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By John, 3 February, 2013

Le Grand Aioli

Le Grand Aioli Aioli is a traditional Provencal sauce that is often used as a dip or dressing. It is a strong garlic mayonnaise that is easy to make at home from just egg yolks, olive oil, salt, and plenty of garlic. It is a fine accompaniment to many dishes, especially fish and steamed vegetables. In fact, there is a traditional Provencal meal made from those ingredients; it is called simply Le Grand Aioli. It's a beautiful feast, and an easy one.

The Veggies and Eggs

In the winter, while I embrace the chill and think of cold-weather cooking, Annette's thoughts wing their way to sunny Provence. Our Grand Aioli was her idea, and it brought us a splash of summer sunshine on the first of February!

Annette steamed the vegetable platter, which by tradition should number at least six, plus hard-boiled eggs. We had:

Steamed carrots
Boiled young potatoes
Cape cod turnip
Steamed fennel
Steamed leek (I know - that's only five.

By John, 20 January, 2013

John's Russian Birthday Dinner

John's Russian Dinner On a snowy day a few weeks ago I got it in my head to make a Russian dinner. As my birthday was rapidly approaching and I would have to come up with a feast anyway, I decided to make it a Russian feast.

I don't know quite what put Russian food in my head that day. I have always enjoyed it, ever since first finding the excellent Please to the Table Russian cookbook, and cold weather makes those heavy dishes more attractive to me. I had most of the ingredients to make some of my favorite dishes, so...

Here's what we did:

Pork with Apples The main course was Pork Chops with Apples Braised in Beer. This was naturally accompanied by chilled vodka! None of us are vodka fans, but a Russian dinner demands vodka, so I got a bottle of Berkshire Mountain Distillers Ice Glen Vodka and put it in the freezer. It was delicious! I must learn more about it. At least we did not kill the bottle.

By BBQ_Mike, 31 December, 2012

New Year Treat: Lime Grilled Scallops on Rosemary Skewers

It is New Year's Eve! Happy New Year everyone!

Lime-Grilled Scallops on Rosemary Skewers

New Year's Eve is traditionally amateur night for drinkers. Christine and I like to find a happy home locally to get together with friends, cook good food, have a few drinks to celebrate the greatness of last year and happily bring in the hopes and dreams of the New Year.

I am making a dish that I cooked at a competition a year and a half ago. Even though it did not score that great with the judges, it is an amazing dish. Lime marinated scallops, wrapped in prosciutto on rosemary skewers.

As a competitor on the BBQ trail, I have had my fair share of highs, lows, and "Should Have Beens". While getting started in BBQ, some of the teams associated with NEBS (New England BBQ Society) will mentor rookies testing the waters. Originally, I was allowed to cook with Andy King and The Bastey Boys. I have become a Bastey Boy. I was fortunate enough to cook with Michelle Taft, Terry Sullivan, and Sully (no Gary Taft this time) of Lunchmeat at the 2011 Roc City Rib Fest in Rochester, NY.

As a mentoring BBQ cook, I cooked only one category. Being the coastal rat that I am, I selected scallops as my entry. Competition is tough in Rochester. Fifty BBQ teams converge on the shores of Lake Ontario for Memorial Day. These are not your run of the mill teams. The competition is some of the toughest around.

By John, 25 December, 2012

Annette's Ritzy Birthday Dinner

Royal Pudding a la Belle Indienne A few years ago we celebrated Richmond's 65th Birthday Dinner with a feast that might have been served at Boston's legendary Locke-Ober Restaurant on the day of his birth.

Annette has always been more partial to the restaurant at the glamorous Ritz-Carlton Hotel, so for her birthday Richmond and I created a dinner from The Ritz-Carlton Cookbook.

Here's how we did it:

Winnemere Cheese from Jasper Hill We opened with a Winnemere cheese from Vermont's Jasper Hill. Winnemere is a Vacherin-style washed-rind cheese wrapped in spruce bark. It is full of rich, earthy flavors and it was at peak ripeness. The cheese course was accompanied by a fine Pauillac Bordeaux from the Talbot cellar. It had been brought back from a trip to France some years earlier.

Next we had a delicious Scallop and Saffron Bisque.

By John, 15 December, 2012

Best of New England Dinner '12

8 Bells and a Van Vleet cocktail Our friends the Halls came to dinner in early December. I had worked with Jim for years, and he has heard a lot of our adventures, so I made a special Best of New England dinner for them. I ended up including fine food and drink from five New England states, and I only missed Rhode Island because we hadn't been there recently.

Here's what we enjoyed:

We opened in the living room with a Van Vleet Cocktail made with lemon juice, New Hampshire maple syrup and 8 Bells Rum from Portland's New England Distilling. This was a fitting accompaniment to a wonderfully rich and complex, perfectly ripe bark-wrapped Harbison cheese from Vermont's Jasper Hill Farm.

By John, 9 December, 2012

a new chariot

Our usual Saturday adventure was almost entirely displaced today by the very important matter of replacing our backup conveyance. After 13 years of Chevy Malibus, your earnest and hard-working Pilgrims will be exploring New England in a Chevy Impala. Friends and relations of your ever-lovin' Pilgrim know how terribly conservative we are, but time marches on and there was no Malibu to meet our needs. This week's Saturday will be on Sunday, in the Impala!

By John, 7 December, 2012

Search works again

The Search function works again, but it will be a little while (a few hours) before the site is completely re-indexed. Until that happens, you might search for something and miss a result that has not yet been indexed. By tomorrow morning the search should be working and reliable. Thank you for your patience!

By John, 4 December, 2012

The Search function is broken.

I had to disable Search because it was broken. A behind-the-scenes software change in a module at the hosting site caused the Search function to break. I have an upgrade to fix it, and hope to get to it by the end of this week or on Sunday. I apologize for not having this valuable function!

Stocking Up

Chowder made from this Fish Stock, photo by Richmond Talbot The Jews, the schools, and the auto companies all have the right idea. The year begins in the fall. The cooling of the weather puts you in the mood to restart your life. Naturally I'm making resolutions. One is that I'll keep the freezer and refrigerator full of material for good homemade soups.

I made a batch of chicken broth. Old cooks say that you can't make chicken soup properly without the feet so when I'm near a Chinese market I buy a pound of them to keep on hand, but my supply was a little outdated, and a freezer burned chicken foot is not a pretty thing. I omitted them in this latest batch. I got two family packs of drumsticks on sale and put them in a tall pot with parsley, celery, onion (including the skin for color) carrot, and peppercorns. I added no salt; it can be put in later if needed.

Epic Mac & Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf

I see some of the "Finer" things that John is doing with this site. My mouth waters every time I read his posts or I yearn for the items he is showing off from the Farmer's Markets and vendors. This stuff is just spectacular. I love the local flare shown here. Whether we know it or not, we are all local flare. Did you know that?

The Epic Meatloaf, cut I am not sure how many of you have children. Some of the "Finer" things in children's lives are connecting with their parents on any level. As much as they may rebel against us, like we did with our parents, they love us as we do our parents. What better way to connect with our children than getting down to the most basic of life's requirements? Social eating is as old as caves. Cooking with children is about that old.

As we get more and more into a service lifestyle where we tend to order our basic needs online we need find a way to keep some of the basic rituals alive especially cooking.

I have been divorced for a long time. My daughter was 5 when this happened. Right now, I am happy to say, my daughter and I have a fantastic relationship that somehow developed around getting together to eat. I didn't have much money so I would bring her over to my house and cook dinner for her. It wasn't long until I had her helping. That basic element created a fantastic bond that continues to make us closer.

Of course, after time, the skill development and the imagination grew. And, the internet began to influence our thinking. My daughter found a YouTube series of videos called Epic Meal Time.

By John, 28 October, 2012

Welcome Fall Feast 2012

Welcome Fall 2012 Fast We had an excellent feast to welcome autumn 2012! This year was a real surprise - our discoveries hit home runs on every front. That is not hyperbole; this was a really great dinner.

Every year I am so glad when the fall comes and I can cook all the great harvest goodies. This year I already knew what I wanted to make ever since the Mass. Brewers Fest in late August. There I got to try the Brut from Enlightenment Ales and I knew what I had to serve with it when the time came.

Enlightenment Ales Brut I have been pairing foods with beers from New England Craft Brewers for some months now, and this planned pairing really excited me. I am glad to say it worked out very well.

Enlightenment Ales makes Biere de Champagne, an exciting new style of beer that has the celebratory effect of champagne, the dry seriousness of fine wine, and the accessibility of craft beer. The Brut is effervescent and dry, but hoppy-herby in a way that wakes up spices and complements mild flavors without overpowering them.

This feast would be a great menu for vegetarians for a Thanksgiving feast.

By BBQ_Mike, 19 September, 2012

Smoking a Sausage Fatty

Mini Sausage Fatty For the longest time I always thought sausage came in two ways - either cased like a "sausage" or else in a patty. You could mix it with tomatoes to create nice gravy for your spaghetti, grill it to enjoy with peppers and onions, pan sear it for breakfast, or whatever. It was not until about a year and a half ago that I discovered Sausage Fatty. Google it, it is a real thing that can inspire much cooking creativity.

This weekend I competed with the Andy King and The Bastey Boys in a BBQ Cooking Contest at the Harvard Fall Festival in Harvard, MA. There were two sausage contests; People’s Choice and New England BBQ Society (NEBS) Grilling. The past two years I have entered these events using a homemade sausage from the Sausage Lady on Rt. 27 Hanson. I would buy her Smoked Provolone & Roasted Red Pepper sausage and grill it, with excellent results.

By John, 29 August, 2012

Good Night Irene

Bobcat FloodSuds and Haddock It was a year ago that the rains of Hurricane Irene began and didn't stop. The roads and homes of Vermont were pounded and flooded and just plain wrecked. The people weren't.

After the storm, Bobcat Cafe and Brewery brewed their special Flood Suds Belgian-style Wit. It's Belgian-style, not Belgian, because everything in it is from Vermont! The ingredients are listed on the bottle. Take that, Irene!

This is more than symbolic. Vermont needed lots of dollars to repair the damage wrought by Irene. Dollars spent locally strengthen the whole community, circulating from pocket to pocket until they leave to fatten some far-off corporation's bottom line. The dollars that might have been spent on Belgian malt or noble hops from Europe went to local farmers, who spent it repairing their own properties.

Beyond that, Bobcat brewed a heck of a Wit. It's delicious. I gave it 5 stars on Untappd, and I don't do that often. We had it with a broiled haddock and greens (reds?) from the Heaven's Harvest Farm CSA and my favorite Greek salad. The beer was a perfect match for the summer fare!

By John, 28 August, 2012

Exploring Boston's North End

Hanover Street I took a vacation day on a late summer Friday and spent it exploring Boston's North End. I love the North End for shopping and eating, people-watching and just exploring. I love the narrow back alleys and the smells and the sounds, and the shops cluttered with all sorts of good stuff that I can't get anywhere else.

I visited a number of favorite shops, including:

By John, 16 August, 2012

going Mad for heirloom apples

farm country in the Mad River Valley We left the Sunday rain behind us and took the interstate highways to Quechee Gorge and then country roads to VT100 so we could explore that fine road through the middle part of the state as far as the Mad River Valley and Rte 89, and to see Montpelier. One of the most exciting things I saw was before we ever left Quechee.

There is a big complex at Quechee that includes a Cabot store, a huge antiques coop, a winery, and some other shops. Now there is a brand new building there: the new distillery for Vermont Spirits, makers of Vermont Gold and Vermont White vodkas. In the middle of the photo you can see the still with the tall, tall column.

I am not a big vodka fan. I buy it sometimes to make vanilla extract, but I don't keep it in my liquor cabinet. So why get excited about the vodka distillery? Against the far wall was a big rick filled with oak aging barrels. Vodka doesn't get aged, so what's the story? I discovered that Vermont Spirits is aging a new apple brandy product!