I love you and your book Sunday Suppers at Lucques. It’s the book I go to when I want to dazzle, when I want to blow my guests out of the water. On Friday, my guest would be none other than Lauren, a great friend and former roommate who was there at the dawn of my website: she knew me when “uh oh” was a more common cooking exclamation than “a-ha.” This would be the first time I’d cook for her in three years, years in which my cooking has improved immeasurably. I wanted to knock her socks off and so I turned to your book.
The recipe I went for was the “Spiced Pork Stew with Polenta, Root Vegetables, and Gremolata.” I decided to nix the root vegetables and gremolata and focus on the pork: Lauren is a big fan of chili and I wanted this to be a kind-of highbrow chili experience. Well not highbrow, necessarily, just impressive. And I know it’s not really that chili-like, but slow-cooked pork shoulder with coriander seeds, cumin seeds and fennel seeds should please any chili-lover, shouldn’t it?
The plan was for my usual roast chicken (which, by the way, you should only salt until it has a light coating: those who said it was too salty took my recipe too literally!) but then, as I was standing there in the grocery store, I spotted collard greens.
“My, my,” I said to myself in a Southern accent. “It’s been a long time since we here attempted fried chicken.” (You may remember that was a disaster). “And I done never cooked collard greens before. Why, I see a mighty fine supper in my future.”
Attached you will find a PDF file that’ll either inspire great terror or great awe. It’s a massive document, with all the recipes broken down over the days I’m home to cook. My only fear, right now, is too much sweet stuff: I may need to add mashed potatoes. But, alas, it is 1:06 AM and I must pack for my flight tomorrow. Will I survive this year’s Thanksgiving? Will I crumble and fail? Tune in next week as I blog the whole experience…. until then, have a great weekend!
[Note: you’ll see on the menu I say I’m doing Alton’s brined turkey, but at the last minute I switched to a cider brined turkey from Epicurious. Feel free to discuss.]
This year, I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner for sixteen people. Let me say that again. This year, I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner for sixteen people. Pardon my French, but holy s**t what the f**k am I thinking?
Sorry for cursing (do you say cursing or cussing? I say cursing) but this is a bit scary. Last year was the first time I ever cooked a Thanksgiving dinner (remember?) and this year the guests have TRIPLED. It’s as if I wrote a book on food or something and all of a sudden people expect me to know what I’m doing. Hello! Did you read the title? Amateur Gourmet… not Competent Gourmet. Not “Cooks For 16 People” Gourmet.
Ok, ok, so it’s not all that bad. I leave for Florida on Saturday (this dinner will take place in Boca Raton, where my parents live) and I have five whole days to get things ready before the big night on Thursday. I’m already coordinating a game plan, a carefully scheduled program that I plan to follow to the letter in order to get things done ahead of time. When I finish it, I’ll post it as a PDF to the site: it’ll have a full menu and all the recipes typed out. My strategy is to do as much ahead as possible so that the only thing I’ll have to do on Thursday is cook the turkey, heat up the soup and side dishes and prepare a salad.
In anticipation of all this, I’ve started testing recipes here in Brooklyn to see how they’ll fare next week. Tonight I share with you my conclusions and seek your feedback on my plan thus far.
Of all the dishes in my repertoire, this is the one that gets the biggest wows, the one that Craig requests the most often, the one that never fails to impress: it’s the roast chicken from the Chez Panisse cookbook with a few touches of my own (namely: potatoes and garlic). This video will show you how easy it is and then, after the jump, I’ll post a recipe and a few more tips.
In the Chelsea Market, on 9th Ave., there’s an Italian goods store that features rows upon rows of imported treasures from Italy. There you’ll find salt-packed anchovies, genuine San Marzano tomatoes, even white truffles for several hundred dollars a pop. Every time I go in there, I marvel at the goods and then I leave empty-handed: I never know what to buy.
Recently, though, I was determined to buy something. I toured around the store and there, in the back corner near the meat counter, I spotted it: real, Italian polenta. When I say “real” polenta I mean not instant polenta. Everywhere else I’ve ever bought polenta–Key Foods, Whole Foods, Union Market–only sells instant. I wanted to experience the real deal, the kind that cooks for 45 minutes. And so I left the Italian goods store with not one but two packs of genuine Italian polenta.
I wish now to describe to you the difference between instant polenta and “real polenta.” If this were the SATs, it would go something like this:
1. Instant polenta is to regular polenta as…
(a) Care Bears are to polar bears;
(b) sitting in a massage chair at the Sharper Image is to spending a week at an Arizona spa;
(c) table for 1 at the IHOP is to table for 20 at The French Laundry.
(d) All of the Above.
The answer is D and if you haven’t yet made REAL polenta at home you get a D in my book. It’s such a shocking thing–it’s so much creamier, sultrier, sexier than instant polenta, I feel like a polenta virgin who just spent a night with Sofia Loren in a bordello. What? I don’t know. Polenta power!
So the dish you see above is polenta for breakfast. It comes from Lidia Bastiniach’s book “Lidia’s Family Table” and it’s as hardy a breakfast as you could want, especially as the weather gets colder. You cook the polenta for 40 minutes with 5 cups water to 1 cup polenta and a pinch of salt, plus a few bay leaves. Lidia has you stream the polenta into the water when it’s cold, whisking all the way, and then turn on the heat–I’m not sure what that does, but it certainly produced excellent polenta. You must stir as it goes–every few minutes or so–or it’ll stick.
Once it’s cooked through, you add a cup or two of grated Parmesan (yum!) and half a stick of butter (double yum!) And here’s the real smacker (smacker? Adam what kind of word is smacker?): once in the bowl, put an egg yolk on top and the residual heat will cook it. Grate over more cheese, some pepper too and you have a breakfast of champions. Italian champions. Like Rocky—cue Rocky music.
If you want polenta for dinner, do as Alice Waters says to do in her new book “The Art of Simple Food.” Get a baking dish, layer in polenta, tomato sauce, fresh mozarella, and Parmesan and make a polenta lasagna. Bake in the oven til golden brown on top, like here except this didn’t get really gold:
But what a dinner. Diana came over that night (remember Diana? She was my old roommate) and all three of us dug in with abandon. It was messy–it was hard to make pretty on the plate–but it was oh so good.
And so, I hope I have convinced you of the power of polenta. Real polenta, not that mamby pamby instant kind. If you’re going to make polenta, make the real thing. It’s worth it.
“This is a coup,” said Craig, eagerly chewing a caramelized, spicy, salty, and sweet Brussels Sprout. “This could get kids eating Brussels sprouts all over the country.”
The recipe comes from superstar chef David Chang and it’s a knock-out. It’s a knock-out at his restaurant and it’s a knock-out at home. The components marry in such a way that you’ll start tap-dancing up your wall and moon-walk across the ceiling. I skipped the Rice Krispies bit because I couldn’t find Japanese five-spice powder, but it still came out fantastic.
The recipe was printed in last month’s Gourmet and you can read it online here. I also tried his recipe for the apple salad with bacon but that didn’t fare as well. The bacon I used–which actually wasn’t bacon at all, but a D’Artagnan cured pork belly that I sliced into my own lardons–didn’t produce enough fat to make the dressing. But the peanuts were a tasty snack later. And honestly, if you make a ton of those Brussels Sprouts no one will want anything else. They’re a meal–a feast–unto themselves.
