Bone Appetite

Leftovers, but not the kind you're thinking!

Tonight, in recognition of the fact we haven't gone shopping since before Thanksgiving, we had leftovers, featuring this awesome Summer Harvest Stew I made back in early September. (I had forgotten where the recipe was from t-- hat's one of the reasons I have this blog now ---- but also a reason to be married, as Mika remembers these things when I don't and reminded me of the label on the container and whence it came.)

This may seem like an odd claim, but I think it's possible the stew might have mellowed in the freezer. It's hard to remember exactly how it tasted back a couple of months ago, but both the spouse and I thought it was somehow zestier for having been reheated. I suppose it's not the freezing part but the having sat before freezing part and the having been gently reheated part, but still, it's always pleasant to get some zippy comfort food out of the ice.

Speaking of leftovers, loyal readers may be wondering where the 'meal plan / veggie box' post from last week was. Thanksgiving takes over all! We had no meal plan after Thursday, and I've been winging it (no pun intended; we did not get any of the meat leftovers) since. I have also given the sous chef a few chances to cook as I had Coast Guard patrols both weekend days. On Friday, though, we had a really wonderful meal that consisted wholly of all the veggie leftovers from Thanksgiving. I am happy to say that with the exception of the salad everything came out really wonderfully (see the posting for the menu.) How did I ruin salad? I just had a really bad time finding the good produce this time out. I went to the produce store on Tuesday thinking I would find really good stuff there, but it was all wilty. I ended up going to Safeway for more greens, which was not better. (No, No, No way I was going to go to the mall parking lot and Whole Foods the day before Thanksgiving. As it was, I got parked in at the Safeway parking lot.) So I apologize to my diners on turkey day for the greens, but I hold out those super awesome green beans as my defense.

Irregular winter veggies start this week, sans advance warning about contents, so we'll go into off-season mode for menu planning starting tomorrow.

The Thanksgiving Menu

We're again going up to see friends for Thanksgiving, who live about a half hour away. They're cooking the turkey and mashed potatoes and one cranberry sauce; we're cooking everything else and bringing the wine.

The real art of the whole enterprise of domestic economy is kitchen management. This gets, I believe, to the heart of the successful big holiday dinner. Having the kitchen organized, getting your ingredients prepped in the right order, rotating things in the oven, and timing everything to come out at just the right time, that is so much more important than mere recipes. I wish I had a magic bullet to make this all work, but I believe a lot of this is just intuition garnered from experience. (Oh, like the time we had our dishwasher break and the sink clog up halfway through the cooking in a galley kitchen. We ended up eating the pie for dinner and the turkey for dessert.)

That said, for something as complicated as Thanksgiving -- especially when we have to do much of the prep work "offsite", as it were, before dinner -- some planning is in order. I don't necessarily go so far as a schedule per se, but I do write down what we need to do in the order that it needs doing, because it sure helps you avoid forgetting things.

So, bearing in mind that we're splitting our part of the cooking into two halves -- before we leave to go to our Thanksgiving house, and after we get there (but before dinner, and certainly before the bourbon and wine have had a chance to kick in) -- here is our part of the menu and the approximate schedule, with notes. I write it here because I have to write it somewhere!!

Wednesday afternoon:

Bake sweet potatoes. Spice with a little salt and pepper, and just a touch of nutmeg. Cover and store in fridge.

Bake the pumpkin for the fresh pumpkin meat for the pumpkin pie, strain and puree and reserve in the fridge for tomorrow. (Start as soon after the sweet potatoes are done as is practicable, or do at the same time.)

Wednesday evening:

Make the braised cabbage and put in the fridge.

Make the traditional cranberry sauce and refrigerate.

Make the three pie crusts.

Make the cranberry-apricot pie (our own recipe to follow in a separate post).

Thursday morning:

Bake the Bourbonated Pecan Pie (requires 450 oven). (our recipe follows in a separate post).

Prep the green beans with leeks and dill as follows:
- french cut, then blanche the green beans and store in an airtight container.
- dice the dill and store in another container.
- slice the leeks and store in another container.

Bake the Pumpkin pie.

Thursday afternoon just before leaving:

Prep salad:
- clean and tear salad leaves (butter, escarole, red leaf) and pre-mix leaves, and bag them
- make champagne vinaigrette

Prep acorn squash with bacon:
- cut squashes into halves and clean (cut away bottom to make lie flat)
- put in one 1/2 T pat of butter into each squash, diced half slice of bacon, 1 T brown sugar
- cover with aluminum foil

Pack into car:

- whipping cream
- three pies
- cranberry sauce
- sweet potatoes
- braised cabbage
- green bean dish ingredients (beans, leeks, dill)
- salad ingredients (lettuce, dressing, pine nuts, goat cheese)
- glass baking dish with acorn squash
- wine
- extra pie serving utensils
- wife, kids, etc.

Immediately upon arrival (one hour prior to dinner):

- put into the oven with the turkey the acorn squash
- open wine and start drinking it

20 minutes before dinner:
- put braised cabbage into dutch oven on stovetop and warm on medium-low heat

10 minutes before dinner:
- put sweet potatoes into oven or microwave, as available
- combine salad ingredients onto salad plates
- in a hot skillet and 1 T EVO, cook leeks and dill together, add S&P
- toss in green beans, stir until warm

5 minutes before dinner:
- remove acorn squashes

After dinner:
- whip up whipping cream

So, that's the plan. Enjoy it now, because, as they say, the instant the cooking starts, the plan gets thrown out the door.

Recipe: Quickest Chickpea and Parsley Salad, Ever

Time for more Garbanzo journalism!

This is insanely quick - 2 minutes start to finish if you have the ingredients on hand - and a really fresh and nutritious salad.

1 can chickpeas, rinsed out in a colander
1 cup of fresh parsley, finely chopped
juice of 1 lemon
about a tablespoon of EVO
1 teaspoon soy sauce
salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste (don't be shy with the salt here, though; a 1/4 teaspoon seems about right)

Toss and serve. May also be chilled to good effect. Serves about four as a side.

I've tried adding in "bonus" ingredients here -- a little roasted red pepper, split cherry tomatoes, etc. -- which are fine, but less somehow seems to be more here.

After Lunch, Le Deluge

A cabinet minister in Italy has suggested that Italians take too long for lunch, and eat too much while they're at it. He's ostensibly talking about the health and productivity of Italian workers, but there's a bit more to this in terms of globalization and food than just the time taken out of the day. I'm all too familiar with the advantages of having predictable lunch hours for the sake of doing business -- I once counted the number of time zones I had to keep track of regularly for the job I had last year, and it was eight or nine. You try setting up a conference call that's not going to interfere with somebody's lunch. If that lunch takes 2-3 hours and has erratic start and stop times, oi.

On the other hand, as one of the commentators on "The World" noted, maybe all that healthfulness of the Mediterranean diet doesn't have so much to do with the food as the attitude and pacing behind it. If you think about this: lunch as a lazy, extended period, the traditional carnivorous big meal in the middle of the day that we may be evolutionarily adapted to, the easy socialization instead of rushing through it, and maybe a bit of a siesta on top of it -- you might make a case it's worth studying to see if this is better for your heart than "good" cholesterol.

I won't get into the (predictable) reaction to the minister's comments, which are a little irrelevant to my point at hand. Particularly with kids and regular work days and such we have this fairly rigid schedule about when we eat and mealtimes are constrained by external constraints. Our "relaxing" meal of the day is dinner, because that's the only time we have time to go in any such pace, the only time we're all together every day. From the meal structure comes our diet, and the format for all our cooking. I rarely mention lunch and breakfast here because, well, they're very much the same every day. (In my case, eating leftovers from the kids' breakfast for breakfast, and leftovers from dinner for lunch.) And yet I rarely think on this, even within this space.

Think about this in the context of slow food and eating locally: we're not only globalizing our food supply right now, we're globalizing our eating habits, the rhythm of the day. It's a necessity of sorts for the 24/7/365 society. And I'm pretty sure it's not a good thing.

More Things You Didn't Know You Needed to Know [*hic*]

For Thanksgiving, I'm doing a braised red cabbage recipe that calls for juniper berries (the new LA Times recipe, which I'll link to on the appropriate post.)

I tried to hunt these down in the usual area stores, but nobody seems to be carrying them.

You'd think I could hunt down some juniper berries off a shrub in the neighborhood, albeit not plump or appropriately dried, but I couldn't even find one with berries in a quick perambulation.

So, it's on to the substitute. The last time I had to sub for juniper berries I just threw in what seemed like the right amount of gin. What was the right amount? I figured a good shot. No science at all. I can't remember what happened. That may be a sign I put in too much gin. I think it might've been a Christmas pudding or fruit cake, but the mind is blank on specifics.

In any event, this is what we keep really really old cookbooks around for. Courtesy an ancient Fanny Farmer, the correct substitution is one teaspoon for every two juniper berries. That seems like a lot of gin - that's going to be two tablespoons of gin in my recipe -- but I'm game. It's easier than fighting the supermarket crowds right now.

Except, amazingly, when I got home I discovered we have no gin. This from a once prolific consumer of gimlets, too. I haven't been replacing the hard liquor in the cabinet when it runs out, except for the most common cooking stuff (amaretto, brandy, et alia) largely because we have more or less completely ceased having even the occasional cocktail since parenthood took over. (And for that matter, the celebrated parties we had back in Pittsburgh with our equally child-free friends are now a thing of the past, so I don't even have others to bartend for. While I do believe cocktails are a legit form of the cooking art...it's just that you can't really experiment with more than one a day with kids in the house, and even then, go find the time.)

So I may skip the juniper in the recipe, unless I happen to be driving by a convenient package store tomorrow. I'm not going to risk my life in a grocery store on the day before Thanksgiving, that's for sure.

Recipe: Rosemary Scallops with Spinach and Brown Rice

We saw a recipe for a simple scallops and spinach, but after deciding it was a bit bland we riffed gently on this combination a bit to come up with the following. It has the advantage of being incredibly quick if you're using frozen spinach and scallops, and has a rich flavor without much at all in the way of spicing.

1 pound frozen scallops (or fresh equivalent)
1 pound frozen chopped spinach (or fresh equivalent
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped and roughly minced
2 tablespoons EVO (or butter)
juice of one lemon
 3 cloves garlic, pressed

Start your brown rice well ahead of time. Start your scallops defrosting if they're not already thawed. The cooktime for the main dish is less than 10 minutes.

The spinach can be cooked in advance and set aside. I simply stir-fried mine in a dry, hot wok over medium heat, then removed to a glass bowl.

Add EVO or butter to the pan and heat gently. My taste-tester preferred EVO; I think a little butter (maybe 50/50?) helps a bit here but if you want to go all healthful on us, by all means just use EVO.

Sauté the scallops and rosemary on medium high heat for about a minute, stirring constantly. Add the lemon juice, and toss and stir constantly until the scallops are almost but not quite done (as ever, don't overcook), 2-4 minutes probably. Add the cooked spinach and pressed garlic, stir to combine thoroughly and heat, 1-2 minutes.

Serve immediately over steaming brown rice. Makes about four medium servings for a "one dish meal".

Apropos of the garlic: it would be wrong to carmelize it by cooking it in the oil before adding to the scallops. By adding it into the end you get the zestiness of the garlic without permeating the whole dish, especially the scallops.

The scallops: either bay or ocean scallops will do here; smaller may be better to get a consistent dish, however.

Variation: try lime juice instead of lemon (I sort of prefer this, but my taste tester insists lemon is better).

Meal Plan and Veggie Box week of 11/19-11/25/09

Our last veggie box of the season from Two Small Farms CSA is this week, and I was moderately disappointed. I don't know what it is about the last two seasons, but we seem to have gotten more things that are harder to cook with regularly -- beets, that sort of thing. We're about to do our winter "piggybacking" onto our friends' CSA for 'winter share', which comes more irregularly from now to March, so the weekly planning exercise around the veggie box will be in partial abeyance.

butternut squash (2 smallish)
beets (3, with greens)
turnips (3 decent size)
chard (medium)
carrots (4 medium size)
leeks (again! 4)
apples (a dozen or so small fujis)
sweet potatoes (4 small and medium)

What I found disappointing is, the week before Thanksgiving, I'd prefer, say, getting enough squash to actually make a side dish with, and maybe skip the sweet potatoes, or vice versa. As it is, since I'm making both for Thanksgiving, I'll have to make another trip to the store.

In any event, the week...kind of a poor menu this week, what with processed meat sticks on two different days and previously-frozen fish on another two. I blame the veggie box for a lack of inspiration. Perhaps that Beaujolais Nouveau can perk things up a bit as we head into winter.

Thursday - small sausages, sauerkraut, applesauce, fresh greens

The sausages were left over from last week's meal plan, Duncan's special request. I bought some tofurkey for Iz as an experiment - too spicey and not to his liking alas. The sauerkraut was also store-bought, but I have a nice way of reducing it (sort of a slow cook that leaves it slightly crispy but still moist) in beer that is agreeable to my taster in chief.

Friday - fish cakes, sweet potatoes, greens

I'll use the CSA sweet potatoes here and try to make inroads on the last of the fresh greens.

Salmon cake for Duncan, crab cakes for the rest of us. I bought store-made ones (sigh).

Saturday - surprise day. We have a couple of things to go to in the late afternoon/early evening so we'll see how snacked out the kids get. By surprise, it means it may be a surprise to me as much as anyone.

Sunday - scallops and spinach over rice. I have frozen I should use up. We'll see which of the kids is or isn't eating scallops right now...

Monday - pasta night with salad.

Tuesday - chard salad, lentil stew

Wednesday - hot dogs (I'm still using these up from Izzy's picnic!!), buns, veggie olla / hodge podge.

2009 Beaujolais Nouveau

Woot! The Dubouef Villages Nouveau was just being unpacked in the store when I got there this morning.

My taste tester and I pronounce it EXCELLENT this year, not at all acidic, nice smooth buttery taste with a dry finish, just the way we like it. Let's just hope the case lasts us through Thanksgiving.

 

   

Now with the wine goggles on...

Bad Chef, Saturday Night Edition

Well, Saturday night dinner wasn't a disaster but it was waaaaaayyy off par.

I had a whole chicken on the docket, since I wanted to make some broth. I figured a comfort food meal would be about in order, so I had some baked squash, side veggies, and salad on the menu, pretty straightforward and traditional.

 The trouble started out when I realized about a half hour before I was supposed to start cooking the chicken that there was a big ball of ice in the cavity, encasing the giblet pack. Why the ball of ice was there in the first place, I know not. How would that much water get in there, anyway? It's more than the chicken would hold all on its lonesome. In any event, I went through 20 minutes of running water on the thing, poking it into the microwave, and trying to pry this ball of ice stuck to the inside of the chicken out. The upshot of all this frantic defrosting: dinner was an hour late in the end, which is not good when you have kids.

I like to cook a few potatoes and veggies in the pot with the chicken -- makes it roast more moistly and you get the bonus of having some nice basted vegetables. But I had somehow missed the fact we were out of carrots, and the three potatoes I had to use up were a bit more aged than I had thought. So they were a little sad out of the pan. I forgot to stir them, too. And then there was the salad -- I let a head of romaine sit a little too long, and some force of nature had pushed it to the back of the fridge, where it was too cold. It was either eat it up now or have it go bad altogether. 

The squash I was baking came out fine, but I forgot I had to strip the skin off until just before serving time, so I was madly picking little bits of skin out of the kids' portions.

All in all, it's not like individual bits came out poorly, but the whole dinner felt off-kilter.

Which is to say, I think good cooking is as much about timing as anything. Timing of managing your ingredients, timing of the preparation, timing of the cooking, timing of the serving. I've been battling a low grade something or other that's been making feel ill for a while, and while the day can be a bit of a grind, I know I'm truly off when I can't get that cooking rhythm going.

What, you didn't expect this blog to be one of those haute cuisine, everything-I-cook-is-fabulous blogs, did you? How boring twould be, twere so!

In any event, lesson noted: sometimes you need to shunt the proceedings off to your sous chef du maison before you get yourself in trouble. I finally figured this out when it was time to get the broth cooked, and humbly requested the assistance of my better half to finish off the evening.

And now, I'm thinking maybe I should stock up on some spaghettios, just in case, for the next time my game is this far off. One downside of the meal plan discipline is sometimes the circumstances of the day call for one to simply chuck it out, shuffle something around, or go with a Plan C out of a can.

Remedial Lemon Slicing

Here's this week's kitchen konundrum (tm): if you need to squeeze half a lemon, and want to use the other half for lemon slices, what's the best way to cut the lemon?

I believe this is an insoluble problem, like Fermat's last theorem. The best way to cut lemon slices is to cut along the axis of the stem (parallel to the nubbinses on either side), and the best way to cut a lemon to juice it is transaxially, so the tissue between the segments doesn't interfere with the juicing.

If you cut it as illustrated on the right, you will get lots of juice in your face and not on your fish. But if you do it the other way and try to juice the half you need for juice, you end up having more difficulty getting the juice out and end up with more pulp to filter.

That said, I think the correct answer is the latter (NOT the way it is illustrated above) -- cut for the slices and deal with the juicing.

I thereby open the floor to discussion. More important issues of our day to come!!!

I wonder if this is the sort of thing they discuss at culinary school?