Tarte

Today's baking project...

Feliz Navidad - Mole pt. 3

The day of reckoning. I've got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Honestly, it wouldn't have gotten done without a lot of help from LP and DS. Many thanks...

First, blend up the chocolate, nut, seed, and bread mixture with a little turkey stock into one sauce. Then, blend the dried and fried chiles and a bit of stock into a second sauce.


Second, brown the turkey in lard.


Third, in reserved lard, warm, darken, and thicken chile sauce before adding chocolate mixture. Finally, add 5 cups stock, and simmer for about an hour.

Fourth, bake the turkey, covered in the finished sauce, in a roasting pan. Then, after baked, pull meat out of sauce, cool, remove skin and debone.


Finally, place the deboned turkey in serving dish, pour sauce over, sprinkle with sesame seeds, garnish with a little cilantro, and serve with rice and tortillas.


CC (from The Devouring Woman) and her father made a tortilla soup, and BC made a tres leches cake. We had Negro Modello and Tequilla Rickeys to drink.


All in all, a fantastic Christmas meal with good friends...

Feliz Navidad - Mole pt. 2

My plan is to combine days 2 and 3 together, leaving day 4 on it's own so that Christmas day isn't too crazy. To make a long story short, it doesn't happen...

Day 2 calls for cutting up the turkey and making the stock. Seems simple enough... While the stock is simmering, I can complete day 3's tasks (finish the sauce, brown the turkey in lard and bake it, etc). Except that the I need the stock to make the sauce. What was I thinking? Why didn't I read the recipe in full?

So, this morning, Christmas morning, I am starting early. The dried, lard fried peppers are reconstituting, the stock is ready, and I'm prepared to cook the meat.

Wish me luck.

Here's a few pics of the bird and stock (thanks, CG, for the new cleaver!!)

Feliz Navidad - Mole pt. 1

I'm making mole for Christmas dinner this year. I'm using Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican for the recipe, which is WAY too long and involved to copy here. I'll try to paraphrase for you, offering figures and illustrations where necessary...

Rick says you can complete the whole task in 7 hours from start to finish in one day, but that if you spread it over 4 days, the flavors are allowed to develop more fully, and it is less stress on the home cook. I'm tweaking his days a little, but it will be spread from Saturday, December 22 to Tuesday, December 25.

Bayless says "Day 1 - Assemble the ingredients and compete the toasting/frying" portiong of the recipe. I spend day 1 assmebling the ingredients and day 2 on the toasting and frying...

Saturday, the 22nd: I hit New Seasons first, and find most of what I need. I know I want to buy the lard from Viande. In addition, NS dosen't have the chiles mulatos I need. On my way downtown, I check Jesusito Market on N Interstate, Whole Foods in the Pearl, and Fred Meyer NW for the missing peppers. No dice. I arrive at City Market in the NW for the lard, and I hope they might have the peppers, but they don't.

I meet CC for lunch at Russell St BBQ, and she suggests checking for the peppers at Don Pancho carniceria on Alberta. Sure enough, they have what I am looking for.

Task 1 - Assemble the Ingredients - Check!

Sunday the 23rd: I start by measuring out all the ingredients, cuting, slicing, and chopping where necessary...


Next come the peppers. I have to stem, seed, and devein the dried chiles. That's 28 peppers. Takes a while, but I finally get them done.


Next, I toast the seeds (sesame, chile, and coriander).

Then the frying starts. I plop a generous portion of lard into my great grandmother's cast iron skillet and get to work. Peppers, almonds, raisins, onions, garlic, one by one, all adding amazing aromas to my house...


Then, I fry up a corn tortilla and some stale bread, and add all of the above (expect for the peppers) to a can of drained whole tomates and broken up Mexican chocolate.

Tomorrow? Deconstruct a turkey, turkey stock, soaking peppers, finishing sauce, and cooking turkey. Stay tuned...

My new cheese cave...

As some of you know, I worked the harvest at Ch. Coupe-Roses in France this past September. I spent two amazing weeks in the town a La Caunette, and I've put some pictures way down below, as (unfortunately) my trip isn't really the point of this post...

Everyone knows the French motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité," right? While there, I learned the motto of the French table, "Pain, Vin, Fromage." We consumed this trilogy at nearly every meal (we substituted cafe for vin at petite dejunnier).

And for the cheese, my hosts had a fantastic little cheese cave in their fridge. I shit you not, it was a Tupperware brand "Cave a Fromage." I love cheese, and I wanted one of these, but instead of carrying it back with me, I decided to track it down once back in the states. You know, we have Tupperware here too...

Or so I thought. After an exhaustive search of the web and stores as well as e-mails and phone calls to Tupperware, I realized I was in trouble. Not only weren't these sold in America, they couldn't even ship to me. I found a few on French e-bay, but with the shipping and exchange rate, the price was out of control.

And then it dawned on me, CG's folks were heading to France the following week. Could they be persuaded to bring one home to me? After a few e-mails, they agreed. Then in late November, the cheese caves (yes plural) arrived. One small and one large. These are Tefal brand, not Tupperware, but I'm not complaining. These are even better than the ones I used in France. Merci beaucoup, Steve!!

I've been using them for a few weeks now, and I love them. The keep the cheese at a better humidity than what the fridge normally offers, and they filter the smells of more pungent cheeses as well. What a delight. In the cheese cave pictured above? Montgomery's Mature Cheddar from the UK (the guys at Setve's Cheese tell me this is the best wheel they've ever had, it is simply fantastic), Abbaye de Belloc (a sheep's milk cheese from the Pyranees), and Mary's Peak goat cheese pyramid from River's Edge Chevre (who is quickly becoming my favorite Oregon creamery).

If you are over in France and you like cheese, I'd recommend bringing one (or two) back with you...

Now for the pics of La Caunette. There are from my visit in early 2006, but I assure you absolutely nothing has change...

My first Noris Dairy delivery

You have to love a farm whose motto is "Purity in Food."

Loyal readers (if there are any left after my long absence) may recall that I blogged about the lack of Noris Dairy products at New Seasons (and their subsequent replacement by the high quality but non-local Straus Creamery out of California). If not, click here for the old post... Theoretically, this change was supposed to have ensured consistent supply of organic, glass bottle dairy. New Seasons (at least the Arbor Lodge store) has still not been able to maintain that consistency.

So, I'm taking matters into my own hands. For an order of $15 or more, Noris will deliver to your door free of charge. I talked to a few of my friends, and we easily exceeded that dollar amount. This week, I got half and half, yogurt, eggs, cheese, and milk. Next week, more half and half, and probably some butter too. I can't tell you how excited I am to have Noris back in my house!

Here's how it works, you download an order form from Noris' web site, fill out out, and fax it in. I'd recommend calling after you fax the first time to see what day they will be in your area. When that glorious day arrives, put a cooler outside, leave a check for the correct amount, and when you return home, viola, dairy for you to enjoy.

Here's a direct link to the order form, in case you want to download and fill out right away (and who can blame you. Go for it!).

Need more convincing? Check out their "About Us" page.

And finally, this little blurb from Salon (from way back in 2005)...

Already, some small dairy farmers say the big dairies are squeezing them off the shelf. About 30 miles southeast of Bansen's farm, Franz Wenz, owner of Noris Dairy Inc., the only independent organic milk producer and bottler in the Northwest, says only large operations like Organic Valley and Horizon can afford to spend big bucks on flashy marketing and offer supermarkets exclusive deals at lower prices.

"The big guys can bury us," says Wenz, an Austrian native with bushy eyebrows and heavy jowls. "They can make exclusive deals and say, 'You just take our product and we'll give you a good deal.' The stores don't understand that they're hurting themselves when they depend on just one company that can then control the price."

To stay in business, Wenz and his family have carved out a niche by selling and personally delivering their glass-bottled milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream and sour cream directly to more than 300 customers in the Portland and Eugene area. Wenz says he and his family intend to stick it out, despite hard financial times.

So, today's lesson, boys and girls? Buy local. Support the little guy. Enjoy purity in food.

Goat Curry

Time again for EP, my quasi-monthly dinner group, to reconvene. This time, it was my turn to host, and spurred on by my insanely late 'discovery' of Lee Scratch Perry, I settled on a Jamaican theme. Inspired by a trip to Montego Bay years ago for Scoop's birthday, the dish of choice was curried goat.

Other dishes present: Jamaican beef patty with Sauce Chien (Caribbean spicy dipping sauce which, as you can guess, means dog sauce), accras with black eyed peas, mofongo, red beans and rice, and banana-bacon skewers in brown sugar with avocado ice cream. To drink, rum punch and Red Stripe. (As EP evenings wear on, and more alcohol is consumed, in this case the punch and beer, fewer and fewer photos are taken. For this reason, unfortunately, most dishes were not photographed.)

I'll spare you the boring details, and simply give you a peek at the day of cooking and evening of eating with this selection of photos.

Sunday Night/Monday Morning

Sunday Night

jerk chicken
coconut/allspice/cinnamon rice
sauteed garlic shoots
red stripe


Monday Morning

goat cheese omelete
(eggs, purple haze goat cheese,
scallions, fresh garlic, s&p)
nutella toast
coffee

Extra Cool Squid Whisk

Just saw this on Uncrate and had to share.

Bird Bottle Opener

I needed a new bottle opener. The one I'd been using was one of those 99 cent grocery store church key deals. It did the job, but wasn't anything to look at. I kept it atop the fridge for easy access. But, the cheap metal began to bend, and with every bottle I opened, it became more and more misshapen. Hell, the metal looked like it was about to snap in two.

So, when I ran across this beauty at Canoe, I knew I had to have it. My new bird opener wasn't inexpensive, but it looks damn good. This was designed be legendary Japanese iron artist Tadahiro Baba. The beauty if this lovely piece is that the beak opens tin tans (like pineapple juice or like product) while the back of the foot and the tail feathers work in concert to open bottles (like beer or the bottle of ginger beer for Moscow mules).

Here's the rough translation I was given at Canoe of the booklet that came with the opener...

Without speaking of "material," we cannot talk about "craft." Because, character of Iron and Copper have been decorated people's life with craftman's knowledge and skills. We could say that we need space for "crafts" in current society which had broaden and materialized lifestyle. However, "new relationship between human and things" must be created with harmony of design and material. In the past, we had almost lost wealth of our spiritual life to industrial society. We should not lose our humanity to civilization.

Kitchen Bling

I've had Teflon pans for too long. With the health warnings piling up, I knew I needed to change. Recently, the nonstick coating on one of the sauce pans began to flake. That was really the final straw.

And, if you're going to switch up, why not go all the way.

So, I sprung for the All-Clad Stainless starter set. Damn, they work absolutely. They are a true joy to cook with. I'll need to add a couple of pieces here and there, but this 9 piece set is really tight.

Kitchen bling, indeed.