We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Snowed in now and happily so. House cleaning while mixing up a batch of winter stew for friends and family.
Mountain of sauteed onions, garlic, and celery in bacon fat and butter, all the bacon bits, big browned chunks of pork, chicken, and venison shoulder from the freezer. Lots of carrot chunks. A quart of my frozen gibier jus and a half bottle of cabernet. Half cup of crushed tomato, a few bay leaves, and some herbs. Tablespoon or 2 of raspberry jam and a couple of handfuls of frozen blueberries. A few twigs of snowy thyme from the frozen garden.
Porcinis if I had any dried ones in the pantry, but their flavor is thick in my special jus anyway.
A little thickening if needed.
6-8 hrs in the crock pot to tenderize the meats, then served on Pappardelle with some of my peach preserve on the side. Better yet - just in a bowl with that rich sauce concentrated instead of being spread around on noodles.
How to make Moroccan/Turkish/Greek/Arabian coffee. Delicious stuff even without any spices - just sugar. I prefer it to espresso. You need a dallah or ibrik or whatever it's called to make it properly. Alas, not available at Dunkin or Starbucks. Why not?
A machine can not make it. I think it could become more popular, for sure, than the crappy, watery espresso one is typically served in the US.
The original breakfast roll-up. McDonalds makes breakfast roll-ups, but they are not very good.
I like roll-up "sandwiches" for lunch of supper Especially with apple butter, turkey, mayo, tomato, lettuce. If I were a breakfast-eater, I'd try a jianbing any time.
The best cheese shop, by far, in the New World is the famed Murray's. The US has plenty of cheese shops, but Murray's is the big cheese. Since I enjoy discovering obscure stinky cheeses, a daughter and her boyfriend picked some out for me at Christmastime:
- Ossau-Trate Vieille - Ardrahan from Ireland (Whew! Mighty stinky, like old wet socks which have been left to ferment in a bog. Delicious and tangy.) - Chevre D'Argental - a recently-invented goat brie
That's cheese heaven for Bird Dog.
Murray's main shop is on Bleecker St., but they now have a handy outpost in Grand Central Station in that like totally cool Grand Central Market. Even better, they take online orders. Problem with that is that they have so many varieties to taste that it's difficult to select from a distance. However, you can talk to their cheesemongers on the phone.
Remember the...
Maggie's Rules of Cheese
- Cheese is health food - Stinky cheeses are the zippiest - Cheese has to be offered at room temperature - Never serve a cheese before a meal. Good cheeses are instead of dessert, maybe after a tiny scoop of sorbet. A savoury. A Cheese Board is the thing - a platter, not wood. - Cheese without a wine (or, in Stilton's case, a Port and in some cases, beer or ale) is never all it can be. Murray's recommends their beverage pairings and they know what they are talking about. (For example, their advice for a cheese board parmesan) - Cheese should always be offered with jams, preserves, pepper jelly, or fresh or dried fruits and nuts. Bread and crackers optional.
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.
This weekend we traveled from Northern NJ to Philadelphia to see my cousins. As we approached their house, I said if anyone asked, we took the regular route. She laughed. She noticed a peculiar bit of slang which seems to emanate from my Philadelphia roots. Whenever anyone in my family goes anywhere, we will usually ask "How did you get here? Did you go the back way?" Obviously "the back way" is a shortcut or some alternative route which allows you to avoid traffic or other roadblocks that typically occur on the commonly used roads.
For several years, she insisted this was a saying that was distinctly Philadelphian in nature. This seems to have been confirmed when we were speaking with several friends of ours who were from Philly and she asked "do you know what the back way means?" They all nodded and the conversation then revolved around how "the back way" is defined.
Every region has some kind of slang. In California, it seems every highway has "the" in front of it. "The 405 to the 10 to the 110" was one set of directions I used whenever I was visiting clients. Visiting Boston College, I learned not to order milkshakes or subs, but frappes and grinders.
Being from Philadelphia, it took me years to stop asking for hoagies and asking after "youse guys", but I still go "down the shore" (another phrase which drives my wife nuts - living on Long Island, she always went to the beach and despite the beach being south of her, she "went to the beach"), and "Yo" is still part of my vocabulary.
For my wife, the torture of the regional slang is only made worse by the fact I've managed to convince both my boys to enjoy certain foodstuffs, like the Philly Cheesesteak (we take ours 'wit' - never 'witout') and Taylor Pork Roll (technically a NJ thing, but a staple down the shore). Of course, neither has succumbed to my great longing for Habbersett's Scrapple, the mere mention of which causes her nose to wrinkle in disgust.
What slang and/or foods do our readers enjoy wherever they are?
I have a few friends who have taken trips to France or Italy to attend 5-day to one week hands-on cooking schools. Generally, husband and wife participate although one is usually more interested than the other. Some also offer classes for youth.
Many of the schools run from around noon or 1 through suppertime, when the students eat their creations together. The meal planning and local shopping are part of most courses except for the ones sited on farms.
People have told me that these have been the most fun they have ever had while traveling because it gets you into the culture and away from the "sights."
Just for fun, you can google "tourist cooking schools near Paris," or "in Provence", or "in Italy," etc. As you know, each region of Italy has its own cuisine and its own different produce.
Gee, I still like those foods. And coffee jello with Miracle Whip. Good stuff. For the few Americans who still cook dinner at home (a rapidly-shrinking number partly because of the rise of women with day jobs), what they are fixing is more international and more sophisticated than 30 or 40 years ago.
As she notes, over the past 50 years food in the US has taken up a diminishing proportion of the family budget. Thus the boom in prepared food, fast food take-out, and restaurants in general. McArdle: The Economics Behind Grandma's Tuna Casseroles:
We were the sort of people who did our grocery shopping like a trade caravan moving from oasis to oasis. You started, perhaps, at Fairway Market in the 70s, for produce, and then you moved methodically up Broadway from point to point: Bruno’s for fresh pasta, Citarella for meat, Zabar’s for cheese and deli sundries, H&H for bagels, the Korean vegetable market on the corner for staples you might have forgotten to grab at some earlier stop. Then you cooked. Unless it was her busy season (my mother sold real estate when she was not simmering blanquette de veau), we had a fresh cooked meal from scratch every night.
If this sounds unbearably precious, it wasn’t, because the great blessing of my life is that my mother did not let me become a food snob.
Our popular Maggie's Classic Mommys of America Comfort Suppers series reminds me to do a series on classic old-timey Mommy's Desserts. Most Moms today don't make dessert except for special occasions, but it was a nice touch and popular with the kids.
Furthermore, growing and physically-active kids need sweet and sugary treats - for health, energy, and peace of mind - and to feel the love.
Moms never used to buy desserts. People lived on strict budgets, and only the prosperous went to restaurants other than the hot dog stand, which was fast food. People raised in the Depression, or raised during WW2 or the 1950s and 60s, did not buy stuff, and a linen-napkin restaurant was very special, unlike today. They got off their butts and made stuff - even my Mom with 5 kids. I remember some my favorites:
Coffee Jello with Jiffy-Whip (that's how I learned to love coffee in my youth)
Apple Pan Dowdy or whatever version of that sort of apple thing
Blueberry Cake with Hard Sauce (she'd only make it if we picked the wild berries at the Farm)
Yellow Cake (from the box) with Mocha frosting for birthdays. Mom never bought a cake in her life (except for the annual Buche de Noel)
Indian Pudding for winter holidays, with ice cream or whipped
Bread Pudding +/- rum, and English-style custard or rum sauce on top
Apple Pie, from our apple trees, with ice cream.
Cherry pie, from my great-aunt's amazingly-productive cherry tree.
Home-made vanilla ice cream, hand-cranked machine. Sometimes, with home-made chocolate sauce, sometimes with rhubarb sauce, sometimes with butterscotch stuff out of a can or bottle.
Peach Melba, with canned peaches
Trifle with rum- or wine-soaked pound cake - for special parties
Strawberry Shortcake, made with Bisquick
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Brownies, occasionally with ice cream on top
Rice Pudding with raisins. Might be good with dried cranberries too.
Root Beer or Sarsaparilla Floats in hot weather
I'll get to work on an Official Mommy's of America dessert post, but only if you tell me what some of your favorite Mommys of America home-made desserts were. Since we are read all around the world, the whole world will appreciate, and benefit from, our homey memories.
Either of these tomes is great fun to read, and all chefs use one or the other as foundation for recipes and technique. There is a lot to learn. Chefs know everything, but cooks know how to make it. Chef is architect/engineer, cook is carpenter.
That is our version of regional haute cuisine and I am sure it is government-approved. However, I still prefer a grilled cheese with ketchup. Cheddar, please, white bread, and tomato slices in it. Yum.
Lobster is overrated. It's just a big bug, but I am happy to promote Yankeeland's Clam Chowda, Cod Chowda, and baked beans. Especially Cod Chowda. With hot biscuits on the side.
A classic, cool weather Southern Italian dish. Easy. I am not a big fan of southern Italian, but this is a standard for those many who enjoy this sort of thing. Use chicken thighs only.
Saw this on Food Channel yesterday morning while chained to the stair machine, so at Costco yesterday I picked up a big package of ribs to make today.
Long and low - that's how to do baked ribs.
Those at Costco were not exactly short ribs, but whatever. Ribs are delicious, and for me polenta is as good as grits - or better. Basically, very similar. This has cheese polenta. Nice, but plain is good enough for me if there is a great sauce.
There is roast beef, mutton chops, fish and chips, and steak and kidney pie, but #1 is this good comfort food. But who has these spices in the cabinet?
In America, a pasta dish is often used as a secondi (ie an entree - the use of the term entree for a main course is American). Properly done, the pasta is a small dish primi followed by a meat (eg braciole) and vegetable secondi. Well, in America we do whatever the heck we want but at Maggie's HQ we try to respect the time-honored Italian traditions.
For me, any pasta as a main meal is a disgusting, bloating, cloying, enervating, fattening, brain-numbing experience. Best for a small dish primi, for special flavors. Same applies to risotto, gnocchi, or polenta. American restaurants serve too much primi to fill you up on the cheap.
Most common American error is to dump the sauce (or "gravy") on top of the pile of pasta. Nope. Dump the pasta in the hot pan of sauce and serve thinly-coated. That's what pasta tongs are for.
"Whole grain." Don't bother with it unless you like the taste of it. It has zero "health" benefit. Living as we do in a prosperous part of the world with an abundance of varied foodstuffs, there is no reason to consume any grain products at all except for enjoyment and to soak up gravy. Breads were once poverty food, just enough carbs to keep the proles and soldiers working one more day. The rich ate meat and lived far longer and more happily.
The American lobbying and advertising Whole Grains Council has had huge success in selling their health scam. Just like Whole Foods. Food piety has two arms: the ignorant, and their commercial predators.
Enjoyment applies to OJ too. It's basically sugar with no other food value. Years ago, the Florida Citrus cabal convinced Americans that they should have it for breakfast. Tasty, but no different from a Coke. Scurvy is not a problem.
My point with my nutrition myth posts is that you should eat whatever you enjoy. If you have a weight problem or a health problem, that's another matter. Just don't pretend, for example, that an OJ is any "healthier" than a Pepsi, or brown bread is "healthier" than white bread. That is just marketing to the low-info shopper and gullibles like Michelle Obama.
We all love happy myths, do we not? The fantasy that we can control fate.
Got some advice from my chef friend about Goulash. I have a lot of venison in the freezer, some tender cuts and some tough cuts. Tough cuts are for the goulash.
It's all about paprika. Very simple. Chef tells me real goulash has no tomato in it, and the meat should be falling apart. Like real chili, should be made with meat chunks, not ground meat. No noodles in the stew, but can serve on egg noodles or rice with some sour cream to top it off. This stew at the end should be thick, not soupy.
Recipe:
Brown a few onions in butter and veg oil - not chopped, just quartered, with some garlic Then brown chunks of tough meat in butter, after seasoning heavily with salt, pepper, and paprika Cover with chicken or beef broth and bake covered in oven for 2 hours or more. Then check it for moisture, add some broth or water if needed, check for salt, add more paprika. Can add some potato chunks if you want. Then back in the oven for another hour or 2. If too soupy, uncover and let it thicken in oven longer or cheat and stir in some thickener.
I guess crock pot would work, but it would need to cook a while at the end to thicken.
Snowed in now and happily so. House cleaning while mixing up a batch of winter stew for friends and family.
The original breakfast roll-up. McDonalds makes breakfast roll-ups, but they are not very good.
There will only be 13 or 14 of us this year, so it's easy.
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).
Most kids in New England are raised on 
Saw
In America, a pasta dish is often used as a secondi (ie an entree - the use of
Got some advice from my chef friend about Goulash. I have a lot of venison in the freezer, some tender cuts and some tough cuts. Tough cuts are for the goulash.