We call this meal “Crack”. It’s by far my favorite version of Sole. The way I make it is similar to the way my mom made it, but way better! I use a very spicy mixture of peri peri and black pepper that I mix with flour, egg, and panko. Then I fry it in butter and olive oil, cover the fish in tasted almond slivers and sprinkle with parsley, then serve it with lemon slices.
Ingredients:
The sauce is actually very tasty. Using a chopped onion, loads of garlic, along with chopped red, orange and yellow bell peppers in a bath of crushed Italian tomatoes. Because we like it hot, I added a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes early in the process as the onions were sweating. We also had a couple of left over hot Italian sausages from our pizza the other day, so we picked up a French Baguette and made what we called “Italian sloppy Joes”. Super yummy. We toasted the bread, layered some sauce, and fontina cheese, then split the sausage and covered the lot in loads of the Peperonata sauce. It was super yummy!
Nothing like a frittata on a Sunday morning in front of the fire watching footy. This was a “what in the fridge” sort of breakfast. I threw it all together and YUMMY! The secret is to spread the the ingredients evenly across the skillet carefully pour the custard (with the garlic and spices) over the vegies etc, then crumble fetta cheese over the top. Drop it in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes and sprinkle chopped italian parsley over it before serving.
Ingredients
Another one inspired by Pagliacci Pizza, Theirs includes Cascioppo’s Italian sausage, mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, sea salt and olive oil with crushed Italian tomatoes as a base. Our version uses Hot Italian sausage. This pizza needs a lot more flavor. More heat for sure! Work to do. On the other hand, our sourdough pizza crust was stellar.
It looked lovely before baking
This pizza is inspired by Pagliacci’s version which includes thyme-roasted artichoke hearts, peperonata peppers, ricotta, fontina and mozzarella over their pesto base. Ours includes fresh thyme along with marinated artichokes and a sweet pepper we had in the fridge. Its a pretty good pizza if I am honest. The Artichokes eat like meat and have a nice acidic brininess to them. We enjoyed it. More importantly, we used our first iteration of sourdough crust on this one. I feel pretty chuffed about that. It was definitely great dough.
This is another one of my favorite easy go to meals. It works with both fresh and canned clams. I like it both ways. This version was made with canned clams. One thing though, this is a better dish with dried spaghetti than fresh pasta. I have had it both ways, and because the clam meat is so soft, the toothiness of the el dente spaghetti makes the dish sing. Its basically 5 ingredients:
While the spaghetti is boiling, in a pan you get the garlic going, not burnt, but fragrant. Next I add a good pinch of red pepper flakes. I like to add a little anchovy paste, some white wine, and the juice of half a lemon. The base of the sauce is really the clam juice either from the cans or from the shells opening. If you make it with fresh clams, then discard the shells. Add the clams themselves then as the spaghetti gets to lightly done, add it to the pan to finish. Toss in the chopped parsley and you have one hell of a good dish! It’s basically ready to eat in 12 minutes.
Every once in a while, we enjoy a burger. We start with a pound of ground beef. I mix it with some shredded cheese to keep it moist. This time I added gochujang and some hot korean chili sauce for flavor. I always add an egg to bind it, and if its too wet when all that is added, then I add bread crumbs to get the wetness right. It needs to feel moist not wet. I let it all come together in the fridge for an hour or two, then I weigh it and divide it into 4 equal parts forming them into balls, then once I am done with that, I flatten them out to make patties, cover them and put them back in the fridge.
I roast and clean and divide an Anaheim pepper, crisp two strips of bacon, and cut two slices of cheese. I then make our special sauce. It’s typically mayo, ketchup and Tabasco. This time, to keep the Korean theme, I made it with gochujang, Korean chilli paste, a little ketchup, may and a splash of Tabasco to get the heat right.
I salt and pepper the burger before it goes into a hot pan, and sear both sides till the inner temp is 130 or so, then the cheese goes on and into a hot oven it goes under the broiler. We toast the ciabatta buns, sauce them, put lettuce, tomato and pickles on the bun, add the burger, on top the roasted pepper and the bacon and we are in business! It’s a prety fucking good burger, even if I say so myself!
Round 2:
Growing up, we had a roast leg of lamb as our sunday dinner for as long as I can remember. I have not had it since my mom moved into an old age home 20 years ago. We were shopping at Costco the other day, and they had boneless leg of NZ lamb at a very good price, so we picked up a 5 pound leg.
One of the things that I LOVE with lamb is mint sauce. Heather had never had either leg of lamb, or mint sauce, so she was very excited to make it happen.
First I unrolled the leg, and then I made a rosemary, garlic, salt and olive oil spread that I laid across it all before I rolled it and then tied it using my best version of chef’s knots. (Not good!)
Next I put slits around the meat and placed thin slices of garlic in each slit all around the meat.
That went into the fridge overnight, before being cooked over a deeper pan on a grid over a water bath. I went hot, 450 F for 15 minutes, then about 15 minutes per pound at 350 looking for an internal temperature of 130 degrees.
While the lamb was roasting, I made mint sauce with water, rice wine vinegar, a little salt and sugar to balance it. I use about a cup of finely chopped mint, two table spoons of sugar, about a half cup of vinegar and about a cup of water along with half a teaspoon of salt.
In addition we roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic, and made roasted asparagus )salt, pepper and olive oil.)
All in all, it was an amazing meal. Heather LOVED it, esp the mint sauce with the lamb, and for me, it was a real throwback to my youth. I really channeled my mom as I was in the kitchen pulling it together.
This one is inspired by the seasonal pizza, the Tricolore, offered for a limited time by Pagliacci. From their website, …” [the Tricolore] features burrata, an artisanal cheese that originated in Puglia, the region of southern Italy located in the heel of the boot-shaped country. Burrata’s exterior resembles fresh milky mozzarella, but when you split it open molten ribbons of cheese curd and cream spill out from the center. The cheese melts in your mouth. Our Tricolore features a generous layer of burrata over a Margherita base topped with drizzled pesto. We finish the pie with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt.”
This is a delicious pie. Super yummy. We added some spicy Korean sausage we had left over from an earlier pie, and we had trouble with the pesto squirting, but even so, it is a combination of seriously yummy flavors. We also had a yummy tomato sauce base from the scratch sauce we made last week. Gotta say, this one will be on our repeat list.
Its been quite a journey to get to here. I have had several realizations along the way. First of all, everything I knew about relationship was, well, wrong. For 30 years, I suffered the emotional abuse of the woman who was supposed to love me, which left me feeling lonely, sad, resigned and cynical. To be fair, when we got separated, it felt like being released from prison. I began to meet new people and in a very short time, I came to realize that instead of being unlovable, I was in fact, loveable. That had me create a clear picture of what was missing from my marriage, whch in turn gave me the clarity to create something new. I set out to create intimacy. This was back in early 2018 fully 4 years of exploring after my separation. We finally got divorced in 2017, so by 2018, I was ready to find my life partner.
I created a tattoo in the trash polka style that had the elements of what I set out to discover and find. I believed in attraction, which is represented by the pheromone symbol, I believed that life is random which the black and red strips represent. I believe we live in an infinite universe which the dots represent. Mostly, I wanted to be truly loved more than anything, which the lips represent. Together, the tattoo says I am lovable. It took me 7 months to get the tattoo on my chest over my heart.
With that resolved, I created a seeking post that was quite specific, painting a life of fun with a partner in crime. I put it out into the universe in the cities close to Seattle, including Tacoma, Portland, Vancouver BC and Denver as well as Seattle. I had a number of women reach out to me and even met a few before Heather, who was on her own search for happiness, found my post and made contact with me.
We courted for about 6 months, meeting for meals and drinks and walks in the park before we made the choice to begin our relationship formally. It was only a few weeks after that, that Heather moved in with me. For the next year we really took time to get to know each other, and when Heather’s divorce was final, on the winter solsctice of 2019, we celebrated by committing to each other that we would “create something new”. Then covid happend. For the next year, we spent 24 hours a day together and it was bliss. We really got to know each other inside and out. We were committed that we would not experience another long term relationship on the terms we had both expereinced in the past. In her case, Heather had dealt with a long term abusive marriage at the hands of her narcicistic husband, and she was committed to not have a similar experience. We were both on the same page. We were clear about what we did not want to create.
We spent the next several years being with each other, making great food, and even better cocktails, we explored a truly wonderful sex life and by any measure, we were happier that either of us had ever been. One thing that was true, and a real surprise for both of us, was the amazing allignment that existed between us. At the time, it was notable because each of us had been so out of allignment with our previous partners. To this day, that is still true. We are incredibly allinged.
When we started out, we were both of a mind that marriage was not the objective. In fact, we both made the choice overtly to “never get married again.” It was with that backdrop that our love blossomed. To be fair, Heather was the one who first shared that she was experinecing loving feelings toward me. I made the choice to be with that and to be loved by her. I was hungry for love. Internally, I beleived I was not lovable even though by then, I knew that I was. So, from early 2019 till late 2023, we blissfully made our way as lovers without a thought about marriage.
Then we began to explore mind-expansion. First with mushrooms and then with MDMA. To be quite clear, the impact was completely unexpected. Less so with the mushrooms, which made us laugh hysterically with statements like, “Be careful on that dangerous carpet” as I left the living room, our mirth occuring all day long. It was the experience on MDMA that changed everything. As you might know, MDMA creates a massive dopamine dump which has you see each other newly. I was clear that my feelings for Heather transcended anything I had ever expreinced. It took a few days to process, but we spoke about it one day in these terms when I said to her, “Having seen you newly, now I just cannot unsee you!” She agreed that it was a game changer. A shift in context. A new realm had been created. With that, we agreed that the next thing to do in our relationship was to get married. Wow! We were both on exactly the same page. Heather said, “Lets set a date to get engaged because I also want to ask you to marry me.” We had formalized our relationship initially on the winter solstice of 2019, and now we would take the next step on the winter solstice of 2023.
It was magical really. we both got dressed up and we met in the living room having taken MDMA for the purpose, and we spoke the words we had written to each other and we asked each other to marry. We both agreed, of course, and we set about creating the greatest engagement period we could imagine.
Our engament unleashed Heather’s creative mind. She set about making a “Love Quilt”. Her family are all Master Quilters and OH MY GOD, The quilt she created is mind boggling. The intention is that we first use the quilt to wrap ourselves in when we get married, and the use it as our bed quilt going forward. Its beautiful and made with such love. I am really moved by this quilt.
Not only that, she also made a flask with two spouts for us to drink wine from together at our wedding. The flask is painted to capture her “spirit animal” the Snow Leopard, and my spirit, the science of aliveness as represented by the prism breaking up whote light as referenced on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd being my favorite band also captures my preferered vibrational energy.
This period, the period between the winter solstice and summer solstice has been the most amazing time of my life. In about 2 weeks we are going to marry on the summer solstice. We have committed to create our marriage newly each and every day. When my previous marriage came to an end, I realized that my ex-wife and I had pretended to be married to each other. With Heather, we are committed that we are not prepared to be anything other than 100% present at all times with each other. Its going to be the greatest marriage in the history of marriage! We are so excited for the next stage to begin. It will be a whole new realm.
UPDATE:
Now, as we approach our 3rd version of our wedding ceremony on the Summer Solstice, I can say that in fact, we have completely re-imagined marriage and each of us are happy and in love in a manner that is still both new and fun.
My Life: A Memoir 