A Letter From Me To You.

Dear Readers:

I haven’t forgotten about you, I promise.  We’re doing Christmas Eve dinner at my apartment this year, even though I’m busy getting things ready for eleven diners, two houseguests, two (visiting) babies and one dog, there’s so much I want to share with you — like the beautiful and sad novel I recently read, and recipes for candy I’ve tried out, and my thoughts on vanilla, and how I’m searching for the perfect salt cellar — but I can’t promise I’ll have even a moment to sit down and give you all the time and attention you deserve until after Christmas.  Good thing I have to run out the door and catch the bus, otherwise I’d probably sit here apologizing for about three more paragraphs.  So.  I hope I have a chance to have a proper chat with you soon, but in case I don’t, happy holidays, and I hope you all sit down to at least one fantastic meal during these last crazy and hectic days of 2009.

xxoo N

Five Things About Me: 61 62 63 64 65.

61. This is my dearest fantasy.

62. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I cannot imagine a day without cheese.  Last week I thought I had skipped a day, and I practically had a heart attack.  I went straight home and ate a most of a fat wedge of Comté.  I immediately felt better.

63. There’s something I find extremely soothing about getting an eyebrow wax.  I’m not a masochist or anything.  I just like a nice arch.

64. I love how seagulls have to find the highest point possible upon which to perch and survey the ground below.  I love how much of the time, the points they choose are the tops of highway street lights.

65.  Holiday mania — particularly Christmas mania — really freaks me out and totally turns me off on celebrating altogether.  That said, I really like this.

I’m Going To Tell You Something, But I Don’t Want To Talk About It.

Here’s something you probably don’t know about me: I struggle with my weight.  And when I say struggle, I mean in an epic Greek tragedy kind of way, minus Oedipus or Electra complexes.  The thing is, I never wanted to write a fat girl blog — I’ve got no interest in composing it, and I’m going to assume that you’ve no interest in reading it.  That said, some days there’s just going to be no avoiding it, and this is one of those days.  Here’s why:

I’ve just made the most delicious-smelling dinner, and the recipe called for fourteen tablespoons of butter.  Which is why it’s probably going to taste fantastic.  And I want to enjoy it, I really do, but I’m scared that I’ll scarf the whole damn thing down.  I know you think I’m being glib or hyperbole-prone, but I promise you I am capable of such a thing.  Moderation and I have yet to meet.  And when we do, I’ll probably punch the broad in the face and take off running.  Because that’s the kind of gal I am when it comes to food.

Anyway, in the spirit of the holiday season, and of sharing and solidarity and all that, here’s the recipe.  I don’t want to be fat alone.

Chicken, Sausage + Mushroom Pot Pie, from Jean Soulard at the Fairmont le Château Frontenac, as published in Bon Appétit
Makes six portions

for the crust
2 cups all purpose flour
¾ teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
4 tablespoons ice water

for the filling
4 tablespoons butter, room temperature, divided
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
12 ounces crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 cup finely chopped shallots
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 ¼ pounds Italian sausage, casings removed
2 pounds skinless boneless chicken thighs, trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
½ cup Madeira
2 cups low-salt chicken broth (or you can use the handy-dandy turkey stock you made this past Thanksgiving, if you’re me)
1 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled, thickly sliced *
1 large egg yolk, beaten to blend with 1 tablespoon water

1. Make the crust.  Blend flour and salt in processor. Add butter and cut in, using on/off turns, until coarse meal forms. Add 4 tablespoons water. Using on/off turns, blend until moist clumps form, adding more water by ½ tablespoonfuls if dough is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and chill at least 1 hour and up to 1 day.
2. Make the filling.  Mix 2 tablespoons butter and flour in bowl to smooth paste; set aside. Melt 2 tablespoons butter with oil in large deep skillet. Add mushrooms, shallots, and thyme. Sauté until mushrooms brown, about 8 minutes. Add sausage; sauté until no longer pink, breaking up with spoon, about 7 minutes. Add chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté until chicken is no longer pink on outside, about 5 minutes. Add Madeira; boil 2 minutes. Add broth; bring to boil. Mix in butter-flour paste; simmer until sauce thickens, stirring often, about 3 minutes. Mix in parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to 10-cup round baking dish; top with egg slices.
3. Preheat oven to 400°. Roll out dough on floured surface to 13- to 14-inch round. Place atop filling. Trim overhang to 1 inch. Fold overhang under; crimp edge. Brush crust with glaze; cut several slits in crust.
4. Bake pie until crust is golden, about 45 minutes. Let rest 15 minutes and serve.

* I did not include the hard-boiled eggs.  Keith isn’t too into them, and besides, it’s not as if I need any more cholesterol.

Five Things About Me: 56 57 58 59 60.

56. My favorite Mr. Sketch scented marker in both color and fragrance was the turquoise/mango.  My least favorites were the brown/cinnamon and the green/mint.  The orange/orange (duh) always made my mouth water, even now .  If I think about it, I can remember their scents so clearly.

57. I obsessively watch television shows on Hulu.  At this very moment, I’m in the middle of a My So-Called Life marathon, and it’s kind of freaking me out that I now relate the most with Graham Chase (the charmingly bushy-eyebrowed Tom Irwin) rather than with Angela (a barely-adolescent Claire Danes).  Other shows I’ve been Hulu-hooked on include Friday Night Lights, Dead Like Me and Firefly.

58. I sew a lot, and make lots of quilts.  To amuse myself, I buy ridiculously-colored* thread and use it on the insides of my projects, where they’ll never be seen.  But I know they’re there, and what colors they are.

59. If it were considered socially acceptable to wear bathrobes out and about, as apparel, I probably would.  In the warmer months, anyway.  I love mine.

60. I have two tattoos.  I got the first at age nineteen in New York, and the second at twenty-one in San Francisco.  My parents didn’t find out about either one until much later, and they weren’t pleased when they did.  They’re still irked.

* I.E. “Enchanting Ginger,” “Pretty Flamingo” and “Sunny Summer.”

On Boereg, aka “Cheese Things.”

It may take me a while to get to things sometimes, but I think I’m a gal of my word. I promised you the recipe to boereg, the one that has made my mother famous, so here it is:

Boereg
Makes twelve squares

1 ½ pounds mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 stick butter, melted
1 16 ounce package of phyllo dough (it should have two packets of rolled up phyllo inside.)
1 bunch finely chopped parsley
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (My mother uses Korean red pepper flakes, but I use Aleppo red pepper flakes. Use whatever you can get your hands on, and feel free to experiment.)
1 large egg, lightly beaten and mixed with a splash of water

1. Preheat oven to 325°.
2. Mix shredded cheese, parsley and red pepper flakes in a bowl.
3. Brush a 13 x 17 ½ sheet pan with melted butter. Unroll one packet of phyllo dough, but keep covered with a damp towel as it will dry out very quickly. Layer the pan with three sheets of phyllo, taking care not to tear the phyllo. Brush the phyllo with more butter. Continue, alternating three sheets at a time with brushed butter, until you finish the entire first packet.* Brush the last sheets of phyllo with butter, then evenly distribute the cheese mixture over the sheets of phyllo, leaving about a ½- to a ¼-inch gap along the edge of the sheet pan. Open the second packet of phyllo, again keeping covered with a damp towel. Repeat the process of layering three sheets of phyllo with brushed butter until you finish the entire second packet. At this point, you can opt to tightly wrap the entire tray in tinfoil and store it in the freezer to be baked later (but no later than three months after assembly).
4. Brush the top layer of phyllo with the egg wash. With a sharp knife, cut the unbaked boeregs into twelve squares — cutting beforehand may seem counterintuitive, but it’s important as the phyllo becomes so flakey it’s impossible to slice the boeregs neatly. Bake for thirty minutes, or until the dough turns a deep golden color. Eat immediately! Boereg must be eaten warm; once refrigerated, the phyllo deflates. Don’t worry, you can reheat individual squares in the oven (or a toaster oven, though I do not recommend using a microwave, as it’ll make the phyllo soggy).

* You can, of course, opt to use more or less butter in between more or less sheets. My aunt Hasmig, she of the macaroni-and-cheese squares, butters each sheet of phyllo. Her boereg is incredibly rich.

Is it Weird That…

…I froze my mother’s leftover Thanksgiving turkey bones and drove them* from New York to Massachusetts?  Is it strange that when I got home, I chopped the bones up so they’d fit in my stockpot with carrots, carrot greens, a hacked-up onion, a handful of black peppercorns, some leftover parsley, a smattering of thyme and a couple of bay leaves?  What if I told you I then covered the whole lot with water, and let it all simmer, covered, on the stove for about four hours?  Would that be weird?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

Making turkey — or chicken — stock is so simple, there really is no reason why anyone couldn’t do so at home.  All you need are the bones from your bird (ideally with some meat still attached, but no worries if that’s not possible, since the flavor really comes from the cartilage inside the bones), mirepoix and seasoning.  If you want results that  are a bit lighter in color, I’ve read that you can substitute parsnips for the carrots, though I’ve not done this myself.

You can also add a bouquet garni of thyme sprigs, bay leaf, parsley, sage, et cetera.  I highly recommend tying your herbs together with kitchen twine, or making a little cheesecloth bundle, or using a tea strainer, since you want your stock to be as debris-free as possible.

Speaking of keeping your stock debris-free…

Once your stock is ready to come off of the flame, you will need a fine colander to strain it.  I like to fish out the larger pieces with a slotted spoon or a pair of tongs before I go through the straining process, but that’s just a personal preference.  Regardless of what you like to do, you will need to place a colander inside a large bowl to capture all of your freshly-made stock.  I’m a bit clumsy, so I put my bowl and colander inside the sink, since I invariably will splash a bit — well, maybe more than a bit — outside of my target.

If you don’t have a very fine colander, that’s okay.  Michael Ruhlman has a great tip for you:

…Strain [the stock] through a kitchen cloth, cheese cloth if you have it, or any kind of cloth (I use ones that i can wash and reuse because I’m a cheapskate and hate to keep buying cheese cloth).

After all your straining is done, it’s storage time.  I like to freeze my stock in zipper bags because I have a small freezer; this way my stores of stock take up less space than they would in little plastic tubs.  Normally I freeze stock in three-cup-quantities.  To do this, I date and label my bags, then stick them in a clean, empty plastic quart container while I measure out my three cups.  It’s much easier to pour liquids into a plastic-lined container than a floppy plastic bag.

As you can now tell, stock-making is so easy that writing a recipe for it seems a little silly, but here goes:

Turkey Stock
Makes about twelve cups

Leftover turkey bones from a fifteen-pound turkey
6 quarts cold water
4 tablespoons butter or vegetable oil
2 large onions, unpeeled and chopped roughly into quarters
4 large celery ribs, broken in half
4 large carrots and their greens, broken in half
bouquet garni of parsley, 2 bay leaves, and thyme sprigs
15 black peppercorns
1 ½ teaspoon salt

1. Melt butter in a 10-quart stockpot over medium heat.  Add vegetables, stirring to coat.  Lower heat to prevent burning.
2. Break apart turkey carcass to fit into the stockpot.  Transfer to stockpot, along with remaining ingredients.  Cover with cold water and increase heat to high.  Bring to a boil, skimming scum off as needed.  Reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for 4 hours.
3. If you’re using the stock right away, go for it.  Otherwise, let the stock cool to room temperature, about one hour.
4. Set a fine colander inside a large bowl.  Carefully pour stock through the colander and dispose of vegetables, bones, peppercorns and bouquet garni.  Stock can be frozen for three months; otherwise it should be used within five days.

* Before the accident.

Five Things About Me: 51 52 53 54 55.

51. My conditioner-to-shampoo ratio is incredibly unbalanced.  I’d say it’s about four parts conditioner to each half part shampoo.  Let’s put it this way: I’m still on the same shampoo bottle that I brought to Europe in August, and on that trip I brought two bottles of conditioner.

52. I have all of my dogs’ names picked out for any foreseeable dog I might have.  The first three names are pretty much set in stone as my favorites, but the rest rotate based on my mood.

53. Jack McBrayer cracks me up.  He doesn’t even need to do anything to make he laugh.  His existing is enough.

54. Right now, I really want a nectarine.  If I could have any magic power, I would choose to be able to conjure my favorite foods at their seasonal peaks out of thin air.  No food miles, just shazam! and nectarine.

55. I read either Memoirs of a Geisha, The Secret History or Bel Canto at least once a year.  Last year I read Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto twice, and I haven’t read either Arthur Golden’s or Donna Tartt’s novels yet in 2009, so I better get to it.

There is Nothing Good About Being in a Car Accident…

…but it is nice to come home afterward and discover something like Amazon’s nominees for the best book cover of 2009.  I happened to read Jonathan Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You not too long ago (at my dear friend Amee’s suggestion — thank you!) so I am a bit partial to its Gray318-designed cover for that reason.  I can say the same for Baking by James Peterson (designed by Nancy Austin and Katy Brown) and the Momofuku cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan (designed by Marysarah Quinn), both of which I got for my birthday last month.  And while I do like Doogie Horner’s work on Seth Grahame-Smith’s undead take on a Jane Austen classic, I couldn’t get past the second chapter of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, so my biases work both ways, I suppose.

This is as good a time as any to direct you all to one of my favorite blogs, the Book Design Review, where book and design junkies like me can get a regular cover fix.

Oh, and I should tell you that Keith and I are fine.  Our car might not be, but we are.  In the (belated) spirit of the holiday, we are both very thankful for that.

My Version of a Traditional Thanksgiving.

We spent Thanksgiving at my parents’ this year, which is the first time in two years that Keith and I have even been around for the holiday.  (Last year we were in England; the year before we were in Spain.)  On Thursday, Keith telephoned his brother from New York to wish him a happy Thanksgiving.  Later, he told us that Brian was interested in our menu.

“He was very concerned that your parents wouldn’t make a turkey,” Keith said.  “I told him that we had a turkey, but he was appalled that we didn’t have stuffing or mashed potatoes or gravy.”

My mother laughed at this.  “This is how I’ve always done Thanksgiving,” she said.  “This is what I know to do, so this is our tradition.”

It’s true; I’d never tried stuffing until I had Thanksgiving at Keith’s mother’s, and I’ve still never had sweet potatoes with marshmallows — though I am totally fascinated by this combination.

Here’s what we have instead: phyllo dough stuffed with mozzarella, red pepper flakes and parsley (boereg); garbanzo, dark cannellini bean and black-eyed-pea salad with roasted red, yellow and orange peppers; mango-and-cucumber salad; fattoush; pilaf with cinnamon, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts and ground beef; some sort of beef dish (this year was rib-eye with peppers and tomatoes); and turkey with caramelized onions slipped under its skin.

My absolute favorite part of the meal is the boereg, which turns a beautiful burnished gold in the oven.  I’m not alone in my boereg love — anyone who has ever had my mother’s recipe has fallen for its crisp pepper-laced cheesiness.  During high school, her boereg made my mom famous amongst my friends; whenever they stopped by, they asked if she’d baked any “cheese things.”  It’s surprisingly easy to make, though a bit time-consuming.  I’ve got the recipe at home, but it’s written on a sheet of scrap paper that I think I tucked in Michel Guérard’s La Cuisine Minceur this past June.  Normally I’m more organized than this.  I promise I’ll make it a priority to find the instructions and post them here, because boereg is best shared.

Food Diary, Vol. 2: Day Seven.

11.00 – 11.30 am: Breakfast of black olives, salami, baguette, pita bread (which in my house we just call bread), Tomme Crayeuse and Brebis Ossau.

1.42 – 2.06 pm: More olives, salami and pita bread, plus some Armenian string cheese, which I share with the dog.

5.20 – 6.01 pm: Turkey time.  Even though I don’t much like it, I eat bit of dark meat, along with my family’s version of Thanksgiving fixins — mango salad, bean salad, two and a half boeregs, holiday rice* — and a glass of Chateau Ste. Michelle Columbia Valley Dry Riesling.

6.30 pm: Glass of Koehler Chardonnay in the backyard with the dog.

7.05 pm: Two slices apple galette, a bite of chocolate-chip meringue and a hazelnut truffle.  Then another few inches of galette.  Then some galette crust crumbs.  And a grape.

Apple Galette, from Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pépin by Jacques Pépin
Makes eight to twelve portions

½ recipe pâte brisée (recipe following)
5 large apples
¼ cup sugar
4 tablespoons apricot preserves
1 tablespoon Calvados or Cognac

1. Make pâte brisée.  Roll out dough 1/8 to 1/16 thick, in a shape that fits roughly a cookie sheet — approximately 16 x 14 inches.  If the dough is not thin enough after you lay it on the cookie sheet, roll it some more, directly on the sheet.
2. Peel and cut the apples in half, core them and slice each half into ¼-inch slices.  Set aside the large center slices of the same size and chop the end slices coarsely.  Sprinkle the chopped slices over the dough, then arrange the large slices on the dough beginning at the outside, approximately 1 ½ inches from the edge.  Stagger and overlap the slices to imitate the petals of a flower.
3. Cover the dough completely with a single layer of apples, except for the border.  Place the smaller slices in the center to resemble the heart of a flower.  Bring up the border of the dough and fold it over the apples.  Sprinkle the apples with sugar and pieces of butter, and bake in a 400° oven for 65 to 75 minutes, until the galette is really well-browned and crusty.
4. Slide the galette onto a board. Dilute the apricot preserves with the alcohol and spread it on top of the apples with the back of a spoon and the top edge of the crust.  Take care not to disturb the apple pieces.  Serve the galette lukewarm, cut into wedges.

Pâte Brisée **
Makes enough pastry for two 13 x 16 rectangular crusts, or two 13-inch circular crusts

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) sweet butter, cold and cut into thin slices
½ teaspoon salt
Approximately ¾ cup very cold water

1. Mix the flour, butter and salt together very lightly, so that the pieces of butter remain visible throughout the flour.
2. Add the ice-cold water and mix very quickly just until the dough coheres.  The pieces of butter should still be visible.  Cut the dough in half.  Wrap and refrigerate for one to two hours, or use right away.  If you use the dough right away, the butter will be a bit soft, so you may need a little extra flour in the rolling process to absorb it.  When rolling, use flour underneath and on top of the dough so that it doesn’t stick to the table or the rolling pin.  Wrapped properly, the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for two or three days, or it can be frozen.

* “Holiday rice” is what I call the rice my mother makes exclusively for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It’s pilaf with ground beef, pistachios, almonds, pine nuts and cinnamon.  Whenever we come to visit, Keith asks my mom for holiday rice, and she refuses.
** I find this pastry extremely soothing to make, mostly because I love mixing the ingredients together with my hands. I think it’s really relaxing. I also like to trash-talk my dough while I make it.  Dunno why.