The key to the seared chicken is to season it first with salt and pepper (I actually use a barbecue rub from sent from Kansas City via our friend Valerie) and then dredge it in flour.  This is less than I normally do which is the flour-egg-breadcrumb method. And then use the brown bits on the bottom of the pan to make a gravy.  Easy peasy.

Seared chicken with onion gravy

2 chicken breasts
1/2 cup of flour
2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of of cooking oil
1 large onion, sliced
1 teaspoon of chopped sage (pilfered from my neighbor’s yard)
1 tablespoon flour
1/4 cup of bourbon/vermouth/white wine (optional)
1 1/2 cups chicken stock

Pound the chicken breasts like this.  Salt and pepper the chicken breast (I use Kansas City spice rub for a down home feel).  Dredge the chicken lightly in the flour until lightly covered on all sides.  Heat skillet until a drop of water dances.  Add the butter and oil and heat until the butter melts.  Sear the chicken on both sides until golden brown and firm.  Put the chicken on a cookie sheet and keep warm in a 300 degree oven which you make the sauce.  In the pan with the leftover butter/oil  saute the onion until it’s translucent, about 15 minutes.  Add the tablespoon of flour and stir until it’s incorporated with the onion.  Deglaze with the alcohol and stir until thickened (it should be kind of a puddingy consistency).  Add the chicken stock and simmer for about 10 minutes until thickened and hot.  Salt and pepper to taste (I have this awesome umami paste I use).

Lay chicken on the plate on pour the gravy on top.  Eat.

My cooking related gifts - The Le Creuset and my awesome cooking clogs

Only two days into owning it and I’ve made two dishes.

The first is  seared pork loin made a la Gettin Saucy.  BUT I decided to go all out and sear the pork loin in the Le Cresuet and deglaze the pan with port wine and a canned black truffle gravy my mother brought from France.  On top of that, I roasted some shallots and shoved the whole mess in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes for the pork to cook through.  By the end of the cooking the pan was crusted with black and brown stuff.  All of it came of with a wipe of the sponge.

This was all part of my master plan to do a multi-course plated dinner for the family that included:

Course 1
Arugula salad with sherry vinaigrette, crisped proscuitto, and croutons

Course 2
The seared pork tenderloin with roasted shallots and port sauce

Roasted asparagus

A Cauliflower parsnip puree (add parsnips.  They are delicious and creamy)

Course 3
Nigella Lawson’s chocohotopots 

Sugar free pumpkin mousse with ginger cookie crumbles

Tom Kha Dumpling Soup
Now that the weather is cold I am this a lot. I love this and it’s SOOOO easy to make. Trader Joe’s has these awesome little cilantro and chicken dumplings that are perfect for soup. The problem with a potsticker-sized dumpling is that by the time the middle cooks through the wrapper gets soggy. These are the perfect wrapper-filling ratio.

1 onion, finely sliced
1 inch of ginger cut into slices
1 bulb of lemongrass
2 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
1 carrot sliced into disks

1 can of coconut milk
the equivalent amount of stock (can be vegetable or chicken)
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon sambal olek
1 teaspoon Thai sweet chili sauce

1/2 a bag of trader joe’s chicken cilantro mini won tons
Add ons: shredded napa cabbage, shitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, cooked shredded chicken, tofu

Saute the first set of ingredients in about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil until the onions are translucent. Add the rest of the ingredients and start tasting to make sure it’s to your liking. You may want to add a bit more lime or fish sauce in particular. Add the add-ons. Simmer for 20 minutes. When ready to serve, bring to a boil and add the mini won tons. Boil for 2 minutes and spoon up!

What I came to Thanksgiving with: fig and sausage stuffing, cauliflower puree, chocolate ganache tart, apple upside down cake, ginger cake with caramel sauce, chopped sage, rosemary and thyme from my garden.

7:45 am  arrive at the 10K with the family

9:30 am  finish the 10K

11:30 am  arrive at Aunt’s house and eat lunch

12:30 pm  make a herb-orange rub for the turkey.  Mix with metled butter and rub on turkey.  Toss the asparagus in olive oil and salt and pepper and put in roasting pan.

1:00 pm  get cousins to grate cheese and peel and slice potatoes.  Chop garlic and mix with herbs.  Assemble gratins.

1:30 pm   bake gratins for 45 minutes covered and another 45 minutes uncovered.

3:00 pm  put in turkey.   Assemble salad (everything except the dressing).

5:00 pm take turkey out of the oven and roasting pan.  Cover with foil.  Add drippings to pre-made gravy (that I still made from scratch).  Put gratin and stuffing in oven to heat.  Heat puree on the stovetop.  Warm caramel sauce in double boiler.  Roast asparagus.

5:30 pm slice turkey and put on platter.  Pour a little turkey stock on top and cover with foil.  Keep warm in oven at 300 degrees.  Put asparagus, gratins, stuffing, and puree on table.  Toss salad and put on table.

6:00 pm place turkey on table and call everyone to dinner.

6:15 pm  decide to hold off giving thanks until dessert.

7:15 pm  give thanks and then eat dessert.

10:00 pm karaoke with the siblings and cousins.

Sugar Free Pumpkin Mousse

1 packet of gelatin (a scant tablespoon worth)
1/4 cup of water

1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon of maple extract
1/3 cup of splenda for baking (which ensures a 1 to 1 equivalent for sugar)
4 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon worth of spices (you can use cardamom, ground ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg etc)

4 egg whites from the separated eggs
1/4 cup splenda

1 cup heavy cream

Dissolve the gelatin in the water and let sit in the water for 15 minutes until the gelatin has softened.   Mix together the pumpkin, splenda, maple extract, spices, and egg yolks in a large heat proof bowl.  Add the gelatin and put the bowl over a pot of simmering water.  Heat the pumpkin mixture until the gelatin has fully dissolved and the mixture has thickened a little.  Let cool to room temperature.  Whip the egg whites and sugar to soft peaks.  Fold vigorously into the pumpkin (seriously don’t worry about deflating the egg whites, the mousse is totally airy anyway).  Whip the whipped cream until soft peaks and fold the whipped cream into the pumpkin mixture.  Let stand at least 2 hours before serving.

1. J made gourmet deviled eggs with different spices on top. The first was a smoked hot Spanish pimenton and the second was a Moroccan harissa. Lovely!

2. I cracked the hot turkey code. Make sure the turkey is ready to go out of the oven 1 hour before serving. No seriously, 1 hour. It takes a half hour to rest under foil and 15 minutes to carve. Once carve put the meat on a platter, pour a little gravy or stock on top and cover with foil and stick in a 300 degree oven until ready to serve.

3. Flavorwise the ginger cake was amazing. Texture-wise it was a bit dry. This is where I would recommend heating by microwave. The other thing I would say is the butter in the caramel sauce recipe is unnecessary. I found that the butter split from the sauce when reheated. For the recipe go here.

4. For a light flavored dressing, use sparking white wine as your acid.  The Spinach, apple and pomegranate salad that West Coast Rebecca made was positively refreshing.

Now onto the family Thanksgiving with 14 people.

To inaugurate the pot, I emailed my sister a short rib recipe. She and her fiance made the short ribs and they pronounced them delicious.

Ingredients

* 4 beef short ribs, trimmed of fat
* Kosher salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 leek, cleaned and large-diced, white part only
* 1 1/2 cups chopped onion (2 onions)
* 4 stalks of celery large-diced
* 2 carrots, peeled and large-diced
* 3 garlic cloves, minced
* 2 tablespoons tomato paste
* 1 (750-ml) bottle Cotes du Rhone or other dry red wine
* 1 teaspoon rosemary sprigs
* 1/2 teaspoon thyme sprigs
* 1 tablespoon brown sugar
* 1 8 oz can of stock (can be chicken or beef)

Directions

Salt and pepper the short ribs and sear in the olive oil until browned on all sides. Set ribs aside. Add the leek, onion, celery and carrots and cook over medium-low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the tomato paste and wine, bring to a boil and cook over high heat until the liquid is reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Add 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Add the herbs.

Place the seared ribs on top of the vegetables in the Dutch oven and add the brown sugar and beef stock. Bring to a simmer over high heat. Cover the Dutch oven and bake at 350 degrees for 2 hours or until the meat is very tender.

Carefully remove the short ribs from the pot and set aside. Skim the excess fat. (You could make this ahead and put in the fridge and then get the solidified fat off the top). With your handy dandy immersion blender, puree the vegetables in the pot and then cook the vegetables and sauce over medium heat for 20 minutes, until reduced. Put the ribs back into the pot and heat through.

Here’s my menus:

Thanksgiving of friends
Herb rubbed turkey with gravy
Southwestern cornbread stuffing with chorizo
Ginger cake with toffee sauce
Sugar Free pumpkin mousse
(friends will be bringing more sides)

Thanksgiving of family
Frisee salad with lardons and homemade croutons
Steamed asparagus
Cauliflower and parsnip puree
Two-potato gratin
Fig and sausage stuffing
Clementine brined turkey with gravy
Ginger cake with toffee sauce
Sugar Free pumpkin mousse
Pear tart tatin

What’s everyone else making?

Where the book is strongest is when Kim shines a light on herself and especially her writing process. The narrative thread is strongest there. Severson is great at talking about what influences her and how she approaches a piece on a particular person. One challenge is that the book jumps around from influence to influence and time period to time period. It ends up being hard to know how the things relate to each other because of the tangled chronology.

I’ll take this review chapter by chapter because there’s such an evenness that some chapters shine and others struggle.

Marion Cunningham
This is one of the better chapters where Severson goes in-depth on her battle with substance abuse and her personal journey in becoming a food writer. We really see her journey to find herself and her writing voice. You can clearly see Marion Cunningham’s influence on her as a former alcoholic herself. You get a sense of Marion’s reach into the food world by sheer force of her nurturing personality. One weakness is that Severson just drops one tiny chink in Marion’s armor about her relationship with her children and backs way off on delving into it, probably because that’s not something Severson herself knew much about. What ends up being a huge joy for this Bay Area resident is her ode to the food of the Bay Area, particularly Meyer lemons (I have a fruitful tree in my backyard). But also she talks about food writing itself – how to describe food in interesting and compelling ways that gives the reader a sense of her life as a food writer.

Alice Waters
And this is one of the weaker chapters. I think Severson doesn’t know what to do with compelling and complicated figures. In what turns out to be a frustrating pattern, she’ll sing Alice’s praises as a groundbreaker and vanguard and say that “other people” say that Alice is a beeyotch. She uses that a lot. “Other people” have criticisms of Alice but Kim remains resolutely neutral. And Alice Waters is most certainly someone who you cannot be neutral about. The other challenge is that Alice Waters has been written about (and has written enough herself) that everything Severson writes about Alice ends up sounding like boilerplate because Severson doesn’t actually put her own opinion out there.

Ruth Reichl
Oh blech, definitely the weakest chapter in my opinion. She talks about Ruth Reichl being a kind of head cheerleader of the food world. This is in the context of Severson herself, moving to New York to write for the very paper that employed Reichl. And once again, Severson employs that “other people criticize” method. Severson can’t seem to say anything bad about anyone herself so she lets “other people” do the dirty work – whether that be about Reichl’s fictionalized journalism or Reichl’s own personality. And one other thing, Severson really hates food bloggers. She constantly talks about the blogging community as a huge bitchy monolith. She never says a nice thing about any food blogger, which I am finding frustrating because the line between FOOD WRITER and blogger is blurred beyond comprehension at this point.

Leah Chase
The second weakest chapter. She turns Leah “Dooky” Chase into some kind of Bible spouting Saint. This whole chapter is about Severson’s spirituality and Chase’s spirituality. It’s all about how they need God and how God tests you and how God gives you strength. My own biases come into play here and the fact that Severson tiptoes over the extreme inequities and emphasizes Chase’s “God will provide” attitude just makes the story of Katrina sound like a 700 Club mailer. Its devoid of politics which is is central to how New Orleans was impacted by Katrina.

Scott Peacock
Ah the best chapter. While peripherally about Edna Lewis, the renowned Southern cookbook writer, this chapter is really about Edna Lewis’ devoted gay (the poetically named) Scott Peacock. This was where Kim Severson talks about her lesbianism and her family and Scott Peacock’s devoted relationship with Edna Lewis. The hot story that I only heard intimated was about how this sweet gay man became the devoted caretaker to an old black woman who’s the pillar of Southern cooking. It’s really entertaining because it gives you a long look at Kim Severson’s childhood and Scott Peacock’s relationship with Edna Lewis and boy is that a bit of dirt (LITTLE RASCALS!)

Rachael Ray
This was a decent chapter. Severson gives you a sense of her totally star F$&;%^ing when it comes to Ray. She talks a lot about her admiration for Ray and Ray’s fame. She also delves in a bit more with notes on Ray’s family, childhood and rise to fame. It feels like a complete story.

Marcella Hazan
Severson has the good sense to dish a bit more dirt in her last profile of Marcella Hazan. Severson frames the whole piece by waxing poetically about the impact Hazan and one of her cookbooks has on Severson. That book was a gift from her mother and it becomes a treasured icon. Then Severson is called to interview Marcella and her husband. Rather than being some transcendent moment, the interview is awkward. Severson writes a well reviewed article about the Hazan’s that includes a bitchy comment from Judith “homewrecker” Jones (Knopf cookbook editor) about Marcella’s tastebuds being killed by cigarettes and whiskey. And then the nasty emails come from Hazan’s husband. Severson lets loose and totally outs Hazan’s husband for being mean and petty. This gives her a realization that there are not perfect food moments. It’s hilarious to see the Hazans all twisted about one comment in one article.

Spoon Fed ends with a story about Severson’s declining mother but really who cares. We all wanted more dirt on the Hazans.