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photo courtesy of Denise at Chez Us

We had the pleasure of meeting Denise and Laudalino from the website Chez Us at the Kingsford weekend last year. It’s always good to meet another couple who love food. Clearly, these two do.

Last summer, they had the chance to go to Gascony, in France. As they wrote:

“There really is nothing like freshly made Charcuterie and a glass of Floc to make one really appreciate the small things in life.  We first met Dominique Chapolard during a workshop that he teaches at with Kate Hill, French Pig – The Butcher & The Cook.  We instantly hit it off with both Dominique and Kate and knew it was only the beginning of a long friendship.”

Not a bad summer vacation, right?

The Chez Us couple recently launched a video they made about the making of charcuterie at this Gascony farm:

“One early summer morning we were able to work along side the Chapolard family, this is where we were able to capture this amazing video.  Not only does it show the hard work that goes into their amazing charcuterie but also the love and passion that the family has not only for each other but also for what they do.”

We think you’ll like this video. It’s fascinating and beautiful, even if it does show the butchering of meat.

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Making chorizo like this one hanging in the Rover’s charcuterie refrigerator? That take precise skill and months of waiting until you can eat.

But making fresh Mexican chorizo? That flavor awaits you soon. Girli Chef shows you how, here.

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Photo from David Lebovitz
I love David Lebovitz. I always have. I always will.

(Four years ago, he said he was going to marry me. Danny came along. David lives in Paris. We moved on.)

Normally, if you think of David Lebovitz, you think of baked goods. (And hilarious writing.) However, the man has good taste in all foods. I trust him.

So when he wrote this post about his visit to Porchetta, a small restaurant in Manhattan that serves only roast pork? I was salivating, immediately.

Then I read this paragraph:

“When you walk in to Porchetta, there’s not much in the way of fancy decor. Which is fine, because under glass are oversized humps of roast pork resting under the warm lamps and that’s all I want to look at. I was gazing at those bundles of glowing meat like a new parent gazing at his firstborn sleeping soundly in an incubator. This isn’t just pork that’s been cooked forever until soft and meaty—it’s about the crust…oh, the crust! If you have any doubts that God exists, if you take a bite of this pig skin, you may see something resembling a divine presence. (And if I did have a baby, wouldn’t that be some sort of miracle, too…)”

Oh my. We have to go to Porchetta when we go to New York in September. HAVE TO GO.

You will want to go too, when you go on over to David’s post and look at the photographs.

If you are reading this anywhere near New York, will you go to Porchetta and tell us about it? Thanks.

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Our friends got married this weekend. It was days filled with joy, much laughter, and good food.

There were games on the front lawn (an obscure one from Sweden called Kube and ladderball, which was addictive), bicycle rides, walks to the beach, conversations on the porch, and naps. (Oh, naps.) This was a social, voluble crowd. No one ever lacked for something to do.

However, it’s not really a surprise to me and Danny that most people spent the majority of their time in the kitchen. It’s where we all gathered.

The first afternoon we arrived, we found a friend of our friends, talking and laughing while she carved this pork loin she had rubbed with wonderful spices and thrown on the barbecue. We became friends immediately.

(And that loin lasted for days. I found myself nibbling on it over the course of the entire weekend.)

The day before the wedding, a group of friends made a giant brunch for everyone who had arrived by that time. These sausages sure tasted good in the morning.

And later that day, the entire island of the kitchen was covered with dozens of different cheeses, some dips, and salami, mortadella, and prosciutto.

This fueled a lot of dancing that night.

Of course, there was far more food at our friends’ wedding than pork. There were cakes and ice cream and root beer and pitchers of margaritas and French toast and bowls full of fruit, to name a few. We ate well.

But for me, in particular, the presence of the pork loin, the sausages, and the mortadella those days were a comfort. Many of the great foods at the wedding were made from gluten. In a sea of pancakes and crackers, my choices looked slim. With a few exceptions, however, good pork products are always gluten-free. I have something to eat.

So did the rest of us. The center piece of the wedding dinner were juicy grilled pork shoulders.

We have good friends.

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We’re at the ocean, far away from Seattle and the madding crowd. (And in fact, we’re backdating this post and publishing it after we returned. No internet service for three days! What a relief.)

Some dear friends of ours are getting married. Their tw0-year-old daughter, who is our daughter’s best friend since birth, is part of all the festivities. There was no rush on this weddding. Instead, our friends wanted to have days with the people they love, family and friends alike, to gather, play games, and eat great food.

Sign us up, of course.

We’ll tell you more about what we ate — this was a pork crowd — in the next post. But first, we have a recommendation for you.

Our friends chose to have this party at Seabrook, a recently created beach community on the Washington coast. All the cottages have a similar feel: large, spacious, sort of New England/Cape Cod, sort of west coast cool. There’s a large village green where our friends will be married, a bike rental place, and a steep walk down stairs to the expansive beach below. Everything is new, clean, and very inviting. (When we first walked into the house where Q and A are staying, we stopped in our tracks at the kitchen. Huge, lots of light, an island in the middle for gathering. One of their friends was carving a barbecued pork loin as we entered. Nice way to start the vacation.)

Seabrook also has its own little grocery store, community center, and cafe. The Front Street Cafe is a little like a pub, a little like a corner cafe, and a lot like the place you want to be at the beach.

When we walked in for our first meal of the trip, our waitress said it was Happy Hour. No drinks for us but the prices were reasonable. What do you recommend, I asked her.

Oh, definitely the ribs, she said.

Once I found out they were gluten-free as well, I said yes. You don’t have to pull my arm.

The sauce was just thick enough, well spiced (enough for a bit of a kick but not enough to tear off the roof of my mouth), and sufficiently sloppy to make it a rib-eating experience.

This was the start of a beautiful vacation.

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Danny and I feel blessed these days. Blessed, I tell you.

For the past few days, our friends Diane Cu and Todd Porter (who write a website called White on Rice Couple) have been staying with us. They’re here not just because they are friends — a simple visit would still feel like joy to us — but also because they are here to film us.

Yep. They’re filming us.

Diane and Todd are some of the most talented people we’ve ever met. They take beautiful photographs, lead Vietnamese culinary tours of Orange County, make enticing pastries, grow a magnificent garden, and adore each other. (Of all their many talents, that’s probably their most important one.) We were a little in awe of them before we met them last year, at the BlogHer Food convention. They gave a practical, insightful talk about learning the camera and how to take better photographs with it. (The photographs you see on this site are in some part due to that talk.) A couple of months later, we had the chance to hang out with them at the Kingsford University experience. That’s where we became their friends, instead of these fellow bloggers who were a little in awe of them.

We’re really blessed. We adore these two.

It’s not just because they’re so talented. (Check this out if you want to see some of their qualifications.) We adore Diane and Todd because they are mensches. (Don’t know what a mensch is? You should. Look at this.)

These two give of their time and expertise freely. They laugh and expect the best of life. They are kind-hearted and brutally funny. They work together like oil and vinegar, emulsified.

They also really like pork. That’s another reason we’re friends.

So, for the last two days, Diane and Todd have been staying with us, waking up early as the kid, and jumping into the day. They are here to film a promo trailer for our cookbook. (We’ll share it here when it’s ready.) We have been cooking and laughing, following our toddler daughter around the garden, and then doing it again, in multiple takes.

We can’t wait to see this movie.

Yesterday, we wrapped filming. Big hugs all around and celebration. We only had 30 minutes before Danny had to leave for work and when we were going to take Lu to her afternoon pre-school. Lunch?

Diane and Todd moved like a warm wind into the kitchen and shooed us away. They pulled out pans, grated ginger, bashed lemongrass, diced up vegetables, and moved through that space like the experts they are.

They were making us a spring roll feast.

We all sat at the table outside on the porch, under the trees gently swaying in the breeze. We dug in. Diane showed us how to massage the spring roll wrappers under the water until they were pliable. Todd showed us how to pile the cilantro and mint, the basil and sprouts onto the bottom third of the wrapper. Lettuce. Peas. Cucumber. Whatever we wanted. On top, before we moved our fingers (not as nimbly as Diane and Todd) up the wrapper until it was tight, we piled pieces of this seared pork, marinated in ginger and garlic. After a moment of waiting, we took our first bites.

Heaven.

Diane explained that in Vietnam people take whatever is leftover from the day, whatever was available at the market, and roll it up into spring rolls. Since the rolls are mostly filled full of vegetables and herbs, these are wonderfully health. Having a spring roll party like this was communal eating, hands reaching, bumping, grabbing for more, the conversation rolling over each other’s hands and laughter. Our favorite joy.

I wish I could tell you more about what Diane and Todd did to that pork to make it so delicious. We weren’t in the kitchen. They asked us to simply enjoy.

(Michael Ruhlman wrote a moving post about visiting Diane and Todd in their garden in California, where they enjoyed a similar spring roll feast.)

Enjoy we did. Both the company and the food. Give me a spring roll with that marinated pork, handed to me by Diane and Todd, and I’m happy.

Like I said, we’re blessed.

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It doesn’t take much to make big taste.

Some people like to decry bacon as much as some of us love it. You’ll see these photos of glistening slices in big piles on a plate, insinuating that’s how most Americans eat.

Danny and I love our pork, but we’re not really big fans of the Bacon Explosion. I can certainly see why that became such a fad. However, for most days’ eating, that’s not where we’re going.

We love bacon as a flavoring, a condiment, a small touch in a plate full of other good foods. The fat released into the pan lends its brilliant taste to the brown rice, the green beans, the English peas. This is, in truth, a very French technique.

Try it at home.

Bacon, Brown Rice, and Beans (plus peas)

2 slices good, smoky bacon
1 teaspoon canola oil
2 cups shelled English peas
1 cup green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 cups cooked brown rice

Cut the bacon into 1-inch slices. Set a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Pour the canola oil into the pan. When the oil is hot, add the bacon slices. (The canola helps to coax the bacon fat out and start the process more quickly.) When the bacon has crisped and the fat has been rendered, remove the bacon and set aside.

Toss the English peas and green beans into the bacon fat. Cook, stirring, until they are both hot. Toss in the brown rice and cook until it is hot. Add the bacon slices and serve.

Serves 4

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I don’t get into the city by myself very often. There is laundry to do, a kid to tickle, a bedtime that must be kept to or a sleepless night ensues, and always more work to do. Time in the city by myself seems like a faint memory at times.

On Tuesday, however, I found myself near Pike Place Market, looking up at a warm blue sky, wondering what to eat.

My friend Molly and I were about to teach a writing class at Cornish College of the Arts, as part of their Food as Art summer seminar. I love Molly and talking about writing and meeting new people, so I was jazzed.

However, the class began at 5:30 and lasted until 8:30. As I stood on Western Avenue, in front of World Spice, it was 4:30 pm. I had one hour to eat, reach the school, look over the readings one more time, and see if I had anything to say.

It had to be good food. And it had to be fast.

Luckily, El Puerco Lloron is just down a set of stairs from World Spice. I ran.

If you’ve never been to El Puerco Lloron, you should start running too. This Mexican cantina-style restaurant has been making carnitas and homemade corn tortillas on the spot for over 20 years now. The room is light and the window overlooks Elliott Bay and the ships coming in. The entire place is filled with colorful, slightly cheesy decorations.  Yes, the green, white, and red pinatas might seem tacky, but the food never is. Everything tastes authentic. Especially the carnitas.

The pull-apart pork is tender to the fork, with a bit of crisp fat and mostly meat ready to be shredded and savored. It’s seasoned well — not too much heat but not at all bland. It’s warm and comforting and always, always good.

One carnitas to go, please.

I hate eating in my car. I really do. I hate the rush, the spilling of rice and sauce on my shirt, the way I’ll find bits of food on the floor later that week when I vacuum the car. I can’t stretch out my legs. I find it impossible to sit back and slow down. (Of course, I don’t drive and eat. I’m talking about parked eating. The people who eat while driving astound me even more.)

These carnitas, however? I savored them. I parked near a green space on Denny and turned on some music, loud. I was alone in the city, going somewhere fun, without a kid in the back seat. I dug in.

El Puerco Lloron

1501 Western Ave

Seattle, WA 98101

(206) 624-0541

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photo courtesy of MoMA store

This is the lid for a cooking pot.

According to the MoMA store:

“Made of soft silicone with a pig face in the center, this multipurpose lid can be placed directly over ingredients in a pot to help them cook evenly, releasing steam through the pig’s snout.”

Oh, you know you want one.

We sure do.

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