Here’s a dinner from a little while ago during summer’s peak that was very good to eat and has the added benefit of being well photographed. And as we all know, photographs mean that something happened, unlike my dinner tonight which was excellent but does not exist as far as the Internets are concerned.
So in anticipation of today’s big stuff-a-thon, yesterday I ground a couple kinds of sausage meant to hang and cure into salami. But of course all of that pungent meat, fragrant with garlic and spices and the like, was impossible to resist once it came time to shake the magic dinner 8-ball.
This month’s Charcutepalooza project was grinding sausage. As luck would have it, that announcement came just a few days after I had ground and stuffed a whole bunch: some for hanging, and some for eating fresh. This post deals with one of many subsequent meals featuring the fresh sausages.
The last couple of days have marked a change; the sun is higher and warmer, and things melt quickly when it hits them. There’s still a ton of snow all over the place, but even a thick coat gets greatly diminished by a few hours of sunlight; a half-assed morning shoveling makes for immaculately snowless paths by afternoon. Thoughts turn to seeds, and compost, and mulch. And dinner. A smidgen of foresight led to the welcome presence of some ground turkey defrosting in a bowl of water come dinner time tonight. That foresight did not alas extend to the other several items on the shopping list which I somehow managed to lose between the house and the store, but such is life.
A few posts back, I wrote about the flavor of caramelized radicchio and how it made an interesting connection in my mind. It tasted remarkably like the wonderful caramelized bottoms of the Roman-style artichokes that I love to make so much. Radicchio and artichokes are both in the sunflower family, so it makes sense that they would have a few flavor compounds in common, but I had never actually tasted the similarity before–probably because I almost never cook radicchio. So I started to think about using them together in something.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately. It’s mostly been turning the last of the harvest into value-added staples that will last into the winter: quarts of stock in the chest freezer, a gallon of fermenting cabbage and carrots, bread, and some pretty great carrot-ginger soup made with a beef-goat-smoked pig leg phở that is not the worst thing I’ve ever made. (There are four more quarts of the stock frozen for future debauchery). One of my projects is not quite ready, though it will be by tomorrow, and with any luck it will be as good as I hope.
The ground here is approaching frozen, so tomorrow I’m going out to dig up all the potatoes and most of the carrots before they become inaccessible. The parsnips stay buried, and they are our special treat in march when the soil softens. On the one hand, it’s sad, because apart from some greens it means that there’s no more home-grown food for a while. On the other hand, it’s kind of exciting, because now I can indulge in buying vegetables, and allow myself to include some that were not grown in the immediate vicinity. It’s like my vegetable vacation, and I figure that since I buy almost none from April to December (and what I do buy during that time is local, always) then I can justify such luxuries.
Today was pretty calm, and I made progress on some of the important Thanksgiving steps–mostly those centered around the two ducks. After they defrosted, I took them apart. The carcasses and offal, along with charred onion and ginger, cloves, star anise, cinnamon stick, garlic, and peppercorns, ended up becoming two gallons of lusciously deep-flavored duck phở. I kept it at a bare simmer the whole time, skimming often, and the result was nice and clear, but I’m still going to filter it tomorrow. It’s going to appear in a few places throughout the meal; those pie spices work wicked wonder with almost anything Thanksgivingy.
This hardly merits a post, but it’s one of those quintessential summer dishes that one feels obliged to document because it feels somehow like blogatorial malpractice to let summer pass without a post about pesto and tomatoes. Hell, maybe someone in Australia or Antarctica or Northern Canadia needs a provocative hot-weather pornocopia shot to get themselves off. I live to serve, after all. So, herewith, pesto made from basil, walnuts, olive oil, and sherry vinegar…
Our muggy heat broke rather dramatically this evening with a torrential downpour, accompanied by rollicking summer thunder. The rain was perfectly timed, coming as it did on the heels of several very hot days, and we’ll sleep better tonight as a result of the front’s passage. Such meteorological benedictions were sufficient to inspire me to actually cook something, though the cooking part was mercifully short. Most of the time was spent rolling out fettucine. We’re…