California, Here We Go.

We've been plotting and planning for close to eight months. We've been roommates with boxes and bubble wrap for about as many weeks. Address changes, car selling, new banks, lists and lists and lists, goodbye breakfasts, lunches and dinners, goodbye glasses (that turned into bottles) of wine – all of this, leading up to a moment. The moment we drive away from the City of Angels towards our new home, three thousand miles away in Richmond, Virginia. And that moment happened last Thursday.

It was so hurried and frenetic, nary a moment for goodbye tears or nostalgia. Which suited me just fine. Fred, Eduardo, Byron and I all loaded up in our little car, loaded with our life for the next few weeks - not without grandma Janie's cast-iron skillet and my bacon drippings. Ahead warp zillion! Ahead first to Phoenix, Arizona, where we were set to meet up with the legendary Chris Bianco, creator of what is purported to be the greatest pizza on Earth outside of Italy. And then what next? We were not certain. And that is the beauty. We are like Hansel and Gretel, eating those breadcrumbs all along the trail across this great country to find our way home.

After experiencing a wonderful dinner at Chris' newest iteration of Pizzeria Bianco (which you will be able to read and see all about on TasteSpotting soon!), we popped up bright and early to meet up with him at his cafe and 'test kitchen' of sorts, Pane Bianco. This is where his brother, Marco, bakes the loaves of bread and also where the mill lives. Yes, they grow their own wheat, have their own mill, and bake their own bread with their very own flour.

After a tour of the kitchen, dining room and mill, with tastes of biscotti here, and gelato there, Chris sat with us and talked about love and the beauty in everything, and what inspires him (of which food is but a slice). He talked about rectangles, triangles and circles (everything in Pane Bianco is on wheels). He then sent us on our way with hugs, a bottle of chilled rosé from his restaurant (the label is from a painting his father gave his mother ages ago, of a rose) and told us to pick out one of the loaves that had just come out of the oven – to pick the one 'that spoke to us.'

And on the road we went. To infinity: The Grand Canyon. Where we went to watch the sunset, crack open the bottle of rosé, and eat that beautiful fresh bread with some Italian cheeses we picked up in Flagstaff. And yes, the bread was remarkable – mouth-injuringly crusty on the outside, yet moist, airy and filled with beautiful air pockets on the inside – fundamentally satisfying in every way. I suppose Marco was right, it 'spoke to us.' All this while watching the sun disappear into the canyon. How remarkable was it? So much so that I have goose bumps even writing this.

The next morning we were up bright and early to get on the road again. We needed to make it to Albuquerque, at least. Which shouldn't have been too much of a challenge, but Fred wanted to amble. So we stopped at Meteor Crater, walked the dogs, looked around, took pictures. And then we were off again. Well, for about thirty minutes. When I noticed the car slowing considerably, I looked up and found that Fred had pulled off into a small town. And we were driving down the main drag: Route 66.

Fred turned to me and flatly explained (as though it was quite obvious), “I want to be standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona."

Oh, of course. Clearly.

We pulled over, leashed up the pups and went to find The Corner. It wasn't hard to find. After Fred posed for his obligatory picture, we began to wander and stumbled across none other than the 15th Annual Standin' on a Corner Festival. What are the chances?!

So we found a vendor selling Navajo Tacos on Fry Bread, wandered back to the car and had our lunch. As we sat in the sun, noshing this new kind of taco, I looked around and thought about Chris' words from earlier. I ruminated on unexpected beauty, I looked down at my pizza-shaped taco loaded with meat, cheese, tomatoes, green onion, lettuce and salsa with the fry bread confidently glistening with hot oil, I relished the love of Fred and our dogs on this singular adventure. I then looked up and saw a bird fly over (how amazing would it have been if it was an eagle?).

Take it easy? No problem.

And just think, only fort-eight hours prior we were watching the City of Angels disappear in our rear view mirror.

Navajo Fry Bread
(recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman)

Makes 6 breads

Ingredients

3 cups All-purpose Flour

1/2 teaspoon Salt

3 teaspoons Baking Powder (slightly Rounded Teaspoons)

3/4 cups Milk

 Water As Needed To Get Dough To Come Together

 Vegetable Shortening Or Lard For Frying

Directions

Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir with a fork as you pour in the milk; keep stirring for a bit to get it to come together as much as possible. Add just enough water (about 1/4 to 1/2 cup) to get it to come together. Cover the bowl with a dish towel and let it sit for 35 to 45 minutes to rest.

When you're ready to make the fry bread, heat about 1 to 2 inches shortening/lard in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Grab a plum-sized piece of dough (or larger if you want larger fry bread) and press it into a circle with your fingers: place it on a clean surface and begin pressing in the center and work your way out, stretching it as you go.

When the circle is about 4 to 7 inches (however big you want it) carefully drape it into the skillet. Allow it to fry on one side until golden brown, about 1 minute, then carefully flip it to the other side using tongs. Fry it for another 30 to 45 seconds.

Remove the fry bread to a paper towel-lined plate and allow it to drain while you fry the other pieces.

Serve warm!

Printable recipe.

One year ago: Ham Hock & Lima Beans

Two years ago: Chocolate Sea-Salt Pie

Three years ago: Chicks with Knives at Test Kitchen, 2010

Four years ago: The Marked 5 Truck

Winging It.

Before I begin, I would like to make a bold statement: never again will I have a brilliant writing concept as I'm falling asleep and assume I will recall it the next day. I would like to tell you all right here and now that forever forward I will keep an adorable little notebook and a nice pen on my person at all times. Even in bed. Especially in bed.

That said, I promise this will still be just as great as my brain flower seemed last night, while half asleep and a few glasses of wine down the hatch.

I know this because I want to talk about wings. And, really, who doesn't like wings?

Actually, for the better part of my possible wing-eating adult life, I have been slightly repulsed by them. Wing consumption can appear a little desperate, a little cannibalistic, hands in face, both covered in cloying, sticky sauce, gnawing away at that tiny little bit of meat. I found the meat-to-bone ratio unnerving.

But I've been sheltered. I have not been around wings much. Wings are usually served in bars. To be specific, wings are usually served in bars with beer and sports and boys in baseball hats. And while I am a fan of sports and boys and baseball hats (though not necessarily together), you won't often find me with a beer in my hand. I am a wine drinker through and through. And the bars I just mentioned, often at these bars, when I ask what sort of wine they serve I hear, “Both kinds. Red and white.”

Call it lack of exposure, call it association, but you can clearly see why I'm not a wingophile. But a few, perhaps six or so, years ago, my then boyfriend (who always wore a baseball hat, followed sports (if they were New York teams) and drank beer in the appropriate bars with others like him)) noticed a blurb about wings in an issue of Saveur I was reading. The recipewas the original from the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. He was very into all things New York, being from Jersey himself. And so he tore the page out, shopped for the ingredients, including some ubiquitous and authentic cayenne pepper sauce, and made a batch of Buffalo wings that, to him, tasted like 'home.' I think he may have even smiled.

And you know what? More importantly, I liked them just fine. Even better, I secretly basked in the carnivorous, sloppy-faced, blue cheese dressing soaked process of it all. But I still paired mine with wine. A crisp white, I believe.

He made the wings once or twice more before our relationship ended. Funny thing, when he moved out, I'm almost positive he took that hot sauce-stained-ripped-out magazine page with him - and not a whole lot else.

In the years since, I've had very few wings. Until now.

It's summer, and Fred (who rarely wears baseball hats or goes to bars, but does enjoy his sports) not New York teams, however)) is back in full-on grill mode. And, in addition to all of the steaks, pork tenderloins, salmon, veggies, brick chickens, shisito peppers, and the like, Fred has been grilling wings.  A lot. About five or six times, now. Each time he has riffed and each time he has done something slightly different, be it in the marinade, the dipping sauce or the garnish. But every single time, with my sticky fingers and my smiling face, messy like a five year-old playing in the mud, I look down at my plate of carnage, my mountain of tiny, little chicken bones, and the cloth napkin, so dotted with sauce it resembles a Pollock painting, and exclaim how much I absolutely love wings. With a crisp, white wine, of course. I'm not an animal.

And I always want at least one more.

So, after all of this, I still don't remember what my brilliant, masterpiece brain flower was from last night. But I do remember I was thinking about the concept of 'winging it', and that I thought I had some extraordinary watershed concept with regard to that phrase. And, I suppose since it had dissapeared completely by the time I opened my eyes this morning, in writing this today, I did in fact, 'wing it'.

But I'm still keeping an adorable little notebook and a nice pen next to my bed from now on.

BBQ Buffalo Wings with Avocado-Ranch Dip

Serves 2-6, depending on your appetite.

Wings:

3 pounds chicken wings

Salt

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

Marinade:

1/2 cup unsalted butter

½ cup Frank's Red Hot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce

2 tablespoons Texas Pete's, Tabasco or hot sauce of your preference

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon black pepper

To make the sauce, mix all of the ingredients together in a small pot set over low heat and stir constantly until the butter melts. Once the butter melts, take off heat and whisk the sauce vigorously and set aside. It should remain liquid, but if it starts to solidify, heat it up just enough to melt it, whisking all the time. Never let it boil.

Toss the wings with the vegetable oil and the salt, and arrange in one layer on the grill set over low heat. If you are using charcoal or wood, set your fire on one side of the grill and arrange the wings on the other side, away from the direct heat. You want them to cook slowly. Cover the grill and cook for 30 minutes.

Turn the wings and baste with sauce. Close the grill and cook for another 30 minutes. Repeat the process, painting the wings every 15 minutes or so until the wings are cooked through. Make sure you have a little leftover sauce to toss the wings with at the end. Serve with the avocado-ranch dipping sauce.

Avocado-Ranch Dipping Sauce:

1 ripe avocado, halved and pitted

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon diced red onion

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

1 clove of garlic

1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

1/2 teaspoon hot sauce (like Tabasco)

1/2 teaspoon sugar

salt & pepper to taste

Place the avocado in a food processor and add hot sauce and lime juice. Set the food processor to puree or high, and puree the avocado for 30 seconds or until it is a smooth paste.

Lift the lid from the food processor and to the avocado add buttermilk, mayonnaise, red onion, cilantro, garlic, sugar, and 1 pinch each of salt and pepper.

Replace the lid on the food processor and pulse the ingredients 5 or 6 times for about 15 seconds each time until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined. It may need a few more pulses if the garlic is not chopped finely enough.

Check the dressing for salt and pepper and adjust if required. You can add a bit more hot sauce at this point as well, if you want it a bit spicier.

Refrigerate until ready to use.

Printable recipe.

Two years ago: Yerp: Part 6. Barthelona (Part 2), THE HAMOVER.

Four years ago: Vichyssoise

Out Like a Lamb.

The end of March is nigh, and thus is Easter. Passover is happening right now. It's a big time for a lot of people. And plants. Plants are having a blast right now. And people are having a blast with plants. Or, at least, Fred and I are.

When we last spoke, I had mentioned having chatted around to get a feel as to what food things meant to people with regard to Easter. I ended up settling on chocolate and lamb, though not necessarily together – which might not be a bad idea, come to think of it. So I shared a chocolate recipe.

So you probably know where we will be going with this. Lambville.

Coming from completely non-religious parents, other than the Easter Bunny covertly surprising me with an Easter basket each year at my mom's house, Easter meant little else. I don't even recall a special meal. So after sifting through people's responses to my query about what Easter represented, culinarily, to them, I went about figuring out what it meant to me. And I decided to embark on the most traditional Easter supper I have ever had. First order on the agenda: order a giant leg of lamb.

I like lamb just fine, now, but as a child it unnerved me a little. I think it was just the gamey-ness of the meat. It wasn't on the dinner table too often at home, but I know Dad loved it. He always ordered it at the Greek restaurant in our neighborhood. He loved their Lamb Guvetsi.

As I mentioned, years ago, like 2005, I heard Nigella Lawson interviewedon NPR around this time of year. She was promoting her then new book, Feast, a cookbook devoted primarily to celebrations, holidays and entertaining. I vividly recall her discussing her favorite Easter meal, and the great detail with which she described a saffron roasted leg of lamb and some sticky, crispy garlic potatoes. Obviously it stuck with me if eight years later that was the first thing to pop into my head when I decided to make my first, big Easter dinner. So I started planning the menu, the flowers, the dining room look, and called some friends.

Easter dinner was so happening.

Two days before the event I put the lamb in its marinade and refrigerated it. The day before, while Fred went out to get all of our groceries, flowers and the like, I poked around on the computer to find out why lamb in the Spring, and why lamb on Easter. Why throughout the entire world the most popular Easter symbol is the lamb. I'm sure, as usual in this department, everyone else already knows this stuff, but I'm new here.

The roast lamb dinner that many eat on Easter Sunday goes back earlier than Easter to the first Passover of the Jewish people. The sacrificial lamb was roasted and eaten, together with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (a Seder) in hopes that the angel of God would pass over their homes and bring no harm. As Hebrews converted to Christianity, they naturally brought along their traditions with them. The Christians often refer to Jesus as The Lamb of God. Thus, the traditions merged.

In the 7th century the Benedictine monks wrote a prayer for the blessing of lambs.

A few hundred years later the pope adopted it and a whole roasted lamb became the feature of the Pope's Easter Dinner, and has been ever since.

I wasn't going to roast a whole lamb, of course. Just one of its legs.

Now this lamb recipe involved saffron, which I absolutely love. I know a lot of people do not, however. It seems to be one of those ingredients like cilantro: people either love it or hate it. And I understand. Also, like cilantro, it has an unmistakable, very distinct aroma and taste. The thin, delicate, muted red hair-like strands are fragrant, floral, earthy, and honey-like with a bit of bitterness. Saffron also happens to be the most expensive spice in the world. Use too much and that will be the only thing you take away from that dish. With saffron, the words 'a little goes a long way' have never been more accurate. A little dab will do ya.

It's no surprise that you will find a wealth of recipes with saffron and lamb together. Kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, they just make sense. They are also both prominent elements in a lot of Middle-Eastern cuisine. Actually, it's funny, lamb takes me back to eating Greek food with my dad, and I used Greek saffron with my Easter lamb.

Yesterday, on the event of my Easter dinner celebration, once the lamb went into the oven after two days of marinating, I went about the décor of the dining room. I hand-picked each and every piece of silverware, plate and glass, dug through the linens to find the right napkins – I went for the fancies – and began meticulously arranging the bundles of daffodils and hyancinths into little vintage creamers and jelly jars while listening to my go-to soothing sounds: Explosions in the Sky. All the while the house was filling up with the entrancing smell of lamb, lemon and garlic fusing together in the oven. I dare say it was beginning to smell like Easter. Or, at least, really, really good. The air smelled like family and friends and the promise of festivity and future fond memories.

Everything was coming together perfectly. The food was on schedule, the room looked great, I had the perfect wines; some lovely rosés from a tasting the day before, and just moments before the guests arrived, as I was lighting the candles, Fred and I got our Easter baskets in the mail! I guess the Easter Bunny is trying to help out the US Post Office in their time of need... Nevertheless, that took care of dessert; Cadbury Creme Eggs!

As we all sat down to the table, we raised our glasses of rosé and toasted to a happy Easter. And as I looked around the room, I took stock. The smiling faces of my friends, the table looked beauteous, the food was delicious, the wine went perfectly with the saffrony lamb, the flowers smelled wonderful, and best of all we were all so happy to be with each other. Good friends, together, on our Easter, eating, drinking, smiling, talking, sharing Easter memories and laughter.

SAFFRON ROAST LAMB WITH STICKY GARLIC POTATOES

(recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson's book, Feast)

Serves 6

1 leg of lamb (4.5 lbs)

1/3 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, bruised

6 scallions

2 bay leaves

juice of 1 lemon

small bunch mint, 1 1/2 oz including stalks, torn roughly makes 1 cup

1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, steeped in 1 cup very hot water

1/3 cup rosé wine

 Put the lamb in a large freezer bag, pour over the olive oil and then throw in the garlic, trimmed scallions and bay leaves, squeeze in the lemon juice and throw in the squeezed-out lemon halves too, then add the torn-up bunch of mint. Seal the bag and marinate in the fridge overnight.

Bring the lamb to room temperature before you even think of putting it in the oven, and preheat that to 425 degrees F when you take the lamb out of the fridge.

Pour the entire contents of the freezer bag into a roasting pan and roast for about 20 minutes a pound, or until the lamb is cooked a perfect, à point pink; you will just have to pierce it with the knife to see. Just before the lamb is due to come out of the oven, put the saffron strands in a measuring cup and pour over the hot water so that it can get on with steeping.

Remove the lamb to a wooden carving board to rest. Pick out the lemon rinds, and then place the roasting pan on the stove over medium heat, and stir until it starts bubbling. Stir in the saffron in its water and add 1/3 cup rosé – tasting for seasoning as you go – as needed to let this bubble into a small amount of ungloopy gravy. 

Carve the lamb on to a large warmed plate and strain the saffrony juices, stirring in any liquid first from the carving board, over the pink meat.

Read the sticky garlic potato recipe now so that you can coordinate your movements. And, to go with, I'd want no more than a bowl of green peas, turned in some butter.

STICKY GARLIC POTATOES

Serves 6

1 1/2 lbs small fingerling potatoes

8 cloves garlic (more if you like)

1/2 cup olive or other vegetable oil 

Coarse salt & freshly cracked pepper to taste.

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and add some salt, add the potatoes and cook for 30 minutes. Drain, and put back into the dry pan.

Peel the garlic cloves by squishing with the flat of a knife so that they bruise slightly and the skin slips off. Put them in the dry pan with the potatoes, and then bash potatoes and garlic  so they are cracked and split. You can do this ahead and leave them in the pan – though with the lid off, so that they don’t get watery – until you want to roast them.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and slip a roasting pan in to heat up at the same time. Once the oven’s hot, pour in the oil and let it, in turn, heat up for 10 minutes.

Carefully tip the potatoes and garlic into the hot oil and cook for 15 minutes. Turn the potatoes over and then give them another 15 minutes. 

Salt & pepper to taste.

Serve on a platter with the lamb.

Printable recipe.

One year ago: Rustic Cremini Mushroom Soup with Chives & Basil Oil
Two years ago: Nutter Butter Cookies
Three years ago: The Grill 'Em All Truck