Friday 7 January
This is where the American Academy in Rome party was held. This party is usually about impressive spaces rather than fun, but this was an exception. There were comfortable and quiet places to sit, the staff was friendly and obliging, they'd make any kind of drink you wanted, and there was a huge spread of varied and tasty hors d'oeuvres. So we stayed there and skipped dinner.
Thursday 6 January
Quite a show, this restaurant, the ceilings festooned with...festoons, and a succession of tableside mariachis. I think our party got the warmup duo, who howled out the worst rendition of "quien sera" we've ever heard. It was much better when we last visited La Roca in Nogales with Lois and Jon.
We had margaritas and chips, beef-stuffed poblanos (slightly limp) and pretty good cabrito (kid) - everything served with guacamole, cheese enchilada, Spanish rice and refried beans.
It's also a bakery, so we got sopaipillas for dessert - these were just-made, not pre-prepared, delicious pillows dusted with sugar and cinnamon, with honey to dip them in. Except for the conversation with Amy and Nancy, they were the best part of the evening.
Wednesday 5 January
Tuesday 4 January
We're trying to eat a bit light after the holidays. We were going to make stirfried pork and zucchini, but the zucchini did not survive a week in the fridge. So this was made with whatever vedge did survive, and shows the extreme adaptability of Chinese cooking. If you cut and cook everything according to Chinese principles, you will end up with a dish that tastes like you cooked from a recipe.
3/4 pound pork (we use the scrappy bits from other cuts)
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (or sherry, or sake)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
white pepper
1 large onion
2 stalks celery
1 big carrot (Holt was fancy and pared it down the sides so its slices looked like flowers)
1 red bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
oil
1 big chunk of fresh ginger, minced
salt
chicken broth (usually a frozen block, with a little bit melted off in the wok itself)
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
sesame oil
Cut pork into quarter-inch thin strips. Mix it in a bowl with 1 tablespoon Shaoxing, the soy sauce, and a grind of white pepper. While it marinates, cut vegetables on the bias and across the grain (celery, carrot) or into large slices (onion, pepper). Get your ginger and garlic ready, mix the garlic into the pork, and open the bottle of oyster sauce; in Chinese frying, you've got to have your mise en place before you start.
Add a tablespoon of oil to a medium-hot wok and stir-fry onions, then ginger, with a pinch of salt, until crisp-tender; then add celery and carrot and stir-fry for a few minutes more. Lower heat, add chicken broth block, melt off a few tablespoons, and steam under cover until crisp-tender. Remove cover, raise heat, and boil off liquid. Add more oil and the red peppers, stir-fry a couple of minutes until peppers are crisp-tender. Empty into a bowl. Then do the same to the marinated pork but on a higher heat, stir-frying until all pink is gone. Dump the vegetables back in the wok, give a couple of brisk stirs to rewarm, and make a space in the center of the wok. In the juices, muddle a tablespoon of oyster sauce and stir briskly into mixture. Sprinkle with sesame oil and serve.
Monday 3 January
This is adapted from Steve Matter's chicken salad recipe (thanks, Steve). It sounds so wrong, but tastes so good.
Slice a large onion thinly from pole to pole, and start it cooking in a little oil under low heat, so that it slowly caramelizes and turns golden. While that's happening, cube up enough turkey for two, from the turkey breast you've been feeding off of all week. Broil a half cup of walnuts in the toaster oven until they're fragrant and brown (don't get distracted because they burn in a split second) and chop them coarsely. De-stem and chop up about a half a cup of coriander leaves. When the onions are done, put everything into a bowl and mix in mayonnaise (a quarter cup or more if it's needed) until it's all well coated.
Though the unique flavors come through best when it's just plain on the plate, we served it tonight with the tail end of cornbread from Christmas, plus a few slices of Holt's Italian bran bread, made with that great Canadian import, Rogers 100% Natural Wheat Bran.
Sunday 2 January
A recipe from Marcella Hazan's More Classic Italian Cooking: tubular pasta (we used penne) with a sauce of tomatoes, mushrooms, and ham.
While the water was boiling and the penne cooking, we sliced about a half pound of button mushrooms and sautéed them in a wide pan with a clove or two of minced garlic until dark. Then we added a packet of our own - defrosted - smoked plum tomatoes, which gave the sauce a wonderful woodsy scent. We used parsley (from the garden! in January!) for flavoring, when the tomatoes had broken down into sauce, which is also when we added some thin strips of Schad's ham. When the penne were done and drained, they went into the pan for a few minutes to get friendly with the sauce. Very nice with grated Romano, as you'd imagine.
1 January 2011
We remember that in Rome, lentils and coinlike discs of sausage meant prosperity on New Year's Day. Well, baked beans and ingots of golden cornbread is close enough for the New World.
This is another beloved dish from Barbara's childhood in New York. Going to Horn & Hardart's was a great treat: you could feed nickels into a slot and, holding your breath, pull up the brass-lined glass door to get your sandwich (and they were quite fresh - I once saw a hand placing a sandwich into the slot), or get thick hot chocolate that spurted from golden lionhead spouts. The baked beans were the best, with the unmistakeable smell of what I now know to be molasses.
Here's what claims to be the recipe, found on the intertubes.
Horn & Hardart's Baked Beans
1 pound (2 cups) great Northern or navy beans, soaked at least 8 hours
1 cup finely minced onion (1 medium onion)
- but see below
4 slices bacon, diced
- again, see below
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2/3 cup molasses
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups tomato juice
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
Drain the beans and place them in a large saucepan, or (in our case) the Canadian Tire slow-cooker. Add fresh water to cover the beans by about an inch. On the range, bring to a boil, then adjust heat so the beans simmer gently, uncovered for an hour; or in the slow-cooker, give them two hours on high. Make sure they're always covered with water. When they're tender but not falling apart, drain.
Place the beans in a 3-quart bean pot, casserole, or just back into the slow cooker. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring well after each.
Slow-cook on low or bake, covered, in a preheated 300 degree oven for about 6 hours, or until the beans are tender again and colored as brown as the sauce around them. If there's too much liquid, leave the pot open for the last hour. Stir the beans at least once an hour while they cook, if it takes you that way. Makes about 7 cups, enough for two dinners, especially with Holt's Christmas cornbread warmed on the side.
The intertubes recipe was pretty close to the original, but not spot-on. The onions still tasted raw and were too strong for the dish, while even minced bacon is too evident and separable. Next time we'll give the bacon a whirl in the food processor, and then sauté it and the minced onions until transparent.
