Boots in the Oven

Celebrating the Fourth with our bellies

I hope that everyone out there in Bloggo-land had a great weekend, and that those of you who had an extra day off were able to have some fun with it. 

On Friday the 4th, we got up really early (for a day off) to begin preparing for the holiday dinner we'd be going to at K and P's beautiful South Austin house.  Husbear went nuts. 

HE MADE BUNS.  And ketchup.  And aioli.  And pimento cheese.  And long-term caramelized onions.  And that's just what we brought over.

Pretty soon after we arrived with our giant cooler bag stuffed with four bottles of rose and a bunch of Topochico, K and Husbear put together this quick snack tray.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!, originally uploaded by Boots in the Oven.

Have we mentioned our small kitchen?

I hope everyone is enjoying their 4th of July celebrations! We've been up preparing since about 9 this morning. I'm surrounded by rising hamburger buns, freshly made pimento cheese, a large pile of caramelized onions, and what's rapidly beginning to look like homemade ketchup!

That's not to mention the croissants we bought for hot dogs, the burgers being made at our friend's house, the homemade pickles and watermelon salad K's working on, and of course the copious roses and beers and Topochicos for the drinking.  Phew.

Happy Independence Day! I have to go help before the kitchen devolves into further chaos.

The Beauty of Crudo- Plus a Little Cooking

Let’s play a game. I’m going to put up a few pictures and you tell me who loves their wife.

This past Valentine’s Day I, of course, had to work. However, as a committed husband and diehard romantic (is this working?) I boldly returned home to prepare three different scallop dishes that had been bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks.

As a lot of you may know, both me and the wifey are kinda freaks for raw seafood. A few months ago we were at a sushi bar and had raw scallops for the first time. Well-not the first time, but the first time not all chopped up with some kind of spicy mayonnaise. What’s that about anyway? These were just sliced and dressed with a bit of lemon. Holy shit. How had I spent years not eating this?

So originally, I planned to get my hands on some super-fresh, super-plump scallops and do three crudo dishes. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized it would be a real shame not to cook at least a few up with some of my home-cured guanciale (will I ever stop talking about this? No.)

For the first dish, I hooked up a grapefruit, white wine, and chicken stock reduction, a nice watercress salad and some really flowery cracked black pepper that we brought back from Vietnam. I totally jacked the individual grapefruit cell garnish from The Fat Duck’s notoriously bizarre liquorice salmon dish.

This was real tasty. I knew that citrus would go well but the grapefruit’s particular bitterness was a nice complimentary twist. I thought it might overpower the delicate scallop flavor but it really just brightened it up.

Next was a crudo salad with kohlrabi, apples, and scallop cubes tossed with black sesame. The whole lot got dressed with a light Meyer lemon vinaigrette. Wowzer. I thought I liked the first dish, but this pile of goodness was outstanding.

For those of you who don’t know, kohlrabi is a much underutilized root vegetable that tastes like a cross between an apple and a turnip. Uncooked, the texture is kind of like a crisp potato without the starchiness. You can eat the stuff any which way – boiled, roasted, fried, raw, whatever. The greens are great too, so for the price it’s a real bargain vegetable at the markets around here.

I guess if I could have changed one thing about this dish, I would have liked to have sliced the kohlrabi a little thinner. Unfortunately, my mandolin wasn’t up to the task and those deli slicers cost like a bazillion dollars for some reason. (Although, if anyone wants to buy me one I’ll certainly move some stuff around and make a spot for it.)

Finally, I cooked off some of that amazing hog jowl and seared the remaining scallops in the rendered pig fat. I dressed them with strange but delightful little sauce that was a bit herby and a bit spicy.

I started by making a cilantro-serrano aioli and then I thinned it out with some reduced chicken stock. (If anyone points out that I just paired scallops with a glorified spicy mayonaisse after bitching about it at the beginning of the post, I will be thoroughly displeased and possibly retaliatory.) I garnished the sizzling sea creatures with the guanciale cracklins, some sliced Fresno peppers, more cilantro (I freaking love that stuff), and a smattering of sea salt. It tastes pretty much like it sounds. Amazing.

For the most part, that wrapped up our Valentine’s dinner. No edible undies, no flavored oils or puddings, no extra hot cupid diapers…or was there? I’ll leave it up to you.

-L. Pants

Bay Butter Poached Shrimp, Grits, Mustard Greens with Home Cured Guanciale

I know I've kissed some Anson Mills ass in the past, but seriously- if you haven't tried their old school fabulous grains, you really gots to. To get my fix previously, I have resorted to begging chefs for small bags of Anson Mills polenta out behind restaurants that I know to use the product (seriously- more than once. I ain't proud.) Recently, however, I have discovered that those mad millers from South Carolina ship directly to home aficionados like me.

You can order any of their large selection of goodies online and then they fresh mill every Tuesday and mail right to you. The shipping cost is a little high but totally worth it to get your hands on this stuff.

When my first shipment came in, I went straight for one thing. I've been nursing an extreme hankering for some good shrimp and grits (something you just can't get in Texas- sorry Texas.) And Anson Mills isn't playing around with either their white or yellow versions.

I don't want to go into full recipe mode, but I did want to give a shout out to the scrimps. I tried a whole new cooking method on them and it turned out pretty rockin'. First, I clarified some butter. Then I infused it with California bay, garlic, black pepper and coriander. I took the tempature to a relatively cool 70°C and then slow poached the shelled shrimp until they where just barely done. Aw yeeah! I should also mention that we procured these particular shrimp from a couple of guys at our downtown farmers' market.  They were amazing.  Like little lobsters I tell you.  I'm so glad we found a local source for some of that delicious Gulf seafood.

The stuff on the bottom are some mustard greens that I got from the aforementioned farmers' market, cooked with some guanciale that I cured and aged. If I ever get some time you'll be hearing a lot more about that as well as the pig what it come from.

All in all these were some seriously bad ass shrimp and grits that totally hit the spot. Next time though I'll go with the white ones and see how they stack up to their creamy, yellow brethren.

-L. Pants

A Little Spot of Beauty in Your Otherwise Dull Day.

You must eat this. Not only today, but everyday until it doesn't seem like the best idea you've ever heard of. This my friends, is a soft boiled egg on bacon infused sweet potatoes with a parsley coulis. Phenomenal.

It's a pretty straightforward but brilliant recipe from Chicago chef Bruce Sherman. Like me, Sherman suffers from a severe predilection for eggs. Unlike me, Sherman had the idea to infuse sweet potatoes with bacon and create this vividly colored and deceptively simple masterpiece of a dish. Bastard.

Check out the recipe from Saveur that was originally published in their October 2007 issue.

Don't despair, just eat it.

L.Pants

Goosing Christmas

It's Girlie, again, taking over the hallowed halls of the Kooking Korner.

So, how many of you have heard of a Christmas goose?

Now, how many have actually EATEN a Christmas goose? 

Just because this was a tradition in Victorian England, and not so much in 21st century southern America, wasn't going to stop us from partaking.  Husbear was even able to find a local goose, raised (and slaughtered) by Sebastian of Countryside Farm Products.  It was a bit costly, but turned out to be totally worth it!

Not only did we drive this goose over from Austin to Mandeville, we also brought a half a hog... about 100 pounds of pig.  That will have to wait for another post; for now, can I just say that the freezer is full of pork and pork derivatives?

Our goose, of course, still had its head, neck and feet.  No, I won't subject you to a picture of its face, since I know that gets to some people... how about a foot, instead?

The recipe Husbear wanted to do is straight out of the Supergoose essay Jeffrey Steingarten wrote for Vogue, which can be found in It Must've Been Something I Ate.  It's a riff on a traditional Alsatian recipe and is a little labor-intensive.

First, you have to grab all of the excess fat out of the goose cavity, then season the raw cavity and fill it with chopped apples.

As far as I'm concerned, that sounds great and I can't imagine what else you'd do... but wait, there's more.

Then you brown the goose on all sides in its own fat in your roasting pan.  Yum.  Goose fat turns out to be insanely tasty, totally different from duck fat.

When you get it good and brown (20-30 minutes later), then you put it in the oven to roast by itself for a while (another 20-30 minutes).

You can tell that this recipe isn't difficult, exactly, but there isn't a lot of downtime.  While the goose is browning, for instance, you need to be chopping all of the vegetables that will soon be accompanying it into the oven. 

When you're done, take the goose out and surround it with chopped carrots, celery, celeriac and pears.  Pour some chicken stock and white wine over the fruits and vegetables, and pop the whole thing back in the oven.

You'd think that here, the recipe would be just about done making you jump, but no... after everything roasts for a while, take the pan out of the oven again and get the apples out of the goose.  Put the apples and pears together back in the oven, and what the heck, throw the goose back in there too, because you're up and the goose isn't quite done.

When the goose, along with everything else, IS finally done, take it out of the oven and arrange everything really prettily on a serving platter that will turn out to be just a hair too small for actually carving the bird.

It really did look quite pretty, set up on the serving platter, and Husbear made a nice pan sauce out of some of the seventy-three cups of drippings we got off the bird.  Since this was my first goosey experience, I don't know if they're all quite this fatty, but I can tell you this was one fatbutted bird.

Husbear served the goose with a rice pilaf.  As you can see, he bravely (some might whisper "stupidly") elected to carve the bird right there on the dinner line.  Wow.  He did a very good job, though several family members came very close to getting nicked a bit when reaching for slices of delicious goose that hadn't quite been detached from the carcass.

So, the verdict?  Goose is tasty.  It is very tasty.  Vegetables and fruit roasted with a goose and some wine and orange zest are magically flavorful.  I know this is a hard bird to get a hold of in many parts of the US, but it is worth it for a special holiday.  You know, like Christmas.

Hey, do you think that's why the Christmas Goose is such an archetype?

It's a bonus if you have a mother-in-law who's really good at making desserts, and who has just so happened to get her hands on a Galatoire's cookbook.  Then you might be lucky enough to get served a sweet potato cheesecake with a sour cream topping and a caramel sauce.

Though there was some cursing from the kitchen over the caramel sauce, which doesn't seem to be recorded correctly in the cookbook.  (Well, it was Mama Bear, so by cursing, I actually mean lots of "Oh, shoot.  Shoot shoot shoot.  Shoot!")

 

The cheesecake is also served with spiced pecans, that help to break up the sweetness.  It's certainly rich - a great recipe to follow an equally rich bird like our afore- and aft-mentioned goose.

What to do with leftover goose?  Well, how about a soup, with barley and dandelion greens?

This soup was worth all the trouble of the initial goose recipe.  It was rich and dark and lovely and perfect for a 60 degree New Orleans night.  Hey, it's tending towards cold down here now!  (I will have you know it's actually supposed to get down to 28 tonight.  I know it's no, well, -28, but it's pretty cold for here.)

Mmmm.... anyway, soup.

And that was our Christmas dinner!  Check back later, when I'll attempt to whittle down the 400 hog pictures we have into some semblance of a post.  Plus we went to New Orleans and drank lots of sazeracs (and absinthe, newly legal!) and ate several dozen oysters and an original muffuletta.  Yeah, I went to the gym today - why?

Fighting the Winter Doldrums with a Meat Grinder

Technically, this is not a Kooking Korner with M. Pants, since I'm the one writing it, but hey.  It's got food!

So.  Winter in Texas is not nearly the soul-shredding never-ending eyeball-freezer that it is in my hometown of Chicago, but the sun is going down a little earlier.  That's sad.  How have we been keeping the monsters of winter at bay?

With our shiny new attachment for the KitchenAid blender - the meat grinder!

Husbear's been wanting one of these for donkey's ears.  And, with Christmas coming up, and plans to break down a half of a pig that is as we speak sitting in the fridge of a good friend out in Lakeway (to whom we owe copious sausages), the time had definitively come for one to be purchased.

Oh, the things one can do with a meat grinder attachment.

First, you can use it to... grind meat!

Let's start with a lovely pork shoulder, purchased from Peach Creek Farm at the downtown farmers' market on Guadalupe.  We bought a 2-pound shoulder, which ended up making about... let's see... quick mental arithmetic... about 20 meals, I think?

Husbear made two different kinds of meatballs with this ground pork.  The first were Italian style, and I can't be much more specific than that because we have a tiny kitchen and I was trying to make myself scarce.  I know he made breadcrumbs and soaked them in milk.  I know there was onion involved.  From there, perhaps I'll ask him.  (He says he also added garlic, parsley, an anchovy fillet, parmigiano-reggiano, and salt and pepper.  Sounds Italian to me.)

He served them deliciously, yeah really, with roasted pattypan and sunburst squash (love them, eat them lots) on a bed of caramelized onion Israeli couscous.  The sauce, more of a glaze really, was made from Dario Cecchini's mostarda, thinned out.  It's so wonderful, I hate that he's using it.  Perhaps that's a contradiction.  But we only have the one jar.

Moister meatballs have never been served in this country, as far as I know.  Certainly they haven't been served to me.  I thought meatballs were supposed to be dry - apparently the secret is lots of bread to soak up those meaty juices and keep the proteins from toughening up.  TMYK.

Of course there were leftovers!  We had three people eating this meal, and Husbear had about, oh, 15 meatballs, so we had to have leftovers the next day.

A strong argument for Italian meatball subs was put forth, but nay... Husbear had a craving.

So what if spaghetti and meatballs isn't technically traditional Italian food?  It's traditional Italian-American food, and that's what we wanted.  In Italy, you'd get the spaghetti as a primo and then the meatballs (or polpette) as your secondo.  We just wanted them together.  In homemade marinara sauce.

Now, Husbear still had half of that ground pork left... so what did he do? 

More meatballs!  This time, though, Asian style.

Asian style here means the pork was mixed with panko breadcrumbs, hoisin sauce, cilantro (sorries), and pork floss, an ingredient that's insinuated itself into the delicious pantry maintained by your friend Mr. Pants.   Also ginger, fish sauce, onion, shao xing rice wine, five-spice, and szechuan peppercorns.  Guess these were more elaborate.

These meatballs were served with insanely delicious bok choy we picked up at the farmers' market, as well as a Japanese sweet potato with miso scallion butter.  The scandalously simple (yet overreachingly delicious) recipe can be found in November's Gourmet.

If you're Husbear, what you do with leftover Asian-flavored meatballs is you make a banh mi.  So what if this means you have to pickle daikon and carrot overnight, and make your own aioli?  You're Husbear!

I'm sure he'd tell you these things are ridiculously easy, and within the reach of all but the most hopeless home cooks.  Like me. 

It's a lot easier to make the pickles with a mandolin or a v-slicer - takes all that slicing and chopping down to about 5 minutes.  And a whisk, along with a good recipe (we use one from Cook's Illustrated several years back - online recipe only available to members, apparently) is all you really need for a great aioli.  Well, that and the ingredients, to be fair.

ANYWAY.  He added cilantro (again, farmers' market - we grow GREAT cilantro down here in Texas, let me tell you) to the meatballs and aioli and pickles, along with some tiny cucumber and lettuce, and threw the whole into french rolls picked up at the giant Vietnamese-focused Asian market way up on Lamar.

Hoo boy.

These were so good he had to make them again for friends two days later.

And lest you think that meatballs, or meatloaf, or ground meat, or Hamburger Helper are the only things you can produce with your spanking new meat grinder, let me step in with more ideas.

Take some chickpeas and soak them overnight.  Add chopped red onion and parsley and maybe mint, and possibly some garlic, and salt and pepper, and send them through your grinder.  Don't cook the garbanzos first!

What you get will look about like this.  Perhaps exactly like this.

Then, form the mess into patties.  Do you see where we're going here?

Now, fry the heck out of them.  Leave them in for a while past when you think they'd be done, when the pops and sizzles of escaping moisture have quieted to just about nothing, and take them out.

And what do you have?

Gimme an F!

For Felafel.  (And for many other things which won't be mentioned on a family blog.  Hey, F for family too!)

Actually, F for Freakishly Flavorful Felafel.  Serve these with some tzatziki and a tahini sauce - here's an interesting jumping off point for that, from the lovely men who catered our wedding - and wrap in lettuce or pita for a truly outstanding dinner.

We're having leftovers tonight.  Oh, did I mention these freeze remarkably well?  Just freeze individually, because otherwise they'll stick to each other, then throw them in a bag together.

That's not all this tiny culinary behemoth can do!  If you get the additional $10 sausage stuffer, you're opening up a whole new world.

All the better if a quarter of a Turducken has been staring you in the face from the back of your freezer since Thanksgiving.

First, you do have to go get some casings.  Best are the natural casings, which is how one can refer to pig intestines without having the stomach contents of the squeamish coat your immediate area.

We got ours from a processing plant in South Austin (Hudson's Meat Market), which will also process your freshly shot deer into smaller bits if you bring it to them. 

The stuffer just goes on to the extrusion tube of the grinder.  Feed your ground whatever, turducken in our case because we're strange, through the top of the grinder - and it comes out into the casing like magic.  Try to make it even.

Husbear served the Turducken sausage with a mix of pan-browned celeriac and fingerling potatoes and a heap of amazing farmers' market swiss chard.  (Are you sensing how much time we've been spending at the farmer's market lately?)  And cranberry sauce and mustard for flavoring.  It was quite good, though the bread content of all those stuffings in the turducken made a couple of the sausages burst open.  Ah well, there's always next time we have a huge chunk of turducken sitting in our fridge, right?

I'm sure Husbear hasn't come to the end of the list of things that can be done with this new attachment.  You'll probably see it pop up time and again, though not right now, because I have to go eat a bunch of that leftover felafel.  I'm serious that it's the best ever. 

The Whole Hog!

Do you know where your pork comes from? I mean like really and truly? And don’t say a pig because that just makes you a smart ass and don’t say the grocery store because that just makes you a- well I’ll try to keep my judgin’ pants off.

As many of you know, I was a long time vegetarian until I moved to Italy to go to culinary school. I decided to eat meat there for the educational and cultural value as well as the fact that I appreciated the relationship and connection to the animals that is possible. (Do I need a ladder for this high horse?)

“Blah, blah, blah,” I’m sure you’re thinking. Another militant PETA crazy. But wait. This story ends with hacksaws and intestines and flesh peeling off boiled faces. I’m not some tree hugging, tofu eating (it is delicious though), condemn your lifestyle vegan. No, I just like to know that whatever I’m eating was happy and healthy and to be able to look it in the eye before I shove it in my mouth kind of guy.

Enter Dai Due, Jesse and Tamara, the awesome Austin couple who’s bringing us all things local and delicious. These guys run a dinner club that hosts parties every week or so at farms or private homes here in town.

They are usually themed by some sort of seasonal ingredient or animal and they work hard to procure all of the fixin's from within a few hundred miles. Jesse (an Italian trained chef) is so serious about it that he says he’s giving up olive oil for pecan oil because he can’t find a reliable local e.v.o.o. supplier. That’s hardcore.

In addition to dinners, Dai Due occasionally hosts instructional classes on a variety of food related topics. Specifically, every late fall/early winter Jesse does a hog butchering class. Remember now kids, slaughtering and butchering are different. Slaughtering is the one with all the blood and squealing. It’s also the one tightly regulated by the FDA so just the butchering for us thanks.

Our lovely half a hog came from a fantastic family farm in Kemp, Texas called Full Quiver. Some of you may recognize the name from the Discovery show Fourteen Children and Pregnant Again. Mike Sams and his family, who run Full Quiver farms are part of the Quiverfull movement; a Christian branch that eschews birth control and aggressively condones procreation.

That being said, the Sams make wonderful cheese. As a bonus, they use the leftover whey from the dairy production to feed/fatten their hogs – just like the Parmesan makers do in Parma. Can you say “intramuscular marbling!”?

The day started off at the Dragonfly House, a lovely and modern home located in a beautiful part of East Austin. Eight exuberant folks showed up for the class. We began with some basic pig talk and then moved on to a much needed anatomy lesson. All those muscley bits and bone parts can get confusing if you’re not used to seeing them in their original unshrink-wrapped locations.

The first thing to go was the head. Jesse and Chris (another helpful chef) sawed it off and put it in a large stockpot with various herbs and spices in preparation for making a delightful headcheese (we have got to come up with a better label for that folks. I think it’s delicious but even little old me feels a bit queasy if I dwell on the name too long.)

Next, we removed the kidney and the tenderloin and set them aside. Then off with the ham or hind leg as it were. Then we moved onto the bacon; carefully removing belly from ribs in one large fatty piece. The bacon immediately got a dry cure of salt, sugar and spices and got slapped into an ice chest.

This is probably an appropriate time to mention that all of the work we were doing on this animal wasn’t purely for show. The next day there was to be a large dinner party where we and about 30 other pig aficionados could gorge ourselves on the meats of our labor.

Ok, after the bacon Jesse skillfully filleted out the loin. This is the part that pork chops are traditionally cut from, but apparently you need a band saw or some such to do it properly. Lacking our shop class tools, the loin made its way into a large icy brine to await further instructions.

At this point, Jesse broke out the meat grinder from the freezer (don’t underestimate the need for cold when you start cranking pieces of pig through fast moving metal.) The first item up for particularization was the leaf fat- the softer fat that lines the abdominal cavity. This went into a large cast iron Dutch oven to be rendered for lard.

Following the fat fun, we went to work breaking down the shoulder and the hind leg. Now normally, you would cure or smoke the ham, but we were in need of an abnormal amount of sausages so the leg got the slightly less traditional treatment.

Some of the mixed leg/shoulder meat and a healthy dose of fat went into a pot for the making rillettes, that delicious French porky spread. Some went towards a delightful pate and the rest was divided up to make several different kinds of sausages.

We started with a spicy and tangy chorizo- this is Texas after all.

Meanwhile we boiled some more meat and a few organs for a Cajun style boudin. Boudin is one of the few sausages that is actually cooked before you pack it into the casings. It also happens to be one of the yummiest. Boudin is po’ folk food and is traditionally made with a lot of rice as a filler. So when the meat was done, we used the leftover liquid to cook the grains and soak up all that additional flavor- genius I tell you.

Next was a poblano sausage that Jesse wanted to make because he had just come into a surplus of fabulous peppers. It seemed like a good idea and damn it if it didn’t actually turn out to be one too.

At this point in the festivities a break was in order. After all that pig choppin’ a man deserves a decent glass of wine or two. And possibly some cheese. And fruit. And maybe some buffalo jerky…with local candied pecans. But nothing else. And honey.

As a quick note, both of the cheeses were wonderful. The cheddar was from Full Quiver and the Blue (which is really, really good) is from Veldhuizen Family Farm in Dublin, TX. Buy them both.

After our well earned down time, we all meandered back inside for the finishing touches. First order of business: boiled pig face.

It was done and all of the meat needed to come off. There is a surprising amount of meat on a hog’s head, including some seriously succulent cheek meat- the same stuff that makes guanciale for you bacon lovers out there.

When all the removable parts had been removed we shifted over to stuffin’ some more snawsages.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t hang around to finish off the headcheese (who the hell came up with that name?!) because the liquid had to reduce to get the right gelatin proportions. I remained undeterred though as the class was awesome and copious samplings of everything would be had the next evening at the Dai Due dinner/feast hosted at the lovely and amazing Rain Lily Farms! Stay tuned for details.

Props to Jesse and Tamara and Big Thanks to Chris for all y’alls hard work spreading the eat-local-and-love-it gospel!

-L. Pants

Turducken: Tricky Thanksgiving Turkey Trio

You're probably wondering how we celebrated being in the States for Thanksgiving this year.  Or not, but you're going to find out anyway.

The Turducken is a pinnacle of turkey preparation, one Husbear's been wanting to scale since well before we read Jeffery Steingarten's recounting of his Turducken experience in It Must've Been Something I Ate.

So, we're here, we're in Louisiana just around the corner from actual real Cajun country, and we're NOT going to make a turducken this year?

Yeah, right.

For those of you that don't know, a turducken is a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey.  Between each layer is an entirely different dressing, and the whole is topped with a sweet potato-eggplant gravy.  It's not to be undertaken lightly.

It was a bit of a do, tracking down the recipe in Paul Prudhomme's out of print Prudhomme Family Cookbook, but the Austin Library came to our rescue.  Then, we had only to put together a spreadsheet organizing the six separate recipes that go into making one turducken, and we were off!

First, you have to chop like forty-something cups of the Cajun Trinity - that is, onion, green bell pepper, and celery.  22.5 cups of onion alone, to be precise.  My eyes are still burning.

Then you make the three dressings (stuffings, if you were up in the North) that, along with the chicken, the duck, and the turkey, make up the finished Turducken.  These have to be prepared, baked, and then chilled completely before assembling the turducken.  Unless you want a 10-hour day of cooking (which is what we ended up with), you may want to prepare these the day before final assembly, which is the day before you want to eat the turducken, since it roasts for at least 13 hours.

Yes, this is a three-day recipe.

The three dressings are oyster, cornbread (for which you of course have to make the sweet cornbread!) and andouille.  Here's the andouille and cornbread, being watched over by a suspicious ceramic rooster.  I think he may have foreseen the forthcoming poultry carnage.

While we waited for the dressings to cool, Husbear got to the deboning.  Mr. Prudhomme recommends you start with the turkey and work your way down (presumably because it's easiest to see the structure of the biggest bird), but Husbear started with the chicken.  He's a bit of an old hand at deboning chickens and ducks.

This duck is a "head on feet on style" from the giant Asian market in Austin.  I think this sounds like a particularly obscure type of kung-fu.

Last bird, turkey.  I should mention that Husbear brined this turkey for a good 24 hours before getting it ready for turducken prep.

Deboning a turkey turns out to be a serious undertaking, especially if you're working with a 26-pounder!  (That's just under 12 kilos, for our non-US friends.)

My sister-in-law walked into the kitchen with Husbear elbow-deep in splayed-open turkey flesh and yelped "Oh, dear G-d."

The carnage was extensive.

Please note, you have to have the proper apron to prepare a turducken.

So.  If you've done everything correctly here, you should now have three pans of dressing and three deboned birds.  Lay out the turkey, season it lots and lots, and spread on a large amount of the andouille dressing.

Good, there you go.  You're doing great.  Now lay out that boneless balloon of duck on top of the turkey.  Season it, too, and then spread on a liberal amount of the sweet cornbread and giblet dressing.

There you go.  Now, grab your chicken... no dirty bizness, here!

Cover it with your oyster dressing, which is like half butter, by the way.

You can't help but giggle at that.  The variegated meat strata... the chicken leg just poking out, there...

Here's where things get a little delicate.  I was reminded of all those Food Network shows where people try to move their soaring chocolate towers or spindly sugar showpieces the six feet from their worktables to the display area.  The Turducken has to be folded in on itself and moved to a deep baking pan.  Then it has to be sewn together (with a curved carpet needle, KTHXBAI).

Then, there's a further delicate procedure - jam your hands under the by now almost 40 pound extradense fowl singularity and flip it over.  Again, you probably want two people for this.  If you've poked any holes in the breast when deboning (and hope you haven't, because that would make for a seriously fugly turducken) sew them up.  Then, coat the sea of turkey in more seasonings.

While you've been doing this, your family has been chowing down on a 110-pound sack of oysters.  Obviously.

Now, this huge layered extravaganza has to roast at 190 F for 13 hours.  Or more.  The USDA says this is a great way to poison all of your guests (according to them, roasting poultry below 325 F is unsafe... our opinion is that the USDA likes to scare people), but we're all still standing, so... huh.

We had to put the pan in the oven at midnight.  Yeah.

Husbear got up a few times during the night to make sure the oven was at the proper temperature and that the turducken hadn't exploded or started to give off large amounts of liquid.  "Just like having a newborn!" chortled the rest of the family.

Things actually got started pretty late Thanksgiving morning.  The turducken looked good, with the internal temperature up around 130.  A run was made to the local Cafe du Monde outpost for bags of beignets, and Husbear fixed everyone bracing mugs of cafe au lait.

(Do I need to mention that it was almost 80 on Thursday?  Good thing global warming doesn't exist, she says, quoting further anecdotal evidence...)

I can't see why people who live near Cafe du Monde would ever need to buy powdered sugar - there must have been three pounds sitting in there with the beignets.

I'm sure it goes without saying that Thanksgiving dinner was not limited to the turducken and its three separate pans of dressings.  And its sweet potato-eggplant gravy.

No, there were yams.  And two pans of the always necessary broccoli-rice casserole.  And yeast rolls.  And giblet gravy for those who were unsure of the sweet potato-eggplant gravy, and to use up all the yummy giblets we had from the birds.

Preparations took over the stove and spilled from the kitchen to cover most available surfaces.

Several hours later (after turning the oven up a couple of times) the turducken was done.  Here it is with its Dr. Frankenstein.

We all looked at it askance.  Would the turkey breast be dry?  Would the dressings inside the bird be soggy?  Would the duck skin be fatty?

The stuffed bird took its place on the buffet line.  Though this looks like food for thirty or so, we were only 9.  Oops.  Hey, the best thing about Thanksgiving is the leftovers, right?

Husbear stepped up to carve the bird.  What would it look like on the inside?  The suspense...

Everyone got a slice including all three birds and all three dressings. And here they are!

And here, again, but accompanied by all the sides and dressings and casseroles and berries and gravies.  This is what happened when you tried to get a small spoonful of everything.

Final verdict?  Delicious.  Very, very moist turkey breast (likely thanks to the brining).  The duck skin didn't add anything, but wasn't bad - it would probably be a good idea to remove it and render it for duck cracklins.  The dressings were all outstanding; everyone had a different favorite, which is probably a good sign.  And I don't even know how to begin to tell you how good that sweet potato-eggplant gravy is.  We were all surprised.

And that's not even mentioning how good the accompaniments prepared by auntie Jodi and Mama Bear were.  Wow.

Thanks to Husbear's clan for being willing to experiment this Thanksgiving and letting us try to pull this off, and for all the help they gave us.  Now we just don't know what to do for Christmas.

The moral here is go ahead and make you a turducken.  Don't be scared.

Dropping Some Sweet Food Science

I almost feel bad about writing this post. I can already imagine the overwhelming sense of regret and lamentation and hear the collective gnashing of teeth of all those who weren’t present for the launching of the L. Pants WORLD COOKING CLASS TOUR! [insert wild applause/crowd noise.]

Well, it’s really not a tour and, uh, if I’m being honest with myself I’m not really going around the world so much…and well ok, it was kind of just a one off, weekend kind of thing-

But still, you missed the L. Pants TWO DAYS OF COOKING STUFF IN CALIFORNIA THINGY-DEAL!

That’s right. It was awesome.

The lovely folks over at the amply named VIVA: The Culinary Institute of Florence and Italian Cultural Center in Sebastopol arranged to fly me and Girlie out for a little visit (ok, we had to buy one of the tickets. It’s a cultural center not Wells Fargo.)

They had contacted me a few months earlier and asked if I would be interested in concocting a couple of cooking seminars and then dissembling that knowledge to an eager group of food loving Californians. How could I say no?

The classes could be about anything provided they were Italian in style (I don’t mean starting late, riding a Vespa, and downing espresso – I just mean the food). That was pretty wide open. I would say that I didn’t know where to start, but the truth is risotto immediately sprang to mind.

For some reason I have a passion for showing people how to make good risotto. I’m continually waylaying guests in my home as well as the occasional passerby, dragging them into the kitchen and then forcing them to watch me stir rice. I promise it’s more exciting than it sounds. Anyway, a risotto primer class was a must. (You can check out previous risotto posts here, here, and here.)

The second choice was a little more difficult. I tossed around a lot of options but ultimately settled on another passion of mine – tiny food. Yes, I just can’t help but love the petite little yummies that start any great meal. They really do set the whole mood. Besides, Italians are crazy for antipasti so the topic fit the bill nicely.

I started out on Thursday getting to know the lovely Viva kitchen, making stocks and doing a little last minute testing and tweaking. After that Mme. Pants, Heather (one of the fabulous ladies who runs the school) and I went out to do a bit of grocery shopping. With all ingredients accounted for, we knocked off early and prepared for the next days’ classes by drinking copious amounts of wine and eating too much.

Viva's totally sweet kitchen with overhead cam "Whoowee! I'm on the teevees!"

The next day was brisk and beautiful, perfect for making antipasti. People started showing up around 5:30. After a little initial nervousness and the reclaiming of a misplaced shoe, things got off to a rollicking start.

We began with a classic Tuscan bruscetta, Crostini Toscani. It’s basically a very rustic pâté made by slow cooking chicken liver with such delightful ingredients as anchovies, capers, onions and red wine. Liver isn’t for everyone, but this stuff is so good that the whole class had bits smeared around their faces. One woman told me she hadn’t eaten liver in twenty years but she was sure as hell gonna start. I hope she has.

Then we moved on to making some fresh ricotta. It’s a surprisingly easy task with an extremely impressive pay off. Who doesn’t want to go over to someone else’s house and be told that the cheese was made fresh just for them? (Here are some step by step instructions from a previous post.)

We used the ricotta to make hot and cold versions of some adorable little tomato bites. Basically, you just season the cheese to your liking and then stuff some hollowed out cherry tomatoes. You can serve them as is or stick them under the broiler.

Following these little guys we made some eggplant napoleons. This is a simple dish with a striking presentation that I modified/stole from Beccofino, the restaurant I worked for in Florence. All it really is is baked eggplant mixed with garlic, olives and chopped tomatoes, layered between thin slices of fried eggplant rounds. Garnish with a little basil vinaigrette, bocconcini and confit tomato and you have a dish that’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Last of all we assembled some figs in both a hot and cold preparation. The cold ones are simply sliced, stuffed with goat cheese and topped with prosciutto. The hot are pretty much the same but we substituted blue cheese and then baked the whole mess. For a really cool garnish, I was fortunate that all of the rosemary bushes around (and there were lots) were in full bloom. You don’t see them used a lot, but rosemary blossoms are gorgeous and they taste great too.

By the end of the class things had really taken on more of a casual party atmosphere aided in no small part by James from the Wine Emporium showing up with several bottles of his quaffable fare. Everyone was great and seemed to have a good time so I left feeling a bit more relaxed about the next day’s demonstration of notoriously finicky risotto.

Saturday, a day for rice. My helpful hosts had gone out of their way to procure all three types of risotto rice that I had asked for: Arborio, Carnaroli, and Vialone Nano. I thought that it would be interesting to use all three side by side so that people could really get a feel for the differences.

I used the Arborio to make a basic asparagus risotto. I went very traditional, just using onions as the soffrito and veggie stock that I’d made earlier for the liquid. A good tip is to toss the tough asparagus stems in with the stock for even more vegetably-yumminess.

The carnaroli went towards a more unusual strawberry risotto. This is a savory (as in not sweet) dish that goes great with meats like duck or pork. It’s perfect for using up some of those tart, end of season berries.

The soffrito is melted leeks and the liquid is combination of milk, water and sweet vermouth. Strange sounding I know but this is one seriously tasty side dish.

Finally, we made a shrimp and fennel risotto with the Vialone Nano. Vialone is probably my favorite risotto rice. It’s quite a bit smaller than the other two and really retains its shape well. It’s not quite as forgiving as the other varieties so you have to keep an eye on it, but when it hits that perfect al denteness this grain really shines.

As a bonus, at the end of class we fried up some risotto cakes and served them with sautéed spinach and poached eggs. Not only is this one of my all time favorite brunch dishes, but it’s also a really great way to use leftover risotto. And polenta.

This class did a lot more note taking and didn’t devolve quite as far into a bacchanalian state as the previous day had. All in all though I think it too went really well. I’ve already gotten several emails from some of the attendees telling me that they made the first perfect risottos of their lives. [Beaming smile of satisfaction] What more could I ask for?

If I go back for another teaching stint, and I’d love to, I’ll let you Californian folks know in advance so no one has to pull out hair or spend days sitting in the dark due to the missed opportunity.

Girlie triumphant after it's all said and done.

Stay strong out there.

-L. Pants.