Good Things in the Kitchen

I did some good things in the kitchen yesterday. I made a batch of pear chutney. I also browned a small, tough beef round steak along with carrots, onions, and celery, then simmered it all afternoon to make beef stock. I made the meat into dog food, and tonight I'm going to make French Onion Soup with the broth! I feel very self-congratulatory about this planning ahead.

Dad picked some beautiful greens for tonight's salad. Salad and soup will be enough, because we ate an Italian lunch in downtown Tucson while attending the Tucson Art Museum Art Fair. The restaurant was odd: they had a very limited menu, just ravioli, linguini, or rigatoni, but it was excellent, and the delicious wine was served in the most elegant tall glasses. The building was about as old as you'll find in the West, very thick old adobe.

Holiday Mashed Sweet Potatoes

The annual Thanksgiving lunch at work was today. I brought sweet potatoes. Most sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving tables are really gross -- either chunks boiled in sugar syrup, or a casserole dish covered with colored marshmallows. I wanted to make a compromise dish, one that people would eat but that I would also eat, so I added a pecan topping to my usual recipe.

This is a plain roasted sweet potato, not the recipe described below.

The key, as always, was baking the heck out of the sweet potatoes, which I think brings out their natural sweetness way better than boiling or steaming them. Here is the recipe as I wrote it in an email to a coworker who wanted the recipe.

Bake 5 or 6 whole sweet potatoes at 400 degrees for 1 to 2 hours, until the skins collapse slightly and the potatoes are soft. Let cool until you can handle them and remove the peels. Mash with a potato ricer. Add and mix thoroughly:

1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup half and half
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 scant teaspoon lemon or orange zest

All of the above are approximate -- taste and keep adding as needed. Sometimes I add a few tablespoonsful of bourbon, but I didn't today.

The mixture should be really fluffy, almost soufflelike. Spoon into baking dish and sprinkle with chopped pecans. You can sprinkle on some brown sugar if you like. Toast under broiler for just a minute -- those pecans will burn SO FAST, as I was reminded this morning when I had to scrape off a layer of blackened pecans and start over again. Twice. I had to throw away a lot of bitter, charred pecans, and I was sad.

Turkey

Thanksgiving turkey probably involves more advice, worry, clucking, and carrying on than any other meal in our culture. It's not that hard to roast a turkey! An added plus is that the Thanksgiving feast is so excessive that you don't have to cook for several days after.

My very simplest and best method for turkey is to brine lightly for 2 or 3 hours (soak in a solution of cold water with 1/4 cup of salt*); drain turkey and then rub all over with a mixture of olive oil, paprika, and salt. Stuff if desired. Place breast-side-up in a turkey roaster or baking pan. Pour 1 cup white wine or vermouth around it, and then bake at 325 or 350 for whatever the label says. I usually have a 12-pound turkey, stuffed, and it takes about 3 1/2 hours. It's not done until the dark thigh meat is done. Usually I cover the turkey for the first half, but it depends on the pan available, the oven, the company, etc.

Stuffing

12 cups dry bread crumbs (don't buy seasoned bread crumbs. Save old bread in the freezer for the month leading up to Thanksgiving and break it up in the food processor).

1 onion, chopped
1/4 cup butter

Cook the onion in the butter in large Dutch oven. Add bread crumbs and cook a little to toast lightly. Then add:

2 teaspoons dried sage
A little each of thyme, rosemary, and marjoram
A small handful of finely chopped parsley
Salt and pepper
Chicken or turkey broth to taste--our family likes very dry stuffing, so we just add a half cup or so. It will get wetter if it's cooked inside the turkey.

It's important not to overseason at this point. The flavors will develop as the turkey juices soak in.

You can also cook the stuffing in a casserole (30 to 45 minutes in medium oven), in which case you can be freer with the amounts of seasonings and broth. I usually put some inside the turkey cavity and the rest in a casserole.

Gravy

It's good to boil the turkey neck, onion skins, and any other spare parts for a couple of hours ahead of time to make broth. You can use it in both the stuffing and the gravy.

Once the turkey is done, remove it to a platter and let rest a little before carving, while you make the gravy. Assess your roasting pan: is there still some fat and liquid in there? If there's a lot, pour it off into a blender, add about a third or half that amount in flour, and blend. Put back in roasting pan and cook the paste (roux) until it's not raw anymore. You can make it as dark as you want the gravy to be. Then gradually add the broth, stirring constantly, until you have gravy. You could use about 5 cups of broth per cup of flour, I suppose, though I never really measure. Boil gently and stir. Season with salt and pepper. If it's too thin, boil more to concentrate. If it's way too bland, add some chicken bouillon granules. If it tastes "flat," add just a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar.

If your roasting pan has baked dry, you can put in a quart of water and boil it up to get the flavorful broth out of there. Pour off, make a roux using 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup flour, and use some of the broth you just created to make gravy.

Whenever you get gravy that's not as smooth as you like, puree it in the blender. No one has to know.

*Brining is easily accomplished in an ice chest. Throw in some ice cubes to keep everything cold. And--here's a great thing I discovered once when the turkey got done a whole hour ahead of everything else: preheat the ice chest with hot water, then drain. Put the cooked turkey in and it will stay very hot for a long time while everything finishes cooking.

Collards

This is my favorite way to eat collard greens: cut into strips, with the ribs chopped up small, and sauteed in the fat from one or two pieces of bacon. Garlic and a dried chile are optional. It's halfway in between the traditional ham-hock-and-eighteen-hours recipe and the lighter stir frying in olive oil...both of which I write about in a November piece for the Free Times which will be published the week after Thanksgiving.

Oh, man, I love collards.

Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew

You could say this is the meal that got Cooking Habit started, although we never posted it here. It was the first recipe I discovered and told you about, Mom, instead of the other way around...which is when we started to form the give-and-take that led to this site (though I still get most of my cooking ideas and knowledge from you).

The site is coming up on its one-year anniversary in five days, so this is appropriate.

I found the recipe in the 2000 Joy of Cooking. It looked tasty, except that it called for ground turkey or beef, and zucchini, both of which I omitted. It turned out to be delicious -- highly addictive, very warming, very filling. And here's where this story became part of family lore: I told you to try making it, but I forgot to mention what I'd left out. You came up with the exact same modifications, and you loved it, and then Russell made it and he loved it, and it became a family standard. I believe even Isaac, who might as well be a family member, identified the correct modifications independently of us.

It's basically a thick, rich stew made with garlic, ginger, assorted bell peppers and hot chiles, sweet potatoes, and peanut butter. I always serve it over couscous. It's the most satisfying completely vegan meal I've ever had.

I forgot to take a picture of it when I made it this week, so instead here is an old picture of the first table I ever ate it at, in one of my old apartments.

Here's the recipe with my/our modifications:

Saute in 1/4 cup oil until translucent:
-1-2 onions, chopped
-1-2 bell peppers, any color (I prefer red)
-1-2 fresh chiles, minced

Add and saute for a minute or two:
-4 cloves garlic
-1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

Add and saute for one minute:
-1 tablespoon chili powder
-1 teaspoon cumin, ground or whole
-1 teaspoon whole or crushed dried red pepper -- scale up or down depending on heat of other chiles used

Add:
-2 large or 3 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in 1-inch chunks
-1/3 cup tomato paste

Cover with water and simmer for 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, until sweet potatoes are sweet and soft. Stir 1 cup of the broth into a bowl with:
-1/2 to 3/4 cup peanut butter

Then stir the mixture into the large pot. Salt to taste. Serve over couscous.

I've actually tried it once with some ground beef, and I didn't like it at all. Let it remain vegan, zucchiniless, and perfect.

Impossible Pumpkin Pie

How can this be so good? It's a recipe throwback from the seventies, first seen on the back of a Bisquick box. It's not really a pie--more like a pudding. Easy and delicious.

Impossible Pumpkin Pie

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup Bisquick or other biscuit mix*

1 16-ounce can pumpkin

2 tablespoons soft butter

1 12-ounce can evaporated milk

2 eggs

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 or 2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix all ingredients in a blender, or beat in a bowl, until smooth. Pour into a 10-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

*Here's a healthy alternative to Bisquick:

Light Baking Mix

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup dry milk powder

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Mix thoroughly. Store, tightly covered, in cool dry place. Use in place of Bisquick.

Spiced Lamb Meatballs and Yellow Chard

It was hard to get a pretty picture of this meal, but boy did it taste good. I bought ground lamb and made a Claudia Roden recipe in which the lamb was mixed with allspice, cumin, and coriander, and then formed into meatballs. I sauteed the meatballs with some onions and garlic, and added tomato paste to make the whole thing into a stew. We ate it over rice. It was a great recipe for a busy night in which I wandered in and out of the kitchen a lot -- sort of time-consuming, but easy and spread out.

The chard was actually the tops of some golden beets I bought over the weekend. It looked kind of tough, but ended up being tender and really mild -- Lawson said it tasted like turnip greens, and he was right. I sauteed the stems in olive oil first, then added the leaves and some red chile and garlic and a bit too much salt.

I'll be going on about greens a lot over the next several days, as I am working on a piece about collards for the Free Times. I even interviewed a local organic farmer yesterday about them. Oh, I love collards.

November Miscellany

Here are our first tangerines of the year (we had eight.) They are hard to peel and a little on the fibrous side, but have a delightful tangy and sweet flavor.

***

I am not reviewing this cookbook, just complaining about it. I bought a used copy of James McNair's Favorites (1999) at a library sale for $2.50. It is beautiful to look at and has some lovely recipes. However, it has the worst index I've ever come across: I finally found a spinach recipe under R for "Roman-Style Spinach" and eventually figured out that the vegetable recipes are more or less alphabetically arranged--okra, potatoes, spinach--but they are included in a long section titled "Accompaniments," which also includes salads and grains. I wouldn't be so disappointed if I didn't love McNair's Pizza book, which got me started down the path to years of wonderful pizzas.

***

On a less bitchy note, here is a wonderful salad that our neighbor Mary Ellen brought to the neighborhood picnic last weekend. It is just the perfect combination to sit around on the buffet table and still be delicious, whether chilled or at room temperature.

Greek Salad for Two

2 tomatoes, cubed

1/2 cucumber, sliced

12 Greek olives

1 slice red onion, chopped

1 16-ounce can garbanzos

Feta cheese

Make a dressing of oregano, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (two parts vinegar to one part oil). Add salt and pepper to taste. Lettuce is optional.

Brussels Sprouts

We've had many beautiful green and leafy things lately, with the fall garden in production and fall vegetables in the markets. This Brussels sprouts recipe modified from one by Jack Bishop is so delicious:

Braised Brussels Sprouts with Mustard Cream Sauce

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup minced onion

Brown the onion in the butter for about 3 minutes. Add:

1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved or quartered

1/4 cup evaporated milk or cream

1/4 cup chicken stock

Pinch of salt

Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until tender. Add a little liquid if necessary to keep from sticking. Before serving stir in

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

With these we had barbecued Cornish game hens (first marinated

Portuguese-style in vinegar, garlic, and chile pepper) and roasted new potatoes.

Pasta with Italian Sausage

No, we didn't eat the dog. We adopted her, and that's why I haven't posted much this week. I've been exhausted and, I'm sorry to say, eating nothing very interesting -- pizza from our local Greek pizza joint; lettuce with salad dressing and nuts; cereal; grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm ready to get back to cooking more.

A few nights ago, though, I made a pasta sauce with Italian sausage, red peppers, onions, oregano, basil, and tomatoes. On Lawson's recommendation I added fennel seeds, some dried red peppers, and parsley. It was good. I love sausage because I love the idea of meat as seasoning rather than giant chunk of main ingredient.

Men and Soup

I enjoyed your Butternut Squash Soup post. Dad is always encouraging me to make soup for dinner--an excellent idea, so why do I resist? Well, here's why: I made this absolutely terrific soup this evening, and he was looking around for the rest of the meal.

I admit that this is Wednesday evening, and I usually do my marketing on Thursday morning, therefore the the cupboard was a little bare. I can recommend this version of butternut squash soup, though, even if I'm embarrassed to reveal that I got the recipe from AARP magazine (and modified it).

Butternut Squash Soup

1 large butternut squash

Cut the squash in quarters, scrape out the seeds, and roast at 425 degrees for 1 hour. Turn over after 30 minutes.

1 tablespoon butter

1 chopped onion

2 strips bacon, chopped

Melt butter in soup kettle and add onion and bacon. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onion is tender.

Cooked squash, scraped from skin

4 cups chicken broth

Add squash and broth to pot and cook about 30 minutes. Then add:

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Puree soup in blender. Serve topped with:

Chopped toasted pecans

Shrimp and Grits Away from Home

We went to the beach with some friends this weekend, and there we improvised a meal of shrimp and grits. The meal was also supposed to contain roasted eggplant, which I burned, and a salad, for which our friend couldn't find the lettuce he'd brought home from the grocery store. So it was just the shrimp and grits. I am not normally a cream sauce fan, but people were interested in that, so we made the dish above. I toasted the shrimp shells in a dry pan, then simmered them with white wine and strained the shells out. I made a roux, sauteed shallots in it, and then added the stock and some cream. We cooked the shrimp in a separate skillet and added them at the end, along with diced raw red and yellow bell peppers, green onions, and parsley. We served them over some very seriously coarse red and yellow grits.

I loved the bowls at that beach house.

Healthy Blueberry Muffins

Brittany asked me for some healthy baking recipes. I thought I had lost track of this one, but fortunately Mom still had her copy of Simply Colorado from 1989, the source of this delicious muffin recipe. They have the added advantage of using frozen blueberries so you can make them year-round.

Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins

1 cup flour

1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats (raw)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Combine above ingredients and set aside. Mix:

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 beaten egg

Add the buttermilk mixture to the dry mixture and mix just until blended. Fold in:

1 cup frozen blueberries

Spoon into 12 paper-lined muffin cups. Sprinkle over all:

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

Pot Roast with Beer and Onions over Noodles

This is pretty close to Julia Child's beer and onion pot roast recipe from Volume 1 of Mastering. I browned a big piece of lean, tough beef -- bottom round, I think -- in some oil. I then sauteed some carrots and several onions. Then I dumped it all into the crockpot with herbs (parsley, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns). I made a small, light brown roux in the leftover drippings and added that to the crockpot. I deglazed the pan with a few bottles of Stella Artois (it's an annoying hipster pot roast, you see). Seven hours later, it was tasty. It was also extremely difficult to eat, what with noodles slithering back into the somewhat thin broth. If I'd had time, I would have reduced the broth for several more hours on the stove.

Posole

As far as I can tell, the only essential ingredient in the wonderful Mexican stew posole (also spelled pozole) is hominy. After that it varies wildly. It is so flexible, nutritious, comforting, and delicious. It's also a great food for entertaining because you can make up a whole tray of pretty garnishes for guests to add according to their tastes. Some typical garnishes are crumbled Mexican or grated Monterey Jack cheese; sliced radishes or green onions; cilantro; pickled jalapeno slices; olives; lime slices; and cubes of avocado.

Pictured above are some freshly roasted Anaheim chiles. Dad peeled them.

Here is a traditional pork version of posole, as well as a vegetarian one.

Pork Posole

Olive oil
1 or 2 pounds boneless pork, cubed
2 onions, sliced
4 or more cloves of garlic

Heat the oil in a large pan and brown first the pork, then the onions and garlic. (Most Mexican recipes do not brown the pork--it is just boiled. But I prefer the added flavor that comes from browning. You can skip it if you want.) Cover the meat with water and simmer, covered, until very tender. I often do this step in the crockpot.

Add:
1 large can tomatoes, or 1 pound fresh tomatillos
2 large cans hominy, yellow or white, drained
Salt
1-2 teaspoons oregano
Fresh or canned green chiles to taste

Last night I used 8 large, fresh Anaheims, and it was pretty spicy.

Simmer everything together for about an hour. Serve in bowls with optional garnishes.


Vegetarian Posole with Roasted Vegetables

3 to 6 dried red chiles (or 1/4 cup or more pure chile powder)
2 cloves garlic

Soak chiles in 1 quart hot water for ½ hour, then drain, reserving soaking water. Puree chiles with garlic and ½ cup of the reserved water.

1 large onion
2 tablespoons olive oil

Saute onion in oil until very golden. Add chile puree and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.

1 or 2 large cans hominy, drained
Vegetable broth (you can make this more or less soupy to taste)
1 can tomatoes
2 teaspoons oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

Add these ingredients to puree and simmer about ½ hour.

1 large onion
1 green pepper
2 large carrots
1 tablespoon olive oil

Meanwhile, chop these vegetables, toss with olive oil, and roast at 450 degrees until charred and tasty, about ½ hour. Add them to the posole and simmer until everything is cooked and flavorful. Serve in bowls with optional garnishes.