What's Cooking (Take Three!)

We've had the T-Day leftovers twice now. First time was the soup with extra meat thrown in, stuffing and sauteed vegetables on the side. Second time was all the bone-in parts (legs, wings, neck) with the traditional trimmings: stuffing, gravy, cran. Tomorrow we'll finish up the bits of this and that... last of the soup, last of the meat, last of the stuffing, last of the cran.

And I haven't used the broth yet. That will get rice, for sure, but I'll have to, um, er, buy more turkey.

[Jenise]

Jeff, great effort. You're the synchronized swimmer of leftover turkey!

Me, I'm the one who drowned. Had planned an enchilada pie on Thursday, but life changed that plan. Same plan for last night, but we unexpectedly stayed over in Vancouver yesterday and today, I removed that last lovely turkey breast from the bag and smelled it. NO.

So it's in the trash and some sliced pork is thawing for a Chinese stir-fry with yellow chives and snow peas. Can't decide whether to do it with Chinese noodles as a one-dish thing or just a stir-fry for serving over steamed rice. Leaning toward the latter.

Jeff, great effort. You're the synchronized swimmer of leftover turkey!

Thank you!

Me, I'm the one who drowned. Had planned an enchilada pie on Thursday, but life changed that plan. Same plan for last night, but we unexpectedly stayed over in Vancouver yesterday and today, I removed that last lovely turkey breast from the bag and smelled it. NO.

Ooh, I hate when that happens.

So it's in the trash and some sliced pork is thawing for a Chinese stir-fry with yellow chives and snow peas. Can't decide whether to do it with Chinese noodles as a one-dish thing or just a stir-fry for serving over steamed rice. Leaning toward the latter.

I don't think I know what yellow chives taste like.

A couple of nights ago, it was risotto with blanched cauliflower and smoked mozzarella. Very good, although I did overload the cheese a little (not that this is a terrible mistake to make).

Last night, I made a cucumber/dill/sour cream salad to take to a friend's house. (It was to go with the stroganoff he made.)

Tonight, it was pan-fried maple brined pork chops with sauteed chard and those Kenji Lopez-Alt potatoes (thanks, Robin!).

[Jenise]

Tonight: Asian pork chop with kimchee fried rice (my first attempt), and sesame stir-fried baby bok choys.

Tonight swordfish steaks grilled with a basil, mint, garlic,lemon and olive oil brush, and sauced with the remainder.

Poor Man's Jambalaya tonight.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Fried chicken tonight for us--but I'm not cooking it. It's the Wednesday special at a great new restaurant in town.

It's sesame seed crusted salmon night here. And we have side dish stuff in the fridge -- two leftover baked potatoes and two whole delicata squash -- but Pumpkin doesn't want starch tonight nor does he want to wait for squash to bake so neither got used and instead I sauteed spinach and got some stuffed-dough thingie for me at a local Middle Eastern bakery.

[Jenise]

I really like delicata squash, the size is so compact and useful. A healthy restaurant side dish the other day brought a ring of delicata filled with wild rice and cranberries. Delish!


Yesterday I had a Cornish game out but no particular plan for it, so I decided to spatchcock it and oven roast it to serve with some Kenji-style potatoes. I made up a marinade from excessively ripe and juicy tangerines that I was about to throw out--squeezed the juice of four into a Ziploc bag and added chile oil, Whole Foods berbere (which I remain in love with), salt and fresh rosemary sprigs. Later, while the bird roasted, I boiled the marinade down into an intense drizzling sauce which went over the bird halves. OH MY GOD. That sauce was SO good that I'm doing that rare/rare thing: I'm making it again tonight. This time for two chicken leg-thighs.

Here's the recipe:

Juice of four tangerines (about 1/2 cup)
1 tsp berbere
1 tsp hot chile oil
1 tblsp neutral oil
salt
rosemary

That's it. The aroma and flavor are mysterious and hypnotic.

I like Cornish hens a lot. The Silver Palate has a nice fruit stuffing for them but, indeed, they are excellent just spatchcocked and roasted. Love the idea of boiling down the marinade to a drizzle!

[Jenise]

I like Cornish hens a lot. The Silver Palate has a nice fruit stuffing for them but, indeed, they are excellent just spatchcocked and roasted. Love the idea of boiling down the marinade to a drizzle!

Stuffing's fun. Do you and Pumpkin eat a bird each? If you do that makes sense. I don't stuff them anymore because we're more likely to share one.

I also really like Cornish hens. Years ago, we used to stuff them with a mix that included a good dose of brandy. You'd cut into it and get an amazing brandy aroma wafting out of it.

I'm on my own for a few days, so I took advantage of the situation last night. My wife's not fond of any of the flank steak family of meats while I love them. I picked up a couple of pieces of flatiron steak, dry rubbed them, and cooked them on a grill pan on top of the stove. Smeared a little Korean chili paste on just as they were finishing. Also had roasted brussels sprouts with maple syrup.

I like Cornish hens a lot. The Silver Palate has a nice fruit stuffing for them but, indeed, they are excellent just spatchcocked and roasted. Love the idea of boiling down the marinade to a drizzle!

Stuffing's fun. Do you and Pumpkin eat a bird each? If you do that makes sense. I don't stuff them anymore because we're more likely to share one.

I eat a whole one. Pumpkin claims that's too much and eats only half.

It actually dropped into the high 20's overnight here last night and stayed pretty chilly all day. (I know this is not impressive to those of you enduring the cold in the central and eastern part of the country, but that's pretty cold for out here!). That is more than enough of an excuse for some braised comfort food, so I made pot roast with mashed potatoes on the side. The pot roast was from a 1998 issue of Gourmet. It included tawny port and a good dose of fresh ginger. A keeper.

I made Gung Bao chicken last night using dried Chengdu bullet chiles from the Mala Project store. These chiles were extremely aromatic. I was surprised at how fresh they were, and what a difference it made in the dish.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I've been ass-deep in my community project, the dinner for 80 and 7 staff last Saturday night and am just coming up for air. We've been living on simple fare, including a huge pot of cabbage rolls I made early last week knowing that I wasn't going to have much time or energy for cooking for the two of us. Last night we were both in the mood for hamburgers, and that was a late dinner after getting home from errands around 7:30. Homemade, with arugula instead of lettuce, lightly pickled onion slices (it softens and tames them in a wonderful way) and green chiles, so not ordinary, but nonetheless: they were just hamburgers.

Tonight I'll be doing parmesan crusted chicken cutlets and broccoli rabe because both love being squirted with tons of lemon juice, and I love tons of lemon juice, and I have tons of lemons on hand at the moment.

Oy vey. Not a good day in the kitchen.

We lingered over presents and breakfast so I didn't get into the kitchen till 12:40p and I had a lot to do. Things began OK: start sizzling the sausage for the stuffing, start sauteeing the cut-up turkey leg for the gravy base, start toasting walnut pieces for the salad. I was rushing so I missed a later step in the gravy-making but nothing critical. Then, comes the goose: clean and trim, yank a few stubborn bits of quill, zest the citrus and pound the rub, diamond cut the skin, stuff with herbs and the bald fruit, and into the oven. The plan is hot for 15 minutes to get it rolling, then turn it down.

It took less than 10 minutes for the smoke to start.

Turns out my roasting pan has a pinhole and goose fat is really smoky. I see the growing puddle on the oven bottom and put a piece of tin foil on a lower shelf to keep the droplets off the hot oven interior. The smoke stopped but I should have thought that through a little better.... A few minutes later, I look in the oven and I see a pool of fat accumulating on the foil. I mop that up with paper towels, wipe up a little extra that dripped further, and now re-settle the roasting pan into a handy stainless steel paella pan.

I don't exactly know what happened next. Where I had wiped up the extra spillage, I was suddenly getting a lot of smoke, so much that I had to leave the kitchen. There were some small flames, briefly, but I blew them out and they stayed out. But smoke then clouded the living room and we couldn't get back into the kitchen for 10 minutes or more. Finally, whatever it was was exhausted and no new smoke appeared. The kitchen cleared in just a minute or two (yay for the ceiling vent) but the living room had taken on a Dickensian pallor and we had guests arriving in half an hour.

So, we opened the front door -- fortunately, it's about 50*F outside but, unfortunately, all the storm windows are up so the door is the only thing that opens -- and Pumpkin begins waving a towel to blow the smoke towards it.

At this moment, four vehicles from the Fire Department roar up the street and stop on the corner.

Entirely coincidental. They were staging themselves for something else happening a block away. ::insert emotion here, darn if I know which one::

All in all, we lost about a half hour of our time... and our minds:
The towel was a junk rag so now there are bits of red lint everywhere.
The bird had kept roasting through it all but the time-table for everything else was shot.
I'm not dressed, the table's not set.

In my subsequent haste, I confused some ingredients in the crab cake recipe so they were flavorful but a bit mushy, and things like the tartar sauce and the Green Goddess salad dressing were made somewhat later than the last possible moment (i.e., their respective dishes were already on the table).

We never did serve the Christmas pudding nor did we tug the Christmas crackers.
- - -

After everything was picked up, packed up, washed up, and put away, Pumpkin and I did a debrief then pulled out the chocolates (that we also failed to serve) and a generously-alcoholic drink.

Oy vey indeed! Well done for carrying on regardless. I am sure your guests ate well and had a great time.
Hope you and pumpkin enjoyed your post traumatic chocolate and alcohol fix.
When the smoke settles you will laugh together about the great kitchen disaster of 2017.
Maybe we should start a thread on great kitchen disasters. Goodness knows we all have them.
How was the goose btw, I am thinking of doing that for my next Xmas in July but it is an unknown for me.

[Jenise]

Oh Jeff, entertaining story but I can feel the pain! Hopefully there are no leftover aromas to help you relive the event every time you come home for the next however many days.

Our Christmas Eve dinner contained no disasters, but my sous vide prime rib wasn't a perfect success in that I would have preferred it a bit more done. I set it for 134 based on the Sansaire video for same (the brand of immersion circulator I have) wherein they declared 134 a perfect medium rare. I could see the result and agreed that's the exact color I wanted. But it was actually a bit too rare, even though not blue. Just scarlet red, where I'd wanted a little more pink. Flavorwise, though, I nailed it with the aromatics I put inside, and got a lovely crust with more pureed garlic, flour and a blow torch.

Oy vey indeed! Well done for carrying on regardless. I am sure your guests ate well and had a great time.
Hope you and pumpkin enjoyed your post traumatic chocolate and alcohol fix.

Every little bit helped.

When the smoke settles you will laugh together about the great kitchen disaster of 2017.
Maybe we should start a thread on great kitchen disasters. Goodness knows we all have them.

I think that's a good idea.

How was the goose btw, I am thinking of doing that for my next Xmas in July but it is an unknown for me.

This is my third time making a goose. I like it a lot. The meat is very dark and the flavor is like duck but more beefy and less birdy. And, of course, you get a liter of lovely fat for making potatoes in!

For cooking purposes, it's just a big bird so all your usual handling and knowledge applies, with two caveats:
(1) yield is a little less than a turkey... a goose has a heavier skeleton
(2) you must make sure all that fat melts off... don't worry, there'll be plenty left on it, anyway, no matter what you do

I like this Gordon Ramsey recipe for its simplicity and strong flavors (but I omit the honey):
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2428/gordons-christmas-roast-goose-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88MHrk0qA1c

Oh Jeff, entertaining story but I can feel the pain! Hopefully there are no leftover aromas to help you relive the event every time you come home for the next however many days.

There is just a tiny bit of lingering smoke smell. I expect that will dissipate the next time we do a thorough kitchen clean.

Our Christmas Eve dinner contained no disasters, but my sous vide prime rib wasn't a perfect success in that I would have preferred it a bit more done. I set it for 134 based on the Sansaire video for same (the brand of immersion circulator I have) wherein they declared 134 a perfect medium rare. I could see the result and agreed that's the exact color I wanted. But it was actually a bit too rare, even though not blue. Just scarlet red, where I'd wanted a little more pink. Flavorwise, though, I nailed it with the aromatics I put inside, and got a lovely crust with more pureed garlic, flour and a blow torch.

So how many degrees to bump it up? Sounds like the crust carried the day, anyway.

[Jenise]

So how many degrees to bump it up? Sounds like the crust carried the day, anyway.

Probably 140. It's almost hard to factor in the lack of carry-over cooking that is emblematic of the sous vide process. I set the Sansaire to 134 and then took a Thermapen to the meat the second I pulled it out of the bag. 133.8--BINGO. But that's all it's ever going to do. It might also have actually been a waste to do prime grade by this method. Honestly, might have been too much of a good thing. I'll also add that something I always love about a perfect med-rare conventional cook on PR is the way the outer ring is well done when the interior is gloriously pinkish-red. With sous vide, you lose that. You get perfect color edge to edge, and I have to admit now that I don't think that's actually so perfect.

We had to have a low key Christmas this year which meant no cooking and no leftovers. Just wanted something simple and on hand for dinner last night so I made basic risotto using my turkey stock. Topped with a little bacon and cilantro.

Jason