Pork Belly Smack Down--Happy July 4th!

Happy, happy July 4th! I hope you all had a safe holiday. I'm currently rubbing refrigerated aloe all over myself while I try to rehabilitate my liver, so ours was clearly a good time.

But about the cooking competition: this holiday, my sister and I chose pork belly as our cook-to-the-death ingredient, much to my husband's delight. Up to this point, I'd never cooked pork belly (which is basically a big slab of bacon before it's cured and cut). I went to the Asian market the Wednesday before the lake trip to get a small portion of pork belly to experiment on (again to my husband's delight). It was a total, epic disaster. I tried a couple of different variations of marinating it and scoring the skin and then proceeded to cook them all beyond recognition (poor husband was not so delighted). Charred crackling, anyone? So I was good and truly nervous. I sat down and looked through all my cookbooks, trying to find a different method of preparation. Sadly, all my favorite cookbooks let me down. Is everyone but me just born knowing how to cook a damn pork belly?!?

I was also thinking about the balance of the overall dish. Everyone likes a good mix of creamy, crunchy, sweet, salty, and acidic in a composed dish. I wandered out on Wednesday to water my silly garden while I was thinking this over, and then I spied several green heirloom tomatoes. Aha! I knew then that I wanted to do a fried green tomato, but with a kick.

So I made up a brine of water, apple cider vinegar, rice wine, brown sugar, sea salt, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, mustard seeds, and fennel seeds. I put everything in a large saucepan and stirred it until the salt and brown sugar melted. I let it cool almost completely before I poured it over my sliced tomatoes so as to not cook them. They still needed to be fairly firm on Friday so I could bread and fry them. I had no idea if this whole pickled fried green tomato thing would work.

But it did! When the rest of the meal was nearly ready, I drained the tomatoes, coated them in flour, dipped them in milk, and then dredged them in a breadcrumb/cornmeal/flour combination before frying them in clarified butter.

But back to the pork belly. After Wednesday's abysmal failure, I had no clue what to do. Thursday rolled around, and it was time to get my groceries, get packed, and head to the lake. I still had no clue how to fix (don't laugh at my vernacular here) a good pork belly! The girl child and I went to Hirsch's Meat Market (a great local butcher shop near Parker and Alma in Plano, if you're a Dallas-ite), along with every other person in DFW who was looking to stock up on meat for the holiday. However, while I stood around for half an hour, waiting for my number to be called, I saw it! The perfect glaze (confirmed by the gentleman in front of me who purchased 25 pounds of ribs, three pounds of liver, and six pounds of tongue. I decided he was a legit source).

Right on. We were in business. So here's how the belly went down. I didn't score the tough skin layered over the fat because that just made a mess, but I did puncture it several times with a sharp knife after I seasoned it with salt and pepper so some of the fat could render out. I heated the biggest pan I could find (as I had a five-pound slab of pork belly) to about medium high, and hefted it, skin side down, into the hot pan to sear and render. Into another deep pan (oven safe with a lid), I poured one quart of chicken stock and added some pepper as well as a handful of fresh thyme and rosemary from the herb garden. While the broth warmed on a medium-low heat, I pulled off the belly when it was dark golden brown. With a great show of strength (see me flexing as I had to use two giant grill forks to move this ridiculous piece of meat?), I wrestled the giant belly into the broth, skin side up, and put it in a 325 degree oven to cook for a little over an hour. When both the fat and meat below were nice and soft, I glazed the skin side with my glaze and took it out to the grill for a last good sear to crisp up the skin. (You could also do this under the broiler). Let it rest for about 10 minutes or so before serving.

While the pork belly was cooking, I made some cheesy mashed potatoes. Nothing fancy. I just peeled and cut five baking potatoes, put them in a big pot of cold water, and brought it to a gentle boil until I could easily pierce them with a fork. Drain and put them back over the heat, shaking the pot, to burn off any excess water that will make your potatoes watery. I added about 4 T. of butter, 1T of sea salt, 2/3 cup heavy cream, 1/3 cup milk, and 1/2 cup chunked up cheddar cheese. As I added these ingredients, I tasted a lot to see if I liked the level of creamy/salty/cheesy. Keep in mind that the pork belly and tomato will have an element of salt as well, so don't over salt.

To really appreciate the final product, you had to get a bite with potatoes, pork belly, and tomato all together. It actually worked out really well, much my shock.

My fabulous competitor, my sister, made pulled pork belly tacos (with an agave nectar glaze) served with grilled pineapple and poblano peppers. YUM! Her dish was way prettier than mine.

By a very narrow margin, I won our fourth of July competition, which was a delightful mess. We (my spouse, sister and BIL, mom, daughter, and about ten friends) all spent the day at the lake (on the beach, not the boat. I hate taking the boat out on holiday weekends) eating bratwursts, drinking beer, and floating. We trooped into the house crazy hungry, sunburnt to a crisp, with sand in all our crevices, and proceeded to cook for two hours. Madness. But fun madness. I'm very grateful to live in a place where I can spend the day on the water with friends and family. Happy birthday, America! Or, as my friend Bloody Gaga says, 'Murica. And she says it while wearing a trucker hat with 'Murica airbrushed on it, gold hot pants, and while embracing an Elvis impersonator who smells of Axe, but that is another story....

Recipes follow the break here...

The Christmas Fillet Loin Lives Happily Ever After

Wow. I need some fiber, STAT. I feel like I've been at a Roman feast for a week. In the grand tradition of my family, Christmas dinner was divine (largely because we didn't have company--when we have scads of people, the meal is never perfect).

I had a solid twenty-four hours of utter panic before Christmas Day. We had talked my father into an Italian Christmas dinner for one whole day before he changed his mind (just long enough for my sister and I to make a meal plan and collect recipes. I even got a super-secret recipe for the most divine tiramisu EVER). Anyway, we re-planned for a traditional Christmas dinner. My father went out and purchased a beautiful beef fillet loin that cost more on its own than all the ingredients for entire dinner parties I've thrown. And it was up to me to cook it without ruining it. Picture me, hair standing on end, frantically paging through cookbooks and magazines, trying to decide what to do.

Thanks to the gods, I found salvation in a magazine I'd picked up the day before I came to my parents' house. Years ago, when I was a poor(er) college undergrad, I had taken to getting my father a big bag of cheap books as a Christmas gift. I still go, every year, to Half Price Books, and get him a bag full of $1-2 paperback novels because it's a holiday tradition by now. This year, I included my mother in the fun, and I picked up a few back issues of Cook's Illustrated because it's my favorite cooking magazine. Lo and behold, one of the issues had an entire spread on how to perfectly cook a fillet loin!!!

Cook's Illustrated, March/April 2009, Number 97, pages 6-7. Note the ethereal sunlight streaming in over it, like the true Christmas miracle it was. ; )

According to Charles Kelsey, the author of the article who cooked over 25 fillet loins (about $1200 worth) to figure out the most successful method, the best way to get a good crust on a fillet without getting that unattractive gray ring around the edges when it's cut into is to cook it at a low heat (300 degrees) for 40-50 minutes (or until your meat thermometer reads 125 degrees for medium rare or 135 degrees for medium) and then to take the loin from the oven and sear in a pan of very hot oil to get a good sear. He explains that it takes too long to heat cold, raw meat to the searing point, which results in overcooking the external layer of meat. However, searing a loin already hot from the oven takes much less time and prevents this overcooking. The man is a genius, and he saved my a#@ this year.

I wanted to try the garlic horseradish crust I mentioned several posts ago, however. So, I took about 30 cloves of garlic. (BTW, did you know that you can get a 1/3 lb bag of already peeled garlic at Sam's for about $5? This time of year, or when you have a very garlic-y project to undertake, I would highly recommend this beautiful bag o' easy garlic.) I tossed my garlic in a generous amount of olive oil, put it in a roasting pan with a tight foil cover, and roasted it at 350 degrees for about half an hour until it was soft. When it cooled, I combined the garlic, oil, salt, pepper, and a small jar of creamy horse radish into a small food processor and made a paste. Smear!

I had to cut my loin, as it was too long for any of the baking dishes I had. I cut one plump end off so that I would have two pieces, each one of consistent thickness throughout. I trimmed as much fat and silver skin off as possible, liberally salted and peppered both pieces, smeared them with my paste, and returned them the the fridge to hang out for about four hours before cooking.

Obviously, I couldn't sear this in a hot pan when it came out of the oven. When it was registering 125 degrees in the meat thermometer, I jacked up the broiler to about 475 degrees and waited for the paste to crust. A note here: DON'T LEAVE YOUR POST WHILE THE BROILER IS ON, or your lovely piece of meat may incinerate. Do NOT go to the bathroom, go smoke a cigarette, or go in search of something to fill up your red solo cup. I turned on the oven light and sat on the floor in front of the oven, hot pads in hand.

Success! I think I could have let it gone longer under the broiler to get a crunchier crust, but sheer panic won out in the end. It was like butter. With horseradish and garlic. Thanks, Mr. Kelsey.

I also made another, life-changing discovery: cooking turkey at about 300 degrees is the way to go. At Thanksgiving, we had a 25 lb turkey that was okay but not great, even with our tried-and-true Rosemary Orange recipe. Generally, we cook a turkey at about 375 degrees until the skin browns, cover it with foil, and then cook it at 325-ish until it's done. However, due to lack of oven space, the turkey, once it was browned, had to hang out in the 300 degree oven with the fillet. We just did a breast, and it was AH-MAZING. The moral of the story is thus: Don't cook a huge turkey. Bigger is not better. By the time the middle is cooked, the top of the breast is overdone. Cook a couple of smaller turkeys or breasts. And, after the initial browning, cook it at a lower heat.

And yes, that is my red solo cup in the background.

My mother did her usual fantastic job at the Asparagus Casserole. My sister, the potato queen, made both mashed and scalloped potatoes that melted in the mouth. I made the Black Friday dressing and a Steamed Cranberry pudding.

How was your holiday? What did you make? What did you eat? Is there photographic evidence?

For my Christmas Procrastinators...Links, Gift Ideas, and a Side Dish Recipe

Well, I'm afraid I may be on the naughty list again, despite my best intentions. Christmas is in two days (we're big Christmas eve lovers), and I haven't finished my shopping, planning my contributions to the meal, or my grading that is due tomorrow night. Clearly, I am not the goddess of all things professional and domestic that I am in my rich fantasy life.

Gift Ideas:

• I'm going to start with a crazy gift suggestion (read: fantasy cook's gift) from Sur La Table. The QOOQ is a tablet for cooks, preloaded with videos, lessons, and recipes. It's splatter proof. I haven't laid hands on one, but it looks AMAZING. If Sur La Table would like to send me one to review for my tens of readers, I'm all for it. ; )
• If you are a new cook or have an aspiring cook to shop for, I suggest the Betty Crocker Cookbook. The recipes are simple and a good starting place. For example, I made five batches of pumpkin bread from various recipes (several from Pinterest). A few were good, a couple were like bricks, and none were stellar. It finally dawned on me to go back to basics. I used the basic quick bread recipe, added some additional spice, and voila! Perfect pumpkin bread. You can take these recipes and add your own flavors/spins, but it's a great reference book. It has handy tables for metric conversion and interior temperatures of meats at various levels of doneness. There's a reason our mothers and aunties frequently give this one as a bridal shower gift.
• I love, love, love my immersion blender. You can get a less expensive, basic version that looks like these, or there are larger boxed sets that come with a mixer attachment and a little blender base. I use mine the most for soups (you can just stick it down in the pot and not dirty your whole blender or food processor) and sauces. I love the blender attachment for pesto and herbed salad dressing. 
  
• Silicon baking mats are a must for the home cook. You can make cookies on them, roast meat, whatever you want without destroying all your cookie sheets. (Maybe you're less destructive bakers and roasters than I am.)

• Booze. My favorite, favorite thing for the holidays is Smirnoff Cinnamon-Sugar Twist Vodka. Splashed in coffee is my favorite way to drink it. It's very smooth and flavorful, and it doesn't taste like alcohol much at all. 

Links:

• A recipe for linzer torte from Smitten Kitchen. This is a versatile dessert that looks fancy! 
• The ladies of Big Girls, Small Kitchen have an excellent-looking recipe for Butternut Squash Latkes. YUM!
• This Spiced Hot Cocoa recipe with ancho chili powder and homemade cinnamon marshmallows looks fab. You could even add a splash of bourbon or Cinnamon Twist Vodka for Santa's.
• These White Chocolate Cranberry Cinnamon Rolls look festive and delicious for Christmas morning. 
• If you want to impress everyone, try this super-easy, fool-proof recipe for cheese souffle. Read the cute story about the French newlywed who stumbled upon a simplified souffle method. I've tried this one, and it came out beautifully. It's even better with a little cheddar or some bacon bits mixed in. 

Decadent Asparagus Casserole. 

One of the staples of our holiday table is Asparagus Casserole. My mother has made it for years, and it's wonderful. I snapped some shots of her making it at Thanksgiving. It's a fairly simple dish: layers of white sauce, cheddar cheese, asparagus, and sliced boiled eggs. However, if you make creamy white sauce, medium-boil the eggs, and get some good asparagus, it's worth every single calorie.

Mom likes her eggs good and boiled, but I think this would be even more decadent with a soft to medium boil on the eggs.

The key ingredient to this dish is really the white sauce. A good white sauce is rich and creamy, only slightly salty, and doesn't have a floury taste or mouth feel.

For this recipe, begin by cleaning the asparagus (about two bundles worth), getting rid of any woody bits. Chop it into relatively uniform, bite-size sticks. Either blanch or lightly saute with garlic, salt, and pepper. Boil your eggs (6-8 should be more than enough). Let cool and slice into 1/4 inch thick slices.

For the white sauce, combine butter and flour in a pot to make a roux. Let the roux cook a bit on a low-ish heat. You want the flour taste to cook out, but you don't want to really brown or burn it or you'll have to begin again. Add milk to the roux, a bit at a time, whisking all the time to get a thick sauce. Add a few tablespoons of cream and salt and pepper (black and white) to taste. I like to add just a sprinkle of garlic salt to mine. No too much so the garlic doesn't overwhelm the sauce.

Start with a layer of white sauce in the bottom of a baking dish. Add a layer of eggs, evenly spaced. Add half of the chopped asparagus and a thin layer of grated cheddar cheese (we usually grate one standard-sized block from the store and use it all). Do this again and end with another layer of white sauce.

Bake at 325 degrees until the asparagus is almost cooked, about 25 minutes. Towards the end, add another sprinkle of cheese on top to melt. This dish is excellent made the day before and heated just before the meal. I will ask my mom for her white sauce recipe this weekend, but until then, this one will work. Use the variation for thick sauce.

Have wonderful happy holidays!!

Christmas Links and Champagne-Saffron Scallops!

I'm fascinated to know what your holiday food traditions are.

Stockings that represent us: My daughter has a Pottery Barn ballerina stocking that I have blinged out with crystals, my husband has a Batman stocking, and mine says "All I want for Christmas is Mr. Darcy." 

Here's how it goes down for us: We all go to my parents' lake house, of course (it's the only place big enough for the whole clan and all of our fur-family). Christmas Eve is really our "big deal," as my dad calls it. We spend the day finishing up wrapping presents while my daughter waits for it to get dark. Around lunch time, we have a birthday party for my mother, whose Christmas birthday was often lost in the shuffle (or at least felt that way to a child).

When we were kids, my parents told us that we couldn't open presents until it was too dark to see the back fence. Cue my sister and I plastered to the glass on the back door, waiting for the moment. We always had music and champagne on Christmas Eve.

Now that we're grown and appreciate food beyond the realm of corn dogs and chicken strips, my father makes a fabulous Christmas Eve spread. I really learned to love cooking from my father, who started experimenting with Bon Appetite recipes in the late '80s (and still has the issues with his favorite recipes). Every year, he makes a seafood extravaganza. Giant, spicy boiled shrimp with lemon butter, corn-meal battered fried shrimp, crab cakes, and everyone's favorite, lobster tail and scallops with Champagne-Saffron Sauce. (See the end of this post for the sauce recipe.)

After dinner, my daughter plays Santa, handing out presents, and we all take a turn opening one at a time, oohing and ahhhing over each gift. We put out milk and cookies, and Santa comes to visit my daughter overnight and leaves stockings for everyone. Hurray!! Christmas dinner is often a sort of recap of Thanksgiving favorites we want more of but with a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey and sometimes a bourbon-glazed crown roast instead of ham. I've often wanted to do an Italian or Mexican-inspired Christmas dinner, but I've yet to convince my father of the merit of this plan.

• Here's a link for Pain au Chocolat (chocolate croissants) from My Daddy Cooks. Looks fabulous for Christmas morning. And who knows, maybe Santa would be down for something other than stale cookies. 
• This recipe for Indian Potatoes from The Tiffin Box will add some exotic flavors to roasted potatoes. 
• Check out this prep checklist from Like Mam Used to Bake to help you get some things done in advanced so you can mostly just drink for the holiday itself. 
• I'm a fan of Bubble and Squeak. You can make it out of leftovers or throw it together for satisfying side dish on the big day. Check out this link to a less expensive Christmas dinner for some other great recipes on a budget.  
• Can someone please, please, pretty please make this Prime Rib with Roasted Garlic and Horseradish Crust? Maybe I'll see if I can talk the family into it...

Champagne Saffron Sauce (From a Bon Appetite Magazine--I will find it when I visit the family)

• Large sea scallops (you decide how many you need--we usually do about 20 for the six-ish people)
• 2 T unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cup dry champagne (not sweet)
• 1/2 t. saffron threads
• 1 cup whipping cream 
• fresh lemon juice
• minced fresh parsley

Melt butter. Add scallops and saute at a high heat to get a good sear on them. Remove the second they're cooked through so they don't get rubbery. Add champagne and saffron to the butter-scallop sauce in the pan, and boil until reduced by 1/2 cup, about seven minutes. Add cream and gently boil until reduced to a sauce-like consistency, about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Return scallops (and chunks of cooked lobster tail, if you like) to the sauce and heat until just warmed through. Sprinkle with fresh parsley. Holy cow.

I'd love to hear from some of you! What are your favorite holiday recipes? 

Two-Soup Icepocalypse! ('Cause, Baby, It's Cold Outside')

Wow, is it cold in Dallas this weekend. As a native Texan, I'm much more prepared for 60+ days of triple-digit weather than I am anything below about 50 degrees. And yes, I've seen all the memes about how Texans overreact to severe weather. They're funny. I would like to state for the record that I did not run to the store and clean them out of milk and bread. I got kale for the rabbits, a whole bunch of flour and sugar to make cookies with, and a Jesus candle that struck my fancy.

So during day two of being shut in, I ran out of anything interesting to eat. And my toes WOULD NOT get warm. I'd been flipping through some back issues of Cooks Illustrated, and came across a recipe for chicken and dumplings. Yum. I love chicken and dumplings, though my expertise rests on eating rather than cooking this dish. But I thought, why not? However, I didn't have any chicken thighs, wings, or breasts. All I had was some ground chicken, so I mixed it with salt, pepper, thyme, an egg, and some Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs to make meat balls. So really, I made meatballs and dumplings. I browned them very well in a non-stick skillet and deglazed (what little there was) with sherry. While my dumplings were browning, I had finely chopped a half of a large onion and one garlic clove, which were sweating in olive oil in a pot. When they were translucent, I added the sherry from the skillet until my onions were a lovely, sweet-sherry, soft mass of bits.

Then I added my meatballs to the pot, along with a bit more sherry, about four cups of water, and chicken Better than Bullion to make faux stock/broth. I let that warm together, tasted for seasoning, added some more Bullion, salt and pepper, and brought it to a low simmer.

In the meanwhile, I had mixed up buttermilk, butter, an egg, salt, four, sugar, and baking soda into dumpling dough. Let me tell you a secret: I never have buttermilk. I don't buy it because I'll never use it beyond what I need for a recipe. So let me tell you what my mom advised me to do many years ago. Measure out the milk you need. Add a teaspoon of vinegar per cup of milk. Stir, let it sit for a few minutes, and you have a pretty decent buttermilk equivalent. I'm sure finer chefs would be horrified, but it's worked out for me so far. 

When the dough was ready and my pot was simmering, I started dropping my dumplings in. Remember to spray your spoon with cooking spray so the batter will slide off. 

Plop, plop, plop. Cover, let simmer for about 15 minutes, and there they were! Dumplings! I was very excited. 

My friend Carolina says this looks like matzo ball soup. I was hoping to see how it fared into the next day, but that night, my husband ate the ENTIRE POT.

The next day, due to the continued ice and decided dearth of dumpling leftovers, I decided it was time for potato soup. I had a bag of potatoes from my Bountiful Basket that looked about one day away from the trash, so I decided to make a pot of potato soup that even my honey couldn't get through in one day.

Easy-peasy. I peeled and chopped five large Yukon Gold potatoes and one enormous onion and threw them in a pot with water and salt to simmer away.

When the potatoes were soft enough to pierce with a fork, I drained the whole thing and dumped the veggies back into the pot. To this, I added about 1/3 cup cream, 1 1/2 T butter, about 1 t. of chicken Better than Bullion, salt, pepper, and boiling water in 1/2 cup increments until I got the consistency I wanted. Using the immersion blender, I blended this up until it was a silky-smooth, potato-ey dream. Fortunately, it was great on its own, because we were out of bacon and cheddar cheese for toppings due to the movie-fest, slumber party fueled by grilled bacon and cheese sandwiches the night before. Did I mention we're not having a low-cal icepocolypse?

Normally, I would thin it out more, but it's cold, so our soup was pretty thick. Rest assured, I did make the troops eat the rest of the apples left in the crisper as well. Right before we made s'mores. Stay warm, y'all!

Recipes after the break...

After the Fact: Thanksgiving Dressing on Black Friday

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Ours was full of the usual shenanigans. My dad walked in the kitchen a the crack of dawn, gave everyone their duties in drill-sergeant fashion, and then looked in my direction and made an announcement about no one getting sauced before lunch. Well, damn. So, as we careened from great successes (the scalloped potatoes were glorious, as was the homemade pumpkin pie from the puree I made last month) to some disasters (the convection oven dried out the top layer of turkey breast, which had to be surgically repaired by no less than five people before serving). However, we were only 45 minutes late in getting the meal on the table and no one got completely sauced before lunch. Promise. There's one area of our Thanksgiving dinners that remains totally unsatisfactory, however. Dressing.

This is an area of debate at my house. My mom likes her mom's cornbread dressing, but we can't ever get it quite right. We've tried a variety of bread dressing recipes, but someone always hates it. My dad has long since thrown in the towel and requests Stove Top purely out the desire for stress-less consistency. This year, we had a complete break down. Mom threw on three boxes of Stove Top at Dad's request, in all the chaos the burner got jacked up, and my sister and I kept looking at each other asking, "Is something burning?" as we poured another glass of wine. Well, gentle readers, the Stove Top was burnt tar-black to the bottom of the pot, and it was the proverbial blessing in disguise. I always feel obligated to eat a bit of it because I love dressing! I want it! I crave it! And then I elegantly spit it into my napkin and feed the rest to the small, prowling dogs under the table. Sigh. We had a dressing-less Thanksgiving meal, and our guests were too gracious to mention it.

Today is Black Friday, and I still want some freaking dressing. Everyone has gone, and it's just me and my parents at the house. I decided that today, today was going to be the day I would conquer the dressing debacle that has plagued us for years! So I surveyed the grocery contents and went searching online for a recipe. I adapted this recipe for Sage Dressing.

First, to survey the bread. On hand, we had a nice loaf of honey wheat and some leftover hotdog and hamburger buns. In the interest of economics, I cubed up about 6 slices of bread, two hotdog buns my 11 year old had mangled and left in the bag (sounds delicious, I know), and a hamburger bun. I sprinkled them with about a teaspoon fresh, chopped rosemary and toasted them in the oven until they were mildly crunchy.

I didn't have any leek or mushroom, so I chopped up about a 2/3 a cup of celery left over from the veggie tray, 1/2 cup of the worst onion I've ever cut up (picture me sobbing over the cutting board, the gases were so strong), and two cloves garlic. I sauteed the veggies in about a tablespoon of leftover orange-rosemary butter and about 3 tablespoons of fat I'd skimmed off the stock we made and reserved. When the veggies were cooked down a bit, I added salt, white pepper, and a half cup of white wine. I let it reduce a bit, and took the pan off the burner. To the veggies I added 1 t dried, ground sage, 1 t dried marjoram, 1T fresh chopped sage and 1 t fresh chopped thyme. Into the bread bowl went the veggies, which I mixed with as little handling as I could manage. Then I added two eggs and 1/2 t baking powder and gently combined them into the bread cubes. Over that, I poured about 2 1/4 cups homemade stock. You want the cubes well moistened, but not soupy, and don't overmix them into a concrete-like dough brick. The cubes should be able to maintain their original form. Sprinkle with 1/3 cup Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs. I think the 400 degrees the recipe calls for is really a recipe for dried-out dressing. I baked mine at 325 for a half an hour covered in foil and then another 15-20 minutes uncovered to crisp up the top. Be mindful this is totally dependent upon your cooking vessel. I cooked this in a deep dish with a small circumference, so it needed more cooking time. If you don't want a soft center but want more crunch, spread this on a cookie sheet with sides and cook around half the time, checking frequently for dryness/doneness.

By this point, I'm sure you've all realized that food photography is not my strong suit. I apologize. This shot is particularly unlovely because we fell on this dressing like ravening wolves the moment it emerged from the oven. It was just doughy enough for me, crispy on top, and light and fluffy. My mom thinks we should add some cornbread next time, as she does not care for all-bread dressing. I think you could do up any combination you wish!

Recipe follows:

Thanksgiving, Handled. Funnies, Links, and Recipes

The countdown begins. If you're like me, you're feverishly trying to figure out how you'll get everything together by Thursday. I did score with my Bountiful Basket and a visit to the White Rock Farmer's market yesterday, and I'll post about those soon. But for now, we all need to get our s#@! together for Thursday. 

I told you I was anti-stuffing. Happy Thanksgiving!!

•  Bread. We never seem to get this quite right at my house, as it's always an afterthought. This year, I'm determined to do better and was thinking I might try Happy Bread. I would love to try the actual recipe, but in light of all the cooking I'll already be doing, I thought I might try this with store-bought croissant rolls. I know, I know. But I'm trying to be realistic here. 

  

  Happy Bread via Foodiva's Kitchen.

• Looking for something new to add to the family's repertoire? Try these Crispy Polenta Chips with parmesan and sage. 

• My favorite Butternut Squash Soup. The juniper-infused cream MAKES this soup. You can make it all the day before and then just reheat it and have an elegant starter to your dinner. This would also work well with pumpkin puree.

• Another variation on cranberry--Spiced Cranberrry Jam. This post from Food In Jars also links to pickled cranberries and some other cranberry-related excitement.

Image courtesy of asweetpeachef.com.

• Green bean casserole. We all love it. However, with a bit of effort, homemade is so much better! Imagine fresh green beans instead of canned, your own white sauce with sauteed mushrooms, and freshly made crispy onion rings. Check out Alton Brown's recipe for Best Ever Green Bean Casserole. It's also quite good with just about a third of a red bell pepper slivered into the beans as well. If you really want to impress your mother-in-law (or just avoid canned cream of mushroom soup), here you go. 

• Great desserts. For something special, and pretty easy, try one of my favorite recipes. My parents refer to it as "compote" and you can make it in any variation. The three parts are fruit, wine, and spice. Begin with 1 1/2 cup water, 1 1/2 cup wine, and 1/3 cup sugar. Put over a medium heat and let this simmer until it reduces down a bit, about 12 minutes. Taste it to check the sweetness. Add more sugar if needed. Add fruit (about 2 cups, washed and cut into uniform pieces) and spices. Adjust your heat to a low simmer until fruit is soft. Fish out any hard spices like whole cloves or cinnamon sticks, and puree in a blender or with an immersion blender. Strain through a fine sieve and return to pot. Add the extract of your choice. In a small bowl, mix 1 1/2 T corn starch with 1 1/2 T cold water. Mix completely, add to pot, bring to a boil for about 30 seconds, stirring all the time. Here are some combinations I love: 1) a spicy red wine sauce I used in the pavlova recipe. Add raspberries, blackberries, and/or strawberries to this one. Sub in dark brown sugar for a very rich taste. 2) Use white wine and frozen peaches or apricots or fresh mango. For spices, use a pinch of saffron and 1/2 t. orange extract. 3)White zinfandel or rose wine with raspberries, almond extract, and brown sugar. 

You'll wind up with a lovely sauce that is great over cheesecake, panna cotta (I've used this recipe from Ina Garten many times with great results--just omit the balsamic strawberry part and sub in the sauce you just made), or ice cream. Or, you could take those black bananas your kids didn't eat this week, make some Banana Yogurt Bread, toast the slices in a skillet with a bit of butter and serve it with this sauce and some whipped cream.

The recipe for "compote" is after the break...

Talkin' Turkey

Is it just me, or is making the turkey sort of a dreaded task? Either you know you're just setting out to force twenty pounds of dry and/or greasy bird on friends and family, or, if you're like me, you pretty much know you got assigned to turkey duty because no one else wants to take the blame if it sucks.

 Well, suck this, turkey haters. Orange-Rosemary Turkey will never fail you. My dad found this recipe in Bon Appetit in the '90s, and we've used it every year since in some variation. No lie. When I get to the homestead next week, I will take a picture of the well-worn, dog-eared, spattered copy that is kept with the cookbooks. Here's a link to the original recipe. This post will be without a whole lot of pics, which I will take next week to update, but I really felt like it was more important to help save your bird this year, if you belong to a family whose bird is in need of saving. You know who you are. (Allow me to wax poetic here for a moment. Even if you just run down to Wal Mart and grab whatever frozen bird they have there, it's still an animal. One that probably led a pretty s@#tty life until it was sacrificed for your table. I strongly believe that if an animal gives up its life so we can eat it, we owe that animal the best preparation we can muster.)

Hence this simple but delightful turkey makeover. I like to vary this up a little bit, however. Personally, I think you need to make about double the Rosemary-Orange butter. I tend to stuff more  butter in the turkey than this recipe calls for, plus you want some left over for dressing, gravy, and dinner rolls. Because once you taste it, you'll want to smear it on anything that will stand still. Thank goodness, your turkey is probably standing still.

This little tool is the easiest way to get pretty consistent orange or lemon zest. You can then chop with a knife if you want it in smaller pieces.

 So double the butter recipe described in the original. I usually add a bit of black pepper to my butter. This year I also added some frozen grated ginger as well. Mix this up the night before, divide in half (so you have a designated turkey bowl and and everything else bowl. No salmonella for us this year, thank you very much), and refrigerate. You can even make this two days in advance.

 On the day you're cooking your turkey, **GET THE BUTTER OUT OF THE FRIDGE EARLY.** It's a lot easier to stuff the bird with room-temperature butter. And don't lose your mind and microwave the butter to soften it, because it also sucks to try to stuff your bird with completely melted butter.

My parents have seriously held onto this magazine since 1989.

A note on turkeys. There's no sacred Thanksgiving writ that says you have to cook a whole bird if you have a small number of people, no one eats dark meat, or you're having multiple proteins. You can easily just buy and prepare the breast if you like. I usually do this at least once between Thanksgiving and Christmas when, inevitably, my husband casts sad eyes at me and says, "I really didn't get much turkey this year. I don't feel fully satisfied in the turkey department." This is not a dirty metaphor; he just wants me to cook another turkey. So I make him a breast, and everyone is happy.

So here we go. You've made your double batch of butter a day or two in advance to let the flavors meld together. You've taken it out of the fridge to warm to room temp. Now, to prep that turkey. I hope, if you bought a frozen turkey, that it's been thawing in the fridge for a couple of days. If not, you may want to put it in a sink of cold (NOT HOT) water to defrost.

When it's defrosted, remove the neck and giblets. You can use these in gravy, if that's how your family rolls, or you can make an excellent stock from them. However, if your turkey comes with a package of pre-made gravy frozen up in there, do your family a great service AND THROW THAT PAP AWAY IMMEDIATELY. Don't even handle it too much, lest you get bad cooking juju on you. Rinse your turkey well. Leave in that little thermometer button that pops out when it's cooking. You don't want to use this to measure when the turkey is done, but you don't want to leave a gaping hole for the juices to run out of either. Make sure you pull out any stray feather ends that may have been left behind.

I stuffed that giant turkey until, as Stanley Tucci said in Julie and Julia, "she just couldn't take it anymore."

Now for the fun part. I'd roll my sleeves up and remove jewelry if I were you. First, you need to gently separate the skin from the muscle of the turkey without shredding it. Slowly and gently, work your fingers in between the skin and muscle, loosening the skin without tearing it. Loosen the skin all over. When you're done, stuff 3/4 of the bowl of turkey butter (so 3/4 of 1/2 of what you made) under the skin, smooshing it around until it's fairly evenly distributed. Then spread the remainder on top of the bird all over the skin to make it crunchy. Stuff the cavity full of onion, garlic (you can just take a whole head, cut it in half through all the cloves to expose them), celery (use the leaves! They're more flavorful than the stalk!), carrots, orange wedges. and rosemary. Make sure your turkey is elevated on a rack.

A note on dressing versus stuffing. "Dressing" is served on the side; "stuffing" is actually stuffed in the turkey to cook. I'm in the anti-stuffing camp. You really have to be careful to make sure the stuffing is heated to a high enough temp so as to not poison everyone with raw-bird juices, and usually, by the time the stuffing is cooked, the bird is overcooked (your stuffing must reach 160 degrees F). I'm not a fan, though I know some people who swear by stuffing and do it well.

Do tuck in the wings so your bird cooks evenly and no floppy bits incinerate in the oven, but don't worry about trussing. It takes longer to cook a trussed bird, and then the breast is dry. 

A note on cooking turkey. This is not an all-day event unless you've stuffed it. It's usually a 2-3 hour event AT MOST, depending on how large your bird is. A breast will take less than half that time.

We had a little disaster with the convection oven being too hot, but we figured it out in time to save the bird. Next time, I think I'll take my blow torch to get a nice, even golden color. 

Your breast meat needs to reach 150 degrees, and the leg meat (it has more connective tissue) needs to hit 160 degrees to be safely done without being overdone. Use a thermometer rather than relying on a set amount of time. Let the turkey warm to room temp before cooking. It will cook more evenly that way. You want to start at a high heat to kill all the surface bacteria and brown the skin, loosely tent some foil over the breast so it doesn't brown further, and then lower the heat for the rest of the cooking time. When I lower the heat, I add a couple of cups each of water and white wine for moisture and to keep my drippings from burning. We usually start ours at 375 degrees until the breast is browned and then reduce the temp to a little less than 325 degrees for the rest of the cooking. But you know what? Screwing up the turkey isn't the end of the world. I accidentally cooked the turkey breast down the entire time one year, and it was awesomely tender. It didn't look pretty, but it was juicy. Undercooked turkey? Slice it and put it in a pan in its own juices to finish cooking it. Overcooked turkey? Slice it and put it in a pan in its own juices over super low heat. Pour your guests another round, and let them eat cake. Or pie.

Another note on cooking turkey. Put the baster down. All it does is make that lovely, crunchy skin soggy. If you don't overcook the turkey and you let it rest for at least ten minutes, it will be juicy.

I don't usually brine my turkeys because I really like to use the drippings, and the drippings from a brined turkey are too salty. To make gravy: in a pot, add 3T Rosemary Orange butter and/or drippings. Let it melt. Whisk in 3T (maybe a bit more) flour to make a roux. Let it cook a minute to get the flour taste out. Slowly,whisk in about 2 cups stock. As you start whisking, it will look like crap, but eventually, it will even out (sprinkle flour, don't dump in one place, and don't use cold flour to prevent clumping).

 Another fun thing you can do is make pretty butter for the rolls.

Use a pastry bag to pipe pretty butter shapes onto parchment paper. 

Pipe some of your fancy Rosemary-Orange butter onto parchment paper and put it in the freezer to set. Arrange it on a plate and set out on the table for buttering rolls.

More Holiday Happiness!--Links and Recipes, Oh My!

I cannot believe Thanksgiving is next week. I'm so not ready yet, having just finished all my business for graduation last week and trying to shovel my way out of the pile of grading that accumulated over the last week and half. However, as deep as my denial may be, in one week, the holiday is upon us. So I thought now might be a good time for some links to great recipes, ideas for host/hostess gifts, and some little noshes to have around.

Just say no.

• So, so over the jellied cranberry sauce that is too sweet and tastes like a cranberry that hid under a dirty bridge for the last two seasons? (And I must apologize to my sister, who quite likes canned cranberry sauce.) Try some Hibiscus Cranberry Sauce. While you're at it, this Cranberry Liqueur looks pretty good too. So you can be festive in your holiday booze-fest. 
  

• This is a rad idea and sure to bring a smile to the face of the folks cooking for you this year, if you're not doing it yourself. Vanilla is at the heart of many traditional desserts, so make some homemade vanilla extract and vanilla salt. When you make it, bring some by my place, please.

• While we're on topic of salt, here's an easy recipe for herbed salt. It's good on everything, easy to make, and you can put it in pretty containers to gift.

• Did you have an "oh s@#*" moment when your mom asked you do the stuffing? No problem. Check out this Apple-Herb Stuffing. 

•  I love this recipe from Tigress in a Jam for Pumpkin Marmalade. I think this would be amazing over a piece of cheesecake.

• If your family is like mine, we stand around grazing for ages while the cooking goes on. Here's a recipe for Rosemary and Salt Smoked Almonds that might just make you the darling of the day. Or at least make people less resentful when you polish off the last of the bottle of chardonnay.

My grandfather, husband, and two of the family dogs, tearing it up last year.

Handy Food Blogs and Some Holiday Meal Links

Well, kids, the holidays are nigh upon us. 

Personally, I love the holidays. They're a good time of year for a food whore. I mean, foodie. I'm hugely fond of cooking for days for the folks I love. I'm sorry to admit it, but I love seeing Christmas displays in October, listening to Christmas music while I'm planning the Thanksgiving menu, and I would totally put up the Christmas tree the day after Halloween if I could talk my husband into it. It's a sickness. I love the colorful, sparkly happiness of it all.

To that end, I thought I'd just do a list of links to fun recipes, blogs, gadgets, and anything else that may inspire you!

• As you know, I'm a big fan of Ben Starr. Here's a link to his extensive blog post on how to prepare a brined turkey. He even has a video to show you how! 
• Deb at Smitten Kitchen did a humorous post on how to do chicken stock in the crockpot! Freaking genius, I say, when we all know that good stock is the basis of rad stuffing and gravy and well played at a time when stove-top space is at a premium. 
• The ladies at Spoon Fork Bacon have a luscious-looking recipe for sweet potato and rosemary gratin for those of you tired of that crap with the marshmallows on top. (I'm deeply sorry if the marshmallow version is your favorite. Sort of.)
• This little gadget is the secret to turning the turkey drippings into something non-greasy and delicious. 

  

  The built-in strainer will strain out the big chunks, and if you wait a bit for the grease to separate and rise to the top, the spout will allow you to pour out the tasty juices sans grease. 

  
  

• Every year, I make Martha Stewart's Steamed Cranberry Pudding for my momma. Don't be turned off by "pudding" in the title; it's just a really moist, thick cake that is as good as licking the batter out of the bowl. For the pudding, you'll need one of these:

  

  You put your cranberry mix in the bottom, top it with the cake batter, and lower the whole thing into a pot of boiling water (up to just below the lip) for a gorgeous holiday cake.

  The best part is that if you get the mold, there are a variety of recipes appropriate for all times of the year at the Martha Stewart Living website. And it's so pretty!
  
   
• Jerry at Cooking Stoned posted this recipe for Cranberry Christmas Sangria. You can bet your turkey wishbone this will be happening at some point Thanksgiving weekend. 

What are some of your favorite Thanksgiving traditions/dishes? Some of our favorites include orange-rosemary turkey, butternut squash risotto, glazed bacon-wrapped green beans, my grandmother's cranberry salad, and maple-pecan pie. I'll post some of those recipes as the big day draws nearer!