Easiest Cranberry Relish

For the start of the new year, we decided to clean up our cookbook shelf, and found a bunch of loose recipes and pamphlets shoved behind some other things. One of the things we discovered was a pamphlet of cranberry recipes. I had a pound of fresh, local cranberries on hand so I adapted the recipe I found for cranberry orange relish to fit the amount of cranberries I had. I put the rinsed cranberries in my blender and added 4 whole clementines. I wasn't sure whether to leave the rinds on or not, so I compromised and peeled two of them. I ground up the cranberries with the clementines and then moved the relish to a bowl, to which I added 3/4 c. sugar and mixed well. I chilled the relish for about two hours before serving as a side dish to our roast chicken and macaroni and cheese dinner. The relish was sweet and tangy, and a perfect addition to the New Year's Eve meal.

Louisiana Yam Muffins

I make a traditional lasagna each year for Christmas dinner. Cooking the sauce is an all-afternoon affair, which is then layered with a ricotta cheese mixture, and shredded mozarella cheese, and lasagna noodles. This year, I added special muffins to the menu. I could not resist this recipe when I saw that it called for Tabasco and coffee - James' two favorite beverages. I also had half a sweet potato in the refrigerator, which after I steamed and mashed it, gave me the 1 cup that the recipe calls for (it does specifically say that yams or sweet potatoes can be used - I am not really sure what the difference is, anyway). The recipe also calls for 1 c. each of cornmeal and all-purpose flour; 1/4 c. sugar, 1T baking powder, 1 1/4 t. cinnamon and 1/2 t. salt. The dry ingredients were mixed together in one bowl, and in a smaller bowl I mixed 2 eggs, 4T canola oil, the sweet potatoes, coffee (1/2 c.) and Tabasco (the recipe says 1/2 t. but I just shook some into the batter. I am sure it was more than 1/2 t.). The wet and dry ingredients were mixed together, and then baked at 400 degrees for 16 minutes in the convection oven. There were a lot of flavors to be tasted in this. It was just sweet enough, and the coffee flavor came through. I probably could have added even a bit more Tabasco for more kick.

Eggnog Pumpkin Pie

To finish off Christmas Eve's Day of Delightful Dining. I made Eggnog Pumpkin Pie. This was a recipe I  modified from the Classic Pumpkin Pie recipe I often use during the holidays from The Pumpkin Cookbook. After cutting, steaming and pureeing a smallish pumpkin I added 2 eggs, 1/2 c. maple syrup, and 4 T flour. The recipe also calls for 1 c. light cream, for which I substituted a cup of eggnog. I also added some ground ginger, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. I did not measure any of the spices. I just threw in what seemed like good amounts. I think I could have added more. I poured the mixture into a homemade graham cracker pie crust and baked at 400 degrees for about an hour. The recipe said it would take about 30 minutes, which I think is usually the case when I make the "classic" pie. I guess with eggnog it takes longer to set. In any case, the pie was delicious. I good holiday treat.

Day of Delightful Dining

Our Christmas Eve tradition, since 2005, has been to have lobster with friends in East Bridgewater, each year making it more of a day-long event. Yesterday was perhaps the best so far, and not just because their kitchen -- which has been under development this entire time -- is near completion (and perfection). No, it was mainly the company and also the food, drink, and music that made the day perfect.

Lobster is lobster, so there was not much room for culinary innovation on the main course itself. Rob -- raised on the Connecticut shore and possessed of two great lobster pots -- cooked six lobsters to perfection, with melted butter being all they needed.

In thinking about a side dish to complement the lobster, my mind turned naturally to Paul McIlhenny's Tabasco Brand Cookbook. This scion of the Tabasco-making family was smart enough to partner with a real writer -- Barbara Hunter -- for this work, so the book is like a small Louisiana Bible. I turned to it both for the Christmas Eve side dish and for breakfast on Christmas day.

My choice was Piquant Onion (p110), which I insist on pronouncing with a bad French accent. Small white onions -- a bit larger than pearl onions, but no larger than an inch or so, typically sold in mesh bags -- are browned in butter and then simmered for the better part of an hour in a mixture of broth, tomato sauce, and vinegar with sugar, thyme, bay leaf, and raisins. Yes, raisins.

To prepare for cooking in our friends' kitchen, I created a piquant-onion kit, assembling most of the ingredients in our own kitchen, knowing that they would have the basics (butter and cornstarch) and the essential cast-iron skillet.

I seem to recall using this kind of small onion recently, but I do not remember spending so very much time with them. The tricky part in this case was to peel them while keeping them whole. It would have been tedious, but for the fact that I was doing the job under ideal conditions: a nice counter top in a new but homey and huge kitchen, good company, good music, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and a festive chef hat!

Once the onions have been permeated by this sweet/sour mixture, it is thickened with cornstarch and zinged with Tabasco. The word "piquant" is appropriate, as the result is quite flavorful and complex, and not dominated by the heat. It worked very well with the lobster, fingerling potatoes, and macaroni.

The result was pleasing both to the palate and the eye. This will be a regular part of Hayes-Bohanan-Waterman-Rue holidays to come!

The title of this blog post comes from Rob's comment near the end of the day. In addition to the dinner itself, we shared various nibble and nips, including a toast to our lately-departed friend Anna, out by the fire. For this we had Portuguese aniz liqueur in ornate glasses with a requisite coffee bean in each. The title of the post should in fact it should be pluralized, since the good food has continued into Christmas day itself. I prepared omelet (p36) made with a little home-brewed rye beer and Tabasco, with fresh-grated Parmesan. I used twice as much Parm as called for, and should have used twice as much as that.

Of course, the cheese was grated with our stainless-steel box grater, a heavy investment when we purchased it years ago, but the last grater we will ever need. And we were able to inaugurate our whimsical cow cutting board (made of bamboo), sent for Christmas by none other than Lori, our beloved COW (Cousin Of Wisconsin). We were just realizing that ours should be a three-cutting-board kitchen, and then this arrived. Of course, cheese was its first project! The eyeglasses are another part of essential kitchen gear -- two twisted up for regular use, they stay in the kitchen so we can consult recipes without foraging in the rest of the house for glasses.

But the omelets were nice and light -- saving appetite for Pam's famous and delicious lasagna in the evening!

Eggnog Muffins

Today's recipe is in honor of my friends Anna and Rachel. Anna died earlier this year due to complications from breast cancer. The cookbook, Granny's Muffin House came from her kitchen. She gave it to me about two years ago, insisting that I loaned it to her, and she was just returning it. I told her I had never seen the cookbook before, but in her usual stubborn way would not let me leave without it. This is the first time I've used it. Rachel is a co-worker who just returned from a very long sick leave. We always have coffee together on work days. I told her when she returned I would have exceptional coffee for her, and make some muffins. I am so happy she is back. She gives this recipe two thumbs up.

Granny's Muffin House is conveniently divided into seasons, so that bakers can find recipes with ingredients that are seasonal. I opened right to the Winter section, and found the recipe for eggnog muffins. We had a bit of eggnog (3/4 c.) left from our recent Crescent Ridge Dairy Farm delivery, which turned out to be just enough for this recipe which also calls for 2 c. flour; 1 T. baking powder; 1/2 t. salt; 2/3 c. sugar; 1 egg; 1/3 c. melted butter; 1/4 c. rum and some nutmeg for sprinkling on top. Baking was at 400 degrees in the convection oven for 16 minutes. I don't think I've ever made a batch of muffins that called for a tablespoon of baking powder, and these turned out to have tall peaks.

Easy Salmon

A couple of days ago we decided to have some salmon that was recently delivered from our new dairy. We were to have it alongside one of our family favorites, mashed potato casserole (detailed below). I turned, as we often do, to our well-worn Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. As we've noted before, this book is the simplest in famed series of books from a famed vegetarian restaurant, but it includes a section on fish.

The recipe is described as teriyaki. It calls for soy sauce, but I substituted Worcestershire sauce, which I boiled briefly with some minced, fresh ginger. I strained the ginger and mixed it with sherry, sugar, and minced garlic. The recipe had called for Chinese cooking wine, rice wine, or dry sherry. Sweet sherry did not seem to do any harm, though! I simply soaked the fish in this mixture for about 45 minutes, while Pam made the potato casserole, and then pan-seared it in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. The result was flaky and tender on the inside, sweet and crispy on the outside -- a simple and delicious way to prepare salmon.

This worked very well with the casserole mentioned above, which Pam prepared in the usual Hayes-Bohanan way. She mashed potatoes -- leaving the skins on and blending with some butter and plain yogurt. Then she layered it in a deep baking dish with steamed greens (frozen this summer from our CSA) and topped it all with freshly-shredded sharp Cabot cheddar cheese. This is one of our household's favorite comfort foods, and was appreciated by our daughter, who had just arrived home for the holidays.

Having a Three-Way

Although eating a three-way sounds more like a scene from The Slutcracker than a respectable lunch, it may be the most popular lunch item in painfully straight-laced Cincinnati. In May of 1990 we were at the Contemporary Arts Center on the morning of its infamous arrest on obscenity charges, and the NC-17 rating was introduced the same year, arguably in part because of the prudishness of the Cincinnati Post. So it was jarring to hear the respectable local citizenry routinely seeking a "three way" at lunch time, and to hear such things advertised on television and radio, and so far from Las Vegas.

As you may have guessed by now, the Cincinnati Three Way is nothing more than a popular lunch item. It is, in fact, the ultimate comfort food of the Queen City. Throughout this week, we have been fortunate to have a variety of foods, from our own kitchen and elsewhere, in abundance. So after a lunch of leftovers, we still had plenty for dinner. I had committed to building some sort of casserole on the excess linguine I inadvertently made when reprising my Linguine Valenzana (this time with saffron and without tomato sauce). But then I had a sizable tray of chili and a HUUUGE tray of cheese sauce leftover from a catered luncheon at school yesterday.

Thus Pam's brilliant suggestion that we make recreate Skyline Chili's most famous dish. It turned out pretty well, actually, and was well paired with our rye home brew, though as far as we know the Cincinnati chain does not offer beer with its chili.

Compare:

Hayes-Boh

Skyline

A perfect meal for us would be delicious, nutritious, sustainable, and cheap. Few meals can meet all of these criteria, and lately we've settled on too many that emphasize delicious over all the others. But this meal was certainly cheap -- almost free, really. And though as a product of the corporate catering food system it was probably not very sustainable not in terms of the sourcing of ingredients, it did have this virtue. We reduced waste by having a meal of food that would probably have been discarded otherwise. That chili is all gone, and I imagine our daughter will be happy to help us with that cheese sauce!