Year: 2009

November 16, 2009

We continue to have an incredibly mild and beautiful November, and in-between food- not too heavy, not too light- is working famously. I came across a decent-looking garlic sausage (with pistachios) recently at a store while looking for something else. My first thought was cassoulet, but since we’re out of duck confit that had to wait. And since I’ve been in a bistroey mood of late, the lentils in the pantry took care of the…

November 15, 2009

There is no greater resource than a well-stocked freezer. (Except maybe a well-stocked freezer working in harmony with an equally well-stocked pantry.) There are still a couple of quarts of frozen fish stock that I made a while back from a halibut skeleton, and the presence of a big bag of snow crab legs just above the stock containers got the wheels turning. There was also a bag of a rice blend- long, short, and…

November 10, 2009

We’re still having the most gorgeous warm weather, and it has been energizing me in and out of the kitchen. I found a couple of lamb steaks in the freezer, and while they were thawing I pulled some roots. Thinking old-school bistro, and with enough time to do it properly, I made mayonnaise with mustard and yuzu juice, then used that along with yogurt, capers, cornichons, kimchi juice, and herbs to make rémoulade. I tossed…

November 9, 2009

Returning with the cooler weather (though the last few days have been utterly resplendent Indian summer, flirting with low 70’s) has been my desire to bake bread. I kind of fell out of the habit this summer, but now I’m fully back into it, this time with some slight modifications to the process that fit better with my equipment and the rhythms of my life. I’m still using the live starter that Andrew gave us,…

November 8, 2009

What could have been framed as a giant pain in the ass- taking the bus down to the city, renting a 14′ truck, loading it full of crates at the Brooklyn apartment, then driving back up here- was instead pretty painless, and made even pleasant by the scintillating weather, lack of traffic, and a stop at Mitsuwa for a whole basket of goodness. I didn’t take any pictures of the first dinner: sashimi of yellowtail…

November 3, 2009

Lately I’ve been commiserating with other gardeners about the crap “summer” we had this year, and about how various species underperformed or didn’t at all, and about how hard it is to be us. And I’ve been grouchy and glum about how little I canned or pickled. We’ve begun buying some vegetables much earlier than in previous years, which I take personally as a sign of failure. The last few days have been wonderfully mild,…

October 30, 2009

My article in this month’s Chronogram mostly consists of a few recipes designed to make the traditional feast a bit less stressful and a bit more tasty. There wasn’t room in the piece to cover all the dishes mentioned or photographed, so I’m doing it here. Anybody with a question about any of it should leave a comment and I’ll try to help. First, the poached pears. I bought some local, organic Seckel pears at…

October 27, 2009

I’ll keep this quick, since I have a date with my mattress. For my November article in Chronogram (out on the first) I did a Thanksgiving recipe piece that sort of remixes the traditional dinner in what I hope is a more interesting and lower-stress way than many people are used to. A central ingredient is phở made from the turkey carcass and used to flavor several other components of the meal. The intensely aromatic…

October 23, 2009

I placed an order for a pork belly (half, really) and it weighed in at 11 pounds. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but it’s at least two inches thick- more in places. I cut it into two large pieces that would just fit in the two biggest vessels I could stack in the fridge, and rubbed it well with miso, ume paste, maple syrup, and a bunch of spices. There it sits, slowly…

October 21, 2009

Sunday and Monday I did a heap o’ cookin’ for the November article, and Jen the photographer was scheduled to come Monday evening to shoot the results. The article will be a Thanksgiving thing, showing some ways to make the preparation easier and flavor richer than the normal version without going completely off the reservation (as it were). And John was around. Like waterboarding Dick Cheney, it was a no-brainer. Jen came early, and shot…