Maggie's Farm

It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc.

Here's the correct, home-made version from Alton Brown. However, I tend to be lazy and to do the wrong thing - to buy the pre-made, and fuss it up with the fixins. Lots of fresh-grated nutmeg.

My Dad always made it the correct way at Christmastime, but I think he made it way too strong, Brit-style like punch. It had a punch.

I have been assigned - again - the task of running the bar for the fancy Christmas cocktail party of one of Mrs. BD's lady clubs next weekend. It's a formal, traditional sort of group, dressy but not black tie. The husbands are very fine and jolly guys most of whom I have known for years and are happy to pitch in with tending the bar for 1/2 hour when asked, so the manpower part is easy. The bar generally needs only 2 guys at a time.

There will be tons of excellent "heavy hors d'oevres", aka supper, with desserts - but that's not my department.

My past experience with this group, which will be around 100-120 people for 2-3 hrs, is that most ladies are light drinkers (a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of beers), most guys will do a bit more, and there is a subset can get cranky without vodka or Scotch.  I want everybody to be happy but I like to keep it simple.

Thus my provisional shopping list:

Bag of limes and lemons
A few bags of ice
Case of Coke
Case of Diet Coke
1 case of Perrier
2 cases of Harpoon beer
2 cases of some other beer
1 bottle of Johnny Walker
1 bottle of Grey Goose
1 bottle of Rum
1/2 case of Prosecco
1 1/2 cases of red (which one to be determined)
1 1/2 cases of Sauvignon Blanc

Does that sound right to you? Too much? A case of wine is about 50 glasses of wine. You hate to be stingy and run out of something basic but you don't really want leftovers either. As a rough guide, I use this party site.

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.

We used some of those plastic Cajun Classic meat injectors (image on right) to inject our birds (ducks, turkeys, pheasants, etc): Deep Fry Turkey Day with Red-neck Yankees, aka Les Tres Riche Heures du Bird Dog.

Those plastic injectors are worthless crap. The herbs and spices jam up the injector holes, and the whole thing falls apart after a few birds.

We then made do with a large-apertured medical syringe which one of our medical friends had (which I hope was clean), but this is really the cooking tool that is needed: the stainless steel Bayou Classic with one needle for herb mixtures and another for marinade (photo below).

Many folks like to inject a turkey with sherry or cider.

I bought a couple of those for my cooking buddies. (Update: I did, and got one for myself too. Would be scary to see a nurse approaching you with one of these.)

This year, I am going to inject those big SOBs with a warmed mix of sherry, butter, honey, and herbs under the skin and deep into the meat. That can not be bad. The Indians did it that way, didn't they? Of course they did - when they weren't busy scalping, raping, and torturing their neighboring tribes.

We always have this on our Thanksgiving menu, but there's no reason to limit it to Thanksgiving. Comfort food.

Here's a good easy recipe.

Delicious stuff, especially with chicken and other fowl. Right now is the only time of year to buy cranberries in volume.

I freeze them in the bags because I am fond of them, but chutney is one tasty way to put them up.  There are many recipes online. Here's one:  Putting Up-Cranberry Chutney

For Thanksgiving,  we make the one on the Ocean Spray bag, and also this one: Fresh Cranberry Orange Relish

I have liked kippers since I was a kid. Kippers and scrambled eggs for breakfast. I also love pickled herring with that cream sauce. I raised my kids on that. Canned salmon is disgusting. Canned salted anchovies? Well, there are good ones and terrible ones. The worst ones are used by pizza joints. Always wonder why they call canned Tuna "Tuna fish"?  Is there some other kind of tuna that is not a fish?

Via Am. Digest, an Ode to Canned Fish

Re-posted from past Thanksgiving seasons -

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.

The Spanish version of Cappuccino, or of Cafe au Lait. A good shot of espresso with same shot of scalded milk. Good with or without sugar. Like the others, it's a morning drink but I will have it anytime to perk up. That, or a Coke.

I found we have a milk-scalder in the pantry. Never used it. One of my many cafe con leches in Spain 2 weeks ago, this one in Cordoba:

We posted about Timballos on Friday. Yes, any pasta dish is a Primi, not a meal. A scene from the film Big Night (1996) (h/t Reader):

This is what I'll get for the Thanksgiving wine this year. 

We had a fine dinner on Saturday with friends at a Portuguese place.

I believe I discovered the tastiest affordable red wine at that restaurant: Ramon Bilbao Riserva. Yes, a Spanish Rioja - and in a Portuguese restaurant.  I can't use those fancy wine words (except rich and earthy for this one), so just try it if you are one of those millions always looking for delicious wine that tastes like a $60 bottle but costs $16.

My nice wine shop says they will get some for me, and that they have had enough requests for it that they may decide to carry it.

Ignore Wine Spectator - to me it's above a 90.

A few of my pals and I were splitting firewood this morning (giant 3' wide logs from the trunk of an old Ash tree - with tons of knots), and rambled onto the topic of deep-fat turkey frying. We decided to do a First Annual Bird Fry tomorrow after church. Nobody really wants to crank up a fryer just one one item, plus only one of us owns the gizmo.

We're going to do smaller turkeys, and also ducks and chickens, and will drink a bit of beer in the process. It's a nice neighborhood I live in.

I am brining my birds now with a cider and OJ recipe for infusing.

Italian savory pies range from the humble snack of "pizza" to the mind-boggling Timballo.

There are as many recipes for Pizza Rustica as there are Italian grandmas. They are not just for Easter but the ricotta one is an Easter special. Sometimes they are cooked in a pie pan, sometimes in baking pans.

Here's one version.

Here's another: Pizzagaina. There are many other versions to google. For example, the one pictured on the right with red peppers and spinach.

Here's a recipe for a Sicilian-style Venison Pie. I'd use cut venison, not ground.

A Timballo is a pasta-based pie (as is lasagna) which everything in it: sausage, whole hard-boiled eggs, noodles, lamb meatballs, spinach, peppers, etc.

Here's one:

Here's a simpler Timballo with eggplant:

Pizza Pies are not meals in Italy - they are street food and street snacks same as in NYC.

Here's a Sicilian Tomato Pie recipe from Nonna -  Pizza alla Faccia di Vecchia

Here's what we call a Sicilian Tomato Pizza made with foccaccia. Too much bread for me. This in a shop window in Bergamo - quite far from Sicily:

We ate a lot of tapas in Spain, partly because dinnertime there (9 pm) is a bit late for us. Also, we kept trying to find some really good ones. I concluded that none of them are all that tasty except with wine or beer, and we were not drinking booze. It's bar food. An exception was the tapas at the Madrid Ritz, but those were about 20 euros each instead of the normal 3 euros each.

I think we only did 2 real dinners, on the fancy side. At one, I had bacalao and at the other, suckling pig. Both excellent.

We broke the rule of Foods to Avoid in Spain, partly just because we wanted to see how they did it. We tried paella twice, once as a media ration with tapas and one shared for lunch. The latter was ok with squid, octopus, mussels, etc, but I just don't get the big deal about paella.

I also had to try a gazpacho, as in my pic along with some tapas. This one was creamy and delicious. We did try Salmorejo in Cordoba. Disgusting stuff, we agreed.

Anyway, the fun part of tapas is deciding which ones to try. That plate in the middle was fried eggplant. Not delicious at all - but it should be. Pic is the outdoor cafe at the Parador de Grenada.

It's become like the UK's hamburger, it is so ubiquitous and popular. Was almost proclaimed an official British food by Parliament. Delicious on white rice.

There are many versions. Here's one:

Due to their long history of Arab occupation, Sicilians cook with a lot of mint. A typical side dish for grilled meat is boiled potato with mint. Easier than pie.

Boil up a bunch of potatoes to firm with a few sprigs of mint in the water. If big, then quarter them. If small, leave alone. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, then throw a generous handful of chopped mint +/- parsley on top.  Done.

Speaking of cultural appropriation, mint is middle-eastern/Egyptian, and potatoes are from South America. Go figger.

Our favorite potatoes are roasted potatoes with rosemary. Quarter the taters, cover with olive oil, add s and p, then sprinkle with rosemary (fresh preferably) and roast in oven until the surfaces are brown but the insides creamy. Turn occasionally until browned.

It's the coffee of Greece - Greek coffee. The Frappe is made with Nescafe. Greek Nescafe is preferred, but local is ok.

Depending on where you grew up, you might refer to noodle-shaped pastas as macaroni, noodles, or spaghetti. If more advanced, you might refer to the specific name of the pasta species.

In Soprano Country, they refer to that disgusting red tomato sauce for pasta as "gravy" as in "I'll take some more gravy for my macaroni."

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of pastas. Peasant food! Packed with Evil Gluten! Well, a small primi of pappardelle with a (fresh) porcini sauce decorated with chopped parsley is very fine so I can make some exceptions.

I will admit to being a food snob when it comes to Italian. Pasta is not a meal unless you plan to run a marathon in a couple of hours. It can be a small primi but there are many sorts of primi. And cappucino is only a breakfast coffee. Italians do not eat meatballs. The best pizzas in the world are in America because we think a pizza is a meal, not the nutrition-free street snack that it is. I could go on and annoy everybody.

Finocchio (Fennel) grows wild all over Sicily. In late summer to fall, it has its yellow blooms by the roadsides. A delicious flavor, raw or cooked.

Orecchiette with Fennel and Tuna