Thanksgiving Weekend, 2010

This year my parents visited for Thanksgiving, reprising a tradition that they kept up for six or seven years when we lived in Atlanta.  It has been harder for them to travel since then, so they have only visited a couple of times since we moved to D.C., but they decided to make the trip this year.  I think that we all had a wonderful time.

My Dad has some dietary restrictions, so I put together a Thanksgiving menu that had healthier versions of some of the standards.  I spatchcocked the turkey, which involves taking out the backbone and roasting it flat.  This method obviously eliminates the option of stuffing, so we had dressing cooked outside the bird.  I did a wild rice dressing that included pecans, mushrooms, and Madeira, but no butter, in deference to Dad.  I probably should have added some dried fruit, though.  In addition to mashed potatoes (again no butter) and gravy (which Dad didn't eat) and cranberries poached in red wine with spices, we had butternut squash and leeks baked in parchment paper packets and green beans in a Meyer lemon and olive oil vinaigrette.  To finish it off, my Mom made a healthy pumpkin pie in an oil-based crust and I made an apple pie in a decadent buttery crust.  All in all, it was a pretty good meal, and we had ample leftovers.

Or even too many leftovers.  I'm getting a little tired of turkey, so I jumped at the chance yesterday to make something else for dinner.  We met a friend of ours out in Middleburg, Virginia, where we had lunch and I went meat shopping at the Home Farm store, which sells local heritage meats.  I bought some delicious (humanely raised) veal rib chops and a couple of pounds of chuck roast.

We had the veal chops last night, and I am marinating the chuck in red wine, along with some herbs and aromatic vegetables, so that I can cook it tomorrow in the slow cooker, while I'm at work.  I did the chops very simply, just searing them in a cast iron skillet and then roasting them for 15 minutes in a 375 degree oven.  That was just about right.  We also had some sauteed mushrooms and shallots, which I did in the skillet while the meat rested.  I deglazed the sauteed mushrooms with some cognac, added a little extra turkey stock I still had from the big day, and finished it with a little cream to make a sauce for the meat and the mashed potatoes.

In addition to visiting Middleburg, we also stopped up at the Linden Vineyards, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  We tasted some very pleasant wines and split up a case purchase with our friend, so that we could enjoy the benefits of their "Case Club," one of which is access to a delightful tasting porch.  Judging from the reviews I read online, some people react pretty negatively to Linden's efforts to limit access, by, for example, requiring Case Club membership for some things.  From my perspective, the experience would probably be destroyed if access were not metered in some way, and they are simply doing it by allocating space to their best customers.  It seems like a reasonable way to operate a business.  Be that as it may, we have access for a year now, so hopefully we will make it up again.

Making Dinner at the End of the Week

My regular practice is to do the grocery shopping at Whole Foods once per week, with a supplemental trip to Trader Joe's or Costco or a conventional supermarket as needed, but usually no more than once per month.  With that schedule, putting dinner together towards the end of the week can be a challenge, unless I cop out and tell Glen that we're going out, or we are in gardening season so I have a ready supply of fresh vegetables.  This past weekend I did the marketing on Saturday, so I suppose that today (Wednesday) qualifies as "towards the end of the week."

Sitting in a conference room at work this morning, waiting for colleagues to show up for a telephone interview we had scheduled, I mentally reviewed the list of what was left in the vegetable bin.  Turnips.  Mushrooms.  Some spinach.  One red onion in the pantry.  Maybe do something Asian and make some sushi rice?  Figure out a way to incorporate a poached egg?  But what about those gnocchi that had been hanging around for a while?  Somehow that appealed more.

So, we ended up having a spinach and roasted red onion salad, along with gnocchi with turnips, mushrooms, and brown butter.  Here's what I did.  After peeling and halving the onion lengthwise, I cut it into wedges and tossed it with olive oil and some salt and pepper before putting it into the trusty little convection oven at 375 degrees.  It took about 35 minutes for the onion to roast, and then I tossed it with some very good balsamic vinegar.  I added the onions to the spinach, which I also dressed with some balsamic vinaigrette and sprinkled with some salt and a grind of pepper.

For the gnocchi, I quartered a fair number (probably about 10 oz.) of cremini mushrooms, and then I peeled four small turnips and squared them off, so that I could dice them into little cubes.  While sauteeing them in some olive oil, I minced some garlic, which I added to the turnips and mushrooms when they were pretty far along, and I browned about 3 tablespoons of butter.  Finally, I cooked the gnocchi in a pot of boiling, salted water.  Once they were done, I added them to the turnips and mushrooms, along with the brown butter, and tossed the whole mess together.  Of course it made sense to garnish with some good Reggiano-Parmigiano cheese after plating the gnocchi up with the salad.  It would have been nice to add some sage to the gnocchi, but I'll try that next time.

Pumpkin Lentil Stew

I am not ashamed to admit that I occasionally like to use a slow cooker.  I received mine as a gift some years ago, and, despite an initial 1970s macrame-avocado-green-cheese-fondue flashback, I have used it more than I thought I would.  Especially in the colder months, when something stew-like is what appeals.  It certainly did on Sunday, when we were running around all afternoon with a friend who was visiting.  So, I decided to make a second pot of the pumpkin-lentil stew that I had put together a few weeks ago.  Here is what I did.

Ingredients:

2 T olive oil

8 oz. hot Italian sausage, casings removed

1 large onion, chopped

2 ribs celery, diced

3 medium carrots, peeled and diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

2 black cardamom pods

some herbes de Provence

1 small sugar pumpkin, seeds removed, peeled and diced

1 bunch kale, ribs removed and chopped

1 can diced tomatoes, with their juices

1 1/4 cups French lentils, rinsed

1 quart low-sodium chicken broth

salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in skillet, and add sausage.  Saute, breaking up the sausage with the back of your spoon.  When it is browned add onion, celery, carrots, garlic, whole cardamom pods, and herbs.  Saute until vegetables start to caramelize.  Put in slow cooker, and add pumpkin, kale, tomatoes and lentils.  Stir to mix.  Add chicken broth, and some salt and pepper.  Cook until vegetables and lentils are tender.  (Approximately 5 hours on the "high" setting seemed about right, but other cookers might vary.)  Correct seasonings and serve.  Add a dash of sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar, if desired.

We had the stew with a beet and spinach salad and some homemade biscuits.

Autumn Farro Pilaf

Even though I like meat too much to consider ever becoming a vegetarian, I do my best to plan at least a couple of meatless meals every week.  That can be a little more challenging than simply recycling the same formula of meat-starch-veg night after night, but ultimately this commitment forces me to be more creative, I think.  In part that is because, even without animal protein, I still crave the same rich kinds of flavor that roasting or browning meat imparts to a dish.

Last night I created that same experience in a farro pilaf that we had with a roasted beet and spinach salad.  Here's what I did.

Ingredients:
1 cup farro
8 oz. mushrooms (cremini or an assortment with some wild), quartered
8 oz. Brussels sprouts, halved
1 onion, cut in strips
olive oil
salt and pepper
crumbled goat cheese

Bring 5 cups of salted water to a boil.  Add the farro, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes or so, until tender.  Drain.  Meanwhile, toss the mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, and onion with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast in a 400 degree oven for around 25 minutes, until they are starting to brown.  Toss the vegetables and the warm farro together, dress with a little additional olive oil, and correct seasoning.  Garnish with goat cheese.

I also made a pumpkin, kale, and lentil stew the other day in the slow cooker; I'll post that recipe when I have a chance.

Using Every Bit of Flavor

Glen and I recently had dinner at Ardeo, a restaurant in Cleveland Park, which we had never tried before. I enjoyed my dinner quite a lot, especially the celery root and winter squash hash that they served along with roasted salmon, olive puree, and pine nut foam. I just happened to have a celery root in the refrigerator that I hadn't used the week before, as well as half of a butternut squash, so I decided to see if I could make a reasonable facsimile.

I also wanted to try a recipe from the November issue of Fine Cooking, for a turkey breast "porchetta." As the name suggests, this dish is typically made from a small pig, but in this version a deboned turkey breast is marinated with a spice rub, trussed up, browned in a skillet and then roasted under a canopy of pancetta. This is where the extra flavor comes in. After I browned the turkey in a trusty cast-iron skillet, I realized that I should just make the hash in that pan, to squeeze out every bit of flavor, as well as to save a bit on the dish-washing.

So, I cubed my celery root and squash, diced some onion, and sauteed everything in the skillet with some additional olive oil and a bay leaf. No other herbs or spices were needed, because the pan already contained a fair amount of the spice rub, which included fennel, coriander, sage, rosemary, and garlic. After sauteeing for ten minutes or so, I began to add water in quarter-cup increments, until the vegetables were tender but still held their shape. The end result was not exactly like Ardeo's, but it was still pretty delicious, along with the meat and some mashed potatoes.

Ramona the Pest

Anyone who lives with a cat knows that it is very difficult to prevent them from doing exactly what they want to do, especially jumping up on countertops. I know that we should more diligently apply the spray bottle method, but I'm not sure it would work on either Rupu or, especially, Ramona, who is very persistent and curious. Why on earth would she want to investigate a bunch of kale? Who knows? It really doesn't matter, because she's going to do it.

I needed the kale for a vegetable casserole called panade. The recipe was in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago. It involved layering sauteed leeks, slices of butternut squash, kale, cauliflower, and stale bread in a Dutch oven, and then baking the whole thing with milk and fontina cheese. I added some nutmeg to the recipe; it seemed to need some additional spice. I thought it was a little too wet, so I will need to make some adjustments next time.

Along with the panade, I made an impromptu mushroom-barley soup. I sauteed some onion, carrot, and celery with a bay leaf and some thyme, and then added about twelve ounces of sliced mushrooms, half cremini and half shitake. After they were cooked, I added 2 cups of beef broth I had frozen, about 3 cups of water, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and a third of a cup of barley. The soup made a very satisfying starter.

Along with dinner we drank an Austrian red wine, a 2008 Schiefer Königsberg Blaufränkisch that paired well with the food. It is a fairly light red, but with some nice spiciness that complemented the rustic rood very well.

Eggplant Avalanche

I think that I have mentioned that I have never had any luck growing eggplant before. Well, that worm has turned. This year we have had oodles of the fruits. The white variety, which reminds me of ostrich eggs, have probably been the most prolific, but the purple ones are coming on strong, and I have harvested a few Chinese eggplant too.

So far we have had them in salads, pastas, a tart, and an Indian stew, but several nights ago I decided to make some eggplant sandwiches for dinner. I sliced the eggplant thick, sprinkled the slices with salt, and let them sweat for fifteen minutes or so while heating my little convection oven up to 400 degrees. After blotting the eggplant slices with a paper towel to absorb the bitter juice that they gave up, I brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper before popping them in the oven, where I baked them about 12 minutes or so on each side, until they were brown and soft. I brushed the eggplant slices again with a balsamic vinaigrette after they came out of the oven. While they were cooling a bit, I toasted the bread and sliced some tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. To assemble the sandwich, I stacked the eggplant, some arugula leaves, the mozzarella, the tomatoes (which I sprinkled with salt and pepper), and a few basil leaves on the bottom slice of toasted bread. I spread the top slice of bread with some lemon mayonnaise and added it to the sandwich.

We both pronounced it delicious, but I found myself wondering what it would have been like with some prosciutto...

Summertime

I have a long-time friend who moved away a couple of years ago, but I always think of her when I eat a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad. I have known her for more than twenty years, and every time I have ever seen her eat one of these salads, she has said something to the effect of "Man, this is what I love about summer." Who could argue with her? Tonight's version involved three different tomato varieties (including a succulent Brandywine) on a bed of arugula, several little balls of fresh mozzarella, and a nice scattering of julienned basil, all dressed with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

We had the salad with some grilled chicken and roasted fingerling potatoes. I only have a couple of those left, and I used the last of the onions today in a big pot of eggplant-tomato-pepper pasta sauce. The eggplant continue to produce and the zucchini are really just starting, but everything else is ramping down, even the tomatoes. We are leaving later this week for a visit to some family in California, and I can tell that, by the time we get back, the days of tomato abundance will be over. We will still have some to eat into September, but the summer is inevitably starting to fade. I think that next week I will start some things for fall, so that we will have turnips and chard and lettuce when the weather turns cooler.

I used some more tomatoes and eggplant last night in a savory tart, the recipe for which is in the original Greens Cookbook, by Deborah Madison. It was quite delicious, and it paired very nicely with a fruity French rose wine.

Tomato Heaven

I was happy to find a trickle of fresh tomatoes when I returned from vacation. It wasn't long before that trickle turned into a flood, despite what has been a very unpleasantly hot summer. They're not all beautiful fruits, but some of the ugliest are actually the tastiest.

I have given quite a few away, and I tried to soak up some of the surplus today by making some tomato chutney and a pitcher of gazpacho. The chutney turned out great; I melded together two different recipes I found on epicurious.com. I spiced it with ginger, coriander, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, black mustard, cayenne, nigella seeds, and a cinnamon stick, and I added golden raisins and onions along with the tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar. The taste I tried was delicious; we'll see how the flavors develop.

Tonight we are having a very locavore kind of dinner. Whole Foods had some locally raised lamb loin chops, which I am grilling. (They really seem to be carrying a lot more locally raised food; their consumer research must have shown that is a key value for their customers.) With them we're having some roasted fingerling potatoes from the garden, along with some purple pole beans (there are a few in the photograph above), which actually turn green when you cook them. I was going to open a Virginia wine to go with it, but we have a really great Cotes-du-Rhone that will pair well with the lamb, so that's the direction I decided to go.

On Vacation

The Little Red Wagon will be back on July 16. Have a great 4th of July!

Harvest Day

I dug all of the potatoes today. The haul was about sixteen pounds worth, which was a little disappointing. The French fingerlings had a better yield than the Yellow Finns, some of which I impaled on the pitchfork and hence became squirrel food. I may need to rethink having potatoes next year. They are unbelievably delicious, but they take up a lot of room. I have given up a lot of other crops for my spuds.

The fingerlings did contribute to a very tasty dinner, though. I simmered several of them until they were just tender, and then I sliced them and placed them in a baking dish, forming a bed. After drizzling olive oil over them and seasoning with salt and pepper, I added a halibut fillet and put the whole thing in my little convection oven, set to 450 degrees. (I had also drizzled the fish with some oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.) Thirteen minutes was about right. If the fish had contact with the pan, rather than resting on the potatoes, I think that ten minutes in the oven would probably be sufficient. I had the fish and potatoes along with some beets (a dark red and a salmon-colored) that I had diced small, tossed with chopped oil-cured olives, some julienned basil, and a few minced anchovies, all dressed with olive oil and sherry vinegar. This beet relish was the highlight of the meal. The combination of sweet beets, bitter olives, fragrant basil, and salty anchovies really did it for me, and it married extremely well with the fish and potatoes.

I paired the food with an albariño, a very pleasant white wine from Spain that I had heard about recently on "The Splendid Table." I thought that this quaffable wine would work well because of the Spanish feel of the food, and I wasn't disappointed.

New Potatoes

Potatoes are about the easiest thing there is to grow. I plant them around St. Patrick's Day, pay a little bit of attention to them during the spring (mounding up dirt around the hills, watering occasionally), and then summer arrives with a harvest of buried treasure. I dug the first hill this morning at 7:00 am, and we ate the spuds exactly twelve hours later. The flavor was absolutely sublime, enhanced only by a little butter, some cream, fresh chives, and salt and pepper. I could have eaten a whole plateful, but I had also prepared some pan-sauteed catfish and a beet and endive salad which, frankly, was disappointing. Something about it just didn't hang together. Maybe it was the rather bland goat cheese, which had none of the tang that the beets needed. Oh well, I'll try again. I think that beets and potatoes are the only things that will be coming out of the garden for the next week. But there are a lot of things on the horizon...

...provided that they stay alive. My volunteer cucumber vine succumbed over the weekend to the wilt that always seems to get them. Last week I planted some replacements that have come up nicely, so we will see if it is really a timing issue. Sometimes it is possible to plant things at a time that allows them to miss the insect that spreads plant viruses, and I have read that such a strategy can work with cucumbers. I choose to be optimistic. Meanwhile, my eggplant have been attacked by waves of flea beetles, and I actually have given in and started spraying them with a relatively benign, chrysanthemum-derived insecticide. I am trying to be sparing, because the spray is also toxic for beneficial insects, especially bees, which we have in abundance in the community garden. (We now have a beehive, one of several that have been deployed in community gardens in DC.) I just decided that I was unwilling to give up any hope of having eggplant, even if it meant having to make (very mild) organic compromises. And even with the spray, the leaves on the plants have plenty of little pin holes. So the pests are getting their fair share.

Sharing in the Garden

People share a lot in the community garden where I have my plot. It is probably just a part of the DNA of a place like that. Advice, seeds, watering help, and surplus produce all pass from one person to the next. Oh, there are also petty conflicts, territorial disputes, and grumpiness about weeds that are allowed to thrive, but the level of communitarian spirit is pretty high.

I have the good fortune to have the same neighbor at home and in the garden. Last year I gave her some surplus onion plants that I had left over, and she put them in her plot. I was a little puzzled when she didn't harvest the onions after they were ready, but they came up again this year and produced the flowers that my neighbor had been hoping for all along. Onions are biennial, meaning that they flower and produce seed in the second year of their lives. The flowers are beautiful, and she has a nice group of them that stand guard over my beets.

I, however, always harvest my onions, so I doubt that I will ever have onion flowers to show off. Tonight I grilled a couple, dressed them with a balsamic vinaigrette, and had them with a delicious New York strip steak. I also prepared some packets of little red potatoes for the grill; I boiled them for 15 minutes and then placed them in foil packets with rosemary sprigs, olive oil, some butter, and some seasoned salt from the Spice House, and then I put them on the grill with the rest of the food. We ended with an arugula and red lettuce salad, also dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette, but I used the really good vinegar for the salad. It almost seems obligatory to have some red wine with a dinner like that, so we had a Malbec from Argentina.

I had initially thought that I would make some kind of biryani tonight, to try something new. That would have been a real project, with a long list of ingredients and a melange of subtle flavors. The meal we actually had was nothing like that. In fact, it was pretty basic cooking, but it was probably just as satisfying.

Summer Cocktails

Several years ago at my physical my doctor asked me how many alcoholic drinks I have per week. He did not seem entirely pleased with my response of 1 - 2 beers or glasses of wine per night, so since then I have been careful to low-ball my estimates. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, and I am convinced that, in this area at least, it won't hurt me, either. I once had a landlady who had reached the ripe old age of ninety-three, and every night she and her husband (who was even older) had two 7 & 7 cocktails, one tall and one short. They didn't seem any worse for wear, so I am just following their example, though I think that I measure out the alcohol more carefully than they did.

I generally gravitate to wine, and somewhat less frequently to beer, but recently I have also been drinking the occasional cocktail. My plan to sample a new cocktail every week never materialized, but lately I have been trying my hand at mixing new things, like the Leland Palmers we had last week on Memorial Day. I made something similar for myself tonight, essentially a grownup lemonade. I am sure that there must be many versions out there, but here is the one that I mixed.

Lemon-Lime Fizz

Juice of half of a lemon

Juice of half of a lime

1 teaspoon superfine sugar

1 oz. limoncello

1 oz. vodka

ice

club soda

lemon slice

Muddle the sugar with the juices in a highball glass, add the spirits and ice, top with club soda, and garnish with lemon slice.

It is very refreshing, and would probably also be good with gin in place of vodka for a variation on a Tom Collins, which is itself a nice break from the ubiquitous gin and tonic. It's going to be pretty hot tomorrow, so I'll probably need something like that after all of the weeding that I'll be doing.

A Beet Salad

This entry could have been titled "Your Mother Knows Best." I was in Kansas City over the weekend, visiting my parents and sisters, and I baked an angel food cake for my younger sister's birthday. It was only the second "from scratch" angel food cake I have ever made, and I don't have the technique quite down. It ended up being fine, but I took it out of the oven a few minutes early, even though Mom advised leaving it in just a little longer. As soon as it cooled I was worried that it would be a little too, well, wet. I expect that angel food cake is one of those things that benefit from practice. But what is a person to do with all of those egg yolks?

Tonight we had a very simple supper. Chicken leg quarters roasted in a cast iron skillet with whole cloves of garlic, baked Yukon gold potatoes, and a very nice roasted beet salad, which also included a few steamed sugar snap peas, sweet onion, and fennel fronds, all dressed with a vinaigrette made of olive oil, walnut oil, and sherry vinegar. This year I planted Chioggia beets, along with golden and dark red varieties, so the salad had a nice mixture. I commented to Glen during dinner that I had started the salad back in the middle of March, when I planted the peas and onions. It was worth the wait.

Memorial Day Cookout

We had a few friends over for a Memorial Day cookout, and I decided that it might be fun to do hamburgers. Now, there are at least two reasons why I almost never cook hamburgers. First, I don't trust ground meat from the grocery store, even from Whole Foods. I have read that, in the typical package of supermarket hamburger, it is possible to detect the DNA of dozens of animals. Pretty scary. Second, I really dislike purchased hamburger buns. So I decided to address both issues in my hamburgers.

A friend gave me a copy of the cookbook from the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco several years ago, and one of the recipes that it includes is for the famous Zuni Cafe hamburger. It involves using whole chuck, which is cut into chunks and salted the day before, and then ground fresh on the day it is cooked. The method is pretty simple, even if it is a little time-consuming. My main concern was that the meat was a little too lean; I had bought grass-fed beef, so it was not very marbled. To raise the fat content a bit I ground some bacon in with the meat. It ended up being pretty juicy, and I did not detect any pronounced bacon flavor. I thought the meat might have been a little under seasoned, but otherwise it was tasty.

To go along with the burgers I made the hamburger buns from the Martha Stewart Living Cookbook. They were much better than the typical supermarket bun, and I was surprised at how quickly they went together. I was going to make her spicy ketchup, too, but I think that I will wait for tomato season. Instead, I made the gorgeous pink pickled onions in the photograph, which are also from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I honestly think that these onions were my favorite part of the meal, and I am glad that we only ate one of the two pints, so I'll have some to eat with sandwiches.

While I was finishing the prep we drank Leland Palmer cocktails, which are featured in the new issue of Bon Appetit (http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2010/06/the_leland_palmer). This is essentially a blend of iced tea and lemonade that is spiked with gin and limoncello. Very refreshing.

For dessert I made vanilla and strawberry ice creams, which we had with some very fudgy brownies. I was thinking of a Neapolitan-style sundae where the brownie stands in for the chocolate ice cream. When I was growing up we always had homemade ice cream for summer holidays. My family had one of the old-fashioned hand-crank White Mountain ice cream churns. It seemed like we had to turn that crank forever! It is a lot easier now just to pour the custard into the cylinder and flip the switch, but I sometimes miss the elbow grease method. The anticipation was almost as much fun as finally digging into a big bowl of pillowy frozen goodness.

Cold Suppers

In Washington, the approach of summer means that a heavy blanket of hot, humid air will soon be thrown over the city. Once that happens, eating hot food, much less preparing it, is not very appealing. And so the cold supper just makes sense.

That was the direction I went last night, even though it wasn't particularly hot. Instead, my motivation was a good combination of ingredients from the garden: A Tom Thumb mini-head lettuce, some sugar snap peas, sweet Walla Walla onions, and a couple of radishes. I added some chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, and one yellow bell pepper that was left over from the marketing early this week. I poached some chicken breasts in broth, shredded them, made a lemon vinaigrette, and put the whole mess together. I should have walked out to the backyard to get a handful of herbs (some lemon thyme and parsley, maybe, or some marjoram), but I was too lazy. The salad was still pretty tasty.

To go along with the salad I made some buttermilk biscuits, which I think are one of the most perfect foods around. I use a recipe from a cookbook called Soul Food: Recipes and Reflections from African American Churches, by Joyce White. I am a little ashamed that the biscuit recipe is the only one in the book that I really use; I have just never gotten around to exploring the rest of the collection. But it is a really good biscuit recipe, so I probably should inaugurate a weekly soul food night for at least a couple of months.

Little Growing Things

I definitely have some little growing things in the garden. And yet I still am in that period when I have put a lot of time, energy, and sweat into the garden, and it is really just teasing me with the promise of a bountiful harvest. Yes, there have been some radishes, and arugula, and lettuce, and just in the past few days some sugar snap peas and spring onions. But I still need to buy a lot of vegetables at the store. That is really the test, for me. Being able to go and harvest something for dinner, planned menus be damned.

My garden is a little different this year than in the past. More eggplant and peppers, no rapini and not so many salad greens. And somehow I have ended up with nine tomato plants, which is an all time high. It would take really terrible luck (or some really pernicious pests) to strike out in the tomato department this year.

It is always interesting to see what comes up on its own. This year I have tons of fennel, a lone cucumber, and three sturdy potato plants (Yukon Gold, I think) that I reluctantly had to pull up, since they were just in the wrong place. My dad calls these plants "volunteers," which is a term that really appeals to me. I suppose that these plants are also little gifts from the previous year, and sometimes rather unexpected. I was frankly stunned to see the cucumber. My cucumbers were a disaster last year as usual, victims of my reluctance to use chemicals. I picked only a few before the vines succumbed to some sort of virus that always seems to claim them. I don't even recall discarding a fully ripe fruit that might have yielded a seed that came up this year. I suppose that I'll just have to wait a few weeks to find out if it is the same variety that I tried to grow last year.

Well, time to go check on dinner.

All Trussed Up

Last weekend was a big cooking weekend. We had some friends over for dinner on Saturday, and I made a menu of carrot soup with star anise, braised beef short ribs with caramelized shallot mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli, and sliced oranges drizzled with Grand Marnier, along with some nut cookies. The recipe for the soup called for using two bags of baby carrots, but I substituted two bunches of fresh carrots, and I made a nice chicken stock to use in place of store-bought. I was inspired to do the short ribs by the current issue of Fine Cooking, which has a great guide to cooking these tasty nuggets. After the heavy meal, I thought that a light dessert was appropriate. though I did augment the oranges with some Greek yogurt, into which I mixed some chopped preserved clementines. (I have been trying to work through a whole quart of them that I made.)

I had planned on just having leftovers on Sunday, but instead I decided to debone a chicken and then fill it with a rice stuffing before trussing it. When we were in Kansas City for Christmas we made the ritual pilgrimage to Pryde's Old Westport, which is surely one of the greatest kitchen stores in the world, and I had picked up some pins that you use to truss birds. As should be apparent in the photo, the chicken is pinned together, and then kitchen twine is criss-crossed around the pins, almost like shoelaces. That part worked really well, though I was a bit disappointed in the stuffing, which needs a little work. Something about the seasoning combination, which included cumin, paprika, bay leaves, green olives, orange zest, some capers and sundried tomatoes, just did not work. I guess I'll just need to work on that.

Welcome to 2010

I decided to make stuffed cabbage leaves from the current issue of Martha Stewart Living for the second dinner I've cooked in the new year. The first was a simple supper of rosemary roasted potatoes and steamed mussels with a spinach salad. Tonight I wanted something a bit heartier, since we are freezing, and the cabbage leaves appealed to me. I followed the recipe pretty faithfully, though I did substitute some cooked barley for the rice in the filling of ground beef and pork. I thought that this worked pretty well, and the acupuncturist I was seeing for my back told me that I needed to eat more barley and kale. (Kale soup is on the menu for Tuesday.) It is a pretty spicy filling, containing a tablespoon of hot Hungarian paprika. I actually purchased mine in Budapest when I was there for work eighteen months ago, and I need to use it up. (I took advantage of that trip to eat a fair number of delicious pastries, as well...It's hard to go wrong at Ruszwurm, up at the castle.) We had the cabbage leaves with some roasted carrots and parsnips, which I did very simply with olive oil, kosher salt, and herbes de Provence. With dinner I opened a 2004 Blauer Zweigelt from Paul Lehrner, a spicy Austrian red wine, which was an excellent pairing, and we finished with a bit of goat cheese from Firefly Farms, a local cheese maker. All in all, this was probably my favorite meal of the year so far.