Author: foodnerd

My parents live in an 1825 farmhouse in the boonies, and have a big fireplace with a brick beehive woodfired oven. They use it once a year to cook the Thanksgiving turkey, which comes out amazing because the heat is very high at first, with a long slow heat to follow. The meat stays moist & tender & flavorful — it’s just great.
The one problem has always been that the outside has a tendency to burn to a crisp because the heat is so high at the outset (between 500-600F). Over the years we’ve tried lots of things, like covering the bird with an oil-soaked cloth, putting water in the bottom of the pan, etc. Last year’s innovation was to cover the bird with a pound of bacon underneath the oiled cloth, which worked great, because the bacon burned to a crisp instead, leaving mahogany skin underneath. Bacon makes *everything* better.
This year, we let the oven cool down much more than usual (because I was too slow finishing the stuffing, whoops), to just above 400F or so. This means we don’t have enough residual heat after the turkey finishes to bake our usual pots of beans, but I’m willing to sacrifice, because the burning-to-a-crisp situation is much improved. The bacon is almost edible, if a bit well-done, and the skin is gorgeous and the meat is delectable as usual. Next year, I’m agitating for even more preliminary cooling. I’m sure it will make my father completely insane, because he has waiting issues — he can barely stand to let the bird sit & reabsorb its juices for more than 10 minutes after it is done. *grin*
The basic method for brick oven usage is to build a wood fire inside the night before, and let it burn down. In the morning, shovel out the ashes, and build another fire, which you time so it’ll have burned down by the time you want to start baking. Shovel out the coals & ashes again, and when the temperature is where you want it, bung in the bird and shut the door. The whole fireplace structure will be hot to the touch, because the bricks have absorbed so much heat, and the cooking is done by the heat radiating back out from the bricks. That’s why the temperature comes down so fast, from 600F+ to below 400F in just a few minutes after the coals are removed, but then stays between 375 & 300F for hours. It’s nice to come in from a walk outside in the cold raw woods and warm your hands up by fondling the toasty fireplace wall.
The rest of dinner was even better than usual, if we do say so ourselves. We had mashed potatoes with the usual complement of dairy-based fats, mashed buttercup squash, smashed rutabaga & carrot (YUM), green beans, brussels sprouts picked out in the yard that morning, creamed onions (my father’s sweet & tender garden onions made these *so* much better than the slightly tough, sharp supermarket onions that never seem to meld right with the cream & butter), bread stuffing with sausage, sage & mushrooms sauteed in sherry, dripping gravy, corn pudding (from my friend M’s family recipe, soon to be a foodnerd family recipe – yum!), relish tray of olives & sweet gherkins & carrot sticks, and jelly-style cranberry sauce still bearing the shape of the can. And because too much is never, ever enough, especially on Thanksgiving, we had four desserts: apple pie — please note my mother’s fabulous pie crust, which I have never been able to equal; marlborough pudding (an old 18th/19thC recipe of custard laced with sherry and stewed apples and nutmeg & baked in a pastry shell); pumpkin pie from my jewish grandma’s asskicking recipe (a shot of whisky is the secret ingredient); and sailor’s duff, another recipe of M’s for a steamed molasses-based pudding-cake, with unbelievable sauce of whipped cream enriched with a cooked egg-sugar mix, and for which I am forbidden to post the recipe, lest I be hunted down by M’s family members and shot. Oh, and vanilla ice cream and regular whipped cream. And port.
We had to go lie down for a while after dinner.

12/8/04 addendum: In addition to the creamed onions recipe in the comments, by popular demand here is the Marlborough Pudding recipe.
2 large apples
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup sherry
6 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons nutmeg
4 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 lemon , juiced
1 sheet puff pastry dough OR 1 pie crust
Preheat oven to 350F. Stew apples until very tender — push through fine sieve (or food mill) to make puree. Mix together 3/4 cup apple puree, sugar, sherry, butter, eggs, heavy cream, lemon juice, & nutmeg.
Line deep 8″ pie plate or square pan with pastry. Pour in apple mix. Bake about one hour or until set — knife inserted in center comes out fairly clean. Cool before serving. (Old Sturbridge Village recipe. )

I am still in the throes of work hell, so baking was an utter impossibility for me this weekend, but I know what cookie I would have made: chocolate afghans. All over New Zealand, we found these fabulous crunchy chocolatey cookies wherever you might find a big thick chocolate chip cookie here in the US. We happily gobbled them up with our tea, and eventually happened on the best cookie in NZ as far as we could tell, at the DeLambert Cafe in Oamaru on the east coast of the South Island, 70 Thames St, Oamaru. 0-3-434 8884. (Apparently it is/was for sale. Oh, the temptation.)
The picture above is from the last batch I made for the MoveOn bake sale, so unfortunately they’re wrapped up in plastic for sale, but you can get the general idea: thick chocolate cookie, with thick fudgy icing, and a walnut half on top. The web turns up not very dang much on these cookies, but my friend Ian did some experimenting and pointed questioning of his Kiwi pal, and came up with the following recipe.

Cookies:
200g (a little less than half a pound) unsalted butter
1/2 cup = 1.2 dl sugar
1 1/4 cup = 3 dl flour
4 tablespoons = 60 ml cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder (can try using up to 2 tsp)
2 cups = 4.5 dl corn flakes (I would measure before crushing). You can also use Weetabix. (Note: Foodnerd recommends Weetabix if available for better crunchiness.)
Frosting (this made almost twice as much as I needed):
200g sweetened cooking chocolate
2 scant tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons cream (the original recipe called for 1/2 cup but this would
have made it too runny)
walnut halves
Preheat oven to 350 F/ 180 C
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then stir in dry ingredients. Note that this dough is really stiff and will take a lot of elbow grease to incorporate properly. Crush Weetabix/cornflakes (more or less fully depending on taste) and fold in well. (It works best if the crunchies end up inside the cookies not on the surface.)
Use your hands or a tablespoon to form dough into fairly large cookies, almost golf ball size (this recipe made only 18-20 cookies). Place on greased cookie sheet and press down slightly. They’ll be a bit thick.
Bake about 13 minutes; better to undercook rather than overcook & make them too dry. Cookies should still be soft and fragile when you take them out of the oven, but they will harden somewhat after a few minutes of cooling. Let them cool enough on the tray or they’ll smush as you lift them.
To frost, melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler and add cream until you get the right consistency. After cookies have cooled somewhat, use a spoon to cover them generously with frosting and then put a walnut half on top.

In an act of sheer pigheaded will, I carved out time to fry the last two green tomatoes. I sliced them about 1/4″ thick, dredged in beaten egg thinned with a tablespoon of water, and then in seasoned breadcrumbs (I used italian flavored ones, with some extra black pepper and hot paprika added). Fried them in about 1/8″ of canola oil over medium heat just till golden brown & crunchy. Served with plain baked chicken legs & rice & veg. Yum.

I keep reading about matsutake and how magical and delicious they are, but I’d never even seen one before last Saturday [really more like 3 weeks ago, I’m a little behind, sorry], when I found some wrapped tidily in plastic at Kotobukiya in the Porter Exchange. Each pack of 2 mushrooms was at least $7, and I did waver in an attempt to be fiscally responsible, but I came home with two adorable little brown mushrooms.
Having no clue what to do with them, but operating on the assumption that simplest would be best, so as to clearly showcase the flavor of the shroom, I did what any cook would do: I Googled. About.com had a very simple matsutake rice recipe, which seemed perfect. And it was. The aroma & flavor of the mushroom goes all through the rice, extending and amplifying itself. It’s quite lovely: it tastes a bit like a woodland floor smells, and it’s strongly savory in the most delicate way. (Of course, like truffles, these mushrooms aren’t necessarily worth the price, but setting filthy lucre aside, they’re wonderful.) Given what I read, the forest floor echo seems about right for the “pine mushroom” (they really do smell a bit like pine needles when they’re raw), and a hot dish of piny earthy rice was exactly what I needed on this blustery autumn day. Let’s hear it for seasonality.

Most recipes for yakitori I’ve tried didn’t taste anything like the glorious stuff I’ve had in izakaya in Japan and in one fabulous, lamented Brookline restaurant (how we miss you, Kiyoshi-san, o drunken master of the charcoal grill). But I happened on one here, which I’ve stripped down to its simplest to great effect. The vinegar is the key. You can make this for a crowd pretty easily if you’ve got a big enough grill. I slice the meat before serving, so it’s easier to nibble.

pack of boneless chicken thighs
4 tablespoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
4 tablespoons sugar
Mix soy, vinegar & sugar in a marinating dish. You want to stir & stir, b/c it will stay gritty a long time – you could probably also heat it to speed up the melt. Marinate thighs about an hour, or less/more if you’re busy. Grill them — you’ll get a bit of char on the outside, but meat will stay moist & yummy because of the salt & sugar.

What with the general insanity in my world lately, I haven’t gotten around to frying up those green tomatoes. And this morning I looked outside, where I’ve been storing them, and found them frozen solid. Oops. So I needed a way to cook a lot of them fast — The Gift of Southern Cooking to the rescue, with a scalloped green tomato recipe. Slightly adapted by me because I love Lawry’s seasoned salt on cooked tomatoes. Tangy, savory, and warming. Mine was very pretty, with mostly green tomatoes with a few red ones and nut-brown cubes of whole wheat toast making a nice contrast.
10 or 12 green tomatoes (if you have a few reds too, that’s ok)
small onion
big clove garlic
1 tsp sugar
1 generous tsp Lawry’s seasoned salt
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp or dash ground nutmeg
3 slices bread
few tablespoons butter
Melt butter, cut bread into 1/2″ cubes, mix together and toast in oven 8-12 min at 375F. Cut onions & tomatoes into 1/2″ cubes, mince garlic, and toss in a bowl with sugar, salt, thyme, pepper & nutmeg. Mix in the toasted bread. Butter a nonreactive baking dish (I used a big glass lasagne pan that i’d already used to toast the bread) and dump veg/bread mix in. Spread flat, cover with parchment paper, and bake 40 minutes or till tender at 375F. Take paper off, bake 10 minutes more to crisp up top. Serve hot. You could probably use foil instead of paper — it called for both but i was too lazy, and the paper worked fine alone.

The always-fabulous K had us over to her place this weekend, and whipped up a terrific, blindingly fast pantry dinner: saute garlic & chili paste in oil, add shredded kale to wilt, then put over pasta and douse the works in vietnamese fish sauce. Add some grilled meat or whatever if you want protein. Delicious! You can add fresh lime, but i prefer the saltiness of the fish sauce on its own.

I suppose it actually would be nice if I gave the recipe for my soup, even if it didn’t really help.
1 buttercup squash, cut in quarters & seeds/strings removed
madras curry powder
spicy paprika or cayenne
black pepper
1 bouillon cube (I used a mushroom flavored Italian one)
1/2 onion, diced
clove garlic, minced
few tbsp heavy cream
1/2 to 1 cup water
1/2 to 1 cup milk, fat level irrelevant
Wrap squash quarters in saran wrap and microwave until mushy & tender — start w/ 5 minutes; mine took about 10. Saute onion & garlic in a bit of olive oil & a dash of salt in your saucepan until softening and just starting to color. Add a bit of water and the bouillon cube. Scrape the cooked squash from its skin & add to pot. Add curry powder & spicy paprika to taste. Add cream, milk & water until the soup is the consistency & richness you desire — you may want to stop & puree the soup before you finish up adding extra liquids, so as to be sure not to misjudge consistency. Add a bit of fresh ground black pepper, adjust seasonings as needed.
I ate mine with a crumbled slice of wheat toast and some stinky old cheddar crumbled into it.