Thanksgiving Recap

I got my chance to take the lead in cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family this year. I spread the cooking out over a few days and it was surprisingly unstressful. Thank you to Lisa, my sous chef and my Mom for supervising. Here's the run down:

The turkey
My mom always gets a free turkey from Shoprite and I wasn't about to rain on her parade. I also wasn't about to bring a Greenmarket turkey on a 3 hour public transportation ride along with the rest of the food I needed to bring. Better luck going heritage and free range next year. Mom supervised the turkey, I just did what she told me to do.

Roasted butternut squash with parmesan and thyme
Replaced the traditional baked sweet potatoes that I never liked. These were devoured. Although I thought there was too much thyme and too mushy from too much cooking time.
Lisa's single-rise yeast biscuits with lemon, rosemary, and sage (before baking)
Replaced the traditional Shoprite from-a-can-slice-and-bake rolls. Couldn't taste the lemon. Didn't rise as well as in her test run. Surprisingly similar to the usual rolls = I still liked them.
My parents' remodeled wet bar
Replaced the old wet bar where alcohol was unwelcome and looked like a stereo closet crammed with science fiction paperbacks
Appetizers, including homemade rustic wheat crackers, roasted garlic and herb white bean dip, and hummus
Balsamic marinated roasted beets
My family is afraid of beets so these were not a hit, but at least my boyfriend ate up the leftovers.
Mashed potatoes
I tried to infuse roasted garlic flavor, but didn't use enough garlic
Steamed broccoli with balsamic-mustard sauce
To replace the plain traditional steamed broccoli. Could have used a little more tang.

Roasted green beans with lemon juice, dill, toasted almonds, and caramelized onions
I finally figured out why my mom serves green beans on Thanksgiving even though it's out of season - because she has a ton in the freezer from her garden and wants to use them. Defrosted green beans don't roast well. The dish also could have used more than one onion for a better green bean-to-onion ratio.
Pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies (before baking)
Not pictured: Stuffing with baguette, celery, apples, and onions (replacing the traditional Pepperidge Farm/Stouffers/whatever it is stuffing from a bag); two gravy dishes, one made with real turkey drippings and one made from a Shoprite gravy packet; Mom's cranberry-cider sauce (replacing the traditional canned cranberry); and most of the desserts: Mom's apple pie, Mom's pumpkin pie, Lisa's real pumpkin pie with whole wheat crust, storebought sweet potato pie, tiramasu, truffles, blueberry muffins, and banana bread

The best part about Thanksgiving: The leftovers

The worst part: My fat belly from sitting around eating and headaches from playing Minesweeper all week.

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The Jackpot: Underground Meat! plus Muffins!

And now, while I slave away toward the Thanksgiving feast, a not very explanatory guest post from my sister Lisa


Out of a refrigerator in a nondescript office space downtown, flowed forth local beef, pork, raw cheese, raw milk, local pickles, salsa, bread...

Plus some butternut squash, turnips, onions, turnip greens, and raw cheddar.


From that came the meal of burgers and mashed turnips above[ed note: at least that's what it looks like]


And for desert!!: butternut squash maple muffins with homemade oat flour

2 cups oat flour [rolled oats ground in a food processor until fine]
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 banana
1/4 cup applesauce
1 cup mashed butternut squash [roasted, cooled, and mashed]
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine ingredients, spoon into greased muffin tins, and crumble brown sugar on top. [I'm guessing you can bake these at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.]

hott!!

thanks Lisa, that was very interesting...

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The Usual

This is how most weeknight dinners in my home end up. I cook a big one-pot dish that includes some form of protein, vegetable, and grain, and then we each eat a bowl or two of it for dinner, and the rest goes into tupperware stored in the fridge and freezer for future lunches/dinners/boyfriend's midnight drunk ransacking of the kitchen.

Pictured above is my naive attempt at making Indian food at home: a variation on aloo gobi, with the addition of chickpeas for protein. I simmered dried chickpeas until soft, while cooking brown rice, and while boiling cauliflower and potatoes until tender and while defrosting blanched summer tomatoes from the freezer. Then I sauteed onions in a big pot until translucent, added in the potatoes, cauliflower, chickpeas, and rice with a whole heck of curry powder (probably 2 tbps), tumeric, cumin, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper and simmered it all together a few more minutes. Not as good as what you'd get at an Indian restaurant. But good enough for a healthy, everyday kind of meal.

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An Indulgent Weekend

I wanted to have a nice dinner on Saturday, so I went to the Union Square Greenmarket to get the goods, and here's what I cooked up with help. A flat-iron grass-fed bison steak from Elk Trails, seasoned with salt and pepper, and cooked in butter in a cast iron pan on medium heat for about 8 minutes on each side. At least I think that's how long it was - it seemed to take a long time. The bison farmer recommended cooking it slowly over relatively low heat, as searing it too hot can overcook the bison quickly. It turned out well, but slightly tough. I usually marinate these cheaper cuts like flat-iron and flank steak, but wanted to see if it could stand on its own. Next time I'll go back to marinating.


On the side we enjoyed brussel sprouts steamed with garlic (nice, but I think roasting would give it more oomph) and our usual fries: potatoes sliced, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted in the oven until crispy and tender, dipped into green garlic and vinegar spiked mayonnaise. As well as a bottle of nonlocal Malbec from Argentina via Trader Joe's because I was feeling cheap. And the cocoa applesauce muffins before and after dinner.

On Sunday I planned to make chili in the crockpot and let it cook all day. Boyfriend implored "I want to go out for dinner." I responded, "That would put me over my food budget for this month, but we can go get drinks before dinner instead." Which made a nice compromise for both of us, or so we thought.


So we hopped on the G and went to Cherry Tree, which has an excellent draft beer selection, which turned into more beers across the street at Fourth Avenue Pub in Park Slope. By late afternoon, we started to get hungry but knew the chili wouldn't be done yet. So instead of heading straight home, we extended our outing even further with a stop at Flatbush Farm for appetizers.


Their oysters are amazing every time; never bland/hit or miss like at other restaurants. We also shared the Ploughman's Plate of cheddar cheese, salami, and bresaola (I think that's what it all was), but at $12 I felt it was a bit lacking in the meat for the price. Then finally went on home and ate chili and cornbread (baked in the cast iron skillet, again lacking in other baking apparatus). Total money spent in eating and drinking that day: more than if we had just gone out to dinner. Whoops!

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Cocoa Applesauce Muffins

I wanted to make a sweet treat to go with our romantic dinner on Saturday (more on that to come). In thinking about what I had on hand - no chocolate chips but some cocoa powder, as well as lots of old apples going brown and waiting for me to get off my lazy butt and make applesauce - I concocted what I thought was a recipe for fudgy brownies with applesauce.

To make applesauce, I diced the apples, put them in a saucepan covered with a little water, honey, and cinnamon, and simmered for about 30 minutes until tender. Then I mashed the apples with a fork, until they had the consistency of chunky applesauce, and set it aside to cool.

I'm lacking in the baking apparatus (the roommate who recently moved out took her useful bread and cake pans with her), so I poured the batter into muffin tins, thinking they would come out like rich brownie cupcakes. However, I must have used too much flour and baking powder because they rose up instead as moist, hearty muffins, with just a touch of cocoa and spice. The chocolate flavor was very subtle, better serving as a morning treat or afternoon snack than a decadent dessert. For a heightened chocolate flavor, I think you'd have to double the cocoa powder and/or melt in some chocolate. Despite that, these muffins were addictive enough in their own right, and only one was left by the weekend's end.

Cocoa Applesauce Muffins

6 tbsp of butter
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 cup applesauce
1/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp baking powder

Bring 1/3 cup water to simmer in a saucepan. Melt butter in a large bowl over saucepan. Set bowl aside to cool.

Then pour 1/4 of the hot water into a small bowl of cocoa powder, and whisk to combine. Set aside to cool.

While ingredients cool, preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease two muffin tins.

Once cooled, whisk sugar, honey, eggs, applesauce, and cocoa mixture into the melted butter until smooth. Pour flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking powder into the bowl and stir to combine.

Scoop batter into muffin tins and bake for approximately 20 minutes until knife inserted comes out clean. Makes 24 small muffins - or 15 regular muffins (make sure to grease any muffin tins you leave empty).

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A Night at the Opera

I went with friends to see Doctor Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera a couple weeks ago and I really, really didn't like it. My problem was that neither the story/libretto nor the music captivated my attention. So it was three and a half hours of zoning out.

I've liked other music by John Adams, of the lush, repepetitive, tonal, minimal style, and so I blindly went in expecting more of the same, but this was actually an atonal opera. It sounded boring to me, as if they just needed to come up with another note to sing the next word on, without there being any rhyme or reason. I recognize that all music does not have to be purely tonal, but this music just didn't captivate me in any kind of way.

I saw an atonal opera at the Met a couple years ago, American Tragedy by Tobias Picker, and likewise wasn't a big fan of the music, but at least that story kept me plugged in and enjoying the experience.

In theory, the story of Doctor Atomic had great potential. It's about the creators of the atomic bomb in the 1940s, during the month leading up to the first test of the bomb in New Mexico. They both feared and hotly anticipated the test, not knowing if it would fail with a whimper, erroneously destroy the whole planet, or work successfully. What a weighty subject.

However, the libretto didn't bring it all together in the amazing way that it could have. Instead, we had a bunch of people onstage arguing with each other about testing the bomb, interjected with seemingly unrelated painfully long monologues by the male and female counterparts of a couple waxing rhapsodically about love. So then I started to think maybe there was a love story in there too, though I could not for the life of me tell the point of all their rhapsodizing or how it related to the rest of the plot. But no, the Playbill explained those songs are just a married couple "pondering love, life, war, and peace" in the most boring way possible, furthering the plot not one bit. No character development. Nothing.

There were lots of other things about the story that were unclear to me until I read the Playbill at intermission. Maybe it was a mistake to not read the Playbill before watching the opera. Maybe this is just a problem with most opera. But come on - I'm reading the text line by line from a little screen in front of my seat. I shouldn't have to also read a plot summary to know what the fuck is going on. You don't have to read a plot summary while watching a movie or a play - the whole point of the theater is that the action should explain itself to you as it goes along. Am I right?

I only liked one part, the massive Bhagavad Gita choir towards the end. The text "Oh shape stupendous" seems particularly relevant as they wait for the giant bomb to drop, as does the power of the music.

Then when the bomb detonated at the opera's finale, a giant sound emanated out of the speaker behind me that was so loud and went on so long that I felt queasily claustrophobic as if the low reverberating sound was smothering me there in our steep, cramped seats, as if the sound might cause the walls to crack and the building to collapse and tilt and me to go tumbling all the way down. And I'm only 23! How must all of the old people (the majority of opera goers) have felt!? Isn't that a health hazard? Yes, it was making a point about the terror and immense power of the atom bomb, and maybe I'm a wimp, but still.....it could have been 20 seconds shorter.

So the point of the story is - while I will accept atonal music, I don't particularly like it. And just because it's an opera doesn't give you an excuse to not tell a story well.

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Cornmeal Berry Pancakes

Now that my storebought buckwheat pancake mix is finally long used up and gone, I get the fun task of making up homemade pancake recipes. Last weekend I made use of cornmeal and berries in my freezer to whip up these babies. I used raspberries because that's what I had in my freezer, which gave the pancakes a surprisingly floral note, but I think blueberries would be better.

 I liked the crispiness of the cornmeal (but maybe maple syrup will make almost any pancake taste good), but I thought they cooked a little too dark because they took too long to cook through the middle. So some kind of recipe tweaking will have to happen on my next batch to prevent that problem.


Cornmeal Berry Pancakes

1 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 1/2 tbsp sugar or honey
1 tbsp baking powder
4 tbsp melted butter
1 egg
1 cup plus 2 tbsp milk
1 cup berries
syrup

If using frozen berries, rinse them quickly in water to thaw and let dry on paper towels. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Make a well and stir in wet ingredients. If batter is too thick, add more milk, one tbsp at a time. Gently stir in berries. Heat a spoonful of butter in a skillet until foamy. Pour pancakes out in pan to desired size, flip after a few minutes, and remove when browned. Serve with real maple syrup.

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