Saturday, September 17, 2011

Samedi soir

Eastside Road, September 17, 2011—
WELL, NOT ONLY Saturday evening; all day Saturday. An exceptional day, meal-wise. First, of course, breakfast: two caffelattes, one piece of toast with honey. One of these days I'll write about honey, and how I loathed it for so many years, and then suddenly had my Saul-of-Tarsus moment, and came to Believe. But not just now.

oysters.jpg
Then, my share of a half-dozen Miyagi oysters on the half-shell with a glass of rosé. We'd met a friend in Healdsburg, brought him home for a pot of tea, and I'd taken him back into town; this was his way of saying So long, nice to spend a couple of hours. What a civil fellow, and how intelligent; how I like hearing him talk about looking at photographs and paintings — but that's another subject for another blogosphere.

Willi's Seafood & Raw Bar, 403 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg; 707.433.9191dave.jpg

Home for an ear of corn from this morning's market, and an afternoon at the desk. Then dinner: the routine farm-market Saturday evening. Line-caught salmon from Dave the fish guy, and here is, modestly turning away from the camera; and lima beans from Nancy Skall, because her beans are simply the best.

Tonight Lindsey chopped shallots onto the grilled salmon, giving it a subtly but completely different personality. I know we could live without shallots, but they're always there in the onion basket. They last for weeks, and now and then we get the urge; I chop them into a salad dressing in place of the usual garlic; or they go into a marchand de vinsauce for the now-and-then steak; or they answer some other urgent whim, as they did today. They transform anything they deal with.

The beans were cooked in a bit of butter, which makes virtually anything better, as the old tongue-twister has it.
Viura, Marques de Montañana, NV (soft, a little bland: this webpage describes it pretty well)

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