Smithy

I hope y'all had a nice Thanksgiving. Ours was typically quiet: we'll be with family for Christmas, we hope, but Thanksgiving has been on our own since we began spending our winters rambling. Yesterday was no different. One advantage to not doing Thanksgiving with others is that we aren't bound by the firm traditions. Turkey is okay, but we'd rather have prime rib. I have never liked pumpkin pie, and he isn't much of a dessert eater. Sweet potatoes aren't our bag, although they can be nice if simply roasted, perhaps served with butter - but none of that marshmallow junk, thankyouverymuch. So it goes. My first batch of sourdough bread, which was proofing during an earlier post, came out pretty well. It used the Sonoran wheat blend, and the sourdough starter is still my original starter from home. I'm glad I didn't pitch it. Could I tell a difference between this wheat blend and King Arthur white whole wheat? Well, no. I'll try the next loaf with commercial yeast to see if anything stands out. (I think I left the dough in the banneton too long. The surface was quite firm, as evidenced by the slashes.) The menu: scalloped corn, scalloped potatoes, green beans with bacon, prime rib with horseradish sauce, and the above-mentioned bread. The only stovetop dish was the green beans. The oven has a single rack and a small chamber. Consequently everything was done in stages - bread first, then the corn and potatoes (those two dishes could share a rack) and finally the prime rib. With the oven running at high temperature, the back of the range - where the oven vents - served as a good warming rack. The dishes were all kept covered until serving time. The bread is still in foil, behind everything else, in this picture. While the prime rib was cooking, I grated a small horseradish root and made sauce for the meat. I wrote more about it here. It's been a while since I tried making horseradish sauce. Are there any enthusiasts out there who'd care to share their methods? Dinner. This morning, all that remains is to re-squirrel away the baking dishes in their various hidey holes!

I found this topic yesterday while looking for advice on how to make horseradish sauce. The top entries in a general Google search all turn up recipes for horseradish sauce that all include prepared horseradish! I had young roots that a friend gave me from her garden. I peeled a root, grated it with a microplane, then began mixing. A bit of horseradish. A bit of white vinegar. Whoops! too much liquid! More horseradish. A touch of water to tame it down. Nope, that was a wrong thing to do. More horseradish. The final finish was to add a small amount of sugar (next time I'll try white wine vinegar) and salt to offset a bitter note, then a bit of sour cream and mayonnaise. It sounds a mess but came as close as I can remember to the horseradish sauce a favorite restaurant provides with its prime rib. I have 4 more roots for experimentation, not only for a meat sauce but for salad additions. I see some good ideas earlier in this topic. Is anyone else doing things with horseradish these days? What's your favorite preparation? Has anyone tried the leaves, as mentioned above? My gardener friend would be delighted to hear of such an idea.

@heidih, are you saying Orchard Supply is no more anywhere? 😞 I loved that chain.

Last night was our first campfire, and first campfire cooking. Hash. We're a bit out of practice, so the potatoes were a bit, er, crisp. No matter. It's my darling's comfort food, and the landscape was drenched with moonlight after the fire went out.

My mother gave me hers, but then missed it, so I found another in a thrift store, or on eBay - I don't remember - and surprised her with it. When she passed, my sister got that one. Since then I've bought at least 2 more when I found them: one for the trailer, at least one more for friends who admired mine.

I prefer the method @Chufi showed us in Pomegranates, the easy Nigella way. I haven't had much luck with the pith and seeds separating under water. I know it works for a lot of people, but I inevitably end up with bits of wet pith still stuck to those seeds. The Nigella / Chufi method is this: cut the pomegranate in half across its equator. Turn one half upside down over a bowl. Use a heavy spoon or other implement (I generally use the flat of my large chef's knife) and tap the sides of the fruit. Taptaptap. Turn the fruit and tap again. Keep at it, rotating the fruit. The tapping loosens the seeds from the pith, and the seeds will fall into the bowl. (This has an added benefit of letting you eventually see the interior structure of the fruit, since the pith stays more or less intact. Geeky, I know. ) Chufi's pictures are excellent, so I won't bother posting photos here about it. Besides, I don't have any pomegranates at the moment. I'll have to rectify that soon, I think. As for juicing them, I'm happy with my venerable Alcoa citrus squeezer for that. I suspect the juice isn't as clear as it would be from one of the commercial stand-type mashers, but it's worked for decades and two generations.

My domestic streak - most pronounced in cookery - developed when I was living alone. No need for sadness or apologies!

What a great idea. What crumpet recipe did you use, please?

(Cue Ella Fitzgerald, singing Cole Porter:) "Oh, give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above...Don't fence me in..." It's much more open and much less thorny here. I confess it's taking a while for my eyes to adjust to the relatively spare vegetation. We see evidence that there's been some rain since we were last here, but most of the trees and bushes are looking all too dry. No matter, our nearest neighbors are far away. I won't bore folks with repeated pictures of my sourdough starters. The North Woods starter is alive and well. The Tucson starter is still struggling. It has a more complex and tangy odor, so I hope it survives, but it didn't seem to like all the jostling that went with yesterday's drive. I have a batch of bread dough doing its first ferment, using bethesdabakers' test batch recipe. I used the Sonoran flour blend. It's clearly a mix of white and whole wheat flours, as seen in the left frame below. It pulled together quickly from a shaggy dough to a smooth, silky dough that passed the windowpane test easily. I may put it in the refrigerator to retard it until tomorrow; I haven't decided yet. It's intended for tomorrow's dinner, but with a small single-rack oven I've hit problems before with trying to time everything.

*bump* For a while I was making my own yogurt, then went off the idea and went back to my favorites: Chobani and/or Fage. Now, I have a new favorite: This is very thick yogurt, and not as tart as some. I was through the container before I realized/remembered that it was fat-free. It has the same rich mouthfeel as a full-fat yoghurt. I picked up one container as a test; I'll be looking for more. As a side note: I'm amused by the Yank fascination with Aussies. This yogurt is simply another example. In case you can't read it, here's the fine print on the back:

Please tell more about the little "stoves", @andiesenji. Did they run on Sterno? Were the intended simply to keep the coffee warm after brewing?

Please tell more about that canning project. I have generally frozen lemon, lime and occasionally minneola juice with mixed success. Never thought about canning any of it.

I'm very glad you're working to save that tree and use its abundance. Some of the older varieties of fruit - not just citrus - have fallen out of favor because they lack some commercial convenience or appeal - but they're much better than the stuff that's commercially available. OTOH some people are far more about convenience. My mother was staggered when one of her good friends, also a commercial orange-grower, admitted that she preferred buying orange juice (Minute Maid, at that!) because it was more convenient than walking out the door, picking the fruit and juicing it. My father solved the problem of "too much fruit from one tree" for my grandparents in an ingenious way when they moved to a smallish place in Fresno. He grafted several varieties of citrus onto a single tree: lemon, navel orange, valencia orange, satsuma mandarin orange, and I think grapefruit. They called it their "fruit salad" tree.

Norm, I'd take a chocolate pecan pie over a regular pecan pie any day, and yours looks beautiful!

Yeah, I just read (and posted) about that recall. No problems so far, but I know the CDC is saying to toss it anyway.

CDC takes aggressive and widespread action against new, widespread E. Coli outbreak: throw away any and all romaine lettuce. associated with any form of romaine lettuce, and says to throw it all away. and This strain of E. Coli is particularly virulent, and produces the Shiga toxin - which can cause kidney problems. Edit: As I was typing this, we passed a double-trailer truck packed with boxes of romaine, going to market. It's harvest season near Yuma. I can't imagine what this will do to the farmers' Thanksgivings. CDC says so far they don't know the source of the contamination.

After I read Shelby's answer of "about a cup of water" I started second-guessing myself. It may not be an inch worth, even for the 6-quaryt IP. Let us know what you come out with!

That sounds about right. In my 6-quart IP I use about an inch of water - it comes to just below the steamer insert bottom. In my 3-qt I" it's the same principle, but I can't tell you the depth of water.

I didn't think much of the Sonoran Desert when we first began visiting here. It's so densely vegetated with spiny plants as to seem impenetrable. Over the years of visiting, I've come to appreciate this desert. I respect the plants and wildlife. I appreciate the foodways of the indigenous Tohono O'odham, and - at this time of year, at least - the weather. I like the mix of old and new cuisines that mingle here, and I appreciate the local food culture that's booming here. I think it's ironic that Barbara Kingsolver used Tucson as the ultimate in nonsustainable, arificial food culture in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I wonder whether the town has changed so significantly since then, or we look at it from very different perspectives. I learn more every time I visit. Here's a flyer from one of the ASDM Food Partners that I visited during the Sonoran Harvest "Taste the Desert" festival. I'm glad to see that urban foraging and prevention of food waste are catching on in this country. Even though I like it here - a little more each time - it's time to move on. We'll be boondocking for the next few weeks: running a generator a couple of times a day, but otherwise cooking with gas. Pressure cooker or microwave, maybe. Slow cooker or sous vide, not a chance. I was very pleased with last week's sous vide chicken, though: the chicken legs and wings came out confit-tender. I got two small cups of excellent chicken jello, and we had a large salad with the meat.

Good morning! I'm feeling encouraged about the new starter. I fed both starters last night after posting. This is how they look this morning:

@kayb, where to start? In no particular order: More on the grape salad, please. More on the apple-cranberry-walnut crisp, please! Deviled eggs, cranberry salad, yes! I hadn't thought about a curry spread for leftover turkey, but it sounds great... and I'll be there Friday for the mimosas!

Oh, I'm demonstrably of the "if it's a good read, it's worthwhile" school of cookbooks. I'm just feeling a bit sheepish at the cookbooks I bought this summer and packed along for the winter that haven't been touched yet. Ya know, I wonder whether those ciolim/cholla buds would be good pickled? They suddenly remind me of oversized capers. If I discover that I've packed them along, I'll try it. (That may be a while. I still haven't unpacked the fresh spices I bought just before we left.)

The North Woods starter was begun per instructions in the conversation that began in Baking Bread from Scratch in France and continued into Establishing and Working with Homegrown Sourdough Starter. This Tucson strain I simply began from 50g all-purpose flour and 50g tap water; I refresh it by discarding half and refreshing with equal quantities of water and flour. As I look back on the original topic I see that the instructions for getting it going began with a thick paste, not specific quantities. I'd forgotten that. We'll see what happens!

In other news: I decided, somewhat belatedly, to establish a sourdough starter from Tucson and see whether it differs significantly from my North Woods starter. I haven't been baking much for the last year, and I've neglected my 5-year-old starter until it was a flaccid layer with black hooch on top. (I almost dumped it before we left home.) Yesterday I began feeding it and began a Tucson starter at the same time. Two feedings later, the North Woods starter is alive and well. The Tucson starter doesn't look like much yet, but it seems to be bubbling. This was taken about 8 hours after this morning's feeding.

I looked at "Eat Mesquite and More" today and thought about buying it, but decided I was kidding myself that I'd get much use from it given our normal locations. I'm glad to know you find it useful. I didn't know that about ocotillo flowers! Do tell more, please! Yeah, the chollas have wicked-good protection. The roads around here have such thorny vegetation on the verge that it's a bit intimidating for cycling, and we don't marvel that cowboys would need chaps. Nonetheless I've been exposed to cholla buds ("ciolim" by the natives) due to buying them dried at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I've tried them a few times and been unimpressed, but after the Sonoran Desert Harvest festival I'll try to find uses for the remainders. FauxPas, the poster shows almost exactly the steps that were described as one way of getting prickly pear juice. Thanks for that. It helps reinforce my memory of what Mrs. Allen, the demonstrator last night, told me.