Pork chops

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, July 24, 2009—

WHAT A DELICIOUS afternoon; what a delicious lunch. Four friends drove up for the afternoon. Lindsey cooked up some fine green beans and sliced the year's first really good tomatoes. She also fixed a batch of one of my favorite things, little potatoes and unpeeled garlic cloves drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and rosemary, and baked in the oven until done.

I got out a mortar and pestle and ground up all the fennel seeds I could find, maybe three or four tablespoons, with salt; then ground in the grated zest of a lemon. I made a paste of it with olive oil and spread it on the pork chops, which were then grilled over charcoal.

Oh: I made a faux-Caesar salad, too: anchovies pounded to paste, olive oil, lemon juice, on torn Romaine. (One guest doesn't eat garlic, which would have brought the salad a little closer to the genuine article.)

Rosé: of Cabernet sauvignon, "TT," and of unspecified grapes, Preston Vineyards, both Dry Creek; also Zinfandel, "Bear & Lion" old vines, Napa Valley, 2006