Thanksgiving countdown!

A week from today I'll be tackling Thanksgiving for the 4th time in my life and, also, for the 4th in a row. I have just written a "strategic guide to Thanksgiving" for the paper I work for and was surprised to receive many e-mails about it. Apparently I wasn't the only one to make a few dramatic mistakes the first time I hosted a turkey dinner. I'm no expert now, but I got better with the years and once again I'm pretty psyched to be the one cooking the Thanksgiving feast. If you want to read my witticism about turkey day, here's a link to my article in the newspaper. After long deliberation I have finally come up with my menu:

Oysters Rockafeller
Roasted herbed turkey with truffle gravy
Oyster dressing
Chestnut, sausage and apple stuffing
Mashed sweet potatoes with brown sugar and nut crust
Cranberry chutney
Brussels sprouts with walnuts and apples
Pear pie with strusel topping and caramel sauce

Wish me luck. And yes, I have asked my mother to make a couple of the dishes, especially since with the perfect timing that characterizes us we have been out of town last weekend and we are going out of town again this weekend, so I will have no time to prep for the big day other than Tuesday night and Wednesday (which thank God I have taken off work). Because, you know, we like to make everything a challenge. We haven't left town for ten months and we decide to do so twice just before we host Thanksgiving and have friends staying with us. Again: wish me luck.

Maritime pork tenderloin marinade

For those of you who are wondering, no, this pork tenderloin is not stuffed with crabmeat (which I'm allergic to anyway) or topped with a skewer of plump Gulf shrimp a la surf & turf. The reason why this pork tenderloin is called "maritime" is because it was made with a lot of love and lots and lots of swearing on a sailboat. I've been down in Key West since Thursday night and, unfortunately, I'm going home tomorrow. But still there have been many fun times, including the making of this pork.

Friday, the 13th, we had no bad luck. But over the weekend, and even today, we had some -let's call them- "moments". Today, for example, we went 7 miles out in the inflatable to dive a new wreck and, of course, the current was so strong we had to give up. Oh, well, we could still go sailing, no biggie. We get back to the marina, get on the sailboat (which is our floating house for the week) and get all read to go. Battery dead - no way we could idle out of the harbor. Yes. No comment.

So instead of going for a sunset sail and spending the night out in the bay on a hook, we went and watched sunset at Mallory Square missed it because traffic was more retarded than usual and ended up scarfing down raw oysters at the Half Shell again (that part of our day I enjoyed a lot!)

When we got back to the marina and on the boat, though, we had the pork I had so zealously marinated all day and Tommy cooked it on the grill with some sweet potatoes -the perfect ending to a less than stellar day. But you know what? I'm still on vacation. So who cares how stellar a day is or isn't or how crappy m food photography can be. This is Key West. People start drinking at 10 a.m.

Enough said.

"MARITIME" PORK MARINADE

2 pounds pork tenderloin
Salt and pepper
1 cup soy sauce
2 minced cloves of garlic
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup dijon mustard
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper

Sprinkle pork tenderloins with salt and pepper to your liking. Put pork in a ziploc bag and pour in all other ingredients. Swish around and refrigerate for a few hours, turning occasionally to coat. Discard marinade and grill pork on medium high.

Manatee time!

This post has absolutely NOTHING to do with food and recipes, but I thought it would be worth posting. I was just sitting on the dock here in Key West, getting ready to go diving when this manatee (see cow) came up on the surface and started playing with the hose we were using to rinse our gear. Check it out -I've lived in Florida for almost ten years and have never seen anything like this before!

Vacation

I'm on a mini-vacation in Key West, Fla., sailing, diving and trying not to drink before noon. I'll be back to reality on Wednesday and will have many recipe/food related stories to post. Have a great weekend everyone!

Gravlax

So I have this thing for salmon -for me to eat it it must be either smoked or wild caught. I refuse to eat the farm raised type mostly because it tastes so fishy it makes my stomach turn and also because if you read how they live in captivity and what they eat it will turn you off it forever. Anyhow, I had a beautiful piece of wild caught salmon in the freezer, but it wasn't really big enough to make an entree out of it, so I decided to make gravlax instead. Gravlax is a Swedish dish and, to my knowledge, the only Swedish contribution to world cuisine. Those of you who have read Stieg Larsson's novels will probably know that all they eat in Sweden is toast, coffee and, when they get all crazy and reckless, cereal. Never in one of his huge books does Larsson mention gravlax -which is a pity because it's delicious and easy to make. The only tricky part is that you have to plan ahead for it because it has to marinate for 24 hours. Other than that it's completly idiot-proof.

GRAVLAX
One pound of salmon fillet, skin on
2 tablespoons sea salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon black pepper
A large bunch of fresh dill

Place the salmon, skin side down, on a large piece of plastic wrap.

Mix salt, pepper and sugar in a bowl. Sprinkle evenly over salmon, until the flesh is completly covered with salt mixture. Place dill on top of salmon.

Wrap the salmon up, as tightly as possible, in the plastic wrap. Use a second sheet of plastic wrap to wrap again. Place the package in a container (I used a pyrex) and place in the fridge for at least 48 hours. You will notice some liquid forming in the container -it's normal.

After two days open the pacakge, discard the dill and gently wash the salmon with cold water. Place on a cutting board and cut thinly, from the tail end first, detaching each slice from the skin. Serve with dill, crackers, sour cream and slices of lemon.

Orecchiette with meatsauce

When I was little I didn't like meatsauce. This tidbit of information probably won't shock anyone since I have confessed more than once that I used to be a pain in the ass picky eater when I was little. It all started in preschool. I went to a Montessori preschool in Milan and absolutely loved it. We were free to learn what we wanted to learn at our own pace, we could move our little desks wherever we fancied and lunch was served in a beautiful room that had an aquarium in it. It was the best three years of my life and I wish that I could have gone to a Montessori elementary, middle and high school. Hell, I wish I could have gone to a Montessori university and maybe landed a Montessori-style job. Wouldn't that be fun? Being able to to as you wish, getting stuff done because you want to and not because someone is going to fire you? Instead I receive e-mails from HR that remind all of us that we should keep cutesy personal objects on our desk to a minimum and that leggings are not proper office attire. It goes without saying, I wear leggings pretty much every day and have taped the cutest picture of my cat to my cubicle. Yes, I'm a rebel like that.

Anyways, back to preschool. I only have one bad memory of those three years and it has to do with food. Meatsauce, to be exact. On the first week I was attending preschool, on Wednesday, the menu taped on the door read "Vulcano-style meat". It turned out to be nothing other than meat sauce and I hated it. Because we were not allowed to throw away food I sat in the dining room for two hours, well after all the other kids had gone out to play, and had to eat the whole thing. After that incident, every Wednesday, my mom would leave a not asking to subsitute my meal with ham and carrots. See, at the Montessori preschool they did that. They substituted your meal if your parents asked.

And so meat sauce, for a long time, was taboo at my house, until I grew out of this ridicolus stage and started loving it.

MEAT SAUCE:
1 pound ground sirloin
1 pound ground pork
2 slices of bacon
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 onion
Salt and pepper, to taste
A bottle of good red wine
Beef broth
2 bay leaves

Mince the bacon and brown it in a little olive oil in a large stock pot. Mince the vegetables and add them to the same pot. Sautee them for about five minutes. Add the ground meat, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook until browned, stirring frequently.

Add a couple of glasses of red wine, lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add enough beef broth to cover the meat, throw in the bay leaves, cover and simmer on very low heat for a couple of hours. Serve over orecchiette.

Polenta, gorgonzola and speck bites

Polenta is in my blood. My mother's family hails from the region of Veneto, where polenta is an everyday staple. She was born and raised in Milano, but when she was little she often visited her cousins, aunts and uncles at their farm in the country, where fruit was freshly picked from the trees and an old aunt was roasting chicken on the spit or making polenta. Making real polenta, you see, is no easy task. You have to stir the thing for more than an hour, without interruptions. Imagine that? Stirring a thick, heavy mass for more than one hour with a wooden stick? Neither can I. Nor my mom, for that matter. She always bought instant polenta, which is lovely and takes 5 minutes to cook and virtually no stirring. And of course I've learned from her because if you think that I can stand there and stir a couldron of bubbly yellow stuff for more than an hour, you're sadly mistaken. I might be a witch from time to time, but not that kind of patient witch.

Instant polenta, as I was saying is perfectly ok and most people will not taste the difference. Some will say they do, but they are bluffing. So buy the instant stuff and make polenta as much as you can. Now that is colder out (at least in places that have normal climates, here in Florida I'm still waiting for some kind of relief from the humidity) it's the perfect dish: comforting, filling and, incredibly enough, low in fat. And if you have leftovers you can make this little appetizer bites, which are delicious.

POLENTA BITES
One package of instant polenta
A slab of creamy gorgonzola
A package of speck (smoked prosciutto, available at Costco)

Make polenta according to directions, then pour it into a large pyrex coated with cooking spray and pat it down. Let it cool completly.

Once the polenta is cool, cut it into bite sized squares and place them on a cookie sheet coated with cooking spray. Broil for a minute, so the polenta squares get a little bit of a crust.

Top each square with a little gorgonzola and a piece of speck.

Gorgonzola and pear baskets

Gorgonzola and pears. A match made in heaven. If you have never tried it, do so immediately -you'll be hooked for life. It sounds like a strange combo, but the tangy and sharp gorgonzola shines when paired up with sweet pears. In Italian we even have a proverb that says "Al villan non far sapere come e' buono il formaggio con le pere", which means don't tell the farmer how good pears and cheese are together. I'm not sure why -perhaps the farmer would eat all the pears and there wouldn't be any left for us?- but then again most proverbs are silly to say the least.

Back to the dish in question... I made this on Saturday for my mom's Halloween party and it was quite the hit. The original idea was to use those little frozen pastry shells, but after seeing how expensive they are (something like $6 for a box of 12 or 15) I decided to experiment with wonton skins. I had used them recently to make ravioli and discovered that they are delicious and cheap, so I thought, why not try and make little baskets out of them? They turned out perfect -pretty to look at and crunchy- so I added one more thing one can do with wonton skins to my ever-growing list. Who would have thought?

GORGONZOLA & PEAR BASKETS

36 square wonton skins
8 ounces ricotta
8 ounces creamy gorgonzola
Salt to taste
3 pears
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 whole cloves
1/2 cup brandy

To make the baskets you'll need a mini-muffin pan. Spray it with cooking spay and gently stuff a wonton skin in each hole. Bake in three batches for 7 minutes in a 350F preheated oven. Remove from muffin pan and place on a tray to cool.

Mix the two cheeses in a bowl using an immersion blender and season with salt to taste. Set aside.

Cut pears into 36 bite-sized pieces, place in a skillet, sprinkle with brown sugar and douse with brandy. Add the cloves and simmer for about ten minutes, until caramelized.

Assemble the baskets just before serving, spooning a little cheese mixture in each and topping with a piece of pear.

"Italian flag" mahi mahi

Green, white and red... get it? The colors of the Italian flag. It's ok if you didn't, neither did my boyfriend at first. He was too busy connecting and ohhhhing and ahhhhing over our new blue ray dvd player (courtesy of my mom and dad). In the mean time I was concocting this Italian flag inspired mahi mahi dish which turned out beautiful to look at and very yummy. The red is a sweet and spicy homemade tomato jam, while the green is a very healthy broccoli puree, both of which go together well with a mild fish like mahi mahi. I poached the fish in vermouth and garlic, mostly because I realized I didn't have any white wine on hand and it was way to late to go to the store. Vermouth gives food a pleasant sweetness so I use it often as a substitute for wine. I also use it often to make martinis, but that's another story.

Speaking of booze, since party season is coming up I will start posting some cocktail recipes soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow, but in the mean click here to read a story I wrote for today's paper with some recipes and ideas for Halloween parties.

ITALIAN FLAG MAHI MAHI
Serves 2

For the green:
1 steam-in-bag bag of broccoli
1/4 cup broth
Crushed red pepper and salt to taste

Steam broccoli in their bag in the microwave for 3 minutes. Using a food processor bland them until you have a puree, pour in a saucepan and season with salt and crushed red pepper. Keep warm over low heat.

For the red:
3 large tomatoes
1 small onion
1 jalapeno, minced or 2 tablespoons jalapeno jelly
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Grate onion and tomatoes in a saucepan, add jalapeno, sugar and salt and simmer until tomato water evaporates, about 10 minutes. Stir in lemon juice and keep warm.

For the white:
2 mahi mahi fillets
Salt and white pepper to taste
1 clove of garlic
Vermouth

Season fish with salt and pepper, place in a pan with two cloves of garlic and a half inch of vermouth. Simmer gently, flipping once until vermouth is almost all evaporated, about 10 minutes. Serve with broccoli puree and tomato jam.

Pork and sweet potato goulash

I know. Goulash isn't made with pork and usually you don't see sweet potatoes anywhere near it. But as it often happens with me, I had decided that that's what I wanted to cook last night and -dammit- nothing was going to stop me from having a delicious bowl of goulash. Not the fact that I didn't have beef in the fridge. Or potatoes in the pantry. Or pink paprika, for that matter. I decided that pork, yams and hot smoked paprika would make wonderful substitutes and well, they did. Of course my goulash had little to do with the stew I used to eat in the Italian Alps near the border of Austria. It was thicker and spicier, and at the same time sweeter because of the sweet potatoes. In one word, it was good, just the perfect way to end an almost flawless weekend. I served mine over egg noodles, but I'm sure it's very good by itself or, if you are feeling creative, with rice.

PORK AND SWEET POTATO GOULASH:

1 1/2 pounds pork loin, cubed
2 yellow onions, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cipolle bionde, tritate
3 tabelspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1 carrot, sliced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Heat a little oil in a casserole, add the onions and sautee for a few minutes, until tender. Add garlic and pork, season with salt and pepper to taste and stir well. Lower heat to low. Stir in paprika and cumin, mix well and pour in a cup of water. Simmer on low for about 45 minutes.

Add potatoes, carrot, bell pepper and more water, enough to cover the stew. Cook for ten minutes more, then add the tomatoes. Adjust salt and pepper, cook for ten minutes more and serve over egg noodles.