Bad Gravy

OK. It really was not that bad of a gravy. I had no stock. So when I over thickened, I added some wine. But did not let the gravy get hot enough to burn off the alcohol. A little strange.

Beets

beet it, originally uploaded by Darwin Bell.

As Mark Bittman says " I love beets." Usually, I just throw a a little butter on roasted beats. But tonight, I am going to try this.

A bit more adventuresome is a dressing of walnuts, garlic and fresh orange juice. Note that all of these have some bitterness or acidity, which counter the sweetness of beets beautifully. To tame the garlic, I cook it quickly, along with the walnuts; toasting always makes nuts nuttier. This makes the purée smoother tasting, as well.

Eat well, my friends.

What Is In Your Pantry?

Mark Bittman In the New York Times.

But if your goal is to cook and cook quickly, to get a satisfying and enjoyable variety of real food on the table as often as possible, a well-stocked pantry and fridge can sustain you. Replenished weekly or even less frequently, with an occasional stop for fresh vegetables, meat, fish and dairy, they are the core supply houses for the home cook.

While you’re stocking up, you might clear out a bit of the detritus that’s cluttering your shelves. Some of these things take up more space than they’re worth, while others are so much better in their real forms that the difference is laughable. Sadly, some remain in common usage even among good cooks. My point here is not to criminalize their use, but to point out how easily and successfully we can substitute for them, in every case with better results.

Sounds good to me.

What Do You Need

In your Kitchen? Not much according to Mark Bittman, a New York Times food columnist and cookbook writer. His kitchen in New York City is six feet by seven feet. Picture.

a young journalist called and asked what, after all, I considered essential in a modern kitchen?

“A stove, a sink, a refrigerator, some pots and pans, a knife and some serving spoons,” I answered. “All else is optional.”[...]
No calls came from chefs, either, or from fellow food writers. They, too, know that when it comes to kitchens, size and equipment don’t count nearly as much as devotion, passion, common sense and, of course, experience. To pretend otherwise — to spend tens of thousands of dollars or more on a kitchen before learning how to cook, as is sadly common — is to fall into the same kind of silly consumerism that leads people to believe that an expensive gym membership will get them into shape or the right bed will improve their sex life. As runners run and writers write, cooks cook, under pretty much any circumstance.

Time To Brine

The bird.

Heresy!

Chef is going to let out his inner heretic. Yes, this thanksgiving I am going to fight for the right not to stuff my turkey. Lindsey at Majikthise has a great list of tips for cooking a turkey. I like this one.

6. What I'm about to say sounds heretical, but stay with me: Don't cook the stuffing inside the turkey. Instead, fill the body cavity with a quartered raw onion, an quartered cored apple, half a lemon, and fresh herbs.

I would use lemon, half and orange, and fresh herbs. Also, I like to give my bird a subcutaneous rub.(Under the Skin) For my rub, I use butter, lemon zest, and garlic powder. If you do not brine your bird add salt to your rub.

If you have relatives that demand cranberry sauce from a can you can always fake them out by making your own and refrigerating it in a can so it has the classic shape. Depending on your recipe you may have to add some pectin to jelly it up.

Top Ten Cooking Mistakes

From Keith Law. Just so you know I love salt. But this is a good list.

1. Salt. The food police have everyone running scared of good old sodium chloride, but it’s incredibly important from a culinary perspective as a flavor in and of itself and as a flavor enhancer. Salt intensifies other flavors in every dish by hitting the fifth taste known as umami; without salt, most foods will taste bland, flat, or even stale. Salting foods early in the process allows you to use less salt in total because you can often infuse your foods with salt by dissolving salt in the cooking liquid. Pasta water should always be heavily salted, and the cooking liquids for small grains like rice, barley, or quinoa should also have salt. Seasoning the exterior of meats helps prepare the surface for the Maillard reaction that occurs during the application of direct heat on a grill or on a stovetop pan, producing that brown crust that, for me, is the #1 argument against vegetarianism. I prefer kosher salt for most applications because it doesn’t dissolve too quickly and is easily pinched due to the coarse grain size, but I use table salt for baking because kosher salt will not integrate evenly in most doughs and batters.

Read them all. Via Kottke