A Day in the Life. . .(part deux)

Some days are just a beast. Today was one. Tomorrow will be another. And then, finally, a fun weekend.

Luckily some nice moments broke the gloom. And while I did not burst into song like Julie Andrews, it was nice to enjoy some of my favorite things. . .

1. It snowed!!!!!! To the naysayers: yes, the novelty and joy will wear off in about 24 hours as the prospect of the next few months kicks. But this is how snow makes me and my IKEA man feel.

2. Grocery shopping and realizing that my slightly dysfunctional, though extremely gourmand shopping cart only included

• A half a case of wine (is it my fault that Buschs has amazing wine sales?)
• 4 avocados (ditto the sale)
• roasted peppers (yup)
• blue corn chips
• and a copy of Harpers.

Dysfunction, or a recognition and acceptance of the sweeter things in life. . . the wine is for a holiday party and include a Spanish Verdejo and Pinot Noir from Coppala's winery, both of which I am really excited to try. Given the amazing sale prices, I also picked up some Chilean carmenère, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Australian Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Spanish red to round out my "cellar."

And of course we had a busy day at the cafe, which was rewarding but tiring after an incredibly high stress week.

But as long as my cellar is full, the cat happy and my Internet working, life in our little city/big town will go on.

Healthy Inspirations

Today was my annual check-up. Luckily, given that my primary care physician is lovely, the 2+ hours long appointment was not as unpleasant as it could be. And while I've quit smoking and got a great all-clear recently after surgery, the holidays have provided plentiful rich food and drink. . .

Let's just say the scale was not kind. Surely a fluke, probably a seismic shifting of the earth or problem in the buildings structural integrity that led to the floor tilting, etc., etc.

Nonetheless the health scares of late and scale results led me to think that my recent indulgences (French-style hot chocolate with whole bars melted into milk being one very unfortunate new recipe.. . )should be a tad less frequent.

So this great article in the Times inspired me to think of making some lighter fare. Asian inspired, probably with a heavy leaning towards Japanese and not my beloved coconut milk-heavy Thai curries, lots of ginger, fresh steamed healthy goodness which is light but flavorful.

Ah well, if there is any hope of looking cute in all those party dresses then perhaps a bit more healthy living could be arranged.

Food and Friends

I find the best meals tend to be with good friends and the best dishes tend to be those that are the most spontaneous, cooked while sipping wine in the kitchen and gabbing with good company.

Having just spent Thanksgiving near Traverse City, I realized that my dinner invite to one of my oldest and dearest friends, S., was not well-timed for cooking a gourmet meal. Whoops. However she is like family and as my fridge, pantry, and bar have been well stocked of late, I figured an improvised meal would be possible.

The freezer tends to be underutilized in my kitchen, but when I do use it, I realize how hugely helpful it is to keep good frozen food. Buschs had had a sale on frozen wild shell-on shrimp a few weeks ago, so I had bought an extra pound and chucked it in there thinking it could come in handy. It did.

My mother, bless her, always buys extra produce with me in mind, so I had a beautiful large eggplant, bell peppers, fresh tomatoes and fresh herbs in the crisper drawer in my fridge. And then of course I had some olive oil (Colavita extra virgin and my current obsession, a Chilean varietal from Fustinis) , butter (you really can't go wrong with butter), sea salt from the always reliable Trader Joes, canned organic chopped tomatoes, fresh garden grown jalapenos, onions from the farmers' market, and french feta cheese and couscous from the Middle Eastern store, all of which I set out, mulling what to do and sipping a lovely 2009 Chenin Blanc. (Thanks again, Whole Foods!)

I initially thought I would make karades guvec, a Turkish shrimp casserole that is baked in a clay pot, and incorporate eggplant in the stew. So I set to peeling and salting the eggplant, and thawing the shrimp.

Though, while I am not engineer, the shrimp to eggplant ration already looked a bit off. . .

And as the onions and garlic sauteed and were joined with the red bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants, S. came, the conversation and wine flowed. As we launched into our catch up, it was clear that my initial plan would not work or be too time consuming to tweak.

So I switched to a far easier ratatouille and decided to cook the shrimp shell-on in a very hot pan with just some olive oil and green onions. I had fresh rosemary, thyme and sage all of which I chopped and added to the eggplant mixture which was cooking down, and the shrimp cooked very quickly. While a pain to peel while eating, they tend to be so much more tender when cooked with the tail, shell and legs still on.

And in the end, for an extremely improvised dinner it was not bad at all. S. and I both agreed that the couscous could have been more flavorful (I only used butter and sea salt) but the ratatouille and shrimp were both tender and flavorful, and complemented each other better than I planned.

But more importantly, it was so nice to spend an evening with someone I have known for the better part of 23 years. Laughing, commiserating, and going down memory lane. That the evening was accompanied with good food and better drink was a lovely bonus. As is the fact that my 1990s pictures of S. and I remain happily in the non-digital world - MC Hammer pants and crop tops not being my most elegant of looks. . .

Detroit food musings

Why is it that everyday brings a new article about how amazing the D is?

This one from the Guardian is on the local food scene. Makes for a good read and good guide to planning some long overdue time in the city.

Friday Food Thoughts

On vacation, my plan has been to de-connect/go offline (ha!), relax, read, eat well and do wholesome yoga-like activities (umm, kind of?).

I finally got around to picking up The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by David Kamp. It is a fun read and I knew I would enjoy the book immensely when I read this passage:

I love the way that even the seemingly mundane staples of our daily life are being tapped for all the depth and complexity they can offer - to the point of ridiculousness, but benign ridiculousness. Butter is now something you can get in a variety of regional pedigree and butterfat contents: 86 percent for the artisanal "cultured" version made by the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company, 85 percent for the butter from California's Straus Family Creamery, 82 percent for the commercially manufactured but high-end Plugra, and 80 percent for your basic supermarket Land L'Lakes. Sugar, too, is making a play for our attention, its enthusiasts arguing that there's a whole world out there beyond the yellow Domino box, a world populated by varieties with Dr. Seussian names as jaggery, piloncillo, muscovado, and demarra. What about salt, then? Well, at the restaurant widely regarded as the best in the United States, Thomas Keller's French Laundry, in Yountville, California, I was soberly presented with a salt tasting - a salt tasting! - as an accompaniment to my foie gras course. The waiter, like some particularly elegant cocaine dealer, gently spooned nine mini-mounds onto a little board, each salt a different hue and consistency from the next - one as fine and white as baking power, another as dark and chunkily crystalline as the inside of a geode.

It is, in short, a great time to be an eater. And how often do we get to say something as unreservedly upbeat as that?

From Kemp, Preface pages x - xi

Thanksgiving, 2 years later

Life since the last post has been, well, life. Full, complicated, difficult, rewarding and never lacking adventure though also at times slightly bleak. . .

However - this Thanksgiving has taken me to Crystal Mountain Resort in northern Michigan with my parents, brother, and our cat Fatty. It has been a welcome break as this fall was one of the hardest in memory. Things are looking up and I suppose I do have much to be grateful for: first and foremost my health, and always my family and my friends who have truly been rockstars.

So in the holiday spirit and to get back into blogging foodie mode, a few pictures from our Thanksgiving this year:

The view of the table with drinks - we had a lush 2008 Parducci Cabernet Sauvignon (soon to be available at my mother's lovely restaurant), Toso Champagne from Argentina (great quality/price ration, very smooth and drinkable - thanks Whole Foods recommendation!) and some local St. Julian Blue Heron White for desert (also available at Ayse's Cafe and a very underrated little white in my opinion).

My plat composé

Our delicious bird

Wild rice stuffing and cranberry sauce

And a pre-dinner shot of me and my brother.

Wishing you and yours warm wishes over Thanksgiving with much to be grateful for and much good food, wine, and cheer.

Risotto a la belge

Sometimes it is great to have a recipe to rely on, and this one is particularly yummy. It is also a great website for those who have lived, live, or will travel to Belgium. In my humble opinion, some of the best food (and fashion!) to be had in Europe is in that little country.

Bon appetite!

Thanksgiving, Past and Future

This year’s Thanksgiving was, modesty aside, The Best Ever. Naturally I attribute that to two key factors - excellent food, for which I was partially responsible - and a healthy amount of Moet et Chandon White Star and Evolution from the Sokol Blosser vineyard in Oregon - for which I was fully responsible for. Family gatherings can be tense in the best of situation, but loosening everyone up, albeit in a reasonably civilized way, ensured that the final prep, dinner, conversation, desert, and subsequent card games all flowed smoothly if not a little hazily.

This year was the second time in my life that I made the turkey. Now cooking in my house is very daunting as everyone is an amazing cook and thus, a spot on critic. So rather then completely winging it (no pun intended) I decided to stick as closely to a recipe as possible. Naturally, that didn’t fully happen and what turned out was an improvisation of two recipes. One was for the actual brining, which I shall forever do before roasting any poultry, the second for roasting the turkey. I found both on epicurious.com, which has always proved reliable in my experience and usually has very helpful user comments.

The first step, after we bought the 13.15lb (5.9 kg) monster was to wash it thoroughly and remove giblets and organs. I then found a pot large enough to put the bird in so that it would completely submerged in the brine, plunked it in, and improvised the following brine recipe.

Rather then adding a whole three pounds of kosher salt, I added approximately 1 1/2 cups, and while we didn’t have marjoram, I used fresh rosemary instead. This was done the day before to let the Turkey soak overnight, and the whole concoction looked something like this:

The hardest past was probably washing the bird after the brine, because you really do want to do it thoroughly, but it is a large, slippery, unwieldy thing.

As to the actual bird, I decided to improvise on the Porcini Mushroom Turkey with mushroom gravy recipe with fresh baby portobello mushrooms instead of dried porcini.

What that meant was that I boiled approximately 8 ounces of the mushrooms (cleaned and sliced) and using maybe 1/4 of that for the mushroom butter that went under the skin and the rest for the gravy. Thinking back on it, 1 1/2 sticks of butter under and over the turkey’s skin is a bit much, but it made the meat unbelievably juicy.

For the actual bird, my mother had brought homemade chicken stock from her cafe, and I had saved the mushroom broth, so I combined both of those to put in the roasting pan with the bird and the fresh herbs. Luckily there had been a farmer’s market at the Corner Brewery the week before and one of the vendors and been kind enough to give me a ridiculous amount of fresh rosemary, thyme, and sage (alas no parsley or we would have had us a good old Simon and Garfunkel moment) for only five dollars.

There was extra butter, so in addition to putting it under the skin (a very intimate process not for the squeamish) and in the cavity (ditto), I put it over the skin as well instead of the olive oil the original recipe called for.

So as the bird was ‘doing its thing’ roasting in a separate roaster oven we have, I started the prep for the gravy. Again, I substituted fresh portobello’s and used regular onions for shallots. I started the gravy with a blend of the chicken and mushroom stock, and added some pan drippings later once the bird was out and tenting. The sauce was way too much for the 5 of us, however I refrigerated one part, and froze a good 2 cups of it for future use. The part initially saved was used with the last of the turkey breast, sauteed mushrooms, and extra fresh herbs to create a sort of post-Thanksgiving Fettucini Alfredo. I don’t usually much care for cream sauces, but given this had more broth and white wine in it then actual cream, it was surprisingly light and yet still onctueux.

I was told by no less than my father, one of the kindest people I know but with a highly sophisticated palate, that it was the best turkey he had ever eaten, and my mother, who has even more discerning taste buds, seconded this. It was pretty damn good, and though time consuming, surprisingly easy to make. In the future, I would roast it in a conventional oven as I think it lets the skin brown more and maybe try it with a mix of mushrooms to add even more woodsiness and richness to the flavor.

Also on the dinner menu was the wild-rice and chestnut stuffing my mother makes’ every year (unbelievably good, also time consuming but fairly straightforward). I had my dad send me the recipe the first year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner by myself, but have been unable to locate the .pdf file or the recipe online. As suggested by the title, the stuffing involves loads of wild rice and roasted chestnuts, is cooked with chicken broth and celery, flavored with fresh thyme and the rest I will leave to your imaginations. Because the bird was brined we did not stuff it, but baked the cooked stuffing.

Other sides were roasted Brussels sprouts (the only way I eat them), mashed yams, and a lovely cranberry-orange sauce whose recipe was from a girl who works at my mom’s. I’m not a huge fan of cranberry sauce, usually finding them far too sweet, but this one had no added sugar and fresh orange rind, so it had a lovely citrusy, aromatic bitterness.

For desert I made a maple-pumpkin pie, with the best crust recipe I’ve ever found, all from November’s edition of Real Simple.

I made the crust the day before and was really hesitant about rolling out. All previous crusts I’ve used have been with the “pat-in” method, and I’m really no baker. However with my mother’s help, we rolled it out evenly and it turned out flaky, not too sweet, and buttery. I think I’m going to use the recipe next time I make my caramelized onion quiche.

So as I get ready to go back to Berlin (where ironically, I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner by myself) my brother and I are planning to have a late Thanksgiving dinner for him and some of our friends. It will also be a Festivus celebration (dorks that we are). I suspect we will substitute 2 roast chickens for the turkey as it is hard to find a reasonable sized one, and I will bring canned pumpkin, ready roasted chestnuts, maple syrup and other ingredients from the States. I also suspect we won’t make all the trimmings, but definitely the stuffing and one other veg. Either way, it should be a good time and a fantastic trip.