Posted by Anita on 11.09.07 7:02 AM
What the heck is up with all that alphabet soup in the title?
First, there’s DOTW: Drink of the Week, our regular Friday diversion into the world of mixed drinks.
And then there’s MxMo: Mixology Monday, the monthly cocktail event created by Paul Clarke. This session’s topic, Gin, is hosted (appropriately enough) by an Englishman: Jay of Oh Gosh.
DOM, though: It’s a bit of a mystery, innit? Somewhere in the depths of cocktailian history, some wiseacre decided to spread the rumor that these three letters on the label of every bottle of Benedictine stood for Dominican Order of Monks. Which is kind of ridiculous if you have even the most cursory knowledge of religious orders. For those of you without the benefit of a parochial school education, Benedictines and Dominicans are two different brotherhoods.
The whole Dominican business is one of those bits of cocktail lore that you see debunked in plenty of places. DOM, as our good Professor Embury correctly defines, is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase Deo Optimo Maximo: “To God, the best, the greatest” — a prayer on every bottle that those clever monks sent out into the sinful world.
Rather tidily, there’s a cocktail of the very same name that’s a perfect fit both for MxMo XXI and RotLC #2 (which I’m happy to announce has popped up over on The Spirit World this morning).
The DOM
1-1/2 oz dry gin
1/2 oz Benedictine
1/2 oz fresh orange juice
Shake all ingredients, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
As written, I found the DOM lacking a certain something. A splash of orange bitters brought out the Benedictine’s citrus and vanilla notes; Cameron pronounced it Creamsicle-esque, although not as sweet. Aromatic bitters highlight the gin’s bite and the liqueur’s spicy overtones — a better match, methinks. Should you find yourself in possession of a Meyer lemon, its juice makes lovely substitution for some, or all, of the OJ.
Drink of the Week, drinks, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 11.06.07 4:18 PM
I don’t know about you, but it seems lately like my life is exploding with insanity. It’s not just work, either; it’s home and dogs and life in general. It’s all rush-rush, crazy nonstop chaos… and it’s not even the holidays yet.
I knew things had gotten out of hand when I realized we hadn’t seen Paul & Sean — friends we saw nearly every week in the summertime — in more than a month. Worse yet, we hadn’t hosted a dinner party in so long that I couldn’t even remember who had come, or what we’d served. Clearly, something had to give.
Now, the last thing any frenzied soul needs in the midst of a swirling storm of busy-ness is the stress of planning a soirée. So we resolved to keep things simple: A small guest list, a casual menu, and an early start time so as not to keep folks up late. Ah, autumn entertaining… the very best kind, don’t you think?
Contorting our weekly menus into the Dark Days Challenge hasn’t been much of an effort, truth be told. But then, it’s hard to feel too smug when your whole meal plan involves soups, pastas, and meat-potatoes-veg plates with a green salad to start. Weekday dining is pretty fanfare-free at our house, and we like it like that.
But for company, it seemed like a nice touch to try at least one recipe that was just a little more haute than humble. For months, my recipe file has held a strange-sounding starter — Leek & Potato Soup with Melted Leeks in Ash — from rising star chef James Syhabout (of PlumpJack Cafe fame when the article debuted, now chef de cuisine at two-star Manresa… ooh-la-la!). Just as I’d hoped, the soup was special but not too fancy for the casual entree of braised lamb alongside bean-and-rice salad. And then there was that dreamy spice cake, frosted with icing made from local cream cheese and butter… a lovely kickoff to fall, if I do say so myself.
Thanks to the generosity of party guests Cookie and Cranky, we are now in possession of a bag each of whole-wheat flour and cornmeal, both grown by Full Belly Farm in Capay Valley. And — wonder of wonders — I found locally made dried pasta. Although neither organic nor sustainable in any discernible fashion, Eduardo’s Pasta Factory could hardly be more local: They’re just over the neighborhood line in Bayview, pratically visible from our back deck. Better yet, they make a pretty nice assortment of pasta types; this week we bought rotini, linguine, and penne, and there’s a few more shapes awaiting our next shopping trip. All in all, a good week for local carbs.
New to our pantry this week, sorted by distance:
Eduardo’s Pasta Factory dried pasta – San Francisco
Molinari Sicilian-style hot Italian sausage – San Francisco
Mastrelli house-made cheese raviolini – San Francisco
Divinely D’Lish granola – San Francisco (+local farms)
Guittard milk chocolate chips – Burlingame
Amy’s Organic canned split pea soup – Petaluma
Jimtown Store deli artichoke spread / pasta sauce – Healdsburg (Sonoma County)
Alexander Valley Gourmet Manhattan-Style Pickles – Healdsburg
Full Belly Farms certified organic flour and cornmeal – Guinda (Capay Valley)
Sierra Nevada Cheese Gina Marie cream cheese – Willows (near Chico)
Last week’s Dark Days Challenge meals included:
Beef stroganoff
– Prather Ranch beef chuck, Far West Fungi white mushrooms and dried porcini, Eatwell onions, Clover Organic sour cream, homemade stock
– Eduardo’s Pasta Factory rotini and Dirty Girl haricots verts
Sunday lunch with friends
– Leek-Potato Soup: Little‘s potatoes, Eatwell leeks, homemade veggie broth
– Braised Lamb: Marin Sun Farms leg of lamb, Hedonia preserved lemons, Eatwell onions, Chateau Souverain sauvignon blanc, homegrown thyme, Happy Quail roasted peppers
– Bean & Rice Salad: Eatwell onions, Happy Quail sweet peppers, Rancho Gordo beans, Massa Organics brown rice
– Raita: Hamada cucumber, Chue’s cilantro, Redwood Hill goat yogurt
– Spice cake: Gina Marie cream cheese and Clover Organic butter, Alfieri almond brittle
– Wines: Chateau Souverain syrah, Merryvale Starmont sauvignon blanc
Soup & salad
– Pasta Fazool: Home-canned Mariquita tomatoes, Rancho Gordo heirloom beans, Fatted Calf pancetta, homemade chicken stock
– Pear salad: Little‘s lettuce, Apple Farm pears, Point Reyes blue cheese, Glashoff walnuts, Bariani olive oil, O vinegar
Stacked chile verde enchiladas
– Prather pork, Quail Hollow chiles and tomatillos, Eatwell onions, homemade stock, Rancho Gordo tortillas and beans, Spring Hill colby-jack cheese
Friday (…is always pasta night)
– Mastrelli ricotta raviolini topped with Hedonia marinara sauce
– Molinari hot Italian sausage, grilled
– Salad: Little’s lettuce, Glashoff walnuts, Three Sisters Serena cheese, Chue’s green onions, Bariani olive oil, O vinegar
– Rosenblum 2005 San Francisco Bay Zinfandel (from Alameda!? Who knew!)
cooking, entertaining, locavore, other blogs
8 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 11.04.07 10:16 PM
Remember last month, all those Strega concoctions we resurrected for Raiders of the Lost Cocktail? Well, it seems yours truly has been anointed the winner of said challenge, and therefore the decider of this month’s challenge ingredient.
Don’t be too impressed by my gold-medal status: I was the only entrant who actually followed the rules. So paltry was the attendance that I actually managed to take both first and second place. Of course, the scanty turnout might just could possibly sorta have been due to the relative obscurity of the target ingredient and the mysterious lack of published Strega recipes.
So in the spirit (hardy-har) of opening up the challenge to wider participation, let me propose a slightly more-mixable subject: Benedictine. It fits the bill quite neatly: A widely available product that has been known to gather dust, but one that well deserves a broader audience.
Like the now-trendy Chartreuse, Benedictine began its life behind abbey walls, the proprietary elixir of the monastic order that shares its name. A sweetened cognac base infused with 27 secret herbs and spices — the Colonel has nothing on those monks! — amber-hued Benedictine conjures up a set of heavenly flavors and aromas. It’s also the kind of spirit that makes curmudgeonly drinkers (and drink-makers) giddy. Here’s David Embury waxing poetic on the subject in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks:
One of the oldest and best of all liqueurs, highly aromatic, and having a base of the finest cognac. It is made with consummate skill and is thoroughly aged. There are few liqueurs in the world that can compare with it.
Indeed, its balance and complexity has kept Benedictine from ever falling completely out of fashion. Although sales of herbal liqueurs rapidly declined after Prohibition, most every cocktail book in our library boasts at least one recipe for this concoction.
Certainly, it’s no stranger in this parish: We’ve mixed up no less than four recipes bearing the blessed tipple: Erik‘s guest-sermon on Bobby Burns, the Pegu Club’s Prince of Wales variation, a post-MxMo stab at the Cabaret, plus last Friday’s very own Widow’s Kiss.
One last word of warning, my children, before you venture forth in the world: Be not led astray. As the reverend Dr. Bamboo wisely cautions, the labeling of premixed “B&B” appears nearly identical to that of the pure liqueur. The wise man seeketh the right label.
Go now, and mix some more.
(Stay tuned to The Spirit World for the formal announcement and directions on how to enter, or check back here for a link in a day or so.)
drinks, other blogs, recipes
3 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.28.07 7:50 PM
When my mom was growing up, homemade dessert was a regular occurrence around the dinner table. By the time I was a kid, the family tradition had lapsed; cakes and pies showed up mostly around the holidays or on someone’s birthday. Not that I felt deprived: To this day, my idea of dessert is scraping the bowl for the last spoonful of mashed potatoes, or sneaking an extra meatball from the lunch-bound leftovers.
Despite my defective sweet tooth, I love to bake for friends and family. At my office in Seattle, I belonged to a crew of hard-core amateur pâtissières dubbed the Spare Change Bakery. We all kept jars on our desks for our coworkers’ contributions, and as soon as we scraped together enough nickels and dimes, one of us would whip up a double- or triple-batch of something sweet and scrumptious for the next staff meeting. By the time we disbanded, we were collecting enough cash to bake every week — a gratifying but rather exhausting sign of our popularity.
But since we moved back to San Francisco, I haven’t had many excuses to bake. Sure, our dinner parties often need a sweet ending, but I miss those crowd-pleasing desserts: Brownies, bars, and other decidedly lowbrow sweets. So when I saw the photo of the Spice Cake with Coffee Toffee Crunch on the cover of the new issue of Sunset, I knew my path was clear. The theme for this month’s “Waiter, There’s Something in My…” event is layer cakes, after all, and there’s just something about a sky-high cake with cream-cheese frosting that sends me running for my sifter and whisk.
Working my way through the recipe, I found it refreshingly well documented. The writer details a number of steps — creating a crumb coat, and using strips of parchment to keep the serving plate clean — that help give the final cake a centerpiece-worthy appearance. With the exception of the recipe’s lack of measurements by weight (the serious baker’s preferred method for dry ingredients like flour and sugar, especially), it was one of the best-written magazine recipes I’ve used in months.
Aside from substituting Alfieri Farms’ almond brittle for homemade coffee toffee, I followed the recipe to the letter, so click over to Sunset’s site if you want the full rundown. Although I doubt the magazine’s suggestion that this cake will replace pumpkin or pecan pie on your holiday dessert buffet, it’s got a spicy, deep flavor that would make a perfect finish for an autumn feast. While the icing’s got enough sugar to satisfy even the most intense sugar junkie, the cake itself — sweetened with molasses — keeps things moist and spicy without too much sweetness… just the ticket for a baker without a sweet tooth.
baking, dessert, magazines, other blogs
10 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.23.07 1:37 PM
When I think about the bloggers participating in the Dark Days Challenge in places like Maine or Minnesota or Michigan — places where winter actually involves snow, frost, and farmers markets that close for the season — I feel like a fraud.
We still had tomatoes at our market this weekend — heirlooms and Early Girls and a rainbow of Sweet 100s — from a surprising number of farms. They sat there in their little cliques, cozying up to their buddies, red peppers and basil. You could almost imagine them standing in front of a mirror inspecting their own summery plumpness and silently mocking the homespun pumpkins and Brussels sprouts on the next table over.
Frankly, I’m over these cheeky girls of summer. I’m ready for the potatoes and the greens and the crisp new apples. It’s a little eerie to realize that I could eat today the same meals we made in June without even leaving the market. I even saw three different vendors who were still selling strawberries… they’ve been on the farm tables since the first week of April, for goodness sake. I’ll be sad when the pasture-raised chickens come to an end, but that’s really all I’m going to miss from summer. Autumn is my favorite eating season.
We started out our Dark Days Challenge last week with some of our favorite standbys. We make these dishes a lot, and we’re pretty dialed in on where to find their ingredients from local sources. And I suppose that’s one of the benefits of eating locally all the time: With the exception of farmers dropping out of your market, you pretty much know where to find your favorite things, after a while. You also know, eventually, what’s hard (or even impossible) to find; it makes you more alert when you spy something you haven’t found locally before.
Speaking of which, our friend Cookie turned me on to a local source for wheat flour and polenta. Although Full Belly Farms is about 100 miles away, they don’t come to my local market — they sell at weekday markets in places I can’t get to during the workday, plus one Saturday market down in Palo Alto, 30+ miles south of us. So now I get to make the choice about whether it’s better to drive an hour to buy the local option, or stick with my carb exemption. The other good news is that I found out (from Cookie, again) that the white rice we’ve been buying is harvested semi-locally… about 150 miles away.
Here’s what last week looked like:
Chicken & Dumplings
– Marin Sun Farms chicken; onions, carrot, celery from the market; garden herbs
– biscuit mix from Beth’s in San Rafael; Clover Organic milk
Chili Dogs (can’t watch the playoffs without ‘dogs!)
– Prather Ranch uncured hotdogs and Acme pain de mie buns
– Chili made with our own tomato sauce and homemade pork sausage, plus Prather chuck
– Eatwell Farms onions, and non-local (but organic) cheese
Oxtail Ragu and Pasta
– Marin Sun Farms oxtails braised with our own chicken stock and tomato sauce
– salad: red-leaf lettuce (Little), avocado (Will’s) and tomatoes (Everything Under the Sun)
– non-local dried orecchiete pasta
Pork & Potatoes
– Double-cut Prather Ranch pork loin chop on the grill
– Roasted Iacopi Farm brussels sprouts with Bariani olive oil
– Roasted ‘rose Finn apple’ potatoes from Mr. Little
Pasta (Not-Quite-)Bolognese
– meat sauce made with Prather beef and pork, Mariquita tomatoes, Eatwell onions
– garlic bread: Clover Organic butter, Acme rolls, local garlic
– non-local dried pasta
farmers markets, locavore, other blogs
10 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.17.07 7:35 AM
So many variables factor into the bounty of the Bay Area’s foodshed: The density and affluence of our population creates a bumper crop of food-obsessed consumers, our progressive social milieu fosters an interest in sustainability, and the richness of our restaurant scene rewards ambitious farmers.
But underneath all that is the inescapable fact that we live in one of the most fertile food-growing regions in the country. Add to that an eye-crossing number of microclimates, and the result is an astounding variety of warm-weather crops from just-spring to deep autumn. Even in winter, our markets offer an almost unbelievable abundance.
I know that most other regions don’t have it so easy; reading the seasonal posts of other food bloggers brings that fact home. Eating locally, especially year-round, can be a struggle for even the most dedicated fanatic. In most areas, the first frost pretty much spells doom for the locavore agenda, save for home-preserved harvests, hardy winter crops, and often-pricey meats and cheeses.
So when I read on the Eat Local Challenge blog that an autumn-into-winter locavore event was afoot, I had to check it out. Laura — who writes a charming blog called Urban Hennery out of Everett, Washington — is blogging her latest experiment: Feeding herself, her husband, and her friends on local foods throughout the remainder of the year. She’s challenged anyone interested to join her, christening the event the Dark Days Challenge.
I signed on with Laura without giving the idea much thought… without realizing that this snap decision means we’re going to become a lot more candid about the choices we’re making when we shop. This isn’t just a one-week flirtation with locavore exhibitionism, as we’ve done before. But I know we can do it because it’s what we’ve been doing pretty much all summer long, on the sly. And, honestly? Not doing it here — in what must be the easiest place in the country to attempt this challenge — would feel churlish.
My name’s Anita, and I’m …a locavore. There, I said it.
All joking aside, I’ve been bashful of talking about what we’re doing, mostly because I am leery of sounding sanctimonious or self-congratulatory. Food choices are incredibly personal, and if you have strong opinions about what you eat and why, it can be hard to talk about them without seeming snobbish. Or condescending. Or egotistical. Or just vain.
So, in order to salve my fears, I’ll say this and then trust that you’ll give us the benefit of the doubt: Eating sustainable, local, and organic food whenever possible is important to us. But by sharing what we’re doing, we are in no way condemning anyone else’s choice.
Enough of that, and full speed ahead. We’re on this bandwagon for the full ride. Expect to hear about our locavore adventures — the triumphs and the challenges, as Laura says — throughout the fall. We’ll continue to eat as locally as we can as often as we can, and write about it at least once a week until New Year’s Day.
Laura has encouraged her Dark Days cohorts to modify the house rules to suit their circumstances. Based on our experience in past challenges, we’ve held ourselves to a harder line with some items (like produce miles) and taken a more realistic approach to others (like carbs). Here’s our general game-plan:
- We will continue to cook locally as often as we can, with a baseline of two dinners per week made from 90% local ingredients.
- We will write about at least two meals a week made with as many local ingredients as we can source.
- Local for us will be a 100-mile radius for produce and a 200-mile radius for protein. Strong preference will be given to items purchased direct at the farmers market rather than retail.
- We’re making the usual ‘Marco Polo’ exemptions for seasonings. We’re also making exceptions for flour, dried pasta, white rice, and polenta — we have no local sources of these ingredients, and man does not live by potatoes and bread alone. We will try to source baking ingredients locally, but I don’t expect to find much beyond nuts, and I won’t go through the holidays without baking.
- We’ll try to limit processed foods to those produced within a 50-mile radius. We’ll try to determine how much local ingredient sourcing they’re doing, and talk about it in our posts.
- We’ll continue with the challenge through the end of the year, and then re-evaluate on New Year’s Day along with other participants.
locavore, other blogs
8 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.16.07 12:02 PM
You learn the darndest things when you blog.
Here’s just one example: Until a few days ago, I never knew that one of my all-time favorite foods was so widely appreciated. I mean, I knew meatloaf sandwiches were something other people ate, but I had no idea they loved them as much as I do.
That is, until the day I posted this photo on Flickr and the comments started rolling in:
“One of the best uses of leftovers of all time.”
“Nothing better [than a meatloaf sandwich].”
I’m right there with them. I may love meatloaf sandwiches even more than I like the original meatloaf dinner. Which is impressive, considering my adoration for baked potatoes knows no bounds.
For those of us in the meatloaf-sandwich-lovers clique, there’s no need to wait for a special occasion to celebrate. But in case you’re seeking an excuse, Serious Eats declared this Thursday National Meatloaf Appreciation Day, and we’re all invited to play along.
Don’t tell me that you don’t have a prized family recipe to bring to the party? Oh, you poor thing. Here… pull yourself together. Sit down and let me give you a copy of ours.
But first, a few caveats:
Our family meatloaf is a bit of an anomaly. It doesn’t come topped with pan gravy, or even a tomatoey glaze. (Although Heinz ketchup is a mandatory condiment, as far as I’m concerned, it’s absent from the cooked dish.) This recipe also eschews breadcrumbs as a binder; Quaker Oats serves that purpose. An unorthodox choice, to be sure, but the end result is less bizarre than you might expect.
In place of the usual middle-American seasonings, our meatloaf features some strange-sounding spices. Happily for any purists among us, they fly under the radar, adding their warmth without making anyone think of an oatmeal cookie. Perhaps the biggest heresy of all: This meatloaf isn’t baked, or even shaped, in a loaf pan. Sporting the freeform curves of a football (make that ‘rugby ball’ outside the US), our odd-shaped loaf maximizes the crusty edges our family covets.
And because the resulting slices are just a teeny bit wider than the average piece of bread, the elliptical shape yields some delicious trimmings — perfect nibbles during the next day’s sandwich-making activities. Lucky you.
Mom’s Meatloaf
1-1/2 pounds ground chuck
1/2 pound pork breakfast sausage
1 onion, grated
1 egg
1 cup uncooked oatmeal (not instant)
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until well mixed. Pat into a football shape and place in a wide baking dish or a small roasting pan. Bake for 75 minutes, or until juices run clear when the center is pierced with a knife.
family, meat, other blogs, recipes
12 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 10.15.07 7:02 AM
A big shout out to Natalie over at The Liquid Muse for choosing food/cocktail pairings as the Mixology Monday topic for October. My proposal for a decadent lunch (or bachelor’s dinner) is a steak and bleu cheese sandwich paired with an ice-cold Martini — one of my all-time favorite combinations.
This is no tame, civilized snack. The sandwich should be rough and ready. You’ll need slices of cold beef left over from the loud debauchery at the grill Saturday night; a good, chewy roll; a wedge of bleu; plus a spreading knife and the guts to use it.
No lettuce. No mayonnaise. No mustard.
This particular Martini you want to be rippingly cold and (to borrow a winning concept from The Art of the Bar) made with Atomic Age proportions of gin and vermouth. Skip the orange bitters; you’ve already got a lot of flavors coming together.
Consume while watching a sporting match, taking in an action flick, or plotting your next corporate takeover.
Steak and Bleu Sandwich
Cold sliced steak
Bleu cheese at room temperature
Chewy sandwich roll
Slice open roll. Spread several healthy swipes of bleu cheese on both halves. Layer bottom half with steak slices, and top with the other half. Eat.
Atomic-Age Martini
2 oz gin
1/2 oz (or less) dry vermouth
Combine ingredients in an ice-filled mixing glass. Stir until icy cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with an olive or two.
drinks, meat, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.11.07 5:12 PM
The lovely and talented Jennifer of Last Night’s Dinner challenged me to divulge the five foods that I’m ashamed to love. After chewing on this meme for nearly two weeks, I have a confession to make: There aren’t a lot of foods I’m embarrassed about anymore.
Some of my former foibles have fallen by the wayside. After reading up on the delightful ingredients in my once-beloved Fresca — what the hell are ‘brominated vegetable oil’ and ‘ester of wood rosin’ doing in my soda pop? — I’ve managed to get that particular grapefruit-flavored monkey off my back.
There are plenty of foods that I like that other people find amusing. I take a fair bit of good-natured ribbing about the frequency of my macaroni salad consumption, but it’s hardly the stuff of blushes and stammers. Sure, there’s a slight bashfulness about my regular indulgences in cheesy Mexican combo plates …but I eat enough of the real stuff that I can accept my fondness for the less-authentic version as a regional quirk. I’ve made peace with my unholy love of canned corned-beef hash, and even found a few foodie friends who share my tragic attraction to the pink cylinder of doom. But even this, the worst hyper-processed dreck of the lot, I wear as as a badge of my eclectic taste rather than anything I’m actually trying to hide.
But there is one food I’m just a wee bit embarrassed to love: Casseroles.
When we were kids, Mom always managed to make fabulous dinners on a slim budget. Our evening meals were never gourmet (that was Grandpa’s turf), but they always tasted great. Shake-n-Bake chicken with rice, meatloaf and baked potatoes, even the occasional steak on the grill… we must’ve been the only kids on the block who didn’t have to be coaxed to clean our plates. One-dish suppers were the mainstays of our family diet: Mexican lasagna, a pair of tuna casseroles — one with curried rice, another simply called “That Tuna” — and the frankly named Oven Put-Together. But the queen of them all, the one I still crave, was a homely little dish called Creole Rice.
Much like so many of the faux-ethnic dishes of 70s, there’s not much ‘Creole’ about this mélange. (I suppose it’s slightly more authentic than the disgusting-sounding ‘Thai’ Pepper Salad that my friend Michael recently dredged up. Secret ingredients: Bulls-Eye BBQ Sauce and Miracle Whip…). And while we’re being honest, Creole Rice is definitely one dish that won’t win a single beauty contest — it’s about as beige as can be.
But it’s comfort food in the extreme, at least for my family, and Cameron eats it without too much smirking. I jokingly call it Trailer Park Paella (though it’s closer to Redneck Risotto), but that doesn’t stop me from hauling out the old recipe card a few times a year. Still, that red-and-white can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup lurking in the dark recesses of our pantry was cause for more than a little locavore angst.
Inspired by The Homesick Texan’s recent post about revamping her hometown favorite, King Ranch Chicken, I decided to see if we might be able to remove the store-bought gloop from good ol’ Creole Rice without losing its homespun charm. Given that the soup was really the only scary ingredient, it wasn’t terribly hard; if you use homemade breakfast sausage, you can probably even make it entirely with local ingredients.
Creole Rice Redux
2T salted butter
2T flour
3 cups chicken stock
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 cup sour cream
1 pound pork breakfast sausage
8 to 12 oz white mushrooms, sliced
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced onion
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Melt the butter over medium heat in the bottom of a large saucepan, then add the flour. Whisk continuously until the flour browns slightly — you’re looking for a blonde roux. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes until it reaches a thin but sauce-like consistency. Add the pepper and taste for seasoning, adding salt and more pepper if needed. Remove from heat and stir occasionally until warm but not hot. When cooled a bit, add the sour cream and stir until well combined.
While the sauce cools, sauté the pork sausage until browned, crumbling into small chunks. Remove the sausage from the pan with a slotted spoon, and place in the bottom of a large casserole. In the sausage fat (or oil, if you prefer) sauté the mushrooms until cooked but not dry. Add to the casserole on top of the meat, then top with the chicken sauce-sour cream mixture. Layer the remaining ingredients in the casserole in the order listed — do not stir. Push down any rice that rises above the level of the liquid, then cover and place in the oven for 75 minutes.
At the 60 minute mark, remove the casserole lid. The dish will still be fairly soupy at this point; push down any rice that has risen above the liquid, and continue to cook until the rice has absorbed all of the liquid, 15 to 25 minutes more.
Serve hot, with the curtains drawn.
family, other blogs, recipes
11 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.05.07 7:04 AM
As I walked down the escalator to baggage claim at the Las Vegas airport, Mom glanced at the jacket slung over my arm, a wide smile breaking across her face.
“Did you need that coat at home?” she quipped. “You sure won’t need it here!”
When temperatures hover in the 90s in the late afternoon, even in October, you begin to wonder if Las Vegas might not be enchanted by some sort of spell: a warped incantation that keeps the Southern Nevada desert sparkling-hot at the same time as the rest of the country is starting to think seriously about airing out their woolen sweaters and setting a savory stew on the fire.
The notion of a mischievous spirit was never far from my mind as I dug deeper into my cocktail books and online sources for another suitable Strega cocktail. As I sweltered away, I sampled tall drinks, fizzy drinks, and citrus-spiked drinks designed to beat the heat. But they all felt a little blah, like unimaginative variations on better-known concoctions. I kept wishing that I could add an ingredient or two, play with proportions, and generally jack up the flavors. But tempting though that notion was, it’s entirely contrary to the purpose of “Raiders of the Lost Cocktail” — to rescue an existing recipe from cocktail oblivion.
Digging through the eGullet archives for cocktail-book suggestions for further research, I stumbled upon an old Strega thread. In the midst of a general discussion of Strega’s merits and quirks, I noticed a mention of an unnamed Strega cocktail served at Seattle’s Troiani restaurant. Enchanted by the description of a drink that “starts fresh and strong and ends like a wisp of dessert”, I knew I had to add this to my trials.
Unfortunately, the post dated from the restaurant’s early days… many moons and several staff-changes ago. Ever hopeful, I called Troiani one afternoon and asked if anyone in the bar might remember the drink’s proportions. Unsurprisingly, the answer was no. (Well, more like “Huh? What’s Stray Gull?”) Nobody could even tell me who might have tended bar there, all those eons ago — two and a half years is an eternity in the restaurant world.
All I had to go on was a list of ingredients in the post: Vodka, Strega, crème de cacao, orange and lemon juice, with a vanilla cream float. Nothing like that existed in any of the books at my disposal, nor in CocktailDB or any other familiar online source; it must have been someone’s in-house creation. Over on a site called DrinksMixer — where their ‘Most Popular’ sidebar inauspiciously lists the Apple Martini, Jager Bomb, and Long-Island Ice Tea among the top five — I noticed a similar drink, with a most appropriate name.
If it were mine to tinker with, I’d suggest you make the Sun Witch with a lighter hand on the creme de cacao. If you do as Troiani’s sadly anonymous bartender did, adding lemon juice and vodka, you’ll enjoy a lighter finish… at least as far as these sorts of milkshake drinks go. If you’re in the mood for a dessert cocktail, you could do far worse than to fall under the Sun Witch spell.
Strega Sun Witch
1 oz Strega liqueur
3/4 oz white creme de cacao
3/4 oz orange juice
1 oz whipping cream
Orange slice, for garnish
Shake with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a slice of orange.
Sun Witch a la Troiani
1 oz Strega liqueur
1/2 oz vodka
1/4 oz white creme de cacao
1/2 oz orange juice
1/2 oz lemon juice
1 oz whipping cream
vanilla extract or vanilla liqueur, to taste
Lightly whip the cream with the vanilla; set aside. Shake the remaining ingredients with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with the vanilla cream, and garnish with a light grating of orange zest.
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