COLD CUT CHRONICLES II

INTRODUCTORY SALAMI, Part the First: (Text)ure and Technology

Cotto (literally "cooked") salami is both soft and coarse in texture, originating, like mortadella, in Bologna, Italy. Sometimes dry-roasted, sometimes boiled, it does not require the longer periods of curing or smoking associated with semi-hard, semi-dry salami or the aging, fermentation and storage lavished on hard salami.

In addressing the matter of the origins of sausage- which all salami, of course, is- Philip Dowell and Adrian Bailey speculate in COOKS' INGREDIENTS (Morrow, 1980) "that the Germans, who claim to have invented the sausage, learned their skills from the Romans, but it was left to the French to develop the idea so imaginatively..." I remain skeptical of such linear narratives but these thoughts are not without their interest. What really intrigues me is the nature of culinary traditions that persist in the face of the mass-marketed pretenders to those traditions. The matter of cooked salami provides much to consider.

Two masterful cotto makers reside here on the West Coast: Seattle's great Armondino Batali (of Salumi) and California's Chef Paul Bertolli (Fra'Mani brand). Batali's cotto is the simpler and more familiar of the two: coarsely ground pork butt flavored with mace, nutmeg, white pepper and whole black peppercorns. The first time I tasted it, I was transported to Palmisano's Sub Shoppe on Hartford Road in 1962, sitting on the counter stool, ordering up the Italian coldcut with peppers, oil and vinegar and extra Parmasan. Classic flavor. The right feel on the tooth. Bertolli's lovely salame rosa is a more coarsely textured cotto cut from pork shoulder, flavored with coriander, white pepper, mace and fruitwood smoke. The addition of little cubes of plate fat and pistachios contributes to what his firm's advertising refers to as a "distinctive mosaic face." It could not be better put: salami in its painterly, even architectural, aspect. Salami as both text and texture.

Here in Portland, two bastions of German-American fare, Edelweiss and Gartner's Meat Market, offer varieties of housemade cooked salami, distinctively flavored, at prices that might make one blush in a different economy. No fancy pigs at either of these stores where you need a number to be served on Saturday morning. At Edelweiss, the more traditionally German of the two, transactions not uncommonly take place in German and Russian. This is the stuff of Main Street USA in an earlier era and it still exists if you seek it out: food that still bears the imprint of the human hand.

Yes, these purveyors make use of machines that streamline their work; they all produce a lot of good product. But that dance, that pride in the fancy footwork at the edge of the industrial, eschews the lazy overworked emulsions called "cotto" that I dutifully purchased at the supermarket and tasted as I sat down to write these words. My cat, Eloise, however, felt no such compulsion to more than sniff the small samples that were left in her dish.

- Charles Seluzicki

You Say it's Your Thanksgiving, Well it's my Thanksgiving too

For those who need a little turkey support, cooking hints or just possess a voyeuristic need to look in on other’s day. Kim Severson of The New York Times will be blogging her day and dinner here - Maybe next year I will sell my services as a Thanksgiving coach - Best business cards ever: Account manager? Nope, Thanksgiving Coach - an imprint of a pie on business stationery, now that is cool.

For the first time in 18 years, I will be guesting instead of hosting/co-hosting Thanksgiving. Despite fighting an urge to get up and check the oven for pie or stuff something with something else, I feel surprising good about change of roles.

Granted the host/guest relationship is a bit symbiotic, or maybe a better way to state that is the two roles aren’t that sharply divided, they blur into one another. A host makes sure their guests are comfortable and sated. A good guest can help the host by behaving, staying relatively sober and like a good host, being thoughtful to the needs of the others at the event.

A good guest, according to the axiom - never shows up empty handed. Maybe a better way of stating that is you gotta bring something. Not necessarily material something either - there are ways to help a host that are worth more than a moderately priced bottle of wine. Not that there is anything wrong with moderately priced wine or premium bourbon for that matter.

Offer to help. The timely offer of help is the greatest gift of all. Help in the kitchen? Sometimes extra bodies aren’t help at all. Be careful about the difference between hanging out in the kitchen and actually helping. You should not be in the kitchen if you aren’t peeling, trimming, washing dishes or performing a specifically requested task. Yeah, that is kinda like the job description for a dishwasher/prep cook but it is the selfless guest is going to chip in with some thankless jobs.

Help takes different forms. Do you like children, watch them. Do you pride yourself on your ability to be able to hold a conversation with anyone? Maybe your cousin’s hot friend needs less chatting up than your great aunt - Just suggestin’. Make sure everyone is included in conversation. Ask plenty of questions and be respectful to the expressed opinions of others that are different from your own – no matter how ill-informed they are. When frustrated conversationally, ask questions not make statements.

Watching football? Maybe you work hard, have a busy schedule through December and just want to drink beer and watch football with your day. Okay maybe that is true for the host as well and they decided to have 20 people over to their home. Even if you are a guest, the event isn't about your wishes and desires. If football is an integral part of the event, watch it, if you are the only one watching a game in the basement, rethink your strategy.

Watch the txt messaging and no matter what else, 15 minutes worth of dishes is a requirement.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving. Saucyman will – taking a few days off before returning on Monday with a new post by Charles Seluzicki.

Red and White and Drunk All Over

Saucyman, My Thanksgiving host asked me to bring a few bottles of wine to dinner. I know wine by colors and I am not even sure which color goes with turkey. Any suggestions? Beyond 3-Buck Chuck

I would have felt better if you asked me what cocktail/aperitif/digestif goes well with a formal dinner party. Or even beer, I could explain how the hoppy goodness of India Pale Ales compliment roasted meats and especially turkey. Wine though, wine is not within my area of expertise. However, Friend of Saucyman and occasional contributor, the one who cloaks his true identity behind the moniker Pinot Envy is far more knowledgeable about wine. Mr. Envy was kind enough to pass along a few suggestions for the Thanksgiving table:.

Reds

Pinot Noir from Oregon Willamette Valley
These wines range from earthy to fruity, light to extracted, juicy to austere but most are food friendly for the range of turkey preparations.

Zinfandel from California Dry Creek Valley
This valley turns out Zinfandels that features spice and fruit. Many are blended with Petite Syrah from the same valley to give them a more serious red drinker something to chew on.

Nouveau Beaujolais
Do not take this wine seriously, drink it. There are real wines from Beaujolais as well but save them for another menu. These wines are affordable and cases are stacked in every local store so there is no excuse for not adding this to the table.

Whites

Riesling from Germany, a Kabinett on the dry-sweet scale
Sugary vegetables, fruits, nuts and spices are common recipes at this meal. This wine will both compliment and contrast those flavors. The regions of France and Germany that are best at making Riesling use a lot of butter and cream in their cooking. Need I say more?

Pinot Blanc.
Every 100% Pinot Blanc I have tasted this year I would recommend. This wine won't stand up to every dish on every table. For Thanksgiving Dinner spreads that stick to a pretty safe, traditional menu, this wine easily pairs with all dishes. If you venture away from a potatoes and turkey menu, this wine should be served chilled with your apps or first courses.

One addition to Mr. Envy's recommendations, a little prosecco generally goes well with any celebration/occasion. Prosecco is a sparkling wine, like champagne except it is Italian and it isn’t quite as fancy: No corks, quite often it is sealed with a bottle top that looks quite familiar to beer drinkers. Not to be confused with the other Italian sparkling wine - Spumante, which can be syrupy sweet – Prosecco is dry, enjoyable and reasonably priced good bottles start at $12 and work up. It works on the front end of a meal with appetizers, snacks or cheese or goes quite well with dessert. Not only are you not going to go wrong by showing up at any party with prosecco, the bubbles tickle Saucyman’s nose.

Totally Crustless

Pumpkin pie suffers from the same two problems that many simple good foods suffer from – The Pimp my Ride syndrome: The belief that something good, natural and true gets better as you start loading extraneous and expensive parts onto the frame. A mascarpone brandy pumpkin pie on a candied pecan and gingersnap pastry has to be better than just a pumpkin pie, right?

And like a society that is seems to gravitate to either the high or the low, pumpkin pie can tip the scale in the other direction. The holiday pie can be a horrific example of how you can compromise flavor, taste and goodness is the name of convenience. Coolwhip, evaporated milk, vegetable shortening, pre-ground, premixed pumpkin pie spice – because you know measuring four different common spices is so much harder than finding that bottle of pumpkin spice from a year or two ago. Or the greatest monstrosity ever known to the kitchen – the store bought pre-made pie crust.

Pumpkin pie is tricky, the crust takes longer to cook than the filling, often resulting in a soggy crust, causing some cooks to misdiagnose the problem as an innate inability to make a good pie pastry. If neophyte cooks get past their ‘can’t do’ mindset about the pie crust, they often feel they don’t have the time to make a pie crust. In addition - white flour has become a bit of a dietary/cultural no–no. Even if the Fear of a Carb Planet is waning, celiac disease has really become the new lactose intolerance as far as what and why people aren’t eating these days.

Fortunately, the filling of a pumpkin pie is essentially a big custard, similar to flan or pot de crème - crust isn’t necessary to enjoy the dessert(ed) pumpkin. The traditional pie can be made sans pastry, baked in individual ramekins instead. Prepared 24 to 72 hours ahead of time, pumpkin flan allows the cook to enjoy Thanksgiving Day instead of stressing out over one more thing to do in a limited time frame.

This is basically the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can with a few adjustments: Okay, one adjustment - cream takes the place of evaporated milk, condensed milk and milk milk. Poach-baking; cooking in a water bath is a method of cooking that seems inelegant - involving hot water, a roasting pan and an oven. Eggs cook/scramble at a very low temperature, a water bath, even in a 350+ oven, will not get hotter than 212 degrees, allowing the custard to cook gently, slowly.

Pumpkin Flan

Preheat oven to 350º ƒ. Fill a roasting pan - 9 x 13 like the type you'd bake brownies in - fill half full of hot tap water place on middle rack of the oven. Bring 4 cups water to boil in tea kettle or microwave, set aside.

1 15 oz can pumpkin puree
1 cup heavy cream
¾ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon*
½ t. ginger* ½ t. nutmeg*
1 clove ground or a pinch of ground cloves*
pinch of salt

Warm above ingredients together over low heat, while constantly stirring. This pre-heating, reduces cooking time and pumpkin seems to come alive – like blooming spices for a curry or decanting wine, gently warming really seems to build the taste.

*These are guidelines for spices, not all spices are the same in their freshness and potency, flavor to taste. If ½ teaspoon of nutmeg is good, a full teaspoon isn’t twice as good.

Whip together:
½ cup heavy cream
3 large eggs

When the pumpkin spice mixture is warm remove from heat and add cream and eggs. Thoroughly mix together. Thoroughly. Pour pumpkin custard into individual ramekins. This recipe should fill 8 - 4oz ramekinsª. Place ramekins in the water filled roasting pan residing is in the oven. Add water from tea kettle so that water comes up about 2/3 -3/4 of the side of the roasting pan. Set timer for 25 minutes.

The pumpkin flan is done when the outside of the ramekin is done and the center most spot, about the size of a nickel is still jiggley, jello jiggley. Remove baking dish from oven, take ramekins out of the water and place on a cooling rack – like you'd do with cookies. After they are room temperature, wrap and refrigerate. These are really good solo, with a ginger cookie or whip cream.

ª Ramekins can be 4, 6 or 8 oz. They can be short with a lot of surface area or more cylindrical – all this means - cooking times will vary. 45 minutes to an hour isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Who are you calling English, Muffin?

Saucyman, What if, for reasons of food safety or deep-frying, you don’t actually stuff the turkey? Nothing in the Middle

Previously, Saucyman agreed with Sara Dickerson’s conjecture that stuffing is the most expressive medium from the Thanksgiving kithen. For the last few years at the holiday Saucytable, stuffing has expressed itself in a less than traditional fashion. Rather than fill the bird orthodox manner, the breaded goodness known to some as stuffing, to others as dressing, the stuffing came cooked in English Muffin batter filled with smoked sausage/ham, herbs, onion, celery and cooked wild rice. These little savory pancake-like treats, are better known by the contraction of STuffing and cRUMPETS; Strumpets.

Strumpets are probably more akin to a Cornish Pasty or buckwheat blini, but they sit comfortably at the Thanksgiving table, seamlessly offering a bready, flavorful treat in lieu of traditional turkey stuffing. The advantages of leaving the turkey empty - An un-stuffed bird cooks quicker, dramatically reducing the chance of a dry bird. Others don't worry about overdone as much as they are understandably concerned about eating undercooked stuffing from previously raw poultry. And for the avid outdoors cook – there is no way to BBQ or deep fry a stuffed turkey.

Just as people distinguish stuffing as the filling cooked in the bird and dressing to denote the same ingredients cooked by themselves; Saucyman designates an English Muffin as a the mass produced, pre-cooked version of a fresh crumpet even though they are both made from flour, yeast, milk, egg, water, salt, butter. Crumpets and their puntacular kin, strumpets, are about as difficult to make as pancakes* and while they will save time on the bird baking end, they do need to be made close to eating time. Assuming there is no electric griddle, this will tie up the stovetop at a very critical juncture of the day. Fortunately, the duty can be assigned to someone who has pancake level skills or better and has offered to help.

Strumpet Filling

See previous stuffing post for more ideas - anything can be used, but whatever gets used needs to be cut into tiny, sized pieces. In addition to honey I shrunk the stuffing type of prep, anything placed in the batter will not do any additional cooking – only warming, so make sure strumpet filling is cooked to desired consistency.

1 or 2 days before – cook a ½ cup of wild rice in a cup in a half of water of stock for 45 minutes. Finely mince one onion, not as finely 3 ribs of celery and sauté with ¾ of a pound of smoked sausage. Mince 4 leaves of fresh sage with fresh thyme and parsley. Salt and pepper of course.

Strumpet Batter
Beth Hensperger’s wonderful and encyclopedic The Bread Bible includes a recipe for English Muffins. Like other Bibles, I have not taken the word so literally and in this instance, I have changed what is written to make it more adaptable to my needs. The truth here needs to be a little more savory, so stock gets substituted for milk. The batter needs only 2.5 to 3 hours to rise.

¾ cup warm water
1 Tablespoon yeast
½ teaspoon sugar of honey.

4 cups Flour
1 egg
1 ¼ Cup Turkey, chicken or vegetable stock – warmed to 110 (Hands are about 98 degrees, so it should be warm to the touch. Microwave is good.)

Add water, yeast and sweetener together and leave in a warm spot in the kitchen. In about 10 minutes it will become frothy. At this point...

Mix everything together, keep mixing until lumps are gone. Pour into a mixing bowl, whose inside has been lightly oiled to prevent the dough from sticking. Cover and set aside in a warm place for about an hour and half to 2 hours. If counter space is a premium, the top of the fridge works well.

½ stick of melted butter for cooking

After the batter has roughly tripled in volume, gently deflate it by running a spatula around the side of the bowl and folding the batter inward. Preheat griddle to (Set to 325 if it is electric) on medium low. Lightly oil the surface of the griddle- If using the handy, dandy rings (pictured) fill the ring 1/4 full with batter. If you are working free form – spread batter out in a rough 3 inch circle about 1/4 inch high. Once bubbles start to form on the surface, add strumpet filling, then top with batter. Continue cooking for 5 minutes, flip and cook the 'b' side for 10 minutes.

Keep on the griddle until ready to serve.



* Once you have had them, there is no going back to the toasted packaged variety.

The Soy of Cooking

Saucitarian, SIL is coming for a day I like to call Turkey Day. Despite the fact I know her dietary choices, she will stand in the kitchen and ask what is in the food: I call it control freak; she calls it vegan. My brother tells me she would really like a not bird, a meat substitute. I already feel I am bending over backwards for her, do I have to get a tofurkey? - Wanting to tell someone to furk off

No, you don’t have to; the question is, should you cook a tofurkey.

I almost understand the tofurkey; ever since umami was confirmed as the fifth taste along with sweet, sour, salt and bitter there has been a greater acceptance of any food or preparation that produces a protein-ee, savory taste. Seaweed, mushrooms, soy (especially soy sauce) and tomatoes are all vegetables that are rich in glutamic acid, an amino acid that trigger taste receptors on the tongue. Umami can be gently described to/by any non-vegan as ‘meaty’, it is a satisfying taste on a very primal level and completely understandable why people would crave it.

What isn’t understandable is why a vegan would want a meat substitute. After animal welfare, better living through natural eating is a common reason cited for a vegan diet. Tofurkey, Quorn and the fake bird made of soy with a crisp cellulose skin (think bad sausage casing) are incredibly processed foods. Tofurkey is a little better than the others as far as processing goes, but as for taste and texture - I don’t understand the attraction. These products are pretty much the opposite of natural foods.

Secondly, vegans are fond of telling everyone, people can have a healthier diet life without meat. So why the meat substitute? Rather than embracing the goodness of fruits, nuts, veg and grain, they dress food up like meat. If one doesn’t need meat to survive and thrive, why process foods to look, act and taste like meat? It seems vegans/vegetarians are undermining their own arguments in much the same way the original Moosewood Cookbook tells you how great vegetables are and then recommends covering them in feta cheese or yogurt rather than actually tasting them.

As a host, you have an obligation to respect food choices of your guests, no matter how annoying they are: The victim of celiac disease who eats pizza once a week; The vegetarian who eats fish and stuffing cooked with chicken stock but not slices of turkey; the vegan who is more worried about other people’s dietary habits than their own choices - as a host you need to provide food for them.

Serve 3-5 things your guests can eat. The upside, to this turkey lover anyway, fruits, nuts, veg and grain are all so delicious they don’t need to be processed beyond recognition to be enjoyed. Make a small potion of succotash, corn soup, serve wild rice with wild mushrooms, or make the bacon sprouts with walnuts instead. Toast pecans with brown sugar and a little cayenne pepper, roasted beets or glazed carrots are great side dishes. I hear sweet potatoes and kale is to die for and roasted potatoes in olive oil are easier to cook than making a separate batch of mashed potatoes with soy milk.

While I can speak generally to why you don’t have to cook a fake bird, I can’t answer what you need to do for this specific occasion. If you don’t do what she wants to do, will it cause friction - at the table? For your brother? Then being right, unfortunately, isn't worth it Based on the fact you are asking about this issue, I would guess you know what you need to do already which is cook the soystitute bird, but on the positive side you can actually microwave the thing without loosing any taste or quality.

Stuff It, Stuff it Good

Dearest Saucyman, Any recommendations for stuffing?
-Stuffing a turkey, BTW

The first stuffing I ever loved was from Evan Jones’s American Food; The Gastronomic Story, I think it was the smoked sausage that sold me on that recipe. As I started working on my own stuffing variations and over the years I developed an understanding or belief (sometimes it is hard to sort the two) that a cook, a real cook, could be judged my his/her ability to make the most out of leftover bread and humble ingredients like an egg, an onion, a stalk of celery, hand crafted stock.

Slate’s Sara Dickerman explains the importance of stuffing for both the Thanksgiving table and the cook’s pride in beginning of an article from 2 years ago:

Turkeys are turkeys. Sure, you might shell out for a rare-breed heritage bird or a presalted kosher turkey. You might brine it or swaddle it in cheesecloth, but most everyone who celebrates our country's great nonsectarian holiday (vegetarians and manly turkey fryers excepted) roasts a turkey come Thanksgiving. But stuffing, or dressing as it's called in the South, is special. Equally essential to the holiday table, it's a far more expressive medium than turkey. Its bland base of bread or rice invites embellishment, both traditional and irreverent, and in dressing recipes, sausage, nuts, fruit, mushrooms, and shellfish combine in countless permutations. In contrast to the more predictable turkey, stuffing is the frisky, occasionally outlandish, personality of the holiday table.


The rest of the article continues here, but like All the Kings Men, the first paragraph tells the whole story so succinctly, so completely, that you don’t have to read on for any other purpose than pleasure.

As much as I enjoy the challenge of a good stuffing, for the last decade or so, Friend of Saucyman, Evan K has been marshaling the stuffing efforts for Thanksgivings, quite admirably too. There really aren’t recipes, more like proportions – At least 2/3 of the bread must be white bread, cut into inch squares. Onion and celery are necessities along with good rich stock. Parsley, sage and thyme (sorry Simon & Garfunkel – no rosemary) are all needed, and I think fresh rule over dried herbs.

After that any thing goes: Oysters, wild rice, rice-rice, bacon (cooked, please), nuts: pecans, walnuts and chestnuts are all common. Sausage is cool, corn bread is too, together they are great. Shallots, crab, wild mushrooms, figs, apricots, cranberries – dried or ‘fresh’; apples, ham, crawfish, pancetta, spinach, peppers, pine nuts and goat cheese can all be added in various combinations. And while raw eggs are usually added to bind and partially leaven the ingredients some cooks love adding chopped boiled eggs.

There isn’t a right or wrong recipe but there are tips to make your stuffing more better:

1. Good bread. No cellophaned, none of it no pre-wrapped, already cubed croutonish mixes with flavoring packets. You want good white bread – a pound loaf equals 6 cups of cubed bread. Buy it Saturday or Sunday, cube it yourself on Monday and leave on a sheet pan to dry out. Seriously, you think you don’t have time? I promise you really have 3 minutes to do it. and your stuffing will be better for it.
   
2. Good Stock, be it vegetable, chicken, turkey, mushroom - the better the stock the better the stuffing – remember that when you are opening a carton of broth.
3. Know what needs to be precooked like bacon and wild rice what doesn’t like ham or oysters. Most recipes are going to help you out. I like sautéing the onions before mixing all together but the celery looses its crunch by precooking it. Some of this is trial and error – some of it is good research. Consult cooks and cookbooks, like the stock the better the quality of these, the better the results will be.
4. Warm the stuffing up before filling the bird. You can do it in the microwave, oven or stovetop. If you warm to stuffing up to 160-170 before roasted the turkey, you wont be drying out the bird waiting for the stuffing to cook to a safe temperature.
   

Wee Cabbages of Love

In a wholly unscientific, casually random survey, Brussels Sprouts fared rather poorly when coworkers and customers were asked to choose their favorite Thanksgiving side dish. Garnering only 1.5 votes: Along with myself, my esteemed colleague split her vote between stuffing and Belgium’s eponymous veg. Even if they don't provoke nostalgia or hunger in most people, it just doesn't seem like Thanksgiving without Saucyland's recipe for Bacon Sprouts.

Bitter, Like My Soul

Culturally, we gravitate foods that are salty or sweet. But Brussels Sprouts, beyond being neither, are further handicapped with an extremely bitter taste. They contain high levels of glucosinolates, the sulfuric-rich family of compounds that round out the flavor of the sprout’s cousin, mustard. Glucosinolates aren't always bitter but as far as their presence in the sprouts of Brussels goes, they pretty much are. Some of the bitterness can be subdued by cooking in boiling water - as opposed to steaming, braising or roasting.

Considering all the rich, butter laden foods on the Thanksgiving table, a little bitter is a great contrast. Similar to what cranberry sauce is theoretically doing with its bitter/sweet flavors - rounding out the flavor palate, sprouts should make everything else on the plate taste a little more alive. Well, that and the presence of some dietary fiber amidst the cream, butter, pie crust and dinner rolls makes Brussels Sprouts a good choice for the holiday table.

Sprouts tend to overwhelm subtler flavors, like herbs. They need big, bold flavors that can hold up to the strong, distinct cabbage taste. I like the bacon for the job. My aforementioned colleague preferred butter and salt on sprouts, commenting they don’t need bacon. I concurred, they don’t need it, they are just better for it. I have had delicious sprouts with lemon zest and olive oil; toasted walnuts; roasted chestnuts and wild rice; but the bacon compliments the sprouts. Besides, cabbage and bacon are natural matches, they go together like NASCAR and left; like SIGG bottles and the urban under-hydrated and other various examples of two seemingly disparate items.

The recipe is for 8 small side portions.

2 pounds Brussels Sprouts
1 pound Bacon*
Optional – 1/2 cup hard cider or 1/2 cup apple cider + Tablespoon of cider vinegar

Notes- The sprouts can be blanched = partially cooked, 3 to 5 days in advance. Make sure they are cooled to room temp before storing them in a Ziploc type of bag, so they don't get steamy/smushy.

Bring 3 Qts of salted water to a boil. While the unwatched pot is coming to a boil – trim stem ends off the sprout and remove discolored or woody leaves. (1) The sprouts can be cooked whole but halfsies are easier to cook and are more forkable at the table. When the water is boiling, add sprouts and cook for 3-5 minutes, until the tip of a paring knife goes in but has a little trouble coming out. Drain and set aside.

Cut bacon into small pieces, at least 20 pieces per strip of bacon. Add to a heavy (cast iron) pan, cook over low heat for 20 minutes. You’d think higher heat would be quicker but you’d be wrong. Some things just take time. Slow and steady may not win the day but it does make for crisp bacon.

When the bacon is brown with only a little opaque/translucence left in the fat, turn heat up to medium and add sprouts. Continually stir for five minutes, add cider if you are going that way – continue stirring until all the liquids have been absorbed, adjust seasonings and serve.

* For vegetarians, substitute 1/2 pound walnuts, shelled, toasted in a 300 degree oven for 15 minutes. Warm precooked spouts in 1/3 cup of walnut oil, add toasted nuts and serve.

(1) America’s Test Kitchen reports that scoring an x on the bottom of the sprout does not aid the cooking process – on this type of thing Chris Kimball and company are at their unparalleled best. (Actually, the only time they really need to be ignored is when they try to explain how to make authentic Pad Thai in 15 minutes from ingredients purchased solely from a 7/11.)

The Children's Hour

Saucyman – After I graduated from College, I traveled for a year, returned to the states, secured a full-time job in the big city far away from my childhood home. I was applying for [Grad School], getting ready to move in with my boyfriend, yet when I came home for Thanksgiving that year, I was seated at the children's table. 24 years old and I am talking to the kids about Thomas the Train.

Last year I attended a holiday gathering, I was seated next to a 'tween', who was very polite, but we spent the meal talking about Hanna Montana. 13 years later in my life and the conversation had only grown up 4 years.

Is there an established legal age for the grownup table? – Adult Deficit Disorder

A few years ago in Saucyland, enough of our parents showed up for Thanksgiving that we were able to seat them all at a table together. The "Parents Table" was supposed to be divine retribution or at least low-level indemnification. Every time I looked over at their table to enjoy the fruits of the passive aggressive seating, the 'adults' were laughing, sharing photos or exchanging prescription drugs – they were having so much fun I tried to pull up a chair in get on the action.

Apparently, seating a bunch of people together with similar backgrounds and interests is not punishment at all, it turns out it is actually the sign of a thoughtful host. While it would be easier to use an algorithm or quasi-algebraic formula – You may be seated at the grownup’s table (GT) when your current age is 2 times greater than the average age of the children’s table - just plug the numbers in and let the math adjudicate the issue. Stating an unequivocal age -16,21,37, whatever - or placing a demographic requirement like 2 years of college of better, would really help mitigate this issue, there is no magical formula or set rules about such things.

There are two conflicting ideas at work here: First, never underestimate the importance of adult time. Second, for better or worse, children need to learn how to dine with and like adults, the best practice is actually doing it. The problem with Thanksgiving or another big formal dinner is that it is the equivalent of going from playing pick up games at the park to trying to guard Kobe Bryant – there is a difference in the level of play.

Complicating the issue is, like adults, some youngins are better conversationalists and far more interesting than their cohorts or people their parent's and grandparent's age. As disappointing as it was for you to have to talk about Hanna Montana, I’m sure your interlocutor was equally disappointed – no one over 30 really knows enough about Miley Cryus to hold a decent conversation.

It really wasn’t fair to either one of you to get put in that situation. There should have been an adult; either a parent or family friend/relative seated next to the 'tween' to help them navigate the grownup up table but it was kind of you to perform the task of the mentoring adult even if you didn’t want to. Even if all you wanted to do is kick back, drink wine, talk about adulty things; I offer this as a consolation at least you weren’t stuck next to the Uncle who quotes the most incendiary AM radio talk shows like it fact rather than opinion, now there is someone who needs an adult to teach him about conversation.

Making a List

Saucyman, If you cook all day, is there really any chance you can enjoy the Thanksgiving festivities yourself? Tired by Turkeytime.

Absolutely. You need to make 2 scant adjustments to end up with more energy than your guests who have gorged themselves into a narco tryptophan turkey buzz. The big thing you need to do as a host is have a plan - yeah the best laid plans can go astray, but making adjustments to a plan is better than not having one all. The other part of your two pronged attack is proper Oprahization.

The reason why you plan, is to take care of as much as you can before the day sneaks up on you. If you are hosting a 9 x 9 Thanksgiving; 9 guests - 9 dinner items, the first thing you want to do is write down the menu. Turkey, Gravy, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, green beans with toasted pecans, brussels sprouts, Wild Rice & wild mushrooms and pumpkin pie.

After the menu is made you want make your shopping lists. The days leading up to Thanksgiving are some of the busiest of the year in terms of dollars and foot traffic for grocery stores: Having a list, checking it twice, will save you the pain of returning to a long line. Before you go to the store, get out the cookbooks, review recipes, write down ingredients. Over estimate how much cream, eggs, butter and coffee, good coffee and you will need. (You will also need more toilet paper than you think. )

After you have your shopping list, make your Thanksgiving to-do list. Lay out the list so you can get as much done early as humanly possible, without compromising the quality of the food. All the work you can accomplish the weekend before will be paid back three fold on Thanksgiving day.

Keep the to-do list taped on the Fridge, cross out tasks as you complete them. Roughly speaking, the list for the aforementioned items would break out like this -

Saturday: The pie crust can be made and frozen. If you need cornbread for your stuffing make it now, cut into squares and refrigerate in a paper bag.

Sunday: Mix the brine, toast pecans, chopped and cook the bacon, make the cranberry sauce, mix the pumpkin pie filling together - cool it down and refrigerate all. If you are using the flour/fat mixture called roux (so much better and easier than flour thickened gravy) make it now.

Monday: Stay out of the kitchen and grocery store; possibly order pizza.

Tuesday: Clean & chop mushrooms, take the pie crust out of the freezer place in fridge, cut up the bread for the stuffing - don't buy those stale things - don't. Trim the green beans, cut the Brussels Sprouts in half, everything that gets prepped goes in a sealed ziploc bag.

Wednesday: Bake the pie, brine the turkey, steam the brussels sprouts and blanch the green beans = cook half way - cool them down and then back into the fridge. Set the table. Make a list of what needs to get done -The most stressful thing to manage on Thursday will be oven space and stovetop time go to bed knowing you are way ahead of the curve.

Visions of turkey and stuffing dancing through your head

In bed. rested, relaxed, positive visualization or Oprahization becomes important, fall asleep thinking about your Thanksgiving. And if you are going to the trouble of visualizing, you might as well visualize your dinner being successful.

Think about the Turkey going in the oven in the morning, but more importantly think about it coming out on time, crisp on the outside, moist inside. Picture it draped in foil while you calmly finish the gravy. While the turkey is still baking you can cook Wild Rice on a back burner, potatoes peeled boiled and mashed a few hours before the guests arrive - they will keep covered on the stovetop for a couple hours. Saute the mushrooms add them to the rice. The sprouts can be heated up with the bacon. The green beans/pecans will replace the turkey in the oven, turn the heat off - tell yourself easy peasey because, well, it is, you planned for it.

Think about the beer, wine or whiskey you are going to reward yourself with when you sit down. Finally, before you fall asleep - close your eyes and see yourself laughing with your friends -because you didn't frantically cram 14 hours of work in a 12 hour window, you have the energy to sit back and enjoy what you have created.

Enduring Mysteries

Saucy, Why put marshmallows on sweet potatoes, aren’t the potatoes sweet enough. Stay Puff

In addition to marshmallows, most recipes call for brown sugar or molasses too, it is sweet on sweet on sweet. Preparing a good dish is like a musical composition, you need at the very least counterbalance and melody – it all can’t just be top notes and a catchy chorus – Candied Yams, as the recipe is called, even though the dish uses sweet potatoes, is the culinary equivalent of Celine Dion singing Mother’s Day Cards, sickening sweet.

While figuring out how marshmallows ended up on top of sweet potatoes is a mystery, sweetening root vegetables like sweet potatoes/yams, rutabagas, parsnips, carrots and turnips has long been a tradition in New England and Appalachian cookery. Before fresh produce was available year-around, vegetables were prized for their keeping powers. A veg would be selected for the attributes that would help it ‘winter’ in a root cellar, thick-skinned and starchy would have won out over sweet and fragile - sugar and molasses were added during the cooking process to liven up the taste of these stored vegetables.

Marshmallows are old and unlike most of the pilgrims they are not English, rather a French confection made with the juice of the marsh mallow. The plant, commonly used in Europe since the middle ages was prized for the thickening powder of its root. Today gelatin, gum arabic and corn syrup provide most of the structure for the puffy white candy but originally, pate de guimauve, used the viscous juice from the marsh mallow plant to bind sugar and egg whites together. The mixture was then baked and cut into square or round shapes, but probably not mini sized.

Many cookbooks are willing to state candied yams with marshmallow topping is a Thanksgiving classic, none really are willing to go on record with where or when this tradition started. The Saucytorium contains volumes on the history of food in the Americas, dozens of books about food in the US and none hint at how, when, where and why the marshmallow tradition got started. USDA's National Agriculture Library has scientific studies on the elasticity of marshmallows but nothing on how they got to the top of sweet potatoes. Gastronomica - the Journal of Food and Culture; archives contain an article on the Death of Soul Food but nothing on the birth of marshmallow ladened candied yams.

Pumpkins, not sweet potatoes would have been familiar around Plymouth Rock, Virginians might have seen a little more of the tuber, although its peak production years were the decades before and after the Great Depression, not at the beginning of the Old Dominion. While sweet pies of any variety would have been familiar to English settlers in both northern and southern colonies, there isn’t a tradition of dolloping custard pies with meringue topping. Adding to the mystery of how marshmallows ended up on sweet potatoes pie, marshmallows were not mass-produced until the post war years.

If I had to guess, I would speculate recipes on the back of canned yams/sweet potatoes and the cellophane packaging of marshmallows offered recipes as a bit of marketing synergy. That reasoning does explain how marshmallows ended up in jello but it is still idle speculation, and that is the best I can do to answer your question. Editorially, though save the marshmallows for cocoa and try peel 3 pounds of sweet potatoes, cut them into 1 inch slices and bake with a cup of bourbon, a healthy pinch of salt and a stick of butter in 350 degree oven for 90 minutes or they are tender.

Keeping it Real

Saucyman, Wild Rice - people always say it’s not a real-rice. It looks like rice, it looks real, what can you tell me ?

Wild Rice, or Zizania palustris, is a distant cousin to the tropical Oryza grass – this is the plant people call real-rice, the family of rice with 10,000 or so varieties, the crop cultivated in 110 countries, whose grains are a staple food for about half the world’s population.

Saucyman hates passing judgment of what is authentic and what is spurious but in the case of Wild Rice; it is a grass like real-rice, is genetically related, like its white counterpart - it is harvested as food - so it is fair to say it is real.

Wild Rice was a pre-columbian crop in North America, the aquatic grass can still be found growing in New Jersey, Florida, Texas and isolated parts of the St. Lawrence watershed but the mother lode, specifically Northern Wild Rice, is found the Great Lakes region in the US and on the Canada side the plant grows in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba (1).

Harvesting Wild Rice is labor intensive. For about the first 10 to 12 thousand years of cultivation, the grass was harvested by paddling canoes into waterways where the top of 9-foot tall plant would be bent over the canoe - the rice was collected by raking grains from the stalk into the bottom of the canoe. In the last 40 years, cultivation has shifted to artificial paddies that are drained prior to harvest so the rice can be reaped mechanically.

After the Wild Rice is gathered, it goes through a multi-stage process to prepare it for storage. First, the kernels are matured – a process very similar to fermenting tea leaves – the rice is piled on the floor or ground where microbial growth on the surface of the grain develops flavor and weakens the tough outer husk. Next, the kernels are parched over a fire to reduce the 40% moisture content – making the rice ready for storage and imbuing the grains with a smoky, nutty flavor. Finally, the rice is husked, removing a papery envelope that surrounded the grain leaving the familiar brown, brown-green, needle shaped kernel.

Even in the kitchen Wild Rice takes a little more work - needing 75% more liquid as real-rice and taking twice as long to cook as its cousin. Because of its rather intense flavor, expense and long preparation time wild rice is often partially cooked and mixed with real-rice. The never, ever will be appropriate, cringe inducing brand, Uncle Ben’s, sells converted wild rice/real-rice pilaf that cooks in 8-10 minutes.

As tempting as the ease of prepackaged rice pilaf is, do not reach for Uncle Ben’s, the more appropriate Minnesota-based Uncle Sven’s or any other prepackaged wild rice mixes - cooking wild rice is a total back burner project - And there are better things to mix wild rice with than real-rice.

3 ½ cups water or stock
Healthy pinch of Salt
1 cup wild rice

Bring liquid to boil, add salt, stir in rice, reduce heat to medium, cover and do not look for 40 minutes. Don’t look. After 40 minutes if the rice is still nutty, add a ½ cup of liquid cover for an additional 10 minutes before removing from heat. It is done.

Mushrooms, particularly wild mushrooms, go real well with wild rice – About 8-12 oz of wild mushrooms – any mix of crimini, portabello, shiitake, chanterelles, oyster or really any mushroom that isn’t white - cooked in two tablespoons of butter then mixed with wild rice makes for a tasty dish. ½ cup cranberries cooked in a cup of white wine (the sweeter the better) for 20 minutes then added to cooked wild rice is good, especially when diced ripe pears and a tablespoon of pear brandy are tossed in to the mix. Sautéed onions are good match to wild rice, but leeks or scallions are better. Mixing Wild Rice with smoked salmon is a good option for the turkey averse. Mixing the wild rice with green beans, apples or baked squash make for better tasting sides then your standard straight from the box wild rice pilaf.

(1) Along with real-rice, a strain of Wild Rice can be found growing in China, but grains take a back seat to both the plant’s leaves, which are used as dumpling wrappers and the plant’s young shoots, which apparently taste like asparagus.

4th Thursday of November

Saucyman – Any ideas on something new, different and exciting for the Thanksgiving table? Coolly Whipped

Thanksgiving is viewed as a superior holiday in Saucyland. It is like Mardi Gras, well, except for its Thursday not Tuesday. And instead of beads and parades, it’s turkey and stuffing and those aren't thrown (generally). If not exactly an autumnal Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving is certainly analogous in spirit – while the celebration is certainly about the day – it is equally about the planning the meal, enjoying the labor that goes into making the day as well as the pleasure of the food, drink and companionship.

After hosting the big day for dozens of years and hundreds of people, I have learned, people don’t want innovation, new foods and to be culinarily challenged on Thanksgiving. Generally, the friends and family you share your holiday meal with want familiar dishes. And if you try to get too creative and inventive, you will loose you audience - even if it is the best thing you have ever cooked, getting people to try something new on a traditional day is a hard sell.

For instance, years ago I went back to the drawing board and I decided to make succotash. As in suffering succotash, as in the classic dish of New England natives featuring a combination bean, corn and usually tomatoes. Having never had a good experience with lima beans, I substituted pinto beans. I added fresh thyme, dried chilies, baked sweet potato and a little cider vinegar to cut through the taste of the beans and contrast the sweetness of the corn.

It was good, not in the narcissistic way that you think the food you cook is better than food others prepare, a term Friend of Saucyman - Keith Weber - coined as gastrocism. The dish tasted really good, a beautiful harmony of flavor and textures. And unfortunately, there are no witnesses to testify to this fact, since I was the only one who ate it. And it was a shame too because that recipe, really did take the suck out of succotash.

Cranberries are another example. Most of the time, dinner companions want something that resembles the jelled cranberry relish of their youth, if not to eat, then at least to be reminded of tradition. Over the years, different variations on cranberry relish have hit the Thanksgiving table: A friend made Susan Stamberg’s shocking pink cranberry horseradish relish, which is surprisingly good, but ultimately went the way of the succotash.

Not all of the attempts have failed. If you want cranberries to be present without cooking the back of the bag recipe there are other ways they can be represented - Cranberry sorbet has been a popularly received. A few cranberries in the stuffing/dressing keep the ingredient discretely present at the table. A nice aperitif made of cranberry juice, orange juice and vodka – (A Turkeypolitan? A Cosmogiving?) has all the familiar flavors of the holiday favorite without all avant-garde about the whole thing.

The point is with thought and planning, there are ways to take something familiar, occasionally worn to cliché/abused to mediocrity and make it new and exciting again. To help the improve, if not the day, than at least the meal, for November, Saucyman is dedicating its digital pages to making a better Thanksgiving for you and yours – with a feature called the 12 Posts of Thanksgiving. A few recipes will be sprinkled in such topics as the kids table, to brine or not to brine, turkey substitutes (Tofurkey?, how about just no turkey then), crustless pie, stuffing, wild rice and wine suggestions along with some other topics.

Sauthors: Ivy Manning

Ivy Manning’s Farm to Table Cookbook is pretty - Well designed, populated with good-looking photographs, printed on nice heavy paper. As attractive as the book is, it is the substance that keeps you coming back to its pages. Laid out in four seasonal parts, focusing on seasonal and local ingredients, Manning’s own recipes are interspersed with contributions from Northwest restaurateurs (and Saucyman favorites) Marco Shaw of Fife, Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place, and baker emeritus Lee Posey of the Pearl Bakery.

Ms. Manning took a few minutes off from working on her new, still untitled cookbook, which sometime next summer will answer the question of what to cook for the vegetarians when you invite them over for dinner, to talk to me on the phone about Farm to Table, the rigors of professional cooking and the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday.

Manning grew up in the great Midwest, fed by a 70s mom, which meant getting meals from cans and the Crock-Pot. The difference in her culinary life came on the weekends when her g-ma, Helen Zalubowski, the family cook, would let young Ivy play with pizza dough and hang out in the kitchen from the time she “eye level to the counter.”

From her early apprenticeship with her grandmother, travel and work shaped the role of food in her life. Through a study abroad program, that was either chance or fate, Manning ended up spending her junior year of high school boarding with a retired pastry – the lack of a common spoken language wasn’t a barrier to learning - hanging out in the kitchen fueled her love of food. In college there were restaurant jobs and more study abroad; this time to Florence, Italy, which isn’t food crazy in the ‘foodie’ sense, as much is good food is in the DNA of the local culture. Post college life brought her to Portland, culinary school and working in local restaurants.

Cooking professionally is a lot different from hanging out in the kitchen or loving to cook or bake at home. Odd hours, physically demanding labor, toiling beside people who use ‘pork’ as a verb; restaurants can wear a person out. After 15 years of restaurant work, Manning explained how food, which can be so boundless in terms of possibilities, isn’t quite the same when you are cooking off a menu, “If you work in a professional kitchen, there is a lot of repetitive boring work. You aren’t standing there creating things, you are making the same 5 salads, the same 5 entrées, over and over and over again…I’m not cut out for professional cooking, ”

Fortunately, Manning had an English degree and writing as her ‘plan b’. First there were restaurant reviews on Citysearch, which led to a gig at the weekly alt paper, which in turn landed her a biweekly column on ‘Vegetarian Flavors’ in the Oregonian. Along with steady work in Sunset and Cooking Light Magazines, Manning’s first cookbook was published by Sasquatch Books earlier this year.

Manning explains the concept behind, Farm to Table, The Art of Eating Locally, “The idea was, if I am a trained cook, and I go to farmers market and buy to much crap – this beautiful produce actually, not crap - and I don’t know have an idea with what to do with all this stuff - how is the average person at the market going to [cook] it?” Manning continued, “So the idea was to enlist the help of restaurant friends who also cook seasonally… and learn how to eat through the seasons, how to embrace the seasons and maybe cook things in different way and get out of the vegetable rut that people are in”. Learning to cook and eat seasonally isn’t just for rookies at farmers markets, in the course of writing Farm to Table, Manning discovered what to do with kohlrabi.

Kohlrabi, according to Manning, looks “A little bit like sputnik”. The veg is a member of the brassica/cabbage family is about the size of a golf ball on the small end, though you're more apt to find them as big a tennis ball at this time of year. Sometimes called the 'cabbage turnip' or 'German turnip', the cooked root’s taste is reminiscent of broccoli - more of the milder tasting stem than the florets. True to the plant’s heritage, Manning likes a recipe featured in the book - provided by Fearn Smith of The Farm Café - for Kohlrabi Coleslaw. It is a dish Manning noticed guys like (including her husband and the book’s photographer, Gregor Torrence), despite their preconceived notions about the taste of broccoli.

With Thanksgiving approaching, I asked what cooks of varying skill levels could make for the holiday table, Manning replied, novices or pros could easily prepare two recipes from her book: The first, is a dish Manning is now obligated to make each Thanksgiving, the “Mashed potatoes with celery root; every year that one has to be on the table”. The other dish for a novice cook is the Cranberry Chutney. “Add liquid, put in a pot in boil it. It can be made days ahead of time and it is a different take on cranberries. It features Indian spices…with all the other rich foods, the flavor cuts right through.”

Manning’s own holiday plans are possibly not what you would expect from a cookbook author, instead of trying to recreate a Marthaesque holiday, instead she will be in the Wisconsin, "hopefully on the couch watching the Packer game". Before she leaves for the motherland, you can catch her this Sunday at Wordstock. For other information on appearances and activates, check out chefivy.com.

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