I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Ours was lots of fun and, as usual, the food turned out great. Here is the menu:

Roasted Turkey with Gravy
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes with Red Chili
Homemade Cranberry Sauce
Butternut Squash Puree
Oven-Roasted Fennel, Cauliflower, Carrots and Shiitake Mushrooms
Green Salad with Red Pears, Pomegranate Seeds and Hazelnuts
Sauteed Brussels Sprout Leaves with Caraway
Sweet Potato Pie
Pear Galete with Almonds

Two of these dishes were new this year: the very yummy pear galete that my sister made and the sauteed brussels sprouts. The brussels sprouts recipe was from a Sunset magazine which basically just says to strip the leaves off of the sprouts and then saute them with butter, bacon, onion and caraway seeds. We skipped the bacon but it still turned out delicious. The little hint of caraway was great. The magazine also has a variation that calls for sauteeing the leaves with butter, shallot, ginger and lemon zest. I made that version last week and it was also good. The smell of the ginger and lemon zest when it hits the pan is amazing.

We sampled a number of good wines:

Brooks 2005 Amycas White (Oregon)
Dona Paula 2005 Chardonnay (Argentina)
2006 Pierre-Marie Chermette Beaujolais Vieilles Vignes Cuvee (France)
Erath 2005 Pinot Noir (Oregon)

All of the wines were very tasty but, if I had to pick a favorite, I think I would choose the Brooks White. It was similar to an Alsatian riesling or gewurtztraminer, a tiny bit sweet at first but with a nice, crisp finish.

Since tomorrow is a big food holiday, I wanted to keep tonight’s dinner simple: veggie burgers and oven fries. But…since I never seem to be able to completely keep things simple, I decided to make my own hamburger buns from scratch. I’m just get so tired of buying packages of 8, using 2 or maybe 4, and throwing the rest out. Sure, the freegans might love me but I still feel guilty over the waste.

I used the first recipe that popped up on a google search for hamburger buns. As usual, I did a couple of things differently. First, I scaled the recipe from 25 servings to 4. The website actually has a handy calculator that lets you scale recipes however you want. The other thing that I did differently was make the dough before work. I left it covered in a bowl in the refrigerator and then, when I came home from work, I formed the balls and let them rise for a couple of hours (instead of the 20 minutes that the recipe calls for.) For some reason, I ended up only getting 2 buns from my dough instead of 4 but that was all I needed anyway.

After 15 minutes in the oven, my buns came out golden and dome-shaped. They were crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. I think that they were actually the perfect texture; firmer than commercial buns, which can sometimes be way too soft, but softer than a kaiser roll. The flavor was buttery and slightly sweet just like a good hamburger bun should be. These buns were so good, I wish I had paired them with something more interesting than a plain old veggie patty. A grilled portabello mushroom with basil mayonnaise would be ideal (or a juicy hamburger, of course!)

My computer started acting up recently so, last weekend, Robert and I put on our geek shoes and performed a few upgrades (new motherboard, processor, etc.) I also used this as an opportunity to try out a new operating system: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. So far, I am in love with this OS! Other linux distros that I have used in the past include Red Hat 8 and Suse 8.2 Pro. They both pale in comparison. Ubuntu lets me do cool things that I couldn’t do in linux before such as sync up my music player with my iPod. And, it’s completely free! If you’re looking for a way to save some money or just want to stick it to the man by switching to an alternative OS, give Ubuntu a try.

The word Ubuntu hails from sub-Saharan Africa and, in celebration of my new operating system, I decided to go with an African theme for this week’s winesday. My menu was pretty simple: Prawns Peri Peri, South African yellow rice and a mixed green salad. Peri Peri (or Piri Piri in Portuguese) is a name used to describe the hot African birdseye chili and also a popular sauce made from those chilies. This sauce was brought to Mozambique by Portuguese settlers in the 15th century and is now popular all over Southern Africa. The recipe that I used called for crushed garlic, chopped red chilies and lemon peel to be combined with olive oil and left overnight to allow the flavors to meld. The prawns are marinated in this mixture and then gently cooked with butter and lemon juice. The lemon flavor was nice but the dish could have easily been spicier.

My wine of choice was also from South Africa: Spice Route 2003 Chenin Blanc. The man at the wine store told me it was like Sauvignon Blanc but with a bit more palette. I think it was actually much heavier than he indicated. I don’t usually pay too much attention to “legs” when drinking wine but I couldn’t help noticing that the legs of this wine seemed to stick to the glass for an unusually long time, almost like a thin syrup. The flavor of the wine was very complex. It kept changing as I drank it making it difficult to describe but I finally decided that it had very autumnal flavors; apples, pear, toasted nuts. It had a bit more oak than I prefer but I still really liked it. Unfortunately, my prawns were too light and subtle for this wine. I think this wine would go well with spicy squash soup or even a light meat dish. I have a fuyu persimmon that’s been sitting on my counter for weeks; maybe I’ll slice it up and add it to a green salad with some toasted hazelnuts and eat that while I sip the leftover wine. That sounds like a much better match.

Check the gross yet delicious eyeballs I made for my company’s Halloween potluck. I stuffed sweet cherry peppers with toasted hazelnuts and goat cheese and then I cut circles out of basil leaves for the irises and used flattened currants for the pupils. Everyone at the party was impressed. Some people were too freaked out to try them but, those that did, thought they tasted great!

A couple of years ago, wanting to learn more about my favorite cuisine, I purchased a copy of Cracking the Coconut by Su-Mei Yu. This cookbook focuses on authentic Thai home cooking and had been very highly praised. Since then, I have gotten into the habit of, every few months, picking the book up off my shelf, reading through it, drooling over many of the recipes and then putting it back down again without actually cooking anything from it. This is not a criticism of the book. The recipes certainly look enticing but the ingredients lists are very long and call for lots of exotic items and the recipes are highly labor intensive. To make any of the recipes would require much time and planning so, for me, this had become a book full of beautiful recipes that I fully intended to cook “some day soon.”

Earlier this month, I finally decided to stop pretending and force myself to make one of Su-Mei Yu’s recipes. I settled on Squid with Roasted Chilies in Oil which seemed somewhat less complicated than the other recipes. I took a trip down to my local Asian market to stock up on ingredients and proceeded to spend a good part of that Sunday soaking dried red chilies and tamarind, roasting fermented shrimp paste, frying (separately) mass quantities of shallots, garlic, dried shrimp and dried red chilies and then pureeing all of these ingredients together with palm sugar and fish sauce. All of this effort resulted in a small jar of thick, black paste called Nam Prik Pow. Once the paste was done, the rest of the recipe was a snap, requiring nothing more than a quick stir-fry of garlic, nam prik pow, soy sauce and squid with some thai basil added in at last minute. It looked great, the little rings and tentacles bathed in a deep ruby-colored sauce.  Unfortunately, it way too salty (and, coming from me, that’s saying a lot because I love salty foods.) I would have been sad that all of my hard work had resulted in such a disappointing dish but I knew that I still had enough paste for 5 or 6 more dinners, surely enough attempts to allow me to achieve perfection. Last night, I made the same dish with shrimp instead of squid. I used a full 2 tablespoons of nam prik pow (double what I had used before) and a combination of soy sauce and water in place of the full amount of soy sauce. It was delicious! The shrimp was juicy and deeply-flavored, sweet and just a little bit salty. It went wonderfully with the brown jasmine rice and stir-fried gai-lan that I served it with. Finally, an authentic and delicious Thai dish from my very own kitchen! I am now re-inspired to try more of Su-Mei Yu’s recipes. With one successful dish under my belt and a large tub of fermented shrimp paste sitting in my refrigerator, I have no more excuses.

I selected an Italian Pinot Grigio for today’s winesday: Montelvini 2005. My meal to match was Chickpea and Octopus Bruschetta, Creamy Fennel Soup and a simple salad of mixed greens and radishes. I recently found out that Jennifer McIlvaine, creator of the bruschetta recipe and owner of Bruschettina, a popular food stand at several of Seattle’s farmer’s markets, is selling her business and moving to Italy. Sadly, I never had the chance to try her famous bruschetta but, thanks to Sunset magazine, I was able to get the recipe for her signature dish and thought I would give it a try.

I have never cooked octopus and it kind of freaked me out a little. Not in a vomit-inducing sort of way like when I pull the guts out of squid. It was more of a ghoulish experience, appropriate for the current Halloween season, I guess. I had a tough time finding baby octopus but finally managed to get my hands on some at Uwajimaya. Unfortunately, I had to buy 2 whole pounds and it was sold encased in a giant, heavy block of ice. I didn’t need the full 2 pounds for this dish so, last night, I decided to partially thaw the block so that I could break it into smaller sections and then refreeze what I didn’t use. I lugged the block out of the freezer and peered into its murky depths. I could just barely make out a mass of tentacles splayed out everywhere within the ghostly ice. At this point, I was already a bit spooked. I began to run water over the ice and slowly, one by one, as they defrosted, individual tentacles managed to squirm, poke and flop their way out of the block. They appeared to be coming to life like octopus zombies. Very creepy. Finally, one little octopus became thawed enough to fall completely away from the rest of the pack and then, when I was able to see it in its entirety and confirm that it was indeed dead, I relaxed. I was able to pick it up without fear and even considered chasing Robert around the house with it.

For the bruschetta itself, I used hominy bread from Tall Grass Bakery which is what Jennifer McIlvaine uses at Bruschettina. It had a really good flavor and texture and resulted a very different bruschetta than I am used to. Combined with the chickpea and octopus topping, it was very rustic. The wine might have been “rustic” as well. I see that on the descriptions for Italian wines a lot but, really, what does a rustic beverage taste like? I do know that this wine was very pale in color with a bright, fruity aroma and crisp, citrusy taste. And, as with most wines, I liked it!

Tonight, to add something special to my Indian vegetable curry, I made my own paneer. Paneer is an Indian cheese and it is actually extremely simple to make. You just bring whole milk to a boil, add acid to separate the whey from the curds, and then drain through a cloth and press the cheese into shape (wrapped in cloth, using weights.) It has a very mild flavor and a texture similar to firm tofu. For curries, it is best to press the paneer well so that it will be firm enough to hold up to cooking. But, you can also skip the step of pressing and instead use the soft curds in a salad, perhaps with tomatoes and cucumber and a dusting of cumin. It takes a quart of milk to get a very small disk of cheese. For each quart, I use 1.5 tablespoons of white wine vinegar as the acid. I have also read that people use rice wine vinegar, lemon juice or even soured yogurt. Paneer is a nice change of pace from the usual proteins such as tofu, shrimp, etc. Plus, it feels really cool to make your own cheese!

Since today is winesday, I chose a gewurztraminer to go with my Indian dinner. Gewurztraminers are usually recommended for serving with Indian or Asian dishes because they have a spicy, floral quality that matches well with curries and other spicy dishes. The wine merchant at Pike & Western recommended a German gewurztraminer to me, Pfeffingen 2004 Spatlese. He told me that, even though it is a Spatlese which is late harvest and usually means sweet, this was one of the less sweet gewurztraminers out there and that it had enough acidity to match well with food. I’m not so sure. It was still a little too sweet for my tastes but I did like the strong floral aroma and spicy flavor. Next time, I will try one of our Washington gewurztraminers to see how they compare.

It’s official – fall has arrived in Seattle. The other day, I actually had to wear a coat! It was one of those days where my hair goes from straight to curly during the walk to work. I also spent my first full day of work since last winter wrapped up in my designated work blanket (My employer handed these out for Christmas one year because it gets so cold in the office. Mine is starting to lose it, though. This year, I think I need to replace it with a slanket!) I’m really looking forward to fall, though. This weekend, I’m celebrating by pulling all of my sweaters out of the depths of my closet for a good cleaning. I’m kind of excited because I think there may be some in there that I forgot I even knit last year. It’s like going shopping in your own closet. I also made a delicious pumpkin bread this morning using a recipe that I found on epicurious which was rated a whopping 628 times! I love reading the user reviews on epicurious before I cook something. They are often very helpful and can sometimes be downright entertaining, especially when people get into arguments with each other. I always giggle when I see reviews that go something like this: “I loved this recipe! I added more red bell pepper, reduced the chili sauce by half and used olive oil instead of butter. Oh, and I used shrimp instead of chicken. I will definitely make this again!” Are you really reviewing the recipe at that point or just letting everyone know what a wonderful and experimental chef you think you are? That said, I did make about 13 alterations to the pumpkin bread recipe. Other fall traditions that I will be partaking in this weekend include mentally calculating the odds that it will snow in Seattle this winter (and not just a light dusting that melts in an hour – I want disruptive snow!) and helping Robert with his green chili stew on Sunday (we got a new batch of green chilis that are supposed to be extra hot this time. Yikes!)

My new mission is to learn more about wine. Nothing too obsessive; just enough to know about the basic different types of wine, which countries/regions produce the best wines and what I, myself, enjoy most. I recently read Andrea Immer’s “Great Wine Made Simple,” which I recommend, and now am reading “Windows on the World Complete Wine Course” by Kevin Zraly. Instead of wine comparison tastings, which can be heavy on the wallet, I have decided to incorporate wine education into my regular life (since I already drink wine regularly, this shouldn’t be too hard.) Each Wednesday, I will choose a new wine and plan a meal entirely around it. In addition to education, this will make planning meals more fun too! So, today marks my first ever “winesday” (that name is really cheesy, I know.)

Tonight’s wine of choice was Trimbach 2003 Alsatian Riesling. My meal to match was Riesling-Poached Trout with Thyme, Buttered Baby Potatoes and a Watercress, Endive and Apple Salad with Apple Cider Vinaigrette. First, the wine. I haven’t had too many rieslings in my lifetime so I was excited to try something different. All I know about them is that they are the lightest bodied of the whites and can sometimes be sweet (particularly Germain rieslings.) Alsatian rieslings are usually dry. This one was delicious: clean, crisp, and light! They say lemon, mineral and grapefruit (even cabbage) among other things online. As for the meal, it was OK. It matched well with the wine I guess but I usually find French food to be pretty boring and this was no exception. Thankfully the hatchet job I did on the trout didn’t ruin the meal. I should have just had the fish monger fillet it for me but, I was thinking that maybe one day I would like to learn how to fish and, if I did go fishing and actually caught one, I would have to learn how to do this myself. At least you couldn’t tell once it was cooked and covered in sauteed leeks. Also of note: for the salad dressing, I used the apple cider vinegar recommended by Cooks Illustrated magazine, Spectrum Naturals Organic Unfiltered. I actually sipped a little vinegar straight from the bottle and it was good. So much better than Heinz.

Overall, I would say the wine was far better than the meal but I’m going to stick with Winesdays for a while and hopefully will be able to produce a spectacular wine-meal combo. Do you have a favorite food and wine pairing that you would recommend?

Robert and I are going backpacking in a few weeks so I have been busy planning what we are going to eat during our trip. My main goals are to keep the cost, preparation and weight to a minimum while still having meals that we enjoy. Robert suggested frito pie. For those that don’t know, frito pie is a New Mexican dish that, at its simplest, is a bowl of fritos topped with chili and usually some chopped onions and cheese. Last night, I performed a little frito pie experiment. I was able to stick fairly closely to my normal recipe with a few modifications for wilderness cooking. First, I made a quick roux of flour and oil. I found a tiny bottle of oil at Cost Plus so I figured it wouldn’t be too much trouble to bring that and a tablespoon of flour. Next, I added water and a blend of red chili, cumin, oregano, onion granules, garlic granules and salt. Normally I would use fresh onion and garlic but it’s added weight. I don’t want to have to do any chopping and I really don’t want to smell like onions in the woods. I don’t know if bears are attracted to people that smell like onions but I’m not going to risk it. I will not be bringing a whisk (only a spoon) so I was very happy that I didn’t get lumps when I added the water. In place of tomatoes, I added some tomato paste. Later, though, I read that tomato paste needs to be refrigerated. I’m not going to bring a whole, unopened tube so I think I will either leave it out or use ketchup instead since you can get those small packets of ketchup at fast food restaurants. Ketchup would make it a pretty ghetto frito pie (as if frito pie could get any more ghetto!) After simmering for a few minutes, I added some instant black beans and texturized vegetable protein. These are low in fat, high in protein and extremely lightweight to carry. They also helped to thicken the chili. Overall, it was a success and, if I liked it at home, I know it will taste great in the mountains. Next week I will be performing a tuna noodle experiment!