TGivin', come and gone

This is part one of the Petro family Thanksgiving. This year, it's a week-long adventure in one house, during which thirteen members of the family eat, sleep and play together. Like a Thanksgiving camp, if you will.


Oh, the only time of year I truly wait for. And actually, once Thanksgiving is over, what's left of the year? My scrooge-y side comes out in anticipation of Christmas, the presents and the pressures. At least there are the food and family memories of Thanksgiving carrying over into the terrible rush of December.

This year we spent Thanksgiving at my parents' house in Maryland. I was a little sad about not having another warm and sunny holiday in southern California, but after arriving to an unlikely and mild 60 degrees in Appalachia, I unpacked my shades and bikini.

Kidding. At least we could wear t-shirts and still have warm arms.

We started the holiday week early this year, and by the Monday before Thanksgiving most of the extended family had already arrived. Impressed? I don't know that many families who take it as seriously as we do. If we didn't all get there in ample time before the actual Thursday, everything would be thrown off entirely and Thanksgiving could disappear in the dark mist. Something like that.

Pre-game: Making the giant list for food shopping is actually a fun event for us. We strategize, whilst sipping rum and Coke. Fancy, it is. After a trip to the grocery store for meal #1, the fridge was already packed tight. We started an area in the garage for overflow.


And Dad set up the brand-new turkey fryer.

We all expressed concern over this monstrous electric-potential-fire-disaster, but at the same time, all were intrigued by the golden, crispy, juicy possibilities. My journalist friend, Angie, sent me safety tips after having written numerous news articles about Thanksgiving fires caused by turkey fryers.

Where would we fry the turkey? Outdoors was the vote, but Dad, who is the tallest and eldest, decided on the garage.

Okay.

Some eating highlights before the big day round up as follows:

- Auntie Merribeth's spaghetti and meatballs with cousin Mike's garlic bread
- Fish tacos with Uncle Andy's rice and beans
- Christine's Butternut Squash Soup



By Wednesday, we had already eaten to the point of having to roll from point A to B. Where was the time for exercise when we had desserts to plan and card games to play? Thus, the night of butternut squash soup. This recipe can be adjusted to behold a nice, spicy kick if you're feeling dangerously squashy. It has been adapted from several like recipes.

Butternut Squash Soup

1-2 Butternut squash, depending on the size of your crowd
Vegetable broth, heated
Heavy cream or milk
Nutmeg, ground
Honey
Fresh thyme
Cinnamon, ground
Cayenne pepper, ground

1. Peel, seed and cube the squash. Boil until soft in large pot.

2. Puree squash in batches in food processor or blender with vegetable broth, adding just a little heavy cream or milk as you go. Return puree to pot.

3. To taste, add nutmeg, thyme, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and honey to the puree. The more cayenne, the better the spicy bite! Keep to a simmer, letting the spices meld to the squash puree.

4. Adjust spices as necessary. When tasty, serve!

More food and fun to follow. We're only up to the night before Thanksgiving!

Sardinian Sanguinaccio

Enjoy this edge-of-your-seat guest post from fellow foodie and author, Joe Dunthorne. And look out for his first novel, Submarine, available in the U.S. from Random House this spring!

Sebastiano tells me, in tentative English, that the next course is going to be a surprise. Then, turning to the other guests, a young Italian family, he describes the cooking process in mellifluous Italian. I watch his hand movements for clues: his arm stirs the air, he makes a crumbling action with his finger tips, he draws his hand down his own chest as though unzipping a jacket. The family coo and nod.

Sebastiano looks lupine, I think: his long arms covered in wiry black hair, his fine, arched nose and a pack-hunter’s poise to his mannerisms. Although I understand very little of what he is saying, there is one word that sticks out: “Coaguli.”

When Sebastiano disappears in to the kitchen, the mother of the Italian family looks adoringly at me – as if I am a charming idiot. She has seen me eating pistachio nuts on the terrace and thinks this is the limit of my culinary appreciation.

Sebastiano returns with two very large bowls of hot slightly-lumpy soup. The smell is subtle and familiar. It’s the colour of raspberry jam.

He places the bowls in the middle of the table. My first guess is that we have been presented with pots of steaming blood.

Leading by example, the youngest son of the family – a nine-year-old boy who always takes a glass of grappa with his meal – digs in first, spreading the thick liquid on to a piece of flat bread.

Sebastiano still thinks I have no idea. He thinks I am expecting Heinz Tomato Soup.

Watching the boy take a bite, I see a dribble of gore run down his chin. Soon enough, the whole family are tucking in. Ruby-coloured stains, like badly-applied lipstick, all around their mouths. The napkins are making me think of the last time I had a nosebleed.

I think this must be blood. It looks like blood. It smells like blood. It’s the colour of blood. It’s blood.

I remind myself that, firstly, I came to Sardinia with just this sort of anecdote-friendly gourmandism in mind. And that, secondly, I adore black pudding.

Drifting in to a mental state of perfect calm and total disengagement, I spoon the blood on to the flat bread. I am slightly disturbed by the lumps, I might even call them clots. I try to remain Zen-like, distanced, watching myself through the eyes of the elk’s head mounted on the wall.

I see that Sebastiano is watching me too: eager – smiling – his teeth stained red.

Since I have loved every thing Sebastiano has cooked so far, and since I have little or no choice in the matter, I take a faux-confident bite. I expect my eyes to roll back, fangs to replace my incisors and hair to sprout on the the palms of my hand. Instead, there is the recognisably rich but subtle flavour of – yes – blood, but also onion (the lumps) and mint.

I have to take a few bites before I can really decide whether I like it or not. Sebastiano watches for my reaction. I smile at him. I imagine the blood on my teeth. He is pleased.

As I relax in to the idea of eating blood, a memory returns to me. I remember, at school, the time when I cut my finger on the point of a compass. All the other kids got lollipops as they walked home, while I sucked on my index finger.

Once the sanguinaccio is finished, the youngest son draws a smiley face in blood on his plate. Sebastiano tells me that he also crumbles his home-made pecorino in to the mix. The blood had come from one of his own lambs. The word Sanguinaccio translates literally as Bad Blood.

I later learned that it is now illegal for blood to be sold in butchers. The blood has to be very fresh – eaten within twenty-four hours – so they only way to guarantee freshness is to kill the animal yourself.

The other great Sardinian delicacy is named Casu Marzu – known locally as Maggot Cheese: a kind of pecorino where fly larvae have been deliberately introduced. The cheese moves beyond fermentation towards decomposition. The digestive action of the larvae breaks down the cheese fats, leaving a very soft texture, liquid in parts. Depending on their bravery, Sardinians eat the cheese with or without the accompanying white worms. Wikipedia notes that the worms can jump up to fifteen centimetres in the air. Eye protection is advised.

With love and spice, from Korea

A food story from my sister, who is teaching English in Korea this year. While reading this, you'll feel your tastebuds burning with heat. And you will laugh, too.

Dear Christine,

When we went to Gyeongju, on holiday, we ate at a restaurant that was something of a shack. The woman that owned it was rambunctious; she ordered us all in (we might have been one of her only customers for the night). We sat down, we tried to order, but she told us what she was making. She told us it would be hot, and she wasn't exaggerating on that one: IT WAS THE HOTTEST FOOD THAT I'VE EVER EATEN!

It was a red noodle dish. The sides were interesting: slightly pickled cabbage and sausage, and old, old kimchi - which can be normal - the older the kimchi, some believe, the better. We drank makgeli, a fermented rice wine, which is normally good, but this might have been old; we felt ourselves grow increasingly drunk on both the spice and the wine. My mouth was on fire, Kristin looked like she might pass out, Anthony was trying to play tough guy, and somehow Todd and John ate the whole bowl of unidentifiable hot stuff.

The owner kept coming over to us and laughing that we thought it was too hot. She told me to eat faster, to eat it all. We kept asking for water, and she kept laughing, but obliging our wishes. She asked us if we minded the television, we said "no." John asked if she had music since there was a boom box on the table behind us. She turned on Trott Music, Korean music with incredible precision, and she danced. We all danced and clapped our hands. I danced with her, she laughed her laugh.

When we were leaving I told her it was very good, but too spicy, and she told me if I thought that it was good that I would have eaten it. (Anthony translated for me). The next morning I felt terrible.

That was the most severe and strange of our eating experiences.

Love from Korea,
Teresa

Campin' Out

Camping can have a varied food effect.




For example, above is the effect mid-hike after reaching a scenic view, pausing for some PB&J, trail mix, and power bars ... and fruit, and cheese and crackers. And cookies. Campers become napping turtle-people, sunning on a large rock.

Trish had orchestrated a rather impressive camping adventure of 11 people, with both a Philly and a NYC group convening in the wilds of just-outside-of-NYC in Harriman Park.

This event created a food challenge. Camp food forces the cook to reach a new state of simplicity. Every ingredient, method of preparation and cooking utensil must be considered ahead of time. This is hard for me. I enjoy complicated and spontaneous cooking - experimenting for large groups of people with new recipes that have multiple stages of preparation and if possible, hard to find and somewhat mysterious ingredients. Food is flung around the kitchen in a fluster, and everything comes flying out of the cupboard in a time-sensitive search for the springform pan. This is the fun of cooking - doing it in a slight disaster area. Camp cooking, however, needs an uncluttered frame of mind. A strategic approach, if you will.

A good s'more, for instance, requires perfect timing. This is very important or you end up with a nicely toasted marshmallow sandwiched between grahams with a chunk of hard, cold chocolate. We did a fair amount of s'more trial and error on this trip. On the second night, we got it. The bottom layer of graham and chocolate must be warmed and ready to go at the same time that the marshmallow has been toasted to bulging, internally gooey perfection. If you are like Erin and myself, you just want a s'more right away and will do almost anything to get it. You will hover excitedly with marshmallow-on-stick, waiting for the fire to start. But we all became willing to time each element right and eat bare marshmallows in the desperate intervals. The s'more instructions are below.

As far as the actual sustenance, we go beyond s'mores. (Though, I admit nothing is truly beyond the S'more). I don't know where the thought "big pot of chili" came from. I had a sudden vision of warm, big bowls of ... stuff... being eaten by chilled, but happy people circled 'round the campfire. Working my way backwards from that vision, I came up with a way to do camp chili. I think we got it on the first go-round. All it really took was a giant pot, several ziploc freezer bags of diced onions and peppers, crushed tomatoes, beans and rice, and a baggie of various herbs and spices. And, uh, reaching into the cooler for a beer every now and then to add some more liquid to the pot when necessary.




I think people were happy with the outcome.

Now, it is true this was not the kind of meal you could prepare on a true roughin' it type of trip. My camp food skills have not yet evolved to there. We had a grate on the fire, could lug the big pot in our car and bags of ingredients in the cooler. But the meal totally worked for a large group of friends who drove out of the big city for a weekend in the cool and pretty, late-summer woods.


The Best S'more

Marshmallows (lots)
Graham crackers (lots)
Chocolate (lots)

1) Put on headlamp. Find s'more sticks.
2) Make assembly line of all ingredients.
3) Put bottom graham cracker/s and chocolate in pan over fire (not too close) to gradually warm.
4) Begin toasting marshmallow a minute or so later.
5) Get bottom layer of graham and chocolate from pan, place marshmallow on top, and add top layer of graham.
6) Eat best s'more ever.
7) Make another one. Use headlamp to check for inevitable chocolate on face, arms, lap.

Camp Chili

4 cans of beans, multiple varieties (e.g. black, kidney, garbanzo, white)
3 can of crushed tomatoes and their juices
1/2 a bag of rice
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 sweet onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 sack of mysterious spices (e.g. chili powder, thyme, basil, oregano, crushed red pepper, salt, pepper)
4-6 cans of beer

1) Put all ingredients in separate ziploc freezer bags (bag of diced vegetables, bag of tomato, bag of beans, etc
2) Pack all camping gear
3) Arrive at campsite and build fire with friends
4) Get out big (giant) pot with lid
5) Saute onions, peppers, and garlic
6) Add 1/2 of spice sack and saute a few minutes more
7) Add tomatoes, rice, the rest of spice sack and 1-2 cans of beer. Put lid on pot and cook, stirring occasionally until rice is done. Add more beer when necessary.When
8) When rice is done, add beans and additional beer as necessary. Cook until beans are hot and add additional seasoning as desired.
9) Scoop into mess kits, add cheese and crumbled chips.

Food Hiatus

Even food-blogs need to go on vacation sometimes.

Plum-Apricot-Nectarine-Blueberry-Peach Lavender Crumble

One evening Marvelous M and Super C invited a goat for dinner.

The two were unsure as to what a goat would like to eat, but decided to play it by ear. Marvelous M had just gone to the Morningside Heights farmer's market that day and returned with pints of little yellow, orange and red cherry, grape and pear tomatoes, and a few verdant zuchinni and bright yellow squash. A fresh bunch of earthy smelling basil was her brilliant after thought.

Marvelous M and Super C put together a simple pasta of the colorful tomatoes and basil with marinated artichoke hearts and fresh parmesan on top. The squash and zuchinni they sauteed in a white wine vinegar of rosemary, thyme and lavender.

All was merry, all was in season. The chefs drank wine together with the goat and had interesting conversation.

And then they brought out the fruit crumble.

The goat gasped with delight.

For they had done it - fruit crumble was his favorite dish.

The special thing about this fruit crumble was that it had not one or two, but a multitude of pitted fruits and berries. Italian plums, apricots, nectarines, blueberries and peaches filled the dish beneath a crust of brown sugar and a European chefs' high-quality cooking butter. A thick and oozing syrup of golden orange and muted purple fruit juices bubbled beneath the decadent topping.

The trio dished their servings. They ate. They were overjoyed.

And there was one more surprise.

"Delicious. What is that delightfully aromatic flavor floating just above the sweet fruits and melting crumble?" the goat wondered out loud.

"It's lavender!" both Marvelous and Super shouted triumphantly, for they had made the goat happy.



What's in season - August:

Tomatoes
Basil
Squash
Plums
Nectarines
Blueberries
Peaches

Specialty Ingredient:

Culinary Lavender*

*Note: can be found in specialty gourmet stores, sometimes your local grocery store in the spice aisle, or can be ordered online

Red Hook Ballfields

I rode bikes with Ryan W. down into Red Hook on a recent muggy-hot Saturday. From under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, past the old factories, down the pot-holed streets and through somewhat dilapated housing, a magical land of white and blue canopies on the edge of a soccer field comes into view. Griddles and coolers are everywhere. Hotness and sweat. People, kids, birthday parties, balloons. Spanish chatter. Serious soccer game. Simple and amazing food. It looks like a giant family picnic, but the good news is that everyone is invited.

This is the kind of food experience that requires a little bit of orientation. It looks slightly chaotic with people in lines and not in lines. Every tent seems to be a different Latin American country. We decided to visit the El Salvador canopy, which was by far the most popular-looking, as determined by the long line. There was a forever wait under the canopy with the hot griddles blowing smoke and toasting our already sweaty and hungry selves. A small, fleeting suffering to pay for the comestibles. Plus the women preparing and cooking the food were unquestionably twenty times more hot than we were. Ryan made the genius move of getting a mango-on-a-stick to share for the line waiting. The ripest, sweetest mango I've ever had in this town. For $7 (both of us) we shared queso and jalapeno pupusas - the fried corncakes of El Salvador - with salsa and pickled cabbage on the side, and a sweet pile of platanos with frijoles and cream. One dollar for a sweetly chilled Coco helado on the way out and life has never been better.

The vendors have been at the ballfields every Saturday and Sunday for a long time - the one we went to, since 1990. After excitedly telling some friends about this food mecca, I heard numerous casual rumors that the vendors would be forced to leave if not in compliance with NYC Department of Health. If this happened, something very good about Brooklyn would be gone. Like the rug suddenly ripped out from beneath. The only thing I can do is to go back again this weekend, get the grilled corn, some empanadas and share the love with my friends.

Red Hook Ballfields
Clinton and Bay Streets
Red Hook, Brooklyn