Some food from the weekend

I'm not going to regale you with recipes for every Thanksgiving dish — everything was delicious, and almost everything is a favorite standard — but I thought it best to at least check in with a quick rundown of the weekend. On Wednesday we made pizza for the family (four cookie-sheet-sized pizzas, two with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella and two with pears, walnuts, blue cheese, and mozzarella). Tomorrow night's plan is for stew with chickpeas, clams, and sausage. Tonight we had skate, very yummy baked fifteen to twenty minutes in a buttered pan at 400°, and then topped with browned butter and capers. We served the skate with brown rice and chard: bring a few inches of water to a boil in a large pot, and add a good handful of baking soda, and then stir in two bunches rainbow chard, cut into one-inch-thick ribbons; peel a couple cloves of garlic, mince them, and then add a large handful of salt to the garlic in a small pile on a cutting board and work the salt into the garlic with a knife until you have a nice paste; after about two minutes, drain the greens in a colander, dry them off a bit in a clean dish towel, and toss the greens with the garlic in a serving bowl.

On Friday, as we do every year, we made soup. My brother invited a friend from school to join us for the Thanksgiving weekend, and said friend is quite strictly vegetarian, so in addition to our usually turkey soup, we also made a vegan option. (The friend left today, hence the meaty dinners tonight and tomorrow.) Coarsely chop four onions, half a dozen celery sticks, and about as many carrots, and divide them roughly evenly between two pots. Add a few bay leaves, a few peppercorns, and a large handful of salt to each pot. In the larger pot, also add the saved turkey neck and giblets as well as the bones (break them up if you can with a cleaver to let the marrow out), but discard the skin and use the fat for some other project. Save any savable meat, of course. Cover the contents of each pot with water (but not more than enough to cover), place the lids on, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook about an hour.

Dice another three onions. Place two of them in a large pot and one in a medium pot, and saute in a splash of olive oil with some salt. Also add diced carrot and celery to each to make two mirepoix. To the smaller pot, add three quarter pound sliced crimini mushrooms. Once the mushrooms start to release their liquid, add between half and a third of a cup of pearled barley to the smaller pot, and between half a cup and two thirds to the larger pot. Stir the barley in to coat, and then place a colander or sieve over the smaller part and pour in the finished vegetable broth, rescuing the cooked veggies to give to the backyard chickens (it was raining all weekend — that soup was from October). Then move the colander to the larger pot and pour in the turkey broth.

Bring both soups to a boil. After about ten minutes, add frozen edamame to each pot. Bring back to a boil, cook another ten minutes, and stir in a fair amount of saved turkey meat into the turkey-broth (non-mushroom) soup. Adjust the salt and serve with good bread and good wine.

Salad with beets, potatoes, eggs, shrimp, celery, carrots, and heirloom tomatoes

Picnic near Coit Tower: grilled sea bass with potato salad and dill pickles

Mayonnaise, it turns out, is as easy as anything. We followed the recipe from Julia Child and Company (1978): "Using the metal blade (I never use the plastic one for anything), process [1 whole] egg, [2 egg] yolkds, [1 teaspoon Dijon] mustard, and ½ teaspoon salt for 30 seconds. Then add 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar and process half a minute more. Finally, in a very thin stream, pour in [2 cups olive and/or peanut] oil. When all has gone in, remove cover, check consistency, and taste for seasoning."

So make your own mayonnaise. Also halve a pound of fingerling potatoes and boil them in salted water until cooked but still al dente. Dice a stick or two of celery and about a third of a large red onion. Combine the potatoes, celery, and red onion with some mayonnaise, and maybe some salt and some sherry vinegar. Transfer to a large tuperware container.

Check two half-pound pieces of seabass for scales, and then coat them in a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise. Heat up the grill and cook the bass evenly on all sides, adding some fresh tarragon near the end of the cooking. Let the fish cool slightly and then move to a tuperware.

Finally, prepare a final salad (not pictured) with heirloom tomatoes, garden basil, and a little salt, olive oil, and just a touch of balsamic vinegar.

Pack a cooler with the dishes, and add also a jar of homemade dill pickles (use a recent batch that still has some bite). Find a beautiful picnic spot, and enjoy an early dinner with a nice bottle of red wine.

In particular, find a spot just below Coit Tower by cutting off the trail up a little early. Start dinner around 3:30pm and eat for an hour, and then discover that you don't have time to climb the tower. Instead, head down to Pier 33 for the ferry to Alcatraz Island. Watch Hamlet on Alcatraz, arguably the best Shakespeare production you've seen (and you've seen shows at Ashland — it helps that Hamlet is such a good script). Encourage all your friends to go too, although it looks like they might have sold out.

Chicken soup with rice

Whenever you cook a chicken, you should save all the extra inner parts in a bag in the freezer. You should save also the scraps of celery and onion and so on that you don't want to eat directly (wash all veggies before placing in the freezer).

On soup day, combine in a large pot the carcass from your cooked chicken (take apart your leftovers, saving any good meat), the giblets and veggie scraps from the freezer, a coarsely chopped onion, one or two halved carrots, a stalk or two of celery, and some black pepper corn and a bay leaf. Cover with water and bring to a simmer for about an hour.

When the stock is well-flavored, strain out and discard all the solid stuff. Saute a mirepoix of onion, celery, and carrot in just a little olive oil and add to the stock. Add also one cup of white rice (and some extra water if necessary) and bring to a boil. Cook the rice for ten minutes, and then add cooked meat cut from your leftovers. (The only part you don't want for any step of the soup is the fatty skin: the skin itself toughens a bit in boiling, and soup should not have much fat in it.) Cook another ten minutes. Then adjust the salt and serve.

Lunch salad with watermelon agua fresca

Cut the flesh of half a yellow watermelon into pieces, and place in a blender. Pulsing, being careful not to cut up the seeds, macerate the melon, and then pass it through a sieve. Combine the watermelon juice with plenty of lime juice (this is vital), a little sugar, and some water, to taste.

Mash a shallot and some salt to a paste in the mortar and pestle; add some lemon juice and olive oil. Slice a bulb of fennel, and toss with the dressing. Divide the fennel between two shallow bowls. Pick two or three small ripe tomatoes from the vine, and add the halved tomatoes to the bowls. Divide in two and add also one carrot, sliced; one stalk celery, cut up; and an eight once tub of cooked salad shrimp.

Later, smile when B makes you a cappuccino with a heart drawn on the top.

Whole wheat penne with sauteed mire poix and fava beans