kitchen
Even though we’ve had three days of feasting: two dinners and two lunches at our house, one dinner in town with another branch of the family.
Local Thanksgiving bouquet – the very last chrysanthemums
Twelve people ate here between Thursday night and Saturday morning– several of us more than once – so even though the Poughkeepsie branch ( Saturday night) had leftovers of its own we ought, by rights, to be out of turkey.
We are not, even though the bird only weighed 12 pounds after I got done boning it. There was so much other food the turkey was as in my opinion it should be, almost incidental.
If you don’t remember to remove the string that helped restore approximate turkey shape, the starring bird will have a bikini line.
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It would be beyond bogus to pretend we’re anything like self-sufficient. We’re not even notably local; I’m too fond of things like olives, lemons and pomegranate molasses.
But at Thanksgiving we always try – ok; I try; I’m the one who makes up the menu – to celebrate our own harvest, both from the wild and from the gardens.
Some years this includes the meat; we have venison. Bill has even on one occasion shot a deer so close to the back garden we were probably eating our hostas and roses along with the rest of the produce.
This year it’s turkey, just so I can keep my hand in. Local but not heritage. And the corn for the pudding ! you absolutely have to have corn pudding! will be a mixture of our own Black Mexican and some kind of tender hybrid from Beth’s farmstand up in Maine.
Corn from the days when we grew more kinds. Top to bottom: Ruby Queen, unknown hybrid (seed purchased and name forgotten by Bill), the Black Mexican we still grow, at the cornbread stage
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In theory, the combination of steam vents and tightly crimped edges prevents the juice leakage visible at left. In my view, if there isn’t so much juice at least a little bubbles out somewhere, there isn’t enough juice.
Inside that crust is a Three Cheers Pie (apple, pear and quince) in honor of this being pie season.
Of course, back last spring I would have said summer is pie season; with rhubarb as the opening salvo. Even before those stalks start getting stringy there will be cherries and peaches, plums and blueberries – all primary reasons for pie to exist.
On the other hand, next thing you know here come the apples and pears and pumpkins and then uh-oh, it’s Christmas, the one time of year when mincemeat pie…
Take your pick for maximum pie pressure, no matter how you slice it that’s a lot of crust. Here are a couple of the recipes I use, starting with that super-fast easy one.
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Easy make-ahead piecrust recipes coming your way shortly… Meanwhile, here’s the (probably unneeded) reminder that house cleaning comes first. Nobody minds hanging out while you cook.
It’s also a reminder – should Black Friday find you in appliance shopping mode – that shiny black surfaces in the kitchen are a very bad idea. This is not a room where it’s wise to have water spots look like dirt.
Poor fellow can barely see himself; and I'd just washed it that morning!
As we get ready to fire up for Thanksgiving, I’m reminded how lucky I am. Not many cooks have a huge wood-burning outdoor oven, but thanks to my loving ( and very handy) husband we have two, one in New York and one in Maine.
Bill built the Maine oven so the process could be filmed, so in a way I can thank The Three Thousand Mile Garden for that one. But that one never would have happened if the New York one hadn’t came first, and although Bill did of course build it the ultimate thanks there should probably go to his childhood.
There were several outdoor bread ovens in the neighborhood where he grew up, including one at his grandmother’s place. He never forgot the bread – or the fact that the ovens were home built – so when I started making wistful noises about how nice it would be to have one they fell on receptive ears.
Next thing to be thankful for: he’s a man of action. And that goes not just for building the ovens but also for providing instructions. You too can have one of these things, not without a bit of work and not instantly, needless to say, but very very inexpensively and it ain’t rocket science, either. Here’s his step by step how-to:
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Roughly 15 years ago I wrote a piece for Yankee magazine titled something like “ The Only Roast Turkey Recipe You Will Ever Need.” Still substantially true, should you be the type who keeps clippings forever, but there have been a few refinements in the intervening years – mostly because there have been refinements in the turkeys themselves. Roast Turkey 101.2, The Upgrade, with Wild Mushroom Stuffing, was therefore rolled out last year.
Wild turkey booking it through the lower garden; she knows what's coming
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Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing, and I’m not talking about the manufactured “collectibles” created each year for no other purpose.
Nope, this is your warning ( in case you didn’t already know) that elderly Halloween doodads, while not in the league of antique Christmas ornaments, are nevertheless worth more than you might think.
Not always a lot more
Candy container, plastic, from the 1950’s, spotted at a nearby shop
But sometimes, as in this example from the website of Showcase Antiques
“ Composition "Pumpkin Girl" candy container painted in tones of yellow, green, blue, red, and white; marked "Germany;" circa 1910. Height=4.5 Price: $795.00”
In a normal year, this wouldn’t come up; I’d just be merrily chirping along about how this is a good time to bake
Spicy Walnut Gingerfingers
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Every autumn there’s more of this: bake sales being swept up willy nilly in the (laudable! I’m for it!) attempt to get junk food out of the schools.
Sigh. When will these people wake up and smell the donuts? You don’t have to be Michael Pollan to realize American kids’ obesity problem isn’t caused by too many home made desserts, it’s caused by a crashing dearth of home made anything else.
When even well fed children are growing up thinking a carrot’s a machine-made toy, ready to eat right out of the bag, it’s hardly surprising to find that the default model for “food” is something you buy, not something you prepare at home. And from there it’s not rocket science to see the profitability of sugar, salt and fat.
But the solution isn’t to ban sugar, salt and fat per se (good luck with that, btw), it’s to give children a chance to combine these things into something really good and thus seduce them into the joys of home cooking. From there the rest is easy… Well, easier, anyway.
Point here is simply that people who know how to cook eat a lot less junk than people who don’t, and dessert is the gateway goodie – most children go for baking cookies before they get all excited about making boeuf bourguignon.
Case in point: Fat Banana Cookies, rich with fruit and nuts, simple to make, filling enough so just a few will do. Also durable; thanks to the banana they stay moist and tasty for a good long time.
The bananas get star billing because: a) plain brown cookies, what's to show? and b) I want to plug mini bananas, not only a more sensible size but also tastier, once they’re fully ripe. For richest flavor and creamiest texture they have to be well speckled with brown. This bunch is still just at the edge of being cookie material.
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A lot of wild mushrooms have delicate flavors that are easily overwhelmed. And a lot of them are typically found in small numbers or purchased in even smaller ones (except by the possessors of large dollars). As a result, a lot of wild mushroom recipes have what might be called a reverential attitude about the signature ingredient.
Nothing wrong with that – except that it tends to carry over where it isn’t essential, as in the case of sulfur shelf, Laetiporus sulphureus, aka chicken of the woods. When you find that, you generally find many pounds, plenty enough to play around with.
This curry is an example. The mushroom flavor is only one among several, but it's one that would be sorely missed if it were absent. The rice happens to have red peppers, gold raisins and pistachios. Just plain would be just as good or better.
I put “of the woods” in parentheses because I’m sure the curry would be good – albeit not this good – with genuine chicken. The shortcut is prepared spice mixtures and the multi is Indian and Thai. Cooking the mushroom in coconut milk without a preliminary saute is what brings out the reds and pinks.
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“Really a lot” is really the right number because I’m doing a mega-testing of vegetable varieties and Rob Johnston (thanks, Rob!) has given me access to the trial fields at Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Combine that with help from Steve Bellavia, Johnny’s Vegetable Product Manager, and from Vegetable Product Technicians Andrew Mefford and Lauren Saraiva and what do you get? Among many other things, 34 varieties of cucumbers.
At Johnny's trial fields. Cucumbers in the foreground, peppers (to come) in back
There’s a different variety every 10 feet
and on each plate ( only a few shown here).
Sample slices were taken from large and small fruits, from the blossom end and from the middle. Result in addition to many tasting notes: pounds and pounds of cut cucumbers that needed to be used up right away.
Easy PICKLESorSALAD to the rescue.
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