Maggie's Farm

We seem to order Thai takeout almost weekly. Thai takeout is what Cantonese and Szechuan takeout used to be around here.

In my limited experience with Thais (limited to restaurants in the US only), they are efficient, entrepreneurial, and pleasant polite people with excellent smiles, beautiful gals, and good English. I welcome all immigrants from Thailand, but I am not sure why they come here.

I am ordering a Thai delivery tonight (Penang Curry, Clear Broth Noodle Soup, Thai Salad, extra white rice, extra hot sauce on the side).  Cultural appropriation - bring it on! 

A close family member has been spending Christmas week in Thailand. My father-in-law, who has visited Thailand, warned them about ordering the amazing food over there: "They give you a choice of Not Spicy, Spicy, Very Spicy, and "Local."  He said "Never ask for the "local.""  He said the "Not spicy" is hot enough for the average lame American person but if you want to prove your toughness, just order Spicy and take it from there.

An email from a beach in Phuket:

Some of the food pics below the fold - the last one looks mysterious but I'm sure it was tasty -

My Christmas feast crown roast of pork. Apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, taters, turnips) and mashed rutabaga and applesauce on the side. And gravy.

When you wrap the thing in bacon, and stuff the center well, the thick chops come out very juicy and succulent.  Good stuff.

 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 (ie small 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.

Traditionally, 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.

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.

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?

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.

 Turkey is good meat, especially with the sides and gravy. There is an easy and effective way to cut it up:

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: