Holiday food in review

[muckefuck]

Well, I'm pretty satisfied with tonight's dinner. I had many advantages that I lacked at my sister's: A familiar kitchen well-stocked with cheffy tools and ingredients, access to Cooks Illustrated, and--my ace in the hole--pork from Paulina Meat Market. monshu stopped in Sunday to pick up the goose he ordered and that I was disappointed to find lacked the neck skin so I couldn't make gefüllter Gänsehals. (Essentially, a goose-liver sausage.)

My disappointment was more than assuaged when I found what else had accompanied it home. The GWO had manfully limited himself to the impulse purchase of four sausages (two curry brats and two turducken) and two thick-cut smoked pork loin chops. I immediately suggested stuffing the latter, so he found me a couple of recipes and I picked the one incorporating cornmeal, buttermilk, walnuts, and cherries.

Just for good measure, it also had you brine them in a mixture of cider vinegar, brown sugar, salt, and spices. It added another dimension to a meat that's already bursting with character. As a side, I originally suggested greens, which is a Southern tradition; the colour auspiciously suggests paper money. But that was one more thing to do on the stove and monshu convinced me that a green salad was a fair substitute. Our poor benighted ancestors didn't have that option.

Besides, I argued that a golden loaf of cornmeal was auspicious enough. What didn't go into the stuffing formed our brunch when it was drizzled with warmed maple syrup. This also gave us an excuse to break into--literally!--the brick of pu-erh tea I'd brought my honey back from Ten Fu on Wangfujing. Lovely stuff and well worth the price. I so wanted to keep drinking it, but the caffeine jolt from a mere two cups was enough to convince me I shouldn't.

To round out the menu, was had the red cabbage monshu made two nights earlier. (It's one of the few vegetable dishes that really benefits from sitting in the fridge.) And looking for a white chili recipe that I ended up not using, I stumbled across a technique for roasting cauliflower and a curried yogurt sauce (we ended up substituting sour cream) in my magazine. Dessert was the mission figs stewed in balsamic monshu had made a couple nights earlier over the panna cotta from New Year's Eve, but he was too full to eat any.

He did have room enough for it the night before when it was strewn with macerated fresh berries and balsamic, but that was a lighter dish. We needed it after roast goose with pecan stuffing and mushroom-truffle polenta. (As good as that was, it was even better fried in butter for an afternoon snack the next day.) The GWO paired it with a very tasty Oregon pinot noir and then we popped the cork on the Auslese spookyfruit had gifted him with for afters.

The night before, we'd finished off with the stewed figs daubed with mascarpone. I also braised the sausages from Paulina in stock and turned the leftover roast baby potatoes from Friday into Bratkartoffeln. Not that they weren't fine before as an accompaniment to the last few reheated slabs of the GWO's traditional Christmas standing rib roast, but what isn't better when bacon's involved?

Normally, we hardly touch the stuff, but between breakfasts, cabbage, crumbling into salads and the like we exhausted a whole pound over the long weekend. It's going to be tough readjusting to our sparser ordinary fare, but monshu plans to ease us into it by making a cassoulet next weekend with a couple pieces of reserved gooseflesh that he'll marry with some lamb and sausages. And, of course, a roscón de Reyes for the Epiphany.

Comments

[keyne.livejournal.com]

That's surely the first time I've ever heard a turducken referred to as a "sausage".

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Er...just as you can make sausage from a turkey or duck, you can make sausage from a turducken. I have to say that, as with turducken, the character of each meat came through clearly. Hot Doug should take note!

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Okay, I get using a meat grinder to make one from leftovers.

But going through all that trouble just to make sausages for sale? That's warped. :)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I imagine that the sausages they got at the market were also made from leftover meats.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It was several days after Christmas after all.