No, we’re not done with the pig’s blood just yet.

In fact, I’ve a feeling there could be 38 different dishes you can cook with Black Pudding. Thirty-eight at the very least.

Not that I plan on naming them all here.

In fact, I’ll just mention two or three.

First off: Chopper’s Lancashire Hotpot. He made this one on the Saturday after the black pudding was done and served it to unsuspecting guests. The guests were quite pleased and went back to the kitchen for seconds.

That Sunday morning, Chopper made a scramble with spinach, onion, more bits of black pudding, and the last remaining smidge of Lancashire Hotpot. It too was quite tasty, though it could have used something sweet to temper the spinach/onion/pig’s blood nexus.

Enter, apples. Inspired by denzylle’s comment on our Happy Entrails to You post, Chopper created a frittata wherein the black pudding mixed it up with tasty, crunchy bits of Granny Smith apple and the whole thing was topped with grated kasseri.

We declared it tasty and wolfed it down, thus ending Black Pudding Days at casa Belly Timber after only three dishes.

Only three? Surely there must be more!

Now, I’d offer up a challenge to see who can come up with the largest number of black pudding variations, but to be perfectly honest, after writing this post up I think I’m quite ready to move on from pig’s blood for at least a short while. So instead, because we’re never completely done with All Things British in these parts, and because we believe in extending all birthday celebrations at least a week and a half, your challenge (with a hat tip to Riba Rambles for the meme) is this:

Grab a pencil and paper and without looking at any resources, see if you can list all 38 (most commonly agreed upon) Shakespeare plays. And don’t give me any of that silly Francis Bacon really wrote them twaddle.

Mmm…. bacon.

(End note: This post was written last week, but MizD’s woefully uncooperative digestive system has prevented her from thinking joyful thoughts about food for several days running. At this very moment, in fact, she is resisting the urge to gaze longingly at photos of dark chocolate.)

Prologue:
At first, I was horrified. Cookiecrumb and Kevin hosting a Mac-n-Cheese event? But I can’t! You don’t understand. I just can’t. I cried to Chopper: Look what they’re doing, I said. How cruel. How evil. Can I ever forgive them? If you make mac-n-cheesy goodness and eat it alone, can I ever forgive you? Chopper merely shrugged and said, hey, it’s me here. I can make it happen. I bit my lip in fear. But… the history, I whimpered… my history…

1.A cheesy childhood.
Oh dear lord did I love mac-n-cheese as a child. It wasn’t just that it was vast and goopy and satisfying beyond all reason, or that it sometimes held the exquisite secret of little salami nuggets, tucked beneath its placid surface. No, it was this: It lacked vegetables. And for a child, especially one in a house wherein vegetables were routinely cooked to oblivion, this was nirvana. I always went back for seconds. Sometimes even thirds or fourths. If the mac-n-cheese pot had been bottomless and my plate accompanied by an equally bottomless glass of Nestle’s Quick, I would never have left the table. Not even for episodes of Star Trek.

2.College in a box
When one is single and one is in college and living in a tiny apartment, one’s episodes of Star Trek are accompanied by a box. The blue kind. You know the one. Gross, eh? I bet Spock’s Plomeek soup never tasted so bad. Perhaps it was just the way I (ineptly) cooked it, but my Kraft mac-n-cheese always came out a little gritty. Not that this stopped me. Nope, not one bit. After all, it was cheap and easy and isn’t college all about cheap and easy? Hey! I’m talking about food, here.

3.Is that a shot put in my gut, or am I just sorry I ate you?
We’re on break from the gaming session, it’s been five weeks and still no one knows my red shirt security goon is really a Romulan spy. I love surgical alteration. Now, if only I could get some surgical alteration on my gut, I could make it through this cheesy meal without feeling like I’ve been injected with an elephant’s dose of cordrazine. What is up with this? I used to love mac-n-cheese and now I can barely touch the stuff. Could it be… no, say not so! It’s true. My gut hates cows.

4.Cold turkey (sandwiches)
Are you coming over for dinner, the in-law says, I’m making mac-n-cheese! I attempt to hide my sour face and fail miserably. Oh, right (now, she remembers), you can’t do cheese. There’s some cold turkey in the fridge! Dave can make you a sandwich! I try very hard not to pout, but I’m just not good at it. Oh, I’ve no doubt the sandwich will be just dandy. Heck, it may even have fancy Dijon mustard on it, but must I watch everyone else eat mac-n-cheese? Can’t I go downstairs to the family room instead? C’mon, Sci Fi Channel’s running a marathon, and I could be communing with Chekov and the space hippies right this very instant! Hey! You think they solved lactose intolerance in the 23rd century?

5.Nirvana, with goat.
So, if I’m going to make it, Chopper says, I’m going to make the creamy kind. Not that crusty stuff that ends up tasting like a rubber waffle. We’ll have to get kasseri, since we know it melts and we know you can eat it, and we’ll need something other than cow’s milk. Um, I say, just a wee bit optimistic for once, would you believe I saw a quart of goat’s milk in the health food section at Fred Meyer? No way! Way! We (boldly) go, we shop, we find. Chopper cooks. He serves me up a small but perfect portion (not too much on my first try in over a decade), and I take a bite. Simple, unadorned with frivolity save for a dash of smoked paprika and a sprig of fresh thyme. Creamy, just like Mom used to make. I am in nirvana. Hey, I think, I should eat this in front of the telly with the boys in gold, red, and blue. But, damn, SciFi channel never shows Trek episodes anymore. Ah well, that’s okay. I get to eat mac-n-cheese.

It was the event that almost wasn’t. The event that re-emerged from the abyss, from the long lost annals of Gastroblogian history, stifled by photographic traumas, by the death cries of a computer far past its prime, and by the evils of a creature known only by the minacious name Blogger BETA.

No. We refuse to believe it. And why? Because this meal was just too damned good.

It’s true, I confess it. We haven’t finished unpacking our kitchen. We’ve got reasons, many of which I’ll explain another day, but in brief, we’re still using our picnic basket plasticware, and we’ve no idea where we put our favorite can opener. Not that this will stop us.

It’s also true: Our camera is broken, my computer’s throwing tantrums (Lappy jealousy, I’m certain of it), and we’ve yet to figure out where we can set up a reasonable spot for food (or for that matter, craft) photos. Not that we’re deterred by this either, dang it all.

Nope. We’re determined. We’ve been away from our favorite food blogging event far too long. We’ve had too many months without proper kitchen access at all.

And so, Paper Chef Weekend, we took to the store, and subsequently armed with a bag of cranberries, a bottle of sweet vermouth, and a glug of cheap champagne, we embarked upon our search for something wild. And cheap. Cheap is good. We’re on a scary budget these days. And with that in mind, first stop: the freezer and that chunk of wild Alaskan salmon we snagged from the in-laws while we were house sitting.

Second stop? The yard. Yard? Wild? Come again?

Trust me on this. The yard is wild. At least we haven’t had anything to do with it for our two years away, and since then? We chopped a few branches off the fig tree so the satellite dish would (ostensibly) work, but yes, the yard is wild. Weeds gone wild, herbs gone wild, and most of all, apple tree gone wild. As in, it’s been two years plus since it met a pair of pruning shears.

Result? Rosemary, sage, and thyme to gather by the bunch, and apples, apples, everywhere. Most of our apples hit the ground before we could get to them, but even so, we managed a partial harvest — enough for several treats, including this Paper Chef’s dessert.

A note about the apples. I believe they’re Granny Smiths, but in all honesty, I haven’t a clue. All I know is this: they are green, they are sour, they are crisp and they are damn good.

Here’s our makeshift studio. It’s a tiny end table atop a coffee table, with a TV tray table to the side to hold the desk lamp. Both desk lamp and the bridge lamp above have full-spectrum daylight bulbs to help with the color balance, and behind the setup, I’ve got an old curtain rod and one of our freshly unpacked curtains, which I think might belong on a window around here somewhere. I’ll figure that one out someday soon.

After we’re settled in (ha ha, in our distant future), I’ll build my first true photo set-up. See, up on the island, we had a luxury — a luxury in summer at least — of an enormous bank of west-facing windows. We were in daylight heaven. Here, well… we’re in a bungalow, a tiny bungalow with tiny windows and tall trees. (My S.A.D. is sad, I tell you.) Photos in natural light will be a rare occurrence this time of year. Or, I should rephrase, considering the current condition of the camera: photos will be a rare occurrence this time of year.

But enough of that. On with the food!

For dinner: Butter and herb poached salmon with yellow pepper and sweet vermouth coulis, fried, beer-simmered polenta, and cranberried sugar snap peas.

For dessert: Apple champagne gelée, and cranberry gelée parfait with sweet vermouth caramel.

A few short tasting notes:

Here’s the thing about butter poached salmon: It is moist. Scrumptiously, perfectly moist. So moist, that it falls off your fork, and in the end, you’ve got a coulis-slopped plate with flaky, tender bits of salmon all over it (this after you’ve devoured everything else) and you do what makes perfect sense: You roll up the lettuce that was, at the start, intended to be more a decorative bed than a necessary dinner element, and you scoop every last scrap of salmon up, creating one mighty fine salmon salad roll in the process.

And here’s the thing about our rosemary polenta points: I can’t quite explain it, but the rosemary bush in the backyard is beyond this world. This is not your everyday rosemary. This is the most phenomenal, fragrant, tasty rosemary I’ve ever encountered. This is the beluga caviar of rosemary. To kidnap a phrase from a favorite FBI boss of mine, someday I’m going to write an epic poem about this gorgeous rosemary. (But first, I’m going to propagate it!)

And the gelée? A funny thing happened on the way back from the island. We left our crappy old juicer behind because we thought we’d never use it again. So, Chopper didn’t quite have the right tools for the job, and he wasn’t able to get quite enough of the pulp out of the apple juice for the gelée to gel. It was still refreshing, even if the overall effect was unbalanced, and Chopper more than made up for it with his garnish. Yes, what is that crazy thing, anyway?

Why, it’s a boing!

I had a small challenge tracking this puppy down. Google "boing" and "caramel" and you get all sorts of Boing Boing posts and references to "the blogosphere’s yummy, caramel-filled core." (Cool! It’s caramel-filled, like a Cadbury Egg! I never knew!) Add an "s" to the boing’s end, and ah, there it is: Caramel Boings from chef Gale Grand. No pictures though, so we’ll just have to assume that Chopper’s boing is up to boingy par.

A final note, this time having to do with wine: Somewhere around halfway through the preparation, or perhaps it was after we’d tasted the first bit of rosemary and polenta, Chopper asked about wine. Now here’s the thing. Back in early October, we took a trip up to Washington wine country (an unblogged trip, I should add, due to a misbehaving digital camera and a collection of 35mm film rolls not yet sent to the processor) and we accumulated a modest but adventurous collection of wine. Six bottles, I think, and I’d been so resistant to drinking them all up, I’d consistently say "no, maybe later" every time Chopper asked.

Not this time. How about the Pasek Passion Fruit wine, he said. Oh, hell yes. I mean, I’m a sucker for a good sweet wine anyway, but this was genius. By the way, Pasek bills this one as a delicious summer sipper, but who are they kidding? Here’s a secret: tropical wine and tart cranberries? An unexpected match made in heaven.

And as for the curse? Well, it took quite a while to get this post done – we’re down to one fully functioning computer between the two of us – and the evil Blogger BETA is still mucking with our Paper Chef founder and host’s blogging efforts, but we hope Christmas will come just a wee bit early and all will be resolved soon. And Owen, give us a holler if you need a non-Blogger hand. Viva le Chef Papier! Oh, yikes. I spoke French.

Most people recoil in horror when they are told what the primary ingredient is in the classic Mexican breakfast dish menudo. No, it’s not Ricky Martin…

The first time I ever tried menudo was at a tiny Mexican cafe in San Diego back in the mid-nineties. My friends told me it was good, and having never heard of it before — I was rather young — I ordered it. Little did I know I was about to have a “Mikey” moment, where my friends were just seeing if I’d eat it. Well, I did, and I really liked it, especially the little tender chewy bits.

“What was that?” I asked my friends as they were about to burst into laughter…

That’s right, beef tripe. Stomach of cow. The funny part for me was that I didn’t mind.

Now, I’ve always been up for a good experiment, so why not try my hand at this culinary gem?

I think I did it justice. It was spicy the way I like it, and the texture was just like I remember. It was good enough for Mrs. D to give it a try. In her words…

Chopper sez: So, I’ll consider this experiment in Chopper’s lab a success. What’s next, you may ask… Just wait and see.

MizD sez: Braaaains, I tell you. Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiins. (Hey, what can I say? We’re only seven and a half weeks from Halloween.)

Saturday morning, we went to the Portland Farmers Market.

And at the Portland Farmers Market, one is generally not lured in by such things as fermented black soy beans and giblets, two of this month’s Paper Chef foursome.

No, indeed. Instead, we heard the siren call of maitake mushrooms, patty pan squash, and glorious, fat leeks for a dollar a piece.

(Okay, so we didn’t exactly hear the call — the market is rather noisy and what with that odd band playing some sort of world beat, syncopated version of the 70’s disco hit “Ring My Bell,” well, the quiet voices of vegetables and fungi were completely drowned out. But boy did they look good!)

So we brought them home, stashed them away near last week’s Moreland Farmers Market purchase of Pale Blue Ewe from the Black Sheep Creamery in Southern Washington, and were promptly distracted by household and family issues.

That is, until tonight when Chopper announced he was going to make goat cheese stuffed patty pans with crispy pan fried leeks and sautéed maitake mushrooms. (And, after a quick and boisterous exclamation of YUM, I scampered to the computer, double-checked the date and the rules and declared: Hey! This is perfect for Festa al Fresco!)

So, to Ivonne and Lis, I hope we’re not too late to join the party! Chopper finished our dish just as the sun lost itself behind the giant elms and maples to the west, but the hazy summer light lingered long enough for me to snap a few shots out on the porch railing of our current, temporary abode. Look! There’s even a tree in the background. Perfect for a picnic!

la festa al fresco

This is our last Paper Chef in this house.

In two and a half weeks, we’ll be moving back to Portland after 20 months of camping out and caregiving on an island we only occasionally called home. I can’t say that we’ll miss this disastrously tiny and ill-equipped kitchen, but we will have fond memories of a few small miracles we were able to pull out of the chaos.

At long last, this Fall, we’ll be back in our own home sweet home and our own kitchen. Sure it’s in serious need of updating — the linoleum floor has divots you could hide a mouse in, the drawer faces have a habit of falling off at inconvenient times, and there’s no dishwasher — but it’s ours, ALL ours, and that’s what counts!

But, because we’re here and because it’s Paper Chef time once again, we had to create just one last bit of chaos before we ramble on, and this time we had a grand bit of help from the annals of Paper Chef history and our bloggy neighbors from Down Under.

This month’s ingredients? Peaches, cherries, something hot & spicy, and a “new herb.” Now, by “new,” our Paper Chef host, Owen (welcome back, Owen!) means something we’ve not tried before. Not an easy command for Chopper to follow, as he’s used just about every herb on the island and then some.

But wait! What about that scrumptious and heady prize we received from Noodle Cook for Paper Chef 13? Aussie herbs and spices, the likes of which we’d never seen before? Perfect!

For this challenge we bent the rules a tiny bit to include spices (though by strict definition, two out of our three selections are ground leaves and should be considered herbs) and chose one for each of Chopper’s dishes. For his Tandoori Style Chicken with Stone Fruit Chutney, Chopper used Mountain Pepper Leaf, for the Chile Rellenos with Stone Fruit Salsa, Lemon Myrtle, and for the Spicy Braised Short Ribs with Dueling Gastriques, Wattle Seed. All three of these spices came from the Oz Tukka “A Taste of Australia” gift pack, part of our wonderful gift from Noodle Cook and his fellow Paper Chef 13 judges.

The gift pack includes five spices (ours has Mountain Pepper Berries and Bush Tomatoes in addition to the three we used for this adventure), and a helpful flyer with spice information on one side and recipes on the other. Not that Chopper used any of those recipes. For him it’s all about sample and invent first, read what others do later.

About the spices:

Mountain Pepper Leaves: This one is the most difficult to describe. It’s a dried leaf, and looks like just about every other ground leaf herb, but the smell and flavor is quite unique. The closest comparison I can make is that it reminds me of a more subtle and slightly lemony version of Israeli Zahtar (a blend of thyme, sumac, and toasted sesame seeds). It’s got a small but noticeable peppery kick to it, which, according to the Oz Tukka write-up reduces with cooking time, so don’t add it too soon. Mountain Pepper Leaf, Oz Tukka says, comes from a small tree that grows in the alpine rainforests of Tasmania.

Lemon Myrtle: The lemon scent of this east coast Australian spice is simply astounding. It’s super-lemony, and not in a cloying way, but in a crisp, fresh way that was absolutely perfect for our cherry and peach salsa. Like the previous spice, our Lemon Myrtle came in the form of dried, ground leaves, and is best added toward the end of a recipe. Uncooked, Oz Tukka says Lemon Myrtle should be left to infuse for a day or two. Unfortunately, we ate all the salsa far too quickly to find out how intense that result would be!

Wattle Seed: The last time Chopper and I were able to spend any time at Pike Place Market, we wandered through World Spice Merchants, inhaling deeply in the direction of every untried spice and blend we could find. And though we found many glorious new things — including the aforementioned Zahtar and a most excellent Kashmiri Curry — nothing came even remotely close to Wattle Seed. Now, if we’d gone to an exotic coffee merchant, on the other hand… Wattle Seed, from the Outback, dried, roasted, and ground, conjures up eccentric nutty coffees, mixed with unsweetened chocolate. It’s a spice that can go sweet or savory, and for our dish, we went both. Savory on the short ribs, and sweet — oh my — the moment of spicy perfection: the chocolate/coffee of Wattle Seed with the sweet cherry gastrique. I don’t think I’ve ever had a cherry cordial near that good.

Chopper Sez: The best part about this entry for me, was that I was able to get all the ingredients I needed for all three recipes (and a soup made from the leftovers, not pictured) for less than $30! I’d also like to give a special shout out to Noodle, for introducing us to the amazing herbs and spices from his corner of the blue marble.

paperchef20

Finally!

For the past three months we’ve had a hankering in the worst way to participate in Barbara’s The Spice is Right over at Tigers and Strawberries, and for the past three months, our cooking schedule (such as it is) has failed us. But not this time! Not when chiles are on the menu and Chopper’s in the kitchen.

This month’s theme, It’s Too Darned Hot, brings to mind a myriad of tongue-burning dishes, but our inspiration comes from the cold waters of the North. Copper River, Alaska, to be exact, and that slab of salmon at the local market that was just too darned good of a deal to pass up.

But what to make with salmon and chiles — especially when the goal is to feature the chiles? Something cold for our hot summer weather, perhaps? Something with an extra chile kick to make cooling off all the better?

Ah, that’s it. Skip the oven altogether and make ceviche.

We had fun with this one, from adding grapefruit to the traditional citrus marinade, to finding just the right serving glass from our ramshackle glass collection, to a bit of kitchen hypothesizing on the origins of ceviche. (Our wild guess: Peruvian fishermen, carrying citrus on their boats to ward off scurvy said, hey, if you squeeze this lemon all over this raw fish and wait a bit, not only will it taste good, but you won’t get sick! Of course, years later, someone figured out the science of that whole acid-cooking thing and now everyone embraces ceviche. Or at least everyone who doesn’t still panic at the sight of seafood that hasn’t touched an oven or a frying pan. Silly people.)

I note in passing that I said “skip the oven” above, and in the recipe below, Chopper refers to rosting chiles under an open flame or a broiler, and we did indeed use the broiler. What I meant to say was “You should skip the oven because your broiler will have a complete meltdown during the chile-roasting process,” but that would be guidelines that only apply to our kitchen. Silly broiler.

And, if you’ve bought big hunk of salmon with skin on like we did, you can dress up your dish with a few fried salmon skin crackers.

Ah, salmon and a chile kick. I think I can survive the summer heat with more meals like this!

So, Independence Day, yet again.

You probably thought we Yanks were done with those pesky Brits back in 1776. Wrong. ‘Round these parts, sovereignty didn’t get settled till almost a hundred years later. We blame the pig.

The roots of our story can be traced back to Article III of the Treaty of 1818: the joint occupation of Oregon Country by the United States and Great Britain. How the treaty signers thought two countries vying for land claims and navigation rights would resolve any boundary issues is anyone’s guess, but nevertheless, the increasingly tumultuous Oregon Country free-for-all continued for 28 years, until, in 1846, the two sides determined they’d had enough. They signed the Oregon Treaty on June 15th, set the border between the US and Canada at the 49th Parallel (excepting lower Vancouver Island), and that was that.

Or so they thought.

Trouble is, the folks signing the treaty were, to put it bluntly, cartographically inept. The border between Canada’s Vancouver Island and the US mainland, they said, should lie down the middle of the “major channel” through the islands. Easy to say if there’s one major channel.

Not so easy if there are two.

And not at all easy if both Yanks and Brits are enjoying the resources of the group of islands that lie in the middle.

And so, while politicians squabbled over maps and over which strait was “major” — Haro to the west or Rosario to the east — settlers arrived from other parts of the continent and soon American “squatters” (as the British preferred to call them), had laid claim to land just a stone’s throw from the sheep runs of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Belle Vue Farm at the southern end of San Juan Island.

And for the most part, the sheep ran along their runs, and the handful of Americans eked out a living on their tiny parcels of land (which the British insisted were most decidedly not theirs), and all was, if not calm, at least not explosively tense.

Until the pig entered the picture.

For sheep will trot right past a farmer’s potato patch, even if there’s nothing much for fencing in their way, but pigs, or more specifically Berkshire boars? They’re born for rooting, and when they sense potatoes, they have at it.

And having at it was just what one particular Hudson’s Bay Company pig was doing in Lyman Cutlar’s potato patch on the morning of June 15th, 1859. And Cutlar had had enough. He grabbed his rifle and shot it.

Charles Griffin, Belle Vue Farm’s manager, was not pleased in the least. He demanded exorbitant compensation. Cutlar, being an obstinate sort, refused. Griffin, being equally obstinate, demanded Cutlar’s arrest. A blink of an eye later, the American settlers on San Juan Island (all 18 of them or so) had armed themselves and were demanding military protection.

In July, the first American soldiers arrived. In August, British war ships. By the end of the summer, the count was Americans: 461, British 2,140, and — most happily for all involved — not a single casualty of war.

Except, of course, for the pig.

This peaceful standoff — so peaceful that troops from both sides celebrated holidays together and held sporting events on the prairie at American Camp — continued for 13 years. In November of 1872, the Royal Marines withdrew from English Camp at the north end of the island, not because they’d been defeated in battle, or even because the Crown had called it quits. No, in fact, the American and British governments did what governments do so well in border disputes such as this: they passed the buck. They turned to Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany and said, excuse me, could you figure this one out for us?

And, after a year of meetings by his three-man commission in Geneva, Kaiser Wilhelm did just that, and ruled in favor of the United States.

These days, the Pig War is serious business. We’ve got our two National Parks, the 4th of July Pig War Barbecue, the Pig War Museum, Encampment, over a dozen books about the subject, and no doubt a good forty other things I’ve forgotten. Truly, there’s a bit of a porcine glut in these parts.

Even so, when it came time to commemorate Independence Day (or rather the San Juan Island version with all its local piggy trappings) we couldn’t resist adding our own culinary homage to the mix. And, because we are (as I mentioned in the intro) only 400 yards from where this all happened, I took said homage on a field trip.

Piggy, the Pig War Scotch Goose Egg,
Takes a Field Trip

Here’s Piggy in the car. Are we there yet, he asks. Of course, I tell him, it’s only a quarter mile drive up the county road!

Piggy arrives at the main trail marker for the American Camp interpretive trail. Silly Piggy, blocking our view of the image on the sign. Oh, wait, here it is.

Piggy poses in front of the Officer’s Quarters. The camp’s commander, Captain George E. Pickett, lived there. Yes, that Pickett.

What, they named a fence after him, too?

Piggy checks out the prairie. According to the sign (stop blocking the signs, Piggy!), Pickett’s horse bolted during one of those joint sporting events and all the British soldiers cheered.

Uh oh. Piggy’s rooting radar is on high alert. What’s that beyond the fence?

It’s a potato! (Careful, there, Piggy.) Piggy’s found a meal on the bluff above Griffin Bay. Have at it, Piggy, the H.M.S. Satellite’s got your back!

Not everyone is so lucky to have their own commemorative rock! Here’s Piggy, checking out the rock named for Henry Martyn Robert, the military engineer who built American Camp’s fortifications. Piggy says behave yourselves, or he’ll go after you with a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order!

Ah, Piggy had a grand time at the park! So grand that now he wants to head up to the north side of the island and check out Garrison Bay and the British fortifications!

No, Piggy, I’m afraid that won’t be on our plate this afternoon, because, well…

You are.

So, because we’re contrary sorts, we’ve got two entries into this month’s Paper Chef and neither of them have anything to do with July 4th.

Oh sure, we had a billion Independence Day ideas: Grit Cakes with Boston Harbor Tea (pre-dumping, of course), Firecracker Popcorn, The Most Frightening Apple Pie Ever, Pine Nut and Coriander Encrusted Corn Dogs, but truthfully, I think the onslaught of holiday tourists to our tiny island was just too much for us to bear, and by midweek we were ready to step out into the middle of Spring Street with a bull horn and direct all traffic off the docks and into the harbor.

In short, we are over the whole 4th of July celebration thing. So very, very over it.

So, for our first entry, we declare ourselves Citizens of the World (or at least of North America), and as such we are celebrating El Grito de Independencia, Mexican Independence Day.

Which is not, some may be surprised to learn, Cinco de Mayo!

El Grito de Independencia (the cry of independence) is a festival that begins on the night of September 16th with a reenactment by Mexico’s current president of the famous Grito de Dolores of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the priest who, in 1810, changed the course of Mexican history with a ring of his village church bell and a cry to his countrymen to rise up against Spanish rule. And though Hildalgo himself was captured and executed in 1811, the fight for independence continued and was eventually won in February of 1821.

Now, Chopper’s the lucky one. He’s been to Mexico, eaten the fabulous food (and no doubt consumed more tequila than he’d care to tell me). Someday soon, he hopes to return and bring me with him and we’ll take the tour, Rick Bayless style.

Meanwhile, for our El Grito de Independencia Paper Chef entry, we’ve got a list of Mexican ingredients a mile long, all worthy of the number 4 spot on our Paper Chef ingredient list, but in the spirit of competition, I’m going to pick the one that makes this Chopper invention unique: Nopales — prickly pear cactus pads.

What I love most about Chopper’s exploration of Mexican cuisine is the closer and closer he gets to the authentic, the further and further he moves from the horrid, cheese-laden Americanized crap we find at so many poor excuses for Mexican restaurants in these parts. Not that he ever cooked horrid, cheese-laden crap, mind you. I think of it more as an ongoing discovery on my part of just how good Mexican food can be. And, I should add, how good it can be for my poor, lactose-intolerant digestion! Swap out the quesa fresca with a little goat cheese and I’m set. Can’t get that sort of goodness at Chevy’s!

(In just a bit, I’ll post our second contribution to this month’s Paper Chef. It is, I promise, quite scholarly and historical in nature and entirely lacking in silly content involving a meal dressed as a pig. Okay, I lied about that last part.)

Paper Chef19

As most of you are aware, it was Mrs D’s and my two year anniversary back on Monday, and both she and I had work-related problems with celebrating on the actual date. We did however get a plethora of great suggestions on what to do with our special day (well, except for the whole maid outfit thing).

I decided that I needed to do something very special on Wednesday to make up for our lack of ability to celebrate on the proper date. First, I knew that I had to get Mrs D to the beach, and second, I absolutely had to cook a knock-her-socks-off meal.

These things came together beautifully when I remembered that we had brought up our propane-fueled camp stove and our wonderfully decked-out picnic basket. Soon the ideas for the food started to emerge. I needed at least three courses, and I knew that Mrs D absolutely adores fish, or more appropriately, anything that lives in and/or breathes water. First I thought about halibut, but then I remembered that we had a gorgeous chunk of salmon brought to us by our good friend, Farhad (long time readers might remember him from our post about the potlatch last year). I found it right where I left it in the freezer.

Then I did some more scouring of the fridge and came up with a half-gallon of home-made brown chicken stock, half a bottle of cheap white wine, a log of herb and roasted garlic compound butter, half a Walla Walla sweet onion, some Roma tomatoes, and the piece de resistance, three perfectly ripe mangoes. Next, it was off to the pantry where I found our customary jasmine rice as well as a small bag of wild rice, a bottle of sherry vinegar (left from our very first post… a paper chef entry), a couple heads of garlic, and one last shallot.

The idea solidified, and while Mrs. D was off at work, I went into action.

I drove out to Wescott Bay Sea Farms and picked up a mixed bag of their world famous mussels and clams. Then I was off to our local market to get the last few things: some organic mixed baby greens, a loaf of artisan bread, one bunch of cilantro, a bunch of scallions, and a small pack of sliced almonds.

And what did I come up with?

A lovely three course dinner served in the picturesque environs of San Juan Island’s South Beach.