Not Derby Pie

Two weeks, 30 meals*, and nearly 1,000 photos later, we’ve returned from Southeast Asia. It’s nice to be back in our own home, in our fair city (which compared to the Maryland suburbs has too much pollution but compared to Vietnam smells like I imagine Little House on the Prairie did). But still: even with all of our creature comforts, I find myself really missing Thailand in particular. Both Chiang Mai and Bangkok had so much to offer in terms of food, culture, and cheap massages. I wish we’d had more time.

I’m currently going through all of my photos from the trip, and over the next couple weeks, I’ll post some of my favorite images and tell you a few good stories (let’s face it – they’re mostly about amazing meals). For now, I’m gradually relearning my way around a kitchen, reminding myself that oh, I really do love to cook. The muscles are soft from lack of use; it’ll be a while before that kitchen feels like home again.

Also, it is cold here. I left DC when it was maybe 60 degrees, and went to two countries where seasonal attire in December is shorts and a t-shirt, with a jacket for nighttime if you’re lucky. I return to freezing temperatures and wind? Dislike. As if on cue, our HVAC sputtered yesterday. Around here, we’re getting professional at wrapping the blankets around our bodies just so.

Fortunately, we’ve got hot chocolate. Before I left, I was getting really into an only-slightly-indulgent routine of having hot chocolate in the evenings. I’d been riffing on my usual recipe, adding mexican cinnamon and smoked chile, or a dollop of salted caramel. When you’re starting with good hot chocolate, It’s hard to go wrong.

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Hey lovelies! On vacation so no blog updates for a little bit, but you can follow along with our Southeast Asian adventure on twitter, instagram, and Facebook. Huzzah! 

This is my bread.

It starts with this gurgling little beast, my homemade sourdough:

I’m telling you, it’s alive.

(I still need a name for the beast. I’m taking suggestions.)

I’ve been making this loaf for a few weeks now, tweaking it every so often here and there. It started as a multigrain loaf, with whole wheat and barley and rye all mixed together. I found the flavor a bit muddled, though, and the loaf was too dense. Since I was working with Anson Mills’ rye flour, which is fragrant and flavorful and deserves to be celebrated, I simplified the recipe down to some white flour, some rye. Now the loaf is lighter and the rye really comes through.

Good rye flour really makes this bread sing, but there are plenty other things to love about it – enough that, were you to make it with whole wheat instead of rye, I think it would still be special. It’s got cocoa and cinnamon, cloves and black pepper. Not a lot of any of these, mind you. None really clears its throat to announce its presence. The spices play a supporting role, like the honey in the dough. And they work really nicely with the golden raisins, which give pops of sweetness as you eat.

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I think I’ve confessed before that, despite my being Jewish, I really love the all-American, green-and-red, pine-scented, light-twinkling, gift-filled holiday that happens to coincide with Christmas. What better holiday than one that causes my colleague to bake several pounds of fudge, all at once, and give it all away? And the carols. The carols! It’s true: I love Christmas. I know I’m not alone.

I’m pretty sure the reason we give gifts on Hanukkah is because otherwise, all the Jewish kids would be jealous. There’s nothing about the origins of Hanukkah at all connected to gift-giving. Still, at this point, it’s tradition. With the holidays upon us, there’s no time like now to be uber-generous. Here are some suggestions for the foodie in your life.

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Now then. That was fun, wasn’t it?

I’m imagining you all with bellies full of turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and cornbread and maybe too much pie. As for me, this past week was fulfilling in other ways. Time in Israel, time with family, a wedding, a weekend, and plenty of food (though none of it Thanksgiving-worthy; I’m craving some pumpkin right about now).

But it’s back to work, so around here, it’s back to business. And by business, I mean lemon poppy seed sour cream cake.

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Every November, the food industry collectively scrambles to reinvent the wheel on Thanksgiving dinner. We’re told to eschew the recipes handed down by generations of relatives, and instead, spatchcock our turkey. Or steam it. Or let it hang for days, Pekin-duck style. Or tie it to the exhaust manifold. That stuffing we’ve been making all these years? Nah. It’d be better if it had chestnuts. Or oysters. Or sausage. Or, if we swapped out the cornbread and sourdough for couscous, and added some dried fruit: a Thanksgiving tagine. Apparently we should also be stuffing our turkey with eel. Get it? Got it? Good.

I’m not cooking for Thanksgiving this year. In fact, for the first time ever, I’m not even having Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll still be surrounded by D’s family, but instead of putting on the elastic-waistband pants for turkey and pumpkin pie, I’ll be lacing up my dance shoes and celebrating D’s sister’s wedding, just outside Tel Aviv.

You can imagine that my feelings about this trip are complex. It’s been too long since our last trip. I miss my bus route, my favorite vendors at the market, my friends and family. But I also know that this trip is more fraught than we’d anticipated it would be. Friends spent last Friday night in a bomb shelter. Folks on both sides are sad and scared. We’re walking into the middle of something. Then again, I guess when you go the Middle East, you’re always walking into the middle of somehting.

When I lived in Jerusalem, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for some 20 friends and acquaintances. This was no easy feat: turkeys in Israel are hard to come by. I managed to find one on my third butcher visit, and I felt so triumphant that I bought two. (We had turkey pho for weeks afterward.) I bought challah for stuffing – that, there’s plenty of – but baked my own sourdough and cornbread to supplement. I searched high and low for enough pumpkin to make my own puree. I found cranberries at a specialty grocery store. And after much, much ado, I made a Thanksgiving dinner that would have been as much at home in Silver Spring, MD as it was at my post-college apartment in Jerusalem.

On most other days of the year, I’m the one who seeks out the kaffir limes, the rare Moroccan spice blend, the exotic new chile pepper, all to give my cooking that extra oomph. I love trying new things; I love experiencing a different part of the world through whatever I can get onto a dinner plate. But Thanksgiving, that’s a holiday to be grounded in things close to home — wherever home may be. When I lived in Jerusalem, I wanted Thanksgiving to transport me back to the US. Now that I’ll be back in Israel for the holiday without a chance to celebrate it, I find myself thinking of all the friends and folks who will, in strange, wonderful unison, remove those browned, burnished turkeys from the oven to rounds of “ooh!” and “ahh,” and then “mmmm” as guests take their first bites. Stuffing will have sausage, or oysters, or challah, sourdough, cornbread, and maybe more, depending on its origin. Or maybe it won’t be stuffing at all, but dressing. Each family has its own tradition.

On business travel this week, I met a woman whose most popular contribution to Thanksgiving dinner is a big casserole of macaroni and cheese. True, it’s not traditional–for me. For her family, though, nothing could hew more to tradition.

So this Thanksgiving, close the newspaper. Ignore that magazine article on 50 new ways to add flare to your pumpkin pie. Just open up that notebook of tried-and-true family recipes. Make mom’s turkey. Serve up that ourtrageously good cranberry relish. If you’re a certain Texan, make that pink salad. I’d never touch it; it’s a good thing it isn’t my Thanksgiving tradiiton. But it is yours, and you should enjoy it.

If you’re really without recipe ideas, here are some from the year before last. And the year before that. And here’s a good list of vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes.

For soup-to-nuts Thanksgiving sanity, look no further than Sam Sifton’s new book. He is the mayor of the holiday, and you will do just fine if you follow his very sane, non-trendy advice: no appetizers, no salads, no chocolate, no fads. Just straight-up tradition.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. After the holiday, stay tuned: I’ve got some deliciousness up my sleeve.

There may be nothing better than taking the most virtuous ingredient, like kale, and making it as delicious as deep-fried potato slices. I love kale chips.

If we’re being honest about our allegiances, I’ll tell you that I might like my taters au gratin even more than as chips. You get that crunchy, browned exterior, but you also get that soft, melty, creamy underbelly. And if you want to sprinkle some extra grated parmesan on top, well, don’t let me stop you.

My kale repertoire boils down to three main things: chips, sauteed kale, and raw kale salad. So the greens are either very very crunchy, or totally soft. What never occurred to me — until last week, that is — was the idea of treating kale like potatoes au gratin, giving them soft parts and crunchy parts in the same dish. That’s what I was going for with this crispy kale tart.

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