Deliciously Vicious Cycle

I believe xkcd said it best:


This is where I have been for the past week, although lucky for me, my cycle has involved more diverse (and nutritious) fare than cheese and chips.

It all began with a butternut squash soup that I made before I started my new job last week (figuring it would be the last chance I'd have to cook for a while). I bought a fairly massive squash, and ended up using only half of it in the soup. Now, given how long it took me to peel, cut and clean that squash, there was no way I was only using half of it. And so the cycle began.

The answer to the squash dilemma lay in the latest issue of Fine Cooking. A recipe for a quick and simple autumn soup that involving tomatoes, squash, chick peas, onion, carrots and kale (although I think one could substitute just about any autumn veggies in here and it would work just as well). This particular combination makes for a very festive colorful soup though.




The more I cook, the better I am getting about judging weights and quantities of things that don't easily fit in measuring cups (herbs, veggies, etc.), or maybe its just that I can't be bothered to measure out exact quantities anymore, and am content just to ballpark it. However, there is one area that still illudes me entirely: Leafy greens. I once took a guess at how many bunches of spinach it took to make 1lb, and was off by a factor of 3. Pathetic. It's no surprise then, that I ended up with excess kale after making the autumn soup. And so the cycle continued.

There are a *ton* of cool things you can do with kale (although I'm not big on the kale smoothie), but since the last few culinary projects had been predominantly vegerarian, I decided to change it up a little and revert to an old favorite:

Roasted chicken legs with potatoes and kale is one of my standbys because it's just so *simple*. Tear up some kale, chop up an onion and some potatoes, and toss the whole lot in a roasting pan with 1/4c of EVOO and some salt and pepper. Then, season chicken legs with salt, pepper, and paprika and nestle them on top of the veggies. Pop the whole thing in the oven and roast it 450 for 20 min covered, and 30 min uncovered. The result is that the chicken gets nice and crispy, but still moist inside, the potatoes get infused with onion, kale and chicken-ness, and the kale becomes nice and tender. Its a full meal (meat, veggies, and potatoes) all in one pot. True comfort food.



Of course now we have leftover chicken legs and potatoes, which can only mean one thing: curry. The cycle continues...actually come to think of it, maybe cycle isn't the correct term, maybe it's more of a "sprint".

A Tribute to Julie, Julia, Canadian Thanksgiving and My New Kitchen

First of all, can we all just take a moment to admire the awesomeness of my new kitchen? I am fairly certain that this kitchen has more counter space, and more cabinet space than all of my previous kitchens combined. Not to mention a gas stove! Prior to this weekend, I had only attempted minor cooking feats in this kitchen. But even on a small scale, I was impressed by how quickly and easily things got done. Pasta was once again a quick fix (as the water boiled in 15 min. rather than 45 min.), stews could be made to simmer (as opposed oscillating between a rolling boil and not boiling at all), ingredients could be kept within arm's reach of the stove, but not on it, etc. etc. It was all very exciting.

And so, I decided to celebrate both my kitchen and Thanksgiving (the Canadian one!) by cooking a turkey dinner. A whole turkey seemed a bit overkill though (especially since it was only feeding 4 people) and so, I took a page out of Julie Powell's book (or rather, an entry out of her blog and a page out of Julia Child's book) and attempted to make Boned, Stuffed and Roasted Turkey Breast.

Now, full disclosure here, this recipe does not come from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I am not that brave. Instead, it comes from The Way to Cook, in which Ms. Child has toned things down a notch. Further full disclosure: I toned things down a few more notches. Amongst other sins, I simplified the stuffing (you really don't need anything but bread, onion, sage and spices), I basted with chicken broth rather than butter, I made a gravy base with chicken broth and added the juices from the turkey to it at the very end (turkey breasts really don't have the juice to make enough gravy for 4 people), and I skipped the deglazing business when I made the turkey stock from the bones (personally, I think I should get points for even *making* the stock).

Ok, so after that rap sheet of culinary short cuts, what I am about to present probably doesn't seem quite as impressive, but I'm proud of it, so I'm going to write about it anyways.

The first challenge of this culinary endeavor began outside of the kitchen. I had been warned that unless it's X-mas or Thanksgiving (which its not, in the US right now), that turkey breasts can be hard to come by. So when I found one in a store on the other side of town, I bought it immediately, without giving any thought as to how I might haul it home. Well, I made it about as far as UW on the bus, before giving up and calling for reinforcements (and a ride) to get myself and the turkey breast home. They are heavy little buggers.

Then came the skinning and deboning. This was actually not as scary as I expected it to be. A good knife, a large cutting board, and an extra pair of hands proved very useful.


After some careful knife-work, I was left with two massive boneless skinless turkey breasts, and an equally massive breast bone (which went directly into the stock pot, no questions asked).


Now we come to the fun part: stuffing and wrangling. I say wrangling because that is truly what it is. It took two of us, poking excess stuffing into the cavity and yanking at the cheese-cloth to beat the thing into submission. Afterwards, just to be sure, we secured it with some embroidery thread and a few knots I remembered from sailing (actually, I think it was mostly just a creative use of half-hitches). Anyways, Julia suggested sewing it...really? Sewing cheese-cloth? I think not.


(Turkey breast wrangling: before and after)

I was truly amazed that we'd made it this far without anything exploding, and the kitchen, considering the carnage that had just taken place, really didn't look that bad. However, we'd reached the part of the recipe that scared me the most: the cooking part.

I like stews. You begin by sauteeing some veggies, add some sauce or broth, some spices, maybe some meat and a few more veggies, and let the whole lot cook. Its a very gradual process, and if at some point in that process you decide the stew needs more salt, or cumin or whatever, you just add it in, and to test when it's done, you can try little bits of it. Roasting anything (especially meat or poultry) requires a certain leap of faith that just doesn't exist when you're cooking a stew. For me, this is the most terrifying part of roasting a turkey: that 2.5 hour stretch where you sit there, basting and checking diligently as the recipe tells you to, and praying to the culinary gods that you don't undercook, or worse yet, overcook the turkey. A meat thermometer is a huge help in such situations, but really there's no way to know for sure until you haul the bird out of the oven, remove all the hardware used to hold it together, and cut the first slice.

Luckily, the culinary gods were smiling on us that day, and we managed to get it just about right. We even timed it so that the potatoes, the turkey and the green beans were all ready at about the same time. It must have been beginner's luck.