Pig Roast, Summer's A-Wastin' Party

FreshTartSteph — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:57:35 PDT

So, as I mentioned below, BIG food weekend. John and I kicked it off all by our lonesome with another killicious din in the lounge at La Belle Vie. If you go, order a cocktail (with alcohol or no) - they're all gorgeous and tasty. And then, feeling jazzy and chic, with ice cubes clinking merrily in a graceful glass, order the lamb burgers, pommes frites, the mache salad with artichokes and yogurt, and perhaps a tasty off the restaurant menu (you are presented with three menus in the lounge - the famous dining room tasting menu, the dining room a la carte menu, and the lounge menu; all rock). Sit back, enjoy the elegant room, stare inconspicuously at people closing their eyes and moaning as they eat (the food is that good), and be grateful to be in such a pretty spot on a Friday night.

Sunday afternoon, John, Nathan, and I attended a neighborhood pig roast, put on by the Bennett's and Anderson's. We arrived just as the 100-lb. pig was laid out on a big table, crisp and glistening, apple in mouth (but of course), looking very, graphically porcine.

I admit, I winced a bit as Ed and Bob sliced into the beast, but my guilt melted away as I was presented with a bite of crisp skin. Holy Porky Cow, so intensely good. Soon the roast was pulled into pieces and presented alongside soft buns and several different styles of barbecue sauce. With a 1/2-block long table groaning with potluck sides (salads, bars, cookies, cakes), we definitely made ourselves a meal. (Thanks Pam Van Ert for the pics!)

And last night, night of the tomato tart with Parmesan crust (below), we were invited to dinner at Sue & Louis Ainsworth's for a Summer's A-Wastin' Party, along with Ana Scofield & Rudy Maxa, Genie & Joe Dixon, and Debbie & Stu Williams. We drank beautiful wine and ate gorgeous food - gougere, grilled shrimps, boned leg of lamb, ratatouille, salad, olive bread, cheeses, and raspberry cake for dessert. What a way to end a beautiful Labor Day weekend! (Pics here are from the party.)

And today.... Kind of a bust, today. Due to an irrigation system malfunction, part of our back yard is not just wet, it's basically a swamp. A puppy-loving, dig-30-second-holes-in-the-mud kind of swamp. Bad. So, I drove all over the metro area to find a temporary fence, and installed said fence with Nathan (no easy task, 75 feet of fencing!), only to discover that even more of the yard is seriously wet than I realized, and Louis just dug a new mudhole on this side of the fence instead. Sigh.

Good thing he's so cute... Anyhow, we weren't done with the (useless) fence until almost 6 pm, ack, so dinner, which was going to be post-shower veggie share new potatoes in some sort of yummy hash, was instead...sweaty Domino's pizza. Ah well.

And now - bedtime. Sleep tight, y'all.

So Long Montana, Hello Puppy Louis

FreshTartSteph — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 08:02:43 PDT

Good-bye summer! It was a chilly 45 degrees at 3 o'clock this morning, autumn is definitely in the air. If you're wondering why I know the temp at 3 a.m., it's not because I was out partying. It's because we got...a new puppy! Puppy Louis, a mini goldendoodle (will be 45 lbs. full grown), and he is about as sweet and cute as puppies can be. But since he's also little - 9 weeks old - he needs a bathroom break once in the middle of the night for a few more weeks. Ah, yes, good thing they're so cute, and good thing he seems so incredibly trainable - all is going very well.

As a result of Louis - who we picked up the day after we got back from vacation, yikes! - I haven't had a chance to write about our fabulous trip to visit my dad and stepmom Susanna south of Bozeman, Montana. We visited last week, with Stacey and Cooper, my cousin Kim, and Debbie and Stu the Wine Genius Williams. Fly-fishing the Madison River, taking in the beautiful views down the Madison river valley, hiking, playing pool, and preparing and consuming copious amounts of delicious food and wine (thanks to Stu & Debbie) is the grand routine, and we had a blast.

The night after we arrived we celebrated my dad's birthday in fine style with the largest prime rib of beef I've ever seen, courtesy of Jay Taylor. Susanna had to trim it to fit it into a roasting pan (steaks for later, yum)! She roasted it using the classic technique of roasting for one hour, turning the oven off for a few hours, then roasting again for a short period of time before eating (I've found so many different versions on the web, I'll ask for her specific recipe). It was perfect. We made caesar salad and crushed new potatoes (tossed with butter and showered with plenty of freshy minced herbs) to accompany, and hot fudge sundaes for dessert at my dad's request. Susanna's brother Jim, his wife Anne, their daughter Farley, and Susanna's cousin Barbara, joined us for a knock-down, drag-out birthday feast.

The next night we made another classic - the Silver Palate's chicken marbella. Ah, the Silver Palate cookbook, my friends and I cooked our way through it in the 90s. It and Bon Apetit magazine defined my generation's newlywed/new home-owner dinner parties. And for good reason - the recipes are terrific, and fun, and I'm thinking I need to revisit my old pal. Especially after re-experiencing chicken marbella, studded with prunes, olives, and capers, holy moly is it a delicious recipe. Easy too, and inexpensive because the key to the whole dish is to use skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs, which can stand up to the marinade and roasting, emerging crusty-tender (whereas breasts, I think, tend to dry out). Recipe here.

But now the vacation is over, sniff, and so is summer. I can't seem to manage - yet - both the new puppy (watching, watching, outside, outside) and making anything very interesting for dinner. We're finding a groove, however, and just yesterday I slipped away to spend the afternoon with Birthday Girl Suz. We drove up to darling Lindstrom, shopped for antiques, and downed a totally tasty diner-lunch at The Swedish Cafe. A good session of hooting and hollering and talking about everything from religion to Quick-Curl Barbies was just what my stir-crazy self needed. Happy Birthday my dear Susie, the greatest, most awesome, funniest, kindest friend on the planet!

Today, I'm thinking corn. I've had only one piece of corn-on-the-cob this summer (luckily a particularly delicious one) and it's time for more. Suz and I intended to stop at a stand somewhere along the way and pick some up, but then we got talking...and well, no corn. But today I plan a walk - it's sparkling and cool outside, how could I resist? - and a stop at some local stand to load up. I think I'll grill it (a la the State Fair - their sweet corn completely rocks), and serve it alongside steaks. I'd serve tomatoes from my pots as well but...wasn't meant to be this summer. Luckily Whole Foods has had delicious home-grown cherry tomatoes for the last several weeks; they'll make a perfect salad.

And oh! Definitely check out the very kindly Saturday, August 22, post on The Lighthearted Locavore, by our friend Lexi Van De Walle. In fact, check out her whole excellent blog, about eating locally in NYC and the Hamptons.

More pics of Montana and Puppy Louis below.

Fresh Tart

Pig Roast, Summer's A-Wastin' Party

So Long Montana, Hello Puppy Louis