I eat!
This year I didn’t want to bother making a complicated salad for my Christmas Eve dinner. Instead I got an organic salad mix from Grocery Outlet and a bottle of Marie’s Sesame Ginger Salad Dressing from Safeway. This proved to be a great decision. The dressing was simply delicious. I probably should go buy more salad so I can eat more of it 🙂
Anyway, so far this is my favorite salad dressing hands down.
Once again, my daughter Mika asked me to make butternut squash soup as part of my Christmas Eve menu. I had made a version of it for my 2008 Christmas Eve dinner, but I hadn’t been that thrilled with it. I found a number of well-rated recipes online, but many reviewers suggested that they were quite bland without some doctoring. So I decided to start with Claire Robinson‘s recipe as a base and add extra seasonings to make it tastier. The results were quite good, even my husband liked the taste. I didn’t blend it as much as I should have, however, so parts of it were a bit chunky 🙁 The soup, as I made it, was unfortunately a bit too spicy for Mika, though perfect for the rest of us. To make it child friendly substitute regular curry powder for the Madras curry powder I used. I made this soup the day before I served it, it heated up very well. This recipe should serve 12 adults easily, half it if there are fewer of you. Serve with sour cream.
Directions
Preheat oven to 375F
Cut off tops and bottoms of the squashes. Cut them in two, lengthwise. Scoop out and discard the seeds. Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put facing down on a baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and carefully turn the squash around, so the flesh faces up. Let cool and then scoop out the pulp into a bowl, discarding the peels.
Heat 3 Tbsp. of olive oil over medium-high heat in a stock pot. Add the chopped shallots and the ginger and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the sage and spices and cook, stirring, for a minute or two. Add the reserved squash and the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for at least 10 minutes. Let cool and then blend with an immersion blender until smooth. Alternatively, blend in a blender in batches. Return to the pot and cook for at least five more minutes to let flavors blend. Season with salt and pepper.
Marga’s 2011 Christmas Eve Menu
One more Christmas, one more Christmas Eve celebration with my sister Kathy, my niece Nikki and my best friends Lola and Iggy. I usually make elaborate multi-course meals but this year I was tired and not very inspired or enthusiastic. I wouldn’t have minded just getting Chinese takeout (our Christmas day staple), but the family wanted more so I complied. Still, this year my menu was completely streamed down. I loved it!
I mostly made dishes that I could get ready in advance (at least one day before), and that were not “time sensitive”. That’s important because often times I make stuff that needs to be baked/roasted and that means that it has to go into and out of the oven at a set time (specially if I’m juggling multiple oven dishes). As my guests are not always punctual (or predictably unpunctual) I have to guess both at what time I’ll start serving dinner and how long it will take to go through each course – I’m often wrong and then the pacing of the meal doesn’t work well. This menu consisted mostly of dishes that I started warming up half an hour before my guests were supposed to arrive, and then I could leave over very warm heat on the stove until I was ready to serve them. This was great! It meant I was able to spend more time at the dining table than in the kitchen, which is very rare for me during Holiday dinners. From now on I’m determined to give up on roasts (I’ve cooked all the ones I wanted to anyway) and instead serve great braises as my main dishes.
My menu this year consisted of:
– Curried Butternut Squash Soup
Now, if it was up to me I would have made my adored mushroom soup. But Mika wanted butternut squash soup and, again, I complied. Alas, the recipe I made, while good, was a bit too spicy so she didn’t really eat much. Now I have a whole tureen-worth ready to eat by myself. I’m not too excited, but the soup was good.
– Caramelized Onion and Blue or Goat Cheese and Mushroom Pastries.
I made the former last year and they were delicious. This year they were a favorite as well. I also tried them with goat cheese instead of blue cheese, and while good the blue cheese ones are better. I made another sheet with sauteed mushrooms, good but not as much either.
– Mixed Greens Salad with Sesame Ginger Dressing
Store bought, but delicious.
– Wine Braised Short Ribs with Mashed Potatoes
This recipe was quite good, though I probably should have salted the ribs more. Still, we all enjoyed them and they were perfect with the mashed potatoes.
This was Mika’s idea and it was a great one. The cake wasn’t as delicious as other ones I’ve had (the problem may have been I didn’t sit overnight), but it was quite good anyway. I’ll definitely try other versions in the future.
It’s been four years since I got Mika (now 9 1/2 yo) an Easy Bake Oven (a model which has been recalled since). When I first got it, and for years afterwards, the kids had little interest on it. The mixes were boring, the portions too small and it took too long to make them. We did go through all the mixes that came with the oven, but after that we put the oven away. Indeed, if I wasn’t so lazy I would have sent it back when they had the recall.
But I’ve come to learn that a toy that doesn’t interest a child when you get it, can really interest them years later. A couple of days ago we went to the 99-cents only store and found a bunch of Easy Bake Oven mixes for, well, 99-cents each. These are the full size packages, each containing about 4 mixes (each of which makes enough for one cookie-size recipe). While 99-cents for the equivalent of 4 cookies may seem expensive, these packages usually retail for $6 to $10! Mika saw them, wanted them so I bought a couple of packages. She knew exactly where the Easy Bake Oven was (in the garage, I think) and somehow we managed to find the necessary tools that went with it, so she went ahead and made the brownies. She needed a little help putting the pan inside the oven – it’s a bit tricky – but she got the hang of it and it went well. Well, not great, because she did not put the timer so the brownie came out too dry, but well enough. Cookies are next in the menu.
If she (or Camila) show more interest I may go back to the 99-cents store and get more mixes, at that price they can’t be beat. But I daresay they’ll get bored with it again pretty soon.
We went to the City Center Grill for lunch a couple of weeks ago when we took place in an Occupy Oakland protest (as you can see, these protests do bring business to nearby eateries, we saw several cops eating around as well). As it was in the weekend, our choices for lunch were limited. Unfortunately, City Center Grill wasn’t a good one.
City Center Grill offers breakfast, burgers, sandwiches and salads. We went for the cheeseburgers, $7.50 with French Fries and a small drink. The fries were OK, but the burgers left much to be desired. I don’t think we even finished them, even though they were pretty small for the price. The fries were good, however.
Service (this is a place where you order at the counter) was very friendly. Still, I wouldn’t go back.
City Center Grill
1221 Broadway, #105
Oakland, CA
510-452-3100
M – F 6:30 AM – 3:30 PM
I’ve never watched Master Chef on Fox as, honestly, I had never heard about the show, but I got an e-mail promoting auditions for the show in San Francisco tomorrow, Saturday Dec. 10th (which, btw, is International Human Rights day). The show matches passionate home cooks against each other, and provides a showcase for those cooks among us who really think we cook better than any Michelin star chef out there 🙂
Now, personally, I can’t cook without a recipe, so this show is definitely not for me – but it seems like a great opportunity for any of my creative readers.
The auditions in San Francisco are
Dec. 10, 2011
10 AM to 6 PM
Le Cordon Bleu
350 Rhode Island St.
San Francisco
Visit http://www.masterchefcasting.com/MasterChef-Season-3-Open-Calls for info on what to bring with you.
We went to Tim’s Backyard BBQ for dinner on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We had seen the restaurant as we drove to our hotel, and Mike is pretty much always in the mood for BBQ. While we liked the down home vibe of Tim’s – it’s larger and not as divish as our favorite BBQ places back home, but still very modest -, the food was somewhat disappointing.
We ordered a lot of food, and we got a lot of food. The food was somewhat expensive, but you did get quite a lot of it. Unfortunately, it all tasted absolutely the same. That’s because all items came drenched in BBQ sauce, and you could taste little of the meat itself. The BBQ sauce (no choice as to spiciness) was nice enough, but I prefer to taste my meat as well.
Of the stuff we had, the ribs were by far the best. They were fall of the bone tender, though we would have preferred a more smokey flavor. The pulled pork and the brisket were almost identical, both were shredded and dry (perhaps that’s why they were drenched). The links were perhaps the most disappointing. Links are generally Mike’s favorite, but at Tim’s they tasted/felt like store bought sausages with sauce on them.
On the plus side, the onion rings were good. Then again, I’m pretty sure most restaurants buy the onion rings pre-made and just dump them into the deep frier.
In all, if we were in the mood for BBQ in Medford, we’d probably head somewhere else.
Tim’s Backyard BBQ
1605 West Main Street
Medford, OR
(541) 499-0707
http://timsbackyardbbq.com/
Tuesdays are a hard dinner day for me. The kids have classes until late, so we don’t get home until 5:30, and then Mike has to go and rush to make it to his School Board meetings. While I love cooking, I don’t like cooking when I’m rushed and I don’t particularly want to cook just for the kids and I (if I make what they want, I won’t be happy, if I make what I want, they won’t be). So often times, if we have no leftovers, we rely on take out or frozen food. Last night was one of those nights, so I headed to Grocery Outlet for some frozen pizza.
Generally, Grocery Outlet has tons of choices, but this time they were more limited. The kids only like cheese pizza, so I went for this California Pizza Kitchen version. I’d had the CPK frozen pizzas before, and I’d liked them. Well, so did the kids. While they still prefer take out pizza, they were perfectly happy to eat this one. We got the version that comes with the flat bread appetizer, and the kids pronounced the bread the “best bread ever”. It’s pretty good, and it tasted garlicky to me, but I didn’t tell them that :-). I didn’t try the spinach artichoke dip as that’s not my thing. This pizza was available at GO for $4. It’s think crust, so it pretty much only fed my two hungry kids.
For me, I got a Bellafoglia pizza with a bunch of toppings ($4). I’d never heard of the brand, but I’m glad I gave it a try. This was by far the best frozen pizza I’ve ever had. The cornmeal crust had a lot to do with it, it was just crunchy enough, just salty enough and just very good. The cheese and toppings were good quality and were well balanced. I did some research when I came home, and found out that Bellafoglia is a product of Hayward’s Pacific Cheese Co. a cheese supplier. Sizewise, this pizza may be enough for two adults, but probably if they eat a salad or something else as well. I ate half of one, and was hungry later in the evening.
In all, I think I’ll keep a few of these pizzas in my freezer for nights just like last’s.
Picture "borrowed" from City-data.com
We stopped by Jaspers Café in Medford in our way back to California. I had researched Medford restaurants before we left and Jaspers got very good reviews – plus I’m always in the mood for a burger.
Jaspers offers the most extensive selection of burgers I have ever seen in my life, a couple of dozen at least. They also have tons of different hot dog combinations and sandwiches. In addition to offering different topics and combos on the burgers, from your regular patty & cheese to those covered with mole sauce and pot stickers, Jaspers offers several burgers made with more exotic meats. These include relatively common choices as Buffalo and Kobe Beef, but also elk, antelope and venison. Of course Mike and I had to try those burgers, which definitely was a mistake.
I had the “Widowmaker” burger ($8.20), which came with a 1/3 lb Himalayan antelope patty, covered with bacon, cheddar cheese and a peanut butter chipotle BBQ sauce. It definitely sounded interesting to me, but it was a total miss. I’ve eaten all sorts of wild meats in my day (and this reminds me I want to post a list of them) and have generally liked them, but Himalayan antelope had an off, gamy taste which I didn’t like. The closest thing I can compare it too is Indian goat meat (which I also dislike). As if that wasn’t enough of an issue, the meat was incredibly dry. I really don’t think I’ve had a drier burger. Perhaps fortunately I couldn’t really taste the meat or the other ingredients unless I made a special effort (and I did, because I wanted to see what antelope tasted like) because the flavor of the sauce was overwhelming. Really, that’s the only thing I could taste. It wasn’t bad, the BBQ sauce is pretty tasty, but it made the whole burger one-note. Needless to say I would never order this again.
Mike had almost as bad luck with the burger he ordered. His was elk and also suffered from dryness and an overwhelming sauce, though at least the elk meat itself was tasty.
Both kids had plain cheeseburgers. Camila liked it well enough, but Mika considered it the worst burger she had ever had in her life and didn’t eat much of it. It definitely tasted differently than other burgers, the taste of the meat might have been gamier. I thought it was OK, though it needed seasoning but Mike thought it was quite good – then again, he likes his food undersalted. We ordered fries and onion rings, both very tasty.
Another problem with Jaspers is that it’s a tiny place. I don’t think more than a dozen people can be seated inside (they also have outside tables). We stopped there around 3 PM the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the place was packed. It was pretty cold waiting outside, but fortunately we managed to grab a table before our burgers came.
In all, I’m glad I tried the burgers but I would definitely not eat them again. I’m curious enough to go back and try one of their whacky combinations with a beef patty, but given that Mika didn’t like them I probably won’t.
Jaspers Café
2739 N Pacific Hwy
Medford, OR
541-776-5307
http://jasperscafe.com/
M-Th 10:30am til 7pm
F-Sa 10:30am til 8pm
Sun 11am til 6pm
Ropa Vieja, a very simple dish of beef in a tomato wine sauce, is one of my all time favorite dishes. Indeed, it’s a favorite of several members of my family, my sister asks me to make it every time she visits. I don’t quite understand how so few ingredients – the only seasoning on this dish is salt and bay leaves – can have such an amazing result, but it does. Fortunately for me, ropa vieja was one of the first dishes I discovered when I first started cooking, so I’ve been able to enjoy it for almost two decades. I used to serve it over white rice, but I actually prefer it with sourdough bread, though French bread is good too. The one problem this dish has is that it’s really hard to avoid eating the meat as you shred it.
Ingredients
Instructions
Sprinkle salt on all sides of the roast. Heat a very thin layer of oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the roast and brown on all sides. Add one cup of water, turn down the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 2 to 3 hours or until cooked through. Turn off the heat and let cool down in the broth, covered.
Once the beef is cool enough to handle, shred the whole roast by hand, discarding hard pieces of fat. Mix the broth from the pot with the beef and set aside.
Wipe clean the pot you used and add another thin layer of oil. Heat over medium heat and then add the onions. Cook until soft, add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook for five more minutes. Mix in the beef, tomato sauce, red wine and bay leaves. Season with salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
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