zoramargolis

John-- your recipe is easy to follow, for those accustomed to narrative instructions, which is all of us. The engineer's recipe is more visually organized and a very different way of presenting the information. Not saying that it's better, just interesting to think about. Your recipe presumes that prep is all done prior to cooking. In today's New York Times, Mark Bittman suggests that time can be saved by not making a complete mise en place, but prepping some ingedients while others have already begun cooking. His is the way I have always cooked. click

Pretty clever, no? What do you all think?

click

Two mid-coast places to recommend and one to avoid:

Fog is a hip and lively bar and cafe on the southern end of the main drag in Rockland. Not open for lunch, but serving casual and well-conceived bar food starting at 4 p.m. We walked in at about 8 p.m. and sat at a table near the back where silent films are projected on the wall. We watched a great Buster Keaton film, Sherlock, Jr. and part of a Charlie Chaplin film while we ate. J. had an excellent burger with fresh-cut fries and I had a duck shepherd's pie, made with duck confit in a tasty broth with some inobtrusive veg, topped with sweet potato puree and carmelized onions. They have a good selection of local beers on tap and in bottles.

Solo Bistro on Front Street in Bath has very cool "Maine modern" design, sort of a mash-up of Scandinavian and mid-century modern, and excellent food. There's a rathskeller/wine bar downstairs, with exposed brick and really old stone walls, the old foundation walls of the building. Well-executed modern cuisine. While we waited for our food, we were served some homemade bread with a tub of salt-roasted beet and roasted onion butter, raspberry-pink in color. We split a caesar salad to start, with Spanish boquerones (marinated anchovies), and slivers of pecorino in it. J. had a perfectly cooked hanger steak with a deepy flavored bordelaise sauce, frites with roasted garlic aioli and haricots verts. I ordered swordfish, and requested that it be cooked "medium rare" (too many disappointing meals of overcooked fish and seafood in th past few days up here, but that's another story). I would have been happier if my fish had been pulled from the fire a minute or two sooner than it was, but at least it wasn't overcooked and dry. The fish was topped with roasted grape tomatoes with basil, capers and olive oil, on a bed of very creamy roasted garlic mashed potatoes and haricots verts. The portions were quite generous. They had a prix-fixe meal for $24.95 of house salad, moules-frites, and apple crisp, that seemed like a good deal, since most of the entrees were in the $25 range. There's a decent but not dazzling wine list with numerous wines by the glass, between $7 and $9. We finished with coffee and very silky creme brulee.

Avoid Savory in Damariscotta. The menu looks good, with expressions of fealty to local farmers, fisher, and foragers. The building is a small former village church whose interior is airy, clean and tasteful. The quality of the cooking was in a word: awful.

We're going to be driving from Damariscotta to Bucksport to spend the night next Thursday. If we get up there in time to drive up to Sweet Pea's for dinner, we definitely will. Edan's new place sounds amazeballs!

last night:

lettuce salad with avocado, vinaigrette

linguini with clean out the fridge bolognese before leaving town: ripe tomatoes, roasted red pepper, smoked eggplant, leek, fennel, ground pork, with lotsa garlic, fennel seed, paprika, aromatic herbs.

white nectarine

2013 French rosé

Tuesday night:

herb-brined, applewood-smoked eco-friendly pork chops with zq sauce

braised kale

duck fat-fried new potatoes

fresh limas stewed with onion, eco-friendly bacon and aromatics

canary melon

2013 Muga rosé

Wednesday night:

bbq'd chicken thighs (cooked the previous night along with the pork chops)

romano beans, slow cooked with tomato, roasted red pepper, garlic and aromatic herbs served with grated parmesan and basil

new potato home fries with smoked portobello mushroom and shallot

fresh peaches

2012 La Caí±a albarií±o

I highly recommend the "Bruno" series by Martin Walker. Walker is British, but has been a DC-based international journalist and pundit who has turned to mystery novel writing in recent years. Martin Walker's wife, Julia Watson is a food journalist who created the Washington Eats website. The stories are set in the Perigord, where Martin and Julia summered for many years. The protagonist is Bruno Courreges, a sensitive and humane policeman in a small country town who avoids violence unless it is unavoidable. Bruno is also a talented cook, and there are wonderful scenes in all of the books involving food preparation and dining. The plots often hinge on local history--like the French underground, and Nazi collaborators; the wine trade; truffle smuggling. Start with the first one: Bruno, Chief of Police. The books are intelligent mysteries, a delightful immersion into the culture and history of a beautiful part of France, and a must-read for food-lovers.  Just the thing to take your mind off of the unpleasant aspects of medical care. I have totally fallen in love with his characters. I wish I hadn't already read them all, so that I could discover them anew.

of Martin at Politics and Prose, discussing one of the books in the Bruno series. It's long, but he's a very charming and erudite man.

kidney beans pressure cooked with onion and aromatics, then stewed with andouille sausage, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, fennel, garlic, yellow zucchini, and corn

Carolina Gold rice

peach

Fat tire

My downstairs neighbor in Manhattan invited me to go with him, but I hate crowds so I declined. I would have been miserable.

Ironically, about five years ago a close friend of mine bought a house less than a mile from the site, in Bethel NY. I've been there several times. The old Yasgur farm pasture where the concert was held is now a very snazzy performing arts center where big time concerts are held, including by the NY Philharmonic. Although the parking lots are well-organized, the roads leading to it are still fairly narrow country roads, and the locals avoid the traffic jams in the area when a major performer, band or orchestra is scheduled to perform.

I'll be there visiting my friend next week.

dinner with the next-door neighbors:

nibbles: smoked eggplant hummus/baba ghanoush hybrid with pita chips; sungold tomatoes; spiced olives

2013 Muga rosé

lamb, tomato, and eggplant tagine (adapted from Paula Wolfert's recipe)

maftoul (Palestinian cous-cous)

green beans, roasted red pepper, garlic, and lemon

2011 La Montesa rioja

peach and blueberry crisp

sweetened vanilla creme fraiche

last night:

apple-wood smoked, charcoal roasted Empire chicken thighs with zq sauce

succotash made with fresh limas, Toigo corn and eco-friendly bacon

tomato and cucumber salad with fresh dill

Next Step seedless watermelon

2013 Muga rosé

wild salmon burgers* flavored with lemon grass, ginger, scallion, and cilantro

on sesame buns with wasabi-ginger mayo, lettuce and Cherokee purple tomato

*cooked in a steel pan on the stovetop because of the rainstorm at dinner time

potato chips

vanilla ice cream with dulce de leche

2013 Muga rosé

Zora -- Thanks for the compliment and the ideas, but as usual I wasn't being clear.  The other half of said turkey is still in the fridge, raw, so what I'm actually pondering is how to cook it.  Compounding my dilemma is that I will be a bachelor for the next 10 days or so.

I have some tasty left-over stock from a batch of green beans, so that might figure into the solution, as it were.  Between that and the surfeit of tomatoes in the house there could be some sort of turkey/tomato stew in my near-term future.

Interesting choice, to cook half the turkey. I usually cook it all at once, even if I only need half, figuring the time spent cooking is essentially the same and then I can indulge my true lazy slugness and serve leftovers for a meal or three. However, you might take the opportunity of your (gluten-free, as I recall) wife not being around, to enjoy some forms of grain that you aren't ordinarily able to serve. ie. brine and then roast the turkey and slice it for sandwiches on real bread. Make stock with the bones and use that to make mushroom barley soup and the leftover meat in turkey tetrazzini. Squirrel away the extra soup and noodle casserole in the freezer for those times when you two aren't sharing the same meal.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the other half of the turkey.

Wow, let me count the ways (other than the obvious sliced turkey sandwiches): turkey tacos or enchiladas; re-heated in bbq sauce and served on buns, with cole slaw; in a bean and vegetable soup based on stock from the bones; in a chopped salad; hash; in an Asian-style rice noodle soup.

Sounds like a delicious meal, by the way.

"The Secret Language Of Food" by Dan Jurafsky on ft.com

tacos al carbon, made with charcoal-grilled tri-tip

corn tortillas

pico de gallo

calabacita con rajas y maiz*

frijoles borrachos

DB Vienna lager

*a mother of invention saga: I started by roasting chiles for the rajas, 4 green and 1 ripe red poblano, and 4 Hatch chiles, which were peeled and cut into thin strips, long sauteed with a pile of sliced white onion, garlic, and finished with some lime juice and heavy cream. They were so spicy, that I could not imagine us eating them untamed somehow. I had an unusual bulbous green squash, called an avocado squash, that I had bought at last Sunday's Dupont market from Next Step produce. It was the size of a mini-melon, had a nice buttery texture and almost no flavor. I sliced it thin and sauteed it with some garlic, and stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of the rajas, so that it was about 3/4 squash and 1/4 rajas. I had found an abandoned ear of corn in the fridge and grilled it with the tri-tip, cut the kernels off and mixed them in with the other veg. The resulting melange was delicious, but still caused the occasional bout of coughing when a particularly Scoville-laden morsel of chile was encountered.

shakshouka with Afghan seeded flatbread and hotsauce

a peach

cappuccino

fattoush-ish salad made with seeded Afghan flatbread, a heap of lettuce and veg, chick peas, and a side of sardines

seedless watermelon from Next Step

Good to know A&H is selling good seafood.  I haven't been there since I lived in Bethesda, 8 years ago now, but at the time I limited myself to their grocery items and a few cheeses.  Do the fresh fish they sell lean more toward Mediterranean varieties?

It's a very different store since Santi Zabaleta took it over. He has cleaned it up and replaced all of the shelving, as well as added lots of new, interesting products. He recently expanded the space and now sells some prepared foods (he used to be the executive chef at Taberna al Alabordero). The varieties he sells aren't exotic (monkfish, rockfish, farmed salmon, cod, haddock, yellowfin tuna, swordfish...) but he always has mussels and clams, shrimp, scallops. And fish stock, lobster stock. All priced very reasonably, especially compared to BlackSalt.

OK, Dan, despite the fact that the two places you mention are arguably the best, I will accept your challenge: River Falls Seafood in Potomac and A&H Gourmet Seafood Market in Bethesda. At least, they are both in MoCo (the OP requests Silver Spring...)

eco-friendly spicy Italian sausage and peppers+ (ripe frying peppers, a N.M. Hatch chile*, tomato, onion, garlic, and a smoked eggplant), grated parmesan/romano, chopped basil/Italian parsley

whole grain garlic toast

cantaloupe

2010 Castaí±o Hecula

*on sale at my neighborhood Safeway for 99 cents a pound

The family reunion is this weekend, so getting rice from Anson Mills in time will be costly...

eco-friendly suckling pig shoulder, herb-brined and applewood smoked, pulled and served with zq sauce on toasted sesame seed buns

napa cabbage slaw

bbq kidney beans, pressure cooked with aromatics and onion sauteed in bacon fat

DB vienna lager

hell or high watermelon

Local honey--The Italian Store sells Toigo honey. Carla Hall's cookies, which I have seen at Whole Foods. Local cheese--ditto or at Arrowine or Cheesetique. A crate of peaches or apples from a local farm stand or Thursday or Friday farmers market.

Out of curiosity: why do you need so much dill seed?