Dahlia from JP’s Backyard

 

Ahhhh…ok.  Thursday – almost Friday, which is almost the weekend.  It’s about this time that I need a little weekend love.  If you’re feeling it, here it is!  Last Sunday.  Nothing out of the uzsh, but a good day none-the-less.  Late that afternoon, JP picked me up and we went for a little ramble down Canada road.  We probably fit in about 14 miles out and back.  In the picture below you can see the Santa Cruz Mountain Range that separates the Southern Bay Area from the Pacific.  It also separates us from that “marine layer” you can see cascading along the ridge of that range.  It would be mighty cloudy were it not for that little range.

 

 

Once we got back to JP’s, we poured a couple glasses of Rose.  This one’s French, and less than $10 from Nugget Market in Davis, CA.

 

 

Once our bloodstreams were comfortably diluted, we got into some food.  On the menu – Grilled Spicy Tomato Rigatoni (homeade sauce) and a spinach salad w/ raw corn, pecorino cheese, radish, and fresh orange viniagrette.  We started by roasting about 15 Early Girl tomatoes (we started with about 3 lbs), one big red bell pepper, two jalapenos, and green and yellow squat zucchinis on the grill.

Before…

 

 

After…

 

 

After you take the veggies off the grill, allow them to rest so that the juices can absorb back into the flesh.  Meanwhile, start a sofrito by browning some onion and garlic in a saute pan.

 

 

Once the veggies have cooled, remove the skins and chop the tomatoes, red bell peppers and zucchinis.

 

Muddle the jalapenos into a paste.

 

Then toss all of it into the sofrito.

 

 

Once the sauce is simmering, cook the rigatoni.  By the time the pasta is done cooking, it’s time to dump the sauce right into the pasta.  Toss it up and coat all the pasta with sauce.

 

The salad is a pretty quick dish.  The spinach is out of a bag.  Throw it into a bowl, slice some pecorino cheese ontop, cut raw kernals off a corncob, tear some fresh oregano, add some sliced radishes (optional), and toss with orange viniagrette (squeeze juice of one whole orange and whisk in olive oil, salt and pepper to taste)…voila!

 

 

These two wines were quite different.  The 2007 St. Amant old vine Zin from Lodi, CA (~$16) was…How do I say it?  Yummy?  Delicious?  Deliciously yummy (I guess).  I could drink this everyday!  It’s a little sweet, doesn’t leave your mouth dry at all (low tannin), and makes me want to gulp.  The 2004 Porta Chilean Cab was also good very good, but not what we’ve been hankering for lately – probably a better pairing with dinner, though.

 

 

Alright, two more days and it’s the weekend!  If you want to make your Thursday night special, I suggest you find an old vine Zin from Lodi or Amador County, CA.  Mmm mm.

 

Salud (Cheers in Spanish)