Grandma's Thanksgiving Rolls

My mom's family has a theory about Thanksgiving: you must spend at least a week prior to the holiday "training" your stomach.  By eating too much in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, your stomach will be adequately stretched out and able to take in much more holiday food than it otherwise could.  


If my maternal family instilled in me a lifelong obsession and hunger for food, my paternal side gave me the respect and craving for simple, hearty fare. They are farm people; in their kitchens, nothing is ever wasted, nothing is thrown away. You won't find fois gras in the farm kitchen, but you will learn how to de-bone a chicken, cook the meat, make stock from the skin and bones, and throw whatever's left into the ensuing soup. Bonus points if there is a dog around to slurp up the scraps.

I spent hours as a kid helping my grandmother, and then my father, learning to cook in their farmhouse tradition, where nothing was wasted and everything came from scratch. Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey carcasses always became pots of stock and chicken soup (with homemade noodles, carrots, celery, onions, and parsley, plus lots of black pepper - simple perfection) the next day. In fact, most leftovers that didn't get subsumed into a following meal got thrown into a soup pot for the best sort of recycling I've ever tasted. 

My grandma (both of them, actually) passed on when I was just a child, so my memories of her I savor and relish. I make her rolls every holiday, not only because they are the best vehicles for turkey sandwiches (with only yellow mustard - I'm a purist), but because thoughts of grandma showing me how to make them permeate their flavor still.


These are a simple variation on a classic parker house roll.  You heat water, sugar and butter to boiling.  Cool, sprinkle with yeast, then mix in eggs, flour, and salt.  An overnight rise, then they're rolled out, stamped, and patted with more butter before being left to rise a second time before being baked up into buttery, slightly sweet golden perfection.  

Our tradition was to pat one roll with jam instead of butter. The person who unwittingly took the jam roll from the basket was blessed with good luck in the coming year.  These so remind me of my family and my grandma that regardless if whether I get the jam roll, I'm still lucky.

Marinated Cauliflower...

Wherever it is from, behold:  This is a strange beast.

I initially pulled it out (from….um….Cooking Light?  I have no idea)  because I needed something to do with a leftover ½ head of cauliflower.  And I'm always on the lookout for different, interesting things to do with vegetables besides steaming them or roasting them, two options it seems that I just default to time and time again.  (Both are good ways to prepare them, but you get bored doing the same thing over, and over...)  After I made it…well, there are better things to do with leftover cauliflower. 

It’s not that it’s a bad recipe – the flavors are good, and the vinaigrette dressing uses common ingredients and good flavors that I’ve used in many, many a vinaigrette before (Dijon mustard; red onion; olive oil).  I like the saltiness of the olives (I didn’t have capers) and the bite of the vinegar, but it just didn’t come together for me. 

The vinegar was too strong – instead of the called-for white, I’d use cider.  The salad tasted more pickled than marinated – not bad, but not what I was after.  And with nothing else in the salad, it just seemed a little…empty.  It’s OK, and it would probably be a big hit on, say, an Italian antipasti platter, because the acidity would cut right through the rich, saltiness of salumi and cheese.  But as a side dish it left me wanting…something else. 

If you have a leftover head of cauliflower, and you don’t know what to do with it….ROAST IT!  Tossed with olive oil, salt & pepper, give it 20-25 minutes in a 425 oven.  It gets brown, nutty, and delicious – truly different than most of its usually uncooked applications. 

If you don’t want to roast it, or if you have an antipasti platter laying around, you could try this.   It’s not that bad…but it’s not that good either.  But, hey, at least we used up that cauliflower. Modified recipe after the jump. 

  

Curried Farfalle Chicken Salad

It happened again.  I got home from work today and decided that I needed to make two meals, instead of just one.  Why do I do this?  Much like the Boy Scouts who are taught to “always be prepared,” it seems I am ingrained with a need to always be prepared for my next eating experience.  This leads to endless thinking ahead about meals, wondering how to use leftovers while I’m cooking the main event, and many other future-food-related habits that leave A shaking his head and wondering who this food beast is that he married. 

This endless food scheming has its advantages, however.  Nothing pleases me more, especially in the winter, than spending a Sunday afternoon making large batches of soup, breads, snacks, stews, and the like, giving us a rich cache of foodstuffs to eat for lunch and otherwise throughout the week.  I’ll often make up a pasta salad or other cold dish to keep in the fridge for A to eat when I’m at work and to fill my dingy old lunch bag.  I like to have food on hand, all right?  Because god forbid I’d ever let the fridge go bare.

With this thought in mind, I set about making a recipe that had been bookmarked for ages – so long, in fact, that I had totally forgotten about it: Curry Chicken Pasta Salad from The Pioneer Woman. The combination of sweet golden raisins, crunchy celery & almonds, and spicy curry powder was enticing, and it seemed a great single-bowl lunch dish to eat the week through.

Then, I noticed the dressing: full-fat mayo, full-fat sour cream, and heavy cream?  Have mercy.  I dunno, I just can’t cook like that.  I mean – I’ll eat the crap out of crap at restaurants (fried cheese?  Sign me up) but when it comes to my own kitchen, I just cannot do it.  Still, it had lots of good ideas – cooking the pasta in the water you poach the chicken with, adding flavor to the noodles while saving a pot and re-using the water; mixing chicken and fruit and nuts and veggies into what some might at first glance assume to be an unhealthy dish.  But I wanted to change that perception.

Instead, I scrapped her three-fold fat attack and used 2% Fage Greek yogurt, thinned with a bit of 1% milk.  I also left out the sugar, figuring the raisins would be sweet enough.  I also added in some green onions, since it just seemed right for the recipe (and I had bought a giant bag of them at Trader Joe’s).  And I decreased the amount of chicken to 1.5 small breasts, in fact only cooking one and chopping up the remainder of a leftover chicken breast that was just hangin’ out in the fridge.  Since you use a large amount of curry, and I took the initiative to add Old Bay (I am ADDICTED to it) it needed barely any additional seasoning but a pinch of salt.

We loved the combination of flavors from the curry and the raisins with the more vegetal elements.  It dried out a bit in the fridge overnight – I probably should have reserved a bit of the yogurt to mix-in as needed in the days following, but then again bringing it to room temperature loosens it up a bit too.  It’s packed with protein, so it’s a nice filling, nutritious lunch.  Now, where did I put those cheese sticks…? 

Visit the link above for the original recipe, or see my slight adaptations after the JUMP.

Challah, light

It looks prettier when not viewed through a camera phone.  I left my camera in my work bag.  DAMN.

Cooking Light is an interesting magazine.  I grew up reading my mom's subscription, and its recipes were identifiable for the many "shortcuts" they used to achieve full-ish flavor from light and fat free ingredients.  Yogurt instead of sour cream; milk/buttermilk instead of cream; applesauce subbed for oil in baked goods; and all of those fat-free and low-fat bastardized versions of the real thing.

But those things give me the heebie jeebies.  What, pray tell, are you eating when you eat fat-free butter?  What homogenized chemicals must be processed indefinitely to produce something like that? Certainly, not all reduced fat items are bad, and some I actually like just as much as the regular version (neuftachel cheese, 2% greek yogurt), but still...fat-free cream cheese?  What are you actually eating?

A kitchen scale makes baking so much easier.

Recently, though, Cooking Light has somewhat changed its ethos away from "fake-out" cooking towards a more moderate approach.  Instead of turkey bacon, their recipes will now use regular bacon - just sparingly, and in consideration of what's in teh rest of the meal too.  Likewise, trans-fat filled margarine now cedes its place in the ingredient list to real butter, just again with a thought to what else you're eating and what else is going in the dish.  Cooking Light is a great source - and inspiration - when trying to eat healthier without feeling like you only eat salads.  Plus, their recipes are generally good.  Yeah, some taste like health food, but most are easy, and they work.  This is important.

Love the action shot of my gorgeous KitchenAid....

Their Thanksgiving 2010 issue features a great cache of lightened-up and updated holiday recipes, including one for a Fontina and Chive Challah bread.  Challah is, I'm told, a traditional Jewish bread enriched with butter and eggs, somewhat like Brioche. It is usually braided into a loaf and brushed with egg wash to help the top bake up with a deep golden brown crust.  I know it  from deli counters and countless grilled cheeses - something about the eggy, buttery bread with its crusty top layer just welcomes toasting, sandwiching, and endless extra bites.

I had planned to make soup for dinner that night, but needed something to go alongside, hopefully something to dip into the brothy bottoms of the soup bowl.  Although I lacked fontina, I decided to give this challah a go, albeit a plain version, halving the recipe as well to prevent the inevitable eating of two loaves of bread before they go stale.

Sorry about the camera phone shot...

The recipe called for a few eggs, a few yolks, and very specific amounts of two kinds of flour.  But, since it required three separate rises, and I wanted to make it in one day, I woke up early to start mixing the dough.  As a result, my math (and reading) skills weren't quite up to par at that daybreaking hour, so I sorta "winged" the amounts.  I'm pretty sure I used too many eggs, and not enough flour, so the recipe below is definitely not the same in its exactness as the original.  Cooking Light claims each slice (counting 12 per loaf) has but 160 calories and 4 grams of fat, which compared to brioche (have you ever READ the ingredient list?) is light indeed.  And without the cheese, this version is even better.  So all that butter I slathered all over the top of my slices is totally negated, right?  Right.....

Roasted Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar Glaze

This is barely a recipe.  It's just good.  

Roasted acorn squash with brown sugar glaze

Acorn squash are a great vegetable (actually, Cheeks, they're a fruit) to keep on hand in the fall/winter months.  Kept in a cool place, it keeps indefinitely (probably more like a month or maybe two) until you're ready to use it, or when you're simply in search of something to go on the side of something else. 


Is this helpful or what?


The hardest part of cooking acorn squash is - literally (I used it correctly this time, Yeshua) - cutting through the skin/shell/demon cover.  Since the squash is knobby, it doesn't lay flat on a cutting board, making the slicing process even more difficult - and potentially dangerous.  I thought my giant meat cleaver might come in handy, but it turns out even I'm smart enough not to hack at a roly-poly squash with a giant knife.  


No, the bread knife's long, serrated edge, and a fair bit of muscle, were the best way I found to saw through the tough, inedible skin.  Once you overcome this obstacle, though, a delicious bounty awaits you as fair reward.  Does anyone else have a better way to cut through them?  Because, I'm all ears...and clearly no expert. 

You have no idea how pretty you are, do you?

Squash is nice and versatile, with endless recipes available online to celebrate this fall fruit. But really, the easiest and most familiar way of all is simple: butter and brown sugar.  Oh yeah.  


Like I said, barely a recipe needed.  Quarter (or more) the squash.  Place skin side-down on a baking sheet.  Dot top with butter, sprinkle with brown sugar, S&P, and roast until done (about 40 minutes at 400 degrees). They're done when easily pierced with a fork.  Oh, and they're pretty.  

Cheddar Bay Biscuits

If something is glistening with butter, it might not be healthy, but it's probably good. 

You know what I'm talking about.  Cheddar Bay Biscuits, Red Lobster's most famous offering. Say what you will about this seafood chain, I'll go there anytime you ask me if only to feast on these buttery, cheesy, garlicky bread bombs.  They're famously good...and NOTORIOUSLY bad for you. 

Now, I don't claim that this version I made the other night was healthy, mind you.  A biscuit is a biscuit--that means butter and white flour, and these even include cheese.  But I dare say there a lot less bad than the kind in the restaurant, and you definitely won't end up eating a plate full of deep fried fish along with the biscuits if you make them at home (well, I suppose that's not quite true. I've never deep fried anything and I never plan to.  I can find plenty of deep fried temptation outside my house and don't need to find it inside, too. But you might be deep frying your shoes right now, for all I know.)

Something is clearly wrong with me today.  Is it the fact that, defying my very sloth-like, anti-AM nature, I got out of bed at 5:30 this morning to go to the GYM?  And then I took the dog to the park?  And then I made both breakfast and lunch before leaving for work? Usually I can barely dress myself in the 15-minute post-wake up, pre-run-to-catch-the-bus morning haze.  I am not myself ("How am I not myself?" -- name that movie) today, clearly.  


So, meandering my way back to a point, BISCUITS.  They is good.  

I should have used a bigger sheet, but that would have meant washing one, and I'm lazy.

These biscuits might just make up for my mental shortcomings.  I love drop biscuits (my go-to biscuit recipe is a roll n cut variety) because they're just so easy to whip up on a moment's notice, when you are panicking that "OMG my dinner doesn't have STARCH in it?  How can I eat without potatoes or white flour!?"  Hey, I was raised in the Midwest.  I need my carbs. 


Crisp and flavorful, they aren't as flaky as those RL (for some that acronym might mean Ralph Lauren; in my food-centric world, it's of course Red Lobster) versions made with probably triple the amount of butter, but that just means I can eat three times as many before the guilt sets in.  

Sweet & Spicy Snack Mix

I have this problem with Racheal Ray.  And, surprisingly, it's not the perkiness.  

When you think about it, I should admire her.  She's the first to admit that she's not a chef--she's a cook.  She rose to stardom by finding a niche and filling it--evidently filling it very well, if her now pervasive media presence is any indication of her popularity.  She earned a loyal following by doing something I fully support--stripping the difficulty from making new, exotic, interesting recipes and bringing quick, easy, and filling recipes to the masses, and giving people the confidence to branch out in their weeknight cooking.  Plus she seems just like a regular person--not a food genius, not a perfect technician, not a super-skinny spokesmodel (GIADA, i'm looking at you.  There's no way you eat the food you cook.) 

All of these things, I love.  I actually like her show, aside from cringing every time she says "EVOO" or markets some product with a twee name like a "spoonula." None of these things, however, are my problem with her.

It's her recipes.  

She's got tons of great food ideas.  But, by and large, at least with her recipes that I've made, they're VERY poorly tested.  The balance of ingredients is way off (like her sausage and spinach drunken risotto that called for 3 cups of red wine, and buried all other flavors besides wine in the finished dish).  The recipes lack specifics when they are seriously  needed, or just plain don't work.  Rarely do I make a recipe of hers without carefully monitoring it every step of the way, ready to fix, adjust, and abandon it halfway through if needed. When you stop paying attention to her recipes and trust them, more often than not you wished you'd modified something halfway through.  

This snack mix is no exception (I'll get to that) but DAMN if it isn't good.  Incredibly addictive, spicy and sweet, it's one bowl you can't stop reaching into.  The first time I made it, however, I was certain it would be a dud.  See, you cook butter, sesame seeds, brown sugar, red pepper and soy sauce on the stove, then stir in chow mein noodles and spread it out to harden into crunchy bits.  

But, because the recipe doesn't say how long to cook the caramel or to what temperature, there is no way to tell if it's reached the right stage to harden, instead of just congealing into a sticky mass--not the consistency you want in a snack mix.  Faced with this traumatic result, I just stuck the whole sheet into the oven for 15 minutes, hoping it would get the job done--and it did!  It dried out the sticky, crunched up the chewy, and resulted in this getting made a second time--and probably many more times to come.  


This is a crunchy, sweet, spicy, salty, slightly exotic snack mix that is worth making, especially when you've had one too many bowls of chex mix or gorp...or just want to try something different.  Adapted recipe after the jump. 

Georgian Cheese Bread

While updating my external hard drive last week (sorting through my multitude of picture folders, really) I stumbled upon a forgotten folder titled, appropriately enough for this food nerd, "Food Porn."  Alas!  Food pornography shots I took way back when, before this budding blog took flight, before I had an excuse for my gluttony. 

This picture, though forgotten, reminded me of a delicious baking experiment that went horribly, horribly RIGHT.  "Horribly" because it was near impossible to stop myself from eating the whole damn thing.  This is what happens when you bake alone.

Georgian Cheese Bread, which I first saw in the May 2008 Gourmet, was one of many recipes I made simply because the photos left me an unstable drooling heap, unable to contemplate a life without making. this. now.  I did make a few variations on the recipe, though. Mine contained only mozzerella...because that's all I had.  I also recall the dough being very stiff (7 Tbsp water just doesn't seem like enough) and had trouble getting the dough to nicely flatten, much less reach an 11" circle.  I bet mine was around 8"--good enough for me.   

I can't resist showing it from multiple angles...

Regardless of these changes, this is seriously good. And despite having to make a dough and allow time for it to rise, this bread is relatively easy, so delicious, and--just look at it--pretty darn impressive!  Imagine serving this bubbling beauty instead of plain ol' dinner rolls at your next meal, party, shindig or secret alone-time feast.  Hey, I don't know what you do in your spare time, just what I do in mine....

Close up of the molten, delicious center. 

Let me just take a moment right now to acknowledge that the road to this blog has many, many direction-givers without whom I would never have had the idea and motivation to start it up.  The Food Pornographer, namely, and Smitten Kitchen, two well-known blogs whose images and stories, though different, are equally enthralling if you love to eat.  And Ms. Pioneer Woman, as well, who reminds me not to editorialize or to take on a voice that isn't my quirky, obnoxious own. As I reach for stardom, or just another cookie, you're all who I thank. 

Or thank me, because if you click through the jump you'll have a recipe in your hands that will make you into a star of your own kitchen.  Mmm.

Braised Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Shallots

It’s no secret that Brussels sprouts are not the most exciting vegetable.  They’re immortalized in cartoons and sitcoms as the grossest of vegetables, the one that no kid will eat and that always gets fed to the dog.  They are most often found over-boiled, mushy, and, frankly, pretty gross. You can gussy them up with vinegar or butter or whatever, but it can’t overcome a good veggie cooked badly. Because of this, I totally understand how and why they got their bad rap.

How can you not want to eat that?

Yet it doesn’t have to be that way!  We can live in a different world!  One where Brussels sprouts get their due appreciation.  One where little cabbages (they aren’t, but don’t they look like it?) are loved and celebrated in all of their miniature glory.  I want to live in that world.

I’ve read interesting recipes where you shred or very thinly slice the sprouts into delicate little ribbons, then lightly sauté theme or use them in a slaw.  This is a good idea, because dramatically changing their shape tricks the eater into forgetting past associations with the humble sprout and trying them with an open mind.   Plus, the little shreds are much more approachable than the somewhat dense, compact green leafy balls. 

A good idea, yes.  But I wanted to try a different tack to give these sprouts a new life.  A more direct route.  And what’s the easiest way to make something not delicious into something delicious?  Add bacon.  Hey, it’s just science.  Bacon + other food = good.  You can’t argue with a proof that thorough.

Another problem with the common approach to sprouts is a lack of imagination.  Take vegetables, put in water, boil until soft.  I mean, I suppose boiled potatoes are fine, blanched green beans are OK too.  But they're plain, boring, and bland.  Most times you employ this method, it's merely a step toward a finished product.  Even boiled potatoes usually get buttered and seasoned at the table!  Why relegate sprouts to the blandest of cooking methods?  Look at cabbage ("Cabbages is beautiful"--line from one of my favorite novels...).  They're versitle, used both raw and cooked, in all sorts of applications.  A sprout can be just as loved. 

Building layers of flavor by using bacon and shallots to create a base, gently braising the sprouts in chicken stock, and finishing it off with some coarsely ground pepper melds these sprouts into something greater than the sum of their parts. Give them another chance.  Served with some Parmesan Garlic Bread, it easily transforms from a side dish to a meal. One you won't believe started out with Brussels sprouts.  Believe. 

Jump for a recipe. 

Layered Cauliflower Salad

Pretend those aren't canned peas you see.  I didn't have enough frozen ones.   Canned peas are gross, and to be avoided. 

A short post today, owing to my lack of attention span, the hunger in my belly that writing about food is not helping to abate, and the 8-day business trip upon which I embark tomorrow taking my time away from fun thoughts.  So don't be surprised if you don't hear much from me over the next week, although San Fran should provide some tasty diversions after the workday is through.  Will I develop the courage/lack of self-consciousness to take photos of food inside restaurants?  We shall soon see.

A fall outing to the pumpkin and apple farm this weekend started in the best way possible--a feast of homemade (not by me) baby back ribs, smoked over hardwood, glazed with Coca Cola and BBQ suace, and devoured by four foodie friends.  BFranks, best ribs ever, by the way.  Major accolades are being metaphorically heaped at your feet by my literal sticky, sauce-stained hands. I could smell the delicious porky smoke on my fingers for hours....god, i want some more ribs!

To help our arteries survive the meat barrage, I made a quick, easy overnight salad to go alongside the ribs.  Teamwork is a good thing.

It's something that just seems really well suited for a potluck.  Easy-to-find, lowbrow ingredients.  Must be made ahead, then grabbed from the fridge when needed. And, it has bacon in it.  Any salad that manages to work bacon into the mix is a friend of mine.

Ahhh, you are so good.  I was too busy eating you to take a picture of you all stirred up. 

Easy family recipe after the....you know what.