WARNING: THIS IS A COOKING-RELATED POST. FEEL FREE TO SKIP IT IF YOU FIND SUCH THINGS BORING. I WOULDN'T DO THIS SORT OF THING IF I DIDN'T HAVE FRIENDS THAT ASK ME FOR RECIPES. OR IF I WROTE THINGS DOWN WHILE I COOK INSTEAD OF POURING ANOTHER GLASS OF WINE. WHAT'S THAT? DON'T MIND IF I DO...
I love the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It sort of represents the best and worst of American culture - Broadway...cheerleading...bands of both the marching and boy varieties...Hannah Montana and tacky, cheesy capitalist excess. Where else can you see an authentic Ojibwe tribal dance AND Spongebob Squarepants? I can't remember the last time I actually sat down and really watched it - I think it is best consumed as background noise while furiously whipping things up in a kitchen that is only used to its full capacity approximately 3 days out of the year. I think I believe this because in my house, I only ever watched it as a kid when I was still small enough to get shooed out of the kitchen, but when I was spending Thanksgivings at my aunt's house in Chicago during grad school and I was big enough to NEVER get shooed out of the kitchen, the parade always had to be on because she HAD to see the Rockettes. She could care less about the rest of the parade, as long as she got her high kicks, and the cooking would be put on pause while she watched them.
That being said, this year Rick Astley was on a float, surrounded by giant imaginary friend puppets.
That's right - the Macy's parade got Rickrolled.
God bless America, y'all.
Why am I bringing this up now, when us Americans done had our Thanksgiving three weeks ago? It really has nothing to do with anything; however, my flight home for Christmas got snowed out today, and since there is no reasonable way for a girl without a car to get from Scarborough to Pearson Airport at 4:30 on a Sunday morning (two...three hours on the Night Bus? No thanks. $50 cab ride? I'll pass.), I just went ahead and booked a seat on a Monday flight in hopes that by then the airport will have recovered from the OTHER storm that's headed our way on Sunday. So, I'm at home. When I'm supposed to be having drinks at the Virginian with Will and seeing Sweeney Todd at Live Arts and having lunch at Cafe Europa and mourning four years of Milky Ways at the now-defunct Espresso Corner and EATING A BAGEL AT BODO'S ON THE CORNER and generally marveling at how much things have changed since I graduated almost 10 years ago. The one blessing I can count is that they cancelled my flight BEFORE I left the house, saving me hauling my very heavy luggage (lots of liquid presents this year for Dad and Brother) to the bus stop in the worst part of the storm and God-knows-how-long on the GO bus before getting the good news. And, as Em not-so-subtly points out, one of the best things to do while snowed in is blogging. And, since it's apparently not allowed to be Christmas yet, it must still be Thanksgiving. Because in addition to being in holiday travel limbo, and despite all of my last-ditch cleanup efforts, there is STILL duck in my fridge.
The most pressing problem with being snowed in when you're supposed to be headed out of town for a week and a half is not one of inconvenience, or of having your vacation cut short, or of losing time with family and friends that you haven't seen in months (or, in some cases, years).
It is one of groceries.
See, I don't HAVE any. I thought I was going to be gone for 11 days, so I used up everything I could in the last week or so.
I can't GET any. IT'S FUCKING SNOWING. There's like...I don't know, a crapload out there. And there's Christmas lights and glogg and egg nog in here.
I personally believe snowstorms are the reason wine racks were invented.
Anyway, a girl's gotta eat, right? Gots no groceries. Gots no car. Gots no way to get takeout because roti ain't worth snowboots, and delivery will take forever and the delivery guy NEVER seems to get that whole "come around to the back door" instruction. So I have no choice but to rummage. Which brings me back to Thanksgiving.
And a Tale of Two Recipes.
Thanksgiving poses a unique problem to singletons, even those of us who have bona fide boyfriends. That problem is one of Leftovers.
"But Wahooty," I'm sure you are saying to your computer screen, "we all have Leftovers! Leftovers are a part, nay, a veritable necessity of the Thanksgiving experience!"
But a single girl doesn't just find herself with leftover poultry and pumpkin pie. She finds herself with leftover....ingredients. Because sometimes you can't find a small can of pumpkin. Sometimes all you can find are the big cans, that are big enough for TWO pies. And ONE pie is more than one girl needs, especially when her favorite pumpkin pie recipe is made for a deep dish tart pan and thus makes enough filling for four little mini pies in addition to one regular pie. Now, The Boy is remarkably helpful when it comes to disposing of excess pie, but what, exactly, is he going to do with the excess pumpkin?
So this half of a can of pumpkin had been sitting in my fridge for a week.
Taunting me.
Luckily, food and drink is one of my major hobbies and so, if you catch me in a leisurely mood, leftover ingredients are like toys. And one night, I felt like playing. So I henceforth present my newly-developed guidelines for pumpkin soup. It's a work in progress, but so far, it's like crack.
(I should preface this by saying that I have had pumpkin soup in a few restaurants, but it tends to be on the sweet side and generally contains coconut milk. These are the two things I am looking to avoid, because a) not a fan of sweet soup and 2) tummy doesn't like coconut. Stupid fructose. Anyway, this is a savory soup.)
Take 2 strips of really good, smoky bacon. Cut up into little strips, and fry in a pot until the fat renders and it starts to crisp up. Throw in one onion, diced. A couple of cloves of minced garlic. About an inch of ginger root, grated. A generous layer of garam masala. Curry powder would probably work too, but in a totally different way. The bacon and onions and spices are leaving a brown layer on the bottom of the pan...let's deglaze that with a little bourbon. Once that boils down, add half of one of those big cans of pumpkin (or one 15-oz can, although, in retrospect, a whole big can would've been good too) and three cups of beef broth (wanted to use chicken, but only had beef). Taste it. It could use something herbal...green. Still have piles of fresh thyme left over...throw a few sprigs in. Maybe a little more garam masala. Wait, chop up and throw about 3 of those shiitake mushrooms in there too. Hmm...a liberal grinding of fresh pepper. Let's just let that simmer for 20-30 minutes.
Still have some cream left after making that pie...and some milk...add a little of each (or, if you're doing it sans leftovers, about 1/2 a cup of half and half...you could probably get away with 1/4 of a cup).
Fuckin' tasty as hell.
Of course, that's probably just because I'm an MSG whore and typically use a jar of "soup base" (aka boullion, just not in cube form) as my source of "broth". In the interests of full disclosure, instead of adding salt, I added more of the "beef soup base" beyond the amount required to make the broth, which effectively means I added salt, beef fat, and MSG.
Fuck off, it still tastes good. It's like Fall. In a bowl. (Seriously...MSG is a cheap trick, but it fuckin' WORKS. Especially on a Thursday.)
Serve this with a fruity white wine, like a riesling or a gewurztraminer. Preferably one that's a little on the off-dry, slightly sweet side. The garam masala somehow makes the soup taste vaguely coconutty to me, but without being sweet. So if the wine's a little sweet, that satisfies the conventional pumpkin soup profile that's obviously tasty if every restaurant makes it that way, but the soup itself is still savory, which satisfies...
...me.
And isn't that really all that matters? Yeah, I thought so.
Leftover duck leg? I'm lookin' at you next... my shirataki noodles will OWN you, bitch! I will henceforth refer to this as Snowday Soup:
Start with a good, heavy pan (I use cast iron) and heat up a good layer of olive oil. Toss in some onions. Not a whole lot - I've only got one leg leftover, after all. This was about half an onion, sliced about 1/4 of an inch thick (or roughly half a centimeter for you metric kids). Slowly caramelize on medium-low heat. While this is happening, boil some water in a pot big enough to hold the soup. Drain the shirataki noodles (my new obsession that will be getting a LOT of love once I'm eating sensibly again after the holidays), rinse them well, and par-boil them for 2-3 minutes to "reduce the authentic aroma." (That's verbatim from the package, BTW. I believe "authentic aroma" is Japanese for "ass-funk.") Drain the noodles. Return pan to burner, and bring stock to a boil (I used half beef "soup base" and half chicken broth from a tetrapak because that's what I had). Go ahead and throw the duck leg in there whenever you want. Meh, throw the noodles in too (they are weirdly gelatinous and apparently benefit from as much time in things with flavor as possible). Once those onions are nice and dark brown, toss 'em in. In your frying pan, start frying bacon. Like before - 2 strips, cut up into very small bits. Render 'til crispy and brown. Put bacon in pot. Use leftover bacon fat to start sauteeing the 4 shiitake mushrooms that have kept remarkably well since Thanksgiving, chopped fine. Add some thinly sliced cabbage - I used Napa, because that's what I had. Baby bok choi would have been better (but whole, not sliced). Throw in a few cloves of chopped garlic and maybe a drizzle of sesame oil. Lose track of how many different varieties of fat you have now included in this meal. Dump the veggies into the pot. Deglaze that pan with some water or broth to get the browny goodness into the soup pot. Add some soy sauce if the soup isn't salty enough. Toss in a few sprigs of that thyme, because, yep, it's STILL THERE (even if it is now somewhere halfway between fresh thyme and dried). Let this simmer for a half hour to an hour... shred the meat off of the leg and pull out the bones... and finish with a splash of Chinese black vinegar (balsamic and/or malt vinegar would work if you don't have it).
Eat with chopsticks and an Asian soup spoon, like you would pho. Even though it tastes weirdly European. It's fusion food. And WAY more fun if you eat it with chopsticks.
And...ah, crap. Now I have Leftovers.
