Maggie's Farm

This is an annual re-posting.

The global cooling we are experiencing inspired me to consider some truly fine cool-weather all-white breakfast eats which are not easily found in Yankee-land. The good stuff that sticks to your arteries ribs and warms you from the inside.

Creamed chipped beef on toast is the fine old Yankee version of the southland's biscuits 'n gravy. Both have done wonders for warming the hearts and narrowing the arteries of generations of American boys. Add some potatoes and you have the perfect meal for a lumberjack or hunter.

While apple pie is an old-time Yankee breakfast staple, it has been replaced long ago by eggs, toast, and bacon, maybe a chunk of fruit, and preferably home fries with ketchup on them. Not Heinz 57, though - it's not my job to feed John Kerry.

Some people eat cereal for breakfast. Why? Because Dr. John Kellogg, a health-food charlatan in the 1800s, told them to. Zero nutrition. Breakfast cereal is a fraud and a scam, unless it's plain grits or cream of wheat or oatmeal. The crunchy granola stuff? Well, I thought the guy who discovered that you could sell people plain water was a genius, but the people who decided to sell guinea pig food to humans was his creative equal.

(At Maggie's Farm, we are also fond of fish for breakfast, like the Brits. Kippers. Or a lighty sauteed trout someone has caught early, sprinkled with parsley. Or left-over broiled salmon.)

The chipped beef was always a boarding school standard, and half loved it and half barfed to look at it. It does look like vomit, but it's great stuff. It's a gourmet's delight, but nobody makes it anymore.

When I did my time south of the Mason-Dixon, a local favorite was hot dog gravy on biscuits. Grits on the side, of course. Everything white. Not a refined breakfast, just gravy made with supermarket hot dogs instead of sausage. A truly revolting flavor unless you grew up in the hills and hollers, but it will fend off hunger for hours. I prefer my Sabretts on a bun at Yankee Stadium. But other sorts of southern gravy, made with ham or sausage, are just fine. I won't presume to offer a biscuit 'n gravy recipe, because every Southern Mom has her own. Well, here's a Virginia one from someone's Grandma.

Biscuits 'n gravy, and grits. Serious food for the soul.

Image: New Hampshire chipped beef on English muffins - with home fries. They don't do grits up north (except in Italian homes and restaurants, where they like to call grits "polenta") and it's a damn shame. Good stuff.

Creamed Chicken with Peas

Mac and Cheese

Cacciatore

Easy Chicken Casserole

Shepherd's Pie

Meat Loaf

Pot Roast

Beef Stew

Pasta Fagioli

Stroganoff

Tetrazzine

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Corned Beef and Cabbage, aka New England Boiled Dinner

Chili

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Chowder

Beans: Black Bean Soup, and Red Beans and Rice

Moussaka

Tuna Noodle

Chicken and Dumplings

Stuffed Cabbage

Shrimp and Grits

Codfish Cakes

This was news to me, from a Paris-trained chef friend.

Butter will keep for weeks or months without refrigeration, depending on how much oxygen it is exposed to. The purpose of a butter dish (or butter crock, etc) is so you can have soft, usable butter on the counter or table at all times, while protected from ambient air.

In fact, butter will stay better and fresher in a butter dish rather than in the fridge where it is exposed to ambient air. Why do Americans keep butter in the fridge? Who knows. It won't melt under 80 degrees F. Supposedly, the butter crocks that use a water seal will keep butter fresh even longer, many months. Well, butter has been around a lot longer than refrigeration.

My days of tearing bread and toast with hard butter are over, as of now. Yes, I do love butter, and even more now that we know it's healthy.

In reference to our Scientific Survey about coffee containers, a reader sends this:

Victor Coffee Mugs made by the Victor Insulation Company.

These mugs originally were made without handles for use on Navy ships, so outside lookouts could wrap their hand around one to warm up and drink coffee, too.  Also, they are hard to knock over or break.

The real ones are commonly available on Ebay (see:  9 Victor Coffee Mugs Heavy Thick Diner Restaurant Vitrified Stoneware Original) and worth every penny.  We use them exclusively.

We learned how to make it right from Jewish friends. Mrs. BD has had the bug that's going around - stiff neck, headache, muscle cramps, general weakness, so I made a batch for her. No, it's not meningitis.

Quick and easy. I lightly sautee a pile of chopped onions, celery, and garlic in some olive oil and butter. I chop a few carrots, skin on. Throw them in the big crock pot. I lightly brown a few chicken legs and thighs, and throw them in, and cover with water. I toss in a bunch of herbs - bay leaf, thyme, a little rosemary, maybe tarragon, and a large pile of chopped parsley. Lots of salt and pepper.

I put the crock thing on high for 5 or 6 hours. It can't go wrong, and it is good medicine for whatever ails ya.

From our archives:

Cassoulet

As you may know, cassoulet is basically French baked beans with meat. The real original of hot dogs and baked beans. It is country home cookin, but it can be great stuff. Dutch oven cooking. Crock pot? Why not, as long as the meats are browned first, but it will not brown the top.

It's a good way to cook some wild game meat, especially the less-tender parts.

Any meat, but not beef - strong red meat is too strong for cassoulet. We have, over time, used various mixes of duck, snow goose, chukar, venison, chicken, pork, wild boar, and pheasant which we have killed. Mix the meats - it adds to the flavor. There should be some source of pig fat or duck fat in it. Some venison sausage, or any sausage, because it is a necessary traditional ingredient. The meat-to-bean ratio is supposed to be fairly high - 30% - but I like beans and prefer a lower ratio. I think every village in southern France has its own recipe and method. I figure roughly one hunk of sausage and one or two hunks of meat per person.

A few tips about Cassoulet:

1. Make it at least the day before. Like beef stew, it improves overnight.
2. Serve with salad, toasted garlic bread with a pile of stinky and gooey cheeses on the side, and then fruit for dessert. And a Cote Rotie or Cotes du Rhone.
3. You need to use large white beans, ideally French haricot beans. Use the canned beans, don't bother with dried beans.
4. Make sure you push the bread crumbs down into the surface of the mixture when baking.
5. Sprinkle chopped fresh parsley on top when done - it looks better that way.

It's worth reading a few approaches to get the general idea. Here's an easy American version. Here's one French version. Here's another.

Cooked up a big batch of superb Beef Stew (my opinion) for the family crowd yesterday, to be served today for birthdays. A stew always benefits from a day's rest.  I do it the Frenchie way with the cheapest cuts of meat, lardons, lots of pearl onions, porcini mushrooms, Cotes de Rhone - all the best stuff. My concoction is also good for the unwanted cuts of venison.

I slow cook it, low heat, for 6 or 7 hours, let it rest for 24 hrs, and serve on egg noodles, Italian or otherwise.

However, I somehow stumbled on recipes for liver 'n onions. I love calves liver and onions, with a side of mashed taters. (Me like chicken liver too, but that's another story.) The trick to tasty calves liver is the same as for foie gras - crispy on the outside and pink on the inside. That means high heat, quick cooking. I like liver in chunks, not slabs.

Readers know that we do not meander around this incredible museum colossus at random (which works fine if you are stoned and have all day but that ain't us anymore), but we only go for one show or one area. One hour only, or a little more, or you get the deadly brain affliction known here as "museum-brain."

Having accumulated a manageable dose of education and culcha, a nice lunch and a glass or two of wine nearby is perfect. Mrs. BD suggests the following for affordable cheap amazing prix-fixe lunches - make reservations) Decent dress code not a bad idea for these, ie dresses and jacket and tie.

Our long-time favorite: Giovanni Vento Cinque. Cozy, cuisine not entirely predictable but always good. My favorite? The calves liver with balsamic. That's Italian.

Caravaggio. Jacket and tie required. Wonderful and elegant but not stuffy.

Jean Georges - just across the park. Mind-blowing.

If you can handle two venues in one day, stroll down to the intimate Neue Gallery and have a perfectly authentic Viennese lunch in their parlor. I have been in Vienna, and this is Vienna.

For in-laws, kids, and their significant others

Roast Boneless Leg of Lamb to 120 degrees (F) - rare - au jus of course
Steamed haricot verts with olive oil
Steamed spinach with garlic and olive oil
Mashed Oregon Gold taters
I forgot to get the beets at the store - I have never gone to the market without forgetting something
Green salad of baby spinach, baby kale, and arugula, with goat cheese

Hard crusty bread

Prosecca, Mt. Etna Rosso, Martinelli's

Christmas cookies and espresso from my Christmas machine

The Art of the Bûche de Noël

Great to make, but easier to buy one at your baker

Best Macaroni and Cheese

The best side with any juicy, fatty, succulent meat

5-Minute Peanut Butter Frozen Fudge

We changed our Christmas Day menu. Our neighborhood butcher is making us a crown roast of pork with 18 chops - and each chop 2 inches thick. I'll stuff the roasts with sausage-apple stuffing, and we'll make some applesauce. Few winter foods are more succulent and delicious.

 Around the HQ, we stick with the un-Yankee, Southern Italian/Sicilian Christmas Eve fast, which means seafood. In past years, I have had the real 7 Fishes with fried baccala, steamed mussels, scungilli,  etc etc. A wonderful fish feast which it would be a stretch to term "fasting." The Catholics are very clever with their concept of fasting.

The best-known Sicilian Primi is Pasta Con Sardi - pasta with anchovies (or tiny sardines) - what I term Pasta With Minnows aka Pasta with Bait.

What is an "anchovy"? Never, ever use those tinned brown over-salted anchovies that they put on cheap pizzas. Disgusting stuff, cat food for a cat you hate. If you can't get fresh anchovies (they are white)  at your local fish market, use the canned white anchovies in olive oil. Tasty. Good Italian markets have good fresh or oiled white anchovy filets.

Here's the recipe. Yes, to be authentic it needs the breadcrumbs.

And here's another Vigilia favorite: Fried Baccala Balls. I've also had these with mashed potato in the cod mix to hold it all together. Nothing is more delicious.

Traditonally, you have to have Struffoli for dessert even though I find it inedible.

Truth is, in recent years we just make poached salmon with yogurt-dill sauce, to be ready to serve at room temp. after getting home from church.

We want it easy but good. We're thinking something like this:

Eggnog and/or Champagne, and Martinelli's of course for the teetotalers, then wine
A spiral-cut full-size Harrington's Country Ham big enough for 20, with some cool sauces and mustards for it
Corn Pudding
Scalloped potatoes with bacon
Asparagus
Biscuits
A green salad
Misc. Christmas cookies for dessert - bring homemade ones with you

We do church Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning as I did as a lad. We forbid gifts with extended family so we omit that silliness - except gifts of homemade cookies. In fact, we are not too big on gifts in general anymore. Instead, we'll have Mrs. BD on ye olde Steinway playing Christmas songs for us all to sing off-key, and some group games. We often play the "Who am I?" game.

At night, the kids go off to the movies with friends.

What's your plan?

From our archives:

Christmas is a traditional feast day (but it was not for true puritan folk like Dutch Reform or Congregationalists, who did not historically care for Christmas), so you are expected to cook something tasty. We have done all of the things: turkey (again), goose, roast beef, crown roast of pork with apple stuffing (real good).

On the other hand, the southern Italians do a cool thing - they do the Christmas Eve fish dinner - because it is a vigilia di magro (fasting, Italian-style).That is darn good. Fried baccala, fried calamari, scungilli, clams, mussels, maybe lobster etc etc. I love the baccala, and those little fried minnows bagiggi - smelt - with lemon that you eat whole like french fries, and clams (if they aren't cooked), but hate those cold seafood salads - dolphin food. In Sicily, the tradition is seven fishes. Serious abstinence: cook a leg of lamb, and you burn in hell for eternity.

But back to Yankee Christmas dinner, and goose.

As regular readers know, we cook our Canada geese with the breast only, marinated and sauteed rare. We confit the legs and thighs.

Store-bought goose tends much smaller (maybe in Dickens' time they had bigger farm geese - if you can find a giant Christmas goose as big as Tiny Tim, great), and has lots more fat on it. In fact, it seems about 50% fat, which oozes out during cooking and fills the pan below. If you want to cook that traditional English bird, you need a few of them. I would say, one per 3-4 people, minimum, if you are using the supermarket birds. (Some might disagree with this.) One bird will not do it, as a turkey does, because once the fat melts off, there isn't much left except bones. The plus side of all of the fat is that they are self-basting.

This is a good approach. Overcooking a goose, at low heat, is not a bad idea. For a roast goose, you may really want the meat falling off the bone, unlike a nice rare breast of wild goose. Goose is, of course, a dark meat like duck (but more coarse in flavor, I think).

Make a tasty sauce out of the drippings, once you have removed the fat. Add a little red wine, maybe a handful of huckleberries or dried cranberries and a bit of sugar, and reduce/thicken.

What to serve with goose? Mainly braised and sauteed roots. Parsnip, carrot, potato, turnip. And how about a rutabaga puree? Or a celeriac (celery root) puree? Maybe a pile of braised, sauteed baby squash, too. Cranberry sauce? You bet.

My favorite is a slice of turkey, some mayo, a spoonful of cranberry sauce and a spoonful of stuffing - on white bread, It has to be white bread.

Some people like Turkey hash which is ok if you use enough black pepper. Needs a ton of fresh ground black pepper to not taste like Cardboard Hash.

(BTW, Your Dry, Stringy Turkey Is Caused By Climate Change)

What do y'all like?

it's a good opportunity to catch up on the local news. In Maine.

I see this morning that, during the night, Mrs. BD & Co. produced three punkin pies (from fresh pumpkins and homemade crust) and two pecan pies. Nice. My job this morning? Making stuffing (cornbread with sausage, onion and celery) and grilling the turkeys. Then the friendly Indians will arrive bearing their goodies after their annual TG 10 K race. I say they are nuts but they all blame me for introducing them to the running habit which I did, years ago. I quit that when my 3rd kid was born. It did not feel right to disappear for two hours every weekend morning with three little kids around.

Basting is a waste of time, the stuff just runs off the skin. With my frightening horse-sized hypodermic needle, I am injecting cider into the birds this year. Breasts, legs, wings, and under the skin. Once in the beginning, again when half-done. They are not Butterball, just plain fresh turkeys. One is 20 lbs and one is 26 lbs. That's a big turkey. Good leftovers for all. On the grill, I have plain charcoal and I am keeping some oak and apple logs burning and smoking on top of the charcoal. Nice smelling smoke wafting around for a country mile, as light snow falls. That's Yankeeland Thanksgiving. And the Indian Pudding is in the oven.

For a dumb reason, I did brine one of them for 24 hrs. in a ton of herbs and spices and wine, etc. but it really is not worth the trouble. Just inject them with liquids - sherry, white wine, cider, brandy, beer, or anything. You can add herbs, melted butter, whatever. It's a man's job, cooking meat and game. And mashing the taters with cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and heavy cream. Taste while doing to make sure you added enough pepper and to keep your strength up.

The Thanksgiving Recipes Googled in Every State - Which foods are unusually popular in each state on Thanksgiving.

It's wonderful to see how regionally-diverse this big nation of America remains, but I would not touch some of that stuff. I mean, Snickers Salad for Thanksgiving? Sheesh! Nothing against Snickers but oh, well, it's all good as long as we are grateful. I don't want to be a food snob, but, gee whiz, there are some limits!

Pic is my standard Yankeeland cooking. I use half the sugar, twice the berries. My mother in law always makes raw cranberry and orange relish - deliciously tangy and different from this.

Re-posted -

How did they celebrate their first year and their first harvest in the fall of 1621, when they sat down with their Cape Cod Wampanoag friends?

"Deer and wildfowl." What else? We don't know. I don't think they had the grain to brew their beloved beer until the next year. What we do know is that these folks had been through a nasty voyage in a rotten, leaky boat, landed at the wrong place - remember, they were headed to the Dutch New Amsterdam area - which was better idea. They managed to scrape out a living, thanks to the Indian's education (these folks weren't farmers, anyway) as they watched their family members die.

Only 53 of the original 104 immigrants survived until fall, 1621. Then they gave thanks to God. Thanks for what? Thanks, I think, to God for being there with them through thick and thin.

It's always been a wonder to me that they didn't all catch the next flight from Logan back to Leyden. Trust in God is strong stuff, and many of us are not strong enough to handle the powerful grip of God. Thanksgiving is about putting our faith in the Lord, or trying to - and nothing else. God Bless us, and America, please, and make us Pilgrims in our own time, in our own ways.

It looks like we're down to only 20-25 (not counting rug rats) of friends and family for Thanksgiving this year at the Maggie's Farm HQ. Some of my sibs are doing TG at their new vacation house on Cape Cod, appropriately-enough.

The way we do it is like the Indians did: everybody brings part of the feast. We rent a few round or long tables with chairs to put in the parlor, light up a couple of fireplaces, decorate things a little, and warm up the grill.

Best holiday of the year - no presents, just festive get-together. No TV allowed, generally-speaking.

Our home team is, as usual, providing 2 turkeys, stuffing, gravy, wine and beer, green salad, and Mrs. BD's pumpkin pies and Indian Pudding. Oh, and  whipped cream. Soup is just too much trouble. Guests are bringing apple pies and ice cream, grilled brussel sprouts, pickled beets, sweet potatoes, mashed taters, mashed rutabaga, roasted parsnips, cranberry relish, champagne and Martinelli's, and hors d'oevres. 

Low-carb, fat-free, vegan, and gluten free of course!

In New England, Indian Pudding is as essential a part of Thanksgiving dinner as Pumpkin or Squash Pie. Great stuff, if you like the flavor of molasses. It's not just for Thanksgiving.

It's called "Indian" because it is made with corn (maize) meal - the staple food of North American Indians.

Simple rustic ingredients. No sugar? You use molasses. No flour? You use corn meal. The only trick is to make sure it is neither too firm nor too runny. Serve warm.

Here's a bit of the history of this dessert, with a good recipe.

It can be simple or complex. Here's simple.

Classic way to serve it is with spaetzle, a dollop of sour cream on top,  and a side of sliced cucumber and onion marinated in vinegar.

Re-posted from a past Thanksgiving season -

We did one turkey in the oven, stuffed with cornbread stuffing, and the other one on the grill with occasional doses of soaked apple wood chunks from my neighbor's tree, and with white wine in the steam water. Both birds were brined 24 hrs before cooking, and each around 18 lbs. but I feel that's a waste of time.

We had plenty of family and friends to eat it all up.

I think people preferred the grilled (no stuffing in the grilled bird).  It was my first time trying grilled turkey. Beginner's luck: It came out perfectly: moist, with a pleasant hint of smokiness. It took around 3 1/2 hrs to cook. Keeping the temp at near 325 involved carefully titrating the number of briquettes and fruitwood chunks to keep the heat low, but to not let the fire go out. Basted it with veg. oil and honey. Just for fun, I use my heavy-duty poultry injector to squirt sherry or cider into the meat. Why not? I don't buy butterball turkeys.

Nice grill, eh? This cast-iron thing weights 500 lbs. I had to assemble the darn thing off a truck, and got most of it right. Except for the wheels, which fell off. Now it takes a few pall-bearers to move it.

This is halfway:

And done:

The puppy seemed equally happy with scraps from the grilled and from the oven-roasted turkey.