Fare for the family table
No recipe today, just a few festive shots of Muppet's Gingerbread Village to brighten your day.
Regardless of what holiday you celebrate this season, all of us here at Oui, Chef wish you festivities full of love, laughter, and of course, lots of great food!
See you in 2012!
Like they say…."It takes a village", preferably one made entirely of SUGAR!
This is the year that my sibs and I finally cried uncle and decided to suspend holiday giving between our families. We did this for a couple of reasons. First, all of our kids are now teens and are basically impossible to shop for, preferring to receive cold-hard cash (large denominations, please) in lieu of any creative gift idea we stupid adults might arrive at on our own. Second, we stupid adults are so fortunate as to have all that we need or want, and so the whole idea of braving the hordes of holiday shoppers to buy token offerings seemed a bit nutty to us all. We decided instead (full credit given here to my brother) to arrange a cookie swap between our three families, with each sending the other 4-5 dozen cookies of various types.
It was such a brilliant idea that I wish it were mine.
This big trough of awesomeness is a slight adaptation of a recipe I saw recently in Fine Cooking magazine, which is fast becoming one of my favorite food publications. In my continuing effort to purge the fridge of long held condiments I decided to try this dish as a means to polish off some cerignola olives and peppadew peppers we had lying about. Yeah….this baby was a two-fer in our quest to pare down the number of bottles, cans and plastic tubs we've accumulated over the past year.
While it meay be that we turned to this dish as a fridge cleaner, we'll go back to it again and again (and again, if Arthas has anything to do with it) because it flat-out rocks with salty, sweet and umami tastes in perfect balance. Those of you feeling the urge to run screaming from this cottage pie because just seeing the name is dragging up memories of grade-school lunch ladies serving you a dish of the same name, DON'T. This dish is as far a cry from the cottage pie of your elementary school youth as Barbara Streisand is from Ke$ha.
Do I make myself clear?
Though I didn't do a very good job at keeping pace with my Charcutepalooza brethren, and flat out missed a few posts, I did want to share these lovelies with you because they turned out so well. They were far superior to all but the best artisinal salamis you'll find around these days, fragrant with just the right amount of chew, and exhibit a great fennel flavor. I timed them to be fully cured, dried and ready to eat when our guests arrived for Thanksgiving (because quite frankly, we wouldn't have had nearly enough food for everyone otherwise). Once my nephew's recovered from their shock of finding what appeared to be dismembered penises hanging in my wine closet, these were a huge hit and enjoyed by all.
I learned a valuable lesson about meal planning over the Thanksgiving holiday. In short, developing a plan for the turkey day dinner alone is not enough…..not by a long shot. When 20+ people are expected, including 5 teen-aged boys, the least of our food planning worries was Thanksgiving dinner, it was the breakfasts, lunches, snack binges and dinners that rounded out the rest of our guest's time-in-residence that was our biggest challenge.
I'm a huge fan of rapini (broccoli rabe) and sausage with pasta, in fact, next to a good carbonara it's probably my favorite pasta dish. It's such a great combination of flavors and textures, bitter, sweet, salty, spicey…you name it, and that dish has it. The other day I was hankerin' for a big bowl of the stuff, but when I checked the pantry I found we were out of gluten-free pasta, and as I'm trying hard to keep the missus wheat-gluten free, I decided to twist the dish up a bit and make it with polenta instead.
Doesn't that rich chicken stock look delicious?
We call this Ming and Muppet's Soup because at it's base is a poached chicken and broth that comes from a recipe I adapted from Ming Tsai, and that appears in his great cookbook Simply Ming – One Pot Meals . Ming serves his dish Chinese style, with each diner getting as piece of chicken and a cup of the broth to dip it in. The other night when Muppet was begging for some homemade chicken noodle soup, we turned to Ming's chicken dish and just took it a few steps further by adding a couple more ingredients, and serving it over pasta for an unvbelievably tasty soup.
Those of you who have been with us for a while know all about Food52, the awesome on-line food community founded by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. The first two years of Food52's life were dedicated to crowd sourcing a few cookbooks by holding on-line recipe contests each week (for 52 weeks…get it?), with the winners of each themed contest getting their recipes published in a cookbook.
Well, I'm proud to report that the first Food52 cookbook has been published and that I was one of the lucky contest winners to have a recipe published within (I actually have two winning recipes in next year's book, so stay tuned!). This year's edition is a gorgeous thing, and would make a really terrific holiday gift for family and foodie friends alike. It is packed with terrific recipes ranging from my Cider Brined Pork with Calvados, Mustard and Thyme, to my friend Winnie's Turkey Pho, and fellow LCB grad Lynda's, amazing Broccoli Rabe, Potato, and Rosemary Pizza.
This is a cookbook by home cooks for home cooks, so you need look no further for a great addition your favorite foodie's growing collection! You can order a copy (or 5) by clicking the image below…and no, I don't receive a penny on the sale of any of the books, I just get the satisfaction of knowing that on my recommendation, you will have purchased one of the best new cookbooks out there.
Go ahead….click it!
Cheers and happy holiday cooking! – Steve
Hot on the heels of our recent "Pumpkin Spiced Steel Cut Oats" success, I've been thinking of other ways to get pumpkin's goodness on our table without having to resort to making pumkin pie or pumpkin bread. Not that I have anything against either one of these lovely confections, but a few in our clan struggle with the thick, custard texture of the pie, and the rest struggle to get even a whiff of pumpkin bread when we make it.
Why?
Because Trader Joe's Pumpkin Bread is one of Muppet's all-time favorite foods, and unless you're standing with her at the stove when the bread emerges, you haven't got a chance. The poor starved thing will either eat it all in one sitting, or more likely squirrel it away like a little rodent hiding nuts for another day. I've tried to nanny-cam her to see where she hides them, but so far no joy.
