Fish and salad down the hill

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, May 10, 2009—

I'M JUST GUESSING, since we weren't watching: I think T. simply cooked up some plum tomatoes with finely chopped onion, celery, black olives, and maybe one other aromatic vegetable — a little parsley? — and then shallow-poached the halibut in it. With it, Corona beans, cooked with a little sage and onions, of course. The green salad afterward came from our garden: lettuce, arugula, mâche, and a sprinkling of summer savory leaves.

White wine, "Madame Preston" ; Viognier; both from Louis Preston vineyards

A very smooth continuity of tastes and aromas, stitched together by Preston's extraordinary California Rhone-type wines.