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.
I happen to love Borscht, but I never make it, Mrs. BD has never made it, and I've only seen it on the menu in the old Russian Tea Room. My Mom, Yankee WASP that she was, would make it to please my Dad. A refreshing cold soup.
Everybody knows how to make Harvard Beets. They are just sweet-and-sour beets, but on a bed of buttercrunch lettuce it's a salad.
The Italian Coastal Dinner, May 18, at The Lincoln Ristorante at Lincoln Center. That delicious-looking Italian menu is below the fold, but it's neither on my workout nor my wallet menu although it's cheaper than flying to Italy for a good supper.
Mother's Day breakfast. Make a good mess in the kitchen! Don't wake up Dad either.
Even if you are not Jewish, Challah bread makes the best French toast with bacon: Challah French toast with perfect bacon. A couple of stiff Screwdrivers too would probably be appreciated.
Who knows, she might even decide she likes you brats. Real Maple syrup with it, on the side.
It may be a phony Capitalist commercial day invented by Hallmark to sell their stupid cards, but we Americans are generally forced to observe it now. That's ok, but every day should be Mother's Day (and Father's Day too). It's #6 in God's Ten Suggestions.
We'll have 3 mothers here for lunch, along with misc. other family. I'm cooking of course, but maybe a daughter or two will lend a hand. Darn well had better do, with 10 or so of us here.
My simple rustic American menu:
Grill: A few fat one-and-a-half-inch thick Costco ribeyes - or maybe butterflied lamb
Creamed spinach and/or grilled vegetables with olive oil. (I usually grill onions, sweet peppers, yellow and green squash, mushrooms, maybe some asparagus or eggplant, and toss in a bowl with oil, basil, parsley, and salt and pepper.)
Mashed taters
Sliced tomatoes/vinaigrette
Beer/wine/lemon Perrier/Lemonade
A Trifle for dessert, with Bird's Pudding (but no sherry, rum, or Riesling to flavor the Pound Cake - makes it better but we have some careful teetotalers and kids). Somehow, I have two large English glass trifle bowls. (For a very large crowd, a punch bowl works well but it takes a lot of stuff to fill a punch bowl and it doesn't really fit in the fridge, so for over 15 people best to use individual stemmed glasses)
Strawberry, Blueberry, Kiwi, Raspberry, Banana is my plan. A good few hours in the fridge is good for a trifle.
Whatever you intend to do with a potato, you need to select the variety for the job at hand. If you have ever made gluey mashed taters, or had taters disintegrate in a stew, you know what I mean. Wrong potato. All of our potato types have been genetically-engineered for specific qualities. Special thanks to Mr. Johnson who came up with the Yukon Gold a few years ago.
As I have commented in the past, it's fun to think about all of the foods the New World native farmers and plant breeders contributed to Old World cuisine. For starters, potatoes,tomatoes, peppers, beans, maize, zucchini and summer squash, winter squash and pumpkin, cocoa, strawberry, sunflower, sweet potato, peanut, vanilla, etc. etc.
At the time of the European invasions of the New World, there were few communities of pure hunter-gatherers (eg the Eskimos). Farming was big, supplemented by hunting-gathering.If you recall, the Pilgrims took over Indian hundred-acre cornfields.
Our doctrine here at Maggie's HQ is that charcoal grills are good for some things (corn on the cob, burgers, hot dogs, turkey, barbecue stuff, Bluefish, Striped Bass, grilled vegetables), but only cast iron is for good steaks (eg ribeye, NY strip, porterhouse. I will not eat London Broil). Readers know that ribeye is my favorite by far. In our current dietary regime, one thick ribeye makes the foundation for 4 substantial meals, probably with some left over.
Being fresh out of game bones and game carcasses, I made 2 gallons of something between stock and glace. It's rich enough to turn into firm gelatin when put in the fridge.
I sauteed a pile of chopped carrots, onions, whole head or two of garlic, celery (all skin on) in olive oil until browned.
You always brown bones, meat, and carcasses for a French, Anglo, or American stock. I browned a pile of veal bones, chicken wings, a chicken carcass, and turkey legs in the oven. Then I threw it all in the stewpot with a jug of Chardonnay, a bottle of cheap ruby port, some water, a handful of fresh thyme sprigs and a handful of fresh parley, a handful of frozen blueberries, half of a small can of tomato paste, a handful of dried oyster and porcini mushrooms, and a handful of peppercorns, and low-simmered it all for 6 hours. Three hours with lid on, three hours with lid off.
Then I strained it all, and I am reducing it a bit more. Smells good. Not sure what I would call this, except delicious and fragrant. Not for beef, though. As a base, you can add currants or berries or berry jam to it for a venison sauce, some chopped apple for a pork sauce, mushrooms for a poultry sauce, etc.
It's glace when a stock is reduced to a syrupy state, which I rarely if ever do. You have had glace in restaurants though, on the plate under a piece of meat. I just aim for a thick, intense stock and I call it "jus" or "gravy," although it is not gravy. It's super-jus.
A convection oven is a handy item. All modern ovens have the convection setting. However, you must bear in mind that you must reduce the heat and reduce the time.
A cousin had a copy of my (recently-late) Mom's recipe for Danish Wedding Cake, in her own hand. "Spray the Bundt pan with Pam!" He scanned it and sent it. Sounds a lot like a cheesecake.
It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind; that he becomes man and so can be overlooked by his contemporaries and by the powers that shape history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals himself; that he continues to knock gently on the doors of our hearts and slowly opens out eyes if we open our doors to him.
It's that gentle knock that can eventually get you out of the chair or sofa, and open the door.
That painting hangs in St. Paul's in London. I was surprised to see it there.
Now that we have finally been informed by our intellectual superiors that a real breakfast is healthier than fattening grains and fattening fruit, a new heresy appears to attack the dietary consensus: Breakfast is not important (unless you are a growing child or do physical labor all day)
Of course not. I thrive on coffee for breakfast, maybe with a cigar or some tobacco. A good diner breakfast, much as I love it on the rare occasion, puts me to sleep instead of giving me energy to do things.
It's the time of year when people begin to cook the game in their freezers. Readers know that I like to make a gallon or so of Gibier Sauce or Gibier Glace each fall or winter, and freeze it.
There are other tasty sauces too for game (or for chicken, pork, even steak) and they are easy, and fun, to make.
A sharp surface browning of any sort of meat (and some vegetables, and roots for sure) brings out the strongest flavors of the thing. That's the Maillard Reaction. That's why hot-sauteed and lightly-browned parsnips, carrots, green beans, asparagus, and onions are so good too.
Cooking is chemistry. The Maillard Reaction is why every amateur cook dreams of a high-powered industrial stovetop with a big gas flame - "Cooking with gas." That way, you can brown things, even fish, while keeping the inside rare. Readers know that's how I cook steak, always on the gas stove (well, sometimes on charcoal for steak, lamb, and Bluefish but it's the same idea.) Chicken is more flavorful browned too regardless of what you use it for after.
To make a great European-style meat stock, you want max flavor. That's why you use the M Reaction to first brown all the bones and meat scraps, and the vegetables too (mushrooms, garlic, carrot, celery, onion, etc), before you throw them into the stewpot with the water, peppercorns, herbs, and wines.
I only use two stovetop heats: Max and Very Low/simmer.
For some recipes you do not want those intense flavors, which is why lots of Asian stew-type recipes use unbrowned meats. Boiled chicken, for example, pork, or shrimp, and lightly boiled vegetables and roots. The Maillard Reaction is thus avoided to permit more subtle flavors. Very pleasant things like like sashimi, carpaccio, steak tartare, etc., take subtle to the max.
Megan talked about browning her beef stew beef in the oven to make it easier. Not a bad idea. Browning chunks of beef or lamb for a stew in a pan is messy, and who will clean the damn pan? And, for a stew, you don't care how well-done the meat is.
With an Irish father-in-law, the boiled dinner is de rigeur around here on, or close to, St. Paddy's Day. I'll make up a big pot this weekend even though he is still in lovely San Diego, slowly on the mend and eager to get home.
I happen to be one of those people who love that New England Boiled Dinner, aka Irish Boiled Dinner, aka (per reader) "a greasy, one-pot slopfest."
The real traditional Irish St. Paddy's dinner is Bacon and Cabbage. Why is the New England dinner associated with the Irish? Read all about it here.
Cook the heck out of the meat, for hours, until it almost falls apart. Lots of whole peppercorns, Allspice, cloves, bay leaf, and garlic in the pot.
The carrots are optional, in my view - and the cabbage is the best part. For a large volume of food with generous leftovers for all, I am using 2 packaged corned beefs, 6 turnips, a small bag of carrots, a couple of giant onions, a small bag of parsnips (yum), a bag of potatoes, 2 or 3 large cabbages. That's all that will fit into our largest stewpot.
We're gonna need a bigger stewpot.
A large pot of hot mustard on one side, and a pot of beer on the other side. Great peasant eats, and the spices perfume the entire cabin.
Update: Had to do it in multiple batches but reusing the water from cooking the meat.
Yummy, quick, cheap and easy for an early winter supper. Best with pancetta, but bacon will do in a pinch. Thin spaghetti, please, always, and more ground pepper than you think. Maybe linguine instead of spaghetti is ok.
It's sort of a Southern Italian version of bacon and eggs, also good for a 3 am meal after bar-hopping and flirting all night.
But the classic for that purpose is Whore's Spaghetti, the highly-flavored Spaghetti Puttanesca. Capers, olives, and anchovies. White anchovies in jars or fresh, not the disgusting brown ones in tins.
All of these puddings require something to be served on top. For Bread Pudding, I've seen Rum Sauce, Lemon Sauce, Vanilla Sauce, etc etc.
Or the old standby, English Custard Sauce. No need to make it yourself - you can buy Bird's at Amazon. Ol' Mr. Bird invented it because his wife had an egg allergy. A bird, allergic to eggs...
I was raised on these things. In winter, baked beans with hot dogs and toast. Ketchup on the side as the vegetable. I still like that old, filling, Yankee poverty food.
To get it right, probably should use dried Navy Beans, but the canned would work too. A crock pot item? Why not. It should come out firm, not soupy.
It's basically a slaw. We had that at a restaurant this weekend as a salad sort of molded from a cup on top of a potato fritter. Damn good. I told Mrs. BD that dog kibbles with black truffle oil and parmesan would be delicious. Actually, I have always liked B. Sprouts anyway, especially sauteed with bacon.
(Speaking of bacon, my brother served an hors d'oevres Sunday afternoon - dates wrapped in bacon, broiled. Amazing.)
Culinary tip: Brussel Sprouts do not hit their peak of flavor and sweetness until hit by at least a frost or two. The ones from the stores have not been. Put a stalk of them outdoors on a frigid day for a few hours, and let them freeze. Much better. Serious gardeners leave them standing in the garden all winter, and just go out and cut some off from the stalks. I guess you could try the freezer, too. When we buy them in bags, we leave them out in the snow until we use them.
The sweetest meat is near the bone. Cook the heck out of it until fork-tender. You can bake or slow-cooker it. Some people like to brown the marinated meat before cooking.
Generally one whole shank per person is plenty. Serve one whole shank, bone in, with a pile of sauce over polenta or white rice.
I have not made it with venison shank yet, but I should. Maybe soon. A saw would save the trouble of cutting the meat off the shank bone. Yes, I do know how to butcher a deer.
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.
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.
I happen to love 
An Italian classic and a Maggie's HQ favorite. This recipe calls it an antipasto but we use it as a secondi.
It may be a phony Capitalist commercial day invented by Hallmark to sell their stupid cards, but we Americans are generally forced to observe it now. That's ok, but every day should be Mother's Day (and Father's Day too). It's #6 in God's Ten Suggestions.
Potatoes, mashed or fried, are the most popular side dishes in North America. Rightly so - the original tiny 
I love deviled eggs. An egg salad sandwich is good too, with some celery in it, lots of pepper, on white bread.
Yummy, quick, cheap and easy for an early winter supper. Best with pancetta, but bacon will do in a pinch. Thin spaghetti, please, always, and more ground pepper than you think. Maybe linguine instead of spaghetti is ok.
My favorite winter puddings are Indian Pudding, Bread Pudding, and Plum Pudding (with hard sauce, please).
I was raised on these things. In winter, baked beans with hot dogs and toast. Ketchup on the side as the vegetable. I still like that old, filling, Yankee poverty food.
Simple and easy: 
One of my favorites: 
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 
This was news to me, from a Paris-trained chef friend.