Food Diary V

Asparagus Pizza

Leek latkes with lemon garlic sauce

Perfect poached egg and homemade wheat bread

Veggie Bibimbap

Maple syrup brussel sprouts

The Manhattan (Recipe) Project: Bourbon Vanilla Cherries

Though I am fairly adventurous in terms of the fare I attempt, I don't feel as though I have fully forayed into the world of cooking. This is because I rarely ever "invent" any dishes. I am excellent at following a recipe, I have internalized many complimentary ingredients, and I can eyeball measurements more accurately than a year ago, but I rarely throw something together off the top of my head.  I want that to change: I want to be able to truly understand food at a level where the fear of failure, and the excitement of surprising tastes and textures by my own hand, is something I experience in the kitchen at least once a week. 

I gave this dare a try Sunday night.  In the December issue of Bon Appetit  I spotted a page with a lustrous photo of a Manhattan.  Next to the cocktail the magazine promotes a boutique batch of bourbon vanilla cocktail cherries, made by Barker & Mills at thebostonshaker.com.  What a great Christmas present for...myself,  I think, but this product truly is boutique: hand-pitted and seasonal, the business sold out (presumably months ago), and there won't be any more twelve-dollar jars until next autumn. So place your order now! the website proclaims.   

But I want these cherries yesterday. I bought Javier an early Christmas present of Bulleit rye whiskey that's sitting in our cabinet just waiting to make a yummy Manhattan. And I want to try something new.  So on our trip to the grocery store I buy a half-pound bag of cherries, some Gallo sweet vermouth, and Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans. At home I pit the cherries and muck up my hands with their red. I put the cherries in a saucepan with sugar, a bit of fresh squeezed orange juice, and half a vanilla bean split and scrapped so that the microscopic beans cling to the knife and my fingertips, and eventually get simmered in the juices of the cherries.

The result is cherries that taste like the innards of a fresh cherry pie, with the heavenly smell of the vanilla. The cherries are good enough to eat directly, or to place atop Javier's ice cream. And, as seen below, they compliment a Manhattan quite nicely.

Cherries, sugar,  bourbon vanilla bean, orange juice

Manhattan with vanilla bourbon cherries, stirred

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, Javier and I traveled to D.C. to visit my mom and my cousin Chris who was visiting from Vancouver. Ahead of time, my mom and I struck a bargain: she would fund Thanksgiving dinner if I made it. This was an easy deal to make as for weeks (alright, months) in advance I was looking at new and exciting recipes for the feast. To make it easy, the October issue of Bon Appetit arrived in the mail and it was dedicated in its entirety to what the mag stated as "the most daunting holiday of the year" (the pounds of butter contribute to the daunting aspect, the caption claimed).

After multiple emails and phone calls from various grocery stores in the days and weeks prior to the big day, my mom purchased all the ingredients, and we arrived with the rest (our collection of spices has grown impressively over the past few years). The menu was comprised of traditional dishes all with a bit of a twist: the turkey had a soy sauce-based glaze, the potatoes a bit of horseradish. The dressing had kale, pine nuts, and raisins. The squash was Persian influenced; the salad, Mediterranean. And instead of cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie, the two would be (somewhat) combined into cute little cranberry hand pies for dessert.

As happy as I was looking forward to devouring (I mean relishing) this fare, I was also happy to prepare the food because of the challenges that lay before me: How would I  plan the cutting, peeling, baking, steaming, and other various cooking verbs, in order for the meal to finish on time and without any disasters?

Luckily, on that second-to-last Thursday in November, everything went (nearly) without a hitch. My mom and Javier were gracious sous chefs, and Javier was also the turkey master. One batch of pine nuts burned black in the toaster oven, and there was a bit of stress of whether the turkey would finish on time, but we had back-up piñons, and the turkey roasted to a beautiful golden brown. We all sat down just after sunset with full plates, glasses of wine, and relished in the hard work of the day.

The photos below are obviously professional shots: in my rush to start eating, the photos I took of our dishes are sloppy and blow-out with the flash. I'm substituting my photos with those of Bon Appetit since it is from that magazine that I took the recipes. So though the images are not not my own, trust me that the food we made was as good as these look.

(P.S. The leftovers were awesome, too!)

Squash with Spiced Butter and Pomegranate

Italian Mother-In-Law Dressing

Whipped Potatoes with Horseradish

Arugula Salad with Grapes, Almonds, and Manchego

Cranberry Hand Pies