Jim Dixon

As a native Oregonian I'm of course an expert on the local wines. Here's what I kow: They cost too damn much. Or at least the pinots that get so much attention do. I drink a lot more Italian, Spanish, French, and even Caliifornian red wine than I do Oregon, something that rankles my deeply ingrained Beaver State chauvinism. But I'm also cheap. A few local non-pinot noirs that I like include Andrew Rich's Tabula Rasa Chenin Blanc (which has some Yakima grapes in it, too...he also makes a killer Gewurztraminer ice wine) and Chehalem's Pinot Gris (a sommelier friend told me many years ago that pinot gris would be Oregon's best white wine grape, and it's becoming true). Jim

I got to hang out with Steven, Ellen, and Rollie for a day at Argyle. One of my favorite things about Rollie is that he's got this Texas accent and demeanor in an area overrun with pretentious wine snobs, and while he's describing some aspect of his wine-making he'll say, "It's cooler than shit." Jim

Here, at last, is the ham report... first, a couple of before photos (and pardon the low res of my old camera) here's the ham just unwrapped: and in the bread pan holder: Despite all of your great advice, I just went ahead and cut into the damn thing. It was hard as a rock but I was able to get nice thin slices off with a freshly honed chef's knife. It's definitely saltier than prosciutto, but in small quantities not disagreeably so. Our four grown boys stood around the cutting block in the kitchen and ate the slices as they came off. We agreed that it's sort of like pork jerky. Here's what it looks like after a few day's damage: You can see that I wasn't able to get nice flat slices because of the bone. I tried boiling a few slices to get some of the salt out, and they also absorbed a little moisture, pinked up, and looked more like ham-as-we know-it. But it lost a little flavor, too. Rather than eat it plain, we've been adding it fritattas, soup (I made a sort of ribolitta and a roasted root vegetable puree, and it's a nice addition to both), and anything else that seems like it benefit from salty ham flavor. The verdict: for prosciutto-like ham, stick with prosciutto. Malarkey...on this I'll take my cue from the Italians. We stayed at an agriturismo in Friuli and the owner kept his prosciutti (and he made them himself) sitting out from the day he cut into one until the bone was ready for the soup pot. Besides, the thing won't fit in the 'fridge. Jim

mmm, donuts... I've always been a big fan of this combination of American foods' holy trinity: white flour, white sugar, and animal fat (sadly nowadays most donuts are fried in some kind of industrial vegetable shortening). One of my favorite spots is Joe's Donuts in Sandy, Oregon, conveniently located on the highway so you can stop on the way to Mt Hood. Just this Saturday I picked up an enormous apple fritter (and a simple unglazed buttermilk bar...for me, that's constraint) and ate half on the way to slopes. I love the cold leftover waiting for me when I climb back into the car, tired and hungry from skiing. Even better, we got our tree this year at a small farm just outside of Tualatin (Lee's, on the road that goes past Meridian Park hospital). We went not because the trees were anything special, but because Michael at Ripe told me they have a donut machine and make fresh apple cider donuts. He said they're the best he's had since New England, and while I can't make the same comparison, they were good. Smallish, but only 50 cents each (or 5 for $2...I got 10), sprinkled with plain sugar, and best eaten hot. very Homeresque. Jim ps...rumor has it that Ripe will soon appear in the NYT. I wrote about them in the WW Restaurant Guide, and the story is here.

I unwrapped the ham and it looks great (I took a couple of photos and will post them later...they're at home and I'm at work). Minimal mold even after 2 yrs. Gave the ham a quick scrubbing and left it out to dry a bit. The Pepin book showed him using a bread pan to hold his ham vertical, so I dug out an old loaf pan (one of the those square ones that came with a lid for making little finger sandwich bread) and the ham fits nicely. Haven't actually cut into it yet. One of my boys wanted to be around when I started, then he left, and then there was a party to cook something for, then cleaning the house, and.... So maybe tonight or tomorrow I'll start cutting. Right now the ham is in the pan with the hoof end pointing up, and it looks like the prosciutti I remember seeing in Italy. Any opinions about right-side-upness? Jim

Suvir, How long depends on how fresh the beans are...older beans take longer. I usually check them after an hour or two, adda little water if they seem low, and check again every so often until they're done. Sometimes it only takes a couple of hours, sometimes a lot longer. If you blow on the beans in the spoon and the skins start to peel back, they're done. I like small white beans a lot (they are similar to zolfini beans, a hard-to-find tuscan white bean), but also cook borlotti (aka cranberry) beans and even pinto beans like this. But I also use canned...just yesterday I made a sort of minestone with mostly vegetables and a couple of cans of white beans. I still prefer the dried beans for eating plain. Jim ps...haven't gotten back to making any marmalade yet

I'll use canned beans if they're part of some larger dish, but I really like just plain beans, and cooking dry beans is the only way for that. You also get the bonus of what my old friend Jerry used to call bean juice. (Jerry, aka Gerardo, was the son of migrant workers. We worked together for the Forest Service and kept a crock pot of pinto beans going round the clock. He turned me on to the great flavor of just beans, bean juice, and salt.) I've posted before about my no-soak oven method....put beans, about 4 times as much water, salt, and any flavoring agents into a baking vessel of some kind (I use a pyrex dish covered with foil)...cook in 200 degree F oven until done (you start to smell them cooking before they're done). Jim

Marco is usually there, but if he's not the staff can probably get the book...it's usually behind the bar someplace. If you get a bite I highly recommend the grilled calamari with lentils. Jim

Trillium, I was talking to Marco (from Bastas) just the other day, and he told he had just bought some wormwood at the Chinese pharmacy for an amaro. He makes a lot of infused alcohols, and he has an Italian book with recipes that he's willing to share...Bastas has a nice happy hour, so you can go in for drink and bite and copy a few. I had some Nonino amaro when we were in NYC last spring and was able to find a couple of bottles in Brooklyn just before we came home (for you non-Oregonians, we live in a state with incredibly strict liquor laws, and it's hard to find any spirits that aren't mainstream). Where do you get the Lucano? We like Averno okay, but it's no match for the Nonino. It does make a very nice warm weather aperitif with soda (or fizzy mineral water) over ice. Jim

Just last week I ate the last of my 'summer' tomato crop, a few golfball-sized green zebras and early girls (not exactly an heirloom variety, but dependable and tasty). I had pulled the plants in late October and put all the little green tomatoes into a big enameled pot. As they ripened, we'd pull them out and slice them, sprinkle on olive oil and salt, and think about the warm weather that won't be back for many months. Here in Portland we have moderate winters, and I've got cavolo nero (lacinato kale, black cabbage to the Italians), arugula, a few beets left in the ground (the roots get sweeter and you can keep clipping greens until it freezes), cardoon (and artichokes, but they won't produce anything until spring), and a few hardy herbs still growing. I planted shallots and garlic last month, and they'll grow all winter, too. Jim

Okay, here's my plan... I unwrap and scrub the ham to remove the mold, etc. I figure I might as well go ahead and soak it for a couple of days, too. I improvise a rack (Pepin suggested a loaf pan or pate tray...both long and narrow..or jamming the ham into a dawer to keep it upright), trim away some of the rind and fat (and keep it), and take a few slices off. (I can't remember the Italian, but they use an expression that means 'playing the violin' to describe slicing a prosciutto) So if, at this point, we decide it's much more salty than prosciutto, should I go back to the boiling? So much hand-wringing over something that country folk have been eating for centuries. Jim

I was looking through Pepin's Essentials at the bookstore today and, in the header for his recipe for making your own salt-cured ham (!), he casually tosses off a remark to the effect that Smithfield and other cured American hams can be eaten like prosciutto...that is, without any additional cooking. Anybody done this? Do the American ham curers use a lot more salt than the ham makers across the Atlantic? Sure seems a lot simpler than all that soaking and boiling. Jim

Trillium hit it right on...I'd add that I get much better results with grain alcohol than vodka, but if you use go with the 100 proof since it's more neutral flavored. I plan to make the rest of my nocino base into a more tuscan version...just dilute the alcohol with sugar syrup and no other flavors. Marco at Basta's makes a lot of these infused alcohols, and he says about 40 proof is right for traditional nocino, but I like it stronger. I took a bottle of my Sicilian nocino to the olive oil dinner and everybody liked it...but they'd been drinking wine for a couple of hours by then. Jim

Thanks for good advice...I think I have the Beard book (he's a homie after all), but if I don't, my mother will. It looks like I'd better get started this week if I want to eat ham on Christmas. Jim

I'v had a Smithfield ham hanging in my basement for the past 2 years, and decided it was time to cook it. (I bought it in Florida over Thanksgiving 2000...I had read an article by the Sterns about country hams in the airline mag on the flight down from Portland, and when I walked into Publix to buy supplies for the turkey, there was the big Smithfield display. I brought it home in my suitcase and it's been hangin ever since.) I know about the scrubbing, the soaking, and the boiling before baking, but also remember reading an account of a long, slow baking proces instead of the boiling phase. Anybody got any ideas? Jim

I get most of my Meyer lemons from a friend in San Francisco. She has a tree in her yard, and it seems like we get boxes of fruit starting in the fall through December. You can also buy great Meyer lemons from Snow's Citrus Court (and really wonderful satsuma mandarins). They're more fragile than other citrus so require more careful handling. It's only been in the past few years that I've seen them for sale here in Portland. But they seem to keep quite well in the refrigerator. Jim ps...Suvir...email for recipe coming

I have an abundance of Meyer lemons right now, and decided to try making marmalade. I found a recipe in How to Be Domestic Goddess (my wife tells me I already know how, except when it comes to cleaning) for grapefruit marmalade, and figured it would work for lemons, too. It calls for cooking the whole fruit in water until they're tender (about an hour for lemons). I let them cool a bit, sliced off the stem end, split into quarters (and the central pithy part with most of the seeds lifts out fairly easily), then sliced thinly. Starting with 7 smallish lemons, I ended up with about 1 1/2 cups of peel and pulp. I added a cup of sugar and cooked again. Nigella says to cook until the sugar "reaches the setting point (about 15 minutes)." I appreciate that kind of direction, but forgot that most jams set up a bit as they cool, so overcooked this test batch just a bit. Still, even though the results are just a bit too stiff to spread easily, it tastes great. I'll be making more this weekend. Jim

I finally finished making a batch of nocino this week. I had started back in the late spring of 2001 when, at the direction of a friend from Tuscany who's at grad school here, I picked a couple dozen hard green walnuts off the tree in our yard. I split these into quarters with a small hatchet, packed them in a one gallon glass jar, and covered with a half-gallon of grain alcohol. This sat in my garden (it needs to be the sun) all summer, then in October, just before we left for Italy, I strained it out and added a small amount of sugar syrup that just happened to be at hand. It looked like used motor oil, but I stuck it in the basement and sort of forgot about it. This summer I met Anna Tasca Lanza during a book tour (her family owns Regaleali Winery in Sicily, and she's written a couple of cookbooks). Her book had a recipe for nocino that included clove, cinammon, and lemon, so I decided to incorporate those flavors. It just took 6 months to get around to it. I heated some water and added a few cloves, 2 sticks of cinammon, and a Meyer lemon, halved and squeezed, peel and all. I let this steep for an hour, strained, and added sugar to make a simple syrup. I blended this 50:50 with the nocino base, and since, it already had a little syrup, it probably ended up at about 60 proof. It doesn't have quite the alcoholic bite as the limoncello I make, which is 85 proof. But it does taste good. I only used half of the base, so I may make the more traditional Tuscan version that renato told me his father makes...it's just walnuts, alcohol, and syrup. Since this is the time for good citrus, it's also a good time to start more limoncello. I think my recipe is on this board somewhere. Jim

Mine Cuisinart is like Rachel's..the #14, and when I got it about 6 years ago to replace my orginal, it came with a simple lid without the feed-tube...just a hole in the top (with a little cap) so you can add liquids. I think that the second lid was the best thing they ever did... I've always assumed that they all come with it, but maybe I'm wrong. I use it a lot, but mostly with the basic steel blade..not so often with cutting or grating discs. It can be a pain when liquids slop out the top (avoid processing anything hot!), and I don't like cleaning the thing. Even though the work bowl is supposed to dishwasher safe, I've seen the lexan get warped enough that it no longer fit on the base. Jim

I think I read this in Sunday's NYT book section as a quote from the Zuni cookbook, but it was something along the lines of... if you cook the same thing three times in one week, you'll learn more about cooking...(and I can't remember the rest of the comparison) For somebody like 201 who wants to learn to cook better, I think this is the best advice. Pick something, and maybe something not too difficult, that looks good and make over and over. A roasted chicken might be a good start. DO the first one plain, the next time try stuffing some herbs under the skin, maybe brine another one, and play around with temperature and breast up vs breast down. After a few chickens, you'll know how to roast one. It applies to both techniques and ingredients. I know that when something I haven't cooked much appeals to me, I'll cook it over and over in different ways until I figure out how it responds and which method I like best. Jim

We're doing a new olive oil dinnner this Sunday (details on Pac NW board), and one of the courses will be pecorino with honey and olive oil. Cathy Whims (chef/owner of Genoa) said she'd heard about it, so we've been experimenting. Last night I mixed some local clover honey with the new oil (from Umbria) about 3 parts honey to 1 oil. It takes a bit of mixing to get a crude emulsion. Then I drizzled it over some manchego (just happened to have it) and some young pecorino Sardo. I've eaten plain honey with pecorino before, and it's good, but I like this even more. The olive oil cuts the sweetness just enough and, especially with this assertively flavored oil, adds another element. Jim

Wasn't there a news item in the last few weeks about about the increase in childhood illness somehow being related to our obsession with cleaning? It was something about the exposure to everyday bacteria building more antibodies. I rarely do anything to the sponges, and have even been known to wipe something off the floor, then go back to doing the dishes. To me, this is in the same category as not using somebody else's soap because it might be dirty. Jim

hence the ketchup Jim

Steve....I grew up in Roseburg, Oregon, where my only contact with anything Jewish was reading Exodus. At age 15 we moved to the more cosmopolitan Eugene, where I fell in with a few Jewish kids who's parents were at the U of O. But I was in my mid-20s and living in metropolitan Portland before I attended a seder or actually saw a menorah. So being a self-described 'country goy' is my attempt at relating my own naivete about all things Jewish. My stepsons are Jewish by birth (their greatgrandfather was a Russian cantor, their grandfather a well-known radical and member of the ACP, their father a red-diaper baby who spent part of his childhood in Moscow) and provide me with a glimpse into their cultural experiences. Matthew...I've been trying to come up with a good line to rhyme with "latkes on the griddle." Cakewalk...no offense taken. Reagan may have set social policy in America back a few decades, but I think he had something with that "ketchup is a vegetable" idea. One night we were eating burgers at Higgins (one of the best burgers anywhere) with the chef of Portland's best Italian restaurants. It might've been the beer talking, but she suddenly blurted out, "I love ketchup." I couoldn't agree more. Jim

Ketchup has a long and honorable culinary history, and while it can certainly be abused, let's not blame the shortcomings on the condiment. As I've said many times before, I'm just a country goy. My adaptions of the traditional latke came from a search for a quick fried potato breakfast dish, a sort of hash brown-home fry substitute. For me, ketchup is the perfect accompaniment, especially if you don't have any gravy. Jim ps...Matthew...you're right again about the spice level for the Tex-Mex latkes. My own kids often complain about that the things they make from my recipes don't taste quite the same, and that's one reason why I developed my recipe disclaimer...but I see that it needs its own disclaimer...ignore the part about adding salt only at the end (and I'll try to fix that error soon). That's one thing that makes cooking so interesting...you never really stop learning.