kayb

Homemade ricotta gnocchi with Marcella Hazen's tomato butter sauce.

Put me squarely in the traditionalist camp for Thanksgiving. Brined, roasted turkey, cut-up apple and orange inside, olive oil, s&p outside. Cornbread dressing with giblet gravy. Sweet potato casserole (eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla) topped with a brown sugar-pecan crumble. Cranberry salad, a mainstay at every Thanksgiving and Christmas I can remember -- chopped cranberries, apples, oranges, pecans, in a jello syrup. (Don't be hating on the jello, here; you could actually make it with simple syrup, some stewed cranberries in it for color, and a little gelatin to sort of tie things together. Jello's easier and it's such a minor element you'd never know it was in there.)Another side or two; sometimes it's mashed potatos, sometimes corn pudding, sometimes roasted broccoli, sometimes glazed carrots and/or parsnips, sometimes green beans. I make a pumpkin pie for the pumpkin pie-lovers in the house, a coconut cake for me (fortunately it freezes well) and lemon icebox pie for a couple of the other kids who adore it.

I bought a can of San Marzano tomatos today at my local gourmet shop, as I plan to make Marcella Hazen' tomato butter sauce this weekend to go over homemade ricotta gnocchi. It's a 3-kilo can. Which looks an awful lot like a gallon of tomatos, or a little more than half what I need to make the sauce. I bought it because it was cheap -- $7 and change for the can, vs. doggoned near that much for 16-ounce jars -- and they didn't have any other selections. What's the best way to preserve these babies that I don't use, after the can is opened? Can one freeze, vacuum packed, the remainder? How long will it keep in Gladware in the fridge? If I can find a reasonable method of storing them for, say, as much as two weeks, ideally a month, I'll go back and get the other three or four 3-kilo cans they had at that price, which sounded quite reasonable to me. (I just looked, and they do NOT specify DOP. They also indicate they are "con basilico," which I didn't notice when I bought them. Will this compromise Marcella's sauce?) (Edited to closed parentheses.)

dcarch -- the brisket is absolutely mouthwatering. Gorgeous presentations, as always. scotty, love the whimsy of the "planted" veggies!

I have two friends who absolutely, positively, not-in-a-million-years-when-starving, will NOT eat seafood of any kind. In both cases, it was a piece of "bad" fish consumed as a child that turned them against it. I grew up in western Tennessee, far from any coast, but on Kentucky Lake, so catfish, bass, crappie and bream were staples for me as a child. I never knew shrimp came any way other than breaded, frozen, deep-fried until I went to the Gulf Coast for the first time in my early 20s, and after experiencing them boiled, steamed and grilled, almost never eat them fried any more. I love scallops, crab, lobster, clams, but can take or leave oysters. Sushi-grade tuna, either barely seared or completely raw, is probably the most sublime thing I have ever eaten. I don't care for squid or octopus, but I think that's a texture thing; my first experience was with calimari, probably not very good calamari, and I think I was traumatized by it. Oddly, the one fish I really don't care for is salmon. Unless it's smoked. Go figure.

Norm, that Chicken Parmesan is a thing of beauty. When I do it -- which hasn't been in a LONG time, something I must remedy -- I used a mix of bread crumbs and grated Parmigiano to coat the cutlets. Inquiring minds want to know: What's martini chicken?

I caramelize about five pounds of onions at a time in my slow-cooker -- slice, pile into the slow-cooker, throw in a stick of butter, sprinkle on a little kosher salt, turn it on low and ignore it for about 18 hours. Perfectly caramelized onions, every time. I portion them out in about one-cup portions and freeze in plastic bags. And then when it's time for French onion soup -- thaw out a bag of frozen beef stock, a bag of frozen caramelized onions, add the big crouton, and Presto!

That brioche photo makes me swoon.

Agreed. A recent meal, which I didn't photograph or blog about, was meat loaf, purple hulled peas, carrots, and mac and cheese. Other than the pasta, which was Barilla in a box from the supermarket, the cheddar (Wisconsin) and Velveeta (wherever they make Velveeta!), and the bread crumbs in the meat loaf, everything was from within 50 miles of where it went into my oven or onto my stove burners. And I thoroughly enjoyed it and I expect will have leftovers tonight.

And bump again....I'm in Dallas this weekend. A group of us have reservations at Al Biernat's. I wasn't famliar with it, googled, looked at the menu, and it looks fabulous. Comments? Suggestions? Reviews?

Wonderful, Scotty. I'd hate to have to follow you.

Thanks for the nice words on the baked Reubens, y'all (and, Kim, on my hands! I'm blushing! At least my manicure was fresh...) Newly-out-on-her-own daughter came by tonight, and took the leftovers with her -- lunches to carry to work all week. Now I have to come up with something to carry to work all week for lunch....

Intellectually, I agree with what Bittman says. I don't eat much fast food at all any more, other than the once-every-two-months-or-so stop at Sonic or Burger King for French toast sticks, my guilty pleasure. But I do periodically buy it for the teenaged boy I'm raising, who won't eat anything green, eats very little seafood, very little fruit, but would happily dine every day on chicken strips or burgers or mac and cheese or pizza. And yes, he's overweight. Unfortunately, I didn't acquire him until he was 15, so his eating habits were pretty well formed. I've just gotten through indexing the first year of recipes on my blog -- before this kid came to live with me. Looking back, I notice that I didn't cook every night -- but even my "snacky" nights were good, from-my-fridge or pantry, healthy (for the most part) snacks. I can't feed him like that. If I'm coming home exhausted from what is an increasingly stressful job, and I really have no appetite, I give in much more frequently than I should to the temptation to stop and pick him up something. Not a whine -- though, reading back, it certainly sounds like one -- but just a reflection that sometimes convenience is the best we can do, given the circumstances we face.

An over-easy egg, Petit Jean bacon, and a smashed potato with truffle oil and grated Parm.

Oh, man, Percyn ... that lobster roll! A thing of beauty. Heidih, I love that rye recipe. I always add caraway seed, because rye w/o caraway just doesn't seem right. This time, it's made with a half-cup of buckwheat flour and a half-cup of whole-wheat flour subbing for one of the cups of rye flour...as my bulk grains/flours store is closed on Saturday and Sunday, and the local supermarket, can you believe it, did NOT have rye flour! Clayton's recipe calls for making a sponge of two cups of rye flour and a cup of rye flakes, with two packages of yeast and two cups of hot tap water, and letting that ferment for two days. Over the same time period, you soak a cup of rye berries overnight in water, drain them, then cover them tightly and let them sit at room temp until you're ready to make the bread, so they'll start to sprout. Then you add another cup of rye flour (if you had it, that is!) and 3 1/2 cups of bread or a/p flour. For my money, you could leave out the rye berries; I can't see that they particularly add anything.I don't think I'll bother with them next time.

JNash, I've made potato cakes from cooked (generally leftover) potatos all my life. Not sure I see the point in baking them first; I always just fry mine, like croquettes. They're excellent with a little green onion added in. PaulPegg, the carrot soup sounds astounding and looks even better. I can just taste the carroty goodness. Today, I made baked Reubens, minus the sauerkraut, which I sauteed with apples and served on the side. The process starts with Triple Rye Bread from Bernard Clayton's New Book of Bread, and after its first rise, instead of shaping into two loaves, it gets rolled out about an inch thick on parchment. Spicy mustard is slathered down the center, and layered atop that are corned beef and baby Swiss. The sides are cut into diagonal strips, which are then wrapped over the top in a basketweave type pattern. Weaving completed. Egg wash.... And kosher salt. The finished product, oozing goodness.

Kim, as nearly as I can recall, the onion spread is: 8 oz cream cheese 4 oz goat cheese one great big onion some marjoram about 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese Dice and caramelize the onion; add it to the room-temp cream cheese and goat cheese, and blend it up with a potato masher. Stir in the marjoram. Put in a pie plate, and top with the parm; broil until golden brown. I had had one similar to it, and had no recipe, so I sort-of made it up as I went along.

percyn, of what does white breakfast pudding consist? It appears to be a sausage-type thing?

There's not a festival any more, to my knowledge (there was when I was in high school, a century or so ago), but you must add mid-October to early November, depending on the year and the weather, for "new sorghum" in the Tennessee River Valley of Western Tennessee and Kentucky. You can get "local" sorghum year-round, but "new" sorghum, with crackling cornbread, for the first two-three weeks after it's cut, cooked and canned, is just a spectacular taste that has no equal. I might add that, to be enjoyed correctly, it must be accompanied by slab bacon and home-canned tomatos. Heaven!

When I was a kid, my mother, grandmother and I "put up" all kinds of fruit and vegetables, as well as freezing and/or curing meat (beef, pork, game). We had about an acre and a half garden, and a big orchard, and the summer was filled with canning and freezing. Some things were always canned -- green beans, tomatos, purple hulled peas, pickles, jams, jellies. Others were always frozen -- corn, squash, okra (cut and dusted with cornmeal, salt and pepper frozen in a single layer on cookie sheets, then bagged after it was frozen). About all we bought at the grocery were staples -- flour, meal, coffee, sugar, etc. When I moved away to the "big city," Mama, convinced I would starve if left to the mercies of supermarkets and restaurants, kept me supplied with home-preserved and frozen food, until age caught up with her and my father and the family preserved food pace fell off. So this summer, my co-worker had this fig tree. She hates figs. She hates the mess they make on her driveway, and the wasps they draw. And I went over and picked figs. And for the first time in almost 40 years -- and the first time EVER by myself -- I canned fig preserves. Small figs, about ping-pong ball size. About three pounds' worth, draining in the colander after a good wash. Cooking, with sugar. They made plenty of their own liquid. Nicely cooked down, and pureed a bit with an immersion blender. I have no canner, so the stock-pot served for sterilizing jars and water-bath canning. The finished product. I was proud.

Did a brunch for my granddaughter's dedication service at church: Ham and black pepper parmesan biscuits Quiche cups with corn tortilla crusts, for the gluten-intolerant child. The darker ones were yellow corn, with chorizo and black olives; the others were white corn with ham and broccoli. Fruit salad in a dressing of honey, spicy mustard, olive oil and lime juice. Baked caramelized onion spread Crustless lime tarts with whipped cream Black bean and corn salad A few other odds and ends like fig and olive tapenade, gluten-free banana bread with Nutella, chickpea and tomato salad, hummmus and veggies. All in all, a success, though I hate cooking in my daughter's kitchen!

I usually get a half-dozen or so food gifts at Christmas from vendors with whom I do business. Got a "tower" of different goodies from Harry & David, a ham or two, a bottle or two of wine or whiskey, a box of candy from some famous St. Louis confectioner whose name I disremember, but the candy was excellent. But my favorite, year-in, year-out, is my two-pound box of shelled pecan halves. I plan for them, know about when they're coming, and my holiday baking and candymaking happens shortly thereafter! I always do sweets for my co-workers at Christmas. I make a mean praline, and decent fudge, so I always do those; some years I supplement with candied nuts, or some sort of flavored chocolate bark, and last year, to throw everyone off, I did tiny terrines of bourbon-chicken liver pate. I'm thinking this year may be homemade bread and fig jam, since I canned a boatload of that this summer.

It's a marvelous world and a marvelous blog! Makes me want to visit SF.

Just kill me now. You people out there have the most astounding shopping options....

Zagnuts. You see them occasionally, but not often. Paydays. It's my bar of choice. And, oh yes, Sugar Babies! I LOVE Sugar Babies! In the movie-box size!