Christmas Eve dinner was a huge success. All the food I made was simple and easy to make yet delicious. Everyone – not the least me – was impressed.
I put up the menu and recipes already (they are at http://www.marga.org/food/party/xmas04/), as I failed to do it in previous years.
Christmas day we had a frozen lasagna for lunch and then went to the Oriental Tea House for Chinese, we were the only non-Chinese people there!
Yesterday we ate leftovers, and that’s what I assume we’ll have for lunch as well. For dinner we’re taking K. to Chevy’s, as that’s where she wants to go.
Author: marga (Page 108 of 120)
It’s Xmas already and I’ve gotten several food gifts:
-Prashad, Cooking with the Indian Masters – a cookbook by J Indor Singh Kalra (from Mike)
-The Best Ever Indian Cookbook (from David & Dana)
-White and black truffle oil, directy from Italy (from Mike)
-A bottle of fresh olive oil from the Marin’s farmers market (from Lotty)
-A garlic oil & vinegar set (from David & Dana)
-A huge bottle of cheap balsamic vinegar (from Mike)
-Soup plates (from Lola & Iggy)
-A whole silverware set (from Kathy)
-Aprons (from my Mom and Lola & Iggy)
-Potholder (from my mom)
-Dish towels (from my mom)
-A gift certificate to Bay Wolf!!!!! (from Regina & Boris)
A couple of nights ago I served chicken with Patak’s Tikka Masala simmering sauce which I bought at Cost Plus ($3.50 for a 15 oz jar, enough for 1 lb chicken and 2 1/2 people). It was OK but it didn’t taste at all like tikka masala. Mostly it tasted like other generic jarred or frozen Indian curries. Its main ingredient was oil, so it’s very fatty (but it gave a wonderfully tender consistency to the chicken), followed by lemon juice, so it’s also very sour. I don’t feel any compelling reason to buy it again.
I’m getting tired of take-out and I’m often too tired to cook (not to mention that my kitchen is too much of a mess to cook in), so the other night I decided to try one of those ready-made entrees available in the refrigerated meats section of the supermarket. I’d had a craving for Beef Stronganoff before and while I didn’t have high expectation of this version, I figured it was as good a choice as any.
It was OK. The meat was tender and not very fatty; the sauce tasted like a sour gravy, and not at all like Stroganoff, but it was perfectly edible. I served it over spaghetti and it was OK with the pasta. I don’t think I’ll buy this again, but I may try one of the other entrees.
Last night we had fondue for dinner, from a box. It was Le Superbe Fondue, imported from Switzerland, which we got at Trader Joe’s. It was quite good, a little bit less alcoholic tasting than the ones from the red boxes we usually get at tthe supermarket, which is good. Of course, home-made fondue is often better, and it is really easy to make, but last night I wanted something that took no time at all. And that would save us having to wash the food processor (after grating all those cheeses). Anyway, we liked it.
Yesterday we went shopping to Trader Joe’s. As usual, most of what we bought were impulse buys including a pint of Sharon’s Sorbet, coconut flavor that I got a craving for. That’s the problem with being pregnant, you see something and you want it.
I’ve never had coconut sorbet before but I liked it. Unlike other sorbets, it’s quite creamy, which makes sense given that its main ingredients are coconut milk and coconut cream. Still, it’s lighter than regular ice cream which I liked. It had a nice coconut flavor, though I would have preferred more coconut and less sweetness. It wasn’t as refreshing as I wish it was. But it was good.
Growing up, I was never too fond of orange marmalade. As the cheapest of all the fruit preserves, it was ubiquitously served by all the old aunts and their friends with whom I had the misfortune of having tea at some point or another. I am sure they were great ladies on limited budgets trying to save a few pennies, but as a child I wasn’t that understanding. At home, I insisted on strawberry jam, or if we were lucky and found it available at the store, on rapsberry jam. Even as a kid, I felt sophisticated eating toast with butter and those exotic berries.
I still prefer berry jams, which in the US are as obiquitous as orange marmalade was in Argentina. All jams & jellies here seem to be priced identically, regardless of flavor, so there isn’t an incentive to buy any but the one you like.
I hadn’t given a second thought to orange marmalade for at least twenty years, until I ran into this product at the 99-cents store. I could recognize the brands, they were imported from Argentina. I was intrigued, it had been sooo long since I had tasted it and it could indeed bring memories back of home and childhood. And yet, I hadn’t liked it as a child so why should I like it now? So I didn’t get any.
I kept thinking about it, though, so when we visited the 99-cents store again last weekend I decided to get a jar of orange marmalade along with one of apple jam, also a product of Argentina. Today I tried it and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Perhaps its sweet and sour taste is more pleasing to adults, or perhaps it’s just nostalgia speaking, but I thought it was great on a slice of toast, and even better in a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. At 99 cents it cannot be beat.
The apple jam is quite good also, it tastes like a sweeter, denser apple sauce. This is something I might have had once as a kid, so it didn’t any evoque any particular feelings, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I prepared a (reduced) Thanksgiving feast for our small, nuclear family. Still – cooking for 3 or 7 is not that different and I did spend a fare amount of time in the kitchen. Enough to realize that there is no way I’ll be able to cook Xmas dinner next month – when I’ll be almost 8 months pregnant.
Dinner came out well, but nowhere near perfect. The problem was clearly that I didn’t pay enough attention – pregnancy brain, tiredness, I have tons of excuses. I did leave tons of dirty dishes for Mike to cook, however.
We started with a sweet pumpkin soup, made from a Trader Joe’s base I’d previously bought. All you have to do is add some sour cream and milk, and it’s very good but very sweet. A jar should be enough for four as an appetizer, as you can’t quite handle too much more of the sweetness. Mika liked it and ate quite a bit as well.
Then it was time for the main meal.
I made Roast Turkey with Prosciuto-Hazelnut Crust from this recipe at epicurious.com.
I started by brining the chicken (a free range, organic 12-pounder) in a solution of kosher salt, sugar, dried thyme and bay leaf the night before. Then I rinsed it (note, some of the thyme leaves stuck to the turkey skin), dried it and let it sit in the fridge for several hours before cooking. I cooked it according to instructions, but I wasn’t able to baste it as part of my baster was inexplicably missing. I also overcooked it somewhat. I’d checked the turkey and it had been at 172 – when I checked 10 minutes later it had shot up to 180. Clearly I should have taken it out at 172. Live and learn.
The turkey was very good, I found the drumstick a tad too salty but Mike found the breast was fine. It was, however, too dry – though Mike said he expects that from turkey. Still, I wanted something jucier. Mike loved the skin where the butter had been.
The accompanying gravy was rich and thick and tasted quite good, but the bits of meat made its consistency too disconcerting. The recipe didn’t call for it, but it should definitely had been filtered. In any case, I wasn’t able to palate it – knowing that it was made from the internal organs gave me a case of the willies. This even though I have no problem eating foie gras or pates made out of innards. Oh well, let’s blame it on pregnancy.
I made mashed potatoes from the Zuni’s cookbook recipe. I’d previously made it and loved it. Once again, they were a big hit – I’ll make them again for Xmas and quadruple the recipe. This time they were too lumpy, I didn’t spend enough time mashing the potatoes and I should have probably whipped them for longer (I was afraid they’d get gummy – they didn’t), but the taste was all there. Oh, and this time I didn’t use buttermilk, just whipping cream.
Finally, I made Stove Top stuffing, which I like so much that I never see a need to make any other kind. We made the sourdough kind with salted butter, and I found it a tad too salty – Mike didn’t. I had meant to mix it up with grilled chopped apple-chicken sausage, but I totally forgot. Pregnancy brain again.
I had also meant to make green beans, but we left them in the plastic bag overnight and they had mold by then.
For dessert I made an apple pie. I used frozen Marie Callender pie crusts and they were very good, they tasted great in combination with the apple stuffing. They were too thin, however, so it wasn’t possible to cut off a piece of pie without having the whole thing disintegrate, and my proportion of apple-stuffing to crust was too high (I used four granny smiths, next time I’ll use 3), but the pie was delicious, in particular with some Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream. I had meant to make a sugar-free pie, using Splenda instead of sugar, but once I started adding the spleanda to the apples I realized the taste just wasn’t there so I used probably twice as much sugar as splenda. My other ingredients were cinamon and a dash of nutmeg and ground cloves.
Today our leftovers are mostly turkey and pie. The pie held up great and Mike said his turkey sandwich (bread, turkey and mayo) was awesome.
Last night I made Pomegranate & Spice Braised Pork, a recipe I’d seen in the Wine section of the Chronicle a couple of weeks before. I had actually meant to make it Monday night, but I miscalculated when I had to start on the recipe so I left it for dinner last night.
I followed the original recipe quite faithfully, though I used regular anise seeds instead of the star anise, I chopped rather than pounded the garlic (misread it) and used a good quality cab instead of the fruity wine (I wasn’t serving it with wine any way, and wanted to use what I had open).
The results were quite good, the sauce was sweet but not overwhelmingly so and complimented the pork quite well. Mike liked it, but he found the pork a little dry. I don’t know if somehow I failed in cooking it, or this is related to how lean pork nowdays is (and I may have messed up by cutting off the lawyer of fat on the outside of the pork shoulder). I thought the pork was fine – though the fattier parts were definitely tastier – but I found the sauce to be too one-dimensional. It was just there, tasting good but with no complexity to it. It bore me. I served the dish with couscous (always a good choice for any sweet sauce) and I do have to admit that it went wonderfully with it – the couscous much better than the pork set off the different flavors within the sauce.
It was an easy dish to make, though as with any braise dish it takes quite a while to cook. Pork shoulder is relatively cheap, but beware that a bottle of pomegranate juice cost me $6, the hoisin sauce was another $3 – so this dish can get expensive. Another caveat is that it smells just like cinamon rolls while it’s cooking, it may give you a craving 🙂
Recipe
- 3 1/2 to 4 lbs bone-in pork shoulder roast
- Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
- 2 tsps.. vegetable oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 5 large garlic cloves, chopped
- 6 slices fresh ginger
- 1/4 tsp. anise seed
- 1 stick cinnamon
- 2 tsp. whole black peppercorns
- 2 cups dry red wine
- 2 cups unsweetened pomegranate juice
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 2 tsps. fish sauce
- 2 tsps. hoisin sauce
- 2 tbsp. dark brown sugar, or to taste
Instructions
Heat the oil in a large pot or dutch oven. Season all sides of the pork with salt and pepper. Brown all sides of the pork in the oil. Remove and set aside.
Fry the onions until transluscent. Add the garlic and cook until aromatic. Add the ginger, anise seed, cinnamon andn peppercorns and stir. Add the pork, wine, pomegranate juice, soy sauce, fish sauce and hoisin sauce.
Stir, bring to a boil, turn down the heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes. Check the level of tartness and if needed add the brown sugar.
Continue to simmer for 1 hour, turn the roast, and simmer for another 1 1/2 hours, until the meat is tender.
Remove the meat and set aside. Bring the sauce to a hard boil, uncovered, and boil until it’s reduced by 1/2 to 1/4th. Meanwhile, slice the meat. When the sauce has reduced, strain it, discard the solids and return the liquid to the pot. Add the pork to the liquid and simmer it for a few more minutes until it gets warm. Serve.
Probably by now everyone with an internet connection has heard of Jones Soda holiday pack, featuring sodas in such festive and inviting tastes such asTurkey & Gravy, Cranberry, Mashed Potato & Butter, Green Bean Casserole and Fruitcake. But beyond the entertainment value, what do they really taste like? A group of intrepid men and women set out to find out, and here are the results. In a nutshell: they taste just as bad as you imagine they would.
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