let's have a ball and a biscuit, sugar

These biscuits are perfect for sopping up turkey gravy.  I suppose they'd do nicely under some breakfast sausage and gravy for a hearty start to Black Friday also.  The original recipe called for 3/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese which might put these over the top...feel free to add it with the bacon.

Bacon Scallion Biscuits
adapted from Gourmet February 1997

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage leaves
5 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 scallions, greens included, trimmed and chopped
5 bacon slices, cooked almost crisp and chopped
3/4 cup cold buttermilk (shake it first, duh)

Preheat oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper.  Put 10 or so fresh sage leaves in the bowl of a food processor*.  Pulse until well chopped.  Add flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt to food processor, pulse 2-3 times to mix well.  Add cold butter* and pulse until mixture resembles meal.  Add bacon and Scallions, process for 20 seconds. Add buttermilk and process until mixture just forms a dough.  Pour dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  Flour your hands, gather dough into a ball,  and knead gently a few times (no more than 5 or so, don't overwork the dough).  Press dough to 1 inch thick round.  Using a 2-inch cutter, cut rounds from dough and arrange 1 inch apart on baking sheet.  Reform scraps of dough into another 1 inch round, working dough as little as possible, and continue cutting. Bake biscuits in middle of oven 10 - 15 minutes until browned.

*If you don't have a food processor, use a bowl and your hands.  Work the butter in quickly, rubbing between your fingers.  Obviously your fingers will not chop the sage - for that I suggest a knife.

**I cut the butter as soon as it comes out of the fridge and then keep the pieces in a bowl in the freezer while I assemble the dry ingredients.

You to Thank

This week I'm cooking a lot.  I'm taking small breaks from the cooking to read about cooking - and more specifically to read about Thanksgiving food: 

Andrew Knowlton, the BA Foodist, recommends some delicious cranberry cocktails. 

Michael Ruhlman advises cooks to prepare the stock for gravy today or tomorrow to save time and stress for Thursday.   His best tip of the day: using inexpensive handkerchiefs for straining the liquid.  Cheesecloth sucks and I love this alternative. 

Here's a super quick and delicious pumpkin pie recipe from Andrea at Forkable.

Epicurious explains dry brining, but my friend Nikki's adventures with actual brining, per the advice of Pioneer Woman, are more exciting to read about and they ended with a succulent bird - even though it was over 20 lbs.

25 Chicago restaurants open for Thanksgiving...and then 60 more.

A local charcuterie lover stuffs all of his favorite Thanksgiving flavors into one sausage.

I'm currently grossed out by this recipe for White Castle Slider Stuffing.

Do yourself a favor - subscribe to apartment therapy's the kitchn.  I can't pick just one article.  Most of them are interesting or nice to look at or both.

Revisit This American Life's 2008 Poultry Slam.

Don't forget the Green City Market is open indoors - even this Wednesday for last minute Turkey day shopping.  Also, Rob and Allie from Mado are doing chef demonstrations at 10:30 am!

Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?

Cranberries were always present on my family's Thanksgiving table.  If I was celebrating in Kansas City, I usually had some in the form of a can-shaped jellied blob.  On alternate years in Chicago, I'd have them two ways: a cranberry-orange relish and a homemade cranberry sauce.  I loved all three, but now I make my own version with dried fruit, ginger, and grand marnier.

Most people I know buy a can or follow the instructions on the Ocean Spray package.  Either is fine, but if you want to step it up a notch this year, I have some suggestions:

Forget the Water
Water adds the necessary liquid for your recipe, but provides no flavor.  Instead, substitute juices, liqueurs, or a combination.

• Orange Juice
• Apple Cider
• Hard Cider
• Grand Marnier or Triple Sec
• Cranberry Juice
  

Spice it Up
Add a few pinches of one of these spices for flavor.  At the table everyone will be asking you just what is in your (now famous) cranberry sauce.  Many of these will do double-duty for your holiday desserts.  Add any spices in small amounts and taste as you go. 

• Ginger (dried, fresh, or candied)
  
• Cardamom
• Nutmeg
• Cinnamon
• Star Anise
• Vanilla Bean
  

More Fruit
Cranberries are tart.  Besides adding sugar to your sauce, other fruits can provide some natural sweetness and more flavor to your dish. 

• Pears
• Apples
• Cherries
• Dried: cranberries, apricots & cherries
• Orange segments

Other Tips

If you're only going to add one thing to your cranberries (besides sugar and water), choose an orange.  Add the zest of one large orange and the juice.

Rinse your cranberries in a colander under cold water.  The berries should be firm.  Discard any that are mushy or feel thin-skinned like a grape.  Take care to remove stems.  Your fresh cranberries should not look like this:

 

The basic recipe for cranberry sauce is 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, & 1 package fresh cranberries.  Knowing this formula can help you estimate your substitutions.  I prefer 1/2 cup juice, 1/2 cup liqueur, 3/4 cup sugar, plus the cranberries and other dried/fresh fruit.

Cranberry Sauce Mix
Mr. Grieves - The Pixies
Underneath the Leaves - John Vanderslice
Sunday Morning - The Velvet Underground & Nico
Carbonation - Enon
Faith - George Michael
Susanne - Weezer

This Year's Girl

Esquire recently published a list of annoying food trends. Included: high-end burgers and pizzas, waiters named Todd, and the phrase "farm to table". Gourmet's artfully designed and witty photo slideshow about food and the web manages to document the frenzy of online foodie movement both critically and lovingly. It's hard to articulate my simultaneous participation in and hatred of food on the interweb. I suppose it involves a bit of self-loathing and hypocrisy.

I blog about food. I pause to take pictures of my food at restaurants. I menu scout. I plan all my vacations around meals. I concede. I'm a bougie food snob and now that it's hip to be a bougie food snob, I don't entirely welcome the new company. The trends themselves are slightly less obnoxious than the trend stories and chatter. When the newspaper of record announces that it is cool to cut off your eyebrows or flavor trip, I roll my eyes. Rather than care about food because caring about food is cool, I just care about the food dammit! But when Epicurious announced its plan to predict food trends for 2010, I couldn't help but brainstorm my own list. Most trend stories are full of just silly(peruvian is the new thai) or obvious (green, local) bullet points, so this should be easy.




Food Trend Predictions 2010

1. Granny Chic moves from the fashion and design world into food. Look for beets on restaurant menus (pickled, roasted, pureed) beyond the steakhouse. Home canning and preservation becomes both a financial security measure and a foodie statement. Comfort food is always popular. Your grandma made everything by hand...I hope you were paying attention at her apron strings.

2. Hard Cider isn't a pansy drink and some of you are figuring that out. This guy thinks so too. Ask your favorite bartenders if they've been pouring a lot of Magners recently...mine have.

3. Food and music pairings. Some restaurants here in Chicago are known for playing eccentric and loud music in the dining room. I love to make mixes specific to dinner parties and events I'm catering. In 2010, I hope dj-chefs step it up by pairing courses specifically with songs and artists. I'll get right on that.

4. Cuban food reaches the masses. Hopefully Obama's diplomatic negotiations with Cuba continue in 2010. Hell, maybe the wrongheaded embargo will be lifted.

5. People realize fast food can be good food. Street food, mobile food carts, and non-corporate quick service restaurants offer delicious alternatives to McDonald's. Rick Bayless is doing it. Paul Kahan is getting in on the action.

6. Less is more. A culinary student acquaintance who had a short stage at Tru bragged that he spent 4 hours preparing a sauce with almost fifty ingredients. My favorite chile negro sauce has three ingredients plus salt.

7. The green movement will become less of a happening and more of a norm. I'm frustrated maneuvering the farmer's market when it is filled with waif-like women sinking their towering fashionable shoes into the muddy aisles. Maybe if we had a decent year round market, people would go there to get food rather than be seen. I have many doubts about the new French Market, but here's hoping.

8. Charcuterie, good cheese, cured olives, craft beer, crusty bread, buckets of mussels. I think big communal platters of rustic foods can slow the small plate craze. Tapas are great, but this is what I want when I go to the pub for a pint.

9. Spice trend: cardamom. Keep an eye out for cardamom in ice cream, dusted on doughnuts, and in coffee drinks. I personally love chai-spiced cardamom marshmallows and a friend puts garam masala on his popcorn (genius!). It is used in foods in India, Scandinavia, the Middle East and will soon be in everything.

10. America needs to shut the hell up about bacon. This coming from a lady with 8 cups of rendered pork fat and 3 lbs of bacon in the fridge. It isn't the bacon I'm tired of, it is the talking about bacon. The endless websites devoted to gross and grosser uses of bacon. I'm bored of reading stories devoted to a trend that could be succinctly explored with a Seinfeldesque "What is the deal with all this bacon?" Awesome bacon recipes, a bacon festival, reviews of bacon products, and bacon of the month clubs are definitely still allowed. I love bacon, just not some of the people who love bacon.

Hard to Handle

48. 102. 59. 37. 70. I wash my hands quite a bit - sometimes a hundred times per day. Last week I averaged 63. I don't have OCD, but I do spend most of my time caring for children or in the kitchen which puts me in contact with a lot of germs, messes, and bacteria. I use two products daily to avoid the chapping, cracking, and bleeding that can occur when washing so often strips your skin of moisture. They are inexpensive (less than $10 for both), small enough to fit into a purse or satchel, work nicely on sensitive skin, and I strongly recommend both.




Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme
I use this when I wake up in the morning and before bed every night. I concentrate on my cuticles, but also rub it all over my hands. If you cringe at the idea of those scary cuticle trimmers at the salon or at the price of a manicure, try this stuff. At $6 for a small tin that lasts a couple of months, it is well worth the investment.




Neutrogena Hand Cream: Norwegian Formula
I use this multiple times per day. It soaks in quickly and doesn't leave hands greasy like other lotions designed for very dry skin. You can buy a 2 ounces for about $4 at most drugstores. I keep one at work, one by bedside table, one in my backpack, and one in the kitchen.

Cooking with Spirits

When I was 15, my family moved into a house full of ghosts. Many of my Stepfather's family members had died in the house over the years, but sharing the space with their past never really spooked me. I liked exploring the stacks of musty books and clothes, the decades-old magazines and 8-tracks. One particularly good find was a weird little cookbook in the basement amongst the National Geographics and motorcycle parts. Cooking With Spirits has traveled with me to 14 different apartments and homes over the years, but I've never once opened it. It sits on a shelf in the kitchen, providing me with enough inspiration just from the title.




My earliest cooking memory is of my mom basting a whole chicken tipsy with white wine and dancing it around the kitchen to the Go Gos. For deglazing pans and making sauces, wine is an obvious choice. I put Grand Marnier in my cranberries at Thanksgiving and good beer in my chili. Last week, I made a peppercorn infused vodka to go in tomato soup. I like to drink while I cook, and cook with whatever I'm drinking...which is usually hard cider. This (paired with a rather frugal period during college) led me to experiment by adding cider to my Thanksgiving cranberries instead of the usual liqueur. Pear cider + orange juice and zest worked out just fine.

Ace is my favorite, but I also enjoy a Magners or a Strongbow. Hornsby's or Woodchuck will do in a pinch. I've used cider for everything from butternut squash soup to salad dressing. When I needed to make an apple-based accompaniment for a pork loin last weekend, cider was on the counter, so it ended up in the chutney.

Apple Shallot Chutney

3/4 cup pickled shallots or onions*, small dice
2 apples, small dice
3/4 bottle hard cider
1/2 cup pickling liquid or red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 cup sugar

Add diced apples and onions to medium saucepan along with the hard cider, pickling liquid and spices. Bring to a boil over high heat and stir in sugar. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally for 20 to 30 minutes. The liquid should reduce and form a light syrup - this may require adding more sugar or cooking for a longer period of time. Can be served warm, cold, or room temperature.

*If you don't already have a jar of pickled shallots or onions in the door of your fridge, you have options. Make a quick pickle (I like Molly Wizenberg's with a teaspoon of pickling spices added) or just cook some onions in equal parts sugar and vinegar with a teaball infuser/sachet filled with a teaspoon of pickling spices (this will prevent chunks of cloves and bay leaves from invading your otherwise smooth chutney).

Fun with Pasta

This weekend I got to try my hand at homemade pasta for the first time in quite a while. Allison and I cooked for a client that bought a four course dinner for six that we had donated for a charity auction last July. I decided that I would be in charge of the pasta course, mostly because I found my pasta machine after moving recently. I have been working in a restaurant where we make pasta quite a bit differently than the last restaurant I worked at, and I was eager to try my hand at the old egg pasta recipe I used to know so well. The recipe is very similar to the one listed in The French Laundry Cookbook, so you might want to try both and see which one you like more. I think the best thing about making this recipe at home was that I had enough time to knead the dough for a full half hour by hand rather than cutting it down to fifteen minutes like I used to have to do at the restaurant. I know, a half hour seems like a long time, but if you don't have a prep list a mile long, the rhythm of moving and pressing the dough becomes quite meditative after a while. You can knead this dough for a full ten minutes and get good results, but its easier to roll out the more you knead it. Pasta dough has few ingredients, but the technique takes a bit of practice. Don't get frustrated if the dough doesn't turn out perfectly the first time. Remember, you can always add more flour as you knead the dough, and the longer you knead it the better your results will be.

Egg Pasta dough

1 lb AP Flour
10 eggs
1 whole egg
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil

You will need:
a pasta rolling machine
a rolling pin
a spray bottle full of clean water
a pasta cutter, a rolling one that has decorative edges is nice, but you can use a pastry cutter.

Measure the flour into a large mixing bowl. In another bowl whisk the eggs together with a fork. Make a well in the flour and add the salt and the olive oil. Pour the eggs into the well. While turning the bowl counterclockwise, whisk the eggs with a fork clockwise to incorporate the flour a bit at a time into the eggs. There should be leftover flour in the bowl once the eggs are incorporated. If the dough is sticky or too wet to turn out onto a floured surface and knead, add more flour. Eggs are often different sizes so the dough can be a little too wet sometimes. Don't worry, just add more flour and you will get the feel for it. Once the dough has enough flour, turn out onto a floured surface and knead until it is a smooth ball, roughly for 10-30 minutes. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap once it is kneaded, and let it rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours. To roll it out, let it sit out of the fridge for a half and hour. Knead it a couple of times and then let it rest 10 minutes. Roll out the dough according to the instructions on your pasta roller.

I made ravioli this weekend, and for the filling I made a white bean puree but you can use sausage or ricotta cheese or whatever as long as it is firm enough to stand in a little blob, but soft enough so it doesn't tear the pasta. So, for ravioli, take a sheet of pasta, and place little blobs of filling about an inch and a half apart. Take a spray bottle of water and spray the the dough. Carefully lay another sheet of pasta over the first one, starting at one end and slowly laying the top layer over the filling. If you start at one end, you can press the layers of dough as you go so you don't get any air pockets in the ravioli. Once the two sheets are put together, cut squares around the filling with your pastry cutter or pasta cutter. Cook the pasta for about two minutes in boiling salted water. Toss in your favorite pasta sauce!