Potato Kugel

3 large onions
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 pounds (about 5 medium) russet potatoes, peeled
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup matzo meal
2 teaspoons salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Thinly slice 2 of the onions.

2. Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the sliced onions and cook, stirring often, until lightly caramelized, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a 13-by-9-inch baking dish.

4. Grate the potatoes and the remaining onion in a food processor equipped with a shredding disk or by hand. Transfer them in a large bowl. Stir in the remaining 5 tablespoons of oil, the caramelized onions, eggs, and matzo meal, and season with the salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and smooth the top.

5. Bake until the kugel is well browned on top, about 55 minutes. Let cool slightly. Serve warm.

Personal Note: This comes from a Jewish cookbook I grabbed on a whim this summer at a blowout book sale out east. It has an entire section on kugel, including an apple kugel that stews in kirsch! It cracks me up too, because the kugel section randomly references Henry James and then out of nowhere connects a quote of his to, um, kugel. It's all so very Animal Crossing, if ya know what I mean...

But anyway. This is great, because it's so freaking easy. The key to the entire dish is well caramelized onions. Other than that, it's pretty much latkes baked into a big casserole instead of fried--which is great for me, because I love making latkes with my parents but am a wimp and won't deep fry on my own! So this is a handy substitute.

Made it for "German Potluck Part 2" at Gary and Rachel's last night. Fun.

Cranberry and Ginger Sorbet

Ingredients:
4 cups cranberries
2 Tablespoons fresh ginger, grated or minced
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar

Directions:
Boil everything together until tender, then let cool thoroughly in the fridge. Whiz in the (immersion) blender or run through a food mill (if you use a blender, there'll be little strings of cranberry peel, but they're not unpleasant).

Pour into container, cover, and place mixture in the freezer. When it is semi-solid, mash it up with a fork and refreeze again. When frozen, place in a food processor or (immersion) blender and process until smooth. Cover and refreeze until serving time.

Chicken and Winter Vegetables

Prep: 15 Min
Cook: 1 Hr
Rready: 1 Hr 15 Min

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
2 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, sliced
2 stalks celery, diced
3/4 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
4 or 5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
Green beans
2 cups chicken stock
A tiny splash of vermouth or white wine
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf

Directions:

1. Season the chicken with additional salt, pepper, thyme, and cayenne. Set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Melt the margarine or butter in the skillet. Stir in the garlic for about 30 seconds. Stir in the onion, celery, and mushrooms, and cook until tender but firm.

3. Set vegetables aside, and cook the chicken breasts in the skillet 8 to 10 minutes on each side, until juices run clear. Set chicken aside.

4. Deglaze skillet with stock and vermouth, scraping up the fond. In a large sauce pot, mix in the potatoes and green beans and add the cooked vegetables and chicken. Pour in the deglazed liquid and fond from the skillet. Season with salt, thyme, cayenne pepper, and bay leaf, making sure the bay leaf is submerged in the liquid. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are tender and some of the liquid has been reduced. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

Personal Note: I just happened to have everything this recipe calls for in our remaining vegetable reserves for the week. It's proving an ideal supper for today--it's hearty, simple, and warms you up with heat and savory flavors. Would probably be good with crusty bread, despite having potatoes in it. No, really. I love carbs, ha.

Stir Fry: General Reference and Pointers

Vague Sense of Ingredients:
Sauce components (see directions below)

2 or 3 Tbsp oil (see directions below)

Aromatics:

2 Tbsp garlic, minced
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated or minced
1 cup onions, sliced

Vegetables:

Cauliflower or broccoli, cut into bite-size florets
2 or 3 scallions, sliced or minced
Bell peppers, sliced (I prefer orange, yellow, and red)
Carrots, julienned

Meat (or meatish component!):

Boneless chicken, beef, or pork, rinsed and patted dry, cut into chunks
Ddok, cut into chunks or slices

Barely cooked optional touches:

Water chestnuts, sliced
Bean sprouts
Bamboo shoots
Cashews

Directions and Loose Tips:

Whisk a mixture in a bowl to later coat the stir fry using a bit of sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce if you're feeling adventurous, Asian sauces at your discretion (I like fermented black bean, Szechuan, garlic, hoisin, orange, etc), and sugar. Optionally, you can add 1/4 cup stock and corn starch as a thickener as well.

Swirl 1 Tbsp oil in a wok over high heat. Add half the garlic and half the ginger, stirring, and cook about 15-30 seconds. Add the onion and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Add broccoli or cauliflower and scallions and cook over high heat until it browns and becomes tender but not at all mushy, about 5-7 minutes.

Remove vegetables from heat, add another 1 Tbsp oil if necessary, and cook the other vegetables similarly quickly at high heat, grouping them by toughness so everything has the right texture. Remove.

Turn heat to medium, swirl 1 Tbsp oil, and add remaining garlic and ginger. Stir, the add the meat and/or ddok. Raise heat to high, stir meat once, then let it sit for 1 minute before stirring again. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat has lost its pinkness, 3-6 minutes.

If you're like me and make enough that it doesn't all fit back in the wok to coat with the sauce you've made, take a huge sauce pot and stir it together under low heat that way. Toss in the cashews and other barely-cooked optional ingredients (if using) to lightly toast them, then add everything including the sauce and combine. Season with salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve over rice. I use a rice cooker for this, because stir fry is too hectic (lots of abrupt, short but crucial timing steps) to be timing white rice perfectly the normal way.

Personal Note: This is loosely based on Mark Bittman's guideline recipe, with the things my father taught me interjected. I've spent something like a decade making stir fry, both bad (I've totally flopped a bunch of times on my own) and good (Tasty! Where it makes takeout seem like paying someone to make me mac n cheese--it can be that good and easy). Now on my own I'm slowly learning how to make it open-ended but foolproof. That's why I'm finally posting some sloppy go-to reference for myself, so I don't forget what I've learned so far.

A few things:

Make sure your meat is really cut small enough and has been patted very DRY.

Keep your wok HOT and use as little oil as possible to maintain that heat.

Simplify the sauce--at first I was putting a little of every kind I had in, and the results were very underwhelming, I guess because it all cancels each other out. So now I'm not afraid to make a stir fry that is a bit more one dimensional but with big returns on actual flavor, with one sauce the major component and maybe just a dab of a couple other complementary things.

And maybe most important of all, don't be afraid to do the vegetables separately based on "toughness" class--it seems frustrating, like it defeats the purpose of stir fry (simple, quick, zap-fast cooking), but it makes a huge difference. If you're not willing to do like vegetables with like, you may well end up with soggy onions and peppers but barely cooked cauliflower and carrots.

Which reminds--the worst thing is soggy stir fried vegetables. Err on the side of "al dente"-ish, toothy crunch. Bittman talks about parboiling the cauliflower, and I just don't see it. I like it with a faint crunch though. Besides, you want things tender but firm--how else will they stand up to being microwaved as 3 a.m. leftovers? ;)

Roasted Curried Cauliflower Florets

Ingredients:
1 head cauliflower, washed, dried, and cut into florets
A few whole cloves of garlic, peeled
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp curry powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 F. In a small bowl whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, turmeric, curry powder, and salt and pepper. On a baking sheet or roasting pan, toss mixture onto cauliflower florets. Tuck cloves of garlic among florets. Roast for about 25 minutes or until golden and slightly caramelized.

Personal Note: This is a nice, slightly less typical way to use cauliflower for a super easy side dish with dinner.

Thai-Style Chicken Soup

A fragrant blend of coconut milk, lemon grass, ginger and lime makes a delicious soup, with just a hint of chile.

Whenever you have a roast chicken it is worth using the carcass to make stock. Remove all the skin from the remains of the bird and put the carcass into a large pan. Add roughly chopped onion, carrot, and celery stick, and a bouquet garni. Cover with water and bring to the boil. Skim off the scum and then simmer the stock for 1 hour. Strain through muslin (cheesecloth). Skim of the fat when the stock is cold.

Serves 4.

Ingredients:
5 ml/1 teaspoon oil
1-2 fresh red chilies, seeded and chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 large leek, finely sliced
550 ml/18 fl oz/2.5 cups chicken stock
450 ml/0.75 pint/scant 2 cups coconut milk
450 g/1 lb skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bitesize pieces
30 ml/2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 lemon grass stalk, split
2.5 cm/1 inch piece fresh root ginger, peeled and crushed
5 ml/1 teaspoon sugar
4 kaffir lime leaves (optional)
75 g/3 oz/0.75 cup frozen peas, thawed
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (coriander)

Method:

Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the chilies and garlic and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the leek and cook for 2 minutes longer. Stir in the stock and coconut milk and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Add the chicken, fish sauce, lemon grass, ginger, sugar and lime leaves, if using. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes until the chicken is tender, stirring occasionally. Add the peas and cook for 3 minutes longer. Remove the lemon grass and stir in the cilantro just before serving.

Personal Note: My mom sent me this recipe. I didn't even use proper homemade chicken stock (I know--the horror! Don't tell my parents!); I settled for Le Gout-style chicken stock base. I also fiddled a bit with measurements, since I added ddok I happened to find at the Asian grocer's. The result was a thicker, less pale soup, kind of more like porridge or Asia's spunkier/more energetically flavored answer to shepherd's pie. It had a great balance of flavors--gently hot, savory, zesty/near-citrusy (thanks to the lime, lemongrass, and fresh ginger!), and sweet. Cozy-comforting like chicken soup should be, too. And sinus clearing to boot! Robert loved it.

I'm eating a bowl of it now. Good for a rainy evening.

Roast Pork Loin in Beer Sauce

Level: Easy
Yield: 6 servings
Times:
Inactive Prep: 9 hr 0 min
Cook: 1 hr 30 min
Total: 10 hr 30 min

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
2 (12 ounce) bottles beer (not dark)
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup honey
1 (3 1/2) pound boneless pork loin, tied
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon butter, room temperature
1 tablespoon all purpose flour

Directions:
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute until tender and golden brown, about 15 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, cinnamon and allspice and stir 1 minute. Add beer, mustard and honey and bring to boil (sauce will foam). Remove from heat. Puree in batches in blender until smooth. Cool to room temperature. Pour into baking dish.

In a large heavy resealable plastic bag combine pork, turn to coat, and marinade and seal bag, pressing our any excess air. Put bag in a baking pan and marinate pork, chilled, turning bag once or twice, at least 8 hours and up to 24. Let pork in marinade come to room temperature, about 40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Remove pork from marinade; pat dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Reserve marinade. In a flameproof roasting pan heat oil over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and brown pork on all sides. Transfer to baking sheet with rim. Roast in oven for about 1 hour or until thermometer inserted into thickest part registers 155 degrees F.

Transfer pork to a work surface/cutting board, reserving juices in roasting pan and discarding string, and let stand, covered loosely with foil, about 15 minutes. While pork is standing, skim and discard fat from pan and add remaining marinade. Deglaze roasting pan over moderately high heat, scraping up brown bits.

Combine pan juices and marinade in saucepan. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Mix butter and flour in small bowl until smooth paste forms. Whisk this beurre manie in, bit by bit, until sauce is combined well and thickened slightly. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cut pork into slices and pour sauce over pork.

Personal Note: Um. This is delicious and easy! ...Just takes time. Pork loin was on sale this week, so viva fall loin! Ha. Eat it with smashed Yukon Gold potatoes--they're ideal for the tangy sauce.

SO.GOOD!