Sardines Over Orzo - If It Don't Sound Good, You Don't Know My Skill

truth is wine doesn't drive me. yes, I write about it, I talk about it, and I drink a lot of it (but not too much).  Still, it's not really about wine for wine sake.  yes, I love the magic of wine but really it's food, any food that inspires me.  food is one of the best ways we communicated with the planet.  (hence, what pulled me to the farm in the first place, but that's a story for another glass.) how we express that communication is what excites me.  tonight I'm choosing to begin the conversation with a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer Pinot Noir and stuff I found on the shelf. 

However, tonight it isn't about the bottle.  Tonight, wine is the special guest.  I great little bottle I grabbed at my new favorite wine shop in seattle.  so being that this tasty bottle is my guest (yes that is code for I'm drinking alone) I need to make a meal worthy of our guest.  Now if one would have stopped by the farm prior to this dinner, you likely would have thought my cuboards were bare.  But isn't that the beauty of cooking, creating something out of what you got and making that something a meal.

Yes, organic is the way to go.  whenever I can I get the freshest possible and ideally the best of the freshest.  having those types of ingredants makes cooking easy.  when reality sets in, and you are forced to use what you have, that's when your skill as a chef comes out.  luckily my chef skills come from a woman that survived a war.  more importantly, like any good mother, she took pride what she feed her family 

having lived in the japanese occupied philippines my grandma knows a few things about making do with what you have.  today, I'm yet to find a person that can out cook my Lola on her best day.  from watching create ever since I was a kid, I picked up a couple tricks of my own.  so what appeared to be junk on the shelves and a mostly empty fridge, turned into a flavor plate of sardines over orzo.  which if you ask me was worth of your guest, but only speaking for myself, I enjoyed them both.