The Dinner Files

Did you have a happy Thanksgiving? Was the turkey moist? The pie flaky? The relatives well behaved?

We did not have the best Thanksgiving ever. That was last year. Last year I came down with pneumonia (pneumonia!) the weekend before Thanksgiving, causing us to cancel the festivities. My friend from high school who was scheduled to come for the weekend came anyway, figuring on keeping me company and/or helping with Ernie while I recuperated. The thing is, a few days into the anibiotics and steroids I was feeling much better. Not well enough to host Thanksgiving, but well enough to enjoy the company of my dashing husband and omnivorous son and the world’s best houseguest. I wasn’t up for cooking on Thanksgiving, so we got take out from our favorite Pakistani restaurant. The whole day was so fun and mellow that we declared it The Best Thanksgiving Ever. It was a fine example of extremely low expectations leading to great happiness.

But, as the saying goes, you can’t go home again. Since none of us care about turkey (well, my dashing husband adores it but, as previously mentioned, he is “trying” to be a vegetarian so torturing him with a turkey carcass to pick at for a few days seemed cruel). We were all tempted to just order the Pakistani food again, but my dashing husband inquired if there was some other way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

So I thought. And thought. I considered the time I would put into a traditional menu. I thought of what else I could make. What else I wanted to make. What I’d rather make. And then it came to me: manti.

Manti are teeny tiny Turkish dumplings filled with itsy bitsy morsels of lamb, baked, covered with broth and baked some more. They are then drizzled (or drenched, your choice) with garlicky yogurt, brown butter, some chopped mint, and a sprinkle of ground chile. They are crazy delicious and an unbelievable amount of work. So I spent a few hours on Wednesday afternoon mixing the filling, kneading and rolling out the dough, and folding the tiny things closed before arranging them in a pan. I made them based on a recipe from Saveur, which got it from Nevin Halici’s Turkish Cookbook. 

I started by making chicken stock. Since I make it in giant batches in a canning kettle, I removed the 4 cups I would need for the dumplings and simmered that with a stick of cinnamon and a dozen whole peppercorns for 30 minutes.

Next step was making the dough, essentially a basic pasta dough of 1 2/3 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt, 2 eggs, and 1/4 cup water. Mix this until it forms a dough, then knead it, using extra flour as necessary (between the humid San Francisco November weather and the simmering broth turning my kitchen into a light steam room, I used a fair amount), until when you pinch a bit of it it feels like your earlobe, 5 to 10 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest at least 30 minutes and up to an hour.

While that rests, mix the filling. Just a half pound of ground lamb, a finely chopped small onion, about 2 Tbsp. minced flat-leaf parsley, 3/4 tsp. kosher salt, and 3/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper. Since that probably won’t take a full half hour, you can also generously butter a large baking pan (at least 10.5 x 12 or two smaller pans; you may want to have a smaller pan ready for extra just in case). 

Divide the dough into four pieces, roll one piece into as much of a square as you can manage about 1/8-inch thick. Cut into 1-inch squares, removing any uneven edges. Top each square with about 1/8 tsp. of the lamb mixture. Yes, these amounts are insanely tiny. Any yet these are the amounts, trust me.

Pick up a lamb-topped square and fold two opposite corners towards the center and pinch them to seal them together. Pull the other two corners up to the center and seal them. These corners need be sealed in the center top, but the sides do not need to be completely sealed. Place the sealed dumpling in the buttered baking pan (they need to be in a single layer, but you can have them in there pretty tight just not squished) and repeat with remaining dumplings. Then repeat with remaining dough. At some point you will feel like you are losing your mind. Make sure you have the radio on or perhaps a good friend on speaker phone. Or just get all zen-like and enjoy the mindless, repetative task at hand.

When they are all done and in the pan you can cover and chill for up to a day (as I did), or just go ahead with the recipe. Heat the oven to 400. Bake manti until golden, about 30 minutes. Bring the 4 cups broth to a boil and pour into pan, cover pan with foil, and continue baking until most of the liquid is absorbed, about 25 minutes.

While they are baking, mince or seriously smash up 3 cloves of garlic and mix it with 1 cup thick or strained yogurt and salt that to taste. Melt about 4 Tbsp. butter and cook until it starts to brown. Chop about 1/4 cup of fresh mint leaves. 

Divide dumplings between 4 to 6 shallow bowls, top each serving with yogurt, brown butter, mint, and some ground chile. Tradition/authenticity calls for urfa chile flakes. I found a mixture of ground arbol and ground ancho and a bit of ground sumac was pretty tasty. Just some red chile flakes would work just dandy, too. 

For dessert we had this beautiful baklava. I’m not going to give you the recipe, though, because I wasn’t so thrilled with it. The word I’m looking for just may be “disppointed.” It sure was pretty though:

In short, we had a Turkish dinner instead of a Turkey dinner.

So I’ve been bad about posting. I know. There are many reasons (including some bad mojo connected to an old post, but I think I’ve let that all go), but one of them – a hard to believe but quite serious one – is, well, winter. To be more precise the convergence of Daylight Savings ending and winter in the there-are-fewer-hours-of-daylight sense starting. By the time dinner is cooked, my kitchen is dark, the lighting is horrible, and everything looks yellow and kind of gross no matter what kind of photoshop magic I work (granted, it’s not magic at which I’m particularly skilled).

Enter the light tent. You can pay a lot of money for one or, if like me you enjoy an hour or two of making something, you can create one from:

After some measuring and cutting and taping and glueing, behold!*

So now instead of hideous yellowed food that isn’t fun to write or read about, I can show what things really look like. Along with the fab risotto cakes (which Ernie kept referring to as “rice meat” – um, whatever), we had an arugula and persimmon salad, dressed with a basic vinaigrette of 3 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, 1 clove minced garlic, salt, and a bit of ground mustard to help it keep its shape, if you know what I mean. Oh, and I like my persimmons peeled, but that’s just how I swing.

Doesn’t it look divine? It really was. I proclaimed it my new favorite salad. We’ll see how long that lasts. Persimmon season, after all, is pretty short.

*Cut windows in sides and top, cover them with vellum or tracing paper. Somehow line inside white. It seems to me spray paint would have been a better way to go, but lining the whole thing with poster board worked too. Note: I left the vellum over the top “hinged” by taping just one side down. That way I can do overhead shots too. And that top “flap” in the front isn’t taped in place so it can fold back to allow more angle possibilities.

Is wood glue the best choice? I’d say not. Spray adhesive would have been better. But wood glue is the first thing I found in the basement and it worked okay. Just okay, though. There’s some wrinkling and whatnot. But I think I can live with it.

We got a beautiful head of Treviso radicchio in our CSA box this last week. I could have grilled it, sauteed it, broiled it, roasted it, thrown it in a salad. But instead I made an old family favorite – something I created maybe 10 years ago and which my dashing husband loves. I warn you: it’s weird, it’s intense, it’s probably a bit much for most people. Radicchio and blue cheese risotto. It’s a bit blue-ish purple, which I find rather fabulous. 

And yes, Ernie ate it. I did, however, pull out his portion before I added the blue cheese. 

And the best part? The risotto cakes I just made myself for lunch. There’s a whole tray of them in the fridge waiting to be fried up for dinner. 

Risotto Cakes

Leftover risotto

1 egg per 1 1/2 cup leftover risotto

1 cup white rice ground into powder in a coffee or spice mill (this will be enough for plenty of cakes and make it super easy to coat them and keep your hands somewhat dry)

Vegetable oil

Stir risotto to loosen it a bit if it’s started to get clumpy. Beat egg(s) and stir into risotto. Put ground rice powder in a shallow bowl.

Scoop risotto mixture in 1/3-cup balls and put them in the rice powder. With a dry hand, pick up rice powder from around the risotto and spread it over the risotto ball, slightly flattening it into more of a patty or cake. When cake is thoroughly coated, transfer to platter to baking sheet. Repeat with remaining risotto.

Heat a large frying pan over medium heat. Swirl in enough vegetable oil to coat the bottom. Place risotto cakes (as many as will fit without touching) in pan and cook, undisturbed, until browned. Carefully flip each cake over and brown on other side. Serve and eat pretty much immediately. They are extra delicious with a salad of hearty or bitter greens with a pungent sherry-vinegar or balsamic-vinegar dressing.

I’ve been meaning to tell you, my dear internets, about a little something I’ve been working on. It’s a radio show called I’d Eat That and my co-host and I have somehow convinced the powers-that-be at KALW (91.7) in San Francisco to air our pilot episode. Today. At 2:30 PST. Oh? Did you already miss it? That’s okay. They’re airing it again on Wednesday at 7 PST, so you can listen while you prep your stuffing or trim your brussels sprouts or whatever else you have going on for Thanksgiving. Don’t live in San Francisco? Well, that’s too bad, but you can still listen because KALW streams all their shows on these very internets! Just go to kalw.org at the previously mentioned days and times.

My absence has been worth it. Seriously. I come to you bearing…. Bourbon Glazed Pears.

I cook a lot. I cook a lot of delicious, scrumptious, delectable food in the process. But I’m a simple girl. Even my elaborate cooking projects tend to have an old-fashioned, homey appeal. Sausage making, for example, or way-too-homemade cassoulets (there is really no need, I learned, to confit your own duck). So even when I come up with something yummy, like those enchiladas earlier this month, I’m not usually surprised or even really excited. Satisfied, I would say, is more often the feeling. But these pears! There is only one way to describe them: I am a genius.

Wait, that’s not really about them, is it?

What happened was this: my dashing husband was not home for dinner. (Wait, didn’t that just happen with the brilliant green beans? Perhaps I should bar him from coming home for dinner ever again….) You see, along with avoiding fried food, he is also “trying to be a vegetarian.” You might think someone either is or isn’t a vegetarian. Not my guy. He would like to be, he says he feels better when he doesn’t eat meat. But he is faced with this problem: meat is delicious. He can’t resist. Plus, he’ll be the first to point out that the non-meat options often available just are not very tasty. So he slips. He has a turkey sandwich at lunch, tries a bite of my carnitas at a restaurant, shares pork-laden dim sum with our son. And he’s lucky. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really cook much meat. I was a vegetarian for years, formative, starting-to-cook-for-myself years, so meat is not my go-to item. I like meat and notice I get sick less often if I eat it now and again, but it’s not as if he is faced with delicious roasts he must resist every night at dinner.

If I’m going to eat meat, however, I want it to be high-quality meat from animals who lived like animals. So I joined a meat C.S.A. That’s right. I belong to a meat club. Every month I get my share of the animals slaughtered at the lovely Clark Summit Farms in Tomales in Marin County. So my beloved deep-freeze has a fair amount of free-range chicken, grass-fed beef, and well-petted pork sitting around, waiting for my husband not to be home for dinner.

So I defrosted the two pork chops I got in the last share, picked up Ernie from school, and told him on the way home that we were having pork chops for dinner.

“What are pork chops?” he asked.
“They’re meat,” I said.
[pause]
“Mama, what animal is pork chops?”
“They come from a pig,” I answered.
“Oooooohhhh!” he replied as a *huge* grin spread across his face.

So I quickly cooked the chops in a frying pan and set them aside to rest. And then, inspired by the memory of an awesome pork shoulder with garlic, chiles, and pears I did for Sunset (they even made it for me at my good-bye lunch), added a bit of butter to the pan, de-glazed with bourbon (inspired by the Pear Upside Down Cake from the same story), sauteed some garlic and chiles with wedges of peeled pear and amazed myself. I will never serve applesuace with pork again. I will serve sauteed pears. And I’ll probably glaze them with a buttery-bourbony-pork drippings concoction if I can.

Oh yeah, I also made this Butter Braised Savoy Cabbage. It was also fab. Highly recommended. So simple! You could add some caraway seeds if you were feeeling fancy, I suppose, but the simplicity of the butter, cabbage, and salt is terribly effective at being delicious.

I had these yummy critters last summer at Magnolia gastropub here in San Francisco. I took a picture and swore to figure out how to make them… someday. Well, that day was last night. Two major factors played into the timing. First, we got yet another pound of green beans in our farm box and had failed to use some we already had, making the hydrator unusually green bean-heavy. Second, my dashing husband had to work late. You see, while he will eat and enjoy a fried food item, he will also spend the time during which he is eating it talking about how he doesn’t like to eat fried food and tries to avoid fried food and how fried food makes him feel (a subject on which he can sometimes go into unsavory detail). He has never asked me not to fry anything, because that’s not his way. He’s not bossy like that. But he also would never just not eat the delicious item coming out of the kitchen. Nor would he ever just eat a few and not say anything. It’s just not his way. So I spared us all and never fried the green beans.

Until, of course, last night. Ernie loves green beans. I love green beans. We both have little to no problem with the fried. So I had a plan. I would make a tempura-like batter but somehow use buttermilk. Thank god I was on the phone with crispy-treat lover and cooking-question trouble shooter Juliet Glass. She is also a big fan of buttermilk. She heard “buttermilk fried” and immediately thought of chicken, which, if you weren’t already focused on the green beans would be the natural place to go with such a phrase. When you buttermilk fry chicken you soak it in buttermilk and then dredge it in flour. She suggested I do that. I did. It was good. So good that is all I had for dinner. I’m not kidding. I just had a big old plate of fried green beans sprinkled with plenty of salt. I ate and ate until I was full and then I ate nothing else. It was delightful. Ernie ate a mess of them too. Then he tucked into the can of chicken noodle soup Juliet’s son had sent him in a care package (for the no longer broken arm). 

You want to hear the worst part? I ate fried green beans again for lunch today. You see, I hadn’t measured very carefully and I can’t get decent pictures in the crappy light in my kitchen after the sun goes down. So I really had to cook them again, to test them and get a good picture, don’t you know. And then there they were, all fried and golden and crispy and salty. And they seem to know my name. They called to me. Just like the Demon Lover.

Want to make them yourself? I highly recommend you do so. I posted the recipe over at Local Foods.

Wow. That was easier than I thought it would be. Yes, the enchiladas, I guess, but really the presidential election. The polls closed, the race was called, one candidate conceeded, another candidate accepted, and it seems like everyone I know has spent the day straddling joy and disbelief.

We listened and watched returns and drank wine and sat around smiling and gorged a bit on these enchiladas. Considering they were made entirely with stuff I had sitting around the house… well, you wouldn’t guess that by how they taste.

Mushroom potato chile enchiladas

1 oz. dried wild mushrooms

1/2 lb. mushrooms, stems finely chopped and caps sliced

1/2 pound mild green chiles, roasted, peeled, and chopped

1 lb. potatoes, scrubbed cleaned and cut into 1/4-inch dice

9 corn tortillas

Vegetable oil

Salt

1 recipe Enchilada sauce (below)

About 8 oz. queso fresco

Soak dried mushrooms in 1 cup boiling water for about half and hour. Lift them out and chop them up. Reserve the soaking liquid. In a large frying pan over high heat drizzle a bit of oil and cook the fresh and dried mushrooms, stirring as much as you care to, until they’ve released all their liquid and that liquid is mostly evaporated. Add potatoes and chiles and about 1/2 tsp. salt and stir it all up. Pour in reserved mushroom-soaking liquid, cover, reduce heat to simmer, and cook until potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

Preheat oven to 375. In a frying pan over medium heat heat about 1/4 inch of oil. Fry tortillas just to soften them, about 10 seconds each. Lay a softened tortilla flat, spread about 1/9 of the vegetable mixture down the center, roll it up and place in a large oiled baking pan. Repeat with remaining tortillas and filling. 

Pour sauce over enchiladas. Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake until cheese is melted and bubbling and enchiladas are heated through, about 20 minutes.

Enchilada Sauce

Remove stems and seeds from 2 oz. each dried pasilla negro chiles and dried ancho chiles in 2 cups boiling water (or more to cover) for about half an hour. Lift chiles out of water (reserve liquid) and put in a blender. Add 1 can (about 14 oz.) canned tomatoes, 1/2 tsp. salt, and about 1/2 cup of the soaking liquid. Whirl until smooth and creamy. Add more soaking liquid to get a pourable sauce, if necessary. Taste and add more salt if you like.

You’re just trying to distract yourself, aren’t you? May I suggest a nice long walk? Oh, you’re at work? Can’t concentrate? Thinking about the election? Chomping at the bit for the first returns? I’m in the same place. But I’m going to pull myself away from my computer, head into the kitchen, and bake up a pan of mushroom-chile-potato enchiladas. Am I hallucinating with Election Fever or does that sound good? Sure, I suppose you could think of it as cleaning out the fridge in preparation for the new farm box tomorrow, but I’m thinking a delicious dinner might, just might, result. If they turn out I’ll tell you how to make them tomorrow. I know, I know. Fat lot of good that does you now.

If you need something easy and not too heavy but a bit cozy, I can recommend a frisee salad with pancetta and a fried egg on top. We had them last night and they hit the spot. Make a dressing of three parts olive oil, one part red wine vinegar, a bit of dijon mustard and salt and pepper to taste. Chop some pancetta or bacon and slowing cook over medium-low heat, covered, until most of the fat renders out and the meat starts to crisp. Toss a mess of frisee with the dressing, then toss in the meat “croutons.” Fry eggs in the rendered fat and serve them on top of the salad. It’s all very French. Very sophisticated. Very coastal elite. Very easy. Enjoy.

FYI: You can just skip the pancetta/bacon aspect of things. You can. It makes the whole thing much quicker, but equally parts less tasty. The choice is yours.

I had some of this this summer, but I was on vacation. I meant to tell you about it later, but the thing about dinner it there’s always another one and it’s hard to play catch-up.

“This” isn’t the butternut squash or roasted brussels sprouts or sauteed kale with garlic and chies pictured above. “This” is the wild duck next to them. It’s the reason fancy-schmancy restaurant duck almost always disappoints me. Where, I find myself asking, is the flavor?

We had them for my dad’s birthday dinner. I made the vegetables listed above, my brother and his wife brought the carrot cake, my mom marinated the birds, and my dad shot and grilled his own dinner. Happy Birthday!

But wait! There’s more. My mom also made spare ribs & sauerkraut. Odd, right? Seems like a lot, even too much, food, doesn’t it? Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together: The first time we met my sister-in-law, the lovely Heidi (in order to avoid troll-like comparisons I don’t like to stand next to her in pictures), was at the now-defunct Minneapolis outpost of Aquavit. Her dislike of salmon came up because the Scandi menu was so very salmon-heavy. At several other junctures our family has served or ordered food she had never had before–not didn’t like, not wouldn’t try, just never had. From this pastiche of experience, my mother has somehow deduced that Heidi is a picky eater. (I’m just guessing here, stay with me.) So she made the mouth-watering, falling-off-the-bone ribs under the assumption/guess/worry that Heidi doesn’t like duck. She’s a good host and wants her guests well fed and happy.

But for the record: I saw Heidi eat the duck. She was sitting across from me. Did she strip the bones clean of all flesh as my son and I did? No. She’s a lady. But she did eat it. A lot of it. And she tried all the sauces (hoisin, plum, hot mustard–oh my!) that were on offer. And she ate her vegetables, too.

Along with the treat of a super sustainable duck dinner (hey, the “slaughter” also counts as recreation–it’s a real win-win), my quick visit to Minnesota had several other moments of joy. One was watching as Ernest surprised my dad while trick-or-treating. You see, my dad didn’t know we were coming. It was a birthday surprise. Sure, we’ve visited on his birthday for three of the past four years. Sure, two of those visits were “surprises.” But he’s not one to suspect, my dad. Or pick up on clues. Or, for such a history buff, even notice historical patterns.

Ernest rang the bell, my dad answered the door and said, “Well hello there. What a cute trick-or-treater. What are you?” They stared at each other for a moment before Ernest removed his hood (not mask, mind you, his face was fully visible at all times) and proudly declared, “I’m Ernest!”

We all laughed and hugged and went inside to eat spicy chili.

Another joyful moment occurred as I walked around a very fancy neighborhood in Minneapolis. Big houses, vast lawns, lake views. Lots of money. You’d think Republican-making money. But almost every lawn had an Obama sign. And not just an Obama sign. Signs for higher taxes to support local public schools (“strong schools for a strong city”) and signs for higher taxes to support clean air and “legacy management,” which I pieced together is for arts funding. I heard a comedian once refer to Minnesota as a “progressive Lutheran police state,” and there’s an element of truth to that. I don’t know the first thing about either of these measures or propositions, whether they’re well written and properly funded and mandated. But coming from a state that for over 30 years has refused to revisit a tax-cap that has devastated its public schools, it was heartening to see people posting signs that essentially said “I’ll pay higher taxes for good schools and a nice place to live.”