a hot oven to become the silkiest, sweetest, most gorgeous side dish ever.  Roasted carrots are outrageously easy and make Daniel extremely happy - we're all winners here.

But what to do with those intimidating, guilt inducing carrot tops?  I've heard of carrot top soup, but that sounds rather blegh.  And sure, you can add them to chicken stock and it's great!  I was roasting a chicken that day and should have used the carcass for stock, but I already have two very large jars of homemade stock in my freezer that haven't moved in months.  I take that back, they moved from my last freezer to my new one, despite Daniel's insistence that we need not move frozen jars of stuff we don't use.  But we might!  Just wait until soup season starts!

So what to do with those carrot tops that I just can't throw out because because because?  I decided to do with them what I do with any extra herb or green I have lying around, begging to be made into something more delicious.  Pesto!  Whirred up with some good olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and a healthy handful of walnuts, the carrot tops transformed into something earthy, grassy, and rich.  The walnuts added a gentle toasty depth and thickened the pesto nicely.  Originally I was planning on using it to dress my roast chicken, but upon tasting it I decided that it needed something fattier - bread and cheese.  Thus another dinner was born - carrot top pesto pizza with radicchio, roasted summer squash, garlic blossoms and feta.  Slow roasted tomatoes rounded out the meal, which was made complete with a few glasses of Copain's 2010 Tous Ensemble Pinot Noir, our house red.  We're extremely spoiled, that gem of a wine is just so so good and we have so so much of it!

CARROT TOP PESTO

carrot tops
a good glug of good olive oil
salt and pepper
garlic cloves, crushed
lemon juice
a handful of toasted walnuts

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until a smooth pesto forms, adding olive oil as needed and seasoning to taste.  The carrot tops are a little stemmy, so they take a while to puree.  

Use like any pesto - with pasta, pizza, cheeses, crudites.  

Kale kale kale.

Oh summer salads, how I love you!  You make every meal more fun and healthy and there are so many ways to make you.  Sometimes I feature a grain or bean like kamut, farro or chickpeas.  Maybe cherry tomatoes, corn, avocado.  All are variations on beautiful fresh produce, plenty of herbs, and some kind of flavorful dressing. 

At my little local farmer's market last week I picked up kale, squash and tomatoes from Tom, my new favorite farmer.  His produce is gorgeous and he always has really lovely bunches of flowers that I don't know the name of but look very pretty in vases with random branches and leaves I've plucked from my backyard.  Flower arranging is a piece of cake after a few tries and plenty of greenery.

Most of my summer salads are good, a lot of them are great, but the one I made with Tom's produce was fantastic.  A keeper, for sure.  It's all about the dressing, which can be used on a million different salads.  Start playing!

CHOPPED KALE, SUMMER SQUASH, AND CHERRY TOMATO SALAD

1 bunch kale, tender leaves separated from stalks, chopped into thin strips

a couple handfuls of the best cherry tomatoes you can find, halved

2 - 3 yellow summer squash, sliced in rounds very thinly on a mandoline

5 - 6 tbsps cotija cheese, crumbled

basil, torn

1/4 cup balsamic

lemon juice from one lemon

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp dijon mustard

3/4 cup olive oil

1/8 cup white wine

salt and pepper

Massage the kale with your hands to soften it.  

Whisk together dressing ingredients in a small bowl or a ball jar.  I like using ball jars (or old mustard jars) because shaking is the best way to mix it.  Taste and season accordingly. 

Toss kale with dressing and let it sit for at least 20 minutes.  Mix in squash, tomatoes and basil.  Top with cotija and serve.

We served this salad with grilled steak and balsamic-thyme grilled peaches and red onions.  Paired with Syrahs from Radio-Coteau and Copain, all was right in the world.  Radio-Coteau's more robust and lush Syrah was a nice foil to Copain's leaner and prettier 2011 Les Voisin.  Full disclosure - we meant to open the 2009 instead.  Whoops.  Turns out this young Syrah is still really really good.   

 

Happy Winter Solstice!

Fork.  The shortest day of the year may come as a dismal reminder that winter is upon us, promising many cold nights and crisp days.  Snow and ice and doom and gloom.  I can't say I'm thrilled by the low temperatures, but the darkness of the season certainly begs for cozy evenings and slow cooked meals.  So don't despair!  As you're lamenting the absence of August blueberries and September tomatoes, turn to the bright tang of December citrus to brighten your day.

Paired with red wine and balsamic vinegar, orange juice is a zippy braising liquid for gamey lamb chops.  Add dried apricots, olives and fennel and you have a wonderfully rich winter dish sure to be a optimistic reminder of the season.

Solstice Braised Lamb

orange, balsamic, fennel, apricot, olive

2 lamb shoulder chops

1 tsp fennel seeds, toasted and finely ground

1 tsp vegetable oil

1/8 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup red wine

1 cup orange juice (preferably fresh)

a good handful of dried apricots

a good handful of cured olives, pitted

2 bay leaves

zest of 1 orange

1. Trim your lamb chops and season with ground fennel, salt and pepper.  Heat oil in a large, high-sided ovenproof skillet over high heat.  Sear chops until well browned, about 5 minutes per side. 


2. Add wine and vinegar.  Boil until slightly reduced, about 2 minutes.  Add orange juice, apricots, olives, orange zest and bay leaves.  

3. Braise lamb in oven, covered, for 45 minutes.  Uncover and continue cooking until meat is very tender and falling off the bone, about 45 minutes more.  Baste often.  

4. Reduce braising liquid on the stove until thickened and saucey.  Serve lamb with sauce. 

With kale salad and roasted butternut squash.

Glass.  Do eat this meal with a hearty red wine.  The orange sauce is intensely flavorful and demands a wine that is full-bodied and rich.  Lamb always seems to pair beautifully with the wines of Northern Rhone, and most favorably with Syrah.  All dark and earthy and black olivey.  Deep purple, warm spices.  We chose a new world Syrah, made with the Rhone Valley in mind.  Copain's 2007 Baker Ranch Syrah is all sorts of roasted fruit, black pepper, and bold olives.  The orange sauce popped and the meat sang.  And we reveled in winter cheer.

Play.  Long nights and short days are perfect excuses for cozy couch sessions with forgotten movies.  This tiny gem, which many have seen but only once, promises to bring a delightful warmth to the coldest of evenings.  Little Miss Sunshine is the charming story of a quirky family road trip, complete with hi-jinks, revelations, and dancing.  As the title suggests, the scenery is bright with the Southern sunshine and the main characters radiate an honest mix of melancholy, passion and joy.  Simply put, you'll feel happy when the credits roll and on the darkest of days, that's all we need.