Archive for December, 2008

Holidays in Quebec (recipe here…)

Technorati: Food | photo | kevin d weeks | seriously good | tourtierre

Christmas Dinner

My parents won’t drive at night, so if I want to have them over to my place for a meal it has to be lunch and on most holidays I end up going to their house. That’s fine except it usually means I can only cook one or two things and they either have to be transportable or simple enough to prepare in an hour. So when I learned my sister was coming down for Christmas I insisted we have Christmas dinner here – driving at night isn’t a problem for her so she could bring the folks.

We began our meal with champagne, a smoked trout and cheese spread, and a mushroom pâte my mother had made — and we opened gifts. It was a significantly bookish year gift-wise. But given we’re all fanatic readers that worked. (Dad gave me Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Meat, which has been on my list for ages.) Then we had Christmas dinner.

Like everyone else, money is really tight for me right now so roast goose or prime rib were out.

Like everyone else, money is really tight for me right now so roast goose or prime rib were out. But this wasn’t a huge problem as I’ve been wanting to make a traditional French Canadian (Quebecois) Christmas dish — Toutièrre. This is a savory meat pie made of pork and beef and it’s not only extraordinarily good, but as you can see in the photo above it makes an impressive, albeit rustic, presentation.
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Merry Christmas!

Taking a Break

As much as I love experimenting with new dishes and variations on older dishes, sometimes I get burned out on the entire process. During the past two months I’ve prepared 2 1/2 Thanksgiving dinners and two Christmas dinners for various articles. And I have one more Christmas dinner to make for my family. This intense focus on on cooking as business means that sometimes cooking, and even eating, just becomes a chore. More work than fun, more duty than pleasure. Unfortunately this condition is a form of apathy and the trouble with apathy is you don’t feel like doing anything about it.

This intense focus on on cooking as business means that sometimes cooking, and even eating, just becomes a chore.

When these moods come upon me I turn to old standbys. These are often also comfort foods, but their purpose in this case isn’t to provide comfort, but rather to provide a good meal requiring little or no thought — a homemade equivalent of fast food. One of my standbys is lasagna.

This works because I usually have almost everything I need to make a simple and satisfying lasagna on hand — noodles, mozzarella, Parmigiano, eggs, Italian sausage, and even tomato sauce in the freezer. I don’t usually have ricotta in the fridge, but that’s a very quick trip to the store. It takes me about 45 minutes to make from the time the pasta water goes on the stove until the completed dish goes in the oven.
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Early Genius – Holiday Pork

I was nine or 10 when I got the assignment: make sausage balls. I suspect I brought it on myself. My memory from so long ago is fuzzy but I seem to recall lobbying my mother to make them one Christmas (she must have made them the previous year) and, as she was wont to do, her response was, “If you want them, you make them.”

You know the things I’m talking about, country sausage, cheddar cheese, and Bisquik mixed together, rolled into balls, and baked. The perfect task for a nine-year-old cook. So I made them and when we had our annual Christmas Day open house my sausage balls were part of the spread. Woohoo! I not only got to make them and eat them but I got to show them off to all the adults!

My job, my Christmas calling, was to make sausage balls.

Well…. From that day on I was the sausage ball king. As the years passed and my cooking skills improved I’d contribute other things to the Christmas open house menu, but my job, my Christmas calling, was to make sausage balls. And I did, every year until I left home.
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A few days ago I received an offer to purchase unpasteurized milk for my pets from a local organic farm. For $103 I’d receive a gallon of raw milk once a week for 12 weeks. I’ll save you the trouble of doing the math: that’s $8.58 a gallon. I’m really fond of my cat, but not $8.58-a-week fond. Which is why I’m pretty sure this offer is an end-run around Tennessee’s laws preventing the sale of raw milk for human consumption.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | raw milk