Month: December 2009

December 29, 2009

We made it back from Chicago in much less time than it took us to get there; all told we could nearly have driven the 800 miles in the 11-ish hours we spent on Thursday getting from here to there. Winter holiday travel can be such a treat. I’ll put up a post about Xmas dinner, and I have a couple others which predate the trip, but for now we’ll just have a look at…

December 23, 2009

I got a comment recently from a subscriber inquiring about a comment I left on her blog suggesting a possible use for the lavish surplus of salmon that they’re burdened with up in Alaska. I elaborated a little bit, but then the idea was in my head so I needed to make it. It’s different every time, but basically it’s just a salmon curry with lots of lemon rind. Often there are potatoes, and it’s…

December 20, 2009

Growing up, there was a time before my Mother had to go to work when she gardened and baked bread all the time. Helping her weed and pick and knead and mix formed some of my earliest memories, and no doubt have much to do with how important those same rituals are to me now- and why I’m so pleased to pass them along to Milo. The smell of bread baking has to be one…

December 19, 2009

Lateness often confounds my grand schemes and forces me to scramble, resulting in dinners that are far from my original intention but serviceable nonetheless. As always, freezer, pantry, and leftovers provide the difference between decent and awful. In this instance, I grabbed some boudin noir from the freezer. While they were thawing, I threw some scarlet runner beans in the pressure cooker with leeks, onions, garlic, burdock, carrot, herbs, and some smoked chicken stock. Once…

December 17, 2009

At long last, the kiln fired. I began these pieces back in the spring, I think, so there’s a bit of a learning curve at work, but I’m happy with most of them. For the next batch, whenever that happens, I have many more ideas. I may bring my Mother’s wheel up from Brooklyn and start practicing. I’ve also got some ideas for non-ceramic serving pieces that I may get to in the near future,…

December 10, 2009

So dinner yesterday was not soup, actually. It was steak. The roads improved a bit, so the family set off to buy a Christmas tree. And returned with strip steaks. (And a tree, sure, but let’s concentrate on the important stuff). There were also maitake and brown birch mushrooms. Instead of just making sweet potato fries, I busted out the saladacco and spun a tuber into lovely thin strips which I then double-fried into appealing…

December 9, 2009

We got 8.5″ of snow last night, so school was cancelled. I still had to schlep over to the garage and have the power steering belt replaced, but at least everyone else with an appointment that morning was still at home shoveling out so the guys got it done very quickly. I love all-wheel drive. So with a kid to entertain, and after making a couple of snowmen (one had a homegrown carrot nose and…

December 7, 2009

We went to Boston for the weekend, and managed to cram a ton of socializing into a very narrow window of time. We managed to invite ourselves over to a couple of different houses for dinner, making for a much more enjoyable time since Milo is good for about 20 minutes in a restaurant before he starts to get bored. Friday Andrew made us celery root salad with preserved lemon persillade followed by polenta with…

December 4, 2009

What to do when you’re conflicted between broiling and tartare: both. Especially in the case of some gorgeous salmon. I minced it and mixed in sesame oil, yuzu juice, scallions, soy sauce, and pink pepper, then cooked it inside a ring mold on pretty high heat to get a good sear on one side. I made crispy crackers with the skin, and served them all on brown rice and diced garden roots (carrot, rutabaga, daikon)…