Canning Season

It is full-fledged canning season at the farm so come on over to my other blog Farmwife at Midlife and visit me in my cottage canning kitchen. There are gently cooling breezes down from the knob and we can enjoy the porch again after a long heat wave and drought-like conditions here in south-central Kentucky.

I promise there will be more regular updates here at In the Pantry with pantry-related posts throughout the autumn and winter months ahead.

In the meantime, I'm filling our pantries and freezers from now until the colder weather. Getting a woodstove installed–oh how I miss a woodstove!–and we will soon be piling up many cords of seasoned wood from our farm on our back porch. Here in the very hot and dry South we will welcome Fall sooner than we did in the Northeast. And Fall rains will be welcome as will the cozier and cooler days ahead. I used to mourn the summer's passing in late August–now I embrace it like an old friend or my favorite shawl.

And oh how I still love to fill a pantry, our many freezers, and a wood box. There is something immensely gratifying about seeing your jars of the summer harvest lined up in rows on the shelf. It is a visual record of a day's work, of self-sustenance and good nourishment, too. The idea of living out of our own food stores, with our own animals and eggs, local produce from farmers we know, and avoiding the store? Priceless.

How to "Pie Up!" in the Pantry

From my vintage postcard collection.

Yesterday I cooked another large second turkey, just because it was at the bottom of the freezer. Time to "pantry up," as my friend Edie recently said (and "freezer up," too). Throughout the busy week ahead the juicy 25+ free ranger, from an Amish farm last winter, will be transformed into turkey salad, turkey soup, turkey pie, creamed turkey and sandwiches. [One reason is because I have an article deadline on December 1st and many book orders to process].

Today I'll be making turkey tetrazzini, with roasted beets and parsnips on the side and more rhubarb and pumpkin pies. We're having our Mennonite friends Melvin and Anna Hurst over for a Sunday supper of "leftovers" (well, not really, but that was the premise) later this afternoon and I'm looking forward to a nice leisurely "catch up" as I haven't seen either of them in a month. I'd even intended to host a "leftover" potluck for friends last night but it just never materialized.

As for food this Thanksgiving, back to our "simplicity" kick. I didn't make homemade cranberry sauce this year, or homemade rolls, or even cranberry nut bread. But the stuffing was arguably my best yet––from a recipe I came up with in college that I've been tweaking for the past 30 years. This year I added dried cherries and chopped pecans, as well as the Italian sausage, chopped apples and fresh cranberries that I have always included.

© Anne Taintor, Inc.

But we also had P I E! Homemade! By me! I say this so enthusiastically, and with great unabashed pride in my heart, because I've always had pie phobia–big time. The fillings are never the problem, it's the crust. Usually it is the one thing I ask guests to bring at Thanksgiving: dessert (and dessert at Thanksgiving usually equals pie). A few weeks ago my friend Rosemary back in New Hampshire sent me a pie dough recipe she had tweaked from Joanne Chang's Flour Bakery in Boston. It was the best pie dough, and easiest, I've made yet. If it sounds like there is a lot of butter, there is: but you're worth it (Rosemary also added a few more tablespoons to the original recipe). Rosemary, I should also add, was the frequent pie lady at our house (as well as my friend Linda, but I don't want to start a pie war between these two friends!).

Rhubarb pie awaits baking on Thanksgiving morning.

Rosemary's Second Amazing(ly Simple) Pie Dough

[Here is her first recipe: click here for blog archive!]

• 1 cup flour

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 10 Tbsps cold butter

• 1 egg yolk

• 2 Tbsps milk

Eli loves to help.

Put flour and salt into food processor, with blade (I used my plastic blade). Add cold butter, one tablespoon at a time, while pulsing. I combined the egg yolk and milk in a bowl and beat it quickly before adding to the flour-butter mixture in the food processor. Pulse all ingredients a few times until mixed and turn out onto floured board. Knead and flip several times and press with the back of your palm. (Rosemary said this is called "fraisaging" the dough–rhymes with "massage" and that's exactly what you are doing.) Then pat into a disk, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour. The chilling is absolutely essential for ease of roll and a resulting flaky crust. [I doubled this for a 2-crust dough and you can also freeze your disks of dough for another day.]

A perfect pie trifecta!

When sufficiently chilled, roll out dough disk on a floured board to the desired size. You will find, having chilled it, that it will roll very nicely and should feel all satiny to the touch. After it bakes, your pie will have the flakiest, melt-in-your mouth flavor and texture. I can't wait to try it with turkey pot pie later this week! As much as I like Rosemary's other pie recipe, I might just be a convert to this one.

Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie is akin to sacrilege.

Blackberries!

As I've posted in this blog before on numerous occasions, I love berries but especially blackberries. [Just do a blog search of my blog on "blackberries" in the column at left: yes, it's too hot and I'm too lazy to link them for you today!] Blackberries are the blueberries of the South and if you live in the Northeast or northern locations where blueberries prefer the acid soil and grow readily, you will know what I mean. Warm and juicy from the sun, not too sweet and a bit tart, all purply and plump, they are the perfect medium for so many things: fruit salad, peach-blackberry cobbler, jam, yogurt and even tossed onto French toast. Oh yes, and muffins: we've already made several batches of those, too.

An early trade card for Butter-Nut Bread, with gnomes!

Here is my easy recipe for French toast: it is the only breakfast I can get everyone to agree upon without a fuss. Of course, when you make it with your own farm-fresh eggs, maple syrup from a former neighbor in New Hampshire, and blackberries picked right from your own bushes, you can't go wrong. I have to say, however, that Butternut® White Bread, the equivalent of Wonder®, makes a fine vehicle for the egg batter. It is even better when you've left the bread out overnight or just barely soak it in the egg mixture. Otherwise, you will have French glop!

French Toast (serves four)

•  4 large eggs
•  3 cups milk (or combine cream, milk, Half-n-Half or whatever is on hand**)
•  1 teaspoon vanilla
•  1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
•  2-4 slices of white bread per person
•  butter for your skillet and for slathering
•  real maple syrup (accept no substitutes: otherwise you are drinking high fructose corn syrup! OK, so you could also use sorghum molasses, too, a favorite here on biscuits)

**just don't use skim milk

Mix all ingredients with an egg beater, except for bread. In the meantime, heat a generous tablespoon of butter in your skillet on medium high. Let sizzle. Have plates ready. Briefly, especially if bread is fresh, dip one piece at a time in the prepared egg batter (I can fry 3-4 pieces at once in my skillet) and take right out of the batter and place on skillet. Cook, briefly, on each side of bread until firm, browned and no liquid is showing.

Stack and serve with butter, maple syrup and a handful of your favorite berries or fruit. Also goes well with thick bacon or sausage patties.

We'll probably have this in our house on our first day back to school on Wednesday. Yes, the school year is here again, even though August is probably the hottest, most summer-like month in Kentucky. This was the fastest summer ever, even though the boys had three months off (but we get a lovely temperate May and all of June on the other end so we can't complain). Despite the heat here, we do enjoy this season on the farm and we plan to languish in our last days of summer vacation together.

On that note, I'm nursing a summer cold so I'm off for a nap and a good read--not necessarily in that order. For me, and with everyone in a routine again, the fall months will bring more structured time for writing and I'm looking forward to that. I may, if the fates allow, even have a real, live salaried writing-related job opportunity in the wings, too. I'll keep you posted. Either way, I'll keep blogging when I can. And I may as well nap while I still can, too!

Sunday Dinner

Ham awaits preparation at a Sunday dinner we had with our Shaker friends in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

"Sunday Dinner" by Dan Masterson, is a pleasant conjurer of so many things for me: family gatherings, good food, communion, fellowship. [I highly recommend the daily poem in your email via Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac."] We used to entertain a lot more in New Hampshire, sometimes to the level that the poem describes (remember that my pantries had stuff in them that needed to be used once in a while!). But what it reminds me of most is the family dinners we used to have at my grandparents' Ohio house where we gathered together with my grandparents at the helm (who were raised during the last gasps of Victorian formality), their two children (my dad and his sister), their two spouses (my uncle and mother) and we six grandchildren (all cousins and siblings). We didn't get together on Sundays in any formal way but about once a month we would gather for either a birthday or a holiday dinner, or some combination of the two. My grandmother, if anything, was a great matriarch that way. Now we are deceased or scattered across the lower-48, as so many families are today, rather helm-less at times.

In New Hampshire, on my grandparents' farm (on my mother's side of the family), my grandmother would frequently roast one of their chickens for Sunday dinner after church–or just because–and serve it with vegetables and new potatoes from the garden. We would drive over to Silver Ranch (now Kimball Farms) for homemade ice cream for dessert. While the farm was a less formal environment, it was just as filled with that family sense of gathering and purpose, of old and repeated stories, of new thoughts and ideas, or laughter and foot nudges under the table. The last family gathering we had there was at Thanksgiving in 2003 when my mother brought us altogether for the last time. Now it seems like a pleasant dream from another lifetime.

Thanksgiving dinner in New Hampshire.

The poem "Sunday Dinner," which really seems like more of a winter or autumn poem to me, is about the formal trappings of gathering and ritual, even though it does not mention a person in it. Family and fellowship is only implied. A reminder of the Victorian age when the sideboard was a kind of gastronomic altar of abundance and plenty, the poem also evokes a simple Sunday dinner, too. You could say that this poem is just about food, inanimate objects and their presentation. When I read it, I also think about who might have cooked the food, how it was presented, what was the feeling behind it, who may have served it, and who were those who gathered to eat it. I think of the communal nourishment that is the essential part of so many gatherings of family or friends.

In some way, every family has had a Sunday dinner on occasion. I want to strive to make it more of a routine again in our household and not just for holidays. I hope that I am a matriarch-in-training for my children, and perhaps grandchildren, one day. I do believe, from both observation and experience, that every family needs a loving but declarative, no-nonsense but objective, matriarch or patriarch (or both) at its helm to be successful as a unit. Otherwise we can feel rather adrift and rudderless. And because there is nothing like a mother ship in a weary world.

Sunday Dinner

Linen napkins, spotless from the wash starched
And ironed, smelling like altar cloths. Olives
And radishes wet in cut glass, a steaming gravy bowl
Attached to its platter, an iridescent pitcher cold
With milk, the cream stirred in moments before.

The serving fork, black bones at the handle, capped
In steel, tines sharp as hatpins. Stuffed celery,
Cut in bite-sized bits, tomato juice flecked
With pepper, the vinegar cruet full to the stopper
Catching light from the chandelier.

Once-a-week corduroyed plates with yellow trim,
A huge mound of potatoes mashed and swirled.
Buttered corn, side salads topped with sliced tomatoes,
A tall stack of bread, a quarter-pound of butter
Warmed by its side. And chicken, falling off the bone:
Crisp skin baked sweet with ten-minute bastings.

Homemade pies, chocolate mints and puddings,
Coffee and graceful glasses of water, chipped ice
Clinking the rims.

Cashews in a silver scoop, the centerpiece a milkglass
Compote with caved-in sides, laced and hung
With grapes, apples, and oranges for the taking.

~ Dan Masterson

[from All Things, Seen and Unseen. © University of Arkansas Press, 1997]

Berries!

Fresh local strawberries! Our season here in Kentucky lasts about three weeks in May.

I do know what you're probably thinking: didn't this woman just say she wasn't blogging for a while? Perhaps it is just crazy Summer Solstice energy fueling my peripatetic moods but, you see, I'm always open to suggestions, great ideas, and new ways of seeing the world. One of our readers here (Destiny, thank you!) has suggested that I just post a photo from time to time and not worry so much about writing. Brilliant! [Of course, I've probably already babbled on too much.]

So here's my plan: throughout the summer I'll post photos with captions, at the very least, and if I am able to write more, I'll do that, too. It works for me. [I have to say that I am so very pleased with Blogger's recent tweaks to ways of blogging, especially in the new ease of uploading, posting and editing photographs. They have come so far in the past five years in terms of self-design options.]

Organic black raspberries from the local Casey County Produce Auction have been frozen for muffins and for homemade black raspberry ice cream that I'm planning for a Father's Day cookout on Sunday.

My first attempts, ever, at making ice cream, and using our local strawberry finds! Last month I purchased a Sunbeam® ice cream maker for under $30 at Target in Lexington [now it is on sale for even less than I paid. It is electric and makes a gallon in about one hour. Loads of fun (but I didn't realize it would require loads of heavy cream to make it: yikes!)

Real Simple Suppers

Chicken-Broccoli Casserole a la Catherine (see below)

This blog post today is honor of Real Simple Magazine's 2009 Essay Contest–of course I entered it and remembered a few weeks ago that winners (first and runner-up) would be announced by phone and/or email "after January 3." The topic was "When Did You Realize You Were a Grownup?" (Mmm, now that I think about it, maybe I was not convincing enough–there are days that I still feel about 22 or 12, in my head, of course.) I spent a week crafting that essay back in early September, after hearing about it from my friend Edie, a Cupcake (the hardest part was reducing it to less than 1,500 words–is that a surprise?). I liked my essay, very much, but they got thousands of them and you never know what the editors are looking for in an essay contest. However, if you are a writer, or an aspiring one, I highly encourage entering any essay contest.

I rarely buy Real Simple because I find it really hard to slog through at times because it's far from simple in execution–it also bothers my ADD between having to surf over the huge amount of ads (even in this poor economy, so that is good for the prosperity–and popularity–of the magazine) and the brief snippets of information. [I had to also chuckle a few weeks ago while watching The Joy Behar Show. She was talking to the woman who did everything Oprah told her to do for a year, while blogging about it. Of course she also got a book deal! At the end of the conversation, Behar said, "A lot of these magazines...like Real Simple is the most complicated magazine I've ever read–it just gets you doing more things!" Exactly. Or to quote Fred Armison on Saturday Night Live impersonating Behar, "So what! Who cares?"]

And let's also point out here that the magazine title is not even grammatically correct: here is their defense of that in a response to a letter to the editor: "You are right to notice that Real Simple as our title is not grammatically correct. Although, we chose to emphasize the magazine's focus on the real and the simple, so we decided to go with the colloquial title over the strictly correct one." No sour grapes here, just some objective observations as it can be the gimmicky dumbing down in life which sometimes cloys.

Even though I can be a competitive person, I'm not a sore loser. The award went to Andrea Avery Decker of Phoenix, Arizona and she deserves congratulations for winning out of the thousands of essays submitted and I look forward to reading her essay. She will receive $3,000 for the publication of her essay ($2 a word is a good price in this magazine market, even though I was getting $1 a word twenty years ago) and a trip to New York City to meet the editors, see a Broadway show, and stay in a nice hotel.

To be honest, I was starting to obsess, how can I tell them that I don't want to fly? Or that I'd want to bring my 9-year old boy whose life goal at the moment is to go to the top of the Empire state building, even though his mother is terrified of heights? So I'm not terribly disappointed–who needs that kind of pressure? [But I had wanted to be the second essayist in my family to win an award and that kind of recognition. My grandmother Louise Truslow Grummon wrote "An Individual Struggles in the Age of Automation" in the early 1960s and won first prize and $5,000 with the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company! And my grandmother should have published more than the occasional magazine article, too. Her essay, is still relevant almost 50 years later and one day, when I can find it again (I am working on family archives this year), I'll reprint that essay here.]

In the meantime, here is an easy and tasty recipe we tried this month from Real Simple (I can't find the issue again but the recipe is also on-line–just click on the recipe title, below). And in their honor, I hereby christen this occasional "In the Pantry" segment: "Simple Suppers". I also follow it with my own recipe for a similar dish that I made last night. Both are good for a cold winter's night when you really want something warm and creamy but pseudo-healthy, too. You could also substitute whole wheat or other pasta for the shells or noodles–and go nuts with fresh herbs if you have them.

Cheesy Baked Shells and Broccoli from Real Simple

• 3/4 pound medium pasta shells
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsps flour
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (or other cheese or a combo)
• 1/8 tsp ground or grated nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1-16 ounce package frozen broccoli

1. Heat broiler.
2. Cook the pasta according to the package directions.
3. Meanwhile, heat the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, 4 to 5 minutes.
4. Add 1 1/2 cups of the cheese and stir until melted. Stir in the nutmeg, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1⁄4 teaspoon pepper.
5. Add the pasta and broccoli and toss to combine. Transfer to a broilerproof 8-inch square or another 1 1/2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle with the remaining 1⁄2 cup of cheese. Broil until golden, 3 to 4 minutes.

This recipe reminds me of the creamy noodly-ness of Stouffer's® Tuna Noodle Casserole that my mother sometimes liked to get–they also had a really good Scalloped Apple dish and Spinach Soufflé, which I've used to make the base of a very good Northern Italian pasta sauce.

Simple Chicken-Broccoli Casserole a La Catherine (this is an easier variation of this recipe)

• 1 shallot, minced
• 3 Tbsps garlic, minced
• a splash of olive oil and a bit of butter
  
• 4-5 chicken breasts (I used some pre-marinated ones we had in the freezer to use up)
• 1 18-oz can Progresso® Creamy Mushroom Soup Vegetable Classics (finally, canned soups with only a few ingredients and ones that you can read–and NO MSG! I find it fairly cheaply at my local Walmart and stock up on it for this reason)
  
• 1 head broccoli (or a bag of frozen broccoli florets)
  
• 8 handfuls of egg noodles (When I can't get homemade noodles from a local friends, I like to use Mrs. Miller's Old-Fashioned Extra Wide® which we get at Sunny Valley bulk foods)

TOPPING:

• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• 2 Tbsps melted butter

1. Set oven to 350 degrees. Boil water for pasta, add a bit of salt, and cook broccoli al dente in a steamer basket over the pasta if you are set up for that–or separately.
   
2. Sauté shallot and garlic in melted butter. [You might also want to add some sliced fresh mushrooms but I didn't have any.]
   
3. Add chicken chopped into chunks.
4. Cook chicken only a few minutes, gently tossing while stir-frying until almost done.
5. Add mushroom soup and salt and pepper. Set aside off burner.
6. Drain noodles and broccoli (make sure broccoli is still quite green) and toss in with the chicken mixture. (I sauteed and baked in the same pan–my Le Creuset Dutch oven.)
7. Top with topping that you've made by melting butter, tossing in bread crumbs and cheese.
8. Bake for about 30 minutes until bubbly–or broil, briefly, until bubbly.
9. Serves 5-6 people.

And now for a teaser: this Gooseberry Crumble with Vanilla Pouring Custard looks much better than it actually was, in my opinion (although my husband loved it and that speaks volumes–our boys wouldn't go near it, sadly, but they do love my casserole creations). I made it and baked it along with the casserole. The custard was passable but could have been thicker. The crumble was my own assemblage of ingredients but the gooseberries were a bit tart on the old pucker, despite the added sugar. We picked them last summer and I've been wanting to do something with them ever since (they freeze as easily as cranberries). But I need to tweak the recipe first, having never baked with gooseberries. Thanks to our own lovely eggs, the custard is really that yellow! I'll work on this for a future installment.

Entertaining 101: Have Lots of Hobbit Pantries

It is hard to imagine that after looking for pantry references in so many books when I was writing The Pantry several years ago, that I should have forgotten about Mr. Bilbo Baggins' pantries at his hobbit-hole in Bag End, Hobbiton. I read and loved The Hobbit when I was about twelve but I never got into J.R.R. Tolkein's other novels. There was something about the wee folk in the lovely English countryside that seemed familiar and less menacing to me then the greater adventures with scarier creatures in Middle Earth.

The hobbit-hole of Bilbo Baggins was a sizable hill and is introduced in the first chapter:

No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

Today on Facebook, a friend put up this quote: "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world," which one of the dwarfs says later on in The Hobbit in reference to Mr. Baggins. As someone who likes to eat, cook, sing and entertain, this sentiment rings true for me. And, I was reminded, again, of how pantries ("lots of these") were a part of Bilbo Baggins' home in the shire and how a full larder is a good thing to have when a wizard–and thirteen dwarfs–show up on your doorstep, unexpectedly, for tea (and tea in England can be more like an American supper). PHOTO–Our guests, which included mostly children, were appreciative and did not make any extra requests like the dwarfs who came to tea at Mr. Bilbo Baggins' hobbit-hole. And no, our humble hobbit-hole is not tilting–it almost looks like the crooks' hide-outs in the old television show, Batman!

Like myself, Hobbits tend to be reclusive little people, "inclined to be fat in the stomach...(with) good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it)." They also are about three and half feet tall and have full heads of curly hair. I expect I've heard a "fruity laugh," or uttered one once in a while, myself, although it has likely been a while. [Come to think of it, my dear husband reminds me of a taller, balding Bilbo!]

On Monday we had some friends over for lunch and I could somewhat relate to Bilbo's angst. However, unlike with Mr. Baggins, I knew I was expecting a lot of guests (sort of–we did have a "snow day" reschedule) and my anxieties tend to occur in advance: I fret about how the house looks, how the food will work, and oh so many things not tended to (and that in the end don't really matter). I used to entertain in New Hampshire quite often, for small groups of friends or dinner parties or around the holidays, but here I've gotten rather rusty and the old perfectionist streak creeps in again. It is so unnecessary, but there it is.

When Baggins invited the wizard Gandalf to tea he asked himself (and don't we always second-guess ourselves after sending out a party invitation? I know that I do! What was I possibly thinking!?):

"What on earth did I ask him to tea for!?" he said to himself, as he went to the pantry. He had only just had breakfast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright.

Then the dwarfs, whom Gandalf had invited, kept piling into Baggins' hobbit-hole, one after another. Baggins went "scuttling off" to "the pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed-cakes which he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel." They begin asking Baggins for more and more food.

+ + +

"And raspberry jam and apple-tart," said Bifur.

"And mince-pies and cheese," said Bofur.

"And pork-pie and salad," said Bombur.

"And more cakes, and ale, and coffee, if you don't mind," called the other dwarfs through the door.

"Put on a few eggs, there's a good fellow!" Gandalf called after him, as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries. "And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles!"

"Seems to know as much about the inside of my larders as I do myself!" thought Mr Baggins, who was feeling positively flummoxed, and was beginning to wonder whether a most wretched adventure had not come right into his house. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed.

"Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!" he said aloud. "Why don't they come and lend a hand?" Lo and behold! there stood Balin and Dwalin at the door of the kitchen, and Fili and Kili behind them, and before he could say knife they had whisked the trays and a couple of small tables into the parlour and set out everything afresh.

Gandalf sat at the head of the party with the thirteen dwarves all round: and Bilbo sat on a stool at the fireside, nibbling at a biscuit (his appetite was quite taken away), and trying to look as if this was all perfectly ordinary and not in the least an adventure. The dwarves ate and ate, and talked and talked, and time got on. At last they pushed their chairs back, and Bilbo made a move to collect the plates and glasses.

"I suppose you will all stay to supper?" he said in his politest unpressing tones.

"Of course!" said Thorin. "And after. We shan't get through the business till late, and we must have some music first. Now to clear up!"

Thereupon the twelve dwarves–not Thorin, he was too important, and stayed talking to Gandalf–jumped to their feet, and made tall piles of all the things. Off they went, not waiting for trays, balancing columns of plates, each with a bottle on the top, with one hand, while the hobbit ran after them almost squeaking with fright: "please be careful!" and "please, don't trouble! I can manage." But the dwarves only started to sing:

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
Blunt the knives and bend the forks!
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates?
Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
Cut the cloth and tread on the fat!
Pour the milk on the pantry floor!
Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!
Splash the wine on every door!
Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;
Pound them up with a thumping pole;
And when you've finished, if any are whole,
Send them down the hall to roll!
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!
So, carefully! carefully with the plates!

~ excerpted from The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkein:
Chapter 1. "The Unexpected Party"

+ + +

As a hostess I am terrible about two things: delegating any kind of task or letting people help me in the first place. I am awed that my Mennonite friends are able to do both with great ease and efficiency and aren't afraid to ask for help or to offer it, either. They think nothing of swooping into another woman's kitchen and pitching in–but somehow that is less a part of our own culture and more about their communal one where the kitchen is not only the center of the home but an extended living room, too, as well as work room. And everyone in their home–man, woman, child–has a specific role or is able to learn to do many things. There is something inviolate, at times, about coming into another woman's kitchen and over the years, with good friends, as welcome as we've felt in each other's homes, we just seem to respect this unwritten code of conduct.

Ironically (and I always enjoy good irony and symbolism), I wouldn't let anyone bring anything but one person who did not attend had a bouquet of flowers delivered and they arrived a half hour before the lunch. And frankly, I hadn't thought about a centerpiece so it was a kind and unexpected gesture and it graced the center of our table. One thing I love about entertaining, as in life, is to expect the unexpected in situations, and in others, and be glad of it–embrace it, even. Taking a good cue from the poet Emily Dickinson, I try to always "dwell in Possibility," from a poem that explains as much as I feel about heaven on Earth in a shared transcendentalist stance with the poet, as I seem to feel about entertaining and having visitors in my home:

I dwell in Possibility–
A fairer House than Prose–
Superior–for Doors–

Of Chambers as the Cedars–
Impregnable of Eye–
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky–

Of Visitors–the fairest–
For Occupation–This–
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise–

~ Poem #657, c. 1862, by Emily Dickinson

My husband knows to make himself scarce in the hours before a party, if not the day before. This week, one of our boys helped me to get the house ready in the morning and did some vacuuming and was a great sous chef for last minute things. Regardless of any advance mayhem, we always have fun once the gathering begins–and there's always plenty of food.

When one of the toddlers at the lunch opened our bedroom door, which is just off the living room, he made this discovery. I was able to say with a sweeping gesture, "See!? This is how we really live..." (But at least the bed was made!!) Around the corner from this bedroom, and fortunately only accessible from the bedroom, is my unkempt hobbit-hole of an office. (And no, I'm not proud of it...)

Unlike in Mr. Baggins' hobbit-hole we have no cellars here to hide stuff in. So here's my entertainment advice for what it's worth:

1. Unless you are planning a huge open house or garden party, you'll always have enough food no matter what you make or how many people are coming (and you can freeze leftovers). I've never had this fail.
   
2. Do your major cooking and "light cleaning" ahead of time.
3. When all else fails, pile every stray bit of clutter on your bed a few hours before company comes and shut the door!
   
4. (Plastic cups are also good for a crowd.)
   
5. (Nice days help when you have a lot of kids–so do games.)

The varied women of Cranford–a series of novels by Elizabeth Gaskell set in Victorian rural England and adapted in two sagas by the BBC–always seem ready for tea-time. But they are just as adept as brushing over any conflict with each other and value love and friendship above all. I am blessed to have made friends like this in my life.

Another parting "party tip": do your major vacuuming in the day(s) after the party and only a bit before hand–and let your children do the before hand "sweep" (if you are like me, you'll be less hard on them and happily have them do it while you tend to other things). You'll thank me–and unless you have some one who is doing a white-glove inspection of every nook and cranny in your hobbit-hole, no one will really notice...or care. And if they do, they probably won't want to come back any way.

Take it from Mr. Bilbo Baggins: it is always easier to entertain thirteen raucous, hungry, messy but grateful dwarfs–and a kind old wizard–than it is to please one imperious queen. Not that royalty ever visited the hobbit's shire, that Tolkein wrote about or that is in my memory, but a good hobbit must be prepared for anyone, at least, with his ample larders and seed-cakes. And, above all, dear readers, we must always allow the time in our day and in our homes for tea-time.

[I just discovered that The Hobbit will at last be made into a (two-part) movie: get ready for more Hobbit fever in the next few years.]

Simple Pot Roast

Pot roast is the ultimate comfort food–serve mashed potatoes or whipped parsnips along side of it, or hearty, buttered egg noodles. Gravy made from the reduced juices is also delicious. I made this for supper last night which was the perfect ending to a winter day.

Roast beef and pot roast are among two of many reasons I probably could never become a vegetarian, even if I wanted to for ethical reasons. OK, and steak and a good hamburger, and the occasional roast lamb, too. They are also two of the dishes that I feared making properly for years. Most of us have suffered through really tough pot roast in our lives and I've certainly made a few of those myself. But I learned through trial and error–and this really fabulous and easy recipe–that the secret to making both perfect roast beef or pot roast is similar: slow and low.


Look for boneless, pink cuts of meat with lots of good marbling–that's what you want for the most tender, fork-cut pot roast.

With pot roast it's a slightly different process because you want to first braise the meat on all sides in order to start the necessary break down of the connective tissues–those great grisly bits marbled into a cheaper cut of meat (which is ideal for pot roast–you don't want anything too lean). And yet, it is similar to roast beef, too, which I like to cook quite high for about 20 minutes to sear it and form a good crust before reducing the oven temperature. This essential braising is what eventually leads to tenderizing the meat with its slow-cooking in the oven. It is also what gives a "well done" (in the flavor and texture sense of the word) pot roast its melt-in-your mouth characteristic.


You can use almost any combination of vegetables and additions to cradle your pot roast while it's cooking, but here are the basics.

I rarely use a crock pot any more but you could probably make this in a crock pot–I just can't guarantee the outcome. I fear those, too, for most varieties of slow cooking because "crock pot" pot roasts are what created my anxiety about making them in the first place: after a day of stewing, even after the requisite braising and then in the cooker on low, they were tough and awful. Fortunately, you can replicate that slow-cooker process in your own oven with even better results.

My cooking dish of preference for most things is my Le Creuset® covered dish–the medium baker, which I think is a bit more than a gallon capacity. The nice thing about Le Creuset® cookware, which is now being widely imitated, is that it's baked enamel-over cast iron finish means that it is already seasoned–and it's also easier to clean. It's my favorite pot in the house and when lidded it works like a Dutch oven. A few years ago my husband got me a starter set for Christmas at Sur la Table and I use this particular piece practically every day and for all sorts of things. [I even got one for a friend and she calls it her "magic blue pot"–and it was Edie who taught me about braising. In fact, I used up some of her Bee's Wing Farm garlic, which was a welcome gift.]

So here is the recipe for "Simple Pot Roast," from my edition of American Classics by the editors of Cook's Illustrated. It has since been updated and I've made many recipes from this cookbook, and many from a few others in my collection that they published. What you can count on from their cookbooks, like their magazines (they also publish Cook's Country, to which I subscribe), is that you know they have tested the recipes–and tweaked them–dozens of times. They also write about their methodology, and sometimes the background of a recipe and its history, in further detail which is ideal for anyone who might want more information on what went into the end results. Or you can just cut right to the well-defined recipes. I don't always like a wordy cookbook and theirs can be short on photographs, but it's like following the detailed steps of a scientific experiment while also easy to make–as long as you first do what they say and embellish on your own later.

Simple Pot Roast from American Classics
[This is the basic recipe–in true form, only broken down into more steps. It also goes on for several pages of commentary and variations, which I did not include. I highly recommend this cookbook and others from Cook's Illustrated. Here is more information about the book.]

The editors recommend chuck-eye roast. I'm not sure what our cut was but I bought it two years ago at the co-op outside of Hanover, New Hampshire and it was another "bottom of the freezer" find. I'm convinced that with double-wrapping, meat can be frozen forever and taste just as good when it's thawed.

• 1 boneless chuck-eye roast (or any pot roast cut), about 3.5 pounds
• salt and ground pepper
• 2 Tbsps. vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped medium (I used a large one)
• 1 small carrot, chopped medium (I used a 1-lb bag of baby carrots and halved them)
• 1 small rib celery, chopped medium (I used half a bag of celery)
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced (I added more garlic)
• 2 tsps. sugar
• 1 cup canned low-sodium chicken broth (I used my own from the freezer)
  
• 1 cup canned low-sodium beef broth
• 1 sprig fresh thyme (I rarely have this on hand!)
• 1-1/2 cups water
• 1/4 dry red wine (I omitted this part because of time issues)

1. Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 300 degrees. Thoroughly pat the roast dry with paper towels; sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

2. Heat the oil in a large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (see Le Crueset®, above) over medium-high heat until shimmering but not smoking.

3. Brown the roast thoroughly on all sides, reducing the heat if the fat begins to smoke, 8-10 minutes.

4. Transfer the roast to a large plate; set aside. [The roast might look done in this photograph but it still has to be slow-cooked in the oven. We like Penfold's Shiraz with beef and lamb dishes. You can also add shallots with your onions, which I forgot to do.]


5. Reduce the heat to medium; add the onion, carrot and celery to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the garlic and sugar; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

6. Add the chicken and beef broths and thyme, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen the browned bits. Return the roast and any accumulated juices to the pot; add enough water to come halfway up the sides of the roast. Place a large piece of aluminum foil over the pot and cover tightly with a lid (this step is very important!); bring the liquid to a simmer over medium heat, then transfer the pot to the oven.

7. Cook, turning the roast every 30 minutes (I don't bother with this step), until fully tender and a meat fork or sharp knife easily slips in and out of the meat, about 3.5 to 4 hours.

NOTE: At this point you can take out the vegetables and cook down the juice and transform it into your own meat gravy (much better than just the reduced juice, I think). If you don't want to add the wine, drink it while waiting or preparing the dish. I also serve the root vegetable mass on the side as there are many good cooked carrots which are too good to toss.

8. Transfer the roast to a carving board; tent with foil to keep warm. Allow the liquid in the pot to settle about 5 minutes, then use a wide spoon to skim the fat off the surface; discard the thyme. Boil over high heat until reduced to about 1.5 cups, about 8 minutes. Add the wine and reduce again to 1.5 cups, about 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

9. Cut the meat into 1/2-inch-thick slices, or pull apart into large pieces; transfer the meat to a warmed serving platter and pour about 1/2 cup of the sauce over the meat. Serve, passing the remaining sauce separately.

Holiday Fare, Part Deux: Easy Bûche!

I have a huge magazine problem. I keep telling my husband it's "market research" as I do, from time to time, sell an article to a national magazine. [Sheer laziness keeps me from doing that more intently and nor do I have a lot of patience with non-responsive editors, even those I have worked with before. Blogging, while it doesn't pay the bills, can be just as gratifying.] But being a foodie and loving lifestyle imagery in that "jump in the pavement painting" Mary Poppins-y way–even though I know from experience how staged these photos can be, at least those rooms look magnificent and inviting for that magazine moment–I would buy them any way. I also have a huge "can't-seem to throw-the-magazines-away" problem, but that's a blog post for another day. So is finding the answer to the question of "why do you even buy food magazines when most recipes are on line today?" I suppose for the same reasons that I will never buy an Amazon Kindle® (and I stand true to what I wrote in that blog post at Cupcake Chronicles two years ago). But it's a rhetorical question in our household and fortunately my husband doesn't even realize this fact or he would likely complain about my hundreds of cookbooks and the magazines.

So here's what's fun about piles of magazines, especially during a quieter holiday week at home like this or on winter evenings or when your husband and kids keep flipping back and forth between The Three Stooges and Looney Tunes marathons on New Year's Eve and you are feigning "quality time" with your family. Occasionally I will sit in my comfy chair and go through them, clipping recipes or ideas (my good artist and writer friend Edie uses them for her collage art). Many magazines actually survive "my cut" unscathed or missing only a few pages and I hate to just toss them. I used to give them to friends or the "swap shop" at the town dump back in New Hampshire and this might be one reason I've let them pile up here these past two years. [Yes, I have no friends! Well, or at least sensible friends here who don't read a lot of magazines...]

Seriously, if anyone reading this in Kentucky would like my magazine cast-offs, let's meet for coffee and they're yours! I will gladly meet you somewhere: Lexington, Berea, Frankfort, Midway (I'm always looking for new restaurants, too). I'll also be traveling back to New England by way of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Woodstock, New York and possibly northeastern Ohio in mid-February with a big empty Honda Pilot. If there are a lot of you, let's use this as a reason to meet up in the New Year: there are plenty for all. Old copies of Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Victoria, Country Living, Country Home, Paula Deen, Old-House Interiors and the occasional O Magazine or MS Living in the mix, and oh so many random lifestyle and shelter pick-ups...I do keep all copies of King Arthur's Baking Sheet, Cook's Country, and Mother Earth News (and any magazine with an article of mine in it, of course). In sum, I do my darnedest to keep the foodie and shelter magazine trade flourishing.

When Gourmet suddenly went under this fall, I returned to Bon Appétit and might, I said might, even subscribe again. I can understand why Condé Nast kept that magazine over Gourmet (although there is so much about Gourmet that I enjoyed: Ruth Reichl's editorials, the essays about food from writers, Jan and Michael Stern's column on "Road Food") as the recipes are more user-friendly and there are great theme issues.


I could have bathed in this easy espresso cream, it was that delicious.

All of that was my usually lengthy preamble to a recipe from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appétit. I wanted to make a Bûche de Nöel this year but time, as always, was my enemy and it just looks, well, so needlessly involved (even though I, one day, will make meringue mushrooms). Also, when you have a friend who is an extraordinary baker, and could easily be, and has been, a professional, and who made the most magnificent bûche a few years back for your husband's birthday, the same one who makes amazing pies (Rosemary, sorry, I have to give you credit here), it's hard to imagine even coming close.

So when I saw this easy variation on those fabulous old "Famous Chocolate Wafer" icebox cakes–did your mother make those in the 60s with whipped cream?–I said, "She's gotta have it..." It was the perfect Christmas Day dessert which we brought to the Hursts for supper after Temple got his "Friendship quilt" (and yes, that will be my next blog post in the New Year: that marvelous quilt!). I would happily make it again for just about any occasion. [And kudos to King Arthur Flour Company for shipping out their espresso powder the very next day, along with some other ingredients, without my paying an additional surcharge. I used to get to their store and bakery several times a year when I lived in New Hampshire and now return from annual treks to New England with large sacks of their flours.]


Before I served this, the boys and I scattered fake candy "rocks" around it...and I forgot to bring some holly! But you could certainly make yours look more festive than in this picture!

Super-Quick Mocha Yule Log from Bon Appétit (December 2009)

Chocolate wafers. Coffee. Whipped cream. Does it get any better than this? [NOTE: I used chocolate wafers sold in bulk at our local Mennonite bulk foods store (for ice cream sandwiches). They were almost as good as Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers® but certainly more readily available. And no, I did not make the meringue mushrooms, either...next time!]

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar plus additional for garnish
• 1/4 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder [This would also be good in any chocolate cake.]
• 2 cups chilled heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 9-ounce package chocolate wafer cookies
• 8 purchased vanilla meringue cookies [I couldn't find any...]

1. Sift 1/2 cup powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and espresso powder into small bowl. Using electric mixer, beat cream and vanilla in large bowl until soft peaks form. Add cocoa mixture and beat until stiff peaks form.
2. Spread 1 side of 1 chocolate wafer with 1 rounded teaspoonful mocha cream; top with another wafer. Continue layering wafers and mocha cream for stack of 5 cookies. Place stack on its side on long platter. Repeat making stacks with remaining wafers and some of mocha cream; form log on platter by attaching stacks with mocha cream. Using offset spatula or rubber spatula, spread remaining mocha cream over outside of log to coat. Cover; chill at least 2 hours. Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled.
3. Place platter with yule log on work surface. Using fork, gently pull tines of fork along length of frosting on log to create design resembling tree bark. Sift powdered sugar over log to resemble snow. Arrange meringue cookies or Meringue Mushrooms (click for recipe) along sides of log. Cut log on diagonal into thick slices. Serve immediately.

Et voila! Bonne Année et bonne santé!

Holiday Fare: Roast Beef 101

A hearty plank of roast beef served with Yorkshire pudding, oven roasted potatoes, and creamed spinach–all holiday traditions in our combined families.

I have to really crow about our roast beast this year. First of all, it was recently excavated from the bottom of our chest freezer on the back porch. That alone is something to crow about. Allow me to recap the scene here about a week ago:

SCENE: A small doublewide kitchen on a ridge in Kentucky, a few days before Christmas.

Tired Old Wife: "Remember, hon, when we got that huge roast at Kroger's last year on sale and we cut it in half?"

Tired Old Husband: "Um, I think so." (reading the paper, feet propped up, sort of not really listening)

Tired Old Wife: "Well, I'm almost positive it's in that freezer somewhere..."

Tired Old Husband: "I take it that means you would like me to look for you?"

Tired Old Wife: "Yes, but only when you have a minute..."

Tired Old Husband: "You mean, like 'right now,' don't you?"

Tired Old Wife: "Well, yes, that would be nice...thank you so much. You know, before I forget...I would go myself, but you know I'd fall in if I start reaching into the very bottom, being of gnome stature and all..."

Tired Old Husband tromps out to back porch. Fusses because freezer is covered with Tired Old Wife's cookie doughs in various covered plastic containers and a bunch of items that won't fit in the kitchen refrigerator, and a box of apples in various states of decay. Rummaging and fussing can be heard for several minutes.

Tired Old Husband: "Found IT!"

The old couple examines the 12 pounds of solid, boneless Delmonico roast. The old label was still on it and they'd paid about $110 for 24 pounds (about $4.58 a pound for excellent meat–at half price), which saved then about $120 with the use of their Kroger® card (the original roast was well over $200). It was double-wrapped in foil and had been placed in a zippered freezer bag (one of those really large ones). After a year in the bottom of their chest freezer, dread overcame the Tired Old Wife.

Tired Old Wife (somewhat vexed): "Do you think it has freezer burn?"

Tired Old Husband (somewhat annoyed but aware that his wife is generally prone to needless fretting): "We'll see–There's no sense getting yourself all worked up about it...yet."

Tired Old Wife sets up coffee maker and pats roast thawing on the counter for good luck before turning on nightlight and heading to bed.

Loud applause as kitchen set goes dark.

+ + +

We were supposed to have had it on Christmas Eve, late in the evening "Le Réveillon-style," after our deliveries of baskets of food and banana bread. But we were exhausted from that and my sensible husband suggested we have it Christmas Day at noon instead (our traditional Christmas dinner is usually served around 5pm but we were going to the Hursts for singing and the quilt-giving so I thought, this year, we'd have a French Réveillon, but served well before midnight).

When it thawed and I looked it over, there was not one bit of freezer burn to be seen or felt and the meat was still a lovely fresh pink. Maybe it had somehow "dry aged" itself in the freezer or maybe it was our "Christmas miracle" of the season. Either way, you'd never have known it had been frozen for twelve months. Vive le boeuf!



About ten years ago, after years of struggle and occasional blind luck, I finally asked a restaurant chef how they always managed to get pink, juicy roast beef straight through. "First I braise and raise (the temperature) and then it's slow and low," he said. All you need, apart from a really good roast, is a reliable roasting pan and an even more reliable meat thermometer. Here is my recipe for succulent, juicy, fool-proof roast beef (that is, if you follow the directions!).

Christmas Roast Beef

1. Get the best cut of beef you can, ideally on sale: Delmonico is great but there are others. [Don't hesitate to ask the guys behind the meat department at your local box store, either. They love to be asked and will tell you all you want to know about meat and what the best cut is for the price you want to pay. Make sure it has some fat on it, but not too much. That marbling is what gives it the flavor.]
   
2. Put the fresh, or thawed, meat in the pan, fat side up, to come to room temperature, several hours before roasting.
3. Slather the meat all over with coarsely ground pepper, sea salt and fresh minced garlic and dried rosemary, if desired.
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees and place meat thermometer in the middle of the roast, piercing it towards the center. Put just a bit of water in the bottom of the pan, perhaps 1/2 inch.
   
5. Place roast in center of oven and cook roast at 450 degrees for 20 minutes (make sure you set your timer).
6. After 20 minutes at 450 degrees, turn oven down to 250 degrees (without opening oven).
7. Cook until meat thermometer registers "rare" for beef or 60 degrees Celsius (or 140 degrees Fahrenheit), about 2 hours.
8. Take beef out of oven, remove from pan to platter and put tin foil all over it. It will continue to cook slowly to "medium rare" while you make the gravy and/or Yorkshire pudding. [Transfer juice to another pan to make gravy if you plan on using roasting pan for Yorkshire pudding and return pan, with suet or lard in it (several tablespoons) to oven and turn up to 475 degrees, for 8 minutes**]
9. If there are those who want more "well done" pieces of beef, give them the ends or stick a piece or two back in the oven for a few minutes.
   

**For Yorkshire Pudding recipe: follow the recipe for "Uncle John's Popovers" but triple the ingredients, as found in this blog entry, but put batter in the roasting pan (instead of individual cups), after you've melted a bit of suet or lard in it first. PHOTO–The Yorkshire Pudding should be suitably puffy and egg-y, as it crawls up the sides of your roasting pan. Slightly crispy on the bottom, and somewhat glistening on the top is also good. But never, and I mean NEVER use bacon fat as I did this year: always always use suet or lard in the pan before pouring in the batter–butter if nothing else.

NOTE: This dinner would also be a great option for New Year's Day or Eve. We traditionally do a big brunch on New Year's Day after just sort of lolling around at home on New Year's Eve with various hot and cold appetizers.