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Recipes

How to make real cranberry sauce

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Good TG dinner. Guest asked me for a recipe for the cranberry sauce we served. Videlicet:

You need:
1 bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 orange
1/2 stick cinnamon or a few twists of a cinnamon grinder, or about 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
a few twists of a nutmeg grinder, or about 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

saucepan
sharp paring knife or vegetable peeler
slotted spoon
small serving dish

Using a sharp knife or vegetable peeler, peel the zest off an orange. Cut the orange in half.

Combine the sugar and water in the saucepan and bring to a boil. Allow to cook down about 1/4. Add the cranberries, orange zest, and spices. Bring back to the boil and then turn down to medium heat. Cook gently until the berries burst. With the slotted spoon, lift the berries out of the syrup and place in a dish. Pick out and discard the cinnamon stick and the orange zest (actually, this makes a candied orange zest that can be eaten or chopped finely and served over the berries or over ice cream).

Remove the seeds from the orange and squeeze the juice into the remaining syrup. Reduce (boil down) the syrup by about 1/3 to 1/2. Pour this over the berries. Cover and chill.

Real brown gravy

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Okay, I’m going to tell you how to make the real stuff: turkey gravy the way my great-grandmother used to make it. It was brown, it was intoxicating, and it was delicious.

Back in the Cretaceous, we didn’t worry about things like fat. Calories were known but not a focus of obsession. As a consequence, food tasted pretty darned good. Gravy, in particular, was very good, indeed. Here’s the trick…or rather, the series of tricks:

Reserve the turkey neck and giblets. At the time you’re preparing the turkey for roasting, put the neck and innards in a small pan with a coarsely cut up onion—no need to peel the onion. Just hack it apart and toss it in there. Add water to cover these ingredients. Pour in a little white wine or sherry, if you have some around. Bring just to a boil and then turn to a low simmer.

While the turkey’s cooking, let the turkey parts and onion simmer slowly. Add a little water or wine if the liquid reduces by as much as half. If it seems to be wanting to reduce too much, turn off the heat after two or three hours.

About the time the turkey is ready to come out of the oven, pour the broth through a strainer into a bowl to strain out the turkey meat, bones, and used-up onion. Set aside.

Lift the turkey out of the roasting pan and set it on a carving platter to rest. While someone else is fiddling with the other fixings, inspect the pan drippings. One of these two possibilities will present itself:

1. The drippings may consist mostly of fat; or
2. The drippings may contain a lot of liquid.

If the drippings are mostly liquids, take a big cooking spoon or the baster and skim off a fair amount of the fat floating on the top. Discard this fat (not down the drain in the kitchen sink!). Pour about a half-cup of white wine, sherry, or cool water in a mug or measuring cup and add one or two tablespoons of flour. Beat this up nicely with a fork to get rid of any lumps.

Place the roasting pan over one or two burners on the stove and turn up the heat. Remember to use a hot pad when handling this pan, since it will already be hot as a bygod and you’re about to make it even hotter. Bring the drippings to a fast boil. Add the floured liquid and mix briskly with the fork or a wire whip. The liquid should start to thicken shortly. Add the strained turkey broth as the liquid is thickening. Continue to cook at a fast clip, reducing the liquid substantially—the idea is to concentrate the liquid and all the flavors you’re mixing together. If you can reduce it by about half without leaving too little gravy to go around, do that.

If, on the other hand, the drippings are mostly fat, you’re in luck. This makes a far more delicious and richer brown gravy, IMHO. With your spoon or baster, skim off all but about two tablespoons of the fat. Don’t waste any delicious other liquids in the bottom of the pan. Place the pan over one or two stove burners and turn to medium high. Sprinkle one or two tablespoons of flour over the drippings and stir briskly with a wire whip or wooden spatula. As the flour starts to brown, carefully add the turkey broth. Stir smartly to combine all ingredients, scrape up all the drippings, and avoid lumping. Allow the gravy to reduce a bit—at the very least, it should simmer along for five or ten minutes to mellow the raw flavor of the flour.

Personally, I’m fond of adding a dollop of red wine to this second type of gravy. Be sure the gravy is deep brown, though…otherwise, you can end up with purple gravy. If you have any doubts, use white wine or sherry instead. Or nothing: it’s not really necessary.

To give either of these gravies a little extra polish, add some chopped parsley just before serving.

If you have brined the turkey…don’t even think of trying either of these recipes. Brined turkey exudes salty pan drippings. Way salty. If brining is your preferred approach to making flavorless mass-produced turkeys taste like something, use canned gravy instead; add a little wine to zing it up.

And if your opinion of commercially raised turkey is the same as mine, you’ll be pleased to know that this recipe works just fine with any other holiday roast: a nice standing rib roast, for example, or a leg of lamb. Substitute a combination of wine and canned beef bouillon, beef broth, or chicken broth for the turkey broth.

Fast & easy one-dish meal…

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…in which The Human nabs some of Little Dog’s food and turns it into dinner.

Don’t panic! As some of you know, dog food around here is really human food. We’re still working on the mound of hamburger we got for $1.72 a pound when the Human had an on-sale roast ground at the butcher counter.

Half starved (having consumed one piece of cheese and a handful of blueberries all day long), I didn’t want to wait while food defrosted and the charcoal caught and on & on.

Little Dog needed some rice, she having consumed the leftover potatoes from two nights ago. And some meat: defrosted burger was waiting to be cooked. Since I had to cook the beef and the rice anyway, here’s what I came up with by way of a fine dinner shortcut:

dcp_22021You need:
-As much hamburger as needed for the number of humans on hand
-Ditto, cooked rice or macaroni or potatoes
-A couple cloves of garlic, chopped
-A handful of fresh spinach, chard, or any other stir-fryable or frozen vegetable
-A couple of green onions, chopped
-A tomato or two, cut up
-A small handful of pecans or walnuts
-Some honey
-A little olive oil
-Cinnamon
-Salt and pepper

My hamburger was already cooked, because you can’t feed a dog garlic and onions. Bad garlic, bad onions! But if I were going to fix this for humans only, here’s how I’d combine the ingredients above:

Skim the bottom of a frying pan with a little olive oil. Over medium heat, cook the garlic and the nuts briefly—don’t let the garlic scorch. Turn up the heat a bit and add the meat. Stir until the meat cooks through. While the meat is cooking, add a little honey (oh, a tablespoon or so), a bit of cinnamon (turn the grinder a few times, or use about 1/8 to 1/4 tsp.), and salt & pepper to taste. When the meat is cooked, add the spinach and green onion and stir around till the leaf vegetable is appropriately limp. Then add the tomato. Toss gently to heat through.

Serve this slumgullion over rice, noodles, macaroni, or potatoes. Very good. Very fast.


Cheap Eats: Albondigas soup

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At Small Notebook, Rachel posts a beautiful recipe for New England clam chowder and asks readers for other soup recipes.

Here’s one for a Mexican-style meatball soup, which came from my old journalist friend Larry Cheek, a restaurant critic and wonderful cook.

1 pound very lean ground beef
1 raw egg
1/2 pound chorizo (optional)
one small hot chili pepper, minced (use rubber or latex gloves while handling chili peppers, especially if you wear contact lenses—don’t rub your face or touch contacts after handling chilis)
About 1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
Small handful of cilantro, chopped (about 1/4 to 1/2 bunch)
At least a quart of chicken broth (more, if desired)
About 1/2 glass pale beer
Olive oil
A few corn tortillas, preferably somewhat stale

Time: About 35 minutes.

Cut the tortillas into wedges. Set aside.

Combine the beef, egg, chorizo, chili pepper, chili powder, garlic, and about 1/2 the cilantro in a bowl. Mix well. Roll chunks of this mixture into meat balls, about the size of a golf ball.

Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven or small stock pot. Toss the meatballs into the hot oil and brown, using a large spoon to roll them gently until browned on all sides. When the meat balls are well browned, gently pour the chicken broth into the pot. Add some beer. Simmer the soup over low heat for about 20 minutes.

At the last minute, add the rest of the cilantro and the tortilla wedges to the hot soup and serve it up.

Cheap Eats: White bean salad

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Looks like I’m soon to be eating beans again. So I’ve been rummaging in the cookbook in search of old favorite ways to fix them. Here’s one I found in Sunset Magazine back in the days when it was really a superb resource for food and household projects. It’s very old, but very good:

White Bean Salad

  • 1 pound dried white beans
  • 2 Tbsp white vinegar (I use white wine vinegar)
  • 1 Tbsp Dijon-style mustard
  • 4 drops Tabasco (I’ve used those Korean dried pepper flakes)
  • 1/3 cup salad oil (I use olive oil or a combination of olive & some other vegetable oil)
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • about 2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil or 2 tsp dried basil
  • about 1 1/2 tsp chopped mint leaves
  • about 3 Tbsp each chopped parsley and green onion
  • minced garlic clove
  • a couple of handsful of cherry tomatoes, halved

Cook the beans: First wash them in a colander, picking them over for any that look spoiled and for any small stones. They seem to taste best if you use the long method:

The night before, put the beans in a Dutch oven and cover generously with cold water. Soak overnight. In the morning, drain beans into a colander and rinse. Return to pan and cover generously with water. Bring to a simmer or slow boil and then turn the heat to “low.” Cook until they’re tender. Time depends on how old the beans are—anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, I’d say. Test by picking up a bean or two with a spoon or fork and blowing on it. If your breath splits the skin, it’s probably done. Taste to be sure…it should be on the soft side of al dente.

If you forget the previous evening, here’s the short method of cooking dried beans:

Cover the beans in a Dutch oven with cold water. Place over high heat. Bring to a full, rolling boil and count to one minute. Immediately remove the pan from the heat and let the beans set for one hour. Drain and rinse. Return beans to pan and cover with fresh water. Bring the heat to a simmer or slow boil and then cook until tender over low heat.

Make the salad:

Mix the vinegar with the mustard. Using a wire whip, whisk in the oil a few drops at a time to make a fairly thickish sauce. Mix this and all the ingredients except tomatoes with the warm beans. Stir gently but well. Chill thoroughly—at least four hours, but overnight is fine.

Shortly before serving, add the cherry tomatoes, halved. Garnish with a few sprigs of mint, if available.

This bean salad is good on its own—makes great snacking food to keep in the fridge—and splendid when served with good grilled sausages.

Some vacation…

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I took off the four days of use-it-or-lose it time I’d accrued on top of the 267 hours of time My Beloved Employer has to pay me for if I get laid off. Tomorrow is the last of those four days.

With vacations like this, we don’t need salt mines. When I wasn’t sweltering with figures trying to calculate how (if) I can get by without a job, frantically conferring with my financial advisor,and negotiating with potential Copyeditor’s Desk clients, I was filling out job applications or throwing myself around the yard trying to catch up with several months’ worth of neglected gardening chores. Today I tackled the front courtyard: hauled three jammed wheelbarrowsful of plant trimmings and debris out to the garbage can. The other day I hauled two of the same out of the backyard. There’s still a lot to do—more pruning, more cleanup, more hauling. Today I worked until I couldn’t stand up anymore and then collapsed on the sofa and fell asleep.

There’s a phenomenal amount of work around this place that Gerardo doesn’t do, for the grandiose $75 a month I pay him. Grr! I asked him to trim the Texas sage in front. He nipped off about three twigs, far as I can tell. I cut it down two or three feet—quite a trick to do that without turning the thing into a futbol. I like my desert plants to look like desert plants, not like sculptures of soccer balls, but that doesn’t mean I want them to run amok.

Day before yesterday (was it that long ago?) I shoveled the last of the moribund flowers out of the poolside flowerbed, spaded the compost from the bin into the soil, and chuffed the bin full again with new plant debris. Having decided I’d better have some food growing if I was about to be out of a job, instead of flowers I planted beets, chard, carrots, red scallions, and bush peas. And one hopeful tomato, not likely to produce before the frost—but nothing ventured: it was only a couple bucks. One of last spring’s tomato plants survived the summer (a rarity!) and is blooming, so it may produce before winter nips it back.

The package of bush peas held many more dried peas than I had room to plant. Then the light dawned: around the base of the queen palm! Of course! It gets watered by the bubbler that overflows onto the queen palm from the Meyer lemon, and the palm’s trunk is a natural trellis (tho’ supposedly trellissing is optional for these plants). This meant I had to dig up the desert landscaping to plant the peas, which I really didn’t want to do. So I troweled little “cups” into the crushed granite, cut open the fabric ground covering underneath, planted the each seed in the dirt, and then packed the cup with a mix of dirt and potting soil. This was a chore: those guys who landscaped the backyard dumped four or five inches of Madison Gold Minus Three out there. Digging it up is not a joke. The result looks pretty ugly, but the plants should cover it up, and after they’re spentit should be easy enough to shovel the gravel back in place.

I also filled a big pot with soil and planted a bunch of the peas in there. Pruned roses, cut back some other plants, fertilized and watered roses, dug the dead clover and dichondra out from between the flagstones. What killed that stuff? Gerardo thinks it didn’t get watered, and I will say: it was dry. But it’s been thriving all summer—just suddenly keeled over. Pearl mites?

The watering system doesn’t seem to be working. A couple of sections are nonfunctional. So…why are my water bills through the roof? I suspect there’s a leak somewhere.

Coping with that is more than I can deal with just now, and so I think I’ll probably shut it down and drag hoses. Argh.

Cleaned the hummingbird feeders, made new hummer food, reloaded and rehung the feeders.

Backwashed the pool, refilled the filter with diatomaceous earth, treated the water. It needs a chlorine shock treatment, which I will administer once it’s REALLY too cold to swim. We’re right at the verge of that: this afternoon it was mighty crisp, but it still felt soooo good after spending four or five hours sweating in the sun.

Today trimmed part of the desert willow (didn’t do it much good; had to get the saw out to cut one limb) and the Texas ebony. Invented a system for tying the bougainvillea to the block wall without drilling into the wall and without gluing hooks to the wall. Pruned the bougainvillea and tied it up. Pruned the Texas sage. Cut my foot open on a cactus; bandaged foot, dug out spines; drove one spine in too deep to get it out. Trimmed back the palo brea and the vitex. Hauled heavy metal chairs back and forth. Moved the rustic (read “rusty”) iron crucifix from behind the boug and figured out how to hang it on a different wall without having to drill another hole. Dug the dead grass and weeds out from between the flagstones. Took the scissors and trimmed down the overgrown, leggy, dried-out Mexican primroses. Jammed two communal garbage barrels full of trimmings and plant debris. Left an incredible mess on the ground to shop-vac up after resting. Repaired the pool cleaner & got it running again.

And now I need to get up and finish the job. But first must dig the out the thorn, which hurts.

Ain’t homeownership grand?
EveningUpdate
Fed dog; dog evidently not annoyed by spinach (human having run out of preferred veggies), which she normally picks out and daintily sets on the floor: food dish emptied and chased around the kitchen floor. Dug cactus spine out of foot, accompanied by some profanity. Dragged shop-vac to front courtyard to inhale up leaves, compost, and dirt. Cleaned out four clogs, left courtyard looking about 110% better. Paused to feel smug. Dumped plant debris, compost, & dirt into compost bin. Cleaned out shop-vac; washed filter (did you know you can actually rinse out one of those expensive paper filters that come with shop-vacs? yesh!). Put shop-vac away.
Fired up BBQ; cooked a couple hamburg patties and some freezer-burned mystery meat for dog; cod filet for human. Incredible dinner: how did this happen?
Accidental Wonderful Dinner
You need:

§Charcoal grill
§Charcoal
§Hardwood chops (hickory chips were on hand)
§Filet of firm-fleshed fish such as cod or salmon
§1 cup rice (I used converted; you could use regular white or brown rice but try to avoid instant rice…ick!)
§Olive oil
§21/2 cups water or broth; a little wine or sherry optional
§Chives or other herbs
§Asparagus
§Tarragon or other herb, to taste
§Small blob of butter or splash of olive oil
§Tinfoil
§Your favorite way to light coals
§Fresh lime or lemon
Step 1: Start the charcoal. Set the hardwood chips to soak in cold water.
Step 2: While the charcoal is firing up, pour a little olive oil in the bottom of a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add a cup of rice. Let this turn golden brown; stir now and again. Pay attention: once the browning starts, it can move right along. When the rice is evenly brown throughout, add2 1/2 cups of some sort of liquid. Since I was sharing this with the dog and I had no chicken or beef broth, I used water only. If no canine roommates are in the offing, mix and match to your taste. Sherry is a nice blandishment; so is white wine. Combine about 1/2 cup of either with broth or water. Whatever: add to the rice when the rice is browned, turn the heat down to medium-low, and set the timer for about 25 minutes if you’re using converted or about 35 or 40 minutes if you’re using regular white or brown rice.
Step 3: Wash and trim the asparagus. Set it on a sheet of tinfoil. Add a small blob of butter or a splash of olive oil; top with pinch of tarragon or any other herb that suits your fancy. Wrap tightly in tinfoil.
Step 4: Check on charcoal. Pour yourself a glass of wine or beer. Supervise in a desultory way until the charcoal is ready to use. At that point, place charcoal in grill (if it’s not already there; I use a chimney, so have to dump charcoal into the BBQ when it’s covered with white ash). Drain water off wood chips and toss wood chips on top of charcoal. Place grill over delicious charcoal and wood chops.
Step 5: Place the tinfoil package of asparagus over the heat. Rub a little olive oil over the fish and put the fish over the heat. Close the cover.
Step 6: Continue drinking and supervising. Keep an eye on the rice: don’t let it burn dry. When you flip the fish over, also flip over the tinfoil package. Watch rice.
Rice, fish, and veggies should get done at about the same time. Test fish by gently pushing apart with a barbecue spatula. It should flake but not be dried out.
Step7: Retrieve fish and asparagus from grill. Serve on plates with rice and juicy cut lime or lemon. Add some chives to the rice, if available, or dried herbs and a little butter. Be prepared for dog, if available, to try to sponge dinner from humans.
Step 7: Eat. Enjoy.
And so to bed.