I wrote this post in the spring during a bit of a cooking drought, but it seems I forgot to post it. In the spring, the reason I was posting so little (and cooking so little) was because I’d gone back to school part time and my evenings were filled with programming instead. This fall my excuse is less singular, and the truth is that I’ve had a lot less to say about food and cooking at the moment. I’ve done a lot of thinking, but not come to any hard and fast conclusions.

I can’t help but think about food for a good portion of the day. That’s probably because most of my reading and entertainment has to do with food. If you haven’t noticed the “We’re reading” feature in the right column of this site, you can follow some of the things I’ve been reading there. This year, I’ve shared much more than I’ve posted because frankly there are some great people posting more interesting things than I’ve had to share lately.

If you think about food as much as I do, you realize how many different things there are to think about. Why do we eat the things we eat? What is the best way to eat them? What is healthy? What is ethical? What will taste amazing? What is the most cost-effective? Are there things we shouldn’t eat? Why? What do other people eat? When is it better to let someone else do the work? When is it better to make things from scratch? I could go on…

In the search for answers to these questions, I’ve found some pretty interesting resources. Hopefully you’ll find value in these, as I have:

Ted Talks and lectures

If you’re not familiar with TED talks, they are 20 minute talks that really stretch my brain to think about things in a different way. Their tag line is “Ideas worth spreading,” which I’ve found to be very accurate.

They constantly post new talks on every subject imaginable, but for our purposes here, I’d like to point you to their food talks. I’ve only made my way through a handful so far. These are some great ones to get started with:

• Dan Barber’s foie gras parable
• Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities
• Jennifer 8. Lee hunts for General Tso

What I love about TED talks is that the speakers are usually impeccably prepared and since they only have 20 minutes (or less!), they need to be able to get their ideas across clearly and quickly. If you enjoy these, I encourage you to look at other topics, I want to watch them all.

Less succinct, but no less compelling, I recently watched this lecture about how our bodies digest sugar and learned some things that surprised me. If you have any interest in biology and nutrition, and an hour and a half to spare, check out Dr. Robert Lustig’s talk, Sugar: The Bitter Truth.

That said, there are multiple sides to any argument, and no one source should be taken as “truth.”

Books

I’ve read quite a few books this year about my favorite topic. These are the ones that have stuck with me the most. Because of Michael Pollan, I’ve developed a keen interest in mushroom foraging (look forward to a post about this coming soon) and natural surroundings. Eric Schlosser has made me think a lot about voting with my food dollars and how the choices we all make impact the global economy and social well-being of the earth’s citizens. Jonathan Safran Foer has helped me realize how much we don’t know about the food we eat every day, and converted me into less of a meat eater than I’ve been for much of my life. But despite reading these, it doesn’t completely wipe away my ability to eat a big burger and fries – I’m just trying to find better ways to indulge in that occasional craving.

• Michael Pollan – The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• Eric Scholsser – Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
• Jonathan Safran Foer – Eating Animals

Television Series and Documentaries

The following films and shows have influenced my thinking in the past year greatly. Food Inc. touches on many of the same ideas as the three books above. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution touches a bit closer to home, discussing the food that schools serve children in the U.S. and in the general lack of understanding about nutrition that much of our country suffers from. Bizarre Foods follows a foodie who travels around the world looking for the weirdest things to consume. Sometimes they are tasty and sometimes they are not – but it really makes you think about what “normal” food is, and why that might be. No Reservations follows another foodie around the world as he experiences other cultural and culinary traditions.

• Food Inc
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
• Bizarre Foods
• No Reservations

Full disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means if you buy something based on my recommendation here, I get a small commission. That said, I’d rather you just take any of those items out of the library and read them.

Last year our Thanksgiving dinner went off without a hitch. I’d like to say it was five years of practice that made it so, but I can’t take all the credit for how things came together. My whole family all worked together to make our Thanksgiving a feast that we could enjoy, but not keel over from. Below are some of the things we did that enabled me to enjoy the leftovers for days afterward without feeling Thanksgiving’d out.

We ate early

We skipped the appetizers and dug straight into the meal at around 4:30. This way we had ample time to digest before dessert. I can’t speak for my guests, but I know I didn’t feel nearly as stuffed as in past years. We were able to enjoy all of the food throughout the day. Our family was able to spend all day together without much worry on what everyone would eat.

We made more than we would need and packed it up right away

We had plenty of leftovers to feed our out of town guests with a minimum of hassle because we packed everything up in plastic containers right after we ate. Nothing went to waste and everything was preserved at its freshest.

We split the work

I drafted up a schedule of preparations the night before that gave each of us jobs to do. We didn’t plan it this way, but us young’uns did the cooking and the parents took care of the cleaning. Everything was back to normal before bedtime and I don’t think any of us were especially exhausted. It was comforting to know we wouldn’t have to wake up to a mess in the morning.

What are some of the ways your family handles the big day?

This summer has been a real adventure in cooking from scratch. I think that making something “from scratch” can sound intimidating to a lot of people. Before I really starting cooking at all, that term really scared me. I thought of it as a snobby way to say that something was better than something else.

Cooking from scratch isn’t always better (depending on what you are using to determine what “better” is). The first time I made a cake from scratch, it was tough, dry, and pretty much inedible. Making ice cream from scratch is much tastier than store-bought, but certainly not cheaper and probably not healthier since we often use eggs and heavy cream. Making ice cream also takes a decent amount of time and advance planning. Pizza from scratch is probably the most delicious I’ve ever eaten, but can take at least a day of advanced planning to deal with dough and good ingredients may not be cheap.

Even when making something from scratch isn’t cheaper, healthier, more delicious, or less time consuming than buying something partially or completely pre-made, there’s something to be said for the self-sufficiency of it all. I really get a lot of enjoyment from learning how to do something. I like knowing how things are made and how much work goes into their creation. Even if I make something from scratch rarely (like pasta), knowing how to do so helps me appreciate the differences between what I am able to do and what a manufacturer can do. It also helps me make informed decisions on whether it is worth it for me to get the ingredients and make something myself or to buy it.

Last time I wrote about this, I was getting ready to make the decadent ricotta cheese that Smitten Kitchen had posted. For her, making the cheese herself allowed her to make something far richer than you can generally buy in the store. I’m less interested in eating ricotta cheese straight up – I tend to use it only as an ingredient in other recipes. The problem is that it can be a hard ingredient to keep on hand as it isn’t cheap and it can sometimes go bad before I have used it all. I really have to plan to have it around just in time for when I want to use it.

This was a case where learning how to make an ingredient from scratch meant that I would get to use it a lot more. Taking Deb’s recipe and thinning it out a bit with less fats gives me a similar cheese to what I can buy, yet I don’t have to make a special trip to the store to get it. I always have milk, lemon juice, and salt in the house. Now if I want to make a recipe that uses ricotta cheese, I can whip up the amount I need right before I need it and not worry about remembering to buy it.

While cooking from scratch can be a scary endeavor before you try it, it can be a great experiment in figuring out exactly what you can do in the kitchen. Sometimes it’s a time saver, sometimes not. Sometimes the result is so much better than what you can buy, and sometimes it isn’t. But it is always a learning experience. These learning experiences give you a little bit more freedom in the kitchen to try new things and see what happens.

So don’t be afraid of a recipe just because it starts with “from scratch.” Such a recipe can be simpler or easier than you might guess, and the knowledge could be a big benefit in a pinch.

Once you start making foods from scratch, it gets a little addictive. It’s amazing how many every day foods aren’t really that hard to make yourself. But even I have limits (or at least I thought I did). I was talking to my mother the other day and mentioned how I had a great sandwich. The bread was homemade (we’ve stopped buying bread because ours is finally satisfying enough). The pickles were homemade too, and some of my best yet. “Soon,” I joked, “I’ll be making my own cheese.” I was really really kidding though.

And then Deb over at smitten kitchen had to go and post this ricotta cheese recipe. There are only 4 ingredients, all of which I generally have around. It looks too simple not to try. Once I do that, I know it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to mozzarella. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to doing this, but when I do, I’ll be sure to let you all know how it went.

(Homemade peanut butter is also on the to do list, and since it doesn’t require a the heat of a stove, it might happen first.)

My thoughts have been drifting over to Paris quite a bit lately. I think it’s the travel bug that’s been itching in me all winter. This year also marks five years since I studied there. I spent a good part of this afternoon following Google street view around my old Paris haunts, amazed at how much is still the same (assuming Google’s photos are up to date).

The five months I spent in Paris were fabulous, and every once in a while I wish I could be transported back to that time. I learned so much there, a lot of it about food. If I were to go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would surely choose to eat a lot better. As a student, I was on a tight budget. I also knew much less about food than I do now. I cooked a lot of weird meals for myself and ate at a lot of weird places (usually only once).

But one place I know I would go back to is a little sandwich shop that was around the corner from my school. Pictured above, Le Ventilo is just a little lunch window on a quiet street. If you went inside, it like someone’s homey kitchen. There was a small seating area for maybe 3 people. You would sit behind whoever was making sandwiches that day and watch through the window as other people got their lunches. It was a lovely place, but there must have been many more remarkable sandwicheries across the city.

The menu at the time had cutely named sandwiches. I think there was one called “Le Austin Powers,” and of course, they sold the requisite Nutella panini. My favorite one, which I must have ordered a dozen times while I was there, was the “Ali Baba.” It wasn’t always available, but I remember treating myself to one whenever it was. It was 3.20 euros, I think. It was the simplest sandwich – a soft baguette pressed with moist ground beef and chopped cooked tomatoes. Simple, but somehow perfect. I would wait a few minutes for it to cool down and then nibble it for as long as I could while the meaty juices soaked into the meat and occasionally dripped down my fingers.

The first time I tried to recreate it at home, something was missing. A briny moistness to the meat. For some reason, I was able to replicate the flavor by including some brine from a jar of hearts of palms while sauteing the meat and tomatoes. I have no idea if this is even close to what they did at Le Ventilo, but it sure is delicious. If you’ve got some hearts of palm along with the brine, chop some up and include them as well.

Recipe: “Ali Baba” Ground Beef Sandwich

Makes 2 to 4 sandwiches depending on the bread

• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1 tomato, roughly chopped, about 1/2 cup
• 1/4 cup liquid from hearts of palm
• 1/4 cup hearts of palm, chopped (optional)
• salt and pepper
• either 2 approximately foot-long baguettes, or 4 sandwich rolls/smallish pitas

1. Season ground meat with salt and pepper. Saute with tomato and hearts of palm liquid. Break up the meat into small crumbles. Cook on high, stirring occasionally, for about 8 minutes until meat is done, tomatoes have disintegrated and some of the liquid cooked out. The meat will be gray because it wasn’t browned first – that’s okay. Add chopped hearts of palm if you are including them.
2. Spoon the mixture, juices and all, into the bread of your choice, in a thin layer.
3. If you would like to press and toast the sandwich panini-style, feel free to do so.

Enjoy as a nice midday snack or lunch with a small Nutella sandwich for dessert for a particularly decadent American-in-Paris treat.

Last year's perfect turkey, dark meat platter

If you’ve never bought a turkey before, it can be overwhelming to try to understand all the differences between them. There are plenty of guides, but there are so many of those too, it’s hard to know what will be best. In my family we have always chosen frozen kosher turkeys, but even if you don’t keep kosher there are plenty of good reasons to choose a kosher turkey. This cuts down the options a bit, which in this case, is a good thing.

Last year's turkey getting a feather inspection

My favorite reason is that kosher turkeys, like all koshered meat, have already been brined. This results in saltier meat that is more likely to retain its moisture during cooking. Sure, you could brine any turkey yourself, but if you live in a tiny New York apartment like I do, you probably don’t have room for the equipment to do it right. And besides, I have enough other dishes to worry about on Thanksgiving, I’ll take the occasional shortcuts where I can find them. If you start with a kosher turkey, then you’ve got all the flavor you need inside the meat before you even start.

Our turkey from 2008, rubbed down with seasoning. Probably a bit too much seasoning, actually.

When shopping for a turkey for Thanksgiving, see if your regular grocery store has any kind of holiday special going on about a month before the holiday. Stores will often have promotions that give away a turkey, or discount a turkey, if you spend a certain amount at the store over a certain period of time. This can help reduce the cost since a kosher turkey will be slightly more per pound than an non-kosher one.

2006's turkey getting a flip with ziptop bags over oven mitts.

Preparing and Cooking the turkey

Makes enough turkey for 8-10 people, plus leftovers

Prep time from fridge to table: Approximately 6 hours

Equipment:

• Roasting pan
• Tin foil

Ingredients:

• 14-16 lb kosher turkey
• 1-2 tbs paprika (mix in hot or smoked if desired)
• 1 tbs freshly ground black pepper
• 2-3 tbs kosher salt
• olive oil

1. If the turkey is frozen, defrost for at least 4 days in the refrigerator before you plan on cooking it. Defrost by putting the whole turkey, wrapping and all, into a big bowl or watertight container, and putting the whole thing, uncovered, into the fridge. This way, any loose liquids or condensation can drip into the bowl and not all over the rest of your food.
2. Once the turkey is well thawed and the day to cook it has arrived, put the bird in the (freshly scrubbed clean) sink, and open up the wrappings. Rinse with cold water, inside and out. There may be a packet of extra goodies in the cavity, or a neck, or both. Remove these and save for another dish or for stock-making.
3. Kosher turkeys tend to have more feathers left on the wings and tail than the average Butterball because of the way they are processed, so it’s a good idea to inspect and remove any that you find. A clean pair of tweezers usually does the trick. Once you are satisfied with the cleanliness of your turkey, dry it off with some paper towels and put it into your roasting pan. It’s probably a good idea to clean out your sink again at this point.
4. Mix together the dry seasonings in a bowl. Rub the turkey inside and out with olive oil. This will help crisp the skin and help the seasonings stick. If you have a kitchen helper, have them shake the seasonings over the turkey while you rub it into and under the skin. Make sure to cover every spot of the turkey with some of the rub. Any excess seasoning can be left in the cavity.
5. Face the turkey breast down in the roasting pan. Cover with a tent of aluminum foil.
6. Put into a 350 degree oven with a timer to check on it in 2.5 hours.
7. Take the turkey out of the oven and prepare to flip it. One of the most successful ways we have ever flipped the turkey has been to cover oven mitts in clean plastic produce bags, plastic wrap, or gallon sized ziptop bags, and just picked up the turkey and turned it over in the pan. This way you’ve got a good hold on it (remember, it’s hot!) and you don’t tear into it the way tongs might. I’ve seen “turkey flippers” in fancy cookware stores, and I suppose those could also work, but our method has always served us well. However you do it though, flip it so that it is breast up.
8. Before putting it back in the oven, you can salvage some of the liquid from the bottom of the pan for the gravy, stuffing, or even the mashed potatoes depending on how you like them. Much of it will evaporate in the last hour of cooking, so it is best to collect it now.
9. Return the turkey to the oven without the aluminum foil tent and let it roast for one more hour.
10. At the end of the hour, the flesh on the legs should be pulling away from the bone and the skin should be crisp and brown. Remove the turkey from the oven and cover it back up with the foil tent to rest for an hour.
11. Once the turkey has cooled down enough to touch, you can carve it. I like to separate white meat and dark meat onto different platters, but you can, of course, organize the perfectly carved turkey however you prefer.

Cooked this way, you’ll barely need gravy because all of the meat will be moist and flavorful on its own. Not that I’d ever pass up gravy, I just put it on my mashed potatoes instead.

2005: My first turkey, right before being flipped (tin foil tent was removed for the photo).

One year ago: Bacon Waffles (you can use any kind of bacon for these!)

Last year I thought of all kinds of things to say to all of you about my favorite holiday, but I thought of it all too late. I mean, really, who needs Thanksgiving tips a week after you’ve passed out from feasting? This year, I’m going to get my Thanksgiving started early. I have so many things to be thankful for this year, and I want to share the great resources I have with you early enough to be useful.

To me, Thanksgiving is about gathering together the ones you love, and showing them how much you love them by feeding them tasty foods made with care. One could probably argue that a lot of holidays are like this, but I like this one most because there’s no better reason to celebrate than thanks. Thanks for being alive, being with the ones you love, having more than enough to go around (because we truly are extremely lucky in that respect), and for being able to share it all. And unlike some religious holidays, I know I always get this one off from work. So really, it’s a time for guilt-free expression of joy. But enough with the sentimentality, on with the food!

In terms of Thanksgiving, there are few people I can give more thanks to than Alton Brown. The techniques I’ve gleaned from him over the five years I’ve been making Thanksgiving dinners for my family and friends have transformed me from a master re-heater to a proficient saucier. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it a lot here, but sauces are my favorite things to make, and it’s really all thanks to Alton (my arteries probably don’t feel the same gratitude). He explained the word “roux” to me and it was all gravy from there.

But specifically in the world of turkey and turkey day accoutrement, Alton has outdone himself. There are a series of clips available on Hulu right now which dissect each task of the Thanksgiving day chef into an easy to understand, practically foolproof set of concepts. From jellied cranberry sauce to perfect mashed potatoes to the entire bird with stuffing, he’s got us covered.

And while Alton has taught me tons over the years, no one has taught me more than the women in my family, for which I am endlessly thankful. My mother knows poultry and so I’ve always been lucky enough to have a fail-proof turkey technique just a phone call away. This turkey is always perfect. I mean look at last year’s spread. That was some moist turkey. Stay tuned for my turkey advice.

Because of my family, I’ve always had a strong tradition of holiday feasts to look back to when coming up with a menu. Family or tradition can be a great resource. What were your favorite Thanksgiving dishes growing up? I like tradition, but I also like to try new things. I try to balance the meal with some old family standards, and mix in some new flavors from my friends. For example, the way I make turkey and gravy is generally the same year to year, but with stuffing, Jen’s family’s cornbread-style recipe is more adventurous. This way there’s something familiar and something new at the table for everyone.

If you’ve never done a Thanksgiving feast before, it can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. The first time we attempted a Thanksgiving dinner, we made the dishes we knew we could handle (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes), and bought the dishes we weren’t yet sure how to make (cranberry sauce, gravy, pies). Over the years, we increased the number of dishes we made from scratch, until we’d got the day down pat. Now we even make our own pies. But remember, we didn’t start there and you don’t need to either! Each year, we learn a bit more, and take tips from the masters in our lives on how to get each component right.

I’m going to try to post my best Thanksgiving tips each week until the holiday. If there’s anything you want to know more about, leave us a comment and we’ll do our best to get it in.

One year ago: My Grandma’s Vegetable Soup

Related posts:

1. Thanksgiving
2. A Simple Turkey, a retrospective

Because it’s been so beautiful out, we’ve changed some of our usual eating and cooking habits for the summer. We’ve been eating out a bit more and have been sharing more meals with friends. To counteract the cost of eating out more often, we’ve slowed down our grocery shopping routine (Incidentally that is not very hard to do considering you don’t need to cook as often if you eat out more).

Despite the fact that we haven’t really shopped in the last month, we’ve still been eating about as well as we usually do (one disclaimer: I’ve had a ton of fresh greens and herbs from our local community garden that I wrote about last time). That’s why you haven’t seen much of me here, I’m cooking some old favorites over and over again. It’s times like these where I’m really proud of my home cooking experience and the ability to keep a well stocked pantry and freezer.

Not writing blog posts (sorry about that, really), has also given me time to read some other great posts. These two say it all better than I ever could, and also came at the perfect time:

• A Guide to Using Dry Beans for Cooking by Trent Hamm over at The Simple Dollar – Trent has been posting some great frugal cooking guides this summer. I loved this post because I too have recently found the joys of keeping dried beans. I just throw each whole bag into a jar when I bring them home from the store, and they can last almost forever. I can throw a handful or two into any soups I’m making (skipping the soaking step isn’t ideal but can be done), or soak some all day for an easy dish that night. So many varieties of beans are healthy, delicious, cheap and easy to keep around. Dried beans are also easier to lug home from the grocery store than cans – which is important when you live in a 4th floor walk-up.
• At GetRichSlowly – Reader Story: How I Save Tons of Money by Grocery Shopping Once Every Three Months. This post’s title is slightly misleading as the author does get vegetables from a CSA biweekly, but the idea behind it rings true: shop less often and you’ll save money. Another point she makes that I believe in is that cooking out of your pantry forces you to be a little more creative with how you put meals together, and helps you develop a sense of what works together.

These two posts reminded me a bit of the sort of topics I want to cover here at Get Cooking: being creative and unafraid in the kitchen, cutting costs without sacrificing health or flavor. Stay tuned for some new recipes straight out of the pantry!

One year ago: Collard Greens with Chick Peas

We’ve been stopping by a community garden in our neighborhood doing a bit of weeding and pruning this summer. When we went a few weeks ago, we saw these tall bushes of what looked like dill and smelled like licorice. I tasted a bit and it tasted overwhelmingly like dill, so I thought that was what it was. We took some home and I’ve been adding a little bit to pretty much everything.

We stopped by today and met some of the garden organizers. I told them how much I loved the dill, and it turns out that the bush is anise. I forgot all about that third option in the dill-fennel family.

I’ve already started using it in dill dishes (like the best tzatziki sauce I’ve ever had), so it’s hard for me to think of it as something other than dill. It’s like a dillier dill and it is wonderful. I think that I may need to try to make a batch of “dill” pickles to see if there is any noticeable difference.

Has anyone ever used anise greens in their cooking? I’d love to hear some ideas about what else to do with, since I have several bushes of it available for the taking.

One year ago: Egg white avocado salad

I could run off a huge list of excuses about the lack of posts lately, but I find those kinds of posts tiresome and I bet you do too. The most interesting reason that I’ve been a bit absent here is that it’s just been too gorgeous out to hang out in a hot kitchen. As much as I advocate for cooking instead of always eating out, there are times when getting out of the house and enjoying the great food your city has to offer is pretty much obligatory.

So get out, enjoy the great food that summer brings out! And hey, if you aren’t lucky enough to be in New York where you can get a great hot dog pretty much anywhere (in any meat or non-meat variety), make one yourself and have a picnic.

I’ll be back soon, I just need to soak up a few more rays and eat a bit more terrible, but oh so wonderful, local foods.

Psst: If you’re still not satisfied, check out the archives by poking into the tags, categories or monthly links in the right side bar.

One year ago: Warm Creamy Peanut Chicken Salad