Much has been given

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us; and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips and shows itself in deeds.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

I'm grateful for a lot today. The readers and writers here online (I sometimes think of all of us as "friends-in-our-heads") are certainly part of that.  You  enrich my experience as well as increase my sense of community, all while teaching me many lessons. Some of them are even about gardening.

Wherever you are today, I hope your celebration (or even your choice not to celebrate) is everything you wish it to be.  May your dressing be savory, your pies sweet, and your company heartwarming.   Happy Thanksgiving!

Oooof, followed by The Pig, Again

I am finding myself gone all topsy-turvy in reacting to the looming presence of Thanksgiving tomorrow.

While I am deeply grateful for the chance to sit and eat a home cooked meal with all of my immediate family this year, I find I am also chafing at the wretched excess I found over the past weeks as I wandered the the food blog interweb.

The hype around this one meal has outdone the H1N1 virus in terms of reaching fever pitch. I am reacting to it as I would any holiday incarnation of a toddler caught mid-tantrum. I long for nothing more than the chance to gently lead my holiday back out of the public eye, calm it way the hell down, and reduce the histrionics until it is manageable and enjoyable again, for both our sakes.

That out of control sense is (cough!) probably coming from inside out, so rearranging my own attitude will be just what the doctor ordered.

With that in mind, I am heading into the kitchen with renewed determination to be more wabi-sabi as I put together the reasonably simple sides and desserts my family designated as "required".

The main course, the dressing and an appetizer will be the focus of attention for tomorrow's cooks, whoever ends up holding the spoon. My goal is to seek the opposite of perfection this go-round. I want to celebrate any and all imperfections and let them be Just Right.

So for the moment, while I head off to wrestle with my perfectionism demons, let me leave you with something of an Anti-Turkey post and rather share with you another recent foray into the realm of Porky Wonderfulness.

Without further ado? Ladies and Gentlemen, the Pig, Again....

Cochinita Pibil is a family favorite I was determined to reproduce at home.

The result of a citric braise with an achiote centric marinade, cochinita pibil is typically served with pickled onions and rice, often eaten simply folded into a heated tortilla. This simplified technique, using a shoulder roast of whatever size you wish, can yield enough for a small family (with great leftovers) or a small crowd. Your call.

Chef Son had assured me he could guide me through the easy technique, and once I located a source for Achiote that came with a recipe for the marinade right on the packet, he reviewed it and pronounced it as very close to the one he'd used in a restaurant setting. I gathered my ingredients and laid out a three day game plan.

Madrecita Achiote Marinade

4 tablespoons achiote (one small package)
2 cups orange juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground pepper
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground coriander
pinch oregano
(I added a pinch of cinnamon)
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt to taste

Marinate seafood, pork or chicken from 3 hours to overnight. (printable version here).

"Pibil" reportedly refers to a stone lined pit and "cochinita" is an entire baby pig, so calling this dish cochinita pibil is taking liberties, clearly. I suppose to be more accurate, we'd have to dub it Puerco a la Pibil or something like that, but a need for accuracy was off the table as long as we ended up with a delicious dinner in its place.

The Strategy:

Day one was to make the marinade according to the Madrecita packaging and let it sit overnight for the flavors to speed date, fall in love, and hastily marry.

Day two I cut a Niman 2-3 pound half pork bone in shoulder roast into four smaller chunks and placed it into the marinade for an overnight steeping.

The third day, I made a half recipe of the pickled onions, refrigerated them, then put the meat and the marinade into a dutch oven for a long slow cook at 325 degrees.

As advised by ChefSon, I put a bit of water into the pan to make sure the liquid level came 3/4 quarters of the way up the meat.After several hours in a low oven the meat was fork tender as required - all ready to go. I siphoned off as much of the fat as I could out of the pan, shredded the pork and spooned the defatted pan liquid on top. It can hold in a warm oven at that point until needed.
Pickled Onions, or Cebollas Curtidas


(Rick Bayless)
 Makes 7 cups
4 large (about 1 1/2 pounds) red onions, peeled and cut in half
2 cups fresh lime juice
Salt

Thinly slice the onions (this can be done using a food processor fitted with a thin slicing blade). Scoop the onions into a heat-proof, non-reactive bowl. Pour boiling water over them, wait 10 seconds, then pour the onions into a large strainer. Return the drained onions to the bowl, pour on the lime juice and stir in the 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Cover and place in the refrigerator until serving time. Before serving, taste and season with additional salt if you think necessary. (printable version here).

I didn't make a habañero salsa as is often featured as companion piece for this first go round as nobody at the table was much of a pepper head. I do have habañero peppers finally set on our plant out back, so when they ripen I will make another batch of the puerco pibil and add salsa as a table condiment. Alternately you could set out a bit of Sriracha or jar salsa for anybody that wanted to lively up their tacos.

The results were delicious and not at all tricky, though it did require juicing a small mountain of limes and oranges as part of the prep. If you have any recipes calling for piles of citrus peel, dig them out for sure. You will have peels in abundance after making the marinade for the meat and onions.

Also, Annato is quite a tenacious dye, especially when combined with rendered pork fat, so you will want to take a bit of care not to paint yourself or your counter with any of the pan juices. That tendency put this dish into the sartorial "No Whites!" category for me already populated by barbeque, Rotel dip, and anything with potentially drippy staining propensities. You may have better luck than I have historically experienced eating messy sauces without staining light colored clothing. I know my limits and while this dish doesn't need bibs, it does require attention. You've been warned....

The final moist and smoky slightly sweet pork was its own reward for the requisite sticky time with the juicer. I'm not sure Johnny Depp's Agent Sands character from Once Upon A Time in Mexico would have shot me over the results, but you never can tell. I sat facing the front door, just in case.

Once you hit the point of Turkey/Pumpkin Palate Fatigue, get yourself a pork shoulder roast and try some Cochinita Pibil as delightful antidote, won't you? ¡Adios, amigos! And, Happy (relaxed) Thanksgiving!

Cold Turkey

Sharing here that I have gone over 24 hours now without a piece of pie or any Thanksgiving leftovers in whatever form.

I won't pretend I have pie willpower. Those pies are long gone. Ancient History. No evidence of their existence past a teensy extra bulge in the elastic waists of my clothing.

My hands are starting to shake a little - that could be from the caffeine.

Alternately, it might be the prospect of our two chores for today.  Hauling down the tree from upstairs to set it up and getting the Christmas lights up on the outside of our house.Why rush from Thanksgiving right towards Christmas, you ask?

A) Is this really your business?, and 2) Because it is a fair amount of work and I want to enjoy it for at least a month, that's why.

Equally important to recall is that this year, for the first time in a very long time, we have a young cat with an untested tree reaction to factor in to our Christmas decor equation.

Decorated Christmas Tree plus New Extremely Frisky (read: potentially destructive) Cat equals....what? Many many possible answers might balance that equation.

DCT + ENFC = ???

Here's another way to think about it.

If a cat, we'll call her "Kitty B", traveling at the speed of blurring vision, propels herself towards a fully decorated Christmas Tree while a creaky human, we'll call her "Alarmed A" observes and lurches up from the couch to intervene at slightly less than the speed of drying paint, who will lose their footing and actually knock over the tree?  Or....

Kitty B + Angry A x Velocity of Slips/Slides ÷ DRT (distance remaining to tree) = ?what¢¶the™º*§?!!!

Be sure to show your work or you won't get credit even if you answer correctly!

We may discover that yes, sure, ooooops! That decorated tree does indeed look for all the world like a giant Kitty Toy.Or it may be spectacularly uninteresting to Bijou. My money is on that first option, but I will be tickled to be proven an alarmist.

My original point, and I am pretty sure I had one in there somewhere, was that I'd like to see how the cat reacts and then yet have enough time to retool and reload the tree as needed before LawSchoolGirl arrives later this month. She is of the "turn all the lights off and sit in the glow of the tree and admire" ilk, direct descent from her Momma there, and I am looking very much forward to our chance to sit and do that together, ad return to law school.

In that aspect, the preserving and representing the holiday traditions of the family? I am the Tenacious D. So. Shaking hands from excitement, terror, caffeine or turkey withdrawal notwithstanding, we have our work cut out for us today.As a reward I have that "here is your Thanksgiving Feast Again Three Days Later" dinner in my pocket for tonight. Yes, resting patiently in its plethora of plastic preservation permutations, the Heat It and Eat meal extraordinaire awaits!

I'll admit this. Thanksgiving:The DoOvers is one of my favorite meals of the year. It ranks just after that piece of pie for breakfast the morning after Turkey Day. You get all the deliciousness without the fatigue of it coming on the heels of the effort it took to put it all together.

All the deliciousness except for the pie that is. And Yay for that. The Siren Song of pie in the house is nearly impossible to resist. So we mostly don't.On to stringing lights and dragging down (too many!) boxes that are mostly holding in the Christmas Tree and her abundant decorations.

That is the last blast from me today - except to note that Christmas Trees have a lot in common with road maps. Once you get them fully unfolded, and in the tree's example, properly fluffed out? They never ever quiiiiiite fit back in where they started from, in my experience. Which may or may not fully explain all the crumple marks on my road maps and the years worth of tape around the tree box.Luego - es tiempo por las luces!

Two Lessons And a Grace for Thanksgiving This Year

I have been going back and forth about Thanksgiving this year. There is a lot of extra hoorah on food blogs lately and most of it is one of two extremes.

Extreme the First? Over the top Thanksgiving feasts.

Two or three entreés, eight sides, bread, two kinds of dressing, , salads, appetizers, four kinds of pie and several wines.

That sort of foray into what is more typically hotel buffet realm is fine if that is your style, but in this time of economic downturn it might strike some as a bit tone deaf unless you are actually needing to feed a small army.

Extreme the Second. Low calorie feasting. Oxymoron anybody? Crustless pies, fatless gravy (not technically gravy by the way), substitutions galore. The cook works just as hard but I suspect everybody enjoys it less. The spirit is not right on that end of the spectrum, either.

I am not suggesting you hang up your apron and eat Ramen. Nothing like that.

While we are certainly not Ramen haters, I think there is a middle ground. And as these things go, my kids helped me remember that this year.

Yesterday, when it came time to actually cook ahead for our feast today, there were two lessons I took to heart that reminded me: Feasting is not something to take for granted. Your heart needs to be in the right place as the very first ingredient.

First - and this was something both kids said to me in one way or another over the past couple of weeks - there are times when you do not mess around with people's comfort foods.There are lots of extremely fancy Thanksgiving feasts being pulled off around the country today but the meal our family, at least those of us in town, will share, won't rate as one of them.

We are having what we usually have, with just a couple of nods to the idea of cooking using local products, organic whenever possible, and sustainably raised.That means natural organic turkey, organic green beans - but in our otherwise regularly featured kicked up green bean casserole- organic yams but with the same sauce as we used to put on the canned ones, etc. etc..

The second lesson is that sometimes, even the most well intentioned Feast Thrower can get it wrong. In my case, this came in the form of a little reminder that while I can put together the requisite family feast for this day, there are still times when I need to be a Mommy First and a Feast Thrower second.

Your Mom is supposed to be the one who remembers who likes what in the family. Especially around a big deal meal such as Thanksgiving. It is Mommy who knows who likes light meat or dark, who can't stand beans even under layers of onion rings, and who likes which pie with or without whipped cream.

While under the influence of the Less is More Feasters I had decided to make only one pie this year. I went for pumpkin thinking you can't have Thanksgiving without it. Also, I know my LawStudentGirl really likes pecan pie and I figured I would make it for Christmas when she is home again.

However, I was reminded by my daughter that it is ChefSon, the (grown) child who will actually be present today at the table and grateful to have a meal cooked for him rather than the other way around, who truly love love loves pecan pie. He can't imagine a holiday without both pumpkin and pecan pie and if I was a halfway attentive Mommy I would have remembered that without having to be reminded.

Sigh.

Before anybody gets ready to have a tag with my name/address on it pinned to my clothing, I managed to get a pecan pie made anyway.I pulled out the Karo corn syrup (sorry there Michael Pollan - please avert your sensibilities!) and decided to combine two recipes. The first is the fairly reliable Bessie's Pecan Pie recipe from an November 1994 issue of Texas Monthly. Back then they featured recipes on their back pages. The other, supposedly a regular award winner at county fairs, is from a Texas pecan grower's website.

The recipes are nearly identical so I simply combined them and we will hope for the best. If this turns out to be an amazing amalgam of the two you will be the 5th, 6th and so on to know.I rested well last evening knowing I have a pecan pie ready and reasonable facsimiles of our family's version of Thanksgiving Comfort Foods on hand for today. The pecan pie looks good. It set up well, which is always the potential problem with pecan pie. Nothing more disappointing than a pecan pie-slide after the first cut, although they typically still taste delicious.

I will be back to report on the pie and share the final recipe with you after the holiday food stupor lifts. Meanwhile, I hope you will have a delightful feast with family and friends. If you are traveling, I hope you will do so safely and return back home without incident when the time comes for that.

And please, before you get to eating one or two or even three kinds of pie, do remember the reason for the feast and offer thanks in your own way. We all have something to be grateful for if we will tune our hearts to sing that song. That grateful heart is the best thing anybody can prepare for a feast no matter what your mindset is for the rest of the meal.

Grace

 

Thanks & blessings be

to the Sun & the Earth

for this bread & this wine,

this fruit, this meat, this salt,

this food;

thanks be & blessing to them

who prepare it, who serve it;

thanks & blessings to them

who share it

(& also the absent & the dead).

Thanks & Blessing to them who bring it

(may they not want),

to them who plant & tend it,

harvest & gather it

(may they not want);

thanks & blessing to them who work

& blessing to them who cannot;

may they not want - for their hunger

sours the wine & robs

the taste from the salt.

Thanks be for the sustenance & strength

for our dance & work of justice, of peace.

 

~ Rafael Jesus Gonzalez ~

Challenging (Thanksgiving Post #2)

Thanksgiving is not, for my family of fairly particular palates, the right time to go too far out on a limb. We like what we like. That does not mean, however, that we avoid trying some new tricks now and again.

I was re-elected main cook and bottle washer this year for our feast. My son the chef was coming off a string of 11 nonstop stints at the very exclusive Spa where he works. Among the challenges he routinely faces there are guests like a recent one, who asked him to prepare a different dessert for several evenings running that had to be both gluten and fruit free. I was happy to step back up to the counter and let him have a well deserved day off.

Mom in charge meant our usual menu was reinstated. After dozens of Thanksgivings, I have the timing for this meal down pat. I can shop and cook ahead leaving just enough to do on feast day for optimal results without risking being too tired to fully enjoy the results. My daughter graciously volunteered to help, which tweaked my timing a bit as I attempted to identify which dishes she'd like to get hands on experience with, and then synchronized preparing those with her availability.

Mid-morning on turkey day, there I was, waiting for my kids to arrive and my husband to get back home from making rounds at the hospital, and I was bored. I arranged and rearranged the room. I played around with the table set up, and chose the music I wanted to set the mood. As I triple checked that I hadn't actually forgotten some major essential component of our meal, I was restless, looking for something new and more creative to do. I decided to devise something of a challenge for my daughter with regards to the dressing she and I were going to make.

I downloaded and printed up recipes for making dressing from scratch, including one for "poultry seasoning", and waited for my daughter to arrive.

Then I proposed to her that we try something different this year than the admittedly reliably delicious option of going with Pepperidge Farm dressing prepared by the instructions on the back of the bag. I called it "A Gifted/Talented Challenge".When my daughter was in grade school, she was part of the G/T program. The Gifted/Talented kids had demonstrated they could read and parrot information, this program was devised to challenge them to use their intellects to move past parroting and into demonstrating mastery of various types of knowledge. To get them thinking creatively, outside the box, or bag.

So I put out the bag and I put out the basic ingredients for dressing and let her choose. "By the Bag" or the "G/T" challenge?

Demonstrating how incredibly smart she truly is, my daughter opted for a combination of the two.

I've shared how serious we are about wanting Thanksgiving foods to be "just so". My daughter knew that if the dressing we came up with from the basic ingredients and recipes I'd located was delicious but too differently so? She and I both would be fair game for a series of comparative compliments that might veer dangerously close to thinly veiled criticism.

So she put together some dressing from scratch, which she then prepared along with some of the bag components in the classic style. The combination dressing hit all the expected notes yet had a little something extra, which elevated it just enough to warrant the effort.

I am thankful for a LOT this year. All 4 of us together at the table for one. Two adult children who are not only capable, but actually creative in the kitchen, is another. Yet a third thing I am grateful for is a new recipe for a dinner "post-turkey day" that is so far removed taste-wise from roast poultry that it proved just the thing for our jaded palates. Stay tuned - that recipe will be posted next, because as we all know, good things come in threes......

Pirates in the Kitchen - Thanksgiving #1

Arrrrrrrrrrrr......

My favorite choir director consistently reminds us that we need to leave the "r"s alone when we sing. Arriving early and then holding on to those "R" sounds can transform any sacred anthem, no matter how spiritually intended, into something that more closely resembles a sea shanty. For those of you not so chorally inclined, think back to your REO Speedwagon days.The lead singer, Kevin Cronin, he used to rrrrrreally hang on to the "R"s. Turn on the way back machine and channel your mid-80s self. Bad perm, tight pants, that's it - now listen in your head - "can't fight this feeling any morrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre....". That's what I'm talking about.

So what does this have to do with food or Thanksgiving? What, you don't think I have a point for all this pirate talk? Oh ye of little faith.

Brined turkey!

Yeah, after spending an inordinate amount of time searching for a source of Poultry Giganticus that isn't the subject of a PETA cruelty investigation, I finally found a reasonable source (division of Cargill Meats) of fresh, uninjected turkey breasts, and at my regular local grocery store, no less.

I bought two split breasts, not quite Dolly Parton sized, each one coming in at around two pounds. They do come larger, but those DD cup turkeys are from birds that have been so genetically twinkered with they can't reproduce on their own. They taste about as much like real turkey as the test tubes they begin their lives in, so I opt for a more "normal" version.

I sought. I bought. I brined.


There are scads of recipes for brining out there. Some general guidelines are 1 cup salt and 1 cup sugar plus a source of some acidity plus aromatics. If you have time to leave the bird (or bird pieces) in the brine for several days which is optimal to allow the flavors to permeate and develop, then you can cut the salt back to 2/3 cup.

Caveats: Brining poultry is a salmonella stew waiting to happen so you must allow room in your refrigerator and give some thought to potential contamination control. Some swear by huge ziplock bags as a way to eliminate potential splash problems. Others start with a frozen bird in a bag in an ice cooler in the garage. They don't live in Central Texas however where the temperatures are just as likely to be in the mid-80s in the run up to Turkey Day as not. I opted for a stock pot with a nice snug lid, one large enough to have room between brine level and the top of the pot. I kept bleach type wipes handy and, I was careful not to slosh.

Another consideration is your pan juices from a well brined bird can be a little salty for gravy. I discovered that with more moist and flavorful meat on my plate, the gravy is no longer the star it once had to be. I made gravy without the pan drippings this year and nobody cared because everything else on the plate already tasted good. To me, that's the point. Savory moist food, not amazing gravy poured all over dried out meat and dressing.

Brining works, bottom line. I won't take time here for the chemistry, the blogger at Cooking for Engineers has done that already. Try it once and you will discover brining delivers meat that will roast without drying out or losing all it's flavor to the pan.

So there you have it. No need to walk the plank for dried out turkey any longer. The easiest solution for a wonderful turkey or turkey breast is just that. A solution. Brining. Arrrrrrrrrr. Aye!

Blog Imitates Life

We are rapidly coming up on one of my favorite holidays. Thanksgiving is, for me, centrally a sacramental meal. 

Despite varying levels of rookie nerves around what I've been asked (or worse - volunteered!) to cook for the meal, or puzzling how to multiply a recipe that feeds 4 comfortably into a quantity to satisfy 5 times that number, I always enjoy the idea of preparing food for family and friends.  

In my adult life I have experienced Thanksgiving meals in every convolution I'd ever imagined. Immediate family, extended family, "chosen family"; meals for two and meals including up to 30 others.  I've shown up with only my appetite, cooked the entire meal, prepared all but the turkey, and brought dishes to pot lucks.   

Some celebrations it is easier than others to remember not only what we are thankful for, but why we ought to stop and offer thanks.  There was one memorable Thanksgiving meal shared with my exhausted husband, then a surgical intern in the Air Force in San Antonio, Texas.  We celebrated that year in the nearly empty hospital cafeteria, seated across from a woman who had a swollen bandaged nose, and two black eyes.  Looking down at my meat, gravy and three ice cream scooped portions of sides, I realized with new intensity how lucky we were to be in there because my husband had work to do on other folks.  

Over the years our family has settled upon a preferred lineup for the holiday menu.  Experimentation is fabulous for some, but our merry little band features some significantly picky eaters. I learned early not to arbitrarily challenge my family's Thanksgiving expectations.  If I want to try something new, if possible I offer it in addition to the item it might replace, until we are comfortably assured of everybody's acceptance.   A new recipe would have to significantly improve upon a family favorite to warrant consideration for substitution. And I have learned the hard way "improve" is all in the eye - or the mouth - of the beholder.

One required recipe I can claim as my own is my version of Cranberry Relish.  Granted, my variation is only an inspired addition to the recipe on the bag, but I was the first person to think of it in my circle of friends and family, so I claim it as "mine".  I have yet to run across anybody else who has tried this at all, much less anybody who will claim to have been doing it for longer than I have.  

Ladies and gents - the very best whole berry relish you will ever wrap lips around consists of the recipe that comes on the bag along with - drum roll please - the addition of one large seeded, rough chopped jalapeño. I put 5 of the jalapeño seeds into mine which provides just the right amount of fire for the tenderest mouth amongst us.  The peppers vary some in heat from year to year but that formula has proven a fairly reliable path towards reproducible results.  

I add the chopped jalapeño along with the berries, and that's it.   I do like to mash the berries up a bit as they cook with the back of a spoon, although I don't strain the results.  

This sparkling combination of sweet and tart and hot (calling forward the title of this blog and of this post) elevates the sauce to a whole new level.  People who say they don't like cranberries have told me they like the sauce prepared this way. Try it this year in addition to your usual cranberry sauce, and see what you think.   

Who knows? Maybe you will have one more thing to be thankful for...