Thanksgivings!

My family lives too far to get together on Thanksgiving so I began cooking it myself two years ago for local friends in the same predicament. I had three guests but cooked enough for ten, that seemed about right for Thanksgivings. The bird was 14 pounds and I filled it with Italian sausage stuffing and covered it with cheese cloth soaked in melted butter. the cheese cloth was a great trick I just leaned about. The cloth really hangs on to the liquid when basting and the turkey came out very moist.


I also made cranberry sauce, of course, roasted
root vegetables, Brussels sprouts with bread crumb and hard boiled egg, and an apple, walnut cheese salad. It sounds fairly simple but there was a lot of juggling on my tiny stove. The turkey made its way to the table ahead of a few side dishes, and the boys picked at the plate with such stealth that we had to cut many more slices. Being from Sweden, the boys are new to Thanksgiving, so just minutes before Robert fell sound asleep Steph and I told him about tryptophan. There was a few seconds of disbelief and then snoring.


After a good sized nap, I woke Robert up with this piece of gingerbread atop a cloud of English cream. Boy do I love this dessert!




Later we watched Gary Vaynerchuk's WLTV thanksgivings special and tasted these wines, followed by a mandatory dance party and a round of poker which was a non stop argument, but in a fun way.

special sweet treats

I arrived at home last night to find a present on my door step (or knob, really). I was so touched because it is from a friend who really loves chocolate and he is sharing this with me, chocolate from home. A texted followed that read that it was something to show how much he appreciates all that I do for him. Oooh, sweet! All friends should be so good to each other.

the giant pineapple

sounds like a double entendre, doesn't it. sounds like a euphemism for something a tad naughty, yes? yes? is it just me?

Whatever.

Ok here is it the giant pineapple. At Caroline's birthday extrazaganza, we gathered again and painted plaster. I didn't really know what it was that I ordered. I initally wanted the wheat plaster but they were out so, without taking a good look, I opted for the pineapple. And I painted it. I looks fine in this pic yes, no big deal.




Well check out this picture! With the ruler as size reference! Now! Yea! Big Deal! I don't have a spot on my wall anywhere for such a BIG PINEAPPLE!

I know, I know. In reality it is not so big , but in NYC apartment living scope, yes it is, and I don't have the space for such a thing.

Anybody want to buy a hand painted pineapple?

Working hard is hard work!

I recently started a new job that I already love love love, especially since I am being sent to Paris for eight days! Yea!!! But I have been neglecting you dear sweet bloggy. And the readers have been clamoring for more - ok that would be no one, but I have to pretend so that I get motivated. I say to myself, get out of bed - your readers need more! Maybe my readers are the multiply personalities in my head! tee hee. I still have to blog up about Thanksgiving, the lovely gift left at my door and the giant pineapple (that's foreshadowing). Tonight, tonight, it is all I will do.

custard the culinary challenge

So the point of this blog is to challenge myself to learn about cooking and wine. I want to cook intuitively, you know... from the gut or from the heart, whichever. I have been thinking the I need to toss myself culinary throw downs on a regular basis. Here is the first one: make something I am apprehensive to make without referring to the recipe. This isn't like the turkey chili that I can just make by following my craving, but something a tad more technical.

On Thanksgiving, dessert will be individual pumpkin-shaped gingerbread that will rest on a pillow of English cream. Sounds yummy doesn't it? the English cream recipe I have is custard folded into whipped cream. I made the custard tonight and it was my culinary throw down.

When I said "without referring to a recipe", I meant during the process. I read it first and committed it to memory and then proceeded to make the custard. I prepared a bain Marie, got out all my tools and ingredients. Things turned out pretty good. I put a cup of whole milk in a small pot and brought it to a simmer.
Look how mysterious this yolk looks close up, like a happy sun rising over sugarhill.

Combined two yokes and a 1/4 cup of sugar and whisk. When the milk reaches a simmer, pour it in a slow stream into the egg and sugar while whisking to combine. Slow pour and whisking is a must because you do not want the heat of the milk to cook the egg yokes.

Pour it back into the pot and return to a low heat. Stir consistently with a wooded spoon till the mixture thickens. Do not let it go over 175 degrees. You can see here that my pause for a photo is causing my custard to get dangerously close the no-no zone. If it is not thickening pull the pot off the heat, dangle it above the flame to keep the temp down but giving it a bit more cook time.

Pour the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl in the bain Marie (ice bath). Mix in 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla and there it is! Custard!

So, I did it, I meet my culinary throw down and and pleased with the results. During the process though, I was very distracted by the photography that I pulled the custard before it was thick enough and I had it on ice before I decide to go back to the stove with it, but that decision to go back to the heat is the intuitively that I am trying to develop. Isn't it?

GV we have a problem!

I got one of four hundred boxes of Gary Vaynerchuk's Secret Thanksgiving Pack but one of the bottles got mysteriously drunk last night! Seriously and not by me!!! I mean it!! And it wasn't the cat either, though the picture suggests otherwise. My two hungry Swedish neighbors drank it, but that is fine. They are coming to Thanksgivings so it is for them anyway.

Cotes du Rhone wine tasting

Last night I hosted my fourth wine tasting event. What a crazy emotional day! It was my last day on the job at Imax and Monday, I start a new gig that I am very excited about. Leaving my job was hard because I have the best boss ever!!! There was a surprise party and presents... lots of fun!

I rushed home, performed tornado style cleaning and cooked up a batch of Swedish meatballs. They came out ok but I want to tweak the recipe to be more flavorful. I also prepared seven glasses of wine for our "smell off". I used a very neutral bottle of wine, a beaujolais nouveau, the base wine and added aromas that would be found in the wines we were drinking tonight. The aromas were blueberry, currant, black pepper, smoke, chocolate, spice, and fennel. The group then smells all the glasses and tries to detect which smell is in the wine. Luckily by the time everything is set up and the meeting gets underway, I tend to forget what is in which glass, so it is a challenge for me too. I got stumped by the blueberry and the currant; I couldn't tell them apart.

We then tasted four Cotes du Rhone wines. Our first was Guigal Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2003. In the bouquet I detected spice and berry, and the flavor had notes of smoke, black pepper and berry. The mouth feel was fabulous and the tannins were grippy but not over bearing. When there was just a little bit of the wine left in the glass, the aroma became plastic and reminded me of toys that I had as a kid.

The next wine was Guigal Crozes-Hermitage 2004. This one was herbaceous, with a dark chocolate hit and dark stone fruit on the finish. Tasted lighter and sweeter than the first bottle.

We then moved to the Eric Texier, Côte du Rhône Brézème 2005 and the Côte-Rôtie Vieilles Vignes 2004. The price point is hugely different on these wines the former is $18 while the latter is $62 and yet they are both excellent quality wines. I was surprised at how light and fruity the wines were tasting because they are Rhone, while not light like Burgundy red, still I wasn't thinking steak but german sausages instead.

I like every wine we has last night. After we all have our little sippy sips of every wine, it turns into a party as we polish off the bottle. I went back to the Pape and this time, after all the wines, the tannis were very grippy, too grippy. It is always fun to go back and see how different the wine is.

The questions that came up during the evening all require a good googling. How are these foreign aromas imparted onto a wine, what is the effect of duty on the price, are the grapes washed before the crush. I don't know!!!

Hooray for Birthdays

My sister and I have birthdays that are somewhat close together. We went out to The Melting Pot restaurant in Hoboken NJ to celebrate and the staff signed a card for us to share. And we shared it.

Chamber Street Wines tasting of Louis/Dressner

Went to my second Louis/Dressner wine tasting at Chamber Street Wines today and purchased these lovelies. The two on the left are for my next wine tasting get together and the other three are theoretically for Thanksgiving. Problem is that Burgundy keeps calling to me so I hope it makes it till then. Since this blog is all about me learning new things about food and wine, one thing I must absolutely learn is how to cellar a wine. Yeah, yeah, I know 55 degrees and the right humidity, I get that part, the tricky part will be to resist their siren song.

Wine tasting at Tasting World

Attended a wine tasting tonight. It was a group of about 35, everyone brought a bottle. I picked up this one pictured above, but I wasn't so crazy about it. The one I liked the best was the Salla & Mosca Cannonau di Sardegna Riserva 2004. It is flowery, spicy, soft and subtle. The bouquet was beautiful and perfume-like, I wouldn't mind smelling like this wine. The taste was dimensional with a nice length. I love a good length! Best of all, Union Square Wines sells it for $12.99! I'll be right over USQ!!

It is a bit overwhelming sampling 35 wines, spitting was an absolute necessity for me but I didn't see too many other people spit, so I am assuming there are 34 people in NYC with some hefty hangovers. Me? I got too much to do this weekend to nurse a hangover; I am testing recipes for Thanksgiving! It will be my second Thanks but my first with a proper table for peeps to sit around. I am very psyched for the day (and will be a furious cooking maniac till then).

Citizen Cope

Lisa and I drove up to Peekskill after work last night to go see Citizen Cope. It was a great show in a tiny venue. He played a really long set, mostly solo, and at times accompanied by a percussionist and a keyboardist.

It is great to see such a talented musician in a small venue. It is almost as if I have retained a modicum of my former hipness, like back in the day when I used to see brilliant little-known musicians at CBGB's or Danceteria or The World.

AaahhhhOld.

At some point I did have to stick a bit of tissue in my ear. Not because the sound was too loud, but to mute out the horsefaced girl in row N who spend much of the night professing her love for Cope. "I love you Clarence". Boy, I wish I had audio so you could hear my mocking tone.

Other than that, a fabulous show. I am thinking I will zip down to Philly for the Dec 29th gig! Anybody, anybody?

Pea Soup

A while ago my friend Robert teased me that everything I make has peas in it. It's true, I do love peas, specifically petite peas. As a kid, my sister Barbara would literally cry when peas were served. One dinner, my mother coerced her to eat the peas and Barbara threw-up. It was very dramatic. Maybe they were not petite peas but common peas that are mealy and starchy. Yuck. It is petite peas or nothing!

As the weather has finally cooled, it is clearly pea soup season. I pondered peas soup a few weeks ago and while thinking of my tried and true pea soup recipe I wondered why I mindlessly followed along and used dried peas. So I pulled out a bag of frozen petite peas and winged it. The results were very satisfying. And now, as I dream up a Thanksgivings Day feast, I believe I will add this soup to the menu. I guess I better figure out how I made it!

Tonight I tried to make the soup a second time, which wasn't such a stretch since it is intended to be simple. Onions, carrots, thyme, ham, s&p, stock and pureed peas! It tasted fresh and clean but I think I would like to try it with a food mill, to really smooth out the peas, and maybe a touch of cream. Now that I think about it, I'd better try out a few more recipes for Thanksgiving.

Birthday party for ME!!!

So I wasn't much in the mood this year to have a big party like I usually do. Instead I had just a few neighbors over for turkey chili. I have been working on the recipe for a while and I am quite happy with it.

Happy folk eating turkey chili

Why turkey chili, you may ask. Several weeks ago I had a hankering to make something I have never made before. Something warming and delicious. Something ideal for this lovely fall weather. After searching online for a while, I printed out two recipes that didn't really float my boat too much, but I thought I would just monkey around with them and see what they could do. On the subway ride home (and to Whole Foods) I over heard some guy saying that he had turkey chili last night. (He had an actually friend on the receiving end of the conversation; he was not one of those random weirdos talking to himself that are often riding the fabulous NYC subway). Turkey chili he said and it was like an epiphany. It was the dish I was craving! It was as if I could taste it already and I knew exactly what I wanted in it. So I lost the recipes I was carrying and set my mind on turkey chili and winging the recipe.

Turkey Chili recipe and how I made it last night
1 large onion chopped fine
3 cloves of garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon of whole clove
1 1/2 teaspoon of whole cumin
1 poblano chili
fat pinch of cayenne
1 teaspoon of paprika
salt and pepper
2 big springs of thyme
1 pound of ground turkey meat
2 large carrots finely cubed
1 large yellow pepper finely cubed
1 28 oz of fire roasted cubed tomatoes (Muir Glen brand)
1 minced chipotle chili in adobe sauce
2 or 3 tablespoons of black strap molasses - to taste
vegetable oil and chicken stock as needed

If at any point during the cooking process the contents of your pot becomes sticky, add a touch of stock to prevent burning but don't add anything that needs to be sauteed till the liquid is sufficiently cooked off. I use this technique so that I don't have to add more oil to the pan and it buys me some time as I continue chopping up stuff to toss in.

Pour about 2 tablespoons of oil into a pot and set over a medium flame. As your pot heats, chop up your onion and add to the pot. Add salt to the onions (this will draw out moisture from the onion) and throw in the sprigs of whole thyme. As your onion cooks down, mince the garlic and add to onions. Let it all cook down till onions are loose, liquid and caramelizing. In a spice mill grind together the clove, cumin and poblano chili. Grind until the contents are a fine powder add to the pot along with cayenne, paprika and freshly ground black pepper (to taste). Crumble the ground turkey meat into the pot and stir a few times till the meat is cooked through. Then add your carrots and yellow pepper. Let them all cook down for about 5 minutes. Then add the fire roasted tomatoes, chipotle chili and a bit of molasses. You can hold back on the a bit of the chipotle and the molasses because you may want to taste it in a bit and see how the flavor is marrying. You can always add more seasoning but you cannot take subtract it once it is in the pot. The tomatoes will need about 20 to 30 minutes to cook down to deliciousness. Taste the dish at this point and see what you may want to add. Fish out the sprigs of thyme and with your spoon (hopefully a wooden spoon) give them a scrape on the side of the pot, loosening the leaves off the stem (and back into the pot). Toss the stem.

Last night the turkey chili was not having it at, at this point in the cooking process so I had to really noodle around with the flavor in the end. I added more molasses, paprika, salt and pepper and even a few drops of liquid smoke until the dish finally tasted as scrumptious as I was hoping for.

Who know what happened but we somehow wound up at the Edge Bar again and here I am with my girls sporting my new Wine Library TV wristband that arrive just a few days before my birthday. Such a awesome gift. Thanks Wine Library!!!

Pictures from Storm King Art Center

Burgundy reds

Last night I hosted another wine tasting event with my meet up group. We had five red wines from Burgundy: two from Beaujoulais, and one each from Cote Chalonnaise, Cote De Beaune and Cote de Nuits. I have been furiously focusing on trying to develop my palate to detect the aromas and nuances in the flavor. At the first few wine tastings I had a blind smelling where I put different aromatics (lemon, mango, banana...) in a covered cup and the group tried to identify the contents based on smell alone. But last night I think I finally figured out that I am focusing too much on trying to detect these descriptives (like raspberry, caramel, straw) and I should be paying attention to the other attributes like the mouth feel, acidity or complexity.

Look how buttery this cheese is! This is the Mt. Tam from Cowgirl Creamery. It is smooth and delicious on top of an apple wedge. We also had Epoisses from the Burgundy region. It is a washed rind cheese and smells like Mrs. D's horse camp that I attended as a kid. Hay, mucked stalls, horse... it was like reliving some of my favorite childhood memories. It tasted fantastic too!

baby steps

It was a monumental moment for me! Last night I smelled the wine my friend Melissa was having and was instantly able to identify it as Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand! A seated victory dance followed which involved lots of fists pumping and there was one very happy Pammy. Okay okay, it probably is the most easy to identify wine because of the distinctive cat pee smell but I did it and I am happy.