1. It's been a while since I've had a full day in the kitchen. Today I did. I agreed to prepare three contributions for this evening's Mother's Day family dinner, helping fulfill the menu requested by Carol.
I started the food preparation on Saturday night when I made Mediterranean Spiced Olives. It was simple. I combined a mixture of drained and rinsed green and kalamata olives in a bowl with olive oil, orange zest (and some fresh orange juice), honey, garlic, thyme, allspice, salt, pepper, and some chopped flat-leaf parsley. I stirred it up, put the olives in a sealed container and the flavors melded overnight and on into today until they were served around 5:00.
I also took a brief detour from family dinner preparations and combined olive oil, fennel seeds, cinnamon, allspice, and garlic in a bowl and rubbed it over a pork roast and put the roast in a ziploc bag to marinate. Later, I added some lemon juice to the bag. I'll cook the roast on Monday.
2. I then prepared two dishes for family dinner.
I began by assembling the ingredients for Olive and Lemon-Studded Chicken.
I had taken out the chicken parts I bought yesterday and let them reach room temperature.
I cut two white onions into slivers and poured them into hot olive oil in a Dutch oven and cooked them for ten minutes. Meanwhile, I cut the chicken thighs and breasts into bite-size pieces and, just to see what would happen, also kept a couple of fat drumsticks on hand.
Once the onions were limp, I added garlic, saffron, cumin, and ginger, and cooked the seasoned onion slivers another couple of minutes.
I added in the chicken pieces along with chicken broth, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a couple of cinnamon sticks, brought it to a boil, and then turned down the heat and simmered this stuff for about a half an hour.
For the last step, I was supposed to add a preserved lemon to the pot. Since I don't have preserved lemons on hand, I asked my crack research team to explore the World Wide Web for a substitute. Luckily, I put my request into the team on Saturday night and discovered that by peeling a lemon, mincing the peel and rind, putting it in a small bowl, and letting it sit overnight, I'd have something akin to a preserved lemon.
So, I added the lemon preserve substitute and a mixture of drained and rinsed green and kalamata olives. I also removed the drumsticks, trimmed the meat off of them so no one at dinner would have to hassle with the bones.
The Olive and Lemon-Studded Chicken simmered for another twenty minutes or so and I turned off the heat as a precaution against overcooking the chicken.
During the simmering, I assembled the ingredients for Byzantine Pilaf.
I chopped a white onion and peeled a handful of carrots and them into about quarter inch pieces.
In a small bowl, I combined allspice, cumin, cardamon, saffron threads, and salt.
In our other Dutch oven, I melted unsalted butter and added olive oil to it. Once it was fairly hot, I poured in the chopped onion and, once the onion was tender, I added the carrots and a few cloves of crushed garlic and cooked it altogether for another five minutes or so.
Now it was time to add the spices, and cook the garlic, carrots, and onions for another minute or so.
I decided to use brown rice for this pilaf and poured the uncooked rice into the pot and cooked it with the carrots, onions, garlic, and spices for about a minute.
I stirred in chicken broth and added dried cherries, brought it all to a boil, covered the Dutch oven, turned down the heat and cooked the rice until it absorbed the liquid.
The (old) brown rice took longer to cook than I planned for -- way longer, in fact -- and so I gathered up the baguette and the three small blocks of cheese I was contributing, along with the olives I prepared Saturday night, and ran them out front to Tracy and Christy. They stopped in front of the house on their way to dinner. I was grateful that, thanks to Christy and Tracy, the stubborn rice didn't keep the rest of the family from getting started on time with the bread/cheese and olives appetizer.
As long as I'm jabbering on and on so much about food prep, I'll add that when I packed up the two Dutch ovens in a Chewy box, I also added the not quite empty chicken broth box. I tasted the rice pilaf before packing it up and thought it was undercooked a bit. Once I arrived at Carol and Paul's, I asked Carol to confirm that the rice was still a little crunchy. She confirmed it was. I fixed it by adding more broth to the pilaf, bringing that liquid to a boil, turning down the heat, and letting the rice absorb it -- and the rice cooperated -- and so, by dinner time, the rice pilaf could no longer be mistaken for Grape Nuts or Captain Crunch.
3. We sat down for dinner. Just before we took our seats, Christy sautéed asparagus stalks. She and Tracy also brought a fresh and beautifully dressed Caesar salad. Before we dug in, Christy read aloud the menu list she'd typed up. It described some of the history and geographical origin of each of the dishes at the table. We'd all had a glass or two of the red wine sangria Paul made to go with the appetizers and now were ready to compliment our meal of lemon-olive chicken, rice pilaf, Caesar salad, and sautéed asparagus with the red or white wine Molly contributed.
Since Monday had been the 50th anniversary of the Sunshine Mine fire and since Molly covered the ceremony for the local newspaper and since Carol and Paul attended the ceremony, conversation turned toward a discussion of May 2, 1972.
Soon, however, the discussion of mining danger got more personal and Paul told about his days working in the Lucky Friday mine and the terrifying incident he experienced when he fortunately escaped being killed by rockfall in a stope he and the miner he was helping were working. The story of Paul's escape segued into the story of the 70 foot fall Paul's dad miraculously survived in the Bunker Hill mine. With some reluctance, upon being asked, I talked a bit about my harrowing near death experience in a roaster at the Zinc Plant.
The discussion that grew out of these stories was as serious as any discussion we've ever had at family dinner. We talked about industry in and near the Silver Valley and the dangers of mining and logging. Those of us who lived here talked about growing up with water, air, and soil pollution and we all made observations about the remarkable transformation of the Kellogg landscape in the decades that followed the closure in 1982-83 of Bunker Hill's smelting plants and mining operations. We even talked a bit about Butte.
I then dreamed all Sunday night about mining and smelting and industrial deaths and survivors. The dreams repeatedly snapped me awake and it was a comfort to be awake with Luna near my head or chest and Copper pressed against my lower legs, reminding me of the contrast between the sweet cats who live in my present and the scenes I was revisiting in my dream visions of the past.
In time, discussion meandered away from hard metals and timber and we sauntered into the living room.
Carol and Christy received Mother's Day gift bags. Christy served us a superb orange pound cake and, as an after dinner drink, Paul poured us a moderate amount of Grand Marnier.
What a Mother's Day! We enjoyed flavorful food, serious and illuminating conversation, and commemorated our family's mothers, honoring mothers in our past and the mothering of children and animals in the present.
Oh! And I witnessed another moment I really enjoyed! Molly cracked open a can of Icicle Brewing's Dark Persuasion, a German Chocolate Cake stout.
I'm always looking for moments when I can demonstrate to the uninitiated that because a beer is dark, that doesn't mean it's strong or more bitter.
So, I asked Molly to share a sip of her beer with Dark Beer Skeptic Christy.
It was like watching Mikey eat Life cereal.
She liked it!
Even though she announced that she would probably have bitter beer face upon tasting it, she didn't!
My mission to advocate for the wide variety of tastes in dark beers made some progress!
I was really happy.
