Laytonville, then Eastside Road, October 16, 2010—
LUNCH IN LAYTONVILLE today, where Meadow grilled some lamb steaks, and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and ingeniously roasted some zucchini in olive oil, and even more ingeniously invented something new, which Henry decided would be called supd, since it was made upside down. (The silent final "D" was my idea, to distinguish it from the more usual meaning of "sup".)
Supd is simply a kind of onion shortcake. Meadow sweated the sliced onions very slowly in butter, until they were nearly caramelized; then spread them in a round griddle-pan with a low rim, and covered them with biscuit dough she'd spread out, pizza-style, and baked the thing to make something between pizza, shortcake, and something else, something quite delicious.
ALL THAT LEFT US not terribly hungry in the evening, so we made do with the usual Saturday night almonds-and-cashews with our Martinis, then some of Nancy Skall's inimitable lima beans cooked in butter, and omelets.
I have some misgivings about the omelets. I made them my usual way, using a technique I learned from that marvelous movie Big Night: you whisk the eggs, then cook them in olive oil instead of butter, using the usual omelet pan and technique. No misgivings there: but Lindsey'd left a few tarragon leaves on the worktable, so I chopped them up and filled the omelets with them and the usual grated Parmesan cheese.
Tarragon is quintessentially French; Parmesan is thoroughly Italian. I don't think the national sensibilities, or the flavors that so uniquely express them, really get along that well together. But it worked, and was interesting; and in a week or so we'll be straddling the border between Haute Savoie and Piemonte, so perhaps it's all for the best.
No comments:
Post a Comment