Turkey Tacos!

Last week I stuck taco meat in my ear. This act, of course, was not intentional. I have yet to encounter the person who has done this and thought, "Well, what a worthwhile endeavor!" No, taco meat in the ear is a chunky version of a wet willy and undesirable on nearly every level.

How I came to have taco meat in my ear is understandable. I was eating a delicious turkey taco in a hard corn tortilla shell. As you know, when you are eating a hard shell taco, once you've committed to the first bite, you have committed to every bite thereafter until it is finished. On bite one, the shell breaks and only your hand is holding the whole contraption together. I always hold the taco in my right hand. I had not noticed that taco drippings had graced my left hand. My hair was not pulled back off my face and was itching my left ear. I could not afford to have an ear itch at this point as I had already committed to eat the entire taco. I used my free left hand to bring the loose hairs away from the ear. Then I felt it. That awful feeling of wetness in a location that should not be wet at that moment in time, and I discovered I had left taco meat in my ear.

I know you're wondering how I could possibly post a taco recipe after that story, but apparently I have no qualms about doing it. Brian and I eat turkey tacos on average every two weeks. They are incredibly simple to put together, fairly nutritious (minus the taco shell), and fast. I never tire of them, which is saying something because I have probably eaten tacos monthly since I've been eating solid foods (so 34 years give or take). When Brian and I first got together for the second time (long story), and I suggested tacos for dinner, he opened the cabinet and reached for seasoning mix. It is my love for this man that kept me from running out the door. It is his patience and openness to new things that allowed him to embrace my way of making tacos.

My disgust for taco seasoning mix at an early age was the first indicator I might adore food, its preparation and its consumption. I was at a slumber party at the cool girl's house. She also happened to be nice and inclusive which explains why most of our third grade class was there. The kitchen was open to the living area, and so while playing I watched her mother prep dinner in the kitchen. I saw her mother put seasoning mix in the taco meat. At first my objection was purely conjectural. My mother didn't use it and therefore it must be bad. Conjectural led to empirical because the first taste of the slumber party taco let me know that seasoning mix is evil.

My mother's blossoming into a fine cook took time, but her tacos were great from the very beginning (also known as my early years). She is an amazing person, a single mother who raised two children while still creating a professional life for herself. Tacos were one of her early successes in the kitchen. This recipe is hers.

The taco mixture will seem too liquid at first, but keep simmering.

The mixture is done when there is very little liquid left in the pan.

TURKEY TACOS
Serves 3-4

1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 T canola oil
1 to 1 1/4 pounds ground turkey (or beef)
1 4-oz. can diced green chiles (I prefer the Hatch brand)
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 t. cumin (I like cumin so I put in 1/2 T.)
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Augmentations:
tortillas and/or taco shells
chopped tomatoes
shredded lettuce
shredded cheddar cheese
sour cream
hot sauce

Heat a 10 to 12-inch saute pan over medium to medium-high heat. Add the oil and swirl around the pan. Add the onions and garlic, and saute just until translucent. Add the meat and break it apart with a fork or spoon. Once the meat is broken up and fully mixed into the onions, add the green chiles, tomato sauce, spices, and salt and pepper. Let the mixture simmer down, which should take approximately ten minutes. Remember, you want very little extra liquid in the pan, otherwise you'll have taco meat dripping all over your hand.

While the taco meat mixture reduces, preheat the oven to 190 F. Warm up the taco shells and/or tortillas in the oven. When the meat is ready, put it in your vessel of choice augment with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and/or hot sauce.

Ice Box Cookies

At the end of October I went home to Colorado for the first time since I was married there last September. It is the only time I can remember a whole year passing in between visits, and I will not let it happen again. I need my Colorado time!

Even if the weather throws a curveball…you see within 30 minutes of landing at the Denver airport it started to snow. And it didn’t stop for 48 hours. This all would have been fine and good had I not been talking weather smack to my husband and touting Colorado’s 300+ days of sunshine. I extolled the virtues of a state with abundant sunshine and warm days thrown in for good measure in the middle of January. I reminisced about Christmas vacations spent sitting outside on my mother’s patio because it was 65 degrees. So two feet of snow at the end of October may be the meteorological equivalent of getting my due.

I did not mind the snow at all. It was lovely, fluffy dry snow. It gave me time to enjoy cable TV without excuse or guilt, bond with the dog, and peruse my mother’s treasure trove of a recipe file.

She handed me a badly damaged index card, water-stained and brown from age. I had to decipher the amounts of ingredients and experiment a little, but it was worth it for these:


These are ice box cookies. Mom tells me the recipe came from Mrs. Jarvis whose family was and still is prominent in Durango, Colorado. Well, all I can say is I am grateful she shared this recipe, which is perfect for holiday baking as you can make the dough ahead of time, freeze it, and then bake it when time permits. Not only are they easy, but they are absolutely charming. They hail from a different era as they are thin, delicate and crispy. They are not steroid-induced cake masking as a cookie that we encounter all too frequently today. They have a nice touch of spice that seems to be the perfume of holiday baking and would be a nice addition to any cookie tray. These cookies would also make a nice homemade gift.

Keys to success:

• All ingredients should be room temperature, including and especially the butter.
• Don’t overmix. Once you add flour to the dough, mix just until incorporated. Stop. Scrape the mixer, including the bottom of the bowl, Mix just a couple more seconds and stop.
• If you have a warm kitchen, and the dough has gotten warm while mixing, stick in the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes before shaping it into a log/cylinder.
• To shape into a log take one fourth of the dough and roughly shape it like a log in the middle of a piece of parchment. Fold the parchment over the dough and grab a cookie sheet. Using the edge of the cookie sheet pressed against the log, pull firmly on the top piece of parchment and the dough will roll itself into a more uniform log. Like this:

It’s snowing here. The first real snow of the holiday season. It’s time. Let’s bake!

ICE BOX COOKIES
By Mrs. Jarvis of Durango, CO

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter, at room temp

2 each eggs, beaten
1 t vanilla
½ t salt

2 ½ to 3 cups all-purpose flour
1 t cinnamon
1 t cloves
1 t nutmeg
1 t baking soda

1 cup pecans, chopped

Oven: 325 F

Cream together the sugars and butter until fluffy (scrape!). Add the eggs and mix until incorporated, scraping the bowl as needed. Add vanilla and salt. Mix until incorporated.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, spices and baking soda. Add all at once to dough and mix just until incorporated. Add nuts and mix. Stop.

Roll one-fourth of the dough into a cylinder on parchment paper. Repeat until all the dough is in cylinder form (see "Keys to Success" above for instructions on how to successfully roll a log). Refrigerate at least 12 hours or overnight. Or freeze, then wrap in plastic wrap and freeze.

If dough has been frozen, let sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes until sliceable.

Slice dough into ¼” cookies and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake at 325 F for 12 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly golden brown.

No-Fail Cranberry Sauce

In June, several of my beloved cookbooks met their demise. I have not recovered from the loss. Every time my darling husband says it could have been worse and we didn't lose much I get a stinging sensation in my chest. While he's accurate on both counts, those cookbooks are a loss I feel over and over again. They were my diaries. Every recipe I tried I wrote the date next to the recipe with notes in the margin about successes, challenges and improvements for the next time. Often I noted which wine we drank with it.



One of the cookbooks that died was titled, I believe, Barefoot Contessa Parties! This week I miss that book, a lot. It contained the best cranberry sauce recipe I'd ever produced. I'd forgotten about this loss until I went to look for it this morning in an attempt to be ahead of the curve for the Thanksgiving meal. It was missing from the shelf. There's no time to order it, and yet I must have sauce for Thursday. What's a girl to do but create her own?!



I have some biases that color my recipe. First, I don't think the sauce should be overly sweet. It should be a nice balance of sweet and tart and even a little bitter to balance the other flavors on the table from turkey to sweet potatoes to stuffing. Second, it should taste fresh, really fresh. Freshness is achieved with citrus.


Third, it should have texture. I can eat smooth sauce when I am in the nursing home.


Fourth, the recipe should double or even triple easily, and this one does. Here's what a double recipe looks like before it is simmered. You'll want to cook this in a 4 quart or 5 quart stock pan.


Molly's No-Fail Cranberry Sauce
Serves 4

1 twelve ounce bag fresh cranberries (if desperate, frozen is fine).
1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar (sweetness is personal, add more if you like a sweet sauce)
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 orange, zested and juiced
1 cup water

Combine all ingredients in a 2 quart saucepan. Bring to a boil and then immediately turn down the heat to low so that it softly simmers. If you don't do this step, the sauce will boil over in fairly short order. And no, that has never happened to me. Ever. Seriously. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Time depends on thickness desired. Simmer it longer for a thicker sauce. Also, remember it will thicken as it cools. Once cooled, it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.

If you want to take the sauce to the next level, add:

• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger or 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
• pinch of nutmeg
• right before serving, stir in 1/2 cup toasted pecans
• 1/2 cup diced Granny Smith or Fuji apple

Happy Thanksgiving!

RIBS!

Sometimes Brian and I run around the house, fists pumping, yelling "meat" over and over again. Yes, we really are that mature. We have a couple of recipes in the queue that cause us to do this jubilant shouting and high-fiving about meat. The one we use for ribs causes a ridiculous amount of euphoria, and perhaps, it is because the sauce is laced with bourbon.


Or maybe it is the rub infused with brown sugar, paprika and celery seed...

Before you gasp in horror and report us for putting our meat in a cage, know that it is my inability to have my act together that caused the above photo to be our best one of the ribs, raw and covered with rub before we grilled them. The ribs are caged because we put them in our grill rotisserie basket and slow-roasted them for an hour. By we, I mean Brian. Tangentially, I've noticed if you want to make a man happy give him a grill.

This cooking method produces a very tender product, perfect for slathering with the bourbon-laced barbecue sauce.

Are you hungry yet? Good...here's the recipe.

Once you've printed out the recipe and given it due consideration, here are a couple of suggestions:

• RIBS: You can use any type of pork ribs, including country style or baby back.
• RUB: The rub has A LOT of salt. This is fine if you are only leaving it on the ribs for two hours before grilling. However, if you are letting the ribs absorb the rub overnight, then reduce the salt to 1 1/2 tablespoons.
  
• RUB: Think of the amount rub as perfect for that amount of ribs. If you use a smaller amount of ribs, then reduce the amount of rub accordingly. For example, if you use only 2 pounds of ribs, then make only a half batch of rub.
  
• SAUCE: Strained tomatoes, really Martha? To me, this is just extra work. Use crushed tomatoes...same amount.
• SAUCE: You do not need to put the sauce in the blender if you don't want. It's lovely chunky.
  

Now, some of you are wondering why I would post a rib recipe in late October. It's 74 degrees today. If it were not, though, and if you enjoy grilling then weather is no object. Thus, a rib recipe such as this is worth braving the elements.

The Bombs of Fall

When I refer to the bombs of fall, I am usually talking about color bombs. Autumn in the Hudson Valley is just as picturesque and breathtaking as you might imagine. One place to take in the fabulous color is at Kaaterskill Falls, New York State's highest waterfall:



Really, though, it doesn't matter where you are. The color is fabulous in front of a nearby gym:


And on the walking trail near our house:

We recently learned there is another bomb of fall. We moved into a new home this past June, a home graced with towering, yet lithe black walnut trees in the backyard. In mid-September, when the nuts were ready to separate from the trees, they had a nearly four-story fall onto our deck and into our yard. Boom! Boom! Boom! Over and over and over, for weeks on end.



At first, I would jump a little each time one of these suckers impacted. They break apart violently, and then immediately start to rot.



Look at this guy that hit our patio table at such a high rate of speed he has the table markings imprinted on his husk!


So I say get out there, enjoy the rich fall color, and wear a helmet!

Figs

All hail the fig! Um, yes, the under-appreciated fruit you'll find in the section of the grocery store with all the other produce they didn't know how to classify and therefore shoved in some random remote corner. The fig is adorable...just a little purple or green ball, like this one:

And internally, well, the color is gorgeous, like this fig we ate last month while visiting northeastern Spain:

Apparently, it is fig season. As figs don't grow well in the Northeast, if at all, this is news to me. When I see them at Adams, our beloved local grocery store, I usually treat myself to a few, despite their usually having a high price tag (sometimes upwards of a dollar per fig). Figs are terrific fruits because they can play for both teams.

You can use them in a chutney or in a salad. They pair well with chicken, duck and pork. I'd dare say that the little fig can uplift any savory undertaking. Oh, and don't forget cheese. Figs pair well with cheese.

On the sweet side, they provide an earthy nuance. A fig tart is a classic dessert. They are lovely paired with nuts. When I lived in Italy, a popular gelato flavor was fig and ricotta (see, it's all about the figs and cheese).

My favorite fig recipe comes from April Bloomfield, the chef at the Spotted Pig in New York. It is a fig salad with mozzarella cheese, lemon zest, thyme, olive oil and balsamic. It is the perfect combination of sweet and salty and tart. I've had fun playing with how to plate it.

I no longer use a recipe to make it. It was first published in Gourmet (R.I.P.) in 2006, but I've lost my copy and it is no longer posted on their website. However, you can find it here. I hope you have ripe figs where you live and are able to enjoy this simple, wonderful salad.

Granola!

Sometimes I get a little foggy in the cerebral section of my body, and I have to search a bit for recipes worth sharing with you. It’s not for lack of inspiration or inventory. Like I said, I get a bit foggy. It is this fog that is my excuse for not sharing this wonderful recipe with you sooner because I make it quite often for many occasions. I give it to people as birthday presents, we put it in the welcome bags at our wedding, and my husband requests it with frequency. It should have been an obvious recipe to share.

It’s granola: really good honey-laced, loaded with fun stuff like coconut and sunflower seeds granola.

It’s the kind of granola you want to eat directly from the jar, or take on a hike, or top with blueberries and yogurt for breakfast. It’s sweet enough to satisfy a sugar craving in a pinch, but substantial enough to eat for a meal or after exercising. For me, the best part is each bite reminds me of childhood trips to Santa Fe, New Mexico where we would stay at the Grant Corner Inn. This granola was a regular part of their breakfast menu as was locally roasted coffee served in this cute mug:

The Grant Corner Inn no longer exists, I am sad to say. It was centrally located near the Plaza, had a wrap-around porch, charming and clean rooms, and delicious breakfasts. Lucky for me, and now you, the Inn published a cookbook which includes this granola recipe.

GRANT CORNER INN GRANOLA
Adapted from The Grant Corner Inn Breakfast & Brunch Cookbook by Louise Stewart. 1986.

Yield: 10 cups

Vegetable Oil ¾ cup
Honey ¼ cup
Brown Sugar, packed 1 cup
Vanilla 1 teaspoon
Kosher salt ½ teaspoon
Rolled oats (not quick) 8 cups
Almonds, slivered, toasted ¾ cup
Sunflower seeds, unsalted, roasted/toasted ½ cup
Coconut, flaked, dry ½ cup

Preheat oven: 325 F. Place rack on middle shelf.

Prepare two baking sheets: line with foil and then lightly grease with the same vegetable oil you are using for the recipe. I use just a tablespoon and spread it around with my hands.

Combine oil, honey, brown sugar, vanilla and salt in a medium (2 quart) saucepan. You can leave this on low to medium-low heat while you measure the other ingredients into a large bowl. Do NOT heat over high heat and walk away because you might overcook the sugar and have an undesirable clean-up situation on your hands. Stir occasionally until the sugar melts. This is not an emulsion so the oil and sugar will not combine.

While the sugar mixture is cooking, combine the other ingredients in a large bowl. Pour the sugar over and stir quickly for even distribution. Small clumps are fine, but large clumps should be broken up. At this point, the original recipe says you can use your hands to mix the sugar into the dry ingredients. DO NOT DO THIS if you value the skin on your hands. A large wooden spoon works fine. If the mixture sticks to the wooden spoon you can scrape it off with a regular silverware spoon.

Divide evenly the granola mixture between the two pans. I usually bake one at a time. Depending on your oven’s actual temperature (an oven thermometer is handy gadget) and even distribution of heat, it should take 10 to 15 minutes to bake. Every five minutes during baking, stir the granola by bringing all the mixture from the edges into the middle, incorporating it, and then leveling it off. The edges tend to cook faster than the middle section. Also, your oven may be hotter in back than in front, especially since you are opening the door every five minutes to stir, so rotate the pans once during baking. Once finished baking, place on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Once you have baked and cooled both batches, break up any large clumps, leave the little guys, and combine both batches together in an airtight container. Can be stored for up to 10 days.

Note: Do not make this on a humid day. You need the granola to completely dry out during the baking and cooling processes. When it is humid, this will not happen, and the granola ends up being sticky and a bit soft instead of crunchy. Further, it will not keep as long because of the undesired moisture content.