Kate F____, Girl Reporter

I’m trying to play catch up a bit… I’m currently in Paris, where it is 1 a.m. Ben is joining me for the weekend tomorrow, and I’ve taken loads of photos, as one does, but I also have a pre-trip backlog. Namely Thanksgiving, which I did almost literally on the fly between trips. I had never roasted a turkey. The one time I roasted a chicken it was a disaster. But off we went!

I went to London the Saturday night before Thanksgiving, worked Monday-Wednesday, then flew back Wednesday afternoon. I got in around 7, we picked my brother Tom up from the airport, and headed home. Ben’s mom and brother joined us for a pasta dinner shortly after we got back (Ben, bless him, cooked), and I trotted off to bed soon after that.

Ben had done the shopping, using lists I’d pulled together on the fly from London. Naturally I’d forgotten lots of things since I wasn’t actually looking at recipes or, you know, spending more than 3 minutes thinking through what I needed to make Thanksgiving dinner. I did not discover any of the missing items until Thursday morning, when it was too late to do much about them (more on that in a moment).

Wednesday night after I went to bed, Ben and his mom made chocolate cream pie. In the morning, Ben made pumpkin pie, and we encountered some first-time-use glitches with the oven, so it took about two hours to get it cooked. Just as I started panicking, though, the oven fixed itself and behaved nicely while I baked the turkey. Meanwhile I realized I was missing shallots (for the beans), parsley (for the stuffing, oh well), celery (also for the stuffing), carrots (for stock and around the turkey), and, for the stuffing, of course….Bread. I meant to get a bag of those croutons that are already all dried out, because this was The Thanksgiving For Shortcuts.

Hmm.

What can you do at 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving? No grocery stores were open. Eventually Tom went to 7-11 and purchased two snack containers of baby carrots and celery, and a loaf of Pepperidge Farm white bread. He cut that up into small pieces and I toasted it as hard as I could without browning it. Meanwhile I prepped the lovely turkey, a little 13-pounder, that we’d gotten from Trader Joe’s. He was pre-brined, so I just had to remove the giblets, etc., give him a nice butter/salt/pepper massage, and slide him into the oven (breast down to start, per Bittman).

I started a stock that never came to anything, and over the course of the morning/afternoon I made the stuffing (dressing, I guess, since I cook it out of the bird), cranberry sauce, and Ben and Tom made a hectare of mashed potatoes. Tom blanched beans, which he later dressed with lemon and olive oil, since we didn’t have shallots. I nearly forgot to make the cauliflower soup that I wanted to start with, but I did that right before we ate. The brined turkey gave of lots of nice drippings and Bittman has you put veggies and broth in the pan, so there was plenty of juice. I used his method, which involves boiling down the drippings and adding cornstarch (dissolved in water) to thicken if needed. This had the benefit of being simpler than a roux, with fewer lumps, and also being gluten-free, so Christy could eat it. She said she hadn’t had gravy in years!

The feast:

First of all, Mr. Turkey. He was fantastic!! Combined with the brine, Bittman’s Start Breast Down and Flip method worked great (he says this maxes out around 10 pounds, but the guys managed to flip our 13-pounder, though I was not around when they did it so who knows…) and the white meat was very juicy. Hurray!

Before the turkey, though, we had soup:

Then the good stuff:

Followed (many hours later) by pies, courtesy of Ben!

It was the last meal at our patched together little table/kitchen table combo:

Because the next day our long back-ordered table came in, and the guys brought it home!

When my mom was in town at the end of October, we spent a day shopping on Newbury Street, and at one point we revived ourselves with a quick pizza and salad at Sonsie, a restaurant that has been there at least since I was in college. The pizza was really good (much better than I expected): Several tasty cheeses topped with butternut squash and walnuts. I later recreated it using some of the leftover delicata squash we had cooked.

Note the blackened walnuts on the lower right:

The old stove went to 600 not including the broil setting–it was nuts. And, um, walnuts cook fast.

The pizza was really good, but not quite as good as the restaurant one. The delicata isn’t very sweet, which I love when it’s a side dish. But in this you want the sweet squash to contrast with the bitterness of the hazelnuts and the richness of the cheese. I’ll try it again with some butternut, maybe. The textures are great and I really liked that sweet/bitter interplay so I want to play around more. (It’s a nice riff on the usual butternut squash or pumpkin ravioli topped with browned butter and walnuts.)

Will post Thanksgiving, etc., but tonight I head back to Europe–Glasgow, Paris and Lyon–and won’t be back in the states until 12/6. I do have loads of photos uploaded and ready to post, though…

I am off on a couple weeks of work travel… I have a backlog of things to post and hopefully will work my way through them at the various hotels. For tonight, I’m headed to London, please think Smooth-Travel thoughts in my direction!

(The Temporary Waterloo Bridge, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, 1938)

Almost two weeks ago we were home for the weekend, without guests or a trip, for the first time since…. Hmm, early September. There was a crazy storm on Saturday, which I was excited to see forecast since Ben had studying to do and I wanted nothing so much as an excuse to laze around all day. Friday I got a delivery of a lovely loaf of challah from a guy in the office, and I stopped after work to pick up essential groceries so we wouldn’t have to go outside all day.

Witness, a perfect day (half of the Sunday NY Times comes Saturday, so we had that handy!):

I wandered out to the dining room around 9:30, greeted by steaming steel-cut oatmeal cooked by Ben, who is the Oatmeal Master. His other areas of expertise: brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and pancakes. I’m not going to argue with that skill set!

After a very leisurely breakfast we retired to the living room and lit a fire, which we kept going all day. It was a violent storm, extremely windy with sheets of rain and dramatic whipping-about of all the trees.

When we got hungry for a little lunch, I got out the naan I’d bought the night before, drizzled them with olive oil, and topped Ben’s with goat cheese and mine with ricotta salata and leftover beets, and heated them up:

Later there was mint tea (I love the Trader Joe’s brand):

And through the day, the fire and my annual re-read of Pride & Prejudice. What could be better?

We were supposed to go to a party that night but we didn’t end up heading out into the rain. A friend from b-school came over and we had a casual pasta dinner. So cozy! As much as I envy the outdoor living thing you can do in Southern CA, I could never give up late fall/winter days.

Ben ordered the new stove, and we’re thinking about hoods; scary and exciting stuff. Here’s what we’re thinking:

Hood: We need a recirculating hood because drilling through to the outside for ventilation will be a nightmare. Not sure what to do yet.

Stove: I saw the white enamel Viking in Domino at least a year ago and flagged the page, never imagining I might actually have a place to put it. Over the summer I saw it in person at the kitchen showroom where E worked. Stunning. Supposedly it is coming Friday! We will see if the plumber can actually detach our old stove in time, and come hook up the new one. Sadly, I leave for London Saturday night so I won’t get to play with the new stove much at all. (The photo is of the 36″ version–we’re getting the 30″, which will free up some space on that side of the room.)

I have ordered a bunch of prints over the last couple months (for all over the house), and when the last one arrives I will start thinking about how to frame them. I mocked these up at Frames by Mail… I’m thinking these first two, with some other stuff, would be good in the kitchen:
Amy Ross, Manshroom

Keep Calm, Tea

I adore Etsy artist Sk8ordiehard, and I’ve been eyeing her Fungi poster for many moons. But the bright colors definitely send things in a different direction than those mellow browns. Hmmmm.

I already have those first two prints (well, “Tea” is on its way), but they could live in other places in the Funghi poster seems like a better fit in the kitchen. What do you think?

(Ok, that title may bring horrible searchers to the site.)

Many ages ago I wrote about making a Dutch Baby, or oven pancake. It was a favorite sunday night supper at home, and I have frequently made them when we needed a quick and comforting dinner.

Last Thursday we were exhausted and kind of cold, so I thought a Dutch Baby would be a great food solution. Only once I had started did I remember that we were almost out of milk. I had half and half, so I was about to dilute that with water when Ben suggested I use up some of the buttermilk we had in the fridge. “Hmm,” I said. “Buttermilk sure has a different texture from real milk.” But what the heck, we gave it a try. First of all, the batter was very yellow, even yellower than the 5 eggs usually make it:

(I had let the butter brown a bit too much in the oven, oops!)

And lo and behold, the dutch baby just didn’t puff. Ok, it did a little bit, but it didn’t soar upwards like it normally does. As a reminder, here is a normal Dutch Baby (Tom’s finger for scale):

Here is the buttermilk Dutch Baby, even flatter since I forgot to shoot a picture until I’d cut it:

Be honest, though: Doesn’t that look pretty freaking tasty? It was; it tasted great, and the only difference I noticed was that it was denser than normal. God, I could eat that every day! I’ll use milk next time, though–I missed the puffy sides!

Dutch Baby, from memory
(Recipe from Mom, of course!)
5 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/3 cup butter

Preheat the oven to 425 and put the butter in a 9X13 pyrex dish. Put it in the oven to melt.

While the butter melts, crack the eggs into a blender and blend on high for 1 minutes. Gradually add the milk and blend briefly. Gradually add the flour and blend for 30 seconds.

Pour the batter into the melted butter (BE CAREFUL taking that pyrex out of the oven; it’s hot!) and bake for about 20-25 minutes, until it is enormously puffed up and nicely golden brown. Aim for photo 2, not photo 3. Serve hot with syrup or with powdered sugar and fruit. Yum!

Last weekend my mom was in town for a visit, and on Friday night I came home and she had cooked a ton of food—the house smelled amazing! I can’t tell you how luxurious it was to come home and have dinner already almost done. She cooked loads of gorgeous yellow beets, green beans with shallots, roasted potatoes, delicata squash and sautéed chicken. We were set up with enough leftover that I didn’t have to cook anything from scratch all week.

The happy scene in the kitchen:

Beets are just so jewel-like. These were roasted and peeled, then sliced and dressed with a simple dressing to accompany a lovely arugula salad with goat cheese and walnuts.

Autumn colors! Orange beets, yellow squash.

Delicata are so delicious–roasted cut side down, the edges caramelize. We serve them with butter, salt and pepper, and they are creamy and sweet.

It sounds ridiculous, but I avoid cooking chicken; it makes me feel insecure. I have had fairly successful experiences so far, but I hate pounding the breasts flat, and I’m paranoid about overcooking. My mom cooked chicken on the stove to demonstrate how simple it is (this really does seem silly-simple, but oh well!).

After cleaning and pounding the breasts to an even thickness, pat them dry and rub them with olive oil, salt and pepper:

Get a heavy pan good and hot, then place the chicken in:

After a couple minutes flip the chicken, admire its lovely golden crust, then COVER while it finishes cooking. This is the step I didn’t think of, so the chicken tended to start burning before cooking through. This keeps it very, very juicy.

Edited to add better instructions from Mom: “Cook the first side 3-4 minutes until a nice crust forms (don’t move it or it won’t); cover and cook 2-3 minutes. Check for done-ness by touching the meat; soft and squishy means it’s still raw, springy means done, and firm means over-done. All meat continues cooking once it’s off the heat and it needs to rest a few minutes to resorb its juices before you eat it.

Easy! Here is our delicious dinner:

As for the leftovers, we ate some over the weekend, and I used half of the remaining chicken in an absorption pasta with some of the arugula tossed in at the last minute:

The other half I added to pasta with tomato sauce for a very last-minute dinner with a friend from B’s b-school class last night.