June dinners

We have been eating. Above, a favourite, Roger Verge's aromatic chicken. As usual I cannot leave well enough alone so I roast this rather than braise it. But I am loyal to his overlapping slices of lemon and tomato on top of the chicken pieces, and to the use of carrot in the vegetables that surround them. Then I use onion, shallot,  garlic and fennel.  The lemon, tomato and carrot are key, after that do as you like. Roast with a quarter inch water for about an hour, hot.

Ha! I am so happy about this..Whatssss under the pot? A porterhouse steak. A thick porterhouse steak. I hate to touch the oven in warm weather. So, fire. But how to capture the heat? I usually cook these big steaks in cast iron in the oven at about 500'F for 8 or so minutes, after searing in a red hot pan. On the braai, Le Creuset came to the rescue,  upturned over the meat. Worked perfectly. I need never use the oven again. The meat was very good, from Los Paisanos, so that didn't hurt, either.

After it had rested and made lots of good juice I sliced it from the bone, sliced it again into thick chunks, and we ate it with fire-warm garlic bread (roof garlic, paper thin and tucked into between almost-cut-through bread slices with butter,salt and chives), and our day lily salad. Post Stones Shiraz.

On a hotter night when we hid in the airconditioning, cold meat, cheese, bread. See me slumming it with a mojtio.

I made a marinade after craving the sweet heat of ancho peppers. Roasted tomatoes, onion and garlic till just charred, whizzed them in a blender with the softened chiles and some seeds for spice, added orange juice, a handful of raisins for luck and bathed some baby back ribs in this delicious sauce before roasting them on bed of bayberry (origin, Battery Park). No pictures. Ate too fast.

Last night, a treat. We were a bit hungry after the kick off to the Eat Drink Local Week hosted by Edible as we'd arrived fashionably late (my fault) and the punctual and hungry attendees had eaten everything. Moral of the story, if it's a New York food party, arrive first. There are no rail thin models here drinking champagne and sucking on cigarettes; these people eat. Everything. So we hoofed it to nearby-ish Prune and waited a mere ten minutes before tucking into some roasted marrow bones and fried white bait. Wow, on the same menu. I love both.

Coming up, things with apricots, strawberries, berries in general. Soon it will be time for It. Red currants are ripening, somewhere. I look forward to finding more milkweed flowers. Green leaves in adundance, with bits of slow cooked pig flecked about.

Never write while hungry.