Month: November 2006

November 27, 2006

In Chicago, with Christine’s Mom, Aunt, & Uncle, a smaller gathering called for a more modest meal and thus turkey was not on the menu. Instead we had a roasted pork loin, stuck with garlic, and a cranberry/red wine reduction with ginger and lemon, and mushrooms cooked in the pan drippings then flamed with cognac to finish. Along with this lovely roast, which had brined all day and was really juicy and flavorful, we had…

November 27, 2006

Fresh from a shopping trip to Chinatown in the city, all the new treats inspired this inaccurate but damn tasty dinner upon my return. It’s hard to find gai lan and long beans anywhere else, so I loaded up on them, as well as baby bok choy. The long beans sautéed in the last of the pork belly, then had garlic, sambal oelek, rice wine and ponzu added to finish. The gai lan tossed with…

November 17, 2006

Sometimes we get lucky, and my evening survey of the fridge immediately suggests a plan. This was one of those times. We liked to order malai kofta from our local Indian place back in Brooklyn, and I saw the makings of a mutant variation in the remnants of recent meals. So, for the balls, leftover steamed Brussels sprouts, parsnips, and cauliflower puréed along with brown rice and sweet potatoes as well as onion that I…

November 17, 2006

I’ve always been a fan, especially in colder months, of keeping a pot of soup going day after day by adding leftovers or new ingredients to it every day or two (reheating it fully every time) so that it remains a work in progress- hitting certain plateaus of completeness but then undergoing slight or radical changes based on the nature of what gets added and subtracted. This particular version had its genesis back in the…

November 16, 2006

3 couples came to dinner the night before my birthday, so I bought a bunch of good things and figured out how to put them together. I knew I wanted slow-cooked lamb shoulder, so that morning I put a 4-pound beauty into a big pot with the usual aromatics plus lemon, cumin, kombu, dried porcini, wine, soy, and vinegar and, once bubbling, put it in the oven for about 8 hours at 225˚. Then I…

November 10, 2006

An unbelievably beautiful day today; I spent some of it moving rhododendrons to make room for the garden, which is tilled and awaiting a fence. I went shoppping too, to get things for tomorrow’s dinner, and I picked up some wild salmon among other things. Crusted with sesame seeds, and seared, it sat on mashed sweet potatoes and kale sautéed with a bit of pancetta and garlic. Just right for the cool evening; the richness…

November 9, 2006

Tonight, in honor of the rain, good hearty fare that hit all those exalted kid-food notes while still being refined and healthy. Instead of breading and frying the slices, I usually bake them with a little oil and salt, or sautée them so they’re soft. Grilled is best, because then you get the amazing alchemy that fire works on eggplant combined with the whole bubbly cheese and tomato sauce context, but the rain tonight precluded…

November 8, 2006

We’ve been enjoying the combination of cauliflower and tofu in a coconut-based curry, so I revisited it, but this time the sauce had the rest of the kabocha and gravy added to thicken and deepen it. Broccoli, peas, and a nice mix of seeds and pastes rounded out the flavors. It’s important to let this kind of thing simmer a bit to really reduce and marry the flavors; it also greatly benefits from having the…

November 8, 2006

Sort of Moroccan, with a Southern twist: a whole chicken slowly stewed with lemons, olives, cumin, ras el hanout, onion, celery, carrot, sweet potatoes and herbs until it was falling-apart tender, then all solids removed to bowl & board while the liquid thickened with some flour to make a fantastic gravy. Meanwhile baby spinach wilted with garlic and more lemon, and gave a nice tangy counterpoint to the rich sauce. A Pleiades XIV couldn’t have…

November 8, 2006

Noah and Deanna came up for a night, so we had crispy tofu in a pungent peanut sauce (PB, sesame oil, vinegar, lime, umeboshi paste) as well as faux BBQ tempeh (molasses, ketchup, tamarind, vinegars, hot sauce) rice, roasted kabocha, and the last of the red cabbage from rib night. We drank a 2003 Turley Keig vineyard zin and a 2003 Siduri 2003 Sonatera vineyard pinot noir.