Tanks Gibbon

Another day of gluttony and excess at Blauhaus is in the history books. The dinner crowd numbered eight in all. I spent most of the day cooking, as is my preference, and we sipped wine and nibbled things all the way through. Once again, we brought the Gramma Table in from the deck, and it rendered excellent service:
We had some very tasty wines. In addition to Beaujolais and a number of my perennial Trader Joe's favorites, we had Schug Sonoma Hills Pinot Noir, Cocodrilo Mendoza Cabernet (a very tasty, polished Argentinian wine), and then we enjoyed two wines of note the next day: Three Rings Shiraz and Clarendon Hills Brookman Vineyard Syrah (a powerful leather, pomegranate and spice-packed brute that we drank for last year's anniversary).

If I do say so myself, we ate well. The picture does not exactly illustrate the amount of garlic mashed potatoes I made. This is an 8-quart stockpot, mostly full of spuds:

I roasted a lot of garlic. Bryan took this pic, and it's only as much garlic as I could fit in my hand. There was plenty more. I pureed it and put most of it in the mashed potatoes, and a generous amount went into the garlic butter.
Here is the complete day's menu:

Breakfast: Maple/Bacon/Scallion cornbread, made by Lindsey (she will hopefully put a picture of that on her blog)

Grazing Nibblies: Dates stuffed with cream cheese and walnuts (by Lindz), Brie smeared with Trader Joe's ginger jam (by Lindz), smoked oysters, crackers, French bread (by me), garlic butter

Dinner: Roast Kosher turkey (Bryan obtained the 12 pound bird from Trader Joe's), cranberry-onion confit, garlic mashed potatoes, hand-made gravy, bread stuffing with apples, sage and bacon, green bean casserole (by Lindz's aunt Barbara), artichoke dip (also by Barbara), more French bread

Dessert: Mocha torte (by Bryan), ginger pumpkin pie with real whipped cream (by Lindz), too much port, not enough water (by me), about half of Bryan's bottle of Bärenjäger honey liqueur

It was an enjoyable meal, and the conversation was ebullient. Lindz and I put some real work into making the house a welcoming place (getting a big chunk of cabinet installation done, cleaning the house, cooking, etc.), and I'd say we succeeded.

Culinary Postscript: Gravy

I put a lot (probably a disproportionate amount) of care and energy into gravy. I think it is an often-undervalued item, a potent plate-unifier and vehicle for flavor. This year, I did not succeed in finding turkey wings on my last-minute trip to the Food Lion. I usually use these to make turkey stock so I don't have to rely on drippings from the main bird (they can get burned, it's a tricky, messy procedure to get them out of the pan, and you can't have them until late in the meal prep). Nevertheless, this year's gravy was good. I think my thin, sharp new Japanese knife played an important part. For the first time, I cut my aromatics truly fine. It makes a difference. Gravy is an expression of care, attention to detail, the innate flavor of the ingredients, and technique. Here is the 2007 Blauhaus Gravy:

Three carrots, brunoise cut
Three ribs of celery, brunoise cut
One medium onion, minced
Three cloves of garlic, minced
One bay leaf
One star anise
One chile de arbol
A fistful of fresh thyme sprigs
One sprig of fresh rosemary
One quart of organic chicken stock
One turkey neck
A gob of chicken Better then Bouillon, to taste
Turkey drippings (they didn't burn)
Blond roux (I think it was 3 tbsp of butter and about 1/3 c flour)
A bit of cornstarch at the end, as necessary

Sweat the carrots, celery, onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil. When they've softened a bit, add the chicken stock, turkey neck, anise, bay leaf, chile, thyme and rosemary. Simmer this slowly, stirring occasionally, while you're doing everything else. We're talking about a few hours here. Add water if you think you're reducing too much. Reduction means flavor, so balance how good it tastes with how much gravy you'll need.
Within an hour of service (but before you're dealing with getting the bird out of the oven), make some blond roux in a smaller (1 1/2 or 2 qt) saucepan. Strain the gravy into this roux pan. Squeeze what liquid you can out of the solids and discard them. Whisk. Whisk. Bring it to a simmer. Whisk. Adjust the seasoning with the Better than Bouillon (I treat it as salt in a situation like this). The gravy should be a bit thicker now. Cover it and set it aside, off the heat. Deal with the turkey and stuffing. At this point, I added the drippings while the bird was resting, and I thickened it just a bit more with cornstarch. The roux makes for a better consistency, so I didn't use cornstarch alone for thickening this.

One of the things I love about Thanksgiving is how this meal is the essence of what I see as the greatest cooking: turning humble ingredients into very special food. There were no expensive or exotic ingredients here. Next year, I want to get an heirloom turkey, or perhaps a goose, and one might consider that semi-exotic. To someone without a farm, perhaps it is. Anyway, that's next year.

Unexpectedly Good yet Backbreaking Saturday

This weekend, the goal was to install the two base cabinets on the sink side of the kitchen. The source of anxiety for me was the fact that unless I successfully reconnected all the plumbing, we would not have a functioning kitchen. Get your calendars out kids - it's almost Thanksgiving. Anyway, we got to work this morning. Here's the whole kit and caboodle:
Much to our delight and satisfaction, everything went as we hoped, with no nasty surprises. Everything is reconnected, with a few (but not all) of the hardware pieces installed. Just look at those pot & pan trays! And check out the ribbed glass in the wall cabinet!

It ain't easy being SuperCouple.

The Third Thursday of November...

...is traditionally the day for installing drawer pulls. It dates back to Roman times, when the emperor would grant a selection of tasteful cabinet hardware to a victorious gladiator. The eleventh month of the year was known as Knobvember for centuries before it gradually morphed into what we call it today.
As coincidence would have it, it is also the day when Beaujolais Nouveau is released. It is a bright, tart, youthful contrast to the blustery fall weather outside.

And let's not forget about bread

The old French Bread recipe, little changed from what we ate as kids (I skip the egg wash, and I use olive oil instead of butter, but that's it).

Mexican Lasagna and Hard Work

Bryan came over with a bunch of ingredients and a plan. We set to work, and here was the result:
Goodass crap. As a refined little apertif, I got a giant can of Budweiser Chelada style beer. Purely out of morbid curiosity. It is beer (sort of, it is Budweiser after all) with Clamato, lime and salt. It was kind of weird, as you might expect from a beverage built of light beer, tomatoes and mollusks. We dumped it out and drank some Ommegang Three Philosophers instead.

On to a different subject. Lindz and I began the kitchen project. We replaced two base cabinets on Saturday (my back is still sore). Behind one cabinet was evidence of how attractive the kitchen must have been in 1981:
And here's me leveling one of the new beauties. It's actually made of wood, rather than sawdust!
And the payoff. this drawer is nearly three feet wide, and it comes all the way out. We're going to need some partitions in there. It's so big, you could call it zoning. Note the attractive masking tape flag serving as a drawer pull until the new ones arrive.

Lindz and I had a good time demolishing the flimsy old cabinets. No complaints, really - they served for two and a half decades, but their era is at an end.

Maybe I won't bother installing them...

I rather like the new kitchen cabinets in this arrangement!