Meredith's Food for Life: Holiday Time: Food Musings

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Holiday Time: Food Musings

Ahhh, tonight we spring-ahead the clocks - a tell-tale sign that spring is upon us. With the promise of spring comes Passover and Easter.

I find the best way to host a dinner with a calm outlook is to prepare. I plan my menu, ensure I am able to cook everything in the oven at the times I need to, draft a shopping list as well as a 'to-do' list and I even plan out the serving platters I plan to use for each dish. So then, I offer you the following few items purely as inspiration for your holiday dinner table -

Feel free to check out all the recipes on Meredith's Food for Life for continued inspiration!

Ideas for Easter
Starters -
Lasagna Roll-Ups (can be made and frozen ahead of time)
Deconstructed Greek Salad

Main Course -
Drunken Lamb
Pecan Crusted Rack of Lamb
Pesto Crusted Rack of Lamb with Mango

Desserts -
Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
Coconut Raspberry Cake with Almonds
Raspberry and Grand Mariner Tiramisu

Ideas for Passover -
Almond and Chocolate Cupcakes
Roman-Jewish Fried Artichokes
Cherry Tomato Salad with Lemon Poppy Dressing

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Stock the Shelves

Beans (2 cans of: Black, Red Kidney, Cannelli, and Small White Beans)
Broth (2 cans each: chicken, beef, and veggie)
Butter (1 lb. of unsalted butter)
Cheese (freshly grated Parmesean, shredded chedder style, shredded swiss, and Feta!!!)
Eggs
Fancy Items (pitted kalamata olives, Kikkoman "Less Sodium" Soy Sauce, jar of sundried tomatoes in oil - julienne style, capers - not in salt)
Flour (5 lb. bag)
Fruits (lemons, limes, grape tomatoes)
Herbs, Fresh (Flat leaf parsley, Rosemary, Thyme, Cilantro)
Milk (a small whole milk, 1 quart of heavy cream)
Mustard (Dijon)
Nuts (Almonds, Macademia, Pecans)
Oil (Extra Virgin Olive, Sesame, Canola)
Onions and Such (garlic, ONIONS!!, and shallots - a few of each)
Pasta (3 boxes of various shapes, depending on taste), Rissotto
Rice (2 boxes of couscous, Success brand White or Brown 10 minute Rice), Rissotto - Aborio Rice
Spices (ground cinnamon and sticks, cloves, allspice, cumin, bay leaves, ground ginger, chili powder, ground nutmeg and whole nutmeg, honey, ground tumeric, dried oregano, kosher salt, whole black peppercorns)
Sugars (2 boxes of confectioners, 1 box of Brown, packed, and 1 5lb. bag of regular sugar)
Tomatoes (28 oz. cans: 1 of whole plum tomatoes from San Marzano, Italy; 1 crushed, and 2 14.5 oz cans of diced tomatoes
Vanilla Extract
Veggies, Fresh (carrots, cucumber, 1 red or yellow or green pepper)
Veggies, Frozen (a sampling of them + 1 pkg. Frozen Petit Peas)
Vinegar (white and red wine are a must and for fun...balsamic)
Wine (1 white, 1 red, 1 bottle of Vermouth, 1 bottle of Port)

For the Little Helpers in your Kitchen

Let kids grate cheese, it's easy and fun
Little helpers are great at eating what you're slicing - set aside some extra for them
Kids? Flour? Rolling pins? Need I say more?
Who doesn't love to whisk or mix? Have them do either one along with you
Every child likes to throw things away...give them stuff to toss in the garbage (one by one so it takes longer and they feel more helpful)
Kids are great at picking herbs from the garden - show them which ones you need and let them do it
Little helpers are great at buttering cake and loaf pans before baking. Give them a pat or two of butter and a paper towl and set them to work
Kids love to roll dough into balls - perfect for cookie baking!
Ask children to search and find ingredients in the fridge - age and size appropriate, of course!
Quiz your little helpers on whether you've added the right number of ingredients (tell them "the receipe calls for 3 Tbls. I put in 2, is that enough?")
Ask your children to pour ingredients into bowls with you
Invite your kids to be your "tasters" - "does this need salt?"
Let them set the table

Big Mistakes

Anyone who cooks knows that making a dish that elicits that feel "Anton Ego" exhibited in the movie "Ratatouille" is one of the best experiences, ever. However, anyone who cooks knows all too well the agony of defeat. Since I know how much we all love to laugh at another’s expense, I thought I'd share some of my BIG cooking MISTAKES!

"Nearly Done Turkey"
Lately my mother and I share the Passover holiday so the second night of Passover has become mine. When I begged to make the holiday the first time I realized that I could never cook Matzo Ball Soup like my mother, so she would bring it. I knew we would have had the most amazing Brisket one has ever eaten the night before, at her house, so I would have to come up with an alternative. Ahhh...Passover was the perfect reason to thaw that Thanksgiving Turkey I'd received free for buying so much food at the store the weeks before T-Day. I know what you're thinking - but it was frozen...how could it have gone bad? So I thawed it perfectly and on the second day of Passover I got busy cooking the turkey.

I made an herb butter paste and put some fresh herbs inside the cavity, etc. And I set the oven at the correct temperature and proceeded to make the rest of the meal. But something told me that this was a relatively small bird and I was sure it would cook in no time.

All the family arrived and we had our abbreviated Seder and nearing the end of the ceremony portion of the evening, I excused myself to remove the bird from the oven. And boy did it look absolutely perfect. I don't have a meat thermometer so I had to trust my gut and well, I knew it was done.

We had our soup, fish, hard-boiled eggs, and now it was time for all of the "main" course food to arrive. I asked my husband to come in and carve the bird. He took a few slices off the outside of the bird and it was really good. And as he got a little closer toward the middle...he informed me (with horror on his face) that the bird was not cooked!

I called my mother inside to make sure he was right. And, sadly, he was. So we cut off only the pieces we could eat and stayed far, far, away from the...shall we say...raw pieces?

Oh god, it was terrible. We’re all lucky we didn't die of salmonella poisoning.

"Onion Cake"
When my husband and I were living in NYC we lived in an awesome, but very small, studio on the Upper East Side. It had a tiny kitchen and the fridge was about 3 feet high. I managed to make some amazing things in that kitchen which I am not even sure I could replicate!

Anyway, I made a golden vanilla cake with vanilla butter cream frosting for a dinner party we had on a Saturday night and for the same dinner I used one half of an onion so I wrapped the other half in plastic and set it aside. At the end of the night I wrapped in plastic the remaining piece of cake and set it on top of the nesting bowls I have. The next day my husband and I set ourselves up with a movie and we were ready for our slice of cake. My husband ate about a quarter of his before I finally sat down with mine. And when I took a bite I was horrified! The cake had been sitting on top of the bowls but inside the littlest bowl was the half-cut onion and the smell somehow managed to permeate the cake. Oh it was terrible. We were so disappointed then but we continue to laugh about it now.

"Bounce Lasagna"
So I suppose I should have learned from my mistake that smelly things affect perishables. But, alas...

One winter day I decided to make lasagna - not complicated but hearty. I made the sauce and assembled all the ingredients. I had purchased Barilla Lasagna sheets - no boil sheets - and stored them in the food storage shelves in the basement. So I put the lasagna together and baked it up. When my husband and I sat down to eat, we each dusted our piece of pasta with grated cheese and I promtly took a bite - it smelled sooo good! Well...it tasted really bad. It tasted odd and I had to take three more bites to really figure out what the problem was. Meanwhile my husband was confused at the taste - not like his mommy's - and just sat there watching my face. I have such a strong sense of smell and taste that like a zombie I walked down the stairs to the basement and surveyed the shelf. Yep. Just as I suspected...the unopened box of BOUNCE dryer sheets was in the exact spot next to where the Barilla box had been. Sure enough, the pasta tasted like SOAP. I took the lasagna tray and dumped it in the garbage. We ate eggs instead.

Awesome Cookbooks

"Cheese & Wine; a Guide to Selecting, Pairing, and Enjoying" by Janet Fletcher - a terrific gift I received for the holidays, it has beautiful photos and it's easy to read
"Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan - my BIBLE
"Everyday Italian" by Giada De Laurentiis - great basic sauce and other easy to follow recipes
"Marcella Cucina" by Marcella Hazan - amazing!!!!
"Tender at the Bone" by Ruth Reichl - if you love food as much as I do, you know Ruth Reichl as the Editor of Gourmet mag. This is her personal account of her growing up and becoming who she is today. Filled with amazing stories and peppered with tremendous recipes
"The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden - a beautiful book seperated by Ashkenazie and Sephardic dishes. It's filled with wonderfully written historical accounts of Jews and where Jewish foods came from. I use it all the time at the holidays
"The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook" by Jennifer Appel - a wonderfully sweet book
"The French Chef Cookbook" by Julia Child - a MUST HAVE. She takes away uncertainty in cooking
"The Kitchen Answer Book" by Hank Rubin - if you've ever been curious about what makes a lamb a mutton or what is the difference between milk and cream...this book is for you!
Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking by Micol Negrin. This is a terrific accounting of regional Italian flavors.
"The Wilton School: Decorating Cake - a Reference and Idea Book" - a Bible of sorts for me

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Holiday Time: Food Musings

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