This is my contribution to this week’s Photo Friday Challenge: Cloudy.

Romaine lettuce

Slugs appear to be attacking the bok choy, though. Dan dusted them with diatomaceous earth, a natural pest control method. It’s the fossilized remains of a type of algae called diatoms available in garden centers as a fine powder; it has tiny sharp edges that irritate the soft tissues of slugs and so, when sprinkled around plants, deters them from moving close enough to eat them.

Bok choy sprinkled with diatomaceous earth

So we’re hoping they come back. In the meantime, we’re enjoying a mixed green salad with our baked rockfish tonight.

I visited Tortilla West on a recent Sunday for lunch with Patrick Evans-Hylton and members of the food writing class we’re taking at The Muse in Norfolk. We ordered a variety of dishes to share tapas-style.

We started off with drinks. My companions went for the Bloody Mary bar, but as I’m not an aficionado, I ordered the house margarita on the rocks with salt. It always has the perfect balance of tequila, lime juice and orange liqueur, and a crunchy rim of kosher salt.

The most memorable dish for me was the fried oysters with a creamy dipping sauce. The plump, juicy Chinoteague oysters were coated with a crackling cornmeal crust that broke apart with the first bite, releasing the sweet meat. The creamy, slightly spicy sauce was the perfect counterpoint to the crunchy coating. I used to think I didn’t like oysters – they’ve made a convert of me.

More disappointing was the Mexican pulled pork sandwich, served on ciabatta rolls with tomatillo dipping sauce. While the pork was fork-tender, the sauce was overly salty, which really detracted from the flavor. The Mexican-influenced macaroni & cheese, however, made up for it. It was delivered nice and hot, with curvy cavatelli pasta soaking up the flavor of a perfectly melted, beautifully balanced spicy-creamy cheese sauce flecked with bits of jalapeno.

I’ve been to Tortilla West many times since they opened several years ago, and I don’t believe I’ve ever not liked a dish, until this pork. So I’m sure I’ll be back – the food is generally outstanding, the prices are reasonable and the service is fast and friendly.

Cooking, gardening and photography are some of my passions, along with writing, which is why I started this food blog years ago. But I haven’t been as consistent with it as I would like, so I signed up for this class, hoping for inspiration and feedback.

I also really enjoy the people and the atmosphere at The Muse, so this keeps me coming back there, as well

So, for the first class on Oct. 16, Patrick, my classmates and I all brought a dish to share, as well as cameras to record the yummies and paper and pen to record the aromas and flavors.

Classmates photographing yummies during class

Becky brought cinnamon bread, caraway bread and stewed apples. The stewed apples in particular stirred fun memories for me. Whenever I have homemade stewed apples or applesauce, I think of visiting my great-grandmother Frances on the farm in Monroe, Mich., when I was growing up. She was famous (to me as a child, at least) for peeling apples, freshly picked from the tree out front, with one long peel. I’ve never been able to accomplish this.

Cinnamon bread, caraway bread and stewed apples

My offering was a tasty treat I’ve made a few times now – Honey-Rosemary Scones with Goat Cheese. This recipe is from a book I won in an online contest a few years ago. I love the unusual combination of the sweet honey, a gift from our friend and Portsmouth beekeeper Paul, and the savory rosemary, from our garden.

Honey-Rosemary-Goat Cheese Scones

Patrick also encouraged us to purchase a few books to use as resources in the class; I picked these:

• The Describer’s Dictionary
• The New Food Lover’s Companion
• Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reviews, Memoir, and More

The first class was a lot of fun, and I’ve blogged more in the last two weeks than I did in the last month. And I have more food-related reading materials (as if I need more, but hey …). I think I’m gonna like this class.

So here’s my contribution to the Photo Friday photo challenge for this week – Curvature. I took this photo in Pisa, Italy, during our 25th-anniversary trip there in 2009. This is the arch over the main entry door to the Pisa Baptistery, with a statue of the Madonna and child.

Szechuan Pickled Green Beans

This refrigerator-pickle recipe for Szechuan Green Beans intrigued me because it’s so simple. It doesn’t involve the scary-seeming boiling-water method that is generally used for canning vegetables for the relatively long term – a few months to a year. This recipe just requires covering blanched beans with a seasoned vinegary brine and keeping it in the fridge. It will last for a month and the flavor deepens every day. Yum.

Szechuan Green Beans

• 1 pound green beans, washed, topped, and tailed
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon whole peppercorns, preferably Szechuan
• 1 (1-inch) knob ginger, sliced into coins
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced

Line several baking sheets with dish towels and set aside. Prepare an ice-water bath in a large bowl or clean sink.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop the beans into the water, no more than 1 pound at a time, and return to a boil. Blanch for 1 minute.

Scoop the beans out with a spider or slotted spoon and plunge them into the ice-water bath. Continue blanching in batches. Remove the beans from the ice bath with a slotted spoon and spread on the towel-covered baking sheets. Blot dry.

To make the pickles, pack the beans vertically in a quart jar.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a medium nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 minute. Pour the hot brine over the beans to cover by 1/2 inch. Leave 1/2 inch of headspace between the top of the liquid and the lid.

Refrigerate: Cool, cover, and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.

Red, yellow and white onions from the garden

There’s really not much to this recipe. I trimmed the zucchini and cut it lengthwise into four planks. I whisked together the juice of one lemon, the same amount of extra-virgin olive oil, a 1/2 tsp. of Penzey’s Minced Garlic, a pinch of cayenne, a big pinch of sugar, and salt and pepper for a quick marinade. I also sliced a small homegrown red onion and trimmed the green beans.

Dan sprinkled Paul Prudhomme’s Blackened Redfish Seasoning on two tuna steaks and took everything out to the grill. We have this handy grilling wok that makes it easy to grill small pieces of food like cut vegetables.

After everything was grilled, we tossed the vegetables with the rest of the marinade.

The first zucchini of 2011!

Garden-fresh green beans

Grilled veggies, grilled tuna and remoulade sauce

Tomato blossom

Baby celery

Mesclun mix and parsley in a terra cotta pot

Tiny swallowtail caterpillars love the fennel

Medium swallowtail caterpillar in the fennel

Red leaf lettuce

Mixed lettuces – red leaf, green leaf and romaine

We also have a couple rows of English peas coming up.

English peas

And I’m really happy that the parsley made it through the winter, too.

Parsley

We’re trying a new vegetable this year: celery! They’re little babies right now – Dan started them from seed in the sunroom.

Baby celery

We have lots more to come – several kinds of tomatoes, hot and bell peppers, and purple tomatillos are growing from seeds in the sunroom, and we’re going to try Brussels sprouts again, too. Should be a fun summer!

Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, because harvesting it is so labor-intensive. Saffron threads are the stamens of a variety of crocus. There are three stamens per flower and each must be picked individually by hand. It has a delicate flavor; liquids are generally infused with saffron and then used in recipes.

Paella is a classic Spanish dish of saffron-flavored rice with seafood, chicken and sometimes chorizo, or Spanish sausage. I made this dish for a dinner party and it was a big hit. Serve with a nice green salad and a vinaigrette made with sherry vinegar.

Ultimate Paella with Seafood, Chicken and Chorizo

The term comes from the Latin patella, a flat plate on which offerings were made to the gods. The prepared dish is placed in the middle of the dining table, as it is traditionally eaten straight from the pan.

1/2 tsp. sweet paprika (preferably Spanish smoked paprika)
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. kosher salt
3 chicken thighs, cut in half
5 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 Spanish chorizo sausage, thickly sliced (about ½ cup)
1/3 cup coarsely chopped roasted red peppers
1/2 cup Spanish onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped (reserve some for garnish)
2 medium ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
3 cups short-grain Spanish rice, preferably Calasparra
5 1/2 cups strong chicken broth
Generous pinch saffron threads (about 1/2 tsp.)
1 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed
1 dozen mussels, scrubbed
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
2 lemons, cut into wedges

Combine paprika, oregano and salt. Rub spice mixture all over the chicken, cover and refrigerate for one hour. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 325*.

Warm chicken broth in a saucepan to just below a simmer. Crush saffron slightly and stir into broth; keep warm.

Heat the oil in a 14-inch paella pan or large skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté the chorizo until lightly browned; remove from pan and set aside. Add chicken skin-side down and brown well on all sides; remove from pan and set aside. Sauté onions in the same pan; when the onions start to brown, add red peppers, garlic and half of parsley. Cook for 3 minutes over medium heat. Add tomatoes; cook until mixture caramelizes a bit, stirring occasionally.

Fold in the rice and stir-fry to coat the grains with the onion mixture. Pour in the chicken broth and stir gently to loosen browned bits from the bottom of the pan. The broth will almost fill the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring the mixture a couple of times.

Press the clams into the rice. Simmer for 5 minutes more, occasionally moving the pan on top of the flame so the rice cooks evenly and starts to absorb the liquid. You should still have a lot of liquid in the pan.

Press the chicken (with any accumulated juices), chorizo, mussels and shrimp into the rice. Place the pan into the oven and bake, uncovered, for 25 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven. Place the pan on the stovetop and sprinkle with peas and parsley. Cover with foil and let rest, covered, for 10 minutes. Garnish with lemon wedges and serve.