Post-Thanksgiving

Well Thanksgiving is over and done with and yet I still have leftovers in my fridge. This entire week has been spent eating turkey potpies and big slices of pumpkin clove pound cake. I think I have finally made a dent in the leftovers. A lot of the rest will be thrown away as it has reached the 'way-too-long-in-the-fridge' phase plus I'm not a big leftover fan anyway. It was a good time cooking with my mom and spending an average of $360 on Black Friday shopping like everyone else did.

So I've lived in Florida nearly a year now and have been so disenchanted with the whole orange thing. Where are they? All the oranges I've seen come from California unless you go to an Indian River Fruit stand I suppose. This weekend however, I uncovered a wonderful new variety that I can probably now call my favorite. The scarlet navel (aka the red navel) is wonderfully sweet yet caustic on the lips. Inside the flesh is the color of a perfect ruby grapefruit. Its love, truly.

Pre-Thanksgiving

So I'm done with the cranberry sauce and the pumpkin pound cake a la Warren Brown is in the oven right now smelling up the whole apartment with wonderful clove. Plus the turkey is thawing in a brine and everything else is ready to be assembled. I'm siked.

Last night I felt compelled to make a nice pre-thanksgiving dinner for P and I since it would be our last alone night for a few days. It was pretty thrown together but turned out quite nicely. I wrapped some chicken breasts with prosciutto and cooked them until tender. Then I found this amazing! orange cauliflower at the store that is my new favorite food of the week. I caramelized it with garlic and red pepper flake. A simply dressed watercress salad with sea salt, pepper, and olive oil finished it off.

Oh I also found some crazy cheeses. A fig, walnut, and golden raisin boursin (second favorite food of the week!), a sage dubliner, and a elderberry dubliner that had a chap-stick quality.

The cake is almost done.

Its probably a bad idea to blog whilst hungry. Hopefully this dark chocolate Toblerone will tide me over until dear P gets home and we can go out for our weekly sushi date. I think its finally Fall in Florida. I never thought I'd miss cold weather, but I'm beginning to think that I am. This weekend we went to the 'Return to France' tasting part...I've lost count. This was a fun one. All of the essentials were in place -- wine, French winemakers with poor English, paté, and little bits of cheese. What more does anyone need really? Oddly enough, we tried 1 pinot and the rest were chards from Burgandy.

The first were from the Voarick Family of Aloxe-Corton near Beaune. The pinot was a Parnand-Vergelesses and there was a chard as well each being a 100% blend. The pinot was boring and overly chalky. The chard was super mineral and super delicious. Then we tried a Corton-charlemagne (Grand Cru) that was the most expensive I've ever tasted at $70, but not nearly as good as the Pernand.

Then we tried a chard that for some reason tasted like bacon to me. No one else got it so don't take my word for it. This chard was a Domaine A&P De Villaine Les Saint-Jacques 2004 with 100% chard and a hint of muscat which was very interesting.

The rest were Robert-Denogent's
'Clos des Bertillones' -- smelled of scotch
'Les Pommards' -- very citrus-y
'Les Reiss' -- juicy pear
'Les Taches' -- true flavor of the grape

Afterward, Diana and I made a pre-thanksgiving/clean out the fridge dinner. I marinated/basted some turkey tenderloins with apple jelly some chicken broth and loads of rosemary. I cooked them nice an slow on top of the stove until they got a nice carmalized crust despite being skinless. The flavors went nicely on a bed of fennel. Then we experimented with spaghetti squash and came up with a puttanesca type deal with tomatoes artichoke hearts, capers, and red pepper flake. This is my new favorite thing. I will definitely be making it for thanksgiving but maybe altering it slightly to better fit with the other side dishes. We had a nice pinot with all this wonderfulness -- a 2005 Laetitia Estate from the Arroyo Grande Valley in CA.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I'm so excited to finally be doing all the cooking. Stay tuned.

The consensus is I may or may not be allergic to brussel sprouts. They are so very delicious nonetheless.

Tonight we did Indian food in a jar. Sorta. I noticed the milk I bought was about to go bad so I made some paneer. How about that? Then I chopped up some nice lamb chops and cauliflower and threw it all together with my jar-o-korma and it turned out to be a rather tasty lamb/paneer/cauliflower korma. For starters I tried to replicate this salad we always get at Stonewood, which is sadly the best restaurant in town. I threw together some mixed micro greens from a bag clearly marked 'NO SPINACH' tossed with lightly sauteed baby asparagus, torn prosciutto, and bits of baby brie all wilted and delicious. A simple sweet balsamic dressing topped it off and it tasted just like the Stonewood originall if I do say so myself.