Anyway, to regain some degree of sanity I decided to give myself something to do, and that usually involves turning my pantry into something delicious. I ran out of cereal earlier this week and decided to make do with what I had in my pantry for breakfast for the rest of the week, and probably the month: oats, walnuts, and some dried cranberries. I have a bad habit of burning granola, and I swore that this time I’d pay attention to it and be a little more logical about it than I have been in the past (putting dried fruit in the oven for 30 minutes is usually not a good idea unless you want them to come out burnt, having already been dried).

I picked Mark Bittman’s recipe for crunchy granola because it’s the simplest one I came across, which made it perfect for what I had available! Super easy, and very delicious (3 cups of rolled oats, 1/2 cup of honey, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 cup chopped walnuts, 1/2 cup of dried cranberries baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and stirred occasionally). I don’t really have “power mornings” any more, but when I do, I’ll come back and make this recipe again.

Oh, and one more thing: freezing this pork shoulder ragu has done wonders for my wallet and my cravings for Italian.

There are tons of great chocolate chip cookie base recipes out there, including the New York Times one that I made a few years ago in college, but for whatever reason I chose Martha Stewart’s on a whim. Maybe it wasn’t quite a whim, maybe it was…an homage to a show I never watched starring a woman I never really liked that much. Whatever your opinions about Martha, she did make housewifery into a billion dollar business, and you have to be pretty shrewd and intelligent to do so. Anyway, for better or worse, her show’s getting the boot and I wanted a very classic cookie recipe and Google gave me hers.

Instead of baking into a classic cookie, these spread out and ended up more like Tate’s cookies in texture–crunchy around the edges and slightly chewy in the center. I love Tate’s though, so no complaints here!

The other day I found some beans in my pantry, leftovers from my summer CSA share. Last time I tried to cook the beans in chili, they took longer than I thought I did–after four hours of cooking, they were still crunchy, even though I’d soaked them overnight! This time around I soaked them for two–one day in the fridge because I was concerned about any weird fermentation. Two still wasn’t quite enough, so I’m not really sure what’s up with these beans.

The good news about beans in soup is that you can blend the beans into soup if necessary, or if you feel like it. That’s what I did here for a chunky soup that was not quite chili. Great flavor with just a few tacky crunchy beans. T got some tortilla chips yesterday that I thought went really well with the soup.

Next time I’m going to soak those beans for a whole week!

To make this, you’ll need:

1 1/2 cups of beans (soaked sufficiently or canned)
1 carrot and 1 onion, both diced
1/2 can crushed tomatoes
3 cups chicken stock (or veggie)

1. Sautee the onions and carrots in a saucepan until softened, 5-10 minutes. Don’t forget to salt and pepper them!
2. Add the beans, the chicken stock, and tomatoes and simmer for 30 minutes. Add salt to taste.
3. Blend and serve.

Yesterday I tried to make challah, and I failed at my first attempt! Not sure whether it was the amount of yeast (active dry, not rapid rise or instant), whole wheat flour, and/or time allowed for rising, but either way I didn’t end up with a fluffy loaf of eggy bread. So last night I started again, using King Arthur Flour’s no-knead challah recipe. I figured it might be helpful if I had less contact with the dough so it could rise and do its own thing. This morning I woke up to some successfully risen dough and baked off this lovely loaf of challah.

Happy Holidays! Enjoy them wherever you are.

About a week later, I promised to remake the ragu that we’d shared at dinner. With 13 of us, there was really only enough for everyone to have one bite–it was so delicious that we all wished we each could have our own plate of the ragu.

In my quest to replicate the dish, I looked at several recipes for pork ragu–some required that I roast a whole pork shoulder before adding it to sauce while others were much simpler, requiring nothing more than sauteeing carrots and onions and one round of browning the meat in the braising pan before adding stock and tomatoes to cover.

I picked a recipe that I thought would have more depth of flavor, one that involved an overnight marinade and essentially two rounds of cooking the meat down: the first was a vigorous reduction of the wine marinade until it evaporated while the second was a slow simmer in sauce and broth.

Click here for the recipe from Gradisca in Manhattan.

Note: I was making ragu for a party of 12, so it took me about 3 times the cooking time.

The powerful gusts reminded me of the time my family and I went to the Grand Canyon during one of Arizona’s worst winters. I was 4 and I’d never seen snow before. Growing up in Southern California, I wouldn’t see snow again until my first college winter. Our tour bus pulled up to the convenience store packed full of tourists trying to keep warm and we jumped out. As we walked nearer and nearer towards the endless pit, the winds grew stronger and stronger until I thought I was about to fall in–I held on to the railing for dear life!

When we finally made it back to the tour bus, my parents and I stopped into the convenience store and got some Maruchan cup noodles–stuff I wouldn’t touch now. Safe inside from today’s bitter cold winds,  I warmed my battered cold blues with a distant cousin–actually perhaps a distant great grandparent of Maruchan noodles: soba in miso broth from 101 Cookbooks. I added some blanched kale and tofu to mine and it made for a deliciously soul-warming meal. Now if only I didn’t have to go outside so soon!

This past weekend my friends and I got together to tackle Bon Appetit’s Thanksgiving Issue at our deliciously immobilizing “Fake Thanksgiving” dinner.

All told we made two salads, roasted squash, greens, creamed collards, spiced squash puree, biscuits, maple sweet potato rolls, cajun-rubbed turkey, three cranberry sauces, three stuffings, cajun crawfish gravy, potato gratin, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, three pumpkin desserts, and an apple pie. The dishes were generously shared between our party of 17, and there were still leftovers-a-plenty.

While they were all incredibly beautiful and delicious–stand-out dishes for me were the salads, turkey, creamed collards, cornbread oyster stuffing, cajun crawfish gravy, potato gratin, spicy cranberry jelly, and the apple pie.

I made the kale and brussels sprout salad:

Check out our spread:

Salads, squash preparations, and three cranberry sauces

Creamed collards, potato gratin, mashed potatoes, two stuffings (in the photo), and the turkey!

Biscuitarama

I made two kind of buttermilk biscuits: regular and pumpkin–the latter to honor my favorite season, fall. I’m sure you all know this, but homemade buttermilk biscuits are amazing right out of the oven. Flaky, steamy layers of buttery delight that are just a little bit crunchy on the top and bottom.

Pumpkin biscuits!

If anyone knows how to keep them that way, please let me know! Like most offices, mine isn’t equipped with an oven so I wasn’t able to serve them fresh and they were nowhere as flaky as they were when I tried (too many) of them.

The recipe was so quick and easy that I’m looking forward to the opportunity to redeem myself. Thanksgiving, anyone?

Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 stick butter, chilled or cold

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.

2.Using a pastry cutter (I used a metal potato masher), cut the cold butter into the dry mixture until it is evenly incorporated and resembles coarse crumbs. If there are a few larger pea-sized pieces, that’s okay, just use your fingers to rub the flour into them a little.

3. Add buttermilk and stir until mixture comes together into a ball.

4. Flour a flat surface and knead the dough lightly. Be careful not to overwork it–you just want it to come together.

5. Roll the dough out to about 3/4-1 inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a 2-inch diameter glass, cut the biscuits out and place them on the pan. Brush the tops with melted butter, if desired. Bake for about 10 minutes.

*Note: for pumpkin biscuits, replace half the buttermilk with pumpkin puree. Add 3 tablespoons of agave, honey, or sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg.

Makes 12-14 biscuits.

On tonight’s menu: potato & zucchini latkes, brisket, homemade challah, roasted vegetables, apple honey cake and good company.

Thanks to Rachel, Amy and Kate for hosting!

Our feast.