Mildly under construction…

Tonight’s dinner was the first in a long time that I’ve actually wanted to share ’round these parts. I needed a good blog break to refocus on what it is I want to share here.

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Thinking all about food

I wrote this post in the spring during a bit of a cooking drought, but it seems I forgot to post it. In the spring, the reason I was posting so little (and cooking so little) was because I’d gone back to school part time and my evenings were filled with programming instead. This fall my excuse is less singular, and the truth is that I’ve had a lot less to say about food and cooking at the moment. I’ve done a lot of thinking, but not come to any hard and fast conclusions.

I can’t help but think about food for a good portion of the day. That’s probably because most of my reading and entertainment has to do with food. If you haven’t noticed the “We’re reading” feature in the right column of this site, you can follow some of the things I’ve been reading there. This year, I’ve shared much more than I’ve posted because frankly there are some great people posting more interesting things than I’ve had to share lately.

If you think about food as much as I do, you realize how many different things there are to think about. Why do we eat the things we eat? What is the best way to eat them? What is healthy? What is ethical? What will taste amazing? What is the most cost-effective? Are there things we shouldn’t eat? Why? What do other people eat? When is it better to let someone else do the work? When is it better to make things from scratch? I could go on…

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Thanksgiving

Last year our Thanksgiving dinner went off without a hitch. I’d like to say it was five years of practice that made it so, but I can’t take all the credit for how things came together. My whole family all worked together to make our Thanksgiving a feast that we could enjoy, but not keel over from. Below are some of the things we did that enabled me to enjoy the leftovers for days afterward without feeling Thanksgiving’d out.

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“From Scratch”

This summer has been a real adventure in cooking from scratch. I think that making something “from scratch” can sound intimidating to a lot of people. Before I really starting cooking at all, that term really scared me. I thought of it as a snobby way to say that something was better than something else.

Cooking from scratch isn’t always better (depending on what you are using to determine what “better” is). The first time I made a cake from scratch, it was tough, dry, and pretty much inedible. Making ice cream from scratch is much tastier than store-bought, but certainly not cheaper and probably not healthier since we often use eggs and heavy cream. Making ice cream also takes a decent amount of time and advance planning. Pizza from scratch is probably the most delicious I’ve ever eaten, but can take at least a day of advanced planning to deal with dough and good ingredients may not be cheap.

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Starting from scratch

Once you start making foods from scratch, it gets a little addictive. It’s amazing how many every day foods aren’t really that hard to make yourself. But even I have limits (or at least I thought I did). I was talking to my mother the other day and mentioned how I had a great sandwich. The bread was homemade (we’ve stopped buying bread because ours is finally satisfying enough). The pickles were homemade too, and some of my best yet. “Soon,” I joked, “I’ll be making my own cheese.” I was really really kidding though.

And then Deb over at smitten kitchen had to go and post this ricotta cheese recipe. There are only 4 ingredients, all of which I generally have around. It looks too simple not to try. Once I do that, I know it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to mozzarella. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to doing this, but when I do, I’ll be sure to let you all know how it went.

(Homemade peanut butter is also on the to do list, and since it doesn’t require a the heat of a stove, it might happen first.)

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An Ali Baba sandwich and thoughts of Paris

My thoughts have been drifting over to Paris quite a bit lately. I think it’s the travel bug that’s been itching in me all winter. This year also marks five years since I studied there. I spent a good part of this afternoon following Google street view around my old Paris haunts, amazed at how much is still the same (assuming Google’s photos are up to date).

The five months I spent in Paris were fabulous, and every once in a while I wish I could be transported back to that time. I learned so much there, a lot of it about food. If I were to go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would surely choose to eat a lot better. As a student, I was on a tight budget. I also knew much less about food than I do now. I cooked a lot of weird meals for myself and ate at a lot of weird places (usually only once).

But one place I know I would go back to is a little sandwich shop that was around the corner from my school. Pictured above, Le Ventilo is just a little lunch window on a quiet street. If you went inside, it like someone’s homey kitchen. There was a small seating area for maybe 3 people. You would sit behind whoever was making sandwiches that day and watch through the window as other people got their lunches. It was a lovely place, but there must have been many more remarkable sandwicheries across the city.

The menu at the time had cutely named sandwiches. I think there was one called “Le Austin Powers,” and of course, they sold the requisite Nutella panini. My favorite one, which I must have ordered a dozen times while I was there, was the “Ali Baba.” It wasn’t always available, but I remember treating myself to one whenever it was. It was 3.20 euros, I think. It was the simplest sandwich – a soft baguette pressed with moist ground beef and chopped cooked tomatoes. Simple, but somehow perfect. I would wait a few minutes for it to cool down and then nibble it for as long as I could while the meaty juices soaked into the meat and occasionally dripped down my fingers.

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A Simple Turkey, a retrospective

If you’ve never bought a turkey before, it can be overwhelming to try to understand all the differences between them. There are plenty of guides, but there are so many of those too, it’s hard to know what will be best. In my family we have always chosen frozen kosher turkeys, but even if you don’t keep kosher there are plenty of good reasons to choose a kosher turkey. This cuts down the options a bit, which in this case, is a good thing.

My favorite reason is that kosher turkeys, like all koshered meat, have already been brined. This results in saltier meat that is more likely to retain its moisture during cooking. Sure, you could brine any turkey yourself, but if you live in a tiny New York apartment like I do, you probably don’t have room for the equipment to do it right. And besides, I have enough other dishes to worry about on Thanksgiving, I’ll take the occasional shortcuts where I can find them. If you start with a kosher turkey, then you’ve got all the flavor you need inside the meat before you even start.

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Getting into the Thanksgiving mood

Last year I thought of all kinds of things to say to all of you about my favorite holiday, but I thought of it all too late. I mean, really, who needs Thanksgiving tips a week after you’ve passed out from feasting? This year, I’m going to get my Thanksgiving started early. I have so many things to be thankful for this year, and I want to share the great resources I have with you early enough to be useful.

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Making the most out of what you’ve got

Because it’s been so beautiful out, we’ve changed some of our usual eating and cooking habits for the summer. We’ve been eating out a bit more and have been sharing more meals with friends. To counteract the cost of eating out more often, we’ve slowed down our grocery shopping routine (Incidentally that is not very hard to do considering you don’t need to cook as often if you eat out more).

Despite the fact that we haven’t really shopped in the last month, we’ve still been eating about as well as we usually do (one disclaimer: I’ve had a ton of fresh greens and herbs from our local community garden that I wrote about last time). That’s why you haven’t seen much of me here, I’m cooking some old favorites over and over again. It’s times like these where I’m really proud of my home cooking experience and the ability to keep a well stocked pantry and freezer.

Not writing blog posts (sorry about that, really), has also given me time to read some other great posts. These two say it all better than I ever could, and also came at the perfect time:

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My new favorite herb: Anise leaves

We’ve been stopping by a community garden in our neighborhood doing a bit of weeding and pruning this summer. When we went a few weeks ago, we saw these tall bushes of what looked like dill and smelled like licorice. I tasted a bit and it tasted overwhelmingly like dill, so I thought that was what it was. We took some home and I’ve been adding a little bit to pretty much everything.

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