A Tribute to My Love of Sandwiches.

Baked Salmon with Roasted Bell Peppers and Capers Sandwich.

This is truly a glorious week for Reddit’s 52 Weeks of Cooking, because it focuses on the sandwich! My love of sandwiches as a food marvel cannot be overstated, especially given how many of them I’ve posted here.

The sandwich is truly one of the most wonderful of food delivery mechanisms, as well as the most versatile. Though he wasn’t the inventor, the sandwich was given its most commonly used name by the John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who popularized the food item as a way to eat without needing to take a break from playing cards back in the day (Source: Sesame Street, Wikipedia.)

Yakisoba bread.

Post Thanksgiving Post

Hi everyone, yesterday was a success. I had to feed 28 people and pulled it off quite well, handling a great deal of the preparations.

My own responsibilities were two turkeys, gravy, cranberry conserve (basically sauce), mashed sweet potatoes and the dessert, persimmon tarts.

The other prepared dishes were salad, which my mom took care of, and I guess what you would call a Pomegranate Fizz which my dad was in charge of (though I did most of the seeding there.)

There was also bread and corn, nothing fancy there. Now for the food porn!

First the big contenders:

My family’s Char Siu style marinated bird.

Here’s a better angle if a worse picture, sorry about the blur. Fending off six children demanding turkey skin is challenging.

And here’s my “Cajun” brined turkey. The original recipe triumphs over the traditional in flavor! Go me.

What’s this? A roux, with celery and onions, which will go with the following:

Turkey stock and pan drippings…

To make a very striking dark gravy.

To balance the intensity of the gravy, a cranberry conserve.

Stuffing! Sorry for the not very attractive globs of turkey fat on it, I forgot to take a picture after putting this in to crisp it up a bit more and let the delicious turkey fat baste it.

I had a brief moment to take a picture mid-meal.

And for dessert, some freshly baked persimmon tarts.

Extremely well received by the family.

Let me know if you want more clarity on anything here.

How did everyone else’s Thanksgiving dinners go?

The Thanksgiving of 2011

No time for exciting pictures and recipes today. I need to handle a lot of the feast preparations today, and never fear, there will be much to post in coming days.

That said, it seems fitting to express what I am thankful for.

I'm glad to have a roof over my head and a family that supports me. I'm glad to live in the Bay Area and in reasonable driving distance to a great number of my dear friends from high school and college. I'm thankful to have a great kitchen that I can perform experiments in to share with you.

And in spite of things not being terribly great in terms of underemployment and where I am in life, I am thankful that I am in a place where have a good chance to find a better future, and the frame of mine to hope for those things to come soon.

I hope you're all in good spirits, and may the Holiday season bring good things to those who need it.

Something to Gobble Down! Turkey Three Ways.

First order of business, I want to give a thank you to my ultra modest friend Jeremy who made this NEW LOGO (see above) for me. I am really quite touched that he found my website worthy of his special attentions in digital designery. He can expect some special noms in the future. You may also notice the new layout, hopefully you all think it works.ah,

Now, it is time to talk turkey.

This past Veterans Day weekend was an ambitious one. Not only did I bake two pumpkin pies, I decided to tackle a turkey in a way I’ve been meaning to try out for a while now, at the insistence of two good friends yet scary good roller derby gals, Maully Millions of the Ithaca League of Women Rollers and Karlee! As they wanted to see several methods of preparing turkey, I took their idea of taking one turkey, and breaking it down so I could try a few different seasoning methods.

One caveat to note. I noticed after purchase that the turkey was frozen in some sort of brine already (8% solution according to packaging) so I adjusted the salt to less of a concentration to compensate. Results were good (clarified below) but I think the turkey probably could have withstood the full forced brine or marinade without a problem.

First, the turkey had to be defrosted. This was done over a few hours with changes of cold water every thirty minutes to ensure even defrosting.

Sorry, there just isn’t much of a way to make a raw turkey look terribly appealing.