Catholicism, holiness and spirituality

A solitary lunch

One of the things I miss about traveling for business is dinner out at a nice restaurant. Lucky for me, I haven’t traveled out of town for business the past few months. Most times, dinner was a solitary affair – just me and one of my favorite magazines. At the end of a long day, a nice dinner, a glass (or two) or decent wine, and an hour reading one of my favorite magazines was a real treat.

But please don’t get me wrong – being home every night, having dinner with my family – or picking up the boys from track practice, or watching a movie together, or going to Graeters for ice-cream, or taking a walk with my wife – those are all absolutely great. But I have grown to like my ‘alone’ time too; the introvert in me basks in that time, at least for a while.

So anyway, today Melinda had gum surgery and I stayed home to care for her. Having become familiar with what gum surgery entails, and how it is hereditary, I thank God that my parents had good gums (Thanks God! And mom, and dad too!). So we get home around 11 AM, she crashes after taking numerous pain & etc pills. I found that there was one more prescription to fill –so off to Kroger I go.

Now, I really like grocery shopping. So, I drop off the prescription and hit the rest of the store. I’m looking for interesting foods for my lunch…. A pre-packaged bacon-wrapped filet-mignon? But it’s supposed to rain soon – but I have a grill-pan, so in the basket it goes. At this point I’m running through a mental list of what’s in the ‘frig…. Now the produce aisle – shitake mushrooms… sure! Gotta have some good bread – and there’s an ‘artisanal’ 7-grain boule. Got it. Lunch is starting to come together.

When I get home. Melinda is zonked-out, slobbering all over the pillow (she’ll *kill* me when she reads this). I take care of that, and the prescription, and I’m off to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Get the grill-pan heating while I get a bottle of wine from the wine cellar (yes, I have a wine cellar)…. Coat the steak with a blend of chili pepper, cumin, salt, and coriander; put it in the grill pan. Do we still have that asparagus in the ‘frig? Yes! OK, here we go. Cut the asparagus into chunks, trim and slice the mushrooms. Saute them both in olive oil, add some salt and pepper, and add some leftover grilled potatoes from last night. Yum and done. A couple minutes more and the steak is done. Oh yeah, cut a slice of bread and warm it in the grill pan, drizzle with some extra-virgin olive oil.

Now, I sit down at the table, alone. The only sound is from the approaching thunderstorm. I spend a good 30 minutes, eating my lunch while reading the latest issue of Saveur. This is nice. Not that I want to do this every day, but it’s a nice change. Kind of like ‘old’ times.

I forgot about getting dessert at the grocery store…. In the pantry we have a box of Nutty Bars, and that works for me.

The pain pills have kicked in and she is sleeping through this raucous thunderstorm. A few bolts of lightning seem to strike really close, and the rain overflows the gutters. I made it halfway through my magazine, and feel replenished.

Shrimp Tacos

This one is really simple, and pretty good if you have the ingredients on-hand. We just threw this together tonight based on what we had in the 'frig...

Cook some shrimp however you like it - boil it, steam it, grill it, whatever. Dice some fresh spinach and roasted red peppers. Spread some goat cheese on a small flour tortilla, place three shrimp on it, sprinkle the peppers and spinach on top, and fold in half. If you don't like goat cheese, and pity on you who don't, then I suppose you could use some shredded mozzarella or cheddar. Velveeta might work, I suppose. It's good to use a sticky cheese in this taco because it keeps all the ingredients inside the tortilla.

Goose for Christmas

Our traditional meal for Christmas day centers around roasted goose. One 10-11 pound goose is enough to feed four to six people. I carve it into 8 pieces - legs, thighs, and each half of the breast cut into two pieces. There are a couple bonuses with roasted goose - making a rich goose stock with the bones, and using leftover goose meat on salads. But first, here's how I roast a goose, based on the recipe in Barbara Kafka's cookbook on roasting.

Make sure the goose is thawed completely. If there are any pin-feathers left in the skin (there usually are some) then remove them with a tweezer or small pliers. Remove all the excess fat and skin. Rinse & dry it, season with salt & pepper in the cavity and on the outside. Roast at 475 degrees for an hour, removing the excess fat at 30 minutes and at the end of the hour. There will be a lot of fat - be careful because it's hot and can splatter. After the first hour, turn off the oven, leave the oven door closed, and let the goose continue to cook for another hour. The oven temperature will slowly decrease to around 200 degrees or so. Total roasting time is about two hours.

Remove the goose to a platter and deglaze the pan with stock, wine or a mixture of the two. Boil it down and, if you want, thicken it with a bit of butter and add some fresh herbs. Serve this sauce along with the goose, or save it for making goose stock later.

I always make goose stock with the leftover bones. The goose neck, gizzard, heart and wing-tips get browned in a saucepan and simmered in water while the goose roasts, and then added to the stock pot. Remove the loose skin from the bones, salvage whatever meat is left on the bones, and break the bones into smaller pieces to fit into a large stock pot. If there's anything left in the roasting pan (leftover glazing liquid, brown bits, etc) make sure to get that in the stock pot too. Cover it all with water, bring to a boil and then simmer, covered for three hours or so. This makes a rich, brown stock - I usually get about 20 cups. Once it is strained and cooled, I'll put it into 4-cup containers and freeze it for use later.

The leftover and salvaged goose meat is great on salads. This year we had it on spinach salad, with bleu cheese crumbles, diced dried figs, and chopped almonds.

Kafka's recipe calls for saving, straining and clarifying the goose fat so that it can be used later in frying things. I'm not big on frying, so I usually don't keep the goose fat. If you want my goose fat, come on by.

As for wines to go with roast goose - definitely red wine. There is no white meat on a goose, it's all dark and rich.

Christmas party food & drink

Parties call for champagne, in my opinion. This year I made a champagne punch according to a recipe from Gourmet magazine, July 1992. You can get the recipe from epicurious.com (may have to register for free). Don't go spend big money for champagne (or sparkling wine, for any wine purists reading this) that will be going into a punch! Once it's in there with ginger ale and various other elixirs, no one will know if you used Dom Perignon or Frexienet.

We made a lot of food. Nicholas cubed a bunch of ham and cheese (cheddar, provolone, smoked gouda, smoked cheddar) for a platter. Matthew and I peeled and sliced a batch of kiwis and a pineapple, adding some grapes to make a big platter of fruit. These are great activities for kids to participate in.

The December 2004 issue of Gourmet inspired a couple snacks - olive & tomato toasts, and red pepper cheese toasts. For the former, slice some good firm bread and spread basil pesto on one side of it. Then cut the slices into bite-size pieces and toast them in the oven. Combine one part chopped kalamata olives and one part chopped sun dried tomatos (packed in oil). Mix that up with some chopped parsley, salt & pepper to taste, and put a bit on each of the toasts. Use good kalamata or similar olives for this - don't use canned black olives.

For red pepper cheese toasts, slice a loaf of good firm bread. Use a cookie-cutter to cut out bite-size pieces, and toast them in the oven. Finely chop some roasted red peppers and put some one each toast. Then, put a dollop of herbed boursin cheese on top of each - I used a pastry bag for this. Get the highest quality roasted red peppers you can find.

I ran out of time to make homemade cheese crackers - the dough is made and in the freezer, ready to roll & bake. The recipe is from the December 2004 issue of Saveur, my favorite food & cooking magazine.

Risotto with shrimp

Tonight we had risotto with shrimp, and a salad of baby arugula with Maytag blue cheese. The boys don't like the peppery flavor of arugula, so they had baby spinach instead. Plus, they don't like blue cheese, so they skipped it - but I can't pass up Maytag blue on a salad. Oh, and a slice of good multi-grain bread toasted in the oven, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.

Risotto is one of those simple dishes that is really versatile. Matthew helped stir it tonight - if your kids can make mac-n-cheese from a box, then they can help with risotto. My basic recipe for risotto follows, and is based on the one in Joyce Goldsteins's excellent cookbook The Mediterranean Kitchen. To the risotto broth I added a handful of flat-leaf parsley, a sprig of rosemary and a few sun-dried tomatoes (Nicholas chopped the herbs). When you add the last ladle of broth to the rice, also add 1 pound of peeled and deveined shrimp. By the time the rice absorbs the last liquid, the shrimp will be cooked just enough.

I had some red wine with this, and it was good. I suppose a rich white wine would work too, but I am seriously inclined towards reds, so that's what I had.

Thoughts on dinner

For dinner tonight we had roasted pork tenderloin with mixed herbs and wrapped in prosciutto, grilled basil-garlic polenta, and fresh spinach salad drizzled with balsamic vinegar (though arugula would have worked better). For a sauce, I just deglazed the roasting pan with a bit of chicken stock and firmed it up with some butter. Plus, we had some good ciabatta bread from a local bakery. And for me, a glass of every-day red wine that was on sale at the grocery store.

The reason I write this is that while I was cooking I remembered a post at Open Lotus about how, in some homes, men do the cooking. My wife can cook quite well, but for me it is a hobby. As I tell people – some guys golf; I cook. My younger son Matthew is becoming quite the sous chef too. He went down to pick the herbs tonight – I asked for a sprig of rosemary and he proudly came back (as usual) with a bit more – the requested rosemary, plus some oregano, sage and flat-leaf parsley. He likes to chop the herbs very fine with my big chef’s knife, and we often fix a little “cook’s snack” to munch on as we cook.

Nicholas doesn’t like to cook much, but (like his mom) he does very well in the eating department. He’s practically vegetarian if we exclude fish & shellfish, and he’s the tallest & best looking in his class (I’m a proud father!). And he’s a great midfielder this year. Once he fouled a player on a break-away that he was losing. He later said he didn’t care about the foul, it stopped the play after all. I see executive management in his future.

Looking back on the menu, it sounds Italian. But the meat, bread and polenta were from the US, the parmesan we grated over the polenta was from Argentina (and it was quite good), the prosciutto was from (gasp!) Germany (how did that happen?), and the wine was a Shiraz from Australia. The balsamic vinegar was Italian! Well the meal, like most of us Americans, came from a lot of places but it all turned out great.

Food Stuff

Food & wine & cooking - three of my favorite things. I grew up on a farm; most of what we ate, we grew or raised. Lots of veggies and even more potatoes. We raised our own beef, pork and for a while even pheasants. I remember helping feed around 300 pigs, moving a hundred cattle from one pasture to another, and breaking the 3 inch ice on the pond (with an ax) in the winter so they could drink. And there's nothing like going for a ride on the back of a big pig.

For locally grown and organic food, check out eatwellguide.org, localharvest.org, and eatwild.com. Go the extra effort to go organic!

I read an article on Angelo Pellegrini and his book The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life. Seems it is a classic cookbook that has inspired many chefs, including Alice Waters. This quote from the book caught my attention:

Just watch what I do with a piece of tripe. And when you have eaten it, cara mia, you will regret the tripeless years of the past!

My mom taught me the basics of cooking, and I really extended those basics by studying and cooking most of the recipes from Julia Childs' Kitchen. Though I don't really cook French-oriented food now, those French basics and techniques are a great basis for cooking everything else.

Wine and food, for me, really go together. I've had good wines from all over the world, but tend to avoid French wines because in my opinion they are often too expensive for the quality delivered. I've had good wines from Texas (Llano Estacado), Missouri (St James Winery), and of course the reliable California, Oregon and Washington wineries. And for good value-oriented wines you have to check out those from Chile, Argentina and South Africa (Goats do Roam).

Just stuff

One of my younger son's friends came up with a great idea! When her mom had trouble finding and keeping track of their cordless phone the little girl said 'Mom, wouldn't it be great if someone invented a phone that you could hang on the wall and it stayed attached to the wall with a cord so that you wouldn't lose it?' A fine idea.

I finally wrote down the recipe for my turkey stuffing this year. I've been making it for a few years now, somewhat haphazardly. But it always tasted great. It's a cornbread stuffing with crawfish tails. Yep, crawdads, mudbugs. Tastes great:

Cornbread & Crawfish Stuffing

2 8" pans pf conbread cut into 1/2" squares
2 stalks of celery
2 large carrots
1 red bell pepper
1 medium onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 stick (8 oz) butter
1 pound crawfish tails, coarsely chopped
a few cups of turkey or chicken stock
salt & pepper
1 tbs each of dried oregano, basil and thyme

Finely chop and then saute all the vegetables in 1/2 stick of melted butter. Salt & pepper the veggies to taste. Don't brown them, just slowly cook them until tender. When the veggies are done, add the herbs, crawfish tails (and any juice from them), 1/2 stick of butter and a cup or two of stock. Cook that for a minute or two and then add to the cornbread cubes. Mix all that together until well-combined. Add additional stock, salt and pepper to taste - and you do have to taste it to determine how much is needed. If you like your stuffing smooth, add more stock and mix it until the cornbread cubes break down. If you like a more textured stuffing, add less stock and mix it less.

This is enough stuffing for a 15 pound turkey plus an 8" pan on the side. How long to bake it? I didn't keep track of that - had too much else going on. I covered the pan with foil and it probably baked for 30 mintues. Then uncover it and bake for 10 minutes more to get a crispy top.

We also had the traditional sweet potatoes, cranberry-stuff, broccoli casserole, rolls of bread, and gravy.

The wines for today's meal were not from the US - a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and a Beaujolais Nouveau. Not intentional at all - we had a great NZ Sauvignon Blanc at a restaurant a while ago and I'm temporarily hooked on it, and who can pass-up Nouveau when it's fresh and available?

(For my out-of-country visitors, today was Thanksgiving holiday in the US - a day we give thanks for all we have, traditionally cook a turkey (Hey Jcecil - what do vegetarians eat for Thanksgiving?), and eat way too much.)