Varmint

Well, since you have the kids, your choices are limited. Trust me, I know! Right by your hotel is Lucky 32, which is a very small chain. It's nothing exciting, but it's very kid friendly. However, I know you want more adventurous than that. So, let's get you some good Southern cooking. The restaurant at the NC Farmers Market is only 15 minutes from your hotel. It's a classic meat n' 3 place where the food is decent, but not outstanding. However, it's a fun place for a lunch or breakfast. I think you should drive into Raleigh and eat at Enoteca Vin for an early dinner. It's top notch food, you'll miss the crowds, and my friends with really young kids have told me many times that they put up with the youngsters. Hopefully, Zeb A will come on board with some more kid-friendly ideas, as he's the man in that regard. By the way, Allen & Son will probably be a half hour drive from your hotel.

Rich, if you're in Cary, you're pretty much right in the middle of lots of options. If you must have barbecue, I'd suggest getting in the car for a 15-20 drive to Allen & Son in Chapel Hill. I can get you directions from where you'll be staying if you PM or email me. I think you'll need to give us a bit more guidance regarding what you might want before we can truly help you with other items.

When I say they're my neighbors, it's not like they live next door or even on the same block. They live 3 blocks away, but I walk by their house many mornings when I'm taking my so-called "power" walk.

We're not warm enough for citrus fruit. And I've never seen an avacado tree (or any local fruit) around here.

Peaches grow quite readily in this part of North Carolina, so I'm not concerned about the climate.

Fortunately, our home-town college, NC State University, has a great extension office and has lots of good information on its website. There's a bunch of articles on fruit trees for the home grower, including several on peaches alone! I may have to go just with a peach tree, as it's self-pollinating. But I may also have to plant some raspberry bushes along my driveway. Lots of fun chores for the L'il Varmints.

I've always wanted fruit trees, and dammit, I'm going to have fruit trees! I'll search around the nurseries this fall and see what's available. Fig trees are easy. Peach trees are not. Maybe I'll do a pear tree, too.

Although this is a gardening question, it's all related to food -- in this case, peaches. I have several neighbors who have peach trees in their yards, and this time of year, I just want to start picking the fruit off and carrying the peaches home. However, I don't know these neighbors, so I walk by their houses and mope. I want to grow my own peach trees, but I've never planted anything in my life that's survived, let alone a peach tree. So, I need some guidance. Who can help me????

I have a dinner party challenge for you, V. What do you (rather, I)cook for three chef friends on their night off? Don't try to impress them with the spectacular, as that's not possible. Simple, summery, and flavorful is what's needed. Creativity not necessary. That's my personal challenge in 11 days.

One of the problems with a crowd of this size is that there will always be folks who don't like seafood or red meat or shellfish or blue cheese. There are even people who don't like chocolate. However, I cannot worry about idiosyncracies of every guest. On the whole, the people raved about the meal. I enjoy doing this -- a lot. I could do this much more frequently than once a year, but I don't have the budget to do so! Being able to rent dishes, chairs and tables gives me the ability to feed 29 fairly easily. Plus, by getting the guests involved in the preparation, plating, and serving, we can get a lot of food out in a fairly short amount of time. And don't worry, I try to have a decent dinner party at least once a month. Heck, I'm cooking for some chef friends in a couple of weeks!

The meal was a great success. I ended up doing the Sicilian-spiced shrimp, which was a big hit. The fregula and clams was fantastic. I made a light, summery tomato soup as the base (using only local heirlooms), added the clams and fregula, and finished with basil and EVOO. Very simple, very clean, very fresh. The salad was very good: fennel, arugula, mint, oranges and a meyer lemon dressing with local goat cheese crumbled on top. The salmon was excellent and a very pretty dish. I served it with the sangiovese risotto, an amazing chicken stock reduction and grilled asparagus. The beef tenderloin actually had some flavor, and the gorgonzola butter added a bit of oomph to it. I ended up serving it with tons of zucchini from my next-door neighbor's garden, which I quicly sauteed with pancetta. The crema was very rich, very decadent, and very popular. I served it with an espresso-walnut lace cookie that I made earlier in the day. Thanks for everyone's help. Until next year . . . .

I nominate this discussion to be the most anal-retentive thread in eGullet's history. And seeing this is eGullet, that's a good thing. I will wait until the experimentation is over and then make the final product. I LOVE orange muffins.

So, when can I get into Z Kitchen?

No insult taken. If I were doing the dinner for my food-loving friends, I could be much more adventurous. But as I said above, I do have to dumb down the menu quite a bit. Moreover, a lot of the dishes have to be the type that are cooked in fairly short order. Anyhow, the duck prosciutto salad is pretty much out. As for the fish, well, I've found a cooking technique that works particularly well for salmon, and it's plentiful and reasonably priced right now. And yes, lamb would be lighter and better, but this crowd wants at least one beef course. As far as the fregola with clams is concerned, it will have tomatoes, but I'm just lightening it up a bit. Not at all the classic dish, but a more summery version. Too American? Guilty as charged, but I don't have that much room for authenticity. Plus, we Americans are prone to bastardize classic dishes, eh?

Thanks for all the great suggestions, Bard. And to think this was your first eGullet post -- well, I'm flattered. I'm gravitating towards a simpler, citrus-based salad. Shaving parmesan reggiano on the salad is always a nice touch -- folks at this dinner do care as much (if not more) about presentation as taste.

Yes, at Whole Foods. If they don't have that, I'll braise some other green. That meat course is not intended to be light.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew someone would catch that, but I've seen salmon on lots of Italian menus! As far as the salad is concerned, I may do the fennel but "water it down" a bit with romaine. Could be interesting.

I had planned on doing a quick grilling of the shrimp, and I LOVE the first Sicilian suggestion. Consider it done. Yes, I'll be grilling the tenderloins. We have a fairly new butcher in the area, and I'm paying way too much money for flavorless beef, but it's what the people want. They're truly prime cuts, dry aged for only 14 days (tenderloins don't need a ton of dry aging). The portions for this dish will be small. Right now, I'm not entirely sure the figs will be ready next week, so the salad may have to be changed completely. One thing to remember is that when you have 30 people, you have to dumb down the flavors a bit. Only about a third of the guests would be considered to have a passion for assertive flavors, so I have to be careful with fennel, onion and olives. Sounds like a great salad to me, but I'm quite confident that I'd get a bunch of plates returned that had barely been touched.

I've been doing this for so many years, it's hard to come up with different menus. However, this is my preliminary menu for an interactive dinner party for my office. This is an event that is primarily for our summer clerks, but we have lots of lawyers and their spouses here, too. EVERYONE must get involved in the cooking or plating of at least one of the dishes. It's this sense of teamwork that makes this a lot more fun than your traditional dinner party. Oh, there will be 30 people crammed into our house for this event -- Yikes. I've liberally stolen ideas from Charlie Trotter, Mario Batali and others. I'd like some comments and suggestions about this menu. I think I may have to re-do the salad, as I don't have a local source for duck prosciutto (and I don't want regular prosciutto). Help me come up with an Italian-ish salad that I can do instead. Let me know if you can think of any other things I'm missing. Oh, and if my Italian is off, I don't care! Antipasti Grilled Pesto Shrimp Rosemary Foccacia 2003 Campi Flegrei Falanghina (Campania) 2004 Campi Flegrei Piedirosso Per e Palummo (Campania) Minestre Fregola and Clams in Tomato Broth 2002 Pira Dolcetto Fornaci (Piemonte) Insalata Mixed Green Salad with Duck Prosciutto, Roasted Fig and Balsamico Dressing 2004 Anselmi San Vincenzo (Veneto) Pesce Slow-Roasted, Thyme-Infused Wild Salmon with a Sangiovese & Mushroom Risotto 2001 Torre Sangiovese di Romagna Riserva (Emilia-Romagna) Carne Tenderloin of Beef with Gorgonzola Butter, Sauteed Rapini & Pancetta 1999 Bolsignano Brunello di Montalcino (Toscana) Dolce Chocolate and Valpolicella Crema NV Botter Prosecco (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia)

I went downtown today to check it out, and as soon as I arrived, I got a call from our nanny needing my immediate help (she had a flat tire). So, I didn't make it today. Anyone have a report for us??

I need a good source for duck prosciutto. Any advice?

There's an old joke frequently told by the students at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (which is 8 miles from Duke): Chapel Hill is frequently referred to as "The Southern Part of Heaven." Duke is frequently called "The Southern Part of Jersey." I'll try -- really, I will -- to keep the UNC-Duke jokes to a minimum. And if I fail, I'll at least make them food-related.

The concept of a high-end eating establishment in a student apartment is brilliant. And having it at Duke, where the students have, ahem, a bit of discretionary income, could be an ideal combination. Hell, I'll give it it try! I also love the fact that this is the second blog in a row from a resident of the Triangle (OK, so Bryan won't be in NC during this time, but he lives here most of the year when he isn't traveling around the world).

Heh, heh, heh . . . I love having Phlawless over for dinner. Let me tell you one thing: there's nothing better than having friends who REALLY know how to cook. I'm a pretty decent home cook, but Ph. knows how to take things to a completely different level. I just might have to be one of her financial backers should she ever go back into "da bizness" again. Here's a photo of my ingredients I purchased today. Extreme close up of the four different types of beans/peas that went into the succotash. Bandregg made this awesome caponata that primarily came from his garden. Mmm, eggplant! Appetizer of lump crabmeat and country ham saute with fried sunburst squash and trout roe. The crabmeat was sauteed with butter, garlic, onion, and lavender. It needed a splash of lemon, which really helped bring out the flavors. Here's the dinner plate of uber-slow roasted pork shoulder (rubbed with awesome spices), summer squash gratin, the succotash, and a watermelon, tomato, cucumber and pheta salad (yes, pheta, not feta, as it's locally produced cheese). That's me in the orange shirt -- and you can see how fast Ph. is moving! Bandregg thinking about how good the Barolo he brought is. Ph plating her dessert. And now the dessert. Oh My Gawd!! This is one of the most creative desserts ever. First, she made silver queen corn ice cream. That's not something you see every day. Then, she made caramel corn to go on it -- that's cool, eh? Throwing in caramel and blueberries was a fairly logical step. But then the blondies. Yeah, one would think that blondies make sense. And peanut butter blondies at that. But BACON peanut butter blondies??? That's just fucked up. And damn, was it ever awesome! The salty, nutty flavor of the blondies, combined with the richness of the ice cream, the acidity of the blueberrys, and the sweetness of the caramel -- well, hot damn! And then, the caramel corn added a textural element that was just over the top. So, can one person out there ever say they had this dessert before? If you do, you're a damn liar! Phlawless rocks, and dat's da truth!

I've heard several women comment on Chuck's looks (particularly his eyes), so you're not alone in that regard! And M is very, very cute! I've got summer squash salting, peas/beans cooked with local onion and bay leaf (picked from a neighbor's tree). I just got some lavender from my mother-in-law's garden -- I'll try it with the crab. Mrs. Varmint has been building a tree house today, so I've got to get the house cleaned up for the guests!