Regular readers will know that I disgraced myself last Thanksgiving by ruining the stock for the gravy; I put the liver in and rendered the stock (and the air in my kitchen) utterly disgusting. My mom triumphantly saved the day with a jar of gravy and I was mortified on many levels.
Leandro shows off as he pounds the turkey spice rub
That is not going to happen this year, thus this real time post to give you my stock recipe and let you know things are progressing fine! Continue reading
“Why don’t you just get a Butterball and be done with it?” says my brother, or my sister-in-law, or my mother at some point every Thanksgiving or Christmas. “Why do you have to make everything so complicated?”
Indeed.
My immediate family – not unreasonably – often finds my and my dad’s insistence on getting a farm-raised bird expensive, unneccessary and annoying. They are probably right. You have to order ahead. You have to spend $3 or $4 a pound more. You have to go pick it up (although turkey pick-up at Restoration Farm involves seasonal festivities that some people need a designated driver for). And yes, you really need to brine it. Continue reading
We’ve been experimenting with Brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving dinner. Should we go with an old favorite? Or try something new and potentially disastrous? (which brings to mind some awful lip-puckering lemony thing I did a few years ago which was only just edible. Of course I ate it out of a sense of guilt and starving-children-in-Ethiopia-so-eat-that-you-overprivileged-ingrate virtue, but it has left me a bit gun-shy)
Bubbling Brussels sprouts, Batman!
Then Pedro (the Dad) started experimenting with this recipe (similar to a Spanish one we have done often) and we are all hooked. He has done it enough so we feel confident that on the day either of us could make it delicious! It is easy, tones down any strong Brassica cabbage-y flavors, and can be done on the stovetop, so doesn’t take up valuable turkey and stuffing real estate in the oven.
Onions are the new ingredient in this adaptation of Spanish-style sauteed Brussels sprouts.
What are you doing for Thanksgiving sides? Inquiring minds want to know…
A bit mushier than current fashion, methinks, but keep cooking for that sweetness!
Tangy Sauteed Brussels Sprouts
1/2 lb. Brussels sprouts, bottom trimmed (just take off a thin slice) and any ugly outer leaves removed
6 Cups water
1 Tbs coarse salt
1 small onion, peeled and sliced into rings
1/2 tsp chopped garlic
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
3 pinches salt (to taste)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 -2 generous Tbs red wine vinegar
In a pot put the Brussels sprouts, 1 Tbs salt, and the water. Bring to a boil, lower to a lively simmer and cook until tender (about 10-15 minutes).
Meanwhile, heat oil in a skillet big enough to eventually hold the Brussels sprouts. Add sliced onions and garlic and saute until wilted at medium low. Allow to caramelize a bit.
Drain Brussels sprouts and when they are cool enough to handle, slice in half and add to skillet along with about 3 pinches of coarse salt and a few grindings of black pepper. Stir to coat and continue cooking at medium low until slightly caramelized. Add red wine vinegar and cook down until evaporated and turning golden brown. Serve hot.
Oh the sweet taste of victory!
My victory? My victory garden!
My little baby peppers
I managed to coax a couple of ajies (Capsicum chinense or sweet cooking peppers) from seeds that I saved from a pepper from my mom’s cousin’s kitchen garden in Mayaguez, to go with the recao (Eryngium foetidum or sawtooth coriander) that I grew from a seed packet from Puerto Rico. Next year I will be much more aggressive about how early I plant all my peppers, but for this year, the teeny-tiny-ness of my harvest does not diminish the absolute joy of it. Continue reading
These Northeastern storms (Sandy and the nor-easter) have brought out the darker side of humor in many of us, as in “What next: plagues of locusts? Frogs?”
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to have taken a liking to New York and environs; they are galloping through with thundering hooves and much of it is pretty horrible. Mind you, we are doing fine at my house, now that the power is back and school has started – in fits and starts, actually, as sudden power outages have closed us down a few times. We are lucky!
Easy-peasy ham and peas….
But we are striving for normalcy and for me normal is blogging about food. Continue reading
Thanks to all those who sent messages of support before, during and after the storm. You are reading the words of someone who feels incredibly blessed; aside from losing power for a few days and a big branch down in the backyard, we came through pretty well. I was even able to attend a teaching conference in Albany (the capital of NYS) which was not affected by the storm, and present successfully with my colleagues from Thursday to Saturday; we were among the few who made it from downstate.
Big tree down in the backyard
Please lend a thought or prayer to the many who have lost lives, or homes, or peace of mind, who are still without power as the temperature drops, or don’t have clean water or food to eat.
I go back to teaching tomorrow. We already know of one student in our program who lost his life. I am praying for him and his family, as well as hoping that none of our other students were so fatally affected. I have only heard from three out of my nineteen students and am very anxious for their well-being. We’ll now see how we can help. Our students are immigrants and international students; certainly we will have to help the boy’s family raise the funds to send his body home. Continue reading
(About to lose power! So let me post this quickly and wish us luck during Hurricane Sandy!)
I saw one of those manager’s specials at the local supermarket recently – a styrofoam and plastic wrap missile loaded with a pound cauliflower florets for about 99 cents, so I grabbed it impulsively, intentionally forgetting that cauliflower is not yet on my son’s List of Acceptable Vegetables. I can easily eat a pound of cauliflower on my own, I thought, if I don’t try to do it all in one day.
Cauliflower in the pot with spices
Then, a day or two later, there was the cauliflower, looking at me rather expectantly, mournfully, accusatory-like from its tightly wrapped package, while I prepared other vegetables from Leandro’s List of Acceptable Vegetables. We know the manager doesn’t put vegetables on special if they are at their peak of freshness, so the cauliflower needed doing before it fell off Natalia’s List of Acceptable Vegetables. Continue reading
It’s not every day that someone swings a plastic bag of severed extremities at you by way of “hello.”
My Precioussssssssss
But when that day comes and if the swinger happens to be Caroline Fanning, one of the growers at Restoration Farm, and she happens to follow her swing by saying, “Hey do you want some chicken feet?” then you should most definitely say “YEAH!” Continue reading
Yesterday I asked if you knew what this was:
Peel Away Peeler, Corer, and Slicer, courtesy Hatti Langsford.
And I got numerous responses, most of them correct! The hair removal comment was pretty funny! (Thanks Conor from One Man’s Meat)
It is indeed an apple corer, which can be set to peel and slice as well. Want one? Click here to shop around….
My dear friend from college (The New School, if you’d like to know), Hatti Langsford, whose recent “sustainable” wedding to Chris Moratz, was covered in these pages, gave it to Leandro when we were visiting them in the New Paltz area last fall. It has since traveled, not just home to us, but to Leandro’s school during Apple Week last year! The kids (and teachers) loved it! And it is a terrific way to get kids eating fruit and involved in the kitchen!
It is a marvelous contraption, that Hatti wants me to remind you can also be used for peeling potatoes, and it can be used for pears as well. It came in particularly handy for this simple apple crisp recipe, as the spiral slice was the perfect thickness for the dish (1/4 inch); all I had to do was slice each apple once in half from top to bottom after Ashley and Leandro had peeled, cored and spiral sliced them.
Make sure the butter is well-distributed through the dry ingredients or you’ll have dry patches. I eliminated the dry patches by covering with foil; the heat finished the topping!
I made it in two 8×8 baking dishes so that I had one to take to this month’s Single Mother’s By Choice meet-up (where it met with general approval and most people took seconds), and one to keep! You could also do one large baking dish.
Yum!
Apple Crisp (adapted very slightly from Betty Crocker!)
10 small-medium cooking apples (we used Gala this time), cored and sliced (peeling is optional)
1.5 Cups mixed brown and white sugar, packed
1 Cup all-purpose flour
1 Cup quick-cooking oats (old-fashioned can also be used)
2/3 Cups butter, softened
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1.5 tsp ground nutmeg
Whipped cream or ice cream, if desired
Heat oven to 375°F. Grease bottom and sides of two 8×8 or one 8×13 rimmed baking dish with shortening.
Spread apple slices in pan(s). In a large bowl, stir remaining ingredients except cream, wetting thoroughly with the butter. Spread over the apples.
Bake 30 minutes (add five minutes for glass baking dish), or until top is golden and apples are fork-tender. Serve warm with cream.
This Cioppino recipe includes an element of redemption.
Ají dulce…home-grown on Long Island!
Adriana — my dear friend from way back when in Puerto Rico, and now another single mom by choice and an essential part of my New York life, has made numerous appearances on Hot, Cheap & Easy. But even more of our fantastic meals together have never made it to these pages. We like to blame it on the kids. It’s one of the things children are good for.
Sofrito
It’s not as though we don’t try. We start out dutifully recording the ingredients; me glaring across the counter at Adriana waving the appropriate measuring implements at her, grabbing the bloody and limp plastic wrap from the butcher as she is trying to throw it out so I can write down the exact weight of the meat, and giving her the evil eye every time she starts to improvise before I have a chance to count the peppercorns or the coriander seeds, or, the grains of salt, she would say. Continue reading
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It was another summer Friday in the neighborhood and that called for another festive cocktail. Riding high on the success of last session’s passionfruit mojitos, I decided to make mango mojitos. The drink itself followed much the same construction, but the mango was decidedly sweeter than the passionfruit, so I decided that it needed a […]
Summer evenings in the neighborhood can be wonderful. Occasionally on a Friday some of us neighbors bring out folding chairs and sit together in one front yard for a bit of happy hour while the kids go mental on someone else’s lawn. It’s pretty much BYO, but we do mix up a pitcher of experimental […]
We spent the better part of last summer in Puerto Rico, and among the tasty things that my little guy fell in love with was tembleque, a jiggly (temblar means to tremble) dessert that falls somewhere between pudding and flan. I promised him we’d make it back in New York, and this weekend, for a […]
When the heat gets tropical, so should the drinks. On a recent trip to the mountains of Puerto Rico, I was inspired by a wonderfully cooling and exotic sangría I had up around and about El Yumque (Caribbean National Forest, the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service system) at Noelia’s, recommended to us […]
There are a number of land crab species skittering about Caribbean coastlines. Some are edible and the one we eat most here in Puerto Rico (although I am told they mostly are imported from Venezuela these days) is Cardisoma guanhumi which we call juey and — if you are English-speaking — you might call the […]
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