We returned to Texas on Monday, after two very long drives and a little over a week in the Twin Cities. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t do any work while on this vacation, and it was a little strange to have time to just read and hang out with the family. I didn’t even cook much, only making a dessert for Christmas dinner and chili a few days later. It was good to be away, but by New Year’s Eve both my son and I were itchy to be home again with our old routine.
On Tuesday I went to work reassessing our food stores. Throwing food away always makes me feel like a bit of a failure in the cooking department, but it’s hard to salvage two-week-old organic produce. As I surveyed my practically bare refrigerator, I realized that in a way I was being given a gift.
While I try to plan out our meals and use everything we buy, our family is still guilty of quite a bit of food waste. Because the bulk of our food comes from the farmers’ markets, including charcuterie purveyors, seasonal selections call out as you walk past. Hydroponic strawberries don’t care if you have a big bag of tangelos in the fridge already, and Brussels sprouts have been waiting so long to be adored that they’ll kick anything else out of the crisper drawer.
One of my food goals for this year is to not be tempted to buy foods without a plan. To think hard every time I pick up an emerald head of broccoli or find my nose leading me to a second breakfast at the charcuterie stand. We often don’t have a need for the extra food we buy, whether it comes from a local farm or the grocery store. While our intentions might be noble when grabbing another bunch of greens, it’s time to be honest with ourselves about our food intake.
Confession time: the first time I ever ate a tamale, I didn’t know you were supposed to unwrap it first. As I chewed, I wondered why the heck this food was so popular in certain parts of the world. Thankfully, somehow I was clued in and I’ve been enjoying tamales ever since.
Two years ago I learned how to make tamales thanks to my friend and her sister, and while it was fun, my uninspired fillings made me loathe to deplete the freezer stash we had created. In the end they were all eaten, and I made the decision to not make tamales again in 2010. A poor decision, as it turns out, as I spent the first part of 2011 wishing I had a bag of tamales in the freezer to go to on many nights.
Tamales are a huge deal in Texas for Christmastime. I know many families who either make their huge batches in advance in preparation for Christmas Eve feasting, or spend Christmas Eve itself spreading, filling, and rolling not only for that day’s meal, but to ensure homemade goodness for the year to come. Much like decorating gingerbread men, bringing family and friends together over the table reinforces the communal spirit of the season, but even the sweetest tooth out there has to admit tamales are the more practical of the two.
You can make tamales alone, but I don’t recommend it. For one thing, if you want to make a lot of tamales (and you might as well, since it’s often hard to make small batches of filling), you’ll be working at it all day. Many hands are great for this type of assembly-line work – throw in some snacks and some tunes, and the time and masa will fly by quickly.
I hosted a tamale party (tamalada) on Black Friday, kicking consumerism aside in favor of a DIY day. In about five hours, we knocked out 480 tamales with six different flavors: brisket, red chile pork, black bean, venison, chipotle chicken, and chard with goat cheese.
If you’d like to host your tamalada, head over to Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, where I’m sharing a few tips!
I’m not one of those who learned how to cook at their grandmother’s knee – the only thing I remember my grandmother cooking was the mashed rutabaga that everyone refused to eat, every single Thanksgiving. My interest did begin early on, with clipping recipes from the coupon circular and flipping through our stained Betty Crocker binder, but I didn’t really learn how to cook until I was an adult, and almost married.
I didn’t know where to begin, so I turned to Cooking Light. To me, Cooking Light has always been the most accessible of the cooking magazines, and the sheer volume of recipes in each issue was enough to create tremendous value.
I was really pleased to see that value duplicated in the new book put out by Cooking Light, The Complete Quick Cook by Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein. The recipes included are easy to follow with standard ingredients, and beautiful photos accompany more than half of the recipes. But it’s not just the recipes that make the book worthwhile – there are pages and pages of useful tips, from stocking your pantry, to creating recipe variations, to how to properly sauté. This is a wonderful cookbook for the beginning cook or busy family.
I made two recipes from the book for dinner the other day: Shallot & Grapefruit Dressing and Sauteed Carrots with Sage. Both of these recipes are great ways to showcase the flavors of the season, as here in Texas our juicy grapefruit and sweet carrots are coming into season. Carrots often get pushed aside in favor of more showy side dishes, but with the addition of sage they can really hold their own against that glazed pork tenderloin or sous vide steak.
Salad dressing is one of those things I often take for granted – I confess I buy it more often than make it, simple because I really like the certain flavor I get. However, every time I mix up a homemade batch it’s like I’ve newly discovered the possibilities.
Shallot and Grapefruit Dressing
Reprinted with permission
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped shallots
2 cups fresh grapefruit juice (about 3 grapefruit)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add shallots; cook 5 minutes or until golden brown. Stir in juice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; cook until reduced to 1 cup, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat; cool to room temperature.
2. Place grapefruit juice mixture, cilantro, sugar, and pepper in a food processor; process until smooth. With processor on, slowly pour 2 tablespoons oil through food chute; process until smooth. Store, covered, in refrigerator for up to 1 week. YIELD: 1 cup (serving size: 1 tablespoon).
CALORIES 35; FAT 2g (sat 0.3g, mono 1.5g, poly 0.2g); PROTEIN 0.3g; CARB 4.2g; FIBER 0.1g; CHOL 0mg; IRON 0.1mg; SODIUM 1mg; CALC 4mg
Sautéed Carrots with Sage
Reprinted with permission
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon olive oil
11/2 cups diagonally cut carrot
2 tablespoons water
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons small fresh sage leaves
1. Melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add carrots and 2 tablespoons water. Partially cover pan, and cook 10 minutes or until carrots are almost tender. Add salt and pepper to pan; increase heat to medium-high. Cook 4 minutes or until carrots are tender and lightly browned, stirring frequently. Sprinkle with sage. YIELD: 2 servings (serving size: 1/2 cup).
CALORIES 75; FAT 4.4g (sat 1.5g, mono 2.2g, poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 0.9g; CARB 9g; FIBER 2.6g; CHOL 5mg; IRON 0.3mg; SODIUM 224mg; CALC 35mg
Photos courtesy of Oxmoor House/The Complete Quick Cook
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for the purposes of review. I was not otherwise compensated for my review, and as always, all opinions are my own.
Yesterday I went to a large cookie swap in Austin, but it wasn’t my first swap of the season. True, I swap jam and other preserves all year long through ATX Swappers, and just last weekend I went to my first-ever soup swap. But cookie swaps are the quintessential food gathering of the holiday season, and I was excited to be able to participate in not just the local swap, but the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap hosted by Julie of The Little Kitchen and Lindsay of Love & Olive Oil.
They did an amazing job wrangling hundreds of bloggers all over the world, matching us with care. Because I have a food allergy (bananas; big bummer) I was paired with a couple of other people who are in a similar situation. It’s always fun to exchange food with new people, and for me the fun isn’t over yet – because one of my swap partners is in Alaska, the final box of cookies should be arriving any day now.
Interested in signing up for the next Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap? Head over here to get added to the mailing list for updates.
I made a twist on the ubiquitous chocolate crinkles – OK, not that big of a deal, but I added peanut butter. Can’t go wrong with that!
Muddy Snowdrops
makes approximately 3 dozen
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
3/4 cup powdered sugar
Mix together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and set aside
In a large bowl, cream together chocolate, butter, sugars, and peanut butter. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture in batches.
Refrigerate dough for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Form dough into small balls, then roll each ball in powdered sugar. Bake for 10-12 minutes and let cool slightly before removing to a wire rack.
For me, a big part of the holidays is the nibbles we had leading up to the big meal of the day. Growing up in Wisconsin, that meant sliced cheddar, Owl’s Nest or Swiss Colony cheese spreads, Ritz crackers, and plenty of summer sausage.
Over the past two years I have expanded my cured meat horizons thanks to local artisans Dai Due, Kocurek Family Charcuterie, and Salt & Time. I’ve also tasted fantastic salamis from Creminelli, the glory that is njuda from Boccalone, and porchetta di testa at Contigo. As far as I know my cholesterol has not suffered from the onslaught. (Please no health police here – I don’t eat cured meat every day!)
When I found out Creminelli had a couple of new items for the holidays, I jumped at the chance to try them out. Wild boar mortadella and cotechino soon arrived at my doorstep. I’ve had mortadella before, in the form of hot dogs, but this version came in a large round, ready to be sliced for sandwiches or a charcuterie plate. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a local place willing to slice a hunk of not-from-their-store meat for me, so I had to be creative. As it turns out, a cheese plane worked fairly well for creating thin, if not perfectly uniform, slices!
The mortadella is mild and creamy, and a great meat to put on a sandwich. I enjoyed it on crackers with a little goat cheese. I also tried the mortadella chopped and scattered across a salad, and it went really well with the slightly sweet dressing we use. I liked that it didn’t make the salad feel heavy, like other meats sometimes do when you add them to greens. I still have some left, and I plan on serving it at our holiday open house.
Cotechino is a pork sausage that is traditionally served for the holidays in Italy with lentils. I had a bit of user error when it came to my lentils, and we ended up serving the cotechino with green beans. The incredible softness of the sausage made the flavor very interesting – it is quite luscious and a little goes a long way. I did find it was a little saltier than I like, but I am extremely sensitive to salt. I think pairing the cotechino with roasted winter squash could make for a really lovely winter meal.
The fine folks at Creminelli are offering up a salami gift set for one of my lucky readers. This set includes their Barolo, Tartufo, and Wild Boar salamis, all of which are delicious and the perfect accompaniment to your holiday party cheese plate.
Giveaway Rules:
- Open to US residents only
- Entries must be received by 11:59 pm CST on Saturday, December 10. Winner will be drawn on Sunday, December 11, and notified by e-mail. Winner must respond within 24 hours; after that a new winner will be drawn.
- To enter, leave a comment on this post.
- Winner will be drawn via Random.org.
Giveaway is now CLOSED. Congratulations to Darius M. for the win! Thank you to all who entered.
Disclaimer: I was contacted by Creminelli and provided samples. All opinions are my own. I like meat.
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