use real butter

Recipe: feta artichoke sandwich

I’m going next door… to Utah. It’s just a quick trip for the Evo Conference taking place in Park City. I’ll be teaching a photography workshop with a panel of supah fine laydeez including the funniest one of all. Additionally, I’ll be shooting Todd and Diane in action during their photography workshop at the conference. I guarantee they will have some good beta to share – which is why it’s so awesome that they’re teaching Food and Light with me and Matt Wright in Boulder this summer! Solid.

utah back in 2005… hopefully it will be tens of degrees cooler this time

Our monsoon season is here. Every afternoon the clouds build like a furrowed brow on the sky. In the distance there is a low rumble and a breeze begins to pick its way through the aspen leaves. We typically get a few strikes of lightning out yonder, then closer. The boom of the thunder nears until that big flash overhead and a crack so loud you feel it in your bones. There is the rush of air from the updraft and then the rain – glorious rain for the parched ground – drenches everything. I love it.

zing! (that one was kinda close)

Up here in the mountains, afternoon thunderstorms in summer are the norm. The orographics make for some incredible weather. However, down on the flats, the topography or lack thereof creates some dramatic weather in its own right. As the storms clear off and head east from our house, I watch with longing as the thunderheads billow high and set up pretty light shows for my friends in Boulder and Denver. You know what else they have down in Boulder and Denver that I long for? Snarf’s. It’s a sandwich shop. My favorite sandwich shop in town. [Of course, if you’re in Williamsburg, that would have to be the Cheese Shop which makes THE best sandwiches. EVER.] If sandwiches are my favorite class of food and Snarf’s is my favorite sandwich joint in Boulder, then that sort of says something about their sandwiches. But I don’t go to Boulder every day and well – you know where this is going…

bread, artichokes, feta

pickles, prosciutto, lettuce, tomato, pesto

I’m hooked on Snarf’s. I even say it the way Snarf says his name in Thundercats. Ever watch Thundercats? I was an 80s cartoon junkie. Anyway… these sandwiches are so good that I’m willing to wait the THIRTY minutes it takes for the staff to slap it together. Everyone is willing to wait the THIRTY minutes which is why there is a line out the door at lunchtime. After standing around for my second thirty minutes, watching the staff and marveling at how slow they could possibly be, I punched their number into my phone. Now I call (way) ahead. Problem solved. I usually get the pastrami and Swiss – hold the onions, please. Snarf’s size. Toasted with mayo, mustard, pickles, hot peppers. That’s because it took too long for my old iphone1 to load the menu so I could peruse my other choices. I go with what works. But my buddy Jason sings the praises of Snarf’s feta and artichoke sandwich. I happened to have both feta and artichoke at home the other day.

choppy choppy

pesto is the new mayo over here

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: calabrese sandwich

Weekend comes. Weekend goes.

Even though we have plenty of snow in the backcountry, it’s really started greening up around here in the last week. I can’t tell if summer is our shortest season or if it only seems like it because that is the time when you want to do everything. Okay, that is the time *I* want to do everything as the sun tracks high overhead. Hard to believe that in three short months, the newly minted aspen leaves in our mountains will be turning gold. In the meantime, summer is on the menu.

In my last post, I wrote about these wonderful pink pickled red onions I had made and sort of fell in love with. Even if you aren’t an onion fan, I suggest giving these pickles a chance. Awesome sauce.

remember these?

Pickles go great in all manner of foods. My very favorite class of food has got to be the sandwich. I have a sandwich addiction. Pickles and sandwiches are like best friends. They so totally belong together. After making the pickled onions, I knew exactly which sandwich I wanted to make.

thinly sliced calabrese

ciabatta rolls, calabrese, mozzarella, tomatoes, pickled onions, pesto, mustard

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: meatball sandwich

On our quick 2-day trip in California’s glorious wine country, our first stop was Jordan Vineyard and Winery just over a mile north of Healdsburg off of beautiful Alexander Valley Road. I had met Jordan’s director of communications, Lisa Mattson, at IFBC in Seattle this past summer. Lisa was spunky and hilarious company during dinner. When she gave me her card, I only registered that Jordan was in California.

the lovely grounds at jordan winery

old oaks grace the patio

A couple of weeks before I left for BlogHer Food, I tweeted that we’d be spending a few days near Healdsburg after the conference. Lisa tweeted back that I should visit Jordan – perhaps attend their Harvest Lunch. The dates and locations all matched up, except that Lisa was going to be away on travel the day we arrived. But she made sure we were in good hands. Laura greeted us and walked our group through the stunning grounds to the incredible Harvest Lunch spread that their resident chef created. It was like being transported back to summer (California does that to you).

our table for harvest lunch

What I noticed and loved about Jordan was how all of their employees came in from the fields, the buildings, and gathered at the tables across the lawn to share lunch. Every day, Jordan’s chef prepares lunch for everyone at the winery to eat. There was a nice family feel to it. Laura told me she was excited about the mac and cheese (it was deliciously fancy mac and cheese) they were serving at lunch, but I was completely enamored with the vegetables – most of them straight from the garden, bursting with flavors of summer. Our lunch was served with Jordan’s crisp and bright Chardonnay. The winery is known for two types of wines: Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Chardonnay grapes are harvested from the Russian River Valley, but the Cab grapes are harvested in Alexander Valley.

tomatoes picked from their gardens that morning – still warm from the sun!

just a fraction of the beautiful dishes on offer

jordan chardonnay on ice

During lunch, we learned that Jordan was founded in 1972 by the Jordans – two petrologists who moved from Colorado to California. Petrologists are a flavor of geologist and so I was delighted to hear that the winery recently began incorporating soil mapping into how they grow their grapes. The property itself spans over 1,500 acres of rolling hills adorned with majestic California oaks and 75% of that is left natural and wild. As Laura led us down to see the chef’s garden after lunch, she explained Jordan’s commitment to sustainability and ecological balance of their land. The business is certified carbon-neutral and they implement several policies to minimize their impact on the environment. The garden was an enormous plot with tomatillos, all manner of herbs, precious heirloom tomatoes, several varieties of peppers, strawberries, figs, beans, onions, corn.

strawberries down at the chef’s garden

Because it was the harvest, we could see large stainless steel containers being loaded with hand-picked grapes and then transported up to the winery. We watched the operations as each container was tipped and emptied of its contents. The grapes fell into the hopper and then moved via conveyor belt past inspectors who removed debris and lesser-quality grapes before speeding into the building to be processed further. Meanwhile, the stems and leaves that were separated were trucked out to their compost (I love that!). The sheer volume was mind-blowing.

petit verdot grapes pouring into the hopper to remove stems and leaves

sooooo many grapes!

picking out burned grapes and other plant matter

On the way back to the reception area, I couldn’t help but admire the architecture and all of the trees and plants growing in courtyards and on the structures. Grand walls were blanketed in ivy which helps to keep the buildings cool from that hot hot sun. It’s the kind of place – with all those idyllic little nooks in the shade – that makes you want to grab a book, some cheese and bread, a glass of wine and go sit down and forget about everything else. Our sincerest thanks to Lisa and Laura for such a special visit at Jordan Vineyard and Winery.

persimmons ripening

a quiet courtyard with a statue of bacchus, roman god of wine

Full disclosure: Our group of four received complimentary harvest lunches and tours from Jordan Winery with no obligations.

It’s a small world, you know. When I was photographing lunch at Jordan, Laura asked me if I knew Matt Armendariz because he had been there not too long ago for a photo shoot. Are you kidding me? I love that guy! I just hugged his adorable self at BlogHer Food not five days ago… Food connects everyone in some form or another, but food and the interwebs bind us all like The One Ring. Not long before I flew to San Francisco, Jeremy informed me that the first year graduate students in his department gathered and took turns cooking for each other every weekend. He told me that the coming weekend they were going to make my recipe for Italian meatballs. Somehow, someone found my blog. I asked Jeremy if he thought it was weird to have these separate worlds colliding. He shrugged. I don’t think it phases him anymore. Okay, but where was I going with all of this? Those meatballs are not *my* recipe, they are Lorna’s recipe and when I saw her at the Queen Anne farmers market last month, I promised her I had another post on those meatballs coming.

i made meatball sandwiches

I must confess that I have always had a problem with meatball sandwiches. I began to discuss this with Jeremy because I had never had one before and he asked me why not. I’ll tell you why not. Because meatballs are spherical and they don’t stack nicely between two planar surfaces, that’s why not. Who the hell thought up such horrendous design mechanics of a sandwich? Also, they are discreet spheres rather than a continuous filling in the sandwich space. Ultimately, you know what this means, don’t you?

*inherent structural instability*

**Jump for more butter**