Turkey Tetrazzini

Turkey tetrazzini was something my family never really made growing up. One of my friend's mothers used to make it but I don't think I actually ever had it. I can just recall my friend speaking of it with a far-off look in his eye like he was speaking about some ancient religious relic from his people's past.

So it was that I gave a quick glance at a recipe and figured out that it's actually quite a simple dish. It's basically like making a creamy mushroom soup, adding pasta to it, and baking it in the oven.

Even I could do that!



Before I served up the dish I made this salad with kale, arugula, balsamic glaze, pears, Parmigiano-Reggiano, olive oil, salt, and pepper.



Supposedly turkey tetrazinni is named after an opera star named Luisa Tetrazinni though it is debatable whether it was invented in San Francisco or New York City. I'm going with New York City as that's where my allegiances lie.

What I did was caramelize some shallots and garlic in olive oil and butter then add crimini, shiitake, portobello, and chanterelle mushrooms. I also threw in a little dried thyme and sage and some duck stock I'd made a few nights ago after our roast duck from last week. Then I reduced this down, added skim milk, porcini dust, and finally thickened the mixture with a butter roux.

In another pan I cooked some red peppers which I'd forgotten to add initially. I then added them to the mixture with the frozen turkey meat from either Canadian or American Thanksgiving (I can't remember), a few glugs of dry sherry and a good amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano.



I then paused to take advantage of my brand new glasses with some of the sherry, even though I'm not a huge fan of the fortified wine.

After that I cooked some spaghetti, tossed it in with the sauce and some fresh peas, then topped it with bread crumbs before baking it in the oven for a bit. I did forget to add the almonds to the dish. While there's no real set standard for this dish they are usually an element. I had plenty of almonds but my forgetfulness got the best of me.



The result was pretty good but a little less saucy than I would have thought it would be. Also, I think I could have done without the turkey. Months old frozen turkey, it turns out, is not so much an additive to a pasta dish so much as it is a subtractive.



In an effort to clean out the fridge from the scores of individual beers I had the "Old Brown Dog" from Smuttynose. It was a very nice brown ale, though probably not the best accompaniment for a creamy pasta dish with mushrooms.

But, hey, sometimes you have to let old brown dogs lie.

(I'm sorry about that last line.)

Lamb of Good

Sadly last night's grilled meats did cause Jen's mom to have nightmares. I imagine the nightmares must be similar to the ones that Ebenezer Scrooge has in "A Christmas Carol." Particularly the Muppets version.



Diane claims that the nightmares are more like people chasing her and stuff. If it was anything like the Muppet Christmas Carol that would be great. I would be going out of my way to consume grilled meats every night -- even more than I already do!



This morning Jen woke up incredibly early to begin baking and the table was set and ready for breakfast before anyone else was awake.



Jen woke up early specifically to make her hot cross buns. This was her best batch yet. The best part about it was that we finally used up the remaining confectioners sugar. Now, for the first time in four years we must actually restock our pantry with fresh confectioners sugar. For all we know they may not even make confectioners sugar any more.



Before Jen's mom and sister had to leave for the airport we managed to dye Easter eggs. My only contribution to the dying was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle egg over to the right. I don't know if you can tell from that picture but that's Raphael and he is "cool but rude." If it had been Michaelangelo it would have been clear because you'd be able to see that he was "a party dude."



While dinner cooked we had this salad of red leaf lettuce, marcona almond crusted goat cheese, and baby heirloom tomatoes. This is as close to healthy as we got this weekend. While eating the salad we agreed that health needed to be a primary focus next week as this week has been loaded with heavy, rich holiday foods.



While dinner cooked I also enjoyed this seasonal spring lager from Magic Hat Brewing Company. For some reason it's called Vinyl and the word "lager" is written upside down across some strange pixie's wings. I guess it's to be expected from those hippies up in Vermont who plaster their bottles with all sorts of copy about the "ancient ritual of brewing" and the like.



Last night, while the grill was hot, I seared this nice piece of lamb leg which I studded with rosemary and garlic. It's yawn-inducing but rosemary and garlic are really the best accompaniment to a nice leg of lamb. One cliche that I can't fly with is that of mint jelly. In general I just don't like mint. Certainly not as an accompaniment to anything savory. Instead I used this red pepper relish. I also cleverly cooked extra grilled asparagus and mashed potatoes last night which I utilized for tonight's dinner making this evening's Easter feast a snap to make.



Jen's mom brought a tremendous amount of Easter candy for us. Combined with the Easter candy my parents had given us a few weeks ago and the extra Easter candy we purchased at the local market made for an exceptionally unhealthy dessert. There were a good number of Canadian and British candies in the mix that we tackled first tonight.

It's hard to find a good Easter movie or music to listen to. I tried Blossom Dearie, Schoolhouse Rock, "Songs in the Key of Springfield," and Jesus Christ Superstar. The latter was probably the most appropriate. However, whilst eating our candy we watched the season opener between the Red Sox and the Yankees. It would have been impossible to avoid anyway with everyone on Facebook and Twitter yammering on about it anyway.

Go my favorite sports team, go!

Ribeye Madness (Round 2)

The ribeye that I'd removed from our freezer the other day required multiple days to be fully consumed. Tonight we began round two of our battle with the enormous ribeye.



But first we had two weeks worth of salad greens from the farm that I combined with grape tomatoes, croutons, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and shredded Córdoba. The salad greens were getting slightly elderly but overall it was a pretty tasty salad.



The ribeye preparation was a touch unorthodox. I started by browning some garlic, onion, and fennel (all from the farm) then hitting it with some steamed baby beets (also from the farm) at the very end. I seared the ribeye with the sauteed vegetables and hit it all with some red wine.

I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend this preparation but it was interesting. What it excelled at was in utilizing many neglected vegetables from weeks past.



After all this I pored through all of my available wine literature to find the perfect accompaniment to ribeye that would also incorporate a suitable pairing with fennel and beet. What I found in The Critical Sommelier by Nicholas Racharian^* was that a 2007 Di Majo Norante Sangiovese would be the best suited match for this meal. Wouldn't you know that I happened to have a 2007 Di Majo Norante Sangiovese in my wine cellar^**? Fortune had indeed smiled upon me.<sup>***

*</sup> This is not an actual book.
^** My "cellar" is actually a rack from Crate & Barrel.
^*** None of this actually happened ^****.
^**** Except that we did actually have this wine. In fact it was the first red wine that I found.

Farm Share (Reprise)

Last night may have been an all time low for the farm share. A combination of fridge emptiness, missing last week's vegetable pickup, and general malaise contributed to this:



A particularly weak stir fry. Normally one would expect a nice variety of vegetables in a stir fry, however, all we had was that partially used head of bok choy from two weeks ago. I used that in combination with some shrimp and scallops form the freezer and made a quick coconut rice with farm scallions.

The results were adequate.



Today's farm pickup brought us Red and green tomatoes, cabbage, basil, cucumbers, white onions, lettuce, beets, squash, eggplant, Yukina Savoy, and peaches.



For a salad I used the lettuce, beets and scallions from the share with a little feta, Jersey corn, and tomato with olive oil.



We had some Bilinski sausages in the freezer so I used that with some of the savoy, onion, garlic, and garlic scapes to make this orecchiette dish. I made a light rosé butter sauce and topped it with a little Parmigiano.

I'm beginning to put together a shopping list the likes of which the world has never seen. Hopefully by Saturday we will have made a huge shopping expedition in hopes of restocking the fridge. Lately it's been quite a stretch to cobble together even a mediocre meal like tonight's.

Think of the marvels that may await if we were to get our hands on some exotic ingredients such as milk, chicken, and lettuce!

Getting our Seder On

I got home tonight with 45 minutes to do one thing: make a loosely Passover Seder-themed dinner. Luckily I had most of the necessary ingredients on hand. I picked up the remainder on the way home from work and, with a little cheating, managed to throw together a pretty fun Passover dinner while we enjoyed other Jewish traditions such as watching the Islanders/Penguins game on MSG.



I picked up some Manischewitz which is a boon seeing that it was only $4.99 for one of my favorite grape varietals: the concord grape. Not just a little concord grape but a minimum of 51% of concord grape! That is a commitment to quality that most wines are, quite frankly, afraid to make. We "enjoyed" the wine with some matzoh crackers, the first time I've had matzoh that weren't the standard head-sized ones. They were not leavened which symbolizes how I had to rush home from New Jersey and did not have time to let the dough rise.



After that I made a charoset-inspired salad for two reasons: 1) I didn't have the time or all of the ingredients to make charoset and 2) I didn't have a spare pan to make it in either. The salad had horseradish (more Seder-themed than charoset-themed). I was extremely skeptical about this combination but I must say the salad was one of the best I've made in a while. The combination of these ingredients was fantastic. I would say this salad was a mitzvah!



We also had some matzoh ball soup. This I did not make (because I'm a cheater). I bought it already prepared because, again, I only had 45 minutes to get this feast together and still leave time to read from the Haggadah!



I got some already prepared brisket (again, I only had 45 minutes) and I boiled some potatoes and threw together a quick carrot tzimmes (using my Bubbie's recipe, of course) with some baby carrots I had in the crisper.



For dessert we had Poppy Hamantashen from Lilly's (their website is apparently not functional at the time of writing this). Jen was skeptical of these cookies because, for some reason, she doesn't like cookies that look like this. I think maybe she might be clinically insane. Maybe it was the Manischewitz talking but I thought the cookies were delicious! I guess four cups of Manischewitz will do that to you.

Comes to pass that four cups of wine is some sort of Passover tradition! Who knew? I guess that tradition was started because Manischewitz tastes just like delicious, sugary grape juice.

Mazel tav!

Return of Real Cooking

Today was my first day off in a little over two weeks and I was going to do some cookin' and eatin' if it killed me. Overall it went pretty well though I could have done with far less laundry.



For lunch we had a visitor. When she's not busy kicking our asses at Wii Bowling, sometimes Heather will meet us for lunch (or my nemesis, brunch). Today she came up to visit the still immobile Jen. Selfishly, I prepared my favorite lunch of smoked salmon, bagels from Mike's Bagels, leftover pizza, and mimosas.

Like some sort of greedy little hog I ate as much smoked salmon as I could, then made tea and had two cupcakes before lying on the couch in shock and eventually falling asleep for a brief nap.

We spent most of the afternoon watching the remaining episodes of Firefly which we started watching the other day. After running out of episodes of Chuck we decided to branch out and watch the complete works of Adam Baldwin, which I believe is the standard reaction for anyone who sees Chuck.



For dinner I cleared some shrimp out of the freezer by making a spicy shrimp boil. I used the remaining champagne, lemon, coriander seed, black peppercorns, bay leaf, hot sauce, cayenne pepper, chili powder, salt, and lemon to flavor the boil then quickly cooked and chilled the shrimp.



To accompany the shrimp I served greens, cocktail sauce, sour cream, avocado, sliced tomato, and diced red onion.



For the main course I carmelized some spring onions with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper then seared some duck breast with the same seasoning. I also made a tiny amount of balsamic glaze for the onions.

At the current moment, I have enjoyed smoked salmon, duck, and a good healthy amount of chocolate. We have one more episode of Firefly as I eat a generous portion of yogurt straight out of the container and follow that up with some delicious See's chocolates.

If it wasn't for the return to work tomorrow this would be the perfect night.

But I'm not going to let my imminent return to work spoil the Adam Baldwin for me.