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.