Cheryl Katz

In case the Zagats ever wonder if they’ve  “made it,”  it may be reassuring to know that people are even parodying their guide styles in reference to ancient Israelite burnt offerings. 

Nextbook | God’s Zagat: Dining with the Deity has its own rules

Ideal Bite | Crazy-concerned over the PB recall?

Hey locals!  You may remember Spread from when they used to sell their handmade, organic nut butters at the Hillcrest Farmers’ Market.  Now they’ve made the big time – a thriving Internet business (and busy brick-and-mortar comfort foods restaurant, to boot!) and a mention on Ideal Bite!

We’ve tried a variety of their products and they actually are pretty much to die for.  But yay San Diego!

Whether you live in San Diego or not, if you’re interested in a free eco-tip on a daily-or-so basis, you can sign up here.

ruhlman.com: Lunch: Peanut Butter and Cabbage Sandwich.

Peanut butter and cabbage sounded weird to me at first, but I think I will try it tomorrow.  (At the very least, I could probably bust through one or two of the heads of cabbage I have around the house in a week or two.)

Ruhlman’s post got me thinking, though – I don’t have any kind of lunch traditions.  In fact, most days I don’t put any thought into it at all.  Leftover something or other, a slice of bread with something on it, the classic standby bagel with cream cheese and tomato.  One day recently I made tuna salad with yogurt, fresh pepper and a little paprika.  Nothing groundbreaking.

I’d like to make lunch a little more special.  Even just once or twice a week.  I pledge to find something to bring a little charm to an otherwise utterly perfunctory part of my midday.

Anyone out there have a lunch tradition they’d like to share – a special food or a special personal ritual they like to do that surrounds or relates to lunch?  I would love to hear it!

(Photo forthcoming.)

Yesterday was Day 2 of the failed Roast Turkey Project.  On Sunday Ben got me a full on, 15 lb organic free range sans-antibiotics frozen turkey from our favorite butcher shop.  I put it immediately into the refrigerator to begin thawing, thinking that on Monday afternoon it would be ready to roast.

Well, one thing led to another, and come roastin’ time, there is a plastic handle thingy sticking out of the butt end of this turkey, and I can’t for my life get it to come out.  (Especially not when I’m trying my hardest not to touch the turkey or anything inside it with my bare hands, but my sissy-tude is not in question at the present moment.)  I donned rubber gloves and fought and wrestled and fought some more with this godforsaken turkey, to no avail.

A quick IM conversation to  one of my many friends of exceeding culinary talent later, I am advised that under no circumstances am I to attempt to cook this turkey if it is not fully thawed.  At first I thought this was because of health concerns – and it is, but not entirely.  The concern is that if you cook the frozen inside of the turkey to a hygienic temperature, you have essentially charred the skin and outer flesh, and/or set your house on fire.  So, scratch that plan.

Instead, I used the recommended recipe: Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey.  I prepared the brine and soaked the turkey overnight in the fridge, turning once in the morning (that was a debacle, but not worth posting about.  Just know that it involved a full small load of our kitchen rags used to sop up brine on the kitchen floor, and let your imagination do the rest.  But don’t imagine a turkey on our unsanitary floor.  That part didn’t happen.)

I didn’t wind up getting it into the oven in a timely way, but it was finished cooking not too long after Sami went to bed, and boy does our house smell good.

And here’s the punch line.  I covered it and let it cool some before popping the whole covered roasting pan into the oven.  When I went to research how to carve a turkey, I noticed that all the pictures of mid-carving turkeys were like mine, but upside down.  Yes, I roasted my turkey back-up, breast-down.  *sigh*

So I let it rest, covered, in the fridge overnight, and turned it breast-up in a 500-degree oven for about 20 minutes, just to get that final crisp on the skin of the breast.  It worked just fine, even if it didn’t get out the roasting-rack wire marks from the otherwise luscious, moist skin and meat.

I got my info on how to carve from Google, here and here.  The video is just hilarious, getting the rundown of carving a turkey from the British accent just puts some extra polish on the experience.  And I relied more on the text and images (second link) because I couldn’t keep up with the video.

Now, one can say that in our family, I am the one who has the first clue about how to carve a turkey.  And I think we will give Thanksgiving a try at our house this year.  Though I don’t have *much* of a clue, I can get the job done if given enough time (and some more practice turkeys!)

On to planning my turkey stock, soup, and future turkey-based meals with probably the best roast turkey meat I’ve ever had.  Thanks for the recipe recommendation, AB!

I had every intention of roasting a turkey today, thinking that about 16 hours thawing in the fridge would be enough.

Sadly, I was wrong.  I had to ask around because there was a plastic ring-handle-thingy sticking out of the butt-end of the turkey, and I couldn’t for my life get it to budge!

It occurred to me only much, much later that it wasn’t budging because the inside of the turkey hadn’t yet thawed.  Sigh.  Thankfully a culinarily talented friend admonished me in no uncertain terms that this turkey should be thawed completely before cooking.  I had visions of salmonella poisoning and the like, but in reality I bet it was because in order to cook the inside to a safe temperature, the outside would have had to wind up charred beyond recognition.

So instead, on Alex B’s recommendation, I am using more or less this recipe, and the turkey is brining in the fridge as we speak.

I went ahead and roasted anyway the potatoes and onions that had been slated to roast WITH the turkey, and I added some sesame oil and a little cumin since there was to be no turkey fat or turkey seasoning in the pan.  They turned out excellent nonetheless, and went well with the leftover chicken-garlic creation from last week.  (Anything that contained 10 heads of garlic, as did that dish, has no excuse but to be downright delicious, and it didn’t disappoint.)  This was the final appearance of those leftovers.

I also baked cookies!  I made Melting Moments, a cookie of which I’d never heard before but sounded irresistable to me.  They turned out all right.  I’ve never made them before, and I’m not sure that I’ve even had one before, so I may be disappointed for nothing.  They tasted wonderful.  I just wasn’t excited about how the crust of the cookie turned out.  Chalk it up to my food texture peccadillos, I suppose.  I’m happy to report that both Ben and Sami begged for seconds, so they couldn’t have been half bad.

And, to not send you home empty handed, here’s a picture of the cookies.  It’s not a glamour shot, but they do look edible.  Lucky San Diegans might get to try one, depending on who you are and whether or not you’re already in my calendar. 

Since I had all that butter-laden tart crust in my fridge unused with our roast chicken dinner Monday night; and with tarte tatin out of the question because of no more apples because I caramelized them beyond recognition, I bust out my kitchen-fu and made a strawberry tart instead.

The recipe I used came from The Kitchen Sink, and is called Rustic Strawberry Tart.  Please note that I didn’t use the crust recipe, and I also didn’t exactly follow the tart filling recipe.  It served as more like inspiration.

Above is the pre-baking shot.  I basically licked my fingers thoroughly after the tart was assembled and baking – the crust batter is scrumptious, and who doesn’t love the goo of fresh strawberries + sugar?

Here’s what it looked like post-bake:  not altogether different, but now with more integrity!  It was mountains of yum.

The Minimalist – The Latest Must-Haves for the Pantry – NYTimes.com

With this Mark Bittman column in mind, when I was sniffling and stuffy and looking for lunch one afternoon this week, I put my hands up and backed away slowly from the nearly stale sandwich bread.  I instead decided to dip into our larder and put something together nearly as yummy as I could muster, and here is what I came up with.

I started out by chopping a carrot, onion and celery and simmering them in a pot of water with a dash of salt for a while.  Once the water looked and smelled more like broth and less like veggie-tainted water, but before the carrots had lost their integrity entirely, I sauteed a bunch of de-stemmed kale in a little bit of olive oil and garlic, and tossed them into the pot.  When the kale approached the tender-yet-structurally-respectable state I like for my soups, I tossed in a can of rinsed chickpeas.

I don’t think the whole thing took more than 20 or 30 minutes to make – about as long as it would have taken me to decide between a sandwich or a salad if I’d gone the lazy route – and the soup was GOOD!  I transferred leftovers to individual portion containers, two in the fridge (they’ve since been eaten, and may I just say YUM) and a handful in the freezer for future sniffle-rific days.

And of course I am proud to have a completely home made, fresh and (mostly) local lunch.  My great-grandma probably wouldn’t be proud, but I’d pass the basic household skills test.

Pictured is a kale-heavy bowl. I like me some kale, ok?

Buenos dias, damas y caballeros!

For those who don’t know, Ben and I have taken a very brave trip to Peru with Sami in tow. We’re having a great time, eating well, and haven’t succumbed to elevation sickness (thus far) after our journey from Lima to Arequipa today. And our español is getting a very good workout.

We’re not spending a ton of time online, but I’m uploading pictures as often as I can. If you want to see snapshots of what we’ve been up to, you can find them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cinediva

What? You want them to have Titles and Captions? Tough luck I’ll get to those when I can. Until then, comment away and discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll try to fill in the gaps later.

Please feel free to share with anyone who may be interested!

BBC NEWS | Americas | 106-year-old voter chooses Obama.

This is as close as we’ll get to a confirmation of the divine endorsement Obama (“the One”) has seemed to have.

OK, well actually it just made me smile.  Yay voting!  (Especially for Obama.)