Yorki

I have some horribly dull eating habits. Habits that include boxes, cans, plastic tubs. It makes me happy, because sometimes real cooking is too hard, and a girl has to eat.
I have another quirky food habit: I like to tinker. I like to play with my food. I stop well short of Ferran Adrià, though. I will not force you to smell burning juniper sprigs while you burst fake caviar pellets in your mouth, chin dripping with foam.
But I like to play.
This sushi is made from Yorkshire pudding, a drizzle of horseradish/sour cream, and topped with a tender slice of leftover prime rib. (What a great time of year for leftovers!)
It was good, and a lot of fun. But I think I'd really rather have a roast beef sandwich.
Cute, though!

From Cabbages to Kings

If your mother offered you creamed cabbage, you'd probably gag.
If Molly Wizenberg suggested cream-braised cabbage, you'd sit up and listen.
Molly creates relaxed, long-cooked recipes that — well, I think I'm trying to say that time is one of the important ingredients.
We had a green cabbage, just the normal shiny round kind, in the fridge. I recalled that Molly loves a cabbage dish her husband invented, so I grabbed her book, A Homemade Life, and searched the index for cabbage.
Bingo! Cream-Braised Green Cabbage. (But it wasn't the one I thought I was looking for. Turns out the Brandon recipe was different; it uses sambal oelek and soy sauce. I made a lucky mistake.)
I'm sorry this isn't a recipe blog, because I don't think the recipe appears on Orangette. But I can tell you how simple it is: You slice the cabbage into thin wedges, brown it on both sides in butter with some salt, then douse it with cream, cover, and cook 20 minutes before turning with tongs and cooking for another 20 minutes, then apply a squirt of lemon juice.
It turns into silk. Where did all that flavor come from? That color?
I'm trying to choose my favorite description, but I'll have to settle for three. Silky, deep-tasting, brown mouth yum. It's really amazing. Total transformation with such simple ingredients and technique.
Yet, I'd say the best ingredient was the time.
You really have to try this. I really mean it.

Bonus! If you visit Amazon to see this book, you can search the pages and find the recipe. Pages 186-187.

The Year of Clay Pot

I was skimming through my posts for the year, to see if there was anything I could pull for a Top Ten list.
There really wasn't, and besides, it occurred to me it would be immodest to trumpet my 10 faves.
What I did see was a theme of very casual, comforty food. Bowls of food, pots of food, slow cookers of food.
Then, something caught my eye. My standout purchase of the year, an Asian clay pot. We have used it for so many satisfying meals, tweaking the ingredients and learning the ropes.
A recent tweak was cooking potato and cauliflower in the pot, instead of tofu and mushrooms. And, of course, that calls for curry flavors.
We recently bought a jar of Trader Joe's green Thai curry paste. And we recently bought a jar of Korean gochujang, a red peppery, sweet sauce. Good mixture for this dish. Garlic, of course.
So easy.
My Top One choice.

Our Daily Waste of Space

You've all seen Stewie Lemonhead, haven't you?
If you haven't, take a look.
I don't know if my mind is going, but I thought it was very good. I laughed.
I hope you laugh.

What, No Green Vegetable?

For a cut of meat we only cook once a year, I'm so happy with our latest method, from a 2007 issue of Saveur.
This was a three-bone standing rib roast, aka prime rib. The butcher had trimmed off everything but the eye and the ribs (and a little fat, good).
The technique is to roast the meat rib-side up. It seems to create a little roasting chamber, sui generis, and the meat cooks gently and evenly throughout. (The other technique is 30 minutes at 450F, then down to 325F until the internal temperature hits 120F.) This roast then rests for half an hour, perfect opportunity for making the Yorkshire Pudding. (It was the best, fluffiest, prettiest pud ever, but I couldn't tell you why.)
I know this beef doesn't look rare enough for some of you cannibals, but it's exactly the way I like it: pink and juicy. (Rare meat? Not juicy.)
Confession: There really were no green vegetables.

My Recommendation for Next Year

I've found the perfect Christmas Eve supper. So, so perfect.
This was a little cassoulet, cooked in a Staub cocotte (3/4 qt., I think; just right for two appetites with no leftovers). Cassoulet cooks itself, so you can busy yourself elsewhere wrapping gifts or singing along with Brenda Lee.
All you have to do is soak and cook the beans. We used cannellini, and they were just right, with a tender thin skin. Cook them with a little bacon fat and a bay leaf, trust me on this.
Save a little of the bean cooking water.
OK, shred or dice your meat. We used a Toulouse sausage, a confit of chicken thigh, and half a single breast of duck bacon. Fry these all up in, I don't know, duck fat? Yeah, duck fat. Because...
OMG, duck bacon! We'd made it a year ago and stashed it in the freezer. I was grumping because our confit was chicken, not duck, but Cranky remembered this, and... OMG. Can I use the word "perfect" again?
OK, the usual assemblage ensues. A dab of frozen tomato sauce for pinky sweetness. Thyme leaves. Garlic, garlic, garlic. Some of that bean water mixed with sparkling wine, to drown the mess.
Bake for as long as you can stand, covered or un-. Just keep an eye on it between Perry Como songs.
Hey, it'd make a great New Year's Eve supper, too.

Everybody Knows a Turkey

and some mistletoe.

Happy KwaHoliNukahMas

I read a first-person story about a Jewish woman who grew up rather sheltered. When she did finally visit the home of a gentile friend over the Christmas season, she was scared of the tree! Scared of a Christmas tree.
The tree is not holy. It will not burn you or convert you. It might even yield a gift.
I've been unreligious for a long time, but I still put up a tree, and I call it a Christmas tree. Nobody's zinging bolts of lightning at me for that. I think I'm safe.
You wanna say "holidays" instead of "Christmas"? I'm OK with that.
But I will not have Bill O'Reilly telling me what to do.
Still, funny.

Running Out of Storage Space

The food in this casserole was lovely, but nothing to blog about. What I really love is the dish we baked the food in.
It's made by Staub, but it's not cast iron. It's ceramic. Staub's metal pieces are made in France (for that ooh la la cachet) and the ceramics are made in China (for that "I hope there's no melamine in it" cachet).
The lines are gorgeous and sensual. It has a vague mid-century look to it, like something January Jones would use. And it was sold at a discount!
I have a friend who pointed me in the direction of a closeout homewares store (there are actually two in Marin County), called Tuesday Morning. She specifically sent me there to check out the Staub, because she knows of my weakness. I went, expecting I'd see more metal stuff, but no. That was when I discovered the pottery.
I actually made another Staub purchase that day. Something so cute I can't even tell you. Sadly, I haven't thought of something to put in the pots yet. Whatever it is will have to be very small (for that *squeee* cachet). Cute overload!
I promise a picture when I get it figured out.

Hot Little Round Things

It looked a bit like a swanky, ring-a-ding retro cocktail platter. Cubes of cheese and rolls of salami. But in that dish, oh, goodness: roasted olives and radishes. Together! It's just delirious to eat hot olives and hot radishes. The seasoning was super, too, grated orange rind, slices of fennel and a coating of olive oil. The olives (green, though they look black here) were already very garlicky.
My mouth is still happy.
If you don't hate olives, please promise you'll try this. (45 minutes at 350F, no cover)
It might make a great relish tray for your Christmas feast. Aunt Orchid would faint but she always does anyway; hide the Jim Beam!

Molotov Escargot

Last month, a couple of men came to a Marin County restaurant and had a meal that included escargot. You know, the stuff that tastes like a garden hose (but so yummy with garlic and butter).
Each man has now claimed they were scalded and stained and nearly blinded by exploding snails. But as the defendant noted, they said nothing to staff and went happily on eating their dinner.
Did the gastropods really blow up?
A judge says now he thinks there's no case and these greedy men should knock it off.
Interestingly, orders for the garlicky yard pests went up drastically at the restaurant as a result of the case.
And that is my report.

One Big Brag

I've been in print before. Mostly newspapers, though there was a book or two of collected linguistics essays that I contributed to when I was in grad school.
This is a real book. A real COOKBOOK. !!!!!!
I have no idea how or why I was selected to appear with 799 other cooks in Molly O'Neill's new tome, One Big Table, but there I am. I recall being grilled by a research assistant last year, but I didn't think it would go anywhere. (And how the heck did she find me?) Then Molly herself emailed, and we talked back and forth for a while. She's a solid reporter; not lazy. Friendly and wry, too. Yay, Molly. My new BFF.
AND. Speaking of yay, Molly, my name was mentioned in a blurb on the back cover, by Molly Wizenberg. (Blogger solidarity, I suspect. Or maybe because I'm friends with her aunt and uncle.) But yay, and thanks. My other new BFF.
Oh, by the way, my recipe is totally ridiculous, though I swear by it.
Jeez. Immortalized for ranch dressing.

A-Test Chicken

So cool, this atomic photo! I got the effect ("heat map") from picnik.
It looks way better than the original, if only because the original was out of focus. And a little dark (I was shooting in the oven!).
But the food was pretty.
When I was a kid, back in the nuclear days, there were three kinds of cheese (not counting that vomit-smelling stuff in the shiny green cylinder): orange, white and white. The whites were Swiss and Jack. The orange was Cheddar.
Therefore, if you were making up a dish of chicken divan, you used the orange. The other ones weren't right.
So, to this day, I think of chicken divan as something covered in orange glop.
This one was covered in ivory glop, because we used non-orange cheddar and parmesan (from NOT the can).
I feel so grown up now. And full. A very good, filling, yummy meal. The bomb.
(And why did we make it? Because there was broccoli in the fridge. That's all.)

Little Plates of Holiday

More sour cream on potatoes.
This is an old standby that we eat several times a year. The toppings can vary (we used to use caviar, when there still was such a thing), but the basis is always halved small potatoes, oiled, salted and roasted cut-side down. Oddly, these local taters were so rich in sugar that they began to stick to the pan, so we finished them right-side-up, under the broiler.
You are tempted to eat them hot, right out of the oven. But be warned: the sour cream will melt and slide off.
Really, this is OK eaten slightly cooled. I've had them at catered events, in fact, and they weren't hot. (Cold might be icky, though.)
Finishing touches were snippets of smoked salmon, and a sprinkle of chives.
Very horse doovy.

More Omega-3s

This time, it really is a salmon fillet. It doesn't look as much like a sweet potato as a sweet potato looks like salmon. But close.
If you read the previous post and comments, you'd see that we created and crowd-sourced a new recipe: just sub salmon for the potato. And for god's sake, use a little bacon.
Cranky grilled the salmon in our little Smoky Joe, outdoors. He added a handful of soaked alder chips to the hot coals, and a little smoke flavor definitely found its way into the fish. Not too much. Perfect.
Meanwhile, I cooked and chopped bacon, hacked chives, and loving-spoonfulled the sour cream.
Verdict? Really good. Not high-end restaurant good, but secret cult local diner good.

Just an Excuse for Sour Cream

It wasn't until I was a grown-up that I learned you could simply bake a sweet potato, open it up, add butter and salt, and devour.
I'd always been led to believe sweet potatoes had marshmallows and vanilla and other abominations, and no, thanks.
Cranky's mom, the frugal Yankee, taught me the plain, baked way.
And today I figured, "Let's pile that whole Russet baggage on this thing." Why not?
The sweet potato was so, so huge we could each only eat one quarter. (Leftovers!)
It was buttered and salted, then drenched with sour cream and sprinkled with chives. Only bacon bits were missing, and I think they might have been really good, too.

The Sixth Taste

You got your sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami.
Well, at my house we've been cooking with a sixth taste, burny. Not smoky, though there was a bit of that in the stock we used for this soup.
The smoky came from barbecued pork rib bones. They were simmered with turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving.
The burny, though. It's easy, it's free, it's natural. And it tastes good.
Just throw your chopped vegetables into a pan with hot grease and cook until brown corners appear. It doesn't compromise the native flavor of the vegetables at all; just adds a zing of caramelization. And if you brown until black corners appear, you get that special sixth taste. A little touch of carbon.
Why not? I know in England they make gravy from burnt onions if there's no meat. Which I am going to try, now that I'm loving burny.

Sour Cream Peeps on Latke Surfboards

These latkes came out pretty good, even if I suspect the baking powder is out of date. I bake so rarely that every time I need baking powder, it's expired.
We found a good Nova from Brooklyn, oily and smooth and naturally cold smoked. I grated an adequate amount of onion (read "just a tetch too much"). Had to use a whole egg, because I was reducing the recipe. Should have thrown part of it out, since it just pooled in the mixing bowl.
The oil was perfectly heated (and, people, why do latke recipes call for so much oil? I know, it's symbolic, but yechh). No burning occurred, and the potato cakes were thin enough to cook all the way through by the time the outsides were golden brown.
Sour cream Peeps were the crowning touch.
Cowabunga!