Roshhashanahtoberfest

This year, unlike years in the past, I didn't do my version of a traditional Rosh Hashanah meal. This is mostly because I don't actually know anything about how to cook Rosh Hashanah foods and after getting angry letters about how insulting my attempts were to Jews around the world I opted to lay off this year.



But that doesn't mean I didn't still make some latkes! Latkes are, of course, a traditional German food and I decided that these were traditional German latkes and not traditional Rosh Hashanah latkes regardless of the fact that I just made them the same way I always make them.

I grated some potato into a bowl and tossed with salt, pepper, a dash of cider vinegar, an egg, and some flour then I fried them in a pan. Normally I'd grate onion as well but I was surprised to find that we had no onion. The learning experience from this event was that the onion doesn't actually make that much difference. Go figure!

I also made a giant pot of applesauce since we got a metric ton of apples from the farm this week. This was convenient because applesauce was also a traditional pairing for our main course.



I haven't made Sauerbraten since I was in culinary school so I figured I was about due to make it again. This was the perfect item to make for this strange Rosh Hashanah/Oktoberfest hybrid holiday. Brisket, in the German style, with potato latkes, and German beer. It's like fusion cuisine, weak fusion cuisine.

One thing I like to do when cooking European cuisine is to consult Culinaria European Specialties, the two volume set of cookbooks I got in 1995. The set contains fantastic traditional recipes from all the countries of Europe. The effect of this is lost slightly when I come in and bastardize it with my missing ingredients and laziness.

I took a piece of brisket on Monday and marinated it in red wine, water, cider vinegar, salt, peppercorns, juniper berries, cloves, mustard seed, onion, carrot, bay leaves, and dried rosemary.

Today I removed it from the marinade, seared it in butter, olive oil, and canola oil, then added some more onion, the marinade, and simmered it for 2-3 hours.

When it was fork tender I drained all the liquid through a strainer and added some soaked raisins. You're supposed to add gingerbread to this sauce. Since we don't have any I used some of Jen's pumpkin bread as an alternative. You're also supposed to add red wine and red currant jelly. I figured there was enough red wine involved already. When the sauce had simmered for about ten minutes before finishing with some jam, salt, and pepper. Since we have a cupboard full of jellies and jams I decided to use this cerise noir au thym from Corsican company Corsica Gastronomia.

I cooked the sauce down, pureed it, and sliced the brisket on top of the sauce.



To accompany this meal/amalgamation I had this Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier from Schlenkerla in Bamberg. I'd been wanting to try this ever since I saw the episode of The Beer Hunter with Michael Jackson entitled "The Fifth Element." In it he shows how they make this beer by burning beechwood with the malt.



Michael Jackson says that the locals claim you need to have six or seven liters of the beer before you acquire a taste for it. I can see why, it's very strange. It kind of reminds me of yerba mate only a little less disgusting. Michael Jackson claims he loved it the first time he had it. I think he did this just to show off how much of a beer expert he is.

Michael Jackson recommends having this beer with smoked Bavarian ham. Since we didn't have any smoked Bavarian ham I decided to substitute the next best thing: 1986 Eddie Murphy vehicle The Golden Child. This was an adequate substitution. When you can't have a nice smoked ham sometimes you have to watch Eddie Murphy yell at a bunch of Tibetans instead.

Yesterday's Flammkuchen is Today's Pastakuchen

Yesterday I made a bastardized version of the ratatouille flammkuchen found in the Lucerne Market Cookbook: The World's Most Expensive Cookbook. I had leftover ratatouille from the pizza flammkuchen so I did the sensible thing and through it all together to make a quick pasta.



All I did was heat the remaining ratatouille in a pan and toss in some cooked spaghetti which I finished with two healthy spoonfuls of quark -- the fresh cheese that is, not the page layout software or the subatomic particle. I was a little cautious about adding quark to hot pasta but it worked pretty well. It was a bit tangier than ricotta would have been and quite a bit smoother. If you have the desire to make this from scratch (rather than just utilizing leftovers) I'd recommend giving it a go.



For beer I enjoyed a second German beer from G. Schneider & Sohn. This one was a Hefe-weizen(or a Weißbierlexikon if you have that funky ß character on your keyboard). This beer had a much more lemony taste to it than I would have expected but it was quite nice. A great addition to any kuchen you may wish to make, flamm, pasta, or otherwise.

After dinner we left the house which is quite a rarity since we generally aren't done with dinner before 10:00 PM. However, we'd procured tickets to see an underground arthouse film called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 so we need to be there around 9:00 PM. This movie hasn't gotten a lot of press but I've got to say it was a dark and gritty tale about a group of wizards who seem to suffer a lot then are in their late thirties at a train station with their ridiculously named children.

If you can find a theater around you playing this film I highly recommend!

Flammkuchen

When we were in France, not in German-speaking Switzerland, we saw something called flammkuchen on the menu. We asked the waiter what it was and he said it was like a crepe. We liked crepes so Jen ordered one but what arrived what almost certainly a pizza. A delicious pizza, don't get me wrong, but not a crepe in any way.



When in Lucerne I picked up a cookbood for €44.00, the equivalent of $62.28. It was probably the most expensive cookbook I'd ever purchased but what better way to celebrate a trip to Europe than by getting a souvenir for three times what it should cost?

On the first page of the cookbook, the very first recipe, was for flammkuchen. So, we celebrated France yesterday, tonight it was time to celebrate Switzerland. Or at least this one recipe from an overpriced cookbook from Switzerland.



But first I found some great fresh figs which I paired with some San Daniele prosciutto in from the fridge. Not exactly Swiss but both were not going to last much longer so it was now or never.



For the flammkuchen I rolled out some pizza dough and topped it basically with a ratatouille that I made with onion, garlic, and the summer squash and eggplant from the farm. I had also rendered some bacon in the pan first for some additional flavor. I spread the dough with quark. The recipe suggested creme fraiche but I used quark to keep it a little lighter. I topped the whole thing with some sliced assorted grape and cherry tomatoes.



Since there really aren't many Swiss beers in the United States to choose from (and if there were they'd all be lagers) I got this German beer to go with the meal. I picked out this Edel-Weiss from Georg Schneider. I picked it largely because of all the German beers there this one seemed to have the most German name. It was just a bonus that it happened to be pretty tasty.

Since our Tour de France All Access pass hadn't been working at all last night we watched Stage 12 this evening on the laptop to try to catch up.

Thematically, I suppose, we should be enjoying a Basque dinner since the tour is moving its way through the Pyrenees at the moment.

What can I say? Sometimes you have to really phone in your dinner/current events tie ins.

Sweet & Sour Duck Pasta (or The Fictional Duck Dilemma)

Hey! You should follow our blog! Now, on to the show . . .

For dinner tonight I wanted to use up the leftover duck. Jen has an innate repulsion for any sort of leftover poultry. She feels (incorrectly, I may add) that once a chicken, duck, or other piece of poultry has been cooked and refrigerated that the meat turns all "grey and greasy." I, on the other hand, have a more sensible approach. However, in order to get her to eat it I need to disguise leftover poultry so that she is tricked into looking past it's greyness and greasiness.

Jamie Oliver had a cool recipe in his book Cook with Jamie for Gorgeous slow-cooked duck pasta. Like all of Jamie's recipes this one was unnecessarily long in name. The only disappointment for me was that it wasn't something more distinctly English like Right Proper Duck Pasta or Best Bloke's Pasta. He does, however, mention in the instructions to let the sauce "blip away nicely" as one of the steps in the cooking process. So I'll give him a pass this time.

I was going to try to think of two fictional ducks do name this dish after. Donald, quite obviously, would be the sour duck but I was stumped when I tried to think of a fictional duck that was sweet in nature. Daffy? No. Howard? No. My only options were to go with some of Donald's nephews but I didn't want the ducks to be in the same universe. It was quite a dilemma.

Even this Wikipedia page which was a list of fictional ducks didn't really provide me with any options.



I changed up the recipe a bit and, of course, I didn't actually pay attention to the quantities for anything. That's just not my thing. That's why there are no recipes on this blog and, consequently, why no one reads it.

I rendered some bacon with a little olive oil then tossed in sliced garlic, chopped onion, celery, and carrots. After cooking them for a minute I threw in some chopped rosemary and a stick of cinnamon. A few minutes later I added some whole peeled tomatoes and red wine and simmered it for about twenty minutes before tossing in the pulled duck meat. After another half hour I added some toasted pine nuts and dried cherries. Mr. Oliver called for sultanas (which no one in America has) but we were also out of raisins from Jen's recent Pantry-Clearing Muffin Bakefest 2011.



I served it over "Calamari Rings" from Severino Pasta. They not, of course, actually calamari but rather a mixture of different colored pasta rings. If we had had this type of pasta when I was little I could have made way better pasta necklaces for my mom. Rigatoni is so played out.



For wine we had this cabernet from Concannon Vineyard. I'd used this in the sauce as well. It was probably not technically the best pairing for this dish but luckily since I don't believe in wine pairing with food it went well. Since the wine was delicious I didn't really care how it paired with anything other than my mouth. And with that it paired quite nicely.

Now that Jen's return home is complete it is time to move on to the task of continuing our grand pantry-fridge-freezer clean out. Not as much fun but more somewhat satisfying.

I suppose.

The Return to Island Time

Tonight, in the wake of Snowmageddonizzardpocalypse 2011, we made the choice to eat out of our food reserves rather than purchasing anything extra. Truth be told, that's what we've been doing throughout January and actually had very little to do with the snow at all. We did not have to rush out to the store to make any auxiliary purchases prior to the storm because we probably have enough frozen, refrigerated, and pantry items to sustain us for about six months.

In the late afternoon we did go out for a walk after the roads were cleared and picked up a baguette and some fava beans. You know, the essentials.

After our trip to Jamaica last October I've been interested in doing a Jamaican theme night. The challenge in this is that I don't have any experience with Caribbean cooking of any sort. However, we did return with an assortment of jerk sauces, rums, and Jamaican hot sauces so I was pretty confident that I could put something together.



I also returned with this cookbook by Enid Donaldson. While I am not one for following recipes I do enjoy a good authoritative cookbook on a subject I know little about. Usually what I do is flip through and read the methods of preparation and ingredients and then converge them with what I would normally do so that I have some sort of hybrid bastard child recipe that only resembles its traditional form.



I started by making a dark and stormy for Jen with the ginger syrup that I've had in the fridge for the past few months. I'm worried that this syrup may be a little past its prime. Jen didn't seem to mind.



I had a Foreign Extra by Guinness. Red Stripe would have been the obvious choice for this meal and while I like Red Stripe I think I can go without it for a while after spending five days in Jamaica. I may be good to stay off of Red Stripe for another year or so.

The Foreign Extra was pretty good. It's not Jamaican but I saw it for the first time when I was in Jamaica. At the airport, actually. I'd never seen this before in the States but, of course, I saw it about two weeks after returning home and picked it up. I think I enjoyed this beer more than regular Guinness. I guess they save their best stuff for foreigners.



I marinated some chicken wings in some jerk sauce then cooked them in the oven and served them up with lime slices and chopped ginger. I was worried that these would be too spicy but they were perfect.



The oxtail, on the other hand, was pretty spicy. I browned them in a pan and then tossed in some finely chopped onion, garlic, dried chilies, and salt before adding some of my turkey stock and water and throwing it in the oven for a few hours. It turned out a bit spicy from the dried chilies. Normally I cook oxtail using the same method I use for osso bucco so it was interesting to try a new take. At the end I threw in the broad beans I'd purchased that afternoon after I'd peeled, blanched, and peeled them again.

As an accompaniment I made my take on traditional Jamaican rice and peas. Of course I didn't have any peas so I substituted edamame. It was a little weird but it worked really well. I cooked the rice in coconut milk and salt then threw in the edamame right before it was done.



For dessert I made this bread pudding with the baguette we picked up and used up the leftover heavy cream and eggs from the holidays that we had in the fridge. I put in molasses, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon. Next time I think I'd cut back a bit on the molasses and allspice. Other than that it came out pretty good. I didn't look at any sort of recipe beforehand and, perhaps, that may have helped.

We also picked up some vanilla ice cream from Ronnybrook Farm Ancramdale, NY mostly because it was so cheap. Ronnybrook makes great stuff and when you can get any of their products at a reduced price from the alternatives you are very lucky indeed.

Well, I'd hoped we'd be able to incorporate a few more traditional Jamaican dishes in this night we did a good job of using up a lot of our food reserves and for that I'm happy.

Now if only we had goat and ackee in the freezer!

Inventory Update

Freezer

• ground beef
  
• chopped turkey from Canadian Thanksgiving
  
• flour tortillas
  
• coconut cookies
  
• macaroni & cheese from Canadian Thanksgiving
  
• turkey stock from Canadian Thanksgiving
  
• turkey stock from American Thanksgiving
  
• part of a baguette
  
• lemon bread
  
• Antiguan run fruitcake
  
• cranberry bread
  
• fudge
  
• Japanese noodles
  
• buttermilk bread
  
• stuffing from Canadian Thanksgiving
  
• bacon
  
• oxtail
  
• homemade bread crumbs
  
• edamame
  
• turkey curry
  
• rye bagel
  
• shortbread cookies
  
• puff pastry dough
  

Pantry

• pumpernickel bread
  
• panko
  
• cellophane noodles
  
• raisins
  
• dried cherries
  
• dried cranberries
  
• dried apricots
  
• dried chilies
  
• garbanzo beans
  
• canellini beans
  
• sardines
  
• anchovies
  
• sesame seeds
  
• cashews
  
• pistachios
  
• shredded coconut
  
• walnuts
  
• pecans
  
• semolina flour
  
• goldenberries
  
• forbidden rice
  
• candied cherries
  
• powdered dried porcini
  
• couscous
  
• Jamaican jerk sauce
  
• Jamaican rum cakes
  
• Jamaican hot sauce
  
• nori
  
• quinoa
  
• sherry vinegar
  
• purple basil vinegar
  
• red wine vinegar
  
• apple cider vinegar
  
• champagne vinegar
  
• rice
  
• assored dried pastas
  
• lasagna noodles
  
• tomato paste
  
• balsamic dressing/marinade
  
• relish
  
• chopped clams
  
• clam juice
  
• piccalilli
  
• fajita sauce
  
• cherry jellies for barbecue
  
• canned pumpkin
  
• pasta sauce
  
• croutons
  
• assorted flours for making brown bread
  
• pickled beets
  
• seafood stock
  
• beef stock
  
• basil pesto
  
• jarred roasted tomatoes
  
• smoked salmon
  
• stuffed olives
  
• Grand Marnier mustard
  
• Coco Haze spread
  
• twelve jars of grapefruit marmalade
  
• black cherry marmalade
  
• fancy plum jam
  
• Captain Redbeard's hot sauce
  
• salted lime cashews
  

Fridge

• eggs
  
• korma sauce
  
• sauerkraut
  
• dates
  
• shallots
  
• miso paste
  
• cranberries
  
• pickled beets (made by Jen's dad)
  
• white sweet potato
  
• potatoes
  
• carrots
  
• celery
  
• heavy cream
  
• cream cheese
  
• goat cheese
  
• cocktail sauce
  
• red pepper tapenade
  
• sauces, marinades, and condiments too numerous to list
  
• a million assorted beers