{happy feasting}
Here, we’ll start with Manhattans, edamame hummus, chicken liver pate, butternut squash mini-arancini, along with a baguette and garlic and zatar pita chips. Then, on to the main course: tandoori turkey, with a vegetarian entree — miso curry squash with heirloom butternuts, tofu, kale, and potatoes. And a raw chard salad, to balance everything out, and some giant tandoori bread instead of biscuits. And lots of other goodies, courtesy of all the guests.
I hope I can get a walk in before the feasting begins. It’s in the fifties today in Minneapolis and yesterday there was a golden pink sunset at the lake and ducks and weeping willows, and it felt magical to be here.
Wishing you all the happiest and most delicious of Thanksgivings.
{the best — juiciest, most flavorful — turkey I’ve ever made}
I’ve made a fair number of turkeys in my day. I was a pretty precocious child when it came to the kitchen, and I think that I was a freshman in high school the first time that I declared that I was going to make Thanksgiving. And this was no joking around Thanksgiving. This was a Thanksgiving with lists, with weeks of prep, with freezing, with soup and salad and biscuits, and two pies, and stuffing, and two sides, and a turkey with gravy.
I’ve since simplified.
Now, running Thanksgiving on my own for the second year, I’m sticking to the vague potluck method. Vague as in, I will make the turkey and a vegetarian entree, and probably also a salad (likely a version of this raw kale salad, but with slightly more delicate chard) and some munchies (likely a mini version of these arancini, with butternut squash risotto) for beforehand, to be popped along with a bottle of Prosecco.
But I won’t be making any pies or any other sides, and I definitely won’t be making gravy. Every year, I think I’m going to make gravy, and every year, by the time gravy-making time comes around, I just want to be done, and I look at the shimmering pan juices, and I think, well, those look plenty delicious. And I think they are. Any other day, maybe I would make gravy, but paradoxically, on Thanksgiving, I think pan juices are just fine. read more…
{kale + lemon + pecorino/parmesan + garlic = perfect thing for a busy day/week/month}
What do you eat when you’re feeling too busy to cook? If you’re like me, you’ll fall into one of these camps: Take-out (pizza, burritos); “Cooking” (quesadilla, grilled cheese, pasta). Not a lot of vegetable matter. A lot of food that is not really that satisfying but feels fine for one meal. But not, I repeat not, fine for more than one meal. Because — and this is the true sign that I am turning into an adult — I like eating vegetables. And I do not want or like to eat several meals lacking vegetables in a row.
But sometimes, cooking is hard. The pasta is staring at you saying, boil me. Just boil me, and add some olive oil and salt and a little bit of whatever you have in the fridge, and I will be delicious. Or, if you are me, and live where I live, then Chipotle is literally across the street, and I swear that they are pumping the scent of carnitas out their exhaust fumes.
This, then, is when I turn to kale salad. As evidenced by my recent lack of posts (and my apologies about that!), I am having a very busy day/week/month. Full discretion: I am actually eating a quesadilla right now, as I type. One made with corn tortillas (good local ones) and grated cheese, and that’s it. Not even any hot sauce. It’s a busy time.
Too often, I forget about kale salad. It’s a little counterintuitive, eating such a hearty green that I am so used to cooking absolutely raw. But it’s become my favorite way to eat kale, and one of — if not my absolute — favorite ways to eat salad. It’s so filling and so satisfying — the snap and crunch of the kale between your teeth actually make you feel like you are growing stronger as you eat it, not unlike Popeye and his spinach. And the zing and the cheesiness of the dressing makes the whole thing feel utterly decadent, even though it’s one billion times healthier than a slice of pizza. read more…
{and a fried green tomato party, the best kind of party}
I think the pictures say it all today. The garden was full of green tomatoes that ran out of time to ripen. 20+ lb. of tomatoes. Which meant only one thing: time for a fried green tomato party. What you need: fried green tomatoes, a big pot of red beans, a pan of cornbread, a big ol’ tub of sour cream, 2 kinds of hot sauce (TapatÃo and Louisiana), and, optionally, some preserves. Plus, booze and friends willing to bring more food and more booze. And some good tunes, of course.
Still so many green tomatoes — for salsa, for jam, for green tomato tart. Any other green tomato ideas?
Recipe for fried green tomatoes after the jump!
{recipes for a delicious start to 5772}
The best challah I’ve ever had
False Mahshi, a traditional Rosh Hashanah dish from Iraq
A plethora of roast chickens, paprika-cayenne here and orange-coriander here
Lots of other harvest-appropriate dishes in the archives! What will you be cooking on Wednesday night at sunset?
{sweet and sour Sicilian eggplant stew}
My apartment building turned the heat on for the first time yesterday. The radiators were hissing and spitting, and I went around closing up the storm windows for maximum heat efficiency. (I’ve never seen storm windows before moving to Minnesota, not even on the East Coast.) And the heat was only on for a brief few minutes, but it was enough to warm the place up, and I slept better than I have for several nights.
This caponata contributed to the heat of the apartment in a big way, as well. Making this stew was actually a pretty big occasion for me — it Christened my brand new Le Creuset. I’ve been wanting a Le Creuset for a long time now, but it’s such an investment, not just in price, but also since it will last for my entire life and probably beyond, I really wanted to absolutely love the color I ended up with. And, I was continually reluctant to spend that much money on a pan. I knew it was worth it, but still…it was a lot of money. But then, I discovered that there’s a Le Creuset outlet right outside of Minneapolis! A Le Creuset outlet, people! (And there could well be one near you — there are a lot.) And they were having a sale on the Valencia color. And then I was sold, and a beautiful 7.25 quart round dutch oven was mine.
As easy as it was, after two nights of roasting tomatoes, I was getting a little tired of it, and I used the rest in an easy tomato sauce. That plus a small ton of mini eggplant from the farmers’ market was the inspiration for this dish, a nice bridge between summer and fall, and a perfect first use for the LC.
I get such a kick out of these eggplants — they’re adorable. They’re a little bit more work, but not much, and I think they’re a little more flavorful (the usual benefit of a mini version of a vegetable) and also they have a higher skin to flesh ratio (perfect for the caponata, not so perfect for, say, baba ghanoush, where you’re supposed to only use the flesh).
Caponata is a Sicilian sweet-sour eggplant stew — sweet from a touch of sugar, sour from a glug of red wine vinegar. Along with the incredible influx of salty-savory flavor from anchovies, capers, and olives, it makes for a dish full of wonderfully complex flavor, that still tastes very fresh. read more…
{the final frontier}
Well, I’ve finally made the leap into the 21st century — Food Junta is on Twitter! In addition to blogging here, I’ll be tweeting about food and more @FoodJunta. Hope to see you there.
ps. Any twitterers that you’re particularly keen on? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to check ‘em out!
{to eat immediately, or to preserve}
Well, friends, here we are, in mid-September, and it is time to start preserving tomatoes. This is the perfect moment — the moment when tomatoes are rolling, abundantly, into farmers’ markets for the cheapest prices of the season (at least here in Minnesota), the moment when other produce is not rolling quite so abundantly into the markets anymore, the moment when it is cold enough at night to blast the oven, and the moment when it’s about to get a lot colder.
I was never really one for preserving tomatoes. People would talk about blanching them, peeling them, canning them whole, or else making them into a sauce and canning that. It all seemed too fussy for me; so much work for something that is so simple. And, truth be told, I think you can buy pretty good canned tomatoes for pretty cheap. (Muir Glen was actually just doing a giveaway near my house of its reserve tomatoes, which are being sold on its web site in a Reserve Kit for members of the Tomato Connoisseurs’ Club. Wild!)
But everything changed when I found out about slow-roasted (or, when cooked a little longer, oven-dried) tomatoes. This is the simplest way I can think of to preserve tomatoes, requiring extremely little active time on your part, meaning…no canning! Liberation from the water bath! It doesn’t get easier than that. (You just need some space in your fridge or freezer.) read more…
{in my other writing life}
I am thrilled to be part of Food Studies, a new series at Grist that covers all the different ways there are to study food in the world of academia. I’ll be writing about combining my primary program — the MFA in Creative Writing — with my graduate minor in Sustainable Agricultural Systems. I’ll be focusing primarily on my experience this past summer working at a school garden in St. Paul, exploring ideas about school gardens, creative writing, and food justice.
I’ve been reading Grist for a long time, so it’s very exciting to now be part of such a great site. You can check out my first post here, and I encourage you to check out the other columnists, as well!
