Close Enough

I think turkey is overrated. We can get good heirloom varieties up here, but lacking the means to deep-fry one or the patience to smoke one out in the cold and rain I'm opting out. Even smoked or fried it's still pretty bland, and so big that you have to eat it for days after. To me, the holiday is about family, eating, and gratitude with a strong focus on seasonal ingredients, not about eating what everyone else eats just for the sake of tradition. So bring on the duck confit.

Since we're not having turkey for Thanksgiving, tonight I made up for it with turkey burgers (seasoned with herbs, garlic, arugula, wine, duck fat- because it's too damn lean- and togarashi) served with cranberry ketchup (cranberries, a couple of canned tomatoes, vinegars- cider, balsamic- and maple syrup.) Kimchi and beet pickles on the side. Organic spelt English muffin. More of the Jaboulet Vaqueyras. Basta.

Buckwheat Two Ways

I got a couple of things done today, chief among which the ham ravioli- smoked ham glued together with activa and with a filling of acorn squash, apple, pine nuts, onion, ginger, spices, and an egg yolk. There were a few left, and some of the buckwheat mixture, which, like risotto, made great supplì with a bit of aged gruyère and an egg-cornmeal coating. So for an appetizer, to christen the new small plates (it's like freakin' Christmas all up in here) I put a buckwheat ball with arugula and a ham dumpling with maple/balsamic sauce on the oval ones and then dutifully took a picture:















The ham ravioli were good- sort of like inside-out gyoza, very sweet and savory at the same time, with the unifying magic of pork. Next was dashi broth with soba, the ham trimmings, and a side of blanched kale:

















The wine was a Susana Balbo "Crios" torrontes, which goes with all things Asian-inflected and otherwise, provided they're not too spicy, given its amazing lychee flavors and good acidity.

Braiseworthy

For some reason, this came together perfectly- flavors, textures, and portion sizes were all just right. Crosscut lamb shanks braised with mirepoix and a bit of lemon and wine until they were nice and tender. Parsnip roasted with whole garlic, rosemary, oil, and coriander seeds until crispy/creamy (and so sweet after some frost.) Buckwheat "risotto" simmered with lemon, savory, marjoram, parsley and scallion. I tossed a winter salad of mâche, spinach, and some of the winter lettuces that are still soldiering on. It all worked famously, and we drank a 1999 Prunaio which is still pretty tannic, but with more time could be something special. It's officially braising season, and this was a nice beginning.

Egg Drop Soup

In a combined effort to make room in the fridge and also make us something healthy, I wrangled diverse leftovers into a decent egg drop soup for lunch. Scallops, tofu, chicken broth, liquid from half a can of tomatoes, garlic, ginger, scallions and two beaten eggs added up to something that did not taste at all like leftovers. I sprinkled some of the kabocha seed-togarashi gomasio I made yesterday for Thanksgiving on top to finish, and we added sambal oelek to taste since I can't make anything too spicy. Now there's some space for all the things yet to be made before Thursday.

Oy, Again With The Pasta

One of the problems with Thanksgiving is that it's easy to eat badly for days beforehand since all the time and effort in the kitchen are in the service of delayed gratification. So this evening, after much toil on prep, I whipped up a quick roux-thickened, pancetta enriched milk and tomato sauce with some minced dried porcini, dried tomatoes, garlic and herbs and tossed penne in it, followed by a bag of our frozen peas. I finished it with a bit of white truffle oil and a grating of breadcrumbs (from a really stale hunk of bread) that I actually meant to stir into the sauce for some extra thickening and textural interest. Simple, and hearty- kind of like staff dinner. Tomorrow I'm going to try to spend a bit more time on our food.

Stew

Oxtail stew. At Chris & Sirkka's house, with such a rich variety of roots and leaves from their garden that I won't bother to list it, all pressure cooked with wine for 45 minutes and served over polenta with fresh raw milk stirred in at the end (yes, from the same cow we get ours from.) We drank a 2003 Jaboulet Vaqueyras and a 2005 Langhe Nebbiolo by La Spinetta. Life is good, even in the harsh cold wind that knocked our power out for a bit this afternoon.

Harmony

A trip to the market for Thanksgiving-related items led to scallops, and a cauliflower, which is one of the first vegetables I've bought since May. The rainy day just seemed to want roasted cauliflower, and there's something about the sweetness of scallops that seemed like a good fit. So I marinated the scallops in kimchi juice to make a sort of ceviche, but not really long enough to "cook" them (though I did try one, and it's worth doing again for a longer soak) and roasted the cauliflower in the oven. Refried polenta, warmed kimchi, a pan sauce deglazed with a little wine all matched flavors and colors pretty well for a rich and subtle combination. On the side, to provide some raw green balance, a salad of chiffonaded chard, mustard, and sorrel that worked really well; the heat of the mustard was countered by the almost creamy chard and sweet sorrel, and the walnut/balsamic vinaigrette accentuated all those qualities, as did a 2003 Trimbach reserve pinot gris.

Onglet

This was originally going to be my birthday dinner, but I postponed it until Christine was back: a hanger steak (NOT a hangar steak, unless you cook airline food) cooked sous-vide at 135˚ for 75 minutes and got a quick sear in the iron pan to brown the outside. Polenta, endive-umeboshi mash, and a reduction sauce of fresh raw cream from Pepper (pop locavore quiz: do you know the name of the cow(s) you get your milk from?) with pancetta, dried porcini, garlic, herbs, and lemon juice completed the plate.

The meat was really tender, uncharacteristically so for this cut, which I credit to the cooking method. The sauce was rich and decadent, and balanced well by the bitter, tangy mash. I made the polenta a little on the wet side so it would pool nicely on the plate. If we weren't both so tired, I would have opened something fancier, but another 2003 Cheze St. Joseph Cuvée Prestige de Caroline did the requisite Syrah-steak dance and was interesting enough for the strong flavors of the garnishes. Don't you just love the little line of juice around the polenta?

Turkey

But not what you're thinking; Christine got back yesterday with birthday presents, (among which, some beautiful plates) Turkish delight with pistachios, and a camera stuffed full of pictures of boring things like Hagia Sophia and all the Greek ruins along the Aegean coast- which I already visited and dutifully drew like 16 years ago. But I did find one pertinent picture. Turkish food, like Greek (but don't let either hear you say it) is very good but very limited; pretty much the same menu everywhere you go, but the ingredients are fresh and local. (This is true for Mediterranean Turkey- farther inland the cuisine may well change.) In any case, here a typical plate of appetizers, which in keeping with the nature of appetizers the world over are better than the main course and thus inevitably ruin your appetite because you ate too damn many. Hence the name.

Quick Change

Again seeking efficiency, and short on time for dinner, I repurposed the chicken and soup from last night into a nice curry. Japanese yam and zucchini simmered in coconut milk, the soup, the pesto gravy, vindaloo paste, spices, and lemon juice. I added the chicken at the end to warm it through. We had pappadums and mango chutney for an appetizer since Milo was "very very hungry." I had a 2006 Sancerre by Franck Millet which is one of my favorite whites right now- for the money (15 bucks) it goes with so many things and works well by itself as an aperitif if people drop by.

Birthday

Christine gets back on Tuesday, so Milo and I had a pretty mellow birthday; Wednesday night I'm going to cook a hanger steak sous vide and make some decadent accompaniments, but for tonight a puréed soup of leek and celery root (with the very last of the vegetable shepherd's pie thrown in for depth and efficiency) and then pan-roasted chicken seasoned with ras-el-hanout, sudachi powder, salt & pepper, and garlic with a kale pesto gravy and kimchi. Not elegant at all, but the soup was a big hit and the pesto gravy was one of those "duh" moments when I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it sooner. I opened a 2001 Leflaive Meursault to compare to the last of the Montagny from the other night; they both did fascinating things with the soup. I got two books: McGee's On Food And Cooking, and Weiskopf's Yaje: The New Purgatory. Opposite extremes of the spectrum to be sure, but I'm equally excited by both.

Warm

In the mood to play more with my new toy, I vacuum sealed some wild salmon with ginger, garlic, lemon thyme, 5 spice, and sudachi powder. Cooked for half an hour at 47˚C and served on brown rice with a kale-endive pesto, kimchi, and a tomato-blood orange sauce. The beauty of salmon like this is that it looks raw, yet pulls apart like cooked, and the vacuum really helps the flavors get into the fish. Next time I might toss it in a hot pan for just a minute to crust the top, but there's something to be said for the pure silkiness all the way through.

This kimchi is so good and so addictive that I'm going to start another batch next week so we don't run out. In keeping with the fun, experimental mood, I opened two wines that I knew would be fine, even better, after a day or two open: a 2005 Boillot Montagny 1er cru and a 1999 Parent Chambolle-Musigny. Neither was stellar, but each did play off different aspects of the meal with some success and it will be nice to have them around to try with something totally different in a day or two.

Pizza Party

We had a few friends over, with a total of 5 more kids, because Milo wanted to have a pizza party. I made four: potato, (our almost very last) kale pesto & dried tomato (mixed with a bit of basil pesto and the endive-umeboshi mash) zucchini (our very last) and shiitake-guanciale (sautéed in a pan with garlic and parsely until nice and caramelized.) The last two were with homemade tomato sauce and local mozzarella. I've pretty much perfected my dough recipe, and with the convection oven at 500˚ and a $3 tile from Lowe's in the oven they come out pretty crispy and authentic. The key is to get the crust nice and thin. Jackie brought some local ice cream. There were no leftovers.

Chirashi

If Christine were here, I would have made this into sushi, but containing hurricane Milo while preparing dinner requires some compromise. I did get a chance to play with my new (used) water bath, which is all that matters. Trimmed grass-fed organic ribeye cooked sous-vide at 130˚ for a bit over an hour, then seared in a skillet to get a nice brown on the top and bottom. Sliced thin over Thai black rice with a rich mash of endive, ume plum, garlic, and oil, it covered a lot of ground with a few ingredients. To celebrate my return to meat and wine, I opened a 2004 Mongeard-Mugneret Savigny-les-Beaune "Les Narbantons" which is slowly opening up but needs quite a bit more time to show its stuff; if it lives up to its nose it will be a good value.

Puttanesca

A perennial favorite, and great kid food that also satisfies a more sophisticated adult palate, I find that this is one of those dishes- like penne all'arrabiata- that is deceptively hard to get just right. The key (apart from cooking the pasta properly) is the integration of the various strong flavors into a near-seamless whole within a sauce that has to be just reduced and oily enough to coat the pasta. When it's done right, it sings four-part harmony and transcends its humble status; it becomes the perfect plate of pasta, the Platonic Penne.

Bachelor Party

Christine is in Turkey for a week, so it's just Milo and me which means I get to play around with healthy and refined versions of kid food to keep us both happy. Last night was a good example; I used the leftover mashed sweet potatoes and a chicken carcass to make a shepherd's pie with a cornucopia of garden goodies. The chicken made a simple broth, while kabocha squash, carrots, onion, leeks, scallions, radish, potatoes, celery, and herbs (all from the garden) had a quick sautée, sprinkle with flour, and then addition of broth to bubble and thicken. Poured into glass dish, topped with mashed sweets, and baked, it hit all the right creamy comfort notes while still being super-healthy (and the squash and potatoes were perfectly al dente.)

There's little that's less photogenic than shepherd's pie, so I'll make do with the bread I made yesterday morning. I did the full recipe in the big Dutch oven this time, and it worked really well; the sides gave the loaf good height and shape, and the steam before I took the lid off made for the best crust yet. The only trick is leaving it in the oven long enough, since it requires a lot more time to bake through than the smaller size.

Neewollah

The anti-Halloween, if you will. Super clean and healthy to compensate for all the sweets. Brown rice, with three complementary preparations on top: seitan braised with onion, radish, carrot, ginger, garlic, and scallion; freshly-dug burdock simmered in water with a pinch of salt; a purée of collards, mustard greens, and sorrel with lime. Milo LOVES burdock, and told me so. This was a nice case of making satisfying food for the family while still keeping to the requirements of my "Dieta."

Soon the kimchi will be ready (and I'll be able to eat it) and then this type of food will get a boost to an even higher level. One of the best parts about a garden is the ability to make fantastic condiments to give winter food some excitement and spice.

Scene Stealer

Chris & Sirkka gave us some fennel since ours is done, and it completely dominated this meal. Sautéed and then braised a bit to soften- with only oil, lemon, salt, and pepper- it was meltingly smooth, sweet, and sublime. The pan-roasted salmon (well-done by request) and mashed sweet potato/Japanese yam combination were fine, even delicious, but the fennel was on another plane entirely.

Halloween

Here's Milo in his chef outfit, enjoying a lollipop. Surprisingly enough, he figured out the whole say-trick-or-treat-and-get-free-candy thing pretty quickly. Astonishing. The parade was fun, and we ran into all our friends, all in costume.

Frost

Last night we had our first frost, and the row covers worked well to protect the less hardy greens. My hope is that we'll be able to keep some things going at least as far as full Winter, if not longer for the kale and collards. Those I planted a month ago will have a great head start in the spring if they survive. In any case, it will be a good chance to learn about what does well and what doesn't, and whether some more robust winterproofing is in order for next time.
















Tonight I made falafel for the first time in a long time, which is odd because it's so easy and so good. The key is to soak and then cook the chick peas early in the day so all that's needed come dinner time is to fry them up and assemble the garnishes. These included fresh radishes, pickled beets, hot and mild garden salsas, mixed late greens (arugula, mustard, mizuna, sorrel) and of course tahini (but with an avocado mashed in for good measure.) A very nice balance between the crispy fried and the crunchy raw ends of the spectrum, all tied together with creamy sauce and a little spice.

The other accomplishment today was the crock of kimchi- two perfect cabbages, carrots, scallions, a couple of radishes, garlic, ginger, and a minced cayenne pepper combined in salt water- in a week or so I'll check its progress. I'm pretty excited for this; it's so healthy and so good and will help wake up many winter favorites. All our hot pepper preparations are going to require lots of beer or riesling this winter.