Two loaves of bread, made for Thanksgiving dinner. 

Left: salami-cheddar bread

Right: Spotted Dick, aka raisin bread

Somehow no other Thanksgiving photos survived. My excuse is going to be that I was busy in the kitchen all afternoon and evening. Little tip for those of you out at home - if your cranberry stuffing has too many cranberries, the chicken will look like it's not cooked for a long time. a looooooong looooooooooooong time. I kept waiting for the juices to run clear; finally we cut up the bird to cook bits individually in a skillet, and figured out what was really going on. The whole cavity was pink from cranberries. Oh well. Eating an hour later than planned was not the end of the world.

The week after, I decided to try my hand at a traditional meat pie. It's cold, so I like having kitchen projects that involve a lot of cooking. First off I started a pot of vegetable stock - step one was caramelizing onions in the cast-iron casserole, then adding carrot, parsnip and onion peels, the ends of some celery, and a bit of garlic. After the vegetables were in, I filled the casserole 2/3rds full of water, covered it, and put it in the oven at 110 C for 4 hours.

While that was cooking, i prepared the other ingredients.

yep, lard.

I dredged the chunks of pork in flour, with a pinch of salt and black pepper, then fried them in a cast iron skillet with a teaspoon of oil per batch. I tried butter, lard, vegetable and olive oil. The butter produced the best looking results. I only did about 5 or 6 chunks at a time, to prevent overcrowding and steaming the meat. Too much moisture makes grey meat, rather than the nice crispy brown stuff.

Meat transferred to a metal bowl

When the vegetable stock was done, I took it out of the oven, poured the contents through a strainer, threw out the veggies and poured the stock back into the casserole. At that point I added oregano, sage, a dash of fennel, cumin, a pinch of chilis and black pepper.

Here we have the homemade vegetable stock, plus spices

While the meat was browning, I sliced up some chestnut mushrooms.  When the meat was done, I transferred it to the bowl, turned the heat down, and added the mushrooms. I let the mushrooms brown a bit, then added them to the stock.

Like so.

Then I added a parsnip, three carrots, two and a half stalks of celery, and one leek to the stock, added the meat chunks, and turned the burner up to high. While that cooked for about 10 minutes, I buttered and floured a pie dish, and lined it with puff pastry.

Then the stock+veggies+meat were added to the pie. 

And then I cut strips of dough from the leftovers and made a crosshatch pattern on top, popped it in the oven for 20 minutes...

 

and there you go.



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In his amazing cookbook Mouth Wide Open, John Thorne has a recipe for "pasta in a bag"; basically the point is that by cooking the pasta in sauce, in a paper bag, you trap the moisture and keep a thick sauce that infuses flavor into the noodles. So I tried something similar, only with this little star pasta and in a casserole dish, not a paper bag.

First off. chop some onions finely, brown them in butter, and add the leftovers from a carton of tomato juice that seemed like a good idea when you were getting a cold and wanted vitamins, but then you ended up just eating ramen with an egg in it instead. Since this particular tomato juice was really thick, thin the juice with water until it's about the consistency of fresh squeezed OJ. Add pepper and the stellette. I put in some oregano (good idea) and fennel (not so good. Do not do this with fennel unless you're adding sausage.)

I covered the pot with a lid and let it boil for about 5 minutes, then took off the lid and started stirring. I wanted to get almost a risotto-like texture, where the pasta releases starch out into the sauce.

 

 

It worked pretty well - if I'd made this without the fennel I would have been ecstatic. With the fennel, it was okay but not phenomenal. I thought the fennel was kind of distracting, actually.

Whatever, Jed was really into it, so I'll count that as a partial success. 

"Stellette"

Fun fact: you can make bacon sausage. All you need is a meat grinder, a kilo of bacon collar joint., and some elbow grease. And probably a crash cart, nurse, and blood thinners if you heat more than three. I could feel my heart slowing down as I ate these.