Category Archives: Briefly noted

Always make the stock, pie crust and cornbread ahead of time – anything you can think of – don’t put it off until Thanksgiving Day if you can help it. Iron everything at least week in advance.

No matter how prepared you are, the last hour will be very busy and, unless you have nerves of steel, quite intense.

On pie:

• Sugar on a pie crust makes it crunchy and sweet but also encourages over-caramelization (burning) – see maple leaf decorations above
• There is a very fine line between caramelized and blackened – again see maple leaf decorations
• Fraisage is the key to the perfectly flakey crust and it really is no big deal – notice the totally flakey (albeit slightly burnt) maple leaf decorations.

12 year old girls make excellent sous chefs.

12 year old girls make excellent table setters.

5 year olds can totally peel all the carrots. In other words, put your kids to work!

Perfectly polished sterling salt cellars and pepper shakers make the table look pretty but nobody actually ever uses them – is it worth polishing them? Consider this.

Masses of inexpensive carnation or daisy type flowers in a single seasonal color can make striking table arrangements.

Dressing/stuffing is one of my favorite foods but I can’t be responsible for eating the ten extra servings I produced in my zeal for stuffing leftovers. If serving ten people, there is no need to make stuffing/dressing for twenty. Stuffing for fifteen should suffice.

Fine grain cornbread is the better choice if you have to decide between fine and medium grind. Northern style cornbread is better for stuffing/dressing – as in the sort of cornbread that has some regular flour in it, along with the cornmeal.

I’m thinking that our ceramic fondue pot might make an excellent gravy boat – keep that gravy nice and hot! However if you have no fondue pot, don’t worry. If you need to hold the gravy while finishing up vegetable sides, set it in a double boiler, or a make-shift double boiler with a lid over water that has just reached a boil. Should be quite hot for at least 20 minutes. Then you can pour it into a warm gravy boat and bring it to the table when everything else is ready.

Shoving a brining bag into your largest stockpot is a good way to increase the volume of the pot and avoid having to use a cooler to brine the bird.

If you can commit to brining for 72 hours, then you can get away with significantly less salt and the gravy won’t be ruined by overly salty turkey drippings. 3/4 cup of kosher salt + 2tbsp per 2 gallons water is the right salinity.

Rinse and dry the bird before brining and afterwards. If you can manage it, remove the turkey from the brine the night before Thanksgiving, and having rinsed and dried it, inside and out, allow it to dry out overnight in the refrigerator, lightly covered with parchment.

Play a game of Monopoly or watch at least part of the football game. Don’t spend the entire day in the kitchen. You will be able to do this if you have a good plan.

Inviting a Thanksgiving expert makes a lot of sense. I asked “the Thanksgiving Queen” to come dine with us and not only did we have a wonderful time, but at key moments, I got really solid advice!

I had already made my turkey stock from the carcass when I found this recipe for making in the oven. I’ll have to give it a  try it next year!

Finally, it’s hard to believe, but Turkey Tetrazzini is actually pretty delicious. Use the turkey stock you made (you’d better have made some!) for the velouté. Sliced baby shiitake mushrooms sautéed in butter until brown and crisp are so much more compelling than the typical button mushrooms. (As if Turkey Tetrazzini could ever be compelling!) The recipe in the Joy of Cooking or Fanny Farmer will be just right.

Thanksgiving is only a day away and I am all caught up. I finished the pie crust this morning. There is some tidying and one more big trip to the store for the more perishable things like parsley, chives and celery. ( Imagine having bought celery on Sunday only to have it droopy by Thursday just because you couldn’t wait?!) My plan for Thursday has shaped up nicely.  The aim is to sit down at 6 PM, which is late enough not to feel geriatric and early enough so that the kids don’t start wigging out. This is the plan:

Thanksgiving Day Schedule

8:00 AM – Peel apples, and cook them down for pie filling (Joy of Cooking Method 2 – from 1997 edition) Remove pie crust from refrigerator so it will be just pliable enough to roll out. Do this about half way through peeling the apples.

8:30 AM – Roll out pie crust. Fill and bake the pie.

9:00 AM – Pare the carrots, trim then blanch the green beans, brown the almonds slowly  in butter, wash and finely chop parsley to be set aside for garnishing.

10:00AM – Set table. The linens are already ironed – whew! Put the cranberry sauce in appropriate serving bowls and put in the fridge.

10:30 AM – Put sparkling water, apple juice and champagne in cooler outside.

12:00 PM – Start the stuffing/dressing – chop and saute all vegetables and sausage and stir it all together – this should take about an hour.

12:30 PM – Preheat oven.

1:00 PM – Stuff and start the turkey. Refrigerate remaining dressing in an oven-to-table pan, wrapped in plastic wrap.

1:30 PM – Baste the turkey now and every half hour until it’s time for dinner

1:30-4:00 PM – Put your feet up except for the basting part. Now is the time for Monopoly, a puzzle, the football game or a walk with the dog.

4:00-5:00 PM – Peel and cut the potatoes and put them in a large pot covered with cold water.  Start the red cabbage at 4:30. It takes 1 1/2 hours to cook down. Pace yourself – the next hour will be intense!

5:00-6:00 PM:

• Start the potatoes.
• The turkey is ready to come out of the oven at around 5:15 PM. When the turkey comes out of the oven, pop the dressing in.
• Remove the turkey from the roasting pan and set it on a large cutting board with a gutter to catch the juices. Cover with foil.
• Make the gravy.
• Start the carrots.
• 5:45 PM – The potatoes will be done. Pull the dressing from the oven. and cover with foil.
• Turn the oven off and put all the platters and serving dishes into it – so they warm in the residual heat.
• Mash the potatoes and put them in a double boiler over low heat with a lid on top.
• In a large heavy saute pan, heat the beans in olive oil and butter and season with lemon rind, salt and pepper. Toss in the almonds.
• Finish the carrots.
•  As you are doing the vegetables, ask someone to carve the turkey. I have Martin all lined up.
• While the turkey is being carved, put the carrots, beans, and cabbage in the warm serving dishes, the potatoes in a hot bowl. Put the gravy in the gravy boat.
• Set everything out on the table and call everyone to dinner.

This is the kitchen in California, where we vacation in the summer. It’s my favorite place in the world to cook, despite the clunky electric stove, the dishwasher that limps through every cycle, and the more-than-occasional mouse. Although, since we have a pizza oven, it doesn’t really matter about the stove. The oven is in a screened dining room, right outside the kitchen door.

If you were visiting the kitchen for the first time, you might think it was outfitted by an eclectic hoarder. But bear in mind that our kitchen turned 100 years old this year and is stocked by a family of people who love to cook. On the back wall is a floor-to-ceiling hutch with stocky towers of grey and cream stoneware mixing bowls and bright majolica serving bowls; one pink plastic and one flowered plastic pitcher; two dark blue Wedgewood pitchers, one large and one small, with gleaming Grecian ladies dancing around the base and that’s just a start.  There must be a dozen large platters. The Chinese ones have people in houses and gardens in reds, oranges and greens, while those from Japan are blue and white with chrysanthemums. An enormous, painted, chipped tin platter strewn with colorful strawberries, apples, grapes and a beet (or could it be a rutabaga?) stands brightly behind. All kinds of baking dishes are piled messily at the side: white ceramics from France, two small painted terra cotta ones from Mexico, and plain old pyrex, squares and rectangles. Pie plates in tin or glass, some with fluted edges are on the shelf underneath. There are so many sugar bowls, wedged in between the bowls and platters. Three teapots. Several cruets – does anyone actually use cruets? – patiently gathering dust on the top shelf. Did I forget to mention there is a stack of 15 wooden bowls, round or oval in every size? Oops. To say that this kitchen is well-stocked doesn’t quite describe it.

My favorite plate is a white scratched square for asparagus with purple and green spears painted around the edges. Like the asparagus plate, many of the pieces look like what you are supposed to serve on them. There are several bowls that either look like artichokes or are painted with artichokes. Next to those sit two small dark green artichoke-shaped containers for homemade mayonnaise. There are bowls painted with lemons or that look like a giant lemon cut in half, with little majolica lemons resting on the edge.  There is even a matching pitcher, in case you want to serve lemonade with your lemons. A small walnut shaped bowl with a lid is for serving, um, walnuts.

I haven’t even started on the tool drawer. Let’s just say that if you need to crush an entire head of garlic or open many bottles of wine simultaneously, you’ve come to the right place.

The one thing we don’t have is a heavy skillet for the pizza oven, so I haven’t had the opportunity to roast a chicken in there yet. But we do have a grill to place over the smoldering chunks of oak, so we grill steaks and chickens broken down into pieces in addition to the pizzas. You would think that a house as well-stocked as ours is would at least have a cast iron skillet, seasoned well, if a little dusty, shoved in a corner somewhere. But no. A heavy stainless steel skillet would be even better.

What we do cook,  we make over and over again. Pizza, of course. When we first got the oven, twelve times in fourteen days. Lots of grilled skirt steak rubbed with sea salt, pepper, and chili flakes, sliced thinly in corn tortillas with pico de gallo. Gazpacho. Guacamole. Big Greek salads. Lamb, butterflied, in the pizza oven. Pita bread in the pizza oven with the lamb and white bean puree. Cooking like this, reductively, with the simplest methods, a little olive oil, a chop of garlic, salt and pepper, the rhythm of my knife on the board, the scent and feel of the ingredients, the funny old tools and serving dishes – I cook more instinctively here. I use fewer recipes.

I had to make a few rules for myself, though, so I don’t spend the entire vacation chopping, being chained to the stove or going on obsessive searches for ingredients that are hard to find in a rural grocery store. (Of which I only use a few spoonfuls and then forget about after they get shoved in the back of the refrigerator.)

The rules are eccentrically specific but are important nonetheless:

1. No julienne-ing anything under any circumstance! Just don’t! Even for Vietnamese noodle salad.
2. No caramelizing onions. As hard as it is to resist this, if I spend another hour and a half getting the onions as brownly sweet as I like them, I will sulk. And nobody cares nearly as much as I do how brown they are. Bacon makes a good substitute.
3. No buying any exotic ingredients. They will only be used once  anyway and then are quickly forgotten at the back of the refrigerator. For instance, tahini. There are 3 tins of tahini in the refrigerator right now. I bet I am the only person who makes homemade hummus here. It is hard to put up with plastic tub hummus, though. How about tzatiki or white bean puree instead? Martin makes pita bread in the pizza oven and we need something to go with it.

Plantation from The Art of the Bar
(if you like making cocktails at all, you really should get this book)

“Nothing tastes so good as being thin.”

I was chatting with the barrista at Espresso Vivace today and we were commiserating. I had ordered two non-fat cafe lattes Nico-style (cinnamon and orange rind and something else I can’t figure out but it is so very delicious) for me and my cousin and he said – Want a pastry with that?

Technically, the answer is  yes but sadly, I’ll be saying no – I said with a sigh. He laughed and that’s when he said it – Nothing tastes so good as being thin – He explained that he has an ectomorphic friend for whom this is a mantra.

I am not sure that I will ever feel that way but something I do often ask myself, is, “Is this really delicious enough?!” If I am really honest almost nothing you get in a coffee shop is ever actually delicious enough to eat. There are exceptions of course, but not very many. So I’m having to ask myself as I wander around town: is it really delicious enough? The answer is nearly always no. You do have to harness your inner exacting food critic to make this work.  Sometimes it would seem there is nothing so satisfying as a Devil’s Food Cupcake with Brown Sugar Buttercream. Or any kind of French pastry with custard and pears.  A pear thing could bring me to my knees. I look at that kind of pastry and it is practically looking right back into my eyes and speaking directly to me. So I have to intellectualize. Really think about it. Which would be better, tastier, if I were really analytical about it? I know it sounds puritanical, but I do think a salad of spanking fresh lettuces, a sliced avocado, thinly sliced shallots and a few toasted walnuts with a walnut oil dressing would beat the cupcake handily. Could it beat the pear custard pastry though…?

Also, I try to remember that being a little bit hungry is ok. It really is. A sort of meditation that goes with the Detox. I must point out though, there is no point in starving. Terrible slip-ups happen when you get too hungry. I should also mention hunger is not possible in the winter, not for me anyway. But in the spring, when local vegetables get gorgeous, then you can say – this delicate, perfectly balanced salad will more than suffice. Get your hands off me you stupid cupcake. I am busy eating a poem about spring.

Right now though, I am starving. Truly hungry and fighting off urges to eat an entire bag of Pirate Booty, a large square of Fresh Ginger Cake  (stupidly made by me yesterday on Day 1 of Delicious Detox), and a square of very dark chocolate smeared with peanut butter. Must….resist. I’ll sit tight and wait until dinner. We’re going out because I am too hungry to cook. I know this isn’t the healthy way, but I was running around too much today and didn’t want to eat the crap they sell at the soccer field. Thus extreme hunger. (Confession: I just caved and succumbed to a sliver of the totally excellent cake. Only a sliver though)

Tomorrow I will buy a large bag of apples for emergencies.

Menu for Day 2

• Breakfast: Bowl of plain low fat yogurt, 3 dried apricots, 5 walnuts, 1 tsp maple syrup (the pesky sweet tooth)
• Lunch: Nothing (Dumb move.)
• 8 pieces of Pirate Booty (Not proud of this – just trying to stay honest)
• Sliver of excellent cake. Sigh.
• Dinner: Stuffed Eggplant, Stewed Chickpeas with Dill and Green Beans with Roasted Peppers and Yellow Raisins at Vios for dinner. A small glass of red wine.    (and a 1/3 of a Meyer Lemon Galactoboureko with Sour Cherry Compote. Oh dear…)

I will be much more sensible tomorrow.

Ok. Maybe I have to give up on an impeccably crimped edge in order to indulge in an all butter, totally flakey crust. It’s definitely worth it! I took a sharp little knife and sliced away a piece where no one would notice. Absolute flakiness achieved! So the edge isn’t so beautiful. I can live with it.

Lovely supple dough

The fluted edge was gorgeous before it hit the hot oven!

Ok, so the edge is still a little blobbish - do you think the all butter crust is at fault?!

Apple Pie, Thanksgiving 2011

Is there anything more beautiful than half and half swirling into a tall glass of cold coffee on ice? Let me qualify that, is there anything more beautiful on a hot day in August?

I will now confess to something quite disgusting, although you will have to be the judge of whether it was as disgusting as what Laurie Colwin and her sister did (which was collecting all the leftover coffee from cups at the breakfast table and pouring that over ice). I think what I did was worse or maybe equally gross.

The other day, I made too much coffee for myself and a friend and I let it cool down on the counter for a future iced coffee and forgot about it for a few days…Then, driven by too much time with my cooped up, too hot children, I became desperate for iced coffee. Only instant gratification would do. I looked at the glass, and thought ew, for about 2 seconds, then shrugged and dumped in some ice cubes and a swirl of half and half. 10 minutes of unadulterated bliss – it was like a mini vacation. It should have been disgusting but, I have to report, it really was not.

I recommend making extra coffee in the morning to cool properly in a glass in the refrigerator to ice later. Usually I forget to do this and pour hot coffee over ice and then add the cream. Unfortunately hot coffee does not produce the best swirl of cream and coffee, which should be akin to Italian marbled endpapers, and which is intrinsic to the ultimate iced coffee experience. At least in my book. The appeal of the swirl is more than just aesthetic. With a good swirl, there are rivulets of cream and coffee throughout the glass. Sometimes you get a sip of pure coffee, sometimes mostly cream, then varying combinations of the two. It’s the most delicious thing.