Portuguese Turkey

I have been promising to post this. Eva, I don't think this would do well for goose, because goose is already fatty; this suits the blander character of turkey. Don't you think "Purity" is an odd brand name for sausage?

Marinate a 12-to-14- pound turkey for 1 to 3 days in a mixture of:

2 cups vinegar

2 cups water

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon pepper

2 dried red peppers, crushed

To cook turkey, stuff and roast at 325 degrees for 3 to 4 hours. Baste as desired with a mixture of melted butter and white vermouth.

Portuguese Stuffing

1/2 pound Portuguese sausage, diced

4 slices bacon

1 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped celery

1 carrot, grated

1/4 cup chopped parsley

8 to 12 cups coarse bread crumbs

Fry sausage and bacon in large skillet. Add onions, celery, parsley, and carrot and cook until tender. Add bread crumbs and fry until lightly browned. Remove from heat and season with:

Salt

Pepper

2 teaspoons dried sage

Poultry seasoning or a mixture of marjoram, thyme, rosemary (total 1 to 2 teaspoons dried, more if fresh)

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Mix thoroughly, then moisten as desired with turkey broth. Use less broth if you are going to put the stuffing inside the turkey, more if you are going to bake it in a casserole.

I Promise I Will Shut Up About Collards After This

I wrote the Entertaining page again this month for Abode, the special home section that appears in this week's Free Times. Once again, it's not online, but if you're in Columbia, South Carolina, you should pick one up.

The main article is about collard greens. The auxiliary articles are about 1960s desserts and decompressing from holiday entertaining.

Slow Collards

It occurs to me that you might not yet have cooked collards the really long, slow, traditional way, Mom. The collards Dad has started growing are so tender, and our family isn't much for cooking vegetables for half a day. And besides, I didn't want to scare you the first few times I made collard greens for you, because Southern food was so foreign to us. But I think you should try it. I took a bunch of pictures on Sunday, so here's a pictorial guide.

I weighed the bunch of collards I bought before I left the store: 3.5 pounds. It was a large, compact bunch, and probably yielded 8 side-dish-sized servings.

I have made greens that were really tasty but totally ruined by gritty dirt. So you have to do exactly what all the recipes say: fill a sink or a giant bowl (or a cooler, as I discovered at Thanksgiving) with water, swish the greens around, and let them sit there for 10 or more minutes until the dirt has fallen to the bottom. Change the water once or twice. Collards seem less dirty in general than turnip and mustard greens, which you should wash even more thoroughly.

Don't dry the collards at all -- you're just going to add more water. Take several leaves at a time, roll or bunch them up a bit, and cut crosswise, across the stem. I don't discard much of the stalk -- only the thickest bit at the base. It all gets very tender and tasty, so why waste it?

You will need some kind of cured pork product. I probably wouldn't have chosen the chemical wonderland pictured here, but Lawson was good enough to do our Thanksgiving shopping and decided we needed 10 pounds of artificially flavored pork neckbones, so I will not complain. Ham hocks work well, too. Probably roasted pork bones of any sort would also be okay.

A closeup, perhaps?

I don't know what that is, either. I poked it, and it was flexible.

Next, get a big pot. The bigger it is, the less time you have to spend waiting for the collards to cook down so you can stuff more in the pot. You will probably still have to spend a while doing so...maybe 15 extremely unstrenuous minutes.

Turn the heat on to medium-high and put the pork in the pot. Begin adding collards.

This is still just the one bunch I started with. It took about 10 minutes to get it all in. I used this strangely shaped wooden spoon thing that Lawson picked up at a yard sale to stir and prod.

Once all the collards are in, add water to bring the level up to 4 or 5 inches. Some recipes call for more...according to a family cookbook, Lawson's aunt covered hers entirely with water which she then discarded (sacrilege!) but this is a good start. You may need to add more later. Slow collards should end up with plenty of what is usually called potlikker, a greenish vitaminy broth that is, for me, almost the entire point of slow collards.

Then simmer the whole thing, lid slightly vented, for 3 to 6 hours, stirring maybe every 30 minutes. The pork should cook down and the greens become first darker green then less green. Add more water if needed.

Here are the collards after about two hours. They've reduced but are still darker green and not yet completely tender. These took another hour and a half.

When they're finished cooking, salt the collards to taste -- you shouldn't need much if the pork was cured. Then add a few teaspoons or more of hot pepper vinegar. Ideally you have a jar of pickled chiles of some sort and can just use some of the juice. If not, maybe cider vinegar and Texas Pete?

And here they are, all finished and delicious, with plenty of potlikker and a little of the meat that fell off the neckbone. Do not be dubious, even if you prefer vegetables that aren't overcooked...these are a special case. Lawson eats them cold out of the refrigerator for dessert -- they're that good.

Southern Italy and the Southern US

On Sunday I made:

• Tuscan Baked Cannellini Beans with Rosemary and Garlic. The recipe came from the Jack Bishop Italian Vegetarian book you gave me for my birthday. It was awesome, although next time I will probably use the crockpot instead of the prescribed Dutch-oven-in-the-oven, because I would like my beans a little bit moister.


• Fennel and Orange Salad with Mint and Olives, also from the Bishop book. The taste was phenomenal, but I didn't like the size and shape of the orange and fennel pieces as dictated by the recipe -- the oranges were in big rounds, beautiful but hard to handle, and the fennel was in weird chunks.


• Piadina, a Roman flatbread I have probably mentioned before.
  


• Collards cooked for five hours with some smoked pork neckbones.

I liked the way the collards fit right in with the three Italian dishes. A very balanced meal, all in all.

More on collards very soon...

Supper for Friends

I made a nice cozy supper for three last night:

Minestrone

Homemade Whole Wheat Bread
***

Pan-Seared Tuna with Herbs

Salad of Baby Greens with Feta Cheese

***

Little Bowls of Fresh Raspberries

Easy Almond Tart

Minestrone

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup sliced onion

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup diced celery

2 cups diced potatoes

2 cups diced zucchini

1 cup sliced green beans

2 cups shredded cabbage

Heat olive oil in large soup kettle over medium-high heat. Sauté onion for three to five minutes, or until slightly browned. Add carrots and brown in the same way, then celery, potatoes, zucchini, green beans, and cabbage, browning and stirring each time a vegetable is added.

6 cups beef, chicken, or vegetable broth

1 one-pound can cut tomatoes

1- 1/2 cups white beans, cooked or canned

Add broth, tomatoes, and beans. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, for about three hours or until thick (or simmer in crock-pot all day on high).

Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle each serving with 1 tablespoon Parmesan Cheese.

Pan-Seared Tuna with Herbs

1/2 cup sliced red onion

3 cloves garlic, sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat the oil and gently brown the garlic and red onion. Turn the heat to medium-high and add

12 ounces albacore, red tuna, or swordfish, cut in 1/2-inch by 2-inch slices

(this is one recipe where frozen fish works pretty well. Thaw just before cooking and pat dry with paper towels if necessary)

1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs (basil, parsley, oregano, etc.-- a mixture is best)

Salt and pepper

Sear the fish quickly on both sides, sprinkling with herbs, salt, and pepper. Remove the fish to a plate and keep warm. Add to the empty pan:

1 or 2 cups chopped fresh or canned tomatoes

1/2 cups pitted Kalamata olives

1 tablespoon capers

1/2 teaspoon red chile flakes

Boil up to deglaze pan. After a couple of minutes, add the fish back in and stir for a minute or two. Don't overcook. Stir in more fresh herbs and serve at once. This is also good cold the next day for lunch. I speak from experience.

Green and Red Tomato Pizza

This was a Viana La Place idea: make a pizza with all the tomatoes you have to pick the day before the first frost, both red and green. In our case, they were green, yellow, and red. She suggested leaving the cheese off, but I added some fresh mozzarella and herbs, and it was delicious. The green tomatoes were tart and very good.

I have a number of longer posts planned for the next few days; I just wanted to get this up.

Pie for Breakfast

I never have room for pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving day; fortunately it makes an excellent breakfast the next morning. Here is the menu from yesterday's meal for six:

Tapenade* with Crackers

Cherry Tomatoes, Green Onions, and Radishes from Dad's Garden

Black olives from Raymond's tree which he cured himself!

Champagne

###

Portuguese-Style Turkey with Linguisa Stuffing and Pan Gravy

Mashed Potatoes with Garlic

Sweet Potatoes from your recipe--very popular yesterday

Chunky Applesauce

Port Wine Cranberry Sauce

Scalloped Corn

Green Bean and Tomato Salad

###

Pumpkin Pie

Mince Pie

*This is James McNair's recipe. It was a perfect appetizer because it was sharply flavorful rather than rich and bland. Easy to make ahead, too.

Tapenade

1 cup pitted Kalamata olives

1/2 cup basil leaves

3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Chop first 5 ingredients in food processor, then add olive oil and lemon juice to make a smooth paste. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Thanksgiving Ho

I just wanted to post this reminder to myself and everyone else that we won't be eating gravy and butter-based dishes forever. Someday, maybe around the middle of next week, we will again eat lightly sauteed greens and pork-free beans and shiny golden beets and things like salads and whole wheat tortillas. Onward to the future.

I'll be out of town for a few days but will return with many stories of the way other people eat. Happy Thanksgiving.

Pies and Pielets

Monday I made pie dough (after hollering about James McNair's cookbook in an earlier post I used his butter crust recipe); Tuesday I made a pumpkin pie; and today I made a mince pie using a meatless Joy of Cooking recipe. I used great restraint and didn't eat all of the mincemeat filling with a spoon; it is a wonderland of apples, raisins, lemon rind, spices, and brandy.

I love pie filling, but often leave the crust because it's too rich. I am going to work on pielets*: little individual ramekins of filling with elegant precooked pastry cutouts floated on top. I do like a bite or two of pastry if it's flaky and wonderful. Probably I could bake up the filling until it was bubbly, then put on the pre-browned pastry cookie, and heat everything together for five minutes. This is such a great idea that I'll probably become famous for it. I'll be asked to autograph pielets.

*Linguistic notes: Pie-ette is a better name, but hyphens are a pain, and it sounds like a brand name. Pielette is a problem homophone--I immediately got tangled up with pielettes and boats of pastry. Pielet is closer to piglet, so it works for me.

Planned Side Dishes

It's important to plan over a healthy breakfast.

Lawson and I are assigned the side dishes for his big family Thanksgiving again. We are going to be much less ambitious than in years past, so I am feeling pretty good about it all. Here's what we're making:

- Collards, traditional Southern style. This involves a ham hock and several hours of simmering with plenty of water.

- Green beans, traditional Southern style. This involves a smoked turkey neck and several hours of simmering with plenty of water. Are you getting all this?

- Spinach-rice. Because the turkey is smoked, it isn't stuffed, and every year Lawson pores over stuffing recipes and spends hours making it and nobody eats very much. His stuffing is good, but I don't think it's a stuffing-eating family. So we're going with rice and spinach this year.

- Macaroni and cheese, which I have noted in the past is the weirdest of the traditional Southern Thanksgiving foods. We will be using the absurd Macaroni and Cheese Supreme recipe of the illustrious David Wade, TV chef and object of my scholarly and acquisitional interest. I can't wait. The recipe includes 2 cups of sour cream. It will clog arteries from 8 yards away.

- Cranberry sauce. I adore the extremely tart raw cranberry-orange relish we make every year with the hand-cranked meat grinder, but I'm going to try plain cooked cranberry sauce this year to see how it goes over.

- I may make some gingerbread.

So, all in all, it should be pretty low key. The only bad part is that we have to procure all our groceries tonight, along with the rest of the city.

Flu Shot Soup

Lawson got a flu shot Friday, which always makes him feel crummy and sleepy and flulike a day or two afterward. That's not supposed to happen, according to what I've read, since the virus in the vaccine is dead, but he says it always does, so whatever.

Anyway, yesterday he felt bad and I invented this soup. It's somewhere in between chicken-noodle soup and Nina Simonds' cinnamon beef noodles. And it's so much healthier and more satisfying than regular chicken-noodle soup.

We had a carcass left over from last week, when I roasted a whole chicken. I made a stock using the carcass, an onion, a few carrots, and a number of turnip stalks. I threw in a few bay leaves but otherwise kept it pretty unseasoned because I didn't know at that point what I was going to make.

After the stock had simmered for hours and was good and rich and drained and cooling off in the refrigerator, I sauteed a chopped onion, a big clove of garlic, a few chopped carrots, and a potato. I added a little sherry, then some chopped turnip greens (maybe half of a medium bunch -- not so much that the soup was overwhelmed). I then seasoned the soup with salt, star anise, cinnamon, and coriander and simmered everything for about 35 minutes, until the potato was soft. I took out the star anise and added some shredded chicken left over from the roasting -- about one breast and one leg's worth -- and a cup of pasta stars, and let it simmer for 10 minutes more. All it needed then was black pepper.

Stock is just not very pretty.

Coucous and Friends

Couscous: "The Quickest Cooking Starch" or "Carbohydrate in Five Minutes." I used to feel guilty about couscous but now it's available in a whole wheat version (I'm probably not the only one who thought couscous was a whole separate grain. Actually it's little teeny balls of pasta). My Aunt Betty and Uncle Mario lived in Morocco for years, and we visited them there, and of course couscous in Rabat was not the modern five-minute kind. It was steamed in the top of the couscouserie while the stew cooked below.

But times have changed, and now we can buy instant whole wheat couscous, quick and nutritious. Here's an infinitely flexible recipe. Last night I needed something green, so I substituted frozen peas for the chickpeas, and it was just fine. This can round out any meal. It's from a faded newspaper clipping, so I can't give credit where it is due.

Couscous with Chickpeas and Carrots

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 carrot, peeled and grated

1 can chickpeas, drained

Saute garlic in olive oil in a saucepan for about 2 minutes. Add carrot and chickpeas and cook 2 or 3 minutes.

1 cup chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water

Add broth and bring to a boil. The stir in:

1 cup instant couscous

Cover, remove from heat, and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir and fluff with fork. Garnish with:

Chopped parsley or cilantro

Birthday Dinner Party

We had some friends over Thursday for a pretty simple meal: grilled salmon, ginger-scallion noodles, and steamed sesame broccolini. And because it was a birthday dinner, and the birthday boy (what's the adult equivalent of that term? Birthdayed one? Birthdayee?) can't eat dairy, for dessert we had a dairy-free chocolate mousse cake with lemon sorbet and raspberries.

I made the cake the night before, and everything else was pretty easy to fix after work, so it was a good stress-free night. I wish the food had been a little more interesting, but we had fun. It went well with beer and Jameson.

Every time I take a picture of food, Lawson tries to stick his finger in the frame. So I'll give him this one. Let's hope it doesn't encourage him to greater heights of interference.

And as promised, Mom, here is the beautiful platter you and Dad gave me piled high with noodles. I love it.

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.