We who are about to dine salute you!

Lousy picture but an interesting first.  Using a head of Romain, plucked yesterday morn by Miss Jensen at Freedom and Unity farm, I began to concoct my dinner plans.  As instructed by Tyler Florence I combined garlic, Dijon mustard, egg yolks, parm (the king of cheese), oil and anchovies to make caesar dressing.  I cut the Romain in half and gave it a sensual massage of olive oil before placing it on the grill.  I must warn you, as the greens charred it smelt like a high school bathroom after some punks thought it was a good idea to have a joint in between class. I threw on some bread to toast, kinda sorta a crouton substitute, and I fed myself and my gal a grilled salad.   Nothing too amazing but i enjoyed grilling the Romain and thought I shall share.

Snotty Frenchmen

During our most recent trip to the Lake Ella farmers market, a trip that Logan dragged me on, we came across an old man with youthful spirits hoping to sell us multi colored potatoes. Cut them open and they could be purple, pink or even...WHITE! The action of buying the potatoes lead to an inexplicable chain of events, one of which was logan suggesting we make potato salad. You can imagine my disapointment. Rikki and I say "if it don't have lettuce in it don't call it a salad". Honestly I don't want some nasty mayoed up potato cube that for some reason is yellow! I instead fantasized about making purple and pink french fries. However Logs had a different potato salad in mind and insisted mustardy mayo sauce (I was just informed the yellow in potato salad is mustard) will not be a part of it, instead it shall be a French potato salad.

Ok. I have accepted the idea of a potato salad. It has evolved from a fear of mine to a perfectly suitable side dish. I want to emphasis the side dish because no matter what happens, potato salad will always and forever be a side dish. So what next, what would go well with this side dish-0-potato? Well she did say its french... what's a french main course? To be honest I'm still a little lost on what french food is. My lack of understanding how to define this type of food reminds me of the time logan was trying to teach me what savory was. "It just means salty right?" i insisted. I just didn't get it. Anyways, I understand french cuisine is good food, expensive and looks pretty, but what is it? Italian food is easy for me to imagine but not french. My mind turned to a nice little french lunch place in Naples where I had a lovely baguette sandwich with nice roast beast.

Logan comes back from the store with a pasty white baguette and 3 lbs. of smoked Boston pork butt. The butt was pink and reminded me of ham and we were unsure if it was fully cooked so we decided to call the expert. Mom. Unfortunately I called the wrong expert, i should have called my father the resident Hamxpert (Ham expert), because my mom didn't know if a pink smoked ham-looking boston pork butt was fully cooked.

In the end the potato salad was a smash hit. The salad of course had the three varieties of heirloom potatoes, dill, garlic, basil, onions, chardonnay, mustard and shallots. The sandwich was toasted with a sharp aged gouda and some capital T tender pork butt that was cooked with the said chardonnay to ensure the cookedness of the butt.

French? i dunno maybe... A satisfying dinner for two? Duh.