Inspired by a recent vacation in Morocco, we made dinner for a group of friends (and, as with Iceland, ended up going a bit overboard with food). Beets with cumin, carrot and orange blossom salad, pepper-tomato jam, eggplant zaalouk: Fresh baked semolina bread: Pastilla / B’stilla (savory pastry pigeon pie with egg and almond and cinnamon– in this case made with chicken thighs for convenience): Lamb, olive, cardoon, and preserved lemon tagine with homemade couscous: ...

Making couscous from scratch (flour, water, mist, roll with palm, filter, steam, repeat) for a Moroccan-themed dinner party, inspired by this NYtimes article and the linked article. Hydrated at the end with saffron-infused water. A repetitive, satisfying, and successful process.

The annual family blind homebrew tasting (the righthand six are mine): They ran the gamut of beers (kit, extract, and whole-grain, traditional and not (aged-on-fruit, wild plants in lieu of hops)), and ciders (apple, pear, wild fermented and brewed with controlled ale yeasts). As usual, I had the strangest and lowest-rated brews (a punishingly bitter vaguely absinthe-like Mugwort ale) but also a few more pleasant ones (both takes on a Grisette were popular). My sister’s apple-pear cider made from a variety of roadside drops was my personal favorite. ...

How to cook thin ribeye steaks? Rub with salt, pepper, and juice from crushed garlic cloves, let sit 10 minutes, preheat a skillet over high heat with a little beef fat, then cook quickly (just over 1 minute per side), remove to a plate, and let rest under tented foil before slicing. Melting a pat of butter + goat cheese on top is optional. As is eating with lentils and romanesco in front of a roaring fire and jealous dog. ...

Unlike last year’s cidering from whole apples, this year I picked up six gallons of fresh-pressed cider (unpasteurized, of course) at a store in Philo. Split into two batches in sanitized bottles– one allowed to ferment with whatever wild yeast and bacteria were on the apples (what causes jugs of unpasterized cider to swell up if let sit), and the other dosed with crushed campden tablets for 48 hours to stun the wild yeast before adding Wyeast 4766. ...

During another rare heat wave in SF a few months back, I brewed a small batch of a new saison-like ale– this time a mix of pils, rye, and white wheat malts mashed at a lower temperature for fewer complex sugars, targeting a dry 4% ABV table beer (inspired by reading about Grisette, a miners’ beer from Wallonia), fermented with WLP590 French Saison Ale yeast. After primary fermentation I split the batch and decanted one gallon of it onto a few very ripe pluots from H’s back yard for another few weeks. ...

The result: Before hops became a key component of beer around the 14th century, beers were brewed with a range of herbs serving the roles of bittering agents and source of antibacterial / preservative compounds (a broad style, “gruit”, which has been enjoying a very minor revival). Inspired by a chapter in The Brewer’s Tale, I picked up Stephen Buhner’s book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, which touches on brewing with herbs of various potencies and effects, which in turn inspired me to look for bitter herbs growing wild along local trails (such as mugwort and yarrow pointed out by H). Time to brew a few very small batches with individual local herbs in lieu of hops (whether or not the result was a pleasant beer– I’d be happy with “interesting”…) ...

A few photos from an all-day preservation binge earlier this summer on a large quantity of Bing, Brooks, Rainier, and Tulare cherries: I’m deeply skeptical of all single-purpose kitchen utensils, but I will say the 6-cherry pitter was effective: Macerating some of them in sugar in preparation for shrubs. A few weeks later, the final bottled and labeled shrubs: Rainier cherries with fennel 5 cups pitted and chopped cherries macerated in 2 cups sugar with half a bulb of fennel for 24 hours, which drew juice out of the cherries, producing about 2 1/3 cups of juice, then strained and rinsed with 1 1/2 cups of champagne vinegar and 1/2 cup of cider vinegar and bottled (a roughly 2:1:1 chopped fruit to sugar to vinegar ratio) A mix of Tulare (less flavorful) and Bing (delicious!) cherries, macerated on sugar and rinsed and bottled with cider vinegar, in three different batches: Cherries with bay leaf and peppercorn (very subtle bay leaf, just tasted like cherries) Cherries with vanilla beans and pink peppercorns Cherries with fresh ginger ...

For 4th of July this year, carnitas tacos: Starting the afternoon before with an 8-pound bone-in pork shoulder (and some pork belly for good measure): Packed together to tightly fill a dutch oven, with onions, garlic, fennel, cilantro, and sliced oranges, then added just enough milk to fill in the cracks for braising (after wedging strips of pork belly in every open crevice to keep this tightly enough packed to render out the copious amounts of pork fat and allow the pork to almost confit, inspired by this Serious Eats carnitas article): ...

[ update, April 2021: I visited The Willows many years ago and wrote the below, but disturbing information about the restaurant and chef have come to light. The meal I had there in 2015 was great, and I enjoyed time walking around the parks in the island, foraging for berries, and talking to a local farmer, but now I won’t be going back… https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/dining/blaine-wetzel-willows-inn-lummi-island-abuse.html ] Since reading about Blaine Wetzel at The Willows Inn a few years ago, I’ve always wanted to eat there, but getting to a restaurant on a small island a three hour drive and ferry ride north of Seattle was always logistically tricky. ...

For my 16th time homebrewing since I first started two years ago (and as I count it, my 26th & 27th brews, as I often brew 2 batches in a day or split a batch into a few different smaller experiments), I wanted to go farther out and play around with the secondary fermentation / infusion and aging steps in a beer inspired by the forest. I decided to make a very strong Belgian-inspired beer with simple malts, caramel, and a small amount of an earthy hop (Saaz) and then age it a few different ways. The result (as always, having a little fun with the label): ...

Made sauerkraut. One head of cabbage and some salt, massaged to break down the cell walls, then fermented in a ceramic pot (with water seal) for two weeks, making a tangy, tart, still slightly crunchy sauerkraut. Success! Next time I may try fermenting it longer and shredding it more finely.

Back in February I visited Big Bend Brewing in Far West Texas (6 hours West of Austin or 3 hours East of El Paso). Only a few years old, they’re already expanding, growing from 30bbl to 90bbl tanks, adding an automated canning line (they only do kegs and cans, not bottles, except for some special releases), with several excellent beers across a range of styles. And they gave one of the best brewery tours I’ve been on (and I’ve been on quite a few)– friendly and scientific, followed by a tasting of every one of their beers. ...

I’ve homebrewed in my tiny kitchen 15 times since becoming interested in it two years ago (20 brews if you count split experiments)– that’s a nice round multiple-of-fingers-per-human-hand milestone. I still enjoy the process and (usually) the result, so I’ll probably keep doing it… though I have no desire to scale up in volume. For brew day #15, I finally achieved a session (low alcohol) homebrew I’m quite happy with: ...

Two Hour Tacos? Why not Ten Hour Tacos, with a slow-smoked brisket, hand made tortillas, pickles, and a creamy BBQ sauce? We threw a dinner party inspired by a weekend trip to Far West Texas, and this is the story of the brisket. I’d never actually smoked meat before, though I knew the general principle of indirect heat / “slow and low”. It became clear it wouldn’t just be a “set and forget it for 8 hours” process, and that there was a whole range of intuition, tweaking of the fire, and experience needed to get a good smoke. Well, there’s no real way to learn but by doing… so after browsing various online forums and getting pointed at this Saveur article, I had a general plan. ...