Free Range: Chef Mac's Louisiana Cuisine

Lauraville storefront = a little bit of Louisiana.

Go here for the review and there for the gumbo.

Free Range: The Dizz Grandview

Same as it ever was--albeit this time at the top of a Hampden apartment building. Go here for the review.

And yes, dear readers, there really is a Mrs. Woolwine...

Feeding My Head

Although the calendar may say otherwise, October is truly the shortest (and definitely the most beautiful) month.

So here we are in November. I'm just back from the Bedell Nofiction Now conference at the University of Iowa, re-charged and ready to jump back in the fray...tomorrow.

But remember these?

Here's how the story turned out.

Cooler...

The weather, that is. Finally.

And this means changes are afoot in the kitchen. A pork loin ringed with carrots and potatoes went into the oven, rather than on the grill, on Sunday, the first roast of the season. Soon it will be nippy enough for beef stew.

This morning, however, it's New York Times' writer, Melissa Clark's granola in the oven, filling the house with the cinnamon tempered by the clean smell of olive oil. I'm smitten with this recipe, even though I usually substitute more cinnamon for the cardamom and occasionally add sunflower seeds(today I had to substitute almonds for pistachios because I was out--drat). The olive oil keeps it crunchy and light, and I'm totally sold on the maple syrup, a slightly more expensive option than honey, but I like the subtle smokiness it imparts. Clark serves the granola with fresh ricotta, which sounds heavenly, but I'm more likely to have Greek yogurt in the fridge and that works well too, tart meeting sweet and salty, creamy contrasting with crunch.

All summer I've been waiting to scratch my baking itch, but it's just been too...damn...hot. While I don't need snow...yet...I'm more than ready for autumn. Hello Fall!

Old Wine

Saturday was not meant to be a feast, and yet a bottle of wine and a lot of exhaustion made it so.

I spent most of the day re-painting the backyard fence and bolted late in the afternoon to do some quick grocery shopping. But I was too lazy to buy wine, thinking we must have something at home to drink. We did, but most of it was wine bought during a former life, meant to be saved for a special dinner, not burgers and chips. But I did find this:


a bottle of 1997 Domaine Maume Gevrey-Chambertin.

I and some former colleagues at The Wine Source each bought a half case or so of this wine six or seven years ago when the distributor was trying to get rid of it at a rock bottom price. Some bottles were surprisingly good then, some were already well past their prime, and the last few bottles I had, I'd had to dump. This one bottle lingered, and out of desperation, I opened it, expecting nothing.

But it was lovely, a little faded, but soft and supple with just a shadow of cherry and a little rose petal. This was not a profound wine experience, one that changes your perceptions of red burgundy, Pinot Noir, life. Rather, this was a gentler experience, like the touch of a hand on sore muscles or the reminder of the potential grace in age.

Cheers.

C'est si beau

K made dinner tonight.

Salade Niçoise.

'Nuff said.

Feeling Fishy

September has brought with it the bustle of preparing for our annual long weekend at the beach (which can run anywhere from three to six days) and the catching up that comes after. And so apologies for absence.

This year's respite was mercifully rain free. It was also free of photos, but full of good eating. We made our annual stop at Beach to Bay Seafood in Princess Anne to visit with Rich and Diane Evanusa and eat their fresher-than-fresh seafood. K had a whopper of a soft crab sandwich, two fat crabs balanced between white bread with tomato and lettuce, as well as Diane's homemade cole slaw and mustardy potato salad. I inhaled my own version of a fried seafood combo platter: several gorgeous fried oysters that must have been at least three inches in diameter, a sweet grouper fillet, fries (natch), and Diane's homemade stewed tomatoes, which were excellent, though I still prefer the pickled beets, sadly unavailable that day. Their rice pudding is also to die for.

From there we drove north to Delmar, Delaware to the not quite one year old Evolution Craft Brewing Company. Wednesday through Sunday $5 gets you five generous samples of their brews from the inevitable seasonal pumpkin beer, Jaques Au Lantern, made Belgian-style, to the coffee-spiked Rise Up Stout. (The Exile ESB is my favorite.)

It turned out to be a fish-filled weekend (and why shouldn't it when you're at the beach?). Twice we drove north to Rehoboth to eat at Salt Air Kitchen for fish stew and halibut over lentils (Thursday) and baked bluefish and corvino (Friday), never mind the white anchovy "pizzas" and chorizo and date skewers. Saturday I made fish tacos with fresh tuna, and Sunday we hit Rehoboth yet again, this time for Chinese at Shawn Xiong's excellent Confucius where we carried out salt and pepper shrimp, cumin beef, fiery hot pepper pork, and searing sauteed string beans--a feast made complete with a bottle of rose.

In between eating I walked the beach, watched the U.S. Open and far too many HGTV shows in a cable tv gorge akin to pounding junk food, did a little sewing, read Peter Robinson's latest Inspector Banks mystery, counted the brown pelicans, saw one dolphin and one oystercatcher, the latter picking its way across the beach at breakfast time. It was a pleasure to be away from home.

And it is a pleasure to be back.