Friday, January 22, 2010

Mme Diat: More of the Thanksgiving Marathon

A week later, another Thanksgiving. This time, I was heading over to my aunt's home in Palos. This time around, I wasn't expected to cook anything so I brought a few wine selections instead. I ended up with Gabbiano Chianti and Fat Bastard Chardonnay. As someone who isn't always a fan of white wines, I really have to say I enjoyed the Fat Bastard. I bought it because I knew my extended family, being Italian, and my immediate family, being German, Lithuanian & Bohemian, would appreciate the wine choice.

Even though I didn't cook a dish for my second Thanksgiving, I wanted to write about it because for the first time, I tried a brined turkey. I have to be honest, maybe it was the way it was cooked, but I was not impressed. The turkey seemed dryer than normal and there was really nothing special that would make me recommend it to anyone. Just to be sure, I am planning on brining my own turkey sometime soon. I've heard such good things and I don't want to give up on it just yet.

Now onto my final, and real marathon, Thanksgiving. Since my whole immediate family couldn't be at the "Official Family Thanksgiving" it was declared that we would have our own small meal the next weekend. I was absolutely turkey-ed out at this point, but I offered to make the dinner.

The Menu:
Turkey
Southern Sweet Potatoes [the same ones I made with Mme.
Pépin]
Mashed Potatoes
Cauliflower
Peach Stuffing [Mme.
Pépin's traditional contribution to the holiday meal]
Sausage Stuffing [a manlier alternative for the growing Diat boys]
Cranberries w/Pear [also a Mme.
Pépin favorite]
Apple Pie

Since it was rainy that weekend, grilling the bird was out of the question. I opted for a nice roasted turkey with a vegetable & herb seasoning mixed with butter for under the skin and oranges stuffed inside for moisture and added flavor. The mashed potatoes were just the general variety, milk and seasonings for flavor. The cauliflower was absolutely fantastic. I was torn on whether or not I wanted to make it with bread crumbs, a family favorite, or baked with olive oil and Parmesan cheese. I opted to bake the veggie and was not disappointed. It's such a great way to spice up an otherwise boring vegetable.

For my dessert, I decided to go the classic pie route. I had been wanting to try my hand at pie crust and fruit pie for some time and I thought that my third Thanksgiving was as good a time as any. The only thing that I have to say was that I followed the recipe exactly, and wound up with entirely too many apples. I could have made about 3.5 pies with that recipe. Take a look at your recipes before hand an if 12 apples sounds a little intense, it probably is. Scale back some of the other seasonings and start with about 4-5 apples instead. I presume that would have been more than enough for my pie.

All in all, every meal was a success. A friend who had attended all 3 holidays with me remarked that my final masterpiece was the best of the 3. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal and leftovers were gone within a week. My only request after all of it: that we not have turkey anywhere near our Christmas menu.

Mme Diat: A Pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving

Happy 2010 everyone, I'm truly sorry for taking so long to get back to the blog. The winter months were littered with more birthdays, parties, holidays, and events than I could even fit into my already packed schedule. Blogging was a welcome break that I didn't have much time for. Even now, I'm writing on my lunch break at work. So to get everyone up to speed, I will re-cap some of the cooking mishaps, victories, and learning experiences that I had closing out 2009.

Thanksgiving 2009 #1:
To start, I say Thanksgiving #1 because I had 3 this year. It was like the marathon of Thanksgivings for me. Three weeks, three turkeys, and three families [so to speak]. Thanksgiving #1 was the second annual holiday event co-hosted with Mme. Pépin. As Mme. Pépin and I begin planning for Thanksgiving up to 3 months in advance, I had time to work out a menu that would challenge me.

It was more than assumed that I would be cooking the turkey because of the two of us, I was the only one who could handle prep of the raw bird. To free up our oven for the afternoon I decided it would be interesting to grill the turkey. I decided on this recipe from Martha Stewart to season the bird. I wanted to make sure that since I was grilling, the skin was infused with as many herbs as I could find. We used a charcoal grill and cooked the bird for about 6 hours. It turned out absolutely magnificent.

I was also in charge of the sweet potatoes and a dessert. To get away from just mashing all of our starches I picked this great southern recipe from Martha Stewart for the potatoes. I peeled and sliced them, which was much harder than I expected. I then put them in the oven to bake. After that I took them out, spinkled butter, brown sugar, pecans, and some cayenne pepper on them and popped them back into the oven for a few minutes. The result was absolutely phenomenal and everyone loved them.

As for the dessert, I was dead set on hand making a pumpkin pie but there wasn't a sweet pumpkin for miles. I must have checked at about 5 different stores and I couldn't find one. Why I couldn't a week before Thanksgiving I will never know. So I settled, begrudgingly by the way, for the canned pumpkin puree. They say that there's seasoning in it and it's "Pie Ready" but I was not about to believe that. I added my own spices [from this recipe], made the crust, and baked it. As an aside, I've been experimenting with pie crusts lately. I want to find the best crust for every pie and so far I've been impressed time and time again with Pate Brisee's crust. It's easy and just great. As for the pie, it turned out absolutely amazing. Though, I don't want to make a habit of using the canned puree.

All in all, Thanksgiving #1 was a hit. For the turkey, I would absolutely recommend grilling. The bird was so moist and flavorful. If you want to try something different and free up some oven space, don't be afraid to grill. You won't regret it.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mme Pepin: "Real" Food and BBQ Picante Chicken

I recently read a book by Michael Pollan called "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual". I was drawn in by the well designed cover (Yes, as a graphic designer I do judge books by their covers). It was a quick read, and aside from Tim Gunn's book "A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style", I've never been so influenced by a book before. Pollan's concept wasn't anything novel or original, yet in today's day and age I suppose it bore repeating: eat REAL food. Not over-processed food, not food with ingredients that make you scratch your head, but food that is fresh, healthy and actual food. There were some other very informative parts of the book, including HOW to eat (insert smart-ass comment here), but rather than jilt Mr. Pollan out of book sales, go read it (I had it done in a matter of hours and it cost me about $7).

So what does this have to do with me, and cooking? Well, after reading Pollan's book, I evaluated the Cheez-it's that were tucked away in my purse. As I ate (one of my favorite snack foods) I noted what Pollan was saying about too much salt, too much to the point where it was artificially and unnecessarily salty. I looked at the fake bright orange color. I looked at the ingredients. Now things didn't click right away for me, I was on vacation and was subject to whatever food was going to cross my path (including my grandmother's delicious biscotti).

But when I got back to my natural habitat something strange happened: I really wanted an apple. I wanted that apple for several days, until I finally made it to a grocery store, purchased that apple (and several others) and ate it. Of all things I was full afterwards. Well go figure. Apparently, not only are apples filling and low calorie, they are incredibly good for you, they are probably one of the healthier fruits you can come across. So, I decided to adopt the old "apple a day" policy. So far what I've noticed is that I'm not craving chocolate and sweets very much anymore. I'm not eating when I'm not hungry. I'm not eating processed foods as much. I think Mr. Pollan may be onto something here... more to come as more happens.

Well, tonight I finally hit rock bottom in terms of the amount of consumable dinner food at my apartment. There was a lot of 'fake' mac & cheese (another old fave) which had lost it's magical pull over me. Some sherbet, apple sauce and a whole host of things that should (and since have) be thrown away living (and breathing, haha just kidding about the breathing part) in my fridge. I decided I really wanted real food. So I walked to Jewel (I don't own a car) and picked up dinner for the boyfriend and myself for Friday night (more to come on that after Friday night happens) and dinner for myself tonight.

I decided that since the boyfriend and I were going to have beef on Friday, I'd have chicken tonight. SINCE WHEN IS BEEF CHEAPER THAN CHICKEN?!?! Ah well, can't overdo it on the red meat thing, so I bought some chicken breast. I've been seeing those commercials lately for Pace Picante sauce, and since I do enjoy salsa, and could recognize/pronounce all of the ingredients on the label, decided that that would be the topping to my chicken. When I returned home I checked online at Pace's website to assess the situation and they even suggested BBQ sauce mixed in, hell's yeah! I do enjoy my BBQ as much as my salsa.

I started to heat some olive oil in the pan, putting A LOT more than usual in (the boyfriend did it the other night when he made pork and it turned out really juicy). Even with oven mitts on once I put the chicken in the pan I was getting burned. I turned the heat down, still popping, gah it was a bit of a mess. I then started to paint the chicken with the BBQ-Picante mixture until I decided that the chicken was done (several years ago I turned chicken into rubber, so now I'm always careful not to cook it too long). I had two thin chicken breasts with the mixture on it, and it was really good. And filling.

For dessert I mixed fresh blueberries into plain yogurt and drizzled honey on top. It's been several hours now and I'm not hungry, I'm not scouring my place for chocolate and I don't feel bad about what I ate. Awesome.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Mme. Pepin: Welcome Back

Happy 2010, sorry it's been a few months, November and December are my prime entertaining months and I'm going-going-gone during that time. I'll recap a few of the cooking highlights:

Thanksgiving 2009
I'm just going to say it, I know that I'm an adult now that Christmas is no longer my favorite holiday of the year, don't get me wrong, I still love the traditions and holiday cheer, but to me, Thanksgiving takes the cake. What's better than an entire holiday centered around food and family? I've got two dishes that I look forward to making each Thanksgiving (okay, for a few different Thanksgivings held over the past 2 years, and hopefully many more to come). The first is the often overlooked (until now) cranberries. The second is the stuffing. Ironically enough, up until I started making the stuffing and the cranberries from recipes that I found, neither of those dishes ever found their way onto my dinner plate.

I found the recipe that I frequent for cranberries from Good Housekeeping's Thanksgiving issue back in 2008 (I believe). It doesn't produce the jello-esk cranberries that so often hold a place at a Thanksgiving table, this recipe turns out much more like a relish of sorts. Aside from the obvious, cranberries, this recipe features ginger and pear. Last year I used ground ginger from a container, but this year, I got adventurous (and perhaps a little overzealous) with fresh ginger that I ground myself. One word: Micro-plain. Go buy one. So my first batch for my pre-Thanksgiving dinner was a little heavy on the ginger, I got it right for the actual big day.

The stuffing came from one of Martha Stewart's staff members, written up in Martha Stewart Living's Thanksgiving 2008 (once again, I believe) issue. It is a peach stuffing, and tastes fresh and delicious if I do say so myself. The recipe features stale rustic Italian bread, a can of clingstone peach halves and frozen orange juice concentrate among other things. I find it difficult not to pick at the dish while I'm waiting for the right time to put it into the oven. It had a large following this year at my parent's Thanksgiving table. And had tough competition at the pre-Thanksgiving dinner when it was up against my brother's "Man Stuffing", which featured summer sausage, eggs, and mashed potatoes.

All in all, the pre-Thanksgiving and actual Thanksgivings were culinary successes and I look forward to next year.

Ah yes, I almost forgot to mention that for the pre-Thanksgiving I made the delightful Cannele. This time they turned out harder on the outside. I'm chalking that up to working with an oven that can actually get to the correct temperature. Not sure which way I prefer the outer shell to be, but both times they were a crowd favorite.

Into the New Year:
I've procured some new cookbooks throughout the holidays and I'm excited to get cracking on them. I'm going to use this blog to continue my work with Jacque's cookbook, but also to share some of my other culinary adventures.

I just got back from a long (chilly) weekend in Florida. I wanted something warm and simple to make for my boyfriend and I for dinner that didn't consist of driving to Wendy's, pre-made food, or my standard tri-color rotini with olive oil and parmesan cheese. In one of my new cookbooks full of healthy meals for under $7, I found a recipe for sirloin steak with blue cheese and basil. I was running behind schedule, so (what turned out to be) thankfully, Mike was there to keep my company as I cooked. I couldn't find any fresh basil, so I took that out of the mix, and I made whole wheat gnocchi as a side. I was about to put the steak (seasoned in sea salt, olive oil and lemon pepper) onto the pan when Mike pointed out that there was a lingering piece of black paper stuck to the bottom of the steak (from the packaging), phew, caught it before I started a fire. I must have been really absent minded last night as the kitchen started to fill up with smoke due to the fact that I was searing the meat on high heat instead of medium heat (thanks again to Mike for pointing out that error). There wasn't much damage done to the meat other than a few well done edges, and we got the window open before the fire alarm went off. When the steak had cooked for about 5 minutes on both sides I added the blue cheese and cooked it for another 4 minutes while the steak finished and the cheese melted.

It tasted very good, I'd make this again in a heartbeat. The few little mishaps aside, this meal was simple and quick to make as well as relatively healthy and inexpensive. I was worried that I had put too much salt onto the meat, but thankfully the cheese took care of any issues in taste that could have occurred from too much salt.