Thanksgiving Aftermath, part 1

Happy après-Thanksgiving, everyone! Are you still feeling the food coma? I am…mostly because I can’t stop eating leftovers and am already plowing through holiday eggnog. December: 1, Meg’s willpower: 0. (Somewhat troubling in that it isn't actually December yet.) But since my Thanksgiving cooking efforts were so successful, I’m calling the whole thing a win anyway. 

I actually had two Thanksgivings, one which I did not contribute to and one which I cooked about 60% of, plus an out-of-order leftover experience.  The first Thanksgiving was at my cousins’ home, and my cousin’s mother-in-law was responsible for some seriously delicious butternut squash. I’ll figure out that one and share it here soon, hopefully…

Then came Friday, when EPB and I realized a little too late that doing our Thanksgiving on Saturday meant that we had to improvise the traditional Friday meal of leftover sandwiches.  So, with canned cranberry and StoveTop to the rescue (plus leftover turkey from an office lunch earlier in the week, we created our masterpieces. EPB may win for most interesting – his went as follows: layer of white bread (the more basic the better, and – in his case – untoasted), turkey, cranberry, layer of white bread that had been dredged in leftover gravy, layer of stuffing, remaining slice of white bread. Mine was toasted and lacking the middle slice – I added some mayonnaise and used my gravy dip-style. Overall, quite delicious.

But Saturday…oh Saturday. As mentioned previously, we had procured a turkey – free-range, organic, heritage breed (Spanish Black, if you’re wondering) – not quite the fanciest turkey out there but pretty darn close.  Feather bits plucked, Friday it went into the brine. Saturday, it hit the brand-new smoker. And it was GOOD. So good, we may have converted our guests to this turkey and process for next year! 

The majority of the sides were my project, and while not everything was a success I am fairly sure I have found the world’s best stuffing.  Things that were marginally successful: Lemony Green Beans (sort of tasty but too lemony, and possibly also over-steamed - not worth detailing here), and mashed sweet potatoes. These mashed sweet potatoes will be the death of me. They have been a staple in my family for years – my grandmother used to make them, and she taught my mother, who makes them for holidays now.  They are (allegedly) simple, and delicious. The trick is the addition of apple juice – you’re supposed to add gradually until it looks “thin” or you can smell it, then let it sit on keep warm and the potatoes will absorb the rest.  Three times now I have added slowly, and it has gone from not at all thin, to suddenly quite thin, and then – no matter what I try – it does not re-thicken. SO FRUSTRATING. This year, after a series of delicious baked sweet potato experiences, I apparently thought it would be a good idea to mess with a recipe I had never perfected in the first place by mashing fresh, instead of using canned (the recipe way).  Suffice to say: it didn’t work. Flavor: okay. Texture: thin and chunky at the same time. Distressing. 

But the stuffing…oh, my. The stuffing. Recipe and story coming up shortly...

I'm a lucky blogger

Thanksgiving...a high point of what I think of as "the cooking season". It's gloomy out, and people gather for warmth and unconcerned eating. It's the first and last time people really enjoy holiday food - after this, the Christmas parties come fast and furious, and we're all perpetually...stuffed. But Thanksgiving! Nothing has gone awry yet, no one has been trampled for a big cheap flat screen. There's only food, family, friends, football.

This year, I'm doubly lucky. I'll have a Thanksgiving with my family out here tomorrow - so glad that I HAVE family out here! - and Saturday we'll have our own Thanksgiving at home, because someone has an overwhelming desire to smoke his own turkey. In between, shopping will be limited to the internet and strenuous activities will include...um, nothing. I've got quite a meal planned for Saturday...the turkey arrived this morning from Windy N Ranch in Ellensburg, WA, via Full Circle Farm in Carnation, WA (where I get my bi-weekly organic produce delivery from). Tom Turkey looks pretty promising...there are still some feather bits on him, which is alternately fantastic (so fresh!) and slightly disconcerting. The produce box contents - Yukon Gold potatoes, carrots, celery, leeks - will make up a good part of the menu. There are also pears - you know what will happen to those! The West Seattle Farmer's Market filled in the rest of the ingredients - cranberries, sweet potatoes, bread for the stuffing, all locally grown/produced.

I'm so excited to cook all this - and so grateful to live in a place where all this can be locally provided by non-corporate/industrial farms.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Can I get that recipe?"

A lot of my cooking lately has been baking-centered, and fruit-specific baking at that. This isn’t something I have always done much of. It was sort of an accident, actually. Over the past four years or so, I developed some bizarre food reactions. A little bit of research combined with a visit to a really great allergist in Princeton, NJ, and it turns out...I’m allergy to healthy things. Okay, not ALL healthy things - but a lot of raw fruits and vegetables. Turns out this isn’t as weird as it seems - not even that uncommon, just under-diagnosed.

I digress. Point is, can’t eat raw fruit. Fast forward to the holidays last year, when I was the recipient of a couple of Harry & David gift boxes...both of which included many fresh, juicy, delicious, pears. Which I can’t eat. What to do? Poached pears sounded so thoroughly unappealing. A little Google hunting produced a fairly simple sounding pear tart recipe (posted in full below), so I figured I’d give it a try.

The first time I made it, it came out looking like total liquid, and I fretted and I knashed and I wrung my hands and put it in the oven again and again. Since the juice was being created by the ongoing liquidation of the pears plus the brown sugar, this obviously didn’t help, but in the end it may actually have made it even more delicious (just as long as you don’t burn the crust).



Bottom line: simple, delicious, and the kind of thing that, if you bring it into the office, your colleagues will ask for again and again and again. Trust me.

Give this one a try...more baked fruit recipes to follow!

Rustic Pear Tart Eating Healthy in 2009. Copyright 2007, Ellie Krieger, All Rights Reserved.
Prep Time: 40 min // Inactive Prep Time: 30 min // Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves 6

Ingredients

Crust: [note from your blogger: I completely skip this crust business...Trader Joe's makes a terrific frozen crust that looks and tastes homemade. Defrost, roll out, and you're done. But if you're so inclined, this one came with the recipe...]

1/2 cup whole-grain pastry flour or regular whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons lowfat buttermilk
3 tablespoons ice water

Filling:

3 medium pears
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons light brown sugar [Note from your blogger: I rarely have light brown sugar on hand, so do the old half-and-half of dark brown and white sugar.]
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Glaze [Note from your blogger: I tend to forget to make this...the tart is still delicious either way, although probably not as pretty]:

1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon boiling water

Directions

To prepare the crust, in a medium bowl whisk together the whole-wheat pastry flour, all- purpose flour, granulated sugar and salt. Add the butter and using two knives or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour mixture until you get a pebbly, course texture. In a small bowl combine the buttermilk and ice water. Using a fork, gradually mix the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture. Pat the dough into a 4-inch round and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F, and prepare the filling. Peelthe pears, core them and cut into 1/4-inch slices. In a large bowl toss the pear slices with the lemon juice. Sprinkle in the cornstarch, brown sugar and cinnamonand toss until the pears are evenly coated. Set aside.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the chilled dough into a large circle about nine inches in diameter. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and draping the dough over the rolling pin, transfer to the prepared baking sheet. If the dough breaks at all patch it up with your fingers. [Note from your blogger: I haven’t attempted this - haven’t been confident the crust wouldn’t collapse on me with all the liquid the appears - so have been just putting in a pie dish. Arrange and fold as she suggests and it works out fine.]

Arrange the pears in a mound in the center of the dough, leaving a 2-inch boarder. Fold the border over the filling. It will only cover the pears partially and does not need to be even.

Bake the tart for 15 minutes, and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, keeping the tart in the oven all the while, and bake for another 40 minutes, until the pears are tender and the crust is golden brown. [Note from your blogger: at this point, mine often looks like it’s too liquid-y, as mentioned above. Don’t worry about it. Let it cool and the liquid will set. Just be careful to limit the amount of heat it if you serve it warm...which you should.]

In a small bowl stir together the honey and boiling water to make a glaze. When the tart is done remove it from the oven and brush the honey glaze all over the top of the fruit and crust. Transfer to a plate to cool slightly. Cut into 6 wedges and serve warm or a room temperature.

The pork, it is roasted. And then some.

So, it's November. Clearly, this is not gardening season...at least not in Seattle, so we're skipping that part of my re-learning curve for a few months. It IS Dungeness crab season...at least, it should be...and it's comfort food season. What sounds more comfort food-y than a roasted pork loin? Nothing! Well, plenty of things...but last week pork loin was it. It was on sale in massive cuts at my grocery...minimum: 8 pounds of pork! I live alone. 8 pounds was clearly excessive, so I now have 3 2-lb cuts in the freezer. What happened to the other one? Well, that's a matter of opinion, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The first challenge was finding a roast pork recipe that involved neither fruit (apples/raisins/etc) nor onions. I'm not opposed to fruit, and certainly have no shortage of fruit at the moment, but...fruit with pork always seems to make me just want more roasted fruit and less pork. Also I really hate cooking with onions. Truth be told I'm not super fond of eating them, either.

A little digging around produced this deliciously garlicky sounding recipe (copied in full below). I had all the required ingredients in-house, which is no small thing for me, and this even gave me an excuse to use something I had grown on the back patio (rosemary). I got home from work and got to it, stabbing the pork and lining the pan and crushing some recently dried rosemary. I popped it on the rack, set the timer, and put the whole thing in the oven. For the following two hours my apartment smelled AMAZING, if a little garlicky. It came out, and I sat down to a very attractive dinner.



I took the first bite...and knew immediately something had gone awry. The flavors were perfect - rosemary and garlic but neither in an overpowering way - but the meat was surprisingly overdone. Why? Well, if you already looked at the recipe and read my post carefully, you probably thought "wait, why is she putting this thing on a rack?" Indeed, why? There was no mention of a rack in the recipe. #fail. 

So, fellow chefs: remember, just because you're roasting something doesn't mean there's a rack involved. Now, to be fair: my ever-patient boyfriend (henceforth referred to as "EPB") tried to assure me that it was delicious, not at all overcooked. So either he was being kind or I like my pork juicier than it's supposed to be...who knows? Either way: I'll try this one again.

Roasted Pork Loin (source: AllRecipes, Kathleen Burton)

Serves 8 (although those seems like pretty small servings to me); Prep time 20 minutes, Cook time ~2 hours

Ingredients
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
salt and pepper to taste
2 pounds boneless pork loin roast
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white wine

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Crush garlic with rosemary, salt and pepper, making a paste. Pierce meat with a sharp knife in several places and press the garlic paste into the openings. Rub the meat with the remaining garlic mixture and olive oil. 

Place pork loin into oven, turning and basting with pan liquids. Cook until the pork is no longer pink in the center, about 2 hours. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read 160 degrees F (70 degrees C). Remove roast to a platter. Heat the wine in the pan and stir to loosen browned bits of food on the bottom. Serve with pan juices.

Okay, seriously, the world needs another food blog.

So, clearly THAT's not true...but I'm doing it anyway. I say "food" blog specifically for its vagueness - this will run the gamut from cooking debacles to eating experiences to gardening mishaps to the bi-weekly adventures that are my CSA membership. I was cut off from domestic bliss for a few years there, so am throwing myself into it with a vengeance now. Among other things, I joined a CSA to get myself out of a rapidly developing mini-rut: if it's in my kitchen already, I'm much more inclined to actually do something with it.

The truth is, the CSA is what triggered this thing. I think I have run out of friends who are willing to stop and brainstorm when I call them after opening the delivery and say "so, what the heck do I do with THIS thing?" So, what do people do when they need a little human guidance? Well, obviously we turn to the millions of strangers in the great system of tubes known as the World Wide Web. So: I'll tell stories and share the wins and losses, and maybe you can help me out a little here and there. If not, well, at least I'll have a place to double check where I went wrong on that recipe that one time...

And off we go!