Tough Call (and probably right...)

Yesterday at Oriole Park Matt Joyce hit a liner down the right field line that hit at the base of the foul pole. The umpire's original call was ground rule double. O's manager Buck Showalter popped out to say he thought the ball was foul. Ray's manager Joe Madden was betting it was fair, and thus a home run. After reviewing the tape, the umps granted Joyce a dinger because the ball did hit the base of the foul pole. It took about ten minutes to come to the decision.

Check out this video: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=27259781&topic_id=&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_27259781&v=3

I watched all this from the couch. I could watch this piece of tape a thousand times and still not really see well what's happening. I think the umpires get this right, even though I was pulling for the Orioles.

Uniform of the Day--Warm Night w/ Cookout

Finally, a warm spring evening in DC. A friend who works for the National Endowment for the Arts was hosting an event in his back yard. His wife runs a catering business, so the set-up and food are always top drawer. It was casual, no jacket required. I decided it was time to break out the Nantucket Reds and white bucks.

The District of Columbia is one of those places to which people from all over America and the world come for work, so there is always an interesting mix at events like this. Plus, this was an event for people working in the arts as healing and in particular doing so with the military and veterans community, so it was a particularly diverse group of artists, musicians, writers, doctors, researchers, and scientists, veterans, service members, &c.

I received several questions and comments about the Nantucket Reds: some people had never seen them, several asked about the texture and tint, one guest from Iowa referred to them as being salmon colored. He was quickly dis-abused of that fallacy by Ms. F.

Reds fall into the broad category known as go-to-hell pants. These might include any brightly colored pant, I suppose, but particularly madras pants and other trad / prep looking togs. I love the look of color--especially among the grey-suit uniformed classes in DC--and enjoy the conversations that inevitably follow arriving in a pair of GTH pants.

Nantucket Reds from Murray's Toggery, white bucks, white Brooks Bros. OCBD, J. Press surcingle belt.

Lachs und Spargel

"Ich bin ein American soldat. Wo is die bahnhof?" is the line every American soldier in Germany was taught. It means I am an American soldier. Where is the train station? When I served in Germany from 1986 to 1989, I was at worst a little better in German than this emergency line.

But in point of fact my German sucks. I studied for a year in high school with a teacher named Amado 'Sonny' Narvaez who did magic tricks during class to keep his students amused. I also studied for a year in college with a Swiss woman named Regula Meier--"I am Swiss, I like things regular." Frau Meier taught us Hoch Deutsch, or high German. Which wasn't really much use to me as a cavalry officer who was occasionally lost disoriented in Bavaria trying to talk to farmers' kids about which way to the intersection with the Autobahn.

Once you have a foreign language in your head, some words always stick with you. Years after learning German, I was in class at the Foreign Service Institute learning French, and German words popped into my brain when I was stumped for the proper French word.

The German word for asparagus is one of those words that you couldn't get out of my head with a tooth scaler: spargel. When I go to the grocery today, instead of writing asparagus on the shopping list, I write spargel.

Anyway, tonight's dinner is salmon on a plank with asparagus--lachs und spargel. Pretty simple.

Soak your plank for a couple of hours in water. Get your fire going and set it up for direct heat.

Put the salmon--tonight we used Coho--on the plank, sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a small bowl mix up some minced garlic, toasted sesame oil, and minced ginger. Spread it on the salmon.

Trim the ends of the asparagus and rub it with a very light coat of olive oil, add salt and pepper to taste. You could add some garlic or ginger or sesame if you want, but I think the asparagus tastes fine by itself. Ms. F and I have a dispute over thin vs. thick asparagus. She prefers thin. Enh, I don't care so much, so we use thin. You can set the asparagus directly on the grill grate or use a grill pan... as you wish.

Put the plank on the grill and cover; let the smoke and heat work together. Plan to cook the salmon for about 25 minutes and the asparagus for about ten minutes. The salmon's done when it flakes a bit, but you won't hurt yourself if you take it off a little sooner. You can hurt the meal if you take it off much later.

This goes well with a drier Riesling. I like the German or Austrian wines but Ms. F prefers the Oregon.

Genießen sie es.

Uniform of the Day--Georgetown Lit Prof Lunch

Wow, it's mid-May and we had freezing temperatures last night out at Dulles Airport. A little warmer here inside the District, but still....

Anyway, off this morning to Georgetown University for a meeting with the chair of the English Department to thank her for the Department's support for our literary journal, O-Dark-Thirty.

Olive jeans from J. Crew, navy blazer from Burberry, Allen Edmonds Black Hills oxfords, Charles Tyrwhitt mini-gingham shirt, Sid Mashburn navy blue gabardine tie, 1958 Rolex Air King, mid-60s Parker 75 Cisele sterling pen, vintage Brooks Bros "button" cufflinks. Given that the temperature is still in the 40's, I added a Barbour Liddesdale quilted jacket.

Bad Umpire

On May 8th in the Cleveland-Oakland game, the umpires had a chance to make good a tough call they missed the first time. Manager Bob Melvin asked crew chief Angel Hernandez to review the call on a replay. Even with video replay, Hernandez failed the test.

Check out this link on the MLB site. http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=26957341

We rate bad calls here using the Blind Mice scale. This one is so bad it's off the scale and earns Angel Hernandez the highly coveted, rarely awarded, muchly sought after Mr MaGoo award. Congratulations, Angel.

Stick with the video to hear the announcers' talking about Hernandez making an equally bad call two nights earlier. He and his crew would blow a few calls in the Nationals-Cubs over the weekend, too.

Brady Anderson in Oakland

Ms F. and I were in California recently celebrating our anniversary. The Orioles were playing the A's and since we had never been to Oakland Coliseum we popped over. Ms F. was in charge of the tickets and had gotten us seats right behind the plate. At one point late in the game I looked over my shoulder and saw Brady Anderson sitting behind us.

Anderson played outfield for the Orioles for fourteen years. In 1992 he hit twenty homers, stole fifty bases and had seventy-five RBI. And in 1996 he hit fifty home runs. When I commented that he hit 50 home runs and stole 50 bases, he quickly caveated the feat(s) by clarifying, "But not in the same season." So? Dude hit fifty home runs in a single season. He's now the Orioles' Vice President for Baseball Operations and seemed like a helluva nice guy. O's won 3-0.

Paella on the grill.

Kind of a crazy weather day in DC. Sunny downtown where the Nationals were playing the Cubs, and pouring rain in NW where we were planning a paella on the grill. Luckily for us, the rain tapered off and we got outside. Not so lucky for the Nats who dropped the game 8-2.

Paella is a favorite dish of mine both to eat and to cook. It seems complicated but it's really not.

First, assemble the ingredients:

Chicken: (~1 piece per person) Use thighs or separated legs and thighs.
Sausage: preferably linguiça, but a fresh chorizo will do nicely. Slice it into discs. 
Littleneck clams. (~6 per person) 
Good sized shrimp. (~3 per person) Tail on, shelled and cleaned.
Arborio or valencia rice. (1 or 1.5 cups depending on the size of your pan and the size of your crowd)
Tomato paste. (1 tablespoon)
Hot smoked paprika. (1 tablespoon)
Saffron. (a generous pinch)
Garlic, crushed. (1-2 tablespoons to taste)
Clam juice. (one bottle)
Chicken stock. (a quart)
Frozen green peas. (about 1/4 of the bag)
Sliced pimentos.
Lemon for garnish.

Get your grill ready to cook over direct heat: if you're doing this on a gas grill you're missing out on a bunch of flavor--so use charcoal. It will need to be hot for about half an hour. You need a paella pan: they're thin stainless steel, with low sides and handles. You can go out and pay a whole bunch of money or go to Williams Sonoma and pay $25 to $35. These are great pans. A paella cooked in the small pan (13 inches or so) will feed four easily. 

Once your grill is hot, put the pan on the center of the grill and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Lightly salt and pepper your chicken and once the oil is shimmering in the pan add the chicken skin side down. Brown the chicken on both sides and remove from the pan. Add the slices of sausage and let it crisp on the edges. Add the rice and stir it around in the fat in the pan. Once the rice has a shine to it, add the tomato paste, paprika, saffron and garlic, stir well. Add the clam juice and let it come to a boil to deglaze the pan a bit. Begin pouring in the chicken stock, just enough at a time to keep the rice covered. Now you can start putting the chicken back into the pan. 

So this is important: unlike when you're making risotto, you're not going to stir this rice dish. Once you start adding the stock, resist the urge to stir it. You're trying to create a crust on the bottom called la soccarat. 

After you've added the second batch of stock, turn the chicken and start adding the seafood. Add the clams first: just push them right down into the rice and stock. Wait about five minutes, then start putting the shrimp into the rice, too. 

Add stock as necessary. Once the rice has absorbed all the stock--all of it or la soccarat won't form--all the clams have opened, and the shrimp are done you're finished. 

Pull the pan off the fire and place some pimento and lemon slices over the top. Serve directly from the pan at the table if you can. Don't forget to provide your guests with shell bowls. 

This dish is friendly with a range of wines. A rioja or tinta pinheira will hold up well. I particularly like to serve it with a dry rosé.

Uniform of the Day--Teaching at Walter Reed

Heading over to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center today to teach our weekly creative writing class. We teach in a small element of Walter Reed called the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE). It's DoD's premier research and testing institute for PTSD and TBI. Here's a BBC story about our work there. Wednesdays are usually the best day of the week because we get to do this.

Orvis khakis, Brooks Bros pink OCBD, J. Crew knit tie, Allen Edmonds Grayson loafers, Façonnable sport coat, 1958 Rolex Air King, 1927-ish Shaeffer fountain pen given to my father-in-law on his Bar Mitzvah.

Uniform of the Day--Woolly Mammoth Theater Company

Heading downtown on a cool, grey day to meet with some development and production people for the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company about a joint project to put veteran-written plays on stage and in front of audiences.

Grey Harris Tweed jacket, J. Crew cords, RL Polo chambray shirt, vintage Brooks Brothers tie, Allen Edmonds Jefferson brogues, LL Bean belt, 1944 Tissot steel watch.

Clams on the Grill

Dinner last night was skillet roasted clams on the grill. Simple. Put a couple dozen clams in a bowl of cold water in the refrigerator for a few hours so they burp out the sand. Light the fire. Put into your skillet a glass of white wine, a quarter stick of butter, some garlic, salt, pepper, a chopped scallion, whatever herbs you have at hand--I used some thyme. Add the clams just before you go outside. Once you've set the coals for direct heat, put the skillet on center the grill. Lay some sliced French bread on the edges of the grill to toast; don't let it burn. Once the clams are opened, serve directly from the skillet with the bread to sop up the juice. You should sprinkle some chopped parsley over this before you serve, but we were out. We served with a sauvignon blanc, but it could easily work with any dry white or a cold beer.