As anybody who's ever gone camping can attest, cooking in an unfamiliar environment can be a real chore. Pre-planning meals, carefully choosing ingredients based on weight and convenience, and foraging for fresh ingredients can tax anyone's patience. Add in a forgotten spice or a broken cooking implement, and you have a recipe for misery.
Still, as hard as it can be to find oneself on the trail with insufficient foodstuffs, these miseries are nothing compared to the total annoyance of floating thousands of miles above the surface of the earth, trying to cadge together a palatable cuisine out of preserved Russian and American meats and veggies. While the space program brought us delicacies like freeze-dried ice cream and Tang, it is also responsible for sausage in a tube and irradiated bread!
But, as Astronaut Sandy Magnus demonstrates in this blog, the possibilities of space cuisine are limitless ... as long as one packs enough dehydrated sausage and sun-dried tomatoes!
There are few holiday dishes so polarizing as green bean casserole. If it was part of your usual Yuletide feast growing up, the stuff is sacrosanct and utterly essential to holiday joy. The bulk of it -- the french-cut green beans, cream of mushroom soup and French-fried onion strings -- must come blopping and clattering from cans and be baked in a casserole until it resembles a roiling green bog topped with a dry moss of frizzled onion straws. There are always seconds, and there's hardly ever any left over for a midnight refrigerator picnic.
If you didn't grow up with it skulking on the holday table, gosh darn does that stuff look ten-foot-pole nasty.
When I was growing up in Virginia, my babysitter often referred to my family as "the carpetbaggers." This wasn't all that surprising; my parents were from New England, and the folkways of rural Virginia were somewhat bizarre to them. Even so, they quickly adapted and even learned to embrace the culture of the area. Because of their zealous adoption of all things Virginia, many of our major holidays were celebrated with a huge, salty Virginia ham.
When I undertook the reverse migration from Virginia to New York, I worried that I would not be able to get hold of real Smithfield hams. Luckily, however, one of my local butchers carries them; it seems that they are a standard Italian dish on the feast day of Saint Nicholas. As the butcher rang up my sixteen pound chunk of pork, he and I had an interesting conversation about the art of cooking Virginia ham. Interestingly, many of his customers are actually scared of Smithfield ham.
In truth, this isn't really all that surprising. After all, Smithfield hams are exceedingly salty, very ugly, and take a long time to prepare. However, they are also amazingly delicious, and constitute one of the most truly American of dishes. Luckily, they are also fairly simple to cook, freeze beautifully, and pretty much all of the leftovers are delicious.
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and the December holidays are ahead of us, but not so close that I'm feeling the panic of unbought presents and unmade cookies and undecorated house, it's time to talk about a wine that was tailor-made for this "down" week before the holiday frenzy begins, when you still have time for a bit of pre-bed reading or TV-watching while snuggled into a cozy chair with a blanket tucked around your legs. The wine is, of course, Syrah, or Shiraz, as it's known in Australia.
It used to be that you could draw at least a loose demarcation between the two styles. Syrah, originally from France with its most notable examples coming from the Northern Rhone, is more a rough-and-tumble wine: wild, spicy, and requiring age and food to appreciate its greatness. Shiraz, by contrast, is almost Port-like with its richness and velvety chocolate undertones.
Lately the lines between the two have become increasingly blurred, with more New World wines labeled "Syrah" that taste more of "Shiraz" and some vice versa, so it's harder to choose which you're in the mood for based on the label alone.
Continue reading "Syrah/Shiraz - Wine of the Week" after the jump.
A few days ago, I documented my first visit to a Pollo Vivero, or live-kill poultry place. Well, having now had the joy of dressing and eating a freshly-killed turkey, I can absolutely state the following points:
Cutting off Heads Isn't That Hard: I thought that removing the bird's feet and head would be really difficult, but it was actually easy. I used a sturdy, German-style chef's knife, located the respective joints, and sliced away. While the legs came off in one piece (each), I had to take the neck off in two pieces. I used a paring knife and reached inside the carcass to cut it closer to the torso.
Live Turkeys Don't Look Quite the Same: My turkey's torso was longer and slightly sleeker than the Butterballs that I was used to. That having been said, it was still quite meaty, and the actual process of cooking it was very much the same (minus the pop-up timer, of course).
Live Turkeys Are Yummy: The turkey tasted more or less the same as a grocery store turkey. It was slightly more succulent, but I also chalk that up to the fact that I brined it.
Live Turkeys Dry Out Easily: Unlike store-bought turkeys, which soak in a broth solution until you unwrap them, live turkeys need to be protected from drying out. I wrapped mine in moist paper towels before brining it.
Turkey Heads Are Fun: Being somewhat perverse, I held on to the turkey head and feet so I could show them to select people. Two of my sisters got in a little bit of a tiff over who got to keep them (I'm not the only weirdo in my family), until my youngest sister claimed the artist card, stating that she wanted to draw the various parts.
I have decided that I'm definitely going to go with live poultry for Christmas. Does anybody have a good recipe for pheasant?
When it comes to cranberry sauce, I've always been partial to the canned stuff. I like the shape that the can makes, and I like the simplicity of it - just crank it open and give it a couple of jiggles. However, this year, when I went to pick up the standard can, I happened to read the label and discovered that my beloved Ocean Spray is made with high fructose corn syrup. Despite those commercials that the corn refiners started running earlier in the fall, trying to convince the public that HFCS is just fine, I've been trying to avoid it. So back on the shelf went the can and I determined to make my own sauce, albeit as close in consistency to the canned version as possible.
I cooked down a bag of cranberries with some maple syrup, Meyer lemon juice and zest and some cherry cider (I would have used cranberry juice, but I didn't have any) until the berries were all popped and juicy. I then ran the whole mess through a food mill to smooth it out and get rid of the skins (I know that they are very healthy, but I wanted a can-like consistency and so they had to go). I toyed briefly with pulling out a mold (I have a few from my great-aunt) but decided that was overkill and just chilled it in a glass bowl so that you could see the bright redness.
The resulting cranberry sauce was pleasantly tangy, but with a discernable sweetness. It was still cloudier than the canned sauce and not quite as set, but I continue to be happy with the results. After a couple of days in the fridge, it's become like jam and I'm considering making more to can and give away as holiday gifts. More specific details, like measurements, after the jump.
Some people love leftovers while other people are a little unexcited by the prospect of eating the same thing for several days running. Personally, I adore not having to cook for days at a time and can happily eat plates full of turkey, stuffing and potatoes for five or six days running. The only problem I encounter is that the veggies tend to run out before everything else, leaving me with nothing more than a plate of starch and protein.
One of my mom's Thanksgiving tricks, that I'm adopting this year, is to buy a second vegetable that you don't cook on Thursday but instead save for the next day. That way, you have a fresh veg to go along side the mounds of potatoes, stuffing and turkey. If you're looking for a little vegetable inspiration, and you didn't cook up a mound of Brussels Sprouts yesterday, check out this recipe from Food+Photography.
Leftover mashed potatoes? Please allow me to direct your attention to Not Made of Money's article on what to do with your starchy surplus. Their 10 creative ideas include shepherd's pie, Thanksgiving casserole, mashed potato soup (!), mashed potato dumplings, mashed potato patties, mashed potato and egg hash, mashed potato rolls, and mashed potato and salmon croquetes. Or you could just eat them cold with a spoon in front or the fridge at 2 a.m.. Not that I do that or anything.
It's official. Turkey Day has come and gone for another year (although the leftover season has only just begun). My turkey was nearly perfect, the gravy was lump free and the roasted sweet potatoes were incredibly sweet and tender (all I did was roast them, wrapped in foil, in the toaster oven for a couple of hours. Easiest side dish ever). However, my Brussels Sprouts were a little too crunchy and using the ricer to mash the potatoes took forever (and resulted in cold 'taters).
I want to know how your meal turned out. Did your turkey take longer than anticipated? Did your guests rave about your mashed potatoes? We want to hear success stories and disasters alike.
Though I am definitely the raging brewhead of the group, beer is certainly something that can bring my family together. Case in point: For my father's birthday, my sister signed him up for the Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club.
Mom and Dad don't drink as fast of the rest of us kids, so when I arrived home for the Thanksgiving holiday, the fridge was pre-stocked with a number of BotM leftovers -- Eight different types to be precise. Coincidence? I think not! So for this week's Slashfood Ate (8) beer edition, let's see what this particular beer of the month club believed was worthy of our family fridge.
For your ever-so-gently-surreal Thanksgiving viewing pleasure, Alinea's Grant Achatz breaks down and sous vides a turkey -- just like Grandma used to. No vacuum sealer or immersion circulator needed. Sadly, there's no nitrogen-blasted green bean casserole or marshmallow and yam alginate spheres on the menu this time, but hey -- there's always Christmas.
Watch Part 2 -- Sous Vide Stuffing and Deep-Fried Bourbon Pumpkin Pie on a Flaming Cinnamon Stick on YouTube and sign up for free recipes at alinea-mosaic.com.
For weeks now, everywhere you turn, it has been Thanksgiving as far as the eye can see. Here at Slashfood, we posted three menus, a bevy of side dishes and some excellent suggestions for wines to drink with your meals. At The Kitchn, they've been talking pie since November 1st (that's a lot of pie). Ree, The Pioneer Woman, has photographed so many Thanksgiving recipes I'm astounded she can still bear to be in her kitchen. And every newspaper section in the country has written about turkey, apples, pumpkins and cranberries ad naseum.
The thing is that for all these recipes, tips, suggestions and turkey tricks, how many of us actually vary our Thanksgiving day menu from year to year? I'm serving up a meal this year for the holiday that is very much like the one I've eaten with my family since I could first gum a couple of spoonfuls of mashed potato.
Over at Slate, Regina Schrambling has written a piece that describes just this conundrum - food sections, blogs and magazines who feel the need to reinvent the holiday each year, when most people turn to the familiar recipes they've been making for years. It's a good read that will get you in the mood to head to the kitchen and cook up your Thanksgiving favorites.
Having grown up on sterile, deep frozen turkeys, I have always had the sneaking suspicion that my Thanksgiving was missing something. About a year ago, my wife and I moved into a Dominican neighborhood, an experience that has brought me into contact with an almost endless array of new, exciting foods and food services, notably the collection of "Vivero" joints in my area. Basically, these are sort of like a cross between a butcher and a pound. You go in, choose your bird or rabbit, tell them what you want done with it, and come back in a half hour to pick it up.
I've been circling the Vivero for a while, curious but also a little nervous about getting my poultry from a place that looks so much like an animal shelter. Still, with turkey costing a fortune in my neighborhood, I felt like this might be the year to try out a fresh bird. Because of the season, the owners recently got in a shipment of about 400 turkeys, and I found that the whole process was surprisingly easy. Basically, I picked out my bird (I was looking for an animal in the 15-pound range that looked guilty), and told them that I wanted it plucked, cleaned, de-legged, beheaded, but generally left intact. Explaining this took a while, as the workers only spoke Spanish and I only spoke English. Still, between us, we managed to get it all worked out.
About a half hour later, my bird was ready. When she saw that the legs were still attached (my Spanish, clearly, is not very good), the lady at the window gave me a funny look, but immediately endeavored to make the package a little less unwieldy. Her method was to, basically, jam the turkey's feet up its rear end. She managed to get one in before giving up.
We can change the way we make eggs -- scrambled, poached, fried -- but what about changing the eggs themselves? Mix up your scrambling routine with quail eggs.
.jpg)
When I was growing up in Virginia, my babysitter often referred to my family as "the carpetbaggers." This wasn't all that surprising; my parents were from New England, and the folkways of rural Virginia were somewhat bizarre to them. Even so, they quickly adapted and even learned to embrace the culture of the area. Because of their zealous adoption of all things Virginia, many of our major holidays were celebrated with a huge, salty Virginia ham._thumbnail.jpg "Burlap Ham")
_thumbnail.jpg "Dry Ham")
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and the December holidays are ahead of us, but not so close that I'm feeling the panic of unbought presents and unmade cookies and undecorated house, it's time to talk about a wine that was tailor-made for this "down" week before the holiday frenzy begins, when you still have time for a bit of pre-bed reading or TV-watching while snuggled into a cozy chair with a blanket tucked around your legs. The wine is, of course, Syrah, or Shiraz, as it's known in Australia. 
.jpg)
Leftover mashed potatoes? Please allow me to direct your attention to 
Though I am definitely the raging brewhead of the group, beer is certainly something that can bring my family together. Case in point: For my father's birthday, my sister signed him up for the 
.jpg)
Second Helping of Slashfood - June 19
Competitive-Eating Contest to Pit Humans Against Elephants
The Backyard Boom - The Hungry Bride
