zoramargolis

Goose.  Going to cook a goose for Christmas.  Never cooked one before.

The poultry counter at Eastern Market has pretty much every kind of bird imaginable. I can't recall the name of the business, but I bet Hillvalley knows the one I am talking about. Try sending her a PM.

salad with meyer lemon vinaigrette

spaghetti bolognese--using the leftover osso buco meat. (All of the marrow bones had been eaten.)

HD salted caramel gelato

Columbia Crest H3 cabernet

A well-written, comprehensive article about bone broths, including recipes, from my friend Laura Silverman's blog, Gluttonforlife.com.

slurp

chicken tinga tostadas

comice pear

Vienna lager

I used unsalted matzo meal.  :-)  And really it was a mixture of schmalz and canola oil (didn't have enough schmaltz).

Last night, take two.  Better, still not great.

Do you shred or puree the potato? Try doing a mix of both. I shred all of the potatoes in the cuisinart with the grating blade. Then squeeze the shreds in a dishtowel to get out as much water as possible. Then take 1/3 of the shreds, and puree them with the egg, onion, matzo meal, baking powder and salt. Mix the puree with the remaining shreds.

dinner last night:

potato, leek, and cauliflower soup made with chicken broth in the pot that the schmaltz and gribenes had cooked in, without washing the pot. I sauteed the onion and leek in the chicken fat that remained in the pot, and used the soup to deglaze the layer of crusty, oniony fond left in the bottom from the gribenes. Oh, and there was some napa cabbage in there, too. I pureed it with a hand blender. Wow, was that delicious soup. We ate it with some German 100% rye pumpernickel.

A pot of schmaltz. And a bigger pot of chicken stock. I found chicken backs for 79 cents a pound at the Georgetown Safeway this morning. And a couple of 4-packs of Empire skin on-bone in chicken thighs for half off, because they are two days from their pull date. So I trimmed the fat off the backs, and the skin and fat off the thighs, and ended up with a fairly substantial pot of soon to become schmaltz and gribenes, and the backs and thighs minus their skin and fat went into the stock pot with lots of aromatic vegetables. Unfortunately, there were no necks or feet to buy--this was the Georgetown store, after all. But it's part of my DNA, or at the very least learned cultural behavior, to be unable to resist such a bargain, when it offers the potential for many delicious meals for pennies, mere pennies per serving.

I have some of Bev Egg's chicken livers in my freezer. I foresee DGS Deli-style chopped liver with chicken fat, caramelized onions and gribenes in the near future. Gotta hunt down some good rye bread for that.

Azoy geshmak! as the saying goes.

latkes fried in schmaltz, with a poached duck egg; served with creme fraiche and homemade applesauce.

Used the Serious Eats method (kind of).  No spattering (yay) but they came out rather heavy.  I still have trouble with frying.

I use my mom's recipe -- not fried in schmaltz-- but it calls for some baking powder, which helps to lighten the latkes and make them fluffy. What did you use as a binder? Try some unsalted matzo meal next time, if you used flour.

Solo brand (or similar) canned apricot filling (apricot preserves won't do) and almond paste (the solid kind that has to be grated).  If my local Safeway had them I sure as heck couldn't find them.  Thanks.

Rodman's.

Old medical myths die hard.

When you make your chopped liver, you'd do well to saute the onion in chicken fat. The aroma of onions cooking in schmaltz is intoxicating, and it will make your chopped liver taste even better. Plus, you are making latkes? I hereby declare you and your husband are honorary Ashkenazim--Eastern European Jews, the people of the gribenes.

last night:

posole verde (pork shoulder, Rancho Gordo posole corn, roasted poblanos, tomatillos, onion, garlic and aromatics)

refried pinto beans

tortillas and butter

DB Vienna lager

last night:

olli soppresatta, olives, tomatoes, taleggio and baguette toast

spring mix and mache salad with meyer lemon vinaigrette

osso buco with gremolata

risotto Milanese

pecan pie (almond/vodka crust with John Thorne recipe filling)

2010 Talisman pinot noir

osso buco. welcome home dinner for K-- one of her favorites. she's been subsisting on a starving student's diet for many months and is looking forward to good eats. we're on our way to the airport to pick her up.

Red Medicine in L.A. had a spat with the L.A. Times reviewer a few years ago. They closed Halloween night, supposedly due to overhead and are taking a "better offer".

That critic was S. Irene Virbila. And she is no longer the restaurant critic. Since she joined the L.A. Times, she has been a wine reviewer and still is, but I don't know if this incident has anything to do with her no longer being the restaurant critic.

last night:

braised beef cheeks (four days in cooked wine marinade)

mashed potatoes

haricots vets with garlic and lemon

bosc pear

2010 Dufeu bourgueil

Hilarious

click

bone broth in the news

miso ramen with shrimp and squid, napa cabbage and mushrooms

We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.

Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,
popped it right in.
That frog song wanting nothing but echo?
We used that.
Stirred it widely. Noticed the clouds while stirring.
Called upon our ancient great aunts and their long slow eyes
of summer. Dropped in their names.
Added a mint leaf now and then
to hearten the broth. Added a note of cheer and worry.
Orange butterfly between the claps of thunder?
Perfect. And once we had it,
had smelled and tasted the fragrant syrup,
placing the pan on a back burner for keeping,
the sorrow lifted in small ways.
We boiled down the lies in another pan till they disappeared.
We washed that pan.

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

I'm resuscitating this thread for a wine bargain found at Costco Pentagon City today:

2012 Columbia Crest cabernet H3 (Horse Heaven Hills) which got a 92 point score from Wine Spectator.

$10.99 minus $2.50 per bottle discount taken at the register = $8.49 a bottle.

Very nice wine, fruity and complex with a lovely nose. I'm going to try to get back tomorrow and buy a case.

When my daughter left her dorm after her freshman year at UNC and moved off-campus, I bought her a knife roll, a Furi knife and a sharpener, a paring knife, a serrated knife and a selection of basic cooking tools that fit into the slots of the knife roll. I also gave her a few old Calphalon pots that I had retired in favor of All-Clads. She has since developed a real interest in cooking, and every year at Christmas, I've been gifting her with cookbooks and a piece of All-Clad or a small appliance--KitchenAid food processor, blender. So, gradually, she is acquiring a batterie de cuisine that should last her for many years. Last year, I found an 8 quart Staub enamel cast iron Dutch oven at a garage sale for her, like new for $50. I bought us a new espresso machine for Christmas last year, and gave her the old one, which still worked fairly well, but was beat up and leaked out of the milk steaming vent--which she thought was the best thing I could have given her.

braised stuffed cabbage: savoy cabbage stuffed with ground bison (new vendor at Dupont Market, can't recall name), basmati rice, and spices, baked in a sweet-sour-spicy tomato sauce made with yellow carrot, parsnip, celery, quince, golden raisins, dried figs and aromatics

forelle pears poached in spiced red wine syrup served with creme fraiche

2005 Ch. Gros Caillou St. Emilion

a tostada/nachos hybrid:  a warm tortilla and tortilla chips on top of which were layered homemade black beans, monterey jack, rajas de poblanos, marinated, grilled chicken thighs with salsa verde, lightly dressed lettuce, pico de gallo

2003 Altos de Luzon found in the back of the corner cupboard. The cork crumbled and had to be extracted with an ah-so, but the wine was only slightly bricked, had a fair amount of tannin, and was still huge and full of fruit.

pan roasted d'Artagnan moulard magret with sour cherries in a pan reduction sauce based on homemade veal stock

mashed potatoes mixed with braised kale made with smoky lardons

2012 Acrobat pinot noir

last night:

roasted kabocha squash soup with lots of other veg: onion, leek, fennel, carrot, celery, quince, aromatic herbs, ginger, lemon grass, duck stock

wild goose salami, homemade by Mark N. and Emily S.

p'tit basque

marinated roasted red peppers

olives

rustic bread

As J pointed out to me this morning, this is probably the first Thanksgiving of my adult life that I plan to do no cooking at all. We declined an invitation to a cousin's house in Timonium--I'm not yet physically up for a long round-trip car ride. So we are going out to a nearby restaurant for dinner, albeit not for turkey. I am fine with it, though J seems somewhat wistful. Thanksgiving has always been his favorite holiday of the year, and we have always celebrated with having family come here, or traveled to be with them. I am hopeful that things will return to the usual state of things next year, although this getting older nonsense is unpredictable.