:: Jorian Hill Vineyard ::

By weekdays, I am a Los Angeles based entertainment lawyer, with a busy practice and an active family life.  Cooking, entertaining and even relaxing are the last things on  my mind.  But come the weekends, I shift gears.  I travel two hours north with my family to our vineyard–Jorian Hill–seven and a half acres of Rhone varietals located in the Santa Ynez Valley.  And although the vineyard presents plenty of things to think about, from the challenges of organic farming to raising a flock of chickens,it seems as if cooking, entertaining and relaxing (usually all three at the same time) are the first things on my mind.
The best part of making meals at Jorian Hill is my culinary partner–my fourteen year old son Reed.  Although he yields a mean lacrosse stick and has reached the level at three leaf clover at Grand Theft Auto, Reed is a natural chef.  What follows are some of our favorite  times spent together in the kitchen and what we cooked up together:

Friday night after a long day:
After a long day at work and school, we wanted to make something quick and satisfying. Sometimes the most comforting thing about comfort food is spending the time to prepare it  with someone you care about.  When I was first married, I used to make a dish called Chicken Dijon from a Cleveland Orchestra cookbook.  Here is our modern day rendition:

DEVILED CHICKEN

6 chicken drumsticks
3 half  chicken breasts, each cut in half
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
Dried herbs of your choice
1/2 loaf of firm  bread
3/4 cup grated Parmigianino cheese
1T paprika
3 T melted butter
Preheat oven to 450 degrees with rack in the upper third.
Tear the bread in pieces and feed though the tube of a food processor with the blade whirling to make bread crumbs.  Mix the crumbs with the grated cheese, paprika, 1/2 t each of salt and pepper and put in a medium size bowl.  In another medium size bowl, mix the mustard with around 3 teaspoons of dried herbs of your choice.  Since my daughter has recently (in a fit of boredom) alphabetized my spices, I used sage, summer savory and thyme.
Dredge each piece of chicken in the mustard and then in breadcrumbs and place in a buttered pan. Drizzle the chicken with butter.  Roast until the chicken is browned and cooked through, around 30 minutes.

Reed and I  steamed some baby bok choy from our vegetable garden.  We roasted some white asparagus tips in the oven with the chicken and tossed them with a little salt, pepper and truffle oil.  We were both comforted.

Saturday dinner:
Saturday brought the annual Santa Barbara Vintners’ Festival Harvest Festival at Rancho Sisquoc Winery.  It was a beautiful fall day and we poured lots of Jorian Hill Syrah and Viogner to a sell out crowd.  After pouring wine for four hours, we deserved a treat. I also needed to find an companion for a left over half bottle of Syrah.  Before we left for the event, we marinated two beautiful New York steaks in the following marinade that we adapted from a Gourmet magazine recipe:

MARINATED STEAKS

3T soy sauce
3T balsamic vinegar
3T maple syrup
4 garlic cloves, chopped

EGGPLANT SALAD (also adapted from a Gourmet magazine recipe)

When we finally made it back to the house, we grilled the steaks on the barbeque along with a big purple eggplant.  When the eggplant was  blackened on the outside and soft on the inside, we peeled it and coarsely chopped it with the following:
1 chopped red onion
2t red-wine vinegar
1t  sugar
1t cumin
1T olive oil
4T chopped cilantro
We mixed it all together with a little salt and pepper and scooped it up with warm pita triangles.

APPLESAUCE

While Reed was busy manning the barbeque, I went down to the orchard and picked as many apples as I could carry back to the house.  I picked a mixture of Fuji and whatever else hadn’t been devoured by the birds. I peeled the apples and cut them in quarters.  I put them in a pot with water to cover, along with:

The peel of one  lemon-use a vegetable peeler
The juice from the lemon
A cinnamon stick

We simmered the apples until they were soft enough to mash against the side of a pan with a wooden spoon.  We ate our applesauce hot over cold vanilla ice cream and then from the fridge the next day for breakfast, with a little granola from the Santa Ynez Inn sprinkled over it.