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.
Chefs are extremely particular about their knives. They even travel with them if they might have to spend a little time in a kitchen.
My chef friend loves her Gunter-Wilhelms. They are not the most expensive professional knives (the best Japanese sets go for $2000+), but she says the Gunters have the heft and authority that she likes.
We always do two turkeys, one on the grill over a wood and charcoal fire, and one stuffed and in the oven. We make sure there is an overabundance of TG food so those who want to have a next-day mini Thanksgiving at home can have one.
Since stuffing is what a TG meal is really all about, I made three varieties this year. I cheated and did it the easy way with those Pepperidge Farm unseasoned croutons. Immoral I know but, dammit, it's supposed to be fun, not work.
So I made three pans of stuffings - one giblet with the livers, one sausage, and one fruit. The fruity one was most popular, I think. I used half of it to stuff the oven bird.
I soaked a bag of quartered dried apricots and a box of currants in white wine for a few hours (had no Bourbon which is recommended, and some raisins would have been good too), chopped up about 2 cups of walnuts. Sauteed a big onion and some celery (some apple chunks would have been good also). Had a lot of chopped fresh parsley, and threw it all into the aluminum pan with the croutons with 2 cups of fresh cranberries.
Then lots of ground pepper, and a tsp each of ground clove, cinnamon, and ginger. Added three eggs. Toss and mix with hands, then add enough warm turkey or chicken broth (with half or a whole stick of melted butter) to make it a little soggy, and toss again.
You might like it. I think I'll do this again for Christmas instead of our usual standing pork rib roast.
Photo is my grilled turkey. Most of the black is the bacon I covered it with. I filled the cavity with all the beer, chicken broth, and honey it could hold, and put the rest in the pan. Had to add more beer as it cooked. Lots of liquid keeps it from drying out. Does bacon go with turkey? Duh. The sauce in that pan was dynamite. I don't know why I bother with a dull oven-baked turkey.
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. It's easy to forget that they were not mainly hunter-gatherers, but farmers with 100-acre fields. Farmers, with their main amusement being killing, raping, and torturing members of neighboring tribes. A cultural thing.
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 with ice cream or whipped cream.
My buddies with whom we did the big pig roast party last summer did a Turkey Fry party last weekend. Deep-fried seventeen 12-13-lb. turkeys (had to fit them in the frying cylinders - we had a 2-cylinder fryer set-up). Had around 100 guests, and they each had to bring an hors d'oevres or a dessert, and some wine or beer. Lots of cornbread and stuff.
I decided that small turkeys are better and easier to manage. I usually cook 2 big ones for TG, but I think I'll go for 3 small ones this year. They cook faster, are maybe more tender, and you can gnaw on the legs like chicken legs.
It was outdoors of course, about 25 degrees F, with torches, firepits, and outdoor fireplace blazing. Gals in their parkas. What are we? Yankee gentry rednecks? Well, we just like informal fun I guess.
That's a good party. The turkeys? Cajun rub, and all thoroughly and I mean thoroughly injected with Cajun spices to the point that Mrs. BD had trouble with it but, as I said, first turkeys I ever ate that did not taste like cardboard or smoke (I cook mine on barby with wood - smokey turkey).
This week we will review turkey injections and rubs (necessary for a good meal). Due to various circumstances, the Maggie's HQ will have a small group this year I think, about 13-15 people instead of 25. We'll invite some friends to fill it out. Always need hands to clean up...
On Sunday night, Mrs. BD had an all-pumpkin supper: Spicy Pumpkin-Apple Soup, Pumpkin Ravioli, and a Profiterole with Pumpkin Ice Cream. It's Pumpkin season, and Pumpkin is good food.
Pumpkin is a winter squash whose original small plant is native to the Americas. For the Eastern American Indians, winter squashes were one of the Three sisters: Squash, Corn (Maize), and Beans.Indians ate healthy, organic whole foods despite, or because, they were genetically-modified foods. They didn't live very long, though. Indians in their 50s were old men while men in their 50s and 60s and 70s today run marathons, pump iron, and climb Alps. My neighbor climbed all of the Dolomites in his 80s by eating steak.
All of those Indian crops had been greatly genetically-modified over 2,000+ years by Native American geneticists, because the wild plants they started with were weeds, hardly worth bothering with. Of course, what we grow now has been greatly improved from the Indian versions.
All humans knew about genetics long before Mendel explained it.
This is about warm pasta dishes, not cold. Room temperature pasta dishes like Nicoise are nice - but that is from Nice, not Italy.
I do not care for a pasta dish as a meal. It makes me feel full and lazy. I don't mind the way the Italians do it - and the way it was intended - which is as a small plate tasty treat as a Primo. Maybe 4-6 forks' worth. That's a meal's carbs, because the Secondi usually doesn't have any. Just meat, with some vegetables in oil on the side.
Southern Italians eat pasta, but they don't eat much of it when they do. Maybe the equivalent volume of a potato. Lasagna (which is Southern Italian) is served as a small Primo. - a little 3-or 4-inch square.
Sicily is not big on pasta. They make a few classics, like with sardines or clams, but do more rice and couscous as primi. On the mainland, the further north you go the less pasta there is. They do more rice (esp. risotto), gnocchi, and polenta for their primi.
Anyway, an Italian meal with a primo and secondo - and wine or beer - is lunchtime, not supper. (Italian breakfast is typically just an espresso or a latte - cappuccino - with a biscotti. Suppers are light, like a soup and lunch leftovers.) Italians tend not be be fat and even the elderly women mostly tend to look pretty spry except for the ones who stay home all day cooking for their relatives because they taste things all day long.
I married into a family with some roots in Caserta (lots of ziti and spaghetti pasta down there) and I know the rules:
- When pasta is cooked al dente, you take it out of the pot with pasta-grabbers and dump it directly into the saucepan with the sauce. Then you mix it with the sauce with the heat on. You don't drain pasta.
- Depending on the volume of sauce you have made, you dump a cup or half-cup of the pasta water into the pasta-sauce mix, and slop it all together with the pasta-grabber (with the heat on). Enough pasta water to be right. Heat is on. The pasta water binds it all together and helps the sauce coat the pasta completely.
What is the ultimate pasta Primo? The festive Timballo. I have never had a slice of one, and probably never will have the chance because it's not a restaurant item.
Tomato sauces? Yuk. Cristoforo Columbo and his pals, in my view, wrecked Italian cooking by bringing the tomato back from Central America. Not to mention the Cultural Appropriation sin of putting the Mayan tomato in Italian food. But wait - the Italians stole pizza from the Greeks? And pasta from China. Is there anything that college kitchens will be able to feed the brats now? I mean, like, ice cream is Egyptian and yoghurt is Turkish. Let them eat gluten-free cake.
For pottage and puddings and custards and pies Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies, We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon."
Pilgrim verse, circa 1633
Pumpkins are just one variety of winter squash. Winter Squash have the virtues of being harvested in the fall, and easily storable for keeping through the winter in a root cellar as long as they do not freeze. All winter squash (Butternut, Acorn, etc) taste pretty similar and are more or less interchangeable in recipes.
Winter Squash, along with string beans, maize (which we call "corn" in the US, and many other foods like peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes) were first genetically modified for agriculture by American Indians.
Eastern Indians had large fields in which they grew winter squash, maize, and beans (which climbed up the corn stalks) together. In fact, one of the reasons the Pilgrims decided to stay in Plymouth was for the 50-acre and 100-acre planting fields that the Indians (recently dead probably from European diseases brought in by explorers and fishermen) had prepared there.
The Pumpkin of the Americas quickly became a popular crop in many parts of the world. Our Philippino nanny rarely made a Phillipino stew without pumpkin chunks in it. (Loved that Oxtail stew with peanut sauce, potato, and pumpkin, or her winter squash and string bean stew with coconut milk plus some shrimp or chicken chunks.) And people who have read Alexander McCall Smith's series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, know how popular pumpkin became in the African diet. As for Pumpkin pasta recipes, there are tons of them.
Mashed pumpkin with salt, pepper and butter is great. Same with steamed pumpkin chunks. A little chopped fresh Sage is good with them. Never boil winter squash. Steam or roast, or it will get too soggy.
As for the olde standbys, Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Soup, those are OK too but the spices tend to obscure the subtle flavors of the winter squashes used. (Re Pumpkin Pie, the Maggie's Farm advice is to go very light on the sugar, and serve with a spoonful of whipped cream, then drizzled with 100% Maple Syrup.)
Leftover pizza is one of the finest breakfasts or snacks that exist. It tastes better the next day.
Tip: Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza.
My chef friend told me that home-made Reese's are better than store-bought, and you can make whatever sizes you want. (I wonder whether you can make them pie-sized and cut them in slices. Why not? Might be good with ice cream on top)
Easy:
- Buy whatever sort of peanut butter you want. Put it in silicone candy molds and freeze in freezer. - Make some tempered chocolate.That's the specialized part. - Dip the frozen pieces of peanut butter in the tempered chocolate, and let air-dry at room temperature on waxed paper. Done.
- To make them even better, sprinkle a little kosher salt on top before the chocolate hardens.
I was cleaning up this weekend and emptied out a backpack to find notes I'd written a year ago about topics of interest to me. While I traveled through Austria and the Czech Republic, the extended family took meals together and whenever something caught my ear, I'd write it down. One such topic was 'bog butter' - something I'd heard of, but knew little about.
The thought of it makes me wish to know as little as possible, in some ways. Yet it turns out to be an intriguing topic. We are all probably familiar with the remarkable capacity of peat to preserve just about anything. Peat has properties of preservation which are rather astounding. Apparently, old societies used peat to preserve their butter and occasionally forgot about it, lost it, or left it behind. Which means some archaeologists or bog workers are the lucky recipients of free butter. If they're willing to try it.
Its quality varies based on the kind of peat, how long it's been sitting, and what it's made of. I was told by someone who has seen some that it smells like old shoes, which may not make it the most appetizing of condiments. However, perhaps a better description is 'strong cheese'. I'm still not trying it, even if it is edible.
While these random finds are of little culinary value, they do provide insight into techniques of ancient food preparation and management. It has been noted that butter was a bit of a luxury, but was used for more than just food. It was also used to pay taxes, rents, fines and provide hospitality as well as helping out with healing. The quality of the butter would be an indicator of socio-economic status.
As for me, I'll stick with my Land O' Lakes, salted. Refrigerated, not stored in peat.
August is blueberry season in New England. Local blueberries, that is. Our wild blueberries are the highbush and the lowbush, and both are smaller and zingier than the commercial varieties.
Pic: I like Kippers. That's the morning I ordered kippers with fried eggs. Best kippers I ever had but, sheesh, it's just too much. I never ordered haggis or blood pudding (pudding in the UK can mean sausage), but Mrs. BD is fond of the latter. Funny thing I saw: A food truck on a scenic overlook in Skye serving sliced haggis on a burger bun with ketchup. Very popular. Seemed revolting to me.
Scottish breakfast menus are a variant of English breakfasts with a Scottish accent. Typical items on the menus we were presented with in Inverness and the Hebrides below, whatever combinations or numbers of items you wish, of course - it comes with the room:
Tea or coffee (Scots, Aussies, and Brits take the tea)
Porridge (aka Oatmeal) Scrambled eggs with lots of of smoked salmon (yum) Haggis Kippered Herring Toast Bacon (not the crunchy goodness of American bacon - more like fried pancetta) Eggs however you want 'em Smoked haddock poached in milk with poached eggs (yum) and, always, "Full Scottish Breakfast": Blood Pudding (aka Black Pudding), Haggis, roast tomato, roast mushroom, baked beans, potato scone, and choice of eggs from (obviously) free range Scottish chickens. Very rich yolks.
It's outdoor grilling season (well, that is all year-long for many of us regardless of snow), but I want to convey our Cordon Bleu-trained chef friend's advice for oven-roasting meats of all kinds: Always 400 degrees.
Even chicken. Ignore the cookbook. Use a meat thermometer if you can't tell doneness by touch.
More meat advice from our expert:
- Remember (everybody knows this anyway) that meat continues to cook for at least 10 minutes after removing from the heat. That fact has ruined many a rare steak or butterflied leg of lamb.
- Rib-eye is best pan-cooked, no matter how thick. Otherwise many or most meats can be pan-seared and roasted. She says grills are best for burgers and hot dogs, but I disagree. I love a grilled butterflied leg 'a lamb. Possibly my favorite meat. Rare, please.
In the southern USA, "tea" means Sweet Tea. People usually make a couple of quarts at a time. Delicious.
I have been a fan of Sun Tea since I first had it in Montana. It's usually made a gallon jar at a time. Keep the top on or ants will come, and keep in direct sunlight for 5-6 hours.
Helped roast a 130-lb. hog this weekend for a pal's garden party. It's quite the project. Night before, our cooking team seasoned the cavity with spices, filled it with apples and oranges, then stapled the cavity shut and pinned the ears back. Ran the spit through the mouth and out the back end, then the heavy prongs on the spit to hold the pig firm and acouple of long lug bolts with large square washers to pin the pig to the spit. Then chicken wire wrapped tightly around the whole thing to hold it all together.
After that, ten hours of tending the apple wood and charcoal fires in this corrugated steel contraption. Have to be careful because too much heat can set the pig on fire, and too little won't cook it. We figured keeping the temperature in there around 220-240 F. Slow cooking, and some smoking but not too much. After the first couple of hours, smoke can't penetrate anyway. You can not leave the thing unattended but it's good redneck fun with good company.
There is only one French salad dressing - mustard vinaigrette with shallots. This guy learned how to make it.No reason to ever use anything else other than laziness (I can be lazy and I like to put Ken's Steak House salad dressing from Costco on tomato slices).
The only French variation is to add tarragon or to use tarragon vinegar. I don't care much for tarragon flavor although it grows vigorously in my garden. Tarragon Chicken is a classic, but I don't care for it.
Isn't it strange that commercial "French Dressing" and "Russian Dressing" are American inventions? So is commercial "Italian dressing." Well, they all taste ok. Russian is great on a roast beef sammich.
What is a genuine Italian salad dressing? Salt, olive oil, vinegar (3 parts oil to one part vinegar). Toss it extensively - 30 times seems to be an Italian standard. You can add a few drops of Balsamic to that if you want, or use lemon juice (very Sicilian) instead of vinegar. Without salt, salad is not edible. It's barely edible anyway because it is rodent food and minimally-digestible by humans. I figure if you want to eat greens, eat a herbivore instead because they have the tools to break down and digest cellulose and thus the contents of greens. We do not.
It's getting into Shad Season now in the Northeast. Just had my first shad roe dinner of the season with pals last night. They made it with a caper and mushroom sauce with chopped bacon on top, on a bed of spinach, with roasted potatoes. It should be fully pink in the middle but crusty on the outside.
Many of us in Yankeeland welcome this brief season - mainly April-May, when the Shad migrate from the ocean up the rivers to lay and fertilize the eggs, with the females filled with their delicious egg sacs we call Shad roe.
If you drive over the Hudson River, the Connecticut, or Housatonic bridges, you will see the shad fishermen's nets spread out right now.
The roe, cooked with bacon, is as good as food gets. Do not overcook it - it is Shad caviar. But the meat of the Atlantic Shad (a large type of herring, I believe) is underestimated. It requires an expert boner which makes it expensive, but it's as tasty a fish as exists. The Shad is full of crazy bones.
It's a brief season for Shad, and there are Shad Festivals all over the Northeast.
Photo above is Shad roe. My Mom loved it, and so do I.
I'm no gourmet, and I'm not hip enough to even say I'm a 'foodie'. I dabble in cooking occasionally. I'm somewhat adept at certain types of chicken, and while grilling is supposedly the domain of the more masculine of the species (remember, gender is an attitude now), I'm only passable as a grillmeister. I can follow directions well enough, so if required I am actually capable of whipping up a decent meal from time to time.
My wife has a ton of cookbooks on our shelves, so I'm never at a loss for opportunity or options. She is also a fan of cooking shows, and I've learned to enjoy the dulcet tones of such celebrity chefs as Bobby Flay, Giada de Laurentiis, and Ina Garten. I couldn't really tell you what they actually cook or how they do it, but I know who they are and what they do.
Enough is enough, though. We don't need 200,000,000 cookbooks, we don't need new tools, shows and gadgets to get the best meal. By now, the right way to boil water has been fleshed out, and we should be able to provide sufficiently for ourselves. Shouldn't we?
Chefs are extremely particular about their knives. They even travel with them if they might have to spend a little time in a kitchen. 
We always do two turkeys, one on the grill over a wood and charcoal fire, and one stuffed and in the oven. We make sure there is an overabundance of TG food so those who want to have a next-day mini Thanksgiving at home can have one.
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.
This is about warm pasta dishes, not cold. Room temperature pasta dishes like Nicoise are nice - but that is from Nice, not Italy. 
Leftover pizza is one of the finest breakfasts or snacks that exist. It tastes better the next day.
My traveling pal emailed me his bowl of goulash in Budapest. 
August is blueberry season in New England. Local blueberries, that is. Our wild blueberries are the highbush and the lowbush, and both are smaller and zingier than the commercial varieties.
For summer get-togethers or any other festive occasion, along with beer and wine it's fun to have a cocktail theme, like one kind of pitcher cocktail.
It's getting into Shad Season now in the Northeast. Just had my first shad roe dinner of the season with pals last night. They made it with a caper and mushroom sauce with chopped bacon on top, on a bed of spinach, with roasted potatoes. It should be fully pink in the middle but crusty on the outside.